Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. is banking on new orders to pare debt even as global headwinds like the U.S.-China trade war impacted India's steel industry.
“We are fully booked as far as our rail capacity is concerned for the next one year. The Government of India intends to buy about 1.7 million tonnes of rail in this year,” the company's Managing Director VR Sharma said. “Among the peer groups, we are definitely better placed.”
JSPL has secured orders of about 350,000 tonnes for the eastern and western corridor, the main tracks of the Indian Railways, and will also be entering metro rail supplies, Sharma said.
The company has reduced its debt in the first quarter by Rs 1,500 crore and is hoping to repeat that in the second quarter, he said. “We opened with Rs 39,000 crore in this financial year we will be ending at close to Rs 34,000 crore at the end of the year.”
JSPL has been the second-biggest loser on the Nifty Metal Index after Steel Authority of India Ltd. as the index lost almost 30 percent so far in 2019, the most in four years. On Thursday, its shares fell 2.44 percent to Rs 222.15 apiece even as the benchmark Sensex shed 0.45 percent to 37,104.28 points.
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