Coal news and updates

India’s largest power generator NTPC does not have any plans now to buy back its own shares, given the company’s low cash position and ambitious capital expenditure plan, senior officials of the company said on Monday.

 

“As of now we don’t have any formal communication nor is there any further buyback (plan) from our side,” Chairman and Managing Director Gurdeep Singh said while addressing NTPC’s annual press conference.

 

The company’s Director (Finance) Kulamani Biswal said NTPC has ambitious capital expenditure plans.

 

“We have about 24,000 MW of projects under construction which requires ₹1 lakh crore of capital expenditure. Therefore, our capital expenditure plans are quite high,” he said.

 

The company’s cash and bank balances stood at ₹4,406 crore, as on March 31, 2016.

 

The central government recently notified a policy under which public sector units are required to pay dividend equivalent to higher of 30 per cent of the paid-up capital or 5 per cent of the networth. This would be applicable from 2016-17.

 

In 2015-16, the company paid dividend equivalent to 33.5 per cent of its paid-up capital.

 

Fund-raising exercise

 

Biswal also said the company has planned capital expenditure of ₹30,000 crore in fiscal 2016-17, compared to ₹25,737 crore in the previous fiscal. To fund this capex, it plans to borrow ₹20,000 crore in the current financial year, an increase of ₹5,000 crore over last year.

 

Of this, about ₹7,000 crore will be raised from overseas bond markets. And of the remaining, 40-50 per cent will be raised via issue of bonds in the domestic market while the rest would come from term loans.

 

Source: The Hindu Business Line