Coal India, BEL Miss Estimates as India’s Mid-Caps Surge Ahead

Coal India’s profit moved just 0.6% on Monday, to Rs 8,852 crore (roughly $1 billion), and still came in below what analysts had penciled in. A few updates down the same live earnings tape, Supreme Petrochem’s profit nearly tripled. Both numbers landed on the same July 27 session, one of the busiest of India’s Q1 FY27 results season, with more than 50 companies reporting on a single Monday.

Look past the four blue-chip names dominating the headlines, Coal India, Bharat Electronics, Tata Power and Canara Bank, and a pattern emerges that the ticker-by-ticker coverage mostly buries: the biggest, most-tracked companies of the day all grew profit in a narrow band and lost margin doing it, while a long tail of mid-sized manufacturers and lenders quietly turned in some of the strongest prints of the entire earnings season.

The Big Four Post a Strangely Quiet Quarter

Bharat Electronics (BEL), the state-run defence electronics maker, Tata Power, the Tata group’s power utility, and Canara Bank, one of India’s largest state-run lenders, all reported alongside Coal India on Monday. None of them fell short of growing profit. None of them grew it by much, and all four gave up margin against the year-ago quarter.

Coal India and BEL Both Miss Profit Estimates

Coal India’s consolidated net profit of Rs 8,852 crore missed the Rs 8,907 crore that analysts had estimated, even though revenue of Rs 46,255 crore, up 7.8%, beat the Rs 44,055 crore forecast. Ebitda fell 4.1% to Rs 12,069 crore, and margin slipped to 26.1% from 29.3% a year earlier. The miner still declared a first interim dividend of Rs 5.50 a share.

Bharat Electronics told a similar story. Net profit of Rs 1,048 crore, up 8.2%, missed the Rs 1,077 crore estimate despite revenue jumping 25.3% to Rs 5,533 crore, well ahead of the Rs 5,086 crore analysts expected. Margin fell to 25.1% from 28.1% a year ago, also short of the 27.9% the Street had modeled.

Tata Power and Canara Bank Grow, Just Barely

Tata Power’s net profit rose 10.9% to Rs 1,176 crore on revenue up 5.6% to Rs 19,051 crore, yet Ebitda fell 3% to Rs 4,013 crore and margin dropped to 21.1% from 22.9%. Tata Power shareholders had already locked in a June 23 record date for a separate dividend alongside HUL, Asian Paints and Dalmia Bharat, weeks before this quarter’s print landed.

Canara Bank’s net profit rose 2.2% to Rs 4,856 crore, with net interest income up 13% to Rs 10,215 crore. Provisions nearly doubled from the previous quarter, to Rs 2,080 crore from Rs 992 crore, though they were actually below the Rs 2,352 crore set aside a year earlier. Asset quality kept improving: gross NPAs fell to 1.57% from 1.84% in March and 2.69% a year ago, with the provision coverage ratio at 94.76%.

Why Are Margins Shrinking as Revenue Climbs?

Revenue is holding up across India’s biggest companies this quarter, but the cost of doing business is eating further into what reaches the bottom line, and brokerages flagged this exact combination before results season even began. It shows up plainly in Monday’s four largest reports, all of which grew sales while losing between 130 and 320 basis points of margin.

Antique Stock Broking’s Q1 FY27 preview projected Nifty companies, excluding financials, commodities and a handful of large caps, would post 15.1% revenue growth alongside just an 8.9% rise in profit after tax, a gap that only widens once oil, gas and metals are stripped back in. Morgan Stanley’s India equity strategist, Ridham Desai, has been telling clients that revenue momentum should stay healthy through the quarter even as earnings absorb pressure from rising input costs.

• 9.8%: projected year-on-year net profit growth for the Nifty 50 this quarter, according to brokerage estimates
• 6%: Nifty earnings growth once metals and oil and gas names are excluded from the index
• 15.1%: revenue growth Antique Stock Broking expects for Nifty companies once financials, commodities and a few large caps are stripped out

It is the same pattern that showed up in Wipro’s own Q1 print two weeks earlier, when a flat profit exposed an early split in the season. Brokerage PL Capital’s own research note still has the index climbing toward 27,958 by the fiscal year-end, a call that leans on exactly this kind of profit recovery broadening out past the index’s heaviest names.

Where Q1’s Real Growth Is Hiding

Scroll further down Monday’s earnings tape, and growth rates stop looking like the big four’s. A wide group of mid-sized manufacturers, chemical makers and non-bank lenders posted some of the sharpest profit jumps of the entire season, several of them doubling or nearly tripling what they earned a year earlier.

• +189.7%: Supreme Petrochem’s net profit, as margin nearly tripled to 19.4% from 8.3%
• +128.5%: R R Kabel’s net profit, aided by a Rs 169 crore inventory write-back
• +97.2%: Balaji Amines’ net profit, with margin up more than 10 percentage points to 25.4%
• +64.6%: JK Paper’s net profit despite revenue growth of just 13.6%
• +61.5%: CCL Products’ net profit as margin improved to 16.1%
• +51.9%: PN Gadgil Jewellers’ net profit on 40.7% revenue growth
• +40.6%: Usha Martin’s net profit as margin rose to 20.1% from 16.3%

Input costs for plastics and chemical makers had been swinging hard through the year, jumping as much as 60% in a single month on crude-linked polymer prices, according to commodity researcher Procurement Resource. Those same feedstocks have since cooled, with PVC resin now hovering near Rs 1,10,000 a tonne in July, per Polymers Bazaar’s market tracker, as Southeast Asian oversupply weighs on offers, a swing that lines up with the margin recovery at several of the names above.

Not every number in the tail is as clean as it looks. Sumitomo Chemical India’s 20.5% profit growth leaned on a Rs 269 crore one-time gain, with underlying revenue up just 0.6%.

Small Lenders Quietly Outrun Canara Bank

Canara Bank’s 2.2% profit growth looked especially modest next to smaller finance names reporting the same day. Home First Finance grew profit 34.4% to Rs 160 crore. Northern Arc Capital grew profit 40.9% to Rs 114 crore. HUDCO, the state housing financier, grew profit 35.1% to Rs 851 crore and declared its own first interim dividend of Rs 1.25 a share. Tamilnad Mercantile Bank, a smaller private lender, grew profit 35% to Rs 412 crore while trimming gross NPAs to 0.69% from 0.73% a quarter earlier.

The ECL Bill Canara Is Already Flagging

Canara Bank’s managing director and chief executive, Brajesh Kumar Singh, told analysts the softer treasury income behind this quarter’s provisioning jump was tied to mark-to-market losses that should ease going forward, and that the bank saw no slippage in its large corporate book, with Rs 1,780 crore of fresh slippage instead coming from smaller MSME and agriculture accounts. Singh also said the lender expects to hire 3,000 to 4,000 employees in the coming financial year.

He separately flagged a bigger, slower-moving number: Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 12,000 crore of additional provisioning the bank will eventually need to absorb as regulators shift banks onto an expected-credit-loss model, with Canara aiming to be fully prepared by April next year.

Not Every Small Name Made the Cut

The mid-cap surge was not universal, and several smaller names had rough quarters of their own. Tata Chemicals swung to a Rs 17 crore net loss from a Rs 252 crore profit a year ago, even as revenue rose 14.4% to Rs 4,255 crore; margin fell to 13% from 17.5%. Godfrey Phillips, the cigarette maker, saw profit fall 44.3% to Rs 198 crore as revenue dropped 19%.

Sagar Cements swung to a Rs 23.1 crore net loss from a Rs 1.2 crore profit, with margin nearly halved to 10.3% from 18.1%. Epigral’s profit fell 37.9% to Rs 99.7 crore despite 16.3% revenue growth. Tejas Networks widened its net loss slightly to Rs 202 crore from Rs 194 crore, even though revenue nearly doubled and its Ebitda loss narrowed to Rs 100 crore from Rs 136 crore, a sign the telecom-gear maker is still spending ahead of the revenue it is booking. Gravita India’s profit grew just 14% despite a 41.8% jump in revenue, with margin slipping to 7.4% from 9.7%, and Nesco’s Ebitda margin fell to 48.3% from 57.1% on a 4% rise in profit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which major companies were still to report Q1 FY27 results after Monday?

Indus Towers, Coforge and Capri Global Capital were all named on Monday’s results calendar alongside Coal India and Canara Bank, but their scorecards were still pending as the day’s trading wrapped up, leaving IT services and telecom infrastructure numbers for later in the week.

What is the RBI’s expected credit loss framework, and when does it apply to banks?

The Reserve Bank of India’s final directions, issued in April 2026, shift banks from an incurred-loss provisioning model to one based on projected losses, phasing in from April 1, 2027 with a four-year glide path to March 2031, according to KPMG’s analysis of the rules, giving lenders time to absorb the one-time provisioning hit.

What dividend did Coal India declare with its Q1 results?

Coal India’s board approved a first interim dividend of Rs 5.50 per share for FY27, with the record date for the payout set for July 31, 2026, four days after the results were announced.

Which sector showed the widest gap between big and small companies this quarter?

Chemicals stood out the most. Balaji Amines and Supreme Petrochem posted some of the biggest profit jumps of the season, while Tata Chemicals swung to a loss and Epigral’s profit fell nearly 38%, all inside the same sector and the same reporting week.