No change on ground; topline still a concern: Century Ply

Century Plyboard is not seeing any change or buoyancy on the ground despite what GDP data and other such macro indicators are suggesting, says company MD and CEO Sanjay Agarwal. From payments, to sale, to growth, everything is problematic, he told CNBC-TV18.

He rues that though the bottomline is better than last year, it is only because of costing and sourcing of cheaper raw materials. However, topline and capacity utilisation are still a matter of concern.Below is the verbatim transcript of Sanjay Agarwal's interview with Reema Tendulkar & Nigel D'Souza on CNBC-TV18.Nigel: I wanted to understand has demand seen any kind of improvement in the last couple of months, are you forcing it to pick up anytime soon because mid-year you didn’t sound so confident?A: Few days back all of us has seen the gross domestic product (GDP) data, the manufacturing data and all seem so rosy in that report but as far as our sector is concerned or whether in many sectors I know, I don’t see any change or any such buoyancy on the floor or on the field. I am sure I cannot be a person and I don’t have the might to say that the data is wrong but certainly something is happening which probably should show its face to us or make us feel maybe coming times maybe in Q4 or maybe in next one year but right now, I don’t see as far as our movement is concerned, payment is still a big problem, every bit of sale we are working harder and harder to get that part of our sale, we had forecasted such high growth we have ended up till now only by some 3 percent of growth.Reema: In the first half of the year that means you have done revenues of 5.5 percent if there is no pickup in demand, are you likely to end the year with 5-7 percent revenue growth only?A: Yes, I don’t think we will be able to do better than that. Our bottomline is much better than last year but that is because of all the costs etc and because we have been able to put up some sourcing of our primary raw material timber into other countries where we are getting them cheaper than what we were getting last year. So our bottomline is better but that makes us happy and our shareholders are also happy. But as far as the topline is concerned, that is a matter of concern. The capacity utilisation is also a matter of concern for us because that is increasing our cost. I hope we all pass through such situations in times and internally we are looking into our internal costs.For entire interview, watch accompanying video...