At a time when other sugar mills are reaping the benefit of higher sugar prices, Shree Renuka is paying the price for its overambitious foray into Brazil for which it piled up debt, pushing the company consistently into losses. And almost 50% of the money earned today is spent on servicing this debt. For 9MFY17, interest outgo was at Rs.268 crore and it has gone up 8% (YoY). And with 96% of the total income of Rs.5739 crore going away as such into operating costs, along with the interest cost, loss was but obvious. For Q3FY17, net loss doubled to Rs.42 crore from Rs.24 crore (YoY) but 9MFY17 loss has come down to Rs.36 crore from Rs.325 crore. EBITDA for Q3FY17 was down 36% at Rs.54 crore and margins slipped from 5.5% to 2.6%.

The company currently has a debt reorg in place where the creditors of its Brazilian unit have agreed to settle their debts on receiving 30% of notified value of debt plus interest from the debt of plan approval until the date of payment. The debt is expected to halve after this exit but till then, it will continue to bear the burden.

Interestingly, its Q3FY17 numbers show that it earned more profit (EBIT) from ethanol - Rs.35 crore compared to Rs.9 crore earned on sugar. In fact its sugar unit EBIT margin has come down to 0.5% v/s 2.15% earlier (YoY).