Kochi Refineries took off on opening on Friday, hitting the 20% ceiling at Rs 56.55, after the company declared stupendous results on Wednesday.

By 9:58 IST, the scrip of the standalone oil refinery registered volumes of 8,801 shares on BSE. At its 20% ceiling, the outstanding buy position was over 5.5 lakh shares on BSE.

After market hours Wednesday, Kochi Refineries said that net profit for the fourth quarter ended 31 March 2003 stood at a voluminous Rs 290.60 crore (Rs 2.9 billion) against a net profit of a mere Rs 26.20 crore in the corresponding period last year. Total income increased 94% to Rs 2,749 crore (Rs 27.49 billion) from Rs 1,417.40 crore (Rs 14.17 billion) in MQ-2002

For the full year ended 31 March 2003, the company registered a huge rise in net profit to Rs 456 crore (Rs 4.56 billion) on a 59% increase in total income to Rs 9,267.60 crore (Rs 92.67 billion).

The company also declared a huge dividend of 100% or Rs 10 per share for FY-2002-03.

KRL is a subsidiary of state-run oil refiner BPCL, which had acquired a 55.04% stake in KRL for Rs 800 crore in March 2001. The two companies have already integrated several functions including crude procurement and marketing. The acquisition of KRL has ensured enough products for BPCL's large marketing infrastructure, especially in the south and west.

KRL has further investment plans in the petroleum sector including process optimisation, energy conservation, R&D projects, additional LPG recovery and JV projects like the Kochi-Karur product pipeline and marketing infrastructure development.

With BPCL having a market share of over 20 million tonnes, with a highly developed marketing infrastructure, KRL could continue to concentrate on attaining capacities of scale and maximum utilisation of capacities rather than marketing. The company had been working to 100% capacity for the past 12 years barring the last year.

As on 31 March 2003, the public and institutions held 14.73% and 24.31% in BPCL's equity, respectively.