Mr Sandeep Jajodia executive vice chairman and managing director of Monnet Ispat joins CNBC-TV18 to highlight the quarterly performance of the company. Steel and power industries have not really been having a great time with the Karnataka ban on iron-ore mining and coal supply disruptions.
Ispat however has recorded a topline of INR 458 crore compared to INR 360 crore of the corresponding quarter, a growth of about 27%. Mr Jajodia said that “Margins have tanked from 28% to 25% this quarter because the raw material prices of coal and iron ore were almost at the peak.” He said that the company managed to arrest this cost with operational efficiencies and better volumes.
Below is the edited transcript of the interview.
Q - Could you just tell us what the numbers are, we don’t quite have them and the key highlights?
A - The quarter was quite nice, especially in view of the fact that the steel industry and power generally is not going through a very good phase. The economy is showing signs of a slowdown. Considering all of that, I think we have done very well.
This quarter we have recorded a topline of INR 458 crore compared to INR 360 crore of the corresponding quarter. So that’s about a 27% growth. The net profit is INR 76 crore as compared to INR 65 crore. That’s a 19% growth. Then we have the EBITDA doing well as well, we had INR 104 crore, now it’s INR 119 crore.
So overall, operationally, we have done very well in this quarter. Our margins of course have gone down a little bit because the raw material prices of coal and iron ore were almost at the peak. So the EBITDA margins have gone down from 28% to 25%, but we still have been able to achieve a better bottom line because our efficiencies have been better and our volumes have been better. So overall, it’s been a decent quarter for us.
Q - Can you split up the performance for us with respect to what to place in your steel segment and how your power segment did on the topline?
A - In terms of volume, in the corresponding quarter, we did about 209 million units which grew to 240 million units. So that’s a good achievement. The other one is that we had done 160,000 tonne of sponge and we now have 185,000 tonne of sponge which is about 15% increase in volumes.
The realization of sponge has been about 10% better, however, realizations on power has gone down about 10-12%. That’s compensated partly for the volumes.
But overall, both power and steel have, because of higher volumes, given us a better bottomline. EBITDA margins, of course, have come under a bit of a strain because of the high raw material cost.
Q - So could you tell us going forward in the second half of the fiscal year, what is your expectation of both volumes and realizations of sponge iron and power?
A - We are not adding any major capacities this coming half, so I don’t see a big growth in volumes. However, I am very optimist about realizations and the margins because power, for example, has started to show signs of improvement. I think it’s about 5-7% higher than what we clocked in the September-ended quarter. I hope power will do better. In fact there is no doubt about the fact that there is shortage of power overall in the country, but the discoms are not doing very well, so because of that, they have cash problems. They are not buying power and are in need and resorting to power cuts. So power overall should do well.
Steel also, I am hopeful about because large amounts of money have been allocated to the infrastructure side, which of course, needs to be put to work. There have been delays, but I think steel fundamentally seems to be on a very sound footing in this country. I believe that the next half should be better than the first half.
Once our integrated steel plants come into play, which is a 1.5 million tonne steel plant which we are putting up right now, then I guess, our cost structure would also become better and we will be able to contribute more to infrastructure growth. So I am very optimistic about the company’s performance going forward.
Source - CNBC-TV18
