India's Tata Chemicals posts quarterly loss on one-time charge, lower soda ash prices

(Reuters) - India's Tata Chemicals reported its second loss in four quarters on Monday, hurt by a one-time charge incurred in its UK operations and a dip in soda ash prices amid soft demand.

The chemicals firm reported a consolidated net loss of 530 million rupees ($6.1 million) for the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared to a profit of 1.58 billion rupees a year earlier.

Tata Chemicals said it incurred a non-cash writedown on assets aggregating to 700 million rupees with respect to its UK operations.

Its revenue from operations fell 3.8% to 35.90 billion rupees for the quarter.

For further results highlights, [Full Story]

KEY CONTEXT

An economic slowdown in China and flat demand in the European Union have hit prices of soda ash, which contributes to two-thirds of Tata Chemicals' overall sales.

Soda ash is used to reduce the melting point of silica to produce glass. It is also used in the soap and detergent industries.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next Estimates (next 12 Analysts' sentiment

12 months) months)

RIC PE EV/EBIT Revenue Profit Mean No. of Stock to Div

DA growth growth rating* analysts price yield

(%) (%) target** (%)

Tata 24.11 10.76 7.54 25.02 Sell 7 1.06 1.52

Chemicals

Deepak 29.89 18.87 13.73 28.88 Hold 18 1.09 0.32

Nitrite

SRF 49.72 25.85 13.80 34.12 Hold 27 1.00 0.30

GHCL 10.86 5.84 4.30 1.91 Buy 1 0.78 1.64

* Mean of analysts' ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell

** Ratio of the stock's last close to analysts' mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

OCTOBER-DECEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE

-- All data from LSEG

-- $1 = 87.0420 rupees

(Reporting by Anuran Sadhu in Bengaluru)