Everest Industries Ltd: ₹1,701 Cr Sales, ₹-26 Cr Loss — Building Dreams, Breaking Balance Sheets
1. At a Glance
Everest Industries Ltd, born in 1934 (yes, older than your dad’s scooter), sells roofs and steel buildings while coughing asbestos dust into the air. Market cap? A cool ₹990 crore. Revenue? ₹1,701 crore. Profit? A negative ₹25.7 crore — because apparently building materials are heavy, but profits are weightless. With 97% sales domestic, it’s basically India’s favourite asbestos uncle.
2. Introduction
Picture this: You’re walking into a village in India. Above your head? An Everest asbestos sheet — strong, cheap, reliable, and possibly trying to kill you slowly. Welcome to Everest Industries, where half the business still depends on asbestos cement sheets even though 53 countries screamed, “Bhai, ye cancer ka ghar hai.”
The company plays a double role:
Saint: Providing affordable roofing to over 1,00,000 villages and 600 cities, making it one of the most trusted rural brands.
Sinner: Still importing asbestos from Russia and Brazil because hey, health is secondary, margins are primary.
Meanwhile, Everest also builds sleek pre-engineered steel buildings (PEBs). From Reliance to Godrej, they’ve raised over 3,000 PEBs. But the irony? The PEB division makes 31% of revenues, while 50% still comes from asbestos sheets. That’s like having one foot in the 21st century and the other firmly stuck in 1970s India.
And just when you think it’s steady — Q1 FY26 profits crash by 87.8%. Everest didn’t climb; it slipped.
Question for you: Is this company an old dinosaur with asbestos lungs, or a sleeping dragon with a steel backbone?
3. Business Model (WTF Do They Even Do?)
Think of Everest as a builder’s thali:
AC Roofing Sheets: The staple rice. Cheap, filling, dangerous if eaten daily.
Fibre Cement & Supercolor Sheets: Masala toppings. Same asbestos, but colourful.
Boards & Panels: The papad. Adds crunch but low in margin.
Artewood & Designer Ceilings: The fancy paneer dish no one orders, but looks good in a PPT.
Steel Buildings: The butter naan — premium, modern, but limited coverage.
Revenue Split (FY23):
Building Products: 69%
Steel Buildings: 31%
Geography?
India: 97.3%
Exports: Just 2.7% (basically one container to Sri Lanka).
The model relies on selling roofing sheets to rural India and steel buildings to corporates. Rural demand = monsoon driven. Corporate demand = capex driven. Translation: One depends on rains, the other depends on government policies. Both unpredictable, like Mumbai traffic.
