Hitachi Energy India Ltd
NSE:POWERINDIA
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Hitachi Energy India Ltd
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Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Hitachi Energy India Limited Analyst Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I now hand the conference over to Mr. N. Venu, MD and CEO, Hitachi Energy India. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. So thank you for joining this call. As probably you've seen, we have published the results on the stock exchange along with the presentation, which I'm going to go through now. So I take the reference of the slide numbers. So in case if you are following via phone, so that's easy for you to go through that.
In the room, together with me, I have our CFO, Ajay Singh; and Poovanna, Company Secretary and General Counsel; and Manashwi Banerjee, Head of our communication. So once again, thank you for joining the call, and I hope that you're all keeping well and safe. And you [Technical Difficulty] it has been a welcome relief when we see the declining cases in the COVID in our country consistently since the decline of wave 3. But on the other hand, we are also seeing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, and it's set to cause the largest commodity shock since the 1970s, from food to fertilizer to energy, you name anything, all prices are expected to rise further in the coming quarters, coming months, and we are also seeing the interest rates also going up to tame the inflation in many parts of the country, including in our own country.
So let me first focus on this quarter and let me go through the slide number, Slide #3. The January to March quarter typically sees accelerated pace of business. And as the nation was also witnessing a period of normalcy, we saw good demand from utilities, both central as well as state utilities and industries. And state and private utilities placed large grid-strengthening orders, some of them through TBCB. While there was a pickup in metal industry CapEx, in some sectors, there were a few project deferrals. As you can see, the renewables are [ conspicuously ] fewer orders than what we reported in the previous quarter. However, the same period also witnessed supply side challenges, continuing semiconductor shortages, spiraling commodity prices, and rising freight costs, coupled with the long-drawn geopolitical crisis, and a fresh favor of COVID-19 in China that have further disrupted the global supply chains.
On balance, through relentless efforts of our team, keen customer engagement, and a steady conversion of receivables, we were able to report a strong performance in uncertain markets in the quarter ending January to March 2022 with a double-digit growth compared to the January-March 2021 period.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #4. Our first principles, as we have been talking about, employee health and safety is cornerstone of our strategy. Over the past 2 years, the entire organization, supported by the crisis teams, demonstrated exemplary efforts to tackle the global pandemic by protecting people, preserving the business continuity. As business started operating in the new norm, we are leveraging all the learnings and persist with our cautious approach. We have commenced booster vaccination drives for all eligible employees and their family members in our locations.
To ensure a culture where people take ownership of their and their colleagues' health and safety as a priority, we continued our efforts towards spreading awareness and building capacities at our offices, factories, and project sites where we operate. The trainings covered a wide range of topics from first aid, electrical safety, fair trade practices, et cetera, to cater to the spectrum of audiences addressed. As we always say, safety, integrity, quality are our licenses to operate and our customers, too, continue to appreciate our culture throughout our operations, whether it is our own factories or the project sites.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #5. When we had launched our 2030 carbon neutral goals, 11 months ago, you'll remember we were talking about that. We had set ourselves short-term, medium-term, and long-term targets. And I'm happy to share with you that we had a few early wins achieving 100% fossil-free electricity across all of our facilities already by December 2021. And now we are implementing process changes to help us monitor and manage the steps to reduce our carbon footprint.
We have defined carbon-neutral operations year-wise targets for the next 3 years and also subsequently, which have the potential for reducing more than 70% CO2 emission. Reducing 70% CO2 emission is the target for the next 3 years. In this quarter, we have built on waste and water management plans and implemented smart metering across facilities and standards for SF6 management. As you know, SF6 gas is a very little gas when it comes to the atmosphere and it's 23,000x more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. We will continue to explore various technologies, options, to accelerate and phase out fossil fuel in other parts of our operations.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #6. As the energy landscape evolves, we strive to help talent and manufacturing to keep pace in this energy transition. This month, we launched a Smart Electric Grid Lab at NIT Warangal. This state-of-the-art facility provides an opportunity for experimental learnings, complementing the unique Masters in Smart Electric Grid offered by the institute. There was a distinct gap in the industry, and so we collaborated on the first-of-its-kind course offered by NIT Warangal and Hitachi Energy to ready future electric grid professionals, researchers, and innovators in utilities, industries, and institutes for developing and managing smart grids, which will be a critical contributing factor in India's carbon-neutral commitments. Digitalizing the grid is the centerstage of the energy transition of this country going forward.
On the right, you see us at the inauguration of the dry bushing factory in Baroda in Maneja. The need for these bushings in the Indian grid was voiced by a key customer. And even though there was some delays, we established the first manufacturing facilities in India, producing a resin impregnated paper bushing up to 4 kV voltage level. The dry technology improves the thermal, electrical, and mechanical performance of transformer bushings, making transformers more resilient and reliable. This is also in line with Make in India policy, bringing the technology to India, to our customers locally here.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #7. We echoed the shared goal of accelerating a carbon-neutral future across our business actions. We won orders to strengthen grids and making them more efficient and unreliable and also booked orders to improve energy management and efficiency of energy-intensive sectors such as steel and mining. With the pandemic catalyzed shifted to automation, it has been an insightful experience partnering with our customers, key customers to co-create and pilot digital solutions such as bay augmentation, digital products such as CoreTec, CoreSense to upgrade all makes of transformer.
You will recall, we have been talking about the deployment of the digital technologies with some of our key customers. These technology offerings align the execution of milestone projects like the 2-way Raigarh to [ Pugalur ] ultra-high-voltage DC link and digital processors to overcome the limitation imposed by COVID were all recognized through multiple innovation awards bestowed on us by India Smart Grid Forum, a public-private partnership initiative of Government of India.
And the last tile of the slide, as you can see, an initiative that is particularly interest to me, close to my heart, and it's beginning to bear fruits. While it is long road ahead, over the past year, various campaigns have helped us notably increase the diversity among our new hires. And we also have diversified workforce in some of our new factories being inaugurated.
Moving to the next slide, which is a very interesting thing. This slide, as well as in the previous slide, also in the next 2, we touchup on Hitachi Energy's state-of-the-art energy technology, automation, digitalization, engineering, developed by our global R&D teams. And I'm pleased to share that RoadPak, the newest innovative power semiconductor module in our diverse range of semiconductors for all e-mobility applications. By using the state-of-the-art silicon carbides technology, RoadPak achieves exceptional levels of power density for faster charging, reliability over the vehicle's lifetime, and the lowest possible power losses for the longest possible driving range.
Moving to the next slide. We have a growing range of products that have been designed and engineered to deliver [Technical Difficulty] offshore marine conditions without compromising on performance. As offshore windfarms become the norm in our shift to sustainable energy future, technologies that can withstand high seas, wind, vibration corrosion will be key to ensure their efficiency and reliability.
OceaniQ applications include fixed platforms, floating structures, subsea power system, and more. Combining cross-industry competence from the power and marine sectors, the portfolio addresses applications, as I talked about, fixed float farms, floating structure, and subsea power. As India's ambitious renewable penetration by 2030, offshore wind is one of the key component or one of the key strategic initiative of the government, which is going to come soon.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #10. I think this you know more than me. The Omicron wave and the set of uncertainties, delays in decisions, and strain on supply chain brought along with [Technical Difficulty] was thankfully short-lived. But the trickle-down economic impact of geopolitical crisis became evident from the end of February and shows no signs of abating.
While on the one hand, GDP growth estimates remains at a healthy 7% to 8%, power demand increases, industry -- as you can see, industry parameters, such as e-way bills reached all-time high and recovered compared to the last year, the inflationary impact of the war will be soon felt. You've already seen the Reserve Bank of India rising the rates, and that is really a concern for all of us. As discussed earlier, rising prices of oil, commodities, freight will impact margins in the coming times. Also, the main impact of the semiconductor shortage is currently on cost. As we continue to consume our existing safety stacks, we become more dependent on the evolving market situation in the months to come. The lead time for semiconductor manufacturers to ramp up capacity means that respite is at least a quarter or a few quarters away from now.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #11. In the January to March 2022 period, orders growth was driven by utilities, public, and private, and also TBCB tender -- TBCB projects as they strengthened the transmission grid. The data center market witnessed [Technical Difficulty] and it translated to growth in orders from that particular sector. And as you know, data center is one of our high-growth sector. We have been tracking this. We have been focusing on that. And while we're continuing to book renewable orders, it could not keep pace with a year ago as some decisions are anticipated in the April-June quarter. Reflecting the sectoral demands listed, as I talked about now. Projects contribution to our order book increased from the previous year as we delivered directly to the end users and end customer segment.
Moving to the Slide #12. Exports, we have been talking about export for last several quarters, and we said that exports -- we set ourselves a target of 22%, 25% from the midterm strategy standpoint, that is up to 2023. But I'm happy to share with you that export continued to lift orders, contributing approximately 25% to the order book in the March quarter, with an increased contribution from our feeder factories, solid demand came from key utilities in South Asia and North America followed by Africa for our power quality products, substation projects in neighboring Bhutan, coupled with service orders from Bangladesh helped us clock fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth and reconfirmed our goal of 22% to 25% range of order book in this year itself.
In addition, traditional retrofittings, diagnosis, spares, and extensions from utilities, steel majors and metro customers continue to contribute to our service order book. So we have been continuously saying in addition to focusing on high-growth segments, our additional levers for the growth is exports, service, digital offerings, and that's where I'm seeing a slew of first. We were successful in HVDC SCADA HMI integration for additional GIS bays at Pugalur; booked order to conduct system study of Grid Connected Battery Energy Storage System by private utility, another for dry type transom enabled with a digital solution like a Txpert solution from healthcare majors. From existing installed base to the newly diversifying, we saw immense trust from our customers to be their partner of choice even during turbulent market conditions.
Moving to next slide, Slide #13, is our financial performance. And in the quarter ending 31st March, we received orders worth INR 1,043.6 crores, which is up 22.9% year-on-year. And as you know, our strategy is to grow higher than the market, and we have demonstrated adequately that we have -- we were able to grow much higher than the market growth. This put the order backlog at around very healthy INR 4,672 crores at the close of the year, which is expected to result in a sustained revenue in the coming months and coming quarters.
Revenue in the quarter rose 11% year-on-year, reaching INR 1,142 crores. Profit before tax was INR 70.7 crores, up 31.7% year-on-year despite high commodity and other supply challenges. Profit after tax was up 31.2% year-on-year to INR 51.7 crores. Through continued focus on efficiencies, operational EBITDA stood at INR 77.1 crores in the quarter. However, the supply chain disruptions emanating from port delay weighed on process time lines coupled with increased commodity and freight costs slowed our march towards target margin corridor. As you recall, our margin corridor was EBITDA of double digit in the medium term 2023 to 2025. And this year, we already touched EBITDA of 8.9%.
Moving to the next slide, Slide #4. Based on the company's performance and encouraging market outlook, the Board of Directors recommended a dividend of INR 3 per share, 150%. This is, of course, subject to the approval of the shareholders at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting. In addition, the Board also reappointed the MD and CEO and the Independent Directors for another period of 5 years, again, subject to the -- all these appointments are subject to the approval of the shareholders in that.
Moving to my last slide. Our key focus -- priorities for 2023, our key focus will remain protecting our people and preparing ourselves to tackle the new norm and best manage impact of the fast-evolving crisis in Europe. We will focus on shaping an agile supply chain, being selective in our contracts, striving for the price excellence, and revisiting long-term agreements with customers and suppliers as the price trends of commodities and freight remains uncertain. We closely track the semiconductor market and manufacturers as they ramp-up capacities.
There could not be a louder signal for switch to sustainable energy systems than the crisis we face today to reduce dependence on geopolitical system while also reducing pressure on the ecosystems. We continue to drive our high-growth segments, whether it is the rail, data centers, renewable, HVDC, service, and service and exports are other 2 levers where we believe that and then we have a very good portfolio to offer to our customers in the geographies we operate. We will continue to build and strengthen our operations along our pillars of carbon neutrality and diversity. We are invested in India for the long term and developing these capabilities will help us grow along with India's green ambitions.
As we expand, we will take our stakeholders along with us from raising quality standards at suppliers to reducing the carbon footprint of our customers. As the pioneering technology leader, we will continue to collaborate with the customers and partners and grow the organization to be sustainable, flexible, and secure in the face of [ headwinds ]. I'm pleased to inform at Hitachi Energy India is advancing sustainable energy future for our customers.
So ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to me, and I would now like to open the channel for your questions and comments. Thank you.
[Operator Instructions] We have the first question from the line of Rajesh Kothari from AlfAccurate Advisors.
Sir, my first question is, what is your current order book?
Current order book is at 4,000...
INR 4,548.
Yes.
Okay. I thought that is order intake. Is it the order intake or order book?
Order book. Order intake of the order...
Okay. So 1,043...
INR 1,043.6 crores what we talked about is the order intake for the quarter January to March.
Okay. So the order intake is INR 1,043 crores for the quarter and order book is INR 4,548 crores, correct?
That's right.
Perfect. And sir, in the data centers, I think the opportunity is huge. But if I look at your growth, you're talking about 7% growth, this I assume is the order intake growth for fourth quarter for data center?
Order intake growth for the quarter -- for that particular quarter. You're right, Rajesh.
Okay. Okay. So what would be the transmission contribution to your full-year revenue?
You're talking about -- as you know, transmission is one of the segments. So we are talking about the full year revenue. Transmission is one of our key segments. And we normally don't give the thing, but it is a sizable thing. As you know, if you really look at our orders, it's a transmission and also the transportation and the industries are equally spread in that. Yes. We talk about the orders, for example. The split of the transmission is in the range of around close to 50%.
For the fourth quarter. And what will it be for the full year, how the split will look like for the full year [indiscernible]?
It follows in a similar range, 40% to 50%.
Okay. So 40% to 50% is transmission. Okay. And how the other part will look like?
Yes. So the balance, another 60% to 50%, depending upon what you take, is basically our infrastructure, which is data, rail and et cetera, and also the industries.
Data, rail is 15% to 16% and...
And the industries.
Okay. So each basically will be 15%, 16%. That's what you're trying to say?
Right.
Okay. Perfect.
It will be little more or little less.
Sir, my second question is...
Sorry, go ahead.
Sorry, your voice was not very clear.
Please go ahead, I said. You were saying something.
Sir, my second question is with reference to the growth areas. How do you see the growth outlook from here on? And in terms of the -- considering there are supply chain issues, the constraints, how do you see the revenue for the current year as well as the profitability?
So Rajesh, as a listed company, our policy is that we don't give any forward-looking statements. So we talked about all as part of my thing. So there are challenges, there are headwinds, challenges in terms of commodity prices increase, challenges in terms of nonavailability of the semiconductors, and challenges in terms of high inflation measures. All those things are headwinds we know. But at the same time, our [Technical Difficulty] is that the long-term demand drivers that need to have quality power, need to electrify whether it is electrical mobilities, need to have digitalizing the grid, all those things, in our view, the long-term demand drivers are intact.
Okay. So this -- the commodity price is impacting your margins. By when you think you will be able to offset that?
We will not be in a position to predict when exactly we will be able to offset. As I told you that in my commentary, it will take couple of months or couple of quarters as the global supply chain stabilizes.
[Operator Instructions]
Operator, it looks like the instructions is not clear to the participants.
Sir, I'll repeat the instructions.
Please check how many participants are there once again.
Sure. [Operator Instructions]
In case our participants are facing issues, could you give them a phone number to dial in on so that they can join on the voice only.
Sure, one moment. We have questions from the line of Viraj Mithani. As there is no response from the current participant, we'll move on to the next question from the line of Bhavin Vithlani.
Congratulations on numbers amidst the difficult times. It seems like a very good performance on the gross margin side.
Thank you, Bhavin.
So my question is question, if you could just help us understand what is the signs of the total end-user industry? What is the total market size and the way you are dissecting transmission, which is the utilities, the industries market, if you could just help us understand?
Yes. See, as you know, we do not give the exact market sizes how we track. But let me also give you a little bit of color to the whole thing what you're talking about. So the whole thing if you really look at the areas where our company portfolio will go into the traditional sectors, such as transmission, distribution. So that is transmission, distribution, and then also the industries standpoint, industrial application, industrial grid connections, et cetera. And the new emerging sectors, the new emerging sector is the data center, as you talked about, energy storage we are talking about, and then we're also talking about like a grid connected renewable is, of course, the bulk of our portfolio.
In addition, also our portfolio goes into the transportation sector. Take, for example, Indian Railways. Every third Shatabdi you see, it is powered through our technology there. And also, our technology goes into the metro rales. Every 9 out of the 10 metro projects in India has been powered through our SCADA systems. So that is how we track. Predominantly, the transmission is the biggest portfolio followed by the rail and rail and infrastructure, and then the new emerging sectors like data centers and other things.
One of the peer set in their earnings call mentioned the total market -- total addressable market in India to be around INR 16,000 crores in fiscal year '22. According to you, would this be a fair number because there will be some products which they may not be addressing like for Hitachi.
Sorry. Sorry, what was the question? Sorry, according to?
Sir, one of your peers in its earnings call mentioned that the total orders placed in the T&D segment was around INR 16,000 crores in fiscal year '21-'22.
Okay, understood. In our view, the addressable market is much higher than this.
Okay. So in the year gone by -- so actually just wanted to try to understand the size of the addressable market in the year gone by. And given that power grid is now talking about ordering from the clean energy corridors, plus there are 2 or 3 HVDC projects which are coming up. So I would just like to understand how do you see the market growth going forward.
So again, the market growth has 2, 3 dimensions to it. One is that the market is growing in the traditional transmission sector, as you rightly said, into the green energy corridor and then also the large HVDC projects. I think that market is really going as per our expectations. And we -- remember, we have told in our previous analyst call that HVDC -- previously, HVDC project used to come once in 4 years or 5 years. Now we envisage HVDC project at least one per year for next 3 to 4 years. So that is the kind of growth opportunities coming in that sector. And that's why the Make in India and other things, the reason why we are expanding our factories, inaugurating factories is to take care of these kind of opportunities in that. That's about the traditional transmission.
We also operate in the data center. Data center [indiscernible] really exponential. The drivers of data privacy laws and so on and so forth are fueling the growth in the data center. And the third one is the rail. The rail, as you know, Indian government has target of net zero by 2030 and complete electrification by 2023, and those things are fueling the growth opportunities for us in that.
Sure. The second question is on the exports side. What is the share of export as a percentage of the last 4 quarters of revenue?
So the last 4 quarters is around 24%. We set ourselves a target of 22% to 25% by 2023. So I'm happy to share that we already reached the higher end of our target corridor by this year, consistently driving the export growth in the last 4 quarters.
And if you could just give us a flavor on the export -- are some of these project orders that's the effort of Hitachi India -- efforts of getting, or is it like exporting to some of the parent's factories globally?
Yes. So when it comes to the Hitachi Energy in India, our export strategy is a 3-pronged strategy. The first one is we have a global factories for some products and then we will export those things to globally, either through our factories or directly to the end customers globally using the existing sales channels. That's number one.
Number 2 is, we have allocated market, so such as the markets in Africa, such as markets in South Asia, such as some markets in the Middle East. And those allocated markets, we will develop the market through our sales channels as well as in those countries' sales channels, and we will sell our products directly to that.
And the third one is we have the feeder factories for some components -- for the global feeder factories. And those things we will sell it to our companies around the world. So these are the 3 strategies we have deployed for the exports.
Just last question from my side. So on the competitive intensity in the country, so about 1.5 year ago, the government put non-tariff barriers on some of the Chinese. So after that, in the current round of the biddings in the recent past, how is the competitive intensity that you are seeing? And do you believe that with the increase in the order traction that you highlighted, there is a scope for expansion of the margins?
Yes. So I think talking about the impact of restrictions of imports from China, I think the renewed push for Make in India, self-reliant India, clause giving preference to supplier with meeting the local content requirement of 50% is now applicable in all government contracts. We have seen some limited advantage of this. But private industry players may also give preference to Indian suppliers. So we have seen private players also now ask for a local content, in some cases, in selective cases.
So [ although ] we may stand to gain in certain parts of our portfolio, but what we are looking at it being a long-term players here, we are building our capacity. We are manufacturing for the last 6 decades. We continue to expand. As we speak, we have already just inaugurated a new technology RIP bushing factory 4 kV first time in India, in our Baroda just a month back. So all those things we believe that will put us in a much more competitive advantage in going forward in respect of those restrictions in the longer term.
We'll take the next question from the line of Viraj Mithani. As there is no response from the current participant has muted the line.
Is there any technical issue operator? Because I see we are also not getting refreshed on the thing. Why don't you please look at your portal. It looks like there is a technical issue. And I've been asking you how many participants have joined. You're not even telling that.
Sir, we are checking that.
Yes. This is the third time you are saying.
350, sir.
How many?
350.
Then how can it be -- are they able to hear us at least.
Yes, sir. I'll make the announcement once again. [Operator Instructions]
So Faizan, I don't know if people are facing trouble to ask questions. They can reach out to us. If they do have questions, we will try our best to answer them. Venu, would you like to have any last words because I don't think the technical issues.
So first of all, thank you for joining, and I see that due to the technical issues, you're not able to raise some questions, but we are very open any time if you want to have any discussions and questions, please reach out to our Investor Relations portal or directly to Manashwi, we are happy to answer your questions. So we sincerely regret if this is the case. We sincerely regret the technical issues and glitches. Thank you once again, and please take care and stay safe. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Hitachi Energy India Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.