Adani Power's Q4FY26 results, approved by its board on April 29, 2026, mark a structural inflection point for India's largest private-sector thermal generator.
While the headline EBITDA — broadly in line with consensus estimates — will dominate the next-day brokerage notes, the more consequential disclosure is the company's reaffirmed capacity-addition guidance.
The company has guided for 11 GW of new thermal capacity to be commissioned by FY29, taking total operational capacity from 17.55 GW today to nearly 29 GW.
The expansion is concentrated across six projects: Mahan-2 in Madhya Pradesh, Raipur extension in Chhattisgarh, Korba expansion, Mirzapur greenfield in Uttar Pradesh, Kawai expansion in Rajasthan, and Vidarbha-2 in Maharashtra.
Vidarbha-2, at 3,300 MW, is the single-largest supercritical coal project currently under construction in the private sector.
All projects are backed by long-term PPAs with Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra discoms at tariffs in the Rs 5.30–6.20/kWh band.
This level comfortably covers the elevated capital cost of supercritical coal plants in the post-2024 capex cycle, where engineering and equipment inflation has added 12-15% to project costs compared to the 2018-20 vintage.
Tariff realisation and cash generation
The company has also flagged that its average realised tariff in FY26 expanded by 38 paise/kWh on the back of merchant-power sales into the IEX DAM during the May-September peak season.
During this period, prices repeatedly hit the Rs 10/kWh ceiling.
This merchant premium, layered on top of contracted PPA revenue, has produced an unexpectedly strong cash generation year that has pulled forward the deleveraging timeline.
Consolidated net debt-to-EBITDA is now expected to fall below 2.5x by FY27 versus the earlier 2.8x guidance.
This trajectory makes Adani Power one of the fastest-deleveraging large-cap infrastructure businesses in India today.
The FY26 full-year operating performance showed a plant availability factor of 93.2% across the fleet.
This was above the 90% threshold stipulated in most PPAs.
The company also reported a coal inventory position of 24 days, comfortably above the Ministry of Power's 15-day emergency norm.
The company has guided for the first phase of its 500 MW Rajasthan solar acquisition — an inorganic renewable play to hedge PPA customers' RPO obligations — to be consolidated by Q2FY27.
For investors, the question is no longer whether Adani Power can execute on capacity.
The question is whether India's coal-based power demand growth — currently running at 6.8% CAGR — can sustain that build-out without a peak-load demand collapse as efficiency improvements and renewable self-consumption by large commercial and industrial customers begin to structurally reduce discom purchase obligations in the 2030s.
The company's own scenario analysis, shared at the analyst day, projects that coal-based power demand remains robust through at least 2035 even under an aggressive renewable-penetration scenario.
For now, that is a view the market appears to share.
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