Unitech on Sunday said it has lowered debt by 40 per cent in last two and half years and would further reduce the borrowing in coming quarters from operational cashflows.
“We have reduced our gross debt significantly from over Rs 9,000 crore in March, 2009 to about Rs 5,500 crore now. The trend will continue in the next two-three quarters after that we may not need to reduce further,” Unitech Managing Director Sanjay Chandra told PTI in his first interaction after getting bail in 2G telecom scam.
Besides gradual reduction in debt, he said the company would infuse more funds on construction of ongoing projects for fast execution of about 80 projects across the country. It invested Rs 1,300 crore on construction last fiscal.
“We do not have any concern on the debt front.Operational performance is leading to continuous reduction in debt and not asset sales,” Mr Chandra said.
He noted that the company’s debt-equity ratio was in a comfortable position at 0.46 per cent and is very low compared to peer groups.
Unitech, has cut debt by nearly Rs 400 crore in the first half of this fiscal.
In 2009-10 fiscal, the company had raised about Rs 4,500 crore from qualified institutional placement of equity shares, out of which about Rs 2,200 crore was utilised to cut debt.
After that reduction has been through operational cash flows. On sales performance, Mr Chandra said: “We are not pricing our products too expensive that sales are affected. We should achieve sales booking of Rs 1,000 crore per quarter despite macro-economic deterioration“.
During the first half of this fiscal, Unitech has sold 3.71 million sq ft of area, mostly residential, worth Rs 2,088 crore. The company has launched projects comprising 6 million sq ft of saleable area and more projects are in pipeline.
Mr Chandra said the company would not shelve its plan to develop 13 shopping malls because of the government’s decision to put on hold its plans to open FDI in multi-brand retail.
“We have nine malls under construction and we have land for another four malls. We will develop these malls,” he said, adding that the the company would invest up to Rs 3,000 crore in the next five years for this.
Unitech’s share price fell by nearly eight per cent on Friday to close at Rs 19.55 on the BSE. The scrip has plunged from Rs 68.05 on January 4 this year. The market cap of company stood at Rs 5,111.24 crore.