United Spirits Ltd, India’s largest maker of alcoholic beverages, has managed to reduce its standalone net loss to Rs 1,799 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2015 compared to a loss of Rs 5,380 crore a year ago.
During the third quarter ended December, 2015, the company had reported a profit of Rs 74.7 crore.
Total income for the quarter went up at Rs 2,051.2 crore as against Rs 1,943.3 crore, showing a growth of 5.5% year-on-year.
Gross margins improved by 480 basis points year-on-year.
Staff costs increased by 45.3% year-on-year to Rs 212.3 crore. This included Rs 34 crore towards provisions for its employee incentive scheme.
The company witnessed lower level of spends in advertising and promotion activities at Rs 196 crore, a decline of 0.7% year-on-year.
The company has also managed to reduce its operating loss during the fourth quarter to Rs 11.9 crore from Rs 927 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.
However, the company took a hit on its profits for the quarter due to provisions for loans, advances and investments in its subsidiaries, all aggregating to Rs 716 crore. Provision for loans and investments in relation to Whyte and Mackay Group (WMG) was Rs 184.85 crore while loss on sale of shares of a subsidiary was Rs 10.85 crore. Provision for a loan to a related party aggregated to Rs 995.46 crore and profit on sale of manufacturing unit was Rs 35.65 crore.
During the fourth quarter ended March 2015, the company made a foreign exchange gain of Rs 8.7 crore as against forex loss of Rs 7.8 crore in the year-ago quarter.
Further to Diageo Plc's undertakings offered to UK's Office of Fair Trade (OFT), which is now called Competition and Markets Authority, UK, in January 2014, the company's board of directors decided to initiate a process to explore a potential sale of all or part of Whyte and Mackay.
As a culmination of this process, on May 9, 2014 the company's then wholly owned subsidiary, United Spirits (Great Britain) Limited entered into a share sale and purchase agreement with Emperador UK Limited and Emperador Inc., in relation to the sale of the entire issued share capital of Whyte and Mackay Group Limited for an enterprise value of 430 million pounds (calculated with a normalised level of working capital), from which deduction has been made for the payment of a warranty and indemnity insurance premium of 0.85 million pounds agreed between the seller and the purchaser.
An opinion from a leading merchant banker, addressed to the Board, confirms that the enterprise value is fair from a financial point of view of the company.
On October 31, 2014, the sale of the entire issued share capital of WMG by USGBL to Emperador UK Limited was completed. With the above sale, WMG and its 45 subsidiaries have ceased to be subsidiaries of the company. Part of the proceeds from the sale was used to repay Whyte and Mackay acquisition debt amounting to 370 million pounds.
The USL board, which met in Mumbai on Tuesday, has not declared any dividend for the year in view of the losses incurred during 2014-15.
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