godrej consumer products - aceanalyser.com call/132424_20140203.pdffy14 results conference call....
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Godrej Consumer Products Q3 2014 Earnings Call 3 Feb’14
Operator Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Godrej Consumer Products Limited Q3 FY14 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Deutsche Equities. As a reminder, all participants' line will be in a listen‐only mode. And there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today's presentation. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Manoj Menon of Deutsche Equities. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Manoj Menon, Analyst Hi. Good morning, everyone. This is Manoj and Gaurav consumer analysts from Deutsche Equities hosting the Godrej Consumer 3Q FY14 results conference call. It's our privilege to host the Godrej management today to interact with you on the results. Just quickly, we have a buy rating on the stock and we were quite pleased to find that the company has outperformed the market growth in all the key businesses in the quarter, so that's quite a pleasing result. Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you, Manoj and good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you to the Godrej Consumer Products conference call to discuss the performance for the third quarter of the financial year '13 results [ph]. Joining me are Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director; Nisa Godrej, Executive Director; Shashank Sinha, President, International Operations; Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development; P. Ganesh, Executive Vice President of Finance, Commercial and Company Secretary and Sameer Shah, Associate Vice President Finance and Investor Relations.
We continue to do reasonably well in our challenging environment. During the last quarter, we delivered consolidated sales growth of 18% that is far ahead of both the overall FMCG industry growth and the growth of the home and personal care categories.
We have been consistently gaining share and strengthening our market positions. Our India branded sales grew by 14%. This is almost three times the growth of the household and personal care sector during the quarter. While it is difficult to give a precised estimate of volume growth given the nature of our categories, we believe that about 10% of our growth in the quarter was volume driven. At 24% constant currency growth, our international portfolio also continued to do well in the quarter.
Our consolidated EBITDA growth of 12% was reasonably healthy given the uncertain macro environment and cost pressures in some of the geographies we operated. The India business delivered EBITDA growth of 15%, which was higher than the sales growth. The EBITDA growth in our international business was 7%, which is well below our expectations.
EBITDA growth lacked sales growth due to continued cost pressures in Indonesia and down trading in hair extensions in our Africa business. EBITDA growth in our Latin America and Europe businesses well ahead of our sales growth.
Along with driving strong sales growth, we are continuing to invest in building a sustainable platform for the future. Over the last few quarters, we launched several exciting innovations along with significant renovations in our portfolio. We continue to back these innovations with strong marketing investments.
This quarter, our A&P expense grew by 24% year‐over‐year at consolidated level. The response to our innovation has been very encouraging and the performance is significantly ahead of our plans. Our gross margins continue to remain healthy at 53.3% despite significant cost pressures, due to wage and fuel price hikes in certain geographies and the adverse impact of currency depreciation in some geographies.
Gross margins in our India business were lower by 70 basis points year‐over‐year due to higher input costs resulting from rupee depreciation.
I will now recap our six key business imperative and access how we have performed on these priorities during the quarter. After this, I will discuss the highlights of our financial performance during the quarter. We will then be happy to answer your question.
One of our most important imperatives is to sustain leading positions in the three core categories that we participated, Home Care, Personal Wash and Hair Care in India. Across these categories, our focus is in on growing ahead of the market, driving
consumption and penetration and strengthening our portfolio.
If you look at our India business across categories, we have significantly outperformed the reported category growth rates. Our household insecticide business grew by 8%, well ahead of category growth. Overall, this was a weak quarter for the Household Insecticide's category. Our recent innovation in the category Fast Card provides instant relief from mosquitoes and is very easy to use. Fast Card will help create new occasions for consumers, recruit new consumers to the HI category and drive penetration especially in rural India.
The initial feedback on Fast Card has been extremely positive. Our other innovation this year hit HIT Anti Roach Gel is also doing well, delivering ahead of expectations. The soaps category had a challenging quarter. However, even in this difficult environment, we delivered 6% volume growth for the quarter, which was much better than the category growth, which witnessed, in fact a degrowth.
Our value growth was also at 6%. We continue to be the second largest toilet soaps player in the country. With a recent rupee depreciation and the resultant increase in palm oil prices, we have initiated some price hikes in our soap portfolio from the month of January.
In the hair colorant category, we continue to be market leader. We grew by 37% during the quarter, far ahead of the category. We are driving several initiatives to drive penetration as well as consumption in the category. We continue to make good progress on air, our Air Freshener brand. Last quarter, we introduced a new format to provide consistent fragrance through a spill proof gel technology.
This new product has further enhanced the user experience and have received very good feedback from consumer. The second pillar of our strategy is to drive growth in our international business, guided by our three by three strategy of focusing on three core categories and in emerging geographies in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Our biggest international business, Megasari in Indonesia, continues to grow at a healthy pace of 18% in constant currency terms aided by the success of new launches and distribution expansion. Megasari continues to strengthen its position as the market leader for urban household insecticide and hair care [ph] in the Indonesian market. EBITDA margin of 16%, which is before payment of technical and business support fee and the distribution arrangement of the divested foods business was impacted by a 60% increase in minimum wages, 45% increase in LPG and 33% hike in fuel prices.
Calibrated price hikes have been taken and we expect margins to mobilize gradually. Our African operation, which comprised Rapidol, Kinky and Darling made steady progress during the quarter and grew by 21% in constant currency terms. Revenues stood at INR291 crore, EBITDA margin was at 18% and moved up 400 basis points on a sequential basis.
Business momentum in Nigeria and Kenya was healthy. However, lower consumer confidence in South Africa resulted in down trading impacting both sales and EBITDA growth in our South Africa base businesses. The overall Darling business integration plan is on track and we are working towards increasing our overall stake in the business through the addition of new geography as well as increasing our stake in existing geography.
Our Latin American operation, which comprised Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, continued to show improvements during the quarter. Revenues stood at INR168 crore with a growth of 15% in constant currency term. EBITDA margin moved up further to 9%, up by 80 basis points on a year‐over‐year basis. In Argentina, Issue and 919 continue to strengthen market share in hair colors. In Chile, Illicit became the market leader in hair color by both volume and value.
Our Europe business more than doubled recording of constant currency growth of 107% lead by strong growth in both the organic business and the acquired the Soft & Gentle brand. EBITDA margins of the business were around 6%, improving by 170 basis points year‐on‐year. Soft & Gentle was relaunched during the quarter with new packaging and refreshed Imagery [ph] for silver range continues to deliver excellent growth rate and is now the second fastest growing brand among the top 22 shampoo brands in the UK. Our third strategic fill up is to accelerate the pace of innovation and to strengthen our brand portfolio.
The last few quarters have seen many innovations and new launches across categories and across geographies. We launched Aer air fresheners, Godrej Expert Rich Creme hair colors, HIT Anti Roach Gel, refreshed Cinthol and very recently launched Good Knight Fast Card in India.
We have also launched new packaging for Nupur in January this year. We also refreshed Stella air fresheners in Indonesia and Soft & Gentle range in the UK. The initial response to these launches has been extremely encouraging and we are beginning to see strong traction in sales from these lunches. In India, nearly one‐third of the incremental sales growth for the first nine months of financial year '14 was driven by new launches of the last few quarters.
We will continue to launch innovation based products including a major one just tomorrow. We have been making upfront marketing investments to ensure that we adequately support our new launches, nearly three‐fourths of their increase in advertising and publicity spend in the first nine months of financial year '14 was targeted towards our new launches. We believe that we will reach the benefits of this upfront spend as the new launches continue to gain scale.
One of our other key imperatives is to create a future ready sales organization for the India business. We have launched Project Daksh to improve the productivity of our sales force and to enhance go‐to‐market efficiencies in our urban markets. We recently completed roll out of hand‐held terminals to all of our direct sales representatives in Asia.
We continue to grow strongly in rural. Our rural growth in the quarter was 22%. Our fifth pillar is to create a global best‐in‐class supply chain. We have taken strong steps in this area by establishing centers of excellence in TPM, lean, six sigma and low cost automation. We have also set up a strategic sourcing team to leverage scale and reduce our procurement costs.
Our gross margin performance, especially in our Indian subcontinent business is well supported by ongoing cost saving initiatives. Through Project ICON, ICON standing for Improving Contribution, we are putting additional focus on efficiency improvement and margin enhancement.
We have also invested significantly to improve the quality and timeliness of information for rapid decision‐making. In fact, in our supply chain, we can now ensure 99% stock availability for our major SKUs. We also commissioned a new manufacturing plant in Guwahati in November to cater to higher demand for some of our new products.
Finally, we continue to execute several initiatives to foster an agile and high performance culture in the organization. Recently, GCPL was recognized among the 17 best employers in India in 2013 by Aon Hewitt. GCPL is one of the only two FMCG companies on the list this year. Earlier, GCPL was also ranked as the number one FMCG company to work for in India by the Great Place to Work institute. GCPL has feature in the list of best companies to work 10 years in a row.
Our rankings in these HR surveys reinforce our commitment to creating an outstanding workplace that attracts and retains talented employees and delivers superior value to our consumer. Four of our brands are also ranked in the 100 most trusted banks in 2013 by Brand Equity. Good knight was ranked the number one brand in household care. HIT ranked eighth in household care. In personal care, Cinthol ranked at number 11, Godrej No. 1 and Godrej Expert Powder Hair Colour too ranked at number 14 and number 23 respectively in the personal care category. I will now cover the highlights of our financial performance this quarter.
For the quarter ended December 31, 2013, our consolidated net sales stood at INR1,979 crore with a growth of 18%, excluding the impact of the distribution arrangement for the divested food business in Indonesia. EBITDA margins were around 16%, excluding the impact of the distribution arrangement for the divested food business in Indonesia.
Earnings per share, non‐annualized stood at INR5.75 for the quarter. The Board of Directors has declared third interim dividend of 100%, which translates to INR1.00 per share. Our net branded sales in India grew by 14% with significant outperformance across all our core category. Our EBITDA growth was at 15%. EBITDA margins stood at 18.5%, up by 20 basis points. EBITDA margin stood at around 13% plus, excluding the impact of the distribution arrangement for the divested food business in Indonesia. In these uncertain times, our team has been very dynamic in its approach. Our top line growth is better than most players in the industry. We have also delivered net profit growth that disclosed to our top line growth. We continue to make the right investments for the longer term while managing our business more prudently in the short term.
We remain watchful, agile and prudent. We have launched several operational excellence initiatives to further enhance our operational performance. Uncertainties, however, also present opportunities to propel forward. We will continue investing judiciously for the longer term to improve our position, create competitive advantage and emerge stronger than ever before.
I am confident that with our clear strategic focus, our superior execution and our top notch team, we will continue to deliver industry‐leading results in to the future. I now conclude my opening remarks on the quarter's performance and open the floor for questions.
Questions And Answers
Operator Thank you very much, sir. We have the first question from the line of Abneesh Roy from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Abneesh Roy, Analyst
Sir, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, in hair colour, you've done very good, very strong numbers on an elevated base, so any one‐off in this and is it possible to say what percentage of growth came from volumes?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Well, I think, good part of growth has come behind Expert Creme, which is doing quite well and which is also now in the base for us. Add to that also powder's portfolio, especially the advanced is doing pretty well for us. Well, it's a difficult category to give value volume growth. But we would say half of the growth would be volumes led and half of the growth would be price plus Expert Rich Creme led.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board So volume growth would be more than half because Expert Creme also increases our total volume. It is very difficult to compare volume of one type of hair color with the volume of other type of hair color.
Abneesh Roy, Analyst Sir, going forward, a follow‐up on this, the base is becoming higher than 25% in the coming quarters, and in terms of competition, if you see, Marico has just launched hair color and one more local player has also come out with a INR30 product. So, how you are seeing the growth in the coming quarters in the light of the higher base and maybe a bit of higher competition?
Nisaba Adi Godrej, Executive Director So, I think we see very positive growth going ahead, especially with Expert Rich Creme, it's been a big hit with consumers and led through members that hair color has always been very, very competitive, so having Marico come in or someone else launching a Creme doesn't really change this market dynamics too much according us, it's always been a very competitive category.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Abneesh, if you look at again penetration rates and consumption rates, there's still significant headroom for growth. And I think, given the superiority of our product and the high quality of our product, we feel extremely confident that we will be able to sustain good growth going forward as well.
Abneesh Roy, Analyst Sir, my second and last question is on the HI business in India, you've seen one another player who had much smaller base, report a bit growth, so what gives us the confidence that the growth might revise in Q4, which is say, a key quarter for the business because the deficit in the monsoon will be, in my view, a bit more prolonged, if the monsoon has not been there, it will be a two, three quarter impact. So, if you could give us some more clarity on why you expect growth to recover in HI?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, I don't agree with your analysis about the monsoon. In this quarter, the northeast monsoon in the south being very poor, mosquito infestation was lower. Secondly, in the east, the southwest monsoon was lowest, so therefore, again, it effected in mosquito infestation. Then, in this quarter, we are comparing with the base where the growth was very strong in the third quarter of the previous year. Now, you must not compare our growth, which is against an extremely strong quarter of the previous year with that of someone else whose quarter in the previous year might have been very weak. So, we have provided very strong growth on a strong base.
In a category that has declined, we have grown by 8%. So, our share has gone up very considerably across the country in all the four regions and in all variance of household insecticide. So, I think once the season changes in the fourth quarter, fourth is always the strongest quarter for household insecticides, and once the season changes, once the effects of the winter in the North wear off and once the temperatures is in the south rise and in the east rise, household insecticides consumption should go up.
So, we expect to have a stronger growth in quarter four, much stronger growth in quarter four than in quarter three. Vivek, you want to add anything.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director No, I think it's, you know, the seasonal dynamics, Abneesh, are very different in Q4 versus Q3 and as Mr. Godrej said, as the temperatures increase across the country, you will see Q4 performance being better than Q3. And as Mr. Godrej also said, apart from the seasonal challenges, Q3 last year was an abnormally high growth period for us. So, we have the challenge of both seasonal issues along with a very high base.
Abneesh Roy, Analyst Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board These two products will definitely change the growth factor in household insecticides as your rightly put it happened with Creme in sachets in hair color. We expect them to contribute tremendously. In fact, we would have grown at a higher level if we could have supplied all the Fast Card there was demand for.
We did run short because the actual sales were much higher than our original estimate. We have taken steps to put a new manufacturing capacity and I expect this will certainly help us grow faster in household insecticide and help increase penetration in household insecticide over the next few years.
We are also launching other very strong innovative products in household insecticides over the next few months.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Abneesh, again, you know, to your point, while the base may be high, one has to remember that if you look at penetration rates, particularly in rural India, penetration of insecticides is only 28% in rural India versus for urban it's 77%.
So, if you look at penetration, particularly in rural, there's still a massive opportunity for future growth. Second of all, if you look at consumption, even in urban India, consumption for household for insecticides still trays other tropical countries like China or Indonesia and other parts of the world.
So as we look forward, both in terms of consumption and penetration, there is still significant opportunities for growth in this category going forward.
Abneesh Roy, Analyst Sir, very helpful. I'll come back if I have more. Thanks for this.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Percy Panthaki from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Hi, sir. Congrats on a good set of numbers.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Sir, my first question is on the international business. This year, we've had margin declines in large parts of our business, so FY15 on this lower base, would EBITDA margins in most of the geographies expand or do you think they would just maintain at this level and what could be the drivers in either case? Can you throw some light on that, please?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board It's very difficult to tell about margins, but generally, I expect them to expand because the average growth in our markets outside of India rated by population is running, is expected to be 5.6% GDP growth in 2014. So we think there will be ‐‐ and remember this, average growth improves the UK, which has a very lower growth rate. So we do expect better performance, the global economy is improving and we feel as the negative effect of paper on both emerging currencies and emerging growth rates fades away, I think we do expect better results. And as you rightly put it, for the next year, the base would be a lower one than it was for this year.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director And I think Percy, you know, to your point, I think the challenge frankly had been much more driven by Indonesia than anything else, because if you look at it sequentially, at least, whether it's Africa, Latin America or Europe, in all of those geographies, actually our margins improved sequentially. I think in Indonesia we've just had a very unusual increase across the board in cost, whether it's wages, whether it's fuel, whether it's electricity compounded by a significant devaluation of the currency.
So we are taking some actions, we have taken some calibrated price increases. We are trying to reduce some of our costs and we are hoping that those margins will normalize over time, but I think the international margin erosion, frankly, has been much more by Indonesia, rest of the portfolio, I think we've seen margin improvements.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst But what about Africa, I mean, it may not be correct to compare on a sequential basis because Q3 is always a higher margin quarter for Africa, but on a Y‐o‐Y basis, even Africa is lower than last year. So, what are the challenges you are facing there and why are we seeing this margin compression?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board See, the South African economy is not doing well.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Yeah.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Growth ‐‐ GDP growth rate is around 2% to 3%. And there is down trading in South Africa, there's lot of pressures on consumers in South Africa. And that does affect margins because people are consuming lower price SKUs, which tend to have lower margins. But, again, you know, at 18% margin for Africa, I think that's a very healthy margin. I think, Omar, do you want to add to that?
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development Yeah, I think two points, I think the first one is that in this quarter, you did see a strong impact from the devaluation of forex [ph], so that is a factor with respect to this quarter. And combined with the much lower consumer sentiment, which is expected to improve after the upcoming election in South Africa, that should see some bit of a recovery. But in an ongoing normalized, and I think we are pretty close to normalized margin for Africa.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Right, sir. Sir, my second question is more general and broader question. I mean, definitely you need to be given credit for investing in new nascent categories and sort of succeeding in most of those investments, but as the economic climate changes and there are challenges on sales growth, would you shift your focus more towards cost controls so as to able to deliver bottom line growth, which is healthy and in line with what people are expecting, you have increased ad spends by about 500 basis points, 600 basis points over the last two, three years. Your consol EBITDA margins have consequently dipped by about 400 basis points, 500 basis points. So, is there any reversal of this trend that we can expect, and if so, what would be the timelines for that?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director No, I think Percy, this is the balance. I think we are very clear that we will continue to look for cost reduction and even this year, we have launched several initiatives to guide almost 100 crores and savings in cost. So, I think operational efficiencies, operational improvements, through relentless execution is critical. At the same time, we feel like we have a very exciting pipeline of innovations. And so in a calibrated manner, we will continue to launch new products, but in certain cases, if necessary, we'll morbid a A&P, sequence our product launches better, but I think we are quite clear that we will continue investing for the longer‐term to be able to deliver results, both in the near‐term and the longer term.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Whereas accounting‐wise, any investment in a new innovation and/or in additional advertising, clearly is a cost. We internally look upon that as an investment in to the future. And so, we feel that really our margin for advertising is the right one to compare because the rest is all in to investment for the future. And in the past, these initiatives by us have paid strong dividend. So, we may continue to do some of them.
And clearly, cost saving is a very, very important endeavor whether in good times or bad and we continue to strongly focus on cost savings, particularly in manufacturing and in sales.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director And I think Percy, and as a general principle, we still want our profit growth to be in line with sales growth, clearly in India, that's been happening as our innovations have gained scale. It did not happen, I think, in the international business largely because of the very unusual cost pressures that we faced in Indonesia. But as a guiding principle over the next one or two years, we definitely want to manage the business where our profit growth will be in line with sales growth if not a few points higher. The other thing I'd like to emphasize that since our inorganic growth is higher than most of our competitors, it is by its nature, going to lead to a bottom line growth, which maybe little slower than the top line growth because when we state our profits, the interest cost of the acquisitions are deducted before we state the process.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Right, sir. And if I may, one last question on household insecticides, the decline in the industry growth rates and your growth rates that you've seen in this quarter, of course, there is the monsoon issue, which has contributed. But apart from that, is there any other reason, general slowdown or anything else that you can think of why your and the industry growth rates have come down?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think Percy, if you look at it on a year‐to‐date basis, if you look at a nine‐month growth, it's been 19%. If you look at our Brand Equity and all our share positions, we have gained share in every single region, in every single format. So, as I look at the underlying numbers, I think they still remain very strong. I think a lot of this was the regional aberration. Occasionally, Q3 has ‐‐ we have seen this kind of challenge in the past as well. And I'm hoping that Q4 would be much better than Q3.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst So, are you seeing some recovery in January on that?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yes. We expect to have a much better growth in the January, March quarter. And in household insecticides, that's a business, which is both seasonally, there is a lot, and annually, there is a lot depending on the weather condition because the weather conditions strongly affect mosquito infestation, which effects consumption. So, we have seen this in the past and it quickly recovers because that seasonality effect goes away in the following quarters.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director
Percy, just to add to that, if we look at all India growth stripping out two three states, which were affected by this weaker monsoon impact, the growth was very strong in mid‐teens for us. So, it's not an issue at category level, as of now, we don't see something structurally going wrong in the category.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Right, sir. Thanks and all the best.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Sure, thank you. Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Nillai Shah from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Nillai Shah, Analyst Thank you. My first question, sir is on the domestic business. Your high margin businesses are growing faster than your lower margin businesses. Yet your gross profit margins have compressed for this quarter. So, is it all to do with the palm derivative prices for this quarter or just is this something else in terms of product mix et cetera?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Nillai, there are couple of factors leading to squeeze in gross margins in India business to begin with. First is, there were few consumer offers in form of price offs, especially in household insecticides. This is more of a tactical strategy to the growth in the quarter, that led to little bit of squeeze in the margins and add to that a bit of rupee appreciation, which had impact more so on packaging front across all the three categories resulted in squeeze in margins. In case of soaps, in fact, our Y‐o‐Y margins are marginally better as compared to what we had in the base.
Nillai Shah, Analyst So, have those first two factors been corrected going into this new quarter?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah. So, in soaps, we have taken some price increases effective January this quarter.
Nillai Shah, Analyst Okay. And second question is basically on this $150 million of guarantees, loans et cetera, which you are picking up for the internal business I believe. Can you throw some light on that?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Sorry, can you repeat your question?
Nillai Shah, Analyst The $150 million limit enhancement, which you are talking about with your shareholder, there is a postal ballot?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so let me explain this. We have loans taken in our offshore subsidiaries for funding the acquisitions. And for the repayment obligation, a good part of the India cash flows are utilized for funding the repayment, again, because partly, the new acquisitions are in a growth phase and also they are not generating enough profit at this point in time because the loans get repaid
over the three to four year time frame and that for the repayment is actual rate. New Companies Act proposes that shareholder approval will be required for that. While the sections are not yet notified, as a proactive measure, we are taking shareholder approval upfront so that as and when the sections get notified and become lost, we are already in a state of compliance.
So this is actually a proactive measure, it's a business as usual, it's the changes associated by the change in the company side.
Nillai Shah, Analyst Sure. So this is just basically repayments of loans and not fresh loans?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, these are not fresh loans. These are repayment of loans which should be funded from the India.
Nillai Shah, Analyst Okay, fine. And as a follow on to that question, we had discussed about the ROCs in the international business, so any form of return ratios, as you all would be measuring it, could you give me some direction as to where the last two or three years, how the ROC ratios have improved in the international business?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board So, directionally the ROCs have improved in our businesses, especially the ones we have been holding for about three years or more currently and through a combination of a couple of factors, one is, margin improvement, initiatives in each of the businesses and as well as through other initiatives like working capital control.
So, the focus has been on the P&L front through margin improvement initiatives and also on the balance sheet by way of optimizing working capital. Also what happens is ‐‐
Nillai Shah, Analyst (Technical Difficulty) Indonesia for instance?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah. Indonesia business also definitely is higher and if you compare it with the foreign at point in time, we had made that position. Gross margins themselves have improved by at least 200 basis points since acquisition.
Nillai Shah, Analyst And return ratios out there? Similar quantum?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Well, I think Nillai, over a period of three or four years, just in case of Indonesia, our ROCs have improved. Also, if you look at operating company's ROCs, they are very strong. Roughly, they would range anywhere between 50% to 75% across all our international businesses.
Now few initiatives, which we are working on, one is of course to improve the EBITDA margins of each of these businesses and the second one is the working capital which is quite evident from the number of days of working capital, I mean, the kind of reduction, which you have seen on that front in last two to three years, also driven by initiatives in international business.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Just to add Nillai, again, the return on capital employed starts on a low base for the any acquisition largely because of the acquisition
cost. As scale of the business grows up, automatically the return ratios also start improving, that's the other fact, which helps.
Nillai Shah, Analyst Sure. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Thank you.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Hardik Shah from Birla Sun Life Insurance. Please go ahead.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Hello, sir.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Hello.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Yeah, sir, I'd like to ask you about your repayment obligations for the next year?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Hardik Shah, Analyst Over the next three years?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Okay. And, sir any planned CapEx in the next year?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director So, we'll largely have maintenance CapEx and this would be more or less in line with our annual depreciation.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board CapEx is not a big factor in our business.
Hardik Shah, Analyst
Right, sir. And could you give me the gross debt position as on date?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Total debt we have in the books in the range of about $300 million.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Right, sir. And, sir if you have just look at your sales mix from various geographies, do you have a break up available as in?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board If you look at overall business, international is little less than half of it. And within international Indonesia, would be around 40% followed by Africa, which should be around 25%, 30%, then followed by UK and then Latin.
That would be the share of revenues coming in from international businesses.
Hardik Shah, Analyst And India?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board 52%.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director 52% would be ‐‐
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board 52% of India and ‐‐
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board 52% would be ‐‐
Hardik Shah, Analyst In India, you have to go in to geographies like east, west, north, south?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No. We don't share that information.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Okay, sir. Right, sir. Thank you.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Latika Chopra from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Latika Chopra, Analyst Yeah, hello everyone.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Hello. Just two questions. Firstly, on the Indonesia and the Darling business, would like to know what has been the volume growth in the quarter?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Well, in Indonesia, in overall 18% constant currency growth, Latika, the volume growth would be nearly 75% of it. Then in Africa, it will be little difficult to break, but if you look at overall constant currency growth, which has been 21%, organic constant currency growth was in early double digits, specific to Darling. If you look at organic constant currency growth, this would be around mid‐teens and volume growth would be 200, 300 basis points higher than mid‐teens value growth in Darling business.
Latika Chopra, Analyst Okay. Thank you. And the second question is just any sense on the timeline for completion for the next level of Darling acquisition?
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development So, I think in a broad sense, we are looking at two phases of this. The first is the increase in stake strongly current 51% percent level, which we have in the countries already in the joint venture and I think we think some of that is happening in the next 12 to 24 months. On the addition of countries, we don't exactly have a timeline, so we keep it broadly in the range of the next two three years, again, but specific countries we will plan it as the time spreads.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director And, Latika, I mean, at least our thinking is that over the next six to 12 months, we will increase our stake in some of the geographies and potentially add geographies, but that's what we are planning towards, but let's see how it actually pans out. But I think we will see some more activity happening this year itself.
Latika Chopra, Analyst Sure. Thank you.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Varun Lohchab from CIMB. Please go ahead.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question was on the raw material pressure in the domestic business, if we expect any further gross margin compression like we saw in this quarter due to say, slight increase in palm oil because our gross margins are at sort of multi‐year rise, so, though despite favorable category growth rates, your high margin categories are growing well, but do you foresee any gross margin pressures due to palm oil or other cost? Well, Varun it will be difficult to guide on that front because gross margins also will be driven by category and within category format mix impact, as what I've mentioned earlier in the call, we have taken price increases on soaps in Jan, so that should boost gross
margin sequentially.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst What is the extent of that?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board We are looking at roughly 3% to 4% kind of price increases in soaps starting quarter four. And also as I mentioned earlier in the call that quarter three gross margins were also impacted by consumer offers, especially in form of price offs on few formats of household insecticides, that again, is refreshed in terms of what's the strategy in quarter four.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst So, given these actions as of now, you don't foresee ‐‐?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board There is definitely gross margin pressure in quarter four also, no doubt about it. Both in India and again, as I mentioned in Indonesia, given the kind of significant cost increases that we have seen is definitely I think there is a fair amount of gross margin pressure, but we are trying to work through it, we are trying to get as much cost reduction as possible. But I don't see the gross margin pressures are becoming less in Q4 than what we had in Q3.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst Okay. And, sir my second question was on the urban growth rates, you gave the rural growth rate number, if you could share the urban and the modern trade growth rates?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think urban growth rates have been in the high single digits and modern trade growth has been in the mid to high teens. So I think one of the interesting facets of our performance have been, if you look at overall FMCG growth rate, for quarter three, in home and personal care at least, rural growth has actually been lower than urban growth, at an overall home and personal care industry level. I think for us, our rural growth rates have been significantly higher than our urban growth rates.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst Yeah. And if I compare it with Q2, it seems you have not seen any moderation in rural growth rate, would that be the right assessment like of the market place also?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah. We've actually improved, I think the delta between urban and rural actually has been higher in Q3 as opposed to Q2, largely because of I think the infrastructure investments that we made in rural, it seems to be playing quite well for us.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst And urban growth rate decline for you would primarily be due to HI?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, I think it's largely been a category challenge, HI, as you rightfully pointed out, has a much higher salience urban, so I'm hoping that in Q4, as the overall category turns the corner, you will see our urban growth rates improve and you would obviously like to maintain our rural growth rate.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst Okay. And just lastly, on the tax rate, till when would you remain on MAT in India?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board We expect MAT rates to continue at least for next two to three years around.
Varun Lohchab, Analyst Okay. Fine. That's it from my end. Thanks and all the best.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you, Varun.
Operator Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Hemang Kapasi from Canara Robeco Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Hemang Kapasi, Analyst Yeah. Sir, as you said your Fast Card has received a great response and you are running out of capacities, can you ‐would you be able to share what would be the percentage on the home insecticide turn over from Fast Card?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board It's too early to say, I think early progress is very encouraging, but this product has only been in the market for about three to four months. So I think we want to wait to at least one year is over before we can start sharing information publicly. Okay. And what's the initial response in terms of consumers switching from this Fast Card to home ‐‐ other home insecticide products?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think it's again too early to say, definitely, we would see switches happening from coil. At the same time, we would see a lot of multi‐format usage, where people may use an LV or a coil while sleeping at night. And you might see a lot more evening kind of usage or day time usage, too early to say, the learning from Indonesia was that it actually help grow the overall market with a lot more households actually using multiple formats, but we'll have to wait and see how the India market evolves going forward. Because the seasonal effect dampened growth in the last quarter, very difficult draw conclusions till we see data over a few more quarters.
Hemang Kapasi, Analyst Okay, thank you.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Sanjay Singh from Standard Chartered. Please go ahead.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst Yeah, hi everyone.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, hi Sanjay.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst Just wanted to know, a more clarity on the Darling timeline front. We were aware that 65% would go to 85% this year, and then, probably it will take more time for the last 15% of the countries of the sales and the 51% of some countries will go to 100% in FY15. Can you just give some more clarity on the Darling acquisition in terms of percentage as to sales and the overall ownership over the next two years, may be by year each?
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development I think even the nature of the fact that there are good and fall options, we won't be able to put exact timelines to each country, but broadly let me again repeat what Vivek indicated. In the next 12 months, we definitely see some movement on the 51% going higher in some of the countries. What we had as a timeline for FY15 was the foot option, so we see some movements happening there in the next 12 months. On the addition of countries, I think overall, we now have the majority of the business within the joint venture and we expect to add a few countries this year as well, but we wouldn't be able to share specific timelines on that.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst And when you're saying the 51% going higher, does it mean it will go to straight to 100% or it can again be broken into 75 and then 100?
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development No most likely, we will go to 100 in particular country.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst Okay. And when you did this acquisition, it was originally emphasized that by FY15 or latest FY16, we will close this. But now it seems, it was taking a little longer time, any particular reason behind this?
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development So the countries which get ‐‐ which got into the joint venture in September 2011, five years from then, all those countries would definitely get to a 100%. So, I think those timelines are still very much in place, but it's five years from the time country joins ‐‐ at the joint venture as an outer limit. On the addition of countries, I think we're taking a stand of being comfortable with, when the countries are kind of ready to get into the joint venture and given that we now have a majority on ‐‐ of the business into the joint venture, we are taking that as it's closed.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst Okay. A question on LATAM, when we acquired the business it was I think Issue Group was around 14% margins and Cosmetica was around 20%. Now the whole LATAM as a whole I think YTD we should be doing around 7% or may be PAT lower margin in LATAM.
So, can we just ‐‐ can you just share what is the LATAM experience and why from acquisition to now margins have come up so sharply?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board One of the reasons, I will ask Sameer to give you little more detail, but one of the reasons is, once L'Oreal saw that Godrej has acquired businesses, and similarly in HI, when this ‐‐ when S.C. Johnson's sees us acquiring businesses, then they start competing much more strongly.
And we, in order to defend our market share, not only defend, but we are successfully increased our market share in LATAM, we had to sacrifice some margin. But now we find that having achieved that success, we expect the margins will improve, but I'll get Sameer to give you some more details.
Sameer Shah, Analyst Okay. Coming back to your earlier questions, given the overall LATAM in last year especially have been high single digit, this year we expect it to be early double digit on an annualized basis, lot of initiatives, especially on cost reduction front have been implemented in the business.
Secondly, if you look at Argentinean business margin, say two three years back when you bought the business, yes, this were around 12%, 13%, 14% level and margins, which we have been clocking have been little bit on a lower end for several reasons. Few of them have been regulatory, few them have been high inflation and so on so forth, and also a bit specific to our business, which is more labor dependent right now.
So, because of this factor, the margins have been down compared to what our expectations were from this business. But having said that, we are very optimistic on overall LATAM's margin from going ahead. We see a strong expansion at least for next two, three years because of the initiatives which we have implemented in the market.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst I think just another, maybe a more broad based macro direction, while there are issues are ‐‐ into each market on each country, specific issues, but if one takes a step back, here we see LATAM has come up, margins have come up a bit, we see some political issues or whatever in Indonesia, some small margin issue in Darling. This is for Godrej, but if you look at some of the other Indian companies we have acquired, we have seen Dabur margins in mostly coming up from 15% to 5%, even Marico facing problems in Bangladesh and Egypt. So is there a, does this, may be the emerging markets growth have come up a bit, so the tide has gone away from the favor. So, is there any change of the macro emerging market acquisition thought process, which we had maybe couple of years back very strongly?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, I don't think so at all. I think the future is clearly with the emerging markets, and clearly, for the last year, because of the fed taper, there have been some effects on emerging markets, especially on the currency front. And as a result of the effect of the currency front, there is political pressure in some of these country, internal political pressure to create solutions on other front. So, that may continue for another few months, but I see, already see it changing positively. And in the medium to long term, clearly, emerging market growth should be good.
As I mentioned, the latest expectation of GDP growth in the countries we operate in, weighted by the population of each country is expected to be in the year '14, in the calendar year '14, expected to be 5.6%, which is a good growth rate.
So we expect our businesses in the emerging markets will continue to do well. Yes, if you say, was the year '13 affected by some of these factors, definitely, it was affected and were it not for the effects of the taper, I think the economies would have done better and we would have done better. But, I don't think this is fundamentally going to affect the growth in the developing world.
Sanjay Singh, Analyst Okay. Thank you very much.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Operator Prasad Deshmukh, Analyst Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. Sir, on household insecticides' growth revival that you are talking about. There are couple of things that you mentioned in the call. Firstly, you said Q3 last year was a high base. So, it seems even Q4 and Q1 of FY14 were upwards of 25% growth.
Secondly, also you said on a long‐term basis, you expect rural penetration to increase and hence household insecticides growth should improve. And this combined with the fact that Fast Card can intuitively be a very good replacement for coils as well as mats, what is giving you confidence that on a sustainable basis, you will see HI growth coming back to the level that it used to be in the past seven, eight quarters?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Two major reasons. One is, the penetration of the category, particularly rural is very low. So, the potential of converting non‐users to users is going to be very high. Secondly, disease is a margin factor. Five years ago, the main reason people use mosquito repellents was to prevent mosquito nuisance. Now, increasingly a very large part of the population additionally uses mosquito repellents to prevent disease.
And as we bring in new innovations, which help both save cost and make it very convenient to use these productsm, we are seeing multiple usage of the different variance in household insecticide.
So, people may use an aerosol and a liquid vaporizer. People may use a Fast Card and a coil. So, we feel growth will accelerate. We feel the potential is very strong. Of course, since we have almost 50% share in the household insecticides market, a great part of category growth improvement will depend on how we perform. So, this is a major task, which we are taking on very strongly both from the innovation point of view and the marketing point of view.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director And Prasad, three things give us additional comfort. One is, as I mentioned before, if you look at per capita consumption in India versus other markets in the world, India still trades other markets by a fair amount. And so clearly, I think there is opportunity to drive consumption up.
Second of all, we also have a lot of confidence in our own innovation pipeline over the next two or three years. So, we feel like we've a lot of products in our pipeline that could further drive growth in the industry. Third of all, I think if you look at the benefits of integration while we've gained a lot from the integration with (inaudible), we still feel like there is actually a lot more opportunities to continue to drive further distribution gains over the next two or three years.
Prasad Deshmukh, Analyst Okay. Just one more question on the hair color business. How much of the growth has come because of channel filling when you like expanded distribution of cream?
Nisaba Adi Godrej, Executive Director I don't think, I don't think there is any channel filling now because we are almost like a year and a half.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Prasad Deshmukh, Analyst Sorry.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director I think, sir the Creme got launched in south in early part of quarter two, there has been no channel filling in hair color in this quarter.
Prasad Deshmukh, Analyst
Okay. So, you are saying Q2, it was nationally launched?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director No, no, no Prasad. In Q2, we had the launch in south. That's because we were running short of capacities when we launched Expert Creme in Q2 of FY14, late Q2 of FY13. In Q2 of FY14, it got launched in South. And even if you look at quarter three, the primary and the secondary sales growth are more or less mirroring each other.
Prasad Deshmukh, Analyst Okay. I have some doubts. I'll take this offline. Thank you.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, yeah.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Pankaj Chopra from Shanthi Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Yeah. Thank you very much. My first exposure to the company and it was extremely interesting to hear. I have some D&A questions. Sir, could you tell us what you think as per management's strength are the strengths of the company in these fields? I hope it's in the right form, yeah, if it's not, I could take it separately?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, I think my suggestion Pankaj, this is a very broad question.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Why don't we try and schedule some time offline?
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Yeah, sure.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board And we can spend more time on that.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Okay. I have a few small ones. Could you just delineate the distribution capabilities currently of the company? And what potential does that have? How much can you go further than that?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Again, it's a very complex question in terms of distribution by channel, by urban, rural, by state, by category. So, again, this is best covered offline.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Okay. The last one actually is, do you ‐‐ you have been, you said you have an innovation pipeline. So, I believe it would be in the categories you're already present in or do you intend to have anything beyond that?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think the innovation pipeline is a function of trying to drive hard existing categories to full potential, along with that also extend into meaningful adjacent phase. So, for instance, we launched an air freshener a few months back, which has been a big success under a brand called Aer.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Right.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Within our personal wash portfolio, we launched a shower gel. So, clearly, it's the function of both within our existing code and looking for adjacencies around the globe.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director I think the mixture of, I think, Mr. Godrej, you want to ‐‐
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think this is too broader question to answer in a con call like this. I think if you ‐‐ it's much better ‐‐ answering such a question itself would take half an hour.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst No, but yeah. Okay, so do you perceive other than macro risk? Would that be?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Risks, as we perceive them are mainly of implementation.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Okay.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think strategically, we have great opportunities to grow. We have been implementing these strategies. I think the risks are implementation of these strategies.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Okay. And would that be a large amount to be paid for the further acquisitions for Darling? Would that be or what range would that be if at all?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board
No, that's what we shared earlier on the call, on an average, we are looking at debt payment of anywhere between $60 million to $65 million annually.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst But that would be apart from your CapEx?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Pankaj Chopra, Analyst I understand. But you had mentioned earlier in the call that the CapEx would 60 million to 70 million on an annual basis?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director No. Those are loan repayments.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board That's repayments of debt.
Pankaj Chopra, Analyst Okay. That's repayment of debts. Okay, okay, fair, fair. Okay, right. Thank you very much.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Arnab Mitra from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Arnab Mitra, Analyst Yeah. Hi, and thanks for taking my question. On the Indonesia market, I wanted to understand firstly, overall, how the overall market growth has been, has that slowed down very significantly as per the industry data? And, this 18% growth, how does that compare with the overall market growth?
And also within your specific categories, how are you looking in market share in this scenario where there are lot of pressures for all players? So, that's my first question.
Shashank Sinha, President, International Operations Okay. This is Shashank here. I think that overall, if you look at the macroeconomic picture, I think that's well‐known. And I think in Indonesia as well, there has been some slow down across food and non‐food categories.
But specific to our categories, I think that because insecticides tend to be seasonal and as we commented earlier during the call, if some of amount of seasonality has to be kind of understood when we look at year‐on‐year growth in the category.
I think that there is, compared to the previous couple of years, insecticides category has definitely seen some amount of lower consumption. Our growth is significantly higher than the industry growth. And therefore, in terms of market shares, we have gained significant amounts of market share.
I think as commented earlier because it is more competitive and because of the fact that input cost pressures have gone up, that may have resulted in some erosion in our gross margins. But our market shared are significantly higher than before.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board We have grown ahead of categories in almost all our categories in Indonesia.
Arnab Mitra, Analyst Right.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Because as we have gone ahead of category growth in most of our categories in India.
Arnab Mitra, Analyst All right. So, just continuing on the margin front, so the reason why like in typically in India, whenever there have been cost pressures, there has been reasonable discipline in pricing among the players except in one or two categories, where margins have been protected, do you see that it will take, in the scenario where cost pressures are up, margins are going got remain lower than the trend levels in the past which have been more like 19%, 20% one or two years back?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yes. I think, Arnab it's going to take us some time before we will be able to normalize margins. So far, I think there are some players in the industry who have initiated some price increase in FMCG in Indonesia. We are watching closely, but while we have increased some prices, the price increases have not been enough to compensate for the significant increase in input cost, 60% increase in minimum wages, 40% increase in fuel, 40% increase in electricity. These have been just very unusually high increases.
So, while I think we are looking at cost reduction and we are also looking at price increases, we are quite clear that we don't want to lose share at the same time either. So, I do expect continued profit pits [ph] in Indonesia for one or two quarters.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Arnab, just to add to that, unfortunately the lag between price increases, which will offset, the input cost is also getting stretched because more or less, every quarter, we are hearing one or the other negative news in terms of increasing input cost.
So, that's also one of the reason why we see this lag getting stretched a bit and we do hope at least at this point in time that the gap which you have seen on Y‐o‐Y margins should narrow down going ahead. But the pressure may continue for a quarter to two.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think Indonesia is in election mode like India is. And usually, we find, whenever a country is in election mode, inflation tends to be high. And after election, we expect in both the countries inflation rates to come down. Right. And just one more question, which is on the Africa further state purchase, so is the agreement, does it have multiple defects and the fact that the business today is lower margin than probably when you took it, does that help you having to pay lesser going ahead or how does the kind of further stake buying prices get agreed upon?
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development Yes, it is (Technical Difficulty) based on profit, so it will move in line with profits and margin.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board So I ‐‐ if margins come down, unless profits have come down, it won't be lower. But if the total profit, which includes sales growth and margins comes down, it will be lower. But in general, our profits have risen. So, take for buying the 50% stake, I think our costs would be higher than the first 50% stake.
Arnab Mitra, Analyst And then just one question, could you give me the net debt figure that is there right now?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah. So, net debt is in the range of about INR1,600 crores.
Arnab Mitra, Analyst Okay. Thanks so much and all the best.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thanks, Arnab.
Operator Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Prashant Kutty from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Prashant Kutty, Analyst Thank you for taking my question, sir. So the question is, with regard to working capital cycle, if you could just tell us what has been the working capital cycle as of December?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Well, if you look at working capital in terms of number of days as of September and these were hovering around 21, 22 days and directionally what we can share with you at this stage is in terms of number of days, if it has gone down in December and as compared to what it was in September.
Prashant Kutty, Analyst And how would this be for your international business?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board So, bulk of this reduction has come in international business not only for one quarter, but if you look at last four, five quarters.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director And again India business for most of this operates on a negative working capital. So, it's positive working capital only in our international business and that has been consistently coming up.
Prashant Kutty, Analyst Okay. And what are the targets in regard to the same going forward as far as the working capital cycle is concerned?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, so directionally our targets are in terms of cutting down on the number of days, so in line with the growth in business, absolute working capital could go up, but working capital days have been focused.
Prashant Kutty, Analyst And how much would that be? Any number to quote on that/
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board So, we wouldn't want to quote the numbers on that, but directly, the focus will be on getting the number of days down and we certainly are updating with internal targets on that.
Prashant Kutty, Analyst Okay, fine. Thank you, sir.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Operator Thank you. Next question is from the line of Harit Kapoor from IDFC Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon. I just had two questions, firstly, I think 4Q will be the first quarter in many quarters where we won't have a large acquisition led growth. Also given that our net debt levels are reasonably comfortable now, just wanted to understand what the acquisition strategy will be over the next one or two years, which are the key markets that we're looking and how do we see that going forward, ex obviously Darling?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board There will be some acquisition led growth in quarter four also. There are acquisitions we have made in the UK in Africa, which were not in the base in the quarter four last year.
Harit Kapoor, Analyst Right.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board And, however, our acquisitions strategy continuous to be the same, it's a three by three on three continents in three categories, but very clearly, we will acquire businesses only if it is strategically fits in with our objective. We will continue to look at acquisitions for future growth.
Harit Kapoor, Analyst But, is there a preference within that three by three in terms of Asia or Latin America, Africa because we outlined this three by three strategy a few years back, I just wanted to understand going forward, is there a preference within geography or are they are more attractive targets, just very broadly?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Preference would only based on the individual business looked at, not necessarily of the geography, but we'll stick to the three by three strategy.
Omar Momin, Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Development And if I may add, I think the preference would also be along the lines of consolidating our presence in markets where we are already ‐‐ where we are already there, so that would be our buyers [ph] as compared to opening up new markets, but broadly the principles of our M&A strategy remain the same as we have outlined for the past.
Harit Kapoor, Analyst Fair enough. Lastly, just wanted to understand what is the average cost of debt right now for our ‐‐?
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director This would be around 3.5% to 4%. 3.5 to 4. Okay. That's it from me. Thanks a lot.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Thanks, Harit.
Operator Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Kaustubh Pawaskar from Sharekhan Limited. Please go ahead.
Kaustubh Pawaskar, Analyst Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for taking my question. Sir, first question is on your Latin American business, we have seen recently that Argentine peso has depreciated by 25% around. So, do we see any impact on revenues or profitability in the coming quarters?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Not actually because where currency hits is, one in terms of gross margins, a few imports, we do not very huge import in our Argentinean business. So, as of now, we don't expect any major P&L changes driven by sharp depreciation in peso to US dollar.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director The only marginal impact will be in terms of translation.
Kaustubh Pawaskar, Analyst Okay. And, sir my second question is on the soap segment., domestic soap segment. We have seen our growth rate to be better than the category growth. So, what exactly has helped you to achieve around 6% volume growth vis‐a‐vis the category has declined?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think it's a combination again of stuffs that having one of the best quality products. So, I think one of the big differences for us is that our products are by far the best quality in the market. Along with that, I think it's about execution. Execution both in terms of marketing, execution in terms of distribution. At the end of the day, I think it starts off with just being able to drive better and more consistent execution than anybody else at the market.
Kaustubh Pawaskar, Analyst Okay. But just broader industry's question. Have you seen any down trading or, you know, in this particular category? No, in fact, I think generally, I think what's happened now is that the soap categories evolved quite a bit. Where if you look at shares, the shares of the larger national players has actually increased significantly over time. So, as consumers have gotten used to using branded high quality soaps, generally I think that's a shift you've seen in this sector over the last few years. There are no visible signs of down trading in this segment.
Kaustubh Pawaskar, Analyst
But, have we seen any kind of market share improvement for our soap segment?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Absolutely, if you go back and look at the last 24 months, we've actually gained significant share, particularly number one.
Kaustubh Pawaskar, Analyst Okay, okay. Thanks.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thanks a lot.
Operator Thank you. We have the next follow up question from the line of Percy Panthaki from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Sir, just on Indonesia, Sameer was mentioning that 75% of the growth has come out of volumes and 25% from price, which means that on a Y‐o‐Y basis, your prices are up only about 4% now the inflationary pressures have actually started to build up in the last three, four quarters.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst So in last three, four quarters, only 4% of price increase has been able to push through?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board See, actually, if you look at the squeeze in gross margins, this is more driven lag in price increases. So 4% to 5% is the kind of the price led growth, which we saw in quarter three or in 17% 28% over a value growth. Going ahead, the price
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Right. And lastly, I know a lot of this has been talked about on inorganic growth. But to just simplify it very clearly, would you be able to give a figure that in FY15, what percentage of sales growth will be added due to inorganic?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, that's difficult to tell because we may make some acquisitions now onwards, which may come into FY15 and we don't know about it right now.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst So, no, so excluding completely new acquisitions is just on ‐‐?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, that's where ‐‐ mainly the growth due to acquisition comes from new acquisitions. It is not pre‐planned acquisition.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst But due the Darling faced acquisition ‐‐?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board There will be some, but even in the Darling, we don't know exactly because lot discussions are taking place. We don't know the exact effect of inorganic growth in Darling, also for financial year '15. But, there will be significant growth coming from acquisitions.
Percy Panthaki, Analyst Okay. Okay, sir. That's all. Thanks.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director Thank you.
Operator Hardik Shah, Analyst Hello, sir.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Hello?
Hardik Shah, Analyst Yeah. Sir, just wanted to ask you like, since you have exposure to multiple currencies, is there ‐‐ and what was the impact of the ForEx fluctuation on current performance?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, translation impact was less than 50 basis points. It was not very ‐‐
Hardik Shah, Analyst Okay. And what was the ‐‐ what is the hedging policy or strategy that you're following?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, so as far as our trade exposures are concerned, we have limited our exposures significantly and most of our exposures are covered. As far as our loan exposure, loan repayment obligations are concerned these are essentially very long‐term loans. What we continue to do on this front is, near term repayment obligations are hedged whereas longer term ones are kept.
Hardik Shah, Analyst So, by near term, would we mean around six months?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah. So near term exposures, we define it as any repayment obligation which come over a six months time frame.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Okay. And, sir if you have to may be talk about percentage of hedged to unhedged or a total ForEx exposure, what would be ‐‐ what would it look like?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Hardik Shah, Analyst Okay. So, as of December, if it's available?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah, so as of December, we have very little on the trade front, which are eventually import led. And as for as loans are concerned, we will have a vast majority of it unless at any point in time over the near term because the loan repayment obligations extend over the next three to four years.
Hardik Shah, Analyst And, just normally it will be done through forwards or also derivatives?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board It's largely forwards.
Hardik Shah, Analyst Right, sir. Thank you.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you.
Operator Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijeet Kundu from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead.
Abhijeet Kundu, Analyst Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question was on the gross margin front, I know a lot of has been talked about it. Just wanted to understand and you had been ‐‐ you had well covered on the palm oil front till March 2014. So has there been any change in that? Has palm oil inflation impacted your gross margin during Q3?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah. Palm oil inflation has affected, especially when you take the rupee depreciation into account.
Abhijeet Kundu, Analyst Okay. Abhijeet, as what we mentioned earlier in the call, if you look at quarter three soaps' gross margins on a Y‐o‐Y basis, there hasn't
been much movement.
Abhijeet Kundu, Analyst There hasn't been much movement, right?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Yeah.
Abhijeet Kundu, Analyst So, in Q4 as well, we don't expect anything much in case of soap gross margins?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board More or less yes.
Abhijeet Kundu, Analyst Okay. And secondly, we have been hearing that the electro supply situation or a power supply in certain states, which are one of your key states as well, has improved, so, which should be of help for your HI business, liquid vaporizers or liquid business primarily. So, are you seeing any traction there going ahead?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board The liquid vaporizer business has actually always been doing very well. The challenge is far more driven by the monsoon effect, net the deficity [ph] effect. So, I think as the temperatures rise in Q4, that is going to have a bigger impact as far as positive movement is concerned rather than electricity supply.
Abhijeet Kundu, Analyst Okay, sir. That's it from my side. Thanks.
Operator Thank you. Participants, that was the last question. I now hand over the floor back to Mr. Manoj Menon for closing comments. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Manoj Menon, Analyst Thank you. Sir, I have one question from my side regarding the competitive situation in India Insecticides business. While we did hear about the company's outperformance, just wanted to pick your grains on anything you would like to
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board No, I think Manoj, definitely competitive intensity over the last two or three quarters has been higher. But as we look at our share positions in terms of our equity, our shares only I think increased. So, I think that gives us enough comfort that we do have the innovation pipeline and the brand equity to be able to withstand the competition.
So, clearly intensity has gone up, but it hasn't led to any changes in share positions.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director In fact, our shares has been improving despite the competitive intensity increase.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board It's the same in individual as well, so it's not just an India phenomena across the Indonesia, we have also seen similar trend.
Manoj Menon, Analyst Understood. Sir, and one last question on the Africa Insecticide launch, any comments you would like to make about the progress?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board I think too early to say general traction in Nigeria has been good, but I think we are looking at some other African geographies as well. So, we will make those plans later on this year.
Manoj Menon, Analyst Okay. So, if I am to understand correctly, is it just that the regulatory timelines kind of, is pushing to go‐to‐market or is it something more to do with the marketing mix itself at this point in time?
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Two things. One is the regulatory situation, it normally takes some time. Second of all, also, we are keen to, first of all, make Nigeria relative success. So, we are still learning a little bit in terms of the marketing mix and Nigeria, I think every quarter, the Nigeria, I think business is doing better as far as the launche is concerned, but before trying to do too many of those, we want to first of all, stabilize the Nigeria launch.
Vivek Gambhir, Managing Director, Non‐Executive Director I think it will also depend upon the investment potential in terms of adding new countries to launch because it would require investment in the beginning. Understood. So, thanks. That's from my side. And over to you for your closing comments, sir.
Adi Burjorji Godrej, Executive Non‐Independent Chairman of the Board Thank you. Well, I'd just like to thank all the participants for being on the conference call. And if you need any further clarifications, including details, we are at your disposal. And thank you very much.