- The disclosure calendar every Indian listed company follows
- Which document to open for which question
- Standalone vs consolidated — and why picking the wrong one distorts everything
Fundamental analysis has one genuine advantage over every other kind of market analysis: the raw material is public, free, and legally required to be accurate. Companies cannot decline to tell you how much they earned.
Imagine you owned 5% of a kirana shop but lived in another city. You'd want a short update every three months — sales, profit, anything unusual — and once a year a full sit-down: the complete books, what he spent on the new fridge, who he owes money to, and what he plans next.
That is exactly the rhythm the law imposes on listed companies: four quarterly updates and one full annual report.
The calendar
- Q1 resultsCovers: April–JuneTypically arrives: Late July / August
- Q2 resultsCovers: July–SeptemberTypically arrives: Late October / November
- Q3 resultsCovers: October–DecemberTypically arrives: Late January / February
- Q4 + full yearCovers: January–March, plus the audited full yearTypically arrives: April / May
- Annual reportCovers: The complete financial yearTypically arrives: Usually June–August, ahead of the AGM
- Shareholding patternCovers: Who owns what, by categoryTypically arrives: Within weeks of each quarter end
Which document answers which question
- Is the business growing right now?Open this: The latest quarterly results — revenue and profit vs the same quarter last year
- Is it a good business over time?Open this: The annual report's five- or ten-year highlights, plus the P&L
- Is it financially safe?Open this: The balance sheet — annual, and half-yearly where published
- Are the profits real?Open this: The cash flow statement — annual only, which is why it gets ignored
- What does management claim is coming?Open this: The MD&A section and the earnings call transcript
- Are the promoters selling or pledging?Open this: The quarterly shareholding pattern
- What could go badly wrong?Open this: The risk factors and the notes to accounts — where the uncomfortable details live
The glossy first thirty pages are marketing. The financial statements are four pages of totals. Everything that explains those totals — the contingent liabilities, the related-party transactions, the accounting-policy changes, the pending litigation — is in the notes, at the back, in the smallest type in the document.
You do not need to read all of them. You do need to know they exist, and to search them for three words: contingent, related party, and pledge.
Standalone vs consolidated — pick the right one
A father owns a shop. His two sons each run their own shop, funded by him, and he owns most of each.
Standalone = the father's shop alone. Consolidated = the father's shop plus both sons' shops, added together, with the internal transfers between them cancelled out.
If the father's shop is quiet but the sons' shops are booming, standalone makes the family look weak. If the sons are losing money, standalone flatters them.
A parent with a large operating subsidiary. Both sets of numbers are correct — they answer different questions.
- Standalone revenue
- ₹1,200 Cr
- Consolidated revenue
- ₹4,800 Cr
- Standalone profit
- ₹210 Cr
- Consolidated profit
- ₹95 Crsubsidiaries lose money
Default to consolidated numbers. If a company's subsidiaries matter at all, standalone is a partial view of what you own — and a favourite hiding place for losses.
Where to actually get all this
- The exchanges — NSE and BSE host every filing a company makes, free. This is the primary source; everything else is a copy.
- The company's own website — an "Investors" section is mandatory. Annual reports, transcripts, presentations.
- Investor presentations — management's own summary of the quarter. Useful, and openly one-sided: read what it emphasises and what it omits.
- Earnings call transcripts — the most under-read document available. Analysts ask the awkward questions here, and the answers (or the dodges) are on the record.
- Aggregators — screeners and sites like this one, which parse the filings so you don't have to. Fast, but always reconcile a surprising number against the filing itself.
Headline percentages are meaningless until you know the comparison base. Compare a quarter to the same quarter last year (year-on-year), not to the previous quarter, because most Indian businesses are seasonal — festive quarters, monsoon quarters, exam-season quarters.
Also check whether the base quarter was itself unusual. "Profit tripled" from a COVID-crushed base is arithmetic, not achievement.
And watch for one-offs: a land sale, an insurance receipt, a tax write-back. These inflate a single quarter and vanish. Strip them out and ask what the business earned from doing business.
- ☐Is this standalone or consolidated? Is my comparison on the same basis?
- ☐Is this a quarter, a trailing twelve months (TTM), or a full financial year?
- ☐Is it compared year-on-year, or against a quarter that isn't comparable?
- ☐Does it include a one-off item? (Look for "exceptional items" in the P&L.)
- ☐Are these audited annual figures, or unaudited quarterly ones?
See it live · Our fundamental reports read consolidated filings and label the period on every figure — full-year, TTM and quarterly are never silently mixed.
See a report →In one screen
- 1Four quarterly results plus one annual report — India's financial year is April to March.
- 2The notes to accounts hold the details that matter; search them for contingent, related party, pledge.
- 3Default to consolidated figures, and never compare consolidated against standalone.
- 4Check basis, period and one-offs before you trust any headline percentage.
Check yourself
Nothing is scored or stored — the explanation after each answer is the point.
An Indian company reports "Q1 FY26" results. Which months does that cover?
A holding company shows ₹300 Cr standalone profit and ₹40 Cr consolidated profit. What's the most likely explanation?