Bharat Heavy Electricals rose 1.67% to Rs 224.75 at 12:44 IST on BSE after the company announced that it has developed fuel flexible supercritical boilers, which will end uncertainties regarding coal shortages.
The company made the announcement during trading hours today, 19 August 2014.
Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 58.81 points, or 0.22%, to 26,449.77.
On BSE, so far 2.84 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 8.49 lakh shares in the past one quarter.
The stock hit a high of Rs 226 and a low of Rs 221.85 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 291.50 on 26 May 2014. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 100.35 on 20 August 2013.
The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 18 August 2014, falling 7.10% compared with 2.92% rise in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 3.64% as against Sensex's 9.41% rise.
The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 489.52 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.
India's power generation is mainly coal based and the power sector is currently plagued by coal shortages where power plants are stranded due to non-availability of indigenous coal supplies. This has triggered a series of companies to either resort to operating the plant on part load due to non-availability of domestic coal or make up for the shortfall by blending indigenous coal with imported coal. Being heterogeneous in nature, the properties of coal vary from source to source. The performance of power equipment is dependent on the coal being fed to the power plant, Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) said in a statement.
Bhel has been designing boilers for the past 30 years and has extensive experience of designing boilers fired with indigenous as well as imported coals exhibiting wide variations in properties. Based on Bhel's extensive in-house experience of working with a great variety of indigenous as well as imported coals over the years, Bhel has developed a new boiler with fuel flexibility of indigenous and imported coals. Bhel is now ready to offer the new boiler design to overcome these issues, the company said.
This new boiler design is based on a unique combination of indigenous and imported coals but is capable of firing both extremes of 100% domestic coal as well as 100% imported coal. It will provide developers with much needed freedom regarding the ratio of blending as well as the characteristics of the domestic and imported coal to be blended. This enables the boiler to work over the entire range of blending ratios and would protect the project developer against the vagaries in coal availability, thereby providing him with an opportunity to operate the plant throughout the year, Bhel added.
Bhel said it has a coal research centre at its Tiruchirapally plant, which will be used to identify the unique combination of blended coal after carrying out the analysis of imported and domestic coal samples supplied by the customers. The associated boiler auxiliaries, also manufactured by Bhel, will be designed to accommodate the variation during firing of different type of fuels.
Addressing today's environment where thermal power plants are starved for fuel and developers face severe uncertainties regarding the availability of domestic and imported coals, Bhel's new design with fuel flexibility will be a major step forward in this direction, the company said.
Bhel's net profit fell 58.42% to Rs 193.50 crore on 21.35% decline in total income to Rs 5502.76 crore in Q1 June 2014 over Q1 June 2013.
The company's outstanding order book stood at about Rs 97400 crore as on 30 June 2014.
Bhel is the largest engineering and manufacturing enterprise in India in the energy related/infrastructure sector. The company caters to the core sectors including power, transmission, industry, transportation, renewable energy, oil & gas and defence.
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