We will insulate ourselves from biz cyclicality: J P Chalasani, Suzlon Group

In the last year, Suzlon Energy’s shares have rallied 277% while Benchmark Sensex gained 19%. The company is now debt-free and generating cash. Chief executive officer, J P Chalasani tells ET the company wants to insulate itself from being a cyclical organisation and build an annuity business model through its services business. Edited excerpts:

Suzlon’s shares rallied in the past year. What do you attribute this to?
The answer is investor confidence. But the confidence is coming due to two reasons. One, we had an issue with respect to high opex (operating expenditure). Our fixed costs and debt were very high. So, our interest cost was Rs 100 crore a month. Secondly, the sector went down after FY17. In FY 17, we did 5 gigawatts, but subsequently, we’ve been struggling. However, internally, we fixed both-the opex in 2019- 2020, and now we are debt-free. Now we have huge internal accruals coming from our services business. The order book has been significant, especially for 3MW wind turbine generators (WTGs). The sectoral tailwinds are strong, wind energy is picking up significantly.