Centum Electronics deliberately wound down loss-making European and Canadian subsidiaries, absorbing ₹153.78 crore in impairments to clean its balance sheet and refocus on Indian defence and space.
Centum Electronics, founded in 1993, employs over 1,900 people, including more than 600 design engineers. It supplies mission-critical electronics to ISRO, DRDO, and defence public sector units.
Before the restructuring, roughly 65–70% of revenue came from overseas, with Europe and the UK contributing 59%. The domestic Indian market accounted for only about 31%.
In late 2025, Centum approved closing two Canadian entities. The French subsidiary entered court-supervised restructuring in France. In June 2026, MBDA France acquired most French activities and SII Group took Toulouse and Belgium operations.
The European and Canadian units persistently burned capital, depressing consolidated earnings. Centum wrote off ₹153.78 crore in investments, ₹39.6 crore in receivables, and ₹10.07 crore in inventory provisions.
Centum will invest ₹500 crore over four years in a 225,000 sq ft Devanahalli aerospace facility for strategic electronics. A separate ₹106 crore ECMS approval funds domestic transducer and filter manufacturing.
Q1 FY27 showed the core business strengthening: standalone revenue rose 11% year-on-year, EBITDA margin held at 11.28%, and the order book climbed 31% to ₹1,800 crore. Headline PAT surged 2,257%, mostly from a one-time ₹81.23 crore deconsolidation gain.
Standalone EBITDA margin expanded from 10.71% in FY23 to 13.60% in FY25, proving the Indian operations were profitable all along. A March 2025 QIP raised ₹210 crore, cutting borrowings-to-equity from 1.25x to 0.36x.
Risks remain: defence and space contracts are lumpy, two large capex projects must be executed at once, and the government is effectively the dominant customer. Materials for microelectronics still depend on fragile global supply chains.
Centum has exited loss-making overseas units and is repositioning as a Tier-1 partner for India's defence and space programmes. Read the full deep dive for the financial detail.
Read the full analysis →