BackAEL plans ₹50,000 cr capital expenditure over five years
Out of this, over ₹35,000 cr will be infused into Adani Enterprises’ airports division
PremiumAdani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), the holding company of billionaire Gautam Adani’s group, has a ₹50,000-crore capital expenditure plan to fund its new businesses over the next five years, a senior executive said. Out of this, over ₹35,000 crore will be infused into its airports division.
“We took over two (Lucknow and Mangaluru) of the six airports so far and will take over operating control of Ahmedabad airport in the coming weeks. The acquisition of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports will be finalized in the next few months, and latest by March 2021," said Jugeshinder Singh, chief financial officer, Adani Enterprises.
“We will spend ₹14,249 crore on the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai airports and about ₹15,000 crore on the other six. The total capex target for the airports division is ₹35,780 crore," he added.
AEL, which incubates new business divisions within the group, will consider a demerger of the airports business after 2023, Singh said, adding that the company’s focus is on airports, roads and data centres, with a total capital expenditure of ₹50,000 crore over five years.
Adani Enterprises has also thrown its hat in the ring for the ongoing commercial coal mining auctions held by the government. A total of 38 coal mines have been put up for auction by the coal ministry. There have been 76 bids from 42 companies for 23 coal mines, with the remaining 15 mines failing to get any bids. The Adani Group has placed the highest number of bids in the ongoing coal mine auctions. Stratatech Mineral Resources, a subsidiary of Adani Group, won the Dhirauli mine in Madhya Pradesh, earlier this week.
While Singh did not comment on specific coal blocks, he said the company “continues to work with government programme in coal auction". “We have a large profitable mining services business and are in a good position to exploit this opportunity," he added.
Higher volumes in solar manufacturing and mining services pushed Adani Enterprises’ net profit up to ₹362 crore in Q2FY21 on a consolidated income of ₹9,312 crore. The company had reported net profit of ₹50 crore in the year-ago period, including an exceptional write-off of ₹130 crore.
During the quarter, solar manufacturing volumes increased by 50% to 418 megawatt (MW) due to increased sales in domestic content requirement and the engineering, procurement and construction segment. In roads, AEL has signed five concession agreements with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) under hybrid annuity model for construction of roads aggregating to over 200km.
“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. Our 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," Gautam Adani, chairman, Adani Group, said in a statement.
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