RCom gains after repaying ECB loan

Reliance Communications rose 1.04% to Rs 131.50 at 14:57 IST on BSE after the company announced that it has fully repaid another syndicated ECB loan of $500 million, or approximately Rs 3100 crore, on the scheduled due date today, 3 January 2014.

The company made the announcement during trading hours today, 3 January 2014.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 77.68 points, or 0.37%, to 20,810.65.

On BSE, so far 13.80 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 14.28 lakh shares in the past one quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs 132.65 and a low of Rs 128.70 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 164.45 on 20 September 2013. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 50.25 on 26 March 2013.

The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 2 January 2014, sliding 8.54% compared with the Sensex's 0.05% fall. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 12.53% as against Sensex's 7.03% rise.

The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 1032.01 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5.

Reliance Communications (RCom) had earlier this year made full scheduled repayment of two other syndicated ECB loans aggregating $1 billion (Rs 6200 crore), and bilateral ECB loans of more than $310 million (Rs 1900 crore approximately).

With these repayments, RCom has now fully liquidated the borrowings from 23 foreign banks and financial institutions.

RCom's consolidated net profit spurted 562% to Rs 675 crore on 3.7% growth in operating revenue to Rs 5394 crore in Q2 September 2013 over Q2 September 2012.

RCom said there was a provision write-back of Rs 441 crore in Q2 September 2013. RCom's consolidated profit after tax (PAT) excluding provision write-back surged 129.4% to Rs 234 crore in Q2 September 2013 over Q2 September 2012.

RCom is an integrated telecommunications service provider. The company, with a customer base of about 125 million including over 2.5 million individual overseas retail customers, ranks among the Top 7 Telecom companies in the world by number of customers in a single country. RCom's corporate clientele includes over 39,000 Indian and multinational corporations including small and medium enterprises and over 830 global, regional and domestic carriers.