Ladies and gentlemen, good day, welcome to Godrej Consumer Products Limited Q4 FY 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Vishal Kedia, Head of Strategy and Investor Relations. Thank you, over to you, sir.
Good evening to all. Welcome to the conference call for Godrej Consumer Products for quarter four. We will start the call with an opening statement from our CEO, Mr. Sudhir Sitapati, following which we will go to a statement by our CFO, Mr. Aasif Malbari. We will then move to the questions. Post the questions, we'll also have an ending statement. I now hand over the call to Mr. Sudhir Sitapati for his opening statement.
Good evening, everybody. Q4 FY 2026 has been a quarter of strong broad-based performance for Godrej Consumer Products Limited, fully aligned and strategic priorities. The quarter brings to a close a year in which the consistent execution of our Goodness Manifesto, our focus on category development, and our discipline on cost have come together to deliver profitable growth across our portfolio. In Q4, at a consolidated level, revenues grew 11% in INR terms on the back of 6% underlying volume growth. EBITDA % with operating margin at 21.7% and net profit after tax grew by 10% on a reported basis, reflecting the underlying quality of earnings being delivered by the business. I would like to call out growth have been weaker over the last two years. This is driven by significantly stepped up investments to ignite growth and expand into new categories.
We have already seen parts of the portfolio that have started to significantly outstrip growth driven by investments and profitability driven by scale benefits. We expect this to happen across the portfolio. Our standalone business delivered an excellent quarter driven by 8% underlying volume growth and 10% sales growth. EBITDA with margins at a healthy 24.7%, supported by disciplined cost management, calibrated pricing actions, and improved operating leverage. Within the standalone business, Home Care delivered 12% value growth with strong momentum across household insecticide, air freshener, and fabric care, and consistent market share gains in our key categories. Personal care grew 3% with personal wash continuing gaining market share on the back of strong in-market execution. Perfume and deodorants delivered strong double-digit growth led by perfumes, with KS 99 now scaled pan-India.
Turning to our international portfolio, in Indonesia, the pricing pressures we have been calling out over the last several quarters have now largely bottomed out, and we are seeing increasingly clear signs of stabilization. The business delivered 4% underlying volume growth and 3% sales growth, and we continue to expect operating conditions to improve from FY 2027 as the market normalizes. Our Africa, U.S., and Middle East business delivered another strong quarter with top-line growth of 20%. EBITDA grew 2%, reflecting a deliberate doubling of media spends behind our FMCG categories to build a long-term franchise. We believe this is the right investment to make as the geography enters its next phase of growth. Our Latin America and others business delivered 26% sales growth. EBITDA impact costs in the quarter. We expect this to normalize over the coming quarters.
Looking ahead, we enter 2027 from a position of strength. Our India business is well-placed to deliver continued calibrated growth at normative EBITDA margins, supported by improving demand trends, a strengthening innovation pipeline, and consistent in-market execution. In Indonesia, we expect a meaningful step-up in performance as pricing pressure abates and our Africa, U.S., and Middle East business continues to deliver on its stated objective of double-digit revenue and profit growth over the medium term. Before I close, I would like to briefly flag and then hand over to our Chief Financial Officer, Aasif Malbari, an important presentational change that we are adopting from this quarter onwards in a manner in which we report revenue. I would also take the opportunity to personally invite you to our investor meet scheduled to take place on Monday, 11th May.
The event will be held at our headquarters and will provide in-depth perspective on our strategic vision, recent business performance, and forward-looking initiatives. Our leadership team will share comprehensive updates on market trends, innovation, and the company's growth map. As the year closes, our unwavering focus on category development, cost discipline, and operational excellence continues to translate into improving performance. With strengthening demand trends, consistent portfolio action, and a clear strategic roadmap, we are increasingly confident in our ability to deliver sustained profitable growth and create long-term value for all our shareholders. I now hand over to Aasif.
Thank you, Sudhir. Good evening, everyone. I would like to take the next few minutes to walk you through an important change in the way we are presenting the revenue from the quarter ended 31st March 2026 onwards. To set the context, in the FMCG industry, companies incur a wide variety of customer-related expenditure like in-store visibility, display arrangements, mailers, and other similar channel-level spend. Industry practice on how to present these spends has historically been mixed. Some companies have recognized them as expense on a broad basis, while others have netted them off against revenue. GCPL till 2025 presented some of these spends as expenses. Our position rested on a set of considered judgments that these spends do not have a direct correlation with sales.
Products would continually be sold to our customers under existing commercial arrangements, regardless of whether we incur these spends or not. That pricing remains unchanged irrespective of these arrangements, and a fair value for these services received could be reasonably demonstrated. On that basis, we have presented some of these spends as operating expenses, similar in substance to other marketing and promotional efforts undertaken by the company. To give an example, visibility in-store and visibility on the street as out-of-home are two spends which can be interchangeably used. In February 2026, the Expert Advisory Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India took up this matter for detailed examination. The committee considered multiple instances of customer-related arrangements typically encountered in the consumer goods sector and went through a detailed evaluation of the facts and circumstances of each instance.
Having considered each of these in detail, the committee concluded that these customer-related spends should be netted off from revenue rather than presented separately as operating expense. GCPL has carefully reviewed the opinion and presented the relevant spends accordingly. The company is implementing the opinion of the Expert Advisory Committee in letter and spirit. The impact is straightforward. Revenue from operations and the corresponding lines within other expenses both reduce by the same amount period after period. There is no impact whatsoever on absolute EBITDA, PAT, profit after tax, total equity or cash flow. Margin percentage would be optically higher under the new presentation simply because the denominator is smaller while the absolute profit pool is unchanged. The underlying economics of the business, our pricing, our competitive position, the cash we generate remains the same. Our strategy and the way of running our business remains the same.
There will be no changes in the way we incur these spends going forward. Also, to clarify, while A&P expenses optically look lower for the quarter, if you compare this after restated, the amounts are actually broadly similar YoY. Restated revenue for the last eight quarters and the last five years on the new presentation is set out in the investor communication accompanying our results. There is no material impact on growth or profit metrics. We are actually extremely pleased that ICAI has released this EAC opinion to this effect, which will enable better consistency and comparability across all the players. Thank you.
We will now move to questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. The first question is from the line of Vivek Maheshwari from Jefferies. Pleas e go ahead. Vivek, your line is unmuted. Please proceed.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Hi. Good evening, team. First question is on the personal care bit in India. Sudhir, can you just elaborate because the presentation slides talk about, you know, soaps have done well and so is the case with perfume fragrances, and I think it looks like that powder hair dye has actually been, you know, has been under pressure. Can you just elaborate a bit more on this?
Yeah, I think there are two things. Bulk of our personal care business is soaps and that market, muted despite GST. While we have gained some market share, our growths have been pretty muted in soaps. Condom sexual wellness also has been quite muted and we've declined it's a small business. Hair color has had an okay quarter. Not a great quarter, but an okay quarter. I think there was some seasonality impact of marriages, et cetera. Overall, I would say a somewhat muted quarter only on our personal care business.
Okay. Sudhir, when you say India business is up, let's say has grown by 10%, if home care and personal care have grown by 12% and 3% respectively, I think the other portfolio has grown like 75%, which has added about 2.5, 3 percentage points, right? Can you just elaborate on what has happened there?
I think, firstly our home care business salience is increasing every quarter and it's, you know, becoming bigger and bigger on the back of some of these things. That is one. The second is there has been a lot of explosive growth globally on our air freshener business, which we don't capture indeed. Next time onwards we'll capture it. So far it was a small number. That, as I take you through on Monday, we are just having very high growth on air fresheners globally, which is broadly we make in India and we export it from here. That has been the delta contributor there.
Understood. Lastly, on Indonesia, you know, how confident are you about the turnaround given that, you know, there has been certain, whatever I understand, inflationary pressures also in the economy. How confident are you of the turnaround over there and outlook also on Africa business for FY 2027?
See, on Indonesia, I think even last quarter we had about 4% volume growth. This quarter also we've had 4% volume growth. I mean, in a steady state, if we can do 5%-6% volume growth in Indonesia this, sales growth has to do with currency that may turn actually into one, the other way around. I think, revenue growth will now lead volume growth in Indonesia. I think what we will get in Indonesia is kind of mid-single digit volume, high single digit value, going forward. As far as Africa goes, you know, we are having a very strong performance in Africa. I think, as I said, one of the big drivers has actually been FMCG driven by hair care in Africa. You know, revenues have gone up that requires advertising spends.
We have kind of investing ahead of the curve in building FMCG in Africa. Our Africa business now is looking more and more like a conventional FMCG business to us.
Okay. Just a follow-up on Africa. Given that the base has been high and the last few quarters have been quite good in Africa on growth as well as margins, do you think FY 2027 we should be mindful of the base, given that, you know, the performance in the past few quarters? This quarter also constant currency growth has been somewhat okayish. It's the reported number which has been very good, right? Because of the currency moves.
Yeah. See, I think the in FY 2025 we had a very depleted performance in Africa, so the FY 2026 numbers come on a depleted base. I expect Africa performance to be quite strong because there are, you know, again, on Monday we'll explain to you, there are some underlying drivers in FMCG which are driving bulk of the growth in Africa, and those will continue to compound in FY 2027.
Got it, Sudhir. Look forward to seeing you on Monday. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mihir Shah from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. Sudhir, when I, when I look at your looking ahead para, you've highlighted the India businesses place to deliver continuous calibrated normative EBITDA margins. Given the context of the West Asia war and inflation that we are seeing, should one assume that what you're indicating is that you will be able to hold up that 21.5% normative margin in consol and 24, 25 on India business? Is that what this statement reads?
To be honest, next to this quarter and next quarter, I expect some pressure on EBITDA percentage margin. We are seeing upsides on a variety of other areas. We are seeing pricing growth high, higher than what we thought we'd get. We are seeing in certain categories like laundry and household insecticide, a lot of pressure on locals. Overall, I'm expecting lower margins till this oil remains at $100-$110, higher revenue and kinda netting out at reasonably good levels as far as EBITDA goes. I think it's just, you know, it's just if this oil remains at $100-$110, that's what we expect, and that too for a few months.
This $100, $110, as we had said in the pre-note, is not something that we can't price up for over three, four months. It may take three, four months, again, of a little bit of a dip in percentage margins. Unlike in the case of, you know, very sharp palm oil prices, where even if I have a 6%, 7% inflation because of palm oil, it affects only one category, and then that becomes really hard to take up prices. In the case of crude oil, it affects all categories, so that same 6%, 7% is spread out over every category. While we may have a percentage gross margin lower than in Q1, we are, of course, we're also lapping a weak comparator. I think it'll come back, much sooner than it does when there's a palm oil crisis.
Understood. Got it. Again, on the personal care front, just wanted to get a sense of now, you know, we had some tailwind of restocking in third quarter. That seems to have normalized. How should one think about the growth of personal care from here on? Is the resiliency of hair color just because of the marriage seasonal impact, and the soaps are going to be.
Yeah, I mean, look, we didn't have a bad quarter on hair color, just a little lower than what we usually have. I think pricing growth will come into soaps, pretty significantly, going forward. I do expect this personal care performance to improve.
I'm sorry, sir, we are not able to hear you if you are speaking.
No, I was saying that, you know, pricing is coming back in soaps, more than what we thought to the various cost inflation, both in soaps and in general personal care. I do expect higher revenue growth than this in FY 2027 and going forward. Can you hear me?
Yeah, Sudhir. Thank you. Got it, that's all from my side. Wishing you all the best.
Thanks, Mihir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Aditya Soman from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good evening, and thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. Firstly, on home care, we've seen fairly strong growth on what was a tough base as well. Can you just maybe throw some light on what's really worked? Is it just I mean, the LVs launch being pushed wider and acceptance? In similar vein, as we sort of get into summer, and this year there's an expectation of an extended summer, would that have any seasonal impact with the extended summer on the insecticide business?
I think quarter four was pretty good and broad-based in terms of home care. All our businesses did well. Household insecticide, air freshener, fabric care, both in terms of top line and bottom line, they did well. I think going forward, if the summer is a hotter summer, last year was a cooler summer, and actually the whole of last year cooler. I think soap volumes have been a bit muted in the overall category because of a sort of slightly cooler year. I think summer Q1 is typically a small quarter for HI. Yes, it's possible that the HI numbers aren't as great as they should be. On the other hand, there is a dynamic of local players not getting kerosene to make incense stick and so on.
There are some complicated dynamics going on between the weather and West Asia. Equally, I'm expecting a better quarter in terms of soaps. Yeah. I mean, there are two dynamics going on here. I mean, short point is there's a weather dynamic and a West Asia dynamic, both of which are playing out positively and negatively. I think in soaps is largely the weather dynamic is positive. In HI, the weather may be negative, West Asia may be positive. Laundry also, the West Asia thing may be positive.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama . Please go ahead.
Thanks. Two questions. My first question is on Muuchstac and your other recent acquisition, essentially in terms of the Raymond, what is the update? Going ahead in terms of outlook, how do you see that, given these two scenarios you mentioned, in terms of West Asia impact on the, say, the cost inflation and say the summer, which is likely to be on the stronger side? For these two businesses, how do you see the in terms of the outlook?
Abneesh Roy, maybe the Muuchstac questi on and the Raymond question I will take on Monday when you guys are here because we have some slides on how Muuchstac and Raymond are doing. Let me answer because what we wanted to do was to use this call to really answer off the Q4 questions and Q1 questions and kind of more portfolio questions answered in Monday, if that's okay by you. Short point is, we're very happy with Muuchstac. I think, we're also quite happy with Park Avenue. A little bit of, we had early successes in sexual wellness which seem to have dried off, but good consistent volume growth on deodorants. I think as I told you, the way we're looking at the year, there's a negative in terms of cost.
There's a positive in terms of, you know, middle distillate prices, which is basically linear alkylbenzene and kerosene, which are used in detergents and household insecticide. Those prices going up significantly and a lot of locals coming on from our business point of view, the positive of West Asia. As far as weather goes, if the predictions of El Niño are right, there will be, Q1 will be a difficult quarter for HI, to be a good quarter because when it's hot and reasonably wet, actually it's reasonably good. Q2 and Q3 should be okay. Soap should generally be good.
Indonesia does quite well during El Niño in general, you know, gene ral consu m ption, if monsoons are poor, I don't know how Q4 will be. Overall, the la st El Niño year I think we had was FY 2024, if I'm not mistaken, and that turned out as a reasonably good year for us.
Sure.
This is the sum of moving parts between West Asia and hotter summer and El Niño.
Understood. My second question is on soaps. In Q4, Sudhir, we have seen that in most of the FMCG categories, GST has had some benefit. I do understand in soap local players is not very big number. But if you could tell us from a compliance side at least, is there some improvement? Because at least at 5%, degree of bypassing the system is much lower. So are you seeing some evidence of that? It may not translate to number as yet. Your optimism on soap volumes recovery, say in Q1, Q2 based on, say, El Niño, et cetera, is that the main reason? Or because of inflationary condition, you and say the market leader will gain market share, is that the main reason?
Two, three questions you're asking. I mean, on the second question on why I'm reasonably bullish is last year pretty cold summer, as you know, and various beverages categories, et cetera, and ice cream categories, and this one is expected to be the other way around. On your second question on the impact of GST, to be honest, the overall impact on GST has been quite good. I think the consumption we have seen results. We are also quite happy with 8% volume growth in India. I mean, the overall consumer sentiment certainly seems to have improved after GST, and that is benefiting a lot of discretionary categories like laundry liquid and air care, which may not have had a direct reduction in GST prices.
As far as soaps itself goes, it doesn't seem to have shown, at least for us and, from what I'm able to read from reported results, significant improvement in volume. Unlike some GST categories, I think categories which are slightly under-penetrated or which have heavy locals, but certainly under-penetrated categories really have benefited from the GST price cut. Soaps and a few other, universally penetrated categories, the impact has been limited on the GST, though we've passed on all the benefits to consumers.
Hair Oil has seen very good benefit, and that's also very well penetrated.
I don't know whether it's hair. Is it premium?
Yeah, premium has also grown strongly. Bahujan has grown very strongly.
That's what I also believe, that it's a premium phenomenon, you know, where when you have a very premium brand, when prices come down, other categories, you know, there are other few penetrated categories like oral, et cetera, where I don't know what the impact has been on GST.
Last question, in terms of the pet food, any update or you want to share that in the analyst day, given it's a big sector from a longer term, but may not be that relevant currently. Any update on that?
I think, you know, we are in the quest of product market fit and getting increasingly convinced we have it. We've set up a state-of-the-art plant in Nashik, and we've shipped out volumes from there. The more we understand this category, firstly, it's going to be a long burn. There's going to be a lot of, do feel that, and I'll again share this on Monday, we do feel that this is a category that has a good odd for us to really become a big business in a few years' time. I mean, I think we may have entered this at the right time.
Right. one last follow-up on palm oil. The feedback given was palm oil and crude oil, the linkage has been broken, but we have seen fantastic linkage this time also. Your thoughts. Second, on the soap, new formulation which number one player has taken, what is the current stance you have given there is a big palm oil inflation, it makes much more sense now than ever. What is your stance now?
I think palm oil inflation after this see, look, Abneesh Roy, the way to look at this is crude went up from give or take $70, let us say, to $100, right? Which is a 40%-50% increase in crude. Palm has gone from MYR 4,000 to about MYR 4,000-MYR 4,500, which is a 10%-11% increase in palm. Some of the middle distillates, which is kerosene and linear alkyl benzene, which is basically the stuff that competes with jet fuel, costs have more than doubled. In the scheme of things, you know, palm oil of 10% is not a, it's not like a deal breaker the way like, you know, 20%-25% is. It is of course going to be, I mean, it's okay.
In the overall scheme of things, as I said, we are anticipating at a $100 Brent and MYR 4,500 palm oil. It still seems to be roughly where we are, kind of 7%-9% inflation, which, between costs and, you know, some cuts and pricing, we should be able to recover. As far as the, you know, formulation and competitive are not proper for me to comment on that. I think it is important to say that, you know, we are on our path on soaps. I think we are happy with the margins that we have on soaps. A little bit of volume in the soap category is a little lower than what it's typically been.
We wonder whether it's because of a colder last structural is going on, but it is not an alarming change in volumes either, you know. I think it's a little bit of wait and watch on soaps. It doesn't seem to be, from what I see, a game changer one way or the other for FY 2027.
Sure. Thank you. That's all from my side.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Siddhesh Deshmukh from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi sir, this is Percy Panthaki here. I just wanted to understand in light of the inflation, while there are going to be moving parts in terms of the percentage margin and the top line, if I just look at the INR crore in terms of the growth YoY of the EBITDA level, do you think because of all these events there is any need for us as analysts to re-look at the INR million EBITDA figure? Or you think you will be able to sort of manage what you had in mind before the war started out?
I mean, Percy, we'll give you the guidance on Monday. At this current stage, this is not an alarming inflation because it is spread out over all categories evenly versus a typical 20%-25% palm oil inflation, which then one category takes and can't price up and, you know, there's a limit to what you can't really take prices on other categories when palm oil inflates. I mean, it's hard exactly given, you know, you can see the. There are two variables we are playing with here. I mean, there's one, a fundamental variable which we'll talk on Monday, which is we believe our business is on a compounding effect of couple of our categories like hair care and actually some parts of HI and laundry, et cetera.
That one underlying variable where we just see volume momentum building quarter after quarter. There's another compounding factor of a potential El Niño and a third one on West Asia. These are the three dimensions we are looking at. Given that does put a little bit more difficulty, but I would not say that this is an alarming number as things stand today.
Got it. Second question on soaps. Typically, what happens in the soaps category is that when there is a price increase, there is a significant and measurable, sort of volume impact of that price increase. Do you think that this time around that volume impact will not happen? What has happened is because of the GST, the prices have got cut, and now because of inflation, they will go back again. If you see point to point over the last five, six months, for the consumer, the price would not have changed at all. It goes down and then comes up in a period of less than half a year or so.
From a consumer point of view, if he's seeing that the MRP is roughly unchanged, does that mean that there will be no volume backlash and whatever pricing you take will be purely incremental to the top line?
I think so. I think, in fact, it may be the other way around. GST went from 18% to 5%. As I told you know, palm oil is up 10%. We may not take up the full edge. Palm oil is not the only thing we may put into soaps. The chances are that the price increase we take will be less than the GST benefit that we passed on to consumers. If anything, compared to October, the consumer will see a pre-October, pre-GST will in fact see slightly lower prices on soaps, though our realization will improve because that GST doesn't obviously affect our realization.
Yeah, exactly. That's what I was saying. Okay, got it. We'll catch up on Monday.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Harit Kapoor from Investec. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening. You mentioned, you know, some price increases already in place. Any indication on, you know, what's the kind of range of price hikes on a weighted average basis that have already gone through the market?
I mean, in soaps we have taken up prices by 5%. In detergents we have taken up prices again by 6% or 7%, which is now a meaningful part of our business, maybe 7%. In household insecticide, we have taken up prices again by 4%, 5%. That's the kind of range.
Got it. It's already a meaningful price increase which will monitor the market as I understand.
Yeah, I mean, like, some of those price increases just happened in April. All of them just happened in April, so they're not reflected in the results of last quarter.
Got it. Got it. The second question is on Indonesia. You know, you've slowly kind of been building back the margin also, you know, this quarter again, you know, at 28%+ operating margin. Just wanted to get your sense on, you know, whether, you know, the issues on competitive intensity, et cetera, are kind of completely behind us because it doesn't reflect like that, at least in your margin delivery over the last, over the last few quarters.
Yeah, I think this margin delivery has a little bit to do with revenue recognition, which in Indonesia, actually, we already did a round last even before this Expert Advisory Committee recommendation came up. We already did some reclassification. Broadly, Indonesia margins are where they are. It's not 28%.
Quarter four.
Quarter four also we generally have a spike because it's the, you know, month of Lebaran, which is Ramadan there, et cetera. I would say Indonesian margins are steady. Volumes are back to being steady two quarters in a row of four, probably potential to go to 5%-6%. I really do think that some of the businesses which we'll talk about again on Monday, which is Africa, international business, even Latin America, et cetera, we may be in the cusp of much higher growth there.
Got it. Last is bookkeeping, Vishal. Just a sense on what your tax rate outlook is for fiscal year 2027 consolidated?
The tax ET R is likely to remain the same as this year. The one-offs which you've taken and we've clarified separately.
Got it. Okay, got it.
Yeah.
Thank you. Appreciate this.
Harit, does that answer your question?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Awais Bak shi from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sudhir and team. Am I audible?
Yes.
Just two questions from my side, specifically to your Godrej Fab portfolio. Firstly, in terms of your ARR, where are we tracking versus the INR 500 crore exit aspiration? A sub-part to it would be the south and north-south split of that current ARR number. Secondly, you know, at what revenue scale does the Fab portfolio turn EBITDA positive for us at a bank level? I think those were the two questions from my end. Thanks.
I think our ARR is about on GSP terms, about INR 500 crores in quarter four, and maybe INR 450 crores in NSP terms. We of cour se internally look at our gross sales value is about INR 500 crores. We're a very, very fast-scaled brand. Every quarter is kind of doing better than the previous quarter. It's also kind of broken even in quarter four. Again, there'll be some issues in quarter one becau se laundry does get pretty badly affected by crude. We have a good solid path to profitability on Fab and look, we just think that the sky's the limit. This is a INR 4,000 crore market in India. Very rapidly we've come from nowhere to becoming INR 500 crores. I mean, we feel this market is a hyper-growth market and we have a lot to gain and very little to lose here.
Sure. Just a follow-up here. Would it be fair to assume that the INR 500 crore growth is more or less to do with south? More than 50%?
No, no. Fab is now across the country doing extremely well in most states, north, Maharashtra. It has gone significantly beyond being a south player.
Okay. That's clear.
I mean, south is leading it, so everything is bigger. I mean, because we started there in the south, but this is a national player. We're very excited with the scale opportunity this provides us in the future.
Sure. Thanks for taking my questions. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Aditya Vikram from DB Securities Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sudhir. Thank you for taking my question. If I understand it correctly, you will see margin pressures over the next two quarters because of where the crude is. Is that correct interpretation of what you said?
I think percentage margins we will. Absolute EBITDA also we may or may not, but, you know, we will try and see where we can recover, because we do expect both pricing growth and some kind of share growth in a few categories.
Okay. thanks for that. however, just one thing. Sudhir, it has been couple of quarters now where if one category performs, something else doesn't, and specifically on personal care, things are not going as planned. Right? What is the long-term strategy? The roadblocks now or the blockers which we will see in next two quarters will only amplify anything which doesn't perform. What is the thought on that front?
I mean, look, you know, in every quarter you will have some category performing. I think you have to look at the overall numbers. You know, in India, we delivered 8% volume, 10% sales growth and 18% EBITDA. Across the world, you know, we delivered 11% revenue and 10% EBITDA. There will always be some category in some quarter that doesn't do well. I think as long as most geographies are range bound and more, you know, then one should be okay with it because these things they do change a little bit. The personal care number is a bit lower than what we thought, but this, you know, 3% can go to 7%, 8%. I mean, personal care structurally is a slightly lower, slower growing business for us than home care because of the weightage of soaps.
I'm not unduly worried about personal care. It's at the lower end of what it should be. It may be a little bit higher than this on a long term. We do expect our home care businesses to really grow much faster. So one can expect in the long term our home care businesses to grow faster than our personal care businesses just because of the weightage of soaps. It's not one of those things that, you know, if you have a, you know, one part of business doing well, another part doing badly and the overall business doesn't do well, then, you know, it's a problem. If the overall business is You know, the two big numbers for us are India UVG, which at 8% is good, and, you know, overall EBITDA, which at 10% is okay.
I guess that's how we look at it.
Okay. Just one, basically on personal care itself, right? You have been bullish in your commentary for past two quarters on soap doing well or soap picking up, right? It is not doing as well as we thought, and it's impacting the overall growth if you look at it, because the sheer weight of soaps, right? Is there any plan from the management side to increase the marketing spends or increase the awareness? Is there some sort of a strategy? This apparently is one pain point which has been there for past two quarters, at least two, if I can recollect it properly, right? If there is any strategy around this that we will spend more on the marketing side to enhance the visibility or enhance the performance.
I mean, there are a couple of things on soaps. One is, last year we genuinely think it was the temperatures affected the overall category volumes. When we look at the data, it is a bit anomalous. FY 2024 was a good year in terms of volumes. FY 2025 was okay. FY 2026 we acted okay and in a couple of months. There is a temperature impact there. Also, there is a movement of soaps to liquids. Again, we'll talk about it on Monday. The biggest thing that we'll have to do is to look at the overall skin cleansing business. We are having a lot of green shoots on Cinthol body wash.
You know, we doing extremely well on Magic hand wash. Now with Muuchstac we have an acquisition in face wash, which is also kind of very promising. Really we have to change our lens from soaps to cleansing, and look at the growth there.
Nothing more to do on the marketing spends or visibility or anything else, right? It's just about how you will-
Well, you know, the focus is really to kind of gain market share consistently, not to lose market share. You know, the growth of the market is the growth of the market. Between cleansing, between other categories, we'll have to compensate. You know, as we'll show you on Monday, there are some categories which are, you know, on hypergrowth, and those are compounding every quarter. Their impact there is becoming bigger and bigger every quarter.
Okay. Okay. Thanks so much, Sudhir. Best of luck.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Kunal Vora from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I have a question on margins. In the previous two instances when crude crossed $100 in 2020 and 2022, you saw above 200 with controlled margin contraction. Your comments indicate that this time the margin contraction may not be meaningful. What's different this time? Is there a change in business or raw material mix, or is it palm oil already high in the base or GST rate cut is making it easier to raise prices? Any comments on this, Sudhir?
I think a combination. The palm oil hike so far is a 10% palm oil hike. In 2022 and all it had gone up, 20%-25%. That is not the extent of palm oil inflation we are seeing today. I think the relative salience of soaps is slower than what it used to be 'cause we are now becoming a larger and larger home care business. As a combination of all these, I still expect, as I told you, lower than normative margins on Q1 and probably Q2, though it may not be very different from what it was last year. I think that's the reason.
Understood. Second, price hike against a 50% increase in our cost. Is there more?
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Sorry, that question wasn't clear.
Yeah, the question was on detergents. Given the price hike, the raw material cost has gone up meaningfully, 50%. Wanted to understand if there is more pricing action?
I mean, yeah. We will kind of, you know, do this in a couple of steps. We are of course, you know, committed to pricing it right. One is, you know, we're still nowhere near the market leaders in this category, so we will be led by the market leader here.
Understood. Lastly, on HI, like, RMF molecule has been around now for more than a year. How has it impacted the HI, like, category market share growth acceler ation or, like, what kind of gains you've seen, what kind of traction you've seen, both in case of incense stick as well as in case of LVs. Let's say, do you expect continued acceleration, continued gains from this or, now it's in the base?
I mean, we again talk about this with Monday in detail. You know, having looked at our numbers now for a few quarters, we conclude that in general, RMF has worked. Worked better in some places than others, overall it has worked, we feel reasonably confident that from a kind of a zero to low single digit growth category, household insecticide is at least a high single digit category, you know, over a period of time can compound into a double digit category. We do feel that the household insecticide problem that plagued us for 10 years is probably behind us. Of course, there will be. It is, whether you like it or not, a volatile category in terms of season, there will be ups and downs in seasons.
That entire mean is, I think, going to change pretty meaningfully. That's what we've been observing, because we've been observing the spread over season. We have a seasonality index on our side, and we've been observing a meaningful variance on our total business over seasonality since we launched RMF. I mean, it's taken some time, bit of time to happen, but we do feel and one of our main themes on Monday is to show you in detail on why we believe the HI issues may be behind us.
Understood. Thank you. That's it from me.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Nihal Mahesh Jham from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, Sudhir. Good evening. I have two questions. The first was on soaps, again, that in Q3 you commented that, you know, the packet growth was better than the volume growth. Just trying to understand that with the full impact of the grammage increase sort of playing out in Q4, what led to maybe the growth not accelerating versus Q3? Was it that in the packet or the unit growth sort of saw a deceleration?
It's still sitting on very high grammage growth last year at the same period. See, what happened in soaps is between Q4, Q1, and Q2, basically Q4 of FY 2024 Sorry, FY 2025, Q1 and Q2, we've had very sharp grammage cuts. We're still lapping bases, where our grammage on small packs is significantly lower than what it was in Q4 of last year. One of the reasons why volumes are still a little bit muted. On large packs, they're better than they are on small packs.
Even adjusting for the GST, however, the grammages for the small packs are lower as compared to the.
Yeah. Yeah. The kind of hikes that we took in or drops we took in soaps between Q3 of FY 2025 and Q2 of FY 2026 when palm prices shot up, I, if I'm not mistaken, for example, Godrej No. 1, INR 10 went from something like 55 g to 40 g. We took it back up to, I think 46 g to 47 g. It's still a good 15%-20% lower than what it was last year.
Understood. That's helpful. The second question is you alluded to.
I'm sorry, Nihal. Can you use your handset mode, please? You are not audible properly.
Sorry for that. Is this better?
Yeah. Please proceed. Thank you.
Sudhir, you alluded to the individual components of RM of how they've inflated, whether it is for LAB or for palm. On a blended basis, what is the inflation we are at present facing for company as a whole?
I think we put that out in our results. 7% to 9% is what we're seeing.
Even on the spot prices?
Even on the spot. I mean, like, spot is changing every day, but even on an average, I mean, spot price. Yeah, let's just say at a 100 to 105 Brent and 4,500 CPO, that's what we're seeing.
Got that. Just one final question on Fab. If I heard you right, you mentioned that obviously the pricing choices that you plan to take will be more determined by how the market reacts rather than how the RM sort of behaves.
Yeah. Yes. I mean, see, when we are leaders, we lead price. When we are followers, we have to follow price.
Sure. That's it, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Avi Mehta from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Sudhir. Thanks for the opportunity. you know, just I had one basic question, and most of them, others have been answered. you know, while you're seeing margin under stress over the next coming quarters, you know, you do have price hikes that are raising sales prices In such a scenario, do you see consolidated EBITDA growth also following a similar trajectory as margin that is moderating from 40 levels in the percent, or how should I see that?
Yeah, I think so, because of course India gets hit the most, but, I think the same principle will be there, percentage margin and, we will have, absolute EBITDA margins are quite high.
Got it. Okay. Perfect. That's all from my side. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Aditya Vikram from DB Securi ties. Please go ahead.
Sudhir, one just follow-up. You are alluding that you will take some price hikes, and you have already taken some over the last two, four years, right? I just wanted to understand in these specific categories where you are taking a price hike, are you seeing some sort of a pricing elasticity or are you seeing some sort of a drying up on volume based on whatever we have done so far?
I don't expect a drying up on volumes, to be honest. I told you know, I've seen a couple of these hyperinflations on crude before. There are market share gains versus locals in some categories you get. Maybe volumes will be a little lower than what we wanted at the beginning of the year. Maybe revenue growth will be a little higher than what we thought we'd get at the beginning of the year. Maybe EBITDA will be, as things stand, slightly lower than what we thought, but still pretty good or maybe to be where it is. That's what I'm anticipating at current costs.
Okay. Thank you. That's all. I appreciate it.
Thank you. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vishal Kedia for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, everyone. We hope we have been able to answer all your queries. In case of any further queries, please reach out to us on our IR contact details. Again, I would like to invite you all to our analyst investor meet on Monday, and we hope to see you there. Thank you and good evening.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Godrej Consumer Products Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us today, and you may now disconnect your lines.