BPCL Q1 profit drops 73% as refinery margins and fuel prices decline

New Delhi: State-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) on Friday reported a 73 per cent drop in its net profit in the June quarter as refinery margins dropped and a fuel price reduction slashed marketing margins.

Consolidated net profit of Rs 2,841.55 crore in April-June -- the first quarter of the current 2024-25 fiscal year -- was compared to a profit of Rs 10,644.30 crore a year back, according to a stock exchange filing by the company.

The company had last year made extraordinary gains from holding petrol and diesel prices despite a drop in cost. Those gains eroded with a pre-election Rs 2 per litre cut in petrol and diesel prices together with drop in product cracks or margins on relatively stable crude oil prices.

Cracks -- the difference between raw material crude oil and final product price -- have shrunk from highs of 2022-23. At the same time crude oil prices have stabilised in the range of USD 82-85 per barrel.

BPCL earned USD 7.86 on turning every barrel of crude oil into fuel in the quarter as compared to a gross refining margin of USD 12.64 per barrel in the same period last year.

Its refinery run or throughput was almost unchanged at 10.11 million tonnes, while market sales was slightly up at 13.16 million tonnes when compared to 12.75 million tonnes products sold in April-June 2023.

Sales growth, according to the filing, was 3.22 per cent in April-June this year while a year ago it was 8.42 per cent.

Revenue from operations was almost unchanged at Rs 1.28 lakh crore.