Unitech Q3 net profit up 52 percent, beats estimates

Labourers work at a construction site in Hyderabad May 29, 2009.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Unitech, India's third-largest listed real estate developer by market capitalisation, reported a forecast-beating 52 percent rise in net profit for the Oct-Dec quarter, helped by higher sales and low finance costs.

The company's net profit for the fiscal third quarter was 841.7 million rupees compared with 552 million rupees a year earlier, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Net sales were up 25 percent at 6.45 billion rupees over the same period.

Analysts expected the company to post a net profit of 808.4 million rupees, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Unitech, which builds houses as well as commercial and retail properties, had a mobile phone joint venture with Norway's Telenor (TEL.OL) that was among those whose licences were revoked by a court following the high profile licensing scandal.

On Tuesday the company's shares ended down nearly 18 percent after media reports of the company's Managing Director Sanjay Chandra's involvement in the allocation of mobile phone airwaves five years ago. The company has strongly denied any allegations.

(Reporting by Aditi Shah; Editing by Sunil Nair)