STL has announced the consolidated financial results for its fourth quarter and financial year ending March 31, 2020. The company reported Rs 51.54 billion in revenue and an order book of Rs 100.37 billion, backed by large deal wins globally.

FY20 – A transformative year for STL

The global environment witnessed uncertainty and sluggish growth, followed by a lockdown due to COVID-19. However, STL continued to perform and grow its revenue by delivering end-to-end data network solutions.

  • New global wins build a robust order book for STL across all customer segments – global telcos, cloud companies, citizen networks, and large enterprises. Key deals include: T-Fiber for rural broadband in Telangana, Telekom Albania digital transformation and multi-million dollar contracts in India, Europe and Middle East.
  • Strategic transformation to solutions driven account based organisation with four end-to-end solutions – optical connectivity, fibre deployment, FTTx Mantra for access networks and network modernisation. This has expanded the total addressable market including large scale transformational projects.
  • Established ecosystem for Make in India next-gen solutions by assembling a strong ecosystem of partners in hardware manufacturing, cloud computing and academia.
    • Acquired IDS Group – a data centre design and deployment specialist,
    • Invested in ASOCS – a pioneer in virtual Radio Access Networks (vRAN),
    • Partnered with VMware – the leading provider of cloud virtualization infra,
    • Contracted with VVDN – developer of focused radio hardware solutions,
    • Aligned with IIT Madras – for research and technical advancements in 5G.

This will enable self-sufficient indigenous solutions for 5G for all markets.

  • Invested in technology and grew patents portfolio to 358 patents, for optical connectivity, network services, and virtualized access solutions.
  • Drove sustainable business practices and helped the community:
    • World’s first ZWL integrated optical solution. Achieved zero waste to landfill certification across glass, fibre and cable manufacturing.
    • Global industry recognition: Awarded the Behaviour Based Safety Corporate Award and British Safety Council International Award 2020, Frost & Sullivan 2019 Converged Network Solution among other accolades.
    • COVID-19: Implemented a robust and agile business continuity planning (BCP) model to ship products for immediate mission critical requirements of customers during the lockdown. Currently, STL is operating facilities in China, Brazil, Italy and India, while safeguarding employee health and wellness.

FY21 – STL reorganises for the emerging new-gen network

The dominant trend of growth in data network usage has been enhanced with social distancing due to COVID-19. Remote work has resulted in a massive surge in the Internet traffic across home and enterprise segments. Today, we see three definitive global trends driving robust network investments, and are preparing STL to for this future.

  • Three dominant global trends will evolve the network: Driven by the need for connecting everyone with high quality broadband, we see that a) Telcos are driving significant fibre network creation, b) Cloud companies, Enterprises and Governments are creating large-scale networks for edge data centres, Industry 4.0, IoT, and other use-cases, and c) New players, like STL, are providing agile open source software that is disaggregated from OEM hardware.
  • Global leaders are accelerating investments towards virtualised infrastructure: As network creators amplify investments, they will need a disruptive software-driven architecture that is designed, built and managed as an end-to-end solution.
  • STL solution ecosystem uniquely positions it to deliver on these investments: STL has been strengthening its capabilities with technology investments and ecosystem partnerships. With its end-to-end solutions that integrate optical interconnect, network software, access network products and system integration services, STL is uniquely positioned to generate value for its key customers globally.

The Board of Directors has recommended final dividend of 175 per cent at Rs 3.50 per equity share for FY’20, subject to shareholders’ approval.

Commenting on the results, Anand Agarwal, group CEO, STL, “In the current times, we have focused on keeping our employees and communities safe, while continuing critical operations and deepening customer relationships. As we start FY21, we have a more robust business.  We are seeing an accelerated shift towards digitalisation and data network investments from all our customer segments. The next generation of networks are shifting towards network densification, edge compute, open source and virtualization. As STL transforms to an end-to-end solutions provider, I am confident that we are uniquely positioned to address a much larger opportunity and help our customers achieve their network objectives.”