The company held its AGM on 23^rd July'12 and was addressed by Mr. Vinayak Deshpande Chairman

Key highlights

• Artson Engineering started the year Mar'12 with opening order book position of Rs 200 crore. But due to various Visa related issues in Kuwait, 2 large export projects worth Rs 125 crore got cancelled. There was hardly any export sale during FY'12. All these, together with domestic issues on delay and tight liquidity resulted in fall in sales by 55% for FY'12 and loss to the extent of Rs 13 crore.

• In Q1 FY'13 the domestic slowdown together with delay in execution of projects resulted in fall in sales by 25%. The company reported loss of about Rs 4.39 crore for Q1 FY'13 as compared to loss of Rs 4.43 crore for Q1 FY'12.

• During the Mar'12, company was able to bag Rs 95 crore of orders and during Q1 FY'13, about Rs 40 crore of orders were also received. Total outstanding order book position as on July'12 stands around Rs 157 crore.

• The company currently concentrates only on domestic projects and there are hardly any export orders in the order book.

• Of the total order book about 10% orders are from Tata Projects and rest are from outside parties namely, EPC order of 21 tanks in Haldia of about Rs 25 crore value, Pressure water fillers order from Tata Steel, Rs 10 crore order from Cairn etc.

• Management has indicated that they will try to ensure that the company returns in black by H2 FY'13 onwards. However it is really a challenge, given the current economic condition and the pace at which growth is expected.