Beating street expectations, India's leading cigarettes firm ITC Ltd on Friday announced a year-on-year increase of more than 19 per cent in its quarterly net profit.

ITC announced that its net profit grew 19.4 per cent to Rs 1,927 crore in the three months ended March 2013, from Rs 1,614.36 crore in the corresponding three months of the previous year.

In spite of gestation costs to its new FMCG business and investment in areas like paper and packaging and hotels; the company enjoyed growth in all segments.

The company's net profit jumped mainly on account of a growth in the non-cigarette FMCG sector, which achieved break even point for the first time in the company's history.

Consolidated net profit for the full fiscal year jumped 21.6 per cent year-on-year, from Rs 6,322.39 crore to Rs 7,693.58 crore; while gross income climbed 19.48 per cent to Rs 45,102.45 crore.

Revenues from cigarette business grew 13.4 per cent, while pre-tax profit grew 20.1 per cent to Rs 10,684.18 crore. It may be noted here that the cigarette segment is the major contributor to the company's top line.

Compounded earnings per share for the full fiscal year grew from Rs 7.93 in the final quarter of 2012-13 to Rs 9.45 in the same quarter of FY2013-14.

ITC's board of directors declared a dividend of Rs 5.25 per share, which is considerably up from the previous year's dividend of Rs 4.50 per share.