NCC Confident Of Achieving Order Inflow Guidance On Strong Q4 Expectations

Construction company NCC Ltd. is confident of meeting its guidance for the financial year ending March 2025 in terms of order inflows on expectations of a strong January-March quarter, its Head of Strategy, Neerad Sharma, has said. Talking to NDTV Profit, Sharma highlighted that while the first half of the current fiscal was a bit muted in terms of order inflows, things are looking better in the second half.

“We have already achieved, till today, about 60% of the lower end (of order guidance), and we are very optimistic that things should pick up now that the March quarter is just a couple of days away,” he said.

Sharma added that order awarding activity will pick up in the fourth quarter of the financial year.

“Things should pick up in Q4, and we are confident we will achieve the inflow guidance that we have shared with the market,” he said.

The top executive acknowledged that the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal was muted due to general elections in the country. 

“In the first quarter, we had central government elections and practically hardly any awards. We have also received only Rs 400 crore (order) inflows,” Sharma noted.

The first quarter has been a “washout quarter” not only for NCC but the construction industry in general, he said. 

“We have felt the aftereffects of this process in most of the second quarter, if not all, but things are picking up,” he said.

Sharma confirmed that the company was moving in line with expectations in terms of the order book.

“I take this opportunity to share the fact that at the start of this financial year, we had shared three sets of guidance numbers with the market. The first number that we had shared with the market was an order inflow guidance, which is Rs 20,000-22,000 crore,” he said.

“I am happy to report that if we really take into account the projects that we have bagged in the first and second quarters, and as of today, we have already achieved close to 60% of this lower band,” the NCC executive added.

Talking about revenue and Ebitda margin guidance, Sharma said that NCC will achieve those numbers too.

“The second number that we have shared with the market is revenue growth, upwards of 15%. We have already delivered about 13% revenue growth in H1,” he said.

“The third number that we had shared with the market is a margin guidance that is 9.5% to 10% Ebitda margin and we are hopeful and optimistic to achieve these numbers by the end of 25,” he added.

Shares of NCC Ltd. closed 0.6% lower at Rs 276.70 apiece on the NSE on Thursday, while the benchmark Nifty 50 ended 0.8% lower at 24,004.75.