Thermax Limited (NSE:THERMAX)
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Sep 11, 2026, 3:29 PM IST
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Q1 26/27

Jul 31, 2026

Summary

Q1 FY27 saw a major profitability hit from a legacy government project, shipping delays, and losses in Green Solutions and Bio-CNG, but management expects a strong recovery in the coming quarters as legacy issues resolve and order pipelines remain robust. Order book quality is high, with less than 5% government exposure and strong growth expected in industrial, chemical, and data center segments.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Thermax Q1 fiscal year 2027 earnings call hosted by DAM Capital. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in 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 is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Kunal Shah from DAM Capital. Thank you. Over to you, sir.

Kunal Shah
Analyst, DAM Capital

Hi, good afternoon. Welcome to the 1Q fiscal year 2027 earnings call of Thermax Limited. We have the management today, Mr. Ashish Bhandari, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Arunachalam, Group Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President. At this point, I'll hand over the floor to the management for their opening remarks. Thank you. Over to you, sir.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Thank you very much, everyone, and I hope I'm audible. Also thank you for coming into this call, and I'm sure there are a lot of questions. Before I get to the questions, I would like to share my thoughts on what happened in the quarter. A very difficult quarter. Felt like it was the toughest one, at least relative to expectations, for the past few years that we have had. Not that we haven't had tough quarters in the past, but this one felt particularly so. I would want to spend a few minutes talking about what happened in the quarter, what are we doing to fix it, and also share why I continue to be bullish about the year as a whole. Let me first start with what happened in the quarter itself.

Of the things that did not go relative to expectations, the first was, and by far the biggest was, the hit that we had to take for one specific project which is the cost to completion for a government project. It is part of that same bucket of projects that we had said that we don't want to do. It is the same project against which we had taken a hit last year. We are now in the last four quarters of execution of that project. In June, the engineering partner that we had, which is the detailed engineering partner on the basis of whose design and prior expertise we were doing the EPC of the project, came back with some significant changes. Those set of changes at that late hour was not something that we had budgeted for.

Given it was a loss-making project, we took that time to take a step back, understand all the risks that we have in this project that we can see, and a contingency for what we cannot see as we execute the project over the next four quarters. We took the impact of this forecast and change in cost, including what it would take us for site extension, expediting to meet customer commitments, et cetera. We have a reserve for LD, a portion of the LD, which we have kept intact, and some other numbers for what may come about in the future. This is the hit that we have taken from a cost to completion perspective. There was also an impact in industrial products, more so than other places, of not being able to ship finished goods inventory overall to the tune of about INR 300 crore.

A good portion of it was for international customers, including for the Middle East where, because of the Gulf War, shipping rates were quite high and many customers chose to delay picking up equipment. Also, there was some commodity price impact to the tune of INR 10 crore. Some portion of it was expected that we would have a tough quarter because the commodity prices went up in February, March, and as some of those projects which have got shorter durations on the product side, as they converted into products. We were expecting some part of that hit to come in. In that sense, the hit was not too much. It was in line with what was expected. It is the not being able to ship what we wanted to ship that had a bigger impact on our profitability.

Finally, within Green Solutions, we have done two parts. We have recasted our Bio-CNG business as part of Green Solutions. It is how it is operated. It has moved from Industrial & Infra to Green Solutions, and it is led by Green Solutions as well and FEPL. FEPL in particular, which is our wind solar renewables business. We had not expected an INR 20 crore loss in that business. That INR 20 crore loss is a combination of two factors. One is in Tamil Nadu, where we had a project, actually two projects, which were complete. They got complete during the period where the government changed. The whole portion where the government, the elections were going on, and later on when the new government came in. Many of the projects which were just put on hold for no particular reason.

Those projects we expected were just sitting on somebody coming and saying, "Yes, you can produce electricity from these assets." We expect to get this approval done within the next week itself. We have got teams that are just sitting at the bureaucracy and talking to the ministry. That change in government really set us back. The other reason at FEPL was that as we are now choosing to cut back in areas, and we think we have a good set of assets, we want to bring an external investor into the platform. Some of the carrying costs of the people that we have affected the bottom line as well. Both of these together resulted in an INR 20 crore loss in FEPL, and we are carrying an INR 8 crore loss in Bio-CNG. I will talk about Bio-CNG later, otherwise.

These are the things that contributed to Q1. As I look at the year as a whole, I am as bullish as I was when we had shared, when we had talked about Q4. Let me first start with the revenue and profitability portion. I will then go into the order side. On revenues, you know our backlog is quite significant, and in Q1, we barely delivered 7% growth in revenue. Some portions of it was because I talked about these INR 300 crore that could not ship out. But even with the INR 300 crore taken in, our backlog is building up very nicely. And the quality of our backlog, for the most part, especially on the project side, is very good. On the industrial products, there is one more quarter of some amount of volatility as the commodity prices completely get flushed out of industrial products.

Otherwise, in industrial projects, the backlog that remains is very good and profitable, and that will start to show up in Q2, Q3, and Q4. You have also previously seen that when we do better than INR 3,000 crore, just the gross margin impact that you get and how that gross margin flows through to profitability is nice. Last year, we did one quarter, which was more than INR 3,000 crore. This year, we will have to do two and hopefully three quarters that are more than INR 3,000 crore. So you will see that impact on profitability as well. Next on profitability, I have said, and we've been saying, there are three areas where we need to do better. One is these government projects that are long duration with civil construction, which for the last three years we haven't taken at all.

I had previously committed that this would be the last year we would have any exposure to those. I think for the most part, I would stick to that. HRRL, with this change, will slip into Q1 of next year. But all the cost impacts, I expect that we have absorbed and taken care of this year. Whatever remains, hopefully something that will not have any major impact. But our FGD projects, HRRL, everything. HRRL is over with this quarter. FGD, all the FGD projects are going as we had committed and planned previously, and will get executed between Q1 and Q2. One more plant got handed over. Q2, one more plant will get handed over, and the last one in Q4 of this year. So all of FGD would be, and there are no surprises coming on FGD.

They're not very profitable, but there are no more surprises on FGD. We are executing every project. And now that we have delivered one plant to the customer, we know very well, from an engineering point of view, what is entailed, and we're just working that on schedule. FEPL, I've already shared what our path on FEPL is. This year, we will look to bring a partner to the platform who will take substantial majority of the platform. And third is Bio-CNG. On Bio-CNG, we have four projects which I talked about, which are the EverEnviro projects, where we had PGTR commitments, which is performance commitments to the customer. Of those four customers, of those four projects, one we have finished PGTR successfully. Second one is going through PGTR, where half the PGTR is over, and it's also going through successfully.

The next two, because of some of the monsoon changes, monsoons have significantly affected operations in those areas where the rice straw coming in was wet, and there were some other challenges in terms of enhancing electricity, et cetera, at those sites. They will go through PGTR in August and September. Next quarter, I should have much better insights into how those projects are going. That is the last remaining portion on the Bio-CNG side, where at that point, our liabilities all across would be over. The question now is for two years on Bio-CNG, we haven't taken any new projects. Whatever orders we have had, have been change orders on existing sites to add capacity or whatever the customer would pay us for.

We haven't taken on any new projects, and we are carrying a team for which we are taking a hit of about INR 8 crore a quarter right now, INR 7 crore-INR 8 crore. We are waiting. That cost will get liquidated against new projects because that's the manpower that we need to execute the project. We need to the tune of two projects, which is INR 250 crore to basically work the team and the cost that we have against that team. The expectation is that there are some big policy changes that are expected imminently, which should then create a significant pipeline for Thermax. I'll answer kind of whether that is what is the outlook, et cetera, as part of the questions that you have.

This is kind of the things that are detractors to the Thermax numbers on the revenue and profitability side and my opinion on those. On the orders side, while it looked like it was a weak orders quarter, we have a significant opportunity pipeline across the board, and we had a very good orders year last year. I expect us to exceed that order book this year. Yeah. Even in Q1, there were two big shake hands that were done, relatively big, a few hundred INR crore, but because we advanced income in, we couldn't book it. Supercritical also, there is a continued pipeline. International, across the board, there is a very good pipeline. I stay very bullish on orders and continuing to build a pipeline of the kind that we like and want to execute better on. Chemicals also, we have had a turnaround in the business.

There's still some risk relating to commodity prices. On the volume coming back and which helps us on the bottom line, that part is good. With this opening and preamble, because you would have a lot of questions, I'm okay to go beyond the standard time that we have set for our discussion. I look forward to answering your questions one by one by one.

Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin with 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 have the first question from the line of Rahul Gajare from Macquarie Group. Please go ahead.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Yeah. Hi, good morning, and thanks for this opportunity. Sir, my first question is, you did touch upon the order where this is really coming from. Could you quantify year the size of the project which was there, and how much of that is pending in the execution, which you expect to complete over the next four quarters? Where you've taken this INR 91 crore hit.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Yeah. The original order was about INR 1,200 crore, of which now it is running at negative teens profitability. Which means the loss that we have on the project is close to INR 150 crore. Rajendran, could you specify year what the number is if you're comfortable sharing that? The order itself was taken in fiscal year 2022, and it is in its last portion of execution now, where what remains is now execution on the ground. The last four quarters are still execution heavy from a civil and construction. Civil is largely over. It's on the construction side it's still heavy. The engineering portion, which is where some of these changes and the corresponding equipment and all those other changes came about. We now have a formal letter from our engineering partner saying the engineering is now 100% complete in their part.

At the final stages of commissioning, there could be some minor movements here and there. The engineering is now complete. Have I answered your question, Rahul?

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Yes. The balance, I think that's something which we're just waiting for.

Rajendran Arunachalam
Group CFO and EVP, Thermax

The invoicing completed is about 74%, balance 26% is to go.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Sure. Yeah. My second question is, with Thermax, we are seeing when you all are delivering project, if there is any shortfall in terms of the output that was expected and we'll end up having penalties or higher cost or make good for the loss that the customer would have had. Now I want to know, is this the normal terms and condition of the industry, or is it that it's different with every customer?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

See, we have shared a page which we would like to go into little bit more detail with everyone. The realization is the kinds of projects that we had, FGD, HRRL Majority of the JD projects, HRRL, NRL, they all have one theme which is common. Customers that are government customers and L1 method of bidding, a typically tougher line taken by customers on what feels like are reasonable decisions. Which is why these projects tend to go on forever. We have got lot more highly demanding customers. Our international customers that we serve in the Middle East and other places, they are way more demanding. There is a practicality in how that whole discussion and those relationships work, which for government projects we have seen really doesn't happen.

This method and the way this happens is in some ways unique to us, kinds of set of things that we have said we'll just walk away from. There is a whole set of government projects which we are not saying we will never do them, but we will do them at a price point and which are commensurate with the risk that you are taking. If you don't get those price points with those customers, then it is okay if those numbers go down to zero. Over the last three years, they've come down to zero, practically. We are doing nothing. We have taken one IOCL project, which is very small, which is INR 50-60 crore, but otherwise, there is nothing that we have taken on a government project where we would have.

We are still living through things that we had taken some time ago, and this is the last year that we are working through. The only other one where we have risk is relating to in the Bio-CNG side, for example, where there is a performance contract really in Bio-CNG projects. Typically, almost everywhere where we have performance targets, Thermax, we know our equipment well enough that very rarely, if ever, we get into the performance of our equipment. We tend to work in areas of energy, water, air pollution control. We know very well what we can deliver or not deliver. We can talk a little bit about supercritical as well on why supercritical is in that sense a part of what we understand much better than otherwise. Bio-CNG, we went in because the whole industry was very nascent.

We took on some performance guarantees, which were difficult to handle because on both sides, the feed itself that we got was very different than the feed that was expected. It went into little bit of back and forth. Other than these two areas, there is nothing. Both of these areas for the last, for Bio-CNG, more than two years, and for these large government projects, more than three years, we haven't done anything. We are bringing this portion of our business down to zero, where we have customers that we don't like or economic models that are not completely in our control. Both of these we are bringing down to zero. We are just cleaning up our book from what was in the past. Otherwise, with most private customers, international customers, there is a relationship which is a back and forth.

It is not like every project is smooth. In some projects, we have LD exposure, et cetera, as well. We manage that in a reasonable fashion with 90+ % of our customers. The last thing I would say, Rahul, is that the way we account for things is that if it is a profit-making project and you have a cost increase, that cost increase gets accounted for as the project accounting happens. Even if there's a cost of increase of INR 10 crore, but you have INR 300 crore to go over, say, four quarters, you take proportional risk as you execute the project itself. For loss-making contracts, the way our accounting works is you have to do loss accounting for whatever you see in the future. This is a loss accounting for execution that will happen over the next four quarters.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Sir, just following up on this aspect. I clearly understand how the government contracts will, now that we will be probably at the last leg of it. But as far as on the Bio-CNG performance guarantees, how long do they typically have? Is it one year or it is like a five-year performance guarantee?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

No

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Are responsibility?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

No. It is one month or three months. That is it. As I shared in the opening, there are practically four projects on which we still have that performance risk, of which one we have delivered, handed over. Second one has crossed more than 50% and is continuing to make good progress. We are confident we will hit the commitments that we had made to the customer. The next two will go through performance execution in August and September. Those are three months.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Thank you very much. Thank you very much for this.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Okay.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

I have more questions. I'll come back in the queue. Thank you very much.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Please come back. We'll run this longer.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Sure.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

If your questions are not answered by anybody else, we'll take them up. Okay, thanks.

Rahul Gajare
Analyst, Macquarie Group

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you are requested to restrict your questions to two questions per participant. We have the next question from the line of Atul Tiwari from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Yes, sir. Thanks a lot. My question is on your order book. As a part of your order book, what will be the proportion of the government and PSU projects currently?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Of our order book, what remains, I think it is INR 300 crore. If I'm right, INR 300 crore-INR 400 crore is what would be left.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. Very minuscule. Out of almost INR 14,000 crore, just INR 300 crore pending.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Yep. It's getting to less than 5%, almost going towards 0% then.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. At least in the foreseeable future, you do not see yourself bidding for any more PSU and government projects.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

I wouldn't say absolutely no. I would say we would do those at our terms and priced correctly. I don't think it is right to say never because in cases where boilers and certain capability that we have, where we can do something that nobody else can, if there are only one or two participants that can do that correctly and you price it right and you win it, then we can look at that. Certainly not at the way we bid them in the past where we took those projects the way we bid a domestic project, that is really not the case. We are working those because the sites get delayed. It is not in your control. Most private players account for that correctly, give you extensions, give you money for those extensions. Government customers, even good ones.

In this particular case, I wouldn't say the customer is too unfair, just the way the process works is not something. We have to price it correctly. I wouldn't say a complete no or a never, we would price it correctly and we would do things where we have a particular capability which is not available with anybody else. By the way, sorry, I'll make an exception to what I had said. I said there is only one Indian Oil Corporation Limited project, which is of the tune of INR 60 crore. There is one other project, which is also less than INR 100 crore, which is a green methanol project for Kandla Port. Kandla Port, I suspect will get treated as a government entity at the end.

This is producing green methanol where we have the technology for producing green methanol from syngas to green methanol, which nobody else in India does with indigenous technology. The project was configured and developed on the basis of our capability, which is why we were doing that. That's it.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay, sir. For this project, which had the cost overrun of INR 91 crore, you seem to suggest that mostly it was because of some last-minute engineering changes by your engineering partner. How does it work now that you have booked the losses? Do you have some kind of claims against the engineering partner as well? It looks like that what they should have done in the earlier part of the project, they delayed it and because of which things kind of went out of control.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Yeah. First, I think this was a wrong project to take. We shouldn't have taken it. It was just wrong. After this 2023 end and 2024 onwards, we have completely changed the way we take on projects and the kinds of things we put in place before we look on a project. I'll start there to say that this project itself was a mistake to take. Because the engineering partner in a project order of INR 1,200 crore has an exposure of less than INR 100 crore. They bill that in portions where what you are left with is a few INR crore of LD. That few INR crore of LD is nothing that you can do, whereas you are taking a hit of more than INR 100 crore and you've got working a site. Just the model itself was a mistake on our part.

This was also something was in an area that was new to Thermax. In almost every other case, we do the engineering ourselves. The question is, why did we take on a project which was that large, where we did not know the engineering, and furthermore, was a PSU and all of that? Those are all the questions that our board has also asked, and the only answer I can give is it was a mistake and not one that we have remotely done in the last three years. For almost every project, including the project that we took for green methanol, we do majority of the engineering before we even bid on the project. If we can't do that, then we just walk away and we don't even bid for the project.

We do a 3D model, which is not 100% accurate, but a largely accurate model on the basis of which you can do the costing of the project and retire the engineering risk, including we did this for supercritical as well before we take on the project itself. A lot of work is done in advance so that your costing is extremely granular and you are doing engineering and you have a methodology by which even if the engineering partner is involved, like in supercritical, we have got B&W as our engineering partner. All the risks that are in the project are identified before we bid for the project itself, which is why for the first supercritical project, it took us nearly a year to close with the customer. Also in the case of supercritical, we said no to all civil and construction.

We said no to all balance of plant. We said we will just deliver the boiler and nothing else. With the customer, we had change provisions for commodity price increase, for the imported portion that we had currency fluctuation. All of those safeguards we had put in the order itself that we took on. A lot of things were put in place. In this particular case, it is something that internally has just taken so much of our discussion bandwidth for the last year, because it has called into question practically everything about how we execute projects in Thermax. Which is why this time around we took a page to share with all of you, because projects execution can never be completely perfect.

It was important for us to share with you how we see our own execution, this is something that we are sharing with the board on a continuous basis. This is the first time we have shared it with our analysts. We are sharing. I will spend some time on that slide. We have taken all the projects that we have been executing that are greater than INR 100 crore over the last couple of years, and we have broken them down between private, export, and PSU. What we are talking, it does not matter at what margin you book the project. What we are looking at is relative to how you book the project, how did you deliver the project?

That is the range at which how did you deliver or in your system based on your current visibility, how do you think you will deliver the project? Which is why the export projects are not all delivered, but on what path are you to deliver those projects. In that list, which is more than 30 projects that we have shared, 35 projects, if I remember right, total. Other than the PSU projects, almost all the other projects where you have price movement, which is negative, is less than 10%. Of those 10% that are more than 5%, you will see there is a corresponding number which is greater than 5% as well. Which means while there are price movements, everything else is largely under control or better than under control. Doing better and better.

It's only on those PSU projects where we have had an issue, which we are completely bringing down to zero and being very careful in terms of how we book, even if we choose to bid on anything, going forward.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay, sir, if you can allow the last one from my side.

Operator

Sorry to interrupt, sir.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Okay.

Operator

May I please request.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Look, I'll go a little longer, yeah, because people have follow-up questions. If it is a question in the same category, then I'll allow it. Yeah. Because if they are follow-on questions in just the same category, I'll allow it.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Oh, no, sir, I will come back in with you. I have a question.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Okay.

Atul Tiwari
Analyst, JPMorgan

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Pankaj Tibrewal from IKIGAI Asset Manager. Please go ahead.

Pankaj Tibrewal
Founder and CIO, IKIGAI Asset Manager

Thank you. Thanks, Ashish, for the opportunity. Coming from an investor side, the problem we are grappling with Thermax for last many quarter is the commentary and finally what comes out in execution. The consistency has been an issue, which was not there for a long time, because I've been seeing this company for more than two decades now. In your view, what's going wrong? Because even if I look at your fourth quarter commentary and to just verbatim quote, you said that in the industrial infra business, we are fairly confident. We should definitely have confidence in the margins going forward. I'm sure this project, as you alluded, has been a point of discussion for last 12 months within your boardroom. You fairly were aware that this could be something which could hit us, as you move ahead in fiscal year 2027.

I'm just trying to understand that how as investors we should take that from an overall commentary perspective, because that's something what the market reaction is also showing out, is investors are not very confident on what the commentary has been and what the execution finally comes out to be. I'm being a little bit candid, but that's the discussion which people are having. Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Your question is very valid, I don't think it is unfair by any means. Anybody looking at our numbers would have that same opinion, including our board, which has been absolutely clear, transparent and brutal in its expectations of us as a team. I think anything I share, beyond making excuses, would only take away from the fact that we haven't done a good job of showing what it is that we are capable of. Yeah. Let me just take, with that as the preamble, let me take a step back on two parts. We've been saying now for now, few quarters that we realized we made a couple of mistakes. In the last three years, we have been working to bring these mistakes and the impact of these mistakes down to zero.

Even last year when we had shared our numbers, I talked about that 2027 is the last year where we will see impact of some of these businesses. I will stick to that word, and I'll continue to stick to that. Despite all of this, at least in this period, despite taking all of these hits, we have been showing by the time the year gets done that our revenue, while it may be flat, our profitability, despite taking all of these hits, has largely been going up moderately, not as much as I would like, but it has been going up moderately. I would say even with taking this INR 90 crore hit, I expect this year to be a very good year.

At the heart of it comes down to the backlog that we have built up and getting that backlog to translate into revenue as some of these legacy projects get worked out and finished. That is the only thing I can say why I see consistency in our future and these three areas where we need to clean up our act, and what we are doing to clean up our act. Let me talk about this particular project and what happened and what changed. The engineering change that came from our partner came in early part of June. When it came in, it was first a surprise that we did not expect or like. The team took a couple of weeks to go out and say, "Okay, this is a change that has to come through.

What is the impact of this change that will come about?" That impact then came out as a bigger number than what we were expecting. As is prudent accounting, we took a step back to say, "Okay, if this is what is happening, then we need to take into account other impacts that will happen," which means the site can get longer. You will have to account for that. You may have other changes which were in your medium risk. Even though you may have opportunity of change orders and all that, you need to start accounting for those medium risks in your number as well.

After looking at all of that, this rather large number came up and prudent accounting said, "Just take that hit." Which was not easy because it's taking away from lot of other good work that is going on in all other parts of Thermax, which is why we shared the execution profile on how tightly we are monitoring and working almost all of our projects here. Outside of this one project, there's less than 10% of our projects which have a movement of less than 5%. It is more than corresponded by many projects which are more than 20%, which have an impact of better than 5%. Net-net, we actually, outside of this one project, our project execution adds to our as sold profitability, not takes away from our as sold.

Your point around us not doing a good job overall in terms of what we are showing to our investors is correct. I think it is something not just this year, it is what has been getting us to work extremely hard for four quarters. In fact, it actually starts the year before where we said no to so many orders because we didn't think they were the kinds of orders we should take. All of fiscal year 2025, we said no to orders, and fiscal year 2026, where we started to focus a lot more on international, even domestic, we said no to NTPC orders for super critical because they had all the characteristics that we did not like. We were extremely patient on when we acted on our first one, the breakthroughs in data centers and all. None of those things have been delivered yet.

Yet the entire data center backlog, which is now several hundred INR crore for the U.S. and extremely profitable, are things that are sitting in our backlog and will get executed over the next few quarters. The good portion, we haven't been able to show to the extent that we would like. Certainly, we are showing the bad portion more often than we would like to. I don't know. Any more questions you would have on this particular point?

Pankaj Tibrewal
Founder and CIO, IKIGAI Asset Manager

No. Thank you. Only just one maybe an observation, suggestion, whichever way you can take it.

Whenever there's a huge divergence between what you have said previously and the outcome is very different, like the IT companies, you can give a profit warning just at the start of the quarter, so that every investor, everybody's on the same page. This kind of a negative surprise probably takes everybody very negatively. Profit warning could be a better way to do it, rather than surprising it every quarter on some of the other side.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

I understand

Pankaj Tibrewal
Founder and CIO, IKIGAI Asset Manager

Just an observation. It's a good corporate governance, and it will help you in the future.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

I think even this point got discussed and a couple of members of our board have made that very specific comment that you do, that IT companies take time out. We debated that internally. I think, going forward, I'm not committing to it. It's between us as a team to decide. I think this is something that we could have done. Also what happened was, as the numbers came out and we had some idea about what that looked like. To clear that through our board and through our auditors also took a couple of weeks because this was a surprise at many levels on this particular project. The questions were exactly the questions that you are asking. Can it get any worse? Are you being conservative enough? How could you be so bad? All of those questions that you are asking, which were valid.

Some of that also took a little longer to conclude and to finish. Your feedback is very well taken and without committing to it for sure, your suggestion is something that we are looking at very strongly. To say, if there are such surprises, we need to be sharing those much earlier and doing so. Yeah. We will take this into account. Thank you.

Pankaj Tibrewal
Founder and CIO, IKIGAI Asset Manager

Thank you, Ashish. Thank you. Wish you all the best.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you are requested to restrict your question to one question per participant. I repeat, you are requested to restrict your question to one per participant. We'll take the next question from the line of Bhavin Vithlani from SBI Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.

Bhavin Vithlani
Analyst, SBI Mutual Fund

Yeah. Ashish, this is like if I look at the Thermax pre-COVID and post-COVID, I mean, the two halves. There was a difficult six-year period where a lot of talent was being restructured. Even the pre-COVID era, even the project was taken in a difficult environment, four, five% margin. In the end, it used to come out with a six, seven% margin. Have we seen that the restructuring of talent and I think if you could answer that, is that the talent issue where we had Thermax with an impeccable execution track record and that has become completely inverse over the last six years. We've been consistently seeing disappointments over the last 24 quarters. Maybe you could talk about the talent. The second thing is, while we have seen a few mistakes and you called out those mistakes.

You pointed out public sector and the why that is that because of the one or two mistakes, will you compromise the growth significantly? Because, in the hindsight, you could say that, okay, these were things that you could have corrected on, but not taking public sector projects and taking projects with these specifics. Would you be compromising on the growth and that can hamper the underlying long-term growth for Thermax for just want of being conservative?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Good questions. Thank you. First on the talent bit. In this particular portion, I don't see that as a concern. At least that wasn't the concern. The mistakes that were made, even if the team that was doing it was the same team. Actually, the top five people who were involved were all with more than 20 years within Thermax and with project execution expertise of the nature that is relevant for doing projects. It's not like they were not of projects background. They were and they are. Not everyone in the team is still with Thermax. We have had some structuring that has been announced as well and some consolidation in how we work. That was announced as well. Not all of that was announced.

Some of it, as you looked at the restructuring of our business, the elements in how we are reporting and bringing things together, it was as part of that. I don't think talent by itself was a point. If anything, we are seeing an environment right now where even in some cases, talent that had left Thermax is looking to come back in multiple parts of our business. Certainly in these large project execution, there were zero people who were not long-term Thermax people. Yeah. I would say even the Bio-CNG business, the way it got incubated and led, the first entire portion of the business, only now we are getting one or two people from the outside. Everybody else was legacy and Thermax project experience.

FEPL is the only area where we have had leadership that has come from the outside. TOSIL is the area where we have had leadership come from the outside. TOSIL has done spectacularly well. Even in this last quarter, TOSIL booked two orders, very good marquee orders, and one of which was TOSIL's largest order of INR 120+ crore with a 10-year A revenue outlook of INR 2,000 crore. It is that level of numbers that are coming into the business. We really like that. FEPL overall, I think was not the right business for Thermax. That's the only way I can put it out. The second part of your question is, will we be conservative? In some parts, there was a redirection of the business. That actually was more 2025. If you remember, 2025 was a very muted year for orders for Thermax.

Even at that time, there were multiple projects that we bid on for governments also, which if the price wasn't right and we lost them, we were perfectly okay losing them. fiscal year 2026, almost everything that we did, we liked. We will not compromise on our growth as long as it is in the right areas and in ways that we like. The focus then is on having technical differentiation and capability, which is worthwhile. Second, continuing to really get good at project execution. I think the mistakes that have happened, have happened. We can't continue to cry our entire quarters and the entire year about it. There's a significant focus on just executing projects better. By the way, to me, that is not just Thermax.

The entire Indian ecosystem needs to get much better on executing projects, because we are working in an environment where weather patterns are fluctuating, labor is not that easily available. We need to bring in lot more automation, lot more digital into how project execution is structured. That whole model is a post-COVID model change, which needs to happen.

It does not mean that we will not do projects going forward. Certainly, you will see in TBWES where we think we have got good capability, where we are able to execute well, we are taking projects. Even in this year, we will take projects where customers are good, we know how to price them right. It is in areas where Thermax can do well. We will take. Which is why Bhavin and I were saying on the order side, I still see a pipeline which is better than what we did last year.

Bhavin Vithlani
Analyst, SBI Mutual Fund

Sure. Thank you so much for taking my question.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Amit Mahawar from UBS Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Amit Mahawar
Analyst, UBS

Yeah. Hi, sir. This is Amit from UBS Securities. Ashish, I just have one question. A lot has been discussed already about the legacy orders, how it will go. Thank you for that. Just following up on Bhavin's question, can you help us? There's a lot of demand and growth we can see on industrial estates, on compliance, ZLD, ETP, right? You have a lot of industrial product pipeline, right? I know these discussions get lost right now on a very overwhelming quarter. If you can throw some light on these segments and most importantly, the TBW scale up, because that's where the core of profitability could lie looking beyond the legacy orders. If you can spend some time on three, four important segments and the pipeline colors, Ashish. Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Let me use the first question that you had to share industrial products and what is going on in industrial products, then I'll spend time on TBWES. That's how I'll break my response. Amit, you are right on industrial products. The broad events which are relating to sustainability, better, cleaner air, cleaner water, continue to drive a very healthy pipeline. ZLD as an example, which was a very small portion of our business and negligible portion of our business even two years ago in our water business as driver of ZLD plus ETP overall with ZLD as a core, has become the single biggest part of our water business. Then if you add up solutions around desalination and other emerging areas, those have become the driver of our water business domestically and internationally, both.

Similarly, on clean air, the emphasis that is coming from many states on just better control of what we exhaust out of our plants is getting better. I don't think the enforcement is still as good as we think it can be. Like, in my opinion, in the northern part of India, significantly better implementation is needed. The policies may be there, but enforcement is not as good as can be. We have the technology. We have the technology to go out to every one of those plants and retrofit them with air pollution control equipment, which would cut down the emissions significantly, bring them up to the tightest norms that are possible, which will help during winter months when pollution gets really, really high. In cooling, similarly, there are trends around data centers, around our heat pump technology, which has got good legs as we go forward.

CLCT technologies, which can deliver much lesser cooling needs at plants and commercial locations. In boilers also, the whole biomass boiler bit, every one of these areas, I feel, has got good growth. It is that kind of growth that we've been seeing for the last two to three years. Solid double-digit growth year-on-year is the trend that I'm seeing in this part of the business domestically and increasingly internationally. We are getting more and more competitive internationally, which is also good to see. In that same breath, I would say in industrial products, you could see our profitability in Q1 drop because of some exposure to commodity prices and because we were not able to ship as much as we would like to.

In industrial products, in two parts of our industrial products business, like pollution control equipment, design and engineering, you can do well, but it is largely just steel. When steel prices jumped up by 18%, it went from 52%, 53%- 61%+ in just two months for plates. That impact comes on couple of those businesses. Those we need to work through. In our cooling and our heating business, cooling in particular, where we have got opportunity for much higher margins, given the spaces that it is working in, the backlog is more Q3 and Q4. I see some amount of pressure in Q2 in industrial products margin that will get cleared in Q3 and Q4. Year overall, I'm still confident that we can, in industrial products, deliver a year which will have good profitability growth, good orders growth, and good revenue growth.

TBWES is the place where there is a structural shift that is going on. Here we are adding capacity. Not only are we adding capacity, we are looking to work with our ecosystem to significantly increase the capacity through our ecosystem as well. We are seeing a big pipeline of thermal projects happening. We are seeing international pipeline, including Middle East and Africa, and waste to energy domestically and internationally increase quite substantially. Finally, we see a big pipeline, not a big pipeline, but a pipeline for data centers also starting to come by for the U.S. This is specifically for the U.S., where natural gas to power is a big space. This is specific to the U.S. In TBWES, we are increasing capacity at our plant, as I said, and also looking to increase capacity through our ecosystem as well.

What I would say is look for measured continuous growth in industrial products. Look for discontinuous growth, which is what we are going through on the TBWES side. Even on the project side of the kind I think we can execute well, power plants, private customers, domestic and international, taken at reasonably good margins. Even there, our pipeline is increasing now.

Amit Mahawar
Analyst, UBS

Thank you, Ashish, and good luck.

Operator

Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Aditya Mongia from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.

Aditya Mongia
Analyst, Kotak Institutional Equities

Yes, thank you for the opportunity. Ashish, the question from my side was more linked to your competitive positioning in two key markets, data centers and hydrogen. Why I ask this question is that somewhere a few years back, you had talked about heat pumps and where you stand, at what temperature you can extract heat, how good you are. Over in these two segments, in data centers and hydrogen, as we understand, there's a combination of capabilities that is going up inside the company. The annual report was fairly informative in that aspect. We just want to understand how better you are versus others, and accordingly, how big can these businesses become for you over time?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

There are four parts of our business that have exposure to data centers. Our cooling business, where we provide absorption chillers and Hybrid CLCTs. Our TBWES business, which is capable of providing boilers and pressure parts for boilers for large power projects, which then are powering data centers. These power projects are specific to powering data centers. Third is water, and fourth is chemicals, where you need water treatment chemicals for water plants that you supply for data centers. Those are the four portions of our business that have exposure to data centers. All four of them are critical to a data center. You will see there's lot of talk about power, cooling, and water as drivers of data centers.

Of these, the order that I mentioned is the order in which we have differentiation. The biggest differentiation we have is on the cooling side, where what we can do, especially where power is co-located with the data center, what we can do for international markets, particularly the U.S., very few can do and the competitors are maximum one to two globally, not just domestically, globally. The question there is how do you get yourself in front of the customer and you have a position by which you can explain and work your technology into the overall scheme for the data center? There we had our first win last year, which we were really excited about. Even now, the overall pipeline that we are working of those kinds of projects is significant.

There are two major solution providers in the U.S., with whom we have MOUs that are inked that they will incorporate our technology as part of their overall execution philosophy of cooling for a data center, where we are getting more and more progress. If I had to commit, while there is a larger range, I would think between Q3 and Q4, we should be showing two more wins that relate to cooling solutions going for data centers in the U.S. That's my expectation. Handshakes in this quarter and next and order booking in Q3 and Q4. That pipeline, I hope with each quarter will continue to grow. Similarly, cooling for India and other markets where if with our Hybrid CLCTs, we have a position on technology which is different. Traditional cooling towers can't do it.

Again, the core point is can I save power that is needed at the data center? In cooling we have a position which is unique. Next would be boiler pressure parts going into the U.S. where very few Indian companies have that exposure and that capability and where we have a breakthrough. The competition is not from China. The competition is actually from U.S.-based companies, and what we can supply. I guess there could be competition from China going forward as well. There also the question is not as much on price. The question is on how quickly you can deliver and trust in our ability to engineer that. Yeah, that is second.

In water and in chemicals, while we have a pipeline, it is not super differentiated in the sense that the water that is needed has to meet what water norms that need to get met for any other, basically, water treatment plant as well. Yeah. This is called as raw water treatment and it's a basically a configuration which is relatively standard for water, so it's competitive. Similarly on the chemical side, once that raw water treatment plant comes up, cleaning it with chemicals is also relatively straightforward. In water treatment chemicals overall, we are one of the larger players in India, so we get a share from that point of view, but it is not something where we think the technology is particularly demanding. Okay. Have I answered your question at a fair amount of detail?

Aditya Mongia
Analyst, Kotak Institutional Equities

Just partly the hydrogen part, as in we could see.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Oh, sorry. The hydrogen part.

Aditya Mongia
Analyst, Kotak Institutional Equities

the manufacturing being there, the advances being there. Yeah. A lot of things happening over there from a capability factor perspective. Yeah.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

I would put hydrogen and Bio-CNG as two areas where we are saying we will commit to putting our head down and working through this because we do see light at the end of the tunnel. In hydrogen, in my view, there is only one other company in India that has put together a team and the capability of the nature that we have. We have already shaken hands on one project. We can't announce it yet. Hopefully, in the next quarter is when we will announce it because it has got some time to when it will become bookable. We are starting to see some success coming our way on the hydrogen side based on our partnership with HydrogenPro.

Not only that, even on SOEC where our demo plant has to go up, our demo plant will go up at the end of this year. It will be a showcase plant and it will be showcased with global standards. It'll be not just for India, it'll be a showcase for global standards and we expect couple of very big names to be partners in that demo project as well where we will be able to show our capabilities. Hydrogen right now we are working through and carrying a team of about 40, 50 people which is just doing engineering and work and setting up the demo plant, et cetera. Next quarter we should be able to announce an order as well, and next year start to show revenues around hydrogen as well.

Aditya Mongia
Analyst, Kotak Institutional Equities

Helpful. Ashish will come back into the queue. Thank you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Amit Anwani from PL Capital. Please go ahead.

Amit Anwani
Analyst, PL Capital

You did allude on the products business in terms of margin and growth. Just wanted an understanding basis the current order book in industrial infra, and you have given one slide about the margin change. What's the margin expectation now versus the current book? Second question, you said you will exceed the overall order inflow versus the last year, and you also highlighted there's been challenges in PSU public sector orders and the focus is on the private sector orders. For the remaining nine months, what is that you're factoring into the order inflow? In which segments? Is it the data center which you highlighted or other segments which will contribute to the expectation of your order inflow, given the constraint that you have set for yourselves?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Sure. As I said, not just this year, even for the last two years, we have completely walked away from any large government multi-year civil construction kind of projects. In fact, overall in our portfolio, we will. It's not like civil and construction we will say no to, but wherever civil and construction is involved, we are going in with our eyes wide open. If I had to share why am I overall excited about that we think we can do better on orders, let me first focus on industrial infra, because that is the place in which we had booked large orders last year. How do they match is what I would like to share first. Industrial infra, we had a supercritical project that we booked last year. I suspect we will repeat a supercritical project this year.

At least one, maybe more than one as well. We've got multiple active opportunities, and I do think with the overall capacity look in the market, there will be more customers who will look to work with Thermax. That portion is at worst equal to what we did last year. We had an international set of projects, one relatively large project for the Middle East and one relatively large project, which was in refining and petrochemical for Africa. Both of these we see equal to or more in this coming year. Africa, our pipeline continues to grow. Of the projects that I talked about, we have already shaken hands on one in Q1, which we just couldn't book because we're just waiting for the advance. The project is all signed and done. We have got more in the pipeline for the remaining quarters as well.

Similarly, Middle East, we see a good pipeline. Whatever we did last year, we should be able to do more. On top of that, we've got the data center pipeline opening up for the U.S. and India, some supercritical, subcritical and captive thermal also coming in addition to waste to energy and some of the areas where we think we can execute couple of EPC projects also. Overall, the pipeline is very healthy. We were very patient in Q1 wanting to focus on booking what we think as an order profile that we like, which is why it looks relatively muted. By the time the year goes through, our pipeline continues to be strong, and I expect to do better than what we did last year. Industrial products, you can see even in this quarter we showed double-digit growth over last year.

We will continue to be on that path for the remaining year as well. I think there is some short-term kind of where some of our sectors, like Rice, from which we get quite a bit of business, some of the customers are worried on exports to Middle East, et cetera. There are timing moves here and there, not too much. Overall, our pipeline continues to be good in industrial products, will grow year on year.

Chemicals, we have shown a much better Q1, and some of our volumes have come back in chemicals. I do expect that we will grow at least 20%, hopefully, in chemicals. In Green Solutions, TOSIL has had good success in Q1, and in TOSIL, the numbers don't go down on revenue. Yeah, they continue to go up. TOSIL had a very good Q4 on order booking, very good Q1, and a very good pipeline going forward. TOSIL is on path to becoming an INR 800 crore- INR 1,000 crore business over the next two years on a consistent basis. It's already on a run rate of better than INR 600 crore.

The outlook is we already see visibility of it getting to INR 800 crore- INR 900 crore, and then as it continues to do well, getting to INR 1,000 crore kind of a number on a continuous basis. Bio-CNG, I spoke about, we haven't taken any reasonable number of orders. If Bio-CNG opens up as a sector, the expectation is in August itself, some of the pricing changes that the government wants to do, they come into place. Q3, Q4, there should be a good pipeline of Bio-CNG projects also starting to develop. Hydrogen, I've already shared my outlook. Other than FEPL, and even in FEPL, as that we complete, they come into execution and they start to produce power. They will start to show more results. That's my reason for confidence across the board on why I think on orders we will have a decent year.

Amit Anwani
Analyst, PL Capital

All right. Just a follow-up on data center.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Without anything on PSE.

Amit Anwani
Analyst, PL Capital

All right. Just a follow-up on data center. What's the size of this power plant switch that.

Operator

Sorry to interrupt, sir. May I please request you to rejoin the queue for any follow-up questions?

Amit Anwani
Analyst, PL Capital

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.

Mohit Kumar
Analyst, ICICI Securities

Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My question is, sir, in the opening address, you mentioned that there are big policy changes which you think should create a significant pipeline for Thermax. Can you please dwell on it? What kind of policy change you're expecting, and in which segment they are?

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

No, I did not say big policy changes are expected that will affect all of Thermax. The only policy change I was referring to was specific to Bio-CNG, I'll repeat that again. Beyond that, it wasn't policy-driven. India doubling down on thermal is something that three years ago, if anything, post-COVID, we were actually building a Thermax where thermal would have no role to play. Where we stand today, one of our biggest pipelines is from thermal. Not only super critical, even sub-critical captive power plants, a very large pipeline for thermal, which has emerged. That was my only point. Nuclear and many other sectors will have relevance for Thermax, but that is not for the next three years. They will all have relevance later on.

Where policy will play a role is actually largely on the green solutions area. The biggest area would be in Bio-CNG, where Bio-CNG today, the government has said they want 5,000 Bio-CNG plants and waste to energy plants. The reality is that we have 150 plants in India. Most of them are not meeting the economics that were originally envisioned, and are effectively not loss-making, but with significantly low returns on equity. That is the reality. Also because of which, lately, no one has been putting large-scale plants, including the big players out there. Meanwhile, India's import bill continues to increase on natural gas. We don't have an effective home for parali. You don't have, what do I use all this parali for? There is a very high degree of expectation and confidence that the government will look to fix this.

What is expected is that the price of Bio-CNG will go up by more than 20%, somewhere between 20%-30%. If that price goes up by more than 20%-30%, this is straight money going into improving the economics of the project. Doesn't affect cost. Simple price increase for Bio-CNG with higher mandates for Bio-CNG, mixing into as part of overall CNG mix, and then state benefits and other benefits as part of what is called the Sampoorna scheme that the central government is expected to push. In fact, many of us are expecting that August 10th, where there is a big conference in New Delhi, there will be some announcements that will come up. Even if they don't come up there, the expectation is August is when they will come up.

Second would be green methanol, where government is looking as part of SECI to create a movement around green methanol as part of our ports, and India to become a green methanol hub. There also, SECI is collecting tenders and creating a big pipeline on green methanol. Both versions of green methanol, e-methanol and biomass to methanol, are areas where Thermax will have a role to play. We'll be very careful in the kinds of projects we take and the risks that we take. Our first focus is on executing our first project in Kandla and making that as a showcase piece. Kandla was particularly chosen as a small-sized project in which we can amply demonstrate our technology. Kandla will get executed from our portion between, I think, Q4 of this year and Q1 of this year. It's not delayed by us.

It is more the site and what the customer needs to do, which may delay it. Then hydrogen, we have talked quite a bit about. Hydrogen is one more area where government policy can impact how big the market can be. In the traditional portion of our business, there is no dependence on policy at all. Understood, sir. Thank you and all the best, sir. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Subhadip Mitra from Nuvama. Please go ahead.

Subhadip Mitra
Analyst, Nuvama

Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity. This is Subhadip Mitra here. Just wanted to check that, in your opening comments, you talked about the fact that we have only about INR 300 crore of PSU and government-related orders out of a total INR 40,000 crore order book. Is it right to understand that this is the only portion of, let's say, painful legacy projects that are left, which could be exposed to cost escalations on margins and beyond the INR 300 crore, hopefully, the pain ends? Also, what is the, let's say, new normal in terms of the consolidated EBITDA margins that you would look at once all the legacy projects are done with? Thanks.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

First part is, yes, on the industrial infra side, this is the last portion. Yeah. It's got a mix of NRL and the FGD projects. That is the last remaining bits. The two last Bio-CNG projects are, I talked about four, of which two are going through PGTR. One is finished, one is well through its PGTR, and the last two remaining are, that's the one area where we are confident. Until we finish it, that is an area which is also something that we need to close out. That too should get closed out by in Q3. Yeah. With that would be the end of any of this that we are looking at. Of what we are bringing in, not everything would be of that same quality and high margin.

If I was looking at the blended number between exports and private and all the spaces that we are looking at, I would say for contribution margin and EBITDA margin on industrial infra, I can finally see line of sight to taking that business to 10% and beyond on profitability. Not just on EBITDA, but on profitability itself. Industrial products, as I've shared in the past, the focus is, of course, on increasing profitability in each part. There are two parts of the business where growth is high, but from a profitability mix perspective, they are lower in profitability, which is water and air pollution control, which are our basically clean water, clean air businesses. They tend to have lower profitability than cooling and boilers.

There is a mix impact because these two are growing slightly faster than boilers, because boilers, we have a very high share, and finding new areas of growth is not that easy. In cooling, which is both profitable and potentially high growth, that we need to continue to keep on the acceleration to make sure that the blended mix is also one that continues to grow on profitability. If you asked me for a number that is consistent, my thing would be continue on the profitability path, continue on the growth path. Which is maintain profitability, continue growth on industrial products. Chemicals, getting to double-digit EBITDAs is something that we've already shown in Q1. I would like to continue that.

Chemicals, I would like to say, while we have had a good Q1, we see some visibility to continued improvement, there is commodity price pressure out there, which in between felt like would go down with the war coming and the crude prices coming down. In the last week, that is again something that is changing quite rapidly. Lot of what we do in chemicals is exports, and we compete with Chinese players on the export market. That is little bit of worry on how our customers will continue to absorb the increased prices that we are doing. We've also had the pressure of this 10% tariff, which is now being put on. The U.S. is just very tough to determine how they are acting. Far, our customers are holding off. Some of our biggest customers don't want to work with Chinese anymore.

I am happy where we are right now and optimistic. By that, if this hold on for too long, will we continue to be able to push our price increases through to our customers or not?

Subhadip Mitra
Analyst, Nuvama

Understood. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you so much. The next question comes from the line of Dhavan Shah from AlfAccurate Advisors. Please go ahead.

Dhavan Shah
Analyst, AlfAccurate Advisors

Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My question is on the INR 300 crore of order, which you mentioned that was delayed last quarter because of the logistic-related challenges. Is that shipped now? Let's say, if you had recorded that INR 300 crore of revenue, is it fair to assume that the adjusted EBITDA of last quarter could be around INR 290 crore, INR 300 crore odd because the fixed cost has already incurred, and the gross margin probably 45%-50% odd, that would directly flow to the EBITDA.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

I don't think our gross margins is 45%-50% at all. There are actually only two of our businesses where gross margins are 45%-50%. In the rest of our businesses, it ranges from 15%-30%. Like in our projects business as an example, gross margins are of the order of 15% with 5% G&A and 10% coming down then to the profitability line. That's an ideal kind of a business in a way. There is a range to those numbers. Your thinking is right, because in some of these cases, especially where we had exports, there was some amount of profitability that was better than our average profitability in what we could not ship. We haven't been able to ship all of it, even now.

There is a chunk that has moved, even in Q2, we'll have to be doubly aware because not only the INR 300 crore slipped from Q1 to Q2, we had a relatively bigger number for Q2 already. You can see with an INR 14,000 crore backlog, even if I take out about INR 2,500 crore, which is for deliveries in future years, we have a big number that is due for shipment in the year. Each quarter, we should be looking to do INR 3,000+ crore. That number puts a lot of burden, in a good way, on our entire supply chain and our ecosystem. We not only need to take those INR 300 crore in, but we have to make sure that what is at the end of September, we are making sure that that also ships out. Yeah.

Execution-wise, there will be continued visibility and pressure on the whole quarter. The last point, I think, as I'm thinking aloud, is our first shipment for the U.S. which was for data centers, a significant portion was supposed to ship out in Q1 and was supposed to get recognized in Q2. That is now shipping in Q2 and will get recognized in Q3. Which is something we already know, and that wasn't delayed. We were ready in time. The customer, and you are hearing constantly in the U.S., data center projects are getting delayed because of environmental constraints and people slowing down projects and all. The project got slowed down at the customer end. They finally agreed to take the equipment. It is shipping out later this month, but it will only get recognized once the customer takes possession of the equipment, which will then happen.

Rajendran, our expectation is Q3.

Rajendran Arunachalam
Group CFO and EVP, Thermax

You're right, Ashish, in terms of revenue recognition.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Revenue recognition, and then the margin recognition also will show up in Q3. That said, Q2, we have got lot of good orders and some other adjustments, which are all relating to LD reversals and cash collections, et cetera. We expect a good Q2 on top of the hit that we took in Q2 last year. Q2, Q3, Q4, each one now should be a significant improvement over last year.

Dhavan Shah
Analyst, AlfAccurate Advisors

Understood, sir. Secondly, I think in the presentation, slide number 17, you had given the table of that more than INR 100 crore projects in the industrial and infra segment, wherein the changes in margin and the number of counts also have been given. Can you share the absolute amount of that project also, because I think number of counts, we would not be able to understand based on the number of counts.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

There were two other metrics, which is the absolute amount and the profitability of individual projects, which we thought we shouldn't share because then it starts to share competitive information, and that was not correct. I see your point that the absolute amount is something that would be helpful. I can't commit to this right now, but I'll talk to Rajendran and see if that is something that is reasonable to share or not. Yeah?

Dhavan Shah
Analyst, AlfAccurate Advisors

Sure, sir. Thank you. That's all from my side.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

What I can share is that in absolute, if I remove this INR 97 crore number, in absolute numbers, as part of our total execution, through execution, we add to our margin and not subtract. Yeah. Which is something that we can share. Yeah. The PSU projects were the only exception. Until this INR 91 crore, even including the PSU projects, in aggregate, we were, through execution, adding to our margin and not subtracting.

Dhavan Shah
Analyst, AlfAccurate Advisors

Understood. Sure. Sure, sir. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, we'll take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you, over to you.

Ashish Bhandari
Managing Director and CEO, Thermax

Look, there was a lot of questions which were all across on our margins and our profitability. I hope we did justice to sharing every bit of it with complete transparency with all of you. It's not a quarter that is, A, we are proud of, or it is reflective of what the company that we are building at Thermax and the performance that we can deliver at Thermax. That is very well understood by all of us and by our board as well. I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much for your questions. If even afterwards, over the next month or so, as you have more questions and there is more in-depth discussions needed, compared to previous quarters, we'll be more amenable to having discussions. Be patient. We need to go focus on the business itself.

We will, through the remaining of the quarter as well, be open to sharing more from Thermax. Thank you.

Operator

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