Nifty FMCG P/E at 34, near its lowest since 2021

The headline figure

Nifty FMCG closed at 47,570.40 on Monday, 13 April 2026, at a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.01. Its price-to-book ratio was 8.38 and its dividend yield 1.73%.

These are NSE's published end-of-day ratios, charted day by day on the Nifty FMCG valuation page.

Near the bottom of its five-year range

The comparisons start on 31 March 2021, when NSE moved its index P/Es to consolidated earnings. For FMCG the switch mattered less than for most indices: its P/E went from 44.88 to 42.93 that day. That leaves 1,241 sessions to 13 April.

• P/E: only 10 sessions closed lower, all of them since 19 March. The low of the period, 32.56, came on 30 March 2026, the last session of the financial year. The high, 52.36, was on 30 September 2024.
• P/B: also only 10 sessions lower, with the low of 8.02 on the same 30 March.
• Dividend yield: 1,072 sessions yielded more than 1.73%. On this measure the index is not cheap at all.

On the older standalone basis the index often traded lower. Its P/E was below 34 on every session from 2008 to 2011, on most of 2012, and on 51 sessions of 2020, the last on 17 June 2020. From 2013 to 2019, and in the five years since 2021, it was mostly higher.

Rising profits, falling price

A year earlier, on 11 April 2025, the index closed at 55,741.10 at a P/E of 44.53.

• The index is down 14.7% over the year.
• The P/E is down 23.6%.
• Dividing one by the other, the earnings behind the index rose about 11.7%.

The earnings line climbs steadily. The price line went the other way from January: 17.9% down between 31 December 2025 and 30 March. The index has recovered 4.5% from that low, and it is 28.3% below its peak close of 66,305.20 on 23 September 2024.

The yield that did not rise

A falling price usually lifts the dividend yield. FMCG's yield fell instead, from 2.00% at the end of 2025 to 1.73% now.

The reason is a single step. On 12 February 2026 the published yield went from 2.14% to 1.58% while the index slipped 0.5%. Multiplying the index by its yield, the dividends behind one unit of the index fell from about 1,116 to 820 index points, roughly 26.5%, in one session. They have stayed near that level since.

A move that size in a day usually means a large payment has dropped out of the trailing twelve months, or the index's members have changed. The published ratio cannot say which. The yield series has jumped like this before: for a week in late May and early June 2025, it rose from 1.85% to 2.58% and fell back to 1.99%.

Yield times P/E gives the share of profit paid out: about 59% now, against a median of 82% since March 2021.

Against the Nifty 50

FMCG always costs more than the market on earnings. On 13 April its P/E was 1.63 times the Nifty 50's 20.93. Since March 2021 that multiple has had a median of 1.92, and only 138 of 1,241 sessions showed a smaller one. The narrowest, 1.27, was on 29 April 2021.

The same pattern of rising profits and a falling price has played out in IT this year, as our Nifty IT P/E post set out in March.

What this does not tell you

Lower than its own past is not low. At 34 times earnings, FMCG still costs more than one and a half times the Nifty 50.

The yield series is noisy. One-off payments and member changes move it in steps, so a single day's yield says less than the P/E.

Earnings are trailing. The P/E uses the last twelve months of profit, not the next.

An index is not a fund. Consumption and FMCG funds hold their own mix, often with retail, autos and durables alongside staples.

Where to go from here

For the market as a whole, see the Nifty 50 P/E post for April and the Nifty P/E ratio page. The guide on consumption and FMCG funds covers how funds in the theme are built, and dividend yield funds covers the yield side.