Good evening to all. Welcome to the conference call for Godrej Consumer Products for quarter four.

We will start the call with a opening statement from our CEO, Mr. Sudhir Sitapati, following which we will go to a statement by our CFO, Mr.

Aasif Malbari. We will then move to the questions.

Post the questions, we'll also have an ending statement. I now hand over the call to Mr.

Sudhir Sitapati for his opening statement.

Good evening, everybody. Q4 FY26 has been a quarter of strong, broad-based performance for Godrej Consumer Products Limited, fully aligned [unclear] and strategic priorities.

The quarter brings to a close a year in which the consistent execution of our Goodness Manifesto, our focus on category development, and our discipline on cost have come together to deliver profitable growth across our portfolio. In Q4, at a consolidated level, revenues grew 11% in INR terms on the back of 6% underlying volume growth.

EBITDA grew [unclear]% with operating margin at 21.7%, and net profit after tax grew by 10% on a reported basis, reflecting the underlying quality of earnings being delivered by the business. I would like to call out [unclear] growths have been weaker over the last 2 years.

This is driven by significantly stepped-up investments to ignite growth and expand into new categories. We have already seen parts of the portfolio that have started to significantly outstrip growth, driven by investments and profitability driven by scale benefits, and we expect this to happen across the portfolio.

Our standalone business delivered an excellent quarter, driven by 8% underlying volume growth and 10% sales growth. EBITDA grew [unclear]% with margins at a healthy 24.7%, supported by disciplined cost management, calibrated pricing actions, and improved operating leverage.

Within the standalone business, Home Care delivered 12% value growth with strong momentum across household insecticide, air fresheners, and fabric care, and consistent market share gains in our key categories. Personal Care grew 3% with personal wash gaining market share on the back of strong in-market execution.

Perfume and deodorants delivered strong double-digit growth led by perfumes, with KS 99 now scaled pan-India. Turning to our international portfolio, in Indonesia, the pricing pressures we have been calling out over the last several quarters have now largely bottomed out, and we are seeing increasingly clear signs of stabilization.

The business delivered 4% underlying volume growth and 3% sales growth, and we continue to expect operating conditions to improve from FY2027 as the market normalizes. Our Africa, USA, and Middle East business delivered another strong quarter with top-line growth of 20%.

EBITDA grew 2%, reflecting a deliberate doubling of media spends behind our FMCG categories to build the long-term franchise. We believe this is the right investment to make as the geography enters its next phase of growth.

Our Latin America and others business delivered 26% sales growth. EBITDA [unclear] impacted [unclear] time costs in the quarter.

We expect this to normalize over the coming quarters. Looking ahead, we enter 2027 from a position of strength.

Our India business is well placed to deliver continued calibrated growth at normative EBITDA margins, supported by improving demand trends, a strengthening innovation pipeline, and consistent in-market execution. In Indonesia, we expect a meaningful step-up in performance as pricing pressure abates.

Our Africa, US, and Middle East business continues to deliver on its stated objective of double-digit revenue and profit growth over the medium term. Before I close, I would like to briefly flag, and then hand over to our Chief Financial Officer Aasif Malbari, an important presentational change that we are adopting from this quarter onwards in a manner in which we report revenue.

I would also take the opportunity to personally invite you to our investor meet scheduled to take place on Monday, 11th May. The event will be held at our headquarters, and will provide in-depth perspective on our strategic vision, recent business performance, and forward-looking initiatives.

Our leadership team will share comprehensive updates on market trends, innovation, and the company's growth map. As the year closes, our unwavering focus on category development, cost discipline, and operational excellence continues to translate into improving performance.

With strengthening demand trends, consistent portfolio action, and a clear strategic roadmap, we're increasingly confident in our ability to deliver sustained profitable growth and create long-term value for all our shareholders. I now hand over to Aasif.

Thank you, Sudhir. Good evening, everyone.

I would like to take the next few minutes to walk you through an important change in the way we are presenting the revenue from the quarter ended 31st March 2026 onwards. To set the context, in the FMCG industry, companies incur a wide variety of customer-related expenditure like in-store visibility, display arrangements, mailers, and other similar channel-level spends.

Industry practice on how to present these spends has historically been mixed. Some companies have recognized them as expense on a gross basis, while others have netted them off against revenue.

GCPL till 2025 presented some of these spends as expenses. Our position rested on a set of considered judgment that these spends do not have a direct correlation with sales.

Products would continue to be sold to our customers under existing commercial arrangements regardless of whether we incur these spends or not, that pricing remains unchanged irrespective of these arrangements, and a fair value for these services received could be reasonably demonstrated. On that basis, we had presented some of these spends as operating expenses, similar in substance to other marketing and promotional efforts undertaken by the company.

To give an example, visibility in-store and visibility on the street as out of home are two spends which can be interchangeably used. In February 2026, the Expert Advisory Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India took up this matter for detailed examination.

The committee considered multiple instances of customer-related arrangements typically encountered in the consumer goods sector and went through a detailed evaluation of the facts and circumstances of each instance. Having considered each of these in detail, the committee concluded that these customer-related spends should be netted off from revenue rather than presented separately as operating expense.

GCPL has carefully reviewed the opinion and presented the relevant spends accordingly. The company is implementing the opinion of the Expert Advisory Committee in letter and spirit.

The impact is straightforward: revenue from operations and the corresponding lines within other expenses both reduced by the same amount period after period. There is no impact whatsoever on absolute EBITDA, PAT, profit after tax, total equity, or cash flow.

Margin percentages would be optically higher under the new presentation simply because the denominator is smaller while the absolute profit pool is unchanged. The underlying economics of the business, our pricing, our competitive position, the cash we generate remain the same.

Our strategy and the way of running our business remains the same. There will be no changes in the way we incur these spends going forward.

Also, to clarify, while A&P expenses optically look lower for the quarter, if you compare this after restated, the amounts are actually broadly similar YoY. Restated revenue for the last 8 quarters and the last 5 years on the new presentation is set out in the investor communication accompanying our results.

There is no material impact on growth or profit matrices. We are actually extremely pleased that ICAI has released this EAC opinion to this effect, which will enable better consistency and comparability across all the players.

Thank you.

We will now move to questions.

Hi. Am I audible?

Hi. Good evening, team.

First question is on the Personal Care bit in India. Sudhir, can you just elaborate?

Because the presentation slides talk about soaps have done well, and so is the case with perfume fragrances. I think it looks like that powder hair dye has actually been under pressure.

Can you just elaborate a bit more on this?

I think there are two things. Bulk of our Personal Care business is soaps, and that market [unclear] kept muted despite GST.

While we have gained some market share, our growths have been pretty muted in soaps. Sexual wellness also has been quite muted, and we've declined [unclear] It's a small business.

Hair color has had an okay quarter, not a great quarter, but an okay quarter. I think there was some seasonality impact of marriages, etc.

Overall, I would say a somewhat muted quarter only on our Personal Care business.

Okay. Sudhir, when you say India business has grown by 10%, if Home Care and Personal Care have grown by 12% and 3% respectively, I think the other portfolio has grown 75%, which has added about 2.5%, 3 percentage points, right?

Can you just elaborate on what has happened there?

I think, firstly, our Home Care business salience is increasing every quarter and it's becoming bigger and bigger on the back of some of these things. That is one.

The second is there has been a lot of explosive growth globally on our air freshener business, which we don't capture. Indeed, next time onwards we'll capture it.

Far it was a small number, but that, as I take you through on Monday, we're just having very high growths on air fresheners globally, which is broadly we make in India and we export it from here, and that has been the delta contributor there.

Understood. Lastly, on Indonesia, how confident are you about the turnaround given that there has been certain, whatever I understand, inflationary pressures also in the economy?

How confident are you of the turnaround over there and outlook also on Africa business for FY27?

See, on Indonesia, I think even last quarter we had about 4% volume growth, and this quarter also we've had 4% volume growth. In a steady state, if we can do 5% to 6% volume growth in Indonesia, all this sales growth has to do with currency.

That may turn, actually, in Q1 the other way around. I think revenue growth will now lead volume growth in Indonesia.

I think what we will get in Indonesia is kind of mid single-digit volume, high single-digit value going forward. As far as Africa goes, we are having a very strong performance in Africa.

I think, as I said, one of the big drivers has actually been FMCG driven by hair care in Africa. Revenues have gone up.

That requires advertising spends. We have kind of investing ahead of the curve in building FMCG in Africa.

Our Africa business now is looking more and more like a conventional FMCG business to us.

Okay. Just a follow-up on Africa.

Given that the base has been high, and the last few quarters have been quite good in Africa on growth as well as margins, do you think FY27 we should be mindful of the base given that the performance in the past few quarters? This quarter also constant currency growth has been somewhat okayish.

It's the reported number which has been very good, right, because of the currency moves.

Yeah. See, I think in FY25 we had a very depleted performance in Africa, the FY26 numbers come on a depleted base.

I expect Africa performance to be quite strong because, again, on Monday we'll explain to you, there are some underlying drivers in FMCG which are driving bulk of the growth in Africa, and those will continue to compound in FY27.

Got it, Sudhir. Look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Thank you.

Hi, sir. Thank you for taking [unclear] question.

Sudhir, when I look at your looking ahead para, you've highlighted the India business is placed to deliver continued calibrated normative EBITDA margin. Given the context of the West Asia war and the inflation that we are seeing, should one assume that what you're indicating is that you will be able to hold on that 21.5% normative margin and on consol and 24, 25 on India business?

Is that what this statement reads? See,

to be honest, this quarter and next quarter, I expect some pressure on EBITDA percentage margin. We are seeing upsides in a variety of other areas.

We're seeing pricing growth higher than what we thought we'd get. We are seeing in certain categories like laundry and household insecticide a lot of pressure on locals.

Overall, I am expecting a lower margin still this oil remains at $100, $110, but higher revenue and kind of netting out at reasonably good levels as far as EBITDA goes. I think it's just if this oil remains at $100 to $110, that's what we expect, and that too for a few months, cuz this $100, $110, as we had sent in the pre-note, is not something that we can't price up for over 3, 4 months.

It may take 3, 4 months again of a little bit of a dip in percentage margins. Unlike in the case of very sharp palm oil prices where even if I have a 6%, 7% inflation because of palm oil, it affects only one category, and then that becomes really hard to take up prices.

In the case of crude oil, it affects all categories, so that same 6%, 7% is spread out over every category. While we may have a percentage gross margin lower than [unclear] in Q1, of course we also lapping a weak comparator, I think it'll come back much sooner than it does when there's a palm oil crisis.

Understood. Got it.

Again on the Personal Care front, just wanted to get a sense of now, we had some tailwind of restocking in third quarter, that seems to have normalized. How should one think about the growth of Personal Care from here on?

Is the saliency of hair color just because of the marriage seasonal impact and the soaps are going to be remain

Yeah. Look, we didn't have a bad quarter in hair color, just a little lower than what we usually have.

I think pricing growth will come into soaps pretty significantly going forward. I do expect this Personal Care performance to improve [unclear]

No, I was saying that pricing is coming back in soaps more than what we thought [unclear] to the various cost inflation, both in soaps and in general Personal Care. I do expect higher revenue growth than this in FY27 and going forward.

Can you hear me?

Sudhir. Thank you.

Got it, and that's all from my side. Wishing all the best.

Thanks, Mihir.

Yeah. Hi, good evening and thanks for the opportunity.

Two questions. Firstly, on Home Care, we've seen fairly strong growth on what was a tough base as well.

Can you just maybe throw some light on what's really worked? Is it just the LV's launch being pushed wider and acceptance?

In similar vein, as we sort of get into summer and this year there's expectation of an extended summer, would that have any seasonal impact with the extended summer on the insecticide business?

I think quarter four was pretty good and broad-based in terms of Home Care. All our businesses did well: household insecticide, air fresheners, fabric care.

Both in terms of top line and bottom line, they did well. I think going forward, if the summer is a hotter summer, last year was a cooler summer, and actually the whole of last year [unclear] cooler.

I think soap volumes have been a bit muted in the overall category because of a sort of slightly cooler year. I think summer Q1 is typically a small quarter for HI.

Yes, it's possible that the HI numbers aren't as great as they should be, but then on the other hand, there is a dynamic of local players not getting kerosene to make incense stick and so on. There are some complicated dynamics going on between the weather and West Asia.

Equally, I'm expecting a better quarter in terms of soaps. Yeah.

There are two dynamics going on here. Short point is there's a weather dynamic and a West Asia dynamic, both of which are playing out positively and negatively.

I think in soaps it's largely the weather dynamic is positive, in HI the weather may be negative, West Asia maybe positive, laundry also the West Asia thing maybe positive.

Thanks. Two questions.

My first question is on MCBC and your other recent acquisition, essentially in terms of Raymond, what is the update? Going ahead in terms of outlook, how do you see that given these two scenarios you mentioned in terms of West Asia impact on the cost inflation and say the summer which is likely to be on the stronger side.

For these two businesses, how do you see that in terms of the outlook?

Abneesh, maybe the MCBC question and the Raymonds question I will take on Monday when you guys are here because we have some slides on how MCBC and Raymonds are doing. Let me answer because what we wanted to do was to use this call to really answer off Q4 questions and Q1 questions, and kind of more portfolio questions answer it in Monday if that's okay by you.

Short point is we're very happy with MCBC. I think we're also quite happy with PAKS.

We had early successes in sexual wellness, which seem to have dried off, but good, consistent volume growth on deodorants. I think, as I told you, the way we're looking at the year, [unclear] there's a negative in terms of cost.

There's a positive in terms of middle distillate prices, which is basically linear alkyl benzene and kerosene, which are used in detergents and household insecticides, those prices going up significantly, and a lot of locals coming under [unclear] be from our business point of view the positive of West Asia. As far as weather goes, if the predictions of El Niño are right, Q1 will be a difficult quarter for HI [unclear] will be a good quarter because when it's hot and reasonably wet, actually it's reasonably good, Q2 and Q3 should be okay.

Soaps should generally be good. Indonesia does quite well during El Niño in general.

General consumption, if monsoons are poor, I don't know how Q4 will be. Overall the last El Niño year, I think we had, was FY24, if I'm not mistaken, and that turned out as a reasonably good year for us.

Sure.

This is the sum of moving parts between West Asia and a hotter summer and El Niño.

Understood. My second question is on soaps.

In Q4, Sudhir, we have seen that in most of the FMCG categories, GST has had some benefits. I do understand in soaps local players is not very big number, but if you could tell us from a compliance side at least, is there some improvement?

Because at least at 5%, the degree of bypassing the system is much lower. Are you seeing some evidence of that?

It may not translate to number as yet. Your optimism on soap volumes recovery say in Q1, Q2 based on say El Niño, etc., is that the main reason or because of inflationary condition, you and say the market leader will gain market share?

Is that the main reason [unclear]? No, I [unclear]

two, three questions you're asking. On the second question on why I'm reasonably bullish is last year [unclear] pretty cold summer, as and various beverages categories, etc., and ice cream categories.

This one is expected to be the other way around. On your second question on the impact of GST, to be honest, the overall impact on GST has been quite good.

I think we've seen results. We're also quite happy with 8% volume growth in India.

The overall consumer sentiment certainly seems to have improved after GST, and that is benefiting a lot of discretionary categories like laundry liquid and air care, which may not have had a direct reduction in GST prices. As far as soaps itself goes, it doesn't seem to have shown, at least for us and from what I'm able to read from reported results, significant improvement in volumes, unlike some GST categories.

I think categories which are slightly underpenetrated or which have heavy locals, but certainly underpenetrated categories really have benefited from the GST price cut. Soaps and a few other universally penetrated categories, the impact has been limited of the GST, though we've passed on all the benefits to consumers.

Because

hair oils has seen very good benefit, and that's also very well penetrated. My next

I don't know whether it's hair Is it premium?

Premium has also grown strongly. Mahabhringraj has grown very strongly.

That's what I also believe, that it's a premium phenomenon and when you have a very premium brand, when prices come down, there are other penetrated categories like oral, etc., where I don't know what the impact has been on GST. Understood.

Last question in terms of the pet food. Any update or you would want to share that in the analyst day given it's a big sector from a longer term, but may not be that relevant currently.

Any update on that? No,

I think we're in the quest for product-market fit and getting increasingly convinced we have it. We've set up a state-of-the-art plant in Nashik, and we've shipped our volumes from there.

The more we understand this category, firstly, it's going to be a long burn. There's going to be a lot of [unclear] do feel that, and I'll again share this on Monday, but we do feel that this is a category that has a good odds for us to really become a big business in a few years' time.

I think we probably may have entered this at the right time.

Right. One last follow-up on palm oil.

The feedback given was palm oil and crude oil, the linkage has been broken, but we have seen fantastic linkage this time also. Your thoughts.

Second, on the soap new formulation which number one player has taken, what is the current stance you have given there is a big palm oil inflation? It makes much more sense now than ever.

What will be your stance now?

See, look Abneesh, the way to look at this is crude went up from, give or take, $70, let us say, to a $100, right, which is a 40%, 50% increase in crude. Palm has gone from 4,000 MYR to about 4 4,500 MYR, which is a 10%, 11% increase in palm.

Some of the middle distillates, which is kerosene and linear alkyl benzene, which is basically the stuff that competes with jet fuel, costs have more than doubled. In the scheme of things, palm oil of 10% is not like a deal breaker the way 20%, 25% is.

It is, of course, okay. In the overall scheme of things, as I said, we're anticipating at $100 Brent and 4,500 MYR palm oil, which still seems to be roughly where we are, kind of 7% to 9% inflation, which between costs and some cuts and pricing, we should be able to recover.

As far as the formulation and competitors, they're not proper for me to comment on that. I think it is important to say that we are on our path.

On soaps, I think we're happy with the margins that we have on soaps. A little bit the volume in the soap category is a little lower than what it's typically been.

We wonder whether it's because of a colder last [unclear] structural is going on. It is not an alarming change in volumes either.

I think is a little bit of wait and watch on soaps. It doesn't seem to be, from what I see, a game changer one way or the other for FY27.

Sure. Thank you.

That's all from my side.

Hi, sir. This is Percy Panthaki here.

I just wanted to understand, in light of the inflation, while there are going to be moving parts in terms of the percentage margin and the top line, if I just look at the rupees crore in terms of the growth YoY of the EBITDA level, do you think because of all these events, there is any need for us as analysts to relook at the rupee million EBITDA figure, or you think you will be able to sort of manage what you had in mind before the war started out?

Percy, we'll give you guidance on Monday, but at this current stage, this is not an alarming inflation because it is spread out over all categories evenly, versus a typical 20%, 25% palm oil inflation, which then one category takes and can't price up, and you can't really take prices in other categories and palm oil inflates. It's hard exactly given you can see that because there are two variables we're playing with here.

There's one our fundamental variable, which we'll talk on Monday, which is we believe our business is on a compounding effect of a couple of our categories like air care and actually some parts of HI and laundry, etc. That one underlying variable where we just see volume momentum building quarter after quarter.

There's another compounding factor of a potential El Niño and a third one on West Asia. This is the three dimensions we're looking at.

Given that that does put a little bit more difficulty, but I would not say that this is an alarming number as things stand today.

Got it. Second question on soaps.

Typically, what happens in the soaps category is that when there is a price increase, there is a significant and measurable sort of volume impact of that price increase. Do you think that this time around that volume impact will not happen because what has happened is because of the GST, the prices have got cut, and now because of inflation, they will go back again.

If you see point to point over the last 5, 6 months, for the consumer, the price would not have changed at all. It goes down and then comes up in a period of less than half a year or so.

From a consumer point of view, if he's seeing that the MRP is roughly unchanged, does that mean that there will be no volume backlash and whatever pricing you take will be purely incremental to the top line?

I think so. I think in fact, it may be the other way around, which is GST went from 18% to 5%.

As I told you, palm oil is up 10%. We may not take up the full, as palm oil is not the only thing we put into soaps.

The chances are that the price increase we take will be less than the GST benefit that we passed on to consumers. If anything, compared to October, the consumer pre-October, pre-GST will in fact see slightly lower prices on soaps, though our realization will improve because that GST doesn't obviously affect our realization.

Exactly. That's what I was saying.

Got it. We'll catch up on Monday.

Yeah. Hi, good evening.

You mentioned some price increases already in place, any indication on what's the kind of range of price hikes on a weighted average basis that have already gone to the market?

In soaps, we have taken up prices by 4%, 5%. In detergents, we have taken up prices again by yeah, 6% or 7%, which is now a meaningful part of our business, maybe 7%.

In household insecticide, we have taken up prices again by 4%, 5%, so that's the kind of range.

Got it. It's already a meaningful price increase that is gone into the market as we speak.

Yeah. Some of those price increases has just happened in April.

In fact, all of them just happened in April, they're not reflected in the results of last quarter.

Got it. Got it.

The second question is on Indonesia. You've slowly kind of been building back the margin also, this quarter again at 28% plus operating margin.

Just wanted to get your sense on whether the issues on competitive intensity, etc., are kind of completely behind us because it reflects like that at least in your margin delivery over the last few quarters.

I think this margin delivery has a little bit to do with revenue recognition, which in Indonesia actually we already did a round even before this Expert Advisory Committee recommendation came up, we already did some reclassification, broadly Indonesia margins are where they are. It's not 28.

Then

quarter four also we generally have a spike because it's the month of Lebaran, which is Ramadan there, etc. I would say Indonesian margins are steady, volumes are back to being steady, two quarters in a row of four, probably potential to go to 5 to 6.

I really do think that some of the businesses which we'll talk about again on Monday, which is Africa, international business, even Latin America, etc., we may be in the cusp of much higher growths there.

Got it. Last was bookkeeping, just a sense on what your tax rate outlook is for fiscal year '27 consolidated?

The tax ETR is likely to remain the same as this year, [unclear] the one-offs which you've taken and we've clarified separately.

Got it. Got it.

Thanks

and wish you all the best.

Yeah. Thank you.

Wish you

Thank you.

Hi, Sudhir and team. Am I audible?

Yes.

Just two questions from my side specifically to your Godrej Fab portfolio. Firstly, in terms of your ARR, where are we tracking versus the 500 crore exit aspiration?

A sub-part to it would be the South and non-South split of that current ARR number. Secondly, at what revenue scale does the Fab portfolio turn EBITDA positive for us at a brand level?

I think those were the two questions from my end. Thanks.

I think our ARR is about on GSV terms, about 500 crores in quarter four, and maybe 450 crores in NSV terms. We, of course, internally look at our gross sales values, about 500 crores.

It is very, very fast-scaled brand. Every quarter, it's kind of doing better than the previous quarter.

It's also kind of broken even in quarter four. Again, there'll be some issues in quarter one because laundry does get pretty badly affected by crude.

We have a good solid path to profitability on Fab. Look, we just think that the sky is the limit.

This is a 4,000-crore market in India. Very rapidly, we've come from nowhere to becoming 500 crores, and we feel this market is a hyper-growth market, and we have a lot to gain and very little to lose here.

Sure. Just a follow-up here.

Would it be fair to assume that the 500-crore growth is more or less to do with South? More than 50%

No. No, Fab is now across the country, doing extremely well in most states, North, Maharashtra.

It has gone significantly beyond being a South player. South is leading it, everything is bigger because we started there in the South, but this is a national play.

We're very excited with the scale opportunity this provides us in the future.

Sure. Thanks for taking my questions.

That's it. Thank you.

Hi, Sudhir. Thank you for taking my question.

If I understand it correctly, you will see margin pressures over the next two quarters because of where the crude is. Is that correct interpretation of what you said?

I think percentage margins we will. Absolute EBITDA also we may or may not, but we will try and see where we can recover, because we do expect both pricing growth and some kind of share growth in a few categories.

Okay. Thanks for that.

However, just one thing. Sudhir, it has been couple of quarters now where if one category performs, something else doesn't, and specifically on Personal Care, things are not going as planned, right?

What is the long-term strategy, because the roadblocks now or the blockers which we will see in next two quarters will only amplify anything which doesn't perform. What is the thought on that front?

Look, in every quarter, you'll have some category performing. I think you have to look at the overall numbers.

In India, we delivered 8% volume, 10% sales growth, and 18% EBITDA. Across the world, we delivered 11% revenue and 10% EBITDA.

There will always be some category in some quarter that doesn't do well. I think as long as most geographies are range bound, then one should be okay with it, because these things they do change a little bit.

The Personal Care number is a bit lower than what we thought, but this 3 can go to 7, 8. Personal Care structurally is a slightly slower-growing business for us than Home Care because of the weightage of soaps.

I'm not unduly worried about Personal Care. It's at the lower end of what it should be.

It may be a little bit higher than this on a long term. We do expect our Home Care businesses to really grow much faster.

One can expect in the long term our Home Care businesses to grow faster than our Personal Care businesses just because of the weightage of soaps. It's not one of those things that, if you have one part of business doing well, another part doing badly, and the overall business doesn't do well, then it's a problem.

The two big numbers for us are India UVG, which at 8 is good, and overall EBITDA, which at 10 is okay. I guess that's how we look at it.

Okay. Just one basically on Personal Care itself, right?

You have been bullish in your commentary for past couple of quarters on soap doing well or soap picking up, right? It is not doing as well as we thought, and it's impacting the overall growth if you look at it because the sheer weight of soaps, right?

Is there any plan from the management side to increase the marketing spends or increase the awareness, or is there some sort of a strategy? Because this apparently is one pain point which has been there for past couple of quarters, at least two, if I can recollect it properly, right?

Is there any strategy around this that we will spend more on the marketing side to enhance the visibility or enhance the performance? See,

I think there are a couple of things on soaps. One is, last year, we genuinely think the temperatures affected the overall category volumes, because when we look at the data, it is a bit anomalous.

FY24 was a good year in terms of volumes. FY25 was okay.

FY26 we started okay, and in a couple of months. There is a temperature impact there.

Also there is a movement of soaps to liquids. Again, we'll talk about it on Monday.

The biggest thing that we'll have to do is to look at the overall skin cleansing business. We're having a lot of green shoots on Cinthol body wash.

We've doing extremely well on Magic handwash. Now with MCBC, we have an acquisition in face wash, which is also kind of very promising.

Really we have to change our lens from soaps to cleansing and look at the growths there.

Nothing more to do on the marketing spends or visibility or anything else, right? It's just about how

the category Soaps is really to kind of gain market share consistently, not to lose market share. The growth of the market is the growth of the market.

Between cleansing, between other categories, we'll have to compensate. As we'll show you on Monday, there are some categories which are on hyper-growth, and those are compounding every quarter, the impact of that is becoming bigger and bigger every quarter.

Thanks so much, Sudhir. Best of luck.

Thank you. I had a question on margins.

In the previous two instances when crude crossed $100 in 2013 and 2022, we saw about 200 bps consol margin contraction. Your comments indicate that this time the margin contraction may not be meaningful.

What's different this time? Is there a change in business or raw material mix, or is it palm oil already high in the base, or GST rate cut is making it easier to raise prices?

Any comments on this, Sudhir?

I think it's a combination. The palm oil hike so far is a 10% palm oil hike.

In '22 and all, it had gone up 20%, 25%. That is not the extent of palm oil inflation we're seeing today.

I think the relative salience of soaps is slower than what it used to be, because we are now becoming a larger and larger Home Care business. As a combination of all these, I still expect, as I told you, lower than normative margins on Q1 and probably Q2, though it may not be very different from what it was last year.

I think that's the reason.

Understood. Secondly, on detergents, single-digit price hike against 50% increase in R&D cost, is there more pricing action required?

Sorry, that question wasn't clear.

The question was on detergents. You've taken a single-digit price hike.

The raw material cost has gone up meaningfully, 50%. Wanted to understand if there is more pricing action

required in detergents. We will kind of do this in a couple of steps.

We are, of course, committed to pricing it right. One is, we're still nowhere near the market leaders in this category, we will be led by the market leader here.

Understood. Lastly, on HI, RNF molecule has been around now for more than a year.

How has it impacted the HI category market share, growth acceleration, or what kind of gains you've seen, what kind of traction you've seen both in case of incense stick as well as in case of LVs? Let's say, do you expect continued acceleration, continued gains from this or now it's in the base?

We'll again talk about this in Monday in detail. Having looked at our numbers now for a few quarters, we conclude that, in general, RNF has worked.

It worked better in some places than others, but overall it has worked, and we feel reasonably confident that from a kind of 0 to low single-digit growth category, household insecticide is at least a high single-digit category and, over a period of time can compound into a double digit category. We do feel that the household insecticide problem that plagued us for 10 years is probably behind us, though of course It is, whether you like it or not, a volatile category in terms of seasons, there'll be ups and downs in seasons.

That entire mean is, I think, going to change pretty meaningfully. That's what we've been observing, because we've been observing this spread over season.

We have a seasonality index on household insecticide, and we've been observing a meaningful variance on our total business over seasonality since we launched RNF. It's taken some time for [unclear] bit of time to happen, but we do feel, and one of our main themes on Monday is to show you in detail on why we believe the HI issues may be behind us.

Understood. Thank you.

That's it from me.

Yes. Hi, Sudhir.

Good evening. I had two questions.

The first was on soaps again, that in Q3, you commented that the packet growth was better than the volume growth. Just trying to understand that with the full impact of the grammage increase sort of playing out in Q4, what led to maybe the growth not accelerating versus Q3?

Is it that even the packet or the unit growth sort of saw a deceleration?

It's still sitting on very high grammage growths last year at the same period. See, what happened in soaps is between Q4, Q1, and Q2 basically Q4 of FY24, sorry FY25, Q1 and Q2, we've had very sharp grammage cuts.

We're still lapping bases where our grammage on small packs is significantly lower than what it was in Q4 of last year. It's one of the reasons why volumes are still a little bit muted.

On large packs, they're better than they are on small packs.

Then adjusting for the GST YoY, the grammages for the small packs are lower is what you're still alluding to. Because

the kind of hikes that we took in or drops we took in soaps between Q3 of FY25 and Q2 of FY26 when palm prices shot up, if I'm not mistaken, for example, Godrej No. 1 10 rupees went from something like 55 g to 40 g, then we took it back up to, I think, 46 or 47, it's still a good 15%, 20% lower than what it was last year.

Understood. That's helpful.

The second question is you alluded to the inflation RM

Sorry for that. Is this better?

Sudhir, you alluded to the individual components of RM of how they've inflated, whether it is LAB or for palm. On a blended basis, what is the inflation we are at present facing for the company as a whole?

I think we put that out in our results. 7% to 9% is what we're seeing.

Even on the spot prices.

Even on the spot, spot is changing every day, but even on an average, spot price. Let's just say at a $100 to $105 Brent and 4,500 CPO, that's what we're seeing.

Got that. Just one final question on Fab.

If I heard you right, you mentioned that, obviously, the pricing choices that you plan to take will be more determined by how the market leader reacts rather than how the RM sort of behaves.

Yeah. Yes.

See, when we are leaders, we lead price; when we're followers, we have to follow price.

Sure. That's it, sir.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. Hi, Sudhir.

Thanks for the opportunity. Just had one single basic question.

Most of them others have been answered. While you're seeing margin under stress over the next coming quarters, you do have price hikes that are being seen.

In such a scenario, do you see consolidated EBITDA growth also following a similar trajectory as margins? That is moderating from 4Q levels in the first half, or how should I see that?

I think so, because, of course, India gets hit the most, but I think the same principle will be there: percentage margin and absolute EBITDA margins are quite high.

Got it. Okay.

Perfect. That's all from my side.

Thank you very much.

Sudhir, just one follow-up. You are alluding that you will take some price hikes, and you have already taken some over the last two quarters, right?

I just wanted to understand, in these specific categories you're taking a price hike, are you seeing some sort of a price inelasticity, or are you seeing some sort of a drying up on volume based on whatever we have done so far?

I would say that I don't expect drying up on volumes, to be honest, because as I told you, and I've seen a couple of these hyper-inflations on crude before. There are market share gains versus locals in some categories you get.

Maybe volumes will be a little lower than what we wanted at the beginning of the year. Maybe revenue growth will be a little higher than what we thought we'd get at the beginning of the year.

Maybe EBITDA will be, as things stand, slightly lower than what we thought, but still pretty good, or maybe it'll be where it is. That's what I'm anticipating at current costs.

Okay. Thank you.

That's all. Appreciate it.

Thank you, everyone. We hope we have been able to answer all your queries.

In case of any further queries, please reach out to us on our IR contact details. Again, I would like to invite you all to our analyst investor meet on Monday, and we hope to see you there.

Thank you and good evening.