Titagarh Wagons to enter Locomotive biz as Indian Railways get China push

Titagarh Wagons to enter Locomotive biz as Indian Railways get China push

Analysing the potential of the agreement, Umesh Choudhary, Vice Chairman, Titagarh Wagons expects this development to finally see light of the day as the railways project has been going on since several years in various forms and fashions

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) and an action plan were signed between the government of India and People’s Republic of China in enhancing technical cooperation in railway sector. The potential cooperation areas mentioned in the MoU are: training in heavy haul freight transportation, increasing speed of trains on existing routes, station redevelopment, high speed rail and setting up of Railway University. Analysing the potential of this agreement, Umesh Choudhary, Vice Chairman, Titagarh Wagons expects this development to finally see light of the day as the railways project has been going on since several years in various forms and fashions. Titagarh Wagons is not directly a part the project as of now but the company is getting into locomotives and expects to have some share in this pie, he says in an interview with a TV Channel.  Further, he sees railway space getting a lot of traction hereon.

Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview:

Q: I am sure you would have gone through the news, your first comments on that?

A: The railway sector has been receiving a lot of focus and attention from many countries. We saw that from Japan also, the railway sector was in focus and in China also I happen to be in Delhi and I saw there were a lot of Chinese part of the delegation that went to the railways. I believe that apart from the technical collaboration and training Indian Railway men in China and so on they are also looking at investing in one of the corridors of the high speed apart from some tracks connectivity and tracks enhancement project. I personally believe that this is a sector that should receive a lot of traction going forward.

Q: There are some alerts that are coming by on a request for a proposal with regards to the Indian Railways. I will read it out to you, Indian Railways to issue an Request for Proposal (RFP) in a month for locomotive projects. Can you just tell us how much of an opportunity that would be for Titagarh Wagons if that is the case and in general what it would mean for the industry?

A: This is basically the Madhepura locomotive if I am correct. This has been going on for several years. We have seen this project come up in several forms and fashion but now it seems that it will see the light of the day. This is for high power or high capacity locomotive primarily for the dedicated freight corridor usage. So, it is an important milestone. While Titagarh is not directly a part of this right now but we are getting into locomotives. So, we are in dialogue with a few people to have some share in this pie as well.

Titagarh Wagons stock price

On September 19, 2014, at 13:24 hrs Titagarh Wagons was quoting at Rs 229.85, down Rs 4.9, or 2.09 percent. The 52-week high of the share was Rs 342.00 and the 52-week low was Rs 91.10.

The company’s trailing 12-month (TTM) EPS was at Rs 0.97 per share as per the quarter ended June 2014. The stock’s price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio was 236.96. The latest book value of the company is Rs 315.49 per share. At current value, the price-to-book value of the company is 0.73.