Hindustan Construction Company's (HCC) standalone net loss has narrowed down to Rs 38.51 crore during the October-December quarter, as the company today reported a 7 per cent increase in net sales and managed to cut down interest costs marginally.

The leading infrastructure firm had reported a net loss of Rs 130.41 crore during the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal.

Net sales of the company was up 7 per cent to Rs 1,020.76 crore during the quarter vis-a-vis Rs 949.24 crore for the October-December period of FY'12, it said in a filing to the BSE.

Besides, HCC's total expenditure stood at Rs 950.34 crore during the quarter, amounting to over 93 per cent of company's net sales. Its interest cost, at Rs 139.57 crore, during the period was marginally lower than Rs 141.96 crore in the same period of last fiscal.

According to company's filing, one of the promoter group company, Hincon Holdings Ltd, has pledged its entire stake in favour of 3i Infotech Trusteeship Services Ltd as additional collateral to comply with the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) package.

The pledged shares amount to a little over 83 per cent of total promoter shareholding in HCC as Hincon Holdings Ltd has 33.09 per cent stake in the infrastructure major.

3i Infotech Trusteeship Services Ltd is the security trustee for the lenders of the HCC, whose CDR package was approved by the CDR Empowered Group during the April-June quarter.

In a separate statement, the company said that it has an order book of Rs 14,624 crore currently and L1 ((where the contracts are yet to be signed but the company has emerged lowest bidder) on three contracts is worth Rs 2,198 crore.

"HCC's performance amidst a challenging environment for the infrastructure sector affirms the management's commitment to shore up our operations. The order position continues to be an area of concern as several large projects are still awaiting clearances," company's group CFO Praveen Sood said in the statement.

He added that HCC will continue to implement measures aimed at further improvement of its performance even in this lean period.

Talking about performances of its subsidiaries, HCC said its Switzerland-based subsidiary, Steiner AG reported a profit of 2.33 million CHF (swiss franc) and a revenue of 194.1 million CHF during the period under review. Besides, Steiner has a total order book of 1.30 billion CHF and yet to be signed contracts of 200 million CHF.