Chemicals maker BASF India's Q4 profit jumps, shares hit record high

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Chemicals maker BASF India on Tuesday posted a fourth-quarter profit that nearly doubled, helped by strong demand for its materials and agriculture solution businesses.

Profit rose 96% year-on-year to 1.62 billion rupees ($19.4 million) for the three months ended March 31 from 823.9 billion rupees a year earlier. Revenue from operations rose 2.5% to 33.60 billion rupees. The materials segment of BASF India, which comprises of its performance materials & monomers businesses used in segments like transportation, appliances and footwear reported a 13.3% rise in quarterly revenue while the agriculture solution segment, which includes insecticides, herbicides, fungicides among others grew 12.4%. This helped offset the 11.2% and 1.7% fall in quarterly revenue of the nutrition & care and industrial solutions segments respectively.

The Indian arm of Germany's BASF posted its third straight quarterly profit at a time when most other chemical companies are still grappling with high inventory and destocking for the past few quarters. Earlier this month, peer chemicals and polymers maker SRF posted a drop in profit for the fifth quarter in a row as its chemical business, which consists of specialty chemicals, fluorochemicals, and agrochemicals among others continued to face weak demand. BASF India also declared a dividend of 15 rupees per share for the fiscal 2024. Share of the company rose as much as 14.5% after the results to hit a record high of 4,690.75 rupees. ($1 = 83.5080 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Ashish Chandra in Bengaluru)