Afcons Infrastructure, the flagship of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, expects to end FY25 with an order intake of ₹25,000 crore, its highest ever in a year, a senior official said.
At the start of the year, it had set a target of ₹20,000 crore, but it has already crossed that factoring in the projects where it is the lowest bidder and expects to book “not less than ₹5,000 crore,” the rest of the year, Managing Director Paramasivan Srinivasan told analysts when discussing the company’s first quarterly results after its IPO.
This will provide revenue visibility not only for FY26 but for the following year as well, he said. The projects contractor ended the September quarter with an outstanding orderbook of ₹34,152 crore, excluding ₹10,154-crore worth of projects where it is the lowest bidder.
The company, which only takes on complex projects where there are few bidders, usually keeps in hand projects that would give two years of revenue visibility. Its total addressable market, in terms of bidding pipeline, is ₹3.2 lakh crore, dominated by urban infrastructure projects such as metros and bridges accounting for around ₹1 lakh crore, followed by surface transport at ₹60,000 crore, and marine and hydro projects at ₹50,000-55,000 crore each.
Muted Q2 growth
The company reported a net profit of ₹135 crore in Q2 of FY25, up 30 per cent on year while revenue fell 10 per cent to ₹3,090 crore, due to muted order-book growth over the last two years, owing to bank guarantee constraints.
The General Elections in May also resulted in delays in bill payments from some customers while the severe monsoons this year delayed some projects, company officials said. The second half of the year is expected to be better, but the revenue growth in the current fiscal is expected to be flat and grow 20-25 per cent in FY26, they said.
Srinivasan also said that the company was keeping away from hydrocarbon projects for the moment until the contracting methodology is changed. Companies that had participated in onshore projects in the oil and gas sector had lost money, “therefore we want to be very cautious in terms of our movement,” he said.
Its exposure to the oil and gas sector in terms of its orderbook value is only 5 per cent, with underground and elevated metro projects contributing the most at nearly 38 per cent.