Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to APAR Industries Limited earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ambesh Tiwari from S-Ancial Technologies. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Ambesh Tiwari from S-Ancial Technologies. I welcome you all to the Q4 FY 2024 earnings call for APAR Industries. To discuss the business performance and outlook, we have from the management side, Mr. Kushal Desai, Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Chaitanya Desai, Managing Director, and the CFO, Mr. Ramesh Iyer. I would now pass on the mic to Mr. Kushal Desai for the opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah. Thank you, Ambesh. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the APAR Industries Q4 earnings call. I'd like to start by providing an overview of our performance and then discuss a few brief industry updates. Post that, we can delve into more details for each of the three major business segments that we have and then open up the floor to questions. During Q4 FY 2024, the consolidated revenue for APAR came in at INR 4,455 crores, which is up 9% year-over-year. Domestic demand continues to be strong, offsetting the weaker export demand that has been coming, especially from the U.S. markets where customers had been deinventorizing. Global sales growth ex the U.S. actually grew at 29.8% in Q4. The overall export mix is 39% versus 53%, which was a year-ago period.
The EBITDA is up 3% year-on-year to reach INR 457 crores, with an operating margin of 10.3% versus 10.9% a year ago. Profit after tax came in at INR 236 crores, 3% lower than the previous year. But last year, same period was the highest quarterly earnings that we've had on record. It is 5.3% versus 5.9% in the year-ago period. Considering the 12 months, the consolidated revenue posted an all-time high, revenue growing at 13% year-on-year, closing at INR 16,153 crores. The growth is coming from higher volumes in all the three business divisions. The export mix for the year is 45.2% versus 48.8% in the last year. EBITDA for 12 months is INR 1,632 crores, representing a 24% increase compared to last year. The EBITDA margin for the year is 10.1% versus 9.2% a year-ago period.
The profit after tax is up 29% year-on-year, which has reached INR 825 crore with a margin of 5.1%. This is about 70 basis points higher than the previous year. Covering a few industry highlights, data from the Central Electricity Authority reveals that about 3,512 circuit kilometers of transmission lines were added in the month of March 2024. On a 12-month basis, 14,203 circuit kilometers of transmission lines were added, which has fallen short of the planned addition of 16,602. However, looking ahead in the next three years, it's targeted to add about 17,500 circuit kilometers of transmission lines per year and about 80,000 MVA of transformer capacity per annum. On substation addition, the Indian substation capacity addition stood at about 78,382 MVA in FY 2022, falling to about 75,900 MVA in FY 2023, and it further fell to 70,728 MVA in FY 2024.
Very significantly, the private sector has been making increasing contributions to India's substation capacity buildup. In FY 2022, private sector entities had added just 1,000 MVA of capacity, which has grown to now 5,000 MVA in FY 2023, and it has risen to 15,000 MVA in FY 2024. On the renewable energy front, the year proved to be a strong year for the country's renewable energy sector. India achieved the highest-ever annual new capacity addition to the grid, spurred by the solar power segment, which accounted for 81% of the addition. The total new capacity added during FY 2024 stood at 18.48 GW, which was higher than the capacity added in FY 2023. That was 15.27 GW. In FY 20.24, and this is the highest all-time high addition in a year. In FY 2024, the new capacity addition in solar power sector grew by 18% compared to the addition made in FY 2023.
Today, India's installed renewable energy capacity stands at 143.6 GW, and this excludes 47 GW of large hydropower capacity. Among the renewable energy capacity, the total solar installed capacity is at 81.81 GW, followed by wind at 46 GW, and 9.43 GW is biomass, and 5 GW are the various smaller hydro projects. Coming to the individual business performances, our conductor business revenue in Q4 FY 2024 grew 10% year-on-year to reach INR 2,328 crores, with a volume growth of about 14% in the quarter. Domestic business grew 59%, conductors had a robust demand in this quarter. However, there have been some adverse effects from competition, where higher freight costs impacted by the Red Sea crisis and a slowdown in the U.S. market affected exports in the quarter. Export revenues contributed to 40.3% of the division's overall revenues versus 53.5% in Q4 of the previous year.
The premium products contributed to 48.9% of the revenue mix. Despite some headwinds from the U.S. market, EBITDA per metric ton post forex adjustment came in at INR 48,453 per ton on the back of reasonably good domestic demand and execution of HTLS projects. Overall, our order book stands at about INR 6,885 crores, with the premium basket contributing to 44.8% and the export mix contributing to 37%. New order inflow for the quarter came in at INR 3,018 crores, of which the premium product mix is 57.5%. During the 12-month period, revenues for conductor division crossed INR 8,000 crores. It came in at INR 8,031 crores. So that's up 15% year-on-year. Export sales contributed to 45% of the revenues, as against 46.5% in a year-ago period. Volumes year-on-year are up 29%.
The EBITDA per metric ton post forex adjustment for 12 months came in at INR 42,141, which is 4% lower than the previous year. Coming to the oil division's performance, Q4 FY 2024 revenues are at INR 1,210 crores, which is 3% higher than a year ago. The volumes grew by 5% in the quarter. Transformer oil volumes, which has actually led the growth, grew 22% over the previous year. Exports contributed towards 43.9% of the overall revenues. EBITDA post forex adjustment came in at INR 4,251 per KL, which is 15% higher than the same period previous year. Profitability for the quarter, as I had mentioned in the previous earnings call, was partly affected due to higher weighted average cost of inventory consequent to delays in shipments which had happened in the last quarter. The lubricant revenue came in at INR 241 crores with a total volume of 17,813 KL.
Looking at the 12-month period, oil revenues are up 4% year-over-year to INR 4,837 crores. The volume grew by 11%. Transformer oil volumes have grown year-over-year by 15%. EBITDA post forex came in at INR 5,746 per KL. The lubricant revenues for the year are at INR 944 crores with a total volume of 17,625 KL. This is an all-time high number for the oil division in terms of volume. Our cable business revenue growth is 15% higher than the previous year. Last year had a high base coming in from the U.S.. If you look at global sales ex the U.S., the sales grew by 51.8%. Exports overall contributed towards 24.7%, and 52.8% is a figure a year ago. So EBITDA continues to post double-digit margin with 11.4% in the current quarter.
Our overall order book is at the moment at INR 1,436 crores for the cable division. If you look at the 12-month period, cable revenues are up 18% year-on-year at INR 3,859 crores. Domestic revenue is higher by 45% year-on-year, and sales ex the U.S. is up 44.8%. So it's really the slowdown in the U.S. market, which we had been talking about through most of our earnings calls, has come in and hit the overall number. The export mix for the year is 38.3% versus 50.8% a year ago. The EBITDA post forex for the year came in at 11.4% versus 10.5% in the previous period. The U.S. order intake has slowly started improving as the inventory rationalization gets completed and some of the solar projects are starting to get executed.
We have seen an increased level of inquiries coming in, but the inquiry to closure of orders cycle is actually still fairly long. The Red Sea crisis has impacted the supply chain, and this, in turn, has affected volumes, especially to Europe, where the freight costs are still high compared to prior periods. This has enabled local players to be more competitive, relevant to exporters like APAR. However, the domestic business looks strong in terms of volume given the trust on renewables and the renewable capacity being added, transmission lines which will be required to be added for evacuation of power, and other infrastructure development. I'd like to point out that we have a detailed corporate presentation on our website and would encourage all of you to please access the same and go through it. It's much more detailed than we can cover on this call.
However, coming on a cautious note, we see increased competition coming from Chinese exporters in most of the markets. Even in the U.S. markets, they have been trying to skirt around the tariffs by illegally routing products to alternate geographies. Some actions have already been initiated by the U.S. authorities, and this activity is actually getting more intensified. So our sense is that over the next year or so, you will start seeing an impact coming in as there are certain importer distributors whose import licenses have been revoked or they have been fined. We are also seeing a short-term slowdown in demand from tenders and some of the new conductoring work, at least for this period, given the fact that decision-making is reasonably paralyzed due to the ongoing elections.
However, we remain optimistic that the basic growth drivers remain intact both in the domestic and global markets, especially if one takes a slightly longer-term view. So with this, I'd like to come to the end of my comments. I'd like to thank everyone for joining this call, and we can now open up the floor to questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. First question is from the line of Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities. Please proceed.
Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for the congratulations on a very good set of numbers. My first question is on how do you think about selling premium conductors in the export market? Do you think the demand in the U.S. market will come back in a couple of fiscal?
Premium products in the U.S. will be sold. It will take a little longer for us to penetrate those markets. Currently, the premium products are being sold more in India. With regard to the U.S. market coming back, the information we have is that this year, it will continue to be a little soft. But the expectation from the customers is that from next year onwards, next calendar year onwards, things should pick up.
Given that our capacity price is very high for conductors and for cables, I guess, where are we in capacity expansion? I think when we were undertaking capacity expansion last year, can you just throw some color on that?
So in terms of capacity expansion, Mohit, we are continuing as per our plan during last year and through various interactions we had through the whole QIP process and all the documents out there. We were talking about doing INR 350 crores-INR 400 crores CapEx year-on-year. So that program still remains pretty much on track. And we are investing on the conductor side on our rod-making, alloying capability, metal treatment, stranding, as well as on the premium product side, expanding our CTC, that's the copper transposed conductors, is going to transformers. So we are expanding that capacity as well as the bus bars and drones. So the expansion is going on. We fundamentally see that the long-term growth drivers remain intact. And some of these projects are getting delayed because the expected rate reductions haven't taken place or announced by the Fed.
There has been expectation that there would have been three reductions. Now, it's down to possibly one or none. So there is a little bit of a wait-and-watch given that many of these projects are leveraged. But otherwise, the growth drivers still seem to us to be pretty much intact. So we are going ahead with these capacity expansions. Also, we need to keep in mind that getting best-of-class equipment today has significantly longer lead times compared to what it was two or three years ago.
Understood. Thank you for all the answers. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Amit Anwani from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good afternoon. Congratulations for a good set of numbers. My first question is.
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Amit. Your voice is very low. Can you please use the handset?
Is it better?
Yes, this is better. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Congratulations for a good set of numbers. My first question is on the EBITDA per tonne of 48,000. And you did highlight in PPT that this is because of the high-margin premium products. So I just wanted to understand any particular product which is driving this kind of high EBITDA per tonne this quarter. And second, wanted to understand some sense on you did highlight in your presentation about the premium products breakup on HEC, copper, OPGW. So I just wanted to understand any particular product within premium which is contributing much higher and also the contribution of AL-59 in domestic market. How was it?
So in general, Amit, this premium conductors has been a higher share. If you look at this quarter, it has been about 49% of the total kind of the value. And therefore, yes, we see that increase in the margin. Also, as the volume has been higher, we also get a lot of economies of scale due to lower conversion cost due to which the EBITDA per ton has gone up. At the same time, there was also one-off recovery against some old provisions that we had created, and we were able to recover that. That has also added to the bottom line, increasing the EBITDA per metric ton by about INR 1,500 per metric ton. So all in all, it has resulted in a higher EBITDA. And nothing specific more about the HTLS and reconductoring projects that have been there as part of the premium conductors.
More of such orders have been executed during the quarters, which has resulted in this margin being high.
Right. So any sense on AL-59 contribution?
We don't give a specific product-wise contribution as compared to the total number. But AL-59 volumes have also been going up in recent years.
Right, sir. Second, on the capacity utilization with the four-year volume, so conductor almost more than 2 lakh tons. And I recollect we were at about 180 lakh tons-190 lakh tons. So just wanted to understand since we have a robust outlook for upcoming years, how much time it takes for capacity and what kind of capacity or number are we going to increase by 50%, 100%? And.
Yeah, Amit, in our case, it's capacity expansion happening almost continuously because we predict the demand one year in advance. And typically, in the conductor division, we operate about 90% capacity utilization. So as we see orders coming in and the demand going up, we tend to increase the capacity by 10%-15% year-over-year. There could be some periods where the capacity utilization may be less, and some period could be high. But typically, it's more of a continuous process. And as of currently, we have a capacity of about 2.1 metric tons-2.15 metric tons per annum. And we are continuously also increasing the capacity there.
Lastly, on the acceptances, we did talk about giving our fundraise that will be focusing on the working capital rationalization. So just wanted to get a sense what should we consider as a benchmark for the acceptances or working capital or the interest to sales in FY 2025, 2026? Yeah.
So this quarter, if you see, because of the QIP funds coming in and getting deployed in working capital, our interest bearing LCs come down. It's about 3,200 as of March 10th. Depending on how our working capital we are able to rotate, this number will change. And also, as the business volume goes up, then you'll see increase in this, I think.
Can we consider 2%-2.5% interest to sales as a?
I guess maybe what you see, the number for this particular quarter, is slightly lower because of the lower interest cost that is coming because you've deployed the QIP money. But at the current volume, maybe about INR 112 crore of interest on a quarterly basis is something that you can predict. However, if volume is going up, this may go up further.
Thanks for taking my question. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Nitin Arora from Axis Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for taking my question. Just on the conductors first, I mean, your order intake has been quite strong again. For the whole year, it's up 20.4%. Generally, given your strong commentary on the domestic side, plus your capacity part, you still think you'll be able to grow conductor revenue by 18%-20% this year? That's my first question. Second, if you can comment on the profitability of the conductor segment, how one should look this 42,000 going where? If you can a little bit more sense, then I have one more question. I'll take it after this.
So now, if you look at what we have been guiding, it's pretty much on a medium to long-term perspective. We don't really give guidance on a short-term perspective because the nature of our business is that sometimes you execute more in one particular quarter in a year that distorts the entire overall number. Say, for instance, in this year, we grew the conductor volume by about 29%, whereas we've been guiding about 15%. So typically, what happens is that as the project gets executed, depending on the pace of the execution, you tend to get more volumes in a particular quarter. However, what we feel is that as the fundamentals are intact, on a medium term, on long-term basis, we expect the conductor division to grow about 15% on volume terms staggered.
There could be a few quarters and periods where, depending on the level of execution, this percentage will vary. Clearly, on a long-term, we expect this to grow about 15% staggered basis. Coming to EBITDA level, we have been giving guidance of about INR 28,500 per metric ton. Again, though we have been getting about INR 40,000 per metric ton in the last financial year. However, looking at a long-term point of view, depending on the level of competition and the pace at which the project gets executed, we continue to guide about INR 28,000 per metric ton. Plus, definitely, there could be a lot of tailwinds that we get as we execute these projects. Those would get added on to the EBITDA numbers.
Got it. Just on the starting commentary on the export, we are seeing export mix is also down quite from the mix perspective, and domestic is growing way faster. But given that exports is the mix have come down, you're saying it will take a little more time. But here, at least from a declining perspective, it should stop. It's more of a bottom you see, or you still think it will take two or three quarters away where we'll start seeing growth, or at least we could be flattish? I mean, I'm asking more from a profitability mix perspective. If you can throw some light there.
So this export mix, actually, has come down because last year, we had a very high growth coming from the earlier year. And lastly, because of U.S. exports being high. Now, depending on the situation that's prevailing on ground on U.S., the interest rates being high, and also elections coming up in the U.S., we have seen a slowness in the last year due to which the demand has been less. However, we expect that going forward, once these things get cleared off, this project could be more executed. And we may get back to the mix that we have caught in the last financial year.
Got it. Thank you very much. I'll come back in the queue. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Naman Parmar from Niveshaay Investment Advisors. Please proceed.
Yeah. Good afternoon, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is related to what will be the opportunity size of the cables or a conductor on a transmission side and cables on the distribution side? Can you provide me that?
So on the conductor side, there are basically if you look at transmission lines, there are two opportunities. One is new transmission lines that are being built to evacuate power from the new power-generating locations. So, for example, there's Khavda where there's three sets of 10 GW each solar power coming up. And you'll have transmission lines evacuating power from there. So one growth is coming from the addition of new transmission lines. The second area of growth for us is coming through the reconductoring of existing lines. So, for example, if you see there has been power in India growing at almost 8% CAGR. And we are expecting that in a month of June, the government has announced that India could have the highest shortfall of power in its history. Power consumption is increasing. So, as a consequence, reconductoring projects will also come up.
They have been happening, but they will also continue. The third thing is that in the mix that we have of our conductor division, we also do the copper transposed conductors for transformers. You may go through the earlier earnings calls that we have had. We've explained that when you're building a transmission line today, the investment that's happening in the substation has almost gone up to 50% of the total transmission line, which used to be about 30%. Off that, the transformer is a very major portion. So transformer demand has been growing. We supply two products into the transformer. One is the copper transposed conductors, which come from the conductor division, which also has been growing. In fact, in the INR 350 crore CapEx, we are putting in a substantial CapEx for growing the copper transposed conductors.
Of course, the other area is transformer oil, which, as you heard in my opening remarks, that after a long time, we are seeing strong double-digit growth over 12%-15% year-on-year. We expect that growth to continue in this year. On the distribution side, which is primarily the cables, you have drivers coming from the addition of infrastructure in the Indian Railways, from defense, from the renewable energy sources, which is both solar and wind, where APAR has a significant presence. Then there are government schemes which are there for strengthening of the last mile, which is the RDSS, etc., where the cables are going in along with the metering solutions to moving to digital meters and reducing losses and theft. These are primarily the segments that we would see the growth coming.
On the same question, if the RDSS scheme has INR 455,000 crore of investment outlet, so cable would be around, let's say, 40%. That would be right?
It's much lower than that. The EPC portion would be somewhere in the 35%-40%. A large allocation of that is also going towards the metering because all the metering is getting converted into digital meters.
Yeah, smart meters.
So you're looking at the EPC portion coming in the mid-30s. Also, I didn't mention that one more portion where APAR is the leader is in the medium voltage covered conductors. A lot of MVCC projects are coming up where there is a necessity to increase safety. You have 33 kV lines running, which are very close to residential places or even commercial places, which are being replaced by these medium voltage covered conductors. So that is also covered under the RDSS scheme. But it's not underground. It's an overhead solution.
Okay. My second question is related to if a 10 MW solar project or wind project is deployed, then how much % cost would be of a cable or a transformer as compared to a thermal project?
The cable content is approximately 4% of the cost of the generation. If you were to spend INR 100 crore, then INR 4 crore is what would be the cables that would go in at the site. The transformer size completely depends on the size of the project and the size of the transformer that is required. There's no direct sort of correlation.
Okay. So.
You have 1 GW coming in or 500 MW, you'd have correspondingly the size of a transformer because it's dependent on the transformation capacity that you're looking at.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, sir, for answering that.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Charanjeet Singh from DSP. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hello, sir. Am I audible?
Yes. Good afternoon.
Good afternoon, sir. First of all, congratulations on a good set of numbers. So my first question is regarding this U.S. market. You touched upon certain distributors getting banned. Are there any kind of distributors here which are common to us and some of these who are supplying Chinese product? And can they have an impact from near to medium-term perspective on our U.S. volumes?
So most of the companies that we have been dealing with, they have none of them have got into this trouble as of today. But we've heard not only from them but also recently, there was a very major IEEE trade fair in California just a few weeks ago where this information, it's been happening for a while, but the U.S. authorities have started cracking down on this. And none of the people that we have been dealing with have been affected. But I think they are a little bit more optimistic that others have been cracked down upon who are using this channel for bringing in products which were a bit cheaper.
Got it, sir. So the other thing is now you have touched upon the premium products. Their contribution is rising. So if you can just touch upon this premium products as a percentage of the market, how large it is, how fast you expect this to grow? And within that, how is the competitive scenario in terms of which are the other tiers present in the premium category itself?
You're talking about for conductors or?
Yes, sir. For conductors. Yeah. Conductors.
So in the premium category products which we have, our largest competitor is Sterlite Power because we have pretty much the same footprint that we have except for a couple where we are unique and have unique product offerings. There are others like JSK who are trying to also enter the HTLS market. In that premium range, we are also seeing a growth, as I mentioned just a couple of minutes ago, on the copper transpose conductors. See, there is a new requirement that has come in from Central Electricity Authority, which requires you to use copper transpose conductors for all transformers that exceed 400 amps. So the high voltage transformers will all have to shift towards using CTC. So that is another area of growth. There, our competition is not the names that you would typically hear. They are all copper players like Precision Wires and KSH, etc.
These are all private companies, but they are in the copper business as such. Now, if you ask me what is the growth of this is going to be, we see that the growth of copper transposed conductors is approximately 22%-25% of the cost of a transformer. So as you will see, the amount of transformer ordering that's coming on of 400 amps and above, it is directly proportional to that. That expectation is that it will be at least in the double-digit kind of growth. In terms of HTLS, there is a huge amount of the market is very, very large for reconductoring. It's a question of the amount of money that's being allocated to do the reconductoring work. The moment these projects are announced and funded, then the work typically starts on this.
So it's really a function of the amount of money that's being allocated. All I can leave you with because it's difficult to pin a number as you look over a number of years is that with the electrical demand growing, the last few years, CAGR has been 7.5%-8%. And the last month's numbers came in at an 11% year-on-year growth for the month of April. A lot of this work will have to come up. Now, I can't tell you which quarter it will happen. But if you look at it over the next three to five years, there will be a lot of reconductoring that will happen in the country. So does that sort of answer your question?
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for the detailed answer. So my subsequent question is just more on the industry level. What we are hearing is that across the power transmission supply chain, there are severe supply-related issues. The demand is exceeding the supply. So how long do you think that this kind of scenario can continue in the overall sector from a demand-supply perspective in the power transmission equipment space, mainly cables and wires and conductors where we are present?
I would say that now the industry has increased the supply, including ourselves. So there is no, I think, problem on the supply chain as far as our products are concerned. Yes, there is a growing demand, and we are taking steps to expand our capacity. So I don't think there is an acute problem or anything. So there was a short-term issue that had come up when the standards changed from conventional pure aluminum ACSR conductors to AL-59 because the alloying process requires very specific equipment and also investment. So when the shift took place, there was a short-term period where this equipment had to be bought and installed, etc., etc. I think that phase is already over. So today, there is no shortage as such of the whatever demand is there, it can typically be met with capacity that people have.
Got it, sir. Thanks for taking my questions, and all the best for the future.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Raj Rishi from DCPL. Please go ahead. Mr. Raj, your line is unmuted. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hello. Hi.
Yes, you're audible. Please go ahead.
What sort of asset base can we have in the next three years for your block?
Our fixed asset turnover ratio anywhere ranges from 10-15 times depending on the category of the product which is there. Each division has its own different turnover ratio. Average, it turns some 10-15 times.
Okay. No, that's the asset turnover ratio. But whatever your asset base is today, any.
We are looking at around INR 350 crore ± CapEx being incurred year-on-year for the next year.
Year-on-year. For the next year. Okay. Okay. Thanks, sir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Bobby Jairam from Falcon. Please proceed.
Hi. Regarding the domestic renewable investment, there's already 130 GW or 140 GW, correct, which is 30% of the total power capacity. But the usage is only 12% or 13%. So even whatever capacity is there is not being used. So wouldn't that impact the addition of incremental capacity?
I'm not sure. When you say that the installed capacity is not being used, whatever assets are actually so there are a few assets which are in the NCLT process. But if you take assets which are otherwise in operating conditions, they're running flat out. And in fact, in the month of June, CEA has predicted that India will have the largest shortage of power between supply and demand.
Now, what I mean is for the renewables, for solar and wind, because the cost of storing is very high, so they're not being adequately used. I mean, as per the data.
You're talking about India or you're talking about the U.S.?
I'm talking about India, solar, and wind.
As far as solar and wind is concerned, I think it's going straight into the grid. I don't know of a large portion of solar or wind assets not being utilized. Because today, as a percentage, it's still small. The problem you're talking about will increase when you end up having solar being over 50% of the total generation, in which case you've got to match when it is being generated versus when it is being consumed. At the current generation of units, that problem is not really a problem. At least, I'm not aware of it.
Okay. I understand. The second question is for the U.S. market. The U.S. has been aggressively imposing tariffs on Chinese aluminum, steel, and all that. Couldn't the same happen to India because they actually want their domestic producers to benefit from all this spending?
The U.S. government is not so strict. So they don't sort of mandate that the customers in the U.S. have to use only American-made products. So basically, it's a supply-demand situation. And if the EPC or the developer goes back and informs the authorities that the local producer is unable to supply the material on time, then the project would get delayed. Then they don't have an issue, and they allow the imports to happen from places like India.
Also, the tariff for Indian import of the kind of popular conductors that are there in the United States, they are going to between 5%-15%. So it's not that there isn't a tariff. The tariff is higher to export a conductor from India to the U.S. than to import something into India, which is at 5%.
So there is already a tariff in place that is protecting a local industry. In the case of Chinese product, the tariff is at 25%.
Right. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Vidit Trivedi from Asian Market Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is only opening remarks. You just mentioned that there's a threat from the Chinese players. So could you please elaborate a bit on that, and how much it will impact on the margins, and what growth you foresee for the cable segment as a whole for the coming year? That's it. Thank you.
The Chinese have been aggressive in the markets where they have already been existing and having a fair amount of share. Those markets are typically in Asia, Africa, Latin America. They are not so much in North America. To a small extent, they are in Europe also. Their emphasis has been to kind of retain their markets. After COVID, we are seeing that at times, the price of the aluminum in China is sometimes favorable to them compared to the London Metal Exchange. Those are a few times. But during these periods, then they are more competitive compared to the rest of the world.
We've also seen general aggression from the Chinese on export. As time has passed on in the last one year or so, they've been much more active in terms of quoting on tenders and contacting EPC players, etc., etc.
So I think that level of wanting to export out of China, that seemed to have increased. And as Chaitanya mentioned, those are the markets which they're looking at. In terms of your question on the cable front, our guidance has been that we are expecting 25% year-on-year growth. Last year, the growth was lower than 25 because we had a big drop in cable exports to the U.S. market. Slowly, that has started picking up. So in FY 2025, you'll start seeing cable supplies to the U.S. starting to pick up.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Shrinidhi from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on a good set of numbers. First, we have seen a very strong growth in your domestic cable business, almost around 80% for the last two quarters. Would it be possible to share some colors what is really driving this strong growth, and how do you think it will continue in the next 1-2 years?
So actually, the growth has been coming primarily from supplies to the Indian Railways to the solar wind projects. Wind has been year-on-year, we've seen a large growth on the wind side because as the local players like Suzlon have redesigned their windmills, they've become far more efficient. They've moved from 2 MW to 3+ MW. So the wind sector has grown. Solar sector has grown. Our shipments to Indian Railways have grown. Our LDC business, which is the B2C business that we sell of the APAR Anushakti wires, that has also grown from about INR 170 crore to about INR 260 crore. So we've seen overall growth on the domestic market. Power cable business also has grown with supplies to various metros, etc. So the overall side on the cable market domestically has grown. We've almost seen a 40% growth quarter-on-quarter in the domestic side.
Do you think, sir, there's a strong tailwind going into next year as well because a lot of these forces?
On the cable side, we see on the B2B cable side, the demand growth is definitely there. There is increased competitive intensity because all the major players are looking at increasing their capacities or in various stages of increasing capacity. So there will be some amount of competition that increases, especially in some of these specialty sectors. But the growth is definitely there.
Yes. Sir, may I ask you to give some breakup of your annual cable business by different product types? How much is power cable? How much is specialty? How much is LDC?
We have a broad breakup for the overall products in the corporate presentation.
Sure. I'll have a look at it. Yeah. Thank you for answering my questions. All the very best.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Gaurav Uttrani from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Congrats on a good set of numbers. Sir, could you highlight how the margin trends would be in the coming quarters as we are seeing the copper prices are inching up or other monomer prices are inching up? If you can highlight how the pass-on would be to the end customers or to any of the customers in these segments, specifically for conductors and cables.
So both for conductors and cables, our margin will not change depending on the prices of copper or aluminum going up and down because we run a full hedge book. There's complete back-to-back hedging that happens on all the orders. The margin per unit may not significantly change. However, depending on the price of aluminum going up and copper going up, there could be, if the project cost is increasing for the customers, then they may kind of postpone some of their projects. If they expect the copper price or aluminum price to come down, then we may see some kind of postponement of the projects. For our company, the margin profiles are unlikely to change because we do a back-to-back hedging.
Okay. And sir, could you just please highlight what was the growth rate in transformer oil for the FY 2024 and 4Q in terms of year-over-year growth?
Yeah. Sir, the transformer oil side of the business, as I mentioned in the earnings call, we were up 15%.
15%.
15% annually for the full year oil.
Okay. And sir, last question on the order book. For the conductors, what would be the export mix for this current order book, which we have of INR 68 billion?
Just one second.
38%. Yeah. It's about 38% is export mix, conductor pending order.
Okay. And for cables, sir?
Cable, the total order book is about 1,436. 1,436.
I don't think we have a very handy number on the export side. The export orders are finalized quite quickly. The turnover on the export orders are relatively very fast because the metal is priced at the time they place the order, and the execution normally takes place within 4-6 weeks.
The export mix is about 20% each there. 20%.
Okay, sir. Thank you. That's all from us.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Anand Trivedi from Nepean Capital. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi, Kushal. So that's my good set of numbers. My first question on the U.S. market, please break up how much of your business comes from the U.S.. And given the fact that you mentioned that it will be slow in the coming year as well, do you see the Indian market making up for the lack of growth in the U.S.?
Yeah. So far, the Indian market has been actually quite strong. Overall volume growth, conductors, cables, both has been very strong. The competitive intensity for us in the Indian market has also been higher. So really, we have to pick and choose which business we want to go after to maintain the profitability that we would aspire or like to make. As far as the U.S. market is concerned, we've seen it slowed down both for conductors and cables. In the case of cables, it was first due to de-inventoryization. And secondly, that some of the projects in both conductors and cables have got postponed, like new solar farms, new wind farms, etc., which required a fairly high level of leverage. But having said that, on the cable side, we started seeing optics again picking up, especially with respect to the solar installations.
What percentage of your business comes from the U.S.?
Sorry?
Around 12%-13% in the current financial year.
Okay. My next question is on the renewables.
Anand, it was at 26%. Today, at its peak, when we were in FY 2023, it was at 26% of the revenues of that year. Today, it is at about half of that, about 12%-13%.
16%. The company as a whole was 16%.
Oh, sorry. 16%.
So it's at around 12%. Last year was about 16%-17%. Current year, it's come down to about 12%-13%.
12, 12%.
Okay. On the renewables side, do you further break down how much of the business comes from renewables, and is that growing at a much faster pace?
In our corporate presentation, we have had a slide in terms of how much our total products come from renewables. We have given that in a slide in the corporate presentation.
Okay. I'll look through that. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Akshay Shah from KRIIS PMS. Please proceed.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity. Sir, our transformer oil business is growing very fast. Is it expected to be growing at the same pace?
We expected to grow at double digit for sure because, as I mentioned in the opening remarks, that the amount of transformers getting installed and the amount of substations that are coming up, not only in India but even around the world, is continuing to increase. So we see double-digit growth in transformer oil.
Okay. Can you mention transformers that are going to establish in the world in the next three to five years?
You mean what is the transformation? So it's counted in the form of MVA. I don't have that figure clearly available. But the Indian market, the transformation capacity has been planned to be added at about 80,000 MVA for India. And if you see, I mentioned the numbers for the last three years. It's been falling from 79,000 to 76,000 to last year was 71,000. We're expecting it to pick up to 80,000 MVA from this year onwards.
Okay. Sir, apart from new transmission line, old transmission line are changing. With that, the new transformer will also be placed. The demand of transformer oil will decrease as there are new transformer installed?
No, no, no. So what will typically happen is that if there is a large increase in the transmission line, then along with that, the substation also will have to be upgraded. So a new transformer will go in, which will be filled with fresh transformer oil. It will also increase the demand for our copper transposed conductors which go into the transformer. So reconducting for APAR, actually I mean, the largest portion obviously comes from the reconducting piece. But there is also a substation upgrade that has to take place.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Yash from Stallion. Please proceed.
Thank you for the opportunity. I'm audible?
Yes.
Sir, I just wanted to understand, what is your volume growth for this quarter in your cables division for India?
In the cable division, we don't report the volume numbers because there are too many SKUs of different sizes. So we have only been reporting the value growth there.
We are expecting a 25% year-on-year growth over the next few years.
Right. I see. And this is in terms of volume growth you're saying for the next couple of years?
The value. Because in our case, we have a huge variety of specialized cables that we make across so many industries. So the only common denominator is really value.
Right, right. Okay. And just a second question is that in your power cables, you would be competing with the traditional peers in the Indian market like Polycab, KEI, or I mean, is there any sort of data in terms of your market share specifically with respect to the power cables?
So there is no, I mean, I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what percentage it would be as part of power cables. The entire cables market is around between INR 70,000 crore and INR 75,000 crore. And if you take the INR 3,000 crore that we have in the domestic market, we are at whatever, 4.5% market share. Of which the specialty side, we are the largest player in wind, solar, railways, all that. The power cable share would be in the range of maybe 1.5% also, 1.5% too. I would hang my hat on that number, but it's somewhere in that range.
Got it, got it. That was it. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Himanshu Upadhyay from BugleRock PMS. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. One thing on the first was that with Chinese competition, what you have stated, it is in both conductors or cables business? Means? Or it is only in conductors when you were referring?
So we see the Chinese competition coming in both products, in conductors and cables. Over the years, we've been more active on the cable side, less active on the conductor side. But right now, we've been seeing in certain countries, we've been active in both product categories.
One more thing. When we had spoken about the cables business, okay, you said that we are into many of the products in the U.S. which require a lot of approvals, okay, and on the renewable side, okay, around 18 or 20, whatever, approvals for there, means variety of products. So are the Chinese also having similar variety of products and approvals in that market?
No, the Chinese are very active in the building wire segment, which are the products which go into commercial and residential real estate projects, etc., etc. So the building wire market, just like in India, also if you take the building wire market, it's almost 40% of the total market. The U.S. is something that's a similar number. And the Chinese products are actually most active in that. They have also started routing products that go into the solar side, which is your string cables and power voltage, the photovoltaic cables. So we actually make a very good product. It's very well accepted in the U.S. But the Chinese products coming via some locations is probably being priced lower than our product. That's the market which I was talking about where some of the distributors have been. There's been raids on their warehouses and stuff from the U.S. authority.
But otherwise, their predominant position is on the building wire side.
Okay, okay. We are very small in building wires, whatever I used to.
We have a building wire business. And so part of those we were talking about those 18-odd approvals, which are the UL approvals, the Underwriters Laboratories approvals. So we have a full range in there. And we continue to sell some of these building wires as well. But our largest products go into the renewable energy side.
Okay. And what is the progress on Anushakti this year in terms of distribution and presentation?
As I mentioned, we were at INR 175 crore, about 170-odd crore last year. This year, we are at close to INR 260 crore as an FY 2024.
We would be present in now how many states and distributors?
18 states we are present.
Okay. One last question. We have seen a 22% volume growth in global transformer oil for the quarter. But the segment volume is up 5%, okay? Which would be the segments which are not growing that well? Has the margins improved for transformer oils as not all oil companies would be in the approved vendor list for all transformer companies because it was a duopolistic market? Is the transformer oil demand also strong in export markets? Generally, we were not exporting transformer oils.
Transformer oil demand has been strong, both domestic as well as overseas. The overseas growth has been even higher than the domestic market growth. If you take the full year, we are looking at a 15% growth. If you look at the other product category, the overall growth has been 11%, of which transformer oil has been 15%. Most of the product lines that we have have grown, but they've grown in smaller numbers for the year.
I think one more thing because a lot of industrial oils also, they are rubber process, those things. So as manufacturing moves up, would not the volume of them also increase in similar proportion? Or means not to the rate of transformer, but again, at a better rate than what historically they have been. Would that be a right assumption?
So I'm not sure. It all depends on the cars, the number of addition of new vehicles, etc. So we've been seeing growth happening. Typically, if you take the non-transformer oil side, we've been seeing growth happening in the market growth at about 2%-3% per year. And the lubricant growth is definitely in that range, the industrial lubricants, automotive lubricants.
Okay. And how is the margins on transformer oil? Because it should have improved because some of the other oil companies.
If you've not been commenting on individual product lines, if you take overall, the margins have improved this year compared to the previous year. And that has been largely contributed from the transformer oil growth that has happened.
Okay, okay. Thank you from my side.
Okay.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sagar Dhawan from ValueQuest. Please proceed.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for taking my question. So my question is on the conductor segment. So can you please comment on the profitability in the conductor segment specifically for the export market, if possible directionally or even if specific, compared to where we were last year?
Your voice is not clear. Can you repeat the question?
Yeah. Sure. Is it better now?
Yes.
Sir, my question is on the conductor segment. Could you please comment on the profitability in the conductor segments for the export piece? Directionally is also fine.
Yes, but we don't give out specific information on breakup into domestic and exports because the number of products and the category of products are too huge. So it is difficult to compare what we saw last year, what we saw current day. It's all order-based products. So it's difficult to give that number out.
Okay, understood. And would the profitability in the export be lower than the company average, or would it be higher than the company average of INR 48,000 per metric ton?
It's difficult to compare that because the products are completely different. What we sell in India are the premium products. What we sell, export, is the conventional products. So the product lines are different. The bill of material is different. So it's difficult to compare that way.
So typically, the same product sold in the export versus domestic, we would generally make a better margin in export versus domestic. But as Ramesh says, the mix is completely different between we don't sell a lot of standard products in the Indian market. We sell more premium products in the Indian market. Most of the standard products are sold in export markets where we get a better realization from them.
Understood, sir. One second question from my side is on the market share. If you could share for the CTC, what is our market share in that?
So our copper transposed conductors, they are approximately 20%, approximately.
Okay. That's it from me. Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Amit Anwani from PL Capital. Please proceed.
Hi. So thanks again. Just one question on the exports. You did highlight that the U.S. market and domestic market, how the growth has been. Just wanted to understand ex-U.S., ex-domestic, how has been the outlook for the other markets? And I recollect a few months back, we used to highlight that there is a lot of traction also for the premium products in the few geographies, including Australia. So just wanted to understand the sense for both cables and conductors, ex-U.S. and domestic.
We had commented that the Australian market is an important market for us. In terms of export markets, it's the third largest region after the United States, then it was the EU last year, and then number three was Australia. The market potential itself is much lower than these two geographies, but we have a good presence in the Australian market. That market continues to grow. We've sold more product in FY 2024 than in FY 2023. I think in FY 2025, we should exceed what we've done in FY 2024 in Australia.
Sure, sir. So.
We also have a good presence in Australia on our specialty oil where we have almost 35%+ market share for transformer oil. And we have almost 50% market share for white and pharmaceutical oil. So if you take the whole bundle, then actually, Australia is quite a strategic market for APAR.
And so this we are talking about the premium products, or?
No. So there's a full range across the range of products. So there's conventional aluminum conductors. There are some specialty aluminum conductors. There's a whole range of cables. In cables, the maximum volume goes again into renewable energy products. So we've supplied more than 75 renewable energy sites in Australia with our cables. Our transformer oil also has been going into transformers that are supplied to many of these sites, but supplied locally through our Australian distributor.
Sure, sir. Thank you. Thanks for the answer.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mukesh, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mukesh. Thank you for the opportunity. I just want to know about our capacity utilization, product level capacity utilization, and what would be our capacity for next year?
We would see about 90% capacity utilization for conductor and cable division. As we are increasing the top line, the capacity will go up. We're looking for a 10%-15% increase in the conductor capacity. In case of cable, we expect a 25% growth in capacity year on year.
Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. We have a next follow-up question from the line of Akshay Shah from KRIIS PMS. Please proceed.
Sir, we are in power cable. We are in conductor. We are in transformer oil. So seeing the good demand in transformer also, why are we not adding into this sector also? Is it, I mean, entry barriers are very high?
So in terms of transformers, as a strategic decision, we've stayed out of transformers because being such a major supplier of transformer oil, and especially the upper end, when you get into all the extra high voltage, ultra high voltage transformers, etc., we don't want to be competing with our customers. We get a very early look into development of products for them. And all that would be lost if they felt threatened that we were a competitor. Similarly, we then got into copper transposed conductors. Again, it's a strategic material that goes to transformer manufacturing. So the clear idea here is that we want to focus on being in critical building blocks that go into transformers as opposed to making transformers ourselves. So it's not because of an entry barrier. If we really wanted to, we could buy out a transformer company or get into that business.
It's a strategic call in terms of what business we want to service and especially not compete with our customers.
Oh, thank you, sir.
Thank you. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Kushal Desai for closing comments.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for participating in this earnings call. We remain fairly optimistic. We see that the main growth drivers continue to remain intact. As you look over a period of the next three to five years, we are quite sure that this whole energy transition will play out and will provide opportunities to Apar to grow both domestically as well as in the export global market. So thank you once again, everyone, for joining us today.
Thank you. On behalf of APAR Industries Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.