Bharat Petroleum Q4 net drops 10.6% to Rs 2,549-crore on low oil prices

State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL) on Friday reported a 10.6% drop in its March quarter net profit on back of slump in oil prices.

Net profit in January-March quarter fell to Rs 2,549.08 crore from Rs 2,852.89 crore in the same period a year ago, the company said in a filing to the stock exchanges.

Sales were down to Rs 44,197.09 crore in the fourth quarter of 2015-16 fiscal from Rs 51,346.12 crore, a year-ago. The company turned 6.22 million tons of crude oil into fuel, up from 6.11 million tons in the fourth quarter of 2014-15. Fuel sales also rose to 9.78 million tons from 8.69 million tons.

Exports were however flat at 0.54 million tons. For the full fiscal 2015-16, BPCL reported a net profit of Rs 7,431.88 crore, down from Rs 8,463.98 crore in the previous financial year.

The company said it earned $6.59 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel in 2015-16 as opposed to a gross refining margin of $3.62 a barrel in the previous fiscal. It got fully compensated for the loss it makes on selling domestic cooking gas LPG and PDS kerosene at subsidised rates.

It received Rs 1,598.49 crore from the government as fuel subsidy and another Rs 198.01 crore as dole from upstream firms like ONGC. The shares of the company closed up 9.12%, or Rs 84.45 at Rs 1010.85 on BSE.