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BS Limited (formerly BS TransComm Limited), a Hyderabad-based infrastructure player in the power transmission and distribution (T&D) sector, through its wholly-owned overseas subsidiary BS Global Resources, is exploring business opportunities in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, said its chairman and managing director Rajesh Agarwal.
“We have just started tapping into the MENA region through BS Global Resources, which imports steam coal and nickel ore from Indonesia to China and India. We expect close to $50 million (approximately Rs 300 crore) in revenues from our international business next year,” he told Business Standard.
BS Limited started its journey as a tower manufacturer in 2004, and was managing around 10,000 telecom sites until last year. However, after facing a lot of challenges, including delay in payments and thin margins, the company closed down its telecom EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) business in 2013.
“Telecom managed services have become more of a smaller players’ game now. Currently, our core focus is on expanding our T&D business in a big way,” Agarwal said, adding the domestic transmission industry was looking at a huge growth in the next 10 to 15 years.
BS Limited had forayed into BOOM (build, own, operate and maintain) projects in 2010 and bagged its maiden project in a consortium with Patel Engineering and Simplex Infrastructure Limited for establishing a 765-kv transmission system from Raichur to Sholapur.
“The Rs 320-crore project was completed recently. We are looking at this (BOOM) as a strategic play. Our target, however, is to go in for projects through the EPC model,” he said.
Stating that the current order book of the company was at Rs 1,500 crore, with new orders aggregating Rs 600 crore being added in the last six months, he said BS was expecting its order book to swell to Rs 2,100 crore by the end of this financial year. Also, close to Rs 1,500 crore worth of contracts are in various stages of bidding, he said.
BS, which had raised Rs 190 crore through an initial public offering in October 2010 to fund its expansion plans, has a manufacturing plant in Hyderabad with an annual capacity of 240,000 tonne of towers and 120,000 tonne of structural steel.
Agarwal said the company had recorded revenues of Rs 2,320 crore during the last financial year. “We expect around 30 per cent growth in revenues this year, primarily on the back of new contracts from PowerGrid, and increasing demand for transmission networks from various state grids,” he said.
It witnessed a marginal increase of one per cent in its net profit to Rs 15.65 crore for the second quarter ended September 2014, as against Rs 15.49 crore during the same period a year ago. Revenues stood at Rs 713 crore during the quarter, as compared with Rs 620 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year, registering a growth of 15 per cent.
