BHEL Q3 profit falls on slowdown in orders

An employee from the electricity board works on newly installed overhead power cables ahead of the ''Kumbh Mela'' as the sun sets in Allahabad December 7, 2012.

REUTERS - Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd(BHEL.NS), India's top power equipment maker, missed analyst estimates with a 17.5 percent fall in third-quarter net profit, hit by a slowdown in new orders, sending its shares down more than 4 percent.

India's power sector has been badly hit by shortages of coal and gas supplies, delays in environmental approvals for power and mining projects and drying up of funding -- severely denting the demand for equipment.

Net profit at the state-run company fell to 11.82 billion rupees in the quarter ended December 31 from 14.33 billion rupees in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts, on average, had expected a net profit of 13.84 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

BHEL's order book stood at 1.14 trillion rupees, down from about 1.22 trillion rupees at the end of September.

Shares of BHEL ended down 1.2 percent.

($1 = 53.1900 rupees)

(Reporting By Aradhana Aravindan and Aditi Shah in MUMBAI; Editing by Sunil Nair)