PTIApollo Tires It has also reduced capital expenditure investments. Apollo Tyres’ European subsidiary has decided to reduce capital expenditure (capex) by Rs 40 crore in the current fiscal due to the coronavirus pandemic, a senior official of the company said.

Apollo Tires Gaurava Kumar “Considering the overall demand, we have indicated in 2020-211 that we have reduced our capex by Rs 4,010 crore in the year to ensure that there is no pressure on cash flow or liquidity. conference call with analysts.

Earlier, the company had earmarked around Rs 14,000-150,000 crore of capex for its domestic operations for the current fiscal.

Apollo Tyres also added that it cut down on capex investments in its European operations.

“If I remember correctly, we were talking about a figure of Rs 1,400-1,500 crore in India. This year, the figure is 1,000-1, 1,000 crore rupees. Similarly, we have reduced our European business,” Kumar said.

He pointed out that the company has taken various measures to control costs as much as possible due to the uncertainty in the situation as there is an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.

Kumar said, “This includes the announcement of no salary increases this year, lower salaries for senior executives, lower promotional expenses, lower advertising and promotional expenses, and significant improvements in working capital over the last year, which we continue to actively monitor.”

Turning to the outlook for the current fiscal year, he said, “In terms of the outlook going forward, the outlook for the OE (original equipment) business is that sales in FY21 may be lower than FY2020, but the outlook is still quite weak and the outlook is not bright.

But Kumar said most of its business is substitutes, which is a key strength of the company.

He added, “Except for the passenger car tire segment, all other product segments (truck tires, agricultural tires and two-wheeler tires) have shown good recovery in the substitution segment.”

Kumar noted that all the company’s plants in India have been operated as per the guidelines of the state government.

Kumar said that though the utilization rate is low, it will gradually improve as expected.

“Given the current situation, we expect sales to come down,” he said of the European business. However, sales could recover significantly. Two plants in Europe are already operational and production capacity is growing. used in the Netherlands.