- Despite the market volatility and the inflationary pressure seen across the globe the Speciality Intermediates (SI) business saw growth both in the exports & in the contribution margins.
- Commissioned a new plant for SI supplies to an agrochemical major. Most of this capacity is already contracted.
- The AI business saw QoQ improvement in EBITDA Margins and exports also grew very well. Almost 40% of the revenues of the company came from exports in the Q1FY23.
- The company optimizes procurement between imports and local supplies to support the margin expansion in the AI business that was aided also by the softening of petrochemicals and acetic acid prices internationally.
- The quarterly EBITDA at 104 Crores resulted in an improved EBITDA Margin at 14% an increase of 29 Crores viz a viz Q4FY22. This was due to better contribution margins in both businesses and an optimizing of the SI product mix.
- Given that the revenue of Q1FY23 at 759 Crores was about 14% lower than Q4FY22. On an annual basis the revenue of Q1FY23 was flat as compared to that of Q1FY22 which was 741 Crores.
- This fiscal the company will commence the fluoro speciality unit. Almost all the civil and infrastructure work is completed at Lote Parshuram site and packaging and dispatching from Italy is also on track.
- The heat wave Europe is facing and has slowed down some of the dismantling work. Since the conditions are not conducive for the workers to work, a dedicated team from the company’s side has been established at the site to put in place measures that will reduce the impact of this disruption.
- After completion of the fluoro speciality business the company will continue to invest in the debottlenecking investments for the AI business. The SI business capex is continuing smoothly and the company is on track to commission yet another new plant in Q3FY23.
- Overall the company has been able to develop core capabilities to execute organic capex of 350 crores annually.
- In the Fluoro specialities segment the company is getting inquiries in all three product segments-
- Pharma, Agro and industrial. Industrial- is that segment in which the product goes into coatings, inks and adhesives. So these are new products that are required by the company’s existing customers at some point in their new product life cycle.
- Miteni’s value proposition- Their starting points were chlorine and toluene and then hydrofluoride (HF) was one of the steps they performed in their value chain and Laxmi is looking to replicate that in India.
- More than 90% of the capex will go towards speciality businesses going forward.
- Annual capex of 350 crores. There will be some debt that the company will take as an organization because it will improve their working capital. The company doesn’t want to be just reliant on the internal accruals.
- Many of Laxmi’s products find application in a diverse set of markets so given Laxmi’s global supply chain the company is being able to move products across different geographies as well so the Acetyl segment had a slight increase in its export ratio in the last quarter primarily because the company found some other markets being more fruitful than others.
- Current EBITDA Margins are 12%. Fluoro speciality segment will increase the EBITDA Margins going forward.
- Miteni used to do only fine and speciality chemicals. Laxmi is not looking at the entire refrigerant space as a business. Within the fine and speciality chemicals the products that Miteni would manufacture none of those products were produced in India at that time. Laxmi’s intention is to start off with 8-10 products which sets the baseline and the bench very strong and then take it up from there and go down to further and further other products. Laxmi’s intention is to increase the margins overall as a company.
- The first phase of fluoro the speciality segment will involve some building blocks but the company will also be getting into the downstreams of those building blocks.
- In the last couple of months the prices of acetic acid have declined quite a bit.Regarding acetic acid the overall global demand and supply has undergone change. Demand has been slightly weaker and therefore the acetic acid prices have been correcting. Feedstock prices would have come down as well therefore that has happened globally.
- Laxmi has set up a kilo lab where they have many customers essentially a miniature plant of the Italian plant in India and the company did this during covid because they couldn’t get access to Italy. This allowed Laxmi to absorb technology, get the people trained on that and as well as sample out to customers. Currently for various customers the sample is in various stages of approval and that’s a process that has helped Laxmi to shorten the time.
- Laxmi’s requirement for HF remains fairly small.
- Acetic acid prices softening has helped the margin expansion in the AI business in Q1FY23 along with the fact that the company optimized purchasing locally Vs importing
- Laxmi doesn’t hold on to inventory raw material for a very long period of time. Longest inventory holding period is about 30 days.
- Fluoro chemicals capex – 350 to 400 crores
- Hopeful of capitalizing the entire SI plant by the end of this fiscal.
- By the end of FY22 the company has spent about 152 crores and in this quarter the company has spent about 30 crores so around 182 crores has been spent. There is a balance of 120-150 crores more to be spent.
- AI business would be 30% more asset turnover than the SI business given that there is no capex in the AI business apart from debottlenecking.
- Because FI is a greenfield site the asset turnover would be a little lower and as the company is able to add more and more blocks that’s when it significantly improves. Asset turn would be below 1 in the beginning for FI.
- SI asset turnover is much above 1 because its a brownfield expansion.
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