Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the call for our First Quarterly Results for Motherson Sumi. In spite of having lost almost 20, 21 days of production under the unfortunate circumstances of COVID, I think Motherson has delivered a very strong result. If you look at it in the perspective that you've lost almost a month, has almost gone without any production, almost globally. We still achieved INR 16,700 crores worth of a top line and our EBITDA and our debt to EBITDA has actually come down to 1.1.
Under those circumstances, the board actually congratulated everyone and said, "Great job done, and we have to be very cautious and focused on the next quarter, the current quarter, and the next quarters coming." I think all of you already know about the business and all that, so I would ask Vaaman, Pankaj, and Kunal, and Gauba, all of you guys to also participate in answering any doubts if you have any. Thank you very much, and stay safe. Handing over back to you.
Thank you. Should we open for Q&A?
Yes, please. Go ahead.
First question is from the line of Kapil Singh from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my question is related to the operational updates that we have given in the press release. One broader question is whether, when we look at the margins for the company, are there any structural factors in your view or these are all operational challenges? In particular, we have shared that greenfield performance has improved. If you could share some color over there as to where are we in terms of profitability for greenfield. Because the profitability for greenfields, I understand, has been lower than rest of the business, and therefore, even if the performance improves there, the plant-wide mix could be negative. That's one area I wanted to understand. Similarly for PKC, we've also mentioned about certain operational challenges.
This copper price pass-through, this takes place with how much lag, and higher logistics and product launch costs, if you can share some color on that as well?
Okay. Kapil, thanks for the question. I think this is going to be answered in three parts by Vaaman and then Gauba and then Pankaj, if that's okay with you.
Hi, Kapil. For the greenfield plants, the economic greenfields, I think now they have stabilized quite a bit, so they become part of our normal operation. To give you an idea, we talked about, of course, Cheshire and Alabama in the past. These two have done well. They continue to improve the profitability levels, and they're on a good path. Quite satisfied with how the local management team is continuing to build the capability over there and continue to show better performance. Out of these two plants, I think Hungary was a lot more affected with the customer, let's say, rearrangement of the program mixes and extreme rate shutdowns because of the semiconductor shortage and other issues that they were facing. Alabama was slightly less, but yes, also affected.
We definitely did see an overall effect in all our plants, but these plants continued to hold ground strong and were able to beat with the market as well and could limit the impact. There is customer feedback that they would like to catch up in the following quarters post this August break, catch up on that lost production that they've had. We're quite optimistic that moving into Q3 and Q4, like Gauba said, we have to be quite vigilant and the situation is quite dynamic. We are hopeful that there'll be a lot more stability in the following quarters. We are not seeing any different impact on just these two plants or something like that. It's been an overall effect in all the plants. That's for SMP, and I will hand over to Pankaj sir and Gauba sir for talk about PKC.
Thanks, Vaaman sir. Kapil, just to add, there is no structural change in the business model. I mean, the business model remains the same. As you have seen in the last quarter, the copper price reached the peak. As Pankaj sir had explained in the previous call that the copper content in case of a commercial vehicle is much, much higher. While there is no general rule in terms of the customer's pricing lag, but normally you have six months adjustment kind of a situation in the commercial vehicle segment.
If the copper price remains stable, that is a question, then you will see a good part of it being recovered from this quarter onwards.
Pankaj, sir, you would like to go on?
Generally, Kapil, it's six months average. Let's say from December to May, it will start flowing in from 1st of July. That's how it works. Different customers, different models, generally more or less six months averaging. At current copper price, about 80% recovery would be there, then in coming quarters, it's six monthly impacts get negated. In this period, we also had supply chain constraints, component shortages, which have been for varied reasons impacted by the specialty polymers from Texas hurricanes, which have destroyed some of the facilities and the suppliers of components have not been able to come back. From there, as well as we had two new orders. One was supposed to start a year ago, but due to pandemic, the launch got delayed and the second launch was to happen this year.
Both of them finally coincided and coupled with supply chain constraints, had a very big impact on us. Which also took higher manpower costs and logistic costs, which are one time, which should slowly get eliminated through this quarter.
Thanks, sir. Secondly, I wanted to also know, when we look at the performance for Q2 and Q3 onwards, is the situation getting better or how would you like to guide us in terms of this whole issue that we are facing? Some of the OEMs have come out and said that they are facing very large shortages as well in Q2. Do you see Q2 to be better or worse compared to Q1? Are we getting a sense that from Q3 onwards things will start getting better?
Good question, Kapil. Your guess is as good as ours. There are two trends which are helping Motherson. One, whatever shortages are there, it's generally seen that the car makers are pushing it towards the higher upper end models that they have because they have better realization with the same, semiconductors or wafers or whatever shortages that there are. Having said that we all have to be on our toes and the product of Motherson are very wide, so everyone has this thing. If you have more questions on this, then tell me, I'll direct you to whomever you want.
We are in August, so you will have some sense of how July and August is looking like, just directionally.
Okay. Which product?
No, overall revenues.
I have to tell you I wouldn't be able to help you on that. If you are looking for some more recent trends.
No, let me rephrase. What I'm saying is that we saw supply chain disruptions in June quarter. Is that a similar problem in the September quarter or are you seeing it to be a bigger problem in September quarter than the June quarter? Without mentioning numbers and other things.
August is mostly holidays in Europe, definitely there's some relief over there if you can understand that. That should allow us and all the car makers to also make sure that any of these shortages or any inventories that are missing get built up so that cars can be produced. I think the positive sign is that, look, the demand is very much there in a solid way. Even if you look at the IHS forecast and anything that you're seeing, the same stuff that the reports that we get, we're seeing that Q3 and Q4 should ease up. I think definitely the last quarter, the fourth quarter has been challenging. The second quarter continues to ease a little bit because of the holiday session and everything that we have.
That's why I think they're saying that, from September onwards things will get better. It's a very dynamic situation. It's not something that we have visibility to and neither do the car makers at this point. Everybody is just waiting for this August month, for the holidays to finish, September to start and that's when we'll look at those things. We are working in the meantime to deal with the market. Definitely, you've seen the impact of that in Q1. I think, again, we are coming out of a global pandemic, the first quarter as compared to last year, as you can see, we're already in a much, much better situation. I don't think people would have imagined that where we were sitting last year.
We are optimistic, things are getting better, and we will get a better grip of the situation when things open up in September. Till then your guess is as good as ours.
Thank you, Vaaman. Very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Any participants who wish to ask a question, then please press star and one at this time. The next question is from the line of Nitin Arora from Axis Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for taking my question. You touched base on the model part that a lot of the OEMs wants the higher-end models to be made in the scenario of chip shortages are there? Just continuing with Kapil's question, and sorry for that. Just to understand one more thing on it. If I have read this correctly, more of the higher-end luxury cars are getting made across the plants versus the lower end. Given your cost would have not moved quarter-on-quarter, you cannot shut down the plant because it's a very dynamic situation. Cost cannot get cut on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Is it more of mix issue also, the cost would have been higher and the higher end getting made, lower end is not getting that much made, and the demand also is a little weak in the lower end versus the luxury. Cost would have been hitting you more. Is that the right way to look at it? This mix issue should start getting stabilized in the second half?
Well, there are too many moving parts in your question, very difficult to advise as to what your real question is.
Okay, I'll put it this way, sir.
Yeah, go ahead.
Okay. I'll put it this way, sir. If higher end cars, higher luxury models of, let's say, any of your client would have been made more because a lot of the OEMs are saying that because of the lower chip shortage, we are making the higher end models because the demand is very strong at those higher end models. At the lower end models, the demand would have been less. I'm assuming your cost doesn't get apportioned according to the model which we are making. That must be at the plant level only, at the plant level cost. I'm just trying to understand that once situation normalizes, when the chip shortage goes away, and as you rightly said, it's anyone's guess. I'm just trying to understand more of a question is Q2 a cautious part is just on this aspect, nothing changes structurally.
It depends upon the customer, but look, if you look at the basic difference between what is a smaller car and a bigger car, you can't say the smaller car demand is not there. The demand is there, but it's just that the customer allocates this more towards the higher end thing because he gets more realization in the same effort.
It's just related to that. I'm not saying that the small car makers are going to go out of business.
No, I think I'll just give you some more color. I think you have to understand that we're not making a static part. We are making instrument panels, door trims, wire harnesses, mirrors. There's a lot of different products that are really going in, and that's why we've always said that, look, we don't believe in just looking at the margins. We believe in looking at the roads, because even some of the high premiumized vehicles, for us, perhaps there are more bought-out parts for that. You may think that the margin looks lesser, but actually the return on capital is higher. It's a very complex question that you're asking because of our diverse portfolio.
If you look at our customer split, if you look at our geography split, we're extremely diversified. Whatever you're trying to infer will not have a direct impact to us because of the advantage that we have of diversification. As you can see, that even though the volumes perhaps have come down substantially in the OEM side, our volumes have not come down as in the direct correlation of that because of the diversification of products that we have. Generally what you're trying to say does make sense, but it's not applicable in Motherson because of the high diversity in parts and customer portfolio and locations that we have. We would need some really crazy Cray computers to compute which models, because you have to understand, we're supplying to pretty much all the models out there. We have some part of the other going in.
It helps to take the pressure off when certain models are not doing well, even if they are in premium or lower end, because we have access to the other models as well.
Okay. Second, in terms of July and August, versus an average of last quarter, what's the visibility OEMs are giving in terms of production? If you can throw us some light in terms of in this situation. For example, if a year the production visibility was OEM was giving 30 days, and I'm just putting a raw example, if you can help us in that way, that right now the production visibility is less than 10 days because of this chip shortage, or it's closer to an average a month. If you can throw some light on that'll be really helpful. Thank you.
No, there's no change in the way that they're giving us.
Sorry to interrupt you, sir. Your voice is breaking.
Sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yeah, there's a slight break, sir. Can you please repeat the sentence?
Can you hear me now? Is it without break now?
Thank you.
I was going to say, look, there's no change in the way the customer is giving us the outlook. They were giving us 30 days, they are still giving us 30 days. There are changes that happen within those 30 days, which is dynamic is what we are seeing. It's not that they've stopped giving us outlooks, but they are also saying, look, the chip situation is a bit dynamic, so what we are giving you for 30 days is changing as they're giving it. They give 30 days, they give a week, they give daily. For us, we're also receiving every two hours for some of the exact specs that we need to make.
There's more uncertainty in what's changing, and that's what's difficult for us to plan around, because you can imagine the workforces, et cetera, you need time to be able to be more flexible, read with the market, rearrange shifts. If you get a change in the morning shift for the night shift, it's very difficult to go around and change all of that. It's a dynamic situation. Again, it's not something that is usual, and what they're saying is that this should settle down as we move into the next quarter.
Thank you, Vaaman. Thank you so much for your answers.
Thank you. Participants, please press star and one if you wish to ask a question. The next question is on the line of Chirag Shah from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question is, with respect to SMR and SMP, see, when I look at sequentially the revenue that SMR, SMP has done is far better than these volumes that your customers have done at their end. Is it that because they have focused on premiumization, our value addition content has gone up and it has helped us? Is it driven by more bought-out components for us? How should one look at it? Your revenue profile and as well as your margin profile seems to be better than sequentially as compared to your customer.
Chirag, again, very tough question here, but I'm sure Vaaman has a good answer for that.
No, this is one particular fact which actually alludes to the fact that premiumization is happening.
That's what we have been saying. Anyway, I think, Vaaman, you can go ahead also.
Chirag, again, it depends. It's hard to give you an answer when you don't tell me which customer you're looking at, which product. Again, you have to understand that the customers that SMR and SMP are supplying to, they're different platforms. The same platforms are not being supplied by SMR and SMP. It depends on that location, depends on how those things are doing. SMR has a lot of more business, for example, in Korea, which SMP doesn't have. SMR has much more business in India, which SMP doesn't have. It's very difficult to look at SMR as compared to SMP because, again, the number of bought-out parts, premiumization is definitely happening. That business has been with us also slightly longer than SMP. Difficult to compare SMR and SMP.
The SMR management team is very. The entire SMR, the backward integration that we have, the entire wiring harness, plastic parts, actuators, these are all parts that we are doing ourselves. In SMP, there are still more bought-out parts. Again, difficult to compare the two, but the SMR team is definitely to be congratulated that they have navigated this turbulent times with a lot of control, and being able to breathe much faster in the market.
Yeah. Thanks, Vaaman. Second question is on this bought-out component. All these components that you have that a lot of fitments would be going in cockpit or something like that, why generally that the bought out component share goes up when there is a higher premiumization in our revenue and vice versa? Conceptually, it would be helpful.
Because there are camera systems, for example, we talk about mirrors, to give you a very simple example for you to understand, I think that low entry-level cars are not having as many camera systems or actuators or power fold. They're more on the manual side. They don't have EC glass, which is those reflective glass, which is a bought-out part. It depends. As SMR is also going and doing backward integration, we started making some of our own glass, for example, in certain areas where it made sense. Some places we buy it. We look at those examples of where it makes sense to do it. Some of them, they're IP protected. For example, the EC glass is heavily IP protected. It's very difficult to break into that and you buy that part.
In SMP, there's that much more parts because the parts are much bigger, so there are a lot more child parts. In SMR, the child parts are smaller and something that they were well integrated from the start. Again, very difficult to compare SMR to SMP, but SMR is quite vertically integrated and we do have a lot more control over the entire bought-out parts, at least on the lower side. As you go on premium, of course, like I said, EC glass and all those kind of other electronics which we are not present in, they're all bought-out parts in that sense.
Even in SMP, can we presume that as premiumization happens, the bought-out component tends to increase? In SMP it is largely stable because child parts would be common whether you make the high-end version of a client or a, say, A3 versus A6, the child part would be largely similar in SMP.
Yeah, sure. You will add more sensors, radars, cameras, grills. There's a lot of parts over there that, as you go more premiumization of those parts, you're also doing more bought-out. Because if you look at it, these are more outside-facing facial parts, so they're more electronics, et cetera. If you look at the premium vehicles, they have a lot more sensing technologies than some of the other ones. Yes, the painted components, the child parts, those plastic parts, they are mostly the same. The difference comes more in the electronics features.
Yeah. Thank you. I'll come back for more. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sonal Gupta from L&T Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Sir, just wanted to understand your statements around the PKC that you've mentioned in the presentation, and I think Pankaj has already talked about it. Could you give some more color? I mean, primarily trying to understand this new product launch related cost. I mean, is this a regular feature for you or is this something really a one-off? I mean, just trying to understand that. Are these some newer facilities where these products are ramped up and therefore there is a higher cost pre- launch-related cost?
Both actually, I'd give Pankaj the chance to explain. I think just understand that under these circumstances, we actually transported almost about 400 people from different parts of the world, majority coming from India to Serbia, where this problem happened. It's a one-off thing. Pankaj, if you can explain it quickly, then I think everybody understands.
Sure. Sorry, can you hear me, sir?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. All right. As I mentioned earlier that we had got new orders. These are the OEMs and the products which we were not supplying earlier, those trucks, and one launch was to happen a year ago, and the other one was to happen at this time. Somehow due to COVID challenges, the launch got delayed and both launches happened at the same time. We got into challenges, mainly because there were supply chain constraints, there were component shortages during this period, and which compounded the problem. That's why we had these as a one-off. Your question, is it normal? No. These are not normal, and they were not supposed to be normal because both the launches would have been about a year difference, 12 months difference. One launch happens, and then the next launch takes place.
This compounded the situation, and that's why we had these additional costs, which are one-off.
Okay.
Supply chain constraints on the other hand, the supply chain constraints are still continuing, and we do still see supply chain constraints happening. It is not just linked to this launch. These launches got compounded with that. Otherwise, supply chain constraints have also impacted our efficiency in other parts of the world as well.
Exactly, Pankaj. In fact, one year ago, we were breathing with the market, and since the launch got delayed, we actually had let people go, which we had trained in that place because we have to breathe with the market. When suddenly the launch came back, and then it was real complication. I think Pankaj and his team have done a phenomenal job, somehow trying to keep the customer lines running. We've been air freighting the delivery. It's a one-off thing for sure. Yeah, these are things that we have to do because at the end of the day, you have to be on your toes. In these conditions for the last one and a half year. I think going forward another year, you're going to be on your toes.
You have to be making sure that the customer is trusting you, is increasing, and we can clearly see that the customer is very happy. Also, I think this particular thing was actually a first time entry into a particular customer and a huge order, and it got delayed, postponed by a year. That's the thing that we face. It's an opportunity. It's there. We walk into a big customer in Europe, so worthwhile.
Sure, sir. Just on that, like you mentioned, that we had to transfer some people from India and a lot of other places to Serbia to ramp up this order. Basically, we had some, like you said, and also because of the COVID last year, you had to let go of some people. Is that the thing that there was a frictional sort of issue in terms of the manpower availability and that is what led to the higher cost?
No. How is it a frictional issue? I didn't understand that. Yes, we have to transport people from India to Europe. That involves cost. People were coming from Brazil, from Mexico, everywhere to come and help out. That's the nature of Motherson. If one is in trouble, then all of the companies are going to go and help that company out. I think it's a great example of the ability to bring global resources into one place to solve. Even though it's painful a bit, but it shows the camaraderie which Motherson especially enjoys.
Right. The other part was on, again, around the copper price. Like for India, we see that it's roughly around maybe somewhere around 15%-20% in a broad range, I mean, like the cost of copper versus the wiring harness content or overall. Would that be the sort of number for PKC or would it be even higher in terms of copper content?
The copper content in trucks is usually higher than passenger cars because most of the wire thickness, lengths, everything is more. You expect to see the voltage drop and the robustness and the vibration sense. It's generally more thicker cables in the trucks than.
Okay, sir. Great. Thanks so much for answering this.
No worry.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Jinesh Gandhi from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, sir. My first question pertains to this one-off cost which we indicated for PKC. Is it substantial, or can you give a number, or it's not very big?
Pankaj, would you want to? I would understand if you don't go ahead.
Well, as I mentioned that it's a compounded issue. It includes expedited logistics costs, it includes the cost of the human resources who were brought in to support. Their stay charges, their charges to bring them to that country because we needed experienced people to smoothen things up and smooth launches, and also due to the supply chain constraints. All these things got compounded. It's very difficult to kind of break it down. On the copper side, we had approximately a gap of about EUR 9.5, EUR 9.7 million of difference between the price at which we would have bought copper and did the difference. Overall cost would have been in the range of, apart from copper, all these things put together would be in the range of about EUR 9 million-10 million more. That's how it is.
Okay. Sorry, what was the number you said for copper?
Some of it we would have recovered, but not much as of now, so we do not factor in what we have not yet recovered.
Sure. What's the impact of copper you said? About EUR 6 million? I did not catch that number.
I mentioned about EUR 9.5 million Would be the impact of copper.
Okay, understood. Second question pertains to, again, the PKC side. From structural perspective, we are seeing some movement towards hydrogen, both on ICE as well as fuel cell side. How is PKC positioned in that technology, and how would be the content difference between ICE versus hydrogen ICE and fuel cells?
We work with.
No.
Sorry.
Go ahead, Pankaj. Go ahead.
I just wanted to say that hydrogen is a future kind of a thing. The technology of hydrogen is to protect the fuel tank. The fuel tank people have to make a very solid fuel tank which can store the pressure of hydrogen and not get affected in case of an impact or something. It doesn't really change much of the needs of the wiring harness side and all that. I don't understand the line of your question. What do you want to know from us about hydrogen?
No, I said does the wiring harness content be very different in that, vis-a-vis ICE?
No. It could be similar if not a big difference or something. They're similar.
Okay. Understood. Last question.
Hydrogen has to be ignited, right?
Hydrogen has to be ignited.
Right.
The real technology change will be on the fuel tank and the delivery of hydrogen from fuel tank into the engine. The engine, I think, if I'm not wrong, is similar to that of an ICE engine.
Got it. Last question pertains to SMRPBV. In this quarter, we had about CapEx of EUR 29 million. Is that a run rate which should sustain for remaining three quarters and in turn overall CapEx should be under EUR 200 million or could be higher than this?
Well, I'll tell you guidance overall, not for SMRPBV, the thing is still, I think INR 1,800 crores- INR 2,000 crores. Pankaj, correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes.
Sorry?
Yes, sir. INR 2,000 crores remains the same. Yes.
Yeah, remains the same, actually. Not much difference.
Okay, got it. Thanks. I am done with my questions. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Nishant Vass from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi sir. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on specifically in the SAMIL subsidiaries, can see that the performance continues to be relatively better than the underlying market. Focus point was more on the Marelli joint venture that you see. Obviously, the revenue ramp-up seems to be stronger than underlying market. A, what is driving that? Second, associated with the Marelli joint venture, we recently mentioned about potential MoU with SMRPBV and Marelli on the lighting system side. Can you shed some light because it seems that you are expanding the scope of your relationship. Thoughts around that, please. Thanks.
Yeah. Just to answer the second one first, I think we are known for that. We have multiple joint ventures with the same partners and of course, we believe in growing businesses together. First, we started with lighting, then we got into exhaust systems, with suspension systems with Marelli. The business continues to grow and the lighting business is quite strong. You will see more and more of that as we continue to build more and more partnerships with the same partners, because I think that shows how good the business is. Now, coming to the first aspect of your question.
I think we've been saying that from the start, that this is the right time for these businesses to come into the fold of Motherson now, the new Samvardhana, because the heavy lifting of the investments, making sure they have the right technologies, getting onto the right platform, that all cycle Samvardhana has already done through our holding company, which we are merging now together with and making new Samvardhana. That was the whole thesis that, look, these companies are prime companies, they're profitable companies. Now they're going to grow in market share, and we want to bring it to all our shareholders, and continue to grow these businesses, not just in India, and have more opportunities outside as well. This is only playing out what we pretty much told you, why we were doing this merger with these businesses.
They continue to showcase that they're in that key growth takeoff stage, which places them beautifully to be in the public listed entity.
Thanks, Vaaman. Just a clarification, because my focus point was more on the global side of SMRPBV, because, correct me if I'm wrong, there aren't many companies who have lighting and plastic parts together in terms of potential bidding with customers. I just want to understand how you plan to take it forward in terms of will you be jointly bidding for programs in the future, potentially what you're looking at customers? What timeframe you're thinking about this potential partnership to fructify? Just some sense on that.
Sure. I think, yes, Vaaman, let me just repeat. The joint venture between Marelli and Motherson is actually between SMP, not SMRPBV, but SMP and Marelli. That is more to take care of the exterior parts, which are today going to be a hallmark of electric vehicles that are coming. That's the biggest advantage of this joint venture, because we will be making a lot of parts which are going to signify that it's an electric vehicle, and in visual and in sound, et cetera, you need that kind of distinction. I think we're grateful to Marelli, we think we have enough opportunity to market this with our customers globally. We are very excited about that and we are sure it's going to turn out some very good opportunities in the coming time. Sorry, Vaaman, you were saying?
Just going to add on to what you're saying. I think we are very strong on the exterior side. Like I was saying, lighting is becoming more and more a key component for branding, differentiation, and the newer vehicles which are coming have a lot of front-lit modules. It makes a lot of sense because we're anyway in that area, and Marelli has strength in the lighting side. We have existing joint ventures. There's a lot of trust between us. We continue to do that. We will have more of such partnerships with our existing joint venture partners. For example, interiors and all other kinds of tools as well.
You get to do more and more parts for, to increase content per car. We will look to continue to increase wherever we find the opportunity.
Fair enough. Thank you for the detailed response. Just my second question is on, sorry again, on PKC, but more on the growth structure as well as in terms of your order book structure. Pankaj sir, can you just shed some light in terms of how you're looking at, because many of your customers in the recent quarterly commentary have upgraded their growth structures for both Europe and North America. The associated question was also in Europe, many of your key truck customers are either collaborating with each other or trying to make an aggressive pivot following the policy regulations towards electric.
Where are you seeing yourself in terms of from the early design stages on those programs, and some color on that in terms of potentially your future order book for PKC on the electric side, if you can share something on that. Thank you. That's all.
We do see a strong growth coming from our customers. That's how they all are seeing. They have very strong order books. As we have also mentioned in our report, in our announcement today, that we do see that there have been some hiccups which they're facing because of supply chain constraints and some disruptions which have been caused due to shortage of materials, including the chips and also materials which are caused by the hurricane in Texas and then some in Europe, impact of flooding in Germany, Belgium area. Demand is very strong. The order booking is very strong and we are aligned with most of them. In terms of the electrification of the trucks, we are working with them and we do support all their electrification requirements, so we are working in tandem with our customers on their projects proactively.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. A reminder to our participants, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Kapil Singh from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Just one question on electrification. If you could talk about what are the new areas that we will be able to address, or new products or in existing products, some major changes which could take place as electrification takes place, across two-wheelers, four-wheelers, as well as commercial vehicles. What are the areas we are targeting? Whether we are working with some of these startups. There are a lot of startups in the scooter space, particularly. Are we working with some of them as well? How is the wiring harness content in those compared to ICE two-wheelers?
I think there is huge amount of opportunity in the existing products itself that Motherson has, because all of these products in some one way or the other fit in very well to the new demand. There is enough R&D people, the amount of money that we spend on finding solutions, exactly what the customer needs. The recognition is by far because there are a lot of companies that want to tie up with Motherson because we are in the specific field with which they can collaborate and they can enhance and grow their market share as well. It's a bit too early for us to introduce you to what are the new things that are happening out there. As and when they will happen, we will come back to you to tell you.
I can assure you, the competence that Motherson has developed over the past 40 odd years is related to the product design, the product tooling, the assembly of the product, and then supplying to the customer. Also globally, we are in 42 countries, so that becomes a very, very attractive way to go beyond Motherson.
I'm sorry, sir. We couldn't hear you, sir.
Sorry. Anybody else wants to add anything to this particular fact? Because we can't go specific into the product. Suman, what do you say?
Sir, I think, largely we have been engine agnostic, but depending on what the customer wants us to do, I think we will look at that. We already heard of one partnership as you pointed out, and we continue to make progress on those parts. We are not going to take any large bets in battery manufacturing or something like that. I think we will stick to our core and we will follow what the customer is telling us to do. There's a lot of opportunity out there, like Papa is saying, we are getting a lot of things on our table right now, and we are evaluating it.
As these things happen, as you heard about the one for the exterior lighting, you will hear more of these things as we are able to put a business case around it and have a good plan to go after some of these new products.
Okay. Thanks. Do we have any update on what % of revenues for the quarter were coming from BEVs, and if there is any update on any additional orders we have got from BEVs?
Definitely we have picked up a lot of orders, but, sorry, Kapil, we guide you in six months. Trust me, we are doing very well because you are generally seeing the car makers coming out with existing models in electric vehicle versions. That needs, depending on the product, it needs to be tweaked a bit here and there. That means more opportunity for Motherson. We are not in a position just now to tell you what the numbers are, but I can tell you it's a very healthy number.
Okay, sir. We'll look forward to that at the end of six months. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone who wish to ask a question at this time, then please press star and one. Ladies and gentlemen, that would be our last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vivek Chaand Sehgal for closing comments. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thank you. I would just like to take two minutes to try and explain to you what are the challenges are, not insurmountable. They're easily able to be taken over. The thing is, every day you have new challenges. These challenges have not come before to us. Our people are on their toes. They are looking at ways and means by which they should combat these challenges. I think the turnover of the company and the gaining of market share that Motherson has done is alluding to the fact that we are having a great set of people. They are very innovative. They figure out ways and means. I mean, I was just trying to tell you that to find in the second wave time to send that kind of number of people out from India to a new country in Europe.
Pankaj, I think we actually had to hire an aircraft to send the people there. I'm just saying, it's new challenges that you've never faced before in your life. How all that, all we had, you come out with solutions and all that. It's making us really, though we don't want these challenges, but when they come, we solve them very well. The other thing which is important is that, because of these particular things, our inventories are on the higher side. That actually works in our favor double times, because if the products that we need are having a higher inventory in our factories, it also kind of helps us to hedge the raw material price increases and things like that. We continue to do that while our eyes are definitely on the debt to the EBITDA that we have.
The general work of the finance people and the management people is to bring those particular things down, if possible, to zero. We are working towards that. I would have had pleasure to tell you that there is a lot of pain in the system. At the moment, it's more pain in the Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4, and that also is a big challenge for the car maker. It's also an opportunity for Motherson because we can pick up these particular assets and stabilize them and help them. A lot of opportunity in the future and looking forward to your support. Thank you very much, and stay safe, stay healthy.
Thank you very much.