Good morning and welcome to Siemens Limited Analyst call for H1 FY 2022. I am Bijesh Kamath , Head of Media Relations at Siemens Limited. This conference will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. For this purpose, we need you to press the hand icon on the bottom right side of the screen. In the interest of time, we request you to limit the number of questions to a maximum of two each. Please note that this conference is being recorded. On the call, we have Mr. Sunil Mathur, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Siemens Limited, and Dr. Daniel Spindler, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer of Siemens Limited. You can see the disclaimer on the screen. I will quickly read it out for the benefit of legal requirements.
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Good morning and a very warm welcome to our analyst meet. A lot has happened in the last couple of months since we last spoke. I do hope you are all well and safe. Over the next couple of minutes, Daniel and I will walk you through a couple of the key highlights of the last half year. We'll give you an overview of how we see the business situation overall, and then also a little bit explain the financials to you. Maybe just starting straight away on the highlights of the first half year. So, as we see it today, the market momentum is continuing. We saw the market pick up already in the last financial year, the second half of the last financial year, and we are beginning to, or we have started seeing this momentum really continuing right through the first six months.
Our visibility is showing us currently that the market momentum will continue, and I'll talk more about this a little bit later. Our orders are up 60%, over 60%, with revenue over 10% in the first half year. We'll talk a little bit more about this as well. The revenues have been muted, but as we have mentioned in our last press release, we do expect the revenues to pick up. The muting of the revenues has been primarily due to some supply chain challenges, but Daniel will explain that in more detail when he goes through the numbers.
Our major focus in the last half year has been primarily on managing the supply chain and also ensuring, with the inflationary costs that are beginning to creep in, that we are able to ensure that the profitability is maintained or improved and that there is proper cost management in place there. Our commitment to double-digit profitability and strong cash stays the way it has always been, and we do believe we can continue on that position. Finally, last but not the least, I will talk more about this later in my presentation. Sustainability now is really the center of everything that we are doing, and sustainable solutions, not only internally what we are using within the company but also for our customers out there. I'll talk more about this to explain our sustainability program in much more detail.
Moving on, so we will split this presentation to you in three parts. I'll give you an overview of the business highlights and then hand over to Daniel to explain the financials, and then I will summarize how we see the year ahead and how we see our business moving in that process. Moving on now, in terms of the market momentum, how do we see it? Practically, in most of the major verticals that we are working on, we've got a whole lot of other verticals that we are also present in, but I've picked out some of the major verticals that we've currently seen movement in and that we are actually working on. You see in almost every vertical real growth happening. The trends are good. They have been good for the last six months.
We expect that they will continue on this trend at least for the next six months in terms of the visibility that we currently have. As you see here, we are covering both private and public sector investments. The plans of the government in terms of public spending and capital expenditure, both last year rolled out and the current year are consistent. We see government spending picking up in the areas of transmission, in the areas of railways particularly, distribution to some extent as well, although a lot of distribution is moving now towards private sector who are spending over there, and I'll go into a little bit more detail in all this. On the flip side, however, there are headwinds. The headwinds continue on the supply chain, primarily coming out of the semiconductor areas, not too much from anything else, primarily from semiconductors.
Logistics has been a challenge, but these are challenges that we have been dealing with the last six to eight months, and I don't think those are materially impacting our financials currently. But what is, however, creating an issue is the delay in availability of semiconductor components. And again, here, Daniel will break this down in a little bit more detail when he explains the impacts on the respective businesses. Inflation is a concern. The impact on commodities, the impact on raw materials, the impact of the increase in oil prices, this will all have an impact, an inflationary impact, and then we are already beginning to see interest rate increases happening. The challenge is, however, at what point in time will the interest rate increases and the inflationary impacts start impacting growth?
Currently, we do not see, and I repeat that very clearly, we do not see any slowing down in any of the verticals, in any of our major verticals on growth. This could change if the trend continues in terms of further inflationary impacts balanced with further interest rates. Right now, to be honest, it's too early for us to make a comment on that, but we will see. Moving on, our order position, as you see over the last quarters, and these are numbers showing the movement or the order position in comparison to the previous year, you see the last couple of quarters have been extremely solid in terms of growth, and other than the time of the first wave, which of course impacted everybody, we are continuing to show tremendous growth here in spite of all the challenges that are coming.
We currently have the highest order backlog of close to over 17,000 crores. We have the base business, which is pretty solid, and we see that growing very well. And by the base, I mean steady business in terms of short cycle as well as medium-sized projects. But we have started seeing, and this is heartening, we have started seeing an emergence of much larger orders also coming in. Moving on, where is this growth actually coming from? Now, if I look at the growth of the half year 2022 versus half year 2021, our energy business has grown by close to 30%. Where is this coming from? Primarily, our customers are now moving into decarbonization solutions. Waste heat recovery is a major introduction and a new product that we have brought in, and I'll talk a little bit about this later.
But this is something that companies, particularly in the cement business, have been very keen to introduce. We've got some very good orders in that direction. Modernization and upgradation of power plants is gathering momentum, both private as well as government. Of course, we know that the FACTS and the STATCOM business are driving the transmission growth, primarily coming out of the stabilization of the grid due to renewables. We are also seeing in the energy business, particularly in the generation part, with the biomass growth in sugar, cement, steel, and so on, both in the biomass as well as in waste heat recovery. Both of them moving in a direction primarily focusing on decarbonization solutions. Our Smart Infrastructure business, growing by close to 40%. Private Discoms are really revamping their networks. We see investments happening there, bringing in more efficiencies.
We see a major growth in data centers and transportation. In other words, in the areas of the railways and metros, we are seeing, as I mentioned, even over here, medium voltage, low voltage investments coming in in cement and steel business. On our Digital Industries business, a very clear focus on digitalization. This business seems to be accelerating quite a lot. We are seeing growth in automation and digital solutions in the metal, cement, and infrastructure business, also in pharma and food and beverages. But we are seeing new business models, emerging in metros, new intralogistics, where we are doing a tremendous amount of work on intralogistics, tunnel automations, and so on. And we see these as being emerging sectors with a huge growth potential. Our driver now and our focus for the next couple of years is definitely going to be mobility.
I've talked already in previous meetings about the Pune-Hinjawadi project, and we booked that in the first half year, and that has contributed to the major jump in our mobility business here. But electrification and signaling is also gathering momentum, both in the mainline as well as in the metro business. And we are seeing as well linked to that, particularly in the mainline business, and in other words, in locomotives, trainsets, and I'll talk a little bit about this as well. Major growth happening, major tenders happening, major orders being awarded. So mobility will be our growth driver in the coming years. Moving on, the mix of our orders hasn't really changed. Yes, there is a slight change in the projects and products mix in the first half year, but this comes primarily out of the booking of the Pune-Hinjawadi order, which is a project order.
But otherwise, we continue to have a robust export share in there, as well as a mix of government and private is more or less the same. No strategic intent over here. It's just a natural mix that we have got. And I do believe that this is a healthy mix, and it is reflecting in the profitability targets that we have and that we are currently demonstrating as well. Next, please. So just giving an overview of how the business looks. In the energy segment, we have got some good orders, substation orders for AIS, for example, in the lift irrigation space. We got some great STATCOM orders, the first industrial STATCOM, where we are doing the design, supply, installation, testing, commissioning of a STATCOM for a steel plant.
It's actually the first of its kind in the country, where we are giving grid stability and improving the power quality for the plant through the introduction of STATCOM. A huge growth potential over here as well, first of its kind in the country. On the Smart Infrastructure, I'd already spoken about data centers. Here we are providing substations, RMUs, low-voltage panels, integrated building management systems, fire safety systems, and so on, which are a huge integral part of data centers. We see this as a growing market for us to bring in electrification there. Turnkey electrification, particularly in ports. This is covering our entire bandwidth of medium voltage, low voltage, SCADAs, and everything that goes, part of it also being automation to some extent, all going into ports.
And as the ports start getting revamped and start growing there, we see this as being a huge reference as well. In our Digital Industries business, I've spoken already about automation and digital solutions. Here, for example, we've automated the first indigenous greenfield vaccine production unit, not only bringing in our automations, but our electrification part of it as well, but also our building management solutions, our fire safety solutions, our DCS and instrumentation solutions as well. On the cranes business in digital, here again, we are bringing in automation. We see this as the infrastructure business grows. Cranes is a huge business potential there. And the entire electrical packages that we can bring is going to be a huge potential, electrification, automation of all the cranes over here.
Mobility, I've spoken about Hinjewadi being the first PPP metro project in India under the new metro rail policy, where we have got a consortium, Siemens Project Ventures has got a 26% share, and Siemens and Tata's TRIL has got a 74% share in the company. So with that, there is quite a huge potential. Trainsets is something that we see as being a major growth area. This is our first entry into the trainset market. This is where the government is planning to replace trains which are hauled by locomotives, actually with self-propelled trains, i.e., trainsets that will run on distributed traction power systems and reach design speeds of 180 km an hour. We are providing the propulsion and train control management systems and all the electrics.
Now, this is the first of its kind that we have gotten into in the country, and there are huge orders out there and tenders already out there for the trainset, and we see a growth potential there. Moving on, as you come to digitalization, again, some examples to give you a flavor of what we are actually doing. Cybersecurity, in particular, where we are adapting the network intrusion detection systems to make the gas power plants that we've worked on much more secure from cybersecurity risks over there. Warehouse digitalization.
Here we are looking at an integrated offering of PLCSIM Advanced along with Plant Simulation software Tecnomatix, where we can, through this, reduce errors and commission many more warehouse numbers in a much shorter period of time, increasing the efficiency of the warehouses as well as throughput time, as well as the time taken to set up a warehouse and bring it into service. Our digital twin of the automation production, this is where we are actually working with or have done a project to deploy both our MindSphere as well as Plant Simulation technologies together, where we are leveraging the digital technology, which includes automation, IoT, data analytics, Plant Simulation software, our MindSphere platform to reduce the energy consumption, boost productivity, bring in flexibility here, and actually bring in greater efficiency of up to 15%.
For example, here, we were able to bring in efficiencies of up to 15% in the paint shop, another growth potential as well. Moving on, the DEGREE network, and this is the DEGREE framework that we have actually announced globally to describe our sustainability approach at a global level. The DEGREE covers basically decarbonization, where we are supporting the one and a half degree target to fight global warming. Ethics will be a key focus for us, as is governance, where we are looking at state-of-the-art systems and technologies for effective governance processes, resource efficiency, and how can we get circularity and dematerialization into the entire supply chain. Equity, where we are looking at diversity, equity, inclusion, as well as giving back to the community, is another area. Finally, employability.
How do we really make our own people, equip them for the future, but more importantly, equip our ecosystems around us? And this brings in skill development for our supply chain, as well as our customers, as well as our own people. So this is really the plan that Siemens has announced at a global level called DEGREE. How are we doing it in India? Now, when you look at India in particular and you're looking at decarbonization solutions, e-mobility plays a central role. And you know we are already working with Ashok Leyland on the Switch Mobility in the e-mobility charging infrastructure area. We've got first successes in Chandigarh. We are now moving to Bengaluru. There are other tenders out there. Mumbai will be a third, and there are a whole lot of other potentials that we see there.
So we are really ramping this up where we are able to support our customers on their decarbonization. When you look at waste heat recovery, this is for a cement plant in particular, where through the technology that we are bringing into the country, probably a first of its kind, we are able to substantially reduce the carbon footprint of our customer over there. So we are helping our customers on decarbonization, and I'll talk about more solutions that we have in the area of decarbonization later. On ethics in particular, we are working not only on business conducts, on guidelines for our own employees, but also in terms of getting a level playing field and working together in a collective action with other stakeholders.
For example, we are working with the Indian National Shipowners' Association or the United Nations Global Compact Network in the area of anti-corruption and so on. So this is going to be a major initiative that we've already started working on. We are working on governance with a supplier code of conduct, which we have rolled out already to all our suppliers, making sure that they are committed to our ethical fundamentals, but also to our decarbonization initiatives. We are looking at the entire environmental ESG radar screen there, and you will hear more about what we are doing on this in the next couple of months and in our next presentations as well. Resource efficiency rolls around our own people here, where we are looking at the supply chain. For example, we started on our own with a 7 MW green energy that we have introduced in Kalwa.
3 MW of that is using rooftop solar for our own use, distributed energy systems for our own use. But we have also entered into a joint venture with Sunsole for buying clean tech for another 4 MW, and we will expand this to all our factories in the country as well. In parallel to that, we're also working with customers, and here we have started a distributed energy system looking at microgrid, solar biomass, e-charging, trying to see, for example, with IIT Kanpur, can we develop a completely e-infrastructure over there. On the equity, of course, our CSR programs in Project Asha, where we are looking at over 100 villages that we have already electrified, brought in health and education into them for over 600,000 people.
We are looking at diversity, not only in our own environments through the organization, but also looking at bringing in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the top functions of our own organization. I spoke about employability and dual vocational training. Currently, we are working with over 300,000 ITIs in 14 states, roughly 45,000 students at a time, where we are doing skill development there. Also, digital learning for our own employees, and we have got targets now in place so that every single employee begins to understand and appreciate the technologies behind digitalization. In the solutions that we have, there are a whole lot of solutions here. I won't go into each one of them. But more importantly, you see we are bringing in eco-design transformers. We've already sold the first one, where we are using ester fluids for insulation.
We are looking at grid control centers, which we have also begun to bring in to integrate the grids. We are looking at high-efficiency motors, which will save energy. We are looking at a complete Demand Flow solution, where we can bring up to 15%-20% energy savings in buildings, for example. We are looking at an Energy Suite, which will bring in, using our SIMATIC technologies, the entire energy management along with automation. So we now couple automation and energy management together. Our electric motors, locomotive business with the propulsion systems over there are bringing in savings. We are looking at ester oil-cooled steel tank transformers. For example, we are looking at other solutions for the hotel load converters, which will eliminate diesel sets being used in power cars.
We will use power from the overhead catenary to feed the auxiliaries in the coaches, which will in turn bring in a reduction in operating expenses of the trains and maintenance costs as well. So a lot of decarbonized solutions, sustainable solutions. This is just a first example of it, but eventually we will bring in, and we are already bringing in many more. In our next presentations, we will give you a demonstration of much more that we are doing in the area of providing digital or in providing sustainable solutions to help our customers on their decarbonization journeys. So with that, let me hand over now to Daniel to talk more about the financial highlights. Everything that he talks about will be related to the first half year, and he will give a much more detailed explanation on the financials there. Over to you, Daniel.
Thank you, Sunil.
And also from my side, a very warm welcome to all of you. As always, I'm very pleased that you have taken the time to be here in a call with us today, and I would also like to express my warm welcome to all of you. Over the next few minutes, I will share more details about our second quarter and half-year results for Siemens Limited during financial year 2022. And just to remind you once more, our financial year ranges from October 1st to September 30th. So overall, we are very pleased that we delivered a strong performance during eventful first six months of fiscal 2022 against the impact of the ongoing global pandemic and the crisis in Europe, later on marking a significant turning point.
Thankfully, in India, we experienced some further signs of normalization during the last six months, notably, that resulted for Siemens Limited in India in two very strong order quarters heading into the fiscal year, as you have already seen in one of the slides from Sunil. So let me start, as usual, by giving some general comments before going into the financial details. Globally, the macroeconomic environment remains extremely volatile, whereas the war is amplifying cost inflation and puts constraints on supply chains. And during the last half year, the pandemic still impacted productivity in some areas besides the recent Omicron outbreaks in China leading to lockdowns. From my perspective, the unchanged solid economic development in India is particularly for most of our key markets like data centers, pharma, buildings, steel, and cement, besides infrastructure-related verticals like transmission, machinery, metro, and lately also automotive. You have heard Sunil speaking about it.
This all is providing secular momentum. From a macro perspective, India's economy grew by 4.1% in quarter four of fiscal 2021-2022, pushing up the annual growth rate to 8.7%, which is the highest in 22 years, as it was just recently announced by government. Growth in January to March period was, as expected, lower or kind of sluggish compared to 5.4% expansion in the previous October to December quarter. PMI, Purchasing Manager Index continues to trend above 50, which is a positive signal. It was 54.6% in May, showing an expansion of the economic conditions, whereby factory output was boosted by a jump in international orders, which was actually the highest in over 11 years. CapEx is still rising despite inflation and interest rate increases. There was just another interest rate increase earlier this week.
However, this favorable development was also reflected in the achievements in our businesses within their respective key verticals, and like mentioned in our last call, the macroeconomic environment in India is and will remain to some extent volatile and dependent on the further development of the ongoing pandemic and also the crisis in Europe. Like most other companies, we are therefore also still observing challenges caused by the pandemic, besides supply chain disruptions, component shortages, as well as some cost inflation. In this context, even more remarkable to mention that we at Siemens India have navigated through these changes quite successfully. S o like in our last call, and Sunil was also touching on it, the supply chain is an unchanged critical topic which we have to master and mitigate also for some more time going forward. It will not fade away quickly.
It will stay with us for many more quarters, if not years. So we have to master and mitigate also for some more time going forward our supply chain issues. Many companies are struggling with missing deliveries or shortages, and we continue to work relentlessly with our suppliers and our own factories to optimize deliveries and to avoid logistical congestions. Needless to say that our focus is on mitigating impact on our customers as much as possible. So as a result, we have been able to keep deliveries from our factories at high levels. We have built on our effective commodity hedging activities like for aluminum, silver, and copper. Demand pooling, just another point, demand pooling for raw materials and components helps to maintain strategic alliances with suppliers. So relentless collaboration, constant talking with our suppliers ensures to minimize supply chain delays.
In Smart Infrastructure, the integration of C&S Electric is progressing well. To recall, the acquisition of C&S was closed March 1st, 2021, so last year, and it is in line with our strategy to expand in India and adjacent markets. Since closing was March 1st last year, we however don't have compared the growth figures yet. What I can share with you is that EBITDA remained in upper single-digit range, as well as in line with our expectation. Margin when acquiring C&S. One more important remark here, if you reconcile Siemens Limited's standalone results with our consolidated results, then you have to take into consideration some effects out of depreciation from purchase price allocation. Mainly, customer relationship is the most important point here. This is negatively impacting the consolidated group profit.
Talking about portfolio effects, on May 27th, we announced the divestment of Large Drive Applications business, which was reported under portfolio companies for INR 4.4 billion or INR 440 crore. Looking at key operational highlights from the second quarter, I'm pleased with the progress of our strategic initiatives to drive digital and sustainable business and simplify our portfolio. Sunil talked about this in what depth already. Our customers continue to invest in digital transformation and resource and energy efficiency in the wake of rapidly increasing energy and material prices, so with this now, let me go into our financial highlights, starting with first half 2022 results, which ended, as touched on already, with a very strong second quarter, and as you have seen on the previous slide, all financial figures shown are based on continuing operations.
So let me begin by giving you a brief snapshot on the KPIs for Siemens Limited in our second quarter, January to March. All in all, new orders were up by excellent 61.4% year-over-year, against an already robust prior year quarter two. Key contributors to growth were Mobility and Digital Industries, both massively up, actually more than doubling their volume. Revenue was up across all businesses by 8.2% year-over-year. So top-line growth momentum came in quite robust and was brought by, so in particular, ending double-digit in Smart Infrastructure, followed by Digital Industries. EBITDA for our industrial businesses ended at 12.5% of revenue, or INR 446 crore, benefiting from top-line driven growth, productivity, and ongoing cost out measures. In addition, structural and operational improvements, besides low discretionary spendings, are also continuously paying off.
This is helping to offset adverse factors from higher material and logistics costs. I will give you some more details later on. Altogether, and after taking interest income and depreciation into consideration, we recorded a profit before tax. You can see here on the bottom left-hand side of 12.5% of revenue or INR 445 crore. Deducting tax, we achieved a profit of 9.2%, INR 329 crore, which is an increase by 4.1% compared to last year. Various reasons for this development will be outlined in more detail later. Finally, this translates into an earnings per share of INR 9.23 versus INR 8.87 last year. On the next slide, we will show you the six months or first half-year performance, meaning from October to March. During that period, we saw a plus of 63.3% in orders and plus 9.9% in revenue, respectively, with a very strong book-to-bill ratio of 1.57.
At this point, I would like to once more highlight that our company is operating well above the level of pre-pandemic. Last quarter, we achieved another all-time high in orders, as we have already seen, as well as the second high in absolute revenue. Again, more details will follow. To conclude, we fully recovered from the pandemic setbacks, and we have shown growth in very challenging circumstances and therefore sustained our performance. Operational performance, meaning EBITDA, stood at positive 11.5%, down by 155 basis points year-over-year, while profit before tax closed as well at 11.5%, after tax at 8.5% or INR 574 crores.
Also, at this point, I want to state that the long-term backlog of our businesses comes with very healthy margins, and INR 2.6 billion of cash generated from operations for the first half year is certainly a robust performance, whereas the good results are originating from ongoing working capital initiatives, which have been executed timely as well. So with the next slide, let me walk through our quarterly revenue development, which looks similar to what Sunil has shown to you on the order side. And after the huge dip that you can see here in quarter three fiscal 2020, another less impactful dip happened one year later as a result of the second wave. But since then, the revenue recovery continued for three consecutive quarters, and mainly for current fiscal 2022, with a +1 1.8% growth in the first followed by + 8.2% for the second quarter.
Quarter two was the second highest in absolute terms, as you can also see here on this slide, with INR 35.7 billion, and this happened, as described, on the basis of large orders in energy and Mobility and our solid resilience against supply chain delays, as well as on a stringent backlog execution, so the growth during the first half of this year was also here, like in orders, broad-based across all our businesses. Each of our businesses actually was reporting positive revenue growth. In the book-to-bill, I think I mentioned already, with 1.57, which is also trending towards further momentum for the remainder of this fiscal year. On the next slide, I want to give you an overview on our book-to-bill development for each of our four businesses. The yellow line indicates new orders, whereas the green line is for revenue.
As you can spot on the slide in DI, so Digital Industries, new orders and revenue usually trend very close to each other and in parallel, whereas in H1 fiscal 2022, the orders exceeded the revenue by far. For book-to-bill, it is 1.7. Orders increased substantially and to some extent also due to advanced ordering through our channels, anticipating higher lead times and also anticipating supply chain delays. On the right-hand side, top corner, you can see Mobility, where we have been very successful in large metro projects, where we accumulated also a healthy backlog. Typically, for such large projects, the execution period is three years or even beyond three years. Energy, as well as the book-to-bill, increased in the second half of this financial year due to higher order volumes out of large orders, while on the other hand, experiencing some supply chain delays and disruptions.
Lastly, in Smart Infrastructure, we can also recognize for the fiscal year sharper order growth with softer revenue momentum, however. This was created out of higher lead times in global supplies, besides some production impacts in January due to the second wave of COVID. So all in all, our four businesses, we would expect a stepwise normalization of our book-to-bill in the coming quarters when executing our record, just to repeat, our record high order backlog. Then let me come to the next slide, which is about the development of our EBITDA in absolute figures and in percentage of revenue. In the light of our revenue growth, as outlined before, we have reported an EBITDA in fiscal 2022 amounting to INR 4.5 billion or 12.5%, the very right-hand column in green. This translates into profitability down by 90 basis points from 13.4% prior year.
And quarter one shows a positive 10.4% margin at INR 3.3 billion. To give you some flavor on our margin development, let me mention the most important factors. Firstly, there's an unchanged rigid conversion on our revenue growth, maintaining a stable operational margin and low non-conformance costs. Then we have further benefited from a bundle of cost control measures initiated during the pandemic, where we have already given you quite some details in our previous calls. Nevertheless, we also experience in some areas higher raw material and components, as well as increased freight and transportation costs. However, this impact could be limited with an efficient hedging, and as mentioned already, also with higher customer price adjustments. Discretionary spending is still comparably low since travel and other activities like conferences are still somewhat limited but slowly picking up.
I also would like to provide you some transparency on the impact from foreign exchange gains and losses combined with the gains or losses from commodities, and in previous year, quarter two, we recorded a gain of INR 260 million, 50/50 from FX and from commodities, whereas in quarter two fiscal 2022, we had a gain of INR 211 million. So the impact from commodities and forex was mainly due to fluctuation in pricing. As you can imagine, on the other hand, rupee and euro are trending quite stable, which is very helpful, so all in all, to conclude, out of our forex and commodities, we see a rather minor profit impact, which is maybe in the range of, I would estimate, around 20 basis points, so almost negligible, and for the half-year situation, the situation is quite similar.
And if we take it into a comparable basis, after FX and commodities, EBITDA would have declined from 12.6% to 11.9%. And the reason for this drop is mainly primarily higher logistics costs, outbound packing and forwarding charges. So with this, let me share some more details regarding our performance across the four different business segments. Performance of Energy is the first one, which, unchanged, shows a strong resilience against global volatility or a growth of 28%, revenue of +4%. Growth contributors come predominantly from the industrial renewables segment, transmission business. And as we heard from Sunil, we recorded some big orders in AIS substations and STATCOMs. Positive to mention here is the profitability of INR 2.9 billion or 14.1% of revenue, which is a decrease from a very high comparable by some 200 basis points. Nevertheless, bottom line, we see a solid operational execution.
Energy, h owever, also impacted by lower FX gains, which were partially offset by commodity gains. Smart Infrastructure on the top right-hand side of this chart was driven in most of the sub-segments by favorable market short-cycle industrial and electrical product offtakes and based on strong demand in important sectors. Consequently, SI delivered a very solid performance across all metrics. Orders up 37%, we have seen revenue by 13%. Top line was boosted by electrical products, especially where C&S is also placed and with some accelerated activities in solutions and services. EBITDA at 9.1%, not yet fully back to pre-COVID, however, margin performance benefited from high capacity utilization, cost savings as well. I would like to mention here, margins were held back by some short-term production impacts during the second wave of COVID. Additionally, there were some headwinds from FX losses reducing the margins by around 50 basis points.
So also here, not really too significant. Next business will be DI, which faced a well-improving market environment in the first half. Key markets in particular, electronics, infra, but also automotive lately showed an exceptionally strong momentum with a certain level of pre-orderings due to long lead times, as we have already mentioned. This is reflected in a sharp surge in volume and in top line. Orders up, you can see it here, 78%, revenue 7%. So DI is showing a continued strong upward trend due to higher customer offtakes and order conversion. Operational margin in DI reached a healthy 11.1%, 40 basis points better than previous year even. So against the trend and higher revenue in our short-cycle business resulted in consistent margin improvement, which was also supported by stringent price adjustments to counter higher input or logistics costs. Maybe finally, one more comment on inventories in Digital Industries.
Because of the pre-orderings, we had to secure future deliveries, which were compensated with advanced payments and stringent payable management. And then the last one would be Mobility. Order pipeline remained exceptionally strong. We had to absorb some project shifts last year. Situation improved quite nicely this year, and as a result, orders increased here by 391% on basis of these large orders like train sets and PPP, which we pulled in. Revenue surged by 26%, also a very nice development, especially on the basis of increasing passenger locomotive components. EBITDA performance was weaker with 10.0%, down by 90 basis points, keeping double-digit bottom line. So then let me conclude my part. As a summary, Siemens India performed considerably strong during the first half of fiscal 2022 in volume and solid top-line growth. Key focus areas for my point would be in these times of high volatility.
It is first and foremost about stringent and focused execution and gaining supply chain excellence. Continue to drive profitable growth like in the past, banking on strong resilience in the crisis. Where I would like to highlight a real source of strength as our order backlog is beyond INR 170 billion, which is more than INR 40 billion up year-over-year. And therefore, a vast majority of the next 12 months is already in our books across all businesses. And visibility in our short-cycle business and our core segments is far-reaching. I touched on it. We have initiated cost-saving and operational measures to ensure resources are adequately aligned. And lastly, my own perspective would be based on continuing growth in GDP in India and expectation that the challenges to our business from COVID and supply chain constraints will not worsen. So overall, we are well on track.
With this, I would like to hand back to Sunil to give you his summary.
Thank you very much, Daniel. Basically, as just confirmed by Daniel, we are well positioned for continued profitable growth. Just to summarize everything that we've just said, we continue to see an uptick in the market, and we will participate in that growth. We do see a strong growth in the short-cycle business, but also in the high-volume project business, and that is partly reflected already by a couple of high-volume projects that we have started getting, but also those that are being tendered. There is a continued interest in digitalization very clearly, and we will ride on that tide as well. We will continue in our stringent supply chain and cost management activities there. Profitability is very critical for us, and we will make sure that the cost increases are minimized.
Profitability, cash flow continues to be a focused area. And finally, as I said, sustainability will now run through every single thing that we do, both internally in our organization, but more importantly, as we go out and start supporting our customers, but also our suppliers on their decarbonization journey. So with that, we will stop our presentation and would like to hand over back to you, to Ramya, to take all the questions, and we are ready to answer them. Over to you, Ramya.
Thank you, Mr. Mathur, and thank you, colleagues, for joining in today and we'll take the first question from Harshit Patel. Harshit, over to you. Please unmute and go ahead with the question, please.
Opportunity, sir. I had a couple of questions. The first one would be on our exports. So I believe energy and Smart Infrastructure, these are the two segments which dominate our exports business. So could you explain a bit as to what would be the share of exports within both these segments? Also, which would be the product lines where Siemens India is a global feeder factory for the Siemens Group as a whole? First question, sir.
So we do not give sub-segment-wise information. But broadly, I can tell you on our energy business, we are looking at exports in transformers. We are looking at exports in substations in our switchgear business. We're also looking at exports in our turbine business. And this is what constitutes it right now, and this is what we expected to grow. On the Smart Infrastructure, we currently have exports in our digital grid segments over there, and those will continue. Some of our factories are very heavily part of the export network. In fact, all our factories within Siemens Limited and 32 factories that we currently have, including 11 factories of C&S, are all part now of the global export network, and we do expect that to increase.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you, sir. So my second question would be on the Digital Industries segment. So this segment has seen a very solid performance, especially in terms of margins in the last few quarters. We are now operating at substantially higher margins vis-à-vis what was the scenario, let's say, a couple of years ago. So what exactly we have done over here? Have we localized more? Have we taken very sharp price increases, or the mix of the business has changed? What exactly has happened over here?
So it's a mixture of all three, Harshit. We have done localization to some extent, but this is also, as you move towards digitalization, a lot of it is also software solutions, and that is what will start creeping in. There has been very, very stringent cost control that has been brought in. Greater productivity measures have been taken in the DI business as well. But also, a lot of the profitability is coming through price increases that we have been able to pass on to customers, partly because of inflationary impacts, but over and above that as well. So I guess the simple answer is it's a multiplicity of things on all the areas that you just mentioned.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. That was all from my side. I'll come back in the question queue for further questions.
Thank you, Harshit. Renu, over to you, please.
Renu, you are on mute, I think.
Renu, we can't hear you.
Am I audible now?
Yes.
Sure. Thank you for the opportunity and good performance and growth that we are seeing in. My first question is on the Mobility side of the business, where we have seen fairly strong tailwinds from the market dynamics, and probably we might be the only or among the very few handful companies in the country with capabilities and technology. So can you give more perspective in terms of as the size of large projects in this business increase along with programs like Vande Bharat Trains, etc., what could be the value addition and scope of Siemens in these PPP projects for Vande Bharat Trains? And do you perceive over the next three to five years, Mobility portfolio could be as large or better than the T&D part of the vertical that we have today, given the growth and scalability which is visible?
Okay. It's a lot of questions there, Renu, and I'll try and answer all of them to the best I can. So yes, the Mobility market for us is definitely picking up. And let me break that down. Let's start with locomotives. The market in locomotives, both 9,000 HP, 6,000 HP, 12,000 HP, is definitely picking up. Tenders are coming out there. And this is an area that we have not been present in the past. We have been, and we are looking at that very seriously now for the future. So this is definitely an area there will be an increase in need for locomotives in the country as the country moves towards greater rolling stock and greater efficiency. So this is an area definitely that we are looking at.
The other area is when you talk about Vande Bharat, a lot of the Vande Bharat revolves around trainsets, and these are technologies which are self-propelled and can help the Vande Bharat trains or help the trains move up to speeds of 180 km an hour, so the propulsion systems over there, this is something where we already have the technology, and this is something that we see the technology will pick up. As I said, we have started bidding for this already. We've got the first orders. This is going to be an area as the Vande Bharat projects increase, and there will be a substantial increase. We see this part of the business growing for us as well. The third segment is, of course, electrification and signaling. As metro projects and as mainline business increases, we will see over here an increase in electrification and signaling.
A very large amount of electrification and signaling has already been done. The country is moving to the new Kavach system on the signaling, and we will participate in that as well. So we see here as well a major growth perspective for Siemens, but more importantly, for the country as well. Finally, the metro. In the metro business, I guess the potential is obvious. We are already participating in the first metro project, Pune-Hinjewadi, but I believe the market for metros is huge. Every single city, the A cities right now, Tier 1 cities, already are looking to expand their metro networks, their existing networks, and that's happening in Mumbai, that's happening in Calcutta, that's happening in Bengaluru already, Chennai Metro as well. But the B category cities, the Tier 2 cities, also have a huge potential for metros, and we have not even started yet on Tier 3.
So I do believe the metro business is just taking off. We will be participating in that much more than what we are doing. To finally answer your question, whether it will be more than the energy business or less than the energy business, all I can say is that the Mobility business, our scope is, or our intent very clearly is to grow the Mobility business to a substantially higher growth rate than what it is currently today. We are looking at portfolio changes. We are looking at getting into markets that we were not present in earlier on, and concrete plans are on the table. You will hear more about these in the next couple of months.
Sure. That's pretty interesting. The second question is, if you look at your comments on the broad-based demand outlook has been fairly strong. Just again, just to reconfirm and reiterate, if the inflation environment is where it is today and interest rates continue to remain firm and increase in the next 12, 18 months, the way we are looking at the global landscape, you still do not perceive any major headwinds to the cyclical uptick or to the cycle combination of both government as well as private infrastructure investments which are on plate?
That is correct. If there is no further, let's say, if you take the current situation as of today, the inflation levels, the interest levels, in spite of the 50 basis point recent increase, I do not expect a slowdown on CapEx spending in the economy for the next, at least visibility for the next six to 12 months. At these current levels of inflation and interest rates, I do not expect a slowdown. As I said, I can't predict how things will move both on the inflation and interest rate environment in the future, but as we stand today, I do not think there will be a slowdown in CapEx spending either on the government side or on the private sector side.
Sure. And lastly, sir, now that growth is coming back in large projects, we've already won the PPP for Metro and many more on Mobility side coming through. Do you think the business portfolio mix will now start tilting towards projects, and that may have an impact on the margin side of the portfolio as well, or the overall operating leverage and volumes will be more than able to compensate for the potential change in the mix side?
Yeah, good question, Renu, so I mean, our challenge, and this is what we have been saying, at least I've been saying for the last seven or eight years at least, maybe longer, is that our driver is profitable growth, and this is a balance that we are going to have to strike to ensure that we do have growth, but that growth does not dilute margin levels, and that is going to be our intent moving forward. We do not intend to dilute margin levels. We hope to maintain the margin levels and grow the margin levels if possible.
The real challenge for us in the management team of Siemens is going to be to keep this balance to ensure that the large projects that we get are balanced with a whole lot of additional product businesses and short-cycle businesses and digital businesses that can offset a lot of the margins that we are having.
Thank you, Renu.
Got it. Thanks a lot. And all the best.
Renu, we'll move to the next question from Jonas Bhutta, please.
I think you're on mute, Jonas.
Am I audible now, sir?
Yes, you are.
Just one question. This is pertaining to C&S. What we've noticed, sir, is that in the first half, the margins in C&S seem to have doubled versus the last half ever since we've acquired them. Second half of FY 2021 over first half of FY 2022. Can you talk about what's happened there? Because we were tracking at about 4%-5% EBITDA margins there, and we've sort of come up to almost 9% now, almost touching company-wide margins. The question is more because we've not seen an uptick in exports. Because we remember that exports was going to be one large driver for C&S. If you can talk about what you're doing in C&S and that's—
Let me just start on that, Jonas, in detail. As I said, our integration activities are, or as Daniel said, actually, our integration activities are on track. We're hoping to close the integration very soon, and as we move through our integration cycles, a lot of what we are doing and what we had planned to do starts stabilizing, and the one-time impacts that we have or had start reducing. With this, there will be an increase in margins overall. Our top-line business continues to be healthy. Without the synergy effects, the business is growing on a standalone business. With the synergy effects, which have already started creeping in, export business has already started happening in C&S and will only build up. I think at a macro level, let me just put it this way. We are on track. Our top lines are growing.
The synergy effects that we had predicted are beginning to kick in. Our integration plans are on track. Most of our integration activities are now underway or have already been completed. A lot of the one-time impacts have now been taken into account. So we do expect over the next couple of months and probably latest by the mid of next year that you will start seeing stabilized margins where we said right from the beginning when we did the acquisition that this acquisition will be margin- accretive, and we do expect that that continues. Now, for the specific numbers on the margin in terms of what happened in this quarter or in this half year, maybe Daniel, you can give a little bit of more insight.
Happy to do so, and Jonas, thanks for raising the question. We also observe very intensively the margin development, and there's something Sunil already alluded to. We have seen that the one-time integration costs are coming to an end, so the integration is well on track, and it's actually now fading out. Everything there is well on track. We have seen a margin development into the direction of an upper single- digit, as I had mentioned in my part when talking about the financials. This is also in line with our goals when we signed the acquisition and when we closed the deal 1st of March last year. Stringent cost execution and the same parameters like we have for Siemens Limited are also valid for C&S, meaning driving profitable growth.
So this is the same strategic imperative that we have outlined for Siemens Limited is also valid for C&S. Insofar as profitability, as you observed, is in the right direction like for Siemens Limited.
Okay. Thanks, Jonas, for your question. We'll move on to the next question from Anurag Jain.
Yeah, Anurag, we can hear you. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. Just one question and slightly on the micro bit. So our order inflows have been very good. And generally, what happens is that when cycle comes in, we find that payment terms become more favorable, pricing gets better, working capital comes down, cash flows improve, advances, there are more advances involved. Are we at that stage yet in your sense, or there's still some time to reach there, or your thoughts on those?
So to put it simply, we are not at the stage of Nirvana yet. Okay? We see very clearly a growth of volumes. We see a clear direction on government spending and private spending. We see clear intent and tenders coming out from the government. We see very clear tenders coming out on the private side. We see an uptick in digitalization, etc., etc. Now, that does not mean that competition does not continue to be tough. That does not mean that supply chain challenges and logistic cost increases, commodity price increases are not having an impact both on our customers as well as on our competition as it is happening on us. And therefore, I would not go to the extent to say that payment terms are comfortable. There are very tough discussions around payment terms. There are very tough discussions around commercial conditions.
So the market continues to be competitive, highly competitive, highly price-sensitive. What has improved substantially has been demand, but the customers continue to be as demanding as before, maybe a little bit more demanding because they are being hit by all the same challenges that we are being impacted by as well.
Got that. Just to follow up on this, does it follow that first demand goes up and then eventually this follows the direction that I've been asking about? So do you see that happening sometime in the future, or?
I think it is wishful thinking. In simple terms, I think it is wishful thinking. Demand going up is not necessarily linked to the fact that there will be free flow of funds, that there will be a lightening of margins and lightening of cash into the system. I think the challenges will continue. Resource constraints will continue for our customers. Competition will increase. The volatility in the global environment and the local environment will become much more apparent, and we are going to have to deal with a lot of issues. What we have not yet seen, to be honest, is the impact of any future escalation in the U.S.-China trade war. We don't know what that's going to have as an impact. So there could be a whole lot of global cues yet.
We don't know what the impacts are going to be of the Fed's increasing their rates in the U.S., etc., etc. So to be honest, right now, VUCA has taken a completely new meaning, and I don't think I can be presumptuous in saying that I see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of Nirvana state.
Got that. Got that. Yeah, I understand a lot of dark clouds, maybe not on the horizon, but right overhead. But thank you so much. Thank you so much for this.
Thank you, Anurag. Bhavin, you can ask a few questions, please.
Good set of orders. Three questions.
We can hear you.
Thank you so much. Three questions. One, on the corporate structure, we have seen globally acquisitions of the Gamesa piece into the Siemens Energy. How does this impact Siemens India? And on a longer-term basis, as Siemens Energy separately listed, how do you see the corporate structure of India? That's question one. Question two is on the recent announcement of sale of Large Drives business, specifically on the valuations bit, which is at EV to sales of about 1x , and whereas Siemens India is trading at about 5.5x EV sales. If you could just help us understand the valuations. Last bit is on the Digital Industries piece margins.
You did highlight what drove the margins, but if you could just explain the services part as the installed base increases, what is the role of that in the increased margins, and what do you see the sustainable levels going ahead?
Okay. So let me try and take those questions. So the first one on the corporate structure. Look, Gamesa is a separate company. Siemens Gamesa is a separate company in India. They are a full subsidiary of the parent company. We have nothing to do with Siemens Energy at a global level. And therefore, right now, we don't know what the plans are. We have nothing to do with Siemens AG at a global level. As you know, Siemens Energy is a 25% shareholder in Siemens Limited. That is the only extent of Siemens Energy's involvement in Siemens Limited right now. What the future plans of Siemens Energy in India are, we don't know. Right now, we have none. When we have something, when we plan something, we'll take it to our board and then, of course, let you know about it.
On the Large Drives business, look, Large Drives business is what? Under 3% of our total volume. You can't apply a Siemens Limited multiple to a business that is less than 3% of Siemens. And as a result of that, it would be unfair. The valuations have been done by an external valuation company. They have been done fairly. They have been reviewed by the audit committee in detail, taking into account the fact that they are a related party. But please don't apply the same standard for a business that is less than 3% of the business here or 3.4% of the business and only 2% of the operating profit, right? Only 2% of the operating profit. Please don't apply that yardstick to the businesses. These are small portfolio adjustments that we have.
As we said, we're also looking at M&A transactions, and as we take out some, we may bring in some. These are going to be small portfolio changes that we will be doing. On the DI business, I've explained in detail how the margins are moving. The services content, in other words, digital business will be picking up, but also the regular services content where we do go in and do integrated plant management of our industrial businesses and of our customers there. That is something that is gaining greater attraction. So all that will, of course, play into the margin development as we see and as I mentioned earlier for DI.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Bhavin. We'll move on to the next question from Parikshit Khandpal, please. Parikshit, please go ahead. We can't hear you. Parikshit, can you check your audio, please? We are unable to hear you.
Hello. Can you hear me now?
Yes, we can.
Okay. Congratulations on a commendable performance in a tough environment. My first question is, you did give your views on the CapEx. What I could understand is that a large part of it also pertains to greenfield CapEx like WHR, then efficiency improvement, automation. So largely related to building on existing plant or infra. If you can also give us some insights into greenfield CapEx, how do you see the green shoots there? Are you really seeing that China Plus One playing out and the manufacturing picking up, and how do we stand to gain there?
Yeah. So yes, I have spoken a lot about brownfield, but a lot of greenfield is also happening. Data centers is a big one. And I'll split this into private as well as government. Data centers is a big CapEx that is happening. Greenfield, infra logistics, warehousing, all that is greenfield. A lot of that happening. There have been major announcements, and plans are in place. We are already in discussion with customers around the semiconductor construction, around battery infrastructure, around e-mobility, etc., where we can do quite a lot for our customers. So concrete plans are already in place by customers there, and we are in discussion. So these are not just on the PowerPoint slides, but they are actually concretized, and we are in various stages of discussions with customers there. On the government CapEx, of course, a lot is picked up, particularly in the area of railways.
I spoke at length about the opportunities over there. The railways definitely are doing a substantial amount. Utilities and transmission business in particular, TBCB ordering is happening. It did get pushed out a little bit, but it is picking up. Tendering is starting. How much of it will happen in this Siemens financial year? In other words, within September, and we can book some orders in September, or whether some of it will get slipped into the next Siemens financial year, we will have to see. TBCB ordering is beginning to pick up in some states at least. Metro ordering is also picking up. There are a lot of electrification areas that are happening there. New metros are also coming in. Airports, ports, a lot of greenfield coming up there. Let me put it this way.
I think I am very upbeat on the CapEx spending as we speak today. As we speak today, and based on what I've seen in the last six months, and based on my visibility for the next six months, of course, under the rider that I just mentioned to Renu, in terms of interest rate and inflation over there, we will need to see, but as I see it today, we are on a good growth curve, both on brownfield as well as greenfield.
Okay. Great. So my second question is on the PPP on the metro side. And if the new green Capex moves on the PPP side, because government has limited finances, especially on the government projects I'm talking about, so how are you well placed to capture that? Are we looking to invest, co-invest in equity, or will we be largely limited to just EPC or product side of it? So if you can just touch upon that.
Our first investment in the metro has already been done at Siemens Global, where we have a 26% share in the special purpose company that has been created for the Pune-Hinjewadi project. We will be active everywhere, as Siemens Global and as Siemens in India as well. We will be active in the area of metros and Mobility in general, as I outlined to Renu earlier. And this could involve equity. It will involve products. It could involve EPC. We will have to strike that balance on utilization of financial resources globally as well as locally. We will have to strike that balance of project versus product. But keeping all those parameters in mind, we will definitely be present in the metro market much more than what we have been in the past.
So how much was the equity investment done by the Siemens India in the PPP project for the 26% stake?
No. So Siemens India had no equity participation in the PPP of Pune-Hinjewadi. This was done by Siemens Project Ventures globally into the project.
But in future, so my question was, will Siemens India directly invest in equity? Will you start taking equity exposures in such big infrastructure projects?
We will look at it case-by-case. I can't give you a blanket answer. Even in the case of Pune-Hinjewadi, there was a discussion whether we should do it or the global should do it. We will look at it on a case-by-case basis. The challenge that we have, of course, is particularly when you go in as an equity partner and you want to participate in the same project as an EPC partner, is there a conflict of interest somewhere or the other? So those are parameters we'll have to look at. Then the conditions, we'll have to look at the regulatory environment. We'll have to look at the financial business models. I think it is fair to say that we have the advantage of the complete backing of the parent. We also have the advantage of being cash-positive and cash-heavy here in Siemens Limited.
Investments from Siemens Limited are not a restriction. We will look at every case on a case-by-case basis.
Okay. Just the last question, sir, if I may. On the supply-demand, so if demand is, say, at a level of 100, so because of the friction- like supply chain issues, semiconductor issues, logistic issues, so what could be the feed-in on the supply side we are able to right now cater to? So how efficiently are we able to service this demand? So is it at 80%, 70%, 75%, or 80%? So if you can give some number, give us sense directionally.
Yeah. I can't give you a percentage like that because it doesn't make sense to do it. And it varies from product to product. It varies from factory to factory. It varies on whether I am exporting or importing, etc. So it would be not serious for me to give you a number because there's not much you could do out of that. And frankly, I don't have that number because it varies, as I said, from product to product.
Thank you, Parikshit.
Okay. Okay. Sure, ma'am. Sure. Thank you. Those are my questions.
Next question from Aditya Mongia, please. Aditya, please do ask your question. Aditya, please go ahead and ask your question.
Sure. I'll go ahead with my question. Thank you for the opportunity. My focus was more on sustainability as a business line for Siemens. And I understand that they are inside all three parts of utilities, the industrial side, as well as commercial buildings. What I wanted to gauge a sense from you, from the team, is that of these three buckets, which is the segment wherein you are seeing the most traction? And sustainability as a business line, how big can it become as a share of overall business over time? Thank you.
Which three buckets are you talking about in particular, Aditya?
Utilities would be one side of it, which is renewables, and then there is the industrial side, which is waste heat recovery, and then the commercial building side, which is energy management.
Yeah. And frankly, it goes beyond that as well. It goes into the factory as well. So look, at utilities, the moment you bring in FACTS solutions, STATCOM solutions, the moment you bring in control centers, grid control centers, smart grid solutions, Smart Metering solutions, you've got a huge open environment over there. You've got a huge environment in terms of the DISCOMs. Not only the private ones. Look at the opportunities in terms of sustainability, in terms of energy saving, in increasing the efficiencies in the DISCOMs. Now, if I look at the generation side and you're looking at, yes, waste heat recovery is one of them, but there are a whole lot of other solutions as well. There is flexible ramp-up of existing power plants. This is something where we are able to adjust through digitalization solutions.
We are able to adjust that power plants, even if they are coal-fired power plants, can ramp up and ramp down much faster using much less fuel. Another major decarbonization initiative so there's a lot that is there on the energy side. If I look at the building side, I've already spoken about demand flow solutions where we are able to bring in major energy savings in commercial buildings. We haven't even started looking at residential buildings yet. The opportunity there is huge. When you start looking at industrial operations, data centers use the highest amount of energy. We can bring in substantial energy-saving solutions over there. We can look at intralogistics and warehousing. These are all areas that use a huge amount of energy. We are talking about green steel now.
There is a huge move, as you know, of green steel, where steel companies are having to go in for energy and sustainable solutions there. We can come in with a whole lot of solutions there through the entire value chain. And we are already talking to customers there. I haven't even started talking about e-mobility and the entire opportunities that are there in the area of charging stations and so on. So we are looking at wastewater management. We are looking at water management. Can we improve water distribution in cities for our customers, for industrial areas as well? So the entire management of utilities in gas, electricity, fuel, water in factories, in buildings, in commercial complexes, in government complexes, a huge amount of energy-saving solutions that we can do there.
We have got in our Kalwa factory, for example, we have started with a central command and control center there, started monitoring utility services not only within India, in our factories and our offices within India. We've also started the first pilots of monitoring utilities outside India, in our operations outside India. Opens up a huge new area of sustainable offerings where if we can multiply that for our customers who have got multiple needs across their offices and factories through central command and control centers, we will be looking at solutions where either we can do it, we offer it as a service, or we can provide the customer cloud-based solutions, or we can put on-site solutions over there. So the range of offerings, and I haven't started talking about down the supply chain as well.
So the entire value chain where we can offer all these sustainable solutions, the potential for that is huge. And we will be looking at using this as a major lever for growth in the future as well.
Thank you, Aditya. We'll move on to the next question. We are over time, but we'll take the last couple of questions. Amit Mahawar, if you could limit your questions, if possible, to one so that we can fit in other colleagues as well. Amit, please go ahead. Amit, can you hear us? Amit, would you like to try one last time? Else we'll move on to the next question. Okay. Gopal, would you like to ask your question, please?
Can you hear me?
Yes, Gopal. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the opportunity, sir. So I remember a few years back, Siemens was very skeptical in terms of making projects, and we were looking more for product supplies and all. And I think the things are changing now. And if I see the risks are still there in terms of payment delays, execution delays, raw material cost, and everything. So what has changed is this is the only way we can fit in our product supplies. That is the reason we are changing our stance there. Or on ground, things have changed some.
We are not changing our stance. We never got out of projects. We always had a healthy mix of projects and product business. We tightened over the years. We tightened our project management processes. A lot of the projects that we had acquired eight to 10 years ago were projects that did not have the right level of margins. We needed to improve our own project implementation, skills, etc. And as you see, over the last seven or eight years, we have been pretty robust in managing the risks. We've been pretty robust in managing our funding requirements there and our working capital over there. But we have not really ever given up our project business completely. We've had a couple. We had the large Pugalur- Kerala HVDC project, which was a huge project that we closed last year very effectively.
With that in particular, I think it demonstrates that we have never really shied away from projects. It is also true, and please don't forget that pre-COVID, be it 2017, 2018, 2019, the number of projects in the market had actually come down. Large projects in the market had actually come down. The GDP growth in the year March 2019 was 4.2%. It had slid down. The number of projects on the horizon were fewer. Therefore, automatically, the number of projects that we got also went down. I don't think it is fair to say that we have changed our stance. Our stance remains the same. Our commitment to profitable growth remains the same. I've made a clear statement that our profitability targets are not getting diluted. We will continue on that path.
Sure, sir. Thanks. Yeah.
Thank you, Gopal. We'll take the last two questions. Next one is from Manish Goyal. Manish, if you could try and limit to one question, please. Manish, please go ahead.
Can you hear me?
Yes, Manish. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Sir, I would like to know on the power distribution side with the government's revamp scheme being introduced, how do we see ourselves participating? Are we probably going to bid for the project as a developer, or we probably continue to provide solutions? That is number one. And my second question on the small turbines business, how are we seeing the growth? And with the entry into waste heat recovery, how do you see market opportunities for? Thank you.
So one clear statement: we will not become, we will not move towards being a developer on transmission and distribution. Most definitely not. That is not our business. Our prime business is selling our products and solutions, and we will concentrate on that. The R-APDRP program, and of course, there's this new revamp program in terms of the funding that has been provided. We have not seen substantial, let's say, improvement at the government discom side. Coming out of that, and as a result of that, not substantial ordering in terms of revamping the DISCOMs, the government-based DISCOMs. What we have seen, however, as I mentioned in my presentation, is private DISCOMs have definitely started revamping and will continue. So the straight answer is we will continue to be product and solution providers.
We will choose when to become a solution provider and when to stay only with our products as far as the distribution business is concerned. On the generation part, look, new capacities are obviously not coming up in conventional power plants. There is cogen. So there are industrial capacities happening. A lot of them are not in the greenfield, let me put it that way. They are more in the area of decarbonizing existing capacities. That's why waste heat recovery, but also solutions of bringing in greater efficiencies and decarbonization in the existing generations of industrial plants, chemical plants, fertilizer plants, etc., are coming in. And so we are participating in that. Will it be a huge growth area? I do not think so, but it will be an area that will grow, but I don't think it will be a substantially large growth area.
It will contribute to our growth, but not be the major growth driver.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you, Manish. We'll take the last question from Jason. Jason Soans. Jason, please go ahead and ask your question, please.
Yes, sir. So yeah. Hello. Am I audible?
Yes.
Sure, sir. So one final question from my side. I just wanted to know, last time on the last analyst meet, you did speak about the portion in the Smart Metering, the medium- voltage or the high- voltage solutions as DISCOMs move towards more efficiency. But clearly, on ground, the progress towards this generally has been quite slow. So just wanted to know in terms of actual progress on the ground level, how this is panning out.
Yes, you're right. There hasn't been substantial growth in the Smart Metering area the way that it could be and should be. So it is slow. Our meter data management systems, we continue. We are market leaders in that, and we continue to supply those. But yes, there is potential for growth in the Smart Metering or for an increase in or an uptick in growth in the Smart Metering business.
Sure, sir. And just one last question, if I can squeeze in. Just wanted to know your demand outlook in terms of demand outlook for captive power plants and smart grids. How do you look at demand outlook from both these segments?
So I see a very strong outlook on smart grids, definitely. We haven't started, as I mentioned earlier, on all the government-based DISCOMs, and they will need to come in with smart grid solutions at some point in time as well. So there is a huge opportunity over there. In terms of what was the other one that you wanted to know about?
Captive power plants.
Captive power plants, I don't believe there will be a major substantial increase in greenfield captive power plants. One or the other or a couple here or there, but I don't think there will be a substantial increase in greenfield captive power plants. More optimizing brownfield plants and decarbonizing them.
Sure. Thank you so much, sir.
Thank you, Jason. With this, we've come to an end of our analyst meet for H1. Thank you so much all for participating. As always, as in practice, we will be uploading the presentation onto our website and the transcript early next week. Thank you all. Stay safe. Take care. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. Thank you.