The country’s largest wind turbine maker, Suzlon Energy, on Sunday reported a 77 per cent decline in net profit at Rs 236.48 crore in FY’09 on the back of currency losses and replacement of defective blades. The company’s net profit (after share in associates profit and minority interest) was Rs 1,030.10 crore in FY’08. Revenues took a hit last year after some clients in the US cancelled orders and the company undertook replacement of defective blades.

“The blade retrofit programme is 80 per cent complete. We are slightly behind schedule but expect it to be completed by August. We don’t expect any more provisioning for the retrofit programme,” Suzlon Energy Chief Operating Officer Sumant Sinha told reporters here. In the January-March quarter this year, the company had set aside Rs 100-crore for the blade replacement programme, Sinha said.

“Despite a challenging year, we have registered good growth at a consolidated level with sales growing to Rs 26,082 crore. There is an industry-wide slowdown in the immediate term, but I expect we will achieve 30 per cent growth levels in 2011-12,” Sinha said. The consolidated revenues expanded 91 per cent at Rs 26,082 crore in FY’09 as against Rs 13,679 crore in the previous fiscal.

The Pune-based company has an order book position of Rs 7,901-crore as of June 25. “On a consolidated basis, we expect revenues in FY’10 to be flat because the financial market has still not recovered completely. Interest rates are still high but we expect margins to improve a bit,” Sinha said. “Our total debt level on a consolidated basis was about Rs 11,800-crore at the end of last fiscal,” Sinha said. The company has adopted stringent policies on debt management, working capital reduction, increasing operating operating efficiencies, freeze on capital expenditure and cost rationalisation, he said.