Thank you, [Andrew?] .

A very good morning to everyone. It's my absolute pleasure to welcome all the participants and the management of HPCL to the results conference call this time around as well.

We have with us Mr. Vikas Kaushal, Chairman and Managing Director; Mr.

Rajneesh Narang, Director (Finance); Mr. S.

Bharathan, Director (Refineries); and Mr. K.

Vinod, Executive Director (Corporate Finance). Requesting Mr.

Vikas Kaushal to give the introductory remarks, and then we can move on to the Q&A. The floor is yours, sir.

Yeah. Good morning, Shiva, and thank you for the introduction there.

As Shiva said, I'm joined by Director Finance, Director Refineries, Vinod, ED Corporate Finance, and a couple of other colleagues from our finance team. I'll start by wishing everyone a great 2026.

It's a pleasure talking to you all on this call for quarter three results. Like in the past analyst calls, we'll talk about the current performance and future action, we'll bucket it into two parts.

I'll not go too deep into the numbers. Some of you have already analyzed it already, but at least I'll try to give the commentary on it.

Before that, going into these two buckets, I wanted to talk about the highlights of the last 3 months. In some ways, HPCL has killed one of the questions which used to come in the analyst call on when are you going to commission Vizag.

We are very excited that we commissioned the RUP project in Vizag a few weeks ago. Obviously, you guys would have caught the stock market information and the media releases around it.

We believe this project is a milestone in technical advancement for HPCL and the Indian refining industry. Those of you who understand this project would appreciate that it is the extent of deep conversion which is being planned here, taking the bottoms to a 93% conversion through the LC-MAX technology, has not been attempted elsewhere.

It's the first time in the world, and we are mightily proud about that. The other interesting bit is, just to give some titbits around it, the project itself is an engineering marvel.

Some of you might have had an opportunity to visit that in the past, but if not, in future we'll have some of you, those who are interested, to come and see the project. Just to give you a small context, the three key reactors are 2,200 tons each.

They are one of the heaviest things put in a refinery, 2,200 tons each. They are thick walls, because they run at 420°C and 200 bar pressure, and the walls are 25 cm thick.

Imagine being inside a vessel with [25 cm?] thick walls.

That's the context of it. The beauty of it is a lot of these reactors were done in India, so that's why both we and many of us in the sector are proud of what has been done.

The status [unclear] we are getting steady stream of HSD. We are slowly bringing other units in and learning how to run this complex thing.

[unclear] project. With that, we have also done a digital twin, it's called M-Cube, again comes with the licensor itself.

We are starting to populate digital twin also. We are targeting a performance guarantee test, which will mean 100% utilization, somewhere in March.

This quarter will be one of stabilization, and post that next holy year, we are anticipating financial results there. All of you are very curious about numbers.

I can tell you that the crudes which we are buying, because we are starting to factor in RUP into our crude baskets, if we just do the analysis with RUP without RUP, we are easily getting on paper $2.5 per barrel kind of guidance which we had given to the stock markets. Of course, we have to translate that into physical performance.

This is still at the optimization level. Overall, HPCL team is mightily proud of what has been done, and of course, we'll be happy to take on the questions.

The second big elephant [unclear] Well, that is also progressing well, at least the first part of it. All four pipelines have been commissioned.

A lot of the units are in the process of commissioning. We have crude in the refinery already, natural gas is already in the refinery, both Mangala and imported crude are in the refinery.

Multiple units like boiler, priority crude tanks, etc., have been done. We've got the PESO approvals.

As we speak, we are doing the commissioning process in the CDU plant. We've explained in earlier analyst calls the commissioning sequence is run few weeks, but we are right in the middle of a commissioning sequence.

Once the CDU is done, then obviously the downstream intermediate products and other products will come out. We are expecting first tranche of the products to be out in February, and ramping up the refinery to full capacity by quarter one of the next financial year.

This will be, as you can imagine, a greenfield takes a gradual ramp-up. Petchem will take maybe a quarter or so more, but right now we're focusing on getting the refinery up and running.

Again, that would be the most complex greenfield refinery ever attempted in India. You would have also read about the ADNOC gas deal.

We had done a heads of agreement earlier, but earlier this week we closed the sales purchase agreement for a 5 million ton 10-year deal with ADNOC. There are a lot of other things which are in progress, but I want to keep time for questions, I'll skip those.

You can ask us in the questions. In terms of physical performance, the key things I wanted to highlight are obviously our sales grew up at 3.1%.

Interestingly, a lot of our sales growth has been on the retail side, not on the bulk side. In fact, all of our sales increases literally coming on the domestic market is coming on the retail side, because bulk went on huge discounts, which we did not chase that market.

Instead, we were steady and we didn't go after the volume numbers, but we went after the value numbers and happy with our growth there. Refinery throughput is 6.38, 103% utilization, tad lower than what we think it should be.

Refinery GRM says 8.85. I'm sure there's a question around lower than this, higher than this.

This is after absorbing the impact of BAT crude, which if you see the Mumbai refinery GRM numbers are lower. If there was, and God bless if it had happened, if there was no BAT challenge we had or the contaminant challenge we had in Mumbai, our GRM this quarter would have been 10.24%.

The curious of you can quickly calculate the impacts, etc., around it. Yes, we did lose GRM because of that incident.

There's been strong performance on other businesses also, I'll not delve deeper into that. Moving on to the financial performance, there's a continued strong run.

Q3 profits ₹4,072 on a standalone versus ₹3,023, up by 32.6%. Steady performance over 9 months against ₹4,000 crores, we have been earning ₹12,274 crores, up 206%.

If you just see the last five quarters, and it's not a flash-in-the-pan performance, we have been steady over the last five quarters. We've roughly earned ₹1,300 crores per month of PAT, give or take a few crores.

It's been a steady 15-month run during this period. Obviously, this results in a significant cash generation, around ₹25,000 crores or thereabouts.

This has allowed us to deleverage. Beginning of the year, our standalone leverage was at 1.37.

We had given a guidance of about 1.15 to 1.2 to the market. We are much below that.

We are at 0.86 for this quarter. Having said that, I also want to caveat that this would be higher for Q4 because of the cyclical nature of our business and the year-end stuff, but we will end the year lower than our guidance of 1.15.

The interesting bit is the lower leverage is starting to show up in our P&L. If you compare interest in third quarter of this year vis-a-vis interest of third quarter last year, this is about ₹250, ₹300-odd crores in that range lower.

We are paying on a monthly basis lower interest, which is starting to flow to our P&L. There's been a marked improvement in our performance, and we are very bullish about our future.

As analysts, sometimes you question whether it is flash in the pan, will it stay, etc., how will excise impact it, etc. We don't look at it that way.

We look at it the fact that operationally, we have improved the performance and impact of this business. To me, three things have happened, and I wanted to call them out as my insights onto the call.

First, the operational efficiencies have come in. We had promised them on this analyst calls.

We've been working on it, but they are starting to show up in our P&L where it matters the most. In a way, we are lowering our breakeven, and more importantly, we are building in a culture of efficiency.

We are altering the culture we had in terms of the way we were working earlier to work in this new paradigm. I just wanted to bring your notice two or three very interesting facts which excited me.

If I just look at opex as turnover, because that's a clean ratio, I think, because other things can get muddled with how much product I'm buying, etc., etc. On quarter three last year, my opex to turnover was 1.60%.

On quarter three this year, it is 1.37%, if I remember my numbers correctly. Just 1 year down the line, for every rupee we are selling, or every ₹1,000 we are selling, we are spending less money in earning that.

That to me is a real operational efficiency which builds in. If I look at a 9-month number, the 9-month last year was 1.47, this year it is 1.36, which also tells me that the quarter three is something where the gap is higher.

Our capture of efficiencies has accelerated as we have moved quarter-to-quarter, and this is starting to show in rupees per ton. Quarter three last year was ₹1,473 as rupees per metric ton.

This year, it is ₹1,278. For 9 months, it has dropped from ₹1,371 to ₹1,246.

Real numbers which are changing and which bode well for the future. Our program on Samriddhi has helped us on that, it gave us benefits, and it also allowed us to deliver a reasonably good quarter despite the challenges we had.

I personally am not happy with the numbers, I thought it should have been higher than this, but despite the fact that we had a significant challenge, we were able to deliver a strong quarter. That was the first, I said three things have happened differently.

First, operational efficiencies have kicked in. Second, deleverage, I talked about the lower interest cost, greater flexibility.

Our finance team's been very diligent in managing the debt levels, we have refinanced certain things, and the difference is starting to show. Compare the numbers on interest costs drop in the first 9 months and interest cost drop in the last quarter, you will realize that portion is also accelerating.

It is very natural, as the leverage comes down, that will accelerate. It's not only the quarter-end debt which you see, but we look at the average debts for the quarters are coming down, as a result, the lower interest burden is there.

The third thing is we have created the right to grow for our next wave. Many of you as analysts, many others who had looked at HPCL, had concerns about HPCL over the last year, year and a half, our delayed projects and all those kind of things.

In last 1 year, we have solved the harder exam questions. Our projects are coming to a fruition.

Yes, they have been challenging journeys, it's very difficult to do capital projects in India, but they are starting to come up to stream. The harder exam questions have been solved, and there is tangible progress in projects, operational improvement, etc.

I think each one of us can have our own judgment on how it is looked at. I know many of you still remain skeptical at times.

It reflects in the share price shifts, the volatility of that, but we at HPCL are very convinced on the direction and path forward and the momentum we had. Let me very quickly talk about the future.

It's the time when we start thinking about the future. 2026 promises to be a great year for us, and we are geared up to make the most of it.

I talked about Vizag. Vizag, the benefits will start flowing in where you guys would want to see them the most, which is the P&L.

Barmer commissioning will happen. The stabilization journey will be a reasonable one and a challenging one, but we are geared up for that.

Good thing is that's an easier problem which we are all capable of solving. Now that that is coming to closure, we will also start looking at the financial impacts, and maybe in subsequent quarters we'll tell you how we look at absorbing of the first few quarters, which would be some challenge there.

There are other projects which will also start giving benefits. Let me very quickly move on to what are the focus for our next year.

There are five or six focus themes as a management maybe four focus themes as a management team we have. First, we are going to focus our efficiency drive.

Samriddhi 1.0 has till date given us ₹1,500 ₹1,267 crores of benefit, of which ₹518 is one-time, or other way around. Repeat is 740, repeat is seven repeat is one-- ₹519 and ₹749.

They'll give you the details, but ₹1,267--

₹519 recurring and ₹749--

Sorry, ₹519 is recurring. I got the numbers wrong on my sheet.

And ₹749 is one-time. The recurring ones are being built into the plan.

We are already starting work on Samriddhi 2.0. In the first phase, we got to the things we--

Sorry, we got disconnected. I'll recap, I don't know when we got disconnected.

I'll start on the focus for next year. As I've said, Samriddhi 1.0 gave us ₹1,260 crores of benefit till now, of which ₹518 is recurring, ₹749 is one-time.

The recurring ones are being built into the plan, and we are starting to plan for Samriddhi 2.0, where we will target the harder-to-do, more fundamental initiatives. This time, we will run with external support.

In the next analyst call, we'll give you the guidance for the next year, but there will be a guidance coming on what is our target. We'll be very transparent with you on what is our target for next year.

The second big initiative we are doing is digital focus. We believe that is the way to transform the organization to the next level of excellence and competence.

We have done an exercise where we've laid out our digital acceleration roadmap. This was done with one of the leading global consultants, and we are now starting to think through the implementation plan.

The focus of this would be on three key aspects. One, value capture, needless to say, that drives everything.

Second, there are process and efficiency improvements, including increased use of AI and other tools, taking some of our processes which are still being run in a paper way to make them completely digital. Third is preparing for the HPCL of future, which is about imagining our future.

You can expect progress on all three initiatives. Third area we are focused on is our customer focus.

At the end of it, we are a customer-facing brand, one of the largest ones in India, to reinforce our customer effort. I hope some of you have visited our retail outlets, the recently renovated retail outlets.

You'll see the look and feel of them are by far the best in the market right now. See some of the city outlets we have done.

We are redoubling our effort on strengthening our customer focus. We have tweaked our retail organization to bring it closer to the customer, improving delegations, strengthening the field, and fighting the battle, the retail battle.

That is going to be one of the top priority for next year, because as I said, we are a consumer brand which wins and loses on the consumer forecourt in our case. We've also created a separate CGD vertical, which is running it as a separate division now and in some ways preparing for growth and potential value capture in the future.

Petchem, we are already on the progress of launching that business. In Lubes also, as we have said in the earlier calls, we are doubling down on the customer segment there.

The theme around it is we are making our businesses more customer-facing and strengthening the brand. Some of you would have seen increased advertising from us, and claiming our rightful place as one of the most premium customer-facing brands in India.

If you go, please go to our retail outlets, renovated ones, if you have feedback for us, give us, but you'll see a lot of improvement in those retail outlets, some of them. We've not been able to do the whole network, but we are slowly getting there.

The fourth area we are going to go deeper in the coming time is deeper into the green and alternate energies. We have already done some focus on that.

We have our CBG plant at Badaun has been running for now 6, 12 months. We've been improving efficiencies, getting to the basics of it.

On renewables, we have done mostly captive, but we are starting to see how we can extract more money around it. Gas business, I just talked about the ADNOC gas deal.

With that, we are also going to be planning for our next wave of energy industry growth. Those are our four agendas as a management team for going forward.

Before I stop, I'm sure there's a question in everybody's mind on the Mumbai refinery. The issue is fully behind us.

We came back to stream fairly quickly and managed the issues there. I think there are only residual matters to be solved, which are more of financial and commercial matters, but the asset is running back and full, and the run-rate GRMs would be what they ought to be on an asset of that scale and class.

I want to reassure you that that is back on stream. Wanted to thank you for your continued interest in HPCL and our journey.

We are on a solid trajectory and are committed to delivering for all our stakeholders. Let me stop here, and we can throw it open for questions.

Thank you for the opportunity. Very good morning, sir.

Let me thank you for the briefing that you gave. Extremely to the point and extremely useful in terms of what are the issues to be looked at.

Thank you for that. Just a couple of questions.

Firstly, with respect to the ADNOC deal, can we just share some details in terms of the sort of--

Probal, we can't hear you. I don't know--

Can hear you. Yeah.

Yes, please go ahead. Hi, sir.

A very good morning to you and your entire team. Sir, firstly, I would like to congratulate you on a fantastic performance as you've reported.

Sir, I'll take a few minutes of your time to talk to you as an investor. It is so heartening to see our company reporting a profit of ₹12,500 crore in 9 months, and on course to do a profit of ₹15,000, ₹16,000 crores.

Sir, there are only 25 companies in India today who actually report a profit of more than ₹15,000. Extremely happy with you guys.

You guys are doing a wonderful job. Congratulations on that to you and your entire team.

Sir, there's just a couple of things I would like to bring to your attention, is that, sir, today, in spite of being the 25th most valuable company in the country, our market cap is clearly divergent as we rank today at 117. Now sir, the reason why I bring this up is today because the great work which is being done by all of us is not being translated into market cap.

Clearly, there is some kind of fear or apprehension, which is kind of weighing on the stock price. Because, sir, today, you look at it, our ROEs are at 28%.

Now, I can't find any company, okay, who is trading at a 5.5x multiple and has a 28% ROE and a 6% dividend yield. Today we trade at a 50% discount to asset value.

Now, sir, of course, these are India's companies, and this is India's wealth, hence I touch upon this crucial aspect of market cap. Sir, I would really humbly request you to please look into this, because it is clearly ambiguous for a great company of this size to trade at a market cap which is trading under the market caps of the quick commerce companies, etc., which are trading at 8x sales, and whereas we trade 0.2x sales.

Since this is an important matter, I wanted to bring this up, sir. Now, sir, I just wanted to only ask you one thing, is that can you quantify the impact of the Hindustan oil impact?

How much is that in terms of quantum? Sir, that's it, sir.

Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for your compliments.

We take them graciously and humbly. On the market cap, let me opine on that.

See, I think you guys are better judges of market cap than a management team. The management team can be held responsible for delivering on the promise which we have given, and we have consistently over the last many quarters delivered on the promise.

Not only many quarters, couple of years ago, we had laid out a path of taking ₹40,000 crores as EBITDA. We are on that journey.

We hope the sentiment also turns around it. I'm the CEO running the company, but if I was an investor, I would have taken a different decision knowing the strength of the company right now.

It is a really strong company, and up to you guys to make what value we figure out on it. The impact of BAT, I would not like to give a number.

As you can imagine, something like this is in disputes and there are claims and counterclaims from parties around it. What we can easily say is that the Mumbai GRM was down by three points, right?

Vinod, you know the numbers? Around 3.5.

Overall basis, there'll be a dollar improvement. Yeah.

The Mumbai refinery GRM for the quarter was impacted by $3.5 because of the total impact of it. If we didn't have that incident, we would have been higher by around $3.5 per barrel in Mumbai, and overall HPCL, instead of 8.8 or whatever that number was, we would have been 10.24.

A dollar-plus kind of per barrel impact for overall HPCL. I won't want to give the exact numbers or calculations there, because you can imagine that there is claims and counterclaims on those kind of aspects.

Thanks, sir. Sir, sorry if I may just ask one thing.

Sir, there are perpetual talks of fears about this excise duty. Whatever I can understand as an investor and tracking the sector for the last few years, the government has been very prudent and stable in its approach.

The policies are very much stable as the Oil Minister had spoken in the analyst meet which you guys had organized. Sir, can you basically allay some fears because the government actions are very clearly stable, but our friends in the community keep on emphasizing on excise duty, which is kind of creating havoc in investors' minds.

If you can clear something on that, it'd be wonderful, sir. Thanks a lot.

See, that's a great question. I also read about those reports and I'll opine on that, but see, it's not for me to comment on what Government of India's policy on excise duties, it is for Government of India to comment, I will not delve into that topic.

For me, whatever is the duty is the law of the land, it is applicable to everyone. Now coming to the point, there are two aspects I would like to say.

What can I do about it? We as a management team can prepare for different scenarios.

Crude goes up, well, that's a scenario we have to prepare. Dollar or rupee depreciates against dollar, that's a scenario we prepare, we dropped significantly yesterday.

How do we prepare? We prepare by lowering our breakevens, by improving our operational efficiencies.

That is what we have been doing, and that is within our control, and we as a management team are responsible for that. That's why we did Samriddhi 1.0, that's why we are going to do Samriddhi 2.0, and that's why we are doing digital transformation, because we want to capture in all the efficiencies we can capture in, and a stronger company will be much more resilient to bear any challenges, whether it is an excise duty change, whether it is crude volatility, whether it exchange rate volatility.

We are working on the fundamentals of the company, not necessarily just on the excise duty. On the issue of excise duty, I think that's a favorite topic for many of you.

You guys seem to know more about it than we do. The only joke I would say, if I total all the recommendations which came out that excise is going to be increased this week or two in next week over the last quarter or two, then probably the excise would have increased by ₹20 by now.

Because everyday one of you puts out a recommendation. Maybe you have more information than we have.

You put out a recommendation, obviously our shares drop after that. That's not for me to fight the battle, it is for the investors to figure out who's giving right advice, who's not giving.

Some of you have been calling excise will be increased this week for 4 or 5 months I've been noticing, it has not increased. If you people still want to believe those investors, then those people, it is their call.

It's not for me to judge what you know about excise duty or not, it is for me to prepare my company for every eventuality. That part, me and my management team are responsible for.

Otherwise, you guys are free to believe whose views. Somebody might know that they are better on excise duty, then they can give.

It's very easy to give a scenario, ₹1 change in excise duty will drop by that math, anybody can do. Then some people have been writing about this for 6 months without an increase, and if people still believe those reports, then they must be very well informed, I must say.

For me, I have to just worry on what is the law of the land today, what will be the law of the land tomorrow, and respond and take my company forward with that. That's all I have to say on this.

The fact that we are trading at a 50% discount to market cap, etc., as a management team, we want to better it, but then we are not in the middle of fighting the bulls and the bears, we are in delivering the performance for HPCL. Thank you so much, sir.

I wish you all the best and good luck, sir. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for the opportunity, sir. I hope I'm audible right now.

I apologize for the distraction earlier.

You dropped off, Probal. You said something on ADNOC deal.

Yes, I just wanted to understand, sir, is it possible to share any pricing framework that has been agreed? This is a Brent-linked contract, I would imagine, or what are the pricing terms and any range that can be sort of spoken about?

Yeah. Probal, thanks.

This is a Brent-linked deal. Obviously, we will not give the pricing ranges here, but all I can tell you is one of the very competitive deals which we have done, 0.5 MTPA for 10 years.

The gas is going to come from Middle East sources. It's basically not a trader gas, but a source gas.

It's very competitive, is all I would say.

Understood. The second question, sir, with respect to the Rajasthan refinery, you mentioned I think about the first tranche of downstream refining products will be likely starting from Feb, and petchem will follow basically a couple of quarters.

Is it fair to assume that FY28, we will have the full capacity alongside the petchem conversion of every barrel in place for this refinery?

Yes, that's a fair assumption. Things can always go here and there, but that's a fair guidance we can give.

Right. Sir, with the current margins being what they are as far as petchem, obviously you would have done your budgeting at a certain pricing level.

Are we comfortable with margins being what they are at least for the first couple of years? Is that something that's factored in, or are the returns going to be impacted if margins for petchem remain as low as they are right now?

Just your sense of how you're looking at it strategically.

Probal, you guys know I was a service professional for a long period of time before I came to run the asset company here. I look at things very differently.

To be very, very honest, while we have done the financials and do keep an eye on the scenarios, that is actually not which is on top of my mind, because where I or HPCL or HRRL stands right now, whatever is the cost, whatever is the external market, whatever is the prevailing prices is a fait accompli at this point of time. What is most important for me is how fast, how smoothly, how efficiently can I look at that.

I can assure you that 100% of our teams are focused on that. Yes, some people in finance do the numbers, etc.

Am I losing sleep on the numbers on what they're coming? Absolutely not.

If a vessel which is going to be dispatched to Barmer, if that gets delayed by 2 days, that's where we lose sleep on. We are absolutely razor-sharp focused on closing out the refinery and bringing it on stream.

Everybody's done those numbers, and I'm sure you guys have your own numbers. As I said earlier, we will come out with transparent numbers.

We've been very transparent in giving the guidances over last few quarters wherever we want to be sure of the guidance. Right now, I'm not even bothered about what it's there.

What if the crack is lower, what will I do with it? I still have to run that asset, nah?

The good part is I have an integrated asset. We could sell more diesel, we will have multiple options.

The crude which we can pump in, we are already doing the simulations on what crudes we'll run in different scenarios. We could do liquid products to some extent, we could sell LPG and naphtha and not crack it, we could crack it, and eventually we could even do downstream stuff.

The fact that it's going to be an integrated asset gives us a lot more flexibility, and we will use it to the hilt based on the numbers prevailing at that time. For the moment, the whole focus, 150% focus is on completing the asset as quickly as it can come on stream.

Whatever be the cost or the margins, that's a secondary question.

Understood, sir. Perfectly clear.

Third question, if I may have one more, is as far as Vizag is concerned, you spoke about the massive changes in terms of the bottom of the barrel conversion. On an overall basis for Vizag, therefore, what kind of distillate yield can we expect once the stabilization is done of the RUP unit?

82%.

So 82% distillate yield. Vizag, if you recall, few years ago was in mid early '70s, mid '70s.

We've done two parts of it, the capacity expansion, the BS-VI, etc., we had done, and then subsequently 82% is the full guidance we have given, and we are confident it'll come to that level.

Got it. Sir, one last housekeeping question.

What kind of capex are we looking at closing the year for this year and for '27, any guidance on capex, and if you can break it down in terms of segments, that will be very helpful.

'27 guidance, I will not give right now, because our board has not approved that. We discussed it in the board yesterday, but there's going to be another round of discussion.

Broadly, it will be in the line of similar numbers what we have done. Our this year's capex, we had told you earlier that we are going to be lower on capex, it might be somewhat under the budgets if we had planned.

If I keep HRRL aside, overall it might be in ₹13,000, ₹14,000 crores, if I remember the budget number was ₹15,000 crores or something. It might be slightly tad lower than that, which is not bad for us because we were running a high leverage.

We consciously picked and choosed where we could look at investments. In terms of nature of investments, going forward, you can expect a wider spread, because the last 5 years the capex was very skewed towards refining.

You would expect a wider spread across different assets, including increased marketing expenses, some new energy expenses, energy capital in the next 5 years. We will work out those and come out with the guidance at the right time.

Thank you, sir. Congrats on a good set of numbers, and all the best.

Thank you, Probal.

Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My first question is on LPG losses.

What was the loss per kg in the quarter, and how is it shaping up in January after the increase in Saudi CP prices?

If I remember last quarter was two digits, ₹39 or something.

₹35.

Somewhere in that region.

Per cylinder.

Per cylinder. For this quarter, the under-recovery is higher, because CP prices have gone up.

I think-- It was around ₹30, ₹30 from-- Vinod will give you that answer.

Around ₹35 per cylinder. During the Q3, we had an under-recovery of ₹503 crores.

Going forward, the CP, Saudi CP has gone up, we are expecting the cylinder prices, the under-recoveries to go up by close to ₹100, ₹120 per cylinder.

Sir. Secondly, sir, just wanted to understand if there was any impact of inventory losses during the quarter, and if yes, could you please quantify that into refining and marketing segment?

In marketing, there was a gain of ₹14-odd crores, and refinery, this part of the margins, about ₹540-odd crores.

Sure, sir. Lastly, sir, a bookkeeping question on HMEL, if you could help us with the EBITDA and PAT for HMEL.

The HMEL EBITDA was around ₹4,000 crores. Mind you, the company had taken a turnaround during this quarter for almost 40 days.

Right.

Sir. Thank you so much.

For the 9 months, 9 months. Right.

Sir, HMEL is a very mature asset now, what kind of ROC are we seeing on that asset now, your sense? I don't have the number readily available, we will let you know.

Sure. Sir, another thing as a lot of participants have said about the valuation and everything, with the LPG subsidy that what the government is paying us, the ₹7,500 crores approx, and the margins staying so stable now, with the refining margin staying so strong, is there a buyback in the plan?

Is that something that can be on the table?

If and when there is anything like that, we will let you know. Right now, as I said, we were more focused on our projects and our performance there.

As and when these plans, if there is any plan at any right time, we'll let you know. Right, right.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Sir, am I audible? Yes.

Sir, just wanted to know, have you done any study with respect to how many outlets can India reach, let's say, next 10 years or 20 years down the line? I understanding that around 1 lakh outlets are there.

What can be the broad number 10, 15 years down the line?

As a company, we have not done that study. As a company, we are more focused on where can we put in our retail outlets and be more profitable around it.

As a nation, I think your question merits a discussion at a level where somebody thinks around this. Again, the question is not only in terms of number of retail outlets, there are different models on retail outlets.

There are countries where there are huge retail outlets with throughputs of 2,000 kl per month, but if you look at countries like Japan, etc., they run huge number of small outlets. Different models exist.

For each one of us who's putting retail outlets, the question is not the number of outlets, but the question is how am I getting those outlets to be viable for me and for the partners who are putting up that thing. That's a lot of our focus is on those aspects right now, but to be frank, we have not done a nationwide study on this.

Sir, my second question is on the Rajasthan refinery. Sir, has there been any cost overrun from the last updated numbers, and currently what is the total outlay?

Is it near to around ₹80,000 crores? Yes, roughly in that direction.

We will not be able to give you an exact number right now, because there are some government approvals which are being in the final stages. Once that comes out, we'll look at it.

There is no further increases from what has been discussed earlier. Give and take few hundred crores here and there don't matter in that number, but broadly it will be in that kind of a range.

Got it. Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Just two questions. One on that you have so far done around 1 million ton of LNG sourcing from the ADNOC, right?

One was in HH and the latest one is in a Brent-linked. Are this cargo is going to come only at Chhara terminal, or you have an provision to take it to the other terminals, let's say Dahej or Dabhol?

Yeah. We have flexibility to do that.

We have different parties. With some of the parties, we have interoperability things.

They can land cargos at our place and vice versa. Primarily, our gas we are planning to bring at Chhara, but there would be situations where, for example, Chhara is not available due to anything, storage capacity is not there or weather is bad, we can take cargos to different terminals also.

Those flexibilities

exist. The primarily consumption will be your refineries and the CGD business, right?

No, we are also selling in the market, and we will ramp up that business increasingly.

Got it. Second question is that on the sourcing side, earlier you mentioned that as a part of a project Samriddhi, you have a couple of line items, and one of that was sourcing.

Can you just highlight that how you have improved the sourcing in terms of the various mix, and second is on the hedging part, and so that I think really helpful.

You're talking of

crude sourcing? Crude sourcing.

I think on crude sourcing, there are three or four things we have done. As you're all aware, any company like ours does term cargos and spot cargos.

Based on our views on the future, we've been looking at how much to do on term and spot. On the spot, when you go to the market, what do you do, what do you buy is a very big question, and in every purchase, by getting it right, you can get $1 lower, $0.5 lower, $2 lower depending on what you buy.

We have done a lot of work on optimizing our models, etc., where the way we go to the market, otherwise earlier we would go on a set pattern, buy one cargo. We have experimented with things on trying four cargos at one point of time, looking at opportunity crudes.

We have brought in agility into our sourcing. We have brought in science into our sourcing increasing.

We updated our models, we've gotten the latest versions of the models, including using some AI tools, etc., which we are still in the progress of augmenting. There is a lot of effort which has been done there.

Can you guys hear me?

I am here.

I thought the line has got cut. The most important thing which we have done on the sourcing is actually getting the Vizag project up and running, because it allows us to buy very different kind of crudes, and as a result, capture more value.

I said earlier in the call, if we just do the maths between what crudes we are buying and what we would have bought in the last month if we had not had RUP with us, every single parcel, we would have bought a more expensive crude. Those are the things which we have done.

There is more value to be captured out here by being smarter, agile. Now in terms of sourcing, that's not the only thing we are sourcing, because we also source LPG.

A lot of LPG, we import 6, 7 million tons of LPG, if I remember correctly, and we also, because HPCL's--

Hello?

I was saying, our call seem to have a jinx that they get cut after some period. I don't know whether--

You were discussing about this propane and LPG sourcing.

Yes. You would have read about the deal which has been done for sourcing from US by all the three OMCs.

We've together gone and done that. We've looked at propane butane mixes on sourcing.

There is a lot of effort which has been done on each of these areas, and that's what is starting to show in our results in some ways. Having said that, there is a lot more which needs to be done and can be done going forward.

Got it. Thank you very much, and wish you good luck.

Thank you.

Hi. Good morning.

Thanks for the opportunity. My first question was on opex.

This quarter, it seems to have gone up almost even if you adjust for FX, gone up by almost 10% QoQ. Wanted to understand the reasons for that increase.

Did you mention opex going up? The

other expenses in the P&L.

In fact, in terms of expenses, there has been net reduction. If you recall the opening remarks of our Chairman, the opex per ton for the quarter three has come down by about 13%, and on a 9-month basis, it has come down by about 9%.

This is on a per metric ton basis. As a percentage of turnover, in Q3 of last year, it was 1.60%, and that's come down to 1.37% in FY26.

If there are some specific numbers that you are looking at, that we can engage with on those numbers separately.

Yeah. Maybe there are some specific heads you're looking at.

You can just drop us a note on it, and we'll clarify.

I'll do that. Also, I read somewhere in your notes to accounts or presentation that you mentioned that the Mumbai refinery incident has been fully accounted for in the quarter.

While I understand that there's an impact on GRM, was there an impact on other items also, let's say, in other expenses or anything like that?

There will be an impact in terms of there is a unit down, there is a cost to up on R&M, there are costs. There are also impacts which when a unit goes down and suddenly, and remember this happened around the Diwali period, there is a cost which happens in extra transportation, etc.

There are a lot of allied costs on it. As a management team, whatever we know best, we have captured it into the entire thing.

Having said that, because there are some disputes, obviously you can imagine in these things, it is hard to say, "Oh, this is the exact number." Whatever best we know has been factored in into the entire thing.

Having said that, I will not say that's the end of it, there might be some elements which come here and there, but by and large, I would say the quarter factors in our best estimate of the overall impact, not only crude, etc., etc., it factors in our best estimate.

Got it. Just a last question on deleveraging, that seems to have been a key focus area for you and it seems to be going well.

Next year, what kind of additional debt reduction can you target, and by when you think you will start thinking about your next leg of capex beyond the Rajasthan refinery?

Yeah. I think on the numbers for next year, we will come back in the analyst call in the first quarter.

Yeah. That's something which we'll kind of come back to you.

In terms of when would we look at the next wave of capital, I think we are already starting to develop what are the projects which we want to take in the near future. They will not be large, and these are all, of course, here are projects on green side, we have CBG plants, etc., etc.

We will take those. On the refining side, there'll be more of debottlenecking, some small value-addition projects, etc.

We're not envisaging a large capex. Somewhere during the course of the next financial year, we will develop our next year next 5-year roadmap on capex, etc.

By that time, we would expect Vizag to be fully stable, we would also expect Barmer to be on the path of stability. That gives us a greater muscle to do that.

We do not want to get to a complete under-leverage situation, because as a management team, we believe certain leverage is very good in the business, and that's all that's what many of us have learned in our schools and colleges, the debt is good, some amount of debt is good, but we definitely want to come down on the overall leverage, including we don't not only look at HPCL leverage alone, we also look at the consol leverage and get it. Once that gets more comfortable, we will take the next wave of capex.

We still are doing reasonable amount of capex, but a lot of it is focused on marketing and some of the other areas right now.

Understood. Just a last question on lubes.

In the last call, I think you explained that you're looking to build a bigger consumer-facing business for that. Are you doing any specific steps to do that, or what are the plans on that front?

Yes, we have a multiyear plan. It's been done by one of the leading consultants, and we are executing on that.

On ground, you will see if you were noticing some of the recent cricket, you would see HPCL Lubes just advertisement. That's a small part of it, that was more to just create a brand awareness.

We are also doing things like racer stations, Neo car stations. These are places where we are starting to provide more services than just sending a bottle of lubes.

We are introducing more of high-grade lubes, the synthetic lubes. We've done some agreements with couple of international players on those.

We're also looking at expanding our portfolio into allied products like greases, etc. We have doubled down on our R&D around lubes so that we can tailor-make lubricants.

Mining equipments require specific grades of lubes, we are testing them in our labs and taking them to our mining clients. A lot of ground work effort happening on those, and it's starting to bear results.

In next couple of years, we will see a much more stronger customer-facing FMCG brand in Lubes from HPCL.

Got it. Thanks a lot.

Best wishes here.

Thank you.

Good morning. I have a few small questions.

Firstly, on the marketing front, I think there has been some decline in margins for diesel QoQ, but there has been growth in the volumes because of the seasonality. LPG also improved quarter-on-quarter in terms of reduced losses.

Still I think if we do a back-calculation, the total marketing earnings seems to have fallen QoQ. I don't know whether it's right way to ask it or not, but was there anything exceptional on the marketing side or that fuel contamination affecting marketing, anything of that sort?

Sabri, two parts to that question. One, I think we did have, when Mumbai incident happened suddenly, this was also peak marketing season.

We did have a market-related impact on that. We were able to manage it, and prevent any dry outs, etc., but obviously you have to do extra movement and the product which should have gone from Mumbai, we had to do coastal movements.

It was a small effect of that, clearly. Second, even right now if you see our portfolio, we sell more than we refine.

Those of you track cracks would know that cracks were late '20s, early '30s or diesel cracks touched '30s also. For a company which is more skewed on marketing, there would be a dampening effect of that definitely.

Then cracks have come back to normal levels right now. I would call them, Sabri, both as these are more as business as usual, these things will keep happening up and down.

Nothing majorly off. Diesel cracks went to 30, on that fortnight when we sourced the remaining product from others, obviously we paid more for that, that dampened the slightly the marketing margins.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Secondly, on Barmer, you mentioned that in the presentation, I think you have given ₹79,000 crore of revised project cost. Is there anything further being discussed with the government, or this is the end of it?

I said that the only reason I didn't give a specific number is because that's under an approval process right now, but I also said when somebody said 80,000, I said broadly it's in that range. That's the final part.

Should not escalate anything from here on, right? No, that's not our anticipation.

Right. Last one small question.

Venezuelan crude dynamics, I think with Vizag bottom upgrade project, do you see it to be an additional opportunity beyond that $2.5 per barrel GRM increase? Venezuelan crude, apart from the bottoms heavy, are also having high viscosity and high acid number.

We will have some opportunities. We will evaluate as and when we can get offers, and we will take it accordingly.

Yeah. I think the good part is if Venezuelan crude is coming out right now, then having RUP and also having Barmer, which has delayed coker and all, at least gives us an opportunity to evaluate and see.

As Director Refineries said, that's also not an easy crude to handle. It's a tough one, but the fact that we have that asset gives us that opportunity.

Got it. Thank you so much, and all the best.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.

Just seeking a couple of clarifications over here. When you talked about the LPG losses per cylinder as of now, you gave us two numbers, that is ₹35 per cylinder and then you expect it to go up to 100 to ₹120.

What is the broad expectations in January? You think it's going to be 35 and this increased price would be early applicable from February?

That's my first question.

Around 130 is what is expected in January. Okay.

Because the Saudi CP has since gone up. 95.

Okay. Understood.

Running rate is about 130. 95.

I stand corrected, 95 in January and then 120 thereafter.

95 in January and 120 thereafter, based on the current Saudi CP. Fine.

On the inventory losses, you mentioned marketing gain of ₹14 crores and refining ₹540 crores was loss or gain? Loss.

Yes.

That was loss, right?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

The other question I had in mind, we appreciate that you looking to kind of focusing more on the customer end of things and renovating all of these retail outlets. What is the end goal?

What is the desired benefits that you specifically see, because we're not in a business unlike the other B2C businesses where companies have a right to even charge higher prices from the customers for the experience they're providing? That remains to be limitation from HPCL point of view in my understanding.

Would want to be knowing more insights on that side. What are the specific targets when you renovate or invest more on the retail outlets?

You go to a retail outlet yourself and you drive your car. If every retail outlet on the street is of the same caliber, then you have a choice and you might go in there.

If there are some which are better than others in terms of looks, etc., you will go there. There is a big impact doing the renovation and modernization on the right retail outlets has a immediate impact on the volumes.

That's point number one. Second, we are looking at the business as it was done in the past where, okay, people will come and only fill gas tanks and go away.

This business is also changing. There are places where we are starting to put in chargers, there are places where we're starting to put in non-fuel retail, there are places where we're starting to do different things.

A lot has to be fought on the forecourt in this business in the next 5 years. Just keeping the pumps, the companies which don't innovate, first you'll have to even keep pace, you'll have to do that.

Whenever you do innovation, how smooth is your process when you come to my retail outlet, and if you can pay through HP Pay, it gives you flexibility. Now I'll use a bit of time for air time for marketing.

If those of you send your drivers to fill, sometimes you worry whether the driver is doing the right fill or not. If you're using HP Pay, you can actually directly keep the payment in your control and the bill comes directly to you from the machine.

Those are kind of services if you provide, obviously we become a stronger consumer brand. I think there is a lot to be fought out there.

Understood. Do you have clear-cut roadmap as in how many retail outlets you'll be renovating every year, how that percentage is going to grow, and any targeted market shares that you have in mind?

Will it also be useful to kind of have schemes like loyalty, discounts, and stuff which can kind of help you retain your customers, make them more loyal to you?

Sure. We do have loyalty schemes, we are also working further.

We do have a very fantastic app, HP Pay, those of you have not used it should use it and see benefit it gives. You can trust us that we have a roadmap on the entire thing.

The only thing I would say, the roadmap and connecting it to market share, etc., I don't want to get into those Excel sheet calculations, but wherever we do renovate, every single retail outlet which is renovated, specific IRR is calculated for that, and post renovation, we look whether that IRR is met or not. There is obviously a lot of homework which is done, it's not like a random exercise on it.

There is an absolute roadmap on how many. We are not going to do renovations for all 24,000, because 25,000, because that's a huge number, but we pick and choose where we want to do.

Okay. Sure.

Thank you, and all the best.

Yeah. Hi, sir.

Thank you for the great introduction. Just two questions.

First on Vizag in terms of the scale-up of the RUP unit. When do you think you can run to full utilization, and can you just give us an idea of what percentage of the HPCL group will basically be sourcing diesel after the RUP coming through and after the Rajasthan coming through in terms of coming from outside your ecosystem?

Okay. Mayank, thank you.

Thanks for the question. As I said in the introduction, we are targeting a performance guarantee test by the licensor in March.

Performance guarantee test means that they have to show the unit running to us at all systems at 100% utilization for a period of 3 3 days. Basically, we are targeting March where we will be able to run the asset fully on a continuous basis.

That's the performance guarantee test. That's the best outlook I can give at this point of time.

We would get there. I think we are, give or take, a few days.

It's a complex asset, but I think we are in that direction, because we are monitoring it on a daily basis what is happening out there. In terms of diesel sourcing, we would have a lot of diesel.

I think, if I'm not mistaken, we'll be able to meet our 100% of our-- With RUP, almost only leaving 14%, rest would be either HPCL or HPCL group. Yeah.

After HRRL comes in, entire HPCL would be of the HPCL group only, except for MS, around 11% will be sourced outside.

Got it. Once Rajasthan plus MRPL, your stake, plus HMEL plus HP all put together, you'll be pretty much completely neutral on diesel in terms of how much you are refining versus marketing, correct?

Is that the right thinking?

We will have full product security,

yeah. Except in our case, because some sits in joint ventures, some of the margins will be captured there.

Yes, from a product side, we'll be completely diesel, we won't need anybody's.

Is that fair to say that from a market share perspective, obviously, you've lost a few basis points on market share on diesel this quarter and last quarter as well. When do you think that you can recover that fully back?

Yeah. Mayank, if you distill that market share loss, nah, you would find, because you look at diesel, but diesel is bulk diesel and retail diesel.

We actually have not lost share in the retail side. Bulk diesel, if you were close to the market in the last quarter, you will realize that bulk diesel in India has been going at a discount.

Actually, shareholders or potential shareholders, you should be happy that we did not chase the volumes, because we did not lose the value. It wouldn't have made sense to buy product from somewhere else and sell it at a discount.

Our retail market share on diesel has also not It's literally at if I'm not mistaken, it is higher than at least other two state-owned companies. All the state-owned companies lost to Reliance, the Jio-bp in this period, market share, that is on the even on the retail side because they did some very aggressive pricing on the retail side.

We did not run the bulk diesel race in the last quarter because of discounts. Now if and when we have surplus diesel with us after commissioning and running of all these products, at that stage, we will have to take a choice of whether I sell it in the domestic market at the best price I can fetch, which is potentially discount to the retail prices, or should I export that product.

I will have to do that optimization on a regular basis. We did not lose market share on the retail side in the last quarter.

At least amongst the OMCs.

No, that's very clear. Thank you.

Sir, the second question was more in terms of LNG sourcing. I think the two deals that you have signed, how comfortable are you in terms of competitiveness of your LNG portfolio now versus what others are kind of signing in India, because you are going to sell in external market as well.

Where do you stack up your portfolio versus the rest?

I think we've signed two deals right now. I would say we are in the infancy stage on that portfolio.

Right now, I'm kind of fully covered with those deals, because I can use that literally in my own refineries, but that's not what we are doing. In fact, for one of our refineries, currently buying from outside and selling LNG, because we get more money on that.

The latest deal which we have signed, I'm not going to go into the numbers, but I have reasonable assurance that is one of the most competitive deals which has been signed in India. It's a Brent-linked deal, the slope is one of the most competitive in India.

We've been very aggressive in getting the right deal. We will learn and we'll obviously sharpen it further.

First one is a Henry Hub deal, which is difficult to compare with the Brent, because on some quarters you do better, some quarters you don't do better. There we manage by trying to hedge at different quarters, but the second deal is one of the most competitive deals in India.

Got it. Normally it's going to be wet gas, or it will be dry gas that's coming in?

Can you share that?

Mostly, it's dry gas. I think I don't know the exact answer, but it's-- It's directly from the NOCs, from their fields, so-- Yeah.

No, it's a dry gas only, because if I'm not mistaken, it's only Qatar RasGas which is the wet gas, but this is a guess. Next time onwards, I speak to you, I'll get you an answer on this one.

Sure. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

HMEL, as Chairman mentioned also during the course, they had a turnaround in this quarter. For the three months 25 26 that is Q3 the PAT was a loss of ₹94 crores, and for 9 months, it is loss of ₹18 crores.

Okay. On the depreciation?

On HPCL depreciation? Yeah.

What is the question, Ramesh? Yeah.

Based on the 9 months Yeah, sorry, yeah. Significantly, most of the assets have got capitalized, including the RUP unit.

More or less, except for the fact that in case of this quarter, Q3 quarter, only 1 month depreciation would have come for RUP. Rest all is more or less stabilized.

Basically the RUP depreciation will be probably annualized from next quarter onwards, got it. In terms of your CNG business on standalone basis, when do you see that making a meaningful impact on your top line and bottom line?

See, we are gradually making the portfolio, and in fact, we are already EBITDA positive as regards all the CGDs are concerned. The portfolio is increasing, and maybe in a year or so, you will start seeing the significant impact of the contribution from this segment also.

One last thought, on HPCL LNG, when do you think it will become EBITDA and PAT positive based on the current utilization and future ramp-up? You're talking about the terminal side or the gas side, both things?

I'm talking about the overall HPCL LNG business. See, HPCL LNG business, if you look at, currently our utilization levels are lower.

Maybe in a year or so, the utilization level will increase, and we'll become positive as regards. We are already EBITDA positive as regards the terminal is concerned, but to be cash positive, it maybe a year or so, it will be, yeah.

Ramesh, the way we look at it is for Chhara, while the terminal is housed in a separate entity, the gas business is obviously on the parent entity. Our first endeavor is to get, can we leverage Chhara to make more money on the gas side.

On the combined sourcing of gas plus Chhara, can we get EBITDA and cash positive very quickly? Our endeavor is to get there very, very quickly.

Maybe once there's a breakwater to be completed there, which is going to be completed hopefully in the next couple of months. Once it becomes an all-weather port, the utilization, as Rajneesh mentioned, will go up, and hopefully we'll get to breakeven on the terminal itself and a cash positive on combined business.

Thank you very much, and wish you all the best.

Thank you, Ramesh.

Thank you, Shiva, and thank you all. If there are any residual questions, please send it to us.

Our corporate finance team would be very happy to answer those questions. Thank you for your continued interest and continued probing, because that keeps us honest, and every time we take away one or two new questions from the call which we think about.

Look forward to connecting with you again in 3 months from now. Meanwhile, if anybody has individual questions, wants to have an individual chat with the management team, we'll be more than happy to have a discussion.