Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals Limited (CHAMBLFERT) share price

₹418.80 on NSE as of 2026-09-11. +0.25% on the day. market cap ₹16,779 Cr. P/E 8.7. 52-week range ₹409.55 to ₹554.20. Chemicals.

Chambal Fertilisers Q1 FY27: Revenue Down 12%, Operating Profit Up 8.5%, and a Nitric Acid Plant That Isn't Allowed in the P&L Yet

At a glance

Chambal sold ₹670 crore less stuff this quarter than last year and made ₹65 crore more operating profit doing it. Revenue came in at ₹5,027 Cr against ₹5,698 Cr a year ago — down 11.8%. Operating profit went the other way, ₹826 Cr versus ₹761 Cr, and the operating margin climbed from 13% to 16%.

Consolidated PAT was ₹524 Cr, down 4.6% year on year, which is a smaller fall than the revenue drop because the Morocco joint venture decided to have a quarter of its own: IMACID contributed a net loss of ₹25.10 Cr this time against a ₹36.12 Cr profit a year ago. Management says sulphur shortages and high sulphur prices prompted a temporary shutdown there to avoid negative margins, with production resuming in July 2026. Strip the JV out and standalone profit was ₹703 Cr, up 10%.

The urea volumes explain the top line. Production was 6.45 lakh MT against 8.54 lakh MT, sales 6.10 lakh MT against 8.41 lakh MT, which the company attributes to planned and extended plant shutdowns. Complex fertiliser revenue fell 18% to ₹1,737 Cr while its segment EBIT went from ₹143 Cr to ₹239 Cr — management confirmed advance purchases starting January helped both revenue and margins, and separately guided that those margins will decline as price averaging catches up.

Meanwhile, at Gadepan, weak nitric acid and ammonium nitrate solution are being produced and commercially sold, and none of it appears in this income statement. There's a reason for that, and it involves an accounting rule about commissioning.

Introduction

Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited was established in 1985 by Dr. K.K. Birla. It runs three gas-based urea plants at a single location — Gadepan, district Kota, Rajasthan — with a combined annual capacity of 3.4 MMTPA, making it the largest private-sector urea manufacturer in India with roughly 10% of national urea production. Gadepan-I and II together produce 3,477 MT of ammonia and 6,100 MT of urea per day; Gadepan-III adds 1.3 MMTPA and is described in company filings as one of the most efficient plants globally.

Beyond its own urea, the company markets complex fertilisers — DAP, MOP, TSP and NPK blends under the Bharat brand — plus crop protection chemicals, speciality nutrients, biologicals and seeds under the Uttam brand, all on an asset-light sourcing model. Distribution runs through 19 regional offices, 4,918 dealers and more than 93,000 retailers across 14 states. In 1997 it took a stake in Indo Maroc Phosphore S.A. (IMACID), a Morocco joint venture with OCP that manufactures phosphoric acid. A software business existed once; in FY21 the company sold its assets, transferred certain liabilities and ceased operations.

The recent chapter is chemicals. The Technical Ammonium Nitrate project at Gadepan — total cost ₹1,645 Cr, capacity 2.4 lakh MTPA, technology from Casale of Switzerland — has been walking through commissioning in public via exchange filings: weak nitric acid production commenced 1 June 2026, ANS production commenced 31 July 2026, HDAN still to start. TAN is a non-subsidised, market-linked business, which for a company whose revenue depends on notified concession prices under the New Urea Policy 2015 and Nutrient Based Subsidy rates is a genuinely different kind of rupee.

There is also a possible fourth urea plant. The CCEA approved the National Investment Policy for Urea 2026, and Chambal has acquired an additional land parcel, completed fencing and geo-technical studies, secured in-principle gas supplier approval and received expressions of interest from LSTK/EPC bidders. Management expects financial bids around mid-October and says commissioning could be delivered within 2030 — everything subject to Department of Fertilizers and board approval, a caveat management repeated with some determination.

Business model

Take natural gas. Convert it to ammonia and CO2. Combine those into urea. Turn urea into solid prills. Bag it. Sell it at a price the Government of India tells you to sell it at, and collect the difference from the government as subsidy. That is the core of Chambal, and it has been for forty years.

This is why the company's segment revenue split is more interesting than the headline. In Q1 FY27, urea was 57% of revenue at ₹2,860 Cr, complex fertilisers 34% at ₹1,737 Cr, and CPC, speciality nutrients and seeds 9% at ₹430 Cr. Three businesses with three completely different personalities living under one roof.

The urea business is a machine that runs at a policy-determined margin. The company doesn't set the price; it optimises the energy efficiency, and the reward for being efficient shows up as a spread against the norm. Management explicitly credited Gadepan-III's dominance in the quarter's sales mix — G3 did 3.29 lakh tons against G1's 0.96 and G2's 1.85 — plus a currency movement that directly benefits G3 economics, for holding profitability up while volumes fell.

The complex fertiliser business is the trading arm wearing a manufacturer's badge. Chambal doesn't make DAP or MOP; it buys and places them. This quarter, that meant taking calculated positions from January and building 8.5–9.0 lakh tons of inventory, which is a polite phrase for buying a mountain of imported fertiliser before prices moved. It worked: segment EBIT rose 67% on revenue that fell 18%. Management then volunteered that the margin will decline as price averaging happens, which is an unusually direct thing to say about your best-performing segment.

The third business is where the product names live. Insecticides called LUCIDA and Clothrin, fungicides with names like Uttam Nodachi and Uttam Fulcot, hybrid maize UCH-2001, hybrid bajra UPMH 1401, and a biostimulant introduced in Q1 called Aris Gold. Seven new crop protection products launched in the quarter out of fourteen planned for FY27. Revenue here was ₹430 Cr, down 6% on deferred farmer purchases, but segment EBIT rose 13% to ₹108 Cr — a 25% segment margin that management attributed to product mix. It is the smallest segment and the most profitable per rupee, which is what happens when you sell branded chemistry instead of subsidised nitrogen.

And then TAN, arriving via the same ammonia the fertiliser plants already make, sold into mining and infrastructure explosives under brand names — AMMONITE, KOTAN+ — that sound considerably more exciting than urea. The pharmaceutical-grade variant goes into nitrous oxide for anaesthesia. From bajra seed to laughing gas, all from one gas pipeline.

Quarterly results, balance sheet, cash flow, ratios, shareholding and the filings themselves are on the full page for Chambal Fertilizers & Chemicals Limited.

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