Adani Enterprises (AEL), the flagship company of the Gautam Adani-group, has planned a capex of ₹80,000 crore in the current financial year, mostly in new energy and airports.
Saurabh Shah, deputy chief financial officer, AEL, said they would invest ₹50,000 crore in the airports and new energy business through Adani New Industries, a subsidiary floated in 2022, which focuses on green hydrogen, wind turbines and solar modules.
AEL, which incubates various businesses, will invest ₹12,000 crore in roads, mostly in Ganga Expressway.
“We are also starting our PVC project, so there will be a capex of about ₹10,000 crore in the business, while the remaining would be in data center at about ₹5,000 crore’’, Shah said. He was speaking to analysts in a conference call.
After the Hindenburg report, the group put the PVC project at Mundra — which would be the largest in India — on hold.
Subsequently, it revived the project in July 2023 and is estimated to come at an investment of around ₹27,000 crore. A consortium of banks led by State Bank of India (SBI) reportedly would fund 60 per cent of the project cost.
ANIL has a target of green hydrogen capacity of 10GW capacity. It has commissioned India’s first ingot and wafer plant in Gujarat with capacity of 2GW, which will come
on top of an already established solar module plant of 4GW.
This will not only reduce dependency on imports but also enhance better control of module production and prices, Shah said.
Imported polysilicon is used for making ingots at present. These are converted into wafers, which are used to make solar power cells.
In airports, revenues grew 35 per cent to ₹8,062 crore, while EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation & amortisation) rose 45 per cent to ₹2,437 crore.
AEL operates seven airports in the country. It is building a greenfield airport in Navi Mumbai where it hopes to start operations by the end of 2024-25.
There was an increase of 20 per cent in passenger movement during 2023-24 and Shah said, there will be an exponential jump once the Navi Mumbai airport commences operation.
Shah said the company expects more airports to be privatised after the general elections, and AEL would bid for them.
“I think post elections the government may have in the pipeline a privatisation plan, and we will 100 per cent bid for projects in airports, which are our core strength,” he said.
AEL sees the airport business as a network of airports, which will facilitate effective strategy-making, including route planning.
“We are looking at it from a consumer and cargo perspective, and having a big network also increases our strength,’’ he said.