INDIA’S largest private firm Reliance Industries reported on Friday (January 18) a surprise 24 per cent rise in quarterly net profit as higher refining margins offset slowing output from offshore fields.
Reliance, controlled by India’s wealthiest man Mukesh Ambani, said net profit for the financial third quarter jumped to Rs55.02bn ($1.02bn/£64.3m), from Rs44.4bn ($82.5m/£52.01m) in the same period a year earlier.
Turnover climbed 10 per cent to Rs963bn ($178m/£112.8m) for the quarter, a statement said.
The earnings overshot analysts’ expectations of a Rs50bn ($9.2m/£5.8m) profit and snapped four consecutive quarters of declines.
“Our performance improved this quarter with margin expansion in petrochemicals and record earnings in the refining business,” Ambani said.
Analysts have been concerned in recent months about Reliance’s ability to raise gas production from its blocks off India’s east coast.
In the first nine months of the fiscal year from April to December, crude oil production from Reliance’s main oilfield KG-D6 slid 40 per cent year-on-year to 2.3 million barrels of crude oil.
Natural gas production tumbled 37 per cent to 275 billion cubic feet from April to December over levels a year earlier. “This reduction was due to reservoir complexity and natural decline,” the company said.
But countering the output decline, Reliance’s gross refining margins rose in the third quarter to $9.60 (£6.05) a barrel from $6.80 (£4.28) a year earlier.
