Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ayush Agarwal from the Investor Relations team. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thanks, Rayo. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Ayush from the Investor Relations team. I welcome you all to the Britannia earnings call to discuss the financial results of Q3 2024-2025. Joining us today on this earnings call is our Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Varun Berry, Executive Director and CEO, Mr. Rajneet Singh Kohli, Executive Director and CFO, Mr. N. Venkataraman, Chief Commercial Officer, Sales and Replenishment, Mr. Vipin Kataria, Chief Manufacturing and Procurement Officer, Mr. Manoj Balgi, and Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Amit Doshi.
The analyst deck is uploaded on our website. Before I pass it on to Mr. Varun Berry, I would like to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement in the presentation. Over to Mr. Varun Berry with the remarks on the performance.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this conference call, so let me jump in straight away. I would say that it's been a really good quarter in very challenging circumstances, and we'll come to the details, so on the first slide, actually slide number four in the deck, you will see that our 12-month growth is 6.5% on revenues, and profit after tax is 4.8%, and for a 24-month period, the same number is 8.8% on the top line and 1.6% on the PAT.
Now, moving to the next slide, which is the challenge that I was referring to, it's been an extraordinarily high inflationary environment. If you look at the CFPI, which is the food inflation, it was almost at double digits in this quarter.
If you were to look at some of the key food, so if you were to look at cereals, it was about 6.5%. Oils and fats were almost at about 15%. And similarly, vegetables and fruits and everything was pretty high single digits or double digits. Our inflation for the block of commodities that we buy, for us, was approximately 11%, with the RPO being, and I'll come to the details in a bit, but RPO and Cocoa were leading this inflation. If you were to look at what the government is projecting as the GDP growth, it's been the lowest GDP growth that we've seen in a bit.
The real GDP growth is at 5.4%, and the nominal GDP growth is at 8%. Now, according to the government estimates, recovery is expected in the nominal growth to 10.5% in H2, and I'll come to that on the next slide. Basically, what the government is projecting is that the agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fishing is going to go up from the first half being at 7.5% to almost 12% in the second half of the year. And similarly, manufacturing going up from 5.5% to 7.5%, which is going to lead the recovery as far as the GDP growths are concerned.
The bottom slide just takes us into a little more detail, so I will not dwell on that slide. But the private final consumption expenditure is also expected to increase on a real basis to 7.8% and on a nominal basis to 13.7%.
And if that was to happen, then it certainly will bring about a certain change in the conditions that exist in the country. Moving on to the next slide, we've been going through a phase which is a phase of inflation, deflation, inflation, deflation. So towards the beginning of the year, it seemed that the environment is not going to be inflationary, and we had taken pretty steep price increases towards the last year. So we started to correct, and as we were doing that, there was a huge inflation which came at us, and we have now started to take the price increases.
So if you were to look at our revenue growth and our volume growth, they are almost at par, which shows that we have not taken any price increase till now. But as we speak, we've started to take price increases which are going to make sure that we are able to take this in our strides. Now, this slide is about market shares. We've had a flattish market share year, and that's predominantly because of the ups and downs that we've seen in our prices. And once this moves in the right direction, I think our trend on market share is also starting to look good.
The exit to the year is looking very positive, so we are hoping that that continues. Now, getting back to the strategic pillars, so let me just go through these one by one. On distribution, we have moved up on expanding our direct distribution. We have moved from March 2024 of INR 27.9 lakh outlets to INR 28.8 lakh outlets. And even our rural distributors have moved up from 30,000 to 31,000.
Our focus states are doing much better than the rest of India. That continues to be our growth engine. The next slide is on our route to market. So the route to market has two elements to it. One is how do we deal with the emerging channels, and second is what do we do to urban retail, which is our large cities and the retail distribution, the up and down the street accounts that we have. How do we get them to grow at a faster pace? Because these are the accounts which are also challenged by the emerging channels. So the first part on the left is about e-com and how do we do it.
We've developed an in-house capability to have a model in place which will capture data-based consumer insights, which will then lead to personal content for consumers.
This is doing really well for us. This is a segment which is growing pretty well. The second part is about the urban retail and rewriting our route to market. There are actually five parts to this. One is how do we leverage high potential outlets and service them in the way that we would want to. There are some outlets which require higher service frequency. There are some outlets which do not deserve the kind of frequency they get. So how do we right-size the service frequency for these outlets? Second is how do we upscale our salesman capability so that they can deal with these outlets in the right way?
Third is about upgrading our technology to provide the right productivity to the company. Fourth is to increase feet on street as the frequency levels require modification.
So it's something that we've been working on, and it's in a pilot stage, but I can tell you that these are giving us good signs and good results. So we are looking at scaling this up in the quarter that we stand today. And we are also looking at a refresh for our route to market for rural so that we can bring even a better way of servicing our rural customers. Moving on to the next slide, which is about the sustained investments in brand.
Now, what we focused on is critical growth brands and innovation. And what we've also done is we've done some higher impact social media activation so that they can bring better productivity to our advertising efforts. And there are a lot of these products that we've launched, a lot of these promotions.
I'm not going to, again, talk about each one of these, but these have given us really good connection with the consumers, especially our digital campaigns. We've also done some tactical consumer promotions. There's one product which is missing on these slides, which is the Pure Magic Choco Frames, which was launched towards the end of the last quarter, which is the quarter in question.
This is a Harry Potter-themed product, a very exciting product, which is a biscuit and a slab on it with the Harry Potter houses as different biscuits having different houses on it, and this is only for e-com and modern trade, but it's giving us really good results. Now, getting to the next slide, which is on some of our adjacency products as well. We've had some very exciting products. We've got a layer cake, which is dual-flavored.
We've launched a rusk, which is a INR 5 pack. We never had a INR 5 pack in rusks. And there are a lot of the biscuit products which we've launched which are doing quite well. Our innovation pipeline is also catering to regional preferences and is helping us drive premiumness. For our adjacency business, again, some very exciting products. In croissant, we've launched a triple chocolate croissant. Sorry about that. We have a full cake relaunch coming up. We've started to roll it out.
Very exciting new graphics, very exciting recipes, products which are beating competition by a mile. And hopefully, that's going to give us the right flip for our entire cake portfolio. And similarly, cheese, we have a relaunch for our entire cheese portfolio, which is coming up.
We've started to roll that out as well with new graphics and new recipes which are better than competition in every format. For our drinks, the season is upon us, and we are coming up with a very good campaign on Winking Cow. We've also got a very exciting product, which is the Winking Cow Grow, which is an INR 20 product, which is flavored milk, which is fortified with 16 nutrients, which is basically vitamins and minerals which support growth for children, also provide energy metabolism as well as strengthen the immune system.
That product has also been rolled out. It's going to be a very exciting season for us as far as drinks are concerned. International business continues to perform well across, and we are hopeful that that will continue. Moving on to the next slide, which is on cost leadership.
This is, again, an engine which is working really, really well. We've been presenting this to you forever, but let me just reinforce this one more time. The elements of our cost savings are on the left-hand side. So again, you can see what are the elements that we focus on. In 2013, 2014, it used to be 0.7% of our revenue, and in this year, it's going to be 2.5% of our revenue. We've scaled it up deliberately, obviously, because of the inflationary trends that we are seeing, and we are hopeful that this will continue even as we get into the next year.
The next slide is on ESG. We've been recognized by Times Now for our ESG impact. We've also been recognized by SKOCH ESG Awards for a silver on it. We've also had a campaign which has amplified our messages.
It's been a campaign which has been very well received. You can see it in the upper part of the slide. It's a campaign around trees, which is highlighting a milestone for Britannia's ESG journey around 100% plastic neutrality as well as energy efficiency and water stewardship. So there's a lot of news which is being created because of this campaign. Moving on to the next slide, which is on commodity inflation. As I was saying, for flour, there has been a 4% inflation, but this 4% would have been higher had we not had the forward buying that we've done on flour.
Palm has been a 43% inflation, and that too, despite our forward buying. So palm oil has been a very, very high inflation. Sugar is flat. Cocoa is at 103% inflation. Laminates is nominal at 3%, and corrugated boxes are at 15%.
Our inflation for our products that we buy is about 11%. This would have been at least 2%-4% higher had we not done the forward buying, and we hadn't had that advantage of that forward buying. Moving on to the next slide. On cost and profitability front, in the last five years, we've had a total inflation of INR 4,000 crores, right? And we've dealt with it in the right way. It was a one-way street for two years, and then it started to move up and down. And that's why we've had price decreases in the beginning of this year, and now we've started to do price increases for the last four, five months.
We've dealt with this situation very well, and we are at a stage where we've taken all the necessary price increases which are going to get us to a stage where we counter the inflation, and if this inflationary trend continues, if we have to take slightly more price increases, that will be decided as we move into the next year, but we are very well prepared to be able to counter the inflationary trends. We are also doubling down on our cost efficiency, as I said.
We are planning to make sure, and as I keep repeating every time, these cost efficiencies and cost savings, they start with zero on the 1st of April, and whatever has been achieved ends with the year, and there are new cost savings that come up every year.
So we are, again, looking at a 2.5% for next year and hopefully even more than that. We have focused investments on innovations and on adjacencies. Some of the adjacencies have been doing very well. Croissant has been growing very high double digits. Our milkshakes have been growing double digits, and similarly, wafers, etc. So we've been seeing traction as far as adjacency businesses are concerned, and we will continue to drive those. Our outlook, we are closely monitoring the commodity prices, as I said, and we are making sure that we are dynamic in the actions that we take.
We are also vigilant to competitive pricing. We do not want to be completely out of whack, but it seems that the entire industry is facing a steep challenge, and it's all moving in the right direction.
Our strategy will remain focused on driving our market share and also sustaining our profits as we've done in the past. Now, getting to the financials, revenue trends I've spoken about, so I'm not going to repeat that again. A 6% growth, operating profit up 3%. And finally, on the last slide, net sales up 6.5%, profit before tax up 3%, and profit after tax up 4.5%. And if you were to look at the ratios, the numbers have moved up in the last three quarters, and we are at profit after tax of 13%. So with that, I will end my presentation and open the house for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions 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 handsets while asking questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from Abneesh Roy from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. My first question is on the current very high inflation. So my specific question is, in the popular price point of, say, INR 5 and INR 10, till now, how much grammage cut you would have taken because there you can't increase prices? And on the larger packs, how much pricing you have already taken? And given you have forward cover, you did say that almost 200 basis points kind of a saving comes from there, and you have seen a 600 basis points gross margin erosion.
The local players would have seen, obviously, higher erosion. So what's the pricing happening at the local players level if you could clarify on that? That's the first question.
Our total price increase that we've taken currently is approximately about INR 100 crores in quarter three, which would, in percentage terms, Venkat would be. 2%. It's about 2%, but it's progressively going up. By the end of the year, we will be at about 4%-4.5% price increase. So 4.5%, let's say, exit of this year. The inflation, you're right. The inflation for the local players will be higher because of the muscle that we have in terms of forward buying, etc. But as I said, Abneesh, the issue has been this year, nobody was clear on whether it's going to be a deflationary year or an inflationary year.
We started with the feeling that it's going to be a deflationary year, and then it started to turn on us, and hence, everyone's been late to the party to increase prices. But as we speak, everyone is becoming alive to the fact that this inflation is not going away, right?
First, there was this feeling that palm oil duties, which have been imposed by the government, will be temporary and will go away, but no, now we know that it's not going away. Also, the feeling was that Cocoa prices will start to normalize. Wheat prices, white wheat prices, will normalize a bit because the season is on us, but all of that has not normalized, so people are now very clear that unless they want to destroy their profits, it is going to be important, so I think there is action which we can see in the marketplace.
In the competition, Varun, could you talk about some of the new players? Amul, there is some presence. I'm sure distribution is very weak. If you could talk about Reliance also, they have tied up with a Sri Lankan player. So any worry you will have from a medium-long-term perspective? Not current, but would you be worried because these are large players?
Not really, Abneesh. We haven't seen any signs of worry at this point in time. And if we do see something, we will obviously react at that point in time. But no, at this time, the brands are also very important, Abneesh. It's very difficult to just come in and work on one element, which is price, and get away with it. And we've had price competition in this segment forever, right? But brands have always stood their ground. But right now, we don't see any challenge.
Sure. Last question. On the adjacencies, you have been quite aggressive the past few years in terms of innovation, etc. If you could tell us in terms of numbers, what's the impact of Croissant? Very strong double-digit growth, Rusk now, INR 5 pack. So what's the idea behind that, if you could talk about? And e-commerce, my sense is e-commerce should be very helpful to adjacency because a lot of these products are more attuned to that.
If you could discuss both e-commerce impact, benefit to this, and in terms of numbers as a percentage of revenue, if you could tell us how things have moved over the last three years.
So Abneesh, you're hogging the space, but I'll answer this. So well, the point is that e-com has been, especially to new products, not just for adjacency. Adjacency, it's been very helpful, but even for some of the new products that we've launched, it's been very helpful. And the contribution to some of the segments is much more. So for example, biscuits is 4% as far as e-commerce is concerned or slightly lower than 4%. But let's say I'm just giving you one or two numbers so that you get an idea.
For croissant, it's 17%. For cake, it's 9%, right? For dairy, it's 11%. So the numbers are much more for the adjacencies. Okay? Thank you, Abneesh.
Thank you. Next question is from Percy Panthaki from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Firstly, can you just call out the quantum in INR crore of the one-off in staff costs and give some idea as to what is going to be the staff costs in the coming quarters if there is any one-off going to be there or not, and if not, what is the quarterly run rate for the staff cost on a normal basis?
Right. So I'm N. Venkataraman here. So employee cost for quarter three had the impact of provisioning for the stock appreciation rights. So this is based on the share price as at the end of last quarter and the current quarter. So last quarter end, the share price was INR 6,338. That became about INR 4,762 as of 31st of December. And that had an impact of about INR 75 crore in the quarter.
So basically, there was an increase in staff cost in the last quarter, and there is a decrease, so it's all evened out. Yeah. So it's just.
So every quarter, depending on the share price, this will go up or down, is it?
Correct. For a stock appreciation rights, that is the way it happens. Yes. It's been volatile. I mean, it's been there from SAR scheme has been there from 2021, but it's been very volatile in the last couple of quarters. It was never there like that before.
But it all evens out in the end. So it's not like, yeah.
Sure. Secondly, just wanted to understand on the price increases. In the last quarterly call, you had mentioned that we are putting through 5%-6% price increases, which will happen cumulatively over Q3 and Q4. Most of it would happen by February. Now you're saying that by end of Q4, you will have only 4.5% instead of 5%-6%, while at the same time, the cost inflation has actually been higher than what we could envisage at that point of time. So why this hesitation to take the price increase, which you had already planned, and actually even more is necessary?
There's no hesitation. It is a necessity today. And you're right, exactly right. There will be a 6% price increase. We've already taken in Q3, 2%. In Q4, it's going to be another 2.5%. And then in Q1, which is going to be the Q1 of next year, it's going to be another 1.5%. So cumulatively, it's going to be 6%-6.5% price increase.
Okay. And with this six, sorry, yeah, please continue.
Yeah, the 11% inflation that we spoke about in commodities equates itself to 6.5%. It requires to be balanced. It requires 6.5% price increase.
Got it. Got it. But just to clarify, if there is an 11% inflation in commodities, at a rupee value, it might require 6%. But in order for you to maintain your gross margins, it would require an 11% price increase. Is that interpretation correct?
Well, yes.
As a percentage, yes.
Maintain the percentage, yes. But in absolute, to maintain the profitability, it requires 6%-6.5%.
Got it. Got it. So here is my.
Cost efficiencies, yeah.
Understood. Understood. So here was my concern. I don't know how much you can eke out from cost efficiencies, but here was my concern that basically in biscuits, since a lot of the pricing happens through grammage changes, the price increase doesn't fully translate to a higher top line. And therefore, if the margins are not maintained, the absolute profit itself takes a beating. So do you think that with the cost savings, you will be able to go back to that 17%-18% kind of EBITDA margins by Q1 once all your pricing is through?
Now you're talking about profit margins which we had during COVID and stuff like that. Maybe not 17%-18%, but we will make sure that our spine remains vertical and we are able to provide the right growth as far as profits are concerned. So if you were to look at it, 6%-6.5% price increase, 2.5% is going to be the cost efficiencies that we are going to work on. And there will be other opportunities that we are looking at at this point in time. So we will make sure.
We've been doing this forever, and we will also make sure this time that we will be able to provide the right growth as well as the right profitability to the business.
Got it. I think, Varun, the disconnect is I think you're talking about EBIT margins and I'm talking about EBITDA. I think your EBITDA margins peaked out at around 20%, and I'm talking about 17%-18% on EBITDA.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah. I got it.
So that should be doable, right?
Yes, yes.
Okay. That's all from me. Thanks very much.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from Mihir Shah from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi sir. Thank you for taking my question. So firstly, on the volume front, so how should one think about the impact of volume with this 6.5% pricing that is likely to happen? Can you help understand this volume trend that we are seeing, including the grammage reduction can sustain and the impact of the same?
Volumes do take a beating when there is a price increase. There is arbitrage between volumes and revenues. But we've been growing. Actually, if you look at last quarter, we grew at almost 6.4%. It's almost the same as our revenue growth. So our volume growths were pretty good. Yes, there will be a little bit of arbitrage which will come through, but that's fine. You've got to do what you've got to do.
Got it, sir. So I want clarification on gross margins. Can one assume the peak of the input cost inflation in the margins is built into these quarter numbers, or were you consuming low-cost inventory, and going forward, there may be some high-cost inventory that you'll have to consume, and margins will continue to get impacted despite the price increases that you are taking?
Not so much. We've been yes, we did some forward buying, which helped us, as I said, to about 2%-3%. But now with the season coming on wheat, March, the season starts, so hopefully we will see some better prices as far as flour is concerned and some normalization. So I think it should be okay.
Got it, sir. So last clarification on the margin. So what is the margin range that you mentioned on the EBIT level? 17%? Did I get that correctly, sir?
I didn't mention any margin range. Which margin are you talking about?
Just to Percy's question, you had mentioned I got confused between EBITDA and EBITDA margin. If you can just reiterate what you mean.
I wasn't talking about EBITDA. I was talking about PAT.
Oh, you were talking about PAT margins.
Profit from operations.
Profit from operations.
What is the range, sir, you mentioned? Sorry.
So we will stay in the current range, I would say. That would be the range that we would look at, although we don't give any forward-looking forecasts. But I would say current range is what we would target.
Got it, sir. Thank you. Wishing you all the best, sir.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from Tejas Shah from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, yesterday, ITC and its press release highlighted intense competition from local players at biscuits, but our market continued to expand this quarter as well, so what are the key drivers that are working in our field?
Sorry? What are the key drivers? I guess our growths are coming through the strength of the brands as well as our distribution efforts. And we hope to continue with that.
Sure. So second, focus states are growing at two, 2.5 times versus the average for a while now. But at the aggregate level, we are not seeing the impact. It's not moving the needle yet. So what is the current contribution that we have reached of this pocket of growth, and at what point we'll see that this number will actually start driving the overall growth?
See, the focus states are still very small in terms of our overall revenues. And we still are our market shares in those focus states are half of what they are for the rest of the country. In fact, even less than half. So that's why the impact that you see is marginal at this point in time. As we keep now, as I've said in the past as well, we don't want to do any big bang strategies in these states. The big bang strategies would be reduce price and try to get share from competition.
We are not doing that. We are doing all the execution parameters, which is distribution, strengthening our brands, launching the right products for those markets, and gaining share in a way that it becomes sustainable rather than unsustainable in the future. But as these states are growing, at some stage, they will start to add a lot more to the overall country-level numbers as well.
Yeah. So Tejas, I'll open this side. So these states basically contribute about 15% to our overall revenue. And they've been growing at about 1.3x- 1.4x, which means that over a period of time from 12%-13%, they have moved to 15%-16%. These states are like we keep saying these are opportunity states because that's where the biscuit consuming population is, and we have got a market share which is under-leveraged, and therefore there is a lot of headspace. And like Varun said, I think the backbone that we want to build in these states is distribution-led, right, and brand-led.
And that's the impetus that we've been able to put forward, which is giving us this kind of growth, right? So the other very important aspect of these states is that they are almost 35% contribution to the overall rural category. And if you see our growths in rural, they are pretty healthy because our focus states are really firing for us. So I think apart from the level of contribution or salience, there are a lot of other impact areas that we see, and that's where we are working.
Thanks. Very detailed and clear. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Next question is from Latika Chopra from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Varun and team. Thank you for the opportunity. I wanted to get some more color on non-biscuits portfolio and how are you thinking about portfolio diversification over the next two, three years? If you can give us some color on how the salience of non-biscuits, it's growing at double digits, what kind of double digits? Is it profitable? What is the distribution opportunity which is still available, and also, how are you thinking about alternative snacking options? You had experimented with salty snacks in some markets. Just throw some color on how has been the reception.
Yeah. No. So first of all, the point is that if you look at our diversification, I think it's been pretty good. We have gotten into a lot more categories than we've ever been, right? So whether it's wafers or croissants or the cake formats that we've launched and all of the other products that we've launched have been pretty good. Now, we are in no hurry to get to 15 more categories because it doesn't make sense. I think it's important that we develop these categories, and that's what we are seeing. So if you were to look at it, today, our croissant business next year will cross INR 200 crores, right?
Our milkshakes business has already crossed INR 200 crores, right? So these are all numbers which have happened in the last two or three years, right, and growing pretty rapidly.
Now, the point is that the base of biscuits is very large, and it doesn't really show a large change in that, but if this was to continue and if we were to double it up, I think we will be in a very good place to be able to showcase the portfolio that we've created, and some of the categories are genuinely premium and have entry barriers which small competitors cannot cross, right?
Now, your question is on there will be products which will always be in experimental stage or pilot stage, and we will continue to make sure that we are diligent on those because Latika it doesn't make sense to do things in a bit of a rush because you will launch it, and then you will create confusion, throw the cat amongst the pigeons, and you will not be able to sustain the momentum from those categories. So salty snacks is one of those. We understand it's a very large category, but we also understand that it's a very competitive category.
Till we are able to feel absolutely confident of being able to sustain our competitive edge with the large competitors that we have, we will not launch it nationally, and that we are very clear about.
And frankly, it's not that we just launch it and leave it in the pilot stage in some of the markets. We experiment. We look at different formats. We look at different ways to market. We look at advertising, pull, push, what will work, more grams in bag, trips to mouth, all of that. So all these experiments are showing us what works and what doesn't work. Only when we are absolutely clear about it, we do not want to get into a large category like this without being absolutely clear of success.
So that is really my message to you, Latika. But I can assure you that on some of the categories, we are seeing very good momentum, and we are hoping that all of our categories are going to be moving in that direction. Yeah, Vipin.
So Latika, two more points. I think within biscuits, there are a lot of opportunities. So if you see cookies, which is one of the largest categories in biscuits, we have an immense opportunity in premiumization. And that are the launches that we were talking about even in the deck. So let's say we have launched fruit and nut, butter, jeera within cookies, which is showing very good initial signs. And in each of these categories, there is enough opportunity both on the differentiated and the premium end to keep adding more brands and sub-brands. There is another price point opportunity.
So let's say we talked about drinks where we are now coming up with an INR 20 SKU, which is a very large market, and our participation was only in the INR 35 or INR 40.
So I think while we will keep making sure that our adjacency business keeps accelerating, but I think within core, there are enough opportunities for us to keep moving the needle up.
Thank you. This is very detailed and clear. My second check was just on CapEx for FY25, and are there any thoughts on CapEx for FY26? Thank you.
Yeah. We are going to take the CapEx break, so to say. We have put up plans, and we will try and keep it as low as possible. It will still be what? About Venkat, about INR 200 crores?
For the next year?
Yeah.
Should be even lower.
Even lower, so INR 150 crores- INR200 crores is what we'll keep it at unless there is a volume increase. I don't think we need CapEx because we've got three new plants with new lines and capacity and headspace and all of that, so I think we are in a good place as far as CapEx is concerned.
Understood. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from Aditya Soman from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Just one question from me. I mean, on your sort of distribution revamp that you are doing, where are we on it? And in terms of the spends on that program, can you give us a sense whether there was an impact on profitability in the current quarter because of it?
See, the spends are going to be more related to how much we want to expand, right? So if we want to expand our two salesman model to, let's say, another 100,000, 200,000 outlets, from 250,000, we want to go to 400,000. That will cost us a little bit of money, but it will pay us back a lot more than that, right? And just to remind you, we are talking about this in urban retail, right? And urban retail is the channel which is the most profitable channel for us. That is 1.3 times the profit of the company, the urban retail channel. So if that channel grows, it only gives us tailwinds as far as profit is concerned.
Very clear. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from Amit Sachdeva from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you so much, My question, sir. Just one small question. I may have missed something, but does the employee cost, has there been some reorganization in the cost structure there?
No, there has not been any reorganization. It's just that last quarter, we had extra charge, which has got neutralized this quarter. So there's no reorganization.
So what's the outlook for that?
We've always been very conscious of our overhead costs, but no, there's no reorganization.
Can you talk about the outlook for staff cost in the coming year as well? What should be the YoY kind of outlook?
So we focus on making sure that our top-line growth, which I must confess that we've not been able to do in the last two years, but our principle is that if our top-line growth is X, our fixed cost growth or our people cost growth should be 0.75X. And that's what we will keep with so that we are leveraging our top-line growth.
Got it. Sorry. Is it flexible enough that you can maneuver around that, or how does that work?
No, there is no flexibility. It's just the planning. You've got to plan for.
Sure. Sure. Got it. So I just want to come back to you on the margin structure. If I understand correctly, the inflationary environment is going on, and the gross margin was 38 and a bit, which is perhaps one of the places. Do you expect this gross margin and the dynamic to give you 18% kind of? If I could relate back to previous participants' question as well, are you sort of trying to keep margins in the range of 18% or a bit of margin I'm talking about for the coming year?
How the earning dynamic that you see in terms of price increases, expected volume growth, and your obviously expectation cost? What I'm interested in that how in this context, how the earning dynamic would actually play out in the next three, four quarters?
See, we don't give any forward estimates, but as I had said, we are taking 6%-6.5% price increase, which will be enough to get our absolute profit up to level. And then on top of that, we will look at other cost-saving measures, etc., to make sure that we keep to the margins that we've got and we do not suffer any margin slip for our overall portfolio. But you've got to remember that we've negotiated through this kind of environment many times, and we've done it quite well, and we will continue to do so even in the future.
You're welcome. Thank you so much for this answer. Thanks a lot. And all the best.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from Harit Kapoor from Investec. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. So I just wanted to get your sense on the 6% volume growth. Would the biscuits, core biscuits business be in the similar range as this because your adjacencies have actually done quite well? So just wanted to get a sense on how biscuits run for in India biscuits specifically for this quarter.
It's about 5.5 %, so not a big difference. There's a delta because, as I said, the adjacency business is much smaller for us but growing faster. So the delta between the total volume growth and the biscuit volume growth is 0.8%-0.9%.
And your analysis of how industry would have grown, your belief would that you would have done better?
Yes, for sure. The exit numbers are certainly better. And even if you were to look at some of the public declarations on growth, etc., by some of the companies, it seems that we are ahead. Obviously, Nielsen gives us certain numbers, but they are based on taking a sample. When you look at the numbers declared by some of the public companies, it seems that we are certainly doing better than the others.
And my last question was on the pricing. I think the last time when we had this significant headwind on pricing or on inflation was, I think, fiscal 2023, if I'm not wrong, 2022, 2023. That time, the price increase was extremely aggressive. This time, it seems like you're slightly more measured on that. Is that really a function of market demand in your view, that you want to be a little bit more gradual as you put them in?
No. So we were measured because we were not clear where the inflationary trends are going from a deflation to inflation. And we were also hopeful. Actually, not just us, but the entire industry was hopeful that maybe the duties on fat, etc., will go away. But as our honorable finance minister has said, this is basically going to stay because they want to indigenize fats in India. So we are now clear that it's not going away. So now we are taking very decisive action on pricing.
All right. Those are my questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Lokesh Gusain from BOB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
My question is actually related to pricing. So I just wanted to understand. I know you mentioned that the removal of fat and crude duty was a factor, but were there any other factors or hurdles that stopped you from taking pricing? Because I think in the call you did mention that you were trying to take pricing by the end of January, 4%-5%. So what changed?
So we still are going to take 4.5% pricing by this quarter. So it will be, we've already probably taken 4% and another 0.5% towards the end of the quarter, 4.5%. So yes, we will continue to do that. But no, there were no other factors. See, pricing should never be the trigger for you. And we always take it as that. Pricing obviously impacts consumers. It impacts categories. It impacts everything. So pricing is always the last trigger for us. And that's why we kept it till we were absolutely sure that this inflation is not going to go away.
Understood, and just on efficiency, you mentioned you're going to double it this year, so are you already at the double run rate as of December end, or are you still on the way?
No. Cost savings are going very well for us. In fact, we probably will beat our targets that we've set for ourselves for the full year.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from Amnish Aggarwal from Prabhudas Lilladher. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I'll just answer the opportunity. I have a couple of questions. My first question is really regarding the staff cost. You mentioned that you had a INR 75 crores write back in the current quarter, and we had INR 50 crores provision in the previous quarter. So was there any element of that in Q1 also?
In what?
The staff cost, there is a provision for the settlement of options. Was there some provision made in 1Q also with regards to this?
Yes. There was a small number there as well. There was about INR 25 crores in the first quarter.
Okay. Because in the last two years in the annual report, there's INR 50 crore to INR 60 crore of provision which comes. So can we actually start showing this at a separate line item because it fluctuates on quarter-on-quarter basis?
It's not necessary to do that. It's an overall scheme of things for a company which is of this size. I don't think it's necessary to be shown separately. But whenever there is a blip, we always talk to you about it and highlight it.
Okay. So my second question is that you indicated that the big CapEx, your move is now over, and now you will be not spending more than a couple of hundred crores. So I believe that we have done a lot of CapEx. There might be some PLI-like benefits also because if you look at the first nine months of the year, our other operating income has nearly doubled. And in the current quarter also, it is up by 93%. So incrementally with the gains from this, we start tapering off. How should we presume this run rate to be on a quarterly or the yearly basis in the coming years?
No. So most of the CapEx gains that we get or the benefits that we get are for a much longer period of time. Yes, there are some plants which exhaust their incentives, but there are other plants. We've recently put up three large facilities: Ranjangaon, UP, and one, also in Bihar. Bihar? Bihta. And we've expanded our Odisha facility as well. So there are big incentives there as well. So no. Yes, there is some PLI incentive as well, but that is very small in the entire context of the company.
But if I look at the nine-month number, there's INR 373 crores of other operating income. So will this INR 125-odd crores of a run rate continue on a quarterly basis?
So we estimate that for the coming year, the incentives that we should be able to get, subject to our fulfilling certain conditions that are prescribed under PLI for that, we expect it to be on similar lines as current year.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Yeah.
Thank you very much. That was the last question in queue. I would now like to hand the conference back to Mr. Ayush Agarwal for closing comments.
Thank you, everyone, for spending time with us on the call today. We look forward to interacting with you all. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Britannia Industries Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect your lines.