Adani Energy Solutions Ltd on Monday recorded its third quarter profit for the financial year 2023-24 at Rs 324.90 crore, down 31.6 per cent in comparison to Rs 474.72 crore during the corresponding quarter of FY23. It posted revenue from operations at Rs 4562.73 crore, up 28.5 per cent as against Rs 3551.7 crore during the same period last year. The company EBITDA was at Rs 1527.3 crore, up 3.4 per cent on-year.
The company stated that revenue growth was on account of the newly commissioned transmission projects and higher energy consumption in the distribution business. Key transmission projects, it added, included the 765 KV KBTL (Khavda Bhuj line), with 217 circuit kilometers which got charged during the quarter. This line, once fully commissioned, will help evacuate about 3 GW of renewable energy from Khavda, Gujarat. Second was the 400 KV Kharghar-Vikhroli double circuit transmission line, establishing the first-ever high voltage 400 KV connection in Mumbai.
The company said that AEML, the Mumbai distribution business witnessed an increase in the energy consumed by 14.8 per cent. It saw one of the lowest distribution losses of 5.46 per cent and added new consumers, reaching 3.16 million on the back of reliable and affordable power supply.
“Our growing portfolio with newly commissioned lines, coupled with favorable energy demand, continues to drive our growth. We are proud of our contribution to developing national transmission infrastructure, which is very critical to facilitate renewable evacuation, especially from the Khavda region,” said Anil Sardana, MD, Adani Energy Solutions.
“We are very excited about opportunities in all lines of business in AESL. The smart metering segment is consistently growing besides our existing T and D established industry position. To offer smart and tech enabled smart metering solutions, our partnership with Airtel, Esyasoft, AdaniConnex will be very fruitful and will immensely augment our offering,” said Kandarp Patel, CEO, Adani Energy Solutions.
Adani Energy’s Q3 performance across segments
The company said that the transmission segment, on operational parameters, was a strong quarter with an average system availability of over 99.7 per cent. The business added 302 circuit kilometers during the quarter and ended with a transmission network of 20,422 circuit kilometers. Adani Energy said that it has an under-construction transmission pipeline worth Rs 17,000 crore on track from the execution point of view. The company is on track to commission the MP-II package (partial), the Khavda-Bhuj (partial), and the WRSR lines in the coming quarters. The near term (12-24 months), tendering pipeline for the industry is buoyant and upwards of Rs 1.10 lakh crore under various stages of bidding.
The distribution business sold 2,489 million units vs 2,169 million units last year on account of an uptick in energy demand primarily driven by higher industrial share. The company said that the distribution loss has been improving consistently and stands at 5.46 per cent in Q3FY24 and maintained supply reliability at over 99.9 per cent. “The distribution business continues to show a steady performance with double digit growth and consistently increasing RAB (regulatory asset base), supported by internal accruals. Total RAB
for the distribution business has now reached Rs 7,823 crore from Rs 5,532 crore at the time of acquisition in 2018. AESL is exploring several areas and have applied for parallel distribution license in several geographies like Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra, Greater Noida (Gautam Buddha Nagar) in UP, and Mundra subdistrict in Gujarat,” it said. AEML, on a YTD basis, did capital expenditure of over Rs 800 crore and reduced its long-term debt by Rs 855 crore through a bond buyback program.
The smart meters business segment is evolving well and the company said that it will become a sizeable in terms of contribution to AESL’s overall growth and profitability. During the quarter, AESL received LOA (letter of award) for Phase-2 smart metering contracts from Andhra Pradesh discoms and a new contract from the Uttarakhand discoms. Total contracts awarded in Q3 aggregate to 2 million smart meters with a contract value of ~Rs
2,300 crore. The under-implementation pipeline now stands at 21.1 million smart meters, comprising nine projects with a contract value of over Rs 25,000 crore. The untapped market comprises 135 million smart meters, as the government’s official target is 250 million by 2026.