Larsen and Toubro (L&T) reported 20.5% growth in its first quarter net profit to ₹1,361 crore even as margins from major business segments such as infrastructure, power, heavy engineering, information technology (IT) and information technology-enabled services (ITES), financial services and others fell.

The rise in profit came on a 10% growth in revenue to ₹29,636 crore, with international revenue contributing 31% of the total revenue or ₹9,268 crore.

L&T secured ₹38,700 crore worth of new orders, registering a 11% growth with international orders contributing ₹9,005 crore or 23% of the total order flow.

“Order wins in infrastructure and power segments were the major contributors to the order inflow during the quarter,” said the company in a statement, adding that the consolidated order book of the group stood at ₹2,94,014 crore as on June 30, 2019, with international order book constituting 21% of the total order book.

L&T’s EBITDA margin from the infrastructure segment, which constitutes about 75% of the order book, fell to 6.4% from 6.8% in the year-ago period due to job mix and seasonality of execution.

Commenting on the margins, L&T MD and CEO S. N. Subrahmanyan said, “Infrastructure margins can't be judged on a quarterly basis as the value of the projects differs in every quarter. It’s better to judge on long-term view.”

‘PSU clients chip in’

“While orders from the central and State governments were affected during the general elections, strong PSU and private sector orders enabled the growth during the quarter," the company said. L&T Group CFO R. Shankar Raman said,

“We estimate most of the growth will come towards end of the year. We are optimistic on meeting our order flow guidance of 10-12% and revenue guidance of 12-15%.”