Thermax posted a strong set in its Q4FY21 earnings beating street expectations. Order inflow of around Rs 1,500 crore aided the broad-based recovery this quarter.

On the COVID-19 pandemic impact, Ashish Bhandari, MD & CEO of the company said, “Until March the execution was on schedule, overall factory productivity was starting to go up, in some of the later months especially February and March were our most productive months in quite some time. At the end of April, that second wave impact started to show up and it is in May that the impact has been at its highest.”

On the demand picture, he elaborated, “We see good strength in the large projects. We are seeing larger industries have started investing again but this time around unlike what we saw after the first wave where we saw demand recovery across all of India we don’t see that right now.”

“The broad-based recovery that we saw across all of India that I can’t say with confidence that we see it right now. It does not mean that demand does not exist, we just have to wait for the second wave to die down a little bit,” he added.

On commodity price increases, Bhandari said, “Significant impact I will say, even in Q4 we had to the tune of Rs 10 crore plus of an impact on our topline because of steel price increase, because of commodity increase and in the case of our chemicals business increase in styrene as well. In some of these cases where we are taking in new orders, our prices are also going up.”

For the full management commentary, watch the video.

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)