Fuel subsidy helps HPCL beat St

Hindustan Petroleum on Wednesday reported a net profit of Rs 4,609 crore for the fourth quarter ended March, after it got lumpsum fuel subsidy, beating the Street estimate of Rs 3,170-3,460 crore. It was, however, lower than the Rs 7,679 crore net profit in the year-ago period.

Chairman and Managing Director Nishi Vasudeva said the figures weren’t comparable as in the past year, the Centre released a backlog fuel subsidy.

HPCL sells diesel and cooking fuel at rates way below costs. Roughly half of the loss is compensated by the Centre by way of cash subsidy. Upstream oil and gas producers make up for another 48 per cent.

The company lost Rs 9,183 crore on selling diesel, cooking gas and kerosene at controlled rates in the quarter. Against this, it got Rs 5,671 crore assistance from the upstream firms and Rs 6,938 crore in cash subsidy, which was to cover for loss HPCL incurred in previous quarters as well, K V Rao, director (finance), said.


In the full year, the company got Rs 15,215 crore in cash subsidy and Rs 16,771 crore in assistance from upstream firms, leaving Rs 482 crore uncovered loss.

He said the company earned $4.66 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel as compared to $3.71 a barrel gross refining margin (GRM).

Turnover rose 4.73% to Rs 64,126.81 crore.

For the full fiscal 2013-14, the company reported almost doubling of net profit to Rs 1,733.77 crore. HPCL had reported net loss in two out of the previous three quarters in 2013-14.

The increase was mainly due to increased refining and marketing margins.

Sales rose 7.7% to Rs 2,32,188 crore for the year 2013-14 as against Rs 2,15,666 crore in the previous year.

"The sales of petroleum products in the domestic market were at an all time high of 30.26 million tonnes during the year, registering an increase of 4.1% over the previous year, as against the industry growth rate of 1.3%," Vasudeva said.

The pipeline throughput increased to 15.69 million tonnes as compared to 14.04 million tonnes in the previous year.

The refineries at Mumbai and Visakh processed 15.51 million tonnes of crude during the year. The combined GRM during the year was $3.43/bbl, as against $2.08/bbl in the previous year.