Indian Oil Q4 profit slips 31% but revenue jumps; shares fall

Government-owned oil refining and marketing major Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC) on Tuesday reported a 31% year-on-year decline in its consolidated net profit for the fourth quarter ended March 2022.

Profit for the last quarter fell to Rs 6,022 crore from Rs 8,781 crore the oil marketing company had clocked in the same three months of last year. 

IOC said its revenue from operations for the fourth quarter were up 25.6% at Rs 2.06 lakh crore, as against Rs 1.64 lakh crore in January-March 2021.

To be sure, these revenue numbers do not have any element of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) since crude and refined petroleum products do not fall under the ambit of the indirect tax regime. 

IOC and other public-sector oil companies such as Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum had kept petrol and diesel prices unchanged for several months, despite a steep rise in crude oil prices, due to elections in a few states. They started increasing prices only towards the end of March.

Shares of Indian Oil were down about 4.5% in early afternoon trade, compared with a 0.1% drop in the benchmark Sensex.

Other key highlights

1) IOC’s Average Gross Refining Margin (GRM) for the year April-March 2022 is $11.25 per bbl, up from $5.64 per bbl in 2020-21.

2) The company said that the core GRM, or the current price GRM, for 2021-22 after offsetting inventory loss/ gain comes to $7.61 per bbl.

3) IOC said its board recommended issue of bonus shares in the ratio of 1:2.

4) The board also recommended a final dividend of Rs 3.60 per equity share. This translates into final dividend of Rs 2.40 per equity share (post-bonus) for financial year 2021-22.

5) Sequentially, the profit was higher than Rs 5,860.80 crore in the previous quarter.