Schneider Electric Infrastructure (SEIL) held a conference call on May 19, 2015 to discuss the performance of the company for the quarter and fiscal ended March 2015. In the conference call the company was represented by Prakash K Chandraker, Managing Director and Anurag Mantri, CEO of the company.
Key takeaways of the conference call
Market continues to be challenging. Macro-economic sentiments though positive the infra sector recovery at ground is yet to happen. Financing issue for large industrial and infrastructure projects still to be picked up. Utility customers the project execution is gradually start picking up, which facilitated burnout of order book.
Order backlog as end of March 2015 is about 1200 crore. OF the order backlog about 4% is services, 20% is translation systems and 75% is power solutions.
Order booking run rate for the last two quarters are at about Rs 350 crore. The company is pushing for orders on technological side and not commodity side.
Parent is committed to India business and positive of India growth story. And that's why it provided operational financial grant of about Rs 91 crore ( Rs 49.28 crore in FY15 and Rs 42.11 crore in FY14).
The non listed entity of Schneider primarily focused on Low voltage category but the listed entity focused on medium voltage (3-122 kva) and smart grid solutions. Smart grid solutions order of Kerala, J&K, and Bihar etc are implemented by SEIL even though the technology is that of parent.
The company to focus on new segments such as Data-centres, water segment, railways and food & Beverages, which is not given adequate focus by most of power equipment companies.
Smart grid projects in various states started moving. Further investment push is required for this progress to reflect at ground level.
Order pipeline for 12 months especially lot of policy level discussions are going on relating to smart city etc.
Utility order placement has seasonality with more in June and Sep quarters. Smart cities lots of policy decision are happening and orders are some time away.
Capacity utilization will vary product to product. In case of Secondary distribution systems/products the loading is good but with primary system product the loading is not that great as generation projects executions are subdued.
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