Acquisition to add customers, global mkts for Symphony: CMD

Unseasonal rains in summer led to drop in demand for air coolers, Achal Bakeri, Chairman & Managing Director (CMD) of Symphony told CNBC-TV18. The company’s total income fell 13 percent to Rs 133.4 crore and sales slumped 20.9 percent in the June quarter. Net profit crashed 32 percent to Rs 22.3 crore year-on-year.Bakeri does not expect any adverse impact of irregular monsoon, and sees sales improving by 10-15 percent from current quarter onwards. The company’s recent acquisition of Chinese air-cooler company, Munters Keruilai for over Rs 50 crore, will open up global markets and add more customers, Bakeri said.  Below is the transcript of Achal Bakeri’s interview with Sumaira Abidi & Nigel D'Souza on CNBC-TV18.Sumaira: What really went wrong in Q4, this is a quarter where you see your strongest uptake. I was reading your press release you said things will normalise that 20-25 percent odd mark, but by when can we see things moving? Why have volumes just slummed so badly this quarter?A: We had very unexpected summer wherein we had sporadic showers and these really have consistent heat as we normally do. This was one of those sort of freak summers which probably we haven’t seen since 1997 when the summer wasn’t really consistent and you had unseasonal showers across the country and especially in northern India, which is our biggest market for one of the country - that has affected sales in this quarter. Our sales in the previous three quarters were great. Sales in the current quarter, we expect to be very good, but there was that one particular quarter which is the April to June quarter that was badly affected.Nigel: Then when exactly could we see some normalisation in terms of these volumes because a de-growth of around 20 percent, that is worse than any expectations on the street, so can we see some kind of normalisation going ahead in this quarter or in fact in the next quarter?A: Absolutely, the current quarter and the forthcoming quarters are expected to be a lot better. We are doing very well even in the current quarter. So, last quarter was really an aberration and we don’t foresee that recurring again.Nigel: Can we see some growth coming into this quarter itself? You believe that the volumes will spike up, will be back to around that 15-20 percent approximately because this time you have given a de-growth of around 20 percent but you are sounding quite confident, so do you believe we can see a volume growth of around 15-20 percent going ahead?A: Absolutely. Despite de-growth, you will see that for the year as a whole, we have still grown. Our year ended in June, so despite that one quarter, which was really an aberration, we have still seen reasonable growth for the whole year and our margins are intact.