Thank you so much, and good evening, everyone. On behalf of Mrs.

Bectors Food Specialities Limited, I extend a very warm welcome to all participants joining us for our Quarter 3 results discussion call for the financial year 2026. Today, I am joined by Mr.

Manu Talwar, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Parveen Kumar Goel, Whole-time Director and Chief Financial Officer.

We also have with us our investor relations advisor from MUFG InTime. I hope everyone had an opportunity to review our investor deck and press release, which have been uploaded on the stock exchanges as well as on our company website.

The company reported revenue from operations of INR 533.3 crores in the third quarter of FY26, reflecting a growth of 8.4% year-on-year. The biscuits vertical delivered a resilient 5.7% year-on-year growth, impacted by GST 2.0 transition, as well as continued uncertainty due to punitive tariffs.

The bakery vertical recorded a strong 13.2% year-on-year growth, led by English Oven brand. EBITDA percent came in at 12.9%, which is 44 bps up over Quarter 3 of the financial year 2025.

Amid a dynamic global trade environment, many India-based manufacturers with growing international linkages, like us, navigated a period of uncertainty in the recent times. The proposed trade agreement between India and the United States marks a meaningful step forward in economic, strategic, and geopolitical terms, reinforcing India's position as a globally competitive manufacturing and sourcing hub.

We express our sincere gratitude to Honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, for announcing the same, and for progressive trade facilitation measures and tariff rationalization from 50% to 18%, which have strengthened confidence in the India's export ecosystem, enhanced the attractiveness of Indian food and FMCG manufacturing for a long-term global partnerships, and advanced the vision of Viksit Bharat. This development will enable us in regaining momentum and strengthening our exports vertical.

On the domestic front, implementation of GST 2.0 reforms led to transitionary inventory impact. However, the significant benefits to the consumer bode well for the category, and we are already witnessing the consumption picking up.

Post GST rationalization, we passed on the full benefits to consumer through MRP reductions and increased grammages, enhancing value for the consumer. On the bakery front, English Oven continues to be the key driver of performance, supported by sustained momentum from our QSR partnerships.

English Oven's strong trajectory is underpinned by brand pull, health-first initiatives, and distribution excellence. I am happy to share that I'm happy to share with you that we successfully commissioned our Calcutta plant in January, making our foray into East.

Further, we expanded the English Oven brand into Hyderabad market, marking a strategic entry into a key growth region. We are progressing towards commissioning of the Khopoli plant, targeted in the next few months, which will further enhance our capacity and operational flexibility.

Together, these initiatives are expected to strengthen our presence across key markets, improve supply chain efficiencies, and support sustained growth through deeper regional penetration. Our new product development strategy remains anchored around building a strong health-oriented portfolio, with the full rollout of zero maida range and nature baked reinforcing our better-for-you positioning.

The foray into ready-to-eat desserts under the frozen range continues to scale up, enabling English Oven to participate beyond breakfast and snacking in a household. The ready-to-eat pipeline remains robust, with key launches planned over the coming quarters.

On the biscuits front, we had a successful Diwali season, with the gifting portfolio realizing a 20%-plus growth. Introduction and scaling up of Golden Bites, Fruit & Nut, and Pista Almond cookies, the bakery cookies compliments our strategy of premiumization in general trade, along with quick-commerce-first products like Zero Maida Coconut, which continues to do well.

Rounding up the quarter, we had a very successful collaboration with Blinkit on Christmas, where our flagship Danish Butter Cookie tins penetrated 3 lakh-plus households and generated brand goodwill. Before we move to our financial performance for the quarter, I am pleased to share that we have declared an interim dividend of INR 0.6 per equity share.

Talking about the financial performance, our biscuit segment reported revenue growth of 6%, which stood at INR 325 crores in Q3 FY26, as compared to INR 308 crores in Q3 FY25. The segment has grown by 21% over Q3 FY24.

Our bakery segment revenue for Q3 FY26 stood at INR 198 crores, against INR 175 crores in Q3 FY25, thus registering a growth of 13% on a year-on-year basis, including retail bakery and institutional segment. This segment has grown by 36% over Q3 FY24.

The consolidated revenues for the current year stood at INR 533.3 crores, versus INR 492.1 crores in Q3 FY25, thus registering a growth of 8.4% on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA stood at INR 68.4 crores, resulting in a growth of 11.4% on a year-on-year basis.

The EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 12.8%. PAT stood at INR 38.1 crores for the quarter, resulting in a growth of 10.1% on a year-on-year basis, and PAT margins for Q3 FY26 stood at 7.1%.

Moving to nine months financials FY26, the consolidated revenue for nine months FY26 stood at INR 1,557.7 crores, versus INR 1,427.8 crores in nine months FY25, thus registering a growth of 9.1%. EBITDA for nine months FY26 stood at INR 195.9 crores.

EBITDA margin for nine months FY26 stands at 12.6%. PAT for nine months FY26 stood at INR 105.5 crores.

In Q3, PAT is impacted on account of provisioning owing to new labour code amendments. With this, I request you to open the floor for questions and answers.

Thank you so much.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is on the Khopoli expansion.

As we move closer towards commissioning this plant, could you help us quantify the peak revenue potential from this particular facility at optimum utilization, and what is the timeline that you are assuming for reaching towards that optimum level?

This plant is actually quite a large facility, and the infrastructure has been created for much more than what we have. At the moment, what I can guide you is that the plant capacity for breads would be around the 132,000 breads a day.

In case of buns, we would be doing around a million buns a day. In the buns case, it is going to be double than what we have.

In case of breads, it's going to be much larger, because breads was a very small business, and we were getting it done from outside. These two factories, in the next few years, are going to be commendable and would give a very very good quality breads, and we are looking at good growth numbers.

On the exact side, how many years it'll take, I don't have those numbers with me. We have the next three years plans, which we can share it later.

At the moment, this is the best what I can tell you.

Sir. Could you help us with the asset turn on this capex if not revenue potential?

Asset turnover on this asset is, like I said, the infrastructure has been created for a much bigger business, right? Asset turnover, I think, will be on the lower side.

Manu, can you share this?

As this facility has been built for a longer tenure, and in bakery specially, we need to invest in one go for the 5-7 years of capacity. In next 2-3 years' time, we should start hitting a asset turn of 2 to 2.5 for this plant, but it'll take about 3 years to get to that asset turn.

Noted, sir. Sir, my second question is on the export side, which has been a strong performer for us.

With this trade deal likely coming into effect from Q1 onwards, and the EU FTA also now concluded, we are expecting a favorable shift in the operating environment. Sir, could you help us quantify what kind of financial enhancement we should expect from these developments?

Do you primarily see this as a volume driver, or we can also see a structural improvement in EBITDA margins?

This has been relatively new, right? It's just happened, but yes, this will relatively improve any manufacturer from India's ability to sell in the EU and America.

We are very very hopeful of getting a big benefit out of this opening from 50% punitive tariff to a 18% tariff. Hopefully, we would be able to have a lot of value addition in the business.

Sir. Sir, if you can list down some growth drivers for FY27?

Our growth driver for FY27, yes, definitely export will be a better growth driver this year because of the whole trade treaty and some other uncertainty. Although export has been growing at a over last 4 years has been growing on an average of high double digit in in the last 4 years, but this year has been a low on account of this, tariffs and other things.

We expect export to get back to a good growth engine for us to get into mid-teens to high-teens kind of growth. Similarly, bakery, English Oven continue to expand.

As you would have heard in the MD's speech that we have opened up Calcutta, and so we opened up our East region. We've also opened up another big city on bakery in the Southern region, right?

We continue to kind of expand in other regions. English Oven should continue its journey of growing, and and our Khopoli plant, which is getting commissioned in next few months' time.

We have very aggressive plans for Bombay and Maharashtra in terms of growth. English Oven will remain a high-growth engine for us with probably expecting another, 1 or 2 cities further getting added during this financial year, coming financial year.

Right, domestic biscuit business again has seen a sequential improvement in growth in this quarter over the last quarter. Trends are are looking good.

We are very clearly investing as we shared last time, we're investing in a 400-500 km range from our both Indore plant as well as from our Punjab plant, and going deeper in our penetration, coverage. That also should be good.

Coming on a B2B business of bakery, yes, B2B business on a bakery side, QSR is still on a on a low bond, but we're very confident that that now there should be turnaround there. What we did over the last 2-3 years, we added a frozen business, and the frozen business has built into a good business which has become almost 20% of our B2B bakery business and has a great growth potential.

We're expecting that again to leverage and to grow that part of the business. Also, as mentioned in the speech, we have started introducing some of the frozen product in our in our in our retail.

These are some of the pilots which we have done in the NCR, and but we see that also should start stabilizing and and growing there. These are some of the few growth engines across the business areas, which should help us grow well in the coming financial year.

Noted, sir. That helps, sir.

What is the percentage of B2B as compared to on a total revenue?

B2B, bakery you're asking?

No, no, overall business, yes, in bakery, what is the percentage of B2B revenue?

You're talking of B2B bakery, or you're talking exports and B2B put together?

I'm talking about exports and bakery put together, sir.

Exports and B2B bakery put together should be closer to 45%, 46%, 47% around that, yeah.

What is the QSR as a B2B, I think more relative would be the Indian B2B, which is our QSR business, right?

Another thing which I want to take the opportunity of highlighting here is that you see, our Cremica brand biscuit, we have a large domestic business, but Cremica brand is also very large business internationally. We are selling Cremica brand over 50 countries.

Cremica brand has done also very well in this financial year. It is contributing over 50% of our revenues internationally, which is in our export division.

From your question point of view, the Cremica brand is both there internationally as well as domestic, and it's a fairly large business both in India as well as outside India.

Sir. Thank you so much, sir.

All the best.

Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Sir, just wanted to check, is it fair to assume that our export growth for this quarter, lower double digit, while the domestic is flat to marginal on year-on-year?

No, our export has grown lower in this quarter. Our export growth was single digit, and our domestic growth was a high single digit, almost touching double digit.

It was around that much. Yes, export was a low single-digit score.

You're to say domestic is high single digit and majorly it will come from volume?

Come from, sorry?

Volume? This domestic biscuit.

No, there has been GST changes and all that, which has obviously led to high. We have definitely grown in volumes in this quarter, but it's also the value growth.

If we assume that high single digit, in that case, what will be the volume, low single-digit volume?

Let me get back to you.

I think there have been a lot of changes, because with the GST 2.0 changes, I think, at this point of time, comparison might not be right, because we have been in the transition.

Okay. Okay.

Sir, last, on a margin, how do you look right now? Because in Q3, last quarter also, we are targeting 14%-plus.

How do you look Q4 and FY27?

You see, as I explained to you last time, that for us, the margin starting from Quarter 1 of next financial year, as I said that we can look at in the H1 of next financial year, we should start getting to the 14% range.

Okay. What about the gross?

Any marginal improvement we can see from gross margin as well in FY27?

Gross margin? In the gross margin, you're asking, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Gross margin, I will be able to give more clarity in the next call.

We're just in the process of concluding our AOP. To exactly comment on the gross margin side would be a little tough.

Yes, you can expect also some marginal improvement there.

Okay. Sir, last thing that in this quarter, what is the bakery B2B growth, sorry, B2C growth, English Oven?

Is it mid-teens?

Yeah. It's a high-teens growth.

High teens. Okay.

Sir. Thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity, sir. Sir, my first question is regarding the domestic biscuits.

As a market leader has already highlighted that the competition is very high. Can we elaborate that considering the high competition from local plus what larger national players, the growth rate into the domestic biscuits will going to be into the high single to low double digit only in near term?

You see, domestic biscuit business has been for a while a very highly competitive and intense business, and in our core territory of North India, definitely is a highly competitive business, both with big players and local players, right? We have seen a sequential improvement over the last quarter in this quarter in the growth, and yes, you're very right, we do expect in next two quarters to march towards the low-teens kind of growth, and that's what we are targeting to achieve in the next financial year.

Okay. It is fair to assume that double-digit growth will come from the second half of FY27 into the domestic biscuits especially?

No, no, we should have, you see, as I said, growth even in this quarter, we had a high single-digit growth. We see sequentially with GST impact also turning positive quarter-on-quarter, it should keep improving.

Got it. Sir, my second question is on bakery part.

Though we have clocked around 13% to 14% sort of growth, but it sounds a bit conservative considering the TAM plus the opportunity plus the activation in terms of the clean label and all which we are doing. What has caused or slowed the growth rate, and going forward, by when we are again targeting a high double-digit or high-teens sort of growth rate into the bakery segment?

I I just, I think, mentioned that in the English Oven, we have grown high teens. It's only the B2B business which had a had a lower growth.

That's why average is around 13.5%, 14% there. English Oven continues to march at a good growth rate, and shall continue to do that as well as expand further.

We are very very firm on becoming a pan-India strong brand over the next two years' time, and that's why we added two more geographies in this this this quarter, last quarter. While we're building these geographies and our our Bombay-Maharashtra geography will see a huge expansion as we updated you, the Khopoli plant will come up soon in next few months' time.

We we are also likely to add another few cities in this financial year. English Oven growth is robust and will continue to be robust.

Got it. Sir, last piece on the exports part.

Can you highlight some qualitatively how we are diversifying apart from the USA, and from the profitability front, considering the lower tariffs now being into the system, are we expecting a significant improvement into the USA exports and the margin as well?

We have

Yeah, I'll go. See, what is happening is Mrs.

Bector, has always invested and has built up a capability to exports export biscuits to not only every segment of countries, right? We are exporting to around 60-70 countries today.

Out of them, US is one of them. South America is big for us.

Europe is going to be turning out to be good opportunity. UK, with the new FTA, Europe with new FTA.

US, was the last 6 months from, we had seen, all projects coming onto hold. We feel, Mrs.

Bector is fully ready, geared up, to get the benefit of these opportunities. We will see, good value not value biscuits, but premiumization from our perspective which we will deliver to these markets.

Anoop, I would request to you also, you can brief them how we have upgraded our capability on distinctive biscuit categories

for

Indian and international market in Mayur.

Today, Mrs. Bector is one of the largest suppliers of Danish cookie tins to the US, right?

The Indore plant was specifically built with the mind that we are going to be feeding the US market. For the last 6 months, since the time Indore plant had started, we didn't want to use that capacity into India, because that plant could make very specific, good products.

Now things will get activated. We already have used this time last 6 months to prepare the products.

I think the benefits will come in now very clearly to the company.

If I may permit for last one, can you just highlight on the export incentive which has been paused from the government? Are there any updates on that part?

That's absolutely right. In the last 6 months, from August onwards, we have not been able to get those benefits.

In fact, if those benefits had come in, our margins would have shown a very different sort of numbers, right?

What our company has now done is we are going to be utilizing that we start importing raw materials which are duty-free, because for our exports, we can import raw materials against advance licenses. We are going to start doing this slowly.

I think in the next 6 months, we should be geared up to recover the damages.

In terms of quantification, can it be into the range of 20 to 30 odd bps of your margin that gross incentives?

No, our impact on our overall revenue would be almost close to 1% here. Close to that,

in that ballpark. Understood.

Thanks, sir. That's it from my side.

Good evening. Just had two, three questions.

One was on the growth rates. You've spoken a lot about how you expect business to accelerate.

Should we assume that given that export business starts to normalize hopefully in early next year, and even your capacity in bread comes through only in Q1, that these growth rates on the revenue side are a Q1 FY27 onwards kind of a picture? Q4 also will be in a similar to slightly up and down band?

Is that the right way to kind of think about near-term growth on the revenue side?

You're right. That's the right way to think, yeah.

That's what is going to happen is that from Q1, we should start seeing improvement in our growth rate, and it should kind of build up. Looking at the situation now, trade treaty signed, nothing much going adverse, largely.

We should be targeting to get for the next financial year close to mid-teens kind of growth. US is getting signed in March, and so I think UK and Europe are also going to be signed probably in the second quarter or something.

Over the year now, I think on the growth side, things look into a much stronger wicket.

Got it. The first half performance in bakery was about 17-odd percent growth.

Q3 has been 13. The lower growth versus first half, you would attribute it entirely to B2B, is it?

Largely, I would say. Largely, B2B is a reason.

Yes, but in the Q1 in the H1, our growth were higher. You see, I I just give you a brief.

We had a price increase in October and November of '24, right? H1 was cycling, a that advantage also.

Overall, and but this quarter this quarter again, our growth has been high teens in the bakery. If I kind of try and normalize that, the growth has been pretty consistent there with 1% or 2% here and there.

Yes, the H1 had an advantage of cycling the low-price times, right?

You're saying that the bakery business is more volume-led growth this time,

In Q3, yeah.

In yeah, in in yeah. In Q3, yeah.

Got it. Just as a comment, I would recommend if you could also give I know your tonnages across are very different, but henceforth or whenever possible, if you can also give a broad range of where the volume growths have been either separately for biscuits and bakery or overall for the business, because that helps us understand the pricing differential also, because in the B2B business, we can't really pick it up in the market.

If possible, if you can kind of do that math, that would be fantastic. My next question was on the margin side.

Look, the export incentive has not been there this quarter. It was only there for one month in Q2 it was there for two months in Q2.

Still, we've seen a sequential improvement in the gross margin, right? I think an earlier participant also had a gross margin question.

From your perspective, is this improvement is driven by mix because B2C has done better in both biscuits and in breads, or is it also some RM benefits also kind of starting to flow through now? How would you interpret this sequential improvement in gross margin?

Harit, let me first clarify on the RM margins. We have always believed in predictability, right?

We are one of those companies who didn't get the benefits of lower prices. That's one thing, because we had done our hedging till March.

There are no benefits which have come in from the raw material side. Manu can explain you the rest.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think Anoop has covered that answer, and it's largely the business business mix and efficiencies, right? RGM, revenue growth management, and business mix and then some bit of efficiency which has helped us to improve that margin over last quarter, last quarter, yeah, Q2 or Q3, yeah.

Got it. Last question was Anoop ji, this export incentive thing and you looking to import now, does that completely offset, whenever you start kind of offsetting this impact with your import strategy, does that completely offset the

In fact, we had been waiting that this because it was suspended. It was not finished or it was only suspended.

We kept believing that this will come back, it's just a short-term thing. Incentives, because people have been a very high-value drivers, right?

For us, our Danish cookie tins are very highly priced. As a percentage, what we used to get, I think we'll not probably be able to recover 100% of what we were getting, but we will target to get towards that.

It is going to take us 3, 4, 5 months, 6 months, because I have to create this complete import. We have already targeted few raw materials, which we have already started sending the POs, but I think in the next 4-5 months, we will get out of it.

Understood. Despite you saying that, it will take 4-5 months in your view, but even though it will take 4-5 months

To reach optimization, right? That's what I said.

To reach optimization,

right. Yeah.

Not 4-5 months to start. We've already started, but it'll reach 4-5 months to optimize it, right.

Perfect. Wish you all the best.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Am I audible?

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you, and good evening. Thanks for the opportunity.

Most of my questions have been answered, but I had one part with respect to the larger competitor has hinted at a strategy towards competing fiercely. Do we have any kind of plans that we are either making or have in pipeline to compete with the players given the new competition?

You're talking of Cremica domestic biscuit business, right?

Yes.

Okay. In a domestic biscuit business, as I said, there are two-pronged strategies which is One is obviously, we explained you that how we are going to penetrate deeper within the 400 km of our Punjab and Indore plant, right, and drive the distribution growth and expansion there.

Second, alongside that, while we are investing behind our brands and varieties which are doing well, like Coconut, Bourbon, Digestives and all, we have also, over the last 8-9 months, if you look at, we have launched series of premium products, which MD had mentioned in his speech also, right, which are premium cookies, as well as some of the health varieties, and some in terms of premium like Shotto and other product, right? Objective is to now the products which we have launched over the last 9 months' time, we also invest behind to keep building those products.

Objective behind that is that we are very clear now that what we will be launching is a differentiated product, which we have done, right? We want to build these products over the years, because getting into the again me-too kind of products doesn't give you that differentiated strength in a highly competitive business.

These are the 2-3 large strategies which we are on execution mode now. These will be our sources of growth for our RGM of domestic biscuits.

All right. Perfect.

Secondly, just extrapolating this competition point to the bakery business as well. On the Q-comm front, we have seen some of the Q-comm companies as well coming out with their brands and some other smaller companies also launching their own brands in the bakery side, even the premium-ended bakery side.

Have we seen some kind of impact of that competition?

No, quick-comm is also very competitive platform. We have been an early starter in year '22 in quick-comm, and we continue to invest on this platform.

We're very confident of this platform kind of growing in a changing consumer environment, and that's what has happened. We have a stronger share in quick-comm business, much ahead of our general trade share, and we continue to grow very very aggressively there.

Quick-comm in English Oven is now contributing almost 33%, 34% of our revenues, right? This is kind of improving every quarter and every year.

If I remember right, over the last 1 year itself, we have doubled our revenue contribution. A, English Oven is a high-growth business.

In this high-growth business, quick-comm has contributing almost 33%, 34%, and this contribution has literally doubled over the last 12 months, right? It's a strong journey.

We have a strong hold, we're investing behind it, and we remain ahead in this journey versus many other players.

That's great to hear. Finally, just also on the B2B part.

We have seen certain newer brands and players also entering, certain international brands also entering into the chain QSR space. Do we or have we seen some client additions or new brand additions in our B2B portfolio?

Or do we plan to add some?

I would not know if you would tell us which brand you're talking about, we can tell you we're part of them or not. Because we have Tim Hortons, which is a cafe coffee chain, we supply to them.

We'll need to know. We supply to most of the burger guys, right?

We hold a very strong position over there. You'll need to tell us who's the person, who's come in, so that probably we can know, because otherwise you'll not come to know otherwise.

All the new premium range is where we are present, with our frozen range also getting very strong. We are offering them variety of products, right?

We are still in discussion on many of the new products with these chains. In terms of customer additions on our B2B bakery side, there have been a robust performance, especially led by the frozen range of our products, because our share in a bun business in quick-comm is already upward of 80%, 85%, right?

So

All right. Got it.

That's it for me. Thank you so much, and all the best.

Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, just a question on this India-US tariff.

As things are, is it back to normal business, or there is some added tailwind? If yes, which countries generally we compete with, which gives us some advantage?

When US trade tariff had happened, we are covering most of the countries, right? What we are seeing is in our journey, in our trade fairs, with our people who are visiting, we feel Europe is coming out strong.

Europe would be, which was earlier not there, was very limited for Indian food products other than ethnic, is now getting into the mainstream. What you have to understand about exports is that we have a very limited ethnic consumer.

Our consumer is more mom-and-pop stores, We compete with the local competition, with giving them the local products. That is the differential which is there with us.

I think Europe is coming out extremely well. We also see America as they have started responding and coming back onto the old projects which they had put on hold till the time these duties were not clarified.

I think there's a great opportunity in South America, in Europe, in US as well. UK is going to be very good for us.

My question was, it is back to normal business, right? Before this entire tariff tantrums happened, we are back to normal business, or there is an added advantage that we have?

No. We have not lost any business, but new projects from US stopped coming in, which will now start coming in.

Yes, definitely, we had to part away with some extra discounts or something, small discounts, not very big discounts. We did not lose business.

Other than small, few retailers, yes, we lost, but otherwise we would continue.

Sir, which country we would be competing for import this, if they are importing from A or B or C countries? Which are the other two countries?

India, see India is very unique. China is not our competitor in these products.

As I said, we make for the market. We would make product for Walmart, like most of the tins which are Danish cookie tins, which were earlier going from Europe, are now going from Mrs.

Bector. Similarly, we do not have competitors from any other country as such.

What is it at the moment, right?

Great. This is helpful, sir.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question.

Wanted to understand a bit more on your strategy 2.0, which you had indicated will be rolled out possibly in FY26, as in towards the 2026. I wanted to get a more sense in terms of is it kind of finalized, and when can we expect that rollout to happen?

If you can share some broader contours of that, it will be helpful.

I think I answered in one of the beginning questions, our sources of growth across the business area, which I explained. Export, obviously, with this tariff agreement happening, and with new capability of some new products coming up in Indore and one more of plant, we should again see a resurgence of our export growth, which had been there well over the past few years, but yeah, this year was a little low, right?

Coming to the another biscuit business, domestic biscuits, which on a quarter-on-quarter has seen improvement in growth, and we are investing in our distribution coverage in 400 km from both our Punjab and Indore plant. We have launched series of premium products in the last 9 months' time, we'll be again continuing investing behind them to kind of build it, and further strengthening our brand marketing as we are carrying out a brand study of both Cremica and English Oven.

Made a go-forward strategy on both the brands, which will further enhance the growth on the domestic Cremica biscuits side and take it to a low-teens kind of growth next year. English Oven, as I briefed, that it continues to be on a strong growth path, which has been growing at kind of high-teens kind of growth.

This launched in last few months in Calcutta region and Hyderabad, further expanding our geographies, right? Our Bombay plant will come up in next few months' time, which will help us good quality the bun and bread supplies, and we will strengthen our distribution not only in Bombay, in many parts of Maharashtra, and that will become another large source of growth for English Oven.

English Oven continue to grow in the existing new territories, plus we're planning to add some more net territories in the coming financial year. B2B business, as I briefed, that frozen business is showing a good traction, which we built over last 2-3 years' time, and now we have enough on pipelines as a promising for good revenue growth in the next financial year.

QSRs also continue to invest in their store expansion, and there should be a turnaround. These are the business-wide sources of growth, and a strategy, what you call it, for the next financial year.

Understood. Also wanted to get a bit more sense on the margin.

We have seen small bit of improvement, and obviously, given the fact that we will be utilizing the duty export incentives. In that context, hopefully, the margin should start improving further possibly from Q4 onwards.

Wanted to get a more sense in terms of what kind of an improvements can we see in Q4 and then going forward?

As I've been briefing the previous call, that our target was to get to 14%. We would have got to 14%, but for the export incentive, which kind of suddenly was put under suspension by the government, right?

Otherwise, we would have been at 14% in this quarter. Now improving from here to getting to in the 14% range is what we expect in the H1 of the next financial year, and that's the path we are progressing on.

Understood. Quite helpful.

Thanks.

Thank you. The first question is on the bakery QSR.

Fair to say it would have grown, let's say, in mid-single digits for Q3?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Here, again, would it be fair to assume that since we're already so well-penetrated on the bun side, any incremental growth here would largely be driven by new categories like frozen foods, unless the macro demand for the QSR improves, which sees the growth from the bun side as well.

Would that be the right understanding?

Broadly, yes. Yes, as we have started our Calcutta plant, so that will give us a fill-up of the East region business even on the bun side, right?

There are many new small customers also mushrooming, where we had a capacity constraint, both in Bombay and Bangalore. Bombay plant coming up will help us to service that new customers, which we were as of now not able to service them and add them to our portfolio.

Similar is the challenge in Bangalore, and Bangalore also we're investing in a expanded new plant there in the coming financial year. That will help.

Yes, some bit of growth which we were not able to capture of new customers in both West and South territory will get available with the capacity falling in place, and the Calcutta region obviously is a geography new to us other than McDonald's, is what will add to our business. Broadly, what you said is right.

With that, then, FY27 onwards, can we expect this to touch double digit or a high single digit kind of a growth for the bakery QSR? Ha,

bakery B2B business, yes, we will be targeting a low-teens kind of growth in the coming financial year.

Right. The export biscuit business, while we've seen a low single-digit growth in Q3, if you could break it up into the US and the non-US business.

As I understand, the US business is almost 20% of our exports business. How much would have US business degrown, and how much would have the non-US business grown?

I think

Most of the territories have grown, we don't share numbers to that granularity. Broadly, yes, our challenge in Q3 was US, which will get rectified, right?

The non-US business would have registered a double-digit kind of a growth, or would we have seen some slowdown?

I don't have ready number as of now. We normally don't get into sharing such a granular number.

Directionally, as I said, is true.

The export business also with the US trade deal coming through, right, would that also be a low double-digit kind of a number that we are targeting for growth for FY27?

Yes. Yes.

Now that the trade deal has been announced, are we already seeing more inquiries from the US business, or it's still status quo?

People have started talking to us, right, back. We had a deal which if the trade deal had not happened, we would have lost that deal, because there are certain businesses which are like the Danish cookie tins, we are approved supplier with them.

If it was 50%, we would not have got that. They were not going to come back to us, or we would have had to discount heavily.

Which has gone into our favor. Already things have started happening.

India is back into their mind, even the buyer was confused as much as we were confused, right? It was very difficult to create a supply chain.

Effectively, I think, going forward, India is going to emerge as a big player in exports in food products, and biscuits being one of them. America being a very large consumer, will really give a benefit.

Those companies will benefit who are prepared. As I mentioned earlier, we manufacture for the market, for the US market.

We do not manufacture ethnic products, right? We do ethnic wherever there's a need, but our main competition happens If I selling my biscuits into America, I'm doing a cheese cream for them, a cracker for them.

It's a product which they keep eating. They are consumers of that product, right?

It's not that I'm giving them a jeera biscuit or something else. We are sure that things will be much more productive, right?

Sure, sure.

It's too new. In fact, right now we don't even know, we know we're going to have 18% tariff, but we don't know.

It might be different, right? It might be lower, it might be something else, because in the newspapers, we read that certain food items are being considered as zero.

Now if that is the case, we don't know, right? I think end of March, we'll have a clear clarity on what is happening.

Yes, things are moving in the right direction.

Understood. Just the last one on the domestic biscuits business.

While you all have articulated the future growth levers for the domestic biscuit business, but I just wanted to kind of double-click on why the domestic biscuit business has been sluggish. See, the GST-related disturbance is something that even the industry leader has faced.

If we look at our domestic biscuit business, the growth versus, let's say, a Britannia is hardly 200 bps higher, while we are probably one-eighth their size, right? Is it, if I exclude the GST part, what is it that has impacted our growth in the domestic biscuit business over the last one year?

Is it a lot of competition? Were we constrained on capacities?

Were there any execution gaps? If you could just kind of help me on that.

Let me brief you, right, that's what we briefed in the last, actually, You see, domestic biscuit business, if you remember, we had a huge commodity spike in prices starting October, November of '24, right, palm oil and other things, right? With the hyper competition is something which had put a very large adverse pressure on our domestic biscuit profitability and margin, right?

It was very important for us to kind of first make sure that we correct our margins there, and get the business again to a good sustained level. That's what took about close to 8-9 months to get that into mode.

Then we started about kind of getting into the again distribution expansion, new products, and other things few months back, which will now is getting back into the investing behind a high growth, investing on distribution brand more, and we have seen a sequential improvement in our growth over the last quarter to this quarter, and that journey will continue. Our expectation is to get into low-teens kind of growth in the next coming financial year, and we're confident we should be able to achieve that.

Sure. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I hope we have been able to answer all your queries.

In case you require any further details, you may please contact us or MUFG InTime, our investor relations partner. Thank you very much.

Bye.