LAHORE: Sui Northern Gas Company Ltd (SNGPL) on Monday announced that the profit-after-tax (PAT) for the first quarter (July-September) of FY21 jumped by 69.20 per cent to Rs3.181 billion compared to Rs1.880bn in the same period the preceding year.

The earnings per share (EPS) rose to Rs5.01 in for 1QFY21 as against Rs2.96 in the corresponding quarter of 2019-20.

A spokesman while sharing the company’s latest financial numbers said that owing to decrease in finance cost by Rs1.176bn and decrease in unaccounted-for-gas (UFG) disallowance by Rs648 million, the company despite all the economic, financial, circular debt challenges and prevailing lockdown situation due to Covid-19 has witnessed increase in profit during the first quarter of 2020-21.

Unveiling the audited report for the year 2019-20, the spokesman said due the increase in the UFG percentage and other issues had reduced profitability ratio of the SNGPL during the year.

He said the SNGPL’s PAT fell by over 15pc to Rs5.998bn (EPS Rs9.46) in FY20 from Rs7.076bn (EPS Rs11.16) in 2018-19. The company has proposed a final cash dividend of 40pc for FY20.

“The reduction in profitability is due to increase in UFG (line losses/gas theft, technical losses etc) percentage from 11.86pc to 12.32pc and accordingly increase in UFG disallowance from Rs10.528bn to Rs11.742bn. Even though UFG volumes decreased from 52.5 BCF in previous year to 48.3 BCF during the current year, the increase in UFG percentage is mainly due to decrease in availability of indigenous gas volumes during the year.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2021