Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Karthikeyan, moderator for this conference. Welcome to the conference call of RITES Limited to discuss its Q4 FY 2026 and FY 2026 results. We have with us today Mr. Rahul Mithal, Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Deepak Tripathi, Director Technical, Mr. Krishna Gopal Agarwal, Director Finance and Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Prem Singh Meena, Director Projects. At this moment, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. At the time, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded, and in the interest of time and fairness to all participants, you are requested to restrict yourselves to one question per participant. Time permits, you may join back the question queue.
I would like to hand over the floor to Mr. Rahul Mithal, Chairman and Managing Director, RITES Limited. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Morning. Thank you. Let me start with giving the safe harbor statement. The presentation and the press release which we uploaded on our website and exchanges yesterday and discussions during the call today may have some forward-looking statements. These statements consider the environment we see as of today and obviously carry a risk in terms of uncertainty because of which the actual results could be different, and we do not undertake to update those statements periodically. Let me start with giving you a brief overview of this quarter and the financial year. The most reassuring thing for us is that the performance of this FY was in line with the roadmap and the strategy that we had laid down at the beginning of the FY, and we had been watching it and updating it at every quarter.
We had aimed for a double-digit growth and growth in profit. We, while keeping our margins secure, we broke the first gap of about two years in our export income, about INR 300 crores after a gap of nearly two years. A very important milestone which we had to achieve. We continued the steady order inflow rate of one order a day and one export order a quarter. Despite the high execution in quarter four of about INR 750+ crores, we ended with the highest ever order book on 31st March of INR 9,416 crores.
All of these are, were in line with the roadmap which we had set and have set us a platform to leverage on this and as we have been giving the guidance for a substantial growth, further substantial disruptive growth in the coming FY. What is also reassuring to us is that the two, three years of business reengineering followed by year of consolidation, we were aiming for FY 2026 to be year of growth, and that has moved in the direction which we had planned strategically. These are the broad overview on a bigger picture on the overall performance, and we'll come to specific numbers as each one of you ask specific questions. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, now we begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time and fairness to all participants, you are requested to restrict yourselves to one question per participant. Time permits, you may join back the question queue. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Our first question from the line of Parimal Mithani from Credential Investments. Please go ahead.
Good morning, sir.
Morning, Parimal. Go ahead.
Yes, sir. Can you hear me properly?
Yes, yes. Morning, Parimal. Go ahead. I can hear you.
Sir, I just wanted to know, you've been mentioning the disruptive growth in your press releases in last two quarters.
Yes.
Can you highlight the reason for this optimism in terms of considering the geopolitical headwinds right now. Also, can you highlight across your businesses, how do you see it going forward? Starting with consultancy, sir. It'll be really helpful for us.
Yes. Why we are saying this is that the order book profile that you see, and if you see the trend of growth of order book in the last seven, eight trailing quarters, it has been showing a upward swing. There's been a substantial increase, especially in the last 18 months or so. There's been a incremental jump in a big way. The order book currently of INR 9,400 crore, a substantial portion, more than 50% of it is very young, which is about, as I said, 12-18 months old. These will be the orders which will start generating revenue in this, in this, year, in this FY.
That's why, in fact, in the last quarter of FY 2026 also, you saw an increased revenue of INR 750 odd crores. That's why, the young order book, normally an infrastructure project has a time span of three to four years, and this is the second and third year where we start generating more revenue.
That gives us the confidence across all our streams of revenue that we will start generating revenue, whether it is consultancy, where we get a percentage, a fee of the infrastructure cost, whether it is the turnkey, where we get the entire revenue in our top line, or whether it is the export order book, which has been an all-time high of INR 1,700+ crore , which despite the INR 300 crore execution in this last FY, will generate more revenue because the Bangladesh delivery will also start in this FY.
Okay, sir. Sir, we expect to maintain this margin going ahead, which we have maintained for this entire year?
No. The margins, as these competitive orders, which I said will start generating revenue, if you again compare every year ending the mix of the order book, in fact, now it's ended this financial year on 31st March, is 63% on competitive. That's the breakup of the order book. If you count the fresh order inflow, it is about 70% +. The margins all across our streams, the margins on the new orders are much lesser. As these new orders generate more revenue in the mix of the total revenue, the margins will definitely go down.
Yes, as we have been giving a guidance that the red line of PAT margins 15% and EBITDA margins of 20%, that in no condition will we allow that to be breached by suitably, you know, monitoring the high margin orders.
Okay, sir. I'll, yeah, I'll come back later for the question.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on a telephone keypad. I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on a telephone keypad. Next question comes from the line of Lakshmi narayanan G K from Ksema Wealth Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Sir, you're able to hear me?
Yes. Go ahead, Mr. Lakshmi.
Sir, could you throw some light on turnkey construction projects, sir? I see the PAT margins are very low for it. I just want to understand some nature of this business because I'm new for covering the company.
Yeah, sure. Let me be clear. We are not a construction company. We are a project management consultancy company. What you see in a, while the order size in a turnkey is large, that's why it is a large portion of the order book. Our scope of work remains the same. To be able to explain to you as an example, let's say our fees is 5%. If in a INR 100 crore project, our fee is INR 5 crores. In a consultancy mode, the client gives us an order of INR 5 crores. In a turnkey mode, he gives us an order of INR 105 crores, our scope of work remaining same. We are, our role remains the same.
Certain clients like educational institutions, et cetera, primarily building projects, like to deal with a single window, so they give us in the turnkey mode. That's why the denominator being large in turnkey projects, while the scope of work and our revenue, our, you know, the revenue remaining same, the margins are much lesser in turnkey. To be able to reiterate the key point, our role is that of a consultant, whether the mode of order is in a consultancy mode or a turnkey mode.
Understood, sir. Thank you for your time.
It's just a difference in the method of accounting.
Yeah, I got it. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah, the next question from the line of Darshika Khemka from AV Fincorp. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, could you help us with the impact that the competitive projects will have on the working capital position of the company? Would it in any way dilute the working capital position, or it would not have any impact?
Ma'am, our working capital requirement is barely minimal. That's the way we structure all our orders of consultancy. There is no really going to be impact, significant impact in any way because as a business model, our working capital requirement is hardly any.
Okay. Apart from that, do you see any raw material related headwinds impacting the margins going ahead, apart from the competitive portion already having a minor impact?
Again, the contracts that we give for execution, we have about 700 + live consultancy orders that we are executing. The contracts that we give for execution, all of them or most of them have a price variation clause, where for the execution agency. Our fee as a consultant is a percentage of the infrastructure cost. In terms of the impact on fuel or raw material costs, et cetera, we don't see any major risk coming to our margins or our revenue.
There is no execution risk right?
Sorry.
Would you expect any execution risk as well?
Not really. The infrastructure construction projects, we have 13 different verticals. We don't foresee any major risk in any of the sectors in terms of execution. We just have to keep a watch on the some of the costs, like travel costs, et cetera, because being a consultant, and as I said, 700 + live projects.
We have travel costs, an important cost both for our domestic and we have a lot of international projects also. That's the only element which we have to keep a close watch on the margins.
Awesome. Thank you so much. I'll come back.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Request the participants to restrict yourself to one question in the initial round and join back the queue for more questions. Next question comes from line of Viraj Mithani from Jupiter Financial. Please go ahead.
Good morning, sir. My question is, these other expenses have gone up in this quarter and the year. Why is that? What is the reasons for that?
Which specific figure are you referring to?
Other expenses. When you see the numbers.
I basically, yes. There are two major contributions to these other expenses. One is, we have moved these 10 locomotives of Mozambique, right? Especially if you see six in the last quarter. The logistics for this movement.
Is also an important factor. Similarly, for the warranty, provisions which we make. These are two important elements which are the related, you know.
Execution.
Execution of our export order. Since these 10 locomotive, the entire order was executed in this FY, this has seen a comparison YoY, which has seen a
Hello?
Yes. Did you get that?
No, breaking, sir. Comparison YoY, I couldn't hear after that.
Yes. I said so because this entire 10 locomotives Mozambique export order was executed in this year, that's why these two elements which are related to an export order execution see an increase YoY.
Okay. Will be the same picture going forward also, this expense will be higher or will be plateauing down this year?
Because the execution of export orders will be much higher this year, there will be a slight increase, but since Bangladesh, the major quantum of export contribution this year will be primarily from Bangladesh, order.
-which will have lesser logistics cost because it has to move by rail. To that extent, it is slightly neutralized. The increase will not be substantial, even though there will be an increase in the export revenue.
Sir since
I'm very sorry to interrupt you. Please join back the queue, sir.
Yeah, okay. I'll do that.
Thank you. The next question from line of Harshit Kapadia from Elara Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Congrats, sir, on a good numbers on revenue terms. Just few questions from my side. On consultancy, sir, can you give me the breakup between quality assurance and what is the consultancy because it was a flat in this quarter? That's the first question.
Good morning, Harshit. Thank you. The overall consultancy YoY has seen a growth of 6%. This is a year of real redemption for us in our quality assurance vertical. We have crossed, we have reached when this hit of the competitor quality assurance for the railway sector of business started hitting us in the year 2023-2024, we reinvented the entire business. There has been a 16% increase in our QA business within this overall consultancy. We touched an all-time, again, revival and came back, crossed the figure of the QA revenue, quality assurance revenue, which was there in 2023-2024. All in all, the contribution of QA has come back to the same levels, which it was at the beginning of 2023-2024.
That would be what? INR 70 odd crores, sir?
No, it is much, much more. It has different elements which get interspersed in the various consultancy verticals. It's very difficult to give a separate headwise breakup of the entire because consultancy revenue of total INR 1,185 crore comes from 13 different verticals. The accounting of our various orders from our quality assurance vertical has shown that we have come back to the levels which we were there, at least in terms of revenue contribution, even with a tighter margin, where the hit started about two years back.
Okay. You have back to FY 2024 numbers. Okay, great.
Yes, FY 2024 numbers in terms of, in fact, with the key variation that we call our diversification of our QA business, where it used to be about 55% of the IR element in our QA revenue. Now it is about reverse. The non-IR element is roughly about 60% +.
Okay. Okay. I have few more questions. I'll join back in the queue, sir. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Vishal Periwal from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, sir. Thanks, sir, for the opportunity. Sir, in terms of our export, can you give some color, like how exactly the execution of pending order book will be? Say, for example, we have done 10 coach. I mean, like, you know, the Mozambique order we have already supplied. What is pending? For the Bangladesh also, if you can just give some color around that, sir.
Yes. With this execution of the Mozambique order, with the 1,750 export order balance, one of the key elements of this is the 200 coaches of Bangladesh. They are fully on track, which as we have been indicating. The first rake of 20 coaches, we are definitely trying to send. The prototypes have been approved. The final production has started. They are in the finishing stage. The first rake should definitely go in about two months' time. With that, once the first rake goes, we should be able to maximize as many rakes with gaps of at least, you know, three, four rakes minimum in this FY. Try to step it up after the production rates will increase after the delivery of the first rake.
This is the main contributor which is going to be there for the export revenue, export of rolling stock revenue in this FY. Besides, as I had indicated in the last quarter, we have a very important developmental exercise where we are converting the in-service diesel locomotives, the spare diesel locomotives of Indian Railways, and converting them to Cape gauge and proposing to export to African countries. The first two locomotives also, again, the prototypes are ready, and we should be able to push them in the coming few months. Once the first two goes, the opportunity for sending more because we have an order of about 30 locomotives for the in-service locomotive, and we should be able to definitely keep pushing them.
Okay. Just maybe one continuation with that. The order that we have of almost like INR 1,700 odd crores, so what sort of execution, that one can see, out of that in FY 2027?
You see, we did about INR 300 crore in FY 2026. We are aiming definitely much above the levels of INR 300 crore. As I said, it will be premature to peg a real number. What I can safely say is with the first rake, once the first rake moves out, because this is the first rake after approval of the prototype, which happened recently, this month itself, it will give a clearer picture. Each rake consists of 20 coaches. There are about 200 coaches which have to be sent. In the next two, three months, the exact number of rakes which we can send in this FY will become a better clarity.
Maybe at the end of Q1, I will be able to give a clearer number in terms of the growth vis-à-vis INR 300 crores. This is for sure it will be much higher than INR 300 crores.
Okay. Okay. Sure, sir. I'll come back in the queue, sir.
Thank you. We have our next question. It's a follow-up question from Viraj Mithani from Jupiter Financial. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Now since most of the, like, good amount of orders will be getting executed in this two years, what should be the earning trajectory of the RITES like? If you can just give some color on that, sir.
See, Viraj, what we are pitching now for this FY as an ambitious target is to break the records of our revenue. All-time-high revenue we will definitely try, that's our aspiration for this year. As you would appreciate the related EBITDA in those years when this was achieved, were very much higher compared to what we are now. Similarly, the blend will also be slightly different in this year with turnkey starting to contribute more, which will be a lesser margin. While we will aspire for definitely breaking the record for an all-time-high revenue in this FY, the profits, while we are aiming to have a growth, but will not be able to break the all-time-high records of profit.
That may take a subsequent at least, you know, minimum two to three years to break those records because the revenue will have to grow substantially much higher with these lower margins to break the profit records also. That gives a bigger picture of the next two, three years timeframe.
The all-time high profit for net profit was INR 633 crores.
Pardon me?
The all-time high net profit for the company in last 10 years will be INR 633 crores, which I can see from the table here.
The all-time high profit for the consolidated profit all-time high has been INR 571 crores.
Okay. That will take time to be breaking, because of competition.
Yes, definitely the margins in the blend mix in the total revenue. While the revenue will definitely, as I said, try and cross the all-time high, but the profits will not be able to cross the all-time high this FY.
Will the profit grow by some double-digit margins or that will be also a bit difficult for the company to maintain?
Profits will grow. To give a exact number is too premature, but profits will grow.
Okay. Okay. Thank you and all the best, sir.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Next is a follow-up question from Parimal Mithani from Credential Investments. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Can you hear me? Hello?
Yes, go ahead, Parimal.
Sir, in terms of your REMCL business, we are each around INR 163 crore of revenue and that is almost close to INR 90 crores. How do you see this business since, you know, with terms of diesel consumption being reduced, government trying to reduce the diesel consumption, do you think this business will be getting more traction going ahead?
Yeah. REMCL, as you correctly said, has grown by 16% and the profits have grown by 19%. It's about INR 163 crores the total revenue and profit has been INR 90 crores. It's given a substantial dividend to us of about INR 42 crores. You see, the electrification having nearly reached about 100% on the Indian Railways system. The growth in the consultancy revenue from this stream of power purchase will be, you know, limited to only the growth in the volumes of traffic on the IR network. What REMCL is doing for further charting out a growth in the coming years already started taking in this FY other consultancy orders in the renewable energy business from different clients, and also started taking pitching for taking international orders.
In the coming FY and the coming FYs, besides these growth, steady growth from the Indian Railways stream of business, we see REMCL getting revenue from these two new streams of revenue. That is, which they have already started getting orders and which will grow as a consultant expert with its experience of about 11, 12 years in the renewable energy business, as well as getting some international orders, which we definitely, we are sure in this FY itself we will get our first international consultancy order for REMCL.
Okay, sir. Sir, second question if I can answer.
I request you to come back in the queue, Parimal.
Parimal, sir, please join back with you, sir.
Okay.
Thank you. Next is a follow-up question from Harshit Kapadia from Elara Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity again. Sir, on the macro side, I just wanted to understand. There's been a decent rise in the railway budget in this year as well. You know, looking at the macro headwinds, you know, there has been a talk that the CapEx is what has to come down if the government wants to ensure that the country's spending remains to be in a healthy situation. Also, there are other spending which are required. Do you think there would be some delay in spending on railway contracts or railway budget or infrastructure CapEx? Are you getting a sense from them that it's not going to get canceled, but there could be some delays or you will see second half to be better than the first half?
Something that you can give a sense about, sir.
Harshit, our assessment of our order book and the opportunities we are getting, we are since we have order book across all various domains, and each one of them, as you said, has got a substantial contribution in the CapEx, overall CapEx budget of the government. I don't see any major impact on our consultancy, whether it's fresh orders or for the progress of the construction, so that our fee as a consultant, you know, getting the requisite fee from various milestones.
In fact, if you see, the recent orders which we have been getting, and even in this quarter, in the last 1.5 months, we have been getting fresh orders across, whether it is railways from various PSUs, private sidings, Indian Railways, from highways, ports, bridges, airports. We've got a recent big order for airport consultancy, another one for shipbuilding cluster from Kandla. I don't see our strike rate of fresh orders as well as the execution going down. If the execution is progressing at its normal pace, our related milestone consultancy fee continues to come at a regular rate.
Understood, sir. Very well explained, sir. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up question from Parimal Mithani from Credential Investments. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. My, the previous colleague answered the question, so you answered it. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up question from Harshit Kapadia from Elara Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the question again, sir. Just on the turnkey projects, just wanted to, you know, check, sir. Even though, you know, the decline has come down, but we have still not, you know, reached the last year's number. When do you think we'll be able to reach last year's number? If you can give us, you know, status on the projects. You know, where are we? Are they, you know, reaching the milestone phase now or they are still some time away?
Yes, Harshit. The turnkey revenue is lesser by about INR 200 crore. The order book of INR 4,580 crore of turnkey, substantial portion of it is at the now the young stage. It is in the time's frame of one to two years window. That's the time where the contracts are in place, the execution has started. In fact, these one or two, three quarters, they will start generating revenue in a substantial way. Since the order book is young, nearly about 2/3 of it, of the turnkey order book, and considering, as I said, a time span of three to four years for a turnkey project, the most real time when it starts generating a revenue is from the second year onward.
Many of our projects, the IITs and IIMs, et cetera, the building vertical, some of our rail infra with siding projects which we have taken on the turnkey mode, these will start generating revenue in this FY. We foresee that we should definitely be able to come back our projections based on the execution of each of these big projects to at least the turnkey revenue levels of last year.
Understood, sir. Fair enough. Wishing you all the best, sir. Thanks, sir.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. As there are no further questions, I would like to hand over the call to the management for their closing comments.
Yes, thank you. As I said at the outset, the foundation for a growth year building up on the growth of FY 2026 has already been created, as you can see from the numbers and the breakup of the order book. The one of the strongest signal from the result was, you see, not just the rise in revenue and profits, but the, you know, underlying growth emerging from all the three elements of high-margin. That is consultancy, leasing being an all-time high, and exports. All of these three streams of revenue contributed to the growth, both in top and bottom line.
This FY, while these will continue to grow, and as I summarized in the turnkey segment, which will also contribute, the key focus of ours will be to continue to focus on a mix of higher margin projects and the turnkey projects so that while maintaining a growth on the top line, we secure our PAT and EBITDA margins as per the guidance that we've given. We are sure that we will definitely grow in this FY. Our basic model of rewarding our shareholders with a high dividend payout ratio, that model is going to continue. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. Thank you all for being a part of this conference call. If you need any further assistance or information or clarification, please email at investors@rites.com. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. Thank you.