RIL beats Street with 16% rise in profit at 7,398 cr

MUMBAI: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), India’s second-largest company by market capitalisation, on Friday beat market expectations with a 16% rise in net profit to ` 7,398 crore during the JanuaryMarch quarter of 2015-16 against ` 6,381 crore in the same period last year, backed by high refining and petrochemical margins.

Analysts had expected the company to post a net profit of ` 6,948 crore during the quarter.

Revenue, however, fell 8.9% to ` 64,569 crore during the fourth quarter, against ` 70,863 crore in the year-ago period.

For the full fiscal 2015-16, the company reported an annual consolidated net profit of ` 27,630 crore, a rise of 17.2%, from ` 23,566 crore last year. Revenue fell 23.8% to ` 296,091 crore, from ` 388,494 crore in the previous year.

The Mukesh Ambani-led company said it expects a stable rise in the new growth platforms in hydrocarbons. The company continued to maintain the schedule on its much-awaited 4G telecom rollout for this year.

“Financial year 2015-16 has been a year of outstanding achievement for our downstream hydrocarbon businesses, notwithstanding persisting global economic uncertainty. Refining and petrochemicals delivered record operating and financial performances. Our refineries sustained double-digit gross refining margins and record levels of utilisation,” chairman Mukesh Ambani said in a statement.

RIL earned $10.8 for turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel (gross refining margin) in the fourth quarter, compared with $10.1 a year ago.

RIL said the decline in revenue was due to a fall in feedstock and product prices, partially offset by record crude throughput and higher petrochemical volumes. Crude oil price averaged at $45.6 a barrel in 2015-16, a fall of 45% over the previous year. With fall in oil and product prices, exports from India were lower by 35.8% at ` 146,855 crore, against ` 228,651 crore in the previous year.

“We have been a little bit constructive on the outlook on prices for Brent crude and market seems to be in the direction of $43-45 range. Markets are balancing out pretty well in some sense, the activity in the US in terms of drilling is very low,” CFO V Srikanth said.