1. At a Glance – Jet Engine Dreams, Cash Flow Nightmares
Aequs Ltd is what happens when India decides it doesn’t want to just supply screws to global aerospace giants but wants to machine the entire damn airplane bracket by bracket. Market cap of about ₹9,362 crore, current price hovering near ₹139, and freshly IPO-bathed with ₹6,700 million of new cash. Sounds glamorous, right? Now comes the punchline: ROE at -11.2%, ROCE barely breathing at 1.11%, and a net loss of ₹596.6 million for 9M FY26.
Q3 FY26 revenue jumped 51% YoY to ₹3,262 million, EBITDA exploded 353% YoY to ₹381 million, and yet the company still managed to post a quarterly loss. This is peak “top-line flex, bottom-line stress.”
Debt has reduced to ₹785 crore post-IPO, which is good, but interest coverage is still a sad 0.26—basically lenders are getting paid with hope and PowerPoint slides. Aerospace contributes 89% of revenue, consumer electronics 11%, and management dreams are clearly flying faster than profits.
This is not a boring company. This is a dramatic company. And dramatic companies deserve a full autopsy.
2. Introduction – The Only Indian SEZ Where Planes Are Born (In Pieces)
Aequs was founded in 2000 with one clear ambition: become indispensable to global aerospace OEMs. Not a vendor. Not a subcontractor. A partner who is too painful to replace. And to be fair, they’ve executed this vision well—vertically integrated aerospace manufacturing inside a single SEZ at Belagavi is not a jugaad operation.
They forge, machine, surface-treat, assemble, and ship high-precision components that end up inside Airbus, Boeing, Safran, Spirit, Collins Aerospace platforms. Over 5,000 aerospace products across global programs. That’s not a PPT number; that’s execution.
But aerospace is a cruel business. Long gestation periods, brutal certifications, slow ramp-ups, and customers who negotiate like they’re buying onions at a mandi. Add to this Aequs’ aggressive expansion—France, Texas, consumer electronics—and suddenly the P&L looks like it’s been through mild turbulence.
The IPO was supposed to “fix” the balance sheet. It helped, but didn’t magically turn losses into profits. This is still a scale-up story pretending to be a mature one. The question is: does scale eventually save the day, or does capital intensity eat equity alive?
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do? (In Simple Human Language)
Imagine Airbus needs a wing flap bracket. Not a simple metal piece—something
