Major Indian stocks report mixed Q1 earnings; HDFC Bank, JSPL post strong gains

India's stock market was watching a scattered set of earnings reports on a July weekend, and the picture they painted was one of uneven recovery. Some companies had clearly found their footing in the post-pandemic world. Others were still struggling, or facing problems that no amount of profit growth could solve.

HDFC Bank, the country's largest private lender, delivered the kind of quarter that investors had been hoping to see. The bank reported a net profit of ₹9,196 crore for the three months ending in June, a jump of 19 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. The growth came from the fundamentals: advances—the money the bank lends out—grew by 22.5 percent, deposits climbed 19.2 percent, and the total balance sheet expanded by 20.3 percent. Net interest income, the core measure of a bank's lending business, rose 14.5 percent to ₹19,481.4 crore. It was the kind of broad-based expansion that suggested the bank was not just riding a temporary wave but actually growing its business.

Jindal Steel and Power Limited told an even more dramatic story. The company's consolidated net profit surged to ₹2,770.88 crore in the quarter ended June 30, a multifold increase from ₹14.25 crore in the same period the previous year. The jump was driven by higher revenues—total income rose to ₹13,069.17 crore from ₹10,643.17 crore. L&T Technology Services also posted solid gains, with consolidated net profit climbing 27 percent to ₹274 crore, while revenue from operations grew 23.4 percent to ₹1,873.7 crore.

But the earnings season also exposed fractures. ICICI Prudential, the insurance company, did swing to a profit of ₹156 crore in the quarter, compared to a loss of ₹186 crore a year earlier, helped by lower claims and provisions. Yet the company's value of new business—a key measure of future earnings potential—jumped 31.6 percent, suggesting the real growth story was still ahead. Just Dial, the local search platform, moved in the opposite direction. The company's losses widened sharply to ₹48.36 crore in the first quarter, compared to a loss of ₹3.52 crore a year before, even as revenue grew 12.2 percent to ₹185.6 crore. The company was bringing in more money but losing more of it.

The aviation sector, meanwhile, was dealing with problems that quarterly results could not capture. IndiGo, the country's largest airline by market share, was facing a labor dispute. A significant number of aircraft maintenance technicians had gone on sick leave over the previous week to protest their salaries, which had been cut during the pandemic and never fully restored. The carriers had slashed pay to survive the revenue collapse of 2020 and 2021, and most had not brought wages back to pre-pandemic levels. SpiceJet faced a more serious threat. A petition had been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking to halt all operations of the airline, citing serial malfunctions and asking for a special fast-track commission to assess whether the airline should be grounded until it met all security requirements.

Vodafone Idea, the debt-laden telecom operator, secured a lifeline of sorts when shareholders approved an equity allocation of ₹436.21 crore to its promoter, the Vodafone Group. The vote was overwhelming—99.94 percent of shareholders approved the move. The Vodafone Group holds 58.46 percent of the company, while the Aditya Birla Group holds 16.53 percent. Torrent Power, meanwhile, was preparing to raise capital, announcing plans to seek shareholder approval for issuing up to ₹2,000 crore in non-convertible debentures at its annual general meeting scheduled for August 8. And Maximus International Limited was looking outward, drawing up an expansion plan worth over ₹25 crore for its East African operations over the next two to three years, including a new manufacturing facility.

The earnings season revealed a market in transition. The largest and most established companies were growing steadily, their balance sheets strengthened by the recovery. But smaller players and those in labor-intensive sectors were still finding their way, and in some cases, facing existential questions about safety and viability.