APL Apollo Tubes reported a 128.3 percent revenue growth in Q1FY22, while profit after tax rose to Rs 168 crore from Rs 22 crore YoY. The EBITDA jumped 258 percent to Rs 254.8 crore versus Rs 71.2 crore, YoY. The company has lowered its volume growth target to 10 percent from 20 percent earlier. It says the Q1FY22 EBITDA/t at Rs 6,800 was not sustainable and gave the guidance for EBITDA/t at Rs 4,500- 5,000.

The company aims to become net-debt free in one year. Anubhav Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer, APL Apollo in an interview with CNBC-TV18 spoke about the quarter gone by, the business outlook and debt reduction plans.

“If you see March 2020 balance sheet, we had a debt of Rs 7.8 billion. After COVID-lockdown, we switched to cash and carry model and generated an operating cash flow of Rs 10 billion. So, we used those funds, operating cash flow to cut down the debt to Rs 2 billion, which was at 30 June 2021 and some capex for our new upcoming Greenfield project,” said Gupta.

The company will implement residual capex in FY22 and its operating cash flow remains strong as its net working capital days remain below 10 days, which is best in the industry, he said.

“So, we will continue to generate a lot of operating cash flow, if not by March 2022, then maybe by June 2022 or September 2022, we should be debt-free,” Gupta added.

On value-added products, he said, “If you look at our last five-year journey, we used to be 40 percent value-added and 60 percent commoditize. Now in five years we have reversed it to 60 percent value-added and 40 percent commoditised. All the incremental capacity, we have 2.6 million tonne capacity and volume of 1.7-1.8 so this incremental 700,000 tonne is all value-added and we have announced capacity to take it to 3 million tonnes from 2.6 million tonnes, so that additional 400,000 tonne is also value-added.”

For the entire interview, watch video

(Edited by : Ankit Gohel)

First Published:Aug 9, 2021 4:26 PM IST