Thank you for the opening remarks and good afternoon, everyone. I'll take you through our Q1 FY27 performance, the key operational updates during the quarter and our priorities for the rest of the financial year. So, Q1 FY27 was a strong quarter for Ellenbarrie across revenue, EBITDA, and PAT. Revenue from operations stood at 987 million compared to 836 million in Q1 of FY26 and 874 million in Q4 of FY26. This represents a growth of 18% on a year-on-year basis and 13% sequentially. The growth was driven primarily by the ongoing ramp up of our Kurnool and Uluberia 2 plants. Both plants are progressing well, and we continue to focus on improving their
capacity utilization through FY27. EBITDA stood at 387 million compared to 318 million in Q1 of FY26 and 258 million in Q4 of FY26. This represents a growth of 21% on a year-on-year basis and 50% sequentially. On the margin front, the EBITDA margin stood at 39% compared to 38% in Q1 of FY26 and 30% in Q4 of FY26. The improvement in EBITDA was supported primarily by higher operating efficiency of our new plant, disciplined cost control, higher production, and some benefit from higher argon production and pricing. Profit after tax stood at 350 million compared to 187 million in Q1 of FY26 and 229 million in Q4 of FY26. This represents a growth of 87% on a year-on-year basis and 53% sequentially. The improvement in PAT was further supported by lower finance cost and lower effective tax rate besides the stronger operating performance. Coming to the core gases business, the revenue from gases and related products and services stood at 973 million in Q1 of FY27. This was up 20% on a year-on-year basis and 13% sequentially. The growth was primarily driven by higher volumes from the ramp up of our merchant plants. Segment margin in the core gases business stood at 38% for this quarter. Margins remained healthy, supported by higher volumes, cost efficiencies across the P&L, and a benefit from argon volumes and pricing. Oxygen and nitrogen prices remain stable and largely are contractual in nature over the long term. Argon prices continue to recover with a modest sequential increase, although they are still below the levels seen in H1 of FY26. Power remains a key cost for the business, and we continue to manage it through more energy efficient plants, higher production levels, and disciplined cost rationalization. Employee costs and other operating expenses were also kept well under control during the quarter, supporting our broader focus on cost discipline, operating leverage, and margin protection. Now let me cover the key operational updates. First, the ramp up at Kurnool and Uluberia 2 is progressing well. These plants are expected to be key growth drivers in FY27. Our immediate focus is to improve utilization, deepen customer access, and strengthen distribution around these assets. Second. The new on-site plant in East India is being commissioned. This plant has a capacity of 320 tons per day and is expected to contribute revenue from Q2 of FY27. For the full year of FY27, our focus is on execution, utilization, and margin discipline. We expect the coming quarters to get the benefit of better utilization of our Uluberia 2 merchant plants and contribution from the East India 320 TPD on-site plant.
Our capex guidance remains at 2,500 million or 250 crores for FY27 and 2,000 million or 200 crores for FY28. We will continue to invest in growth opportunities where we see strong customer visibility, attractive returns, and long-term strategic value. We will also continue to move ahead with our planned merchant capacity additions in North India and in West Central India. These projects are important because they deepen our presence across key industrial clusters and support our ambition of building a broader pan India platform. Margin protection will remain an important area of focus. We will continue to benefit from newer energy efficient plants, higher production levels, cost rationalization, and some savings from renewable energy. We will stay disciplined on cost management across the business. Overall, we enter the rest of FY27 with good momentum. The core gases business is performing well. Our recently commissioned plants are scaling up. And the East India on-site plant is moving into operations. And our capacity expansion roadmap remains on track. Our focus will be to convert this momentum into sustained growth, stronger utilization, and healthy profitability throughout the year. With that, we can open the floor for questions. Thank you. We will now open the call for questions. Kindly raise your hand to ask a question. We will unmute your line. Please announce your name and your organization's name before you ask a question. And as a reminder, we request all the participants to restrict themselves to two questions and come back in the queue. We'll wait for few moments for the question queue to assemble. The first question is from Vatsal Bhandari. Vatsal, please unmute your line and go ahead. Vatsal Bhandari (Singularity AMC) So, just wanted to understand two questions from my side that since we are setting up this 220 TPD North India plant, how much capacity is actually backed by identified or contracted demand before commissioning? Or are we going to first set it up and then find customers? The idea is, given that we have a lot of competition and all in these other regions, how are we thinking about this sir? So, you know, typically for a merchant plant, we assume capacity utilization ramp up over a period of 18 to 24 months. Typically, again, you know, merchant plants are not backed by advance contracting of the capacity. So generally, you know, the way we see it is that we survey the micro market and the surrounding areas where we see
good amount of potential, where we see there's a gap in the demand supply balance, and, you know, significant new industries coming up, consumer industries coming up for us. And then based on that, we decide on a location. The actual business building up and contracting only starts, you know, maybe 1/4 or maybe 3-4 months before the plant actually gets commissioned. And hence, we need a ramp up period for the capacity to get to that, you know, 80 to 90% capacity utilization, which we feel is the sweet spot. So, to answer your question in a nutshell, there are no contracts which are tied up in advance, but we have a sense of our target customers in that region. Vatsal Bhandari (Singularity AMC) So, just to understand, would you generally as a new entrant enter into a new market, then give a lower price or something like that compared to a competition? How to make an entry because given there is a limit, all these plants, the competitor plants would already be there, and they will be servicing some amount of the market already. So, is that a strategy we plan to deploy?