Hello. Yeah. Am I audible? Hello?
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Yeah. Thank you. On behalf of Antique Stock Broking, a warm welcome to all the participants on the Q2 FY25 earnings call of Dhanuka Agritech. Today, we have Mr. N. K. Dhanuka, Chairman, Mr. Rahul Dhanuka, Managing Director, Mr. Harsh Dhanuka, Executive Director, and Mr. V. K. Bansal, CFO on the call. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to Mr. N. K. Dhanuka for opening remarks, after which we will open the floor for Q&A. Thank you. Over to Mr. Dhanuka.
Thank you, Mr. Manish. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Myself, N. K. Dhanuka, Chairman of Dhanuka Agritech Limited, welcome you all to the Q2 earnings call. I hope all of you are doing well and keeping safe. I have with me Mr. Rahul Dhanuka, Managing Director of the company, Mr. Harsh Dhanuka, Executive Director of the company, and Mr. V. K. Bansal, CFO of the company. As you are aware, Dhanuka Agritech is a leading agrochemical company in India, focusing on brand sales in the market. Also, in FY24, Dhanuka has commenced operations at our Dahej chemical and pesticides plants. Dhanuka is working with the vision of transforming India through agriculture. We have a pan-India presence to reach out to more than 10 million farmers with our products and services.
Dhanuka's key focus has been on the introduction of novel chemistries and extensive product development, distinguishing us from the rest of the industry. We have a pan-India presence in all major states across India. With four manufacturing units and 41 warehouses across India, we cater to around 6,500 distributors and around 80,000 retailers. Dhanuka has a strong sales and marketing team to promote and develop new products. Dhanuka's strong R&D division has world-class laboratory as well as an excellent team for new product registration and development. Dhanuka has international collaboration with 10 leading global agrochemical companies from Japan, the U.S., and Europe, which helps us to introduce the latest technology in India. While the overall rainfall has been very good, the sales return from Q1 has impacted significantly in this quarter.
Continuous rainfall in the months of August and September resulted in the skipping of application of insecticides in many crops. On a positive note, the water level in most reservoirs is very good to support the Rabi crop. There was continued pressure on revenue due to price reduction with an impact of almost 5% versus Q2 of last year. Our new introductions, Purge, and MYCORe Super, continue to receive great pull from the market. LANEvo is already entering our list of top 10 products for the first half of the year. Although we have introduced 94 Me Too products, Miyako, and Roxas in this quarter, we are committed to keep bringing new products and technologies for the Indian farming community to support them in their endeavor to increase farm productivity and safety of the food.
Coming to the financial performance for the quarter two of FY24-25, revenues from operations stood at INR 654.28 crore versus INR 617.92 crore in Q2 of FY23-24, having a growth of 6%. EBITDA stood at INR 159.58 crore in Q2 FY24-25 versus INR 141.58 crore in last year, having a growth of 13%. That was INR 117.52 crore in Q2 FY24-25 versus INR 101.77 crore in Q2 of FY23-24, with an increase of 15.5%. The zone-wide percentage share of turnover for Q2 FY24-25 is as follows: North India 29%, East India 12%, West India 28%, and South India 31%. Product category-wise percentage share of turnover for Q2 of FY24-25: insecticides 43%, fungicides 21%, herbicides 17%, others including PGR 19%. We consider ourselves responsible to securing the farmers' welfare and preserving food security of the nation.
We continue to strengthen our association with the agriculture universities, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, and other critical institutions to impart knowledge and latest technology to the farmers. Thank you very much for your kind attention, and now we would like to open the forum for taking questions and answers. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone 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 a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Prashant Biyani from Elara Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. My question is to Mr. Rahul Dhanuka. Sir, how is the agriculture scenario right now post monsoon in your view? How has been the harvest, grape crop quality across all states? Any material crop damage that your team might have seen? And consequently, how do you see the demand for H2?
Right. So agriculture is under watch from the leaders, politicians, and economists all. So we are quite well aware that the reservoir levels all over the country are almost the highest of the last 10 years, almost a decade. Heavy rains in the maturity stage of the crop certainly caused some damage in some parts of the country. So some soybean was impacted. Some parts of cotton were impacted in Gujarat and northern India also. Paddy, being a hardy crop, was not significantly impacted. And there was some high moisture at the time of purchase, which delayed lifting and purchase from FCI. Subsequent drying of paddy has resulted in activating procurement also. So overall, not a significant damage. We are looking at almost 6%-7% higher paddy yield over last year.
Overall, Kharif production should be higher by about 5% for the country, which puts us in a good situation when it comes to the harvest from Kharif. With good reservoir position and groundwater situation being very favorable, we are looking at very positive Rabi acreages coming up, including paddy in South India, very high acreages of tur Bengal gram, red gram, and black gram in almost the entire South and Maharashtra. We are also looking at positive paddy acreages in East India, although West Bengal and Odisha were impacted by Cyclone Dana. It does not, again, cause a negative impact on the paddy acreages. Potato acreages have certainly been impacted. Early potato has been impacted, which has caused a higher price of potato. The farmer still has time to go for re-sowing of potato. Potato acreages will be coming up again.
Higher prices will make it lucrative for the farmer to invest in potato. Similarly, early onion sowing was impacted in Maharashtra and Karnataka in the month of early October and late September. Onion acreages would also be coming up significantly, with onion prices being all-time high. I feel that the farmer is going to have a good recovery for Kharif sales, and Rabi acreages and Rabi opportunity are appearing very positive, in fact, very bright.
Right. Sir, like we had seen at the start of Kharif, the seed shortage, which impacted us due to last year's Rabi rainfall, any risk of any sort of that in this Rabi due to crop damages in Kharif?
So the farmer is proactively able to see the shortage of seeds and then is able to plan sometimes, most of the time, to be able to plan for crop diversification, alternate crops. As of now, what we see is maize seed significantly being in demand. So practically all maize seed companies' seed is sold out. Rabi maize acreages are appearing very bright. So maize seed is coming up really well. Paddy seed has no shortages. Rabi sowing was already complete. So again, no problem. And onion seed is one which could cause a problem. And potato seed is another which could cause a problem to the farmer in terms of seed availability of onion bulbs and potato. Other than that, for the larger crop acreages of wheat, paddy, black gram, and yeah, we don't see any problem with that.
Right. Lastly, sir, if you can give some color on the sales contribution of new launches and the new launch pipeline for the next 12 months?
Yeah. So we had three major launches far. MYCORe Super, which is a soil conditioner mycorrhiza, it improved the soil health across all crops. And it has received really good acceptance from the market across all the geographies and across all the crops, including wheat, paddy, sugarcane, and horticulture crops like brinjal, tomato. And another one is LANEvo, which is Nissan Chemical Japan insecticide. We have launched it for chili, tomato, cabbage, and brinjal. This product has also received very wonderful acceptance. It's a very innovative product in a new category. And we have seen huge traction for LANEvo. And the third product which we launched was Purge, which is a soybean and groundnut herbicide, again from Nissan Japan. This product has also done exceedingly well. And we were able to complete our volume significantly. And Kharif soybean and groundnut was well received.
We are looking at upcoming opportunity in Rabi groundnut also for Purge. We launched Terminal, our total weed killer. So this product received some movement in Kharif already. We are looking at a major movement of Terminal in Rabi, which would also be a replacement of glyphosate in times to come. So all these four products were well received, especially LANEvo, and MYCORe Super have done beyond our expectations in many markets.
The pipeline for next 12 months?
Come again? I couldn't hear you.
New launch pipeline for the next 12 months?
New launch, we have recently just launched Roxas, a wheat herbicide. Before that, in October, we launched Miyako, a miticide. I think so I will hold on for a while to share for next year's launches. Let me come back.
Okay, sir. That's it from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your question to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Rohit Nagaraj from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on the set of numbers. So first question on the performance. So we've been delivering exceptionally good performance over the last four quarters. And this is barring the conditions which are prevailing in the market. So what could be the major reasons for the same in terms of the margin expansion that we are seeing? How has been the mix between specialty and generics? And is there any benefit which is coming from the new products? So what has been the trend in terms of margins across the portfolio? And do we see that the margin trend will continue and stay for the rest of the year and for next year? Thank you.
You see, margins expanded largely because of product mix and the new launches. I discussed just now like MYCORe Super, and Purge. There is significant growth in our superstar category in this financial year because of which we have been able to deliver better margins. In the coming quarter and the full-year basis, we are expecting at least 100 basis points growth in gross margin.
Sure. That is really helpful. So second question is for our manufacturing business at Dahej . So what was the performance during Q2 and first half? And what has been the negative contribution at the EBITDA level for the same?
EBITDA is negative for Dahej in Q2, and the contribution in revenue was INR 8 crore.
What would be the negative EBITDA contribution? If you can quantify it?
Negative EBITDA contribution is around INR 4.75 crores.
Right. Fair enough. Thanks a lot. I will come back in between. That's it.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Darshita from Antique Broking. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is regarding the sales returns that we had highlighted that we will see during the second quarter. Could we quantify the amount of the same?
Yeah. You see, sales return has increased significantly as compared to previous year. The sales return increased by more than 40%. It's more than INR 100 crore in quarter two. It's largely because of the less consumption of weedicide in July and August because of delayed monsoon and continuous monsoon.
Okay. Got it. Could we get the volume growth and pricing growth for the quarter?
Yeah. Volume growth is around 10% in quarter two.
Okay, and if we adjust it for the sales returns, then our growth would have been much higher, I think.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
It would have been some 20% plus kind of growth. Okay. Okay. With respect to our how much I mean, are we expecting a lot of sales returns to happen in the third quarter, or the cleanup is already done?
Most of the material is decommitted in quarter two itself.
Got it. Okay. And I just had one question regarding the higher receivables. It's up almost 44% on YoY basis. Sorry, receivables and inventory both, in fact. Could we get the reason behind the same?
You see, in terms of receivables and inventory put together, you are right. But large increase is only in the inventory side, not in receivables.
Right.
Inventory, because you see, because of continuous rain in the month of September, there were many sprays of missing pesticides. Because of which we have left a little more inventory. One. And another is the heavy return of weedicide, which was sold in quarter one and decommitted in the quarter two. But I'm expecting the inventory will be in line with our expectation by the end of this financial year.
Okay. Got it. And just one last question regarding the impact of pricing that we've been seeing. I suppose we have seen about a 5%, 6% decline during the quarter with respect to pricing. Do we expect this to continue in the third quarter as well, or the pace has normalized now?
So you see, pricing impact in quarter two is around 4%. In quarter one was more than 6%. And on year-end basis, we are expecting the gap should be around 3%. Not much. Beyond 3%.
Perfect. Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, ma'am. The next question is from the line of Viraj from SiMPL. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Just a clarification. You said for sales return, we had a sales return of INR 100 crore in Q2. Am I right?
Yeah.
So adjusting for that, the growth would have been around 21% in sales. Had it not happened?
It is very unlikely. Sales return is happening every year.
So if it's a normal year, what would be the normal sales return we typically see in a year or in this particular quarter?
Maybe around in the range of 60 to 70 this year.
Okay. So my question is, on the margin side, especially gross margin, last year we talked about a very high base in terms of gross margin in Q2 of last year. And even in Q1, our view was that we may see a moderation in EBITDA margin, probably because the contribution margin, what we had at the high base, may not continue going forward. And our view was that the old molecules would continue to see a very large price erosion. So just trying to understand what really changed in terms of just one quarter which added such a high gross margin for us.
You see, I already shared this high margin because of exceptional growth in our five-star category, Navratna category. Right? And in case of generic, there was a negative turnover in quarter two. So even within the generic category, so high margin product volume was a little better as compared to the low margin product.
The ITI index, can you just share what would be the share of ITI in this quarter?
ITI Index is 16.3%. 16.09% in this half-year basis as compared to last year's 16.39%.
Okay. So the products which we launched in last two, three years, the likes of Incar
Again, you talked about Decide and Defend. Defend is a rice BPH product. It finds opportunity in North India, Punjab, Haryana, as well as entire South, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. This year, North India has seen very low BPH attack because of very heavy rains during the attack opportunity. Defend has not done that well in North India. It is also part of one of our market return category products. Decide, which is a sucking pest product on tomato, brinjal, okra, cotton, chili-like crops, again, has done well, but not as well as our expectation. Again, due to various rain opportunities, which helped the farmer skip the insecticide spray. Sucking pest was not as big a challenge for the farmer to use Decide as many times. These are the two products which did not receive the traction as desired.
Whereas Purge, the soybean herbicide, finds opportunity in almost the entire nine million hectares of soybean and vast acreages of groundnut across the country, especially in Gujarat, and we are seeing that Purge is performing well in other crops also, so we will probably be going for label expansion and explore crop opportunities like black gram, where the government has a major thrust in terms of increasing Purge acreages. Lanevo, which is a Japanese insecticide, we have launched it for chili, tomato, brinjal, and cabbage, so this product has done really well, extremely well, in chili acreages and tomato in Maharashtra, in Karnataka, in Tamil Nadu, sorry, not Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. The performance of LANEvo has superseded farmers' expectation as compared to various other insecticide options that were available to the farmer.
LANEvo has really wonderful opportunities going forward because we have vast chili acreages and good chili prices for the state of Maharashtra and later Madhya Pradesh also in future. And we have vast brinjal acreages for the northeast, cabbage and cauliflower opportunities in North India as well. LANEvo, which is a very versatile insecticide, will find future opportunities when we do label expansion in various other crops which have caterpillar attack. For example, even maize has fall armyworm attack. Cotton has pink bollworm problems. Many other crops have lepidopteran attack. And LANEvo can find opportunity in various crops subject to label expansion. MYCORe Super is a very versatile soil health improver. It improves the soil health organically. It improves the soil health biologically. So it has been really accepted by the farmer across all crops, especially in paddy, wheat, sugarcane, tomato, grapes, and various other horticulture crops.
This has happened across the country so much so that we could not meet the demand at a certain point of time. Last year, we also launched Zanet. Zanet is a very unique product as a combination from Nippon Soda and Hokko Chemicals of Japan, a combination product launched by Dhanuka. Zanet is also seeing good traction after heavy rainfalls, including many crops across the geography. Yet it finds wonderful opportunity in tomato so far in Kharif and upcoming opportunity in potato seed treatment.
Just one query. For these products which you talked about, would we be the exclusive distributor in India? And when does exclusivity end?
LANEvo from Nissan, Dhanuka is exclusive. Purge, again, from Nissan, Japan, Dhanuka is exclusive. MYCORe Super is Dhanuka's exclusive product. Zanet is exclusively available to Dhanuka. So all the products that I talked about are exclusive with Dhanuka for a good time.
Okay. Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Bhavya Gandhi from Dalal & Broacha Stock Broking. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on a good set of numbers. So my first question is regarding the total revenue that we generate from partnership products. So if you were to dissect the entire revenue in three parts, one, revenue from partnership products, what is it? Revenue from our specialty products and revenue from generic products for the quarter, if you can provide.
Yeah. You see, in case of our percentage from our partners is around one-third, and generic is also around one-third.
Partnership? Okay. So all are one-third, one-third, one-third right now.
Yeah.
So let's assume, sir, for next two, three years, if you were to extrapolate our total revenue, what would be the total revenue from partnership products?
I think it would be in the range between 33% to 36%.
So the range percentage would still be the same? That is what you're trying to say?
33 to 36.
33 to 36. Okay. And what sort of gross margins do we make on the exclusive partnership product? Is it, I mean, like a 5%-10% incremental to the normal product?
You see, it depends. Even within the partnership, there is a huge difference in the margins. Some molecules are very big margin and some is average, some is moderate. Right?
When we say exclusive products, so I believe that the gross margins should be on the higher side, right? If you can give some range.
Absolutely. In most of the cases, that's true. But in a few cases, moderate as well.
If you can give some range of gross margins, what would be the range?
Range, you can say whatever our average gross margin. The range is more than 1,000-1,500 basis points.
Okay. And the exclusivity period, if you can throw some light, is it renewed like every year or every three years or how is it?
At the time of introduction, the exclusivity period to begin with varies from three to five years minimum and is extendable after that.
Okay. Okay. And when we say exclusivity, it's that Nissan himself also cannot sell it in the Indian market?
Nissan cannot directly sell in the Indian market without Dhanuka as a partner.
Right? I mean, yeah, the molecule innovator also cannot sell. That is what we try to say, right?
The molecule innovator cannot sell it themselves without Dhanuka as the partner.
Okay, and any product which we have on the patented side which we have introduced in the partnership?
Yeah. So we have Mortar as our patented product, which we launched years back, got the patent early 2023. And LANEvo is patent applied for, and there are a couple of other products which are patent applied for.
Okay. Fair enough. And also, just for some clarity on the margin, 100 basis point improvement that we are expecting. So initially, we had told about the 100 basis points on the lower side. So in fact, we are looking at a 200 basis point improvement from the previous guidance?
Just looking.
Something like that? Absolutely. Okay.
So I just missed out on that point.
Yes. Right?
Yeah. From previous guidance, you can say we are now revising our guidance, 200 basis points improvement. Overall, last year margin, 100 basis points improvement.
Got it. Fair enough. And just last thing, if I can squeeze in, on the Dahej revenue, if you can give some guidance for next two years, what sort of revenue are we expecting from there? And are we looking for any CRAMS partner over there?
So yes, we are looking for CRAMS partner for Dahej. But as of now, we do not have any big group in that segment. And revenue guidance, we will maintain the similar as we have shared in the past.
If you can just reiterate the numbers.
Yeah, so over three years, we'll be doing INR 250 crore.
250 crore. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Thank you so much. That's it from my end.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Shubham Sehgal from Scale Ventures. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible .
Yes, sir.
Yes.
Yeah. I just wanted to confirm that for our B2B business in Dahej, you stated that the revenue is under EBITDA. So the revenue is around INR 8 crore and EBITDA is negative INR 4.7 crores, right?
Yes.
Yes.
Correct.
Okay. Of the production that we're doing there, how much are we using captive ? And any update on new molecules that we're introducing in B2B?
So about 25%-30% is in-house consumption. That is sold in the market. And in B2B sales, we have added a lot of products, not manufactured by Dhanuka, but some of the products that we are importing from China, that we have added in the B2B portfolio. And some local products also we have added in the B2B portfolio to increase our customer base. The second part of your question about new products from Dahej, we've developed several products. But looking at the current challenges in the market for manufacturing, we have not decided to introduce any of them as yet.
Okay. Got it. And so on new business initiatives, so like few quarters back, we talked about us looking at new segments in agri input like seeds, etc. So any update on that? Have we thought about any new segments to enter in?
Come again. What was that?
So a few quarters back, we were talking about to enter into newer segments, for example, seeds. So do we have any update on that?
At the right time, we'll certainly love to come back to you on that one.
So my last question is that in the inventory side, if we see, so the build-up in September is due to what? And how are we placed in the inventory in terms of system versus the industry?
You see, inventory was built in September largely on account of two, three reasons. One, because of heavy rains in the month of July and August, which were sold in quarter one of these sides. Another is, insecticide sales were missed because of continuous rain, right? And we are expecting by the end of this financial year our inventory line to be previous year.
Okay. All right. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Priyank Chheda from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. I hope I'm audible. Rahul Ji, you talked about a list of products. If you can help me, so in terms of brand sales and the size of the sales that each brand does, I believe Targa Super was a brand which is a flagship brand which we had launched two decades ago, and it's right now doing somewhere around 150 crores of sales. Correct me if I'm wrong. And if you can also highlight, which are the other large brands that we're looking out in terms of sales size to reach more than 50, 100 crores?
Right. Thanks for your question. Normally, we do not talk about the brand size in the call. So I will not be correcting you on the Targa Super numbers.
Yes, Targa Super, a wonderful product, still continues to command that wonderful position in our portfolio as well as in the market. Various other products which have enjoyed that kind of a position is Caldan. LANEvo, another recent introduction, appears to be really catching up with that position. Sempra, a sugarcane maize herbicide which we introduced a few years back, has again received wonderful response and is going to be Mortar and Nuvan, our two other insecticides in that category. So what I've told you are some of the top 10 products, including Decide, another insecticide in our portfolio.
Right. So other than Targa, I believe all would yet to cross 100 crores. Is that understanding correct?
Yeah. That would be correct.
If you can help me, what leads to this strong two decades of leadership in Targa Super, which the competition has not yet cracked, which Dhanuka still commands a leadership position? If you can just highlight a few points on that.
Okay. So our trust and comfort with the channel as well as with the farmer is what gives a repeatability of the use case. Then our continuous effort to reach out to new market opportunities, to new crop opportunities, to new farmers gives us avenues where we are able to continuously expand and cover up for the loss of the business, if any. This is what we achieve by intense demand generation activity, Dhanuka Doctors, which we have almost 1,500 people on ground, which continue to do demand generation activities for this two-decade-old product also because it has as much opportunity in the market with hardly 30% of the country being chemically protected.
We have 70% of the agriculture chemically unprotected, and that is where we continue to reach out to the farmer and educate them repeatedly about right use of Targa Super and various other new products that we continue to launch.
Perfect. That was very clear and helpful. Coming on the pricing front, I really hope competition is not able to crack that code.
No, kudos to your team and great marketing efforts. Sir, coming to the pricing front, quarter on quarter, we have seen that decline remaining at 5%. So I believe that pricing has stabilized somewhere right now in at least last six months. How do you see that moving ahead over the next six months, and should we see some mix and price benefits coming up in FY 2026 along with the volume growth? You see, the capacities in China and India have increased like anything, and unfortunately, due to uneven rainfall, the season has not picked as was anticipated, so due to which there was inventory in the channel and demand was less. You see, economic principle is there. Demand and supply will rule the prices, so because of less demand and excess supply, the prices were reducing on month-on-month basis and higher capacity.
So now I think that the bottom has come and the prices are now stable. But there is possibility that prices can further reduce by 2-3% in the next six months. So when we think about FY 26, leaving aside FY 25.
Thank you, sir. May we request that you return to the question queue for follow-up questions?
No problem. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Rohan Gupta from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Good evening and thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is, what would have been the industry growth in this first half, second, and from then on?
Rohan, thanks for that question. You must be attending so many other investor phone calls also. I think so. It's a question I would like to ask you. What, according to you, would be the industry growth in H1?
Sir, we have not been able to gather the data on that, but I thought I'll just check with you. I mean, what is your?
I think, Mr. Rohan, it's a very uneven season. While we have faced very intense goods return because of our immense push with our new products launches and focus on herbicides, I think so many in the industry are still struggling to get the right balance of goods return versus sales, and the industry has still not completed that work. Whereas Dhanuka very aggressively cleans up the market, aligns with the channel in the true spirit of partnership, and cleans up, so our numbers are true reflection of wherever it's business, wherever sales, wherever inventory stands. I believe the rest of the industry has probably not done that cleanup, so the numbers could be significantly camouflaged or masked.
I understand, sir, the season was more importantly for the herbicide where the collection returns would have been more. So now with the herbicide market only probably will be picking up next year before the monsoon. So do we see that we had to live with the higher inventories or we were able to place in the other markets and year-end inventory would not be, I mean, significantly high?
Some of these products will still find good opportunity going forward. For example, Purge will find opportunity in the Rabi groundnut in South and East India. Targa Super will find opportunity in onion and black gram and East India jute. So we have good opportunity for some of the herbicides, including Sempra and Tizon in sugarcane and ever-highest acreage of maize, which is going to come up. There could be some herbicides which may not have repeat opportunity in Rabi, and that will land for the next cycle.
Okay.
But we may not be taking various other steps to kind of optimize our inventory levels, and we should see normalization by the next quarter end.
Right. Right. Coming back to the question, I mean, we may not have invested. If you had a solid volume growth, almost 38% Q1, and when this quarter, if I adjust for the sales return, you had almost 20% growth. It means our first half growth would have been more than 25%-28%, which certainly is not the industry number. So we would have gained significant market share. My concern is, sir, that it is all contributed by the new product and the significant market acceptance that has led to this kind of market share gain in the current first half. And can it continue with the current product pipeline for the next year as well?
Right. So even to assume that it could have looked like 25% is a misnomer, at Dhanuka, we really don't believe in that. And that's why we do aggressive material take-back from the market in the spirit of partnership with our channel. That's why I'm very confidently able to say that my Q2 closing numbers are the real sales numbers because I have already cleaned the market of unsold inventory. So that 25% is an imaginary number I would not subscribe to. Going forward, the products and the technologies which we have introduced are extremely powerful, very stable, and unmatched as compared to the competition in their respective categories.
We see huge growth opportunity in the remaining six months as in the H2 of this year, and we see wonderful traction in the coming year also with our product development, fieldwork, and demand generation activity, which we are doing on ground also and which we are doing through digital and social media as well. So I see a wonderful growth coming in from the demand generation and the product portfolio of Dhanuka.
That's it from my side. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Hussain Baruchwala from Carnelian Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chheda. Any change in the guidance in terms of revenues that we'd like to give currently, considering a good set of numbers in Q2? So you had downgraded your guidance earlier. So what is the guidance that you would like to maintain this week?
This year, we had given the guidance of 18% for the whole year, but now we are revising the top-line guidance to 16% approximately for the next quarter as well as for the whole year. However, the EBITDA margin, earlier we have given the guidance of 100 basis points reduction, but now we have revised the EBITDA margin guidance, 100 basis points improvement over last year. So overall, there will be 200 basis points improvement in the EBITDA margin over the last guidance.
Wonderful. So 200 basis points improvement over last guidance. And basically, you are saying, sir, compared to last year, you were earlier guiding 100% drop in EBITDA margin, now you are guiding 100% increase in EBITDA margin compared to last year. So that is what we understand.
Absolutely right. Absolutely right.
16% in terms of revenue growth.
Yeah. Revenue growth 16% approximately.
Got it. Got it. Got it. That's the only point from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Rohit Nagaraj from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the follow-up. So just one question, rather two questions. One is, what was the split between specialty and generic during first half? And I think you answered this earlier, but I missed it. What is the gross margin differential between specialty and generic products?
So you see, especially in generic, we are not sharing the margin, but there is a difference. You can say it depends product to product, right? On a category basis, there should be a reasonable difference. And with regard to the question, the split is around two-thirds specialty, one-third generic.
Okay. Sure. And sir, second question is in terms of the current pricing, particularly for the generic products. So is it largely stabilized now? And here on, if we were to, I mean, given that you also mentioned in terms of the inventories by the competitors or in the channel, incremental growth again for us will be predominantly propelled by volumes and the product mix. So just your thoughts on this. Thank you.
Yeah. I think that the prices are now stabilized. They are bottomed out, and I don't foresee further reduction in the prices of generic products. Specialty, you know that those specialty molecule prices are usually decided at the beginning of the year, and they remain stable throughout the season. So there is no change in the specialty molecule price trend. Only the generic prices are having a reduction trend. But now I think they are stabilized, and I don't foresee, but there can be a possibility in few molecules where the inventory levels are high, 2%-3% further reduction in the prices is possible in the next two quarters. But regarding the volume and value growth, by the end of the year, we expect that there will be 3% variation at the end of the year between volume and value.
Perfect. That's helpful. Thanks a lot and all the best.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Viraj from SiMPL. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. I just had two questions. First is on the B2B business. The INR 8 crore sales we did, you indicated that there was a good amount of third-party traded business in that. So the question is, on INR 8 crores of sales, even if you adjust for the third-party sales, we've done a net loss of INR 4.5 crore-INR 5 crore. So is it purely due to subscale of operations, or even at the gross level, you're seeing a negative margin for us?
So, gross level, there is a positive margin for sure, but the operational expenses are on the higher side, and we have invested significantly in the chemistry R&D. So that has good ongoing monthly expenses. So that is causing the lower negative effects on the heat business. And the INR 8 crore revenue, as I mentioned, is only for the heat products. The traded product revenue is over and above this.
So what scale of operation you would have to do to just break even and get from the wheat specialty?
Yes. For breakeven, our estimate is close to a revenue of INR 150 crore-INR 200 crore on an annual basis.
Okay. And if you look at the commentary of various major B2B players, and even at the global agchem MNC major, everyone is talking about a recovery in volumes and inventory in key end markets normalizing. So even on the pricing side, the view is somewhere in the first half of next year, we should expect a price recovery. So from our pipeline and scale-up point of view, how are we looking at the Dahej facility going into 2026?
Okay. So I'll try to break the question into parts, one around the global prices and supplies resuming. So my understanding and learning from my interaction with various people in the industry and also with companies in China is that global inventory levels have definitely come down, but some of the countries and some of the companies are still having good levels of inventory for specific products. Second scenario is the very significant increase in capacities and number of products in China. So these two factors combined are leading to the continued low demand from global markets and creating pressure for all technical manufacturers in India as well as in China. Having said that, the future for the trade, when we look two years down the line, of course, we are working with our international partners for contract manufacturing opportunities and looking forward for some partnerships over there.
Secondly, we are looking at developing some of the newer molecules in our laboratory where we can get good margins and commercialize them by 2026.
Okay. Got it. Yeah. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. This was the last question for the day. I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments.
Thank you. Once again, I would like to thank all the investors and analysts for your support and confidence in Dhanuka. With the transition in management, we have embarked on our next era of growth and business success. We continue to demonstrate our ability to overcome challenges and emerge stronger despite uncertain business environment. I reassure our stakeholders that we are committed to the task of transforming the landscape of agriculture and farmers in India. India Ka Pranam Har Kisan Ke Naam . Thank you and goodbye until next time. Thank you very much.