With a $7.02-per-share take-private offer from a consortium of CPPIB and founder Sumant Sinha now binding, ReNew Energy Global heads into its fiscal second-quarter report, due after the close on November 2, in an unusual position. The stock, at $6.87, trades just a couple of percent below the deal price, so the quarterly numbers matter less as a driver of the share price than as a check on whether the business is holding up while the transaction works through regulators and the courts. The report needs to show that the operating story management laid out in August is intact and that nothing has surfaced to threaten the deal's path to completion.
The Street expects earnings of $0.16 per share on revenue of about $465.2 million. That works out to roughly 23% earnings growth and 14% revenue growth from a year ago. These are healthy gains for a utility-like power producer, and they reflect the steady addition of capacity. Revenue is expected to fall from the $506.0 million reported last quarter, so a sequential decline on its own should not be read as a warning sign. Management did not give quarterly targets, but it reaffirmed its full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of INR 103 billion to 109 billion, a range unchanged since the fourth quarter. With INR 30.4 billion already booked in the first quarter, a solid second quarter would keep the company on track toward the middle of that range. A soft one would raise questions about how much the second half has to carry.
The clearest risk in the release is manufacturing. Margins in the solar module business fell to 34% from 40% a year earlier. Full-year manufacturing guidance of INR 10 billion to 12 billion also looks conservative given that INR 5.7 billion came in the first quarter alone. Management tied the expected slowdown to new cell supply and to the extension of domestic-content sales rules through December 31. If second-quarter manufacturing profit drops sharply, that is simply the guided path playing out. If it holds up better, the full-year guide may prove too cautious. The more troubling outcome would be a decline steeper than the guidance implies.
On the power side, the first test is whether ReNew keeps adding capacity at its pace of roughly 1 gigawatt a quarter. Operating capacity stood at 13.5 GW last quarter. Getting meaningfully closer to 14.5 GW would support management's execution claims, as would further growth in the 20.5 GW committed portfolio and the commercial and industrial book, where hyperscalers make up about half of contracted offtake. Solar plant load factors fell about 220 basis points last quarter, roughly half from Rajasthan grid curtailment and half from weather. Any progress on a compensation mechanism with the power ministry would remove a lingering drag. Working capital should also look much cleaner after the INR 57 billion collection from the Andhra Pradesh discom pushed days sales outstanding down to 54. Holding that improvement, and closing the roughly $190 million sale of 1 GW of assets, would keep leverage moving toward the 5.5x target from 5.7x.
Sentiment has become far less pessimistic, with the bearish reading easing to about 9.7% from nearly 45% before the last report. Much of that shift likely reflects the deal floor rather than conviction about operations. The shares are up 0.6% since the August report, slightly ahead of a flat S&P 500. They have traded in a very narrow band near the top of their post-earnings range, comfortably above the 200-day average, in the way stocks typically behave when a cash buyout caps the upside.
The central question is whether the second quarter confirms a business compounding capacity and cash flow on schedule, with manufacturing normalizing as planned rather than faster than planned. If it does, the narrative of steady, deal-supported progress remains intact.