Thanks, Vinay. Good afternoon, everybody.

I am Jaideep Barve, the Chief Financial Officer of Control Print Limited. Welcome everybody to the earnings conference call for the first quarter of FY26-27.

We appreciate that you have taken out time from your busy schedule to attend this call. Mr.

Shiva Kabra, the Joint Managing Director of Control Print Limited, also joins me on this call. For the first-time joiners, more information about our company can be obtained by visiting our website.

Just for information, the detailed presentation has already been put up on our website as well as in the investor presentation notification on the exchanges for this call. Let me provide you some highlights on the performance of CPL on a stand-alone basis for the first quarter.

On a stand-alone basis, the total revenue in the first quarter is approximately 107 crores. Just for information, the total revenue for the last three, four financial years was 460 crores, 395 crores, 347 crores, and 295 crores respectively.

Out of the total revenue, the operating revenue for the stand-alone financial statements is approximately 105 crores. This was approximately 100 crores in the Q1 of the previous year.

Coding and marking continues to be the most significant business segment. It contributes about 95% of the total operating revenue.

The business outlook for coding and marking for the next few quarters is promising. New customers are getting added to our portfolio.

We are having new solutions in printers, inks, and cartridges, and we are also hopeful of improving the contribution margin. Pipes, food, dairy, cable, FMCG, steel, metal, and wood are our top-performing business verticals.

We continue to be market leaders in cement, plywood, sugar, and dairy. The business outlook remains bold for the track and trace division.

New solutions have been developed. Acquisition of new customers is another plus point.

We are getting good traction in the co-packing activities in the packaging division. A pipeline is being generated for the laminates business as well as for the co-packing activities.

The management of this division is strengthened and operations are more tightly controlled now. The Mask Lab has now been operating as a PPE and safety division.

Along with masks, hats, flash suits, helmets, gloves, blankets, etc. are also sold in this quarter.

New customers are also being added. On a stand-alone basis, the cost of goods sold is about 42% of the operating revenue for the first quarter.

This was 44% in the first quarter of the previous year. Manufacturing costs remain at 3% of operating revenue.

This is in line with the prior periods. Depreciation is also approximately 4% of operating revenue, which is consistent with the earlier periods.

On a consolidated basis, the operating revenue is 115 crores in the first quarter, corresponding to 111 crores in the first quarter of the previous year. The cost of goods sold is approximately 43%.

It was 42% in the prior year. On an overall basis, management still remains committed to improve the revenue as well as optimize the procurement costs.

We are also looking closely into the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of the operations. This we feel can definitely lead to reduction in the operating costs and increase in the profitability.

The way forward for Control Print is to consolidate the coding and marking business. We aim to increase the installed base, provide robust solutions.

Recently, an increase in the prices has also been implemented. We would be developing new solutions and also capitalize the available market opportunities in the track and trace segment.

We expect an increased revenue in the packaging business both in India and overseas through the sale of machines, co-packing, and laminate sales. We are also conceiving a distributor model for the packaging business.

All our overseas subsidiaries will continue to be monitored with focused core targets. Business plans have been mandated for execution for them.

With this, I leave the floor open for questions from the audience. Thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity. Am I audible?

You are.

Thanks for taking my question. I just have one question.

Yesterday, Shiva had made a statement regarding the V-Shapes business. He said it is not a demand issue, but rather an execution issue.

Samarth, can you please continue or your question is over?

Hello?

You said that Shiva mentioned that it's not a demand issue, but it's more of an execution issue. Is that your question?

My question was if you could just drill down on that in terms of the demand, if you could talk about, who the potential customers are. Is it like one customer, many customers?

What geographies are these customers from? What industries and use cases would they be to just sort of give us an understanding of, I'm just trying to understand whether, we're still trying to convince clients of the use case or, there's a large market now that can be serviced, it is just a matter of execution executing on the same.

Samarth. This is Shiva Kabra.

Can you hear me?

can you hear us?

It's my phone.

Yes, I can hear you. Okay.

Going back to the demand question, what happened, see, initially we purchased CP Italy, obviously everyone was very bullish about it, we increased our sales team, and we made a few sales around the co-packaging and the machines. Now what's happening, they didn't perform that well.

Okay. We sold some stuff, but they didn't work up to the expectations.

There's what I would say or we had to produce them in-house because it's a more finicky system. If people make one product continuously, it works well.

If you make a change of products, they make multiple products, system has to be adjusted each time. Unless you have got an operator who's willing to go through that or seasoned operators willing to go through that steep learning curve, the system is not reliable now as of previously.

What happened was, the point is not to sell the machines and not get the repeat business because customers feel that it's too difficult to use or sometimes the packet doesn't open perfectly 100 out of 100 times, opens perfectly well 95 out of 100 times, or even worse, one packet leaks, and then there's some product spilled on the rest of the packs in the same carton, and so on. You can imagine that.

What we've been really focusing on is improving our own co-packaging and improving the machines so that we can meet those types of customer requirements. If everything runs smoothly, like I said, there are many customers who approached us.

We are also doing a lot of co-packaging business. There's a learning curve that's there.

The primary market, of course, food is the biggest. It's quite price sensitive.

Pharmaceutical is the best market, but it has a long gestation period. We got some good customers there and we got some good cases there, but it's a longer gestation period type of business because of the qualification that goes.

I think that if you ask me, cosmetics and nutraceuticals, they are the biggest target industries in terms of the fact that price is not an issue, and there's a clear use case and not only a aesthetic benefit, but also functional benefit for those types of brands in that they can perfectly control their dosing and so on. Of course, there's an individual barrier for each product and so on.

Yeah. What's happened is, even right now, I was at Interpack earlier this year, and there's a lot of customers interested.

I just want to make sure that the product is something that is successful because what happens if you create a poor reputation in the market, and this is what happened with V-Shapes prior to our purchase, they did sell. Their peak sales in 2021 was more than €12.5 million.

What happened was that they sold more than 70 machines in the market, but most of them are not running because the system was too fiddly. Honestly, each machine is slightly different from the previous.

It's very Italian thing. It's been a challenge, but we are trying to fix it.

I don't think that if we fix the issue, the problem is going to be that customers are not interested in the product. Of course, I don't know how many of you are aware of the AGM questions from yesterday.

I think the question was talking about V-Shapes and what I see for the future of that business. I said the demand is there for that product.

It's just that we're not able to execute well enough or confidently enough. Therefore, if the demand was an issue, I would agree that, yes, we need to relook at that entire investment.

If the demand is not an issue, and we can see that if we can execute, there is going to be a large profitable market potential at this thing like a very big scope, then the focus right now is on improving our execution. I hope this answers the question.

Just a one follow-up on that, Shiva. As of today, where we stand, we're still trying to perfect the machines or we have sort of closed that gap now and we just need to sort of execute in terms of sales and just getting the product out there?

Right now, let's see. Our own internal production in India and in Italy for the co-packaging, that's quite stable because those guys are much more trained, right, the technicians, they are aware of what's happening.

When we sell the machine, I think if the person is making a single product, I'm packing 10 grams of honey, and I'm making that same pack again and again, then I think it's very stable. It's a good product.

If I'm going to change from a 10-gram pack of honey to a 20-gram pack of honey and then I'm going to pack something else with a different viscosity of 6-7, and it's too difficult for users to do. The wastages become too high.

It's not like it can't be done. Like I said, our people can do it, but it's also because we're doing 100 a lot of runs.

The experience that those guys have is quite different, right? That's the situation right now.

Obviously the idea is to make it that anyone can run anything anytime and it's 100% stable. We're not through with the machine challenges, if that's what your question is.

Got you. Thank you for that answer.

Yeah. Namaskar, Shiva.

Jaideep sir, namaskar. Thank you firstly for the opportunity.

Just to take the conversation forward for where we left yesterday evening. Shiva sir, the first question is addressed to you.

In continuation to what Samarth sir was asking, sir, you used the phrase there that we are now moving from terrible to poor. If you could just explain for the V-Shapes this CP performance going ahead, that we still have the teething problem.

Rather, I would also sir frame my questions in just a more broader way. In the opening remark, Jaideep sir did alluded to the fact of how the performance was.

If Shiva sir, you could just take few minutes and explain to us how our core domestic business have performed on a comparable basis, if we exclude the one-off items. The profitability has also taken a dip.

Firstly, if you could just give us some broader picture of where we stand today in the core business and then the health of the subsidiary and the way forward for us. If you could just summarize it in a more precise manner, addressing as you have addressed yesterday to your shareholders, that would suffice many points.

Then I will put forward my questions.

Saketji, this is a very broad question. I'll try to address it.

Now if fundamentally the difference is in the profit before on a stand-alone basis, one is partly down to some foreign exchange gains or something, the other. Then there's still a slight gap after that, is what I believe.

I'm not going to the exceptional items or something because that is a one-off. Like I said clearly last year, in the AGM yesterday, fundamentally nothing has really changed in the market between what I feel in the last couple of years and this year so far.

My view is that we lost maybe a few crores worth of consumable sales because of this whole Iran thing. There's been a lot of fluctuation of polymer prices, and I think that that's why the extrusion business specifically was very slow.

Plus whatever questions on El Niño and God knows what not. No excuse, but I think that from whatever I see in our core coding and marking business stand-alone, we are still going to do as well not as well, but like I don't see any major as of right now changes as compared to what I'm seeing in the last three, four years post-COVID.

I think we should be consistent in that business, at least this year and the next year, from whatever I can I know from our pipeline. Of course, on a on a quarter-to-quarter basis, it's difficult to predict.

By by the end of the year, we would expect in the core coding and marking business to be anywhere between like that, 10, 12, 15% growth numbers in that specific stand-alone coding and marking business. We did have a couple of cost increases.

What we've noticed is, prior to COVID, we the prices for our products were very stable for all the imports. I don't know what's happening since COVID.

I feel like a lot of cost increases are not temporary anymore. They become very sticky, and suppliers are exploiting the fact that, these are qualified products on our part and we are very reluctant to change suppliers.

Or for whatever reason, costs have increased. We've been a bit slow in understanding, and we're like not very aggressive in our pricing.

We are a little bit more Japanese in that style that we charge what is a correct price rather than charging what is the maximum price before you, feel the pinch. We have had a couple of price increases, one price increase and we had a surcharge since the Iran war began and So I think those things should get our margins back up that couple of percent maybe we've lost.

I think this covers maybe some questions on the stand-alone coding and marking business. Now if you can repeat the the rest of the questions that you wanted to address, the way forward or what?

Including subsidiaries, that's what he's saying.

Sir, I want you to address us on the status of the health of firstly the subsidiary companies today. What is likelyhood the road map?

Give and take the business environment, the sentiment, and unknown factor. There is definitely a very strong and a concrete plan with which you and your team is working.

Whatever can be explained to us in the most simple way, please do try to elaborate on the same, rather than being only conservative on the fact that something or the other cannot be spoken. I'm just trying to make sense of we as investors understanding where our company stand in terms of our investment in this subsidiary part.

How much more are we going to invest in the current year to support the operations there?

Yeah. Again, like I said, with Markprint, we've picked up the digital printing part.

We also have our own digital printing solutions in Control Print. I don't know if it's on our website.

Is everything there?

No.

We should put it up. We've localized our own solutions.

Part of it is, of course, using the technology absorbed from Markprint, and we are selling these solutions actively. It's a big part of our business right now or our future growth strategy, and We've already got some sales and we expect to this to be a big growth area for us going forward.

That is one of the core reasons to invest in Markprint. Markprint itself is doing well.

We expect them to do better. Definitely I expect that business to pick up further.

Codeology, we've taken over the print and apply business and we've localized that, and now that's product available for sale. Someone did mention about printing on cartons, and the market for that for printing barcodes whether linear or 2D on cartons for supply chain tracking.

Now that is the single biggest application globally. Out of the $7 billion or $8 billion coding and marking market, about 30 to 40% of it is printing on the outer cartons, both with print and apply or with piezo inkjet printers.

To print barcodes and to trace them through the supply chain and use it for warehouse management. Now in India, this is not there as of yet because it's a kirana store network.

I don't know if it's going to change. I don't know what's happening because I've been working on this application for at least 15 years.

I've gone to customers like whether it's Unilever, Godrej, or Procter & Gamble and God knows whoever. It's always been interesting, but it's never been like we need to do it.

Even though they do it abroad. I don't know.

It's normally the retail chains that specify this barcode. I think DMart and Reliance Retail and those types of guys still don't have enough market share to enforce this on their suppliers.

The smaller suppliers anyways hand paste labels and all stuff like that, so that's another competition. The print and apply has a lot of industrial and other applications, especially in exports and other stuff.

Our competitors do about 25 to 30 crores of print and apply sales each from whatever I know. Obviously, that's something that we are missing that market entirely.

From this business, obviously the base here, and we also expect that we needed to be in this market. That was one of the main things of the Codeology acquisition, and separately how we address the British market is something we're not super focused on, but now we're going to focus on it much more intensely.

The third part, which is, of course, the big one, which is CP Italy. Like I said, it's been a big area for us.

We have started streamlining costs. We have reduced some manpower.

We are reducing some further manpower. We are supplementing certain resources.

We've increased our sales manpower. We've reduced a lot of general purpose people in what you can call as operations and back office.

We continue to do that. We've increased the sales people, and We've decreased slightly people in the technical team.

We've increased some people in India. There's more of a combination of work going on between India and there.

Started using some more outside consultants who are experts in certain areas to help us get over some teething issues. Like I said, I think that once the machines are, just as the final changes are made and tested, if everything works, then I think we'll be in a much better position to execute some of the sales orders that we have and be confident that it's going to work perfectly.

I think that from all areas, I do believe that things are going smoothly. Like I said, there's differences in both those things.

CPL MEA is more of our sales outlet for us, and our international sales are increasing. That's doing okay.

It's, I'd say probably already going to break even this year and stand for not whatever investments we've made in our international businesses. The investment, of course, has to be looked at because a lot of times for our international sales, we sell from India directly to those customers, even though the sales people are based outside of India.

It's a bit tricky to get the exact picture necessarily clear through our subsidiaries. Yeah.

Overall, I'd say the packaging industry this year is more of a streamlining activity. It's more of stabilizing everything, stabilizing the quality, growing the sales, and being solid, and really focusing on expanding that business next year onwards.

The track and trace business, the QRiousCodes business is where we were working on some pilot projects. We're going to get a fair idea of where those projects are in Q2 and whether our unique propositions are working as we believe they should in the market and as per the customer expectations.

We'll get a lot more visibility on that set of solutions. Again, both in the packaging, in the thing, we've got a lot of patents around for the solutions that we're delivering.

I think that if we are successful, we have very long runway in those types of solutions.

Sir, only to add to it, when we say that if we will be successful, if the sales will happen, when you being leading the team is not confident or not using the phrase, what should investors take home from the understanding? There has to be some concrete evidence of the business fundamentals that you are working on.

There should be revision in upward or downward in terms of sales. But "if" word does not make good to us whether we are on the track or not.

Just I'm trying to make sense and make myself understand when you yourself leading the entire operation is using the phrase "if the sales happen, if." What should we take home?

It can be a variation. You may say that we may be doing say X revenue, and that may go up or down by 10 to 15%.

If we use the phrase that whether the sales will happen, if they will happen, then we are not confident on what we are trying to sell or what we are trying to do. I am unable to understand what exactly is being communicated.

I hope, sir, I have been able to explain my thought.

No, sir. I will rejoin the queue, but my message and the reply is what I'm looking for.

Yeah.

Yes, let's have the reply and no more follow-up questions as of now.

Yeah. Saketji, and this is a fair question.

Again, my answer is that, see, I can't predict anything. We don't operate on intent, feelings, and all this other type of stuff.

When I get a firm purchase order, also I don't talk about it. When I get the payment, and the job is completed and the customer signed off, that's when Control Print considers a sale and a success.

I withdrew from the packaging business, and I said that slow down on the sales. Don't do all this stuff.

I don't care about the losses because first you want to fix everything, it's going to work perfectly. Control Print is here for the next 10 years, 20 years, past when Shiva Kabra there, there's going to be some other person there, past when Jaideep Barve is there, there's going to be someone else there, and we're like an institution.

I don't care about selling machines which are not going to work perfectly. I have to be very clear that I can only be relatively confident on the stand-alone coding and marking business.

Like I said, I know that we should have a steady growth. We should be at that 60% gross margin, 30% EBIT margin on that business if I take out the investments in other parts of the business this year.

Again, like I said, in the end, I'm not making the evaluation. I have worked on a product.

Other team has focused on it. We have done what we think is something leading.

In the end, it's the customer who's going to decide whether he believes in this. I think I have to be very clear.

Shareholders and I understand where this is coming from, but at the end of the day, the customers, our reputation, our technical expertise, and the development of that, our employees, I'll have to look at all those factors, and I'll have to look at it over a longer period of time rather than saying that I need to make an immediate announcement for the comfort of shareholders. Because if I make an announcement and I don't live up to it, then I don't want us to lose credibility.

I don't want us to sell machines which don't have performance even if that helps boost sales in the short term, but helps damage my long-term reputation. I'll just have to repeat my thing like I don't expect the packaging to be a major contributor, although I do expect that sales to improve, losses to narrow, because we are now getting orders we're going to pick up in the co-packaging business.

The second, of course, we also got a bigger pipeline because we've also been working on these projects for longer. That's one part of it.

I do definitely expect, like I said, we're working on some pilot trials, and there's no point working and giving to every customer in the market because I've already got two, three key customers. They're giving me the feedback I require, making the changes, we're working with them.

I don't see the point of making a lot of announcements because if I can't keep these customers happy and they're not finding some benefit in the market, then obviously my reading of what developments I need to do was incorrect.

Right, sir. I'll wait.

Yeah.

Good afternoon, sir. Hope I'm audible.

Yes.

Yeah. Mr.

Shiva, most of the big picture and broader questions have already been asked by Saketji. I'll just get to the specific developments.

I'll start with the track and trace division first. In the earlier calls and presentations, we have been updating that we have been in negotiations with two of the large pharma companies and it was at the final stage.

Currently, what is the update on that?

Yeah. That's what I said earlier.

Right now we've run some pilots with a couple of machines. They're putting this stuff in the market.

This is the pharmaceutical industry. I just want to explain to everyone.

They are very very specific. For us to go through the IQ, DQ, PQ, and then put the product out in the market, and then they're putting out a controlled supply chain.

Now they're going to get the feedback from the controlled supply chain, some additional trials will be run, and then, yeah, these three customers will get back to us on what their final thoughts are. They're three different customers, we can have three different outcomes.

We don't know.

Do we have a tentative timeline as to when we can see sales coming from this division? Because it's been long overdue.

I think that this division is already in the plain vanilla track and trace, we're already doing a certain amount of sales, maybe close to 20 crores or something, and we're already profitable, or at least break even. The innovative stuff, which is what our main focus on, is underway.

Like I said, in the end, each customer has their own process and cycles, and maybe we've gone for some of the most thorough, but slowest customers that are there in the thing. That's good because honestly, there has been a lot of feedback from them.

There's been a lot of improvements in development from our side. I think we're going with a far more mature product over this one and a half year, two-year period that we've been working on this.

Sir, you said 20 crore in this year in this quarter we have done. Last year I'm assuming we didn't do any.

No, 20 crore in the last financial. 20 crore in the last financial year, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. 20 crore in the last financial year.

Okay. What about this quarter, sir?

It

must be in a similar line. I'll have to get the exact breakup, but it would be similar type of things.

Okay. Sir, any specific reason that stand-alone business has not performed well this quarter?

I know you have addressed this in terms of the cost increase and the geopolitical issues, but any specific reason for such a huge impact on stand-alone sales? As in the growth has not been there only this quarter.

Yeah.

Like I said, I think partly because of Iran, all the polymer prices changing. The extrusion is our biggest sale, and I think because of some of those things, especially are more cyclical.

I think because maybe of prices going up and down, I think there's been a little bit of a lack or slower production in that area. I see it going back to normal right now.

From whatever, like I said, over the course of the year, I'm pretty sure we're normal. I don't see anything abnormal.

In terms of the long-term view of the business, obviously, these quarterly impacts from the geopolitical issue don't matter. Now it's mattering because we've been invested so much in the subsidiaries, and that has been a pain point basically from a top-line perspective as well as on the operational profitability.

The reason I'm asking this is because if, for example, it takes much more longer for V-Shapes and track and trace to pick up, and the base business itself, which was giving a steady number, starts to basically dwindle a little, I need to understand your thought process on this as to how you are trying to balance it all out from the operations perspective.

I don't think we're increasing our investments in other businesses as of right now. Like I said, I do believe that the stand-alone business, the stand-alone coding and marking business is steady from whatever I can see, because obviously I get a lot of data and access to the CRM and other types of stuff, and of course we have our own reviews.

We are confident of what we're going to do still this year. There's no major outlook market outlook.

Even if, yeah, we have to understand that today if I didn't get 5 crores worth of consumable sales this quarter because it got delayed and I got an 85% margin on that, we had that 5 crores and 85%, the numbers look different. What if it's pushed out to the second quarter, third quarter?

To us it doesn't make any difference personally speaking. I think the stand-alone business is, like I said, the engine, and we're absolutely sure that that engine is not under any effect because so far people still need date codes and batch codes and all this other type of information.

Of course, like I said, there's no guarantee on anything. In the end, if the government changes the rules and regulations, even that business can be impacted.

As of right now, we don't see any upcoming legislation on those areas. I think that that business is going to be it's predictable and steady, and we retain our market shares and slightly increasing if anything over a period of time.

Sir, we are not expecting to invest any further? We have invested around 65 crores in V-Shapes till date.

No more investments from us and no more cash burn expected?

I think the update in one of the previous meetings was we're now doing the tech transfer so we'll be purchasing it so that all the IP is shifted to Control Print.

Right.

We had to revalue the IP in Control Print Italy. It's also like irrelevant because it's all 100% subsidiary and so on whatever.

In a way it is like, yeah, there will be a cash element going there and the IP coming here. That was pretty much going to be the last ever infusion from what we know what our own internal calculations are.

Right. Because if I see this quarter's number Just one last question and I'll get back in the queue, sir.

If I see this quarter's numbers, sir, the trajectory in terms of top line from subsidiary's perspective as well as the losses that has been incurred has remained the same. Last time I met with Mr.

Barve in a one-on-one meeting, he basically specified that this year we basically have to do something about it, that V-Shapes has to pick up because a lot more cash has been invested. Along with that, sir, a lot of challenges have been already faced by the company in V-Shapes, like the RM is still imported and standardization is still causing an issue.

There are certain execution challenges. Just to get an overall picture on this V-Shapes part, sir, when can we actually expect the numbers to materially improve?

Because in case of track and trace, sir, the market size I assume is 600 crores. Whenever these things click, we'll reach a certain point.

V-Shapes is what is basically providing the company an opportunity to get to the next level. I'm trying to understand the pain points and what specific strategies have we adopted to really overcome them and overcome them fast.

I'm sorry it's a long question, but just trying to get your perspective on this. Yeah.

Just to answer your question, obviously when we talk about V-Shapes, the idea was to focus on the team there, strengthen the marketing and sales in India. For some cross-border stuff, we made some sales, we had some good initial success, but then we weren't able to sustain it because of consistency, other types of issues.

We said we'll take it a bit slow. Now what we've done is we've started streamlining some costs.

Like I said, there's been a decrease in the number of people there. Rather there's been three or four people who have left, and we've added three or four people in sales.

Maybe it's not overall, I don't know what the numbers are, but the focus has shifted from keeping more people in operations, back office, and other stuff which is not required into strengthening our sales and marketing network there. We are closely interacting much more with India.

We have a person that we've got in India who is basically spending a lot more time in Italy. Hopefully if he gets his Blue Card soon, he will be based there.

He's very sharp guy, too. He's helping streamline all the business processes and operations there and improving the coordination between India and Italy and in the future, North America and Taiwan and everything else like that.

We're working very actively on that. Like I said, we are also not through with some of the streamlining of expenses and manpower, we're also working further on that.

It's not going to show a result in this year because even if the severance pay and all it's about a year of salary or whatever it is. In the end, even if you lower the cost in the longer term, the expenses will still be there for this year.

Like I said, I think as we are focused on improving our product execution, that's going to make a difference. We are working on the material manufacturing here.

We've had some hiccup with Unnati in the Northeast where we were making an expansion in existing factory or facility in Guwahati, because the government has claimed that the funds have run out of that scheme. We are still moving ahead with our manufacturing of the materials in-house both for consistency, but also for improving our margins sharply on the materials.

We believe that is another demand obstacle. One is the consistency of the machinery, which we want to improve, the second, the speed, the performance.

The second part is, of course, the cost per pack. Especially in the food industry, this is a bottleneck.

I think step by step and moving forward and smoothing out well. Like I said, I think I'm hoping that we see some benefits this year and definitely next year.

Like I said, in the track and trace, what we want to do is try to do some stuff which redefines the industry in QRiousCodes, and, yeah, we're going to see how successful we are in not too long from now.

Hi, sir. Am I audible?

Sir, from my side, I have two questions. Can I know what is the printer sales for this quarter?

If I see from last 12 quarters, our revenue top-line growth here in worst case, it's 9-10%. Why it's cost 4% this 4% growth this quarter?

What is the root cause? Because it's more predictable cash flow we can expect in stand-alone business.

I want to know what is the profitability number of our subsidiary Codeology and Markprint?

Mr. Badri Narayan, I could only hear the first part very clearly.

You asked about the volume of the printers which are sold in the first quarter, right? Mr.

Badri Narayan? Yes,

We sold 574 printers in the first quarter.

He's going to the bathroom, Jaideep.

Sir.

Mr. Badri Narayan, does it answer your question?

The first quarter we have sold 574.

Yeah. Yes, sir.

Can you just repeat because I could not hear the next questions properly.

Sir, next question, if you see our last 12 quarters, our revenue growth has been consistently about 10%. This quarter is 4% from stand-alone business.

What is the root root cause because it's more predictable business? It's a predictable business.

How we are seeing next quarter next next quarter, sir?

An answer to your question, Mr. Badri Narayan sir, like in every business, the Q4 is the most prominent aspect of every business, and most of the sales happen in the end of March.

What happens is that the first quarter is always a little bit slower for even our kind of business. Our business was also affected by sluggish trend in the pipes and the extrusion business where most of our consumables are used.

As a result of decrease in the momentum of the business in the extrusion and the pipes and the cables, the demand for the consumables was lesser because the printing didn't happen on that pipe. Hopefully we'll catch up with that very soon.

The business outlook for the next three quarters for the coding and marking is stable, and we'll definitely come up with better numbers than the first quarter.

Yeah.

Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity, sir.

I joined late, I missed Mr. Shiva's opening remarks.

Could you, sir, shed some light why is there margin compressions so much? What would be our sustainable margin for this year?

In the coding and marking business, our margins have not changed much. Because if you look at the overall profitability and if you compare with the Q1 of the last year for the stand-alone business, except for the foreign exchange fluctuations, there's not much of a change in the PBT.

We are quite confident of retaining the same trend for the forthcoming year. The Q2, Q3, and Q4 business is on a positive trend.

That's for us. We are not overly bothered in our mind about the stand-alone coding business.

The margins have remained more or less constant. Yes, there was a slight decrease in the trend in the sale of consumables in the first quarter, which I just mentioned in the prior question.

Hopefully, that would be eased out. The last worry we would have is on the stand-alone business, and coding and marking happens to be our bread-and-butter business.

That is going fine.

Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity.

Am I audible?

you can be a little bit more clearer so that I hear properly.

Now it's clear, more?

It is clear now, yeah. Correct.

Thank you. I have just two quick questions.

One is that we have also mentioned that the track and trace segment is expected to gain strong momentum and we have recently read some articles where the government is also agreed to the 1,000 drug makers for this QR code thing. Just wanted to understand what is the total addressable market for the same and where we are currently and what is our focus going ahead?

This is one question. I'll ask another question if after this you answer.

You asked about the total addressable market or the target market for the track and trace. I would imagine it's about 500 to 550 crores.

Does that answer your question, Raj?

Yeah. Where we are currently, how much is the revenue coming for Control Print from this segment if you can give the breakup?

No, no. Can you repeat the question?

I just gone to the bathroom just for

He was asking about the TAM for track and trace. I said it was 500 crores.

Right now, see, yeah, it's about a 600 crore market if the track and trace, this is including not just the printers, but of course, I'm talking about the equipment in the line and the software. It's about a 600 crore a year market.

We were about 20 crores last year. What was the rest of the question, Raj?

He's saying that how would we progress and what's our market share as of now?

We're at 20 crores. The market was 600 crores.

There's going to be two different levers of growth potentially, Raj. One is that, like I said, we're working on some unique propositions which will both expand the market and hopefully expand our market share, both factors.

We'll find out and I'll disclose more maybe in the Q3 presentation depending on what outcomes I see. The second part of the thing is that right now the top 300 drugs were mandated carry QR codes.

Some people also do it on more products, some people don't do it on many other products. The government has put out it's right now still a discussion paper, it's not actually been fully mandated, to go from the top 300 brands to the top 1,000 brands.

The top 300 brands about 2,000 SKUs, and if they go to the top 1,000 brands, the number of SKUs will increase. In that discussion paper, they've also mandated the QR code for anti-infective, antibiotics, similar products, anti-infectives, and for psychotropic medicines, stuff like SSRIs and similar.

That would go from what's about 2,000 SKUs currently to about 25,000 SKUs. It would be a significant expansion of the mandate from the government.

Now this is supposed to happen over the course of two years, but right now it's still out in discussion. There's some part where the market itself makes expand.

I would think that if the mandate is actually implemented, then the market will anyways go from maybe 600 crores to 1,500 crores or something anyways. It will be a sizable market.

The second part of it is, yeah, now what is the final outcome of those regulations, I'm not completely sure. Let's see what happens.

Hi, sir. Am I audible?

what is the Q1 export revenue?

Q1? Sorry, Diya.

Diya, can you repeat the question?

Yes, sir.

Yeah. Could you repeat the question?

What is the revenue from exports for this quarter?

Exports are about 4 to 5% in this quarter.

Sir. This new manufacturing facility that is going to come in Assam, when is this going to be commissioned and how much revenue can we expect?

Diya, there's been a suspension of the incentives from the government. We have already ordered our equipment for the plastic film manufacturing for our V-Shapes.

We're still waiting for some government updates. Right now it's a little bit in limbo because the government has suspended the scheme, we're still waiting.

We're ready with our papers and registration and everything, but since the government has suspended new units under the scheme until further notice, we're waiting for their notice.

Hi, thank you for allowing me. Sir, basically for V-Shapes for break-even, do we stick to breaking even in the second half of FY27 or does it gets pushed back to FY28 if you can get clarity on that?

Secondly, for the Assam capex, was it mainly for the co-packaging for V-Shapes or that facility will also be used for our other business like coding and marking or anything else?

Okay. The questions, yeah, I think the packaging business as a whole would probably only break even in the first half of next year, the first half of next financial year.

I don't think it'll necessarily break even in the second half of this financial year. I'll keep you posted with an update in Q2.

The second part of the question was regarding the

We were planning to use some coding and marking and some other stuff there just to ensure a quicker outflow of incentives to us. Right now, like I said, the whole project is put in limbo, we're not sure.

It was going to be used primarily for our packaging industry, for the co-packaging and for the manufacturing of the core films that we sell.

Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.

Sir, my question is basically on the Codeology and Markprint. We had in the last quarter, we said that we expect 15 to 20% growth.

Looking at the stand-alone business, we say that there's no material change. Any change on this part of the business segment?

Secondly, we had also said that some machines were not delivered due to change in a packaging segment. There's some change in specifications, what is the update on that side?

I'm not sure of the first part. I'll ask Jaideep to do it.

We did see some revenue growth across Markprint and Codeology. The second part is, yeah, we do have a few machine orders which we have requested some additional time for those deliveries to be made, and right now we're servicing those customers through packaging, whatever loss we can at our own facilities.

Thanks for the opportunity again. Just last question with respect to you said that because of Iran there were some new clients they were deferred from buying.

What is the current status? Has the demand improved?

What are the biggest challenges where we anticipate over the next 12 to 18 months with respect to raw material cost or competitive intensity or the execution front? Just wanted to understand this.

Raj, just to go back. I think that maybe a little bit of uncertainty in the last 2-3 months of this thing.

I think by June, things seem back to normal, everyone's just stuff is going to happen and business is going back to normal. Of course, there's been some recent escalations.

What happens, I think, it affects people like us because, say, in our packaging business, we have some co-packaging that we have signed. Now the raw material for the co-packaging has increased sharply, it's negatively affected our margins even though we've sort of committed to giving packs at a certain price to our customers and we've already committed to that.

Now the same thing happens in the industry. I think that the issue is one of high price and one of low price.

When there's volatility, then I think customers get more concerned about buying materials and other stuff at a higher price. I think that's why specifically in certain things like where the margins are relatively thinner for people who are more in conversion, where you're buying plastics and then you're converting them to other stuff through extrusion or through other things, those customers get slightly more conservative.

I think that's probably where we saw some issues. I think the volatility is what is more of an effect.

If I have to buy a thing at 150 and I know it's going to remain 150, that's not a problem. If it goes from 70 to 150, and I buy it at 150 and it'll go back to 80, then that's a huge loss for me to carry that's the type of thing that I can't deal with.

That uncertainty causes more issues rather than the pure price per se. I think, yeah, from whatever I feel is that it seems like all customers have to adjust to this because, yeah, and go back to business as normal.

I think that's what's happening.

good afternoon, sir. My question is regarding last concall you mentioned about track and trace solution.

There was one loophole was there, like QR code can be copied by some sellers. That problem is solved now?

No, that problem is not solved. That is why our solution is unique, and hopefully it will solve that problem.

That problem is still very much true. If you buy a medicine today, and even if you authenticate it with the QR code, the likelihood of it actually indicating in NCDs thisness whether the medicine is actually genuine or not is pretty negligible because all smart counterfeiters have to do is just copy one medicine, their batch counterfeit, and with the amount of scanning that goes on, and it's a complicated thing.

I would not say the counterfeiting has been addressed in any way.

What would be charges per QR code for any of our manufacturer?

Normally what we do is we sell the equipment, and then depending on the customer's preference, we would charge them on a per QR code basis and a separate charge for the line equipment, a separate AMC charge for that. That would be a percentage of the equipment that we supply them.

In some cases, they pay on a line charge, including the software. It depends what the customer's method or the standard way that they operate.

The price per QR code depends more on a bucket, it depends on how many QR codes you purchase from us, and then that determines the pricing. If it's less QR codes per line, if you have a high value but low volume product, the cost is higher.

If you have a high volume, low value product, then, yeah, the cost is lower. It's a slightly more complex pricing methodology which is employed.

Hi. I just wanted to know what's your internal reference point after which you'll pull the plug on these underperforming businesses?

Because we have been investing into these businesses for some time. I just want to understand at what point enough is enough, and you'll rather do something else.

I think the QRiousCodes business is very straightforward. It's already break even, if not mildly profitable.

I think that there's no reason for us to stop. That business is closely allied to our existing business also.

The international business also I feel should be break even. Let's see how that goes, whether we're actually successful in growing our sales abroad because, again, there's a lot of optionality out there in terms of that it's the same manufacturing facility, the same everything.

Out there, in both these cases, those benefits are there. Whatever digital printing solutions we're building around both QRiousCodes and our core business is something that we've already sunk in a good chunk of investments, but we're going to continue with that.

I don't think our development plans are going to reduce over the next few years. We'll continue to invest in that.

Now, yeah, getting back to the large question of the somewhat less related thing and also where frankly all the losses lie, which is the packaging business. I think like I said, the demand issue is not there, and I'm not an expert on the packaging machine manufacturing side, but I know that these are issue that we are having can be addressed, and I also know that we have a lot of levers to improve margins by lowering costs as we get economies of scale in the machine manufacturing, definitely lowering costs by making the materials in India or sourcing from elsewhere from lower-cost suppliers.

Right now we're focusing on those things, and like I said, I think that the opportunity is very big, and we should try to do our best to capture that opportunity rather than focusing on pulling the plug. As of right now, if we feel that there is no path forward, then obviously we'll not going to hesitate to take a tough call.

Right now, the issue is that we're just not performing. It's not that the opportunity is not there.

I think I've answered this question earlier that it's going to go from about 2,000 SKUs across the top 300 brands to the top 1,000 brands. Of course, there is also those other elements like vaccines and stuff, but, yeah, we're talking mainly of the antimicrobials and the psychotropic narcotics and psychotropic substances, which is a broad series of medicines, it'll go up to 25,000 SKUs.

All of those SKUs are not at the same volumes as the top 300 brands, but like I said, and that should expand the market from according to me, from 500-600 crores to maybe even 1,500 crores. The issue is that right now, my information needs to be updated, right?

I think it's still a discussion paper that's out there. They're still taking feedback from the industry.

My past experience has been that the industry does not like any regulation, and they may lobby against this regulation or dilute it down. Right now there's a still discussion that's been put out there, and feedback is still coming in from various people in the supply chain like us or customers or whoever else is involved.

Maybe they consulted doctors and hospitals and other types of chemists and so on also. Right now they're getting feedback from the relevant chain around this, and if everything is through, there'll be a two-phase implementation: one of which is pertaining to July 1st of next year and one to another year down the line.

Right now, to my knowledge, it's not been enforced. I can assure you that definitely not happen for July 1st of this year.

It's going to happen for July, but it's still in discussion. Let's wait.

See what the final outcome is. I don't like to comment on government regulation which is not completely announced.

I want to thank everyone for all the questions. I understand a lot of concerns around losses and other types of things, like I said.

I can understand everyone being very skeptical, also. We appreciate that feedback.

We hope to come back with better news. The message is that the core business is steady, and we are definitely working aggressively on all the other areas and trying to come take those businesses forward and get them standing where they should be to make them real contributors.

Thank you everybody for the time on this call, and we look forward to your support and cooperation for the rest of the year. Thanks.

Thank you.