Ladies and gentlemen, good day, welcome to the Q4 FY 23 earnings conference call of Vedant Fashions Limited, hosted by Nuvama Wealth Management. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then 0 on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded and will be for a duration of 45 minutes. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nihal Jham from Nuvama Wealth. Thank you, over to you.
Yes, thank you so much. On behalf of Nuvama Institutional Equities, I would like to welcome you all to the Q4 FY23 earning conference call of Vedant Fashions Limited. From the management today, we have Mr. Vedant Modi, Chief Marketing Officer, and Mr. Rahul Murarka, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Vedant Modi for his opening remarks. Over to you, Vedant.
Thank you very much, Nihal. Good afternoon and namaskar to all the participants. I'm Vedant Modi, the Chief Marketing Officer of the company. Thank you for joining us today to discuss the Vedant Fashions Limited Quarter Four and Financial Year 2023 results. I am joined by Mr. Rahul Murarka, the Chief Financial Officer of our company. I hope everyone got an opportunity to go through our financial results and investor presentation, which have been uploaded on the stock exchange as well as the company's website. Let me take you through the fourth quarter and full year performance. We are pleased to report that we have achieved strong growth in the financial year. Our growth strategy is focused on expanding our retail outreach both domestically and internationally. We have expanded our international presence, and we are now present in 4 international countries, USA, UAE, Canada, and the U.K.
In this quarter, we increased our exclusive brand outlet footprint, which is the dominant channel for the company. As of March 2023, VFL's EBO area stands at 1.47 million square feet, spanning 649 stores in 257 cities and towns globally. The national EBO footprint tally is at 633 stores spread across 245 cities and towns. In this quarter, we have opened net square feet area of around 75,000 square feet, which includes seven EBOs in India and two international EBOs. In financial year 2023, we expanded our retail footprint by 2.04 lakh square feet with 64 net EBOs opened. This expansion highlights the commitment to provide our consumers with the best possible shopping experience while increasing our market share with the largest share of the consumer's wallet.
In financial year 2023, our overall consumer sales growth stands at 26.3% over financial year 2022, and our SSSG growth has been 18.1% in financial year 2023 over financial year 2022. In quarter four financial year 2023, our overall consumer sales grew by 21.2% over quarter four financial year 2022, and the SSSG growth has been 14% over quarter four of last year. In financial year 2023, our consumer sales growth stands at 47.1% when compared to pre-COVID financial year of 2020. While the financial year 2023 SSSG growth has been 17.6% over the pre-COVID financial year of 2020. In the fourth quarter of the financial year 2023, our overall consumer sales growth stands at 45.8% compared to quarter four financial year 2020.
In Q4 FY2023, the SSSG growth has been 16.2% over the Q4 of FY20. We continue to run our flagship campaign built around the theme, Taiyaar Ho Kar Aaiye. The campaign features Ranveer Singh in a new avatar and was targeted to wedding-centric audience. We ran the campaign across all channels. It was a 360-degree campaign. In addition to this, I would also like to highlight that we have launched Kiara Advani as the new face of the brand Mohey. We ran a campaign featuring her, featuring around the theme, Dulhan Wali Feeling, and it depicts the saga of a modern-day bride and how weddings are a big day for them. This campaign beautifully encapsulates the theme and strongly connects with all modern-day brides.
We saw tremendous performance across the digital channels that we made this campaign live in. With this, I will now hand it over to Mr. Rahul Murarka to take you through the financial performance of our company. Thank you.
Thank you, Vedant. Namaskar and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to highlight the key performance for the fourth quarter and financial year ended March 23 based upon the consolidated financial statement. Starting from Q4 of FY 23 performance update. The company has reported revenue from operation of INR 342 crore in Q4 of FY 23, delivering a growth of around 15.3% compared to Q4 of FY 22. The company continues to report industry leading gross margin of around 66% during Q4 of FY 23. The EBITDA margins were around 50.2%, and the EBITDA stood at INR 171 crore during Q4 of FY 23, with a growth of around 17% compared to Q4 of FY 22.
The company reported best-in-class tax margin of 31.9%, the PAT stood at 109 crore during Q4 of FY23, with a strong growth of 23% compared to Q4 of FY22. Our sales to our customer was around 483 crore during Q4 of FY23, with a significant growth of 21.2% over Q4 of FY22, along with strong SSG growth of 14% in Q4 of FY23 over Q4 of FY22. Comparing our Q4 FY23 performance with Q4 of FY20 whose figures have been considered based on internal management MIS. The revenue from operation significantly grew by approx 31%, we witnessed very strong growth impact by approx 53% compared to Q4 of FY20.
Sale of our customer grew by approx 46% over Q4 of FY 2020, and we recorded SSG growth of 16.2% in Q4 of FY 2023 over Q4 of FY 2020. Now I would like to summarize FY 2023 full year performance. The company reported revenue from operations of INR 1,355 crores during FY 2023, delivering a very strong growth of 30% compared to FY 2022. The company continues to report industry-leading gross margin of 67.4% during FY 2023, with an improvement of 0.5% compared to gross margin of 66.9% in FY 2022. The EBITDA margin was around 50% and the EBITDA stood at around INR 678 crores during FY 2023, with a strong growth of around 30% compared to FY 2022.
The company reported best-in-class PAT margin of around 31.7%, and the profit after tax stood at INR 429 crores during FY23, with a significant growth of around 36.3% compared to FY22. The PAT generated during the year is approx 140% of net working capital deployed as on March 31, 2023. With optimization in working capital, we have been able to achieve industry-leading ROCE of approx 95.3% during FY23. The company has a track record of generating significant cash driven by a healthy cash conversion ratio. The company continued to generate high cash conversion ratio of around 83% in FY23, which has been computed based upon operating cash flow over PAT during the period.
The operating cash flow generated during the year is 116% of net working capital deployed as on March 31, 2023. The company also witnessed improvement in net working capital days from 94 days in FY22 to 83 days in FY23, which is computed based upon internal MIS. Sale of our customer was around INR 1,861 crores during FY23, with a significant growth of around 26.3% over FY22, along with a very strong growth of around 18.1% in SSG compared to FY22. On comparing our performance with figures of FY20, this is internal management MIS, revenue from operations significantly grew by approx 48%, we witnessed very significant growth in PAT by approx 81% in FY23 over FY20.
Sale of our customer also significantly grew by approx 47%, along with SSG growth of around 18% over FY 20. Thank you and namaskar everyone. We can now move to the Q&A session.
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 touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. In order to ensure that the management is able to answer queries from all participants, kindly restrict your questions to two at a time. We have our first question from the line of Tejas Shah from Spark Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. First question pertains to largely kind of trying to reconcile your SSG numbers with the very traditional method of like store addition or square footage expansion, which is 16%. If I reduce the revenue growth from there, then the SSG does not actually look very high number. How should we reconcile this number with what you have given?
Hi, Tejas. Basically, as far as reconciliation is concerned, look, the pure math will never work because the square foot area which we add up on in a particular year is around the year. It's not in the beginning of the year. The revenue which also gets generated is for a part of the year in that year in which we open the store, and the full year revenue comes in the next year only. If you see our trend of store opening, like in FY23, out of 204,000 sq ft which we opened in the entire financial year, 75,000, which is a big chunk, we opened in Q4 only. Around 60%-65% of area which we opened was in H2, compared to 40% which we opened in H1.
Obviously the revenue of those square feet area additions which has happened, the full revenue would come in the next year only. That is why the total and if we add up on the square feet addition plus the SSG will never come across, will never match with the overall revenue growth.
If I may add to that, Tejas, if you look at it, our triple AG for financial year 2023 over 2022 was 18%, while consumer sales growth was at 26.3%. Now we've added about 16% to our overall net area. Because that was throughout the year, if you just take half of that is 8% and add it to the 18%, it almost adds up to your 26.3%, which is a ballpark figure of how this whole derivation happens.
Perfect. Perfect. If I see SG&E efficiency in last two, three years.
It has been very good. In fact, employee cost in particular, we have again this quarter also we have reduced it, YOY and sequentially both. The same is true for the whole year as well. We just wanted to know how should we think about SG&A efficiency going forward and where would you like it to settle, so that the business also doesn't suffer but profitability also improves or remains healthy.
As far as employee cost is concerned, Tejas, one of the major reasons why the employee cost decrease we are seeing at a financial level is because of the restructuring of the director remuneration. I mean, if you see the director remuneration, the director remuneration has reduced from 2.1% of revenue to 1% revenue in FY23 because of the restructuring of director remuneration, as we explained in earlier calls. That is one of the reasons why on an overall level you are seeing a decline or say, similar numbers of HR costs and not the growth.
Just adding on to that whole piece, when we talk about the overall efficiency of a company, I think we've been able to demonstrate extremely high gross margins throughout the year. We're comfortable in saying that 66%-67% gross margin is what we expect the long-term trend to be. When we talk about PAT margins, while we deliver 31%+ in some quarters, we are comfortable in saying a 30%+ number. As you're aware, Tejas, these are some of the numbers in terms of efficiency are a global benchmark now. We've been able to do tremendous stuff. The idea is to maintain it as we move forward, in the numbers just mentioned.
Very much clear. The last one, if I may. Looking at the healthy cash flow generation and a very capital efficient model that you have created, how do you want to allocate capital going forward? Because that question will keep on, like, it will gain materiality as we go forward. How do you think about allocation of capital going forward? Tejas, the company is debt-free and the whatever cash we are able to generate on a particular financial year, which is 83% of PAT, a significant number, that is sufficient enough to run the business per se. You have seen that we have also, you know, believed in distributing the excess cash which we have to our shareholders.
Like last time also we had declared dividend of INR 5 per share. This is also based upon the performance of the company. The board of directors have decided to propose INR 9 per share as dividend. You know, unless we have any M&A which we are not sure when it will happen or it will happen or not in future, cash we will use for the business, for expansion, of course, to the extent required, and always the endeavor would be to give it back to the shareholders.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Varun Singh from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Mr. Varun Singh, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you very much. My question, my first question is on revenue growth. If I look at the yearly revenue numbers and compare it with FY19 numbers, we see that roughly 13%-14% is the revenue CAGR, which is coming up. Vedant, my question is how do you look at this number? You think that we could have done much better? Even going forward, how should we looking at the revenue growth, given this context?
Thank you for the question, Varun. The number which we strongly follow when we look at, let's say, a 3- or 4-year CAGR. The number in our reference is currently the FY23 to FY20 triple AG number, which was at 17.6%. That comes to a 5.5% sort of a 3-year CAGR. While we may not be exuberant with that number, we are not unhappy either, given the kind of environment we are operating in currently. The endeavor is to be at good single-digit triple AG number as we move forward.
Okay. Sir my second question is how do you see competition from, for example, Ethnix in the pockets where, you know, that the stores would have opened up?
Sure. I won't be able to comment on a single organized retailer. However, in totality with all the organized retail competition that is opening up across the country, what we've also kind of spoken in our last call is that everywhere we are seeing organized retail open up next to our stores. The performance of that store is actually better than the state average when it comes to triple AC. This is a phenomena we are witnessing across the board and in most of the stores. That is really fantastic to see that the overall market is growing and it is most likely a faster shift from unorganized to organized, which is what we understand currently.
In addition to that, as we've mentioned that the moats that entail in our industry are very large, given the fragmented supply chain, the very difficult understanding of consumer preferences as it varies every 50 kilometers. Then the kind of brand moat we have created with Manyavar. Very recent study that we conducted with one of the best market research surveys revealed that Manyavar in its PD has a 98% awareness, while we have a 95%-96% consideration. Now again, from a brand perspective, these are unheard of numbers in the fashion retail space. We are very confident about our brand and the kind of moats we have. As the internal numbers suggest, business is strong and we are continuously expanding.
Thank you. We'll move to the next question from the line of Aliasgar Shakir from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yes. Andy, yeah, I had a question on the, you know, performance of Mohey and Twamev. You know, we have done the heavy lifting over there and, you know, we've been seeing that confidence in the 3, 4 key measurables that we have been tracking has also been, you know, doing well. I think you also now opened the independent stores over there. Just want to get a sense of, you know, what is the feedback on the ground? What is the situation? You know, those key measurables that we've been tracking in the flagship stores, how have they been, you know, doing in the independent stores?
Do you see, you know, the confidence here to now scale this up very quickly in, you know, a good period of time, maybe 30, 40 stores in a couple of years?
Thank you for the question. The independent stores for Twamev are planned to start going live by end of this week. Our first flagship in Bangalore has its soft launch on Friday, with Delhi and Hyderabad being followed very closely and also Pune. Twamev is set for four flagship stores in the coming quarter or so. While when it comes to Mohey, again, flagship stores are in the pipeline, and they will start to open extremely soon. I can't comment on how the performance has been on those independent stores yet because we are going to go live with them extremely soon. However, when it comes to the performance of Mohey and Twamev within the flagship outlets, we have seen tremendous growth and both the triple AG growths have been faster than the company average in the financial year.
All the frontline data that we're getting, which is feedback on product, be it conversion rate, inventory turns that we're able to achieve with both of these brands, they've continuously improved over the years. We are very confident regarding the independent store concept as well. However, there will be new interesting things that we understand in terms of how do we market the brand separately, so we're able to bring in footfalls to the exclusive stores, which will be an interesting space to kind of see over the next few quarters.
Okay. scalability from here will be dependent on how these stores perform or, you know, I mean, we have a pipeline to already add 30, 40 stores cumulatively on these brands.
Take for example, we are expecting about 8-10 stores in Twamev and 10-15 stores in Mohey as the pilot. Based on the results we gain from these pilots is when we take the decision on scalability of the model. However, we are very confident and what we've done with our business development strategy is divided the stores into different pockets of regions and at the same time also divided them into multiple business development strategies. For example, trying out a high street where consumers walk versus trying out a high street where consumers enter with a car versus a mall store that is extremely famous in the city. Trying out every single permutation and combination to understand the model as well as we can in the first few quarters itself.
All right. They will be in 2024, right? FY 2024, these store additions.
Correct.
Okay.
That's it.
Got it. Second question is on the digital transformation we scoped even last quarter, you know, which was likely to see a launch of phase 1 in, you know, this quarter. Can you share any details about it? What are the areas we should see benefit? Has the launch happened, you know, and things about there?
Absolutely. Thank you for that question. The phase one launch has already happened. If any one of you are interested, you can just go to manyavar.com and see the phase one come to life. We have seen tremendous numbers on the back end. However, I don't want to comment too much on it currently because it's only two to three weeks of data where we've seen a significant rise in conversion rate, significant rise in average time spent on our website. We are seeing the experience having grown phenomenally. What we are really interested in is the phase two which kicks in two to three months from now, when we will start to connect the digital and the physical world.
What that will kind of entail at that time is, let's say what we've witnessed is a lot of grooms surf the website before they end up in the store. What we're trying to do is create a profile of that groom, which is what kind of sherwanis are they interested in, for example. Do they like brocade or which colors do they like? Then we pass on this information to the store when the person ends up booking an appointment. All of this is going to start come to life on our new platform in the coming two to three months.
Understood. The phase one you mentioned will be on manyavar.com, where you can, as a customer, build your profile and things like that.
Absolutely. Phase one is just a starting point where the new skin is live, a very fast website using all the global practices. The PageSpeed Insights, et cetera, which is Google, which Google offers you, we've seen tremendous scores there, and our SEO is also improving after the launch of our first phase.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sameer Gupta from India Infoline. Please go ahead.
Hi, sirs, thanks for taking my question. First question is that if I look at the secondary sales growth performance on our second half basis, which is clubbing the previous quarter and this one, I see a Y-o-Y growth of only 7%, and this is over a retail area addition of 16%. Growth has been kind of weak if you include both 3Q and 4Q, which takes in a whole wedding calendar. How are you so confident of still achieving a high single digit SSS growth going forward? What is going to drive this improvement in the near term?
Thank you for the question. We've discussed this before, that overall what we have witnessed is that last year, Q1 was heavily impacted. Weddings moved from Q1 to across the year, which spilled over the dates throughout the financial year 2022. Because financial year 2023 did not have much of a COVID impact, and typically the entire year was clean, that's why weddings were happening normal in Q1, Q2, and Q3, Q4 also normalized. Typically, what we see in a given financial year is we do 36%-37% of our business in H1, while the remaining happens in H2. This year that figure moved to 42% and 58%. What we are expecting is those numbers will normalize and it goes to one year thing to happen this year.
That answers, sir. Thank you. Second question is on the EBITDA margin. If I look at full year EBITDA margin, it is at 49.5% on a post-Ind AS basis. This would be around 41% on a pre-Ind AS basis, historically the highest. Are you comfortable with such high margins, first of all? Second is that going ahead with Mohey, for me, with plus pricing competition, how do you look at these margins? Is it safe to build some contraction at this point on such a high base?
Again, commenting on the PAT margins, while we've delivered more than 31%, we are comfortable in saying that 30% in the short term as we move forward. Even with our newer brands, we've been building efficiency with scale so that the margins are able to match up to the company's average margin when it comes to gross margins. That as these brands scale up, they are not eating away from our company's margins. On the other hand, when it comes to Manyavar, we have a very strong cost efficiency inbuilt in that brand. We are able to produce anything almost 25%-30% cheaper when it comes to other organized players in the market. That gives us the breathing room in terms of having very tight prices, yet being able to have the kind of margins that we offer.
Just to add upon, Vedant says, giving reference of PAT because, you know, post Ind AS 116, you know, PAT has become more relevant than EBITDA. I mean, your question was on EBITDA. That's why I was just clarifying that, you know, when internally also we review, we feel that it is more relevant to compare on PAT level rather than EBITDA after the introduction of Ind AS.
Mr. Gupta?
Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I'm done with my questions. Thanks.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Priyanka Trivedi from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is with, you know, if you could give us a sense on how your international stores have been performing and, you know, what is the contribution to your revenue from these stores?
While the contribution to our revenue would be very low, it would be the 1%-2% range. What we've witnessed over the last couple of years is very good traction when it comes to our international stores. We've grown at a 26% CAGR from pre-COVID levels, and the growth was extremely good during the COVID years. As we moved out of COVID, what we've seen is the international buyers coming back to India as NRIs and shopping here. That growth has slightly plateaued, but still the kind of CAGR we witnessed, we are very confident in expanding to much newer countries and to much newer cities that we haven't explored in the international cities yet.
Yeah, the path from here when it comes to countries we've already entered in, such as the U.S. and the U.K., look very good to us.
Okay, got it. My second question would be, you know, what would be the contribution of groom versus non-groom sales during the quarter?
Again, during the quarter is something which we don't give out as a number, which is groom versus non-groom. On a typical yearly basis, about 45%-60% of our business comes from grooms or brides.
Okay. Okay, got it. Yeah, that's it for me. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Prerna Jhunjunwala from Elara Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. I would like to understand the channel mix as well. How do we see the contribution from the other channels like MBO and LFS and online channel as we are investing into digital platform? How is that share moving?
Just breaking it down into two components, which is MBO and LFS, one, and e-com being the other one. As a company, the dominant channel for us is EBOs. Strategically, EBOs are a much more important channel compared to MBOs and LFS because we're able to give consumers the kind of experience the brand wants to give to them. The kind of sizing of the stores that we are opening now is truly able to cater to their needs, with a much higher average bill value that we've seen from any other format. On the other hand, when we talk about online is a very strong channel for us when it comes to non-wedding sales, such as festive buying for Diwali or even wedding attendees buying online. That channel is continuously growing from a business perspective.
However, as we were discussing earlier with the new digital experience going live, we feel omni-channel and physical experiences will become a very big component as we move forward into the future. That is where manyavar.com would really harp on to all of those, sort of nuances. We've seen a 40% sort of a CAGR in our online channel over the last 3 years, which is compared to pre-COVID levels. That has been good. With large format stores in MBO as well, we continue to expand, yet it's relatively slow when it comes to the commitment we have towards EBOs.
Okay. Second thing, as we are growing we are opening larger and larger format sizes, do we see same-store sales growth for the company increasing much higher than today's, at least in the near term?
No, I mean, the size of the store does not play any role there. As we've mentioned, a high single digit, good single digit kind of a 3-year CAGR is what we endeavor to achieve, and that is what our targets are. With higher stores, what we're able to do is increase our average bill value and provide a much better experience to our consumers. Typically, we only open larger stores in areas where we see the potential to already exist.
Okay. Okay. This quarter, this year, when we've opened very large stores, is higher store than our average size is a coincidence? Maybe it will normalize in next few years. Is that how.
Right. Strategically we are opening larger stores and that will be the strategy moving forward. While this quarter may have been slightly abnormal in terms of the average, however, the typical average we've had of about 2,400-2,500 sq ft is also going to increase from here on.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Archana Menon from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question was to Vedant. You mentioned market share gains in your opening remarks. Could you share some numbers around that? Where is the market share currently and where was it, say, last year?
Yeah. In terms of market share, we don't have exact numbers, right, in terms of what kind of market share that we have. What I was kind of referring to is that with our expanding reach of stores and square footage, that is what we endeavor to do. While there is no exact market research report that we've done over this year, I won't be able to comment on that. If I refer back to financial year 20 numbers, then at a men industry, men's ethnic wear industry scale and size, we were doing about 8-10% business. While talking about organized, we were at about 35-40%.
Okay. Your sense is that could have grown from there?
Sorry, I couldn't get you.
Sorry. That number from 35% would have, should have increased in the last two years.
That is our endeavor. I won't be able to comment on it exactly, as we've not done any research, on those lines in the current year. However, from our understanding, we always try to increase our market share. Yeah.
Sure. No, understood. My second question was on the wedding season for the upcoming year. Are you seeing or expecting any seasonality there or change versus the normal in the upcoming quarter?
Again, I think, this year that we had just concluded, which is financial year 2023, was again slightly, we were coming out of COVID and things were still not normal and the year was still we were trying to understand how post-COVID things would impact. However, we feel next year is now that we're completely out of COVID, would return back to normal terms with about 36%, 37% of our business happening in H1 and the remaining in H2. While April has slightly low weddings, May and June have very good wedding dates in the coming quarter. Across the year we are very confident with Q3 having good wedding dates, Q4 having good wedding dates.
It all looks like the historical trends we've been operating in when it comes to the current new financial year.
Got it. Would you like to share any comments or on how Twamev and Mohey have scaled up in FY23 in terms of numbers? Is it fair to assume that they could be between 20%-25% of your revenues now?
No. They are not 20%-25% of our revenues because Mebaz has been scaling at a rapid pace by itself as well. When we talk about other brands, when we had done our IPO back in those days, we had given on that. At that time, about 15%, 16% of our revenue came from other brands. Mebaz contributed to 84%. The other brands have been scaling faster, so that number has slightly increased. That encapsulates Mebaz in it as well.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Ankit Kedia from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Sir, do you think, you know, in the market we are seeing in the kurtas category, you have taken some price increases, you know, the entry-level product prices have increased? Can you just elaborate on that? You know, given the push we are seeing in kurtas, why has the entry-level pricing increased, in that category?
Ankit, if you refer to the entry-level pricing at a company level, we have not really increased the entry-level pricing. However, at a store level, because of the way merchandising mix changes, those entry-level prices could have changed. Let's say a very premium store like Lower Parel, the entry level might have moved from a INR 2,000 kurta to a INR 2,800, INR 2,700 kurta. However, when it comes to the whole fleet, the entry level price points have remained same.
Sure. You know, you alluded to the bigger stores. Now we are opening, you know, 20,000 sq ft stores, what we have done in Hyderabad, Delhi. How does the footfall in that store move? The smaller stores around in the area, how are they impacted? Because a 20,000 sq ft stores is really a big flagship store which will pull the crowd.
Absolutely. The typical move that we make is if the productivity of an area is extremely high, we've created a scientific understanding of how big a store we should open in that area. Take, for example, a 20,000 sq ft we've just opened in GT Road, and it used to have a smaller store next to it, and that smaller store continues to perform really well. While it may not be doing those tremendous numbers that it used to before, it still continues to beat the company's average when it comes to productivity. The store is still self-sufficient in terms of operating itself and continues to be very profitable.
The newer stores, on the other hand, are able to attract newer consumers as well. The average bill value that they're able to provide is on par when it comes to the rest of the fleet.
Is the inventory also very different in the smaller store versus the big stores?
Yes. I mean, there is less inventory, and in some areas where there is a very big store next to a smaller store, we also are taking calls of changing those stores to carry only kurtas and jackets versus having, let's say, everything from a sherwani to an Indo-western as well. If a consumer walks in, then the staff of that store themselves take them to the newer store which carries all the inventory.
Understood. My last question is for Rahulji. Rahulji, the other expenses in the quarter have hardly grown YOY basis. Can you just share, you know, given that wedding season had also shifted partly from quarter 3 to quarter 4, have we curtailed our A&P spends in quarter 4? Can you share the pre-index rent, you know, for full year FY23?
The quarter spend for marketing cost is 3.6% of revenue. In the previous year also in Q4 FY22, it was 3.6% of revenue as well. From a percentage of revenue prospect, it has not changed. From absolute value term, it has increased from current quarter.
Ankit, I would just like to add on top of that, it's also because marketing calendar in our organization is planned at a annual level. Q3 is when we kind of have all the campaign launches planned for. We also did big events in quarter three, for example, we did a sponsorship in the World Cup as well. Thus all of those properties carry the higher absolute value. At a yearly financial level, we closed A&P at about 5%, which is what we had planned for. Yeah, we don't kind of look at marketing at a quarter level, but rather at an annual level.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Yajash Mehta from Kotak Mahindra AMC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My apologies if I've missed this. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, we've seen the revenue go down. As per my understanding, didn't Q4 have a higher number of wedding days? If that was the case, then why did we see a decline in revenue? Secondly, if you could just give a sense of the cash conversion cycle.
Thank you for the question. I think the first part, so we had kind of explicitly explained this in our last earnings call as well, that people tend to actually get married in quarter three, which is the November, December period. However, because the number of wedding dates were extremely low, that's why there was a slight bit of spill-over from quarter three to quarter four. Wedding dates are not exactly proportional to the number of weddings that will happen in a quarter. It is spill-over. That's why we had also said that the numbers might come closer, but there is no chance that Q4 would actually be higher than Q3. This is a historical trend in the life cycle of a company where I don't think there has been a single Q4 that has done better than Q3.
Because there are festivals also, like major festivals like Diwali, that also happens in Q3 only. Because of the festivals and weddings, Q3 is the heaviest quarter as far as retail is concerned.
Got it. Thank you. My second question, as I mentioned, if you could just give me a sense of the cash conversion cycle.
Yeah. cash conversion ratio, the OCF by PAT is we have been able to generate INR 58 crores of operating cash flow during FY2023, and OCF by PAT has been around 83%. I mean, this is the cash conversion ratio which we have been able to generate in the current year and similar historically as well.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Aman from Carnelian Capital. Please go ahead.
Sir, thank you for the opportunity, and congrats on a good set of results. My question was on the retail space. Like, currently we are going for larger new stores, like around 4,000 sq ft. If you can give a rough idea, like how much is the mix from Manyavar, Mohey, Twamev, like, any idea on that, sir?
Sure. Thank you for the question. Mohey would typically be depending on the size of the store, somewhere between 25%-30%, 35% of a store. While Twamev is not given any specific area in EBO, it's kept along with Manyavar products. Twamev does not require any spacing of its own. That's the kind of split we have in any flagship store that is larger than 3,000 sq ft.
Understood, sir. A follow-up question on that, sir. Like, when we are talking about around 16% kind of retail CAGR, in space, like, does that include this Mohey area also, like, the standalone Mohey and Twamev stores we are opening? If we look from just Manyavar standalone point of view, like even with the higher number of stores, the actual retail space growth for Manyavar would be lower, right? Like it will be in low double-digit kind of a number.
Again, any retail growth numbers that we've given have always been at a company level. That's the way our format has always been up until now, which is the Manyavar Mohey flagship concept and the standalone Manyavar concept. However, as we have more formats moving forward, we don't expect the 16% CAGR to change too much. The endeavor is always to beat that number. However, given the kind of, supply side and demand side that we have to maintain and the kind of cost efficiencies we keep in mind, that's a good target that we've set for ourselves internally.
Understood, sir. Just one more question on demand outlook. Like, are we seeing any slowdown? Because lots of players in the consumer sector are seeing some slowdown in their businesses. Any slowdown we are witnessing in our business, sir?
It's very difficult for us to comment on any slowdown or anything on those lines. Our business is heavily dependent on wedding dates as one big factor. Typically what we've seen throughout the years, even in cases of a very large slowdown or a very good consumer behavior, the change is plus minus 2% at a triple AC level, which is the kind of effect our business may have. At an overall level, the big dependency that we have is on wedding dates, which seems very good for the overall financial year that has upcoming.
As far as weddings are happening, we are a kind of essential category.
Great, sir. Thank you. Thank you for the answers, sir. It was really excellent.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Rajesh Vora from Jayme Venture Advisors . Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Good afternoon.
Congrats on pretty good set of numbers. One question Vedant you touched upon was, Manyavar brand at the time of IPO was close to 34% of revenues. Twamev was launched, 2002, but acquired in 2017. Mebaz, Manthan. Is there a challenge to create another Manyavar set of brands for you? Or how do you look at it from 30,000 feet view?
Thank you for the question. Again, you know, as a company, we've always been calculative in our steps, and we are focused on achieving efficiency with any of the brands. We don't want to scale at the cost of efficiency. With all the newer brands that we have, be it Mohey, Twamev or Manthan, we've gotten them to a position, especially Mohey and Twamev at this moment, where they are now ready for the next level of leap. That is why we've taken the strategic call of starting to open exclusive brand outlets, which will start with foreign over the next quarter. We would ideally like to study those exclusive brand outlets that we open, understand the kind of potential that this model has, kind of fix if there anything requires fixing, and from that point on, move on.
What, you know, we've really gained over the years is the synergy from the brand Manyavar. Building Manyavar has allowed us to understand how to manage supply chain in this industry. We've built extremely strong data models that are now being able to use across our brands and therefore improve all of their efficiencies.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you very much to everyone for joining us for the quarter four earnings call. It's always a pleasure, interacting with all the analysts. It's a very good learning for all of us. Thank you very much. Hope to see you next quarter.
Thank you.
Namaskar.
Thank you and namaskar.
Thank you. On behalf of Nuvama Wealth Management, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.