Welcome to Investors’ Edge— your daily dose of business insights, trends, and updates that matter. In this space, we go beyond the headlines to explore the evolving world of companies and industries. Each day, we bring you thoughtfully curated insights, sharp observations, and key developments shaping the business landscape.
Whether it's a strategic pivot by a market leader or an under-the-radar company making waves, we break it down for you — clearly, concisely, and consistently.
Today is 27th may and we bring you great insights from multiple concalls for Q4FY25 and an interesting sector that might be at its cyclical bottom
Pure play on Defence Indigenisation
"These three products that you see the Indian Navy was importing from Russia we have successfully indigenized them and are supplying for the various platforms that are being built by the Navy".... "This again was imported from Russia We have successfully indigenized them"
A big proxy to the shipbuilding capex
"You see the kind of capex MDL,I believe, is doing about 4 to 5,000 cr capex GRSC is doing. CSL has added a dry dock to themselves they're doing about 2500 to 3,000 cr expansion on that I see this going through"... "prime minister has said that India has to become the fifth largest ship building that industry in the world and everyone is aligned to the vision and moving towards that"
Performance Drivers and Outpacing the Industry
“The strong performance in domestic ratings (19% Y-o-Y income increase in FY '25) is attributed to a combination of factors including growth in new ratings business (number of entities), increased volume of debt rated, a consistent push for better pricing, and a diversified presence across market segments. The focus on being a full-service rating agency with presence across the spectrum and a sector-focused business development approach has helped improve presence across segments. Management aims to outpace the industry growth consistently through these efforts”
Using LLM to improve the quality of publication
“Also, we have been using technology, as Mehul had mentioned in his opening remarks, there is usage of technology, LLM models, etc, especially to improve the quality of our publications. And also, we are using technology to improve the quality of our compliance in addition to the human control processes that we have.”
Navigating Challenging Market Conditions
“The management acknowledges that FY24 and FY25 have been challenging seasons due to a decrease in consumer demand compared to previous years. This is attributed to the normalisation of market conditions, declining consumer spending power resulting from rising interest rates, and increasing inflation. They view this as a recurring economic cycle that the brand has faced before and emerged stronger, expressing full confidence in their ability to navigate these challenges. The market sentiment is currently still low and sluggish”
Unique Inventory and Partner Relationship Model
“Credo Brands employs a distinct merchandise life cycle where unsold stock from offline channels is returned to the company and subsequently sold through online platforms and factory outlets. This strategy ensures effective sell-through, generates profit from returned inventory, and crucially, insulates their business partners (distributors, franchisees, etc.) from the risk of unsold inventory, thus building strong, long-term relationships. While this model can lead to higher inventory levels temporarily and potentially longer receivable cycles, it is offset by higher EBITDA margins”
“So, while DDC will obviously be a significant driver or continue to be a significant driver of our revenue in FY '26 and beyond, also in our, obviously, FY '28 outlook, which we have given. But also, it's not just DDC. I think that's also the point Arun just mentioned, that our business has got multiple legs.”
“You know, of course, DDC is a significant growth contributor. But also, you know, whether it is sterile injectables, whether it is soft gelatine capsules, where we have recently added capacity and taken the capacity to three acts, and we've got multiple new customers onboarded. So, Yes, so while DDC will continue to lead our growth strategy, but we have got all service offerings contributing.”
— Neeraj Sharma
Strong sales growth to continue and margins to be stable around 24-25%
“We would not be commenting on quarter-on-quarter. So, we went up to 550 and then came back to 700, so I will not commit that 700 is the safer side. But obviously our target now is to move to 800. So, in the next four quarters, we should be crossing 800. That should be our target, and that's what we will be striving for.”
— Arun Jain
Strategic Positioning and Ambition for Purple Fabric
"Purple Fabric is not that. This is a purpose-built AI platform architected from the ground up to drive concrete business outcomes like enhanced customer acquisition and growth, operational excellence, more robust governance and compliance, and faster and sharper financial decisions."...
"It is built on four foundational technologies... What sets Purple Fabric apart is its governance-first architecture. We have embedded 18+ AI guardrails, ensuring explainability, fairness, and auditability of both data and decisions..."
"We are quite sure of Rs.1,000 Cr. We are now in the last 4-5 months, we built up the entire use cases or business cases to make it Rs.1,000 Cr business in for next three years for Purple Fabric... The next milestone is, can we make it a 5,000 Cr business? That's where our efforts are... to make this as the greatest AI product in the world where we can challenge Palantir, c3.ai."— Arun Jain
Ahead in the curve in terms of tech investments
“I think we will be ahead of the curve when it comes to tech investments. We spoke about it even last quarter. So we have developed our agility, which means our speed to market when it comes to new products from a tech standpoint, the kind of connectedness that we are able to provide to the market participants and most importantly, our readiness for growth. So all of this is already very much baked in, into our readiness framework for technology.”
— Praveena Rai
Growth to come in with the increased capacity utilisation
“I think the biggest challenge we see is to now build the capacity from currently which we are utilizing 65% and to start manufacturing 85% to 90% within 90 days of time. As you know, with the downward trend, we had shut Plant-4 which had an additional 250,000 capacity. We are restarting now immediately. We started recruiting
manpower, the infra and the raw material required for the same. You will see the weight for few quarters; further additional enhancement of the capacity needs to be done. If it needs to be done”— Chirag parekh
UAE market is near to breakeven
“Our ratio is reversed now, with the sales of 80%. Appliances at 20% sinks in UAE, with the riding success with the first Dubai showroom, we are now opening a second showroom in Sharjah of 3,000 square feet on the main Sheikh Zayed Would also like to give you some good news that Carysil has now got a breakthrough in UAE with the biggest developer, Emaar, which is a state-owned Company, for the Carysil sinks. I am also pleased to announce that we have been robustly growing, more than our budget for the UAE market for the market this year”— Chirag parekh
Strong pipeline for 2026
“Alankar, going back to what we have spoken during the roadshows, I think what we had specifically stated was the timeline on certain molecules had kind of scaled up for the first time and then the follow-on for this order will result in lower growth than the previous year. This is the commentary that we had provided last time. However, where we are seeing today in fiscal '26, we see strong growth momentum. We see much better visibility and a stronger pipeline.”....
…“I think with respect to new molecules going commercial, dates are not within the control of the CDMOs like us. We've seen two large volumes of products that received phase 3, a good phase 3 readout as announced by the pharmaceutical companies. The timing of when it will add to our commercial pipeline is something that we don't know at this time, but these are data that we've seen in the public space. I think with respect to commercial products, I think a lot of the growth that we have seen this year, commercial product volume has increased, and that is driven by certain products scaling up. We are seeing visibility with respect to some of these products scaling up better again in the next year.”— Siva Chittor
Exports are set to improve on the back of entering new geography and china plus one
“So, as you know, we have invested in our CDC in Germany. We are upcoming investments in Manchester plus New Jersey. So all these are new geographic -- geography investments. So they will result in more business in newer geographies for future sustainable growth. In addition, we also see favorable market dynamics vis-a-vis ingredient business and Global Ingredients business, which has turned around in the last 2 years. We see good tailwinds from China, I think China Plus One strategy or alternate to China strategy, especially in the chemical and ingredient business, India has a very strong position vis-a-vis other countries in the world. “
FY26 can be strong year for the company
“To give a color on the revenue, whilst the opportunities are quite high and different, these are more midterm opportunities as we are just entering these markets. Our current existing markets in Europe and domestic market in Southeast Asia, we continue to see healthy traction. I continue to I would say, forecast or predict a 12% plus CAGR growth year on, as we have always alluded on the midterm, I think there is no reason to believe there will be any slowdown in this coming year.“
“So, we are still guiding 12% plus CAGR year-on-year despite a strong growth year last year. Given that our factory production facility is basically getting on stream later part of this year. We will look at also margin improvement and look at -- so we had very strong growth this year, we may look at a more moderate growth and focus on the margin management to improve our margins from the 43% average we had for this year to slightly better for next year. So, I'm very confident that we have good leverage to both grow at 12% plus and maintain or improve our gross margins.”— Kedar Vaze
Emerging-market (EM) re-rating tail-winds
A softer dollar is usually rocket fuel for commodities
Tight physical markets – especially in China
Long-cycle demand from the energy transition
Global mining companies are incentivized to improve utilization due to near-bottom commodity prices expected to rise. This presents potential opportunities for related Indian market proxies to benefit from sector growth.
Today's insights reveal a dynamic market landscape, from defense indigenization efforts by Krishna Defence to Care Ratings' tech-driven quality improvements and Intellect Design Arena's ambitious AI platform, Purple Fabric. While some, like Credo Brands, navigate challenging market conditions, others, like Carysil, focus on capacity utilization and expansion into new markets. Sai Life Science anticipates strong growth in 2026, and SH Kelkar eyes export improvements. Notably, the potential resurgence of global mining offers a ripple effect of opportunities for related Indian sectors, suggesting broader market potential. Overall, these varied strategies and outlooks reflect a market poised for both innovation and resilience.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this reference is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation. As an educational organisation, our objective is to provide general knowledge and understanding of investment concepts. We are SEBI-registered research analysts.
It is recommended that you conduct your own research and analysis before making any investment decisions. We believe that investment decisions should be based on personal conviction and not borrowed from external sources. Therefore, we do not assume any liability or responsibility for any investment decisions made based on the information provided in this reference.
Welcome to Investors’ Edge— your daily dose of business insights, trends, and updates that matter. In this space, we go beyond the headlines to explore the evolving world of companies and industries. Each day, we bring you thoughtfully curated insights, sharp observations, and key developments shaping the business landscape.
our daily dose of business insights, trends, and updates that matter. In this space, we go beyond the headlines to explore the evolving world of companies and industries. Each day, we bring you thoughtfully curated insights, sharp observations, and key developments shaping the business landscape.
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