RHI Magnesita India Limited

RHI Magnesita India Limited

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INR
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Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 30, 2026

Operator

Please note that this conference is being recorded. Before we get started, I would like to point out that some statements made or discussed on today's call may be forward-looking in nature and must be viewed in conjunction with risks and uncertainties that we face.

The company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements publicly. I now hand the conference over to Mr.

Parmod Sagar, Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer from RHI Magnesita India Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Parmod Sagar

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

Financial year '26 was a resilient year for RHI Magnesita India, a year that demonstrated the strength of our strategy, our business model, and the discipline of our execution. Despite operating in a challenging environment characterized by pricing pressure, inflationary cost trends, industry overcapacity, and intense competition, we delivered our highest-ever annual revenue, surpassing 4,000 crores for the first time in history, as well as in Indian refractory industry.

More importantly, we achieved this while strengthening our customer relationships, enhancing operational reliability, generating robust cash flow, and maintaining disciplined capital allocation. Our performance reflects more than resilience; it demonstrates our ability to consistently create value while advancing our vision of driving progress in ever-changing world.

The industry landscape in India continued to undergo a structured transformation: government-led infrastructure investments, manufacturing expansion, supply chain localization, and increasing industrial self-reliance are creating significant long-term opportunity across steel, cement, non-ferrous metals, and energy infrastructure. As these industries expand and modernize, the importance of high-performance refractory solutions continued to increase.

Against this backdrop, RHI Magnesita India Limited remained a trusted partner to customers, ensuring uninterrupted supply and operational reliability even during periods of geopolitical disruptions, including the Middle East crisis. Let me briefly touch upon the industries that continued to drive our growth.

India further strengthened its position as world's second-largest crude steel producer during financial year '26, supported by the robust infrastructure spending, rapid urbanization, and sustained government capital expenditure. Steelmaking capacity has now reached approximately 165 million tons and inching towards 300 million tons as government policy states.

Steel remains our largest business segment, and we continue to strengthen our leadership position across integrated steel producers, secondary steel manufacturers, and public sector customers through our comprehensive refractory management capabilities and customer-centric operating model. During the financial year '26, we further expanded our presence in the ironmaking and flow control segment through specialized products, enhanced localization, strong project execution capability, and deeper strategic partnerships with customers.

One of our most important strategic differentiators is our growing focus on integrated solutions through our 4Pro platform. By combining refractory products with automation, robotics, digital monitoring, scanning technologies, process optimization, recycling, and CO2 reduction initiatives, we are helping customers to improve productivity, reliability, sustainability across their operations.

Importantly, customers are increasingly recognizing the value of this integrated approach. During the year, we secured long-term agreements under the 4Pro framework and received highly encouraging customer feedback, validating both the relevance and effectiveness of our solutions.

Our objective is clear: to become the partner of choice rather than simply another supplier. Technology leadership continued to be a key growth driver of our business.

During financial year '26, we successfully implemented India's first fully integrated robotic solution in casting operations, an important milestone for both our company and the industry. We currently operate two robotic systems successfully and remain confident about expanding our automation footprint through additional deployments in the coming year.

Turning to the cement sector, industry growth remained resilient during '26, supported by infrastructure investment, recovery in housing demand, GST rationalization, and continued government focus on economic development. This sector continued to provide meaningful diversification to our portfolio while strengthening our industrial business franchise.

At RHI Magnesita, we firmly believe that the future of refractory industry extends well beyond product pricing. Historically, refractories have often been viewed as a commodity business.

However, we are witnessing a fundamental shift toward a decommoditization driven by technology, integrated solutions, performance-based partnerships, and increasing customer reliance on specialized expertise. This transformation lies at the heart of our 4Pro strategy.

Financial discipline remains a cornerstone of our operating philosophy. Despite market volatility, we generated strong cash flow during the year through prudent capital allocation, disciplined investments, and continued focus on working capital efficiency.

Our ambition extends beyond growth alone. I'm also proud to share that during the year, RHI Magnesita was recognized with the prestigious CSR award from the Government of Andhra Pradesh and from Government of Tamil Nadu's Pollution Control Board for environmental excellence.

These recognitions reflect our unwavering commitment to responsible and sustainable growth. As we move forward, our priorities remain clear: driving profitable growth, expanding our technology leadership, strengthening customer partnerships, accelerating sustainability initiatives, and maintaining disciplined execution.

The foundation of our business have never been stronger, and we remain confident in our ability to create long-term value for all our stakeholders. With that, I would now like to hand over to Mr.

Azim, who will take you through our financial performance in detail. Thank you very much.

Azim Syed

Thank you, Parmod ji, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through our financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year FY26.

FY26 was a year of strong top-line growth, continued market share gains, disciplined cash generation, and strategic investments despite one of the most challenging operating environments the industry has faced in recent years. Revenue from operations increased 9% year on year to 4,000 crores, while shipments grew 5% to 523 kilotons.

Our growth was broadly based by three key factors: strong growth in ladle solution and electric arc furnace projects, continued expansion in tundish and ladle slide gate solutions, increased demand in the ironmaking segment supported by new coke oven and DRI projects. These gains enabled us to further strengthen our market position despite a highly competitive market environment.

FY26 was characterized by significant industry headwinds. The refractory market continued to face excess capacity, aggressive pricing behavior, rising raw material costs, elevated freight and energy expenses, with increased commoditization.

Against this backdrop, our focus remained firmly on protecting market share, strengthening customer relationships, and building long-term value through differentiated solutions. For this quarter, revenue stood at INR 932 crores, reflecting the impact of geopolitical disruptions and a softer cement demand cycle, broadly in line with the guidance we had provided earlier.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was INR 113 crores, with EBITDA margins of 12.1%. Adjusted profit after tax before exceptional items stood at INR 39 crores.

During the quarter, we recognized an impairment of goodwill relating to RHIM IR. This was driven by a reassessment of medium- to long-term growth expectations considering a combination of factors, including weaker export demand amid geopolitical uncertainties, persistent currency depreciation impacting raw material costs, increasing industry capacity additions, heightened competition from imports, and continued inflationary pressures across key cost categories.

While these factors impacted profitability during the year, it is important to note that they do not alter our long-term strategic direction or our confidence in the underlying growth opportunities available to the business. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA stood at INR 477 crores, with EBITDA margins of 11.9% compared to 13.7% in FY25.

Adjusted profit after tax for FY26 was INR 180 crores. Although margins moderated during the year, our profitability remained resilient considering the magnitude of industry-wide cost inflation and pricing pressure.

For FY26, we have earmarked approximately INR 135 crores of capital expenditure focused on operational excellence, product innovation, selective capacity enhancement, automation, and sustainability initiatives. These investments are aligned with our strategy of driving long-term profitable growth while enhancing returns on capital, strengthening our competitive position, and supporting future earnings potential.

Turning to cash flow and the balance sheet, one of the most encouraging aspects of our FY26 performance was our strong cash generation. Cash flow from operations increased 9% year on year to INR 409 crores, supported by disciplined working capital management and improved cash conversion across the business.

As a result, we further strengthened our balance sheet and ended the year in net cash position with net debt to EBITDA entering to net cash positive at 0.1x. This achievement underscores the quality of our earnings, the strength of our operating discipline, and our ability to generate cash even during periods of market volatility.

Our balance sheet remains robust, highly liquid, and well positioned to support future growth initiatives while maintaining financial flexibility. Looking ahead to FY27, we remain constructive on both growth and profitability.

We see multiple drivers supporting margin improvements and earnings growth in the coming year: first, improved demand across core end industries; second, progressive implementation of price increases across selected products and customer segments; third, continued cost optimization through recipes, recycling, and strategic sourcing programs; fourth, expansion into new industrial segments, including petrochemical, following the Resco acquisition; fifth, greater penetration of our 4Pro platform enabling high-value-added solutions, improved realization, and stronger cost pass-through mechanisms. The last one would be improved fixed cost absorption supported by stronger coke oven projects order book and increased operating leverage.

In closing, while FY26 presented significant industry challenges, it also demonstrated the resilience of our business model, the strength of our customer relationships, and the effectiveness of our strategic priorities vis-à-vis the competition. With a stronger balance sheet, growing market share, robust cash generation, and improved growth visibility, we enter FY27 with confidence and remain committed to creating sustainable long-term value for all of our stakeholders.

Thank you for your continued trust and support. We'll now be happy to take your questions.

Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session.

Anyone who wishes to ask question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from question queue, you may press star and two.

Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.

Participants may press star and one to ask question. The first question is from the line of Gaurav Khanna from Capgrow Capital.

Please go ahead.

Gaurav Khanna

Good morning. Am I audible?

Azim Syed

Yes.

Operator

Yes, sir. Yeah.

Gaurav Khanna

My first question is that is all the restructuring done, and what is this impairment of goodwill, and what is the roadmap going for FY27 and '28?

Azim Syed

I'm sorry, your voice was breaking. If I understand, you're asking how much was the goodwill, and is there anything up front?

Did we capture the question correctly?

Gaurav Khanna

Sir, I'll ask again. I'm asking that what was this impairment regarding goodwill for

Operator

Sir, Gaurav, sir, operator here. Just request you to use headset, please.

Your voice is not audible properly.

Gaurav Khanna

Am I audible, sir? Hello?

Hello?

Operator

Yes, go ahead, sir.

Azim Syed

You're audible, but Yeah.

Gaurav Khanna

Sir, I'm asking that what is the roadmap for FY '27 and '28 going forward? Apart from that, this goodwill impairment what you have taken, what is exactly that?

How do we look to improve margins in a very competitive market?

Azim Syed

Thank you so much for the question. You asked three questions, let me try to do this in sequence.

First thing is basically, our outlook is that we still believe that from a growth perspective, we will outbeat the market by 2%. We say this with a lot of confidence now because our growth area is coming in ironmaking, DRI, and pellet business.

I'm happy to report out that we have a strong order book for next 18 months. We have secured the one of the largest coke oven projects with one of the largest industry integrated steel players, this will ensure that our fixed costs get absorbed, plus we're able to kind of grow in the significant area.

We are confident about the growth for next year with a firm order book in our hand. Second, as you know that we have long-term contracts called 4Pro contract.

This means that most of the organic growth is also secured. Second, on the margin side, at the moment, we are actively seeking price increases because of the recent input cost increases with our customer.

We are also happy to report out that we were quite successful in receiving most of the price increases where we were targeting the particular product and customer segments. We should see all these tailwinds coming through in Q1 and also in Q2 as well.

To summarize this, we will have a better growth percentage, that is plus 1% to 2% than what the market is saying in terms of steel or cement production. Second, our margins will be far more better than what we have achieved in the last quarter, which is basically Q4, with the price increases and with ironmaking fixed cost absorption that we were mentioning.

On the goodwill impairment, basically we took a assessment of the recent market changes that have happened. We basically saw that our exports volumes were reducing quite significantly.

Second, on the FX side, there is a quite a bit of a deterioration and unpredictability because of geopolitically. We have to kind of consider that because most of the raw material purchases, not only for RHI Magnesita, but globally, the business is done in USD.

As you know that INR and USD has the highest amount of volatility, we consider this factor. The third factor also basically is that the amount of new capacities that have been announced by the competition.

Now, we believe that these three factors along with the inflationary pressure, which also will be felt by our customers, we took off a very prudent view and conservative view. We basically said how much of this will commoditize the business in some specific areas and some specific segments.

With this in mind, we prudently went for the impairment of the goodwill on the Dalmia assets only. Hope we answered the questions.

Gaurav Khanna

Okay. Last question is that going forward, any more restructuring is pending, or it is done now?

Azim Syed

It is done. It is all done.

No further restructuring is required.

Gaurav Khanna

Hello?

Azim Syed

Yes?

Gaurav Khanna

Hello?

Azim Syed

Hello. Do you hear

Gaurav Khanna

Sir. I was asking any more restructuring is pending, or everything is done right now?

Azim Syed

It is cleaned. No further restructuring is required, and we say this with utmost confidence.

Hope you are able to hear our answer.

Gaurav Khanna

Sir. Fine, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Azim Syed

Yeah. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Praveen Jayaraman from Avendus Spark Institutional Equities.

Please go ahead.

Praveen Jayaraman

Sir, good afternoon. Am I audible?

Azim Syed

Yes, you are.

Praveen Jayaraman

Sir, my first question is related to the coke oven project. You've mentioned that that is one of the main projects which we see an order book for the next 18 months.

My question comes whether this is a project CapEx on client side or it is an operational one where we get order even after that 18 months, it's a continuous operational supply for them or it's a one-time supply where they use it as a project CapEx?

Parmod Sagar

Coke oven is always a project, but there is not any CapEx required. This is a normal production process, and we got some 30,000-plus order.

It's a huge tonnage, and with our mining now we transfer in our name, and earlier we were buying from the market as almost double the price of our mining cost. With this order in place, mining in our name, we will not only absorb our fixed cost, we will have a better margins also because of our own mining.

After 18 months, we believe there are four or five more coke ovens are coming up, and we are very sure we will continue getting those projects, and this will at least continue for next 3, 4 years' time when it comes to coke oven.

Praveen Jayaraman

Sir, I could not get it. If four or five more projects comes, that means for us to increase our supply, we should have more coke ovens under us, or will one coke oven give us continuous supply orders?

Parmod Sagar

This order is for two coke oven batteries, and five more coke oven batteries are coming up in next 2, 3 years' time. We believe that we will get at least two more out of these five, very conservative approach.

Another, say, 18 months after this 18 months, we will be able to continue with this high level of production with fixed cost absorption, and with our own mining, better margins.

Praveen Jayaraman

Post that 18 months what you're saying, we can assume that 30,000 tons will be with us, and it can increase with more coke oven coming in?

Parmod Sagar

Absolutely.

Praveen Jayaraman

Got it, sir. Thank you.

Sir, my second question is on inventory side. Last time, we had a commentary that higher-cost inventory has been absorbed by Q3, and this can support going forward in terms of margins.

Has this been the case in Q4, sir? Did we see some inventory benefit coming in?

Parmod Sagar

Actually, it offset by high-cost inventory, which is coming up for basic refractory, primarily fused magnesia and DBM. High-alumina inventory, which was high cost, is already consumed, and we are at a market level pricing.

This magnesia-based products has gone up because of energy cost increase in China, freight increase, etc., which impacted Feb and March shipments. I believe it will continue with this inflationary environment, but at the same time, we reach out to our customers, as Azim said, and customer realize that, absolutely, this is necessary if we want to continue the supply, we need to agree to price increases, and we, in some cases, we even got double-digit price increases.

This will offset our inventory high-cost values, rather it will give us a bit of margin advantage as well.

Praveen Jayaraman

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Sir, my last question comes on growth aspect. I heard the commentary right now that we would be doing 2% higher compared to the market.

This 2% outperformance would be on the volume terms, or how do we compare this? Yeah.

Parmod Sagar

Actually, we should always consider volume because pricing is dynamic, it keeps on changing depending on raw material pricing, forex, freight, etc. We should consider only volume.

If the market is growing by 6%, 7%, we will be growing at 8%, 9%.

Praveen Jayaraman

Sir, with the inventory which we have right now and the order book which you have projected, or which we have right now, and the price increases which we are seeking in the market, what is our outlook on the EBITDA going ahead, sir, margins?

Parmod Sagar

We are projecting for next year 13% EBITDA.

Azim Syed

Exactly. Just to add on this, for full year it's 13%.

Normally our business is cyclical, please bear this in mind. There'll be some strong quarters and Q4 is not usually a stronger quarter.

You can see this historically as well. Yes, for full year, please take the number as 13%.

Parmod Sagar

Q1, we believe, it should be a strong quarter.

Azim Syed

Agreed, Parmod ji. Understood, sir.

Praveen Jayaraman

Understood, sir. Sir, when we say that we are going to outgrow the market by 2%, generally what do we consider the volume of market in terms of refractory, sir?

Would it be like steel market growth that into consumption plus 2%, or how do we generally say this outperformance, or how do we benchmark this comparison, sir? Or I can also put it in this way: if you take FY26 as an example, what was the growth which the market had, and how did we perform against that in terms of volume?

Parmod Sagar

It was almost at par, I believe. The market grew by 6%, our volume growth was about 5%, a little bit I would say below market, why so in Q4.

Q3 was okay. Q4, there was some cyclic, as Azim said.

The cement is the lean period from October to December, even January. That was the reason volume-wise we were a bit low, but Q1 we should be back with the 1,000-plus volumes again.

Praveen Jayaraman

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Sir, where do we refer this 6% industry growth, sir?

Parmod Sagar

It is a combination. I'm not saying only steel.

It is steel, cement, non-ferrous, glass, put together everything, the average growth is about 6%. Steel maybe grew by 8%.

Azim Syed

Exactly.

Parmod Sagar

Right? Non-ferrous is 4%.

It's the combination of all the pieces where we are supplying, various segments.

Praveen Jayaraman

Sir. Sir, thank you for answering all my questions.

All the best for the upcoming year.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sahil Sanghvi from Monarch Networth Capital.

Please go ahead.

Sahil Sanghvi

Good morning. Am I audible?

Azim Syed

Barely, Sahil. We can hear you partly.

We can hear you, but not clearly, but please continue. We'll try.

Sahil Sanghvi

Yeah. My first question is if you can help me understand what is the total revenue that we have achieved in the Dalmia assets and the margins for FY26 just to get a broad understanding of how we have grown on that asset?

The second question would be to understand as we've mentioned in the presentation that there is huge competition in the cement side also and we've lost some bit of business. What's exactly happening over there?

How are we trying to regain some of the business, and what will be our focus points when it comes to the cement side? Thank you.

Parmod Sagar

We grew in Dalmia asset by 14%. Revenue was 115 1,153 crores as against 1,013 crores of FY25.

It is a 14% growth in that particular segment. Revenue has gone up to 10.8% against 11.5%.

Revenue we grew by 14%, and EBITDA is almost at the same level and not much difference. What about cement you are saying, I would be very specific that competition has put up a lot of capacity in last 1 and 1/2 year or so, and now it is under production now.

For example, our competition, Calderys, IFGL, even smaller players, they try to fill up their plant and at any cost. That put a lot of pressure on us also.

It will continue. I would say the overcapacity will definitely put pressure on commodity business.

We are trying to get out of commodity type of business to more solution-oriented business where we can add value to the customer. We are talking to even our cement big customer how we can add value to them instead of just supplier-buyer relationship, can we have their solution partner.

The response is very good, and we are trying to decommoditize this segment also to get back to the desired level. All right.

Sahil Sanghvi

Got it,

Azim Syed

sir. Go ahead,

Sahil Sanghvi

go on, Azim. Go

Azim Syed

on. Go on.

No, no, I was basically saying that our cement as a percentage of revenue from FY25 to '26 also dropped because of this overcompetition. In FY25, we had about 13%, now it's at about 11%, just to give you a full-year flavor because we choose in to do only the business that makes sense for us.

Got it.

Sahil Sanghvi

Got it. Just to get the margin number right, if you can reiterate what was the margin number in FY26 at Dalmia?

Azim Syed

Can you repeat? 10.8% EBITDA.

Sahil Sanghvi

The EBITDA margin.

Azim Syed

Yeah, 10.8%, yeah.

Sahil Sanghvi

10.8%. Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Parmod Sagar

Sahil, you must appreciate that from last four-quarter or so, we are consistently delivering double-digit EBITDA. We started with almost 4% when we acquired.

Absolutely, sir. Agreed, sir.

Agreed, sir.

Sahil Sanghvi

Agreed, sir, great efforts on that side. Sir, we were planning some refurbishment in the Dalmia assets.

What plans on that front, and with respect to the CapEx number, absolute number for FY27, how much we will spend across the complete

Parmod Sagar

We continue restructuring or modernizing our Dalmia assets, which were in a pathetic situation. At the same time, we are very prudent, very thoughtful where to spend, how much will be the payback period for that particular asset.

We spent about 100 crores in '26, and the CapEx for '27 is around 150 crores or so, but it is not limited to only Dalmia plant, overall 150 crore, that's what we are assuming. It will also have some CapEx for Bhiwadi, Jamshedpur also, not only limited to Dalmia plants.

Sahil Sanghvi

Sure, sir. Thank you so much, and all the best, sir.

Parmod Sagar

Thank you, Sahil ji.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Kothari from Nuwama Wealth Management.

Please go ahead.

Kunal Kothari

Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is in regard to the other expenses that we have seen rise in the quarter four of this FY26.

Just wanted to understand much more in detail that is the West Asia conflict has led to any one-off increase in the overall expenses? Do you see to continue for next couple of quarters?

See,

Azim Syed

I will basically say that, yes, West Asia conflict has increased our input cost, but it's mostly reflected in your raw material or material cost. We also saw some elevated increases in our freight, especially whatever is getting oversight, there was an immediate surge which we had to take on our books.

Apart from this, we also had So these are cost increases for which we are seeking price increase now. We believe that the price increases, not we believe, the price increases we have secured will be effective as of May onwards, okay?

That's the first thing. On top of it, we have some one more continuous cost.

As you know that we are starting with this 4Pro contracts, as Parmod ji was mentioning that we we signed three 4Pro contracts. In 4Pro contacts, you always have a startup cost as well, example in terms of people deployment, machine deployments, and so on and so forth.

This is something that will happen, for which we will get the margins and revenue in the upcoming quarters. These are your continuous costs which you are seeing in the other expenses.

On top of it, we had one one-off cost, which basically was some of the legal cost that we had, which allowed us to help us to get the mines transferred on our name, and we had some of our transactions with the acquired entity that we had to close, this was some of the one-off costs also that were featured in the other expenses.

Kunal Kothari

Sir. Sir, secondly about the CapEx in FY27, '28, can you give some color on that?

Also about the leverage management that you see over the next 2 years?

Azim Syed

On the CapEx side, basically we are looking at 150 crores of CapEx, of which maintenance CapEx would be around 40 to 50 crores of it. Rest all, we are dividing into two parts: one basically is that with these new 4Pro robotics kind of a machinery, we'll have some phased CapEx, which will have an immediate benefit for us, and some structural growth CapEx that we will be deploying.

That's how we are thinking about our CapEx for the upcoming year. On the leverage, as you can see that we are absolutely cash positive, everything will be funded from our balance sheet.

We have some growth plans, so that's where we'll be deploying CapEx, not on any big transactions at the moment.

Kunal Kothari

Sir. That's it.

Thank you, sir.

Azim Syed

Welcome.

Operator

Thank you. A reminder to all the participants, you may press star and one to ask question.

The next question is from the line of Rajesh Majumdar from 360 ONE Capital. Please go ahead.

Rajesh Majumdar

Good morning, Parmod ji. Good morning, Azim.

Azim Syed

Good morning, Rajesh ji.

Rajesh Majumdar

I was just wondering, could you explain a little bit on the fixed cost increase? Because your gross margins seem to be decent, but the employee costs and other expenses have gone up.

You did highlight about some legal expenses, but what is the quantum of fixed cost increase we've seen on account of the ironmaking that you highlighted? That was my first question.

Azim Syed

The question was not clear, but we heard the first part that you are asking about this thing. Can you repeat the question part alone because that part was

Rajesh Majumdar

The question is I want you to quantify the impact of the ironmaking fixed cost that you highlighted at the beginning of the call. How much was the impact of that on the quarterly numbers?

Azim Syed

We are not going to give that separate carved-out number on our fixed cost absorption, so that I think we will not do that, Rajesh ji. Basically what we wanted to say was that the message we want to give on the coke oven, to be very precise, on the projects basically is that, a, as you know that this is project in nature, we have secured a order book which will keep our line continuously running rather than running only for maintenance-related projects.

This will ensure that our fixed cost is always managed well. As you are following refractory pretty closely, wherever we have a kiln, that's where refractory guys have the higher fixed cost.

Now that we are able to secure this for 15 to 18 months continuous order, our message basically was that first lever that we see that, a, we will have a revenue upside; b, normally these coke oven projects are of better margins than other businesses that we have in the ironmaking area; c, we will also get a better fixed cost absorption; d, we also have the mines being transferred. We were sharing that highlight.

Rajesh Majumdar

Okay. You have been talking about your margin guidance coming down gradually over the last few quarters.

At one point of time it was 15% to 16%, now it was 14% last quarter, now it is 13%. Where do we see the end of this?

Is it going to 10% in the industry because it is a fiercely competitive industry? Are we looking at a worsening scenario or an improving scenario?

Because we've been gradually coming down on the EBITDA guidance over the last few quarters.

Parmod Sagar

Rajesh ji, the market is so dynamic, the geographical situation is so drastically changing, we have to adapt to that. This 13% to me is a number where we believe we can deliver because of our various initiatives which we have taken.

If we would not have worked on this, what you are saying, it might have gone to 11%, 10% also. We are taking a lot of initiative to maintain our margins from 37.

13.7% to now it is 12.1%, and then we are saying we will go back to 13%. It's challenging, but we know we have a order book, we have mines with us now, it will improve our margins, we have strong order book, we have 4Pro, three contracts which sign in Jan only in this year, which will increase later part of the year the margins also.

There are some levers. Based on that, we are sure we will be able to deliver 13% or so.

Azim Syed

Yeah. Also we are also seeking price increases as well.

There is a good amount of understanding from our customers that this is coming because of the input cost increases. We believe that this will of course improve our margins.

I'm guessing that because there's a realization on the customer side. You're talking about the broader market also, maybe there is little bit of a short-term breather there.

Again, we can't talk about all the competition because they are operating in specific segments. We have a broad diversity, which basically means that we're able to absorb the shocks better, which you can see in our cash flow statement and overall resilience of going continuously in double digit vis-à-vis some of the niche players who basically are further deteriorating even though they command stronger market positions in some specific segments, Rajesh ji.

Rajesh Majumdar

This 13% you are talking, does it include any project orders like glass, aluminum, or is it without that?

Azim Syed

Yes, we have some, apart from the coke oven projects, as we had informed you earlier, last financial was the worst in the non-cement industrial area. We had not secured any big, big projects.

Now we see some order book on this as well, some we have also converted few of them. Yes, this 13% includes the industrial non-cement projects as well.

Rajesh Majumdar

Okay. Parmod sir said that the first quarter could be even better compared to the average of 13% earlier.

What is the reason for that? Any project order kind of spillover has happened from fourth quarter into first quarter?

Parmod Sagar

There are some pending price increases which we believe we will get in May, June, and that is one reason. Second is what Azim was saying, the price increases which we are asking for is starting from May.

If we get those price increases, it will definitely help us. Plus, the cement season starts during this time: May, June, July, August, September.

This is cement season also.

Rajesh Majumdar

Is it possible to give some color on the price increases? Is it 5%, 7%?

Azim Syed

Let's put it like this that, vis-à-vis our cost increases, we are basically asking for 1% to 3% of price increases depending on the categories or the segments that we are operating. Let's say that our cost increase is zero, then we are basically asking 1% to 3%.

Again, it depends on the segment, Parmod Sagar (Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer):

Parmod Sagar

I hope the customers are not listening to this.

Rajesh Majumdar

Yeah. Yeah.

No, and if I could sneak in a last question, sir. Alumina prices have been low, but magnesite has been rising.

Is that a positive cycle for us given the fact that we mine a large part of the global magnesite in RHIM globally? Last question.

Parmod Sagar

Actually, the raw material price increase is good for the industry. Then our refractory industry will grow much faster, revenue will go up, margin will be improved.

For sure, this is a good development as long as we pass on these cost increases to our customers. When it is of magnesia, it is mostly steel related or even cement where the bigger kilns are there where they are using fired magnesia bricks.

This is good sign for us, I think.

Rajesh Majumdar

Sir. Thank you.

Parmod Sagar

Thank you,

Azim Syed

Rajesh ji.

Operator

Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I would now hand the conference over to Mr.

Parmod Sagar for closing comments. Over to you, sir.

Parmod Sagar

Thank you very much, dear investors, analyst, for your kind support till now, and we hope you will continue supporting us. We assure you we will do our utmost to increase our revenue, our margins.

That is our core and we are working on that. Various initiatives has been taken by the regional leadership team how we can absorb cost, reduce our input cost, reduce rejections, increase our circular economy, and deliver good results to all of you.

Thank you very much. Stay blessed.

Have a nice weekend.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of RHI Magnesita Limited, that concludes this conference.

Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

Parmod Sagar

Thank you.