Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Tata Chemicals Limited Q4 FY23 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 this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then 0 on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Gavin Desa from CDR India. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Neerav. Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Tata Chemicals Q4 and FY23 earnings conference call. We have with us today Mr. R. Mukundan, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Zarir Langrana, Executive Director, and Mr. Nandakumar Tirumalai, the Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's discussions may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. I now invite Mr. Mukundan to begin proceedings of the call. Over to you, Mukundan.
Thank you. Thanks, Gavin. Good day and welcome to everyone to our Q4 FY23 earnings call. I'm joined by my colleagues, Zarir and Nandu, for today's call. I will start the discussion with key operational highlights across segments and geographies, following which Nandu will walk through the financial performance for the year. We have ended the year on a strong note, as can be seen by the results. Revenue and profitability have registered healthy growth. More importantly, this has been healthy growth in all our geographies compared to previous years. Performance largely in line with what we had expected in the soda ash market. We expect the, in the medium term, the balance to be continuing in the soda ash market, especially because of the continued demand and start of various plants and operations both in India, around the world.
Our focus is on timely execution of our projects and efficient cost management. Now, going specifically into elements which we feel are geography specific. Starting with China, we are very enthused by the strong reopening of China, and this has led to the tightening of dense ash within China. Inventories remain low in the dense ash sector because of high demand from the glass and container glass sectors. US continues to register strong demand from all parts of the world. As can be seen, the contracts which we had mentioned last time, and we said would be visible to everybody, those contracts have started to kick in, and that will continue to hold in terms of margin expansion in US.
U.K., as we mentioned last time, will move to fixed margin from Q1. I think that effect of that fixed margin will be fully seen by Q2, basically Q1 of the next fiscal year, the current fiscal year which is running. That will continue to hold good because that sort of protects the company from gyrations which may come with the risk of gas prices, and it sort of protects us against that. In terms of Kenya and India, they serve almost similar markets. They serve the Indian market as well as the nearby markets. As you know, we have taken a price correction during the current quarter and also in the previous month of the quarter.
This was mainly to avoid discounting in the market and make sure our list price was aligned with the pricing levels prevalent in the market. As we move through the year going forward, while the prices will remain more or less flat, I think our view would be the cost will start to moderate within India. Going forward from beyond Q2, we do believe that the margin would go back to previous levels. Just as a reminder, our contribution in the business used to be at the level of somewhere around percentage gain, which we had gained in the margin structure of whatever we had gained.
We'll be able to go back to the old margin gains which we had prior to the high increase in costs which we had, which is tending to moderate now at a constant price. All in all, the way we see the market going forward, it will be that the US would continue to lead in terms of both margins and volume for us, and that is expected to marginally improve and then in fact hold right through the year. UK would moderate to fixed margin.
Kenya and India would hold flat at the current margin and start to improve from Q2 once our cost structures come down because as you know, we contract for coal, which is the coal stocks, which run for about 4-6 months, and they need to be ramped down with the new stocks. The prices are at a lower level. Broadly, our view is that demand patterns are good. Prices are more or less stable, except where there is an occasional inventory movement, especially in India. We did see some inventory coming in because of which the discounting had increased. We took a pricing correction. Overall, worldwide, we continue to see strong demand right across sectors, especially driven off the new solar glass plants which are coming up.
Three lines are expected in India and additional lines are coming up around the world. Just as a benchmark, 100 gigawatts of solar capacity needs a million ton, and every ton of lithium carbonate we said needs, 2 tons of soda ash. That should give you broad benchmark of the demand growth. Overall, in terms of demand supply, if you go on a global basis, while the demand growth will continue, region to region, depending upon where the capacities come on stream, anywhere between 2%-6% growth, the supply is not gonna keep pace with it. Even considering at some point, the 1.5 million tons of inner Mongolian capacity which we have highlighted in the past.
While this capacity will come in the interim, I think the key issue which one should bear in mind, which we can go through when we have the Q&A, is the fact that this will largely in our view, because of the high logistic cost to get it to port and beyond port, would serve the domestic market. We do believe that there is a strong reopening of China. This is gonna bode well for this capacity to get absorbed. We have continued to maintain, world needs close to about 1.5 to 2 million tons of capacity every year for remaining balanced. Till year FY27, FY28, we don't see large tracks of capacity coming on, and this market will remain either balanced or tight depending on what the current contextual situation is. Geography to geography, it could vary.
All in all, what we wanted to highlight is that the structural elements of the business remain good and we continue to invest in this business. Our capacity of 200,000 tons would come on stream in two steps. We expect 100,000 tons of soda ash to come on stream in India. Additional 100,000 tons to come a year later. In addition to that, the salt capacity would also go up in India by about 200,000 tons, but that will be slowly absorbed in the market at the rate of 100,000 tons for every year. In U.S., we are in the final stages of finishing our debottlenecking details, and we do intend to add at least 400,000 tons of capacity in U.S.
This addition would come in a period of about 24-28 months. Broadly, that is the context of our growth. In terms of the our specialty portfolio, Rallis has had a difficult quarter in terms of cleaning up its balance sheet. With this cleanup behind it, I think Rallis is poised for a steady and a strong year-on-year growth going forward. In terms of our two other specialty forays, this quantities continue to rise, the capacity utilization continue to rise. As far as Cuddalore is concerned, the board has agreed to add additional capacity of another 10,000 ton in the short term, in addition to the current capacity, and also pivot our entire capacity to tire grade, and we would be focusing on that grade going forward more and more.
With these words, I just wanted to highlight that our strategy continues to be in place. Structural characteristic of the market continue to be in place. We remain watchful because of the high interest rate environment in the market of market conditions, and we continue to focus on cost management to ensure that we continue to deliver on the margins and the return profiles to our stakeholders. Thank you. With this, I invite Nandu to give his comments.
Thank you, Mukundan. Good afternoon to all. I will broadly cover in four different sections my. One is in terms of, is for the quarter for consol. Two is in terms of the annual performance. Three is each geography, and fourth ending with cash and CapEx. On the first part for the quarter for the company as a whole, we had good financials for the quarter. Revenues for the quarter grew by 27% over last year's Q4. The growth was broad-based with all businesses and geographies performing well. EBITDA grew by 47% and stood at INR 965 crores for the quarter. The margins expanded by 3% and it was at 31.9% for the quarter, aided by higher sales and improved cost management.
Coming on to the annual performance for last financial year, our revenues stood at INR 16,679 crores, almost 33% more than last year. The EBITDA was at INR 3,822 crores, 67% more than last year. The margins improved by 4.5% and at, standing at 33%. As far as the whole part is concerned, the profit for the year was at INR 2,452 crores against INR 1,400 crores last year. A 35% increase over in PAT. The PAT margin was at 14.6%. The financial year ended March 2023 was perhaps the highest ever across all geographies and for the company as a whole. Moving on to individual businesses, starting with India, the revenue for the quarter grew by 17% year-on-year for the quarter.
Growth was largely due to higher revenue on account of better selling price amidst stable demand. Salt and bicarb business as well performed well. A higher operating leverage resulted in better margins for the quarter. Last year in Q4, we had a one-off INR 65 crores tax relief which boosted the income last year, which didn't come in current year's Q4, and hence the PAT numbers for India were lower than last year's Q4. In the US, we saw good performance for the business. The newer contract, as Mukundan mentioned, entered for the calendar year kicked in January, and those helped us in the quarterly profits, and we had a healthy margin for the quarter. Europe as per, which means UK had good performance on the back of the high pricing and volumes.
Salt and bicarb registered good growth, in turn helping the business to register revenue growth over last year. PAT grew very well. We had a loss last year. The benefit of gas hedging remained till March 2023. We got the benefit of that during the quarter. We also made a one-off deferred tax asset creation in the quarter in the U.K., which boosted the PAT numbers for U.K. for the quarter. Kenya too had good growth over last years because of higher revenues and better profits. Balance sheet was, and cash flows were strengthened during the year. Kenya became debt-free during the year 2023.
New trends silica Mukul has covered in depth. Rallis we had a one-off kind of a provision on inventory and impairment of intangibles in seed business of INR 63 crores during the quarter, and that impacted the profits for Rallis for the quarter. On overall consol basis, we had INR 2,398 crores of cash at the end of audited. Net debt was at INR 3,898 crores. The consol CapEx for the year in all is about INR 1,600 crores. We are very much focused on cash generation and paying off debt over a point of time. With that, I close my comments. I hand over back to the moderator to open up for your questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star 1 on their touchtone 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. A request to all the participants, please restrict to two questions per participant. If time permit, please come back in the question queue for a follow-up question. The first question is from the line of Suman Kumar from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. My question is for India business. You are talking about margin recovery in Q2, FY24. Can you talk about the, whatever the, raw material, lag we have, say power cost, we are buying coal from Indonesia. What is the lag effect? How many months lag effect we have for the soda ash business in India?
Yeah.
Any other raw material.
Yeah. Correct. Correct. thank you. The main reason why we keep that inventory during the first half of the year, because it built during monsoon, the shipping delays happened from Kenya, from Indonesia to India. To avoid that, we do keep stock, and I said it peaks at about 6 months and goes down to 3 months during the year. It is, so you can take an average of 4-5 months at any point of time in terms of inventory, which is as prices come down, it'll take its own time to sort of wash through the inventory build up I think.
Okay. Do you think India business will reach at whatever the peak margin we have seen in past quarters? Have you reached that level or that will normalize from there?
The margin level India business, India has always been a leading margin business. Broadly speaking, the next year, I think you will start seeing U.S. to lead the margins massively. I think the key lever for us in terms of performance going forward next year is gonna be that, I'd mentioned this, U.K. will go to fixed margin structure, which means they will be profitable, but they'll be on a fixed margin. Kenya and India, the margins would moderate to normal levels, but they are much higher than what used to be before pre-COVID. We are gonna be in that structure because that is the nature of the current demand supply environment.
U.S. would also improve and go get to the margin levels we have seen worldwide, that means there's gonna be an expansion in U.S. margin. The way we see next year panning out is fundamentally that numbers from U.S. will substantially change. Numbers from India more or less will hold around the same levels. Numbers in Kenya and U.K. would moderate and would stabilize to normal profitable levels. This will be at a higher level than what we used to see before COVID.
Thank you. Sorry to interrupt you, Sumanth. I'll request you to join the queue again. A request to all the participants, please restrict to 2 questions per participant. The next question is from the line of Abhijit Akella from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. First on the Europe business, this INR 225 crore EBITDA for the quarter, you know, is there some hedging, gas hedging benefit still within that? If so, could you please quantify that? When you are alluding to, you know, a fixed margin structure for the year ahead, would it be possible to share with us broadly, I mean, what sort of, you know, EBITDA numbers, we should be looking at for the?
Yeah. I think, yeah. Abhijit, I understand your question. I think just wait for next quarter result. That will tell you the constant margin number. I think it is, it is, we would not want to disclose that. In terms of deferred tax asset and one-offs, I think Mandip can highlight.
Yeah. Abhijit, I think, we spoke about our hedges being in place up to March 2023. The benefit of our lower cost hedge of gas also has played out in Q4 also. We also had the one-off tax benefit which came out of INR 50 crores, in the, in UK in Q4. That won't come back in Q1.
fundamentally th
Impact.
At the PAT level, the positive impact of tax asset. In terms of the gases, they were in play. For you to get a peek into the fixed margin, I think just wait for Q1 result. Because of the fixed margin structure, one, we have a very assured volume offtake within U.K., so volumes are not gonna be under pressure at all. Secondly, I think the company will be consistently profitable.
Okay. Sure. The second question I just had was with regard to upcoming supply additions in the world market. Regarding this Inner Mongolia project, apparently the news from China, or at least the claims from China are that, you know, they are trying to ramp up this capacity to 5 million tons within this calendar year itself. Is that something that, you know, you're seeing as well? Also, if you could just help us with regard to other capacity expansions coming up across the globe. I believe there is something in the U.S., you know. If you could just help us with that over the next 1 or 2 years, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, in terms of capacity addition, Abhijit, I mentioned already, but I think world needs about 1 to 1.5 million tons every year going forward. If you add 2 years, it's gonna be 2.5 million tons coming. The world needs it to be balanced. Exact month and when it is gonna come, I think we can't predict as of now, but broadly. The additions also I think will be broadly in that range or slightly below that range. As far as Mongolia is concerned, our information, our understanding is still 1.5 million tons.
Over a period of time they'll go to 5, but we haven't, the last time the only natural capacity which came up was in Turkey, and it came up in tranches of 1 or 1.5 million, spread over a quite a long time. I don't think it's gonna come in in that speed. If it does, we will keep you posted. Right now, our information is only about 1.5. Also the second element, which is unlike in Turkey where the plant is very close to port, I think that's about 200 kilometers to port. Inner Mongolia has a long distance to travel to any port and get to any export market.
Our view remains that it'll large amount of displacement it'll do with the Chinese domestic market. It, it is gonna challenge the domestic synthetic manufacturers more, and they will be under pressure to. Some of the weaker units in China may actually close down. In fact, they have been pretty much the government has been in China very forceful in terms of meeting environment targets and shutting down capacity. It, you're gonna find some kind of a reordering there. I cannot predict how, but it is a natural process which will happen. And to give you an example of that natural process, in U.S. where we have 12 million tons of natural capacity, prior to this natural capacity coming on stream, U.S. was fully synthetic.
All the synthetic capacity in U.S. got wiped out over a period of time because natural capacities came on stream. Any natural capacity coming in any geography, that immediate geography gets to sort of challenge the synthetic capacities there. As I also mentioned, synthetic plants, they generally cannot export for long distance because their cost of production is high, so they can't bear a large amount of logistic cost. The comparative position of Chinese synthetic plants are as good as our synthetic plants, so I don't see any issues at all on competing with them. The issue is gonna be that how do they step up and compete internally within China, we need to watch.
This whole element of that Inner Mongolia capacity will play itself out, but will maybe play itself out very differently from the way Turkey played, because Turkey's capacity had to be absorbed in other markets. Large amount of displacement they did was in Europe, it did find its way to multiple markets. I would leave it there, and I think we should watch this very closely. Our view is not, I would say in terms of, our view is that it may not disturb the world markets as Deepan would expect. Of course, there are always fears that one need to be prepared, we are focused on being cost competitive and being ready for them.
Thank you. Abhijit, I'll request to join the queue again for a follow-up question. Next question is from the line of Vivek from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you so much for the opportunity, and congratulations on the result. Two small clarifications and one question from my side. Just to, just to clarify, there are no one-offs on the India cost side. It's just the lag effect of your inventory which will normalize. Is that fair?
Yeah, that is fair. Absolutely fair. I think it would normalize over a period of a year. That's where that's the way we believe because I think the cost will normalize over a period of time, but the market pricing would, we have to implement immediately in line with the cost, you know, expected cost structures which we have.
Sure, sir. When you say normalized level of margins, would the first half of financial 23 be a good benchmark? What should we consider to be a normalized margins for this India segment?
I think it will be closer to Q3 of, maybe, between Q3 and Q4. That's where I would keep it around. It'll be better than Q4, over a period of time, but, maybe tagged below Q3.
I'm sure, sir. Very helpful. The one question I had was on the demand side, if you could just throw some more light with respect to the downstream demand trends that you've been seeing across your key markets, and across your portfolio. That'll be super helpful. Thank you so much.
Sir, can you repeat the question?
Yes, sir. If you could just throw some more color with respect to the downstream demand trends that you're seeing. You obviously mentioned demand is healthy, but if you could just give a little bit more color in terms of the segment that's driving demand, if you're seeing really good growth or if there's any slowness in any particular segment. Some more color on that front would be really helpful.
See, I'm just gonna highlight that growth across segments, across categories is very good. The growth drivers, as I mentioned, are all sustainability drivers, which is shift to glass and, when you, when I say glass, it is more due to solar glass and container glass, where sustainability is playing a big role, and also for lithium carbonate. Let me just say the small pocket of weakness which we do see in some markets is the light ash demand, and I think this is about the producer's portfolio not keeping pace with the demand patterns. I think this, we, some of us need to sort of shift the product portfolio towards more dense ash and less light ash, that's the only element which I see. It's also in pockets.
For example, it's in pockets in markets where synthetic plants exist, mainly in China and maybe partly in India. Light ash does not travel because the port authorities don't tend to give approval for light ash unloading because the material tends to disperse a lot in the air, and very difficult to get it across through multiple ports, except as bag cargo.
Thank you. Vivek, I'll request you to join the queue again. I request all the participants, please restrict to two questions per participant. The next question is from the line of Arjun Khanna from Kotak Mahindra Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Sure. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on a good set of numbers. The first question is in terms of the CapEx. You did allude to, or you did explicitly say you're looking at an expansion in the U.S. market, debottlenecking. Have we talked about what would be the CapEx for the same? How much would that cost?
Yeah. We'll come with the exact numbers in the next quarter, because by next quarter we would be very clear about the contours of that. Are doing detailed engineering, and we would sort of, it's almost in the final leg. The India capacity also will move from the current 1 million, which will be fully, the current expansion will finish. India capacity also will move to 1.3 million tons. Another 300,000 tons is being added in Chhattisgarh. That adds up to about 700,000 tons. We are also looking at where, which are the other geographies we can sort of add another 300,000 ton to take our additional 1 million ton overall.
India capacity is gonna the 200,000 ton is coming immediately to go to 1 million, and then go to 1.3 in the next step. Their detailed engineering work is going on, which also should be completed by this quarter, and we'll be able to give exact specific numbers. As far as U.S. is concerned, the 400,000 ton there also will get completed, and we'll be able to give exact numbers.
Sure. Secondly, in terms of the amount of debt, we are down to INR 770 million gross debt. We also saw the interest costs and are increasing globally. How do you anticipate this debt position to play out going forward? Given that we have a heavy CapEx, do you anticipate the net debt from around INR 4,000 odd crores to come down going ahead?
I think this year our plan is to, I said last year that we plan to pay down about $100 million. In fact, we've done more than that across all geographies. I think $80 odd million in US and about
Forty.
$40 million, $40 million in Kenya. About GBP 20 million, GBP 20 million in UK. We've done more than what we had planned. This year, our plan is to do anywhere between $200 million-$250 million of pay down our debt.
Sure. This would obviously be after the CapExes that we have envisaged for this year.
Yeah. This is including all this. We are not going, having any borrowing or equity plan to do the rest.
Thank you, Arjun. I will request you to join the queue again. Next question is from the line of S. Ramesh from Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Thank you, good morning, congratulations on the good results. If you look at the U.S. market, the way the volumes and margins are performing, is there an expansion in the U.S. domestic market? Secondly, we were going to understand that there is competitive pressure in exports to LatAm and Asia because, you know, most of the U.S. produces out of ANSAC. Is that concern awaiting based on the pricing power you see? How do you read the competitive landscape in the U.S., for both U.S. market as well as for exports from the U.S.?
I think U.S. tends to supply mainly into the North American, Central American, and when we say U.S. market, we actually say Canada, U.S., and Mexico as one market, which is the domestic market. We, the, and the LatAm and the Far East, that is where the material goes, and some to Southeast Asia. As far as our exit from ANSAC is concerned, there are no pressures. We are fully sold out. Our exit also in terms of quantities, do wind down over a period of time. I think this year, we will be, our own volumes will be about one third of the total export volume out of the U.S., and it'll wind down in a, through phased manner over three years.
We were able to place all our volumes with customers through contracting with them all the way through. We don't see any issues in markets and markets for the dense ash out of US.
If you see the U.S. realizations based on the fourth quarter results, that is going to be sustainable over the rest of the calendar year. Because last year you got accommodation from your customers when your costs were going up. Given that there is a deflation across the various cost items, would there be some, you know, request from customers asking you to, you know, reduce the price during the tenancy of this, during the current contract period?
There is no such move, and I think you will see quarter one results when they are announced, quarter two when they are announced, the numbers. I think they're pretty much intact, and we have no reason to sort of state anything otherwise.
Thank you. Ramesh, I'll request you to join the queue again. The next question is from the line of Saurabh Jain from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity and congrats for, you know, very good set of numbers. You know, on the US contract, would it be possible for you to, you know, quantify your the new contracts that you have signed, or at least give us a percentage, I think, from last year?
Saurabh, sorry to interrupt you, but we lost your audio while you were asking the question. Can you repeat once again, please?
Yeah. Yeah. Which contracts is it possible to handle the, you know, the contracts that we negotiated?
Saurabh, sorry to interrupt you once again, but your audio is not clear at all.
Is my audio better now?
Slightly better.
Sorry about that. I wanted to know whether the U.S. contracts, is it possible for you to highlight what is the % increase from last year? If you can give us the, you know, amount of the prices that is being negotiated too?
It's reflected in the results. I think next quarter also will reflect. I think if you track that, I think you'll know the increase.
The thing is it is a mix of both exports and, the domestic prices. That is why I was
blended, and I think both have gone up, and I think that will give you a blended number. Last year also it was a blended number. The overall blended number has gone up and it will continue to, this quarter is reflective of that. Next quarter will be even more reflective of that.
Okay. Additionally, on the China capacity, you know, what kind of reserves would be there in China? Wanted to get a sense of, you know, what can be the scale of them being able to continue to supply the markets for the next few years.
Generally, when anybody opens up a natural mine, they look at a 20-year mine life, more or less. It's very rare anyone opens up a mine with a 15, less than 15-year mine life.
Okay. It will at least be a 20-25 years kind of reserve. Can it reach to a scale of like what U.S. has? Any sense on that in terms of reserves?
The biggest world deposit is in U.S. I think there are multiple bets there. U.S. re-reserves can last over 1,000 years.
Yeah. Okay. China, you know, still we're not in a position to know that whether these reserves can last for next 50 odd years or anything of that sort.
Certainly I can confirm that it is 20-25 years it will last. Turkey is the one which probably will has a lesser reserve life than that.
Thank you. Saurabh, I'll request you to join the queue again. I request to all the participants, please restrict to 2 questions per participant. The next question is from the line of Rohit Nagraj from Centrum Broking Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on good set of numbers. First question is, now since the European energy issues are normalizing, whether incremental capacities are coming. I mean, people who are on sidelines are operating at lower rates. Have they come back completely? Will that have any impact on the short-term demand, supply and pricing? Thank you.
In Europe?
Yes, sir.
Actually, see, most of our supply is to island, within island of U.K. I think, we have generally not seen major material land except from Turkey. We don't see any major change in that position. We have not seen anything to say that we will have any issues with the quantities we have there. We are fully sold out through contracts as we speak. The fixed contract also ensures that both us as a company and our customers are well protected.
Right. Sir, second question is on natural soda ash capacity. From an incremental capacity perspective, what is the dynamics and timelines that are usually followed? Maybe a 0.5 million tons capacity of synthetic and natural. How much time does it take? And again, a similar question from Chinese perspective. Currently we have said that there is 1 million-1.5 million tons additional capacity. If they were to take it to 5 million tons, what would be the constraints or what will be the key drivers for the same, and within what period of time they can get to that? Thank you.
normally a synthetic plant would take anywhere between, I would say, 2 and a half years to 3 years to put up and stabilize. Sometimes little longer, depending on what is the level of environment clearance needed. That usually varies from country to country, from 1-2 years. From the time you get a go-ahead, usually it ends up almost being 4-5 years in terms of execution time. If it is a debottlenecking where you don't need major environment clearance, it can be done in about 24 months at best, and most people finish it in 36 months. That's really the way we see.
Every incremental capacity needs a fresh environment process to be done by most players because it's that's how the environment laws run in most countries, and that's what we are aware of. This broadly should give you the timeline of most of the projects.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Riya from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for giving me an opportunity. My first question is in regards to India demand. I was just reading a couple of articles on detergent demand on a YOY basis has not grown significantly. For India, for CS' geography, the contribution from glass and lithium ion has been lesser. What incrementally you think that will drive demand in India?
Detergent, you're right, which is why I mentioned that the light ash is a bit soft in some parts especially also that includes India. We do hope that that corrects for a bit of time. The real growth in India is gonna come from increased glass lines which are getting invested. This year we do see in the next two quarters itself, three new glass lines coming. Annually there are multiple additions being planned. As country India industrializes, you would find that the key driver then moves to container glass and the flat glass. That would continue to be the case in India. Also the solar glass capacities are coming. That's another addition which I mentioned to PLI schemes and other schemes where those capacities also will get established.
Oh, okay. Thank you. Glass as a % for the India demand, how much it would be and what would be the kind of growth we are looking at?
About 45% would be the glass demand in India, I think it is a faster-growing sector, close to about 6%-8% probably.
Okay. It will look, we, I think last quarter we were seeing some imports from dumping out there.
Riya, sorry to interrupt you. We are losing your audio. May I request you to speak-
Hello?
on your handset.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. Last quarter, basically we had seen that the imports from China had increased to India, and hence we had taken price cut. How is the imports from China in this current quarter and going forward in the months of April and May? Second would be, since China would be going towards natural mining, will the synthetic player be more motivated to export the soda ash to India?
Yeah. I think we have seen let's say normalization or some toning down of the imports coming in overall basis. I think they have landed. Consignments have landed from U.S., from Turkey as well as from China. It is not just one place where it's landed in India in the past. We do believe that this will normalize. As far as China is concerned, the broad issue, what a synthetic player does do is that those who are competitive and large scale plants will continue to export synthetic plants, but it will put pressure on the domestic smaller plants and weaker players domestically. It's gonna be a combination of putting pressure on the domestic players.
Some synthetic players who may have the margin, keep, let's say, cost competitiveness to export, they will export. Those who can't They will face increasing pressure with difficulty to run and run their operations.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Nitesh Dutt from Prabhudas Lilladher. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for this opportunity. My question is, Solvay in its, you know, results declared today, they highlighted a lower flat glass demand, particularly in Europe. Just wanted to know that how much of our soda ash volumes, you know, go into flat glass, typically, and are we also experiencing any slowdown there, and what's our outlook?
See, in U.K. we are mainly we don't have flat glass plants at all in U.K. which we sell. Our product base sells only in U.K. We don't export out of U.K., and in U.K. it is mainly container glass, and we are fully sold out. There is no slowdown in container glass demand, and we have no exposure to continental Europe.
I was asking about flat glass.
Yeah. Flat glass.
also actually about flat glass.
Yeah. Correct. Correct. That's right. That's right. The flat glass plants are all in continental Europe. In U.K. we it's mainly container glass plants and we sell only to them.
Sure. Sure. Sir, my second question is, recently South Africa rejected our application, to set aside this, 40% antidumping duty that is imposed on, you know, on our U.S. imports.
It has no impact on us. In the past, we had a preferential duty of 7%. We were trying to get the preferential duty. It didn't come, so it has got no impact. We would have gained a little bit had that had they not stuck it down, but in terms of volume and all, it hasn't always had.
Understood. Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Saket Kapoor from Kapur & Company. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Namaskar, sir, and thank you for the opportunity. Sir, firstly, about the employee cost, if you could explain the increase in the employee cost Q on Q, both on the standalone numbers as well as for the consolidated numbers. As a % of sales also going ahead, on, what should be the numbers going ahead?
On in the standalone, actually the number is some actuarial adjustments they have done, which happens in the quarter four. I would not read beyond that. In the international one, it is, there's no major change in headcount. I can only assure you that. The second one is in terms of internationally, it is also some translation issues with respect to the exchange and some.
Rupee, you know, rupee has fallen.
Rupee has fallen as well as, there would also be actuarial adjustments internationally.
Okay. They will remain in this vicinity only, 10% of sales have generally been.
We don't see any major change. I think, in terms of, increases also, which we have, they're all in, in keeping with the local, trend. Certainly, I think the increase has been, employee, increases, have been because of high inflation, higher than what we would normally give. We do make that up over a period of time through productivity increase and, control on headcount.
Sir, on the SBC part, do we see any slackening of demand from the SBC front? Also, through gas as an opportunity, what's the understanding of on the same, sir? As the requirement.
What is SBC? I couldn't get what you meant.
Sorry, sodium bicarbonate.
That is a steady growing sector. It continues to grow between 5%-7% broadly. I don't see any issue on that front. It feeds into multiple sectors, including animal feed, poultry, it goes into human feed, food applications, pharmaceutical application, they continue to grow.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mital Bua from Unlisted India. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. I had a couple of questions relating to TCNA. We have spent around $1.2 billion to acquire TCNA over a period of time. Like 2008, we spent $1 billion, and we have had a free cash flow of around like $50 million-$100 million. Giving a subpar return on equity of 5%-10%. Going ahead, if we want some 15% kind of return on equity on the TCNA, can we expect like $180 million kind of free cash flow? Isn't it fair for a shareholder to expect that?
Sorry, I will not comment specifically, you watch for the results in Q1, Q2, Q3. We will be able to add those numbers up.
Like over the period of, like the last 15 years, we have not made that kind of returns. Isn't it same in the case of even Tata Chemicals Europe, we make up for that period, actually? Given that now we are going to fixed kind of profits.
No, Europe is a very different situation. I think, in Europe, I think we are moving more and more to value-added. You will find by the year-end, pharmaceutical salt capacity will come on stream by the year-end. Next year we will have pharma salt, which we'll be bringing to market, it will be higher margin product. In US, I think our competitive position is fairly strong and the margin and earnings profile is very good and it will pay down its debt and it continues to give us adequate return on capital and you would see those numbers as they unfold. I wouldn't want to make a forward-looking specific statement on US.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jainam Doshi from Crest Portfolio. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Congratulations on the good set of numbers. Just two questions. First one is how are we seeing the lithium bicarbonate demand shaping up? Second one is whether we are planning to foray into any bromine-based specialty chemicals.
On the demand is, as I mentioned, that every lithium carbonate unit needs about for every ton, 2 tons of soda ash, and that demand is good. We have good contracts in South America with respect to that. In terms of bromine, we have a small bromine capacity, and we continue to work on options to sort of increase the extraction. If anything specific were to happen in the bromine area, we'll come back to you.
Thank you. We move on to the next question. Next participant is Suman Kumar from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead. Suman, may I request you to unmute your line, please? Suman Kumar from Motilal Oswal, may I request you to unmute your line, please? Due to no response, we move on to the next participant. The next question is from the line of Abhijit Akella from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks so much for the follow-up. Just two questions from my side. One is, the U.S. domestic volumes seem to have declined quite sharply, this quarter down to about 237,000 tons. What might be the reason for that?
We are basically exporting more. There's nothing specific to it. I don't think we have any issues. We are producing flat out and moving the material flat out, and I think it will be just that export contracts we would have exported more during the past quarter as well.
Okay, thank you. The second thing was just, with regard to this tax benefit in the UK. If you could please just help us understand exactly what has happened there and what we should expect, as a normalized tax rate going forward for the UK and for the overall company?
Abhijit, in U.K. we had this deferred tax asset. What it means is that, U.K. has made losses for many years' time and there's a tax benefit on account of that. Whenever you foresee that you're going to make a profit going forward based upon some assumptions and having made profit in the current year, as per accounting, you have to make a deferred tax. You have to create an asset, which means there's a possibility of the past losses being, you know, consumed going forward on the tax point of view. We made a one-time kind of a DTA in March quarter, which brings asset, which means it's profit. It's a one-time kind of event for the quarter. Accounting impact. There's no cash impact there.
Going forward in terms of what tax will cover, again, depend upon how much losses we have carry forward. We expect to consume those losses for some time. That's where we stand, Abhijit. This is a one time which came in Q4, which won't repeat.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of S. Ramesh from Nirmal Bang. Please go ahead.
In response to the question about the slowdown in flat glass, you were saying in the UK it's only container glass. Is there a risk of the capacity of soda ash? Both of them are using dense soda ash, right? Is there a difference in the grade of soda ash? To what extent your market for container glass is protected? Is there some flexibility in terms of the soda ash between flat glass in Europe and container glass? Is there any risk to some substitution of, or competition from UK-
Soda ash capacity will get released if the other goes low on flat glass.
See, they are fungible. You can move, so the flat glass with certain soda ash to both flat glass as well as container glass. There is no, you're absolutely right on that. I mentioned to you that we are contracted out fully for the full year, and we see no issues with respect to our customers and they continue to produce well and they continue to consume well. We've not seen any demand slowdown as far as our customer base is concerned in UK.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Suman Kumar from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Sir, in U.S. business, you said this quarter we had $91 EBITDA per ton, and you said it is going to further improve from here also. Considering this and a strong balance sheet, why we are not aggressive for soda ash expansion in U.S.?
In U.S. we are expanding. I think we are in the final stages of as I mentioned, detailed engineering to go ahead with the project. The project is approximately 400,000 tons of capacity addition there.
This 4 lakh ton is I think too conservative and going by your balance sheet and the strong balance sheet and the kind of margin we are making, can we not 40%-50% kind of capacity expansion in US for next three, four years?
See, as a vision, our vision is to lead in this market. We have already announced we will be aiming to be the leading player and nothing less than being a leading player. You know the capacity of where the leading players are, we'll be ahead of that. I can only announce what I have taken to the board and what the board is supporting us to go ahead with. That's the vision. Vision is to be number 1 in all the businesses we are in, including soda ash, bicarbonate, salt and silica. These are 4 products we've identified for leadership.
Thank you very much. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you and thank you all for this attending this conference call. While this quarter has been good, we continue to focus it on executing our strategy. The market conditions, while they remain robust, there are also words of caution because the interest rate has risen sharply. While it may have peaked in this quarter and we anticipate most interest rates to stabilize for some time before they come down, we are preparing for that period, interim period, so that we remain focused on delivery with cost competitiveness. Our focus is gonna remain to be very competitive and support our customers. At the same time, our growth plans are robust and we are moving in a phased, in a structured manner to execute and participate in the growth in this sector.
Lastly, we do believe that we need to continue to work our way through improving our balance sheet and move towards a reasonable level of debt. Hopefully if the current trend continues, we would continue to make sure that we go to net debt levels which are almost zero in a near term of 3 to 5 years. This year, as we committed, we will be reducing our debt further and that will also help us to weather any disturbances if they do occur and also reduce the interest burden on the company. Overall, we have a robust frame in terms of expansion, growth, also improving our fitness and continuing to serve our customers in a competitive manner.
Thank you all for this and see you next quarter and have a safe year ahead. Thank you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Tata Chemicals Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Thank you.