Good day and welcome to the Sai Silks Kalamandir Limited Q4/FY 2024 earnings conference call hosted by HDFC Securities. As a reminder, all participants' 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 touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Jay Gandhi from HDFC Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah, hi. Good evening, everyone. This is Jay Gandhi from HDFC Securities. Welcome to the Sai Silks Kalamandir Q4/FY 2024 earnings call. From the management at SSKL, we have with us Mr. Bharadwaj Rachamadugu, Vice President Sai Silks Kalamandir, and Mr. K.V.L.N. Sarma, Chief Financial Officer SSKL. Before we start, we would like to point out that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature, and a disclaimer to this effect has been made. Kindly note that this call is meant for investors and analysts only. If there are any representatives from media, they are requested to drop off immediately. With that, I hand over to Mr. Bharadwaj for his opening remarks.
Thank you, Jay. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for joining us today to discuss Sai Silks (Kalamandir) Limited financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year FY 2024. I'm Bharadwaj Rachamadugu, Senior Vice President at Sai Silks Kalamandir Limited. I'm hoping that everybody got a chance to go through the financials that have been uploaded both on the stock exchanges as well as on the company website. I have with me Mr. K.V.L.N. Sarma, our CFO of the company. Let me first start by giving you an update on what happened in terms of the ethnic retail market scenario for the quarter four. The overall wedding dates in quarter four were marginally smaller than last year quarter four. The wedding and occasion-wear market is still in the recovery mode in this quarter.
During this quarter, we have also observed that in the month of March, we did see an increased trend in the footfall attributing to the wedding date calendars being slow majorly in the Q1 of FY 2025. So, therefore, the month of March actually saw a good recovery compared to last year month-over-month, both in terms of SSGs as well as our new store's performance. So overall, in Q4, we did see an SSG growth topped with the new store revenues, adding to the overall growth. With respect to operations and executions, in this quarter, we have added three new stores measuring close to 22,750 sq ft of retail area, and all of these three stores are with Varamahalakshmi Silks. Additionally, we have also upgraded one of our stores from Kalamandir format to a Varamahalakshmi format. For the full year, we have added close to 43,900 sq ft.
That puts us at a total at 647,300 sq ft worth of retail area presence as of now. Each of these store additions also focuses on providing a unique shopping experience in the same standards of our other Varamahalakshmi Silks stores. As we always believe, we truly sell an experience rather than just a retail store. As per the plan, we aim to open additional store capacity of close to 90,000 sq ft in this financial year. Majority of it would be coming in the Tamil Nadu area and with our brand, Varamahalakshmi Silks. We did a revenue of about INR 359.6 crores this quarter compared to last year of INR 323 crores. Our gross margins stood at 40.97% compared to last year of 39.77%. Our PAT for the quarter stood at INR 28.73 crores compared to last year's of INR 20.24 crores, which has grown by about 41.95%.
Our full-year PAT stood at INR 100.87 compared to INR 97.59 last year, and that has grown by about 3.36%. On the strategy front, we are planning to open the next set of stores also in the strategic locations of Tamil Nadu majorly. In terms of the customer base, we have an active customer base as of today around 6.5 million and are growing strong as we expand. Our contribution coming from the loyal customer base also continued this season. We still continue to hold our loyal customer base of about 53% of our repeat purchases. In addition to this, we are able to complete the integration of Salesforce with our ERP. We have also started making multiple campaigns to reach out to our customers digitally through our Salesforce Cloud.
We believe that this will be a great addition to improve the overall loyal customer base as well as to reach out to our new target audience through automations in terms of marketing digitally. We are optimistic about our growth of a company as we plan to expand our retail footprint into one of the biggest markets of ethnic retail in India, majorly in Tamil Nadu. We believe that our strategic focus, combined with our technology adoption, will help the company achieve greater milestones in the years to come. Now, I would hand it over to the operator and would be happy to answer any of your questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Dhairya Trivedi from DJT Investments. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi sir. Thanks for taking my question. So my question is on the cash flows. If we see the trend over the last couple of years, the company has hardly been able to convert any of the profits to operating cash flows. Last year, we did an operating cash flow of INR 40 crores against a bid of roughly INR 200 crores, and this year, the operating cash flows are, in fact, negative. For a consumer company, even if we compare ourselves to any of the peers, our cash flow conversions are extremely poor. So what is the reason for this, and by when do you think the company can start having reasonable cash flow conversion?
I'm Sarma here. If we are studying our cash flow for the current year, the main objective, as you have explained during our IPO process also, is that we would want to reduce our payable days. We want to gain on the cash discounts, etc., by negotiating better in the markets and all that. So during the current year, the focus has been to improve the balance sheet by reducing liabilities, etc. And you would have seen that in the cash flow statement, the reduction in creditors has been to the extent of about INR 170 crore, of which a part of it was used from GCP, and the entire year's generations are deployed. This is also one is to reduce the payable days, and of course, the increase in inventory compared to the minimum basic quantities that we are required to maintain in the new stores is lesser.
In fact, there is a slight improvement on inventory management to that extent. But to comply with another issue also, that the SMEs' payments to be cleared within the stipulated time, this has also forced us to clear off for the majority of creditors. So current year, if you see, the majority of the reason for the negative operating cash flows is reducing the payable days. Whose benefits will you be seeing in the next two, three years? We are already seeing that we are able to negotiate better with our vendors, and thereby, perhaps the margin improvement would be perceptibly seen in the coming quarters. So this is the exclusive reason.
In any case, you can say that the internal generations have been deployed on improvement of the balance sheet, while for the investing activities for the current year and perhaps a part of the next year, we will be utilizing the IPO funds that are available with us even now.
Okay, understood, sir. What would be the guidance for FY 2025 in terms of SSG revenues and EBITDA?
We are expecting, as we have seen the last quarter, Q4, as we have explained in the earlier quarters, we initially imposed that inventory as a KPI thing, and we have suffered slightly on the Q2 and Q3 on the productivities. But in Q4, we realized that this is again coming back to normal. In fact, we are on positive SSGs in Q4. And when we are on positive Q4, positive on SSGs in Q4, and we are adding particularly VML format, I think the EBITDA margin has improved in the quarter four to approximately 17% or so. So going ahead, our target is to retrieve the SSGs at least to a positive of 2%-3% along with the implementation plan that we already initiated.
In fact, the 40,000 sq ft that we have put in in the last year towards the third and fourth quarters would run to the full capacity during this year. Along with the new stores that would be coming, in fact, as we are speaking in June, we would be putting up another 25,000 or so. By half-year end, we should be completing the expansion of approximately ±50,000 sq ft. So these things should normally, in the normal course itself, should give at least another INR 300 crore-INR 350 crore of turnover with an improved EBITDA because if the SSGs are recovered and the premiumization works out, we would have better EBITDA margins and approximately ±INR 350 crore of additional turnover.
Understood. Sir, we are looking to open about 13 stores of Varamahalakshmi in this year?
See, we'll go with the square feet area. Last time, when we initiated the expansion plan, we took an average size of 5,000 sq ft, which normally, you see, all Tamil Nadu centers are major cash-rich centers, so very small stores are not viable there. So average is working out to approximately 6,500 ± now. So if we go by the sq ft area, our plan of action originally was about 150,000 sq ft, of which we have already put in 43,000 sq ft last year. And this year, we should be putting up about 90,000, of which 50,000 will come into operation by the end of half-year. So that these 50,000 will be available for full-scale operations in the quarter three and quarter four, which are considered to be the best quarters for the company.
All these stores will be in the Varamahalakshmi format, right?
Yeah, all of them are Varamahalakshmi format.
Okay. Okay. And sir, another question I had was on how do you foresee the saree demand evolving over the next few years? I mean, while we are privy to certain details in the Technopak report, we just wanted some qualitative highlights on the category, especially in the light of the younger generation being more inclined towards Western outfits as opposed to sarees.
So Mr. Trivedi, thanks for the question. I can answer that question. So if you see the Technopak report, Technopak report was basically observed in terms of how the market has been doing in the last couple of years, still 25. If you take that as a metric, a few of the highlights that I would like to highlight at this point of time is in the overall saree consumption, the SSG I mean, the CAGR growth is around 8% CAGR growth that saree as an industry sees, and we're talking only about pure sarees. So though SSKL has about 69.5% sarees and another 30% coming from other categories, if you just focus on sarees alone, it's growing at an 8% CAGR. So in this overall pie, 50% of the entire concentration is only coming from South India. Northeast, West put together is the rest of the 50%.
Now, if you take that as a metric, Tamil Nadu one state is equivalent to Andhra plus Telangana combined. So our Tamil Nadu presence today, as we see, is around 63,000 sq ft. It's just a nine-store presence. So now the focus is the market has doubled the size. So for us in Andhra and Telangana put together, we have around close to around more than 40 stores. So there is a huge potential for us to enter into Tamil Nadu. And Tamil Nadu being at the top of the chart in terms of saree consumption across the entire country, we believe the Varamahalakshmi format is the best format to go to because Varamahalakshmi Silks, as you know, that is majorly into silk sarees, and Tamil Nadu has a greater absorption market for that. So we believe our strategical expansion into Tamil Nadu is the right strategy.
In terms of your average age, what's the trends like? What we actually wanted to when I actually look at a consumer portfolio profile around in the entire ecosystem of what a Varamahalakshmi customer actually comes, I would say broadly around 60% of our customers is coming for wedding-based purchase, 60%-65%. Another 35%-40% is your occasion wear-buy. So wedding purchases is one of the main reasons because your average age that a consumer comes for a wedding is around for a girl, is around 20, 24 to around 30 years old. So we still are able to attract this group of audience to our Varamahalakshmi purchases. And the remaining 35-40% is coming from the occasions buying. It could be any festivities, or it could be any functions, or evening parties, or something like that.
All of that is the remaining 35%. So this metric, if you see currently in the Indian census data as we have, this group of people in the younger women generation are actually increasing. And that's a quick math on how we actually take this approach. I hope that answers your question.
Got it. Got it. Understood. Just to clarify, we closed FY 2024 at 60 stores, right?
Correct.
Okay. Okay. So this is a request I made last time as well. If you can please upload the investor presentation on the exchange days, it would really help because otherwise, it's very difficult to get a sense of a trajectory of the business without the investor presentation.
Understood, Trivedi. So I think it's currently underway. We will have a press release released today as well as the investor presentations. Both of them will be done before the end of the day.
Thank you. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Maulik Chaudhari from Monarch Networth Capital Limited. Please go ahead.
Am I audible ?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I just wanted to ask that how is the traction for those stores of Varamahalakshmi that you opened in H2 FY 2024?
Hi. So we're talking about our stores that we have opened in quarter four. If I may repeat, is that what your question was? Are you talking about our new store implementation?
Quarter three and quarter four.
Quarter three and quarter four. Overall, as we did tell you, Tamil Nadu is still at the top of our remaining other state presence. Tamil Nadu still commands a better throughput compared to the other states. The same has been there, the case with the old stores as well and the new stores as well. If you talk about a few new stores, we have taken strategic locations this time, not just the typical markets. For example, the second store in Coimbatore, coming up, or a store in Salem, coming up. These are the areas where we believe it's a higher potential. And there are a store like Salem which has other advantages compared to not just sales, which is because the majority of our production, one of our top three or top four sarees, actually comes from Salem.
We believe that network in Salem will also help us to improvise our inventory management. As we speak, we are also expanding a small distribution center in Salem, which is right on top of our existing store. Using that network, we will see and forecast to see if we can move the inventory in a better fashion. Overall, Q3, Q4, the new store additions, around six stores we have added. These six stores came in Tamil Nadu, and everything seems to be good. Overall, what I would like to say is the overall consumption, especially in the wedding and occasion wear, market has considerably been a little weak. One, attributes to the low wedding dates. Two, the overall consumption also seemed to be a little weak.
With these two reasons, we had a slight impact in the other areas, but Tamil Nadu still seems to be strong for us.
Okay. Thank you. And my second question is, what was the revenue per store of Varamahalakshmi, Kalamandir, Mandir, KLM Fashion in FY 2024 full year?
Yeah. If we take Varamahalakshmi, Varamahalakshmi is continuing to be approximately INR 45,000-INR 46,000 at a company level. Tamil Nadu would be slightly higher. And there is Mandir continues to be almost on the same range, about INR 44,000 per sq ft. KLM has shown a slight improvement, INR 20,000 per sq ft there. And KLM currently is at INR 14,000 per sq ft.
KLM is what?
KLM is at INR 14,000 per sq ft.
Okay. Okay. And my third question is also, earlier, you had mentioned that you wanted to add a Kalamandir store as well in FY 2025. So the guidance is intact, or you are delaying the plan?
So yeah, I can answer that question. At this point of time, the near horizon in the span of Q1 and Q2, there are no Kalamandir stores as we plan. The demand for Varamahalakshmi is still there. So currently, we have around three stores that are currently almost close to opening within the 60-day timeline from today. And the other stores are also Varamahalakshmi. We have kept a provision for Kalamandir stores, one or two stores, not too many, in the Tamil Nadu cluster once that cluster matures. Typically, we are looking at Chennai as a market and Coimbatore, as a market for Kalamandir. But at this point of time, we do not have any solidified plan for Kalamandir to execute immediately.
Probably after the first two quarters of Varamahalakshmi implementation, if there is a possibility, we'll try and see if we can expand into Kalamandir for the next year.
Okay. Thank you.
But the overall schematics, if you have to think about it, the majority of the expansion, almost most of the expansion, will be Varamahalakshmi-based expansion. And mostly, it will be in the Tamil Nadu area.
Okay. You just mentioned in the average that you will be adding Kalamandir in Andhra and Telangana as well in FY 2025.
So at this point of time, we wanted to focus on Tamil Nadu as an area alone because Tamil Nadu still has a greater potential. We are actively focused on closing down new locations in Tamil Nadu once we are able to get into a decent number of additions by the end of Q2. Probably in Q3 or Q4, we can look at adding new stores into Telangana and Andhra. As we speak at this point in time, as of today, we do not have any forecasted number of stores in AP and Telangana.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pranav Shrimal from Pioneer Wealth Management. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hello.
Yes, sir.
Yeah.
Good morning, Pranav. You are audible. Please tell me.
Yeah. Yeah. So my question is that I just wanted to understand your qualitative view on the long-term relevance of saree wearing given the preference for Western outfits among younger generations. We know that there have been reports which show that saree market will grow at a CAGR of 8%. But I just wanted your qualitative view and what gives you confidence in continuing to expand in this business. And do you think that our business model can be a risk in the long run as people shift more towards Western outfits? Just wanted your qualitative view and wanted to understand what gives you confidence to expand in this segment.
Sure, Pranav. Thanks for the question. So if you see currently, in the entire clusters that we have, around 15-50 presence in four states, when you talk about occasion wear and wedding wear, it is dominated by sarees, especially in South India. And if you have to talk in depth about Tamil Nadu, it is dominated by sarees when it comes to wedding because in a typical wedding, earlier, it was just 1-day or 2-day wedding. So now we're talking about a 4-day ceremony, 5-day ceremony kicking in. The consumption of sarees became more, not just the bride, the entire family. That still continues. We do not see any slowdown in these areas whatsoever.
Now, if you talk about when you expand into other areas, for example, a North Indian market, East, South, in other cities that we currently are not there, that becomes actually true because your lehenga component, your occasion wear, that also plays a major role. The other spin that I would like to talk about right now today is if you talk about our Mandir format or a Kalamandir format and a certain extent KLM format, we do have that offering as well. So the moment we talk about expansion beyond South India, beyond these core saree consumption markets, we have the capabilities. We have done, and we have also sold many of the non-saree occasion and ethnic wear products. So we will just change the product mix to a certain.
So today, since we are going deep south into saree markets, the concentration of sarees is moving from 67%-69.5%, and probably it will go all to 72% or 75%. Once we go beyond these clusters, then maybe we can get it back from 75% back to 60% or 65% or even 50%. So what I would like to point out is we are very strong in terms of the sourcing. So as I did tell you in my earlier calls as well, we have a very strong team, more than 100-150 people purchase team we have in all segments put together. And these people are well-equipped to get our sourcing and entire structure, even from sarees to non-sarees to men's wear and kids' wear as well.
The whole idea behind SSKL strategy is to operate in the ethnic wear as well as in the occasion wear space. So it is just that in today's market scenario, in today's clusters where we are present, saree still continues to dominate, and that's the reason why our saree contribution is high. Once we move beyond these clusters, then that composition of sarees towards non-saree wear will actually change. Even if you look into our metrics from our last customer data that we have been tracking in that 6.5 million customer base we were able to secure, just in the last 12 months, last trailing 12 months, when you take an analysis, we are very happy to say that 53%-54% of repeat purchases are coming in our stores. So all of this is a very encouraging factor.
We still continue to keep one of the industry's top metrics in terms of bringing back to the customers. We have data going three-time visitors, two-time visitors, or four-time visitors. Having a 53%-54% of a repeat customer rate in our sense is quite a good number to be at. Maybe that can answer your question.
Yes, sir. Thank you. So one more question. In terms of marketing, we do spend on marketing when we open a new shop, and we get most of our sales also through word of mouth. But I just wanted to highlight that since the influencer market is very big, and so are we into that hiring influencer for the sarees, any change in the fashion of saree or something where people can get more knowledge about the saree, and they can take it as a fashion? Can you actually believe that saree is also one of the fashion which you can wear? So influencer market is so big. So I just wanted your view on that.
Yeah. Sure, Pranav. So if you look at our overall advertisement expenditure that we have been making for the last couple of years, after 2021, that entire e-commerce boom picked up. So we also followed that trail, and our e-commerce journey also started. But even within the advertisement spend as we see today, our digital advertisements actually doubled. And our offline advertisements, such as newspapers and television, spend actually reduced. So we are going towards the same path. We do understand the importance of influencer marketing, digital reels. If you look at any of our social media handles, be it Instagram, we are doing a lot more in terms of influencer collaborations, and we are actively trying to focus on these clusters very, very strong. And when it comes to e-commerce, we are doing influencer collaborations not just with India, but we are doing abroad as well.
The focus continues to remain to spend a lot more on digital platforms and reduce the spend on the offline channels. That's where we currently stand. This year also, we have budgeted towards the same thing. Our digital spends are increasing compared to the offline spends in terms of newspaper and television. But talking about our store inaugurations-wise, in terms of store inauguration, it will generally be a blended of both offline and online. We go all out in terms of our offline. We do dhol. We do newspapers. We do television. We do hoardings. We do paintings. We bring in celebrities. We bring in influencers. We bring in those groups of people who come and visit stores and keep stories on Instagram and make some reels and content like that.
The idea behind this is to make sure everybody in the vicinity knows that our store is open. That is generally going to be an offline plus online-heavy-driven model. But once after the store opens, then we convert majorly into a digital marketing campaign. With the Salesforce coming into play, we now are even more confident because we are now able to do automations. With the help of geofencing and geotagging, we are now able to run use cases where we are able to convert your offline purchases to online and then doing these automation of use cases using emailers and WhatsApp and Instagram or sponsored posts, everything in that ecosystem.
Okay. Thank you, sir. Thanks a lot for answering my question. Best of luck. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chinmay Nema from Prescient Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. I hope I'm audible.
Hi, Chinmay. Yes, you're audible.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. If I look back at a somewhat longer period, back in 2020 right now, for the last two, three years, we've been operating at quite elevated levels of inventory compared to back in 2018, 2019. I just wanted to understand what are we doing differently from how things were back then.
So Chinmay, so to answer your question, if you're talking about our inventory levels, more or less, our inventory levels seem to be same. So if you're talking about back in the year 2018, 2019, then I'd like to point out that there was another company called Sai Retail India Limited, which was actually helping us in terms of sourcing. But the moment when we started this journey towards listing publicly, we thought, in the best interest of our investors, to make it very, very transparent, we closed down the operations with Sai Retail 100% completely. And everything is happening under the SSKL umbrella. And that activity also has crossed more than two financial years, and we have been operating without any pain points, or everything is in the BAU model, business as usual mode.
So the inventory levels, generally, in saree as an industry, if you talk about wedding and purchasing, generally, we have to hold a high amount of inventories to give you this amount of throughput. So if you're talking about a revenue per square feet, as our CFO just earlier mentioned, these are one of our industry-leading throughputs that we actually do in our stores. For us to achieve this amount of throughput, the only requirement that we should have in our stores is having adequate inventory levels. And that's the reason why, in general, this industry commands the inventory levels to be higher. Now, that was what our analysis and perception was and how we have been operating so far.
However, since our focus is to expand deep into Tamil Nadu and make the Tamil Nadu cluster much bigger and better, there are two important aspects towards inventory management that we are trying to do. The first thing is the majority of our sarees right now that we are adding is I mean, it will be with silk sarees because Varamahalakshmi Silks formats get added. So with that, we are able to bring efficiencies by procuring in larger quantities. That's the first point. And with that, we are able to reduce our COGS to a certain level. The second interesting point that we do, as I did tell you, each of the every store has to have a good amount and decent number of inventory.
Now that the cluster matures, probably after three, four, five stores being added, once this cluster matures, the backup inventory requirement also for a Varamahalakshmi store will be lesser. Therefore, we generally move the inventory from one store to the other store. All of those efficiencies will kick in. Therefore, the overall inventory requirement in a store would come down. At the store level, we also brought this concept of MBQ revision. So minimum base quantities is what we call per category. These MBQ revisions happen once in a quarter. We do have a plan in place that we review every month. Based on that, we are changing our MBQ revisions once every new store gets added to this cluster. So these are a few things. On top of this, we're also paying our vendors and weavers in an earlier fashion to reduce our payable days.
Therefore, that also is helping us get some discounts in the overall scheme. With all of these three, four factors in place, we believe the inventory turnaround will become better and better in the next quarters to come. By the year, the idea is once we complete this 90,000 sq ft expansion and one full year runs, which is the next financial year, by then, we should be able to see a considerable amount of inventory improvement requirement in our stores. So we should be able to see the trend coming from Q2 onwards. Ideally, the way we should look at inventory, as I always do mention, is kindly look at the inventory levels at the end of the year because generally, the festivities and occasions come in the end of Q2 and Q3. I'm sorry, Q3 and Q4.
Quarter-end inventory number is not an accurate way to look at. So probably, I would request you all to look at an inventory level at the end of the year. So once we complete this 90,000 sq ft addition and the one full year runs, you should be able to see a considerable amount of inventory improvement happening at the company level.
Got it, sir. This is very helpful. Secondly, could you quantify in the last five years how much inventory write-off have we taken, if we've taken any, and how many store closures have we had? If we've had any?
Yeah. Chinmay, yeah. See, the procedure that we have been following is that we go the banking system, which are our working capital bankers, they have a specific audit mechanism called ASM, Agency for Specialized Monitoring, which they earlier, it was on a monthly basis. Now, we are doing it on a quarterly basis, wherein a textile expert along with a chartered accountant will go through the inventory, more particularly slow-moving inventory, and arrive at the realizable value of the inventory that we are holding and accordingly recommend to the bank on the stock valuation that we are holding. So according to their recommendation, we adjust our inventory levels at the year-end. And any variations, if they are recommended any small reduction in value, etc., gets absorbed in the gross profit levels since we are executing the closing inventory valuation.
Broadly, we have realized that this amount is in the range of about ±1% on an annual basis. We are planning that from this year onwards, we would declare it as a separate line item going by the same procedure of the surveillance audit, etc., but we would provide for a separate line item this year instead of existing in the gross profit levels.
Understood, sir. Got it. I'll join that in the Q&A.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Naitik from NV Alpha Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. My first question is, can you please give me the total square footage that we have today as of end of FY 2024, and what was it at the end of FY 2023?
Hi, Naitik. So I think the current total square footage is 647,000 sq ft, more or less. And this year, if you remove around 44,000 close to, we should be able to be at 603,000 net retail area last year.
603,000. Sure. Okay. And the second question is, if you could just give me the figure of SSG for this quarter and the whole year.
Naitik, I'm sorry I lost you. Can you repeat what your question was?
SSG growth for the quarter and the full year?
SSG is in the last quarter because of the small rectification steps that we have taken subsequent to Q3. SSGs were recovered, and SSGs in the last quarter were recorded at 3%. So we hope to maintain this year the recovery process. And the target is to maintain at least the 3% levels that we have taken.
The same number for FY 2024 was? The full year 2024?
Oh, same number for FY 2024 was -6.
Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't get that.
Same SSGs for the full year of FY2024 was -6%.
-6. Sure. Thank you. Lots of thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Resha Mehta from Green Edge Wealth. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. So firstly, how do you define repeat purchase? So is that within a time period of one year or more than that?
Yeah. So hi, ma'am. So this is Bharadwaj . So we take a trailing, last trailing 12-month period, and then that's when we actually do repeat purchase. So when a customer comes and makes a purchase, we identify them with a phone number. And a phone number becomes our primary method to track how many times he's visited our store, which store he's visited. One of the systems that we actually follow is we try to do this customer profiling and see when she's bought, what she's bought, and therefore use our entire CRM around it. So in this particular use case, I've taken the financial year of FY2023-2024 and taken account of all of the customers who have made a purchase in more than two or more than two times in this full 12-month period. That is a calculation of 50%.
Understood. And just to understand, so for our primary product, which is sarees, so I would imagine the wedding-wear sarees are obviously heritage-linked and the handwoven kind of sarees, right? But the balance, the occasion-wear sarees, so would they also be these heritage silk sarees, or would they be something like an Indo-Western fusion or something of that sort? So just can you elaborate a little bit on your saree product mix that we sell?
Sure. So overall, if you look at wedding-based sarees, rather than saying silk and a non-silk, I would say it will be majorly pure silk sarees. So for pure silk sarees, it only starts north of INR 25,000 and goes all the way up. We have sarees ranging around INR 3 lakhs-INR 5 lakhs as well. When you talk about wedding-based purchase, generally, people who come into our store actually come in groups. If you see a typical consumer sitting in our stores, people come in three, four, five as a group. They come like mother, daughter, and they actually purchase for the entire event. So in a typical event, she's just not buying one saree. She's buying a group of 10, 20, 30 sarees that she can use for one for wedding, one for muhurtham, one for talambralu. And there are other events as well that come in.
Along with that, the mother of the groom, the mother of the bride, the relative of the bride, all of that also comes into our overall purchase. So when we talk about wedding, in general, majority of it is silk sarees. But even if you talk about another event in a wedding, let's say, for example, you talk about a reception or let's say, for example, talk about a haldi, then women customers generally prefer a non-silk saree. This could be Banarasi. Majorly, Banarasi are the second biggest category in the overall saree consumption that we currently have. So this is how our product mix changes. So now, if you talk about our different brands now, Mandir as a format, if you take for an example, majority of it is non-silk because Mandir is portrayed as a designer wear the ultra-premium category.
So what you will find in a typical Mandir is more of Patola or Paithani sarees and Banarasi sarees and less of the Kanchipuram silk sarees. Now, if you come to a Varamahalakshmi store, you'll have the majority of our product profiling in the sarees being silk and coming from and typically, it's a wedding saree. And we talk about Kalamandir, that's when you see the lower price point sarees, around INR 1,500-INR 2,000 kind of a price point what you can expect in the Kalamandir sarees. However, what you can expect in a Kalamandir versus a Varamahalakshmi just in the saree is the purity. So the moment you talk about purity in terms of pure silk sarees, then you will get majorly in Varamahalakshmi Silks sarees. Occasion-wear or daily-wear kind of a component of sarees is what you get in a Kalamandir store.
That's the reason why your KLM, the ASPs, generally are around INR 1,800 or around INR 1,850 versus the Varamahalakshmi Silks, the ASPs are around INR 5,500-INR 6,000 rupees ASPs. Versus the Mandir, you would typically get it around INR 13,500-INR 14,000 rupees for the ASPs there. And KLM Fashion, again, does also have saree component, but the ASPs are around INR 600-INR 650.
Sorry, I missed this number for Varamahalakshmi.
Varamahalakshmi will be around INR 5,500-INR 6,000 rupees. The reason why Varamahalakshmi Silks.
This is the one that sells sorry, this is the one that sells Kanchipuram silk sarees, is it?
Correct. Correct. Yes, ma'am. So if you talk about Varamahalakshmi Silks a little bit in detail, see, the component of gifting sarees is also huge in a Varamahalakshmi Silks store. So that's the reason why your ASP, there's a comparatively lesser compared to brand Mandir. The Varamahalakshmi Silks we are also what we also do here is based on the tier it is located, we start doing a store profiling. For example, now, Jubilee Hills store, which is in tier one location in Hyderabad, does have sarees that range in a higher price range as well.
But if you go down deep into tier two and tier three, let's say, for example, a Bhimavaram, which is a tier three town in AP, do not hold the same amount of inventory, actually have a lesser ASPs in that store versus a Salem store, which is a weaver market that's in Tamil Nadu, again, have different price points. So we take consideration in terms of the location where our store is present and try to put our products according to those price ranges. If you take a blended average, this is where we currently stand.
Okay. So from an overall standpoint, overall, just the saree standpoint, which is almost, I think, 70% of our revenues, so the pure silk saree contribution would be how much?
Just the pure silk saree contribution, I think, should be around more than 25%-30%, 25% +.
Okay. Then would come the ASP?
The mixed silk sarees. So pure silk sarees is there. Then the zari mix is going to be there, which is not 100% pure silk sarees but is in the silk saree component with a mix of non-silk elements as well. So the purity of the silk will not be there, but you have other mixed sarees. So those sarees will also contribute to another 35%-40%. So then comes your Banarasi sarees, and then comes your fancy sarees. So that's the calculation that we go. For example, if we talk about Salem, Salem is silk silk sarees but is not pure silk saree.
Got it. Got it. Fair enough. So apart from sarees, which is another 30% of our revenues, what are the other products that we sell?
The other product that we sell is women's lehengas, kurta, kurtis, men's occasion-wear, kids' occasion-wear, and a small component towards accessories as well. All of these other formats are driven with KLM and Kalamandir formats.
Okay. And so men and kids would contribute overall how much to our revenues?
In terms of pure men's and kids, I think close to around 15%-18% will be men's and kids. 18%, yes.
That's only about 30%.
The remaining other piece is going to come from your women's non-saree component, I think, such as Kurta, kurtis, lehengas, etc. It will all be the other portion. So one interesting point I wanted to make here is even in the menswear and the kidswear, we are driven majorly with the occasion component of menswear and kidswear, like men's Sherwanis or kurtas or kids' occasion-wear, baby occasion-wear such as gowns or ethnic wear. That's the major reason why even we call our KLM Fashion Mall format to be an ethnic-value fashion format. So the idea in the overall ecosystem is we are around 80%-85% of our entire product offering will be the ethnic occasion-wear. And the remaining 15%-18% will be your western wear such as your basic tees and tops and jeans and things like that.
Okay. Got it. The other thing, so what would be the margin differential between our core saree business of 70% versus the balanced 30%?
See, the overall margin profile, if you have to talk about format level, the KLM will generally be on the lower side of the spectrum, and Varamahalakshmi Silks will be on the higher side of the spectrum, majority of it being because it's handweaved and handloom kind of products generally demand a higher margin. But it will not be too much of a difference if you talk about the format level. The reason we always wanted to keep this margin very sharp is, one, we think that even the local competition is a good competition for us, and therefore, we do not want to lose our business to anybody. Second thing is, if you talk about an example, across the formats, more than 95% of our entire sale is full-price sale. We do not believe in end-of-season sale or discounting in a timely manner or a seasonality basis.
Therefore, we aim to price the products in a very, very sharply priced value-for-money kind of a purchase. Most of our customers who walk into our stores know that there's not going to be any bargaining or any discount or end-of-season. The kind of buying and customer profile that come in, they come in different points in time, and that's why they're able to buy. Even despite the fact that we do not do end-of-season sale or maybe discounting, we are still able to get the customer retention of more than 50%, is something that we believe is the top of the industry that we have.
Sorry. So you said 95% is full-price sale. This is across the company, right, if I look at the overall numbers?
Yes, ma'am. Across the company, for Varamahalakshmi Silks as a format, it's 100%. In the history, we have never done any end-of-season, no discounting, nothing. 100% of our sale that comes from Varamahalakshmi Silks format is full-priced.
Got it. And lastly.
Just the other two stores. Just, we have one or two stores that we have opened in the beginning. Those stores do have an end-of-season sale that comes up only in specific stores. It's not at a format level. It's at a store level.
Got it. And lastly, just a data question. So across your brand formats of KML, KLM, KMR, and MDR, if you could just talk about for FY 2024, what was the revenue % from each of these formats, the margins at a store level and the ASP?
Yeah. Revenue contribution, because we have increased our Varamahalakshmi footprint during the year, also last year, now, Varamahalakshmi contributes approximately 42% of our turnovers, while KLM would be in the range of 38% also at this level. 16% would be from Kalamandir, and 4% would be from Mandir.
Okay. And the margins, store-level margins?
Margins at store level, even if we take it store level, Kalamandir would be at the company's average. Store-level margins for Varamahalakshmi should be in the range of about 33%-34%, while KLM, it would be in the range of about 24%-25%.
Okay. And this one, Mandir, margins for Mandir format?
Mandir almost goes along with Varamahalakshmi. It's also a premium format. So it goes almost identical with Varamahalakshmi.
Okay. And.
We have only four of these stores, total sq ft being about 13,300 or so. This is considered to be the premium format, hence normally goes along with Varamahalakshmi format.
Got it. Lastly, the ASP of these four formats for FY 2024?
2024, they were almost in the same range. Varamahalakshmi was in the range of about INR 5,000+. ASPs incoming. Yeah. Yeah. Gmail. Yeah. Mandir would be in the yes. Mandir would be approximately INR 13,500. Varamahalakshmi would be in the range of about INR 4,800. Kalamandir would be in the range of about INR 1,800, and KLM would be in the range of about INR 700+.
Okay. Got it. Fine. Thanks a lot, and all the best.
Yes.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Surya Narayan Nayak from Sunidhi Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Am I audible, sir? Yes, sir. Please tell me. Yeah. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. So you said that now we entered FY 2024 with roughly 647,000. Or 7% YY change. So if I'm just, you know, if I'm right, Kalamandir entered with 11, Mandir 4, Varamahalakshmi 26, and KLM 19 in total, 60. So is it possible to give separately SSG growth because some of the formats in the Varamahalakshmi have come in the third quarter and fourth quarter? So is it possible to give SSG for different formats?
So, Surya Narayan, we generally don't roll out SSG format level and store level. We believe that this is a format, and this is very confidential information. So probably, maybe we can have a private conversation on this.
Okay. And secondly, another point is that we are actually trying and trying to penetrate more into the Varamahalakshmi and Tamil Nadu region. So my concern is that if the inflation situation will be high, and generally, people will avoid, let's say, costing their pricey sarees, and there will be a tendency to go for economic sarees. So if that is the condition, then don't you think that we are actually risking more towards the Varamahalakshmi format and Kalamandir or, let's say, Mandir? Sorry, Mandir.
So just a quick idea here in the overall is Varamahalakshmi Silks, if we talk about, is majorly wedding. So weddings across the board, in any part of the corner, there is a consumption required in the wedding saree element. Now, as I already mentioned earlier as well, we do not only price only high-value items in every store. There is no set definition that we only stack products above 10,000 or only above 1,000 for range. So the kind of analysis that we do when we do a store addition that anywhere as a part of our store expansion network, we understand the location of that particular region and understand the consumer purchase patterns. So the way we do is we do a thorough analysis in terms of the competition.
We do understand the product profiling in all of these competition stores that we are entering into, and therefore, stock our products as per the current store requirements are. One thing I will tell you is what we do is at the moment we identify the stock, and we put it in our store, and we launch our store, then that store will be marked under review for the next 90 days. In this 90-day period, we closely monitor the highest sell-throughs and the lowest sell-throughs in terms of the price range in terms of sarees and therefore shuffle. The moment it completes the 90th-day period, that's when we complete the store profile. We call this as a store profiling area for the first 90 days, and that's when the key changes happen to the store.
So before the store opens, though, we do a continuous and rigorous activity on identifying what kind of products we need to put, what price range, what kind of source, which source product can we have to put. Post-opening as well, this activity continues for a period of about 90 days, and we have a set of people who sits and analyzes price range-wise, product-wise, sell-throughs, and therefore make adjustments. And finally, after a 90-day period of time, we end up with those MBQs in a certain format. And that's when we actually define these MBQs. And once these MBQs are defined, once in every quarter, based on the wedding calendars, based on the slow movement, we set the targets for every store as well as make the adjustments to MBQs so that our inventory stockup is not too much.
So if I'm to understand from your wording, so let's say for Varamahalakshmi, you have a certain perception prior to opening the stores. As they do progress, suppose you didn't find the kind of crowd that has to come, then obviously, that format could be, let's say, behaving like a, let's say, Kalamandir kind of thing but not as Varamahalakshmi or Mandir as you perceive. Am I right?
I didn't understand your question. Can you repeat your question, please?
So what I'm saying is that now, suppose because our penetration for FY 2025 and FY 2026 as well is towards the Varamahalakshmi, if I'm correct, 13 for FY 2025 and 5 for FY 2026, so around closely 18 stores was to be opened. So if that is the sense, then you might have certain perception that now the kind of crowds that will be attracting for it will be as for the Varamahalakshmi. But as the day progresses, suppose some of the formats, some of the stores may not attract that kind of crowds, and obviously, that could be falling in the category of Kalamandir. So if that is the case, then at the company level, you could be categorizing for the optics, it will be Varamahalakshmi. But I mean, literally, it could be the Kalamandir level.
Okay. So I got your question. So if I have to put it in a perspective, so though we are adding these 13 + 5 stores or total of 90,000 + another 30,000 sq ft this financial year and the next financial year, I think what we try to do is at this point of time, Varamahalakshmi Silks format seem to be at the top of our game. Compared to all four Varamahalakshmi Silks format commands a better premium in terms of productivity as well as margins. So in terms of our expansion, we are not just focusing on Tier 1. We are having a blended calculation of Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3. We do identify pockets of areas and potential cities and markets which have higher potential.
These are the markets that currently, there are already existing competition which is actually having a bigger market share, and we try to enter it into the market and actually grab our market share with our brand value that we already create. We are able to make our customers walk in from day one. On the other aspect, since we do a big bang launch and spend a lot of money in terms of marketing during the store launch time, we actually start expecting footfall from day one, week one itself. Therefore, during this 90-day period, it becomes the right method for us to actually make some changes in terms of the inventory.
Now, when you talk about what happens if you have to implement a Kalamandir store or a Mandir store, as a matter of fact, KLM store as well, all of our store in the history that we have executed these 60 stores over the course of 18 years, our mantra has always been to do a big bang launch and identify potential markets. That is something that we take help of outside and external agencies to help narrow down the markets. And we do also have internal teams to help us qualify the right locations and therefore go ahead. If I have to talk specifically about Varamahalakshmi Silks, currently, Varamahalakshmi Silks generally is not on your typical high street. Varamahalakshmi Silks stores generally are one street behind high street. And because the word of mouth is so strong, that becomes a market for us.
There are several use cases in the history of the company with the Varamahalakshmi Silks format that we have not opened in those high street areas, high traffic areas, but still, we are able to command a good, decent footfall coming in from day one itself. So that's something that we work rigorously with multiple teams to come down and identify which format to open and which area to open. So currently, when we actually provisioned for Kalamandir, the idea was once when a Varamahalakshmi Silks cluster matures, in that cluster, strategically, a Kalamandir store would be added, and therefore, we would be able to use our inventory management, warehousing, and administrative costs in a much better fashion.
Okay. And to understand the dynamism of the question of ethnic wear because 85% happens to be your revenue coming from the ethnic wears. So I mean, if compared to the Western wears where the style and the formats, they change quite often, and I would say that now in terms of obsolescence of the inventory, so what kind of, let's say, obsolescence or, let's say, change in the lives and the style of sarees, especially of wedding sarees that happens, is it remaining constant for three years, four years, or where we will not see a degree of obsolescence is quite low?
I think I got your question. If you're talking about sarees, are you talking about non-saree categories?
Sarees alone. Sarees alone.
Okay. So if you're talking about sarees, the good part is one size fits all. The design cycle, as you rightly mentioned, does not change so quickly, like autumn, winter, spring, summer is something that's not the language that we go by. We have a distributed purchase cycle because not all of our products are coming from one manufacturing center or one weaver. So we, in the course of last three years, again, we updated because we work with more than 4,000 weavers and vendors across the country. And because we work with such a high number of people, our inventory also comes in specific periods of time, and we do not have the problem of having one same saree in multiple pieces. So we stack only in three or four quantity, and therefore, the design cycle or the design obsolescence is not so high.
Though we have cases where once a customer purchases a saree, even their mother or it passes through generations, in our sense, the design lifecycle can travel from Tier 1 to Tier 2, Tier 3. 2-3 year time is not at all a point of problem for us, and these designs just generally don't go out so fast. But in the overall ecosystem of the inventory levels currently we have, our ASP lies in the fact that our incentive module, we have state-of-the-art incentive module that we currently have, and that actually helps us liquidate the stocks in a much better fashion. We incentivize our sales staff basis also in terms of inventory aging versus the new store aging. So we do a lot more things in this aspect to move the stock away.
At this point of time, currently, if you talk about the overall inventory aging, inventory above the age of one year stands around less than 15%. I think 12%-15% is the overall inventory which is above one year. So we are very confident that that is not going to be a problem because with our incentive module, we will be able to sell the stock as quick as possible.
And finally, regarding the cost because majority of the ethnic wears are very labor-oriented, and the wage inflation is very high. So what sort of ASP we need to see a growth so that we can say to accommodate the rise in the wages?
Okay. So in terms of our ASP growth, it always changes because you're not talking maybe in sarees, no two sarees are same. So we have different sarees, different products. The ASP increase or decrease is only dependent on the new store additions that we are actually going ahead with. So for a moment, if you add tier three stores, your ASPs will fall down. If you add tier one stores because the consumption is higher, the ASPs will rise. So it's completely dependent on the kind of store addition that we do. So that metric is not a metric that we should be able to look at, a forward-looking metric at this point of time. It completely depends on the kind of store addition that we are actually having and depends on the location and where we are at.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Due to time constraints, that will be the last question for the day. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you all, each and everyone, for taking your time to participate in our results. Hoping to meet you in the next quarterly results. Thank you so much for your time. Have a good day.
Thank you. On behalf of HDFC Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.