Thank you, Sagar. Hello and good evening, everyone present on the call.

I, on behalf of ICICI Securities, welcome you on Bajaj Consumer Care's Q4 FY26 earnings call. I would like to thank the management for giving this opportunity of hosting the call.

From the management, we have with us Mr. Naveen Pandey, the Managing Director; Mr.

Dilip Kumar Maloo, CFO; and Mr. Aakash Gupta, Head - Finance.

I now hand the call over to Naveen for his opening remarks. Thank you.

I'm here to share the update of quarter 4 FY26. In an extremely volatile environment, we've been able to deliver an extremely solid quarter.

In this quarter, we registered a strong growth across all segments, channels, and markets, building the confidence behind our brands and the strategy chosen by us. Before I get into the details of the quarterly results, I would like to highlight that we have ended this year delivering a net revenue of ₹1,153 crores at a growth of 21%.

This is special for us as this is the first time we've crossed the 1,000 crore mark. Further, we have delivered a gross margin of 60% and a full-year EBITDA of ₹224 crores at a margin of 19.5%, and a full-year PAT of ₹190 crores at a PAT margin of 16.5%.

It has been a year of turnaround for us and sets the base for the company to march ahead. Coming back to the quarter, in quarter 4 on a standalone basis, the revenue of the company stood at ₹308 crores, a growth of 28% year-on-year.

On a consolidated basis, the revenue stood at ₹327 crores with a growth of 32%. Continuing the work on margin expansion, our gross margin stood at 63% for the quarter and 60% for the full year, registering a significant improvement of around 650 basis points against the last year on a full-year basis.

This improvement in gross margin, as previously shared, has come on back of a mix of actions around strategic pricing, revenue management, and mix improvement. In the previous quarter, we also optimized the ML-age of some of our key packs basis consumer insights and revenue management principles, which delivered a realization improvement for us.

We feel extremely confident on the place where we have reached with respect to our gross margins, and intend to now operate in this same zone over a medium-term basis. Consequently, EBITDA on a standalone basis for quarter 4 grew by 131% to deliver an absolute EBITDA of ₹78 crores for the quarter, which translated into an EBITDA margin of 25%.

On a consolidated basis, our EBITDA was ₹77 crores, which was a growth of 135%, translating into an EBITDA margin of 23.7%. The standalone PAT for quarter 4 stood at ₹64.1 crores with a margin of 20.8%, and the consolidated PAT was ₹63.6 crores with a margin of 19.5%.

In the current quarter, we saw a continued recovery in our general trade channel, which grew ahead of the other channels and has delivered a strong teens growth on a full-year basis. This performance came on back of a strong momentum on our key brand ADHO and the distribution efforts put by us through Project Aarohan.

Both urban and rural channel, and within the urban channel the key sub-channels retail and wholesale have done well for us. Rural business, which was muted in H1 and saw a revival in quarter 3, continued with its strong performance in quarter 4.

Organized trade as a channel continued to perform well. It registered a strong 20s growth YoY in quarter 4, and within organized trade, modern trade and e-commerce performed well and ahead of the channel.

However, the performance of CSD, CPC was muted. At a channel level, now we have covered a significant milestone with OT as an overall business contributing 30% to our overall sales.

This gives us ability and the scale to premiumize and innovate at a much faster pace than before. In international business, we overall had a challenging year.

This business declined in this quarter. In the key markets of Nepal and Bangladesh, however, we saw growth, and the highlight for us in this channel was the breakeven of Bangladesh and further margin improvement in Nepal.

We will continue to grow the businesses in Nepal and Bangladesh on a profitable and a sustainable manner. At an overall basis in IB, we also had a leadership change, and with the new leadership, we have renewed our efforts behind getting and fixing the markets of rest of world and MENA.

I'm confident that we will soon be seeing a turnaround in this business. Moving ahead, at a brand level, ADHO has delivered a stupendous year with a full-year revenue growth in the 20s.

What gives us great joy is that while the growth came across pack groups and channels. At a volume level, for this quarter we had a near double-digit growth on a brand on an adjusted ML basis, and a mid-single-digit volume growth on an absolute basis.

We continue to register volume market share gains on the brand on a quarterly as well as a MAT basis. Our consolidated advertising expense for the quarter were up 34% against the same period last year.

We are very happy with the SOV intensity being maintained by us and by the performance of our digital campaigns across various platforms. Moving ahead, we are happy to report that in FY26, we have delivered a revenue of ₹225 crores from the non-ADHO portfolio, which we internally refer to as growth portfolio.

This portfolio is already a positive contribution portfolio and a profitable portfolio for us, and we will be further focusing on growing this portfolio to around ₹500 crores in size over the next three years. Within this, while Bajaj Coconut and Bajaj Banjara's would be the two key brands in the portfolio, we will use a combination of scaling up some of the existing brands and introducing some new brands to help us achieve our ambition of ₹500 crores.

Banjara's, which was in its first year under Bajaj ownership, saw a double-digit growth for the year and a low-teen margin delivery. We feel confident about our ability to scale this business further through brand building, distribution expansion, and portfolio augmentation.

On input costs, the war in the Gulf has created extreme volatility in the prices of LLP and packaging materials. It has also delayed the price cooling in case of mustard and copra, which have held on to the pre-war levels and have not fallen further as expected earlier.

We are monitoring the situation on a nearly daily basis and are taking calls as needed. We believe that this situation will need to us to take pricing and optimize costs across the lines.

We are already in the process of executing these changes. Despite the current situation, we feel confident about our ability to maintain margins in the current approximate range.

However, as the situation unfolds over the next month or so, we will freeze our strategy and continue to fine-tune our actions over the subsequent quarters. Overall, like we always maintained, we will remain focused on strengthening our brands to enhance advertising and digital spends, and through further expansion of our digital footprint.

Basically, through such focused execution and continued capability building, we will focus on unlocking the next rung of growth for BCCL. Thank you, and back to you, Ashutosh.

Yes, please.

Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats to Naveen, extremely strong performance. My first question is specific on Q4.

I see that generally in hair oil, seasonality is a bit low, but in your case you have managed to deliver almost 6.7% quarter-on-quarter sales growth. Wanted to understand if you could give some color, how much is volume?

Is volume the main driver behind the 6.7% quarter-on-quarter growth? If I see the cost of goods sold, it is down 3%.

It's not matching obviously if I take a presumption that most of it is volume growth. Is the decline happening because maybe copra has cooled off, copra obviously is not a very big RM for you?

If you could explain this math, impressive performance, but I wanted to understand this math.

Abneesh, if you were to look at quarter 3 versus quarter 4, what you would see is margins have expanded a bit for us. Obviously there is a margin expansion and that has come on account of mix change and positive mix movement for us.

Within that, obviously which brand has done better between Q3 and Q4 is much more sensitive for us to reveal. What you will see is that we have improved margin, but at a volume level overall, we are in the same zone by and large as we were in the quarter 3 versus quarter 4.

Not much change, but within the brands, there is obviously a mix change for a more accretive mix for us in this quarter, which is yielding both a margin improvement as well as a revenue uplift.

Sure. Last question.

What you said in your opening statements on the pricing part, we have already seen many FMCG slash consumer categories have taken price hike: paints, edible oils, soap companies, adhesive companies have taken price hike. If you could tell us for your company, broadly LLP plus packaging is what portion of the raw material, because that is fairly understandable given direct and indirect linkage to crude oil is there.

Second is great 9 months start to your tenure. How much does the hyperinflation become a challenge?

You did mention that the band of margins you are reasonably okay with achieving in the near future, but in terms of the template or strategy, or in terms of challenge, how big is the challenge given it's a hyperinflation?

Abneesh, for the first one, what I will say is that if you look at seed oils, basically which is mustard, almond, also behave very closely in line with the overall oil index. Hence, nearly 100% of our cost base is under inflation.

It is just that some of them is under maybe a 50%, 60% inflation, and some is under a 20%, 30% inflation. I think the entire cost bucket is under inflation.

Where we are fortunate is that we are holding good positions, which cover us for a good portion of the quarter and which will help us buy time to tide over this cycle. Hence, if this thing ends in the near term, in the next few months, I think the impact to us as an organization and what we will need to pass to the consumer will remain limited.

Second portion, I will come to what actions we have taken. In the gone quarter, quarter 4, we've already taken certain ML-age adjustments, which we mentioned about, which also basically help in terms of margin for us.

In this quarter, I think we will have to take some amount of frontal pricing as well to manage the quarter. I think these two are a given set of actions which we would be taking.

Now, quarter 2, quarter 3 onwards, the scenario could be that we might see cooling off and us coming back to at least a new normal, if not the old prices. If that happens, I think we will be in a much better position.

If the hyperinflation continues as it is continuing right now, we will have to further fine-tune our actions going quarter 2 onwards to see how we will continue to protect our margins and be fair to the consumers at the same time.

Thanks a lot, Naveen. That's all from my side.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you, sir, and congrats for your good set of numbers. Just first question on the general trade.

Since this channel has grew up by lows to high teens, just wanted to get a sense on within the GT, what would be the growth mix between your retail channel versus wholesale channel?

All I'll tell you is the full-year basis GT has grown high teens, Binay, and if you were to look at urban, which is the combination of direct retail and wholesale, has performed higher for us as compared to rural. If you take a high-teen number, we are nearly 20s in terms of when it comes to retail, and rural is basically a bit lower, mid-teens kind of a number.

I think that is what I'm comfortable sharing.

Understood. Lastly, on the rural side, since the rural market growth momentum was very strong throughout the year, is it led by change in macro environment or is it a category shift within the hair oil basket from upgrading from coconut hair oil to perfumed hair oil?

Sorry, can you repeat, Binay, the first part? I was not able to hear you clearly.

The second question was on the rural market. Since the rural market growth was very strong throughout the year, just very keen to know that this growth was largely driven by the improvement in macro environment or do you see that there was some category shift within the hair oil basket from upgrading from coconut hair oil to perfumed hair oil?

Binay, actually for us, urban has performed better than rural if you look at a full-year basis. Rural has not outperformed more for us.

We are a more premium brand, and hence, if there has been any shift or benefit to the category on the bottom of the end brand, I think we are less likely to feel it as compared to some of the other players. For us, our turnaround in both urban and rural has been a direct action of our focus on our brand, fixing the advertising on ADHO and basically having strong investments behind the brand, as well as fixing our go-to-market through Project Aarohan wherein we've focused on enhancing our direct distribution and just gearing our system up to date.

I think those are the things which have worked for us overall in GT, and that is what we attribute it to. Again, within that, urban has outperformed rural.

Okay. Just last question.

What percentage of growth improvement to be seen from your Project Aarohan initiative in FY27?

See, if you were to look at it, what we've experienced is around anywhere given to 2% to 3% improvement delta performance for us in places where we have done Aarohan versus places where we have not done Aarohan. I think that is the kind of benefit which Aarohan is yielding us, and that is what we should keep on expecting from the new states where we will go and deliver Aarohan.

Thank you so much, sir. That's all from my side.

Congratulations, sir, on good set of numbers. My question is, first of all, are there any one-offs in this quarter and are these numbers sustainable?

There is no one-off, Vivek. The only thing is that we've acquired a company in quarter 1 of this year called Vishal Personal Care, which is seeing its first year into the consolidated revenues.

That is basically there is no base to that. I think beyond that, there is no other one-offs or any additional item which you should be considering.

Secondly, hair oil sector is a sort of a sunset sector especially in the young generation and the urban generation today and versus rural, and versus LLP versus natural oil based also, how are we placed, sir?

Vivek, I don't believe hair oil is a sunset sector. It's a $2 billion plus market with a 20% plus margin with a 92% penetration.

There are not too many categories in the country which have 90% penetration, have basically such large bases, continue to operate profitably, and grow at a high single digit year-on-year. I think this question basically has been there for the last 20 years whether hair oil is a sunset sector.

I don't believe hair oil is a sunset sector. It's a mature category, I will accept that, but I don't think so that is something also which is a worry for a company like us.

We have extremely high headroom to grow within the category. That's the way I would choose to respond to your view.

Actually, sort of playing the devil's advocate, otherwise the numbers have been quite good. What changed actually, I've recently started tracking the company, sir.

What changed the company? Because your coming in has proved to be a sort of a catalyst and there were a lot of old brands, No Marks, Bajaj Amla, and other things.

How are they performing, and what changed in the last 2 years, or after what you do, and what have been the steps taken by you to move the company to a next orbit?

I think let's be fair on the commentary. I think actions basically start much before they start yielding colors.

There is a lot of action which basically the team has picked up even before my joining, and we've continued a lot of it, and we've added some more after me. Essentially, what is working for us is very simply two, three key things: focus behind our brand ADHO, ensuring that we continue to support it with the right level of advertising, go back to our old aggressive levels, driving distribution and execution on the ground through projects like Aarohan, but not limited to it, and many more, and really just sharp-shooting priorities and getting the overall execution focus into the company at a higher level.

I think that is what is working for us. Obviously, when you're on the early stages of reversal, you get a lot of low-hanging fruits hanging in, and hence we are witnessing the benefit of that.

Essentially, it is these set of actions which are helping us be where we are.

Especially appreciable in view of the slowdown in India on the overall FMCG sector. Our company has proved to be exception.

How is the opportunity size and expected growth rate for us in India and export?

Vivek, we have a less than 10% market share in our category. A less than 10% category player basically shouldn't worry about too many things.

We just have to execute and win our space and gain more share in our category. I think that is where we are focused.

We operate in certain international geographies. I think we will do that, but our bullseye focus is and will continue to remain India.

While we do some of the work behind our international business, I think India will continue to remain our focus market, and we want to gain and get to a much higher market share than where we are currently, and that remains our priority number one.

Southern India especially remains an attractive market for us, versus north, east, or

No, I think all markets are attractive for us, but yes, south is an opportunity wherein we have very little penetration and very low share. Hence, the opportunity to have a delta would be much, much higher, whereas there is enough and more delta available even in the Hindi-speaking belt and Maharashtra and Bengal and the other states.

I think there is no single state in the country wherein we would not aspire to gain share. Yes, the aspiration of how much gain will differ from state to state and cluster to cluster, but we are at a level where we would aspire to gain share across all single markets, all channels.

Besides hair, that massage oil is also the category, I believe, and health benefits of the same is being recognized on regular basis now. Yeah.

Keep up the good work, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Naveen. A good set of numbers.

I just wanted to understand what has changed between last quarter and this quarter. In the last quarter's conference call, you had mentioned that for now the margins will take a pause at the current levels, which were at around about 18.5%, and then after a few quarters, we will see the journey towards higher margins, whereas now we have seen in one quarter only the EBITDA margin going up 500 basis points sequentially.

What has changed for the outcome to be so much different versus what your commentary was?

Again, Percy, the commentary always has to be taken directionally. Please, I will urge that again and again.

Coming to your question, what are the two things which are happening? I think one action, which is the action which I talked about, that we have taken certain ML-age reductions, and these ML-age reductions have been supported by high level of transaction growth, which has not impacted the overall revenue.

Hence, being able to take ML-age reduction and hold on to revenues has helped us expand margin. Also, there has been a little bit of favorable mix movement between quarter 3 and quarter 4, which I spoke about earlier.

I think these two things are helping being in a place which is slightly there. Also, what you will see is that on an absolute basis, quarter 4 the revenue delivery has been higher than quarter 3, and there is a good delta between quarter 4 revenue and quarter 3 revenue.

In our case of a gross margin company, when you have a higher revenue delivery, it flows through. I think you are witnessing a combination of these things to get there.

Overdelivery on revenue is also a very, very key factor.

Understood. The ML-age reductions have happened before the cost inflation has actually hit.

The cost inflation started only in March, and assuming that at least some inventory you have, it will hit probably in Q1 or Q2. Just wanted to understand, in light of that, what is the sustainable margin that we should take over the next 2 to 3 quarters, because this 23.2% or 23.4%, whatever you've done this quarter, is on the back of effective price increases through ML-age reductions before the cost inflation has come through.

Percy, I think what we need to see is that again our operating desired range does not change. We said that anywhere from a low 20s to a mid 20s is where we would aspire to operate, and that is where we continue to aspire.

Our objective will always be to enhance revenue as much as we can by remaining within this zone. I think that is what we will intend to do.

As far as coming quarter is concerned, as we speak today, we are not worried, but then it's a dynamic situation. I think we will remain within this range is what I spoke about previously.

That is what we feel at this moment.

Yeah. Next question is, just wanted to know your plans on the non-ADHO portfolio.

You have said that coconut is one of the focus areas. What else are you going to focus on and what is the kind of pace at which we should expect diversification in the company in terms of this year you've done 20% non-ADHO?

How much should we take over a 12-month period as well as a 36-month period in terms of, I know you can't give exact numbers, but just directionally whatever commentary you can give.

Percy, we want this portfolio to basically become a close to a ₹500 crore portfolio over the next 3 years, which means it has to do a 30s kind of CAGR. We've anyway said that if we do around a double-digit revenue CAGR over a period, we'll be happy.

You can basically just do the math and try and see where that lands you.

What is actually the plan or what is the action that you are

Within the portfolio, again, you will see us doubling down on Banjara's portfolio where we believe we have a significant scaling opportunity. We believe we have a significant scale-up opportunity on Coconut.

There are a few brands which we are tweaking and playing with currently, which are part of our portfolio, which we are kind of testing the model and seeing what can get scaled up from the current portfolio. This year, you will also see certain new launches come into the market, which we are hopeful about.

I think it'll be action on multiple fronts and hopefully some of them will become big to contribute to the ₹500 crore aspiration we have.

This ₹500 crore, would it be independent of any future acquisitions and that would add to the ₹500, or are you saying that ₹500 is including any sort of, or rather you would need some small acquisition to reach that ₹500 in the 3-year period?

I think when I'm outlining our aspiration, we are outlining with what we have today. We buy something else, that should come as a top-up.

Understood, Naveen. Thanks a lot and all the best from my side.

Thank you, Percy.

Hello. Hi, am I audible?

Hi. Congratulations, sir, excellent set of numbers.

Just a clarification from your previous statement that you made on volumes, to the first question asked. You said broadly volumes are similar.

It is a mix improvement and some ML reductions, right? That is how one should think about, right?

Is the volume growth broadly closer to double-digit or mid-teens, in that range? How does one think about it?

Because Q3 had a similar kind of a volume.

Amit, I'll tell you, we primarily indicate volumes for ADHO because otherwise we have a varied portfolio. We're giving ADHO, which is the main brand so as to get a sense.

We told in Q3 that we had a double-digit volume growth. In Q4, what we have called out very clearly is that if you take ML-adjusted growth, that just on double digit.

If you were to not take ML-adjusted, but to take just pure, it will be mid-single digit.

Sure. Thank you.

Sir, just on the distribution side, one trying to understand the channel dynamics, which is playing out. Last quarter, you indicated that I think correct me if I'm wrong, that GT was not doing that well.

It is the urban channel which was doing pretty well versus the rural. The difference was almost 700, 800 bps higher rural growth versus urban growth versus rural growth.

The organized channel continue to do well at that time also, now also. From a broader mix is 30% is organized trade, which kind of is doing well, growing in 20s, now the GT is also started to do well.

What I just wanted to understand, last quarter there was basically a point that your wholesale channel and direct reach in urban was doing well. How long do you think that this can continue, especially on the urban side, driving wholesale as well as the direct reach incrementally in FY27 for us to have this while I understand that organized trade can do well, but the rest of the portfolio if you could give some clarity on this?

See, Amit, the new levers which we have executed in the market have kind of in a sense reset our revenue to a new base. Now, this new base will give us hopefully a very high growth momentum, at least for another two quarters before it tapers down wherein we will start overlapping very high growth bases.

We are also at the same point of time executing the next set of levers, which are required to continue to drive growth. I think that's how the cycle of growth works.

We have executed certain levers, which are giving us the benefit today, and we then are now starting to work on the new set of levers.

Those new sets of levers, one you have indicated that could be new product launches and your aspiration of going beyond ADHO, and the others would be largely around distribution itself?

Yes. What we've also said is that Aarohan, which has given us good benefits, we are getting into the third phase of Aarohan, which involves us going to five new states where we had not gone so far.

We would be executing our entire playbook of Aarohan in these states. We've started the work towards the end of quarter 4, and we will work and to extract the benefits of the project in those five states through this year.

Okay. Just lastly on the margin side, how does one think about the outlook for, say, next one year for FY27?

Should we think somewhere in the band of 19% to 20% or could be higher also? While you have indicated that Amit,

let me clarify, we don't give guidances. I can't give you a guidance on where it is going to happen, that too in an environment like this.

Which is our happy zone, I've already indicated. There's no point doing that again.

Guidances, we don't give. Please excuse me for that.

Sure. Thanks a lot, sir.

Thank you.

Hi, Naveen. Maloo Saab, thank you for the opportunity and good evening.

Very impressive performance, Naveen. I just have a few questions.

In the ₹1,153 crore, what would be Vishal or Banjara contribution?

Less than 5%, basically, Shirish.

Okay. You mentioned that Banjara is still fully not to the level of in terms of profitability.

What can change here? Is the back-end supply chain improvement will lead to margin expansion or will be scale or maybe throughput?

I think the biggest benefit will come from scale, Shirish, because this business is a still sub-₹100 crore business. I think as we get this business to a ₹100 to ₹200 crore size, I think there will be a lot of scale benefits, which will automatically flow through because the categories which we operate in inherently are high gross margin categories.

At a gross margin level, we don't have a worry. It is about the net flow-through.

Also, what people forget in light, Shirish, is that we are continuing to operate Banjara's as a separate business unit because we believe that is the best way to execute on the business. What that means is that we are not fully optimizing on the cost or integrating to minimize cost.

That's a conscious choice from our side to drive up revenues. I think with scale-up and with the revenues becoming larger, I think would be the biggest lever for improvement in Banjara's profitability, while others will also be.

Everything which is said will contribute, but the largest lever will come in from here.

Okay. My second question on Aarohan.

In the first phase, a year of operation in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, is there material contribution change from these four states which has happened? Maybe if you can help me the number, what is the current contribution from these four states?

Shirish, I think what I'll tell you is that between Aarohan and non-Aarohan, we're roughly seeing around a 4% delta. That is to the extent of what is coming out of Aarohan.

Also, let's say that the businesses which have gone through Aarohan roughly are around two-thirds of our current business, and one-third of our business is yet to go through Aarohan. I'm giving you broad ranges.

I think that's the best I can do.

The one-third which you are saying is the Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Odisha?

One-third is what will go in this year in FY27. Two-thirds has already gone in, which means that basically we have executed Aarohan and the benefits are already entering into our P&L, and we are continuing to work on extracting more.

Assume that in second half of FY27, all the states will undergo through the Aarohan. Do you think this 4% growth contribution you've seen is sustainable from the entire project?

I think 4% is sustainable. There would be a lap-up, which will start happening state by state, so that might lead to some tapering.

We have done enough mixes within the current set of states and various kind of models, various people, various interventions. By and large, the delta is holding true for us, I feel very confident about that.

When we get into lap-up, I think we will also figure out how it is unfolding.

Sorry, I'm stretching a little more. On this Aarohan, our core product, which is ADHO, is driving the growth which is there, or it is non-ADHO portfolio which is helping us to penetrate the market?

I think ADHO is seeing a larger benefit as compared to the other ones, because ADHO is seeing benefits across GTM types. It is seeing benefit in urban, it is seeing benefit in wholesale, it is seeing benefit in rural, whereas the other portfolio is primarily seeing benefits in retail, where we are going ahead with that playbook.

At an overall basis, ADHO is a larger beneficiary of the Aarohan exercise.

Okay. Last two questions.

What is the total FY26 wholesale contribution, urban, rural mix?

Shirish, the way I will say is roughly 70% of our business is GT, half of is urban, half of it is rural. Within the urban half, roughly half of it is wholesale.

Okay. That's our by and large basically channel mix as a status.

Now, why I'm asking this question, because quarter 3 most of the FMCG companies said that the GST stability is yet to happen. My question is more inclined towards now GST dispersion would have settled.

Is there a channel filling or maybe if you can give me a SDR number or maybe trade advance?

There's no channel filling for us, Shirish. There is just no channel filling for us.

This inventory in the trade is normalized to the level before GST revision?

We are very happy with the level of inventory we have. Actually, trade has not seen any major stock-up.

At a distributor level also, our inventory is very lean, and we are very happy with the status of our inventory at distributor's end.

Okay. The last question.

I think we've spoken a big number in terms of coconut and its family. Is this efforts are still on and we still bank that south is going to be a key entry point with coconut, and what is the effect which has happened or it will be a tactical opportunity?

Shirish, ₹500 crores when I'm saying, it is out of the growth portfolio. It is not out of coconut alone.

It is out of the growth portfolio, which includes coconut. Coconut will form a part of it.

It won't be ₹500 crores out of coconut. If you've interpreted it that way, then just please take note of that correction.

Coconut is an important part of our strategy, but that is not the only strategy which we have. Again, similarly, while south is a gain strategy for us, our attempt and our gain is not only focused on south or only restricted to south.

Okay. Last, if your growth in terms of volume ADHO, what is the non-coconut or maybe if you can specify value-add hair oils category growth in the quarter?

Value-add basically, Shirish, for us, if you were to look at within value-added hair oil, 98% of value-added hair oil is ADHO, which we already disclose. I don't think so there's any point further dissecting that number into the balance 2%.

Okay. All right.

Thank you and all the best.

Yes, thank you.

Hi. Thank you for this opportunity and congrats on a great set of numbers.

I would like to understand a couple of things. Firstly, regarding the margins currently.

We see that LLP prices are peaking and plastic packaging prices also are peaking. In the previous discussion or previous discussions, you mentioned that you don't see any problems as of now in terms of margins at the moment.

I would like to understand how are you managing the situation currently? Is it that you delayed purchases of raw materials and are waiting for prices to cool down because you already have inventory?

I would like to understand how are we managing it?

Gunit, we have inventory. We are being cautious about purchases.

We are managing pricing very, very closely and in a narrow band. That's all I can share as of now.

Are we taking any price hikes looking at the situation?

Yes, already outlined in my statement.

Got it. You mentioned that one of the levers for higher margins this quarter was outperformance in the revenue.

Generally for a company, we see that there's not much cyclicity in terms of the revenues. Quarterly they are more or less 5% up or down.

Considering this, is it fair to consider this around ₹315, ₹320 crores to be the new base quarterly? Considering that we have reached this outperformance revenue as you mentioned, should we expect the sweet spot of margins that you mentioned to continue, and this being one of the reasons for it?

Gunit, we will give guidance on margins. What we've repeatedly said, we aspire to maintain margins between the low to the mid 20s.

That is what we'll aspire to do. That's all I can say.

Got it. All right, all the best.

Hi, sir. Congratulations for the great set of numbers.

I just want to understand what would be our advertisement and sales promotion strategy going forward in FY27?

We will continue with our strategy. Almond Drops remains our focus brand, and we will continue to double down on it.

Additionally, on the growth portfolio, we will continue to invest behind select bets which we will make on a quarter-to-quarter basis to dial up some portions of the portfolio.

Basically the advertisement and sales promotion are the cost of 15% of the revenue in FY26. Is there any decrease in FY27 we can expect?

Cause YoY there is a 23% increase in the advertisement expenses, and it's almost around the 15% of the revenue. Going forward, it's gonna decrease?

See, what we are witnessing is a very volatile situation on input costs and actions. I don't think so I will be in a position to give you a forecast on a line-by-line level basis as to how we will manage each one of the cost lines and the revenue line.

I think it will be impossible for me to do so if you are asking a question from a year perspective. If you're asking a question from a multi-year perspective, we believe this level of advertising is the right level of advertising for a brand like ours and we would want to maintain.

What will happen next quarter, what will happen next year, I am not in a position to tell you because this position is extremely volatile and we will basically respond as how the market behaves.

Sir. Thank you.

All the best.

Thank you.

Hello.

Yeah. Sir, congratulations on a good set of numbers.

Sir, my first question is, I'm just looking at your gross profit YoY, and when I look at your chart relating to all RMs, you see an increase there. Given that we maintain only I think 20% to 25% of RM inventory on our balance sheet, I'm just trying to understand this 54% to 64% improvement in gross margins.

Obviously, you've mentioned some bit on the revenue front, but wouldn't we have witnessed some inflation on the cost procurement side, or do you think you were sitting on some low-cost inventory for this year?

If your question is consumption inflation has hit us in quarter 4, the answer is by and large no.

No. I'll just frame my question.

I'm just trying to understand with a 30% top-line growth, a COGS increase of 2%, I'm just trying to understand how have we managed to do this?

I responded to that earlier in my thing. It's come on back of a mix improvement as well as certain pricing actions.

That is basically you will need to decode it. Also, anything else which you want to ask?

Sir, you also mentioned that this gross margin now sets the base for next year. You were talking about Q4 as the base or the full-year gross margins of 60%?

Again, as I said, given the volatility of the situation, it is impossible for me to give you any guidance. We anyways don't give guidance as a principle.

Further, I think we can't give you a guidance. What I meant was that we are in the right zone.

You have to look at it from the context of where our P&L was 4 to 5 quarters back wherein we were at possibly one of the lowest levels of profitability this company has seen over a decade, decade and a half. I think as from that point, we've taken a series of actions to basically get the revenue growth back up, to get the margins back up.

I think there have been a set of actions which have followed over the past 4, 5 quarters for us to reach here. It is in that context I had mentioned that I believe a lot of the hard work which we had done is behind us, and we have now reached a place wherein we can continue our steady-state operation, and the task of fixing where we had reached to where we want to be is by and large done.

I think it is in that context that statement has to be interpreted.

Okay. Got it, sir.

Just last thing on the non-ADHO bit, sir. ₹225 crores is the ARR, right?

I'm just trying to understand if you remove ₹50, ₹60 crores of Banjara, balance would be split in Coconut and Amla, right? Majority of that would be Coconut.

Is that a fair understanding?

A large part will be Coconut, yes.

Okay. All right.

Thank you so much. This helps.

Thank you. It's been a very strong year for us with revenues crossing ₹1,150 crores and margins recovering back to respectable levels from the all-time lows we had hit in the past year or two.

We begin our journey of diversification, of reducing the dependence on ADHO and within that in the GT channel. I think both on channel diversification as well as portfolio diversification, we are in a good place, and that place sets a springboard for us to continue to go forward.

That is what we would be working on and accelerating. Again, would want to reiterate that we will continue to focus on brand building and focused execution in the market, which we believe will unlock the next layer of growth for us.

Thank you, everyone, for attending the call, and have a great evening.