Mr. Promeet Ghosh – Managing
Director and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Kaleeswaran Arunachalam – Chief Financial Officer
Ms. Shwetha Sagar – Chief Business
Officer – Butterfly Gandhimathi Appliances Limited Ms. Natasha Kedia – Head – Investor Relations Equirus Securities Good evening everyone. On behalf of Equirus Securities, I welcome you all to Quarter 2 of FY25 Result Conference Call of Crompton Greaves Consumer Ltd. We have Senior Management Team from Crompton represented by Mr. Promeet Ghosh, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Kaleeswaran Arunachalam CFO, Ms. Swetha Sagar, Chief Business Officer of Butterfly Gandhimathi Appliances Ltd. and Ms. Natasha Kedia, Head of Investor Relations. I will request management to start with their opening remarks and following which we can start with the Q&A as well. Thank you and over to you, sir. Mr. Promeet Ghosh Thanks. Thanks also to the people who are on the call for joining this earnings call. As you know, a short while ago, we announced our Q2 financials. I will make some preliminary remarks and then we can get to question answers. I am being joined, as you already know, by Kalees, Swetha and Natasha. I am pleased to share that we have been able to continue our growth trajectory, recording double-digit growth during this quarter for the 5th consecutive time. We clocked standalone revenues of Rs. 1,645 crores in Q2 FY25, a growth of 11%. In our ECD business, we witnessed robust growth overall with revenue growing at 13% YOY , to Rs. 1,393 crores this quarter. Our overall performance across categories has been broad-based with many of the businesses continuing to fire, with appliances and pumps taking the lead in what is otherwise a non-seasonal quarter. We have appliances growing at 26% YOY this quarter, followed by pumps, which is growing at 20% YOY . Our largest portfolio, fans also continued to grow at 5% this quarter. More about the details of all of these in a moment. I would like to also remind you that one of the key strategic initiatives that we had called out when we unveiled Crompton 2.0 was to put the lighting business back on a growth trajectory. Something that we have delivered over the last couple of quarters. We initially saw some green shoots through improved margins Quarter on Quarter, and now in Q2 we have a combination of both growth and margins strengthening. The lighting trajectory, as I said, has been strengthened and we have picked up pace in our revenue growth. It was 1% YOY in Q4 FY24, 2% YOY in Q1 FY25, and is now 6% YOY in Q2 FY25. This has led to us delivering industry- leading revenue growth, led by our B2C business, particularly our outdoor and accessories and non-conventional lighting products. Moving to the specifics. In fans as industry leaders, we continue to sustainably strengthen both our revenues as well as our profits in their growth trajectory. Over the last several quarters, not only have we grown faster than the market, but we have taken consistent pricing increases ahead of the competition. Particularly in this quarter, we have seen a consistent lag in pricing actions by the competition. We have remained steadfast in our own actions and will continue to leverage the considerable strengths of our business. As you can see, we are conscious about how we drive this business and view it holistically. For instance, you would have observed, how we have steadily built our premium offering through new launches, and how we are building our brand equity through aesthetics and style. This quarter, we introduced, albeit towards the later end of the quarter, new premium induction models such as Avancer Swirl, Santos, Aura2 – 4 Blade, which are already contributing to sales and we expect sales from NPD to materially improve going forward. Similarly, to scale our BLDC portfolio, we are working towards increasing our in-house manufacturing, so as to have more control on important aspects of the business as well as further enhance the quality of our products. This quarter in particular, our non-ceiling portfolio has also shown strong growth. In the fans industry, as we are frontrunners, we endeavor to lead the way through world-class green products. We are the first to receive the GreenPro certification in the consumer products category for ceiling fans. I should also highlight that our business is in the midst of various regulatory changes and we have planned ahead and completed in a timely manner the various BIS transitions in our fans business. In pumps, we witnessed robust growth across solar and residential pumps. In solar, we executed orders of Rs. 42 crores last quarter and as we speak, as Kaleesh reminded me just before I came in, we have crossed Rs. 100 crores of sales, perhaps a little bit more than Rs. 100 crores of sales, in solar and we have in that business a pretty strong pipeline as well. Despite some headwinds on account of weather disturbances and a delayed agricultural season, we continue to innovate and launch new products and further our premiumization agenda. In our appliance business, we saw again broad-based growth. High- off-take water heaters, room heaters and in particular air coolers, all of them, grew even though it was off-season and lean season, if you will, for air coolers. Mixer grinders have had a very solid run, supported by new launches in mass premium segment and further channel expansion. Perhaps during the Q&A, I'll talk a little bit more about how we now believe we have a leadership position in the mixer grinders business. Large kitchen appliances recorded a revenue of Rs. 19 crores and while the business is growing, it is also reducing the EBITDA losses which is showing as an indication that we are getting our arms around the business. I also want to highlight, like I said earlier, the performance in lighting. A segment that I have faced quite a few questions over the last several quarters from you. We are seeing consistent improvements in that segment and growth continues to pick up Quarter on Quarter. As I said earlier, this quarter we have now recorded a 6% growth. Now, especially if you factor the lack of conventional product sales, which was a part of the corresponding quarter last year, our revenue growth is industry leading. And while we have had good growth in the B2B segment, B2C has also now joined in the momentum. This growth that we are seeing is being particularly driven by non-conventional products. Revenue from ceiling and outdoor category have significantly improved post new product launches. In fact, now battens and bulbs, which accounted for a share of business in the previous quarter in close to about 70%, now account for about 50%, which should tell you how materially the business mix in our lighting business has evolved over the last several quarters. On the B2B side, the industrial segment is performing well. This quarter we executed a marquee project at Bengaluru’s satellite town ring road of the NHAI with high performance LED street lights. Our focus is on converting a strong order pipeline across categories and driving traction for new products. Additionally, we have seen a Quarter-on-Quarter improvement in EBIT margins. This is happening across the board in lighting, despite much higher A&P spends. But higher A&P spends are also a characteristic of the company overall. This quarter, our A&P spend stood at Rs. 58 crore, an increase of 69% over the previous quarter. We have in the past said that stepping up A&P spends to both bolster brand visibility and also help our visibility across various platforms and channels, we would be investing heavily in A&P and you can see that happen. Similarly, we are also focusing on innovations. This has led to two more patents being granted to us this quarter. Alongside this, we have launched 20 more products in Q2 with meaningful contribution in NPD coming into our sales. Our focus on alternate channels is generating results. Alternate channels grew 37% by YOY this quarter, increasing saliency to 21% of sales versus what was 18% in the same quarter last year. Here again, this is our fifth consecutive quarter of delivering Rs. 100 crore plus revenues from the e-commerce channel. We, in fact, delivered Rs. 200 crore+ revenues in the e-commerce channel this quarter. Our strong revenue performance is also reflecting in our bottom line. Our standalone material margins were 31.9% this quarter versus 30.1% in Q2 FY24. EBIT for the quarter is Rs. 160 crores, a growth of 18% YOY with an EBIT margin of 9.7%. A healthy improvement of 60 basis points despite, like I said, a 70% increase in A&P spends this quarter. This improvement is largely being driven by our ECD business, which had a margin of 14.8%. Our lighting segment EBIT margins also witnessed expansion to 10.7%. Put together, we witnessed a PAT growth of 30% this quarter on a standalone basis, significantly surpassing our peers. Now, a quick overview of our H1 performance. In H1, as you already know, our revenue growth rate has picked up pace. We generated revenues of Rs. 3,605 crores, growing at 15%. Similar growth and profits was also visible. EBIT grew to Rs. 362 crores, a growth of 26% YOY . EBIT margin for H1 was 10.1%, an expansion of 90 basis points, and PAT grew 34%. Moving on to Butterfly performance. Butterfly, as you know, we are on a trajectory of refreshing the business being led by Swetha, and we are well on that track. Butterfly generated revenue of Rs. 258 crores this quarter, with a strong sequential growth of 42%, helped ofcourse by the ongoing festive season. MOR and export channels are consistently delivering growth. We have successfully executed many pricing actions amidst heightened competitive intensity, which is showing up in the margin performance of the business. EBIT margins saw significant improvements sequentially with expansion of 380 basis points to 8.9%. You will remember last quarter also our margins improved materially over the previous quarter sequentially, and now they have further strengthened bolstering what we believe is the overall financial position of this company and its ability to compete in the market. This was primarily due to pricing actions, price laddering, stronger management of trade spends, process intervention, and reduction in operating costs. We are happy that our Crompton 2.0 strategy is aiding us to deliver consistently superior results with depth double digit revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter and strong EBIT margins. With this, we are exiting the second quarter of the financial year on a solid footing. We continue to expect consistent progress through the remainder of the year. Thank you for your patient listening and now we are open for Q&A. Equirus Securities Thank you Promeet sir, for the detailed presentation. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question can use the raise hand feature. I will request everyone to introduce yourself first along with the organization name and then go ahead with the question. We'll wait for a moment till the time question queue gets assembled. Mr. Promeet Ghosh Yeah, I mean just one more point for the benefit of the people who are on the call. The investor presentation, which got delayed for some reason, is also on our website. So, if you want to simultaneously access that, please feel free to do so. Equirus Securities First question is from the line of Kunal Sheth. Kunal, go ahead. Mr. Kunal Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations for a great set of numbers. Sir, my first question is pertaining to fans. You have mentioned that we have done well in fans including a margin improvement. I just wanted to check this margin improvement is driven by improvement in share of premium fans and if yes, what would be the share of premium fans currently in the overall portfolio? Mr. Promeet Ghosh The share of premium fans is at a similar level. This is an improvement that we've seen both at Gross as well as at EBIT margin levels at our fans business. As you are aware, we do believe in growing this business sustainably and we have taken regular price increases in the fans business. We have seen sometimes, particularly last quarter, that there was a significant lag in several competitors taking these prices increase. We don't really think these are sustainable but it's a mix of price increases, stepped up NPD, as well as premium. Mr. Kunal And sir, though you mentioned that a lot of competitors are delaying price hike, so is that because of any slackness in demand or it's just an aggressive pricing strategy that they are trying to follow? It's pretty difficult for us to comment what is the stand the competitor is taking on for their pricing strategy. From our perspective as a market leader, we want to drive the market to behave in a particular manner in terms of our portfolio and how we want to price it. Mr. Promeet Ghosh These situations come and go, so you got to be watchful. I can imagine that our peers have also been seeing us grow consistently with the kind of strategy, both on taking price increases as well as industry leading growth. So, sometimes that can have some reaction, but these kinds of stuff don't sustainably change the business. Mr. Kunal Sure. Sir, my second question is pertaining to pumps. We mentioned that we've grown 20% in the pump business. How much would have the market grown and would we have gained market share in the pumps business? Mr. Promeet Ghosh In each one of our businesses, there's the regular market growth and there are a few segments which are growing disproportionately, correct? Well ahead of what the market may be growing at. So, in our solar pumps business, as I said earlier, we did about Rs. 42 crores and we've already done more than Rs. 100 crores this year itself. Clearly, we are growing quite fast. In residential pumps business as well, I would imagine that we've probably gained market share in that business. So, yes is it a dramatic increase in market share? No, but yes, we would be incrementally gaining market share in our core business which is residential and growth is being driven by adding newer areas which is solar. Mr. Kunal Sure. Sir, and my last question is..