Private corporate sector revenue rose 8% in Q3FY25: RBI data

Sales of listed private non-financial companies increased by 8% year-on-year (YoY) during Q3FY25 compared with 5.4% in the previous quarter and 5.5% in the year-earlier period according to data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday.  

Sales growth of 1,675 listed private manufacturing companies improved to 7.7% during Q3FY25 from 3.3% during the previous quarter, mainly driven by higher sales growth in automobiles, chemicals, food products and electrical machinery industries; sales revenue of petroleum, iron and steel, and cement industries, however, contracted on an annual basis.

Information Technology (IT) companies recorded a rise of 6.8% in sales in Q3 from 3.2% in the year-earlier period while non-IT services companies recorded 11.5% sales growth over and above the 12.9% rise in the same period last year. 

Manufacturing companies’ expenditure on raw material rose by 6.3% in consonance with sales growth, whereas their staff cost recorded a higher increase of 9.5%; staff cost of IT and non-IT services companies increased by 5% and 12.4%, respectively the RBI said.

The operating profit margin of listed non-financial companies improved sequentially by 50 basis points to 16.2% during the latest quarter – the improvement was broad based. 

Interest coverage ratio (ICR) of manufacturing companies moderated to 7.6% during Q3FY25 (7.9% in the previous quarter); ICR of IT sector remained very high (above 40) whereas that of non-IT services companies exceeded 2 (i.e., earnings before interest and tax being more than double of interest payment after 32 quarters, the RBI said.

The data was drawn from abridged quarterly financial results of 2,924 listed non-government non-financial companies.