Technical analyst Rajen Shah of Angel Broking is bullish on Escorts and maintained 'buy' rating on the stock to achieve a long term target between Rs 250-260.

According to Mr. Shah, the stock will hit the said target in a period of 12-15 months.

Today, the shares of the company opened at Rs 177 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 179.30 and a low of Rs 40 on BSE.

Current EPS & P/E ratio stood at 15.88 and 11.26 respectively.

Tractor manufacturer Escorts, which follows a financial year from October to September, announced that its net profit in the March quarter increased by 430% to Rs 41.47 crore owing to a newly launched tractor and bettered performance witnessed across agriculture and infrastructure segments of the economic system.

The company's net sales during the second quarter zoomed 40% to Rs 672 crore as against the corresponding period of 2009.

In the period under review, tractor sales rose 51% to 14,623 units.

Mr. Nikhil Nanda, Escorts joint managing director stated, "We managed an internal reduction of 1.5 percentage points both in variable and fixed costs compared with the last quarter. A combination of market growth and cost reduction boosted profit. We hope to carry this momentum in the remaining quarters."