Adani Wilmar on a roll; shares zoom over 80% in one month

Shares of the country's largest commodity company Adani Wilmar jumped over 5 per cent to hit an all-time high of Rs 764.6 on BSE after Indonesia announced to ban palm oil exports. The market cap of the firm rose to Rs 99,373.43 crore.

Indonesia, which is the world's largest producer of palm oil and meets nearly 50 per cent of the total palm oil requirement in India annually, had announced to ban exports till further notice apparently to contain edible oil prices in their domestic market.

The stock has zoomed over 80 per cent in just one month. It made its debut on February 8 this year. Shares of the Adani Group firm listed at Rs 221, a 3.91 per cent discount to their IPO issue price on BSE. The issue price of the IPO stood at Rs 230.

Adani Wilmar nurtures the largest edible oil portfolio—spanning sunflower oil, soybean oil, mustard oil, palm oil, cotton-seed oil and rice bran oil, carried by its very popular Fortune brand.

India’s overall edible oil market, worth Rs 3 lakh crore, is dotted with unorganised players. The organised segment, worth Rs 1.8 lakh crore, is in turn dominated by AWL, with a share of 18.9 per cent. Other big players include Ruchi Soya (8 per cent share), Emami (6 per cent share), and Cargill (4 per cent share).

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"The industry was not expecting a ban. There will be an immediate impact on prices in the domestic market from Monday itself as the news of the ban has distorted the sentiment.'' The cooking oil industry was prepared for a tweak in export duty at worst by Indonesia which is grappling with its cooking oil price spike in their domestic market by about 40-50 per cent. Indonesia was levying USD 575 per tonne export duty," SEA director-general B V Mehta told PTI.

''The news will push Malaysia oil prices higher which is our major alternate sourcing market,'' Mehta said. ''India consumes 22.5 million tonne of edible oil annually of which 9-9.5 million tonne is met by domestic supplies and the rest by imports. About 3.5-4 million tonne of palm oil is imported by India annually from Indonesia,'' he said.

Adani Wilmar Ltd, the joint venture between Adani Group and Wilmar Group of Singapore, reported a 66 per cent year-on-year rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 211 crore for the quarter ending December 31, 2021. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 127 crore in the year-ago period.

Revenue from operations also rose 40.5 per cent to Rs 14,379 crore in the quarter under review as against Rs 10,229 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.

Adani Wilmar has 22 own factories in total and has sourced arrangement products from 28 more plants across the country. Staple contributes 11 per cent to Adani Wilmar's topline while the rest is from edible oil and industry essentials.

(With inputs from PTI)