Thermax Limited (NSE:THERMAX)
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4,483.00
-62.10 (-1.37%)
May 12, 2026, 3:29 PM IST
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Q1 25/26

Aug 1, 2025

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Thermax Q1 FY 2026 earnings conference call hosted by DAM Capital Advisors Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Bhumika Nair. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.

Bhoomika Nair
Head of Investor Relations, Thermax Limited

Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to the Q1 FY 2026 earnings call of Thermax Limited. We have the management being represented by Mr. Ashish Bhandari, Managing Director and CEO, and Mr. Rajendran Arunachalam, Group CFO and Executive Vice President. At this point, I'll hand over the floor to Mr. Bhandari for his initial remarks, post which we'll open up the floor for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Good morning, and a very warm welcome to everyone that's attending the call. It's a pleasure to be hosting you to share the results of our Quarter One performance. You would have all seen the press release, the headlines. The top items to consider first is revenue flat, which is - 2%, which is different from our performance over the last three years. It's the first quarter where quarter -on -quarter, our numbers are slightly down. Second is the order book, which is 7%, and so the guidance, what should we expect for the year as a whole. And third is the jump in profitability, the reasons behind, and the underlying strength of the business.

So if I take the three things one after the other, revenue, as you know, we had a reasonable Q4, which we had predicted as well that we would like to cross INR 3,000 crores in Q4 last year. As we started this year, we had a good backlog, but the backlog for conversion for Q1 was of the order of about INR 2,400 crores. We did relatively lower than that because we had a few project push-outs where customers did not pick up equipment, and this was slightly more than what we would have predicted, or more than slightly more than what we would have predicted. Some of the reasons that I've heard from customers relate to project sites running slow, rains have come in early, so I could not finish my civil in time, so I can't pick up your equipment, et cetera.

Overall, no red flags, very little relating to do with customers not having money to pay or the project being canceled or anything. The impact is temporary. As the revenue clears, we will actually be able to deliver reasonably on the bottom line as well. That's the first point. On orders, growth of 7% below our expectations, and especially all across, actually, the orders. I don't see a particular red flag. Again, we are predicting a good Q2 on Industrial Products and Heating, which is the core part of Industrial Products, the most profitable part, to come back stronger in Q2. We have a reasonable pipeline to account for that.

The slowdown on the Heating side has largely been driven by the ethanol sector and sugar and distilleries, where there is a big pipeline, but the financial closure of the projects is taking time, and we don't book the order until the financial closure happens, and we get the LC payment or a significant upfront payment, at which time we recognize those as orders. So we have got multiple handshakes, but not enough closures that we would like. That in July started to get better, and we expect in that sense a reasonable Q2 as well. Even on Industrial Infra, we expect a good Q2. Q1 was okay. I've been saying for some time that we would expect to see big projects starting to come in. I think Q2 will be that time where you should see a reasonable bump on our orders.

Yeah, Q2, and at least if not Q2, one particular order where we have shaken hands in first week of October. So this is a time frame where things will happen. In Chemicals, that's where I have a slight concern. We have added quite a bit of capacity. We have added capability, a bunch of stuff to build out our growth, and that is partly the reason why our profitability in Q1 came down. And during our discussion, we can talk about this at a longer length. Chemicals, some parts we will recover from quickly, but U.S., we do have an exposure to on the chemical side, which we will have to understand how to work through and sort that out.

The expectation in many circles is that the tariffs thing will get sorted out relatively quickly, but if it does not, then on our chemical side, we would have a bit of an impact to our Chemicals business. Even otherwise, we have got a lot of growth expectations, and we just need to make sure that we deliver on that growth, which we did not in Q1. Okay. Broadly, these were the big things I wanted to start with. We've covered revenues. We've covered on the profit side. We've been saying it for some time. There was, of course, a big INR 56 crore impact from incentives that we received from the government. But even if I leave those aside, we have about 1.2% improvement in margins, which is entirely driven by basically not having as much bad stuff as we did last year.

Industrial Products, which is where margins came down, but you can see revenue also came down, and Industrial Products now has a reasonably big backlog. As that backlog gets delivered in the rest of the year, we'll pick up on profitability as well. So with that as the headline messaging, we have got a lot to share on new products, hydrogen, even some of the chemical things that we are doing all across, which I hope to answer from the Q&A that we get into. So with that preamble, let's just jump into the questions and answers.

Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take the first question from the line of Ravi Swaminathan from Avendus Spark. Please proceed.

Rajendran Arunachalam
CFO and EVP, Thermax Limited

Hi sir, thanks for taking my question. My first question is with respect to the large orders that are there in the pipeline. Take a two, three-year kind of view from the major sectors like steel, cement, oil and gas, and thermal power. How do you see the traction from end customer-driven CapEx recovery? And a subpart to this question is, how is the pricing of key products like boilers, et cetera, moving? Are they stable, or is there an improvement or a decline based on competition and supply? So if you can give your thoughts on these.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

First, overall pipeline, as I've been saying for a couple of quarters, inquiry pipeline, robust, and in some sectors, some of the highest that I have seen. On top of the sectors that you have talked about, I would add power, which until a year ago was not in the scheme of discussion. Today, there is a fair bit of pipeline that we have that is comprised of power and even thermal power. Yeah, and these are not just large projects. These are even kind of 200, 300 medium projects that we talk about, megawatts, which ultimately result in a relatively large boiler order for us. Those are also in the discussion. I would add international to this as well, where also there is a pipeline. As I look at the future forecast, tough to see four years down the road.

I can only see the next 12 to 18 months, and some of the sectors are cyclical. Refining and petrochemical, as an example, is cyclical. Right now, we don't see too many projects that will go in for finalization in the next couple of quarters, but there are projects that are developing where the inquiry cycle has started, and the ordering may happen in Q4 and the next year and beyond. So there's always stuff that is going on. Cement, continuous set of projects, new things. Steel, there is a reasonable pipeline. Some of our win rates in steel have been below what we would like. We would like to see that get better also. Overall, don't see a concern on a pipeline of projects. Yeah, and international also, Middle East, we're starting to do better and better.

Africa, even Latin America, now we have a developing pipeline of projects, which is more than what it was previously. Southeast Asia as well. To your second point on pricing, pricing is stable. It is competitive on the equipment side when we do things in Industrial Infra, for example, where we sell large boilers, et cetera. Our equipment margins continue to be of the order of 5%-7%. It's services that we are able to pull the profitability up. That remains. On the other side, commodity prices have been very stable and potentially slightly going down also in the environment that we have. Certainly, in the last couple of days, steel has been stable, but copper and some of the other commodities have trended downwards. So I would say stable is a better way for me to put it instead of saying it's going down or something like that. Yep.

Okay, I hope I answered your question. Waste-to-energy is one more emerging segment. Waste-to-energy and the whole kind of sugar distillery space are also relevant markets for Industrial Infra going forward.

Ravi Swaminathan
Executive Director, Avendus Spark

Understood, sir. Can we say from an order inflow growth perspective, last two, three years, it has been in the high single-digit kind of range. With these kind of robust ordering pipeline being there, can the trajectory move into maintain kind of order inflow growth? Is that something that?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

I certainly expect that. I think if you take a look in the last couple of years in particular, Industrial Infra is where we had taken a step back, saying that the kinds of projects we lose money on, we didn't want to do that. Yeah, so we took a step back from large government projects, FGD projects, and I've been saying even before some of the news on FGD came out that in our estimate, we don't have any FGD projects. Yeah, and so in the other parts of the business, including in Industrial Products, we have been delivering double-digit growth, and that is made up of, I guess, what I call internally as good calories.

Yeah, and now, even on Industrial Infra, now that the pipeline is developing on what is reasonably good caliber, I do think, and with international also coming in, across the board, I would expect double-digit growth. Yeah.

Ravi Swaminathan
Executive Director, Avendus Spark

Understood. And my second question is with.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

If I may just take a break, you can come back because we typically take only one question. We have taken two. I'm sure your question will get asked by somebody else, but at the end of the hour, if it's not and we have time, I'll take your question again then. Thank you.

Ravi Swaminathan
Executive Director, Avendus Spark

Sure, sir. Yeah, thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Next question, please.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities. Please proceed.

Mohit Kumar
Research Analyst, ICICI Securities

Yeah, good morning, and thanks for the opportunity. My question on the chemical business, I think in this quarter, the margin was pushed, declined steeply. I think it pushed it somewhere around 9.3% versus 7.2%. Can you please explain the weakness and how do you think about as we move forward and any color on the dependence on export to the U.S.?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Okay, and a very pertinent question. The performance in our Chemicals business was below expectations. We had set and we expected a reduction, especially in Q1, where our new capacity in Jhagadia came online. The depreciation impact was there. Also, for Construction Chemicals, for flooring with Vebro, getting prepared for OQ, even on the international side, adding small capacities in Indonesia, adding manpower in Southeast Asia for growth. We had added feet on the ground. We had added CapEx. So we had a cost impact that happened. Yeah, commensurate to that cost impact, we haven't delivered on the growth. Yeah, and so that is clearly a problem that we had. We also had some one-time bit of impacts where certain deliveries just missed out, and some of our specialty chemicals had some timing issues.

And then there were some one-time gratuity-related costs this year, which was a double effect from a goodwill on some reversals last year. So there was about INR 4-5 crores of that impact, which will get cleared out. So in my mind, the margins will shift to about 12%-13% in Q2, but that jump from 12%-13% to 16%-17%, which is where the direction and the guidance that we have given for a stable business, that we need to work by delivering the growth. Yeah, and that is where my eyes would be, and I expect the team with everything that we have done to come back on delivering the growth. I was confident that we were still on the right track. The U.S. thing is a bit of a dampener.

What we are seeing overall, not just U.S., but U.S. and Europe, very aggressive pricing from China. And not only aggressive pricing from China, on top of that, seeing this impact of tariffs creates a bit of an issue. Not as much for Q2, because by the time some of the impact of the tariffs come, a lot of what we need to deliver, hopefully, will be out of the way. The way the tariffs are announced is that anything that is on the water by 7th of August is free of tariffs. It is after the 7th anything that goes on the water and is not delivered until a particular date in October, all of that will get impacted. So Q2, the impact is relatively less, but if this continues for longer, then there will be an impact on our Chemicals business.

Too early to say how this will pan out. We just need to wait and watch just a little bit.

Mohit Kumar
Research Analyst, ICICI Securities

How much was the U.S. export last year in the Chemicals?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

U.S. export was close to $20 million, but not all of that, what we call out as U.S. exports, is to U.S. Some of it goes to Mexico, Latin America, et cetera. What was U.S. going to U.S. specifically for this year, according to our plan, was about $15 million.

Mohit Kumar
Research Analyst, ICICI Securities

Understood. Thank you, Ashish. Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thank you. Thanks. Sorry, just to. That was just Chemicals. Yeah, on top of that, we have our cooling products as well. If I combine both of them, our exposure to the U.S. is somewhere of the order of $30 million.

Mohit Kumar
Research Analyst, ICICI Securities

Understood. Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhavin Vithlani from SBI Mutual Fund. Please proceed.

Bhavin Vithlani
Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst, SBI MUTUAL FUND

Yep, good morning, Ashish, and it's heartening to see the margin performance of the Industrial Infra piece. My compliments. So I have two questions. The first is if you could talk in brief for subsegment of the Industrial Products piece in terms of outlook, how do you see them moving forward? That's question one. Second is actually a follow-up of what you just mentioned to the previous participant. Could you call out the underlying EBITDA margins in the Chemicals, and what was the one-off? Because you mentioned significant increase in depreciation as one of the reasons. These are my two questions.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Okay, I'll take the first one, and let Rajendran take the second one and give you some more insights into that. On the four parts of our Industrial Products business, Water and Enviro, which is where we do clean air and pollution control related equipment, continue to grow. Water in particular with desalination, zero liquid discharge, both of these as product categories that we are working with and doing reasonably well on and having some elements of product differentiation also coming in. The pipeline is good, and we have been growing as well. Cooling has got some amount of exports exposure. We have planned this year for a very high amount of growth. That growth we could not deliver in Q1 to the extent that we would like. Yeah, but the pipeline still exists, and we are confident.

Even on things like some of the newer products that we have released, even in Q2 and Q3, the pipeline is close to INR 100 crores, where our products are like we think if the customer buys into the product methodology, then competition is relatively low. These are in many of the emerging sectors of data centers and the like. Yeah, so those are also part of our customer base. I would like to see that growth number coming in. Even on exports, in areas like gas power is going up again in data centers, combining that with absorption chillers is one more interesting space that is emerging. That leads the discussion on Heating, which Q1 was not as good as we would like. As I've shared before, the biggest sector was around the ethanol market, which slowed down quite considerably.

I think there are a lot of inquiries in the mix. We just need to see how these inquiries close financially. July was quite nice, and we are planning for a good Q2 overall. Overall, if I talk to the Industrial Products team, I've gone through very detailed reviews of the business pipeline, et cetera. The trend that we have been on, on good steady year-on-year growth, managing one slowdown on one side with a good thing showing up on the other, as I talk to our distributors, channel partners, international, I think that theme on steady growth continues. I don't see a particular concern around that. As that growth gets delivered, I think even the profitability numbers should come through like they did last year.

So, I hope I've given you some amount of insights without giving you very specific breakdowns on how are we seeing the four subparts of Industrial Products. Even international, which we have added quite a bit of capability, our pipeline continues to get better within Industrial Products. I mean, I would like international to cross INR 1,000 crores in order book exports from India, on top of it kind of Danstoker and PT TII and some of the other businesses. Yeah, I'll pass it to Rajendran to share with you kind of a bit of the waterfall on the cooling, including depreciation, G&A increase. Those are the two big impacts on the cost increases.

Rajendran Arunachalam
CFO and EVP, Thermax Limited

Yeah, Bhavin, so some of the expenses increase that happened in quarter one for us on the chemical business side is one has been the depreciation in the new plant.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Pardon me, if you could speak a little louder up, not very audible.

Rajendran Arunachalam
CFO and EVP, Thermax Limited

Okay. Is it better, Bhavin?

Bhavin Vithlani
Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst, SBI MUTUAL FUND

Yes. Yes, yes.

Rajendran Arunachalam
CFO and EVP, Thermax Limited

Some of the expenses increase that has happened in Q1 in our chemical business, I think, as I alluded earlier, depreciation on the new plant, plus the associated employee cost increase. We've had one-off expense item relating to a worker settlement that has hit our numbers, plus the annual inflationary expenses that happens in our general and administrative expenses. Those are the three bits that I would say have impacted our financial numbers.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

No, plus the headcount, et cetera, that we have added, which is part of G&A beyond just the salary increase.

Rajendran Arunachalam
CFO and EVP, Thermax Limited

Okay. Second.

Bhavin Vithlani
Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst, SBI MUTUAL FUND

Sure. Yeah, thank you so much.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pulkit Patni from Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Pulkit Patni
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Sir, thank you for taking my question. My first question is already answered. My other question is regarding the international business. So as we look through multiple segments and Chemicals, you yourself highlighted the Chinese are very aggressive. But when we look at industrial and Industrial Products in the international market, how do you gauge our competitiveness? How do you see our ability to generate decent margins in those geographies? If you could just talk about some of those qualitative points where we are confident that this business will be reasonably profitable, that would be very helpful.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

From our current business that we do, the export portion where we make in India and we send it outside, whether it's Industrial Infra or Industrial Products, our margins are relatively the highest. If we put up a particular size power plant in India and I do that outside India on the project side as an example, when I do it outside India, I tend to make more money. Similarly, if the same boiler that I provide in India or the same chiller, if I do it outside India, I tend to make more money, both at a margin level and even at the PP level, both guys. From a competitiveness basis, we tend to compete reasonably well.

Yeah, the two parts to that answer is first, in many of the products that we sell, if you take a look at water equipment, boilers, chillers, et cetera, many of them have the nature that you need to work with the customer to design the product or to understand the application and provide the right product for the application, and then to be able to provide services, et cetera., around that. When we are able to do that well, we are able to compete reasonably well. We see the Chinese in particular in Southeast Asia, in Middle East relatively less so, in Africa relatively less so. Southeast Asia is where we see the Chinese the most, and in many cases, we compete head-on, and in cases, we lose as well, in addition to some of the local competitors that we see as well.

Where does growth come from over time? Growth comes from two parts. One, especially for the larger projects for Industrial Infra, we get qualified for at customers. Yeah, especially for larger customers, especially in oil and gas and refining and petrochemical, where some of the largest projects are. So for example, over the last few years, we've been working, and we are now qualified at ADNOC. So anytime a project happens at ADNOC, then it provides Thermax opportunities to provide boilers and other equipment, boilers in particular, and some of those projects can get bigger. So in Middle East, as you look to get qualified customer by customer, then that pipeline develops. We are not qualified at Aramco as an example, and we would like to checkmark those boxes. When you do that, then your competition is more with European players, et cetera, where we can compete relatively well.

The second is for customers in many of our markets to get compatible with Thermax in Southeast Asia and many where the shift to biomass is happening, where pollution norms are getting tougher, water norms are getting tougher. Thermax, to establish name, takes some time. So customers use the product, then the word of mouth gets out. You have to do showcase plants, showcase facilities, and as you continue to do so, that you can continue to build a pipeline and win. So they are all like each year you do something, and then next year you stand on the shoulders of where you finished the last year, and you continue to do better. Okay?

Pulkit Patni
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Got it.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

I hope I answered your question.

Pulkit Patni
Executive Director, Goldman Sachs

Yes, thank you for that.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Mahawar from UBS. Please proceed.

Amit Mahawar
Executive Director, UBS

Yeah, Ashish, my question is more on segment two. I'm more sorted on segment one. Segment one, I think if you see last three years, common performance, growth, profitability, and more to come. In segment two, and I consider Babcock as the best part of that, which can easily be 2X business easily, and please correct me if I'm wrong, with a very significant margin delta from 8% level. So in segment two, some of the questions were around that, particularly on the power cycle in India and globally. What are the bottlenecks that you're facing right now? And maybe some portion you can cover on segment two. Thank you, Ashish.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

So the bottlenecks that we face are three bottlenecks. One is the highest end of the segment, which is the supercritical, is a portion on how we want to look at that sector. And we have been very careful not to do something that may tomorrow look like one more FGD kind of project. Yeah, so we have stayed away from going into long multi-year projects with exposure to civil construction-related risk, completely walked away. And in return, we have walked away from what was perhaps on the power side, the biggest piece of the pie. Yeah, so that portion is we will still have a role to play, but how big remains to be seen. Certainly, won't be to the extent that BHEL, NTPC, I mean, BHEL, L&T, et cetera, will do. The second part is thermal beyond supercritical, which is the AFBC piece and for captive.

That portion over the last year has suddenly mushroomed and become bigger and bigger. And there we will have a good role to play. Yeah, because we know how to work this very well. Customers prefer Thermax to a large extent and are comfortable working the project in a way that suits our strengths as well. Yeah, so this particular portion, quite comfortable with. International also, in many, many markets, our competitiveness continues to improve. Newer segments like waste-to-energy, et cetera, we continue to build our capability, continue to be leaders as well.

On the project side, which is the EPC portion, there, in addition to some of the work that we are doing in power, we're really looking at advanced biofuels, ethanol, carbon capture, those as emerging segments where we are building capability today, looking to do demonstration projects that are relatively worthwhile, and then continue to work this for the next two, three years. But I think by 2028, 2029, 2030, some of these sectors could be really big, and we want to be ready for when those sectors become really, really big. The pipeline overall in what you call out as the segment two is the biggest opportunity pipeline that I have seen in the last four years, except for that one period in 2022, 2023 when we took all these NRL and the FGD projects, which haven't worked out well.

So we are very conscious on doing things that align with our strengths. And we will be aggressive as long as these are in spaces that we want to be aggressive in, which is why I really like the backlog and the kinds of things we are developing now as examples of the kinds of things we want to do. Yeah, Amit, I hope I answered your question.

Amit Mahawar
Executive Director, UBS

Answered, Ashish. Can I ask one small one?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Please, sure.

Amit Mahawar
Executive Director, UBS

Thermax is a very organic company, and my limited observation of the last 20-21 years is that the way bottom-up sales force business heads, SBU heads have scaled up, that has been the core and strong strength of Thermax. At the same time, do you think, and are you confident that your salespeople who go out and bag large orders or medium-sized orders for Thermax, do you think you are confident that the translation of orders across segments will happen because the cycle seemingly in segments is not that bad? Thoughts on that, and that's it. Thank you, Ashish.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

I think the organic team continues. Yeah, it's the same team that translates across. In that sense, the DNA is similar. Many of the businesses have got legacy and leadership, which is very stable, very well established. We need hunger, and we need aggressiveness on the ground, which I see plenty of signs all across. Yeah, so as an engine which is primed, I see no concerns at all across. Yeah, thanks.

Amit Mahawar
Executive Director, UBS

Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Balasubramanya from Arihant Capital. Please proceed.

Balasubramanian A
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Arihant Capital Markets Limited

Good morning, sir. Thank you so much for the earnings updates. Sir, post-Bio-CNG FGD challenges, how has our project evaluation process changed in terms of our structure, stricter feasibility studies, risk-sharing process? And secondly, we are heavily investing in R&D for heat pumps and utilities, et cetera. So when will these investments translate into commercialized products?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

I'll take both questions. In terms of process on understanding risk, understanding projects that is already in place. Yeah, these are multiple questions, including even in this particular board meeting that we just concluded. We had, again, a review of all our lessons learned, looking at our projects with that lens of lessons learned. In the last year, we have actually not bid on, if I add other segments also, several thousand crores worth of projects we haven't bid on. Even in cases that we bid upon for literally thousand crores of projects, we bid our best price, and we walked away when the margin stuff wasn't to our liking. Certainly, projects around high civil construction, et cetera, and many of the larger projects, I myself am getting into very detailed reviews before we put in bids.

So I think there is a very formal structure in place all across the board. That does not mean that we will not take risks. We will take risks. We will do those with eyes open, and we will share very clearly internally and in some cases externally where we are taking risk. Yeah, for example, in this last quarter, we have done our first win in the ethanol space where the margin is relatively lower. It's not negative, but it's a less than INR 100 crore project, a single project which we know we can execute within a very defined timeline, and we took it with eyes wide open. The second part in terms of where is the R&D starting to make a difference, that is already happening.

Yeah, so in heat pumps as an example, both as hybrid heat pumps and heat pumps at higher temperatures, not just 50, 60 degrees Celsius, 110-degree Celsius heat pumps and pretty quickly 120-degree Celsius heat pumps. 110-degree Celsius already cleared first product in the market, working beautifully at a customer side. 120-degree Celsius heat pump, which we would be completely unique in the Indian market, one unique potentially globally as well. Product crossed R&D, product developed out in the market, working with customers to get wins done. CLCT, the lower footprint CLCT, again, higher efficiency, lower footprint, delivered to the market, already bidding for newer opportunities with the new technology. On ZLD, we are doing reasonably well. Our new innovation on ZLD, which is lower footprint, lower energy usage, releases in this month, yeah, in August.

So that will then formally release, but we have been having some product releases in the past.

Some of our bigger work, which is on the hydrogen side, carbon capture, and SAF and advanced biofuels, they will take a couple of years before they start to show result back. By the way, on electric boilers, we had started that a year and a half ago with the idea that, look, until 2028, 2029, we would be selling two, three units here and there. We are now selling 10 + units a quarter, and the ramp-up was much faster than what we expected. Just small examples of innovation that we are doing. The first waste-to-energy project that we did this year was also essentially on that whole FlexiSource and the waste-to-energy platform that we are talking about.

So the win that we had, actually, it was booked Q4 of last year, which is a INR 200-plus crore waste-to-energy project, a showcase project, which is again based on capability that we think we have that is differentiating. Okay, thank you.

Balasubramanian A
Senior Equity Research Analyst, Arihant Capital Markets Limited

Thank you, sir, for detailed explanation.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Sahu from HDFC Securities. Please proceed.

Aditya Sahu
Research Associate, HDFC securities

Hello. Hi. Am I audible?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Yeah, you are.

Aditya Sahu
Research Associate, HDFC securities

Hi, sir. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I just wanted to understand if you could throw some light on the revenue that you're looking at, revenue at the top, and the order inflows for FY 2026?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Sorry, I lost the initial part. You're asking for an outlook on order inflow, et cetera, for FY 2026?

Aditya Sahu
Research Associate, HDFC securities

Yes, yes, yes. Revenue at the top, order inflow.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

And in as many indirect ways as I can, reasonably bullish on the year. How bullish? Let's see. To Q2 and Q3 and share. Industrial Products, continued steady growth, profitable growth. That is the trend that we would like to be on. Chemicals, we are planning for a big growth where our plans were set for almost INR 225-250 crores a quarter kind of an order book. We have started much below that number. Yeah, so we should see a bump-up in Q2 and a continued raise increase. My concern is that what the American tariffs thing could be a little bit of a cloud around this whole growth bit, but we have got a lot of new things, and a big chunk of our growth was not driven from the U.S.

Yeah, so the growth I expect, but our base business in the U.S., if that goes down, then that pulls some of the other numbers down as well. Industrial Infra, as we have been saying, we want good calibre. We have a good pipeline. Reasonable start in Q1, you would see TBWES, which is clocking INR 600-plus crores without anything big. And as the big stuff comes in, we want that number to go up substantially. Similarly, Green Solutions, we expect a reasonable growth path for the year.

Aditya Sahu
Research Associate, HDFC securities

Understood, sir. Understood. And as you had highlighted earlier, on the export markets, the major ones that you're seeing are from Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, but these are the regions, right, sir?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Yeah, so basically, our fourth big market, what we call out, is Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, but Bangladesh is extremely slow right now. Yeah, Middle East is where we see the most amount of strength, and then Southeast Asia and Africa for large projects. We don't sell Industrial Products in Latin America, but for large projects, which is Industrial Infra, we do have a pipeline in Latin America as well.

Aditya Sahu
Research Associate, HDFC securities

Understood, sir. Understood. Yeah, that's all. That's all the questions.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Okay. I'll come back later on. Yeah, thank you.

Aditya Sahu
Research Associate, HDFC securities

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Anwani from PL Capital. Please proceed.

Amit Anwani
Lead Equity Analyst for Institutional Investors, PL Capital

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm audible?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Yeah, yeah, you are, Amit.

Amit Anwani
Lead Equity Analyst for Institutional Investors, PL Capital

Yeah. So first question on the package scheme. So you have highlighted that INR 56 crore was accounted this year. Just wanted to understand this relates to which kind of packages and what in future, what's the amount which still can come. So some understanding on this scheme and benefits to us in future quarters.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

So this is for Maharashtra where for a new plant setup, et cetera, there were credits that we qualified for. The first set, which took over a much longer period of time, is we accounted for that last year in Q2. We are accounting for that in Q1 as well. For the next two years, for sure, maybe a little bit beyond also, we will continue to get these credits, but won't be as big as what we have seen last year and this year.

Just a clarification, is this included in the INR 71 crore EBIT for the infra segment? This is included in the margins for that. Last year, we also had a bit of a direct tax refund that had come in, which also in our press release we have shared. So the net impact is not exactly INR 56 crores at the Thermax level. It is more INR 27 crores.

Amit Anwani
Lead Equity Analyst for Institutional Investors, PL Capital

Understood. And secondly, sir, on Green Solutions, if you could provide us more details with respect to we had a target of certain megawatts. And so what is the progress there and what would be the investment in terms of debt equity? And we talked about some project getting stuck in Green Solutions business. So if you could provide us more color, what is happening in this business, yeah?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

The projects that were getting stuck were two, which are both in Tamil Nadu, which took much longer to conclude. And because of the rains, we were expecting to finish them off by June. They are now going into early August and early September, but majority of it will become revenue-generating in August. Yeah, so that is the good part. In Tamil Nadu, we also had rains which had caused flooding last year where one particular asset had to get re-rated, et cetera. And we had a big insurance claim out there as well. That insurance claim got settled in Q1. The impact of that you will see in Q2. It's to our satisfaction, is all that I would say. It is a note that we have added in our clarifications as well.

So from an existing asset basis, we are happy now that in Q2, the chapters would be closed.

All our assets would be stable and operating and running. Even the older projects which we had delayed execution on will also be up and running. That leaves the newer projects which we are executing now in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. One is in Gujarat itself, and the next is ISTS. The Gujarat project is practically sold out. We have acquired land moving aggressively. The project is looking very good and with a lot of emphasis on project execution. We had taken a step back to make sure that whatever we took on now, we are taking it with a very sharp lens on execution, and that we are confident that we would have. For these projects, we have whatever numbers we had shared previously.

We will INR 400 crores in equity and at a 30/70, so about INR 1,000 crores in debt is something that is planned for the projects that we plan to take on in Gujarat and the ISTS projects in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Okay. Anything else?

Amit Anwani
Lead Equity Analyst for Institutional Investors, PL Capital

So with this, what number will reach this year?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

So this year, I'll share the exact number. I think we'll cross 300 megawatts this year and another 300 +, which would be in construction on these newer projects that we are taking on. Yeah, 300-400. I'll come back on the exact number. Rajendran can share that now.

Amit Anwani
Lead Equity Analyst for Institutional Investors, PL Capital

Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Mongia from Kotak Securities. Please proceed.

Aditya Mongia
Associate Director, Kotak Securities

Yeah, thank you, Ashish and team, for the opportunity. I'll go ahead with my questions. The first one is to get a sense of relevance of new products as a proportion of the Industrial Products portfolio. And in my sense, it's like ZLD heat pumps, electric boilers, energy management, those kinds of things that have started last three years. How much are they contributing to the Industrial Products portfolio today?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Sorry, go ahead.

Aditya Mongia
Associate Director, Kotak Securities

Can these high-growth businesses make Industrial Products grow faster than the 15% CAGR that you emphasized for the infra segment?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Right now, I would say they account for about 20% of what we are doing. Can it account for a faster than 15% growth? I think possible. We just need help from a stable economy as well. Yeah, right now, for a couple of quarters, it seems like the growth has been driven by new products, initiatives, et cetera. We would just want some of the sectors where we've gone down a couple of gears to ramp back up. Yeah, and these are sectors like I talked about, ethanol being a big part of it. I think if that happens, if on the export side, some of the pipeline that we are seeing, we can do that. It's definitely possible. Yeah, I think the internal plan is for that kind of growth, if anything slightly more bigger than that kind of growth. And Q2, I expect to see good signs.

Aditya Mongia
Associate Director, Kotak Securities

Thanks, and go for the second question. This is on Chemicals. Okay. Maybe two parts of the question. First part, if you can just give us a sense that beyond growth is even competition a hurdle to reach 15% margins. And I like part of the question that I'd asked earlier. Can Chemicals be the fastest growing segment amongst the three that you have over the next three years?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

I think Chemicals should be the fastest growing segment. That said, I like the growth story on all our segments, including Green Solutions. Chemicals, just the base that it is and the aspirations within the markets that it has, definitely has the potential too, and we are acting like it should be our fastest growing segment. Yeah, so previously, we had added capacity in Jhagadia, and we thought we would derate our plant in Paithan, even looking at potential other exit options. Right now, we are looking at can we use that capacity in Paithan for actually bringing some of our newer products into play. We have added international capability. We are investing quite heavily on R&D, newer molecules, and then, of course, the segments that we are entering, which is coating, sealants, Construction Chemicals, they're all big markets. There will be some amount of competition.

Of course, they will be competitive. But in our Industrial Products and our Industrial Infra businesses, we are used to a lot more competition. Yeah, these are relatively then more application-based selling. And once you agree on the application, it happens, then they are continuous sales. The customers will keep coming to you for that formulation and that chemical. So that part we really like about the Chemicals business, that once you break through, that breakthrough tends to stay with you for a very long time.

Aditya Mongia
Associate Director, Kotak Securities

Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you for your response. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anupam Goswami from SUD Life. Please proceed.

Anupam Goswami
Senior Analyst, SUD Life

Hi, sir. For Industrial Infra segment, you mentioned about this FGD Yamunanagar expiring in FY 2026. So what's the kind of growth after FY 2026? Do we have equally compensating pipeline and order win and new products offering in that? That is my first question, sir.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Let me take just that question. You can come back to the second one. See, we've been saying this for some time. Yeah, we understood that some of these projects have been dampeners on our numbers and on Industrial Infra. It is taking the good part of what we are doing in many cases. It is pulling that story down. Yeah, so if I look within Industrial Infra, you have got three bad things that are pulling down all the good stuff that is going on in many other parts. Those three things together account for about INR 700 crores of our remaining backlog, and all of it in that sense in Industrial Infra.

By the way, I think even Bio-CNG, which is TBSPL, is not, while it won't be a bad story the way it was last year, it's still not completely out of the woods that it's producing even high single-digit margins. Yeah, we're still carrying that business in a way that it's not a drain, but it's certainly not accretive by any means. But the drains, the three projects that are drains are the INR 700 crores, of which majority of it will get cleared this year. There'll be about INR 200 crores which will still slip into Q1 of next year, at which point I think we will say that most of this is in our rearview. All of it is in our rearview mirror. What is filling this up is everything else that we have been working on. In TBW, yes, we've been focusing on waste-to-energy.

We've been focusing on international IPP power projects are coming back up. We are increasing our competitiveness in cement, steel, all the other sectors, so you will see this quarter we did INR 600 crores without any single very large project. Yeah, Q2 also, even without the large projects, we are confident we will cross INR 600 crores, good international pipeline, and as we see those large projects through IPP, a little bit of international, we can absolutely blow through that number and continue to grow. On the project side, there are many projects, especially in distilleries, in sugar, where customers are coming to us. We are doing some adjacent projects in steel, et cetera, where we have got good capability. We are doing international.

In Q1 of this year, we closed one international project for projects in the Middle East, which was largely driven by us supplying all the equipment on a project basis, but no civil, no construction, everything shipping out of India as modules and going to customer sites. So we are doing a lot of new things that are starting to grow seeds. Yeah, those seeds are coming through.

Anupam Goswami
Senior Analyst, SUD Life

So just to clarify on this, we will maintain the run rate of this?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Yeah, I've been very aggressive that our pipeline of inquiry pipeline is the highest. For literally three quarters, we were doing nothing at all, building pipeline of the kinds of things that we want to do. And that pipeline will now come through. You will see even in Q1, while Industrial Products were slightly subdued, Industrial Projects and Industrial Infra, we had reasonable growth, and that will now continue in Q2 and Q3 as well.

Anupam Goswami
Senior Analyst, SUD Life

Okay. Just one more.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Evolution of the year. Yeah, absolutely.

Anupam Goswami
Senior Analyst, SUD Life

Okay. About on the Industrial Products, we've seen a margin dip to this. Where do we see the sustainable margin in this?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

By volume. You will see our volume in Q1 was below our revenue number last year. Yeah, and some increases in base cost, but our backlog is quite good. The backlog will come through, and the margin will also come through.

Anupam Goswami
Senior Analyst, SUD Life

Got it, sir. Thank you. I'll turn back.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Kumar.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Is that the last question then? Yeah?

Operator

Sorry, sir.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

We'll take this as the last question.

Operator

All right, sir. So we take the last question from the line of Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities. Please proceed.

Mohit Kumar
Research Analyst, ICICI Securities

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity once again. I need clarification on the FGD, given that the government has stopped the FGD, the new installation. The notification, does it impact any way our existing execution, or have you heard anything from the customer?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

We have clarified with our customers. We have clarified in the notification, none of the three projects that we are executing get covered. So in that sense, and we have clarified with both the customers, they are all both going forward and would like to execute the projects at the earliest possible. No concern there. The one little bit of concern that I had was, as I had said in FGD, we have got quite a bit of claims on our customers where we were expecting as these projects complete, we would get into a phase where we could settle those claims, and those would then become good guys for us for the future. That process gets a little complicated because we still don't have clarity on how the CEA would look at those claims.

No red flags right now, but that is one of the things that we are working towards and trying to get those answers from our customers and those clarifications and understandings. Yeah, so there is an increased dialogue with the customer, no slowdown on the projects themselves, but some things in the overall environment that slightly complicates matters.

Mohit Kumar
Research Analyst, ICICI Securities

Understood, sir. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Done then?

Operator

Yes.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Yeah? All right. Thank you very much to everyone for your patience, for taking time to hear us out. And as always, we thank you for your interest in Thermax and for coming and asking questions in such large numbers. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take that as the last question, and I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Bhumika Nair for closing comments.

Bhoomika Nair
Head of Investor Relations, Thermax Limited

Thank you to all the participants and the management for giving us an opportunity to host the call again. Thank you very much, sir, and wish you all the best.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax Limited

Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Operator

On behalf of DAM Capital Advisors Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.

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