J Kumar Infraprojects (JKIL), promoted by Jagdishkumar M Gupta and his family, is a small civil engineering company focussed on construction of roads, flyovers, civil construction of buildings, irrigation projects and piling works. Operations are largely confined in Maharashtra and to a large extent in Mumbai. The company is a registered contractor with various government agencies.

JKIL had executed transportation contracts totaling Rs 83.95 crore and civil construction work amounting to Rs 13.78 crore end March 2007. The biggest project executed was the construction of a flyover covering Kalyan Naka junction to ST Depot junction in Thane District amounting to Rs 21 crore. The company has executed some irrigation projects in the Vidarbha region. Designing and construction of four flyovers at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marg in Mumbai with project cost of Rs 111.90 crore is the biggest project in its unexecuted order backlog. This project was bagged by the 50:50 joint venture with Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC).

About 69% (37% from road, and 32% from flyovers) of the revenues were from transportation projects in the six months ended September 2007. The share of the relatively better margin civil construction was 18% and of high margin piling business about 7%.

The current IPO is to fund the purchase of capital equipments, meeting working capital requirement and to achieve the benefits of stock-exchange listing. Purchase of Rs 50.84-crore capital equipment will be completely funded from the proceeds of the issue. About Rs 18 crore of the issue proceeds will be used to meet working capital requirement.

Strengths

Order book was Rs 461.15 crore end November 2007. Orders included new contracts and unfinished contracts. The current order book translates into four times the financial year ending March 2007 (FY 2007) revenue, providing strong revenue visibility.

Piling contracts is a high-margin business. Efforts to add another four piling rigs to the current fleet of 11 piling rigs using IPO proceeds are part of the scaling up operations. Contribution of piling operations to total revenue was about 7% in the half year ended September 2007 and FY 20’07 compared with just 4% in FY 2006 and nil in FY 2005. Moreover, the piling operation is also devoid of geographical-concentration risk. If the piling contracts business, a niche segment, can be scaled up, margin can improve.

Weaknesses

As the nature of contracts handled are not very complex, there is strong competition with lots of operators. This and the small size of operations is a concern. The ability to move up to higher ticket and complex jobs has to be seen.
Most of the construction operations are centered in Mumbai or Maharashtra. The geographical concentration raises concern on order flow, linked to policy, political and financial environment in the state.
The share of low-margin transportation projects in the current order book is over 78%.

Valuation

JKIL’s sales were up 391% to Rs 112.66 crore and net profit was higher by 642% to Rs 8.01 crore in FY 2007. On post-issue equity capital of Rs 20.72 crore, EPS for FY 2007 works out to Rs 3.9. At a offer price of Rs 110 to Rs 120, P/E is 28.2 to 30.8 times. In comparison, industry peers Roman Tarmat, PBA Infrastructure and Supreme Infrastructure are available at a PE of around 20 times FY 2007 earning.