Doubling Sucess Together

Vinod Kumar Mishra, Director (Finance) Petronet LNG strongly believes that the growth of a company entirely depends upon the CEO and the person assisting him financially (CFO) as these two are extremely critical for a firm. He pitches for collaboration between the CEO and CFO so that both of them can ensure growth and financial viability. “The best thing is that nowadays if we see any company which is growing it is not possible that the CEO and CFO are not working together. So it’s imperative for the success and growth of an organisation that both have synergy and should do better in the interest of the company,” he says. 

At Petronet LNG, Mishra’s financial strategies have been evolving with the changing business needs. He augments business development and projects through financial due diligence via well-defined financial parameters under the policy on project appraisal and investment decisions. 

Talking further about how his financial strategies have made an organisation-wide impact, Mishra says, “We achieved pathbreaking advance ruling from AAR, Gujarat, classifying regasification of LNG as job work, achieving a reduction of GST from 18 per cent to 12 per cent on such services. It helped the company in offering services at more competitive rates with huge tax savings and the entire industry also benefited. Benefits of 80-IA under the Income Tax Act resulted in tax savings of more than Rs 50 crore.”

In the past, Mishra also ensured complete coverage of the operations against physical damage of property and business interruption losses and achieved the lowest insurance rate in the hydrocarbon industry of approximately 0.07 per cent through excellent planning and structuring in international re-insurance markets.

Under his watch, the cost optimisation and value creation through trading of LNG, saved in operations (power generation and as fuel for ships), in the spot market yielded the highest ever profit before tax (PBT) and profit after tax (PAT) during FY 2021-22 of Rs 4,474 crore and Rs 3,352 crore, despite the reduction in throughput by over 20 per cent due to significantly higher spot LNG prices. 

Apart from his work as a CFO, Mishra also believes in team effort so that the company can grow. By collaborating with operations, marketing and finance teams to achieve cost optimisation and value creation by the trading of LNG, it witnessed the highest-ever PBT of Rs 4,474 crore in FY 2021-22.

“The financial growth of the company ensures the economic growth of the employees in the form of performance-linked incentives,” he adds.