HCC suffers Rs 130 crore loss in December quarter

MUMBAI: Hindustan Construction Company posted its second consecutive loss in the December quarter and expects weakness till next year due to high interest costs and project delays.

"We are trying hard to move from loss to cash profit and from that to net profit but it wouldn't happen for another year. We should be able to report operating profits by the first quarter of 2013-14," chief financial officer Praveen Sood told ET.

HCC posted a loss of 130.4 crore while turnover slipped 7.6% to 949.2 crore. "The financial performance reflects the difficult economic and business environment. The revenue growth was lower due to slow order booking during the last four quarters, execution bottlenecks, rising interest cost and payment delays by clients," CMD Ajit Gulabchand. The company has made a one-time provision of 166 crore, primarily for cost overrun and likely losses on two projects under construction.

"We had won two projects on certain estimates that we had made earlier, now we feel we would not be able to recover the cost on these two projects. It is quite possible that our bid was aggressive," Sood said.

"We have taken pains to clear our balance sheet in this quarter by undertaking these exceptional provisions. We are hoping that these items would not recur," Sood said.