 "CIL net down 11% but better than estimates")
The company's Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) and profits, however, were better than estimates by six and two per cent, respectively.
Net sales of the public sector company in the first quarter decreased by 2.3 per cent to Rs 16,928 crore from Rs 17,325 crore in the same period in 2012-13, but were in line with estimates.
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"Production and offtake fell in the quarter. The cost of production too has gone up due to inflationary pressure affecting the performance," CIL chairman and managing director Narsing Rao said.
During the quarter, CIL reported a marginal drop in production at 118.7 million tonnes (mt) against 117.4 mt for the same period in the previous financial year. CIL's offtake for the quarter stood at 117.2 mt, registering a decrease of 2.8 per cent compared with the corresponding period in the last financial year.
Realisation from e-auction sales also took a hit, but what helped was the higher volumes in E-auction. "E-auction volume was 15.14 MT in the quarter compared to 10.48 MT in the corresponding period of last fiscal. But, we took a hit of over Rs 700 per tonne so far average sales realisation from e-auction is concerned," Rao said. Realisation from e-auction during this period was Rs 2232 a tonne, as against an average Rs 2941 a tonne notched a year ago.
"The e-auction is market driven. There is general depression in the economy, which has affected the e-auction realisation," he added.
But since E-auction realisations are far better than realisation on coal sold through the fuel supply agreement route, higher volumes in the former came handy. As a result, there was marginal improvement of about 0.6 per cent in Coal India's overall realisation to Rs 1,447 per tonne, which to an extent also helped cushion revenues. Thus, Ebidta fell by just 4 per cent to Rs 4,082 crore and margins fell 64 basis points year-on-year to 24.2 per cent, and came in better than expectations.
Going ahead, given the huge dividend payout (cash outgo), the company's other income is expected to decline further. But, what's more important for the company is to increase output, which has been slightly below targets.
Commenting on the company's effort towards this end, Rao said, "We are trying to meet the output target. Rake availability too has also improved."
Although the official earlier indicated said that CIL's production target was 482 million tonnes (MT), Rao assured it would not be problem for the company to meet Fuel Supply Agreement (FSA) commitment.
When asked whether the company would consider another round of price hike in the current fiscal, he said, "We can neither confirm nor rule out the possibility of price hike at this point of time."
The stock ended the day flat at Rs 270. The results came in post market hours on Wednesday.