Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to United Breweries Q2 FY 2024 earnings conference call hosted by Investec Capital Services. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need any assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I once again repeat, should you need any assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand over the conference over to Mr. Harit, Investec Capital Services. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Harit.
Yeah, thanks, Malcolm. On behalf of Investec, we'd like to, you know, welcome all the participants and the management team of United Breweries for the second quarter FY 2024 earnings call. From the management team, I have Mr. Radovan Sikorsky, Director and CFO, and Mr. Robert Ashton, Business Controller and Investor Relations. I'll now hand over the call to Mr. Radovan for his opening comments, post which we'll take the Q&A. Over to you, Rado.
Yes. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm glad to be here. Just, Harit, also one more thing, we also have our new CEO on the line, Vivek Gupta. I think we have managed to connect to him. He will just join us for just sort of mention a few words of introduction from himself, and then I will just take over with going through the results. Can we try and connect through to him?
Yeah. Hi, I'm on the line, Rado. Can you hear me?
Yes, yes. Good, Vivek. I think the story-
Yeah, no, thanks. Thanks, Rado, and good afternoon, everyone. First of all, thank you for joining me on this call. Just to introduce, you know, I have almost 25 years of work experience before I joined UB, but I'm only 25 days old today in UB. It has been very exciting 25 days. My focus has been to really understand our operations, understand our people, understand our business. I have been out to almost three breweries, six markets. Also, in our head office right now, I'm in Europe, where we came to see our operations for the Heineken company in Amsterdam. I can only share that, you know, I'm very excited. I see huge opportunity.
I think that our brand power is very strong, which is one of a very pleasant surprise that every consumer you meet, they know about our brand. They have a view about our brand. We have a very, very strong innovation portfolio. At the same time, there is enough work to be done on fixing our fundamentals and continue to grow the business. Also, I'm very excited on the work which is ahead of us from a category development in this market, both in terms of working with regulators. In fact, we have also already started meeting a lot of the key stakeholders in the government and various state governments to really understand how we can ease some of the barriers of doing business.
There is a lot of work to be done, you know, as an industry, but also as a market leader, and then maybe we play a significant role in that. Also, I would say that my focus over the next couple of months is to put together the next three- to five-year strategic plan. Hopefully, when we are in the next earnings call, I would like to take you through the pretext of the plan. In between, we would like to also engage some of you to get your input, your thoughts. In short, I see significant opportunity on the business, on the category, on the portfolio.
At the same time, I also want to thank Rado and team because I think, as you know, maybe there was leadership transition, and I think that one of the strengths of the management team is they were able to hold the fort and continue to deliver strong results, which you saw in the results, which we declared last night about second quarter. At the same time, we are very humble that, you know, we have a lot of ground to cover, and we are actually putting fundamentals into it. With this, I will hand over to Rado, but look forward to working with all of you.
Thank you, Vivek. Yes, it's great. We are now a full team, a full management team, and, you know, as Vivek said, so much opportunity ahead of us. Right. I will start with the highlights for Q2. Volumes were up 7% in the quarter, driven by strong underlying demand. You know, a very nice recovery versus quarter one for the three months in this quarter. The premium segment grew 10% in the quarter for us, you know, with growth in the Ultra Max showing promising results and, you know, gaining traction, and also some good results for Heineken Silver.
That's, you know, coming through, of course, we will soon start production of Heineken Silver as well in Karnataka, so I think we will be gaining some more traction there as well. In terms of net sales, net sales were up 12%, fueled by the volume growth that I mentioned, and, you know, solid price increases across a multiple of states such as Rajasthan, U.P., Karnataka, you know, to mention a few, and Maharashtra as well. The gross margins were down still in the quarter versus prior year, around 213 basis points, so the cost inflation is still there, yet you all would have seen that, you know, there has been softening in this quarter, as we've always mentioned in our previous calls. That's good to see.
Volatility remains on cost of goods sold. We can see that as well, but, you know, the softening is, of course, helping our gross margins. In terms of the year-to-date results, you know, we were still down year-to-date 4% with a tough Quarter 1, and that was impacted by, you know, some of the route to market changes that we had, and some of the supply chain challenges that we encountered. You know, we also focused a lot on managing interstate profitability, and therefore, we also had some volume, you know, pullback in those areas where we felt that some of the interstate sales, which is not profitable for us.
Our EBIT margin was around 8%, down around 180 basis points, you know, but primarily impacted by COGS inflation. You could also see that in quarter two, we also stepped up a little bit our commercial spend behind our brands. I'm sure you have seen that also now during the, you know, the current Cricket World Cup, where we have been doing some investments behind Kingfisher. You know, finally, on the outlook, we are, you know, we continue to be focused on the category growth, of course, that is key, but also on premium, driving premium through Heineken Silver, Kingfisher Ultra brand family, so we continue focusing on that.
Like I mentioned, the inflation is softening. It has been seen in quarter two, but also in our outlook statement, you know, we feel that volatility will remain. You know, we continue focus on revenue management, be it, you know, SKU management, be it pricing, that is a key lever for our top-line growth, but also focus on the cost initiatives that we have spoken about. We remain optimistic on the long-term growth, and you saw a lot of positive coming out also from Vivek's short discussion he mentioned. We remain optimistic on the long-term growth of the business. With that, I think we can go to the Q&A.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama Institutional Equities.
Yeah, thanks and congrats on good volume recovery and sequential gross margin recovery. My first question is on the impact of route to market. If I see the impact of route to market is around 2% in terms of overall volumes, but there is no impact in terms of the premium, so wanted to understand why there is a divergence. When do you see the route to market further reducing in terms of the impact? It has already reduced for this Q1, but when do you see it fully going away?
On the route to market, I mean, we remain cautious on the route to market, of course. I mean, we are seeing good traction coming back. In markets like Tamil Nadu, you know, we really full start cycling the main impact of the route to market changes in November, December and into January. We'll be really cycling that. Then we would see still less impact from those route to markets from the past. Your question on premium, the premium category for us was also impacted by the route to market challenges. We expect this 10% premium growth to accelerate going forward in our portfolio.
Sure. My second question is on the region-wise volume growth, which you have given. Very heartening to see East and South both grow in double-digit volume. Here, my question is more on Delhi and Haryana, where still volumes are declining. When do you see this reversing? In terms of East and South, is it a market share gain also, or is the industry also growing in similar double-digit volumes in East and South?
In Haryana, yes, we had some declines, although at the back end of the quarter, we've seen recovery again, so that's good to see. We have been looking at some of our commercial terms in Haryana. We've been working through that with our customers. There was a bit of impact on that. We remain quite positive still on Haryana. In terms of Delhi, as you may know, there hasn't really been a change in the excise policy going forward. You know, we still remain cautious on volume development in Delhi going forward. It's still currently for us a difficult market. In terms of the 11% growth, so we've seen some nice share gains in certain states.
There we've seen, you know, that we have been doing well, states like Odisha as well, and also in the states of Telangana and in Andhra Pradesh, we've gained share. Yeah.
Thanks. Last question is on margin. Sequentially, quarter-on-quarter, there is a gain of 400 basis points in terms of margin. Unfortunately, that's not flowing to the EBITDA and EBITDA level, which is sequentially at the same level. Want to understand when do you see the gross margin expansion flowing towards EBITDA and EBIT? Staff cost is up sharply, 11% quarter-on-quarter and 18% Y-o-Y. If you could elaborate, why such a sharp increase here?
Yeah. I mean, if you look at the year-to-date results, I mean, the costs are growing around 4% and employee costs are up 8% on the year-to-date. Within the quarter, we had a couple of, you know, one-offs and also some provisions recycling from the previous quarter, which, you know, has an impact on the percentage growth quarter-on-quarter. You know, I think it's a couple of one-offs there, but I think the trending line of year-to-date is a reflection of our cost base at the moment, and therefore, that should come through to the operating profit margins going forward.
Sure. Understood. That's very helpful. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I would request you to limit your questions to two, because we have other participants in the queue. The next question is from the line of Jay Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. First of all, Vivek, congratulations and wish you the very best, and we look forward to engaging with you over the next few months. I've got couple of questions. First one is just a quick follow-up on the previous question. If I understand correctly, what you indicated is that there was some one-off in employee costs in this quarter. One should look at first half employee cost as a more, you know, a normalized run rate from a full year perspective. Is that understanding correct?
Yeah. Sorry, I mean, I didn't hear so well, but I understand that you're referring back to the previous questions in terms of in the Q2, whether are there some one-off costs in personnel costs and in the other expenses, and that's correct, yes. We are cycling some from Quarter 2 2022, and also a one-off cost in Quarter 2 of this year.
What is the normalized run rate of personnel costs? What is the quarterly run rate that we should model?
Well, like I've said, I mean, the trending of the year-to-date result is a bit more in line to what we are seeing going forward.
Understood. Second one is, was there any spillover of volumes from first quarter to second quarter because you had called out some supply chain challenges last quarter that impacted volume? Is this 7% growth looking more sustainable in nature, or this is a consequence of a 12% decline that you saw, and so we shouldn't expect this to sustain?
Yes, like I mentioned in the first quarter, that we had some supply issues, which impacted volumes. We also were still facing a little bit more volume pressure from the retail market, which recovered more and more as the year progressed. You know, I think the Quarter 2 is a good reflection of the volume growth, you know, in the industry. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're still cautious on going forward and how the volumes will develop, but, you know, we remain optimistic for the long term, like I said. But, you know, on a quarter-by-quarter, we can have some, you know, pressure.
Understood. One last one, if I may. Your gross margin recovery of 400-odd basis point on a sequential basis, does it fully capture the benefit of low-cost barley? You know, how should we think about further improvement in gross margins from these levels? What is required for you to move further from the current levels?
Yeah. We are already starting to cycle some of the improved barley prices 100%, and therefore, you know, there is an improvement on margins. It's also a combination of some of the, you know, cost initiatives we're running, which I mentioned within the breweries, and it's also helping us in terms of our efficiencies in raw and pack consumptions. We, you know, see the margins still improving going forward, but like I said, volatility remains going forward. We will endeavor to drive up the gross margins, and that's not just through, you know, better variable costs, but also, like I mentioned, through revenue management activities to drive top line. It should be a combination of and.
You know, we need to just be cautious on the variable costs going forward still, I believe.
Understood. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. We have from the line of Karan Taurani from Elara Capital for the next question. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. My first question was pertaining to the festive. You mentioned that you are cautiously optimistic about the demand. Don't you foresee that World Cup and festive as a combination coming together will lead to much stronger volume growth in the next quarter or this quarter rather?
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Got it. Just secondly, on the premium beer front, you mentioned that you will see acceleration in the premium beer growth as well. Currently, I think the growth is about 10 odd %, and I think the market average growth for the premium beer is far higher. When do you start to see growth which is more than 15% or probably higher than that number? Because your base of premium is far smaller as compared to peers. Basically, when do we see potential market share gains in the premium beer segment for you?
Yeah. You're 100% right. I mean, we are not. You know, 10% premium growth sounds like a nice number, but it's by far not where we should be in terms of premium growth. We are not doing as well as the market is doing. We are working strongly to have stronger plans in place. It's one of also the priorities that, you know, Vivek is looking at. He sees the importance of premium growth as one of the pillars of growth, right? I mean, let's just be clear about that. You know, it's not just about premium. Premium is an extremely important pillar, but it's also growing the category, and it's also about, like we always mentioned, that we need to focus on Kingfisher, our mainstream brand.
You know, we will work strongly on the premium. We're working on strong plans to grow that, and, you know, we need to then execute on those.
Just one little thing, if I may squeeze in. You know, a lot of changes from your end in terms of route to market, in terms of profitability, was because, you know, Kingfisher or regular beer is low-margin nature. Any change in stance now that you're gonna focus more on Kingfisher also, and not just the premium beer segment?
Sorry, can you just repeat that question?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So-
A lot of these strategic initiatives over the last one year in terms of change in route to market and other things put together was because of profitability, and that is specifically more to the point of regular beer, which could be, you know, low-margin nature in this inflationary environment. Any change in stance or strategy that you'll try to, you know, focus more on Kingfisher also now with the inflationary environment kind of cooling off or stabilizing?
Look, we continue focusing on Kingfisher, if I understood your question correctly. Kingfisher is, for us, the icon of the business. Make no mistake, it's an extremely important brand for us, and we believe we need to just, you know, work on the Kingfisher brand so it's a beer for all demographics. That's key for us, for our younger consumers, for our older consumers, et cetera. You know, through the commercial team, we are working on some exciting things around Kingfisher. You know, we remain very optimistic about the brand going forward.
Thank you. That's it for myself.
Thank you very much. The next question is from the line of Ajay Thakur from Anand Rathi Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to understand, in terms of the market share losses, last time we had indicated around 150 basis points kind of a share loss for us on a yearly basis. Can you just elaborate what kind of a market share, you know, gains or losses we have during the current quarter?
Yeah. In Quarter 1, we struggled with share. That was reflected, you know, with a 12% volume decline. But we've seen some nice share recovery, you know, in Quarter 2, in quite a few markets. There are some markets that we believe we still have a lot of work ahead of us, you know, particularly in some of the south markets, so we need to work through those. But, you know, we continue hovering close to the 50% mark and, you know, a nice recovery in Quarter 2 versus Quarter 1.
Okay. Quite helpful, thanks. The second question that I had was more on the input prices. If I were to look at the glass cost, can you just share some bit of, you know, your understanding of how the glass price is actually kind of moving? If we were to look at the current prices of both glass and the barley at the current level, can we expect, you know, further improvement in margins going ahead, or, you know, we need to take further price increases to offset the current price?
Yeah. On the glass, as you know, glass is a combination of the actual price of the bottle, but also on the returnability of the bottle. Those two, the combination of those two have an impact on the, you know, variable cost per case. In terms of the actual cost of bottle pricing, you know, we haven't seen any real movement there, so we are still under pressure in terms of bottle pricing, and we need to work through that with our suppliers. On the returnability, on that, we feel we need to, you know, get still a stronger grip on that. Our return rates are good, and as we spoke about this before, but not at the level that we would like them to be at, to be honest.
That's as a team and as a business, we need to work through with our partners across India to improve on that, definitely. You know, this is such an important thing also from a sustainability agenda. You know, in terms of all packaging, returnable bottles rates number one in terms of sustainability, and therefore, you know, it's a key point from us, not only from a profitability point of view, but also from a sustainability point of view.
Thanks for that. Just that last part of the question, if you can just address also, if at the current prices of both barley and glass, can we expect the margins to, you know, improve in the coming quarters, or, you know, we have to take further price increases to offset the cost?
Like I mentioned, you know, previously, I said that, you know, we continue working on the gross margins, and I think in going forward, we wanna see improvement in those margins. Like I said, it's a combination of top line and the variable costs, so pricing, you know, revenue management and working on the variable cost base. I mean, we remain optimistic that we can grow these gross margins going forward. Like I said as well, volatility remains. As you all know, you know, we can be surprised with certain commodity prices, be it, you know, sharp increases in aluminum prices or, you know, silica, et cetera, which then, you know, if you have price adjustment formulas, that can impact your variable costs.
Understood. Thanks. Thanks for that.
Thank you very much. A reminder to all participants, to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Nilai Shah from Moon Capital. Please go ahead.
Hope I'm audible. Well, in the last time on the call, I had asked you this question about the fact that given that the volumes were rather weak over the past few quarters, you would possibly be running extra barley inventory into 2Q versus what you normally would. You kind of said yes to that question. Now, can you quantify as to the fact that this quarter, the lower barley inventory which you have, the new barley inventory, was it utilized for half the quarter, less than half the quarter? Some qualitative comments around that to help us understand the gross margin trends going forward.
We discussed it, and I think I commented to you that that was a good question. Of course, the consumption was slower than what we expected in our forecasting because of the 12% decline in Quarter 1. We have good recovery in Quarter 2. Have we consumed all the barley from the old prices? I can say it's close to being that. We are now cycling with the improving margins and the new pricing. You know, that's of course helping the gross margins. It was a good barley crop, and, you know, we've made sure we've secured the barley, you know, for going into the next season and then for the new crop.
We took a bit of reserve on that because we felt the pricing was good.
Okay, got it. You know, when I come back to all these questions that were asked on margins, we have a situation today where barley is back to the pre-COVID levels. Aluminum and non-glass packaging is pretty much back to pre-COVID levels. UBBL's margins pre-COVID used to be upwards of 50%. Without getting into the specific timing of this, would the anchoring of the management be to try and get to gross margins at some point in time, which are basically just back to the pre-COVID levels in terms of gross margins?
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You know, yes, we all see that there is, you know, better pricing in the markets, but, you know, when you listen to some of the commentary about what can happen going forward, it's still an unknown. We still remain to have pressure on bottle pricing. Like I said, the bottle pricing is again, a combination of the price of the bottle and the returnability of the bottle. Certain things are in our control, like returnability, and therefore, we have to focus and execute on it. Some things are not fully in our control, like pricing of bottling, bottles and other, and commodities like aluminum. Therefore, we have to use other levers like pricing and our cost base.
On the glass bit, isn't it true that the glass bottle business for new bottles is now linked in a way to the commercial aspects of production? Which is to say that energy prices, coal prices in particular, have dropped quite drastically. So, you know, the bottle manufacturers, essentially, as per your term, need to pass on those benefits to you?
That, yes, I mean, I'm not gonna go into the details of our contracts, but, you know, that is the normal negotiation process with the suppliers, of course, you know? You know, it's a combination of that, and it's a combination of supply and demand in the market of glass and the capacities available of glass production in the country. There's a couple of factors there.
Got it. Just a last quick bit, can you just throw some light again, some qualitative comments on Karnataka? I see we are still losing market share out there. The rate of loss has come down, but we're still losing some amount of market share out there. Any thoughts, any comments on what we are doing to reverse that, change that? Thanks.
Yes. In the state of Karnataka, we had some supply issues in quarter one. You know, and of course, that causes us share loss. You know, when you lose share, to recover share back is, of course, more difficult. We are working on strong plans to get back to share growth in Karnataka, you know, across the category segmentation, be it premium, be it the mainstream, be it the economy segment. Yes, we're working through that, but we are not happy with the fact that we have lost market share in Karnataka. 100% not.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Ed Mundy from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. I appreciate there's been quite a lot of change in the business recently, both at the board level and also in the management team. What I'd really love to understand better is, as you think over the next three to five years, you know, what is the dream for this business? What are you really looking to achieve? What are the key things you've got to get right as you go on that journey?
Well, I would love to give Vivek a bit of time in the business and to share that, you know, with all of you, you know, in the next couple of months. I think from my side, what I can say, and therefore I will hold back, you know, on that a little bit, because I think that would be a perfect role for Vivek in terms of answering that question. Still, I don't wanna leave it just hanging there. It's really nice that we are now a full-strength team, you know, and having Vivek on board with all his experience that he has, you know, I really see so much opportunity for us as a business.
In terms of the Board, yes, I think we have a great array of experience in the Board. There have been a couple of changes, like you rightly said, and, you know, we can really go forward as a team now to really, you know, grow our category going forward. You know, as a leader in the market, I think that is the key, that, you know, we take leadership of this category much more to grow the category, to premiumize the category. You know, that is something that is our responsibility as a leader. I think I would end it there, and like Vivek said in this call, I think, you know, we are gonna be working through some longer-term plans going forward.
I think that would be a great opportunity for Vivek to come back to that question, which is a great question.
Thanks. Can I just follow up with the regulatory environment? You know, clearly, you know, beer is quite expensive relative to some of the other forms of alcohol. Can you talk about any sort of recent wins for beer, you know, relative to broader alcohol when it comes to trying to make, you know, beer more affordable?
Yeah. You know, in terms of that, I think Karnataka is a nice example where we see that the playing field has become a bit more fair for beer versus spirits. We can see that and we believe that there will be category growth for beer, which is a low alcoholic beverage. I think that is very important that, you know, as a beer category, we are a low alcoholic beverage, and therefore we strive for moderation. There's a lot of other states that we are working through, you know, with various stakeholder, regulatory stakeholders, that we want to have a more level playing field in other states as well as a category.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Harit from Investec Capital Services. Please go ahead, Harit.
Yeah, hi. I just had a couple of questions. You know, one was on the route to market. You know, you had spoken about Telangana and some issues which you had there in quarter one, even from a, you know, you know, operations perspective. You know, would it be safe to assume that, you know, some of those things in terms of shifts, et cetera, are now kind of behind you and you don't see a recurrence of those issues again?
Yeah, yes, in Telangana we had some shift issues in I remember in quarter one, we had a strong quarter two for Telangana market. That is, that has been good to see. But we, you know, we need to also still work on pricing in the Telangana market. We haven't captured the price increase in Telangana this year. Telangana is now going into elections. That's one area that we still need to, you know, to work on, is to get pricing in the state of Telangana.
Got it. Got it. The second thing was on, you know, you spoke about certain, you know, Haryana is back on track. There was some disturbances there. I just had a broader question on the route to market. Any further changes that we see, you know, currently, that are occurring in our route to market in terms of the way we do business, that potentially could, you know, have any kind of a volume impact going forward over the next, say, two quarters?
You know, we continue assessing our strategy from a state-to-state perspective. You know, it's always a game between volume and also value that we need to keep in mind. You know, as a team now, as we are also a full team, we're gonna be working through that to make sure that there's the right balance between volume and value and what is our strategy state by state. You know, at this stage, no, I don't see anything, but I cannot say that we will not be doing some changes or adjustments to some of, you know, our leading market strategies in different states. I think, yeah, that's how I would put it.
Got it. The last thing was on competitive intensity. When you look at, you know, typically in consumer businesses, you know, prices start to cool off, moderate, you do see, you know, promotional intensity, media intensity go up. In your case, it's more promotional and intensity. Have you started to see that in the market already with the barley prices softening, you know, the market promotional intensity for competitors kind of going up?
If the competitive intensity is going up, is that the question?
Yeah. I mean, you know, in terms of more promotions, you know, more spends by competitors as they get some benefits of the lower costs.
Well, no, I haven't really seen that. From certain competitors in certain states, I can see they have stepped up, you know, their commercial spend. I haven't seen a correlation of the price of variable cost to commercial spend, to be honest. You know, competition intensity remains strong, and like I've always said, competition is healthy, and we just need to be better than our competition. Yes, we have stepped up our commercial spend, and you saw that in quarter two. We will also have some step up in the next quarter because we believe we need to invest behind our brands.
Got it. The last thing was on the CapEx side. You know, this Quarter 1 obviously was weak and, you know, hence for this year, you know, we've not had to kind of invest as much. You know, if you look at a run rate, do you expect, you know, with volume growth normalizing over the next few quarters, should the annual run rate for CapEx now materially go up versus what it's been over the last three to four years, which have been impacted by COVID and the recovery and certain state-led issues?
Yeah. I think we spoke last time, we're looking at spending around INR 350 crore, you know, for the year. Going forward into next year, I think we will potentially step up some of the commercial spend in our supply chain and also in commercial investments as well. I think there will be a bit of step up in terms of that number. You know, that hasn't been yet agreed what that would be, so I cannot divulge that.
Got it. That's it from me. Malcolm, you can, you know, ask for more questions. Thanks.
Thank you very much. A reminder to all participants, to ask a question, please press one, star and one. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand over the conference over to Mr. Harit from Investec Capital Services. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thanks, Malcolm. On behalf of Investec, we'd like to thank all the participants who joined the call, and also thank the senior management for giving us this opportunity to host the call. I'd now hand over to, you know, Radovan for his closing comments.
Yes, thanks for everyone for the questions. For this Quarter 2, like I said, we, you know, we are cautiously optimistic about this quarter in terms of performance. Going further, looking ahead, you know, like I said, you know, it's all about continue to further grow the category across the segments, be it, you know, economy, mainstream, and premium. For us, some good questions around premium, and like I said, we need to really focus on that category and, you know, start to have grow to a fair share of that category, if I can put it that way. Not to take our eyes off Kingfisher and, you know, and the other segments.
Inflationary softening, like I mentioned, but there will continue to be volatility, but, you know, we'll focus on the revenue management and cost initiatives. You know, we remain optimistic on the long-term growth potential. You know, in the coming course, we will give you some more insight into that with Vivek. That's all from our side. Thank you to everyone for joining.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Investec Capital Services, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and now you may disconnect your lines.