JK Lakshmi Cement sees uptick in urban demand; expects growth of 8-10% in FY22

JK Lakshmi Cement posted a mixed set of earnings. The company’s revenue went up 49.25 percent in the June quarter at Rs 1,231.51 crore as against Rs. 825.15 crore in June 2020. The company’s net profit for the quarter came in at Rs. 118.71 crore as against Rs. 44.42 crore in the year-ago fiscal. EBITDA came in at Rs. 232.93 crore in June 2021 versus Rs. 151.51 crore in June 2020. Volumes look better than estimates but there has been a significant miss on the margin front. Shailendra Chouksey, Whole-Time Director, JK Lakshmi Cement, discussed the performance with CNBC-TV18.

Chouksey said, “If the going remains fairly normal, we should be able to do a healthy growth of 8-10 percent."

In June, the company recorded 15 percent volumes on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, he added.

“We see continuous push by the government on the infrastructure side. Last year this quarter, we had seen good run on the rural demand. This year rural demand is slightly subdued but then it has been more than compensated by the urban and semi urban demand,” he shared.

In terms of debt reduction plan, he mentioned, “We don’t need to raise equity. Current debt equity is very healthy. We have our gross debt at about Rs 1,100 crore and the net debt is around Rs 400 crore. We don’t envisage any problems in raising debt for the upcoming project of Udaipur, which is our subsidiary, going forward in this year.”