Indian Oil Corp Q3 net dips 92% to Rs 448 cr on higher costs, forex losses

A 40% surge in input costs pushed up total expenses by 20.4% to Rs 2.30 trillion

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC), the country's top refiner, reported a 92.4% fall in third-quarter profit on Tuesday, hurt by static pump prices, higher costs and foreign exchange losses.

The marketing under-recovery of oil marketing companies was hurt by retail prices that have remained unchanged since April 2022.

The state-owned company reported a net profit of 4.48 billion rupees ($54.71 million) for the quarter ended Dec. 31 against 58.61 billion rupees a year earlier.

A 40% surge in input costs pushed up total expenses by 20.4% to 2.30 trillion rupees.

The company also logged a foreign exchange loss of 17.01 billion rupees during the quarter, the company said in an exchange filing.

Revenue from operations rose nearly 16% to 2.28 trillion rupees from 1.97 trillion rupees a year earlier.

The company said its average gross refining margin - profit from converting a barrel of oil into refined products - was $21.08 per barrel for April-December, compared with $8.52 per barrel in the same period a year earlier.

IOC, along with its unit Chennai Petroleum, controls about a third of India's five million-barrels-per-day refining capacity.

Smaller peer, Bharat Petroleum Corp also reported a 31% drop in quarterly profit on Monday due to a loss in fuel sales.

Indian Oil shares, which were down 0.2% as of 14:33 IST, fell over 31% last year against a gain of 14.3% in the Nifty energy index.

($1 = 81.8900 Indian rupees)

 

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)