10 June 2024
India Strategy
BSE Sensex: 76,693
Nifty-50: 23,290
Corporate profit to GDP – Rebounds to a 15-year high in FY24!
Analyzing growth across cycles
Corporate India’s earnings strength has come to the fore even as markets have been
preoccupied with elections and politics over the last few months. We have been
consistently emphasizing the excellent macro-micro fundamentals of India in our
recent notes with strong GDP growth, a sound fiscal position, a stable currency, and
healthy corporate earnings. In this note, we discuss in detail the 15-year high
corporate profit to GDP ratio clocked by India’s listed corporate sector.
Construing the corporate profit to GDP ratio during the last two decades
Profits have grown at a faster pace
in the last four years
Nifty-500 PAT (INRb)
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
In 2024, the corporate profit to GDP ratio for the Nifty-500 Universe and listed
India Inc. swelled to 4.8% and 5.2%, respectively, scaling a 15-year high.
The
YoY improvement was led by the BFSI, Oil & Gas, and Automobile sectors, which
contributed 95% of the total improvement. Conversely, Metals, Technology, and
Chemicals contributed adversely. The 0.8% YoY improvement in the 2024 profit
to GDP ratio for Nifty-500 was propelled by the BFSI (0.3% increase), Oil & Gas
(0.3% rise), and Automobile (0.2% increase) sectors.
The corporate profit for the Nifty-500 universe grew at a faster pace of 30% YoY in
FY24, after moderating to 9.3% YoY in FY23 (+52% YoY in FY22). We note that the
Nominal GDP grew 9.6% YoY, slower than the corporate profit growth in FY24
and 14.2% YoY GDP growth in FY23 (vs. 18.9% recorded in FY22).
India's corporate profit (Listed + Unlisted) to GDP ratio dropped materially to
1.9% from 7.9% over 2008-20. For the Nifty-500 Universe, the ratio contracted
to 2.1% (at a two-decade low) from 5.2% over the same period.
Notably, the ratio had been contracting since 2010, barring 2017 when profits of
global cyclicals (such as Metals and O&G) had bounced back and losses of PSU
Banks had reduced from the preceding year.
In this report, we analyze ‘corporate earnings as a percentage of GDP’ in greater
detail. We use the Nifty-500 as a proxy for corporate earnings, since the index
accounts for 91% to India’s market cap.
We segregate the 2003-24 period into three phases: 1) 2003-08, 2) 2008-20, and
3) 2020-24.
During Phase 1 (2003-08),
the corporate profit to GDP ratio almost doubled to 5.2%
from 2.7% over the same period, with Nifty-500 profits surging 30%, which was
twice the pace of underlying GDP growth (at 14.5% CAGR) over the same period.
During Phase 2 (2008-20),
the downturn in domestic corporate earnings
resulted in a compression in the Nifty-500 profit to GDP ratio to 2.1% from 5.2%.
Notwithstanding the pandemic-led gloom and weak economic recovery during
Phase 3 (2020-24),
corporate profits have recovered sharply from the lows.
Consequently, the ratio rebounded to a 15-year high of 4.8% (long-period
average of 3.7%) in 2024 as profits grew at a faster pace (of 30% YoY).
GDP (INR b)
The chronicles of corporate profit to GDP ratio
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Gautam Duggad – Research Analyst
(Gautam.Duggad@MotilalOswal.com)
Research Analyst: Deven Mistry
(Deven@MotilalOswal.com) |
Aanshul Agarawal
(Aanshul.Agarawal@Motilaloswal.com)
Investors are advised to refer through important disclosures made at the last page of the Research Report.
Motilal Oswal research is available on www.motilaloswal.com/Institutional-Equities, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Factset and S&P Capital.