Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Barbeque Nation 1Q FY 2023 post results analyst conference call hosted by Ambit Capital. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Videesha Sheth from Ambit Capital. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the 1Q FY 2023 earnings call of Barbeque-Nation Hospitality Limited. From the management, we have with us Mr. Kayum Dhanani, Managing Director, Mr. Rahul Agrawal, CEO and Whole Time Director, and Mr. Anurag Mittal, Chief Financial Officer. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Kayum Dhanani. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. A very good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I take the pleasure in welcoming you to Q1 FY 2023 conference call of Barbeque Nation. Since the onset of COVID a couple of years back, this quarter was a fully normalized quarter. We are happy to report yet another remarkable performance at our company with our consolidated quarterly revenues crossing INR 300 crore for the first time in the history of Barbeque Nation. We reported highest ever revenue of INR 315 crore during this quarter, which is around 3x of previous year Q1 and 25.4% higher than the immediate preceding quarter. Despite a challenging inflationary environment, we managed to.
We managed our gross margins well and achieved gross margins of about 66.8% during the quarter, which was driven by targeted efficiency projects, better cost management, calibrated price increase, and change in business mix towards dine-in. We also reported healthy EBITDA margins of 23.3%. We have clearly defined pillars of our growth, namely Barbeque Nation India, delivery segment, Toscano, and Barbeque Nation International. We are extremely focused on growing each of these 4 verticals to build one of the largest food service companies owning its restaurant brands. In our core segment of Barbeque Nation India dine-in business, we added 9 new restaurants, taking the total India network to 176 numbers of restaurants. Our India business has grown well over last year and previous quarter, led by higher covers and higher realization per cover.
We have a strong pipeline of under construction and under evaluation sites planned to cross 200 outlets of Barbeque Nation in India in this financial year. During this quarter, our dine-in to delivery mix has changed in favor of dine-in. We have witnessed a decline of around 6% in our delivery business as against the previous quarter. While our a la carte orders have continued to grow, our box orders have declined. Our delivery ratings have continued to improve with our focus on delivery business. We believe the business will stabilize at the current levels. Toscano business has grown by around 54% versus the previous quarter, led by both dine-in growth and two new outlets added during the quarter. Toscano now has 13 restaurants across three cities, and we plan to add around five more restaurants this year.
Toscano delivered healthy store margins of 23%+ in this quarter. International business is the highest margin business in our portfolio, with store margins of over 25%+. We have demonstrated sustained SSSG and profit growth over last three years and now are looking to add two to three net restaurants this year. We are extremely focused in building and growing each of these four verticals and build one of the India's largest brands owning food services company. We have always built this business with focus on our guests and employees. I am proud to share that this year we were ranked seventh in the Great Place to Work survey, and we are also ranked among the top 10 retail companies to work for in India. With this, now I hand over to Rahul to take you through the quarterly performance of the business. Thank you.
Thank you, Kayum, and good evening, everyone. We are happy to deliver the record quarterly sales and profits at Barbeque Nation. Our operating revenues in quarter one FY 2023 were INR 315 crore compared to INR 102 crore in a COVID-impacted quarter of quarter one FY 2022. On a sequential quarter basis, we grew 25.4% driven by growth in volume and average realization. We reported strong SSSG year-on-year of 182%. SSSG as compared to the previous quarter was 19.8%. Our dine-in segment has grown around 6x versus the previous year and 32% versus previous quarter. Our dine-in to delivery mix changed in favor of dine-in. The absolute delivery business has declined by around 6% on sequential quarter basis.
Toscano business has sequentially grown by around 54% during the quarter and delivered 23%+ store margins. Similarly, our international business has sequentially grown by around 24% and delivered 25%+ store margins. During the quarter, we reported gross margin of 66.8%. Despite inflationary pressures on the input costs, our calibrated price hikes and improved operating efficiencies helped us to manage gross margins better. Our reported EBITDA was INR 23.4 crore in Q1 FY 2023, delivering a healthy margin of 23.3%. Our adjusted EBITDA without the impact of India and excluding non-cash ESOP-related expenditures were INR 46 crore, delivering 13.6% margin.
Out of our total portfolio of 195 restaurants as on thirtieth of June, around 80% restaurants are matured, which is more than two years old. This matured portfolio delivered annualized sales of around INR 7 crore per outlet with store margins of 21.5%. Out of our new restaurant portfolio of 38 outlets, 24 restaurants were less than 6 months old and are growing well. This portfolio delivered store margins of 6.2%. Both the numbers are without India. As this portfolio matures, we believe this business will further improve. We sustained our momentum in network expansion and added 11 new restaurants during the quarter, taking the total network to 195 as of June 2022.
We have a robust under construction pipeline and a strong pipeline of selected project sites, and we're progressing well towards our target of 30 restaurants in FY23. Strengthening and executing our core dining business, growth in our delivery vertical, unlocking the growth potential of Toscano, and calibrated international expansion continues to be the key four vectors of our growth agenda. With this, we can now open the session for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone now. We have our first question from Harit Kapoor from Investec Capital Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good evening. So my first question is on the margin side. Around that 14.5%, I think adjusting for other income around 14%, you know, given that Q1 is not a very peak quarter for you will peak out in Q3, you have higher operating leverage during that time. Do you expect that similar margins could actually be a bit better than what you kind of achieved in quarter one? Is that the right way to look at it?
Yes, Harit, you're right. Quarter one is sequentially not the best quarter for us. It's quarter three followed by quarter four, quarter one, and then quarter two.
With the margins that we have in quarter one, we should definitely achieve more in quarter three. The only caveat there would be on growth side. We are almost at a run rate of around 10-12 sites every quarter now. By quarter three, we would have approximately 50 sites which are less than one year old. Barring that drag from these on the overall margin, but our mature portfolio should definitely do better than what we did in quarter one this year.
Got it. Can you call out the ESOP impacts for this quarter in INR million, what number is that?
Vidisha, ESOP?
Yeah, the ESOP provisions.
Yeah. The non-cash ESOP provisions was approximately 0.4% of top line. Approximately INR 1.5-odd crore for the quarter.
Okay. That's a run rate which is expected to continue, right?
Yes.
Got it. Great. The second question was on the demand side. You know, one would expect that there would have been a pent-up kind of, you know, benefit post the third wave, and you would have been the beneficiary of that. I just wanted to know, you know, as the quarter ended, did you see similar kind of, you know, or even into July, have you seen kind of similar strong trends in terms of occupancies, et cetera?
It is definitely improving. If you look at sequential quarter growth, obviously quarter four last year was impacted by Omicron wave in January. If you look at the 25% growth that we did on a sequential basis, around 19% of this has come from just the volume increase between quarter four and quarter one this year. Despite this, we also have still an opportunity to increase our overall covers by 10%.
What I mean by this is, the average cover that we used to do, or average turn that we used to do pre-COVID versus now, there is still a gap of 10%, which is an opportunity that we still see, in our, in our business, going forward. The only thing is that quarter two is, unfortunately, a weaker quarter, which has, you know, things like, Shravan, Shraadh, even, you know, Durga Puja, Navratri is all in this quarter. This is actually still good for non-veg consumption, in India, and that impacts us definitely.
Right. Right. Of course. Of course.
You're saying that from a table turns perspective, your average of 1.8, 1.9 is about 10% lower right now, and you have that gap yet to make up.
Yes. Yes, we still have 10% gap to make up with the pre-COVID.
Got it. My last question, and I'll come back post that, was on the delivery side. It's you know, it is expected that you would see some kind of a fall on the delivery side. I just wanted to get a sense, is this the kind of run rate that you're now kind of expecting for the rest of the year?
you know, are there some efforts in place to kind of, you know, increase assortment of the portfolio or greater extension kitchens, et cetera, which can drive this number up a little bit as we go through the year?
Yeah. On delivery front, as you mentioned, it's declined by 6% sequentially, but there are two sub-components to that. One is obviously our box product, which was a keeper during COVID years. And the second portion was our a la carte business, which is individual orders or a couple of items going in order, all this, right? The a la carte segment has actually grown versus last quarter also in this quarter.
Our box product business has come down a bit. Our box product obviously is a group eating product. We also feel that the increase that we saw in our dine-in business on a larger base was significantly higher than the drop that we saw on the box segment of delivery, right? Overall, the mix has slightly changed in favor of dining. My expectation is that this should stabilize at the current levels what we did in quarter one. In July, we have done pretty much same level numbers as we did in quarter one. There are a couple of interventions that we are making. We are actually working on a dedicated you know delivery-only online biryani brand.
We've been working on this for quite some time now, and I think we are at a stage wherein this month we should pilot it in few locations, and depending on the success, we will pick it up, you know, pan-India. You know, as we always maintain that, as Barbeque Nation, given that we own our kitchens, we own our brand, we have the ability to add multiple stuff and, biryani being one of the largest category, you know, we are experimenting something on that front. I think while currently number looks stabilized, but once something like that kicks in in our business, this number on delivery can further go higher than this.
Great. That's it for me . Thank you. Wish you all the best.
Thank you, Harit.
Thank you. To ask a question, ladies and gentlemen, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone now. We have next question from the line of Sameer Gupta with India Infoline. Please go ahead.
Hi. This is Percy here. Percy Panthaki. My first question is this plan of opening up restaurants internationally. I think earlier, when this was discussed, you had mentioned that you would prefer to go through the franchisee route here. You would not want to put any CapEx in international. Does that plan still remain? Can you give some idea as to what is the mode of expansion into international?
We are exploring both, Percy, and we also said that while we will do franchising in the national markets, we'll also look at a couple of sites maximum from our own balance sheet. As of now we have a pipeline of around three sites. It's not given whether that will completely, you know, justify. We may add around 2-3 from our own balance sheet. At the same time, we are also exploring, you know, franchising in few of the geographies. The lead time for these are really very high, right? That's the plan on international.
One thing is sure we'll not go overboard in terms of opening up, say, 70 outlets right now. This year at max we'll do two or three outlets from our balance sheet.
What would be the CapEx per store here?
This would be around INR 4 crore or so. The payback period and all are pretty much similar. If you look at the international business, it's already delivering around INR 10 crore of annual revenue and 30%+, you know, store margin. The payback period wise, it's around two years, which is similar to, you know, or slightly better than what we are seeing in India. We know that we don't want to completely, you know, add more and more given how the payback is slightly better as of now. I think couple of sites in that market is justifiable.
Okay. These two, three sites you have sort of shortlisted, they are all in Middle East or somewhere else?
Right. Right now it's Middle East only. It's not opening up a new market. It's only where we already have the teams, the product, the business, et cetera.
Okay. Second question is, did I hear you right, that you mentioned that, basically the number of bills per restaurant are 10% below the optimum level, something like that you mentioned?
Yes.
Okay. Just wanted to understand. The number of people, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Just wanted to understand, because this has been a completely normal sort of quarter, and in fact to some extent there has been revenge spending on these categories. That is, people have sort of possibly gone out more than what they normally would. Why is it that we are still 10% below the optimum level, and what would be required to bring it up to 10%? I mean, another 10%.
It's more the last segment which is still not back 100% to pre-COVID. Most of the IT corporates also are not fully back. Our weekday businesses, weekday lunch businesses are still slightly lower than what we used to do on a pre-COVID basis. I think that's the big gap. Apart from that, on the weekend side or on the friends and family segment side, I think we are pretty much sorted there.
Understood. On margins, you are about 13.5%-14% margins this quarter, versus a sort of target of 15%. There is obviously input cost inflation and you have taken some price hikes. How fast do you think you can come back to that 15% level? Will Q2 be back to that, since the price increases have gone through during the quarter, and they have not affected the full quarter of Q1, but they will affect the full quarter of Q2? Would I be right in assuming that, or it would take more time?
I think we should look at it for the full financial year basis. Quarter two may not be there because of exceptionally weak quarter. Based on quarter three, quarter four numbers that will come in, I think blended basis full year we should be at 15% margin.
Okay. For FY 2023, we still have hope of being 15% for the full year. Okay. My last question is on this new brand of biryani that you are trying
The person you are speaking with has put you on hold. Please
Hello?
Yeah. Sorry. Can you repeat the question, please?
Yeah. Yeah, I can hear you, sir. This biryani brand, which you are sort of planning to launch for delivery only, can you give some thought process there? See, because Barbeque Nation itself is very well known for biryani, so why have a second brand here? If at all we want to do something with a different brand in delivery, we should be doing it in a type of cuisine where we are not already present.
I tend to slightly disagree here. Look, Barbeque Nation brand is more of a dining brand with all-you-can-eat, you know, value offering, service driven, experience driven. If you look at our delivery business also, we largely do it under the UBQ brand. Although we also have Barbeque Nation, but UBQ brand actually stands for à la carte offering in Indian cuisine segment. While we serve biryani across both these platforms, these are not dedicated biryani platform. You know, we all know that biryani is one of the largest categories, you know, in the country In delivery segment.
We have been obviously preparing biryani and serving biryani for many years across all our platforms, so it is pretty much a natural extension in a different category for us. But when you want to compete in a market where there are dedicated players, I think that requires a separate you know brand look and feel and focus, and that is why we are evaluating it under a new brand, which is very much under a pilot stage right now. If things go well, hopefully we plan to launch few in few markets you know in this month itself. You know very early stage, so I think let's see how it goes, and then maybe you know we'll update on how this performs.
Okay, sir. That's all from me. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you, Percy. Thanks.
Thank you. Anyone who wishes to ask a question at this time may press star and one on their touch-tone phone now. We have our next question from the line of Vijay Patra with an investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I thank you for your management as in the staff. I am fond of Barbeque Nation since last 10 years when it was opened first in Pune. What I suggest, because first thing you can open more outlets, in particular in metros and Tier 1, and increase your revenue. Automatically you will get the profit, and automatically everything will come because the staffs are excellent, and it shows your HR policy is good and very good atmosphere. It is excellent. That is why I, as an individual I can say. I feel to increase more profit or your revenue, increase the outlets because very few outlets are there in cities. It's better you can rapidly expand. That is the ideal to increase the revenue, everything. I hope you will do that. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Thanks for your comments about our team. Thank you. Regarding increasing the number of outlets, we are geared to do that. I'm planning to add up to 300 in next couple of years, sir.
Thank you for calling.
Wish you all the best.
It's excellent. I appreciate this all. I love it.
Thank you, sir. We have next question from the line of Vicky Punjabi with UTI Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Rahul. Thanks for taking my question. Just one, just back to that, to the biryani outlet, biryani brand launch. I wanted to understand, you know, if these get served from the same kitchen, how much of spare capacity do we really have in terms of scaling up? I mean, it seems like there will be no incremental cost, at least for the launch of this brand. I mean, my understanding is it will be largely from the same kitchen and it gives us a better leverage in terms of enhancing throughput.
Yes. When you say capacity, do you mean space in the kitchens or?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's about turnover that a kitchen can kind of support, right? How much of turnover can get supported by the current kitchens is what I'm trying to understand.
you know, since I think last two years, whatever new restaurants we are creating, we are having a dedicated space for our delivery operations inside the Barbeque Nation outlet. It's pretty much in a very crude manner shop-in-shop kind of model. We are doing our you know our UBQ operations today from the same setup, right? When we designed it earlier, we also designed it with the flexibility that tomorrow we can add some dedicated machines and also put it and serve it. I think in some cases, obviously, we have to create some space.
By and large, we are also launching in those places where we have that, and we have not seen. We don't expect also that space to be congested. While doing the research for this particular brand, we also upgraded the overall brand experience both in the outlet, also in UBQ, and also for this new, you know, brand that we are contemplating. We don't see that.
Overall, I think with this new sort of setup and category, we expect that the incremental revenues and profits should have pretty much the same dynamic as we had when we did our UBQ launch from outlets.
Okay. On this cloud kitchen that you're seeing, you know, some kind of problems coming in which is more like now 15 stores count is where we are kind of stabilizing at. You know, would a kind of success out in biryani segment would that lead to incremental growth in that segment as well? Or, I mean, we're looking at this more from the leveraging of the current kitchen space only.
No, which I think, let's look at the four vectors of our growth. You know, apart from Barbeque Nation and Toscano, biryani is one of the key segment of our growth. You know, that doesn't mean that we don't believe in this space or we don't believe in the growth opportunity of this space. This is something that we have been working on for last 6-8 months.
This is something that, our philosophy is that how can you make delivery as at least 20% of your overall business, and then, what are the things that you can leverage to do that. We launched extension kitchen from the same perspective. When extension kitchen was launched versus now, obviously the average daily sales from delivery segment has come down. I've always maintained that extension kitchens will only start making sense, once there is the average revenue per outlet goes up to a particular threshold. That's why you'll notice in this quarter, we have not added any extension kitchens. The focus first is to increase average daily sales from the existing network, which is now close to 185.
Once this goes up and individually, this can sustain an extension kitchen also, then maybe adding more extension kitchen is not a problem, right? Immediate focus is that, don't worry about extension kitchen. Try and increase the throughput of delivery per outlet. Once you do that, then, you know, your delivery will anyway be taken care of also by adding more capacity from extension kitchen. That is the broad thinking we have on this entire thing. This quarter, for example, I think the focus of the team would be to stabilize this new stuff that we are piloting in few places. You know, this may take 3-6 months.
Once the basic number is achieved and the extension kitchen model is profitable at that, at a double unit number at least, that is when you push the scale on the extension kitchen side.
Oh, sure. Thanks. Just one thing I think I missed this. What's the guidance for CapEx and store addition?
We have guided for around 35-40 outlets. As of today, we launched our net 10 outlets this quarter. A very strong pipeline of 15 under construction sites, which are already the ground digging is done. There are 15 sites wherein they have finalized the commercials, they are in various stages of diligence. Today we have complete visibility of the 40 sites that we are planning to open this financial year. I think we still have around eight months to go for the year. Depending on how the new pipeline gets built up over next couple of quarters, we may have to revise the number of sites maybe upwards in the next quarter.
As of now, on the 40 sites, our overall CapEx, including, you know, maintaining CapEx, some other stuff, CapEx stuff that you might do for the biryani stuff, we may be at a CapEx of around INR 130 -INR 140 .
Okay, sure. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's it from my side.
Thank you. Thank you, Ricky.
Thank you. We have next question from the line of Sameer Gupta from India Infoline. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Am I audible?
Yes.
Hello? Yeah. Just a question on the sales per store, which I think this quarter you have done about INR 6.6 crore sales per store. Time was that dine-in itself should get us INR 6 crore and then INR 1 crore on top of that should be delivery. We would be doing about INR 7 crore . Is that a sort of fair thought process to go with even today after seeing some amount of cannibalization between dine-in and sort of delivery? In this analysis, let us keep this new biryani launch aside. Whatever comes from that will be over and above that. Given the demand situation right now for the full year FY 2023, what kind of sales per store do we feel confident delivering?
I think INR 7 crore is a decent number to work with. If you look at our mature portfolio, we have done around INR 7 crore there by analyzing the performance of quarter one. Our historical numbers in quarter one and quarter two put together is not strictly you know the representation of the full year. In the restaurant business, second half is always better given there are festive seasons, New Year and other stuff that come to us. Just on the mature portfolio, I think based on the current numbers, we should cross INR 7 , which is you know what we are currently witnessing in both our dining and delivery channel put together, right?
Without any initiative. Now, our new restaurant portfolio is right now actually very young, right? If you remember, the real increase in our pipeline or increase in our stores started coming from second half of last year. Out of the 38 sites, as I mentioned in my commentary also, around 24 sites are less than six months old. In those outlets also, you know, the margins are just about breaking even. It normally takes around 2-4 months to start, you know, breaking even, right? That's what's impacting the overall 16.6% and the margins where they are.
As these mature, I'm pretty confident that our revenue and margin numbers should be INR 7 + and at least 21%-22% at store level.
Understood. Given the fact that at any point of time in future we will always have some stores which are new and in ramp-up mode, so if I include them in the average, what would be a correct number to go along with for FY 2023-FY 2024? About INR 6.5 would be a fair number to go along with that?
No, look, in the current quarter itself, we have done around 6.65%, right? Like I said, this is not the representation of full year. I think my internal assessment would be to at least reach 7%. Like I mentioned earlier, our covers on pre-COVID basis now, we still see an opportunity of 10%, so we have to go out in the market and capture that. Our delivery business is obviously not these are the best quarter for delivery. We have done better than this in the past also. That is something that we'll try and regain. The third is, you know, new initiatives we are trying from our outlets, right?
Mix of all, at least on top line basis, if we are 6.65% on average in the current quarter, you know, my sense is we should definitely be around 7%. That is what we should target.
Understood. You don't think that there is any element of some revenge spending this quarter in the sense that people going out more often and with more frequency than they would normally go out just because they are getting a chance for the first time after two years. That phenomenon is not there in this quarter numbers, is it?
I don't think so, just because if you look at our last five quarters numbers, you know, our recovery on dining segment has always been very good, right? I'm not seeing any exceptional performance on our dining business, you know, this quarter. From my perspective, you know, the number that we are tracking is why we are still lower by 10% from pre-COVID numbers and how do we get back to that volume. That is the number that's at least we are tracking internally.
Understood. Very clear. Thank you on all this.
Thank you, Sameer. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch-tone phone now. We have next question from the line of Praful Siddharth with Shravas Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. I'm audible?
Yes, Praful.
My question is how are you planning to tackle competition from the likes of Batchelor's Pad BBQ? Because based on my understanding, customers look out for two things. One is low price, the second is the huge spread. How are you planning to tackle this competition?
The competition has always been there. You know, we would be around, in India, around 135+ outlets. We did one analysis earlier and we found that there are almost 120 another similar formats who have copied the concept. This is not a new phenomenon. We have been seeing this for almost 10 years. I think you know, we continue to focus on our guest experience and our variety and we are very happy with the performance that we have delivered over last you know, so many years on a consistent basis despite being at such a high base. My sense is that this competition will keep on coming and going.
Also, you know, just having seen so many businesses, I don't see any business where there is no competition, right? Nothing that really worries us in terms of competition.
Right.
Because it's here and it's always been here.
Got it. My next question is, I just wanted to understand this biryani brand better, because biryani is something which is, you know, it differs a lot from state to state. How are you planning to, like, bring this biryani brand out to the market? Would it be like standardized or would it be customized from state to state? How are you trying to go about this?
As I said, this is in a very pilot state. There is nothing more that we can add right now. This is still work in progress. This is something that we are launching in very select markets right now. As we launch it, as we get feedback, we'll keep updating the you know to the market appropriately.
Got it. Last question. Is it possible to give us a measure on the employee attrition rate, if that's really available with you?
It is unusual. It's higher than the usual number that we used to do. I don't have an exact number right now for you, but that's one area where we are seeing increased rate. The reasons are multiple. In the hotel industry, you know, during the COVID times, a lot of international airlines, cruise lines were not hiring. Those entities opened up for a lot of people. Slowly and steadily more hotels are coming up, so as they are reopening, they're building up their teams, you know, some people obviously are leaving.
Right now it's higher than what we used to do usually before COVID. Nothing alarming. Does it worry us? No. There is some high side, but definitely manageable. That's the reason why, you know, we are also being able to hire more people and also open up new outlets that we're doing right now.
Got it. That's it from me. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you, Praful.
Thank you. To ask a question, ladies and gentlemen, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone now. We have next question from the line of Videesha Sheth with Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. I just wanted to know what could be the quantum of investment on the incremental acquisition that you're making in Toscano and the international business?
On Toscano business, we would invest approximately INR 7- INR 8 . In international business, we have a local partner. In international business, the local business has to be partly owned by the local partner. There's some rule change wherein the foreign entities are now allowed to own 100% of the business, and we're trying to work with our local, you know, entities to see whether we can own it fully. I think the outflow is going to be a little bit more on the value of something, but that still needs to be crystallized.
Okay. What would be the current margins that our delivery business is generating?
Sorry, which business?
The delivery business.
Vidisha, like I said, like the delivery business, you know, P&L, we don't make separately because it's all done from the same infrastructure, right? From the same outlets. Delivery business gross margin is slightly lower. The food costs, packaging costs, delivery commissions all put together, you know, we add up between 65%-70%. The balance cost is all actually fixed. For example, rental, employees, all of them are charged to a per unit approach, right? Not allocated differently. You know, our math is that the margins are pretty much similar, which is around 20%-22% on the delivery segment also. That doesn't change.
The large portion of the delivery costs are actually variable.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Videesha.
Thank you. We have next question from the line of Varun Pratap Singh with IDBI Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity, sir. Just wanted to check if we have taken any price hike during this quarter?
Yeah. We have taken around 4%-5% price hike in the current quarter, which was actually taken in the month of April and May. It's spread across the two months. Post that we've not taken any price hike. Sorry, when you say this quarter, you meant quarter one, right?
Yes. Correct.
Yeah. We mentioned about that in the previous call also, but post that we've not taken any price hike.
Okay. Sure. Sir, if you can give some color on the store that we have closed during the quarter.
We have closed one outlet in a tier two city, and then we also added one market in tier- two city. That's also a number 10. That outlet was doing low average sales in a month and was bleeding. We had mentioned in the past also with respect to these kind of market, and I think you know, historically, we have not closed outlets. You know, today the amount of bandwidth that it takes is just way too much, that's why we decided to just move out of that market and into a new adjacent market.
Right. Thanks, sir. Sir, this would be Barbeque Nation restaurant only, no?
Yes. Yes. It's Barbeque Nation.
Right. Sir, roughly how old this store would be, sir? I mean, one year, one that we have closed.
Yes. No, the one that we have closed would be around pre-COVID world. We opened up before COVID, and then there was, you know, COVID spike, and then post that now we feel like that it is, it's really just eating its bandwidth.
Sure. Okay, sir. That's it from my side. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Varun.
Thank you. A reminder to participants, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone now. We have next question from the line of Shrey Lunkad with Motilal Oswal AMC. Please go ahead. Mr. Shrey Lunkad, your line is unmuted. Please go and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, Rahul. Am I audible?
You are, sir. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, Vidisha.
Hi. Rahul, just if you can just throw some light on the cash flow conversion for the quarter, that would be just nice, please.
During the quarter we had cash profits of approximately INR 30 . I mean, there is a detail around 36 or so. Out of that INR 30 , we have done incremental CapEx of around INR 37 . INR 3 is the net increase in our cash balance. Our net cash at the end of last quarter was around INR 63 . Out of that INR 63 , around INR 85 were cash in books and INR 73 was net debt at that time. Today that net cash has gone up from INR 63 to INR 66-odd , so incremental INR 3 . On the CapEx side, INR 37 CapEx that we've done, we have spent around INR 3 on incremental CapEx and around INR 34 on new sites.
The new sites include around 11 lease terms and one renovation that we have done of the existing same site, but relocated the store. This CapEx would be around INR 12 . Overall, that's the broad cash flow, I think.
Sure. As we speak, how are the inflation trends on our COGS?
We are seeing some, you know, decline in some of these these prices. Also, like I said, this is a very weak quarter from the meat perspective, right? These prices are slightly better to us. We also are working with contracted vendors, so some of these contracts that we have long term on it, they have, we're really taking this into account, right? I'm not seeing any significant risk to our gross margin that we have reported in the current quarter and should continue maybe at this level.
Sure. Just one question that Dubai subsidiary we are trying to acquire 51%, for which you are saying the consideration is not yet frozen. As we speak, is it consolidated line by line or is it treated as an associate?
Yes, consolidated line by line.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your touch-tone phone now. As there are no further questions from the participants, I'd now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you all. Thanks for joining the call and answering your queries. We're always available. Thank you, Ambit team, for organizing this. Thank you.
Thank you very much, members of the management. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Ambit Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining with us, and you may now disconnect your lines.