Terming the medium-term outlook for logistics firms in India as positive, domestic rating agency, ICRA in its latest report has said that the country’s logistics industry is likely to grow at a rate of 9-10 percent annually. It also said that while there have been fluctuations in the economy and freight demand due to Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation, the impact of the same would be transitory and would be corrected over the near term. Besides, it believes that the industry would continue to benefit from recovery in the Indian economy and revival in industrial output, while supply side factors like improvement in logistics infrastructure and emergence of logistics startups would offer further impetus to growth.
As per the report, analysis of the Q1 FY18 performance of key listed logistics companies indicated that their revenue growth at 6.2 percent (on Y-o-Y basis) outpaced the real GDP growth, much of it was supported by increase in freight rates since the latter half of FY 2017, while volume growth remained flat for most of the companies. In addition, it noted that companies have benefited from the underlying sectors such as automobile, consumer durables etc. which have bucked the trend of economic slowdown. From a profitability perspective, it stated that while the aggregate operating profit margins improved marginally on a sequential basis to 9.7 percent during Q1 FY18, there was pressure on the margins on a Y-o-Y basis.
The rating agency pointed out that although the manufacturing activity has declined further in July 2017 post GST implementation, there has been a gradual improvement in most of economic indicators over the past couple of months, which suggest the outlook for logistics companies is likely to turn favourable going forward. As per the report, the road freight rates also followed a similar trend, with the decline in industrial activity and lack of freight demand resulting in a sharp decline of freight rates in July 2017, and subsequent recovery in August 2017 as the industrial activity and freight demand improved.
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