India's Vedanta profit drops 61% as metal prices fall, expenses surge

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Indian metals-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta Ltd reported a 60.8% slide in quarterly profit on Friday, on cooling global commodity prices and a surge in fuel and power expenses.

Vedanta's consolidated net profit fell to 18.08 billion Indian rupees ($219.27 million) for the quarter ended Sept. 30 from 46.15 billion rupees a year earlier, the company said in an exchange filing.

While most metal prices have cooled off from record highs, hurting profits for producers, power costs have also surged for miners.

Total expenses surged 43%, with power and fuel charges nearly doubling to 85.53 billion rupees.

Vedanta also said it recorded an exceptional loss of 5.19 billion rupees due to a windfall tax that the government had imposed on oil producers in June.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) for the quarter was lower by 24% year-on-year.

Revenue was up 20% year-on-year to 362.37 billion rupees, but declined 5.3% sequentially.

($1 = 82.4540 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman and Chris Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Neha Arora)