It’s a strange sight when the stock price and the business story don’t match up. Two companies in the same sector are trading well below their year highs, some down almost half. But look at their order books, their capacity additions, and their future plans, and the picture looks a lot more promising than the falling charts suggest. So what exactly is going on here?
Waaree Energies closed at around ₹2,535.1, up nearly 2.58% from its previous close, with a market cap of about ₹72,922 crore and a consolidated PE of around 18.22 times.
Vikram Solar closed at around ₹165.4,up nearly 1.22% from its previous close, with a much smaller market cap of about ₹5,993 crore and a consolidated PE of around 16.8 times.
Waaree Energies And Its Record Order Book
Waaree’s stock has fallen from a 52-week high of ₹3,720 to around ₹2,480, a drop of 33%. Yet its order book stands at nearly ₹61,500 crore, the highest it has ever had, with almost ₹16,000 crore added in just one quarter. Revenue grew close to 80% year-on-year, and retail sales alone more than doubled, growing 130% compared to last year.
The company is also building out battery storage, transformers, and transmission equipment businesses, moving well beyond just making solar panels. A recent acquisition even gave it a majority stake in a transmission equipment maker, extending its reach further.
What dragged the stock down was a mix of things. Module production actually fell compared to the previous quarter, raw material costs went up across the industry, and a chunk of capacity ran ahead of orders that were ready to be shipped, since more of the order book is loaded toward the second half of the year.
Exports to the US were also slower because clearances took longer than expected. None of this looks like a demand problem though, it looks more like a timing and cost issue that the company expects to sort out over the next couple of quarters as dispatches catch up and cell integration improves.
Vikram Solar Facing A Sharper Fall
Vikram Solar has had a much rougher ride, falling from a 52-week high of ₹356 to around ₹163, down over 50%. Its quarterly volumes actually hit a record high, up 32% year-on-year, and revenue grew 38%. But profit margins took a real hit, with EBITDA margin dropping to around 8%, well below what the company had been running before and far short of what investors were used to seeing.
The reasons here are fairly clear cut too. Metal prices went up sharply due to global conflict-related disruptions, feeding directly into components like aluminium frames and connecting ribbons. An important encapsulant material also got costlier because of rising crude oil prices.
On top of that, a policy on domestic cell requirements stayed unclear for most of the quarter before finally getting deferred, which held back customer buying decisions and left the company unable to pass on higher costs to clients. The company says the cost increase sat mostly in one specific line item, meaning it’s a temporary problem rather than something structural, and expects it to ease as material prices normalize and older costlier stock works its way through inventory.
What Both Companies Are Building Toward
Both companies are chasing the same big opportunity, becoming less dependent on imported cells and more self-sufficient in manufacturing the entire chain from raw wafers to finished modules. Waaree is scaling its cell capacity nearly three times over the next couple of quarters, which should help it capture a bigger share of the higher-margin domestic content market.
Vikram Solar just rolled out its first module from a brand new facility exactly on the promised date, and is building ingot, wafer, cell, and module plants all within a single site to cut costs through shared infrastructure and reduced handling.
Both are also pushing into battery storage as a new growth area. Waaree has already started automated container production at scale, while Vikram Solar is setting up its own cell and assembly plants through a dedicated subsidiary.
Both companies are also widening their customer base instead of depending on just a few large buyers, moving into retail, distribution, and mid-market segments that tend to offer better pricing and more stable demand, which should help stabilise margins over time.
Bottom Line
Both stocks have fallen well below their yearly highs, but the reasons behind that fall look tied to short term cost pressures and order timing rather than any real drop in demand. Order books at both companies are strong, expansion plans are moving on schedule, and the shift toward backward integration should help margins recover over the coming quarters.
Whether the stock prices catch up with the business fundamentals will likely depend on how quickly these cost pressures ease, how fast new capacity starts contributing to profits, and how policy clarity around domestic content requirements plays out in the months ahead