Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Maruti Suzuki Q4 FY 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant 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 will hand the conference over to Mr. Pranav from Maruti Suzuki. Thank you, and over to you.
Thank you, SSC . Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon once again. Welcome you all to Q4 FY 2025 Earnings Call. May I introduce you to the management team from Maruti Suzuki? Today, we have with us our Chief Investor Relations Officer, Mr. Rahul Bharti, and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Arnab Roy. Before we begin, may I remind you of the safe harbor? We may be making some forward-looking statements that have to be understood in conjunction with the uncertainty and the risks that the company faces. I also like to inform you that the call is being recorded, and the audio recording and the transcript will be available at our website. May please note that in case of any inadvertent errors during this live audio call, a transcript will be provided with the corrected information.
The con call will begin with a brief statement on the performance and outlook of our business by Chief Investor Relations Officer and Senior Executive Officer, of Corporate Affairs, Mr. Rahul Bharti, after which we'll be happy to receive your questions. I would now like to invite our Senior Officer, Mr. Rahul Bharti. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Pranav. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us. Before we delve into the details of this earnings call, let us take a moment to honor a visionary who has been instrumental in shaping India's automotive industry. In a tribute to our legendary leader, the late Mr. Osamu Suzuki, Suzuki Motor Corporation and Maruti Suzuki India Limited have proposed to establish the Osamu Suzuki Center of Excellence in India. It is supposed to be located in Gujarat and Haryana. It will facilitate the wide propagation of all those Japanese manufacturing practices that have held Maruti Suzuki successful for the past more than four decades. I have also a very heartfelt message that the Padma Vibhushan will be conferred posthumously on Monday, 28th of April, upon Mr. O. Suzuki. Today, I'll share the overview of the industry sales performance, followed by the business performance of the company.
The PV industry clocked a sale of over 4.3 million units in financial year 2025, a growth of 2.5% over previous year. As expected at the start of the fiscal, the growth rate had moderated sharply from 8.4% in financial year 2024 to 2.5% in financial year 2025. This was on account of high base, confluence of several external factors, and affordability issues affecting the growth of entry-segment cars. In terms of form factor, the industry saw a continued increase in consumer preference to SUVs and MPVs. SUV shares surged further, reaching about 55% of total sales in financial year 2025, while MPVs' contribution increased to over 10%. However, the share of hatchback segment continued to shrink. In financial year 2025, the share has reduced to 23.5% from a high of 46% in financial year 2019.
In terms of powertrain mix, the share of CNG and diesel powertrains was about 18% to 19% each. The share of hybrid vehicles was at 2.4% and EVs at 2.7%. Let me also share some of the major business highlights for the company. In financial year 2025, the company could achieve several significant milestones. We achieved a historic production milestone of 2 million units in financial year 2025. The company is the only passenger vehicle manufacturer in India to attain this landmark. The company recorded its highest-ever annual sales of 2.23 million vehicles, which includes highest-ever export of 332,000 vehicles. The company continued to be the top exporter of passenger vehicles in India for the fourth consecutive year. We surpassed the milestone of 3 million cumulative exports during the year.
We hope to continue the momentum in exports in financial year 2026 as well and grow by at least 20%. In the domestic market, seven out of the top 10 models sold in the industry were from Maruti Suzuki. In financial year 2025, the company launched two new models, the fourth-generation Swift and the all-new Dazzling Dzire. These products got an overwhelming customer response. In financial year 2026, we plan to launch two new models. One, of course, is the e Vitara, which you're aware of, and another, SUV. Maruti Suzuki Dzire clocked 3 million production milestone in December 2024. The company unveiled its first electric SUV, e Vitara, which we just spoke about at the Bharat Mobility Global Expo 2025. Built on the new dedicated ground-up e-HEARTECT platform, the e Vitara offers superior performance and excellent range with uncompromised comfort and safety.
The company accelerated its captive solar power generation capacity to 78.2 MW peak capacity in financial year 2025 from 43.2 MW in financial year 2024. I'm happy to share that the company could achieve this target one year ahead of plan. In financial year 2025, the company achieved a milestone of highest-ever dispatches of over 500,000 vehicles through rail mode. With this, the share of rail mode in overall domestic dispatches has increased to 24.3% in this financial year as compared to 21.5% in the previous year. Coming to business performance in the quarter four, during the quarter, the company sold a total of 604,635 units, the highest ever in any quarter. The domestic sales grew by 2.8%, while exports grew by 8.1%, resulting in an overall growth of 3.5%. Domestic sales stood at 519,546 units and exports at 85,089 units.
In the domestic market, the company entered the quarter with a lean network stock. This helped the company to increase the wholesale dispatches and bring the network stock back to normal levels. However, given the demand situation, the company calibrated its wholesales while maximizing the retail sales. As a result, the growth in retail sales exceeded the growth in wholesales. Even for the full year, financial year 2025, the company's retail sales grew faster than industry, leading to a marginal gain in retail market share. Rural markets continued to perform better both in quarter four and in the whole financial year. In exports, the company continued to maintain a healthy growth in sales volume. In quarter four, nearly one in every two cars exported from the country was from Maruti Suzuki. The company commanded about 48.4% share of India's total passenger vehicle exports in the fourth quarter.
Coming to financial results in quarter four of the financial year, during the quarter, the company registered highest-ever net sales of about INR 388 billion crores as against INR 367 billion crores in the same period of the previous year. Net profit for the quarter was at INR 37.1 billion crores compared to INR 38.7 billion crores in the fourth quarter of financial year 2024. On sequential basis, since investors look out for a sequential comparison, I'll share. The overall sales volume grew by 6.7%. The net sales grew slightly lower by 5.9% owing to product mix. Sequentially, the operating profit margin EBIT has come down to 8.7% of net sales compared to 10% in the third quarter of financial year 2025. There were several adverse expenses.
As you may be aware, the commercial production of Greenfield Plant at Kharkhoda phase I, having a capacity of 250,000 units per annum, has started in March 2025. Being a new plant, it will take a while for the production to scale up. However, the overheads and depreciation associated with the new plant is getting captured in the P&L. The hit on the margin because of this is about 30 basis points. Commodities, largely on account of steel, were adverse by about 20 basis points. The mix was adverse by about 40 basis points. The advertisement expenses, mainly on account of Auto Expo, the Bharat Mobility Show, unveil of e Vitara, and IPL, etc., were higher by about 30 basis points.
The other expenses were adverse by about 90 basis points, largely on account of lumpiness and seasonality associated with expenses such as repairs and maintenance, CSR, digitalization initiatives, and R&D, etc. These adverse expenses were partially offset by lower sales promotion expense of about 40 basis points and favorable operating leverage of about 40 basis points. Forex was favorable in the quarter. It is to be noted that the bulk of benefit in forex of about 20 basis points is accrued due to hedging gain, and because of the nature of this income, this benefit is accounted in non-operating income and is not captured in the operating margin.
I would also like to flag for analysts that our subsidiary SMG has reported a PAT, a profit after tax of INR 1.50 billion crores, which includes an interest income on their cash of about INR 650 million crores at PAT level and some gains due to tax reversals. This is not accounted in our standalone PAT, but I thought it deserves a mention. Coming to the highlights of the yearly financial results, the company sold over 2.23 million vehicles in financial year 2025. For the company, a modest domestic sales growth of 2.7% was compensated by a healthy 17.5% export growth, leading to an aggregate growth of 4.6% for the year. The company registered highest-ever net sales of about INR 1,451 billion crores in the financial year, a growth of 7.5% over the net sales of INR 1,349 billion crores in financial year 2024.
The company achieved a highest-ever net profit of INR 139.5 billion crores in the year, about 5.6% higher than the net profit of INR 132 billion crores in the previous financial year. In terms of dividend, the board of directors recommended all-time high dividend of INR 135 crores per share on a face value of INR 5 crores per share compared to INR 125 crores per share in financial year 2024. We are now ready to take your questions, feedback, and any other observations that you may have. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchstone 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. We'll take a first question from the line of Raghunandan NL from Nuvama Research. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity. Thanks for sharing the impact on EBIT on a QoQ basis. A follow-up on that, relating to the other expenses item which went up 90 basis points, this is more lumpy and seasonal in nature. Ideally, this shouldn't be continuing in the subsequent quarters. Would that be correct? Also, on the commodity side, there was an impact of 20 basis points. How do you see for the subsequent quarter how much can be the impact of commodity given that there has been an increase in steel prices and there is also the safeguard duty?
Thank you, Raghu, for your question. Let me respond to your other expense question first.
As Rahul articulated during the opening presentation, there are a few elements on the other expenses which have impacted, like we had a higher profit for the full year corresponding to the CSR expenses higher. There was also some repair and maintenance in some of our lines in the Manesar plant, which contributed. Also, we did a conscious digitization push, and there were some expenses on digitization which came in this quarter and some other miscellaneous lumpy expenses. That is broadly the composition of the other expenses which is there. Your second question on the commodity on a sequential basis. If you look at it, it is predominantly impacted by steel, as you rightly pointed out. That on a sequential basis is impacting on the commodity side.
Sorry, we missed your question on the safeguard duty, Raghunandan.
Yes, sir. In fact, I wanted to request your thoughts on a few important topics for industry and company. Can you talk about how you're seeing the impact of safeguard duties, these free trade agreements? Also, if you can talk a bit about CAFE norms and the hybrid potential.
Too many questions. Okay. Safeguard duty on steel, we are extremely thankful to the government. They have found a way of minimum import price in which they have taken care of both the steel industry and the user industry, primarily auto. We just hope that the steel industry doesn't use it to raise commodity prices in the market, and we'll be monitoring the situation and reporting to the government if necessary. As of now, since our imports are above that particular threshold, we are not affected directly.
On FTAs, there are discussions happening. There are three discussions happening at the moment: India-U.K. FTA, India-E.U. FTA, and possible is U.S. BTA. Those discussions are being primarily led by the Ministry of Commerce, and industry is in consultation with them. I'm sure the government will take a very calibrated call in the best interest of the country and of all industry and economy put together. The third was on CAFE.
Yes, sir.
We are expecting some kind of finalization of CAFE-III soon, and industry is in discussion with the government on this, with the Ministry of Power, Bureau of Energy Efficiency. They are seized of the matter. They have gone into great details. I think we are expecting the policy to come out in about a month or two.
Lastly, your thoughts on hybrid?
What thoughts on the hybrid?
How do you see the potential of this? Can we expect more launches from your end?
See, we are very happy that the sales of hybrid and the penetration thereof has gone up in this financial year. Some geographies are doing better than others for obvious reasons. It is an excellent technology. The customer response is very good. We have also, as part of our CSR, introduced high-voltage courses and ITIs, etc., so that the serviceability of such vehicles remains high and customers always have a reason to feel happy. Many more states are responding positively. I think it is a matter of chance, both from all three sides: from customers, from policymakers, from industry. We hope to see a positive push from all three stakeholders for this excellent technology.
Thank you very much, sir. Very helpful.
Thanks .
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Pramod Kumar from UBS Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. Rahul San, my question is regarding the profitability because volumes have hit an all-time high for a quarter, but EBITDA and EBIT per vehicle have kind of hit a seven-quarter low or almost a two-year low. How should one look at profitability on a per-vehicle basis? I understand the percentages will get impacted because of the new plant being ramped up. If you can just help us understand, how should one look at the margins in the near to medium term when there is seasonality, vehicle demand on a sequential basis? How are you looking at profitability in terms of absolute EBITDA per vehicle or EBIT per vehicle? If you can share your thoughts on that.
See, Pramod, it's always very difficult to predict margins. It's the resultant of many, many factors.
The volume is easier to predict. Margins depend on several factors. What I can share with you is Maruti Suzuki has far many more levers than any other car manufacturer in the country to handle any kind of headwinds or any kind of impact on margins. If you compare with other companies, in the other companies' best of times and Maruti's lowest of times, we are probably doing better than others. We have to keep that in mind. One phenomenon that we have to be conscious of is that the overall demand is not growing. A large part of it is, as in the press conference also, our Chairman mentioned, that 88% of the country is not participating in the car growth story. That's because entry-level cars are just not growing. We have to be conscious of that fact.
Sometimes India will have to take a call on how to address this if manufacturing has to grow. Auto is a large part of the manufacturing sector. This has to be taken care of. One qualifier I'd like to put: one of the levers that I talked about was exports. We have been talking about exports for a long time now. Fortunately, when the domestic growth is in very low levels, exports have cushioned the decline. We hope to grow exports in a healthy manner in the future also, in the medium term. Similarly, we have levers on decarbonization, so our cost of carbon reduction should be lower than others.
Rahul San, you talked about predicting volumes being easier. How do you see the domestic volume also? Because you did talk about vehicle demand.
If you were to just quantify, what is your economic model for this potential growth for the industry in FY 2026? Also, on a related note, exports, is it fair to assume that we should still aspire to do double-digit growth despite the global macro situation? Thanks to the kind of auto backlog we have on Jimny, is double-digit a fair expectation for FY 2026?
Not just double- digits. We mentioned an outlook of 20% growth for the coming financial year for exports.
Oh, no. That's good.
I took your second question first. The first one was on the first question I had.
Domestic growth, sir. Domestic growth after your macro economic model?
We have forecast a very modest growth of between 1% to 2%. We should be doing better than that. We have a couple of SUV launches this year.
Of course, a lot depends on how the whole organization responds to the customer. We look forward. Would you like to?
Final one, final one from my side. If I look at the opening remarks from the CFO, sir, and you, there have been some lumpy or seasonal items in the quarter. If you were to all put together, what will be the quantification of that if you look at next quarter? Because next quarter, we'll also have seasonal vehicle volume. I'm just trying to understand how these lumpy items, how much of that we are able to shove in the next quarter to offset the operating dealers. If you can just help us understand the one-off nature in full Q, in totality.
If you see the opening remarks which Rahul did, there was a combination of positive and negative factors. I think it will be fair to count both, both the positives as well as the negative factors. In terms of the factors which contributed downward, as we articulated, there was a lumpiness on the other expenses. Me and Rahul both quantified that, which is about 90 basis points. At the same time, there were some positive factors also, like the sales promotion was lower by 40 basis points. That also we have to kind of take into account.
Also, as you see, this particular quarter, the mix was slightly because of the smaller cars was lower, about 40 basis points, which we again covered in the opening statement. These are the three factors broadly we have to see on both sides. That's how we have to take a calibrated view. It's not just we can see only the negative ones.
Fair enough, sir. Very, very insightful. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Binay from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Thanks for the opportunity. Just taking on this point about mix being a 40 basis point or so headwind, could you expand a little bit? Does it have to do with exports also? We saw export share being down this year. And if you could also share the CNG mix this quarter and last quarter. That's the first question.
I think it has more to do with the smaller cars and the SUVs. The hatchbacks actually moved. There was a year, there was a, you're were referring to the quarter four or the whole financial year?
Just the fourth quarter. In your opening comment, you added that mix is a 40 basis point headwind. I assume that you're mentioning sequential headwind of 40 basis points due to the mix.
Yeah. Because one of the things we see is also export share dropping quite sharply quarter- over- quarter. Export share coming down.
On a quarter basis, yes, you are right. There is a little bit of a lower export. As we said, overall, if you look at the export outlook for the full year, we did a 17.5% higher than the previous year. As Rahul said, next year, also the outlook looks quite buoyant. We are projecting about 20%. Export is really not a thing to get worried about. It's actually positive. In terms of the car mix, yes.
In this particular quarter, the small cars were lower, which is kind of contributing to the adverse mix. Going forward, I mean, I think we'll have to observe the market and see. I mean, we can expect a more calibrated mix going forward.
While we are asking this question, next year, export as a percentage will go up. Is that a favorable mix for you or neutral, negative, positive?
What we have to look out for are more the segments within the domestic market. I'll give you an example. For quarter four, SUV share sequentially came down from 39.7% to 36.8%. The UV share for Maruti Suzuki in quarter four versus quarter three. CNG came down from 36.1% to 33.7%.
Okay. CNG was also down?
Yes.
In a way, all these three mixes in a way were moved adversely for you.
Exports was down, small car share went up, SUV was down, and CNG was down. In your view, mainly the domestic is defining the gross margin changes rather than exports share.
This is the data that I shared. In fact, many cars went up from 6% to 7%. Compact went up from 39% to 42.7%. Let's be conscious of those changes.
Secondly, right now, we talked about a new plant ramp-up having some headwind. Is there any cost item which will not repeat next quarter? Anything which is to do with starting the plant? We understand staff and all will be more linked to ramp-up of plant. Is there anything linked to this which is only specific to the first quarter of a plant starting and will not repeat in this 30 basis point headwind?
Some part of it, obviously, since the plant started in February. First two months, there is cost but not sales because it's the first two months. Going to the next quarter, you will have both sales and cost. It will normalize as we go. That gap will kind of even out as we and the plant is going to ramp up as we progress in the year. Yes. This is something which, as Chairman Sir also said during the press conference, we are constantly keeping a watch on how the capacities are moving for next year.
Thanks. Just last one. Will 7-seater Grand Vitara qualify as a new SUV in your view, or is that a variant?
We keep hearing about such concepts and models about ourselves from the magazines and from analysts. Let's wait till the time comes.
I have not heard of a Grand Vitara 7-seater internally, at least.
Okay. Okay. Great. That will be something for us to look forward to. Thanks a lot, team.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Gunjan Prithyani from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Just sort of just going back to the margin queries. I know there have been quite a few. But this plant-related cost, just to be clear, the entire cost for the quarter has been taken into account, right? We shouldn't be looking for any increase from this INR 120 crores odd number that we've accrued in this quarter.
See, whatever cost has been incurred in the next last two months, that has been taken into account. That's the right way of accounting it.
As I said earlier, also in the previous question, going forward, the plant will also start producing vehicles and selling vehicles. There will be a more normalized effect of that as we go into next year. Of course, too early to say with the demand situation how exactly will be the capacity utilization, that only the coming quarters will say.
No, sir. I was just trying to understand because you commissioned middle of the quarter. That does not matter. We have accrued the cost for the entire quarter, right? That is the fair conclusion, right?
We have accrued the cost. Cost will obviously start from when you start incurring the cost. From that point, we have accrued it.
Okay. Got it. Just another one on the cost side now. We did see some RM pressure in this quarter coming from steel.
It looks like there is more to go given the safeguard duty and generally the increase that we've seen in the HRC prices. Is there anything that you can give us a sense on what sort of headwind can come through on the steel side? A little bit on the price hikes that we've taken. We had two announcements, one in February and then in April. What does this mean in terms of blended price hike? Did any of this reflect in quarter four? How much will it be for quarter one of Fiscal 2026?
Okay. Constructively, I answer your commodity part of it. I think as we clarified earlier also, thanks to the government, the safeguard for the grade of steels which we import, there is no significant direct impact. That answers your first question. Commodity movement, yes.
I mean, we are keeping a very close watch because we are all in a volatile world today. We are keeping a close watch on all the commodities and progressing accordingly.
On the price increases, let us be just conscious that it is to offset cost. There is no net effect. We try to offset costs and we pass on the rest to the market. Whatever cost is being incurred is being passed on to the market, most of it.
Okay. I mean, of course, the blended price hike on an aggregate would be much lesser than the range that we announced. I'm just trying to understand, can you quantify that blended increase? I'm also trying, the reason I'm asking this is there's also improvements that you're doing. You called out six airbags in every car.
Are these price hikes to cover up those costs, or is it just the normal course of annual hikes that we take?
See, there are two parts to your question. One part of your question is what about the regulatory hikes? The regulatory hikes, as we have clarified before also, is the pass-through. We will keep doing the pass-through. That is one part of your question. The rest of it, I mean, if it is a forward-looking, see, forward-looking, we will not be able to comment at this point. All we can say is that whatever is the regulatory hike, that will be a pass-through on cost.
Okay. Got it. Just second question on e Vitara, can you just sort of refresh us with the timeline? When do we see the domestic volume launch? Again, on the export side, when do we see the exports signaling? Any timelines on size and wheel and exports on e Vitara?
Today, in the press conference, we mentioned that we hope to do the start of sales within the first half of the financial year. This year, we expect to do a volume of about 70,000, a large part of it coming from exports.
Okay. Got it. Can you just share the details for the quarter, the normal housekeeping numbers, retails, and rural and urban growth numbers, if you have them handy?
We'll come back to you very soon. Unti that time, we'll take the next question.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Jinesh Gandhi from Ambit. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. My question pertains to a couple of things. One is, on the discount check, can you share the number?
Secondly, when we talk of increase in cost because of new plant, our employee cost does not seem to have increased much in the last two quarters. Would there be further increase on that side, or is this a reflection of the new plant as well, what we have seen in this quarter on the employee side?
See, if you look at on the discount of the sales promotion part of it, sequentially, quarter on quarter, we have a 40 basis points benefit, which is reflecting. On your employee cost, I think it is more as a percentage to sales. It is stable. I do not think there is a major variation in that.
Right. Yeah. That was my question. Will we see a step up there because it is a fairly large plant and in a new location?
Should there be increase from where we are in percentage of sales or upgrade basis? I answered that question.
I answered that question before because the volumes are also expected to come from the new plant.
Okay. Got it. Lastly, what kind of CapEx do we expect for FY 2026 as against INR 10,000 crores odd at consolidable in FY 2025?
Again, we answered this question during the press conference. This year, our CapEx has been in the range of about roughly INR 8,400 crores. The range we are expecting for next year is between INR 8,000 crores to 9,000 crores. That is the range we are expecting.
This is including SMG or excluding SMG?
This is including SMG.
Got it. Thanks for knowing this.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Chandramouli Muthaya from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is just on capital allocation. I think we have potentially more than INR 60,000 crores of net cash on the books, almost 20% of our market cap. Just trying to understand over the next two or three years, are you thinking about returns to shareholders as a potential use of this cash on the books just in terms of your shareholder return and total return strategies?
You would have seen our announcement earlier when we announced our results. This year, we have a high stable dividend of INR 135 crores per share, which has been stepped up compared to INR 125 crores per share in last year. That answers part of your question. On your bigger question, I mean, I see we have to keep looking for the market scenario and then decide accordingly.
I think difficult to give a straight answer at this point. We'll keep looking at the scenarios.
Got it. That's helpful. My second question is just around the product pipeline for next few years. You had said that you want to get to 28 models by the end of the decade. There could be some consumption stimulus over the next couple of years in the form of the pay commission, both central and state pay commissions over the next two to three years. Just trying to understand, the previous pay commission, we had the benefit of the launches on Baleno and Brezza, which really helped the company's growth.
Over the next two to three years, that sort of compact SUV segment, maybe premium high segment, is something that we focus on in our new product launch plans just to take advantage of some of these stimulus measures, which might benefit market growth over the coming cycle.
If there is a similar kind of increase in what the government had done as in the past, of course, the consumer response is expected. Yes, it favors those kinds of segments, the compact car segments. The quantum remains to be seen. How much is the quantum that happened? The scale also, is it just on central and state government or extended quasi-government sectors also, PSUs? That remains to be seen. Of course, consumption goes up when such stimulus comes from the government side.
Got it. That's helpful. Lastly, just a housekeeping question.
I think the retail number for the quarter was asked earlier, but just also wanted to check if you could share the extra revenue.
Sure. The retail was more than 400,000 units. It was in the fourth quarter. It was a growth of about 4.2% year- on- year. On the whole year, we could grow our retail market share marginally. We would also like to share that very soon, both as industry and as Maruti, we would prefer to shift to retail reporting because that's a true barometer of consumer activity.
Got it. Just the export revenue and the royalty number, please.
Export revenue was about INR 5,500 crores. Royalty, we have mentioned that around 3.5%. Gunjan had asked about the network stock. We closed the financial year with about 28 days stock, which is quite healthy.
Got it. Got it. Thank you very much and all the best.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Pramod Amthe from InCred Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The first question is with regard to sourcing. Post this sale, steel protectionism, or similar with the trade barriers which are going up in the globe, how do you look at the sourcing of your current product mix? Also, going into the EV space, any relook at the dependence on one nation, how you plan to reduce it over the next three to five years?
See, steel, we are fairly localized. A very large part of our steel, between 85% to 90%, is local. Sorry. The safeguard duty that was applied was neither on our purchases or our vendor purchases. There was no direct impact.
We thank the government for it. We just hope that the steel industry does not use the opportunity to raise commodity prices in the market. We will be monitoring that. I mentioned that earlier also. It is very difficult to predict the way the global tariff wars and everything associated with it is going. One thing that we have to watch out for is the supply chain for rare earth elements, and we will keep a close watch on that. So far, by and large, things remain stable, but it is a dynamic situation, as all of us know.
Okay. The second one is with regard to the new plant which has come up. How do you see it playing out in your overall scheme of production planning? One. Second, similarly for sourcing arrangement between amongst your plants, what is the benefit it can bring onto the table?
Obviously, the economies of scale will accrue for all plants put together. The sourcing is common for all the plants for components, whether they are used in Gujarat or Haryana or within Haryana, whichever plant. Economies of scale benefit us. In terms of production planning, increasingly, we are making our plants more flexible so that more lines can manufacture more models. We are also taking care that the newer lines that are established can manufacture EVs also. EVs are, as you would be aware, they far more heavier vehicles because of the battery weight, and the body tends to handle that weight. There is some difference on the production line on that account, but we are making it flexible, whether it is in Gujarat or Kharkhoda. The utilization is something that we have to closely watch and the operating leverage associated with it. That is something we'd be watchful of.
Sure. The last question, Rahul, is with regard to as EV comes into place, this stuff, how are you looking at its, I would say, overhang in terms of profitability? Should we have a headwind in profitability in the short term, one? Or should it be because it's export-oriented, we should be able to position it better and limit the impact? Second, how are you trying to mitigate this as it gets more and more domestic volume-centric on the EV? Are there any levers which you are looking at next two, three years to neutralize it?
See, we have to be conscious that by design, EVs will have a much lower profitability. That's true for the entire industry. We can't expect EVs to have the same level of profitability as IC engines.
If they were, then the government probably does not need to have a 5% GST or so many schemes or so many support policies on that. We have to be conscious of that. Having said that, our efforts on decarbonization will be through multiple technologies, and we will try to leverage all possible technologies to reduce carbon to supplement our EV efforts. Exports will obviously help us a bit as compared to a standalone domestic scenario because you get better economies of scale, and you may get some pricing power in some markets or others. It remains to be seen.
What's the progress on some of the PLI schemes which you applied? Can it benefit you guys as we go forward? What to expect there?
The government assesses the PLI after SOP because then only is your data getting verified.
It is slightly premature to be able to take a guess on PLI eligibility.
Sure. Thanks a lot, Rahul.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take this as the last question. On behalf of Maruti Suzuki, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.