| Wednesday, 29 October 2025 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
If you grew up in Chennai in the nineties, you can’t have missed going to an Arun Icecreams outlet for that rare treat. Arun Icecreams is to Chennai what Corner House is to Bengaluru or Nirula’s is to Delhi. My personal Arun Icecreams favourite used to be the Cassata. What six-year-old can resist something that looks like a rainbow?
Behind this beloved brand is Hatsun Agro Product, India’s largest private sector dairy company, with a market cap of Rs 25,000 crore. It has a strong presence in Tamil Nadu, also owns other brands like Ibaco, its premium range of ice-creams, and Arokya branded milk, paneer, and curd.
But the 39-year-old company has had a rather lacklustre performance on the stock exchanges, even lagging the BSE FMCG index for most of the year.
That is, until 27 October.
| Source: Trendlyne |
On that day, its stock saw a sharp vertical climb, rising by almost 20% to Rs 1,080 a share after its second-quarter results, hitting the upper circuit limit.
This rally was fuelled by its profit after tax, which jumped 70% to Rs 110 crore from a year ago—among the highest it has seen in 10 quarters, as revenue rose 17% to about Rs 2,430 crore.
The Rs 223 crore acquisition of Odisha-based dairy company Milk Mantra (known as Milky Moo) played a part in this increase. And now, it’s on its way to becoming the Rs 10,000 crore company it hopes to be by the end of the year. In the first half of the 2026 financial year, its revenue stood at over Rs 5,000 crore, with a profit of Rs 245 crore, which the company claims makes it the first private dairy company to see such numbers.
Most dairy companies live and die by milk procurement prices, but Hatsun has shown this quarter that it can take the edge off that impact.
The proof lies in its margins.
The company’s operating margins in the September quarter grew to 13% from 12% a year ago. This came at a time when milk procurement costs rose that quarter.
This pressure is evident at its smaller rival, Heritage Foods, where margins fell by 100 basis points from a year ago to just 7% in the latest quarter.
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