1. At a Glance – Blink and You’ll Miss the Margins
Birla Cable Ltd is that quiet back-bencher from the MP Birla Group who suddenly stood up in Q3 FY26 and said, “Sir, my profits are up 159%.”
Market cap sits at ₹408 Cr, stock price around ₹136, and the company just delivered ₹205 Cr quarterly revenue with ₹4.02 Cr PAT. Sounds exciting? Wait till you see the ROCE of 5.14% and ROE of 1.98% — numbers so low they need oxygen support.
The stock has corrected ~23% in one year, ~14% in three months, yet trades at a P/E of ~54x. Yes, fifty-four. For a cable company. With single-digit margins. Irony has entered the chat.
But hold your judgment — telecom cycles are weird, OFC demand is lumpy, and Birla Cable has suddenly remembered how to make profits. Question is: Is this a comeback or just one good quarter in a long cable reel?
2. Introduction – Welcome to the Telecom Gym, Gains Optional
Birla Cable has been around since 1992. That’s three decades of making telecom cables — copper, optical fibre, structured LAN, accessories — basically everything that connects your data but not your portfolio.
It belongs to the MP Birla Group, so governance isn’t exactly roadside jugaad. The company operates out of Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, with a fibre capacity of ~36 lakh fibre km.
Over the years, Birla Cable has seen:
- BSNL booms
- BSNL bankruptcies
- 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G hype cycles
- Optical fibre capex euphoria
- And margin compression like it’s a family tradition
FY23–FY25 were not kind. Profit volatility, low ROCE, rising debt, and suddenly — Q3 FY26 shows life. Sales up, profits jumping, and management changes happening simultaneously. That’s either a turnaround… or the calm before another telecom storm.
So
let’s dissect this fibre strand by strand.
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
Imagine explaining Birla Cable to a lazy investor:
“They manufacture cables. Very long cables. Very thin margins.”
More formally, Birla Cable manufactures and sells:
a) Optical Fibre Cables
- Aerial & underground
- Microduct & micromodule
- FTTX indoor specialty cables
These go into:
- Telecom operators
- Government broadband projects
- Data networks
b) Telecom Fibre Accessories
- Connectors, adapters, patch cords
- Joint closures & fibre management systems
These are boring but necessary — like screws in an IKEA bed.
c) Structured LAN Cables
- CAT 5E, CAT 6, CAT 6A, CAT 7
Used in offices, data centres, campuses.
d) Accessories
Patch panels, keystones, face plates — basically the interior decor of data transmission.
Revenue is ~98% product sales, exports contribute ~28%, domestic ~72%.
Simple business. Complex economics. Commodity pricing. Government dependency. Welcome to telecom manufacturing hell.
4. Financials Overview – Q3 FY26 Finally Shows Some Spine
Quarterly Comparison Table (₹ Crore)
| Metric | Latest Qtr (Q3 FY26) | YoY Qtr (Q3 FY25) | Prev Qtr (Q2 FY26) | YoY % | QoQ % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 204.51 | 157.80 | 176.07 | 29.6% | 16.2% |
| EBITDA | 10.90 | 9.22 | 7.22 | 18.2% | 51.0% |
| PAT | 4.02 | 1.55 | 0.69 | 159.3% | 482% |
| EPS (₹) | 1.34 | 0.52 | 0.23 | 157.7% | 483% |
Commentary:
This quarter didn’t just improve — it resurrected. But remember: PAT margin is still ~2%. One raw material
