Analysts/Institutional Investor Meet/Con. Call Updates

November 06, 2026 National Stock Exchange of India Limited BSE Limited Exchange Plaza Listing Operations Bandra-Kurla Complex, Bandra (E) P J Towers Dalal Street Mumbai-400051 Mumbai-400001 Symbol-ACI Scrip Code- 543657 Dear Sir/Madam, Sub: Transcript of Earnings Call Reference: Intimation of Earnings Call dated October 28, 2026 Pursuant to Para A Part A Schedule III of Regulation 30 of SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, please find enclosed herewith the transcript of the Earnings Call held on November 03, 2026, post announcement of financial results of the Company for the quarter and half year ended September 30, 2026. The above information shall be made available on the website of the Company at www.archeanchemicals.com Kindly take on record the same. Thanking you Yours faithfully For Archean Chemical Industries Limited Vijayaraghavan NE Company Secretary and Compliance Officer M. No. A 41671 Corporate Office: SKCL Summit, No. 47/C3, 10th Floor, Gandhi Mandapam Road, Kotturpuram , Chennai – 600085 Registered Office: No.2, North Crescent Road, T Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India – 600017 CIN: L24298TN2009PLC072270 | info@archeanchemicals.com | Ph: +91 44 - 610 99 999 | www.archeanchemicals.com “Archean Chemical Industries Limited Q2 & H1 FY27 Earnings Conference Call” November 03, 2026 “E&OE - This transcript is edited for factual errors. In case of discrepancy, the audio recordings uploaded on the stock exchange on 03rd November 2026 will prevail.” MANAGEMENT: MR. RAMPRAVEEN SWAMINATHAN – MANAGING DIRECTOR MR. R. NATARAJAN – CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER MR. RAJEEV KUMAR – DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER FINANCE & STRATEGY Page 1 of 19 Archean Chemical Industries Limited November 03, 2026 Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Archean Chemical Industries Limited Q2 and H1 FY27 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchtone telephone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rampraveen Swaminathan, Managing Director. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Rampraveen S.: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 and H1 FY27 earnings call. Thank you all for taking the time to join us today. On the call, as always, I'm joined by several members of our management team, including Mr. R. Natarajan, our CFO; Mr. Rajeev Kumar; Mr. Rishabh and other members of our finance team and members of SGA, our Investor Relations Advisors. I hope you all have had a chance to look through the Results and the Investor Presentation, both of which are available on the website and on our website and the Stock Exchange websites as well. In my opening comments today, I'll briefly provide a brief update on the overall market and external environment, followed by an operating commentary on each of our businesses and some of our key initiatives, our Q2 and H1 FY26-'27 financials and a quick overview of where we are in terms of execution of our strategy. Starting with the external environment, and I will just begin more the demand side. The global chlor-alkali industry continues to see some strong long-term fundamentals. However, this quarter, this past quarter, like the rest of the year, has been marked with uncertainty and volatility. The price volatility has continued for caustic soda and chlorine, with fluctuations in regional demand-supply balance. There has been a sharp increase in ethylene prices and overcapacity in some regions. Ethylene prices -- CFR prices in China have gone up to as much as $1,140 to $1,200 per metric ton. This sharp cost increase, along with weaker demand for PVC has resulted in pressure on operating rates and reduction in production volumes, which obviously gets mirrored on the caustic soda side as well. And we have seen evidence of that with some of the larger customers who procure salt from us. These changes have resulted in continuing deferments in schedules of volume and demand. But we do expect that there will be a rebound in this quarter in PVC pricing, and that should help provide a fillip to the industry, and should actually start helping see some more firmness in our order schedules. On the positive side, for a long-term perspective, the planned capacity of PVC in India augurs well in the long term for the industry and the sector as a whole. The agriculture sector, which is another big demand driver for us, continues to be fairly tepid in demand due to the impact of the monsoons. This has impacted demand and production of several agrochemical products and some of the brominated derivatives and compounds which go into that segment. The oil and gas sector continues to demonstrate resilience despite the ongoing geopolitical conditions in the Middle East. We actually continue to see a healthy inquiry level Page 2 of 19 Archean Chemical Industries Limited November 03, 2026 right from this segment, though it has been a drop from the prior year. Demand for specialty chemicals, especially for semiconductor chemicals, remains strong. On the supply side, we have continued to see strong inflation impact, especially in the commodities which have a high impact on our business. HSD prices were approximately INR87 per liter for industrial HSD in Q2 FY26, continued to rise sharply, and in Q2 FY27, they averaged around INR136. Prices of coal and propanol have increased by around 40% year-on- year. Supply shortages due to the Middle East crisis, where a lot of sulfur gets manufactured, has also resulted in a sharp increase in sulfur prices, which have more than doubled. In the past quarter, we continued to see increases in SO2 prices and, of course, in sulfur prices and hydrated lime prices, which also have been impacted by the rise in pet coke prices. All of this has contributed to a rise in manufacturing costs across several of our product categories, and we expect in the near term this will continue for the rest of this year. Now, providing operating commentary on our businesses and how we are kind of working through the external environment and the opportunities in front of us. I'll begin first with industrial salt. Industrial salt revenue for Q2 FY27 was INR161 crores, which is up 9% year-on- year. Volumes were down by 9% to around 812,000 tons for the quarter. Despite a solid order book, shipments were impacted by deferrals of major or multiple orders, largely due to the state of the overall PVC and caustic soda market. To mitigate the impact of this, we have continued to focus on expanding our customer base in other regions. It's an initiative we started a couple of quarters ago, and during this quarter, we did see some success with some new orders from these markets, especially from Vietnam and Oman. The spike in ocean freight rates has also placed additional pressure on our realizations. But in this environment, we continue to focus on ensuring our market share in all the regions we operate in remains robust, and we kind of try to focus on growth from new customers in these markets. We remain optimistic that the environment will stabilize in H2, right, resulting in stronger volumes in Q3 and Q4. The logistics, the salt segment also continues to see the impact of high logistics costs. Q2 generally has a period of quarter of higher cost because of the seasonal shutdown at Jakhau Port, and our volumes move to other ports along the Gujarat coast. During this quarter, we continue to see that with the shift to Mundra and Kandla, which of course has been further impacted by the road changes and the fuel price environment. We have managed to mitigate this partially with better route management, contracting, and vendor changes. And our cost per ton actually has remained flat, right, between Q1 and Q2. [Showing first 8,000 characters — download PDF for full document]