Bharti bags two circles, Reliance gets one
New Delhi—Bharti has bagged eight of the seventeen circles auctioned at the end of the biding for the fourth cellular operator’s berth.

After shelling out Rs 690.62 crore for the circles Bharti emerged the largest cellular operator in the country in terms of coverage. It has added the lucrative Maharashtra and Gujarat circles to its tally beating Hutchison and Escotel. Hutchison won the Karnataka, Chennai and Andhra circles for Rs 463 crore. Thus, Hutchison’s total cellular presence has gone up to a total of 10 circles, which include its cellular operations in Delhi, Gujarat, Mumbai UP and Rajasthan. Escotel of Escorts won the Punjab, UP (East) and Rajashtan for Rs 230.35 crore, thus completing its tally to four as it already has the Himachal circle. Reliance, which had bid for 15 circles in the name of two different companies, got only the Kolkata circle for Rs 78.01 crore. Reliance now has a cellular presence in 8 circles including Himachal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam.

Birla AT&T Tata bagged the lucrative Delhi circle for 170.70 crore

The third round of bidding raised Rs 1632.64 crore for the government.
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M&M declares Q1 net loss of Rs Rs 29.61 cr
Mumbai—Mahindra &Mahindra has reported a net loss of Rs 29.26 crore for the first quarter ending June 30,2001 against the net profit of Rs 34.27 crore in the corresponding period the previous year. Net sales and income from operations for first quarter also declined sharply to Rs 685.87 crore against Rs 848.49 crore the previous year.

Other income was also lower at Rs 13.66 crore(Rs 22.01 crore the previous year according to a company release. M&M sold 12,149 vehicles in the first quarter as against 13, 624 in the corresponding period the previous year.
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Reliance first quarter net up 14 percent
Mumbai—Reliance Industries has reported that its first quarter (April-June 2001) profit rose 14 percent to Rs 618 crore from Rs 543 crore declared in the corresponding period last year. Sales rose 4.1 percent to Rs 6,390 crore in Q1 from Rs 6,138 crore in the corresponding period a year earlier.

The company said results last year had been restated reflecting the company’s decision in March to convert to the WDV method of calculating depreciation from the straight-line method used earlier.
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Ford seeks govt nod for introducing eight global brands in India
New Delhi—Ford India Ltd has approached the government of India seeking blanket approval to import eight of its global brands here. The brands in question are Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo, Jaguar, Aston Martin, Land Rover, Mazda and of course Ford.

The company had already sought the government’s approval for importing the Ford Mondeo earlier, which would be launched by the end of year 2001.

However, apart from the Mondeo the company does not plan to introduce any of the other models in the near future. The approval is being taken for future requirements and because auto imports have been liberalized. A spokesperson of the company said that if such an approval is granted the company would not have to go back to the government in the future for approval.

Ford’s proposal is likely to be taken up for consideration by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board at its next meeting on Aug 2.
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Rs 840 crore to be injected into IFCI by shareholders
New Delhi—The shareholders of IFCI led by IDBI may agree to inject Rs 840 crore into the company as desired by the RBI. This however would be against a letter of comfort from the government of India. The fund’s problems are not of a short-term nature. It is estimated that by December this year the fund will start running into a problems of liquidity unless a line of capital is made available to it.
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Yet another one downs e-commerce unit
Bangalore—After Commerce One, VeriFone, a leading global provider of secure electronic payment solutions for financial institutions, merchants and consumers, is reported to be thinking of shutting its e-commerce unit in India. The unit has staff strength of 40-50 and it is said that the company is also planning to hive off some of its other divisions as well.

In May this year, the Gores Technology Goup bought VeriFone from Hewlett Packard Company. VeriFone India does software developmental work for both physical (payment terminals that reside on merchants premises) and electronic payments solutions like payment gateway and Internet payment solutions. It has made significant contribution to VeriFone Inc’s global software needs.
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SAIL registers Rs 376 crore loss
Mumbai—The Steel Authority of India (Sail) has reported a loss of Rs 376 crore in the first quarter ending June 30, 2001against the loss of Rs 231 crore posted in the corresponding period a year ago.

Sail reported a turnover of Rs 3238 crore against a turnover of Rs 3554 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

The company said profit was impacted because of the severe drop in the prices of flat products and restrained production in a recessionary market. Further adverse market conditions caused a steep fall in domestic price realizations of flat products and the global slump pulled export realizations down.

The management of Sail led by chairman Arvind Pande has taken a series of measures to cut expenditure across all operational areas and in the first quarter of the present fiscal expenditure fell by 3.4 percent to Rs 3064 crore.

Sail has also reduced its overall debt by Rs 150 crore thereby reducing the debt burden by Rs 1,000 crore in the past five quarters.
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Sterlite Opticals profit rises 209 percent
Mumbai—Riding on the back of a strong demand for optical fibre, Sterlite Opticals posted a steep rise in Q1 profit to Rs 68 crore against Rs 22 crore in the corresponding period the previous year.

Demand for optical fibre is growing at 53 percent, while that of optic fibre cable has been growing at around 230 percent.

Thus turnover of the company has jumped to Rs 173 crore against Rs 49 crore in the corresponding period the previous year—a jump of 255 percent.

The board of directors of the company has recommended a dividend of 120 percent pro-rata for the nine-months ended March 31 2001.
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Zee Networks Q1 net slides 13 percent
Mumbai—Zee Network, which represents all the group companies of the Zee group, has registered a 13 percent fall in net profit to Rs 36.4 crore in the first quarter of 2000-01 from Rs 42 crore in the corresponding period the previous year.

According to a company press release, the fall is primarily due to increased interest cost and higher tax provisioning.

The listed Zee Telefilms registered a growth of 12 percent in net profit to Rs 29.9 crore and its stock price rose up 22 percent to touch Rs 87.

The total income of Zee Network in the first quarter, according to unaudited results, rose 14 percent to RS 254 crore.

Subscription revenues also figured in the company’s revenues for the first time. While domestic subscription accounted for Rs 13 crore of revenue and taken together with the subscription from the international markets, the total accounted for Rs 67 crore of revenues.
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Reliance to invest $300m in oil and gas exploration
Mumbai—The Reliance group is planning to invest up to $ 300 m in oil and gas exploration and production in the next three years. The company has 25 shallow and deep water blocks under development and has submitted its plans for phase II of development, but have yet to be cleared by the government yet. The other stake-holders are Enron and Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

It is thus expected that the contribution of the oil and gas business will rise in the company revenues in the years to come.
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TVS Electronics; cost cutting for improved profitability
Chennai—TVS Electronics wants to repeat the good performance of year 2000

When it registered a net profit growth of 40 percent. Hence a rigorous cost cutting effort is on in the company at present.

TVS-E has seen a a drop in net profit at Rs 25 lakh in the second half of year 2001 ending June 30, 2001 against Rs 41 lakh in the same period the previous year.

However, in the six months period ending June 30 2001, TVS-E showed a 39 percent rise in net profit at Rs 1.1 crore against Rs 82 lakh in the corresponding period the previous year. Net sales of the company registered a 10 percent increase to Rs 118 crore against Rs 106 percent in the corresponding period the previous year.

In order to replicate its performance in year 2000 the company has put in place a series of measures like reduction in fixed costs.

Says Gopal Srinivas managing director TVS-E that the company intends to cut fixed costs by Rs 50 lakh per month and to do this the company would have strict control over inventory and conduct tight management of receivables especially from sundry debtors. Focus would also be on productivity improvements and manpower rationalization. He says the company has a clear-cut strategy to grow through two businesses—the traditional dot matrix printers and keyboards and the new retail automation appliance system.

The company has given a push to exports through its new business of electronic manufacturing service (EMS) In the first half of the present fiscal earnings from EMS rose 25 percent to Rs 15 crore.
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Usha sources table fan parts from China
Ahmedabad—Usha International has started procuring plastic parts of the table fan from China while it will continue making fan Motors where it feels it has an edge. This may mean that the Rs 400 crore Usha International could shift the production of more products to China or better yet source products from Chinese producers.

Sunil Wadhwa, Usha International says that the Chinese have an advantage over India on fronts like labour cost, capital and infrastructure which makes sourcing products from China a profitable proposition.
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