Instability in foreign exchange rates has adversely affected most of the big firms. Tata Motors, which is the country’s third largest passenger-car maker and largest vehicle manufacturer, saw its net profit sinking for the quarter ended June30, 2008 by 30.13 percent as compared to the same period last fiscal, due to fluctuation in forex rates, inflationary pressures and a steep increase in input costs.

During the present quarter, the company reported a net profit of Rs 326.11 crore, while during the year-ago quarter; it had the net profit of Rs 466.76 crore.

Due to foreign exchange losses of Rs 193 crore, Indian pharma giant Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd suffered a loss in its net profit for the quarter ended June 30, which fell more than 91% year-on-year to Rs 22.9 crore.

On Tuesday, Omesh Sethi, Ranbaxy’s chief financial officer said that the company’s net profit stood at Rs 266 crore in the same quarter last year, with foreign exchange gains of Rs 201 crore.

In April-June quarter, the compnay’s net profit was little changes at Rs 161 crore against Rs 160 crore in the same period last fiscal, if the one time forex loss was excluded.

Talking about the company’s operating margin, except for forex gain was improved marginally at 16.8% sales in the quarter from 16.4% in the same quarter last year.

Tokyo - Sony Corp on Tuesday reported a net profit fall of 47.4 per cent in the April-June period to 34.98 billion yen (324.78 million dollars) compared with the same period last year.

Sony's net profit decline was attributed mainly to the yen's advance against the US dollar and the lack of blockbuster hit movies in its filmmaking division.

The company's operating profit for the April-June quarter fell 39.5 per cent to 73.44 billion yen, while sales were up 0.1 per cent to 1.98 trillion yen.

The Aditya Birla flagship company, “Grasim Industries” for the first quarter ended June 30, 2008, has reported a flat growth 0.49 percent rise in net profit at Rs 514 crore. In the same period last year, it had 512 crore of net profit. The total income of the company saw a rise of 6.84 percent which came to Rs 2,674 this quarter while during the same period last year it had the total income of Rs 2,593 crore.

The minority shares of the company were marginally down by one percent from Rs 120 crore to Rs 672 crore. On the other hand income increased nine percent to Rs 4,524 crore.