Thank you, Dorwin. Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the conference call of Hindustan Unilever Limited. This evening, we will be covering the results for quarter ended 30th June 2026.

On the call with me is Priya Nair, CEO and Managing Director, and Niranjan Gupta, our CFO. We will start with prepared remarks from Priya and Niranjan.

We expect this to take around 15 minutes, leaving us around 45 minutes for the Q&A session. We will look to end the call by 5:00 PM.

Before we get started with the presentation, I would like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement included in the presentation for good order's sake. With that, over to you, Priya.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today.

Welcome to the first earnings call of full year '26-27. Let me begin with an update on the operating context followed by key performance highlights.

Subsequently, Niranjan will take you through the results and conclude with the outlook. The quarter was shaped by an increasingly uncertain global environment characterized by geopolitical tensions, volatile commodity markets, and currency fluctuations.

Against this backdrop, India demonstrated notable resilience. The country entered this period with solid macroeconomic foundations supported by the policy measures implemented through FY '26.

During the quarter, coordinated fiscal and monetary policy actions helped to manage energy security, inflation, and currency volatility. These interventions helped us to cushion the impact on households and business, adding macroeconomic stability.

The FMCG demand environment remained stable during the quarter, reflecting the underlying strength of consumption. In this context, we delivered another quarter of progressively improving performance.

Turnover for the quarter stood at ₹17,184 crores with an underlying sales growth of 10% driven equally by volume and price. This represents our highest growth in 13 quarters.

It reflects the result of decisive actions taken to transform our portfolio, sharpen execution, and strengthen market development. What is particularly encouraging is the consistency of progress.

Our growth trajectory has strengthened from 3% in the first half of FY '26 to 10% in this quarter. Equally important is that this growth is competitive as we continue to gain turnover-weighted market share.

The combination of accelerating growth, healthy volume contribution, and strengthening competitiveness reinforces our conviction that we are building a future-fit business for long-term growth. We have delivered this strong performance in a volatile environment with resilience and agility.

This was enabled by the competitive moats we have built over time. Let me touch on a few of them.

First, our supply chain resilience proved to be a critical advantage. By harnessing the scale of our global procurement network, we ensured continuity of supplies without any disruption.

Complementing this, our digitally powered agile R&D and flexible manufacturing capabilities helped us to maintain service levels throughout the quarter. Second, our portfolio strength was a key source of resilience.

With 50 brands in 15 categories straddling across the price-benefit pyramid, we are uniquely positioned to serve the diverse, evolving needs of consumers. Given the strength of our brands and portfolio, we have been able to implement calibrated pricing while preserving our consumer franchise.

Third, despite the cost pressures, we continue to invest behind our brands to support long-term growth. In June quarter, we stepped our A&P spends up sequentially to ₹1,657 crores, the highest in the last 11 quarters.

Similarly, we continue to strengthen our omnichannel execution. Quick commerce continued to grow strong double digits, while in GT, we grew our distribution led out of small towns and rural.

Further, we continue to expand offline expansion of our digital-first brands like Minimalist and Simple. Finally, our financial agility enabled us to balance near-term pressures with long-term value creation.

Our rigorous savings program coupled with disciplined P&L management helped us manage the cost inflation and generate fuel for growth. Backed by a strong balance sheet and healthy cash generation, we continue to invest behind our brands, innovation, and market-making capabilities.

As we step up our performance, we are equally focused on building capabilities that will shape our next phase of growth. Our approach is to invest ahead of the curve on innovation, technology, manufacturing, and digital transformation to ensure that we remain future-fit and create desire at scale.

A powerful example of this commitment is the launch of Unilever fragrance house in India. It is a part of a global program to advance fragrance creation capabilities both in-house and in partnership with key fragrance houses.

It brings together the best of science, consumer insight, and artificial intelligence close to one of the fastest-growing markets in the world. Our Liquids Lab of the Future in Mumbai is another such example.

It is built with advanced AI and digitally enabled facilities to accelerate innovation in future-facing high-growth formats. This lab can accelerate formulation development timelines by up to six times to respond with speed to consumer needs.

In supply chain, we are continuing to raise the bar on manufacturing excellence. In this quarter, the Haridwar and Sonepat factories were recognized by the World Economic Forum's Global Lighthouse Network in the Supply Chain Resilience and Sustainability categories respectively.

These recognitions reflect our ability to use advanced analytics and digital technologies to respond to changing demand conditions while reducing the environmental footprint. With these recognitions, HUL now holds eight WEF lighthouse designations across six sites, the highest for any company in India.

Finally, we are embedding artificial intelligence across our value chain, not just as a standalone initiative, but as a core enabler of how we operate. An example of this is our digital-first distribution center in Vijayawada, where AI-enabled real-time visibility creates a digitally orchestrated fulfillment ecosystem.

It improves accuracy and transparency through faster demand sensing, warehouse operations, truck tracking, and digital proof of delivery. This fits very well into the rapidly evolving retail landscape and allows us to serve consumers and customers better.

Taken together, these investments are not only strengthening our capabilities for today, but also building the foundations for sustained, competitive, and long-term value creation. While I have touched upon a few examples today, I really look forward to sharing more of our strategy at our Capital Markets Day in September.

With this, let me hand over to Niranjan to talk you through the quarter results in detail.

Thank you, Priya, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll walk you through our quarter performance and then close with the outlook.

As Priya mentioned earlier, we delivered a strong performance with a revenue growth of 10% underpinned by UVG of 5%. We navigated external volatility through financial discipline across all the lines of P&L, delivering EBITDA margin of 23%, which was within the guided range.

Absolute EBITDA grew 8% year on year to ₹3,947 crores, while profit after tax before exceptional items grew 9% year on year to ₹2,731 crores. The strong growth in EBITDA and PAT (bei) reflects the quality of our earnings and the resilience of our business.

The reported profit after tax after exceptional items stood at ₹2,680 crores, declining 2% year on year due to one-off tax credit of ₹330 crores in the base period of June quarter '25. Adjusted for this, the profit after tax stands at 11% growth year on year basis.

Moving to segment performance for the quarter, Home Care delivered 14% USG driven by high single-digit UVG. This is its strongest performance in 3 years.

Fabric Wash delivered a broad-based double-digit volume-led growth. Bars and powders sustained their step-up, while liquids grew competitively and accelerated its double-digit growth trajectory.

Household Care also accelerated its performance, delivering double-digit USG and UVG. Vim liquid reported another quarter of double-digit growth with market development actions continuing to increase penetration.

Given the external volatility, we continue to see inflation in crude-linked derivatives and are taking calibrated price increases across the segment. Turning now to Beauty and Wellbeing, this has been a strong quarter with the segment delivering 12% USG driven by high single-digit UVG.

Hair Care delivered another quarter of double-digit volume-led growth. Premium hair care, including future formats like hair mask and serums, continued to outperform, reinforcing the relevance of our propositions with consumers.

We further strengthened our market leadership during the quarter. Skin Care and Colour Cosmetics grew high single digit, led by double-digit growth in premium skin care.

Minimalist strengthened its double-digit growth trajectory. We've expanded the brand aggressively in offline channels since the acquisition last year.

During the quarter, Vaseline Gluta-Hya franchise broadened its portfolio with the launch of Smoothing Body Lotion, enabling category premiumization and de-seasonalization. Health and Wellbeing saw a soft quarter as we transition OZiva business towards emerging consumer demand spaces.

We remain committed to investing behind the portfolio and are confident of its long-term growth potential. Turning now to Personal Care, the segment delivered 4% USG for the quarter, driven by price increases taken in response to continued palm oil inflation for the second consecutive year.

Skin Cleansing grew mid-single digit, driven by premium bars such as Dove and Pears delivering double-digit volume-led growth. Sustained market development efforts in body wash accelerated its double-digit growth trajectory while strengthening its category leadership.

Oral Care delivered mid-single-digit growth. Premium innovations like Closeup White Now, Pepsodent Gum Care, and Sensitive Expert continued to gain traction, enhancing our presence in higher-benefit demand spaces.

Talking about Foods, the segment delivered a USG of 7% driven by mid-single-digit UVG. Premium tea reported low single-digit UVG, while coffee delivered double-digit volume-led growth.

Our ready-to-drink formats like Bru Gold continued to scale up, reinforcing the strength of our proposition in this space. Lifestyle Nutrition continued its momentum with double-digit growth in Horlicks and Boost both.

The category reported its fifth consecutive quarter of positive UVG. During the quarter, Boost crossed the ₹1,000 crore annual turnover milestone, making it our 21st brand in our portfolio to be in the ₹1,000 crore-plus club.

The relaunched Horlicks Superfoods and RTD offerings continue to see positive traction, while Horlicks biscuits continued its double-digit growth momentum as well. Packaged Foods delivered high single-digit growth, led by robust performance in Unilever Food Solutions, mayonnaise, and international sauces.

Kissan chutneys maintained encouraging momentum, and we expanded the portfolio with two new variants during the quarter. Now coming to our outlook, Indian economy continues to remain resilient, while the global external environment remains a little bit uncertain, and we continue to monitor the progress of monsoon, but we do see continued stability in the FMCG demand space.

Backed by the continued action on market development, channel expansion, and portfolio transformation, we remain confident that FY '27 will be better than FY '26. While commodities and currencies remain elevated, our approach remains consistent and disciplined, driving structural savings, taking calibrated pricing actions, and making judicious media investments.

We therefore expect EBITDA margin to remain around the current guided range. Finally, our focus remains clear and unchanged: delivering competitive, volume-led growth anchored to our key priorities.

With this, we conclude our prepared remarks, and I'll now hand back to Yogesh to commence the Q&A session.

Thank you, Priya and Niranjan. With this, we will now move to Q&A.

We request you to kindly restrict the number of questions to a maximum of two at a time. In case you have any further questions, please join the queue again.

In addition to the audio, our participants have an option to post the questions through the web option on your screen. We will take those questions just before we end.

With that, I will now hand the call back to Dorwin to manage the next session for us.

Hi, team. Just two questions only.

One, when I look at the outlook statement of last quarter versus the current quarter, I don't think it's a subtle change, it's quite significant in my opinion, wherein you stated last time that, let's say, well equipped to navigate market volatility, etc., etc. Now actually stating that continue to monitor monsoons and geopolitics because, look, these two elements were definitely there a few months back as well.

Is there a change in thought process or the confidence levels in terms of, let's say, how FY '27 should pan out, what you thought three months back versus today?

Manoj, absolutely no change in what we said from last time. We would continue to believe we are well-positioned to navigate the volatility, whether it is in terms of our portfolio, procurement, supply chain savings, and similar to the way we have managed in June quarter, going forward, we feel we are well placed.

We are only cautioning for the economic scenario and how it might pan out. That remains volatile.

We need to see how that pans out. We remain extremely confident in how we will be able to navigate.

That's fair. Secondly, just on the soaps business, if I am to think about, let's say, the drivers or the reasons for the mid-single-digit volume decline, could you just help us understand, how much is, let's say, the grammage reduction headwind?

Let's say, how much is the category growth aspect versus, let's say, what it was last year? Point number three, market share.

As far as soaps is concerned, Manoj, we have seen soaps category impacted by palm oil inflation continued for two years. There is a price impact on the category as such.

Having said that, what we are focused on therefore within this is to drive premiumization. Therefore, our Dove and Pears, if you look at it, has grown double digits and has grown since last quarter and this quarter as well.

Further, body wash also is continuing double digit as we are doing market development in expanding body wash, which is actually very low penetration as of now, but we lead the body wash category and continue to expand the category. That is on one side that we are leading on the premiumization and the format development that we are doing under soap category.

On the other hand, obviously, we'll continue to look to drive the volumes upwards as we move forward. Thanks.

Thank you, Niranjan. Just double-clicking on only one point, then I'll come back in the queue.

In your opinion, the reason I'm saying in your opinion because nowadays given the channel complexity, market share is not that straightforward to calculate. In your opinion, we have held shares in soaps or how that has moved actually in the bar category?

We don't talk about the competitiveness given that there are so many data points that actually travel across. It's fair to say that it is an overall category picture which is impacted by the palm oil inflation, and within that if you have to see that the way we are growing the premium, which is Dove and Pears, that's definitely in the premium category ahead of the others.

Manoj, we don't guide, as by segment, but at an overall level, we are continue to be competitive in the quarter and are winning turnover-weighted market share.

Understood. Thank you so much, and all the best.

Thanks, Manoj.

Hi, team. Thank you for taking my question.

First question is a clarification on your statement of stable demand environment expected in the outlook. When you say that stable demand environment is expected, does it mean that one should see similar optical volume growth that is seen in 1Q, or one should see it in conjecture with the base of last year and see it on a two-year CAGR basis?

Because you have a flat volume in 2Q last year. That was the first clarification.

I think we won't guide you into a quarter guidance, Mihir, as you can imagine. What we have guided for is that full year '27 will be ahead of full year '26, and we're retaining that guidance.

Overall, we see demand continuing to be stable going into the quarter.

There was apprehension earlier that there could be inflation-led impact on the FMCG demand, and we are not seeing that at all. The consumption continues to be strong, and which is the reason for us to believe that to guide for a stable demand environment moving forward as well.

Understood. I think to see it in that context will be much better.

Thank you for that. Secondly, on the commodity statement when you say commodity volatility persists, would it be fair to assume that gross margins will continue to see sequential pressure as price hikes that we see are lower than the cost inflation?

You had indicated that cost inflation was closer to 10%, pricing inflation is closer to 5%. Maybe on the pricing growth as well, can one expect it to inch up from these levels, or there is any anniversarization that we should keep in mind when we think about pricing growth going forward?

I think I'll tell you an overall picture that the commodities, you also know, continue to remain elevated even now. We've been very measured in terms of passing the price increase to the consumers, as you saw.

Equally, our leverage on the P&L and all the lines of P&L has still allowed us to deliver EBITDA within the guided range. That gives us the confidence along with the plans that we have that with whatever little bit of inching up price or whatever judicious price you may have to take, even if it's far less than inflation, we'll be able to deliver EBITDA around the guided range.

I would not comment on the gross margin, but I would comment on the EBITDA because these are all the lines of P&L that we are leveraging. Yeah.

Understood. If I may, on the same lines, just ask you about how should we think about ad spends?

I understand the EBITDA comment that you made,

but

we've seen that it has been growing slower than the sales growth since the past few quarters. I did hear Priya's comment on the absolute number on ad spend going up over the past couple of quarters.

When you see the growth rate in conjunction with sales growth, it has been lower, seems like some underinvesting is happening to maintain the margins. Wanted a quick comment on that, if you don't mind.

I think when you look at our ad spends, you also have to factor in, Mihir, the return on investments that we are getting. We have a lot of AI-enabled return on marketing investment programs in place.

That along with our procurement leverage, given the inflationary conditions, are allowing us to get savings on our overall media cost. Looking at it just as a single like-to-like basis would not be strictly comparable.

That's the first thing I want to say. Also the mix of marketing that we're doing by channel and all the work that we're doing on return on investments allow us to get much more efficiency behind our media spends.

Niranjan, anything you want to add?

Absolutely. When we look at the best way to look at A&P also is that how's our competitive spend on the GRP levels.

Actually, that has been going up. That therefore when you look at the SOV, SOM that have been going up, and we are number one in most of the categories, the absolute spend size becomes sizeable.

Which is why we highlighted that on an absolute level, this is the highest in the last 11, 12 quarters of the A&P spends that we have done.

Got it. Very clear.

I wanted to appreciate the efficiency part only. Thank you so much.

Wishing you all the very best.

Thank you.

Hi. Good afternoon.

Two questions from me. Firstly, I think from your results, it seems evident that there's sort of a K-shaped growth pattern where the mass categories and mass segment seem to be growing slower, whereas the sort of more premium categories are growing faster.

From your perspective, first, is this assertion true? Second, then are you making a concerted effort in sort of playing this trend?

Secondly, if you can just comment on how sort of general trade and rural growth has done this quarter, and what your outlook on that is maybe for the rest of the year. Thanks.

I can start and Niranjan can add. Firstly, our mass growths are not behind, and it's not so at a total organization level.

If you start looking at a sub-segment level, you may find some differences in some categories. At a total level, we continue to see competitive growths in mass as we see competitive growths in premium.

Of course, in India, you are at higher growth rates in some of the premium sub-segments. That indeed is the case in the shape of the market.

Because it sounds like you're suggesting that we are pushing towards only premium growth, I want to correct that notion and say we continue to be competitive. It's very important given our scale for us to continue to be competitive at the mass end of the portfolio, and this is the reason why we have a large volumetric base while continuing to drive premiumization in line with the trend line of the market.

That's the first thing I would say to you. Niranjan, anything you want to add on that?

No, that's perfect.

The second thing in terms of rural versus urban growths, for us, both rural and urban growths have been robust and continue to be strong. Therefore, in fact, in the last few quarters, we have seen a step-up in our rural growths, and therefore that's been the big change and driver for us over the last few quarters.

Demand overall continues to be stable both in rural and in urban. I hope that answers the question.

Yes, it does. I think just one follow-up on that.

I totally understand. I didn't mean sort of that your sort of opportunity is lower, I just wanted to ask if the growth for premium is faster.

In that context, since you mentioned rural growing faster, even there this trend would hold true, right, of premiumization and the premium categories generally growing faster? Yes.

Absolutely. Across pop strata in the country today, consumers in consumer products tend to be in that direction over time.

I wanted to underline the importance of our mass business for us. We have leadership because we have the portfolio we have, which straddles across the price piano, and winning at each end of this market is very important.

That's the shape of growth that we're looking for, is competitive growth at each end of the pyramid, and, of course, the premium segment grows faster. I hope that clarifies.

Yes, it does. Thanks so much.

You're most welcome.

Hi, good evening. Am I audible?

Yes, you are.

You're audible.

I had three questions. We'll quickly take them.

The first is, if I look at our Q1 volume growth of 5% versus, say, 6% in Q4, fair to say that it's mainly the moderation in tea volumes and soaps, which sort of explains this deceleration, right? All the other sub-segments would have seen a pickup in volume growth?

From a trajectory perspective, yes.

Fair. That's helpful.

The second one, Priya, Niranjan, was, say, on the El Niño impact. I know you've called that out.

Historically, when we've also seen the performance in, say, years when El Niño has been extremely strong, that we've not seen that much of an impact in terms of how our overall top line or volume growth would have been impacted. It is fair to say that irrespective of how the El Niño impact sort of plays out, there wouldn't be much of an impact on the growth is what we are thinking at this point in time?

Yeah. I'll just give you some statistics, and maybe that'll help.

Overall, listen, you guys will know this, but agriculture is now 15% of the GDP of India, and in a difficult year versus a good year, the impact will be 50, 60 basis points to overall GDP growth. Within that, our portfolio, because of the spread both across categories and the depth in each sub-segment, we feel very confident that we can navigate.

Which is why we are not guiding differently.

If I were to just build on Priya's point, the added thing is that while that's the quantum impact that happens, there's also been MSP increases that have happened around 5% to 6%. Therefore, in a sense, there is some sort of insulation to an extent on the rural income part of it.

Therefore, and plus when you see the rainfall progression as of now, because this monsoon is important, it started with a huge deficit, but now it is actually increased, and therefore the deficit is now only 15% of the overall. Now as long as the deficit remains between 15% to 20%, we do not see any meaningful impact on the Indian economy.

Got that, Niranjan. Just one final question is on OZiva.

Looking at FY '26, the performance was very strong at, I think, an 80% kind of growth, the first full year when you were operating it. In Q1, when you're calling out the moderation, any specific aspects about what changes are we making that the growth has sort of moderated?

No, listen, in these kind of categories, growth doesn't tend to be linear, right? These are small businesses moving sometimes at very high velocity.

We just need to keep driving that curve of growth and innovation. We remain extremely bullish on the opportunity in wellness, and we will roll out a spate of innovations as we go forward to keep driving the wellness category, which is a very early stage, super-nascent, right, the wellness category in India.

I think we've had a huge inflection since acquisition, and this is an area in which we don't expect linear growth, to be honest.

Understood. That was it from my side.

I wish you all the best. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are quite a bit of questions on growth.

The questions are congrats on the double-digit USG growth, especially the volumes in this context. Is this growth sustainable, and what's your outlook going forward?

Yeah. We will keep guiding for the way we have guided, which is full year '27 will be better than full year '26.

What I want to share is why we feel that the progress is in the right direction, and it's basically because we believe it's behind a few key fundamentals. Let me lay them out for you.

We spoke about this in the last quarter and I will repeat it, which is sharply allocating our resource behind a few key bets, which we internally call power moves. These are really low-penetration, high-growth segments in each of our businesses where we are driving resources towards.

These are resources both financial, in terms of human resources, really allocating our resources behind a few bets. The second is market development and really doubling down as leaders in all the categories in which we are behind developing and growing the market, and really whether it is our sampling activities, our resources towards growing penetration in these categories, the assortment of these low-penetrated categories, that has been a big focus.

Related to that, the third is really doubling down behind our execution in market. We are growing our distribution and our assortment both in general stores and in organized trade, and this has come on the back of all the work we have done on creating a more specialist route to market.

We talked about some of them in the last quarter, like quick commerce, and really the organization that we have created. Really doubling down behind execution in the market is the third area or the third vector.

Lastly, it's continuing to drive our portfolio towards the higher-velocity areas, like the acquisitions we've done of Minimalist, OZiva, which provide us better exposure to growth.

If I may just build on that, Priya, this one is also when you look at it, if the growth is actually narrow, then one can look at as to how do you address the medium and the longer term. Our growth, if you see, in the quarter has been very broad-based.

On one hand, right from laundry to dishwash, to coffee, to Horlicks and Boost, to Beauty, Wellbeing, hair care, skin care, you look at across the board, it's a very broad-based growth. Second is the growth is also broad-based across channel.

The GT has come back to the growth, our step-up of the growth, Q-commerce or MT or e-com. You look at rural and urban, even from that point of view, it's broad-based.

Then Priya touched on the mass and the premium. The broad-basing of growth gives us confidence that moving forward, we are standing on a solid platform of taking it forward.

There's one more question which says, there's a report by Bain which points that there's a trend towards many D2C brands arriving in the market, but they saturate at ₹500 crore top line. Is this an opportunity for a company like HUL, which is widely distributed?

Yeah. We look at our portfolio expansion in the following way.

The first is, and we will always say extending our current brands into new demand spaces. Great example of that in recency is what we've done with Horlicks as we've entered protein or what we've done with Vaseline as we've entered light moisturization.

I'm just laying it out so that I can put into three buckets for you. The first is extending our existing brands into new spaces.

The second opportunity for us is to bring in more of our Unilever brands to occupy demand spaces. Of course, the third is looking at acquisitions and bolt-on acquisitions of the nature of Minimalist, OZiva, as we've done and providing them not just the leverage of scale, but actually a lot of the R&D capability, the synergy benefits that we offer along with the deep understanding that we have of the categories in which we are leaders.

Depending on our portfolio, we will always look at opportunities to help scale these brands.

Absolutely. Just to build on that, obviously, we keep saying that barriers to entry may have got reduced, Priya, like what you keep saying, but the barrier to scale has only gone up.

That's also visible in some of the brands that we acquired like Minimalist, that post our acquisition, it's really taken off in a big way.

What are your top risks to deliver your annual revenue outlook?

I think on this, we have to say that we are guiding towards the plan that we have, assuming those risks are built into plan, right? We assume that the risks that are there in the plan are built into it as we guide you towards full year '27 greater than full year '26.

Absolutely. These are risk-adjusted guidance that we have put in, factoring in both the macroeconomic environment as well as any kind of portfolio risks.

Do you

give some guidance on the quick commerce? We are hearing some information on slow down.

How do you see this for Unilever?

As far as quick commerce is concerned, look, quick commerce as a segment is also seeing entry of new players. Therefore, it's a segment that's evolving rapidly.

As far as our growth is concerned, our growth has been very strong double digit, 40%, 50% kind of growths that we are growing in Q-comm. Therefore, moving forward also, we see opportunities as far as Q-comm is concerned, and what we are focusing on winning in Q-comm is through improving availability, through curated tech solutions, tailored assortments across our portfolio, also price-pack architecture which is being built specifically for Q-comm, along with that, sharper execution in partnership with these platform players because there's a lot of exchange of knowledge and how to operate happens.

Finally, as we scale, we are also looking at that how do you leverage data and insights to improve conversion, visibility, and repeat usage. The channel remains a fast-growing, it is structurally attractive, it provides deepening of scale and improving the quality of growth.

Dorwin, I'll hand it back to you for any questions online.

This is Percy Panthaki here. Just wanted to go deeper into the soaps performance.

There is a 4% sales growth, and the volume decline is sort of a low single-digit kind of a volume decline, which means that the effective pricing is a single-digit pricing growth on a YoY basis. Now given that the GST rate cuts have happened from a 18 to a 5 at a consumer price level, the YoY sort of pricing would still be flat to marginally negative only, even though at a net sales level, you are seeing a high single-digit kind of a pricing.

From a consumer affordability point of view YoY, it's flat to better, why is there a volume decline in this segment? See

you have to look at sequential inflations over a period of two years. It's not just one year or let's say the GST period, which you are right in pointing out that there is some part of netting off that happens, but it is over a couple of years that there's a palm oil-led inflation that's been happening, and that's impacting the category overall as such.

What we are doing to counter as we said is to increase premiumization here. Therefore, the focus on Dove and Pears, which we are growing at strong double digits, equally in the formats, upgrading people to body wash, which is actually very low penetration, and again there we have a lead market share and actually increasing it also in double digits.

That's the part of it. Other than that, we are also looking at ways and means to actually grow on Lux and Lifebuoy, which is the mass portfolio in soaps.

Sir, if the inflation is so high that the consumer is not even able to buy the current brand that he's buying, then how is he going to able to premiumize? I understand that at a mathematical level you are seeing premiumization because Dove and Pears are growing faster, but that doesn't mean that the consumer is really premiumizing, right, if inflation is the issue?

Also just wanted to understand, at the mass end, apart from the macro issues in this segment, is there any market share loss at the mass end of the soap segment?

Firstly, when you look at the market, you have to segment the market by pop strata type, by consumer segments. There is different kinds of trends in the market depending on where in the market you're referencing, right?

Different trends in rural, different trends in metros, large towns. I don't want to brush one brush across the entire market.

Our focus is to continue to drive sequentially our volumes, continue to premiumize our business through Dove and Pears and which doing well, continue to do well and drive up the premiumization, and drive the body wash market and convert the market to liquids. That's really how I would see it.

Got it. Secondly, on Home Care and Beauty, I must congratulate you that you have posted really good growth both in value and in volume.

In fact, the volume growth has probably accelerated at the same time that the pricing has accelerated, which is rather sort of rare and a good achievement. Just wanted to understand, especially in Beauty, what has really started working for us?

There was a drag from Glow & Lovely because the mass skincare as a segment overall, and not just your brand, was not doing well. Have we seen that segment coming back to growth or the problems there remain, and we have seen an even faster acceleration in the premium, which has led to the overall sort of growing well?

Overall across our Beauty business, we are seeing both things. We're seeing our mass business do better sequentially.

We're also seeing our premium business accelerate, and that's the reason for the strong double-digit growth. It is a both happening together.

Therefore, and of course, our hair category has performed extremely strongly, double-digit growth, and with high single-digit growth in skin care. This combination of return on sequential performance on mass while, and you're referencing Glow & Lovely, but acceleration of premium.

In the end, it boils down to the moves that we are making, right? The first is that three of our brands are growing at extremely strong double digits.

Simple, Vaseline, Pond's, all growing very strong double digit. We're accelerating our online brands in Minimalist, Simple, very strongly both online and offline.

The channels of the future as well are growing double digit for us, think e-commerce, modern trade. These are growing double digits as well.

We are encouraged with the trajectory we're seeing. We will continue to double down behind some of the measures that we had put in place, like de-seasonalizing of moisturization, democratization of sunscreens, all the areas that we have called out in our beauty categories that we are going behind market developing.

Got it. Lastly, on margins, at what level does crude need to maintain if you are to let's say maintain margins at 23% without taking any further price increases?

That question will be very difficult to answer, and even if I have the answer, I will not be able to provide that. What I can give you is a general thing, which is that, A, again, we are looking at and we've got a playbook where when we have passed even half the inflation, we are able to maintain the margins, and which is what we have shown to be within the guided range.

Therefore, because we have the flex on all the lines of P&L, we do see the commodities remaining a bit elevated, and we'll take measured steps on the pricing, and with that, we should be able to manage the EBITDA margins. Of course, if you were to talk crude at $140, $160, which is of course not feasible as of now, then it's a different discussion altogether.

When we look at the vicinity of, because in the peak part of the June quarter also crude went up to $100 per barrel. When we see that kind of economics which are operating anywhere between $75, $80 to $100 within that all of that ranges, it's feasible for us to maintain the EBITDA margins.

Sir. That's all from me.

Thanks, and all the best.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions.

Congrats first on a great set of numbers in Beauty and Home Care. On a couple of things, on quick commerce, are you seeing this as more a shopper channel shift, or are you seeing incremental revenue coming from either higher consumption or upgrades or share gains?

That's question one. Question two is on the competitive intensity headwinds that are possibly seen in the market from value players in liquid detergents, in handwash, and in beauty, how are you seeing those impacting your growth aspirations in the whole premiumization journey that you're seeing, right?

The third question is on how you see the salience of brand marketing spends and platform or POS marketing spends shifting with the whole shifting shopper behavior more towards organized trade, which is modern trade and quick commerce? Those were the three questions.

Sure. Let me start with the first, which is a question you asked on quick commerce.

Quick commerce actually allows us to segment consumers, and that is a very powerful thing from our perspective to actually create the right portfolio channel architecture, which we are building with a lot of packs designed for that particular channel. Therefore, in that sense, a huge opportunity for us to have upsize, create new sub-segments which hitherto would have been difficult to segment.

I think what quick commerce has allowed us to do is segment the route to market, and that's a very huge opportunity for us, and that's how we see the opportunity in quick commerce for us. The second is in terms of you're talking about liquid detergents and various other liquids.

I think the way to think about it is that these are very, very low penetration segments. Our focus is to really develop the market.

That is really the game that we're playing is to grow the market, to create that market. Within that, we are by far leading the market development initiatives of these categories.

There will always be competition. That's the nature of free markets.

We are very well placed because we are growing and developing the markets. We will have the right portfolio price architecture as the market develops to fight as we have fought in other formats, even in these formats.

That's really what I would say on liquids. On the last thing you asked on performance marketing spends, I believe, versus brand marketing spends, for us, it's always a very healthy balance of these spends, of long-term brand-building spends versus short-term acquisition spends.

We maintain and we have a lot of return on marketing investment long-term and short-term modeling on what are the right ratios to use to build brands, not just in the short term, but over time. We use this knowledge and intellectual proprietary knowledge that we have of return on investment to decide by brand how to prioritize between short-term and long-term investments.

Got it. Just a follow-up on the liquids piece.

Sorry. From what I understand specifically on the handwash piece, post-COVID, there has been some consumer stickiness, and there is reasonable penetration there.

A, are you seeing that being one of the reasons why soaps volumes are being impacted? There again, in terms of the value play through those powder-to-liquid handwashes, are you seeing that sort of denting the whole premiumization on that part of the bars-to-liquids journey?

That would be just a follow-up. Yeah.

I think I'm not entirely clear, but I'm assuming you're talking about skin cleansing.

Yes, that's right, handwash versus bar soap.

Right. I see.

Okay. I was not clear whether you're talking about laundry or skin cleansing.

In the skin cleansing category, the consumption that you have bathing versus handwash are very, very different, and it'll be a small subsection of what is in used as liquids. The biggest opportunity is to convert bathing products to liquids, and that's the body wash opportunity that we were referencing a little earlier.

For me, that is the huge opportunity is the consumption that happens in bathing and moving those consumers into liquids. That's really our priority and focus.

That's the largest part of the market, and we are very well equipped to navigate as the leaders of the body wash segment. More importantly, we're driving those activations and initiatives to gain new consumers, to do the sampling, to educate consumers of the benefits of liquids over soap bars.

Thanks, and all the best.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dorwin. There are three questions on the web.

One is on Home Care. While the top line has been good, the EBIT has fallen.

Would you take further pricing in the context of inflation?

Yeah. Can you repeat that again?

Sorry, Yogesh.

Home Care has delivered a strong performance. EBIT has fallen.

Would you take further pricing to ensure to cover for the inflation?

Yeah. I think we mentioned this, but the situation on crude remains volatile.

We will be calibrated in what we need to do between as we have done in this quarter, we remain confident given our Home Care portfolio. We will calibrate between price, savings, procurement benefits to ensure that we navigate competitively as we have done in this quarter.

The next question is on tea. Can you help us the commentary on tea inflation and what are your pricing actions, especially given that tea season is ongoing?

Yeah. The early read of the tea season indeed shows an inflationary trend.

We will look as we go into the season and the buying done completely as to how the commodity pans out, and based on that, we will take the right calls on pricing.

Priya, you have completed one year in the role. What are your reflections?

Yeah.

Thanks for asking. Firstly, it's been a very exciting one year from an overall context.

Listen, I remain happy with the progress, but not satisfied, and that would be my top-line answer to how I feel. You can never be satisfied in a company like this with what the opportunity is, but happy with the progress we see quarter on quarter.

I believe behind this there are some strong fundamentals. I reference them, I'll quickly touch on them.

The first is all the work that's happening on the portfolio and gearing the portfolio towards higher-growth spaces, the investment choices that we have made, sharpening them radically, ensuring that those get the lion's share of our investments. The go-to-market progress that we've made on assortment, distribution, growth, but also the segmented channel architecture that we are putting in place and the channel capabilities that we're putting in place, but mostly the work that's happening on brands and innovation and that we will see going forward not just in the few quarters that have gone by, but that is a multi-year plan.

I feel that the direction is right and the fundamentals start to fall in place, but like I said, happy with progress, but not satisfied.

With that, we now come to the end of the Q&A. Before we end, let me remind you that the playback of this event will be available on the IR section of our website in a short while and hand over to Niranjan for some closing remarks.

Thanks, Yogesh. If I may just summarize the key messages for the quarter from our side.

One, as you've seen, it's been a double-digit growth with a continued step-up over the last few quarters. Second is our underlying profit after tax adjusted for the one-off credit of last year grew by 11%.

We've navigated well in June quarter with EBITDA margin remaining in the guidance. While the volatility continues, we remain confident of the resilience of Indian economy and the stability of FMCG demand, and we remain well equipped with our portfolio to navigate this moving forward as well.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation, and have a great evening.

Thank you.