Sona BLW Precision Forgings Limited (NSE: SONACOMS) Q3 2025 Earnings Call dated Jan. 23, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Vivek Vikram Singh — Managing Director & Group Chief Executive Officer
Praveen Chakrapani Rao — Group Chief Technology Officer
Rohit Nanda — Group Chief Financial Officer
Sat Mohan Gupta — Chief Executive Officer of Motor Business
Analysts:
Kapil Singh — Head of Consumer and Digital Commerce Research, India, and Lead Auto Analyst
Jay Kale — Analyst
Jinesh Gandhi — Analyst
Gunjan Prithyani — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Prateek Poddar — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Sona Comstar Q3 FY ’25 Earnings Group Conference Call. Please note that all participant lines are in the listen-mode only as of now. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Please note that this call is being recorded. We request that you place your lines on-mute except when asking a question.
Some of the statements by the management team in today’s conference call may be forward-looking in nature and we request you to refer to the disclaimer in the earnings presentation for further details. The management will also not be taking any specific customer-related questions or confirm or deny any customer name or relationships due to confidentiality risk. Please refrain from naming any questions.
Now, I hand over the floor to Mr. Kapil Singh, Head of Consumer and Digital Commerce Research India and lead auto Analyst at Nomura. Kapil, please go-ahead. Thank you.
Kapil Singh — Head of Consumer and Digital Commerce Research, India, and Lead Auto Analyst
Thanks, Linda. Good day, everyone. To take us into the FY ’25 results and-answer your questions, we have with us the team from Sona Comstaer, Mr. Vivek Vikram Singh, MD and Group CEO; Mr. Vikram Verma, CEO of Driveline Business; Mr. Sat Mohan Gupta, CEO of Motor Business; Mr. Praveen Chakrapani Rao, Group CTO; Mr. Rohit Nanda, Group CFO; Mr. Amit Mishra, Head, Investor Relations; and Mr. Pratik Sachan, GM Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations.
I will now hand over the call to Vivek for his opening remarks and presentation. Over to you, Vivek.
Vivek Vikram Singh — Managing Director & Group Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Kapil, and welcome everyone to the earnings call for quarter three, which was a decent quarter despite us achieving our highest-ever net profit, highest-ever EV revenue and highest-ever revenues — EV revenue-share, so as has always been our policy when talking to our owners, our shareholders. We will let the bad news take the escalator, so we will begin with the challenges.
First, demand in Europe continues to remain weak and we do not anticipate any imminent reversal of these trends. Second, both the off-highway market in the US and the commercial vehicle market in India also continued to show weakness, resulting in a production decline last quarter. Given our significant market-share in both of these segments, sales of our differential gears and differential assemblies have been negatively impacted. We hope this — this trend at least can reverse in the coming quarters. Third, there was an inventory buildup in North-America at the customers end during the first-half of the year for multiple reasons, which has been followed by a fairly sharp reduction in inventory in the last couple of months and that has affected our performance this quarter.
Apart from these macro factors, one of our largest customers is transitioning a major model to an upgraded and redesigned version. Now this change although positive in the medium-term is expected to adversely affect our supplies to this customer in January and February. This is due to the typical cycle of reducing inventory of the outgoing model before gradually increasing production sharply for the new model. So while we expect our supply schedules to normalize by March, 4th-quarter will likely be weak because of these disruptions in the first two months.
But the good news is that the factors affecting our current sales performance are temporary in nature. And as I said to our team, if we are not losing share of wallet with our customers and our customers are not losing market-share, there is absolutely no reason to worry. And in fact, it is an opportunity for improving product design or increasing our share of wallet with that customer. We expect to regain the lost revenues of January and February within the next two quarters itself.
We also continue our strong progress on our strategic priority of electrification, achieving our highest-ever EV revenue and EV revenue-share during this quarter. Additionally, we won a new program to supply differential assemblies for one of our existing customers, a new and first look fairly exciting EV models in India. We also received our second product order in the sensors and software vertical and successfully commercialized a new product, zone monitoring sensors.
We’ve also made a significant technological breakthrough by developing a 180 degree field of view using short-range radar sensors which Praveen will talk about later but in short, our journey of pivoting Novelic from a radar services business to a diversified sensor product company is going quite well.
We are pleased to announce that our Board has approved an investment in Clear Motion Incorporated. This is a company that is truly revolutionizing the in-cabin experience for passenger vehicles. With its fully active suspension technology, this is a game-changer as we see it. This investment will further strengthen our partnership with Clear Motion, benefiting us both as an investor and as a supplier. We also continue to grow our share of business with existing customers and are adding new customers and new products. And we are very happy to report that we have further increased our global market-share in both differential gears as well as starter motors in 2024.
Now coming to the numbers of the quarter. Our revenue grew by 12%, while EBITDA and net profit increased by 3% and 14% respectively. Our margins declined compared to last year due to adverse product and geographic mix, while still staying in our range of 27%. And amidst an what I’d call an inordinate amount of media coverage and noise about an EV slowdown, our BEV revenue grew by an incredible 48% in absolute terms to the highest-ever INR329 crores and our BEV revenue-share has increased to an all-time high of 39%.
Coming to the nine-month figures, we’ve increased our revenue EBITDA and PAT by 17%, 13% and 19% respectively. And since this is the end-of-the calendar year, we got our global market shares calculated. Our starter market-share has improved from 4.2% to 4.4% as Europe and the US markets where we have higher market shares have grown faster than Asia. And coming to the bigger one, it is a matter of great pride and I congratulate Vikram and his team that our global market-share in differential grids has grown from 8.1% last year to 8.8% now.
As some of you may remember, at the end of 2019, this market-share was 4.5%. And despite most automotive volume growth coming out of China, where we have negligible share, well, as of now, our — and several new competitors have emerged from India and China. Despite all this, we have nearly doubled our market-share in these five years and we intend to keep going from strength-to-strength and keep expanding this market-share all over the world.
Coming to electrification, our BEV revenue has increased from 28% in the first-nine months of FY ’24 to 36% for nine months FY ’25. In revenue terms, this has grown by 52% to INR9.3 billion. This growth — I mean, if you compare it with the non-BEV revenue growth is 10 times is the BEV growth. This is because our EV traction motors and EV differential assemblies, both have been the fastest-growing segments for us this year.
We also continue to build-on our EV order book and in Q3, we’ve added one new EV program. So this is a new EV order from an existing customer, an Indian legacy OEM and we will be supplying the differential assemblies for their upcoming electric car models, which we feel should do well in the Indian market. With this new win and other new non-EU orders, our net order book has increased slightly over the previous quarter to INR232 billion and the proportion of EVs in the order book stands at 76% at the end of Q3.
With this, we come to our fourth KRA, diversification. The weak demand in Europe in the first-nine months means that the revenue-share from hybrid and micro hybrid has been lower than in previous year. The trend of increasing electrification and decreasing ICE dependence continues unabated for us and this year we’ve seen the Ice revenue shrink to less than 10%. Geographically, North-America continues to be our largest end-market at 43% and this is despite the negative impact of the inventory reduction that I spoke about earlier.
The European market has been impacted by weak demand and our revenue from this region has declined from 26% to 23%. India remains our second-largest market and the revenue-share also remains stable at 28%. In the market mix, it’s fairly, fairly visible. The weakness in commercial vehicle demand, which has resulted in our share of revenue declining from 14% to 10%, which is quite a quite a shift in the first-nine months. In the product mix, the fastest-growing segments for us this year as I already mentioned, have been EV traction motors and EV differential assemblies, followed by differential gears, which is reflected in the change in the product mix.
We also made a small but exciting beginning with our advanced suspension motors starting serial production and becoming 0.2% of our nine-month revenue. Three years from now, we expect this product to be one of our leading revenue contributors.
So before this video is played, I want to say that there are only a few times in a career that one comes across truly game-changing technologies in companies that are run by passionate people. And when we met Clear Motion four years ago, we knew this was one such company and we must work together to bring this product to the world. We must do everything we can to do this and get it done. And four years of engineering and development work later, we are further cementing our relationship in them with us investing $4 million in this current fundraising round.
Pratik, if you could play the video so people can get the idea of the product.
So as you can see the front car is the one that has the clear motion active suspension installed while the second car does not and you can see what happens to those Zenga blocks inside that vehicle so this is a technology that makes the in-cabin experience almost as if you were in a private jet this is because of the active that you can see on the lower left-hand side to which we are a significant contributor.
So in Clear Motion’s current fundraising route, we are investing INR4 million. They are fully active suspension technology, which is controlled by a BLDC motor and controller-based actuator. It has a latency that is five times lower than any other currently available alternative in the suspension world, which to the non-technical ones means it is a five times faster response rate. This active suspension system is built on the software-centric electrohydraulic core, which is that, which includes controlled software, a processor and an electric motor, all of which is supplied by Sonar. This technology has been successfully commercialized and is already in-production in China and is being supplied to the ET9.
Initially, the deployment is expected to be in the premium car segment, specifically e-segment and above, which represents, I would say, a total addressable market of nearly $14 billion. We anticipate that this technology will progressively be deployed in higher and higher-volume segments. And as both an supplier and an investor in Clear Motion, we are fairly well-positioned to benefit from this change and development.
So with this, I hand over the to our Group CTO, Praveen, to update us on our technology updates. Over to you, Praveen.
Praveen Chakrapani Rao — Group Chief Technology Officer
Thanks. Vivek. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m happy to take you through the 3rd-quarter technology updates. What you see here is our technology roadmap. As mentioned by Vivek, we commercialized one-product and added two new products, future products to our technology roadmap.
If you look at the top-right corner, the zone monitoring sensor, it is truly a revolutionary product that gets us firmly into the industrial segment. These sensors whose purpose is to alert and protect people operating in potentially unsafe or hazardous work environments. This could also be used in factory floors where people work-in close proximity with robots and AGVs. This product opens opportunity in industrial domain where several use cases exist today. The use of this product will enhance existing safety measures like barriers or in some cases even replace them.
The second product that I’m going to talk about is the limited slip differential, which you see on the left-side or LSD for short. LSD has significant use cases in low traction surfaces, cornering and high torque situations. This product brings together our deep expertise in differential assembly while newly developed capabilities in clutches to offer the next-generation product to our customer.
The third product is the gearbox for or electric vertical takeoff and landing. The market for is evolving globally and India is playing a very important role in-building them with indigenous technologies and using local ecosystem. Given that the EVTOLs transport people, the safety and reliability of every subsystem is critical. Therefore EVTOLs are designed and tested in the most stringent conditions and certified by DGCA. Started working on design and development of gearbox for EVTOLs with our expertise in gear technology, material science, thermal management and structural engineering. This product will enable Sona Comstar to play an active role in the future EV tools and drone space.
The next one is the point about the new product that is a 180 degree field of few short-range sensors. These acquisition brought us capability in the millimeter-wave radar sensors and we are proud to announce another major breakthrough with this product, the 180 degree field of view short-range sensors. The diagram indicates the use-case where typical passenger car would use four ultrasonic sensors when you do a reverse parking, this unique sensor, just one sensor will replace that you don’t need to drill holes in the bumper and you know it performs much better function. It also has additional capabilities like kick sensing, tailgate or door protection. Additional use cases are parking support and collision warning which opens up cases use cases in affordable PVs as well as two-wheelers.
With this I hand over to Rohit for the financial portions. Thank you.
Rohit Nanda — Group Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Praveen. A good day-to you all. It’s my pleasure to share our 3rd-quarter and Nine-Month results for FY ’25 with you.
We’ll start with the Q3 performance during the quarter gone by, our aggregate revenue has grown by 12% to INR868 crores. In comparison with this, the underlying light-vehicle market in North-America, Europe and Asia, which are the three largest markets for us, grew only by 1%. Our BEV revenue continued to show solid growth. In this quarter, the growth was 48% in BEV revenue. It grew to INR329 crores and constituted 39% of our Q3 sales.
Our EBITDA adjusted for ESOP cost grew by 3% to INR240 crores. EBITDA margin was lower by 2.3% compared to the same quarter last year and that’s largely attributable to the change in-product mix. Our profit-after-tax should be seen after adjusting for exceptional expenses which were incurred on diligence work for certain inorganic opportunities. Compared like-to-like, our PAT grew by 17% to INR160 crores. The margin was higher by 60 basis-points, thanks to the net finance income generated from investment of QIP proceeds.
Moving on to the nine months performance. During the nine-month period, our revenue growth was 17%. The revenue number was INR2,686 crores compared to the underlying growth of only 2% in the key markets of North-America, Europe and Asia. Revenue growth for nine-month period was 52% and the number was INR929 crores and it was 36% of our total sales.
EBITDA adjusted for higher ESOP cost grew by 15% to INR763 crore. Our EBIT — adjusted EBITDA margin is lower by 30 basis-points compared to the nine-month period last year and that’s mainly on account of product mix despite having a favorable operating leverage and lower input cost. Our profit-after-tax adjusted for exceptional expenses grew by 23% to INR467 crores. Adjusted PAT margin was higher by about 70 basis-points. That’s mainly due to higher net finance income. The adjustment to profit-after-tax represents a cost incurred in relation to the diligence work for various acquisitions.
This brings us to the last slide, which is on the key ratios. I’ll just talk about the key highlights here. So on the improvement side, our working capital and fixed asset turnovers have improved to 5.1 and 3.8 times respectively. Net-debt to EBITDA went further negative due to QIP fundraise in the earlier quarter and cash generated for the quarter. Our return on capital employed and return-on-equity have seen a dip consequent to the QIP funds raised during the quarter, but is expected to start improving once the funds are deployed and the new acquisition grows over the next few years.
With this, we’ll come to the end of our Q3 earnings presentation and I’ll now hand the proceedings back to Nomura team for Q&A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
We will now open the floor for the Q&A session. If you wish to raise the question, please use the function located at the bottom-right of the WebEx page. We will unmute your line and prom you to speak up or you may also submit a question via Q&A chat box addressing to all panelists. Please be reminded to keep your questions from maximum of two questions if you have more questions, please to you. Thank you.
We have the first question from Jay Kale Hi, Jay, your line is open. Please go-ahead with your question.
Jay Kale
Yeah. Good evening, team. Am I audible? Yeah. So yeah, I congratulations for your — for the investment in your technological advanced customer like Clear Motion. My first question is basically, Vivek, you mentioned that your BEV revenue growth, of course, has been strong, but it also mentioned about inventory correction at your customer end. So are you seeing a case of a few BEV models of your customers are actually faring lower than even your customers’ expectations? And hence the transition of your stated order book to revenues could be lower-than-expected going-forward? And in the current context, do you still believe your revenues to double in a three-year time-frame, which historically has been your track-record, of course, ex of any acquisitions and the railway acquisition. How do you see that? That’s my first question. I have a couple of more.
Vivek your voice is not audible is it only me or for everyone?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Sorry I was on-mute. I said there was many questions in one. So let me take them point-by-point. So yes, you’re right that we have doubled every three years so-far. But that does include inorganic. It doesn’t — it’s not exclusive because if you look at the history when we became Solar Comstar, we did acquire Comstar part of the business and that’s how also some part of the growth comes from there as well.
On your order book question, we don’t see any major challenges because like I said, this is why the construct that we have is a net order book of 10 years. So even if a program gets delayed out, let’s say, by six to six months-to nine months or even a year, the size of the order book does not change. The shape may change and it is significant from a shareholder perspective that how soon does it translate into revenue, but not the total quantum.
To your point about BEV sales slowing, actually that is one of the things that I found fairly puzzling. I mean I think people are familiar with that line I quote the. But this is one of those cases for five quarters where I think it protect Shone, Baojun, Pravati,. Even after 52% growth, EV is the part that gets the most questions.
I think if you look at the data of EV sales, even in India, by the way, or overall, it is far, far, far faster-growing than the ICE part. Actually, if I were to look at this quarter and say how much our EV revenue has grown. And if I take-out the EV growth, actually we would have declined year-on-year because the ICE part of it is actually what is under challenge. So we don’t still don’t see that much challenge.
Yes, there are program delays, but they don’t change the overall order book size. You had another couple of questions in there, which I might not have answered. So which ones did I miss?
Jay Kale
No, I think largely you’ve covered most of them. I just had one or two more. I’ll just so you also did mention that, of course, you’re not supplying to Chinese as much till now, right? So if you could just elaborate on how do you plan to diversify your customer-base going-forward? And also, if I have to just pick-up a — speak on the Chinese part, it’s an interesting market, but at the same time, it’s a very fragmented market. And as management, when you choose OEMs within the Chinese OEMs, what is your kind of criteria of filtration? Because we’ve seen many large OEMs also there have been news flow of largely group-backed OEMs coming under pressure or under trouble. So what is your criteria so that your — your order book is foolproof.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Sure. So first of all, I would like to humbly make this submission that we do not choose our customers. We are servants of our customers as customers choose us. So we have no criteria of selecting our customer. We try to work with all customers who we think are wanting our products and see value in our product. That’s how we look at the world. As suppliers, one should never get so arrogant to believe that we are in a position to choose customers. Customer is king in any business and we never let ourselves forget that.
Your point about the China market is actually very true that not — it is immense, it is the largest car market in the world, right? But it is not that simple a market. It has challenges in pockets. It has challenges in terms of fragmentation, in terms of supply-chain distribution. It has geographic location challenges. So it is not a simple market, but then you know, if we think of ourselves and hopefully we are a good management team, we are interested to do the things that are difficult. So we are actively looking at how to get into China.
But anything that I can say will be premature at this stage, let us have something concrete. And of course, the moment we do, we will share with everyone. We would — only thing I can share is, of course, we would like to be electric first as we are in every other market. And in China, it makes sense. If you look at even our past strategy, we shut-down our starter motor line 1.5 years ago in China to focus only on suspension motor, right, because we realize that market to have a ICE product makes no sense. So that will be our playbook that EV makers will be, of course, the one that we would desire more, but open and happy to work with anybody who gives us the opportunity to work with them.
Jay Kale
Great. Thanks. Thanks and all the best and I’ll fall-back in the queue.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Thank you, Jay.
Operator
Thank you. And the next question comes from Jinesh Gandhi. Hi, Jinesh, your line is open. Please go-ahead.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yes, Jinesh, I can hear you.
Jinesh Gandhi
Yeah. So question on same lines on China. So obviously that’s the biggest market, but what are we doing to get a presence in that market and what it will take for us to win in that market.
Vivek Vikram Singh
So same answer as I gave Jay, a little premature because we have 6% of our revenue that comes from Asia right now. It’s quite small. We will, of course, it is on our radar. We are doing some things, but let them come to fruition, no point talking prematurely.
Jinesh Gandhi
Okay. Okay.
Vivek Vikram Singh
The plant would be — as you know, we have a motor plant there with — from where we supply suspension motor products. The driveline product is where it’s low penetration. Part of it is because of duties. There is a duty barrier between us in China that China imposes import duties on our HS code, I think between 8% to 10%, for which some bits if you have to do, you have to do low-key so we have to figure that puzzle out it’s still not done but it is on our radar and whenever we have something that is concrete we will announce it.
Jinesh Gandhi
Got it. And second question pertains to our exposure to US and the upcoming Mexico plant, given the changes which are happening in the US regime and the potential threat of tariffs, how — how are we seeing this risk in terms of 40% of our revenues is from US and the upcoming Mexico plant, is there any rethink on the Mexico plant itself.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yeah, actually, I was surprised by this question from somebody else also recently. The — I don’t think the auto component sector is as much at-risk. I think if you look beyond the headlines and which we should, right, before making blanket assumptions, the import duty on auto components imported from US and India is between 10% to 15% depending on which HS code. India duty to US is about 2.5%. So the entire difference, even if reciprocating tariffs were to be put is between 5% to 10% depending on which category one is talking about.
Second, and this is a pharma logical one. If I believe that the president and his current administration’s view is to put America first and benefit America, the US automotive industry is very large and fairly important to the US economy. If they said that we will put duties on auto component import from Mexico, China and India I have no idea how they make cars or then they live with cars that are you know, 15% to 20% more expensive than they are. I frankly think that we are misreading this situation. It could be a great opportunity for India that with the dollar-rupee decline currently with the 5% drop recently, if you have to source, where would you source this from? Because making these parts in US is not going to be possible, it will take far too long and it will be far, far more expensive even with the duty thing.
So I think it’s a far smaller risk for auto components. I think where all of this is stemming from is the differential in duties between cars in India and US that India imposes a 100% import duty on auto. It is not the same for auto components. There is not that much of a duty difference. So that’s my take on it. We don’t think it’s as big a risk as it’s been made out. Mexico plant is starting with Mexico to Mexico sales to begin with. So there is no rethink because that’s a local country-to-country thing which has no custom duty impact, et-cetera.
Jinesh Gandhi
Got it. Got it. And last question pertains to our order book. So what percentage of our order book would be from Europe in terms of European OEMs or sales to Europe.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Good question, yeah, Jinesh, because actually I know people ask about US because Mr. Trump is in the headlines. Europe is the one that should be asked more. A relatively small portion. I don’t have the exact number, but relatively small portion is from Europe because as you might have noticed, European OEMs have also not been giving out many new RFQs or purchase orders.
Jinesh Gandhi
Right. And sorry, last clarification is what is the stake and clear motion for this $4 million investment?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Good question and frankly, we should have put it in our presentation itself. It will be when fully converted between 1.5% to 2% somewhere in that. Rohit would you like to clarify on this one?
Rohit Nanda
1.6%.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Rohit, obviously, as usual is far more accurate than I am. 1.6, yeah.
Jinesh Gandhi
Got it, got it. Great. Thanks. Few more questions. I’ll fall-back in queue. And the next question is from Gunjan. Hi, Gunjan, your line is open. Please go-ahead.
Gunjan Prithyani
Thank you for taking my questions. I had two questions. Firstly on the — on the outlook that you shared for quarter-four that there’ll be destocking in Jan and Feb. If I were to just like look beyond fiscal ’25 now because this is a destocking, which is leading to a refresh of cycle with the customer. How would you think about fiscal ’26? And I’m essentially looking to get your insights on two-parts. One, are the confidence on the conversion of programs that you see happening in fiscal ’26? And secondly, what does this refresh mean? Does it mean a substantial pickup in business from that customer going into fiscal ’26? So a bit more color on ’26 revenue outlook.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Good question. Actually, in a way, it would mean some revenue shifting from quarter-four FY ’25 to FY ’26, right? We — if we follow customer guidance, there should be an increase in sales. But for our purposes or budgeting purposes, we are assuming even if it is flat, because of this quarter change in our financial year being different from calendar year, we should see higher revenue regardless, even if sales remain the same of the refreshed model, we should see increase.
Gunjan Prithyani
And anything on the conversions, Vivek, on the order book, what do you see? How is it shaping up?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Not bad yeah. We’re seeing some good conversions actually some have started this quarter or are starting in March, etc. A couple of largest EV orders which are in the motorslide. Both — the two large ones are both in India that are starting. There is one in North-America that is starting, I would say, at the end — near the end-of-the calendar year and one in dragline, which is also starting at the end-of-the calendar year.
Apart from one,, I think I spoke about in a couple of quarters ago earnings call that one European EV OEM whose order was supposed to convert in FY ’26 seems that it will convert now in FY ’27 to serial production. Apart from that one instance and there is one instance that I spoke about again 3/4 back, that was a Indian EV two-wheeler. Apart from those two particular orders, I don’t know of anything else that has been delayed.
Gunjan Prithyani
Okay. Got it. And I think, Vik, you also referred to that suspension system getting into zeral production, right? I mean, this was — if I recall, this was a couple, I think at least two years back when this was added to the order book. Can you just refresh us what is the potential annualized revenue that you’re now looking at from this product-line? And have there been any progress in terms of new wins or how do you see that this product-line shaping up going ahead.
Vivek Vikram Singh
So good you brought that up, Gunjan. I think we put it in Q3 2020 — FY ’22, so it’s been almost three years. And it’s a good thing that you asked and good also that shows how long our development cycles usually are. So when we talk about something and when we talk about the future, we actually talk about a far longer-term than a lot of other industries. So it has started. I think at that time because it was three years out, nobody gave it much importance, but for us, we have been working on it for three years, right? A
Nd now that it has started, we will not like to commit to annualized revenue right now because like I said, it just started with one model of one car maker, which I kind of have named. So as it spreads to other customers, it could be very large. And I don’t want to create false optimism by giving a number because the number, if you think about it, it’s just like it is very, very big. So that’s why I don’t want to quote that number.
I told you the total addressable market for Clear Motion itself is about $14 billion, right? I won’t go into our product costing, but we are a significant part of this bomb. And if we are a significant part of this bomb, a significant part of this number is our total revenue potential. How soon do we get to that? Of course, will depend on how early people adopted. I can share that there has been one more OEM who has now nominated Claymotion and they have a second customer. Customer and the pipeline as we know and that’s one of the advantages of being an investor, the pipeline has many, many more OEM conversations going on. It will be too, again, premature for me to talk about and short-term that what will it be in revenue in two, three years? But I know that it will be a large part of our revenue in four, five years.
Gunjan Prithyani
Okay. Just if you can offer us an update on railways trans — the transaction and I’ll join back-in the queue.
Vivek Vikram Singh
That I will hand over to my colleague Rohit.
Rohit Nanda
So that’s progressing well. We had earlier indicated a timeline of September end. It’s still under discussion. If all works out well, we may actually be able to close it sooner, but it’s not a done deal yet, but yeah, so we are progressing well, I would say.
Gunjan Prithyani
Okay. Thank you so much.
Rohit Nanda
Before we take-up the next question, I would like to correct myself on the CMI question. Actually there was a pre-money post-money issue. So actually our equity stake will be about 1.5% and not 1.6%. Next question is from Amin Tirani [Phonetic]. Hi, Amin, your line is open. Please go-ahead.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yes, Amin, very much clear.
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Yes. Thank you. Most of my questions have been answered. Just a few clarifications. This inventory stocking and destocking at one of your customers, was it something unanticipated or is it generally how it normally works in your business or was it something which happened in a timeframe which you were not expecting.
Vivek Vikram Singh
So I think one difference, when I talked about inventory reductions in North-America, that was a general comment for US car makers and not particular customer. Particular customer, it’s not an inventory issue, it’s a — they’re doing a model refresh. So if you launch a new model, you will have to shut-down making the old model, right? So there is a two-month, three-month transition phase whenever a new model launch happens, which is major. Of course, this is a regular practice in auto, but the thing is we’ve not been listed long enough for it to have happened to us while being public. Because model launches of five to seven years, you refresh. So it hasn’t really happened since ’21, ’22. So this is the first one.
Second, it happens, but if it happens to a customer who is a small part of your revenue, it is virtually negligible and not worth-mentioning. But yeah, this happens to be a fairly large customer, which is why it is a smaller — which is a bigger, sorry, impact.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. Secondly on the US angle and the tariff thing, thanks for the perspective that you gave on the difference between fully built cars and components on the tariff side. So coming back to the Mexico angle, you said that your sales are Mexico to Mexico. And just forgive me for belaboring on that point, but your customer to whom you’re supplying and with whom you will most likely ramp-up. Is that customer mainly setting up their capacity for supplying to the US or is it also within Mexico?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yeah. So their factory is in Mexico. So if they export from there to all over Americas, but again, they — I don’t think they can make any decision now from that perspective. And again, I’m also — I know we have heard that the rattling let it get implemented. You know there is a — we have seen the same administration last-time also and a lot of noise was made and it didn’t get done really. So let’s see, let’s wait for it to happen before speculating. We are not very heavy capex people in general. As you know, we and I explained to you before that at least land and equipment, we always leave. Yeah. It is machines, which are fairly fungible to our production process and can be shifted if that is what happens. So although a relevant point and it does get taken-up in our risk management committee, as a proportion of our total investment and what is at-risk, it is a fairly small proportion.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. And just lastly on the Chinese OEMs, you know aspect. Now obviously, one aspect is going to China and supplying to Chinese OEMs from there. But Chinese OEMs, it looks like they are looking to become big in Europe and other parts of Asia as well. So is there an angle that your Europe revenues or business can also be through these Chinese OEMs or do you think that you will have to start supplying to them in China to become relevant in other parts of the world.
Vivek Vikram Singh
So excellent question, I mean, and this is something that internally also we have actually discussed that which one comes first. So let’s first take the problem in two separate ways. If not for this duty barrier, we will have had market-share — fairly decent market-share even in the Chinese market. But because of that, we have very little, right? It’s hard to overcome a 10% price difference if you’re not willing to sacrifice your own margins.
However, outside China, if you look at EV customers of ours, we are fairly competitive and almost always win against our Chinese peers for like-to-like products. This should be in this pure theory, similar if the OEM was Chinese or European. If you’re setting up a factory in Europe and saying locally, then the same thing should apply. But practically relationships and familiarity matters and if you’re doing a copy paste of your plant from China into Europe, maybe you want to replicate the same supply-chain and not reinvent the wheel. So that’s what is I think the point.
It will not just be Europe actually, there are plants of Chinese OEMs coming up all over the place in Southeast Asia, South America. And we are seeing that the same kind of pattern is emerging, like some OEMs do not do — go to a geography and figure out what is the best way to manufacture there, they are replicating the Chinese plant. And hence, it may be or actually we think it may be a better strategy to get into China, get that familiarity and to then travel with them outside might be an easier way than to make your inroad through a foreign subsidiary of the January year.
But yeah, I mean, we don’t know if you’re absolutely right or wrong on this one, but this is what we are seeing and we are trying both approaches. But I think the latter approach has a higher probability of success.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thanks for your thoughts.
Vivek Vikram Singh
But great question. I have to add. That isn’t — I mean, this is something we’ve been defeating now for a couple of years.
Unidentified Participant
I’ll come back-in the queue.
Operator
Thank you. And next question from Shruthi. Your line is open. You have question for the management.
Unidentified Participant
My question was answered.
Operator
Oh, okay.
Kapil Singh
Question from the question queue. So one question, this is from Raghu. On the BEV traction motors, can you talk about the status of product for four videos and PV and possible timelines for commercialization.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Sorry Kapil I couldn’t hear that.
Kapil Singh
The status of product readiness for traction motors for four-wheelers and commercial vehicles.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Sat, do you want to comment? I would say premature right now is what I would say. But Sat, you want to add?
Sat Mohan Gupta
No, I agree with you, Vivek. It’s premature right now. I mean, we are still working on some of the designs and validations.
Kapil Singh
One question is, how do you see EV growth for in major market?
Vivek Vikram Singh
That’s a very broad question and I have to be a forecaster actually, Kapil — I mean this I thought analysts have to answer this not people in the industry. We know our order book, we don’t know industry, everybody, but I think this — so my guess is as good as anybody else’s, but I think China will continue to electrify very strongly. The Chinese EV guys may just sweep and a lot of the legacy OEMs who are foreign, I think they will struggle a lot in China, especially the European OEMs. I think US, we don’t expect a lot of EV volume growth. Europe, there should be EV penetration growth, but then the total market also has to grow.
Hopefully that there is some recovery. India should actually interestingly be one of the fastest-growing EV markets in our view, one, low-base, two, just the amazing range of new models that are being launched through this calendar year, I think there is going to be a very-high EV uptick in India. Actually, the more-and-more — and this is obviously completely anecdotal. The more-and-more people I talk to, the — there is a strong preference to buy EVs.
And I think a lot of our OEMs in India have done a fantastic job of launching affordable electric vehicle models in the car space. Two-wheeler space is doing fairly well. Three-wheeler is coming to a stage where they don’t even need any subsidy and they might just go 100% electric like very, very soon. Our buses like commercial vehicles deto, the same logic. It’s just becoming economically a better option. So India, China, Asia in particular to electrify much faster, US to be slow, Europe depends on overall market, but penetration should continue to deepen.
Kapil Singh
One more question is there on update on the PLI.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Okay, Rohit can take that, but we’ve got all the approvals on all our motor models. It is more accounting question. Rohit?
Rohit Nanda
PLI, we’ve actually last-time also updated essentially the approvals and all are in-place and the PLI disbursement for the current year will happen in the next financial year. So-far it’s not there in the P&L. We’ll decide as to how we want to account for it depending upon the milestones and also. Yeah. So this is where we are. I don’t think there is any major change from last-time because now approvals and all are all-out there in the public, you can actually find those approvals on the government website.
Kapil Singh
Yeah. Sir, will you consider approval basis accounting or this will be based on the cash that we do?
Rohit Nanda
We are evaluating it. So I mean, it’s not a decided thing as yet, but this is something we are seriously evaluating. So we’ll inform once the final decision on this is taken.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yeah. So Kapil, again a good question. And obviously, we know from people such as yourselves that there are companies in our industry, especially OEMs who already started accounting from it, frankly from Q1 itself. We weren’t sure and we have that debate that one is accounting for accuracy, so that can only be achieved when 100% disbursal has happened and you receive money, right? But the second is to avoiding the lumpiness and giving uncertainty in this quarter-on-quarter imbalance because it will only come once in every year. So we are debating. There are obviously pros and cons to both approaches. So we are discussing, we’ll also have to discuss with our auditors on how — because it is a new thing.
I know a couple of people have been, I would say, conservative, couple of people have been not so conservative. So there were different approaches to how to recognize PLI revenue. But from the approval side, from the regulatory requirement side, side from what we need to do in order to get it, all of that has been done but that I thought was already public domain knowledge.
Kapil Singh
Do we have a follow-up, Linda?
Vivek Vikram Singh
So while you’re doing follow-up, there is a question in the Q&A queue from Asha about the software that goes into the component, I think we shared a while back that there are about 2 million lines of code that go into this on what we make for Clear Motion and it is in-house. We have a software team we have in Chennai, that is where it is done. And we do not outsource anything core. There are repeatable things that you outsource to ER&D companies, but those are non-core and non-critical parts, but very little. Most of it we develop in-house because it is application software. It controls the hardware that we make and hence, we are the best place to write the controlling software for it. Yeah. So that was one question.
Operator
Okay. We have another question from Prateek Poddar. Hi, Prateek, your line is open. Please go-ahead.
Prateek Poddar
Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, just two questions. One is while I understand you talked about model refresh and the inventory destocking, typically at a production level that shouldn’t happen, right? I understand at the retail level. That was question number-one. The second question was just on Jay’s question.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Sorry, Prateek, I’ll answer this otherwise, I’ll forget what your next question is. No, it will have a production thing, right? So let’s say you are launching a new refresh model, won’t you stop the production of toll model completely? It isn’t a retail thing, it is actually far more from production side. You have to stop the line of the running model and only start building the old one. But for that, in the selling side, you have to get rid of whatever is the existing inventory. Do not reduce any of the old ones, while the new ones you introduce first-in smaller quantities and then you ramp-up, right? That’s why that word ramp-up of new model, that is literally every time that is how it happens.
Actually production has far more of that impact because you go to zero, you don’t even like go down, you go to zero for a limited period of time, let’s say, 45 days or something and then you start building the new vehicle again.
Prateek Poddar
Fair enough to understand that this catch-up of loss of production of 45 days should be covered in the next calendar year? That’s a fair understanding there?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yeah. I actually said that first two quarters, we should get it back. Now exact month-to-month gets harder because that’s correct. And we are trying to get this news because it’s negative out before, otherwise this is just like it’s just started. So we don’t even know when it goes — the curve goes back, but we have the schedules, as I said, for March. So it is already coming back to normal in March. Now how — so let’s say it goes to zero, then it builds up to 2014, then it will be months in which instead of doing 100% will be doing 120 and 130%. But quarters in — I can’t middle.
Prateek Poddar
Surely, surely. No, no, I’m not looking for that. Yeah. The second question was just on Jay’s follow-up. I think you still are saying that with inorganic acquisitions doubling of revenue in three years is possible despite we — I mean, there is a bleak outlook at least on the — on the car industry side, right? So that’s a fair understanding.
Vivek Vikram Singh
It is. But you have to say not each point-to-point, but yeah, we finished our first one in FY ’24 first three years. So FY ’24 to ’27, yes. Obviously, there can be 5% up-down, but that much of even we don’t have a foresight. But you know far more than car, everybody focuses because car is the cooler thing to talk about also in our industry. People should notice this commercial vehicle five is far more concerning actually right now.
Prateek Poddar
Sure, sure. This helps a lot. Thanks, I think.
Operator
Thanks. And next question from Sachi [Phonetic]. Hi, Sachi, your line is open. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hey, can you hear me?
Operator
Yes.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, great. I’m so sorry to belabor this point on the demand for EV. But just a couple of data points like US has cut-down subsidies on EVs and in Europe, Chinese EV makers are eating European EV makers for lunch. And in that context, why should we not expect some of the EV plants to basically shut-down both from US OEMs and European OEMs and why would that not be a risk to the order book?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Sorry, whose EV plants are shutting down?
Unidentified Participant
The — so given that in the US, the subsidies have now been basically removed. So some of the traditional EM sort of OEMs that were — that did have EV plans and EV programs in the US and in the European context, European OEMs are completely unable to compete with the pricing and features of Chinese OEMs. So why should we not expect some of these EV programs to shut-down in the medium-term?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yeah. I don’t know whose EV programs are shutting down or not because again, I have very limited ability to read the future. But what I can tell you is what we are seeing and hearing from customers. We fortunately do not supply much to European EV makers in China. So yes, that is happening, but we don’t have any exposure there. In US and this is again completely speculative because we don’t know what is actually going to happen. I think the pure EV makers will actually do quite well.
However, the legacy guys who were starting new EV programs are will probably suffer or get challenged. We are in most of the pure EV makers in the US, if not all, anybody significant we would be a part of. And in the order book, there is not that many from legacy OEMs, new AV programs to actually affect the overall trajectory. Yes, there could be a risk, but it’s not that major. And Chinese OEMs, like I said, we right now have no exposure.
It is — I would at least like to look at it as an opportunity to gain some market-share. To lose is not much because I know what you’re talking about, but those European EV makers who are struggling in China or in Europe, we don’t have that much share there. So not that much to lose.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. Have you — and I mean, this probably illustrates my ignorance more than anything else. But given that you have found a spot-on the table with some of the legacy OEMs in the US or European OEMs, have you been able to — or is there a possibility to convert some of those relationships to supply to the LCE side as well.
Vivek Vikram Singh
So Sachi, good question, but actually we were already there as suppliers to the ice portals. So in fact, and I don’t want to sound callous, but in a world where the legacy guys continue to make and sell a lot of ice and the EV guys continue to make EV, that literally is the best possible outcome that I can hope for because in the ice bottles, we have a much, much larger market-share of the legacy guys. You know our startup business is basically North-America oriented supplying to ICE models and hybrid models. So if they do well in that, we benefit a lot and let pure EV guys, we only supply EV products, they do well in EV. That’s a great outcome. I don’t know if this will play-out exactly like it is, but if it does, we actually will — that is the best possible outcome of this entire debate.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And just one final point. On Chinese OEMs where you have nothing to lose, but there is an opportunity to gain market-share, are you — outside of the duties because you mentioned there is a 10% — that is a 10% differential. But you would be trying to gain market-share there like or you would be trying to gain a new OEM — new EV OEM, if you see what I mean. Can you try to somebody from existing EV OEM or join hands with a new OEM, where do you see that opportunity?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Without tipping our hand too much because transcripts are read by all people, including our competitors. Of course, we as an ambitious company which likes and lives for growth. We’ll try to get market-share from everywhere we can. That includes China and that includes all the major car makers in China. We will of course want it. How well can we execute on it? Time will tell. And like I said, it’s a little premature, but we have to. It is just too large an opportunity to ignore. And we’ve been trying, let’s see. So — and that’s about China, but if you also notice, and you know us well, we have not focused on the East at all, right?
In the last 10 years, which is the first decade of my stint here in this company. We have grown by focusing almost exclusively on the West and India. That’s it. We did not actually even increase or do too many products apart from if you can Call-IT EV two-wheeler, three-wheeler traction motor that is specifically made-for India. We have not been making products also, which is towards the East, Japan, Korea, China. So Chinese, Japanese Korean, all these three OEMs also, we must target because we are getting now to that point.
See, when we started, we were at 2%, 3% market-share in each category. And even just by trying to focus on West, you can get it to a significant number. Today, we are 8.8% of the world. If we want to take it to 20%, we can’t do it by saying half the world, we will not service. So yeah, there is a strategic shift in our focus that we will now not solely focus on West, we will do East plus West. We will focus on all of transport, which means India does come back into play as a fairly important market for us. The railways move was also part of this shift in thinking that if we have to grow and fulfill our ambitions, we cannot leave half the world unserviced. We need to continue to build there too. So slightly long-winded answer, but I hope I kind of shared how we are thinking.
Unidentified Participant
So this is very good and I think it’s a great note like 20% market-share if that’s where your eyes are set, then I obviously wish you all the very best.
Vivek Vikram Singh
Thank you so much.
Kapil Singh
Vivek I’ll take the last question for the day. This is on the sustention motors that we have just about started building. If you could give some details about the IPR that we have developed for the suspension motor as a layman, if you could explain what is the difficult part here? And then secondly, what would be our share of business when we supply to Motion? And can the orders come faster now because the first product always seems to take longer for the R&D endeavor?
Vivek Vikram Singh
So third-part I’ll answer, which is the more commercial part that of course, we need the first launch to happen as in any other industry when people see the product on the road, like today, I could show you a video, right, that made life so much easier. In 2021, when I was trying to explain to the world what the product is, it was so hard. We had to actually make a wireframe animation to even illustrate and even that was lost. Most people thought it was something comparable to what German luxury car makers had. And it is so different only when you see them side-by-side can you actually know that 5 times latency and what it means. So yes, of course.
Now the snowball effect starts. And that’s why I said three years is what we think it will take because whoever now starts engaging the typical 32-month development cycle will follow. So three to four years, that’s a good timeframe. There are, of course, confidentiality issues. So we can’t share too much about commercials and pricing and these things. But as I can say, we are a large proportion of the bond here. You saw the product, you saw what we make. I mean, physically, you can see it is a large part of it, right? Sat can, though I don’t want to steal the limelight from Praveen, if they should talk about how difficult it was because not just is the part new, the equipment to make it also in some cases didn’t exist, we had to make the equipment also for making the part.
So Sat, our Sat and Praveen have got this done. So let them talk about it.
Sat Mohan Gupta
So Kapil, I mean from the product perspective, I mean, it is compliant, which is the highest in the auto industry. It is a FUSA SLC compliant the response time for this motor is less than a millisecond which Vivek talked about the lett see it’s the very, very compact motor. I mean with the copper content is very, very-high in a very, very small-size, but was available to us to develop this motor. It’s integrated motor and controller. So it’s — you have one motor with — with a controller and inverter sitting on it. And as Vivek said, I mean, it’s more than 2 million software lines there. And to make it autos are compliant, you need to be very, very sure that I mean, both from a machine design, hardware design and software design, you have those provisions in the design itself to create a backup for any failures.
It’s a combination of our motor and the hydraulic module so we haven’t done as a group we haven’t done this product and it’s a very, very compact, very, very-high, highly efficient suitable for connected vehicles, electric vehicle. I mean the current product is going on the electric vehicle. And it’s you can use it for ICE vehicle, for a hybrid vehicle and electric vehicle. So that’s the advantage you have. I mean it’s you can use for any applications whether it’s four-wheelers, whether it’s or whether it’s SUU, SUV or MV. So very, very compact and very highly efficient motor design we have. Praveen, anything you would like to add?
Praveen Chakrapani Rao
I think you’ve covered all of the points. The few additional emphasis would be on being a very small packaged motor, the ability to handle high-temperature, high-pressure is all the more important and high vibration because the whole purpose of this product is to contract the vibration from the road. So ability for this motor to sustain that high-level of vibration. So all of the IP relates to the lot of development work, as Vivek said in the last many years, of course packaging it in a very tiny box to put it under the wheel. So that is the biggest challenge we had.
Kapil Singh
And on the share of business, can you comment on the clear motion?
Vivek Vikram Singh
Yeah, currently it’s only us. It’s — we developed it together. So as things grow and clear Motion hopefully becomes a massive company, who knows, but right now, it’s just us.
Kapil Singh
Okay. Thank you all. That was the last question for the day. Thanks for joining this call. And Vivek, I’ll pass it back to you in case you have any closing comments.
Vivek Vikram Singh
No, no, thank you so much for everyone for attending. I mean, as you know, we are a company that culturally puts bad news first and tries to get that. If it’s good news, sometimes we go super conservative and keep it to ourselves till it’s all done. But I hope we build a business that is also remembered for how we communicate, how transparently we act and how honest we are with our shareholders. So that is all. And yeah, thank you so much. See you next quarter.
Kapil Singh
Thanks to the team of Sona Comstar for joining this call. And Linda, we can close the call.