Moneycontrol Bureau
Vedanta Resources Group company Sesa Sterlite's net profit declined 31.7 percent (up 23.6 percent quarter-on-quarter) to Rs 1,658 crore in July-September quarter from Rs 2,429 crore in the year-ago period. Profit was supported by forex gain and lower finance cost during the quarter.
The bottomline was slightly better than expectations while operational performance and topline were in line. Profit degrowth was estimated at 37 percent and operating profit at 1 percent while total income was likely to fall 23 percent, according to the average of estimates of analysts polled by CNBC-TV18.
Total income from operations slipped 22.7 percent (up 13.5 percent sequentially) to Rs 19,448 crore in the quarter ended September 2014 compared to Rs 25,170 crore in same quarter last year.
Operating profit (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) slipped 2 percent on yearly basis to Rs 6,326 crore from Rs 6,459.5 crore during the same period and margin expanded by 690 basis points to 32.4 percent (as against forecast of 33 percent).
Sesa earned foreign exchange gain of Rs 260 crore during the quarter as against Rs 141.41 crore in previous quarter and nil in the year-ago period while other income declined 25 percent year-on-year to Rs 686.1 crore in September quarter.
Finance cost slipped 22 percent to Rs 1,472 crore from Rs 1,879.8 crore during the same period.
In Q2, there were exceptional items of Rs 90 crore, of which Rs 45 crore relates to expenditure written off pursuant to the Supreme Court judgement in September 2014 cancelling 214 coal block allocations made since 1993 which included all our three coal blocks, said the company in its filing, adding the balance amount of Rs 45 crore was expenditure towards voluntary retirement scheme at Balco.
The Sesa Sterlite merger and the Vedanta Group consolidation was completed in August 2013, hence Q2 and H1 FY2015 performance is compared with the adjusted proforma numbers of respective period. Hence the (adjusted) attributable profit before exceptional item grew by 15 percent Y-o-Y to Rs 1,658 crore and revenue rose by 8 percent to Rs 19,448 crore during the quarter while other income jumped 49 percent to Rs 686 crore in the quarter gone by.
The company has cash and cash equivalents of Rs 47,000 crore at the end of September 2014 while gross debt was Rs 79,526 crore.
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