To respond better to price volatility and streamline its growing portfolio of blended and stockyard-based products, state miner NMDC Ltd, formerly National Mineral Development Corp (NMDC), is moving towards an index-based pricing model, managing director Amitava Mukherjee said in a post-earnings call to analysts.
The system, still in early stages, will rely on an internal, automated pricing engine, similar to global commodity benchmarks such as the Platts Index.
The Platts Index, published by S&P Global Commodity Insights, does not rely on external global benchmarks to determine its index prices. It creates the benchmark through its market-on-close (MOC) price assessment process.
For NMDC, the formula to determine prices will remain confidential, Mukherjee said. "The idea is to have more predictive pricing and more frequent pricing, so that the market dynamics are factored into pricing on a regular basis rather than… with a great amount of time lag," he said.
NMDC offers a diversified portfolio of iron ore products tailored to suit various end-use applications across the steel and sponge iron industries. Its offerings include Baila ROM and Baila Lump, both coarse and medium-sized ores with 55.5 percent Fe content, suited for steelmaking and direct blast furnace use.
"As far as iron-ore pricing is concerned, we cater to all sorts of customers having everything. So, we have to keep our pricing in tune after taking into account all these factors. We are trying to come into index-based or a formula-based pricing," he said.
Majority of NMDC's customers are steel manufacturers, including JSW Steel and AM/NS India.
In Q4, NMDC's consolidated net profit declined 21.8 percent from the previous quarter to Rs 1,483.18 crore, however, revenue rose 6.65 percent to Rs 7,004.59 crore.
At 1.49 pm, the NMDC stock was trading at Rs 71.41 on the National Stock Exchange, up 0.90 percent from the previous close.
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