GHCL Q2 FY27: standalone PAT up 19% YoY to ₹127 Cr, margins ease from Q1's one-off peak

GHCL's standalone PAT for Q2 FY27 came in at ₹127.42 Cr, up 18.7% year-on-year from ₹107.36 Cr (the company's own release rounds this to ~19% using a slightly different base), on revenue from operations of ₹808.03 Cr, up 12.0% YoY from ₹721.29 Cr. The quarter had no exceptional items on either side of the comparison, so this is a clean like-for-like print — both revenue and profit grew in the low-double-digits/high-teens range, with EPS at ₹14.02 versus ₹11.23 a year ago. Sequentially, PAT fell 33.3% from Q1 FY27's ₹191.18 Cr and revenue rose a modest 4.4% from ₹774.26 Cr. That QoQ drop is a base effect, not weakness: Q1 FY27's PBT included a ₹53.62 Cr exceptional gain that pushed PBT to ₹257.53 Cr against a core (pre-exceptional) PBT of ₹203.91 Cr. Even on that core base, PBT normalized to ₹172.29 Cr this quarter — in line with what management flagged on the Q1 FY27 call: margins would ease from the then-29.1% level as energy costs rise, captive soda ash production increases, and realizations soften. EBITDA margin (EBITDA/total income) came in at 24.65% this quarter versus 29.15% in Q1 FY27 and 23.67% in Q2 FY26 — so while the sequential move is a compression exactly as guided, the year-on-year read is actually a ~100bps margin expansion, and NPM followed the same pattern (15.52% now versus 14.53% a year ago, down from Q1's one-off-boosted 23.96%). No verified sell-side consensus estimate for this specific quarter's revenue or PAT could be located in public sources (brokerage previews and consensus trackers checked), so vsStreet is marked unknown rather than inferred. Against management's own prior guidance, the quarter tracks on-plan: Vacuum Salt commercial production began August 31, 2026 (within the quarter, utilising surplus plant energy, 1,70,000 MT capacity) and Bromine commenced October 12, 2026 (just after quarter-end, 2,800 MT capacity) — both consistent with the ramp management described toward a ₹160-170 Cr revenue / 40-45% EBITDA margin contribution by FY28. No management press release or post-result commentary was available in the source context beyond the regulatory filing itself, so there is no additional management framing to reconcile against the numbers here. The board also approved an additional capital budget of ~₹88.09 Cr for FY27, layering onto the ~₹140-150 Cr capex guided earlier, and GHCL was separately named preferred bidder for a Gujarat limestone mining lease (September 23, 2026), relevant to raw-material security for the core soda ash business. Together, these developments — plus the two new product lines going live mid-quarter — set up Q3 FY27 as the first period with a fuller contribution from Vacuum Salt and an initial partial-quarter contribution from Bromine.