A: This is the worst quarter for Heidelberg Cement essentially because price is down, volume is flat, and raw material costs are higher.

Q: There have been many reports of price hikes across the country in some parts specially the south if you would like to confirm any of that, what do you think is a pricing situation?

A: There have been some increases over the past few weeks but July to September has been bad quarter.

Q: What about the volumes, are you seeing an improvement?

A: A little bit. Volumes were flattish so we didn’t lose much in terms of volumes.

Q: This is a seasonally weak quarter as well?

A: Yes, it is a monsoon quarter, it is seasonally weak. We had some huge rainfalls in some areas. So we could have done a little better but volumes we grew a little overall.

Q: Could you tell us what the realizations have been for the quarter?

A: Realizations decreased to about Rs 2,800 from Rs 3,100 compared to last year.

Q: You also indicated that this is the worst quarter. Going forward maybe in Q3 and Q4, what is the improvement that you see in the company’s financial performance?

A: It is difficult to gauge, at this point of time with the capacity increase is still going on, this was purely led by the capacity increases which took place in some parts of the country and thereafter cement flowing to all over India from there and therefore despite the volumes growing higher or rather demand growing higher, the prices fell. So we expect a bit of a slowdown and the capacity built up and therefore I don’t foresee this kind of quarter coming in the near-term.

Q: What kind of an improvement would we see?

A: I don’t give guidance.

Q: Would you like to atleast say whether you could maintain last year’s levels in terms of profitability?

A: We have only done Rs 68 crore and the full year profit was 134 crore. So it is very difficult to catch up with that.