Lower interest, tax cost and other income boosted Q1: PNC Infra

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Yogesh Jain, MD, PNC Infratech, talked about the company's first quarter earnings and the outlook going forward.Below is the verbatim transcript of Yogesh Jain’s interview to Ekta Batra on CNBC-TV18.Ekta: There has been an over 50 percent or around 50 percent increase in your EBITDA as well as your margins which have gone up to 31 percent versus 21 percent. What happened this quarter? A: Our turnover has increased about 19 percent if we compare with the last year corresponding quarter, that is Rs 434 crore to Rs 515 crore. EBITDA margin increased about 12 percent from Rs 60 crore to Rs 67 crore. PAT is increased about 145 percent from Rs 26 crore to Rs 64 crore. This is due to lower financial cost and lesser tax expenses and increase in other income.Ekta: Can you just give us a sense in terms of what your margins would be for FY17, would it be above 30 percent, would maybe come down to 25-30 percent? A: We are expecting EBITDA margin from 13-14 percent in this year also. Ekta: Where does your order book currently stand, last update was around Rs 5,000 crore plus. Where is it currently and what is your bidding pipeline looking like? A: Our present order book is around Rs 6,300 crore and we are expecting some good project in northern state and at the end of this financial year we are expecting our order book will be around Rs 8,000 crore. Ekta: Just wanted to touch upon your debt figures. Your finance cost has risen Rs 78 crore for this quarter, where does your consolidated debt stand, what is the plan in terms of reduction, any asset sales that you are looking to monetise as well? A: If you will see our standalone debt, we are almost debt free company. So, in consolidated that is around Rs 1,722 crore. The debt equity ratio is 1.18 in consolidated. So, we are not in plan to sell any BOT project presently.