GAIL Q1 net profit rises 51% on marketing margin boost

GAIL is not keen to buy more gas from the spot market to make up for the deficit from the disruption from Gazprom.

GAIL (India) Ltd, the nation’s largest gas utility, on Thursday reported a 51 per cent jump in its June quarter net profit on the back of bumper margins from gas marketing.

GAIL posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 3,250.95 crore, or Rs 7.34 per share, in April-June compared to Rs 2,157.15 crore, or Rs 4.81 a share, net profit in the same period a year back, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Sequentially, the profit was lower than Rs 3,473.77 crore net earnings in the January-March quarter. The rise in year-on-year profit for the nation’s largest gas transporter and seller was on the back of bumper earnings from natural gas marketing.

The firm reported a pre-tax profit of Rs 2,317.91 crore from natural gas marketing in the first quarter of the current fiscal, as compared to Rs 449.84 crore pre-tax profit a year back and Rs 1,976.23 crore in the preceding quarter.

The margin on gas marketing made up for a 12.5 per cent decline in earnings from the gas transportation business and a 74 per cent drop in petrochemicals earnings. Turnover more than doubled to Rs 38,033.30 crore in the April-June quarter, from Rs 17,702.43 crore a year back, the filing showed.

GAIL said the earnings per share have been adjusted on account of a buyback of 1.28 per cent shares by the company. Last month, the board of directors of the company had recommended the issue of one bonus share for two existing equity shares.

Later in a press statement, GAIL said standalone net profit rose 91 per cent to Rs 2,915 crore in Q1 FY23 (April 2022 to March 2023 fiscal) as against Rs 1,530 crore in the corresponding quarter of last fiscal. ”The positive results were mainly on account of increased gas marketing and transmission volumes, better marketing spread and higher product prices,” it said.

Manoj Jain, Chairman & Managing Director, GAIL, said the company has successfully registered a healthy growth in the overall performance despite turbulent times in the gas business. GAIL has incurred a capital expenditure of about Rs 1,975 crore during the quarter mainly on pipelines, petrochemicals and equity contribution to joint ventures, he said.

GAIL has commissioned the 533-kilometre Bokaro (in Jharkhand) to Angul (in Odisha) pipeline section of the Jagdishpur-Haldia & Bokaro-Dhamra natural gas pipeline (JHBDPL) during the quarter. With this, 1,642 kilometres of JHBDPL, popularly known as Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga, has been commissioned while the remaining sections are expected to be completed by June 2023, Jain said.

The pipeline travels from Uttar Pradesh to West Bengal with spur lines to Jharkhand and Odisha. He further added that to provide a thrust to the government’s focused initiatives to increase the share of natural gas in the primary energy basket, the company has approved the setting up of a Small Scale LNG (SSLNG) plant on a pilot basis and orders for two small-scale liquefaction skids has been placed.

This will help in providing natural gas to areas not connected to the main pipeline, facilitate LNG as transport fuel and help monetize stranded/isolated upstream gas assets, the statement added.