Deck
Olectra Greentech is an Indian e-bus and electric-CV tender manufacturer with a smaller composite-insulator business; the investment case turns on paid deployment, not order announcements.
Backlog is visible; paid delivery conversion is not yet proven.
- Use the paid-bus denominator. Olectra cites 9,000 pending bus orders, but 9M FY2026 deliveries were 881 vehicles. The valuable unit is a bus delivered, accepted, funded, and collected, not an L1 slot or LoI.
- MSRTC showed the haircut. The 5,150-bus Maharashtra order moved from a May 2025 cancellation scare to a revised schedule of 620 buses in 2025, 2,100 in 2026, and 2,210 in 2027.
- Capacity no longer answers the question. Phase I of Seetharampur started commercial operations on December 31, 2025 with 2,500 buses per year per shift; the remaining tests are depots, financing, routes, and working capital.
The multiple needs cash-flow proof.
The P&L has reached industrial scale, but owner cash has lagged. FY2025 operating cash flow roughly matched profit only after trade payables added ₹2.77B, and borrowings reached ₹3.66B by Q2 FY2026; the next annual print needs to show deliveries funding themselves.
The moat is tender execution, not price protection.
- What Olectra has. 3,600+ buses on road, 500M+ green km, BYD cooperation through 2030, and 29% Q3 FY2026 e-bus share support a narrow execution moat.
- What it lacks. Public e-bus tenders reopen the contest each round, and management expects long-term EV EBITDA margins around 10-12% as volumes scale.
- Who presses it. PMI had about 3,500 delivered buses and a 7,085-bus order book; JBM cites 11,000 buses deployed or under execution and 20,000 annual e-bus capacity; Tata cites 3,600+ running e-buses with 95%+ uptime.
The next chapter is conversion, not capacity.
Before: FY2023-FY2025 guidance ran ahead of actual output: 563 buses vs a 1,000 FY2023 target, roughly 541 FY2024 e-vehicles vs 1,200-1,500, and 972 FY2025 buses vs a 2,500-bus ambition.
Pivot: Mahesh Babu’s Q3 FY2026 framing cut the story back to absorption reality: 1,500-2,000 FY2026 vehicles, with delivery gated by electricity, finance, depots, STU routes, and working capital.
Today: The February 23, 2026 TGSRTC 1,085-bus LoI through Evey adds backlog, while the 10,900-bus PM E-DRIVE tender was reported with PMI and Eka taking most awards and Olectra at 1,785 L1 buses. FY2026 results will show whether new capacity narrowed the execution gap.
The next scorecard is annual cash flow, not another order headline.
- FY2026 print. The May-July 2026 annual results window is the highest-impact update: deliveries, free cash flow, debtor days, borrowings, finance cost, and EV EBITDA margin matter more than revenue.
- MSRTC clock. The revised Maharashtra schedule calls for 2,100 buses in 2026. Accepted, running buses would repair customer trust; another slip would reopen the order-book discount.
- Tape and liquidity. The stock remains below the 200-day area after a December 31, 2025 death cross; a sustained reclaim near ₹1,307 would improve sponsorship, while a break below ₹1,005.55 would mark a failed-bounce setup. Five days at 20% ADV clears only ₹74.4M.
Lean avoid until cash conversion improves.
- For. Olectra is not a prototype: FY2025 revenue was ₹18.0B, TTM revenue reached ₹21.2B, Q3 FY2026 revenue grew about 29% YoY, and the company had 3,600+ buses on road.
- For. The release mechanism is visible: 1,500+ FY2026 vehicle deliveries, debtor days moving toward 100, and EV EBITDA holding at or above the 10-12% long-term range would make the backlog underwritable.
- Against. FY2025 FCF was −₹360M, H1 FY2026 CFO was −₹310M, and FY2025 CFO needed a ₹2.77B payables inflow; cash conversion has not matched the valuation.
- Against. FY2025 related-party sale and service values were about ₹14.25B, promoter control sits at 50.02%, and the core Evey/SPV channel still needs counterparty aging and collection proof.
Watchlist to re-rate: FY2026 FCF after working capital and capex; debtor days and Evey/SPV aging; 2026 MSRTC delivery progress; EV EBITDA margin versus the 10-12% guide.