By Suhani Adilabadkar

Exide (which is in six stock screeners) is back on the driver’s seat in terms of its quarterly performance, and its share price is still over 25% of where it was a year ago, despite the recent bearishness of the market. The undisputed market leader of the organized battery industry has come a long way, since seeing a challenger in Amara Raja Batteries.

Quick Takes:

• Exide Industries was the firm that provided the first indigenous, original equipment to Maruti 800 which till then operated on 100% imported components. It dominated a monopolistic industry until the entry of Amara Raja Batteries. 
• Since the entry of Amara Raja, Exide has shaken off a laidback mindset and has been making aggressive moves in the telecom, OEM auto segment and has more than 20% market share in highly competitive E-rickshaw market.
• Capex plans appear to be in full swing as with Rs. 1100 crore earmarked for FY18-19.
• Exide has developed the ‘Exide Care App’, a comprehensive battery management ecosystem mainly to reduce the lead time for providing customer services.
• FIIs and DIIs have increased their stake in Exide from 32.12% to 34.44%, a rise of 232 basis points just in the last four quarters.

An established domestic player looks towards EVs

Exide Industries was the firm that provided the first indigenous, original equipment to Maruti 800 which till then operated on 100% imported components. Exide is India’s largest manufacturer of lead acid storage batteries for both automotive and industrial applications. It caters to automotive, power, telecom, mining, infrastructure, defence, computer industry and Indian railways.

Its manufacturing base is spread across nine factories with seven of them exclusively dedicated to manufacturing batteries and the remaining for Home UPS Systems. Exide Industries derives 95% of its revenues from domestic market with automotive segment contributing the major chunk. With a market capitalization of Rs. 22567 cr, Exide is now targeting head on the upcoming EV space with all its uncertainties and challenges.

Quarterly Performance: Stable results

Exide has been reporting steady and stable results for the last three years with enhanced momentum over the last four quarters. Revenue has been growing strongly for the last seven consecutive quarters since December 2016 with a robust jump of 32% YoY and 13% sequentially in Q1 FY19 and stood at Rs. 2773 cr.

PAT also exhibited growth coming out at Rs. 210 cr moving at growth pace of 11% both YoY and sequentially. Operating margins though dented by falling rupee and higher lead prices stood at 14.10% reporting YoY de-growth of 132 basis points whereas on sequential basis expansion was 36 basis points in the June quarter FY19.

A Duopolistic Industry Structure

Exide Industries dominated a monopolistic structure till Amara Raja Batteries came into the Indian battery industry. As the industry leader held on to its coffers, after the 2008 crises underestimating demand, Amara Raja introduced superior VRLA technology providing maintenance free batteries in India in the early 1990s and overtook Exide in the industrial segment
garnering more than half of the market by 2015.

The company launched the VRLA technology for Indian railways in 1996 and also entered 2 wheeler battery segment in 2007 directly challenging Exide leadership. Amara Raja batteries with superior technological products, operational efficiency, and appropriate capacity additions became a name to reckon with in industrial, telecom, railways and auto replacement segment.

The company produced higher growth rates year after year and in no time the organized battery industry became a duopoly.
No doubt, Amara Raja has multiplied investor wealth by over 10 times over the past ten years. Exide on the other hand has been punished by investors for its lack of aggressiveness, diversifying into non-core insurance business and unclear future growth strategy.

Time for a Recharge

Apart from the improved numbers and higher operating margins converging with Amara Raja over the past few quarters, changed leadership since 2016 has brought about an aggressive zeal and transformed Exide. Collaborations with Hitachi, Furukawa (Japan), Zhejiang Chaowei Chuangyuan Shiya (China), East Penn (US), and Advanced Battery Concepts LLC (USA) have led to the introduction of superior technology and upgradation of existing products.

As a result Exide introduced the ‘Punched Grid technology’ which increases plant efficiencies and lifespan of batteries. On the same lines, ‘Advanz ’, was launched as country’s first completely sealed and maintenance-free battery for the automotive aftermarket, not requiring topping up. With respect to the industrial segment, the company is working on advanced GEL batteries for a maintenance-free solution for train lighting applications.

Ongoing battle for market leadership, via new investments and app experiments

Capex plans appear to be in full swing as with Rs. 1100 crore earmarked for the FY18-19 by the company for greenfield battery recycling plant in collaboration with Energitech Technologies (Italy) and expansion of current battery manufacturing capacities.

Exide has developed the ‘Exide Care App’ to reduce the lead time for providing customer services and has been reporting 10,000 units of monthly sales on an average. Exide has also entered the EV space through a joint venture with Leclanche of Switzerland and is running all its manufacturing plants at 100% utilization.

Even after years of intense competition, Exide has been able to defend its 2/3 rd market share in OEM segment and around 65-70% in 2 wheeler market. But this time around it is not just Amara Raja to battle it out in the organized space but also the OEMs, Honda & Maruti Suzuki lining up their in-house lithium ion batteries production for EVs.

With an aggressive battle strategy, Exide might re-establish dominance. Either way, the competition has been good for both consumers and the players, increasing the bar in terms of the quality and effectiveness of products. 

Suhani Adilabadkar is a Research Analyst registered with SEBI ((INH200003240)) She has done PGDBA (Finance), MS (Finance) and a Fellowship from Insurance Institute of India. She maintains a blog at oasisfundamentals.blogspot.in. Disclaimer: Investing in stock markets is subject to market risks. Neither Trendlyne nor the author is liable for losses including consequential losses, claims, or expenses incurred by third parties from following research reports and advisory analysis available on Trendlyne.