Vedanta owned Hindustan Zinc on Friday reported a surge of 14% in its consolidated net profit in the second quarter of FY26 at Rs 2,649 crore. The company’s net profit also rose 19% on a sequential basis.
Hindustan Zinc’s revenue from operations stood at Rs 8,549 crore, up 4% from last year.
The company recorded its best-ever second quarter in terms of mined metal production of 258 kilo tonnes, up 1% on year. Its EBITDA stood at Rs 4,467 crore, up 16% from the previous quarter and 7% from last year with an industry leading EBITDA margin of 52%.
When asked about the outlook on the silver market on the back of rising demand and prices, the company’s CEO Arun Misra told FE that the current surge in silver prices will give a good advantage to the company.
In the first half of the current fiscal, the company has produced 293 tonnes of silver. “We are planning to produce 680 tonnes of silver in this year so that means more than 350 tonnes will be produced in the next half of the fiscal which with current silver prices will give a good advantage,” Misra said. Silver drives 40% of the company’s overall profit, the company said in a statement.
“Also, we are not stopping or reducing production of zinc. We have produced about 496 KT of zinc and we want to finish the year at 1,075 KT, so you can see that high volumes are coming in H2FY26, which will result in good revenue and lower cost, good ebitda also,” the CEO said.
The company plans to invest $350-400 million in the current financial year 2025-26 while expanding its capacities, its Chief Financial Officer Sandeep Modi told FE.
As part of its expansion plans, Hindustan Zinc is putting up a new concentrator, expanding its mining operation, and putting up a 650,000 tonnes of smelter consisting of 450,000 tonnes of zinc smelter and 200,000 tonnes of lead smelter.
“Zinc will continue to grow. If you look at current prices, the prices are very stable around $3000 per tonne and it will continue to grow. Demand will continue to grow,” Misra said.
The company will also be expanding its footprint in the mining of critical minerals and plans to start mining of its acquired blocks of monazite and tungsten in the next 2-3 years.
“For monazite and tungsten, we will surely tie up with global knowledge or technology providers. But we are far away from it because we have to start exploring. Once we start exploration, then only we will look into collaborations,” the CEO said.
On the demerger, Misra said, “We have always been considering demerger. I’m sure right now the time is right to reconsider that option because with current silver prices as they are, have we done it last year, by now the combined market cap of both lead, zinc company and silver company would have been far more than what we are getting as lead, zinc and silver company.”
The company has earlier laid out plans to create separate entities for its zinc, lead, silver and recycling businesses to unlock potential value.
