Specialty steel major, Mukand Limited, plans to reduce to its debt of around Rs1,500 crore over the next one year through sale of its land-bank, a top company official said.
"We plan to sell-off some of our land-bank to reduce our debt which presently stands at around Rs 1,500 crore. We plan to achieve this over the next one-year," Mukand's co-chairman and managing director, Rajesh Shah, told PTI here.
While he would not disclose how much the company aims to raise by way of this sale, it is estimated that a sale would fetch it around Rs750 to Rs800-crore, enabling it reduce its debt by around 50%.
The company has substantial land-holdings in Maharashtra, especially in the Mumbai-Pune-Nashik belt and in the southern state of Karnataka. "We have around 42 acres at Sinnar (Nashik), 40 acres 1
at Lonand (Pune) and 210 acres in the Thane-Belapur area. We also hold around 250 acres at Giningera in Karnataka," Shah said.
The company's present capacity utilisation of its specialty steel products stands at 27,000 tonnes per month (tpm) which it intends to scale up to 35,000 tpm by February 2010 and then to around 40,000 tpm by June 2010, Shah said.Mukand clocked a five-fold increase in its Profit After Tax (PAT) in Q2 FY 10 at Rs 16.35 crore as against Rs2.93 crore in the year-ago period.
Its turnover, however, dipped 15.3% at Rs559.74 crore as against Rs661.24 crore in the year-ago period.
"The decline in turnover is partially due to the reduction in the rate of excise duty and also the reduction in the steel-selling prices during the last year consequent to the fall in input prices," the company said in a statement.
Input prices, however, were now on the rise, Shah said, adding that the company upped the prices of its specialty steel by five to seven per cent in October. Shah expressed optimism about his company's performance in the remaining two quarters of this fiscal (FY 10). "We should continue our upward trend in growth," he said.
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