HPCL Q2 Results: Net Profit Drops By 98%
Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. reports a sharp decline in profit due to weaker refining and marketing margins. HPCL Q2 Earnings
HPCL Q2 Results: Net Profit Drops By 98%
On Friday, HPCL announced a huge 97.5% drop in net profit for the September quarter, mainly due to falling refinery and marketing margins.
The company's consolidated net profit for July-September was ₹142.67 crore, down from ₹5,826.96 crore a year ago, according to a stock exchange report.
Profit also decreased from ₹633.94 crore in the previous quarter.
Earnings from fuel retailing dropped to ₹1,285.96 crore, down from ₹6,984.60 crore in the same period last year.
Last year, HPCL and other state-owned fuel retailers, like Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (BPCL), made significant profits by keeping petrol and diesel prices steady, even when costs fell. They argued that this price freeze was necessary to recover losses from the previous year when they didn’t raise prices despite rising costs.
But HPCL lost its earlier gains when petrol and diesel prices were cut by ₹2 per litre just before the general elections. This, along with lower profit margins on stable crude oil prices, led to the profit drop.
Regarding stock performance, HPCL's shares fell over 7.51% to ₹374.35 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday. The shares opened at ₹406 and dropped to a low of ₹372.90 during the day.
