MUMBAI (Reuters) - Explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp posted a nearly flat quarterly profit on Wednesday, hurt by rising exploration write-offs and higher subsidy burden.
The state-run company reported a net profit of 60.64 billion rupees for its second quarter ended September, up from 58.97 billion rupees last year. Net sales rose 12.8 percent to 223.12 billion rupees.
Analysts, on average, had expected the company to post a net profit of 59 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters Starmine data. Shares of ONGC, India's fourth-biggest company by market value, closed 1.1 percent higher ahead of the results. The stock is nearly flat so far in 2013, compared to a 2 percent fall in the sectoral index.
(Reporting by Prashant Mehra; Editing by Anand Basu)