Business Standard

STL Delivers Superlative Growth With a Strong Future Outlook

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Press Trust of India PUNE

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Reports stellar FY'19, and an excellent start to FY'20

with an all-time high order book of over Rs. 10,500 crore

Financials at all-time high: PAT up 68%, Revenue up 59%, EBITDA up 48% YOY; ROCE at 34%

Highest-ever patents filed in a single year

Strengthened position in Europe with acquisition

Capacity expansion to 50 million fkm for optical fibre and 33 million fkm for cable on track

Sterlite Technologies Ltd - STL (BSE: 532374) (NSE: STRTECH), a global data network solutions company, reported another year of solid financial performance. The company's steady growth over the last several quarters is a result of its strategic focus on offering data network solutions to an expanding global market of telcos, cloud companies, citizen networks and large enterprises.

 

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FY'19 - A transformative year

As cloud companies intensified network build, telcos increased fibre deployment with high-impact solutions, defence modernised its networks, and rural and urban broadband accelerated, FY'19 was a transformative year for STL. It acquired new customers and launched end-to-end solutions, on the back of accelerated innovation, an agile supply chain and best-in-class talent.

35 new customers: The company won customers across all its customer segments, prominent ones being two of the world's top cloud companies; several tier one telcos, including partnership for network creation for one of the world's largest greenfield rollouts of 4G; and modernising the Indian Navy's digital communications network. With this, India, Europe and LATAM now account for more than 90% of the company's revenues.

Six new solutions and several partnerships: With its unique silicon-to-software capability, the company designed and launched several network solutions. Some notable launches included FTTx Mantra (fully integrated, ready to implement FTTx solution) and TruRibbon (high-density optical fibre cable for high-capacity networks). The company partnered with industry leaders for some of these, including several partnerships for the Defence, and with open-source consortiums such as O-RAN and TIP.

271 patents: The company filed its highest-ever patents in a single year, taking its global patent filing count to 271. These filings protect the company's deep technology investment in strategic areas. It also launched SPEL - India's first technology lab for structured networking solutions. This is in addition to its two earlier labs - Centre of Excellence for broadband research and Centre for Smarter Networks for next-generation network applications.

Capacity expansion and agile delivery: With the acquisition of Metallurgica Bresciana in Italy, the company strengthened its position in Europe and acquired new product and customer portfolios. Meanwhile, its planned expansion with new Industry 4.0 plant at Aurangabad is ready to come online with 50 million fkm fibre capacity by June 2019, while it is on track to deliver its doubled fibre cable capacity of 33 million fkm by June 2020.

Best-in-class talent: The company continued to strengthen its technology expertise with hiring key talent for optical fibre research, software defined networks, converged networks, connectivity solutions and data science.

Environment, sustainability and governance: The company's commitment to the environment won its optical fibre cable plant in Silvassa, India the prestigious Intertek Zero Waste to Landfill Certification. It also became a signatory to United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest forum on corporate sustainability.

Consolidated Financials - All-time high

This focus on deep customer engagement, solutions build for hyper-scale networks, ongoing innovation, agile supply and key talent contributed to the company's excellent financial performance.

Q4 FY'19 Financial Highlights

Highest quarterly Revenues at Rs. 1,791 crore

Highest quarterly EBITDA at Rs. 328 crore, up 38% YoY

Highest quarterly PAT at Rs. 165 crore, up 47% YoY

FY'19 Financial Highlights

The company's financials have continued to show superlative growth. Key metrics are:

Open order book at Rs. 10,516 crore, 2.1 times the annual revenue

Revenues at Rs. 5,087 crore, up 59% YoY

EBITDA at Rs. 1,164 crore, up 48% YoY

PAT at Rs. 563 crore, up 68% YoY

ROCE at all-time-high of 34%

The company continues to stay committed to deliver PAT of US$ 100 million in FY'20.

With these strong numbers, the Board of Directors has recommended Final Dividend of 175% at Rs. 3.5 per equity share for FY'19.

FY'20 and beyond - An exciting future

As telcos, cloud companies and new digital infrastructure players create hyper-scale networks, STL is at the helm of this network creation opportunity. With its data network solutions for Mobility, Last-mile access, Long-haul connectivity, Network modernisation and Data centres, across large customer segments globally, the company's total addressable market has expanded to a market size of $75 Billion by FY'23.

As the company's focus expands to end-to-end technology solutions for data networks, it is refreshing its identity to reflect a simplified, transformed company that is leading the future of networks.

To know more about the company's strategy and FY'19 results, please see the Investor Presentation.

About Sterlite Technologies Ltd - STL

STL is a global leader in end-to-end data network solutions.

We design and deploy high-capacity converged fibre and wireless networks. With expertise ranging from optical fibre and cables, hyper-scale network design, and deployment and network software, we are the industry's leading integrated solutions provider for global data networks. We partner with global telecom companies, cloud companies, citizen networks and large enterprises to design, build and manage such cloud-native software-defined networks.

STL has innovation at its core. With intense focus on end-to-end network solutions development, we conduct fundamental research in next-generation network applications at our Centres of Excellence. STL has strong global presence with next-gen optical preform, fibre and cable manufacturing facilities in India, Italy, China and Brazil and two software-development centres.

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Forward-looking and cautionary statements: Certain words and statements in this release concerning Sterlite Technologies Limited (STL) and its prospects, and other statements relating to STL's expected financial position, business strategy, the future development of STL's operations and the general economy in India, are forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of STL, or industry results, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding STL present, future business strategies, and the environment in which STL will operate in the future. The important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, among others, changes in Government policies or regulations of India and, in particular, changes relating to the administration of STL industry, and changes in general economic, business and credit conditions in India. Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements, many of which are not in Sterlite Technologies' control, include, but are not limited to, those risk factors discussed in STL's various filings with the National Stock Exchange, India and the Bombay Stock Exchange, India. These filings are available at http://www.nseindia.com and http://www.bseindia.com.

Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content

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First Published: Apr 24 2019 | 6:15 PM IST

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