IndiGo FY15 prepares for IPO as net profit zooms nearly three-fold
11 Sep 2015
IndiGo Airlines, India's biggest airline by market share, reported a record Rs1,304 crore ($196 million) net profit for the year ended March 2015, 2.8 times its fiscal 2014 profit of Rs473 crore, on the back of an aviation boom aided by low fuel prices.
Indigo, which is expected to launch a Rs2,500-cr IPO in the current quarter as it prepares to cash in on the country's aviation boom with a stock market listing, said the numbers were delivered by ''low fuel costs, passenger growth and better yields.''
IndiGo is awaiting approval from the markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for a public listing of its shares.
The latest filing, which the airline submitted to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation today, shows that the airline's net profit in the fourth quarter FY-15 was Rs584 crore while its average profit in three preceding quarters was Rs240 crore, based on the Rs720 crore it made in the nine months ending December 2014.
On a full year basis the airline's revenue rose 22 per cent from Rs11,432 crore to Rs13,925 crore.
Profit before tax rose to Rs1,847 crore from Rs471 crore in the previous year.
Ghosh said the airline added 22 per cent capacity in FY 15, more than in any of the previous year, and denied that the profit was driven by payouts of manufacturer incentives or through profit from sale and lease-back transactions.
"After November 2014, we did not add brand new planes and so therefore not all our capacity addition was by way of sales and lease back transactions and yet this has been our most profitable year. Whatever gains we get we amortize over the entire lease period," IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said.
IndiGo, which operates a fleet of around 100 planes, last month finalised the purchase of 250 Airbus A320neo aircraft, the European planemaker's largest-ever order.
InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which runs IndiGo, is seeking to raise more than $400 million in an initial public offering in Mumbai this year, after filing a draft prospectus in June.
Banking sources say the listing, which would be the biggest IPO in India since 2012, should value InterGlobe at more than $4 billion.
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