Standalone or consolidated: which numbers should you quote?

Every company with a subsidiary prints its accounts twice. Standalone is the company on its own, as one legal person. Consolidated adds in every company it controls, as if the family were one business. For Sameer Chai Ltd, FY26:

The gap is Sameer Chai Foods, the premix company Sameer Chai owns outright: ₹8 crore of revenue and ₹0.5 crore of profit. The two companies sold nothing to each other, so nothing has to be stripped out.

The question at the root

Before any number, ask one thing.

Is your question about the whole business, or about what one company is allowed or required to do?

• The whole business. What it earns, what it's worth, how it compares. Lean to consolidated, because it shows everything the company controls.
• One company's rights and duties. What it can pay out, what the law asks of it. Lean to standalone, because laws bind legal persons, and each company is its own.
• Not sure? Read the rule or the filing itself. It usually names the set it uses, and it isn't always the one you'd guess.

Here is the tree with its five most common jobs.

Valuing the company, go consolidated

A share of Sameer Chai Ltd is a share of everything it owns, Foods included. So the profit behind the price is the group's.

• Market cap: 5 crore shares × ₹54 = ₹270 crore.
• Consolidated P/E: ₹54 ÷ ₹1.90 ≈ 28.4. Standalone it's ₹54 ÷ ₹1.80 = 30.

Same company, same price, and the "how expensive is it" number moves by more than one and a half points depending on the set. For valuation, the consolidated figure is the honest one, because it counts the premix profit you're also paying for.

One detail from the accounting standard: consolidated EPS uses the profit that belongs to the parent's own shareholders. Foods is 100% owned, so all ₹0.5 crore counts. If an outsider owned part of it, their slice would come off first.

Checking dividend capacity, go standalone

So for dividend questions, stay standalone:

• Payout ratio, standalone: 2.5 ÷ 9 ≈ 28%. Against consolidated profit it would look like 2.5 ÷ 9.5 ≈ 26%, which describes a payment nobody could actually make from that pool.
• Reserves that can fund a dividend: of the ₹60 crore of standalone reserves, ₹45 crore is IPO premium. Section 52 lists what premium can be spent on (bonus shares, a buyback, issue costs and a few others). Dividends aren't on the list. That leaves the ₹15 crore of kept profits.

The trap runs the other way for holding companies with rich subsidiaries. The group can look flush while the listed parent has little profit of its own to distribute.

CSR and legal lines, read which set the rule names

This branch splits, and that's the point. The law picks the set, not you.

CSR is standalone. Section 135 applies to "every company" that crosses a line on net worth, turnover or net profit. Each company runs its own test. Sameer Chai Ltd crosses the ₹5 crore profit line on its own numbers; Foods, with ₹0.5 crore, doesn't come close. (The CSR guide works the sum through.)

Some LODR lines are consolidated. SEBI's listing rules often measure the listed company against the whole group:

• Related-party "material" line: 10% of the listed company's consolidated turnover, for groups up to ₹20,000 crore. For us, 10% of ₹128 crore = ₹12.8 crore. On standalone turnover you'd get ₹12 crore, which is the wrong line, even if the ₹6 crore dairy deal sits below both.
• "Material subsidiary": a subsidiary whose turnover or net worth is more than 10% of the consolidated figure. Foods' turnover is 8 ÷ 128 ≈ 6.25%, below the line. The net worth test needs Foods' own net worth, so check that too.

Some lines use the listed company's own figures. The governance chapter of LODR (board make-up, committees and more) doesn't apply to a listed company with paid-up capital of ₹10 crore or less and net worth of ₹25 crore or less. Sameer Chai's paid-up capital alone is ₹50 crore, so it's in.

And some lines don't care. The BRSR applies to the top 1,000 listed companies by market cap. Market cap is one number either way: ₹270 crore.

Comparing with peers, match the kind first

Put standalone against standalone, or consolidated against consolidated. Then ask one more question the tables won't: does the rival even have subsidiaries?

If the rival is a single company with none, it publishes only standalone accounts, and those are its whole business. The fair comparison is then its standalone against our consolidated, because both describe everything each company controls. Matching labels is the starting rule. Matching businesses is the real one.

Reading quarterly results, read both and quote consolidated

A listed company with subsidiaries must file standalone and consolidated results every quarter. Headlines and analysts mostly quote consolidated. Read the standalone set anyway, for two things it shows better:

• how the listed company itself is doing, which drives its dividend;
• whether a subsidiary is flattering the group. If consolidated profit rises while standalone falls, the growth is somewhere else in the family.

When joint ventures enter, the gap changes shape

Take the FY27 "what if": a 50:50 joint venture with a biscuit maker, each side putting in ₹5 crore. The railway kiosks' sales would appear in neither set's revenue.

• Standalone: one line, the investment, usually carried at what was paid: ₹5 crore.
• Consolidated: one line too, but under the equity method. It starts at ₹5 crore and moves each year with Sameer Chai's half of the venture's profit or loss.

So a joint venture can change consolidated profit without changing consolidated revenue at all. If a group's margin jumps, check whether a joint venture's share of profit is helping.