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STL announced a fresh capex of | 200 crore to set up 9 mn Fkm optical fibre cable plant in the US and UK. Consequently, its overall optical fibre cable capacity is expected to expand from 33 mn Fkm to 42 mn Fkm. STL indicated that capacity enhancements will support extensive fibre build-outs planned across the US, Europe and UK to boost rural broadband and 5G roll outs. On the financial front, it aims to reach | 10000 crore revenue run rate by Q4FY23 (vs. | 10000 crore revenue target in FY23 earlier, given Covid led delays in services portfolio) along with net debt/equity < 0.5 and RoCE > 20%. The...

STL has indicated that OFC capacity utilisations are at 100%. It also said that optical fibre demand has revived by investments in digital infrastructure. Globally, OFC industry volumes in 2021 are likely to grow ~6% YoY. STL perceives that unprecedented decade of digital network creation is on the anvil. The company has also maintained that, going ahead, growth should be driven by growing OFC volumes, optical interconnect business, scaling up SI business (both domestically and going global) and building access solution business. We bake in revenues CAGR of ~26.6% in FY21-23E. We...

STL has indicated that capacity utilisations are at all-time high and execution on the ground for services also continues to improve on Q-o-Q basis. It has guided for continued growth in Q4FY21 on QoQ basis. It has indicated that Optical fiber demand has revived by investments in digital infrastructure. Globally, OFC Industry volumes in H22020 have grown by 5% YoY and STL volumes have grown faster than the industry high. STL perceives that unprecedented decade of digital network creation. Factors such as adoption of open source standard and software defined networking, are some of the...

STL indicated that global fibre demand declined 7% YoY in 2019 (from 511 mn fkm to 477 mn fkm), on account of China slowing down after a massive 4G build. Globally most telcos have taken a capex pause and are delaying their investments. Hence, overall global fibre demand is expected to decline by 4.5% in 2020. Once the 5G investment cycle starts, demand is likely to pick up from H2FY21, with expected growth cycle of eight to 10 years. STL has decided to push the capacity expansion of OFC by six to nine months given the Covid-19 led disruption and demand challenge. The company...

STL indicated that global OFC demand came down in 2019 as China and India witnessed 13% and 29% de-growth, respectively, while North America & Europe were up 4% YoY. The company expects a demand and pricing recovery from H2FY21E onwards and has guided for an improvement in performance sequentially driven by strong services revenues and foray into new geographies. We lower our revenue forecast for FY20 to ~9% and expect FY21 revenues to witness a spurt (up 18% YoY) with new market foray that will improve capacity utilisation as well as continued network...

Sterlite Tech reported an in-line topline performance (~63% YoY growth) in Q1FY20 driven by strong domestic revenues (~64% of pie), which witnessed a staggering ~87% YoY growth. Exports revenues, on the other hand, forming 36% of revenues, grew 33% YoY. Reported EBITDA margins came in higher at 22.6% (vs. our estimate of 19.5%) given the higher proportion of product revenues that command superior margins. PAT came in lower at | 141.4 crore (vs. our expectation of | 151.2 crore) despite higher EBITDA, on account of higher depreciation and interest costs owing to...

The demand outlook for OF/OFC is strong, notwithstanding, recent pricing pressure, riding mainly on 5G, FTTx expansion and government initiatives for digital connectivity. However, the Chinese incident reflects the underlying lack of pricing power or commodity nature of the industry. With China's huge market share of ~50% in OF demand, the rub-off effect of pricing in other geographies cannot be ruled out. Moreover, huge capacity addition across the globe clouds the overall pricing outlook for OF/OFC. Therefore, we cut our revenue estimates for H2FY20 and FY21....

Sterlite Technologies (STLs) 1QFY16 results were below estimates due to sluggish optic fiber cable (OFC) sales. This seems to be a one-off, which management is attributing to seasonal weakness in government orders.