Flat Products - 302.00 Rs

Established in 1978 and promoted by Mr. T. R. Mehta, Flat Products Equipment Ltd. (FPEL) is the only company in India having capabilities for designing, fabrication and installation of cold rolling mills. Cold Rolling Mill is the equipment required to convert hot rolled sheets into cold rolled sheets. Hence, FPEL enjoys a virtual monopoly in India while competing globally with players like Kawasaki & Hitachi (Japan), Siemens & SMS (Germany), DMS (France) and CMI Belgium. Presently, the company derives major revenue from metal cold rolling mills, galvanizing lines and corrugating machines apart from specialisation in other downstream processing mills and auxiliary equipments like skin pass mills, aluminum strip and foil mills, colour coating mills, tension leveling lines, mill automation equipments, metal processing lines, slitting and pickling lines etc. In fact, the company provides twenty solutions to ferrous and non-ferrous metal processing industry with its unique strength, state-of-the-art equipment building, process technology and project management capabilities.

The company has two units - one at Taloja Industrial Area, Maharashtra and the other in Silvassa, Union Territory of Dadra & Nagar Haveli. At present, the company has collaborations with T. Sendzimir as well as Bliss Salem, USA, for manufacture of cold rolling mills, with Achenbach Buschutten, Germany, for manufacture of aluminium strip and foil mills with Redex of France for manufacture of stretch levelling equipment and with Durmech Engineering, UK, for paint coating lines. Notably, all its collaborators are world leaders in their respective fields. Due to the huge market, FPEL has been concentrating on exports since the last few years and has made its presence felt in USA, Mexico, Europe, China, Korea, Malaysia, Morrocco, Turkey, Colombia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, Iran, UAE, Vietnam, Japan, Ethiopia etc. With steel and metal producers expanding aggressively worldwide including India, the company has huge order flows especially for exports. In fact its current order in hand position stands at a whopping Rs.1000 cr, which gives it a strong revenue visibility.

Earlier in 2003 & 2004, FPEL was doing well with an operating margin of 9-10% but due to sharp rise in raw material costs and with no escalation clause signed with customers, its margin fell substantially to 3-4% for 2005 and 2006. However the worst is over now and the company is executing contracts with better margins and with an escalation clause. Thus for March’07 quarter,it reported sales of Rs.234 cr. which was tad lower to entire FY06 sales of Rs.286 cr. Importantly, it made a strong turnaround by reporting an OPM of more than 8% after quite a long time. After tax provisioning of around Rs.6 cr. its net profit stood at Rs.12 cr. i.e. whopping EPS of Rs.25 for just one quarter. For full FY07, sales grew by 80% to Rs.511 cr. and net profit multiplied 7 times to around Rs.16 cr. i.e. EPS of Rs.32 on its tiny equity of Rs.4.94 cr. Assuming that FPEL has already turned around, it may clock a turnover of Rs.700 cr. with PAT of Rs.25 cr. for FY08. This translates into an EPS of Rs.50 on its current equity. However, with exports contributing to more than 70% of its total revenue, the sharp appreciation of the rupee is cause of concern. Still investors can buy the scrip at current levels as it has the potential to give handsome returns in medium to long-term.