Aim to be debt free company by March'21 via monetisation of some businesses, land parcels, says Emami

Emami sold their cement business to Nuvoco for an enterprise value of Rs 5,500 crore. The group will receive Rs 3,300 crore for the deal.

Throwing more light on the deal, Mohan Goenka, director of the company said, “We are expecting the money by May-June because we expect the CCI approval by the next 70-80 days and that should bring down our pledge levels, which currently is at about 65 percent to about 16-18 percent.”

“We have created bridge kind of finance for the time being, till the time the money comes in but as soon as we get the money, we would reduce our pledge levels,” he added.

On debt Goenka said, “Before this money comes in, our debt was at about Rs 3,700-3,800 crore. We are expecting about Rs 3,300 crore from cement sale, so that the balance debt should be at about Rs 500-600 crore.”

“We have committed that by March‘21 our debt should be down to zero. So we are trying to monetize not just the pharma business but also other land parcels that we have. Whatever comes first, we will try to monetize that,” said Goenka.

Talking about the business outlook, he said, “We have seen slowdown in the rural markets for the last 3-4 quarters now, but in the next 2-3 quarters things should bounce back.”

“Most of our brands have done 7-8 percent growth and our top 5 categories have been able to maintain market share, rather we have gained market share in almost all the categories. Unfortunately, the categories are not growing because of external factors but hopefully things should improve in next 2-3 quarters,” Goenka added.

Talking about new products and launches, he said, “We haven’t launched too many brands in the recent past because of current slowdown but if things improve, if environment improves then lot of products are in the pipeline. We always look for great opportunities, so hopefully we would be able to launch new brands and get double digit growth by next year.”