Rail Vikas Nigam hosted a conference call on Nov 10, 2023. In the conference call the company was represented by Pradeep Gaur, CMD; Rajesh Prasad, Director (operational) and Sanjeeb Kumar, Director (Finance) & CFO.

Key takeaways of the call

Order book is Rs 70000 crore order book of which railway order book is about Rs 35000 crore.  The company had an ambitious target to achieve the order book of Rs 1,00,000 crores.

Expect marginal growth in topline (Rs 21000 crore plus) and a bottom-line growth of about 15% for FY24. 

The first two projects of Indore Metro which the company got in the month of September/October 2023, the margin is more than what it was getting from the nomination basis. Similarly, the  margin of the first overseas projects i.e. Maldives project is higher than the margin it used to get from nomination basis.   So, overall some projects where the margins would be less but there will definitely be some projects where the margin will be equal or more than the orders on nomination basis i.e. 10%. 

Of the total order book only one project is overseas. Only on project outside of India is the Rs 1600 crore project from Maldives.  There are a lot of very promising projects especially railway projects coming in Africa in countries such as Botswana, South Africa and other countries. The company is also looking at Vietnam, which is going for railway expansion in a big way.  Trying to have footprint in Middle East Asia and Africa. The company has already set up offices in Oman and UAE in Middle East Asia and Botswana in Africa. 

Recently the company was awarded 3 projects in western and central railway zones of IR. Further it  decided to participate in two tenders costing around 2,000 crores in Gomu to Somnagar section of Eastern DFCC.  Confident of having a reasonably big order book (comprising both railways & non railway projects) in time to come to execute.

DFC corridors other than WDFC and EDFC are entrusted to zonal railways and the company will be participating in that.

Typically 10%-15% is the share of the company on the railway projects executed by zonal railways which accounts for 80-85% of railway projects.  So the company has expertise and will participate in tenders floated by various zones of IR and also win.   

Kyrgyzstan project continue to be hopeful. Pursuing it with GoK vigorously and thus can’t give a timeline by when it will start.

Vande Bharat Train order update : The SPV that is executing the Vande Bharat order is Kinet Railway Solutions, where it will hold 25% share.   TMH has partnered with RVNL for this project. The particular   tender is for 120 numbers of train sets and the bid price was 120 crores per set. Since the train set have comprehensive maintenance period of 35 years, the average cost of maintenance is 4%  per year per set.  As of now the SPV has submitted bank guarantee and executed MCMA (manufacturing cum maintenance agreement). Now the mockup is to be prepared i.e. a 3D model showing how this rake will look like. Then first prototype will be 2 years after this MCMA. Second prototype will be 24 months plus 2 months and after these prototypes are approved 12 train sets in first year, 18 train sets next year and 25 train sets each after that. Maintenance for the trains are to be provided at Bijwasan (Delhi), Jodhpur and Bangalore. The prototype will be made at Latur ( the Marathwada Rail Coach Factory constructed by the company).