RailTel Corporation surges 12% on heavy volumes; stock nears record high

Shares of RailTel Corporation of India moved higher by 12 per cent to Rs 186.90 on the BSE in Monday’s intra-day trade amid heavy volumes. The stock of the company engaged in providing telecom services was trading close to its record high of Rs 189.45, touched on March 3, 2021. In the past five months, the stock has zoomed 93 per cent.

Trading volumes on the counter nearly doubled today with a combined 22.3 million equity shares, representing 7.3 per cent of total equity of RailTel, having changed hands on the NSE and BSE till12:17 PM.

RailTel, which owns a pan-India optic fibre network providing broadband and multimedia services, provides modernisation and maintenance of the communications network of the Indian Railways. The company now offers services to private and Government clients as well. It has two main lines of business—telecom and projects. Under the telecom services, it provides lease line services (NLD), internet services (ISP) and passive infrastructure services (IP-1).

Last week, the company received the work order from Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Ltd. for supply, installation, testing, commissioning, and maintenance of ISP Hardware, Software and License for Kerala Fibre Optic Network (KFON) amounting to Rs 27.91 crore.

RailTel has also received the work order from Pimpri Chinchwad Smart City Limited (PCSCL) for providing end to end services for monetisation of PCSCL City Network Infrastructure on revenue sharing model. The estimated annual revenue is Rs 70 crore and total revenue for 10 years is Rs 700 crore, the company said.

Additionally, the company has received the work order from Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) for procurement of cloud infrastructure for Next Generation Passenger Reservation System (PRS) of Indian Railways amounting to Rs 78.58 crore.

RailTel, in its FY23 annual report, said that the company is maintaining robust and sustainable orderbook at Rs 4,800 crore having footprint across multiple sectors like railways, IT, defense, health, mining, coal, banking, smart cities, insurance and more.

The parentage of the Ministry of Railways ensures that RailTel is able to execute all connectivity-related projects of the Railways and secure business from other publicsector undertakings (PSUs). Despite the change in the policy of the Indian Railways regarding open tenders with private parties, the order procurement remains healthy as the company enjoys a favourable position in the market with a well-established network infrastructure and strong presence in the railway business, according to analysts.

The company owns ~62,000 km of optical fibre network across the country through which it provides national long-distance services, internet and passive infrastructure services. In addition, it has executed critical projects of national importance such as BharatNet, National Knowledge Network (NKN), railway signalling, etc. It is currently implementing projects for the Ordnance Factory Board, Ministry of Defence, Coal India Limited, Indian Air force, State Bank of India, etc which provides revenue diversification.