Amara Raja Batteries charges up on Japanese order 18-6-2003 Amara Raja Batteries shares zoomed up 9.8% to Rs 82.95 on BSE early afternoon.

It had earlier struck the day's high of Rs Rs 88. The scrip clocked a decent 1.6 lakh shares in volumes on BSE. Amara Raja batteries (ARBL) is usually thinly traded with average daily volumes in the last one year (to 6 June 2003) at just 9,285 shares.

The stock price has been buoyant over the last few trading sessions on the back of a broad based surge on the bourses. From Rs 48 on 31 March 2003, the stock gained 72.8% to the current Rs 82.95.

The company today announced that it has bagged a slew of orders in the overseas markets. One order coming from an unnamed automotive player in Japan for the delivery of automotive batteries for passenger cars . The order, valued at Rs 1 crore, will be executed over the next 1 year. Another order happens to be from Singapore, for the installation of 15,000 batteries in the "ComfortDelgro Cabs" to meet 100% of the latter's requirements. This order is worth Rs 1.50 crore and will be executed over the next one year. Amaron Hi-Life is being retailed in Singapore through a tie up with Nam Wah Battery Co.

In the Middle East, the company has received an order worth Rs 0.5 crore for 4,000 batteries to the largest fleet of government taxis in Dubai from Dubai Transport Services. ARBL has also partnered with CARS (Computerized Auto Repairs and Services) for retailing Amron Hi-Life for the replacement market. The company has managed to find a foothold in over 10 countries including Taiwan, Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the UK, Cyprus and Greece, it has said in a statement.

The company's exports have been on the rise in recent months due to increasing success in establishing the company's presence in Asian markets.

Amara Raja makes VRLA batteries and automotive batteries and it caters to industries such as power, oil & gas and UPS systems. Johnson Controls of US has a 26% stake in Amara Raja. The other promoter is the Galla family, which holds 26% stake. Johnson Control is also a technical collaborator.

Some of the company's clientele in India includes Siemens, Lucent, Alcatel, VSNL, and Indian Railways.

Earlier, there were reports that ARBL was in talks with Johnson Controls to export batteries to the US under the label Bosch.

For Q3 ended 31 December 2003, the company registered a sharp 34.7% fall in net profit to Rs 3.03 crore (Rs 4.64 crore) on a 9.3% growth in sales to Rs 46.99 crore (Rs 42.99 crore).