Waaree Energies Ltd (WAAREEENER) Q2FY27 Concall Transcript - Sep-2026 Qtr
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Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Waaree Energies Limited conference call hosted by MUFG InTime India Private 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 touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nikunj Jain from MUFG InTime India Private Limited. Thank you and over to you, Mr. Nikunj.
Nikunj Jain (MUFG InTime India Private Limited): Thank you, Siddharth. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you to the Q2 and H1 FY27 earnings conference call of Waaree Energies Limited. To discuss this quarter's performance, we have from the management, Mr. Jignesh Rathod, Whole-time Director and CEO, Mr. Abhishek Parekh, CFO, and Mr. Varun Goenka, President Growth and Strategy. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risk and uncertainties. For more detailed detailed disclaimer, kindly refer to the investor presentation and other filings that can be found on company's website and stock exchanges. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to management for their opening remarks, and then we will open the floor for Q&A. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Jignesh Rathod (Waaree Energies Ltd): Thank you, Nikunj bhai. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on our Q2 and H1 FY27 earnings call. I hope you have had a chance to review our results and presentation. I'll begin with our business updates and our plans. Mr. Parekh, our CFO, will then take you through the financial and operating performance. Let me first start with the industry updates. India has installed approximately 3 38 GW solar in last calendar year 25 versus this 9 months of calendar year 26 did 35.3 GW. And for H1 financial year 27 did 20.88 8 GW. USA installed approximately 43 GW in calendar year 25 versus 19.2 GW in H1 calendar year 26. Solar continues to dominate the energy transition across the world and now with BESS being an additional accelerator, solar PV will continue to dominate the clean energy adoption. In addition, we are seeing green shoots of new growth drivers of solar plus battery renewables from data centers, green ammonia, and green hydrogen, all with significant business potential for Waaree Group across multiple business segments. We are building significant capabilities and capacities to be able to serve both existing and future demand sources across the entire new energy value chain. I'm delighted to share that since first dispatch February 28 2008, over 37 GW modules are in the field generating the clean power. In addition to that, we have started the kit business in April 2025 and we have reached the milestone of 1 lakh kit sold yesterday. Our H1 FY27 performance reflects the strength of our business fundamentals and consistent execution of our growth strategy. For H1 FY27, a 47% increase in revenues coupled with 15% EBITDA growth and significant improvements in operating cash flow by almost five times demonstrated the resilience of our execution. Our 59,500 crores order book further reinstates our execution road map. We are particularly encouraged by the strong momentum in our retail business revenues. It has reached 5,753 crores in H1 FY27, almost 2x year-on-year and accounted for 37% of total revenue for HY H1 FY27, surpassing total retail revenue of 5,515 crores in entire last financial year.
Jignesh Rathod (Waaree Energies Ltd): Transformers, inverters, EPC, T&D and green hydrogen businesses to contribute to future growth. We have an installed module manufacturing capacity of 25.8 GW, including 1.6 GW in USA. Module production in the USA continues to ramp up and reached 0.3 GW, achieving an annualized cap utilization of 71%. An additional 3.2 GW of module manufacturing capacity is being added in USA. The two lines are under trial production at Brookshire factory, by March '27, of which 1.6 GW to be operational in Q3 FY '27 itself. Waaree Solar Americas to have 4.8 GW of PV manufacturing capacity. Turning to cell manufacturing, we currently have an installed solar cell manufacturing capacity of 5.4 GW in India. Our planned 10 GW expansion at Unn facility remains on track and to be commissioned in this financial year. Expansion of our ingot wafer manufacturing capacities progressing well, as can be seen from the photographs included in the presentation. In our BESS business, we are looking at commissioning 5 GWh containerization facility in Q3 FY '27 and 3.5 GWh of battery cell manufacturing in this financial year. On our outlined CapEx program of approximately 30,000 crores, 35% is already deployed, 28% is under execution and 37% is under planning stage. As we will enter FY '28, Waaree will be fully ready to execute on capacities, namely 29 GW of solar PV, 15.4 GW of solar cell, 5 GWh of BESS pack and container, 3.5 GWh battery cell manufacturing, 4 GW of inverters, 20,000 MVA of transformers and larger integrated EPC entity. Waaree sits at the inflection of becoming vertically and horizontally integrated with high operating leverage potential ahead, driven by increased utilization of major capacities near completion. With a clear strategic road map, expanding capacities, capabilities and a strong focus on execution, we are confident in our ability to deliver sustainable long-term growth. We affirm our operating EBITDA guidance of 7,000 to 7,700 crores in FY '27. With that, I'll hand over to our CFO, Mr. Parekh, to take you through the numbers and the progress of your investment plans. Thank you.
Abhishek Parekh (Waaree Energies Ltd): Thank you, Jignesh sir, and good afternoon, everyone. I will take you through our financial results, revenue mix, order book as well manufacturing performance. I will then cover the investment program and our plans for the rest of the year. Our Q2 revenue was 7,517.7 crores, up 23.9% year-on-year. Operating EBITDA was 1,335.2 crores, while margin was 17.8%. PAT was 753.6 crores. For the first half, revenue was 15,449.5 crores, up 47.3%. Operating EBITDA was 2,775.1 crores, up 50.5%, with a margin of 18%. Profit after tax was 1,645.5 crores, compared with 1,651.1 crores in the same period last year. We remain a net debt-free company with net cash of around 3,224 crores, and a net debt-to-equity ratio of -0.2x. ROCE was 28.7%, and ROE was 24.2%. Retail contributed 46.1% of Q1 Q2 revenues. Utility, IPP, C&I customers contributed around 22.9%. Overseas market contributed 18.5%, and EPC, O&M, transmission and distribution and other segments put together contributed 12.6%. Retail was around 3,464 crores in Q2, up by 252% year-on-year. Module sales were 3 GW, up 27%. Top 5 customers accounted for 15.2 and top 10 accounted for 20%,
Abhishek Parekh (Waaree Energies Ltd): 1,500 crores from 732 crores. Revenue from exports from India was 89 crores compared with 2,143 crores last year. Our total order book as on 26th of October '26 was around 59,200 crores. The module order book was 25.6 GW. As noted in the presentation, we have rationalized the order book. Orders which are yet not terminated, but we have reported them as deemed closed as major part of the export orders due to Section 232 in U.S. without assuming any liability against us under these contracts. The geographical mix of the order book is now 48.4% domestic India, 43.8% domestic U.S. and 7.8% exports from India. Our cash-and-carry business keeps increasing their volume share in total revenue. For the first half, total module production was 6.2 GW, cell production was 1.9 GW. The additional 10 GW cell facility is planned to start in current financial year, wherein around 5 GW expected to start in Q3 and another 5 GW in Q4 this year. Once this is completed, Waaree shall achieve total cell capacity of 15.4 GW, largest in the country. Ratio of cell to module capacity would rise from currently around 22% to around 65%. This shall help us use more of own cells, as well as healthy integration in terms of production from own cells, as well as healthy mix of orders, DCR non-DCR. For the second half, our focus is morely on delivering orders, completing the planned capacities, and improving operating efficiencies. We also keep a close watch on our working capital and project spending. If you look at our operating cash flow this quarter, as well as H1, it has surpassed 5x, five times of the total operating cash that we generated year-on-year. Also, if you also look at the total amount yet to be spent on the projects under three categories: project which are already commissioned, projects which are under execution, and projects which are at planning stage, Waaree sits at sufficient cash balance at gross level, which is sufficient to fund the major portion of the projects which are under execution from its own capital without further borrowing. As mentioned by Jignesh sir earlier, we are maintaining our FY '27 operating EBITDA guidance of 7,000 to 7,700 crores. Thank you for your continued interest in Waaree Energies Limited. I would now request the operator to open the floor for questions.
Moderator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone 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 comes from the line of Shweta Jain from Anand Rathi Share and Stock Brokers Limited. Please go ahead.
Shweta Jain (Anand Rathi Share and Stock Brokers Limited): Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Sir, on the retail business now gaining traction, could you just provide some color on the distributor margins and the overall profitability of the channel? We did not see any increase in operating expenses related to any distribution-led model expansion here in the numbers. So could you explain like some light on how the distribution business has been managed?
Abhishek Parekh (Waaree Energies Ltd): Thank you, Shweta. If we look at the distribution model, we call it as sometime retail or cash-and-carry model. We today stand with 775-plus number of retail channels, retail centers, exclusively for Waaree across the country. With around additionally 3,000-plus distribution points attached to them, around 5,000-plus people working under the retail stores as well as the distribution points exclusively for distributing, executing, designing for Waaree across the country, and servicing as well. This business has taken around more than a decade now, once we started this.
Abhishek Parekh (Waaree Energies Ltd): I think in 2016-17, when we started, a journey started from around 10 crore worth of revenue from this segment from three partners to 775 partners now, and half yearly revenue of around 5,700 crores. So, this year, we are looking at around 10,000 to 11,000 crore revenue from this stream alone. While you see the jump in the overall revenue mix from the retail almost 100%, if you compare this H1 with last full year also, we also note that because of the operating leverage that we have created, we are bound to get advantage of operating leverage out here. Any incremental onboarding of franchisee versus the incremental revenue that we get is something that makes more sense for us. We also keep working a lot on the distribution model. It is not just a channel sign-up or an agreement or a contract. It's an agreement wherein we supply the product, we supply the technology, we supply the we service this skill set, and we help them these partners to install the projects, as well as to monitor the performance. Same point in time, these retail channels keep expanding their network, keep getting the annuity income from the operation maintenance that they are doing at the ground. This is enhancing the stickiness to Waaree. Also, there are few retail partners today whose revenue has fairly grown from one to one to two crores a year to more than 50 to 75 crores on a year basis. So, this speaks about the benefit of leverage that not just Waaree, but the retail distribution channel is also getting. And as we grow, as we keep introducing new products, like in the recent REI, we have introduced I think around three plus new models of the products, including inverter, skids, and modules. We also keep expanding product portfolio like product like battery, small battery on rooftop as well as for transformers, skid products. Each of these products are now going to get installed and started to supply from this retail channels. This see a massive opportunity for us not just to leverage on the existing network while we keep expanding network, but we also keep increasing the bandwidth of our product portfolios. And hence, we the magnitude of growth that we see from this particular segment is massive. Hope this answers your question.
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