S & S Power Switchgear Ltd

Fellow shareholders,

Welcome to the S&S Annual General meeting…

Across the world, COVID-19 continues to disrupt supply chains and lives. Luckily, so far, we have been able to keep our team safe and our business fairly intact although at higher costs. At the end of August more than 95% of our colleagues had been vaccinated and those left out had a genuine medical reason for it. In fact, across India the vaccination program has gathered full steam and promises to give our country some protection from this deadly virus.

At our facilities we continued to keep strict safety measures in terms of masking, social distancing, and sanitizing. Wherever, there were people falling ill, we did active tracing and isolating. We actively discouraged travelling and interacting with outsiders. All this caused disruptions and costs, but we believed that the safety of our people was paramount. We truly believe that we are amongst the fortunate ones who were able to stay safe and feel really sorry for those who suffered in their health and wealth. In our small ways, we have tried to help them to the best of our ability, but nothing we can do to replace their pain. Our prayers go out to them and the many others who have been infected across India and the world.

Operationally, our businesses did much better than the previous year with consolidated income rising to 1,316 million from 917 million, a growth of 43% and the loss of 157 million reducing to a loss of 17 million. In India the business revenue went from 325 million in the previous year to 442 in the year 20-21 and the loss came down from 134 million to 23 million. In the UK our revenue went up from 592 million to 874 million and the loss of 24 million got converted to a small profit of 6 million. The loss is disappointing but in the circumstances, with losing about 2 months of productive work and facing disruptions and cost escalations in the price of commodities, we think it's a reasonable outcome.

We believe that business models in the world will continue to stay disrupted for some more time. We as a company have continued to focus on supplying high quality equipment at best costs to counterparties who we are comfortable with. Our focus on export markets have continued with our Indian business now actively exporting to 40 countries in the world. In the last year in spite of travel restrictions we have added a few international customers to our list. This process is slower but because of this we have survived whereas many of our mid-sized contemporaries in India and the UK have suffered and perished. We believe that our above-mentioned positioning will bear fruit and would have showed us better results by now had we not been affected by unprecedented disruptions like COVID, Brexit and the like.

We have used this time to strengthen our organizational capabilities by investing in people, improving our range of products and services and in our IT infrastructure. This, along with constant cost rationalization, better working capital & contract management and focus on customers will continue to be the core improvement areas for the years to come. Our shares are now being actively traded and we will hopefully complete the re-organization of our businesses to simplify the structure.

We have survived these most difficult of times, done our business honorably and will strongly believe in the future of our company. We are going through really challenging times and to keep our heads and hearts straight and motivated is critical. It is equally critical to communicate clearly and completely. Our values of Integrity, Humility and Passion will continue to be the way we run our lives, and our businesses and deal with society I thank you for your support and patience and am personally grateful to all our colleagues in India and England for their sincerity and to our directors for their guidance.