Vedanta Aluminium Metal Limited (VAML) share price
₹394.00 on NSE as of 2026-10-07. -1.76% on the day. 52-week range ₹394.00 to ₹495.90. Metals & Mining.
Vedanta Aluminium Metal Q1 FY27: A 48% Operating Margin, a Maiden ₹8 Dividend, and 2.20 Billion Shares Pledged Upstairs
At a glance
Vedanta Aluminium Metal Limited has filed its first set of results as a listed company.
Revenue for the three months to June 2026 was ₹21,393 crore. That compares with ₹14,654 crore a year earlier, a rise of 46%. Operating profit went from ₹4,386 crore to ₹10,299 crore. That is a 135% increase, and operating margin moved from 30% to 48%. Net profit rose from ₹1,781 crore to ₹5,629 crore.
Aluminium production reached 632,000 tonnes, which the company's release calls an all-time high. Value-added output, meaning metal shaped into billets, rods and alloys, was 389,000 tonnes.
The board approved a first interim dividend of ₹8 a share. The payout totals ₹3,128.55 crore, with a record date of 5 August 2026. Crisil, a credit-rating agency, upgraded the long-term rating to AA+/Stable from AA on 16 July. That move removed the rating from Rating Watch with Developing Implications. ICRA, another rating agency, also moved to AA+ with a stable outlook.
Hot metal cost of production was $1,698 a tonne, down 4% from a year earlier. Aluminium on the London Metal Exchange, the global price benchmark, averaged $3,571 a tonne. That is 46% above the average of $2,448 a year earlier.
In a separate set of filings, GLAS disclosed encumbrance over 2.20 billion VAML shares. Encumbrance means shares pledged as security against a loan. The holding covered comes to 56.38% of the company. The filings name a facility of $1 billion dated 15 July and one of $2.25 billion dated 20 July. The promoter group entered into both.
Introduction
VAML holds the aluminium business of the Vedanta group following the group's demerger, effective 1 May 2026. Per Crisil, the credit-rating agency, each of the group's businesses now sits under its own vertical. Zinc stays under Vedanta Ltd, oil and gas under Vedanta Oil & Gas, and iron ore and steel under Vedanta Iron & Steel. Power sits under Vedanta Power, and aluminium sits here. Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd, or BALCO, is a subsidiary held at 51%, and Crisil consolidates it fully.
The physical footprint, per Crisil: 1.8 million tonnes a year of smelting capacity at Jharsuguda and 1 million tonnes at BALCO. A 5 million tonne alumina refinery sits at Lanjigarh. All of it stands in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Crisil describes VAML as the largest domestic aluminium producer and the third largest globally excluding China. Crisil puts its domestic market share at 48% in the year to March 2026.
The quarter's corporate housekeeping was brisk. On 30 July the board approved a 150 MW round-the-clock battery storage arrangement through SRI9PL. VAML is putting in ₹165 crore for twenty-five years of supply. A later filing revised the storage integration to between 142.5 and 150 MW. The same filing set assured supply at 90% to 95% under a 600 MW solar power delivery agreement. That board meeting also approved employee share ownership and employee share purchase plans alongside the dividend.
The most administrative announcement of the lot was a change of corporate identity number to L24202MH2023PLC411663. The letter at the front moved from U to L, which is what happens when an unlisted company stops being one.
Crisil also notes disclosures by Vedanta about Enforcement Directorate searches at group offices. Those searches concern alleged breaches of the foreign exchange law. Per Crisil's discussion with group management, the necessary information has been provided. Crisil says there are no material implications in the matter yet. Crisil states that adverse developments would be a rating sensitivity factor.
Business model
The company digs up rock, cooks it into powder, and runs electricity through the powder until it becomes metal. The metal then goes to about sixty-odd countries.
Bauxite goes into the Lanjigarh refinery and comes out as alumina, the white powder that smelters feed on. Crisil, the credit-rating agency, notes that Lanjigarh was expanded from 2 million tonnes a year to 5 million. Alumina goes into the smelters at Jharsuguda and BALCO, a combined capacity of about 2.8 million tonnes a year. That follows BALCO's addition of 435,000 tonnes of capacity in the year to March 2026. The aluminium is then turned into billets, rods, alloys and other shaped products. Management says these fetch a premium over the London Metal Exchange reference price.
Nobody negotiates the price of aluminium with VAML. The London Metal Exchange does that, at $3,571 a tonne this quarter. What management controls is the gap between that number and the cost of making a tonne, which was $1,698. The whole strategic effort of this business is a campaign to widen one subtraction sum.
Hence the attention to mines. Management's stated plan runs through Kuraloi coal, where the mining lease is executed and mine opening permission obtained. That one is targeted for the second quarter of the year to March 2027. Sijimali bauxite has environmental clearance granted and Forest Clearance Stage II in place, targeted for the second half of that year. Ghogharpalli coal has environment clearance recommended, with forest clearance targeted in the second quarter and commissioning in the second half.
On the earnings call management quantified the ambition. From roughly $1,700 a tonne, management describes a cut of $175 to $200 over two to four quarters. About 70% of that would come from alumina and bauxite, per management, and the rest from coal.
Domestic bauxite was 46% of the mix in the quarter, against 66% a year earlier. Alumina cost of production was $373 a tonne, up 3% on the previous three months. Management attributes that to headwinds in fuel oil prices from the Middle East conflict. Alumina purity reached 98.81%, which the company calls its best ever, a sentence only a refinery could love.
Quarterly results, balance sheet, cash flow, ratios, shareholding and the filings themselves are on the full page for Vedanta Aluminium Metal Limited.
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