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Informist, Monday, Jun. 1, 2026

 

MUMBAI – The March quarter earnings of companies under the coverage of Motilal Oswal Financial Services did better than expected, the brokerage said. The healthy performance for the reporting quarter was driven by banking, financial services, and insurance, metals, oil marketing companies, technology, telecommunications, and automobile sectors, Motilal Oswal said. However, the brokerage added going ahead, the earnings of the corporate world exhibit weakness.

 

The aggregate Jan-Mar earnings of companies covered by Motilal Oswal rose 16% on year, which was higher than the estimate of an 8% on-year gain. The bottom line of BFSI companies grew 18% on year against an estimate of 11% on-year growth, Motilal Oswal said. Metals and oil marketing companies beat the estimates for profit by a wide margin. Metal companies posted an aggregate profit growth of 50% on year, sharply exceeding the view of a 24% on-year growth. The downstream oil companies' profit gained 62% on year, beating an estimate of 7% on-year growth.  

 

The technology sector's net profit rose 13% on year and the telecommunications bottom line gained over 8 times on year, Motilal Oswal said. The automobile sector posted net profit growth of 13% on a year-on-year basis, surpassing an estimate that showed a 6% on year decline, the brokerage added. In contrast, oil and gas companies, excluding the downstream ones, were the major drag on the corporate earnings for the March quarter. The sector posted a 10% on-year fall in its net profit, failing to meet the estimate of a 1% on-year growth, the brokerage added. 

 

The Nifty 50 constituents posted single digit bottom-line growth for the eighth consecutive quarter, according to the brokerage. This was a trend that came in for the first time since the pandemic, Motilal Oswal said. Barring the heavyweight stock Reliance Industries Ltd., which posted an on-year fall in profit of 13%, and InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., which posted a net loss, the Nifty 50 aggregate earnings gained 9% on year. "Five Nifty companies – Bharti Airtel, JSW Steel, HDFC Bank, Infosys, and TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) – contributed 75% of the incremental YoY (year-on-year) accretion in earnings," Motilal Oswal said. 

 

On other hand, Reliance Industries, Interglobe Aviation, Adani Enterprises, Power Grid, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Cipla, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, and Maruti Suzuki India were the major drags on the Nifty 50 earnings, according to Motilal Oswal.

 

The large-cap companies within Motilal Oswal's coverage reported an earnings growth of 12% on year while mid-cap companies showed improvement and delivered a growth of 36%. The earnings growth of the latter was above the estimate of 25% on year, Motilal Oswal said. "Multiple mid-cap sectors, such as BFSI, Metals, OMCs, and Healthcare, lifted the overall performance," the brokerage said. These sectors contributed around 89% of the incremental on year accretion in earnings. Earnings growth for small-cap companies were in line with estimates. These companies' earnings rose 19% on year, slightly above an estimated on-year growth of 18%, Motilal Oswal added. 

 

The brokerage said that the 50-stock-index ended 2025-26 (Apr-Mar) with a 5?rnings-per-share growth at INR 1,065. This was the second consecutive year that the index posted a single digit growth in the metric. However, Motial Oswal trimmed the FY27 EPS estimate for Nifty 50 by 0.9% to INR 1,235 from INR 1,246. This was led by State Bank of India, Reliance Industries, JSW Steel, Oil and Natural Gas Corp., and Coal India, Motilal Oswal added. 

 

Going ahead, the market is expected to remain vulnerable to volatile developments arising from the West Asia war. "Higher commodity prices will be the key  monitorables, as a prolonged elevated level could affect India's macro parameters and engender a tight monetary policy stance," Motilal Oswal said. However, the brokerage also said that, following India's sharp underperformance in FY26 and record foreign institutional investor outflows, a favourable base has likely been set for Indian equities.  End

 

Reported by Adhithya Aji

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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