Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 and FY 2025 earnings conference call of Vedant Fashions Limited, hosted by IIFL Capital. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sameer Gupta from IIFL Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi, good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining the Manyavar fourth quarter earnings call. Without taking more time, let me hand it over to the management. Over to you, Vedant.
Thank you, good afternoon, and a warm welcome to all the participants. I am Vedant Modi, the Chief Revenue Officer of the company. Thank you for joining us today to discuss the Vedant Fashions Limited quarter four and full financial year 2025 results. 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. In this quarter, we expanded our retail footprint by adding approximately 36,000 sq ft of net retail area. We also rolled out one exclusive brand outlet of Twamev and one brand outlet of Mohey during the quarter. In the financial year 2025, we have expanded our retail footprint by approximately 85,000 sq ft of net retail area. We have also successfully rolled out three EBOs of Twamev in this financial year.
As of March 25, Vedant Fashions' EBO area stands at 1.79 million sq ft, spanning across 678 stores in 256 cities and towns globally. The national EBO footprint tallies at 662 stores spread across 244 cities and towns. In Q4 FY 2025, sales of our customers were INR 5,207 million, growing by about 1.9% compared to the same period last year. During financial year 2025, sales of our customers were INR 18,929 million, reflecting a growth of approximately 2.2% over financial year 2024. During the quarter and throughout the year, we implemented a comprehensive suite of marketing initiatives across marketing channels and brands, thereby further strengthening our brand's reach, positioning, and consumer appeal. Our approach encompassed category-focused campaigns, occasion-based festive marketing, collaboration with celebrities, sports personalities, and influencers, as well as targeted in-store promotions. Collectively, these efforts elevated our brand visibility and reinforced our connection with consumers.
Throughout the year, we executed successful campaigns across several brands to boost consideration. Our flagship campaign, Aap Kab Ban Rahe Hain Manyavar? , reinforced our strong association with the wedding category across platforms. Our Mohey brand campaign, Jab Aap Taiyaar, Hum Taiyaar , also received widespread recognition, contributing to its strong performance during the year. We continued to build Twamev's identity through the campaign, reflecting its truly youth philosophy. While Divas gained early momentum, driven by new offerings and strategically targeting festive marketing, collectively, these initiatives have enhanced our brand presence and deepened consumer engagement. We have also partnered with leading quick commerce platforms to offer instant delivery of our Indian wear, alongside targeted campaigns to build the category. Additionally, our festive and celebration wear offering Divas continued to receive positive response from consumers.
The company's performance in FY 2025 was impacted by subdued consumer sentiment and severely impacted quarter one financial year 2025 with extremely low/negligible wedding days overall. However, in the nine-month period from July to March FY 2025, retail sales grew by 9.3%, with like-to-like sales growing by about 2.9%. Despite these challenges, the company successfully maintained strong margin metrics and positive retail KPIs, reflecting resilient business fundamentals. Looking ahead, we are confident in our business's strong foundation and preparedness, supported by relevant inventory and designs, a robust store network, multi-dimensional marketing initiatives, efficient auto-replenishment systems, and a strong back-end infrastructure, positioning us well for sustained long-term growth. With this, I will now hand it over to Mr. Rahul Murarka to take you through the financial performance of the company.
Thank you, Vedant. Namaskar and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to highlight the key financial performance metrics for fourth quarter and full financial year ended 31st March, 2025. Starting from Q4 FY 2025 performance update, revenues of operations during the period was around INR 367 crore, with a growth of 1.2% over Q4 of FY 2024. The company continues to report industry-leading gross margin of 66.2% and healthy EBITDA margin of 45.6%. The company reported strong PAT margin of around 27.5%, and the profit after tax stood at around INR 101 crore. Sale of our customers during the quarter was around INR 521 crore, with a growth of around 2% over Q4 of FY 2024. Now coming to FY 2025 performance update, the company reported revenues from operations of around INR 1,387 crore, with a growth of around 1.4%. Sale of our customers during the year was around INR 1,893 crore, with a growth of 2.2%.
The company continues to report industry-leading gross margin of around 67.2% and healthy EBITDA margin of around 46.6%. The EBITDA during the period stood at around INR 646 crore. The company also reported strong PAT margin of 28%, and the profit after tax stood at around INR 389 crore. Our performance during the year got majorly impacted because of subdued consumer sentiments and very exceptional Q1, with almost negligible wedding dates nationally. However, during the remaining nine-month period from July to March 2025, sale of our customers grew by 9.3%, with SSG growth of 2.9%. Despite these challenges, the company has been able to achieve healthy profitability metrics along with positive retail KPIs, reflecting resilient business fundamentals. 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 touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue is sent. The first question is from the line of Gaurav Jogani from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is with regards to, if you can shed some light on what is leading to this tepid demand overall. Would you allude this to the overall slowdown in the macro environment? Was it also due to the lower store openings during the year? What exactly would you like to pinpoint this to?
Thank you for the question. I think there are multiple factors here. Firstly, I feel overall the mid-premium side of consumer businesses has seen weak consumer sentiments overall, which has been the biggest cause of the relative slowdown. Secondly, in our case, if I talk about the full financial year, Q1 had a major impact in terms of our overall financial year numbers, having no close to no wedding dates. Thirdly, like I had mentioned in the last earnings call, AP and Telangana played a detrimental role this year for us, where even if I look at the full financial year, overall our EBO SSG is flat if we remove AP and Telangana data. At the quarter four level, it is positive if we remove AP and Telangana from the data.
Our overall exposure to that region is much higher than typical retail companies, both because of higher demand of Indian wear over the course of years from Manyavar, Mohey, and the acquisition of Mebaz combined. That has been another big impact overall from our perspective. Lastly, we do acknowledge the fact that we are operating in a market where over the course of the last two to three years, a significant number of newer players have entered the market with a huge number of store openings across. That is, again, another factor where I feel the impact is relatively much smaller compared to the other three points I mentioned before. Finally, again, like you mentioned about the store openings.
At the gross level, we opened about 180,000 sq ft this year, which is entering the most important markets of India where we were not present or expanding our presence in our important existing markets. The net looks a lot smaller because we have been a little aggressive on consolidating our fleet, which is not required as per today's business needs. All in all, while we would have liked to have a little more net area, given the kind of retail inflation we have been seeing on the ground, it has been a challenging environment to open stores with a lot of speed. All that said, I think the current need of the business is to really focus on like-for-like growth and ensure we are able to deliver on that.
Thanks, Vedant, for this detailed answer. My second question, again, is with regards to the overall category as a whole. If you can highlight something on how the category has grown over the past two to three years, because in 2023 is when we really saw a good spurt of demand there, which I think attracted a lot of many players in the system. How has been the condition of those players who have been entering into this market? Has any of them been able to gain significant market share? Anything that you can shed some light?
Pretty interesting question. I think the way this can be answered is I definitely think that the Indian men's market has definitely not gone down. It has definitely been stable or growing. In one part to it, the other question that we have regarding competition, the number of stores might have tripled over the last two to three years that were there in India doing men's Indian wear. There has been a large influx. However, has one player taken any market share? That has not been the case, certainly. It is a large number of players opening a few stores. That is what we are seeing on the ground, majorly. If I give you an example of a city, let's say like Raipur, we used to have one exclusive brand outlet which we operate, and maybe another 25-30 stores would have opened in that market.
We are still able to operate at INR 90-INR 110 compared to the INR 100 mark we were at before these amounts of stores opened. In retrospect, it also gives us or shows us the strength of the brand that even with so much competition opening, we've been able to stand our ground in that market. If we look at the financial data of all these number of stores opening, hardly any of them are at a mark where business is sustainable in the midterm also. Certainly, there is a lot of macroeconomic pressure, which we've seen, but overall, the category will definitely grow in the future.
Sure, Vedant. Thank you for this. I'll come back and take some questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tejas Shah from Avendus Spark . Please go ahead.
Hey, hi, Vedant. Thanks for the opportunity. Vedant, you broadly touched upon this when you were opening your mouth and the previous questions also. What specific measurable actions are we taking to reverse our current growth deceleration? More importantly, how are we tracking or validating the effectiveness of those initiatives?
Great question. Thank you for that. Firstly, I would also like to raise one important point here. We are not trying to be defensive as a company when we say that these were the reasons. I think there is certainly a need to do better in everything that we do. Times are tough, but we need to take hard measures to ensure that we are able to grow in the future. Some of those initiatives, I would rather break them into three components: product, marketing, and operations. I would say these are the three core pillars of the company. In terms of product, what we ensured in the last financial year, and we will double down on that strategy as we move forward, is we tremendously increased the number of new designs that we launch in the market.
If we used to launch one design this year, we did close to 2.3x-2.4x of the number of designs. Ensuring if there is any trend in the market, we are able to understand them early and have it available across our fleet. We want to double down on this. We want to ensure that there is no trend of India that we are missing and want to be more fashionable than we ever were. We will be working a lot harder in ensuring our production times are faster, our turnaround time for the stores is faster, and continue focusing on that. The second part is marketing. There is a large change in the marketing ecosystem over the last few years, according to what we have been witnessing in the industry. Majority of the companies had very high offline spends.
What has happened is, if you look at the last three to four years, any new apparel player that has become big has become big after becoming a big online player and then opening retail stores. It does show us the imminent need of being a digital-first marketing company, which is the sort of strategy we have been following for the last three years, but in a more hybrid model where our budgets are deployed both towards the big campaign, outdoor TV spends, along with focus on digital. I think what we are now strategically taking a call on is, is there a high need to be 100% digital and to have a lot more focus on how campaigns are done with rapid speed and instead of one or two big campaigns doing 12-13 mini campaigns?
This is something which we've been discussing quite heavily on, and I believe this is something we will be going after and really changing the way modern marketing has been functioning. Finally, when it comes to operations, we've also tried to—we've also highlighted this in our investors' presentation—worked on a lot of fundamental aspects. One of the biggest innovations that was done by us this year is we created our own app, which we call VFL Parivaar . Every single fashion advisor in our ecosystem is sent a one to two-minute training material every morning. What we're able to do is connect a lot better with our retail employees and teach them something new on a daily basis. Otherwise, in typical retail, training is done two to four times a year for each store. The learning is lost in that quarter or in the six-month period.
By reinforcing it on a daily basis, we are seeing uptick in our KPIs, which we are training them on. I think this has been a game changer in terms of how training should be done in the future. These are just a few examples, but we are also ensuring that we take any other measures that are needed.
Vedant, thanks for a very detailed answer. The second part of that question was that, let's say if you have rolled out these initiatives in 10% or 15% of our network, are we seeing materially different outcome in terms of numbers versus the rest of the network, or is it like very early stage where we have not rolled out at all?
Yeah, so when it comes to product, I think we've certainly seen good changes in some pockets of the market where we've taken specific focused actions for. If I give you an example of Bihar, there were specific product actions taken for that market, and we saw a significant delta in that state over the other states throughout the year. Similarly, we are enacting on this strategy for our other important markets. When it comes to marketing, like I mentioned, this is something which is due to happen. We are in the process of having this transition. What we also witnessed is taking strategic actions, especially in a market like Raipur. We are seeing a very good delta in our Q1 performance, which is first April to date, in that market, majorly on account of what we've done outside the store in that particular market.
There are initiatives showing us results, and now the core focus is on how do we focus on key markets and really ensure that these efforts are bringing us the delta growth we are looking for.
If I misread the last one, Vedant, our model really relies on our ability to recruit franchise partners. Now, historically, our franchise partners also would not have seen such a difficult period. Any comment, any insight on the morale of the franchise partners and our ability to attract that capital, which is very crucial for our growth?
I think there are two sides to this question. One is attracting newer partners. The way our company functions is we sign a store without finding a franchisee partner. The business development team does not look at the fact that do we have a partner ready for this market. The goal is to first find a property. Till now, we've never faced a situation where there has been a dearth of a partner. Rather, even now, I would say that has not been a challenge at all and is still one of the easier things to achieve. The second part is regarding existing partners. Certainly with lower revenue per sq ft, their overall ROI falls, but given how profitable our model has been for them, they continue to make decent money.
There is no challenge when it comes to franchisee profitability in the majority of the cases. However, we do have a lot more conversations and business reviews happening on the ground on how we can get their business back to the level they were or even beyond that point. There is a lot of drive from our partners as well who have been associated with us for many years and understand the situation of the market and understand the need of the hour and where they need to focus on as well.
Got it. Thanks and all the best for coming forward.
Thank you so much.
Thanks. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Varun Singh from AAA BMS. Please go ahead.
Am I audible?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. My first question is maybe if you can throw some light over the last one year with regards to store closures which would have happened. What are your key learnings from that? That's my first question.
See, when we look at the closures we've done, these are majorly markets which are top performing for any brand. There are multiple examples where a market moves from one place in the city to another place in the city. We've already opened a much better store in that newer market, and that older market is now where we've removed the store from. That's one big use case. The other big use case that we've seen is there are certain tier three towns in the overall market where we had a very small store, but either in that same town or in a very nearby town, we've opened a flagship store, making that really small store redundant. These two, three are the major use cases in terms of closure.
Some larger stores have been proper relocation where, let's say in Allahabad, we had close to a 10,000 sq ft store which we've closed to shift into a 16,000 sq ft store in the next building.
Understood. So none of the closures would be related with regards to underperformance of the store due to competition. That understanding would be fair, right?
Not in the larger ecosystem. Not at all.
Sure. Understood. Secondly, given the price points where we belong to, do you think that this price point is maybe significantly scalable to make the overall retail area maybe 3x, 4x, 5x from the current level? You believe that maybe similar to Trent, the way they started a different format itself, Zudio at half the price point, that opportunity for us, you think, I mean, given that we have created a specialist brand image for ourselves in this category itself, so similar to Mohey in Manyavar franchisee itself with a similar branding, I mean, if you can throw some light with regards to this, improving the addressable market for us.
In that context, on Mohey also, if you can throw some light with regards to how much we have been able to scale and the scalability potential, the way we are looking at it over the next one to two years.
Sure. I mean, very interesting question again. Just answering your first part, our understanding of long-term Indian consumer is that upper middle class is where brands typically flourish if you look at it globally as well. This is one area where brands have really benefited throughout the entire globe. That is the target audience we go after. Sadly, last two to three years, as we've seen, consumer sentiment in this part of the market and retail industry has been very weak and tepid. Value has done a lot better, just as you mentioned. But we.
Sorry, Vedant, to cut you over here, but I think my earlier understanding was that our category is immune to subdued consumer sentiment, given that wedding is an essential thing. The exposure that we had to wedding, that had a larger role to play. I mean, how consumer sentiment in our case would explain the revenue growth underperformance, that is something, I mean, I'm sorry, I could not track you over the last two to three quarters if you would have already mentioned about this.
Yeah, so again, here the major piece is that if you look at our revenues, 40% of revenue comes from the grooms and the brides. The remaining 60% comes from the family/wedding attendees. Now, when we say consumer sentiments impact us, it will impact how much the 40% is willing to spend, but they will still continue to buy. The 60% behaves very similar to the other lifestyle markets of India, where consumer sentiments demand how much they will actually buy, will they buy a brand, or what will they sort of consume during this festive period as well. That is one major piece from our end.
Sort of coming back to the earlier point I was trying to make, longer-term perspective, we still think that the INR 500,000- INR 5 million income bracket in India is going to grow rapidly, which has been at a bit of a pause in the last two to three years. It will definitely, from a five to 10-year horizon, be the meatiest part of the consumption market in India, which is where we want to sort of stick. When you sort of talked about Mohey, there has been quite a large delta in terms of growth. Mohey would have a close to 25% odd delta in terms of the company from a growth perspective. We have taken a large strategic shift from saying we are a bridal-wear brand to transforming ourselves into a wedding-wear brand. This strategy has worked very well in our favor.
We see improved footfalls. We see a lot more conversions happening on the floor. Overall, this strategy is working for us. Having understood this, we are doubling down on this in the current financial years.
When you say from bridal-web to wedding-web, I mean, you mean that to sell more of a lower ASP product?
Relatively lower ASP to a bridal lehenga, but still women's wear has a lot more work involved, so it will still be higher ASP compared to the company's average ASP. If I give you more perspective, bridal lehengas in our company are at an average ASP of about INR 22,000-INR 23,000. The other products of Mohey are at about INR 7,000-INR 8,000, while company ASP average is INR 4,000-INR 4,500. The growth that we are seeing is coming from the other categories in Mohey, like sarees, skirt-top lehengas, spit suits. These are the categories we are really doubling down on.
Do you think that Mohey is taking more time than we expected to maybe fine-tune the business model and then rapidly scale it up? I mean, what's your current understanding on Mohey?
I mean, there are two parts here, right? One is that Mohey, we have been growing a lot faster than any other brand in the company. Even from a retail footprint perspective, close to about 40% of the retail area we opened was Mohey this financial year. In terms of our existing stores as well, we've been increasing the kind of Mohey merchandise. Even if you look at our overall working capital days, it's increased on account of adding more Mohey stock to existing stores. There is a lot of initiative in terms of driving Mohey business. Even in terms of EBOs, we have now reached sort of five, six EBOs. We continue to open stores across India where we feel that there is potential for a Mohey, but no Manyavar Mohey store is present in that area as of now.
Those actions are also being taken. Last earnings call I had mentioned that productivity levels of Mohey are growing a lot faster. Once we reach a decent level, we will be in a place to sort of even be more aggressive with the brand. As per our understanding, last year, Mohey did the budgeted numbers, which we were happy with.
Yeah, sure. Honestly, only five, six EBOs is not, I think, inspiring much to us as an investor because, I mean, we see so many companies doing retail expansion, etc. Ten to 12 stores, I mean, I do not know what is stopping us to grow at a relatively faster rate, given our business economics, cash flow situation, and everything. Maybe if you can offer some comment with regards to what is FY 2026 target and how are you looking to scale up this franchisee?
So one.
That's my last question.
Yeah, yeah. One easier piece that I think has to be sort of explained again is Mohey has close to now 250,000 odd sq ft. It is not that we have not continuously expanded with Mohey. If you understand the Indian retail landscape, there are top 100 markets in India. Each of these 100 markets have a flagship Manyavar Mohey store. We have already covered the best of the best markets with a large Mohey sq ft presence wherever we can. It is the remaining markets where we might have only Manyavar store where we are continuing to add Mohey flagships in the form of EBO. We will continue to deploy EBOs. One important factor to not be missed is Manyavar Mohey continues to be the primary channel for Mohey as a brand.
The majority of the time investment that the Mohey team does is towards those stores, ensuring that Mohey grows more and more within this ecosystem. The footfall we generate because of Manyavar also has a great sort of effect on sales for Mohey. We want to ensure that we are capitalizing on all these things. If required, we will increase the space of Mohey in these stores. If required, we will open even larger stores to incorporate better size for Mohey. Having the rub effect of both consumers is great for the business overall.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prerna Jhunjhunwala from Elara Capital . Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Just wanted to understand how is the demand now? I mean, how is it building? Are you seeing impact of higher number of wedding days in this quarter against last year? Some initial feelings would help.
I think there are two perspectives here. Overall, we do see green shoots majorly on account of having wedding days this year versus negligible wedding days last year. Business is better on that account. Overall, in terms of expectations, I would say that still overall sentiment we can see from the market are weak and not the best. While there are green shoots in the business, it is majorly on account of better wedding days. We sort of expect all the strategies we have been working on to start firing from Q2, mid Q2. Any results of any new work we do on marketing or product will be seen in the later part of the year.
Okay. How are you looking at space expansion? Because last you had mentioned was that you would go slow on space expansion. How should we look at that?
I mean, one important piece here is, as a company, we feel business is dynamic. The need of the hour is to have extreme focus on like-to-like growth and driving that. While opening newer stores remains to be an important KPI, we will focus a lot more on editorial this year. On the other hand, as retail inflation starts to come down, which is something we've been seeing now in a few markets, we will continue to open stores wherever we see potential and ensure that a decent number of stores are opened by the end of the year.
Okay. Could you also elaborate on your LFS or MBO strategy, if any, to gain geographical reach or customer reach across the country?
Absolutely. Overall, when it comes to LFS, we stick with fewer number of partners but try to go deeper with them. This ensures better inventory control, better experience at the ground level. We have been continuously expanding with a few of the partners we have and are going deeper with them overall to have better reach. On the other hand, when I speak about MBOs, with the addition of Divas to our portfolio, our overall platform for MBO has become a lot deeper because there were multiple kinds of multi-brand outfits. Some want mid-premium products. Some want slightly more festive-based value offering. Now that our booking has increased significantly with Divas, we feel that last year was a trial, and bookings that start in May will actually show us how Divas will be helping this side of the business.
There is a lot more focus in terms of improving the overall Manyavar business there as well.
Okay.
Certainly, that's helped us reach Tier 3 end market and Tier 4 markets, just like you mentioned.
Okay. How is Andhra and Telangana market doing now? I mean, do they continue to track?
Do you mean in Q1 of the current financial year?
Q4 as well as Q1 because we don't know about Q4 as well, right?
No. Like I mentioned, even if I talk about Q4, our like-to-like growth will actually become positive if we remove the numbers of AP Telangana. It was a big drag to the company's numbers in Q4 as well. Q1, I think we have only seen one month. While the one-month performance has been decent there, it is still, I think, too short a time frame to comment on anything.
AP Telangana is your Mebaz network, or do we have Manyavar stores as well there? I mean, for me to understand, is it Mebaz which is impacting, or is it Manyavar as well?
Both are equally as big in the market. Manyavar Mohey sales would be equal to the sale of Mebaz in AP T elangana broadly. Both are heavily impacted. The same when we validate with similar mid-premium brands operating in the men's industry, whoever we are closer to, we see similar deltas with those brands as well.
Understood.
For a lot of the brands, AP Telangana has been hit in comparison to the rest of India at similar levels.
Any particular reason why AP Telangana particularly are hit?
I think the challenges are a lot more macro in nature. That is why a lot more brands are facing the heat in that market. We see a lot of other challenges with the market as well, reflecting slower economic sort of slowdown in that entire belt.
People must be shifting to unorganized players for price points. That could be a fair assumption.
I think, again, if that was the case, then our dealer network would have showed us better growth or would have told us that they are seeing better numbers from their stores. Even with our MBO players across AP Telangana belt, we see similar degrowth happening. We do not see that being the real reason at all. It has got something to do at a more macroeconomic level.
Okay. Okay. Vedant, thank you so much for the detailed answers. I'll come back to the question if you have more. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ankit Kedia from Phillip Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vedant. Two questions from my side. You mentioned that Mohey would have around 250,000 sq ft. Is it fair to assume 14% of AVR revenue also they would be 12-14% level? Or in truth, they are still significantly lower than Manyavar today?
While we don't give the exact numbers, it's ballpark in that region. It's lower than Manyavar. It's not exactly as close as Manyavar. It's slightly lower, but it's catching up.
Sure. My second question is for Rahul. Why is the inventory and receivables both gone up in the quarter? I can understand we would have been expecting a better quarter and hence inventory build-up, but even receivables have gone up from Sunshine JV.
Basically, inventory build-up we did strategically because in this year, Eid was at the end of this quarter, which is March. When Eid is there, we have a lot of artisans and workers wherein the production is disrupted during that period. That is why strategically we planned our production process, and the inventory levels were increased because of that. Of course, with the upcoming Q1, which we believe has a good number of weddings, that is why the inventory levels were good. In last year, if you see, I mean, Eid was in April, and the Q1 also had negligible wedding days. Purposefully, we had lower level of inventories in last year. In terms of receivables, you see increase in receivables majorly because of the store additions which we have done during the year.
Yeah, but we are also close to, right? So net AVR addition is not significant. If I look on net basis, then why is that receivables?
Look, our receivables have increased around INR 50 crore. It is majorly because of the store addition. We had 85,000-90,000 sq ft net addition during this year. More than 50% is because of that only, because of store area addition.
If I just may add a small point, it's broadly 50+% come from new stores, and the remaining comes from adding Mohey and Twamev in some of the existing stores as well.
If you see, look, our primary secondary revenue growth, it is moving in a similar direction, right? It is similar growth which we have seen in both primary and secondary.
Right. Which means we have pushed more inventory to the franchisees, right? We are not getting the same sales.
No, but if that would have been the case, the growth in primary and secondary would not have been similar, no? If you see our.
No, so X of the new stores. That would be new stores. If I have from Vedant's point of Mohey and Twamev, that means that inventory is not moving for the remaining 50% of the receivables.
No, no, no. That is not a fact. As we mentioned, majority of the increase in return is on account of store addition, okay? If you look at our growth in primary as well as secondary revenue, our primary revenue has grown by 1%, and our secondary revenue has grown by 2%. What you are mentioning is not actually collating with the facts. Replenishment is a phenomenon of what is selling there, and it moves in a similar direction as we have seen historically as well, both primary and secondary revenues.
If next year we add another 150,000 sq ft, receivables will further increase?
Yeah, of course. I mean, as a model, as and when we increase our sq ft area, the data would increase to that extent.
Understood. My last question is on the rental cost. How do you see now with more bigger stores opening, we are taking more rentals on your books. In such a scenario where SSG is negative and a low single digit, that pressure is coming on to the margins. How do you balance that in medium term?
I think there are multiple things we are doing here. I think financially we are a prudent company, and we take conservative measures. Like I mentioned, we have been slow in terms of overall number of stores we have opened, majorly on account of not signing wrong stores at wrong prices because these are 10-12 year leases, and we do not want to make those wrong decisions. We are trying to ensure we are not signing the wrong stores in the first place. The second is where we have not seen great SSG, but rent escalation demands have come. We are renegotiating those contracts and ensuring that we do not have to pay any escalations.
Thirdly, in places where we see that overall this store is not making sense for us anymore as a market, which we did last year when market has shifted from one area of the city to another, but rents have stayed at similar levels, we are taking hard calls in closing those stores. This is the overall scenario where we want to ensure that rent OC is kept as low as possible. Overall, it might have gone up by about 1.5%-2% this year at the company's books level, majorly on account of having negative operating leverage.
Just to follow up on that rental part, the last quarter we mentioned we have closed the smaller stores, right? Some 1,000-1,200 sq ft stores. Now you are saying that we also closed stores where the market has moved. Can you quantify both the stores which we have closed? How much is because of business and how much is the small store strategy which we are closing?
It's a mix of both, rather. If I explain it in detail, typically the small stores are the ones we had signed eight to 10 years ago, 12 years ago. At that time, those markets were great, and these are the markets which are now shifting. It is not one or the other. In majority of the cases, this is hand in hand. The small stores did exist in the markets that are moving out now.
Understood. Fair point. Thank you so much, Vedant.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sameer Gupta from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Sameer, I would request you to please unmute your line and speak.
I'm so sorry I was on mute. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to understand this competitive aspect in a little more detail. In your experience over the last decade of running Manyavar, have you witnessed this kind of competitive frenzy when, even in any particular micro market, it may not be at a pan-India level, that so many stores, so many people have opened so many stores?
We have certainly witnessed competition in the last two decades of us operating this brand. Nothing at these levels, for sure. Typically what we've noticed is people open up a single store in a city, do decently well, and as they sort of scale up to a state level, to a regional level, that's when things start to go south. This industry has to understand the hack of sort of understanding consumer preferences and understanding data at a very deep PIN code level because what works in one part of the city does not work in the other part of the city. This is what has been our core moat over the last few years and continues to be. This is something which is detrimental to anyone opening sort of business in this particular industry.
We have definitely not seen these number of stores ever opening up because it has all happened in a very short period of time, last two to three years. Earlier as well, when there was competition, there were a few stores here and there, but nothing at this scale.
Just trying to understand then, what is the trigger now? I mean, it's not like the overall consumption is booming or suddenly these players have got funding from somewhere. Why now and what's so special?
On the lighter side of things, people say, "There was a market cap three years ago," and that might have attracted a lot of people. Overall, I think this space just seemed interesting and without many brands, with only one large player operating. Probably why it attracted a lot of competition. Yeah, I think it's, again, a difficult question to answer why exactly.
Okay. So let me ask another question on a similar line. By when do you expect consolidation? Because what I understand is that you only said that none of them are doing well. I mean, by when do you see this consolidation here in this market?
See, this is very difficult to answer because it's answering from other people's perspective. It really depends on how those businesses would have had identified their strategy. Like I mentioned, majority of the people that have opened stores don't have great financials as of now, which is what we understand. When they consolidate and when will they consolidate is, again, a very difficult thing to answer. What we have witnessed in our tracking is that people who've been a lot older competitor of ours in terms of being in this market have had a reduction in the number of stores they have from last year to this year. The legacy competitors, we've seen the number of stores go down compared to last financial year. On the same hand, what we've seen is the other newer players adding the stores.
In your experience, let's say in any particular micro market, you might have faced this situation. Anything then you had witnessed that it takes these many years for people to consolidate or nothing like that?
I wouldn't have access to this kind of data, actually.
Okay. No worries.
We haven't seen frenzy like this before, like I mentioned.
Got it. Got it. That's very clear. Second and last question. On retail area, now this year has been on both sides. There has been a consolidation, and there has also been a lower than what your usual increase in retail area is, even at a gross level. From FY 2026 onwards, at least the consolidation part, are we done or do you expect more store closures to happen? Of course, the retail area addition will depend on a number of things, but used to be a 14%-15% retail area growth. Any guidance or any tidbits on what is the expected strategy as it looks like today? That would be great.
If I'm being extremely honest here, FY 2026 is one financial year where we will take some hard decisions wherever it's needed on account of higher rentals where we have newer stores next to it. Wherever whatever decisions are required, we will take those. However, at maybe third quarter onwards, I think we are quite sure of getting back on decent retail area growth. Most importantly, one thing which I want to sort of bring some light on is quality retail area will grow tremendously from a complete financial year perspective. Any sort of cleanup that needs to be done needs to be done with retail area which is not adding too much value to the business. When it comes to signing new stores, we will ensure that low rent OC, high productive stores are being signed.
The goal is to add very high quality net retail area to the business in the entire financial year. The hopes are high that retail inflation sort of comes down by Q1, Q2 so that we can get back on the retail store expansion speed as well.
Got it. That's all from me. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you very much for attending the call. It's always amazing interacting with all of you. We've come out of a difficult year, but as a company, we are more driven than we ever were. We will ensure that no stones are unturned with whatever we can do as a company to ensure that we are able to get on a path to much better growth. Namaskar and thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of IIFL Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect.