RIL again loses most profitable tag, this time to IOC

Within two quarters of losing its 23-year-old reign as the country's most profitable company to TCS in the December quarter, Reliance Industries was again humbled in the June quarter, this time by IndianOil.

The state-run firm booked Rs 118 crore more profit than the Mukesh Ambani-run firm net income of Rs 6,318 crore.

Better refining margins arising from lower oil prices and almost full payback of subsidies by the government helped the nation's biggest oil company Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) to report a massive more than twofold jump in the June quarter net profit at Rs 6,436 crore.

IOC's refining margins soared to a seven-year high during the reporting quarter.

For Reliance, losing the numero uno slot comes within two quarter as in the December 2014 earnings season as well it had lost out to TCS as it booked more profit than RIL with a net income of Rs 5,328 crore.

The loss in the December 2014 quarter was the end of RIL's 23-year run as the most profitable firm with a net profit in the country, overtaking the long-standing champion Reliance which saw its profit dip to Rs 5,256 crore as falling crude prices hurt its core business.

The third most profitable company in the June quarter was Tata Consultancy Services with net income at Rs 5,684 crore for the June quarter, up 2 per cent y-o-y, while its revenue rose 16.1 per cent to Rs 25,668 crore.

With this, IOC thus also becomes the first domestic company to sniff at the billion-dollar club in quarterly earnings based on the closing price of the rupee on the earnings day (65.10) while it was well in the club on the as the rupee had closed at 63.64 on June 30.

During the reporting quarter the crude prices on an average fell 43.5 per cent for both the companies.

Even in the December 2014 quarter, IOC was very close to RIL with quarterly net profit of Rs 6,285 crore.

The loss of RIL is more pronounced as only last fiscal year (FY15) the company had overtaken the state-run oil and gas giant ONGC to become the most profitable company in the country both on an annual basis with a annual net income of Rs 23,566 crore, against the public sector company's net profit of Rs 18,334 crore.