Coal India's Q4 Profit Dips 5 Percent


Kolkata: Maharatna public sector coal mining giant Coal India Ltd's (CIL) 2011-12 Q4 fiscal net profit dipped by 5 percent to 4,013 crore due to wage revisions but annual profit for the year grew by 36.08 percent to reach 14,788.20 crore. "The Q4 profit dipped mainly due to the wage revision that we finalised earlier. 3,000 crore of the profits went towards the wages which resulted in Q4 net profit (PAT) going down by 5 percent," company chairman and managing director S. Narsing Rao said here. The company on Jan 31 finalised the wage agreement for its 3.63 lakh non-executive work force by giving a 25 percent hike on gross wages as of June 30, 2011. The wage hike is effective retrospectively from July 1, 2011 and is for a five-year period. While the net sales for Q4 were 19,418 crore, the figure for the year stood at 62,415.43 crore, registering a growth of 24.26 percent from the last fiscal. The company ended the fiscal with a production of 435.84 million tones (MTs), 4.52 MTs more than the last fiscal. Describing the growth in production (one percent) as modest, Rao said the production was severely impeded due to heavy rainfall in July-September 2011, environmental non-clearance and law and order problems. "The Q4 witnessed the production surge up to 144.60 MTs, the highest on a quarterly basis compared to other three quarters of the fiscal. On a Q on Q basis, the increase in production was 12.73 MTs, a growth of 9.6 percent," said Rao. The gross sales for the fiscal grew by 30.16 percent to at 78,410.38 crores. The company aims to increase its supply to power sector by 35 MTs for the next fiscal. "In the last fiscal we supplied to the tune of 312 MTs to the power sector and we hope to increase it to 347 MTs by the next fiscal (2012-13)," said Rao. The company's earning per share increased from 10 to 23.47 from 17.19 in the last fiscal, a growth of 36.53 percent. The offtake for the last fiscal grew by two percent to be at 433.08 MTs. Targets for coal production and off-take for FY 12-13 have been fixed at 464.10 MTs and 470 MTs respectively. The company realised 6,000 crore from e-auctions. "Under e-auction we put only those mines which are difficult for us to transfer the produce to the loading points. At present we are not in a position to say if the realisation from e-auction will increase or not," added Rao. Rao refused to comment if the company was mulling a increase in then coal prices. "We will comment only when the appropriate time comes."
Source: IANS