Q4 FY25 and FY25 Postal Sales Conference call hosted by B&K Securities. From Bosch Limited Management, we have with us today Mr. Guruprasad Mudlapur, Managing Director, and Ms. Karin Gilges, Chief Financial Officer. At this point of time, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the management presentation and opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'll begin with a brief overview of the global and Indian macroeconomics. Global and domestic events are creating volatility due to trade issues, conflicts, and a slowing economy. The UN has lowered its 2025 global growth forecast from 3.3% to 2.8%, citing trade and geopolitical risks. Talent scarcity, impact of AI on productivity are key themes in the global labor market currently. Domestically, RBI monetary policy and rate cuts will be significant, potentially boosting spending in the automotive and other markets. India is projected to remain the fastest-growing economy, with the RBI forecasting 6.2%-6.5% growth for FY2026, driven by rural consumption. Service exports should improve, and the government will maintain fiscal responsibility.
In closing, India has positioned itself as the fourth-largest economy, a position we aim to maintain through 2025 as we strive for rapid and sustained growth. In Q4 FY2025, the Indian auto industry witnessed moderate growth, largely fueled by strong demand for SUVs, premium bikes, and three-wheelers, while passenger vehicle sales edged up slightly. Small cars and sedans faced headwinds. The commercial vehicle segments presented a mixed picture, with electric and CNG models gaining traction. Two-wheelers and tractors, on the other hand, enjoyed a boost from new product launches, festive season sales, and supportive rural demand. Despite challenges such as inflation and weak consumer sentiment, the industry remains optimistic, anticipating continued growth driven by sustained demand for SUVs, the increasing popularity of CNG and electric vehicles, infrastructure projects, and expansion of e-commerce and ongoing government initiatives.
This slide presents the Indian auto market's performance trend, showcasing FY2019 peak, the COVID-19 dip, and the subsequent rebound. The data suggests that the passenger vehicles are expected to experience modest growth, primarily driven by the demand for SUVs, although this could be moderated by rising prices and a potential decline in first-time buyers. Commercial vehicles are predicted to see gradual growth, supported by ongoing infrastructure development, and the industry's move towards cleaner fleet options. Within this segment, bus demand is projected to rise, while low-tonnage LCVs may face increased competition from electric three-wheelers. Tractors are expected to maintain strong growth momentum, benefiting from favorable rural conditions, positive weather patterns, improved farm economics, and supportive government policies. Two-wheelers are anticipated to experience steady growth, fueled by the recovery of the rural economy, increasing incomes, and positive trends within the agriculture sector.
Finally, three-wheelers are projected to see a stable recovery, with growth in both passenger and cargo segments further bolstered by the rebound in export markets. Now we'll get into sector-wise sales performance, quarter-on-quarter performance now. The mobility business demonstrated strong performance in January to March 2025, achieving 14.9% quarter-on-quarter growth compared to January-March 2024. This growth was primarily fueled by a 16.9% surge in the power solutions business, driven by increased demand for diesel components, particularly from the off-highway segment, as well as for electronic control and vehicle control units. A 7.9% expansion of the mobility aftermarket business, attributable to high demand for diesel systems, especially from OEMs, filters, and spark plugs. A substantial 21.4% growth in the two-wheeler business, mainly due to the increased sales of exhaust gas sensors in anticipation of the OBD2 norms implementation effective April 1, 2025.
Complementing this, the consumer goods business also contributed positively, experiencing a 2.9% growth driven by heightened demand for power tools such as grinders, drillers, and cutters. Now, comparing FY2024 versus FY2025, the mobility business achieved a 7% growth in April to March 2025 compared to April to March 2024, mainly due to power solutions business, which grew by 5.8%, mainly due to higher sales of diesel components to off-highway segment, electronic throttle body, injectors, and high-pressure pumps. The mobility aftermarket business, which grew by 8.4% on account of higher demand for diesel systems, especially from OEMs and filters and batteries. The two-wheeler business grew by 18.5%, mainly due to increase in exhaust gas sensor sales on account of OBD2 ramp-up by major two-wheeler OEMs. The consumer goods business grew by 6.3%, driven by higher demand for grinders, drillers, cutters, pairs, and accessories.
The building technologies business grew by 8.2% as a greater number of orders for installation of public address and communication systems were executed. Now we look at the key financial highlights. Revenue from INR 49,106 million, which is a 16% increase quarter-on-quarter over January to March 2024. FY24 versus FY25, likewise, we see revenue from operations in April-March 2025 stood at INR 180,874 million, which is a growth of 8.1% over April-March 2024. The growth in revenue was primarily driven by power solutions, mobility aftermarket, two-wheeler, and power sports businesses. EBITDA, now looking into January- March, EBITDA in January-March 2025 was INR 6,469 million, which grew by 16.1% over the same quarter of previous year. The improvement in EBITDA is mainly on account of higher revenue and reduced material costs.
Now looking at FY 2024 versus 2025, EBITDA for FY 2024-2025 was INR 23,097 million, which grew by 10.3% as compared to FY 2023-2024. EBITDA as a percentage of total revenue improved from 12.5% in FY 2023-2024 to 12.8% in FY 2024-2025. The improvement in EBITDA margin is mainly driven by revenue growth, reduction in material cost, and budgetary control on expenses. PAT. The profit after tax stood at 11.3% of revenue from operations as compared to 13.3% over the same quarter of previous year. The reduction in PAT is primarily due to removal of indexation benefit on long-term capital gains from FY 2024-2025 onwards. Likewise, profit after tax for FY 2024-2025 stood at 11.1% of revenue from operations as compared to 14.9% in FY 2023-2024. FY 2023-2024 had an exceptional item, namely profit on sale of Project House Mobility Solutions business. Yeah.
Now, we're proud to announce the inauguration of our Knox Sensor Gen3 line at our plant in Bidadi. This marks a significant step in our clean mobility strategy, achieved in just 67 days through exceptional teamwork and technological innovation. This cutting-edge line, featuring multi-gas calibration and SCU software flashing, not only enhances India's role in our global value chain, but also prepares us for future product introductions. The Knox Sensor is already enabling cleaner emissions for Indian OEMs, and we are poised to serve global OEMs as well. With the series production underway, we are scaling to a capacity of 2.1 million sensors per year by 2027. This is built for the future in India, for the world, and we are excited about the opportunities this brings.
Bosch Soumitra Bhattacharya is proud to have won the prestigious Confederation of Indian Industry Innovation Award, ranking among the top 20 most innovative companies in India. Our senseless quick shift innovation from our two-wheeler and power sports division has been recognized as a standout example of our commitment to leading-edge technology. This award reflects our culture of creative innovation, a progressive spirit, and relentless teamwork in the pursuit of excellence, and our commitment to creating value for riders and communities alike. Bosch has expanded its tool offerings and tools for professionals and artisans, along with advanced industrial tools designed to simplify assembly line operations. Professionals in power distribution, industrial maintenance, and high-voltage installations stand to benefit from this robust range.
Bosch Soumitra was awarded in the Auto Ancillary category at the Free Press Journal's Best Annual Reports Awards 2024 for its clarity, consistency, and strong narrative and depth of disclosure. The company's annual report, themed "Shifting Gears and Accelerating Forward," was recognized for reflecting how the company is embracing transformation while driving innovation and staying ahead of the curve. I thank you for listening patiently through the call. We are now ready to address your questions. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Participants who wish to ask a question, I request you to please raise your hand. Alternatively, participants can also type in their questions in the chat box. We will now wait for a moment as the question queue assembles. First question is from Pramod Amte. Please unmute and ask your questions, please.
Hey, hi, morning.
Thanks for taking my question. The first question is with regard to the NOx plant. Interesting to see the quick execution coming through there. Wanted to know, does it qualify under PLI, and if so, what is the extent of benefit one?
No, this plant does not qualify under PLI.
Okay.
And we did not apply this.
Sure.
Because new emissions also qualify for PLI. That's where I was a little confused. Hence, thought to check it out.
When will your PLI-related plans start coming up, and you will start accounting in your financials?
We are screening, of course, all the PLIs constantly. Currently, as Ko already mentioned, this plant is not ready for the PLI, but we are screening all the time, and we are in close contact with the legislations and rules and regulations.
Sure, thanks. Related question is with regard to purchase goods.
You seem to be walking the talk in terms of purchase goods easing off from the peak levels. For the last three quarters, they seem to have come under control and now almost on 40% of sales. What has helped you here, and what is to come forward in the remaining quarters, and where this cost will settle down if you can give direction?
Purchase goods, I suppose to talk about the traded goods. What has helped us is our constant work on the localization, and not only on the finished goods, but what we mentioned in the last quarter also that we strongly work on the localization of components and whatever is possible in India. You see here now also the first outcome that we make progress in the relation between traded and manufacturing goods.
Nevertheless, what is coming up new, of course, we first localize the finished goods, and then we go step by step into the localization also of the components. Because if you localize everything immediately, we have a high risk on our quality, which we do not want to have. Here you can see the first outcome of further localization of components as well as finished goods.
Thanks. The last question is with regard to the two-wheeler growth. You seem to be definitely outperforming the industry. Have you earned any new clients in OBD2, or how to look at it?
Yeah, we have continuously, I mean, we are more or less serving all the major OEMs in the two-wheeler spectrum. This we continue to do as we go along. I do not think we have any OEM who is not in our scope right now. Sure.
Thanks in all the ways.
Thank you. Yeah. Okay,
I remind all the participants. Anybody wants to ask a question, please raise your hand. In the meantime, I'll go for one question. Yeah, one. Shriram, you can unmute and ask your question.
Thank you for the opportunity. Within the mobility space, what is the breakup between two-wheeler, passenger vehicle, and CV?. My second question is, we have other Bosch entities also which are unlisted, right?. For the EV business, what will be our scope of work?.
Okay. I take up the first quarter. What we are not doing is that we don't have a segment reporting in this way, but we look at the automotive as a total.
My second question?.
Yeah. I think your second question is, what do different Bosch Group companies do?
I think it's very obvious what they do. We have a company which is dealing with electronics outside of Bosch Limited. A large part of the electronics are pass-through business for us, and they come as they get supplied to us, and then we take them to market. There is another company which is the Chassis Systems, which deals with brakes, which does direct braking business to the market. These are the two big ones, and there's some smaller ones, but that's how it is. In terms of electrification, the e-axles, which are the largest components in the e-axle business, will stay within Bosch Limited, and that's how it is.
Our scope of work is mainly e-axles, right?.
Yes, that's correct. And e-axle as a product includes everything with e-axles. Okay.
The motor controller and other parts, that will be sourced from electronics, or how does it work?
Y es. Electronics will continue to get sourced, but as an e-axle, we will have the complete ownership at Bosch Limited.
Okay. That helps.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah. I'll go for some questions from the chat box. Any update on trend-based specification implementation, sir?.
Yeah. As far as we know from the industry, there is, I mean, from the government, there is no change in the date of implementation. That stays as it is. We, from our side, are prepared to roll it out as soon as the dates are sort of confirmed. As of now, we do not have any further information of any change of dates, although it looks more and more certain that the current dates may not happen.
We are also crossing our fingers that the dates do hold on and happen as planned. Yeah.
One more question is on the exports, sir. Considering the current volatility in the global markets, sir, do we see any opportunity, more opportunity coming up for us?.
Yeah. I'll start, and maybe Karin can add on. This is a very dynamic situation, and all of you are as exposed to the dynamics as we are with regard to what is happening with tariffs and how things are changing on a daily, weekly basis. We are monitoring this very closely. Eventually, what matters most is what is the landed cost, and how is that making a benefit to the customer?. This is something we monitor within the Bosch Group and for our customers very closely.
With this said, there are opportunities coming up all the time, and we will continue to capture those opportunities and enlarge on them. There may also be some short-term uncertainties in terms of how this goes. We hope in the coming months the tariff things are better settled. There are multiple FTAs on the cards for India. There is a trade deal likely with the EU and the U.S. coming up. We just have a trade deal done with the U.K. There are many of these things which are in the works. We will have to look at all these things holistically and then see how the market abroad works, and then take calls on what is best in terms of landed costs for customers when we think of exports out of India. This is, as we've said repeatedly, exports is a high priority for us.
We certainly want to do more from India, and we will monitor this closely and continue to enhance on this. Do you want to add anything else?.
Yes. As you mentioned before, the NOx line, for example, the new one, here we have the new chance for export business. We have in the spark plugs the export business, and we see overall also for the next year a slight increase in the export business. We also have injectors where we are on export already. Overall, we will see for the next year a slight increase. Most important for us, as Ko mentioned, is we have everything in place also to be ready for export process-wise as well as from the quality. Of course, also most important is for us the competitiveness. We will see a slight increase.
I remind the participants, you can raise your hands if you have a question. The next question from the line, Mr. Iqbal Khan, you can unmute and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Congratulations for a very good set of results. Two questions. One on e-axle, which you just spoke about. For this e-axle, do you have orders in place from any of these OEMs?. If you can highlight more about this. Second question is, this quarter, the sales performance that you have done, super performance. Largely, I believe it is contributed by tractors, passenger cars, and also the two-wheeler things. I mean, what I sense is it would be because of the anticipation of this OBD2 norms. Do you think that going ahead, would this be sustainable?.
I wanted to check the probability of how sustainable would this be going ahead. These are the two questions.
Yeah. On the e-axles, as I've said before, we're working with all the OEMs, talking to them and looking at their platforms. We are in several stages of negotiation with different OEMs, and I can't be more specific than that in a forum like this right now. As and when we close the commercials or we are ready to announce, we will certainly come back to you and update you on the deal closures. The revenue side. Sorry. On the revenue side. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes, we had a very good revenue this quarter. You should also be aware that within this revenue, we see a growth in the sales of our products.
We have also closed in this quarter one big application service project, which you can also see reflected in the other expenses because the cost part of this revenue coming out of services, or in this case, a big project is reflected in the other expenses. Therefore, you see a higher percentage in the other expenses also in this quarter. It is a balance out of the closed big project in this quarter, but we also had a very good sales of our production.
Thank you. That was helpful.
Iqbal Khan.
Sir, I'm reading out a question from the question box. This dividend, we have been increasing for the last two, three years. What will be the dividend distribution policy?.
The dividend distribution policy, which we also publish on our homepage. Perhaps to give you a little bit more back.
We had really a very successful year. As Ko already explained in the profit after tax, we had an exceptional item in the last year. Therefore, if you look at the EBIT or in the profit before tax, you can see the performance of the company. Therefore, if I look at or if we look at Bosch Limited overall, we had a very successful year, 8.1% revenue increase in the operations, EBIT growth from 10 to 10.7. We have a stable or a good market outlook. On the other side, we also know how the overall world market had a decrease in the shares in the market. Looking into the future, we also see, and you know our balance sheet, we also have a strong balance sheet, nearly debt-free, substantial liquidity.
We are in a very strong position to make the right investments, strategic investments in the future. Therefore, we decided we would like to appreciate our shareholders in this year. Therefore, this was then the decision that this should be also reflected in the dividend for our shareholders.
Thank you. The next question is on the hydrogen engine. We have been working with a major Indian OEM on hydrogen engines. What are the current updates, sir?.
Yeah. I mean, we have been working with almost all OEMs and also quite a lot of non-mobility players and even ecosystem players on the hydrogen topic. That work continues. There is still quite some things to do on the hydrogen ecosystem development, as you are all familiar.
I think that work continues in terms of electrolyzer developments, hydrogen generation possibilities, cost optimizations on hydrogen, then distribution of hydrogen pumping and bringing hydrogen to the right price level. All this work is still in the thought process or in the works. This is ongoing. From our side, the technology is maturing, and we are offering our solutions, and we are maturing our solutions together with our OEMs continuously. The work we do with our OEMs is quite advanced, and that is going quite well is what I can say right now.
For the next two to three years, sir, other than the industry growth, what will be our growth drivers?.
Yeah. This we have said a couple of times.
I think we always aim to grow beyond the typical industry growth rates, driven by primarily topics like premiumization, which help us get into advanced technologies which get introduced. There are new trends that are coming in the market, either through regulation or through enhanced application of technology. That is something that we will continue to go further. We will continuously work with OEMs on successful introduction of new norms, which has been continuously happening. That is something we will work on. Electrification, of course, is an area which is constantly on our focus, and we hope to have good breakthroughs in the coming years as well.
The next question is, have we received any new orders on electric two-wheelers or three-wheelers?
Electric two-wheelers, no. We have not received any new orders as such on electric two-wheelers. The current order book continues as is.
On three-wheelers, sir?.
No.
If there's anything, we will certainly update you.
I think there are no more questions. Anybody has any question, please raise your hand, or you can type in the chat box. There are no more questions, sir. Yes. We thank all the participants. Do you want to make any closing comments, sir?.
No. I think I would just like to firstly thank everyone for the participation. That's one. We've had a good quarter, in my view. We are looking forward to continuing this growth story and further keeping our growth momentum intact while also maintaining consistent cost optimizations and the drive towards cost efficiencies and pressure on ourselves so that we are staying on top of the game. We want to enter as many new areas with customers as possible and be the leading supplier to OEMs and stay on top of the race.
This is an endeavor that we have, and we continue to do that all the time. I can assure you that our path towards continuous improvement in the company will continue on a very, very steady pace as we move forward.
Thanks, sir. We thank Bosch Management for taking time out for the call. We thank all the participants. We can disconnect our lines. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.