Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the PCBL Chemical Limited Q1 FY 2027 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in the listen only mode, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Sanjesh from ICICI Securities. Thank you, over to you, sir. Thanks, Shruti. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining me on for PCBL Chemical Limited Q1 FY 2027 results conference call. We have PCBL Chemical management on call represented by Mr. Nilesh Koul, Managing Director, Mr. Rohit Narang, CEO, Aquapharm Chemical, Mr. Raj Gupta, CFO, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, Executive Director, Investor Relations. I would like to invite Mr. Nilesh to initiate the call with his opening remarks, post which we will have a Q&A session. Over to you, sir. Thanks so much. Good afternoon, everyone. A warm welcome to PCBL Chemical Q1 FY 2027 earnings conference call. I'm pleased to report that there has been a strong quarter for us on almost every parameter. Consolidated revenue grew 17% year-on-year, EBITDA grew 23%, and profit after tax grew 65%. What makes this performance particularly satisfying is the background against which it was delivered. Cost continues to be volatile, with the West Asia situation persisting through the quarter. When we spoke to you last, at the end of FY 2026, we said that the recovery would consolidate progressively. This quarter is evidence of exactly that and of the resilience we have built into the business over the last few quarters. Let me offer some perspective on the composition of this performance. Close to a third of our volume are on the spot market, and our teams monetize this exposure very effectively as crude ran up sharply through April and May, capturing strong realizations. On the formula link portion of our business, the pricing mechanism worked exactly as designed. Input cost movements are passed on to our customers with a contractual lag. We remain committed to maintaining this pricing discipline. While a part of the spot-related gains is naturally linked to how crude behaved during the quarter and may moderate as crude effects correct, the more important point is that the underlying operating environment for our industry is improving structurally. I'll spend a few minutes on that shortly. First up on cost and margins. Brent crude averaged $97 per bbl during the quarter, compared to $78 per bbl in Q4 FY 2026, largely on account of the escalation of the West Asia conflict. CBFS costs moved in line with crude, and together with higher inward freight, this raised our raw material bill during the quarter. Despite geopolitical disruptions impacting global trade routes, we ensured uninterrupted customer service and met every customer commitment. This took a lot of effort and a lot of agility, and I'm really proud of the team for having delivered this, a discipline that continues to strengthen our standing as a reliable global supplier. Let me talk a little bit about the structural tailwinds I talked about. A global landscape turning in India's and PCBL's favor. Before I run to the operating segment, I want to step back and talk about three structural developments that we believe are shaping the global carbon black landscape in favor of India and Indian manufacturers, and PCBL in particular. First, India's trade architecture has strengthened remarkably over the past several quarters. The India-U.S. trade deal discussion in February this year has brought tariffs on Indian exports down sharply from the peak levels seen last year, and subsequent negotiations have secured for India one of the most favorable tariff tiers among major exporting nations. The India-EU FTA, concluded in January 2026, is progressing through ratification and opens up duty-free access to European markets. It's also expected to eliminate 4.5% EU import duty on Indian tires, enhancing the competitiveness of the Indian tire manufacturers in an important export market and in turn supporting domestic carbon black demand. Alongside this, the India-U.K. CETA and India EFTA trade economic partnerships, which is already in force, new agreements with Oman and New Zealand together position India as a preferred trusted partner in global chemical supply chain. Very few carbon black producing geographies enjoy this breadth of preferential market access today. Second, specifically on the U.S. market, Indian carbon black now attracts a lower tariff than materials from competing Asia and Middle East origins. With China facing significantly higher effective duties, U.S. customers are actively looking to diversify their sourcing away from China and Russia. India is the natural beneficiary. We are seeing good traction from U.S. customers, even after accounting for elevated ocean freights, we are more competitive in the U.S. market today than we were before the conflict. Our upcoming presence in Texas further strengthens our ability to serve this market. Third, the global supply chain is tightening. Ukraine's sustained strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have now hit all of Russia's largest refineries. Russian refining throughput has fallen to new lows with a meaningful share of capacity offline. This has two direct consequences for our industry. Russian exports of carbon black feedstock have shrunk, keeping global CBFS availability relatively tight. Russia's own carbon black exports, historically a large, low-cost supply to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, have contracted sharply on top of European sanctions already in place on Russian material. This combination of shrinking Russian supply and India's improving market access creates durable white space for PCBL in Europe, the Americas, and other premium markets. A structural, not just a cyclical opportunity. Let me talk a little bit about domestic and export. Domestic sales were a bright spot this quarter, with steady demand across key segments driving strong growth. Domestic volumes were also supported by an element of inventory building by our customers in the last quarter. On export, realizations were temporarily weighed down by elevated freight costs, and we responded with agility. Strategically diverting a part of our volume to domestic spot market, where realizations were more attractive. At the same time, we continued to service our key strategic export customers to protect long-term relationships. As freight normalizes and the tariff and FTA tailwinds I spoke about earlier take hold, we see significant headroom to scale our international business from here. You should see those volume flows happening quarter two, quarter three, quarter four onwards. The tire outlook. Globally, the tire industry continues to navigate cost headwinds, while demand in U.S. replacement segments has stayed resilient. Closer to home, Indian tire sector is on a healthy growth path. After a solid 78% this fiscal, industry estimates put growth in a similar high single-digit range over 2027 to 2029, supported by a growing aging vehicle fleet, premiumization, and rising EV penetration. Leading tire makers are stepping up the capacity. Several are running close to 90% utilization and have lined up fresh CapEx for FY 2027, which gives us good visibility on offtake for our carbon black volumes over the next few years. Exports are another factor behind the investment cycle. India's tire exports grew 9% in FY 2026 despite supply chain disruptions, elevated logistics costs, and trade uncertainty. The U.S. remains the largest export destination, while Germany, Italy, Brazil, and France continue to be important markets. With the trade agreements now in place or in ratification across U.S., E.U., and U.K., the runway for Indian tire exports, therefore for domestic carbon black demand, only gets stronger. A few words about our specialty black outlook. In specialty carbon black, we continue to make good progress across multiple fronts. Volumes remain healthy during the quarter, supported by a rich product mix and increasing customer acceptance of our differentiated offerings. We continue to develop new grades and expand our customer base, deepen relationship with existing customers, and strengthen our presence across new geographies. Globally, specialty demand continues to move up the value chain, with customers increasingly shifting towards higher grade, performance differentiated products rather than commodity grades. We see this as a validation of our own push to innovate towards higher grades, and we intend to keep building our position there. The 20,000 MTPA specialty black line in Mundra was commissioned in Q1 FY 2027. With this, our total installed carbon black capacity now stands at 900,000 metric tons per annum. A milestone that firmly establishes PCBL among world's leading carbon black producers. A word about our advanced battery materials business. On battery materials, we continue to make strong progress in building a differentiated platform focused on two most attractive and fast-growing segments, silicon-based anode materials and high-performance conductive carbons. The global battery industry is transitioning rapidly towards silicon-enhanced anodes to deliver higher energy density and faster charging capabilities. We view this as a significant long-term growth opportunity and have invested accordingly. Our Nanovace pilot plant in Palej is in progress, and we have received the consent to operate for R&D and customer sampling. At the individual machine level, we have already started trials, and we are in readiness to start sampling in the coming weeks of August. We are, of course, also going beyond nanosilicon and evaluating broader portfolio of silicon-based materials to address evolving battery industry requirements and sustainability objectives. At the same time, we are strengthening our position in high-performance conductive carbons, which play a critical role in improving battery conductivity, charging efficiency, and overall battery performance. To address growing demand from battery semiconductors and advanced polymer applications, we have set up a 1,000 metric ton per annum superconductive specialty black facility in Palej and have commenced market development activities across battery conductive polymers and electronic applications. We continue to advance our entry into acetylene black, a high-performance conductive carbon gaining relevance in battery and energy storage applications. Engineering for the first phase of the modular manufacturing facility has been completed, we've initiated product development activities with our technology collaborator. This positions us in high-value, margin-accretive segments, benefiting from the accelerating adoption of electrification, electronics, and renewable energy technologies. Together, our silicon and conductive carbon initiatives create a differentiated battery materials platform Aligned with some of the fastest-growing and most attractive segments of the global energy storage value chain, offering significant potential for long-term growth and value creation. A quick update on our cost optimization and efficiency program I talked about last time. The program continues to progress well, we last updated you the initiatives would yield an improvement through enhancement and feedstock diversification. We believe that the target we had identified earlier of INR 200 crore- INR 250 crore of savings over the next four to six quarters still holds, we look forward to starting to deliver that in our results. A quick view on the outlook. Looking ahead, we are decidedly positive on the opportunities in front of us. The three structural shifts I described, India's expanding network of trade agreements, our tariff advantage in the U.S. market, contraction in Russian refining and carbon black exports, are all durable tailwinds that play directly to PCBL's strength, scale, reliability, a global supply chain and an expanding specialty platform. The operating environment remains dynamic, some customers have adopted a more cautious procurement approach that will probably have a temporary effect on volumes in Q2. We see this as a timing effect, not a demand effect, therefore remain constructive on the second half of FY 2027. Our focus remains on capturing opportunity, driving volume growth in newly opened markets, sustaining cost efficiencies, and continuing to strengthen our specialty and battery chemicals portfolio. Addressing the financial and operational highlights. Consolidated sales volume in carbon black business was steady at 153,530 metric tons. Consolidated revenue from operations grew 17% to INR 2,474 crore, consolidated EBITDA grew 23% year-on-year to INR 400 crore. Profit after tax grew 65% year-on-year to INR 155 crore. Of the total carbon black sales volume, domestic sales volume grew 15% year-on-year to 102,985 tons, while international volumes was 50,528 tons, reflecting a deliberate reallocation to domestic spot market that I spoke about earlier. Moving to segmental performance, tires accounted for 91,379 tons, performance chemicals 42,386 tons, while specialty sales grew a strong 23% year-on-year to 19,748 tons. Power generation was 217 million units and external sales volume of 113 million units in Q1 FY 2027 at improved realization. Now about Aquapharm. I'd like to take this moment to introduce Mr. Rohit Narang as the new CEO of Aquapharm Chemical, something I mentioned in the last call. Rohit brings over 25 years of global leadership experience across general management, strategy, and M&A. His last stint was with Eastman Chemical, where he led global P&Ls across large-scale specialty portfolios and spearheaded multi-billion dollar M&A transactions. Aquapharm remains an important part of our specialty portfolio, and under his leadership, we look forward to shaping our future on growth, operational efficiency, and expanding our presence across key markets and segments. His track record of delivering transformational and profitable growth aligns well with what we want to take Aquapharm over the next five years and scale it meaningfully. We're confident that with the new leadership in place, there will be a renewed push on growth and execution in the coming quarters. I'd like Rohit to share his perspective on the company's growth and walk us through the performance of Q1 FY 2027 for Aquapharm. Rohit, over to you. Thank you, Nilesh, and good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you all for the first time since joining Aquapharm as the CEO. Over the last few weeks, I've been on the ground visiting our plants, working with our people, and listening to our customers. What I have found leaves me extremely optimistic. There is strong foundation here, and I see meaningful headroom for growth as we sharpen our focus on execution and scale over the next few years. I look forward to partnering with my team to take Aquapharm to the next level, and I'll keep you all updated as we move forward. Just a quick word on the markets. On the home care, the industry is seeing strong overall growth with good tailwinds from Asia on phosphonates. Europe is a bit of a headwind as the market there shifts towards green chelates, which conveniently is also part of our group's story. In water treatment, demand remains strong across regions, especially with newer use cases like data centers coming up, and we are scaling our phosphonates and polymer portfolio to keep pace. Renewed geopolitical friction and economic uncertainty across the Americas have stalled near-term demand growth in oil and gas segment and created customer inventory overhangs. This should pick up in subsequent quarters as we continue to innovate on product portfolio, target new accounts, and geographies. Let me now take you through this quarter's numbers. Aquapharm reported sales volumes of 22,985 metric tons, revenue of INR 394 crores, and EBITDA of INR 47 crores in Q1 FY 2027. During this quarter, home care and water solution sales volume decreased marginally on year-over-year basis. Whereas application-specific solutions posted a double-digit growth of 10%. Oil and gas segment, while saw 35% year-over-year decrease, sequentially, the segment reported a strong growth of 50%, which shows turnaround momentum. Q1 saw some challenges on the raw material availability, which affected production levels. On the cost side, we saw higher costs across raw materials, logistics, and packaging. LPG availability added even more pressure. We had a raw surcharge in place through Q1 that helped us keep our spread constant, but we assume no surcharge for rest of the year. Going forward, demand for our existing portfolio is picking up. With a strong new product pipeline and growth in distribution network, we are confident of delivering a better number in FY 2027, led by volume growth. In Saudi Arabia and wider Gulf region, we are positioning ourself for industry shift to seawater reverse osmosis. We are speeding up our account approvals and expanding our reverse osmosis portfolio. The effort is already delivering good wins, including a new three-year anti-scaling contract and active qualification with more customers. On procurement, we are actively working to de-risk our raw material supply chain, evaluating alternative vendors and exploring backward integration for some key raw materials. On green chelates, order booking is running ahead of our current capacity, and we are now getting qualified with key accounts like P&G, Reckitt, and Henkel. To build further on this shift towards green chelates, we are in discussion around a new facility. Alongside this, we continue to focus on cost reduction through a number of ongoing initiatives. Over the next one to three years, our growth will be built around a few clear pillars. Introducing new products across polymers, phosphonates, and adjacent categories. Sharpening our focus on the U.S. market. Qualifying green chelates with our key accounts. Expanding our oil and gas portfolio through biocides and paraffin inhibitors, and securing new customer qualification in desalination. We are also actively building our customer relationship and driving more targeted engagement. We believe all these efforts will give Aquapharm a solid foundation to build on through the rest of FY 2027 and beyond. With this, I'll conclude my remarks and open the floor for questions. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Aditya from SMIFS Institutional Equities. Please proceed. Thank you, sir, for the opportunity, and congrats on a good set of numbers. Sir, my first question, you mentioned in your opening remarks that because of the volatility in crude oil prices, the realizations were higher, and subsequently, there were some inventory gains benefit also, which could reverse once crude oil price can go down. Any thoughts, sir, like in this quarter, how much quantum would be from the inventory gains first? Second, sir, when we look in your overall volume mix, the performance chemicals volume says dip on sequential basis. When I look at your specialty carbon black volume, that remains intact. I believe, sir, like specialty carbon black is for the export market, so 90%-95% is exported. Ideally, a dip in export should complement a dip in your specialty carbon black volumes also, but that is remaining intact and performance chemicals is going down. This means like the exports going down is because of the performance chemicals also. If you can share how much mix of the performance chemicals only volumes is from exports and domestic, and you see these volumes coming back going ahead. That's it. First two questions. Okay. Aditya, I'll answer your question. On specialty, around 70% of our volumes are sold in international market. Most of our customers are strategic customers, and like Nilesh mentioned in his speech, we ensured that none of our strategic customers suffered because of supply chain disruptions. We ensured delivery, and therefore, there was no impact on the specialty volumes in international market. Performance chemicals and rubber grade carbon black, that story is different. We had some low-cost oil at our end, and in international market, because of higher freight, our margins tended to be lower as compared to domestic market. Therefore, we tried and pushed more material in domestic market where margins were better. That was a deliberate act on our side to ensure that we have better blended margins. That was the reason. On the first question that you asked regarding how much was the impact of low-cost inventory, we did about close to INR 70 odd crore. Part of which it is not going to go away completely in the next quarter. Part of which my estimation is about INR 40 crore-INR 50 crore, we might have to give away because of the change in the inventory position. Got it, sir. Sir, now coming to the tariffs part, the U.S. government is reversing the tariffs, and most companies from India have applied for the tariffs which they have paid. Even we have also paid some of the tariffs to U.S. Have we also applied for the tariff reversal? If yes, sir, how much number or quantum can we see from the top line or from the other income? How you see that number will flow, from top line or from other income, and what would be that quantum? Well, the accounting treatment we'll have to discuss with our auditors, but in terms of overall magnitude, between Aquapharm and PCBL, the amount would be somewhere between INR 40 crore-INR 45 crore. We have already made application, and we are tracking it very closely. My own sense is maybe in next two to four weeks time, we should be receiving that refund. Got it. Sir, onto the Aquapharm numbers when we look at these quarters. Definitely as you mentioned, inventory benefits also supported. EBITDA per kg looks at around INR 20,000 per ton or INR 20 per kg. That looks more onto the higher side when we look over the last seven, eight quarters. What you see the sustainable run rate of Aquapharm, can this run rate sustain even after inventory benefits going away and because our fixed cost earlier was high, that is also coming down. Some sort of quantitative numbers, how it will flow for FY 2027. Secondly, similar onto carbon black side also per kg numbers looks to be elevated. What could be the sustainable numbers could be worked on for full fiscal 2027? The capacity utilization in Aquapharm still remains low, therefore the number for the quarter, there is an upside to it. It can go up. Now, whether it will go up next quarter, maybe not, because inventory adjustment will happen here also, right? On a steady state basis, if we compare the current quarter's number with the same quarter last year, the numbers were more or less similar. Last year same quarter also we did about INR 19,500 EBITDA. This quarter we have done about INR 1,000 per ton more. The numbers are sustainable, but in the immediate next quarter, because of inventory adjustment, the numbers may be a little lower. On a full-year basis, I am confident that we should be able to deliver something similar to this. Just one last. With Rohit, just a quick add-on. Rohit has just taken over and he's of course developing an action plan for the turnaround of the situation. I would like us to give him a quarter or so to get a hang of what the opportunities are, and maybe in the next conference call, we will give you a far more detailed response on what to expect in the coming quarters. Rohit, if you want to add something. No, I think you guys covered everything. Thank you, Nilesh. I agree with Raj's comment that we expect some hiccups in the next quarter, but on a full-year basis, we are looking at sustainably managing our EBITDA per kg. Sir, just one last question, if you may. Okay. Sir, onto the power side when we look, power business numbers this quarter on EBIT front it is INR 110 crore. Last quarter when we look it is some INR 80 crore. There is a INR 30 crore jump which has directly flown into our EBITDA. First clarification what has led to this jump and secondly sir what is the update on the Nanovace? Have you started that pilot plant? Just a long-term question onto this, are you confident that whatever numbers we have shared, some INR 1,000 crore EBITDA from Nanovace business, can that be achieved over the longer term and what could be the timelines for that? I'll answer the first part of the question and then I'll hand it over to Nilesh. Power EBIT jump because of better realization. Last quarter our realization was INR 3.66, which has jumped to INR 5.39. It's almost 50% jump in power realization and consequent the increase in the EBIT. Nanovace, we remain extremely positive. The lab scale testing and initial testing with some customers are very positive. The pilot plant is up now. As I mentioned earlier as well, at an individual equipment level, the testing is progressing extremely well. We now need to line balance it and ensure that the flows are managed well. That process is ongoing and in the next few weeks we are committed to sort of starting producing the first batch of products which will go to customers with whom we have already been engaging for a while. In the long term, we are extremely bullish about the battery material space. Nanovace, we continue to hold that it will hit the targets that we had set ourselves. Along with the other investments which I mentioned, the superconductives and the acetylene black will form a significant portfolio of the future PCBL as we move forward. We are very bullish about it and as a result, we are also committing a lot of resources both on the R&D side and now, as I said last time, we have now R&D facilities in India, Australia and Europe, which are working on this topic. We have recruited specialists in key positions over the last three or four months and we are very confident of making the numbers that we talked about. Got it, sir. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohit Sinha from Sunidhi Securities. Please proceed. Thank you for taking my question, sir, and congratulations for good set of numbers. My question is on the Aquapharm side. In terms of looking at the scope, just wanted to understand how we would be expanding the volume there? Whether it would be from the newer product with each segment, or how would be the customer engagement would be there, expanding the revenue size from the existing customer or acquiring new customers. In terms of new products, which segment, I mean, oil and gas, water treatment, where we will see more of the product launches going forward. As we have seen some contraction in the oil and gas segment because of the war issues. How that should be shaping up going forward, if we get a sense on that. You had couple of questions there. I'll take them one by one. On the volume growth, on Aquapharm India side, on the phosphate portfolio, we are actively launching commercial products right now. They have been qualified, and we are looking towards selling them in next three quarters. That will bring revenue growth and margin growth both on the phosphate side. There is also penetration growth in the Tier 1, Tier 2 customers on the distribution side in Europe, that's driving some of the growth on the volume and the revenue side. Oil and gas, I would say, given what is happening with the oil prices and the volatility, we have seen a lot of erratic customer behavior. There was some demand surge in April when everybody thought the war was over, but as the oil price has gone down and gone up again, everybody's holding investments. We do expect still a rocky and volatile set of evolution in next couple of quarters. In the subsequent quarter, full-year basis, we are expecting when things will stabilize, and we will be able to drive growth. There are two sources of growth there. Right now in U.S. and Latin America, we are focusing on regional growth. There are geographies where we are not present, and we are trying to drive growth there. Later in the year, we are launching some new products that will also bring growth. Got it. New product launches would be in oil and gas segment as well as in water treatment also? In FY 2027, the major impact is phosphonates and the commercialization of phosphonates. At the end of the year, we are working on some qualifications on oil and gas, which I think the major impact will be probably seen next year. Got it. Secondly, sir, if you could help us on the carbon black. If you could help us, in terms of our export numbers, what was the mix from the U.S. side and the Europe side in this quarter? As we were quite positive on the Europe side, just wanted to understand how much improvement we have seen from the last quarter in that region. Raj is going to give you the numbers, but overall in Q1, we were prioritizing regions. Because Indian demand was giving us more value per ton, we diverted as much volume as we could to the local customers, while retaining the volumes that we are supplying to the strategic customers both in Europe and U.S. Going forward, we expect a significant growth as new annual contracts are getting deliberated and negotiated as we move forward. We are in a very good position to compete against the other countries in U.S., so we should see a significant growth in U.S. followed by EU as well. Raj, you want to give the breakup numbers? Yeah. In Europe, we did around 16,000 tons of volume, and U.S. we did about close to 4,800 tons. Okay. Got it. Sir, one last question. On the logistics side, as that has impacted our export to some extent, how we are now seeing the logistics issues shaping up for this quarter and maybe for the next quarter also? It continues to be erratic. It's a reflection of how the Middle East crisis keeps ebbing and flowing. So we are quite agile in looking for capacities as well as prices. We'll just need to be agile and nimble on this one. We are still seeing high prices both for inbound as well as outbound logistics for this quarter. Okay. These costs are being distributed with the customers or how we are taking these cost impacts? Varies by customer to customer. In most cases, we have managed to get surcharges from our customers based on the fact that logistics costs have gone up. Most of the time we try to recover it, but are we able to recover 100% of it? The answer is no, because we have to be competitive at a delivered price level. It's a bit of a mixed bag where we take customer by customer our approach on how much we are able to pass on. Got it, sir. Thank you for answering my question, sir. That's it from my side. Thanks. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Sanjesh from ICICI Securities. Please proceed. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. I've a few of them. First, on the volumes, the demand scenario looks quite interesting. Can you explain why the volume has declined both on QoQ basis and YoY basis? Was it the availability of raw material which was constrained? We have also commissioned another line in Chennai. I thought that should have added to the volume growth too. Some color on the carbon black volume will be really helpful and especially continues to grow quite well. I think it's largely with the rubber where we have enough and more capacity now in Chennai. That's number one. Number two would be, coal tar distillates, which we spoke earlier, that we are now looking to also foray into distilling the coal tar, which will make the raw material much easier for us. Any progress on that? Any plans, any CapEx we have outlined there? How do we plan to in-source the raw material, which is tied up with two of the buyers today? These are my two initial questions on the carbon black. I will get back shortly. Let me take the second question first. We are progressing very well on the definition of the project for the coal tar distillation. The business plan is being checked, and we are also in talks with the OEM suppliers of equipment, et cetera. By this quarter, we should be looking at getting an approval on all the CapEx that are required as we refine the business model. Tying up the raw material, we have evaluated that completely, and we are confident that for the capacities that we are putting in, we will be able to lock in and make that type of raw material available to us. Hold on for us to give a much sharper advice on the dates and targets and CapEx that we're putting in over the next one month or so. As far as volumes is concerned, it was a bit of a choice that we were making also. As Raj was mentioning, we made some choices on, even though we had orders from international customers, not delivering some of those volumes because the logistics cost was eating away a lot of the margin, so it didn't make sense to do that. Second, if you remember, our formula price hits with a lag. The low-cost inventory that we had, it makes better sense for us to market it in this quarter where the new prices would have come in. That was a tactical choice not to fully go all out for volume, but ensure that we were focusing on the margins and value that we were getting out of the inventories that we had. Going forward, I think there is a little bit of destocking which is happening in this quarter. Overall, we remain confident that the volumes will pick up significantly in Q3, Q4. That's clear. One just follow from the carbon black. My workings suggest that we have done gross profit in the range of INR 44-INR 45, which look unusually very high. I know you called out the inventory gain. The amount of reversal appear lower because the run rate of gross profit per kg we were doing for us was around INR 31. It's a jump of around INR 14-INR 14.5. When I back calculate the reversal, it appears that we are still expecting the INR 37-INR 38 kind of a gross profit per kg. Is there structurally change in the market pressure we are seeing where spreads were declining globally for us and the competition, anything changing on the gross profit percentage? Sanjesh, it is also for the reason that now we are trying to maintain some pricing discipline, we are doing some bottom sizing when it comes to low margin volumes. Consequently, we may witness some upward movement both in our EBITDA portion as well as gross margin portion. Whether that is going to be INR 37, INR 36 or INR 38, we'll see that's what we are targeting. That's the right number to work with for us, right? From a modeling perspective. Sorry, I didn't get your question. For us to work for the full-year, say INR 36, INR 37 numbers for the next nine months will be a right number to work for? Yeah, that's kind of right. Again, it will be a trade-off between volumes and margins. We'll hold on to pricing discipline as long as we can see that our ability to push volumes in market is high. It will also depend on demand and supply scenario, Sanjesh. Got it. That's very clear. One on the Aquapharm. This quarter, we did 47. I think there will be some inventory gain there as well. I think the oil and gas industry has done a phenomenal last two quarter in terms of day runs. How does the outlook for Aquapharm look like considering that we are getting into green chelating? Phosphonates appears now more agile, probably the water problem everywhere driving the desalinations. We are hearing a lot of desalination plant in India. Thanks to data center, I believe desalination is becoming even more important. Lastly, oil and gas rates, I think, the companies have done killing in last two quarter. How does each of the three segment outlook appear? We were looking at INR 75 crores on the exit basis. Do you still hold that, for Aquapharm at INR 75 crores? Sanjesh, the line was very broken for me, so I'm trying to understand the question. You were asking- Okay. Let me put it in simple. We have three segments, green chelates, phosphonates, and oil and gas, and it appears that there is clearly tailwind for all the three segments. How does the outlook look like? I think we have earlier guided an EBITDA exit run rate of INR 75 crore for this year in Aquapharm. Do you still stick with that? Yeah. Green chelates, I would say, we continue to have momentum in green chelates, as I said during my remarks, that we are overrunning our capacity, and we are discussing another facility on green chelates. We have got significant qualifications with both Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers, and we are in the process of commercializing the current capacity and discussing future capacity. Significant momentum there. As you know, some of that is coming at the cost of some of the European customers moving away from phosphonates. It's a give and take, but more on the positive side, both from revenue and margin growth perspective. On the phosphonates side, we have good tailwind in the Asia region. Still growth momentum there. In Europe, there are customers who are moving away from phosphonates to green chelates. Green chelates is where, as I answered the question, we are gaining some momentum. That's the plus and the minus side. On the oil and gas is a little bit more of a nonlinear story because there is momentum on the oil price side, but the volatility on the oil price side, all the service companies and the oil majors continue to not believe that this is sustainable and are holding back investments. That's resulting in pretty erratic behavior in the sense we saw some surge in demand in April, but that has not sustained, and now the customers are telling us that there is an inventory overhang in oil and gas. Oil and gas will, I think, we are still looking some rocky evolution in next few quarters, and then it'll stabilize. The last part on the INR 75 crore, what I would say at this point is early days for me, and I'm trying to understand deeply on what the stable run rate will look like. I look forward to providing you a lot more details in the subsequent quarters as I come back with the answer. That's fair enough. Just one follow-up question on oil and gas. We were also looking to expand our footprint in the European region. Any success, any early reward days in some or any early footprint we have seen in the European region? The way we are thinking about it is a sequential expansion. We have two immediate opportunities of expansion when it comes to geography on oil and gas. One, there are some geographies in U.S. that we are not participating, New Mexico, North Dakota, all of that needed registration and approvals. We have attained approvals to operate in New Mexico or sell in New Mexico. That is progressing in expanding geographies in U.S. In Latin America, we are putting a lot of effort in countries like Venezuela, where there is a lot of rebuild happening, and trying to reestablish ourselves in Mexico. Because of the politics and government change, a lot of things changed, especially for our customers in Mexico. Europe is in line. We are putting the building blocks to be able to expand in future. That's clear. Thanks also for answering those questions. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Sanil Jain from Ambit Capital. Please proceed. Hi, sir. Congratulations on great set of numbers. I just have two questions. Sir, can you provide us with the EBITDA per ton for the carbon black business for the second quarter as well as the guidance for the full-year? The second question would be, can you give us the CapEx outlook for the year? For the quarter, we did about INR 22,900 a ton. On a full-year basis, if you refer to our last quarter's investor call, we had given a guidance of 14%-15% improvement over our FY 2026 average EBITDA. Which will be somewhere around, say, INR 16,500-INR 17,000 per ton. We stick to that. Okay. Sir, CapEx outlook for the year? CapEx outlook this year, we are largely through with our Brownfield expansion. Small CapEx here and there, which is more like maintenance CapEx plus some new developments f or productivity enhancement, yield improvement, et cetera. My sense is that it should be somewhere around INR 300 crore, maybe ± INR 50 odd crore. Okay, sir. Clear. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Harsh from SKP Securities. Please proceed. Hi. Good evening, sir. Congratulations on the preset numbers. A lot of my questions have already been answered. Sir, the volumes in the quarter have been muted, and you suggested that even the next quarter, the demand is going to be slightly on the rocky side. Do you expect that during the full-year, we'll be able to meet the high single-digit growth guidance that we had given during the last year? That's correct. As I said in my opening remarks, we believe this is more a timing issue because a lot of domestic customers of ours are trying to push volumes into the next quarter. Overall, for the year, we expect good growth to happen in volume as well. Sir, on the CapEx side of things, can you provide a bit of an update or a color on how the greenfield expansion that we are doing is coming up? Greenfield expense this year will be limited because the Andhra facility, while we are getting the licenses, et cetera, in place, the expense will actually happen more in the next year rather than this year. Most of the CapEx spend this year will be mostly efficiency CapEx. As I mentioned earlier, we are looking at cost efficiency program, and to ensure that those get through, we are spending some money there. There'll be, at best, about INR 100 crores of strategic CapEx that we'll be able to spend this year. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nilesh from HDFC. Please proceed. Yes. Thank you for the opportunity. I have just one question. Can we expect growth from here on Q- on- Q basis? If it is, how much it would be? How do we see the growth for PCBL business in next two years, since Aquapharm business is still facing headwinds and crude oil delivery is very dynamic. Thank you. As I mentioned, structurally, we should expect significant growth both in value and volume for PCBL over the next few years. Simply because the Indian demand is going up, we are opening up more facilities outside of India, specifically U.S. and Europe. We have got contracts with international customers at an advanced stage of negotiation. On the carbon black side, we should see volume growth both on global as well as domestic level. On the specialty chemicals, specialty carbon blacks, we have good traction with the new range of products that we are putting in, as well as new products which are going to come into play over the next few quarters. I would say it's a very positive outlook in the one to two-year horizon. We should see strong growth both in volume as well as margins. You will have the volatility over the next few quarters because of the geopolitical issues, especially in our neighborhood, where part of the biggest impact will be on the logistics cost and in some cases, we are losing some volume because some ports are getting out of action for limited periods of time. Overall, we remain very positive, and that's why we are investing in both volume as well as value growth as we move forward. Just a small follow-up question on this only. Will we maintain the margins which we have in this quarter? This quarter we have some extraordinary benefit of low-cost inventory, which is unlikely to be repeated in subsequent quarters. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya from SMIFS Institutional Equities. Please proceed. Thank you, sir. For the follow-up, just a couple of questions. Sir, is it possible to quantify the difference between CBFS and CBO prices? How much was CBFS in Q1, and how much was CBO? I believe CBO prices shouldn't have gone up to the level CBFS have gone, because steel production we have not seen anywhere globally taking a hit. Ideally, CBO prices should have been stable. How was the difference like in Q4 versus Q1 today, and how you see that going ahead? The difference continues to be close to INR 150 odd, CBO being higher. That equation is still holding good. We did see CBO prices also moving up. Once the CBFS prices moved up, CBO prices also did end up moving up. We are trying to diversify both options. Of course, if we do the distillation ourselves of coal tar, then those margins are also an incremental part of the value chain for us. That's still something that we are exploring. As I said earlier, we should have a firm plan in the next couple of months on when we invest in that facility. Thank you. The next question is on the line of Kumar from Ambit Capital. Please proceed. Hi, sir. Good evening. Sir, just one question from my side. Sir, I was looking at the realizations. The realizations have moved up about 20%. I was just trying to understand if the spot market is just 30% of the volumes and contracted takes a quarter lag to move out. If you could help me understand this bit, key realization has moved up 20%. How is that playing out? Realization, Kumar, moved up roughly about, say from quarter-on-quarter perspective, it moved up by about INR 27,000. Out of that, about INR 12,000 was on account of margin. I mean, our ability to price it better in the spot market, and balance was the cost passes. Okay, got it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. We take that as the last question. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, management speakers. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line. Thank you. Thank you.