Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mandar Kapse, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Rutuja. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the management team at Sula, I would like to welcome you all to the Q3 FY25 earnings call of Sula Vineyards. I request all of you to please refer to the Q3 press release and investor presentation available on the stock exchange and on the company's website. Today on the call, we have with us from the management team, Mr. Rajeev Samant, Founder and CEO, who is joined by our CFO, Mr. Abhishek Kapoor. They will take us through the results and answer your questions. As always, we will kick off today's call with Rajeev sharing his thoughts on the operating environment and the business performance. This will be followed by Abhishek taking us through the financial highlights of the quarter, post which we will open the forum for Q&A.
Lastly, before we begin, please make sure to check out the Safe Harbor statement about the forward-looking statement. With that, I now request Rajeev to comment today's call.
Thank you, Mandar. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today for our Q3 FY25 earnings conference call. I hope that you've all had a chance to review our financial release for Q3, which are available on our website and the exchanges. Coming to our Q3 performance, our own brand's business recorded its 11th straight quarter of growth. However, I must admit that growth this quarter was subdued and softer than our own expectations due to a multitude of factors, including a broad-based slowdown in urban consumption, especially. With the urban markets accounting for more than 90% of our business, we did face a significant impact from this ongoing slowdown, especially in our two key markets of Mumbai and Pune.
Additionally, state elections in our most important state market, Maharashtra, with a number of dry days and a very strict code of conduct restrictions, also had an impact on sales in our largest state. And in Telangana too, which is now our third largest state and, in fact, challenging Karnataka for second-largest status, and which has been growing really well, we consciously slowed down our placement in Q3 due to a delay in receivables from state authorities. However, on this front, I'm pleased to say things are getting better, and we are beginning to see more timely payments. So going forward, we expect to normalize our shipments to Telangana. Apart from these macro challenges, in our case, our Maharashtra WIPS credit in Q3 this year was capped.
Hence, it was lower by INR 4.7 crore compared to Q3 last year, given the capping of WIPS at INR 20 crore annually at our largest unit, Domaine Dindori. In fact, the lower WIPS credit by INR 4.7 crore also flows directly to the EBITDA. So this has impacted our EBITDA margin by around 200 basis points. Having said that, again, on this front, we have some good news. We have now kicked off production at our Nashik unit, and we have received a positive clarification on unit definitions. This is our fourth bottling unit in Maharashtra, which will ensure that from FY26 onwards, we can garner 100% of the maximum potential WIPS in our case compared to only 80% this year. Though I should note that we will face a small hit on this aspect in Q4 as well.
Moving on, we are witnessing a couple of really positive longer-term trends playing out. First, our elite and premium portfolio continue to do well, even in the current subdued environment, growing by 6% versus last year. Especially with our iconic elite brands, The Source and Rasa, recording double-digit growth this quarter, building on top of a solid H1 performance. That is definitely it bodes very well, and it continues to be our strongest point in our portfolio. Secondly, an even more exciting trend is the growing Pan-India appeal of wine in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities outside of our top two states. Our revenue outside Maharashtra and Karnataka continued to see healthy traction in Q3 as well, growing by 8% after recording a high single-digit growth also in H1.
This is very encouraging and reinforces the confidence that we are taking strides towards our goal of building a truly Pan-India brand for our wines. We expect both these drivers to continue to power our growth journey even more meaningfully as we move forward. Coming now to our wine tourism business, I'm very pleased to say that this segment performed strongly in this all-important festive season, and we have ended up with our highest-ever quarterly revenue. In fact, I should note in this that the month of December was our highest-ever monthly revenue. Wine tourism revenues grew by 12% over last year, led by improved occupancy rates, which stood at 81% in the quarter versus 76% last year, and higher ARRs driven also by a record number of wedding bookings where the entire resort was taken over.
I should note here that in these weddings, we make it a non-negotiable point that the wedding organizers have to buy a certain amount of wine, quite a bit of wine. A few years ago, we used to face a fair amount of resistance here, but recently, we have noted a boom in wedding bookings at our vineyard resorts, with all the guests perfectly happy to meet our condition in this regard, which bodes very well. Though overall visitor numbers were slightly down, we should remember that we have set records in the past as the most visited vineyard in the world, and that was perhaps a slightly unsustainable number coming out of COVID with revenge tourism. Numbers are slightly down, but the spend per visitor, which is a very key focus area for us, has grown by double digits over last year. That's an excellent trend.
This is a testament to the hard work we are doing to provide more excitement on our campuses and more avenues to taste and buy our most expensive and luxurious wines, which more and more people are reaching out for. So this highlights the way forward for us as we focus on constantly elevating our guest experience. We also have some exciting new openings coming up on the wine tourism front in Q4 and FY26, which I had alluded to in earlier calls, and I'd like to provide an update on. First, within Q4 itself, we have the Dindori Tasting Room and Bottle Shop opening up at the Aswali ND Wines. We're building up something really nice there. This facility is located close to the Gujarat border, so we do see a strong potential for footfalls here.
We do get a lot of visitors from Gujarat coming to our main campus, which is quite a bit of a drive further from the border, and this will give a lot of people a further opportunity to taste and buy India's finest wines. Second, the expansion of our wine tourism facilities at Domaine Sula outside Bangalore. Here, we are opening a new tasting room and expanding our existing bottle shop and restaurant. The expansion of the bottle shop was completed in Q3, and we expect to complete a really beautiful tasting room with a spectacular view and the restaurant expansion in H1 of FY26. Third, probably most significant out of our expansion plans is the 30-key resort coming up near our York Winery in Nashik. This will expand our total room capacity in Nashik by 30%, from 104 keys to 134 keys. So quite significant.
It will also be our first resort to have dedicated convention facilities, which will have a boon for all our resorts in the area. So we do expect a big pickup in corporate off-site business once this is completed. And we expect to launch this resort in H2 of FY26. Work is in full swing and is well on schedule. So these expansions, and especially the new resort, will give us a significant boost to our wine tourism business in FY26. Moving on, as most of you are aware, we recently promoted Gorakh Gaikwad to the position of Chief Operating Officer at Sula. Gorakh has been with us for the last 16 years and has worked in various operational capacities, including most recently as Chief Winemaker. He has already very firmly taken over the reins from Karan Vasani, and the transition, I'm happy to say, has been super smooth.
Key functions, including winemaking, viticulture, winery operations, projects, and procurement, are now all reporting to Gorakh. So he is a COO in the truest sense of the word, and we wish him all the best. I have an update from Gorakh on the current harvest, which we are right in the middle of, Harvest 2025. The harvest is looking excellent in terms of quantity and quality, so I'm very pleased to say that it is our fifth excellent harvest in a row. As we have really proven in the last 5+ years, for us, the supply side has been largely seamless. This is a tribute and testament to the hard work that our teams have been putting in. We have been working extremely hard over the last decade to mitigate the impact of climate change and global warming.
I must say today, we have a very robust and resilient system in place for our vineyards and grape procurement that, to a large extent, insulates Sula from the worst impacts of climate change. It is no coincidence that this is our fifth good harvest in a row, when across the rest of the wine world, there have been significant impacts on at least one harvest in the last three or four years, and I would say in sort of every three years or so these days. Talking about another very positive development and something that is hot off the press, you can say, I am delighted to say that we held the 2025 edition of SulaFest this past weekend after a long wait of five years. Well, I would say that it was well worth the wait.
The much-anticipated event set new benchmarks for us as we witnessed an incredible turnout of around 12,000 people who thronged the festival across two days at our Nashik vineyard. As for our ticketing partners, BookMyShow, this was possibly the only sold-out music festival in India of this size over the past year. So that's really a tribute to the hard work put in by the team and the curation of the acts and the musical talent on display. The attendees had a great time enjoying the live performances, our award-winning wines, gourmet food, and other unique experiences. This was also, very notably, the first SulaFest where we did not have spirits available. Some of you may recall that in the past, we were also an importer of some prestigious spirits from across the globe, which also used to be available at SulaFest.
We have walked away from that business in recent years, and hence, we took a decision that for this SulaFest and going forward, there will be no spirits. We had only wine and beer. Not a single attendee, as far as we could tell, missed the lack of spirits. We also had only Indian artists this time, I would say the best of indie Indian music, and the crowd loved it. No one missed the absence of expensive international acts. Our recently launched Sula cans, our Chenin Blanc in a can, the Zinfandel Rosé, the Red Zin, were a huge hit with the crowd. And I would say that those were our highest-selling wines, were the wines in a can. So that was some tremendous exposure for this format, which we see as so exciting in the future. The fest also garnered fantastic media coverage.
We are still measuring it at this point, but it's headed out of the stadium across platforms and formats, including well-known national media houses and all over digital media. So it's been a great event for brand Sula. Overall, SulaFest was a grand success, and we believe it offers us a great platform to attract more wine enthusiasts as well as first-time consumers alike and thus foster both category development and branding in the future. Going forward, we plan to host SulaFest biennially instead of annually, so once every two years, not every year, and not every five years. Finally, to conclude, yes, it has been a challenging year, but I do believe that in many ways, we have hit a trough now, and we should start seeing a revival from here on.
Moving ahead, our focus over the next 18 months is to target quality growth with greater emphasis on improving our profitability and margins. While softness in urban consumption might last a bit longer, we expect Q4 to be largely in line with Q4 of last year. For next year, FY26, we are targeting a significant expansion in earnings. With that, I would like to call on our CFO, Abhishek Kapoor, to take you through our financial performance and metrics in greater detail. Over to you, Abhishek.
Thank you, Rajeev. Good evening, everyone. Following Rajeev's overview of our business performance and key initiatives, I will now take you through the financial highlights for quarter three and first nine months of fiscal 25. First, talking on the revenue performance. As Rajeev already mentioned, this quarter marked the 11th straight quarter of growth in our own brand segment. Revenue from our own brands increased 1% over previous year, with our elite and premium segment posting volume growth of 3% and a value growth of 5.5%. The contribution of elite and premium to our own brand's portfolio expanded by 300 basis points, reaching an all-time high of 80% in quarter three. However, overall revenue growth was impacted by subdued consumer spending in urban India and election-related disruptions in Maharashtra, which happens to be our largest market.
Additionally, a significant factor, as Rajeev mentioned earlier, was the reduced WIPS of around INR 5 crore as our Domaine Dindori unit hit the INR 20-crore cap in quarter three. This contributed to a 250 basis points decline in our own brand's revenue growth, with the impact primarily seen in our economy and popular wines, which were largely serviced through the Dindori unit. As a result, our economy and popular portfolio recorded a 15% decline in revenue for quarter three against a 5.5% volume decline. On a positive note, we commenced bottling units at our Nashik unit, which is defined as our unit one, which has now been certified as a separate entity eligible for WIPS. Moving forward, this will enable us to capture 100% of potential WIPS benefits compared to expected 80% in fiscal 2025.
Geographic diversification played a key role in mitigating the impact of challenges in Maharashtra and Karnataka in Q3. Excluding these two states, our other markets collectively grew 8% in quarter three, with over 10 states recording double-digit growth. Consequently, the share of non-core markets in our own brand's portfolio increased by 300 basis points to 50%. On the wine tourism, as Rajeev mentioned earlier, in quarter three, our revenues grew 12% over previous year. This growth was driven by improved occupancy rates, which were clocked at 81% versus 76% last year, a higher average room rates, which increased by 34%, and increased guest spending during a robust wedding season. Encouragingly, wedding demand remains strong in quarter four as well.
Our gross margin for quarter three stood at 62.5%, which was down around 450 basis points over last year, primarily driven by the lower WIPS, which I mentioned earlier, that impacted 100 basis points decline in the gross margin. Also, we had a change in our route to market for our direct-to-consumer wines, which we sell from our own retail shop. To streamline the supply for wine tourism, we now source these wines through a distributor with a nominal handling fee for stock management. While this adjustment impacted the gross profit by around INR 5 crore, the corresponding increase in sales meant no absolute impact on EBITDA. However, this change resulted in a 200 basis points reduction in gross margin. Employee costs increased by 11.5%, with 300 basis points attributable to the ESOP cost under the 2023 ESOP scheme, which had no comparable cost last year.
Excluding the ESOP cost, the employee cost grew 8.5%. During the festive season, we invested in consumer engagement through tastings, gift packs, and point-of-sale materials. Additionally, our expanding presence in non-core markets outside of Maharashtra and Karnataka led to a 16% increase in selling, distribution, and marketing expenses in quarter three. EBITDA for quarter three declined by 26% to INR 54 crore as lower gross profit and higher market spend weighed on the operating profitability. The EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 25%, with a 200 basis points impact from lower WIPS. EBITDA margin also had an adverse impact from geographic diversification, with higher revenue contribution from non-core markets having lower margins versus Maharashtra and Karnataka due to the higher instance of duties and taxes. As of April 1, 2024, our outstanding debt balance was INR 73 crore.
We accrued INR 44 crore during the first nine months of fiscal 2025, and we also received INR 32 crore from the government of Maharashtra towards the earlier outstanding. In January 2025, we secured an additional INR 24 crore, reducing the outstanding debt balance to INR 63 crore. While the interest cost for quarter three shows a decline of 3%, which is mainly on account of a one-off in last year cost on account of interest on custom duty, the underlying interest cost has seen a 9% growth as the gross borrowing has increased by around INR 75 crore versus last year. The increase in borrowing is due to higher working capital due to expansion in DSOs by 30 days as the revenue contribution from corporation markets has expanded by 110 basis points.
While we are receiving pending payments from the Telangana Corporation at regular intervals, the relative DSO is still significantly higher versus other markets. We expect DSOs to moderate downward by the end of this fiscal. On CapEx front, we are likely to end this fiscal with INR 55 crore investment, majorly composed of our low-cost cellars, which expands 2.5 million liter capacity, and a renewables infrastructure expansion to increase our solar energy contribution from 60% in FY2024 to 70% by end of FY2025. We shall be utilizing 1.5 million liter capacity of low-cost cellars for the current harvest, which is underway, for storing our economy and popular wines. Looking ahead, as Rajeev emphasized, our focus remains on quality of growth. To improve margins, we have started pulling back selling and distribution expenses while continuing to strengthen geographic diversification.
We shall be completing implementation of our second-quarter strategy in quarter 4 2025, helping to reduce the cost to sell for our economy and popular brands. Also, as shared by Rajeev earlier, our 14th edition of SulaFest, which was held earlier this month, saw a huge success scoring beyond on all the KPIs, which we set internally, and also adding huge branding mileage. We believe that the fest shall contribute meaningfully to the wine tourism revenue in quarter four and shall also be EBITDA accretive. It's a great platform for the brand, and we shall also be exploring more potential for expansion of wine music fests going forward. Overall, we expect strong earnings growth from the next fiscal. With that, I would like to now ask the moderator to open the floor for Q&A. 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 touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.
Have we lost them?
The first question is from the line of Varesh Sangwan, an individual investor. Please go ahead. Varesh, please go ahead with your question. Your line is unmuted.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, everyone. So I just had two questions, actually. One was related to the recent tasting room that we opened outside our winery. I think it's the one I referred to Google. It's called Milestone Cellars or something. So how is that performing? I just want to know.
That is doing okay, I would put it like that, a little bit below our expectations, and we are figuring out how to boost the sales there. We have much better hopes for our ND winery, which is on our campus and where we will be able to do a much better job with a bottle shop, etc. But I must confess that sales at Milestone Cellars have not been up to the mark.
Okay. And any improvements or any learning that we are taking out of it or any?
Yes, absolutely. We took a risk here. We took a chance. It's in the middle of a purely rural area. You can say rural heartland Maharashtra near the town of Pimpalgaon. We wanted to take a chance to see how it can work in an area not close to the city. I think we are taking some learnings from it that probably the next one we put up, apart from at our own campus, which, of course, has its own benefits in terms of tours and tastings and all that we can't really do on a standalone, should be closer to an urban area. I think that that's one of the chief learnings that we have here.
Okay. Okay. Best of luck on that. And my last question is related to I happened to hear the conference, the earnings call of our competitor. And what I learned is that they are very much they have a very big market share in HoReCa. Just wanted to know our approach on that and why because I certainly know that Sula is very, very well-known and very high in, I would say, recognition amongst the people. But why we are not into HoReCa, is there anything stopping us or we don't want to go into that?
I can.
I can answer that. I can answer that. Sula is, by far and away, the number one consumer choice in wine brands. Now, there's a very big difference between retail and HoReCa. We are, by far, dominant in retail. That is because no retailer can afford not to stock the consumer's number one choice. At a retailer, the consumer gets to choose exactly what they want. Hence, you can say the best brands and the leading brands will always win. In a HoReCa, it's very different. The buyer at the HoReCa gets to HoReCa for everyone's listening. Of course, we're talking about hotels, restaurants, cafés, bars. The buyer gets to decide what the wine list is, and there are many factors that come into play. The factor of it being the number one consumer choice gets pushed down.
The main factor, for better or worse in India, is how much discount are you giving me? Sula does not play that game in the way that our competitors do. I will state explicitly that we are willing to give lesser discounts. Hence, you will always find that in HoReCa, the brands that are not necessarily the consumer's number one choice, they will have a better market share. Having said that, there is no way that any of our competitors has a higher market share, even in HoReCa, than Sula. We continue to have a higher market share, even in HoReCa. However, our market share in retail is far higher. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah. Maybe they are claiming.
Mr. Varesh, may we request to please rejoin the queue? We have participants waiting for their turn. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vinamra Hirawat from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. I hope I'm audible. So if I look at the distance between the three resorts, the two that we have and the one that's coming up, they are maybe 10-15 minutes away from each other. Because of this, do we see the 75%-80% occupancy that we have coming down? Because now there are 30 more rooms coming in the same greater Nashik region.
It's a good question. The same question was there when we built the new Beyond, that will it impact? It has not impacted at all. If you see the occupancy this quarter versus one year ago, in fact, occupancy has jumped. We don't believe that 130 rooms is enough to sort of cannibalize our own. Each one of our resorts has sort of a distinct proposition, and they function really well together as a unit. I would like to point out that on weekends, typically, we are 100% occupied. So when you are at 100%, that means that on most of those weekends, you actually have demand that you are not able to meet. That's where the benefit really comes. And of course, our weekend rates are much higher than our weekday rates.
During weekdays, there is some possibility that, to some extent, in the beginning, you might have a small hit on occupancy. But overall, definitely, this is going to contribute. Plus, the conference facilities, which is unique in our new property, that we don't have in the other two, and that is only going to be an accretive. I hope that answers your question.
Yes, sir. We spoke about each resort being a little bit unique. The York resort, we're more targeted towards corporates than individual guests. Is that fair?
That's fair to say. But corporates also, you have different sizes of corporates and of requirements. So if you have a corporate that only needs 30 rooms, then they will only occupy York. However, if you have a corporate that needs 100 or 200 rooms, but they absolutely need conference facilities, then the fact that these resorts are only 10 minutes from each other becomes a big advantage there. So they can be a little distributed, some at this resort, some at that resort. We have done that in the past, four bigger corporates. And so that works very well. So the main conference can happen here, but people are spread out over the three resorts.
Okay. Okay. Got it. So we've also mentioned multiple times in the past that road infrastructure to Nashik is causing issues for us. I was looking at the Q4 call. You had stated that there would be plans for a resort in Domaine Sula in Karnataka. Is there any update on this? Because it would go a long way in reducing our dependence in one area.
We have faced certain issues, I must confess, with permissions for building out our resort. We are in touch with the authorities. We come under the Bangalore-Mysore Industrial Corridor, and we are facing certain issues there. Hence, we took a call to build a big, beautiful tasting room for the time being, and that, what I mentioned earlier, and that's really stunning, the architecture there, and it overlooks a vineyard a little bit like Nashik. It's a little smaller in that way, the vineyard in front. But I do believe that that is going to give us a nice boost there. Plus, we are going to have a roster of events, especially musical events, à la mini SulaFest that we plan to roll out there. Unfortunately, no good news yet on a resort at our Bangalore property.
If I could just fit in one more question, sir. We said other states have lower margins than Maharashtra and Karnataka. If you could just break down Maharashtra and Karnataka margins versus other states for both elite and economy separately, that would go a long way in helping the analysis.
Sorry, I take this question. This is Abhishek here. So in fact, this question we have answered in the past as well, that due to the duties, the benefit, the lower duties in these two states, we get a benefit in terms of the operating margins in these two states. In terms of the variation between the margins, it ranges between 500-700 basis points between these two markets versus others. I must also mention that some of the newer markets outside of even Telangana, Rajasthan, and Bengal, which have been well penetrated by us, the others continue to be sort of a focus wherein our spends with respect to building the market, they continue to be high. But we tend to, once we penetrate these markets further, the spends will get restricted and the margins will improve over there. So that answers your question.
Yeah. So this 500-700 basis points difference in EBITDA margin, is the same for elite and premium and economy as well, or is it higher difference for elite? Any word on that?
Just to answer this, in fact, outside of Maharashtra and Karnataka, the percentage of economy, popular, the economy and the popular brands, is much lower versus what we have in Maharashtra and Karnataka. This is because of the economics, as the duties are higher. We have a larger contribution of revenue coming in from elite and premium in the market outside of these two core markets for us.
Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Naman Shah from Monarch Networth Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. I just had two questions. First of all, I wanted to ask about the selling and distribution cost. We have repeatedly mentioned in the presentation that we had high S&D spends. So what will that amount be?
So Naman, the S&D cost, which has been mentioned in our presentation, that pertains to our distribution markets, the direct distribution markets, where this cost typically ranges between 35%-36%. There has been a bit of an elevation in these costs by a couple hundred basis points. But as Rajeev alluded to earlier, and I also mentioned in my piece as well, that now we are pulling back these costs as we want to focus a lot more on the quality of growth vis-à-vis more sort of presence and penetration in the markets where we already have a good depth in terms of our presence.
Right. One more question, sir. You talked about discounting. You talked about offering discounts. Since competitors are also offering discounts, how much discounts are we offering to the retailers in that sense?
I will answer this. Generally, we offer less discount than our competition. So we've been holding this line, and we do believe that this is the right way. We are already offering adequate, I would say, more than adequate discount to the retailers, but some of our competitors offer even more, I would say, to a really unnecessary and unsustainable extent. But we are fairly significantly lower in most markets. And still, I'm happy to note that in most markets, we continue to gain market share, albeit in a small way, but we are still gaining market share in India.
Right. Sir, but could you kind of quantify this discount that we offer?
So as I mentioned, Naman, earlier, I was alluding earlier to our distribution markets. If we talk about our other markets where this is appearing in our selling, distribution, and marketing line, this is typically around 17%-18% of our revenue, the net revenue. As Rajeev was just mentioning, that we prefer to offer less discounts to the retailers. Instead, we prefer more in terms of our reach to the consumer by means of holding more tasting sessions and offering consumer offers, which helps in terms of building the full effect as against just the push to the trade.
Right. Thank you, sir. That's all from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Alisha Mahawla from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good evening. Some questions on your margins. In this quarter, we said that our gross margin was impacted because of the CapEx and the good subsidy, which means that we'll probably have a similar kind of gross margin for the next quarter also before we turn to FY26 when we'll get the benefit of the new plan that we have. In light of this, how can one work with margins for Q4 because it's a smaller quarter versus Q3?
So good question, Alisha. I may inform you that as part of our transitioning of our bottling arrangements, which was largely concentrated in our Dindori facility, at the beginning of this year itself, we started setting up the bottling infrastructure at other three units of ours as well, which are in Nashik and Dindori, which also get the similar benefits with as the Dindori unit. Now, as the Dindori unit has been capped in quarter three, and I mentioned earlier that it was only the economy and popular brands which sort of got deprived of this benefit because of this INR 5 crore restriction which this unit faced, the economy brands have also now been moved out of Dindori for quarter four because of beefing up of our bottling arrangements in the Nashik unit one. And hence, we do not see the kind of impact what we saw in quarter three.
Having said that, as far as Q4 is concerned, with our improved focus on the margins, we don't see much decline in terms of the operating margins versus what we clocked in Q4 last year.
What I'm understanding is that both in terms of top line and margins, we should mirror what we did in Q4 of last year.
Since you asked about the operating margins, so my answer was more oriented towards that.
Sure. Understood. Going forward, last two years, 2023, 2024, we were circling at the 30% margins, which have slid this year for multiple reasons that you've highlighted. This is despite the fact that elite and premium, the share of that has gone up, and the premiumization margin should also improve. That's our understanding. Now we have incremental costs for all the bottling plants and the tasting rooms that we're setting up. There is the incremental spend that we're doing on S&D. There is also third-party distribution for popular and economy, etc. How do we expect long-term these margins to now start moving?
Yeah, Alisha. See, we have been mentioning that the margins, what we saw in FY2024, we ourselves didn't expect them to be sustainable, which was upwards of 30%-odd. The reason was very clear that geographic diversification was very much on our radar. We wanted to drive that, and that is the right thing to do. With that, there was an expectation of slight moderation in the margins. Now, key factors which kind of impacted this in the current year, one is largely the muted revenue growth, which once it's clawed back, is going to add impetus to the margins. Apart from that, with various initiatives which are being taken mainly in terms of reducing the S&D spend, we expect the margins should claw back 200-300 basis points from where we sort of ended our YTD nine month period.
Understood. And just one last question again with respect to margins, if I may. You mentioned in your opening commentary that demand is weak, especially urban consumption seems to be tepid this quarter, last quarter. And while you're not the best judge of it, would this be the most appropriate time to pull back on S&D spend when demand itself is weak and we may need to incentivize the channel a little bit more for whether it's placement to sales of any kind of format?
Alisha, we have witnessed very clearly that offering more channel margins or discounts actually doesn't help in terms of the consumer offtake. It only helps in a short while to.
Hello? Please hold on for a moment. Please go ahead.
Am I audible?
You're sounding from a distance.
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes, you are now. Please go ahead.
Okay. Sure. So I was answering that with this moderation in the discounts, we see that the margins do improve. And to your question in terms of whether there would be any kind of downside impact, the answer is no because in terms of building the connect with the consumer through various offerings, holding more number of tasting sessions, and also, this SulaFest is also going to come to benefit in terms of getting some of this demand back. So the right measures are being put in place as against relying on more discounts being offered to the trade.
Understood, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Siddhant Dand from Goodwill. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
So my first question was regarding our working capital. Now, working capital seems a little tight, and we have aspirational growth plans, setting up new facilities, growing sales, and aging requirements of wine. So what kind of dividend payout do you expect to give in the future? Because it felt like you were funding dividends from working capital in the past couple of years.
Sure, Siddhant. So fair question. I mean, in terms of the past, if I were to talk about FY till FY24, till the time the WIPS policy was evaded and there was a huge accumulation of the past WIPS balances, the accruals, there was a situation which was more tight on account of the monies being expected from the government.
However, having said that, with the regular inflow of funds, if I were to tell you in terms of our YTD WIPS that we have received, it's close to around INR 57 crore this year thus far. Last year, we received around INR 100 crore. And you assume that why is it that the working capital scenario continues to be a little bit on a tighter side? That's mainly because our revenue contribution coming in from the corporation markets that has been inching up. As I mentioned earlier, it has increased this quarter as well by 110 basis points. Now, the relative DSOs, which we have from the corporation markets versus the distributor market, they are higher. And hence, there is a more requirement of working capital. But that is not a scenario what we see, I mean, in terms of the period ahead.
There is a moderation which is happening as the past outstanding from the Telangana Corporation state, they are coming down, and it will help in terms of reducing this gap of working capital funding. To answer your question on the dividends, I mean, it's clearly related to the strong reserve that we have. We don't see any challenge with respect to the kind of trends we have been maintaining on dividends.
Okay. Perfect. My next question was regarding the correlation of wine shop quality and the sale of wine. Could you just comment something on that, and what is any policy in our key markets? I read about some wine shop license in Karnataka. They're going to open that again. So the quality of wine shops and the quality and the sale of wine within these cities.
If I understand your question correctly, you're talking about the demand and the quality relation, the quality of wine?
Yeah. Quality of the store.
What are you talking about?
The retailers.
Sorry. I didn't get your second part of the question.
What is the correlation between the percentage of wine stored in a shop to a better quality store compared to one of the older stores where you have to queue up in a line?
See, a discerning consumer who is a wine enthusiast will always appreciate a quality wine versus going in for the cheaper wines, which are available by the dozen. Now, one thing which we have been consistently maintaining is in terms of offering the quality wines at the appropriate price so that the discerning consumer is not left wanting. So our pricing.
I was referring to the quality of the retail store because we are seeing 7-Eleven and others starting to keep Sula wines. So is that improving our sales, wine, and the percentage of liquor consumption?
I would say, see, early to say that, I mean, in terms of the further penetration into the retail shops and particularly in the organized trade, which are basically full-format stores, it's not so prevalent still. That too, from state to state, it actually differs a lot. Yes, I mean, in terms of its presence, we clearly see that there is a positive impact on the offtake of the wine.
Sorry, Siddhant. May we request you to please rejoin the queue, sir? We have participants waiting for their turn. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Priyanka from Value Prolific. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I just want to understand the wine landscape in India because it's still at a very nascent stage. What is the percentage of domestic wine consumption versus the international wine? What percentage of that is captured by Sula and its immediate competitor, which is Fratelli Wines? Thank you.
Priyanka, so Priyanka, in terms of the landscape, the overall wine market is expected to be closer to INR 1,500 crore, of which around INR 1,000 crore is captured by the domestic wines and INR 500 crore by the imported wines. Within that, if you see in the elite and premium category, Sula enjoys around 60 shares. This is based on our own assessment and the data which we get from various corporation markets. Now, in terms of the overall alcohol space, if you were to see, wine continues to be contributing lesser than 1% to the overall alcohol market in India. However, with this, the growth potential definitely is wide. The right measures of expanding in terms of the reach to the consumer is by means of making people to taste wine, which is driven by Sula through holding various tasting sessions across the length and width of the country.
So that's the right way, we believe, instead of following the trade route and sort of filling the retail shelves with just the bottles of wine.
What percentage are we expecting in the coming four-five years that what percentage of wine will be in the overall alcohol space?
Priyanka, even if this 1% gets converted to 2%, I think it's going to be a big boom given the market leader with the 60 shares. It's going to be a significant jump in the rate.
Okay. My next question is, over the past one year, Sula's share price has fallen down by 50%. What are the main key reasons behind it? I can understand probably because of this Maharashtra elections that dried away. The investors must have anticipated the bad financials. But what are the other reasons, do you think?
So Priyanka, relating to your previous question, while the penetration is a journey and that's where Sula is taking the lead, rightly so being the market leader, it's going to take a bit of a time, and particularly in a challenging environment where wine being more of an urban phenomena and urban demand continuing to be tepid, that has basically given a temporary sort of a pause, if I can say so. But that doesn't stop us from holding back our initiatives in terms of new launches, in terms of innovating further. And one of the testaments to that was the response to our recently conducted SulaFest where we saw tens of thousands of people thronging over this two-day fest.
It clearly showcases that there is a demand, but probably they are holding the consumer is holding back given the tight scenario which is there on the liquidity fund in terms of their consumer spending potential. Once this is back and government is also taking all the right measures to give more money in consumers' pockets, we are very, very confident that this is going to help in terms of pushing the wine growth back on track.
Sorry to interrupt. May we request you, Priyanka, to please rejoin the queue? We have participants waiting for their turn. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Yashodhan Nerurkar from Iconic Wealth. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. So basically, I'll just continue the question from the previous participant. So I just wanted to understand, I mean, we are significantly lower than the per capita consumption of wine across India versus the Western peers. And obviously, there are reasons for the same. But I just want to understand what sort of drivers do you think would that per capita consumption to nearly double in the next five, 10 years, possibly? Or do you think that's really possible? And what is Sula's current capacity? And put in another way, what is the current capacity and how much are you all targeting it to be, say, over the next five or seven-odd years? That is your first question.
Definitely. So first, in terms of the demand, let me give you a comparative. I mean, we are where probably China was 30 years back. Why the right comparative with China market because.
30 years back?
Again, a non-native wine-consuming market, per capita for us is slightly over 40 ml per person per year. And China currently is close to 1 L per person per year. And 30 years back, this is where they were, I mean, 30-40 ml per person per annum. So we are on the right track, I would say that, because more and more consumers today are demanding. As people are traveling to Paris, traveling to Europe, they come back with the experiences, and they want those same experiences over here back in India, which is where we are right there with the right set of offerings, the quality wines for them to taste and get sort of habituated to versus their preference over spirits and other alcohols. On the other question, in terms of capacity, we are close to around 17 million liters, 16.6 million liters annual capacity.
We are also adding the low-cost seller this year, which is going to be commencing the commercial production very soon in February still, which is going to add another around 2.5 million liters capacity. This new capacity is dedicated to our lower-cost wines. We wanted to bring down the CapEx cost for our economy and popular wines. Hence, we segregated the back-end infrastructure for producing and storing these wines.
Okay. That's helpful. So I mean, the other question was about your capacity. What would your target be in the next five years? So that was the other part of the question. And the second question is about your current ASP taken as a portfolio together. And I mean, you have introduced wine in a can as well. So how has that taken off? And are you seeing incremental demand for that particular product as well?
Sure. Yes, sir. So first and foremost, in terms of the capacity, we are having the infrastructure good enough to meet the future demand. Our cellars, as far as the civil infrastructure is concerned, we have based that, keeping the future demand in consideration. What we need to do is just put up more tanks so that our installed capacity gets expanded. And this is a big enabler in case we are on our demand side, we are able to drive it more aggressively and get the results of that as well. Now, coming to your other question, which is in terms of the growth part, so growth—sorry, if I may ask you, what was your second question? Yashodhan, are you there on the line?
Yes, sir. We will move to the next question, which is from the line of Aditya Soman from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening, Rajeev and Abhishek. Two questions. Firstly, on the WIPS subsidy, which you said there was a shortfall of INR 4.7 crores in this quarter, did you give a number on what the shortfall you expect for the next quarter would be? And then you said that for 2026, there should be no shortfall, right?
Yes, Aditya. So Aditya, we mentioned earlier that this year, we are likely to capture around 80% of our eligible WIPS. We had informed this earlier as well that this is a year where we are going to expand our bottling infrastructure across our four units. Good news, which we got in Q3 through our constant working with the authorities and officials, was we got the certificate for our NaBFID unit as well. And Q4, particularly, probably will be closer to 100%. But yeah, in next financial, we will be able to capture definitely 100% of the eligible WIPS.
Understand. So in 4Q, basically, it will be a lot lower than INR 4.7 crores. That understanding would be fair, is it?
Yes. That's right.
Okay. Okay. Understand. And then the second question on wine tourism. So again, in 4Q, we should see a big bump because of SulaFest. Would that be the right assumption? Because that wasn't there in the base quarter last year, right?
Yes, definitely. This will give us a boost in terms of the revenue. We are also expecting this event will be a bit accretive for us while the numbers are yet to be aggregated. It has clearly scored on all the KPIs that we set for this event. It offers really well for our quarter four as far as wine tourism revenues are concerned.
Okay. Understand. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you. Thank you all for joining us on this call. As Rajeev mentioned earlier, definitely, this has been a tough year for us. But we really expect a rebound from here as various measures for the government are being rolled out to get more money into the consumer's pocket. And that definitely is going to offer well for our growth onwards. Thank you once again.
Thank you. On behalf of Sula Vineyards Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.