Exide Rights + BHEL Order

Exide Industries announced during the market hours today, 21 August 2007 that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 28 August 2007 to consider rights issue of shares.

On 20 July 2007, the board of directors of the company had given their approval for acquisition of a 26% stake in a joint venture company in Australia for marketing of traction batteries. The board had also approved the acquisition of the balance 49% shareholding in its existing 51% subsidiary company Caldyne Automatics.

Exide’s net profit jumped 84% to Rs 70.11 crore on 51.4% rise in sales to Rs 663.92 crore in Q1 June 2007 over Q1 June 2006.

BHEL has won contracts worth Rs 6500 crore ($1.6 billion) for setting up power project units. It has won contracts for setting up two units of 500 mega watts (MW) each at the Koderma thermal power station in Jharkhand and two units of 500 MW each at Durgapur Steel Thermal Power Station in West Bengal. The orders have been placed by Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC).

Recently, Bhel had won a Rs 2900-crore contract for building three 500-MW units in north India.