The country’s largest lead-acid battery maker Exide Industries on Monday announced a six per cent rise in net profit in the July-September quarter to ₹126.76 crore against the same period last year.

The higher profits came on nearly 21 per cent rise in gross sales to ₹1,957 crore.

Sequentially the profits are down by a massive 31 per cent from ₹185.3 crore in April-June 2014 quarter, primarily due to drop in inverter battery sales.

Inverter batteries, a major profit churner, sell more in the summer months.

High volume growth The company’s shares closed 3.6 per cent lower at ₹158.80 on the BSE on Monday.

MD and CEO PK Kataky told BusinessLine that the company regained its market share (lost during the last fiscal) riding on “very high” growth in sales volume across the automotive product range.

“We have got back our lost market share,” he said.

While Kataky refused to give market share figures, Exide traditionally controlled over 70 per cent of the battery sales in India.

In the absence of little or no growth in OE (original equipment) demand from automakers, volume growth was fully attributed to replacement sales.

While Kataky is hopeful of a resurgence of OE demand in the January-March quarter; the rise in replacement sales has pushed the capacity utilisation of all plants above 80 per cent.

Margin impacted The high growth in sales notwithstanding, profit margin remained subdued as against the same period last year.

From 8.28 per cent in September 2013, the net profit margin declined to 7.13 per cent.

Operational profit margin (OPM) declined from 14.32 per cent to 12.17 per cent.

Kataky attributed the two percentage point drop in OPM to rise in lead prices.

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