
Weak profitability, market share loss hurt Ramco's efforts to woo investors
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Ramco Cements Ltd is striving to impress investors through the monetization of non-core assets, debt reduction, and its recently launched construction chemicals business. Amid this, weak December quarter (Q3FY26) results didn’t help, even as cement volumes grew year-on-year for the first time after three straight quarters, up about 4% to 4.43 million tonnes (mt).
Still, this reading was below the industry’s high-single-digit growth, pointing to continued market share loss. Ramco’s problem is its vast exposure to South India, where overcapacity and stiff competition are keeping cement prices muted. Q3 cement prices in the trade segment in southern and eastern markets fell by 8-9% from September-end, the management said.
Due to a steeper drop in key regions than pan-India prices, Ramco’s cement realizations fell at a more-than-expected rate of about 7%. Thus, Ebitda at ₹281 crore missed the consensus estimate of ₹345 crore. Ebitda is short for earnings before interest, depreciation, and amortisation.
Weak profitability is feared to hamper other metrics, too. According to HDFC Securities, Ebitda/tonne of ₹610 in Q3FY26 was at a 13-quarter low, and Ramco’s subdued profitability should keep its leverage high (net-debt-to-Ebitda will remain >2x during FY26-27E) and return ratios low. “Amid lower profitability, we have deferred its Karnataka expansion to FY29E," said HDFC.
As of December-end, Ramco’s net debt fell to ₹4,145 crore from ₹4,481 crore in March-end. In the past two years, it has monetized non-core assets of ₹1,020 crore versus guidance of ₹1,000 crore and is considering monetization of another ₹200 crore. Ramco is expanding capacity via de-bottlenecking and selective brownfield
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