“dabur india limited q1 fy-11 earnings conference call” call/100096_20100727.pdf · dabur india...
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“Dabur India Limited Q1 FY-11 Earnings Conference Call”
July 27, 2010
Dabur India Ltd.’s Participants
Mr. Sunil Duggal - Chief Executive Officer Mr. S. Raghunathan - Chief Financial Officer Mr. Ashok Jain - GM-Finance & Company Secretary Mr. Saibal Sengupta - GM-Finance Ms. Gagan Ahluwalia - GM - Corporate Affairs
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Gagan Ahluwalia Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Dabur management, I welcome you all
this conference call for the Q1 results for FY 2010-11. Present here are Mr. Sunil Duggal,
CEO, Dabur India Ltd., Mr. S. Raghunathan, CFO, Mr. Ashok Jain, General Manager Finance
& Company Secretary and Mr. Saibal Sengupta, General Manager Finance. I would now
request Mr. Duggal to give a brief introduction after which we will invite your questions, over
to Mr. Duggal.
Sunil Duggal Thank you Gagan. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you to the Dabur India
Conference call regarding the results for quarter ended June 30, 2010.
Before we discuss the Q1 results, I am pleased you inform you that we have signed an
agreement to acquire the business of Hobi Kozmetik in Turkey for a total consideration of
US$69 million. This would be Dabur’s first acquisition in the overseas market and is in line
with the company’s strategy to strengthen its presence in the MENA and adjacent regions.
Hobi Kozmetik is a leading personal care company in Turkey and manufactures market’s hair,
skin, and body care products under the brand name Hobby' and 'New Era'. Hobi Kozmetik had
revenues of US$27 million and EBITDA margins of around 17% during the year ended 31st
December, 2009. The product range of the company is complementary to us and we see good
potential for these brands across our international businesses as well as in the home market of
Turkey. This acquisition provides us an entry into another attractive emerging market and
provides a good platform to leverage this across the region. The company has significant
distribution footprint Turkey along with a strong backend in terms of integrated manufacturing
facility, captive packaging, research and development and a management team having
experience in MNCs operating in the FMCG space in Turkey.
Coming to the first quarter results, Dabur India Limited has recorded growth of 19.5% in
consolidated sales and 19.4% in profit after tax during the period. This is post consolidation of
the Fem business in both these periods.
The consumer care division, CCD has recorded 18.9% growth, of which 16.8% was through
volumes. Also some price increases have been put into effect during the quarter, although the
quantum of these was not very significant. The division witnessed strong momentum in hair
oils, toothpastes, home care, health supplements, and foods.
Hair oils grew 16.5% during the quarter. Dabur’s largest domestic brand Dabur Amla Hair Oil
reported growth of 18.9% in spite of high competitive activity. Vatika Hair Oil grew at 22%
during the quarter. The newly launched light hair oil Amla Flower Magic and Vatika enriched
almond hair oil received good consumer response and will be scaled up further during the
fiscal.
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The Shampoo category contracted by 17.1% on account of both slowdown in the category
growth and aggressive promotional activity witnessed. Plans are underway for restaging and
providing new communicational and marketing inputs to Vatika Shampoo brand in the next
few months., With this growth in the brand is expected to revive.
Health supplements recorded growth of 42.8% during the quarter. Dabur Chyawanprash grew
by 93.9%, Dabur Glucose by 53.6% and Dabur Honey by 17.7%, driven by introduction of
new SKUs and sustained marketing activities.
The oral care portfolio recorded exceptional growth of 20.2% during the quarter. This was
driven by strong growth in toothpaste which grew by 28.1%. Dabur Red Toothpaste recorded a
growth of 31.2% backed by its differentiated product proposition of being an Ayurvedic
toothpaste. The Babool brand also posted good performance growth of 29.1%. The new gel
variant Babool Mint Fresh continues to receive positive response from consumers. Meswak,
the premium herbal toothpaste recorded growth of 14.4% during the quarter.
The Skin care category posted growth of 12.4% during the quarter. The Gulabari brand
performed well, growing by 22.9%. The Fem portfolio grew by 8%. While Fem bleaches
reported 14% growth, the hair removal creams witnessed lower growth due to intense
competitive activity. Fem liquid soaps are undergoing the change over in formulation which
will be on stream in the next quarter. Uveda brand continues to be in test market phase in
select markets and is planned to be launched in other markets during the year.
The Digestive category grew by 14.7%. The Hajmola brand reported steady growth driven by
new variants and innovative consumer activations.
Home care reported a growth of 31.5% during the quarter. Odonil grew by 68.4%; post its re-
launch last quarter. Electrical air fresheners have been launched under the name Odonil Pluggy
to target this emerging subcategory in the air freshener space. Odomos Oil the, first mosquito
repellant of its kind has been launched to enter the rural markets.
The Foods category reported good growth of 21.2% during the quarter; led by strong
performance by Real and Activ juices portfolio. Dabur’s culinary brand Hommade continues
its good performance posting 37% growth.
The Consumer Health Division, CHD witnessed a growth of 10.2% during the quarter led by
ethical portfolio which grew by 14.5%. In OTC, Pudin Hara grew by 12.8%. The Pudin Hara
portfolio has been extended by launching Pudin Hara Lemon Fizz in the acidity segment.
Dabur’s international business continues to grow at a fast pace posting a growth of 28.7%
during the quarter. In local currency terms, growth in the businesswas 37%. Egypt, Nigeria, the
Levant and North Africa performed exceedingly well with increasing customer acceptance of
Dabur and Vatika brands in these markets.
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The core GCC area also recorded steady performance despite the economic downturn. The
business is showing good momentum and we are deepening presence in existing markets of
Middle East, North and West Africa, and South Asia as well as exploring new markets in these
regions. This expansion will be further strengthened to the acquisition of Hobi.
On the profitability side, Dabur saw a growth of 19.4% in profit after tax during the quarter in
spite of increase in tax rate by 230 basis points. The consolidated EBITDA margins remain
stable at around 16% during the quarter. This was despite pressure on gross margins due to
inflation and increased investment in Adpro which went up from 15.9% to 16.3%.
Overall the business has performed well with strong upsurge in volumes in domestic as well
overseas business. Consumer demand appears to be robust and augurs well for the continued
growth in the markets and our segments in particular. The company has announced a bonus
issue of 1:1 to commemorate 125 years of its establishment. With this I now open the Q&A
and invite your questions. Thank you.
Abneesh Roy from Edelweiss Securities
Abneesh Roy Sir, very good set of numbers. On the shampoo front, we see a decline, is it one off because of
higher competitive intensity or do you think that this is a big change which has happened in the
competitive landscape ?
Sunil Duggal No I think this change which has happened is only a few months old and we have seen
heightened competitive activity driven both by above the line inputs as well as very substantial
consumer promotion and trade promotion activities on the part of Unilever, etc. and that has
led to some losses in terms of volumes. Also the category doesn’t seem to be doing that well as
a whole; the growth was hardly 8% odd as per Nielsen. So it's a combination of both of these.
Thirdly, we are restaging our shampoo brand by having a completely new packaging which is
supposed to go into the market in this month, so we didn’t want to put a lot of products in the
market of the old packaging, when the new packaging was about to surface. A combination of
these three reasons. I don’t think there is any structural issue here or anything which is game-
changing. We expect growths to be back on track, probably we will not record the same
growth as we have done in the previous years, but things should be much better in the next
three quarters.
Abneesh Roy So will it be fair to assume that we can get back to positive territory in the next quarter?
Sunil Duggal Well certainly during the year, we should be back in positive territory. It might take longer
than one quarter to do so.
Abneesh Roy And any change in the consumer preference in favor of MNCs because we were a company
always having a niche space with Ayurvedic, herbal kind of positioning, so why is the shift
happening back to the MNCs because just ad spends cannot propel that right?
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Sunil Duggal Well it's not just ad spends, it is very substantial lubrication of trade and you know the whole
game is dominated by sachets and the trade margins play a very important role because the end
price is limited to 1 rupee. So if you do a lot of below-the-line activity then I think it's not
difficult to gain share which is short term. But having said that, there is a limit to how much
activity this can support because the shampoo margins at 1 rupee level are shrinking; now they
are in the low 40s and they will be pretty much the same for everybody. So I think these are
basically games to get back loss in share and I don’t think they are sustainable. So this is
disruptive competition, but which perhaps will not last for very long.
Abneesh Roy If I compare the three major segments, CHD continues to have slower growth rate. As you
mentioned that you are planning some new initiatives and some new strategy and there are also
some supply issues etc, so if you could elaborate on that part?
Sunil Duggal CHD levels had supply dislocations in the fag end of June. We are looking at 15% growth for
the year and I see no reason to change that estimate. So it is a steady growth portfolio, this will
not include some of new introductions which we put into play in the third and fourth quarters,
but the portfolio as it exists should grow at around 15%. So there is nothing structurally an
issue here, it was just little bit of lost sales in the last week of June.
Abneesh Roy And what was that problem, can you elaborate that supply chain issue?
Sunil Duggal There were some delayed shipments from one of the plants because of some retooling in the
plant, so nothing very significant. It's not a big business, so even 3 or 4 Crores lost sales can
result in some erosion in term of growth.
Abneesh Roy And lastly, you have done this acquisition in Turkey, to understand from the Middle East
perspective, it's quite clear. From the Indian perspective, what kinds of synergy you see in
terms of say product introductions happening in India?
Sunil Duggal They have product lines which I think are pretty compatible with the modern trade, you know
think like wet wipes, etc., etc., so there is an interesting set of products which we can put into
play. Having said that, we still have to work out the duty structure etc., which will see what
kind of pricing they will command in India. So we have not built any India numbers into our
valuation model because we do not really have the visibility as to what prices they will have
here.. But I think there is a very interesting prospect of Indo-Turkish FTA coming into play
and that’s something which I wouldn’t say likely to happen but it is certainly possible that will
happen. And if that does happen, then I think it will facilitate free entry of those products into
the India market at reduced or free of duties and that should facilitate rapid growth of the Hobi
business in India. At the moment we are looking at extending the presence substantially in
Middle Eastern and particularly the North African markets in addition to growing the business
in Turkey.
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Abneesh Roy And lastly on the ad spend, it's up 40 bps this YoY to 16.3%, slightly on the higher side in the
FMCG pack, so what would be the outlook on that?
Sunil Duggal I think it would be in the region of 15% for the year. It will taper off a little bit, but having said
that it's not impossible that it will hit 16% too, it will lot depend upon again how competitors
react, but 15% is the way I would see it at this point in time.
Abneesh Roy Okay sir all the best, thanks for…
Margaret Kalvar from Harding Loevner
Margaret Kalvar Good afternoon, you mentioned on skin care a 12% growth and I noted in the presentation that
Fem care looks a little bit light at 8%, could you talk about the prospects there and then could
you also discuss of the working capital issues and whether they are structural or whether they
are temporary increases in stocking?
Sunil Duggal Yeah on the Fem piece, there have been some reductions in sales in this quarter, because we
have completely restaged the bleach offerings as well the depilatory offering. Even though the
bleach volumes are not bad at 14%, it could be much higher had we not done this restaging and
dried up the market of the product. The new products will come into place this month and we
believe that this quarter and the next two quarters would be very good for the Fem portfolio as
whole, bleach in particular. The Gulabari sales really peak in the winter, so they have been
pretty decent during the first quarter but real action begins in the end of quarter two and the
third quarter. I still think that we will be able to grow skin care well ahead of what we have
done in the first quarter. And on the working capital, yes you would see increase of
approximately 90-100 Crores in working capital, the reasons are not structural, they are
entirely strategic. We have bought our full year requirements of mango because we do
anticipate substantial climb up in the prices, so a lot of money has gone into that investment.
We have also bought the substantial quantities of commodities like honey anticipating a
shortfall and taking advantage of the soft prices. Most of this working capital is blocked up
either in loans and advances or in the form of inventory. And this will progressively go down
as we speak and perhaps reach zero or close to that level by the year end.
Margaret Kalvar What about the increase in loans and advances, is this because our customers are having
difficulty paying promptly?
Sunil Duggal No, we typically used to buy just one or two months, not the full year requirements of mango,
just to give you one example, and the people whom we buy from, they don’t have the financial
wherewithal to stock up one year’s requirement, so we have to finance them in a sense, so
that’s really where…
Gagan Ahluwalia There has also been a higher advance payment of tax, so both these factors have gone into the
higher level of loans and advances.
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Sunil Duggal So once again we don’t believe that this increase in working capital is structural in nature, it's
likely to come down.
Margaret Kalvar Okay. And then finally again on the skin care, does the intense competition in the whitening
creams with Fair & Lovely and P&G, affecting Fem care or your other skin care lines at all?
Sunil Duggal No, fortunately Fem care does not complete head-on with fairness creams, it's a product which
is completely different and our task is really to grow the franchise for bleach in a way which
does not conflict with that of fairness creams. In fact heightened competitive activity in skin
whitening only, enhances the need for differentiated product like ours, so there is no impact
really. I think the task which we have in front of us is to convince people about the efficacy
and superior delivery of bleach vis-à-vis other fairness offerings and we believe we will be
able to do that.
Margaret Kalvar Okay. What about your other line of skin care offerings?
Sunil Duggal Well Gulabari is a pretty steady growth, lot of sales come in winters and the rose water is
steady around the year product, but that with moisturizers and the cold creams, you will really
see action in the third quarter. It's too early to say how that will perform. And with that in
Uveda, we are still testing it out, fine tuning the mix so that we have the optimal product
configuration and value proposition and formulation to go to market with a bigger bang
perhaps later in the year early next year.
Margaret Kalvar Okay great. Thank you so much.
Vivek Maheshwari from CLSA
Vivek Maheshwari Hi, Good afternoon sir, my first question is on the input cost environment, how is it looking
currently, although you partially mentioned about mangoes etc which you have stocked up, but
what about other inputs in general and any price hike that you would have taken in the first
quarter?
Sunil Duggal To answer your second question first; we have taken price increases aggregating to a little over
2% in the first quarter. Most of them were taken towards the latter part of the first quarter, so
the impact was pretty low in the first, full impact will be there in the second quarter. And going
back to your first question, we do see a little bit of a softening of raw material prices in
aggregate terms even though there will be pockets of inflation. The monsoon is likely to be
near normal, so that we will have a salutary effect of inflation softening and therefore lower
material prices. We are firstly, not taking long positions in most commodities; we are doing it
very selectively, so we are going to buy spot as we see prices softening. And secondly, we do
see the margin expansion happening even if we don’t increase prices in the second quarter
consequent to the softening of material cost. It may not be very significant over the second
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quarter, but it's likely to gain momentum as and when inflation weakens to the single digit
which is slated around October or thereabouts.
Vivek Maheshwari Sure and what would be your guidance or your sense on the full year margin, would it be flat,
can you expand margin on the full year basis in fiscal 11?
Sunil Duggal I think I would prefer to be conservative and say that we hold the EBITDA margin at the last
year levels. I would not rule out the possibility of expansion, but I would not bet on it either.
Vivek Maheshwari Sure, the second thing is two segments which stood out in the quarter were health supplements
and home care, particularly in the case of supplements, it was pretty broad based, so what had
driven this and what is the outlook for the next few quarters?
Sunil Duggal See I always believed, not just for supplements but for health care in general, there seems to be
some kind of inflection point which has been reached, and we do believe that growth of those
would be well ahead of what we have seen in the earlier part of this decade. And it is this
belief that which has led us to invest considerable amounts in health care. In the case of
glucose, specifically it's emerging as being a popular energy booster and many people can't
afford those very high priced energy drinks, so glucose is something which is very popular
with the masses. And also I think we have done pretty intense marketing activities in the form
of launches of variants, distribution expansion etc. And it's really on a fast growth track; we
have got around 25 plus shares. We should end the year with around Rs. 150 Crores in terms of
sales. So it's really one of the bright spots in our portfolio and we are likely to grow it further
as the competitive intensity here is comparatively speaking low as is with all or most health
care categories. In honey, we benefited again by low honey prices after many, many years.The
honey prices have softened because of a ban of Indian honey in Europe, so the local prices
have collapsed. And we were able to offer more inputs in terms of marketing etc., because the
margin suddenly improved. We had starved this brand of promotional inputs in the last couple
of years because of margin pressures, which we were able to put back into market which grew
this category. The third, Chyawanprash its still early days, I wouldn’t read too much into the
first quarter numbers, but we do hope that the plans which we have in Chyawanprash are very
interesting to share, would enable us to grow this brand also at a very fast clip. So overall, I
think health supplements has come into its own and the whole health care category, has come
into its own after many years of perhaps little sub-par performance and we believe this will
continue.
Regarding home care, it's been more of a phasing issue, a lot of new initiatives came into play
like the electric pluggy, new low price offerings in Odonil which have been extremely popular,
the launch of Odomos variants like the oil for the rural consumer. So it's been innovation
which has driven growth here. This category as you will be aware is very innovation led, and
that’s exactly what we did to grow the category. So again like in health care, we believe that
the future for home care in terms of market expansion and getting new customers is immense.
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For this category we have just scratched the surface and there is a huge amount of headroom.
On the other hand, the personal care categories which are likely to perhaps not grow at the
pace, we have done in the past because they are now off to fairly high base. So things like hair
care, oral care, and even skin care to some extent are now at a fairly high base. I think we have
to see growth from health, home, and food and not just from personal care to drive growth, as
has been the case in the last couple of, that's exactly what the numbers are revealing.
Vivek Maheshwari Sure, and what was your market share in shampoos in the first quarter?
Gagan Ahluwalia It's around 5.5% on value terms.
Vivek Maheshwari Okay. And what would this have been in fourth quarter fiscal 10?
Gagan Ahluwalia In fiscal 10 it is around 6% or so.
Sunil Duggal I think we have lost half a percent share in shampoos in this last six months, I don’t think we
need to worry about it too much; we should be able to regain it.
Vivek Maheshwari Sure, and lastly on A&Ps, you mentioned that it could be in the range of around 15% to 16%,
but looking at the numbers, is my understanding correct that for A&Ps, you have made higher
investment in the international business compared to domestic business?
Sunil Duggal Yeah the A&Ps in international is always higher than domestic and that’s not something which
is new, but even in domestic business we have increased the Adpro. Well actually they have
gone up you are right, they have gone up more in the international business. So the domestic
business has been pretty constant at around 15%.
Vivek Maheshwari Right, so do you anticipate some pressure in the domestic business in the next three quarters
considering that we were almost flat, do you intend to increase your share of voice or 15% is
broadly the level for domestic business?
Sunil Duggal Well I think what we did is we held Adpros at around 15% levels in the domestic business. In
the international business we had taken up prices very steeply last year, so we had two options,
one was to drop prices and keep the same Ad Pro support as we did last year, and other one
was to hold the price line but invest more in the brands in term of A&P support which was the
latter option. So we held the price line and so the entire growth is volume driven in
international business, but we were forced to spend more. We don’t mind doing that, because
it's yielded very good results in terms of both sales and profitability. Now going forward
whether international business would go on the same trajectory of high Ad Pros, we will try to
trim that down, but domestic, I think 15% is sort of, par for the course.
Vivek Maheshwari Alright, thank you very much sir.
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Hemant B. Patel from Enam Securities
Hemant B. Patel Yeah hello Sunil, couple of questions, one on the international businesses, there has been a
tremendous growth in the last couple of years and even this year, the first quarter you have
shown 37% growth on constant currency terms. I just wanted to understand more, is this
growth largely linked to its penetration led growth or is this off take happening in purely the
markets you are present in. Give me some highlight as to how the forecast is going to go ahead
in this year?
Sunil Duggal Let's put these markets in two buckets, one is the core GCC markets, and I’m talking about the
MENA region only and not not putting South Asia in this bucket.In the MENA region, we
have seen this grow by around 25%, it's steady but not that spectacular. The growth in the rest
of region which is South Africa, Levant, etc. was 45%. The second growth has been led by
increasing penetration in our new geographies etc. The first has been pretty much market share
gains and not too much else. And the third South Asia, which is actually done spectacularly
well with all markets growing in the 40’s. Having said this, both in the case of Pakistan and
Bangladesh, they are off a low base so we expect that growth to continue. Nepal is a pretty
large market, so maybe repeating a 40% growth for the year is hard, but still we are confident
of maintaining a very substantial trajectory in the international business. Another upside as far
the consolidation is concerned that translation losses are expected to come down because the
rupee is now comparatively weak vis-a-vis dollars compared to the first quarter. We may not
see the same humungous translation losses, so you know the top line would look better in
consolidation next quarter, even if there were some lower top line being driven overseas in
constant currency.
Hemant B. Patel Alright, and on Hobi, could you give us an understanding of what the revenue mix looks like
between hair care and skin care segment and what has been the growth rate in the last two
years? And another question on that would be what the competitive intensity on those markets
is?
Gagan Ahluwalia On the Product mix, basically about 50% of the sales are in hair care.
Hemant B. Patel 50, is it?
Gagan Ahluwalia Yes, hair care contributes to 50%, skin and body contributes to about 40%, and then there are
few other items like wet wipes, etc.
Sunil Duggal So 50 hair, 40 skin and body, and 10 things like wet wipes, alright.
Hemant B. Patel Alright I got that. In terms of growth rates and competitive intensity, what's been the growth
rate for the last two years?
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Gagan Ahluwalia Last year on same currency basis the business grew at about 20%, 23% to be exact which is in
2009.
Sunil Duggal The competitive intensity in Turkey is reasonably high, at the same time it's not very different
from India, I think, but perhaps a little bit less than India. You have all the multinationals
there, but it's a modern trade environment much more than India, so getting product placement
is not that difficult.
Hemant B. Patel In your opinion given the fact that you have mentioned that you are looking at expanding into
other geographies and leveraging so called product portfolio of Hobi, what is the kind of
growth rate that you are actually envisaging over the next two or three years?
Sunil Duggal You know we still have to put the numbers together and formulate the business plan, but I
think growths in terms of the Hobi portfolio whether including the products which we seed
into the Turkish market should be in excess of 20%.
Hemant B. Patel Alright, fair enough Sunil thanks a lot and best of luck.
Sunil Duggal Thanks.
Percy Panthaki from HSBC
Percy Panthaki Hi sir, congratulations on a set of good numbers.
Sunil Duggal Thanks Percy.
Percy Panthaki Sir my first question is on the monsoon impact, I mean last year when the monsoons failed,
you did not see any adverse impact coming through for Dabur, now assuming that the
monsoon this time will be good, would it be fair to say that there will be no sort of overly
positive impact either?
Sunil Duggal Well it’s hard to say, one is often too wrong, logically if we had a bad monsoon last year with
x% demand growth then with a good monsoon it should be x+, but that may or may not
happen because I think a lot of last year’s monsoon impact was mitigated by the social security
schemes which obviously continue but I think if the monsoon remains on the current trajectory
which is reasonably good, it should by every stretch of logic lead to increased demand. Having
said that in the first few months of this fiscal, we really haven't seen the same upsurge, maybe
there is a lag here which will happen in the third quarter or when the crops are planted and
there is some visibility about output and the harvest and people will be open up the purse
strings. But Nielsen, does not really show any great upsurge in consumer demand in the
current fiscal so far, but it's early days.
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Percy Panthaki Okay, do you think that the good volume growth that you have seen in the June quarter has got
anything to do with the fact that the volume growth was a bit subdued in the March quarter, is
there sort of a shift, or timing difference, or a shift in demand or a pipeline adjustment which
would cause this effect?
Sunil Duggal If I remember Q1 of fiscal 10 was a pretty decent quarter for us.
Percy Panthaki No, not Q1 of fiscal 10; what I am talking about is Q4 of fiscal 10.
Sunil Duggal I don’t see any pattern there really, but…
Percy Panthaki Because I think the volume growth in March quarter 10 was about 12% if I am not mistaken, it
is bit lower than your run rate at that point of time?
Sunil Duggal 12% this year, this quarter is 16%, now I don’t think we did anything different in fourth
quarter as compared to what we are doing here, so perhaps in case of Dabur, it does indicate
that there is higher consumer demand as compared to the fourth quarter which augurs well for
us. But to your earlier question I was looking at more category data and industry data rather
than Dabur data. Our first quarter has been, according to me quite spectacular from the volume
point of view, I have never seen such volume growth.
Percy Panthaki Right, my only question was that is any part of this volume growth a result of pipeline
adjustment between Q1 and Q4?
Sunil Duggal The answer to that is no, we did normal sales in March, we didn’t hold back any sales and we
haven't dumped anything in the first quarter, it is pretty much normal.
Percy Panthaki Okay. On the margins front, one is with 20% sales growth and a similar growth in the gross
profit, we have not seen any operating leverage come through, is it something that is peculiar
to this quarter or do you think that operating leverage will not come through?
Sunil Duggal Well let me correct you; the operating leverage has been considerable, look at the tax rate, see
the way the tax rate has shot up. It's operating leverage which has come to our rescue to protect
our PAT margins.
Percy Panthaki I was talking about the growth in the EBITDA which is around 20% and the sales growth is
also around 20%.
Sunil Duggal Operating leverage comes below EBITDA. Above EBITDA what is the operating leverage,
there is very little other than sales and distribution cost. So there is no operating leverage,
everything is a variable cost.
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Percy Panthaki Yes, so I was talking about the addition of your employee cost, advertisement and promotion
and other expenditures.
Sunil Duggal Okay you have been right on that front.
Gagan Ahluwalia See the employee cost has been around 7.9%, last year it was 8.2%, so there is saving in that.
Then other expenditure is about 13.2% and last year it was 13.4%.
Sunil Duggal But I think below EBITDA is really where we have been able to offset, mitigate the impact of
the tax by considerably lower interest and depreciation; so overall the EBITDA margins have
held pretty constant largely on account of the operating leverage.
Percy Panthaki Okay. And my last question sir, on the input cost, directionally, are you seeing them inflating
or deflating?
Sunil Duggal Deflating. I’m not talking about indirect cost, because I do see inflation in salaries to be of
much higher order of magnitude than last year.
Percy Panthaki Yeah I was mainly talking on the overall level, if you can just sort of give a bit more
granularity, what are the main elements which are attributing to this deflation.
Sunil Duggal The biggest culprit if you take the first quarter was groundnut oil and the light liquid paraffin
and to some extent dextrose which goes into glucose; these were the three villains. Now on the
first which is groundnut oil, we do see softening of prices, monsoon in Gujarat has been good,
so GNO prices should come down pretty sharply. Dextrose already has come down. And the
third which is little bit more difficult to predict is LLP which goes into hair oils etc. Now that
to some extent is correlated to oil prices, but there is a basic issue in terms of the refining
capacity, so we are not very hopeful of this coming down and otherwise sugar and honey are
our ingredient raw materials which should again come off. So basically a more benign
environment is what we are seeing.
Percy Panthaki Okay, so there is possibly a deflation on a sequential basis, but on a YoY basis, probably not.
Sunil Duggal We look at inflation entirely on YoY basis because the mix has so much impact on the
margins. But on Q on Q basis we should see a lower material cost to sales ratio in the second
quarter than we saw in the first.
Percy Panthaki Then my question is which comes to the price increases that you have taken in the last one or
two months. What is reason for those price increases when there is no cost pressure per se?
Sunil Duggal There was, for example, groundnut oil went through the roof, so we were buying GNO at Rs.
80 a liter, we have never done that in the past. We were buying LLP at Rs. 75 rupees a liter; all
these had a huge impact in terms of margins of say Amla Hair Oil. And we were getting,
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squeezed on that front, so we had no option, but to increase the prices of Amla which was
perhaps the biggest single contributor to price increases. Then we had an opportunity in
glucose because of the huge demand, so we were able to partly mitigate the dextrose prices
through price increase or reduction in consumer promotions in glucose. So wherever there was
an opportunity of or wherever we were really faced with the margin pressure, we took up the
prices. And quite frankly the area we have taken up our prices whether glucose or Amla Hair
Oil have actually performed exceedingly well, so there has been no adverse consumer reaction.
Percy Panthaki Sir, I am taking a slightly more time than I should, but I am a bit confused on this front. You
are saying that the September quarter, the costs are going to be lower on a Y-o-Year basis, but
in June quarter, you took on price increases because prices are higher, so has the cost taken a
complete turnaround in the last two months or so?
Sunil Duggal Sitting in May, we didn’t have a huge amount of visibility about the Q2 costs. The monsoon
outlook was very cloudy.
Percy Panthaki Sir that's my question, have the costs or has your expectation of the cost actually taken a round
about in the last couple of months?
Sunil Duggal In the last one month yes, it has taken turn for the better.
Percy Panthaki Okay. That’s all from my side, sir thanks.
Naveen Trivedi from Pinc Research
Naveen Trivedi Yeah Good afternoon sir
Sunil Duggal Good afternoon
Naveen Trivedi My question is on the Turkey acquisition, can I have the asset details for this acquisition?
Sunil Duggal Anything in particular you would like to…?
Naveen Trivedi Basically; the gross block and the net current assets
Gagan Ahluwalia The net block is around $12 million and net current assets are about again around $11-$12
million
Naveen Trivedi Any tax differences on this acquisition, basically the effective tax rate on this?
Gagan Ahluwalia Tax rate in Turkey is 23%.
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Naveen Trivedi: My next question is on consolidated numbers, what is the guidance for tax rate for the whole
year, it is 18.7%?
Sunil Duggal The current tax rate which is close to like 20% will not be very dissimilar to the full year tax
rate.
Naveen Trivedi Okay so this rate is sustainable for next couple of quarters.
Sunil Duggal Yeah I don’t think it will go up because the slice of pie of international business is likely to
grow which will bring down the tax rate, so there would be a ceiling of 20% unless there is a
change in law. It won't be beyond 20% in any circumstances.
Naveen Trivedi Right, my next question is on IBD, we are regularly expanding our geographies, , IBD is
contributing around 20% of the total sales. Given the same track record, how much would be
the contribution would in the FY12?
Sunil Duggal If you just add the Hobi numbers next year it would be in the region of $35 million in that
ballpark. This will add how much to…
Gagan Ahluwalia About 4%.
Sunil Duggal Yeah so if we have 21% today, we should see a 25% at the very least next year.
Naveen Trivedi Okay. In FY12, it would be…
Sunil Duggal That I think it would depend upon…
Naveen Trivedi Because this segment is growing faster
Sunil Duggal So you know you can say it will grow at around 30%-40% ahead of domestic business, so we
would like to do the extrapolation. Having said that, I still believe that the slice of overseas
business would be considerably more, just because the chances of doing any inorganic activity
overseas is more likely than in India.
Naveen Trivedi Right, one more question what are the margins of IBD?
Sunil Duggal EBITDA’s are around 17, which are almost same as India.
Naveen Trivedi Not the Turkish acquisition, I am talking of overall IBD business.
Sunil Duggal That’s what I am talking about, overall IBD we are close to around 17%, if I remember
correctly last year for the full year was 17.7% and in Q1 was how much, 14-15%, so 15% goes
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up to 17%, so that’s a big jump over YoY and therefore if you again do the extrapolation, they
should be higher than what we did last year which was, if I remember 17.7%.
Naveen Trivedi Okay. 17.7% you are saying was last year.
Sunil Duggal Yeah Q1 margins in both international and domestic businesses are always lower, because of
the mix.
Naveen Trivedi Okay. Thank you so much sir.
Sunil Duggal You are welcome.
Vijay Chugh from Ambit Capital
Vijay Chugh Good evening everybody. My first question, Mr. Duggal, was, I just wanted to know from you
as to how has been the performance of some of the launches that we had which were quite
significant last year in terms of Uveda, Burrst and all that actually in the market?
Sunil Duggal I think most of them have operated as per our plans, some of them are taking longer to roll out
nationally, big bang etc., like Uveda, because we still have to do the fine tuning. These are
very expensive launches, so one shouldn’t rush into it. Burrst is not a major initiative, it is
modern trade initiative driven by the fact that modern trade wants a complete suite of beverage
products including drinks, so it is comparatively low key, and there is no advertising behind it.
Distribution of Burrst is limited only to modern trade and is doing pretty well wherever we
have launched it. But I won't call it something which is strategic like perhaps Uveda and the
hair oils have been both doing pretty well, so they are growing at a decent clip. Overall I think
it's been a pretty good track record, some of them are taking longer to get to the next stage, but
overall it's been good.
Vijay Chugh And any sort of key ones to look forward over the next three to six months time?
Sunil Duggal I think the hair oil should be important, we have little or no presence in light hair oils and it's
very important for us to get into the segment big time, so I would watch the performance of
both the almond as well Amla variants, particularly almond, because that operation is a bigger
space, very carefully. And lot of new introductions which we are planning now in the home
care portfolio which perhaps may not be new brands but new formats to grow the home care
portfolio more aggressively. So I think this year would be more consolidation and getting into
new themes within existing brands. For example, in Real, you will find an array of new
variants being launched, which are very different from what we have today in terms of the
proposition. So these are value added product, so I think the effort is going to be on this
direction rather than to launch, very many, new products.
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Vijay Chugh Okay. Thank you. My second question was on acquisitions, now that you know we have
completed the acquisition of Hobi, how do your acquisition priorities lie in terms of do you
still remain very aggressive?
Sunil Duggal Yes we do, I think our aggression is in a sense restricted by the financial discipline which we
exercise while prospecting and while doing an acquisition is in terms of both the strategic
nature of the acquisition as well as it's payback in terms of the financial piece. So to meet this
cut, the number of prospects are whetted pretty quickly, so I won't say that we have 50
companies on the plate which we are prospecting, but there are certainly at any point in time,
three or five, three or four companies which look very interesting and we progress the
dialogue. In most cases, the dialogue never gets down to doing the deal because of whatever
issues. But I think once a year, acquisition of the size of or bigger than Hobi is something
which is not just desirable but eminently possible and we probably will do it.
Vijay Chugh Okay. Thank you so much.
Shirish Pardeshi from Anand Rathi
Shisrish Pardeshi Hi Good evening Sunil.
Sunil Duggal Good evening.
Shisrish Pardeshi Hi I have few questions, first is in the shampoo category, I heard in your earlier part that the
competitive intensity is gone up. Is that the market is coming down to a 50 paisa and 1 rupees
price point or the have the rigid now vanished?
Sunil Duggal I think the 1 rupee is still the dominant price point, it always has been. There is some thinking
in terms of some companies opening up, reopening up the 50 paisa price point which I think is
pretty aggressive because there is very little margin to be made at 50 paisa and there is the
value in terms of the product which we can offer. But there is, I think because of market share
losses in the part of certain players, great desire to get back to recapture those and that is
leading to very disruptive competition on the ground. Now how sustainable it is, whether
people can sustain the bleed, I suspect that when you take off the oxygen, then you know
pretty the same situation will remerge. It's easy to lubricate trade and gain some points in
market share, but the sustainability of these is very suspect.
Shisrish Pardeshi I just wanted to know, do we have the 50 paisa offering?
Sunil Duggal We don’t have 50 paisa offering.
Shisrish Pardeshi Are we planning to compete there?
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Sunil Duggal No, not really because the only place we can compete that 50 paisa at this point in time is to
change the product formulation and that’s what many companies are doing, but we believe
that’s very short term.
Shisrish Pardeshi Okay I understand that. The other question I have is on the oral care, would you be able to
share what is the growth in brand Babool, I have seen the number including Fresh Mint, we
have grown 29.1%, but can you tell us what's the growth on Babool brand?
Gagan Ahluwalia 25% without the gel
Shisrish Pardeshi With the gel
Gagan Ahluwalia With the gel is 29%.
Sunil Duggal I think one of the strongest part of our growth story this quarter has been oral care and it's
been an outperforming category by a factor of three and we have gained share, we have been
far higher in growth than anybody else by a huge margin. I think it shows the strength of our
brands, the soundness of our strategy, and in a very competitive environment, this has really
been standout performance.
Shisrish Pardeshi Yeah in the presentation I saw the another feature that we have launched introductory offer at
10 rupees for Dabur Red, what is this offer and what exactly is going to do this..?
Sunil Duggal Presently the consumption of red toothpaste is largely urban so we did our analysis and this is
the fact which stared us in the face and when we did some more digging, it was unavailability
of the Rs. 10 price point which was leading to this lack of demand in the rural areas. So I think
it's important for red toothpaste to have a strong footprint in rural and 10 rupees is the route to
that market, so that’s the logic there.
Shisrish Pardeshi Okay. My next question is on the Consumer Health Division, I have a broader question, how
big is the category if you split ethical and OTC?
Sunil Duggal Ethical is around 40% of our business.
Shisrish Pardeshi What is the total category size in terms of rupees?
Sunil Duggal What do you mean by category size?
Shisrish Pardeshi I am saying Consumer Health Division if you look at the OTC plus ethical.
Gagan Ahluwalia You are talking of our categories or …?
Shisrish Pardeshi No in general, the market size
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Sunil Duggal Ethical is probably Rs. 7000 crores that is the size of the market if you include the prescriptive
part also. So these are huge categories.
Shisrish Pardeshi And we have done lot of activities there and we are also planning further inputs, so I just
wanted to understand what is the margin profile and does this really need the A&P spends push
or it is more of driven by the distribution?
Sunil Duggal I think the OTC piece would require spend levels which will not be dissimilar to that of
personal care. The only thing is that the size of the category is small, so the total corpus of
A&P may be high in percentage terms, but it will not aggregate to a big amount. So perhaps in
cough cold fever, let's say brand Honitus, which is a 30 crores brand, we spent something like
5 crores in the A&P which is pretty similar to what we spent in categories like hair oils or
shampoo or certainly hair oils or toothpaste. But it still aggregates to comparatively small
number, but in terms of share of voice, it is not bad, 5 crores in cough cold fever is not a bad
amount, because these categories are obviously much less level of competitive intensity in
terms of A&P spending and personal care and toiletries.
Shisrish Pardeshi Okay. Which are the top 3 segments in the consumer health division Dabur would bet?
Sunil Duggal Well if you look at the OTC piece we would bet on supplements and wellness. We would bet
on cough cold fever and we would bet on gastrointestinal.
Shisrish Pardeshi Okay. You said gastrointestinal?
Sunil Duggal Yeah GI, Pudin Hara is the one brand which we have in that domain.
Shisrish Pardeshi Okay. Now my next question is on the retail front, would you be able to help us to understand
what's happening on the retail initiative?
Sunil Duggal Yeah I think a lot of good things are happening on retail. We are opening up a large number of
stores, we are today at 19 stores and we are literally opening up one store a month or
sometimes two stores in a month. We plan to hit 40 stores by the year end and maybe a little
bit more than that. The business model has been fine tuned to where we are getting to store
break even very quickly. We are seeing far more traction in terms of sales velocity and
footfalls. Every parameter is now showing green compared to what it was one year ago. Part of
it is due to economic revival, lot of if it is due to our own learning curve now having been
reached, so the business today is on a far stronger footing than what it was even six months
ago, little on a year ago. And I think there is opportunity for creating value here because of the
FDI window likely to open and there is a lot we can do in terms of further scaling of this
business whether in Dabur fold, outside the Dabur fold. So we are now far more optimistic
about this business than what we were sometime ago.
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Shisrish Pardeshi So maybe what's the growing rate we are expecting per month for FY12, assuming that you
have 40 stores?
Sunil Duggal By FY12 we should be more than 40 stores and end of current fiscal, should be at 45 and then
we will take a call when we cast our budget for next year whether we want to follow a very
steep trajectory for opening or whether we want to now reach a certain amount of critical mass
and then perhaps look at options for this business which may not be within Dabur.
Shisrish Pardeshi Sir, it is our own store or it is franchisee format?
Sunil Duggal These are own rented stores, and they stock now basically premium toiletries and general
merchandize. So the earlier model which was more omnibus in terms of health care, etc., has
been jettisoned. We fine tuned the model to focus on personal care and toiletries.
Shisrish Pardeshi What is the planned CAPEX for these 40 stores for FY11?
Sunil Duggal We planned around a CAPEX of around 5 crores here for these stores and there could be
around 30 fresh stores, so you take around 20 Lakhs per store, so around 6 Crores.
Shisrish Pardeshi Okay lastly, I heard that A&P spends you spoke about is really going to be competitive, if you
can help us to understand this 16.3% Ad to sales ratio. The sector is now inviting lot of
competition also from the domestic player, now which are the categories we think that we want
to remain competitive or how this 16.3% is spent, if you can help us.
Sunil Duggal I think 16.3% is almost the peak, lot of this has been fueled by in the past at least by a fairly
benign environment in terms of raw materials. I think as and when you have inflation which
has already began to catch up, people start feeling that heat then it should level off. So this is
probably the highest which we will see in aggregate terms. Within that there would be
obviously pockets of intense competitive activity like we saw in shampoos this quarter, so that
will happen in bits and pieces when there would be somebody who is wanting to regain share
or to enter to have a market entry, so there would be periods of disruptive competition in
certain pockets. But in aggregate terms, I think this is really where it could end.
Shisrish Pardeshi Do you see any competitive activity in oral care?
Sunil Duggal I think there is some visibility of that with both Smith Kline and Procter, showing interest in
this category, so there is every possibility of heightened competitive activity in this category in
the next couple of quarters, but we are prepared for that.
Shisrish Pardeshi So how much of this 16.3 would be promotion and advertising if you can break up?
Sunil Duggal In our case, I am not too sure about the market, but in our case, around 12% is above the line
and something like 5% is below the line.
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Shisrish Pardeshi Yeah thanks a lot Sunil and thanks for taking my question.
Sunil Duggal Thank you.
Anshhul Mishra from ING Mutual Fund
Anshul Mishra Yeah hi sir, I kind of logged in late, I guess you have already shared all these numbers, the
financial numbers sales and all for the recent acquisition, please can you repeat it for me?
Gagan Ahluwalia Sales of the company were about $27 million in 2009, year ended 31st December 2009 and the
EBITDA margins are around 17%. Anything else you want to know?
Anshul Mishra This would be Hobi Kozmetik, right?
Sunil Duggal In January to May because they follow the calendar year, the sales are $14 million that's the
latest number which we have got.
Anshul Mishra Okay January to May, okay. This would be for Hobi Kozmetik, right?
Sunil Duggal Yes, the others are for those three companies which formed Hobi Kozmetik Group, there is a
manufacturing company, there is a distribution company and there is third packaging company,
but then that’s just nomenclature thing, the outcome which is the…
Anshul Mishra There is a consolidated thing.
Gagan Ahluwalia These are Consolidated financials for the Hobi Group.
Anshul Mishra Okay. And also one more thing on the market share front, if you can please share on the oral
care category what's the market share, how it has moved on the hair care also, hair oil front,
you have already shared the shampoo figures, so If you can please?
Gagan Ahluwalia In the toothpaste category, our share is 10.6%.
Anshul Mishra Okay. What was it say about a year back
Gagan Ahluwalia 10.6% in value terms and 14% in volume terms.
Anshul Mishra Okay. And what was in year back?
Gagan Ahluwalia A year back it was 10.2% in value terms up to March 2010.
Anshul Mishra Okay, and in volume terms?
Gagan Ahluwalia Volume terms was 13.5.
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Anshul Mishra Okay, and similarly if you can please share for the hair oil segment.
Gagan Ahluwalia Hair oil segment, we are not accessing the AC Nielsen data.
Sunil Duggal The hair oils are growing both the Vatika and the Amla numbers, at 22% and 19%
respectively. I am sure we have gained share. We have stopped taking Nielsen data because it
was completely out of sync with what we were doing, so that’s the only data which we don’t
take, but I am sure the share growth would only by positive because not many brands would
have grown at the pace.
Anshul Mishra Right, and also in the food segment, specific to Real, do you have any market share kind of a
thing and if you can please share that?
Sunil Duggal For Real again, we have discontinued Nielsen data because of huge inaccuracies, but we get
data from second resources where we at this point in time have 52% share.
Anshul Mishra Okay sir thanks a lot.
Abhijeet Kundu from Antique
Abhijeet Kundu Hi, good set of numbers. Sir I want to know this, about the industry as a whole, primarily
personal products portfolio, rather, skin care, oral care and hair care. We have seen good
amount of competition coming in the there in case of hair care where there are primarily in
case of shampoos as well as in case of skin care. When this competition is coming in, we have
seen that there is a slowdown in shampoos where in the same time, the leader who has
heightened the competition, even the leader has not really shown great growth. So primarily
one was, are these categories see a slowdown despite the low penetration level or there is a lot
of marketing activities to really penetrate the rural markets. What's happening there?
Sunil Duggal See based on Nielsen’s, shampoos certainly have shown a slowdown, it's down to around 8%
growth compared to much higher growth which we saw last year, whether that’s because of
fatigue or whether it's just high base, it's really hard to say. I think shampoo growth should
revive and it should get back to at least mid teens where they ought to be, this is probably an
aberration. And you know the problems have been low growth and high competitive intensity,
so it's not been a good quarter for shampoos.
Abhijeet Kundu Okay. And in case of skin care and oral care what would be the category growth rate?
Sunil Duggal The growth rate in toothpaste we can tell, skin care is pretty heterogeneous category, but for
toothpaste what are the rates?
Gagan Ahluwalia In the first quarter i.e. April to June period, it's around 8.3%.
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Sunil Duggal It's 8.3, Dabur as per Nielsen is 18%.Actually they are growing at 28%, but that difference
always is there. So at the very least we have to be 2x of category, we believe we are around 3x.
Abhijeet Kundu Okay. So in such a case despite the 50% penetration levels in toothpaste, do you think that
there is this kind of growth that we are seeing in toothpaste which should not be, so it should
be in the region of about 13%-15% at least?
Sunil Duggal Yes definitely as is for most other categories logically it should be at this, I mean if you have
the GDP growth of 9, then at least basic categories like toothpaste and hair oil should go at
twice GDP growth, but often that doesn’t happen for reasons which are not very clear.
Abhijeet Kundu Okay sir thanks.
Abneesh Roy from Edelweiss
Abneesh Roy Sir, retail expansion is as per track, could you also guide on the expected loss numbers for
FY11?
Sunil Duggal Yeah I think around 10-12 crores is what we will lose this year which is almost exactly the
same as what we did last, but over a much larger store footprint.
Abneesh Roy Any sense you are getting on the FDI based on your talks with the regulatory people?
Sunil Duggal We do get a sense of it, I don’t think the authorities are being very open about what their intent
is, but the noises which we get to hear indicate an environment which will be facilitative of
FDI entry to the space.
Abneesh Roy Sir, regarding Uveda, you said that you will have a very phased and gradual expansion, so any
problem with the timing of the launch or what exactly, is it going as per track?
Sunil Duggal Yeah let's put it this way, we will go and do a big launch when we are pretty certain that the
mix which we have put into play is what is going to work, because the moment we are going to
a launch, we will be putting considerable amount of money on the table and it doesn’t make
any kind of sense to risk that with the proposition with the marketing mix which is not
absolutely optimal. And it takes a little bit of time to get there because there are so many issues
here in terms of consumer understanding in terms of activation on the ground and till
everything is nailed down, it's pretty imprudent to do something which is very big bang
because you can lose a lot of money and get very little out of it.
Abneesh Roy And in FMCG we see that there are lots of failures, lot of success in any new launch, so what
is your timeframe for evaluating a new launch from test phase to the pilot phase to next
national roll out?
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Sunil Duggal See it depends upon the pace at which you roll out, let's put it this way, you can gauge the
product success or failure once you have backed it with media inputs in a fairly large set of
geography within six months of its launch. You know whether it's going to work or whether
it's not going to work, but this is only when you put all the elements of the marketing mix into
play of the ground.
Abneesh Roy So in the last three years have you phased out any new launch?
Sunil Duggal Yeah I think we have phased out products here and there, you know Vatika soaps was a case
which never really worked, but there is largely on sort of margin pressures we didn’t believe
we will be able to make a strong product story out of it. Then we had a couple of other small
failures which we have had which is again part of the game.
Abneesh Roy It's too early, but do you think that the Vatika soaps story can get repeated in the shampoo…
Sunil Duggal No, I don’t think so, shampoos you see the Vatika is a proven success story and it's been in the
market now for over 10 years and it's got a strong presence. One quarter of disappointing
performance I don’t think should, let's put it this way, one year ago everybody thought the
toothpaste story is over for Dabur and look where we are today so you have to take these ups
and downs in your stride but the basic proposition which we have for Vatika is very strong.
Abneesh Roy You spoke that rural outperformance in terms of growth in Q1 has not been that great, so I
wanted to understand in Q1 what has been the rural growth, what has been the urban growth?
Sunil Duggal No, I don’t have the numbers, it's too early, the numbers normally would come around a month
from now, but I suspect the urban rural growth has been pretty similar in the first quarter
unlike last year where the rural growths were ahead of urban growths.
Abneesh Roy And lastly, in terms of modern retail in terms of the working capital, in terms of the inventory,
in terms of the shelf space, any big change in the last two years, initially there were lots of
problems in terms of…?
Sunil Duggal Actually as and when you fine tune your product offering and you trim your SKUs, the
inventory levels come down dramatically. Today we are operating at pretty lean inventories
compared to say two years ago, when inventories were very bloated because we were keeping
a huge assortment of products not knowing but would sell and what will not. You know retail
everybody has to learn by actually doing the activity, there is no shortcut here and the last two
years have given us huge learning in terms of what works and what doesn’t and obviously then
what inventory to keep and what not to keep.
Abneesh Roy Okay sir all the best.
Sunil Duggal Thank you.
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Gagan Ahluwalia Thank you everyone for participating in this conference call today. For your reference we will
be putting the transcript and archived copy of the web cast of this call on our website. Thank
you once again and have a great evening.