Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to ABB India Limited's Q3CY 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded, and any unauthorized recording of this call is strictly prohibited. The recording will be made available on the company's and SEBI's website subsequently. I now hand the conference over to Mr. T.K. Sridhar, Chief Financial Officer of ABB India Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Thank you very much. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, very good morning from the management before we start, and I wish you all a very, very happy Diwali because we just come out of a Diwali vacation and also a New Year for some of the people. I wish you all a happy New Year. On the call, I have with me Sanjeev Sharma, the MD of ABB India Limited, and also I have Sanjeev Arora, who leads Motion, and Kiran Dutt and Ganesh, who are part of EL division as well, we don't have people from our Robotics because they are busy with the customers and execution topics, but we will handle it afterwards. Very good.
I think without wasting much of the time, I hand over to Sanjeev Sharma for taking us through the Q3 results and our Q3 performance issues and topics. Yeah, over to you, Sanjeev.
Thank you, T.K. Sridhar. I hope each one of you had a good festive period and good morning. We will give you a very quick overview about our quarter three, which was July to September 2024, and followed by financials by T.K. Sridhar. Then we take as many questions as we can. When it comes to ABB in India, I think those of you are familiar with it. I think it's just as a reminder, and those who are joining for the first time, just as a overview of ABB in India, we are four verticals: electrification, motion, process automation, robotics, and Discrete Automation. It is all about energy efficiency, energy distribution, and providing productivity to our end users in energy industries, process industries, marine and forest management analytics. Of course, with the robotics and Discrete Automation and machine automation, we provide solutions for automating Fab shop floors.
We operate with five locations: Nashik, Faridabad, Maneja, two in Bangalore, wherein we have about 25 plants, that include different products that we supply into the Indian market largely, and then also we export out of it. We serve the market with 28 sales offices, and we have a very strong battery of 750-plus partners. And out of India, we are exporting to over 30 countries.
Now, giving you some business highlights, we had a performance chart as orders are 11% up for our in-group share of large orders in the overall basket. So if you go back to our commentary of last four to six quarters, so we have been telling, listen, we have a very good inflow from the base orders and also what we call as the fast-moving industrial goods, which get distributed through our channel partners and our integrators.
It's a matter of time that the large contract from our core sectors will start picking up. We started seeing the uptake of some of the market segments, which are very important for us. We have started seeing the uptake of large contracts here. That's what has started forming our book as we go forward, apart from continuation of the base orders or the fast-moving industrial goods orders. Our revenues are up plus 5% based on execution of base orders across segments. Now, given that our books have been mixed with now the large orders, which have larger gestation periods, so the conversion rate that we may have witnessed in the past, that may not be the same velocity because the large orders take some time to digest and execute. I think you can have some questions around that. We'll be happy to answer it.
Our profit before tax is increased by 22% due to revenue mix as well as how we have captured the margins in the orders, both pre-order as well as post-order execution efficiencies. So we have a good capacity leverage, which is available to us. As you know, we have a capacity to manufacture, and most of the expense for any additional volume that we do here, we have been able to do it with incremental investment. We didn't have to make very, very large investments to cater to the market demand. On the electrification side, we have launched a new portfolio in ABB-free@home, which is essentially a very smart portfolio. Any of you considering to automate your home, so you can look into this solution, our team will be also very happy to help you.
On the motion drive product, we have reached a 10 gigawatt milestone in renewable energy automation solution. Only three, four years back, we used to talk about 5 gigawatt. Now we have reached the 10 gigawatt supplies into this market segment. We continue to focus on making sure we're doing the right thing for sustainability. Our Nelamangala campus in Bengaluru is now certified CO2 compliant, CO2 zero, CO2 compliant emission, Scope 1, Scope 2, GHG emissions. It's a very significant achievement by any standards for an Indian company and also in our global network. That's the kind of focus we keep in this area. All our locations, like Nashik plant two, has been awarded our platinum rating by Indian Green Building Council under the Green Factory Building System. Again, credit to our location team there. We continue to run this with a lot of passion.
And also, we were ranked number one in Electronics and Hardware at the Sustainability Conclave 2024 by Businessw orld on the sustainability ranking. And overall, among all the listed companies across the country, we are ranked number four, and we are very humbled in terms of recognition of the efforts we do in this particular area. Now, with respect to markets, though there is a lot of commentary about the market, which way it will go and how long the robustness in the Indian market will stay, we continue to see base strength in the market. And as you know, we have 18 divisions, which focus on 23 market segments. There is always a cyclic nature of certain market segments, which we continue to see up and down. But overall, I think we have a positive outlook in terms of how the market is developing in the country.
The new market segments, which we started data centers about five or six years ago, now they have become significant contributors to us. And given the digitization rate in the country, we see there will be an uptick here. And we have quite a good reputation and demand from the large-scale data centers, which have been set up in the country. Same thing goes for the process industries and also the transport equipment, which is expanding, and we have a portfolio which caters to these market segments.
So you can see some of the examples. I think these slides will be available in the interest of taking more questions from you. I will not read everything. You can see how our products and solutions go across the market segments. And that diversity gives us the good resilience around our portfolio and our results quarter to quarter and year to year.
We continue to engage with partners deep into the geography. We go deeper into the geography. We also go deeper into the new market segments so that our customers can appreciate the portfolio that is available to ABB, which is very well localized and served locally with the global portfolio. And we are seeing a lot of traction, and our team continues to do this religious work of making sure that they keep making this deeper penetration in the marketplace. This is something how we see the market in terms of growth: high market segments, moderate segments, as well as low uptake market segments. And there is always a cyclic nature of it. And we feel the ones which are low today, I think it's just a matter of time they will join in the moderate, and some of the moderate guys will move into the high segment.
Maybe there could be a bit of a reversal on the high to moderate. This is a picture which is very dear to us, and this is how we look into the market, and this is how we continue to develop our footprint in the country. The theme of the quarter is we always talk about one particular market segment. It is power distribution. In this area, you can see that the power capacity, India is the third largest producer and consumer of electricity worldwide and with 440.85 gigawatts as of April 30th. It's likely to double to 817 gigawatts by 2030. You can imagine the rate of growth that we'll see here and the areas where it will get used. We have our portfolio in the electrification that goes right at the sweet spot of it, especially ELDS and ELSP and ELSB portfolio.
We continue to see good gains in that area. These are very solid and very high-growth businesses, which are also contributing heavily to our results. Now, sustainability and practice we talked about. We continue to focus on key parameters, and you can see year on year, if you continue to see our journey, we continue to make progress in all the right parameters. We have good CSR programs. Recently, our motion team, led by Sanjeev Arora, opened an electrical machines lab in IIT Bombay, wherein they have requested to upgrade their machines so that the next generation engineers can really play and train themselves on the best of the machines. We are making sure that all the education institutes across the country, they continue to receive that as part of our CSR initiatives.
Apart from education and skilling, we do a lot of work in the communities and environment, and this is something which gives us a lot of satisfaction as a management that we can do contribution other than contributing to our shareholders. Here, the key growth drivers are the investments, the way they are happening. I think we are hoping and we are seeing private sector uptick alongside public sector. Make in India campaign definitely has the good depth of how the purchasing gets done in India and how much value added gets done in India, and also, the customers appreciate premium products relative to how they used to be a few years back, and of course, there are factors to watch on the domestic economy, consumption growth, and global drag, but these are not the ones we can directly correlate with our business.
We really participate in the market as it shows up in 23 market segments for our individuals. At this point, I hand it over to T.K. Sridhar, and he'll take you through financials.
Give me a moment, please. Just getting myself into the meeting, so thank you. Thank you, Sanjeev. I think it's a very good session on how the markets are and how we're looking to a big picture view, so just coming back to the basics of how we perform in Q3. I think these numbers are already there with you, just to add some commentaries to what you see on the slide, so the good thing is that we are able to maintain the momentum of orders at this point of time, 30% growth.
I think it was the sixth consecutive quarter in a row where we are seeing that 60% growth within the ordering flow, roughly on an average, plus minus 10% here and there. And it's also comprising of both large as well as base orders. Base orders being the maximum out of it. And therefore, we see a good visibility of our good news for the next three to four quarters to come in because we've been executing a bit over time. On order backlog, I think we have a specific slide on order backlog. This is next to it, so we could always do a bit of common storytelling there. And now, on the revenue part of it, we were 5% up. So I think this goes to the execution of the backlog, which is base orders.
The large orders are to kick in with the revenues because they have to align with the project milestones with which we have to deliver the material. So I think we need to wait for it to happen. We don't see any risk of any backlog being slow-moving or non-moving on the order backlog at this point of time. So profitability, so I think we successfully again posted a 15%, 5% is what we see, and that's basically coming from a good mix of revenues between exports, services, projects, and products, and also the various markets and solutions is what we are alluding to. And also, added to that is the advantage of capacity utilization, so which helps drive the profitability. So cash, I think cash remains strong. Our collections in the market continue to outpace the revenues as such.
But the other part is that we are definitely built upon inventory because we have a backlog to execute. And therefore, these inventories, which are earmarked for the execution of this backlog, will become earmarked over the next quarters to come. So I think overall, the message in this, we have a strong cash position at this point of time with an inventory to liquidate for the execution of the backlog. Sequentially, I think momentum and cost structures have been maintained, and cash exposure is more stable steady. But the only thing is, in Q3, there was a cash outflow for dividends, and also we did a CapEx accumulated. CapEx is INR 125 crore for the last nine months, to say. And then we still have projects ongoing for the various expansions and modernization of factories and plants. So now comes time backlog.
I think there could be definitely the urgency to understand how is this backlog building up and how are we trying to execute it. First of all, I think before we go to the backlog, we need to understand how the order inflows have been over the quarters. If you look at it, last seven to eight quarters, we have had orders which are a good mix of both as well as large orders. Large orders have been consistently around five quarters in every quarter, at least 500 crores on average. They come from sectors like metals, mining, oil, and gas, the transportation sector, and also data centers, which is a fast-growing segment at this point of time. I think this is also a reflection of the fact that customer spend in CapEx as well as traditional transportation segment is helping us.
If you see that, it's more to do with the motion segment as such. Overall, I think these large orders which are there in the backlog will see an execution which has to match the overall project timeline. That's something which we are trying to make sure that we are not timing it correctly so that we don't have a lockup of working capital in terms of the people go there. And also, we're making sure that what is needed for the project is what is delivered so that we have a seamless execution of this particular project. On the backlog side of it today, we're talking of almost 10,000 crores of orders, which comprises 25% in terms of large orders and 75% for base orders. That's the sort of a split which is there in the backlog.
And while 25% is what I mentioned, has to go along with the project execution timeline, but 75% is base orders, which ranges the lowest being three months and the highest being sort of 12 months as an engineered product which we manufacture. So I think so that's the sort of the cycle. So I think these particular orders will be distributed and executed over the next four quarters to come. So going into the cost structure, so if you look at it, so we are pretty much stable. So only two questions on this could be, right? How is the material cost stacking up, and how does the other expenses go down? So these are the, I think, two questions which could be need to be answered from my side.
I think when it comes to material costs, I think it's more about the revenue mix, and we have a positive price impact of the company, so it's giving us the benefit which we're having now. The currency appreciation and the commodity price increase is something which is pretty stable at this point of time. Therefore, we don't see anything which has negatively impacted the material cost, and so that is positive. Also, in this particular quarter, we did await the provision because they were doing the execution time. We need to carry it as part of material cost. Once the execution is over, that is transformed into warranty costs till the obligations are completed.
And that's why we could see that there's a reduction in the material costs and there's an increase in the expenses as what you see, which is more in the form of warranty costs, which is there for the products that we executed. And for the new market segments, which we have entered into, where we need those extended warranties to be applied. So apart from that, I think the expense structures are pretty much the same. The deviation which you see between INR 460-470 crores of other expenses to INR 518 crores is what we see is majority because it's focused warranties, which has made it from a material cost to be a sole warranty. But otherwise, I think that's something which is quite normal at this point of time. I can just say something of the on-time projects were executed earlier and that has already moved.
But on an ongoing basis, it is being around INR 470-480 crores is what you see. So yeah, the provision and interests are pretty much straightforward. They have nothing to do with this point of time. So we are consistent on those cost elements.
So if I want to do a bit of a color on the segment-wise information, so electrification, I think growing at a good speed of let's say of an order book of INR 1,766 crores is what we did in Q3. So solid and this was backed up by orders from data centers, rail and export orders. And it was across all the divisions and business lines of EL. And revenues, I think, will stack up as these large orders start to get executed as well over there.
And if you look at it in the backlog, we are at INR 3,400 crores, which will, I think, give us good revenue visibility. And cruising at 20-21% of PBIT, I think it's in sort of a solid performance of what we see. Motion, I think motion, if you look at this particular figure on quarter-to-quarter basis, it looks to be down. But I think we need to understand in the last year, the same quarter, we had a large order from the railway segment, which was actually boosted the orders at that point of time. So if you remove that line to line, so we are slightly above what we had booked last year in the same quarter. So that means that this order is definitely growing in spite of the large order not being there.
So yeah, revenues, stronger revenues, and this is only going to be better going forward as the backlog is executed, which is considerably high at this point of time. And with the profitability continuing at 23, 20 plus 20%. Process Automation, I think we did have an order which slipped out to the next quarter because of decision delays, especially when it was in the oil and gas sector. So the pipeline is pretty strong. And we assume that these particular orders will get finally converted into firm orders. These opportunities will get converted to firm orders in the quarters to come. And that gets reflected in the execution of revenues as well. And actually, the profitability is better because we have a good service revenue component in Project Automation. And that is sort of driving the profitability.
Also, in project execution, skills have been strengthened. A good mix of orders from different solutions is sort of supporting the margin expansions. Robotics, another fast-growing division is what we see. So it has clear reflection between where they operate in select market segments like electronics, automobiles, pharma, and these sort of industries. So I think that's how we see that there is a cyclical way as to how the orders are presented in this particular sector. So hopefully, I think we should be, but we are on track because we have been doing pretty well in the last two quarters. And Q3 was a bit of a decision delay from the customer. And that should sort of catch up in the next quarter to come. And overall, I think here also we see good traction on profitability as well as on the backlog execution.
Overall, I think on a basis other than one-off items with respect to the cost of material, which showed an improved margin. Was it the material and eventually the other expenses, which have increased because we had to put that as warranty costs? Other than that, I think we are pretty much straightforward compared to what it used to be previously. Just to come to the last slide, this is about how our segmentation looks like in terms of business, various dimensions. In the aspect of businesses, EL and MO still have 75-80%, which is a product business or ETO product business, that's what we say. And PA, Process Automation, is 20% with robotics at 45%. These have been pretty constant at this point of time. The next one, it comes to the offerings, projects is 11-12%.
So I think this is also pretty stable. And good part is the products have increased from to 70% is a major share. Therefore, our risk profiling is pretty steady at this point of time. And in terms of exports, we are 12% of the revenues going to exports. Whereas I think the OEMs and the EPCs and the partners are the same as what it used to be earlier. No major change is what we see. That's it from my side. I think we are good to go. I think 30 minutes out, so we are good to go with Q&A today. Yeah, so we can open up the call for the question and answers. So we'll try to do our best to make sure that we have all the questions answered in the next 30, 35 minutes to say.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may press star and one on their touch-tone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, kindly limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Ankur from HDFC Life. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi sir, good morning. Thanks for the time. Two questions. One was on the motors/Motion business.
If you could just talk about, and especially on the LT motor side, if you could talk about how is pricing, even demand, how's that looking up? Has pricing stabilized? Have we seen any price hikes recently? And also on the channel, if there's been any restocking happening post now that elections are over, because we've heard that there was some restocking prior and during elections.
So yeah, overall demand, pricing, and competition on the LT motor side, that's number one. Number two is, and I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions around this decline that we see on the top line and process automation. So if you could just help us, was this on a specific order, or is it just the way that the deliveries are scheduled? Also, high base of last year also kind of not helping us.
So, just some more color there, how you see execution on the process automation side. Yeah, thanks. Okay, so let me take the second question first, Ankur, and then afterwards, Sanjeev Arora, who leads the motion business and also the motors specifically, will help for clarity on that. So process automation, if you look at it in last year, two quarters, we had Q3 and Q4, good uptake of orders from the metals and mining segment. And this year, we had oil and gas coming up in the first two quarters. And this particular quarter, where we expected some orders from oil and gas as well as metals to come in, will come in in the next quarters to come. So in other words, what I want to see is that the opportunity pipeline is strong and vibrant.
It's only the question of decision-making how this happens because we have project orders and process to do this, and there's process to follow. So that's what we see. In other words, I don't see any conglomerate, any sort of opportunity pipeline going up as such. And once these orders fall in place, then naturally, then we follow the execution timeline that is well-defined because we are experts in the field with the specific requirements of the project requirements. So overall, I think at this point of time, while we see that there is a bit of a slow move, as what we see in the chart, but we still find that we definitely have an opportunity to move forward on this. Yeah, so over to you, if you could put some light on how motors market is and what surprising topics, what you're facing, etc. stuff. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you very much. And just sorry for my bad throat for today. But I think very, very good question. And yes, LT motors has been facing some headwinds when it comes to the pricing piece. And of course, large players like ABB, who has a substantial market share, are affected, I would say, a bit more in advance. But then overall, I would say that if you see the total economy, so every industry requires low-voltage motors. And if we see the investment cycles, so first we had the muted period, then we had the elections, then we had the, I would say, some good rainfalls, which has also resulted in some flooding as well in some places. And so I think these nine months have been a bit turbulent. But I'm pretty confident that now the things look like that the erosion has stopped.
And now with the government also was pretty involved in the elections this year, so be it the national elections or state elections. So I think if that phase is over, the investments from the government will also start. The industries will also have a morale boost that the investment has started. And this will also help in stabilizing the price levels in the market. So yes, there has been turbulent times, but I would say that more or less that's over now for the industry. So that's my take on it.
Okay, so good. Thank you.
Thank you, Ankur. Thank you, Sanjeev Arora. Thank you. You can go to the next question.
The next question is from the line of Umesh Raut from Nomura India. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hello sir. Good morning. So my first question is pertaining to pricing power.
And if you could throw some light regarding three aspects on pricing power. So first, basically, capacity expansion, which is kind of happening at an industry level across the products. Second, basically, any demand moderation that you can observe any of the products. And third, basically, any request from the customer to kind of pass on any raw material correction benefit, considering that in the last few quarters, we have enjoyed very healthy pricing power. So any thoughts over here?
Okay, so let me take the first question and probably throw some light on the last question as well. Then the middle second question, if you could repeat it for the benefit of all of us, Umesh.
Yeah, so sir, I was also kind of alluding to the fact that there are any requests from the customers to kind of pass on raw material benefits or whatever cost efficiencies that you have observed during the last two quarters, and because of which we can have such a lower moderation into the pricing power.
First thought is going on capacity. I think today, I think all the business lines who have been definitely, which is aging business divisions, whatever we have, have good capacity planning, and they have a good capacity to handle the current demand development as what we see, right? And while we do so, we are also definitely on the way of looking at it forward by tuning ourselves to the market demands, how we develop, and show our investment in expansion so that modernization of the plant doesn't stop every year.
I think we have been continuously for the last at least three to four years, on an average, we are doing INR 200-250 crores of investments. And in this year, we've already done INR 125 crores. I think it definitely depends on how we liberate the existing capacity and how do we gain those operational productivity improvements, which could also unlock the capacity. And so it's a journey which we could do, and every factory breakdown, right? That's something which we will do. To summarize it, we don't see any capacity constraints at this point of time, and we have enough land banks for us in case we have to put up new factories. And also, the existing factories have the headroom to meet demand surge.
Next, coming to how we are dealing with the pricing topics in the market, I think, as would it say, the commodity prices have now stabilized. The pricing and also the forex variation is also now limited because they have also currently become stable. So the pricing is a dynamic stuff. It depends on how the demand and the supply situation behaves in each and every product, in each and every market segment in which we do, right? And so there's no fixed rule as how we see it. But of course, we know how the price and volume game works, and so the management takes a decision appropriate to the business scenario they are in. Yeah, so my next question is pertaining to the slide on 23 market segments, where you are consistently saying that data center, radio network, and electronics are being more of high-growth segments.
But if I look at certain core industries like metal, mining, cement, oil and gas, or even food and beverages, those are consistently into the low-growth segments.
So any assessment here, what are you observing on private sector effects recovery and especially demand from that particular segment to your products?
Okay, so let me take this question, and then Sanjeev can copy that and pass it over to you on this thing, right? So to give you a sort of a picture, and it could be beneficial to all of the people who are listening in too, if you look at our total dimensions of how we do business, if you take away 10% of exports, we have 90%. And out of that 90%, if you roughly take away 12%-15% of services, then you're left with 75%.
And this 75% is what comes from these 23 market segments from 18 divisions, is what we see. It's basically an 18 by 23 matrix. So now, in this particular listing, the one which is on the left-hand side, which is the fastest growing segment, gave us a growth of almost 20% plus in the firm where they are every year. And the middle portion with moderate growth, which is something in between 10% to 12%, and the low-growth segment has basically, what we call, less than 10%. So now when it comes to the segmentation of it, we still are making 45%-50% of the business comes from the core sectors, which is growing at less than 10%. The reason for that is, one, the installed base is pretty high, and this is core to the country as well and infrastructure as well.
So therefore, a 10% growth on a large installed base is itself a large opportunity which comes in. Number one. Number two, when you look at the top growth sectors, which are the fast-growing sectors, so there's one which forms basically 15%-20% of the order pile. So that grows at 20%. And therefore, so you are a well-calibrated percentage of 11%-15% of growth patterns are, right? And so that's how we see, and that's how the revenue mix, how the market mix, and how the geographical mix also works for us.
Got it, sir. Thank you so much. I'll turn back to you.
Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nitin Arora from Axis Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for giving the opportunity.
I think, Sanjeev, you touched based on some large deal pipeline looks very strong to you. And also on the mix side, where you said that now larger orders are more in the order book, which takes time to pick up. So one, if you can throw some light how the large order book or larger orders in the order book has a percentage or some direction if you can give. And second, in terms of the large deal pipeline, which according to you is pretty strong, can you highlight in which areas are these? And is just that a function of what I think it was highlighted that because of the election, rains, things are getting delayed. Is it also a function of that, or it's just getting delayed from the customer end, these large deal pipelines?
Because I think these large deal pipelines have been there for the last eight to 10 months. Correct me if I'm wrong, but larger deals are a little getting delayed, it looks like, so just your take on that, on these two aspects.
S o the market segments we have focused, so there are certain market segments, so let me rephrase. There are two types of large deals. One large deal is wherein, say, you have a data center which is being set up, and they want power supply into it. And ABB is the number one player in that area for many reasons globally. And all the global players who are coming to the country, they automatically rely on us, and they repeat those contracts with us. And then, of course, the local data center players as well who are expanding.
So they go for the high-quality equipment because the reliability, availability, maintainability, serviceability of these installations is paramount in the eyes of the owners. So in this particular area, most of the equipment that goes in, it's all produced by ABB. It's our in-house value-add equipment. So that means the net effect on our books where then it flows through is quite positive because the value-add is quite high. The other type of large deals are which are integration jobs, wherein maybe we have 30%-40% scope of ours, and then we have to get a lot of third-party materials, put them together, and find a solution for us. So right now, the large deals that we are seeing right now in the market are of a fused nature.
That is, these are the areas wherein, whether because of the government spend or the spend in the new market segment that we are doing, the ticket size of those orders and deals is pretty high for us relative to the regular flow business that we do for the same equipment. So, net effect, when we convert that into revenues, one is that our grip on the supply and the production is quite strong. So we are able to respond very effectively to the market because of our dependency on the third party to integrate the jobs is less. So that's something which is, I think, happening quite well. And the pipeline that we saw eight to 10 months back, I think that has been working quite well for us, and it is quite consistent.
In fact, there are positive surprises as well, wherein a customer decided for one project, and they surprised us maybe one and a half months later on. They say, "Hey, I'm setting up another one. No questions asked. Please double supply. Please double the supply of number one because I'm now setting up two." So you have that kind of behavior which is happening in the marketplace. In the core market segment, like in the metals industry, mining industry, I think there are jobs which are visible pipelines. And we are seeing conversions there as well. And because most of the large players in the metals side, I think they are set upon now doubling their capacity in the next five years or seven years period of time. So you can see there's a lot of consolidation going to take place in those areas.
Now, some conversions in that area take faster, and they are not seasonal. They don't depend on monsoon, or they don't depend on the budgetary constraint. They depend upon the market price of the product they are dealing with, and that's what is a long-term view of demand and supply. So I would say the so what we call as the large projects, it also changes like what our robotics division will call as a large project for them. And then what our ELDS unit will call as a large project for them, the value could be different, okay? Because if it's for a robotics business, which could be $60-$70 million, that a large project could be something which they do as a $15-$16 million, right? And they have those kind of projects coming from the local automotive players.
For ELDS, it is a large project, but at the same time, much larger.
Sir, your voice is breaking. I'm sorry to interrupt. The line sounds good and clearly.
Is it better now?
Yes, sir. Please continue. Thank you.
Yeah. So I can say that we don't see large projects by the company. We see the large projects by each of the 18 divisions in the respective market segments they are exposed to. But right now, we are seeing large projects coming more with high value-added content that we have in the marketplace. And for whatever we have been projecting in past, I think we are seeing a fair conversion rate, especially in the transportation, mobility segment. Last year, we saw some large conversions.
Again, there is a good lineup there, which is due to be, I think, placed, converted into orders as we go forward, whether it's metro lines or it is railway projects. Yeah. So that's the kind of a scheme of things we see at the moment.
Yeah. Getting it. And just what's the larger order book now in the overall order book? What are the larger orders? Just directions.
Yeah. I can refer to slide number 16, where you have the order backlog, which is 9,995, 10,000 per slide. On the top end of it is 25-26%, which is the large orders, and 75% is the base.
So just directionally going ahead, you think because we started the Q1 on a very strong note on execution, last two quarters have been a little lower execution.
I remember last time also you said things will pick up on the execution side. How directionally you are looking at your revenue growth? Will that again claw back to again going towards double digit? I know you don't give any guidance, but generally, direction side is just a temporary issue, or you think things are taking more time in terms of going into actual execution? Just take on that. That's it. Thank you.
So I think, again, I think these businesses, their backlog is spread into 18 divisions. So for example, we have a large contract in our traction division, right? So you know that the railway ministry decided to convert some of those orders that they had initially given for the seated trains to passenger trains. And that created a design change, and that also created the revenue plan change for the people involved.
So you have that kind of effect. And you can call that design change to get impacted. And that's how your large project revenue, even if they were planned for midterm, they get stretched a little bit, but they definitely come. So we are not seeing any stagnation of any projects in our backlog. So they are in our regular flow. So we have four types of businesses. One is called MTO, MTS, made-to-order, made-to-stock. Basically, they are more like FMIG, fast-moving industrial goods. And then we have ETO orders, which is engineer-to-order. And those are the ones which take a little bit longer, but mid-cycle. So you have short cycle, mid-cycle. And then you have the long cycle business, which are typically in the process automation and the transportation sector that we have talked about. So we are not seeing any stagnation.
And we see this backlog executing with a good flow going forward, yeah, unless some customer-related topic that comes in, which creates some kind of a delay in this 25% that we have highlighted, which is sitting in the large contracts.
Yeah. Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jonas Bhutta from Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen, and Diwali wishes to all of you. Two questions, and some people will try and ask the same kind of question, but in a slightly different way. So if you see that post-COVID, for a good six, eight quarters, ABB was in the 2,000-2,500 crores order inflow run rate. For the last six quarters, that got amped up to about 3,000-3,500 crores.
Do you believe that the pipeline in front of you and the growth opportunities present ahead of you sort of give you at least visibility that there is a possibility of another step jump in the quarterly run rate of order intake from the current band that we have been for the last six quarters? Can we inch up closer to the INR 4,000 crore per quarter? I'm not asking for numbers, but broadly, do you think that you have visibility over the next 12-18 months that there could be a step jump in quarterly inflow run rate? That's the first question.
Okay. So we take that. So you're right.
I think after post-COVID, as we also explained in our previous call, that the loyalty factor of many of our customers moved in our direction based on how we really supported them during the COVID period, the continuity of their operations. I think ABB team stood by, and we felt that a lot of customers who used to be very price-sensitive, they became performance-sensitive post-COVID, and we had a significant movement of many customers who were not so loyal in terms of placing orders, or they could move with very small price variation. They became more sticky in our books, so that kind of a phenomenon gave us a jump, and also, of course, there was a pent-up demand, and plus, there was a real expansion of the economy because of the government spend and also the new market segments, which we found out, which started performing well for us.
That was a kind of effect that came in. And also, the service orders, which were subdued during the COVID period, that mix also picked up because the maintenance and reliability services were required by our installed base, which has been created for a long period of time. We do believe that we reached a good run rate of INR 2,500-3,000 crores. We believe it's a good run rate for the capacities that we carry. And since our capacities in the country are such that any new expansion of volume, we require only incremental investment. We are not very CapEx-heavy in order to cater more revenues in the marketplace, right? We are able to quite easily expand our capacities as and when the volumes start expanding in front of us in terms of pipeline or in terms of conversion rates for us.
So what we see is that it's a healthy INR 2,500-INR 3,000 crore band for us as the volumes go. And quite frankly, it's very difficult to predict whether, when, and where it will hit INR 4,000 crores. But given when I look into each and under the hood for each and every division, they see a fairly strong pipeline in front of it. And I would not be surprised that after you have a good gain over a period of time for the volumes, that you plateau for maybe a couple of quarters before again the jump comes back in. So that would be because there's a time when the market and that competition takes time to consolidate and also readjust to the reality. You have to allow that breathing time before the market makes another uptick, an upturn again.
And also, not to forget, right now, there is a lot of uncertainty in the global as well as local markets in certain areas. How that plays out to our portfolio, we have no correlation metrics to it. But we do believe as and when those things clear out, that also paves the way for continued India growth story. We have grown 21% CAGR in the last three years against a GDP growth of over 7%. The projected growth of GDP by various institutions for next year is also about 7%-7.5%. So I think we will have a fair participation there.
Got it. The second question was, I wanted to sort of try and better deconstruct the margin profile that we've been reporting for the motion business.
Given that I think Sanjeev Arora spoke about the weakness that the LT Motors or Motors in general have been facing for the past six to nine months, the segmental margins are sort of surprising given that Motors as per the annual report classification, Motors plus large motors plus LT Motors sort of account for 58%-60% of the segment sales. Given that that business has not been doing that well, it seems that the traction side of the business seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting in terms of margins. A, is that a fair conclusion? And B, in the press release, you spoke about SCADA systems that are going into renewable energy that also sort of have been driving demand for drives/SCADA.
I'm just curious to know whether that sits in the motion business or the Electrification business, given that you spoke about having some 10 gigawatts worth of solar projects having executed, which sort of implies like a 10-12% market share, given that India has roughly 90 gigawatts of solar capacity. Is this a space that you're incrementally more bullish on? And what is the indigenization levels in that product line or service line within Indian entity?
I just have a request. I think if you could keep your question short and sharp, it could help us actually answer it faster and also give some time for the others. So on this question, what I would like to say is the margins actually because Motors definitely forms a major portion of motion segment, no doubt about it.
But also, we have other fast-growing businesses like drives and traction converters and services within that, which also are going faster and they have more value-added solutions to the customers of it. In other words, they are more, whereas what Sanjeev was alluding to on the premiumization, the qualities, which pays off for the better margins is what is the reflection in this particular story. But it is not to be considered that Motors is actually in a scenario of competition is also performing as what it was performing in the past. So the cumulative effect of certain businesses catering to segments where there is improved price realization and Motors maintaining its momentum and the profitability is a result of CAGR and uptake of 23% and also capacities coming to be leveraged to improve the overall cost factors over there.
So this is basically a broad picture of what I could paint for motion as such.
Sure. Thanks.
Thank you.
I request for all the participants to kindly limit their questions to one per participant. I repeat, please limit your questions to one per participant. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mahesh Bendre from LIC Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Sir, we are witnessing and the economy is witnessing some kind of slowdown. All consumption companies are reporting this slackness in the demand. Even some of the industrial companies are also reporting the demand has been slowing down. So in our own assessment, have we witnessed any kind of slackness in the demand? Just a few minutes back, you mentioned that every industry requires LT Motors.
So in that sense, have we seen any slowdown in inquiries or uptake or execution as a whole in the near term?
Thank you for your question. So what we'll do is we'll give you really a hands-on input from our division leaders, which are the largest division leaders in the company. We have Ganesh, who kind of leads us with the largest business we have in the country, ELDS, then followed by Motion, Sanjeev Arora, and also Kiran Dutt, which leads to our fast-moving industrial goods business for smart products and smart businesses in the country. So they'll be able to give you a view on it. Now, I have seen some questions or I've heard some questions in the last few minutes about Motors LT Motors specifically. My take and my understanding of the journey of this business has been fantastic.
Right now, I'm sitting in the Motors plant here in north of the country, visiting this team to congratulate them in terms of the kind of journey they have performed in the last eight years, wherein they used to be low single-digit business, and now they are on the high double digits, the profitability business running in the country. They have done a tremendous expansion in the portfolio, localization, and also channelization of their business. I believe they are really at a very good spot, not only locally, but also how they affect globally and also seen by the global businesses. Sanjeev Arora and his team have done a fantastic job, and they have a great position in the market together with their channel partners as well as end-user connects.
So I absolutely see, even if there's a bit of a small change in the marketplace, I see that as a deal. But that also gives us the time to reassess our opportunities and what we want to do. And I think then the journey will continue. So at this point, I will first invite ELDS head Ganesh to really give all of you a real sense of market opportunities, whether we are seeing slowdown, is neutral, or we still see a robust market ahead. So over to you, Ganesh.
Yeah. Thank you. Are you able to hear me?
Yes.
Yes, sir.
Yeah. So I'm Ganesh calling from Distribution Solutions Division. I'm based in Nashik. So coming to market outlook, the last couple of quarters, definitely after the post-COVID, we have seen a very good increase in the order intake.
And in the last few quarters, we booked a couple of orders from data centers as well as the steel sector, which are really large in the nature. So what we are seeing in the market is data center, renewable oil and gas, and building and infra is still growing strong. There is little softening, which is happening in the heavy industry because we don't see any large expansion, which is coming in steel and cement segment. But our conventional segment, power distribution, is still going strong. So in an overall, what I can see is though there are large orders, what size which we booked in last few quarters, we see little softening in that, but that may look like a temporary.
But the base order, which is coming from renewable or building infra and other industry segments, are still looking quite strong when it comes to the distribution solutions.
Thank you, Ganesh. So over to you, Sanjeev. You may give a bit of a view on the LT Motors, which you already did, but also for the other businesses in motion, which are drives, low-voltage motor drives, high-voltage drives, and mobility. But give a sense from the point of view of the market. How do we see the market is softening or market neutral, or market is kind of looking robust from your point of view?
So thank you very much.
I think I am not to repeat myself, but then let's understand that wherever ABB has large market shares, and where, as Ganesh has said, that maybe in metals, cement, we are seeing that we don't see currently that the investment has been so great as in past quarters, we see a bit of a muted OpEx and CapEx investment. But then if you see from the overall perspective, as I said, and I will repeat again, every industry requires low-voltage motors, and with the growing demand of sustainability, drives are a very, very important product, and we are the leaders in the industry. So as a mixed effect for motion, having the full basket of the motion products which supports our industry in sustainability field, we are ahead of, I would say, most of the peers in the industry. So yes, there has been the headwind.
The demand has been a bit muted, I would say. But having said this, as sustainability field grows, even though the demand was a bit muted, but then our drive business has really picked up very well. And we have got a strong foothold in almost be it the discrete part of the industry, the light industry, or the heavy industry, we have come out as a winner there. So overall, I would say motion has been doing a great job in the industry. And as Ganesh has said, that this is a temporary period. And I repeat myself that I think the erosion, now coming specific to the LT Motor piece, erosion almost has stopped. And we are very hopeful that with the new investment coming in, we will definitely, I would have an upturn in the demand cycle of low-voltage motors as well.
Now, I also heard the question on profitability. Profitability also depends upon multiple things, so one part is price erosion, but then the second part is how you are operationally well-balanced on what segments you are actually approaching, so we have a very, very strong foothold when it comes to the energy efficiency piece, and our customers, they vouch for us when it comes to taking an energy-efficient motor from ABB. So in that segment, we are, I would say, market leaders in energy efficiency segment, and then when the customer knows the value of the product, I think the price becomes a bit secondary, so overall, I would say, yeah, a mixed reaction on the market, but then I'm pretty sure we have a very, very bright future in India to go forward, so that's a bit from my side.
Thank you, Sanjeev Arora.
Same question for you, Kiran, who really is exposed to infrastructure, buildings, and industrial projects, and also certain mobility projects. Kiran, what's your view of the market?
Thank you, Sanjeev. Let me give a simple perspective. As long as there is movement of power from point A to point B, or people moving from point A to point B, or materials moving from point A to point B, for sure we are there for the business. So having said that, let's also look at our 23 different segments of the market, and that's where probably everybody is interested to find out what is happening in this particular segment of the market, where are we into, and how is it going forward. So when I look at this, let me take some few examples. Most of us have spoken about data center.
I think data center is here to stay rather than to expand, and we find significant expansions happening from global investors as well as local investors, so we being there, we feel that we continue to contribute to the success of this particular data center business, then we are talking about movement of people. Now, railways and metros for sure are going to carry movement of material and movement of people as well. Now, looking at that particular segment, I think it is here to stay and expand, so that is certainly some segment which is for sure on a very high level of growth, and we are contributing to that particular success, and that is also contributing to our growth for electrification as such.
Let me also give you an example in terms of not the new one coming up in terms of semiconductor electronics, which is quite new in India, and for sure it's going to expand. Maybe in the next call or something later, we can take it up. But when I look at the other kind of industry, which is mainly on the F&B, I think what is important to understand, India, the rate is rising. The package industry is moving quite forward and very high. And we also see a lot of cold storage being installed in various locations to ensure that the food is fresh. And I think that is also some segment of the market which is extremely having growth.
We see that this particular, even though the food industry is small at this point of time, probably fast food, maybe in the future it's going to grow at a very fast pace. That's where we find that the market going up very high, and our contribution to this particular market is also going up. So that's how I feel, Sanjeev.
Thank you. Thank you. Also to top it up, you saw my slide on power distribution as a market segment earlier, wherein the projection is that the electricity consumption in the country will double by 2030. The portfolio that ABB has is a sweet spot portfolio right in the middle of it.
As the power flows through different consumption points, that's where ABB products find their place, be it in the motion side or on the electrification side, and also helping the industries to absorb that energy and convert them into a value-added product, and also robotics, helping the industry to become more productive, so I think that's how we play, and that's how we see the market formation. And I think now we are preparing ourselves, like say, three, four years back, if you heard our commentary, we were preparing for future, and those results are being delivered at this point of time. Now we are preparing for the future again together with our business teams, so yeah, so that's where we can leave this, and maybe we can take maybe a couple of more questions. Yeah. Thank you.
We'll take the next question from the line of Bhavin Vithlani from SBI Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen, and congratulations for good numbers amidst difficulty. My question is on the power process automation segment. Could you talk about the outlook on this segment on a one- to three-year basis? While you did mention about muted outlook in cement and steel, but specifically the pipeline that you are seeing in the oil and gas petrochemical space, that's one. The second is, what role can ABB India incrementally play on the exports or the global side, especially in the power process automation segment?
So as far as process automation is concerned, we have three divisions there. One focuses on the energy, which essentially deals with the oil and gas refineries, petrochemicals, gas distribution, ethanol, and those kind of pharma industries.
So because of that basket, we continue to have good intake of orders. So if I see the breakdown of this year as well as last quarter, oil and gas segment is a significant contributor to the order intake and the revenue mix that we have. And that's something we see going forward because there are a lot of expansion projects that are being carried out at the consumer side, like the city gas distribution. So there we have a very good participation. Then more and more blending projects are coming in this country. There again, we have a good market share. There are a lot of de-bottlenecking and expansion of the existing refineries taking place by the state PSUs as well as by the private sector. There again, we are contributing. Same thing goes into pharma, expansion in the paint. There are more players coming in the paint industry.
I think that's an area which continues to give us steady business growth, and we always go for risk-mitigated projects in that business. It's not the extraordinary growth we look for there. What we look for is steady growth, but risk-mitigated growth in that area so that we can deliver good value to customers as well as good value to our stakeholders. When it comes to the process industries, wherein the metal, cement, pulp and paper, and aluminum, and other industries are involved, there again, it's a cyclical business. There we have good order intake in cycles. Right now, we have a good backlog, which we are executing, and we have a good visibility for the revenue pipeline. There tend to be relatively large contracts in nature. It's difficult to predict when orders get realized.
When they get realized, naturally, it has an uptick on the book. And as long as we carry a good backlog and good absorption rate of our resources, I think those businesses continue to perform. Then within that, we have the instrumentation business, which is relatively small, but they are expanding their portfolio, localizing it, and they continue to gain the market share in their specialized segment in terms of water monitoring, water flow, as well as on the instrumentation and the analytics side of it because we have very good portfolio globally, and that continues to come into the market. And you'll also maybe hear some announcements for us maybe in the second quarter of next year in what we are doing in that area. There are some specific actions in place, which when they mature, I think we will inform the market.
As far as exports are concerned, we do have some export allocations for the energy business and partly for the PAPI, that is our process industry. But that business is very export-based. And so I think there is a room for us to cater to Middle East as well as African market, which we do. But we are fairly well set as a multinational corporation globally to serve our markets. And whatever we can support out of India, that's what we do. But primarily, we are focused to serve the Indian and South Asian market.
Yeah. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take this as the last question for today, which is from the line of Amit Mahawar from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Sridhar and Sanjeev. I just have one question on the EP division.
If you see the orders for last three, four quarters have been very, very strong. I just want to understand on the medium voltage and low voltage, how are we scheduling the capacity buildup? And given the competition has been very aggressively expanding, if you look at the global and local competition. So just some color on the electrification piece. Thank you.
So we always make sure that we continue to expand based on our business case. And the business case is always dependent upon our view of the market. And also the view of the market is also matched with our capacity and capability that we have developed in the country. So there are three areas that we look in. One is the existing portfolio, how much localization we have done. We go deeper onto the localization so that we are more competitive.
And also we have fostered to the market, and we have less dependencies outside the India ecosystem. So that's one part which our businesses in the electrification are doing, and they have done a tremendous job. We have opened new factories last year to expand our portfolio, and we are getting good market share with those expanded capacities. And our team in Nashik has done a great job. If you go back into our announcements, all those announcements and openings have worked well for us. Going forward, we are expanding further in line with how we see the market and the areas of focus we have. Now, we don't do the expansion purely on vision. We do expansion based on how we understand the market segment and the pace at which the market segments will grow.
We focus more on the productivity side in our existing plant so that we produce more out of same resources and same spaces. That's another area we invest a lot. So given overall mix of it, I would say we have the capacity that we need right now to what the market we want to cater in the domestic side as well as whatever export mandates we carry. Going forward, we already have a 10-year visibility in terms of how we will invest in which areas. Of course, subject to market adaptation as in when there's a serious change on the upside or downside of the market, but we will continue to invest in expanding capacity. And then you will keep hearing every year what we do and once we are ready for the expansion announcements. Yeah.
Thank you, Sanjeev, and good luck. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir.
Ladies and gentlem
en, as that was the last question for today, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. T.K. Sridhar for closing comments. Over to you, sir. Thank you very much. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for a very interesting question. It was an interactive session as well. It was a pleasure taking you through the performance of every quarter. So I think we have improved substantially from where we were, where we started to where we are today. And if there are still some unanswered questions, please feel free to sort of write down to me or Sanjeev. We will be able to answer that as fast as possible. So while I close the call, I would also like to thank Sanjeev, Sanjeev Arora.