NTPC

Q4 FY26 (Jan-Mar 2026) standalone PAT jumped 34% YoY to ₹8,747 crore, but this was driven almost entirely by a one-off exceptional tax reversal of ₹9,062 crore (effective tax rate went negative), while revenue was roughly flat YoY - that PAT growth figure should not be read as operating improvement. Q1 FY27 looks cleaner: standalone PAT +11.9% YoY on revenue +3%, consolidated PAT +12.9% on revenue +7.8%, with EBITDA growth outpacing revenue. Management has reiterated FY27 capacity-addition guidance of 9.5 GW, including 8 GW of renewables, as the growth driver going forward. Full-year FY26 standalone PAT was ₹23,162 crore versus ₹19,649 crore in FY25, but that comparison is also inflated by the Q4 tax item - treat it as roughly high-teens underlying growth, not the ~18% headline implies at face value.

At a P/E of roughly 11x and P/B of about 1.5x, NTPC is cheaper than both Power Grid (P/E ~14.9x, P/B ~2.3x) and Tata Power (P/E ~29.7x, P/B ~2.8x), and below the broader power-sector average of around 20x. Why it is cheap: NTPC's ROE (~14-15%) and especially ROCE (~8.9%) trail Power Grid's (ROE ~18.6%), reflecting that generation is more capital-intensive and lower-margin than Power Grid's asset-light transmission business, plus the market tends to discount state-owned utilities for lower perceived capital-allocation flexibility. Whether it is actually cheap is a separate question - on regulated, predictable cash flows the multiple looks undemanding, but the modest ROCE means the discount is at least partly earned, not purely sentiment.

This is volume-led growth, not margin-led - revenue is growing in single digits (+3% to +8% YoY across recent quarters) as new capacity comes online, in line with a regulated cost-plus tariff model where margins don't expand much on their own. The real growth story is capacity: management's FY27 guidance of 9.5 GW of additions, including 8 GW of renewables through NTPC Green Energy, plus steady commissioning of smaller solar and wind projects (tens of MW at a time through mid-to-late 2026) rather than a single large profit lever.

NTPC's cash flows are backed by tripartite agreements that secure payment from state distribution companies, and both ICRA and CRISIL reaffirmed its AAA/Stable rating in 2026 - so business risk from the underlying operations is low. The watch item is financial risk from leverage: debt-to-equity runs around 1.1x (standalone) to 1.3x (consolidated), with total debt near ₹2.71 lakh crore funding the renewable capex buildout. Given the regulated revenue model and top-tier credit rating, this leverage looks manageable rather than alarming, but it is the thing to track as green-energy capex scales up.

The promoter is the Government of India, holding 51.1% as of June 2026, essentially unchanged quarter to quarter, with zero pledging - unsurprising for a sovereign-owned utility. Domestic institutions (DIIs) hold the largest non-promoter block at 29.4%, with FIIs at 16.3% (down slightly from 16.5% the prior quarter). No marquee individual investor shows up on the register in available data - if you were expecting to see a well-known name here, there isn't one.