We didn’t face problems related to liquidity: Atul Goyal, Brigade Enterprises

Atul Goyal, Chief Financial Officer, Brigade Enterprises Limited, in an interview with Swati Khandelwal spoke about the quarter performance of the company and future prospects of growth in terms of hospitality and leasing business. Edited Excerpts: 

Q: Do you think that Brigade’s real estate space performance will be better in the H2FY19 vs H1FY19?
A: There is an improvement in the real estate sector and I hope we will be able to continue the growth that we were able to achieve in the first half of the financial year. In fact, we will also try to do better than it. 

Q: What were the growth drivers and also let us know about the market where your projects performed well?
A: Our real estate space is mainly concentrated in Bangalore and we will continue to grow here. 

Q: What is your outlook for NCR and are you expecting something over there?
A: We have no plans to enter into the real estate space in the NCR region and we want to concentrate only in South. 

Q: I will like to talk about the liquidity issues as it is being said that there is a liquidity crunch situation in the market. Do you agree with the fact and did you face any problems related to liquidity in your sector?
A: If it comes to corporate loans than we are not facing any problem related to it. We have a small liquidity exposure in our debt portfolio and this is a reason that we are not facing such problems. In addition, our customers are able to secure a loan in an easy manner. 

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Q: What is your view on hospitality and leasing business of Brigade? Also, let us know about the projects that are in pipeline for H2FY19?
A: See, we have five hotels in leasing and hospitality business at present and one hotel will be made operational in Q4FY19. EBITDA margin for our hotel business stands around 24 per cent, which is quite good in the hospitality sector. When it comes to leasing business, then 90-95 per cent of our projects have been leased and we have plans to come up with 5million leasing portfolio in Chennai and Bangalore. In fact, our leasing business’s revenue will grow up to be around Rs 800-900 crore per annum in the next 3-4 years.