Cummins India Ltd Q3 FY22 Earnings Conference Call Insights

Key highlights from Cummins India Ltd (CUMMINSIND) Q3 FY22 Earnings Concall

Management Update:

• CUMMINSIND stated that 3Q22 was a record quarter for the company in terms of revenue and EBIT. The company’s distribution, industrial and associate JV companies, that is CGT and VCPL, also recorded their best-ever sales for the quarter.

Q&A Highlights:

• Ravi Swaminathan from Spark Capital asked about price increase and how much more price increase is needed going forward. Ashwath Ram MD replied that exact numbers cannot be given. But the company has tried to keep up price increases along with commodity increases. But typically, this lags behind about a quarter and a half in a catch-up kind of basis.

• Ravi Swaminathan from Spark Capital also asked about good growth in power gen business and how much of it will be driven by key sectors. Ashwath Ram MD said it’s difficult to give segment share. But it’s from data centers, manufacturing, pharma, healthcare, commercial, and realty which have all started to pick up pretty strongly.

• Ravi Swaminathan from Spark Capital asked about any specific geographies where exports are picking up. Ashwath Ram MD answered that Latin America was a little bit slower than the previous quarter, while Asia Pac, Europe and Middle East continues to pick up. However, Africa is a market which has been subdued.

• Renu Baid with IIFL enquired about cash on books remaining pretty steady and how the company plans to utilize this cash. Ashwath Ram MD said the company is focused on trying to bring in new products, trying to upgrade the technologies in some of the products, get some of the facilities upgraded to do future products. Also, CUMMINSIND stated it’s looking for some kind of ideas to get faster growth.

• Renu Baid with IIFL also asked if the company has any investment plans for clean energy or hydrogen in the near term. Ashwath Ram MD said the company has bid for quite a few tenders. If CUMMINSIND win some of those tenders then those investments are likely to come in.

• Rajesh Kothari of AlfAccurate  asked about margins, if the company thinks that once the inflation pass-through the entire commodity, the operating leverage and the product mix will finally lead to longer term better margins compared to what was seen in last 2, 3 years. Ashwath Ram MD said that the company believes that it will be able to improve margins once commodities stabilize.

• Mayur Liman from Profitmart Securities asked about outlook for 4Q22. Ashwath Ram MD said that on the outlook, typically Q4 is the second weakest quarter in the year. So considering that, forecasting a slightly weaker quarter as compared to the previous quarter.

• Mayur Liman from Profitmart Securities also enquired about the plan for the capex in 4Q22. Ashwath Ram MD said that nothing significant. Most of the investment in capex is either sustenance capex and some continued capex from a growth perspective. No major capital expenditures are planned in 4Q22.

• Abhishek Basumallick from Intelsense asked about some insights on how the data center business is shaping up. Ashwath Ram MD replied that center outlook is very positive. The amount of local storage required to serve content to millions of subscribers means that one needs bigger and more data centers around the country. CUMMINSIND feels it’s going to see more than double digit growth in this market.