Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Jubilant Ingrevia's Q2 FY 2025 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 this conference, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pavleen Taneja, Head of Investor Relations at Jubilant Ingrevia Limited. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Taneja.
Thank you, Darwin. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining our quarter two of Financial Year 2025 earnings conference call of Jubilant Ingrevia Limited. I would like to remind you that some of the statements made on the call today could be forward-looking in nature, and a detailed explainer in this regard has been included in the press release and results presentation that has been shared on our website. On the call today, we have Mr. Shyam Bhartia, Chairman, Mr. Deepak Jain, CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Varun Gupta, CFO, Jubilant Ingrevia Limited, and Mr. Arvind Chokhany, Group CFO, Jubilant Bhartia Group. I now invite Mr. Shyam Bhartia to share his comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Pavleen. A very good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining us on the quarter two of the Financial Year 2025 earnings conference call. Jubilant Ingrevia. Yeah, pleased to announce a healthy quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year growth for the quarter, fueled by enhanced performance of our specialty chemicals and nutrition health and solutions business, as well as the advantages gained from cost savings measures implemented over the last few quarters. Let me share the overall market update with you all. Globally, chemical markets are gradually improving in 2024, with volume showing a marginal growth over last year, and we are witnessing the same in our businesses. The pharmaceutical end-use segment continues to experience steady demand, supported by stable pricing and volume placements. Our pharma portfolio in fine chemicals reflects the sentiments. We continue to face pressure in the agricultural business, though due to low demand in the paracetamol segment.
The agrochemical sector is beginning to show some signs of improvement. The excess inventory situation is gradually resolving, and the volume is recovering in pyridine-based products. We are optimistic that steady recovery will continue over the coming quarters. The nutrition segment demand remains steady, with niacinamide volumes showing an upward trend and prices rising during the quarter. Meanwhile, the demand for choline remained stable, although the pricing pressure continued due to high imports. Let me talk about our business updates. In specialty chemical business, we saw a notable increase in volumes of high-margin fine chemical business in both quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year. The pyridine and picoline segments showed material year-on-year growth driven by higher volumes. The CDMO business continues to show good traction with customers across pharma, agrochemicals, and semiconductor segments, although at an early stage.
In nutrition and health solutions business, significant year-on-year, quarter-on-quarter growth was driven by increased volumes and prices of niacinamide. Margin growth was boosted by better product mix and higher share of volumes versus last quarter from human-grade products. In chemical intermediate business, quarter-on-quarter growth was attributed to an increase in volumes of ethyl acetate and acetic anhydride. However, year-on-year performance declined mainly due to lower prices. We are excited to share that we have signed a five-year agreement with the multinational agro innovators to produce key intermediates for one of their strategic agrochemicals. Jubilant Ingrevia will manufacture the intermediate using the MNC's proprietary technology. As a result of this contract, the company anticipates a significant increase in overall revenue share from its agrochemical CDMO business post-commercial commencement of production.
We are glad to announce that our inclusion in the prestigious Global Lighthouse Network, GLN, of the World Economic Forum, WEF. The WEF will recognize Jubilant Ingrevia Limited's Bharuch Manufacturing Facility as a global manufacturing lighthouse, making us only the Indian company to achieve this distinction in this cohort. Over the last few years, we have made significant investments to digitally transform our plants, and results are evident in the enhanced efficiencies, environmental performance, and safety measures. We are grateful to the WEF for their ongoing partnership in this journey. Now, let me share a few details of our future outlook. We expect to see improvement in our overall business performance in FY 2025, particularly within specialty chemicals and nutrition health and solution business segments.
Consistent with the last few quarters, our primary focus remains on customer centricity, utilizing the newly commissioned plants, enhancing operational efficiencies, leading to further improvement in margins. We expect sequential improvement in the performance in Q3 and Q4, with H2 FY 2025 to be even better versus H1 FY 2025. We are committed to our growth plans through our ambitious Pinnacle 345 vision of achieving three times revenue and four times EBITDA within five years. With this, I now hand over to Deepak to discuss the business in detail. I'm wishing all of you a very happy and a prosperous company. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bhartia. A very good evening to all of you. At the outset, I would like to thank you all for joining us today for the quarter two of FY 2025 Investor Call of Jubilant Ingrevia Limited. Let me first take you through the overall market overview for the second quarter of this fiscal year. In pharmaceuticals, during the quarter, we observed steady demand and good visibility on volume across segments, particularly in pyridine derivatives. Additionally, prices largely remained stable, with slight increase in certain segments. However, demand driven by paracetamol segment continued to face challenges as most customers operated their plants at suboptimal capacity. In the agrochemical sector, demand is slowly returning, and issues related to global inventory restocking seem to be easing. However, we anticipate that full recovery will be gradual. Volumes of pyridine-based products are also showing signs of recovery.
We expect that additional capacity in select agrochemical products in the coming years will further boost pyridine demand. In nutrition, we are seeing an increase in niacinamide volume uptake, with prices also experiencing a rise. Demand for choline remained stable, although pricing pressure from international competition persisted for most part of Q2. We are also making ongoing efforts to gradually enhance traction in products aimed at human consumption. We have rolled out several new initiatives in the last three quarters in line with our Pinnacle 345 growth roadmap that we announced a few months back. Let me share a few key highlights to demonstrate the progress across those initiatives. Number one, our core product platform continued to drive growth and maintain our leadership position. We upheld our market share despite facing significant challenges in the acetyl sector. We achieved significant volume growth in pyridine and Picoline on a year-on-year basis.
We are now globally number one player in pyridine and picoline and the only sole non-Chinese player. In niacinamide, we retained our leadership position, being the top two players in trade. We also achieved steady quarter-on-quarter growth in volumes, along with marginal increase in prices. In acetic anhydride, we observed marginal quarter-on-quarter growth in volumes, although prices continue to remain under pressure. Despite the challenging circumstances, we managed to maintain our market share in HY FY 2025 in both Indian and European markets. Number two, we continue to maintain our revenue share of the specialty and nutrition business to 59% and EBITDA share at 73% in the overall portfolio. Our fine chemicals, microbials, and nutrition products are showing strong year-on-year growth. Our new product line in diketene and food-grade choline bitartrate are demonstrating strong momentum as well.
During the quarter, we secured orders in agrochemical space with two large MNC agro innovators. On the first one, by securing one of the largest CDMO deals in the agrochemical sector in India, we will serve as a critical agro intermediate supplier for a product from a multinational corporation. Our aim is to partner with the client to scale up production in a reliable, sustainable, cost-efficient, and quality-assured manner. Furthermore, this partnership underscores our commitment to rapidly growing and investing in our CDMO business in the coming years. On the second one, we have also received a similar but relatively smaller CDMO order from another agrochemical innovator for its key intermediate of their new AI.
The supplies are expected to start in early FY26, and we hope this intermediate will scale up significantly in coming years as our innovator customer grows the AI volumes going forward. Our extensive customer engagement through roadshows continued in quarter two of FY 2025 also, with successful events held in Japan, Europe, US, China, and India. These efforts have generated significant interest in collaborating across the agro, pharma, nutrition, and semiconductor spaces. We are already experiencing an increase in our export share, rising to 48% in Q2 FY 2025 compared to 38% in Q2 of FY 2024, thereby reducing our reliance on the domestic market. Our export grew by 30% year-over-year, with the European Union and Japan driving this growth. With the China Plus One strategy gaining momentum, we are seeing a steady stream of inquiries from global clients.
Many of these discussions are progressing into advanced stages, and we are confident in our ability to meet their long-term needs in the future. Number three, with our heightened emphasis on ESG, sustainability is central to our operations. As global leaders, particularly in Europe and the United States, step up their efforts to cut CO2 emissions, Jubilant Ingrevia is dedicated to aligning with these goals and furthering our sustainability initiatives. In recognition of our ESG efforts, the WEF has honored our Bharuch Manufacturing Facility as a global manufacturing lighthouse, making us the only Indian company to achieve this distinction within the cohort and amongst the select few ones in the chemicals industry globally. Through this program, we implemented 4IR technologies at our Bharuch site and reskilled many employees to prepare them for a digital future.
Utilizing over 30-plus integrated use cases that leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT-based digital twins, and predictive platforms, we achieved a 60% reduction in overall process variability and significantly increased production volumes. This initiative also boosted workforce productivity by more than 20% and cut Scope 1 emissions by over 20%. Number four, our long-term capital plans are on track with continued investments in new opportunities such as food and cosmetic-grade niacinamide slated for commissioning in Q3 of FY 2025 and other multipurpose plants in the pipeline. In coming quarters, we will announce the launch of more capex in line with our long-term growth strategy. Number five, we have further strengthened our leadership team by welcoming Mr. Varun Gupta as our new CFO and Mr. Barinder Singh as our new supply chain head. Both Varun and Barinder come with deep experience and expertise in their respective teams.
With all the changes we have made in the organization, including in the top team in the last one year, I'm glad to share that we now have one of the best and most energized teams at JVL to drive us towards our long-term Pinnacle 345 ambitions. And number six, finally, on cost front, as I have announced in the previous quarter, we continue to make the organization leaner and agile with over INR 120 crore per year of savings already mobilized. We have also been able to successfully manage our working capital at optimal levels for last three quarters, driven by our inventory optimization and aggressive DSO management. Now, let me take you through the updates on all of our three business segments individually. Specialty chemicals.
During the quarter, the specialty chemicals segment revenue grew by 13% on a year-on-year basis on account of higher volumes coming from pyridine, picolines, and derivatives. EBITDA for specialty chemicals grew by 26% on a year-on-year basis on the back of increasing volumes of high-margin fine chemicals pyridine derivatives, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, touching almost 20% EBITDA margin. Our CDMO business is on a robust growth plan, underscored by the signing of a five-year USD $300 million plus contract with a multinational agro innovator. The diketene plant operated at a healthy utilization level with good volume traction in the newly commissioned facility. The pyridines platform demonstrated strong market acceptance and experienced both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth.
In nutrition and health solution business segment, during the quarter, revenue for the nutrition business increased by 12% year-on-year, driven by higher sales volumes of both animal and human-grade niacinamides, along with elevated pricing. EBITDA for the quarter increased by 29% year-over-year, primarily due to favorable shifts in volume mix towards human-grade products, as well as new initiatives and optimized input costs. Overall, niacinamide demand remained stable during the quarter, though pricing improved significantly during the quarter. Clearly, long products, food-grade choline Chloride and choline bitartrate, continued getting traction in the market. Our GMP-compliant facility for food and cosmetic-grade vitamin B3 is set to launch in Q3 FY 2025, and we are already seeing strong customer interest in booking advanced volume. In chemical intermediate business segments, quarterly revenue increased by 5% on quarter-on-quarter basis due to improvement in volume of acetic anhydride and ethyl acetate.
EBITDA for the quarter improved by 13% on quarter-on-quarter basis, primarily due to marginally higher volume and cost-saving initiatives, although this was partially offset by rising ocean freight costs in our acetyls business. We witnessed improved volumes of ethyl acetate and acetic anhydride, even though acetic anhydride volumes remained under pressure on account of lower demand from paracetamol segment. Our market share for acetic anhydride in Europe remained firm, supported by the acquisition of new customers. We also maintained a dominant position in the domestic market for acetic anhydride. With this, let me now hand over to Varun to discuss the financials of the company. I wish you all a very happy Diwali.
Thank you, Deepak. Best wishes, greetings, and a very good evening to all of you. I would like to thank you all for joining us today for the quarter two of Financial Year 25 Investor Call of Jubilant Ingrevia Limited. I'm excited to interact with all of you in my first investor call. The overall revenue during the quarter stood at INR 1,045 crore, as against INR 1,020 crore in quarter two Financial Year 2024. The revenue was higher mainly due to higher year-on-year revenue from specialty chemicals and nutrition and health solution business segments. The EBITDA for the quarter is INR 135 crore, reflecting a 13% sequential increase for the quarter and a 7% increase on a year-on-year basis. This growth was primarily driven by margin improvements in the specialty chemicals and nutrition segments, along with cost optimization initiatives. During the quarter, we also reduced our net debt.
The net debt of the company as of 30th September 2024 was INR 650 CR and net debt to EBITDA ratio was 1.4 times on the basis of trailing 12 months EBITDA. The CapEx expenditure incurred during the quarter was INR 91 CR, and year-to-date for the first six months was INR 207 CR, which was primarily funded through internal accruals. Net working capital percentage to turnover for quarter two 2025 was lower at 17.1% as against 24.3% in quarter two Financial Year 2024. Number of days of working capital has reduced to 63 as against 89 in the same quarter last year. The PAT for the quarter is essentially 169 CR as against 57 CR in quarter two Financial Year 2024. With this, I would like to conclude our opening remarks. We are now happy to address any questions that you may have.
Thank you. 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 withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sidharth Gadekar from Equirus. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sir. Congrats on the strong set of numbers and the contract win. But could you provide some clarity on the $300 million contract, like in terms of timeline, when do we expect this contract to start?
Hi, Sidharth. Thank you.
Hi, Sir.
So that's obviously one of the biggest events for us in this quarter. So as I already said, this is a $300 million plus contract, which is over the next five years. The commencement of production will probably start sometime late next calendar year because we need time to prepare our agrochemical plant to be able to produce this intermediate.
So how much incremental CapEx will be being in that plant and how much time will it take to wrap up the entire volume?
So I think as most of you already know, we commissioned a new agro intermediate and active plant in the early part of this year, this calendar year. So the plan is to do the modifications and expansion in that plant, and we will require at least another INR 300 crore plus to do that over the next 12 months -14 months for that plant to be ready to deliver on this contract.
Sir, and lastly, in terms of margins or ROC, how should we look at this in terms of this contract?
See, I think I have said that in the past, also every decision we take at Ingrevia from investment perspective, the minimum threshold for us is 20% EBITDA and 20% ROCE. So we have applied the same filters and same screens as we finalize the commercial construct of this contract as well.
Sir, and in terms of the value chain, can you just give us some understanding like how many steps would we be doing for the customer or would be a basic pyridine derivative that you will be supplying?
Sidharth, I unfortunately cannot disclose too much, but what I can say is it's still one of our core chemistries, and number two, it will be a fairly advanced intermediate, so complex one.
Super. So just one more last question on the second contract that we have just spoken about, where we said supply will start from next year. Can you give some color on terms of how much revenue can we expect from that contract?
Again, I won't be able to give precise numbers. That one is also, I think, more than the revenue. The more important thing is it's for a molecule or API, which is a proprietary one and which has not been launched by the innovator. They have engaged us at a fairly early stage, and even the initial volumes will be quite significant, running into hundreds of tons. And it's going to be a high-margin one for us as well, and the supplies of this one will start in the early part of next financial year. This will come earlier than the bigger one that we talk about.
So for this, we won't have to do any CapEx. Is that understanding correct?
Some marginal improvements in one of our existing plants, but no major CapEx.
Okay. Thank you. I'll get back in the question here.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Gokul Maheshwari from Auriga Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Deepak, you mentioned in your opening comments that you are also working on certain newer projects on the horizon. While we await an announcement in due course, but if you could just give an overview of what areas are you really looking in terms of these CapEx projects?
I think as we announced in the Q4 of last fiscal year investor call, our Pinnacle 345 strategy has the aspiration of taking our revenue 3x of our size in the next five years. As part of that, we have worked out bottom-up plans across different business units, and then the CapEx that I talked about for future are aligned with that strategy. Broadly speaking, most of the new incremental CapEx, I think not broadly, in fact, I have said that in these calls in the past, almost 100% of all incremental CapEx is going to go into specialty chemicals and specialty part of nutrition segment in future.
And if I just talk about the specific areas, obviously, I can't share too much detail, but most of it will go to serve our CDMO business, both on the agro and pharma side, our fine chemicals portfolio through multipurpose plants, our specialty nutrition products, particularly on the human and cosmetic-grade side. So those are the areas where we'll be investing further going forward.
Okay. And my second question is, if you could just comment on what you mentioned that there is stability and very decent growth in the pharma side, could you elaborate a bit more on where are we on the agro chem side in terms of your interaction with the customers? Is the bleeding done, or is prices bottomed or moving? What are you picking up while interacting with your clients?
Yeah, so I think I would maintain what I said on the previous call. Typically, agrochemical sector, in our view, from a demand perspective, we think that the destocking problem is largely over, and we can see volumes coming back, and you can also see our results where pyridine, which grows almost 50% of our pyridine portfolio, is built around agrochemicals. We are seeing volume coming back there. So for us, that's the first indicator, and we can already see that growth coming back. On the pricing side also, while the broader market still has softer pricing, at least in our segment, there are pockets where we have already started to see prices also moving up, even though I think it may take some more time for the broader market to improve.
But by and large, at least we are seeing good traction both from volume and pricing perspective in our core segments.
Just on this part, is China still a headache for us in the sense that are they producing as aggressively as what has been in the case of the last 12 months , 18 months?
See, I think if you look at even the import prices from China, they seem to have bottomed out, and it's seen largely a flat trend on pricing over the last few months and even uptick in certain product segments. That's number one. Number two, despite China being aggressive over the last one and a half years, I think, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the China Plus One trend is playing out very strongly with a lot of innovators and our customers speaking to us as us being their potentially Indian supplier from a reliability perspective. And third, I think the biggest proof of this trend is the new contracts that we have signed on the CDMO side. Both of them are in agro, and that's despite the fact that the market has been down over the last six, eight weeks.
Great. Great. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Gupta from Nuvama Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, sir. Good evening and thanks for the opportunity. And first of all, congratulations on winning 12 contracts in CDMO.
Thank you, Rohan.
On the second contract, though I don't want to get into too much of the specifics of the contract, but if you can share that it's roughly $300 million kind of contract, which you have mentioned in the PPT. What this $300 million means and what over a period of time. Second, we mentioned that in the earlier remark that this contract is actually, I mean, for the new API. I'm getting associated with an innovator at an early stage of product development. If you can elaborate a little bit that the product has yet not been commercialized, it's still in the phase of commercialization, phase one, phase two, what stage it is with the innovator, and where and what product or at what stage of N-1 or final API, what we are making for the customer.
Rohan, I think you have mixed up the two different orders. Let me just talk about each one of them one by one so that there's actually level of clarity. The first one I talked about is the big one, which is $300 million plus spread over next five years. That is not the new API. This is an existing API, and we are doing an advanced intermediate for that API. And it's a big contract. And as I said, we will need to make our agro intermediate and API plant ready over the next 12 months for us to be able to deliver on this contract. And the commercial production will commence sometime second half or later part of next calendar year. That's one. The second one is the new API, which is a relatively smaller order that we have gotten.
It's for an AI which is not launched yet. So the innovator has gotten us involved in the early stage, but they expect the volumes to run into hundreds of tons. Even at the time of launch, we are expecting the supplies to commence in the early part of FY26, which is the April-May timeframe, which is when the product will be launched. We'll be making intermediates for this as well. And this also is a multi-step process. We will be doing one of the intermediates in that value chain.
Yes, sir. Thanks for the clarification. I was talking about the second contract only, not the first one. So when you say, sir, the early stage of the product innovation, and so the product has yet to be launched by the customers, right? I mean, and whether we are replacing in intermediate manufacturing, to whom we are replacing, whether the customer earlier was making it by himself or buying this intermediate from China, what we are [crosstalk]
No, so Rohan, this product is not, the final API is not commercialized yet. The customer will be obviously, they were in the process of doing the development of the product so far, and hence all the steps they were developing internally. They have now gotten us involved where one of the intermediates, which has linkage back to one of the platforms that we have in our portfolio, that's why they have gotten us involved on this product.
Okay. So that clarifies. Thank you so much, sir.
Okay. Thank you, Rohan.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nitesh Dhoot from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yeah, hi. Good evening to you, and thank you so much for the opportunity. My first question is on the specialty chemicals revenue. What I see is the revenues are up 50 crores year-on-year for both Q2, and as the PPT mentioned, there is a significant volume growth on a year-on-year basis. How much of this growth is coming from pyridine and how much from diketene? And where would we be in terms of utilization, some capacity utilization for both pyridine and diketene?
No, thank you. Thank you, Nitesh. So obviously, as you can see in our results, the specialty chemical revenue has grown year-on-year by almost 13%. What I can tell you is in terms of volume, the growth has been much higher than this 13%. Obviously, as all of you know, versus last year, the prices have come down. So that shaped up part of our overall growth. The growth in terms of volume is close to 25% in this portfolio for us. And it is a broad-based growth within our specialty portfolio. So the pyridine building blocks have grown. pyridine derivatives have grown. diketene derivatives have also grown. So acetic anhydride has also grown. So it's across segments.
In terms of your second part of your question, the utilization level on diketene, I think I had answered that in the previous quarter also, and broadly, the answer is same. We have done two phases of expansion in diketene. The phase one happened almost one and a half, two years back. There, our plants are running at 75% + utilization levels. The second phase expansion happened in the early part of this calendar year, around March, where we launched two more products. Of the two products, for one, the utilization levels are already close to 70%. For the second one, we have supplied samples from the new plant to a few big customers, and they are just in the final stages of approving the samples.
As soon as that happens, we expect even the second plant to take to 50% plus utilization, hopefully within this or later by next quarter.
Thanks. And in terms of pyridine, capacity utilization?
pyridine capacity utilization, is this your issue?
Yes, sir.
pyridine, we have mentioned in the past, we have 48,000 tons of capacity for pyridine and tri-choline, and we are running it at close to 75%-80%.
Secondly, on the capacity utilization on acetic anhydride on the 210,000 tons capacity, and also in the food-grade acetic acid, if you can help elaborate?
Yeah, so acetic anhydride, you're right, we have almost 190,000 tons of capacity, 2 lakh tons of capacity. We are running acetic anhydride at around 70% plus utilization across our plants. Obviously, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, there is some pressure on anhydride business, particularly driven by lower paracetamol volume and production. We are hoping as the markets improve, we'll be able to take that utilization level up. But despite that, if you see quarter on quarter, in our broader acetyl portfolio, there has been an increase in volumes.
Sure. And so on the choline chloride business, what I understand, it's a largely domestic market-oriented product there. So what's the strategy in terms of the pharma, the food grade, etc., that you've mentioned?
So I think that's not you're talking about niacinamide or choline? Because.
No, on the choline Chloride.
So choline doesn't go in pharma grade. We have two parts of choline business. One is the animal feed-grade choline, which is the dry CC and liquid CC choline chloride, which we do largely in the domestic market, but we also supply to some of the neighboring international markets. That business, volume-wise, is holding up, but there is some pressure on pricing because of the imports. So we are working through our cost structure and other areas to be able to maintain our market share there. We are the biggest player in the domestic market there. There is a second part of choline where, as I announced in the previous two calls, we have launched food-grade and human nutrition-grade choline products, choline chloride and choline bitartrate. Those products we have started to see in the market. We are getting very good traction with most of our customers.
Many of the customers have now visited our plants as well, and they have done the audit. So we are hoping that the volumes will start picking up in that segment in coming months.
Sure. Thank you so much for the answers. Thanks a lot.
Yeah.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gaurav from Invesco Enterprises. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for this opportunity and conversation on the Q3 earnings call. I hope I'm audible, right?
Yes, Gaurav.
Yeah. Yeah, I can't see now. So my question is on our vision to grow our revenue to three times and add it up to four times in five-year time horizon. So I just want to understand what would be the base year when you are evaluating that from this number that we want to take to the three times of the revenue. What is it the FY 2024, or is it the current initial year FY 2025 is the base year?
No, the base year, and somebody else also had asked this question in the last call. So the base year for revenue is FY 2024, which is, let's say, INR 4,200 crore of revenue. And the landing year is FY29. So all the bottom-up estimates and planning was done, keeping those numbers in mind. Having said that, as I explained in the previous investor call also, obviously, there were certain assumptions we had made at that time when we did this exercise in January, February timeframe on pricing as well as market recovery, particularly on the agrochemical side. Given that there is some uncertainty and lag on that recovery, obviously, there could be a couple of quarters of timeline tweaking to this, but by and large, we stick to the overall vision we have crafted under Pinnacle 345.
I'm done. So within this, just for an understanding purpose, since we are mainly our revenue comes in three segments: specialty chemicals, nutrition, and health solutions. And the third one that is the chemical intermediates, which is a significant portion of our revenue. But in terms of the EBITDA, this is not so great as compared to the specialty chemicals and nutrition and health solution side. So whatever proportion of revenue was there in FY 2024, vis-à-vis what we envisaged as per our Pinnacle 345 strategy, what would be the ratio of these three segments when we are going to achieve a turnover of maybe approximately INR 12,000 crore after five years or so? Is it going to be the same proportion, or proportion is going to be changing? Or I mean to say the mix is going to change.
No, so Gaurav, I think you have seen the number part. You should also revisit the slide which we put in our presentation behind Pinnacle 345. What it clearly states is the overall direction is to increase the share of specialty and nutrition in our business. That is something which we explicitly, if you see even today's investor presentation, we have laid out what percentage of EBITDA is coming from nutrition and specialty. That is close to 73% now. The plan, as well as expectation, is that that will continue to grow. Today, acetyl constitutes roughly 35%-40% of my revenue and almost 25% of EBITDA.
The relative share of acetyl in the overall portfolio will continue to come down as specialty and nutrition portfolio grow on the back of all the investments we have done in the last three years and what we will continue to do even in future as per the plans I described in response to one of the questions which came earlier.
Yeah. I got that, and I was going to the presentation also. But when we are modeling or when we are expecting that, in terms of the percentage of index, right, you have clearly mentioned that 50% of the revenue between these two segments and EBITDA somewhere around 73% kind of EBITDA that is coming as of now. But over a period of time, three, four, five years, this revenue mix I'm not focusing because EBITDA you have already given that four times you want to increase vis-à-vis FY 2024, right? So what is going to be the mix change from 60% as of now? Is it going to be 65%, 70%, 75%? Those your energy is more concentrated towards increasing the share.
Gaurav, I won't be able to give precise numbers as I should not. But yeah, it will be north of 75% for sure for specialty plus nutrition together.
Thank you, and the last one, if you may allow me, to achieve this strategy, any impact going to be in terms of our debt numbers? Like for incremental CapEx, is it going to be funded from the internal accruals, or external debt would be required to be taken out?
Yeah. So I think, again, I explained that in last two calls, and then we maintained that. And you can see even in our quarterly results, last three quarters, we have been able to manage our debt within, in fact, lower than what it was four quarters back, despite the fact that we have been continuously investing. So what it means is, by and large, our intent is to fund as much of incremental CapEx as possible from our internal accruals, which we have already seen, and as well as the efficiency initiatives that we have taken. So that we are going to continue. We are expecting at least INR 600 crore-INR 800 crore of incremental CapEx every year for next few years, next three years at least.
And we feel a major proportion of that we can fund through internal accruals as well as EBITDA, which we hope to get on the back of all these investments. If at all we need to, we will need to increase our debt level marginally only. But that also, we want to keep within. Right now, we are at INR 650-700 crore, as Varun explained. But in no scenario, we want it to go beyond INR 900-1,000 crore and keeping our coverage ratio well under 1.4, which is what we have internally set as a benchmark.
Thanks, Jolata. We'll come back in.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Malay Sameer from Breakthrough and Stock Market . Please go ahead.
Hi, Deepak. Congratulations for the two orders that you've got for CDMO. Very impressive. I just want to pick your mind on the Biosecure Act that is expected to be coming in by 2034. We hear that there could be a very big swing away from China to the country that can supply and fill in that gap. Now that we are becoming one of the world's largest suppliers and we have a full backward integration chain, do you think these orders that are coming in right now are just the tip of an iceberg?
Yeah, so Malay, that's a very good question. First, let me answer your question at a slightly macro level based on all the interactions I've had with the customers, as I mentioned in the past. And then you can see in our IR presentation also, we have been doing several roadshows. We have done seven of them, and we have met some 120 customers -130 customers. And not just at the buyer level, but at a CXO level, many of these meetings. So obviously, we gather a lot of insights and understanding of how the customers are thinking about their future supply chain. And the consistent thing which I have heard in all these meetings is that everyone wants to diversify and add more reliable scale suppliers in India to de-risk from China.
And then that is what I said in my opening remarks, as China Plus One strategy, which I think most of us have now heard several times. But I can tell you, not even a single customer did not talk about it. So everyone is just talking about it, thinking about it proactively. Some are, of course, at the advantages. Some are still thinking about it. But sooner or later, it was anyway supposed to happen. Now, with the Biosecure Act and obviously with the expected results of U.S. elections, there is a feeling that it will become increasingly difficult for customers to rely only on Chinese suppliers. And hence, at least I expect this trend to only accelerate from here and leading to more and more outsourcing of manufacturing, not just in pharma, but also in agrochemicals, cosmetics, semiconductor spaces to India.
And hence, coming to now second part of your question, I see these two contracts as only tip of the iceberg in terms of the number of such opportunities we expect to catch and realize in the coming year. Obviously, the size of those opportunities could be different depending on which customer and which molecule you're talking about. The first one that I described is a big opportunity in agro, and it's one of the biggest contracts even in the Indian agrochemical industry. So those ones are rare, in my view. So in terms of numbers, I definitely, to give you a sense out of these 120+ customer meetings, we have already created a pipeline of almost 100+ opportunities. Now, the size of those opportunities vary, and obviously, not all of them are going to convert.
But we have created an internal funnel which we are working on and hoping that as some of these duty structures and China Plus One strategy play out, we will be able to convert many more contracts in the coming quarters and years.
Yeah, so that's very encouraging. So I was thinking aloud that if a large player is shifting away from China to India, they would look at a full backward integrated chain. And as you just said in the presentation, that we are such a large player, not just in India, but of course, India too, but we are a very large player globally. So wouldn't that make us the first choice in India for those people to transition away from China?
No, Malay, so we cannot generalize that. Of course, the chemistries and product platforms which we have, and there are seven or eight of them, and you can see it in our IR presentation also. Anything which is falling in those value chains, obviously, we will be the natural and first contender to grab those opportunities. We still need to be competitive, responsive, agile. All of that will still be required, but we will obviously have a natural advantage there. Likewise, some of our peer companies in India who are present and deep in other value chains, they will have an advantage over us in those chemistries. So we cannot generalize it. It is dependent on the chemistry. I think the second part of it is, of course, all these companies while diversifying their value chain outside of China, they are having a very strong focus on ESG as well.
And that is something where we score over many of our Indian peers absolutely hands down. Because if you see our ESG journey, we started way back in 2001. We are number two in EcoVadis and Dow Jones ranking for several years now. Every year, we are taking several new initiatives, and many of them we have announced in our presentations as well. So that advantage is going to have a huge area or advantage. That advantage is going to give us an edge versus our peers. On top of that, now, if I take the recent WEF Global Lighthouse recognition that our plant had, that just establishes us as one of the not only just cost-effective, backward integrated, and environmentally focused players, but also a digitally advanced player or peer in the Indian chemical industry.
So if you put all of those elements together, our backward integration, the different product platforms, cost competitiveness, environmental focus or ESG focus, digitally enabled plant, and on top of that, willingness to invest CapEx ahead of revenue, it makes us a very solid contender for all these opportunities which are coming India's way in the next few years.
Yeah. So Deepak, for the first order that you announced, you're saying that it will come somewhere late in calendar 2026 because we are investing into the peripheral, sorry, calendar 2025. Not calendar 2026. Calendar 2026. Okay. Okay. Because we are investing in the peripheral equipment, etc. So is it okay to assume that the future orders that will come to us will be executed with a much shorter time lag than receiving the orders compared to what we've done in the first two orders?
No, Malay. Malay, we have two examples right here. One, we are going to execute within four to six months from now. Another one, which will take at least 12 months. So what I'm trying to say is every order, by definition, CDMO business makes sense for customization. And customization means we have to have a customized set of facilities depending on the nature of chemistry, the complexity of the molecule. So obviously, if there is a molecule which falls in our chemistry and can be fitted into one of our existing plants, the timeline for that will be much shorter, let's say three to 6 months. And then that's why we are creating a multipurpose plant ahead of time so that we are ready with excess capacity and we can fit some of these molecules into those plants.
Obviously, if there is a bigger molecule which requires a specific kind of technology or process setup, the timeline, and then we have to create a new plant or make significant changes to an existing plant, the timeline for that will be at least 12 months. So at this stage, it's very difficult to give you timeline in a generic way. It will be customized to every order. But what I can assure and tell you is, internally, our projects team, our design team, our operations team, we are gearing ourselves to ensure that we are agile to the customer. Even our R&D team, we are agile and in responding to our customers and deliver as quickly as possible because it's important not just for my P&L and balance sheet.
It's important for my customers' P&L even more because they wanted the products yesterday, and they are coming to us now because of this pressure coming to them, and with the Biosecure Act that you talked about, there is a huge amount of urgency in their minds to move quickly.
Thank you so much, Deepak. Thank you for taking all my questions.
Thank you, Malay.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Dhruv Munjal from HDFC Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you so much. And apologies if this is a repeat. If you can, please help us some more granularity on the CapEx plans that you have, INR 600-INR 800 crores per annum over the next three, four years. I understand largely this will be in specialty and nutrition, but some more granularity, where do they go? Is it agro? Is it pharma? Is it, I'm not sure, pyridine? What areas are you looking at?
Dhruv, I think for the CapEx, there were questions in the previous speakers also. The Wave One of our CapEx plan, we had announced almost two and a half years back of INR 2,000 crore. And at that time, we had announced a bunch of projects. 65%-70% of that CapEx was supposed to go into specialty and the specialty part of our nutrition portfolio, which we have by and large stuck to. And as I speak, this fiscal year, with almost INR 1,300 crore-INR 1,400 crore of investment which had already happened in the last two years, we are going through the last leg of initial or Wave One for INR 2,000 crore that we had announced two and a half years back.
This year, with a couple of projects already in play between our boiler in Bharuch and the near cosmetic and food-grade niacinamide plant and then a few other de-bottlenecking and expansion plants, we will exhaust the wave one, INR 2,000 crore CapEx. That's wave one. But in order to deliver on our financial three, four, five aspiration in FY 2029 or near about that time, we will need to take a wave two CapEx of INR 2,000-INR 2,500 crore over the next three years, which will be roughly, let's say, INR 700-INR 800 crore that I was saying earlier. What I can tell you is almost, not almost, 100% of that will be geared towards opportunities which are falling in specialty and nutrition side of the portfolio.
Obviously, a lot of those opportunities will also be driven by what kind of CDMO and other contracts that we get from the customer because many of these will be multipurpose plants where we can absorb any customized requirement which comes from our customers. But the focus would be on CDMO opportunities in agro, in pharma, in semiconductors, the fine chemical derivatives in our pyridine and diketene value chain, the human and high-value animal food and nutrition-grade products in our nutrition portfolio. So those are the opportunities which we are looking at as we draw the investment plans for this second wave of INR 2,000 crore-INR 2,500 crore of CapEx over the next few years.
Got it. So primarily, in the specialty segment, the investments will be targeted towards the CDMO segment, be it pharma, agro, or fine chem or semis. That is the fair understanding, is it?
Fine chemical derivatives. As you know, we are world number one in pyridine and diketene. Also, we have aspiration to become a global leader. We do those derivatives, and this is our core portfolio. We will be creating multipurpose plants to serve our pyridine and diketene derivatives portfolio to expand it in coming years. CDMO and fine chemicals are the two major parts within specialty.
Got it. And quickly, on the first CDMO, INR 300 million contract, just trying to understand the nature because there are various terms which the industry uses for contracts. Is this take-or-pay? Is it a flat, I mean, equal revenue over the years, over the five years? And how is the margin structure? Once this comes, how does your specialty margins look like, say, FY 2027 when the full benefits probably start to flow in?
Dhruv, I cannot disclose all the details for obvious reasons. But it is a classic CDMO contract where there is an obligation on both sides, the buyer and the seller. It's a five-year contract with even split of revenues over the five years. And on the margin and ROCE, as I already answered in response to, I think, somebody asked, one of the questions in the earlier part of this call, our internal threshold is 20% EBITDA and 20% + ROCE. So this contract crosses the threshold on those benchmarks.
Got it. Perfect. Thank you, and all the best. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as a last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you all for joining this call today. We hope we have been able to answer your queries. For further clarification, we would request you to contact me. And thank you once again for your interest in Jubilant Ingrevia Limited.
Thank you. On behalf of Jubilant Ingrevia Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.