Hindalco Industries Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla on Monday said the company has started FY'22 at a strong pace and continues to see a strong demand across business verticals despite the impact of the second wave of COVID-19.
In his address to shareholders at the 62nd Annual General Meeting, Birla said that despite the pandemic-induced volatility in the business environment, Hindalco marked some significant milestones.
"We continue to see a strong demand across all our business segments, plants running at capacity, and improving margins, supported by better macros and operating efficiencies," he said.
In FY'21, the company delivered an outstanding financial and operational performance bolstered by operational efficiencies, a robust risk management framework and a sustainable business model.
"Your company continued to strengthen its balance sheet and brought down the consolidated net debt-to-EBITDA to 2.59 times at the end of the financial year from a peak of 3.83 times at the end of June 2020, after closing the acquisition of Aleris. The acquisition is a key step towards the diversification of your company's downstream portfolio into certain premium market segments, particularly aerospace," he said.
"Our India downstream strategy of reducing exposure to the global aluminium price fluctuations and increasing the share of value-added products (VAP) across businesses is also playing out well... more than 80 per cent of Hindalco's consolidated EBITDA was delinked from the volatility of the global metal prices taking together the Novelis, Copper and India Aluminium downstream Value-Added Products (VAP). The VAP sales are going up year after year in aluminium," he said.
