The listing regulations require an Indian listed company to publish results for each of the first three quarters within forty-five days of the quarter end, and audited annual results within sixty days of the year end. (Timing set by Regulation 33 of the listing regulations and amended over time; check the current periods before quoting them. Checked September 2026.) The consequence is structural and easy to miss: there is no separately reviewed fourth-quarter result. Q4 is what remains when you subtract nine months from the audited year. Many companies do print a March-quarter column beside the annual one, and the footnote under it says what it is: the balancing figure between the audited full year and the published year-to-date figures up to the third quarter. Whether the column is there or not, the arithmetic and the standing of the number are the same, so run the subtraction yourself.
That is the reconciliation, and it is a two-line piece of arithmetic that catches more than its cost.
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Worked example: deriving Q4 for a manufacturer
Take the synthetic manufacturer used in the third worked example. Its first three quarters reported revenue of Rs 742.30, Rs 768.90 and Rs 812.40 crore, so nine-month revenue is Rs 2,323.60 crore. The audited annual revenue is Rs 3,180.20 crore. Q4 revenue is therefore Rs 856.60 crore, a figure no reviewer ever looked at on its own. Do the same on profit: nine-month profit after tax of Rs 197.40 crore against an audited annual Rs 246.10 crore gives a fourth quarter of Rs 48.70 crore. The nine-month margin was 8.4954% and the derived fourth quarter is 5.6853%, a fall of 2.8102 percentage points in the one quarter nobody reviewed in isolation.
The fourth quarter is where the year's true-ups land: the provisions the auditor insisted on, the inventory writedowns, the bonus accruals, the impairment somebody hoped to avoid. A company whose Q4 margin is reliably its worst is not necessarily doing anything wrong; it may simply be recognising in April what it was too optimistic about in July. A company whose Q4 margin is reliably its best deserves a harder look, because the audited quarter should be the conservative one.
What do the other parts of the result tell you?
The rest of the format is fixed and each part earns its place.
Both the standalone and the consolidated columns must be published, and the pair is a diagnostic. The synthetic manufacturer reports standalone revenue of Rs 2,610.40 crore against consolidated Rs 3,180.20 crore, so subsidiaries carry Rs 569.80 crore, which is 17.9171% of the group. On profit the sign flips: standalone profit after tax of Rs 274.60 crore against consolidated Rs 246.10 crore means the subsidiaries lost Rs 28.50 crore between them. A group whose subsidiaries add a sixth of revenue and subtract from profit has told you where to spend your next hour.
Segment revenue and segment result are disclosed quarterly, and the table ties to profit before tax through two reconciling lines: unallocable expenditure net of unallocable income, and finance costs. Run the tie-out. In the same filing, segment revenues of Rs 1,742.30, Rs 1,027.90 and Rs 471.40 crore sum to Rs 3,241.60 crore against reported revenue of Rs 3,180.20 crore, so inter-segment eliminations are Rs 61.40 crore. Segment results of Rs 289.80, Rs 121.60 and Rs 74.40 crore sum to Rs 485.80 crore; subtract unallocable Rs 60.40 crore and finance costs Rs 96.50 crore and you get Rs 328.90 crore, which is the reported profit before tax exactly. Tax of Rs 82.80 crore leaves Rs 246.10 crore, tying to the annual profit. A segment table that will not tie is a segment table you have mis-transcribed, or a filing with a problem.
Indian presentation puts exceptional items on their own line, below operating results and above tax. That is convenient and it is also an invitation. The synthetic manufacturer took a pre-tax exceptional charge of Rs 22.50 crore in the fourth quarter. At the 25.168% statutory rate the post-tax effect is Rs 16.8372 crore, so profit before the exceptional item was Rs 65.5372 crore and the adjusted margin 7.6509%. The exceptional item explains 69.9454% of the 2.8102-point margin fall, which leaves 0.8446 points that it does not explain. Both halves of that sentence matter. Count how many years in the last five carried an exceptional item; if the answer is four, the line is a cost centre with a costume.
What is the deviation statement?
A company that has raised money must report, quarterly, in a statement on deviation in the use of issue proceeds, whether the proceeds went where the prospectus said they would. The synthetic issuer's Rs 500 crore raise allotted Rs 300 crore to capacity expansion and Rs 200 crore to debt repayment; it has spent Rs 268.00 crore and Rs 96.00 crore, so utilisation is 89.3333% and 48.0000%, overall 72.8000%, with Rs 136.00 crore still sitting in the monitoring account. Against a stated schedule of 75% on the second object, the shortfall is Rs 54.00 crore. A persistent shortfall on the debt-repayment object with the cash still parked is worth a question on the next call.