I am Pankaj Dhawan and I head the investor relations at STL. I have been working with STL for almost one and a half years now. One of the key mandate that was given to me after the joining was to convey our story to capital market in such a way that it appreciates our business and reward us with fair valuation.
So when we started FY21, our target was to reposition STL from an optical fibre company to an end to end solution provider integrating digital networks. In financial terms, we wanted to achieve the market capitalisation of Rs. 10,000 Cr., which was 4x from the starting position.
In order to clearly communicate this new position, we thought of organising an event, where we can talk about the transition in the business and how are we going to achieve this. Hence we organised STLescope 2020 and in the following year STLescope 2021. As you would know that STLescope is our annual investor and analysts meet, where we share STL’s strategic and financial priorities for the next 3 to 5 years. It’s a unique opportunity for the investors to understand the direction in which the company is moving and also meet our global leadership team including the board of directors.
Some of the challenges in organising STLescope were to align the top leadership on the message, clearly articulate strategic direction and financial milestones and win the confidence of the capital market. Also this was first of a kind event involving a lot of key stakeholders and to be executed in a very short time frame.
So we decided to create a cross functional team comprising of Marketing, Strategy, IT and of course Finance under the able guidance of Exco. We divided the work in 3 broad areas and used program management to make sure that quality output is delivered on time. The first area is to give clear financial metrics to measure our progress. Our 3 key financial targets are Revenue run rate target of Rs. 10,000 Cr. by Q4 FY23, Net debt/Equity reduce to 0.5 and RoCE >20%. The second area was to explain business in simple language and to create a story flow to keep the audience engaged. And last but not the least was to manage event logistics e.g. Sending invites to investors & analysts, finalising virtual platform, Curating videos, preparing right speakers for the message etc.
STLescope 2020 was very well attended & Post the event, CLSA, one of the very reputed global institution initiated our coverage with a buy rating. In last one year, we have attracted new institutional investors and our institutional holding has gone up from 10.6% in Mar’21 to 15.8% in June’21. Last but not the least, finally in May’21 we surpassed Rs. 10,000 Cr. market cap and increasing every day.
In my previous organisation, I had been part of a turnaround journey and had seen the market capitalisation going up 5x in 5 years. So I always knew that it is possible. Plus, during the time leading up to STLescope, I found a lot of STLers pulling up all-nighters to prepare for the event so that really charged me.
Through my efforts, I aim to enable Indian origin organisations to become world leaders in their domain through easy access to cost efficient capital while creating sustainable value.