Q1 21/22

Aug 6, 2021

A very good evening and morning, everyone. I hope you all are safe. On behalf of Hindalco Industries, I welcome you all to the earnings call for the first quarter of the financial year FY 2022. In this call, we will refer to the Q1 FY 2022 investor presentation available on company's website. Some of the information on this call may be forward-looking in nature and is covered by the safe harbor language on slide number 2 of the said presentation. In this presentation, we have covered the key highlights of all the businesses for the first quarter of financial year FY 2022, and a segment-wise comparative financial analysis of India business and our overseas subsidiary, Novelis. Please note, in this quarter, unallocable corporate SG&A expenses, which used to be apportioned to our individual business segments on certain basis so far, is now clubbed under unallocable expense or income in order to truly reflect individual business segment EBITDA in India operations. The corresponding segment information for the prior periods have also been restated accordingly for a comparative analysis. We have with us from Hindalco's management, Mr. Satish Pai, Managing Director, Mr. Praveen Maheshwari, Chief Financial Officer. From Novelis' management, we have Mr. Steve Fisher, President and CEO, Mr. Dev Ahuja, Chief Financial Officer. Following this presentation, the call any questions you may have. An audio replay of this call will also be available on our website. Let me turn this call to Satish. Thank you, Subir. A very good afternoon and morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today's conference call for Hindalco's Q1 earnings. I hope you and your families are safe and vaccinated as we continue to manage through this challenging pandemic situation. Let me start with a short update on COVID-19 and our preparations. Hindalco's management is fully prepared to tackle a third wave of COVID by fortifying its efforts to protect employees and the community. Hindalco has already vaccinated 93% of its employees and families with at least 1 dose, including third-party partners. In some states, the government is collaborating with Hindalco to vaccinate the local population at the company's own hospitals and health centers. Hindalco's dedicated team of 77 doctors, 245 paramedics is working round the clock to serve its employees and the community. Hindalco has boosted medical infrastructure and equipment in its own hospitals and health centers with critical care equipment such as CT scan machines, set up oxygen lines in remote locations to serve patients needing ICU care, and enhanced its lab testing facilities. Hindalco has also strengthened its medical teams, including adding pediatricians and upskilling its paramedics. Let me now take you through Hindalco's progress across various sustainability metrics in Q1 FY 2022 on slides 5 and 6. On the environment, there's a strong focus on water, waste, air emissions, and biodiversity. Fresh water consumption was at 18.4 million cubic meters in Q1 of FY 2022, with a continuous reduction in the consumption of water at all locations over the years. Hindalco is adding 1 site each year to the zero liquid discharge to achieve water positivity at mines and downstream units. This is being done along with the development of healthy watersheds and rainwater harvesting and moving towards its target of all site zero liquid discharge by 2025. We are committed to 100% waste recycling in terms of all waste that are hazardous, non-hazardous, and bulk waste such as fly ash and bauxite residue. We have achieved 82.7% recycling and reuse of waste in Q1 FY 2022. We have been consistently achieving 100% bauxite residue utilization at 3 out of the 4 alumina refineries. Utkal Alumina Refinery is currently running several research projects to reuse bauxite residue for mine backfilling and road construction. We are committed to reducing landfill usage by 5% every year while moving towards our target of zero landfill by 2030. On green cover and biodiversity, the company continues to do well to increase green cover with the scientific biodiversity management plan. Our green belt enhancement plan developed for 10 non-biodiversity management plan sites based on revised forest department SOPs for flora and fauna conservation. Our Aditya Sambalpur thermal power plant has implemented its first Miyawaki patch, a three-tier scientific afforestation in a 400-meter square area with the laid-down SOPs under biodiversity management plan by the IUCN. Our cumulative green belt at all our sites is now spread over 2,684 acres. On slide 6, the renewable energy and safety update. We have assessed the total potential on-site solar projects across all our units to be around 246 MW. We are committed to attain our target of 100 MW capacity by the end of March 2022. Of this 100 MW planned for FY 2022, 49 MW have been implemented and the balance 52 MW are now currently under implementation and expected to come up by FY 2022 end. We have so far identified and are in the process of finalizing 32 MW solar projects to be executed in FY 2023. We are also in discussion with developers of renewable hybrids with pumped hydro storage for 100-150 MW power for our Aditya unit. The exploration and evaluation of emerging technologies in the space of energy storage, carbon capture and utilization, and hydrogen to be used as a fuel is also being done. This is expected to improve with technology maturity and time. Currently, the cost is high and utilization areas are hazy. We are planning pilot projects in FY 2023. The specific energy consumption in aluminium was recorded at 84.6 at the end of Q1 FY 2022 on the base year of FY 2015. The LTIFR was recorded at 0.35 this quarter. There was 1 fatality recorded in Q1 FY 2022 of a contract workman in an Indian operation. We are committed to zero harm and have been continuously upgrading our safety programs and systems to meet international standards and provide safer stakeholders for our employees and contract work across our operations. Coming to slide 8 of the key highlights of our performance in Q1 FY 2022. Hindalco delivered its best ever financial performance in Q1 across all businesses, backed by improved macros, better operational efficiencies, improved product mix, and strong market recovery. Novelis recorded quarterly shipments of 973 KT, up 26% year-on-year, and an all time high EBITDA of $555 million, up 119% year-on-year on the back of higher volumes, favorable product mix, favorable metal benefits, and a $47 million gain related to a favorable decision in a Brazilian tax litigation. EBITDA per ton also stood at $570 a ton, up 75% year-on-year, and is $522 per ton, excluding the gain related to the Brazilian tax litigation. Net income from continued operation was at $303 million in this quarter versus a loss of $61 million in the corresponding period last year. Novelis launched an offering of two unsecured senior notes of $750 million each at a coupon of 3.25% and 3.875% due in 2026 and 2031 respectively. Novelis also received credit rating upgrades by S&P Global Ratings to BB from BB- on 22nd July 2021. Moving on to Hindalco's India Aluminium business performance in Q1. Quarterly business EBITDA for Hindalco India Aluminium was at a record high of INR 2,352 crores, up 142% year-on-year. The EBITDA margin was at a high of 37.5%. This quarterly margin was the highest in the last 13 years of the company and continues to be the best in the industry. Metal sales were flat year-on-year at 303 KT on account of a delayed shipment of around 10 KT. Value added product sales were up at 82 KT, up 137% year-on-year, supported by a continued revival of the domestic market. Our 500 KT Utkal expansion project commercial production is beginning in Q2 of the current financial year. Turning to the quarterly performance of the copper business on slide number 9. Copper Smelter Three ramped up well post the maintenance shutdown during this quarter. Copper production was at 63 KT, up 52% year-on-year, while CC rod production was at 44 KT, up 67% year-on-year. Metal sales was at 80 KT, up 36%, while CC rod sales were at 46%, up 50% year-on-year in line with market recovery. Copper EBITDA was recorded at INR 261 crores in Q1 FY 2022. Coming to the quarterly consolidated performance, the EBITDA was at a record INR 6,790 crores, up 188% year-on-year. Quarterly consolidated PAT for continued operation was at INR 2,264 crores versus a loss of INR 569 crore in the corresponding period of last year. Hindalco continues to maintain its strong treasury balance of around $872 million in Novelis and INR 9,425 crores in India at the end of June 2021. The consolidated gross debt was down by about INR 16,345 crores, while net debt was lower by INR 10,389 crores from the peak on 30th June 2020, resulting in a significant improvement in the net debt to EBITDA to 2.36 times at the end of June 2021. I'm happy to share the recent credit rating upgrades for Hindalco. In July 2021, CRISIL upgraded Hindalco's credit rating by one notch to AA+ with stable outlooks for bonds. CARE Ratings also affirmed the AA+ credit rating with an outlook upgrade from negative to stable for long term loans and bonds of Hindalco. Turning to the broader economic environment on slide 11. As per IMF's latest estimates, global economy is expected to expand by 6% in calendar year 2021, after contracting by 3.2% in calendar year 2020, largely supported by post-recession rebound in major economies. The deepening divide between advanced and emerging economy growth performance is led by differences in the pace of the vaccine rollout and the extent of fiscal policy support provided by the governments. Close to 40% of the population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated, compared with 11% in the emerging market economies, and an even smaller fraction in low-income developing countries. Growth in advanced economies is firming up, led by large-scale fiscal support and the easing of pandemic restrictions, primarily in the U.S. and to some extent, Europe. Recovery in emerging economies is also supported by pent-up demand and rising commodity prices to some extent. On the domestic front, the momentum in economic recovery in the H2 of FY 2021 was interrupted by the second wave. Recent uptick in indicators like PMI, exports, GST suggest that economic activity is showing signs of recovery in Q2 of FY 2022. The easing of supply-side pressures, gradual rise in pent-up demand, and expected acceleration in the pace of vaccination should see improvement in economic activities. Downside risks in the form of 3rd wave, limited direct fiscal support, and rising inflation continue to remain a challenge. We believe that the government's targeted fiscal support and the RBI's accommodative monetary policy should support economic recovery. The market estimates GDP in the range of 8.5%-10.5% for FY 2022. Now let me take you through the aluminum industry overview in slides 12 and 13. The global production in H1 CY 2021 grew by 6% year-on-year to 34 million tons, led by a 9% increase in production in China and a 3% growth in the rest of the world. Global consumption in CY 2021 also rebounded sharply by 14% year-on-year to 34 million tons due to the low base effect. In H1 CY 2021, the Chinese consumption grew by 12% year-on-year, while the rest of the world grew by 18%. With both production and consumption at 34 million tons, the markets were balanced as the Chinese deficit of 0.3 million tons was offset by a surplus of 0.2 million tons in the rest of the world. Over in Q2 CY 2021, the overall world consumption saw a growth of 12% year-on-year due to the base effect, reaching 17.5 million tons, while production expanded by 7% year-on-year to 16.9 million tons. In Q2 calendar year 2021, the markets were in a deficit of 0.6 million tons. In the world excluding China, consumption grew sharply by 33% year-on-year to 6.5 million tons, primarily due to the base effect. The production grew by 4% year-on-year to 7.2 million tons, leading to a marginal surplus of 0.3 million tons. In China, consumption grew by 1% year-on-year to 10.6 million tons. Demand for ICE vehicles in the auto sector has softened due to the shortage of semiconductors and the withdrawal of some of the subsidies offered by local governments. The Chinese government's encouragement for EV and renewables, especially solar, is expected to boost Chinese consumption. The production increased by 9% year-over-year at 9.7 million tons. With a consumption of 10.6 million tons in Q2 calendar year 2021, the Chinese markets were actually in a deficit of 0.9 million tons. With the markets balanced and improvement in global consumption, aluminum prices continued to grow by 14% year-over-year to $2,399 per ton in Q2 calendar year 2021 from an average of $2,096 per ton in Q1 of calendar year 2021. On a quarter to date basis, the Q3 CY 2021 global aluminum prices continue to rise and have reached $2,487 per ton. Coming to slide 12, in Q1 FY 2022, the domestic demand is estimated at 884 kt, a 54% growth year-on-year on account of the low base effect. If you compare Q1 FY 2022 sequentially, the consumption dropped 18% year-on-year due to the COVID second wave. Lower automotive production has led to a 10% drop in the import of scrap compared to Q4 of FY 2021. With lockdowns and phased unlocking in the country, trade markets were also soft during the quarter. Electrical, Building and Construction, consumer durables, industrial machinery were also affected in this quarter. The bright spot in this quarter was the strong demand in food and pharma packaging. Sequentially, the sales of domestic primary producer was lower by 19% year-on-year at 173 kt. Due to weak demand sentiment, imports excluding scrap also sharply de-grew by 27% year-on-year in this quarter. Going forward, with declining COVID cases, economic sentiments are likely to revise. Moving to slide 14, the global FRP demand is expected to grow by 9% in calendar year 2021 versus a contraction of around 4% in calendar year 2020 on account of recovery in demand and base effect. You must have gone through the details of the segment-wide end market outlook in the Novelis presentation. I will just quickly refresh some statistics end market outlook for calendar year 2021. The overall market demand for beverage can sheet is estimated to grow by approximately 3%-6% in calendar year 2021, as beverage can continues to show its resiliency with increased demand for sustainable aluminium cans across all regions. Due to the highest demand in this segment, significant can-making expansions have been announced in the next 2-3 years. The automotive segment is estimated to grow between 20%-25% in calendar year 2021 due to the base effect and continued revival of demand. The semiconductor shortage is expected to have a short-term impact on OEM production and demand. The overall demand in the aerospace sheet is expected to grow in the range of 5%-10% in calendar year 2021 as air travel starts to normalize. As vaccine rollouts are a positive step towards increasing consumer air travel, demand for premium aerospace sheet from OEMs is expected to remain at similar levels as fiscal 2021, with an uneven recovery to follow. India FRP demand will grow year-on-year due to the low base effect, while it is expected to decline sequentially due to the impact of lockdowns in the country in Q1 FY 2022. Demand is strong in pharma and food packaging industries, whereas other segments including consumer durables, automotive, B&C sector faced headwinds this period. Domestic demand of FRP is estimated to recover in Q2 FY 2022 in a phased manner with unlocking in this country. Turning to the copper industry globally on slide 15. In H1 CY 2021, global consumption of copper increased by 9% year-on-year due to the base effect. China production and consumption both grew by 9% year-on-year. World ex-China production grew by 2.5%, while consumption grew by 9% year-on-year. The economic rebound with the push in demand for EVs and green energy has also boosted the global prices of copper to a lifetime high of $10,700 a ton in May 2021. In Q2 calendar year 2021, global production of copper grew by 6%, whereas the consumption increased by 5% year-on-year to 6.1 million tons as compared to the corresponding period last year. This was mainly on accounts of recovery in world ex-China, where consumption grew at a faster pace by around 22% year-on-year. Chinese demand de-grew by 6% during the same period on accounts of lower physical demand for copper in China due to the steep rise in global prices of copper. On concentrate supply side, there were major disruptions at the mines in Chile and Peru, which contributes about 40% of global production of copper. The COVID situation as well as the community unrest in Peru has caused several mine disruptions in the first few months of the year. The spot TCRC was very tight during Q2 calendar year 2021, reaching a level of $0.09-$0.10 per pound. However, Chinese smelters advancing their maintenance shutdown plans and replacing the concentrate with blister has led to an improvement in the spot TCRC to reach $0.14-$0.16 a pound level during July of 2021. The TCRC is expected to improve further from these levels in the second half of calendar year 2021, as some new copper mines are being commissioned in the South American region. Moving to slide 16 on the domestic side, the overall domestic market grew by 30% year-on-year at 118 KT versus 91 KT in the corresponding period of last year. On a sequential basis, the domestic refined copper demand de-grew by 27% at 118 KT compared to 161 KT in Q4, due to lower demand on account of COVID related lockdowns in the country. This demand is expected to improve steadily to a normalized level in the next few quarters due to the declining COVID cases and the phased unlocking in the country. Praveen will now take you through the performance highlights of each of the business segments. Thanks, Satish. In this part of the presentation, I shall take you through the operational and financial performance of each of our businesses. Starting with Novelis on slide 19. Novelis clocked a record quarterly financial and operational performance. Novelis recorded shipments of 973 KT, up 26% YOY compared to the corresponding quarter of the last year. On the shipment mix in Q1, cans were about 58%, auto was about 17% of the total volume, speciality was 23%, and aero was about 2%. We are doing equally well on the various ongoing expansion projects. Automotive finishing lines in Guthrie, U.S., and Changzhou, China, were commissioned last year and now are ramping up in line with expectations, along with customer qualifications. The recycling, casting and rolling expansions in Brazil are on track and are likely to commission in the current quarter. Our expansion project in Zhengzhou, China, which is a part of our overall Asia growth strategy, is expected to begin in the current year. This will entail an investment of about $375 million and is expected to take about 3 years to complete. This project will include a new cold mill, automotive casting house, recycling capabilities and hot mill upgrade in China. On slide 20, you can see the comparative financial performance trend of Novelis reflecting its record quarter performance in terms of revenue, EBITDA, and net income. This is on the back of higher volumes, product mix, favorable metal benefits, and a $47 million gain related to a favorable decision in a Brazilian tax litigation. Excluding this one off gain, the EBITDA was $522 per ton in this quarter. Slide 22 shows the details of the performance of the Indian aluminum business segment. The aluminium metal production was 319 KT, up 9% YOY and 1% sequentially. The production of downstream products was also higher by 150% YOY at 86 KT in this quarter. Alumina production stood at 718 KT in quarter one, up 15% YOY and 3% sequentially, with the ramping up of 50 post the maintenance shutdown in the previous quarter. On the market front, the domestic market was rather soft due to the second wave of the pandemic, although it shows a huge growth compared to the corresponding quarter of the last year, which was even more impacted by the first wave and the lockdowns. The share of domestic sales in this quarter was 44%. VAP sales were at 82 KT, which was 27% of the total metal sales in quarter one. Moving on to the financial performance of the Indian aluminium business on Slide 23. This segment posted a revenue of INR 6,267 crore in this quarter, reflecting a growth of 41% YOY on account of higher global aluminium prices. Aluminium EBITDA was at a record high of INR 2,352 crore, up 142% YOY on account of favorable macros, better efficiencies, improved product mix, and a strong market recovery. The EBITDA margins in this quarter were highest in the last 13 years at 37.5%. Moving to Slide 25. The overall copper production was at 53 KT in this quarter, up 52% YOY. Related to the capacity, cathode production was low due to maintenance shutdown in Smelter 3 during the quarter. This smelter has now successfully ramped up and is performing well. On a comparative basis, production of CC rods was higher by 67% YOY at 44 KT, while sales stood at 36 KT, higher by 50% YOY than the corresponding period of last year. Sequentially, overall metal and CC rod sales were low due to lower production and softening of the domestic market in this quarter. The financial performance of the copper segment is on Slide 26. Revenues were up 134% YOY at INR 7,094 crores because of higher global prices of copper. EBITDA was at INR 261 crore in this quarter, compared to INR 66 crores in quarter 1 of FY 2021. Let's turn to consolidated financial numbers for quarter 1 on Slide 28. Hindalco reported an outstanding consolidated financial performance in this quarter with revenues of INR 41,358 crores, EBITDA of INR 6,790 crores and PAT from continuing operations at INR 3,254 crores. The detailed quarterly comparative financial numbers are attached as an annexure to this presentation on Slide 34. The Indian businesses of Hindalco also reported a remarkable performance in this quarter with revenues of INR 13,349 crores, EBITDA of INR 2,513 crores and profit after tax at INR 1,037 crores. These details are also provided as an annexure to this presentation on slide 35. Slide 29 shows the reduction of over INR 16,000 crore in our consolidated gross debt and over INR 10,000 crore in our consolidated net debt from the peak in June 2020. This, along with increasing EBITDA, has led to a substantial improvement in the net debt to EBITDA ratio from a peak of 3.83 times in June 2020 to 2.36 times at the end of June 2021. The improved performance and strong balance sheets have resulted into a rating upgrade of both Novelis and Hindalco by the respective credit rating agencies. Let me now hand over this call back to Satish to summarize and take you through our key focus areas. Let me conclude today's presentation with our key focus areas. We continue to deliver a strong performance across all our business segments while maintaining safe and stable operations, supported by improved macros and operating efficiencies. Our focus on cost optimization has helped the company to position itself in the first quartile of the global cost curve. With the prime driving force towards stakeholder value enhancement, Hindalco continues to focus on profitable growth through its investment in recycling, debottlenecking, and organic expansion in the stable and predictable downstream businesses in India and Novelis Hindalco's product mix diversification will help enrich its product portfolio by increasing the share of high-end value-added products in the overall product mix, so as to strengthen its position as the world's largest aluminum downstream company. Another critical area where Hindalco has done remarkably well over the last few years is on the ESG front. Hindalco continues to focus on its ESG commitment while creating a sustainable, greener, stronger, and smarter world together. Strives to be the most sustainable aluminum company in the world. Lastly, and most important, Hindalco is focused on strengthening its capital structure with a strong balance sheet by accelerating the pace of de-leveraging through robust cash generation in line with its capital allocation framework. Thank you very much for your attention, and we will now open up for questions. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star 1 on your touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question at this time, please press star 1 on your phone. We have the first question from the line of Sunil Singh from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Good evening, everyone. First question is on net debt. While on a WACC we are interested in performance more than INR 10,000 crores of de-leveraging, when I look at on a quarter-over-quarter basis, there seems to be a build-up of around INR 4,500 crores. This could be due to working capital requirements in copper. If you can just throw some more light on that and give us some more color. Yeah, you are right. In the Indian operations, the main reason is the copper requirement of working capital. This is largely driven by the higher LME in copper. You remember that it's really gone up very high, and this has resulted into extra working capital blockage. You must remember that copper working capital is funded by a very low cost buyer's credit and dollar denominated working capital loans. Really speaking, it doesn't really matter much for us. Working capital requirements are transitory. They move up and down with the LME movements. It is not really a cause of major worry for us. Okay. If I were to exclude this, will it be fair to assume on a debt side, keeping this buyer's credit, we would be down on a simple basis? You look at it in INR terms, you see Novelis debt is the same as before. Right. When you convert this into INR, there's a little bit of a U.S. dollar-INR exchange impact as well on the INR side. There's INR 1,000 crore coming purely arising from that. That's the other part of it. Secondly, one data reconciliation. You mentioned in the presentation on the first slide that the business EBITDA is INR 2.13 crores. When I added the segment EBITDAs for aluminum and copper, it came to INR 2,621 crores. Can you help me, I think probably it includes a lot of other income as well, which is affecting these two numbers. Can you help me reconcile these two numbers and if you want to just focus on the operational EBITDA, which is a number different. Yeah. Really speaking, as we mentioned at the beginning of this call, one change that we have made in the definition of segment EBITDA is that corporate overheads that were earlier apportioned between the two businesses in India, they are no longer apportioned there. It comes as a kind of unallocated expense below the segmental EBITDA line. That minus the treasury income. For example, in this quarter, we had about INR 200 crores of the corporate overheads, which is coming below, and INR 100 crores of treasury income, which is coming in there. There's a net of INR 100 crore, which is a negative net unallocated expenses, which has to be reduced from the overall segment EBITDA. Understood. That's the difference between 26 and 25. Understood. Lastly, given the cost pressures and the inflationary concerns, can you talk about how should we look at the cost of production in aluminium over the next quarter? Given the aluminium prices are also high, any change in the hedging strategy here? Thank you very much. If you remember last quarter's guidance. Q1 to Q4, the cost was up 4%. What we are seeing is Q2 to Q1, the cost will be up 5%. The cost inflation is starting to kick in because coal is sequentially up by 8%. CPC is the biggest culprit, up 25%. We are seeing Q2 at 5% more than Q1 cost of production. That's the first part. Second part, hedging, as I said, this year we don't intend to do any more. Last time, whatever I had said for this year, which was 32% at an average of 1,913, we have not done anything. Next year we were at 18%. We have now done 5% more. In fact, we just did it last few days. We got about 2,560. We are 23% hedged at INR 2,229 for next year. We have more or less reached our insurance level for next year. Understood. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Sumangal Nevatia from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. First question, on the copper side, now that the maintenance is down in Bisinpur, can we now expect on a quarterly run rate, volumes at 18-200 KG every quarter? On the profitability side, what is the quarterly EBITDA which we can get if that large portion is already fixed at a annual TCRC? Copper, you see, is driven by many value drivers. Therefore sometimes some of the things like sulfuric acid prices, what is happening on the DAP side, all these things also sometimes make a difference. You are right. In a broad sense, you should see a sustained performance now. Looking at what has happened in July, we are expecting Q2 to be operationally a strong quarter. Therefore, on the other hand, of course, the market has been a little soft, as we mentioned in the call earlier. Going forward, again, market is likely to improve. Let's wait and watch how much does it improve. The more the domestic market improves, the more is the profitability for us. Exports are less profitable in copper business. Really speaking, it's driven by many of these factors. If you want a kind of guidance on the new definition of copper segment, as we have called it out now, you should expect INR 300 crore or thereabouts to be the normal level of reported EBITDA now. Maybe a little higher or lower, depending upon how these things work. Some of the accounting noise also comes in copper business reporting. Really speaking, in some cases you will see derivative accounting playing some role there. If the LME and the rupee remain stable, that should not contribute to too much volatility there. This is the broad guidance. Understood. Even the guidance numbers which were behind us, right, the 100 KG quarterly business and volume in the coming quarter should be similar? Yes. Yeah. Roughly about 90 KT is the quarterly production that we target. We also do some kind of additional sales from different categories. The sales is around 100, production is around 90 here. Okay. I have a second question. Within the last couple of months, a few more peers announcing some debottlenecking and expansion in upstream capacity. Any updated thoughts on that? I just want to understand from medium to long term and what sort of sustainable delivery levels would you like to see, and for what period before reviewing our thoughts on capital allocation on upstream? I think that, on the debottlenecking side, even we had one line in Renukut shut down. We have pots in Hirakud that we can bring back on. We are working on all those. I think from a longer term sustainable strategy, I think you have asked me this question before. We stick to our capital allocation to value added downstream for now. The issue, Sumangal, is not just the LME, it's the source of power and the cost of power as well. LME today is at 2,600. I keep reminding people the last expansion was done in 2008 when LME was at the same 2,600. In 3 to 5 years, when the projects come in, LME goes down. I think we will stick with our strategy of putting most of the CapEx that we will generate during this high LME periods into our downstream value added business. Okay. Sir, you mentioned about ambitious debottlenecking. What sort of volumes can we add with these? Around 50 KT more. Understood. Just one last question? Recent bond rating upgrade even on the bond side, any transition of interest cost savings do we expect with this upgrade? Our current loans are mostly bank loans, project loans. We are not impacted directly by this credit rating upgrade. Our existing bond, which is actually due for repayment next year, has a fixed coupon on it. How it can help is, in case we decide to raise any money through bonds and refinance, depending upon the cost, et cetera, then those can be availed at a much cheaper rate. That is how it can help. Understood. All right, thanks and all the best, sir. Thank you, Sumangal. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Chirag Kinkari from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Sir, my first question is on coal. We have recently seen several coal auctions, which has taken place for new blocks. From Hindalco's perspective, sir, is it fully covered on coal or do you see any aggressive participation by the company in the coal block auction? No, Chirag. We participated in Burapar, and we were the only bidder. That's why it did not happen. If you know the process, the government will bring it back, and then if we are the only one, we will get the coal block. Chakla we got for INR 5 million, and Burapar is also another INR 4-5 million. We would love to get majority of our coal, 75%-80% in-house now, rather than be exposed to e-auctions and linkages, et cetera. Sir, just going back to the aluminium smelting capacity addition, I know you've answered this before as well in previous calls. If tomorrow, over the next few months, if the company has more visibility on accessible production within its own mine, will it relook at spending capacity expansion? All I can tell you, Pinakin, we will continue to evaluate. I'll tell you that it's not related to coal. It is very unlikely we will put new smelting capacity that's coal-based. If you look at even my remarks, which we are talking about in Aditya, we can get now 130, 150 MW of power from pumped hydro. We have to put some additional pots and all in Aditya. We will try to do it with cleaner source of energy. That's what we are evaluating, not coal-based. Are we looking at other energy so that we can put more smelting in Aditya Mahan? Yes. It's not related to coal-based. Understood. Thank you very much. Sir, my second question is on copper. Copper smelting over the years has been, I won't use the word difficult, but it has been a volatile business in terms of what you purchase. At this point of time, in terms of the overall EBITDA contribution to Hindalco is 3%-5%. There is a meaningful working capital block, and from what you said that it is volatility. How do you see the future of the copper smelting business within the overall Hindalco framework? Will it grow? If it won't grow, will it remain within the company? Do you think that at some point of time divestment is possibly an option? Pinakin, let me just tell you what our next 3 to 5-year plan for copper is. I think that in the next 3 to 5 years, we are going to add further downstream capacity in copper rod and copper tubes. We are looking at about 100 KT of copper cathode production coming from the scrap route to be added. These are the two things that we are going to do. I think that as a part of our sustainability strategy, both aluminium and copper fit in quite well. Both are in high demand for the electrification. This is why we think at least in the next 3 to 5 years, our strategy is to expand copper downstream as well as scrap-based copper production. That CapEx should happen over the next 18-24 months or a slightly more period now? I think that we will probably finalize that. The copper rod one you're going to see fairly quickly. Just hold on. Understood. Thank you very much, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Moving to the next question from the line of Amit Dixit from Edelweiss. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the results. I have two questions. First one is on the recent board approval on INR 3,000 crore investment for the production capacity of 120 KTPA. What kind of incremental EBITDA do you expect from this? I am not going to give you our RFA details, but it's 170 KT of high-end FRP products that are going to come out of the Hirakud Aditya complex. What are those FRP products, if you can name those products? Mostly, we are going to do a combination of hard alloys which go into defense and industrial. It's going to do ACPs that go into B&C. It's going to be certain amount of can body stock. These are probably the three major products that it's going to do. Certain amount of foil stock as well. By the way, one thing I wanted to tell you guys in general is that we are flat out on the FRP side trying to meet the local demand. Really, we cannot meet the local demand right now. Okay. A follow-up that is, if the local demand remains as strong as it is, can we expect more capacity expansion at Aditya Mahan? Look, what we announced, which I've been talking about, good you caught the board approval today, is the second phase of Hirakud, which is 170 KT. That will take us 2 to 3 years to execute. Simultaneously, the extrusion expansion in Silvassa is going on. I think the next 2 to 3 years, we are going to focus on implementing these two. Of course, a phase 3 will come as well. The hot mill in Hirakud is about 450 KT. With this expansion, we would have reached 270. We still have more space to expand in Hirakud. Understood, sir. Very helpful. The second question is on coal source. You can mix if you can, let us know for this quarter, how much was linkage, your own coal, and e-auction. What is the likelihood of mix in the financial going ahead? This quarter linkage was 69, e-auction was 22, own mine was 5. I think that going forward, the own mine part will go up a little bit because we are getting now coal from Kathautia as well. 5 may become 10% in Q2, Q3. Thank you very much and all the best. Thank you. Next question in the line please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First, on ESG, you just said one initial remark about renewable projects with storage from hydro. You indicated a number of 130 megawatts, and incremental 2.6 million capacity. Sir, if it's possible, can you detail more on the pumped hydro? That's one. Secondly, you also touched upon CCUS by 2023. Just wanted to understand what is the eventual, basically game plan over here and follow-up investments, et cetera. That's the first question on ESG. Yeah. The first part, I think you should check out companies like Greenko, which I think you probably are following in India. In Andhra, they have a pumped hydro, so basically they pump the water up and then use it to generate energy. We have been trying to work with them to see if they can at least replace one full unit of Aditya, which is 130-150 megawatts. If we can get that at a reasonable economics, that is the project that we have been discussing with them. On the second part on carbon capture and sequestration, the stuff that makes coal dirty is the high CO2 emission. There is a lot of work going on in seeing how you can capture the carbon and sequester it. It's not a new concept. The cost of sequestration can be quite high. There are many Western projects going on. As those things pick up momentum and the technology evolves, we are trying to work with some companies to see if that we can do a pilot in India as well. That's useful. Just specifically on pumped hydro, any specific numbers on the economics you are looking at for a hurdle rate for us to ship for 130, 150 MW, what you indicated? Look, something around INR 4-INR 4.5 will make it economically viable. That's useful. Sir, my second question is, you touched upon the Hirakud extrusion of 170 GP. It is around $2,300. What sort of IRR are we looking at over here? I think earlier in our comments we have indicated we were looking at certain trade measures from the government before we embark anything material on the downstream side. Any update over there? You did indicate Hirakud capacity was 250 and the current announcement is to 270. Can you help reconcile the difference between previous extrusion versus the recent announcement and finishing the 450? Just some little leg over that, if you could help detail that number, please. Don't mix extrusion with rolling. Extrusion is completely a different process from billets. The hot mill is for rolling products. 250, if you're at 100, 170 added, you are at 270. You have another 180, 170, 50 more to do for another cold mill further down the road. That's the reconciliation of the Hirakud hot mill. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. On the Chicago contention also around $2,300. Want to look at the IRR and ROCE over here, specifically with respect to trade measures. The IRR of the project, with the current product mix we are looking at, should be around north of 15%. Sir, is this number a bit conservative? You could say, because it depends on the pricing and the product mix. IRR of 15% on a base case, I think I'm quite happy to launch the project. Okay. Last one up, are we expecting anything from the DGTR on any of the projects where we are putting on priorities? Yeah. There are 3 trade cases going on right now. The first one is under Malaysia for wire rod, coil stock from ASEAN, as well as FRP from China. All 3 are in fairly advanced stages, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. The government is quite serious about these cases. Very useful. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Indrajit from CLSA. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. A couple of questions from my side. First on the alumina expansion. I think the presentation here mentioned it will be commissioned in this quarter, that's 15th October. Have we tied up buyers for the alumina or what stage we are in, or are we in advance stage of reducing the utilization of our existing refinery? As I had mentioned before, some part of it will be internal, some part we are talking to one domestic user of alumina, and trying to finalize that. Correct. When will it start? Next quarter? It will be sold in open markets. What is it? Is it? By the way, this week it is already starting to produce. I think that we will sell it initially to a domestic user of alumina. I don't know if I can be more clearer than that. No. That's helpful. My second question is actually for Dev Ahuja. One clarification from the earlier Novelis call. I think in 3 years' time, we will be at $20 million+ annualized run rate of synergies from Aleris. I think Dev Ahuja highlighted that we will achieve that $350 million annualized EBITDA run rate again in 3 years' time. How should we look at it? That the first while without synergy, EBITDA will be just about $150 million, or actually EBITDA could be much higher including the synergies for Aleris? Yes. Here's the thing. We are talking about the short term. We are talking about the next two to three years. Synergy is worth a disproportionate part in the. We are not saying that things will stop there. In two years, it will obviously play a role. We have the opportunity to do much better and faster. Beyond the momentum continues, just because of recovery of aerospace, for example, where in the next two years it will still be a business, I would say. One thing is that synergy will play a role. Long-term, there is more momentum, and it is not going to stop. We are very comfortable with it going well above INR 400. With all the time that in our calculation phase, these numbers were possible with those four and a fifth performing four can be digested. I think that the picture in a very good position. I don't know whether I'm answering your question. No, that's helpful. Thanks. Operator? Did we drop off? I don't know. Operator, you there? I think he should see if I still hear you guys. You can hear me, right? I can hear you. Yeah. We can hear you. I don't know if the operator dropped off. Maybe. Operator? You going to drop off? You can talk from your mobile. Could we proceed to the next question? Yes. We were waiting, wondering whether you dropped off, operator. We proceed to the next question from Mr. Raj Nahar from Milli Consulting. Please go ahead. I'm sorry. We move to the next question. Mr. Raj Nahar, your line is unmuted. Please go with your question. I think go to the next one. There's a problem on this line. Sure, sir. We'll proceed to the next question. The next question from the line of Vishal Chandak from Blame Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. My question is with respect to this, Duffel. I guess nine months ago, the consideration and we had pretty confidently launched an arbitration that we will get €7 million. In a span of nine months, we have actually written down more than half of what we were expecting. I just wanted to understand whether the balance, $49 million, €47 million, are we still confident or we will see some more write-off soon? Also, what was the reason for writing off €31 million within nine months of considering the arbitration? Thank you. Steve? Yes. To just make sure that we understand. We had an agreement to sell Duffel plant for €310 million. There was a dispute over EUR 100 million. We closed the transaction, received EUR 210 million, the EUR 100 million is what's left to be sold through arbitration. We feel very comfortable with what we perceive would be the outcome in arbitration, based on the merits and facts of the case. We continue to feel very good about that. With that said, that process takes a tremendous amount of time. It distracts management's attention away, comes with a lot of legal expenses to be clear. Ultimately, we do not know exactly how an arbitrator would rule, even though we feel very good about the case. We did have some discussions with the party to try and close this, and we'd be willing to settle this today or in the very near future for $45 million. We think that would be a good place to settle it in the near term, considering all the time and kind of money and legal fees to get there again. If we can't settle this, we still feel very comfortable. We'll continue with the arbitration, and it will just take some period of time to ultimately get an overruling somewhere in the 1.5-2 year timeframe. Nothing from a factual standpoint has changed. It was just more, it was a way to potentially move on and settle at a level we feel very comfortable with today. What you have mentioned is that it would take a lot of management's bandwidth, and this can sound very convincing, honestly. First of all, is it that if we have a very strong case, why leave that EUR 51 million, number one? Number two, eventually what we have done with the entire transaction of Aleris net of divestment has been very expensive. So look, maybe I can- Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Steve. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I would just say- Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Satish. No, I think that the issue that Steve is trying to outline is that the time value of the money. If we do the arbitration, which lasts over 2 years, with an entity that is facing, as you know, some pretty clear financial stress, versus if they are trying to do a settlement, sell the Duffel assets to someone else, and the emphasis on what Steve is saying is in the very near short term, we can get EUR 45 million. To our stakeholders, that may be a better option than trying to wait and fight an arbitration with a company that we are not sure how strong they are going to be or survive going forward. That's the sort of judgment call we are taking. If we don't get the EUR 45 million in the next very short term, we will proceed with the arbitration. This is a receivable that we will be sort of taking a call on it at the end of every quarter. I don't know if that's making sense. No, this makes perfect sense. As you rightly explained, compared to whatever is receivable from a 100% credit customer, we ate loss forever. I completely see. Thank you very much for the update, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gopal from SBI Life. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, realization during this quarter on the aluminium side seems to be a bit better versus the LME movement and the hedging which we have. What would have helped you there, sir? I'm sorry, you're saying that the realization seems better than what you have calculated, is it? Remember that we have about 80 KT of downstream products as well that gets an additional EBITDA. I was just sequentially, I was checking. Is there any change in the mix sequentially? No, actually, see, sequentially, because in this quarter the sales have been a little bit lower, if you notice at INR 303. Yeah. We had 10 KT stuck at the port. The domestic market was weak, so we exported a little bit more. Really the discount in this quarter has been little bit higher than the discounting in Q4. Any higher realization has been purely because of LME. Okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Pradeep Jain from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. A couple of questions, one on the Capital Intensity of INR 4,800 seems pretty low. Is it just because of downstream expansion or can I actually understand, is there hot mill capacity that is already there and this investment is only on cold mill or this is cold mill also? That's why I said the cold mill is already there. This is adding casting capacity, remelt, cold mill, and some finishing equipment. Okay. The hot mill is already there, you said? Yes. I mean, the hot mill that we got from Novelis right at the beginning of the Hirakud project, it's a 450 KT hot mill. The first phase of the project was about 100 KT of rolled products that we got off the ground. Now with the help of Novelis experts, we are now launching the next 170 KT, and we are going up the value-added product level. As I keep saying, there's a third cold mill that will come in after this one is finished. When you look at the return expectation of 13%, that is basically applying EBITDA per ton close to what you see in your Novelis world book case. Are you pricing in decreased pricing pressure in India, or is it just the advantage of having a lower cost base, or a combination of both? The cost actually is quite favorable. I think the real differentiator here is the type of products we are selling. This 170 KT, nearly 50% of it will be exported. It is a much higher-end product, with higher EBITDA per ton. In fact, for the first time, we're going to be selling can body stock as well, which is a quite much higher EBITDA per ton than what we are normally used to in India. Second question would be for Dev. I think in the pie, for the volume mix it seems the auto body sheet change, I mean, utilization was close to 95% on the 17% volume mix. Did you see any material decline in auto body sheet shipment in this quarter? No, we do not see any material decline at all. In fact, we will see an increase in the auto body sheet shipment because the semiconductor shortage is actually not going to be as bad as it was in the quarter we have just reported. Things will get better. Remember, we are now starting commercial shipments from the new line which has been commissioned. Customers are actually very eager to qualify the line soon. We will start having shipments in time from the new line, and also we'll see a ramp up starting this quarter. We don't see any capacity issues coming in the way. I think will be better than last quarter. Do you see a potential decline in auto body shipment? Yeah. We have potential. We have potential decline, and that was the semiconductors. That was really the semiconductor issue. The potential decline, yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. I thought you were asking about the quarter two or this quarter? Sorry. If you look at 17% of 970 KT, almost operating at 25% utilization. I was mentioning like a material decline quarter-on-quarter in auto body sheet, which you would have expected based on semiconductor shortage. Yeah. You have good points. Well, yes. I mean, there was some decline in LD volume. The line there is, I think your calculation of 95%, I hope you're taking into account that the China line is producing commercial coil now, the new one. That's what I was trying to say, that we are starting to have shipments from the new line. Right now, we are already starting to see the impact of the 300 KT capacity expansions. We are in a good place. If your point is that we are seeming very capacity constrained on the cash side, no. I mean, overall, yes, we are tight on capacity on the coil side, but not on the finished side. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhavin Chheda from Enam Holdings. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good evening, sir. Congratulations on all-time high numbers and also recently hitting a INR 1 lakh crore market cap, creating a lot of shareholder wealth. I think management team has done a wonderful job both in India and at Novelis. Sir, just few questions on, obviously, future growth from here on. You mentioned on upstream capacity expansion by adding pours wherever you are adding capacity. Will this model will be applicable for your other smelters also, and you will keep evaluating this onward? Because I think there's a lot of demand, and you are already operating full on the upstream capacity, and there lies an opportunity in synchronization downside. What will be the roadmap for next 3-4 years for on upstream capacity? Look, honestly, I'm saying again, our majority of the management bandwidth is focused on downstream expansion. I think on the upstream side, Aditya and Mahan, the two new smelters, we have enough land, and we have enough water. These are the places we will evaluate whether we get like a pumped hydro or something or some natural gas pipeline coming in, and we will evaluate it at that time. I think I want to repeat that majority of our bandwidth is focused on this downstream expansion. Sure. Second one on the coal price, which recently has seen a sharp increase. What kind of cost escalation we should model in the coming quarters? I said next quarter, 5% more than quarter 1. 5% more. Right. The last one on the net debt increase you mentioned, mainly driven by copper working capital requirements. Now since the copper price has adjusted to a high level of $10,000 odd tons, we do see some unwinding over next few quarters as your EBITDA and rates remains true? No, in copper, if the LME remains where it is, you will not see a further drain on the working capital. It will remain at that high level. As I mentioned, in copper, it is funded by buyer's credit, which is available at a sub 2% kind of a funding. Sure. It is because we have it's a dollar-denominated business, so we don't have to really hedge or anything. It's a offset which is available. Really speaking, the cost of the extra working capital is not very high for us. I mean, it's counted in our debt numbers is what Praveen's point is. It's not really a debt that way. We have a very cheap working capital working debt trend line. On a reported net debt business, I'm saying since the cash flows are very strong, so based on reported net debt numbers, if the copper remains at current level, our reported net debt could go down by next fiscal end, right? No. Again, see, there are 2, 3 aspects to it. Operationally, we are generating good cash flow, both in Novelis and India. Typically, this cash flow, if not fully utilized for CapEx, et cetera, should reduce our debt. At least net debt, even if it is not gross debt. In quarter one, what has happened is both in Novelis and in copper business in India, the working capital requirement has gone up because of the LME of both copper and aluminium going up. Therefore, the quarter one cash flow has largely been consumed by the working capital requirements at both. In fact, it has added to our net debt. Going forward, if the LME doesn't move up from here, and if we keep generating the kind of cash we are generating, obviously you'll see some net debt reduction. If the LME comes down again, for whatever reason, let's say in copper, then that will help in de-blocking the cash within Novelis, there in the copper world. The NJP6 number for 2022? 2,700 crores. What was the MJP premium realized in Q1? Realized is a difficult one, depends on many things. MJP is running, I think currently at $160, $170. When we export most of our contracts, we get the full MJP. Domestic is different because it is a net realization. Export, we are getting the full MJP. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Pai for his closing comments. Yes. Thank you everyone, and I think that we are in a very favorable environment, both in Novelis and in the Indian business. I think that as long as we can take care of our employees and handle this COVID situation, which has not really gone away. I think that the people that can manage the situation properly are going to benefit. The market will be there, and the demand will be there. I think that is our focus to make sure that we keep our employees and our plants safe and operating, and then take advantage of the very favorable macro environment that exists. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Pai. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Hindalco Industries, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us.