HFCL Share Price Rises 5% On ₹522 Crore Export Order; Order Book Hits ₹26,665 Crore

Most investors ignored HFCL for years. It made optical fibre cables. It ran low-margin EPC work. It rarely made any hot-sector list. In 2026 it became one of the best stocks in the NIFTY 500.

On Monday, 3 August 2026, the stock rose about 5% to ₹203 on the BSE. The trigger was an export order worth USD 54.81 million. That is about ₹522.73 crore. The order is for optical fibre cables. It came through HFCL's overseas arm. The company called the buyers renowned global customers, but did not name them. The order must be met by January 2027.

Three export orders in 25 days

The size of the order matters. The pace matters more.

This is HFCL's third export win in under a month. Together they add up to about ₹1,460 crore. All three are for optical fibre cables. All three are due within the next few quarters.

Compare that with May 2025. Back then HFCL shares jumped 5% on orders worth ₹76 crore. The stock traded near ₹90. One order today is seven times that size. The buyers have changed too. They are now global data centre firms and overseas telecom players, not just Indian state projects.

An order book that dwarfs revenue

The order book is the number to watch. HFCL now holds firm orders worth about ₹26,665 crore. FY26 sales were ₹4,949 crore. So the book is close to five times a full year of sales.

It has also grown fast. At the end of Q4 FY26 the book was about ₹21,206 crore. It has added over ₹5,000 crore in one quarter. That lets the firm plan two or three years out. It no longer has to chase each quarter.

The numbers behind the rally

A stock that nearly triples in seven months invites doubt. Here, the profits moved first.

In the June 2026 quarter HFCL posted a net profit of about ₹246 crore. A year before, it had a loss of ₹29.30 crore. Sales rose 120% to ₹1,914.98 crore from ₹871.02 crore. For the full quarter breakdown, see the HFCL Q1 FY27 results analysis.

Exports did the heavy lifting. Export sales were ₹1,063.30 crore in Q1 FY27. That is about 55.5% of the total. A year earlier exports were ₹209.70 crore, or roughly 24%. The full-year shift is just as sharp. Exports were 12% of sales in FY25 and 41% in FY26. That is a new business mix, not one good quarter.

Foreign investors noticed. FII holding in HFCL went from 7.08% in March 2026 to 15.74% in June 2026. It more than doubled in one quarter.

The stock began 2026 near ₹68. It is up close to 200% since then. From its January low, it is up about 240%. It hit a record high of ₹208.98 on 4 June 2026. It cleared that at ₹209.61 on 19 June, right after the RVNL order. It then peaked at ₹229.40 in mid-July.

At roughly 53 times past earnings, the stock is not cheap for a cable maker. It is not a bubble either. The market is clearly paying for the defence and AI arms, not the old EPC book. Whether that is fair rests on one thing. Those two arms must deliver.

Two new engines: defence and AI

This is where the story stops being about cables.

HFCL has pulled its defence assets into one arm, HFCL Advance Systems. It holds radar and surveillance work through an 80% stake in Raddef. It also holds the thermal weapon sights unit. It picked up an aerostructures and aeronautics unit through Spiral EHL Engineering. The arm began with a firm order book of about ₹1,680 crore. Of that, ₹1,570 crore is export work.

The board has also cleared a ₹230 crore ammunition plant in Sri Satya Sai district, Andhra Pradesh. It will make multi-mode hand grenades and related ordnance. Planned capacity is around 40 lakh units. The target to start is December 2027. HFCL already makes electronic fuzes for 130 mm and 155 mm shells.

The second engine is AI. Through its OptiQ AI brand and unit HTL Limited, HFCL now sells data centre link products, not plain cable. The board has cleared ₹215 crore for a new plant to make them. The global market for AI optical links is tipped at about USD 73 billion by 2030.

Defence buyers also pay in a better way. They tend to pay in advance. That is much easier on cash flow than the old EPC deals HFCL used to live on.

What brokerages are saying

Deven Choksey Research has started coverage with a Buy call and a target of ₹362. From ₹203, that points to an upside of about 78%. The broker values each arm on its own. Fibre, defence, telecom gear and EPC each get a separate multiple. A group discount is then applied to the sum.

The numbers are bold. Defence sales are seen rising from ₹77 crore in FY26 to ₹400 crore in FY27. Then ₹1,200 crore in FY28 and ₹5,000 crore by FY29. EBITDA margins are pegged above 25%. The HTL data centre arm is pencilled in at ₹400 crore in FY27 and ₹800 crore in FY28. From FY26 to FY28 the broker models 35% sales growth, 70% EBITDA growth and 108% profit growth per year.

The firm has already raised its own FY27 sales growth target to 40%.

The risks worth weighing

HFCL is trying three shifts at once. Home EPC work to export plants. From telecom to defence gear. Plain cable to AI links. Each one is hard. All three at once are harder.

A few things are worth tracking. The export orders are large, but the buyers are not named. So it is hard to judge how much rides on one client. The ammunition and AI plants do not start until 2027. Those sales lines are forecasts, not run rates. The FY29 defence target assumes a huge jump from a small base. And a stock that has tripled leaves little room for a weak quarter.

Traders should also note the stock sits about 11% below its July high. Momentum has cooled even as the orders keep coming. For a wider view, see this guide on how to identify multibagger stocks. There is also this piece on the rally in Indian defence stocks.

Broker targets are guesses, not promises. Anyone buying HFCL is buying an execution story. Size the bet with that in mind.

Sources: HFCL filings to BSE and NSE from December 2025 to August 2026, HFCL Q1 FY27 results, company shareholding data, Screener.in data as of 3 August 2026, and the Deven Choksey Research initiating coverage note. This article is for information only. It is not investment advice.