Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question is from the line of Mihir Shah from Nomura. Please go ahead.

Hi sir, congrats on a good set of numbers. First question is on paints. Wanted to just understand your view on how should one think about the growth from here on as you've already attained scale with respect to dealer reach and tinting machines, similar more to quite a few of the legacy players. So how much more growth, do you foresee coming from further penetration of dealer reach and increasing tinting machine reach or will the growth largely come from improving throughput? So that's my first question?

Thank you Mihir. We are very confident of growth and the first and foremost industry is likely to move from a single -digit growth to a double -digit growth in FY 27 while we observe the impact of raised prices and elasticity of demand, but the all trend shows that this is going to be a double-digit growth year. With this, as far as Opus is concerned, there is a lot of growth that is possible for us and we see growt h both in numerical distribution expansion and improved throughput. Let me cover the numerical distribution expansion. We are currently at presence on large and small towns to 11,500. We are anticipating to cross this to beyond 15,000 by the end of this financial year. And the second is even the existing towns, there is a lot of scope for us on overall basis because the total number of dealers in the ind ustry is excess of 1,00,000. But the largest component of growth will obviously come through throughput with the existing dealers having tasted success with one range of our category of products. For example, some of them have done emulsions and others hav e done enamel. With the confidence with the first range of product, they are likely to be able to expand to the entire range. I'll repeat we have emulsions, enamels, waterproofing, wood finish, distemper and for our franchise partners wallpapers and exclusive products. We also see expansion through expanding the retail networks. So we remain very confident that we achieved a triple-digit growth last year and we remain confident of a high double-digit growth. Sorry, Sachin I'm going to pass it on to you for incrementally on that.

Yes, so like Himanshu said, just to reinforce the fact that numerical expansion in across the market for dealers will continue to play an extremely important role, but like Himanshu said, expanding the product range will be critical to build the throughput per dealer.

So my second question is if you can talk a bit on the profitability front on the paint sector. You've highlighted in the PPT that there is improvement in performance of paints when you speak about building material segment, which was also led by paint on the EBITDA level. Is this largely due to getting scale or do you or given that now you've got some scale there is some reduction in rebates to dealers or there is any reduction in the discounting? How should one think about that? And one clarification, you had highlighted that 3 years after your full operation you would want to reach INR10,000 crores. So should we consider FY 26 as first full year of operation because it's only been two quarters since your sixth plant has commissioned? So FY28 would be the third year or FY29 you would be considering as a third year? So that was my second question?

So FY26 is what internally we're taking as our first full year of operation, even though the paints started or the sixth plant started in the third quarter of last financial year. So, we want to take stiffer target for ourselves, and we will take first full year operations of FY26. So, in the sequence of profitability, we want to again repeat in the order of our priority. Our order of priority is number one, we want to become the number two decorative paints operator in India. Second sequence of priority for us is 10,000 crore s and third sequence of priority is profitable. We've always used all the th ree words together, but we are not splitting them in the sequence that we would like to achieve. Having said that, where does the one profitability come from? Profitability for us, we have invested ahead of time on fixed cost and you can see that both in terms of largest number of sales and service force and second is ahead of time investment in brand s. These are both are in the fixed cost nature and as paints goes up, they will cover and give us the EBITDA benefit. The second profitability angle is to get better returns because of our variable cost and the variable cost will again come by us being able to A, get better rates as we our buying ability increases so we can negotiate better prices. So, and with the six plants coming in, optimization of our plants on power, optimization of our logistics cost, all of this will result in bringing down our variable cost. There is also some optimization on products as we've , as we introduced most of our products with a single s upplier, we are in the process of bringing in the second and the third supplier which gives as we bring in competition among raw material suppliers, we will also get both not only scale benefit, other level of cost benefits. So these are the routes for profitability, but as I mentioned, the sequence for us remains number one, number two position, then getting our revenue and finally achieving profitability.

Got it, sir. Very clear and thank you for your clear answers. Wishing you all the very best.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pathanjali Srinivasan from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.

Hello sir, congrats on a good set of numbers. I have couple of questions. So firstly in your early remarks you mentioned that we are within striking distance of becoming the number two player. I think last year the number two player in India did approximat ely 10,000 crores of sales. So how close are we when we say we are within striking distance? What is our range that we are mentioning here?

I'll clarify this. I'll read from the notes that I the presentation we made. Combined revenue of Birla Opus plus Birla White putty business, which is what is measured by all the paint majors, brings us nearly to the level of the existing number two excluding their industrial revenue. Okay, so when you quote a number, that number is annual number and that number includes industrial plus decorative. When we quote a number, we quote only the decorative part of the business which includes the putty side of the business. That is the statement that I made as a starting point, which is the current situatio n as far as quarter four of FY 26. Going forward, our ambition and stated ambition is on its own Birla Opus in the decorative paints business, only in the decorative paint business, not including the industrial paints business, would like to be number two. I hope it's clear. The numbers that are quoted, we have internal estimates, we do market research and we get firm confirmations of multiple sour ces and we are very confident that the numbers that we have are trending towards what we have quoted. I hope it's clear.

Thank you. Sir, that's very comforting. Yes sir, that's that provides a lot of clarity. My second question is related to something one of the previous participants asked. So with respect to throughput per dealer, where would we stand versus the industry benchmarking and what is the leeway that is there for growth there?

I'm going to give it to Sachin.

Right. So hi, this is Sachin here. When you look at dealers, dealers operate typically in a various scale of operation, whether it's a A-class, B-class, C-class, D-class dealer depending upon what kind of business they are doing. In each of these subsets, we have a fair market presence, and our throughput is in line with our fair market presence and consequently that gives us a fair bit of comfort that we are aligned to the industry throughputs in each of these dealer sets.

So just to add, so the obviously we are not the market leader, so the throughput is best for the market leader. They have in our assessment about between 20% to 25% additional dealers. It is the reason why they are such a strong market leader is the throughput that they get from their dealers because as Sachin mentioned, their proportion of A-category dealers’ business is A and B is significantly higher than our proportion there. In the case of number two, we have to focus on number one and number two as we are ourselves the number three, they have a different mix. They have a reverse pyramid that they have a larger proportion of A-category which constitutes their business and then disproportio n. Our business is far more democratized because we are more national presence as well as evenly distributed. That's why our effort is more to be able to through the root of distribution to expand throughput in each of the categories of business whether it is A, B, C and D far more than what we currently have. This is what I can give you at this point of time.

I get the strategic part of what you're saying, sir, but I just wanted to know a rough indexing in terms of because we have started some time back, I would not expect a recently started dealer to have a high throughput, but some of our earlier dealers have they reached fairly like a comparable throughput to some of the established players or are we still like further away from that? I'm just trying to understand if we'll get more growth from the existing distribution because we are still like relatively new in the market in terms of the number of dealers that we have over two-three-year period. If you can give me some colour on this that would be very helpful.

Sure. So like I was mentioning about the four different classes of dealers A, B, C, D, just to give you a rough index why each sub -segment has been growing robustly in line with our overall growth. Just to give you a perspective, from a range lens, the top dealer would be stocking almost two to two and a half times the bottom dealer, as well as if I were to look at throughput per dealer, it ranges between four to five times the bottom dealer. So obviously our strategy of focusing on the top dealers driving business from the top industry contributing dealers is also paying rich dividend basis our market go -to-market strategy of expanding the range availability in the large dealer sets.

Incrementally I'll just add for for your benefit so that you can absolutely clear, our older dealers who spent more than 18 months with us, our counter share is significantly higher as high as 25% to 50% in these outlets and their throughput matches with legacy paint operators. So their throughput as the dealer becomes older and his comfort with entire range of products is there, he is tending to achieve the similar throughput as a legacy dealer is , if that's the question that's the answer that you're looking for.

The next question is from the line of Siddharth Mehrotra from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.

Congratulations on the good set of numbers and thank you for the opportunity. Sir, continuing on the previous participant's query, we noticed that out of the sizable dividend of around 4,000 odd crores, we are going to invest roughly 2,900 odd crores in ou r NBFC business. So just wanted to understand given the fact that previously we used to distribute it to our shareholders, what will be the capital allocation strategy going ahead?

So I don't know what's the term of capital allocation, just from a cash flow perspective you can do your math with straightforward net of tax that are we receiving from our subsidiary in the cement. We would prefer to allocate that fund to A, dividend to our existing shareholders as well as increasing maintaining our stake in Aditya Birla Capital. The entire revenues and EBITDA generated from Grasim will be reinvested in growth of Grasim businesses. I hope that's clear.

So just to sort of clarify, sir, on this, whenever we need to increase our stake, sorry, maintain our stake, that is the only time when we will be sort of using the dividends, otherwise they will be all distributed to our shareholders?

No, no, we are not talking of a long-term policy. I am giving you the current allocation of fund. We at this point of time Grasim, we have maintained for the last three years, Grasim has maintained that we are in a growth business, we have introduced two n ew growth businesses, and we have to stabilize these two new growth businesses and Grasim needs its support around there. So we will we are supporting the new businesses by reinvesting the surplus that is getting generated from the core businesses, as well as now the as far as this year is concerned, we have allocated the cash that we've received to be able to expand or to be able to maintain our stake in Aditya Birla Capital.

Got it, sir. So basically for other sort of growth businesses, we'll be sort of using internal accruals, this is a one-off measure. Is that understanding correct?

Yes, yes, this is a one-off measure. Yes, yes, absolutely.

Got it, sir. Got it. May I just ask a follow -up? What is our since we are past our peak capex phase, what sort of capex guidance should we sort of build in for the respective divisions now?

Capex guidance for 2027 we will be able to share you next quarter. We are just working on it, give us some time.

Okay, sir. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prateek Kumar from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Yes, good evening sir, congrats for good results. My first question is on the new businesses. Can you just, I mean while you have talked about it, but can you just tell add again on profitability path for paints and Pivot business as company starts moving towards revenue target individually for these segments in terms of profitability and when can we look forward to get separate disclosures for these segments?

We will start with B2B.

Okay, hi Prateek, this is Sandeep here. I'll give you a little bit of background on the profitability path that Birla Pivot is on. We had mentioned this as part of our results in Q3 as well. We've been steadily of course our growth momentum has already been shared in the opening comments. You can see that we've been, you know, our growth momentum was far ahead of the guidance that we have given. On the profitability front, even our margin and the EBITDA direction has also been very, ver y positive. Our goal for this financial year FY27 is to exit with EBITDA break-even and we are well ahead, well on that path. It might actually happen a little sooner as well, but fairly confident that we will exit this financial year with EBITDA break-even. And the priorities remain very, very clear that we will continue to drive the revenue growth trajectory, we'll deepen our presence in the categories, but at the same time, we will exit this financial year with EBITDA break-even.

On the Paints profitability, if you there are two parts to the profitability, one is contribution and second is EBITDA. Now, we had a significant improvement in both gross and net contribution in quarter four and we expect to maintain that momentum going forward. As regards investment that we're doing, we have a fixed cost which is now currently in a position to for a much higher market share because we are investing in manpower on a PAN -India basis, both sales and service, as well as investing in brand so that we are ready for tomorrow. So as the contribution improves and scale improves, the EBITDA losses have a glide path on a quarter-on-quarter and a year-on-year basis till we reach the INR10,000 crores. And the glide path has already started. As regard final reporting, we should start that shortly.

Sure, thank you. And another question on capital allocation again. I know you talked about investing in AB Capital, but how about like within your organic business? So, you obviously incubated two new businesses a few years earlier. Do you also evaluate in vesting in new businesses which can further add to your organic businesses in next few years?

So, we have already announced expansion of our cellulosic fiber business where at Harihar we are adding capacity of Lyocell of 110,000 tons per annum. First phase is already on progress and second phase we will announce. That is the capex plan right now we are implementing , and further capex plan as we get approval in terms of capacity expansion, we will share with you.

Just one-line answer on this is as of now, we have enough on our plate. We want to stabilize our cash flows before we look at any further. So, there is no further business to be disclosed at this stage.

Sorry to interrupt, may we request Mr. Kumar to please rejoin the queue. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Purohit from Elara. Please go ahead.

Yes. So just two things. One, wanted to understand you talked about two drivers for growth, one was distribution expansion, second is throughput increase. And within that you highlighted that new product launches will also become a very important part in term s of. So just wanted to understand are we under -indexed in terms of product offerings when you compare it with the number one, number two? That was first question. Second, is you indicated the targets remain same despite raw material prices increase and all. Is there any plans of some of the schemes and all are we re-looking that while you clearly highlighted that 10% scheme still continues, but just wanted to check if there is any business plan change that probably could be there or you may look at it maybe after a quarter or so. How do I think about it?

So, Amit, Sachin here. Thank you very much for your question. As far as product range is concerned, like Himanshu mentioned earlier, we have a full stack of products which have already gone into the market. In fact, in our franchise stores we have a large set of exclusive products also which has been launched in the market and today we can confidently say that a dealer can be extremely satisfied and continue to run and scale up his business with the Birla Opus range of products. Like-for-like we are at even better than with respect to competition. While we will continue to identify white spaces and continue to add more products in the future, but as things stands right now, we are full stack up. With respect to your second question on pricing and, you know, strategy in the market, while Himanshu ve ry categorically laid down the glide path of first priority being the number two player in the decorative paints industry. Second achieving the INR10,000 crores turnover and the third being profitability, our entire endeavor will continue to ensure that we are competitively poised in the market to ensure the priorities are achieved. So, if there is a need for being, you know, so then we will continue to act accordingly in the market.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Gupta from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi, thank you for taking my question. So, two questions. First, now as you scale up both Pivot and Opus, you will see benefits of operating leverage kicking in over the next two years. Now if I see your implied profitability numbers, you have been clocki ng three billion pre -tax losses every quarter for the last few quarters. Is it fair to say that this will come down materially through the year or is there a case that it may remain sticky for longer? So that's my first question.

Yes, it will come down.

Got it. My second question is now that sorry for harping it again, you have not guided on the longer-term capital allocation strategy, but given UltraTech and Aditya Birla Capital are the two subsidiaries where your shareholding is more than 50%, is it fair to say even on the longer-term perspective you'd want to maintain your 50% plus shareholding in both these businesses?

At this point of time the answer is yes.

Got it. Thank you and wish you all the best.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Naman Par mar from Niveshaay Investments. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much for the opportunity and congratulations on great set of numbers. My question is specifically towards your other business segment, specifically mentioning towards the Insulator division. So currently if we see on that division there is a v ery big shortages on the transmission lines and all. So how are we planning towards the adding the capacity on the insulator division and if you can break us how was the overall sales in the insulator division in the current year and the capacity utilization?

You're absolutely right that the electrical segment is growing very well and there is a big order backlog versus what the market is demanding. And while we post this through others, you can imagine underlying our set of growth and numbers on insulator has been good and will continue to remain good for some time. Our insulator business is divided in three parts, so we have a porcelain business. We are actually one of the world's largest insulator players and we are probably the world's only insulator player that operates in porcelain, polymer long rods and polymer hollow composites. As far as the porcelain business goes, we will only do productivity initiatives. We have no plans to increase our base capacity. As far as polymer long rod goes, we have recently done some capacity expansion, those are sold out and we are looking at further investing our increasing the capacity in our hollow composite business. So, we are quite bullish on the on the segment, but it's not like we are planning to suddenly double or triple our capacity. Our aim is mostly to gain operational efficiencies out of our existing assets and do incremental investments in polymer long rods and polymer hollow composites.

So currently we have a capacity of 50,000 ton s, right, in insulator and you are expecting to remain at similar level, but you will be thinking more adding on the composite or the polymer which given the market is been shifting from porcelain to composite and so you will be thinking more on that?

You can't, I'm sorry you can't think of these capacities in terms of ton. Depending upon the size of the insulator, the number can change. If you have if you have studied this process, if you make a larger insulator it takes a larger cycle time, right? If you make a smaller insulator, it makes a smaller cycle time and we supply this to EPC contractors. So, we supply against orders. It's not like our caustic business or our epoxy business where we are producing in tons. We do it by number of insulator and we do it make to order for very specific projects for very specific customers.

Understood. Lastly if you can provide the sales number for the insulator for the FY26, it will be very helpful and also the EBITDA.

I think we have stopped disclosing this several couple of years ago. It's part of our others, I don't think it's our intent to disclose it right now.

Okay. Yes, thank you so much for answering the question.

On behalf of Grasim Industries, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.