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Shares of Allcargo Logistics rallied over 15% to Rs 9.45 on the BSE on Thursday after the company reported a 258% year-on-year jump in profit before tax (PBT) to Rs 31 crore for Q1FY27.

According to a regulatory filing with the BSE, the logistics provider reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue across both its Express Distribution and Contract Logistics businesses, supported by pricing stability and healthy volume growth.

The Express Distribution business posted 13.5% year-on-year revenue growth in Q1FY27, driven by improved operational performance and enhanced service quality. Meanwhile, the Contract Logistics business recorded 6% year-on-year revenue growth during the June quarter, supported by efficiency-led growth, 99% service quality adherence, a strong customer retention rate, expansion across diverse industry sectors, and new business opportunities.

Managing Director and CEO Ketan Kulkarni said the Q1FY27 performance reflects the strength of disciplined execution across the company’s businesses.

“Beyond achieving our highest-ever quarterly revenue in both Express Distribution and Contract Logistics, what is particularly encouraging is that this growth has been driven by a healthy combination of higher shipment volumes, stronger customer relationships and sustained operational improvements,” he said.

Kulkarni added that the company’s service equation-led pricing approach improved yields during the quarter, while over 99% service quality adherence resulted in a strong customer retention rate.
He also said the company is progressively leveraging AI-driven analytics and data-led decision-making to enhance demand forecasting, optimise network planning, improve shipment visibility, and enable faster, more informed operational decisions across its logistics network.Building on the momentum achieved during the first quarter, Allcargo Logistics expects business activity to strengthen further in the second and third quarters, particularly during the upcoming festive season, according to the BSE filing.

“Continuous network optimisation, improved routing efficiencies, disciplined cost management and better asset utilisation have strengthened our operating leverage and profitability. Going forward, we will continue to accelerate the use of AI, digital technologies and data intelligence across our operations and build a more agile and resilient supply chain,” Kulkarni added.

The company said it remains focused on sustaining profitable growth through disciplined pricing, superior customer experience, operational excellence and deeper market penetration across both its Express Distribution and Contract Logistics businesses, while maintaining a prudent growth strategy.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions given by experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times.)

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The cost of living crisis is well documented and for many people a mortgage is a millstone around their necks – but a growing number have chosen to cut costs by swapping their houses for a narrowboat.

The BBC took to the waterside in Leeds to find out how it’s worked out for some of them.

Ken Tracey, 57, sold his house in Suffolk in 2022, citing the need for “a change in life”.

“The cost of the house, it was really tricky to keep up with everything, keep the payments going,” he says.

“I’ve not got a mortgage any more, but I own this, so it’s safe.”

However, he admits there are “swings and roundabouts” to his new lifestyle.

Alongside trying to save money, Ken says he bought the boat to “live an adventure” – but admits he had not realised how difficult boat life would sometimes be.

“You’re not really prepared for it at the start – things like winter are a different thing.

“You’ve got to deal with a whole load of things that you wouldn’t have to deal with if you’re in a house. And then travelling around, you’ve got to solve problems every day.”

He described life on a narrowboat as “not a land of health and safety” and warned: “Locks are dangerous places”.

“This is technology that’s a couple of hundred years old now and you can see that in some places,” he claimed.

It also took him more than 18 months to “get to grips” with steering the boat.

“It takes weeks and weeks of bumping into things, scraping along the side of things, before you can work out the best way to steer it.”

Ken spent £75,000 on his boat and a further £20,000 on unforeseen maintenance.

Shares of state-owned defence major Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) rallied as much as 6.3% to hit the day’s high of Rs 4,910 on the BSE on Thursday, as investors cheered the company’s robust order book and positive outlook for the coming quarters.

According to the company’s annual report released on Tuesday, HAL’s order book stood at a staggering Rs 2.55 lakh crore for FY26. The outlook for FY27 and beyond remains positive, with the company noting that its strong order book provides 7-8 years of revenue visibility.

HAL expects growth to improve through better supply chain stabilisation, capacity expansion, including significant infrastructure investments, and faster production ramp-up of key platforms, the company said in its annual report released on August 4.

Also read: Defence stocks rally on strong order books and rising exports: Are they still worth buying?

HAL key focus areas

Hindustan Aeronautics outlined its key priorities for the coming years, including increasing LCA Mk1A production to more than 24 aircraft annually and accelerating the manufacturing of the HTT-40 trainer aircraft.

The company also plans to expand its presence in the civil aviation and export markets while raising indigenisation levels to over 65-75% across its major platforms. HAL said it will continue to invest in digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and research and development for future programmes such as the IMRH, LCA Mk2, CATS, HLFT, and UAVs.

HAL FY27 outlook

The company said it is well positioned to benefit from opportunities across aircraft, helicopters, aero engines, avionics, and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) projects. It added that the execution of ongoing programmes, along with expected orders for fighter aircraft, rotary-wing platforms, and upgrade projects, is likely to provide strong medium- to long-term revenue visibility.HAL said these initiatives are expected to support its long-term growth, strengthen its role in India’s aerospace and defence ecosystem, and improve its competitiveness in global markets.

Last month, the company announced that it had signed a long-term agreement with Safran Aircraft Engines for the production and supply of turbine ring forgings made from superalloys for the ‘CFM LEAP’ engine programme.

Read more: Why a Rs 72,000 crore fund manager refuses to chase defence rally now

Under the agreement, HAL will manufacture near-net-shape ring forgings for the Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion (LEAP) engine at its state-of-the-art Ring Rolling facility at HAL’s Foundry and Forge Division in Bengaluru.

These superalloy ring forgings are used in high-temperature applications in the rotating section of the aero-engine and are critical to engine performance and reliability, the company said in a release.

HAL share price performance

HAL stock has gained nearly 20% in the last six months and about 10% since the beginning of the year. Over a three-year period, the stock price has risen more than 150%, while it has surged around 800% over the last five years.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

World of Warcraft players began reporting connectivity problems in the early hours of Wednesday, with outage-tracking service Downdetector logging a spike in user complaints starting around 3:46 a.m. Eastern time, according to a post shared on the platform’s social media account.

Downdetector, which aggregates self-reported outage data across thousands of websites and online services, flagged the disruption on its X account shortly after reports began climbing, asking affected players how the outage was impacting them and pointing to its website for further details on the incident. As of Wednesday morning, Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s publisher, had not issued a public statement addressing the specific cause of the disruption.

What Players Were Experiencing

Reports gathered by outage-tracking services during the incident pointed to difficulties logging in and connecting to the game’s servers, with the disruption described as affecting the ability of players to reach the game environment across multiple regions. Some players experienced intermittent connectivity rather than a complete inability to log in, a pattern outage monitors say is common during periods when backend authentication or instance servers become saturated with traffic.

Other independent outage-tracking services showed a more mixed picture of the game’s status in the days surrounding Wednesday’s report. One monitoring site recorded the game as fully operational as of Tuesday, Aug. 4, noting only nine user reports over the prior 24-hour period with none in the most recent hour, a level generally considered within the normal range of background complaints for a large online game. That inconsistency between different tracking services is not unusual during smaller-scale disruptions, where the scope and severity of an outage can vary depending on a player’s specific realm, region or internet service provider.

A History of Routine Maintenance Disruptions

World of Warcraft, which has been continuously operated by Blizzard Entertainment since its 2004 launch, follows a regular maintenance schedule that frequently causes temporary outages unrelated to any larger technical failure. North American realms typically go offline for scheduled maintenance on Tuesday mornings around 7 a.m. Pacific time, while European servers generally follow a similar pattern early Wednesday Central European Time, a schedule that can occasionally overlap with reports from players in different time zones experiencing what looks like a fresh disruption.

Maintenance windows can run longer than their standard allotment when a major content patch is being deployed, and Blizzard has at times extended downtime to several hours for specific realm types when significant updates are rolling out. The company has, in prior maintenance cycles this year, flagged extended downtime windows tied to expansion-specific patches, including tuning adjustments for character abilities and class balance changes, while more routine weeks have seen maintenance windows last as little as an hour before all realms return to service.

Players attempting to determine whether an outage reflects a widespread problem or a localized issue are generally advised to check Blizzard’s official realm status page, which lists the availability of individual servers for both the game’s retail version and its Classic variants, separately from the main modern game client. The company’s customer support account also typically posts updates during confirmed outages or emergency maintenance windows, often providing more immediate information than third-party tracking sites can offer.

Troubleshooting Steps for Affected Players

For players unable to determine whether an issue is isolated to their own connection or reflects a broader service disruption, outage-tracking services generally recommend a short sequence of checks. Confirming server status directly through Blizzard’s official channels is typically the first step, since the company’s status page reflects real-time information based on internal monitoring rather than delayed user reports. If the official status page shows realms as online while a player is still unable to connect, the issue is more likely tied to a local network problem, such as a router requiring a restart, an outdated game client in need of a pending patch, or a connection routing issue between the player’s internet service provider and Blizzard’s servers.

Players experiencing intermittent disconnections during active gameplay, rather than an inability to log in at all, are generally advised that such interruptions often stem from authentication or instance servers reaching capacity rather than a full-scale outage, and that character progress and data typically remain unaffected even if a session is interrupted mid-activity.

A Widely Played Title Still Drawing Large Audiences

Despite its age, World of Warcraft remains one of the most consistently active subscription-based online games more than two decades after its original release, continuing to draw large concurrent player populations, particularly around major content updates and expansion launches. The game’s persistent popularity means that even relatively brief or localized service disruptions tend to generate rapid attention on social media and outage-tracking platforms, given the number of players attempting to log in at any given time across its global server infrastructure.

As of Wednesday morning, the scope and cause of the reported disruption remained unclear, with Downdetector’s initial post serving as the primary public indicator that a meaningful number of players were experiencing problems. Blizzard has not confirmed whether the issue was tied to scheduled maintenance, an unplanned technical failure, or a more localized regional disruption affecting a subset of players. Players seeking the most current information on server status were directed toward Blizzard’s official realm status page and customer support channels, which the company has historically used to communicate updates more quickly than third-party aggregators during confirmed outages.

Given the pattern of past disruptions tied to routine maintenance and patch deployment, it remains possible that Wednesday’s reported issues reflect a temporary and already-resolving situation rather than a prolonged outage, though no official confirmation of that explanation had been provided as of the time Downdetector’s report began circulating.