Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q1 FY 2027 earnings conference call for GMM Pfaudler Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Raveen Kanabar from GMM Pfaudler Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Albert. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to all of you into the Q1 FY 2027 earnings call of GMM Pfaudler Limited. The earnings presentation was uploaded on the Stock Exchange yesterday and is also available on our website. Hope all of you had a chance to go through it. From the management today, we have with us our Managing Director, Mr. Tarak Patel, our Group Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Gregory Gelhaus, our Group Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Alexander Poempner, our Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ankit Nayyar, our Company Secretary, Mr. 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 was uploaded on the Stock Exchange and also on our website, including our call discussions that will happen now, contain or may have certain forward-looking statements regarding our business prospects and profitability, which are subject to several risks and uncertainties. The actual results could materially differ from those in such forward-looking statements. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Tarak Patel to provide you with a brief overview of the performance of the company. Over to you, Tarak.
Thank you, Raveen. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our financial performance for the June quarter ended, and equally important, the strategic transformation that is underway across our organization. For GMM Pfaudler, we successfully transformed ourselves from being a leading Indian engineering company into one of the world’s largest process equipment platforms through the acquisition of the global Pfaudler business and a series of complementary technology acquisitions. With that foundation firmly established, the next phase of our journey. This phase is about GMM Pfaudler taking a decisive step in its growth journey by evolving into a single globally integrated organization. Our customers operate worldwide and increasingly expect the same advanced technology, consistent quality, and support wherever they are located.
To meet their expectations and accelerate our ambitions, we are organizing our business into four distinct global divisions, each with a clear accountability and a sharp focus on the industries that they serve. Over the last year, we have undertaken one of the most significant organizational transformations in our history. Historically, our businesses operate through geographical structures, with India and international businesses functioning independently. While this approach was appropriate immediately after the acquisition, as it allowed the business to stabilize and the customer relationships to continue, it was never intended to be the long-term operating model. Today, we have evolved beyond that stage. We have reorganized the company into four distinct global divisions, replacing the traditional geographic structure. These divisions are CRT, Corrosion Resistant Technologies, PPT, Process Performance Technologies, HET, Heavy Engineering Technologies, PST, Process System Technologies.
Each division under dedicated leadership with clear accountability for technology development, product strategy, customer engagement, and operational excellence. This is far more than an organizational change. It represents a fundamental shift in the way we go to market. Instead of managing similar businesses independently across the different regions, we are now bringing together global expertise under one technology platform. This enables us to leverage engineering knowledge across geographies, accelerate product innovation, improve customer responsiveness, strengthen and allocate capital more effectively. Most importantly, it creates a single global organization with common objectives rather than multiple regional organizations pursuing independent priorities. As I said earlier, our customers increasingly operate globally. They expect partners who can provide consistent technology solutions across markets. Our new operating model positions us much better to meet these expectations. We believe it creates a much stronger foundation for sustainable long-term value creation.
It also helps our capital market stakeholders to better monitor the underlying business drivers across each of our business divisions, providing greater clarity on our overall business. In line with this vision, we have further strengthened our leadership team by establishing clearly defined roles and responsibilities across our businesses. Mr. Gregory Gelhaus has been appointed as Group Chief Executive Officer and will lead the cultural and organizational transformation required to build a truly global organization. This leadership structure will help institutionalize a global mindset, strengthen accountability, and align performance across the organization. It will also enable us to build a robust leadership pipeline, establish effective succession planning, and create global centers of excellent support by shared service capabilities. Ultimately, our strategy is to set leadership across our process technology businesses, expanding customer relationships through broader portfolio, and driving operational excellence across each division.
By capitalizing on growth opportunities more effectively with unified global operations to deliver sustainable, profitable, and create long-term value for all our stakeholders. The new global structure allows each division to focus on its own strategic priorities while unlocking meaningful value across the group. As we move forward, you should increasingly view the geographically managed organization, as a global technology company with integrated capabilities, deep domain expertise, and a clear roadmap for long-term value creation. With that, let me now hand over the call to Greg.
Thanks, Tarak. As Tarak rightly mentioned, this is a transformational year for GMM. With the four new divisions, our focus is to bring the full strength of each technology to every market, deepen relationships with existing customers and winning new ones, diversify and expand beyond traditional chemical and pharmaceutical markets, and enter a broader range of high-growth end markets. With this new structure, decisions are made once and globally. We respond more quickly with the same high standard delivery wherever customers operate. Our focus also remains on cost, whereby each vertical rationalizes its cost structure and global footprint to drive lasting efficiencies in even more competitive cost base. We see this as a very positive change, and I look forward to driving our progress in the months and years ahead. I would like to touch upon our quarterly performance.
We closed the quarter with a record order backlog of INR 2,200, representing an increase of approximately 20% year-on-year, supported by a healthy order intake of over INR 1,007 crore during the quarter. It is important to view this backlog in the right context. Nearly 30% of the order intake in Q1 last year comprised of multi-year projects, whereas the current order book is largely made up of projects with execution cycles of 10 months-12 months. As a result, a substantial portion of both our operating backlog and the order secured this quarter is to be executed within FY 2027, providing strong revenue visibility and confidence in our execution outlook. Let me take you through our division-wise performance. CRT, Corrosion Resistant Technologies. Our CRT division reported revenues of INR 466 crore, representing a growth of 10% year-on-year.
Order intake during the quarter stood at INR 502 crore, representing a growth of 23% year-on-year. CRT continues to maintain its leadership position as equipment with the industry's largest installed base. The business also benefits from a large aftermarket and service franchise, providing recurring revenues and healthy customer engagement. Demand from the core pharmaceutical and chemical industries remained stable during the quarter. For PPT, Process Performance Technologies. The division reported revenue of INR 255 crore, growing 23% year-on-year. Order intake stood at INR 367 crore, growing 64% year-on-year. PPT old platform across mixing, filtration, and drying and sealing technologies. The division continues to benefit from expanding customer adoption across pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, and other process industries, while growing capabilities continue to strengthen our market positioning. HET, Heavy Engineering Technologies. The HET division reported revenue of INR 74 crore, which is flat year-on-year.
Order intake during the quarter stood at INR 58 crore, which is increasing more than 700% year-on-year. HET position in manufacturing large critical process equipment catering to energy, petrochemical, and industrial applications. We also remain well-positioned to benefit from the increasing investments across defense, nuclear, fertilizer, and other infrastructure-led sectors over the medium term. PST, Process System Technologies. Our PST division reported revenue of INR 131 crore, registering a growth of 46% year-on-year. Order intake during the quarter stood at INR 80 crore, whereas the order intake for Q1 FY 2026 was INR 363 crore, which was represented by one large defense order. The division focuses on engineered process systems and skids for high-specification applications. It continues to benefit from opportunities across semiconductor manufacturing, defense, and pharmaceutical sectors, where customers increasingly seek integrated process solutions. To sum up, GMM is entering a fundamentally different phase of its journey.
The last few years were about building a global platform. The next few years will be about extracting greater value from that platform. We believe that our new technology-led organization, disciplined balance sheet approach, and focus on earnings quality will position GMM Pfaudler for stronger and more sustainable value creation in the years ahead. Invite Alex, our Group Chief Financial Officer, to take you through our financial performance.
Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon, everyone. As highlighted by Tarak and Greg, this quarter marks an important milestone in our reporting journey. In line with our new organizational structure, splitting the business to our four global technology divisions. This reporting framework better reflects how we manage the business internally and provides investors with a proof transparency into the underlying performance of each technology platform. Coming to financial performance. During the quarter, the company recorded a total order intake of INR 1,007 crores, which is flat year-on-year. Consolidated revenue for the quarter stood at INR 925 crores, registering a growth of 16% on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 94 crores. On a year-on-year basis, EBITDA was lower by 7%, primarily reflecting continued pricing pressure in evolving business mix and investments towards strengthening our global organization structure. However, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, EBITDA improved by 25%.
Profit After Tax for the quarter stood at INR 22 crores, which more than doubled year-on-year. Our consolidated order backlog stood at INR 2,289 crores , increasing 20% year-on-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter, providing healthy revenue visibility for the coming quarters. We have realized that while there's confidence in our long-term strategy, many of you would like to get greater clarity on how the acquisitions made over the past few years are translating into shareholder value. Therefore, I would like to address some of these questions today. On acquisitions, we look at our group structure today, there are multiple acquisitions done across different countries, and naturally, it is viewed as the organization has become too complex. I would like to reassure everyone that these acquisitions were never undertaken simply to increase scale size of the company.
Each acquisition was made with a clearly defined strategic objective, either to add a new technology, expand into an adjacent process solution, strengthen our engineering capabilities, or provide access to new industries and customers. Collectively, these acquisitions us from a predominantly glass-lined equipment company into a diversified global process technologies platform. More importantly, the acquisitions phase is now largely behind us. Our focus has shifted to integrate these businesses. The organizational restructuring that we announced is the direct outcome of this transition. Instead of operating acquired businesses independently or through regional structures, we have reorganized ourselves into four global technology divisions. This allows every technology worldwide to operate under one leadership team, creating significantly greater accountability, technology focus, and customer alignment. The objective is straightforward. One technology, one strategy, one global organization. That's how we intend to unlock the full value of our acquisitions.
Regarding integration and synergies, another important question to receive is whether the acquisitions are actually creating synergies. Immediately after acquiring the global Pfaudler business, our priority was business continuity. During that period, we intentionally allowed regional organizations to continue operating independently while preserving customer relationships, leadership teams, and operational stability. Now that integration has matured, we are entering the next phase. Our new organization enable us to leverage common engineering expertise across regions, improve cross-selling between technologies, align product development globally, and optimize manufacturing resources. This is where we to increasingly emerge over the coming years. Our focus is on integrating these technologies, customers, and capabilities. Another question was with regard to our debt structure, and therefore, you have sought greater clarity on our balance sheet. The acquisition of the global Pfaudler business was transformational in nature and required leverage. However, our capital allocation philosophy has always remained disciplined.
Over the last few years, we have consistently worked towards reducing leverage while continuing to invest selectively in high return businesses and strategic capabilities. Importantly, many of our subsequent acquisitions have been relatively small, technology-driven transactions rather than large transformational acquisitions. Acquisitions have largely been funded through internal accruals and prudent financing structures while maintaining balance sheet discipline. Going forward, our priorities remain clear: continue strengthening the balance sheet, improve , maintain disciplined capital allocation, pursue only high strategic opportunities that strengthen our technology portfolio. Growth and financial prudence will continue to go hand in hand. As we mentioned in our previous earnings call, we intend to repay some debt at the group level and will repay an amount of approximately EUR 7 million of debt by the end of Q2 in this financial year.
With many of our large strategic acquisitions now behind us, our focus is to strengthen the balance sheet. Our improving cash generation and disciplined working capital management are expected to adequately support our operating requirements while enabling faster delivery. At the same time, we are also evaluating refinancing opportunities, and debt maturity profile. Overall, we believe we are moving in the right direction and expect to see a gradual but meaningful improvement in our leverage matrix over the coming quarters. Another important question we get is EBIT benefits translating or flowing down to the PAT level. This is an area where we rightly expect improvement. Following the acquisition of the global business, we inherited a large international organizational structure comprising multiple legal entities across several countries. While this structure provided global reach, it also resulted in additional financing costs, overlapping administrative structures, and a more complex tax and corporate framework.
As a result, the conversion from EBIT to PAT has not reflected the full operating strength of the business. Addressing this has become one of our key management priorities. We are already simplifying our global structure, rationalizing legal entities where appropriate, streamlining reporting lines, and optimizing the corporate architecture. These initiatives are expected to improve financial efficiency over time by improving our structure and enhancing EBIT to PAT conversion. This is not a one-quarter initiative. It is a multi-quarter value creation program that will strengthen the quality of our earnings. Overall, while certain end markets continue to remain dynamic, our diversified technology portfolio, balanced order book, and strong global presence positions us well to capture future growth opportunities. As our integration initiatives continue to progress, we remain focused on improving operational efficiency, strengthening the cash generation, and enhancing the overall quality of earnings.
With that, I would like to hand over to Raveen.
Time for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Sameer Thakur with Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks. My first question is, are there any signs of recovery in traditional end markets like chemical and pharma? Has the competitive intensity begun to ease over here? If you can comment on regional commentary by end markets, that would be useful. Thank you.
Hi. Yes, I know traditional markets in India. I will start with India, and maybe Greg can speak a little bit about the international business. We do see a significant improvement in the pharma business here in India. We are seeing a lot of action in pharma in Hyderabad, CDMO. That is driving a lot of investments, and that is helping us build backlog in our local Indian glass-lined business. We expect also that this will continue. Definitely compared to about 12 months ago, there is a positive shift in terms of the glass-lined business here in India, and there will be more inquiries, more opportunities, and faster kind of conversion from opportunities to actual orders, right? Q1 was strong, and Q2 also looks strong from a glass-lined perspective. Talking now about, this will impact our CRT business, obviously.
From a PPT perspective, which also caters to our traditional markets where we have our businesses like filtration, mixing, membrane separation, and sealing, those are also linked to pharmaceuticals here in India. There we are seeing a lot of also traction as well. Pharma is doing quite well. Chemicals, unfortunately, in India, has still remained flat. There are a few projects here and there, but nothing significant structurally has changed over the last few years. However, we do hear that volumes are back for most of our clients and customers, and obviously, that would maybe lead to more investment in the next few quarters, right? From an India perspective, our traditional markets are definitely better off right now than they were about 12 months ago. Greg, over to you for the international market.
Sure thing. Thanks, Tarak. Internationally, I think it is a similar trend to what you heard from Tarak, similar situation we see from the pharma sector internationally. We do see a number of opportunities. It is improving there, and we see that both, particularly when we look at Europe and in the Americas. Again, as Tarak said, that is our traditional glass-lined business, but also our PPT division where we see definitely improved opportunities in the pharmaceutical sector. I think chemical is the same as what you heard in India. Chemical remains a challenge. We do not see a strong change in this quarter that we just finished. Particularly in Europe, it remains very challenging from the chemical sector. I would say all in all, what you have heard from Tarak and myself, in terms of pharmaceutical, it is consistent globally as well as in the chemical sector.
Okay, thank you. That is helpful. I have one more question. I think there is some decline in margins for Indian business, the standalone business. Any reason for that, and how should we think about it going forward?
Yeah. Looking at the India business, maybe I'll have Ankit also step in a little bit here. Here we have, obviously, a very large component of growth, which has come from our HET business. As you know, our HET business is an India-led business. It caters to oil and gas, petrochemical, and now we have obviously broken into nuclear, and we're getting into power sector as well, right? A lot of growth opportunities with a strong backlog and an even stronger opportunity pipeline, which we believe will help us obviously build backlog for the next few quarters and maybe even years. That's a strong area of growth for us, and obviously that comes with large projects. Again, there the strategy has been to obviously get into certain kind of industries, create PIRs.
We have recently been approved by EIL for duplex, super duplex, and even air-cooled heat exchangers. We have recently broken into power. Last year, we broke into the nuclear segment. Obviously, nuclear power, fertilizer, all segments that we are going to grow. On top of that, HET also caters to the Middle East market, which is the oil and gas Middle East market, and we've seen some traction there as well, that some of the geographies are reordering after obviously the recent kind of events there. We've seen orders coming from Abu Dhabi, and some other areas of the Middle East, right? That business is a fast-growing business, but again, that business is also maybe slightly different in terms of the processes, margin profile, and how long it takes, right?
You will see some kind of, I would say, a change when the product mix in India changes between the three businesses. However, having said that, I think the improvement program in terms of margins across all our businesses out of India is ongoing. Obviously, the idea is to bring it back to a stable level. With the market improving, pricing will also improve. We see with better utilization, with better revenue, we will see some of this getting absorbed, right? All in all, with the backlog that we have, the order book that we had in Q1 and also some of the order books that are coming in Q2, we're quite confident that India is going to be on the strong path of growth. I think that will continue, and I think obviously recovery of margin is expected and improving over the next few quarters.
Yeah. Just in addition to what Tarak mentioned, we are also investing in cost. As you would have heard, we have invested in the new organization, we are investing in people, and that's why you're seeing a dip in margin. These are good investments happening for the future, you'll see an upward trajectory going forward.
Okay. Thank you. We should expect sequential improvement, further improvement in margins going forward. That's right. Is that right?
Yeah. What we said, the outlook, and we kind of mentioned, we don't want to specify anything right now in terms of what is the final expectation. Obviously, compared to previous year, we definitely expect improvement across all our businesses, and we are working hard to bring down costs and improve margins.
Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. If I can squeeze in one more, just obviously this organizational structure, this is a very good step. If you can just explain what were the bottlenecks before this change. Any examples of that would be helpful.
I think we maybe between both of them. I would speak maybe from the past. I think the regional structure prevented maybe businesses to work together and work closer together. People were incentivized after regional numbers and regional kind of targets. Today, the entire vertical has the same target. Every single person in that vertical, let's say for CRT, if that person is sitting in the U.S., in Europe, or in India, they have the same target for profitability, right? It's in everybody's best interest. Everybody is clear and aligned in terms of what their KPIs, right?
A common KPI, so everybody is aligned, and if they want to extract maximum value, they will then think of opportunities like export out or buy stuff from India or low-cost countries, be putting together multiple different options in front of our clients to win more business, right? The drive in the incentive program now aligns everybody within the decision, and that I think is going to be a big change. While geographically, they were all kind of independent entities and were more kind of based on local geographic kind of KPIs rather than global KPIs. Greg?
Yeah. Maybe to add to that, I think what we see now in the new structure is, as Tarak said, we have a globally aligned team, by technology division, which enables, as was addressed in the beginning remarks, faster decision-making, but also, as Tarak said, aligned around KPIs and strategic priorities for the division. As we move forward, as our customers are demanding, as we said in our opening remarks, they want us to be able to serve them anywhere around the world, and we're better able to do that now quicker and more efficiently in the new structure. That's a difference from the organizational setup in the past, and we believe it's going to help us significantly moving forward.
Just one more point to this is that we have brought in also the right talent to run these verticals. Some have been internal, some have been external. In the case of HET, obviously the strategy of a Heavy Engineering vertical is very different from a glass-lined CRT vertical, right? This allows verticals to really focus on their own strategies, their own kind of operational excellence. Everybody will not be painted under the same brush, right? It gives verticals enough of opportunity to create and build their own strategy, right? I think that's very, very important. I think that's an additional benefit of this organizational change that we have done.
Okay. Thank you very much. That was very helpful. That was all from my side. All the best.
Thank you. Participants, in the interest of time and fairness to others, please restrict yourselves to two questions. For any more questions, you may rejoin the queue. The next question comes from the line of Praveen Kumar with Aequitas Capital Advisors. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a decent set of numbers, and more importantly, for taking first steps to improve the disclosure. Good on that part. Had a couple of questions. One was on the, if you can give us some clarity on the margin profile and the ROEs of these four divisions which are broken out into. Also associated with that, if you could give us a sense of which of these segments do you think are closer to steady state margins today and which are kind of away from that. Also, if you can give us some sense of how do we track the divisions which are away from that steady state aspirational margins. How do we keep a track of when they are closer to that, what is their aspirational margin on those? Thank you. That's my first question.
I think on a margin perspective, let me obviously, as a company, we obviously have always said, like a 15% EBITDA margin for the company is something that we aspire towards, right? That should be something in our business, in our kind of area where we operate and the technologies we have, that's something that we should have. Obviously we build from there, right? Currently, the businesses and the verticals that now we have created somewhat kind of have around that kind of margin profile. There's obviously different initiatives within those verticals to improve margins over time, but I would say that they will be around that range. Obviously, there are businesses which are more, like assistance business is a longer, higher gestation, more value add because we give profits guarantee. Of course, we have higher margin versus maybe just a standalone equipment, right?
That's not always the case. Generally, I think as a margin profile, I think over time we will be able to more, probably build some more pieces. For right now, I think it's important that they are around the same. The idea over the next few years is to grow margins, grow revenue. Some of them will obviously need investment because we need to add people, we need to add organizations because they're high-growth verticals. That will also come in, right? Don't have specific kind of I can't differentiate them very drastically. Maybe, Greg, Alex, you would like to update something on the verticals by margin.
I think you covered it, Tarak. I think the goal is for us, as Tarak said, we have management teams specifically focused on each technology division that we have now. They have a part of their goal is to drive top-line performance, but equally, if not more importantly, bottom-line performance. We have a number of initiatives to improve our financial performance for each of the divisions and, of course, for the company overall. We will continue to drive that, and we have different opportunities in different divisions to improve performance, and we'll keep focusing on that.
Yeah. [crosstalk] Sorry, I didn't finish. Yes. Sorry, Alex wants to say something. Go ahead.
I could just repeat more or less what was said. We will improve the margins, and we have, of course, some units which already are significantly higher margins. You could also see the announcement that we made of the latest acquisitions. We will work on it, and of course, as Tarak mentioned, we mentioned the 15% EBITDA margin as a minimum target, and we will do this.
Understood. My second question was again on the margin trajectory. In the past, you have talked about that aspirationally margin should exceed 15% or higher in the medium term. Right? Just wanted to understand from standing from where we are today, from current levels, what kind of cadence of margin improvement should we expect? I understand that this is not a company where we should be looking at a quarterly margins as proof of anything, but over what time frame do you think we can get to those aspirational margins of 15% and beyond? What kind of cadence can we expect in this? What would be the likely triggers apart from mix change?
I think directionally, we are moving in the right direction. I think we have multiple different initiatives to improve revenue, to grow revenue and to improve margins, right? Let's leave it at that. There is definitely opportunities. We know these opportunities. We know that where we have high costs, we know where we don't move things so well. There are opportunities across the group, across regions, right? There are multiple things ongoing. We're working on debt. We are working on restructuring. There's a lot of opportunities that we are working on, right? We are going in the right direction. I think let's focus on them.
Let's maybe build some kind of momentum with order intake in Q2, and when we meet again next quarter, maybe hopefully we'll have a much clearer picture in terms of where we are going to end up and what the future holds.
Maybe just to add on, we already have several units which achieve these margins or even higher margins. What we're currently suffering on is that we have one, two, three units which are really underperforming and which dragging the margin down. We are focusing on this, and we discussed it, we mentioned it. We have measures in place. We will improve these units, and you will directly see an uplift in EBITDA margin for the full group.
Tarak, while I appreciate your response, the reason I was looking for more of a cadence of margins is because, as you and your team referred to, the investment in employees, et cetera, it's already showing up in the numbers, right? Employee costs are up significantly, both standalone as well as consolidated. We are already seeing the costs up front. It would be useful to actually get a sense over what time frame are we even. I understand there are multiple triggers for this margin improvement, it would be useful to get some sense that over what time frame should we expect that?
Yeah, I get what you're saying. Like I'm saying, there's a lot of initiatives that we're working on. The time frame, again, we are not somebody who's going to wait around for a long period of time. We are actioning a lot of these changes along with the global transformation. We have a stronger team today. We have now accountable CEOs, four CEOs who are driving costs and strategy within those organizations, and making tough calls where they need to make tough calls. That's happening. Alex and Ankit are working on financial kind of areas to improve stuff. Debt structuring, borrowing, et cetera, inventory, cash management. We are working across the group. Business is looking a little bit better again. Let us kind of build some kind of consistency. Let us give a few quarters of consistent results, we can sit down and talk about margins.
I think you guys will also have a clearer idea in terms of what we're trying to do. Let's push this out. The work is going in, as Alex said, there is improvement possible, we will improve, that's ongoing. I think that would give a clearer direction in terms of our margins over the next few quarters and years.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, please restrict yourselves to two questions, for any more questions, you may rejoin the queue. The next question comes from the line of Sagar Shah with Spark PWM. Please go ahead.
Yeah. First of all, thank you for the opportunity, and thank you to the management of GMM Pfaudler who actually first time disclosed the segmental results actually, as what entire street was asking for. My first question, sir, was related to a follow-up on the previous participant's question. You highlighted that there was some uptick in the employee expenditure. You are realigning the entire sales team for different segments now, actually, that you have highlighted in this quarter. Apart from the sales teams, I wanted to know from Tarak as well as Greg actually that what exactly are we doing to strategize actually our sales team, to strategize our operations even geographically, so that actually we acquire greater market share in the segments actually that we have actually highlighted in this particular presentation.
Apart from the sales teams, what exactly measures are we taking to actually acquire greater market share also, that in turn will actually be a margin enhancer in the medium to long term actually? That was my first question.
I think before I hand over to Greg, I think a couple of things that I would just want to highlight. Obviously, Greg has been part of the company now for a year, and he's run the global transformation program, so he's aware of the business. He has a very close understanding of the business. He's been involved in multiple different initiatives over the last 12 months. He's perfectly placed to really kind of look into improvements across the group, both from the revenue side and from the cost side. He also comes from a background where he has done restructuring in his earlier business as part of Alvarez & Marsal and consulting. He has done this before, and he knows what is already expected and what we need to do. Right?
Lastly, I think it's also important that we understand that Greg is part of the family, so he has skin in the game, right? The two of us together, obviously, as family members control a large shareholding of the company, and it is our best interest to obviously drive some of these long-term initiatives to create stakeholder value for all stakeholders and shareholders. With that, maybe, Greg, if you can maybe say a few words on the transformation and then obviously the area that we worked on and will be working on.
Sure. Thanks, Tarak. I think to the point that was mentioned around the transformation, part of the clear role from the sales side is to increase market share. No doubt, that's part of our transformation program. I do believe, we believe that the new organizational structure, as was mentioned in the opening remarks, helps us to move quicker globally for opportunities that we see across the world. We have a greater ability now to share knowledge, to be able to work closer as global teams, to be able to seize opportunities that we see in the market to win new orders, and of course, ultimately win market share. Part of that requires obviously changes in the way we work, changes in the way we go to market, which we've been implementing already, and we're seeing good progress there.
I would point out that it is progress that we're making across within each division, but also because our customers will require, as an example, sometimes glass-lined equipment, filtration and drying, mixing equipment all together for a certain order that they're looking at, a certain opportunity. We're able to work closer together also across divisions. We have a very strong focus on improving our market share, and we're focused on that, and I believe that our new structure is going to help us with that. Just a side note, it's quite interesting because when we created these four verticals, we were not expecting cross-selling to be one of the driving initiatives, right? We were separating people out, we actually find that our cross-selling has actually improved when we now have created these distinct verticals.
Sometimes you get benefits that you don't expect, this is just one interesting case of how we got something that wasn't clearly planned for, right? Again, it's a very different way of how we have done things. This is how we've done things since 140 years. Pfaudler has been a very old company, and obviously Pfaudler and then GMM has been very regional. The way we've operated has always been very regional, right? This is a foundational change, a structural change that hopefully will give us a very strong foundation to create business growth and margin improvement over the next few years.
Does that answer your question?
Okay. Yeah. My second question was related to your data keeping question. You highlighted the strategic measures actually that you will take on the operational side. I know this is not a sequential mapping journey that we are looking for. It's a long-term journey. For FY 2027 and then FY 2028, at least that is up to 24 months. Based on the debt reduction program, based on the strategic measures, what are the target EBITDA margins actually that the company is highlighting? Secondly, what is currently as on March 26, that debt that the company holds on its balance sheet? It's the long-term as well as the short-term debt. It considers around INR 835 crores. What is actually targeted debt levels that we are eyeing till the end of this result of FY 2028?
That is my second question related to data keeping question. That's it.
Thanks. I will take it regarding the debt. We will repay roughly EUR 3 million this quarter. [inaudible] We are working on a refinancing alternative. We will bring further down our debt. We do not want to comment on a debt figure as of the end of this financial year. As you see, we are working on this and we will further reduce over the coming quarters.
Okay. What is the debt that we are eyeing actually? About the margins also, my question was.
Yeah. Ankit, he is asking for outlook on margins. I think we have kind of expressed ourselves also. Maybe you want to give just how we are going to look at margins and how we will talk about margin going forward.
Yeah. From a margins perspective, the objective is to continue to grow margins. As Tarak mentioned earlier also, our objective is to deliver quarter on quarter, see how things are. We see positive shoots in different businesses. As we have already stated, 15% is something we need to go there. Quarter on quarter, we'll see how we are tracking against it. All levers look good as is on the plan to hit those kind of numbers.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Dhavan Shah with AlfAccurate Advisors. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question is on Order inflows for the CRT and PPT segment. You mentioned that you are seeing the green shoots in the domestic pharma sector, that's why we are seeing some order inflow growth for this quarter. If you can share some thoughts on that, whether that was one time, like the lumpy order, or is it the structural revival you are seeing in the domestic pharma, which can be seen for at least next three quarters also for CRT. Then for PPT, what led to such order inflow growth during this quarter, and is it sustainable or not during the next three quarters?
I should maybe ask the question to you because you have a better understanding of pharma. No, on a serious note, we haven't seen this kind of improvement for quite some time. Our glass lining business has now gone through a really tough time over the last two years, I would say. This time, the green shoots again, like we said, look positive. We see some in India definitely are quite positive with this whole pharma play, CDMO, the big Hyderabad players are expanding, API is looking good. We've also seen good pharma inflow of glass lining business in the U.S. The U.S., obviously you know the U.S. story around Mr. Trump and the investment that was signed to bring in pharma jobs to the U.S. Some of that is actually playing out quite nicely.
We have received some large orders from the U.S. recently. Surprisingly, China has also come back with good orders in glass lining and CRT, which we thought China had excess capacity, but I believe that some of the new investment is going over to the Mongolian border for chemicals again. That's driving some growth and bringing back some glass lining. Europe structurally still remains a bit slow. However, we have won some large glass lining orders in Europe in the recent months as well, and the focus is also to push our service business, grow our service business. Maybe there we might have lost some market share over the last few quarters, and the focus is to really bring back glass lining services again, right? CRT looking good globally. Europe still looks a bit tough, but the other geographies are looking a lot more positive.
Greg, you want to add something to that?
No, I think you covered it. I think going back to the question around pharma, and as we answered earlier, we do see some positive signals in the pharma sector, and we're seeing that in terms of the orders that we're winning, but also the opportunities that we see in front of us.
Yeah, one more point here, sorry, I missed it. It's a very important point, is peptides, right? We have seen significant peptide investments. We have already supplied last year a very large order for peptide equipment, and we've also received two large orders from Hyderabad for complete systems built around peptides, right? Peptides is another area that we're seeing a lot of investment coming in, and I think with our equipment we are quite well positioned to grow that peptide offering as well.
Understood. What about the PPT? This quarter, I think we are seeing significant order inflow growth. What led to such a growth? Is it just from the domestic market or there is some room of orders.
Sorry, the first part was cut off. What specific thing were you asking? Growth in what? Sorry, I completely missed that.
Hello?
Hello. Dhavan, please repeat your question.
My question is, for PPT, we have seen the significant order inflow growth during this quarter. What led to such jump for first quarter? Is it like the order inflow came from the domestic business only, or there was some export order also which led to such a growth?
No. It's a combination of multiple things. There's businesses that have come abroad geographies. India last quarter was PST was good. I hope that India this quarter will do obviously a little bit better. Things are looking good. Order intake was good globally, and we expect order intake to continue also. Brazil also has done quite well. Our mixing business has done very large orders. Again, that's equipment and not systems, right? When you compare, I think when you look at us, you look at two or three metrics. The first thing you should look at on April 1st previous year versus this year, what our opening backlog was, right? Our opening backlog was already 30% higher, right? Please consider last year we had in that backlog a very large systems order as well.
We had a very large order of close to INR 30 odd million for a large system. That was in there. Now the backlog really is kind of more robust. We have a lot more equipment in there, CRT, PPT, and HET as well, right? That's the good part. If Q2 remains strong, which we expect it to be, that gives us revenue visibility, pretty much we get this year done and dusted, right? The focus again is to be aggressive. The way that we have reorganized ourselves should help us serve our customers better, mix all our alignment in terms of all the people who work in those verticals are aligned now to go out and get business, good margin business, and cut costs. I think we're going in the right direction.
If the market sustains, and I hope it does, we should be in a decent position. Again, like you said, also sometimes it could be a one-off, two-off quarter kind of an investment. We hope it's sustainable.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Rushabh Sharedalal with Pravin Ratilal Wealth. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes, Rushabh.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, First of all, congratulations to the GMM Pfaudler team on not just improving the disclosures to the market, but also finally going towards the disciplined capital allocation. Big congratulations on that. I have three questions. The first one is on the order book. You did allude to the fact that in the last year, 30% of the orders were large tenure orders. You did say that in the current year, the order book, how much percentage of orders are executable within the next 10 months- 12 months? That's my first question. The second question is on the borrowings. We have mentioned the fact that we'll be repaying around EUR 7 million of debt, and we currently have around 835 crores of INR debt. I assume it's closer to EUR 75 million, EUR 76 million if I convert it into euros.
You have said that you will be repaying that debt in the next 12 months- 18 months. Can you specify a number and a timeline in which how much debt will be repaid? That is my second question. My third question is on the tax rate. Going forward, what is the kind of steady state tax rate should we work with? Thank you.
Okay. Regarding the debt correction, we repay now EUR 7 million, Then we will restructure our debt position and further reduce it. This will take, as mentioned, the timeframe of 12 months- 18 months. As said, we're continuously going down now in the future. Regarding the tax rate, I would work with a tax rate of around 30%, let's say maybe slightly below in the long term. We still require some time to get this stabilized. It partly depends on our current debt profile and our organizational structure. With this change in the org structure, but especially also in the debt structure, we will bring our tax rate down to this level, which I just mentioned. Let's use around 30%, maybe slightly lower.
Maybe to go back to the first Sorry, go ahead.
Just one follow-up to that. You did mention that you'll be bringing down the debt, but can you at least specify a number that what is the kind of debt is that you'll be comfortable with in the next 12 months or next 18 months? That's part one. 30% tax rate that you're talking about, when can we see that coming? What should be the FY 2027 and FY 2028 tax rate number that we should be working with?
I will not mention our debt target figure for end of this year. However, regarding the timing of the tax rate to bring it down, we indicated 18 months- 24 months. The debt, the refinancing, and the reorganization has to be completed first, and then we can go down to this lower and reasonable tax rate. As said, it takes us 18 months- 24 months to really fully get it stabilized.
In 18 months- 24 months, how much of debt will be repaid? Can you at least tell that number?
On the debt, we start with the EUR 7 million. We are working on it. We are looking at different options, so give us some time again. The idea was to make it a much better structure. We can't look at debt alone because we have to look at our global structure, which is now 24, 25 entities or something. We need to clean that up so when the debt is refinanced, we put into the right jurisdiction, in the right structure. We don't want any fluctuation on currency and stuff. There are two or three things need to be done. We're working on it. Hopefully, we can get some of this done before what we have kind of said to our speed, and we are working on it. Just give us some time on this. When we meet again for Q2, we should have more clarity.
Hopefully later this year around Q2, sometime around then we are hoping that we can have an investor day as well. By then you have all the details very clearly mentioned, and you can track that also. We still need some time to get the exact kind of time frames and the amounts sorted out. We're working on it, and we'll come back to you.
Right, sir. Once again, congratulations. Just you missed out my part on the order book. How much of the order book is executable between 10 months- 12 months?
Yeah. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, it's the large majority of that. Significantly, of the roughly INR 1,000 crore order intake that we had, significant amount of that is executable in the next 10 months- 12 months. As I mentioned earlier, if you look at Q1 in the prior year, 30% of that was multi-year projects, which would not all occur in the next 10 months- 12 months, where what we see in this recent quarter is very different.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ravi Mehta with OneUp. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for this call. Just a couple of questions. One is on the employee, is there any one-off severance cost in Q1?
No.
Okay. The investment that you are speaking, is this going to further go up or this can be like a run rate basis, or there are still some more senior level additions pending?
You're talking about employee cost, right? The idea is to bring down employee cost over time. Obviously, there have been certain new hires as we move into the new structure, which are required. We need global kind of HR, finance, IT, but we also have idea to move a lot of that to India, the GEC model, GxP, stuff like that. We can look at options there. Then we also have opportunities to put people in front of our clients. The idea is that some of these verticals need to grow, so we will invest in sales people, sales organizations as well. As a concept, we are looking at non-critical activity being consolidated into lower-cost geographies, things like engineering, drawings, things that don't require to be done. That can be something. We've already started with that.
We have a GEC center now, a global engineering center that has about 12 people for a lot of our entities. That's another push. We have Poland and India coming up as low-cost geographies where we really, really need to utilize these both entities to make sure that we have a much better cost structure. Keep in mind, we've also reduced people in the U.K. the prior year, and last year, Germany, we had a reduction of workforce, factory workforce, which obviously you'll see some of that kind of playing through also in the next few quarters. We'll be getting that benefit as well. With the cost control, these measures in operational excellence that should play out as well. With the higher volumes, hopefully we'll have better absorption and better utilization of our factories as well.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Simran Kumari with Magnolia Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good afternoon. My question is related to interest cost. What is the interest cost for FY 2027 and FY 2028? My second question is regarding the order intake. As we can see, this quarter, the order intake is broadly comparable to the corresponding period last year. Could you please elaborate on the expected order intake trajectory for the remainder of the year? Thank you.
Okay. I'll start with the interest cost. The interest cost we have on average, 6%-7%. Of course, it's especially the debt that is in the international business, which is USD denominated or EUR denominated. They are based on the SOFR base rate and the EURIBOR base rate, but it's also hedged. For your modeling, I would assume 6%-7%. The other question was regarding the order intake?
Yes. On the order intake, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, yes, you're correct that when you look at order intake this quarter versus the prior year same quarter, it's roughly the same. As I mentioned, we see a very different profile of order intake this quarter, where we see that the large majority of those projects that we won in Q1 have execution cycles of 10 months- 12 months. As a result, you'll see that a lion's share of that is orders where we can see strong revenue visibility over that period, given those orders that we've won. It's different from the prior year, as I mentioned, because 30% of that order intake was on orders that were for multi-year projects, and therefore that revenue was not going to come necessarily in the next 10 months or 12 months.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Raveen Kanabar for the closing remarks.
Thank you, Albert. Thank you everyone for joining us today. It was a pleasure interacting with all of you, we look forward to many such interactions during the course of the year. Take care and see you soon, everyone.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of GMM Pfaudler Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, you may now disconnect your lines.