MUMBAI — Hindustan Zinc dug 268,000 tonnes of metal out of the ground in the June quarter and got it out at $851 a tonne, the cheapest it has ever managed. The share price has risen 8.4 percent in three sessions on the back of it, and the stock is still 17.6 percent below where it traded a year ago.
Hindustan Zinc closed Monday, August 24, 2026, at ₹604.00 on the National Stock Exchange, up ₹9.10 or 1.53 percent, and at ₹604.80 on the BSE, up 1.68 percent. It opened at ₹595.95, ran to ₹614.20 in the afternoon and gave part of that back into the close. Volume was 1.28 crore shares, the second heaviest in a month, following Friday’s 1.42 crore.
The recent move is not about the company at all, or not only about it. Zinc, lead, aluminium and copper prices have been climbing globally through August, and the Nifty Metal index has gained roughly 16 percent in a month. What separates Hindustan Zinc from the rest of the Indian metal complex is that it is the only one of them earning a 59 percent margin at the operating line.
Hindustan Zinc Share Price Today: NSE and BSE Close for August 24, 2026
| Measure | NSE · HINDZINC | BSE · 500188 |
|---|---|---|
| Closing price | ₹604.00 | ₹604.80 |
| Previous close | ₹594.90 | ₹594.80 |
| Change | +₹9.10 (+1.53%) | +₹10.00 (+1.68%) |
| Open | ₹595.95 | ₹595.95 |
| Day’s high | ₹614.20 | ₹613.70 |
| Day’s low | ₹592.85 | ₹592.90 |
| Volume traded | 1.28 crore shares | – |
| 52-week high | ₹733.00 (-17.60% from today’s close) | |
| 52-week low | ₹418.00 (+44.50% from today’s close) | |
| Market capitalisation | ₹2,55,252 crore | |
| Trailing P/E · Price to book | 15.0 · 11.27 | |
| Return on capital employed · Return on equity | 69.5% · 76.6% | |
| NSE closing prices for August 24, 2026, with BSE figures from the exchange’s own quote feed, timestamped 16:00 IST. Valuation ratios and market capitalisation are Screener’s consolidated figures. | ||
A price-to-book multiple of 11.27 is the highest of any large Indian company in this series by a distance, roughly six times what Reliance commands. Read on its own it looks indefensible. Read next to a 76.6 percent return on equity it looks like arithmetic, and the section below explains why the two numbers are the same fact.
Hindustan Zinc Stock Code on NSE, BSE and Global Data Feeds
| Exchange or provider | Code | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| NSE (National Stock Exchange) | HINDZINC | Series EQ. Nifty Metal constituent |
| BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) | 500188 | Scrip code. Group A, BSE 200 constituent |
| ISIN | INE267A01025 | Depository identifier. Face value ₹2 |
| Google Finance | NSE:HINDZINC · BOM:500188 | The exchange-prefixed format Google requires |
| Yahoo Finance | HINDZINC.NS · HINDZINC.BO | Suffix marks the exchange |
| ISIN, scrip code and face value confirmed against the BSE’s company header feed. Hindustan Zinc is a subsidiary of Vedanta Limited and was a state-owned enterprise until its disinvestment; the Government of India retains a residual holding. | ||
Hindustan Zinc Q1 FY27: Record Everything
The quarter reported on July 24 was the best in the company’s history on every headline measure, and the company reports those measures in dollars.
| Measure | Q1 FY27 | In rupees | Change YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue from operations | $1,453 mn | ₹13,742 cr | +77% |
| EBITDA | $854 mn | ₹8,077 cr | +109% |
| Net profit | $578 mn | ₹5,467 cr | +145% |
| EBITDA margin | 58.8% | Record | |
| Mined metal production | 268,000 tonnes | Highest-ever first quarter | |
| Zinc cost of production | $851 per tonne | Lowest ever | |
| Dollar figures, production volumes and the cost of production are as printed in Hindustan Zinc’s Q1 FY27 results release of July 24, 2026. Rupee conversions are calculated by The Eastern Herald at the ₹94.58 to the dollar the company states it used for the quarter, and the EBITDA margin is calculated from the revenue and EBITDA lines. The company notes that its cost of production excludes royalty and is the lowest since its transition to underground mining. | |||
Revenue up 77 percent in a year is not something a mining company achieves by mining harder. Mined metal output reached a first-quarter record but the tonnage did not rise by anything close to 77 percent. The rest came from the price of the metal, from lead concentrate sales, from a cost of production that fell to $851 a tonne against the company’s own guidance of $975 to $1,000, and from a dollar that gained roughly 11 percent on the rupee over the same twelve months. Three of those four are outside the company’s control.
Why Eleven Times Book Is Not What It Looks Like
The usual objection to Hindustan Zinc is the price-to-book multiple. At 11.27 times, an investor is paying eleven rupees for every rupee of net assets the company owns. Set against the earnings, the picture changes completely.
| Measure | Figure | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Market capitalisation | ₹2,55,252 cr | Screener, at Monday’s close |
| Shareholders’ equity, approximate | ₹22,650 cr | Book value ₹53.60 a share on about 422.6 crore shares |
| Price to book | 11.27 | Screener |
| June-quarter net profit, annualised | ₹21,868 cr | ₹5,467 crore for the quarter, multiplied by four |
| Price to annualised current earnings | 11.7 | Calculated by The Eastern Herald |
| Annualised profit as a share of equity | 96.5% | Calculated by The Eastern Herald |
| Book value per share, market capitalisation and the trailing multiples are Screener’s. The annualisation is a crude device: it assumes four quarters exactly like the June quarter, which for a commodity producer at the top of a price cycle is an assumption and not a forecast. It is offered only to show why the price-to-book multiple and the price-to-earnings multiple point in such different directions. | ||
Hindustan Zinc earns close to its entire book value in a year. That is the whole explanation. A company that distributes almost all its profit as dividend never accumulates equity, so the denominator of the price-to-book calculation stays small no matter how much money the business makes. The multiple is high because the balance sheet is thin, not because the shares are expensive against earnings, and at 11.7 times annualised current profit the stock is cheaper on that basis than Reliance, TCS or ICICI Bank.
That structure is not accidental. Vedanta Limited controls Hindustan Zinc and has consistently used its dividend as a cash pipeline to the parent. The arrangement suits a minority shareholder perfectly well while the zinc price is where it is. It suits nobody if the price falls, because a company with a thin balance sheet and a controlling shareholder that needs the cash has less room to absorb a downcycle than one that has retained its earnings.
Hindustan Zinc Share Price: Three Sessions That Changed the Chart
| Date | Close (₹) | Change | Volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 14, 2026 | 561.90 | -2.84% | 47.02 lakh |
| August 17, 2026 | 567.50 | +1.00% | 47.06 lakh |
| August 18, 2026 | 558.00 | -1.67% | 22.57 lakh |
| August 19, 2026 | 557.00 | -0.18% | 36.84 lakh |
| August 20, 2026 | 573.90 | +3.03% | 64.28 lakh |
| August 21, 2026 | 594.90 | +3.66% | 141.90 lakh |
| August 24, 2026 | 604.00 | +1.53% | 127.59 lakh |
| NSE closing prices and volumes. The stock has risen 8.44 percent across the three sessions since August 19, on turnover that quadrupled over the same stretch. | |||
Three sessions, 8.44 percent, and volume that went from 36.84 lakh shares to 141.90 lakh and stayed near that level. Turnover of that size sustained over three days is institutional. Above Monday’s close, ₹614.20 was the day’s high and the 52-week high of ₹733 is 21.4 percent further on. Below, ₹557 marked the base of the move and has not been tested since.
What this article cannot tell you is how much of the June quarter repeats. The company has not restated its cost guidance after coming in at $851 against a $975 to $1,000 range, so it is not clear whether it regards the number as sustainable or as a good quarter. Zinc prices are set on the London Metal Exchange and no Indian producer forecasts them. And the release does not separate how much of the 77 percent revenue increase came from volume, how much from price, how much from lead concentrate sales and how much from the rupee, which is the breakdown that would tell an investor how much of this is durable. Until it does, the stock is what it has always been: the highest-quality asset in Indian mining, priced as a call option on a metal nobody can predict.
Elsewhere on Monday the metal complex moved together, with Steel Authority of India up 3.57 percent on four times normal volume, while SBI fell 0.88 percent and Reliance Industries eased 0.47 percent.
Hindustan Zinc’s June-quarter figures come from the company’s Q1 FY27 results release of July 24, 2026. Closing prices and the scrip identifiers were verified against the BSE’s own quote feed for scrip 500188.
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