Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 FY 2024 earnings conference call of Tata Consumer Products Limited, hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Manoj Menon from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi everyone. As always, it's our absolute pleasure at ICICI Securities to host the results conference call of Tata Consumer Products. A wonderful good morning, good afternoon, good evening to you, depending on the part of the world you're joining from. Now handing over the call to Nidhi Verma from the management for the introduction and for further proceedings. Thank you.
Thank you, Manoj. Thanks for hosting us. Welcome everyone to the Q4 and FY 2024 conference call for Tata Consumer. I am joined by Mr. Sunil D'Souza, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Ashish Goenka, Group CFO, and Mr. Ajit Krishnakumar, Executive Director and COO. I hope you have had the time to go through the materials that we put out yesterday, but as we usually do, we'll spend about 10-15 minutes going through the key performance highlights of the quarter and the year, and then open the floor for Q&A. I just want to draw your attention to the disclaimer statement which is on your screens right now. With that, I will hand it over to Sunil.
Thanks, Nidhi. So if I walk you through the executive summary, overall our top line was up by 9% in constant currency, 8%. India Beverages flat volumes but revenue grew 3%. India Foods continued strong trajectory, including Capital Foods was up 20%; if I exclude Capital Foods, 11%. Like-for-like volume growth, and this is primarily driven by salt, was 4%. International Business, 7% revenue growth, 5% in constant currency. Most importantly, significantly improved profitability. During the year, consolidated revenue up 10%, 9% in constant currency. India Beverages volume up 2%, revenue up 7%. India Foods, like-for-like is 15%, including acquisitions was 18%, with a 5% like-for-like volume growth. International Business was up 9%, 5% in constant currency.
The big upside or big bright spot for us is that the India Growth businesses continued their strong trajectory, growing 40% in FY 2024, accounting for 18% of India business up from 15% last year. We had a strong improvement in overall profitability, consolidated EBITDA growth of 24%, and margin expansion 170 basis points to 15.3%. On a MAT basis, the India business, marginal share loss. That said, quarter-on-quarter we are seeing stability or improvement. Salt shares are up to close to 40% right now. Just to recap, when the merger happened we were at a 30%. It improved by 50 basis points on a MAT basis. Innovation to sales ratio up from 3.4 to 5.1, I would say, towards the top quartile of the industry now. Front-end and back-end integration for Capital Foods was completed within 60 days. We had always set out a target of full integration in 100.
We're on track for that. Transaction for Organic India closed on 16th April, which is this quarter, and therefore you will not see the numbers for Organic India in the last quarter numbers. Again, the target for integration is also 100 days in the case of Organic India as well. We continued our good work on working capital. The India core business is down to 0%. Overall, as a company we're down by 8 days versus last year, down to 27 days this year. India, including all the other businesses, working capital of 4 days. In terms of performance for the quarter, I talked about 0% volume growth and 3% revenue for India Beverages. India Foods, leaving out Capital Foods, was 4% volume and 11% revenue.
including Capital Foods, and just as a perspective, Capital Foods was only February and March, was 5% volume and 20% revenue. US Coffee, volume growth of 6% and revenue growth of 3%. International Tea, broadly flat, - 1% volume and 9% revenue growth. And non-branded had a 4% revenue growth. Overall, INR 3,927 crores, growing 9%. For the full year, INR 15,000 crores, growth across revenue growth across all segments excepting for US Coffee, where we've seen significant volatility in coffee prices, and we've moved our numbers up and down, on the shop floors as coffee prices have moved. Double-digit revenue growth of 10% in constant currency, it is 9%. In terms of group performance, 9% revenue, 22% EBITDA before exceptionals, PBT of 12% before exceptionals, group net of 46%. We had exceptional items of INR 200+ crores this quarter, because of which the reported group net profit is - 27%.
We've used a significant amount of cash for the acquisitions, in India, and therefore net cash, while we've been constantly showing you close to INR 3,000 crores on the books, is now down to INR 118 crores. In terms of the full year, 10% revenue, 24% EBITDA, 24% PBT, 29% group net. And because of the exceptionals, apart from this quarter about INR 200 crores, if you remember, we had some significant numbers last quarter, primarily the U.K. pension numbers, which, therefore the group net, reported is -8%. Against the strategic priorities, we have now we're still almost there, still not fully, there. We are implementing a slate route implementation in all million-plus population towns and a significant amount of half a million-plus population towns. We are going with three routes.
Just as a perspective, broadly it is Beverages plus Organic, it is Salt plus Sampann, and, Yums ide, and it is Soulfull plus, Capital Foods. We are significant gap on distribution was in the lower pops data, and we've had a huge focus on adding distributors in all 50,000+ towns. We've added roughly 1,300 distributors in the last year, in our urban markets. And now we are focused on building a superstockist sub-distributor network to reach less than 50,000 population towns. We are now at 1.6 million direct reach, reaching 4 million outlets. Very strong performance in the what I call channels of tomorrow, modern trade and e-commerce. Between the two, they contribute to 25% of contribution now to our business. We've had a significant number of new SKUs on shelf. Soulfull, because it is available in modern trade, has seen a significant growth of 65%.
We have seen a significant improvement in our premium salt salience in e-commerce. This just lends credence to the fact that we now need to expand the distribution of this portfolio. India business overall, we continue to add to brand building. Our A&P spends were up 16% versus FY23. Salt market share was up by 50 BIPs. Overall, I talked about the softness on tea market share, - 50%. The only point I would like to make is, while overall Nielsen does show a 7% growth in the tea business, we strongly feel that we have not lost market share, and therefore we would wait for competitive numbers to see where this pans out. We have upped our innovation engine, and effectively we've launched one launch every week of the year. Our innovation to sales ratio is now 5.1.
As I mentioned, it is we are in the top quartile of the FMCG space in India at least. We've added products across all the three big verticals that we were looking at: convenience, health and wellness, and premiumization. We've had a significant step jump in digital transformation. We are in the midst of rolling out our new distributor management system and Salesforce app. This is built on the Salesforce platform. It is not an out-of-the-box solution, and therefore a very, very customized but very adaptable platform for us to enable decision-making at the front line. Apart from that, we've digitized a significant portion of our back end, including procurement and logistics. We had committed to simplify, synergize, and scale our businesses. We finished the merger of Tata Coffee during the quarter. 1st of January was when it became effective. We've announced amalgamation of all our subsidiaries in India.
That will bring another round of synergies and simplification. We have already on track on our international simplification, and a part of that has already started flowing through into our P&L as we walk you through it. Growth businesses, we had said the target was 20% of our businesses growing at 30%, and with the new acquisitions, we are on track for 30% of our business growing at 30% in India. For the full year, we've delivered 40% growth from our growth businesses. We are walking the talk on sustainability. We've already put out our FY26 numbers out there and across all different items, we are making progress. Now, in four years of TCPL, effectively the India branded business has delivered a CAGR of 16%, international 5%, overall a 12%, revenue growth, translating into a 15% EBITDA growth and a 27% growth group net profit. We've unlocked efficiencies.
Our working capital is roughly half of where we started off. India has made significant progress. International will continue to make progress. EPS is up significantly from 5% to 12.3%, a CAGR of 26%. Operating cash flow is now 101% of EBITDA, and total shareholder return in the last four years is roughly 400%. In terms of the macros, tea costs broadly benign. Coffee, again, a bit of volatility with Robusta leading the charge, moving up, and Arabica moving up in tandem. We need to stay very close to this, especially for our U.S. business. In terms of business performance, overall revenue for India Packaged Beverages up 2%. For the year, we grew with 2% volume growth, revenue up 3%. A four-year CAGR of the beverage business is 9%. The significant part is now two-thirds of our portfolio is in the mass premium to premium segments.
Coffee grew strongly, 29% growth for the year, accelerating to 45% for the quarter. Important is also that we continued our leadership, market leadership in the e-com channel. Just another perspective, I think we've not alluded to it earlier, we have incubated a vending business, and now the vending business has crossed the 1,000 machine milestone. India Foods, like-for-like revenue growth of 11%, volume growth of 4%, and overall revenue growth of 20%. Salt has hit a 40% market share. Tata Sampann finished on a strong note with a 42% year-on-year growth in Q4. Soulfull grew 42%. NourishCo had a slightly subdued quarter given the delayed onset of summer. Just as a perspective, in many parts of the country, the onset of summer is determined not by the temperature outside but the onset of Holi.
Holi was about 20 days late this year, and we are seeing strong traction in the business now. So, overall NourishCo grew 13% for the quarter with INR 204 crore of revenue. We had guided for close to INR 900 crore-INR 1,000 crore of top line for the year, but we ended up with INR 825 crore. But we remain bullish on the business because of two or three big reasons. We have almost grown 50% in outlets last year. That will stand us in good stead. Innovation continues to be a strong engine there at a 20% innovation to sales ratio, and we have augmented capacity and distribution to prepare for the season in this year. Non-branded business, you will see a consolidation of the non-branded business into the TCPL P&L for this quarter.
Overall plantations revenue was down, but that is primarily because we had a bit of, how do I say, a pause in sales while we did name changes from Tata Coffee to Tata Consumer. So auctions and overseas customers, we had a bit of a hiccup. Therefore, there is an inventory sitting in the businesses rather than getting translated into sales, which should get corrected very quickly. But Soluble's revenue grew at 19%, and revenue grew 4%. Tata Starbucks, while they had, I would say, a subdued quarter given the overall trend that we're seeing in the QSR business, we saw February March better than February and April better than March. So we see a better trend right now, but we remain focused on the larger India opportunity. We opened roughly 95 stores. We are in 61 cities, revenue of INR 1,200 crore, targeting 1,000 stores by FY 2028.
Our international business was a star performer for this quarter. Overall U.K. revenue growth of 11%. We are at a 20% market share in Everyday Black, and strategically we needed to grow our market share in fruit and herbal. We are now at a 9%. U.K. delivered a very strong EBIT performance as well. The U.S. revenue growth was up 2%. Our market share is in the ballpark. Canada continues to be the star, with 9% revenue growth and a 28% overall market share. This quarter, we've always maintained that the role of the international business is accretive EBIT margins compared to the overall business. In this quarter, the international has delivered to that level. I'll ask Ashish to walk you through the financials quickly.
Thank you, Sunil. Just turning to financials, key highlights, standalone revenue grew at 13% for the quarter, and consolidated revenue grew 9%. Just to point out that standalone now includes our coffee soluble business, and the base has been restated to that effect. EBITDA growth of 8% on standalone and 22% for the consolidated numbers. On a full-year basis, standalone revenue growth was 11%. Consolidated came in at 10%. EBITDA growth of 15% and 25% respectively. On consolidated financials, while you have seen the numbers and Sunil talked about it, I just want to point out on two specific items. One is exceptional items. They are largely attributed to stamp duty on the Tata Coffee merger and provision on prudence taken on some of the underutilized assets across our entity and fair valuation losses on a financial instrument as part of our annual review process.
The other is on tax. As you would all know, that we've been restructuring our, you know, structure, corporate structure in the U.S., and bulk of it is now complete. And therefore we have taken a one-time gain of close to INR 92 crore in the tax line, and therefore the ETF for the quarter looks at a lower level. And with that, I think I would hand over back to Nidhi for questions.
Thank you. Thank you, Ashish and Sunil. Ashish, we can now go to the Q&A queue now, and we'll take the questions from the webinar after that.
Thank you very much, ma'am. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may press star and one on their touch-tone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets at the time of asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. Thank you. First question is from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks and congrats on international margins and innovation. My first question is on Capital Foods and Organic India. I understand Organic India will be coming in FY25 numbers, but what I have to understand from inventory in the pipeline, how is it? Because initial part of the any M&A, we do see that inventory is there. Higher channel filling is there. So when I see your numbers, in first two months, that leads to a INR 532 crore annual revenue versus INR 705 crore revenue in FY23. In media interaction, you said for Capital Foods you expect double digits. So this double digit is for INR 705 crore of a number, or it's from a more FY24 kind of a run rate? So if you could give clarity on both Capital Foods and on Organic India, how should we build in the FY25 numbers?
Let me take that. Ah, you're absolutely right. When there are transitions, there are adjustments of inventory, etc., because, remember, they had a multilayered system. They had a set of super stockists, subdistributors, etc. So Abneesh, we've in the integration we've flattened the structure, integrated. So we've taken about 200 distributors from their side. The balance we've integrated with our systems. That's number one. Number two, we've reached to almost 95% or 95% of our distributors have already built Capital Foods, and we are on our way. We are basing our numbers of growth on the 705-750 sort of number, and we will work off that base. We are not working on the 500-odd base because we know it is underpegged. We remain extremely confident of our ability to drive the top line given what we are seeing on secondary sales. That's number one.
Number two, what we are seeing, the response to our integration in the international markets as well. For example, in the U.S., we moved from 4 distributors to 13 distributors because of their strong connections. A, B, I think the innovation pipeline is very strong, and Ajay being there continued with us, giving us the history and what he's seeing in the future of the business helps actively. In addition, as I said, the most important thing to drive at the front line is all our 1 million-plus and 500,000, significant number of 500,000-plus, cities. We've got 3 salesmen at the front end now with one salesman focusing exclusively on Capital Foods and Soulful, primarily because there is a lot of commonality in the product footprint, A, and B, the type of outlets that they will address.
This will apply even for Organic India, right, in terms of the growth numbers?
Yeah. Organic India, we just finished in, on the 16th of April. We are still working through all the details. Again, there are only 24,000 outlets, so, I mean, there is a significant amount of headroom to grow out there. Again, we are targeting growth on the, how do I say, normalized run rates for these businesses as they continued alone, and it's not on the short-term adjustments that we will have to do.
So my second and last question is on NourishCo. So you have done exceedingly well past few years on NourishCo, and you have also given, I think, in the media interaction, a growth expectation of around 30% in FY25. So I want to understand here, what are the products or the brands, the sub-brands here which are doing really well? And in terms of distribution synergy, is it now largely done in terms of your total universe? So is a good penetration already there? And second related question is, first half, very strong growth in FY24. Q3 slowed down, and Q4 it slowed down significantly for the entire sector. I understand that. But is the size now becoming an issue? Because, FY23, 60% growth, FY24, second half, significant slowdown. Is size also an issue now given the kind of growth you have seen earlier?
So, so let me answer it in two, three ways. Abneesh, I think size we are far, far, far from where we will say that we've become sizable enough that growth rates will slow down. Both the category growth of packaged beverages in India as well as the opportunity for us to address that remains significant enough. The big brands in the portfolio which are growing are Tata Copper Plus and, Tata Gluco Plus. Tata Copper Plus is seasonal but not as seasonal as Tata Gluco Plus, and Tata Gluco Plus, which is the higher revenue, higher margin, product, is what did not fire as well as we thought it would because of the delayed onset of summer.
In terms of the outlet base, we are now about 900-950 thousand outlets, which is a significant, how do I say, we are significantly behind the rest of the competitors, the last competitors if you look at it. So we've got still a significant portion to run, and we remain confident that we will continue to deliver these growth numbers, that we talked about. We till January were very, very confident of hitting the 900-1,000. Unfortunately, I would say second half of February, March was a little bit of a dampener, but nothing has changed on the basics of the business, so we remain extremely confident.
Sure. Thanks. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jay Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. First question is a bookkeeping question on, you know, Capital Foods and Organic India. What will be the aggregate amortization charges for both the entities and, depreciation as well? And what is, you know, the ballpark EBITDA that you are, sort of, building for FY26, you know, for the EPS neutral math?
Today, in terms of Capital Foods, it's going to be around INR 160 crore per year. Organic India, we've just closed, as Sunil said, on 16th of April, and we're still working through the financials and PPA. I think we'll be able to convey that number later. Going forward-looking EBITDA, I think I will refrain from giving a guidance at this stage.
But essentially what we have said is both these businesses will be cash accretive right from this year, and EPS overall accounting accretive starting next year, FY26.
Will it be EPS accretive or EPS neutral? And is this after factoring in amortization charges?
So after factoring in amortization, charges, Jay, the way we have built the business case, and if we deliver on that, then of course by year three, we're likely to become overall accretive.
All right. FY27?
Yeah. FY27.
Correct. Thanks. A couple of more questions around profitability. First of all, thanks for the disclosures on, you know, profitability movement for different businesses. Now, from next year perspective, what is the outlook on profitability for the international business? And I'm talking about the branded international branded business. You understand the volatility non-branded. And second is, what about the synergies, for Tata Coffee, at a time of a, you know, a consolidation merger announcement? You had indicated some, cost savings and other synergies. So are you still on track for expecting those to materialize? And if you could quantify for that for us again.
So, let me take that question. A, we had always maintained that the international EBIT margins should be accretive to the total India portfolio. And starting this quarter, given the U.K. turnaround, a strong turnaround, I would say, A, and B, the continued delivery of Canada and the improvement in the U.S. U.S., we still got work to do. We expect international to continue to be accretive on EBIT margins, going forward. A, overall as a company, I think we've said, EBITDA margins, we've delivered 15.3 for whole of last year. Last quarter was 16.1, but we will be improving off the 15.3 number as we go forward. And, sorry, on the Tata Coffee merger, yes, we have started realizing the synergies. The integrated organization has already got announced, and therefore from a cost perspective, we have seen the synergies coming in.
In terms of revenue synergies, early signs, there were top-line synergies as well as we put both the teams together, complementary geographies, complementary products, coming together. We have started seeing early signs of those synergies, coming in, and we do expect to deliver on those commitments.
Thank you so much. I can begin. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Good luck for FY25.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mihir from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi. So good morning. Thank you for taking my question. So my first question is on the tea business, on the tea volumes. How should one think about the tea volumes for the coming year? In fourth quarter, volumes became flat. No sooner the base volumes came back to positive trajectory, you know, and that trend will continue. So can volumes in tea business languish in FY 2025, or steps are being taken, you know, to curtail market share losses?
So, A, I'll react first to the market share question. As I mentioned, we don't expect that the industry grew by 7% last quarter as reported by Nielsen, and therefore we would wait for competitive data to come out before making a judgment on that. That's number one. Number two, long term, we do expect the India tea business volumes to be about a 5% growth and a couple of points on that, on our price mix, and, revenue growth management, numbers. Yes, this quarter was a bit soft compared to, what we were seeing as a trend because we had seen volumes coming to a 2%-3% volume growth. We do expect to see, at least a 3%, 2, 2%-4%, growth volume growth numbers at least in the short term.
But in the medium- to long-term, we do expect it to come back to a mid-single-digit volume growth.
Understood, sir. So my second question is on the coffee soluble business. What is the steady state margin, you know, for this business? And given this 22-odd% margin is driven by price increases, can these margins sustain for some more quarters till it gets annualized, or how should one look at the margins for the this business, at least for the coming few quarters of the for the year?
So again, I would separate out the non-branded margins into two different pieces. There is the coffee solubles, and there is the plantation business. Coffee solubles is a pass-through, largely a pass-through number. There might be differences in margins between timing of buying of inventory and selling of inventory because remember, we are buying coffee from various parts of the world, converting it into extracts or solubles, and selling it onwards. So there is an input price also differential, whereas in the plantations, we get the upside of the entire coffee pricing going up. It will remain volatile for some time. We had seen a sort of plateauing of that over the past three quarters. But in Q4, again, we've seen Robusta starting to jump up, and in tandem, then Arabica jumping up.
We would say we would expect volatility at least in the short term on this piece, but we will have to manage the numbers. Now, just as a perspective, overall, the non-branded business is just about 10% of our total India revenue. So from that perspective, it is not as significant, but we would expect some road bumps at least in the short term.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Sheela Rathi from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. My first question again was on coffee business. So Sunil, if you would like to call out, you know, what kind of distribution innovation plan we have with respect to, you know, taking up our coffee branded business higher from where we are today?
So, let me say we've got significant opportunity out there. I'll point back to one of the reasons why now we have done a split route at the front end is primarily because that was becoming the blockage for us to expand our portfolio and expand different SKUs. Coffee did grow 29% for the year and 45% for the quarter, but I think we are still scratching the surface. We've still got a significant amount of runway out there. This year, that remains a focus, especially with A, the innovations that we have planned, B, the amount of media spend that we are putting behind it, and C, between the enabling infrastructure that has been put into place.
What kind of distribution the coffee business would have currently versus CRT business, and if there is any difference here, in terms of B2B or B2C strategy?
So it's primarily a B2C strategy. We are significantly behind. I think we've got still way to go. In the southern markets is where we had initially focused. There, the gaps are. They're still large but relatively smaller compared to the rest of the country. We've still got. We are not there by a mile.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Percy Panthaki from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. So in the standalone, we have seen some kind of a margin contraction this time. I believe it's because of a higher ad spend, which is purely a phasing issue. So can you just try and quantify that for us? What is the increase in ad spend on a YOY basis as a percentage of sales so that we can get a better idea of the underlying profit growth for the standalone business? Thanks.
So, Parsi, hi. Thanks for the question. We have stepped up our AMP as Sunil mentioned earlier. Almost a 100 basis points increase over last year. So that I think that's one reason for a bit of a, you know, underlying numbers on the Tata Consumer standalone. The second, of course, is the Capital Foods, which has a marginal impact. As the full synergy benefit comes through, we will see this impact.
But Capital Foods is not in the standalone, no? It's in the subsidiary, right?
Part of it is in the standalone as well. But I think bulk of it is attributed to the A&P increase. It's almost 35% growth versus last year, as I said, under Capital Foods.
Understood. Understood. Secondly, just wanted to understand on NourishCo, what is the total distribution reach that you have right now, and how does that compare to the universe?
So the total distribution reach last year was about 650,000 outlets, which we improved to 950,000 this year. So that's about a 50% increase. But I would say we're probably index if I take an index to what the universe is there; we are probably at maybe a 15%-20% of the universe. Per se, long way to go.
Understood. Understood. You are growing so rapidly. Are you really just taking market share from the very small unorganized tail brands, or is it also some amount of market share gained from the larger brands in the packaged drinking water space?
So our portfolio is completely different from the big boys, right? I would say in the packaged drinking water, which is Tata Copper Plus, and I'm just taking a there'll be a significant amount of market share that, we would be taking from other players as well as taking off from organized players. But the larger unorganized players, sorry, but the larger portion, I would say, is probably coming in from the, branded players, right? Now we're the number 5 water brand, now in India. Tata Gluco Plus is a cup which is a completely differentiated format. I'm not sure, we are taking away from the big boys. There is enough, category expansion out there given per capita consumption, that we are driving for.
Tata Gluco+ would be approximately what percentage of your NourishCo turnover?
It would roughly be about 40% of the total NourishCo turnover. 60% would be Tata Copper+.
Okay, sir. Okay. That's all for me. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants to kindly limit their questions to two per participant. We'll take the next question from the line of Arnav Mitra from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. My first question again was on the international margins. So, so we've seen a big step up in the fourth quarter compared to even the last two quarters. Was there anything specific this quarter which additionally led to a margin expansion, or this is the full benefit of the changes you've done? And a related question is this coffee inflation last time did hurt your U.S. margins. Do you anticipate any pressure given the current trend from the coffee prices?
So, let me answer your second question first. I think last time around we were, what's the right term? We were a bit slow on the reaction because we had not expected the pricing to move as fast as it did when coffee prices came down. Our reaction time on the shop floor and converting it into promotions was a bit slower than competitors. And therefore, it was a double whammy. I mean, volumes were soft, and we did not get the throughputs. This time around, we've been very agile because we saw this coming slightly early in the day, and therefore, we've moved in line with coffee prices.
So I would not, while absolutes might move up and down, because of the softness on the total top line, with price increases that we are now seeing coming in back into the market, margin terms, I don't think there will be too much of an impact. If anything, we should expect an improvement. That's number one. What, what was the first question? Sorry.
It was the 15, the margin itself?
Oh, okay. So, on the international business, couple of things. We had kicked off our international restructuring last year in the same quarter, right? So this year, we are seeing the full benefits of the entire and when I'm talking of restructuring, it's not the legal entities restructuring, the cost restructuring in the international business. So we're seeing the full benefits of that flowing in. That's number one. Number two, last year, about this time was when we started, how do I say, revamping our entire product/brand proposition especially in the U.K., where we put in 10% A&P into the tea, brought it up to par, changed our entire packaging, made it sustainable, changed our execution dynamics, and went for proper distribution execution in a heightened manner. We're seeing the benefits of all that flow in.
Plus, because now we've got a stronger proposition in the market, we have also started to take price increases to put us on par and not at a discount to all the competitors in the market. We have taken some pricing again this year, and we are seeing our maintaining of market share despite all the pricing that they were taken. That's number one. Number two is, also, remember, the fruit and herbal and specialties are, A, the growing parts of the market, also the better margin parts of the market. That part of the portfolio is also getting ramped up. Between Good Earth and Teap igs, we are now up to a 10% share in the U.K. So all multiple pieces flowing in, we do expect to see, as I said, the international margins, right now are about 200-300 bps better than our India businesses, overall businesses.
We do expect to see that accretiveness to continue.
Sure. Sunil, my last question was on salt. So, you know, you've had a huge margin ex market share expansion. Now from here on, is the pace of expansion going to be a lot more modest given that the distribution, like, has already played in? And given that the category itself doesn't grow much, does it mean we should expect less than mid-single-digit volume growth now in salt going ahead?
So let me put it this way. If I rewind about 18-20 months back was when we took our significant price increases, which was roughly around 30%. At that point of time, our value market our overall market share was primarily driven by value and not by volume because we put our margins on track and continued to execute. Right now, our growth is driven by volume and not as much volume because we have not taken pricing at least for the last, I think, 15-18 months, if I'm not mistaken. So right now, it is a pure distribution expansion, portfolio expansion. Now, value-added salts are now 9% of my portfolio versus when we started with the merger 4 years back, it was about less than 1% out there. So value-added salt, volume growth, distribution expansion.
You would have seen the recent IPL opening day Tata Namak advertisements. We're putting salience behind it. So we remain confident of continued growth in market share. I do not see a reason for us to slow it down significantly.
Thanks so much. All the best.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from Rohan Kalle from InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks, sir, for the opportunity. Just wanted to check on the non-branded business margins. So I'm assuming you've got strong gains on lower-priced inventory of coffee. So just want to understand how much of this inventory do we have left. Assuming now you would be procuring at current market prices, how should we look at these margins sustainably, at least in the near term? And second question on the asset write-downs that are mentioned in the exception items. Just want to understand what INR 620 million asset write-down was.
So, let me take the first one, and I asked Ashish to take the second piece. Like I said, the unbranded business is in two pieces. There is largely a flow through with a delayed impact of either up or down on coffee prices in the solubles business because we buy coffee converted into solubles/extractions, and they then sell it off. On the coffee plantations, there is a straight revenue uplift, which increases margins. Right now, we're seeing prices going up, and therefore, there is a benefit for the coffee plantations more than solubles. On the solubles business, we do not expect too much movement because of prices going up and down. Ashish?
Yeah. On the second bit, as I was explaining earlier, this is largely a part of the annual review process where we look at all assets and across various parts of business, looking at the capacity utilization on a more prudent basis, we have taken provision on some of these assets.
Understood, sir. Thank you. I'll get back in a few.
Thanks.
Thank you. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, I would request Ms. Nidhi Verma to kindly proceed with the next questions on the webcast. Over to you, ma'am.
Sure. Thank you. So there are a few questions on the webcast link.
Among the 20 parties in the conference.
Okay. I'll just read those questions out. The first question is from Kajol. She's asking, "Can you please provide some more light on the subdued performance of Starbucks during the quarter?" And, yeah.
We've already talked about it.
Yes. We've already answered that during the opening remarks, Kajol. There is another question from Nikhil. "How long will it take for it to complete the integration of acquisitions, and when can we expect margin expansion based on these acquisitions?
Yeah. So we've always aimed for a 100-day integration. We remain on track for, so Capital Foods, we acquired February 1st. So by April end, we will complete the acquisition. Like I said, 95% of our front-end distributors are already billing Capital Foods, and we are on our way. So, we will complete Capital Foods in 100 days. Organic India was 16th April. We will complete it in 100 days. And post that, you will start to see margin expansion coming in.
Yeah. Thank you. There is a question from Keshav. He's asking, "Is there any update on the rights issue and any timeline?
Keshav, we are on track on the rights issue. The process is on, and I think we should be able to conclude it by early quarter two.
Thank you, Ashish. There is a question from Jigar. He's asking, "What is the reason of profit decline even though revenue has grown?" So I think this has been explained enough, Jigar. It's, led by exceptional charges. Net of that, the profit has actually grown 42% as we've seen. There is a question from Sumer. He's asking, "Can you give some color of the business of Starbucks, again, in terms of its revenue and earnings to overall business?" So just I think you're asking about the accounting treatment. It's shared.
Starbucks is not accounted for in our consolidated. We consolidate it as part of Associates and JVs. INR 1,200+ crores of top line, which has grown at 7%, for the quarter. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that's pretty much it from the webcast. Oh, sorry. There's another question asking, "Is there any plans on entering the BPC segment?
Like I said, we've always said that we want to be a total FMCG company. Right now, we're focused on being a food and beverage company. I think we've shown our intent very clearly to grow organically and inorganically. We do think there is still a runway left there. Once we think we've exhausted the runway out here and we see a bigger opportunity in moving beyond food and beverage, we will definitely look at that.
Okay. I think there is another housekeeping question from Nida. She's asking, "Is the decline in India business EBIT margin, like, what is leading to that? Why is it declining from 15.5%-12.9%?" That's his question. It is led by the amortization charge here. Yeah.
Amortization of Capital Foods?
Yeah. Okay. There is one question, asking, "What would be the growth strategy for Tata Sampann moving forward?
Tata Sampann, we very clearly said that we want to be a total pantry brand. We've identified very clearly the categories that we want to play in Tata Sampann. Right now, we are in pulses, spices, and a variety of other pantry products. As we gain scale, and improve both our brand strength and therefore pricing power and our back-end procurement, we continue to improve margins on Sampann.
There is a question from Sachin asking, "When you say growth businesses will be 30% of consolidated revenue, does it also include Capital Foods and Organic India?
Yes. We have said before we did this integration we did these acquisitions, we had said, we expect growth businesses to account for 20% of our top line and growing at 30%. Just as I was saying, last quarter, we grew at 18%. Going forward with Capital Foods and Organic India, we expect growth businesses in India to be 30% of our portfolio growing at 30%.
Thank you. Thank you, Sunil. I think we've covered most of the questions, actually all of the questions from the webcast now. So yeah. With that, I think, there are no further questions in the Q&A queue as well. I would just like to take this opportunity to thank you all for joining the call. If you do have any remaining questions, please feel free to get in touch with us. Thank you.
Thank you very much, ma'am. Thank you, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.