Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Sona Comstar Q1 FY 2027 Earnings Group Conference Call. Please note all participants line are in the listen only mode as of now. There will be an opportunity for you to ask question after the presentation concludes. Please note that this call is being recorded. We request that you place your line on mute except when asking question. Some of the statements by 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.
Now I will hand over the floor to the Mr. Kapil Singh, Deputy Head of Research, India and Lead Auto Analyst at Nomura. Kapil, please go ahead. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Sneha. Good evening, everyone. To take us through the Q1 results, we have the whole management team of Sona Comstar. We have Mr. Vivek Vikram Singh, MD and Group CEO; Mr. Vikram Verma, Full-time Director and CEO, Driveline Business; Mr. Sat Mohan Gupta, CEO, Motor Business; Mr. Praveen Rao, Group CTO; Mr. Rohit Nanda, Group CFO; Mr. Amit Mishra, Head, Railway Business; Mr. Ankit Agrawal, Head, Investor Relations; and Pratik Sachan, Head, Strategy and M&A. With this, I'll hand over the call to Vivek for his opening remarks and the presentation.
Thank you, Kapil, and welcome, everyone. Today's call will be a little different from our usual quarterly discussions. I'd like to first spend some time sharing how we are thinking about the next phase of Sona Comstar's journey. Those of you who read my recent letter to shareholders know that FY 2026 was a year that tested us in many ways. But while we were dealing with those challenges, something equally important was happening in the background. We were quietly preparing for our next decade. There's a poem by Edwin Markham that I like. It goes, "When you're the anvil, bear. When you're the hammer, strike." We believe that every company goes through both sorts of phases. There are times when resilience matters the most, and there are times when a company must forge its own future.
Over the last decade, we transformed Sona Comstar from a small automotive components company into a mid-sized global mobility technology company with a diversified product customer portfolio with leadership positions across many categories. It's natural for us to then ask ourselves this question, that what does it take to go from a mid-sized company to a truly large company? Our answer is what we call Sona Comstar 2.0. This is not a change in direction. It is a natural evolution of the strategy that has brought us this far. We began working on this strategy more than two years ago, but we deliberately chose not to talk about it, because we wanted to do something tangible and have something to show before we came to you.
Ambition without substance can easily be mistaken for hubris, we wanted to come to you not with ideas alone, but with actions. Yesterday's announcement of the DENSO JV is one example. Our work in robotics and physical AI is another one, which is perhaps an even bigger move. In other words, Sona Comstar 2.0 is not something we are announcing today. It is the beginning of year two of our next decade's journey. Today, we'd like to share that journey with you. Let me begin by explaining how we've been thinking about the next decade. We did some reflection. I put this in our annual report two years ago. When we look back at our own journey between 2015 and 2025, we noticed something that was both interesting and humbling. Our revenues increased tenfold in that period.
More than 85% of that growth came from just three strategic decisions. We entered new product verticals. We expanded into global markets, particularly the West. We recognized the electrification opportunity early and acted upon it. Reinforces for us an important lesson, that great companies rarely become exceptional because they make hundreds of small, good decisions. They become exceptional because they make a handful of truly transformational decisions and then execute them well. Our ambition over the next decade is simple. We want to build another 10X company. Every decade obviously brings a different set of opportunities. Our job is not to repeat what worked before. It is to build on the capabilities that brought us here while creating new growth platforms for the future. This is why we've broadened our addressable market from automotive to mobility. Our first growth engine remains new product verticals.
It has been our biggest driver of growth over the last decade, we intend to accelerate it through both organic innovation and disciplined acquisitions and partnerships wherever necessary. Our second growth engine is what we call our Look East strategy. Let me first explain what it is not. It is not a shift away from the West. Europe and North America will remain strategically important markets for us. Our ambition in those markets is every bit as strong as it has always been. What is changing is that over the next decade, we intend to build an equally strong presence in the East, not through incremental expansion, like having more sales staff or doing more business development calls, but through carefully chosen strategic moves that strengthen our access to technologies, customers, and markets. Our railway acquisition was one such move.
Our partnership with DENSO is another, and we expect that we'll continue making similar long-term strategic moves over the next decade. Our third growth engine is undoubtedly our boldest yet. Alongside electrification, we are adding another long-term technology theme to the company, robotics and physical AI. We believe this has the potential to become a significant long-term growth platform for us as a company. Now let's begin with the first growth engine, new product verticals. We believe that one of the biggest differences between great manufacturing companies and many good ones is where management chooses to spend their time. Most companies spend most of their energy defending the business that they already have. We have spent ours creating businesses that we did not have. Ever since our IPO, investors have actually often asked me what they believe the market still underestimates about Sona Comstar.
People come to me and say, "What do people not understand fully?" In the last five years, I don't think I've ever fully answered that question. Let me try and answer it today. First, it's our ability to consistently create entirely new products and businesses through our own engineering and R&D. Today, more than 35% of our revenue comes from products that simply did not exist in our portfolio seven years ago. 19 of those products were conceived, designed, industrialized, and scaled entirely through our own R&D, funded from our own cash flows. If I annualize our Q1, together these new products represented INR 1,800 crore revenue business, generating over INR 230 crore of annual profit. If this were a standalone company, this would be one of the biggest innovation success stories of India. That's literally the equivalent of creating a multi-unicorn from scratch in just seven years.
This is the power of building new businesses from within. Organic innovation is only one part of the story. The second capability, which is probably not understood, is disciplined capital allocation. Just because we are good engineers doesn't mean we can't also be thoughtful investors. Over the last seven years, we've invested around INR 2,750 crore across the acquisitions of Comstar, Novelic, and the Railway Business. Today, at the end of Q1, these three businesses contribute roughly 40% of our revenue. If we assume comparable margins, they contribute INR 270 crore of net annual profit. This is despite the Railway Business being in its first year of post-acquisition integration. All of you are very good at math, you can do the math of how good or how return accretive these acquisitions have been.
The point is, whether we build or we buy, the objective is exactly the same: to create capabilities that compound over decades. When we believe we can build something better, we build it. When we believe someone else has already built an exceptional capability, we try and acquire it. Sona Comstar 2.0 means that we intend to become even more ambitious and double down on both of these fronts. This brings me to the second pillar of our eastward expansion strategy. Yesterday, we announced what I believe is the most important strategic partnership in Sona Comstar's history, our partnership with DENSO. Not because it's a joint venture, although this is our first joint venture in my time period here, because of what it enables us to become. Over the years, we've built one of India's broadest portfolio of electric powertrain products. There was one big gap.
All of you know it. We did not participate at all in high voltage electric, as well as hybrid powertrain systems for passenger and commercial vehicles. This partnership fills that gap. More importantly, it completes our entire electrification portfolio. Today, we have a leadership position in two and three-wheelers in India, and through this partnership, we should hopefully add more customers to the two and three-wheeler JV and extend our leadership position to one of dominance. Through JV2, we will have the opportunity to build a meaningful presence across the entire electric and hybrid powertrain spectrum across every vehicle category. That opportunity is far, far more substantial in revenue potential terms.
If we go by S&P Global Mobility, Indian hybrid and EV car and commercial vehicle market alone represents an addressable market of over 2.3 million vehicles, which would roughly amount to about a 24,000 crore opportunity in 2030 itself. If you go to 2035, it will be many times this. This is even before we consider our longer-term global ambitions. India is where we will begin, but just like we've done with driveline and motor business, our ambition is always ultimately global. The actual question that some of you may have had is, why DENSO? I think an even more interesting question is, why Sona Comstar? DENSO is the world's second-largest mobility technology company. It has no shortage of potential partners across the globe. I believe they saw in Sona Comstar what we have been building over the last decade.
A company with strong engineering capabilities, proven frugal execution, and technologies that complement their own. With their strength in hybrid and our strength in electric, I think it makes for a fairly killer combo. It is a strategic partnership between two technology companies, where each brings distinctive strengths to the table, and together we can build something that neither company could have built as effectively on their own. That, in our view, is the hallmark of a successful long-term partnership. To get into the weeds, the partnership consists of two joint ventures. The first will focus on high voltage electric and hybrid powertrain systems for four-plus wheel vehicles, so all passenger and commercial vehicle applications, in short. In this JV, DENSO will hold the majority stake, contribute the relevant technology and intellectual property, and lead the business from a management perspective.
The second joint venture will focus on two and three-wheelers, where Sona Comstar has already established a strong technology position. Here we will retain majority ownership and management control while licensing our own technology into the joint venture. Let me also clarify, because we got some calls, that our suspension motor business, together with all our other non-traction motor businesses, remain completely outside the scope of this transaction, which only concerns itself with the traction part of the business. Let me come to what I personally find one of the most satisfying aspects of this partnership, the royalty structure. The ultimate validation of any technology is quite simple. Technology has value when someone else is willing to pay to use it. In this partnership, the royalty arrangements are equal and reciprocal in both.
JV2 will pay royalties to DENSO for its high voltage technologies, while JV1 will pay royalties to Sona Comstar for our two and three-wheeler technologies. It tells you that this is not a partnership where one company brings technology and the other brings manufacturing. Both companies bring technology, both companies contribute intellectual property, both companies contribute engineering expertise, and both companies strengthen each other. I believe that mutual respect is what makes partnerships successful. If I may end on a lighter note, I suspect we may be the first Indian automotive company to receive royalty income from one of the global mobility technology companies. That is certainly something, as an Indian, everybody could be proud of. Moving on. A new addition to the third growth engine is robotics and physical AI.
I want to spend a couple of minutes on explaining why we believe this is such an important opportunity. Every few decades, a technology comes along that fundamentally changes almost every aspect of human endeavor. Economists call these general purpose technologies. Fire was the first, the wheel was another one, and more recently, electricity transformed the world. The internet did the same in our lifetimes. We believe artificial intelligence will be the next general-purpose technology. So far, AI has largely transformed the digital world, the world of bits and bytes. We believe that the next phase of AI will be different. It will move into the physical world, the world of atoms, and that will transform almost every machine on the planet. The machines will no longer simply execute instructions. They will sense, they will think, they will act, and most importantly, they will continuously learn.
This is what we mean by physical AI. What does all of this have to do with Sona Comstar? The answer is simple. The same technologies that power modern electric and autonomous vehicles, motors, gearboxes, actuators, sensors, electronics, and software. These are exactly the fundamental building blocks of intelligent machines. People often think of automotive and robotics as two completely different industries. We don't. In fact, we believe those two industries have already started converging. Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics. There are companies making humanoids which are from the automotive sector. Whether it's an electric robotaxi or an autonomous mobile robot, a collaborative robot, or a humanoid, the underlying technologies are the same or remarkably similar. Therefore, robotics and physical AI is not a departure from our strategy. It's a natural extension of the capabilities that we've been building for over a decade.
The long-term opportunity for these components is quite large. Morgan Stanley has a report called "The Robot Almanac." I would encourage you to read it. According to that, the global market for radars, reducers, and electric motors over the next 25 years could grow approximately 260 times, 590 times, and 260 times, respectively. Like, absurdly large numbers. They're expected to reach an estimated size of $60 billion for radars, $1.4 trillion for reducers, and $2.5 trillion for motors. If we succeed in taking even a fraction of this opportunity, the future is very bright for us. Now, coming to this slide. This slide is about what we have already built. We're not announcing our intent to enter robotics and physical AI. We are announcing that Sona Comstar has already entered. Over the past year, we've invested in technology, invested in equipment, and we have developed products.
Even more importantly, we've been working very closely with customers. We see three distinct revenue streams for ourselves. The first is advanced components and subsystems, an area which is closest to our existing capabilities. We have deep capabilities in motors, gearboxes, and sensors. These are all mission-critical building blocks for intelligent machines. The second is the perception stack and engineering services around perception. Here we'll provide engineering and R&D services while also developing perception software and integrated hardware-software solution for customers so that whatever it is that the customer requires, we are able to provide that part to them. The third, and perhaps the most ambitious, is the development and manufacturing of selected full robotic platforms. Initially, our focus will be on two autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, and cognitive collaborative robots, or cobots.
Earlier this year, we showcased the prototype of our first AMR at CES in Las Vegas, development continues to progress fairly rapidly. One more thing. We already have customers. We've secured our first order for an advanced robotic subsystem. Our second order is for perception engineering services for AMRs. Our third combines both hardware and software. It's a complete short-range radar perception solution for an Indian commercial vehicle OEM. Together, these three orders, they add INR 6 billion to our robotics and physical AI order book, which takes the total order book for this new vertical to INR 8 billion. What has pleasantly surprised us is that unlike electrification products or our suspension motor product, this market may be developing far faster than we had originally anticipated.
We've obviously positioned ourself early in that journey, this is no longer an idea, an inspiration, an ambition. It is now a business. A small business today, surely, but one that we believe has the potential to become a meaningful growth engine for Sona Comstar over the next 10 years. Before I move on to the more prosaic business of our quarterly performance, let me leave you with one final thought. As we evolve from Sona Comstar 1.0 to Sona Comstar 2.0, we spent a lot of time thinking about two questions. What should change? Equally, what should never change? Let me begin with what will not change. Our purpose will not change. Our values will not change. Our commitment to our customers, our shareholders, and our people will not change. Nor will the principles that have guided us over the last decade.
Engineering excellence, disciplined capital allocation, operational execution, financial prudence, and transparency. Those foundations will remain exactly the same. What will change is the scale of our ambition. We will pursue larger opportunities, we will enter larger markets, and where appropriate, we'll make larger investments and much larger strategic decisions. I believe after yesterday's announcement, we have entered the big league. When you enter the big league, it is wiser to make bigger moves. However, whatever decision we make will be judged against the same three questions that we have always asked ourselves. Does it create meaningful value for our customers? Does it create long-term value for our shareholders? Do we have the capability and management bandwidth to execute it well? If the answer to any one of these questions is no, we'll walk away.
That discipline is what has served us well over the last decade, we believe will serve us equally well over the next. Over the last 10 years, together, we built one 10X company. Our ambition for the next decade is to build another 10X company. With that, let's now go back to the quarterly performance and the quarterly numbers. Coming to the quarter, I'm happy to share this was our best ever quarter for revenue, BEV revenue, and BEV revenue share, with very healthy momentum continuing across the business. As always, I will begin with the challenges. Inflation continues to be the biggest near-term challenge. Commodities and other input costs remain elevated. They have impacted margins during the quarter. April was tough, May was even tougher, June showed improvement as material cost pass-throughs and other cost reduction and mitigation measures started catching up.
Those of you who followed us know that cost pass-through with automotive customers always lag inflation, so they come a little later. This, along with the arithmetic impact on both revenue and cost, may continue to create some pressure on margin as a percentage. However, the encouraging part is that directionally things have started improving as the quarter has progressed. Beyond that, the operating environment remains uncertain. We all read the news. Trade and geopolitical developments continue to be choppy. Frankly, they've been uncertain for so long that I don't think they should be used as an explanation anymore for business performance. Our job is to manage through all the choppiness. I'll move to the positives. Of course, they are far more than the challenges. Demand has remained healthy across all the markets we serve.
India delivered another strong quarter, particularly in passenger vehicles and electric two-wheelers, which was phenomenal. Europe has, surprisingly to many, it has not just remained stable, it actually is growing now. The U.S. has also improved meaningfully as the quarter has progressed. China's was the only one which remained kind of mixed. However, for us, it was our fastest growing geography this quarter because of the suspension motor ramp-up and its success in China. Second point, EV demand continues to gather pace. BEV revenues were, I think they more than doubled during the quarter. BEV revenue share has also reached an all-time high. Finally, business development efforts. This quarter, we secured new business across EVs, hybrids, and ICE across India, Europe, and North America, across virtually every product category we operate in.
That's very gratifying for us because usually there are times when some things do well, some parts of business don't. This is the business that we've been trying to build, a diversified one, which can grow strongly across customers, geographies, products, and powertrain technologies. To the numbers. Our revenue grew by 54% year-on-year, while EBITDA and net profit increased by 49% and 45%, respectively. EBITDA margin was 23.1%. Margins were heavily impacted by input cost inflation, labor cost increases, as well as the timing gap in the customer recoveries or the pass-throughs. This was especially true during April and May, but as I mentioned earlier, June was significantly better. We expect that these recovery measures will become progressively more visible from quarter two onwards.
There was also a product mix impact as traction motor sales grew quite rapidly, and as is well known to you, that product category has the lowest margins relative to our average company margin. That also dragged it down a little bit. Let me now turn to electrification. This was an amazing quarter for us. We continue to see electrification gaining tremendous pace. We delivered a highest-ever BEV revenue and BEV mix during the quarter, and BEV revenue grew 104% despite EV demand in the U.S. remaining weak. This is quite a testament to how our EV business is no longer dependent on a handful of customers or one particular geography. We have also added two new EV programs and 1 hybrid program, which takes our EV order book to 69 programs across 36 customers. Let me go to our order wins.
The quality of our order book continues to improve. We are increasingly winning businesses across multiple power trains, multiple geographies, and multiple product categories. This quarter, we received a new order from an existing North American OEM for hybrid differential assembly. Again, surprising but very gratifying. If North America takes on to hybrid, I think this opens up another avenue for growth. Second, we won two traction motor programs from a new age Indian electric two-wheeler OEM. To add to this, we also won meaningful ICE differential gear programs. This is our first product category, so it often gets glossed over by newer and more exciting products, but I just wanted to reiterate that we continue to gain in this category.
We received an ICE differential gear program from a traditional North American OEM with an order value of INR 2.1 billion, along with additional business wins in starters, differential gears, and railways. At the end of Q1 FY 2027, our net order book stands at INR 240 billion, with EVs accounting for 64%. As you can see, we've added robotics and physical AI to our order book, which is a small 3%. As they say, all great endings have small beginnings. Hopefully, this is one of those. Let me come to diversification, which is our fourth strategic priority. This is one area where we continue to see a lot of tangible progress on our strategy. For example, eastern markets contributed 59% of our revenue this quarter. This was 56% last year. This shows that there is a continued shift in our geographic mix.
We are seeing a similar trend across our product portfolio. Our fastest-growing business this quarter was EV suspension motors, followed by EV traction motors, and something that gets lost in the others category are emerging product portfolio. This includes steering bevel boxes, intermediate gears, epicyclic gear trains, input rotor shafts, and several railway products. With this, I will turn to our Group CTO, Praveen, to update us on technology. Over to you, Praveen.
Good evening, everyone. Our technology focus and customer-centric approach continue to deliver significant business wins and shape our roadmap. We are advancing market-relevant products and solutions across automotive and railway applications, from magnet-free motor solutions and exterior radar solutions to air springs, HVAC, and door systems. Products under commercialization this quarter include short-range radar sensors and advanced robotics components. The short-range exterior radar sensor developed for a leading commercial vehicle OEM is designed to meet the upcoming Government of India regulations on advanced driver assistance systems, also known as ADAS. The business win in advanced robotic components builds on our deep expertise and foundational capabilities in automotive product design, tooling, and manufacturing. A notable addition to our roadmap is the autonomous mobile robot or AMR.
This product brings together capabilities across motor, driveline, and sensor divisions, while also establishing expertise in newer domains such as robot perception, motion planning and control, telematics, reinforcement learning, and AI orchestration. The AMR platform is being developed as part of a broader robotic portfolio focused on manufacturing and warehousing applications. It is designed to support use cases across automotive, electronics, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, and other sectors. The field of robotics and physical AI is expanding rapidly as smart and flexible manufacturing scales up. Manufacturers are moving from isolated automation initiatives to connected and coordinated operations, creating opportunities for Sona Comstar in physical AI, including components, actuators, and in some cases, full systems. An interesting aspect of deployment of physical AI is the need for training. This is an area likely to be the next frontier in cognitive robotics.
In summary, as we evolve from an automotive components company into a global mobility technology provider, we will continue to strengthen our core mobility portfolio while expanding into the emerging growth areas such as robotics and physical AI. With this, I conclude and hand over to Rohit for the financials. Over to you, Rohit. Thank you.
Thank you, Praveen. A very good day to you all. It is my pleasure to share our first quarterly results for financial year 2027 with you. Our revenue for the quarter grew to INR 1,310 crore, a growth of 54% over the first quarter of last year. BEV revenue grew by 107% to INR 436 crore over the same quarter last year. BEV revenue constituted 44% of our automotive product sales. EBITDA for the quarter grew by 49% to INR 303 crore. EBITDA margin was 23.1%, which is lower by about 0.7% compared to the same quarter last year. The margin was lower primarily on account of product mix and higher input prices, despite positive impact of the operating leverage. Our profit after tax grew by 45% to INR 181 crore. PAT margin was 13.6%, which is lower by 0.7% compared to last year.
Between EBITDA and PAT, we had positive impact on the margin from lower depreciation percentage and exceptional expenses booked in the first quarter of last year. Whereas PAT margin was pulled down by lower EBITDA margin and lower net finance income. Now on to the final slide on our key ratios. All these ratios except VA to employee cost have shown improvement in this quarter. In case of VA to employee cost, there is a decline compared to previous period, mainly due to change in the product mix in favor of assembly products. Our return ratios continue to show gradual improvement, as I had indicated in the previous quarters as well. The impact of QIP fundraise has been absorbed in the ratios, and incremental returns from businesses are now supporting these ratios.
Our net debt continues to be negative, therefore net debt to EBITDA ratio also continues in a negative territory. Both the turnover ratios showed improvement in this quarter, supported by a robust revenue growth. Besides this, working capital turnover ratio also improved due to a significant reduction in debtor days, which also made this as our best quarter from an operational cash flow perspective. With this, we've come to the end of our earnings presentation. I'll now hand over the proceedings back to Kapil.
We will now open the floor for Q&A session. If you wish to raise a question, please use raise hand function located at the bottom right of the Webex page. We will unmute your line and prompt you to speak. You may submit your question via Q&A chat box addressing to all panelists.
Yeah, Vivek, by the time the question queue builds up, probably I'll start off. First of all, congratulations to you and the entire team for executing this very significant and momentous joint venture. We look forward to all the progress from this. I'll start off with a question on a area which I don't understand much, which is AI. How should we think about this and compare and contrast this to automotive business in terms of, firstly, we understand you have certain physical capabilities, but there is probably half of the value lies in the software aspect as well. How are you going to target that, if at all? Secondly, in terms of the return ratios, capital commitment, how are you thinking about it? Because it's a completely new and evolving area. Any guidance here in terms of how your thinking will help?
Sure. Let's go back, Pratik, to that slide which had the services, et cetera. Yeah? The robotics and physical AI slide. First, Kapil, one, thank you for being a host for five years, which obviously gives you the privilege of asking questions first. You have seen all our presentations. We've been talking about this software and hardware becoming almost one for a long while now, if you remember.
Our suspension motor product has two million lines of code. Almost nothing we make today is just metal. It is metal and a few lines of code. If you look at the car, a car today has over a billion lines of code, even a regular one. The more advanced electric vehicles who do are five million plus, and robotaxis are actually physical AI products. Robotaxis, now, what you want to classify them is up to you as an analyst, to be honest, a lot of these devices have already crossed that border. The closest example I can give to make you understand this is when first electricity came into our lives, it wasn't that it created revenue only for electricity utility companies or power plant companies. Every single device in your home got connected to electricity and changed. General Electric did not just build light bulbs.
Toasters, washing machine, vacuum cleaners. Same thing will happen. That was the electrification of the machine. This will be the addition of intelligence to the machine, that these are thinking machines. They can learn and calibrate their behavior as opposed to scripted machines. I think the boundaries between industries will blur quite fast. The things that go into-- I'll give you an example. You take a reducer that goes into a car, right? We make the reducer for electric vehicles. That will have a nine is to one reduction for the motor's torque to be increased and RPM to be decreased, right? In a humanoid, in a joint, that ratio will be somewhere between 100 - 160, it is fundamentally the same concept. It is much smaller, it is far, far more precise, it is the same product.
You will see the companies that are the new entrants into this place, even in China, if you cover the Chinese coverage of robotics and physical AI, you will see very similar names to what you are used to when you compare them with people like us, our competitors, in fact. It is a natural extension in that field. Motor players are the ones who will get into frameless motors, I think a few quarters ago, we actually showed a humanoid and said how many motors and how many actuators actually go into one humanoid. A humanoid is not the only application. A robotaxi is one, an AMR is one, a quadruped is one. You will have multi-axis robots that work in factories, can move between stations, can do multitasking. All of those require the same building blocks. That is one.
Software is already something we do. The example of the win that we spoke about, and I think it's good that we waited one year to announce our entry after we won, because then these questions would perhaps have a suspension of belief element to it. Now you don't have to. Our first services one is one in which we are training an AMR and providing the entire perception software stack. That's it. We are not building the machine. We are providing pure software. The third one is where we'll provide the device as well as the software. Yeah, in a thinking machine environment, opportunities will come from all sides. They will also come from people who do very hardware-oriented things like sheet metal, because it has to be made of something, and those guys will perhaps still have value in a pure hardware thing.
Most of us will be hardware plus software. Returns, you know how we have invested so far. We were asked these questions in 2016 by our board. That time, we didn't have external public shareholders. In 2020 and 2021 by public investors when we were investing in suspension motors and traction motors. I think our record speaks for itself, that we are fairly frugal in how we allocate capital, and so far, touch wood, our returns on innovation have far exceeded even our own high expectations.
Okay. Thank you. As long as Rohit approves of all the plans, I'm fine.
He's a very hard man to please, so if we can get it past him, you know that it must be something good.
Yeah. Sneha, we can move along with the question queue.
Yes. We have a question from Pramod Kumar. Pramod, you can go ahead.
Thank you for a great collaboration. Vivek, my first question is on the joint venture two, as you call it, the high voltage venture. What are the timelines you can share here with given the understanding you have with DENSO as to what should be the timeline we should see some bit of revenue recognition starting or any kind of some color on by when can we expect some more updates on the business on the high voltage? The two-wheeler and the three-wheeler traction motor is a business which is gaining traction any which ways, and it goes to the JV straightaway. Also, if you can share by both the joint ventures activation will be on the same date, or there could be some gap between the incorporation of the joint ventures and all of that. If you can just share some color on the timelines.
Okay. The SOP timelines I will answer, and I'll let the second part be answered by Rohit or Sat, whoever chooses to. The SOP timelines, unfortunately, Pramod, we are restricted by confidentiality agreements on it because multiple parties are involved from DENSO's side, from customer's side, so we'll have to hold that. As soon as we humanly can is really the actual timeline. Rohit and Sat can answer on the specifics of the JV formation and which one will lead and lag, et cetera.
Hi. Thanks, Vivek. Rohit, you want to answer?
No, it's okay, Sat. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Rohit and Vivek. Pramod, the first JV will be leading it, and the second JV will be following it. I can't share you the timing exactly. The first JV is the one which will kickstart faster. Yeah.
Yes, thanks a lot. Vivek, I'll try another attempt on the product portfolio for the JV2 because DENSO is a world leader when it comes to a lot of the hybrid systems. They're by far the world leader and have two decades plus of experience on the hybrid side. Also they've developed their EV vertical also, the battery electric vehicle vertical also very well. If you can just help us understand what is the kind of capability, what it brings to the joint venture, because we were not exactly fully updated. At least I was not fully updated on your own solo plan on the high voltage motor as to what all parts you will be doing. Whether that included the liquid cooling, the cooling systems and the inverters and all of that.
Given DENSO already has a very globally proven portfolio there, what could be the potential here? If you can just help us understand some bit of sizing up of the market, the TAM, because you kind of give us a pretty good view on the robotic side. If you can help us understand or size up the opportunity here, which one should look forward to in this journey of 10 years.
Yeah. Good question, Pramod. You're absolutely right. DENSO is not a leader. It is by far the runaway leader when it comes to hybrid powertrains. The electrification business revenue for DENSO is above $8 billion a year. That obviously, the JV2 gains immensely from that exposure, and that would be a market leading position in itself. The EV part, you're right. We have made some progress, and we will do more progress jointly. There are some parts that they bring in controller technologies, they have the full spectrum. You name it. You name any kind of technology in control systems, DENSO has it in their portfolio. That strengthens our own controller thing. What we are good at is the motor part, the manufacturing excellence design. We start with frugal design.
We are starting even at TRL level 1, we do cost targets.
You're building something for a very different market in which cost pressure is very high, which allows us to offer a compelling product. Both of them put together should make a fairly strong combination. Market size, I did say INR 20,000 crore, INR 30,000 crore, INR 24,000 crore. If you were to look at 2035, this number will be many times that. It will be maybe three times that is what we are looking at. Frankly, neither DENSO nor us have ever accepted anything less than market leadership. We will leave it to your imagination on how much market share that entails, but neither of us are people who like being second. Hopefully, that gives some color. I can't really say more than this.
Anything on the CapEx intake for JV2?
Sure.
Anything?
The CapEx intensity of Motor Business and control system businesses is actually low.
Even in our two-wheeler thing, as I think I've shared before, for INR 1 crore of CapEx, you can get INR 8 crore- INR 9 crore of revenue easily. In high voltage systems, Sat, how much do you think for INR 1 crore of CapEx, how much revenue is the thumb rule?
It will be at least 11, 12.
Yeah.
11, 12.
Yeah.
Sir.
More promoted technology thing. It is know-how, the number of iterations you've done. It isn't a very capital-intensive thing. It is more engineering intensive.
Sir, understand that the competition intensity in this category is not as severe as the two-wheeler space. If you can just help us understand, when you look at the India high voltage motor landscape, how many guys are actually out there who have got local manufacturing capability with high level of localization, or is it we are still relying on largely imported sub-assemblies getting put together here?
Pramod, your question has the answer. I can't say more than that because I'll get into trouble. Some of these things may not even entirely be legal. Some of these things will be People claiming PLI when they shouldn't exactly. I don't want to get into a contentious issue. What I will say is two-wheeler, three-wheeler is far more competitive.
Yes.
We have been able to, on our own, take market leadership. This one is less competitive because of the technology barrier. High voltage technology is not easy to crack.
Yes.
Hence, there will be lesser competitive intensity. I think we'll make a fairly big dent in the market.
Wish you all the best, sir. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you so much .
From Nitin Arora. Nitin, please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening team. Thanks for the presentation. My first question is if you can throw some light on this EV volumes which are going up, just how you're thinking about capacity, because on the recent calls, all the OEMs are just upsizing their capacity on the EV. Just wanted your take, how you are looking the schedules or how you are looking, thinking about EV growing, EV market in India, Europe and U.S., what kind of traction you are seeing. Is it you feel that this is something really now coming at inflection, the kind of inquiries, what you're getting from OEMs? My first question is on that.
Nitin, as always, good to hear your voice. EVs, in a way right now, we are not constrained by demand, actually. All our OEMs are not constrained by demand. They are constrained by their own supply chain challenges. We are definitely not the supply chain challenge. If you talk to OEM, please tell them that if you're having capacity issues, please go to Sona Comstar. We have enough and more capacity for them. Sir, do you have any capacity constraints?
Not right now.
I can assure you, neither does Vikram. We have always built capacity ahead of markets, and that is definitely not our problem. Unfortunately, Nitin, and as you well understand, any vehicle has hundreds of parts. Even if one supplier becomes the bottleneck, the whole system has to stop. If you read the book "The Goal," the slowest member of the team actually decides the pace of the group. Unfortunately, we are being able to sell less than we ideally would have, but not much we can do about other players in the supply chain.
How's the EV, you were seeing traction in Europe and U.S. because also if in Europe you see further traction on that supply chain area-
Yes.
Which was getting little weakened.
Nitin, Europe is electrifying very fast. I mean, whether it be fully BEV or whether it be strong hybrids or plug-in hybrids, they are actually accelerating quite fast. India is actually the fastest growing EV market in the world, I think right now. India is doing phenomenally. U.S., we are seeing a shift to hybrids as you saw even in one of our new order wins. The EV market is not doing so well in the U.S. right now. Despite that, I think we will see phenomenal EV growth in this year at least. I don't know, Nitin, if it's an inflection or not. After COVID, I would've definitely said was an inflection because this is just one quarter of data. Let me have two, three data points, so another quarter or so, then we know that it's actually inflection.
It is trending very positively.
Copy. Lastly, as I think as Kapil said, even I don't understand the third part of the business, need to dwell more on this physical AI. When you started your electric motor business, whatever the number today is, it took you, I think about four or five years. You said you have INR 800 crores of order already in the order book. How we should think about this business ramp up? I'm sure when we're talking about opportunity buy, you will get more. Is it from an execution perspective, is it going to take the same time or how we should think about the sizing of this business over the next two, three years?
It's a good question, Nitin, I think I've answered this on a prior earnings call in which I said, first three years when you make a new product or get into a new technology, you make no money. Year four, you see your first dollar of revenue. Year five, you start making the first $10 million odd dollar number, year seven or year eight is when it becomes a $100 million business. We saw that with EV differential assemblies. We are seeing that with EV traction motors. We will see that with suspension motors. Pretty much the same timeline or timeframe of how it happens. I think this one will be faster. Much faster, probably. That's the difference. It is faster than our internal assumptions too. How much?
Too early to tell, yeah, we will get to each of those milestones earlier than we typically used to.
Thank you. Thank you, Vivek and team. All the best as always. Thank you.
Thank you, Nitin.
Next question is from Jay Kale. Jay, please go ahead.
My question, congratulations on the announcements. Heartening to know. My first question is regarding your passenger vehicle motor. You have the JV with DENSO. You have had tried your share of making the passenger vehicle EV motor in the last few years. There would have been some developments around that, and of course, now, what kind of capabilities you bring to that in this JV. Also from a backward integration perspective, do you think that you have a significant lead compared to your peers who are trying to get into this, and your existing business can also capture a lot of that opportunity feeding into this JV? That would be my first question.
Jay, short answer, yes. Long answer is, of course, even if you get a PO today, it will take three years to SOP, right? That is how automotive works. 32 months is the cycle. Yes, we are well-positioned because the supply chain is same. There are two or three building blocks to this. First is design. That can you design your motor to be the most frugal, yet the best quality expression of what you are trying to build? That your job is to provide traction while using the least amount of material possible. That is the most efficient way to do it. Design from a cost perspective from day one. Two, building a supply chain, because no man can do this alone. It is an assembled product, as Rohit was mentioning, and value addition at our end is lower.
Third will be the knowledge of the market, hence designing a product that works for India. You need to know the duty cycle. You would have had to study it. If you remember 2021, in our second or third earnings call, Jay, I'd mentioned that we have done an MOU with a three-wheeler company to get data. For one year, we just captured duty cycle data to make better motors and inverters for the three-wheeler market, year after that is when we actually launched the product. You have to work on all three and make a product that day one becomes the most competitive product in the industry, because in automotive, as you well know, it's not enough to be the best. You have to be the best as well as the most economically competitive.
It is a combination of this that one has to work on always. Of course, we will bring some of these, DENSO is a company we admire. These are the companies you want to become one day. Bosch, DENSO, that's the league in which we also want our name to be taken one day. They have taken 85 years to get there. We are just 25 years old, one day, hopefully, we will get there. It comes by partnering with people of that stature. The question that you should ask is why would someone like DENSO feel comfortable with someone like Sona Comstar? We are 100th their size, I think, in revenue. The respect that we have got from them is definitely not 100th. That means we've been building something which is important. It is something that is worth being proud of.
Great. My second question is regarding your view on how do you see this evolution of this market in terms of OEM adoption? Take e-Axles for context. How do you see the adoption of OEMs for e-Axles versus taking the products independently and integrating? In your JV, is there any future possibility of transitioning to that? Or do you think that maybe the localization efforts of your peers are not up to the mark where you have a significant lead over them? Just your view on the evolution of this market over the next five, seven years.
Sure. Let's just first start with what is an e-Axle. An e-Axle is an integrated assembly which assembles a motor, an inverter, and a gearbox. You add all of these, you get an e-Axle. Now, this could be done by a tier 1 for an OEM, or it could be done by the OEM themselves. Frankly, both models are equally valid. In early stages of electrification, when people are making far less volume, they're okay keeping the whole e-Axle outside, I suspect it will come inside also because, Jay, you know how this works. Battery is not in your control. E-axle is also gone. What is your design leverages in OEM? What is your cost leverages in OEM? What is your bargaining power? What are you making? The shell and the wheels? That's kind of not that critical then. I think this will change.
More OEMs may integrate it themselves. For the JV, the JV can sell to tier ones who make e-Axles. It can sell directly to OEMs, integrating motors and inverters themselves. It can also sell to Sona Comstar, to our driveline division, where we could make the e-Axle with the help of our own motor inverters. All three models are open, but ultimately, the customer decides what they want and who they want it from. We must always stay humble and know that the customer is the one who comes first, who is above us all.
That's great to know. I'll just squeeze in one last question on the robotics side. Of course, this quarter you've been much more open about sharing a lot of details than the last few quarters on them, of course, because of some developments. Just from your perspective, has the market evolution surprised you positively over the last few quarters, or has Sona Comstar's pace of development been faster than expected for this? Because there's a marked change, on a lighter note, on your comments in robotics in historical quarters. Or maybe you were downplaying it to currently on the developments.
Yeah. Jay, I'll answer that. We were downplaying it a little bit. One, without proof of success, I think one should not talk about anything. I know there are a lot of companies out there who talk about things that may happen in three, four years, and we didn't want to be those. Second, also remember, last year was not that great for us. I know we grew and everything, but not to our satisfaction. When you're not doing so well, there are two tendencies. There is one, out of desperation, you start announcing big things. Then you lose credibility, which is why we downplayed it intensely. We will come when we have something positive, when we have something substantial, then we will talk. Otherwise, there are people who like, in India, you know that mentality, that people want to see you fail.
If you're an innovative company, 100% they want to see you fail, and there'll be many critics. They'll say, "Oh, these guys will just tell stories" or something negative. Why go through all that? When we are in a position of strength, we are doing well, we have the orders, that's the right time to do it. As always, underpromise, overdeliver is a better strategy than promising before time. To the first part of your question, both have surprised me. Our team is brilliant. Vikram's team has done wonders that they have moved so fast. However, the market evolution also, Jay, is much faster than we expected.
Great. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you, Jay.
Next question is from Sonal Gupta. Sonal, please go ahead.
My side, just going back to JV1. We're already doing very well on the traction motor for two-wheelers and three-wheelers, and that's been, clearly this quarter again, very strong growth in that business. I'm just trying to understand the motivation for putting that in the JV, and in what respects do you think Sona gains from putting that as a JV with DENSO?
Sure, Sonal. If a company like DENSO wants to partner with you and they think they bring value, I wish you were from my industry. To someone in my industry, this question is kind of unthinkable that it is even a question. Second, there is a customer base that is, in a way, not that open to us right now. That opens up. Third, the export opportunity opens up for us to other markets where DENSO is far more dominant. Fourth, yes, on paper it's two different JVs, but in our minds and in our hearts, it is one JV. It is structured differently, but we want to partner across the board, like I said, across vehicle categories, across technologies. When you partner with someone, like when you marry someone, either commit fully or don't commit. You can't pick and choose.
That is a very spreadsheet way of looking at life, and it seldom works out, in my opinion.
Right. No, I'm just asking, I don't know, I'm frankly not aware how much DENSO is focused on two-wheeler, three-wheeler market, that's why that question.
If they weren't focused, they wouldn't do it and they wouldn't pay money to do it, is a natural, I would say, answer to that.
Got it. Thanks. Just in terms of, again, the only difference between the two statements on the JVs is that in the JV2, we don't mention e-Axle. Just any thoughts there on why e-Axle in JV1 and not in JV2?
Sure. e-Axles in JV1 will be a very tiny market anyway. JV2 will make motors and inverters. e-Axles, like I said, this can sell to e-Axle makers. Actually, I answered that in detail, but I'll say it again. e-Axle is an integration of motor inverter and gearbox. There are many e-Axle makers that we sell to today also, by the way. e-Axle is not that the guy who makes e-Axle makes all of the components themselves. We sell differentials to large e-Axle makers all over the world. The e-Axle could be integrated by the OEM. Like I said, there could be three models. JV can sell to the OEM, JV can sell to tier ones making e-Axles, and JV can sell to Sona Comstar, who could make e-Axles. There, we could be making it in the driveline part of our business.
Got it. Okay, great. Thank you.
All three options.
Sorry.
Open. Again, the ambition, by the way, like two-wheeler, three-wheeler, we're doing well in India, and we are 25%, but 25% is also not enough. Why not more than 50? For that, you need to work in a slightly different way. Second, India is not the be-all and end-all. If you want to go global, it does help. Our brand is not as well-known in this space as DENSO's is. By a margin of, I think 100 is to one, they are better known than us.
Got it. Great. Thanks, Vivek. Thank you so much for answering my questions.
There are a few questions in the chat box. Some of them have already been answered, but I'll just try to run through. I think this question is specific to the JV2. Is it focused on Indian market only, or will it cater to the global market through DENSO?
Of course. I try to answer it. We begin with India, and then we look at the world. I think it is also in, Maebara-san from DENSO has answered, even in the press release, I think there is a mention that in time, in phase II is when we will look at it. Phase I is to get this up and running, then get Indian customers, start satisfying that, and then in phase II, we would also look at that. Yeah, definitely on the anvil, but yes, it will take time.
Okay. Another question for JV2. For reaching the revenue stage, would it be two to three years away?
I think I mentioned to Pramod that we can't comment on timeline. There are certain confidentialities. You know we are fairly transparent, and if we could, we could have told it, but we can't share that.
Okay, the question basically is asking this will entail entire product development process that is validation, testing, et cetera.
Of course.
Yeah. Okay. Does DENSO supply any of these products in India in EVs and hybrids?
Sat?
I think I'll pass this question.
Yeah, I think we can't speak about it. It is not fair to ask us this question, to be honest. This is a question about a different company who's a partner, and they should be answering it, not us.
Okay. Fourth question. This is probably for Rohit. The VA per employee has been declining. Can you elaborate on the reasons for the same, especially on a QoQ basis? I think you touched upon it, but yeah.
I actually answered it when I covered this. Basically when the product mix changes, as you all know, our Motor and Railway businesses are more of assembly businesses, whereas Driveline businesses where the value addition from raw material stage to finished goods is higher. Depending upon which business is growing faster, this ratio tends to change. While higher, the better is obviously the rule, but the thing is that four and a half times itself is also very strong. I'm not trying to take away the fact that it has come down, but basically it can vary from quarter to quarter. FY 2027 number that you look at, that's purely based on Q1 revenue. There is a shift. If there is a shift in one quarter, it will move like that. That's the explanation.
Okay. Then this question is on AI. It brings tremendous opportunities, but also raises ethical concerns. Sona Comstar has always committed to respecting human values, cultural diversity, privacy, fairness, et cetera, transparency. How will you ensure that these core values are maintained and protected?
Certainly. The applications you choose obviously decide the ethical guardrails. It is a good question, a surprising one, I must say, but a good question. The first thing you do, actually, when you do any project with artificial intelligence involved, literally even before the data structure mapping, you actually design the guardrails. That what are the guardrails for the data. Also, you must know that because we supply to European customers, GDPR rules are so severe that it has to pass through a very high bar for data to be taken. An amazing thing that most of our perception stack is built around radar. Radar cannot see you as a person. They can detect your outline. They know it's a human being.
They can detect heartbeat, it will not capture your face, your voice, and hence it anyway has that privacy layer built in because of the core technology. Yes, this is something that we're always sensitive about, especially if it is a transmitting device. Good question. It is always going to be built into whatever we do. Fortunately, our customers are also the kind of people who need this to be built in as the first layer.
Okay. We have a question on INR 8 billion order book for robotics. When are SOPs for these four orders?
They range. Some of them are as early as next quarter, some of them next year, they are not very far in the future, let's put it that way. Rohit, you want to take a stab at this?
No, I think that's the kind of detail we can share at this point.
Yeah.
You're right. Most of this will start production, let's say within 12 to 15 months max. Like Vivek said, one will probably start within a quarter or so, and rest probably in a year or so.
Actually, one is this quarter, one is next quarter, one within 15 months.
How is the rare earth situation panning out?
It's been a while since we got this one. Yeah, rare earth magnets are still restricted. Heavy rare earth magnets cannot be imported. Almost all that we do today is with light rare earth alternatives, and it's working fine. We don't think there is going to be much change. We don't have an update, to be honest. It's been the same way for the last five quarters now. Is that a reference to the rare earth magnet scheme of the government, or is it to the rare earth magnet import situation? I didn't fully get the question maybe.
I think it's probably to the rare earth shortage situation that we faced on imports.
Yeah. I've answered it, that we shifted to light rare earth alternatives and there is no real magnet shortage as shown by our EV traction motor business growth.
Okay. I think this is an interesting question. Please help me understand which product is expected to grow the fastest, the order too, please, and which entails the highest margins.
Second part, will not answer. The first part, I think it'll be one of Sat's products only. Actually, Kapil, this is a very hard question. Yeah, because if, let's say, there is a product which has almost no revenue in the last year. Actually, Amit might have some products which had no revenue last year, and they suddenly will grow. They will grow at infinity percent. In the ones that already exist, I think suspension motor is growing the fastest rate. Traction motor would be the second. Vikram, unless you are going to surprise us all with something you are growing. No, Vikram is choosing to ignore me.
Okay. I think this is the last one that I have in the chat box, that is, I just need to clarify, if we consumed orders worth INR 15 billion, how are the revenues only INR 13 billion?
Sorry?
If we consumed orders worth INR 15 billion, how are the revenues only INR 13 billion?
Oh, the order book consumption is of 10 years, right? You got to divide by that much. Pratik, you want to take a stab at this one? You haven't got a chance for some time. I think this question used to come in the first year of IPO, and Pratik used to answer it. Good throwback. This is also, by the way, five years that we've been listed.
Yeah. Basically, the consumption we take out from all the future years for the orders. Let's say if you assume the average life of an order is eight years, then the consumption from the quarter is multiplied by 32 times. That is why this kind of difference you are seeing.
Okay, great. I'll pass it on to Sneha. I believe we have one more raised hand. Sneha, over to you.
Question from Jay Kale.
Thanks for taking my follow-up. Just one clarification. How do you see the execution timeline of robotics orders? For autos, it's typically around seven years, I guess. How different is it for robotics?
Actually, a very good question, Jay, and I don't think I know, because I don't think the guys making the robotics right now know also, because even the first generation is not ended its lifespan. Good question. Vikram, you want to answer this one? This is I don't know the answer.
The pace at which people are making, I don't know how many will mature on ground.
He's saying, they say, order, how many years would it run till? I said, I don't know what the model life cycle is in.
There will be a lot of evolution of the same product. It is still a growing. They're still figuring out. There will be generation. I think unlike automotive, this generation, changes will happen more frequently.
Correct.
Even the largest guy has already started making the third generation. First generation has not come on the shop.
I think this segment is as difficult for analysts as it is for manufacturers.
Yes. This is early. It's like go back and electricity has just come into the world, and you are in year two, and now you're an analyst and try to figure out what will happen in 10 years. It is exactly that.
Great. All the best.
One experiment you can do, Jay. Wake up in the morning and say each device that you interact with, from your toothbrush to your window to your alarm. What if it was truly thinking and learning, and it could change the way things happened? You will realize the potential is actually almost limitless.
Perfect. Great. Thanks and all the best, Vivek. Thank you.
Thank you, Jay.
We have come to the end of the question queue. We don't have any further questions, and we've run out of time as well. I'll thank everyone for joining this call. Thank you, Sona Comstar team for giving us this opportunity to host you. Always a pleasure. Sneha, with this, we can close the call.
Thanks, everyone. We will now conclude this call. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to email your Nomura sales representative or corporate access team. You may now drop off the line.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Bye.
Thank you, everyone.