Fall in revenues due to drop in commodity prices: Sintex

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Sunil Kanojia on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What caused the drop in revenues this quarter?

A: Actually it is not a drop in volumes this quarter. Commodity prices are suppressed as compare to Q1 of the previous year and also there is a difference of altleast 25-30% in terms of the prices of the commodities. These commodity prices have been passed on to the customers and therefore there is a sales drop. The drop is about 13% in the consolidated figures. But if you compare it with the margins I think we have improved our margins by 50bps and on consolidated basis it is about 50bps and on Sintex it is about 127bps.

Q: Did you see some kind of slippages in the prefab sale in the current quarter?

A: The only segment which is slightly bothering us is the BT shelters because of no roll out of telecommunication capex plans. Otherwise if we look at the other segment which is the utility segment; where we make school buildings, classrooms, health centers orphanages etc there it is still continuing to grow. It is just the BT shelter segment that is gone down but going by the plans of the telecom companies I do not think that it is a really a matter of concern. We had done about Rs 45 crore in Zepplin India in Q4 as compared this year we have done about Rs 28.6 crore, this is much better. There was a jump of 107% as compared to Q1 of the previous year. We have grown in bright auto plast by about 16%. We grew in Bright. As far as Neif is concerned it is almost flat, almost maybe 9% negative but you will appreciate that the overall overseas markets are generally suppressed. However we are able to maintain our overseas subsidiaries margins still at 12% level.

Q: What about the textiles business? Have margins being a bit subdued there?

A: We can not ready anything on the basis of one quarter performance. We continue to maintain margins of 27-29%. I think this is the only one quarter were we had 24% but that is not very alarming. We are more than sure that going forward for the year we will be able to maintain our margins between 27-29%.

Q: Where is your current order book right now?

A: I think we have a good visibility. We are talking about a growth rate of about 5-6% in this business. However the focus is more on the margins where we have two portfolios, one is collection portfolio and other is the normal manufacturing of fabric as per the designs given to us by the customers. We keep on improving our collection portfolio but in this particular quarter the collection portfolio mix was less and that is what has lead to the slippage in the margins.