Tata Chemicals net up 61 per cent on demand push
The Economic Times — July 31, 2009

Tata Chemicals, makers of the popular Tata Salt brand, on Thursday said its standalone first quarter net profit grew 61% due to robust local demand and lower input price. The Mumbai-based company posted a net profit of Rs 94.40 crore in the April-June period, compared with Rs 58.70 crore in the previous year. Its revenue in the same period grew 19.4% to Rs 1,441 crore.

Tata Chemicals, which also has subsidiaries overseas, said it posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 106 crore which it said was not comparable with the pervious year’s profit, due to a one-time provisioning of Rs 63 crore made towards restructuring of overseas operations in line with local GAAP.

The Tata group company, which also has interests in fertilisers, said that had the company followed the practice of accounting actuarial gains and losses of pension plans of overseas subsidiaries in the profit and loss account, the consolidated profit after tax of the group would have been lower by Rs 152.17 crore. Speaking to ET, finance director PK Ghose said that the accounting treatment under AS 21, was in line with current norms. “The government has permitted such relaxation in norms due to the extreme volatility seen in the recent past.”

Tata Chemicals said restructuring costs for its overseas operations totalled Rs 87.36 crore for the quarter ended June and this is line with international GAAP.

Tata Chemicals has repaid loans worth Rs 440 crore in the June quarter, while the outstanding subsidy, for the fertiliser segment, was at Rs 521crore. The company plans to repay foreign currency loans worth $44 million in January 2010, and will pay $30-40 million every year toward loans worth $300 million taken by its US unit General Chemicals.