After having invested over Rs 2,300 crore and reaching a break-even level at its Chennai facility, Apollo Tyres is looking at expanding its Chennai Facility.
Satish Sharma, president – APMENA, Apollo Tyres said, “Chennai has become a success story. When we commenced operrations here in 2010, we started producing about 5,200 tyres a day against an installed capacity of 6,000. The company has space to add 30 per cent capacity at the unit. We will expand our Chennai facility. We though the break-even period will be seven years but we reached it in 3 years.”
The company is also focusing on its Kerala facility. “We will invest over Rs 400 crores in our Kerala facility. With this expansion, we will increase our production capacity from 30 tonnes a day to 110 tonnes a day within the next one and a half years,” Satish Sharma added.
Apollo Tyres is also looking at growing export market.
“The overseas market contributed around nine percent last year for Apollo Tyres and the company expects to increase this to 14 percent in 2014-15. We will target OEMs abroad and the market segment, apart from catering to the export share of domestic vehicle manufacturers” said Sharma.
He also added that in the last months the company witnessed around 40 percent growth in overseas business. It may be noted that the company is looking at a manufacturing facility in Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines .
“It will take another two years to decide on the destination. Focus now is to make the Eastern Europe facility up and running by 2016”, said Sharma. Apollo Tyres has recently announced its plans to set up a Greenfield tyre unit in Eastern Europe and said it will expand its Dutch brand, Vredstein’s presence in Europe and India
Apollo Tyres stock price
On June 17, 2014, Apollo Tyres closed at Rs 199.40, up Rs 1.30, or 0.66 percent. The 52-week high of the share was Rs 213.25 and the 52-week low was Rs 54.60.
The company’s trailing 12-month (TTM) EPS was at Rs 8.78 per share as per the quarter ended March 2014. The stock’s price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio was 22.71. The latest book value of the company is Rs 55.02 per share. At current value, the price-to-book value of the company is 3.62.