Thermax confident of European operations bouncing back by end of Q3

Thermax on Wednesday reported a 22.5 percent rise in consolidated first-quarter profit, on the back of higher revenues.

MS Unnikrishnan, managing director of Thermax spoke to CNBC-TV18 about the results and company's outlook.

“If I have to divide company’s performance for the domestic and international operations, the answer would be something different because the topline growth had been 16-17 percent between India and international and the EBITDA improvement or at the PBT level, it is 36 percent up for the Thermax Ltd standalone and after accounting for the negatives of the international operations, we have come to a 4.3 percent improvement only in the EBITDA and this is specifically on account of our European subsidiary substantially, which I had already spoken in the last quarter itself when I have seen the first negative, they are working towards the right provisioning to ensure that we will be out of that. I am very confident that by end of H1, that would also come back to normalcy,” said Unnikrishnan.

“The quantum of enquiries coming from the consumer oriented sector in the country has gone up to almost 18-19 percent in the last three quarters but ordering has not gone up. There is one challenge the medium-sized industry is facing, the public sector banks crisis – nobody seems to be wanting to lend. So that is a challenge that I am seeing for this particular industry,” he added.

“Steel capacity is going to go up in the country,” said Unnikrishnan.