Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited ($506767)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Q4 and FY '26 Earnings Conference Call of Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited hosted by Ambit Capital Private Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinion and expectation of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Kumar Saumya from Ambit Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thanks, Danish. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to 4Q and FY '26 Post Results Conference Call of Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited. Concerned management here with us today, Mr. Kirat Patel, Executive Director; Mr. Chintamani Thatte, General Manager, Legal and Company Secretary; Ms. Kanchan Shinde, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now request Kirat sir for an opening remark, post which we'll open the floor for Q&A. Over to you, sir.

Thank you, Kumar, and welcome, everybody, to the annual investor call. Thank you for your interest you've shown in the company. We shall -- I shall just give a few opening remarks, and then we will open the line for questions. The year has been a little challenging. We did begin the year with a little bit of optimism thinking that there will be some growth. However, as you can see from the results, both the top line and the bottom line had more or less remained flat, plus/minus 1% of what it was last year. So within that, the concern has been that the markets have not grown fast as we would have liked. However, the good part is we have managed to retain and perhaps even slightly increase our market share in various markets that we operate in. Of course, the year could be split up into 11 months and another 1 month in March after the war has begun. And as you would be aware, we had informed the stock exchange both about the issues we have had with sourcing ammonia in March and subsequently, how we have been able to manage to keep the plants running. So we have had a few challenges in March in operations, but we have, by and large, over commit. But of course, the future remains a little uncertain as long as the war continues, which we hope will get resolved soon. With these opening remarks, I will open the floor for questions on specific issues or specific questions you may have about our products, markets, investments on the numbers which have been released yesterday. And please, Kumar, you can start the questions going. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Rohit Nagraj from 360 One Capital.

Sir, just one question in terms of the demand dynamics that we have seen over the last couple of months given that the raw material prices have improved, that must have been partially at least reflected in the higher product prices. So how has been the user demand given the current context? And what do you expect in the near future? Will it have any kind of demand challenges, which will terminate because the higher pricing continues to stay for some time?

Okay. Yes. It's -- you're right that the immediate impact of the war has been that the prices have risen both of our raw materials and subsequently, we have raised our finished good prices to protect our margins. It is a bit difficult to predict whether this will have an impact on the demand. At the moment, of course, we haven't seen it because it's too early. But we have one thought process that in most of our customers' products, we are actually a very minor cost in their cost of material, it's what you might call a C item. But -- so they have bigger problems to worry about in their major items. So the pressure on pricing may not be from the customers as much as from competition. And competition has already facing the same constraints that we have, so I suspect, though the prices have risen, they will not go back to the pre-February prices very soon. It will take some time for them to readjust. And we think that it will continue for a little longer at this price hike until everything -- the supply chain sorts itself out.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Dhruv Muchhal from HDFC AMC.

Sir, if you can help us, what would be the volume growth for FY '26?

It's been basically flat volume and value, plus/minus 1% either way, prices have dropped 1% and volume has probably dropped 1%. So the combination is about 2% drop. But within that, of course, between products, there has been a lot of...

Change, yes. Sir, on the RM availability, now ammonia is a key element for you. Just trying to understand the disruption that we see and Middle East being a large producer. So curious to understand -- I understand the price increased and net price probably some material is available. But at a broader industry level, is ammonia easily available? I mean if the hypothesis if it is available across the board, across the players, although at a higher price, the oversupply concern to some degree, which was there in the industry would remain and how do these spreads improve then? So I'm just trying -- on the prices have improved, do the improvement in spreads happen? Or because because if it's -- the point is if it's available only to you or probably a few players like you, then I can understand the spread improvement. But if it is available across, how does the spread improvement happen?

Okay. So one is about the availability of ammonia. Yes, there was in March a week or 2 when we had grave concerns about availability, but the sourcing improved some -- most of our suppliers managed to source ammonia for us fairly soon, and the disruption was very short. And our inventories took care of the gap. Going forward, yes, like ammonia, as you said, we were in the region of about INR 50 a kg, and now we are over INR 100 a kg. So obviously, the cost of production has risen. And we have had to pass it on to customers. As I said earlier, the customers have been able to absorb the cost at the moment. Whether this will lead to some demand destruction is a question for the future. But currently, yes, we have been able to source it, and I suspect that most of our competitors have also been able to find their sources of ammonia. So the marketplace has remained balanced. And the rise in margins may be just purely inventories. If you had inventories of the cheaper ammonia or the cheaper raw material then you produced it for a month or 2, you will get an advantage. But after that settled down to the regular competitive margins.

Got it. Sure. And when you say the availability -- I mean ammonia availability is reasonable, does it mean you are able to operate the plant at the level you desire? Or you -- I mean it is at a lower level, all the sufficient enough? I mean just trying to understand the degree of availability.

Yes. So our plants are running. We have a little bit of headroom on an average, we must be having between 60% and 85% capacity utilization and that we continue to get enough raw material to keep there. Yes, if the market grows suddenly to more, we'll have to source more ammonia. But the amount of ammonia the aliphatic industry requires is between 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes a year -- I mean, per month. So it's a fraction of what the country needs. So it's fairly easy for the government to allocate 0.05%, which is a critical raw material going into agricultural inputs to drugs. So they have taken into consideration that, and they will definitely support what is required. Alternative for them would be that, okay, if these industries cannot supply them, then the worst case, they will have to import the material and that is not a great idea. So they are making arrangements to make sure that. So I suspect over a period of time, we will get the ammonia as we require. Of course, it's not just the ammonia, but other raw materials also [indiscernible] rising prices. It will take some time for the industry to sort the supply chain out, maybe another 3 months, maybe 6 months for it to stabilize. Hopefully, by that time, all this almost trade will be opened out and we will be able to manage a reasonable amount of material coming through.

Sure, sir. Perfect. Sir, one another question was if any update on the project that you were implementing in, I think, Kurkumbh.

Yes. So that project was to be commissioned in this quarter, April to June, we are slightly delayed. It will probably be the first beginning of the next quarter that the project will get commissioned. Mechanical completion is going on. Mechanical completion is going to be completed somewhere at the end of June.

And the economics remains broadly same. I mean there's no...

So the economy of the projects have not been affected, even though there has been a slight delay, the economics of the project has not been affected. Even though -- even both -- in that case, also the raw materials and the finished goods low prices in line with everything else.

Our next question comes from the line of Pankaj Tibrewal from [indiscernible] Assets.

So two questions. One, last 3 years when I look at our performance, Obviously, we were impacted by the product pricing, correcting significantly led by Chinese import. And Chinese were selling at a price which was at times below the cost of production, especially in ethylamines and with chain. How is the situation now? Can you give us a color? And the way we saw in the last 3 years, do you think that finally, even if the prices revert, will it settle much above? And can the company now starts to deliver double-digit kind of a growth, which will be a combination of volume plus pricing. So just a color on across the chain and the import side will be quite helpful.

Okay. The first thing is the Chinese were not in the methylamine field, where the competition is largely domestic. While Acetonitrile where we got the -- in July, where we got the antidumping duty, it took a little time for it to materialize, and we only got the benefit of the antidumping duty towards the end of the year. Initially, there was a lot of inventory in the pipeline. So the anticipation of the antidumping duty people are important more. And after that, the Chinese themselves cut prices, which finally, I think, reverted back to their -- so towards the end of the year, we did see some improvement in our pricing in Acetonitrile. And therefore, volumes started creeping up and our market share started moving a little better. Going forward, whether at these elevated prices, whether we'll be able to deliver growth on volume. And obviously, in terms of value, it will grow because the prices have got elevated. But in terms of volume, but it's not sure. We expect that the next year will be like a normal year, which is about 5% to 10% growth rate. But there is too much uncertainty in the future.

On the Aceto side, what will be the pricing now?

Today, I think we are at about what -- a bit over INR 200 now per KG. But then acetic acid is also risen considerably.

And last quarter, it's average will be what?

INR 200 a kg, INR 200-odd a kg.

No, last year's average for us.

Last year's average, it came down to something like 140, 150.

Okay. So it's gone up by almost 30%, 40% from there, that...

Yes, so -- but as the raw materials.

Yes, yes. Sure, sure, sure. And on the ethyl and methyl chain also, the margins had come down to 2 decade low, how is this [indiscernible] from a spread perspective, are you seeing improvement? And plus the volume off-tick because we have a lot of capacity also. So can you give us some color on that side of the business, please?

So in ethyl, the market adjusted and the margins have improved. But in methyl, we find still that temporarily there will be some disruption because of ammonia. But now that we have 4 players in methylamine in the country. We expect there will be competition in methyl because now RC has also commissioned their plant, and therefore, they expect to be some competition.

And ethyl, can you give us some color on the spreads and how is it behaving now?

Ethyl has been only 2 of us, Balaji and us in the market. and there has been a somewhat stable market share kind of rationing or whatever. And prices have stabilized. In fact, they have also increased because alcohol has increased. And margins have been protected.

Okay. That's great. And just last question on Aceto. Can you give us a color on the imports by Chinese? How is it behaving now?

They -- in the last quarter, I think there has been some improvement from us -- I mean, in the sense that they have reduced their imports because they have raised their prices. So more and more, our market share has been increasing. But that's only the last quarter, it took almost 6 months from July all the way to January, December, January for the pipeline and the aggressive behavior of the Chinese to change.

That's great to hear that. And from a demand perspective, con call, you all mentioned because of the tariff issues. A few of your clients had suffered and that's why the volume had become a little lower. How is the feedback from the clients side right now because the tariff issue is now behind. So what are the pharma guys, the API and the peptide guys are saying, how should we look at from a demand perspective?

I think the pharma has always been a little optimism. They were exempt from most of these tariffs. There was a danger in the oil and gas field, where we were supplying, which had an impact. That was on one of the products which we used to sell. But I think -- and where the peptide is concerned, there is still a lot of optimism, I would say, a lot of talk about growth, but most of it has to still materialize. It's still early days. Just March, they got there, I think waiver of these things. So they've all launched somewhere in the last month only. And yes, we have supplied materials to all the players, but we are waiting to see how that growth takes place. And we are optimistic that in Acetonitrile peptide, there will be some volume growth.

But have you been able to now assess the market for us for peptide on Aceto?

Difficult because everybody is giving different optimistic figures, but I don't think that will all hold. They are all very congo about it, but it's not going to be that. But as I know, Acetonitrile market is about 30,000 tonnes or so. And this will be maybe 10% of the whole. So something will go up, something will go down. So the total market is not disrupted by anything. It's not a disruption, but it's a great addition.

And I know the company is quite conservative and overall outlook always. But when I look at the last 3 years, it's not been a very inspiring time for the company because of various reasons from an outside perspective. The way we are standing now, and obviously, things will change because it's an uncertain world. Do you think that now probably we are on a growth path back again and things should be materially better than what it has been in the last 3 years where we suffered from all the fronts.

Short answer, yes. I think we look forward to what I would say, cautious optimism. I think we will do better than what we have over -- we have seen the worst of times, I think. Of course, in life, you never say that because something always comes wrong. Yes, I'm optimistic that we have -- we are likely to see better times in the future.

Our next question comes from the line of Parikshit Gujarati from Neveshe.

First of all, I would like to ask a similar question what Pankaj sir asked. So all this China and pay evolution point of view, how big is the catalyst for us? So they are cutting primitives on chemical sector overall. So how big is the benefit for us, I want to ask that.

Sorry, can you just repeat the question? What is the...

Parikshit, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but your voice is breaking, make sure that you have a stable network.

Am I audible now?

Yes, you're audible.

So what happens on the past 3, 4 years that Chinese were dumping the chemicals into India and now for -- now in the anti-evolution policy, we are trying to cut the capacities India country. So how will we benefit from this?

Yes. So we have seen over the last quarter a reduction in the aggressiveness of the Chinese this thing. And we hope it will continue. So if that happens, then, of course, not just us, all the Indian manufacturers will benefit in terms of reduced competition from the Chinese, some of it, which was quite unfair. And we hope that will help us restore our margins to the levels which we were hoping. And of course, this path that they have taken should be consistent. It's not necessary that they are going to continue to cut capacities as they have promised and in all sectors.

So sir, on the margin side, what margins can we expect from now? Can we say that this is the bottom of margins and from now here on what improvement can we expect?

So as I said earlier, then yes, we are optimistic that we have seen probably the worst and we hope to see better times in the future. with the provision that there's always something which can happen. Nobody predicted the war and what can happen. At the moment, of course, the benefit of lower raw material and higher finished good prices temporarily has helped, but how long it will continue and doesn't know. But we are optimistic that we will have better margins in the future. No. All the prices will -- I don't think, come down to the old levels soon, pre-February levels I don't think we'll see very quickly because it is going to take some time for these prices to come down.

Okay. And in the volume terms, you are guiding 5% to 10% volume growth?

That is what we expect that the country will be growing anyway at 5%, 7%, and we grow along with it.

Okay. So what I wanted to understand that, is this a very big catalyst or medium-term short-term catalyst the China evolution thing? So this a very big catalyst for us or not?

A very big?

Catalyst.

Catalyst...

China's policy that.

No, no, no. It's not that significant. Yes, it does help because you can get maybe 5% more selling price if the Chinese become less aggressive. But they are still -- I mean it's not as if we have completely gone out the market. So there will be some advantage if they will stop acting so aggressively because they themselves have to meet their own return on investments and all that. So -- but it will be a benefit, not a dramatic benefit, but some benefit.

Our next question comes from the line of Gagan Dikshit from Elara Securities. Gagan Dikshit left the queue, we move to the next participant. Our next question comes from the line of Rajiv Rupani, an Individual Investor.

Sir, in last con call, you had talked about there are some products in the R&D pipeline, which you may think about in the next -- by Feb, March. So could you please update us when do you plan to launch new products from the R&D pipeline? And -- will it be?

Yes. So there are 2 things. One is, of course, the products which we are already launching, which will, as I said earlier, will probably come into the market in July, which is also from our R&D pipeline. There were a few other products which we are looking at, but -- and we have got them on to engineering stage, but we will take a final decision on whether to invest or not into this after this volatility in the market settles because some of them, the profitability, we need to have a slightly longer-term vision on these products. When we start, it takes almost 4 to 5 years from conceptualization to come to the bench scale to engineering. And in that time, a lot of commercials change. So depending on how it goes, we have to take a slightly longer-term view. And given the volatility just now, we have been a little cautious before going forward with anything major, whether it is INR 20 crore or INR 50 crore investment or even INR 200 crore investment. We have been a little careful just now.

So by next con call, we will have a better view?

I'm not sure sure, I hope so because this volatility -- I think this war will end. So I'm sure we will be able to be a little more optimistic about the future and be a little more understanding of where the prices are settling, and who's still left standing in the...

Okay. And my next question was on ACM. So what do you think will be the capacity utilization in the coming years? And what was this last year?

So we -- as you know, we have about 30,000 tonne capacity between 2 plants. And we have enough capacity to last us for a couple of years. So we don't see -- don't -- we are not worried too much about the capacity utilization at the moment.

Okay. And going forward, the capacity utilization of methylamines and ethylamines, could you guide us.

So methyl be invested, I think about 3, 4 years ago in a very large plant, which would last us for maybe 5 or 10 years at that time. So there is no question of methylamines we have -- I mean comes we have enough capacity for the next 4 to 5 years. assuming that growth is natural in this 5% and 10%, which we see, though last year, it was a little dull for growth. But we think that we have enough ethyamines capacity. And between us and Balaji, the country has enough capacity for ethylamine. Methylamines, there is an overhang of capacity because new player has come in. So there's RCF, Balaji, and us. So there is a bit of overcapacity of methylamines, and that will take some time to fill up, until the market level where all of us have underutilization of capacity there.

Yes. And my last question was on the raw material side. So if there is an improvement in the availability of raw materials, do you think and the prices go down, the finish -- our finished product prices also go down by that percentage or we can maintain the price current?

Yes. What happens normally is that the prices come down. There is a phase lag of course. When supply improves and prices come down, pretty good prices come down with a lag because that comes with competition. So there is a portion of time where your margins improve, but that is only temporary. But I -- my view is that I don't think the prices will come down to the old levels very soon because the damage that has been done to the petrochemical industry, is going to be difficult to repair in the short term. It is going to be bad, of course, but it will take a little time for it to come back on stream fully.

Our next question comes from the line of Abhinav Mandora from Equitas Investments.

First question is on the incremental ammonia price, I understand that in the March month, we could get availability of the ammonia with going forward with higher tetanus, do you pass on the entire incremental price, a? And b, how place like it long term or on how the month and what is the quarter?

Well, at the moment, if you look at the -- we have been able to get ammonia even beyond March and at the elevated prices, the prices have not dropped. We have been able to pass on the increase. I mean our customers are understanding -- very understanding about the fact that with ammonia doubling, we are not able to supply them the material at the old prices. But they have absorbed it, as I said, because a lot of our chemicals are C item in the whole thing. But going forward, I think, yes, if the prices come -- supply improves and prices come down, the finished good prices will also adjust maybe with a phase lage because ultimately, it's the competition. And we have any of our products. Most of our products have either the Chinese or internal competition which ultimately grabs -- tries to grab market share. So it does -- competition finally sets the price. You do probably enjoy a temporary margin widening, but it's only temporary.

Got it. Got it. And secondly, I wanted to understand the nature of our contracts.

Yes. At the moment, the ammonia contracts are on short term because prices are high and nobody is willing to commit to -- so they're all contracts on it's almost -- well, it's not day-to-day, but it's very short compared to what we used to do earlier because nobody is willing to commit longer term.

Got it. I just wanted a broad view on how are you seeing the user industry sectoral trend? Are you seeing a demand slowdown, particularly in ag or pharma in these 2 are your biggest segments.

Well, I -- at the moment, we haven't seen anything, but there is a little bit of concern that they could be affected, not pharma as much as high agro because they expect this monsoon also with El Lino and all, there is some concern. But I don't see the pharma industry being affected by that.

How much for us pharma would be as a user industry around 50%?

Maybe between 50% and 60% of our sales are to pharma and other maybe 15%, 20% to agro. [indiscernible] about 70%, 75%. While you say that methylamine have got competition, et cetera, et cetera? When do you see the entire absorption of this incremental capacity, which are also getting? And how do you see this panning out? Like how has the cycle be earlier kind of a new competitiveness and the supply has increased. I think in this scenario how difficult it would be to [indiscernible]. So this new competitor in methylamine has not happened for 30 years, 35 years in fact, if I'm right. So there is no comparative kind of scenario. And this is the first time we are seeing such a thing. Yes, earlier, the 3 of us, Balaji, RCF and us have had capacity expansions regularly every few years. And all of us have spare capacity now for all of it to be absorbed, it will take a lot of time because it's a bit of a mystery why it went into this industry when there was -- already, there was overcapacity. There was enough capacity, and then they've put on our new plant. So we have had even more overcapacity.

And for ethylamine, what does [indiscernible] that?

Ethylamine I mean, I think there is no issue. It will continue to grow, and it will take another for us, we have actually a plant which is fairly large size, and we can even debottleneck it. So we don't see any problem in capacity for ethylamine. We are probably either the largest or the second largest producer of ethylamines in the world already.

Got it. And what is the capacity utilization for both the products and what are other products?

Well, we don't talk about individual products, but as I said earlier, that most of our plans are between 60% to 85% capacity utilization. So we have enough capacity for the next few years without having to invest anything more in the existing product capacities.

Our next question comes from the line of Gagan Dikshit from Elara Securities.

Sir, what is the planned CapEx for FY '27 and FY '28, sir?

Plan, sorry, what CapEx?

Yes, what is the CapEx plan?

Yes. So there is no major business project, the current new product plant, which is going at Dahej so a bit of what is left over that we will incur in next year and then a few of the engineering projects. So around -- it will be around INR 80 crores to INR 90 crores.

Okay. So there are any new products, it just existing...

No, no, it can come up in between. Right now, nothing.

Okay, okay. And about the raw material side, sir, given this situation of the raw material availability, so are you evaluating any alternate ammonia or methanol sourcing or any long-term contracts for alternate route for the long-term purpose to provide the timeless head down risk in it effect.

Yes, interesting question. There's a lot of talk about green ammonia going around. And we are waiting to see if the prices of green ammonia offered can even come close to what the petrochem ammonia is? If that happens, that's a great thing for not just the country for the world because that could make a big difference. I think it will happen. It will take a little time. It will be 3 to 5 years before anything breakthroughs happened. But it's -- anyway, I think that's an alternative, which will come up in the future.

Yes. I think also moment is focusing methanol is, I think, byproduct for it?

Yes, methanol is a byproduct in cold. So they are pushing -- they should have. In fact, China did it 15 years ago. We should have also stepped in. We ignored it. We have only, I think, 2 or 3 coal gasification plants, and both of them, I think, in the steel industry.

Our next question comes from the line of Mittal Mehta from Lucky Investment.

Sir, I just wanted to understand your current spreads with raw material prices going up, going down. How are the current spreads behaving for each of your products? I mean, you could just be on miles into nitrile, are the larger ones.

Yes. So in March, as I had mentioned earlier, we did get a little advantage because we had raw material stocks, which were of the old prices, while the finished good prices moved up. This kind of thing, we will not be able to sustain. But yes, the margins initially improve and then they settle down because of competition. Whether they will settle down to the old pre-February or a little higher, we'll have to see. But we are optimistic that I think we have seen the bottom. So probably the margins going forward will be a little better than what we have experienced in the first 11 months of this year -- of the last year, sorry.

Last year, sorry, to assume that every year, we can anticipate some margin increase from now on in terms of our EBITDA margin, about 100 to...

Year, it's difficult to say, but definitely, I think we do foresee some improvement in our margins in the next year. But will it continue growing? That's a separate question altogether. It's difficult to say.

And also from the sales standpoint of view, is it also fair to assume that our growth will be between between 10% and 15% going ahead?

Well, between 5% and 10% volume growth. As I said, the prices just now have gone 30%, 40% higher than what they were in February. So in terms of top line, obviously, there will be a lot of increase, but in volume growth, it will be between 5% and 10%.

Okay. So when you say -- so typically, the higher inflationary sort of selling price has always been helpful to us even in the past? Or generally, raw material prices also sort of move up in the similar fashion, but -- and our conversion sort of remain flat?

So you're right. At the beginning, at every cycle we gave because there is always that we would react to current raw material prices and change our finished good prices, while we do have contracts for the old or inventory of raw material with us. So there is a widening of margins in the initial stage, then it settles down. Hopefully, it will settle down to a better level than what it was before February. And then if the prices start going down again which may happen after 6 months, 1 year, whatever the time it takes for the supply chain to sort itself out. Then we do have some view that raw materials come down faster than our finished goods. Again, we do get a little benefit sometimes. There are 2 opportunities. And in between, there is a kind of a flattening of margins. But given that there has been a boost in the prices, I do not think the prices will come down dramatically back to the February levels very soon. So there will be a margin increase going forward.

Right on your current prices across products. I mean methyl, ethyl...

Sorry?

When selling prices across your product basket, methyl, ethyl, Acetonitrile.

They're very, very different because in each of these, ethyl has key products, methyl has new products. Some are long summer short. And acetonitrile itself is having a volatility so and there are very different trends. Methyl is almost half the price of ethylamines. So they do go from methyl, I would be, say, INR 100, INR 110, and ethyl would be INR 200, would be INR 200 plus today.

Sir, overall tonnage, how much we produced this year? Is it is it possible for you to make assumption?

Yes. I think we have produced overall, I think about 2% more, 1%?

1%.

1% more than last year.

Tonnage-wise could you...

No, we don't actually reveal tonnages of various products or even the global.

Basically from 2 lakh tonnes, we are currently at about 110,000 tonnes, would that...

INR 2 lakh tonne capacity, yes. And yes, if you look at our capacity utilization or not, we will be able to work out in that range, because 1/3 of that is, as you know, we self-consume a lot of our production. The derivatives based on our so almost 1/3 is used by us.

Over the next 24 months, we don't see any major CapEx?

No. We don't see any -- of course the existing products. But as Kanchan pointed out that in case some of these R&D products work out, then we may suddenly come up with a requirement for CapEx. But the CapEx otherwise, looking at is just completing this project and maintenance CapEx. So There's always some maintenance CapEx, INR 20 crores, INR 30 crores, something like that.

To get some more understanding about these new products in. So which are these products actually are the -- is there a completely new set of products and catering to new industries or...

Look, I think we have a policy and which we have mentioned earlier, that we do not talk about our R&D products, still the product is in the market. That means after the plant is commissioned and the product has come into -- then we announce it to the market. So I don't want to discuss any R&D product. But globally, yes, we are in the specialty chemical market. By and large, we look at products which have at least 2 customers for the product. And in the areas which we know, the life sciences. We have a wide range of customers from Rubber Chemicals to what I think to electronic chemicals, drugs and agro. So it's normally in this area. How many -- I mean, in terms of number of projects that we would be currently working in your RA would it be possible for you to share that number.

Ladies and gentlemen, the management line has been disconnected. Please connected while we reconnect them. Ladies and gentlemen, the management line has been connected again. Over to you, sir.

Repeat the question because we got disconnected in between.

My question to you was that how many products or how many projects would you be working at this time in your R&D?

At any point in time, we are probably over a dozen projects working on it. probably more. But at various stages, some are right at the preliminary research stage. I mean, debts are at final, what we call R&D building, they're just finishing off all the data, which the engineering requires. And there are some in the engineering stage, which is not R&D, but the project people, technology transfer people. So maybe a dozen products we'll be looking at at any point in time. But as you said, we -- out of which actual -- when they come to a page where financial decision has to be made...

Ladies and gentlemen, the management line has been disconnected. Please connected while we reconnect them. the line has been reconnected. Over to you, sir.

I'm sorry, I think we are having a little trouble with the network today. And so can you just repeat the question that you were asking, sorry.

Actually discussing about the new product, the new...

Yes. So as I was saying, that they have about a dozen products at any point in time at various stages of development from debt research all the way to engineering. And most of the time, and we have a policy that we will not talk about our products. Of course, our end customers probably know it earlier than anybody else because we do send them samples and discuss with them what they want because specifications and stuff like that. And a lot of these products come from them because they need this. So their approach of saying that can you make this and you need it in year 2 or 3 or whatever, and we need so much quantity at approximately this price. So a lot of this, the customers are the first people, of course, to know about the products. And we -- to the investors, we announced it when we actually have the product in the market. And out of these dozen maybe 1 or 2 may survive to commercialization.

Our next question comes from the line of Nihar Modi from Millenium Money Finance.

So sir, I wanted to ask that you mentioned about green ammonia. But sir, that is a different future perspective that can be planned on. So sir, but is the company under any talks as of now to diversify its ammonia suppliers or maybe build up more aggressive inventory. So something like this situation does not occur again?

Two questions, whether we can diversify our sources of ammonia. We are already dealing ammonia is a very large commodity, and we are only a very minor user of the total quantity. So we depend on distributors and suppliers of this who are mainly connected to the fertilizer plants and import this thing importance. So we don't have a direct connection with, say, the manufacturer, except for 1 or 2 cases. But we have a diversified because there's so many fertilizer plants in this country, most of them in the Western region. So that is well supplied. This shortage of gas is something which is unique, never happened before. So that kind of situation can happen. As far as the green ammonia is concerned, we've been watching the development, but nobody is yet offering the ammonia in future, yes. But I suspect that they'll come to a stage very soon where they will be able to offer this material to us. Of course, we are not the major users. They're probably planning to offer it to other end users, but it could benefit us.

We'll take Rajiv as the last question. The next question from Rajiv Rupani, an Individual Investor.

My question is, sir, our competitor, Balaji, is executing a large plant for ACM, which is coming up in the current year, so 18,000 tonnes. So what do you think will be impact on the prices and our capacity utilization? And my next question is methylamine, so we are facing a lot of competition. Any very new derivative products planned for methylamines that the margins increase?

Two questions. One is Balaji putting up a new Acetonitrile plant. Yes, of course, it can happen, and we will ultimately make the competitive material. But that's in the future. And when it happens, we will see because there is already 2 or 3 other people who are making Acetonitrile, but we seem to have an edge on the costing and the efficiencies. So that's where the scotch comes. You have to have the ability to manufacturing at a low cost. And we suspect that we will be the lowest cost manufacturer in this product for some time to come. Of course, it will have an impact on the market. It's not just Balaji, is the Chinese also. As far as methylamine derivatives are concerned, we are always looking out for new products. And I said we will not talk about our end new products, which we make. Some of these new products are derivates of So some which mean derivatives will be in the R&D pipeline, which we are always looking at. But nothing we can announce just now. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming on to this annual call for investors. And I wish you all the best for the next year. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Alkyl Amines Chemicals Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.