EXPANDING MARGINS.
ACCELERATING GROWTH.

During FY 2025–26, we continued advancing our mission of instating sustainability and decarbonisation as core pillars of our long-term value creation strategy. Guided by our enterprise-wide Sustainability Framework and decarbonisation roadmap, we scaled existing—and introduced new—initiatives aimed at advancing progress across material areas such as climate action, renewable energy integration, process efficiency, resource circularity, biodiversity, and social stewardship, while concurrently accelerating the uptake of low-carbon production technologies.

Project Sustainable Energy Environment and Decarbonisation (SEED), our flagship sustainability initiative, played a particularly vital role in these endeavours. It spearheaded the expansion of renewable energy capacity to hasten our transition toward a lower-carbon energy mix, measurably reduced the emissions intensity of our operations, and orchestrated the rollout of frontier technologies, such as green hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) systems, across operations, helping reinforce our position at the vanguard of sustainable steelmaking.

Beyond environmental initiatives, we remained equally focused on enhancing workplace safety, diversity, talent development, and leadership capability to build a resilient organisation that consistently delivers long-term value for the full spectrum of stakeholders touched by its activities. Collectively, these efforts reflect our steadfast commitment to ensuring that sustainability is not an adjunct undertaking but rather a crucial catalyst for long-term growth, resilience, and competitiveness.

Corporate governance remains a core pillar of our strategy and a critical enabler of sustained long-term value creation. Anchored in principles of integrity, transparency, and accountability, our governance framework ensures robust oversight, disciplined decision-making, and effective risk management. This not only safeguards stakeholder interests but also strengthens trust and credibility, enabling us to pursue growth with resilience and responsibility

The depth of our digital infrastructure today is a direct indicator of the earnings quality and operational resilience over time. During FY 2025-26, our digital transformation evolved from technology deployment into a core driver of operational intelligence. By integrating Industry 4.0 technologies across manufacturing, supply chain, safety, engineering and customer-facing functions, initiatives such as Project SPOORTHI, Project Drishti and JSW Vision.AI have significantly enhanced enterprise-wide monitoring and logistics visibility. The year also marked a structural shift towards AI-led process optimisation, predictive maintenance, Digital Twins, and enterprise-wide IT–OT integration, enabling a level of operational responsiveness that is an emerging competitive advantage. The expansion of the Enterprise Data Lake and the launch of the TEJAS Platform have strengthened our scalable digital ecosystem. With over 20,000 sensors deployed under the Condition-based Monitoring Programme, we successfully saved more than 37,000 operational hours, directly protecting production throughput and asset reliability.

A key priority remains the development of an agile, future-ready workforce to sustain long-term growth. Through large-scale upskilling, structured learning initiatives, partnerships with global institutions and specialised programmes through our Salesforce Training Academy, we delivered 37,730 training hours for 8,228 employees to embed digital capability at every level of the organisation. As we scale our intelligent manufacturing systems, our focus remains on deepening AI and analytics integration to build a fully connected steelmaking ecosystem that enhances productivity, sustainability, safety and customer experience across operations.

Over the years, we have consciously built diversified capital and financing architecture spanning banks, loans, ECBs and bonds across domestic and international markets, supported by a network of over 90 institutions. Since 2014, we have raised $3.84 billion from global bond markets, complemented by $1.8 billion of syndicated ECBs and ₹2,250 crore of domestic NCDs over the past 24 months. This diversified approach enhances balance sheet resilience while enabling agile response to emerging opportunities.

We have continued to sharpen our focus on building a robust financial foundation through disciplined capital management and allocation. A defining milestone this year has been the significant deleveraging of our balance sheet. Through the transfer of BPSL assets via a slump sale into a 50:50 strategic joint venture with JFE, and receipt of the first tranche of equity investment and proceeds aggregating to ₹29,475 crore, net debt has reduced to ₹53,870 crore as at 31 March 2026. This underscores our ongoing commitment to strengthening the balance sheet while unlocking long-term strategic value. A further reduction of ₹7,875 crore is expected by end-June 2026 upon completion of the second tranche of JFE investment.

Supported by resilient operating performance, this has driven a decisive balance sheet transformation — with net gearing at 0.51x (vs. 0.94 in FY 2024-25) and leverage at 1.81x (vs. 3.34x in FY 2024-25) — reinforcing our ability to fund growth with confidence while maintaining strong financial discipline. Our liquidity remains a key pillar of strength. With cash and cash equivalents of ₹41,662 crore as at year-end, supported by committed undrawn credit lines, we are well positioned to fund our next phase of growth with flexibility while navigating evolving market dynamics. This disciplined approach to capital allocation is also reflected in our improving credit profile.

Consequent to these robust financial outcomes and structural deleveraging, leading credit rating agencies have revised our credit rating outlook to Positive or placed rating on watch with Positive implications. This upgrade strongly underscores the agencies’ confidence in our structural cash flows, operational resilience and earnings stability. We remain committed to a disciplined financing strategy that integrates capital raising with our sustainability priorities. This is demonstrated by our pioneering Sustainability-Linked Bond, the first in the global steel industry, in 2021. By linking capital to environmental performance, we are ensuring that our growth remains responsible, sustainable, and value-accretive for all our stakeholders.

JSW Steel has consistently delivered long-term value creation for shareholders, reflected in a TSR of 27% over the past 24 years. This performance is supported by a resilient balance sheet, prudent leverage profile, strong liquidity position and robust credit ratings, ensuring the Company is well-positioned to generate sustainable and superior risk-adjusted returns across cycles. By balancing consistent dividend distribution with long-term capital appreciation, we remain committed to rewarding our investors while maintaining the liquidity required to lead through industry cycles.

Our disciplined financial approach allows us to fund high-value growth opportunities without compromising our credit strength and operational flexibility. Backed by strong fundamentals and a focus on profitable growth, we remain committed to enhancing long-term shareholder value and strengthening investor confidence. We continue to build for a larger future, with a focus on remaining an attractive destination for long-term capital.