Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to GMM Pfaudler Limited Q2 FY 2024 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference call over to Miss Priyanka Daga from GMM Pfaudler Limited. Please. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Sagar. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to all of you into the Quarter Two FY 2024 Earnings Call of GMM Pfaudler Limited. The earnings presentation was uploaded on the stock exchanges today 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 Poempner; and CFO of India Business, Mr. Manish Poddar; and our Compliance Officer, Ms. Mittal Mehta. We will give you a brief overview of the performance of the company, after which we will get into the Q&A. Before we begin with the overview, a brief disclaimer.
The presentation, which we uploaded on the Stock Exchange and on our website, including our further 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. 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, Mr. Tarak.
Thank you, Priyanka. Good evening, everybody. We are happy to report a strong performance this quarter with both revenue and profitability in line with our FY 2025 guidance. Revenue growth was driven by strong execution across international and the India businesses. Profitability improvement in the international business, driven by operational excellence and pricing improvements. A good point to note today is that the international business has recorded the highest ever profitability in this quarter. Order intake, however, remains a bit subdued in technologies and systems due to a general weakness in the chemical sector. Services remains on track. However, our strategy of diversification and entering new industry segment has led to a strong opportunity pipeline across all business platforms, and we continue to focus our efforts on strengthening our market share in the next few quarters.
Having said that, our order backlog stands at about INR 705 crore, which translates to about six months of order visibility in India and about seven to eight months in the international business. Our order intake for the month of October has been quite strong, and it's around between INR 250 crore to INR 270 crore mark. So, October has been a good month in terms of order intake. Some of the other salient points about this quarter, we also had a global strategy meet in Munich, where 30 of our senior professionals from across geography participated.
This is in line with building a long-term strategic plan, and hopefully, by the end of this financial year, we should be able to host an investor day, to update investors in terms of our long-term vision. We also opened up two new service centers, one in Brazil and one in Italy. Both these service centers are for the mechanical seal industry business and will add to, improved services in these regions. In terms of financial performance, our consolidated revenues for the quarter grew by 20% to INR 937 crore, with an EBITDA of INR 142 crore, which translates to about 15% EBITDA margin, which is around 20% higher than last year.
Our current quarter, like I mentioned, the improvement in profitability was mainly driven by the international business, largely due to the strong execution and pricing improvements. We are also continuing to look at internal cost efficiencies, and this is something that we will keep our eyes on, and this is something that over the next few quarters will be quite important in terms of improving and maintaining profitability. In terms of corporate updates, DBAG's Fund VI has sold 13.6%, out of which 9.9% was bought by ChrysCapital. 1% , it still remains with DBAG, which obviously the Patel family has promised to acquire.
Now that all the approvals have been received, the French approval actually came only yesterday. We plan to complete this transaction in the next week or so, probably around November 20th. This transaction will happen at INR 1,700 per share, which was agreed at the time of the last sell-down. Our DBAG nominee directors, Mr. Malte Woweries and Harsh Gupta, have both resigned since then, and today our current board has six directors, out of which four are independent. Lastly, I'm also happy to inform you that we've signed an agreement to purchase 100% stake in MixPro. This is a mixing company based in Ontario, Canada, for a consideration of about $7 million.
The transaction is expected to complete by November 30th, and like I've said in the past few quarterly updates, that mixing is an important business for us. We have a strategy in place. We are building on that strategy, and mixing will continue to be a growth driver, both in terms of revenue and profitability. I will now hand over the call to Manish Poddar, our CFO of the India business, and he will take you through the financial performance of the company. Thank you.
Thank you, Tarak. Good evening, all. So YTD, our revenue was at INR 1,850 crore, up 22%, and the EBITDA is at INR 274 crore, up 27%, at an EBITDA margin of 14.8% for H1. So as an organization, going on to the balance sheet primarily, as an organization, we continue to focus on making the balance sheet stronger. With that in thing, we have reduced our long-term debt by INR 67 crore in H1, which includes the INR 29 crore of prepayments. In H2, we have a planned repayments of INR 51 crore, but we think we, we should be able to prepay some more, debts, long-term debts during H2. And so therefore, overall, in this financial year, we should be, reducing our long-term debt by something like ± INR 140 crore .
Our interest costs have also reduced in H1 by, approximately 20 basis points, primarily in India, and now at consolidated, carries an interest rate of 7.5% and 8.1% here in India. This reflects the confidence of our lenders in the business, and as a result, we continue to enjoy double A minus rate rating at the peak of our rate versus when we were at our when we were at stage three. Also, on the other revenue, we continue to identify non-critical, non-core balance sheet items, and we will try to get it a bit more leaner and on that. So therefore, you see a small item on the asset sales for sale for this year itself. Moving on to, if you refer, slide number 9 on the working capital, our receivables are under control at 48 days.
Inventories have also reduced in the past 6 months by something like INR 70 crore. However, if you see the customer advances, that has reduced from INR 206 crore to INR 270 crore. So that's a combination, and that's the biggest item for us as an area of improvement for us. That reduction is primarily on account of two reasons. One, our backlog has reduced versus March versus September, so that's one count. And, as a percentage to sales, customer advances as a percentage to backlog, was 19% in March, has reduced to 16% in September. So these two factors have led to this reduction in the customer advances. Now moving on to the cash flow. If you see on slide number 10, the INR 251 crore of cash generation primarily has got consumed within the business for this H1.
The biggest item of that is the working capital. And the working capital, there were two reasons. One was the customer advances, as we just discussed. And the other reason was, has been the CIP increase in MAVAG for something like INR 50 crore for the half year. And as you know, MAVAG, we have been running huge operation excellence program, and as the manufacturing goes on and this CIP reduces, we should be able to liquidate a lot of debt in H2. With that, I will transfer the call back to Priyanka.
Thank you, Manish. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to join the question queue may press star and one on their touch-tone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sanjay Shah from KSA Securities Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, gentlemen. So, first of all, wish you all a happy Diwali and a great year ahead. So my question was regarding the order intake, which is drifting slightly towards the services side, that you which you have mentioned in your presentation also. So Tarak sir, can you highlight upon the services side in detail to make us understand what is this, and how do you see that panning ahead, the business too?
Sanjay, right, thank you so much, and happy Diwali to you as well. Just to understand the business, we break our businesses into three main verticals: technologies, which include glass-lined and non-glass-lined equipment. We have a systems business, which is basically any of our equipment around which we build complete systems, automation, et cetera, built into it. And then we have a services business, which is, basically, service mandates that we have internationally and in India. We have spare parts, we have reglass, we have pipes and fittings. So these are things that are used to service our equipment. And as a company today, at a consolidated, consolidated level, about 35%-40% of our revenues comes from services.
One important aspect to consider is the backlog that is currently available of INR 70 million-odd crore does not have a lot of service component, because these are obviously fast moving. So over the next few months and quarters, you will see service revenue kind of be something that comes, it's quite stable. It will continue to happen, and it will continue to be shipped out. This is not really long-term backlog that gets added onto the backlog. So over the next few months and quarters, you will see that the service business will continue to add to the backlog. The other difference in terms of the international business and the India business, the international business obviously has a much larger component of services. India is currently around the 9%-10% mark.
We have plans to improve that and bring that up to double digits. So that's something that we are working on. Services, like you know, is very profitable and something that we have a lot of, you know, focus on in creating service centers, placing service centers in the right geographies, and making sure that services is something that we can be proactive about. Our future goals, our you know, our strategic intent really is to not only stop at servicing our own equipment, but we should also be able to service other equipment as well in the chemical or pharmaceutical plant. So as management, you know, we believe that service is gonna continue to grow. It is very profitable, and we want to make sure that our service offering increases over time.
You know, having said that, services again is something that gets kind of related to CapEx. So when CapEx increases, services may decrease a little bit, but when CapEx slows down, people want to take better care of the equipment and make sure that they have much more uptime, and hence their spend on services will increase. That's the general overview on services. Happy to answer any other questions that you may have.
Thank you, sir. It's really helpful. I'll come back to you for further more questions. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. The next question is from the line of Shalin Choksy from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, team. Firstly, congratulations on the good set of numbers. I had a few questions. Firstly, on the order inflows, which we, we know have been relatively weaker, does this translate into any change in revenue or EBITDA guidance? And what sort of visibility on the domestic and international business does the current order backlog provide?
In terms of this year's outlook, I don't think anything changes. I think we are in a very strong position to finish the year as planned. As management, we are also very aligned in terms of what our strategic direction is in terms of order intakes. We know that we've had a couple of quarters of slightly lower intake than what we would have liked, but having seen a strong October, we believe that over the next few months, quarters, we will be able to build a backlog. There have been some large projects that we have won and that we still expect to win as well. These are projects that got pushed out just because of the slowdown in the chemical industry. We expect some of these projects to now materialize in November and in December.
So from that perspective, I think this year is completely sorted. We are at par, as you would have known, also in terms of both revenue and profitability, we are perfectly on plan. Our focus now really is changing to next year. As management, we are aware, and we are ready for the fight. We are aggressive in the market. At the same time, we are also looking very, very strongly at our internal cost structure. Is there opportunities within the company to rationalize manufacturing footprint? Is there opportunity to reduce cost? All those things are being worked on. But all in all, I think the next six to nine months could be slightly slower than expected, but I believe that the chemical industry will come back strongly.
Pharma has already seen a bit of pickup, and I believe that we are in a strong footing to kind of take advantage of that. No change in our revenue or profitability guidance, and I think for this year, I think we are quite strong, and we expect to complete the year just like what we started.
Okay. My other question was on the standalone business, where your revenue growth has been pretty slow at about 4%, and EBITDA margins have been flattish sequentially. Firstly, what slowed down the revenue growth in the standalone business? And you'd earlier indicated that we can do about 15%-16% EBITDA margins in the standalone business. How is that tracking? Because to achieve that, it means we'll have to do about 17% in H2.
So I think, Shalin, yes, on the EBITDA margin, we have been tracking at something between 12%-12.5%. And as Tarak mentioned, next 6-9 months look not all that super exciting. So, better part of this year, probably we should be in this range only for, for rest of the year in standalone numbers. On top line, you know-
Yeah, Shalin, hi, this is Tarak. So, the line wasn't very clear, but I understood you were asking about top-line growth in India, in the standalone business, right? So look, I think, we all recognize that, market in India has been fairly challenging for the last 6, 9 months, especially in the chemical and, pharmaceutical segments. What we have done is, been a lot, a lot more aggressive in the market in these segments, and also focused on our exposure or increasing our exposure in other segments. So for example, oil and gas, minerals and mining, and a few others, with our mixing business, with our Equilloy alloy and things like that.
So while the growth has not been as high as it used to be in the past, we believe once the core industrial segments return to growth, combined with our increased focus on other segments, I think, you know, we're pretty confident that we'll get back to our traditional growth rate, and therefore also get our margin profiles back to where we normally are.
Sure. That's useful. And if I may, just another question. If you could provide some color on how the raw materials' prices are tracking now, and whether any high-cost inventory that still remains with us. That's all. Thank you, and all the best.
Thanks, Shalin. Yeah, raw materials now have thankfully cooled down. They're not back to where they were before the spike, but, you know, they're sort of, the up- and- down that we had seen in the past has steadied. Most of the high-cost inventory is now flushed out, and we're buying inventory at market and using it.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you very much. The next question is from the line of Koushik Mohan from Ashika Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir, congratulations for the numbers, and happy Diwali. Sir, my major question is coming on the glass-lined side, because our market share, like if we talk about the entire TAM for this entire business, is somewhere around $1 billion. That comes out to be INR 8,000 crore, or let's assume like INR 8,300 crore. Because currently we are in a run rate of revenue somewhere around INR 3,178 crore, which is which we closed in the last year. And also by seeing it, last two quarters, we are also very near to INR 2,000 crore. That comes up to INR 1,900 crore.
So, what will be the, because of this reason we are entering into MixPro, that is $3 billion market. I understand that, that means INR 25,000 crore market share is there, market is there. We are getting into that. But how about this one liter GMM Pfaudler core business that is glass-lined, what, what are we looking out here? Are we going to take the market share of De Dietrich, which is the market leader in the world?
Yeah. So this is Aseem, I'll start off and then perhaps Thomas or Tarak might want to add. Look, glass-lined business is, as you rightly mentioned, our core business, and we're definitely focused on maintaining our share there. While our share varies across different regions of the world, roughly speaking, we're, you know, at 40%-50% market share globally. You did mention correctly that the market globally is about $1 billion, but obviously as the cycle, in this, the CapEx cycle in the chemical pharmaceutical segment has slowed down, you know, for a temporary period, that market also slows down a little bit, right?
So we are very confident that we are, if not protecting, actually we believe we have gained share in the last 6 months, because we've been a lot more aggressive in ensuring that we capture the orders that are out there. And we're confident certainly all the major project orders have come to GMM Pfaudler. As far as MixPro is concerned, of course, or the mixing business broadly is concerned, that's a separate segment. We've always had a mixing business. We believe it's a good business and therefore we are expanding in it. But it's an independent, separate business, you know, that gives us a little more diversification and breadth of exposure.
Okay.
From the international point of view, the market share also are quite high in all the regions that we serve. In major regions, we have a good position there, and our strategy always has been to maintain this market share. However, during the last 2-3 years, we have been able to increase market share, especially in Europe, where we have been able to cater to some of the regions that we haven't been able to get a foothold in, like, southwestern Europe, eastern Europe. And this was due to the EPIC program, where we import vessels from India, made in India, finishing them up in our site in Europe and shipping to the customer. And this was incremental business for us, and thus we have gained market share over the last few years. And our goal is still to maintain that.
Okay, and just to add on the mixing business, more strategic rather than what, you know, what our plan is. So, as you know, we've always had a mixing business in India. It's close to about $20 million. That was the starting point. We then acquired a company in France called Mixel, around $12 million-$15 million of revenue, also having a facility in China. So we are now present in India, in Europe, and in China. Recently, we completed the acquisition of MixPro, which is in Canada. So now we have access to North America and South America, right? So as part of the global strategy, we wanted to be a global player when it came to mixing, which is now completed. We've also looked at resources and organization for mixing.
We have also kind of, we are in the process of bringing in somebody to run the mixing business. I think that's something that will really help, dedicated focus on the business with a clear strategy, go-to-market strategy. Mixing is something that, again, makes a lot of difference for the customer. It's a technology play. It helps reduce batch time, it helps improve power consumption, it helps reduce cost, right? So many more companies are looking at mixing now. People are talking to us about mixing in a more technical manner as well. So this is definitely an area that we want to focus on. And like Aseem mentioned, mixing goes across many different industries, right? So metals and minerals, water treatment, paint, it goes into food and beverage, it goes into cosmetics. So the list is really, really long.
Obviously, we're not going to play in all the areas, but we're going to pick and choose areas where we have a strong footing, and our idea is to be in the top, you know, five mixing companies in the world. I mean, obviously, it's not going to happen overnight, but I think the progress that we've made so far, both with the acquisition and both with the resources that we've added, I think over the next few years, you will see the mixing business really kind of grow at a much faster pace than our glass-lined business. The other thing, just to kind of close out this question, is that even though glass-lined is what we are known for, glass-lined, as we started maybe two or three years ago, accounted for nearly 70% of our revenue.
Our idea as management is to bring that down to 50%, right? 50% should be glass-lined, and the rest of the 50% should come from non-glass-lined and services and systems, right? That is really the goal. To mitigate the risk and the exposure that we have in glass-lined, we have kind of built a portfolio of non-glass-lined products, right? And these products are growing much faster, have much bigger markets that we can cater to. Their TAMs are much bigger, and hence we believe that this is going to be the kind of structural change in the business over the next maybe two or three years. We will always be the market leader in glass-lined, but the share of glass-lined within our total revenue will probably come down to close to 50%.
So that means that our entire revenue of glass-lined is currently around, if I assume on the broader terms, in the last year, we have closed around INR 3,178 crore. If I assume even we'll do this year INR 3,000 crore, that means that in next coming five years, we have another 50% market coming from only from mixing line. That means our entire sales will somewhere around look like around the INR 6,000 crore. Then what will be our margins? Which line of margins will be taken? Because currently, if we look at margins, the glass-lined India business is doing greater than the Pfaudler business that we have it. How about mixing? In mixing business, what kind of margins that will do?
If possible, can you give all the three segments which I'm talking about, their, EBITDA level margins, if you have some guidance?
Yeah. So I think just a couple of points here. One, I mean, you went through the numbers quite fast, and I'm not sure if I agree with all the numbers. I will just kind of give you an overview. Glass-lined margins, yes, are quite strong, have been quite strong, but even our non-glass-lined businesses today are generating similar levels of profitability, right? So none of the business lines that we've added are going to be detrimental to margin. They're going to add and improve the margin profile. Our mixing business, maybe in some cases, is already higher than glass-lined, right? So there is definitely technology sales that we're doing in mixing and systems, where we are getting probably better margins than we are in glass-lined.
Again, the only business that we have today within the group that probably is slightly lower than glass-lined would be in the heavy engineering business. But again, there we have a clear strategy of picking and choosing the right methodology, export versus domestic, and making sure that our margin profile is close to maybe 12%-15% there, right? But the rest of the product lines that we have, anything that goes into chemical processing should generate 15%-20% margin profile, if not more. Service and systems obviously will give you a lot more. And then our Interseal business again, again, has a very high margin profile, right? So I think that's the general overview. We don't expect significant change in margin profile just because we are reducing the glass-lined share.
We are replacing that, or we are adding new businesses that are also kind of, margin accretive rather than dilutive.
My repeated question on this, but a little bit clarity. In the glass-lined business, India business currently is somewhere around 16% plus. So can we maintain these margins in India business? And in non-India business, that is international business, somewhere around 12%. In mixing line, what kind of percentage is that?
In mixing?
In India business, what is our EBITDA margin? In non-India business, that is international business Glassline, what is our margin? In mixing line, what will be our margin?
I think that goes with the right numbers in terms of general guidelines. I think India margins can improve a little bit with operational efficiencies and things like that. If the market dynamics were to change and the market demand were to increase, then automatically prices would increase and hence our margins would go up. Internationally also, you can say, the EBITDA and margins will remain stable. And I didn't hear you clearly, so I think you said Mixel. I'm not sure what that meant, but the mixing business is between the 15%-20% margin profile currently. The idea is obviously to grow that margin and improve that margin as we consolidate, as we have a clear strategy, as we have a clear go-to-market strategy, we want to improve margins there.
Got it. Sir, I will get back in the line. I have some other questions. Thanks.
Yes, sorry for that. The next question is from the line of Mr. Pramod Dangi from Unifi Investment Management, LLP. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Tarak and team. Congratulations for good momentum. Just two questions. One is, you said that, you know, pharma started seeing some momentum building up in India, but chemical is still, you know, sluggish. So, you know, while our order book is still low, do we see any kind of the announcement for the new CapEx building up in the pharma or the chemical, where you can see that, the customers are now planning for the new CapEx?
Hmm.
Yes.
Yeah. So I think there's two points here. One is, I don't think our order book is low. I think we are comfortable. The problem is that the market was super hot, so our, our order book, obviously, a few quarters ago, was incredible. It was a lot. It was much higher, but it's not the general tendency to have such a high order book. So I think that's something to just keep in mind. We are still at a very comfortable position, maybe not at the highest level that we were, but that market was definitely inflated and super hot, right?
Keeping that in mind, like I said, we are at a comfortable level, and that, we believe that this order book can continue to grow because some of these opportunities that we are working on, which are delayed, will only kind of materialize in the coming quarters, and I think we should be in a good position there. Coming back to your question about pharmaceutical investments specifically, and I'll let Thomas answer for the international business. In India, we do believe that things are kind of improving. We have been seeing some traction on the ground, especially in Hyderabad. We've seen some head start happening in Gujarat and in Mumbai as well. Pharma is coming back. I think the real play for pharma is going to be in the next financial year. So FY 2025 is where pharma will invest.
I think some of them have already started building capacity to cater to the demand in FY 2025. Some of the bigger guys, like Divi's, has already announced Unit 3. They've already placed the first round of orders. Laurus has expanded, Neuland is expanding. We have expansion in MSN as well. So those guys are expanding. We have Cipla and Sun Pharma looking at small expansion. [audio distortion] , small expansion. So yes, there is definitely more momentum in pharmaceuticals, and maybe, Thomas, internationally, you would like to say something on the pharma business or the pharma sector?
Yeah, the pharma sector is still strong and growing as well in America as well as in Europe. In America, our intake that is driven by pharma, our project is quite strong still. We also have increased basically our services above expectations in America. Europe, we have to say that the pharma industry is still investing and body making and repairing. So what we are seeing is an intake market there. However, the heat, the overheated mode is somewhat over. Things are back to normal. Decision times are taking a bit longer or back to normal times, and this is quite good news. Where we see some significant weakness at this point is in China. In China, pharmaceutical as well as chemical markets are very, very slow right now.
The capacity seems to be at a high level at this point, but both pharmaceutical and chemical is quite large in China, as you know, from a volume point of view, and those investments will come back, and when they come back, usually they come back strong.
Okay. Okay, great. And then, secondly, on our, you know, Stock and Sale strategy, where we are supposed to supply around 28-30 reactors to Germany or the European facility, how's that stepping up? What kind of, you know, the, you know, we are seeing over there, in terms of the customer offtake? If you can give some update on that.
Yeah. Thanks. Difficult to understand, but I think, you know, the question about the Stock and Sale Program that we have initiated and started.
Yeah.
We have still much success. It's ongoing. It's still going. We are replenishing our stock, the second or third time as we speak. Shipments are on the way to Europe, and usually the vessels that we have on stock and sale don't remain longer than 2-3 months on stock before they go. And, this is something that our customers appreciate, having the opportunity in an emergency case to get fast supply, and for that reason, it's a success story.
Is it helping to gain some market share or to, you know, service the client more in a limited time? How is it helping our profitability side as well as, you know, gaining the momentum with the client?
Sorry, we could not hear you. Sorry, your line is not very clear.
No. Is it, is it better now?
Come back on, because it's not clear, and it's difficult for us to understand the question. Would you mind just logging back on and getting in the queue, Pramod?
Sure, done.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. The next question is from the line of Omkar Kamtekar from Bonanza Portfolio. Please go ahead.
Thank you. First of all, with respect to the execution, our order intake has been slow. That's not an issue from my perspective, but the order backlog has fallen to approximately INR 300 crore on a quarter-on-quarter basis. We can say effectively, on a positive side, the execution has improved, and we have done approximately INR 900 crore of revenue. Every quarter there has been a good, a fair bit of increase, especially in the last 3 quarters, on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Can we say that the execution is starting to ramp up, and this execution level can sustain or maybe even improve, say, for H2 and ahead?
Yeah, the problem is that I think too much improvement in execution means that you eat into your backlog much faster, like you rightly said, but execution both in India, especially international business, has been quite strong. Like many of you will know, we have 3 new facilities in Germany, in Italy, and in China, which obviously are executing. The momentum is there. These factories were started maybe 2.5-3 years ago, and it took us some time to ramp up. That's why you're seeing the significant improvement in revenue. You might remember that when we acquired the former business, international was about $175 million. Today, we are close to $250 million-$300 million, right? So significant improvement in revenue, but it's only come from, I mean, come from two main areas.
One is operational excellence, so improvement in execution, and two, pricing improvement, right? So we used to have, when we were moving factories, changing from the old factory to new factory, a lot of delays in delivery, but today, customers are very confident. They're very comfortable that when we say it will deliver in eight months, it's gonna come in eight months, right? So that's the benefit. We need to definitely continue with execution, and that's what we are working on. There could be opportunities to rationalize a little bit of manufacturing that we have, and that's something that we are looking at as well. But otherwise, I think execution will continue. We need to focus on bringing in orders, which we all are quite, quite aligned. I think order intake has been quite strong in October.
We hope that November and December are also quite strong, then we are back at the decent level. And like I said, our business is not only dependent today on glass line, so we're not only dependent on chemical and pharma. We have other businesses that cater to other industries as well. So in heavy engineering, for example, last month, we got an INR 75 crore order. We are currently working on a few other large projects, INR 50 crore-INR 60 crore. The two of them were to materialize immediately. We are now at the INR 2,000 crore backlog mark. So again, the things change very quickly. And I believe that India will turn around much faster than the international business. India currently has a smaller backlog, so India needs to kind of turn around faster.
In the international business, like I mentioned, 20% also come from spare parts and services. That's always ongoing, so that's not part of the backlog, and that will add to the backlog every month. So that's the general overview in terms of backlog and in terms of the execution capabilities as well.
Okay. Thank you. With respect to the guidance, so the guidance I think would remain relatively unchanged because of the current run rate. We might just about fall maybe by 1% or 2% short of the FY 2024 estimate that was given Q1, and we should be in line with the FY 2025 guidance, just to confirm.
Yeah. So as management, we are clear the FY 2025 guidance, and I think in the past, as management, what we've kind of given out in terms of guidance, we have delivered on. And our primary goal in every single day when we wake up, we make sure that we are working towards achieving that goal. I don't see a reason why we should not be able to meet that goal. We might have to look at certain deviations to strategy, certain changes in our strategy, little bit more aggressive on pricing, but I think we all are on the same page when it comes to that we need to meet these numbers, and we will work towards meeting these numbers and making sure that we deliver on the guidance.
Okay. And just, view on the mixing business. So the acquisition that we have done, although it is on a small scale vertical now, but how do you see that scaling up, and what percentage of the total revenue that it might go, say, maybe FY 2025 or FY 2026? How, what is the guidance or pathway for that?
When you add up our mixing business, and both, and Thomas, will jump in with their views as well. Today, India is around $20 million, it is around $15 million, just for the numbers, and let's say, Mixel another $7 million-$8 million, right? So we are at the $41 million-$42 million mark as well, which puts us into kind of already in one of the bigger or the, I mean, top five kind of companies in the world. Our focus is to build that business into at least a $100 million business, double it, in the near term, in 3-5-year period. And we believe that there are more acquisition opportunities here as well, so that's something that we will always look at pursuing when something comes up.
But even organically, now that we have these three facilities, we have PTR, we have access to new markets, we will then use our global sales network and our ability to kind of combine the three mixing platforms into one and offer the same product ranges to multiple customers across multiple regions, right? So mixing is something that should go, grow quite, quite fast. We've seen significant improvement in the mixing business here in India, and we believe that internationally also, over the next few quarters, you will see mixing becoming stronger and stronger. Thomas and team, do you want to say something here?
Yeah, thank you very much. I think the mixing business again is a market space significantly bigger than the glass-lined market base, and this is one of the reasons why we have chosen this technology. The technology that we understand, that was very adjacent to what we already do, and at the same time, it opens us market opportunities, market segments that we haven't been serving with our current products so far. And therefore, the growth opportunity are certainly there. We are making ourselves a stronger company with mixing offering that, and organizationally, we are working right now diligently in setting up our organization, and we call it a mixing division with a leading person coming from that industry. Very experienced, joining us beginning calendar year next year, and putting all those things together.
As such that, we are working on several acquisition opportunities around mixing as we speak, and we have further potential to grow.
Yeah. I'll just add, I think Tarak and Thomas have covered most of the strategy things. I'll give you a couple of examples of how mixing makes a difference, right? So in India recently, we've had some nice wins in new segments. So, for example, in lithium processing, there's specific agitators required, which we are working on. In biorefining, in gold beneficiation process as well, we're supplying our agitator. So these are new areas from our traditional chemical and pharmaceutical space, and it gives us the ability to really cover segments that we've traditionally not covered. We've selected a few areas where we think we can make a difference, and we'll continue to build our expertise, our PTRs, so that we make a more compelling offer to our customers.
Okay, thank you. So it would be prudent to assume that the mixing business will be growing much, much faster, and it also already, I think you mentioned 15%-20% EBITDA margin. So that would be good to assume.
I think that's a reasonable assumption to make.
Just a final, final, word on the working capital. In the current quarter, we've seen approximately INR 220 crore hit because of the working capital. So how are we going to optimize that? Or it is just a one-off, y ou think, or is this going to be maybe prolonged for some time?
I think that has gone into the base now, so I think, as in first quarter, we started this, Q1, so H2 and H1 will be completely different. Part A. Part B, there are few initiatives which we have already started working upon, and, you know, and you, you'll see the results hopefully in end of March, results as in, as in when we come out.
Okay.
To your previous question on mixing, I think a couple of months back we uploaded a mixing presentation, and there's that much more detail is there in, and you can refer to that as well, and there's a that is being given on the next 4-5 years.
Oh, okay.
Mixing, on the mixing presentation.
Okay. Thank you, and best wishes for the festivities.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. The next question is from the line of Raj Shah from Marcellus Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So my question was, relating to the unbilled revenues, amount. In March 2023, the amount was around INR 100 crore. I just want to know how that amount has moved, as on previous year.
Raj, the unbilled revenue amount, as I said, with regard to Normag primarily, has increased to something INR 66 crore-INR 67 crore. So to that extent, that amount increased.
Okay. Okay. And how do you expect this amount to move by the year end?
I think it should be more or less stable, and with a smaller reduction, because as you go through the base, you know, the revenue base increases. But I think at this stage, we are slightly on the higher side, so you can say a marginal improvement as we go along. Marginal reduction in the year.
Oh, I see. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for answering.
Thank you so much. The next question is from the line of Ritesh Shah, who's an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, sir, this is Ritesh from Investec Capital. So just wanted to understand the business case for mixing technology. That's one. So you did indicate examples for lithium and gold. This is quite niche, as far as the Indian markets are there. Do we supply to any other non-ferrous majors like the Hindalcos or Vedantas of this world? And if yes, what is it substituting right now, or is it something which is new that we are offering to these companies?
Yeah. So as far as minerals and mining are concerned, I gave those two as examples. We do provide agitation solutions to a wider range of mineral mining cases. While I can't take specific customer names for confidentiality reasons, certainly we do cover other areas. And as far as, you know, what we are replacing, there is usually an existing agitation solution. But the way we design our agitator, that it gives them better productivity or more efficiency in terms of power consumption, and that is what actually enables our sales vis-a-vis their existing solution. So just to add to this, I think so I think in the past, when these plants were built, especially in metals and minerals, in, you know, oil and gas, petrochemicals, a lot of PTR was required.
Most of these PTRs were already specified, which would mean that these inquiries would only go to certain vendors. In most cases, we do compete with the global entities when it comes to mixing. However, we've made a name for ourselves here in India, and now with these two acquisitions that we have done, we've also bought PTR. Like, for example, Mixel has very strong PTR in certain industries. MixPro, on the other, has very strong PTR in other industry segments. So we don't really have a lot of overlap. When we combine the two businesses, we have really a much wider range of industry segments and PTR that we can use.
The idea is to bring it all together and package it together under one umbrella of mixing, and then go out and then target the customer base, saying, "Hey, we can now cater to a much wider range of industries." Like I said earlier, mixing helps customers either reduce batch time, which means they can produce more. You can reduce your power consumption, which means your costs go down. You can improve the quality of your product, means you get more money. So there's multiple benefits that the customer can touch and feel, and that's why mixing is very, very important, and that's why we have decided, as a technology leader, to go after mixing in a big way, because it fits perfectly with the portfolio. It's complementary. There are synergies.
Mixing is something we speak about with our chemical and pharma customers, but now we can speak about it to a much wider range of customers as well.
Great. Sir, I appreciate your comments. So, to my understanding, glass-lined equipment was far, far critical, right? So you will have some pricing power, and we can call out on margins what we want. How critical is mixing as a technology when you look at any of the ferrous or non-ferrous majors? Because it will be a very small part of the value chain, to my understanding. So will it fare the same level of margins, ROC, that we look at when we look at our traditional or core businesses?
Yeah. So the big project that we have done, where we were competing with international players, we did a fermentation project where we were competing with a Chinese company, and we must have made, I think, higher than 30% EBITDA margin in those specific agitator s, right? So these are all critical, especially when it's critical and you cannot take any kind of risk, the customer cannot take a risk, then they have to make sure that they pay for, and compared to manufacturing outside of India, so let's say we're competing with a German, a French or a Chinese player, our cost of manufacture in India is much lower, so we are maybe 25%-30% cheaper. But because of our lower cost, we make significant improvement in margins. So mixing generally is a profitable business.
It's changed a lot, and in most cases, the mixing business will probably give you better margins than glass-l ined, and that's the idea of really growing the mixing business.
Sure. That's very helpful. Thank you so much. All the very best. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shyam Maheshwari from Aditya Birla Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Tarak and team, and, congratulations on the good set of numbers. Yeah, just had a couple of questions. One on the international business. When I look at the gross margins this quarter, they are a little off, the numbers that we usually post around 3%-4%. Wanted to understand, you know, why that is. Is there some competitive pricing that you're seeing there? Is it some acquisition-related integration cost that, or probably one-off in nature? If you would like to-
The international business you're talking about? The India business. I didn't get that. Sorry.
The international business. International.
There is, it's slightly lower. What is lower, you said, sorry? Gross margin?
The gross margin. Gross margin, yeah.
Maybe product mix, maybe. Yeah, exactly. So I think in the international mix, business, the technology business has been, you know, in this quarter has been a bit on the higher side. And as you would, imagine, technology would consume that much more raw material, and that is the main reason for this, higher in Q2 material cost internationally.
Right. So this is probably a mix, related, kind of-
Right.
No competitive, kind of pressure as such?
Yeah, primarily on the mix side. I mean, competitive pressure is there now. I mean, if the market were to slow down, you know, obviously there is more people vying for the same kind of order book. There is definitely more competitive pressure. I would say Europe and international U.S. is not as intense as we've seen at least here in India. But I think in India, we've done quite well with maintaining or maybe even improving market share in glass-l ined. So our order book in the last couple of months has been quite strong. We expect some more large orders to finalize in the near future. So, from that perspective, I think both international and India and margin could probably see an improvement if the market were to kind of turn and the demand were to increase.
The revenues that you see right now, they are not under competitive pressure because the revenues from the last quarter were order intakes from eight months ago.
I understand. Second question was just on the outlook of the chemical industry as such. You know, we have guided for growth beyond FY 2025 as well. While our order right now are muted, you know, what gives you the confidence that the chemical industry will come back? And maybe if you could give kind of a breakup between like agrochemicals, specialty chemicals, which sector we are seeing maybe some sort of pickup happening in the recent months.
So I probably was hoping to ask you the same question in terms of what you think about chemicals, because you probably are tracking and following more chemical companies than we are. But I think what gives us confidence is that, one, some of the projects that were supposed to be finalized maybe six months ago have finally started. Kind of people are sending us inquiries, they finalize on their equipment, and they are now getting into the negotiation stage, right? That started to happen, and I think that gives us a little bit more confidence, because earlier, maybe, maybe a quarter ago or two, three months ago, we did not have that confidence that things would. Things have got pushed out, but I think things are now.
I mean, in terms of chemical industry, when I say chemicals, really agrochemicals, the bottom has been reached. I don't think there's any further kind of downside there. So if anything, things are going to improve. Raw material prices have also stabilized. Like you must be knowing, that many of the, much of the overstocking is gonna get consumed, and then obviously, U.S. business will start ordering again. So we will see a ramp-up of the chemical industry, mainly agrochemicals. Specialty pharma have been decent. They have been kind of doing okay. You know, people building like CP, you know, CPVC, PVC, epichlorohydrin, all these kind of specialty chemicals continue to do quite okay, and then pharma is picking up. So all in all, I think the whole situation, even though has, I mean, you know, chemicals is cyclical.
We've always known this. Obviously, we've been in an up, an up cycle for the last maybe five to six years, so people didn't realize that there's also a down cycle. I think the idea is when there's a down cycle, we should be aware, and we should make sure that we have control of our costs and make sure that we don't lose market share, which we are doing. And as soon as the markets are to turn, I think we will be in a strong position to take this opportunity and make sure that we are again, in a strong position.
Understood. Thanks for answering. All the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sarang Sanil from RW Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. I hope I'm audible. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is: What is that you're doing differently in the international business now, which is clearly getting reflected on your margins? With the capacity utilization, headcount rationalization, or have there been any revamps in the existing facilities? I mean, what are the top levers apart from a better pricing that you get?
So maybe, Alex, you can take this question. The question is: What are you doing differently in the international business so that your profit margins have improved significantly from, what, 7.5%, not about 2.5, 3 years ago, to now nearly 15%? So.
There are several, in fact, key one is that Thomas mentioned before, a lot of the orders that you currently see in our P&L, they were offered when we had the peak for energy prices for material last year. So we were able to increase our prices further, and in the meantime, the cost structure stabilized again, and therefore we benefit from the higher, for the better price business with the lower cost structure now.
Right. And I think the other thing that maybe from the pricing improvement that we did, but also the execution in the facilities, namely Germany, China, Italy, I think these are new facilities. They took some time to ramp up, but now the momentum is going strong, and we are getting good absorption of the fixed cost. Having said that, we always also look at, and maybe Thomas can talk a little bit about, the employee cost generally and what we have done over the last few months to make sure that we are more efficient.
Yeah, and the cost, of course, we had increases due to the inflation of the region. Again, we have been able to manage to increase our prices accordingly. That was not significantly difficult because all our customers have the same story, same issue to absorb. But at the same time, we were able to increase productivity to operation excellence programs, also combining, let's say, better operational processes and the productivity increase, and this is what how we counter those cost increases.
Got it. Got it, sir. So my second question is, when I see your margins in the last two years, in Q4, there is a bump up in other expense as a percentage of revenue. So is there any big expense that you incur in Q4, and this is something we can expect going forward?
Yes. So there is a, in Q4, there is usually annual incentives, right, international. But there, there's something in Q4, last Q4, that we had the new calendar. Oh, yeah, the calendar. January is the new calendar where they have the higher salaries that you pay normally, right? So the, the margins-
The cycle is in-
Yeah.
January, which happens to be Q4 for us, so employee expenses generally go up.
Yeah, in Q4, but I think generally for the year, you will see that we are around what we've guided towards. But yes, Q4, you will see a slight increase in employee expenses in the international business.
I meant in other expense.
Oh, I think, exactly references to last year, Q4, probably we did not have something, upfront, immediately to your, to your mind, but I think there, there would be a few, legal expenses that were there on account of your acquisition last time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I assume that you refer to the cost that we spent for the acquisitions and for the, we say you remember that we also tried to dispose the Edlon business, and, for the year end, in fact we approved all the costs for this. So this is more or less considered as a one-time impact. So please do not consider going forward, that in the Q4, we already see a significant bump in the other operating expenses.
Sure. Sure, sure. And my final question is, is the effective tax rate being the 26%-27% range only for this year? Because first two quarters, we saw a little on the higher side, right?
Yes. So for the international business, we always have some changes in the tax rate. I think in general, we gave the guidance to consider a rate of 27%-28%. Yeah, between the quarters, some changes, but I would consider that for this quarter, we are at the 25%-27% rate again. So, yeah, for the full year, you will see according to our published Ind-AS reconciliation, where you see the impact due to deferred taxes, due to the fiscal units that we have globally. So, but the general guidance remain at the 27%.
Got it. Got it. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we would take that as our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
So thank you everybody for joining us on this call. I think most of the comments that we made today will kind of show to you that we have line of sight in terms of where we want to be. We obviously have now also a shareholder who has come in recently, and we will be engaging with them as well to kind of build strategies and see areas of improvement, and that we will obviously kind of look to maybe at some point look to give you guidance, maybe more than FY 2025, which we are currently have guided towards. Having said that, we also have some specific strategies for acquisitions and any opportunity that we continue to look at, so that's something that we will continue to do.
And then lastly, like I said, we are making sure that our cost structure remains intact and that we can look at operational efficiency to help improve margins. And hopefully the market is starting to turn, and there is some on the uptick, and if the market were to kind of turn around much faster, then obviously the demand goes up, which means then everybody kind of increases prices, so that will help also in terms of profitability. But generally, I think we have we performed quite well for the first half of the year, and we expect to continue with the momentum for the next half as well, and we look forward to speaking with you at the end of Q3. Thank you very much, and have a good evening.
Thank you. On behalf of GMM Pfaudler, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.