(ANI): Tata Steel Limited on Monday reported a consolidated net profit of ₹7,765 crore for the first quarter of the current financial year as compared to ₹8,907 crore recorded in the corresponding period of the last year, registering a year-on-year decline of 12.8 per cent.
On a sequential basis, the company's profit after tax registered a decline of 20.4 per cent. During the January-March 2022 quarter, Tata Steel's profit stood at ₹9,756 crore.
The company's consolidated EBITDA for the quarter ended June 30 stood at ₹15,047 crores. On QoQ basis, EBITDA margin improved to 24 per cent while EBITDA per ton increased by ₹3,780 to ₹22,717.
Commenting on the financial results, T V Narendran, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Tata Steel, said, "This has been a challenging quarter for the Global and Indian economy with rising interest rates, supply chain constraints and a slowdown in China due to COVID. Despite these multiple headwinds, Tata Steel has delivered a strong performance with an improvement in margins."
"Our strong marketing franchise and superior business model in India enabled us to successfully pivot and increase our domestic deliveries to counter the 15 per cent duty imposed on steel exports in the middle of the quarter," he said.
"We continue to drive value accretive growth in India backed by investments in customer relationships, brands and distribution networks and remain well positioned to benefit from the buoyant automotive & retail housing demand and the government spend on infrastructure. Our European business delivered a sharp improvement in performance as long-term contracts and product mix helped drive a strong increase in realizations," Narendran added.
According to Narendran, the company targets to commission the 6 MTPA pellet plant at Kalinganagar in the third quarter of the current financial year which will drive cost savings followed by the CRM complex and the 5 MTPA expansion project.
Koushik Chatterjee, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, Tata Steel said, "Tata Steel continues to deliver operationally and financially despite the complex operating environment, sudden impact of regulatory changes and the heightened volatility in commodity prices."
"Our Consolidated revenues for the quarter stood at ₹63,430 crores and our consolidated EBITDA stood at ₹15,047 crores, despite the sharp rise in input costs especially coking coal and gas prices in Europe. Our EBITDA margin increased QoQ from 22 per cent to 24 per cent and EBITDA per ton increased from ₹18,937 to ₹22,717, he said.
He said the consolidated PAT for the quarter stood at ₹7,714 crore.
"In India, standalone revenue stood at ₹32,021 crore and EBITDA was ₹9,616 crore. In Europe, we achieved the highest ever quarterly EBITDA of 621 million pounds, which translates to an EBITDA per ton of 290 pounds, Chatterjee said.
We expect that volatility in terms of steel price and input cost movement to continue in the next quarter but expect the spreads to stabilise in the second half of the year. We spent ₹2,725 crore on capital expenditure in line with our annual capex guidance as we progress on our Kalinganagar expansion, he added.
Chatterjee said the volatility in commodity prices and immediate impact of the export duty in India have led to an increase in working capital "but our cost improvement and other initiatives along with expected pickup in demand in the second half of the year should result in normalisation of working capital".