GMM Pfaudler Limited

Quarter ended Jun 2026

2026-08-06 Transcript PDF
Moderator

Thank you. The first question comes from the line of Sameer Thakur with Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.

Ambit Capital

Hi, thanks. So, my first question is, are there any signs of recovery in traditional end markets like chemical and pharma. And has competitive intensity begun to ease over here? Also, if you can comment on regional commentary by end markets, that would be useful. Thank you.

Tarak Patel

Yes, hi. So yes, so in our traditional markets in India, outside India, and maybe Greg can speak a little bit about the international business, but we do see a significant improvement in the pharma business here in India. So, we are seeing a lot of action in pharma in Hyderabad, CDMO so that's driving a lot of investments and that's helping us build backlog in our local Indian glass -lined business. And we expect also that this will continue, so definitely compared to about 12 months ago, there is a positive shift in terms of the glass -lined business here in India and see more inquiries, more opportunities, and faster kind of conversion from opportunities to actual orders. So Q1 was strong and Q2 also looks strong from a glass-lined perspective.

Talking now about the initial impact on our CRT business obviously and from a PPT perspective which also caters to our traditional markets where we have our business with filtration, mixing, membrane separation, and sealing, those are also linked to our pharmaceuticals here in India. So, there we are seeing a lot of positive traction as well. So, pharma is doing quite well. Chemicals unfortunately in India has still remained flat. There are a few projects here and there but nothing significant structurally has changed over the last few years. However, we do hear that volumes are back for most of our clients and customers and obviously that would maybe lead to more investment in the next few quarters. So, from an India perspective, our traditional markets are definitely better off right now than they were about 12 -months ago. Greg over to you for the international market.

Gregory Gelhaus

Thanks, Tarak. So international, I think it's a similar trend to what you've heard from Tarak, similar situation. We see from the pharma sector internationally, it is, we do see a number of opportunities, it is improving there and we see that both particularly when we look at Europe and in Americas. So again as Tarak said that's our traditional glass-lined business, but also our PPT division where we see definitely improved opportunities in the pharmaceutical sector. I think chemicals is the same as what you heard in India. Chemicals remains a challenge. There, we don't see a strong change in this quarter that we just finished, particularly in Europe, it remains very challenging from the chemical sector. So, I would say all in all, the, what you've heard from Tarak and myself in terms of pharmaceuticals consistent globally as well as in the chemical sector.

Ambit Capital

Okay, thank you. That's helpful. I have one more question. I think there is some decline in margins for Indian business, the standalone business. So, any reason for that and how should we think about it going forward?

Tarak Patel

Yes, so looking at the India business and maybe I have Ankit also step in a little bit here. Here we have obviously a very large component of growth which has come from our HET business. As you know, our HET business is an India- led business. It caters to oil and gas, petrochemicals and now we have obviously broken into nuclear and are getting into power sector as well.

So a lot of growth opportunities with a strong backlog and an even stronger opportunity pipeline which we believe will help us obviously build backlog for the next few quarters and maybe even years. So that's a strong area of growth for us and obviously that comes with large projects and again there the strategy has been to obviously get into certain kind of industry, create the PTRs. We have recently been approved by EIL for Duplex, Super Duplex and even air-cooled heat exchangers. We have recently broken into power. Last year we broke into the nuclear segment and obviously nuclear, power, fertilizer, all segments that we're going to grow. On top of that, HET also caters to the Middle East market, which is the oil and gas Middle East market, and we have seen some traction there as well with some of these geographies are reordering after obviously the recent kind of events there. So, we have seen orders coming from Abu Dhabi and some other areas of the Middle East. So that business is a fast -growing business, but again that business is also maybe a slightly different in terms of the processes, margins profile and how long it takes. So, you will see some kind of I would say a change when the product mix in India changes between the three businesses. However, having said that, I think the improvement program in terms of margins across all our businesses out of India is ongoing. Obviously, the idea is to bring it back to a stable level with the market improving, pricing is also improve. So, we see with better utilization, with better revenue, we will see some of this getting absorbed. So, all in all, with the backlog that we have, the order book that we had in Q1 and also some of the order book that has come in Q2, we are quite confident that India is going to be on a strong path of growth, so I think that will continue and I think, obviously recovery of margins is, expected and will improve in over the next few quarters.

Ankit Nayyar

Yes, just in addition to what Tarak mentioned, we are also investing in costs. As you would have heard, we have invested into the new organization, so we are investing in people and that's why you see a dip in margins, but these are good investments happening for the future, so you will see an upward trend going forward.

Ambit Capital

Okay, thank you. So, we should expect sequential improvement, further improvement in margins going forward. That's right.

Tarak Patel

What we said in outlook, and we kind of mentioned, we don't want to specify anything right now in terms of what is the final expectation, but obviously compared to previous year we definitely expect improvement across all our businesses and we're working hard to bring down costs and improve margins.

Ambit Capital

Okay, thank you. That's helpful. If I can squeeze in one more, just obviously this organizational structure, this is a very good step. But if you can just explain what were the bottlenecks before this change, any examples of that that would be helpful.

Tarak Patel

So, I think, maybe we'll take both of them. I will speak maybe from the past. I think the regional structure prevented maybe businesses to work together and work closer together. People were incentivized of f the regional numbers and regional kind of targets. Today, the entire vertical has the same targets, so every single person in that vertical, let's say for CRT, if that person is sitting in the U.S., in Europe or in India, they have the same target for profitability. So, it is in everybody's best interest, everybody is clear and aligned in terms of what their KPIs are exactly, the KPIs. So common KPIs, so everybody's aligned and if in that , they want to extract maximum value, they will then think of opportunities like export or buying stuff from India from low -cost countries, putting together multiple different options in terms of our clients to win more business. So, the drive and the incentive program now aligns everybody within the decision and that I think is going to be a big change while geographically they were all kind of independent entities and were more kind of based on local geographic kind of KPIs rather than global KPIs. And Greg?

Gregory Gelhaus

Yes, maybe to add to that, I think what we see now in the new structure is as Tarak said, we have a globally aligned team by technology division which enables as was addressed in the beginning remarks faster decision making, but also as Tarak said, aligned around KPIs and strategic priorities for the division.

So, as we move forward, as our customers are demanding as we said in our opening remarks, they want us to be able to serve them anywhere around the world and we are better able to do that now, quicker and more efficiently in the new structure. So that's a difference from the organizational setup in the past and we believe it's going to help us significantly moving forward.

Tarak Patel

And just one more point to this is that we have brought in also the right talent to run these verticals, so some have been internal, some have been external. In the case of HET obviously the strategy of a heavy engineering vertical is very different from our glass-lined CRT vertical. So, this allows verticals to really focus on their own strategies, their own kind of operational excellence, everybody's will not be caged under the same brush. So, it gives verticals enough of opportunity to create and build their own strategy. And I think that's very, very important. So, I think that's an additional benefit of this organizational change that we have done.

Ambit Capital

Okay, thank you very much. That was very helpful. That was all from my side. All the best.

Moderator

Thank you. Participants in the interest of time and fairness to others, please restrict yourselves to two questions. For any more questions, you may rejoin the queue. The next question comes from the line of Praveen Kumar with Acuitas Capital Advisors. Please go ahead.

Acuitas Capital Advisors

Yes, hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on a decent set of numbers and more importantly for taking first steps to improve the disclosures, good on that part. Had a couple of questions. One was on the, if you can give us some clarity on the margin profile and the ROCEs of these four divisions which you've broken it down into. And also associated with that, if you could give us a sense of which of these segments do you think are closer to steady- state margins today and which are kind of away from that. And also if you can give us some sense of how do we track that, the divisions which are away from that steady -state aspirational margins, how do we keep a track of when they are closer to that, what is their aspirational margin on those? Thank you. That's my first question.

Tarak Patel

So, I think on a margin perspective, let me obviously as a company, we obviously have always said like a 15% EBITDA margin for the company is something that we aspire towards. That should be something in our business and our kind of area where we operate and the technologies we have, that's something that we should have, and then obviously we build from there. So currently the businesses and the verticals that now we have created, somewhat kind of have along that kind of margin profile. There will be obviously different initiatives within those verticals to improve margins over time, but I would say that they will be around that range. Obviously, there are businesses which are more like a systems business, it's a longer, higher gestation, more value add because we give process guarantees that could have higher margin versus maybe just a standalone equipment. But that's not always the case, and generally I think as a margin profile, I think over time we will be able to monitor , probably build some more thesis, but for right now I think it's important that they are around the same and the idea over the next few years is to grow margin, grow revenue, some of them will obviously need investment because we need to add people, we need to add organizations because they are high-growth verticals, so that will also come in. So don't have specific kind of, you know, I can't differentiate them very drastically and then maybe Greg, Alex, you would like to say something on the verticals by margin.

Gregory Gelhaus

I think you covered it Tarak, I think it's, the goal is for us as Tarak said, we have management teams specifically focused on each technology division that we have now, they have a part of their goal is to drive top -line performance but equally if not more importantly bottom-line performance. So, we have a number of initiatives to improve our financial performance for each of the divisions and of course for the company overall. So, we will continue to drive that and we have different opportunities in different divisions to improve performance and we'll keep focusing on that.

Alexander Poempner

I could just briefly add on what Greg said, s o we will improve the margins and we have, of course, some units which already are significantly higher margins. You would also see the announcement that we made of the latest acquisitions. So, we will work on it and of course, as Tarak mentioned, we mentioned the 15% EBITDA margins, that's the minimum target that we're going to focus.

Acuitas Capital Advisors

Understood. My second question was again on the margin trajectory. You are talking about, in the past you have talked about aspirationally margin should exceed 15% or higher in the medium term, right? So, I just wanted to understand standing from where we are today, from current levels, what kind of cadence of margin improvement should we expect? I understand that this is not a company where we should be looking at a quarterly margin as proof of anything, but how should we, or what time frame do you think we can get to those aspiration margins of 15% and beyond? And what kind of cadence can we expect in this? And what could be the likely triggers apart from mixed change?

Tarak Patel

So, I think directionally we are moving in the right direction. I think we have multiple different initiatives to improve revenue, to grow revenue and to improve margins. So let's leave it at that. There are definitely opportunities, we know these opportunities, we know where we have high costs, we know where we don't do things so well. So, there are opportunities across the group across regions. So, there are multiple things ongoing. We're working on debt, we're working on restructuring, there's a lot of opportunities that we are working on. So, we are going the right direction, and let’s focus on them, let's maybe build some kind of momentum with order intake in Q2 and when we meet again next quarter maybe hopefully, we'll have a much clearer picture in terms of where we are going to end up and what the future holds.

Alexander Poempner

Maybe just to add one, we already have several units which achieve these margins or even higher margins. What we're currently suffering on is that we have one, two, three units which are really underperforming, and which are dragging the margin down. So, we are focusing on this and we discussed and we mentioned it, we have measures in place, we will improve these units, and you will directly see an uplift in EBITDA margin for the full group.

Acuitas Capital Advisors

Tarak, well appreciate your response. The reason we are looking for I was looking for more of a cadence of margins is because see as you yourself you and your team referred to, the investment in employees etc, is already showing up in the numbers right because employee costs are up significantly both standalone as well as consol. So, we are already seeing the costs upfront, so it would be useful to actually get a sense over what timeframe are we even, I understand there are multiple triggers for this margin improvement, but it would be useful to get some sense that over what time frame should we expect that.

Tarak Patel

Yes, I agree with what you are saying. Like I was saying, there's a lot of initiatives that we are working on. The timeframe, again, we are not somebody is going to wait around for a long period of time. We are actioning a lot of these changes along with the global transformation. We have a stronger team today. We have now accountable CEOs, four CEOs who are driving costs and strategy within those organizations and making tough calls where they need to make tough calls. So that's happening. Alex and Ankit are working on financial kind of areas to improve, tax structuring, borrowing costs, etc, inventory, cash management. So, we are working across the group. Business is looking a little bit better again. Let us kind of build some kind of consistency, let us give a few quarters of consistent results and then we can sit down and talk about margins and then I think you guys will also have a clearer idea in terms of what we are trying to do. So, let's push this out. The work is going in and as Alex said there is improvement possible and we will improve and that's ongoing. So, I think that will give a clear direction in terms of our margins over the next few quarters and years.

Moderator

Thank you. A reminder to all participants, please restrict yourselves to two questions and for any more questions you may rejoin the queue. The next question comes from the line of Sagar Shah with Spark PWM. Please go ahead.

Spark PWM

Yes, first of all thank you for the opportunity and thank you to the management of GMM Pfaudler to actually first time disclose the segmental results actually as what entire street was asking for. Now my first question, sir, was related to a follow-up on previous participa nt's question. You highlighted that there was an uptick in the employee expenditure, you were realigning the entire sales team for different segments now actually that you have highlighted in this quarter. Now apart from the sales teams, I wanted to know from Tarak as well as Greg actually that what exactly are we doing to strategize actually our sales team, to strategize our operations even geographically, so that actually we acquire greater market share in the segments actually that we have actually highlighted in this particular presentation. Apart from the sales teams, what exactly measures are we taking to actually acquire greater market share or so and that in turn will actually be a margin enhancer in the medium to long term actually. That was my first question.

Tarak Patel

So, I think before I hand over to Greg, I think a couple of things that I would just want to highlight. Obviously, you know, Greg has been part of the company now for a year and has run the global transformation program so he's aware of the business, he ha s a very close understanding of the business, he's been involved in multiple different initiatives over the last 12 months so he's perfectly placed to really kind of look into improvements across the group both from the revenue side and from the cost side. He also comes from a background where he has done restructuring in his earlier days as part of Al varez and Marshall and consulting, so he has done this before and he knows what is probably expected and what we need to do. And lastly, I think it's also important that we understand that Greg is part of the family, so he has skin in the game. So, the two of us together obviously as family members control a large shareholding of the company and it is in our best interest to obv iously drive some of these long -term initiatives to create stakeholder value for all our stakeholders and shareholders. So, with that maybe Greg if you can maybe say a few words on the transformation and then obviously the areas that we're worked on and will be working on.

Gregory Gelhaus

Sure, sure, thanks Tarak. So, I think to the point that was mentioned around the transformation, one of the clear roles of from the sales side is to increase market share, no doubt that's part of our transformation program. I do believe and we believe that the new organizational struc ture as was mentioned in the opening remarks helps us to move quicker globally for opportunities that we see across the world. We have a greater ability now to share knowledge, to be able to work closer as global teams, to be able to see opportunities that we see in the market to win new orders and of course ultimately win market share. So, all of that requires obviously changes in the way we work, changes in the way we go to market which we have been implementing already and we are seeing good progress there. We are seeing and I would point out that it is progress that we were making across within each division, but also because our customers will require, as an example, sometimes glass -lined equipment, filtration and drying, mixing equipment, all together for a certain order , certain opportunity, we are able to work closer together also across divisions. So, we have a very strong focus on improving our market share and we're focused on that and I believe that our new structure is going to help us with that.

Tarak Patel

And just a side note on this, which is just quite interesting is because when we created these four verticals, we were not expecting cross -selling to be one of the driving initiatives, we were separating people out, and we actually find that our cross -selling has actually improved when we now have created these distinct verticals. So sometimes you get benefits that you don't expect and this is just one interesting case of how we got something that more than we planned for. So again, it's a very different way of how we have done things. This is how we have done things since 140 years. Pfaudler has been a very old company and obviously Pfaudler and then GMM has been very regional the way we have operated, it's always been very regional. So, this is a foundational change, a structural change that hopefully over the next, will give us a very strong foundation to create business growth and margin improvement over the next few years.

Spark PWM

Okay, okay. Yes, my second question was related to your data keeping question. So, you highlighted the strategic measures actually that means you'll take on the operational side. So, I know this is not a sequential mapping, something like the sequential mapping journey that we are looking for, it's a long-term journey. But for FY27 and FY28, so at least that that is up to 12 to 24 months. So based on the debt reduction program, based on strategic measures, what are the target EBITDA margins actually that the company is highlighting? And secondly, what is the currently as on March '26, that the debt that the company holds on its balance sheet, it's the long-term as well as the short-term debt, it accounts to around INR 835 crores in rupee terms. So, what is the actually targeted debt levels that we are eyeing till the end of this year as well as FY28? So that is my second question related to d ata keeping question, thank you. That's it.

Alexander Poempner

Thank you. Maybe I take it regarding the debt. We will repay approximately EUR 7 million this quarter and we are working on the refinancing alternative that will bring further down our debt and we dont to comment on the debt as of the end of this financial year, but as you see we are working on this and we will further reduce over the coming quarters

Spark PWM

Okay, so what is the debt that we are eyeing actually, and about the margins also my question was.

Tarak Patel

Yes, so Ankit, he's asking for outlook on margins, I think we've already expressed ourselves also, so maybe you want to give just how we look at margins and how we will talk about margins to the street.

Ankit Nayyar

Yes, so from a margins perspective, the objective is to continue to grow margins. As Tarak mentioned earlier also, our objective is to deliver quarter - on-quarter, see how things are, we see positive shoots in different businesses and as we have already sta ted 15% is something we aim to go there, so quarter-on-quarter we'll see this how we are tracking against it and Yes, and all levers look good as of now to hit those kinds of numbers.

Dhavan Shah

Yes, thanks for the opportunity, sir. So, my question is on the order inflows for CRT and PPT segment. You mentioned that you are seeing, you know, the green shoots in the domestic pharma sector and that's why, you know, we have seen some order inflows growth for this quarter. So, if you can share, you know, some thoughts on that, whether that was, you know, one-time like the lumpy order or is it like the structural revival you are seeing in the domestic pharma which can be seen for at least next three quarter also for CRT. And then for PPT, what led to such order inflow growth dur ing this quarter and is it sustainable or not during the next three quarters.

Tarak Patel

So, I think, I ask this question to you because you have a better understanding of pharma, but no, on a serious note, we haven't seen this kind of improvement for quite some time. Glass -lined, our glass -lined business has now gone through a really tough time over the last two years I would say and this time the green shoots again like we said look positive, we see some in India definitely a quite positive with this whole pharma play, CDMO and the big Hyderabad players are expanding so API is looking good. We've also seen good pharma inflow of glass -line business in the US, so the US obviously we know the US, you know, story around Mr. Trump and the investment that was signed to bring pharma jobs to the US, some of that is actually playing out quite nicely, so we have received some large orders from the US recently. Surprisingly China has also come back with good orders in glass -line in CRT, which we thought, you know, China had excess capacity, but I believe that some of the new investment is going closer to the Mongolian border for chemicals again. So that's driving some growth and bringing back glass-lined. Europe structurally still remains a bit slow, however we have won some large glass-lined orders in Europe in the recent months as well, and the focus is also to push our service business, grow our service business, maybe there we might have, and we lost the market share over the last few quarters and the focus is mainly to bring back services , glass-lined services again. So, CRT is looking good globally, Europe still looks a bit tough but the other geographies are looking a lot more positive. Greg you want to add something to that?

Gregory Gelhaus

No, I think you covered it, I think going back to the question around pharma, we do see as we answered earlier we do see some positive signals in the pharma sector and we are seeing that in terms of the orders that we are winning but also the opportunities that we see in front of us.

Tarak Patel

Yes, one more point here, sorry, I missed this, it's a very important point is peptides, so we have seen significant peptide investment, so we have already supplied last year a very large order for peptide, you know, and we have also received two large orders from Hyderabad for complete systems around built around peptides, so peptides is another area that we are seeing a lot of investment coming in and I think with our equipments we are quite well - positioned to grow that peptide order book as well.

Dhavan Shah

Understood. And what about the PPT? This quarter I think we have been seeing significant order inflow growth, so what led to such a growth, is it like just from the domestic market or there was some export order also which led to such a growth.

Tarak Patel

Sorry, your first part was to talk about growth in what, sorry, can you repeat that?

Dhavan Shah

My question is, you know, for PPT we have seen, you know, the significant order inflow growth during this quarter, so what led to such jump for first quarter and then is it like the order inflow came from the domestic business only or there was some export order also which led to such a growth.

Tarak Patel

So, it's a combination of multiple things, the businesses that have come across geographies, you know, India last quarter was decent, was good, but, I hope that India this quarter will do obviously a bit better, things are looking good. So, order intake was good globally and we expect order intake to continue also. Brazil also has done quite well, our mixing business has done well with large orders, so again that equipment and now systems, so where you compare - I think when you look at us, you look at two or three metrics. So. first thing you should look at on April 1st previous year versus this year what our opening backlog was. Our opening backlog was already 30% higher. Please consider last year we had in that backlog a very large defence system order. We had a very large order of close to EUR 30 odd million for a large system, so that was in there. So now the backlog really is kind of more robust we have a lot more equipment in there, CRT, PPT and HET as well.

And that's the good part, and if Q2 remains strong, which we expect it to be, then that gives us revenue visibility and then pretty much we'll get this year done and dusted. So, the focus again is to be aggressive. The way that we have reorganized ourselves should help us serve our customers better, m eet all our alignments in terms of all the people who were within those verticals are aligned now to go after that business, with good margin business and cut costs, so I think we're going in the right direction if the market sustains and I hope it does, we should be in a decent position. Again, like you said also sometimes it could be a one -off, two -off quarter kind of an investment. We hope it's sustainable.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Rus habh with Pravin Ratilal Wealth. Please go ahead.

Rushabh

Yes, thanks for the opportunity. And first of all, congratulations to the GMM Pfaudler team on, not just improving the disclosures to the market, but also finally going towards the disciplined capital allocation. So big congratulations on that. I have 3 questions. So, the first one is on the order book. So, you did allude to the fact that in the last year 30% of the orders were large -tenure orders. And you did say that in the current year the order book, it is - how much percentage of that of orders are executable within the next 10 to 12 months? That's my first question. The second question is on the borrowings. So, we have mentioned the fact that we'll be repaying around EUR 7 million of debt, and we currently have around INR 835 crores of INR debt, so I assume it's closer to EUR75 -EUR76 million if I convert it into euros. So, you have said that you will be repaying that debt in the next 12 to 18 months. But can you specify a number and a timeline in which how much debt will be repaid? That is my second question. And my third question is on the tax rate. So, going forward, what is the kind of steady -state tax rate should we work with? Thank you.

Alexander Poempner

Regarding the debt collection, we repay now EUR 7 million. And then we will restructure our debt position and further reduce it. And this will take, as mentioned, the time frame 12 to 18 months. But as I said, it will continuously going down in the future. Regarding the tax rate, I would work with the tax rate of around 30%, let's say maybe slightly below in the long term. We still require some time to get this stabilized. It partly depends on our current debt profile and our organizational structure. With this change in the org structure, but especially also in the debt structure, we will bring our tax rate down to this level, which I just mentioned. Let's use around 30%, maybe slightly lower.

Rushabh

So, just one follow up to that. So, you did mention that you'll be bringing down the debt. But can you at least specify a number that what is the kind of debt is that you'll be comfortable with in the next 12 months or next 18 months? That's part one. And 30% tax rate that you're talking about. When can we see that coming? What should be the FY 27 and 28 tax rate number that you should be working with?

Alexander Poempner

I will not mention our debt target figure for end of this year. And however, regarding the timing of the tax rate, to bring it down, we indicated 18 to 24 months. And the debt, the refinancing and the reorganization has to be completed first. And then we c an go down to this lower and reasonable tax rate. But as I said, it takes us 18 to 24 months to really fully get it stabilized.

Rushabh

So in 18 to 24 months, how much of debt will be repaid? Can you please tell us?

Tarak Patel

So on the debt, we'll start with the 7 million . We are working on it. We are looking at different options. So give us some time again. The idea is to make it a much better structure. But we can't get debt alone because we have to look at our global structure, which is now 24, 25 entities or something. We need to clean that up. So when the debt is refinanced, we put it into the right jurisdiction in the right structure. We don't want any fluctuation on currency and stuff. So there are 2 or 3 things that need to be done. We're working on it. Hopefully, we can get some of this done before we have given the time to the street. And we are working it.

So just give us some time on this. When we meet again for Q2, we should have more clarity. And then hopefully this year, even this year around Q2, sometime around that, we're hoping that we can have an investor day as well. So by then you'll have all the d etails very clearly mentioned and you can track that also. But we still need some time to get the exact kind of timeframes and the amounts sorted out. So we're working on it and we'll come back to you.

Rushabh

Right sir. Once again congratulations. Just you missed out my part on the order book. So how much of the order book is executable between 10 to 12 months?

Gregory Gelhaus

Yes. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, it's the large majority of that, so significant amount of the - roughly 1000 crores order intake that we had, significant amount of that is executable in the next 10 to 12 months. So, as I mentioned earlier, if you look at Q1 in the prior year, 30% of that was multi - year projects which would not all occur in the next 10 to 12 months, but where what we see in this recent quarter is very different.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ravi Mehta with One Up. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. Thanks for this call. Just couple of questions, one is on the employee is there any one-off severance cost in Q1?

Gregory Gelhaus

No.

Tarak Patel

No.

Okay. And the investment that you are speaking, is this going to further go up or this can be like a run rate basis or there's still some more senior level additions pending?

Tarak Patel

You're talking about employee costs. So the idea is to bring down employee costs over time. Obviously there have been certain new hires as we move into the new structure which are required, because we need global kind of HR, finance, IT, but we also have ideas to move a lot of that to India, the GEC, GCC model, stuff like that, so we can look at options there.

And then we also have opportunities to kind of put people in front of our clients. So, I think the idea is that some of these verticals need to grow, so we will invest in sales people, sales organization as well. But as a concept, we are looking at non-critical activity being consolidated into lower cost geographies, things like engineering, drawings, things that don't require to be done. That can be something, and we've already started like that. We have a GEC center now, a global engineering center that has about 12 people for lot of our entities, that's another push. We have Poland and India coming up as a low-cost geography where we really need to utilize these both entities to make sure that we have a much better cost structure. Keep in mind, we also reduced people in the UK the prior year and last year Germany we had a reduction of workforce, factory workforce which obviously you'll see some of that kind of playing through also in the next few quarters. So, we'll be getting that benefit as well. We're doing cost optimization. We've worked in operational excellence and that should play out as well and with the higher volumes hopefully, we'll have better absorption and better utilization of our factories as well.

Moderator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Simran Kumari with Narnolia Financial Services. Please go ahead.

Narnolia Financial Services

Hi sir, good afternoon. My question is related to interest cost. Like what would be the interest cost for FY27 and FY28? And my second question is regarding the order intake. As we can see th is quarter the order intake is broadly comparable to the corresponding period last year. So, could you please elaborate on the expected order intake trajectory for the remainder of the fiscal year? Thank you, sir.

Alexander Poempner

Okay. I'll start with the interest cost. The interest cost we have on average 6% to 7%. And of course, it's especially the debt that is in the international business, which is USD denominated or Euro denominated. They are based on the SOFR base rate and the EURIBOR base rate. But it's also hedged. So, for your modeling, I would assume 6% to 7%. And the other question was about the order intake.

Gregory Gelhaus

Yes. So, on the order intake as I mentioned in my opening remarks, yes, you're correct that we've had -- when you look at order intake this quarter versus the prior year same quarter, it's roughly the same. But as I mentioned, we see a very different profile of or der intake this quarter where we see that the large majority of those projects that we won in Q1 have execution cycles of 10 to 12 months. So as a result, you'll see that the l arge share of that is orders where we can see strong revenue visibility over that period given those orders that we've won. So, it's different from the prior year as I mentioned, because 30% of that orders that were for multi -year projects and therefore that revenue was not going to come necessarily in the next 10 or 12 months.

Moderator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Raveen Kanabar for the closing remarks.

Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us today. It was a pleasure interacting with all of you and we look forward to many such interactions during the course of the year. Take care and see you soon everyone.

Moderator

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of GMM Pfaudler Limited that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.