Hind Lever Q3 net up 60 pc at Rs520-cr
Mumbai: Hindustan Lever (HLL) has reported a 60 per cent increase in net profit at Rs520.74 crore for the third quarter ended September 30, against Rs325.96 crore in the corresponding period a year-ago.

This is inclusive of an exceptional income of Rs137.74 crore. Excluding this, the PAT rose by 17.7 per cent to Rs383 crore from Rs325.35 crore.

HLL has shown a 12.2 per cent increase in sales to Rs3,066.01 crore from Rs2,731.54 crore.

The exceptional items include profit from sale of investment in Tata Chemicals shares (Rs 120.8 crore) and reversal of provision for employee-related costs at HLL's Sewri factory in Mumbai (Rs 66.8 crore).

The company said cost-saving measures coupled with selective price increase and introduction of a `better product mix' helped the company to improve its gross margins. Profit before interest and taxation for the quarter amounted to Rs412 crore (Rs345.74 crore), registering an increase of 19.8 per cent. Profit for the nine-month period increased 19.4 per cent to Rs1,056.24 crore from Rs884.53 crore.

The FMCG business grew by 14.2 per cent in the quarter - 11 cent by volume and 3 per cent by increase in product prices. The company had raised prices of soaps and detergents by up to 7 per cent in the quarter.

Sales of home and personal care products, accounting for 70 per cent of the company's business, grew by 15 per cent. The foods business, which accounts for 20 per cent of sales, grew 10.7 per cent. In the beverage segment, tea and coffee grew by 6 per cent, processed foods 18 per cent and ice-cream 18 per cent.

The company's spend on advertisement and promotion went up from 10 per cent to 13 per cent in the quarter.

Shares of HLL ended at Rs233.60 up by 2.12 per cent from Monday's close.
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Bharti enters into $400mn deal with Nokia
New Delhi: Bharti Airtel has signed a $400-million contract with Nokia for managing and expanding its cellular networks in eight telecom circles.

Nokia will also deploy a pan-India (Wireless Application Protocol) solution across Bharti's networks. Two months ago Bharti awarded a $1-billion contract to Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson to expand networks in the other 15 circles where Airtel operates.

As per the three-year contract, Nokia will provide managed services and expand Airtel networks to cover all towns and cities in the eight telecom circles of Mumbai, Maharashtra & Goa, Gujarat, Bihar (including Jharkhand), Orissa, Kolkata, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh (including Chhattisgarh).

The network monitoring operations will be carried out from Nokia's Global Network Services Centre in Chennai.

As part of the new contract with Bharti, Nokia will deploy the latest radio and core network equipment including softswitch, flexi-base stations and mini-Ultrasite base stations and provide services based on Bharti's capacity requirements.
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TCS acquires 75 pc stake in Swiss co
Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services has acquired 75 per cent stake in Switzerland-based TKS-Teknosoft for Swiss Franc 100.5 million (around Rs360 crore) to scale up its business in Europe and give it direct access to its clients in Switzerland and France.

TCS's UK and Europe operations contribute nearly 20 per cent of the company's revenues. TKS will add $40-50 million in revenues to TCS' Continental Europe business, which is growing at 50 per cent.

TCS and TKS together developed QUARTZ, a wholesale banking product whose IPR is with TCS but whose distribution rights for Europe vests with TKS.

TCS now gets global distribution rights for QUARTZ. As part of the transaction it also acquires ALPHA and e-Portfolio products from TKS. ALPHA gives a strong foothold for the company in the private banking segment and as does e-Portfolio in the emerging wealth-management segment, said a statement from TCS.
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Hind Latex to foray into vaccines
Thiruvananthapuram: Hindustan Latex, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and in association with the Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech International, has launched two vaccines, HIVAC-B and TYFEX, to combat hepatitis-B and typhoid respectively. The company will market these products in India and abroad.

According to company officials, HIVAC-B, a recombinant vaccine, uses HIMAX technology.

This eliminates ultra centrifugation and the use of toxic metals, while increasing the recovery of antigenic protein to higher levels. The vaccine has been manufactured without using cesium chloride.

TYFEX is a highly purified new generation typhoid vaccine. It is virtually devoid of side effects as it contains only Vi polysaccharide, the most important bacterial cell wall component that controls the virulence of typhoid bacilli.

Only a single dose of the vaccine is required compared to two doses of older generation vaccines.

The vaccines add to the long list of products by Hindustan Latex such as blood collection bags, surgical sutures, auto-disable syringes, hydrocephalus shunt, tissue expanders, needle destroyers and oral re-hydration salts, apart from a range of contraceptives.

The company has targeted a turnover of Rs1,000 crore by 2010.
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Rel Comm plans $1.5bn investment
Mumbai: Reliance Communications is planning a capital expenditure (capex) of $1-1.5 billion in the current financial year that will be used for overall operation and network expansion plans. Reliance will use the capex for furthering its IP-enabled connectivity, wireless and enterprise businesses and submarine cable activities across the globe. A part of it is also expected to be used for its 3G foray, with having options of pursuing WCDMA, EVDO at 800 MhZ and GSM at 1800 Mhz.

The company has the world's largest next generation IP-enabled connectivity infrastructure, with over 150,000 km of optical fibre cable (OFC) in India, USA, Europe, West Asia and Asia Pacific region. This comprises 88,000 km of OFC and data networks in India and 65,000 km of international submarine cable networks - the largest private submarine cable network in the world according to the company.

During the quarter ended September 30, 2006, the company has bagged enterprise business from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Deutsche Bank among others. Under the contract, Reliance will provide these companies with bandwidth connectivity and data managed services from India, he said.
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