Sugar stocks in India: 36 sugar and ethanol companies

The page applies one rule: the sub-industry is Sugar. Market cap is the share price times the number of shares. P/E is market cap divided by the last twelve months' profit that belongs to the company's own shareholders. ROCE (return on capital employed) is operating profit after depreciation as a percentage of net worth plus borrowings.

A mill buys sugarcane from farmers, crushes it and sells the sugar. The same cane gives molasses, which distilleries turn into ethanol, and bagasse, the fibre left after crushing, which is burned to generate electricity. Integrated groups therefore report sugar, distillery and power segments. A mill's margin depends on the gap between what it pays for cane and the price its sugar sells at.

Ethanol is mixed into petrol under the government's Ethanol Blended Petrol programme, and oil marketing companies buy it from mills and distilleries. The government has fixed different ex-mill prices for ethanol by the raw material it is made from: cane juice, B heavy molasses or C heavy molasses. A company's distillery capacity and the feedstock it can use, cane, molasses or grain, differ from one company to the next, so sugar and ethanol earnings vary between listed mills.

Profit and ROCE for a mill reflect one season's cane crop, cane cost and ethanol volumes. Where a company made a loss, no P/E is shown.