JSW Steel posts record quarterly profit

(Reuters) - India's JSW Steel posted record quarterly net profit on Wednesday, nearly tripling from last year, largely beating market estimates thanks to higher commodity prices and spreads.

The company's fourth-quarter net profit climbed to 29.96 billion rupees ($441.50 million), against 10.14 billion rupees in the same period last year, it said https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/0a89cf41-d394-4c25-adbe-3c3f516e9cef.pdf.

Analysts had expected net profit of 18.13 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Total revenue from operations rose 16.2 percent to 208.17 billion rupees and the steelmaker also said it achieved record crude steel production in the quarter at 4.31 million tonnes, up 5 percent year on year.

JSW said it expects 3 percent year-on-year growth in crude steel production to 16.75 million tonnes for the 2018-19 financial year.

Ahead of the results, shares in JSW Steel closed with a gain of 0.6 percent.

($1 = 67.8600 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Krishna V Kurup in BENGALURU; Editing by David Goodman)