Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for being on this call so early in the morning. Sorry to put you through this, but unavoidable.

It's been a great quarter, certainly a festive quarter on a high base. We're delighted to have seen this kind of uptick in demand.

I must also say it is coming on the back of a lot of volatility, competitive intensity, and I must compliment all our teams across all the brands and divisions and subsidiaries to have risen up to the challenge and delivered a good quality execution to kind of take advantage of this. It's the team effort that has helped.

I now hand over this for a few opening comments to our CFO, Ashok Sonthalia, after which we'll start the Q&A.

Thanks, Ajoy, and very good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining this call.

I just thought this time that three, four important points related to quarter or going forward, I will just point out so that you may please take a note. We are very happy to announce that we completed 67% stake acquisition of Damas, and the accounting of that you will see from 1st January, consolidation of Damas books into Titan consolidation will start from 1st January.

Quarter four results, you will have Damas consolidation. With CaratLane, international business which is primarily jewellery business, TEAL, and now Damas also, the consolidated view of Titan is becoming increasingly important.

We have also made sizable investment as well in these businesses. Therefore, I urge you to start looking at consolidated performance as well because that's going to be increasingly important.

From the beginning of this financial year, we have started providing business view of domestic and international market performances. We also provide reconciliation between statutory reporting and the business view reporting in our IR presentation.

I do hope this will help you to get a complete picture of business performances. One more important point which we find sometime people don't account for, we always disclose amount of bullion and digi-gold sale through a note in our IR presentation as well as statutory accounts, and we always exclude them from any performance-related metrics.

As these amounts are sometimes significant, I request you to pay attention to these notes while kind of assessing our performance. The other important development which all companies have faced in India, that labour code impact has been accounted for in our quarter three books.

The impact on a consolidated level is ₹152 crore, which has been shown an exceptional item in the consolidated as well as ₹138 crore in standalone financials. These were some of the important points which I thought I'll point out to them.

Now we can open the floor for questions and answers. Thank you.

Hi, good morning. My first question was if you could briefly touch upon the growth trends that you've seen in fourth quarter till date, especially in context of further sequential gold price inflation.

This is addressed to any particular division or overall?

I'm sorry, I meant from the jewellery segment perspective.

Arun will answer.

Okay. Good morning, this is Arun Narayan, CEO Jewellery.

Thank you for your question. For the fourth quarter, we've just seen a month gone by, and I'd like to leave it by saying it's been a good month.

The real difference what we've seen in January versus the months leading up is that the gold rate has been volatile. Right through this year, we have seen a secular rise in gold rate, and that leads to a certain behavior.

When gold rate is volatile, it's difficult to call. I wouldn't want to leave you all with anything that is indicative of how it may play out in the rest of the quarter, but only to say that the month of January has been good.

Now we are seeing a bidirectional movement of gold rate, it's too early to call out or give you a guidance or say anything that could guide you on where the rest of the quarter could kind of move.

Okay. Just a follow-up to this, Arun.

The gold exchange campaign's intensity has sustained? The old gold mix has sustained at higher levels, which you would have probably seen in the third quarter, or would that have come off?

It's sustained, and our own investment and efforts behind that call-out also sustains.

Got it. My second question was more from an industry perspective for jewellery.

Is there any indication of consolidation happening either on the retail side or supply chain side due to higher gold prices? Is there any indication of winding up of operations of small contract manufacturers or even mom-and-pop retailers, which could ideally benefit the overall organized industry?

Nothing to really call out as something new which we are seeing. Of course, formalization continues, but beyond that, nothing to call out and report.

Sure. I've got few more questions, but I'll get back in queue.

Thank you.

Hi team, great performance. My questions are actually slightly beyond the quarter or the short term.

Look, I think this part of unprecedented gold move which we have seen, the previous participant spoke about possibly hypothesis of formalization. My question is more inward-looking in a way.

When this part of, let's say, material, let's say, beyond the demand planning changes which actually happened, particularly to the supply chain, gold price, etc., if you could talk about, let's say, any behavior in consumers. For example, we would have discussed the 22 karat to 18 and possibly even 14 earlier.

There are practical challenges for consumers to buy anything beyond 18 on the lower side because as I understand, it can't be pledged, etc. Or from a supply chain point of view, let's say you manufactured a 10 g chain which had a certain lead time and a certain, let's say, time for staying in the store, etc., and suddenly the price is materially higher.

If you could talk a little bit about how nimble you actually handled this in the last six months, let's say, and which is a complicated one, too. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks Manoj for that question.

I think the agility, perhaps, is only on responding to the need to be accessible in jewellery and the need to keep price points clearly in mind so that we offer choice as close to what we offered in the past at certain price points. Therefore, the pivot to lightweight jewellery across the board, introducing 18 karat traditional gold jewellery also in certain parts of the country where we have seen a greater openness to it.

We are seeing parts of north and east being more open, but in west and south, we are seeing the thought. Similarly with studded jewellery at lower caratages.

We always had 14 karat jewellery in both CaratLane and Mia, but now we've also introduced that in Tanishq, and also up to 9 karat in CaratLane and Mia. These are the ways in which we are responding to keep jewellery accessible.

That being said, of course, when there is a changeover or when you have to give sufficient choice across multiple caratages, there is a bit of complexity and there is a bit of transition that the system undergoes, which is what we've been through last a couple of months. We think we'll be able to tide over that, and early signs also are quite positive for these changes that we are ushering in.

Thanks.

Manoj, I'll come in on your supply chain piece. It is not that lead times dramatically change or complicate life.

It is simply the changeover and ensuring that you're able to have segregated lines internally that matters. As far as we are concerned, even when we work with our vendor partner ecosystem, we supply the gold, etc., to a large extent, so that doesn't really impact us.

The concerns you might have had in terms of either lead time or volatility in price, etc., because it's mostly our gold.

Understood. Thank you, Arun and Ajoy.

Just one quick follow-up on the first one is that see, making charges in India is a percentage of the gold price. Now what I broadly observe from most of, at least, the branded players who advertised, listed, unlisted, both put together, it's an x percentage discount on the making charge.

Is that now a through-the-year sort of phenomenon given that the gold prices are higher? Because from a Tanishq point of view, at least I observed that you had pockets or seasons or windows in which you used to have it.

Would that be a necessity now to have this through the year? Excuse me.

What would be need to have Manoj? I didn't catch you.

No, no. Meaning the discount on making charges, given that it's a percentage and making charges would have gone up 70-80% in line with gold inflation.

Historically, observation is that Tanishq actually had those discount windows, but given the gold prices where it is, would you either have to re-look at the percentage making charges or have an all-year sort of a discount? Or maybe you are able to manage it better as

well. Far, I think we've been able to manage it across both the gold as well as the studded portfolio.

We have windows pre-Akshaya Tritiya and pre-Dhanteras where it's across the board, and rest of the year, it's on certain grammage or price bands, largely catering to the wedding customer. There is a playbook that we have, which is continuing.

We've not seen the need to kind of alter or change that despite the conditions that you're alluding to. Superb,

excellent. Thank you so much.

I will fall back in the queue. Just a second if I may, one request, one comment.

Beyond the L1 and L2 and L3, the franchising model which Tanishq had over a long period of time, are you looking at any other franchising models at this point, is already there in the market?

We keep exploring various models, but nothing really to significantly alter the franchising model that we currently have.

Okay. No 44 model for now actually.

Not really.

Sure. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you.

Hi. Congratulations on a great quarter.

My first question was on buyer growth, where you mentioned buyer growth is flattish this quarter, but there's also mention of 45% new buyer contribution, something that I think was not mentioned last couple of quarters. Are you seeing any improvement in that metric, and how does that square off between not having buyer growth, but 45% new buyer contribution?

Does it mean that your existing, let's say, loyalty members that's where the frequency reduction has happened?

Thanks for that question. The new buyer share is more or less stayed consistent or maybe it's just more or less in the ballpark, I would say.

However, we do have many ways of keeping our existing customers warm and bringing them back to the store, initiatives which happen at a store level as well as CRM centrally as part of our Encircle program and now also with Tata Neu. It's a lot of existing customers who continue to come back, but new pretty much being in the broad ballpark.

I think also perhaps we're blessed to be in a category where despite such significant increases in raw material cost, we are still able to kind of hold a certain buyers in our hold. That's really credit to price elasticity and our ability to kind of hold that despite inflation in gold rates.

One second. The specific question you had was has it gone up or down?

Vis-à-vis last quarter, it has improved. Last quarter new was 42%, this quarter is 45%.

Vis-à-vis last year same quarter, which was 48%, it is lower. It's an improvement sequentially, but a small reduction compared to the previous year.

Got it. One follow-on question on this was, is there any different trend in studded buyer growth in terms of that trending better than overall buyer growth?

Yes, it is a few percentage points better, and has been also the case last many quarters.

Got it. My second question actually was on jewelry margins.

Given what's happened with gold and the mix, which you cannot really control, if consumers want more gold coins, do you beyond the point essentially focus internally more on EBIT growth as a jewellery business, or do you still try to hold on to those lines on margin range that you want to hold? Just wanting to understand how you think about it in this very high revenue growth environment.

Also if just specifically for the quarter, if Ashok could highlight if there were any one-offs in terms of inventory hedging gains or losses that were there.

Hi. Thank you.

Ashok here. You rightly pointed out, with the rising gold price environment, getting a good fix on margin outcome is becoming challenging.

Margin remains an outcome. In the way we keep prioritizing growth, customer acquisition, market share, etc.

At the same time, we have always said that we are very mindful of margin. You are right, the EBIT profit growth in absolute amount is becoming more and more important than profitability margin, because profitability margin increasingly is becoming challenging in the rising gold environment.

That's what. What was your second part of the question?

Were there any one-offs in terms of hedging gains or losses in the quarter?

No, in quarter three, there is no one-off. Last year quarter three, custom duty gain was there, which you remember.

If we normalize, then 50 basis point drop is there in quarter three compared to last quarter three.

Got it.

Ashok Sonthalia: That is all on account of Ashok Sonthalia: Thanks.

Thanks. That's it from my side.

All the best.

Thanks for taking my question. Again, my question is respect to the jewelry business.

You referred to that buyer growth has been flat, and at the same time, when we look at the studded growth, it has been lower than the jewelry business growth. How should we think about the transaction value of customers?

Logically, if buyer growth is slow, it would mean that new buyer growth is slow, we would believe that the transaction values are going up. Of course, there is a gold price increase also.

If studded is slower, how is actually the consumer behaving? Because this was a quarter which was a high wedding calendar quarter also.

Are new consumers who are buying for weddings not coming to Tanishq, or is there some real change in how consumer is behaving?

I'll just set the record right on this. Our buyer growth on studded has been a few percentage points higher quarter on quarter, not only this quarter, but also many quarters leading to quarter three.

However, the ticket size growth on gold, because of the gold content being higher, is much higher in plain gold than it is on studded jewelry because diamond prices aren't going up, but gold is going up. We are seeing a bigger ticket size jump in gold versus diamonds, and that's why the buyer growth translating into revenue is much higher in gold compared to studded jewelry.

That being said, it is also true that we are seeing a greater traction at higher price points in gold jewelry and in studded, and there is pressure at lower price points on account of inflation and rise in gold rate. Plus, of course, a certain profile of customers seem to be accepting this rise versus others who may be waiting and seeing if gold rates kind of cool down.

In general, wedding buyers are the ones who, where it is not discretionary, and they are the ones who therefore, we needed to give a lot of comfort to from an exchange standpoint, and we are seeing wedding buyers stay obviously invested as a consequence.

Okay. Just my second and final question, again linked to the first question.

What would be now the average transaction value of a new customer, a studded jewelry customer, and a gold jewelry customer?

I think the total ticket size is hovering closer to 1.7 lakhs at an overall level, approximately. 1.9, sorry, for the quarter, 1.9 lakhs.

We may not be able to give you this by studded and plain gold, but I think the question you asked, the studded ticket size has also gone up by 15% in the quarter three, while plain gold ticket size went up by 44% or something like that. There is a differential in the ticket size growth.

In both of them have seen ticket size growth. So

1.9 lakhs, and a new customer? What is the transaction value?

I'm sorry, we won't be able to give that level of depth because it may not

be Understood. This 1.9 lakhs would be the highest we have seen ever?

Naturally.

Yeah.

Yes.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Hi, sir. Good morning.

Congratulations on a good performance. Sir, first question is on jewelry gross margin.

The comparable gross margin, so that we report in our standalone financials, has dipped by about 200 basis points in Q3. While operating leverage and other cost efficiencies has offset 150 basis points of this impact.

Why I'm sort of checking on this because we have not seen such kind of gross margin dip in previous quarters. I wanted to check the nature of these growth investments that we're making in the business.

What happens if sort of growth profile of the business takes a dip? Are these sort of investments reversible in nature, or we may see some margin challenge if growth doesn't show up?

I guess that you are looking at Titan Company performance slide and alluding from there what has happened to jewellery, because you are right, largely Titan Company standalone numbers reflect jewellery number. The drop in GC is Ajoy is doing normalized, huh?

So 1%. Normalized, yeah, you are right, 1% drop.

We have been talking about that in rising gold prices, there are two, three ways margin gets impacted. One is, of course, gold coin salience has gone up quite a bit.

Studded jewellery margin, because of the gold content goes up in terms of value, studded jewellery margin also goes down, while gold jewellery remains the way they are. This put together, I think and you also need to check whether you are including bullion in your calculation.

Please exclude bullion, which has been given

I have excluded that. In Q3 last year, there was no bullion reported by you.

This year, it's very small, about ₹3 crore.

No, I just wanted to check that you are doing the thing. You might have done that rightly.

All these things are leading to this kind of thing. That is what we said, if gold prices keep rising like this, whatever we are doing, 14 karat, 18 karat, 9 karat, light jewellery, they would eventually catch up when gold prices stabilize.

In the continuously rising gold prices, jewellery margin will kind of exhibit this kind of pressure. Absolute, because of the growth coming in, I think absolute EBIT or absolute PBT, whichever level you want to look at, have been growing nicely, decently.

Not in the same percentage as revenue. Business mix is another thing.

When you look at the company-level, TCL level, then business mix also plays a role. Jewellery is becoming, and in quarter three particularly, it has become more dominant because of 40% growth, while other businesses have grew nicely, but they are 17-18%, 14%, 15%.

Because of 40%, now jewellery, which is slightly lower-margin business, has gone up in the portfolio mix, and that also has suppressed TCL India or TCL consolidated margin a little bit.

Understood. Sir, I also wanted to understand, there is a good component of sales coming from gold exchange and some of the installment schemes that we have, which is relatively immune to the gold price.

Wanted to check, what is the mix of these two currently for our business and maybe what we are targeting for the upcoming year through gold exchange and the installment schemes?

I'll answer that. The jewellery purchase plans, we started with Golden Harvest many years back, but over the last almost two years, the program that's gained traction is called Golden Advantage, which is a grammage program, and very relevant solution for anyone planning to buy jewellery in this inflationary era that we are in.

As you all are aware, anywhere from 20% to 25% of our business comes from our jewellery purchase plans, and that's kind of sustained even at this point in time, although we are seeing more customers prefer the new Golden Advantage over Golden Harvest, which is very logical and probably a more appropriate solution for these times. That being said, even our sale through the gold exchange programs have gone up, both the Tanishq exchange program where people come back to upgrade their Tanishq jewellery, as well as those who bring back gold bought elsewhere.

Almost, like we've been saying, more than 50% of our business today has an element of exchange of either types. In quarter three, we saw a good jump in that.

No, you can

use. Broadly, can we understand that 70-75% of your business is relatively immune to gold price volatility?

Is this a right inference?

See, there will be a double counting between these two because there is a A intersection B as well. I don't have a figure right now to give you, but our idea is to move in the direction that you're alluding to, because that's good for business and it's also good for the consumer.

Directionally, that's where we want to move, but there will be an intersection between the two as well.

Just to add one clarification that in gold exchange program, upsell also happens. To that extent, the upsell element is having impact of gold price, but customer is taking it in its stride.

All these intersections are there. Straight deriving 75% is not right.

I think I would just add a comment here. I think nobody can be immune from gold price increase, even if you may be exchanging 100% or you may be having a Rivaah Golden Advantage plan.

There are enough people who may change their mind when they see gold prices are gone up substantially, or they are not in a position. I think I would stay away from making that assumption that you kind of alluded

to. Sir, last small question from my end.

Eyewear growth is 11% with ASP contributing about 5-6% of that. The volume growth is still low at 5-6%, right?

I'm talking about the customer-level sales in eyewear business. Two questions here.

One, we were working on the mass and mid-premium end of the market, right, as indicated in the Analyst Meet. What has driven this ASP increase?

The sub-part to it is as in when do we expect the volume growth to pick up in this business?

Hi, good morning. This is Raghavan here.

Thanks for your question. See, as far as Q3 is concerned, our domestic growth was almost 17.5%, right?

That was overall growth. In terms of volume, the volume growth was around close to 9%.

The way to reach I

was referring to the UCP sales, right? That is reported in the PPT.

The UCP sale is 11%, you're absolutely right. The omnichannel sale what we have reported is 11%.

That's the revenue growth. This revenue growth has been reported by a volume growth of close to around 8%.

From a volume growth standpoint, it is more or less within our zone. This is what we have estimated, around an 8% to 10% growth.

This is what we will continue to deliver, so that is what it is.

Any shift in focus that we had indicated earlier, we were targeting value and mid-premium, what has led to this ASP increase?

In terms of our positioning, right? Titan Eyeplus is positioned as a multi-price, multi-brand destination.

When it comes to multi-brand, today we offer anywhere between 15 to 20 international brands. There is a kind of tailwind for premiumization through our international brand collaboration.

Yes, quarter three has also been aided by a ticket size increase because normally November and December, we see an NRI season effect, and it has a direct correlation on the international brands. We had the benefit of the ticket size also going up in November, December.

Fair enough. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you.

Hi. Excellent set of numbers.

Just wanted to ask, which geographies have contributed to the international profit? Are there still new stores that are unprofitable, and what would be the average margin in the mature stores?

Siddhant, I will give you one color that international margin had at least one-time this time this quarter because we had some primary sales of ₹200 crore, close to that. If you adjust that, the margins are about 5% to 6%.

Then gradually it is growing up, as we have always talked about, from the loss to gradually it will improve to reflect jewellery margin which we have in India. At this point of time, 5%, 6%.

We, of course, all stores, because of the more complex product and studded jewellery ratio being high in North America, but operating cost also being high, more or less margin profile remains same as you see in India. There is nothing significantly different in international market.

Okay. Could you just elaborate on the exceptional item?

We had ₹194 crore of primary sale by our Dubai to Damas for the two stores which we are getting Tanishq converted into Tanishq. Because Damas consolidation is starting from 1st January, until that it was not, so that is kind of sale of our Dubai region where this additional profit is sitting.

From 1st January onwards, when Damas starts getting consolidated, then these kind of transaction will get eliminated. Before 1st January, because these transactions happened, they could not be eliminated.

Understood. Any update on what percentage of stores will be converted to Damas or what percentage of revenue will be converted to Tanishq from Damas?

No, there is nothing like that. Damas will continue to grow on the Arab segment, and they will continue to grow their retail network on that side.

There were few stores which were in the catchment which was more appropriate for Tanishq kind of offering, and some of those stores are getting converted. You will see some of the quarter four also, and we will report that as when we present quarter four results.

Some more stores will get converted apart from these two.

Okay.

It is a store-by-store assessment, and we don't have the final number. It is not a very, very major activity.

Damas will keep growing its network on the Arab side of the segment. Yeah.

That's great. My second question was regarding the TEAL margins.

Was there some exceptional seasonality that you mentioned, sir? Just a broad range of what kind of margins could we expect that business to have?

Just a conservative number.

TEAL is a project business where we do percentage of completion method on a part of business, which is automation solution, because they do projects. That margin will reflect nature of projects which are getting executed in that quarter, and some ups and downs can happen.

Manufacturing services business, which is the second part, is more stable product kind of business. Combination of this two, and TEAL is still not that scaled-up entity, you can see these margin variations.

I can only tell you TEAL is doing well with a good order book and good visibility for the future. Quarterly margin ups and downs, you might expect in future also.

That's great. I'll join back for a couple more questions.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the opportunity and good numbers.

I wanted to check on the jewelry business. We have, of course, seemed to have ramped up our marketing efforts, both discounting, gold schemes, etc.

As I think we discussed, the margin has taken a hit on a normalized basis. I think my question is, in the longer term, if this gold price stability does not happen during the year, would you want to revise how you approach the problem you're solving?

Is it a margin profile, is it ROCE, is it absolute margin growth? What are we really solving for, or is it market share in revenue terms?

How do we think about your approach to decision-making here?

Hi, Jignanshu. This is Ajoy Chawla.

I want to first make a few observations and correct you slightly. Firstly, our approach has not been to drive discounting to grow.

That is par for the course for most festive season and other occasions, and it's been there. In fact, our discounts have been slightly lower if you ask me, than more.

In fact, our entire approach has been to create excitement in the customers on two counts. One is by freshness of products and product innovation and campaigns, which kind of appeal to them and showcase these.

The second piece is to leverage exchange as an emotional connect with customers. We've had offers in exchange all along.

This time, what we did was make it a different kind of narrative, which is based on the fact that we import a lot of gold in this country. I think these are the two fundamental shifts that have happened.

Therefore, to that extent, is discounting or something that has driven down gross margins or something like that? No, the honest answer is it's business mix, as Ashok shared, because jewelry has become a larger share of the business.

Within jewelry, the rising gold rate has impacted the studded margin, as it is expected to, which we've explained earlier in terms of the material cost, relative weightage of gold and diamonds in the material cost. Thirdly, it is to do with gold coins in a period like this of rising gold prices as well as festive quarter, where the product mix within jewelry also undergoes some change.

Frankly, these are the only pieces. Now whether operating leverage will continue to kick in, it depends on the scale of the business.

We believe it should. I think as Ashok pointed out, please start looking at absolute growths in our EBIT and PBT, and compare it to the absolute growth in gross contribution and absolute overall growths.

That might be more relevant. Once gold price stabilizes, maybe we can come to some understanding of where it settles down.

Okay. That's helpful, Ajoy.

Thank you. Second question was on CaratLane.

We saw a significant margin uptick here, but there's no specific mention of any base effect here for customs duties or anything. Just wanted a bit of color on how to look at the CaratLane margin performance, especially as you rightly said, with studded sort of also going down a little given gold price.

What has really led to it, and how should we think about it in the future?

Ashok will respond to this.

CaratLane has a high proportion of studded, and that is where the last quarter, there was some impact of custom duty, but it was not so significant like Tanishq or Titan jewellery business that we needed to call out. There was some element of that, for sure.

As you are aware that there has been operating leverage at play in CaratLane, which is available from the financials of CaratLane. The studded proportion has slightly come down because they also introduced 9 karat, 14 karat modern gold jewellery, which is getting good traction, and particularly in the online space and gifting space, etc.

If you remember couple of quarters back, we had said that gradually CaratLane, with his scale, will start inching towards double-digit EBIT margin. I think they have reached there maybe a slightly earlier than what we expected.

I think they would stay there, low double-digit margin, EBIT profile. I would say.

I think if Saumen is on the call, he wants to add anything. Saumen, are you on the call?

Yes, I am. Can you hear me?

We can hear you. You can add if you want to, if I have missed.

Sure. No, I think you pretty much covered everything.

I think our studded ratio is anywhere between 85% to 90%. We have been hit by the escalating gold rate in quarter one quite badly.

I think we recovered a bit better in quarter two and quarter three. That's one part.

I think revenue growth was the single largest factor. We have been consistently managing our cost for the last six quarters if you look at our figures.

I think so revenue growth and the cost management are the two main factors, and recovery from the margins drop that happened in Q1 are the three things that I would attribute Q3's profit performance. Introduction of 9 karat diamond jewellery, Shaya diamond, which is silver and diamond combination, they are low in terms of contribution today, but they have a positive impact when it comes to margin.

That's very helpful. Just a clarification on this.

Studded share in volume terms is broadly same as last year? Is that a fair point?

I think we'll let that be. We'll give you more details in the Investor Day.

Saumen, we'll share a little bit during the Investor Day, yeah?

Sure. Sure.

All right. Thank you.

Hi. Good morning.

Just two questions from my end. The first one was on domestic jewelry.

Over the last six months, last two quarters specifically, have you been kind of positively surprised with the level of gross contribution you've been able to hold, as well as the relative inelasticity, if I can call it that, on the grammages, while they obviously would have declined? Has both these elements kind of positively surprised you?

In that context, your comment on kind of consumer behavior and expected going forward also would be helpful. That's my first question.

I won't answer the gross contribution. This is Ajoy here.

I'll let Ashok answer that. I'll just talk a little bit about the consumer and how we are looking at it.

I think if you step back and see, there was a lot of people on the fence if I go back to quarter one and quarter two, waiting for gold prices to correct. That's my reading if I recollect right.

The moment they saw that gold prices are only going up, and there were enough rumors in the market that it will continue to go up, and then the festive season came, followed by the wedding season, a lot of customers really jumped in on account of this entire FOMO, fear of missing out. I feel that is continuing even now.

It remains. Now, of course, with the volatility in gold price, maybe it might stabilize a bit or people may once again pause and wait.

I think that's the larger consumer story, which is why we are seeing that we've been able to hold. The second piece I think is more internal to us.

I think our teams have gone out on a limb and done extensive work on product, on retail, on customer outreach, on exchange, and I think it speaks volumes for the execution that has really played up. I think somewhere some credit also goes to the teams for having done that.

On gross contribution, I'll leave it for Ashok to answer.

Harit, I don't think we specifically and separately disclose jewellery gross contribution. Maybe you are taking Titan as a proxy for jewellery.

To that extent, we explained in the earlier question also that those elements are playing out, particularly in last five, six quarters, where gold prices are going up in a very, very accelerated manner. As long as this trend continues, except in January first time we saw a really huge volatility and correction, but again it has started going up.

What we are told by people like you and economists that structural things underlying gold bullishness stay. One can expect that gold prices might continue to go up.

In that environment, there will be stress on margin. Some part we will be able to mitigate through operating leverage.

As long as we are able to deliver good revenue growth, we will get operating leverage and we'll able to maintain EBIT level or PBT level margin profile.

Great. The second question was, earlier participants have asked about formalization, but my question is from the perspective of in an environment where the cost of doing business as far as inventory is concerned dramatically goes up, and the entire market doesn't have a balance sheet like you do, do you expect pace of expansion in the industry to kind of relatively slow down, not for you, but generally to slow down, given just the inventory cost is so high and it's primarily a COCO model ex your business?

Just some thoughts on that.

It's difficult to comment on how the industry will behave. It'll be very speculative.

I think we should wait and watch how it plays out. It's been only a few months.

To draw conclusions of a long-standing nature on that may be inappropriate.

Certainly it puts us, in a I would say a bit not huge, but it's an advantage, competitive advantage for us because we are able to at least fund our inventory, I think, better than others.

Great. Wish you all the best.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations on great set of numbers.

My question is on the studded business. Just wanted your comment on how that consumer behavior in this segment is shaping up.

Now that you own both the narratives of LGD, which is on one side of consumer value proposition, and Tanishq diamonds on the other. I also note that higher value studded was growing faster, but ₹1-2 lakh was a bit under pressure, but you also launched lots of things in sub-₹1 lakh segment.

Just wanted your kind of input here, how this business consumer behavior is shaping up, and also the studded promotion in that context, how it is responding to some of the initiatives on price points that you had taken. Some color on that there would be very helpful.

Sure. Thanks, Amit.

Arun here. You're right in saying that we have been seeing pressure sub-₹1 lakh, not ₹1-2, but sub-₹1 lakh in studded jewellery.

Also with gold rate behaving the way they are, also in gold jewellery. Above ₹1 lakh is a different picture for studded jewellery.

A lot of efforts from our side, like I'd said earlier, to keep jewellery accessible is really been top of our mind. What you see even in January with the Festival of Diamonds and with a new face to our daily wear studded portfolio with Ananya Panday, etc., are all efforts we are doing to woo that customer back into the store.

Having said continues to be high on our priority. It will take lots more effort for us to do that.

I will only leave it by saying that, let's say the trend that we are seeing in a sense, maybe the slowdown in less than ₹1 lakh maybe plateauing a bit. We are not seeing an acceleration there.

Even in January, we are seeing some early signs of results from the efforts we are putting in. To be honest, it will take lot more than that to win that customer back given what we are seeing in terms of price inflation here.

I have one additional comment to add here. As a portfolio of brands between Tanishq, which has a substantial contribution of buyers in the sub-₹1 lakh, sub-₹50,000, Mia, CaratLane, and hopefully going forward in the future, Beyou, which is a different kind of play, I think we should look at the portfolio play eventually, and that's our game plan to ensure that we own that customer in the sub-₹100,000 space.

More importantly, bring in many more customers in the studded space in the sub-₹100,000. In fact, the stress on gold in the sub-₹100,000 buyers is far higher than studded.

Which is fine. We understand, and there'll be different solutions for it.

Yeah.

Got it. That's very helpful, Ajoy and Arun.

Just a small one here is that obviously last year, we've seen studded being in mid-teens and then last quarter was a bit better. In this promotion cycle, are we seeing the similar growth in studded as the last quarter or acceleration or some sort of from a trend point of view, what's so far we've seen in January?

Is there a comment that you could make?

It's too early to call that, Amit. Having said that, I would say that quarter three has been better than the period prior to that.

Quarter four, allow us to wait and call it out at an appropriate time. It's perhaps a little too early.

Also, our Festival of Diamonds is a longest campaign, we'll have to wait and see how that plays out.

Got it. Thanks so much.

That's all from me. Congratulations once again on great set of numbers.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question.

Sir, firstly, one clarification on ticket size. Assuming constant gold prices, is there a material swing or difference in ticket size across quarters?

Usually, third quarter is the highest saliency for you. Does wedding and festive quarter have a material difference than this 1.9?

Can be a material difference for the remaining three quarters? Just one clarification on that first.

Yeah. There are two forces, to say.

One is consumer mix and the need state mix, and second is the gold rate increase. What we are seeing in quarter three, we are seeing play out in quarter four as well because it is also a wedding quarter, and we have seen gold rates increase significantly even beyond December into January.

We are seeing quarter four begin behave similar to quarter three.

I'll just add one more flavor for this. Typically during Akshaya Tritiya and Dhanteras, there are a lot more people who come in.

Many new buyers also come in because they buy small tickets, they buy coins, they buy all kinds of. Actually during those periods of 15 days, you normally land up seeing slightly lower ticket size.

It's as Arun said, during wedding purchases, etc., you see a higher ticket size.

Got it.

During Festival of Diamonds or diamond activation, you see higher ticket size.

Understood. Assuming these swings across quarters may not be as material, it is predominantly the Understood, right?

That's correct. You're right.

Secondly, despite

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on great execution.

My question is, in the past, you've indicated that passing on making charges to consumers in a rising gold price environment is gradual over a couple of quarters, and so you invariably saw some dip in margins. Now when I look at this quarter's performance on a YoY basis, despite all the margin headwinds, be it mix or, and a volatile environment, your EBIT growth is exceptionally good and strong.

My question is, are you positively surprised by the acceptance of making charge as a percentage of sales, in this upcycle of gold price? Or is this kind of behavior that you would have expected in any case at the beginning of the quarter?

Hi Jay, this is Ajoy here. I'll take that question.

What we have seen, I think there are two, three things at play. Firstly, there is a slight shift in the repeat and new buyer contribution.

If you see, new buyer contribution compared to year on year is 3 percentage points down, and typically they come at a lower ticket size, whereas repeat buyers come at higher ticket size. Secondly, because of wedding and the repeat buyers being high, you typically find a richer product mix that we are able to sell compared to new and let's say non-wedding.

The third angle I would like to say, which goes in the opposite direction, because of higher gold prices, there is a tendency for customers to kind of slip down the complexity order, which I mean is that instead of buying very high making charge products, they may tend to slip to slightly medium complexity products. These are two forward and one backward, and there's one more forward which has helped us a lot in quarter three is the collection that we launched was phenomenally successful.

It so happens to be we did exceptionally well with the Mriganka collection and the campaign which the team put out. That created desire, what I would call as irrational desire.

I think all these three, four factors combined have seen the outcome that you're seeing. The final point I would say, which is not related to gold, but to do with studded, the team put in a lot of work in doing many high-value exhibitions across the country.

That has helped a lot in the quarter, and I'm sure will continue to help us in this quarter four as well. All these forces have come together to kind of give you the outcome.

Many of them have added together to give us a big bumper quarter. Let's see how things go on as we go forward.

Thanks, great execution, and wish you the very best.

Hi, good morning, sir. A couple of questions on this gold price bit.

One is, not very long back, there was this debate whether the younger generation prefers gold as much, whether as investment class or as consumption category. Do you think with the way in which prices have gone up, so much excitement around ETFs, and I'm sure you would have seen gold ETF data yesterday, do you think that alters this behavior and the next generation will be far more geared towards gold versus what it could have been otherwise?

No, looking at the performance of CaratLane and Mia in our portfolio, we are actually seeing youngsters stay with us and continue to be invested in jewellery, both as an investment as well as for adornment more. Whatever we are doing to keep products exciting in terms of new collections across all our brands is also kind of keeping them excited in the category.

We aren't seeing an adverse move here. We're only seeing a good response to the excitement that we are bringing in, both in terms of the store additions that we have done, which is quite significant for Mia, and also in terms of the new collections and campaigns that we are bringing out.

Sure. From a medium-term perspective, how do you think about this behavior?

Because Mia, CaratLane are still entry-level. Do you think the interest level of younger generation gets much higher because of all the narrative around gold and the fact that it has come under the consideration set, whether it's ETF or gold jewellery?

Do you think something changes, or you don't think as much as you gauge today?

No, we're seeing it stay positive, which is why our investments in store expansion continue to be fairly robust on Mia. We are taking a positive view of the future.

It's positive only. Even from what I gather, anecdotally, both CaratLane and Mia have had enough inquiries for gold products.

They may do different kinds of gold products, 18 karat or modern gold. Tanishq has seen good modern gold.

I think by and large, I would stay on the track of what Arun said. Even younger customers are interested in gold, and that may sustain.

Got it. The second point on this gold price bit, and again, I'm not sure if because I'm not at least come across anecdotally also, but in a scenario where gold prices are moving up, does that also, a worry, let's say, customers to go into a neighborhood store just from a gold purity perspective or otherwise, or availability?

Sheerly the availability with the jeweller, and that benefits organized players, including yourself?

Quite likely.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Wish you all the best.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. It's been a very good quarter, and thank you for all the wonderful questions that keep us thinking.

Look forward to interacting with you soon. Bye.

Take care.