Tata Steel profit zooms 131%

TATA Steel has reported a 131 per cent increase in net profit to Rs 929.6 crore for the second quarter ended September 30 (Rs 403.1 crore fo...

TATA Steel has reported a 131 per cent increase in net profit to Rs 929.6 crore for the second quarter ended September 30 (Rs 403.1 crore for the corresponding quarter last year). Net sales too grew by 43 per cent to Rs 3,738 crore (Rs 2,613 crore).

Steel production grew by 5 per cent to 10,85,837 tonne during the quarter under review. However, steel sales in quantity terms dropped by 2 per cent to 10,22,845 tonne over the corresponding quarter last year.

Despite the fall in sales in quantity terms, the improved realisation per tonne by 46 per cent over the corresponding quarter last year has boosted the company’s bottomline, analysts said. Operating margin improved to 43.6 per cent of the net sales from 28.9 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year.

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Commenting after announcing the results, Tata steel Managing Director B. Muthuraman cautioned that the company has revised its target for steel sales in the second half of the current year to 1.92 million tonne from 2.04 million tonne following the shut down of ‘G’ blast furnace for three months starting December 2004. ‘‘We will lose around 3,50,000 tonne but would be made good to a large extent by operating the other furnances at higher capacity,’’ Muthuraman said.

The company, after expanding its capacity to one million tonne at Jamshedpur, would add a further capacity of 2.4 million tonne by August 2008 at a cost of Rs 7,800 crore. This would take the company’s total capacity to 7.4 million tonnes by August, 2008.