Q2 25/26

Nov 4, 2025

Summary

Q2 revenue rose 4% and EBITDA 12%, with margin expansion and double-digit retail LTL growth. GST disruption, subdued consumption and seasonal uncertainty weighed on momentum, while management expects primary sales to recover and debt to decline by FY26-end.

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the second quarter earnings conference call of Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Limited. The call will begin with a brief discussion by the company's management on the Q2 FY26 performance, followed by a question and answer session. We have with us today Mr. Ashish Dikshit, Managing Director, ABBLPL, Mr. Vishak Kumar, Deputy Managing Director and CEO, ABBLPL, Mr. Dharmendra Lodha, CFO, ABBLPL. I want to thank the management team on behalf of all the participants for taking valuable time to be with us. I must remind you that today's discussion may include certain forward-looking statements and must be viewed, therefore, in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. Please restrict your questions to the quarter performance and to strategic questions only. Housekeeping questions can be dealt separately with the IR team. With this, I hand the conference over to Mr. Dharmendra Lodha. Thank you. Over to you, Mr. Lodha. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I would like to welcome you all to the Quarter 2 FY26 earnings call for Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands Limited. As we reflect on the quarter, the operating environment presented a mix of challenges and opportunities. The early onset of the Pujas season provided a healthy boost to our festive demand. However, the GST transition and localized issue in the east did moderate overall momentum to some extent. In this context, our team continued to drive focus execution, delivering yet another quarter of double-digit retail like-to-like growth for ABBLPL with all our brands performing strongly in this channel. This performance reflects the strength of our brand portfolio, the resilience of our business model, and the rigor of our execution, which are now translating into sustained profitable growth even in the dynamic marketing environment. Now moving to the financial performance of our business. ABBLPL delivered a steady performance in this quarter, with revenue growing 4% YOY to INR 2,038 crore, led by strong retail performance. Lifestyle brands grew at 7% YOY, while emerging businesses segments saw a decline, mainly due to Forever 21 revenue in the base. While retail remained strong, other channels have now been calibrated to a more profitable base and are well-positioned to deliver strong profitable growth in the coming quarters. Consolidated EBITDA registered a healthy growth of 12%, driven by top-line momentum in lifestyle brands and continued discipline in discounting and cost management in a challenging market backdrop. In absolute terms, EBITDA stood at INR 338 crore compared to INR 301 crore in the same quarter last year. EBITDA margin expanded by 125 bps, moving up from 15.3% in Quarter 2 FY 2025 to 16.6% in this quarter, reflecting improved operating efficiency. Consolidated PAT stood at INR 23 crore in this quarter versus a loss of INR 59 crore in the previous year in the same quarter, which had a one-time exceptional loss of INR 98 crore. PBT stood at INR 31 crore, up from INR 18 crore in the previous year same quarter. Moving to the first half of the year, ABLBL revenue stood at INR 3,878 crore, up 3% YOY. EBITDA grew at 7% in absolute terms to INR 624 crore versus INR 584 crore in H1 last year, with margins improving by 50 bps to 16.1%, despite higher advertisement spend in current year. PAT for H1 stood at INR 48 crore. During the quarter, we continued to expand our retail presence, adding 75 plus new stores in this quarter. Our footprint now spans 4.7 million square feet across 785 plus cities and towns with a network of around 3,250 stores, including 550 plus stores in smaller towns. Our retail presence continued to be a powerful growth driver. With the consolidation exercise now complete and a strong foundation in place, we expect to see a steady net addition of stores going forward. Turning to our lifestyle brands, retail like-to-like grew at 12% during the quarter, reflecting consistent performance across all months. This performance builds on the solid momentum of past five quarters where LTL growth has remained very strong. The growth was fueled by a combination of product portfolio builds, impactful marketing campaigns, and continued enhancement to in-store experience, all of which deepened consumer engagement and strengthened brand salience. Revenue for the quarter grew 7% YOY to INR 1,754 crore with an EBITDA margin of 19.3%. The portfolio further expanded its presence with 60 plus gross store additions during the period. While retail remained strong, secondary growth across other channels also continued to perform well, led by double-digit like-to-like growth in the departmental store business. Primary sales was temporarily impacted in September due to the GST transition. We expect this segment to report strong growth in the coming quarters. Our emerging business portfolio, which includes Van Heusen Innerwear, American Eagle, and Reebok, now spans over 350 plus stores. The network also delivered a robust 11% like-to-like growth during the quarter. The strong retail momentum reflects the strength of our brands and effectiveness of our product strategy. The overall segment revenue was impacted by closure of Forever 21, which was part of the base year numbers. Profitability improved by 150 bps, mainly due to the lower losses in Van Heusen Innerwear business. Together, these positions our emerging business portfolio well for profitable and scalable growth in the coming quarters. In summary, despite a measured consumer environment, we delivered steady growth, improved profitability, and broadened our presence across both established and emerging markets. Our lifestyle brands continue to demonstrate strong growth, while the emerging businesses are well-positioned to become levers of profitable and meaningful growth in the coming quarters. With a robust store network and enhanced product portfolio and continued digitization across operations and supply chain, we are well-equipped to capitalize on future opportunities. As we expand our product portfolio through innovations and our distribution into high potential markets, we remain confident in our ability to sustain profitable growth and create long-term value for all our stakeholders. We are now open to questions. Thank you. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your 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 comes from the line of Gaurav Jogani with JM Financial. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is with regards to the emerging business. If you can quantify the impact of Forever 21 in the base quarter, that will help us to appreciate the growth for the remaining of the portfolio. Yeah. Hi, Gaurav. There is both a top-line impact because of Forever 21 and bottom-line impact. Maybe the overall growth would have been better by 1% if the Forever 21 business was not considered. The impact is also there, and that is also there in both the base and in this year that loss is not there. Sure. If I understand it right, given that if there is a 1% equal detriment, would that imply that the rest of the business would have also not grown very significantly in that context? I mean, because if you see the overall growth rate, in that sense, it is declining by 10% odd on a YOY basis. Yeah. It's fair conclusion. I think there are two, three points that I would like to make, Gaurav. One is that, look, if you were to look at the like-for-like sale in the emerging businesses, all of them together had double digits like-to-like. Okay? So between the innerwear business, Reebok business, American Eagle business, I think our weighted average was some 11, 12% of like-to-like sales. Okay? There was a couple of things which impacted our overall business. One is the transition with GST, where a lot of our wholesale partners had to reconfigure their purchase order system, IT systems, and so on. About half of September, in that sense, was lost for last part of our business. In businesses with smaller base, it impacts a little more, so it had that effect as well. There is also specifically in Reebok, the issue of the pipeline inventory. We had reduced the inventory in some of the exclusive stores, which are buy and sell stores. So that also shows the impact of that in the way we recognize revenue in the system. So that's broadly the reason, which is why the 11, 12% like-to-like doesn't translate to a similar growth in the overall business. Oh, okay. Sure. That helps. Yeah. Lastly, just one bookkeeping question I would say in that sense. If you see the depreciation and the interest amounts, both has been quite a sharp increase on a sequential basis. I mean, if you see the depreciation has increased from INR 173 odd crore to over INR 190 odd crore in Q2, and likewise, the interest has also gone up. So if you can help us out the reason for that. Gaurav, these are the new additions and stores, and whatever leases we sign for the new stores, then I have to consider this as part of the depreciation and create the lease liability. That is the impact. Otherwise, in finance terms, the finance cost has come down because we effectively manage our borrowings, supported by the interest rate reduction. Sure. So sir, at least on the reported basis, can we consider this as a normalized number that we can take ahead? For depreciation and interest? Yeah. Right now, yes. Let us see how H2 pan out because generally H2 for this business is very good, so the finance cost should come down. Yeah? Okay. Okay, sir. Thank you. That is no problem. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Archana Menon with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Just continuing from the earlier question on the emerging businesses. When we look at the quarters ahead, Q3, Q4, what would be the impact of Forever 21 in the base now? Not too much, Archana. It won't be very material on the base. We had started scaling down F21 last year itself from Q3. There would be some business impact maybe for Q3 as well, but by Q4 it would be insignificant. Understood. Maybe separately I can give you exact numbers, but all I can say is it's scaling down. Even in last year's base, it would continue to reduce. Yeah. Understood. On Reebok, what would your customer sales growth be like at an overall brand level? How should we be again thinking about some of the pipeline inventory related challenges for the coming quarter? No, thanks for asking that. I think 9% was our same-store growth in retail stores. In department stores it was 12%. I think at a consumer level, it would have been an overall aggregated 10% plus overall growth. Okay? In that sense, the brand is on a nice steady growth path. A lot of the sourcing issues around BIS, all of that have been streamlined and it's on a good growth path. A lot of stores getting added as well. I think we added some 20 odd stores. All of that should keep building on the momentum for the brand. Got it. Again, when we look at the quarters ahead, would it be fair to assume that this customer level growth also gets translated into reported revenues in the coming quarter? I would like to believe so. I cannot say with definitiveness, but I would like to believe that, yes. Because this primary to secondary is not a continuous thing. You do not keep reducing the inventory in the store. Just to give you a sense, in all our other brands, Archana, we run an automatic replenishment system software. We introduced that in Reebok last quarter. Or last to last quarter, but most of the impact was in last quarter. The software also in that sense sharpens the inventory in each store. So it did result in sharpening of the overall inventory levels in every store. That streamlining is pretty much done, Archana. Understood. Very clear. Just lastly, on the GST impact for ABLBL as a whole, how has the portfolio been impacted? What has been the percentage of the portfolio where you had to take price changes? How have you sort of adjusted for that? There are two parts. One is of course the immediate impact which you saw in Q2, which was more to do with the wholesale businesses, et cetera, the transition impact, waiting for IT configurations, purchase orders, et cetera. That is behind us. Now it is more about how consumer takes on the revised prices. As far as we are concerned, wherever there are reductions, we pass that on to consumer; where there are increases, we would do the same accordingly. So it now remains to be seen how consumers respond to this. A good tester of that would be in the wedding season now, where I know a lot of our suits and blazers and all are at play right now. So you will have to see that part playing out in the next few quarters. Understood. Just last question, anything you would like to share in terms of the demand trends that you have seen vis-à-vis the festive last quarter and any early signs in October and November for the festive? Early days. I think you would have seen through across the industry it was an okay Diwali, and we will have to now see how the wedding season pans out. If you go by the calendar, it should be a decent wedding season. So far in line with market trends, so let's see how that pans out over the next few weeks. Understood. Thank you so much. Thanks, Archana. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Tejas Shah with Avendus Spark Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Hi, Vishak. Thanks for the opportunity. Vishak, this quarter was slightly a complicated one for industry in terms of many signals got jumbled up, early Pujas, but at the same time, GST led disruption and then extended monsoons. If you remove all the signals, how are you reading consumer sentiment? I am not asking only for this month or this quarter, because a lot of impetus from government has been put in to revive this. Are you seeing that at a broader level? Look, GST led thing, we will have to see how that pans out. It is very early days to see how that pans out because in peak Diwali season, it is hard to figure what was the impact. Also, when there is an early Diwali, it is a lot of effort to separate how much of it was Diwali impact versus how much of it was wedding impact. You are right, it is getting more and more complex to decipher this. I can only say that one of the indexes for us is the suit sale, suits and blazer sale that we do. A lot of Diwali business last year would have had Diwali and wedding. This year was probably more Diwali, less wedding. We will have to see if November, December pan out true to their wedding dates, then you would be able to say that, yes, some of it worked out. We will have to wait for that. But in general, if you are asking, has there been an overall greater consumption in the market? I would say not yet visible. Yeah. Vishak, there were two more interventions which government made before GST, which was at monetary policy easing level and then income tax cut level. What I was trying to understand that is it safer to say that the first two measures have still not surfaced in terms of increased demand? Because one of the national chains said that they saw at least exuberance in terms of footfalls picking up, and they called out, if I remember correctly, that one of the best Diwali in last three years in terms of footfalls. At least conversion, they also did not say that is happening as much. I am just trying to see at a broader level, should we say that the trends are changing or it is not, as I said, GST led only, but at all those measures which happened before as well. Let me say this. One clear indicator in the last couple of quarters is very strong growth in small town India. That is something which we saw Tejas in Q1, and we also saw that, in fact, it was a stronger like-to-like in small towns than even our very good like-to-like in urban centers. That is something which I can safely say, yes, this had an impact. Other than that, like I said, I want to be a little guarded about Diwali, because I need to make sure how much of it was Diwali versus how much of it is wedding. Once that result comes out, I will be able to say with more confidence that, yes, Diwali worked well. We will have to see that result panning out over the next few weeks, actually. Next 6 weeks, we will get a good sense of that. I would say, yeah, it was a decent Diwali, but how good was it, I will be able to tell you only once we know how well the wedding season goes. Yeah. You spoke about tier 2, tier 3, but any regional nuances in terms of northeast, southwest, any divergence there? Yes and no, in the sense that yes, north was fairly strong this time. Okay? It did well. East was going well till the flood situation happened in some parts of West Bengal. Also, some of those disturbances in Guwahati and some parts of Northeast, that also had an adverse impact. It has been, in that sense, a bit of a mixed bag. But beyond that, no other trends, Tejas, at a regional level. Thanks. This is very helpful and all the best for coming quarter. Thanks. Thank you. Next question comes on the line of Shreya Baheti with Anand Rathi Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Sir, I just wanted to ask about how, like if we see Navratri was this time early, if we look at the festive impact, if you could just give a sense of how did Navratri impacted the Q2 sales for us? Also I wanted to understand this 120 bps EBITDA margin expansion. This was led by operating leverage, but did it also have the impact of a gross margin expansion in lifestyle and emerging brand segment? Okay, so two questions. One is you asked on Navratri. Yes, sir. Navratri continued for us in the same pace as the overall like-to-like has been for the business. Yes, that's the way it was, but like I was explaining to Tejas earlier, I think we'll have to hold for a little more to see the impact of how the wedding season goes. That's one part, Shreya. You had another question that you had asked. Yes sir. Sir, it's regarding the EBITDA margin expansion. Yeah. It was a combination of multiple things. A lot of cost reduction initiatives, Shreya, which went through. Also, as you know, when you have strong like-for-likes, you get rent leverage. You would see that also impacting because most of our rent is with fixed costs, whichever is the company owned store, et cetera, the fixed costs on rent get spread across larger sales base. That also impacts. Plus there have been multiple cost reduction program initiatives which have also helped to improve the margins, both in the emerging business as well as in the lifestyle business. Okay, sir. And sir, also, if you could tell what is the revenue growth for emerging brands excluding the Reebok business? I thought I just explained that to Gaurav, Shreya. Do you want me to repeat that? Sir, basically you said that 9% SSG is for the retail business for the Reebok segment. Yeah. If you look at it is broadly outside of Forever 21, which we phased out. There are three large pieces. There is Innerwear, there is Reebok, and there is American Eagle. I also tried explaining to Gaurav that the overall 4% ABLBL would have been a little more than 5% if it not been for F21. Sir, that is understood. I just wanted to understand how did Van Heusen Innerwear and American Eagle perform. Fair. They were again like-to-like all double-digit growth businesses. But also similar to many other parts of business which are impacted by wholesale. There was the impact of in all our calculations now we have done July plus August separately and September separately. There was the impact of all of these transitions which impacted this also. Specifically in the case of American Eagle, there was also some network rationalization which also impacted. But without that brand was also near, I think 9% or 10% like-to-like on American Eagle as well. Okay, sir. Yes, sir, understood. Sir, just one last question. Sir, this working capital increase, sir, it must be due to the inventory buildup we did for- Yeah festive and wedding season. Yeah. So sir, if we have to compare it to last year, September 2024. So sir, is it mainly due to seasonal and this is what is leading to increase in the debt also? Yeah, you're right. The season is earlier this time, and when you're planning, you don't know how much consumer will respond early. You'd rather be safer when you're planning. So a lot of our planning horizon would be built around early season inwards. We did that. That's largely the reason for the delta in working capital. You will see that pretty much by the end of this quarter, that would be back to the same levels pretty much, except for the growth and expansion in network, which would carry more inventory. There was also this additional factor of some of the supplies from Bangladesh were getting a little uncertain. We had to make sure that we and a lot of winter wear from there. We want to make sure that we took that in early to prevent any business loss when the winter season starts. Okay. So sir, this will go down by the end of FY26 and debt levels will also go down? JB, you want to answer on the debt level? I think on inventory Yeah Shreya, I can safely say yes. Shreya, yes, definitely by end of FY26, debt levels should go down from this number. Sir, if you could quantify. We don't quantify the number, but directionally, it should go down from this number. Okay, sir. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Shreya. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Devanshu Pansal with Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Hi, Vishak. Thanks for taking my question. Vishak, you have discussed about it in previous questions. Just for better understanding. This time around, the underlying consumer-level growth trend has been about 10% in your, say, wholesale businesses, both in lifestyle and emerging segments. However, the reported numbers are lower because of primary billing getting affected because of GST transition. Now that the channel is lighter, do we expect this impact to sort of come back into higher growth in Q3? For better understanding, so there has been a 20% impact, right? So 10% is the consumer-level growth and we reported -10. Do you expect this 20 to add on to that 10% underlying growth trend in coming quarters? Is this the right way to look at it? Devanshu, just one extra factor I want to bring in, which I hadn't shared with you earlier, but which also impacted our overall growth in the last quarter, which is a very aggressive target that we took on store renovations. Just to give you a sense, we did 65 store renovations in just the last quarter. A typical renovation takes about 45-60 days. It's almost like some 130 store months, which are not there during the quarter. That also has a, as you can do the calculation, that also has an impact on your overall growth. That is, however, something that we will continue for the next few quarters. We want to upgrade more and more of our stores. Also in a lot of stores, we are making them larger, making them, wherever agreements are coming to an end, we are taking larger spaces in the same locations, et cetera. All of that is, however, going to reflect in some flux in the business in terms of overall retail growth. But to answer your larger question around should, in the coming quarters, more and more of like-to-like sales and secondary sales translate to overall growth? Our simple answer is yes. There will be ups and downs across various quarters, depending on seasons, weddings, all of that. But by and large, directionally, and that's what we've said in earlier communication as well, I think double-digit growth is something that we should expect from these brands in the medium term. Give or take a few quarters, plus or minus, but yeah, by and large, that should be the direction. Got it. These 130 stores that you are talking about- 65 stores that went through renovation. 65 stores, yeah. 65. Yeah. Yeah. I was asking that were these company-owned stores or franchisee stores? Yeah. These were company-owned stores. There would be some franchisee stores also. They would also renovate. That is a work in progress for us. When you have a 3,000-store kind of a network, and typically we renovate once every five to six years. There is that process of We have also created a lot of new exciting retail identities across our brands, which also reflect the way consumers like to shop today. That is something which we will go through that process, and we have done a lot of heavy lifting around that in the last few quarters. It is something which also results in stronger like-to-likes as you do the exercise. Yeah. That has been keeping us on these numbers. Vishak, my question was more into the wholesale channel, the e-commerce channel for lifestyle businesses and the emerging segments, right? Where you mentioned there is a gap between primary and secondary. Yeah. For these channels, I was just checking whether the impact that had been there to the tune of 10%-20% in terms of growth. That sort of adds back into the underlying growth trend, right? Yeah, fair point. No, I think that's a fair point. As long as we continue doing these kind of secondary sales, that should translate to primary sales in quarters ahead. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. That's a fair question. Yeah. Second, Vishak, I wanted to understand, you have been mentioning that there is a steady demand uptake across non-metro markets. Here, I guess, quite some time back, we sort of indicated that these markets, the experience was not so great from the below five to fifth tier 2 markets, the experience was not so great. So what has actually helped to turn around these markets? Because from a competition perspective, we are seeing some challenges with some of the value retailers who are indicating that the industry as such is sort of not growing to the extent it was growing. But it's startling to see that from brands portfolio, you are getting good momentum, actually. So if you could just throw some light there. Yeah. You are right. We define small towns as tier 4 kind of towns. These are 1 lakh, 1.5 lakh population towns. And you are right, they have been doing well for us. I would say combination of two things. One, yes, market itself has picked up. Actually, if you saw these stores, these markets 3 years back, they were doing very well. Maybe before this quarter, four, five quarters were bad for smaller towns. Seems to be coming back. I also think we have sharpened our ways of working in these towns, our methods of doing regional assortments, our methods of activating regionally, locally, et cetera. I think we have gotten better and better at managing this format of stores. It is a combination of both. The fact that there have been some tailwinds in the market and the fact that our ability to manage these stores has improved over time. So there has been that learning curve as well. Understood. Last one, bookkeeping question. I am noticing that there is a significant reduction in the rent expense reported by the company, which is sort of moving towards depreciation and higher interest cost. Is there some change in model? Because rent was typically the commission that we used to pay to franchisees. Are we sort of converting some of our franchisee stores to company-owned stores? How should we see this? Because there is a significant reduction in the rent expense. Yeah. So you are right. In one or two brands of ours, which Vishak explained to you in last quarter, we changed the model, and now we are coming back. I think, our business model continues to be franchisee-driven growth, except few COCO stores also. But whatever actions we have taken, that is the impact of the variable rent which you are seeing in the published result. Can you explain as in what exactly has happened in which brand? If you help us better appreciate that transition. Sorry, can you repeat that, Devanshu? I am saying, can you help us better understand what exactly has the change happened and in which brand this change has happened? Look, two things, Devanshu. One is you must recognize that in the way India handles accounting of depreciation it is front-loaded on deposit. So as you put up new stores, okay, you would see a higher charge in early years while as you close earlier stores. So that delta you would see in the EBIT last year to this year, probably you are referring to that. Second piece which JB is referring to is a few stores which would have got converted from franchisee to a COCO operation. These are tactical things that you would do time to time, depending on if there are stores where a franchisee doesn't want to continue the business, he is moving abroad, he is trying to do something else, or it is not viable enough for him, et cetera. So there are time to time you would then take on some of these stores. We would have done that as well. It is a combination of these two things which would have resulted, Devanshu, in this. Sure. But the quantum was big. We were at a run rate of INR 200 crores. Now we are at INR 150. This suggests that there is a significant chunk that this conversion has happened, if I am reading this correctly. No, I think the MIS numbers versus Ind AS numbers, we will have to give you a bridge to reconcile that. No. We can probably do that. It is only INR 150 versus INR 150 crores, 13 crore delta, not 200 going down to 150. I hope you are seeing the right numbers. I was referring from a quarterly perspective. In Q1 it was 190, it has moved to 150. But yeah, on a YOY basis it is 13. Yeah. So 153 to 150. Yeah. Okay. Sure. Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Kunal with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Most of my questions have been answered actually, but one question I had was on this entire GST transition. Has it created any, let's say, troubles for you in the portfolio, especially around price points of, let's say, 2,500 because there is a very sharp jump from 5% to 18%, right? Any impact that we should expect in the long, let's say, in the next few quarters on margins because of that? Maybe you have to take down pricing of products which are around those price points. Not gone from 5% to 18%, it is gone from 12% to 18%. There are parts- No, what I mean is the delta- Yeah when you cross that threshold is now very steep. Yeah. So two, three things. One is, like I explained earlier, the transition challenge we have to go through, especially when you are dealing with wholesale partners, purchase order systems, all of that, you have to deal it. I think that is behind us. We also had to do a lot of repricing in front end to transparently pass on the prices to consumers, et cetera. That is also been done, and that has been executed. Now as we move ahead, it is about how well do consumers accept these prices. Wherever the prices have gone down, how much demand goes up because of that. I think there is also another dimension of, like you rightly said, there is a very steep delta from when you go up above INR 2,500, technically actually INR 2,625. So when you go up from that, basically it suddenly moves from 5% to 18%. Product managers, pricing managers have to get more and more of products within that 5% GST. So some of those are things you do, and yet large part of our suits and blazer wedding business would now be 18%. So there would be a 6% delta in that part of business. We will have to see how consumers respond to it. Understood. But let us say no fundamental reduction in pricing that you have to take for anything which is priced between, let us say, INR 2,500 and INR 3,500 because suddenly it becomes a bit more uncompetitive. Yeah. But no, Kunal, you win some, you lose some. On these things, there are parts of business where you should also expect that the entire INR 1,000 to INR 2,500, where it has gone down from 12% to 5%, should also, for each of our brands, give those commensurate benefits. Yeah, pricing cannot be completely formulaic. You will also have to build it with what consumers would expect from you and your brands. So I think it is fine. I think we should be all right with that. Understood. That is clear. Second is, we had quite a bit of discussion on the growth of emerging brands. Just wanted to check, how do you expect profitability of this portfolio to shape up? Because now we do not have stack Forever 21, but we have not seen any meaningful improvement on the profitability front. I know two of the three parts of this portfolio are actually profitable, but how do you expect the overall portfolio to move, let us say, in a year or so from now? Yeah. So we should keep getting better and better. And yet, I do want to tell you that, at least in the innerwear side of business, we will continue to invest for growth. And that is something which is going to be very important part of our overall play in the portfolio, and we will grow very aggressively. So in the order of priority, there would be a lot of impetus for growth. Of course, as we keep getting benefits of scale, benefits of leverage, we will keep getting more and more efficient and profitability will keep improving. So directionally, you should start seeing that. And yet, I do want to say that this is the part of business where there is a lot of headroom for growth, almost exponential headroom for growth, and we have to recognize that as well. Understood. Very clear. Yeah, that is all from my side. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Kunal. Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and 1 to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Sameer Gupta with IIFL. Please go ahead. Hi, am I audible? Yes, Sameer. Hey. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Sorry about the goof-up earlier during the call. First question is on innerwear. Now, the numbers that I am looking at, I assume there has been a large decline this quarter. You already alluded that GST transitions would have led to, but just wondering, for a category which is largely under INR 2,500, why should a GST transition really affect this category? Just a number, what kind of a decline have we seen in innerwear? If you could answer that. No, Kunal, everything which is above 1,000, the GST rates have changed. We have to recognize that. Also, it is not just about percentages, et cetera. There is a system development transition challenge that every business would have gone through, whether it is your distributors, whether it is your key accounts, e-commerce partners. A whole lot of changes to be made into their ordering systems, which is frankly a fairly time-consuming process actually even for small-sized organizations, not only for large organizations, for everybody, there would have been the challenge of going through that. Regardless of whether you have increased, decreased, or stayed. The percentage GST is not so much the issue as it is the administrative part of going through that transition. Okay. Let us say, I would still assume that large part of innerwear will be below 1,000 only, at least at the final price sale. Would that transition then impact this part of the sale also? Yes. Two things. One is that we also do a fair bit of athleisure. Okay? Which is all above 1,000. A lot of it is above 1,000. Not all, but a lot of it is above 1,000. A lot of lingerie would come at 1,000 plus, okay? Then we also send it to wholesale in September, the winter wear first dispatches, which is all definitely above 1,000 and in many cases above INR 2,500 as well. All of those would impact, Sameer. Got it. Fair. I wanted to understand is that among the three emerging business segments that you have, innerwear is a segment which has been struggling for some time. Lifestyle brands have come back, others are performing, but this segment continues to be under pressure. One, the latest quarter, if you just adjust for the GST noise, is there any sign of improvement? And two, what is the path to both growth recovery here and profitability here? Fair question. Three, four data points for you. One is that across our network, across our brands and formats, the highest like-for-like sale was in innerwear retail. We have some 110, 115 exclusive innerwear stores, which would have had an average 20% plus like-for-like. That tells you the strength of the brand with consumers, which is there. From a wholesale perspective, we are also going through a I think we have said in the last few quarters also, we are also doing a lot of inventory corrections, bringing down our overall base of inventory, et cetera, which has had its challenges beyond what I said to you about GST. But it is only making us even more robust, even more faster replenishment, et cetera. The fact is also that the overall market continues to be soft, right? There are not too many tailwinds in this part of business. All considered, I think the biggest pluses that I would take from the quarter is the fact that continued very aggressive. Q1 was also very strong like-for-like on innerwear retail. Q2 continues to be very strong like-for-like on innerwear retail. I think that momentum is very good. Second is we have also been able to strengthen the shape of business, been able to manage costs and supply chain costs, all of that sharper, which has resulted in a better shape of EBITDA for this part of business. I think, the biggest challenge now is going to be how do we create exponential sales growth? Putting together a lot of things in place so that, Sameer, that is something we can put into action. The part on profitability. Just trying to understand what is the problem area. Is it a low gross margin because of the higher trade spends? Is it markdowns in inventory that you have to take on time to time? Is it higher marketing? Where is the line item which is causing it to be a loss-making segment for many, many years now? I think, this is a business which we are playing for a very large stake. This is something that we want to be very large and meaningful. There are deeper investments into making this happen. You are right, it is a sharp margin business. I think we will have to recognize that. It is also a business where the components of the business change significantly. The kind of share that athleisure had in this business to what it has evolved into. I think we all have to recognize that and go with that. But here is a business which also has a lot of consumer stickiness. As we keep selling every pair of Van Heusen Innerwear to consumer, you have more and more sticky consumer. It is something that you do one consumer at a time in that sense of building a stronger and stronger base of consumer. It is habit-forming. As you sell to more and more consumers, you build a stronger franchise for the brand. It has to be done patiently, Sameer. We will have to go through this. Got it. Fair enough. Just a bookkeeping question from me. Part of your portfolio, this is overall lifestyle plus emerging included, which is below this sweet price point of now INR 2,625 for you. Hello? Sorry. It is very hard to explain this off the cuff. Maybe we can put this analysis together because there are various slices and dices, and we do this usually at a single brand level. So each brand tracks it separately. Maybe we can share this separately with you. Sure, no problem. I will come back and check in with you after the process. Thanks. Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and 1 to ask a question. Next question comes from the line of Sukrit Deep Patil with ICICI FinTrade Private Limited. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. I have a broader question on ABLBL's long-term direction. As more fashion and lifestyle brands expand across India, what is Aditya Birla Lifestyle Brands doing to build a strong base? Not just through store count or celebrity tie-ups, but something deeper like a way of working or thinking that grows over time and makes the company hard to replace. You are saying, what are our strategic strengths or differentiators? I think many, Sukrit, if you refer to our strategy deck that we have shared sometime back, you would see that. But it is also a very deep knowledge of markets, different segments, consumers, et cetera, which in that sense gives us our strength. It is also a very deep understanding of retailing. We run 3,000 plus stores, continue to do that, build very strong equations with various partners in the ecosystem. We work very closely with various business partners across franchisees, malls, department stores, and mills and so on. We also have a very strong creation ecosystem with a very strong manufacturing base, a creation designing base, product creation base. There are multiple things which give us that very tech-enabled organization. It will be difficult for me to explain this over an earnings call, but I think a lot of things which we believe will give us a right to win in the market. Okay, fair enough. My second question is to Mr. Lodha. As retail expansion and customer experiences keep on rising, how are you planning to protect the margins? Are there any smart internal methods like sourcing or any store design that helps you to keep the quality high without hurting the profits, even if they do not show up on the numbers? Just trying to understand how you balance brand experience with keeping margins strong over the time. Yes, sir. Thank you. Sukriti, if you look at our state of business, our biggest drivers of profitability is actually rent leverage and sales per square foot. There are some like-to-like is probably one of the best drivers of profitability, and that is why you see margins expanding over time. That is something which has worked well for us. Of course, there are continuous cost programs around CapEx per square foot reduction, around various such things. But I would say this, the bigger lever for margin expansion will be built around greater retail productivity, greater retail throughput. That is what we will continue to drive. Of course, in each brand, the CapEx per square foot, cost plans, et cetera, would be very different, very contextual. Let us say a Louis Philippe store cost per square foot will be very different from, let us say, a Peter England cost per square foot and so on. It would also depend on what the brand's position, its equation with consumer, et cetera, is. Thank you. Mr. Patil, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes from the line of Kunal Bhatia with Dalal & Broacha. Please go ahead. Yeah, hello sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, from the overall call, one does understand that this quarter around, as you mentioned, Diwali was okay, plus there was a GST transition. You've also mentioned that the smaller towns are doing well, vis-à-vis the metro. So broadly, what's the pain point here? Meaning on an overall basis, despite the government impetus, whether it be through income tax savings or through GST, is it the competition which is dragging the sales or there is something else which is also impacting the overall environment? Because your commentary, even in case of wedding was, we hope that the wedding season should be good. Just wanted to get a broader perspective here, sir. Very nicely summarized, Kunal. But here's what I would say. There are two parts. One is external market and one is what we do internally. Markets have been how they've been. You would have heard commentaries from various players in the market. I think for us, our task, we know what needs to be done. We have to continue to expand aggressively. You will start seeing that you already seen that our overall network has significantly increased in the last quarter. That has to start bearing fruit. We'll continue to expand aggressively. Our e-commerce business, you would have seen in the overall growth, is something which we could do better in. We have to find our own methods and recipes by which we make that part of business stronger. There are multiple growth opportunities, regardless of how markets are, which we have to keep chasing to make sure that we continue to grow and we continue to be strong. As tailwinds come back to market, that should only help us to grow even further. But yeah, right now, is it fair, easy for me to say, "Yes, markets are great"? I don't. I think we are all seeing out of the window to see how the markets are. But separately, Kunal, we have to do what we have to do to keep growing in the business. Sir, but at this point in time, what would be the most crucial pain point for you or the industry as a whole? Well, I wouldn't call it pain point. You would want more consumption in the market. That is something which everybody in the industry would seek. I wouldn't call it a pain point, but that is something which everybody would want, more consumption. Okay, fair enough, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Devanshu Bansal with Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Yes, hi. Thanks for the follow-up opportunity. Just one bookkeeping explanation. In Q4, we did call out that Forever 21 had about INR 50 crores loss at the EBITDA level, one-off, and then INR 50 crore was in the interest expense, right, for FY 2025? I just wanted to check in which quarters was this sort of recognized last year. In H1, primarily. H2, basically is more- Yeah, except the small number, rest all is accounted in the H1 part. Okay. Sir, one request. We have made some reporting changes, but we have not provided comparable numbers even for the last year, right? It would be very helpful if you could provide that because making projections on only one or two quarters of data becomes very difficult. Sure, sure. If you could provide the comparable numbers at least for last four quarters of FY 2025, it would be very helpful. Yeah, Devanshu. It was part of the consolidated ABFRL, so we are splitting up, but we will provide you separately. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the management, we thank all participants for joining us. In case of any further queries, you may please get in touch with Mr. Amit Dwivedi. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.