From Net Loss to Net Profit
Making his humble beginning in steel, Sajjan Jindal has created one of India’s largest business conglomerates. Today, the ‘steel man’ of India takes pride in his businesses across energy, infrastructure, sports and cement, with the group’s revenues touching $11 billion for the year ended 31 March 2017.
The year 2017 was indeed the best year for Jindal’s steel business. A stand-alone loss of close to Rs 3,500 crore in 2015-16 swung to a profit of Rs 3,577 crore in 2016-17. Between January and March 2017, its net profit increased 242 per cent to Rs 1,014.3 crore over the period in 2016. It was a celebration of boom amidst gloom. While the domestic steel market remained weak, Jindal focussed on exports and high-margin coated products.
In 2017, the JSW Group made some bets that paid off well. Jindal Steel, with its three newly commissioned blast furnaces, produced 15.8 MT (metric tonne) crude steel — highest ever for the company, surpassing giants such as SAIL and Tata Steel in overall capacity. The group’s cement business — under the group’s next gen scion Parth Jindal — made some well-informed new acquisitions.
Jindal’s energy business, however, didn’t record any significant success in FY16-17. Poor power demand, lower tariffs and weak merchant off-take took toll on the company’s balance sheet. That however, does not undermine the growth of the business over the years, which has substantially added to Jindal’s fortunes.
In the last two years, the company snapped up three power plants with a combined capacity of 2,891 megawatts (MW) for nearly Rs 16,000 crore. Today, JSW Energy is the country’s fourth largest private power producer with 4,531 MW capacity, maintaining high financial prudence.
As the world shifts towards clean energy sources, Jindal plans to enter energy storage and the electric vehicles segment with a corpus of Rs 4,000 crore, mounting up brand JSW further in accordance to the opportunities like every time.
