Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.

I would like to thank management of Jyothy Laboratory to give this opportunity to host this call. We have with us Mr.

Pawan Agarwal, CFO, and Ms. Jyothy, Chairperson and Managing Director.

Over to the management for their opening remarks. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. A warm welcome to the Q3 FY26 earnings call of Jyothy Labs Limited.

Our financial results and investor presentation are available on our website and the stock exchanges. I trust you have had the opportunity to go through them.

We entered Q3 with a favorable macro backdrop. The FMCG sector has begun showing signs of revival, aided by easing inflation, steady consumption, and a supportive policy environment.

Consumer confidence improved steadily through the quarter, and we believe this momentum will continue to build in the coming months. The recent GST rate cuts, repo rate reductions, and softening inflation have collectively supported improved affordability.

These effects began reflecting in Q3, and their full benefit is likely to unfold over the next few quarters. Demand for daily-use essentials and home care products has begun to recover visibly.

Rural markets remain strong, supported by good monsoons, stable farm income, and sustained government spending. Urban demand, too, improved as the quarter progressed, although it remains value-driven and highly competitive, particularly in online channels.

Modern trade, e-commerce, and quick commerce delivered strong growth for us. Encouragingly, GT staged a recovery across all regions in the country, marking a welcome shift after a few subdued quarters.

The temporary disruption following the GST rate changes largely settled by end November. The initial inventory destocking gave way to restocking momentum across channels.

As we had indicated in previous earning calls, the broad-based consumption recovery seems to have begun. However, sustained traction over a couple more quarters will be necessary to call it a firm trend.

Coming to business performance highlights, Fabric Care delivered a 9.2% value growth, driven primarily by volume. Our entire liquid detergent portfolio across Ujala, Henko, Mr.

White, and More Light continued to perform strongly. The new launch Doctor Wool was well received in its debut quarter.

Liquid detergents posted high double-digit volume growth in a profitable manner, despite price cuts with several players reducing MRPs and offering higher grammage. Nonetheless, category momentum remains strong, particularly in the southern markets.

Dishwash category saw 7% volume growth despite a 1.3% value decline, an outcome of price reductions, grammage increases, and promotional offers. Competitive intensity in this space has escalated with multiple players dropping MRPs and pushing larger packs, impacting average realizations across the board.

Personal Care segment returned to profitable growth in Q3. It grew by nearly 11% in value, primarily volume-led.

The post-GST disruption in September and October was resolved by November. Our Margo franchise performed well across channels with Margo Original Neem and Margo Neem Naturals being key contributors.

The focused turnaround plan for the HI segment is beginning to deliver results. The segment posted 12.6% value growth, driven by volume.

Coil sales continued to decline, but the drop was more than offset by a decent volume growth in liquid vaporizers. The recently launched Maxo aerosol is also scaling up well.

We remain on track to reduce coil dependence, expand portfolio, and minimize losses in HI segment. For the 9-months period ended December 2025, although the sales at ₹2,227 crore grew by 2.2% in value terms, the volume growth was 4.5%.

Fabric Care grew 6.2%, registering a robust 7% volume growth. Liquid detergents have nearly doubled both in volume and value terms.

Personal Care registered a price-led value growth of 1.8%. The Dishwash segment declined by 1.7% in value despite delivering more than 6% of growth in volume, largely due to price cuts, extra grammages, and promotional offers.

Lastly, the HI segment was down by 3.5% percent, however, the outlook of the segment looks promising in the medium to long term. Now coming to our financial performance for Q3 and 9 months ended 31st December 2025: Revenue from operations for Q3 stood at ₹740 crore, reflecting value growth of 5.1% and volume growth of 7.2% year-on-year.

The difference between value and volume growth was primarily due to MRP reductions and higher grammage. Gross margin for the quarter was 46.5%, lower by 330 basis points year-on-year.

Gross margins remained under pressure due to MRP cuts and lower sales realization, especially in the Dishwash and liquid detergent categories, and elevated input prices of select commodities such as LABSA, SLES, etc. Given the current geopolitical situation and resultant unpredictability in the forex and crude prices, coupled with increased competitive intensity, the gross margin is likely to remain subdued over the next couple of quarters at the minimum.

Advertisement and promotion spends were at 7.7% of revenue. However, our A&P spend on a broader time horizon will remain in 8% to 9% range.

EBITDA margin stood at 15%, nearly 150 basis points lower compared to Q3 of last financial year. Operating EBITDA for Q3 stood at ₹111 crore and PAT was at ₹81 crore.

For the 9 months period ended 31st December 2025, revenue from operations stood at ₹2,227 crore. Gross margin was 47.5% compared to 50.4% in the same period last year, while EBITDA margin was 15.9% against 17.8% in the previous period.

PAT stood at ₹266 crore against ₹294 crore during the previous period. With the introduction of India's new labor codes, we have assessed the likely impact and made necessary disclosures based on ICAI guidance.

Given that our pay structure already aligns with the revised wage definitions, the financial impact remains negligible. We will continue to track developments in this regard and account for it accordingly.

While near-term margin pressures persist, especially in Dishwash and liquid detergent segments, due to reduced MRPs and input cost inflation, especially in LABSA and SLES, we expect gradual stability in raw material prices going forward. Geopolitical volatility and forex fluctuations continue to remain watchpoints.

We remain cautiously optimistic about a sustained recovery in consumption. With an improving macro, ongoing cost discipline, and executional agility, we are well placed to build on the momentum of Q3.

In closing, I would like to thank our teams for their commitment, our trade and distribution partners for their trust, and our investors for their continued support and engagement. We appreciate your time today and now look forward to your questions.

Thank you.

Hi, am I audible?

Hi. My question is, in the household insecticide category, our medium-term focus has always been on driving efficiency and turning around the category, but it has not been reflected in our results, purely comparing on a yearly basis.

What problems or challenges are we facing in this category? Is the competition that is hurting us, or is the acceptance of the brand in the minds of people?

Thanks, Rishabh, for the question. In HI category, about 4 quarters ago, we had clearly articulated how we are building up this business.

At that time, we announced that we are going to grow this business profitably. A lot of actions have been taken in pursuance of that announcement.

One of the action is defocussing on coil and focusing more on growing LV and NPDs in a profitable manner. For the last couple of quarters, we have made good progress on this.

You would recall in earlier earning calls, we had indicated that coil and LV ratio used to be 50-50, and prior to that, coil was even higher, coil share in the total segmental revenue was higher. Now coil stands at 1/3 of total HI revenue as we speak.

In the last 3-4 quarters, there has been a lot of work which has been done on the LV side. Also the newly launched aerosol is also doing good job for us in the marketplace.

As a result, if you look at this quarter, both in volume and value terms, we have grown double digit, and the losses are minimal. We hope and expect to maintain this momentum going forward.

As indicated earlier, maybe by the end of FY27, we are quite positive that we should be able to turn around this completely, and we'll be out of woods.

Sir. Thank you.

My next question is that the divestment of our JV, that was JKBL, we had incurred a loss of about ₹4 crore. We did this divestment because it did not yield a desired result for us.

We just wanted to know what are the key learnings or what mistakes did we make so that we don't repeat them in the future?

Thanks for this question, Rishabh. We had put in a number of years in making inroads in Bangladesh market.

Through our subsidiary, JKBL, more than 10 years, we tried that market. It's a difficult market.

We tried a number of things in order to expand our presence over there. Because of the cheaper products availability over there and other operational issues which led to the situation whereby we could not expand it in a meaningful manner.

We thought it prudent to cut our losses and discontinue that operation. This is why we took a decision in March last year, and we sold our stake to the minority shareholder.

We came out of this, and we are completely focused on our domestic growth and in select export market where we are doing pretty well, for instance, Middle East or Southeast Asian countries. It's a focused strategy, I would say.

Where we are confident that we will be able to make our presence felt, we are diverting our energies in those geographies.

Okay. My third question is, how do you see the demand panning out in the future years?

Because what we are seeing that the FMCG results have been static for quite some years. In our product profile, what do you think, which product categories will contribute higher towards our pipeline?

See, overall, as we have been mentioning, the demand has been resilient as far as rural market is concerned for the last whatever 4-5 quarters. The stress was seen only on the urban side.

The good news is that in this quarter, we saw a good revival of demand in urban markets. It's too early to comment, as Jyothy mentioned in her opening remarks also.

We are also watching this sustainability of this demand trend. There is no reason why it should fall.

We are quite upbeat about recovery of demand, especially on the urban side, going forward. Across the segment, if you look at, we have delivered in this quarter a decent volume growth, whether it is Fabric Care post wash or detergent bars or liquids or liquid vaporizer, everywhere double-digit volume growth.

It looks like that if this trend continues, that we are going to see good quarters going forward.

Sir. Thank you.

I'll get back in the queue.

Thank you.

Good evening. I just had a few questions.

One was on the volume growth side. Is there any kind of restocking benefit going into quarter 3 after quarter 2 had this little bit of GST disruption in our numbers?

If any, could you kind of quantify that? That's my first question.

The second one was on this deflation impact of almost 2%. Seems like, given that you mentioned your dishwash volume growth, it's all coming from kind of dishwash, because there seems to be a very sharp 8-9% impact there on the realization side.

If you could just kind of highlight till when do you expect this to continue? When does this kind of annualize in the base?

Is this a new impact for the last 2 quarters? That's my second one.

Third is on the margin. It doesn't look like there is too much of incremental inflation impact going forward.

How do we see gross margin improvement process? How long do you think that takes?

Those were my questions.

Thanks, Harit. To answer your first question on volume growth, especially in the context of GST rate revisions, which happened in September quarter.

As we mentioned earlier, it was only the Personal Care segment which was impacted because of GST rate rationalization. We did not see much of stocking/destocking issues, because part of the quarter, which is let's say end of September, October, and some part of November, there was slowness in demand as far as Personal Care portfolio is concerned from the retail outlets, because they were clearing the old inventory.

After that, I think we have got a decent inflow of orders from the market, it comes back to normalcy. We are not seeing any sudden spike or sudden draw.

Of course, the initial few weeks after GST rollout was a bit of disruption, but otherwise, it's business back to normal. The second question of dishwash that you talked about.

Yes, I think in the last couple of quarters, we are seeing the competitive intensity going up in this segment. We have also taken some MRP cuts in previous quarter.

As of now, it's very difficult to predict which way it will go, because this is a function of market realities and we are focused on growth. We'll wait and watch how market evolves as far as dishwash is concerned.

Thirdly, your question was on margin and the RM inflation and how it is going to impact the margin going forward. In our context, if you look at the key raw materials such as LABSA, SLES, or noodles for that matter, we have not seen a respite in these key commodities, which is bulk of our raw material procurement.

Both on year-on-year basis and sequentially also, there is a visible inflation. Coupled with lowering of prices in liquid detergent and dishwash, more so in dishwash category, has led to this impact on gross margin.

In the near term, margin pressure will be there a couple of quarters at the minimum is what we feel, but slowly as the liquid detergent expansion happens and also in the dishwash, if the raw material prices cools off going forward, I think the margin will slowly and gradually get back to the earlier levels. It may take some time.

That's it from me. I'll come back for more if I have any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Harit.

Sir. Thank you for the opportunity.

Just on the overall growth, as I see, Fabric Care has done well for a high single-digit growth. Is that the case that volume growth in that would also be higher than the value growth, maybe double digit kind of a thing?

Thanks, Amit, for your question. In Fabric Care, our post-wash portfolio has delivered double-digit growth.

Main wash has also been done well. Net-net, Fabric Care has done well, you're right.

Is there a volume-value gap which is kind of negative, or it is only the dishwash that is kind of impacting our entire pricing impact?

Mainly dishwash. As I said, dishwash is the area where we have seen the volume-value major gap.

Otherwise, it's broadly in line. Other segments are in line.

Okay. Just from an outlook perspective, while we aspire to have a double-digit volume growth next year, I wanted to understand from a value growth perspective, as the share of liquid detergents goes up in our overall mix, would that restrict kind of some bit of price growth to some extent if raw material prices remain as they are?

Also, if the industry-wide, there is no price increase taken in detergent because detergent was anyway not part of GST, right? We could have anyway taken price increase.

What is stopping us to take price increases in that, especially in some of our leadership categories? Just your thoughts.

Detergents, both in powders and liquids, will be competitive is what we can say, Amit. Post-wash also, yes, in two of the post-wash things, we are leaders there.

There, we are taking price increases as and when required. Only if raw materials and things go up, we are taking price increases.

Detergents will especially be competitive in the market as how that is being dictated. We'll be also following that.

Except in few market where we are leaders, there we will be taking up price increases.

Sure. Okay.

For next year, the volume-value gap should kind of converge, right, if that the way to think, because dishwash will come into the base most likely, and even if you don't take any price increases, the volume-value gap should converge, right? Is that the way to think?

Amit, we mentioned this earlier also that in the near term, the volume-value gap is likely to persist to the range of 2% to 3%. If you see it in every quarter, you are seeing volume-value gap of 2% to 3%.

In the near term, we believe that this trend is likely to continue.

Sir, can you touch upon some of the distribution initiatives that you could share, whether it is direct reach expansion or general overall reach expansion? How are you thinking both in urban and rural?

Currently, what is the reach, and what is the direct reach, these pointers? Thanks.

That's it from my side.

Yeah. Amit, as last year, we reached about 13 lakh retail outlets directly.

This year, we are close to closing it at 14 lakh retail outlets, which is direct reach. Now between urban and rural, we are, if you take that way, it is almost equal across regions.

Whatever we are doing, it is across each regions and not in particular rural or urban, that way. For us, this 1 lakh retail outlets that we'll be adding this year will be a pan-India phenomenon.

Sure. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Hi, ma'am. Thank you for the opportunity.

I had a question on distribution. While our overall reach is 3.6 million outlets, what would this number be for Exo and Margo?

We don't give that individual brands separately, Umang.

Okay. Any rough idea on whether indexing these brands to overall growth could be a driver going forward?

Sorry, as I said, we don't get into that level of details. At a high level, we always announce what is our reach level, direct and indirect, and that's where we end.

No problem. Second question was two parts.

One was, how is the response to Jovia? Second was, we had launched Ujala IDD to West Bengal.

Just wanted to understand how that is doing.

Yeah. Both have been received well, Umang.

The thing is, Jovia is an NPD. If you take any NPD, we internally have certain parameters of what we call it as a success.

It has fulfilled those parameters, and it's been accepted really well. Ujala IDD in West Bengal is also there are learnings.

While it has been accepted, there are a few learnings as well which we are trying to incorporate going along.

Okay. In terms of home insecticides, the profitability, like you very well mentioned, will come as more and more liquid is sold and the mix increases.

Are we also reducing our ad spend there to make it breakeven, or will the ad spend will continue in that direction?

Umang, that's a great question. We always stated that if we were to cut down on our ad spend on HI segment, we are already profitable.

The fact that we continue to invest behind this brand, Maxo brand, and also we are coupling it with other initiative like focusing on LV and penetrating the new product into the channel. All these things put together is giving us a hope that we will be able to turn around this category, and we are in the right direction.

Got it. Thank you so much.

I'll join back in the queue.

Thank you.

Please go ahead. Hello?

I just wanted a question regarding the dishwashing segment that as we can see that the value is decreasing by 1.3%, right? At the same time, it is the majority part of the revenue stream.

I just wanted to ask that the price cut in the MRP is for the penetration into the market, or what is the strategy regarding that and by when it will be recovered?

It is a pure competitive action, Vyom. It has nothing to do with reaching and all of that, because distribution as a thing for it is important for all our brands, and we've been doing that, be it dishwash, be it detergent across the portfolio.

MRP reductions are purely competitive in nature, and as and when things change, we will also change accordingly.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity again. Just wanted to know more about this laundry business.

What was the management thought process to start this business? Also, how is this business going?

Can you give some thoughts on that?

Could you repeat your question, Rishabh? We couldn't hear it clearly.

Just wanted to know more about this laundry business. What was the management thought process to start this business?

How is it going? Can you give some thoughts on that?

Right. It is a very old business.

Earlier, you would recall that it used to be run under a subsidiary, and then later on, this business was merged with the parent company. Now it's a division of Jyothy Labs Limited and reported under "others" segment, okay?

We are focused on building on the retail franchise in this business. Under Fabric Spa brand, we have 200-plus outlets spread across few states.

We are growing reasonably well in this segment. We are not incurring cash losses over there.

In that sense, we are working towards making it profitable. It may take some time in order to bring a meaningful profit into this business, but the first goal was to arrest the losses, which to a large extent, we have been able to achieve.

Okay. Sir, my next question is, as you say, there are many, many more players in the categories in which we are present, correct?

Everyone is ready to spend money on their particular category. What would differentiate us from them?

You are talking in the context of laundry business or in general you're talking about?

In general, sir.

No. It will be purely on differentiation, Rishabh.

We have our brands are different, what we offer is differentiated with what the competition is offering. As long as that's very clearly communicated to the consumer and they use the brand and they find that of value, they'll continue to use, and we'll win market share like how we've been doing since last so many years.

Our market shares only shares have only grown over a period of last so many years. It's a pure, what do you call, the trust that consumers have in us in each brand that we bring in, and the market shares reflect that.

Oh,

just a follow-up on this one. Could you just give out the market shares of what it was there 5 years back and now for the categories in which we are present?

No, we do not share market share related information publicly.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Hi. My question is on the pricing and the volume trade-off.

Just want to understand the recent growth has been more on the volume-led, and the pricing power remains constrained across the categories. How do you assess the risk of this prolonged promotion-led growth risk and the margin pressure?

What is the specific milestone or the triggers would prompt a shift towards the pricing-led growth, even if you entail the near-term volume risk?

We had stated earlier also that our focus is volume-led growth in the near term, given the external environment and given the slowness in the demand for the past few quarters, 4-5 quarters. The first goal before us was to get back to double-digit volume growth.

If you look at the pricing angle also, it is the dishwash category and let's say liquid detergent, which is kind of disturbing a little bit. Other than that, broadly, the pricing side, we are in a comfortable situation.

Of course, there is a scope for improvement, but the near-term goal is volume growth.

Oh, perfect. Okay.

Coming to this dishwash, sir, my second question, so that is this volume and the value disconnect and with the volume growth offset by the pricing action, is this a tactical response to the heightened competition or do you see a structural difference in the margin and growth profile for the category over the medium and the near term? How's the competitive intensity persisting over here?

Competitive intensity is high at least in dishwash. We have reacted to what others have done in the market.

As a result, we had to take some steep price cuts, and we will wait and watch how this segment evolves in the marketplace.

How do you see this margins profile improving over here, sir? What has been in for the YTD basis over here?

Margins will be under pressure in dishwash. If you look at last 2 quarters also, there has been a impact on margin.

In the near term, because elevated raw material cost and the price cuts, etc., there is a bit of impact on the margins. In the near term, we do not expect margin to swing back significantly in dishwash, but eventually, I think a few quarters here and there, finally, the margins will stabilize at the earlier levels.

See, the price cuts have been purely competitive, Akshay, in that sense. We wouldn't have taken that price cuts knowing the situation.

Looks like premiumization is just a word and not in action done by competition. That's where we see good image brands going down just to increase their market share and volume.

People have taken these drastic steps with leading to no results. Let's see where it goes.

Perfect, ma'am. If I can squeeze in one final question on the HI side.

With the coils remaining a structural weak and the liquids driving the growth, what is the steady-state portfolio mix the management is targeting in the HI? At what scale do you see the format begin to materially change in the segment versus to drive up the profitability on the coils that's been declining?

On the long-term basis, how do you see this to stabilize further?

As I indicated earlier many times that we are working on a plan, and our plan indicates that by end of next year, we should be turning profitable. Now second point is the ratio of coil in the overall HI segmental sale, that also has been coming down, and which gives us a breathing space to focus on profitability.

All I can tell you is that we are marching ahead on our action plan, and the early results are quite encouraging, it gives us confidence that we are on the right track.

Okay. Perfect, sir.

Good luck and all the best, sir. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.

I wanted to know one thing: Is it possible to tell about that we are getting margin pressures due to the competition, how much is it related to the online presence and the competition on the online for where the online retailers charge for the listings, and also where there is a threat of more brands and private labels? Thank you.

In our case, Yogesh-ji, our general trade is roughly 2/3 of the business, and 1/3 of the business is composed of modern trade, e-commerce, quick commerce, institutions, exports, and all of that. In that sense, e-commerce and quick commerce is still a very small portion of our total company's revenue.

In terms of the basket, modern trade, e-commerce, quick commerce basket, our margins are reasonably okay. While there is a increasing demand on the e-commerce, quick commerce side, in terms of promotions, etc., and discounts, but still it is not to a level with which gives us worry.

It's still in decent range.

Thank you. Thanks.

Sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

Sir, my first question is regarding the dishwash category. Where we are seeing the competition has led certain price cuts, can you quantify at a broader level what can be the price cuts which we have implemented and by when it's like to annualize in the FY27?

See, our pricing action, downward pricing revision at a portfolio level would be between 8% and 9% in dishwash category. Going forward, what shape and size it will take, only time will tell.

We are watching the market and competitive moves very carefully, and we will take necessary action to combat the competition.

Sir. Got it.

Sir, my second question is regarding the margin. If we recall the last few odd quarters when we were a bit confident on catching up the 16%-plus sort of EBITDA margin, now when things are not favoring in terms of the competition, on top of that, the RM price are getting escalated, are we going to see a pressure from that front?

Are we need to revisit our 16% sort of plus sort of ambition to 15% to 16% range?

At this stage, we are watching the market and the external environment very carefully. We are not giving any guidance on the margin.

Let's wait for few quarters and see how market stabilizes both on the input side and also the pricing side in the market, then we would be able to take a firm view on medium-term EBITDA margin trajectory.

That's it from my side. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity again.

In dishwash segment, is it the larger player who is alone taking these price cuts, or the regional players are also the ones who are doing this?

No, it is the large player, very well-known player, the largest player in the market who is resorting to these kind of cheap tricks. They have literally downgraded their brand and brought it to this level.

Otherwise, local players are not doing any such actions.

Right. Thank you so much for this.

Second clarification was as the raw material prices of detergents are increasing, do we see the unorganized players in the detergent market that we are in struggling far more than we do? If yes, are we gaining market share in Ujala IDD, More Light, and Snow White?

We have gained market share in Ujala IDD, especially in southern India. We have done well.

For others also, we are in a comfortable position. We are not losing market share in a meaningful manner anywhere.

Okay. Sure.

Last was, Henko, we have been positioning it as a premium detergent, and I think Ariel and Surf Excel are the ones who we would be comparing them with. Our distribution, from what I understand, was restricted to metros and large cities only.

Going forward, any plan to scale this brand up?

The thing is, it's a premium offering in our portfolio. Premium detergent sell in few select areas only, Umang.

It's largely metros, South India, and Large part of India is still low-priced and mid-priced segments. We are there at the right place, and we do selective spends on this brand.

For us and for the country as such, it's the low-priced and the mid-priced detergents that are doing well.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks, operator, and thanks everybody who has joined the call. We are grateful to you for your continued interest in the company.

Thank you so much.