Cairn India suffered loss in the March quarter on the back of a steep fall in global crude oil prices. The private sector oil and gas explorer incurred a consolidated net loss of ₹240.82 crore in the quarter.
The company had reported a consolidated net profit of ₹3,035.44 crore in the March quarter last year. Post its initial public offering in 2007, this is the company’s second quarterly loss.
Despite the falling revenues and profit, Cairn India Board has recommended a final dividend of ₹4 a share, entailing an outflow of around ₹900 crore, including the dividend distribution tax.
The fall in average price realisations impacted the consolidated net sales equally badly. For the quarter, Cairn’s consolidated net sales fell 47 per cent year-on-year to ₹2,677.2 crore, compared with ₹5,048.89 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.
Output from Cairn’s Rajasthan oil fields also fell.
The average daily gross production from Rajasthan was 174,206 barrels of oil equivalent a day, a drop of 9 per cent over the same quarter last year.
Total production from Rajasthan was 15.7 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Cairn sells its Rajasthan crude at a discount of Brent.
During the quarter under review, the discount was close to 10 per cent.
For the full year, it sold crude oil from Rajasthan at a discount of 10.6 per cent to the Brent prices.
Average price realisation for the Rajasthan crude during the fiscal was $76.4 a barrel.
The average across all assets was $76.8 a barrel during the fiscal.
Dropping crude prices meant Cairn’s average price realisation for crude oil across its assets during the quarter fell 49 per cent year-on-year to $48.4 a barrel.
The quarterly loss includes an exceptional item pertaining to the impairment loss in Sri Lanka amounting to ₹505 crore. The company said in a statement that excluding exceptional items, it would have made a net profit of ₹193 crore for the fourth quarter.
Though the results were announced after the stock exchanges were closed for the day, traders had anticipated poor earnings for Cairn.
The company’s shares closed 2.22 per cent lower on the BSE at ₹213.60 on Thursday.
Already in 2014-15, Cairn India has laid off over 200 people and cut its 2015-16 capex by over half to $500 million.
Gross production across its assets was at 19.4 million barrels of oil equivalent with daily production at 215,553 barrels of oil equivalent a day.
For the full fiscal 2014-15, Cairn’s net profit was down 64 per cent to ₹4,480 crore against ₹12,432 crore in the previous fiscal. Its revenue was down 22 per cent to ₹14,646 crore compared with 18,762 crore in the previous fiscal.