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The share price of Refex Industries rose on the NSE by ₹71.10, hitting the 20 per cent upper circuit, and closed at an all-time-high of ₹426.64 per share of ₹10.
As many as 7.14 lakh shares were traded today, for ₹30.37 crore.
This came on the heels of the company reporting, on Thursday, an over three-fold increase in its turnover and more than doubling of net profit for 2022-23. Turnover for the year was ₹1,637 crore, compared with ₹448 crore for 2021-22. Net profit also increased to ₹116 crore from ₹45 crore previously. The company’s board has recommended a dividend of ₹2 a share, or 20 per cent.
What lifted the Refex’s performance was the ‘coal and ash handling’, a business the company entered into about three years ago. The efforts of the first two years bore fruit last year, Anil Jain, Managing Director, Refex Industries, told businessline today. ‘Coal and ash’ handling turnover rose to ₹1,286 crore, from ₹320 crore previously. Profits from the segment increased to ₹129 crore, from ₹27 crore. Tellingly, he said, “this is only the beginning”.
Refex Industries began coal and ash handling with just one customer, but now has nine—all thermal plants that would need to shut down if ash was not removed quickly. Refex has structured its business in such a way that its trucks ferry ash out of the thermal plants and bring back coal. Thermal ash handling in India, Jain said, is a ₹80,000-crore market, almost entirely served by the unorganized sector. He said that thermal power plants were seeing value in the technology-driven services, giving traceability of ash disposed, provided by companies like Refex. Last year, the company’s clients offered it about 20-30 per cent of ash handling, but Jain is hopeful that in the current and coming years, the customers would let Refex remove a greater percentage of ash. Also, the company added two customers in April and one more in May. With more customers and existing customer giving bigger volumes, Refex would gain, he said.
Refex Industries’ two-year-old power trading business fetched revenues of ₹187 crore and profits of ₹42 crore, from nil in the previous year. The company is also into solar power generation and refrigerant gases trading. These raked in profits of ₹5 crore and ₹4 crore in 2022-23, compared with ₹4.4 crore and ₹6.1 crore in 2021-22.
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