Adani Group's flagship firm Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) plans to spend about Rs 50,000 crore in capital expenditure over the next five years with a major chunk of it going towards airports business, a top company official said on Wednesday.
The Gautam Adani-led group plans to infuse Rs 35,780 crore in its airport business in the next five years, AEL Chief Financial Officer Jugeshinder Singh said.
"For Adani Enterprises for the next five years, the main focus area is airports, roads ...the ballpark number over five years we expect ...the capex is about Rs 50,000 crore," Singh said in a post-earnings conference call.
Singh said the company plans to invest a total capex of approximately Rs 35,780 crore for the airport business in the next five years.
"With airports we want to make it a consumer transport facility as APSEZ (Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone) is a cargo transport facility. For that we have a clear strategy which Mr Adani has laid out for us," the CFO said.
The company had won bids for six airports at Ahmedabad, Mangaluru, Lucknow, Trivandrum, Jaipur and Guwahati.
The company took over the operation, management and development of Mangaluru and Lucknow airports on October 31 and November 2, respectively while operations of Ahmedabad airport will be taken over this month.
About capex in road business, Singh said as a group point of view it is not very significant "but overall if we look at all in next five years it may be Rs 6,000 crore".
In the roads sector, the company has signed five concession agreements with the NHAI under hybrid annuity model for construction of roads aggregating to over 200 kilometres. Two of the agreements were signed in July in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
The project completion status of Bilaspur-Pathrapali project at Chhattisgarh is about 50 per cent, as per the company.
Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani in a statement said: "The ability to incubate, innovate and scale effectively and rapidly has been a defining philosophy of Adani Enterprises and we continue to learn and further improve this model.
"The combination of our confidence in this business model, and our faith in India's growth story is demonstrated through the investments we are continuing to make in additional infrastructure sectors that are critical to nation building." Further, he said that the move into roads and water infrastructure, data centre parks, and airports, including the addition of the Mumbai International Airport and the Navi Mumbai International Airport, "provides us with a transformational platform that will help us create several strategic and growth-based adjacencies for our other businesses".
About ongoing coal auction, AEL CFO Singh said: "We will continue to work with government's programme so wherever it makes commercial sense for us we will be keen to participate...We are in a good position to exploit this opportunity." In June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the auction process for 41 coal blocks for commercial mining, a move that opens the coal sector to private players, and termed it a major step in the direction of India achieving self-reliance.
The coal ministry has so far auctioned 13 mines.
Some of the corporate biggies that have bagged blocks so far are Vedanta, Hindalco Industries, and Aurobindo Reality and Infrastructure.
Turning profitable in the September quarter, Adani Enterprises has reported a quarterly consolidated profit of Rs 435.73 crore.
The Gautam Adani-led company had clocked a consolidated loss of Rs 10.06 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago.
