Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Premier Energies Ltd (NSE: PREMIERENE) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 15, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja — Managing Director
Analysts:
Mohit Kumar — Analyst
Praveen Sahay — Analyst
Nidhi Shah — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Premier Energies Limited Q4FY26 earnings conference call hosted by ICIC Securities Limited. 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. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mohit Kumar from ICICI Securities Ltd.
Thank you. And over to you sir.
Mohit Kumar — Analyst
Thank you. Nituja. Good evening. On behalf of ICICI Securities I welcome you all to the Q4FY26 earnings call of Prima Energies. Today we have with us from the management Mr. Chiranjeevsi Saluja, Managing Director Mr. Nand Kishore Khandalwal, Chief Financial Officer Mr. Vinay Gostagi, Chief Business Officer and Mr. Sudhir Mola, Chief Strategy Officer. We will begin with the opening remarks on the management which will be followed by Q and A. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja — Managing Director
Thank you. Mohit. Am I audible?
Operator
Yes, you are. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay — Analyst
So good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our full year FY 2026 earnings call. I am Chiranjeev Saluja, Managing Director of Premier Energy and I am joined today by my colleague Mr. N.K. Khandelwal Group CFO Sudhir Reddy, Chief Strategy Officer and Director and Vinay R. Ustagi Chief Business Officer. I am delighted to share that the company has reported a record set of revenue and profit numbers. Our total revenue has increased by 20.7% year on year to 8026 crores. The profitability margins have held steady.
Operation EBITDA Operation EBITDA margin is reported at 30.4% and PAT margin at 18.8%. Our PAT has jumped 61.1% year on year to 1510 crores. The most pleasing thing about these numbers is that they have been achieved in a challenging overall environment with increase in several commodity prices and freight prices. Amongst key business updates we recently completed construction of our 5.6 GW module plant at Sitarampur in Telangana. This is one of the largest and most automated module plants in India and is expected to achieve full ramp up in the next two months.
In the last few months we launched two new products zero busbar cells and all black modules. Responding to an evolving market. These two products the requirements are showing our strong technical expertise. These innovations are already receiving great market acceptance. Our manufacturing plants continue to run at near peak capacity utilizations and our top one cell line which was commissioned in June 2025 was stabilized in record time and is now running at 90% plus levels. Our proposed acquisition of 51% stake in Transcon is complete.
Transcon has reported excellent results with annual revenue and PAT of 423 and 45 crores respectively. EBITDA and PAT margins have jumped sharply over previous years to 19.1% and 10.6% respectively. The company is now embarking on major growth trajectory with total capacity set to increase nearly sevenfold to 16.75 GBA by July 2026 with focus on more lucrative HV and EHV segments. As we look forward to the New year, the environment around us is becoming ever more unpredictable but our investments in scale, technology, people and supplier relationships built over a 30 year operating platform are paying off in building a resilient business with profitable growth.
The Middle east crisis is turning into a moment for renewables as all stakeholders look to rethink energy mix and reduce consumption of fossil fuels. We believe this is going to provide a major boost to long term demand for the sector. We already seeing strong demand traction across all segments. New installations in FY26 grew to almost 45 gigawatt in AC terms a fantastic 87% growth over FY25 with estimated total module demand of close to 60 gigawatt. The momentum is expected to carry through into the current year and I emphasize notwithstanding concerns around tendering slowdown and transmission delays.
This is reflected in our growth order book which currently stands at 14,010 crores up 66% year on year. We are trying to capitalize on the booming solar opportunity with our expanded module capacity of 11.1 gigawatt and cell capacity going up to 10.6 gigawatt shortly. These capacities make us one of India’s largest and most integrated cell and module manufacturer. FY27 is a year of large capex for us at 5100 crores to be deployed across cells, ingot wafers, batteries and inverters, helping us to transform our business with a diversified portfolio of clean energy equipment.
At the same time, a major endeavor of the company is to leverage AI and digital technologies, automate day to day tasks, exploit process efficiency and boost productivity to stay competitive in an evolving marketplace. With all these initiatives we hope to maintain our relationship our leadership position as the lowest cost producer of best in class products for the foreseeable future. Thank you. We are now open for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and one on the touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may press star and two 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 is from the line of Praveen Sahai from Prabhu Dasli Gadar. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah. Thank you for opportunity and many congratulations for a good set of numbers. My first question is related to the model. If you can clarify like the total, you know Q4, the DCR model volume as a percentage of a total volume has sequentially decreased, doubled. Because if I look at the
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
Same. So yeah,
Praveen Sahay
Because if I look at. Yeah, if I look at the dcr, you know the website, it’s showing that the production of the DCR model for you has been doubled on the sequential basis. So as the case for you, like can you clarify that? So in the last quarterly call also we had said that the DCR website is more a verification portal for traceability and for DCR verification. It is not a portal to, you know, arrive at numbers of sales of module or cells. So the number there would not be an accurate number. You know, just to add to that.
Prabhu. Sorry. You know our sales mix between selling cells and DCI modules it changes on a quarter to quarter basis. And we have an order book comprising both. Hello, can you hear? Yes, yes. And our sale order book comprises both cells, DCR modules and non DCR modules. But I don’t think you should read too much into the quarterly changes in this mix.
Mohit Kumar
Okay.
Praveen Sahay
Second, on the cell realization or the external sales revenue if you can give us some indication that sequentially how it is because you have a higher order of a sell now in the order book. So how the realization is stepping up on the sequential basis. So in terms of the sale market, you know the sell market overall still continues to be favorable. The pricing has been quite stable at between 35.5 to 14 odd cents. And we don’t see any change in pricing in the current environments. Okay. Yeah. Thank you sir.
That. That’s it.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Vikram from DB Securities. Please go ahead.
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
So hi sir, two quick questions. First of all, there is a significant increase in purchase of stocks. Could you clarify why is that the case? Approximately four times of last year. Is that helping us with the margins?
Praveen Sahay
So hi, the stock going up is a planned move by us looking at the supply chain situation. And Also the new 5.6 gigawatt of module line which has got commissioned which also requires more stock to be purchased for the module line. So it’s well in line with our plan. There is no major increase.
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
Okay. And there is also a net debt increase of approximately 660 crores. Why is that
Praveen Sahay
So? You know that is inevitable because we are embarking on a large CapEx program. You know, our total CAPEX for the cell line of 7 gigawatt alone is about 3000 crores. And then in addition to that, we have already started work on our inboard wafer project and separately on other projects including aluminum line, aluminum frames, battery storage and of course transformers as well. So I think you will see as we have previously said, we have about a 12,000 crore capex plan spread over three years starting FY26.
And as the capex goes up, we are funding it through a mix of internal accruals and debt and the debt level will inevitably go up as well. We are obviously. Sorry, link 1
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
Yeah, sorry just to add there, I know you have clarified this as well, but what is the debt to equity ratio which you’re looking at. Sorry, please repeat that question. So what is the debt to equity? Considering all the expansions which are in place and which we are planning as a company, what is the debt to equity ratio you’re looking at in next one or two years?
Praveen Sahay
So through this CAPEX cycle, you know, our endeavor is to maintain our A plus rating and we want to maintain the debt to equity ratio at about 1 and debt to EBITDA ratio at about 1.5 or below.
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
Okay, and last and final thing, so we have somehow sustain margin when other peers in the same group are not able to because of copper prices, silver prices increase. It clearly looks like that this time the in stock trades have helped us. Right. How are you seeing the margin trajectory in this upcoming quarter? Again silver prices and copper prices have started going up and there is all the more escalations and everything which is happening. So how do you do you see this sustaining at this level?
Praveen Sahay
Yes, I mean we can’t give up, give you any guidance on margin as a company. We don’t give any futuristic, we don’t make any futuristic statements, but our current order book is priced at levels which are consistent with what we saw in the last year. Yes, some costs are going up, but at the same time they’re also doing a lot of work behind the scenes to be able to reduce the cost and improve the efficiencies in the overall business. We also need to understand that the scale of the business has grown by almost two times in the last one year and is going to grow by something like two to three times over the next year as all the new plants come online and the production kind of picks up.
So the result of this is building significant operating leverage in the business which is going to give us the advantage of efficiency in reduction of the fixed cost base. The procurement cost should come down as scale goes up. So I think the result of all these things is that yes, some costs are going up, but we believe that we are in a very good shape to absorb some of these cost increases and stay profitable. What happens to the exact margins obviously depends on a number of factors, many of which are outside our control.
Sure. And just to add to what Vinay said, there is a favorable shift in the business. There is more DCR modules coming up as the demand increases. Plus there is a policy shift towards ALM and green which is an advantage for leading players with strong balance sheets. So as Vinay said, apart from this, our scale, procurement efficiencies, low cost base, we believe it will help us maintain industry leading margins. Okay, thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nadesha from ICIC securities. Please go ahead. May they please go ahead with the question. Your line is unmuted.
Nidhi Shah
Hi, thank you so much for taking my question for my first question is on, is on export. So we’ve seen that export has sort of, you know, never really been the focus for the company because of domestic demands. And now that the tariffs on the anti dumping duties on India are very high, are we looking to export to the US at all by procuring ourselves from Africa or anything like that?
Praveen Sahay
So maybe we are looking at, if you look at our presentation, we feel there is a strong, you know, potential of exports to Europe and US both. We are seeing that the demand in Europe will really pick up after the FDA is in place. And even for the US we are looking at more on cell manufacturing. We had earlier announced our cell manufacturing plans in the US and we are looking at it positively now because things have settled down and we feel that there is still a good opportunity for exports and we will look at the right opportunity to start exports to the US
Nidhi Shah
And since ALM2 is coming up applicability in June, when do we expect realistically that demand driven purely by ALM tools but actually start picking up through grandfather projects?
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, you want to take the CMC and both are
Mohit Kumar
Different projects.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah. So maybe, I mean, you know, when it comes to LLM2, we need to Understand that there are various market segments with different rules applying to them. In terms of application of element 2, the private markets, both rooftop and open access projects for CNI customers becomes applicable from June 1. And the demand is expected to come online to come to the market immediately. And that by the way is a very substantial demand because now the CNI segment is almost equal in size to the utility scale segment.
So we expect from June 1st onwards the entire market, entire solar sector, except for utility scale segment, will shift towards element two or domestic sales. And then when it comes to the utility scale market, the demand is going to come, I would say towards the end of FY28 and 29 onwards. Because there are all these old projects which have been auctioned before September 25, they have been grandfathered and they can still use imported sales. But if you look at the overall market demand mix, if you look at what we did in the last year, out of 45 gigawatts, 30 gigawatts including rooftop Kusum and CNI is switching onto the domestic cells right now and only 15 gigawatts will be remaining for the utility scale market for FY28 and beyond.
So a bulk of the market shifts to domestic sales immediately. Now.
Nidhi Shah
All right, my last question would be on K Solar. So the company recently announced that we will not be acquiring K Folair anymore. So could you let us know why that was firstly and second, that do we have other companies in mind for inorganic growth or is there something now that we’re looking to build this piece on our own?
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, so you know, in terms of Case Solar, look, this was a non binding term sheet at that time and the final documentation still had to be completed. Obviously there are, there’s a very comprehensive set of documents for any transaction of this kind and unfortunately we could not find an agreement on some of these terms and conditions in the set of documents. I think that is the reason why the transaction could not be completed. In terms of our future plans, we remain totally committed to the inverter business and indeed are working right now to expedite our plans.
We are looking at our strategic options in terms of JV Partner. We have a proposed JV with Cinema SGS and that JV remains the first preference and we are looking at other strategic options as well. And we will finalize this over the next few months.
Nidhi Shah
All right, thank you so much.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Dam Capital. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, sir, congratulations on a very good set of numbers. First of all, so firstly, you know, we’ve been able to maintain our gross margins at a stable level versus most of our peers seeing a very sharp decline. Right. In that
Mohit Kumar
Sense,
Praveen Sahay
Could
Mohit Kumar
You just provide some insights on our execution and how are we managing this cost inflation which is ongoing.
Praveen Sahay
So Kunal, I think one of the significant things which you see is the utilization of our cell lines. So we have been able to ramp up and utilize our cell lines at optimum level and that is one of the key reasons that we have the right DCR mix. Want to add something with it?
Mohit Kumar
No, I think Kunana, this is a question we already tried to answer earlier. Yes,
Praveen Sahay
There’s been an increase in some of the costs but as the scale of the business goes up we are also seeing a significant amount of operating leverage and efficiency coming into the business. We are actually doing a lot of work to optimize our operations, increase automation, use all the digital technologies, etc. To reduce our cost base. And I think what you see in terms of the results is basically a mix of some of these costs going up but us being able to reduce costs on some of the other areas of operations helping us to maintain our margins.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. Just to follow up on this now given like we like the 7 gigawatt line is
Praveen Sahay
Going to come on same anytime soon, right? In the next three, four months. Now do you see like as you ramp up the line these cost optimization will continue and if you can just quantify that. And second on the 7 gigawatt line would there be like a front ended capex
Mohit Kumar
Wherein you can do further brownfield at a lower cost and what would be the optionality of that capex?
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, yeah sure. So I think, I mean Definitely, you know 7 gigawatt is basically double our current capacity all in a single line, single site. So there will definitely be many more efficiencies coming into the business. Just to give you an idea, you know we currently have four different module plants spread across Papcity and the new Sitaram coast plant that we’ve just commenced operations in uses 40% less manpower on a per megawatt basis. So you know that is the kind of advantage that we are seeing in reducing our cost base in relation to, you know, a potential for brownfield site.
Yes, I mean I think that is definitely a real possibility for us. We have the land and the additional infrastructure available for doing an almost parallel 7 gigawatt new cell line with a CAPEX cost efficiency of as much as 30 to 40%. So you know, bearing in mind that our CapEx for the first 7 gigawatt line is already at about 35% lower than the industry benchmark. That gives us a major advantage in terms of cost and in an ability to scale up and build this line in a very quick time assuming that the demand takes off.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. This
Praveen Sahay
Is very helpful, sir. Secondly, in terms of the existing order book of 14,000 odd crores, how should we think of the execution timelines of the same, like the conversion to revenue on this? And sir, a follow up here would be what? I mean we know that you don’t give a precise guidance but the F26 order inflows have been extremely strong for the company. Like are we confident to grow on the order inflows for 27 as well? Are you
Mohit Kumar
Seeing that market shaping up in that sense?
Praveen Sahay
Yeah. So Kunal, the execution of the order book, most of this will happen in FY27. I can’t give you an exact number but it will be I would say more than 2/3. And in relation to new order intake for the year, I think like we have said earlier, you know, there is a very strong demand momentum in the sector and in fact we are going to see a surge in particularly I would say DCR order intake as we go forward because a large part of the market has been sitting on placing new orders in anticipation of hoping for an element to extension.
But we believe that the policy is here to stay and there will be no further extension. As and when we approach June 1st and that kind of decision line becomes clear, we will see, I would say a big rush for orders. And I think FY27 should be equally good for the order intake for us and for the industry.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. Thirdly, sir, on the resolution, fundraising resolution for this 5000 crores. Now could you just help with the rational for the same? And how are we contemplating on the potential capital allocation? You know, like what are the areas that we might be thinking about?
Praveen Sahay
So this was an enabling resolution. We had taken this approval from our board. There is no plan for any QIB or fundraise immediately. As I told you, we’re looking at opportunities in Europe and US as and when we see that there is an opportunity and we need to do a fundraise, we will of course intimate as of now there are no plans. It was just an enabling resolution.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. And last one, bookkeeping. There is this sharp increase of inventory. I mean your working capital getting blocked. Now could you help? Like is it because like you’re building up the stock ahead of the module line coming up, like could you just Explain the transition.
Praveen Sahay
It’s for two reasons. One is building a stock ahead of the module line and also because of the Middle east crisis that we have stocked up, you know, we planned this inventory levels and stocked up raw material.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. This is extremely helpful sir. All the best for the future and I’ll fall back in the queue. Thank you.
Praveen Sahay
Thank you.
Operator
The next question is from the line of Namanjan from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
Hello, Audible.
Mohit Kumar
Yes,
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, my question is primarily on the best business since it’s the future is solar plus bass and there have been multiple reports that the government government will not push for a 50% plus localization invest going forward. Right. So seems like more of an ALM moment for modules. So why. And since you know, the CAPEX intensity is really low, especially for containerized test solution where we are not doing cells anymore, why are we not pushing for a, let’s say a 12 gigawatt hour capacity by March 2027 itself?
Because you know, given the asset terms going away be very high, you might, you know, be one of the earlier players in the field and make up, you know, most
Mohit Kumar
Of the profitability in the space in FY28.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, sure. I mean I think Naman, you would have noted if you’re following the government announcements and, and the likelihood of the policy, any localization roadmap is likely to become effective only by around FY28 or so. And as we speak, you know, there is, you know the industry is primarily basically relying on imports from China on which there is no constraint right now. And the duty level also remains quite low at about 11%. So I think over the next one to two years we will still continue to see a big portion of the demand being met from imports.
And that is why we’ve decided to basically pace our capacity addition program for this business. And secondly, since you know, we have been able to create sort of a capability where we can expand cell capacity quickly and as well as at a lower capex. How sure are we in achieving the 7 gigawatt capacities? As in it sort of indicates that we’ll be able to do it in the half year which will probably make you the largest player in cell. Right. So if we do we see any delays or it’s sort of like we really believe that it’s gonna happen.
And what’s your expected timeline for stabilization after that? So we had even said the same thing in our last earnings call that it’s on track. And if you look at our presentation, the 7 GHz plant 4.8 June and 2.2 September is on track. It takes four to six months for stabilizing these lines and as we speak everything is on track. We don’t see any significant delays.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Nigam from Motila Loswal. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah,
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
Hi, thank
Praveen Sahay
You so much for the opportunity and you know, congratulations on a very good result despite all the volatility. Just on in the presentation, you know there is one slide on global opportunity. So I was just wondering if you are able to give a little more details in terms of specifically, is
Mohit Kumar
There something that you’re looking for either in module cell batteries, any specific geographies that you prefer over others. So any thoughts over there? That’s my first question.
Praveen Sahay
So Abhishek on solar cell we had announced our JV with Helene. We had put it on a pause. We have reinitiated discussions now. We have also started looking for sites. So we have seen this on our US Solar cell plans. Europe we are seeing a great opportunity. The demand is about 80 gigawatts per annum. There’s also a mandate in EU for solar cells for inverters. So we are evaluating all these opportunities and as and when we are close to finalizing we would update the markets.
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
Okay, okay, fair enough. I understand.
Praveen Sahay
And second on the battery side, so you know, everybody’s doing capex. I see you are doing capex and Vari is doing. And others who are also sort of in the, in the frame markets have expected a localization policy for a while. But you know, off late there has not been much from the, from the government or from the ministry. So is there anything you want to, you know, update us on, on what is happening over there and if you expect a localization policy, could it be, you know, first half this year, second half this year, Anything you have over there?
Yeah, sure Abhishek. So you know, we feel that the government is completely committed to local manufacturing for batteries. In fact, batteries and all the other clean energy equipment, be it wind turbines, you know, electrolyzers and all the other pieces of equipment over a period of time with batteries. I think the government has been slightly conservative given that it’s a nascent market and there is a large need for batteries in the short run. There’s more than 50 gigawatt hours of auctions which have been completed which have been done at very, very competitive prices.
Also, given what the government market experience has been for ALM for solar, the government is trying to give about A two year timeline to the industry to prepare itself. We feel the government is very committed to this. They’ve already held industry consultations and thought process is very, very consistent with what we have seen in ALM2 and ALM3. And we would expect the policy to be announced. I mean you know it’s very difficult to give exact indicators for government initiative but you know it could be announced anytime over the next three to four months.
Mohit Kumar
Okay, okay, that’s very useful. Thank you so much. I will come back in the queue.
Praveen Sahay
Thanks Abhishek.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ketan Jen from Evander Spark. Please go ahead.
Mohit Kumar
Thank you. Good evening sir. I just had a follow up question from a previous participant. I understand been able to retain our margins and appreciable but how is the price price cost moved from January till now? The bill of materials for modules, how has it moved in terms of.
Praveen Sahay
So you’re talking about DCR modules, you’re talking about non DCR modules,
Mohit Kumar
Just the bill of material. However how has the cost increase
Praveen Sahay
Non this year modules we have seen sell prices rising in China they have gone up from 3 1/2 cents level to almost 6 6.2 cents. So it’s like almost 80, 90% increase on sales. But since it’s a pass through to the customers, module prices would go up in line with China prices. And if you talk of BCR modules because of scale, efficiency and the mix which is changing. So we have been able to maintain our margins and we are quite confident that going forward long term margin trends should be stable and likely even better because the mix is changing.
What you need to understand is that the non DCR modules are gradually going to be phasing out and more of made in India DCR mix is going to be brought in as the IPP also start buying DCR modules. And we are quite confident that with scale and procurement efficiencies we will be able to maintain healthy margins.
Mohit Kumar
Is there any increase in the bill of material as well apart from cell in the costing?
Praveen Sahay
So for glass there has been no increase because of the minimum import price. For aluminium we have seen around 11% of the module cost is aluminium. There has been slight increase but again with design changes and frame size optimization we have been able to mitigate those increase of aluminium. So it’s not been significant.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. So as you mentioned there have been a healthy sales mix. I think around FY25 we would have had around 60% of non DCR and around 40% of DCR. Do we maintain the same for FY26. Did we have the same mix?
Praveen Sahay
So we never gave the FY25 numbers. And but going forward I can, I can give you an indication that every, every quarter DCR mix is going to increase.
Mohit Kumar
Okay, understood sir. Thank you. And all the best. I’ll get back to the team.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Trakar Porwal from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
Thank you sir for the opportunity. One question again a follow up to the previous participants question. We talked on DCR non DCR models on cells. In the last call you mentioned two levels of cost saving. One is silver reduction in your solar cell and second is hedging that we do for six months. So one first question is I’m heading what is the policy right now? Because given since last 6 months silver prices have remained elevated. So is the cost increasing on that front? Second, given you filed on the BSE as well about zero bus bar sales, so maybe there’s some clarity.
What could be approximate reduction in silver consumption because of that? Because we have not heard of zero bus bar from anyone and any breakthroughs that globally you are seeing in terms of reducing
Mohit Kumar
Silver, which maybe we can also do.
Praveen Sahay
Yes. Hi Prakhal, So you know on silver we’ve had extensive discussions in the last call also and you know we maintain sufficient stock at any given point of time and obviously also undertake hedging as we said last time. The other thing what we have started doing now is that we have started passing the silver cost risk to our customers and all the new orders that we are signing. So as a result of all these initiatives we are not affected by silver cost increases going forward. I would say second in terms of you mentioned about the potential for reduction of silver usage in our so the zero busbar modules or cells, they use lower silver by as much as about 10% reduction in silver.
And we believe that, you know, and longer term we have got a lot of other initiatives again as we discussed last time, also including potentially a complete replacement of silver with copper paste or even aluminum paste that I would say broadly is about 1.5 to 2 years away. But in the meanwhile we are working on a comprehensive program including reducing the silver consumption, hedging and passing the cost to our consumers. Sure, that is very helpful. Second question is on the order book. If I look at the order book mix 60 percentage sales and 40% models, very rough calculation maybe suggests around four and a half gigawatt of module audible.
So my question is given we’ll have 11 gigawatt order capacity largely for the entire year. So will that mean reduction in utilization levels? And how to look at that, that is one and second is given, it is a very big sell order book. So does this mean that we’re selling to players who are more dominant in the retail category where we don’t have that dominance right now? And so what are we doing exactly to increase our presence there? Those are the common questions. So just to clarify, on the sell order book, substantial portion of the order book also goes into FY28.
So it’s not in FY27 itself. These are contracts with module manufacturers whom we’ll be supplying cells next year. Also in terms of module utilization, we are, you know, at almost about 11 gigawatts taking a 75% kind of utilization. That’s about seven, seven and a half gigawatt. And then model orders, we also need some, you know, potential possibilities of getting orders in every quarter. So these are orders which are in the order book, which are long term orders. Whereas every quarter there’s an order book which also comes up, you know, just to add to that, you know, I’ll again point to, you know, if you look at the makeup of the market, almost half of the market is basically coming from the rooftop and the C and I segments.
The rooftop segment shows up in our order book because those are mainly cash and carry orders and they are booked on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And the CI market, which is basically estimated at about 15 gigawatts, the ALM2 is becoming applicable now. And with that I think we are likely to see a surge in order placement by these customers. So in general we are very, very optimistic that we will see the order pipeline is already very healthy and we will see a large surge in order booking by customers which will basically allow us to also fulfill our fill, our production capacity.
Mohit Kumar
Just one clarification for the rooftop segment that you created to that is through the cache
Praveen Sahay
And carry distributed modeling.
Mohit Kumar
That’s right, yes.
Praveen Sahay
Okay, thank you so much and all the best for the coming quarters. Thank you.
Mohit Kumar
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Vikram from DB Securities. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
No,
Chiranjeev Singh Saluja
All my questions were answered. Thank
Praveen Sahay
You.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, thanks for the follow up. So on the cell technology now we’ve been much ahead of the industry. We were among the first entries, the G12 ourselves and now 0 BuzzBar as well. So what is the efficiency level in the zero Busbar how are like how, how is it getting received by the customer? Like
Mohit Kumar
What feedback are you getting and what will be the timelines for achieving the 25.8% that we had sort of highlighted?
Praveen Sahay
I let Sudhir answer this question. I think on the efficiency front it is going to be about 0.1 to 0.15% higher efficiency. This is basically due to higher exposure area but in the zero bus bar. But that
Mohit Kumar
Said it has other advantages with respect to more robustness to shading and micro cracks that the main advantage with respect to zero bus bar.
Praveen Sahay
His other question was when will we reach 25.8% efficiency?
Mohit Kumar
We are currently at an average efficiency in the top con line at about 25.5. Now that we are getting it stabilized
Praveen Sahay
These lines with a 90% utilization, we expect to move forward gradually over the next few months. One step at a time. I would say at least it will take us couple of more quarters to get to that kind of efficiency
Mohit Kumar
Levels.
Praveen Sahay
Understood, this is helpful. And so just to follow up here now from here on like how do you see this efficiency curve panning out? Like what are the further tech upgradations or improvements that we are working upon? You know which
Mohit Kumar
Has already worked in China and if you could just provide some insights over there.
Praveen Sahay
See I think currently to see the efficiency trends in China they are on a mass production, it’s still hovering around 25.6 to 25.8 even for the A grade ones. What you see these announcements around 26 and all are more for the champion cells and not the mass production cell efficiencies. With the Topcon technology you hit a bar somewhere around 26% to 26.1%. Beyond that efficiency improvement just at the Topcon cell is not possible. It will need more innovations, more into tandem cell technology, back contact and all these kind of newer technologies which will take some more time to mature on a mass production scale.
Operator
I think
Mohit Kumar
A couple of more years, from two to three years at least from seeing mass produced tandem modules.
Praveen Sahay
Got it, got it. This is very helpful sir. Second, in terms of the backward integrations you’ve talked about aluminium frames, are there any other verticals also that you’re looking
Mohit Kumar
Or contemplating upon in terms of insourcing of raw materials or anything of that sort?
Praveen Sahay
See Kunal, I think you know that remains a bossing piece for us. You know we have to wait and see how the government policy evolves. We know that the government is quite keen to start getting all these components also made in India. But what is the Exact policy and what are the timelines? We will have to kind of wait to see how that shapes up and accordingly we will decide what is best for the business. Got it. And lastly on transformers, like it’s a bit unintentional with respect to the upcoming 10gb capacity.
And could you just give some like how do the milestones look like here in terms of getting the required certification and especially because it’s an hv HV segment. How are we progressing on the talent acquisition as well as. Could you say thank
Mohit Kumar
You?
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, sure. So Kunal, in terms of milestones, this plant is due for completion in July this year. And the good thing is that because of the strong management team in place and the fact that the company already has existing production facilities, they have already started producing some of the larger transformers and doing type testing and certification work which can take as long as six to 12 months. So I think the company is making very steady progress on that. In terms of management team, there is already a strong management team as we have shown in our previous presentations which is ex Toshiba and some of the other majors in the electrical goods industry.
And we believe that the company is already secured amongst their first orders. So you know, it will take about two years for the company to fully ramp up their operations. But they are well on track to beginning commercial production and achieving certification in this timeline.
Mohit Kumar
Understood. Is the clarification who from which has that? What like which client have you got
Praveen Sahay
The order from? Unfortunately I can’t give you the client name. Kunal. This is very helpful sir. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anvitra Banerjee from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Mohit Kumar
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for taking my question and congratulations for a very good set of numbers. I just wanted to ask one bookkeeping question. So ON slide number 22 the sales that you have mentioned is 21,751 million. Whereas in the reported financials the sales number is 22,300ft of revenue from operations. So just wanted to understand why the difference.
Praveen Sahay
Yes, sure. So what you see on this slide Aritra is only the sell and module sales. Because this order book is only for sales and modules. But in addition to this we obviously have the projects and the EPC business. So the rest of the revenue is coming from that line which is not showing here.
Mohit Kumar
Okay sir, understood. And another question I wanted to ask was sequentially built share of modules in the revenue has gone up but still like the overall margins and cement tables. So I understand like The VCR share in the modules has also gone up but
Praveen Sahay
Typically like cells have a sharper margin profile than DCI module business as well. So going forward, even like going forward, even if the sales share in the revenue comes down, are the margins still expected to remain same or. Or in other words are like VCI module business revenue
Mohit Kumar
And sell business revenue margins the same? Could you please share some color on that?
Praveen Sahay
So you know I think unfortunately we can’t predict the future and we can’t say how the margins are going to play out in future. But you can see what is the current shape of our order book and we have said earlier that the order book pricing is consistent with what we have seen over the last six to 12 months. So that gives us a good visibility in terms of the volumes as well as pricing and margins. But going forward the mix is only going to become more favorable wherein the DCR share is going to grow at the cost of the non DCR market which is a much lower margin market.
So overall I think the margin outlook for the business is likely to be favorable going into the future.
Mohit Kumar
And this one last question regarding the alien risk to implementation. So hypothetically speaking, if it doesn’t get implemented, let’s say in June 2020 because it gets delayed by someone, so is there any risk of some of the orders in our current order book getting cancelled going forward or is that not a material risk?
Praveen Sahay
No, it’s not a material risk because none of the orders in our order book are from the CNI segments which are deliveries in the next two or three months. So if you look at what business is going to come up from the 1st of June it is going to be the CNI business which will immediately move into the DCR mix. And most of these CNI developers have finished or have completed them installations with the 1 June deadline. So the orders in our order book from that segment are post October November. So even if the DCR or the implementation gets delayed by a quarter it would not affect any of our orders and we don’t see any material risk there.
Mohit Kumar
Thanks for the answers and all the best for the upcoming quarters.
Praveen Sahay
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Participants who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1. As there are no further questions from participants I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments.
Praveen Sahay
Yeah, thank you. So thank you everyone for your time. I appreciate it’s a Friday evening. Just to conclude the call and how we see the business. See there is a lot of noise in the market in relation to demand slowdown, strong competition cost and margin pressures, et cetera. We believe that our performance over the last year has been a very strong validation of the company’s overall business strategy, management competence and execution. In general, we are very, very positive on the growth outlook for the sector, given all the initiatives by the government.
And we are now, in fact, beginning to think beyond the current plans and looking to next stage of growth in terms of products, technologies and geographies. We are grateful for your support and look forward to working with you. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of ICICI Securities Limited that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.