1. At a Glance – Blink and You’ll Miss the Punch
Cyient, once the cool nerd of Indian engineering services, is currently having an existential market moment. The stock is chilling at ₹1,134, down ~4.3% over 3 months and a painful -33.6% over 1 year, while the broader IT crowd keeps arguing about AI, GenAI, and who stole whose engineer. Market cap stands at ₹12,609 Cr, which sounds respectable until you remember this company used to flex like a midcap alpha nerd.
Latest Q3 FY26 numbers show Revenue at ₹1,848 Cr (down QoQ and YoY), PAT at ₹97 Cr, and EPS at ₹8.26. Margins? Compressing faster than your patience during a long concall. Yet, Cyient still flashes a ROCE of 16.6%, ROE of 12.8%, and a dividend yield of 2.29%, reminding investors it hasn’t forgotten old-school shareholder love.
Debt is low (Debt/Equity 0.08), balance sheet isn’t screaming for help, but working capital days have ballooned to 64 days. Translation: cash is working overtime, but not efficiently. With EV/EBITDA at ~10x and P/E at 22.6x, the market seems unsure whether Cyient is a sleepy engineer or a future semiconductor ninja.
Curious why the market can’t make up its mind? Let’s dissect the patient.
2. Introduction – From Infotech Enterprises to Identity Crisis
Cyient started life in 1991 as Infotech Enterprises—basically the OG engineering outsourcing brain before it was cool. Over the years, it morphed into a serious ER&D services powerhouse, touching transportation, telecom, sustainability, aerospace, semiconductors, and now even design-led manufacturing.
But here’s the problem: Cyient is doing many smart things at once, and the market hates multitaskers unless earnings explode. While peers shout “AI-first!”, Cyient quietly executes engineering-heavy, long-cycle projects. That’s great for annuity-style revenue, not so great for Twitter hype cycles.
FY25 saw DET segment order intake of US$ 836 Mn and 24 large deals worth US$ 370.8 Mn. Sounds sexy. Yet quarterly numbers look meh, margins wobble, and EPS keeps sliding quarter
after quarter. Investors are asking: Where’s the operating leverage, boss?
And just when you think stability is coming, boom—independent director resignations, Norway branch closure, Israel subsidiary shutdown. Not red flags, but definitely yellow post-its stuck on the governance file.
So is Cyient a misunderstood engineer… or just stuck between old IT and new-age tech narratives?
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do? (Explained Like You’re Smart but Lazy)
Cyient sells engineering brains on rent, but not the generic IT kind. Think less “app development” and more “designing how aircraft wings talk to sensors while flying through bad weather.”
Digital, Engineering & Technology (DET) – 79% of FY25 Revenue
This is the main money-spinner:
- Transportation (30%) – rail, aerospace, automotive engineering
- Connectivity (23%) – telecom, networks, digital infra
- Sustainability (31%) – utilities, energy transition, environmental engineering
- New Growth Areas (16%) – semiconductors, medical tech, hi-tech
DET is sticky, long-cycle, and boringly stable. But margins depend on utilization, pricing power, and how many engineers are billable versus sitting on bench drinking chai.
Design Led Manufacturing (DLM) – 21% of FY25 Revenue
This is the spicy bit. Through Cyient DLM, the company manufactures electronic systems for aerospace, defense, and high-tech OEMs. Unlike IT services, this involves factories, inventory, and capex—aka real-world headaches.
Others – 0.5%
Basically corporate leftovers. Ignore politely.
The model is strong,
