Corporate revenue grew at a moderate pace in the first quarter, mainly due to slower growth in export and consumption sectors.

Export-based sectors such as information technology (IT) services and pharma were impacted amid pricing pressure in global markets and a stronger rupee as compared to last year.

Among the consumption-linked sectors, telecom services suffered because larger incumbents saw an erosion in their pricing power due to rising competitive intensity. Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and automobiles grew slower because of destocking ahead of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout. The destocking hurt manufacturer volume growth. The analysis is corroborated from the performance of 422 companies across 50 sectors (excluding financial services and oil).

Revenue of commodity-linked sectors expanded by a robust 27% as the realisations on key commodities such as steel, crude oil and aluminium rose 24%, 12% and 6.9%, respectively. The natural gas and cement industries also benefitted from higher realisations in garnering double-digit revenue growth.