Q1 26/27

Jul 21, 2026

Summary

Q1 FY27 revenue grew 49% and pre-interest EBITDA rose 135%, with operating margin reaching 7.5%. SSG was 39%; four-year plans include ~20% store growth CAGR and margin expansion toward 15%.

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the BlueStone Jewellery and Lifestyle Limited Q1 FY27 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will remain in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal the operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Will it change to- Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to Ms. Riya Saharia from EY Investor Relations for opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you. Thank you, Ryan. Good morning to all the participants on the call. Welcome to FY27 Earnings Call of BlueStone Jewellery and Lifestyle Limited. Before we proceed with the call, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward-looking statements that may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors. It must be viewed in conjunction with our business risks that could cause future results, performance, or achievements to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Please note that we have mailed the results, and the same is available on the exchange. In case you have not received the same, you can write to us, and we will be happy to send the same over to you. To take us through the results today and answer your questions, we have the management of BlueStone represented by Mr. Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, founder and CEO, and Mr. Rumit Dugar, CFO. We will start the call with a brief overview of the quarter gone past and then conduct the Q&A session. With that said, I will hand the call over to Gaurav. Over to you. Thank you, Riya. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us at BlueStone's Q1 FY27 Earnings Call. Q1 marks a strong start to the year. Revenues grew 49% Y-o-Y to INR 733 crores and pre-interest EBITDA rose 135% to INR 55 crores, close to three times the rate of revenue, taking our operating margin to 7.5% and expansion of 273 basis points. That relationship, revenue scaling against a cost base that grows far more slowly is the operating leverage in our model becoming visible, and it is what defined the quarter. It came against the backdrop of the customs duty on gold moving from 6% to 15%, which makes the breadth and consistency of demand particularly encouraging. As always, the detailed disclosures are available on the exchanges, so I will keep my remarks brief and focus on a few things that mattered this quarter. First of all, I want to say something about how we see this category because it shapes everything we do. For a very long time, the jewelry industry was dominated by relationships and brand marketing, and designs had very little role to play in this category. We built BlueStone on the opposite belief, that design technology and consumer understanding are how you earn the right every single day. The market has moved decisively in that direction. Jewelry is coming out of the locker and into everyday life, but not just for weddings, but for how people live now. The non-wedding everyday segment is where the consumer is genuinely moving, and it is a segment the industry overlooked for a very long time. That is precisely where we have chosen to build. This is also why I would encourage you to look at BlueStone not only as a jewelry company, but as a consumer internet company that has chosen jewelry as its category. We were born online, and the way consumers reach us reflects that. The moment the thought of buying jewelry enters someone's mind today, they go online. They research, they shortlist. They form a view long before they step into a store. More than 80% of our sales originates online. The store there plays its own irreplaceable role. Jewelry is emotional and high consideration, and it is in the store that a consumer sees and feels the piece, and where trust is finally sealed. We do not think of these as separate channels. They are one continuous journey, and because the intent is largely built online first, our stores convert with a productivity that a purely physical retailer cannot match. Making that journey seamless from discovery on a screen to a moment of delight at the counter in a metro or in a tier 2 town is our real differentiator, and it is what lets a network of 352 stores punch well above its weight. It also shows how we run and measure the business. The metrics we report to you, cohorts that compound, repeat revenue shares, wallet shares, customer lifetime, are the grammar of the consumer internet business, and that is no accident. Our right to exist as a brand comes from being at our core a technology company. We are the only jewelry company that has built its entire technology stack in-house. I would also urge all of us to look forward rather than backward. People tend to underappreciate how quickly consumers and technology are changing. My wife does not shop the way my mother did, and my daughter will definitely not shop the way my wife does. An industry that plans on the assumptions of the last 20 years will misjudge the next 10. We would rather build for where the consumer is going than for where the category had been. One thing worth highlighting this quarter is our same-store sales growth of 39%, which was broad-based, with older cohorts posting SSGs in line with the overall portfolio. What we see in that data is that our stores continue to compound as they mature, which speaks about the headroom that remains to grow per store revenues across all cohorts. This performance sets us up well going into the rest of the year, and our focus stays firmly on execution, deepening our relationship with the consumers we already have and continuing to bring new ones onto the fold. We are building a consumer internet business in India's most loved category, and the category is only now beginning to be built the way it should be. Thank you, everyone, and over to questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use their handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, please note, we request you to restrict to two questions per participant and rejoin the question queue. We take the first question from the line of Harish Advani from Axis Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you for the opportunity, and congrats on a great set of results. My first question was on your comment about the demand softening in May post the customs duty hike, but then it normalized till June. How are the demand trends shaping up as we move into July, particularly in the studied categories? Yeah. You are right. Essentially, last quarter had been kind of mixed. Akshaya Tritiya period was great, then there was import duty hike, which softened the demand. Then I think as June progressed, a lot of that demand kind of kept on coming back. We continue to see that same trend continuing into July also. So no major difference compared to what we observed in June. Perfect. One follow-up on that. See, now that the gold price inflation is beginning to taper off quarter after quarter as we move into the second half, how should we think about the growth construct in the second half of the year? Right. I think historically, Harish, what we have seen is we have generally performed very well in the cases where or in the environment where the gold price had largely remained stable. Just one sec. There is some noise in the background. Hello? Yeah. Yeah, Harish. Basically, we have generally performed much better when the gold prices have remained stable. Across last six years of our retail operations, I think last one and a half years had been the noisiest of the period. Stable gold prices actually are very, very good for the consumer demand. I understand that the investment-led demand kind of increases significantly when the gold prices are going up or is just highly dependent on gold price. Ours is more of a consumer business. Essentially, our customers are not gold coin customers, are not investment-driven customers. Our customers are price point-based customers. Essentially, a person who is looking to buy an INR 20,000 to INR 40,000 product is going to buy an INR 20,000 to INR 40,000 product, no matter the grammage. Now, with the environment where the gold increased very, very sharply, we struggled. We struggled because our merchandise dislocation was happening in real time, in a month, in 2 months, and so on. I wish gold prices remain stable, and then we continue to operate the way we operated for the last 6 years. I think we feel a lot more comfortable in that environment. We believe that is the most conducive environment for us to be able to deliver the targets that we have set up for ourselves, which is essentially almost 30% or so SSG over the next 4 years. Along with distribution growth, taking the overall revenue to around INR 12,000 crore number in the next 4 years. Got it, sir. Very clear. Last question from my side. The repeat revenue contribution has now gone up to about 60%, which is about 9 percentage points higher from last year. On the flip side, we see that the new customer addition, which used to be 50,000 every quarter, has kind of come down to a number of around 40,000. We kind of have recalibrated the entry-level price points, but are there any more initiatives required to take that new customer addition back to 50,000, 60,000 levels? Right, Harish. Essentially, you are absolutely right in that observation. Essentially, a lot of growth that we are seeing right now is being ably supported by very strong repeat in our business. Fundamentally, the category is such that, see, they acquire a lot of customers in 28, 30, 32, that kind of age range. At that time, they start with lower ticket sizes, et cetera, but as they move, as they age, they actually start buying jewelry a lot more frequently, and their ticket size also increase. That is what explains a very sharp increase in repeat revenues, and I am saying absolute repeat revenues Y-o-Y as we have calculated. I think all new, that merchandise dislocation was real. We had sliced and diced our data in every which way. As we continue to fix that, I think we should see. We have over the last three to four months as we are fixing it, we are seeing an upward tick. We are actually comparing Y-o-Y numbers. I am looking more at month-on-month numbers. We are trending in the right direction and so on. All the signs, all the signals are pointing that we are moving in the right direction. As we fix it at scale, that merchandise dislocation, I think this should only keep on getting better from here. Thank you, sir, and all the best. Thank you, Harish. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Jay Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First one is, can you talk a little bit about the trends on lower caratage? Whether you are seeing any demand or interest for 9 carat, or is it still predominantly 18 carat and 14 carat? Any changes that you have observed now particularly since gold price largely stabilized for the past 2, 3 months? Yeah. So 9 carat is, Jay, we have not tried 9 carat so far. At some point in time we might, but right now we have not. We have done some experimentation with 14 carats. What we have generally seen is in lower price point, it helps plug that gap that got created. However, just lowering the carat is not the only strategy we have. We have done a lot of redesigning also in entry price points. We have created designs using new techniques, which actually give more sense to gold even while consuming lesser amount of gold. So they are on multiple dimensions. We have tried fixing that. We are trying to fix that gap. Caratage is definitely one experiment that we have done, and in some pockets it has done well, specifically in lower price point products. Sure. In terms of consumer sentiment for natural diamond studded jewelry, have you seen any improvement over the course of last 6, 9 months? Are you seeing any pickup in diamond caratage-led growth, when you look at your SSG numbers? I would love to understand a little bit more on this. Yeah. So, Jay, quite honestly, we had never seen lab-grown diamonds denting natural diamond demand also. While I understand that it created noise in the minds of the investors, especially with a lot of companies getting VC funding and so on, over the last 3 to 4 years, we had never seen any significant change in the behavior of our consumers just because lab-grown was around. I think that also largely is spread that the fact that lab-grown made its play in bigger solitaires. If you look at U.S. markets also, that was a category where it operated in India, that number of people who would buy 1 carat, 2 carat, 3 carat solitaires, that number was very small to begin with. That is essentially, I think that is where the lab-grown play happened, and for us particularly, that number was even less than 1% of our overall revenue. Hence, we never saw any dislocation. These trends that, okay, because of lab-grown, something came down and suddenly that shifted back towards natural diamond. We never saw the first shift or the second shift. Understood. Lastly, now that gold prices have stabilized, is there any thought process internally to increase hedging or will you still continue with 50% hedging? Jay, this is Rumit here. I think our hedge policy was never designed with a gold price per se in mind. Just to recollect, it is designed with a certain objective of risk management, which centers around liquidity, capital structure, and the P&L impact. Really these are the three metrics. Obviously it is not our business to predict gold prices because any change effectively means that we are taking a view on gold price higher or lower. We are consistent with our policy. There is no change. Sure. Thank you so much. That's okay. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Hi, Gaurav. Hi, Rumit. Congratulations on a very strong quarter. Gaurav, just a small follow-up firstly on that new versus repeat customer growth. I just wanted to check, you explained this, but according to you, what is an ideal growth that we should sort of target from new consumers? Maybe if you could share your view on that. These specific numbers are too micro. We should not be able to comment specifically with such specificity. Okay. Maybe some range or color if you can provide as in just for we analysts to sort of gauge as in what is higher. Is your performance actually tracking well on the new customer side as well? Obviously, the growth variation can be there between repeat and new, but ideally, what is a good range, at least if you could highlight from a growth perspective? Devanshu, I think you have to see both sort of in context because what also happens is that as our store cohorts start to mature and a larger and larger part of the cohort is maturing, and if you look at our consumer base, it's almost close to 1 million customers, right? And they are aging. So it's not that there is a certain number or a mix that we are trying to get at. I think our objective is to be able to grow both, continue to acquire new customers as well as drive the repeat base. And the repeat base is going to become larger and larger just from a mathematical fact that now we have about 1 million consumers and our store cohorts are aging. When the vintages are young, so if you look at the broader trend line from an SSG perspective, there are basically three vectors that drive the SSG, which is your new recruitment, repeats, and AOV. Now the older the cohort, the more driven by repeat and AOV. Younger the cohort, more driven by new customers. So I think you should look at both independently and there is no target mix. I think at a broader level, the objective function is to obviously build more market share and keep adding more consumers. So I think both kind of go hand in hand in that context. Got it. Secondly, sir, this quarter, I guess our store sizes are around 4,500 sq ft. So whatever you have opened. Is this the new normal that we should expect for future stores as well? Also checking if there is any change in investment per store in these larger stores, if you could sort of comment on that. I think as we mentioned earlier, incrementally as we get into tier 2, tier 3, the rentals are much lower and that is why we take a larger space. All of this is not operational square feet. This is basically the incremental capacity that we are building for the kind of store productivity we are able to see in our older cohorts. Second, from a rental perspective, on the absolute level, and we look at it on an absolute cost per store rent, per store revenue, per store. Those unit economics don't really change materially. The operational square feet is still in the broad territory that we've seen historically. It doesn't impact the unit economics. We get a bigger frontage and at the same cost, and it creates more capacity for absolute revenue productivity. Sure. Sir, lastly, this time around, our growth has been better versus the competition. I'm talking about the immediate competition, not the general jewelry sort of industry. Any few things which you could highlight, which we are sort of doing differently, which is helping us gain maybe share in the category that we operate in? Yeah, I think, see, at the very core, it's a focus on designs. Contrary to how almost everyone operates, we still continue to believe very strongly in designs and hence the focus on creating differentiated designs. I think this merchandise dislocation that we are fixing and there's still room there. That has supported our growth well. Probably more importantly, over longer horizon, as Rumit also pointed out, we are not saying that, okay, we are only in for lower price point, we are only for higher price point and so on. What we believe is that getting customers to love you, to love your products in this category and try to trust you is one of the biggest challenges. Once we've overcome that challenge, our endeavor is to actually generate more and more repeat, more and more business from the same customers. Now, for that, we also need to grow when the customers are growing. So a person in her 30s, she might be buying a INR 30,000, INR 40,000 ring. But when the same customer is, let's say 45, 50 years old, she might actually be buying a INR 4 lakh, INR 5 lakh, INR 6 lakh product also because she's just doing much better in life. She has more disposable income, et cetera. So our endeavor is to also grow our selection, our offerings, as our customers are also aging. So I think very clear focus on all these facets and not kind of trying to bucket ourselves for a smaller use case. Those are the things that are going to continue supporting our growth over very long term. Got it, Gaurav. Thank you for taking my questions. All the best to that. Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question, please press star and one. We take the next question from the line of Kaivalya Beng from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Gaurav. Hi, Romit. Am I audible? Yes, please go ahead. Yeah. So two questions from my end. Firstly, on gross margin, this quarter, we are seeing a meaningful expansion of 100 basis points. This is excluding the inventory gain, which I am talking. We saw a similar situation in 3Q where the studded share had actually declined, but back then it was mere 20, 30 basis points of expansion. Could we just throw some color on the drivers behind this? Yeah. So, see, I think through the quarter there are some product mix changes in terms of studded share and what type of studded got sold, et cetera. But I would not read too much into the gross margin trends. I think what is important is to look at broadly the gross margin and contribution margin, which is a more relevant metric, has been largely stable. Really the focus here is on the operating leverage. And if you look at our broader operating EBITDA performance, I think we are already at 7.5%. There has been a significant expansion that we have been seeing for the last several quarters. And from a directional perspective, as over the next four years we get to INR 12,000 crores and scale-driven operating leverage will continue to flow through. So there is massive headroom to expand the operating EBITDA margin from 7.5% to the 15% handle. So a stable sort of contribution margin with scale-driven and vintage-driven operating leverage will continue to drive the EBITDA. I think that is really the big operating story out here. Understood. Secondly, sir, now when we move into the second half, we will be lapping a very sharp gold inflation, nearly 80% in 3Q, and I think 60%, 65% in 4Q. Do you think that poses an inherent headwind as to our growth prospects into the second half? I don't believe so, Ryan. Our view on this thing is totally contrary to how the market behaves, because that's what I saw in our data. In fact, last year's Q3 was the slowest quarter in our history for us, and that was when the gold rose sharpest. When gold remains range-bound, it's even better for us. Basically, the volume part of the aspect shall make up the- Ours is not a volume business. A person comes to buy a INR 30,000 product, that person has come to buy a INR 30,000 product. Just because gold has increased, let's say the gold has doubled, those customers that generally transact with us, their budget does not increase. They don't have more disposable income because gold has doubled. Now, there are other people who generally buy with the intent of investing in that. People who say that, "Okay, every year I'll buy a 10 gram gold coin." Next year if 10 gram is double, they'll spend double. But they are not constrained by their wallet size. They have a fixed budget in mind. Right. It doesn't matter. In fact, it makes it even more difficult for them because they don't find as great an assortment that they could have found last year. Oh, sure. Got it, sir. Lastly, sir, could you just tell me the inventory figure at the end of June, if that's possible? Romix? It's about INR 2,800 odd crores. INR 2,800 odd crores. Understood. Thank you, sir. That is all from my end. Wish you the very best for future. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Ankush Agarwal from Surge Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my question. So first thing that I want to understand is, we have been maintaining that we have about 50% hedge at the inventory level. So wanted to understand, this 50% is purely for the gold inventory that we maintain or it is for the total inventory that we have, which includes the stones value as well? So largely there are two components for the inventory, gold and diamond. Diamond prices is a category that India uses and we operate in, the prices are super stable. As I think Gaurav had already alluded to the fact that our exposure in large diamonds or solitaires, which is where all the price movement, et cetera, happens, is negligible. So large part of, effectively, in terms of inventory, is gold and which is what we hedge 50/50. Okay. This 50% ratio includes GML or that is separate? Yeah. GML is an instrument, right? So it is on the total basis. GML is also an instrument for hedging. So it is all included. Okay. Got it. The second thing I wanted to understand is, in the analysts meet, we have given this sort of a guidance of 50% revenue growth CAGR, and the math behind that, what we have shared is 30% SSG and 20% distribution growth. But honestly, if you have 30% SSG and if you do 20% distribution growth, that would not lead to 50% revenue growth, right? Because distribution does not add up the same amount of growth in the first or second year like what SSG does. If you add the 20% distribution, that might translate to 10%, 12%, 15% growth. So I am just trying to understand the math of this 50% number that we have shared. Sure, Ankush. You are absolutely right. That is not the way the numbers add up, and hence reported SSG is not what we were actually alluding to at that time. What we were actually talking about that time is that at maturity also, if stores keep on compounding at 30%, you tend to get there. Now, reported SSGs will always be different, because let us say stores which are in their absolute first year would show very high number on a low base and so on and so forth. I think the SSG that we were referring to there, and that we discussed also, we spoke about our oldest cohorts and their performance in year three, year four, year five, year six, and so on. Not the performance between year one and year two. If those continue to deliver at that, then the math works, but not on the reported SSG numbers. You are absolutely right. All right. So the understanding is that for you to report 50% growth, you are assuming that the reported SSG would be even higher than that. See, we not work on reported SSG per se. We work on more fundamental construct, and that was what we discussed at that time. Okay. Lastly, I would say you said INR 2,800 crores of inventory, right? As of Q1 end. That's right. That's right. Okay. That was all. Thanks. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Karan Gupta from AssetC Meta Investment. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I am audible, right? Yes, Karan, please go ahead. So, two questions. First on the inventory turnover side. As you shared the data of GMROI at the time of IPO. At the time you said inventory turnover, I think is not meaningful. How much gross margin we are generating on the inventory, that is something important. So GMROI is the metric that you shared. If you calculate the GMROI part across the years, last four years, that is declining from 62% that you shared at the time of FY23, is now I think 48% in FY26. Just want the clarification on that. We are not sharing the GMROI numbers, although we can calculate that on the given numbers. Please share the light on GMROI side. The second one is on the broader question on the operating leverage, that you said the gross margin expansion is happening and the EBITDA margin expansion is happening. So there is something on the fixed cost that is spreading across basically the revenue. But what about the variable part, manufacturing or the operational operating leverage, if you share some light on, in-house manufacturing we are doing and how much we can reduce the cost of that manufacturing part. So that is below the gross margin side. So that is two broad questions. Sure. I will take that. Firstly, on the GMROI bit, what happens is, if you look at the last three to four years, we have opened a significant number of stores, right? There are basically two vectors that drive the inventory turn. One is that, how many stores I have opened in the last one year, two years, three years, because as the vintage builds, the inventory turn and inventory productivity continues to expand. Second factor is what happens to the gold price. Because what happens is you report the balance sheet and you report the inventory number on the balance sheet date, right? Obviously there is a lot of gold price inflation, which has been the case for the last two, three years. To that extent, inventory levels look significantly higher and the consumer demand obviously moves up and down depending on how much the gold prices are moving, right? These are the two fundamental vectors. Now, on the first bit on our core inventory turns, I think in our investor day, we had shared a detailed mix of how inventory turns are trending across cohorts. As you would have noted that most of our cohorts are demonstrating very strong inventory turns anywhere between 1.8 to 2. Largely the blending that you are talking about is a function of how many new stores and what is the share of new stores in our broader portfolio. As we are growing distribution or adding stores on a larger base, the dilution of new stores is going to be significantly lower. We have already communicated that our blended inventory turns should continue to improve and over the next four years should go to the 1.7 mix kind of handle, which is already demonstrated. You will see improvement through this year as well. This year, inventory turn should get better. Thus, I think from a GMROI perspective, it is a little bit more mathematical that the decline is there. Fundamentally the construct of the ROCEs of our business have not shifted. To your second question on the manufacturing cost, I think in my answer to one of the questions that was asked earlier, I said the right metric to look at is the contribution margin, which actually captures the cost of production, cost of manufacturing, and some of the other direct costs. That is where the margins have been reasonably stable. As the build on the scale and as we move from INR 2,440 crores of revenue in FY 2026 to INR 12,000 crores over the next four years, you can see that there is a massive amount of scale benefit that we will continue to get both at the store EBITDA level as well as at the operating cost level, which includes A&P and operate cost. I think that journey will continue year after year for the next four years. How much in-house manufacturing we have? Broadly, all of it is in-house. About 95% of the products that we sell is manufactured in-house. 95%? That is right. Okay. How much it will benefit to the margin side as compared to the peers who has maybe 50%, 60% outsourcing? How much it will benefit in a long term, basically? There is about 300-400 basis point delta, but I think it's hard to put an exact number there because different products have different costs of manufacturing, different margin profiles. But I think it's important to take a step back and look at why we do manufacturing. It's not just a margin driver. Obviously, that is a benefit. But the objective function for manufacturing is that as we are completely design driven, and that is the biggest differentiator, which allows us to charge a premium pricing and get in more customers and continue to build and grow with those customers. The product differentiation over the long term can be retained if you control manufacturing. Otherwise, in a vendor driven ecosystem, your designs, eventually even if you give your own designs, there is a high risk that those designs get dissipated, get commoditized, get stocked with small tweaks in different stores across different brands and networks. Thus your long-term ability to charge a premium from a consumer perspective to get in more consumers and to maintain that differentiation, I think obviously gets harder. It's a very strategic call. It's not a margin driven or a cost call. Okay. Outlook for the store opening? I think we've guided to about 20% CAGR over the next four years in terms of distribution growth. Distribution as in area of distribution? By distribution, I mean stores. Distribution I mean stores. Number of stores. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Pallavi from Sameeksha Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you, sir, for taking my question. Just wanted to understand what would be the marketing spend this quarter versus last year's same quarter. First question. Yeah. Marketing spend this year was around INR 50 crores. I think it is around 6.9% of the overall revenues, and last year also it was around 6.9% of the revenues. However, you have to understand, marketing spend is something which I would generally encourage you guys to not look at a quarterly level because there's a certain There's some noise coming from background. Please, just put that person on mute. Yeah. Marketing spend should not be looked at a quarterly basis. The quarterly variations are going to be there, especially if you look at as a percentage of revenues, because revenue itself is very seasonal in our business, and marketing also has certain seasonality based on the properties available to us, based on opportunities available to us, and those two seasonalities might actually not go hand-in-hand. If you look at the overall marketing spend annually over last four years, we have taken that down from around 9.2% to 6.6% for last full year. For last four years, every year it has been falling in terms of percentage of the overall revenues. In absolute terms, we continue to increase it as we see that as a significant driver for getting more market share. I think going forward also that trend is only going to continue. We believe that over the next five years, this 6.6% will go down to around 4.5%, 4.6% odd percent. I think for this full year also, we should see a number which is better than last year's, something lower than 6.6%. But I think the overall guidance, the overall trajectory will be in that direction. At the same time, just a single quarter here and there, I would not read too much into that. Right. My second question would be, if I can have the inventory number in kgs. That is too competitive. We don't talk about that. We've given the value number already, and that anyway is the relevant number from ROCE perspective. That's all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time and fairness to others, we request you to restrict to two questions per participant. We take the next question from the line of Gopal Nawandhar from SBI Life. Please go ahead. Hi. Am I audible? Yes, please go ahead. Yeah. Thanks a lot and congratulations for a good set of results. Most of the questions already discussed. What I wanted to understand is, because in the last couple of days there is a decline in the gold prices. Are you seeing any change in the trends for exchange and all? Is it more fresh buys are coming or it is still the exchange that is still prevalent? Sure, Gopal Nawandhar. No significant change in just last 2, 3 days. In fact, I think that is very short-term to even base any long-term strategy. But I think over time what we are seeing is as gold continues to increase, the exchange has definitely picked up because the value of the gold that was sitting in households. We saw certain uptick in gold exchange also along with that import duty hikes, et cetera. So I think in general, the exchange this year is higher than, let us say, what it used to be. But no significant change, let us say, over last 1 to 2 weeks, not recently. In this environment, are you seeing more studded being sold in this softer gold price environment? Again, few percentage points here and there, but nothing material, Gopal Nawandhar. We see reasonable consistency in consumer behaviors. Store addition was a little softer in this quarter. Should we expect that annual run rate of 70, 80 to be maintained for this year? Yeah, Gopal. I think the store addition should not be seen on a linear basis. I think the broad timeline from a 20% distribution growth should largely be retained, and we expect that to be delivered through this year as well. Okay. Sure. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Varun Singh from AlfAccurate Advisors. Please go ahead. Yeah, thank you. Sir, my first question is, I did not quite get the logic behind the 50% growth aspiration and the math of 30% SSG plus 20% area expansion growth. If you can just elaborate on that. Secondly, if you can help us understand what is the underlying reasoning for 20% area expansion growth, why not 14%-15% and a much faster acceleration in the margin profile? If you can throw some light on this part also. Thank you. Yeah. I think that 50% math, if it works on fundamental SSG, not reported SSG, that I already explained in response to one of the questions. I will not Vihan, there's some noise. Can we just make sure that everyone else is on mute? That math- Sorry, what's the difference between fundamental SSG and reported SSG? See, reported SSG is a mix of essentially, let's say, when the stores are just starting up. So in their 14, 15 months, because the base is small, the reported numbers would have a higher number because of that. What I mean by fundamental SSG is rather- it's not fundamental, it's actually long-term SSG. Basically, what we discussed on our investor day also was that the oldest of the cohorts actually continue to grow at 30% plus. So you are saying that in the maturity Right 30% SSG number that you are giving I am saying raw that's- Fundamental SSG that is not reported. No, that is SSG even at maturity. The reported SSG would be slightly higher than that because of the new stores that have just come up. That math is not essentially what you can do on the fundamental numbers. I think, see, if you look at the overall growth also, this quarter also is closer to 50%. In fact, historically, we had comfortably delivered 50% growth, say, last year when the gold environment was kind of very, very difficult, the gold volatility, et cetera. We continue to feel very comfortable with those numbers. What was the second part of your question? The second part of the question was why 20% area expansion. I- Why not 14%-15% and much sharper margin acceleration? What is the necessity? Right for faster area expansion given that we are operating in an offline space unlike Yeah a typical Understood quick commerce company. Understood. Here's the thing. I think for that you'll have to understand the operating leverage of the business, probably a little more fundamentally. If you look at the expansion that came in last one year, a big chunk of that expansion, actually, operating leverage, that expanded around 6.5 percentage points last year. The bigger chunk of that actually came from scale expansion and not store-level profitability expansion. If you have more stores, your marketing spends and your corporate expenses also continue to shrink. In fact, over next four years, when we are saying that it's going to go from 7.5% to close to 15%, the bigger chunk of that will come from scale and not a store-level operating profit. That will be delivered with a sharper or the stronger distribution growth, not with a lower distribution growth. I think higher distribution. Someone can say 25% also. Why go at 20%? Why not 25%, right? This is essentially our call. This is the data, et cetera, that we see. I think our base assumption that if we grow slowly or if we grow slower, our operating leverage will show up sooner. That base assumption itself is flawed because that bulk of that operating leverage is not sitting at store-level EBITDA. It is actually sitting at corporate-level EBITDA. We take the next question from the line of Harsh Shah from Bandhan AMC. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Gaurav, and hi, Romit. Gaurav, your AOV for the quarter is- Harsh, I am sorry to interrupt you, but if you could please use your handset because your audio is too low. Sure. Can you hear me now? Yes, it is loud and clear. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, Gaurav. My question basically was that our company AOV is close to INR 78,000 this quarter. What would be the AOV for our repeat customers? See, repeat, specifically for this quarter, I do not have that number. But repeat typically is higher than new in general. What would be the differential, Gaurav? Let's say on a FY26 basis or let's say full year basis, differential would be around I think repeat AOVs would generally be 20%-30% higher than new. Okay. Basically These are still blends, right? Even average order value there is a blend. Correct. I think the bigger trend is the. Yeah. When you look at the cohort of, let's say, repeat customers who are in the five-year cohort versus three-year cohort versus, let's say, two-year cohort, right? What would that different? I mean, how? It continues to expand. In fact, that was the point I was coming to, right? All these averages actually depend on a lot of things. If you are not doing, let's say, well in lower price band, then also your AOV will increase, and so on. AOV itself is not the right metric to look at, and the right metric is to look at the cohorts. As people are maturing, are they buying more frequently, and are they buying higher ticket size? Do we have the right products to offer them? I think that continues to be the focus of the company, and I think the broader trend is the longer the people spend with us, the consumers spend with us, higher their AOV is. Got it. Gaurav, frequency-wise, how would that be different, let's say, a five-year-old cohort repeat customer in terms of frequency, let's say, in FY26 versus let's say a two-year-old customer? How would that be different? Yeah. I think a certain frequency gets established, and from second, third year onwards, that does not change much. Okay. Got it. This AOV, if we slice and dice in metro Tier 1, Tier 2, let's say, would that be materially different or would that be in the same ballpark as the company average? Like I said, I do not have the number. In general, I have not seen too much deviations. Okay. Across tiers. Across tiers, I've not seen much deviations. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Ashish Kumar from Infinity Alternatives. Please go ahead. Thank you. Congratulations for good set of numbers. Just wanted to understand a little bit more on the inventory. I think the inventory from the last quarter has gone up by INR 600-700 crores. What would be the reasons, and when do you expect this to come back to I think the last quarter we had mentioned that it will come back, hopefully, because of once the gold price is stabilized. So when do you expect it to go back? Medium-term, what do you see inventory to turnover ratio? If you can maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I think just the correction in inventory has not gone up by INR 600-700 crores. March inventory was INR 2,650 crores. Obviously, we've added stores, et cetera. To the second part of the question, I think more fundamentally, if you look at our cohort-level performance, our older cohorts are already at 1.8 to 2 inventory turns. Initially, when a new store is opened, you start at a certain inventory level, and as the SSSG continues to build in that store, it reaches to a normalized 1.8 to 2 kind of turns. That is where the broader trend line is. The reported inventory turn is a function of what is the mix of younger stores, what is the average age of the broader portfolio. Given where we are in our journey, a large part of our big distribution build in terms of the dilution coming in from new stores is going to be lower and lower incrementally, and the vintage of my base will continue to expand, which will keep trending this inventory turn to the direction of 1.7, 1.8. So that is where we will get to. You should see continuous improvement, right? Obviously, gold price is something that is external. But all else being equal, on a like-for-like basis, we should continue to see movement towards that 1.7, 1.8. At those kind of levels, the store-level ROIs that our business generates is in the range of 40%. I think these are store-level ROIs that our older stores are demonstrably generating. As Mr. Gaurav Singh Kushwaha had already mentioned, even those stores which are at 40% ROIs are still incrementally doing SSSG, and even we have seen in this quarter in line or better than the company averages, right? Which means that the growth momentum just does not stop even in the older cohorts. So we feel quite comfortable and extremely confident of the progression that our cohorts are making and the expansion in the broader inventory turn, which will continue over the next four years, each year. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Shrinarayan Mishra from Baroda BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Hi. My first question on rent expense. Year-on-year total store area has- Sri Narayan, I am sorry to interrupt you, but your audio is not clear. Could you please use your handset? Is it better? This is a bit better. Please go ahead. Our total store area has expanded by 25.5% Y-o-Y, while rent expense has grown by 35%. There is a gap of 9.5%, which will have an element of annual escalation as well. But given that we are expanding in tier 2 and 3 cities, ideally, this gap should have been lower even after incorporating the annual lease escalation. So why this number seems to be higher? If you can throw some light. Yeah. As I was explaining in one of the responses to a question asked earlier, in our category, all the unit economics, productivity, cost structures, et cetera, we look at it at a per store level. While the rent per sq ft in a tier 2, tier 3 might be lower, on an absolute basis, we take up larger space. It also gives us greater frontage, greater visibility. There is a lot of advertising that we run even on our store frontages, which acts as billboards, et cetera. Fundamentally at a per unit cost level or a monthly rent basis or an annual rent basis, it is not very different as we get into tier 2, tier 3. Second part is that given the revenue productivity that our older cohorts generate and the revenue productivity that we see at the store levels, rent as a percentage over a period keeps coming down, and it becomes, over time, a very small number in the overall store-level unit economics. Really, unlike most other categories where merchandise is a function of square footage, the revenue productivity is a function of square footage. That is not really the case here, right? Given the size of the individual products and inventory. That linkage, I think, is not the right way to look at it. I think a per-store kind of unit economics is the best way to see it, and I think that is reasonably stable. Mm-hmm. What is the annual lease escalation that is built in? Typically about 3%-5%. 3%-5%. To your point that the store sizes are bigger in Tier 2 and 3 cities, that is why I was comparing the area, square feet area, not the number of store counts. Still, there is a gap. This is what I am not able to correlate. No, but at our scale, there are different mixes, right? And different localities, which locations those stores are in. I think best is to just do a per-store-based matrix, and you will see that number is very stable. Okay, got it. And last very short question on what would be the studded mix in this quarter? 57%. 57%. Thanks. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take that as the last question and conclude the question and answer session. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rumit Dugar for his closing comments. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining the call today. Look forward to seeing you through the quarter, and on the next quarter's call. Bye-bye and have a good day. Thank you, sir. On behalf of BlueStone Jewellery and Lifestyle Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.