RM Agarwal, chairman and managing director, ITI, spoke about the better than expected fourth-quarter performance and the business outlook, in an interview with CNBC-TV18, while adding that that ITI is hopeful of 50 percent plus revenue growth, given its strong orderbook.

Giving details about the orders, he said, “The ASCON project was signed in October 2020 with the Ministry of Defence for around Rs 7,900 crore. About Rs 3,500 crore orders were signed for different BharatNet projects, government and private projects.” “Company is also the lowest bidder in a BharatNet project of the Department of Telecommunications, which is to the tune of Rs 450 crore. Also on April 1, the company signed a contract with the Air Force for data centre upgradation,” he added.

Furthermore, the company has also participated in the big-ticket BSNL 4G tender, along with TCS, said Agarwal.

On revenues, he said that after the below-par performances in the first three-quarters of FY21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Q4 saw revenues come in from ASCON and the Mahanet projects.

Giving clarification about the unbillable revenues of around Rs 1,389 crore in FY21, Agarwal mentioned that a major portion of this will be billed in Q1 and the rest in Q2 of the current year. These unbilled revenues came in mainly from the BharatNet project in Maharashtra, but the billing could not be processed due to the COVID situation despite the work being completed.

When asked if the company had identified non-core assets, Agarwal said that they have more than Rs 14,000 crore land assets, and going forward, monetisation will be done.

On the PLI scheme, Agarwal added that Telecom PLI focusses on active products, however, requests have been made for more products to be included in the PLI so the company can participate.

For full interview watch video

(Edited by : Dipika)

First Published:Jun 24, 2021 1:15 PM IST