Polycab's domestic wire and cable sales rose 50% while volume grew in single digits

Revenue grew far faster than the cable Polycab sold

Polycab's domestic wire and cable revenue rose 50% from a year earlier in the September quarter, while the volume it sold grew in the mid- to high single digits. On those figures, revenue per unit of volume rose by roughly two-fifths, so higher prices and product mix supplied most of the growth. The company credited "favorable commodity linked realizations" alongside demand and execution. For the group as a whole, revenue from operations was ₹9,899 crore, up 53%.

Prices follow copper. Polycab works on what management calls a cost-plus model, passing metal costs on to customers, monthly for cables and every fortnight for wires. An executive said copper prices were up around 30% to 40% on average through the first half. The mechanism works in reverse too: after metal prices fell sharply in June, dealers held back on stocking and Polycab cut prices by about 3% to 4% in the first fortnight of July.

Mix helped as well. Wires, which management describes as the higher-margin business, grew volume at an early double-digit rate against mid-single digits for cables, and sales through dealers grew faster than sales to institutions.

Profit grew in rupees, and margins stayed above guidance

EBITDA, operating profit before depreciation and excluding other income, rose 39% from a year earlier to ₹1,423 crore, and profit after tax rose 43% to ₹990 crore. Management said high copper prices benefit EBITDA in absolute terms. As a share of revenue, EBITDA was 14.4%, up from 13.8% in April–June but below 15.8% a year earlier. The year-ago quarter included a one-off gain in the projects (EPC) business, but the far larger wires and cables business also earned a thinner margin than a year before.

Wires and cables earned an EBIT margin of 14.2%, above the 11% to 13% EBITDA range the company guides to for the medium to long term. Asked why it keeps that range, management pointed to a mix that shifts from year to year, between wires and cables and between domestic sales and higher-margin exports, and said that over the longer term margins will "normalize to a certain level".

The consumer electricals unit, which sells fans, lights, switches and bought-in solar inverters, earned a record EBIT margin of 10.1%, which the company put down to scale and more premium products. Its target is an 8% to 10% EBITDA margin by FY30; management said margins may be in the high single digits in some years and in double digits in others.

Paying for raw material later has shrunk the cash cycle

Polycab reported net cash of ₹4,520 crore at the end of September, against ₹2,942 crore a year earlier. Its working-capital cycle, the days between paying for materials and collecting from customers, fell to about 11 days on the company's average basis, from 25 days in the year to March 2026 and 44 days the year before. The company said the improvement was aided by buying more raw material on letters of credit, which lets it pay later.

Acceptances, the sums due under those letters of credit, stood at ₹6,556 crore, more than twice the ₹2,978 crore of a year earlier and larger than the net cash. The company's net-cash figure deducts borrowings but not acceptances. The credit has a cost: interest on letters of credit, vendor bill discounting and leases rose to ₹78 crore in the quarter from ₹30 crore. Management expects the benefit to "gradually normalize" and the cycle to move back towards 45 to 50 days, without saying when.

Volume is recovering, but the next quarter faces a high base

Volume growth has picked up through 2026, from low single digits in January–March to low to mid single digits in April–June and mid to high single digits last quarter. It is still far below last year's pace. Volume grew 18% in the year to March 2026, and also 18% in the same quarter a year earlier. Management asks for volume to be judged over 10 to 12 months against its aim of growing about one and a half times as fast as the market, and said Polycab gained three to four percentage points of market share last year.

The next comparison is the hardest of the year. In the December 2025 quarter, Polycab's domestic wire and cable volume grew about 40%, which management now calls "a very high base".