Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you joining us today, physically here in Mumbai or through Webex from wherever you are. A warm welcome to the Q4 FY23 Analyst and Investor Meet of Mahindra & Mahindra Limited. Today, we are joined by Dr. Anish Shah, MD and CEO of Mahindra & Mahindra Limited; Mr. Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director and CEO, Auto and Farm Sector; and Mr. Manoj Bhat, Group CFO. We extend a warm welcome to them and also to other senior leaders of, from Auto, Farm businesses, and Group Corporate, who have taken time to be here today. We follow the similar agenda as what we do in every analyst conference. We'll start with the presentations from the management, Anish, Rajesh, and Manoj, and then we'll open it up for Q&A.
To those who are attending virtually, please post your questions from your windows, and you could do it at any point of the time. We will pick it up and try to cover as many of them as possible during the Q&A session. Viren, can we have the safe harbor statement?
Yeah, okay, sorry.
Yeah, okay.
Last?
Yeah, sure. I'm not going to read the statement. I'll leave it for a second. With that, I hand over the stage to Dr. Anish Shah for the presentation and taking it forward.
I'll come there.
Hi, good evening, good afternoon, and good morning to everyone here. It's a pleasure to have you join us again, and we are delighted to announce results for the year. Beyond results, what we will also do is talk about our strategy, as this is something that we will continue to do once a year, and it's something we've taken our board through as well. We'll give you a sense of where are we going from the foundation that we've built so far. Let me start first with an overview of the key messages. Our consolidated profit after tax crosses INR 10,000 crores for the first time, and it's a quantum jump over where we've been before.
If you look at this is 3 times the profit that we had in F 21, and 1.6 times last year, or a 56% growth at the consolidated PAT level. We've consistently delivered on the commitments we've made, and that's something that we've been bold in making commitments, at the same time, being careful in ensuring that we can actually meet them, and as you will see, exceed them in many cases as well. Most importantly, this really creates a foundation for us for future growth and to be able to take the group and all its companies to a very different level than where we are today. Standalone results first. What you see is a significant growth in revenue at 47%.
Profit before EI is up 52%, and because we had to make some impairments, trucks and buses was a significant one. Profit after EI is slightly lower in terms of its percentage growth, but nevertheless, a very healthy percentage growth over last year. At the consolidated level, revenue is up 34%. PAT before EI is again up 40%+, and then after EI is up 56%. This is a result of some of our monetization actions that we've taken, and that's something we'll continue to take because these are businesses that we're building for value creation. We've really only started our value creation journey. There's a long way we have to go in the value creation journey.
I'm going to request Rajesh and Manoj to take you through some of the details, then I'll come back to talk about our strategy and where we go from here.
Hi, everyone in here in Mumbai and those who are online. I'm going to start with the farm equipment sector first. As you can see here, we had in Q4 a volume of 89,000, which is a growth of 24%, and a 2.3 percentage points increase in market share. Through the year, we did over 400,000, 15% growth in volume, and we gained 1.2 share points. Over a two-year period, we've had approximately a 3% gain in tractor market share, taking us to 41.2. This is a chart which we normally show you all by way of a quarter-wide movement. The interesting thing here is that Q4 market share is the highest we've ever had in the last 12 years.
Normally, for FES, Q4 is not a good market share quarter, as you can see from the graph. This was a good gain in market share even at Q4. We have introduced what we're calling internally as the Naya Swaraj, which is right now in 5 markets. Comes in with the new style, as you can see from here. A lot of enhanced features and digital cluster, upgraded engine, and lift capacity. Launched in select horsepower at the moment in 5 states. Very good feedback, and we'll be rolling out this with other horsepower categories over the next few months. This is a very important part of making Swaraj appeal to the young and new customers while still retaining the loyalists.
A lot of work went into this styling upgrade, which gets the balance right between keeping loyalists comfortable and still being appealing to the new generation. On the 2nd of June, we are going to reveal the lightweight tractor platform of Swaraj. It's a new segment for Swaraj. Swaraj doesn't have a lightweight portfolio. The platform is gonna be in 25 and 29 horsepowers. We'll start by launching that in phases again. It's a segment for specialist spraying and interculture, which, as you know, with the growth in horticulture, is a very evolving segment and will certainly get a growth momentum for Swaraj. On 15th August, as you know, is an important day for Mahindra.
We've done some significant events around that, and this year we'll be launching OJA, which was codenamed K2 up until now. It's a global launch. And with that, we will start the launch in phases, in India and also around the world. We see significant upsides for us in both global markets and, of course, by way of gaining in India as well. We don't have a product portfolio, which is strong in these segments, at the moment, and this will allow us to take on a new segment of the market. Through a new product strategy in tractors, both Swaraj, two initiatives, and the very big launch of the Mahindra OJA, which, we think will give us a very good upside on tractor market share, even from where we are now.
The farm machinery business is one where we want to scale up significantly. We've been talking about that. We had a 38% growth this year. Very good increase in rotavators. We are number two in the rotavator segment, and there are multiple other things that we're doing through F '24 and beyond to scale this up significantly, and I'll talk about that a little later. You've seen most of these numbers, so I'm gonna skim through them very quickly. What you see on the slide here is our farm growth in Q4, financials in revenue, PBIT, both consolidated and standalone. This is the data for F '23. It's been a good year with very good growth in revenue and profit, both the segments.
What you're seeing here is the data we are sharing for the first time. We've helped for you all to separate out what is our core tractor margin from the FES. Total, the FES does have an effect right now of the farm machinery business, and we thought, you know, while we are investing in farm machinery business, it'd be useful for all of you to be able to see how we are doing on core tractor margin. Core tractor margin is domestic plus exports from India. That's now gone up to 18.3%. You can see a substantial increase with time, and not that far away from F19, which is when commodity prices were at their best. Directionally, we're seeing a very good improvement in core tractor margins. El Niño, much talked about.
You know, maybe if you had seen the IMD news a little earlier, we may have dropped this slide. IMD has today put out a forecast on a normal monsoon, but just for all of you to understand, you may have done your own analytics or analysis around this. In 50 years, there were 17 years of El Niño. Out of the 17 years of El Niño, there was below LPA rainfall in 5 years, and tractor industry had a degrowth in only 2 of those 5 years in which the LPA was below normal. Out of which, some of you have been tracking the sector for a while, we know 2002, 2003, was a year in which industry did a major stock correction, which is why you see the degrowth.
Actually, the only conclusion you can make from this slide is there is very little correlation between tractor industry demand and El Niño. There would be a set of other factors which will enable whether the tractor market grows fast or doesn't grow fast, but El Niño doesn't seem to be one of them. Moving on to the automotive business, a strong growth in Q4 volumes and for the full year at 50%. Revenue market share at 19.6% in Q4, which is a 1.7 share point improvement, and for the full year, a 3.7 share point improvement in revenue market share. That's a metrics that we started tracking because our products are, you know, higher, much higher price than the industry average.
But for the last several months, we have been even number 2 in volume market share. So you know, it's not that we are very far away on volume market share, while we are tracking revenue market share as our delivery metrics. This chart shows you the pace at which we've grown our volumes and our market share over the last few quarters. This is the chart on the open bookings. On the one hand, it seems like good news, the open bookings have gone up. It's not desirable from the standpoint of customer waiting period. We have seen very strong demand come in on the new Thar, and all existing models are continuing to get a very good new booking rate. Even though we've now ramped up to 33 odd thousand.
a month through the last quarter, the open bookings has actually ended up going up. We are seeing cancellations, less than 8%, which is in line with what we've seen, so there's no real change on that. We've, like I said, getting 57,000 new bookings every month, against which we are today supplying about 33,000. As a context, there's a question in the media meet on how much did we lose to semiconductors in the last quarter? Roughly, the number was about 10,000, so about 3,000 a month. Mainly, on Scorpio and XUV700. If you if we had not lost that, then we would be close to the 39,000 odd capacity that we now have ready.
Quite a few of you were there for the Hyderabad launch, have seen these products. It was a great event. We've subsequently also shown these products to our dealers more recently, last weekend, all 300 of them. We've also been showing this to consumers around. Really, the belief is that these products will open up the category and be category-creating concepts or products, because they will be very desirable and aspirational, like what we are seeing with some of our launches on the ICE side today. LCV, less than 3.5 tonne, is a very strong story. As market leader, we've gained 5% share points through the course of this year. Started with the launch of the Maxx City, beginning part of the year, which, you know, has helped us strengthen our lead.
The product's done very well. We've now, last month, launched the all-new Bolero Maxx Pik-up, which has really transformed the full pickup range to an upgraded product. We also introduced a 2-tonne product, which was not there and is significantly helping the category to grow, because there's a lot of demand for a 2-tonne payload segment. The iMAXX telematics has some very interesting features, and it's providing a very good interface for the drivers, route mapping, as well as for fleet owners, who are able to track movement of their entire fleet. A very well-received feature in this segment. Of course, this is there in trucks and buses, but in the LCV segment, this is a very good value addition.
Last Mile Mobility, you can see the light blue chart, which highlights that electric as a % is now becoming significant. We sold 14,700 electric three-wheelers in the Q4. We've retained our market leadership in electric three-wheelers with 67% market share. You do know about the fact that this will be spun off into a separate company, the Last Mile Mobility company, Mahindra Last Mile Mobility, which has a valuation of about INR 6,000 crores, with INR 600 crores infusion that is expected from IFC. We will be making an investment in Hyderabad on new production lines and a battery assembly line there as well. We also opened a new Treo manufacturing line in our Haridwar plant. I'm just gonna skim through these quickly, because you're familiar with these numbers.
Very strong growth in auto, Q4 financials, both on standalone and consolidated, as well as for the full year, where we've ended up the year, standalone at INR 3,780 crores. I think this is an interesting chart. We've seen a sequential improvement in margin, and the margin in F23 now is not that far away from F19, which is the most benign commodity, cost year. Since F19, as all of you know, we've seen BS-VI, we've seen BS-VI.2, we've seen, commodity inflation of the kind not seen before, continuously for over 2 years.
To come back as a margin percentage to something which was close to F nineteen has been a result of a lot that we've done by way of driving costs, managing our model mix, and multiple other initiatives. We know this is a question that, you know, you track and watch closely, and we just thought this chart will kind of bring alive, the fact that margin, as a percentage now, is actually reasonably close to what it was at F-19 . Just a quick snapshot of the three-year journey on the FES consolidated side. You can see that we grew revenues 1.5 times, PBIT 1.9 times, and the consolidated ROC went up by 28 percentage points.
On the auto side, we grew revenue twice, we grew PBIT 2.8 times, and ROC went up from 11%-31%. This is a chart we had put out in May 2021, talking about commitments that we make for Auto & Farm, for the year 2025. So I'm just gonna give you a quick update on how we progressed. We said 15%-20% revenue growth. Over the last 2 years, we are at 34% CAGR. We had said leadership in the SUV segment. By way of revenue, we are there. Leadership, getting stronger in the LCV 3.5 tonnes. We gained 4% share over F 2021. We grew tractor market share 3% over 2 years. We are on the path to quantum growth in farm machinery.
38% is not something that excites us, but we think it's a good start. We are on the top of SUV brand affinity scores, and we had said 3% year-on-year reduction in cost as a percentage of revenue. That's got done. We had said ROC of 18% plus. We are at ROC of 42% in F22, between farm and auto together. What next? Is strategic imperatives on the farm side. It's, of course, to strengthen ourselves in domestic tractors. We do believe we have upsides on market share, with a very exciting new portfolio of products coming in, both in Swaraj and farm. They are new segment products. They're not just upgrades of current.
They will give us market share upsides, because these are products in horsepower segments, in which we are not currently very strong. There is a clear upside potential on market share with the launch of these products. We are talking about 10 times the farm machinery business by F26. That's why I said 38% is not something we feel good about. F23 was a year which was very slow for harvesters. We will see a lot of that opening up as we get into F24. We see international business grow 1.6 times. We are looking at bringing in many new technologies, which you will get to see, starting with OJA, IoT devices, and so on.
We're also working on electrification and automation, and leverage partnerships in both farm machinery and for global growth. On the auto side, strengthen our position in the ICE SUVs. Strong product portfolio. We do think ICE is still gonna be there for a while, at least 70% of the volume, even six, seven years from now. You know, keeping a very exciting product portfolio is important on the ICE side. We, as I mentioned earlier, are Born Electrics. We believe we'll create a new category of people who want exciting vehicles with a very different experience, and electric will be just part of that decision-making process. We believe the products themselves are going to create a huge amount of affinity and desire.
The whole new portfolio on pickups is going to gear us up for the next 3-5 years, to strengthen our position, in the LCV 3.5 tons. We are looking at starting to scale up international operations 2.5 times by F26. We can talk more about that if you have questions. Of course, to strengthen our brand and customer obsession. With that, I'll hand over to Manoj. Thanks, Manoj.
Thanks, Rajesh. Thank you, Rajesh. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to run through a few slides at the consolidated level and then hand it over to Anish to give an update on how the future looks like for us. If you look at the numbers, I think, if I look at the 31% growth, led by auto, 35% growth in auto, 29% growth in farm. If I look at the profit before EI, auto leads the way, more than 100%, 108%, to be precise, growth in profits, and farm grew 39%. Finally, if I look at the EI impact, there is a negative EI of about 425 crores during the quarter.
That's largely because of some of the actions we took during the course of the quarter. If I look at the consolidated numbers, for the quarter, 25% growth, auto grew 34%, farm grew 30%. If I look at some of the group companies, I think real estate did really well, growth of 61%. If I look at holidays, a growth of 31%. A lot of the group companies are contributing to the growth now. If I look at PAT contribution, PAT before EI, auto grew about 137% compared to the same quarter last year. Farm grew 26%. The others, I think there was a mixed. I'll cover it towards the end in terms of contribution.
EI impact was minimal during the quarter, about INR 37 crores only. Coming to the full year standalone, auto grew 63%, while the overall revenue was 47%, and farm grew 22%. Very strong numbers coming from both auto and farm. If I look at the profitability growth, I think auto grew 185%, a significant increase in profitability, and farm grew 15%, more or less in line with the revenue growth. If I look at the EI, about INR 1,200 crores of negative EI during the course of the year, and we have talked about some of them in the past.
I think there was MTBD, and there are some of the other actions which we took during the course of the year, which are contributing to this, EI, which is pulling down the profits for the year in the standalone level. If I move to consolidated, a 34% overall increase. Auto grew 62%, farm grew about 18%. Again, real estate and holidays have done well, as I mentioned. If I look at PAT before EI, auto grew about 268%, farm grew 14%. Mahindra Finance was an exceptional contributor, and I'll talk about that in the one of the slides.
At the EI level, there's been a positive contribution of almost INR 1,500 crores, which was a combination of several actions which we took during the course of the year. At a consolidated level, EI is positive for the year. At the standalone level, EI is negative for the year. Quickly talking about Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Finance. Tech Mahindra, from a revenue growth perspective, grew 19%. If I look at metrics like total contract value won, about $2.9 billion+. It's been a good year from that perspective, but there is a certain slowness in the market. Margins are under pressure, that's the next big initiative in margins, and we will take it up as we go forward.
In terms of Mahindra Finance, which is the bottom box, I think a very sharp increase in disbursements, about 80% up to about almost INR 50,000 crores. If I look at PAT, it has doubled. Now, PAT has doubled. One is, it's a function of growth, the second is a function of focus on collections and reduction of NPA. Both of them have helped PAT grow to about doubling of PAT during the course of the year.
Yeah, you need a different scale because I know it's a picture.
If I look at some of our other listed Growth Gems, Logistics, I think there's a 50% increase in PAT. This is despite the losses we have absorbed because of acquisition of Rivigo, which happened in Q3. Despite that, the PAT has grown 50%. From a revenue perspective, very strong growth, 24% growth in revenues, and EBITDA margins were also up. This is something where we are focusing on acquisitions and integrating them as we go along the path of scaling up this business. From a hospitality perspective, a good set of numbers, I think a 71% growth in profits. The two drivers, one is, occupancy was 84%, which is a very high number, and that reflects the kind of demand we have seen in this segment.
Towards the end of the year, we saw a turnaround in our Finland property, which is HCRO, and that was not doing well during the whole year, but I think they're starting to see recovery in Q4. Finally, real estate. I think this is a business which the numbers don't really reflect it, because I think in F '22, there were certain one-times, and in any case, the real reflection of the performance comes a few years later because of the accounting. Some of the key metrics, I think, record sales, residential sales of INR 1,800 crores plus. We also went into society redevelopment. We won 2 new deals. Finally, the IC business is also starting to pick. All engines are firing, this is poised for a good level of scale-up as we go forward.
Just a quick summary of how the profit adds up from the last year. Last year, we were about INR 6,577 crores. Auto and farm contributed to an increase of INR 23, INR 22 crores. TechM and MMFSL was INR 286 crores. Most MMFSL actually was a more significant contributor. TechM actually dragged the number. The Growth Gems put together was about INR 64 crores, and EI was a big element, and I did speak about it, that on the consolidated level, EI has been a positive in the course of the year. A quick look at cash flow. We started the year with an opening cash balance of almost INR 12,100 crores.
During the course of the year, between inflows from group companies in the form of dividends and certain repayments, as well as operating cash flows, we generated INR 12,677 crores. The CapEx was about INR 3,500 crores. Capital deployed. Now, the capital deployed here also includes our investment into the EV Co. and also includes our investment in Swaraj, some of the other investments we did during the course of the year. That number is about INR 3,100 crores, inclusive of both those also. Debt repayment continues to remain a big focus in looking at the balance sheet and finding the right optimal capital structure. We continue that journey. About INR 2,300 crores was repaid during the course of the year.
Then finally, there was a dividend payout, and the closing balance was INR 14,410. This is a very, very healthy cash position from that perspective. If I look at deployment, this is an update to the slide we presented a few quarters back. If I look at this slide, we had told you that net of BII investment of INR 1,925, we have overall outlay, including monetization and partnerships of INR 15,075 crores over F 2022 to 2024. We are updating that. First is from ICE CapEx, excluding mill. We are looking at another INR 1,600 crores. Now, this is on account of some more capacity addition work, which we are undertaking, as well as regulatory change work, which we are starting in advance.
If I look at the EV side of things, we are upping that by about INR 1,000 crores. This is based on certain changes we are seeing in the marketplace, and that's something we are adding on, and that brings the total investment net of BII at INR 3,200 crores. Farm CapEx remains the same. Auto and farm investments, I think the main reason here is, I think we have already done some of these investments in F 2022. From a F 2024 perspective, there's no change, but this is something we did during the course of the year, especially PMTC. We looked at more external investor funding, which has happened during the course of the year.
Our investment for group companies is coming down from INR 2,700 crores to INR 1,600 crores from our side. Monetization and partnerships has gone very well. As you know, we've sold off MCI fully now. We believe that that number, the target would be instead of INR 2,500 crores, that new number is INR 3,800 crores. When you add all of this, I think the net number goes to INR 15,900 crores over a 3-year period. With that, I hand it over to Anish for his section. Thank you.
Thanks, Manoj. Before we look at the road ahead, it's time to reflect on the past 3 years and what we've committed, what we've done, what are some of the lessons from there? You've heard me say before that M&M was the best-performing stock in the Nifty from 2002 till August 2018, and then we fell off a cliff. Happy to say that we are back up above the cliff now, and we are back at being the best-performing stock in the Nifty since 2002, for the last 20 years. A lot of this has been driven by results over the past 2 years, and obviously, the resulting growth in market cap over the last year. You've seen some of this history before, and we've shown the period from 2002 till 2014, where we grew very well.
This is PAT growth, 43% annually. You've seen the part where we've been flat to negative as well, which is 2014 to 2021, where we actually had a negative 5% annual decline in PAT. After that, we've seen a 75% annual growth for the last two years, which effectively is a 3x growth in profits over the last two years. We're not taking the bottom point there. If we went to the bottom point of F20, we'd actually see a much further growth. There, it's a SsangYong effect, a little bit of a COVID effect, all of those factors have come into play. We are at a very, very strong trajectory right now. We're not promising for 75% growth every year. Let me be very clear on that. What drove this?
The first year, F 21, we focused on capital allocation, and at that time, we had mentioned to everyone that we're not going to look at anything else. We're just going to clean up. We talked about category A, B, and C, and I'll provide a brief update on that as well. Then, as we did most of that in that first year, we pivoted to growth. We talked about transforming our core businesses, we talked about Growth Gems and having them contribute to a much greater share of profits for M&M. We made commitments of 18% ROE and 15%-20% EPS growth. On EPS growth, we had said F 21-26 will be at 15%-20% annually. I think we've hit that already, and as the board very rightly said, "You've done that. That's a pass now.
Go back to 15%-20% from where you are today." Sometimes you can't take, you know, full credit for what's happened. Setting the bar high means you've got to keep delivering at a higher level as well. As you've seen from the numbers, we've closed this year at 19.9% ROE. I'm actually glad it was less than 20 because we're not setting the expectation that it will be at 20 or higher. It will be at 18%. We're going to drive growth now, you will see it at 19% sometimes, 17% sometimes, but we're going to drive growth, but maintain the fiscal discipline around ensuring we hit ROE at 18%. This is the update on our category A, B, and C. Right?
Categories A and B are on the left-hand side, they've largely been turned around except for two. That's MANA and Automobili Pininfarina, they are on a good track right now as well, we're expecting that to be completed as the Battista sales have started now, as MANA is on a much better track. You see a long list of companies that we've exited. As we put this together, even we were a little astounded at, okay, that is quite a lot of exits. That was important to getting us back on track and ensuring that we maintain very strong fiscal discipline. That has helped us get rid of the drag of INR 3,400 crores that we had on our profits from these loss-making entities to almost break even right now.
As we turn around the other two, we shall start getting into positive territory and beyond. More than capital allocation, the story is really about transforming our core. You've seen that happen in the Auto business with the new launches, with the products that have come out. As Rajesh talked, Thar recently had 50,000 bookings. How often do you see a model, actually 3 years after its launch, to have 50,000 bookings in a short time period? That's the strength of the brand. Beyond that, you see bookings across every category be continually higher, and that's again, a testament to the transformation of the Auto business. You've seen the market share go up from 13%-19% in a very short time period. That's something that we expect will only go higher.
The farm business has performed exceedingly well, even from a very high base. At 40% market share, you typically don't expect to grow significantly, but for the numbers that have been achieved there, that is significant. Beyond that, the focus on farm machinery. Farm machinery will depress the overall margins that you see, and that's something, again, we've shared this time. We had said last time that we will break them out. We have done that now. It's a 160 basis point impact from farm machinery, and that's something that we will take for the next 3 or 4 years till we build scale. We want to go to 10x and then ideally 20x, that's when we will start showing results in terms of profits there as well.
Treat it as an investment that we're making right now for hyper growth in that space, which has huge opportunity. Mahindra Finance has seen a very strong turnaround, that's evident in the numbers now. We've seen the GNPA go down from 8.5% or so to 4.5%, and this was the normal GNPA, not COVID-related. This was pre-COVID, which is why we've taken the time period pre-COVID. In COVID, it had gone up to 16%. We have committed to ensure that it stays low, and even in periods of future economic stress, it doesn't go up very significantly. That's what the team's working on, a very strong asset quality.
While maintaining that strong asset quality, where we've had to weed out certain customers, disbursements have grown 80%, assets under management have grown 27%, a very strong growth to the business. More important than growth, it's technology, it's data, it's a very strong team that's come in and that's driving this business forward now. We're not done with the turnaround. I'd still expect around 12 to 18 months before we can declare victory on this, there's still more upside. Our price to book is lower than many of our competitors, as we complete the turnaround, we expect to be back among the leaders because we've got a very strong model with rural and semi-urban areas. Finally, TechM. Transformation hasn't started as yet, it's something that will start now. Margins is the key factor there.
We are much lower in margins as compared to our competitors, and what you will see is a target first of 300 basis point increase, and then over time, we'll look at even a greater increase in margins as we look at transforming Tech Mahindra. That's really the big story. The second part to it is establishing our Growth Gems. While I won't go through every single one on this page, what I will point out is the valuation that you see to the right-hand side. Last Mile Mobility was less than $100 million in terms of valuation two or three years ago. It's $730 million at this point in time, as based on an external investor coming in, not based on our view of valuation.
Similarly, as you look at various other Growth Gems, many have increased in valuation. Susten, you won't see a big increase because we had put it on pause for 2 years, but with a new investor coming in, it has a 5x growth plan over the next 5 years. Therefore, Susten will have a very strong growth path going forward as well. There is a little more work to be done on some of these, but they're off to a great start, and that start now has to translate to a sprint as we go forward. We've delivered, but more importantly, we built a strong foundation for growth. You see that in all our numbers, ROE, EPS, market cap. What I really want to highlight is what's below those numbers.
Because those are the elements of our foundation: our purpose, talent, technology and data, synergy, customer experience. We spent a lot of time and effort building that. That's what's helped us transform our core, that's what's helped us with the Growth Gems, and that's what will help us as we go forward. Having looked at the past, we look at what is the opportunity today. What we see is across the various macro trends that we've analyzed, India is actually very well-positioned. More than that, India is also ready to deliver, and not just India as a country, but many of the companies, including Mahindra, are ready to deliver world-class products. As I've always said, "If we can beat our global competitors in India, hands down, with our SUV portfolio, why can't we do that elsewhere in the world?" That's what we're ready to do now.
Third, what you will see from the next couple of pages is Mahindra is very well-positioned to capitalize on the growth opportunities in India based on the sectors that we play in. I'm going to show a page with lots of words, but I'm not going to go through this. This will be on the website. You can refer to this at leisure. You may, in fact, know most of this. We've outlined the macro trends that we saw around the world and what is the India advantage for each of these macro trends. India will add $4.2 trillion to its GDP by 2030, based on various global estimates. Where will this come from? This is an estimate based on some experts that we worked with to look at the various sectors where this is going to come from.
More important than where this is going to come from, if we look at how Mahindra is placed. We've got very strong businesses in all of these sectors, except for 3: healthcare, which we may or may not play in. Infrastructure, which we are not going to play in. The third one was telecom and a few other miscellaneous things, which again, we're not gonna play in. Where we are playing is where the bulk of the opportunity lies. We've got 4 core businesses today, which are large in scale, and we've got a number of Growth Gems, which are good mid-sized businesses, but they offer a very strong foundation for rapid growth from here on. Therefore, as we think about our future, the next phase for us is to deliver scale. It's to capitalize on the market leadership we have.
Number one in SUV, number one in tractors by a big margin, number one in LCVs, 45% market share, number one in electric three-wheelers. We've got a lot of businesses that are very, very well positioned. Number one in rural finance. TechM has to establish number one as well, which we will at some point in time. Holidays, extremely well-positioned. Our solar business, extremely well-positioned. Real estate. We've got a whole bunch of businesses here that are poised for significant growth, and that's where our value creation comes from as well. Being resilient in the face of the world that we live in, we want to make sure that we are well-positioned to be able to address any issues that come up. The question then is: How do we deliver scale?
Capitalize on market leadership, which I talked about, unlock full potential in both Mahindra Finance and TechM. What you see in the third bucket is the next challenge for our Growth Gems. We talked about Growth Gems being companies with a potential and plan to deliver 1 billion market cap in 3-5 years. What we are saying now is that's not enough. A Growth Gem also must have a 5x potential and plan to deliver a 5x growth in the next 5-7 years. That's when it will start becoming material for us and start becoming a significant part of the Mahindra portfolio. We don't want only 4 core businesses, we want other businesses to start becoming core for us as well.
If you were to look at it from that perspective, this portfolio today, we would value at about $3.4 billion. That would get to $17 billion in the next 5-7 years. That's the value creation story. Rajesh has talked a lot about Auto and Farm, so I won't cover this at this point in time. We'll leave a little more time for questions. Unlock full potential. Mahindra Finance has to continue on a path of strong asset quality, technology and data. Getting into or diversifying into new businesses, which will also help asset quality. TechM, the primary focus is going to be transforming margins to get 300 basis points higher, and a number of things to lead in technology. That's our plan for TechM and Mahindra Finance.
With the 5x growth challenge, again, each of the businesses, I won't go through this in detail either, is well positioned to be able to deliver on that 5x challenge. There are clear plans that have been laid out. A couple of places need a little more work, which we will complete, but by and large, we've got good plans laid out to be able to take on this challenge. In summary, we've talked in the past about reigniting value creation. I would submit today that we have reignited it. We are very well positioned to tap into the opportunity in India, and therefore, our focus is to deliver scale. Deliver scale by capitalizing on our market leadership and by tapping into our Growth Gems, which have a very strong platform to start with and significant potential to go from here.
It's important for us to also address the fact that we are a leader today, and we will continue to be a leader in sustainable development. That's an important part as we drive purpose and values across the group. With that, we will open it up for questions. Thank you. Sriram, are you moderating?
Yeah.
I, Good evening to the team, many congratulations for meeting all the commitments that we talked about. Particularly happy to see the value creation that we have delivered. My first question is on capacities. What I want to understand is in two phases. One is more short term, where how are we tracking on the commitment we talked about? We talked about 39,000 by March 2023 and 49,000 by March 2024. From a supply point of view, how are we tracking on that as you see things today? Also you can contextualize a bit because you've launched some variants like two by two Thar and all.
Does it require any specific new lines or something where there could be bottlenecks? The second phase of the question is more longer term. You know, what I'm trying to understand is that the market has changed, right? It's a 4 million market. 50% of the volumes are coming from SUVs, and I suppose there are some white spaces in ICE as well that you may have looked to fill. Do you need to think of much bigger scale in terms of capacities as you think of next, let's say, 4, 5 years?
Yep. Yeah, thanks. Try and go in the sequence in which you asked the question. Thirty-nine thousand where set capacity will be ready, it is. We are not able to convert to 39,000 because we are having roughly 10%-12% semiconductor shortage, mainly impacting Scorpio and XUV700 both, which is leading to about 2,000-3,000 vehicles lost totally per month, let's say 3,000. About 1,000 in each of these and a little bit 1,000 plus in each of these, and a little bit in XUV300, and so on. The capacity for 39,000 is complete. The capacity for 49,000 should be ready by Jan, Feb, if not earlier. We'll be ready for that.
As a part of that, Scorpio and XUV700 will be in the region of 10,000 each, that's the main increase. There's also some capacity coming in for Thar to take care of growth and also the launch of the five-door Thar, which we think will do very well. The 49,000 is on track as well. I think the way to interpret capacity is capacity will be ready, there will be some short-term supply chain issues which will not enable full utilization of set up capacity. Our guess at the moment is that maybe 10%. Like we are on 39,000 capacity, at this point of time, we feel that we'll be probably at 34,000-35,000, because we are running short of something or the other every month.
That's the way I would kind of think of the capacity utilization story. To your last point on how are we thinking about the future going beyond, we have the EV capacities coming up as well, so we need to think about what's the total mix of, you know, capacity between ICE and EV. A substantial amount of investment will come up towards creating EV capacity, which we believe will be in the next 3 to 4 years, around 20%-30% of our portfolio, as we've said. That's on top of the 49,000. That's not in the 49,000. That's being planned on top, and in appropriate time, we'll share more details around what that total capacity number would look like.
49,000 doesn't include the new capacity coming up for the BEVs. It does include the XUV400 capacity. Does that answer all your questions?
So basically, on ICE, do you have more white spaces to fill? You have the five-door Thar also coming, right? Just, you know, in terms of existing facilities, I was trying to understand what is the potential here, and when do you need to kick in fresh CapEx for new capacity?
I think at this point of time, for ICE, we think 49,000 would be a good number.
Okay.
We, at this point of time, don't think we need more than that. It will have a reasonable amount of capacity for Thar. Most of the aggregate capacities of engines and so on, are also being ramped up as a part of this overall move. There are some things which we were not prepared for, which we are doing now, like we didn't think Scorpio Classic will get the kind of demand that it's getting, so that was capped at its earlier level. That's been triggered. That will kick in now. There's new capacity coming up for pickups. We haven't spoken a lot about pickups. That's built into the CapEx number as well. We, we are seeing a big upside in pickups with the new portfolio. All of that is by and large, factored in.
Needless to say that if we see the need for another round of increase in capacities, we will not hold back from doing that. Clearly, the return on incremental investment on capacity addition is like, you know, very quick payback. I think Manoj had flashed a number on what we have spent beyond what we said last time, the capacity. That's a very small number for the incremental volume that it gives. We will not hold back, but I think right now, it's, it'll be good to watch us get to a number of, you know, 40,000 per month SUV before we really think of.
Okay.
Another one, because we have to think at the pace at which the EV, ICE transition will happen.
Thank you.
As I've been saying, our belief is that our products will create market because they're very, very desirable products. When people see them, they will want to own them. They will overcome multiple barriers that may be there. I mean, it's an amazing drive experience. Very, very tech and feature-loaded, software-defined vehicles. There's a whole bunch of things going in them, and that will change the way people buy. You know, we have to get this balance right, and we have to watch for that.
Understand.
Yeah, Kapil, just to add to that, the one factor here also is that we're looking at launching five new Born Electric SUVs. We're ensuring that there's a very strong focus on that. We are on track for that right now, in fact, probably slightly ahead. That's a very important part of our journey.
Mm-hmm.
If that were not the case, we would be more aggressive on ICE.
ICE.
You're right, we could do more than 49. We could do 59 or 69. There'll be global demand for these products. From that perspective, yes, we could have looked at more white spaces, et cetera. Big reason why we are not doing more of that is to make sure that electric really kicks off at a very, very strong pace.
Understood. That's quite helpful. Second question is on margins. When we go from, say, 34,000-35,000 a month to, let's say, 30% higher or 40%, depending on where it goes, how should we think of the margins for the auto business directionally? Are there any negative factors here to keep in mind, or generally, operating leverage should kick in from where we are today?
Yeah. Kapil, first, I think the one thing to keep in mind is, margins as a per-percentage will not be comparable once EVs come in.
Mm-hmm.
Because EVs will have a very different percentage, my percentage margin structure, apart from the unit margin structure. The one thing that I think all of us have to keep in mind is, once EVs come in, the margins are not going to be comparable to the past. That's just one thing that I want to put out, because the numerator, denominator effect, apart from everything else. Because.
Yeah
The, you know, the taxation structure is different, and hence you're going to have a different net revenue number, so the denominator is going to be very different. That's one thing that we have to keep in mind as EVs start coming in the portfolio, that margins, you know, will not be comparable. We, we personally believe that commodity price movement is a bigger determinant on what's happening to margins than necessarily operating leverage. You know, when commodities go up and we see a lot of inflation like we have, that kind of tends to overwhelm anything else that you may be doing, because the effect of that margin not passed on, as you call it, on the inflation, has a very big effect on the overall margin structure.
Right.
You know, in spite of everything that we've done to bring down cost, we're still not able to get to F19 margin, just because the numerator-denominator effect of the inflation we have seen through BS-VI, BS VI Stage-II, and the huge commodity inflation. We've had, you know, literally three years of inflation of a kind not seen before, and in such an inflationary environment, you're not able to pass margin on top of the cost. You're just struggling to get your cost covered. That does have a very big impact on percentage margin. Not so much on unit margin, but unit level margin, but definitely on percentage margin.
Yeah, sure. That's helpful.
If commodity is benign, operating leverage is going to have a very big impact on margin, let's put it that way.
Okay, great. Manoj, just one small clarification for Q4. We had very high increase in other expenses for Q4, almost 40% year-over-year growth. Anything to call out there, any one time or lumpy numbers?
If you look at that increase, about half of it is variable, so that's linked to kind of volume.
Mm-hmm.
You can take that out. Out of the balance, I think, again, half of it is related to certain Q4 kind of charges which come through, this is something which will continue. I don't think you should look at it from a quarter perspective. I think you should build it more from a year perspective. I think that's the way, correct way to look at it.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Hi, Pramod here from UBS. Congratulations again to the team. My first question is on the electric vehicle side. If you can just help us get update on the demand for XUV four double O, where are we on the capacity ramp-up side there? Because you clearly want to accelerate your plans on EV. How should one look at the potential investments which you may have to do, given what's happening on the private equity side? On the side note, if you can help us get update on the BII rescheduling of the payment. The money was supposed to come in. I think it's got rescheduled, if you were to believe the media reports. If you can help us understand that first.
You're the one who is triggering this whole BII thing. You want to take the BII one?
The BII, let me just take that first. Things are on track. There was a certain schedule that was laid out. I think when the first time the announcement was made, that wasn't fully captured in the way, so there was just an update to the stock exchange on that. There's no delay in any form, and it stays on track as we had planned it.
Okay. Then on the demand update on XUV400, the performance, the customer feedback, anything which you want to share there?
Yeah. We had orders of more than 20,000. We've sold about 3,000 plus so far since we started deliveries in March. Customers who bought it are very happy with the product, especially the drive feel is excellent. There is feedback on need to improve the infotainment screen and interior switch. I guess all of you know. We will do that as we go along. Right now, by way of ramp up, our focus is on going slow because we want to. It's the first time we are doing electric vehicle of this kind. We want to go slow, make sure we stabilize quality, so we're going slow. We expect to back end the supplies to the second half of the year.
At the moment, we are, we are producing, but we are, for the next two, three, four months, we are going to stay at about 1,000 order a month and not ramp up very fast.
Rajesh, any color as to by when do you expect to hit the 5K number there or any milestone you have, like, beyond the next few months where you want to stabilize the product and all of that?
When we had kind of, you know, announced the pricing, we had said we're aiming to do about 18,000 vehicles this month, this year. Directionally, we'll be there, except we'll be back-ended to the second half, like I said, but that's the number we have in mind for this year.
Our electric SUV, BEV SUV pipeline remains intact, or we're going to be accelerating some of them with the additional investments what we are making on the EV side? Any plan to do that? The reason I ask that is diesel is increasingly coming under regulatory, like, as in it's already under the regulatory microscope, but I think there's more scrutiny. You would have seen that some panel recommendation that there should be a ban on diesel cars and all of that. There's a lot of confusion. I'm just trying to understand: Is there a need for us to accelerate our BEV switchover because of our diesel-heavy portfolio?
Yeah. On the, on the panel recommendation, there was a clarification from the ministry that there is no view that they have on it yet, and hence, I think it was nothing more than a recommendation, which many panels make at this point of time. I, I wouldn't personally, you know, overreact to that panel report, and if something was to happen, I'm sure there'll be a timeline. We don't see anything happening in the immediate short run along those lines. The electric launch plans are on schedule, and we would start producing our first lot of Born Electric towards the last quarter of next calendar year for launches in early 2025, which is along the schedule that we had announced.
I think one of your questions was, is there any change in our product plan based on the additional investment? You know, Manoj partly spoke about that, Pramod, but basically, when we had put those numbers out in 2021, we didn't have a clearly laid out product roadmap. It was, "Okay, we need to invest this kind of money in electric." After that, we got into a sharper definition of, you know, we're gonna create an INGLO platform. This is what we're gonna be specced at. These are the top hats that are gonna come on it, all of that. When all of that is costed, we have a new number, and that new number over F22-24 is what Manoj shared.
And just-
Thanks a lot.
Just to add to that, there are a few new product ideas that are coming in as well. Now, we'll finalize what the delivery timeline that there is. One was revealed in Hyderabad, which was a BE.RALL-E, which was in addition to the 5 products that we had talked about earlier. There are 1 or 2 more that are coming in as well, that are being looked at. Some of those costs will go into scoping them, but we will have the launch dates for that at some point in the future when we are ready with it.
Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thanks, Pramod.
Hello, sir. Raghu here from Nuvama. Sir, three questions. Firstly, on the tractor outlook side, now, how are you seeing the triggers or the positive catalysts ahead? I mean, over the past few months, in terms of trade is turning a bit favorable compared to what it was six months ago and run up to the government elections, how do you see the positive impact there? That's one. Two questions to Anish, sir. One, on the Growth Gems side, good to see that there is a profit of INR 330 crores. What would be the ROE there, and which of the Growth Gems you see the ROE ramp up happening first towards that 18% range? Lastly, standalone business net cash position is pretty strong, and the dividends are still, payout is still around 25%.
How do you see the rewarding of shareholder part? You know, because that is also a trigger to the ROE. What is your thoughts on the dividend policy? Thank you, sir.
I'll take the easy one? Okay. Terms of trade for tractors, yes, has improved. Positive enablers are good reservoir levels, good rabi crop. Terms of trade, we expect government spending to go up in rural India, all of these are positive. Well, right now, the mood on monsoon also seems to be positive, like I covered in my slide, El Niño doesn't really, is not really correlated to either rainfall deficit too much or definitely not to tractor demand. I think all of these are positive. At this point of time, we still are saying that we would expect the industry to grow at single digit, low single digits for F24.
as many of you track the industry know that you can't read much right now into April and May number, because last year had 2 Navratras, which is uncommon. Basically, this year's Navaratra moved to March. Last year actually had 2 Navaratra, so you can't compare April of this year with April of last year, because last year, April had Navaratra, this year April didn't. That is an industry size shift of 20,000, approximately. It's quite a large industry size shift that happens of a shift of Navaratra. It's a very big buying season in a large part of North India. Obviously, we all know that tractor demand has to be watched closely.
Many, many positive enablers, but given the uncertainty and volatility of this market, we're still maintaining low single digit for the year, but we'll update that by the time we come to July.
To answer the other questions, the way we are thinking about it is, first, we want to be able to maintain an 18% ROE across the portfolio, and we've gotten there. In fact, as I said earlier, much faster than we expected as well. Once we've gotten there, and that's a question we have for our investors, and we'd love your feedback as well in various meetings we have, is what would our investors like beyond that? Would they like a 21%, a 25% ROE, or would they rather have the growth that we can deliver? We are in a position today to build some very strong businesses. You look at holidays, for example. We've delivered the best family vacation experience that anyone else can deliver in India today.
We've got a business which has 480,000 members. Consistently has been able to deliver that across 100 resorts in India. How can we grow that business? Even what we're doing right now is addressing a minuscule part of the total demand that's out there. We've got a model that is based on delivering vacations for families, which not many others are doing today. Most of them are on business travel or looking at hotels and cities. This model that we have can grow multifold. If we talk about 5X, even in discussions at our board, one of our board members said: "Look, it's good to have 5X here, but aren't you limiting the growth of this business if you put 5X?
Why are we not thinking of 10x or higher? Similarly, if you look at logistics, we've got a very strong business today. There we can deliver, again, a 5x-10x growth in the next decade, build a much stronger, one of India's leading logistics companies. In real estate, leveraging the Mahindra brand, there's so much more we can do. We haven't done that right now. Our focus right now is to take each of these Growth Gems, make them core businesses. All of them have to get to a 15%-18% ROE. I'm not saying 15 today to dilute the number we had. The group level is 18%.
What I've always maintained is, if a business is growing at 35%, we are gonna be very happy with a 12%-15% ROE for that business in the short run right now. Once it grows, it will deliver ROE as well, because once you have scale, much easier to deliver returns at that point in time. We're looking at it as a portfolio approach. What we want to do is build very strong businesses across all the key sectors in India, and that's our primary focus. Therefore, today, the businesses will not be at 15%. My question to them is not, how fast are you going to reach 18%? My question to them is, how fast are you going to get to 5x?
As you get to 5x, then we start talking about getting to 18% after that.
Thank you, sir. On the dividend side, any thoughts?
Yes. Okay. dividend, again, we debated that. We've grown dividend 40% right now. Our profits have grown higher than 40%, which is where that question comes in. Where we are today is we've got huge potential across a large number of businesses to invest and drive scale. In both auto and farm, we will go global in a much bigger way. We've got the ability to do that. I spoke a little about that earlier as well. In farm, we've got farm machinery as a major area of focus, where we will invest more. In some of our Growth Gems, we will invest more as well. We've got a business today with great opportunities to invest. We will maintain the fiscal discipline, so there's a very, very high bar on investment.
We keep getting lots of new ideas outside our core focus areas, and the quick answer to all of them is no, we're not interested in doing that. We are not going to use the cash to go and sort of get into 5 new areas and start looking at various different things. That we're not gonna do, right? If we find something really compelling, maybe 1 more area, we'll do that, but that has to be really compelling. But the most important focus is on where we are today and the opportunity we have today to scale up our businesses, and that's what we want to invest in. Message I would actually send with that is, we've got great opportunities to invest in, which is why we are not giving more dividend.
We will actually create more value for our shareholders, and that's what we want to do.
Thank you. Rakesh?
Hi, good evening. Thank Thank you for taking my question. I'm Kumar Rakesh from BNP Paribas. My first question was on the tractor business. It has been impressive that you have expanded your market share in that segment, which has been very difficult to increase historically. First part of my question is that, what is driving this market share? What is helping you? Typically, we have seen when the tractor industry goes into a down cycle, Mahindra loses market share because there's higher demand for lower horsepower tractors, where market share for Mahindra is lower. You are confident of further expanding market share going forward, wherever the cycle be. What is driving that confidence?
Rakesh, firstly, thanks for acknowledging the tractor market share gain performance. Some key enablers to what happened so far, and on the Mahindra tractor brand side, which is farm division, as we call it, the Yuvo Tech+, is a product which has done very well and got a significant momentum, and that's helped add a lot of market share. On the Swaraj side, you know, again, not no new major new product launch, but just a lot of work around channel and efficiency and throughput, which has got us share. I think the two drivers have been Yuvo Tech+, for the farm division and Swaraj just, you know, doing more of what they were doing.
What gives us confidence that we'll build share is adding new products and segments. The whole new upgrade is a very significant upgrade. We will back it up with significant marketing actions as well to support the whole transition to the new Swaraj. That will give us upside. We're very confident, very good product, which will be aggressively marketed, and you'll see more of that after August, September. The entry into lightweight, both in India for the Mahindra brand with OJA and the Swaraj lightweight brand, which we'll share more of on 2nd June. That market is roughly 50,000-60,000 horsepower tractors per year at the moment in that horsepower range. Our share in that is below our national average.
We would see with these product launches an upside coming in that as well. That I think is something that will happen.
I'm not sure on your point on, you know, low price tractors necessarily gaining share in a downturn. I think low price tractors are at a level at which they will by and large be. They've, you know, made momentum up to a certain point. It's not that easy to manage, you know, channel, money, cash flows, credit periods, all of that, for, you know, sub-scale brands if they want to go national. It's, as we all know, a very difficult market. You need, you know, consistency in channel, good throughput, good service levels for products to establish. Farmers know that by now, they don't want to buy a one-time cheap tractor, which then they get stuck with problems for a long period of time.
There may be a little bit of variation around that, but I don't think that market shares move significantly because of that. We believe that with right product and everything else that we're doing on building our brand and channel, we will gain market share as we go forward, even from where we are now.
Thanks a lot for that. My second question was for Anish. It has been an impressive work for all the group companies that you have turned around, but Tech Mahindra remains one of the company where you would agree that a lot of work is still left to be done, and you are targeting 300 basis point margin expansion. Any timeline which you could give? Also with the new CEO coming in, this is an industry where growth is the largest driver for margin expansion, and I know you also talked about that demand is challenged in that industry right now. What gives you the confidence on driving this margin expansion?
First, on timeline, I will let the new CEO set the timeline for it. We've set the target for the new CEO before the person's come in, so it's only fair for us to sort of give him the time to set the timeline. All I can say, it's not going to be too long, right? Because our patience wears out when it becomes too long. What the second part of your question, I would actually first give a lot of credit to the business and the team that's built it, because there are lots of pluses in this business. It has very high degrees from centricity, a very high degree of agility. As we talk to various customers in the industry, that's something that is appreciated.
The team also does acknowledge that what has got us here will not take us to the next phase. Therefore, as we go to the next phase, it does require a little more standardization. It does require, I mean, today, we will customize everything for everyone, and that's what impact margins. That's what drives growth, that's what impacts margins as well. As you start standardizing more, it starts improving margins, and for our next phase, we need to be able to standardize it and be able to deliver at a high level. The entire team actually is in sync with that, to say that we've done well to come to where we are today, but we need something else for the next phase, and that's going to be the direct impact on margins.
Thanks, Anish.
There's a very clear view on what needs to be done. That is very clear.
Yeah. Thanks, Rakesh. I'll take a couple of questions from the participants online. This is from Jinesh Gandhi of Motilal Oswal. This is on tractors. What would be the size of market in India in the lightweight tractor segment, where Swaraj and OJA products are going to be launched? Couple of other clarificatory questions on, what are the benefit of commodity cost deflation in FES in Q4? Do you expect any significant benefit from commodity prices going forward? The last question was on the revenues of agri equipment business in FY23.
Jinesh Gandhi, the first question we've just answered, which is 50,000-60,000 tractors per year in the lightweight segment. Our market share there is below our national market share. That's the first question. On the second question, my understanding is Q3 to Q4. Rajiv, just confirm, that's the input I have, is sequentially, no change. We haven't got a commodity benefit in Q4 over Q3. None of that is, the margin hasn't come out of commodity benefit from Q4 to Q3, especially on tractors, mainly because rubber, I think, hasn't gone down in Q4, which is a key part, and sheet metal is not such a big thing in tractors anyway. Q3 to Q4 being flat commodity. At this point of time, in Q4, we do see some inflation over Q4.
It's not in to us, going down over Q4. The third question was, on?
Farm machinery, revenue from-
Farm machinery revenue in F23 was INR 600 crores in M&M, and we have a subsidiary company called Mitra, which is now fully ours. They make sprayers, which is another INR 50 crores, so INR 60, INR 50 crores, and we would look at at least 40%-50% growth from there.
Okay. The next question is from Gunjan Prithyani of Bank of America. Can you give us more color on auto CapEx? Capacity-related CapEx was announced earlier, what does INR 16 billion increase pertain to? I'll come to the next question later.
Clear?
No, no. I think, Rajesh, you did answer the question, in the course of one of the other answers. Basically, that, we are looking at, even on the ICE side, basically regulatory changes and capacity increases-
Yeah
... as and when we see markets move. I think that's the short answer, but if you want to add some color.
can you just clarify the question?
The first category, Rajesh.
I understood that. What, it was announced earlier, but what is there now and-
Earlier, last year, we had said that, capacity related to CapEx was announced earlier.
Yeah.
Whatever increase last year we announced, we said it is because of the capacity increases.
Yeah.
Now, she's asking that INR 16 billion increase, what does it pertain to?
See, we are talking the same cycle. We are talking about the F 22 to F 24 cycle. To the, to my understanding, we are within what we had said earlier. We had said we are going to take a certain amount of capacity increase, a year back.
... and we are within the F 2022-F 2024. Some of that has been spent, and some of that will come in F 2024. Broadly, that's.
No, no. The question is, we said 49K capacity increase, and I think maybe a month or two before we gave the 15,075 number.
Yeah.
That incremental INR 1,600 crores, which we are showing right now, I think one part of the question to interpret is: Is this part of the INR 49K increase or is it something else?
It's part of the 49K increase, but also pickups and other products, so it's not just the SUVs.
Is there anything else apart from capacity? I think there are two parts.
Yeah. The other thing that was the whole six airbag transition and other regulatory things is all built in.
Okay, the next question is, are all the investment in group companies related write-offs now became anything pending?
We've completed everything that we had to do from an exit standpoint. There are two turnarounds that are pending, which is Automobili Pininfarina and MANA. Related to that, there may be some minor impairment that may come in as a result of it, but that's very minor at this point in time. Anything else that you want to add to that, Manoj?
Two things to clarify. I think,
Yeah. Sorry, just to clarify, MANA is ROXOR, which is Mahindra Automotive North America. That is not the tractor business. Yeah.
Two things to clarify: I think the way we are taking a very conservative view, for example, in APF. Whatever investment we are doing, we are carrying it at zero value, so it does hit the bottom line from an EI perspective, and that's an accounting treatment we have chosen till we see a real good clarity on where APF lands up. That might be part of EI, if that is the kind of question we have. The second element is, as Anish said, we have looked at all the main entities and quite a few activities which have happened in the last two years. At this point in time, of course, we believe that most of them, there is a true reflection of value. We took the MTBD call in quarter 3.
A bulk of whatever we need to do is out of the balance sheet. Besides that, of course, we have always said that there is going to be a continuous evaluation. That's something which will continue. If market conditions change, that's a different story. At this point, that's where we stand.
Yeah. The exits are all done. The other clarification also is everything in the group company line is not an impairment, because there are investments for growth businesses as well. For example, in this 3-year cycle, F 'twenty to F 'twenty-four, that includes an investment for Susten. As we built a couple of plants, that investment is included there. As OTPP comes in, money goes into Mahindra Holdings at this point in time. We may choose to bring some of it back as dividend, but that is reflected in the investment column right now. As we invest in some of our group companies to build our Growth Gems, you will see that number on that line.
Okay, I will come back in queue. Amin?
Yes. Hi, this is Amyn Pirani from JP Morgan. One view on commodity inflation, if you have a view as to how the next 6-9 months are looking? One slightly larger question is that in the last three years, we've seen favorable outcomes on all the capital allocation decisions, and we've seen a significant improvement on the operating metrics. From the next 12-18 month point of view, what are the risks in your view? Or what are the things that worry you, that may either slow down the progress, what you have planned, or what are the things that we should keep in mind when we think of the next 12-18 months?
I mean, great set of questions. First, on commodity inflation, I think a lot depends on recession across the world. The U.S. keeps talking about a recession, maybe it's talking itself into a recession as well. As that, if that does happen, then we will obviously see benign commodity prices. The China bounce back effect has not been very high, so we have not seen a significant uptick in commodity as a result of that. At present, while anyone's guess here is as good as ours, probably say that it's going to be more of the same, unless we see a much greater recession coming in, into the U.S. and Europe, in which case it'll be lower.
Don't see too many signs for it to go back up, but again, in the world that we live in today, we never know. That goes back to the second part of your question. What worries us is what we don't know today and what could happen tomorrow, right? If China attacks Taiwan, that is a worry. There may be other things that we may not have foreseen right now. What we've done is to try and build a very strong business that is resilient. We've gone through a number of issues around semiconductors, and the team actually, as I would commend them for that, have done a very good job in finding various solutions to it, ensuring there are backups to backups as well, and that has strengthened the business.
What we also have done is put a very strong fiscal discipline in place, which is not going to go away, and that's something that we're very conscious of. It's easy sometimes to get complacent on great results. "We've grown profits 3x, now we can go and spend." Sorry, that's not happening. The operating part is also driven by operating discipline. There was a question earlier on cost that a couple had asked. At corporate, our costs are flat for the last four years. As a principle, they're gonna be flat every year. We want 10% productivity. This is despite a 10% increase in salaries for everyone. That's operating discipline, and that's without laying off anyone. That's not what we plan to do.
That's not what we're doing. That operating discipline comes into play, and therefore we've kept costs flat at F20 levels, which makes budgeting very simple, because everyone's budget is the same as last year. If you spend less, it's okay. You still keep your same budget as last year, because you've spent less, that's a plus, in which case, you're allowed to spend, you know, more than what you spent last year. That's the approach we're using, and that's where the operating discipline has come into the metrics that you've seen, and that's something across our businesses. That gives us confidence that we've got a strong set of businesses, and therefore, there isn't something that I would say that directly worries us that we are seeing right now. What worries us is what we don't see.
Thank you, and all the best. Good evening. This is Ashwani from 3P Investment Managers. My question was, what is the key to success in global expansion in tractors and SUVs both? Where is the edge? Cost is one, but in terms of design, software, particularly on the SUVs. Second, can you elaborate on rural strategy on the SUV side? Whatever we see looks like more of urban. Can you help us understand the rural element of it, rural or second tier towns?
I'll give you a higher level view on keys to success globally, and then I'd request Rajesh to go through some of the details on that. We've gone global in many areas, and some have worked and some have not, right? Maybe you could also say that many have not. The key to global success is first, focus. We can't go global without a very sharp focus in terms of where we are going, even our approach to global now, is now a phase-wise approach. We have to be local in those markets. We have to understand those markets very well. We've got to be ready to be able to put in and build scale in those markets. There's no point playing in a market if you're going to get a 5% market share.
Our philosophy is, anything we do, we will do very well, otherwise we will not do it. If we're going to play in markets, we've got to target a 15%-20% market share and be able to go and play. Therefore, focus is the most important factor. If we can do that well, we will win. Brazil is a classic example for tractors right now. We've gone to 5%-6% market share in a short period of time, and we've run out of capacity. We're building more capacity there, but we are targeting a 15%-20% market share there. We're focusing on that market. We're not going after infinite markets in tractors. That to me is the biggest factor. The more granular parts, Rajesh, over to you.
Yeah. Just Ashwani, to break up your question into just separate auto and FES. On the auto side, phase one is really to say existing markets where we already have a presence, in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, so on and so forth, North Africa. A whole bunch of products that we've launched here, we actually haven't or just starting to introduce there. There's an automatic upside that's gonna come in phase one out of introducing XUV700, Scorpio, and even XUV300 hasn't been introduced in many markets yet. Left-hand drive version of that is ready. All of that is getting phase one out, which is put existing new products into existing markets. That's the phase one.
The phase 2 is around using the Born Electric portfolio that we are creating. Like Anish said, take one market, say UK, because we are right-hand drive ready. We believe that's, you know, global category product with global category tech, and we will take on, say, a right-hand drive market like UK and some other, you know, advanced Western world right-hand drive markets in the next phase. Then the third phase, which may be like 6, 7 years later or 5, 6 years later, once we've gone through this process of phase 1 and phase 2, is then to create electric left-hand drive markets products as well for Western Europe and some of these other countries. It's a calibrated approach. We think with electric, it's far easier to build new brands.
Many electric brands are very new, and electric creates a new paradigm for you to go and succeed in areas where, you know, you haven't been there before. That's on the auto side. On the FES side, Anish already spoke about Brazil, I'm not elaborating on that. If we kind of take a bunch of, you know, markets where we already have presence, there's Brazil, there's Africa, there is Turkey, where we have a presence through Erkunt. There's an opportunity to grow in each of these. We think we are gonna get a lot of growth in North America with the We may not call it OJA in North America, but with the whole K2 platform. ASEAN is a market we haven't had the right product for. Again, K2 platforms gives us product for ASEAN markets.
The new market that we'll create for tractors, where we'll try and focus on, is ASEAN because K-two platform will give us that. Like Anish said, it's gonna be a very, very focused and calibrated approach to creating new markets. That's broadly how we're looking at international.
In terms of SUV and utility vehicles for Indian market.
Yeah, that was.
Urban versus rural.
That, that was your second question. I'm just want to clarify your questions. If you look at our 35,000 odd that we are selling, we still sell 9,000 of Bolero and Bolero Neo, which is largely rural and semi-urban. We still sell 4,000+, and demand is higher of Scorpio Classic, largely urban and semi-urban. Half of the XUV300 is in semi-urban, so that's another 3,000. If you take basically 9,000 + 4,000 + 3,000, more than 40% of our product is very rural focused. 50% of our SUVs today are still the rural, semi-urban, but I'm just categorizing for you, even Thar is not completely an urban product. There is at least 40%, 30%-40% of Thar, which is in semi-urban, rural.
I think we have to change our paradigm of who the rural customer is, and that's a very important thing to understand. The rural customer doesn't want to buy. There are enough rural customers who want to buy advanced technology, high-end products. They have money power more than what we can imagine, and they do want right products. There are those who want just, you know, rugged workhorse, which is what the segment Bolero serves, but there are many who want the Scorpio Classic, the Scorpio-Ns, and all of these. You know, I think we're doing a very good mix in our portfolio, managing for rural customers and urban customers.
Just one more thing. In terms of electric vehicles, where is the differentiation going to come from for your kind of products or the utility vehicles?
Yeah.
Going to do? Because, in mechanical products, you can make out fuel efficiency, lower maintenance. It's easy to differentiate. What is the customer saying? What is the feedback which you are receiving now? Let's say, if you have seen other products, where are you going to differentiate? Is it easy for you, but is it easy for the customer to differentiate those aspects?
It's a good question. I don't know if you've had a chance to see any of our products in person and if you were at the Hyderabad event. Were you?
I was not there.
Okay. You know, you may see all the visuals, but, you know, some of your colleagues here were at Hyderabad, and if you kind of talk to them, the presence of the products is very significant. They have a very strong road presence. We think combination of design, road presence, and the tech interface that we are creating is gonna be what we've done, in a way, the formula for 700, which is super premium feature tech offering at affordable prices, is really what will be the strategy for Born Electric.
Thank you. Wish you the very best.
Yeah, just to respect everyone's time, we will take two final questions.
Hi. My name is Harshil Desai, and I'm coming from CARE Ratings. Recently, around the world, the next big thing after EV is the use of or the invent of renewable fuel. That is, hydrogen-based fuel or ethanol-based fuel. I just wanted to understand if Mahindra is looking into that or has any kind of R&D or some CapEx plan into that.
Yeah, I'll take that. On hydrogen, right now, we're not doing anything. We think that's gonna take a while for that technology to come into mainstream, and it'll probably first come in through trucks in that segment. At the moment, we are not doing any work on hydrogen. We are doing work on blended fuels and ethanol blended and all of that, so our vehicles will be ready for that whenever or, as per the timeline that's laid out.
Hydrogen, you want technology in the car, so how do you get that to the consumer? EVs today is much simpler because electricity transmission, electricity distribution, even generation is all set, and therefore, all you need is a plug, and you can plug in the car, and it works. It's difficult for hydrogen because all of those things need to be put in place, and that will take a very long time.
Hi. This is Priya Ranjan from HDFC AMC. Just two questions. One is on the overall CapEx. How much you are spending on the R&D side? If you can call out that number in terms of %. The second is, after many quarters, we have seen overseas subsidiaries of farm equipment has made some losses. I mean, it's a very small loss, but still there is a loss. Is there something to worry about in near term?
Loss?
I mean, what I'm doing is actually consol minus standalone, for farm equipment business. It's a PBT loss.
We made a loss?
Farm equipment.
Farm equipment.
Consolidated minus standalone. Is it loss in there?
No.
I think it might. Let me take a shot at it. There are two.
Yeah.
What we did is, during the quarter, there is something called hyperinflation accounting. Turkey has crossed that 100% inflation rate over three years. Under Ind AS, there is a provision that whenever that happens in a subsidiary, you actually have to the impact of what is called hyperinflation accounting. There's a INR 120 crore charge which has come through, which will be in the farm consol numbers. That's what probably you're referring to.
It's a full year charge taken now, so it's not a quarter impact. It's a full year impact of F23 or INR 120 crores, which we have had to take in Q4, which is basically adjusting all costs to the current level of market price and not the level at which you incurred the cost. We have to take that impact for the full year. That was INR 120 crores. I think that's probably what is, what you're referring to. Rajiv, you want to clarify? That's, it's only that, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, that really.
Just to add. Sorry. Just to add, that is not an operational charge. It is like an accounting entry, which is coming in the numbers. If you look at the operational numbers of Turkey, it'll be very different. It'll be INR 120 crore better.
Yeah, there's an accounting standard around it, which is not generally used because we don't see hyperinflation situations usually. Effectively, whatever the profits were of that business have been reduced by INR 120 crores, just based on this accounting standard saying, "You got to revalue all of the raw materials for the last year at a certain level," and so on. It's not an operational charge, as Manoj said. It's just more an accounting thing right now. And it possibly may come back as well, which will depend on sort of how the inflation numbers there go.
Understood. Just on the R&D part, overall investment, what is the R&D?
No, we won't, we don't share a breakup.
We actually don't share a breakup of how much is our R&D percentage spend. That, what we try and do is try to give you visibility at an overall level, through the CapEx numbers. That's probably the best model for us, instead of being very granular about it, and that's what we'll stay with.
Uh-
Thank you, everyone. In conclusion, I would just say that expect us to maintain the fiscal discipline that we've had. Expect us to look at growth in a significant way to build on the foundation that we've built right now, and expect us to deliver on the commitments we made. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Please join us for cocktail and dinner. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for being here.
You're the only one.