Reliance Industries profits crosses $1bn
Mumbai: Oil major Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has reported a full year net profit of Rs 5299 crore, making it the first Indian private sector company to clock net profits of over $ 1 billion.

The company's net profit after extraordinary items stood at Rs 5160 crore, a 26 per cent increase over the previous year's figure of Rs 4104 crore. Gross income for the year was Rs 74418. RIL also announced its fourth quarter results, saying its net profit for the quarter stood at Rs 1419 crore, an increase of 29 per cent from Rs 1101 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

The company has declared a dividend of Rs 5.25 per share.
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Prize Petroleum and Aban to develop ONGC fields
Chennai: A consortium of Prize Petroleum Company Ltd and Aban Loyd Chiles Offshore Ltd will develop three marginal fields at Hirapur, Khambel and West Becharji in Gujarat after securing a service contract from the ONGC.

According to an Aban Loyd press release, the three fields on contract from ONGC are onshore and Aban will look at how it will get rigs to carry out the drilling. Aban, at present, has rigs for offshore drilling. The three wells will require drilling up to 2,500 meters.

Prize Petroleum has been promoted by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, ICICI Ventures Capital Ltd and HDFC Ltd. Prize Petroleum would be responsible for detailed geological, geo-physical reservoir management and monitoring production from the marginal fields.

Meanwhile for the quarter ended March 31, 2004 Aban Loyd has reported a net profit of Rs 9.91 crore on a total income of Rs 70.59 crore against a net profit of Rs 4.17 crore on total income of Rs 64.69 crore for the same period last year.

Aban had a net profit of Rs 47.10 crore on total income of Rs 293.01 crore for the year ended March 31, 2004 against a net profit of Rs 9.07 crore on income of Rs 251.56 crore for the previous year. Interest charges were down to Rs 25.74 crore from Rs 36.84 crore in the previous year.
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Bombay Dyeing retains rating
Mumbai: ICRA has retained the A1+ rating assigned to the Rs 100 crore short-term debt programme of Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Company Ltd.

The rating indicates higher safety in the short term. The rating also takes into consideration the strong liquidity of the company, which it derives from its large liquid investment portfolio and healthy operational cash flows.
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Pfizer to appoint valuers for Pharmacia merger
Mumbai: Pfizer Ltd told its shareholderws that it would appoint valuers for the merger of the two listed companies, Pharmacia Healthcare Ltd and Pfizer. The parent company, Pfizer Inc, holds 40 per cent equity in Pfizer Ltd and 75 per cent in Pharmacia Healthcare.

Regarding new product launches, the company has indicated that a strong regulatory framework protecting intellectual property rights will accelerate the launch of more products from the parent company.
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Jindal Steel to complete expansion ahead of schedule
New Delhi: Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL) has informed the stock exchanges that various projects, with an estimated investment of Rs 550 crore, which were scheduled to be completed in two phases by March 2005 and September 2005, are likely to be completed by December this year, which would be three to nine months ahead of the schedule.

The expansion projects include increase in sponge iron manufacturing capacity from the existing 6.5 lakh tonnes to 13.1 lakh tonnes and increase in power generation capacity from 205 MW to 255 MW.

According to the company early completion of these projects will have a positive impact on the company's finances and will help increase the turnover as well as profit, which would be partly reflected in the financial performance of the company during the current financial year 2004-05 and will be fully taken into account in fiscal 2005-06.
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Rs 35,000-cr CAPEX plans for Reliance
Mumbai: Reliance Industries has said that it would spend Rs 35,000 crore over the next five years; nearly three-fourths of it on exploration, production and marketing of oil and gas.
According to the company, Rs 15,000 crore of the total capital expenditure budget would be spent on developing the D6 gas field in the Krishna-Godavari (K-G) basin and putting up infrastructure for the transportation of natural gas. The company estimates that the D6 field holds about 14 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.

Reliance is also spending Rs 6,000 crore to put up new petrochemical capacities at its existing complexes at Jamnagar, Hazira and Patalganga. The expansion will raise the company's polymer production capacity from 12.5 million tonnes per annum to 15 million tonnes per annum in about two years.
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Bharti tele-ventures migrates into Unified Access Service Licences
New Delhi: Bharti Tele-Ventures, a leading private sector provider of telecommunication services in the country, has announced that all its 15 existing cellular mobile licences have been migrated to the 'Unified Access Service Licence' (UASL) with immediate effect.

Bharti now holds unified access licences for 20 circles. It has also applied for a UASL in Assam. Upon closing of the Hexacom acquisition, Bharti will have all the 23 circles of India with the addition of Rajasthan and the North-East, a company statement said here.

Bharti Tele-Ventures has an aggregate of seven million customers, Back to News Review index page  

Alcatel and ITI tie-up for BSNL network
Bangalore: Telecom box-maker Alcatel has secured a Rs 340 crore order from ITI Ltd to supply and install GSM network for the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, an Alcatel news release said.

As per the agreement ITI will produce and deploy Alcatel's Evolium GSM solution. In the first phase of this agreement, ITI will deploy the GSM equipment produced by Alcatel, such as wireless switches and base stations and this will be followed up with ITI acquiring Alcatel GSM technology to manufacture the equipment under the Alcatel licence at the ITI plant in Mankapur, the release said.
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Stock trading on mobiles with Hutch GPRS
Mumbai: Financial Technologies and Hutch India have together launched `i-Win', the first wireless Internet mobile dealing desk through the Orange wireless service in Mumbai. This facility provides stock market and trading facilities to Hutch and Orange GPRS mobile phone users.

It will first be introduced in Mumbai after which there would be a phased introduction of the service in the different circles of Hutch's operations. It makes available to stock market participants the complete suite of desk trading functionalities on a mobile phone. The service has been launched in alliance with the stock broking firms of Kotak Securities and Sunidhi Consultancy Services.
According to a release, streaming quotes, instant execution capabilities and continuous access to the markets are assured to users on the move. Users will get connected through the Hutch GPRS handset and see market rates, enter/modify/cancel orders, view their positions and transactions through a fully secure channel.
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BOW launches online fleet-tracking system
New Delhi: BOW Network Pvt Ltd, a Bangalore-based enterprise solutions provider to the transport industry, has announced the launch of BOW Trakease, a joint venture between BOW and Brussels-based Fortese Software Pvt Ltd.
BOW Trakease is an online, real-time fleet management system that enables corporates, fleet managers, delivery departments, transport operators, automotive companies, airports and harbours to track their vehicles any time.

The BOW Trakease requires an in-vehicle BOW Trakease GPS unit with GPRS/GPS (mobile sim card), user identification, password and a personal computer with internet connection. The system can store up to 32 K of information on vehicles giving location, time, direction, acceleration or deceleration, tyre pressure, door position and the duration at any location.
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Pepsi launches Slice in PET packs
Mumbai: Pepsi has launched Slice, its mango juice drink brand in a 500-ml PET pack in Pune, Nasik, Aurangabad and Solapur, with a new tagline 'Go Man-Go'.
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Rasna to triple capacity
New Delhi: Rasna has announced that it would spend Rs 10 crore towards setting up two more plants for manufacturing its cola product, thereby tripling its capacity. The plants would be situated in the northern part of the country, as the demand for colas in the region is higher.

Rasna is targeting to sell one billion glasses of Cola Cola during 2004-05. The company has recently roped in Bollywood actress Karisma Kapoor as the brand ambassador for Cola Cola, and is promoting the product as a `healthy drink for the masses'.
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