Basu also spoke about the open offer by Adani Group-owned Renew Exim DMCC, which in October acquired a 46.64% stake from ITD promoter, Italian-Thai Development Company, at ₹400 per share.
On July 3, ITD Cementation, a leader in maritime structures and engineering projects, had informed the exchanges that the promoters intend to divest their investments in the Indian entity.
Renew Exim DMCC has made an offer to acquire a further 26% stake in the company at ₹571.68 per equity share.
While Basu refrained from sharing any specific details, he expects ITD Cementation to remain an independent company.
These are the edited excerpts of the interview.
Q. There has been a change in the owners. Now you’re an Indian-owned entity. Can you give us a sense of what happens to the current management post open offer ending? Has there been any communication from the Adani Group in terms of the management and the vision going ahead?
A. The procedure is still under process so I don’t want to comment much on that. Basically, the open offer may come sometime in December.
Q. Can you tell us how the valuation was arrived at? The stake sale is taking place at ₹400 per share. How many bidders were in the fray and how did the promoters agree to it?
A. There was a discussion between the promoters and the buyers. There are three prospective buyers, NMDC (Abu Dhabi), KEC International, and Adani Group. I was not privy to that, so I’ll not be able to comment much on that.
Q. Have you received any communication from the Adani promoters about how this company should go forward from here on, say, for the next five years?
A. There has not been any specific discussion. But we have been working with Adani for several years so I can get a sense that they have got a lot of internal infrastructure development, lot of factories, a lot of projects that they’ll be undertaking coming few years. So they think that we’ll be able to contribute more than what we are doing today, if they take us.
Q. Is it a captive buy for them?
A. Not really. This will be an independent company.
Q. What percentage of your revenues or portfolio is from the Adani group today?
A. It’s 25-26% of the work in hand today.
Q. There has been some compression on margins this time around to 9.1% from 9.8%. What are you targeting in FY25? Do you stick to the 10% guidance on EBITDA margins? And will revenue growth be 15 to 20%?
A. Definitely third and fourth quarter is always better than previous two quarters. So we hope that it will be maintained at the revenue growth of 15-20%.
Q. And order inflows of ₹8,000 to 10,000 crore. Is that on track?
A. It will be close to ₹10,000 crore.
