BENGALURU (Reuters) -Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company, reported first-quarter profit below analysts' estimates on Friday, hurt by lower margins on fuel sales.
The billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led company said its consolidated profit fell to 151.38 billion rupees ($1.81 billion) in the April-to-June quarter, from 160.11 billion rupees a year earlier.
Analysts had estimated a profit of 162.87 billion rupees, according to LSEG data.
Oil-to-chemicals earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation fell 14.3% to 130.93 billion rupees from a year earlier, due to lower transportation fuel cracks, particularly gasoline cracks, which were down 30%, Reliance said in a statement.
"The business was impacted by lower fuel cracks with tepid global demand and ramp-up of new refineries," Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, said in a statement.
Advantageous arbitrage crude sourcing was increased to minimize crude basket cost, the company added.
Reliance is one of the key Indian buyers of Russian oil sold at a discount and has signed an annual oil purchase deal with Russian oil major Rosneft.
The company's consolidated revenue gained 12% to 2.36 trillion rupees.
The Jamnagar complex, which houses two refining plants with a combined capacity of about 1.4 million barrels per day, is at the core of Reliance's oil-to-chemicals (O2C) operations, making it a key profit driver, despite the company's aggressive expansion into retail, telecom and green energy.
Global giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE:XOM) and BP (NYSE:BP) have also signalled that their earnings would be affected by lower refining margins.
Meanwhile, quarterly EBITDA of the company's retail unit rose about 10% from a year earlier, led by increase in footfalls and expansion of store footprint, Reliance said.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, India's biggest telecom carrier by subscribers, reported a 12% rise in quarterly profit, boosted by subscriber additions.
($1 = 83.6740 Indian rupees)