A global industrial slowdown has hurt manufacturers in India. However, Bharat Forge has bucked the trend and posted a 30 per cent rise in Ebitda for the September quarter. Bloomberg TV India caught up with Amit Kalyani, Executive Director of Bharat Forge, to get an insight on India Inc’s capex cycle.

Can you run us through the highlights of your financial performance ?

Total revenue for the quarter was ₹1,117 crore. Our Ebitda margin was 30.1 per cent. PBT was ₹274 crore and PAT, ₹175 crore. So the key highlight was that there was extreme demand volatility and softness in the industrial sector, which is a large part of our business, and there was significant inventory correction in some of these sectors as well, driven by the commodity price decline. In spite of this huge drop in this sector, we have more or less managed to retain our profitability. That’s because of the market share gains in other sectors and ramp-up of our passenger car business.

What is the trend in the margins? Do you see a revival going ahead?

Yes, absolutely. Margins have actually been pretty decent, given that last quarter we had said margins were exceptionally high. It’s not something that we expect to continue every quarter with a margin of 31-31.5 or close to 32 per cent. We expect a revival in fact, but we expect to start growing again from this quarter and next quarter based on the actions that we have taken in terms of product development, and demand growth in India.

Run us a detail on Indian operations?

The India operations have basically grown because of the commercial vehicle (CV) market. This is in spite of the tractor market having seen a very significant de-growth. We have been working very closely with our customers and managed to get into new business with them. This is something that will continue and help us going forward as well. Besides this, we are now starting to make progress on the Make in India strategy and we expect that the Make in India revenues will also kick in slightly from the second half of this year but much more from next year.

What’s the current debt picture looking like and what plans do you have to reduce that going ahead?

On a net basis, we have a debt-equity of 0.2 and we continue to pay off our debt.