Ather Energy Limited (ATHERENERG) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and Chairman, good day, and welcome to the Aether Energy Ltd. Q1-FI27 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal the operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now have the conference over to Mr. Moodley Shashidaran, Head of Communications at Aether Energy. Thank you. And over to you, sir.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Aether Energy Ltd.'s Q1 FY27 earnings conference call. From the management team we have with us today, Mr. Talan Mehta, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Sohail Parekh, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me draw your attention to the fact that today's discussion may include certain forward-looking statements which are predictions, projections, or other estimates about future events. These statements reflect management's current expectations about future performance of the company and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that may cause For actual results to differ materially. With that, I would like to request Mr. Tarun Mehta, Executive Director and CEO of Acer Energy, to share his opening remarks. Following his comments, we will open the forum for Q&A questions. Over to you, Tarun.

Hey, thanks, Mollie. So, welcome, everybody. Welcome to our first earnings call for FI27. We're doing this call in the midst of a pretty massive change and pretty massive transformation for the EV industry, which is reflective in the overall e-tooler penetration. For a while, people were wondering if e-tooler penetration had slowed down or if it was not going fast enough. We've been guiding for the last few quarters that underlying demand is strong and there is growth that we are seeing. But in the last three to four months, given larger macro shifts, numbers have really changed. e-tooler penetration is up by 44% at 11% in the tool industry and electric penetration in the scooter industry is upwards of, I believe, 25% now. This is also reflective in how searches have gone up. If you look at an industry level, EV searches for electric vehicles are up almost 75%, and Aker brand searches are up almost 118%. What's underpinning all of these are some macro shifts. First, transport electrification, as hailed by the Prime Minister himself, is now accelerating as a national agenda. We've got to electrify cooking and transport, and this is really making this mission mainstream today. Second, there is very clear and strong policy support. Obviously, PME drive that has always been around, but the recent announcements and the plans with the Delhi EV policy, I think they are playing a pretty massive role in driving consumer confidence. I believe that if this policy plays out positively, as it looks like now, this will have a pretty massive impact across multiple states. Third is, and this is an interesting one, there are now availability concerns on petrol and diesel, and they are shifting consumer sentiment. There was a point, I remember, a few years ago, when somebody would, even our die-hard EV family would always say that, at home, there is one petrol car. We are now moving to a place, and, you know, this was a fun colloquial thing, a fun thing that I had heard, that one electric car will not have to be in the house. Really capturing the sentiment in a beautiful manner. It's not petrol prices that have shifted demand up. People are moving towards electric because for the first time, probably ever, people generally fear how... Accessible and available fossil fuels would be. Electricity is seen generally as a more available commodity than petrol today. And this is why EV demand is now starting to surge. And finally, obviously, you can't deny this, rising petrol prices in India particularly are definitely improving the overall total cost of ownership for electric vehicles. So these are four macro shifts that are really driving structure, become really structural tailwinds for our industry today. Every demand proxy that you can think of is inflecting upwards. Industry registrations are up 68% in the last one year, hitting 525K in Q127. Inquiries for Ather that we are receiving on a daily basis, they are up 95% in the same time. In Q127, we received more than 7 lakh inquiries for our products. And Ather pre-orders, these are paid pre-orders that are captured across the country. They were up 158%, hitting a first-ever seen 1.5 lakh pre-orders in Q-127, really capturing how massive the demand for electric vehicles in general and Ather particularly has been in recent times. You know, and this is reflecting in very strong financial results. For example, our wholesale volume grew 81% from 46,000 units in Q1 FI 26 to 83,000 units in Q1 FI 27. This has happened despite production constraints and multiple supply challenges during Q1. You know, we were navigating the labor crisis, the West Asia war induced crisis at the start of the quarter, which is why April volumes were still soft. April production was still soft to 24,000 units. But we have month-on-month ramped up from 24,000 units in April to 28,000 units in May to 31,000 units in June. Our current facilities have a max production capacity of 35,000 units, and I'm happy to announce that we are... Almost at 100% utilization as we speak now. So the ramp-up took a couple of months, but we are now there. And this surge is best captured when you see our year-on-year registration growth. So year-on-year wholesale growth was 81%, but year-on-year registration growth was even sharper at 102%. Registrations for Ather grew from 44,900 units in Q1 to more than 90,000 units in Q1FI27. In fact, this is once again another quarter where retail has outpaced wholesale, driving the urgency and the need for us to ramp up both supply and capacity on a war footing. Uh, in sales. Middle India continues to be our growth driver, driving the highest growth among all zones for us. Middle India are the five zones of Gujarat, Maharashtra, MP Chhattiskar, and Odisha, which grew 141% in retail from Q1 last year to Q1 this year, followed by the rest of India at 118%, followed by South India at 76%. I'm going to need to, just to give, We have this slide in the presentation also, where we have shown how inquiries have ramped up, how pre-orders that we are capturing have now crossed 50,000 on a monthly basis. And may I just call out... This is 50,000 pre-orders, despite the fact that in many states now, our dealers are no longer even accepting new pre-orders because the waiting times are now hitting two months or even higher. So the underlying demand, we strongly believe, is very, very, very, very high. We believe today that of the 30,000 units that we retail average in Q1, we could have probably sold an incremental 13,000 to 15,000 units extra every month. That's the unrealized retail potential for us. And this is unique. It is a bittersweet situation to be in because, obviously, a brand would want to be in a place where they have more demand than they can say to it. And this is best captured by looking at our dealer channel inventory. Our dealer stocks are down from 14 days to now three days as of Q1, FI27. So how do we solve for this new demand reality? Our current production out of Hosur maxes out to 35,000 units per month, or about 4.2 lakh units per annum, which is roughly where we are already now getting into in Q2. We've already invested, we are in the midst of finishing our investment in Aurangabad, Chhatrapati Shambhajanagar, which is a new factory. Phase 1 of this new factory unlocks 5 lakh units, which is what we are all razor focused on. Go Live of Oric will take our total capacity up from 4.2 lakh units to 9.2 lakh units later this calendar year. But we believe demand is ramping up very fast. 9.2 lakh units per annum is only 77,000 units a month. We believe on current demand trajectories, even this may be... I think we were lucky here when we took Aurangabad. We took larger land capacity, and we had always planned for Auric Phase 2, and there are some common facilities already that were planned for. With Auric Phase 2, we can incrementally add another 5 lakh annual capacity, taking a total capacity up to 14.2 lakh units in the coming time. We haven't started any investments for Auric Phase 2, but that presents a capturable opportunity by us should the current demand trajectory continue to ramp up, which we are quite bullish about. Also, to fund it, recently, we finished closure of our 1,300 crore QIP a few weeks ago with very strong participation from funds, both from India and abroad. We are also in the midst of seeking shareholder approval and closing a fundraise of another 1,200 crores via our preference issue, leading to a total fundraise of 2,500 crores. This cache race will serve us well as we respond. the fast-tracking that we need to do for this capacity, both at our end and our suppliers' end. It will also help us as we will likely have to fast-track launch of new products, because the market certainly is expanding faster than anybody anticipated, and will also give us the balance sheet resilience to be able to navigate some of the commodity crisis and the supply crisis that continue to exist globally. Coming to challenges, there have been headwinds also, but there have been very, very strong tailwinds. In the headwinds, the first one is the commodity challenge, which we've been highlighting for the last two quarters. Q127 was not immune to it. We saw an escalation in commodity costs across the board. The commodity index in the last five quarters has gone up by 46% for us, which is what we had roughly guided by last quarter also. In fact, in many ways, the hit from commodity costs was probably a little higher than even we anticipated in Q1. We do believe that there is still some more risk in the coming months of it escalating a bit more. But we are hopefully near the top rather than near the bottom right now. So hopefully the pain is not going to compound for too long. To manage this, we've focused a lot. We obviously are increasing capacity, and that will be a big, big help as we can sell more. But in the near term, every crisis can open up some opportunity. We saw that many years ago when the pullback of... The current commodity crisis has definitely pushed us again, which reflects in how we've been able to navigate pricing. Happy to report that our teams have been able to drive very strong success on both. Sales price increase and improved SKU. The average sales price of Ather has now hit 1.61 lakh across the country, up from about 1.5 lakh rupees as of last quarter. So there's been a sharp increase there. This is a mix of A, price hikes, which the market has been able to absorb, and B, improved SKU management on the ground. This is also reflective of the fact about how much pricing power the Aether brand today commands and how much respect and confidence our customers continue to have in us on our quality, on our products, and overall brand promise. So this, hands down, is probably the strongest success story for Aether in this quarter. All of this was also supported by very strong Atherstack pro attach rates, which have gone up even this quarter. We saw 94% Atherstack pro attach rates in Q1.27. So if I see the overall gross margin, just a gross margin story, AGM story, we exited Q4.26 at 25.4%. There were structural gains that we were able to bake in between the price hikes, between SKU management, between Atherstack Pro attach rates, cost reductions, and many others. These are structural gains because most of it will survive even the current commodity crisis. In fact, all the structural gains are not fully accounted for because as I talked about the price hike, the price hike of the ASP increase of 1.61 lakhs happened by the end of Q1. So there is still some more upside that we will continue to benefit out even in the Q2. So this is the structural gain that we've gotten out of this entire episode. Obviously, more than cancelling it out is the near-term commodity inflation that we're dealing with, which led to a 5.6% drop in gross margins. Nett it out, we've landed up at 22.4% AGM for Q127, a fairly respectable place, particularly looking at how strong the commodity hit was. But particularly, the good news, the silver lining in this entire thing is... The structural gains will likely continue the commodity inflation, will likely outlast the commodity inflation cycle also. And which brings us to the big financial success of this quarter. Despite the commodity crisis, despite that pressure, we were able to manage the gross margins well. But more importantly, teams delivered an astounding amount of discipline on fixed costs. Recognizing the strong demand that our gross already had, we were able to run a really tight ship on fixed costs, particularly marketing and sales. And deliver our first ever positive EBITDA quarter. EBITDA came in at a 9 crore margin for Q127, which is roughly about 0.8%. It's a small number, but this is the first time ever we have delivered one, so very happy to report it. Challenges do continue for the coming quarters, so there can still be some, there will likely be in fact some ups and downs, but don't want to miss out on the opportunity to call this out when it does happen, which is a positive EBITDA quarter. So, I spoke a lot about, you know, where growth is coming from, and, you know, how strong demand is looking like, how strong demand is overall looking like. Coming to the next big driver of growth, hopefully for us, and big driver of demand is our EL Scooter platform. This is something that we had unveiled last year, and we are now getting ready to launch. EL scooter is already under production. High-volume trials have already begun. SOP has already begun. Homologation is already completed. Production has begun out of the R-Hosur facility for now, and will run from here for a few months before it starts scaling up out of Aurangabad. We are looking at scaling up our manufacturing capacity for the EL scooter to about 60,000 units per month between Aurangabad and Hosur together. Obviously, it will not be called EL. It will have a brand name. We'll be unveiling the brand name in a couple of days, so please do watch out for it. And finally, the product is going to be unveiled in our upcoming Aether Community Day, which has now become an annual affair. It's happening on the 29th of August in Bangalore, and we look forward to seeing many of you there this time. Between, yeah, sorry, going ahead. To deliver all this demand that we are already seeing and Yale will likely bring in, the most critical piece now is the launch of our factory C.0 out of Parangabad or Chakra Pratish Shambhaji Nagar. We've shared a picture in the presentation outlining the progress on the site. It's tracking well for GoLive by later this calendar year. Assembly line has already been set up, and warehouse and utilities are coming up as we speak. PaintShop is under trial. So things are looking good for GoLive in the coming few months. Finally, coming to the fun event we're all excited about, it's a community day. The theme for this year is a new dawn of magic, which really has a really strong correlation to the product that we will be launching, the EL scooter that we'll be launching. It will be happening in KDPO in Whitefield, Bengaluru, and we'll have a slew of announcements. The big ones obviously would be the launch of the scooter, but there will also be many announcements around the software stack, around charging infrastructure, and many other ownership products. With that, we are at the end of my session. In summary, demand is up incredibly. Demand has really gone in a very different orbit altogether, up 158% compared to same time last year, and EL launch later this month should further set us up for an even stronger demand in the coming quarters. Registrations, which is retail for us, up strongly at 102%, supported enormously by really strong per-unit revenue in Q1. And finally, production also up 79%, but the big upside here is avated with Factor 3.0 going live in Q3, FI27. With that, folks, at the end of my session, we can now open this up for Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use their handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take the first question from the line of Amin Pirani from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. And, you know, congratulations on a strong number, even, you know, in a quarter which had so many challenges. So, my first question is actually on the margin itself. You did mention that, you know, commodity headwinds could continue. So are you seeing a similar 5% to 6% further commodity headwind that you saw in this quarter, or are you thinking more like it will be stable at these levels and then hopefully come down at a later part of the year?

Thanks, Emin. I expect commodity hit to continue inching up because do remember these are quarterly average numbers, so they don't probably fully capture the hit from commodities that we would have seen by the end of the quarter. But I'm also not expecting like a 5-6 percentage further drop from here. So, do expect, like we've called out that the hit in this quarter was roughly about 5.6%. I would say there's probably another couple percentage points worth of risk left. There's also a possibility that this could start cooling, but that's... It's extremely volatile and difficult to exactly predict when that happens. But if nothing else changes, maybe there is still 100, 200 bips of further hit left, for which I think if you've been able to absorb this, I'm more optimistic about absorbing or largely managing the rest because EL itself will start lowering our cost riftures in the coming quarters, and annual cost reductions will anyway play a strong role. Sure.

Thanks for that. And even on your employee and other expenses line, you've shown remarkable cost control. So is this a new baseline and then EL helps us? Because I think when the new capacity comes in, these costs will go up, right? So before the new capacity comes up, is this the new baseline or was this quarter something exceptional that you did to control the costs, which can go up in the future?

Well, I won't call anything exceptional, you know. By DNA, we have generally run a tight ship, and we've been always fairly cautious. This year, even internally, our messaging was very clear that we've had a blowout year in FI26, but in FI27, we've got to be cautious. So we've managed all expenses carefully. We've not been overly generous there, so that's true. But overall, I think it's a story of multiple cautious eyes, you know, landing this year. So nothing exceptional that we have done. You know, it's not like a one-time thing that happened here or some additional positive surprise that's kicked in. When, as AORIC starts going live, yes, there will be a cost that will go up. It will not go up immediately because, you know, some of that cost will likely get capitalized. But expect Q4 onwards that cost to come in. But by the time you'll see that cost hitting our PNL, you will also likely see volume output out of it. So net-net, you may not see a meaningful shift in overall numbers.

And just one last thing from my side. Are you expecting to hit a full ramp up in AORIC phase one by March? Or is that something which will happen sometime in fiscal year 28?

I mean, I would like to hit in March, but honestly, difficult to predict the exact month, so it could spill over into the first few months of FI28, but you can imagine the kind of pressure we've created for ourselves with this demand. So everybody is completely focused and incentivized only and only to, you know, get Auric live, go live as quickly as possible.

Okay, great. All the best for that, and thank you for the opportunity.

Thanks, Edmund. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Kapil Singh from Nomura. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening, team, and congratulations. Firstly, just on the demand side, you know, we have hit an ASP of 160K now. It's probably in the premium motorcycle segment category. So, just wanted to understand. So what is the customer profile and demographics? Any insights you may want to share? Is the market shifting towards scooters? And your views on that would be helpful.

Yeah, hi, Gavil. Thank you for, you know, reminding us that of this interesting success. No, you know, I was just taking the team here while you were asking a question. No, our teams on ground don't believe that the customer profile has changed. It's basically the same customer. There is definitely some role of limited supply at play here, no doubt about it. That's definitely particularly helping us push the SKU in the direction that we like. But overall, we don't think the underlying customer profile has changed radically. Is it the motorcycle buyer buying a scooter today? We also don't think so. We think it is largely still the same scooter buyer. What has to be called out is the continued success of retail finance in our overall scheme of things, which is really helping customers absorb this cost in an easier way. See, because you do appreciate this, you would appreciate this, that the TCO gain of electric is becoming incredibly powerful. So, as Mohan... Though I listed that as the fourth point in the structural tailwinds, it does help a lot towards this factor that, you know what, an extra 5,000, 8,000 rupees is probably fine because that's like maybe 100, 200 rupees extra per month, but the petrol savings are just like enormous at this point. That coupled with the E2O concerns, overall, I think create an environment where customers don't mind paying a little bit more for an EV because they are starting to appreciate the TCO quite a lot more now.

Okay. Second question was on the margin side. What is happening on the PM eDrive subsidy? And, you know, with the price hikes that you have taken, have they been able to cover up for the cost increases when we look at Q2 and beyond?

So, we've been hearing that we've been hearing an intent by the government to find a way to extend PME drives to continue supporting the larger electrification drive that they've been behind. As of now, we don't have one. We are awaiting clarity on it. But signs are strong is all I can say. And have the price increases covered the inflation that we have seen in commodities? No, I won't say they're fully covered because if they had, we would have seen no margin loss at all. But there is one upside, which is that though I did say to Emin in the previous question that I expect commodity inflation to increase a little bit more for another quarter, the reality also is in the structural gains bucket, our price hikes haven't been fully factored in in Q1 because our price hike happened. Actually, reasonably back-roded. So, there is some more upside that will hit us from there also. So, for Q2, we may be in a decent position now on cancelling the effect of commodity hikes. But, yeah, but we'll not fully capture it. We'll have to wait for commodities to cool down.

Yeah, but a subsidy is one element we will need to watch for, right? Because you would have got almost for the full quarter in Q1.

Actually, no. Even for Q1, we didn't bake subsidies for the full quarter. Roughly about 15-20% of the vehicles may have been sold without subsidies. I'll just re-verify the exact numbers. Maybe more. For Q2, we'll have to see if subsidies are announced. Right now, as we speak, we don't know.

Okay. And I just finally wanted to check any thoughts given to Auric Phase 2. Is it possible to bring it earlier if the demand momentum continues like this, especially with the new product launch?

Yeah, very good question, Kapil. So that's what I was saying, that we did start thinking about this as a potential requirement, which is also what played a role in how we sized up our fundraise. So, the overall 2,500 crores in our mind also gives us the watches to fast-track Auric Phase 2 without necessarily waiting for, you know, more proof of Phase 1. So, we'll see in the coming couple of quarters. If this trajectory holds up, I would not rule out a Phase 2 fast-tracking, quite a material fast-tracking.

Okay, brilliant. Thank you so much, and best wishes.

Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Gunjan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just continuing on similar lines, zooming in a little bit more on the capacity and the commodity bit. On the capacity, you mentioned 30 goes to 35 immediately. You've de-bottlenecked or rammed it up. By Q1, that gets to roughly 72. Is that? What, 40 plus the 35, 75, is that the way to think about it? But Q1, we will be 75.

But Q1, 28, you mean? Yeah. Very high likelihood, yes.

Okay. And then you mentioned that there is a 60K per month that you're allocating to EL. How do I read these two together? I mean, is it the fungible lines? Is there something else that I need to understand here?

So, AORIC has been completely dedicated towards EL. What we've also done in HOSU is, yes, HOSU does have some amount of fungibility, but more importantly, HOSU does have additional capacity. So, we can either give EL the full 18K out of... Or we can take it down, because we already have the capacity to do 35k of Rista and 450. So we can play between these two. We can't add them up, so we can't do 35 plus 18, because that much line capacity we don't have. But with a little bit of heads up, we can choose that allocation. So EL, with phase 1 of Auric, EL can have a net total capacity of 42 plus 18, 60k.

Okay. Okay, got it.

Okay, that's clear.

And on the acceleration of phase two, is there a timeline that you can put that how soon can it be done if you had to do a TORIC?

I think it's difficult to say this quarter, Gunjan. Maybe in the next quarter, I'll be a little bit more wise about it. The upsides are that, you know, the land was secured together, incentives were negotiated in one go. Some of the infra will also be common between both phase one and phase two. So phase two should certainly take lesser time than it took phase one. A lot of the approvals are already in place also. So, the downside is, or downside or rather, let me call out the watch out right now is, we don't want to start phase two today or start giving a guidance or timeline today because, you know. It just feels like, you know, we should be a little bit more cautious, just see phase one, at least go live in the next few months, and then get going with phase two. So right now, we are in the planning stage for phase two. If all looks well, maybe in a quarter or two max, we'll have more firmer timelines and guidance to share.

Got it. And on the commodity increase, sorry, a little bit more discussion is happening on this. Just trying to get my head around, you'll have a 7.5% sort of commodity hit. In Q1 and Q2 put together, can you just give us some thought process on how much price hike has been taken? How would we look to sort of cover some of it through combination of price hike? Secondly, structural benefits that we have already accrued and, you know, we may potentially see from EL platform any ballpark, you know, math around it. And of course, you know, we hope that commodities pull off. But in absence of, let's say, commodities plateau out here, how do we look at the, you know, sort of covering up this 7, 7.5% sort of RM headwind?

Yeah. So, in Q1, we started increasing our ASPs. The bulk of this ASP increase has come on the back of price increases, which are 100% margin-accretive. I would say maybe about one-third was improved SKU management, which is not fully margin. It's maybe about 25% of that flows back into gross margins. So we took a pricing up to, so we were 1.5 lakh rupees per vehicle in Q4. We went up to 153k in April, 153k in May, and 161k in June. So that's where for the quarter, we may have averaged out probably closer to 155k or so. But the reality is, since June, our pricing is already or our ASP is already around 1.61 lakhs. So that benefit would be seen on a full quarter basis in Q2, and which is where I'm reasonably confident that Further hits from commodity at this point may be largely mitigated by the price hike that we've already done, which will reflect in our financials in Q2. So, yeah, so this 5.6% could only be partly absorbed, but any further increase can be more or less managed. There's only one downside to ASP, by the way. As EL launches later this month, and as it scales up in production, it will likely depress our ASPs a little bit. But on a whole, overall, margins will likely look quite fine. So at a margin level, I think we've already made a move, and in Q2, we should not see a material degradation from RM any further. But this point onwards, probably for the first time, I would say, Gross margin, hits from commodities are probably now, like there is a line of sight of where they are headed. I don't think they will continue getting worse with no end in sight. There's probably another 100, 200 whiffs, which we can probably manage with our already announced price hikes.

Got it. No, that's super clear. And last question, going back to the opening comments that you made, that we're seeing a pretty big change in the policy push for EVs, and you highlighted Delhi, and you did mention a few more. Is there something that you're seeing with the sort of adoption we're seeing? Is anything else coming from other states? Because the reason I ask is Delhi faced a lot of skepticism, right? I mean, small state, neighboring states, we can see registration. You know, you sort of heard skepticism on whether it will be successful or not. Are you sort of hearing the similar sort of narrative from other states or at a central level as well that, you know, there could be a more stringent policy push towards EVs now?

I think all signs that we have seen are remarkably consistent from a policy perspective around the need to support electric vehicles, which is also why, you know, there's been an increased reach out to, for example, new age EV players, you know, to take their inputs as to, you know, what role brands like us can play. There's been conversation around, you know, if PME drive can be extended. Building EV policy is obviously the strongest move yet. I think it will get a lot of debate in the coming quarters, but I feel now with some conviction that this policy is going to land. Yeah, there will be some parts which will probably get negotiated for a while or might get pushed out for a while. In some categories, there is not enough proof of success with electric vehicles yet, so there will be rightfully some pushback temporarily on it. But overall, like something like in scooters, I think it will be difficult to stop the tsunami of support. See, because, Gunjan, I think for the first time, and... Let me zoom out a little bit. Many years ago, Delhi tried the odd-event policy, but I think there was a lot of pushback on it, despite being probably a good one from a pollution perspective, because consumer support for the policy was not strong enough, probably. But I think what we are noticing with Delhi EV policy this time is that the consumers... And I think that's playing a big role in giving the confidence to authorities to then not back off and, you know, continue driving this. We're also seeing other states like Haryana now following a similar trajectory or at least showing more support. And finally, irrespective of when these policies exactly play out, it's a sentiment that has changed, really, which is why my first point really was, you know, like the Prime Minister saying that electrify cooking and electrify transport. It's a very powerful thing, because for a lot of people, that really sets the tone that then this is time for mainstream. This is, you know, this is the right thing. This is the nationalist thing to do. So I think that is not playing a small role. That's playing a pretty powerful role.

Got it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Best wishes for the real platform.

Thanks, Gunjan. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Mukesh Saraf from Vendors Park. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good evening, and thank you for the opportunity. My first question is regarding the ORIK Phase 1. How do you see the ramp-up of production happening while the plant starts in November? How do you see the ramp-up there? So the reason I'm asking is that they're already about 15k short of production, and then we have the EL launching as well. So just trying to understand how this came up can happen better.

Yeah, thanks. So, um... Oric will equipment installation is ending in the next couple of months and will start trial productions from the festive period. Expect daily output, reliable daily output all throughout Q4, starting from first-chan itself. It's difficult for me to exactly pin down whether it's end of Q4 or into Q1 that the ramp-up to 42,000 units a month will finish, but it will finish sometime in that zip code. So I would say the overall ramp-up from 0 to 42,000 a month is somewhere in the vicinity of 4 to 5 months. So, that's how I rate it. Obviously, I recognize that there's a large gap for us to fill, but the good news is this is a big step-up that we are going to be experiencing. We don't have the upside of seeing linear increases every other month, but the big step-up will hopefully hold us steady for at least a few quarters before, if required, we need to ramp up to phase two.

Right, and in continuation, this 18,000 units a month that you'll start off with at Huzoor, in all probability that would be coming off the Rista, and you'll maintain the production of the 450X, or that's not how I should look at it?

Sorry, Mukesh, I missed your starting of the question. Can you repeat?

This 18,000 units a month that you're planning to first begin at Huzoor, Within the 25K, within 35K that's available right now, we should assume that the Vista production will come off while ETL goes up, and 450X kind of, you'll look to maintain the production.

Correct. So, that's the flexibility that we will create for ourselves. While ETL will have uninterrupted availability for the 42,000 units a month from OIC phase 1, Yeah. It will also have the option to grow into another 18,000 in HOSUR. But should RISTA demand continue to hold up meaningfully, we can allocate that supply to RISTA instead and let ORIC grow more organically only out of ORIC. Let EL grow more organically only out of ORIC. So we'll decide this in a more fluid, in a more dynamic manner as we see early demand trajectory through. But yes, directionally, it's Rista that will likely see more cannibalization from EL rather than 450. 450 is unlikely to be impacted by EL's launch.

Got it, got it. And just lastly, any updated targets we have on the dealer edition, given we are slightly short of capacities now and, you know, how the ramp-up there is going to be? So, dealer edition, any updated targets?

Yeah, no, so Mukesh, we've gone slow with the new store opening in Q1, because exactly the point that you said, it is not prudent for us to ship out more inventory to build out. New stores, while existing stores are only meeting 50-60% of demand. So we're waiting out a couple of quarters, but with EL going live and particularly Aurek go-live happening by system, you will start seeing a surge in new store openings from our end once again, which is when we'll also bring the metric up and, you know, start giving more color on that.

Got it.

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Yash Agarwal from Nirmal Bank Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.

Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and great set of results. I just wanted to know that non-vehicle revenue has increased to 14% of operating revenue. What are our long-term targets, and what are the typical margin profiles for software, jargon, s-series, and other non-vehicle revenue?

Hey, thanks. So, non-vehicle revenue for us is, the largest piece today for us is the AtherSack Pro, the software pack in our offering, which has done incredibly well for us, even better than we anticipated. The potential for growth, however, comes from two other parts, which are... Service revenues and accessory sales. Accessory sales actually have been quietly compounding. We haven't given color publicly this quarter, but maybe in a few quarters, we will bring it up and give a little bit more color. But accessory business has been building out really well. But the biggest compounder of all would likely be the service revenues because that's a function of fleet size. for established businesses. Sorry, for established two-wheeler businesses, service revenues can be as high as 10% to 12% of their overall revenues. For us, That's more in the vicinity of, you know, a couple percentage points, two, three percentage points. So there is a tremendous amount of growth put in possible here over the next decade. So we do expect this will continue increasing. In the short term, it has seen some support because of the price increases on Athertac Pro. In the medium term, accessories will also play a material role. But in the long term, this is going to compound on the back of service revenues. Service and space.

Okay, sir. And the second question is, like, several OEMs are preparing to launch their electric motorcycle in the next 12 to 18 months. So how do you see this segment evolving? And does it intend to participate meaningfully before, like, in next one or two years? Or does the internet platform will take more than that to come up with that first product?

You know, so at this point, we are rather focused on the Yale platform and getting at least the first, maybe two products, maybe another product out on it in the next year. Motorcycles are starting to look interesting. That's true. But Aether may not be the pioneer this time. We may watch the market. We want to see how consumers respond, which segments show a willingness and an interest towards the segment before we make our maiden launch here. So, this is, I would say, more than a year away, for sure. Probably two years plus.

Okay, sir. And the one last question on the Experience Center edition. So, how has the productivity of recently added stores evolved versus mature stores? And can you share any trend in average detailed throughput per outlet?

Yeah, I will not be able to share retail throughput per outlet, but even before the demand surge that we've seen in the last four or five months, our new store, so we look at stores on a quarterly cohort basis, so stores that open in Q3 are tracked together. So every cohort was showing... We have operational profitability in less than six months, five to six months, on an average. So while some stores might take seven, eight months, but the average was really, really rapid. In fact, it was much faster than we had guided to our own retail partners. So in light of what's happening right now, honestly, as we ramp up more and more supplies, I would not be surprised if stores start becoming operationally profitable in as early as two months. So that's also possible. But we've had a good track record on this at least throughout FY26.

Okay, and just one last question on what has been a breakup between Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities in terms of retail sales in the last one or two quarters?

Sorry, I'm going to be going by memory here because we don't have it on our fingertips, but I do remember that tier two or tier three stores were becoming our biggest. So, at least a year ago, I think, a year and a half ago, I think we had equal sales coming out of top 10 cities and then the next 20, 30 cities and then the next few hundred cities. Oh, sorry. Top 20 cities, and then the next 100 cities, and then the long tail of all cities after that. But I think it's becoming more tier 3 heavy in terms of just absolute throughput in the recent few quarters. Also, the EV penetration is highest in tier 2 and tier 3 for a while now. So, it kind of stands to reason that we will see stronger track record there.

Okay, sir. That's it for my question.

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Nikhil Kale from Invesco. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. So, Taran, just a couple of questions. One on the EL launch. So, how are you thinking about the launch in terms of, would it be fair to assume that the launch will be more catered towards, say, Middle India or the northern part of the country?

Initially?

Very likely, Nikhil. You know, there's been a lot of pull and customer interest for more favorably priced variants, particularly in the northern markets. So expect us to have a slightly higher bent towards that. Particularly, there will be a heavy bias towards that in the early few months before we open up sales across the country. We followed a focused geo strategy even during Rista's launch, starting from targeted markets in Middle India and then Rest of India and then South India. The order might be a little different this time, more Rest of India, then Middle India, and then South India. It also follows a larger... Sorry, please go on.

So, I mean, assuming that this will probably be at a slightly lower ASP, like you mentioned, that ASPs will trend down. So, I mean, the expectation for, what's the expectation for, say, Ether, Stackpro, attach rates, will they kind of trend down for this product, generally, given that it will be slightly on the lowest price point?

I would like to guide so. However, you know, having seen the track record over the last year and a half or so, maybe I'll be a bit more optimistic. I wouldn't guide very low. I would cautiously guide at least 75% attached rates with EL also, but I would hope for even higher.

Understood. And just lastly, you spoke about the fungibility at Hosur plant, but just theoretically, if Rista kind of holds up the volume, and if, I mean, I hope it happens that Rista demand kind of surprises on the upside, then how do you kind of cater to that? Because is Auric capable of also doing Rista? And I think initially we had also spoken more about moving Rista to the EL platform. So what are the plans for that?

I think if that happens, the latter is the more likely outcome, because Aurek is built for the platform, EL. Sure, it can handle more products, but as a platform, Aurek is best suitable for the EL platform. So, if genuinely Rista demand surprises us on the upside, expect us to find ways to build it on the EL platform in the more mid to long term. But in the short term, we are anyways well capitalized on capacity for the Rista product and the platform as a whole out of Horsul. Because Horsul can anyways do $35,000 a month, and we are also trying to push that up a little bit more.

That's it for me.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I now have the conference over to Mr. Muddli Shashidharan for his closing comments.

Thank you, everyone. We sincerely appreciate all of you joining us today and for your continued engagement and support. We look forward to updating you on our development in the coming quarters. So, wishing you all a great week ahead. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. On behalf of Aether Energy Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.