Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Adani Enterprises Limited Q3 and FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call, hosted by ICICI Securities Limited. As a reminder, all participant line will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation conclude. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thanks, Danish. Good evening. On behalf of ICICI Securities, we would like to welcome you on the earnings call of Adani Enterprises Limited for Q3 FY26. Today, we have with us from the senior management, Mr. Robbie Singh, Chief Financial Officer, Adani Enterprises Limited, Mr. Rajesh Poddar, Chief Financial Officer, Adani Airport Holdings Limited, Mr. Manan Vakharia, Head of Finance, Adani Enterprises, and Mr. Jitendra Khyalia, Investor Relations, Adani Enterprises. We'll start with a brief opening remarks, which will be followed by Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much, Mohit. Welcome. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Adani Enterprises earnings call. As you all know now, AEL's portfolio is categorized into our incubating portfolio spread across energy utilities, transport logistics, and established businesses, which is traditional mining, trading, and minerals. Straight off, I would just. I'm very pleased to share with you all that Adani Solar, which is part of Adani New Industries, was recognized as world's top 10 solar manufacturers. It's the only Indian company in the top 10 in the world. This feat was achieved on the back of more than 15 gigawatt cumulative shipments, excellent vertical integration, and maintaining a high capacity utilization.
Furthermore, over the last nine months, as you would have seen in the various press releases and announcements over the period of time, our aerospace technology and defense business is taking shape. You would have seen two recent announcements on the development of regional civilian transport with Embraer and helicopter ecosystem within India with Leonardo. Over the coming few years, we will continue to inform the market on the development in the aerospace technology and defense area. And now that business has taken certain shape, we will also from mid this year have a section in it to update you on the status of that business as we go forward. In addition to defense, we've also set up Adani's Global Capability Center within AEL, GCC, which we call Adani Capability Center.
Over the coming period, you would see additional development in that space, including, and not limited to, the development of activities within GCC, which pertain to artificial intelligence and the changeover into agentic workforce model. Coming back to this quarter, the key aspect has been the core strength of project execution and operations for AEL. During the quarter gone, Adani Airports commissioned Navi Mumbai Airport and also the integrated new terminal at Guwahati. The Navi Mumbai Airport is of immense strategic importance for Mumbai as a second airport, and for Adani Airports, this is a significant addition to its regulatory asset base. The road business completed two more HAM projects, takes the operational road projects to nine.
But more importantly, though, the largest road project that we have in the portfolio, which is Ganga Expressway, is set to go live in this quarter. Ganga Expressway is roughly INR 18,000 crore asset and is a traffic risk project, so it would add significantly to Adani Roads revenue and EBITDA. In ANIL, module sales continue to track over 1 GW per quarter, despite the turbulence in global markets. As we had flagged in last month, there's a small variation on realization you have, but nevertheless, the robustness of the business continues. The wind division has started shipping the 3.3 MW wind turbine. On to financial performance. In the coming period, first, AEL will unlock EBITDA from Navi Mumbai, Kutch Copper, and Ganga Expressway.
Post stabilization, these three assets are expected to add well over INR 3,000 crore to EBITDA. The consolidated results for nine months with total income at INR 96,976 crore , EBITDA at INR 11,985 crore, and profit before tax at INR 3,581 crore. This excludes one-off gain on sale of assets of INR 9,215 crore. Incubating businesses had a 7% year-on-year, and now the EBITDA at INR 8,224 crore. On capital management, positioning AEL's balance sheet for the next phase of growth, we completed the rights issue, raising INR 24,930 crore. Additionally, in January, we also further issued INR 1,000 crore of NCD. This was third in series of NCDs.
Now, as a showcase, given the scale of airport business, which is now already tracking over INR 5,200 crore of EBITDA annually, this is without counting Navi Mumbai's assets that will come online this year. The airport now contribute about 23% to India's passenger traffic and roughly 29% of their cargo volumes. This just underscores the key scale and strategic importance that this asset represents to India and its aviation industry. The financial and operational performance for the last nine months, passenger traffic tracks at about 71 million passengers, which is close to, we expect around the number just short of 100 million for the year.
Income is up 31% to INR 9,652 crore, and EBITDA has already surpassed the full year 2025 EBITDA and is for the nine months is at INR 3,724 crore. As I mentioned before, on 25th of December 2025, Greenfield Navi Mumbai Airport commenced operations, which we expect will be meaningfully change the overall financial performance of Adani Airports going forward. It's a regulatory asset base provisionally in the high teens, and the expected rate of return on assets of this type is in the range of 12%-14%. On the strategic front, Adani Airports acquired 100% stake in AGH Port Aviation Services. This acquisition provides Adani Airports with full operational control and strengthen our presence in the airport ground handling.
Overall, these strong operating metrics, strategic initiatives, and infrastructure additions position Adani Airport for sustained growth and value creation over the years ahead. Within our core traditional businesses, we have a portfolio of 17 MDO service agreements with a peak capacity of 143 million tons per annum. We are currently operating at a run rate of 45 million tons from six contracts, which is approximately 31% of the potential of this business. The six operating contracts, which are currently operating at 45 million tons, have a notional capacity of 63 million tons. So the additional and further ramp-up in this business will continue. During the nine months, the dispatch volume of the business is up 14% to 33.3 million tons, and revenue is up 29%.
Consequently, EBITDA is up 29% to INR 1,424 crore. Our integrated resource management portfolios, the volume stood at 35.3, with an EBITDA of INR 2,069 crore. With this, we will end our initial briefing and we are open for questions. Thank you.
Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll 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'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Mahesh from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. So my first question is on the defense side. Is it possible to help with the top line and the investment we have done till date in defense business?
As I said, I think we will. Thank you for the question, Mahesh. We will update on defense fully, in the half-year results.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir, but there's a disturbance from your line.
I said, on the defense side, we will update fully, as a segment, in detail from the first half of next year, so post the September results.
Okay, sir. And sir, on the 60 watts cell and module line, when do we expect the commissioning of this line?
The new lines will be expected to be ready by 30th September this year.
September. Okay. Sir, on the gains that you have booked in this quarter, what is the tax impact for these gains?
It will be taxed at 15%.
Okay. And sir, lastly, on the airport business, right, so can you help us with the commissioned assets in the last 12 months in our airport business?
Can you please repeat the question?
The assets commissioned in the airport business over the last 12 months.
There's no commissioning as such on airport. Airport, only asset we added was Navi Mumbai Airport. Operating airports only.
Okay. And sir, for this Navi Mumbai Airport, right, for FY 27, aero and non-aero side, how one should model for this? And the related question is, do you expect losses in the interim till the traffic picks up in this airport?
No, airport is a regulatory asset, so there's no question of any losses. On the air side, the way to model it is to take the regulatory asset base. Provisionally, it will be, I think, close to, in fact, close to INR 20,000 crore. On the regulatory asset, the weighted average rate of returns is expected to be around 12%-14%. That return is calculated in the following manner. The RAB works in the following way: you take the operating costs efficiently incurred, then capital return, which is depreciation and amortization, then weighted average cost of capital. That gives you plus notional tax to be paid, rate of return on the regulatory asset.
Tax obviously gets paid, cost goes into running of the airport, and what you are left with is a small capital return, plus the rate of return on the asset. So, there is, on a regulatory asset, until or unless there is a serious issue, there is no question of a loss.
Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Manish Somaiya from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. Good afternoon, good evening. I just had a question on the airport business. I see that the growth slowed from the second quarter to the third quarter. Maybe if you can just talk about that, and then also just touch on when we should start seeing any improvements in the integrated resource management, mining, you know, so the legacy businesses, which obviously have been under pressure. So maybe if you can just give us some context around airports, what happened in 3Q. Obviously, we all know about the IndiGo fiasco. I don't know if it had anything to do with that. And then also if you can just switch to the legacy businesses and help us understand when we should mark an improvement.
No, actually, the growth is well over 30%. It's just that, we have, the numbers that we mentioned, we've taken out a one-time element. There's no specific issue regarding IndiGo, in relation to the airports business. If you—even if you look at segmental part of airport, if you look at individual growth in relation to, on, on our presentation deck, on page 23 of the presentation, you'll see that it's gone from 1,100 on a quarterly basis to 1,568. And, and the, the, the non-aero aero breakdowns, they are, they're all plus 25% growth, and we expect that to continue, in the airport.
Right. What I was looking at was the sequential growth. So when I look at the airport revenues that you had in the second quarter, it had year-over-year growth of 43%, you know, we're at 32%. Of course, you know, we're dealing with perhaps, law of large numbers. As growth increases, the growth rate will come down. But, you know, again, I'm just trying to reconcile, if there's anything we should take away from, the sequential portion, the 42% in 2Q '26 versus 32% in 3Q.
No, I think what you will see is that actually that number will again accelerate only because as it is a, it's a timing of various accounting of regulatory assets. So as the regulatory assets kick in, you will see that you will have the revenue from those regulatory assets come in at different times. There can be small changes in terms of mid-period determination of regulatory rate of return. Because currently, aero is still a big part of the portfolio. So you can see some of those changes because the various regulatory assets come online at different times. So for example, the determination, if you look at the effective date of regulatory determinations, the periods are different.
So some somewhere where we filed a mid, mid review, it's in December and so on and so forth. So some we filed in January this year itself. So those, those assets will make a, make a difference. But we don't see the, see overall, you can, you can have at a very large number, like 40% growth and, growth and, growth number, where the growth can-- will moderate to some degree. It is not likely that a 40% growth continues at 40%. But we will have jumps. Mumbai Airport itself will add, on a regulatory basis, a, a, a, a regulatory aero side EBITDA itself of, once we fully account for the timing difference.
On a normalized run rate basis of about just over INR 2,000 crore to the EBITDA line itself. Against our current EBITDA of around annualized EBITDA of around INR 5,200 crore. Just one asset will add about 40%.
Right. And then, switching to the legacy businesses, maybe if you can just help us understand, the pluses and minuses of what's going on, in those businesses.
The main thing there is that, as you know, that we've flagged it last time also, a slight delay in the ramp up of Kutch Copper. But we expect that now the full utilization should start over the next two to three months. So you will start seeing the numbers on the first quarter of the following financial year, which you haven't seen the impact in this quarter. But I can share with you that we will see the numbers showing for Kutch Copper in the very first quarter of next financial year.
At various utilization rates, say if it is 70% then, we will have roughly—it will add roughly INR 2,800 crore of EBITDA. If it is 80%, around INR 3,100 crore, and then there's a further refining element to it, where the EBITDA can go up by another 20%. But assuming that secondary refining is not there, then we are confident of utilization rates of between 70%-80%, so that should give a high INR 2,000 crore EBITDA addition in that business. The main variability for us in that business always remains the integrated resource management, given the continuing sort of global/domestic interplays.
And that part of the business, that core IRM business, overall, this year is around 11% less than what we were last year. But as we've always flagged, that there is an inherent... It's a profitable business by itself, but there's an inherent variation, fluctuation in that business by the very nature. Otherwise, our MDO business is on track. It's grown to 25 odd %. It'll, in its current contract, it has a capacity to grow by another 25%. And then, from where we are, because of the existing contract that has not yet activated, it has got a growth potential of another 21-31%. So we expect that business to keep ramping up.
And as MDO and mining itself become a bigger part, and metals become a bigger part of this business, the variability element that is now outsized because of the IRM being a bigger EBITDA contributor to the business, will become less and less. So we expect the variability itself, as a percentage, to decline as we go forward.
Okay. And, if you can just touch on, the data center, partnership with Google. I believe on the last call, we had talked about the partnership, and I think, you'd mentioned that, you would give more details around spending and, other metrics, hopefully on this call. So.
A little bit to respond, because just to give you an idea, we are just currently working through with the relevant agreements, and so they are, you know, there's nothing that we can share which would will be complete. And naturally, we have to also work jointly with the counterparty in that case. But we expect to have a much clearer rollout and take-up planning from the likes of Google and other partners. There are others also. Probably I think given their timelines and what we are aware of, probably say it's about another quarter to four months away before we can we'll be able to publicly share the rollout plans.
Okay. That, that's helpful. And, and then just lastly, you've been very busy on the capital markets front. If you can just give us a sense of, what else, you know, we should be expecting. And then I think what would be helpful is to have a, a pro forma capital structure. I think you gave the figures for 12/31, but just to understand, you know, even with the current financing that was just completed in the last week or so, if you can just give us a sense of, you know, what the debt stack looks like at this point?
We will actually provide a lot more detail, but just basically our total external debt now is roughly around 36, just over INR 36,000 crore, external debt. And then, we have, sorry, 36 that is allocated to our incubating businesses. And overall, just to give you a basic long-term debt number, the gross long-term debt is about INR 78,000 crore. So give or take, just under $9 billion. We have some shareholder loan outstanding of about just under $2 billion. So the external debt of that would be INR 62,000 crore. So 78 being the total debt, 16 being shareholder loans, giving us a total external debt of about 62. Of this INR 62, majority of INR 37 is just allocated to, actually, airports, roads, Kutch Copper, and the current PVC under construction.
Okay, great.
Okay. So what we can do is if we can give you a pro forma also post the results, we can actually, we'll note down the question, we'll provide that publicly, and we can put it on the website itself.
Okay. No, that'll be super helpful. Just so that, you know, we have a better sense of what we should have in our models. But thank you so much for all the answers.
Look at debt. You can always look at page 26, but if anything further, you can please reach out. So we will put the further details if required.
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pratik Kumar from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, sir. I have a few questions. Firstly, can you discuss, like, this airport segment EBITDA grew, like, 40% year-on-year. There's a mention of non-recurring item also in that number, related to lease income. What is that number? And the other numbers.
INR 220 crore one-off.
INR 20 crore. This will be related to leasing what?
Non-recurring. Just one second. This is largely, like, for the specialist hangar development and advance received against that, so that's how it gets accounted for.
Okay, so next quarter, we will have like, like let's say INR 220 crore lesser than current quarter, plus additional business from the new airport, which is Navi Mumbai Airport as a new run rate?
Correct.
Right. Also on Navi Mumbai Airport, like, we started, like 25th December, in terms of ATMs and daily flights and probably it will move to like a 24-hour airport, sooner. Earlier we were doing like, I think in the start, 5,000 passengers per day. How has the run rate of passengers improved? Because there seems to be like a challenge on constrained capacity environment at this point. And how are you looking at FY 2027 in terms of volumes for Mumbai and Navi Mumbai combined airports?
I think we will actually the volume details and movement, we will confirm and we'll provide between the two airports as part of our annual results. But just to give you an idea, the second phase construction will start just after the monsoons this year itself, 2026. It's already the slots are fully taken up by the airlines at the Navi Mumbai Airport. So in fact, phase two construction will start. So but in terms of the overall system-wide traffic impacts and everything, we will provide much more detailed and clear outlines as part of the annual results. Because we have a couple of steps to do in relation to capitalization of the asset, in relation to the provisional RAB, which we will do this quarter.
Okay. And just to revisit, are you expecting some shift of traffic from Mumbai to Navi Mumbai Airport here? And also a related question, I know that we had, like, pushed out the Mumbai Airport renovation of Terminal one to later date. Is there any update on that?
No, no, no, not on that. Our first priority is to stabilize the 2 airport operations from operations perspective, which we expect to do. And start the second phase construction at Navi Mumbai, and then we will look at Terminal 1 post that.
Moving on to other segment, like road segment, has been doing EBITDA of like 1,500-INR 2,000 crore in like past 2 years. With the commissioning of Ganga Expressway, soon, how do you expect this business to ramp up in FY 2027?
See, basically, Ganga Expressway should just double the size of EBITDA of this business.
Sure.
INR 1,500 will, INR 1,500 EBITDA, that is, sort of run rate. There are two new assets have also come in HAM, but we will be closer to INR 3,000 with Ganga Expressway.
Sure. And you talked about Adani GCC. Is this for, like, internal businesses of the Adani Group? And is this going to be a meaningful revenue or profit contributor to the business, or just a support business for the group? And what are we-- And then you talked about AI and agentic AI, you're, like, looking to develop c apability.
So it is internal, currently internal to the group. But and because it will become the lab through which the Agentic AI will get deployed across the group.
Okay. And last question, on your coal to PVC timelines, and can you discuss, where is that project? How much is the capital employed till now? What is the total project CapEx and the timeline?
I think from a revenue perspective, you should look at calendar year 2028. Completion point of view, base completion towards end of this year and then ramp up, which will continue in that business. If you can estimate roughly, you know, 6-9 months. We obviously will provide a lot more detail closer to the event. But currently our CapEx that has already been expensed on that business is in the vicinity of about INR 9,000 crore, so just over a third of the CapEx.
Sorry, one last question on the, your total CapEx target for FY 2026, and how much has been incurred till in first nine months?
Our total target that we had outlined was roughly INR 36,000 CR, and we have already done just about INR 25,200.
Well, thank you, sir. These are my questions.
Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star and one. Our next question come from the line of Dhananjay Mishra from Sunidhi Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. So are we expecting any contribution from copper side in Q4 as well, or it will only start from Q1 next year?
Q1. Yeah.
Okay. Ganga Expressway, this provisional completion certificate will come in next two months?
It will come in the next month itself.
Okay. So no, I mean, in terms of toll collection and all, it will start from Q1 only, not material in Q4?
No, no, no, no, not, not, not material at all in, in, in Q4.
Okay. And this, lastly, the 6 gigawatt this cell and module capacity, which is going to be completed by June, or I saw your last timeline. So what is the CapEx required for this...?
The total CapEx for this project is around INR 10,000 crore, and it is on schedule completion, so we expect it to be ready and producing by September 2026.
Okay. And do we have enough orders once we have this 10-gigawatt capacity? Because our current run rate is about 4,000 megawatts. So, for at least 20%-
Capacity only, we have enough orders.
Okay. So we can supply once we have this capacity, run rate could be 2000 MW per quarter.
Yes.
Thanks. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments. Thank you, and over to you.
Well, thank you so much. Mohit, thank you so much for organizing the call and everyone who participated. If there's any further questions, you please reach out to the team, our investor relations team, and they will respond. We've noted one question, which we will, based on Cantor's, which we'll put on the website, and you can always look at that answer on that question. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of ICICI Securities, this concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.