Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Britannia Industries Limited Analyst Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines should be 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 an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ayush Agarwal from Investor Relations. Thank you, and our team's farewell.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. This is Ayush from the Investor Relations team. I welcome you all to the Britannia earnings call to discuss the financial results of Q4 2024-2025. Joining us today on this earnings call is our Executive Vice Chairman, Managing Director, and CEO, Mr. Varun Berry, Executive Director and CFO, Mr. N. Venkataraman, Chief Commercial Officer, Sales and Marketing, Mr. Vipin Kataria, Chief Manufacturing and Procurement Officer, Mr. Manoj Balgi, and General Manager, Marketing, Mr. Siddharth Gupta. 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. Berry with the remarks on the performance.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Without much ado, let me jump into the presentation. Page one basically is showing the trends, the forecasts that we are seeing. It shows the real GDP as well as the nominal GDP trending upwards. Similarly, for the real private final consumption expenditure as well as the nominal private consumption expenditure trending upwards in Q3 and Q4. We are hoping that these are clear signs of recovery of the slowdown that we've seen in the subsidiary industry. On that positive note, let me move on to our performance scorecard. In this quarter, we've seen a turnover of INR 4,376 crore, which was, on a 12-month growth basis, a 9% growth. If you look at a two-year number, it's a 12.4% growth.
Profit after tax, we've seen 12.8% of revenue for the fourth quarter, which is a 4% growth on a 12-month basis and a little flat-ish on the 24-month basis. Moving on to the next slide, which is the revenue from operations. The revenue from operations for the full year was INR 17,535 crore, which was a 6% growth on a 12-month basis and about a 10% growth on a two-year basis. Profit after tax was, again, 12.5% of revenue, which was a 3% growth year on year and a 12% growth on a two-year basis. Now, getting to our strategic pillars, which you are well aware of, but just reiterating those: distribution, marketing, innovation, JSON business growth, cost efficiencies, and sustainability. I'll cover these one by one. On distribution, we made good progress.
If you look at March 2024 to March 2025, our total direct reach has gone up from 2.79 million outlets to 2.87 million outlets. Even our rural distributors have gone up from 30,000 to 31,000. Next slide. We have also leveraged the new channels, e-com, namely. The e-com growth has been seven and a half times what it is in other channels. We have had some e-com only or e-com first launches. Pure Magic Choco Frames was one such launch, which was extremely successful, which was the theme was the Harry Potter theme. We saw some very good results just launching it with the e-com and good content. Moving on, we also had some very exciting campaigns.
On MariGold, we had a campaign which was a special edition pack, which we did with Agni Lakera, who is the first Indian woman to win two gold medals at the Paralympics. This biscuit was sized and etched with Agni's gold-winning targets. That was a very exciting campaign that we did. The second one was during the Maha Kumbh, we had Good Day tied up with Sky Point, which gave us good mileage in that very large event in the country. We also had some very exciting innovations in our adjacencies. We've launched Thinking Man's Grow, which is a very exciting product at a very attractive price, and that's doing quite well. It's just been two months, but we are seeing great traction on that product. We've also relaunched Cheese just about two months ago.
There again, some channels have started to fire, and we are hoping that the overall numbers will start to look much better than the previous year. We have also relaunched Cake. There again, it has just been a couple of months, but we are already seeing traction in all of the Cake products post the relaunch, which included not just the recipe and product enhancement, but also the entire pack graphics have changed. It is a very, very exciting combination of products that we have today, and they are doing quite well for us. Moving on to the next slide, which is on the other adjacent businesses. Croissant has been a very good growth for us, high double-digit growth, which is three times that we are seeing on biscuits. Similarly, on Wafers, Wafers have been a very good growth for us as well.
Cake I've already spoken about, and that's giving us very good traction. Rusk, again, we relaunched it with a new pack design, which is just about a month back. In fact, the products are just hitting the market as we speak. Again, the growths are back, and we've got high single-digit growth, and hoping to get these into double-digit as we move forward with the launch countrywide. I've already spoken about Cheese as well as the new launch in drinks. In international as well, we've seen profitability move up and growth coming back in some of the markets where they were sort of stymied in the last two or three years. We've started to see very good growth in some of these markets, and also the profitability has come back. As far as cost leadership is concerned, this program's, again, firing very well for us.
Our target was to get to apex of what we started with in 2013, 2014. This year, we went on overdrive because inflation had become pretty high, and we thought that we could do with some additional cost efficiencies and savings. We have been able to achieve more than that. 2024-2025 has been a 9X of what we started with in 2013, 2014. It has been a very good year for us, almost 2.5% of our overall revenue. On the ESG front, we have had some good milestones as well. Some of the KPIs, we have been plastic neutral for the fourth consecutive year. We have had 79% of our packaging plastic recyclable, which is an improvement of 17% versus last year. We have also had 75% of our laminate waste, which is recycled, which is an improvement of 23% over last year.
Britannia Nutrition Foundation today touches the lives of over 3,500 beneficiaries, and that's an improvement of 31% versus last year. We have assessed suppliers, 479 tier one suppliers. They have been assessed from an ESG standpoint, which covers 78% of our procurement spend. These are all very important and very crucial KPIs from our perspective, and we are making sure that we take this to the next level as we get into the next year. We have got some recognitions for what we have done, and these are all listed on the right side of the slide. I am not going to belabor those recognitions. Moving on, from a cost standpoint, we have seen aggressive inflation. If you look at flour, if you look at versus previous quarter, which was Q3 of 2024-2025, there was an inflation of 9%.
If you look at it from a year-on-year basis, there was a 12% inflation. Similarly, on palm, sequentially a 7% inflation, but year-on-year a 54% inflation on palm oil. Sugar was flat-ish. Cocoa was flat-ish sequentially or slightly down sequentially, but year-on-year was an 83% inflation. We are all aware of the cocoa story. Laminates was fine. It was a small inflation from a year-on-year basis. Milk, again, was an 11% sequential and a 21% inflation from a year-on-year basis. This clearly is a story where there was pretty aggressive inflation, which necessitated us taking some action on the pricing front, and that's what we did, which kept our profits in good shape. Now, from a cost and profitability front, price actions I've already spoken about. Cost savings I've already spoken about.
We doubled down on cost savings and made sure that we did more than what we'd planned. Media investments, we had to make sure that we do what was necessary. We focused on innovations and all the adjacencies and the crucial brands within our portfolio, focused on those, and we did what was necessary with those. From an outlook perspective, we obviously are very closely monitoring which way the commodity prices move. We are going through the phase when the new season wheat comes in. We're not very clear at this stage whether the inflation is going to be as far as wheat is concerned, but we are closely monitoring that and similarly other commodities as well. We are also very vigilant about the fact that we've taken pricing and making sure that we are not priced out of the market.
It seems that inflation is hurting everyone, so it seems to be moving in the right direction. The focus will remain on sustaining margins and also, at the same time, remaining competitive. The next slide is about our revenue trends. Our revenue growth, as I said, for this quarter was 9%, and for the full year, has been 6%. We have seen, as you see it, in the last four years, we have seen a very good year in 2022-2023 with a 15% growth, and then we have seen two tepid years of 4% and 6%. We are hopeful that things should move in the right direction now on because the quarter has been, I would say, reasonably good from a growth standpoint. From an operating profit standpoint, again, it has been a pretty good profit that we have looked at.
Operating profit has been at 16.4% for the full year and 16.6% for the quarter. It seems that from both top-line and bottom-line perspective, if things remain within a certain margin, and I'm talking about inflation as well as the growth trend, etc., we should be in the right place. Now, looking at the overall consolidated report, net sales for the quarter, 9%. Operating profit has gone up by 2.4%. Profit before tax is also 2.4%, and profit after tax has gone up by 4%. The full year numbers are on the right-hand side. If you look at the ratios, the ratios are looking reasonably solid, I would say. 16.4% profit from operations, profit before tax of 16.7%, and profit after tax of 12.4%. That is the story from my side. Very happy to answer your questions now.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchstone 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'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Abneesh Kumar Roy with Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Congrats on good performance. I have three questions. My first question is on the demand side. You have seen a seven-quarter high sales growth this quarter. Was there a significant impact of Kumbh Mela? Coca-Cola saw INR 18 crore servings being sold in Q4 in Kumbh Mela, and your product also has very high demand in such a demand scenario. That was one bit on demand. Second is on the outlook, you said clear signs of recovery. This quarter, almost every FMCG company has said, issue is last two years, FMCG has seen many false starts. What will be your confidence level in terms of recovery in FY 2026? That is the first question.
Okay. Amit, because we are so widespread, it's not one event which really makes a difference to our overall sales. We did well in the Kumbh, but it's too small to impact our overall sales for the country and for the globe as well. We've seen some recovery, which is the good trend, and which gets me to your second question, which is on the outlook. I'm reasonably optimistic on the recovery happening. I don't think it's going to happen. It's not going to be a hockey stick, but I do think that we have seen gradual recovery, and I do think that this trend is going to continue into the next year as well.
Thanks. My second question is on the competitive intensity. This time, the market share chart seems to be missing. If you could tell us any reasons for that. Second is, a lot of FMCG categories, there is competition from B2C. We have seen some level of impact on beauty, personal care from B2C companies. In your categories, is there an impact, especially now I'm seeing Tata Soulful acquisition now going to Rusk, for example? That's also a startup and B2C now acquired by Tata Consumer. If you could discuss competitive intensity from B2C and market share data, is there a change?
No. Nielsen has done a complete change of their panel. The data even historically has changed, etc. We were waiting for the stability to come through, but there is hardly any change in the market share data. It is just that we are not clear what their final numbers are going to be once they sort of clear up their panel. It is in the same ballpark. We have not seen, so you are a witness at least to what other companies report in their calls as well. It does not seem that we seem to be growing the fastest as far as our category is concerned. Yes, there are a lot of unlisted players who do not declare the results, but I do think that we are definitely in the top 10% as far as growth is concerned within all of our categories.
B2C players, I don't think they have impacted us to an extent where it's becoming an issue for us. Especially Tata Soulful, I personally haven't seen them make a big dent in any way in the market from a Rusk standpoint. As you know, Rusk, in any case, has about 2,500 players. It's a bit like salty snacks, right? Every town in the north will have a Rusk manufacturer. We have been dealing with that kind of competition, and we have been dealing with it quite well. I do think that because of our brand and because of our product and because of all of that we do, that will hold us in good stead.
Having said that, I do think that this is a space that we need to watch because with modern trade growing and with e-commerce and quick commerce growing, this could be a phenomenon which we must watch carefully and make sure that we deal with it in the right way.
Thanks, Varun. Last quick question, and then I'll end there. If I see that FMCG, you have been driving a whole food company kind of a strategy, and I see you talking much more positively on Croissant, on drinks, and to an extent, maybe Rusk also. On cheese, it's a relaunch, and if you measure now versus when the JV was announced and now, would you be happy with the performance? I don't know how is the performance, so I'm asking. Is urban slowdown impacting, and is it more of a commodity play? Because I do see a lot of aggressive pricing by some of the newer companies also. If you could tell us how has it lived up to initial expectation, and can the trajectory change to a higher level in the next two, three years?
No. Absolutely, Abdi. Yes, you're right. I talk more positively about all of the other categories, including cake now after the relaunch. The growths are now pretty solid. Cheese, what's happened after the relaunch, as you're rightly saying, the pricing. There are some players who do not have a distribution system, right? What they do is whatever channels are available, which is modern trade and e-com, they discount the hell out of their product in those channels, which is what we had to match earlier because we were at a 25%-30% premium, which was creating a disparity between the channels, and we realized that. For us, our big muscle is traditional trade. If there's disparity, it tends to hit our big muscle. Now, with the relaunch, what we've done is we've priced every channel at the same price.
There might be facts which are different for different channels, but the pricing is the same. As a result of that, we are seeing a 40% plus growth in our traditional trade business. There still are some areas which need to be sorted out, and we are sorting them out. The overall cheese business, we are very hopeful, will start to look very good as we go forward. I do not want to declare victory without really getting that under our belt. That is the reason that I have not sort of emphasized that. The trends, the early trends on the traditional trade part of the business and also on the e-com business, are very, very good. Fingers crossed, we are hoping that the sales team as well as the dairy team will take this to a very, very different level in the coming months.
Thank you. Mr. Roy, please rejoin the queue for more questions. A reminder to all the participants, please restrict yourselves to two questions. Next question comes from the line of Mihir Shah with Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi sir, thank you for taking my question. Britannia has been constantly increasing its direct reach. Now, as you highlighted, that demand is expected to come back. What is the level of volume growth that you expect to be a reasonable level? This is also keeping in mind that you will start cycling a higher volume growth phase from monthly onwards. That is my question number one.
So we've actually, because there's an echo coming, Mihir, can you put yourself on mute? Hello? Mihir?
Yes, sir. I'm going to.
Yeah. So the volume growth has been reasonably good for us compared to our revenue growth even in the last two years. Whenever there is inflation and you take pricing, obviously the delta between revenue and volume increases. We are hopeful that as we go through, depending on the level of inflation, we should see both revenue as well as volume growth. This year will be a test. We are hoping that we'll be able to grow revenue and volume. Obviously, there'll be a delta because we've taken a pretty high price increase in the last quarter, and we will be necessitated to take slightly more price increases to make sure that we deal with the inflation which comes in. Having said that, we are hoping to see healthy growth, both volume as well as revenue.
Got it, sir. Secondly, how should we think about pricing from here on? Key raw materials have started to correct quite a bit. Would it be fair to assume that there is no further price increase that one should expect from here? Secondly, do you foresee any competition from smaller players to start taking price cuts sooner than expected?
No, Mihir, we don't see that happening because there has been a lot of inflation this year, and we started to take price increases pretty late in the year and so did the others. Even if there is a correction as far as inflation is concerned, I don't see a reaction of price cuts, etc., from smaller players. It might just be that thereafter we might not need any more price increases. That is why we are keeping our eye on the ball just to make sure that we do not miss the trend and we do what is right for the business.
Understood. If I may squeeze just one more insight. On other expenses, they have been lower since the past two quarters. One says it is largely because of lower ad spend. As you are expecting support volumes, can this number start inching up going forward? If you continue to do that, what is the level of operating margin that you will be comfortable with?
We do not give any forward-looking statements, Mihir, but we are comfortable in the zone that we are today, and we would like to stay within that zone and try and make sure that our profit growths are higher than our revenue growth as we go forward.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Arnab Mitra with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Varun. My first question was on this quarter. Could you just help us with the split of volume and price growth? In the light of whatever pricing you've taken, I'm sure some pricing will flow in more in the next few quarters. How much of price growth do you expect at this stage for FY 2026?
The delta is about 5.5% between revenue and volume. It depends. I don't think we will need to take any more price increases. There will be some remnants of the price increase which move into the first two months of this quarter. Thereafter, I think the way the commodity situation looks, it might not be necessary to take pricing beyond that. That will all depend on how the trends move through the quarter, and we will have to take a call based on those trends.
Yeah, thanks. That's very helpful. The second, actually, just to repeat, just following up on the input cost question. We broadly know that palm oil and crude have seen some corrections sequentially. How is your expectation on wheat prices? Because I know the season is already done. In that light, would you say that, I mean, whatever input cost deflation we see potentially goes now into improving gross margins back to the historical trend line, or there could be a possibility of lowering of prices if the current spot prices hold in some of these commodities?
No, so I don't think wheat prices, we will see a deflation in the wheat prices. Actually, I'd let Manoj comment on that. Manoj?
Yeah. This is Manoj. Wheat prices have been higher than last year, though the crop has been higher than last year. The minimum support price offered by government is about 7% higher. We do not expect a deflation in wheat prices.
Sure. Understood. That's very helpful. Thanks. That's it from my side. All the best.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Jaykumar Doshi with Kotak. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My question is on succession planning. We saw that you've been appointed as CEO as well. Are you not looking to hire a CEO anymore, I mean, after Ratneet moved out?
No, no, that's not the point. This is a.
Or is this an interim arrangement till you hire someone?
Yeah. It is a statutory requirement that a position of CEO has to be filled. That is where it is. The succession planning is in play, and it will definitely be clear to you in the next three or four months. Things are in place. I cannot comment anything more than that right now.
That's helpful. Thank you so much. That's it from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Latika Chopra with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. My first question was around the revenue growth outlook. You mentioned you would want to maintain both volume and value growth sustaining. Looking at price increases, I'm going to amount to roughly 5-6%. The kind of price increases we saw in Q4 to play out. Just wanted to understand the volume that you mentioned, was that a tonnage volume growth or in terms of number of packs sold? Because some of the price increases could be in the form of grammage reduction. As you look forward to FY 2026, do you get a sense of arriving at a double-digit kind of trend for revenue growth? We clocked 9% in Q4.
Yeah. Whenever we talk about volume growth, they are not in number of packets. They are always in tonnages. That is why the delta, right? If we were looking at packets, I do not think there would be much of a delta between revenue and volumes, right? It is tonnage. Your second question was, what was it? Sorry, Latika.
For FY26, how do you anticipate? Is there a confidence?
Oh, you're talking about. Yeah. There always will be to get back to double digits because, as I've always been saying, with India being the developing country, obviously becoming a very large economy, it's important that in categories like ours, we see double-digit growth. Yeah, the hope is that we get back to double-digit growth with time.
Thank you. The second question was around two key levers for revenue growth for you. One is distribution. We continue to see the direct reach continuing to add for you. I think this is already probably the best in the industry at 2.9 million outlets. What is the scope for this to expand to? If you could throw some color on what is the total reach for you? The second piece is on innovation and new launches. Could you share? Is there a push by the company towards minimizing the portfolio? Are there any metrics you can share which could give us some color on how the premium part of your portfolio is growing? Thank you.
Yeah. No, good question, Latika. What we are looking at now, as you know, is that we are doing the route-to-market project. The route-to-market project is going to give us our ability to have the number of SKUs that we have in the large outlets, the more potential outlets. We want to increase our depth there. Obviously, at the village level and at the rural level, we want our width to increase. We are working on both, but the width improvement is going to be as long as it does not start to—we also look at our volume per outlet. Obviously, even in small towns and villages, there are outlets which sell very high volumes and very high revenues of our products, which we sometimes miss. The VPO is very important for us. We are not doing it mindlessly.
It's not like width at any cost. We are also looking at cost, and we are saying that at the top end, we get depth. At the bottom end, we get width. We do it in a way that the revenue that we get is as profitable as our revenues which we get today. I'll ask Vipin to comment on that. Vipin?
Yeah, Varun. Latika, basically, just to give you a sense of the category, we are into one of the most widely distributed categories. On a 9 million outlet base, we reach about 3 million directly, right? Then there is a component of indirect. If I add the direct, our total reach is about 6.5 million. Over a period of time, we're adding distribution, both direct as well as indirect. What we also realized, like Varun is saying, is that we have got almost 25 different sub-brands and multiple categories. We need to figure out a way on how do we service all the high-potential, ultra-high-potential outlets far better so that we go to the right kind of consumers, we go to the right kind of outlet covers. That's the route-to-market journey that we are talking about.
We are in the middle of it, and we are getting good positive results out of it. Therefore, we have to make sure that we truly behave like a total food company. We are ensuring that not only the width of the coverage, but also the kind of categories that the 7G relevant outlets become a big initiative from our side.
Hope that answers your question.
Yeah. No, thank you. Any color? You want to share the premium mix for you? Any metrics you track for the premium from this segment?
Yeah. Yeah. Latika, you've seen the kind of products that we've launched. Pure Magic Choco Frames is one such example. Very, very premium product, very salient property that we've signed up for this, which is Harry Potter. Similarly, a lot of other products that we've launched which are in this space. Yes, we are making sure that we increase our premium play. That's what's helping us keep our portfolio at the right level. In fact, a lot of our premium products are doing quite well. Sid, do you want to comment on that?
Yeah. So just to add, what we have done is across all your salient categories, we have a fair understanding of what are the consumer needs bases and how they are evolving. They are evolving quite rapidly across the spectrum. This is that across critical categories, we have a very clear role of the portfolio, which includes, as Varun was saying, the critical products that will be needed to cater to the evolving needs and the products that we have already launched in the market, for example, Pure Magic Choco Frames. How do we build on and take them to a much bigger scale? This is the response. We have a very clear framework identified across all our key categories on premiumization. That continues to be a key lever for us that we are building upon.
We have got some very exciting products coming up this year as well in the next two or three months. Yes, the premium range will increase as we go forward.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Percy Panthaki with IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Varun and team. My first question is, it's been about 10 years or so approximately since we first laid out this vision of being a total foods company. However, I haven't seen any new category being introduced since then, maybe with the exception of croissant and some launch of milkshakes, but I'll take that as a sort of product within the dairy portfolio. So I wanted to understand.
Yeah.
Yeah. I just want to understand if basically you're just happy growing the adjacencies. Of course, there would be innovation, renovation as part of any company business as usual. Are you happy growing the current adjacencies for now and maybe some new category, either organically or inorganically, isn't an immediate focus for you in the next one or two years?
See, Percy, first of all, we have gotten into, so as we spelled out when we got into this strategy, the idea was to look at categories which are extremely close to what we do and then start to get further and further, right? With that, we've launched, so frankly, it seems like it's within the same category. But frankly, today, we've got a lot of products which are completely new and have crossed, some of them have crossed INR 1 billion, some of them have crossed INR 2 billion. Croissant getting close to INR 2 billion, milkshakes crossed INR 2 billion and beyond, wafers getting to crossing INR 1 billion. Lots of these categories are giving us that bump up. I think, and these are all, we didn't know ABC of milkshakes, right? We were not a drinks company, right?
We took the plunge and put in the best technology. We have today an aseptic line, which when we put it up, even Coke and Pepsi did not have it, right? We have done it the right way. We have got good results. We are seeing things moving in the right direction. Has it made a difference which we would have expected? It certainly added up to give us the adjacent portfolio, which is much larger than what it used to be. I would say that probably we have been caught at a time when the economic situation was a little tough and FMCGs were not getting their time in the sun.
Today, I feel and very clearly feel from even trends that we see in the market that all of these and adjacencies, I call adjacencies, which is anything outside of the biscuits, all of these are looking very positive. We are seeing really good growth. Even within, let's say, a cake category, right? There are so many new products that we've launched. We've launched layer, we've launched Swiss, we've launched brownie, we've launched so many of these products, which you cannot call as extensions or these are not extensions. Some of them have completely different technologies. From that standpoint, I think we will stay with this for the time being. We are not going to violently go wide where we go very far away from our core.
We will stay with this, but we will make sure that whatever we've done, we double down on it and grow it at a very rapid pace. That will be the plan. Wherever we have opportunities, we will test market. If there are big opportunities, we will launch. More or less, we will stay and grow the current categories that we have because there is immense potential to take them to the next level.
Got it, Varun. Just your thoughts. I mean, this is not a guidance or any particular target, but just your thoughts on if I were to say over the next five years, what would be the growth differential between the biscuits and the non-biscuits portfolio?
I would say one is to one and a half. If biscuits grow at.
Growth.
Yeah.
Got it. Got it. That's very helpful, Varun. Thanks and all the best. That's all from me.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Lokesh Gusain with BOB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Sorry. Thanks for taking my question. I just got two questions. First is on the sales. If you could clarify the focus stage performance relative to the rest of India for the fourth quarter. Secondly, on cost, regarding your cost-saving initiatives, you've got six verticals. Is there any vertical out of these which stood out in the fourth quarter? Since your cost-saving as a percentage of sales went up quite a bit, just trying to understand what's a sustainable rate and what are your targets for FY2026 on cost-saving as a percentage of sales? Thanks.
Let me get to the second question first. I'll ask Venkat to answer that because he's the architect of this. Venkat, are you there?
I'm there. I'm there.
Yeah. You are, Venkat.
You are, Venkat?
Yeah, yeah. Yes. As far as cost efficiency for the year is concerned, the framework largely is the same. What we have done is to have gone deeper. Some of the areas where we managed to get some additional benefits in 2024-2025 have been the areas of fiscal incentives because, as you know, the Maharashtra facility was recognized as an ultra-mega project. Therefore, the incentives applicable to the ultra-mega projects came through in 2024-2025 for us. Also, the facility in Uttar Pradesh, the greenfield unit that was set up in Uttar Pradesh, got the approval for incentives in the current financial year. These are two significant benefits that we saw in the current year. There is also a lot of value engineering projects which were driven by R&D focusing on reducing wastages. And.
Packaging, Venkat.
Packaging as well. Yeah. Packaging and wastages. Correct. In addition, the initiatives were largely around improving manufacturing efficiencies. Buying efficiencies was a very significant thing that we worked on in the current year. Also on distribution. I think broadly, these are the areas that we have been able to work on. Like Varun said, it has been nine times what we started the program with in 2024-2025. In 2025-2026, we are planning something over 2.5% of the top line.
Understood. And then just on the fourth quarter, would you say to say that buying efficiencies were a major part of the incremental savings that you got?
It was across. Yeah. No, buying efficiency was higher. You're right. Thank you for that.
Understood. Thanks. On sales, this is it.
Sorry?
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Nihal Mahesh Jham with HSBC Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. I just have one question. Is it possible to share the proportion of adjacencies for FY 2025 and if you could give a ballpark split among the adjacency portfolio?
The adjacency portfolio, there are the big ones are cake, rusk, dairy, bread. They're all about the same size, about, let's say, $100 million give or take. And then we have the smaller ones which were launched in the last four or five years: croissant, milkshakes, wafers, which are all in between INR 100-200 crore, INR 100-250 crore. Venkat, what's the split today?
It will be about 75-25.
75. Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Kunal Vora with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Maybe if you can give a similar breakup in case of raw material, how much is wheat, palm oil, marine sugar, cocoa? FY2025 composition of raw materials?
Manoj, you can take that question.
From a percentage point of view, roughly about the wheat and oil will be about 30% each and about 20% by sugar.
Understood. Okay.
And Sindhar are lots of small ones.
Yeah.
Understood. Thanks. Second one is on quick commerce and how it impacts you. I mean, just if you can give a sense of what is the contribution, what kind of packs get sold, are you seeing any additional competition because of it? As consumers reduce their visits to Kirana, does it result in loss of some impulse purchase? Yeah, just your sense on how quick commerce impacts your business.
Quick commerce is now approximately 4% of our sales. Quick commerce and e-commerce, but a large part of that is quick commerce today. It has been growing fast, but still reasonably small in the overall contribution. Obviously, the convenience of it, the consumers are enjoying that. It is growing because there is a three-cornered fight between the three big players in that space. I think there are certain categories where it even becomes 30% and 35%.
In our case, I see this move from, let's say, 4% to 8% in the next three years, but not beyond that. Vipin, would you like to comment on that?
Yeah. See, first, just to tell you about the composition of the Q-commerce in total across categories. The biggest in Q-commerce is, let's say, staples and groceries. Then comes fresh, which is basically milk, pouch card, right? Then there is personal care. Then it is packaged food, right? From that perspective, when you compare this 4% savings coming out of e-com, right, it is fairly decent because in personal care, that same percentage savings will be double it, right? I think we are rightly placed in terms of the percentage savings. Point number two is that we are consistently gaining market share. Third is that we are aware of this entire disruption which the personal care space has seen because there is a lot of insurgency which comes into play.
Therefore, if you hear what Varun was saying, there are a lot of digital first brands that we have lined up. In fact, a couple of them have seen good success like Choco Frames. We have got a few more lined up this year as well. We will protect our core, gain share there, and also make sure that all the insurgent brands are basically taken care of through a lot of these digital first brands. I think how we see e-com is basically part of the route to market, which is how do you make sure that you augment the general trade, right, in terms of reaching to the consumers. Let me give you an example. There are a lot of premium products which general trade, Kirana Store will hesitate to stock.
We have been able to turn the tale and make those big. Let me quote an example of, let's say, cake, brownie. Brownie is a product which might face limited distribution because of some resistance. Through e-commerce, we have been able to make significantly good business out of it, right? Therefore, the playbook is that we take a non-conflicting route. We take a route which augments our overall distribution and selling. That is how we have been driving e-commerce going forward as well.
Understood. Does it result in any loss of impulse purchases as the consumers step out to the Kirana's list?
See, I think it only adds to impulse because if you see here and all of us are also users of Q-com. Instant gratification, occasion-led buying is only getting accelerated and accentuated through Q-com, right? Therefore, our impulse portfolio is finding good favor in Q-com. We also have a large out-of-home business, right? We make sure that we are there in a lot of places where impulse consumption happens.
Thank you. Just one last quick question. Other operating income got a big increase because of maybe incentives, INR 4 billion. Where does it go from here?
Venkat, you want to take that?
No, it should. We are not setting up any new units. Now, most of the units that we had set up are eligible for incentives. The one in T. N., U. P., Odisha, Bihar, and Pune. These are the incentives that we are eligible for. It should stabilize, is my sense.
Okay. For how many years does this continue? Maybe at close to current levels or maybe a little more than that?
Each one is for a different period of time. Yeah. Some of them will end soon. Some of them will continue longer.
But the big one is Ranjangaon, which will continue for how many years, Venkat?
It is till 2037 or 2038. Yeah.
Okay. Long term. Okay. Understood. Okay. Okay. That's it from me. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Jay Kumar Doshi with Kotak. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity again. One request, if you could add some disclosures on biscuits and adjacencies either on a six-monthly or annual basis because the 70, 20, 75, 25 split has been there for a few years now. When I look at the old interviews, you've always maintained that 75, 25 should go to 65, 35 in five years. When we ask you this mix at the end of every year, it does not seem to change. It will help us appreciate the progress better, sir, if you can. Even once in a year also will be good to know. Second is when I look at your strategy and I asked you this question a couple of years back on inorganic, how do you think about inorganic now?
For a company with your kind of cash flows, when we compare you versus other F&B players, we have seen some of your peers have been more open to inorganic opportunities, and there are some success stories as well. We do not even sort of hear about Britannia evaluating any, right? For instance, there was Capital Foods or there have been other such acquisitions. Britannia is not even participating in evaluating it. Is there a group-level resistance or reluctance on inorganic, and is it that you are happy with whatever you can do organically? You do not really want to grow faster through inorganic route?
No, that's not true. We would be happy to look at it. It's just that we are very conscious of return, right? Whatever we invest in, we would like to see returns. Whenever we've seen any of these big transactions that have happened, we have evaluated them, but we haven't been able to figure out how we'll get returns on these transactions. You tell us, have any of these big transactions really been worth it? Have they given the returns to these companies? We feel that getting an ROI on any of these investments is very tough because of the valuations in the country. We'd be very happy to stand corrected if you feel that there have been some big transactions which we could have missed.
I think mix has done fairly well for Marico, still early days. I mean, Capital Foods is also something, still early days. I just thought, I mean, a fair point. I take your sort of got your perspective. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks.
Thank you. Last question comes from the line of Tejas Shah with Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Hi, Varun. Thanks for the opportunity. Your decade-long cost-saving discipline has been exceptional across FMCG. At some point, do efficiency gains start to taper off, and is there a risk of cutting into growth-linked spends in pursuit of sales?
I don't think so. See, I think I've said this earlier as well. We in India, we tend to get spoiled by the kind of growth we get, and hence cost efficiencies take a backseat. Think about companies that operate in countries with, let's say, in Japan or in the U.S. where the growth are half a percent or 1%, right? And price increase opportunities are very limited. The entire focus is on cost efficiencies to make sure that they shore up their bottom line year on year. We've learned from them, right? We've looked at how they sort of go after costs and how they get these costs. Every company has great opportunities to optimize costs, right? I think that there is a pipeline of projects that we could look at.
We see them every year, but obviously, there is a limit on how many we can handle. We focus on the large ones, and then we start to, so the process is very good. Our process starts in the month of November, let's say, right? We start to identify these projects for the year starting on the 1st of April. We start to build on these, and these are cross-functional teams which work on them and start to implement them. I think we've defined the process very well. Our team, the inherent thinking of our team is to make sure that we get these costs home. It works very well. I do think that this is not going anywhere. We have enough projects to take us through the next 10 years with the same kind of savings.
Got it. Second, we have done fabulously well on quick commerce as a channel. Just wanted to know, how do you see it in terms of margin accretion and working capital discipline in the overall scheme of things?
For us, again, it's a mindset within the organization to make sure that we look at profitability for every channel. For these channels, it's very important to make sure that the profitability is looked at. These are, I wouldn't say they're accretive overall, but they are certainly in the same ballpark as our overall profitability. We are very conscious of that because if you have tailwinds in a certain channel or a certain pack or a certain brand, it's important that that channel or that pack or that brand is equal to or greater than the profitability of the company. We focus on that to make sure that we don't lose that aspect of our profitability. That's how it works for Q-commerce as well as e-commerce. Despite that, we've also been gaining share within these channels.
Got it. Even on working capital, they are equally good.
Yes.
Okay. That is all from my side. All the best for the coming quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over 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 again in the future. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Britannia Industries Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect.