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India's Dalmia Bharat Sugar and Industries Ltd on Monday said its September quarter profit rose more than six fold, aided by strong demand and higher domestic prices.

The New Delhi-based company's profit from continuing operations rose to 549 million rupees ($6.60 million) for the quarter from 117.1 million rupees a year earlier.

Revenue from operations jumped over 26% to 7.32 billion rupees.

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KEY CONTEXT

Analysts said that a rise in domestic sugar prices would be the main driver for earnings growth. Higher prices help improve the margins of sugar makers, allowing them to make payments to farmers on time.

Sugar prices in India are near multi-year highs and production is likely to fall 8% to 33.7 million metric tons in the 2023/24 marketing year, because of weak monsoon in the top cane-growing states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Dalmia Bharat Sugar also reported a year-over-year rise in profit in the previous three quarters.

Dalmia's quarterly profit jump comes at a time when peer Dhampur Sugar Mills posted a drop in second-quarter profit. Balrampur Chini Mills' results are due on Tuesday.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next 12 Estimates (next 12 months) Analysts' sentiment

months)

RIC PE EV/EBITD Revenue growth Profit growth Mean # of Stock to price Div yield (%)

A rating* analysts target**

Dalmia Bharat 10.69 6.39 8.69 NULL Buy 1 0.84 0.88

Sugar and

Industries Ltd

Balrampur Chini 13.56 10.65 12.12 36.29 Buy 4 0.93 0.59

Mills Ltd

Dwarikesh Sugar 9.87 5.71 0.84 20.87 Strong Buy 4 0.78 2.21

Industries Ltd

Dhampur Sugar 8.67 5.26 NULL NULL Buy 1 0.76 1.94

Mills Ltd

* Mean of analysts' ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell ** Ratio of the stock's last close to analysts' mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

JULY-SEPTEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE