Shivalik Bimetal Controls Ltd (SBCL)

[sanjeev_thakur]

It is a delight to read AGM notes from @Donald @dd1474 @Worldlywiseinvestors. I really thank you all on behalf of the rest of us.

One of the key concerns in the back of my head was the succession plan.

The latest annual report mentions the roles of Mr Kabir Ghumman and Sumer Ghumman, sons of MD. Plus the following snippet from @dd1474 notes.

@dd1474

8 There was visible change in top managment attitude towards delegation of power among second line of professional and new generations family members. The recent expansion in capacity involved significant involvement from second generations of family which is a positive gesture for future business growth in my understanding.

This puts some of the related concerns to rest. With ageing senior management, we definitely need a smart next-gen who is visibly helping take the company forward.

[diffsoft]

Many good and dear friends have written about the business above. Certainly fantastic growth over the years / decades, which few firms can match. It is highly likely that many of those who have posted have enjoyed the substantial run up in prices over the past many years.

I want to direct my post to those uninvested and part-time investors but keen to put their savings to work fastest to generate returns. They are likely to get carried away and set unrealistic expectations on how well the stock will do hereon. Not because what’s painted above is hypnotizing (which it is not); but because it is likely to lure him to think any price is good enough for this wonderful business. There is hardly any discussion on the intrinsic value of the company (about 3 - 4 out of 282 posts above allude to it). Market prices fluctuate. What is ~ Rs 700 today can go down to Rs 500 or go up to Rs 1000 in short time. For someone who bought it at say Rs 200 or so, the down fluctuation is bearable than for someone who buys it today. And if you hear only from those who have made it big here; it is nearly impossible not to get swayed to the upside and pay little attention to the downside.

To put some balance to the price side of the discussion; consider this - that the business has grown revenues roughly by about 5 times and earnings by about 13 times in the past 12 - 13 years. During the same period the market price has grown more than 70 times*. The business thus has become substantially expensive now than those who had the foresight to buy it when it was much cheaper.

Ask yourselves, can earnings over the long run keep growing much faster than revenues? Can prices keep growing much faster than earnings? If so ask why and if not then imagine your downside risks vividly

Maybe the business will really explode and you will make lots of money as prices rise higher; but it is more maybe that the price today factors much of all that explosion.

*From Annual Reports / BSE (adjusted price without dividends), and Q1 FY 23 earnings extrapolated linearly to FY 23

[Dev_S]

Good to see a cautionary wisdom point in recent fanfare. Think both invested from lower levels and recent entrants need to evaluate returns from here on

Some attributes that may help crystal ball gazing in future -

Can we say that identity and positioning of Shivalik has evolved especially when viewed from possibilities perspectives - Shivalik of past( CRT being major used in phased out old gen TV, .low margin mobile components) vs Shivalik of next decade.( EV, smart meter proxy etc)

• Would you be kind enough to append opportunity size expansion possibilities as well -

1. India is producing hardly 3-4 thousand elecric PV/mo , what happens when this goes mainstream and takes center stage with current ICE production runrate. We all know that per vehicle shunt reqmt grows multi fold in each EV.
2. Hardly few lac smart meters to 25 cr+.
3. Growing client base with diverse electrical/electronics usage of bimetal
4. Factor 1 and 2 for global markets as well - where Shivalik is credible player
5. Forward integration possibilities and increasing opportunity size.( esp shunt to solutions)

Does 6X sales and 28X EBDITA at Q1 annualized provides MoS for v near term - def worth considering.

However possibilities are vast( and evolving) and shivalik of future looks quite different than past

While it doesn’t make sense to compare past avtaar of shivalik with what could future hold - here is screener view - earnins at 10 year and Stock CAGR at 10 yr basis arent way out of sync

Invested

[S_Banerjee]

This stock is getting crowded, yes I will use the term ‘crowded’ here from my past experiences, looking at the notification I am getting every day from this thread and avg like on each post. This is euphoric honeymoon period for this stock. A slightest of negative news or market noise will drag this stock price minimum 25% to 30% down from its 52wk high. All weak hands will exit in panic.

I have seen such market noise in this stock from the time I am in this stock from mid 2017. Few I can remember like 1. Promoter selling stake before moving to US 2. AGM question answering body language controversy 3. Margin pressure 4. Covid slow down etc. Old timer like @aveekmitra @ayushmit will relate with this I guess

So,time to be cautiously opportunistic I must say.

[nirvana_laha]

There has undoubtedly been a lot of euphoria about SBCL recently especially on Valuepickr (And rightly so I guess, there are so many here who have been passionately following SBCL’s rise for a number of years :))

To quantify possible future returns from current prices, the best approach is to project potential revenues and earnings out 3 years or 5 years as per Management guidance and then apply suitable discounts to the guidance based on trust on Management etc. Based on what @Donald and @Worldlywiseinvestors have captured as management guidance, I have tried to put together a rough model of how SBCL revenues and earnings might look like 3 or 5 years out. Its a very back of the envelope calculation so I would invite folks to poke holes in the numbers so the projections could be fine tuned.

Assumptions:

1. Shunt market would grow @ 25% for next 3 years and @ 20% thereafter (FY25-FY27). This is roughly based on EV 4-wheeler growth estimates of 20% worldwide (cited by numerous reports that could be found online) and some extra growth to account for replacement of other current sensing tech with shunts.

2. Bi-metals being a much more mature product is assumed to grow @ 10%

3. As per management guidance, SBCL would move up from current 12% market share in shunts to 15% and 17% respectively in FY25 and FY27. And SBCL would move up from current 16% market share in bi-metals to 20% and 22% respectively
   by FY25 and FY27

4. Given that shunts will significantly outstrip bimetals as % of revenue in 3-5 years, I have assumed SBCL’s EBITDA margin profile would improve by 200bps from current levels

5. Interest costs, depreciation costs and other income are assumed to be stable at 8Cr each (annualized FY23 Q1 numbers for each)

It would be a huge value add to the community if others could comment on these projections so that we could potentially arrive at numbers closer to reality.

[DEEPAKSPAMECHA]

hi,
Operating margin till fy 2021 were 18%. there after in fy 2022 it is 23%. is it because of elevated price of copper and nickle price during fy 22 and margin may back to normalcy (18%). as price ease out.

[Sat]

In order to verify the 12% market share claim, I tried googling for the smd shunt resistor market size globally and couldn’t find a reasonable estimate. In the absence of it, I went through the presentations of Yageo and Vishay. Yageo claims to have 34% market share in the segment of chip resistors and Vishay seems to have 2% market share.

As per Yageo’s Q2 results, 14% of their revenues are from resistors.

Q2 Revenues : 31322 Million NT Dollars
Resistor share of revenues : 31322 * 0.14 * 2.58 (conversion to inr) = 11313 million inr = 1131 crores inr
Total market size as per Yageo’s claim = (1131*4)/0.34 = 13341 crores inr (looks too big, is shunt resistor market size a small fraction of this market size?)

As per Vishay’s financial statements, Q2 revenues : 864 Million USD and 23% of their revenues are from resistors.

Resistor share : 864 * .23 * 75 * 0.1 crores = 1490 crores inr
Est. sales = 1490 * 4 ~ 6000 crores (for the last financial year, the resistor sales were around 5500 crores)

Vishay’s numbers aren’t matching with Yageo’s claims. Or, probably smd resistor sales account for a small percent of total resistor sales.

Going by these numbers, probably they may not have 12% market share. The overall market size seems to be big which is a good news (but not convinced as the numbers look pretty big ).

The problem at hand for both these companies is that a significant portion of their revenues seems to be coming from Europe.

One interesting thing that I found while going through Vishay’s annual report is this - “On December 31, 2021, we acquired substantially all of the assets and certain liabilities of Barry Industries, a Massachusetts-based, privately-held manufacturer of
resistive products for $20.8 million. Based on our estimate of their fair values pending finalization of the net working capital adjustment, we allocated $9.6 million of
the purchase price to definite-lived intangible assets. After allocating the purchase price to the assets acquired and liabilities assumed based on a preliminary
estimation of their fair values at the date of acquisition, we recorded goodwill of $7.8 million related to this acquisition. The inclusion of this acquisition did not have
an impact on the Company’s consolidated results for the year ended December 31, 2021. The goodwill related to this acquisition is included in the Resistors
reporting unit for goodwill impairment testing.” Barry Industries seems to be in the same line of business as Shivalik.

Not sure if this post helps with valuation as I was mainly trying to get a sense of the overall size of the market.

[nirvana_laha]

A potential break-through in estimating electricity meter TAM for Shivalik.

This diagram is from Permanent Magnet’s FY22 AR. As per this, there are 2 shunts in each electricity meter.

Now, from Indiamart one can see that Shivalik is selling these shunts for electricity meters @ Rs 15/piece (For orders of 10000 pieces at a time).

Assuming this to be the supply price, we can put two and two together to roughly hazard a guess about potential TAM for Shivalik for the electricity meter procurements under GOI’s smart electric meter scheme which seeks to replace 25Cr conventional meters with smart meters in 3 years. 3 years seems like quite a stretch so let’s assume GOI will complete this in 5 years. So total revenue potential for shunts via this program is ~INR 750Cr (25Cr meters * INR 15/shunt* 2 shunts/meter) over 5 years. This is the TAM.

Now PML is pretty deep into the value chain of electricity meters and they have been aggressively talking about shunt based sensors in their latest AR. There are 26 mentions of shunts in the FY22 AR for PML vs only 1 mention in the FY21 AR where they had stated their intention of getting into shunt assemblies

From the reading in AR21 and AR22 it seems like they are assembling shunt components right now rather than manufacturing it. But I am not sure of this, they may be manufacturing basic shunts as well (Will be great if somebody tracking PML can confirm this). If PML doesn’t manufacture shunts then it likely sources them from SBCL in which case SBCL may be in a position to capture the entire smart meter replacement driven TAM of 750Cr. If on the other hand PML is manufacturing it, SBCL may only be able to capture 30-50% of the TAM, which is 300-400Cr.

So, on a very rough basis, annual revenue potential from digital electricity meters for SBCL might range anywhere between 25Cr-150Cr for the next 5-10 years based on how much share it can grab and what timelines the project extends for (5/8/10 years). Its a one time opportunity and will taper down once the replacement program finishes.

Any revenues from smart metering haven’t been included in the projections in my previous post.

[yrm91]

One of the things that concerns me about the valuations overall is that the business has 2 divisions: 1 is hugely exciting (aka shunts) & 1 is sort of mature where there are some tailwinds due to China + 1. Looking at valuations and multiples on an aggregate basis misses the fact that one of the divisions in the company has far lesser value than the other.

Hypothetically, assuming the earnings are broadly split 50:50 between the 2 divisions; If we assume the Bimetal Division to be valued at TTM 20x P/E (20x 26cr); then this division would have a value of ~500 cr. That would imply that the Shunt Division is being valued at ~2400 cr or ~100x TTM P/E.

A lot of work needs to go into justifying those valuations. I have been trying to size up the market 7-10 years from now and trying to estimate growth rate of the overall shunt market. Happy to share work, please DM if interested. However, there are still a lot of gaps in the analysis. Most importantly, the understanding of which shunts except the BMS are actually the high value shunts with realisations of $0.5-$1/piece. Most of the shunts which power the low power systems (windows, seats, etc) seem to be low value which are unlikely to move the needle much.

If we start thinking like this, it also becomes evident that Smart Meters, even though will provide an impetus to short term growth; are barely relevant to justify 100x PE. The potential of smart meters as a segment is completely dwarfed by that of autos in the long run and once EV penetration starts hitting 40-50%.

[Donald]

It’s good to see words of caution getting injected. It was necessary.
Thanks @diffsoft

Those new to VP and the Industry will do well to heed these, and not jump in at any price. At least NOT the bulk of the buying.

Those who are regular VP members and to Investing will know that all they have to do is MARK this business out as a special business - that might be very very hard to displace from the perch it occupies, and keep working on developing the conviction. And remind themselves that Mr Market gives us multiple opportunities every year - IF our BUY list is clear. It’s only when this is NOT CLEAR, that we wind up confused and unable to take advantage of Mr Markets whim’s & fancy’s. Why, one should easily recall the other tearaway in recent times Gujarat Fluorochemicals was available at ~2200 in May 2022, just 3-4 months back. How many then latched on? How many were clear about the BUY list?? That’s actually a more pertinent question to ask for businesses like these which STAND OUT from the rest.

And also ask of ourselves the question - are we excited by super “Undervaluation” or super “Competitive Strength and Runway” of a business? If it is the former, it is time to break some comfort zones in some businesses. GFL was expensive for most at 1000, 2000, 3500 levels. But does that mean folks in GFL or Shivalik did not average up when the signs were clear/understanding got incrementally better? Many did. We did! And that is what also we have to learn.

What is the right Valuation is a deeply individual quest.
As for me, I keep it simple. After doing the full round of Ramayan on Valuations for over 8+years, I presented this to Prof Bakshi @Sanjay_Bakshi in 2016.

1. Valuations depend on ONLY one thing - Future Cashflows (No one will debate you on that , thankfully)
2. Future Cashflows depend on ONLY 2 things - Industry Tailwinds, Competitive Position of the Business in that Industry (anyone who has pondered a bit on these aspects, will agree with you if you pose the above)

What was Prof Bakshi’s reply?
He said Yes Donald, but then that’s the difficult part, it’s NOT easy to know if the competitive position is getting better or worse. True that!

My experience has been when you are mostly invested in businesses that stand out, its NOT that difficult to keep on top of (think Bajaj Finance, think PI industries and other emerging uniquely-different businesses) - if you are persistent and keep engaging with industry folks, look at data discerningly, its sometimes the opposite - quite easy to keep on top of.

What has incrementally changed (sometimes hugely) for the Business/Competitive Position/Industry Tailwinds - difficult to come to grips with and pinpoint, but worth working on - difficult to put pen-to-paper - and transfer to everyone around. That’s the hard work that everyone tracking/interested/invested in Shivalik should get their heads down to.

We are working on that for the Shivalik Stock Story that we will put out soon.
That will take us all down that journey, in a much more structured manner.

If you ask me, I will stick my neck out again and even hazard - that actually the real journey has just begun for this business! Calling all @automotive domain experts, BMS experts, energy metering domain professionals to help establish this strongly - either way!

Disclosure: Invested form 2018 levels. Had big periods of doubts when story was NOT properly understood and there was a glut in industry, but held through; and as the understanding got incrementally better, averaged up

[nirvana_laha]

Seems like a new customer for thermostatic bi-metal strips.

Cutler Hammer is an Eaton company manufacturing electrical power control and switching devices - https://www.eaton.com/us/en-us/company/about-us/our-heritage/cutler-hammer.html

[yasho_9103]

Hey VP folks, tremendous work done by you all. I have gone through all the comments above & it has helped me a lot in understanding Shivalik better, especially in absence of the primary information by the management in the form of presentations. I have started to look this company recently & it is looking good prima facie. But still I have some questions even after going through the whole thread. Since I am not from Engineering background, the questions related to the products that I am going to ask may be naïve. So please forgive me on that part. The questions are mentioned below:

1. In one of the comments above, it is mentioned that “Resistors are part of the semiconductor”. If it is so, can the Vedanta-Foxconn deal be a big boost for the company since they would require resistors for the production of semiconductors & Shivalik could supply to them?
2. On capacity side- In AGM 2022, the management said that they have doubled their capacity in 3 years. In the year 2019, they said that they were increasing their capacity to 3500-4000 MT (from 1800 MT). So was that the last capacity expansion by them, which implies the current capacity of shunt resistors to be between 3500-4000 MT.
3. On India mart, they are selling a resistor at 15 rupees (minimum 10000 pieces order). So is this the Low-Ohmic Resistor or just a simple one which could be used anywhere else? Would need some clarity on the Resistors used in Smart Meters, BMS, EVs & EV stations!!
4. Since we are having the capacity & assuming that we can get the per unit price of the resistor (if different for Low-Ohmic Resistor), can we calculate the revenue from this segment at different utilization levels?

To all the experts, please throw some light on these questions!!

Thank you everyone!!!

[guru123]

Resistors are used in semiconductors but the Shunt Resistors and Thermostatic Bimetal/Trimetal Strips which are manufactured by SBCL is used for energy measurement and temperature measurement respectively

[Worldlywiseinvestors]

Before @Donald sir answers,

Just my views (proper results reading is an essential skill to be a good investor…)

First starting from Balance sheet observations from H1

1. Property plant and equipment increased from 76.7 crores to 91.84 crores. In line with the guide of expanded brownfield capacities coming on stream.

2. Capital works in progress is at 14.31 crores. Indicating further capex that might come on stream. Their guide was to increase capacities overall by 60% in next 2 years, this expansion will be brownfield in nature at the moment. Post space is exhausted, they will need a new Greenfield land.

Coming to cash flows (Very important)

1. Cash Flow from operations in Last H1FY22 were negative due to increase in inventories.

2. Inventory situation has normalised. Cash flows from operations came in at 24.88 crores vs Ebitda of 50 crores. Full year cash flow will be interesting to see. In B2B businesses and export oriented businesses. Certain amount remains stuck in WC. A good improvement overall in cfo/ebitda in First Half vs last financial year.

3. Capex spend as indicated in CFI is at 17 crore for H1 of this financial year.

Coming to Income statement:

1. Q2FY22 Results on consolidated basis: Topline was 76.23 crores (note here I am excluding other income impact)

Q1FY23 Results: Topline was 110.78 crores (Exluding other income, idea is to get an idea about the core business growth)

Q2FY23 Results: Topline is at 117.59 crores (Excluding other income)

(Other income includes: Other Income during the half year ended September,2022 and quarter ended 30th June,2022 includes fair valuation gains aggregating to 5.12crores on existing stake in SEPPL & SBEPL.)

YoY: Growth of 54% in topline YoY.
QoQ: Growth of 6.14%

Coming To Ebitda (op from screener):

Ebitda in Q2FY22:18 crores
Q1FY23:24 crores
Q2FY23:26 crores

Margins are sustained at an Ebitda level. Inspite of increase in Employee expenses from 8 crores to 10 crores QoQ and Increase in other expenses from 17.82 crores to 20 crores+ QoQ. Signifying increasing employee count.

A good source to check number of employees over a period of time is the EPFO website. Will give you an idea by how much the co is expanding. I did this for Arman fin for last 1.5 years, a good tool.

PAT:

Q2FY23: 19 Crores (ex out other income of 2 crores and this comes down to 17.08 crores)
Pat for Q1FY23: 21.68 crores (ex out other income and this falls to 14.47 crores)

Thus, signifying QoQ PAT growth and YoY you must have already seen.

Gross margins have expanded here, coupled with sales growth.

As investors we should be more concerned with the core business growth. Always ex out other income to calculate. Exclude Other income from PBT to get to true PAT here. I have just done a rough calculation**

This was just my take away, I can be wrong.

Stand-alone Profits numbers have been much better, pointing to decrease in profitability in the subsidiaries( Shivalik Engineered Products Private Limited, Shivalik Bimetal Engineers Private Limited)

Coming to management commentary:

Disc: positions in both SBCL and Arman. Not a reco. Please interpret independently. VP is a tool for collaboration.

Did the calculation here and excluded other income in tax calculations. Here:-

[sahil_vi]

Isabellenhuette (Isa) is one of the major players in this space and has been discussed on and off several times.

A bit about Isa

Isabellenhuette sees itself as the pioneer of precision current measurement technologies. They are an important manufacturer of electrical resistance materials and thermoelectric materials for temperature measurement as well as of passive components for the automotive, electrical and electronics industries.

They claim to define the state of technology with their innovative products.

At a high level, co has three divisions: precision measurement technology, precision and power resistors and precision alloys.

Their precision alloys find applications in following areas:

Applications	Applications	Applications
Airfoil de-icers	Ignition and lighting systems	Signal lines
Circuit breakers	Level sensors	Seat heaters
Coiled filaments	Mineral-insulated wires	Strain gauges
Compensation leads	Plug connectors	Tank container heating systems
Floor heating systems	Quick cups	Thermocouples
Hard solders	Rail heating systems	Thermoelectric leads
Heating cables	Resistors
Heated hoses	Resistance thermometers

In the precision measurements division, in order to achieve a high product quality, they use their advanced shunt technology ISA-WELD® and ISA-PLAN® in their measurement technology field as well.

They have 2 separate lines of current sensing resistors:

Both have their own application areas:

ISA-PLAN® film technology

• Automotive
• Power electronics
• Drive technology
• Medical technology
• Aviation and aerospace

ISA-WELD® composite material

• Automotive
• E-Mobility
• Battery charging technology
• Drive technology
• Electronic energy meters
• Energy measurement

^ that gives us a rough idea of the set of adjacencies that Shivalik can move into, in order to better tap their expertise of metal joining techniques.

Isa has a flexible and completely independent production by concentrating on the essential production steps in one location (vertical integration?), from the melt to the rolling mill, the wire drawing facility, the complete building element and measurement module production to the final inspection. In this way they ensure the highest quality, since development, production, quality management and quality assurance are completely in their control and under one roof

Isabellenhütte is certified according to the ESCC system of the European Space Agency (ESA) and is thus approved as a “qualified supplier” for aerospace applications of resistors. This seems to be a large quality differential versus shivalik (at least as far as certifications go) since we have not seen Shivalik being ESCC certified which might allow Aerospace applications of their resistors. All certifications here: Certifications • Isabellenhütte

They seek to have high customer satisfaction by repeatedly meeting all customer needs:

Analysis of high level financials

I thought it would help to understand the scale of Isa.

Isabellenhuette is a private co so we dont have a lot of data. My 1st line of thought was that some websites provide data for private cos (1st level of approximation).

https://www.northdata.com/Isabellenhütte+Heusler+GmbH+%26+Co.+KG,+Dillenburg/Amtsgericht+Wetzlar+HRA+5057

^ One such website above. This website only has data until 2020 but here goes:

We can see both on margins and revenue base, isa degrowing, potentially creating a whitespace for SBCL to operate. (To do: look for 2021 and 2022 data to see whether they conform to this trend).

@Donald

Wieland Shunts at 1.2 euro/piece, Isabellanhutte shunts are 2.2 euro/piece. The time to approve a new vendor is almost 3.5 years with respect to shunts with this Tier1 supplier.

Isa’s lack of price competitiveness was already established here. However, do note that at 142 M euros in 2020, Isa is (or was) still a 300 pound gorilla. Comparing like for like (almost, since different financial year durations) , in 2020, Isa was at 1150 cr in 2020 6x the size of SBCL.

The next level of due diligence that i am looking to get into is to try to find a detailed latest financial statement for Isa, or their annual report if possible.

Source:
https://www.isabellenhuette.de/en/

[Donald]

As promised, VP collaborators have worked hard to bring to you the Shivalik Bimetal Stock Story. This will be published shortly at 11 am today, even as sanity checks are being conducted and final edits being carried out.

Thanks @sahil_vi for working diligently to put this together for us.
Meaty Contributions have also come in from @dd1474 @ankitgupta @Rokrdude @Donald

This SBCL Stock Story is still a “Leap of Faith”. (led primarily by AGM 2022 interactions).
We need to get facts/data-points cross-checked with deeper EV/BMS industry interactions & scuttlebutts. Time for domain experts in this space (internally within VP Community and outside) to take responsibility and put their hands-up!!

How hard can it be to get in touch with our friends, and friend-of-friends at Tatas, Mahindras, Hella, Continental, Vishay, Isabellenhutte, Marquardt, Rohm and others ??

It’s a small industry. Let’s get it done!

[saurabhjain]

Thanks Donald and team for putting out the Stock Story post on Shivalik Bimetal and it’s quite helpful and informative.

In the past, the company management has not given clear answers as regards to their current capacities for bimetals and shunts in terms of tonnage and what this would go upto post their expansion in FY22 or FY23. Also, we have to understand from the management - what is the kind of capacity utilisation that the company is operating at, for shunts and bimetals (both separately) at the current juncture, as of H1FY23 (as this can keep changing with the ongoing capex).

There is a possibility that a better way to look at the capacities of the company may not be on the basis of tonnage (weight) but on the length of the product (at least in the case of shunts) that the company can produce. This is because the management has in the past mentioned that one product with the same weight may command 40 times the price of another product (of same weight) due to the value addition done to that product. So we have to figure out the best measure to ascertain the company’s capacities.

Also, another important thing we need to get answers from the company, relates to the breakup of the sales value into volumes and realisation. Is the growth taking place in the company (for both products) primarily volume led or has the company benefited due to the prices of finished goods going up (since raw material prices had moved up in the past) or the product mix is changing etc etc.

We have to try to get answers from the company for this.

[Donald]

Thanks @saurabhjain

Welcome to VP, and great to see you post here.
VP is grateful to you - for the barrage of questions you unflinchingly threw at SBCL Management at the AGM (though you hogged a lot of time )

Think it is primarily due your big list and insistence on shareholders rights - that we have a lot of lot of granular details. They even asked you a couple of times “what is the benefit of this information if revealed” and you stuck to the task and gave cogent answers for that !

So yeah, I think we should keep in touch with Mgmt and especially CFO/newly appointed IR (?) and be persistent in asking for above specific answers.

Chairman Sandhu did answer I think that a better measure is running meters (for capacity), but we should wait for the Coy to speak in one voice/get every external communication on the same page.

It should happen with formal IR and fearless efforts from folks like you. (Given experience of previous AGMs we would have been/were too timid to insist on answers). SBCL Mgmt/next generation are aware now of the role of transparent communication to value creation (that’s the educated guess, given willingness to answer all RELEVANT questions at 2022 AGM)

[phreakv6]

@saurabhjain

has the company benefited due to the prices of finished goods going up (since raw material prices had moved up in the past)

There is some evidence to this at least in the past

FY19 closing inventory was abnormally high as compared to previous years (and in retrospect, the year after as well in FY20 closing inventory / inv. days)

And consequently, FY20 gross margins took a hit (Correlates nicely with Cu/Ni price chart)

Currently as well similar deterioration is there in inventory days but a similar hit to gross margins isn’t present (at least so far), though inventory days for FY21 and FY22 have been both at an above average 253 and 260, FY22 gross margins were at 50% like FY21. However in the two quarter in FY23, there is deterioration towards 47%, which makes it bit tricky to conclude its all volume/value led.

Its still maybe a couple of quarters too early to conclude. RM prices have continuously gone up and stayed up during the period in question (FY22), except in the last 3 months when it has gone down - If next couple of quarters, the GMs stay closer to 50 than 40, we can conclude with a higher probability that its volume and / or value led growth. Until then its anybody’s guess.

Disc: Have traded in the past here

[Dev_S]

Value vs Volume - data offers clue for FY 22, per below it is a healthy combo of Volume+Value growth
Value growth

Volume growth

Above is for shunts - single digit volume growth and high Value growth in FY 22, Shivalik is likely most of it. Can be checked for FY 21 and so on… folks with experience in tracking export /import can throw some more light

one can track here
https://tradestat.commerce.gov.in/meidb/com.asp?ie=e