SAIL Q1 net profit falls 29%

Steel Authority of India on Friday reported a 29 per cent dip in Q1 FY12 net profit at Rs 838 crore on costlier coking coal, a key steel-making ingredient, though the sale of the alloy was 18 per cent higher over the year-ago period.

Attributing the dip in net profit to higher coking coal prices, SAIL Chairman C S Verma said that during the quarter under review, it had to bear a Rs 580 crore additional burden because of expensive coking coal.

The cost of the vital raw material rose to $330 per tonne from $200 a tonne in the first quarter of last fiscal.

The state-run company had registered Rs 1,177 crore net profit in the same quarter last fiscal on a gross sales of Rs 9,931 crore.

During the current quarter, it recorded Rs 11,891 crore gross sales on higher dispatch, which stood at 2.75 MT.

Verma said the price of coking coal was higher because of floods in Australia, which supplies a lion's share to global export market. Around 60 per cent of SAIL's total 10.5 MT imports of coking coal comes from Australia.