Tata Steel Third-Quarter Standalone Profit Soars

Tata Steel Ltd reported an 83.6 per cent surge in third-quarter standalone net profit on Friday, aided by robust domestic production.

Standalone profit came in at Rs 2,456 crore rupees ($344.94 million) compared with Rs 1,338 crore rupees in the same period a year earlier, the steelmaker said.

According to I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv, analysts on average had expected a profit of Rs 2,540 crore rupees.

On a consolidated basis, the company posted a net profit of Rs 2,284 crore rupees. However, the numbers were not comparable due to its recent acquisition of Tata Steel BSL Limited (formerly Bhushan Steel Ltd)

In May last year, the firm, one of the flagship companies of the giant salt-to-software Tata Group bought a 72.7 per cent stake in Bhushan Steel Ltd which was in bankruptcy court.

This was the company's first major acquisition after Britain's Corus, now called Tata Steel Europe.

The company has struck a deal with Germany's Thyssenkrupp to combine its UK business into a joint venture with the German giant.

This would allow Tata Steel to cut debt at the group level and bring focus back to India through acquisitions, Tata Steel Chairman N Chandrasekaran had said in July.

The company plans to double its capacity in the country in five years.

"Despite a sharp drop in international steel prices, we were able to maintain overall realizations and increase volumes significantly in India." Chief Executive Officer T V Narendran said.

Local producers are suffering from a double whammy of a rise in cheap imports and low domestic steel prices, which threaten to wipe out healthy profits they have clocked in recent years.

Analysts have said that due to pressure on steel prices, the third quarter could be the last good quarter for steelmakers before a long period of muted growth.

Consolidated steel production rose 11 per cent year on year, while steel production in the country surged 34 per cent, the Mumbai headquartered company said.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)