Sterlite Technologies’ shares soar amid rising fibre demand driven by AI data centre expansion, supported by a major multi-year contract and ambitious growth plans aiming for ₹20,000 crore revenue by FY29.
Sterlite Technologies has become one of the market’s sharper artificial intelligence winners, with its shares surging as investors reprice the value of optical fibre in the build-out of AI data centres. The rally has been fuelled by a broader shift in network design, which is pushing fibre demand far beyond the levels seen in conventional cloud infrastructure, according to reporting by Financial Express and related market coverage.
The reason is technical but straightforward. AI data centres pack large numbers of graphics processing units together, and those chips must exchange huge volumes of data at very high speed. That places far heavier demands on the network layer than a standard data centre. Sterlite has said the number of fibres required per rack has risen sharply as server architecture has evolved, with newer generations of AI hardware needing far denser connectivity than older front-end racks.
That demand backdrop has been reflected in Sterlite’s recent operating performance. In the company’s latest quarter, revenue rose 87% from a year earlier to ₹1,910 crore, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation climbed to ₹397 crore from ₹140 crore. Profit after tax increased to ₹197 crore, and data centres accounted for about 21% of revenue in the period, up from around 1% in the previous financial year, according to the company’s results and market reporting.
Investors have also been encouraged by a major contract win. Sterlite said it secured a multi-year order worth about $1.11 billion, or roughly ₹10,000 crore, from a global hyperscaler for optical connectivity products used in next-generation AI data centres. The company said the deal runs through financial year 2029, and its order intake in the quarter lifted the open order book to a record ₹18,618 crore. Reuters-style market coverage has linked that backlog to the sharp rerating in the stock.
The company has now put numbers on its ambitions. Under its new “Lakshya” growth plan, unveiled in September, Sterlite is targeting revenue of ₹20,000 crore by FY29 and EBITDA margins of 27% or more. Outlook Business reported that management presented the roadmap at an investor meeting on 3 September, while Economic Times said the company wants to be among the world’s top five optical connectivity players. The plan also calls for roughly ₹3,000 crore of capital spending over the next three years, with annual investment of about ₹1,000 crore to expand fibre and cable capacity by 50%.
Even after that run-up, the stock’s valuation leaves little room for disappointment. Financial Express noted that the market is already pricing in much of the company’s FY29 ambition, which means further gains will depend on how quickly Sterlite converts orders into revenue, maintains margins and executes on capacity expansion. The risks are familiar for a business making a large industrial push: supply-chain constraints, the availability and cost of inputs such as germanium and helium, and the possibility that global trade policy could complicate expansion. In other words, the ₹20,000 crore target is a plan, not a promise, and the market now appears to be judging Sterlite on whether it can turn a powerful theme into sustained execution.
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