I now hand the conference over to Mr. Samir Agrawal. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you all for participating in today's call to discuss the second quarter results of Arvind Limited for the financial year FY 2024. Joining me today is Mr. Punit Lalbhai, the Vice Chairman of Arvind Limited and Executive Director on the board, Mr. Jayesh Shah, Group CFO and Executive Director, Mr. Nigam Shah, who is CFO Designate, our Head of Investor Relations, Mr. Sukrit Raju Shah. Before I get into the results and read those out, I'd just take a couple of minutes to share the observations we are having on the macro environment that is relevant for our businesses. Consumer demand in key markets like U.S., U.K., Europe, continues to be tepid, given high interest rates, food and energy prices. Continuing war in Europe and new uncertainties in Middle East threaten to put additional pressure on the situation.
On the good side, in parallel though, the inventory correction cycle, which was playing out for last two, three quarters, seems to have tapered off, and our customers have begun fresh buying discussions. Although they are gonna buy in small lots and closer to the actual demand, but those discussions have resumed. As far as domestic markets are concerned, as we have been sharing, the first half of the year was quite muted in terms of the consumer demand because of the overbought situations in the last year. And hence, the H1 marketing and market demand was so soft. As we open this quarter in the initial few days of October, there seems to be some resumption in the consumer demand and buying, and like growth has resumed.
Specifically for premium and mass premium segment in the market, things are looking up. Cotton and other input prices continue to be range bound and are not expected to show any sharp changes in the near future. Coming to our Q2 results, the revenues were INR 1,922 crore, 1,922 crore, which was up 4% compared to Q1 on a sequential basis. Excluding other income, EBITDA stood at INR 206 crore, which translates into an overall operating margin of 10.7%. Profit after tax was reported at INR 79 crore. Textile volumes, especially in export markets, were on the whole stable during the quarter. Denim clocked 13 million meters, and woven delivered 29.4 million meters. Garment volumes also improved slightly on a sequential basis compared to previous quarter, stood at 7.6 million pieces.
Overall, in terms of revenue, the textile segment reported INR 1,455 crore, which was 3% higher than the corresponding Q1 number. Textile margins improved to 11% for Q2. AMD continues to deliver. The volume growth was recorded at 20%+, although when it comes to the revenue, we reported 13% because prices have to come down in tandem with the input RM costs coming down. Revenue stood at INR 350 crore for the quarter. EBITDA margins improved to 15.7% as a result of input costs and growing size, giving operating leverage. Looking ahead for the rest of the financial year, we expect textile volumes to start seeing significant improvement from Q4 as a result of China Plus One , and increased requirements around sustainability with traceable solutions.
Domestic markets are also expected to remain strong and build upon the ongoing customer season momentum. We continue our trajectory of reducing long-term debt and have repaid INR 45 crore in Q2. Overall, net debt stood at INR 1,333 crore at the quarter end. This concludes my opening remarks. Before we open the circle of questions, I'd request Punit try to share his perspective on the market and our outlook forward.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the call. Pleasure to interact with all of you today. I think given the difficult environment in which the textile industry is currently operating, we are we can say that this is a decent result, and according to our expectations, we had maintained earlier that Q2 should be slightly better than Q1, which we have achieved. I think Samir has already mentioned in quite some detail the market scenario. I think what I would like to say is that we are continuing with our efforts to on the strategic side, to unlock operating efficiency in the overall business, which is starting to show in the operating margin.
We are focused on growing AMD as fast as we can, and we are on track to maintain that growth level over the medium term, where we aim to grow at 20%+. We are focusing our effort to become better at our vertical business on the garment side, where in H2, we should see an uptick in volumes. The main sort of headwind right now is demand across the world because of all the reasons that Samir mentioned. We are investing and working very hard to sort of compensate for the difficult environment by investing in innovation, by investing in technology, by investing in people. So we are on track with all those plans. So that is the general commentary. I now open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Nisarg Vakharia from NV Alpha Fund Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, gentlemen. Congrats on your continued strength in the AMD business. Just wanted to understand from you on the developments now that we have on the garmenting side, because we've seen a couple of Indian companies scale up their operations quite well at stable margins. So just wanted to get your sense on what are the margins today in the garmenting business, and what is your outlook over the next three, four quarters on that business?
So on the garmenting side, still our demand is in a challenging environment, so we are not yet at 100% capacity. So our scale in garmenting is going to improve going forward, and that should lead to an uptick in margins. We are currently, you know, in the single digits overall in garments. We should be, you know, in the high single digits. Our attempt is that in a few quarters we should be able to get into double digits. So that is the sort of transition that we are all working very hard towards. In order to do that, one is, of course, filling up our capacities to amortize all the fixed costs. That is the highest effort that is going on now.
Parallelly, our investment cycle has also kicked in, and our first priority for our investment is to automate the existing plants so that we can have more throughput for the same amount of cost. So over a period of time, once this cycle is complete, we should see some improvement coming from those initiatives as well.
So when you say high single-digit margin, does it include the fact that we source the fabric in-house or it is at an arm's length basis?
It is at arm's length basis.
Okay. So high single digit margin is good. I mean, that's what generally most garmenting companies do. Do you have a certain anchor customer? Because generally we've seen typically a lot of these garmenting companies either have one core expertise of either making jackets, or they have one anchor customer who drives the margins for them going forward. Do you want to comment something on those lines?
If you look at the way our garmenting is structured, I mean, we look at it as a way to make our entire textile business more strategic to our customers, and therefore, we focus on verticality. So what we are... Our business is focused on denim, knits, and wovens, and we are vertical in each of those segments. So we will have a set of customers for denim, we'll have a set of customers for wovens, we'll have a set of customers for knits. And you are right, that three or four anchor customers will make up 80% of the demand. So we have those for each of these segments.
Okay, great. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, in order that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, we request participants to please limit their questions to two per participant. For follow-up questions, you may rejoin the queue. We take the next question from the line of Bajrang Bafna from Sunidhi Securities. Please go ahead.
Congratulations for recent set of numbers to the entire management that we have been able to deliver Q2 better than Q1. So, sir, my first question is pertaining to, you know, in the opening remarks, Samir has talked about traceability solutions. You know, that is something that is going to come out from Q4, and where we'll be having significant edge and can see significant growth. So just to get some sense that, you know, we guided in our last con call that second half is going to be better than first half. And how do we see this Q3, you know, in line with Q2, whether Q3 is going to be a little better than Q2 because festive season is there, and then, of course, the Q4 side?
My second question is pertaining to, you know, you have also talked about in your notes that the subsidiary structure is getting simplified, which we requested in the last call. Some progress on that, in some detail, will be really helpful. That's all from my side, sir. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. So I think when Samir was talking about traceability, he was talking about it in the overall context of sustainability, where we are making rapid progress. We are ... Our hybrid solar wind project has kicked in, which has taken our renewable component of energy to almost 49%, 47%-49%, which is quite significant. We are investing in a special boiler in partnership with one of our major customers to make our entire denim operations coal-free. We, of course, work with almost 100,000 farmers to grow sustainable cotton, where significant amount of the supply chain carbon footprint comes from. So that is a you know major carbon mitigation exercise that we are doing.
In continuation with that, we provide the possibility of having traceability across this entire supply chain. Especially, you know, tracing it back to the farm is an area that we overall, with what is happening in China for labor, all of that. That remains, you know, a worry for a lot of the customers. The fact that we have solutions that are able to provide traceability in a transparent manner helps add credibility to our sustainability performance. We are already high on sustainability performance. We are continuing to invest in that area and maintain that leadership. Traceability is one of the things that allows this leadership to be viewed as transparent by all parties involved. I hope that answers the question around sustainability and traceability.
In terms of Q3, your question of whether Q3 will be better than Q1, yes, there'll be a gradual improvement as we go sequentially. So Q3 things will be better than Q2. And we, the second question of yours was around subsidiaries, which I would request Jayesh to answer.
So, you know, these, there were certain, special purpose, companies where, list, I mean, incorporated for the purpose of several, initiatives and joint ventures. Some of them were of no immediate interest, so we are trying to align all of that so that the structure becomes simple. The idea is to reduce, subsidiaries to bare minimum. Unless there is a strategic reason, we would not want to have a subsidiary for over a period of time. That's what we are trying to achieve.
Got it. So, sir, why, when we can expect this to be a little simplified, maybe next twelve months kind of timeframe?
It is a gradual process, legal process, so our effort is wherever we can, as soon as we can, in terms of tax and other, issues. We are, we are examining all of that, and we will keep, as you will keep hearing, that it is being simplified as the time progresses. I wouldn't say 12 months, maybe, maybe couple of years, it should become very simple.
Okay. Thank you, and all the very best, sir. I'll join in the question queue for follow-up questions.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Biplab from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. My first question is on the capacity. Currently, what would be the effective capacity in denim, woven, and garment?
Capacity, we are currently utilizing it as to the extent of about 80%. As far as garment is concerned, the overall full-fledged potential business where we make innerwear, which is a very large quantity, so we don't count that in our capacity. But our full garment is around 40-42 million. We are currently at about 75% utilization.
Sir, woven?
Woven is at about INR 130 million, and we are very close to that utilization.
Denim is around
Eighty percent.
80% is the capacity utilization, so it, it is around 50 million. That means that capacity is around 62-63 million, right, sir?
60 million, yeah.
60 million. Okay. Okay, sir. And second question, because, you know, what you are doing in AMD is phenomenal, continuously growing more than 20%, margin is more than 15% EBITDA margin. So my understanding is, that you are doing CapEx in this around INR 240 crores. Has the CapEx started, sir?
Yes. So what we had said is, across the company, we will spend INR 600 crore across two years. That broadly will be in track. It's about, about one third of that should go to AMD.
Okay. And, sir, what would be the, you know, PAT margin for AMD and the rest of the textiles?
Sorry?
What is the PAT margin, typically, sir, because we do not... Typically, PAT margin, what would be that for, AMD and, textiles?
So, basically both would be very similar in terms of PAT percentages. AMD will be slightly higher because the CapEx so far has been lower. But the overall PAT margin will be couple of percentages higher for AMD compared to overall number. And for textiles, it will be less, 1% less than what is being reported as overall number.
...So it would be something 7%, 6% for AMD and 4%, 5% CapEx?
8%-9% for AMD.
Okay. Okay. Okay, thank you, sir. I'll come back in with you.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vikas from Equirus. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Am I audible? Hello?
Yes, good afternoon. You are audible. You are.
Yes, sir. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, and congrats for the great set of results. So my first question is with respect to our commentary on the in the outlook section. While I do understand that the cotton prices have largely priced, they have largely stabilized at around INR 68,000 per candy, but our commentary suggests that we expect a further drop in the realizations across segments. Can you please drop some light there as to why do we expect a further drop in the realizations going ahead?
I think, the further drop in realization is received with Y-on-Y numbers and not sequential. So,
Okay.
So it is, maybe it's slightly confusing, but the idea is to say that last year Q3, compared to that, the commodity prices have fallen, and as a result, you will see a dip in the realization.
Sure, sure, sure. So secondly, as you just said, the CapEx, about the CapEx of INR 600 crore, would you highlight me how much CapEx you have already incurred out of that, and in which segment typically? Is the AMD segment, which is the first one that is happening?
I think, I think it is a combination of all the segments where we are investing, where, of course, AMD is a high priority for us. We are also, as Sukrit mentioned earlier, we are also investing in automation of garments, because that's another high priority for us. Processing is another area where we keep adding certain machines to improve product mix or to offer better, you know, service to our customers. We are on track to invest this INR 600 crore over two years. We would have committed almost more like INR 250 odd crore so far, not fully cashed out, but committed that much, and we will be committing more in the some quarters to come.
Sure, sure. Understood. So my one question is with respect to our AMD margins. While for last, one Q as well as two Q, we have been saying that, there is a benefit of lower RM cost, which has aided the margins. So, when can we expect these margins to normalize? Probably next quarter or a couple of quarters beyond that?
I think these are now levels that we should be able to maintain at the current levels. What you saw in H1, we should be at similar, slightly plus minus levels next year or next half. However, as the, you know, as we have been saying that this is a business where we have been incubating a small, many, many smaller businesses as well. So there would be those negative impacts which we currently also take. But as the business grows and becomes larger, our aim would be to continue with small increases in the margin over the next few years. So in medium term, we should hope to improve the margin by maybe 100 basis points, if not more, going forward over the next couple of years.
Understood. Understood. The last question, any color with respect to domestic demand, how are we seeing that panning out in October for all the textile segments?
So margins across the board are, you know, if you look at, demand across the board is kind of muted. So while there is an uptick because of festival, and I do expect it to improve, it's not as good as, you know, in a, what it is in a normal or good year. So there is definitely pressure on demand. And what we are seeing within demand is also that, you know, the mass segments are experiencing much lower demand. The premium segments seem to be fine.
Okay. Right. Correct, correct. And then, can you, like, broadly classify how much would be out of all the products should be towards the mass segments and to the premium, if at all we have the classification?
So I mean, your distribution has to be across all segments, but as a company, we are highly, more highly indexed on premium. So we are and we have the ability to sort of, you know, pull levers and go in the direction where the demand is more robust. So in that sense, we are probably better placed than many to be able to be flexible about where we... Because our customer mix is diverse across multiple geographies and multiple segments.
So if you notice, you know, our sales price, average sales price for most product categories is much higher than the average for the nation. Because of the fact that we are making those premium products, and that's a segment that is dominant in our product mix as of today.
... Right, sir. Very good. Understood. Thank you so much, sir, for answering the question. Best wishes. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Surya Narayan from Sunidhi Securities. Please go ahead.
Congratulations for good set of number, and thank you for giving me opportunity. So, sir, just to may I have two couple of questions. One is, see, if you can give— Am I audible, sir?
Yes, you are. Yes, you might want to speak a little louder, a little deeper as well.
Okay, okay. So, so the composite segment of the AMD has grown significantly. So, will it be possible to give some color, as to, you know, which segment is moving very fast? Because, you know, we heard that the railway segment is giving a lot of demand. So can you just now throw some light on the composites, along with the why the industrial is little bit lagging? So, that is my first question, sir.
For composites, I'll ask Samir to give you color because he runs that business. So over to you, Samir.
Thanks. So look, as you know, composites, we make a range of products, which includes the parts for the Vande Bharat and other train programs in the country. And yes, those programs are being implemented at a fairly rapid pace, so that's certainly one key driver of the volume growth which we are seeing. But having said that, we do make a much wide assortment of products which go into various applications. And we are seeing a reasonably secular demand growth coming out of all segments, be it, you know, construction, industrial platforms, cooling towers, telecom products. And then, you know, the consumption of composites is kind of doing quite well across the board. Many of these are B2B projects or industrial projects which are not impacted by the immediate downturn.
So yes, I think the market has done well, and we have done exceptionally well within the market as well to capture a good part of the growth. So that's on composites. Punit, if you want to kind of share about the industrial piece.
So on industrial, I think, besides belting, which is about 15%-20% of the overall volume, all other segments in volume terms are doing okay. They are also doing very well on margin terms. Our margin in industrial is extremely robust. Belting is down because, you know, of online warehouse demand, you know, has been tapered across the world, and people have very high raw material inventory situation, which should clear out by Q4. Other than that, industrial has been maximally impacted by raw material deflation. So that is why that number is looking, you know, small.
Okay.
Otherwise, there is... The business is very much on track. Margins are extremely robust, and belting should recover in a quarter or maximum two quarters.
Sir, as we have allocated INR 200 crore to AMD, and the balance INR 400 crore will be allocated among the denim and woven, sorry, woven and garments. Sir has said that, look, in woven, we'll be more on the processing of the textiles rather than front-end capacity creation. So, what is the sense of how much capacity from the woven side will be increased, if at all, and garment side?
So garments, we are, you know, we have indicated in the past also that, you know, over a three-year period, we would like to go from 40 million capacity to around 60 million capacity, and that is broadly what we will try and achieve. On the woven side, when we say investment in processing, a lot of that investment is in capability enhancement, not necessarily volume enhancement, but to be able to do more premium products or address segments that are today not very under addressed. We have increased woven fabric capacity to some extent, but that is to feed the raw material into our Advanced Materials Human Protection Division . And so that CapEx has already gone into place, and to keep growing AMD at 20%, it was necessary to do so.
Sir, can we expect the margins in the woven to rise going forward?
Margins in wovens are already very robust, so, you know, the verticality will grow. The end-to-end return on capital employed should improve. But margin as an overall is probably the healthiest in wovens out of all segments in textiles.
Okay. In garments, are we, you know, planning to enter into, you know, higher value-added segments like, you know, to blazers and others, rather than shirtings?
No, for us, you know, as I'd mentioned earlier, there are three strategic segments for garmenting, where we are, you know, going to focus all our efforts. It's denim, bottoms, shirts and other tops, for verticalizing our wovens factory, and then our knit tops, which is to verticalize our knit fabric. So it is, you know, the strategic alignment between our fabric and garment businesses is very important, so that we become very strategic and deep with the set of customers we have, and that's why we are thinking of this in that way. One area over the medium term where we will build capabilities is the MMF.
... area where athleisure and sportswear, which is a very large and growing segment globally, that's where we will create capability of doing high-end garments and which is sort of underrepresented in India today. So that we are building, but we are building it gradually, slowly. The immediate focus is on denim, shirts and knits.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to participants to please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Manish Ostwal from Nirmal Bang Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and, very good set of numbers, given the operating environment for the business. My question on the slide number 10, where we mentioned that, the one-time gain from the lower RM prices, can you quantify in terms of this, on the operating margin?
So, you know, as the business, you know, as the raw material prices come down, we have that lag effect, which takes, you know, a couple of months. But that's a very small number. It's not materially impacting the numbers. We don't see any in a way, margins to be impacted in any form in the coming quarter. If at all, they should be slightly better. As the raw material prices and the, you know, other, so cotton yarn and other chemicals and dyes prices have stabilized, we believe that the margins will stabilize or improve as we improve our operating leverage.
Second question on the operating environment in the domestic market, how the demand scenario shaping up in the festivity and wedding season? So-
We just, in fact, Punit just answered that question earlier, that the markets are slightly better than what they were, but they are not as good as one would have expected them to be. But with festive demand kicking in and the inventory in the pipeline going down, especially marriage season also is coming in. So we expect the retail environment to be better. And I think that's what, in fact, the commentary from most of the retail brand companies is, that the H2, they feel, should be better than what they had experienced in H1.
And lastly, one small data point. What is the CapEx incurred in the H1?
So as we said, the total committed CapEx as of today is about INR 250 crores. Outflow depends on... I mean, we would have spent over INR 100 crores in H1, but the outflow will depend upon delivery schedules and the project completion. But as of today, the commitments are about INR 250 crores.
Thank you. Thank you, sir, and all the best for the coming quarters, and thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jainis Chheda from Spark PWM. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir, and congratulations for a good set of numbers. My first question is that, is there any PLI benefits that have impacted the P&L in this quarter?
Our PLI investments have not yet been completed, so there are no benefits. In fact, the first operating year is next financial year for PLI company, which will kick in, once our investments are completed.
Okay, okay. These are basically operational numbers, all operational numbers. That's good.
There are no-
Uh, secondly-
Uh, yes.
Secondly, what is the current order book in case of AMD, Sanjay, and are there any plans for demerger of AMD business in next 2-3 years?
So order book is, you know, normally couple of, I mean, we get firm orders for a few months and, indications for even further couple of months, which is the normal situation, and we believe that should continue. As far as reorganizing the company, I think those are decisions which our board will take at appropriate times, if at all the board feels it is necessary for us to do in the interest of, fundraise or any other reasons or governance. As of today, the, we are just focusing on growing the AMD business.
Are we cash flow positive in case of AMD?
Yes, we are significantly cash flow positive.
Thank you so much, that's all from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Biplab from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead.
Thank you. So coming back to the capacity and the production in denim and woven. So 15 million, 50 million meters for denim and around 120-125 million meters for woven fabric. Are these numbers the new normal for these two segments?
No, I think our woven capacity is about 130 million meters, and our denim capacity is 60 million meters, and that is the installed capacity.
Okay, okay. So are these numbers the new normal? So we'll be producing around denim 50-55 million meters and woven around 125-120 million meters, and this would be the-
... going forward, maybe this is, these are the numbers that we'll see.
I think the denim volumes have been subdued for quite some time. It happened also because of the cotton price spikes that we saw earlier. I think they have gotten slightly normalized, but they are not still what they could be. Again, just to... I mean, it's more about quarterly impacts, but quarter three generally for any fabrics like denim is very weak. But we will see some improvement further into four, and we will continue to see reaching to our almost full capacity over the next one year.
Okay. Okay. Sir, the follow-up to the previous question. See if you mentioned that the PAT margin for AMD is almost 100 bps higher than the PAT margin for the textiles. But if you see the EBITDA margin for AMD, it is much higher, around more than 400 bps higher than AMD of textiles. So what am I missing from here? Why the PAT margin then it doesn't get reflected into the PAT margin if AMD EBITDA AMD is higher?
I think if you look at PBT margins, they'll be different. But the PAT margin, because, you know, the investment in AMDs are much lower, so the tax is full, which will not be the case for the other, other side of the business. But just, you know, if you, if you were to go back and look at it PBT, they'll be at a significant advantage compared to the textile margin.
Okay. Okay, I understand. And my final question is, if your garment capacity utilization is currently at 70%, and why do you have then a CapEx strength in garment, too? I mean,
I think, you know, as you would have heard from us and some of the other players in the garment industry, I think we have bottomed out. I think the demand is picking up. It may take a few quarters, plus or minus, but we believe that India garment is a strong story, and we would want to try and achieve full utilization over the next 6 to 9 months, or maybe maximum, yeah, nine months. And we want to be ready for further garment capacity when the orders are flowing in, for the company and the country. So I think that's the reason why we want to invest. And automation in the existing facility also helps us reduce cost and improve the margin as we expand the capacity.
The lead time to increase capacity in garments is long, so you need to start well in advance of when you need that capacity. This automation and CapEx in garment will lead to how much increase in capacity then?
I think overall, between automation and expansion on greenfield, brownfield projects, I think we are looking at adding our 20 million capacity over the next three years. From 40, it will go to maybe around 60, which is what the plan is.
By FY 26, this capacity will be operational, incremental?
Will be operational. Efficiency, I mean, capacity will be there. Efficiencies will have to be seen, but yes, the answer is that capacity would have gotten created.
Okay, thank you, sir, and Happy Diwali in advance. All the best to you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prerna Jhunjhunwala from Elara Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, thank you. Sir, I had two questions. One on EBITDA margins of textile business. After many quarters, we've come back to 11% margins. I would like to understand how much improvement can we expect further in this business over the longer term and in near-term second half?
So there are a couple of inputs into improving margin. One is capacity utilization. So as demand scenario improves, hopefully, going forward, that will be one area which will impact margin favorably. And the other thing is operational efficiency, where I think a lot of work has been done over the last one and a half years. And extremely good work has been done in the last 6-8 months, which is now paying dividends in terms of the margin expansion. So I think put together, I think, you know, 100-150 basis points over a couple of years, you know, is still possible, and we'll have to work hard to achieve that.
Okay. Sir, could you elaborate on the work done in the last 6-8 months so that we get a sense of what we can expect there?
So I think there were a few pockets of inefficiency that were there for long periods of time that have been very targetedly attacked and resolved. For example, you know, our dispatchable percentages in denim are at an all-time high. Our raw material efficiency in denim are at an all-time high. Our wastage percentages in woven are at an all-time high. Our sort of chemical, water, and power consumptions in knits are at an all-time low, meaning an all-time best. So all these factors have been, you know, sort of, you know, when demand is low, we need to find other ways to make money.
You know, people have really, the team has risen to the occasion to you know, unlock all these pockets of inefficiencies that were sort of persistent in our system, and they've ironed them out. Of course, then it becomes much harder when to unlock more once the low-hanging fruit is done. So that is now we are back to a you know, continuous improvement process, which will you know, pan out over a couple of years.
Okay.
Operating leverage will come in as, as we get better and better capacity utilization. That, that is now the real focus. We need to get close to 100% capacity utilization everywhere.
Okay. And sir, denim capacity is at 60 million meters. Do we aspire to go back to 100 million meters that we were at, or it remains at 60, 60 million meters now?
Well, we think about going back to 100 million meters. I would like to verticalize this 60 million meters a lot better. So, and I think that will unlock more value and unlock more ROCE for the company. So the first effort is there. Then, if the need is there, we can... It is very easy to, you know, add a few machines here and there, and we bottleneck our capacity.
Okay. Okay. And, when do we start seeing the benefit of interest costs going down? Because we've been repaying our long-term debt, which are higher cost debt. So, when do we really see the effect of interest cost?
I think the, you know, the interest percentage and absolute amount, if we were to distinguish, the percentages have been high because of the interest rate cycle that we are going through. Really speaking, there is no much difference between now short-term and long-term borrowing costs because the subscription amounts have been restricted, as possibly you know. So, the interest cost reduction, really speaking, will come if our debt further goes down from here on. Otherwise, there is no significant change that we would see on absolute amount of interest debt that we are paying, maybe a small marginal change. I think we are also now, you know, instead of focusing on debt, I think we want to focus on opportunities and growth.
As we announced earlier, you know, organic growth in all segments of businesses that we are in, which is garments, advanced material, and some of the textile assets. We will also look at different kind of different ways to grow faster, if there is an opportunity. So the focus, there will be an eye on debt, but not a focus on debt. So that's, I mean-
Yeah, we are now at comfortable levels, so, you know, it's not an area where we are now constantly working to reduce. We are now increasing our outlook for opportunities that can help our growth and create more shareholder value.
Okay. So last question from my side. What should be the sustainable growth rate then, going forward for the company?
We are targeting a 20% growth for AMD and a 7-8% growth for textiles.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, and have a good day.
Thank you very much. We'll have to take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference back to the management team for closing comments.
Thank you all for joining us today. If there are any pending questions and further clarifications, Satyakam and investor relations team is always there to answer those. We'll see you back in one quarter. Thank you, and have a great evening. Bye now.
Happy Diwali! Happy Diwali to all of you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Arvind Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect your lines.