JSW Energy reports sharp rise in net profit during Q3

Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Energy Wednesday said its net income more than doubled to Rs 146.13 crore during the three months to December period mainly on the back of the low base, better realisation and lower interest cost. Total revenue increased to Rs 2,491.8 crore from Rs 2,081.14 crore, registering a growth of 19.73 per cent.

"The profit is mainly on the back of higher generation and better realisations from both merchant and long-term PPA customers. Also, our efforts to reduce debt has resulted in interest cost coming down by almost 13 per cent," joint managing demand and chief executive Prashant Jain said. The finance cost declined to Rs 295 crore from Rs 341 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year due to prepayments/repayments. As a result, net debt has come down by Rs 296 crore to Rs 10,686 crore, he said.

Total generation rose from 4,945 million units to 5,116 million units. But short-term sales in the quarter were marginally lower at 1,112 units from 1,155 million units due to the conversion of open capacity into long-term PPAs. "This is the first time in the past three years that merchant tariffs have increased significantly. Our consolidated deemed thermal plant load factor also increased to 60.1 per cent from 58.2," he said.

During the quarter, merchant prices at the IEX rose 21 per cent on y-o-y to 4.28 a unit, while the peak spot price hit an all-time high of Rs 19.99 a unit on October 29. Speaking about the company's plans on the electric vehicles business, Jain said the discussions are progressing with leading OEMs and engineering services providers for product and technology partnerships.

"We are on track and in the March quarter, we will make some announcement on this. Also, we are hopeful of achieving our target of launching the vehicle in 2020 though it will take three-four years to commercially start the business," Jain said. He further said the company is looking at acquiring power plants under the Samadhan scheme, "under which there are many power projects with unique problems and we are evaluating some of them. We are looking at assets which we are confident of turning around and thus help us sell power at lower cost," Jain added.

He said the power sector may see more consolidation with a resolution of stressed assets through the bankruptcy route which will further aid the demand-supply balancing. "However, volatility in imported coal prices and domestic coal availability especially for private sector power plants continues to remain key concerns," Jain said. The JSW Energy counter closed with over 5.6 per cent gains at Rs 67.90 on the BSE whose benchmark closed flat in choppy trade.