The Hindu Business Line : Gujarat Ambuja Exports crosses Rs 1,000-cr market cap

Ahmedabad, Nov. 30 With the market capitalisation of its shares crossing the Rs 1,000-crore mark today, agro-processing major Gujarat Ambuja Exports Ltd (GAEL) hinted at plans to diversify into other countries and products and projected a turnover of around Rs 1,800 crore this fiscal.

Capital Appreciation

The company has so far bought 9,66,615 shares, thereby reducing the equity from Rs 27.86 crore to Rs 27.68 crore, Mr Gupta said. The 44,000 shareholders of the company saw capital appreciation of more than 300 per cent in the last one year. In the first half of the current fiscal ending September 30 this year, it recorded a jump of 61 per cent in the net profit, 44 per cent in cash profit and 42 per cent in EBITDA. The overall EBITDA for 2006-07 was at Rs 103 crore at 7.4 per cent of the turnover, which is expected to rise substantially this year with improved capacity utilisation, price and margins.

Its equity share buy-back programme, started in April 2006, will close on January 15 next year.

In April 2006, when the share prices of Rs 2 each were around Rs 25, the company announced buy-back with the cap of Rs 38 per share. The shares of the company closed today at Rs 71.75.

New plant

Its new plant in Uttaranchal is set to open next month. “We are talking to the respective parties and finalising these plans at present,” Mr Vijay Kumar Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director, told reporters but declined to give details at this stage.

The company will fund its new plans mainly from its internal accruals.

GAEL, India’s second largest company in solvent extraction, crushed more than 5-lakh tonnes of oilseeds and reported a topline of around Rs 1,100 crore in this segment alone, out of its revenues of Rs 1,400 crore last fiscal. In 2007-08, it expected to crush 7.50-lakh tonnes of oilseeds and, with increased price realisation, it targeted a topline of more than Rs 1,500 crore in the segment, Mr Gupta added.

GAEL manufactures solvent extracted meals, edible oil, maize products and cotton yarn spinning at its 17 plants located in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. It has a wholly owned subsidiary at Singapore, branches in Vietnam, and associates in Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

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