Gautam Adani meets Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe to discuss multiple projects in the island nation, including the Colombo Port West Container Terminal
Our Bureau
Mumbai/New Delhi
In good news for Adani Group, ACC’s net profits (profit after tax) more than doubled (rose 105 per cent) on a yearly basis during the April-June 2023 quarter at Rs 466 crore. In the same quarter last year, the net profits were Rs 227 crore. The company’s net revenue during the quarter rose 16 per cent to Rs 5,201 crore against Rs 4,468 crore registered same quarter last year.
ACC Limited, the cement and building material company of the diversified Adani Group, today announced the financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2023.
The company in a release said the stronger financial performance during the quarter was driven by “volume growth and business excellence”.
“Our long-term competitiveness remains robust, ensuring industry-leading profitability even as we chase our ambitious growth goals. With a firm belief in strategic approach, we are poised to continue our trajectory of outstanding performance in the forthcoming quarters,” said Ajay Kapur, Whole Time Director and CEO, ACC Limited.
Meanwhile, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani held a meeting with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Thursday to discuss multiple projects in the island nation. The discussions included the development of the Colombo Port West Container Terminal (WCT).
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones Ltd (APSEZ), a key subsidiary of the diversified Adani Group, in March 2021 received a Letter of Intent (LOI) from Sri Lankan authorities for the development and operations of West Container Terminal (WCT) in Colombo.
APSEZ will partner with John Keells Holdings PLC, Sri Lanka’s largest diversified conglomerate, and with the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) as a part of the consortium awarded this mandate.
The WCT will be developed on a Build, Operate and Transfer basis for a period of 35 years as a public-private partnership.
The project is expected to boost WCT’s container handling capacity and further consolidate Sri Lanka’s locational advantage as one of the world’s top strategic nodes along the busiest global transhipment route.
The Colombo Port is already the most preferred regional hub for transhipment of Indian containers and mainline ship operators with 45 per cent of Colombo’s transhipment volumes either originating from or destined to an Adani port terminal in India.
The network impact of this partnership is significant and expected to be mutually benefitted from the string of 7 container terminals across its 12 ports that Adani operates along the Indian coastline handling an annual volume of over 6 million TEUs.
Wickremesinghe visited India at the invitation of Prime Minister Modi. The visit will reinforce the longstanding friendship between the two countries and explore avenues for enhanced connectivity and mutually beneficial cooperation across sectors.
“Sri Lanka is an important partner in India’s Neighbourhood First Policy and Vision SAGAR. The visit will reinforce the longstanding friendship between the two countries and explore avenues for enhanced connectivity and mutually beneficial cooperation across sectors,” MEA spokesman Arindam Bagchi said on Thursday.
“This is a very important visit, it is a neighbouring country with whom we have very important relationship, we have multifaceted relations,” Bagchi said during yesterday’s MEA briefing.
Earlier, Gautam Adani had slammed the US-based short seller Hindenburg Research report terming it was “a combination of targeted misinformation and discredited allegations.”
Addressing the company’s 31st Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2023, Adani told investors that in January this year the US-based group had published a report to short the company’s stocks just as they were planning to launch the largest Follow-on Public Offering in India’s history.
“The report was a combination of targeted misinformation and discredited allegations, the majority of them dating from 2004 to 2015. They were all settled by the appropriate authorities at that time. This report was a deliberate and malicious attempt aimed at damaging our reputation and generating profits through a short-term drive-down of our stock prices,” Adani said in a video message.
“Subsequently, despite a fully subscribed FPO, we decided to withdraw and return the money to our investors to protect their interests. While we promptly issued a comprehensive rebuttal, various vested interests tried to exploit the claims made by the short seller. These entities encouraged and promoted false narratives across various news and social media platforms,” the industrialist said.
The Hindenburg report, which came out this January 24, alleged stock manipulation and fraud, among other charges, by the conglomerate.
