By Devidutta Tripathy
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Cash-strapped carrier Kingfisher Airlines , which has been grounded for nearly 10 months, reported yet another quarterly loss on Wednesday, with no income from operations and creditors seeking to sell off assets.
Kingfisher, once India's second-biggest carrier, owes more than $1 billion to a consortium of mostly state-run banks and hundreds of millions of dollars more to airports and tax authorities and others.
After its flying licences expired last year, Kingfisher, controlled by prominent industrialist Vijay Mallya, has twice submitted revival plans to the regulator in bids to restart operations, but the authorities are yet to be convinced.
Last week lenders took possession of a key real estate company in Mumbai, but the property is estimated to be worth only about $15 million and auctioning it will not be easy due to pending legal issues.
The banks, which have so far recovered about $90 million of the loans do not expect to recover much by selling shares and property pledged against loans taken by Kingfisher, the head of top lender State Bank of India said in February.
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Kingfisher reiterated on Wednesday that it was in talks with prospective investors and was exploring various options to recapitalise and resume operations. It will also ask lenders at an appropriate time for a debt restructuring, Kingfisher said in a filing to the stock exchange.
A fully-funded turnaround of Kingfisher would cost at least $1 billion, consultancy Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation has estimated.
Kingfisher, which had never posted a profit in its eight years of operation, reported a net loss of 11.57 billion rupees for the three months to June, compared with a net loss of 6.51 billion rupees a year earlier, but lower than a record 21.42 billion rupees loss for the March quarter.
Shares in Kingfisher have lost nearly three quarters of their value this year and currently have a market capitalisation of just over $50 million.
(Additional reporting by Swati Pandey in Mumbai; Editing by Greg Mahlich)