ION EXCHANGE (INDIA) LTD (NSE: IONEXCHANG) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 30, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Vasant Naik — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Ion Exchange India Limited’s Q4 and FY ’25 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms Burwangi Jain from Valorem Advisors. Thank you, and over to you, ma’am.
Unidentified Speaker
Good afternoon, everyone, and a warm welcome to you all. My name is Jain from Valorem Advisors. We represent the Investor Relations of Iron Exchange India Limited. On behalf of the company and Valorem Advisors, I’d like to thank you all for participating in the company’s earnings conference call for the 4th-quarter and financial year ended 2025. Before we begin, let me mention a short cautionary statement. Some of the statements made in today’s earnings call may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated.
Such statements are based on management’s belief as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the management. Audiences are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements in making any investment decisions. The purpose of today’s earnings call is purely to educate and bring awareness about the company’s
Unidentified Speaker
Fundamental business and financial quarter under review. Let me now introduce you to the management participating with us in today’s earnings call and hand it over to them for their opening remarks. We have with us Mr Ankur, Vice-Chairman; Mr Indra Neil Dat, Managing Director and CEO; Mr Vasant Nayer, Group Chief Financial Officer; Mr NM Ranad, Group Head of Financial Planning and Risk Management; and Ms Nikisha Solanki, Company Secretary. Without any delay, I request Mr Vasant to start with his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Vasant Naik — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Purwangi. Good afternoon, everybody. It is a pleasure to welcome you all to the earnings conference call for the 4th-quarter and financial year ended. For the 4th-quarter under review, on a consolidated basis, the company reported an operating income of INR8,346 million, an increase of around 7% year-on-year. The EBITDA stood at INR858 million, which has declined by 7% year-on-year. EBITDA margin stood at 10.28% and net profit was INR632 million, a decline of by 13% year-on-year, while the PAT margin was around 7.6%. For the financial year ending 2025, the company reported operating income of INR27 INR371 million, an increase of around 17% year-on-year. The EBITDA stood at INR2,939 million, representing an increase of around 8% year-on-year. The EBITDA margin stood at 10.74% and net profit was INR2,083 million, an increase of around 7% year-on-year, while the PAT margin was around 7.6%.
Now let me take you through the quarterly segmental performance on a consolidated basis. In the Engineering division, the revenue for the quarter was INR5,553 million, an increase of 5% year-on-year. The EBIT for this segment was INR412 million, which declined by 23% year-on-year. While for the financial annual year ending 2025, the revenue was INR17,038 million, increase of 17% year-on-year with an EBIT of INR1091 million, a decline of 2.5%. The Engineering segment recorded sequential and year-on-year turnover growth. However, execution of the UP Jal Nikam order remained muted. Regarding the Sri Lanka order, there has been positive development at the quarter-end with the Sri Lanka authorities committing funds to expedite the job. Whilst our inquiry pipeline has remained steady, we did witness delays in the finalization of some large-value opportunities. At the end of Q4 financial year ’25, the total order book for the Engineering division stood at INR2,762 crores. Coming to the Chemical division, the revenue for the quarter was INR2,228 million, an increase by 12% year-on-year. The EBIT was INR522 million, increase of 9% on a year-on-year basis.
For the financial — annual financial year ending 2025, the revenue was INR8184 million, increase of 15.5% year-on-year with an EBIT of INR2066 million, which grew by 17% year-on-year. This segment delivered improved volume during the quarter while maintaining healthy margins. Our greenfield manufacturing facility at ROA for regin production is expected to go on-stream in the second-quarter of the financial year ’25-’26. For the Consumer Product division, the revenue for the quarter stood at INR779 million and increased by around 7% year-on-year. The EBIT loss for the quarter was INR52 million compared to a loss of INR29 — INR28 million in the same-period of the previous year. For the annual year ending 2025, the revenue was INR2,902 million, increase of around 14% year-on-year with an EBIT loss of final INR149 million. This segment continues to record the volume growth. With this, I conclude the opening remarks and we can now open the floor to the Q&A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you, sir. We will now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star N1 on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star N2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Ashmita from Electrum PMS. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello, am I audible?
Operator
Sure. Yes, please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Sir, two questions from my side. The first one being the order inflow seemed to be muted for the quarter. So just wanted to know-how do we see the growth shaping up ahead and the full financial year.
Vasant Naik
Good afternoon,. So thank you for your question. You know, we have been a bit slow on the order intake for the last quarter of the last financial year. I think a couple of factors. One is some of the jobs that we had bid, a couple of large orders we could not win. They were a lot more aggressive pricing in the market. And then a few other key jobs that we have been pursuing. They have spilled over to the next financial year. So those jobs are still very much alive and we are in the fray. It’s just a timing issue for us. And we continue to be selective on the engineering projects and to be able to pick-up jobs that we feel are accretive to our overall engineering business margin. So we’ll continue to pick-up you know jobs in a very selective fashion.
Unidentified Participant
Sure. The second question was in the chemical margins were quite lower for the quarter. So just wanted to know if you could just state the reasons for the same and just throw some light about it?
Vasant Naik
The 4th-quarter, I mean if you are comparing with the immediate preceding quarter, there has been in the third — due to the seasonality of certain product lines, the chemical margins in the 4th-quarter were lower if you are doing a comparison with the earlier quarter. And also we have seen some cost input increases. So those increases we have now taken action to pass-on the price increases to the customers. So these two are the broadly the main reasons why the chemical margins are a bit lower than compared to the preceding quarters. Sure, sir, that’s it from my side.
Unidentified Participant
All the best for the year. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, please press star and one to ask a question the next question comes from the line of Michael Sel from Alquity Investment Management. Please go-ahead. T
Unidentified Participant
Hank you. Good afternoon. And could you just give us your thoughts on the revenue and margin outlook for FY ’26. Are we seeing a more sustained slowdown, which you commented on briefly before and-or do you think that the last year is more of a consolidation year and we should expect much stronger top and bottom-line growth in FY ’26.
Vasant Naik
Good afternoon. Thank you for your question. And in response, we would say that we see a similar trend going-forward in the coming year. And typically, we don’t like to give a call-out before the first-half ends. There has been, Michael, our our preference and our practice in the past. We also are in the process of going through our SAP implementation across the company. So while the first couple of months have been a bit muted, but we hope to pick-up in the second-half of the first — second part of the first-half, we should be able to come back and give you a better outlook somewhere in the second-quarter presentation.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. And you mentioned SAP. Is that having an impact on your order booking and so on or that’s just not causing you any issue in terms of revenue?
Vasant Naik
As you know, an SAP implementation across the company always gives us a lot of learnings for us to work on. We are going through that, but they are nothing major from a business standpoint. These are a little bit of timing issues. But obviously, there is a bit of a disruption as you move from a legacy one system to a corporate-wide SAP system. So that’s what we’re going through. And we feel-good that we should be able to get back to a normal-course in the next month — which is the third month of the first-quarter. So we — in summary, I think nothing major, nothing Impactful. We should be back on course for the first-half.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. And one final follow-up question, just in terms of the ongoing court case. I think the next date is July. Is that the final, final date or there could be — it could carry-on going on for several years still to come?
Unidentified Speaker
We hope it will be, but considering the Indian judiciary and the various factors involved in the case, I don’t — we don’t feel it will be end in July. It is going to be a long round of air.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you very much and best wishes. T
Unidentified Speaker
Hank you. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Deepak from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Unidentified Speaker
Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Unidentified Participant
Sir, my first question, I just want to double-click on what is our demand outlook for the engineering segment. Do you have mentioned in the presentation that there was some delay in order finalization and it got pushed off to, let’s say, FY ’26, most likely will have a good inflow in the quarter one or quarter two of this year. I just want to reconfirm that whatever delay has happened in order inflow, since two months have already passed, are we nearing closing those new order wins, let’s say, in Q1 of this fiscal year?
Unidentified Speaker
So we — those don’t speak on specific orders, but we feel comfortable with the pursuit of those large cases. Again, a lot of them are not in our control and it’s a basket of opportunities that we pursue. Overall, as one would expect in the — in the sector that we are in, there’s no of opportunities. But looking at our past track-record of execution of some of these orders, we would want to be selective and picking-up good-quality orders, which helps us maintain or improve the quality of profitability in the engineering segment. And as I said a little bit earlier, we’ll continue to be selective about the orders that we pick-up and not do anything to the contrary.
Unidentified Participant
Understand that as a company, we are very conscious in terms of what kind of order we are taking and we are very much conscious of the cash-flow impact as well. So how should I look about, let’s say, growth in FY ’26 from this segment going-forward? And also on the fact that you had one onerous order, which was kind of troubling us in terms of margin and UP order is also not picking-up. So how should I think about, let’s say, going into this year in terms of growth numbers and margin for this segment?
Unidentified Speaker
So I think first of all, you referred to some of those past orders that we have referenced in the previous calls. I think so these are large orders, both the UP order as well as the other one that we referenced. So we continue to work-through some of the headwinds there and that’s partly the impact of that you would have seen in our numbers. And these are exactly the kind of reasons why we would like to be selective in what we pick-up. Having said that, you know that doesn’t mean that we’re looking at a very, very conservative in order backlog. I think as I said, there are orders in the market, both in India as well as outside, which we continue to aggressively pursue, but we will be very careful in terms of the quality of the orders that we pick-up.
Unidentified Participant
As to that overall the demand scenario both in India and abroad remains attractive in the long-run and what we are trying to ensure is to keep steadfast on the long-term goal without really looking at very short-term gains to you know, and pick-up orders which are not justified in terms of bottom-line.
Unidentified Speaker
So, Deepak, to give you a guidance, we are looking at several opportunities, both in India and abroad and we do hope that we will have some good ones to book in the short and medium-term. But as Hindra Anil said, we will definitely try to ensure that the quality of orders does not have an adverse impact on our bottom quarterly
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And sir, one question I had on consumer products. So earlier in two, three calls, we had mentioned that you would want to clock an INR80 crore-plus kind of revenue run-rate in the consumer product, right? And right now, if you look at our Y-o-Y growth rate in Q4, it’s now come down below 10%, it’s around 7%, right? So I just wanted to understand, is it that the category itself is not growing or is it the category is growing and we are facing more competition or is it that the B2C segment is doing well within consumer, but it is the institutional sales which is dragging the overall growth of consumer products?
Unidentified Speaker
So you’re right, we continue to see good traction and growth in ability growth both in our products and our services business on our core B2C business that continues. And we’ve kind of working to improve our order acquisition process in the institution segment. So that’s a part of the business that we have been strengthening pretty much through second-half of last year and we are seeing good traction in terms of leading indicators around pipeline and funnel. And we hope that this segment will also start firing because all the macroeconomic indicators in the country are all positive in that segment and we believe that we’ll be able to, you know, benefit from the structural changes that we have made and this segment — this part of the consumer segment will also come back-in this — in FY
Unidentified Participant
Sir, could you please highlight in Q4, what was our B2C growth rate and B2B growth rate for us to clock an overall growth rate of 7%?
Unidentified Speaker
I’m sorry. I mean we don’t give individual product lines breakup in this call. Maybe if you can reach-out to our in. I mean, we can take this further separately.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And sir, one question to Vasant, sir. So sir, now Roha plant will come into operation, right, in Q2. So you have debt on the balance sheet and whatever was being capitalized now will be expensed out. So could you please highlight what is the interest outflow one should expect in FY ’26?
Vasant Naik
As we have informed in the earlier call, the total capex of the Loha plant is in the region of around INR400 crores and the debt component is around 80% of that. So once the entire debt is disbursed and it comes on our books, the interest cost is just below 10% for this term-loan?
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sir. Could you quantify that — okay, sir. I’ll just join back-in the queue.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Chetan Vora from Asset Manager. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes, hi, sir. Sir, can you explain on the EPC front that the growth for this quarter was 5%, which was lowest since five, seven quarters and the margin of close to 7.5% were like five-year low. Would you like to comment on that, sir on the EPC and how do we see the situation going ahead? And would like to understand the update on the legacy project which has been checking the overall, which has been checking down the overall performance, sir.
Vasant Naik
Thank you. So Chetan, as you rightly commented, the margins in this particular business has been a bit muted and I think you also kind of gave the answer. There are a couple of large projects that we are working through the execution, which we talked about in the last call and has kind of giving us headwinds in this segment. We — as I said a short while back, these are multiyear contracts that we are working through to get them executed.
And so these particular jobs will continue to be difficult for us from a margin standpoint. However, there are other parts of the engineering projects that are going well. So there are some other jobs that are going well. And we’ve got some very good execution on our international portfolio. That’s going well. And we believe that should help us mitigate some of those large order headwinds that we have seen in the country. And as we speak, we continue to work on strengthening our execution and working with our customers to see that we can come out of these jobs in the best possible way by closing them out. But this is not a 1/4 phenomenon, unfortunately. So we continue to work this out and grind this out and close these contracts out.
Unidentified Participant
By when this could be? S
Vasant Naik
O this will continue for — definitely for this financial year and maybe early part of the next financial year. The UP projects are
Operator
— we are not the only company who is doing this and I think there has been a consistent track-record in terms of the execution and some parts of the project, we have done well, but there are other parts where they have been slower-than-expected. And I think so all these both these jobs will pretty much continue for the entire financial year. So even the UPs are cost overhead for us?
Unidentified Speaker
No, there is no-cost as of now. It’s more a time spend because as you know these are government plans that were rolled-out earlier but I think across-the-board, including our project, we continue to go through the execution. And so across-the-board, every organization executing these projects, we are seeing time overruns. But as Vasant said, on the — on the profitability front, we are still able to manage with very, very tight project management there, but there is still somewhere to go for us.
Unidentified Participant
But it was told in your last con-call that these legacy projects will be getting over by the quarter two of this year. Now it is being told that this year and the quarter one of next year, it will go until then. So just would like to understand that, can you explain that the disconnect between last quarter and this year?
Unidentified Speaker
What I would like to clarify, what was I mentioned now was with reference to the UP project, which is going to precolate to the — also to the beginning of the ’26, ’27, while the other lega legacy project, what was referred into the earlier call, we expect to largely get it over by the end-of-the current financial year.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. So it has got extended till up to the end of this year from quarter two. That’s right. And even the UP project is making the subdued margins for us or vis-a-vis our earlier expectation.
Unidentified Speaker
As I — we have been informing in earlier calls, we don’t give project-specific margins, but as I was waiting, I’m just asking directionally, I’m just asking directionally.
Unidentified Participant
I’m not asking for the number, but I’m just asking the directionally, it is making the margins which is lower than our EPC margins, right? Is it fair to assume? T
Unidentified Speaker
Hat may not be a fair assumption.
Unidentified Participant
And how should one what we did? And what’s unexecuted UP project order value as of now? That has been given in the investor call, it is around INR378 crores. Yeah. So — but it will be getting a continued till up to quarter one of next year, right? That’s right. Okay. And apart from that, how do we see the EPC demand environment because order inflow had been muted for this quarter and the growth has also decelerated to 5% for any reason for that? Why the growth has decelerated?
Vasant Naik
Okay. So as I said, we see a lot of opportunities in the EPC space. We actually flooded with opportunities and we are trying to be selective to ensure that we improve the profitability of that segment and continue to bring that up and work on it. So there is no doth of opportunities. It’s just that we are looking for good-quality and selective orders that we can execute. Mm-huh. And sir, the reason for the revenue deceleration of to 5%, any specific.
I think we already addressed that, that the UP job, the execution, which was expected in the current financial year, that has not happened as per the plans, largely because of the funding issues which we have faced in this contract. So that is primarily one of the reasons why there is a lower-than-expected growth in the engineering segment in the 4th-quarter.
Unidentified Participant
Right. And sir, lastly, on the chemicals, the plant will be up and running by the quarter two of this year. By when the commercial formation will start — it will be in the trial phase, right, for at least sometime in the commercial production will begin then after, right?
Unidentified Speaker
So we are very close. As we speak, we are kind of doing various kinds of testing. Obviously, this is a plant largely catering to the export market. So we just need to ensure that we have everything right in-place. But we are very close. Most of the systems are all installed, commissioned and we are in the process of the pre-commissioning activities as well
Unidentified Participant
. So for the year as a whole, whether the chemicals will be at the same profitability as what it was in the last year FY ’25?
Unidentified Speaker
Yeah. As we said, we would be able to give you a better outlook around the end-of-the second-quarter. And as of now, we see limited headwinds, but I will just leave it there and we can come back and share with you a little bit more, you know accurate guidance in the end-of-the first-half of the year.
Unidentified Participant
No, no, the balance sheet, last question on the balance sheet side, our debtors has also gone up, which were like 140 145 days has gone up to 160 days.
Unidentified Speaker
And this is — I mean, one major contract which has contributed to the increase in debtor is the UP contract. As I mentioned, the funding issues of this contract that has led to elongated debtors level in this contract. And second is, we had a spike in invoicing in the month of March, which has slightly distorted the overall debtors level. That is primarily the two reasons where we are seeing the number of days have gone up.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay, sir. Thank you. Thank you thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ejas Lakhani from Unifi Mutual Funds. Please go-ahead. Yeah, hi. Am I audible? Yes. Perfect. Thanks. Sir, my first question is that if you look at the PPD deck and see the order book from UP that was outstanding in December ’24, it showed INR719 crores and that number has dropped to INR378 crores. So you’ve effectively done INR350 crores ballpark from your old order book. And you know, I’m just trying to understand that in the earlier call again, we had clearly stated that there was because of, you know the bureaucracy, there was a time delay, but what is visible is the INR350 crore rundown in the UP project. So firstly, is that understanding correct? Because I have following questions based on this.
Vasant Naik
Yeah. So I think I must compliment you on a good reading of our report, so that understanding is correct. And the original backlog, so we have taken a correction on that backlog based on what we see on-the-ground. The earlier backlog was driven by more from the original project that we took up and the detailed project reports, the DPRs. But based on the actual situation on-the-ground, we expect some foreclosures to happen and also because the project has taken an inordinate long-time to deliver. And in our objective to close the project and come out, we’ve taken a conservative view of the remaining backlog and that is why you see a drop-in the backlog, which is not reflected in the revenue correspondingly for the quarter. But we feel that the collectively based on the inputs from the team, we feel that this is a true reflection of the actual revenueable backlog for this particular project
Unidentified Participant
Questions that I have and again, it’s not clear from what you’ve just spoken in your earlier commentary that now this business of — especially UP is just barely 10% of or 12% of your existing book order book and incrementally the share of it in revenues will be lower. So I’m not — and you have again cited on previous calls that — and you can refer to quarter one, quarter two call where you said that there’s been an adverse impact of that project on the overall engineering margins. ]You’ve also spoken simultaneously about picking-up better-quality orders incrementally that do not hurt you like the UP. So I’m — I’m just trying to understand that why should we not build for better margin trajectory in the engineering business in FY ’26 and onwards, given that the run-rate of these old projects is now far more lower than it was in ’25 and ’24.
Unidentified Speaker
That is absolutely correct. That is exactly what we want to do. And that is why as we said, we have been selective in picking-up the kind of jobs we want to do and take learnings from our experiences. And as I also said multiple times that at this point, we will not be able to provide you a guidance for the year. We can come back and talk about it at the end-of-the second-quarter. But directionally, what you said is correct, that is what we’d want to do, finish
Unidentified Speaker
These jobs where we’ve had headwinds in the past and move towards better-quality orders to be executed. And as we said in their order backlog of INR2,700 odd crores, you see about 12% to 15% is on the UP jobs. So I think we are working very consciously towards improving the quality of the quality of the executable orders for the company.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. Sir, the second bit is, you know, in the earlier comments about you mentioned that there has been some margin compression on chemicals. So I want to understand that from a raw-material basket, do you foresee headwinds? You called out that you have taken the cost pressure increases, but are you incrementally seeing any raw-material headwinds? And what is the effect of the increase in cost that has been passed on? Is it 100% or is it just some part of it and some part is yet to be taken?
Vasant Naik
So this is a process that we continue to observe on a very regular basis. As we have mentioned earlier, these are driven more by commodity prices that change and we have been extremely agile in the past to ensure that the profitability of our chemicals business is protected. Sometimes you do end-up with a little bit of a timeline gap between the cost hitting us and we transferring that back to our customers. So the same process has happened in our parts of the chemical business, we’ve had gone ahead with price increase.
But again, as you would understand, that is always a balancing act between, you know, getting priced back and then maintaining share. That’s what our businesses in the chemical segment are working on. But we have done this multiple times over the past several years and we feel confident to be able to navigate this cost rise as well.
Unidentified Speaker
Understood. But sir, is there a headwind in the raw-material basket for chemicals today. I haven’t understood that.
No, I think so. As I said, currently, I don’t think we are facing that. But as I said, it’s a very dynamic situation. So I wouldn’t want to call and give you a lot of comfort. It’s a very dynamic situation. And — but what I can assure you is that we are pretty much on-top of it in across all our chemical business units and we are taking almost real-time action from a pricing standpoint to ensure that we’re able to protect our margins in this part of our business. Understood. And sir, is it fair to then understand that the entire increase in cost price has been passed on to customers fully.
I wouldn’t make that comment. I would say that you know, in parts of the business we have passed on and we continue to work-through that process.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. So you’ve called about the — in the chemical segment, the management thoughts or focusing on the export opportunities that are there in North-America and Europe and I’m presuming that is because of a better margin profile. So could you please elaborate on what are the steps the management has taken to increase this opportunity by?
Unidentified Speaker
So that’s — our focus on the company is how do we grow the chemical part of our business, you all heard that our Roha plant is close to commissioning. That’s a big part of our chemicals growth strategy. I also said that a big part of that plant we are building to cater to our exports market. So clearly, there’s a lot of work that your company is doing in terms of ensuring that you’re able to fulfill the volume that will come out from the Rouha plant and that also goes true for our other businesses, including chemicals and membranes. All of these products that we sell today are sold-in the international markets. So they are international grade products.
And we are significantly strengthening our go-to-market on that international front and we hope to see results of that coming forward in the future quarters. Sure, understood. Could you call-out what is the go-to-market? I mean,
Unidentified Participant
I’m just trying to understand a little more about what is — what are the efforts that the management has made in this direction. So in this call, we will not be able to give you any more specifics. If you are interested to know more, we’ll be happy to have a conversation through Valorem. You know, we’ll be happy to share whatever more we can. And the other part that you know that we are in a very, very competitive market.
So beyond this, in a forum like this, it will be difficult to share more. Understood, sir. And we’ll definitely reach-out. Sir, just my final question is that, you know, does the plant require to be reapproved by customers or because effectively the similar product range will be coming out, the customers really know iron exchange and it’s just a continuity, business continuity or do these plants require revalidation from customers?
Unidentified Speaker
No, these are all standard products that we’ll make there and these are very standard processes. So obviously, our customers are very keen to look at come and visit our new plant as and when it goes up on-stream, but no, there are no regulatory requirements for us to get new approvals for this plant.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, sir. So finally, my understanding on the chemical segment is that as the Roha plant comes on-stream, your ability which today is constrained because from a utilization standpoint, you are pretty much maxed out in chemicals will effectively — we start to be able to see the revenue traction building from, say, say second-quarter and 3rd-quarter onwards. Is that understand? Yes, our salespeople will get very busy very soon. But done.
Unidentified Speaker
Noted. Thank you so much, sir. All the best. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Singh from AC Brokers. Please go-ahead. Hello, sir, am I audible? Yes. Yeah. So I’d like to ask, when can we expect any consumer division to be profitable at the EBITDA level? And have you also received environmental clearness for the Roha plant?, we are going through our clearances. We will not speak about specific clearances, but we are on the last leg. And in parallel, we are also working on our pre-commissioning. So we expect those last few action points to get closed very soon and then hopefully, we can come back and give you the good news of, you know, production happening from that plant. And on the chemical — sorry, Consumer Products division profitability question, I’ll, I’ll request Vasal to take that.
Vasant Naik
Yeah. During the year, we have invested substantially in — as we have covered in earlier calls on our infrastructure, including manpower and on our distribution network. And also we have ventured into newer market segments within this consumer products. The payback did not happen as per the timelines what we had anticipated during this year, but we are — we remain hopeful that as the volumes have picked-up, which we have seen, we should be having a much better margin profile to disc to disclose in the results going-forward from the third and the 4th-quarter onwards? Yeah. All right, sir, just another one. Are we getting any sort of inquiries from industries that are currently booming such as semiconductors or any data center related industries?
Unidentified Speaker
Yes. Yes, as we mentioned in the past call, these are some of our growth segments. We are working very closely with some of our customers in this space. In fact, you know, there were some significant opportunities we were pursuing in one of the segments, but unfortunately, those did not close-in our favor predominantly because of extremely aggressive stance taken by competition, but these are important segments for us. Your company is very well-positioned to win in those segments. In some of them, we have very strong references and track-record. We’ll continue to work on these segments.
Our teams are continuously working with our customers and we believe that we will we will get good results in that segment in the future, those segments in the future hat you talked about.
Unidentified Participant
All right, sir. Thank you so much and all the best for the coming year.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Omkar, an Individual Investor. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks for taking my question. Sir, I need some clarity on earlier participant has asked you on UP and Delhi project. In Q3 presentation, Dili Jal Nigam order was mentioned, including
Operator
UP order, okay. And suddenly in this quarter presentation, the Dili Jal Nigam order book is got disappeared from the presentation. Whether order book was there or it was only UP order book?
Unidentified Speaker
That was my first question. And in which month Roha plant will start? And are we expecting overall good margin in this particular financial year as compared to last financial year, sir?
So you had three questions. I’ll answer all three one-by-one. The first question, this is the UP Jal Juvan mission of the Jal Nigam project, the Swatch Bharat project HWSM. There are two circles that our company is executing. One is in Eastern UP and the other is on the western side of the state. So that is where we talk about these two these two projects, it is both — there was no Delhi Jal Nigam project earlier. It is the UP project that we are doing in two locations of the state.
Unidentified Participant
And just to a follow-up on what Mr Indanil mentioned. In the last presentation, we had mentioned Delhi, that was a very part, which has since been completed. Okay. And sir, which month Roha plant will start in-quarter two? And can we expect better margin in this financial year? My second and third question?
Unidentified Speaker
Yeah. So we will not be able to give you very specific month. As I said, we are very close and we are going through pre-commissioning. We’re getting everything lined-up. So we should be able to come back with some good news soon. But at this point, it will not be fair or accurate for us to give you a specific month information. As regards your question on the overall margin outlook of the year. As per company practices, we should be able to come back and give you a guidance — a broad guidance in the end-of-the second-quarter.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And sir, last small question. Any big orders are we expecting in next two, three months as last year was muted in terms of winning new engineering orders. So any specific orders can we expect because last year was little bit tough for getting big orders.
Unidentified Speaker
As we said in the earlier part of the call, we continue to work on the engineering segment. It is a very important segment, the biggest segment for the company. At the same time, we continue to look for good-quality orders and that’s what our effort has been. As we speak right now, there are multiple opportunities, both big and medium that we are working through. But again, it will be improper for us to make a call.
Ultimately, we are in a competitive market. And you know — but we continue to work on quite a few deals, but we’ll be very — continue to be very selective and be interested to picking-up good-quality orders.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, so thanks for taking my questions. All the best.
Operator
Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mahesh, an individual Investor. Please go-ahead. Mahesh, please go-ahead with your question and unmute yourself in case if you are on-mute Mahesh, are you there? Since there’s no response from the participant, we’ll move to the next participant. That is Saket Kapoor from Kapoor Company. Please go-ahead. Namaska, sir, and thank you for the opportunity.
Unidentified Participant
Sir, with respect to the UC project, what — how is the pace of execution currently? And when are we supposed to conclude the project and also on the receivables — on the receivable fund, how are we — what is the position of the movement of funds or if you could just throw some color on the same. Currently, how are things shaping up?
Unidentified Speaker
Okay. So I’ll answer the first question and then I’ll request Vasant to take the second one. As we mentioned earlier in the call, the UP project has been moving slow there has been a challenge on the allocation of funds, which is getting worked through and hopefully, we will see some improvement in the future. But the project progress has been slow, which has been reflected in our engineering business performance in the last preceding quarter. And as we also mentioned in the call, looking at the progress of the project, we have taken a conservative view of the balanced order backlog. And as we’ve also said that we expect the balance of this project to continue throughout this financial year and we should be able to hopefully wrap it up early in the next financial year. I’ll request Vasant to answer the next question.
Vasant Naik
You had asked about the receivables on the UP project. As I mentioned earlier and what has been mentioned by Mr also, there have been some funding issues for on this contract. So the collections against the receivables has been slow in the current year. So that is one of the reasons why our overall debtors have also gone up. But coming to the specifics of the amount, I’m afraid that we don’t disclose on the investor calls and we can leave it at this.
Unidentified Speaker
And sir, you mentioned that this project will be executed over the entire this financial year and it will take the next year also first-quarter. I missed comment on the same. Can you come against that? When are we expecting the closure? Yeah. That is our conservative estimate looking at the run-rate of how this project has moved in the last six months. It is in — obviously our interest, we are fully mobilized on all the sites. We would want to close and complete and get-out of that job as soon as possible. However, looking at how this project is moving and the disbursal — disbursement of funds, this is our current estimate. If we see a faster fund flow coming in, then we should be able to get-out of those jobs earlier. But I don’t want to give any — any optimistic picture right now, this is purely based on the progress of this job and allocation of funds in the last six months. Okay. Just to conclude, that means the project has been almost installed. Otherwise the size of the pie which we are garnering if it — if the execution takes this longer time, that means there are some serious issues with the entire execution process. It is only — I think so we got a small package out-of-the entire project.
Unidentified Participant
So I got your point, sir. There is a serious issue with the — yeah, yeah.
Unidentified Speaker
Yeah, I don’t think that was exactly what we wanted to communicate. What we were trying to say is that we have seen progress, but we have not seen sufficient fast progress to get this job concluded in the next 3/4 based on our current fund flow that is happening. We continue to see progress on the project. We continue to get milestones done. We continue to see that the projects — some of the projects actually are moving into the O&M phase. So the other thing that you must remember is that we don’t get-out of this project purely by completing this project. There is an operational maintenance segment of this project over the next 10 years. So we are working with the government and the administration to move some of the completed projects to the O&M phase. So here we’re talking about more the EPC portion of these projects. So progress is there
. Some parts have been muted because of the fund flow-in the last few months, which we’re expecting should pick-up so that we can close the balance off in the — in this financial year. And as I said, we have been conservative and we’ve taken a call that there could be certain foreclosures. So we are working on this project on a very conservative basis, but we are fully mobilized and as farms flow pick-up, we should be able to pick-up speed as well.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And last question, sir, we haven’t — we did an acquisition earlier of foreign company by the name, I forgot the name. How is that acquisition currently to our portfolio?
Unidentified Speaker
So that’s working well. This is about, I think close to two years since we acquired the company. I was personally there in November last year. I think we have kind of been over the integration process. It’s gone well. We are fully-integrated. I think we have a good reference base in South Europe, specifically in Portugal and Spain, that’s the focus market that we are working on. We are taking more of our products to that geography and it’s going well and we believe that should give us a good launch pad for the company in the South Europe market? And what are the contribution, sir?
Unidentified Participant
Numerically, can you give the revenue contribution for this financial year and the margins posted by the same?
Unidentified Speaker
As we said, we don’t talk about the specific entity performances. But it is — it is beginning to pick-up traction in terms of our leading indicators and we feel-good about where we can take that business to. Thank you, sir. I joined the queue and all the best to the
Unidentified Speaker
Team, sir. Thank you. T
Operator
Hank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing remarks thank you all for participating in this earnings con-call
Unidentified Speaker
. I hope we have been able to answer your questions satisfactorily. If you have any further questions or would like to know more about the company, we would be happy to opportunity. We are very thankful to all our investors who by us and also have confidence in the company’s growth plan and focus. And with this, I wish everyone a great evening. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Ion Exchange India Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines