Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to all of you to the Q1 FY 2026 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 CFO, Mr. Alexander Pömpner, our India Head of Operations, Mr. Dhananjay Bajpeyee, 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 that was uploaded on the stock exchanges and also on our website, including our call discussion 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 would now hand over the call to Mr. Tarak Patel to provide an overview of the performance. Over to you, Tarak.
Thank you, Dhaval. Just for one clarification, we also have with us today Greg Gelhaus, our Chief Transformation Officer, joining the call. Let me start off with a brief overview of our quarterly performance. We've delivered a stable revenue this quarter with a strong improvement in the profitability, largely driven by our India business. Our consolidated EBITDA is up 14% year-on-year, and our India EBITDA has grown by a strong 45% year-on-year. EBITDA margins have also improved. Today, we are at 12.7% at the consolidated level and 15.7% on a standalone basis. Order intake this quarter has been quite strong. We stand at about INR 1,000 crore of order intake, primarily driven by our system and our services business. This is 14% higher year-on-year and 52% higher quarter-on-quarter, which impacts our backlog.
Our current backlog stands at INR 1,906 crore, which is an increase of 7% year-on-year and 17% quarter-on-quarter, which provides a healthy visibility for the upcoming quarter. We've also completed the acquisition. We've not actually completed, but we are in the process of completing the acquisition of SEMCO . SEMCO is expected to close next week. We had mentioned during our last disclosure regarding SEMCO that this is our foothold into the South American and Brazilian markets, where we believe that there is going to be significant investments in metals and minerals, wastewater, sewage treatment, where SEMCO already has a very large and established brand name, as well as a strong customer base. With SEMCO's acquisition, our mixing platform, our global mixing platform, includes Mixion in India, Mixtel in France and China, MixPro in Canada, and now SEMCO in South America.
We now have6 a strong global mixing business. The idea is to really grow this business and make sure that it comes under one roof and under one brand going forward. In terms of the market, the market here in India seems a little bit stronger. Investments have come back in pharma and in the chemicals, and we do expect agrochemicals also to start investing in the next few quarters. We have already seen inquiries and opportunities from these sectors, and our opportunity pipeline has also grown over the last few months. Having said that, we must keep in mind that there is obviously global uncertainty. Some of these decisions of large projects may be put on hold, considering what's going on in terms of global tariffs. However, having said that, we do believe that the India business is definitely stronger today than it was about a year ago.
With that, I think I would like to now open this call up for questions and answers. Sorry, before I do that, I would like to pass on this to Alex Pömpner, our CFO, to take you through the numbers briefly.
Thank you, Tarak. Good evening to everyone also from my side, and thanks for joining today. I do not want to say so much. As Tarak already said, we have started Q1 with a consolidated revenue of INR 795 crore and an EBITDA of INR 101 crore. I just would like to mention two important topics, more accounting-driven. First, it's the FX currency impact. During this quarter, the euro appreciated by approximately 8% against the U.S. dollar, and this resulted in a notable foreign exchange impact across our financial results. This is due to the fact that we had intercompany currency borrowing within our international operations. Due to this currency movement, we faced an excess lot of currency loss in the P&L statements, as this shows in Note iv in the financial results. This is an unrealized impact with no cash impact.
A second one is also what you've probably recognized, is that we have a really high tax rate. The tax rate adds up to 68%. This is also influenced by our international group structure. For example, a large portion is just due to the fact that some of our corporate expenses, including this FX impact, is an entity which has no income. As a result, we do not show a tax credit for these losses. This is, again, coming from the accounting side, with not really a big cash impact. This was it so far from my side, and now we would like to open the call for questions and comments.
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 touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use hands 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 Mihir Manohar from Carnelian Asset Management. Please go ahead.
No, thanks for giving the opportunity and congratulations on a good set of numbers. Sir, last, we wanted to understand the U.S. business exposure. Sir, I mean, what is the U.S. business exposure, U.S. exports? I mean, India to U.S. and Europe to U.S. What would be that number?
No, so we have no significant exports from either India or Europe into the U.S. The U.S. has a large manufacturing facility, which is local and can be in the U.S. market. We also have Brazil as a low-cost source for the U.S. market. As we understand today, there is no significant tariff on glass-lined equipment that is exported from Brazil to the U.S. As you know, every day there is a new situation and it's changing in its dynamics. As of now, we don't see any significant issues with the U.S. tariff situation in the way that we are structured.
Understood. with reference to the material procurement, I mean, are we, through manufacturing which is resting in the U.S., are the whole 1/3 of the business is America's? Sorry, is it that the cost of manufacturing for our companies based out of the U.S. is increasing or even that is on the floor?
No, I think the U.S. manufacturing facility sources locally. We are one of the only one of the two other suppliers who have local manufacturing in the U.S. We do have a strong position. The U.S. market is a large market for us and a profitable market as well. Being local and having Brazil as a low-cost source has worked well for us. We hope that maybe some of these tariff impacts will maybe energize or increase investment in the U.S. market. We have seen over the past maybe a few months that there has been more inquiries for U.S.
or the U.S. market, which in the past we were not seeing, especially in pharmaceuticals where we believe people might invest and make sure that at least some manufacturing is done in the U.S. If that were to happen, then it would mean that obviously our U.S. business would benefit from this tariff situation.
Okay, understood. Just for clarification, as of now, I mean Brazil to U.S. GLE as well as non-GLE exports, that is not under tariff.
Yes, so we basically use Brazil as GLE exports to the U.S. The U.S. also has a small manufacturing for systems and some stainless steel and non-glass-lined equipment as well. Generally, it's mainly glass-lined. As of right now, the glass-lined exports from Brazil to the U.S. seem to be not notified under this tariff regime.
Okay, understood. Our second question was on the interactions with clients. Last time we were expecting pickup to happen in India from end of the year between Q2 onwards. If you can provide some color as to what is the interaction that you are having with clients across all the three geographies from a business pickup perspective, that would be really helpful.
Sure. I think let me start here with India. India, like I said, chemicals, pharma, a good amount of investment. Recently, we've seen a lot of investment in this GLC2 and peptide manufacturing here in India. I think that's something that's going to continue. We have also participated in that investment and have secured a large number of orders in that space. The glass-lined business also in India is picking up. We have now a full factory in Gujarat. If you remember last year, we had two factories, and both factories were running at 50%, 60%. Today, we have in this quarter overabsorption in the Gujarat facility in our glass-lined business because the volumes have increased. We believe that glass-lined will continue to improve.
We have now received also inquiries from large agrochemical players, which is a positive definitely because we haven't seen that really happen over the last 12- 18 months. That's a change. We expect some investment to come into Q3 and Q4. From an India perspective, India backlog and India business, we do expect a good amount of growth this year and a strong reposition as well from the India order book. We are expecting to grow quite nicely this year as compared to previous year. Internationally, there are different themes across the world. I think Europe we have seen a little bit lower investment in terms of chemical and pharmaceuticals. However, we see some other industries which are kind of making up for this. During the quarter, we received a very large order from a European company in the range of about EUR 33.7 million, about $37 million.
This is more into asset recovery and kind of spend there. We are seeing that level of investment coming back to industries that are involved in the defense manufacturing, arms and ammunition, and so on and so forth. The U.S., again, as of right now, it has shown some amount of recovery in terms of the services business. To say that it is back to its original investment level, I think we will still have to wait and watch a little bit. Generally, the international business outlook is still a little bit more cautious because obviously with the global uncertainties, some of these investment decisions might be postponed. Having said that, India remains strong and hopefully we see some amount of a reversal of this trend in the international business in the coming months.
Sure, understood. My next question was on the cost control measures. What is the status of the cost control measures that we were looking to implement for the European geographies, and what at the control level, both for India and now the consolidation of plants as well as the consolidation plants in Europe? At the control level, what kind of margin improvement do you expect over the next few years?
There are multiple different cost control measures that are ongoing. I'll speak a little bit about maybe one or two and then Thomas and Alex can jump in and talk you through a little bit more in terms of what's going on on the ground. In India, currently we are running and we ran last year a very kind of robust and, you know, what was it, if it had improvement transformation, the project that we ran. It lasted about 9 odd months and we expect those benefits to be approved in this financial year. You would have seen some improvement in Q4 of last year and that continues in Q1 as well. With a lower revenue base, we have significantly improved the margins. Over the next few quarters, when our revenue increases, you will see some of that flow through also, you know, flowing into the P&L as well.
That's something that has helped us quite a bit here in India, but we also continue to make sure that our cost structure remains quite lean and that's something that's ongoing. You would have known also that we have now launched our Poland project that is up and running as well. We have now started sending orders from Western Europe, high-cost geographies like Switzerland and France, to Poland. The quality and the delivery from those sites have been very good. I think as time progresses, you will see more and more material and orders moving into lower-cost geographies. With that, maybe I'll pass it over to Thomas, who will speak a little bit more in terms of the restructuring that we're doing internationally. Thomas?
On the glass-lined technologies, we have started the structuring a couple of months ago where we had built our facility for glass-lined and we thought that we can, even that has been completed, and the premises of the cost savings are seen in the next quarter, most likely. However, the markets there are very difficult and the demand is low. We have increased our productivities and seen in reclassing where we can take orders and be processing much faster. At the same time, we are now considering, we have started a project to look at the cost structure of our German plants and have started to implement and discuss a severe savings program there with the same, let's say, goal to have the capacity more flexibilized and more value in the future of having the capacity available when you see it.
This will help us in the future also very, very nicely. On Poland, our joint venture that we have brought in activities help us monthly grow, we started out in the first phase on that. We have two plants and we are waiting for the cleaning permit to increase our footprint in Poland over the next couple of quarters. This is going quite well. More orders from locations in France, Switzerland will be manufactured in that position in the future.
That's a quick summary for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Jaiveer Shekhawat from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Sure, thank you a lot. Hi, Tarak. My first question is, when I spoke to your gross margins for your India business, I investigated a considerable improvement that has happened over the quarter. If I see the order intake over the last few quarters, it has been declining. I'm just trying to marry the two. I mean, how are gross margins increasing when the order intake for the India business has been falling? Also, alluding to your commentary, I think we have been hearing that there is a pickup that's happening in the market. The volumes are increasing. Why is that still not reflecting in terms of the order intake? When do you expect that to happen? That would be my first question.
Sure. I think order intake in Q1 was obviously a little bit lower, but I think there is some amount of seasonality. Q1 is usually not quite strong. Do keep in mind that a large part of our order intake in India is also the heavy engineering business. This is something that we already have a strong backlog in. You will see over the next few quarters that order intake and the operating pipeline is quite robust. We expect order intake, and we've already seen good order intake in this quarter as well. From an order intake perspective for this year, for this financial year, we are pretty much in a very comfortable position here in India. We do need some orders by September, October, which I think we will get quite easily. I'm not so stressed.
I think now the focus is really shifting into building backlog for next year. As you know, with heavy engineering, these are large long-term projects, right? We are currently working with very large projects that can go on between somewhere between 12 to 18 to 24 months. Hopefully, we will have that in our backlog in the next few months.
Sure. Also, on the heavy engineering piece, we have heard that over the last few quarters, the pickup, especially from a lot of these oil PSUs, private oil companies, has been quite sluggish. Off late, are you seeing more pickup happening, more refineries coming up, and then you also participate in some of those tenders?
Yes. I will have Dhananjay, who's our Head of Operations and has been in this heavy engineering space for quite some time. Maybe, Dhananjay, if you could just share some work.
In India, the refinery oil and gas business is expected to grow over the next 5-6 years around 6%. That can reflect in order inflow. There are two active inquiries for the refinery projects which are expected to come up. The answer to your question would be yes, this order inflow will keep improving over the next few months.
Yeah. We are working on heavy engineering. For us, it is a key growth area, not only here in India, but also internationally in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, a lot of markets. We've already started. We've been kind of approved on quite a few vendor lists now. We have agents now set up. That network is ready. We do expect the Middle East to also contribute to our order backlog. Having said that, there are large projects here in India that we are currently bidding for that should be finalized shortly. Like I said, again, this is really for next year. This year, heavy engineering is already pretty much booked out. We really need to kind of build backlog for next year. I think we are in a strong position to do that.
Sure. On the international business, I understand you highlighted there was a large asset recovery order that you received. Even if I were to reduce, I can just remove that from your order intake. I think it means considerable pickup has happened over the last few quarters comparing that. Anything that's happening? Are there any more large one-off orders that have come in the quarter, or is there a general pickup? It sort of conflicts with your commentary when you said it's more stabilized at the moment. We are not really seeing a lot of pickups. What has really driven that apart from the large order that you highlighted?
Yeah. I think two areas where we've seen a good amount of traction are obviously the systems business, the systems and the asset recovery business that we received. That's been a strong vertical for us. We also have seen last quarter that services have come back in a strong manner. However, our glass-lined business is behind budget in Germany and in China. Those are the two areas. Glass-lined is still slow in Europe and is also in the U.S. That's definitely something that we would need to work around, and we need to be a little bit more aggressive. That's just the general market condition where investment in chemicals and pharmaceuticals in Europe and the U.S. has not gained significantly over the last few quarters. Things can change quickly. There is definitely localization. There's also the tariff situation. We now find that our opportunity pipeline has grown.
It's not only, I think the other metric that we use is how much of the opportunity pipeline has grown. Across our businesses, it has grown significantly. Now we would just wait for these to now turn into actual orders. The trend, I think, internationally, also in terms of the pipeline, is positive. However, it's not still converted into orders. Having said that, we do expect large orders in the non-glass-lined business in mixing and in the other areas over the next few quarters. Glass-lined still remains a little bit slow.
My last question is with respect to U.S. business. Over there, are you looking to ramp up production possibly onshore as well as via Brazil? Could you give a sense in terms of the import of glass-lined equipment that happens from any other players apart from you into the U.S. market? I'm just trying to understand because of these tariffs, if these get finalized, what could be the incremental benefit that can come to you as you become more competitive in that market?
I don't think there's significant import into the U.S. The U.S. is a closed market. They normally buy from U.S. manufacturers themselves. Plus, shipping glass-lined equipment around the world is not very, I mean, unless it comes from India or China. Shipping stuff from Europe to the U.S., I don't think it makes too much sense in terms of cost. The U.S. will buy local or will buy from maybe Brazil, right? We have supplied from India in the past, but now India supplying to the U.S. with the current tariff situation doesn't seem like a strong possibility. We have multiple different options. The ideal situation would be that our U.S. unit will probably, if this investment comes in, then they could serve that market quite easily. If we have the capacity available, we are well known. We are the market leader in the U.S.
We just have to now make sure that we can execute these orders as and when they come in, if they do come.
Sure. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sagar Shah from Spark Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much for the opportunity, and first of all, congratulations to the entire team for posting a good set of numbers. My first question was regarding the demand environment. You say you have already explained about the kind of dullness in, at least in the demand for glass-lined equipment as far as global markets are concerned. What I wanted to understand is that you are guiding for at least a better H2, and I have in regards to non-glass-lined technology, especially regarding to Edlon and especially regarding to industrial mixing as far as global cases are concerned. As far as the diversification path which we took around 3 years back, how is the demand environment as far as the non-glass-lined is concerned in the global market? Because still your technologies, your segment hasn't shown actually that sort of meaningful growth, which you actually emphasized even a year ago.
That's my first question.
Yes. I think the non-glass-lined business, also like our glass-lined business, mainly caters to chemical and pharma. It is our first non-glass-lined business, and the idea of the diversification strategy is to open up more industries and industry segments for us. SEMCO does that because SEMCO caters into the fast-growing metals and minerals and wastewater and rare earth markets in South America. That would be a stream for growth as well. Our mixing in Canada also caters to non-legacy segments. They cater also to metals and minerals and oil and gas and petrochemicals in the Canadian market. The idea is to build different industry segments, and that takes a bit of time. I think we are well- positioned today to kind of take some of these orders. Just to give you a few examples, we have currently orders on hand, which have come from our non-core markets, right?
Even with the slowdown in the chemical market, a lot of the shortfall was made up with orders coming in from things like food and beverage, oil and gas, petrochemicals. We are doing work for the package technology. I said, arms and ammunition and the defense is something that we are working on, right? With Edlon now, we cater to two different markets. We cater to the semiconductor market in the U.S. and also the nuclear market in the U.S., right? There is diversification placed across all our industries. We are using our current portfolio to try and enter into as many new markets as we can. Even with our heavy engineering play here in India, we are now looking at doing work for the nuclear sector. We are doing work for oil and gas, petrochemicals. We are going into Southeast Asia and Middle East as well.
These are markets that are opening up. Obviously, there are new industries like battery technology and cell where we've also done some good work. That could be their core market, but they could turn out to be quite big markets in the future.
Right. My second question was related to the standalone operations. You posted, the company posted very healthy operating performance as far as EBITDA margins are concerned. What I wanted to understand now, since the glass lining demand is actually improving in India, as per your commentary, as per we are hearing from the industry. Secondly, also your heavy engineering business has already taken off. Considering you are also, there is a lean cost structure that you are operating in as far as a standalone operation is concerned. Is it safe to assume the margins are sustainable as far as the standalone operations are concerned, or maybe even we can see further improvements from there on? That is the second question.
As per our current estimate, you know, 15%, 16%, 30% is sustainable. I do believe that when you have incremental revenue flowing through these factories, when we have better absorption, maybe those numbers might look a little bit better. The focus this year is to make sure that we execute well and we grow here in India. There could be obviously some market share, some orders that we take for strategic reasons, which might impact. Generally, I think the region that we are currently in, plus a little bit of upside is possible. The focus should be on execution now, and that's what we are focusing on. Like we rightly said, our factories are now at a good capacity utilization. I think across the board, both the factories are full now.
You did not mention that a large chunk here in India is our non-glass-lined business as well, which includes mixing, filtration, and drying. That has done increasingly well. Like I mentioned a few questions ago, a large order for peptide manufacturing in Hastelloy stainless steel . That's all that is going into our filtration and drying, our mixing portfolio as well, right? Both those non-glass-lined businesses are doing quite well. They are full, very strong and healthy backlog. Glass-lined, decent backlog, but I believe that with the new CapEx that comes in over the next few quarters, we could really be back to, you know, a very strong backlog in one factory while last year we had obviously two factories to finish. We are definitely in a better position. I think to answer your question, the margin profile of the standalone should be something that is sustainable.
Sure. My last question was related to heavy engineering to follow up with what you said. In the heavy engineering segment and also in the non-glass-lined segment, are we looking for any CapEx since the capacities are full? Are we looking at CapEx as far as the India business is concerned?
Yes. Currently, we have not gone to the board for approvals yet, but I believe that we will add some capacity in non-glass-lined in mixing and filtration and drying. That's what's growing, and we have a limited area there. The CapEx would be in the range of INR 7 crore-INR 10 crore. It's not significant CapEx, but we do want to create a world-class facility for this product line, not only for the Indian market and export market, but also for low-cost crossing for our group companies as well. That's something that we will want to build here and use in the next few quarters. We do believe that we will need some CapEx to grow that. In heavy engineering, we have capacity available. I think we are okay for the tools the next year and a half.
After INR 600 crore-INR 700 crore, we might need more of the capacity there.
Right. Thank you. Thank you so much. All the best for future projects.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Praveen Kumar from Acuitas Capital Advisers. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I had a couple of questions. The first one was on the domestic side. In your comments, you have alluded to the glass-lined equipment part of the business in India doing well. If I look at the breakup of your domestic revenues into services, systems, and technologies, if I compare the technologies part on a year-over-year basis, the revenue of Q1 FY 2026 compared to Q1 FY 2025, on the technology side in domestic sheets, you actually have fallen by 8%. Can you throw some light on this?
No, I think it's just a product mix issue. It's just, you know, a one-off. I don't think that you should read too much into that. Like I said, the backlog across all three business lines is quite strong. One quarter, you will see glass-lined doing better and growing. One quarter, heavy engineering will have, you know, big shipments. One quarter, it would be the non-glass-lined, right? Technologies to date had all these product lines in it. Like I said, we do have plans to obviously ship out over the next few quarters. We know our backlog is there. I don't think there is any specific kind of reason why one is more or less. I think across the backlog in our standalone business, we have a strong backlog across all three verticals.
Okay. Just on this note, earlier, I mean, the company used to provide order intake breakup of domestic versus international. You have discontinued doing that. Any particular reason for that?
I think here we would like to just mention that today, obviously the company is going through a transformation process. The international versus India, the division was something that obviously was there. As a global company, we do look at probably having more of a kind of a global kind of view on this. Sharing backlog data, I think this is just the way that we've been doing it in the past. Backlog is at a group level. There are different geographies. There are different businesses. At the end of the day, the backlog really is for the whole company. There's no specific reasons why we did it or didn't do it.
In the future, when we do go through this global transformation program, the way we organize our strategic plans, our financial numbers, we will come back to the markets with some kind of thought in terms of where we are and where we want to go, right? I think just bear with us maybe for a few more quarters, and then maybe we will have some type of way of sharing data, and you will have better ways of analyzing that data, right? No specific reasons really. I think the backlog today is strong. It is much higher than what it was 12 months, 18 months ago. We are in a better position. Like I said, it's still cautious. We are still hopeful and optimistic, but we do have to really take into account that there is a lot of global uncertainty, right? That's really not in our control.
The only thing we can try and control is to make sure that we have multiple different opportunities across various industries to make sure that order intake remains strong.
Understood. My question was on, you know, I think there was an exchange notification about Aseem's exit. I just wanted to understand that, you know, again, on the international side of the multiple lines of business, even in India with more focus on heavy engineering as well as glass-lined equipment, right? With the exit of Aseem and others, is there some kind of an organizational restructuring you are doing on the domestic side? How do you plan to devote the organizational bandwidth required for the Indian operations?
Yeah. I think first things to say is that obviously, you know, Aseem has been with us now for 4 years. We've enjoyed working with him, and we thank him for all the good work that he has done. Obviously, it's a professional decision to move on. He had an opportunity which came along, which he could not say no to. That's something that's part of life, and we move on. Having said that, we obviously have a global transformation program ongoing. Like we mentioned in our disclosure, the India CEO role is something that we are thinking about considering. As we reorganize, we restructure the business to give the kind of focus, independence, and flexibility, we will then kind of figure out what is the right global organization structure.
Whatever structure we choose, the structure will obviously help us to be more focused, to be more proactive, and to be able to be a better company for the long term. This is something that we've inherited. Unfortunately, there is obviously with legacy businesses like ours, which are more regional in nature, there is less alignment between the region. I think we want to bring some more alignment into this business and have people think about not only their region, but really more about how the business is doing at a global level, right? Some of the decisions related to cost structure, in terms of innovation, in terms of automation, in terms of people and organization, we need to relook at that. It's a good opportunity for us to do that.
I think that the excitement levels, the motivation levels within the organization, kind of I think we are doing something that is going to help us in the long term.
Understood. Just one quick last question. In response to one of the other participant questions on the domestic margins and whether there was room for improvement, you mentioned that while there could be improvement on the execution side to win some orders, you might want to give up a little l ight, on that side. I just wanted to understand that response in more detail, right? Because earlier I thought a few years back, the companies, what do you call it? The strategy used to be to focus more on margins. Sometimes maybe, I mean, is there a reaching at an organizational level in the domestic business to focus, I mean, to shift the margin versus growth focus slightly more on the growth side? Is that something we should read into?
No, I don't think so. I think we want to grow, but we also want to improve margins, right? At the end of the day, we want to grow profitability. We've worked very hard over the last few quarters in India, especially to raise and improve pricing and glass-lined. We're seeing some of that also have an impact now. We are also more picky and choosy when it comes to certain orders. In heavy engineering, there are sometimes large orders, which might not be as lucrative as a smaller order. At the same time, the 15% odd EBITDA level margin is something that we strive for as a group, and in heavy engineering as well, we would probably strive for that. Something might come in at 12%, 13%. Something will come in at 20%, but it will average out, right?
I don't think there's any compromise on any kind of outlook in terms of growing and improving our margins. Maybe Alexander Pömpner wants to add something here on margins?
No, whereas I would just echo what Tarak just said . Yeah.
I think we've always been a company that is not only trying to go after growth. We want to grow, but we want to give also profitability, right? I think a lot of the work that we're doing today will help us improve profitability as well.
Understood. Thanks for the response.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in this conference, please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Kunal Mehta from Sunidhi. Please go ahead.
Sahar, very, very good evening, sir. Coming up with a good set of numbers and a lot of improvement on margins on the standalone basis. Sir, I have a question with respect to the international business. Are we sitting on high fixed costs? Are we not operating at optimal levels? I think the international business is leading to a little drag on the overall control margins. I also wanted to know what is the total capacity that we have or what is the peak revenue that we can achieve in terms of all the key segments? If you know, going ahead, what guidance can you give on that?
I'll start off and then maybe Alex can jump in . International businesses inherently come with a higher cost structure. Manpower cost in Europe and the U.S. is much higher than low-cost countries like India and China. That's something that we are quite aware of. You would have appreciated that we've put hard to make sure that at least some of this, you know, offshoring of production, setting up a new facility in Poland, sourcing from India, sourcing from Brazil. There is already a short process that we do see that we need to reduce our footprints in high-cost geographies and move them to lower-cost geographies. That's part of our strategy, and that's something that we're working on quite hard. Thomas did mention a few questions ago that we shut down the U.K. facility last year. We also shut down our Hyderabad facility this year.
There's always a push on making our cost structure just more, more, more efficient. Unfortunately, the down cycle came along the same time. If the market was booming, it would have been a very different situation. It's always good to do some of these, you know, put these cost structures and cost efficiency in now so that when the market improves, hopefully some of that will kind of have a positive impact as well. What was your second question on margins? Sorry, what did you?
No, on capacity. Let's say how much capacity that we have because it is difficult for me to assess. If, let's say, there are multiple orders, like this quarter you had good order inflow, the highest in the last six quarters. Going ahead, if the market sees an upcycle growth, how much capacity we have, if we can cater to all the orders.
I think it's again very difficult to say. We have capacity available in the international business for sure because business is slow there. Order intake is slow. We have capacity available there. India right now in terms of capacity, I think we are definitely a little bit less flexible. I think our factories both in Karamsad and in Vatva are at 80%, 90%, if not more. We do have plans of increasing through operational efficiencies, better kind of workflows, improvement in terms of the flow of the equipment and stuff like that. We're trying to improve. Like I said, at least for our non-glass-lined business in Gujarat, in our Karamsad facility, we do expect to add some capacity because now we've come to a point where we will need some more. Alex?
Yeah, let me say, and Tarak is pretty right. We know we have here and there a higher fixed cost in Europe and the U.S. We attacked it. We already mentioned the closure of one site in Leven. Therefore, in fact, we only have two remaining glass-lined sites in Europe. Before it was three. You already saw that this is a significant reduction, which should bring some improvements on our fixed cost base. However, we still depend on orders. This is currently the customers hold back some orders due to the general uncertainty. If the orders come back, of course, we definitely see directly an improvement in margin and a ramp-up of the European as well as the U.S. organizations. The other party, only party that's helped is China. I think China, we have our size there. We have the fixed cost there. We have the operations there.
However, the order intake is really, really low. Nevertheless, we have to keep some part of the cost because we would like to be present in China. You currently see this in our margins. However, going forward, when China will come back, what we expect, we directly see a positive impact on our margin development.
Yeah, just to add maybe one more point is that we also did a restructuring in our Swiss subsidiary as well. Last year was not a good year for that Swiss subsidiary. This quarter has been a decent quarter for them. Obviously, these things take time. As order intake improves, we hope that the Swiss subsidiary will also do quite well, right? The work is going in. Hopefully, some of these orders and opportunities will materialize. I think we will be in a good position. International, it's still a bit slow. India is, you know, quite strong this year. Like I said, because of the global uncertainties, investment decisions in the U.S. and Europe will take some time.
What is the update on the Poland the JV that we have? At what capacity is it uptaking, and how will the uptake be?
In Poland, as you already said, the joint venture there was far reactive for a couple of months ago. In the first phase, they had one building, and the second building under construction that is being finished. Our manufacturing place is doubling. We only have asked for permits to build building number three and four. We will increase the capacity and the manufacturing footprint there significantly over the next couple of quarters. We are finished with the triple in size and then hit the capacity. We are super pleased with the capacities and the on-time deliveries, the qualities that they deliver so far with the product. This is going to help our overall footprint optimization significantly in Europe and also lowering costs.
In the presentation I also saw that I met with you to rejoin the question. Thank you for follow-up question. Just. Just one follow-up only.
It says that SEMCO outsources more of the manufacturing. Is that also a benefit to the fixed cost because this is outsourced? Is it managed in a better way?
I mean, SEMCO was very attractive for us for a couple of reasons. One reason is, of course, access to the industry market with a lot of growth opportunities, technologies that in this way we did not have. The business model of SEMCO is engineering, assembly an d service, and they have outsourced their manufacturing. I think with our global footprint, we can help them with outsourcing and giving them lower cost sources over time.
Just to maybe speak a little bit more about SEMCO, I think because of their size and scale, they didn't have access to large orders because of their financial, kind of, you know, drifting into things like bank guarantees and things like that. Now there's a whole new market that opens up because obviously as a bigger company, as a GMM Pfaudler Group, we can kind of, you know, support them with bank guarantees and finances. That's something that will open up larger orders. I think the backlog in SEMCO is quite strong. Their option pipeline also remains quite strong. We expect large orders this quarter as well. SEMCO is definitely a growth story for us. The margin so far is around 15%. We need to look at low-cost sourcing also to maybe try and see if we can improve that.
The other benefit that SEMCO will get with our group is that some of the SEMCO products can be taken to the rest of the world. SEMCO also has access to all of GMM Pfaudler's products for the Brazilian and the South American markets, right? The other thing that SEMCO also needs is low-cost engineering, project management capability, which they don't get very easily in Brazil. We can definitely support them out of the Indian facility, right? A lot of things around SEMCO are quite interesting. As time continues, I believe that SEMCO will play an important part in our growth story.
Thank you from all of us.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jay Modi from EIML. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Sir, could you just broadly help us understand how has the mixing business grown for the quarter?
How much has the mixing business grown for the quarter? I don't have the exact numbers. High single digits.
I would say high single digits. Let me also give you some color on basically today with the addition of SEMCO, we should be about $65 million. That puts us into a very kind of strong position when it comes to mixing companies globally. I think we have a strong footprint. I think we are well situated to take as much advantage of our low-cost manufacturing, our low-cost engineering capabilities. I think within the four companies that we have in mixing, we have a lot of different technologies available. It does not only cater to one market. There are multiple markets we cater to, and we would like to build that under one umbrella and make sure that we can sell all these technologies around the world.
Really, the push in mixing is to go out and get market share, go out and compete in newer industries, go into areas where we currently don't have a strong footprint, right? That's really the mixing strategy. Mixing is a growth area for us, and we believe that mixing will continue to grow quite well.
Maybe one additional comment regarding mixing because it shows also sometimes the impact on the global business. The highest single-digit growth rate that Tarak mentioned, it's driven by our operations, mainly in Europe, France, and Canada. Because the operations of the entity in China, it faces the same problem that we also face with our glass-lined business. The Chinese market is quiet also for the mixing business. In other jurisdictions, the growth rates are higher. In China, it's more or less a total negative growth rate.
Got it. Just think for China, would it be growing in double digits in the mixing business?
The expectation is to grow at double-digit levels.
Exactly. Exactly. Okay. To make it clear, yes, definitely it is. If you talk of the Chinese degrowth that we currently face, yes, we are in the double-digit range. China is unfortunately currently not only mixing, but also glass-lined, and I assume also significantly other industries. They do not see the growth. Therefore, we face their negative impacts. France and Canada are doing well. As stated before, also with the latest acquisition, SEMCO in Brazil is also really positive to see there the two-digit growth rates.
Yeah. I think one more thing to add is just keep in mind that 5 years ago, our mixing business in India was about INR 25 crore- INR 30 crore. Today, we are close to INR 150 crore, right? We have tripled or quadrupled the size of that business over the short term. The focus is to continue growing that business. There is more and more need for mixing, industrial mixing across various industries. We see that as a growth opportunity for sure.
Got it. Sir, in your international business, given the macro situation, although you have strong order movement, do you think that the execution could be pushed to the next year and this year would likely see a decline or any of your thoughts on that?
No. If the orders are on hand, then we will execute them immediately. There's no way that we can push them out. New orders coming in, that timeframe is something that we expect. We see already some positivity there. Like I said, it is not as, I would say, hot as maybe the Indian market right now. Investments will come back eventually. They have started to come back already. In terms of executions, we can't push anything out. Whatever orders are on hand will have to be shipped out in this financial year or maybe in this financial year. Do keep in mind that we still have the services business, which is an ongoing business, and those have much shorter delivery. That's something that will continue to come in and will continue to get shipped this year as well.
Got it. Last question is on the standalone finance.
Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I may request that you rejoin the question queue for follow-up questions. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Koushik Mohan from Ashika Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. I just wanted to understand on one single part. What is our current utilization in the Indian business in our factory?
Let's say at glass-lined, we would be probably at 80% utilization. In our non-glass-lined business, maybe 90%, and maybe our heavy engineering, about 80%.
Okay. What about our international business?
I would say it depends again on geography, but I would say anywhere between 50%- 70%, something like that. Maybe a little bit lower also in some cases in China especially.
Is there any differentiation that we can make if we are producing only in India and if we are producing only outside India? What's the cost benefit that we are getting here?
The material cost across the world is pretty much the same. Steel will cost you the same anywhere you go. The big arbitrage is really in terms of labor cost. India and other low-cost countries are significantly lower in terms of labor cost when you compare that with the U.S. and Europe. There is an arbitrage for sure. I think that as a company, we should take advantage of not only India, but we have low-cost sites, like I said, in Brazil and in Poland. We have a combination of different opportunities that are available for us. Sometimes the customers might want it made fully in Europe, for which we will use Poland. Sometimes they will be happy with a hybrid situation where we manufacture some of the components in India but finish the equipment in Europe.
Sometimes they are fine with having a full equipment made in Brazil as well. As a company, we have multiple options that we can offer to our clients. I think we are quite well positioned on that front.
Got it. Sir, does it actually matter when you're producing from India or when you're producing from any other country? Does it actually matter for a client?
It could matter for a client. There are some clients who probably want European quality. There are some European customers who are quite picky. They've been buying this for the last 50 years, and they want to buy it from the same people to a point they might even come and check if the sprayer or the welder is the same sprayer or welder, right? It just depends. I think the world is changing. People are looking at controlling cost. If the quality levels out of India, Brazil, or China are good enough, then I don't see any reason why people should complain about the quality.
Okay. As we are producing in both the places, what is the quality difference that we assure them? If it is coming from Europe, what is the quality level that we are assuring? When it comes from India, what is the quality level that we are assuring?
Good question. I think from a quality perspective, from a glass-lined quality, I think it's quite similar. However, I think that India can still improve on aesthetics, on finishing. Those are the small areas that we can definitely look at. We have multiple supplies across the world from India, from Brazil. It's already been tried and tested. We have also currently a system by which we stock and sell glass-lined reactors in Europe. We make for stock. The equipment that gets in Germany, we've sold more than 100 vessels in Italy. We've sold equipment from India into the U.S. There's always an opportunity. Not always is the customer wanting an Indian-made product, right? As and when we can, we definitely make sure that we can find a nice solution for the customer.
All of that, sir, because we have supplied from India into European customers and markets, we have not a single function complaint yet.
It is also mindset. There is obviously some kind of mindset that is associated with procuring from India or low-cost countries. Chemical farmers are pretty conservative industries. It takes a bit of time. Over the last few years, we've made some nice inroads into selling, you know, products made in India into the European and U.S. markets.
Last question from my side.
Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I'm not requested to rejoin the question. Follow-up question. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kumar Saurabh from Scientific Investing. Please go ahead.
Hello. Sir, I have two questions. First question is, what is our current year plan in terms of maintenance CapEx, gross CapEx, and acquisition, and also reduction on debt? That is question number one. The second question is, if we see the total EBITDA of all our subsidiaries in FY 2025, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think we have made INR 140 crore losses at EBITDA level. I know a lot of, you know, initiatives have been taken in terms of moving the equipment from, you know, high-cost nation to low-cost nation, all of that. Let's take next one, two, three years. What is our plan to bring down this EBITDA loss to zero? Do we have a concrete plan with, sir, or timelines that when this can be achieved, or this is something which is a function of demand which is beyond our control? What is your view?
These are two questions I have.
I'm not sure if I understand correctly. Last year, we had an EBITDA of close to INR 380 crore. I'm not sure what EBITDA loss you're speaking of. Having said that, obviously, this year looks definitely stronger. We do expect to improve both in terms of revenue and EBITDA at a control level and also at an India level.
There were subsidiaries which are showing EBITDA level losses. If we sum up those subsidiaries with EBITDA level losses, this number comes up to about INR -40 crore . Our overall consolidated EBITDA, as you said, is INR 340 crore. Correct me if this is wrong.
Yeah, you're right. I think you referred to one entity where we had a negative EBITDA.
Yes.
The one in Switzerland. As said before, we focused on the restructuring, and we already see now an improvement. Tarak, I think you mentioned it even before that it has a good start into the year, so it will further improve. However, it will not be so hard that you directly have to turn around within six or nine months. We definitely see a better return than last year.
I'm sure. Please go ahead. Regarding the CapEx plan and the uses of cash flows?
So, CapEx at the maintenance level for the group, we are about 2%. That's what our normal CapEx is. We do plan some CapEx in India in the range of about INR 10 crore, not significant. That's growth CapEx to increase capacity. On the debt, a government.
On the debt, we currently have an EBITDA ratio of 0.7. In our latest guidance, we said that we would like to be below 1. We will remain below 1, although we add now with another acquisition. It adds some debt. However, we will also use some of our cash on the balance sheet to finance this acquisition. Just to remind you, the SEMCO will cost us $18.5 million on a cash and debt-free basis.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, this would be our last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you, Amshad. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. It was a pleasure interacting with you. We look forward to many such interactions during the course of the year. Take care, and see you soon.
Thank you. On behalf of GMM Pfaudler Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.