Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Control Print Limited Investor Call for Results discussion of 4 QFY 2023, hosted by Asian Markets Securities Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results may differ from such expectations, projections, et cetera, whether expressed or implied. Participants are requested to exercise caution while referring to such statements and remarks. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference, please signal an operator by pressing star then 0 on your touchtone phone.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Karan Bhatelia from Asian Markets Securities Limited. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Thanks, Arvind. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome all to the Control Print Limited fourth quarter and 12 months FY23 earnings conference call hosted by Asian Markets Securities Private Limited. From the management side, we have with us Mr. Shiva Kabra, Joint Managing Director, and Jaideep Barve, CFO. I would like to hand over this call to Jaideep, sir, for his opening remarks. Post that we shall open the floor for Q&A. Thanks. Over to you.
Yeah. Hello, good evening. My name is Jaideep Barve, I work as a Chief Financial Officer of Control Print Limited. Welcome everybody to the earnings call for the fourth quarter of the financial year 2022-23 of Control Print Limited. We appreciate you have taken out time from your busy schedules to attend this one. Hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy, wish you all a happy financial new year. Mr. Shiva Kabra, the Joint Managing Director of Control Print Limited, also joins me on this call. The detailed presentation has been put up on our website as well as with the investor presentation before this call. For those who are probably reviewing the company for the first time, Control Print Limited was founded in 1991.
It operates in the niche coding and marking segment, which is an oligopolistic market with 4 major players, out of which 3 are MNC, and we, that is Control Print Limited, is the only made in India manufacturer. We have our manufacturing facility in Nalagarh, which is in the state of Himachal Pradesh, for the manufacturing of printers and in Guwahati in the state of Assam for the manufacture of certain types of printers and the consumables. Both these manufacturing locations are state of the art factories where we produce good quality products. We manufacture and supply a wide range of printers such as CIJ, TIJ, high resolution printers, thermal transfer printers, laser printers, et cetera. Apart from these printers, we also manufacture and supply consumable set inks, ribbons and cartridges.
The industries that we serve are cables, wires, pipes, cement, sugar, dairy, FMCG, healthcare, steel and metals and plastics. We have a strong sales and service team of 350-plus personnel across our 10-plus branches across India. Our diversity presence is served through 1,600 cities in India with over 2,500 PIN codes in it. As of today, we have an installed base of over 70,500, 10,000 printers across industry. This enables the sale of consumables across a wide set of printers. Post a printer sale, we believe there is a continuous demand for consumables over its life, which typically lasts for about 5 to 8 years, depending on its operating conditions. Moreover, our company has a robust network to ensure we provide higher time and a good after sales service which eliminates customer concerns.
We also have our end-to-end ERP system, which is SAP, which supports our financial, production, purchase, sales and the CRM. This ensures the optimum constants in accounting, sales and after sales, as well as the total controls of the inventory management and the audit received processes. Our systems and processes gives the necessary confidence to the teams, vendors, customers, bankers as well as the investors. We periodically conduct training programs to ensure that all our employees remain proficient in operating and maintaining their machines. We constantly endeavor to customize the products to reach out to other industries to increase our install base. With a strong foundation and five pillars like man, machine, material, technology and finance, we are well established to augment our business plan, which we feel we are continuously styling for better and better heights.
Let me give you a brief analysis of the standalone financial statement of Control Print Limited for the financial year ended 23. On the overall condition, India has marked its position as one of the fastest growing economies globally. This growth trajectory is expected to continue to 2022 also. Towards the end of 2022, the manufacturers have scaled the production, mainly on the rise of rising international productive demand for Indian products. This trend also was observed in the first quarter of 23, indicating a sustained improvement in the business environment. Coding and marking systems play a crucial role in the manufacturing and supply chains of both industrial as well as consumer goods.
According to certain industry reports, our industry in India is expected to retain a sub-substantial growth with a CAGR of 9.85%. Food, beverages, healthcare, electronics, chemicals, construction, automobiles industries are expected to be the major growth drivers of the coding and marking market in India. On the opportunity side, we feel that there are certain government regulations which require companies in the FMCG field and the pharma sector to give more information to the consumables about the products, about the industry from where it's manufactured. We ourselves have also gone into certain business co-collaborations during the course of this year. In December 2022, we entered into JV agreement with an Italian company called V-Shapes, which is engaged in the manufacture and sale of packaging machines, which is also famous for its eco-friendly single dose sachets.
In July 2022, we acquired a company in Netherlands called Markem-Imaje. This company is a prominent supplier of high-speed printing and coding solutions, and it's well-established in the European market. This is accepting the area of high-quality single pass printing for packaging and industrial applications. We believe that partnering and having a synergy with Markem, we'll be able to offer better solutions and diversify portfolio. On the revenue front, the operating revenues for this quarter was around INR 84 crores. The overall operating revenue for FY 2023 is INR 291 crores, which is an increase of 15% from the previous year's operating revenue of INR 264 crores. While our base products happen to be CIJ printers, it is happy to note that the non-CIJ printers also showed an increasing trend in sales in this year.
We continue to expand our footprints in dairy, cement, pharma industries. We have also launched new products during the course of this year. On the expenses front, we can note that consumption, which is cost of goods sold, it has remained steady approximately of, about 30%. It's more or less in line as compared to the previous year financial year. We can definitely hope for improvement in reducing this in the current financial year with optimized buying strategies. Manufacturing and other operating costs are at a consistent rate of around 3% of sales. This is in line with the prior years. Our employee costs are around INR 50 crores, which we see a decline of 2.5% as compared to previous financial year. This is largely as a result of the increased sales in this current year.
Depreciation is steady at 5%-6%, and our other expenses are in the range of 30%-40% as in the last 2 years. The Q4 EBITDA, PBT, PAT, and EPS, excluding exceptional items, grew by 10.9%, 13%, 18.2%, 18.2% year-on-year respectively. While we are proud of all these achievements, we always feel that there is still exists a considerable scope of improvement. We will aim for better revenues, higher revenues, and also enjoy the, you know, higher margin of sales. The way forward for us is high consumable sales with improved industry production, newly launched products during the year, focused marketing plans. We have an inside sales team which will be given targets. We're focusing on key accounts.
Also try to put more focus on the install base and increase our larger customer share, and also look at the European factories acquisitions we have done so as to achieve better sales and synergy in this year. The floor is now open for questions. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may please 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 a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Gunjan Kabra from Niveshaay. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, I'm actually comparatively new to the company, so wanted to understand the business model. Like, what is the active printer base that we have today, and what's the number that we expected to reach in next two years?
I didn't get the first sentence, ma'am.
Sir, I'm saying I'm comparatively new to the company and wanted to understand, what is the active printer base that we have today, and what's the number that we expected to reach in next 2 years?
See, we've got a installed base of about 70,000 printer base at the moment. If you look at, fairly conservatively an estimate of 3% growth every year, you can get your numbers.
Okay. Okay, sir, how do you estimate the requirement of the consumable to the printer? Like, if I wanted to understand that if we are selling one printer today, then what's the consumable that we can estimate in terms of our ink requirement from that printer that is coming? If we are selling a printer, is it certain that, okay, for next 5 years to 6 years, the consumables for the ink requirement for that printer is being, you know, will be catered by us and that sale is, like, you know, going to be there. How can we estimate that ink requirement?
Okay. The way we see it as, if we sell a printer to a customer and it operates in normal operating conditions, because it is trained on the production packages and without any abnormal wastage, feel that, you know, like he's going to enjoy, you know, the use of the printer for the next five to eight years.
We can, you know, like rest assured that the consumable business that we can get from that particular printer would be somewhere in 5 to 8 years.
Five to eight years is fine. I mean, the printer's life is... would be around five to eight years.
Once he purchase the current printer, he has to necessarily buy the consumables from us.
Sir, that is correct. If I'm talking about, say, if, you we order a printer or somebody, like how much ink, like how much worth of ink will be sold for one year on one printer is what I'm trying to understand. That metric I wanted to understand.
Let me tell you is that, you know, like, we are in the oligopoly, and though we have the machine run rate or consumption, for the ink, at this moment, it's a little bit confidential data because it's the offering oligopoly.
Okay, okay. That's it. Okay. No, not an issue. sir, how much... Like, if you can bifurcate our revenue from how many, like, different sectors, what is the contribution? Like, major sector is contributing how much revenue? if sector-wise also the usage of or the consumption of ink changes with different sectors, if you can tell me, explain me that?
An overall basis, our line of business is consumable-centric. What we can do is that we can say, let's say about 55%-60% of the business comes from the sale of consumables, and roughly about 15%-20% comes from the sale of printers. We also have something called a, you know, service income, which is the annual maintenance contracts or comprehensive maintenance contracts what we do. About 10%-15% comes from that business. From the sale of spares that we do, that is about 8%-10%. That's the brief distribution of, you know, that entire business what we do.
Sir, I'm talking about sectors. I mean, how much is FMCG? How much is pharma? How much is plywood, MDF? How much is these sectors contributing? I'm talking in terms of that.
I think, we do not. I mean, if you look at it, there's no major concentration of business sector-wise. We believe that pipes, tools, bearing, these are the top three segments for us and, that contributes about 40% of the business for us. The others are nearly, about 6%-10% each.
Okay. Okay. Sir, what would be the total capacity of consumables?
Capacity as in...
In tons if you can.
Sir, 60% usage of the capacity.
Sorry?
60% only.
that's the utilization, right?
That's the utilization.
You cannot tell me the total, capacity of how much capacity.
Capacity I'm not able to share with you as of now.
You cannot share, huh? Okay. Okay, sir. Sir, any metrics on which you can guide us that, okay, if this is the number of printers sold, like last year if we sold around 3,000 printers or this year if we are selling, then how can we estimate that, okay, this is going to be the total consumable sales? If not directly if you want to tell, but, anything like metrics that we can judge on or anything from that sort, if you can explain.
We have year-over-year, like let's say about, 10% growth in the number of printers that we sell.
Correct.
That we can do.
That you can do.
Yeah, we can do that.
Okay. Thank you so much. Good luck for your future endeavors.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Darshil Jhaveri from Crown Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi, sir. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. Hope I'm audible.
Yes, you are audible. Thank you. Go ahead.
Yeah. I would just like to know that you've been growing, at a pretty good rate currently. What would be our revenue targets for the upcoming year or maybe next two years? Are our margins stable at 25%?
I will answer that question, if that's fine. You know, we don't give any projections or targets out, so I can't tell you anything. Obviously, we hope that, you know, continue having sustainable growth. You know, I think as far as our margins goes, you know, like we've You know, obviously in the trend, of course, there might have been a I don't know what happened in the COVID time or something sort of dip. You know, it's been sort of consistent over an extended period of time, so we're pretty sure we can maintain that. In fact, on a bigger base, it's much easier to maintain the margins, but, you know, as far as the revenue, it's not possible for us to project that as of right now.
Okay, sir. Okay. I would also like to know is our JV and our new acquisition, how have they been contributing to the business? Are they more margin accretive or how is the demand in Europe? Could you give some color on our acquisitions?
Yeah. As far as the acquisition goes, I think Jaideep's got the numbers. It will give you a better idea. It's been consistent since last year. They were about EUR 2 million odd euros in turnover if I remember correct, approximately. Some good profit contribution. That was Markprint. We are still working on integrating some more of the products with Nina. It's been a bit delayed and we've actually just finally received the first set or so of printers and now we're gonna test them on certain applications here. Yeah, it's...
So far it's not been bad, but it's not been like the integration is frankly a little bit slower than expected on both sides because they've been busy with some stuff and then our team is also busy with some other things. As far as the joint venture goes, you know, it's still a bit early. Just, I think we've activated everything now, and yeah, it's not actually contributed to the bottom line or the top line at all, but it's looking active now. Now it should actually give us some, maybe some numbers in the coming quarter. Maybe not in this quarter, but, you know, we should start seeing some business being done in the coming quarter.
Okay. Okay. The JV might contribute from-
I know, like, all of these kinds of things that we do, it's, you know. I understand the excitement that everyone has been in, like, normally we've got pretty longer-term planning horizons in a lot of these type of strategic activities. You know, it could. You know, our thoughts were anyways, you know, we're still looking at a three to 10-year type of a thing. Obviously that's from a different-
Okay, okay. Okay, okay. yeah, that helps, yeah. okay. thank you so much, sir, and all the best for the upcoming quarter. thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Agarwal from Naredi Investment. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. My first question. Company will run by maintaining a cash balance of INR 50 crore for which you have also made investment. This is a good thing, but why have you invested in direct equity? Why you did not go through mutual fund? You are not an investment company, and it is not our job. What is purpose doing it? Please tell us.
Hello?
Hello.
Can we give him an answer? You're getting that.
No. Well, yeah. I got your question. We know we are not a, you know, financing company. The reason why we are keeping them in the investment category is that, we are always on the lookout for new acquisitions, and we would like to keep our funds ready. Whenever the acquisition happens to be a good one for us to invest and the legal due diligence and operational financial due diligence is done properly, the target is identified, we get, you know, funds to invest in whatever. That's the reason why, you know, we've kept it in. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, sir. There's a second and last question. What is CapEx plan for FY 2024?
It's marginal. I think the depreciation normally covers the CapEx, so something like that.
Okay.
Did you get my answer? I said that the... Normally there's not really much CapEx at all in our business. The depreciation normally covers the capital investment, if any. The net block should be about the same is what I'd say. Jaideep, anything you wanna add out there?
No, it's a, it's a fair answer, Shiva. No, nothing major is planned as of now, but then if it is there, the results will cover it.
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Naisar Parikh from Native Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Shiva and Jaideep. Congratulations, and thank you for taking the question. The question, couple of questions. First is, can you talk about what were the printer sales in Q4 and the full year?
Jaideep?
Yeah. We can. You're talking about just the Q4 or the entire?
Yeah. Q4 and full year, both. Yeah. If you can tell me number of printers sold in Q4 and full year.
Q4 we would have sold about approximately 950 printers. The year on we would have, about 2,200 to 2,300 printers in the year.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I know you won't give future guidance, but just, you know, as you're looking for this year in FY 2024, how are you seeing the traction on this, especially, in context of, you know, the competition? Because what we understand is, you know, competition also going very aggressively, both in terms of the new technologies they are bringing in, people they are hiring, et cetera. You know, what is the sense of competition, and how do you see the printer sales shape of FY 2024? Just directionally, if you can talk about that.
Yeah. I can't comment, but I mean, the competitive intensity is the same as what it was in the past. Like we have maintained, you know, before also that essentially, you know, the bigger customers in India are the ones, you know, who want to take the least amount of risk will go for either us, of course, Ricoh, Domino, Markem-Imaje. You know, we are competing pretty well with all three of them. We don't see any big major change in the competitive intensity. Of course, yeah, the first month has been fair. You know, I can only talk about April so far, so, you know, we'll obviously see how the rest of the year pans out. It's looking positive so far, like the cases and...
I mean, it's looking in line with last year so far.
Okay. Got it. In terms of your mix of printers between CIJ, TIJ laser, can you give that for the year?
Well, Naisar, those, please don't ask us about the breakup. This is too proprietary of information. We have those numbers ready, but the breakup into CIJ and non-CIJ is a bit confidential as of now.
Okay. Okay. In terms of, you did talk about, the your packaging JV. I just want to understand. What is the modus operandi over there? Like, is it a JV company will sell together or do you have, like, distribution rights and you'll sell? You know, how does that work?
Essentially what they have is they make some packaging machines, which have, you know, unique features to it, and the packaging materials also proprietary to the machine. You know, basically similar on the Tetra Pak type of a thing. The Tetra Pak sells the machine, and they also sell the Tetra Pak bricks on top of selling the machine. That's something similar. What we are doing is we will be, you know, manufacturing some part of the range of machines here. Maybe not the entire range, but some part of the range. We also will be, I have already started working on manufacturing the proprietary packaging materials and the flexible packaging material out here. We made 1 type.
There's another type which is fully recyclable and that's still, you know, a few months. This takes time. We have to make sure everything works perfectly, and that's second thing we have to get done in place. The third one, which is compostable one, which is still like quite far, we haven't even started working on that. Basically, we will make the materials out here or rather we get it sourced for ourselves from, you know, specific manufacturers. We will sell it directly to the customers in India and other areas of operation. We'll also be making the machines ourselves in our factory in Talegaon. That's the scope of the JV. This is covering India and a few neighboring countries.
The economics, how is it? Do you have to pay some royalty or is there a profit share or any?
No, I mean, we have the equity in this company, right?
Okay. You all get 50, right?
Whatever. I don't know what they... You know, obviously we make some profits and we might have to reinvest it and all. Eventually I'm assuming if there's enough surplus, we'll get either, you know, that equity will be valuable and they can get dividends off it. Yeah.
Right. It's a 50/50 JV, right?
It's a 70-30. It's right now it's 90-10 because we're still getting some RBI permissions and some compliances. Right now we own the company. We still have to get some clearances before we can issue the equity to them for 10%, and then they will take it up to 30%. They have to pay and then to take it up from 10 to 30. It's a 10 to 30. Eventually it will be 70/30. Right now it's a 100% with us because we still have to get some clearances.
How big is this, like, company in terms of their own market or something? Are they like Is this new technology just getting started or is that like, is it a big thing in their own market or something like that?
It's pretty recent.
Okay. Got it. On track and trace, right, I think you were talking about that also. You know, are we able to get any of the products, like, finalized on that? When can we see sales of that actually picking up?
We've had some sales recently, so it is picking up. You know, of course, because of the pharmaceutical industry requirements, the demands are increasing out there. Yeah, we are getting some benefits of that. Yeah, but it's in process. It's a ready product. It's a ready solution from our side. If anyone calls up, we have the solution ready.
Okay. Last one, and maybe I'll come back in the queue, in the line again. You know, FY 2025, your target was INR 400. Now with where you stand today and, you know, with all the JVs and everything that you have, you know, how do you look at it? Is that something that you'll still achieve, you go above, beyond any sense?
I mean, we can't say anything. The board had set us a INR 400 crore standalone target, you know, it's not relevant with the other ventures that are there in place.
Okay.
Yeah. Obviously, you know, we have that target was set to us. You know, I mean, I do wanna say that it was the board that took it down to the AGM to the shareholders and, you know, obviously then it become a public thing. Yeah. Obviously that means there is a expectation from the board and we're working towards that.
Understood. No, that makes sense.
It was a standalone number, so it's not anything to do with, you know, obviously. It's easy to buy a company of INR 50 crores and add to that target, but that's not. It was a standalone controlled number.
Got it.
Our target, I think this will be INR 292 or something. INR 291.
Okay.
That's the number we have to take to 400 as per the.
Okay. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Shiva. I'll just come back if there's something else. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to 2 per participant. The next question is from the line of Devanshu Sampat, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Just, Jaideep Sir, your voice is slightly muffled, so we request you to, you know, adjust the mic accordingly. Mr. Shiva, this is a question for you, right? Can you tell me what's your cash and cash equivalent right now as of March end?
I couldn't hear you again. Can you repeat that?
You're saying the cash and cash and cash equivalent currently?
Yeah. Yeah, Jaideep, you have those numbers. I think it's there on the balance sheet right there. I think we are about INR 70 crores between cash, liquid investments, whatever, you know, financial investments of different sorts.
Okay. Okay.
About INR 70. The exact number was published. You know, if someone looks at the it'll be there as a cash, bank balances and investments. All three of them are liquid, so.
it's about.
Shiva, also-
No, it's about INR 15.5 crores.
The amount, sir?
INR 15.5 crores.
I think he's asking about liquid investments.
I total investments in excess cash from this basically is around INR 65-70, if I'm not mistaken. Right?
Yeah. Which includes the investments. Yeah.
Okay. One question I have, you know, there was a call, there was a comment that Mr. Shiva had made very clearly, right? Ideally we should have returned everything in excess of INR 50 crore that we should have maintained, and we've only paid out about INR 15 crore of dividend, which is, you know, if I look at the payout ratio is the lowest since 2016. I'm a little confused because, you know, the payout should ideally move up, right? Because we have more money than what we had sought to keep in this cash and cash equivalents. Is there any change from what Mr. Kabra mentioned earlier that we'll be returning all the money above this number?
You know, you mentioned that we'll be leaving some funds for some acquisition, but shouldn't that INR 50 crore amount be taking care of that? I'm missing whatever number is above INR 50 is what we use for acquisition. I'm a little confused. If you can help clarify this.
I will clarify that again. What I did say was that, you know, the board will recommend the most tax efficient manner possible. I do wanna say that, you know, there is a expectation of a dividend that if you give X, then it's there every year. You know, maybe there is views that maybe other methods might be, you know, more tax efficient or, more suitable to return cash and that.
Okay. That's something that we can still expect some announcement from the company soon, I suppose then.
Yeah. If the trend continues, then I'm sure that, you know, it could be that in the Q1 we could see it.
I mean, yeah, we are generating about, anywhere around, you know, INR 45-55 crores of free cash a year. This will obviously just be adding to the cash balance we have right now, so.
Sure.
Okay. I got the message. Thank you very much, and wishing you all the very best. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Raaj from Arjav Partners. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
my question is, as you said, where the Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir, you are audible. You can go ahead.
Yeah. What you said is the average life of printer is 5-8 years, right? How much is the amount of total ink?
Excuse me. I think that's slightly incorrect. It's normally between 8 to 12 years.
Eight years-12 years.
It can be 5 years, definitely in cement, steel and some other industry printer life is about 5-6 years only. On average, I'd say like in a food or dairy or, you know, a pie company, it will be between 8-12 years.
8-12 years. Okay, in those 8-12 years time. Understood. In those 8-12 years time, how much is the amount of ink which you can sell it to your client on a roughly basis?
You will understand, you know, that different clients have a different speed of consumption.
No, I understand. Still, just on an average, just a very rough figure would be good.
Yeah. Jaideep's got that number. I think it's there in the presentation. Jaideep?
We have the numbers, Shiva, I mean, because we are the only company, we don't share these numbers.
Oh, you don't share numbers? It is fine. All right. other question is, what is the average amount of Hello, am I audible?
Yes, you are audible.
Yeah. What is the average ticket size of a printer?
Average?
Like, average order size of one single printer.
Yeah. It goes from about INR 1 lakh to about INR 4 and a half lakhs on average, like the standard range of printers.
Gotcha. INR 1 lakh-INR 4 lakh, right?
Yeah, 1 to 4.5.
Understood. In this, AMCs which you have, can we expect a higher EBITDA on AMCs?
Our business is, you can clearly break it up into three parts, you know, or rather two parts. Like, you know, the sales of the printers and what we call the install-based business, which is broken up into further two parts. One is the, you know, consumers part and one is the service spares and filters part.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think approximately, what is it? I think 21% of our business is something 20, 21%, something like that.
20%.
Is aftermarket business. Definitely, you know, I mean, there's no secret that we made to the, you know, the almost all our margin is on the aftermarket business, you know.
Sorry, I didn't get you.
There is no secret we have made, you know, that almost our entire gross margin is earned on the aftermarket business and not.
Aftermarket is the highest one? All right.
Yeah.
So that includes-
The spares, services, filters and the consumers, fluids, chemicals and everything.
All right. I guess one more. Achha, one more thing if I could squeeze in, that in this. Hello? The JV opportunity which you spoke about, how big can that opportunity actually grow? How much, like, how are investors supposed to look at that opportunity?
I mean, right now it's just an opportunity. You know, till we don't make anything concrete out of it's not possible to comment, I think.
Achha. Can we expect in future calls you will be able to give some clarity on this?
Maybe towards the back end of this financial year we could be much better.
Back end of the financial year. All right. All right. Also, can we expect FY 2024 growth rates to be similar to the historical rates, right? Because since you are not going to do any more expansions and all those things, is that right?
So it's not possible for us to know, like, I mean, I think this question was asked.
No, but you can always give a tentative answer to this, no?
Yeah. It has been good and the number of cases is active is not bad. It's in line with what's happened so far last year. We don't know what's gonna happen in the rest of the year.
Achha. All right, sir. Thanks. All the best. See you in the upcoming call, hopefully. Yeah. Bye.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Karan Bhatelia from Asian Market Securities Limited. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Shiva, I think last year, most part of the year we had supply side challenges. How do you see the situation shaping as of now?
Well, definitely improve. That's a positive. Still some niggling issues for sure, but I'll say like, yeah, it's down like by 80% the issues that is left unresolved, you know. Still some things we are having, but, you know, it's been resolved to a great extent. That, that definitely helped us in the last few months, I think.
Yes, I expected. On the cost escalation, have you been able to pass on whatever cost increase we had seen for last year till now, or you're still negotiating with our customers for that?
No, we have started on the price increases.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, the majority would be true, but it might not be completely done.
Right.
It's still in process, but I'll say that the majority of cost, price increases are taking place in the last few months.
Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Where is your... if you can help me out with the breakup of INR 291 crores, you know, in printers, spares, consumables, mask and others?
If you can say if you want in pure percentages, I can only say that about 18%-20% is in printers. About 57%, 58% is in consumables. Spares contribute about 8%, and the services income is 15%. We also have a small portion of the mask business is only 3%. That's the entire 291 breakup for you.
Okay. Thanks. Thanks. That is from mine. I'll join back in the queue.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepan Sankaranarayanan from TrustLine Investment Solutions. Please go ahead.
Hello, good evening, everyone. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. Firstly, in the opening remarks, you mentioned that there is some increased regulation for FMCG and pharma sector to put more information on content production, batch size, et cetera. Any deadlines mentioned for these sectors, when this could get implemented, which could be a driver, key driver for our growth?
If I cover that question, you might have seen that recently, you know, you have to print like the price per gram or the price per 100 mL or something like that. That's been a sudden thing which then increased the amount of information to be printed. In some cases where people were changing the pack size around, they have to use the printers to print this information. The second situation was regarding the pharmaceutical industry, where there were some regulations where they had to, you know, print, they had to trace their QR, you know, their product through the supply chain, through QR codes and in, like, in the full track and trace system where we have supplied a bit, but that has been delayed by the government.
The regulation has not been withdrawn. It was originally for this year, I believe in August. It has already been postponed. I don't know exact details of when it's been postponed to, but, you know, the pharmaceutical industry is a strong lobby, but it has been postponed. It's not been withdrawn.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Secondly, so Q4, though there has been a good improvement in gross margin, but EBITDA got impacted because of our sharp jump in other expenses. What is the reason for that sharp jump? Any extraordinaries involved there?
If you look at the other expenses as a % of the sales, we don't have much of a increase. Yeah, we can look up to, you know, that particular segment as a maybe improvement in the coming years.
This run rate will be continuing?
Well, we can always look at cost optimization, which we'll definitely have to do, like, focus on the next year, so we have better margins in the next year than that.
Okay. Okay. Thanks a lot, Kandasamy.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Harsh Beria, an Individual Investor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Congrats for the good set of results this year. In your presentation, I think on a slide it was mentioned that new products are being introduced for industrial and non-industrial verticals. Can you talk a bit about these new products?
Yeah. These are some more specialized, you know, applications that we try to, you know, some of the existing products or other involve some technologies for, like, some more specific types of applications. More for steel marking, you know, more for certain things in, you know, the wood sector or the fiber sector. This is when, you know, people want to do something beyond the standard. What we do is we're doing coding and marking. If you really look at it's like, you know, batch numbers, date codes, expiry dates, MRPs and stuff. A lot of customers also rely on us for some branding, and of course for their track and trace, for printing QR codes and tracking their, or, you know, barcodes and tracking their materials through the supply chain.
On the branding front, of course, for a lot of customers, they're looking at a different option, which is to print maybe multicolor or they want higher resolutions and they want better quality of codes and so on. You know, we've got some different products that we have been working on developing. I'll say, like, it's a very nascent stage of the sales part. You know, of course it's something that because, you know, obviously what happens is if someone, say, spending, I'm just giving an idea. I'm saying INR 100 printing. What I can do is I can rely on volume growth, or I can try to go back to the customer and offer him something better and maybe he's gonna pay INR 200 for that also.
You know, we work on both fronts. The idea was to see if we can upsell also to some of the existing customers. Maybe they are willing to, I don't know, pay for more per print.
This is in line with what we have been doing, like building a software team to maybe track the supply chain and giving customized services to end customers. This is kind of in line with that.
That is part of our track and trace thing that we're developing. We actually had some more successes on that front, you know, in the recent past. Like I said, also mainly more for the pharmaceutical industry requirements. That of course has some different aspects. There's a software aspect that we are working on. Of course, we combine the software and the hardware and also all the other things. It's like a single point of contact for the customer. This is... I'm talking more on the printing side only, like with the printers part, you know, giving some more options to the customer so that it will the product stands out more in terms of the branding that we do.
Got it. Can you talk a little bit about your Sri Lankan operations, how it's doing right now?
Yeah, Shiva, I'll answer this question. With the Sri Lankan operations, we have regrouped our team over there and the sales are, you know, like not on a very high growth, but you know, some things are happening. Week on week we are expecting new things both in consumables as well as spare parts. We intend to, you know, like review the situation again and try to employ new people both in the sales and the service and try to revive the operations in a much more focused manner going ahead.
My last question is on our inventory. It's commendable how well we have done on optimizing inventory in the past few years. What is the optimized inventory days for our business?
Inventory will obviously depend upon, you know, some timing differences. If you look at the time, you know, like, a lot of purchases happened in the last 15 days of March 2023 in this year. As a result, you know, you find a substantial increase in the inventory as compared to the previous year. Otherwise it's been in line with, you know, whatever the cost of good sales we are having over the past few years.
For reaching our target of INR 400 crores in standalone sales, we will do this with INR 70 crores-INR 80 crores of inventory?
Well, you know, like what we do is that because of, you know, so many tensions like the Taiwan-China tension or the Ukraine war, Russia tension. The global supply of key components like, you know, like boards, and then circuits, variable or chips, that was quite constrained. From a risk mitigation point of view, we try to build up the stock so that, you know, we don't call shortage of anything and we keep on, you know, delivering our printers to our customers based on the orders.
Perfect. Thanks for that clarification. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashok Shah from LSC Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Sir, I am very much thankful for excellent performance. Sir, in the presentation, we have stated that we are serving 2,500 PIN codes. How many PIN codes to be pending to be served? Also, sir, already 17,000 printer we have got pre installed base. Can you throw some lights on how many printers of our competitor are in markets? Also do we know same data about our competitor also, or they are not disclosing data or it's not available for us?
Our key competitors are closely held subsidiaries of their foreign counterparts. Very little information is available in the public domain for them. They are privately built entities, so not much of information we can get about their operating statistics.
Is it fair to disclose so much data from our side because we may be facing some competition or the data to our competitors?
This data what we share with you is more like, not a comprehensive data, whatever we can, you know, like receive, we are presenting.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Sir, during the quarter, how many new customer we acquired?
In terms of customers, we can't say it. During the quarter we would have sold the printers. We would have sold over 950 of printers.
Any specific new company we have added as a supplier or something like that? Because a new customer is the most important because that could help us to grow in future substantially via new additions.
We have got bunch of clients on our customer base who keep on giving businesses because they increase in size. Yes, to answer your question, we have made progress into new customers, that is what I can tell you on this call regarding. We can't disclose the names of the customers or, you know, the kind of volumes we have done with them.
Okay. Sir, one suggestion. last three AGM was held, virtually. Currently new, physical AGM is allowed. Please hold AGM what, physically if possible. Thank you, sir.
Okay, sir.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we request you to please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Rajnish Bahl, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, congratulations on a good set of numbers. I have two, three questions. One is like what is the current market size of the printers and how much is our market share? Second is on, yes, you told that you have kept some cash for the further acquisitions, so it will be on the printer side or you'll be diversified to some other sector?
Yes, sir. Would you like to take this question?
I'm gonna answer this question. As far as you know, the thing is, we are in the coding and marking business, and basically that is a sort of sub-sector of digital printing. One of the reasons of the Markprint acquisition is we wanna get into some more higher end applications in the coding and marking space, or it's beyond coding and marking. It's sort of in a undefined sphere. You can say it's like a higher end version of coding and marking. That's definitely a diversification that's happening. And yes, we have spent on the acquisition to do it, and of course, we're also beefing up our own internal development capabilities to meet up some of those applications.
We have diversified in the packaging sector where there's an overlap of our customers and this is through the V-Shapes' joint venture. We have diversified into the tracking piece, which is an integration of our printers all the way down to the software. You know, also we're now working on fine-tuning it so that essentially what we were doing was you providing traceability to the customer. Now we're actually working on, you know, actually resolving customer issues. Which could mean inventory control, through FIFO. It could mean, you know, preventing of diversion of goods from one, you know, area to another area. It could mean, you know, take dealer incentives or, you know, other types of incentives that are managed through the system and so on.
Of course to get in touch with the end customer and to resolve the issue besides of course anti-counterfeiting. There are diversification which are related to our core business. I wouldn't say like they're major diversifications. In the end we are just selling, you know, more solutions to the same set of customers. There is, you know... It is a diversification. All three would be considered to be whether you're talking of the track and trace and providing a full stock solution, whether you're talking of, you know, getting past coding and marking into like, you know, a more higher end digital printing type of a solution or whether you're talking of, the packaging industry, the, you know, specific V-Shapes option that we have started.
All three of them are diversifications and strictly defined would be close, but not exactly our current business.
Got it. How big is the total market size and what is your current market share for our current business? How big is the market for coding and marking space?
Yeah. Domino, you know, we are number 4 in the industry. We think the gap between us and the number 3 players now, we're still number 4, the gap between us and the number 3 players are quite small, at least on a standalone basis. You know, we're a little bit less than them, not that much less. Yeah, the 4 of us combined would be about INR 1,400-1,500 crores in sales. That's what I would think. No, about INR 1,450 crores in sales is the 4 of us. The total market will be in the region of INR 1,900 crores, between INR 1,800 crores and INR 2,000 crores, somewhere there.
How about the coding and marking space, market size now?
Yeah. That's why I said, the four of us combined about between INR 14 crore and INR 50 crore is my rough estimate, give or take like, you know, INR 50 crore ±, and the entire market would be somewhere between INR 1,800 crore and INR 2,000 crore.
Understood. Coding and marking space because it's high technology business and this operating margin will be higher than your current business or will be similar margins will be there?
I don't understand that question. Could you repeat that, please?
The operating margins for coding and marking space of business will be similar to your current business or will it be higher?
We are in the coding and marking business.
Okay. Okay. Another question is on the V-Shapes business. When do you think you will start to start the revenue for this business in this financial year or next financial year?
I'm expecting to have some revenues in our joint venture this year. Sure.
Okay. In last call you said you are going to bring some technology from the Markprint to the Indian market. What is the status on that and how big market we can capture through Markprint business line? It's different from our current business line, yeah?
That's a bit delayed. I had mentioned earlier we've just about got our first set of printers from there, and now we will be running it at some customers and see what sort of customization we need for the Indian market. Obviously, the cost needs to come down. Frankly, it has been slow, slower than what we promised and what we expected. You know, it's still moving forward. It has been much slower than what we all expected. You know, the both teams on their side and our side, there's not that much extra manpower available or resources and bandwidth available to, you know, focus on every single thing to do.
I'm hoping that the coordination is much better this year and, you know, we at least have more of a development phase this year and then start getting the benefits from the next financial year.
Last con call you said you are going to invest some more money in Markprint. What is the status? Have you already invested more money or you have yet to invest that money?
They already have a pile of cash with them in Markprint itself. We were looking at it to grow further and that's something we need to discuss with them. They do have financial resources themselves and also like a surplus cash balance on their side. Yeah, that's their aspect. Reddy, do you wanna add, like, give some specific details?
Markprint actually works on a healthy operating margin. I mean, the net profit margin is at 15%, they've got good enough cash with them at the moment to run their operations. In case, I mean, whatever they need, I mean, if they want to expand to European markets or the American market, we'll be obviously there to help them out in case, I mean, substantial thing coming out.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your answers. The last question on the, like, you have surplus cash on books. Are you thinking for any buyback for the, like, tax efficient purpose?
Yeah. We mentioned that the board will, you know, be looking at different things in the near future. We've come above that 50 crore limit. We did do an acquisition, we wanted to do that. You know, of course, in case there are other things in line, you know, nothing is concrete then, you know, we'll talk about that also. Yeah, I mean, obviously, like I said, you know, it's a board decision what to do. You know, if there is excess cash on the books and there's no capital investment or acquisition, we will return that.
Thank you very much for the detailed answers, and I wish you best of luck for the this financial year.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We have the next question from the line of Pawan Kaul from Compound 26 Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. My question was around the fact that you mentioned that the industry is an oligopoly industry. So how difficult or how easy is it for you to kind of source customers? And what is the decision-making process for a customer when they are procuring these printers?
Typically the customers tend to stick to one or two suppliers that are established. What happens is that if they have some new requirements, you know, that's normally when they look at somebody else. Everyone occasionally has issues with their service and supplies. Rather not their supplies, but their services and their printer performances. At that point of time, if the customer experiences downtime, they will look at changing. In general, the single most important decision-making factor for customers is, you know, the perceived reliability or the actual reliability of the product and the service. What they want is they want the product.
They want these printers to work. They don't want that their line goes down at any cost because of our printers or this type of coding and marking equipment. That's the single most important decision-making factor. On a second note, yes, the market sort of, or the customers sort of perceive the four of us as the four key options available if they don't want to do, you know, experimentation.
Understood. Are a lot of these printers kind of off the shelf or are there a lot of customization built in? Because you mentioned earlier that the price point is between INR 1 lakh-INR 4 lakhs for each printer.
Actually there's a range of printers. They're largely off the shelf. The inks change in case to case. The way we install it on the line, you know, is what really changes from every customer to from one. There's like I said, we have a range of printers. We have like six different lines of printers, and in that we have like multiple printers or, you know, different models for different. We have just like a range of products. It's like you have air conditioning. You'll have like, you know, window ACs, split ACs, you have cassette ACs and, you know, the VRF type ACs or whatever, and pipe it in. Like, depending on what the different people require.
You know, I guess it's something like the similar situation here. You know, we have a range, but yeah, there's more standardized products and then, you know, the way we install it on the line. The inks that are there, again, you know, somebody even mentioned that in the beginning about the ink capacity, but we have like about 50 to 70 different types of inks that we sell. There's no capacity. It's more about a technology barrier. Yeah, there is a capacity of course, but, you know, it's not difficult for us to increase capacity because we already have that set up. Instead of running 8 hours a day, we can just run 10 hours a day. The...
You know, to create the ink, to qualify the ink on our printer to make sure it runs reliably, you know, to make sure that it's stored for 12 months and even if you know, people forget to use it and then we, you know, the 13th month and it still works perfectly. Those are all different, like, much more difficult things to do. Yeah. That's it, how it works.
When you look at in terms of planning your production schedules, what kind of visibility do these customers give you? Is it like a 3-month, 6-month kind of visibility that you have on your order book?
For the fluids or rather the consumables space. It's just more like X stock, like it's a customer's expectation. Unless it's a specialty and then we tell the customers that for these things, you know, we'll only make it to order and then the customers know. The standard 20 to 30s would be available X stock, I mean. The printer normally, yeah, our customers expecting 4 to 12 weeks for delivery, depending on the situation. It's depending on the type of product or depending on whether it's a project or it's just like, you know, a replacement and some various factors.
Understood. Last question. I'm interested in the fact that it's an oligopoly industry and only four players. What do you think would be the barriers to entry in this industry? Is it easy for anyone to kind of set up operations in this industry?
I think reliability, I perceive reliability is the most important thing. Obviously first the person needs to have a technology of a high level. Then, you know. What I'm saying is like we provide, like we measured our uptime. We were giving like 99.4% something uptime. You know, and, yeah, I mean, the gap between us and say like, you know, some of the Chinese or the other types of guys has reduced. Some of the other people also have good products. You know, it's like, you know, you can't just provide the uptime through the product. It's the product, the service, the spares, the expertise that they've built over generations.
You know, even if two engineers leave, you have to replace them without losing a beat, you know, and so on and so forth in that given area. It's about having that entire system so that the customer, you know, I mean, that's all the customer's basic feeling is that, "I like you as long as I don't have to call you because some, you know, things are going wrong." That's kind of the way the customers think about us. Obviously there's a technology barrier. The second thing is, I do believe if you ask me personally, I think that it's not high value enough for customers to frankly care about and explore multiple alternatives outside us.
Because this is, you know, it's a small part of their business budget, they're not gonna overthink about this is what my personal view is. You know, once they feel that they've got let's say two suppliers that they believe in, you know, then sometimes they're not even interested in a third or the fourth one. Even that's sometimes a challenge for us because if some customer's already satisfied with say Domino and Markem-Imaje and us, they might not even consider us or Videojet, you know. Until they wanna replace one of these two because they have, you know, they're not happy in between. And the same for us in, you know, lot of cases. That's the sort of situation that's there because I mean, yeah, it's like a minor thing.
It's not like a major cost or a major production cost by any stretch of imagination or the cost of the product. You know, it has a limited bandwidth also. Unless the printer doesn't work and the line stops.
Understood. Understood. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, we would request you to rejoin the question queue. The next question is from the line of Saket Kapoor from Kapoor & Company. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Namaskar, sir, and thank you for the opportunity.
Couple of points from the balance sheet part, Jaideep, sir.
Yes.
Could we please explain this goodwill account of 10 crore INR. This has been generated over the last year. Last year it was 48 lakh INR, and this year it is 10.21 crore INR. Secondly, sir, we have also seen this manufacturing and operating cost line items going up from 1.5 crore INR to 3 crore INR. This is only in commensurate to the revenue from operations or what should we listen to, sir?
I'll answer the first question first. The goodwill which comes within the combined with financial statement and it is basically coming out of the acquisition what we've done in the Netherlands. That pertains to that entity. It is marking to a goodwill which we have, you know, like, taken care in the consolidation accounts or consolidated details.
Okay. The Netherlands acquisitions, what is that, what are we holding, the equity percentage in terms of equity?
No, Control Print Limited holds 100% of the shares in Control Print B.V., which in turn owns 75% shares in Markprint BV.
Okay.
Markprint BV, when they have started out and in the process of their existence from 2015 onwards, they had a, they had goodwill in their books of accounts. As a result of which it has been, you know, like, transferred into our books of accounts, sir.
This will get amortized whenever. What should be the, the end use of this thing? How is this line item going to?
Their accounting policy, they are saying it's going to be affordable 10 years. I would imagine it's about 6 more years to go for that affordability to happen.
I mean, more six years?
Six years, yes. Six years more.
Okay. This will flow to the PNL part or only the reserve?
no, amortization will go to the PNL part, yes.
Right, sir. There will be an impact on the PNL on the consolidated numbers going forward.
Yes. Consolidated numbers.
At the consolidated numbers, yes.
Yes.
For this year, there is any impact of the same?
Of the consolidated numbers?
Yes, sir. On account of goodwill amortization.
Yes, sir. It will be recovered schedule to PSA.
Yeah, it is. The goodwill and amortization expenses is totaling to INR 15 crores for the year. It is same as it was last year.
Yeah.
There is no such impact.
Let me come back on this topic.
Okay. Okay. Okay, Sir. Sir, Shiva. Sir, I think so it is the increase in the consumable percentage that now we should be looking forward with the install base crossing the 17,000 number now. The growth drivers would be the increased consumable only. That should be the key number that we as investors should be looking going ahead. That should grow from here, the percentage in the revenue mix.
Yes, Raku ji, I definitely agree with you, but in the end we still have to sell the printers to sell the consumables. You know, we can't...
Mm-hmm.
Because it's not depending on us, right? I mean, at the end of the day, the customer decides how much he wants to print once we supply him the printer. We have no choice in that.
Correct, sir. Sir, sir, for the Innovative Coding part, how are that the performance of that JV or that subsidiary, how are they performing? I think so, they were to be aligned to our Indian operations. What's the update and any investment we are going ahead with Innovative Coding also?
Innovative scores at about INR 8 crores of revenue this year. If you add up depreciation, in fact it is ending in a cash profit or minus cash profit though, about INR 30 odd lakhs. That company has got a good potential to grow. The next year the forecasted turnover is about INR 13 crores for them.
Okay. INR 8 crore is what we got from Innovative and from the Markprint, the Netherlands one, what was the?
It's about, INR 9 crores from there.
Its contribution to the bottom line?
Yeah. This is-
I think margin was only from July, right? If I remember correctly.
Fifth of July. Fifth of July.
Correct, sir. It was not for the full year.
Yeah.
Impact on the bottom line, sir?
The impact on the bottom line to innovations ended from, you know, less than zero losses.
In getting, sir. In getting.
If you can look at it is about, let's say about INR 2 crores of additional amount.
This is for the Markprint one?
For the marked one, yes. INR 2 crores of additional amount.
2 crores of additional amount. Correct, sir. Sir, for the depreciation part, I'll get back to you later this week once I'll get connected. Sir, on the V-Shapes part of the story, sir, this would be only the equity, the benefit will be percolating to the shareholders only in the form of the profit that will be generated in the JV. Operationally we won't be consolidating any numbers from them. It will be only the performance, the equity part that will come into play.
Are you talking about the V-Shapes JV?
Yes. The V-Shapes JV part. Yes, sir. How will the. There, yeah.
V-Shapes JV got incorporated on twenty-sixth of March two thousand twenty-three.
Right, sir.
In the six days of time, there has been no financial transaction in that particular company.
Correct.
Yeah.
Next year, sir, will it be only a below-the-line item wherein we will be getting the profit of the loss number as JV contribution or a top line and, all the numbers will flow to the top line?
Sure, you want to take this question on the V-Shapes thing?
That completely. you're saying that will it contribute to the top line or the bottom line? I mean-
Yes, yes, sir. Will it flow through the top line part or will it be a single line item in this as has been the case with the contribution from JV as we have seen it?
Consolidation question. I mean, it would be, I mean, up to you and the auditors. I really don't know. I'm assuming that it would be consolidated in our statements because we own 90% of it, I mean 100% of it right now.
Right.
It'll be 90%, then 70%.
Correct.
I believe the rule that if it's more than 51% or something, then we consolidate it, but I'm not sure.
Correct, sir. What should be the target? I mean, what's the business plan for this year of V-Shapes?
No, no, Sakji, we've just started this business. We are marketing it. It's looking promising, but, you know, it's too early to say.
Correct.
I think there were some questions on the coding and marking business, and I said it's difficult to predict down the line. You know, and we've been in business for years and years. I mean, on something new, it's really difficult for me to, you know.
Right. Last very two small points. Firstly, on the royalty, any revision in the royalty rates, that we are expecting and about the Internet of Things type printers which we were to launch, the book said. Anything on that front? Sir, am I there online? Hello?
I couldn't hear that question clearly.
Yes. Yes, sir. I'll come again, sir. Firstly, on the royalty part, when is the revision due, sir?
Can you repeat that again? What is due?
The royalty revision.
Mr. Kapoor, sorry to interrupt you, but your line is breaking. The audio is breaking from your end.
Hello? Hello?
Yes, yes, Mr. Kapoor, please go ahead.
Sir, I was speaking about the royalty part. When is the royalty percentage revision due? About the product launch, in terms of the IoT printers, what we are doing.
Our contract with PBA is till 2026. The royalty percentage issue remains the same for 2027 as well. At least for the next few years it's the same. I don't foresee the percentage of the royalties changing much up or down. Of course, as the percentage of non-CIJ business increases, that is substantially royalty free if not entirely royalty free. Yeah, as a percentage of revenue, the royalty should decrease slightly. Yeah, as a percentage of CIJ business, it remains the same. At least possibly for the next few years because, you know, our partnership is going well on both sides and we're happy with it. The second question again, if you could just repeat it, Sakji.
Yes, sir. On the Internet of Things type printers, the printers, IoT based.
In all our printers, you can do automatically, you know, the LAN cabling or the wireless or something is enabled. Wireless we tend to use less because it's not totally reliable in continuous communication. If you need to have a controller separate and you know, if it's an intelligent print head, we just have to send the message once and the printing can continue, then it's useful. If we need to continuously send data back and forth, then we don't tend to use RS-485 or LAN. It's already there in most of our products. You know, as each generation comes out, we keep updating user interfaces, you know, other features, so on and so forth.
Right. Any further update on the Videojet case and the Liberty Chemicals, the land part? Anything you want to share or the status?
Nothing. No movement. To be honest, like It's really quite stagnant to be honest.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Naisar Parekh from NatWest Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the follow-up. Just a couple more. One is that, you know, the pharma and F&B side where we're trying to obviously, grow, you know, how are those verticals doing for us? You know, are we seeing any more traction over there?
Yes, I think it's been doing fairly good. I think like dairy has become a pretty big industry for us from a pretty minuscule industry. Of course we put a lot of focus on that. Pharmaceutical, we've not had that much traction. Now because of the track and trace and the fact that we give an entire solution end-to-end, you know, we are seeing some, you know, more on the track and trace side rather than just selling printer side. We're seeing some more traction there. You know, personal care we've always been strong in for some reason without being strong in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical space. The personal care we continue to do well, if not do better. Food outside of dairy is still a bit of a, you know, black spot or whatever.
Yeah, we're working on different things. It's improving in, you know, like it is... I mean, of course we say things like food and all, actually it's very, you know, sub-industries or specific application type, you know, thing that's there. For us, bakery will be very different from dairy, which will be very different from ready-to-eat, you know. Each thing is there.
Right.
But, uh-
Building, it's gradually improving is what I'm saying. Yeah. Building products would be how big for us? Like how, what % would be building products for us today, roughly?
Building products basically, you can get it. No worries. No, no. It also depends on how you define it. Like what is included. Like is cable and wire part of building products? Is like pipe part of building products? Is like paint? Like What I think is like the thing is construction material is such a broad category that, you know, it's, it really depends on how you define it. You know, is cement part of building product or something else? You know that what I'm just saying is like, you know, the thing is that is something that you have to, understand-
I mean.
Our definition of what we see as construction materials, and it could be different from your thing. Jaideep now you can answer that question.
Yeah. Basically, like I mean for the building materials for me, what I would consider is that, you know, cement, steel or the plywood or, you know, the construction materials, laminate, even the pipes used. All these put together we have sufficient, you know, like invoice into this kind of industry. The building segment.
What % of revenue that would be?
Sir, our revenue is skewed all over the segment. I mean there's no major concentration I can really pinpoint to anything. you know, like we don't have a major concentration of business except for the pipe industry where it's about 17%. otherwise it's, I mean, more or less everything is, you know, like sub-10%.
Understood. Okay. You know, we generally, I think last year we've done around INR 1.4 lakh per printer if you look at like, you know, consumables, spare services maybe all put together. You know, going forward, how do you see that number shaping up? You know, are you looking at any price increases or are you seeing competition take price increases and on the consumable side, and do you think that, you know, we could see some price pop in FY24 or in general, you know, how will that INR 1.4 lakh number shape up in your sense? Yeah. It's not possible to predict anything, you know, because, like I said, we had undertaken some price increases and I don't know if the INR 1.4 lakh reflects that or not or to what extent.
The thing is that, you know, we've got a basket of products, you know, that numbers are quite misleading because if I take all printers, all printers don't give us the same amount of business per printer. You know, like we said, for proprietary sakes, we don't actually disclose the business or the aftermarket business per type of printer, you know, that we receive, again because, you're aware that, you know, some of our competitors.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that is fair. That is fair. That is fair.
It depends really on the mix of the basket of products that we are selling. Because we are selling a lot more non-CIJ products, especially the thermal inkjet, and a lot of them are being used, you know, to print on the cartons. What happens when you say if you make a pack of, let's say 24 cans, you know, and then the four cans are then packed on a carton and they're printing on the carton. You know, the carton printing is really sell a large number of thermal inkjet especially. You know, that tends to have less business for printer because, you know, Although the print is quite large, you also have less cartons as compared to the primary product.
The secondary printing, that can change the mix a little bit slightly downward, but the price increases or the other things have shifted slightly. It's a little balanced, but it's very difficult for us to predict. We can't target it because the target is to increase the overall volume of install base business rather than look at the specific averages. Which means we sell what we can sell as easily as we can sell it rather than get obsessed with maximizing the averages.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Karan Batenia from Asian Market Securities. Please go ahead. Mr. Batenia, your line is in talk mode. Please go ahead with your question.
Am I audible now?
Yes, now you are audible.
I'm saying, Jaideep, other manufacturing expenses are INR 16 crores in this quarter.
Significantly higher compared to last year and previous years. Which of the cost element has gone up? Hello?
Yeah, Jaideep, you wanna get back to that question?
Sir, we can't hear the audio.
Jaideep?
Sir, we can't hear the audio from the line. I'll disconnect and rejoin the line, sir.
Yes, please.
Ladies and gentlemen, request you all to please stay connected while we reconnect the line for the management. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for patiently waiting. The line from Mr. Jaideep Barve has reconnected.
Yeah.
Over to you, sir.
I'll repeat my question.
Yeah, please.
That is, you know, other manufacturing overheads in this quarter is INR 16 crore, which is slightly higher compared to many other quarter or any other year. What explains this? Which expense has gone up significantly?
No, we're talking about not the manufacturing overheads, we're talking about other expenses, right?
It's INR 16 crores for this quarter.
Yeah, which is other expense, right?
Yes.
Other expense is basically, where even if you look at, expense compared to sales, you know, the ratio is about the same.
I don't see that because the ratio is somewhere at 19%.
No, sir. It's around 14% if you take it on sales versus.
How is this possible? Other expense is 19% of sales. You know, if I take INR 16 crores on INR 84 crores, you know, it is somewhere at 19% compared to much lower numbers for any other quarter historically. Just wanted to understand which cost element under this basket has gone up significantly.
It's basically it's about the same. I mean, as compared to sales, it's more or less same sales. I mean, we are looking at, you know, better economies, better rationalization of the costs, which will definitely go down in the next year.
Right.
I'm seriously concerned that if you're counting at 16%, I mean, how did you arrive at 16%?
I am arriving at 19%.
Oh, 19%. Okay. Basically you've added, I think there's some grouping of expenses also you might have done.
Yes. Yes.
The answer is, you know, like, it's pretty much in the line of sales, but there is sufficient, you know, like, opportunity for us to optimize it, much better way so as to improve our margins in the next year also.
Yeah, that is correct. That is going ahead, right?
Yeah. Going ahead. If you look at-
All right.
The percentage of sales, there's not much of difference. I mean...
Okay. Okay. On the mask business, I believe for FY 2023, the total yearly sales is not more than INR 5-6 crores.
Yes, it is.
How do we take this business going ahead in outdoor contact?
See, we can't plan, right? Everything depends upon the Covid situation and the government, you know, like, initiatives in propagating the use of a mask.
Mm-hmm.
This is, you know, like, quite a things depending on the health awareness and the conditions prevailing. At the moment we do not have much of a visibility on that. At the moment, just from a pure hygiene factor, use of mask is, you know, like, it started and is there in India. There is a possibility we've got, you know, like, few customers like Amazon or like somebody supermarket, they keep on ordering, right? Unless there's a major pandemic coming in, we can't have a even visibility of the mask one.
We've capitalized the entire investment we made historically?
It's done. I mean, we have capitalized it and then, we'll assess the doctor according also.
Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for the detailed, you know, answer. Any closing remarks you wanna make, Jaideep, Shiva, anyone?
Well, we would just like to thank all of you for, you know, like, for supporting our company and interviewing us.
There are more than 25 seats in the conference.
We hope to see you in the next quarter. This is the first quarter for to get it very well. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, from my side also, you know, thanks to everyone. I think, you know, a lot of kind words and, you know, great questions coming up, you know, it's good for us to, you know, get a lot of points of view. Like I said, you know, there are some things it's difficult for us to project or, you know, predict. We avoid doing that. I know that's that frustrates some people. Some things we can't share very detailed information because our competitors are not obliged to do so, and we don't wanna be in a back foot to them for certain reasons.
You know, as far as some things, of course, you know, like I said, we've got a longer term viewpoint, you know, when it comes to a lot of strategic initiatives like whether it's the V-Shapes or the vision printing or the track and trace. When we're looking at these types of investments, so we're looking at, you know, whether this would benefit us in 2030 or something like that. I understand there's, you know, a lot of questions and of course we're also looking at whether we are going in the right direction.
You know, in general, you know, we've got a slightly longer view on things because, you know, what we wanna do is we wanna make sure that we are able to execute in the longer term and, you know, it's not short-term driven. Just, just an idea because I know that there's not as much movement in some of these things as what everyone would want, but, you know, we just, we have a different sort of timeline in some of these cases mentally. You know, obviously, and limited amount of bandwidth, so maybe that's why it's something we're being careful on. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Asian Market Securities Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.