Indian power company CESC’s Q3 profit falls amid higher tax expenses

BENGALURU - India's CESC, a power generation and distribution company, reported a fall in third-quarter profit on Friday, due to higher tax expenses and lower regulatory income. Regulatory income, which includes adjustments related to fuel cost, purchase of power and other fixed costs, fell to 3 billion rupees from 5.6 billion rupees a year ago. KEY CONTEXT CESC's revenue for the third-quarter was expected to get a boost from higher power generation and lower distribution losses, as per analysts at Elara Capital. PEER COMPARISON Valuation Estimates months) RIC PE EV/EBI Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div TDA growth growth rating* analysts price yield target** CESC 13.13 8.52 8.34 12.97 Buy 9 0.84 2.51 Torrent Power 26.06 12.55 9.70 15.34 Hold 8 1.00 1.10 NTPC 13.79 8.87 6.73 9.08 Buy 18 0.74 2.09 Tata Power NULL 12.45 9.20 18.22 Hold 19 0.84 0.53 * 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 OCTOBER-DECEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE -- All data from LSEG Data -- $1 = 85.9280 rupees