KEC International has won multiple orders worth over ₹1,000 crore. Bloomberg TV India speaks to Vimal Kejriwal, MD and CEO of KEC International.

Could you please run us through the orders that you won. Which sectors are they in and what is the execution timeline?

Out of the ₹1,036 crore worth of orders, roughly ₹600 crore is from the transmission sector, another ₹317 crore is from the railway sector and the rest is from the cable sector.

The transmission order will be executed within 24 months.

Railway takes a longer time, so we expect it to be executed within 36 months.

And the cable is online; it will be executed immediately.

What kind of margins are you expecting from these orders?

We have been talking about a margin of around 8.5 per cent, compared with 8 per cent last year.

I think with these orders, we are quite comfortable; we should be able to secure that margin this year.

Currently, what is KEC’s order book?

We have an order book of just about ₹10,000 crore, which means 1.1-1.2 years of execution. But hopefully, we will get some more orders because we are already L1 in almost ₹3,200 crore.

So some more execution will happen from the orders yet to come.

You are seeing great traction from West Asia. How is that order book panning out?

I don’t have the exact number of what we have won, but if you look at today’s number, we have got almost 55 per cent coming in from West Asia.

West Asia had a slight slowdown in the last couple of months when orders were not coming because of the oil prices. But I think with the new policy announcement by the Saudi crown prince and the oil prices now stabilising around 50, spending is restarting.

This order has been in L1 for almost close to 12 months. This has been released now.

If you compare the domestic market vis-à-vis the global market, where do you see higher traction and higher margins?

Traction wise, I think India today is doing better than the international marketFor the first time in the last 15 years, India is very clearly bigger than the order book in the international market.

If you look region-wise internationally, we are seeing a lot more traction in far-east countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Earlier, we did not think these countries would have a large potential, but suddenly, we are seeing a huge number of tenders from these countries. So that is an area we will be focusing on. As the number of tenders increase, the margins also tend to rise.

The railway segment as a whole has been buzzing. How is the railway order book working out for you?

What kind of traction do you see in the segment going forward?

In the last Q4, we quoted almost ₹2,000 crore worth of tenders in the railway sector.

Again in Q1, we have quoted almost a similar amount. Railways L1 is pretty large and this order of ₹317 crore is the largest ever we have got in the sector.

Typically, our order used to be ₹100 crore, then it became ₹200 crore and now it is ₹317 crore. We recently quoted a tender which probably could be more than ₹500 crore.

The time taken from the day of approval to the issue of a tender has come down significantly. We are also talking with the Railways Ministry to reduce the execution period.

The sector will see much more traction than what we have seen till now.

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