India’s push to expand its power grid is opening up a wave of opportunities for companies that build transmission and distribution equipment. As electricity demand rises from data centres, EVs, and renewable energy, brokerages are taking a closer look at who stands to gain the most. One such call has just come in, and it’s a bullish one.
Order Book Gives Revenue Visibility
Jefferies has kept its ‘Buy’ rating on Hitachi Energy India and set a price target of Rs 45,790, pointing to a 46% upside from current levels. The brokerage’s confidence rests largely on the company’s order book, which stood at Rs 32,200 crore as of the June quarter. That’s a big cushion of future revenue already locked in, and it gives a fair sense of how business volumes could shape up over the next couple of years.
A big chunk of this comes from two large domestic HVDC orders bagged during FY26, together worth more than Rs 19,000 crore. HVDC projects don’t move in a straight line though. Execution typically stays slow in the first year and then picks up sharply in year two and three, so the real revenue impact from these orders is still ahead, not behind.
Where The Growth Numbers Get Interesting
Look closely at the Q1 FY27 numbers and there’s a bit of a split story here. Total orders for the quarter came in at Rs 5,096.5 crore, down 55.1% year-on-year. Sounds worrying at first glance, but that drop is purely a base effect – last year’s number included a massive HVDC order that inflated the comparison. Strip out HVDC and orders actually grew 26.1% year-on-year, which paints a much healthier picture of underlying demand.
Revenue, meanwhile, jumped 68.6% year-on-year to Rs 2,493.7 crore, and profit after tax more than doubled, up 123.5% to Rs 294.2 crore. Operating EBITDA margin came in at 16%, up from 11.5% a year earlier. So even as fresh order intake looked soft on paper, the company was busy converting its existing backlog into actual sales and profit, and doing it more efficiently too.
Jefferies expects this to continue, forecasting earnings per share to grow at a 54% CAGR between FY26 and FY29. Beyond the core transmission business, the brokerage flagged battery energy storage systems, data centres, renewable energy, and EV adoption as additional demand triggers that could add to the order pipeline over time.
On the capacity side, the company broke ground on a new transformer factory in Karjan, Gujarat in June this year, with a completion target of December 2028. This adds Rs 2,000 crore in fresh investment, taking total capex commitments to Rs 4,000 crore, aimed squarely at scaling up manufacturing to meet the demand building across sectors.
Bottom Line
The headline order number for the quarter may look weak, but that’s mostly noise from last year’s high base. What actually matters here is the order book, the pace at which HVDC projects will convert into revenue over the next couple of years, and new growth avenues opening up around storage and data centres.
Jefferies clearly sees enough here to justify a meaningfully higher price target, though investors should watch execution timelines closely, since HVDC projects are known to be lumpy and slow to ramp in their early stages.
About the Company
Hitachi Energy India Ltd designs and supplies power transmission and distribution equipment, including transformers, HVDC systems, and grid automation solutions. It serves utilities, industries, data centres, and renewable energy developers across India, and also exports equipment for projects in Europe. It operates manufacturing facilities across multiple states and continues to expand capacity to support the country’s rising electricity demand.