Tata Steel on May 5 posted consolidated profit of Rs 6,644.1 crore for the quarter ended March 2021, with topline and operating performance beating analysts' expectations. The company had posted a loss of Rs 1,481.3 crore in the year-ago quarter.
However, the bottomline missed analysts' expectations due to higher tax cost and lower other income.
Consolidated revenue from operations stood at Rs 49,977.4 crore, up by 38.8 percent over Rs 36,009.4 crore reported in the corresponding quarter of the last fiscal.
"The fourth quarter performance has been stand out in terms of both earnings and cash flows, and helped the company to report one of the highest underlying performance for the full year in spite of the pandemic related disruptions during the first half of the financial year," said Koushik Chatterjee, Executive Director and CFO.
Profit was estimated at Rs 7,050 crore on revenue of Rs 47,476 crore in Q4FY21, according to the average estimates of analysts polled by CNBC-TV18.
At the operating level, consolidated EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) jumped 195.6 percent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 14,184.1 crore during the quarter under review, with margin expanding 1,510 bps YoY to 28.4 percent, driven by higher steel prices.
The operating performance was ahead of CNBC-TV18 poll estimates which was pegged it at Rs 13,405 crore with margin at 28.2 percent for the quarter.
The consolidated crude steel production increased by 1.5 percent YoY to 8.02 million tonnes and steel deliveries grew by 10.9 percent to 7.83 million tonnes in March 2021 quarter YoY.
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On India front, crude steel production came in at 4.75 million tonnes, up 0.4 percent and deliveries stood rose by 15.9 percent to at 4.67 million tonnes compared to the same quarter last year. India operations included Tata Steel Standalone, Tata Steel BSL and Tata Steel Long Products.
Tata Steel said India operations achieved highest-ever quarterly EBITDA of Rs 12,295 crore, up 40 percent QoQ and 2.7x YoY during the period, which translated into an EBITDA per tonne of Rs 26,309 and an EBITDA margin of 40.9 percent.
The company further said Tata Steel standalone also registered highest-ever quarterly EBITDA at Rs 9,206 crore, rising 37 percent QoQ and 2.5x YoY that translated into an EBITDA per tonne of Rs 27,828 and an EBITDA margin of 43.4 percent.
Steel deliveries at Tata Steel Europe grew 17 percent QoQ and 3 percent YoY to 2.47 million tonnes in Q4FY21, and EBITDA improved sharply to £125 million in Q4FY21, the company added.
Tata Steel has registered a massive 381.2 percent growth in consolidated profit at Rs 7,490.22 crore in the full year FY21, the pandemic year, compared to Rs 1,556.54 crore in previous year. Revenue from operations grew by 4.9 percent to Rs 1,56,294.18 crore compared to previous year.
The net debt decreased by Rs 29,390 crore to Rs 75,389 crore, which is 28 percent lower compared to the previous year-end.
"The aggressive prepayment of debt has resulted in a sharp improvement of the capital structure metrics with the net debt / equity under 1x and net debt / EBITDA at around the long term target level of 2.44x," said Koushik Chatterjee.
In the current financial year, "we will reduce the debt levels by more than a billion dollars and also enhance the capital allocation to our strategic capex program in India to complete the 5 million tonnes per annum expansion in Kalinganagar," he added.
Given the strong, underlying performance of the company, he said the board has recommended a dividend of Rs 25 per share.