01 — At a Glance
The Order Book Millionaire Who Can’t Pay Rent
- 52-Week High / Low₹242 / ₹135
- Q3 FY26 Revenue (Consolidated)₹4,900 Cr
- Q3 FY26 PAT (Consolidated)₹122.46 Cr
- Q3 FY26 EPS (₹)₹1.95
- Annualised EPS (Q3×4)₹7.80
- Book Value₹120
- Price to Book1.20x
- Dividend Yield1.52%
- Debt / Equity0.40x
- Order Book (as on Dec 31)₹79,571 Cr
Red Flag Alert: NCC closed Q3 with ₹4,900 crore revenue (-9% YoY), ₹122 crore PAT, and an order book of ₹79,571 crore that somehow makes the company look more helpless than useful. Revenue fell 9%. Profits cratered 25%. Debt jumped 40%. Yet management won’t give guidance for Q4 because — and this is verbatim — “we don’t know what is the quantum that is going to come in.” Translation: The government might pay us. They might not. We literally cannot plan.
02 — Introduction
When Your Order Book Becomes Your Curse
NCC Limited is a construction contractor that takes turnkey EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) contracts and builds public infrastructure. Roads. Railways. Dams. Water pipelines. Buildings. Smart meters. Mining. Irrigation. You name it, NCC has probably half-finished a project in that sector while waiting for a government cheque.
The company was incorporated in 1978 and has 46 years of operational history. It’s done 500+ building projects, laid 20,700+ km of water pipelines, and irrigated 3,50,000 acres of land. By any reasonable measure, this is an execution powerhouse. Except — and this is a big except — it operates almost entirely for the Indian government and state authorities, who pay slower than continental drift.
Q3 FY26 was the moment everyone realized the emperor has no clothes. Revenue dropped 9% year-on-year. Profit fell 25%. Leverage jumped. And management held a concall where they literally refused to predict next quarter’s revenue because the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) payments — their largest source of work — have been stuck for months. The company is sitting on ₹79,571 crore of work that is approved, signed, and started. But it cannot execute it because the Indian government — for whom the work is being done — is not clearing bills.
This is not a business problem. This is a hostage situation where the construction company is the hostage.
Concall Reality Check (Feb 2026): When asked about Q4 guidance, management said: “we have expected that we will be executing somewhere around ₹4,000-5,000 crores in the current year… Unfortunately… delay in the payment, the projects could not be executed.” That’s a ₹1 lakh crore gap between expected and actual. On a ₹20,000 crore company.
03 — Business Model: Build Now, Get Paid… Never?
Fixed-Price EPC Contracts in a State Where Government Payments Are Mythical
NCC operates on a simple model: Client issues a tender. NCC bids. NCC wins (hopefully). NCC builds. NCC invoices. NCC waits. Client pays (if at all). The typical contract is fixed-price, meaning if steel costs surge, NCC bleeds. If execution delays, NCC carries the cost. If the government changes its mind 70% through the project, NCC still finishes it.
About 98.5% of revenue comes from construction. The remainder is real estate (NCC Urban), which is marginally profitable and under-capitalized. The construction business breaks down as: Buildings (31% of order book), Transportation (22%), Electrical T&D (18%), Mining (13%), Water & Railways (10%), and Irrigation (7%).
The problem is the client base. Airports Authority of India. NBCC. PowerGrid. Bangalore Metro. Reserve Bank of India. Nagpur Metro. The entire Indian government apparatus. These organizations have budgets allocated, but the way money gets released from Union Ministry → State Government → Project Level is so fractured that even completed work sits unpaid for months.
Q3 showed this in brutal detail. JJM orders worth ₹7,000 crore are sitting in NCC’s backlog. They’ve done ₹1,300-1,500 crore of execution. But billing is blocked because “the client also did not certify because the payments are not being made.” In layperson’s terms: The government won’t acknowledge the work because they’re out of cash.
Buildings31%Order Book %
Transportation22%Order Book %
Electrical T&D18%Order Book %
Others29%Order Book %
The Gross Current Assets Trap: NCC’s GCA days (time cash is locked in work-in-progress) ballooned from 269 days in FY24 to 297 days in FY25. That’s 10 months of work that hasn’t been invoiced or hasn’t been paid. In Q3, debtors alone were ₹3,505 crore with 87 days of outstanding sales (DSO). Unbilled revenue: ₹7,129 crore. This is 44% of quarterly turnover sitting in limbo.
💬 If you won ₹79,571 crore in projects but can’t get paid for 8 months of work, is that a win? What would you do?
04 — Financials Overview
Q3 FY26: The Breakdown
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