Kesoram Inds Q4 Net marginally up at Rs 349-cr

B K Birla group company Kesoram Industries Ltd today reported a marginal gain in net profit of Rs 348.88 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2016, riding on Rs 755.35 crore gain from sale of assets.
The company reported a net profit of Rs 339.67 crore during the same quarter of 2014-15.
Kesoram director and CFO Tridib Kr Das said the company made a profit of Rs 385.78 crore from hiving off Hindustan Chemicals and spun pipes business and sale of long term investments for 369.57 crore during the quarter.
He noted that the cash received from sale of Haridwar tyre plant was Rs 2,195 crore and all of these will be utilised towards paring the debt which swelled to Rs 5,200 crore as on March 2016.

According to the company officials, around Rs 2,900 crore would be repaid to shed long term borrowing which stands at Rs 3,444 crore to ease interest burden on its bottomline.
"We have just sold a tyre plant not tyre business to JK Tyres. We remain focused in the tyre business. We will meet the demand of 3.5 lakh tyres a month from our have Balasore facility and rest from trading," Das said.

"We will procure radial bus and truck tyres from China and trade as we do not have any radial facility. But, we are investing Rs 800 crore at Balasore for adding passenger car radial tyre facility which is expected to be completed in the Q3 of the current fiscal," Das said.

Tyres contributes 45 per cent of the company's total revenue.
Das said cement prices remained subdued and the firm was able to utilise 70 per cent of the 7.5 million tonne capacity. However, the demand is expected to improve once infrastructure investments gets momentum.