Ircon International Limited earnings call

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Q2 and H1 FY’26 Post Result Earnings Call of Ircon International Limited. I am Bhoomika, the moderator for this conference call. From the management side, we have with us Smt. Ragini Advani, Director Finance, Mr. Alin Roy Choudhury, CGM Finance and CFO, Mr. Ram Kumar Goyal, GM Finance, Mr. Sachin Garg, DGM and Investor Relations. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. At this moment, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press “*” and “1” on your telephone keypad. I would like to remind you that some of the statements that will be made in today's discussion may be forward -looking in nature. It is subject to several risks and uncertainties and the actual results could materially differ. I would now like to hand the conference over to Smt. Ragini Advani, Director Finance, for the opening remarks, after which we will have the forum open for the interactive Q&A session. Thank you and over to you ma'am.

Thank you. Thank you so much Bhoomika. Good afternoon everyone. I am Ragini Advani – Director Finance, Ircon. I apologize, earlier CMD sir was scheduled to join this call but a last minute visit has taken place in one of our projects for some senior level review by Ministry of Railways and therefore he also was required to personally attend the project site. On be half of my team, I extend a very warm welcome to all of you and thank you for your presence today at the Ircon’s earning call for Q2 and H1 FY’26. Although this quarter has been challenging for the company, we have been striving hard to sustain and improve our performance. Financial results as well as presentation have already been uploaded on the stock exchanges. I am sure that all of you had the opportunity to review these documents. Let me briefly give you a snapshot of our financial performance for Q2 FY’26. The company has reported a total revenue of Rs. 2112 crore, a PAT of Rs. 137 crore and a core EBITDA of Rs. 162 crore in Q2 FY’26. Earnings per share stands at Rs. 1.47 per equity share in Q2 FY’26 on half yearly basis and this is on a face value of Rs. 2 per share. Order book of the company stood at Rs. 23,865 crore as at 30th September 2025. About 63% was from competition and balance from nomination and about 91% of our order book is relating to domestic projects and the balance international. Ircon has 11 subsidiaries and seven joint venture companies including a renewable power company. Now, without taking much time, I would like to open the floor for a Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you ma'am. We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from the line of Gaurav Jagirdar, an investor. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon ma'am. Thank you for taking my question. I had two, three questions which I would like to get answered. One was the other income has come down. Any specific reason for this ma'am?

You are talking on other income on consolidated basis?

Yes, yes ma'am.

So, other income has actually gone up?

My apologies. On the standalone, I was talking about.

Even in standalone, it has gone up.

Okay. Other income, yes?

Yes.

Okay. My bad. Ma'am, share from the profit sharing from the JVs. Can you share some light on it? How will it be going forward?

So, in our joint venture companies, we have one of our high way projects. It is called Ircon-Soma Tollway Limited. That has been giving us profits. And going forward, this should be ending. The concession period is ending next year. But this has been giving us good profits over the past few years and is expected to do so for the current financial year as well. We have some coal joint venture companies in which CERL1, which is one of the coal connectivity projects, that is only operational as of now. The balance are all under construction. So, in CERL phase 1, there have been losses and we expect it to break even by the year or two years later. So, right now, this project is undergoing losses. And the reason for that is that while our track is ready mainly, but the mines which had to come up around that area, some of them have come up, some of them have not come up. There is a spur line that we are going to be ready with by the end of this financial year, after which there should be traffic enhancement. But for it to break even, it will take another, lets say about 18 months to about 20 months period. So, that is about the coal JVs. And we also have anoth er joint venture company, which is IRFDC, Indian Railway Station Development Corporation. That is under closure. So, we are at the final leg now, where we are in the process of appointing liquidator for that company. So, we shall be getting back our investment. Again, spread over a period of time, but maybe a significant amount should come back to us by about beginning of next year.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. And my another question is, we are doing quite well on the international front. We will be maintaining the same margins or they are poised to go upwards from here?

So, on international front, while we definitely have better margins, also the foreign exchange has played its own, it has given us a benefit, as we are all aware about the rupee depreciation that has been happening. And therefore, we have had good foreign exchange earnings in this year. One of our projects, which is in Bangladesh, Khulna Mongla, we have had roughly about Rs. 20 crores of realized foreign exchange earnings from there, because of the exchange rate differences.

Got it, ma'am. And what will be the split, ma'am, between domestic and international projects?

From a turnover perspective is as much as 96% to 4% when it comes to turnover. And from an order book perspective, it is about, we have international order book of about 10%.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. That’s it from my side.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. The next questi on comes from the line of Shreyans Mehta from Equiru s. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on margin front. So, any specific reason why the margin is dent in this quarter and how one should look at the full year for FY’26 and FY’27?

So, yes, margins have taken a dent. We have had a series of reasons. One, of course, has been that, as I mentioned, that in CERL, we have been continuously having losses on a consolidated level, which has resulted in our reduction in income. Also, on a consolidated basis, we ha ve had some adverse impact in our subsidiaries, which are also under construction, but that should get negated or kind of offset by next financial year. And that itself has also contributed to our lower margins. Having said that, as I had mentioned in my earlier calls also, we were expecting half to one percent reduction in our margins in terms of our normal projects that we had, and which has been the case. The new projects that we have been winning are on lower margins. And some of my projects, in fact, two of them, we ha ve had some losses, which we have booked partly in March. We had booked and some more came up, which is what we have affected in this half -yearly result. So, all these are the reasons for slightly lower EBITDA margins, as well as PBT and PAT. But having said that, we continue to say that our PAT margins going forward will be in the range of 6% to 7%.

Okay, got it. And my second question is on order inflow side. So, how much we are targeting for the full year? And my third, the last question on the revenue front, it is on the lower side. So, how we are looking execution for second edge and for the full year next year FY’27?

Yes. So, the first, in terms of order book, we have got orders more than Rs. 4,000 crores in the first half of this financial year. And we expect something of a similar range going forward. In terms of turnover, yes, our six -month turnover has been s lightly on the downside, but it i s normally the latter half which picks up. So, we expect that on a console level, we should be having an operating revenue in the range of about Rs. 10,000 crores to Rs. 11,000 crores. And for going forward for the next year also, we maintain a similar level, which will be around Rs. 10,000 crores. Does that answer your question, Shreyans? Hello.

Mr. Shreyans, you are not audible.

Yes, ma'am. Got it. Thanks.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question comes fro m the line of Vishal from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead.

Yes, ma'am. Thanks for the opportunity. Am I audible?

Yes, Vishal. Thank you. I can hear you.

Okay. Fine ma’am. One thing which I a m noticing is, you mentioned order inflow is Rs. 4,000 odd crores in the first half , but I think it looks like there i s a change in the scope of existing work because on an implied basis, the order book has seen a good increase on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

Yes, that is right. There has been some increase in our existing jobs as well.

Okay. So, when you did like second half, we will do inflow. So, is it fair to understand the fresh inflow 4,000 similarly that we are targeting or probably some bit of scope change or anything we are further expecting in the second half?

No, no. Fresh inflow itself, we are targeting in that range.

Okay. Got it, ma'am. And then in terms of our segmental performance, at an international side, though it is a smaller piece, but EBIT level margins are more than 100%. So, I think you briefly touched there is a FOREX gain. Is it the same thing which is coming in the segmental leading to a better margin?

That is right. I n international projects, anyway, we tend to have higher margins than domestic. And over and above that, we have had foreign exchange gain, the significant one being in our Khulna -Mongla-Bangladesh project, which has contributed to the significant increase in EBITDA margins of foreign projects.

Okay. And sorry, I think you did mention on the number, what is this one-off number of FOREX, ma'am?

So, the overall number, I think, is about Rs. 30 crores, and out of it, a significant amount, about Rs. 20 crores is Khulna-Mongla.

Okay. But then, if we take that number off from our reported margins, then it looks like for a domestic project, which we are executing, the margins are very weak.

Dropping.

Yes, it is dropping.

So, as I mentioned that we have about on a normal course, we have been taking jobs now at much stiffer margins, and because of which going forward, there would be a drop of about 1% in my normal execution of projects, which is what you would have seen that our project cost has gone up. Over and above that, we ha ve also had certain losses that we had to book on two of our projects. So, that should be hopefully one-off items.

Yes.

Okay. And then, can you give some color in terms of inflow? I think the order win, which was there in last year, to be 25, from that side, I think first half numbers are very good. So, any changes that we are seeing as the competition has gone down, or are there new segments that we are adding up, which is leading to this inflow? Any colors that can be provided will be helpful.

Yes. So, while we continue to focus on railways and EPC projects and roads, which has also been our main forte even now, as we mentioned earlier also, we have moved into Kavach as one of the segments. And in that, we have been taking certain jobs. Also, we have tried diversifying into certain other areas while picking up the jobs. We have recently taken one particular project in a hydro power project. But these are things which we are trying to diversify, to understand the nuances of that industry, and see if we can get more projects there. Because the market per se has been very tough for us. There has been a lot of competition. Many of the jobs are being quoted below estimates, which means that even if you were to win a job, the margins get very stiff. So, initially, till about a year before, we were trying to continue getting margins intact. And therefore, we were trying to make sure that we do not compromise on the margins. But recently, we have had this change in our attitude, wherein we have, just a second. Yes, sorry. Are you there, Vishal?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, I am so sorry. There was actually an announcement which was hap pening in our company. So, that is why I had to put you on mute. Yes, so I was saying that we have had some change in our course, wherein now we are also going with aggressive margins and trying to get orders. And that i s why you would see that our first half in this year, we have managed to get orders more than what we had got last ye ar. But it does mean that there ha s been some impa ct on our margins, because that i s how the industry is being right now.

Okay. And then, in terms of the margins and competition, which you mentioned, last year again, I think, in your earnings call commentary, you have mentioned competition is there. But is there any concern at even the regulators or maybe like, you know, the agencies who are calling these bills, though, and then like, you know, they are avoiding the project cost, there could be a chance like, these projects may not see light of the day. So, any thought that you are seeing, even in terms of roads or may be any sector, or probably like ministry or maybe any agency, they are not

Yes. So, at least in roads, we ha ve been hearing and seeing it in our newspaper s as well. There has been a lot of focus on the quality. And there have been repeated messages from NHAI as well as from the MoRTH Ministry saying that quality matters, and they are going to go stiffer in terms of the contractors who are not performing or whose quality is not up to the mark. And they are actually working on that side and taking some actions, except that we will get to know that over a period of time. And I am sure something similar would also be taken up in railways. But it may take some time. So, we are also waiting for that to happen.

Okay, got it. I think that is all from my side. And thank you for the detailed explanation.

Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Bhoo mika for moderating the call. I would like to thank all our stakeholders, shareholders, business partners, analysts, investor friends who have shown continued support and faith on us. We would also be happy to connect with you on one -to-one basis as and when required, and for any further queries that you may have. Thank you all, please, for your participation.

Thank you all for being part of this conference call. If you need any further information or clarification, you may contact Mr. Sachin Garg or email at sachin.garg @ircon.org. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.