Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL) has reported an impressive financial performance for FY23 supported by higher capacity utilisation, use of Russian crude in its kitty, increase in the sale of value-added products, and savings on the energy front.
The Board recommended a final equity dividend of ₹27 a share and 6.65 per cent on outstanding preference shares. The company earned ₹237.31 a share in 2022-23 compared with ₹90.15 in the previous year.
The company’s PAT zoomed by 163 per cent to ₹3534 crore in FY23 compared with ₹1342 crore in FY22. Revenue from operations grew 50 per cent at ₹90,908 crore in FY23 as against ₹60,474 crore in FY22.
A strong physical performance is one of the key factors. While the nameplate capacity of CPCL’s Manali refinery is 10.5 mt(million tonnes), the company achieved a crude throughput of 11.3 MMT, which was described as the best-ever physical performance in CPCL’s history. FY23 throughput was also higher than the 9 mtprocessed in FY22.
“The more crude you process, the more products you get. Also, with safety and sustainability in hand, operations were sustained without interruption during the year,” Arvind Kumar, Managing Director, CPCL told businessline.
Gulf crude
The company also diversified its crude basket by use of Russian crude. Normally, the use of Gulf crude is in the range of 70-72 per cent. This time use of Gulf crude was reduced to about 60 per cent as CPCL used 13-14 per cent for Russian crude, which came at some discounted price. This has helped improve margins.
In lubes, which have some good margins associated with them, it has done well this time at 240 tmt (thousand metric tonnes) per annum, the highest ever in the past 10 years. It also does direct marketing of mineral turpentine Oil (MTO), hexane, paraffin wax, and petrochemical feedstock, which is going to the nearby industrial units in Manali.
“In these products, we made margins of 7-8 per cent,” said Kumar.
It also made some improvements on energy parameters. Fuel and loss, energy Intensity Index and specific energy consumption were lower in FY23 when compared with FY22. Though there were some inventory losses due to a drop in crude prices in recent quarters, higher revenue and cash generation helped the company to sustain it, he added.
Debt-equity ratio
The company’s debt-equity ratio decreased to 0.67 as of March 31, 2023, from 3.31 as of March 31, 2022. Higher profit resulted in internal accrual accretion with a consequential decrease in borrowings due to repayments.
The company’s net worth increased to ₹6,281 crore in March 2023 from ₹2,790 crore in March 2022.
For the quarter ended March 31, 2023, the company’s PAT stood at ₹1,004 crore when compared with a PAT of ₹994 crore in the year-ago period. Its standalone revenue from operations grew to ₹21350 crore (₹20,997 crore in the year-ago period).