Adani Group buys Orient Cement as race with Birla heats up

AMBUJA Cements, part of the Adani Group, has agreed to acquire Orient Cement in a deal valued at 81 billion rupees (S$1.26 billion), as billionaire Gautam Adani continues to snap up makers of the key raw material needed for India’s infrastructure push.

Ambuja will acquire 46.8 per cent shares of Orient Cement from its current founders and certain public shareholders, the company said in an exchange filing on Tuesday (Oct 22). The transaction will be fully funded by internal accruals.

It will also make an open offer for 26 per cent stake in Orient at 395.40 rupees a share, according to the filing, or a premium of 12 per cent on Monday’s closing price of 352.45 rupees. 

Shares of the C K Birla Group firm surged as much as 7.7 per cent on Tuesday in Mumbai before reversing those gains in line with the broader India market. Ambuja advanced as much as 2 per cent but gave those gains during trading.

The latest acquisition adds 16.6 million tons annual cement capacity for the ports-to-power conglomerate and shows an escalating asset race between Asia’s second-richest person and the sector leader, UltraTech Cement, led by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla.

“The deal is a setback for UltraTech, and shows that Adani group is putting up tough competition after already having driven prices down,” Jyoti Gupta, analyst at Nirmal Bang Equities said over phone. 

While the deal may look slightly expensive, Gupta said it made “a lot of sense for Adani down the line” as it augments the group’s capacity in regions where construction activity is likely to be high.

More than half a dozen cement deals have been stitched by the Adani Group and UltraTech in two years and many smaller players are still up for grabs. UltraTech had bought a controlling stake in a coveted cement maker in July.

Orient’s “strategic locations, high-quality limestone reserves and requisite statutory approvals present an opportunity to increase cement capacity in the near term,” Karan Adani, director of Ambuja Cements, and Gautam’s son, said in the filing.

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Battle lines are being drawn in India’s cement space as Adani Group’s buyout spree rapidly adds to its 79 million tons capacity with a target of 140 million tons by 2028. UltraTech, which has a current capacity of 150 million tons, is looking to scale up to 200 million tons by March 2027.

Both the billionaires are seeking to dominate supplies of a building material that is critical to sustaining India’s drive to overall its infrastructure. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mission to build everything from airport and power facilities to roads, bridges and tunnels will spur India’s infrastructure investment to 15 trillion rupees by March 2026, according to Crisil Ratings.

Adani Group’s big bang entry in 2022 upended the local pecking order – it became No 2 cement maker overnight with the acquisition of Ambuja and ACC – but it spent much of 2023 fire-fighting after Hindenburg Research’s scathing report.

Gautam Adani’s empire only got back to its expansionist ways fully this year. As part of this revived growth spree, it has been acquiring cement makers, stoking has a turf war with the entrenched incumbent. 

The Adani Group has been scouting for more cement assets to expand its reach, procure key raw material – limestone reserves – and has a war chest of about US$4.5 billion for acquisitions over the next two years, Bloomberg News had reported in July citing people familiar with the internal discussions.

The Adani Group is aiming to drive down costs significantly even if it can’t match the cost efficiency of Chinese cement makers, Bloomberg had reported then. BLOOMBERG