Ashish Bhandari, MD & CEO, Thermax, on Monday, said that the company has a much bigger pipeline now. He also explained that they have better ability to manage their costs as well.

"The opportunity that we have is a much bigger pipeline that we are seeing; projects in multiple sectors that we are seeing that we gained confidence in, for our ability to manage our cost," he said.

Thermax recently came out with its Q3 earnings. The company reported a 5 percent dip in consolidated net profit at Rs 79 crore for the December quarter of 2021. In the year-ago period, its profit had stood at Rs 83 crore. Its operating revenue stood at Rs 1,615 crore in the quarter as compared to Rs 1,411 crore in the year-ago period.

On the company's Q3 performance, he said, “I would like to think that Q3 was different because of a couple of reasons that were beyond our anticipation. First, was there was a big run up in chemical prices in commodities. The second thing that affected us, especially in the October-November timeframe was when coal started to become short- some of our customers shut down their coal plants where we were providing services.”

Bhandari shared that the company had one big order in Q3 of Rs 800 crore. However, its base volume of orders has moved up. He also mentioned that they are seeing some stability in pricing now. Further, he mentioned that capacity utilisation has moved beyond 80 percent.

Bhandari said, "We were at 70-80 percent capacity utilisation, now that number's going beyond 80 percent. Certain parts of our business, we are looking to outsource capacity use, lockup third party supplies. I don't think capacity is still a concern though."

On pricing, he said, “We see some stability in pricing now. We have ourselves increased our prices to a large extent in the chemicals business, where we have had steel price increases. We have passed on all the freight increases as well.”

Watch the video for the full interview.

(With PTI inputs)

First Published:Feb 7, 2022 2:28 PM IST