Q3 25/26

Feb 9, 2026

Yeah, all good, sir. All good. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the interaction with the senior management of Blue Dart Express. Firstly, I would like to thank the management for giving us the opportunity to host the call. Today we have with us Mr. Sagar Patil, CFO, and Mr. Tushar Gunderia, Head of Legal and Compliance and Company Secretary. I would now hand over the call to the management for some opening comments, and then we can take the Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, Alok, and a very warm welcome to all of you. As you are aware, the board of directors of the company in its meeting held on 30th January 2026 approved the financial results of the company for the quarter and nine months ended 31st December 2025, and the company declared its financial results for the quarter and nine months ended 31st December 2025, wherein the company posted revenue from operations of INR 16,161 million and profit after tax of INR 700 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2025. Blue Dart's quarterly performance reflects resilient domestic demand with meaningful contributions from Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets and steady SME shipments activity supported by strong execution discipline across the network. During the quarter, Blue Dart Express continued to invest selectively in strengthening its operational and customer-facing capabilities as part of its long-term capability building strategy. The company operationalized its flagship green integrated hub at Pataudi, Haryana, enhancing line haul connectivity, network efficiency and service reliability across North India. The results have already been uploaded on the stock exchange website and also posted on the company's website. I now hand over the call to Mr. Sagar Patil, CFO, for further proceedings. Thank you. Yeah, good afternoon, all. This is the quarter wherein we have closed with the growth of revenue at around 7% and also improvement in the profitability levels. There has been an exceptional item, as you would have noticed in our quarter results reported. We seem to be continuing on the trajectory of steady growth, with also improvement in profitability in last two quarters. With that background, I would suggest we can start the Q&A session. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Anyone having question can either post it on chat box or raise your hand. We'll take first question from Mr. Krupa Shankar. Please go ahead. Hi. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity. My first question would be more on bookkeeping question. Just wanted to get what would be your tonnage for the quarter as well as the details whatever on parcels and the like? Yeah, sure. The tonnage for the quarter is 374,884 tons. Okay. Number of shipments are 107.4 million. Okay. Clearly the trend of shipments growth being faster than the tonnage growth is reflecting. I think tonnage has Sorry. Yeah, Krupa Shankar, you can be little louder. Sure. What I was saying is that the trend of parcel growth has been faster than the tonnage growth. Just wanted to get a sense of what are the key growth areas. Has e-commerce continued to outperform the overall growth and if so, what has been the growth rate over there? Yes. E-commerce has continued to be the driver for both in terms of shipments as well as overall their share in terms of tonnage as such. Both at the eCom Air as well as eCom Surface Lite level. Nevertheless, eCom Surface Lite has been continuing to grow at a much faster rate as compared to eCom Air. Our numbers. Any numbers around what would be the contribution of B2C or e-commerce this quarter and how has ground performed? Can you comment something on ground's overall tonnage growth this quarter? We remove all of this. eCom has. All active. ... continued to be at around 31% in this quarter of the overall revenue and ground also this quarter slightly lower, that is at 28.6. We typically say it's in the range of 30%. The share of ground, when I say ground, the surface B2B is at around 28.6%, yeah. I think the ground growth this quarter has been relatively lower. Just want to get a sense, sir, because the postage GST rate cut, we were hearing that the tonnage growth in ground was quite good. Your thoughts around that and how do you see the ground piece going up given that you have commissioned two large infrastructure over a period of one and a half years? Your thoughts around these please. Yeah. Ground, as compared to eCom Air, eCom Surface Lite that we saw, the surface is slightly slower. Again, in terms of the new facilities that we have, what we opened in Gurgaon, this is, besides growth, this is also largely in terms of consolidation of multiple facilities there. Not only for growth, but also a consolidation or replacement of the existing space. Got it, sir. With respect to the trend going ahead, are you seeing north of 20 or teens sort of a growth coming in ground? Because clearly you're adding a lot of capacities in the ground infrastructure point of view. Just wanted to get some sense if that's something which is a fair expectation given that the industry is growing at, let's say, about 12%-15%. Yes, ground will continue to be the growth driver and the facility that we bring in, what we've brought in in Gurgaon has been a ground hub which caters to both B2B Surface as well as eCom Surface Lite, the light packages that we move on ground. Both these two products are expected to be the growth drivers. Got it, sir. Thank you very much. I'll get back in the queue. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone having question can please raise their hand or post it in the chat below. Sir, we had one question regarding the margins. The margins have actually been pretty strong, so what has led to that and whether that is. Is there any one-off in that or would we see these kind of margins kind of continue going ahead? The margins for this quarter were related to the festive period, though the festive period was split between the earlier quarter, that is September being also a strong month as well as October and November, as well as December continued to be strong. Definitely there would be a benefit of the light parcels moving in larger volumes. As I said, since this is going to be expected to be the growth driver, we'll work towards maintaining or improving the margins. Got it. Any guidance on what kind of volume growth we could see going forward and also on the broad margin range, whether we are almost at the now stabilized margin or we'll see some further improvement from here? We will not be able to forecast. However, we'll work towards improving the margins further. Anything on the volume, sir? Volumes, yes. The eCom Surface Lite as well as Surface have been the growth drivers. While the other products will also continue to grow, but largely we see these growing faster than the other products. Got it. We have one question in the Q&A box, so I'll just read it out. Yes. If the B2C or the eCom is growing faster and overall growth is single digit, so does it mean that the traditional business is kind of declining at a faster rate? What will be the relative difference between the two? When will the eCom growth start making the overall growth look better? The other products which are traditional documents or air products, international as well as eCom Air, they also continue to grow, however, at a lesser rate. From the margin perspective, all the products more or less are on a comparable margin. While the yield could be lower, and that is where the growth could seem to be lower because in terms of in case of ground, while the percentage margin can be on the similar percentage levels, but because the yield is lower than air products, the growth over there in terms of as a revenue would seem to be lower as such. Got it. Sir, one more question in the chat window. Now we are seeing very strong growth coming from some of the peer sets also like Delhivery has shown very good number. Our number has also been pretty good. There are some section of players who are not kind of showing much growth. Is the industry also moving towards some bit of consolidation and where the larger players are getting a higher market and the smaller players are kind of or mid-size players are continuing to kind of lose market share? Just your thoughts on that. I think while we generally call this as a domestic or express product, each product has its own strongholds, product mix, as well as the way we service our customers, either in terms of capacity or service or the price levels as such. Per se, we'll not be able to compare any of the two competitors as an apples to apples. Nevertheless, given some of the consolidation that has happened in the recent past, there will be, I think, a better ability to avoid any price-related actions to acquire additional business or volumes. I think overall, given the consolidation that has happened, there could be a better opportunity to realize better price points to charge for the value being delivered. Sure. We have some more questions. I'll just read it out. What's the CapEx number for this quarter, and what's the number pegged for FY 2027 for CapEx, and which key areas it is being targeted for? That's the question which we had. Largely, our CapEx is in the nature of either replacement or renewal or element of expansion in that. Again, with the accounting standard, the leased assets are also treated more like a CapEx. Okay, keeping aside the lease part, our CapEx is typically in the range of maybe INR 100-150 crores of rupees, expected to remain in the same kind of range. Again, largely towards expansion or replacement of the existing facilities, given that we are already present all across India. It typically involves large number of smaller or medium level facilities, which are being either upgraded or expanded or replaced. Got it. Yes. Actually, we had a follow-up question. When you had mentioned 28.6% for the quarter, was it only B2B or includes B2C also? This was B2B only. Okay. Including B2C, it would be about 42% share of ground revenue, and air would be about 53%. You can see that the share of ground is slowly increasing. Got it. I'll just take the next question from Krupa Shankar. Please go ahead. Yes, sir. Just because you mentioned ground has reached about 42%, and air is at 58%, just wanted to get a sense around the capacities which were deployed in Guwahati for air. It's an overarching question. Do you see the growth in air business to be flattish to 3% sort of over the medium term? And is that something which is likely, and your capacities can get underutilized? Is that some sort of a threat you believe can happen? Not exactly related, Krupa Shankar. See what happens in case of air. Our capacity we measure and monitor mainly in terms of the pallet utilization and not aircraft utilization, given that the aircraft are supporting the existing express business, which fly essentially at night. As an aircraft capacity, there is always possibility to increase by 100% if we start flying throughout the day. That is not the case. In our case, this is more of supporting the express business, catering to the overnight movement of the shipment, so that what we pick up in the evening can be delivered next day morning. Given the number of fleet size that we have and the network that we have, there is an element of flexibility that we can act on almost on a day-to-day basis, adding or removing a particular flight or at times particular sector. Our pallet utilization remains at around 85%-90% for a volumetric weight kind of level. We also use a good amount of commercial passenger airline capacity, not only in our own 8 stations that we are in, but also more than 25 other locations across the country. Unless the air volumes grow very significantly at a very high level, we may not have to add any additional routes or runs for that matter. However, on an ongoing basis, whether the growth in air is 3% or even it can go up to 15%, it can be very well handled through the commercial airline itself. The function of air growth is not essentially on an ongoing basis to do with the capacity utilization of the aircraft. Yes, last few quarters, we have seen that air volumes are growing at a slower pace, also because we also have a very good efficient ground network, and to our existing customers, we are able to provide a choice between both air as well as ground, depending on their urgency, the criticality of the shipments, as well as the, of course, when it comes to retail customers, what kind of promise they have for their customers on the portals. Got it, sir. The price hikes which you have taken starting January, just wanted to get a sense around what has been the effective pass through, and do you see that you will be able to realize about 45% increase this year? Yes. I mean, January, the price hike is part of this quarter. It of course sometimes takes some time to realize, but we'll get to see the clear picture at the end of this quarter. I understand, sir. Just wanted to get a directional sense, no hard numbers. Just wanted to see if customers are ready to absorb increase in prices and how are the sentiments, especially after you've seen a good third quarter. Just wanted to gauge that sentiment from you. Yes. It's still a work in progress, I would say. It will span over the quarter. We'll see the results with the proof of the pudding when it's ready at the end of the quarter. Okay. I understand, sir. Thank you, sir. That's all from my side. Thank you. Krupashankar has been the investor since last many years, right? Krupashankar. Yes, sir. I've been covering the stock for quite some time. Yes. Definitely. 10 years, maybe. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. We'll take next question from Shivom Aggarwal. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, I'm audible? Yes. Hi. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. First of all, I would like to know, sir, you have mentioned in the ground B2B you have a 28.6% market share, and a 42% in the ground total tons on market share. I would like to know if B2C market is growing faster than the B2B and broad-based demand outlook in B2B and B2C market. Just wanted to know about this. Yeah. The intention is to grow faster both in surface and ground B2B as well as ground B2C. We do see that our volume growth is in general higher than the industry growth that is being quoted in public domain. Again, the B2C market space is split between captive players and others. Same way, surface B2B, there is a fair amount of share also probably coming from unorganized sector. Will be difficult to comment on how or how much we are gaining the market share or not. Yes, we are growing faster there. Sir, just one last question. What's the demand outlook you're seeing in the B2B and B2C market? How is the demand? Demand outlook. What is the demand outlook actually in the B2C and the B2B market? We see in general customers growing. How much we get out of that is again a function of how much are we doing in terms of lane wise, how do they see the pricing at a lane to lane level, how much share of wallet does the customer play around. Based on how our business is panning out, in general, it's difficult to estimate as to how the demand is panning out, but we see a lot of positivity, customers also being very positive in terms of the growth outlook plan. Good. Thank you so much, sir. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Sir, we had some questions in the chat box. Actually, first we'll take from the audio only, then we can take the chat box. Yeah, please go ahead, Vikram. Yes, sir. Hope I am audible? Yes, we can. Sir, how is the outlook on daily capacity available to us and how much we are using that and for our even competitors or other players? If you can give some sense on that, how it is growing or we're seeing some mismatch over there, that would be helpful. Daily capacity of AR you were saying? Yeah. Daily cargo capacity of Tata Group. See, daily cargo capacity, theoretical, given the number of hours we are flying and the theoretical capacity that we have, it would be moving between 450-550 tons per day, depending on which routes and which flights we operate. As I said, it's quite flexible based on the day-to-day forecast of the flights as well as the capacity available. Again, between 20%-40% of the revenue we also fly on commercial airlines. It's quite a flexible kind of model that we have. In terms of our ground capacity, it's completely variable. The vehicles that are being plied on the road are quite optimum to the capacity. Typically, we have a mix of both scheduled fleet as well as additional fleet. We do get an indication as to how many additional trucks on which routes we may have to ply for the day, few hours in advance. Again, there is no unutilized capacity when it comes to the fleet capacity as such. Of course, there will be return loads. If a truck is going from, say, west to east, the trip which is coming back from east won't be 100% utilized, but then it is also important to get that vehicle back, as well as the loads which are being picked up in east to come to the western part of India, to meet the transit time or the customer promises. That is as far as middle mile is concerned. When it comes to the first mile, last mile being our hubs as well as the service centers or the pickup and delivery centers, given the large number, there would always be multiple cases of over and under capacity utilization, depending on when we have put up and what is the growth trajectory that has been forecasted. By and large, the machine is running at a close to optimum kind of level with a good amount of flexibility built in for any additions or additional loads to be serviced. To give an example, our volumes go significantly higher in case of, say, the peak seasons, which is the second half of the year. Given the optimum utilization of the existing facilities, we do take facilities for a temporary period of two or three months, depending on how the peak season is expected to pan out during the quarters. There is no significant or unutilized capacity in general. The network as well as facilities are placed in a way that there is a close to optimum level that we operate at. Okay. Got it, sir. Thank you. Am I audible? Sorry. Yes. have one more question. Okay. Sorry. Was there any positive impact of what happened with IndiGo and other airlines cutting down their schedule? Sorry, I didn't get the question. Can you be a little slower? There is a little bit of echo. Was there positive impact on what happened to IndiGo and other airlines cutting down their schedule? Positive impact of IndiGo? Yeah, there would have been cases where any scheduled flight, if the schedule gets disrupted, then the customers would typically have contracts with different service providers. They would also be quick enough to shift the load, but not that very significant to make a big difference for the quarter. Got it, sir. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. Anyone having question can please raise their hand. Sir, we'll take some pending questions from the chat. Now after several quarters, have we now seen the aircraft stabilized, the newly added 2 aircraft, or is it still some bit of stabilization could further happen from here? If you can highlight on the capacity utilization, basically, of existing and the new aircrafts. Yeah. When we added the aircraft, it's a small addition to the overall bigger network that we had. It's not that these two aircraft got added. I mean, these sectors were added. They were merged in the entire big setup that we have. Barring addition of Guwahati, which was more of a, I would say, an extension of the network to see how the volumes kind of pan out. Yes, in the initial period when we were moving our commercial loads that had increased in the year 2021, 2022, 2023, they were absorbed in this aircraft. I mean, as a new aircraft or the new schedule of all the eight aircraft stabilized, barring first two, three months, where we took some time to catch up. From September 2024, I think the utilization has been at a normalized level of 85% or so at a volumetric pallet utilization level. Again, it's not that if 8 aircraft, 6 + 2, these are being applied on a day-to-day basis. There are cases where we do 5 + 1 or 6 + 1 or sometimes 6 + 0, depending on when this aircraft go for either servicing or some maintenance or on a weekend, on a holiday season or wherever we see a dip in volumes forthcoming, ahead of a week based on whatever reason it could be. To answer your questions shortly, yes, these aircraft is a part and parcel of the day-to-day flying of the network. At the same time, we have also been increasing our utilization or buying of the commercial air capacity. With the capacity also going up in general in market, we at times see opportunities where we may drop rates on some of the sectors, and instead of using all the aircraft, we can also rely on the commercial airline wherever we either find the cost impact is either neutral or positive. Sure. We'll take the next question from Mr. Anshul Aggarwal. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, first question, would you be able to give us the growth numbers for the products that we have? Any numbers would be helpful. Say, what would be the growth in surface business have been or air, or even if you can break that up as well, that'll be pretty useful. Normally, we don't, barring the couple of products which are the main ones on the radar. Like I mentioned, the eCom Surface Lite would have grown by about 26% in terms of shipments or 25% in terms of revenue. Surface at about 22% in terms of shipments. It would be otherwise, since these are. We don't generate or report the numbers by products, because the products are also at times when you say air or ground, these do not necessarily move on air or ground, but it is more of a function of promised transit time to the customers, so it will be incorrect to call them air or ground. These are all express or courier products as we report. Sure. What I was trying to understand was, in surface B2C surface has grown faster and similar for air. Overall air would have grown by how much? Same for surface. Would that classification or that bifurcation be available with us? That's why calling them air and surface as all products put together would not be appropriate. That is why we do not differentiate or report the numbers by air and surface. Okay. Second question, sir, that I had, was on our margins. I think a few quarters back you had mentioned that surface might be slightly dilutive in terms of margins versus air or the product wise. Would that hold true even for e-commerce versus traditional or B2B products? Well, largely the surface, all the products, be it B2C or B2B, would carry similar level of margins, whether it is air or carried on air or on ground. In terms of percentage to revenue, but yes, per shipment, air would typically be higher because of the higher yield per kg that we get. Understood. What I'm trying to understand, sir, now because of seasonality, because e-commerce volumes would have been higher in the current quarter, which typically would see some dip in Q4, whereas B2B would see some uptick in the next quarter. Would our margins get impacted because of this, or we foresee margins to be fairly stable irrespective of the product mix? That is what I was trying to understand. No specific impact because even during the peak season, while we incur higher costs because of certain temporary facilities that we hire, the increased volumes take care of it, so there is no significant impact. Whatever you see in the quarterly margins, that would be similar across the products. Got it. That's it from my end. Many thanks. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone having question can please raise their hand. Sir, a few questions were there in the chat box. Sir, one is on the price hike which you had taken. You briefly indicated that it's in process. How much on a blended basis do we really expect to come through from the 9%-12% price hike which we have announced in October? Effective January, that was the price hike, right? It's almost one and a half months now. As per your assessment and discussions with the customers, what's the blended price increase you could be targeting here? Difficult to quote the exact number because we do go to the customers, in this range. Nevertheless, sometimes the customers would trade higher volume for the price or sometimes the customers would also temporarily divert some of their business before coming back. Again, to regain that business, we may go back and renegotiate as well. This process would go on for a few months, sometimes for some big customers itself. Again, given the diverse, I would say, product types that we have, starting from a small envelope of document to a 50 kg, 100 kg per shipment kind of profile customer, there would be various other criteria, whether you look at rupees per shipment or rupees per kilo, across the different products as well as different customers as such. Very difficult to pinpoint, but yes, what we drive at an individual customer level to start with is 9%-12%. Got it. Sir, one of the question is related to your comment during the call. If ground has grown at more than 20% or so, and overall shipment growth is as per the volumes which you gave, is around 9%. Does that mean that the air has declined quite materially actually in this quarter on a YY basis? Not really. Air is more or less stable, I would say. It's positive. Mm-hmm Not declining. Okay. Got it. Because if you just do the mathematics, it comes to a pretty muted growth for air, if we just try to add the numbers, so. Yeah, it's positive. It's not negative. Okay. Yeah, tonnage and shipment numbers you have already kind of mentioned. Sir, just on the outsourcing bit, so some of the bigger peers have been commenting on how the insourcing of logistics is kind of now peaked out and the customers and e-commerce companies would be more going for outsourcing of their logistics requirements. Just your thoughts on that. Have you seen any change from some of those customers who had started insourcing or increasing insourcing, and now again moving back to giving a decent share to 3PL players? Yeah, I think our share with those major players would not be very significant because we would typically service not so price sensitive, but service sensitive products, which are of a premium category or so. In the overall game, including the in-source player, our share would be much smaller. Large part of our customers would be more of B2C or the brands itself. Not something very significant that I can talk about. Got it. Sir, one question again was on the margins. Maybe several quarters back, at one of these calls, the team used to mention about margins can reach a range of 12%-13% on the upside. Does that number still hold or it could do even better than that, considering how we are able to now scale up the margins and once the aircraft is stabilized and growth is also coming back. What could be the peak margin? I'm not really asking for any specific number, but what could be the broad range, if you could indicate a broad number where we could see these margins can have potential upside there? We can target that level of margin, but see the 12%-13% that we saw were post-COVID impact that we had seen. The way we are also trying to devise or improve the margins, not impossible to get to those levels of margin, in the medium to long term, I would say. Efforts will always be there. Got it. I think, yeah, I think we are largely done with the questions. We'll just take one last question from the chat window only. It's again related to some sort of a guidance only, but if you just ignore the number. In air and ground, what could be the growth outlook? Can air still do 8%-10%, which has not been the case for this quarter at least? Can air grow at around 8%-10%, which you have been mentioning in a normalized scenario that it can grow at around that level? What about the ground growth, since we are on a low base, we have grown around 22%. Can this 20%+ growth continue for some period, at least? It can. We are one of the major players in air when it comes to express products. Given the recent fillip that we are getting on the economy, on the tariff fronts and all, I think it is possible. Can't really comment about any percentages that can come in. Right. Just one follow-up on that. This GST cut which had happened, have you seen any big impact due to that? Do we really see that positive impact continuing or was it restricted to largely this quarter only? We saw both positive and negative impact of GST cut. Like since September, while we build the resources for first couple of weeks till 22nd of September, we saw muted movement. At the same time, the last quarter or last week of September, we saw the volumes increasing. To an extent it continued in October. From our industry or the volume, the customer that we see, we have not seen a very significant continuation of that impact. It might be there for the larger FTL kind of movements or the industries where we are not servicing that much. Otherwise, we don't see significant impact continuing after maybe a couple of months. Got it. I think, yeah, I think those were the questions, sir. I would just like to hand over the call to you for any closing comments. Yes. Thank you all for your questions and comments. As I mentioned, ours is a business where we continue to work with a stable network, not very significant ups and downs. The idea is to improve the business as while growing kind of organically. We expect the process of improvement will continue, and hope to improve the numbers better in the coming quarters. That's all from us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks, sir. Thank you so much for handling the call. Thank you, investors. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Thank you. Thank you.