Kajaria Ceramics, Somany to gain as firms in Morbi go on month-long shutdown

A dealers channel check by JM Financial Institutional Securities Ltd showed that Morbi tile makers usually take a week-long production shutdown during the festival, but this time the companies, involved in manufacturing of polished vitrified tiles, double-charged and wall tiles, have decided to go on a month-long shutdown during August-September.

The channel check shows that this is being done because export orders are being deferred due to sharp rise in freight rates and container availability issues and domestic industry is still on the recovery path. So, the entire production cannot be absorbed by domestic market.

Since regional Morbi companies account for around 50-60% of the production capacity, listed companies in this sector such as Kajaria Ceramics Ltd and Somany Ceramics Ltd are poised to benefit in terms of market share.

“We believe large tile players like Kajaria and Somany are in a sweet spot to gain market share in the near to medium term as they will be well placed to partially fill the supply vaccum created by production shutdowns by the Morbi players and also increase their channel depth (dealers will incrementally prefer organised players due to supply security),” said the JM Financial report.

Further, these production cuts taken by Morbi-based companies also augur well for the tile industry as it will help in creating demand-supply equilibrium and

pricing discipline, which will eventually benefit the organised companies, added the report.