With infrastructure development in full swing in India, the cement sector stands to gain by the demand for cement in India. Markets have performed well over the past one year with Sensex delivering approximately 2.90 per cent over a one year period and almost 7.50 per cent on YTD basis.

Markets have performed well over the past one year, with the Sensex delivering approximately 2.90 per cent over a one-year period and almost 7.50 per cent on a YTD basis.

Earnings were largely in line; we do not see any structural negatives. The marginally lower´han´expected EBITDA was only because of slightly lower volume and recovery in realisation. The focus on cost efficiencies continues, and opex/tonne was down 8 per cent y-o-y, and 1 per cent q-o-q.

Debt-ridden Jaypee Associates has sold most of its priced cement business to the Aditya Birla group company UltraTech Cement for an upwardly revised sum of Rs 16,189 crore. Here´s what analysts have to say about the deal.

Shree Cement continues to deliver robust volume growth (much ahead of the industry) at 31 per cent y-o-y. Given the robust volume growth, realisation fall of ~5 per cent q-o-q in the March 2016 quarter is reasonable.

UltraTech´s Q4 surprised positively on account of high volumes and cost savings. Results beat our estimates by 8 per cent and consensus by 10 per cent on the EBITDA front.

The prices are showing signs of improvement along with volume growth. It is a silver lining by the year end. Better pricing and market penetration will improve overall sentiments for few companies, says Vaibhav Agarwal, Vice President - Research of PhillipCapital (India) Pvt. Ltd.

As expected, February 2016 has seen few major and historic consolidation moves. While, Birla Corp called off its proposed transaction with Lafarge India and entered into an agreement with Reliance Cement to buy-out whole of their capacity, UltraTech Cement announced an historical deal by agreeing to buy-out 22.4mn tn capacity of Jaypee Cement

We are pleased to announce that Vaibhav Agarwal of Phillip Capital (India) Pvt. Ltd will be sharing his views on the movement of Cement Stocks through this column from now onwards.