Q4 25/26

May 7, 2026

Summary

FY26 revenue, earnings and order inflows advanced, while renewables expanded the order book and project mix. FY27 guidance calls for at least 15% revenue growth and 11%-12.5% EBITDA margins.

Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Arvind Prakash from Adfactors PR. Thank you and over to you. Good evening, everyone. Today we have with us Mr. Ramneek Sehgal, Chairman and Managing Director of Ceigall India. Mr. A. Saravanan, our CEO, Mr. Kapil Aggarwal, the CFO, and Mr. Akshay Jain, VP Strategy and Planning. I must remind you that this conference may include forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. We will begin the call with the opening remarks from the management, after which we will have the forum open for the interactive Q&A session. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Ramneek Sehgal for the opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Good evening, everyone. I am pleased to welcome you all to the Quarter 4 Financial Year 2026 earning call for the Ceigall India Limited. Our financial results, investor presentation, and press release are being uploaded on the stock exchanges and the company's website. We trust you had an opportunity to review them. The global macroeconomic environment continues to be challenging. Geopolitical ambiguity, inflationary pressure, and supply chain uncertainties persist. Yet India needs to form modern infrastructure, keeps solidifying, and the growth story in the sector remains compelling. The tightening of the technical and the financial eligibility norms in the bidding process, higher net worth requirements, additional performance securities, and the greater emphasis on the PPP projects continue to favor established players with the proven execution capabilities and credentials. These developments bode well for a company like Ceigall, and we believe that we are well-positioned to capture a meaningful share for the upcoming wave of the projects. At the macro level, India remains one of the fastest-growing major economies, and the government's sustained infrastructure push, combined with the nation's energy agenda, provides a promising backdrop for the kind of diversified EPC and developer platform we are building at Ceigall. Financial year 2026 has been a strong year for the growth of Ceigall, driven by the consistent execution across our core EPC business, robust order inflows across highways and urban mobility. The fourth quarter has been a strong execution quarter. We are pleased with the way our projects have progressed throughout the year. Our total order book stood at INR 18,554 crore as on March 31, 2026. Total order inflow for the year stood at INR 11,332 crores, significantly surpassing our annual guidance of INR 5,000 crores for FY 2026. The order inflow composition includes approximately 35.02% from renewable sector. During the year, we entered five new verticals, expanded our footprint in new three states. This provides strong multi-year revenue visibility. Q4 FY 2026 witnessed healthy order inflow of INR 6,014 crores across renewable sector and road sector. We remain confident about the inflow pipeline going into FY 2027 as well. The book-to-bill ratio remains comfortably at 4.8x. We see no shortage of bidding opportunities across our verticals. One of the key highlights for the year was the LOI of Sahebganj-Areraj-Bettiah corridor, which remains the single biggest project Ceigall has received to date. The total project cost is INR 21,160 crores. Q4 FY 2026 was a strong quarter for our order awards, meaningful inflow across our renewable and power transmission segment. We secured multiple solar and battery energy storage projects, further strengthening our presence in the energy transition space. I would like to highlight this as a strategic milestone, as it reflects our successful diversification into high-growth energy main sector. These wins position us well to participate in India's increasing focus on clean energy, providing long-term revenue visibility. I would also like to touch upon our strategic diversification, which has been a key highlight of FY 2026. We have made meaningful progress in renewable energy, power transmission, wind turbine generator, and industrial infrastructure. During this year, we secured various awards of solar-based and transmission projects. These place the company in the position to benefit from India's energy transition and growing opportunity in the energy-based infrastructure assets. Additionally, the Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway project has successfully achieved COD during the year, marking it an important milestone in our project lifecycle. On the HAM monetization front, I am pleased to share that FY 2026 has been a defining year for our capital recycling strategy. We have entered into a binding document for Malout-Sadhuwali at Neo Asset Management. This is the first transaction of its kind for Ceigall. It validates our execute monetize recycle framework. For Bathinda-Dabwali Jal Vidut Shakt project, we have signed non-binding offer and these are currently under due diligence. Having stated this, we have a clear pipeline of HAM assets monetization ahead of us. On renewable energy and power transmission, we have received LOI for the solar parks projects in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Morena Solar Park-based project in Madhya Pradesh and is now part of our order book. PPA has been signed for Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh solar projects and execution has commenced. The Velgaon 400 kV substation in Maharashtra is progressing as well. On the balance sheet, the company continued to maintain a disciplined deleveraging portion. Our standalone debt to equity stood at 0.2x as on March 31st, 2026. On a consolidated basis, it stood at 0.6. We remain committed to optimizing our capital structure using standalone debt and deploying HAM monetization proceeds towards both growth and the deleveraging. For FY 2027, we are guiding 15% revenue growth with the renewable sector contributing close to 20%-25% of the total revenue, further building up our diversification. EBITDA margin is expected to sustain between 11%-12.5%, and order inflow guidance of minimum INR 5,500 crores. Going forward, we remain focused on strengthening execution, expanding our order book, building a diversified asset-backed portfolio, the long-term revenue visibility while maintaining financial discipline and creating sustainable value for our stakeholders. We are confident about the momentum going into FY 2027. We believe that the combination of the strong order book, improving execution environment, our expanding sectoral presence give us a positive outlook for the year ahead. I will hand over the call to our CFO, Mr. Kapil Aggarwal, who will take through the financial performance in detail. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Ramneek Sehgal, and a warm welcome to everyone joining us today. It is a pleasure to discuss our performance as we close the fourth quarter and FY 2026. The fourth quarter has been a period of significant execution momentum, capitalizing on the strong contribution window, enabling us to deliver our best quarterly performance of the year. In Q4 FY 2026, our standalone revenue from operations reached INR 1,294 crores as against revenue from operations of INR 992 crores in Q4 FY 2025, registering a 30.5% YOY growth, showing our ability to scale operations effectively during the peak construction seasons. This brings our total standalone revenue for the year to INR 3,869 crores, representing a healthy growth of 14.3% year-on-year. On the profitability front, standalone EBITDA for Q4 FY 2026 stood at INR 183 crores as against INR 109 crores for the same quarter previous year, registering a margin of 14.1% in Q4 FY 2026. Our PAT for Q4 FY 2026 was INR 119 crores with a margin of 9.2%. For the full year FY 2026, our standalone EBITDA stood at INR 487 crores as against INR 432 crores in FY 2025, yielding a margin of 12.6% in FY 2026 versus 12.8% in FY 2026. Our standalone PAT for FY 2026 stood at INR 305 crores with a PAT margin of 7.9%. Moving to our consolidated results, which provide a more holistic view of the growing portfolio and SPV performance for Q4 FY 2026, our consolidated revenue from operations stood at INR 1,386 crores as against INR 1,012 crores in Q4 FY 2025, growing by 37.1% quarter-on-quarter. For full FY 2026, our consolidated revenue grew by 17.1% to reach INR 4,022 crores as against INR 3,437 crores revenue in FY 2025. For FY 2026, our consolidated EBITDA was at INR 585 crores, resulting in EBITDA margin of 14.6%. Consolidated PAT for FY 2026 stood at INR 309 crores, resulting in a PAT margin of 7.7%. On the operation side, our execution engine remained robust with 37 ongoing projects currently in various stages of completion. Our order book has now scaled to INR 18,554 crores, providing us a multi-year revenue visibility, which makes this order book particularly strong is its diversified nature. It is no longer just about roads and highways. We now manage a broad mix of projects comprising of 19 EPC projects, ten HAM projects, one DBFOT projects and seven tariff-based projects. Our reach now spans across critical segments including tunnels, railways, metros, transmission distributions, and renewables, effectively de-linking our business from dependence on single segments, with renewables contributing 19% of the total order book. With that, I conclude my opening remarks and would request the moderator to open the floor for Q&A session. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Vaibhav Shah from JM Financial. Please go ahead. Yeah. So congratulations on the set of numbers. So firstly on the international foray. So first of all, what pipeline are we looking at in both domestic and international markets, and what is your target for the international business, say, in the next 1-3 years? So, Vaibhav, good question. Vaibhav, we have already opened one office in Singapore and Dubai. We have already appointed one CEO international, and only because of this war prediction, we were a little slow, and we are waiting for the things to settle down. Since we have entered into a renewable vertical, so I think there is no dearth of the work. We already have all 11 verticals in Ceigall now. So you know what matters is our better margins and IRR at a transactional level. So if we get that, we will definitely bid outside India also. Thank you. What would be our bid pipeline in both domestic and international markets? Right now we have quoted tenders which are under valuation is about INR 13,000 crore. International, only one tender was there. That was Sobha in Dubai and one tender in E.U. Sobha was about 250 million dirhams, and in E.U. it was close to about INR 13,000 crore, which is again under valuation, which is in Romania. Is that a good segment? That is a highway. That is a single highway project which is comprising of highway tunnel and bridges. Single project, 17 kilometers. This is highway So the value is INR 13,000 crores for a single project? Yeah. Single project. It is a 17 kilometer Okay. So you bid with whom? I think there should be a partner, right? No, we have qualified alone. Out of the 12 bidders, we were the only qualifying single company. Rest everyone has quoted in consortium or something, if I am not wrong. That is for sure. Okay. So INR 13,000, so we were earlier, as mentioned by you in the last call, we were thinking of growing the business gradually, I think at the international part. So if you win this order, it will be a very big order, a very big expansion in the international market. It will be almost 65% of your current book, 65%-70%. So how do you look at that? Or any risk? How do you perceive that? So first of all, it is a very conservative bid. Getting L1 is very difficult. Secondly, it is just a 17-kilometer job for INR 13,000 crore. And whereas in India, if I have to do such kind of job, 17 kilometer, it would be for hardly, say, INR 600, INR 700, INR 800 crore. And it is just a matter of EU, because the cost is high. Otherwise, we have executed projects much, much larger than this. And in size of length, lane length. Okay. So when are bids likely to open? I think they will take time because what I have heard is it has already been four, five months, and in a month's time, I think the bid validity will also be finished. They take a lot of time. There are about 12 bids. Okay. Secondly, on the equity investment, what investments are we targeting? What is the pending investment in both the highway and non-highway business, and what is the year-wise timeline for the investment? Next three years, we have to put close to INR 2,000 crore, INR 1,937 crore. After IPO, we have put more than INR 400 crore. As I said, we have already sold three assets to Neo, in which first asset we are expecting it should get executed in this month only. More than INR 400 crore will come from Neo, which is another cash. We have unencumbered cash lying in our bank on March 31. This is close to INR 66 crore and unencumbered FDR close to INR 146 crore. Equity is not a problem with Ceigall. We have mainly cash flow available with us, and besides that, we have our cash flows also. Out of INR 1,937, what would be HAM and non-HAM portion? I think the difference between the. One second. HAM. This is the HAM? HAM definition. These two are the HAM. Almost INR 800 crore is renewable. Rest is all HAM road. Both have to be done next 3 years. The next 3 years, yes. Okay. Lastly, the revenue guidance you have given around 15% plus, it looks quite low given the very strong book we have. Internally, what would we be targeting? Good question. We are a little conservative with the numbers, and that's the reason you would have seen me every time I remain between 10%-15%. This time I've said it's 15% minimum. We are looking forward to good results. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tejpal Singh from Manthan Capital, P Squared. Hello, am I audible, sir? Yes. Hi. Yes, you are. Hi, sir. Congratulations on great set of numbers, first of all. My question is that your bidding pipeline is a little bit on the aggressive side. Your order book is also growing very fast. But on the guidance side, you are just saying that 15% you are growing. Can you throw a light on this? If you see our last investor calls also, we are conservative. It's giving a guidance of between 10%-15%, and we have already achieved it. This time also, we have given a guidance of minimum 15%. Just to be on a conservative side, we say that we will achieve 15% easily. But this is the conservative side of our revenue. Okay. And sir, one more question. Although we are well-diversified across the segments, but our order book is huge. How do you plan to manage receivables and working capital days so that we aren't stuck in the payment cycle, so that we can execute easily and comfortably? Good question. When this war happened, our department, which is MoRTH, has come up with a notification. They have come up with three different notifications now, and they have eased out our billing plan. Earlier, we used to achieve the milestone and get the payment. With this, we can get a monthly payment also, and with that, it ease out our cash flow also. Besides this, we have sold three assets. More than INR 400 crores will come from Neo also after selling those assets. Cash flow will not be a challenge for Ceigall. We have very clear cash flow with us. And sir, from the margin perspective, what are the margin accretive segments in our order book? We have guided between 11%-12.5%, the double-digit margin. Besides this, we make money from other income also. No, but in our order book, we have different segments. What are the margin accretive segment in those? If you can bifurcate margins. No. We always guide on a conservative way. Our guidance towards the investor would be between 11%-12.5%, plus other income which will come from selling these assets, like we sold it to Neo, or some bonus, or some money earned from FDR, or some royalties. Plain vanilla EPC would be minimum between 11%-12.5%. Okay. Sir, how much order book is from the state governments and the central government? In HAM only we have one project which is MPRDC. Rest all projects, HAM projects are from NHAI. Okay. Great, sir. Thank you. Thank you for your detailed answer and all the best for future. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star and one. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ishita Lodha from Swan Investments. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations for a very good quarter. Just in continuation to the previous question, the money that you are expecting, INR 400 crores from Neo, in which quarter are we expecting it, and will it come in our standalone books? The first project, which is Malout to Sadhuwali, we are expecting in this month. So that will come in this quarter. Bijara to Patanga Sabali, we are expecting in second quarter, and Jalbehra to Shahbad, we are expecting in third quarter. So every quarter we will get our inflow coming in. Okay. This will be directly upstreamed to standalone books? Yes. Okay. Also, this trade payables have seen a sharp jump from 79 days to 138 days. Why is this happening? Kapil will answer this. So basically, if you look at March only, whatever we have billed, that payments are released by the department in April. The same way, the payments which are to be made to the creditors, those are linked to the receivables only. Accordingly, the payment has been made in April to the creditors as well. Okay. In April month, how much money have we released to these creditors? Close to INR 100 crores. Okay. Similarly, unbilled revenue has also seen a sharp jump from 94 days to 133 days. This was primarily because of the notification of Atmanirbhar, which was drawn by the government in April 2022. What had happened earlier, we were billing on monthly basis. Starting from April 1, it has been linked to milestones. Since most of the projects which are executed by Ceigall are in the range of more than INR 1,000 crores. So every project has a billing cycle of 10%, if you look at more than INR 100 crore billing cycles. That's why since the number of the projects which are being executed are more in number, that's why the unbilled revenue has increased. Okay. Thank you. But this will improve because now monthly bills have already started with the new notification. This will improve now. You will see the improvement in the coming quarter. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dheeraj Kripalani from Avidis Park. Please proceed ahead. Hello, Amol here. Yes, please go ahead. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on the good set of numbers. Just one question, industries participate from NHAI. How is the NHAI volume in FY 2026 in kilometer terms and in value terms, and how you are looking at going forward? If you talk about NHAI, if you see from this year, we started with three. There were a lot of good works which were out, but they were getting all the cabinet approval. This quarter also, we are expecting good amount of tailwinds. Besides this, we are bidding in renewable also, which is BESS and solar. We are not depending on NHAI orders. If you see, last year also, our order book which has come from renewable was close to 30%. Overall the pipe of NHAI is close to 2 lakh crores. Okay. Like any number, what was the volume of that 30% value terms that you can give? These are the figures which NHAI has put on their own website. I am sorry to interrupt you, sir. There is a disturbance coming from your line. Yeah. One moment. Sure. Hello? Please go ahead. Yeah, that's okay. Let's cross-check this. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. Our next question comes from the line of Mahesh Patil from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. So congrats on the very good set of results. My first question is on the margins only. If you see on Q4, compared to last Q4, there was a significant increase. Is there any one-off or it is just because of the execution mix that you have? Going forward, obviously you have guided for the 11%-12.5% range. Are you seeing any impact from RM cost, inflation, et cetera? If you can just give some details. Last year, if you look at, we have started four HAM projects, which have majorly contributed in the PAT margins. Obviously, the increase in the turnover is also one of the reasons for increasing the overall PAT of the company. Going forward, we are guiding our investors between 11%-12.5%. We are just on the conservative side. Definitely, we will try and match those numbers in the quarter to come as well. Okay. There is no impact that we can see in the upcoming quarters with item cost, inflation, et cetera. No near-term challenges as such. The increase cost is already compensated by the department. They already come up with a circular for compensating the escalation part. Earlier, it was linked to 3 months, and now it has been linked to monthly basis. Whatever increase in the cost, that will be paid by the authority ultimately to the EPC contractor. Okay, sir. Thank you. My second question is on the order book. If you see, as a part of the overall order book we have, the execution hasn't started yet for the project. Out of this, how much of the order book can we expect to, fresh projects that we can expect to be starting in, let's say, couple of quarters? Do you have any number? Except HAM projects and these projects where, like for Morena, till the time transmission line is done, the project will not start. Or in HAM, till the time 80% land is given clear to us, it doesn't start. But the visibility, what we have given as a minimum number, is available with us as a revenue. Of course, the more projects will start, the numbers will be better. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Reminder to all the participants, if you wish to ask a question, you may press star and one. Our next question comes from the line of Maitreyi from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hello, am I audible? Yes, you are. Yeah. Go ahead. Hi. Hello, good evening. Just one question again on the margins. For the past three years, the gross and EBITDA margins have been going down, and you have again guided for a much lower margin for FY 2027. Any sort of competition pressure are we seeing? Why do you see these margins going down? Is it a bit too conservative or is this the way our order book currently stands right now? Ma'am, if you look at the previous year, there was income from bonus and royalty as well. You must be considering the bonus and royalty income as well. Our EBITDA from pure operations is in the range of 11.5-12.5, which we are consistently maintaining since last three years. The other income is always dependent upon the execution and as well as the royalty, which is dependent upon the contract itself, which we are going to do the subcontract. These two are not directly related to the operations and are uncertain in nature. If you complete any project during the year, and if you get early bonus, that will increase your overall margins. If you look at the margin from the operations, it is more or less stable across the last three years. Actually, I was referring to the slide 41 on the presentation. The royalty income probably will be added to the other income, but the EBITDA margins above them are also decreasing year-on-year. I was just wondering, is the royalty income being added to revenue from operations? I was wondering. The EBITDA margin is stable. That is not decreasing. If you look at the numbers of the current year as well, our EBITDA margins have gone up as compared to the previous year. Could you maybe refer to slide 41? Maybe I am looking it at the wrong way. On the consult side, we do see the margins going down, sir. Your FY 2024 margins includes bonus as well, and FY 2025 also includes bonus. These bonuses are added to the revenue from operations? The revenue from operations, yes. Okay. Thank you. We have INR 24 royalty and bonus in FY 2025 and even FY 2024, there was a bonus for Karnal Pehowa which was forming part of your EBITDA only. Oh. Just to add, we have certain awards also in place. Yeah. Whenever we get that, this will also come straight to the bottom line. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Reminder to all the participants, if you wish to ask a question, you may press star and one. Our next question comes from the line of Mudit Bhandari from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Congratulations on a fantastic quarter performance. So first question upon the solar and ESS projects, so I believe we have already signed PPA and TSA for these projects. So, whether they have started execution or any land acquisition or approval for tenders from those projects? Good question. Solar Maharashtra has already started, where we've already done a lease for more than 50 MW project, and we're expecting to get in this month more than 35 MW. Projects have already started, land development, fencing, piling has already started. We are expecting to give you good results in next 3 months. This is for one solar project and apart for the remaining two solar projects? We have two projects. One is solar in Maharashtra, one in there are two in, sorry, Maharashtra and one in Madhya Pradesh. Maharashtra, both the solar projects have started, and Madhya Pradesh, the land leasing is happening. I think that will also be closed in next 10 days. The execution will start there also. If you talk about T&D, T&D is already, the construction is in progress. We've already acquired the land. We bought that land because that land has to be bought by us. In solar, we have to lease the land. The site development fencing has already started. We've already placed the order for the transmissions and GIS. Got it, sir. For BESS Morena project, whether that acquisition has started? No. That project will take some time because the government, the tender was very clear that government has to provide us the land, the transmission connectivity and the PPA. Till now, only LOA is received. PPA is yet to be signed, and even transmission line tender is not even received. Once that is done, once the transmission line is completed, then only the project will start. Understood, sir. One question on the industry front. I know we are not very much now focused upon NHAI road projects, but if you are bidding, how are you seeing the order awarding from NHAI in terms of the timelines or the competition perspective? You know, we are in a higher sector where we are bidding projects more than INR 2,000 crores, majority of them. Got you. We have already got one INR 2,160 crore project and one INR 600 crore project of Veerpur Bypass. We have a notch above there and better because of the higher net worth. As a group, we have a very good net worth. As a listed company, this is on a better side. Going forward also, we are expecting a lot of good bids from NHAI and we are looking forward to it. Understood, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ramneek Sehgal for closing comments. Thank you and over to you, sir. Thank you so very much, everyone. I would again thank all the participants for joining the earning calls today, making this an engaging discussion. We remain committed to pursuing our business strategies and continue to deliver positive results for our stakeholders. We hope that all your queries have been answered. In case you have any further queries, please feel free to connect with the investor relation team at Adfactors. Thank you once again. Good evening. Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Ceigall India Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.