Corporate & Industry
SANJIV GOENKA, Vice-Chairman, CESC
Source: CNBC
BPO foray complements core-biz; retail IPO expected
Our principal focus has been and will continue to be in the power sector. As power projects took longer than anticipated due to problems ranging from availability of land to environmental clearances and supply of fuel it led to the repeated extension of estimated deadlines set for completion of projects. This caused the creation of a gap between availability cash and its requirement for the power projects.
Our retail foray is racing ahead on the road to profits. At the store level, we are already making monthly profits of about Rs 5 crore and very soon we hope the foray will start registering company-level EBITDA. So retail is looking pretty good and is set for an independent listing very shortly.
For CESC, the debt-equity ratio is 0.52:1 and the consolidated ratio is 1.11:1, which is still very healthy. So at a net-net level, we do not need to take debt to finance First Source acquisition.
Both new plants under CESC are on schedule- the plant in Chandrapur is due for commissioning in the early part of next year and the one in Haldia should be commissioned by October or November, 2014.
We certainly do not want to sign PPAs with SEBs who are not solvent and we would not sign PPAs with utilities that are not in a position to pay. So I think the path forward us could be to initially ink a medium-term PPA as a recent clarification has stated that even for a medium-term PPA, FSAs would be applicable.
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