Consolidated net profit rose to 4.13 billion rupees ($49.7 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31 from 3.58 billion rupees a year earlier.

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KEY CONTEXT

Cables and wires companies continued seeing a healthy demand from the real estate and industrial sector, aided by the government's push for infrastructure development as well as private capex.

Stable copper prices in the third quarter, which was nearly flat quarter-over-quarter, helped maintain a normal level of inventory in the cable and wire products channel, according to analysts at Systematix institutional equities.

Polycab, the market leader in THE wires and cables business as per Bob Capital Markets analysts, has reported double-digit profit growth in the previous five quarters. Rival Havells India is set to report its third-quarter results on Jan. 23.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next Estimates (next 12 Analysts' sentiment

12 months) months)

RIC PE EV/EBITDA Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div

growth growth rating* analysts price yield

target** (%)

Polycab India Ltd 32.67 22.15 17.72 20.02 Buy 24 0.80 0.48

Finolex Cables Ltd 24.51 18.21 16.19 21.44 Buy 4 0.89 0.66

Havells India Ltd 55.98 37.81 14.18 28.49 Buy 19 1.00 0.52

KEI Industries Ltd 39.74 26.64 16.55 21.23 Buy 11 1.07 0.10

* The mean of analyst ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell

** The ratio of stock's last close to analysts' mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

OCTOBER-DECEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE

($1 = 83.1350 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Anisha Ajith in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)