Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Q4 FY24 conference call of GMM Pfaudler Limited. 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 an assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Priyanka Daga from [audio distortion]. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Manav. Good day, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to all of you into the quarter four FY24 earnings call of GMM Pfaudler Limited. The earnings presentation was uploaded on the stock exchanges this evening and is also available on our website. Hope all of you had a chance to go through it. From the management, we have with us our Managing Director, Mr. Tarak Patel, our CEO of International Business, Mr. Thomas Kehl, our CEO of India Business, Mr. Aseem Joshi, our CFO of International Business, Mr. Alexander Faulkner, and CFO of India Business, Mr. Manish Sodha. We will give you a brief overview of the performance of the company. After this, we will get into the Q&A. Before we begin with the overview, a brief disclaimer.
The presentation that was uploaded on the stock exchanges as well as our website, including our call discussions that will happen now, contains or may have certain forward-looking statements regarding our business prospects and profitability, which are subject to several risks and uncertainties. The actual results could materially differ from those in such forward-looking statements. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Patel to provide an overview of the performance. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Priyanka. Good evening, everybody. We are happy to report a strong finish to the financial year, where we were able to grow both revenue and profitability by 8% and 11% respectively. Despite challenging business environment driven by a weakness in the chemical sector, we've seen sequential improvement again in Q4 order intake that grew by about 14% to about INR 861 crore, driven by the long-cycle technologies and system platforms. This is partly a result of our business diversification strategy and has helped mitigate the slowdown in the chemical sector by allowing us to focus on non-traditional industry segments. Edlon also, one of the companies that is there within the group, has seen an improvement in terms of order intake and in terms of EBITDA. This is mainly coming from the semiconductor industry.
So like I mentioned, a lot of the new industries that we have diversified into is giving and making up some of the shortfall that has come from the slowdown in some of the key industries that we cater to. Further, we are currently having a strong opportunity pipeline as well, and we believe that the order intake for Q1 will continue also in a similar trend. In terms of financial performance, our consolidated revenues for the year grew by 8% to INR 3,446 crores, while EBITDA increased by 11% to INR 477 crores, with an EBITDA margin of 13.8%. Q4 revenue was at INR 741 crores and EBITDA stood at INR 91 crores, with margins at 12.3%.
Profitability margins improved in the international business, while margins in India have been kind of stable for the last few quarters now. This is a result of the ongoing cost control measures and the focus on operational excellence. Our balance sheet metrics have also seen improvement, and CRISIL has upgraded our rating to positive. There was a strong focus on improving our working capital during the year. This has resulted in significant cash inflows in H2, leading to higher debt repayment and improved debt ratios. Manish will be talking about this in a minute. In terms of corporate updates, we have completed the consolidation of MixPro in Q4, Canada. The results have been published, includes MixPro. I also welcome a new member to the GMM family, Ms. Shilpa Divekar Nirula, who has been appointed as an independent director effective May 22, 2024.
With the appointment, 70% of the board now comprises of independent directors. I will now hand over the call to Manish, our CFO in the India business, and he will take you through the financial performance of the company. Thank you. Over to you, Manish.
Thank you, Tarak. Good evening, everybody. We refer to the slide deck uploaded to Q2 FY 2024. Apart from the P&L, our focus has been to strengthen the balance sheet. You may recall, earlier in the year, we had communicated that we plan to... We target to repay INR 140 crores of debt in financial year 2024. Happy to report that we have repaid INR 145 crores of long-term debt in this year. We have prepaid and closed the entire debt of Hyderabad and Vatva acquisitions that we took, in the past two or three years. Overall, we have repaid INR 96 crores of long-term debt in India and INR 50 crores of long-term debt in the international business. This has helped us improve our financial governance.
Our net debt to equity now is at 0.4, and net debt to EBITDA is at 0.8. In the upcoming years as well, we plan to continue the journey. We have marginally improved our working capital days for debtors and inventories in the FY 2024, as referred in slide eight. Moving to cash flow front. On the cash flow front, we have significantly improved our cash generation in H2, as demonstrated in cash flow slide nine of the deck. This is, primarily on account of inventory optimization and cash collection improvement. While in H1, due to operational reasons, our working capital has expanded. We brought it back to business levels in H2.
Overall, through the year, we generated INR 253 crores of free cash flow, which is a decent over 50% of EBITDA of INR 477 crores that we did in this year. With that, over to you, Priyanka.
Thank you, Manish. Manav, you can open the line for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset while asking the question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have our first question from the line of Anirudh Shetty from Solidarity Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
I thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. Sir, I just wanted your update on the competitive environment in the domestic GLE space. You know, you did mention that demand is still weak, but how has the competition intensity evolved since your last quote? Just wanted some views on that.
Yeah, sure. So this is Aseem, I will address it. So, yeah, demand, as you know, continues to be a little sluggish. So we have to compete vigorously. Having said that, you know, we've taken efforts to, you know, make sure that we are competitive from a manufacturing efficiency standpoint, and also reaching out to a broader set of customers. So I think that is helping us in winning more orders and capturing shares in what is right now a slow market for us. I think maybe just to add a couple of points, the last two quarters have seen significant improvement in Indian glass line order intake.
So I think we were kind of, in Q1, Q2, around the INR 70 crore- INR 90 crore mark, which has doubled, or increased to about INR 150 crore- INR 160 crores in that quarter. So I think the glass line business has seen some improvement. I think our market share probably has also increased, but as Aseem mentioned, the competitive intensity is still there, and, hopefully once the market and the industry kind of turns, you will see some of the pricing pressure cooling off.
Okay. And, so second question on the international front, you know, we, you know, we, the revenue seems to have grown, but the order intake, you know, is declining. So just wanted, you know, your read of the situation there in terms of, you know, your conversations with the customers there. Are they, you know, pausing some of the projects that they intend to do? Is there any delays happening there? Like, some color around that, the global environment would be helpful.
Sure. So I will hand over the call to our, international CFO in a second, but, CEO in a second. What I would like to just mention is that, do keep in mind that the international business obviously has a large component, which is services, and that keeps getting adding on as, you know, the year progresses, so these are short delivery items. We do obviously understand that the starting backlog is a bit lower than, last year, and that's definitely something that we are trying to improve and increase, the order intake. We had received a large order in Q4, a $12 million order from the U.S. We have further also this quarter seen another large order coming in from the U.S. market as well. So in terms of order intake, obviously, pipeline still remains very strong.
Decision-making has been a bit slower than usual, but we are seeing now some positivity, at least in U.S. and Europe, where we do see order intake also improving, and we are seeing something similar here in India. Thomas, you want to add something about this?
Oh, thanks for the lead, and I think there's not much to add to that, what you said. The order intake, as you rightly mentioned, is lower than the revenue last year. That is because the markets have slowed down somewhat, but we are seeing recovery signs and signals in Europe as well as in Americas. So the projects are out there. Decision-making processes are slightly improving in speed. That is the good news. We have been gaining a couple of large projects, especially in the Americas, in the business that were due, so we are above the expectations in this quarter in this business. In China is a different issue. China is still rather slow.
The number of projects is not necessarily increasing, but we expect the China recovery also, very, very soon.
Got it. Got it. Thanks, thanks for answering my questions. I'll join back in the queue.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, you may press star and one to ask questions. You may press star and one to ask questions. We have our next question from the line of Bhavik Shah from MK Ventures. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, sir. So my question is, in the presentation, you have shown the EBITDA for next year at INR 630 crore, as against revenue of INR 3,700 crore, which gets us to the margin of, say, 17% odd. But when we see historically, our last, say, 10 years, we have only hit the 17% mark once in FY 2020. So what makes us so confident that we will be achieving those margins again this year?
So you're talking about the guidance, right?
Yeah.
The guidance was made, obviously, what is it? two years ago now. So, Bhavik, just to give you a background, we 2.5 or 3 three years back, we had given a guidance for INR 3,700 crore of top line, and INR 60 crore of EBITDA. This slide is basically just a reference to where we are versus, you know, what we had guided to… Right. So, it's clear that obviously, since that time, the industry has seen a kind of a down cycle, especially the agrochemical industry, which is obviously a big chunk of our glass line business, and some of that you obviously see in terms of order intake and the current margin scenario.
The idea, obviously, now is to kind of use this time, this kind of a down cycle, to kind of improve on internal cost efficiency measures, which we are working on, and we believe, and we do see some signs of recovery. Hopefully, as the market recovers, some of the benefits that we will be working on today will kind of translate into much better margins as well. Going back to your question on historical margins, yes, from an industrial perspective, capital goods company, you know, 13.8% EBITDA margin for the year in the peak of a down cycle, I think is a pretty decent performance, and I think we've kind of held our ground quite well. Going forward, obviously, we want to improve on this number, and that's what the kind of idea is.
You know, we've got- it's been three years since we've acquired the MixPro business. Since the acquisition has happened, 3.5, four years, we see significant change in size and scale. Even the margins internationally have improved significantly, nearly double. The Indian margins are now kind of stable. We have obviously clear strategies for our different product lines. We have higher growth product lines coming from newer acquisitions. We have a heavy engineering business in India, which is also doing exceedingly well. So yeah, some of the kind of risk associated with the down cycle in chemical and pharma is being kind of compensated by the other product lines, right?
I think we today are in a position to kind of start looking at maybe a three-year plan again, and hopefully in the next maybe few quarters, we should be able to kind of come back to the market with some kind of recalibration in terms of where we are and where we want to go. I think that's something that we've been working on internally, and I think very shortly we'll be able to share some kind of roadmap with you and the investor community.
Right. So got it. So, so this number, which is in the presentation, is not the guidance for FY25, if I understand correctly. Like we-
That was given. We are just giving you a comparative to say that, yes, this is the guidance that we have put out and how we are tracking towards that guidance. Just to show you that we are not changing the guidance midway, so that number is out there, and we are showing you where we are. Obviously, that guidance will probably get recalibrated when our guidance comes in, in the next few quarters.
Okay. Okay, sir. Got it. Just from your opening commentary, you're receiving good demand from your semiconductor industry. So sir, what exactly do we provide there, and what kind of demand are we seeing, and in which sub-segment?
So we have a company in the US. It was historically part of the group, and we used to make PTFE lined vessels. So these are very kind of corrosion resistant vessels, equipment for very high purity applications. And there's a very specific kind of a no metal requirement for the semiconductor. Zero metal, I think, parts per million is like zero point something, something, something. And Edlon has capabilities and experience and technology that goes into this.
Okay.
And that's driving some of this improvement in that business. And semiconductor also is an interesting area for us, because not only do we kind of cater to them through Edlon, but there are other product lines that could also go into some of these, semiconductor, downstream or upstream kind of chemical facilities, right? There are specific chemicals that go into... So one of the areas that we're trying to see the other areas of adjacencies is in the semiconductor space, where we could look at cross-selling some of our other equipment.
Right. So, sir, what percentage of our order book will be coming from this?
I think the size of Edlon today is about $25 million-$30 million, which last, I mean, two years ago was about $10 million-$12 million. So it's been significant growth. Alex, Thomas, you want to jump in in terms of-
Yeah, the number that you are mentioning is quite right. It's about $25 million business. We expect this business to grow significantly further due to the investment that are done in the semiconductor industry in the Americas, but also starting in Europe right now. We are very proud of the quality and the purity of our PTFE that we are lining the tanks with is outstanding, and we are number one in quality performance in that industry. We have been investing in a new site, setting it up as we speak, having the capability to also provide all sizes that are needed, tanks, larger tanks, smaller tanks and mid-size tanks to the industry. And this is how we actually support the growth that we foresee.
Sure. Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Pramod Dangi from Unifi Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks. And, Tarak, you know, just on the international market, while we're going through the presentation, we saw that they are not saying that they stated for the final value, value for the, Mixel acquisition. So is there any one-off in the, profit after tax we reported for the international business over there, from just INR 2 crore?
So, Pramod, on Mixel, this was acquired last financial year, and as per the PPA allocation that has to be done, you know, once the evaluation has to be done within 12 months. So then this quarter we did that evaluation, and accordingly, there was a inventory... So there was a intangible created, and that intangible, as per the PPA, has to be amortized in this quarter, and therefore we have the one-time impact for the Mixel related transaction.
So how much would that be?
Pardon me?
If you can quantify that.
Yeah, about $1 million, I think.
INR 8 crore- INR 8.5 crore.
Oh, Mixel, Mixel will come probably next year. Mixel was approximately $1 million. But I think what you're asking, I think what Mr. Dangi is also asking, is that there was a one-time charge for acquisition expenses. There has been a, I think, a $1 million charge for acquisition expenses, in this quarter. It's, because we were kind of working on a couple of, targets, and we have spent some money. There is a $1 million charge in this PNL as a one-time, charge. That is, that is also there additionally.
Okay. Okay. So if I, you know, so what we are comparing is the, you know, the that reported on the slide number 28. If I look at the like to like excluding the one-time charge, it will be more than INR 10 crore, right?
Yeah.
It is not mentioned anywhere in the note.
You're talking about the distance from EBITDA to PAT in slide that is the international business, right?
Yes. Yes.
So, one is the amortization of the Mixel, you know, intangible. That is what has happened. And the second one is the additional deferred tax provision that we had created in this financial year, and maybe Alex, you want to- Both of these are non-cash. Both of these are non-cash.
Okay. So if you can quantify Mixel amortization, you said $1 million. What will be the amortization, yes, sir?
We have given that as a note separately in the disclosure, that is just-
Okay.
-for financial. We have that number in that disclosure, and-
Okay, I will, I will refer to that.
Effective tax rate for the, you know, for the India and international business collectively stands at 47%. These are one-time adjustments on account of new, new entity acquisition and related deferred tax creation.
Okay, perfect. And secondly, you know, how the total overall environment is looking into the international market now, you know, which you were saying that there was some slowdown, and because the international market was very doing very well till last quarter, year on year. This is one quarter where we have seen the year-on-year degrowth, quarter-on-quarter degrowth in the international market. So from where it is coming, how we are seeing it?
Maybe give you a little bit of what we expect. I think international business will probably trade around the same kind of margins for the next financial year. We are quite confident of that. There are a couple of areas that we need to call out. China is definitely an area where order intake has been slow, and we probably will face some absorption issues in China, but we expect the China recovery to happen, and we are planning for that. We are also doing a couple of restructuring exercises in Europe, especially in the U.K. site, where we have restructured that site to become a reglassing facility, so we're trying to reduce our cost structure there. In the meantime, we have also kind of started our journey of a low-cost sourcing in Eastern Europe.
So that first few orders have been made to a local supplier there to cut down our cost in Europe. So many of these strategies that we are building will hold and help us maintain margins, if not improve. India also, we, we are going to be working on a transformation project here. So that's something that we are quite hopeful to in terms of cost savings. But generally, in terms of environment, if you had to compare with 12 months ago, I would still say that we are probably looking at slightly a more positive outlook. However, are we out of the woods yet? I would say we still have maybe 6 or 9 months before we see a complete turnaround, right? But the signs are positive, and luckily for us, we've made up some of the shortfall.
We've been through the most difficult period, with a lot of help through other business lines, like our heavy engineering business, where we have catered to, let's say, the Adani Group or the Reliance things, is completely different from our traditional markets of chemical and pharma, right? So, and then obviously, with, the services and the systems business internationally has also kept up and kind of made up for some of the shortfall that has come because of the slowdown in the chemicals and the subsequent impact on the glass lining business, right? So all in all, I think we've kind of made it through, the toughest part.
I think now that we have focused on internal cost control, I think we are going to be in a strong position to kind of get some of the benefits as and when the market were to turn. And, you know, starting the year today with the INR 1,700 crore backlog is not a bad number. Obviously, at the highest point in the last two to three years, if you check, it would have been around INR 2,200. So that was a bit abnormal. The market was on fire. Somewhere between, let's say, INR 1,800-INR 2,000 would be a good number to start with, right? So, but the focus is definitely on internal cost efficiency.
At the same time, we are being aggressive in the market, and I think if the market were to turn a little bit more positive, which we expect it will, I think there will be a nice, uptick in the business.
Okay. Okay, great. Lastly, if I may ask, you know, on that, we have given this guidance two years back. Obviously, today, the margins are lower, the revenues, you know, is in line, but the margins. So is there any color which you can throw on that, those guidance, which we had given two years back in terms of the ROC, EBITDA and the revenue? Revenue may, you know, is not an issue, but especially on the EBITDA and the ROC.
Yeah, so of course, EBITDA INR 630 is a tough call at this stage for FY 2025, for sure. We've done INR 277, so I think past two years have been getting on track. But then, of course, with regard to the new scenario in which we are operating now, that INR 630 seems a bit difficult. We have been focusing on cost optimization and getting up to the scale, as Tarak mentioned, as he mentioned earlier in his presentation.
So, and of course, ARUP is just an outcome of what you earn. So, you know, and it will tag along with the EBITDA numbers that-
But I think we are quite confident of growing the EBITDA number for next financial year as well. I think we all are aligned that, yes, you know, obviously it's been a tough year, but we have internal measures, we've already taken actions, and we believe that we are in a strong position to at least maintain or grow margins, right? So the idea is to definitely grow, and be kind of, you know, at least in terms of cutting down cost structures where we can, and then make the improvements in terms of operational efficiencies, we will definitely work towards that.
Okay. Yeah, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to answer questions from all the participants in the conference, please restrict your questions to strictly two questions per participants. Should you have a follow-up questions, we request you to rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Pradyumn Choudhary from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thank you for the opportunity. So, now that we are seeing a growth in our order intake, can we expect, like, going forward, do we expect maybe another couple of quarters of FY de-growth, or do we expect that from here on, at least there'll be some recovery, in terms of FY growth? That's the first one. For FY 25, like, I understand that you want to come back later with guidance, but some initial idea on what can we expect in terms of revenue. And, like, the hope would be more towards, recovery in the second half of the year. Would that be the case?
Yeah. Do keep in mind that, you know, there's a minimum lead time associated with executing orders, and the lead times are different for both India and the international business. So in India, at least, you know, we can book orders till maybe November of this year, that kind of get shipped out in this financial year. In international business, I think it's a little bit shorter time frame. So August would be the latest that we need some of these orders to come in. Do keep in mind also, the international business has 30% of services revenues coming in. These orders can come in as and when, till pretty much the end of the year, right? So all in all, I think the international business is starting off with a pretty decent background.
There are certainly areas where we have, I would say, maybe shorter lead times, and in these facilities we need to kind of be more aggressive and book those orders, and that's what we are working on. But generally, in terms of guidance, I think it's better that you wait for the investor day. The strategic plan of the company is being worked upon. You know, we had a board meeting today also where we have discussed this, and we will be coming to the external community with a presentation and a deck, and our thoughts over the next three years, and what we expect the company to be strategically three years down the line, right? So I think just give us a couple of months here, and we will come back to you.
In the meantime, just in terms of general outlook, I think you can say that next year should see some amount of growth, both in terms of revenue and profitability. And obviously, that is a bit of a conservative estimate, and I think we improve, and improve rather quickly, then we could definitely outperform that, right? So I think it's better to kind of be a little conservative at the same time, and if the market turns, we will definitely take advantage of that.
All right, just to follow up here. So, you've mentioned the minimum lead time for India to be November and for international to be August. As in, this is for the new orders which are coming, you're saying, like, that's when you start supplying these new orders. Is that-
What I'm saying is, if I book an order in November, I can still ship it out by March 31 in India. If I book an order by August 31 in international, I can ship it out by March 31. That's what I'm saying.
All right. All right, understood. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Keshav Mundra from Guardian Capital. Please go ahead.
Keshav, we can't hear you. Can you unmute maybe, or?
Keshav, are you there? Keshav, are you there?
No, I think maybe he'll get back in with you. Maybe we can try the next one, please, follow.
The next question is from the line of Rahul Agarwal from Himalaya Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question is more on the end user industries that we serve. Do you think that there is significant overcapacity that has built in into the end user industries, which would imply that the order inflow slowdown that we have seen over the last two quarters is likely to be a prolonged one over the next three, five years as you look at it? Or what sort of a rate, growth rate would you expect from our core end user industries over the next three, five years?
So, you know, I can give you some kind of maybe, you know, idea in terms of what we are seeing. Predicting how these industries will kind of react would be a little bit difficult. But generally, let's break it down first into pharma. So I think pharma, we are already seeing a nice recovery. I think, pharma looks good for the future. I think pharma has seen all the pricing pressure in the U.S. kind of also kind of reduce, and I think people are investing now. We have good large investments coming in pharma. You know, some of our key customers have outlined projects and large projects...
I think the contract manufacturing in pharma is also picking up, and some of the companies that we are talking to are saying that, "Hey, listen, we want to compete with China, and, you know, we want to put up these kind of facilities and take them head on," right? So pharma is not looking that bad. I think what has really hit us is chemical, and in chemical, basically agrochemicals, which has seen a lot of oversupply. I would not say overcapacity, but I think there's been dumping, overstocking, which has caused some of these, kind of slowdown. But we think that this can change very quickly, right? So we are already hearing that now in the next couple of quarters, the overstocking problem is going to kind of reduce and some amount of, you know, the business is gonna come back.
But do keep in mind there's always gonna be competition from China, and there was a lot of pricing pressure from the Chinese competitors. That's something that I don't know how exactly to play out, but probably it's not something that is very sustainable. But all in all, I think if you ask me, I would say about nine months before we really see a significant change. So I think the next couple of quarters look somewhat similar. You will see some improvements, but I don't think it'll be significant. I think significant reinvestment will probably start maybe early next year.
Got it. So that's very helpful. And typically, what are the replacement cycles for existing, capacity that your customers have? Like, do these equipment last 10 years, 20 years? How do you think of replacement cycles? And, second, from a longer-term three to five-year perspective, if you are, if you are to say, put a, take a guess on where some of the CapEx, where would the CapEx will probably end up? Would you say high single digits? Would you say double digits? Where would you put that?
So I think firstly, I just want to add before we kind of get into the first question, is that as a company and we've deliberately tried to diversify and take the risk away from our glass line business. Glass line business was really accounting for 80%-90% of our business not so long ago. Today, it's down to 50%, right? And also, chemical and pharma were accounting for nearly 80%-90% of our overall business. That's also down to maybe now 50%, right?
So as a company and as management, we've been very clear from day one that we need to diversify both the product portfolio and the industries that we serve, because having all your eggs in one basket catering to only one or two industries is going to be kind of detrimental and very risky if those markets were to slow down, right? So today, I think we've been able to mitigate some of this risk and maintain our margins at a decent level because we've had these other businesses that have performed well when our glass line business has slowed down. So I think glass line for us, really the way that we should think about it is it's a bread and butter business. We are market leaders, but that's not a high growth market for us.
We're going to consolidate this position, try and improve margins and kind of sell technology and really build on what we already have. The growth and the margin improvements in the other platforms is going to be much more significant, much more faster. These are smaller kind of businesses with high growth potential, low market share, where we can grow market share, and many of these new products also cater to some of these new tech and new age industries, right? So things like, like we spoke about semiconductor or things like, let's say, mock meat. These are things that we serve now, but these could be very significant markets in the future, right? So as a company, obviously, chemical and pharma are our traditional industries.
And over time, we hope that our kind of exposure to this would be reduced, and we have other industries that kind of make up some of the segments as well, right? I think, Aseem, do you want to add something to this?
I think, I mean, to your specific question about replacements, it really truly does depend on, you know, the kind of application, the customer's maintenance cycles, et cetera. But as a rule of thumb, you know, in India, typically, you would see, you know, for our reactors, anywhere between 7, 8, 9 years. And I... You know, in Europe, they tend to, you know, be used more carefully, more sparingly, maintained much better, so the life there tend to be a lot longer. But that's sort of how I would, I would respond.
Just one more point here, Rahul, is also that, do keep in mind that the Indian industry has seen significant growth, chemical industry has seen significant growth in the last maybe 10, 12 years. This is when we started kind of supplying these reactors to the SRF, PI sectors of the world. So now we are reaching a point where these reactors are kind of aging to an age where they will either need replacement, reglassing or spare parts, right? So we do expect that the installed base, which is now quite large and has been there for the last 10, 12 years, will start providing some kind of services or reglass revenue.
We hope to do that, and we've been kind of being proactive and preempting some of this by setting up, let's say, service centers close to our customers, putting more of a kind of focus on reglassing. And hopefully, like in the international business, which is a much more mature market, they already see 30%-40% of the revenues coming in from reglass and services, right? So, India currently is less than 10%. So hopefully there'll be a nice service and reglass component that could also kind of bump up. And hopefully, that kind of comes in, you know, in the next maybe few years or even earlier than that.
Got it. No, thank you for the perspective. That's very, very helpful. And then the last question, the GLE side, you said you've diversified away from pharma as well. What would be the, but I couldn't get the numbers. Can you repeat? What would be the industry, end user industry composition broadly between pharma, agrochem, and others on the GLE side and also on the non-GLE side?
Yeah, 60 is chemical and 40 is pharma, generally, only on GLE. There's a little bit of dyes and stuff like that, and these are the two industry segments that we only serve. There's a little bit of paints and dyes, but it's not significant. So yeah, just, just to be clear, the segment, industry segment data that Tarak alluded to was for the company, not only for GLE. The GLE, the glass-lined equipment primarily goes into chemicals and pharma, with very few other applications. So just, just, just to finish off this point, three, four years ago, if we were like INR 500-600 crore of revenue, we were 80% glass-lined, and today we are now 50/50, right?
We've diversified and let's say out of the 1,000, whatever also that we are doing, 500 comes from glass line, 500 comes from non-glass line business.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Rohit Ohri from Progressive Shares. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Couple of questions. During the year, we saw Thomas was busy cutting ribbons and inaugurating quite a lot of service centers or maybe revitalizing some businesses in Europe and U.S. How many of such events are still pending, or do you think how many of these restructuring or revitalizing processes are there?
Are you following us around, Rohit? How do you know? I guess you must have seen it on LinkedIn, right? Yes. So, yes, service is a big component, and we have kind of created a couple of service centers in our existing facilities. So we don't really take new facilities, like we built a new service center in Baar, in Switzerland, where we had a facility, and we are just adding this additional kind of workshop. Similarly, in Brazil as well and in America. But I think there's one more ribbon that you are going to cut. Sorry, there's one more that we added also now in India. But Thomas, we are also having another unit that we acquired 51% shareholding in the U.S., in the south of the U.S., where we will be inaugurating that factory in July, I believe, Thomas.
There's another ribbon cutting in the middle of July in the south of USA, in Georgia, where we have entered into a joint venture. We have built up a new facility together with a partner there, and it's specialized in reglassing and services. So we will have another service station, and we serve the southern part of the U.S. and maybe Mexico much better in the future than in the past, and which we have increased further our service footprint.
Okay. For the brand MixPro, by when do you think that it will be probably 50% of the total revenue?
Of total consolidated revenue? Wow! Yeah, I mean, so, you know, it's very hard to say now. I think the target is we are currently around $40-$50 million of revenue in mixing. I think the $100 million target is what we would like to achieve in the next three years or so. That's the plan. I think how that kind of fits into the overall scheme of things will be kind of difficult to guess, but I think if you had to take a number, a $100 million number is a nice number to kind of make it a platform with enough scale and size to have a separate kind of focus for that platform, right?
Do you think that it makes sense merging all the businesses, maybe IMD, Mixel, as well as MixPro?
Launching or relaunching? Sorry, what was the question?
Do you think that it makes sense merging all the mixing businesses?
Yeah, so we have merged the business internally. We now have a head of mixing that we hired from one of our big, I guess, competitors, I can say that. But yeah, so we are giving it the focus that it deserves. We're bringing the relevant capabilities and expertise, and mixing is definitely something that we are focused on. We are now consolidating the designs, the brands between all three, four of them, and then creating a new go-to-market strategy for the mixing business. That's underway as we speak. And I think mixing, as we all believe, both Thomas and the team, you can jump in here as well, is going to be a very important part of our growth story.
I mean, the mixing industry in total is a very large industry, market that is bigger than the glass line. This is why we are so interested in participating and becoming a bigger player. And, the acquisitions of the three companies over the years is giving us, the critical mass to play there. Our technologies are, in most cases, adjacent. Some are overlapping, so there are a little bit of consolidation needed there. However, our main focus is on growing the business, growing the market share as fast as possible, rather than consolidating.
Mm-hmm.
There were two patents filed this quarter as well. I didn't mention that earlier.
Sure.
In the mixing space, so we are also developing new technologies along with the companies that we've acquired, to really be innovative in mixing and differentiate ourselves from our competitors as well. So everything is ongoing. It takes a bit of time, but mixing is definitely a business line that is complementary, it's driven by technology and differentiated, and you're actually solving a problem for the customer. Either you're bringing down his faster, his cost, his quality of his product. So there's a lot of benefits, tangible benefits for the customer that we can touch. And mixing is something that has been a strong, strong growth driver for us in India for the last few years and now internationally as well.
Just to clarify, these are two patents that have not been filed, but they've been issued, so they're now granted in the name of GMM. So these were filed, you know, actually quite a while back and worked their way through the system, and now they're done.
Last one from my side. If Tarak and team, if you can take us through Altilium and Pfaudler joining forces to revolutionize the extractive industry and something related to asset recovery or something of that sort. If you can take us through that initiative?
Yeah, so that's basically it's not, you know, it's not, I mean, yes, I can, but it's basically working along with an engineering company to kind of prepare and kind of use our equipment and their kind of process technology to kind of go to the customer together and give them a combined offer, right? Because sometimes as equipment manufacturers, we don't have the technical and process know-how, and these guys have it, but they don't have the, you know, all the equipment and tangible stuff. So we put it all together as one single package, and we work towards in trying to guide. This is the one way of kind of extending our market outreach, right?
So it's a good position and a good place to be, but obviously, we need to work together with them to go out and meet these, and meet the requirements of the customer.
Do you intend to buy it out?
Sorry to interrupt, sir. I would request you to please rejoin the queue, as there are several participants waiting for their turn.
Yeah.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Jay Modi from EIML. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good evening, sir. I had a similar question on mixing technology. So, have you started approaching customers with the product, and how has been the traction, underlying traction for it?
Sorry, we could not give a breakdown. Can you repeat, please, Jay?
Sure. Am I audible now?
Yes, better.
Yeah. So I had a similar question on mixing technology. So how has been the traction for us? Have you started approaching customers with the products? What is the kind of reception that we've received on ground?
Yeah. So we've been selling mixing in India, certainly for a long time, as have Mixel and MixPro in their markets. After the acquisitions of Mixel and MixPro, we've been able to take expertise, previous track record, and sort of customer credentials from there and use them to sell into each other's markets. So there are, you know, two gas desulfurization, compressed biogas. Just two examples where we've been able to leverage our broader network and previous work done overseas and take them to customers. And that's just an example, there are several other areas. Yeah, so areas where... So we as Mixing were mainly focused again on our traditional markets of chemical and pharma.
With the acquisition of Mixel and MixPro, we will have obviously significant opportunity in order intake in new industries, for example, metal and minerals is an area where we didn't have a lot of kind of business, and now we do work with, let's say, precious metals, Vedanta and companies like that. At the same time, we were not there in wastewater, but now with Mixel, we've done wastewater kind of projects here in India, with currently, but certain kind of infrastructure projects as well, and all these other ways of stuff that has gone out from India as well. So India has been kind of a curve ahead in terms of fermentation, right? So we've done a lot of work here on fermentation with companies like Aurobindo and, Wipro Group. In turn, now the same technology is now being kind of given outside.
If, you know, if it will be fermentation technology within the group, that company that, so it goes both ways. But having PTR and having experience and the way that when we look at acquisitions, we try and buy a company or look at acquisition targets, which has the relevant, experience, which we don't currently have within the group, right? So that's a little bit of, kind of, area that we want to enter new markets, and by some of these, experiences and PTRs that these companies have, we get automatic entry through the acquisitions.
Got it. Sir, so, the incremental growth that you mentioned, reaching around $100 million of top line for mixing, is largely through international, business, or, or it'll be driven from domestic revenues as well?
Both. It's a global number. It will come on board. The manufacturing obviously can be, you know, pushed out to low-cost manufacturing. We don't need to have high-cost manufacturing. But yes, it's a global requirement. The, you know, the market size that Thomas spoke about was a global market size, and mixing goes into everything, right? So you'll be supplying mixing to Saudi Arabia for their Aramco plants, right? You are going to be supplying mixing to cement factories in Southeast Asia, right? You're going to be selling wastewater to Vietnam and Australia. So it's really a global play. You could sell food and beverage things to Nestlé in Europe or in Netherlands. So it's really a global play. Everybody needs mixing, and the relationship and the network we have, we can definitely leverage the global network to sell some of these products and technologies.
That's the idea. And it's all over the world. The growth will really come all over the world.
Got it. And, sir, in standalone business, what is the kind of capacity utilization for this year or for the quarter?
Sure. So, you know, we are in our glass lining business, you know, right now we're at about 65-ish, thereabout. And from the others, it's a little higher, 70, 75, thereabout.
Okay, and glass lining... Sorry, sorry, sir.
No, go ahead.
Glass lining can technically reach what kind of utilization? 80%-90%?
Yeah. So there's a lot of things, certainly we can operate at 90%. Also, obviously, there the lead times become longer. However, there are a lot of times we can do to improve the throughput of our line, which is what we're currently doing. So once the market comes back, we feel confident that we can certainly drive a lot more output, from this, from the existing assets that we have in Karamsad and Vatva.
Got it. And, this quarter-
Sorry to interrupt, Jay, sir. May I request you to please-
Okay, sure.
Join the queue? Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sarin Sanil from RW Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Firstly, what was the reason for this gross margin expansion? Was higher services revenue contribution the sole reason, or has the segment mix contributed to this?
You're talking about the material consumption reduction, right?
Right. Yes, gross margin.
Yes. So, you know, the top line has degrown quarter-on-quarter, which is primarily on the product side, and the services are more stable. So as you, as the natural outcome, material costs, our consumption is better, as a percentage, and therefore you see the improvement in the.
So we could expect it to rebound back, you know, the normal gross margins once things start picking up, correct?
Sorry, I didn't get that. Can you-
Normal margin.
Yeah. Yeah, this is an exceptionally better raw material consumption. Once the mix is back, we should be back to the normal.
Got it. Got it, sir. My second question was, what all went wrong in this quarter? Was that expectation? Because we were way off from the INR 2,004 crore order book, and India Business was not better than Q3 either, as we had expected. Was there any large project that got postponed?
No, I think from your perspective, I think we are on target. So Q4 has seasonality. I think we talked about this obviously in our last three conference calls. There is, you know, obviously cycles that there's a kind of an increment cycle that happened in the international business in Q4. And also I guess there were a few one-time costs this quarter. So generally, I think we are pretty much in line with what we had planned. I don't think there's any significant kind of surprise here. I think obviously, you know, the year has been a kind of a flat year, and obviously starting next year at a better way will obviously be a nicer thing. So I think there was no real—I mean, need to kind of have an exceptional quarter this year.
I think with the order intake being much lower, even our execution has slowed down a little bit because we don't need to kind of dig into the backlog, right? I think starting for next year, again, with the backlog that we currently have, order intake obviously is a bit low. We would have liked to have definitely more, but again, like I mentioned, in a peak of a down cycle, now main traditional industries or chemicals, I think we've done pretty well. I think the market will return, then definitely I think that order intake would be definitely uptick. But generally, the outlook also remains kind of positive, saying that, yes, we do expect to improve both revenue and margins for next year. Obviously, it's not going to be exponentially better.
I mean, the market still needs some time to correct and improve, and we have to keep our head down and just make sure that we kind of, you know, keep the pace and keep working on the internal costs, you know, improvements that we've planned. We are being aggressive in the market. You know, some of these orders are now, large orders have come in, and so we put up in a stronger position. There are a few kind of areas which are going to be still tough for the long term, like China, which is no doubt. But generally, I think it's okay. I think we are in a strong position today, and I think if the market will return, we will see some of those benefits, flow through.
Got you. Sir, just to cross-check one figure. So you said mixing revenue contributed to, you know, $40 million-$50 million for the year, is it? Mixing.
Mixing, yes. Mixing today, some of the three entities or three brands is about INR 45 million, currently.
Okay. So 13%, nearly 13% of the revenue. Okay. Got it, sir. Thank you so much, and all the very best for the year.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Monisha Wadhwani from Sharekhan . Please go ahead.
I think we lost her, Manav. So maybe we can now close the call, I guess, if you, Priyanka, you want to-
Yeah. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management of GMM Pfaudler for closing comments. Over to you.
Thank you, Manav. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It was a pleasure interacting with you, and we look forward to many such interactions during the course of the quarter. Take care and see you soon.