Gayatri Projects’ stock was under pressure because the company defaulted on its debt obligations worth nearly Rs 35 crore towards four out of 10 banks due on June 30. The stock is down 1.69 percent in a day and is currently trading at Rs 32 on the NSE.

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Explaining the reasons for the delay in payments, TV Sandeep Reddy, MD of the company, said they are facing some liquidity crunch because of pending receivables from some of the state governments who are their clients. The state governments could not pay because of the second wave of COVID.

The company was also looking at other options of raising money. One of the options was that some of their claims were expected to get settled but those too got delayed because of the COVID situation, he said.

However, the company is confident of rectifying the issue in the next one month, said Reddy.

The company currently has an orderbook of around Rs 14000 crore, out of which Rs 4000 crore is from various state governments and within the next one month, they would be able to rectify the issue of delay in payments, said Reddy, adding that they have arbitration awards of Rs 800 crore.

Recently NHAI declared the company as a non-performer. Clarifying the situation, Reddy, said the NHAI letter is very clear. They had an audit of various sites in one of the concrete roads in Varanasi, there were some land delays and because of the execution delays, the project was delayed. Moreover, some of the stretches were done much earlier, which got damaged but we are rectifying them, he added.

This is only 0.2 percent of the entire stretch, said Reddy, adding that NHAI has clearly said that once we rectify it they will reinstate, till then we will not be allowed to bid. Of the total orderbook about 40 percent is NHAI, said Reddy.

Reddy expects the issue to be resolved by the NHAI in the next two months.

The fourth quarter performance of the company was good. The year-on-year revenues for Q4FY21 were up 49.5 percent at Rs 1360 versus Rs 910 crore and the EBITDA too was up 62 percent at Rs 109 crore versus Rs 67.2 crore. EBITDA margins were up at 8 percent versus 7.4 percent.

For the entire interview, watch the video.

(Edited by : Dipika Ghosh)

First Published:Jul 2, 2021 1:05 PM IST