Press "Enter" to skip to content

Petronet LNG Q4 profit falls sequentially, Tellurian deal off – BusinessLine

Petronet LNG Ltd posted a net profit of ₹638 crore for the March quarter, a fall of 18 per cent over the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the firm’s agreement to invest $2.5 billion in US energy firm Tellurian Inc has lapsed, CEO Akshay Kumar Singh said on Wednesday.

The profit for the quarter under review grew by 71 per cent on a year-on-year basis. For the year 2020-21, the company’s profit grew 9 per cent to ₹2,939 crore. Annual revenue from operations, however, fell by 27 per cent to ₹26,022 crore.

In September 2019, Petronet LNG had signed a MoU with Tellurian to invest $2.5 billion in the Houston-based firm’s proposed Driftwood LNG export terminal in exchange for the rights to upto 5 million tonnes of LNG per year over four decades.

The MoU’s deadline for completing the transaction had been extended twice to December 2020 when it finally lapsed, Singh said at a press conference. “We did not get a request from Tellurian for an extension,” he said. “As of today, there is no MoU with us.”

The MoU had been signed on the sidelines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s roundtable with 17 CEOs of foreign energy firms during his ‘Howdy Modi’ trip to Houston in September 2019.

Dividend declared

Petronet’s board on Tuesday recommended a final dividend of ₹3.5 per share for the 2020-21. Including the interim dividend announced earlier, the company’s total dividend comes to ₹11.5 per share. This translates to dividend payout of about 60 per cent and dividend yield of 4.6 per cent for the year, Motilal Oswal Institutional Equities said.

Due to the second wave of Covid-19, the firm’s Dahej terminal operated at about 80 per cent capacity during April and May, Singh said. Over 90 per cent of Petronet’s volumes come from its Dahej terminal, which has an annual capacity of 17.5 million tonnes. The terminal’s operational capacity during 2020-21 remained flat year-on-year at 92 per cent.

Petronet is expanding the terminal’s capacity by 5 million tonnes and expects gas demand to bounce back in the ongoing financial year, Singh said. After the breakdown of the agreement with Tellurian, the company is looking at alternative sources such as Qatar for sourcing LNG, Singh said.