Okay, welcome, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Sona Comstar Q2 FY 2024 earnings group conference call. Please note all participant lines are in the listen-only mode as of now. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Please note that this call is being recorded. We request that you place your lines on mute except when asking a question. Some of the statements by the management team in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature, and we request you to refer to the disclaimer in the earnings presentation for further details. The management will also not be taking any specific customer-related questions or confirm or deny any customer names or relationships due to confidentiality reasons. Please refrain from naming any customer in your questions, please. Now I'll hand over the floor to Mr. Kapil Singh, Head of Consumer and Digital Commerce Research, India, and Lead Autos Analyst at Nomura. Kapil, please go ahead. Thank you very much.
Good day, everyone. To take us through the Q2 FY 2024 results and to answer your questions, we have the management team of Sona Comstar. Mr. Vivek Vikram Singh, MD and CEO, Mr. Kiran Deshmukh, Group CTO, Mr. Sat Mohan Gupta, CEO, Motor Business, Mr. Vikram Varma, CEO, Driveline Business, Mr. Rohit Nanda, Group CFO, Mr. Amit Mishra, Head, Investor Relations, and Mr. Prateek Sachan, DGM, Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. I will now hand over the call to Vivek for his opening remarks and presentation. Over to you, Vivek.
Thank you, Kapil, and welcome everyone to the earnings call of what has once again been our highest ever quarterly revenue, EBITDA, and net profit. But before discussing our results further, I wanted to share an important strategic update. We've made a significant change to our vision statement, and this expanded ambition will now start reflecting in all our decisions going forward. This begins with our product and technology roadmap. So our vision is to become one of the world's most respected and valuable mobility technology companies for our customers, employees, and shareholders. We believe mobility is a higher level of abstraction, which includes not just automotive, which is where we mostly play today, but all vehicles or devices that help transport humans and goods from one point to another.
This expanded scope and expanded ambit demonstrates our growing ambitions and desire to use our technical prowess in either product or application adjacency. I will encourage all of you to look at our product slides, which are in the appendix of this presentation. That should give you a detailed mapping of our products across automotive and non-automotive segments as it stands today, and hopefully, we can keep adding to this mapping as we move along. As I mentioned, in line with this changed vision, we have completely revamped and redone our product and technology roadmap.
This has taken months of effort, and what we have tried to do is, in addition to the electrification mega trend that we've been addressing for a bit, we are now developing products and thought processes to capture opportunities in the other three areas of the EPIC future as well, which is personalized, intelligent, and connected. We further added products that we intend to develop for the wider mobility landscape beyond automotive. This is easily the most extensive, and elaborate product portfolio rejig we have ever done in the history of our company. We've added seven new products to our roadmap this time, two each in the driveline business and the motor business, and three in the newly acquired sensors business. We've also transformed how we represent our roadmap. So this diagram, I think, mirrors the reality of our product journey so far.
Each product tree begins with one initial legacy product, which serves as the root for each of these business verticals. That's where we began. And from that root have emerged live and evolving linear branches, which show how by organically moving only one logical step at a time, we have branched out into creating so many new products. This also has helped us add optionality to create many more products, because the product tree can keep branching forward or sideways at every node point. And this creates ever more possibilities and opportunities for us as a product-driven engineering company. This truly is the power of compounding, of technology and knowledge, and innumerable iteration network. Now I'll invite our Group CTO, Mr. Deshmukh, to explain these changes and better than I could, and also the seven new exciting products that we have added in more detail. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Vivek, and a great day to all of you.
Since this is the first time we are sharing the technology roadmaps, new format, let me explain its structure to you. As you would have noticed, we have revamped the roadmap that depicts the EPIC revolution's four zones. The zones overlap, so although we have shown the electric mobility in blue color, there are no fixed lines between the zones. The boundaries between them are indistinct and blurred. Let me begin with the driveline division and its legacy product, the Net Form Differential Bevel Gears. Several years ago, we moved up the value chain and developed the differential sub-assembly for our off-highway customers. Recognizing the unique strength of our forming technology and design capabilities, we developed the final drive differential assembly for electric passenger vehicles and began supplying them in 2018.
This new product opened up new opportunities for us in the EV space, and we developed three cutting-edge products: the Spool Gear, the Electronic Differential Lock, and the epicyclic Gear Train. We also moved further up the value chain from the final drive assembly and developed the intermediate gear and the Rotor Shaft. While the former branch shows how we went up the value chain in the drive train of the electric vehicles, another branch evolved from the straight bevel gears on the back of our technology, consolidating our knowledge and competencies in net forming straight bevel gears, our R&D developed Spiral Bevel Gears by extending those capabilities. Let me now move to the motor division's legacy product, the Starter Motor. This product knowledge and the manufacturing know-how of the Starter Motor led us to develop the drive motor for electric vehicles.
The first drive motor we developed was a hub wheel motor for electric two-wheelers. We then developed, mid-mount drive motor and low voltage inverter for high power two-wheelers and three-wheelers. We, after that, leveraged the strengths of the driveline and the motor divisions and developed the E-Axle for three-wheelers. The competencies that helped us develop the drive motor and the inverter that controls the motor, led us to develop a product for intelligent and personalized mobility, an integrated motor controller for active suspension. This should explain how the evaluation of new branches from a node of the tree has helped us create more unique, groundbreaking products for the market. All the products depicted in this chart, which are in blue-colored circles, are the products that are commercialized.
These are tested and validated products, most of which are being supplied in series production, and some we will begin delivering soon, for which there are commercial purchase orders. The product roadmap tree is further extended to include our future products, shown in white circles. These products are under development in our R&D centers in Gurgaon and Chennai. In the earlier technology roadmap, we used to show them in a white semicircle. You can see the logic of the new way of showing the roadmap. The chart clearly shows how the new products are related to the products we are already making, and how they contribute to the EPIC revolution. This quarter, we are adding seven new products to our roadmap. The manufacturers of electric vehicles are always looking for ways of reducing the vehicle weight to extend the vehicle's range.
We are developing a lightweight differential with fewer parts and special alloys that are lighter in weight without compromising performance and durability. Our R&D engineers in the motor division are busy developing a compact, cost-effective inverter that is integrated with the motor, which takes less space and is easy to assemble on the vehicle. These efforts aim to make products that bring customers higher value and added convenience. In alignment with our new vision, focused on mobility in general, and not just auto, we are developing drive motors for non-automotive mobility solutions such as AGVs, bots, marine, et cetera. Taking our gear geometry and manufacturing competencies to the next level, we are developing very accurate, exceptionally precise, and highly efficient non-involute gears for industrial robots. These efforts will help us enter the burgeoning non-automotive mobility sector.
As you know, we have added the third business vertical, the sensors and software division. Our core technology here is radar sensing and perception. Our competencies include semiconductor chip design, radar sensor design, signal processing, perception, and sensor fusion software. Our radar technology detects life presence, child presence, and seat occupancy through vital signs such as heart rate and respiration sensing. This technology will also be used for other applications, such as optimized deployment of airbags, driver monitoring, and gesture control human-machine interface. The technology, when applied outside a vehicle, can carry out low-speed ADAS functions, such as autonomous parking, 360-degree short-range awareness, and pedestrian and bicycle detection. The core technology of radar sensing and perception also has other non-automotive use cases. It can detect motion and presence for home, office, and factory automation.
It can monitor the safety of workers around moving automatic equipment, such as robots, and can help avoid collision while providing guiding functions for autonomous industrial vehicles. The new restructured technology roadmap reflects our efforts in addressing the mega trends of EPIC, leveraging the competencies built by us over the years. We will now use this framework to decide our way forward and communicate our intentions. With that, I will hand over back to Vivek.
Thank you, sir. Masterful, as always. Now back to the usual format of reporting our numbers. This has, as I mentioned at the start, been our highest ever quarterly revenue, EBITDA, and most importantly, net profit. On a YOY basis, our revenue grew by 20%, while EBITDA grew by 35%, and net profit increased by 34%. Margins have improved due to mostly product mix and also a little bit of operating leverage. BEV revenue grew by a solid 58% to an all-time high of INR 207 crores, and BEV revenue share was at 27%. For H1, we continue to perform well on all three financial indicators: growth, margins, and returns. Our revenue, EBITDA, and PAT are up by 22%, 38%, and 40%, respectively.
Interestingly, our net profit in the first half of FY 2024 is higher than the full year of FY 2021. We've achieved this in the last two and a half years of being publicly listed, despite COVID, chip shortages, extreme inflation, high interest rate, geopolitical conflicts and, well, more things than one could imagine. While this may be surprising for some of you who've not been following us that closely, we have more than doubled our revenues every three years since FY 2016. So FY 2019 over 2016, 2020 over 2017, 2021 over 2018, and so forth. This, this resolute performance, despite any external events, is because of our tremendous, tremendous team. I'm the face of it, but it's the team that is behind us that helps us do this.
If another thing I would add is the unrelenting focus on technology and innovation and on what is next, what will we be solving for 3 years later, we try and do today. I think that, that mindset is the reason for this. On to our biggest strategic priority, electrification. Our BEV revenue continues to grow, and we continue to build on our EV order book. In Q2, 2 programs have gone into production, both in the driveline business, so taking our active number of programs to 25, 10 fully ramped up and 15 in the ramping up stage. We've also added 2 new EV programs in this quarter to our order book and 1 new EV customer. One program is from a new North American EV customer and another from an Indian OEM for traction motors for electric three-wheelers.
We will elaborate upon both of these in the next slide. So first, the order we won from a new customer. This is a North American new age OEM of high-end electric cars. We will supply what we are calling rotor-embedded differential sub assemblies for the customer's high-performance electric vehicles. This drivetrain is extremely compact because the differential has been directly integrated inside the rotor of the motor. It is and it was a complex problem statement to solve, but I'm immensely proud of our engineering team for having solved it. The second one is the traction motor program for electric three-wheelers that we have won from one of the largest OEMs in India. They are an existing customer for the driveline business, and we are happy to now have them as customers for our motor business as well.
This program is for their upcoming electric three-wheelers. This win further reaffirms our leadership position in the traction motors in the Indian market. Both these programs, as you can see on your screen, will should begin serial production in FY 2025. Now, this slide is, as always, a good visual summary of the reach and diversity of our electrification mission. This quarter, we added one new customer in North America, while adding one program each in North America and India, taking us to 48 EV programs across 28 unique customers. Which brings us to our order book. With the addition of INR 6 billion worth of new orders at the end of Q2, our net order book has expanded to INR 221 billion, and the EV portion is 78% of that order book.
Our fourth key area is diversification, and this trend of increasing electrification and decreasing ICE dependence continues unchecked. And in the last two years, we've seen the ICE-dependent revenue, frankly, shrink to only about 11%. So graphically, revenue mix largely similar to the last financial year. North America remains our largest end market, contributing 40% to our revenue in H1. The European light vehicle market continues to recover strongly, which has contributed now 23% to our revenue. And India was our fastest growing market last quarter, and its revenue share has increased to 30% in the first half. In the product mix, we've added a new segment, Sensors and Software. We completed in the first week of September, the NOVELIC acquisition, so we expect this segment's revenue share to increase rapidly over the medium term.
The last quarter, if you remember, I've said that traction motors would be our fastest, growing product segment despite the reduction and noise around the FAME subsidy. And I'm happy to report that, revenue share from traction motors for electric two and three wheelers has doubled from 2.5% in Q1 to 5% in H1, which means Q2 was obviously very, very good. New programs have started and are ramping up, which was always going to be the case, and it has now started coming in. Those of you, again, who've been following us, this at the time of our IPO was 0%.
One thing I wanted to add before I hand over to Rohit is integrity is our first and primary core value, and as some of you may have noticed, we always share even the smallest bit of negative news and risks upfront. We did that for the FAME subsidy impact last quarter. We did that with the UAW strike impact announcement we made last month. What we would urge and request is that these announcements are received in the same spirit that they are made. Having said that, I turn this to our Group CFO, Mr. Rohit Nanda, to update us on our financials. So over to you, Rohit.
Thank you, Vivek. A very good day to you all. It's my pleasure to share our second quarter and first half results with you. Second quarter was our best quarter yet as we clocked our highest ever revenue, EBITDA and PAT at INR 791 crores, INR 223 crores and INR 124 crores, respectively. Our revenue has grown by 20% year-over-year, whereas light vehicle sales in our key markets of North America, India and Europe grew by only 14%. Our BEV revenue grew by 58% to INR 207 crores and was 27% of our total sales. Against revenue growth of 20%, our EBITDA has grown by 35%, mainly on account of better product mix. Our adjusted PAT grew by 39% to INR 128 crores, primarily due to higher EBITDA.
The PAT adjustment here is for exceptional expenses that we've incurred for NOVELIC acquisition. This quarter's consolidated results include NOVELIC financials for one month only, as we completed acquisition of 54% stake in NOVELIC towards the beginning of September. Coming to the first half results, our H1 revenue was INR 1,523 crore, a growth of 22% against 15% growth in the underlying markets of North America, India and Europe. Our BEV revenue grew by 33%, and it now constitutes 27% of total sales in the first half. Against 22% revenue growth, our EBITDA grew by 38% to INR 427 crore, mainly due to better product mix. Our adjusted PAT grew by 44% to INR 242 crore. That's also mainly due to higher EBITDA. The adjustment to PAT here also is related to exceptional expenses that we've incurred for NOVELIC acquisition.
Moving on to our cash flows for the first half. During this period, we've generated INR 300 crores of cash from operations, out of which we spent INR 141 crores for CapEx, and therefore our free cash flow generation for this period was nearly INR 160 crores. The other large cash outflows during this period were primarily NOVELIC consideration of about INR 210 crores and dividend payment of INR 90 crore. Next one, please. The last slide is on key ratios, and I'll only talk about the notable changes here. The first one pertains to our net debt to EBITDA ratio, which, as you would notice, has turned positive after NOVELIC acquisition related payment, although it continues to be extremely low. Besides this, we've seen an improvement in our return ratios compared to the last year.
With this now, we have come to the end of our Q2 earnings presentation, and I'll now hand the proceedings back to the Nomura team.
Kapil?
Yeah. Hi, Savanur, can we make the announcement for Q&A?
Okay, thank you very much. So investors on the line, we'll now open the floor for the Q&A session. If you wish to raise a question, please either use the Raise Hand function located at the bottom right of the WebEx page. We will unmute your line and prompt you to speak, or you may submit your question via the Q&A chat box, addressing to all panelists. Please be reminded to keep your questions to a maximum of two questions. If you have more questions, please return to the queue later. Thank you. Okay, we do receive a question coming from online. The first question is coming from investor Jinesh. Jinesh, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes, yes.
Yeah. Hi, congrats on great performance. So couple of questions from my side. One is on NOVELIC, given our acquisition is complete, can you give us an update on how business has progressed since we first talked about it, and how their order book has shaped up over last almost nine months since we acquired them? Initially, we talked about it.
Yeah, business is progressing well. I mean, it's been one month since we acquired it. Next quarter, I would say, I know capital markets are not very long-term focused, but one month is too small to give you updates.
Well, listen, what I meant is.
Next quarter, when we completed one full quarter, we will try and integrate that into our how we in our order book and other reporting metrics.
Okay. Okay. Okay. No, I was referring to when we had originally announced about the acquisition, earlier during this calendar year versus now, how it has progressed. Nevertheless, we'll take update next quarter.
Well, even at that point, I doubt we would have shared order book or revenue for.
No, we had, we had not. We had not, and hence, we needed, as we can. But nevertheless, we'll wait for next quarter when next complete quarter is behind us. Secondly, on, the impact of strike of UAW in the US, so, any sense on what percentage of our revenues are impacted by the strike, among the U.S?
So hard to say, because, as you know, this isn't a general strike where all of the customers- are impacted, right? So it's plant by plant, and every day it changes. Like, yesterday, I think two more plants have been struck.
True.
So t rue. I doubt, man, that even Ford or GM can answer this question, as of today, that what it'll be. What it was for the last quarter is already reflected in our numbers.
Right.
Let's see. I doubt that next quarter there will be too much discussion on this. Most likely, this strike should resolve itself by now. We did a little bit of reading, like I'm sure you would have done. The longest strike is 113 days, 78 years ago, and the most recent one is 45 days. We are on day 40 of the strike. So I would say we are closer to the end of the strike than the beginning. When we were at the beginning, we did issue a statement and put it up on the exchange
True.
So that people will be aware. But till now, as you can see in the results, the impact is not very high. Yeah, we would have perhaps been over INR 800 crore. We're not, but that's okay. We can take it. And again, like I said, about the long term versus short term, regardless of what happens, right, even if the strike goes on for another month, there may be some financial hit, but it'll be just for this quarter. It is a very temporary thing to have. I mean, we are not spending that much time as a management team on this.
Got it. Got it. And lastly, with respect to our EBITDA margin trajectory, so, now we have crossed 28%. From current levels, on structural parameters basis, what are the push and pull factors you are looking at from EBITDA margin perspective? Thanks.
Yeah, Jinesh, on that, we will stick with the same answer I have given ever since we went public. We will like to remain in the range of 25%-27% for the medium term. That's our target range. Anything more is great, but that's our target range.
Okay. Okay, got it. Thanks.
Thank you, Jinesh. Okay, next question is coming from Gunjan. Yeah, Gunjan, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my questions. I had two questions. Firstly, on the technology roadmap. Now, these seven products, can you give us some sense on, you know, what are the sort of, you know, ongoing customer engagements as to, you know, how soon these products are, you know, are due for commercialization? I'm just asking this question because a lot of these inherently, I assume, were in works for a while, right? So, is it something that I look from a next three to five-year perspective, or, you know, is it something that can convert within the next 12-18 months? A little bit more color on these seven new products that have been added and where you feel most excited about.
Oh, man! Okay, again, an answer that's not gonna make you happy, but you already know what the answer is. We have no way of actually knowing with certainty that whether they will convert or not also. So probability, as always, is between zero and 100, and timelines could be as soon as the next few quarters to maybe never. And that's, that's one of the things we are always upfront about when we develop new products, that there is no guarantee for success. As you saw, and you would have now, by then you've known us. Two and a half years ago, if you go FY 2021, when we had only three products, DA, starters and differential gears, all other products combined were less than INR 50 crore.
This year, in the first half, 10.5%, as I shared in my presentation, have come, so about INR 160 crore in the first half itself. So if you annualize that, INR 320. INR 50 crore has become INR 320 from other products. But at that point, if you are, and you did ask me at the time of the IPO, and I didn't know, and that's the truth, that we don't really know which one will succeed and by how much and how soon. All we're trying to say, this, this is our impact and this is our intent. And three to five years is safe, yeah, that we will. If it is not developed within, and commercialized within three to five years, we will, much earlier than that, drop it, and we will publicly announce that we are dropping it, and it won't happen.
About excited, that's I'm excited about all of them, frankly, otherwise we won't be doing them. When we do our strategy workshop, about 40, 50 new product areas are discussed by the teams, and they bring them up. My painful, painful job is to say no to many of them. So these are the seven that made it. So these are the seven we are truly excited about. Lightweight differential, if we can reduce the number of parts that go into a differential assembly, can be a game changer, right? I mean, no part is a good part, is what is said, but obviously then auto component guys will go out of business. So less parts is a good part, is what we are trying to do, that instead of having 10, 12 moving parts, can we reduce it a lot more?
That is very exciting. Very excited about, I would say, the integrated motor controller. I think it's an idea that should have been done long ago. I don't know why nobody did it. That, why don't we put motor, inverter, everything into one body and sell it as one product, right? It just makes so much sense from a thermal management, from a space, from lightweighting, everything perspective. Sensors, I think there is a great opportunity in the in-cabin, of course, we have discussed, but in the short-range also. So all three, I would say. Robotics, I would say, is slightly earlier than the other three, because they are more closer to where we are. The other three are slightly further from where we are. I don't know if I helped you at all.
Oh, no, at least giving me these three where you, you know, you, you clearly see a, you know, a big business case from a OEM perspective, that helps. And I'm assuming, you know, you mentioned during the integrated motor controller that, you know, the competitive landscape also here is not, you're not doing a product which is out there, and competition is doing it in a big way. It's relatively niche in, I mean, that's what I understood from your comments.
Correct. That is the thing, that it's a, it's an opportunity that we noticed, and, if we can get it and get it with the customer, that would be good.
Okay. Just the second question is on this, you know, the revenue ramp-up that we've seen in this quarter on the EV, you know, BEVs. Is there little bit color that you can give us in respect of, you know, is it coming from an existing OEM ramp-up or, you know, the new programs that have commissioned in the last two quarters, including this one itself? Like, a bit more color in the execution, have we seen any new large BEV OEM starting to kick in?
Rohit, you want to take this? I think only one traction motor program.
Yeah.
Got ramped up. Apart from that, it's all the same program, same customers.
Correct. It's essentially because of one large program for traction motor that has ramped up during this quarter.
Good.
Q1, Q2, it's a growth of 12.5%, actually, even then.
Okay. Okay. Got it. I, I'll join back the queue. Thank you so much.
So much, everyone. Just a quick reminder to the audience, if you wish to raise a question, please use the Raise Hand function located at the bottom right of the WebEx page. We'll unmute your line and prompt you to speak, or you may submit your question via Q&A chat box, addressing to all panelists. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, the next question is coming from Arvind. Arvind, your lines unmuted. Please go ahead. Hello, Arvind, your lines unmuted. If you have any questions that you would like to raise, please go ahead.
Am I audible, sir?
Yes, Arvind. Is that Arvind? Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi. Hi, good evening, sir, and thank you so much for taking the question. This would be on Equipmake. You have said that product will start sometime in 2025. But is there any detail on any sort of an order or something that you can share on Equipmake?
I didn't get the question at all, actually. But did somebody else?
I am sorry. Can you hear me, sir? Vivek, can you hear me?
Yeah, yeah. I can hear you. You don't have to call me sir, please.
Okay, so Vivek, this is about.
No, no, because I didn't understand.
It's about Equipmake.
Okay.
Yeah. Any details that you can share on any sort of order win, or any clarity on the revenue stream? I know it's still far away, but anything that has happened over the quarter.
So, yeah, sure. So it is a licensing agreement, as you know, and Equipmake has been winning orders. I think, they are a public company, so I have to be also like us, so we have to be careful on what they've disclosed and what not. But, they have disclosed, I think recently, a win, on motors from, a customer, a North American off-highway customer, so that can be found out. But like I said, they have their own investor relations things on their website, details must be there. But on our end, so there are two parts of that agreement that we have signed. One is we manufacturing motors for them, for their production, and we also developing and selling new, in India and Southeast Asia. On that, I think we had given the timeline that by.
It can't be before 2025. Sat, you want to add anything to that?
I mean, it's Equipmake product. I mean, launch is sometime in last quarter, calendar year 2025 or first quarter, calendar year 2026. And right now, as far as the development is concerned, I mean, we are validating the design and the motors to suit the Indian conditions for our customers' expectations. So, I mean, as far as the revenue for us is concerned, it will be in FY 2026.
Got it. Thank you so much for taking my question. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you very much, management and Arvind. Okay, next question is from Hitesh. Sorry, your lines are muted. Please go ahead.
Congratulations on a very good set of results. My first question is housekeeping. I actually just wanted to understand, the other expenses on a Q&Q basis have come off, which has led to this margin expansion on Q&Q basis. So can you explain that? What is the reason? Rohit, if you can give some more color.
Sure. So, Hitesh, like I said, this is primarily because of the product mix. So, you know, there are certain products which we basically, there is an assembly part of the business. So when the, let's say, revenue from the assembling part of the business goes up, then typically the other expenses tend to go down, whereas material costs tend to go up. So it's primarily because of that.
Okay. Any color on the PLI incentives? Have we started to get some color from the government of the PLI? Because some companies have started talking about it, so just want to get some color.
Yeah. So, I mean, in a way, I'll say we are in the queue in the sense we are going through the process that's been outlined by the government, but we'll let you know once we have all the approvals in place. So we have put in application, and as you may know, there is a separate application for each of the products. So it's a slightly long-drawn process. I'll say we are in the queue. Once we have all the approvals in place, we'll inform you guys.
Great.
Hitesh, to add to that, we'll talk about it once it's done, as is our usual practice.
Sure, sure. And my final question is, you know, our team is also globally writing a lot about EV adoption slowing down. I mean, it could be temporarily, because, you know, the prices of battery cost went up, but the production costs are also going up globally. So anything on that front, although you are actually adding more customers and growing much faster, but any color on that, what you're seeing on the EV side?
Fascinating question, actually. Hitesh, this, this is a much longer answer and a very long discussion. And I will draw reference to at least 20 other industries, and we tried to study what happens from single digit to 90%+ when technologies change, and in a 15-year period. And there always comes this point where it seems to stagnate just before it's coming to that, you know, 10%-15% mark, every single time. And most often or more often than not, it gets corrected in the next 18, 24 months, and then it starts its upward journey again. So it is a long discussion. There are lots of factors at play here. Geopolitics is certainly one of them. I mean, the post-COVID geopolitics shifting is one of the reasons this graph is not an uninterrupted straight line at a 45-degree angle, right?
Second is also the new, I would say social dynamics play now, for example, with the UAW, et cetera, and the European unions. So yeah, it, it's, it's interesting times. Longer discussion. We are covered regardless, because we always try and prepare for growth on our own steam, which means industry tailwind shouldn't be your primary factor of growth, and we've succeeded more often than not, again. But yeah, it is a very interesting discussion, and perhaps we'll get some time to have it. It, it is going through this thing because of the battery cell cost not going down. Like if you remember, even in the solar industry, the exact same thing happened, solar panel. They went down almost like a straight line, the cost, and then it kind of straightened for a bit before starting to go down again.
I think here also, the move to a better, cheaper cell technology will be what will make this stasis go away, and again, that acceleration will start. And I think it will happen. And you need a period where it seems everything is against you for this to break out or the breakout invention to happen, and I think it will. Semi-solid state, maybe some other chemistry. Maybe instead of LFP, we pick another one from the first column of the periodic table, because any of those elements could theoretically do the job. So maybe sodium. We don't know. But yeah, it will be interesting to see.
Great. Great. Thanks, Vikram, and all the best.
Thanks, Hitesh.
Thank you. Thank you, Manesh, and thank you, Hitesh. Next question is from Nitish. Nitish, your line is unmuted. Go ahead.
Congratulations on a great quarter. Before I actually get to my question, I just wanted to say that your new differential order win seems quite commendable. That you could fit a high-speed differential inside a moving rotor must be a very interesting engineering challenge. I wanted to ask you a bit on your customer concentration, especially on the EV differential side. What would be the share of your top customer within that? How is that moving? How is that in the order book? And on that same note, you have done very well in North American EV differentials. How do you see the roadmap to replicate that in Europe? Thank you.
So first, thank you. Thank you. Engineer to engineer. Is it as big a... Nitish, I think you'll have to. It's echoing. You'll have to, I guess. So thank you, but congratulations are not to me at all. This is to Vikram and Matthew and Narender and team. These are the guys who've done it. I have not done that much on this. It is a truly, truly, truly amazing drivetrain. And the more you study it, the more you learn, and we learned a lot in this project. I think more than the commercial value of it, what is a real takeaway for us is that our ability to deliver to the most exacting and different standards of leading car makers. That's the confidence, that we are working with the best and doing best things.
Coming to the concentration, I think we've already mentioned this before, that there is no customer who's greater than 20%. In fact, it's slightly less only. And that's just not for EV diff, it is in general. So it's, it's not a risk that is really worrisome. What was the third question, sorry? You said that as to Europe. Yeah. So Europe, we should see fair amount of growth, actually, 25 onwards. We have two good programs launching with two big European OEMs, so we should have more geographic diversity and revenue share also coming in from 25, 26.
Okay, Nitish, does that answer your question, please? Okay, he's muted back. No worries. Moving on to the next question, it's from Garvit. Garvit, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
Good evening to all. Thanks for the opportunity. So just two questions. One is on the Europe side. So based on the discussions that you people are having in with the OEMs in Europe, so how do you see the demand outlook there? Like, India is doing well, last time you mentioned, and we are seeing the numbers also. But what about the sentiments in Europe? And are we seeing any kind of traction in terms of Europe plus one due to the rise in the energy prices there?
So thank you, first of all, Garvit. Europe, our revenue share has increased this quarter. I think we are at 23%, so that shows that Europe's doing fairly well. If you remember last year, it had fallen quite a bit. Even our discussions, and I just mentioned to Nitish, that in 2025, we should see quite a lot of European DA business coming in, so it's decent. Europe plus one, this is the first time I'm hearing this phrase, so I have no idea on this one. Europe used to outsource a lot to China and some of that is shifting elsewhere. And when I say elsewhere, it doesn't necessarily mean it's all coming to India, but it is moving away from China is something we are seeing as a trend.
That's good, sir. And, secondly, you talked about your vision, like we are shifting from a auto mobility technology player to a mobility technology player, as you mentioned. So, can you please put some color, like, where we are going to? Like, we want to be a technology partner or a component supplier to railways or or aero OEMs, like, Boeing, et cetera, or what, what is the exact perspective?
So correctly understood, but why just railways and, you know, aero? Why not drones? Why not boats?
Oh, wow!
Why not marine? Why not boats? So we are saying all of it. So you are right, I'm saying add more. What it means is our ambition. See, you start with a vision, and then from that vision comes all the decisions that you take and all the activities that you would do. If you look at rev, our revenue today, non-automotive, which I'll say is off-highway vehicles, construction equipment farm equipment, et cetera, is 10%. We think there is a lot of scope for that 10% to grow and be much, much more. And there are many devices that may not have been invented yet, frankly, which may be transporting goods and human beings in 2035. By changing our vision and our mindset, we are saying: From now, going forward, all of these industries are also our industry. They are not just a division between us and them, auto versus non-auto. All of mobility is now our scope, rather than being a subset of mobility, which was automotive. That's, that's the point. So your understanding is correct, that it is—could be railway, it could be, aerospace, it could be space, it could be bicycles, anything, anything that moves human beings and/or goods is now, in our scope. That's, that's the point.
Thank you very much, sir, and all the best.
Thank you, Garvit. Actually, I was trying to answer your question on the Q&A chat box, but I couldn't, because it is not allowing me to send the answer. So thank you for asking.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you, both. I believe, Nitish has some follow-up question. Nitish, Nitish, you're live. Go ahead.
Thanks. Sorry, I have a quick follow-up, and I was not able to unmute myself last time, again. But when you are talking about Europe scaling up 2025 and onwards, is there a good part of EV differentials, or what kind of business are you looking in that scale-up?
So, Pratik, can you take us back to the slide which has the visual map of the world and the programs? So, Nitish, if you look at this, we have seven programs with five customers. Five of them are for drive line. The two that are in traction motors are plug-in hybrid motors. So those are already running. So, all the new, for now, in our order book is coming from passenger vehicle, electric diff, differential assembly as a product. So that's the answer.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We have a couple of questions in the chat box. So one is: Can you please give some color on steel prices and its impact on profitability? In the last quarter, you had mentioned that steel prices have come down lately. The prices of steel alloys used in manufacturing and auto components haven't come down. So any color on that?
Sure. So Vikram's closest to that, so I'll allow him to answer.
This is rather stable.
Yeah.
The alloy surcharges keep going up and down. That has also come down. But there is another increase is also expected, so I think this keeps happening every quarter, so it's pretty difficult to tell what is the future order is going to be.
Correct, because the price, let's say, if you talk to steel mill guys, they'll always say, "Yeah, we will, we are expecting a price increase." If you talk to their customers, which are more OEMs, they will say there is no chance of that, because if they're not buying, prices won't go up. And then you have the whole geopolitical angle and China and all of this. So very hard to predict, but so far, for the last six months, they've been fairly stable. Like Vikram rightly said, some of the things like, moly and chrome, and, you know, nickel, they keep going up and down, so the price can go up and down a little bit, but not too much. So reasonably stable.
Sure. There's one more question. Great pickup, great pickup in traction motor business, but if we see the BEV revenue ex traction motors, the revenue has been flattish for the past few quarters.... Is there some seasonality in driveline business or something else we should be aware of?
No, no seasonality that I'm aware of, at least. There shouldn't be, no. And I think a lot of times in these analysis, we overlook factors because we are assuming a very linear world. It isn't really. So last quarter, traction motors were unnaturally depressed, and this quarter they are high because there is also a bit of makeup. So again, quarter is, is not a great. I mean, it's not a big enough time period to do these comparisons, which is one of the reasons we do H1 and compare it with whole year. That would be a better one. But yeah, a driveline revenue and EV not going up too much would be if there is no new program and no new customer that has gone online in that quarter, you should not expect it to also increase too much.
While we have said our BEV revenue year-on-year has grown by 58%, flatness is not a word I would use. I don't know how to answer that. Actually, the problem becomes that we are comparing percentage share or proportionality in a very fast-growing company. So something that looks like even our starter motor business, by the way, which seems like it has shrunk so much, hasn't shrunk. In the last two and a half years in absolute terms, it has gone up. But because the rest of the business is growing so fast, that that growth of 20% looks very low in a business that has doubled. So again, I what I would say to people trying to understand or study our business, and which is something we do internally, write down the absolute numbers and look at them.
Also understand that things that are dependent, and which is most of our growth, new programs, they grow as a step function. So if you guys recall, when we listed, we used to be doing about INR 400 odd crore of revenue per quarter. Then we jumped, we went to about INR 500. From there, we went to INR 600, then we went to INR 700, and now we've finally come close to INR 800. But in the middle, there are two, three quarters following that quarter, which are flat, and it grows again. But if you look at it year-on-year, I would say the growth's been fairly, fairly decent.
Okay. Thank you very much. Okay, let me see. Next question will be a follow-up question from Gunjan. Gunjan, on the line, please go ahead.
Taking my follow-up, I just wanted to quickly check that, you know, this market share which you, you know, which you annually share on differential gear and the starter motor business, is there anything incremental that, you know, that is worth flagging? You know, are we seeing improvement on the diff gear side, given that we were looking at Europe as a market? Anything on the starter motor as well? You know, so just directionally, how we are progressing on the market share gains that we had called, you know, with that we were speaking about?
We should have increased. By how much is a tough question to answer, because we do this exercise once a year, at the end of the calendar. So I'll ask you that question: How many, vehicles sold in, by till thirtieth September in the world? Roughly. So, Gunjan, I'm asking you because I-
Sorry, you are, Sorry. You were asking me how many have been sold in the first half of the year?
First half, nine months have passed, right, in the calendar.
Nine months would be close to about 62-63.6, roughly around 60 million or so.
60 million light vehicles. Let's add some, 2 million of others, make it 63, multiply by five, and I'm doing completely by back of the envelope. That will be 315 million bevel gears is the total world market for the first nine months. Prateek, how many, or Vikram, if he remembers, how many have we produced in the first nine months and sold? That is the market share. I mean, I'm doing a very rough one just for you. But, Prateek, how many? Do you know?
Not exactly, but it may be somewhere around 34-35 million.
Yeah. So yeah, the math then is fairly.
I'm just-
For nine months, no?
0.15 into 25. 3.75 million we are doing every month, into 9 months is 33.75, divided by 5, 6.75. So we are about, if it is 60 million vehicles, then we are nearly 10% of the market.
Yeah, that sounds about right. So yeah, Gunjan-
Yeah, around, roughly around 8, 8.5 or so. Okay. Okay, so it's, it's better than... I mean, on these calculations, it does seem that on diff gear you are gaining.... Okay, and, the other question may be a little, you know, broader one I had was on this, order book of INR 221 billion that we have. Now, you know, there's of course, you have a lot more granularity on this in terms of, you know, how the split of new age, incumbents, what's running programs. So I just wanted to get your perspective on, you know, when we look at the landscape, there's certainly been slower movement on some of the new age companies.
There's all this debate which, you know, Hitesh brought up that, you know, EV adoption seems to be, you know, maybe not slowing down, but it seems it's not accelerating at the pace we anticipated maybe last year. So when you look at this composition, do you see that, you know, the risk, from a conversion perspective, like where you were looking at three years, we should be hitting 60%-65% conversion? That probably gets pushed out purely because, you know, it's more slower move on EVs, and some new age companies seem to be struggling a bit in terms of the offtake in the market.
Yeah, that could be true, but fortunately, the new age EV customers are not that many for us. And even in our traction motor business, you know, most of our revenue comes from legacy, solid balance sheet, solid credential OEMs. Similarly, for driveline also, there aren't that many. The percentage coming from new age EVs is single digits at best, and it's not very high. That is not the risk. Risk would be that, yeah, it could be slow, but I doubt, Gunjan, that the electrification of how many vehicles has happened by 2030 or 2035, that would change. So it could be that, yeah, we go slow in the middle and then suddenly it picks up. So there could be periods like that, but the end result, I doubt, is going to change.
Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
Also just to give comfort to other people, if a lot of the slightly less certain prospects, OEMs in EV, we don't add to our order book. We actually assign them null value till we are certain that they will survive.
Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Gunjan.
Thank you. Thank you, management. Okay, so given, in the interest of time, I pass the line to Kapil now. Kapil, please go ahead. Thank you.
So we have a couple of questions in the chat box. One of them is: Can you recap on dollar CapEx needed for $1 revenue? What has been the trend historically versus the new order book? Basically, trying to get a sense of how much CapEx is required to service the order book you have.
I will let Rohit answer this.
That's been for every $1 of CapEx, we are able to generate $2 of revenue when it comes to driveline business. For motor, the ratio is more like 1:5, 1:6, actually.
The last question in chat box is: Do suppliers near OEMs get bigger advantage? One of the gear suppliers from Taiwan is opening a plant in New Mexico. Do we plan to do any production plant in North America?
That's, it's kind of too specific. As you know, we have made it a policy that we do not talk about others. So others' plans are others' plans. I think it is on the exchange, right? We announced our Mexico subsidiary and investment-
Correct.
A couple of months ago. So, yeah, we are in the process of setting up in Mexico. So that is true, but that's got nothing to do with who else is doing what, et cetera. We, we've tried, I think, for a long time to tell you that our way is fairly organic and driven by us. The race is long, and in the end, we are running against ourselves, and that's who we are trying to beat. Who else is doing what? Yes, we respect all competition, and competition is a fact of life. It's a way of life. It will keep coming, and it will come from very surprising places. So we don't take anyone lightly, but we can't let our locus of control be outside us. We cannot be driven by news and others' movements.
We need to have our own plan, our own direction, our own vision, and we are following that map. The time when it comes that it looks like we are slipping, of course, we will try and course-correct, but so far, I think the results are also speaking that that is the right way.
Vivek, just one last question from my side. Very interesting discussion on product, EV, evolution and penetration. You know, one of the angles there is also that as product undergoes improvement, that also, you know, these cycles come where, you know, some new innovation or product improvement happens, and that also leads to the next wave of adoption. So, because you are seeing a lot of products from your lens, where are the major improvements that you're seeing coming through in the next two, three years, which could help that, you know, consumers are adopting more electric vehicles? And you can talk across segments, across geographies, whatever you are seeing from your lens.
So I think, Hitesh, Gunjan, you, all of you are driving to the same point. I think there is going to be significant innovation in electric vehicles at a much lower cost, and it is the cost. It is actually the price and the cost. Price to the consumer and the cost to produce it. If we go about it, doing it in the old way we were, it will not be feasible, and I think a lot of OEMs have now publicly come and said that that way does not make us money. Retrofitting old vehicles with an electric powertrain is not going to be the way to success here. You have to think from zero, from first principles, and build vehicles that were born to be electric.
I think the drivetrain, powertrain components, even things which were structural and not looked at so far, they are being looked at now, even chassis parts, even parts that how can you make them to make the cost lower and hence price lower? I think within two years there would be a lot more very affordable EVs out there, and this question may not be asked. The big one that is still unanswered, perhaps, and again, all of you know this well, is the battery part. Apart from that, I guarantee all of the others cost will keep going down. I mean, in our own experience, Vikram, right, we've seen this. The same driveline is now 25%-30% lower price and cost to us also to make than it used to be, just in the last four years.
If every supplier, the same thing is happening, so the non-battery parts are going down in cost every time and as economies of scale increase. Unfortunately, for low volume players, these things never have an effect. So why you see the new age guys struggling, it becomes a chicken and egg because they don't have the scale to either invest in mass manufacturing and newer manufacturing processes which are low cost, or with their supply chain partners, work towards much lower cost products. So the bigger guys have gotten bigger in this field, and if somebody else doesn't do those innovative things, the divide will keep increasing, in fact, and that's not great, actually. I know that we benefit in that also, but it's not great for the ecosystem.
For EV to reach 90%+ at 2035, it has to become a mass movement, and every OEM should become good at it. So again, very interesting discussion. My firm belief is that it will become much more affordable, and that kind of thing will be only two and two and half years in the making, and it will come down.
Sure. Thanks. That was the last question. Ronald, can we close the call?
All right. Thank you very much, management, thank you, and all the audience on the line. In the interest of time, we will now conclude this call. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to email your Nomura Sales rep or Corp Access team. Thank you, everyone, for your time, and you may drop off the line now. Thank you, management team.
Thanks, Vivek and team.
Thank you.
For giving us this opportunity to host the call. As is always the case, it was a great discussion. Have a good evening, everyone. Thanks.
Thank you, Kapil. Thanks, all. So yeah, thank you everyone for your valuable time and attention. Please let us know if there's any specific and actionable feedback, and yeah, we ensure you that we'll work on it and try to improve. See you all in the next quarter. Thank you. Bye.
Thank you. Bye.
Thank you. Thank you very much.