CAN BHAVISH AGGARWAL TURN OLA ELECTRIC AROUND?

Slashed revenue forecasts, plummeting sales and a high-stakes energy gamble. What's going on at Ola Electric?

- Ayaan Kartik

Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola Electric's founder, chairman and managing director, at the company's listing ceremony at the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai on 9 August 2024.

(Bloomberg)

Bengaluru-based Ola Electric’s July-September earnings call on 6 November had some surprises for analysts and investors. To begin with, founder, chairman and managing director Bhavish Aggarwal slashed the company’s full-year guidance by a third to ₹3,000-3,200 crore, just three months after saying it would earn ₹4,200-4,700 crore.

Taken by surprise, analysts were quick to seek an explanation. “[You] are Ebitda positive, as...guided last time, but it appears to have come at the cost of sacrificing volume. Could you help us understand what gives you comfort that this trade-off is sustainable and strategically sound,” asked Arun Kejriwal, founder of Kejriwal Research and Investment Services.

In a lengthy response, Aggarwal justified the lowered guidance and played up the company’s improvement in gross margins and operating costs. In the short term, he indicated that Ola Electric was focusing on getting all its ducks in a row. And over the long term, he insisted, this would help the company dominate the electric vehicle (EV) industry.

Aggarwal also revealed that Ola Electric wanted to focus on a new business segment: battery energy storage systems (BESS). The company expects to generate about ₹1,000 crore in revenue from the battery energy storage business in financial year 2027. That would be about 22% of its ₹4,514 crore revenue in fiscal year 2025 (FY25).

“Although the battery business guidance appears promising, the road to achieving that is still hazy as there are established players in the segment,” an analyst from a global brokerage firm said.

Analyst pessimism is reflected in the stock price, with Ola Electric shares plummeting 24% over the last month against a 3% rise in the Nifty Auto.