According to Reuters article published on January 31, 2023, Indian Oil Corp Ltd (IOC) (IOC.NS), the country's top refiner, reported a 92.4% fall in third-quarter profit on Tuesday, hurt by static pump prices, higher costs and foreign exchange losses.
The marketing under-recovery of oil marketing companies was hurt by retail prices that have remained unchanged since April 2022.
The state-owned company reported a net profit of 4.48 billion rupees ($54.71 million) for the quarter ended Dec. 31 against 58.61 billion rupees a year earlier.
A 40% surge in input costs pushed up total expenses by 20.4% to 2.30 trillion rupees.
The company also logged a foreign exchange loss of 17.01 billion rupees during the quarter, the company said in an exchange filing.
Revenue from operations rose nearly 16% to 2.28 trillion rupees from 1.97 trillion rupees a year earlier.
The company said its average gross refining margin - profit from converting a barrel of oil into refined products - was $21.08 per barrel for April-December, compared with $8.52 per barrel in the same period a year earlier.
IOC, along with its unit Chennai Petroleum (CHPC.NS), controls about a third of India's five million-barrels-per-day refining capacity.
Smaller peer, Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL.NS) also reported a 31% drop in quarterly profit on Monday due to a loss in fuel sales.
Indian Oil shares, which were down 0.2% as of 14:33 IST, fell over 31% last year against a gain of 14.3% in the Nifty energy index (.NIFTYENR).
($1 = 81.8900 Indian rupees)
