Will be debt-free in 2 yrs, may add capacity: West Coast Paper

West Coast Paper Mills will likely be debt-free within the next two years says Vice Chairman Saurabh Bangur. However, the company is also contemplating capacity expansions which might mean fresh debt could come on books, he adds.Current debt on the books is at Rs 350 crore, he said.Speaking to CNBC-TV18 after the company reported its quarterly results, Bangur said coming quarters are likely to be better than the first as demand-supply situation has improved. Company is operating at 100 percent utilisation, he said.
He expects 5 percent price hike in paper products in FY17 and significantly better prices in third and fourth quarters.   Below is the verbatim transcript of Saurabh Bangur's interview to Surabhi Upadhyay and Nigel D'Souza on CNBC-TV18.Nigel: The numbers looked phenomenal in fact. You are confident of keeping this kind of a pace up? What is the outlook on margins going ahead?A: We have just come out with our Q1 numbers an hour back. We have posted healthy numbers I would say. So, this quarter has been good relatively if we compare with the corresponding previous quarters. Going forward, I would say it would be relatively better compared to Q1.Nigel: You can better these margins of 17.5-18 percent? What is causing this?A: There has been a couple of factors affecting the market today. Demand supply has been relatively good. There has been some disruption in the supply of some of the paper companies in the market. So, that is why markets are looking good which is very unusual I would say in this time of the year because paper is generally slack in these months. So, sales are good, demand is there in the market. I would say that definitely going forward in Q2 and Q3, they should be coming out with healthy numbers I would say. Q1, though it is relatively better compared to previous quarters, but we had some annual maintenance in our plant, in our power block, so our production has been relatively lesser in this quarter, but in spite of that, we have posted good numbers because of cost benefit as well as sales price relatively moving up. So, relatively by and large has been good, but yes, going forward, the way things are, keeping my fingers crossed, Q2 and Q3 looks positive to me down the line.