Waaree Renewable Geared For Much Higher Volumes if Required

Waaree Renewable technologies Limited, the listed EPC arm of the Waaree Group, has been on a tear in the past 12 months.

Revenue for full year FY24 stood at Rs 876.44 crores, representing a growth of 149% YoY as compared to Rs 350 crores in FY23. EBITDA for FY24 stood at Rs 207 crores as compared to Rs 83.75 crores in FY23, representing a growth of 147% year-on-year. PAT for FY24 stood at INR148 crores as compared to INR55.33 crores in FY23, representing a growth of 167% year-on-year.

With an unexecuted order book of 2.3 GW peak the firm executed 700 plus megawatt peak in FY24.

Speaking at the analyst call, Dilip Panjwani, Chief Financial Officer, stressed that even as the order book would be executed over the next 12-18 months typically, the firm was in no way feeling the limits of growth. He was speaking in response to a question on the ability of the firm to keep sustaining such high growth rates.

Panjwani pointed out the momentum in tendering seen in the past quarter (8.5 GW), and India’s own national targets, which will require renewable deployment of almost 50 GW each year to 2030. This is expected to be dominated by solar.

Panjwani singled out energy storage as an emerging opportunity for Waaree Renewable Technologies, where after targeting 12 gigawatt by FY24, the national targets are 70 gigawatt by FY30. Solar O&M is another area where the firm hopes to make gains, including a large contract where they will manage it post completion.

Talking about the firm’s ability to execute 500 MW plus projects, Panjwani said that ” And we keep improving our capacity also. Unlike manufacturing where machinery is determines your capacity level, this is a platform business, and a little bit additional resources are required where the company has the capability to marshal them over once an order is received. So, 500 megawatt or further 1 gigawatt is indifferent to us as of now. But yes, capacity sometimes gets determined by your manpower to deliver the same.
Like some of the services remain common in the business like design, etc. From that perspective, you can deliver much more higher projects. You get limited by sometimes supply chain or sometimes project site personnel, which we need to marshal. So, if I get, on your question, if I get 500 megawatts, I would definitely like to take that up and execute. And when I will execute, that depends on how the client constructs a contract and when does he wants”.

On Waaree Renewable Technologies own realisations from Solar EPC projects, Panjwani referred to the broad range of Rs 1.2 to 1.3 crores per MW. But he added, “Just to give a perspective, the turnkey contracts are between Rs 3.25 to Rs 3.5 crores per megawatt. And then balance of system could be anywhere between, you know, Rs 80 lakhs to Rs 1.5 crores also. For us, the average is Rs 1.1 crores to Rs 1.2 crores.”