Rain Industries Limited

Rain Industries Limited

204.40
INR
-7.65
(-3.61%)
18.39EPS
12.36P/E
60.69BMarket Cap
Nov 06Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 27, 2026

U. Saranga Pani

Hello everyone. We welcome you all to today's management presentation hosted by Rain Industries Limited.

My name is Sarangapani, and I serve as General Manager of Corporate Reporting and Investor Relations here at Rain Industries Limited. Earlier today, we released our financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31st, 2025.

These results are now available on our website for your reference. In just a moment, we will walk you through the key performance highlights in Rain Industries Limited for the fourth quarter of 2025.

We will provide insights into our operational progress, market dynamics, and strategic initiatives that are shaping our path forward. The speakers for today are Mr.

Jagan Reddy Nellore, Managing Director of Rain Industries Limited; Mr. Gerard Sweeney, President of Rain Carbon Inc.; Mr.

T. Srinivasa Rao, CFO of Rain Industries Limited.

Before we begin today's discussion, management would like to highlight that certain statements made during this presentation may be forward-looking in nature. These statements may include, but are not limited to, expectations regarding future performance, strategic initiatives, market trends, financial targets, and anticipated outcomes.

Such forward-looking statements are based on our current assumptions, projections, and available information. However, they are inherently subject to a range of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Factors that may impact our performance include changes in market conditions, regulatory developments, competitive dynamics, and other risks. Additionally, today's presentation may include reference to non-GAAP financial measures.

These metrics are intended to provide additional insights into our operational performance and should not be considered as a substitute for our GAAP measures. Reconciliations for these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP figures are available in the accompanying slide deck.

Now, please turn to slide 3 of the presentation, and Mr. Jagan Reddy Nellore will walk you through the key development and strategic highlights during the fourth quarter of 2025 for Rain Group.

With that, I hand over to Mr. Jagan.

Jagan Mohan Reddy Nellore

Thank you, Sarang, and greetings to all. As is our tradition, we begin today's call by highlighting our safety performance, an essential pillar of our operational excellence and a core element of our corporate culture.

For the year 2025, Rain achieved a Total Recordable Incident Rate, or TRIR, of 0.11, improving from 0.13 in the prior year. We are once again proud of this exceptional result.

Consistently delivering industry-leading safety outcomes is only possible because of the deep-rooted commitment of our employees, contractors, and leadership teams to maintaining a safe and secure working environment across every Rain facility. It is a testament to the vigilance, discipline, and care demonstrated every single day, and it continues to set meaningful benchmarks within our sector.

At Rain, safety is not just a priority; it is a fundamental core value embedded into our operating philosophy and reflected in every decision we make. From senior management to frontline teams, we reinforce rigorous safety protocols and integrate them into daily routines to ensure safe behavior throughout the organization.

Our strong performance is the result of a proactive, prevention-focused safety culture. This begins with empowering every employee to identify, report, and act on unsafe conditions or behaviors before they escalate to incidents.

We are proud of the meaningful progress we have made over the last five years in enhancing our safety systems, reporting processes, and leadership engagement. Yet, our commitment does not stop here.

We remain focused on raising our standards even higher, driving innovation in safety practices, and ensuring that operational safety continues to be a defining strength. Moving on to this quarter's financial highlights on slide 4, the fourth quarter of 2025 reflected continued positive momentum for Rain from a financial standpoint, despite the typical seasonal softness that affects demand for several of our products.

Reported revenue for the quarter was 43.01 billion rupees, representing a 4% sequential decline, driven primarily by lower volumes in our seasonal product categories. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was 5.76 billion rupees, down 11% from the third quarter.

While our fourth quarter performance reflects incremental progress towards stabilizing our quarterly results, we recognize that we still have work ahead to achieve the step-wise improvement in EBITDA previously outlined. Although this quarter shows signs of better stability and resilience, we remain measured in our outlook.

Compared to the same period last year, our results appear more consistent and suggest improvement in underlying business fundamentals, though continued focus and execution will be essential as we move forward. Over the past three years, the operating environment has been both dynamic and challenging.

Throughout this period, we have remained disciplined, driving operational efficiencies, managing costs responsibly, and maintaining a relentless focus on creating value for our customers and stakeholders. During 2025, we incurred $53 million in targeted capital investments, largely concentrated on essential maintenance and planned turnaround activities.

These expenditures were intentionally measured, reflecting our commitment to operational reliability and long-term sustainability, while remaining below typical levels considering current market conditions. As a result of prudent capital deployment and disciplined financial management, we concluded the quarter and the year with a liquidity position of $340 million.

Importantly, we have no major term debt maturities until October 2028, providing us with meaningful financial flexibility and a stable platform for future growth. When we entered 2025, our primary objective was to restore normalized operating margins and stabilize overall performance, consistent with the guidance we shared in previous calls.

Despite an unplanned, extended shutdown of the waste heat recovery system at one of our calcination plants due to a mechanical failure, resulting in lower energy revenue and reduced volumes, we were able to make progress in line with this goal. Now please turn to slide 5 on segment-wise performance compared to third quarter of 2025.

Our Carbon segment recorded a modest decline in volume by approximately 14,000 metric tons compared to the third quarter. This reduction was primarily driven from the carbon distillation business, while our carbon calcination business maintained stable volumes.

Despite this slight volume softness, the Carbon segment's revenue increased by 1.11%, supported by improved realizations. The distillation business continues to encounter headwinds, driven primarily by sustained commodity price volatility and the strengthening of the euro relative to the US dollar.

These external pressures have affected both our cost structure and the competitiveness of our products in certain markets. As a result, distillation volumes declined by 6%, and revenues were down 4% quarter-over-quarter.

While these decreases are notable, they remain broadly in line with our internal expectations, particularly given the stronger performance we saw in the third quarter within our distilled carbon portfolio. In contrast, our Carbon segment's calcination business continued to benefit from improving global demand, although average pricing moderated slightly.

As noted previously, CPC prices from China surged in early second quarter of 2025, allowing us to temporarily adjust our pricing before those markets normalized. Importantly, our global blending strategy continues to gain broader momentum, supported by the resumption of shipments of US-produced CPC to our SEZ location in India, strengthening our cost and supply flexibility across key markets.

As highlighted in prior quarters, raw material sourcing at competitive prices remains a critical driver of margins across our Carbon segment. This is particularly true with recent market trends in calcination business.

Competition for raw materials from the battery anode material sector continues to impose significant structural pressure for calciners in the global GPC raw material market. The rise of [BLAM?]

as a consistent and price-insensitive buyer of low to medium-sulfur, low-metal GPC grades has fundamentally shifted demand dynamics. This has resulted in tight GPC supply conditions and has forced CPC producers worldwide to pay premium prices for GPC grades that were historically more competitively priced.

Maintaining volumes this quarter was, therefore, a key contributor to our Carbon segment's results. As I have said before, while these global challenges persist, we see them as evolving conditions, not permanent obstacles.

Rain's position as a leading global supplier of carbon products provides us with strategic flexibility to adapt. Our Carbon segment's team remains deeply engaged with customers and are actively strengthening our value proposition across the distillation and calcination businesses.

Now turning to the Advanced Materials segment, as noted earlier, this business is inherently cyclical due to seasonal demand profile of many of our products. While performance in the fourth quarter of 2025 was lower than the third quarter, as is historically typical, it was in line with the fourth quarter of 2024.

Both volumes and realizations were lower quarter-over-quarter, as expected, resulting in a softer margin profile. While the Advanced Materials segment was impacted due to seasonal environment, the segment also continues to face pricing and volume pressures in its commodity chemical portfolio, particularly in engineered products.

Broadly speaking, the segment's results mirror the conditions facing the European chemical industry, which continues to grapple with US tariffs, which have redirected more low-cost Asian chemical products into Europe, a heavier regulatory burden, high energy and labor costs, and lower demand from end-user industries due to reduced economic activity. We monitor these dynamics closely and remain prepared to take steps necessary to protect Rain's long-term competitiveness and the viability in our Advanced Materials segment.

In our Cement segment, operations in South India were affected by extended monsoon conditions, resulting in lower volumes versus the third quarter. Realizations were also slightly softer, leading to modest declines in revenue and margin profile for the period.

Regarding our brownfield expansion in Telangana, we have chosen to slow the pace of development given prevailing subdued market conditions. No expenditure has been incurred until date, and construction has not yet begun.

While we continue to monitor market improvement, we are simultaneously evaluating innovative options to optimize and potentially reduce project costs, leveraging the advantages inherent in a brownfield expansion. This evaluation process may take a couple of quarters, and we will keep you informed of our progress.

From a demand perspective, market conditions across South India remain mixed, reflecting both regional variations in infrastructure spending and muted construction activity in recent quarters. While certain southern states have experienced a temporary slowdown in infrastructure-led demand, early indicators suggest that this softness may gradually ease as project execution improves.

Importantly, the planned development of the Amaravati capital city project in Andhra Pradesh is expected to provide meaningful support to regional cement demand beginning in 2026. Seasonally, construction activity typically picks up after the Pongal festival, and this year appears to be following that trend, with a gradual but noticeable improvement in site mobilization and material movement across key markets such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka.

This incremental recovery is expected to support more stable cement off-take in the coming quarters. Supply-side pressures persist, with the southern region continuing to operate in an oversupplied environment due to significant installed capacity.

While this remains a concern, industry participants currently expect the pricing environment in 2026 to remain generally stable. This outlook is supported by improving demand visibility in housing, particularly rural and semi-urban segments, and ongoing infrastructure initiatives.

Now moving on to slide 6 and continuing our discussion of the Advanced Materials, in addition to our formal entry into the North American mesophase carbon microbead, or MCMB, market during the third quarter of 2025, some of you may have also seen the recent press releases highlighting the significant progress Rain made during 2025. This progress was achieved by leveraging our new demonstration facility in Hamilton, enabling us to announce our participation in several important initiatives focused on advancing next-generation materials and processes for the energy storage sector.

The first initiative, known as SIBDE, is a collaboration with the German government, the Fraunhofer Institute, and several leading industrial partners. This project is aimed at integrating Rain's advanced materials technologies into the development of sodium-ion battery materials with enhanced long-term stability and higher energy density, an area that is gaining traction as a promising complement to traditional lithium-ion chemistries.

The second initiative involves a partnership with Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network, or OVIN, and an industry partner in Canada. This project focuses on combining Rain's proprietary materials and processing capabilities with our partner's breakthrough purification technologies.

Together, the goal is to produce high-performance battery materials tailored to meet the stringent requirement of electrical vehicle applications, where consistency, purity, and reliability are critical. The third initiative, which we announced recently, is named USEG.

This collaboration with an industry partner in Canada and partners in Germany seeks to pioneer alternative graphite purification technologies that are cleaner, less energy-intensive, and fully independent of Chinese supply chains. The project will integrate these purification methods with Rain's recognized expertise in advanced coating materials and processes.

Notably, USEG will focus not only on fresh graphite, but also on graphite recovered from spent lithium-ion batteries, supporting the shift towards circular and more sustainable battery materials ecosystem. Across all these initiatives, Rain's ambition is clear: we aim to shape the next generation of high-performance energy storage materials, materials that maximize graphite yield, reduce waste, lower carbon intensity, and strengthen supply chain resiliency.

We are committed to bringing these advanced materials to market over the next few years, leveraging Rain's proprietary technologies, process expertise, demonstration lab, and global manufacturing footprint. We continue to view these activities as a strategic, long-term growth platform aligned with the accelerating global demand for innovative energy storage solutions, especially in a world increasingly constrained by raw material supply challenges.

Now I will hand over the presentation to Gerry, who will provide further updates on the industry and our business on slide 7. Gerry?

Gerard Sweeney

Thank you, Jagan. Hello, everyone.

It's a pleasure to speak with you again. Turning to the outlook, the global industrial aluminum industry continues to demonstrate resilience and strong forward momentum.

LME aluminum prices have continued their upward trend, even considering the recently imposed US tariffs. This price strength appears to be supported by a combination of robust demand, tightening global supply, rising energy costs, and some tariff-related effects.

Taken together, these dynamics reflect solid underlying fundamentals and sustained expectations of long-term demand growth for this critical metal. A key contributor to this positive pricing environment is the persistently low LME inventory levels, which are helping maintain tightness in the global market.

Industry analysts continue to forecast upward momentum, with many expecting aluminum prices to strengthen further through 2026. These signals reinforce our confidence in the long-term prospects of the sector and highlight the strategic value of Rain's positioning within it.

Looking ahead, several aluminum smelting projects outside of China, including capacity restarts in the US, are scheduled to begin operations during 2026. Beyond 2026, completely new smelting capacity additions have also been announced in regions such as India, Indonesia, and most recently, the United States.

All these smelter expansions are located advantageously relative to Rain's operational footprint. Collectively, these developments point to continued expansion and healthy structural growth across the global aluminum value chain for the next several years.

Turning to the broader macro environment, the global economic outlook continues to improve. The easing of long-standing concerns surrounding tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty has been contributing to a more optimistic sentiment worldwide.

While global markets remain inherently unpredictable, the prevailing tone is now one of cautious optimism, a welcome shift from the prolonged uncertainty that characterized prior quarters and indeed, even prior years. For Rain, tariffs continue to be no material direct impact on our business.

Encouragingly, global trade tensions appear to be showing early signs of moderation. While these trends remain fluid, they do provide a measure of reassurance as we look ahead.

Most recently, the US Supreme Court struck down all of the reciprocal tariffs announced last year. Although the US administration has subsequently reinstated a minimum 10% tariff on materials coming in from all countries, we do not anticipate that these tariffs will materially affect our raw material or finished goods, as we believe that the tariffs will only apply to those items which are currently on that tariff list.

At the same time, non-reciprocal tariffs, such as Section 232 tariffs on aluminum and steel, remain unchanged. Even with these updates, we do not anticipate any material impact on Rain's operation.

In this evolving environment, Rain's strategic priorities remain unchanged: enhancing efficiency, strengthening competitiveness, and building resilience across every market we serve. Turning to slide 8, which presents key commodity price trends and their impact on our business during the fourth quarter of 2025, we observe that most commodity prices continue to soften, tracking the decline in global crude oil prices.

This broad retreat in prices influenced several of our raw materials and energy inputs, creating a mixed, but manageable cost environment. In particular, natural gas prices in Europe have moderated from elevated levels seen last winter.

Over the last few quarters, prices eased meaningfully. However, gas prices remain well above pre-conflict norms during early 2022.

This continued premium has had a direct impact on the cost structures and competitiveness of our European manufacturers. From our industry specifically, higher European gas prices continue to pressure operating margins for products manufactured within the region, especially when compared to imports from Asia, where energy costs have been relatively lower and more stable.

This persistent differential continues to influence trade flows and pricing dynamics across global markets. Despite these challenges, our diversified footprint and proactive sourcing strategies have helped us navigate these commodity price movements effectively.

We remain focused on optimizing our energy efficiency, strengthening our global supply chain, and adapting our operations to ensure cost competitiveness across all regions. With that, I'll now turn the presentation to Srinivas, who'll take you through the consolidated financial performance of Rain on slide 9.

Srinivas, over to you.

T. Srinivas Rao

Thank you, Gerry, and hello, everyone. Turning to slide 9, consolidated net revenues was 42.75 billion rupees during the fourth quarter, an increase of 6.26 billion rupees compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.

The increase was primarily due to an increase of 6.92 billion rupees in the Carbon segment, which was offset slightly by a decrease of 0.43 billion rupees in the Advanced Materials segment and 0.23 billion rupees decrease in the Cement segment. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2025 was 5.76 billion rupees, reflecting an increase of 1.86 billion rupees compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.

This increase was driven by 1.66 billion rupees increase in the Carbon segment, and a 0.01 billion rupees increase in the Advanced Materials segment, and a 0.19 billion rupees increase in the Cement segment. Reported EBITDA during the fourth quarter included certain non-recurring one-off items amounting to 412 million rupees, which majorly include a provision for an investment of 36 million rupees and receivables of 73 million rupees from an associate company which is facing financial difficulties.

In addition, we transferred foreign currency loss of 175 million rupees included in the foreign currency translation reserve at the beginning of the year, because a trading subsidiary for which we discontinued the business about five years ago was dissolved during the calendar year 2025. Further, we made a provision of 45 million rupees towards an increase in liability towards retirement benefits due to changes in the Indian labor laws introduced during November 2025.

Turning to slide 10 to walk you through the full-year performance, consolidated net revenue was 167.91 billion rupees during the year 2025, an increase of 15.24 billion rupees compared to the last year 2024. The increase was primarily due to an increase of 18.41 billion rupees in the Carbon segment, which was offset slightly by a decrease of 2.17 billion rupees in the Advanced Materials segment and 1 billion rupees decrease in the Cement segment.

Consolidated adjusted EBITDA during the year 2025 was 22.75 billion rupees, reflecting an increase of 7.77 billion rupees compared to the last year 2024. The increase was driven by 7.64 billion rupees increase in the Carbon segment, 0.50 billion rupees increase in the Cement segment, which was offset by a decrease of 0.37 billion rupees in the Advanced Materials segment.

Moving to slide 11, our Carbon segment reported revenues of 33.05 billion rupees during the fourth quarter of 2025, an increase of 6.92 billion rupees, or 26.5% increase, primarily driven by higher volumes in the Carbon segment's calcination business. Drilling into our Carbon segment further, adjusted EBITDA increased by 1.66 billion rupees, or 45.2% compared to the fourth quarter of the last year.

This was primarily driven by increased volumes and realizations in the calcination business due to resetting of CPC prices. They were coupled with appreciation of the euro and the US dollar against Indian rupee by about 15.1% and 5.5% respectively.

Moving to slide 12, our Advanced Materials segment revenue was 7.29 billion rupees, a decrease of 0.43 billion rupees, or 5.5% decline compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. During the fourth quarter of 2025, the decrease in volumes was primarily driven by the segment's engineered products and chemical intermediate businesses.

This was partially offset by appreciation of the euro against Indian rupee by 15.1%. Adjusted EBITDA for the Advanced Materials segment remained flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 due to lower volumes, offset by appreciation of the euro against the Indian rupee.

Moving on to slide 13, we can look at our Cement segment, which experienced an 8.8% decrease in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, attributable to lower volumes due to extended monsoon in the southern region. However, the adjusted EBITDA for our Cement segment increased to 70 million rupees during the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to negative 120 million rupees for the same period in 2024, due to marginal improvement in realizations and lower operational cost, offset by the above-mentioned decline in volumes in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year.

Moving on to the next slide on debt, in slide 14, the fourth quarter of 2025 concluded with a gross debt of $1,019 million, which included working capital debt of $190 million. Our net debt stood at $837 million, and with an LTM EBITDA of $261 million, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 3.21x.

This improvement is primarily driven by improved performance of the company during the year. Coming to the cash flows, after the significant utilization of our working capital requirements during the first quarter of 2025, due to higher raw material import requirements for both of our carbon calcination plants in India, and due to increased market prices of these raw materials, we noted the moderate release in terms of pricing during the latter part of the year, and we expect the quantity levels will continue to meet additional requirements pertaining to our SEZ facility.

Rain's investing activities outflow of 3.95 billion rupees represent 4.59 billion rupees spent on maintenance capital expenditure, offset by 0.62 billion rupees net maturities of term deposits and interest received on such deposits. Our financing activities outflow of 10.25 billion rupees represents the repayment of long-term debt, and payment of interest expense, and dividend payments, offset by increased working capital borrowings made during the year.

I will now pass over the presentation to Mr. Jagan for his closing remarks.

Jagan Mohan Reddy Nellore

Thank you, Srinivas. In closing, I would like to offer a few remarks on our strategic priorities and the road ahead.

Across our Carbon segment, we continue to meet global challenges by making meaningful progress in developing and securing alternative raw material sources to support both our calcination and distillation operations. In carbon calcination, the global demand for low-sulfur anode-grade GPC continues to rise sharply, driven by the rapid expansion of the lithium-ion battery industry.

This has led to sustained upward pressure on green GPC prices and a tighter availability. We are actively developing alternative sourcing and processing pathways for all raw materials to ensure we can operate our assets at higher, more stable utilization levels.

Thanks to our long-standing supply relationship across Europe, North America, and Asia, we are continuing to secure raw material volumes required to support both pillars of our Carbon segment. In our Advanced Materials segment, our R&D initiatives are progressing well and are aimed at developing next-generation products for the rapidly expanding battery anode materials and energy storage material market.

While these programs remain in the early stages, we are confident in our ability to bring these technologies to market in the near term. This confidence comes from the strong combined expertise of Rain and our strategic partners, who together bring decades of knowledge in materials science, process engineering, and battery-grade specialty materials.

As we work towards restoring normalized earnings, our focus remains firmly on cost optimization, operational discipline, and improving profitability across all parts of the organization. This includes targeted efforts to reduce interest cost and strengthen our balance sheet over the near term.

Finally, we want to express our sincere appreciation to our shareholders, customers, employees, and all stakeholders for their continued confidence in Rain. We look forward to updating you on our progress and on the advancement of our strategic initiatives during our next quarterly call.

Thank you for joining us today.