GAIL net profit jumps 10-fold in Q3 as all engines fire; dividend announced

New Delhi: State-owned gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd on Monday reported a 10-fold jump in its third quarter net profit as all engines of its business -- from gas transportation to marketing and petrochemicals -- fired on all cylinders.

Standalone net profit of the the nation's largest gas transmission and marketing firm came at Rs 2,842.62 crore in October-December -- the third quarter of the current fiscal year that started in April 2023 -- as compared to Rs 245.73 crore earning a year back, the company said in a statement.

The net profit was better than Rs 2,404.89 crore earning in the preceding quarter.

This came on the back of pre-tax earnings from the gas transportation business jumping nearly three-fold to Rs 1,215.07 crore. Also, natural gas marketing saw a turnaround, posting a pre-tax earning of Rs 1,880.42 crore as opposed to a loss of Rs 86.02 crore in October-December 2022.

Petrochemicals business saw a turnaround with a small pre-tax profit of Rs 62 crore as against a loss of Rs 349 crore a year ago.

Revenue from operations was almost flat at Rs 34,253.52 crore.

For the nine-month period ending December 31, the net profit jumped 42 per cent to Rs 6,659.51 crore on a revenue of Rs 98,303.61 crore.

Profits were higher "mainly on account of higher gas trading margin, increase in transmission volume and increase in transmission tariff", the firm said.

GAIL chairman and managing director Sandeep Kumar Gupta said during the quarter the physical performance has improved across all major business verticals and the petrochemical segment has turned profitable owing to plant efficiency, better capacity utilisation and other optimisation measures adopted.

He further stated that the company has incurred a capex of Rs 6,583 crore during the period from April 2023 to December 2023, mainly on pipelines, petrochemicals and equity contribution to joint ventures.

During the quarter, GAIL transported an average of 121.54 million standard cubic metres per day of natural gas as against 120.31 mmsmcd in the preceding quarter. Gas marketing volume stood at 98.14 mmscmd as against 96.96 mmscmd in the previous quarter.

Liquid hydrocarbon sales stood at 249,000 tonnes as against 242,000 tonnes and polymer sales jumped up by 28 per cent to 215,000 tonnes.

The company declared an interim dividend of 55 per cent for the financial year 2023-24 -- Rs 5.50 per equity share.