Q2 23/24

Nov 9, 2023

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am Edwin, moderator for the conference call. Welcome to Cemindia Projects Q2 FY24 Results Conference Call, hosted by ICICI Securities Limited. As a reminder, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone telephone. Please note, this conference is recorded. I would now like to hand over the floor to Mr. Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you, Edwin. Good evening. On behalf of ICICI Securities, I welcome you all to the Q2 FY24 earnings call of Cemindia Projects. Today, we are pleased to host the senior management of the company, which is represented by Mr. Jayanta Basu, Managing Director, Mr. Prasad Patwardhan, CFO of the company. Without much delay, I will now hand over the call to Mr. Prasad for his opening remarks, which will be followed by Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Thank you, Mohit. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this Q2 FY24 earnings call. We declared our results for the second quarter yesterday, and I am sure you have had a chance to go through our numbers. Before we begin the discussion, I would like to mention that during the course of this call, there could be some forward-looking statements that would be made. These are subject to risks, and the actual results are likely to differ materially from these statements. So I would like to request you to keep all this in mind. I will start with the financial performance of the company and then hand over to Mr. Basu for his views on the operational performance, and then we will take your calls. We have reported a robust performance in this quarter with an operating income of INR 1,610 crore as against INR 1,035 crore, a growth of 56% on a YOY basis. EBITDA at INR 172 crore has grown by about 78% on a year-on-year basis, and profit after tax is INR 54 crore as against INR 20 crore, which represents an increase of about 168%. Our balance sheet continues to be leveraged much less, and our net equity ratio, net debt equity, is about 0.34 times. Our order book stands at a little over INR 22,000 crore as of Q2 end. The new orders that we have secured during the quarter are worth about INR 4,600 crore. That is all from my side to start with. I will now hand over to Mr. Basu for his opening comments. Thank you, Prasad. Good evening, all of you, for joining this call. Happy to say that we have seen another one good quarter in terms of the profitability and even the revenue as well. Normally, this was monsoon quarter, so revenue is a little less than the first quarter, but still much better than last year. The numbers are all available with you, so I do not have to talk much on that. But if you like, I may mention that EBITDA is around INR 125 crore on console on a revenue of INR 1,616 crore, which was up more than 10%. PAT INR 54 crore, 33.3% of the revenue. In last 6 months, that is Q1 and Q2, we have achieved around INR 3,500 crore of revenue. You have to consider that Q2, due to monsoon, the revenue was a little less. Normally, Q3 and Q4, we can expect better revenue than Q1 and Q2. Last year, our Q1, Q2 revenue was INR 2,000 crore and Q2, Q3 was INR 3,000 crore, just for your information. Our cash position also is good. Collection and outflow, we are able to manage properly. You may like to know progress and status of jobs. I will share with you underground metros. We are having Bangalore Metro, Chennai. Running job, Kolkata and Mumbai is almost verge of completion. Bangalore Metro, substantial progress has been done. Around 80% of the job has been completed. Chennai, around 20% plus progress we have done. Good thing about Chennai is that in one of the package, as you know, we have got two packages there. Already we have launched our tunnel boring machine, and the tunnel boring has already started from the Perambur site. Road, Ganga Expressway. From the inception, we have so far achieved around INR 900 crore revenue during last 7, 8 months. Monsoon has affected last quarter, so around 18% to 2.5% revenue progress we have achieved in a very small duration of time. The earthwork is the main item there. Almost 40% of the earthwork has been completed. We have our plan and going on pretty well as per the plan progress. I also like to mention here that one bridge, the Ganga River at Allahabad, we have completed all the foundation and superstructures. So this has gone very well. In marine works, Udangudi, except the finishing item, which is commissioning of the crane, which has to come from overseas. All the civil work has been completed. A remarkable project in terms of the challenge and the volume. Colombo overseas job is going pretty well. You must have seen some news yesterday and day before yesterday, about the promoter's view and the support they are getting from the financial institutions. We are there very much, and progress is as per the schedule. Vizhinjam breakwater, another one marine job, very challenging and happy to say that job is almost getting completed this end of year. With that, there are a few other jobs like in building, we have airports at Trichy and Pune almost completed. At Delhi, Kasturba Nagar, after 2 years, the job has started a few months back, so now it has picked up. We have started also the army headquarter at Delhi. We have achieved the first milestone as per the schedule, and few other building jobs also going okay. With this, as you can see that we have got INR 22,000 crores of work we have, and marine has again come to the top, around 35.3% of the share of the work. We have got few jobs in pipeline. One of the job we are involved in Vizag, that is for the ship repairing facility for Hindustan Shipyard. We are discussing with the customer. We are also pursuing few overseas job as well. With this, I will stop, and I request you to have questions. We are ready to answer whatever you ask. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your turn to ask the question. If you would like to withdraw your request, you may do so by pressing star and one again. The first question comes from Nikhil Abhyankar from ICICI Securities. Yes, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. You have reported very strong, robust aggregation growth in the H1 itself, and also the margins are already above 9% in H1. Will you be revising your guidance for FY 2024? Based on which guidance you are talking? Full year. Sir, revenue, EBITDA and order inflow, sir. I think we will maintain the same, which is around INR 7,000 crore plus in the top line, and we hope that EBITDA will be just 10% above this year of the. Yeah. And sir, order inflow, sir? Order, so far we have secured close to INR 5,000 crore, INR 4,800. As we said that few jobs we have L1, one job L1, and there are some prospects. Hopefully end of the year it will be around INR 8,000 crore, INR 8,000 crore plus total order inflow in this year. Okay. Sir, what is the quantum of the L1 order that you are sitting in? Sorry, can you come again? What is the value of the L1 order? L1 order is about INR 650 crores. INR 650 crores. Sir, now, moving to order inflow in H2, where are the opportunities? What are the opportunities that you are looking at? That is it first. The opportunity, we have few marine job in Bangladesh. The tenders are now under preparation, and hopefully by end of this year, we will be able to submit our bids. Few marine job already have quoted for JSW and other from Adani as well. We are pursuing some job in Odisha for a big port, a new port being developed. We have also some hydraulic job pursuing at Karnataka, and there are jobs from ArcelorMittal in Hazira. So it is a mix of various segments like marine, the building, and the metros. All together, I think around INR 13,000-INR 14,000 crore of jobs is under the pipeline now. Okay. Sir, just a final question. Pump storage hydro projects are gaining a lot of traction and a lot of companies are announcing their plans. Are we thinking of developing any capabilities in this segment? Actually, we are in this segment, and we have done a few very challenging jobs in this segment before. In Meghalaya, we have done, and we are also pursuing a similar kind of job now. Okay. Yeah, we are very much there. Sir, are we in discussion with any of the IPPs or developers? Yes, we are discussing. Yes. Okay, sir. Thank you, and all the very best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Bajrang Bafna from Suniti Securities. Congratulations for a good set of numbers. My first question pertains to the average execution of the existing order book. We are sitting on, let's say, INR 22,000 crore of order book, and we have a visibility of, let's say, another INR 3,000 crore to INR 4,000 crore to flow in during this financial year, the second half. Considering what could be the average execution cycle and what sort of growth on this base of INR 7,000 crore execution this year we can expect for, let's say, FY 2025 or FY 2026. Some strategy or the guidance or the thought process of the management will be really appreciated. My second question is the visibility on the. You are moving more and more towards slightly the projects where margins are high and the competition is low, like marine and some complex jobs there which is not the business of other companies where you can earn a better margin. The trajectory, maybe next 2 to 3 years perspective where we can move from, let's say, this 10% to maybe towards 12%, 13%. Is it something which the management is thinking from next 2, 3 years perspective? That's the second question from my side. Some sense on the improvement in the working capital cycle. That's probably how we are looking at and would be appreciated. That's all from my side. Thank you. Okay. I think many things in one question. Good. I'll try to address one by one. This year's revenue so far, we have done around INR 3,500 crores. The Q3 and Q4 will be definitely a little bit more than that. Hopefully INR 7,000 crore plus. We'll definitely achieve. Going forward to next year, we can think about around 20%, 25% growth in top line. Because work in hand, what we have now, they are fairly big, like Ganga Expressway, as you know, INR 5,000 crores and a project for Indian Navy, project worth INR 3,200 crores. Bangalore Metro put together. Chennai Metro, INR 4,000. So big-ticket jobs. Revenue-wise, we should be able to achieve around 25% more than this year. Regarding further from next year onwards, our focus will remain for the bigger jobs. The idea is to do less number of projects, but each project should be bigger. Bigger in the sense INR 1,000, INR 2,000, in that range. That gives us a lot of leverage to work properly, efficiently. That we have seen. That is why we are also targeting jobs which have got turnkey sort of things, like electromechanical, crane, and many other things, not only civil. Our focus also will remain on the green energy, because lot of emphasis been given by the government and some private sectors on the green energy, on the hydrogen. Big plants are being set up by the local entrepreneurs. We are focusing on that. We're also focusing neighboring countries for the marine work at least. There are some inquiries which are quite encouraging. That is what I can say about the execution for next 1 or 2 years. Regarding working capital, I would like to, Prasad, if you can address that. Yeah, in fact, there is a lot of efficiency that we are recording on our working capital cycle as well. Net working capital is today less than 90 days. While there are obviously opportunities to improve the working capital cycle, I do not think there is a significant improvement possible beyond this level. So 80, 85 days, I think, is a very robust and healthy net working capital cycle. Our endeavor will be to, wherever possible, to improve the cycle further. Okay. Sir, just one sense that we want to get. Most of the players who are there in the industry, in the infrastructure side, they are struggling to get BG limits at the right costing. We were even hearing that a lot of 2% or maybe 2.5% kind of the BG cost for getting those lines from the banking channel. So what is the interest rate that we are paying on BG currently? Some sense on that, because it is a major portion of our interest cost as well. Some guidance on that will be really helpful. The guarantee commission that we pay generally varies from 0.7%, 0.8%, and it depends on the value and the tenure of the bank guarantee. Especially for guarantees that we provide in foreign countries, there is more than one bank involved. The bank guarantee commission would tend to be a bit higher, but it is in the range of about, say, 1% or thereabout, 0.8% to 1% or thereabout. Great. Okay. Thank you very much. I think this is a very competitive rate because off late, whenever we are meeting with a lot of companies, they are all struggling for getting these BG limits at the right costing. This is really challenging and really heartening to know that we are getting the most competitive rate in the industry, at least from this BG is concerned. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Pratik Kothari from BlackRock. Yeah. Hi, good afternoon. Sir, congratulations on a very strong execution. My first question is, we are currently already at about 7,000, 7,500 run rate. We will be at 10,000 very soon. Can you talk about internally, what are we doing, or how are we preparing to execute and scale? This is something which we have not obviously done in the past. How is our preparation going internally? Well, we are seriously concerned about our internal capability. If I can, if I may address one by one. First of all, technical capability, that is not an issue because we have got experienced people, and through experience, they are quite knowledgeable in the business, what we are. We have to build up some new team for the overseas. What we are doing now, we have already worked in Myanmar, we are working in Colombo, we are working in Bangladesh. There is a core team. We are trying to induct some more team with the existing core team. So that by another 6, 7 months' time, they become trained. The most important part is the support system because we have to support the execution from logistics, from finance, and from whatever it is. Those areas we are strengthening. The plant machinery is not a problem because nowadays you get the required plant machinery, either you can buy it or you can hire it. Those things are pretty available. Where we stuck up mostly is the bottom force, the labor force, workman. That is a common problem for all the companies in our industry. We are trying to migrate from most of the manual work to the mechanical work. That is one area. Second area, how to educate this labor force, how to keep them, how to continue them in our company, what sort of initiative we should take. We are really focusing on that. These are some of the area, I mean, things we are doing to increase our capability. Correct. Fair enough. Sir, earlier, I think we had planned for about INR 150 crores-INR 200 crores of CapEx this year, and I think we have already done INR 240 crores in course of FY 2024. Any change in plans? Are we accelerating something for the execution coming up here? If you can highlight that. Yeah, I think the CapEx was more of this last year or so because we have to invest a lot in the trench cutter and tunnel boring machine for the metros we have secured. Going forward, we don't expect that that much of CapEx will be involved, because whatever we have already, that can be used for the next project. For the marine, we already have our adequate plug and machinery. There will be some, but not to this extent. Okay. A large part of whatever investments we have to make for taking into account next 18 months, 24 months, we have already done that, and it will only be minor going forward. Exactly. Except Bangladesh project, which already we have secured, and there will be it is not CapEx. Basically, you have to rent some big machinery for a duration of 6 to 7 months time. Otherwise, large amount of CapEx what we have invested already, that will yield our result. We don't expect much investment now. Got it. Fair enough. And sir, in one of the previous participant answer, you did mention that now our focus would be to do less number of jobs, but do very large, INR 1,000 crores plus. Is it also fair to assume that the competition in that segment is lower than usually what we see at a lower order, like a 2, 3, INR 500 crore order? Exactly. If you see, now if you have an airport tender, and the value is INR 300, INR 400 crores, you will find 10 participants there. In the same airport terminal building, if it costs INR 2,000 crores, it will hardly boil down to 3 or 4 participants. In that way also, and good for us that we are able to get qualified ourselves because of whatever work we have done. So definitely, the tickets is big, the competition is less. Got it. And sir, my last question to Prasad sir. One, if you can highlight any further provisions which we have made this quarter. Also in our standalone cash flow, we see this INR 9 crores of loss from some unincorporated entity. If you can highlight what is that regarding? No, we haven't done. What we would have done is a normal expected credit loss provision. So there is nothing really, any additional provision that we have carried out in this quarter. Correct. And the loss from one incorporated entity? No, that is something that we had done in Q1. I don't think we have done anything in Q2 right now. So maybe you are looking at the six-month balance sheet or the cash flow where it will get reflected because it is for the half year and not for this quarter in particular. Correct. Fair enough, sir. Thank you and all the best, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Siddharth Shah from MK Ventures. Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on great set of numbers. Sir, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that second half is normally much higher than the first half. For example, last year you did INR 3,000 crore in second half and INR 2,000 crore in first half, so 60-40 type of ratio. But the current year guidance is still around INR 7,000 crore, and you have already done INR 3,500 crore in first half. Also all the projects are taking off well. Just to understand, is this quite conservative or this is what is practically possible or what else? Some comments on this would be very helpful, sir. Yeah, I think you have rightly picked up the comments that I made. I want to emphasize that whatever guideline we have given, that we definitely will be able to achieve that. And we definitely try to achieve more. But sometimes those numbers also, it varies year by year. It may not be same this year. Last year, 50% more, it may be just a little bit less on that. What I try to emphasize, the INR 7,000 crore plus will be definitely achieved. Sure, sir. That's helpful. And the second question is a similar question to one of the previous participants, that going forward, all this provisioning of Bangalore project and all is being taken. So from next year onwards, what kind of margins are you guys internally working on? Is it 12%-13% margin possible in next two, three years? Or we should kind of expect 10% kind of margin going forward? Yeah, you see, so far, till a few quarter back, our margin used to be around 8% to 9%, 8.5% EBITDA. We have come close to 10% now. So beyond that, if you have to do margin, you have to really get the job at a better price. So we have to be in the competition also. Yes, 10% plus, and how much we can go beyond that has to be seen based on the nature of job, at what price you are getting the job, what is the competition, et cetera. Sure, sir. Sir, last question is on the debt part. If you can just highlight what is the net debt of the company now as on date or as on- The net debt of the company as of September end is about INR 460 crore. Okay, sir. That's it from my side. Thank you and all the best. Thank you, Siddharth. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Lahar Nirvana from Lahar Professional Investor. Hello, am I audible? Yes, please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, I wanted to understand because general elections will be there in Q1 of next financial year. Just like in the road sector, there is usually some slowdown. In our line of business, do you anticipate any kind of execution slowdown? Not really. I think because of election, perhaps election, there will be a lot of pressure to do more work. Because of election, I don't see that that will affect our work. No, it may impact new tenders or new projects which come up for tendering. But the orders that we have already received or have been awarded to us, we don't expect any slowdown in the execution of the projects that we have on hand. Okay. For orders also, sir, do you anticipate a slowdown? If you do, then do you expect it to be a transient phenomenon which will get normalized in from Q2, Q3 onwards next year? There may be a little bit of, I'm not saying there definitely will be a slowdown, but there could be a little bit of slowdown or postponement in some of the tenders which come up for bidding. But that will obviously be a temporary phenomenon. Once the elections are through, I mean, the focus on infrastructure would remain, and I don't think it is going to impact the industry in the long run. Okay. All right, sir. In Sikkim recently there was a cloud burst and a flood which caused a lot of destruction. So we are doing those tunnel projects in Rangpo. Was there any impact on our project or is there going to be any impact in future? No, touch wood, there was no damage to any structure or any sort of problem we faced. The only thing that, few days the work was stopped, and that too only for 3, 4 days. We were able to manage. I don't see that there is any issue with that. Okay. That is very nice to hear, sir. On cash flows and debt, we have done a lot of CapEx as was already discussed. I noticed that our operating cash flows are quite healthy in half year. I think going forward also we can hope to generate this kind of operating cash flow. Are we planning to become net debt free anytime soon, Prithar sir? No, I don't think we'll be able to be debt free, at least in this financial year or the next financial year. This business is working capital intensive to some extent. While we are trying to manage or ensure that the debt doesn't go out of hand in our balance sheet, I really don't see us becoming net debt free in this financial year or the next financial year. Okay, sir. In that case, can you help me understand the interest rate trajectory? I think you have short-term working capital loans, long-term loans, and the non-fund based limits that you take. Can you guide the interest rates that we should assume for this so that we can sort of estimate the interest cost that will come? Well, I can indicate the interest rates that are being charged to us presently. Going forward, it depends on many factors. For our working capital debt, the interest rate would vary typically from 9.5% to maybe 10.5% or 11%. For term debt, the interest rates are still lower than that, maybe in higher single digits. Okay. For our BG limit, you said maximum 1%. It is around 1%. It typically depends on the bank which we are dealing with and the tenure of the bank guarantee and the location where it is issued. There are multiple factors which influence the charges that we pay. But it is around 1%, maybe sometimes a little higher than 1% or many times lower than 1%. Okay. All right. Final question, sir, from my side is that the CapEx that we have done, INR 238 crores. Can you help me understand towards what this CapEx has gone towards? Because I am not very familiar with the kind of machinery that you are using. So it will be very helpful if you can outline what are the kind of machines you have bought with this and why a buy decision versus a leasing decision. Some color on that so that we understand better. Look, Chennai Metro, we had to do a construction called diaphragm wall, which is vertical wall below the ground, which goes around 30, 35 meters. In most of the cases, we have to do the wall through soil. But typically in Chennai Metro it is rock. In rock, whenever you try to do such work, we require a special machine, which is called trench cutter. Hardly we had in India before. So we had to have nine trench cutter mobilized. To answer your second question, out of that four we have bought and five is buyback or rental sort of things. What is the cost, sir, for each machine? It will be varying around INR 40 crore plus minus each machine. Per machine. Supporting the trench cutter, there are some other small equipment, and we bought few piling rigs as well. Another one important thing is the TBM, tunnel boring machine. We bought one tunnel boring machine for the Chennai Metro. So tunnel boring machine, trench cutter, and few piling rigs. These are the equipment we have purchased out of the CapEx number what is. That's helpful. Sir, final two questions follow up on this. The four trench cutters, what is the You said INR 40 crore per trench cutter, right? Yes, around that. Okay. The tunnel boring machine would be how much? With tunnel boring machine, there is a cost of procurement and there is some refurbishment cost as well. So each tunnel boring machine could cost between, say, INR 30 crore and INR 40 crore. Okay. We hope to utilize this machine across the multiple projects. We are working on tunnel projects plus metro projects, I think. So utilization, you think, will not be a challenge for both the trench cutters and the TBM machine that we have bought. Yes, we have to utilize them. There are visibility. That is what is a business. I mean, you have to utilize them. Right, sir. Sir, many congratulations on this quarter. It was really heartening to see 10% EBITDA. Really wishing that in the coming years you can cross INR 10,000 crore with much higher EBITDA margins and keep doing the excellent high-level technical work that the entire team is doing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Aman Soni, an individual investor. Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. I am joining the con call for the first time. I just wanted to understand, sir, we have a couple of questions. I will go one by one. My first question was on the margin profile. I understand that the company does different orders from NSGI to marine and all other things. Which kind of orders provide a better margin? If you can quantify that would be good. Well, typically, our experience has been that underground metro and marine projects give us better margins. Typically, each project comes with its own set of complexities. The margin profile would differ from project to project. Our margins are certainly higher on these two segments as compared to the other segments that we work in. Okay. All right. One more thing, I was reading your previous phone call that you mentioned something about INR 29 crore provisioning that you did. What was it during the current quarter? Nothing. There was no provision. This was in Q1. For one of the elevated metro projects, we had taken a hit of INR 29 crores in Q1. There is nothing in Q2. Okay. Secondly, my last question was on the tax rate. In the past couple of quarters, I see the tax rate hovers around sometimes 44%, 45%. What should be the number going forward? What can we expect? No, on a standalone basis, the tax rate is around 25%. There's no change in that. But the results that we declared as a mix of our standalone profit as well as the profit that we recorded on some of the joint venture projects that we have. That is why there is a change in the tax rate. But going forward, I think it should be in the range of 25%-26%. 25%-26%. Okay. One last thing, I read in the opening remarks, you detailing out different projects and their completion periods. I can see that some other companies in their investor presentation usually give what the percentage which is completed along with the project name. Would it be possible to share that in the coming quarters in the investor presentation? Well, there are about 50 to 60 projects that we are executing, but that's a good input that we have received from you. We'll see how we can factor that in the presentation going forward. Yeah, I understand. Basically, it would be great if initially you can just start off with maybe 50%-60% of whatever your top orders are. That would be very much helpful. You are right. Okay. That is all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Sameep Deshpande from Fair Deal Investments. Hello. Good evening, sir, and congratulations for the excellent set of results you have produced over the last six months. I heard the net debt is around INR 460 crores or INR 260 crores. 460. 460? Yes. Because if in the balance sheet, if I go for the consolidated balance sheet, the gross loans are around INR 750 crores, and cash and bank balance, if you total, is around INR 500 crores. So it comes to INR 250 crores net debt. No, the gross net number is correct. We have taken some of the deposits are earmarked against some of the guarantees that have been issued. We have only considered the unencumbered deposits for working out the net debt, and according to that, the net debt works out to about INR 460 crores. Okay. It is quite comfortable considering the industry situation, and we have managed our working capital also very well. As you mentioned, less than 90 days is quite commendable. You mentioned regarding these maritime projects and these underground metros are the most profitable part of our total business. In that, the maritime order contributes to, I think, more than 50% of our orders or 40%? It is now close to 40%. It is now INR 17,800 crores out of INR 22,000 crores. Okay. It is quite good. Business is picking up well, and we hope the execution also will be good in the second half. Yes, that is what is expected. Thank you, sir, and all the best. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Kaushik Poddar from KB Capital Markets Private Limited. See, with your turnover going up sharply, say 20%-25%, do you see the margin also going up, EBITDA margin? EBITDA margin, yes, you are right, because there are some fixed costs which does not get proportionately changed. So theoretically, it should go up. To what level do you see in 2025? See, right now, I think you are around 10.6% or 10.7%. Can we think of, say, 11%, 11.5% this year and next year? Yeah. Actually, the margin also is a function of competition. Right. We have to seek some job at a lower margin. That is also a risk. So yes, 10% plus. Let us see how best we can do in next year. Okay. Do you see with the election being a few months away or something, there will be a kind of freeze in new orders? Yeah, expected during around the election time, there will be. But whatever work we have already secured and whatever we are expecting from the LOBs are those all, whatever we have given the guidelines will be affected. Okay. Even with the election being, say, four, five months away, you still see the 20%-25% growth next year. I mean, that should not be a problem because of the orders that are at hand. That is what you are saying? Yes. You are right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Next question comes from Kunal Patodia, an individual investor. Right. Congratulations, sir, for the fantastic results, and hope to get the guidelines also set for the balance of the 6 months. I wanted to ask about the arbitration awards that we have in our hand, and do we expect any cash flow from any of these awards in this financial year? Kunal, you are most welcome. Thank you for joining this phone call. We have got a few arbitration awards. One is from Calcutta Airport, which was a joint venture of their parent company. The discussions are going on, so we expect that some result will come out soon. I mean, when I say soon, maybe 3, 4 months' time. Another one award we have from the Noida Authority, which is around 40 odd crores. Now the authority has gone to the court challenging the award. But normally, if the arbitration awards are there, you can expect that the court order also will be favorable to us. These are the two arbitration awards we are now pursuing. What will be the value of the cash flow that you're expecting? From the arbitration? Yeah. From the arbitration. For the Noida, it is quite defined because it is around INR 40 crores. But for Calcutta Airport, the discussions are going on. We really want to see how well it goes out. We do not want to comment on that, but Noida around INR 40 crores in the carrier. Right, sir. If you could give me a breakup of the revenue that you expect from Ganga Expressway, Chennai Metro, and the Karwar project for next six months. Ganga Expressway, there should be around INR 150 crores to INR 200 crores per month. Okay. Typically metro jobs, INR 40 crore to INR 50 crore per month from each metro job. That is our statistic, without going into the detail. And sir, Karwar Marine project. Karwar Marine project is a little bit early because we are still in the planning stage. It depends upon when we do the dredging, because we can do the dredging in the monsoon before the next monsoon starts, or we may go to dredging after the next monsoon starts. So the whole thing will depend upon the dredging progress. At this moment, I do not have the right number to share with you. Right, sir. So for Ganga Expressway, you said INR 900 crore revenue was booked this quarter. Am I correct, sir? No, you are wrong. So far, we have done 900 crore from the inception. Okay. This is the total execution. Okay. Understood. One more thing I wanted to understand, we are paying royalty to our parent company, ITD Thai, and we are also giving dividends. Can the company consider share buyback, which is more tax efficient for retail and small investors? I don't have the answer for that today. This is our discussion strategy. Yes. I won't be able to comment on that right now. Right, sir. Sir, last question. Sir, any bill discounting for vendors or your contractors or financing like L&T does with L&T Finance. Have we tied up with any NBFC or is there anything in pipeline that we are looking to do it? We have such facilities from a few of our banks. Okay. Fine. Thank you, sir. Best of luck for your next quarter. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next is a follow-up question from Bajrang Bafna from Suniti Securities. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, on the Bangalore Metro, is there anything left, because I think most of the provisions has already been done. Any revenue which is yet to be booked or any more provisions required. Can we expect some sort of the total loss that we booked over last maybe one to two year kind of time frame is upwards of INR 150 crores, if I recollect it right. So some possibility of getting this money back through some settlement or some arbitration. Some guidance on that will be really helpful, sir. Well, Bangalore Metro, physically all work completed. There are three contracts there. Out of four contract, I am sorry. Out of that, three contract already taken over by the client, final bill certified or certification is under progress. The fourth one also completed and taking over also is happening. So whatever left on revenue would be hardly few crores, which will come through the final bill. The provisioning part is almost over. I do not expect there will be anything further required. That I have clarified in the last concall as well. We have got a few claims and the additional work done. We have submitted our bill, so those are under process, and some will go for arbitration. As you know that arbitration process takes time. We will not be able to comment on the timeline, but definitely we are pursuing few claims and our extra items. What is the total cost overrun that we have booked so far in P&L in the Bangalore project? The total amount till date. Bajrang, these numbers are not readily available. Maybe we can reconnect offline and discuss this further. Okay. Got it, sir. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question comes from Mehul Mehta from Nuvama Wealth. Good evening team. In terms of CapEx for the first half, I believe what I heard is INR 238 crores has been so far incurred. Any guidance for H2 would like to give for CapEx? What can we expect? It will be very less. First two quarters we had to invest for many things, which I have discussed right now. Going forward, it will be quite less. I do not have the exact number, but it will be much less. All right. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next is a follow-up question from Sameer Deshpande from Fair Deal Investments. Thank you for the follow-up question. I wanted to know what is the amount of advance received against contracts in our current liabilities? Well, as of the quarter end, the total amount of advances outstanding is about INR 1,300 crore to INR 1,400 crore. INR 1,300 crore to INR 1,400 crore. Because normally we must be receiving the advances when the new contracts we are getting, we will be receiving certain portion as advance. It is INR 1,300 crore to INR 1,400 crore. What was the amount last year? Any idea of that? No, I wouldn't have the last year's figure readily available right now. Because our unbilled working progress- As on September 30 is around INR 1,540 crore. Right. Which is up now almost 50% as I take on the March 31 figure last year. Because of the new contracts we received, et cetera, in a significant way, this figure also must be better. That will help us in questioning our working capital requirements. Mm-hmm. You are right. The numbers will be available in our annual report and our results are available publicly, so you will be able to look at it. The work in progress is higher because, we need to, in the initial periods of any project, after it is awarded, there is a lot of expenditure that we need to incur on mobilizing plant, equipment, materials, et cetera. Only when the billing cycle starts, then we see moderation in the work in progress. I think the growth in the work in progress number is in line with the growth in our order book and our revenue. Yes. Sure. Well, thank you very much. Happy Diwali to all the team. Thank you. Happy Diwali to you as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Next is a follow-up question from Pratik Kothari from Phoenix PMS. Yes, Pratik. Hello. Pratik, please go ahead with your question. Yes. Sir, one comment from you on ports, and we read about Mr. Jindal's comment on the kind of capacity which they expect that India should build. Similarly from Adani Ports. Recently, this development, the U.S. government funding one of your projects for Adani Ports. Just your comment, what kind of pipeline or runway do you see for next few years on the port side? Yeah. Port side, there are a lot of capacity deficit we have in our country. Either the container cargo or the bulk cargo. When I say bulk cargo, it is iron ore, coal, et cetera. There will be a lot of new terminal has to be there the coming years. You can see that it is getting reflected in the Odisha. One by one all the promoters like Adani, Jindal, ArcelorMittal, and many of them are focusing Odisha to building up the port there. At the same time, defense also coming up with a lot of marine jobs in and around the coastline and the Andaman and many other places. So there is a lot of marine job prospect in India going forward. Correct. Thank you and all the best. Thank you. Thank you, sir. There are no further questions. Now I hand over the floor to the management for closing comments. Thank you very much for joining us on this Q2 FY 2024 earnings call. On behalf of the company, Mr. Basu and myself, I would like to wish each and every one of you a very happy Diwali and prosperous new year. Look forward to interacting with you again after our Q3 results. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using Chorus Call's conference call service. You may disconnect your lines now. Thank you and have a pleasant day.