Anil Jain, Managing Director and Bharat Vageria - Director (Finance) of the company addressed the call.

Highlights of the call

The company has a presence in 9 countries operating from various manufacturing facilities in 29 locations across the globe and is recognized for its innovative polymer products.

For the quarter ended December 2016, it registered an 18% rise in consolidated sales to Rs 671.06 crore.

PAT went up 31% to Rs 37.93 crore. EO gains were nil against Rs 19.53 crore. Thus PAT after EO fell 22% to Rs 37.93 crore.

Minority interest rose 36% to Rs 1.38 crore after which net profit went down 23% to Rs 36.54 crore.

For the nine months ended December 2016, it consolidated sales grew 9% to Rs 1944.54 crore. OPM improved from 14.6% to 15.0% which saw OP rise 12% to Rs 291.68 crore.

PAT went up 21% to Rs 107.68 crore.

Net of tax EO gains were nil against Rs 19.53 crore. Thus PAT after EO fell 1% to Rs 107.68 crore.

Minority interest rose 21% to Rs 3.63 crore after which net profit went down 2% to Rs 104.05 crore.

Continuous efforts are on for debt and effective finance cost reduction by using lowering cost of production and financing.

The quarter and nine months results are not comparable due to sale and discontinuance of some overseas businesses.

On like to like basis, for the quarter, net sales grew 14%, India sales grew 11% and overseas sales grew 19%. Volume grew by 15% India volume grew by 13%. PAT grew by 13%.

1st time after IPO in 2007, the company raised Rs 150 crore by Preferential Issue of Equity shares at Rs 93.58 per share in January, 2017.

The company is on track to achieve what it had projected for FY 2017.

EBITDA margins in overseas and India are almost the same.

Net Profit margins are higher in overseas due to lower tax rate.

Capacity utilization in India is 87% and 67 % overseas

Volume grew 19% during the quarter ended December 2016. It grew 11.5% during the nine months.

During the nine months, India and Overseas operations grew 11% and 19% in value terms respectively.

The company successfully expanded PE Pipes capacity by 60% from 18,000 MT to 28,000 MT.

For the continued business, volume grew 15% during the nine months.

For the nine months India accounted for 70% of sales and rest came from exports. The numbers were same for the corresponding period last year.

RoCE improved from 12.93% to 14.29%.

The company is literally driving the end user industries to shift from metal to polymer packaging and has successfully managed to capture a significant market share in India and across many manufacturing countries.

The company is a market leader in Packaging products in 8 out of 9 countries where it operates.

The company has operational footprints in India and overseas countries like UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan.

All 8 overseas operations are now profitable

The company recently ventured into highly technical and innovative products like Composite Cylinders and Multiaxial Oriented Cross Laminated Films (MOX).

The company has 3600 employees.

The company has healthy order book in PE Pipe business and Composite Cylinders business.To cater to this orders the company has undertaken doubling of cylinder capacity (from 700K to 1,400K) to meet growing demand and timely supply.

The company completed brownfield expansion in Egypt for manufacturing of IBC (1,000 liters).

During the quarter the company successfully completed greenfield project for the manufacturing of multilayer multiaxial (M) Oriented (O) Cross Laminated (X) Film (MOX) at Panoli, Gujarat. This unit has now gone into operations last week. The company has put up 6000 tons of capacity which can get sales of Rs 200 crore and profit margins are in excess of 20%. In FY 2018-19 the company hopes to utilize sizeable part of this capacity.

It also completed greenfield project for the manufacturing of industrial Packaging at Jambusar in Gujarat.

Capacity is 700000 for composite cylinders. This year the company will do sales of 350000 composite cylinders. The company has 1.8 million cylinders order in hand which it should be able to deliver in 2-3 years. Margins will be in excess of 20% once the capacity utilisation improves. Last year capacity utilization was not good. There is lot of demand for this product worldwide.

Going forward tax rate will be in the range of 25%.

Earlier the company was fully dependent on Telecom batteries. This year the share of business for telecom is 50% and rest for solar batteries.

Moreover, the company has developed specific batteries for e-rikshaw. The current batteries for e-rikshaw available in market lasts for just 6 months, the company's batteries for e-rikshaw will last for at least 1 year.

The management expects 20% growth in battery business in FY 2018.

Overseas business should grow 19% this year and in excess of 19% for FY 2018.

The company's rating was downgraded by Crisil because it was not able to do the QIP at that particular time.

The company started the year with a debt of Rs 746 crore which now currently stands at Rs 725 crore. Thus the company has repaid debts of around Rs 21 crore.

Capex for FY 2018 is Rs 75-85 crore.

Turnover of cylinder business is expected to be Rs 80 crore in FY 2017 which is likely to go to Rs 160 crore in FY 2018.

Plan for 2021 is sales growth target is 15-21% every year, EBITDA margins target is in the range of 15-15.5%. The numbers are tentative as the company has to see how its new businesses will perform.