Vedanta quarterly profit dives 21 percent, but beats estimate

(Reuters) - Indian miner Vedanta Ltd posted on Thursday a 21.1 percent fall in third-quarter profit, hit by a drop in commodity prices and shutdown of its copper smelter in south India.

Profit came in at 15.74 billion rupees ($221.38 million) for three months ended Dec. 31, compared with 19.94 billion rupees a year earlier, the company said https://bit.ly/2TpGNrV.

Analysts on average expected Vedanta to post a profit of 14.31 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters Refinitive data.

Revenue from operations for the quarter was 236.69 billion rupees compared with 243.61 billion rupees a year ago.

($1 = 71.1000 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Chandini Monnappa in Bengaluru, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)