Share price of country’s biggest steel maker SAIL jumped to a monthly high of Rs 93.80 after the company’s shareholders approved a buyback. At the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company’s share price closed at Rs 92.55, up 7.68% from the previous close.
A company statement said the shareholders have approved buyback at the annual general meeting today. “In the AGM, a special resolution was passed wherein SAIL was authorised to purchase, acquire or hold its own shares or other specified securities as per the applicable statutes,” it said.
SAIL has planned a capex of Rs 12,000 crore for FY13, an increase of nearly 9% from the capital expenditure of Rs 11,021 crore in previous fiscal.
To maintain its current dominance in the domestic market and to meet future challenges, SAIL is working on a long term strategic plan ‘Vision 2020’ which will steer the company towards meeting its strategic objectives of achieving higher profitability through organic and inorganic growth and infusion of state of the art environmental friendly technologies, chairman C S Verma said.
“SAIL has taken various initiatives in optimizing operations, better value addition in downstream units, reducing coke consumption by enhancing alternate fuels like Coal Dust Injection in blast furnaces etc”, said Verma.
Notwithstanding the short term dampeners in the Indian and the world economy, Verma expressed confidence in the growth of the Indian steel industry driven by the increased infrastructure investment and higher pace of urbanisation. “In terms of per capita consumption of finished steel, India at 57 kg lags behind the world average of 214.7 kg, indicating a huge potential for growth”, he said.
SAIL’s modernisation and expansion program being implemented at an expenditure of around Rs 72,000 crores, besides targeting higher production, also addresses the need for eliminating technological obsolescence, achieving energy savings, enriching product-mix, reducing pollution and developing mines and collieries. Verma said the majority of the facilities of the on-going phase of modernisation and expansion of SAIL is likely to be completed in the current fiscal.
