Performance of Private Corporate Business Sector during Q1:2026-27

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( 502 kb ) Date : Aug 27, 2026 Performance of Private Corporate Business Sector during Q1:2026-27

Today, the Reserve Bank released the data on performance of the private corporate business sector during the first quarter of 2026-27, drawn from abridged quarterly financial results of 3,247 listed non-government non-financial companies 1 . This summary position also includes comparable data for Q4:2025-26 and Q1:2025-26 to enable study of sequential (q-o-q) and annual (y-o-y) change (web-link:

https://data.rbi.org.in/DBIE/#/dbie/reports/Statistics/Corporate%20Sector/Listed%20Non-Government%20Non-Financial%20Companies ).

Highlights

Sales

At aggregate level, sales growth of listed private non-financial companies continued to accelerate to 19.4 per cent (y-o-y) during Q1:2026-27 from 13.9 per cent in the previous quarter (Table 1A and 2A).

Sales of 1,827 listed private manufacturing companies expanded by 21.4 per cent (y-o-y) during Q1:2026-27, up from 14.5 per cent in the previous quarter. This acceleration was majorly driven by the automobiles, petroleum and electrical machinery industries (Table 1A, 2A and 5A).

Sales growth of Information Technology (IT) companies strengthened further and recorded a double-digit growth of 14.8 per cent (y-o-y) during Q1:2026-27 from 9.9 per cent in the previous quarter.

Non-IT services companies continued to record a healthy double-digit growth of 19.7 per cent (20.3 per cent in the previous quarter), mainly driven by wholesale and retail trade industry.

Expenditure

With global supply chain disruptions, raw material expenses of manufacturing companies rose substantially by 27.5 per cent (y-o-y) during Q1:2026-27; however, raw material to sales ratio declined marginally to 58.1 per cent during Q1 from 58.5 per cent in the previous quarter (Table 2A and 2B).

Staff cost of manufacturing, IT and non-IT services companies rose by 12.4 per cent, 7.6 per cent and 11.2 per cent, respectively, during Q1:2026-27, higher than the growth recorded during the previous quarter. Staff cost to sales ratio for manufacturing and non-IT services companies increased to 5.5 per cent and 10.1 per cent, respectively, in Q1:2026-27; however, it declined for IT companies during Q1 from the previous quarter.

Pricing power

Despite significant increase in input costs, operating profit growth of manufacturing companies improved significantly to 21.3 per cent (y-o-y) during Q1:2026-27 from 9.4 per cent in the previous quarter. Operating profit growth of IT and non-IT services companies also improved to 19.9 per cent and 12.7 per cent, respectively, during Q1:2026-27 (Table 2A).

On sequential basis, operating profit margin improved across all major sectors during Q1:2026-27 ( Chart 2 and Table 2B).

Interest expenses

With higher sequential rise in gross profits than interest expense, manufacturing companies’ interest coverage ratio (ICR) 2 improved to 10.2 in Q1:2026-27. ICR of non-IT services companies increased to 2.6 and ICR of IT firms continued to remain at elevated level during Q1 (Table 2B).

List of Tables

Table No.

Title

1

A

Performance of Listed Non-Government Non-Financial Companies

Growth Rates

B

Select Ratios

2

A

Performance of Listed Non-Government Non-Financial Companies – Sector-wise

Growth Rates

B

Select Ratios

3

A

Performance of Listed Non-Government Non-Financial Companies according to Size of Paid-up-Capital

Growth Rates

B

Select Ratios

4

A

Performance of Listed Non-Government Non-Financial Companies according to Size of Sales

Growth Rates

B

Select Ratios

5

A

Performance of Listed Non-Government Non-Financial Companies according to Industry

Growth Rates

B

Select Ratios

Explanatory Notes

Glossary

Notes:

The coverage of companies in different quarters varies, depending on the date of declaration of results; this is, however, not expected to significantly alter the aggregate position.

Explanatory notes detailing the compilation methodology, and the glossary (including revised definitions and calculations that differ from previous releases) are appended. (Brij Raj)

Chief General Manager Press Release: 2026-2027/974 1 Source: Capitaline database 2 ICR (i.e., ratio of earnings before interest and tax to interest expenses) is a measure of debt servicing capacity of a company. The minimum value for ICR is 1 for a company to be viable.

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