3 days ago
Welspun Group sees strong US business despite US tariffs, expands into water management
On Thursday morning, Welspun Corp stock was up 10% on highest volumes of shares traded on any day in the past twelve months. The stock closed at its 52-week peak of ₹ 895 on the BSE. The company, which makes steel pipes for transporting oil, had just announced its Q4FY25 and FY25 results, reporting a 67% increase in consolidated net profits over the previous financial year despite a 19% fall in annual revenues.
The sudden confidence of investors should come as a surprise. There was some serious uncertainty surrounding its business after President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel imports into the US in early March. Welspun, which has a pipe making factory in the US, imported steel as raw material, which made the landed cost of the metal highest compared to anywhere else in the world. It looked like Welspun Corp was staring at a prolonged downturn. A month after Trump announced tariffs, the stock was down 15%.
B.K. Goenka, chairman of Welspun Corp, says: 'Trump's big support for the local US oil industry is seeing a surge of investments in the sector. There is a huge demand for pipes, causing their prices to increase and we are doubling down on the business.'
Welspun disclosed that it has an order book of ₹ 19,500 crore, while its US steel mill is booked for the next 8 quarters.
It is not just in the pipe business that Goenka is exuding confidence. As luck would have it, yet another company of the $5 billion Welspun group has its business fortunes linked to the US market. Welspun Living, which is the largest maker of bath towels in the world, accounts for every fifth towel sold in the US. Just like steel, garments exports to the US were also affected by Trump's new rules, which saw import tariffs increase from 4.57% to 30.57%, according to textile industry portal Fibre2Fashion.
In its Q4FY25 results announced on Thursday, Welspun Living said that its home textiles grew at 1.7% year-on-year (y-o-y) in the quarter, even though the growth stood at 10.8% in FY25. The company's total revenue rose 1.2% to ₹ 2,648 crore in Q4FY25. For the full fiscal year, it rose at 8.9% to ₹ 10,697 crore.
A research report by institutional equities firm Systematix titled Indian Textiles, published after India signed its free trade agreement FTA with the UK in the first week of May, says: 'The FTA is poised to bring far-reaching benefits to India's textile and apparel sector. The agreement can double bilateral trade between the two countries.' The sector's export accounted for 12% of UK's $15.3 billion imports from India and the report expects a 9% increase in Welspun's export to the UK, boosted by the agreement.
In many ways, the two Welspun firms have come to be good examples of how Indian companies are working the way around Trump's tariffs, which have got the attention of senior business leaders, policy makers and investors in the past two months.
'Immediately, we will face some issues in our export to the US because of tariffs but we must understand that the main focus of the US is to reduce its reliance on China. To that effect, the real China+1 effect is going to play out only now. In the coming years, we expect our exports to the US to grow 20%,' says Goenka.
Now, the biggest chunk of Chinese exports to the US markets come from synthetic textile and garment, while Indian exports are based on cotton. 'We may not gain from Chinese exports going down as much as getting our shares from countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka which also face higher tariffs in the US. We have better access to capital and that will help us scale up faster," Goenka says.
"India has a unique advantage in home textiles as well-run companies like Welspun Living have easier access to capital markets and also locally-made cotton. It is placed better than competitors like Pakistan and Turkey in terms of US tariffs," says Arvind Singhal, founder and chairman of retail industry consultancy KSA Technopak. Singhal, until last year, was a board member of Welspun Living.
On the other hand, since the price of oil pipe will be directly linked to that of steel, Goenka expects to pass any price increase to customers. 'The price of US steel has already gone up after tariffs were announced and there is going to be parity to imports,' he says.
In the case of Welspun Corp, there are other levers too by which Goenka is trying to generate value. To deploy some of its cash, Goenka took control of plastics storage and furniture maker Sintex after the company filed for bankruptcy. The interest in Sintex stems from Goenka's interest in the water business, which he thinks will grow into a substantial one in the coming years.
'Starting from treatment, whether fresh water treatment or desalination, then transporting, and having a small loft tank, pipes, tap and small effluent sewage treatment can all be done by Sintex as a package unit," says Goenka. 'In FY26, we will do about ₹ 800 crore of revenue but the profits won't by much because of old losses or restructuring. But, we have 10% margin in the business.'
"Welspun has diversified beyond its core offerings into building materials and plastic segments. Such expansion enables it to align with favourable dynamics across the industrial, consumer and residential markets," wrote Shweta Dikshit, analyst with Institutional equities firm Systematix in a May 19 note on the company. The firm recommended a buy on the stock with a target price of ₹ 1,006.
Elsewhere, Goenka is focusing on reducing his costs in the textile business and is implementing a solar power project in Anjar, Gujarat. That project was commissioned with an intention to ensure that 80% of the power for the textile plant came from renewable sources in FY26 and 100% by FY30. 'Connectivity to the grid is still an issue. We will commission a part of it by September this year and the rest by December," Goenka says.
The group will eventually have more solar energy in the renewable portfolio as a new company Welspun Energy has been incorporated for the business. In pilot stages are plans to produce green ammonia and green hydrogen. 'It may look like green hydrogen is not viable today but that was the case with solar energy too in 2008-09 when it was ₹ 18 a unit. The same will happen to hydrogen and it is the energy of the future," he says.
