Reliance Industries posts 23 percent drop in Q2 net profit

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's oil-to-telecoms conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd posted a 22.9 percent drop in its second-quarter net profit, marginally missing analysts' estimates.

Consolidated net profit fell to 72.06 billion rupees ($1.08 billion) for the three months to Sept. 30 from 93.45 billion rupees reported a year earlier, Reliance, controlled by India's richest man Mukesh Ambani, said in a statement on Thursday.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of 72.2 billion rupees, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Reliance said its gross refining margin, or profit earned on each barrel of crude processed - a key profitability gauge for a refiner - was $10.1 per barrel for the quarter.

 

($1 = 66.7819 rupees)

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)