Adani Enterprises (AEL), the flagship company of the Adani Group with interests in new energy, transport and data centres, has pruned its capital expenditure (capex) for FY25 by 13% to Rs 80,000 crore. Post the December quarter results, senior officials of the Ahmedabad-based company had provided a capex guidance of Rs 92,000 crore for FY25.
Going by the details provided by the company, the reduction in capex has happened in the combined Adani New Industries (ANIL) and airports business. Saurabh Shah, deputy chief financial officer, Adani Enterprises said, “We are looking at a capex of about Rs 80,000 crore in FY25. ANIL and airports will be Rs 50,000 crore, roads will be Rs 12,000 crore, PVC business will be Rs 10,000 crore while data centres will be Rs 5,000 crore.” Shah shared details with analysts in a post Q4FY24 earnings call.
A mail sent to Adani Enterprises seeking clarity on the reduction in capex remained unanswered at the time of going to press. The earmarked capex for FY25 will nonetheless be a good 138% more than in FY24 when it was Rs 33,600 crore. “The overall capacity will grow to 10GW in the module integrated manufacturing; right from polysilicon to modules. In wind energy, we will have a capacity of 3GW. This capex is going in that direction,” Shah added.
A presentation shared by AEL showed a rise of 31% in gross debt and a 37% rise in net external debt during FY24. While gross debt stood at Rs 50,124 crore, net external debt stood at Rs 27,776 crore as compared to FY23. Adani New Industries focuses on the generation of green hydrogen, including downstream products, green electricity generation, manufacture of electrolysers and wind turbines. During FY24 ANIL’s module sales in megawatt stood at 2679, a 110% jump compared to 1275 in FY23.
With seven operational airports, AEL is the second largest airport operator in the country after GMR Airports Infrastructure. The company is setting up a green field airport in Navi Mumbai where it hopes to start operations by the end of FY25. A major part of AEL’s capex earmarked for Adani Airport Holdings (AAHL) will be routed to the Navi Mumbai International Airport. Passenger count across AAHL’s airports – Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram – grew by 19% to 88.6 million during FY24 as against FY23.
Air traffic movements increased by 10% to nearly 594,000 during the same year against 539,000 clocked in FY23. In addition to seven new airlines, 10 new routes and 18 new flights were added during FY24.