Whirlpool of India Limited (WHIRLPOOL) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the analyst call of Whirlpool of India Limited. We wish to inform you that 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 call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhavani Kumawat from Access Capital Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you so much, Rayo. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of Access Capital Limited, we welcome you all to Whirlpool of ADEA and List Hall for the first quarter, L527. From the management side, I have this one as well. Managing.

Thank you, Bhavani. Good evening, everyone. I would like to welcome you to the Q1 English Call of Financial Year 2627 of Whirlpool of India Limited. Please note that the call is being recorded and the audio call and transcripts will be available on the website of the company. Also, the presentation to be made by the managing director and chief financial officer is available on the website of the company as well as the stock exchanges. Before we move forward, I would like to remind you of the cautionary statement that forms part of the presentation. During this call, certain forward-looking statements may be made. These forward-looking statements are based on certain expectations, assumptions, and other factors which may affect the business results. Please read the cautionary statement.

Thank you, Shweta. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Narsimhan Ishwar, Managing Director of the company. I would like to welcome you to this analyst call. Thanks very much to Access Capital for making this happen. And thank you to all of you for taking out your time and joining us. Now, I will start with the update. I will do the first two sections. We go now to slide 4 of the presentation deck. I will cover the business overview and the strategic imperatives, and Mr. Aditya Jain, Chief Financial Officer, will cover the financial performance. We go to slide number six in the business overview. Let me start with the highlight of the quarter. Apologies for my voice, a bit of cold flow. The first point really is that we've delivered a record revenue growth in this quarter. We've never done the revenue numbers we've done before in our history. We also delivered double-digit revenue growth. In terms of multi-brand outlet market share, which is where we compete with other people in offline, we continue to maintain our number two position in refrigerators and washers. So we call it T2, internal language, refrigerators and washers. We continue to maintain our number two position in volume market share in multi-brand outlets. We also continue to hold our number one position in direct cool refrigerators in multi-planned outfits for volume market share, and that has been the case for the last seven months. We have been able to complete our entire sell-in, sell-out, the phasing that we had to do of the old refrigerators and the new refrigerators that was completed this quarter, and that has also helped us in getting back some market shares, as I said last time. In front load washers, we had a triple legit increase in market share. Again, the same multi-brand outlet KPI, volume market share. And that business is doing very well for us. Same with air conditioners, where we delivered a 50% plus revenue growth. Elika, we are very pleased to say, continues with a very strong performance. Revenue is up 26% and profits are up 22%. One thing in the quarter that did happen, partly expected, partly unexpected. was our margins were significantly impacted due to both the impacts of the war, basically in two areas. One is in anything that was influenced by crude oil, which obviously pricing went extremely high and continues to be quite high. And the second part of it was all the energy changes, regulatory changes, which included the energy changes in e-waste. I had already highlighted at the beginning of the year, calendar year, that energy changes would be a debilitating Thank you. Obviously, the war impact was on top of this, which we did not expect at the beginning of the financial year. And this, I presume, is true for the entire industry, and probably the broader country as well. One critical thing is that in this... We have not been able to recover the impact of the combined warrant regulatory impact through pricing because of industry competitive dynamics, and that obviously impacts the... on supply chain, which were extremely high in April, May, June, whether it was availability of LPG or whether it was available. We have a net negative networking capital this quarter, and all the investments we made in the last quarter in air conditioners have been fully recovered, as you'll see later. Go to the next slide, please. Now, this is the standard slide that I always show you. On the top, basically, you have the quarters starting from October 24 now to April to June 26. The industry volume growth was, again, in single digits growth. But our actions this quarter, there were quite a few. One is we completed our entire refrigerator phase-in phase-out. That was one significant thing we did. This was with us with new regulations. We had to change all the refrigerators in all the stores. Second, we were able to take up in April and May pricing, which partly covered the war-led inflation and the regulatory inflation, but not fully, like I said, thereby impacting margins. We continue to scale up both our air conditioner business and our front-load washer business, where we have low volume shares and where we have significant opportunity. We also launched. A few NPI, new products, including... Top load large segment vacant space that we have. I am reasonably happy to see that our volume share was up basically by double digit basis points. As a result of all the actions and of the continuation of the phase out. So, revenue up double digits, market share is up as well. Can we go to the next slide, please? If you go to slide A, we are giving you a further breakup of what is it by category, like we always do. So, in direct cool refrigerators, like I said, we completed the sell-in, sell-out, and we were able to actually grow our market share versus last year by double-digit basis points. In semi-automatic washers, we are happy to say we were able to for the second quarter in a row. Grow the market share by more than 100 basis points versus the previous year. And similarly, in front load, of course, we continue to drive market share as we've done for the last year. No frost refrigerator. There were some supply rate issues that we had, which held us back. The app that we had in the market, where we were not present at all. I'm just going to cover that a bit later, but we are literally launching today our large-sized refrigerators, as I promised all our shareholders that we would do it, and we are actually doing it as of today. We are launching our 4-door refrigerators, which I'll cover now, and I hope that in the course of the next month, we will start seeing clearly, because we're filling up vacant spaces that we were not in across the next 12 to 15 months, we will start to see our frost-free refrigerator shares go up as well. Top load washers has been highly competitive and versus the growth of last quarter where we grew double digit basis points a year ago. This quarter was a bit of a decline, but then we have our new products, etc. that we're bringing in and we have other plans as well that we're investing in to take it back. So all in all, reasonably okay with the revenue growth of double digits as well as the market share performance with some opportunities to improve, but we have a clear line of sight as to how to do that. Next slide, please. So the other thing that it's worth highlighting is after a couple of quarters in quarter 1 and quarter 2 of 25-26, there we were declining revenue. Quarter 3 of 25-26 was up 4% on revenue on a standalone basis. Quarter 4, 25-26 was up 7, and quarter 1, 26-27 is up 11%. And this is based on not just the industry growth of single-digit, mid-single-digit kind of industry growth, but our market share grew as well, which adds a couple of points, and then, of course, the uppricing across categories helps us. It also helps that we have aircon and frontload basically driving this business, being high-value. the margins because we have the impact of the refrigerator in the AC, which is nearly two-thirds of our business, being impacted by significant related changes. But on top of that, we've had the war impact. Obviously, there are two big impacts that happen from the war point of view. One is the impact on crude and crude related things, of which there are quite a few in our industry, whether it's washing machines or refrigerators, whether Whether it's MDI, poliole... The EPS that we do, packaging, etc., there's quite a bit of it. And those costs have gone off significantly due to the war, because many of them are single-sourced for the industry and for India from certain places in the Middle East. The second part of it is the regulatory part, where there are two components to it. One is the big differentiator. Sorry, I just skipped one point. So, the war impact has got two parts to it. One was the crude oil, and the second is the forex. So, obviously, with a certain amount of components that we need to import, as does the rest of the industry, there's a certain amount, you know, less than 30% that we import. And that is obviously impacted by the dollar rate going up. The dollar used to be 88 last year. And obviously, that's quite an extraordinary increase. So these two things basically have impacted significantly on top of the regulatory costs that I spoke of. And of course, we continue accounting for e-waste at the higher level. And if you see the gross margin and the PVD margin are pretty much the same, which means the rest of the lines of the P&L, we haven't actually increased anywhere. It's like a straight flow through. As we go forward, I'm sure there's a very big question on everybody's minds. What do we see going forward? I think the war-related impacts, frankly, depends on when this whole thing gets over. And I think that, hopefully, is something that we're all looking forward to. What happens to the crude price and what happens to the forex, that will directly impact the P&L, if there's a saving there. I think on the regulatory part, the regulatory part for this fiscal is here to stay. Next fiscal, obviously, the anniversary, this fiscal. And on e-waste, really, really look forward to and hope that we will come up with a solution that actually works for the entire industry because it's an industry-wide issue on e-waste where we are accounting at a much higher rate than what can be commercially procured. So that is something that we look forward to. So potentially the war ending is going to be a help to the entire industry and certainly to us. Similarly, e-waste resolution. Let's say an equitable resolution at some point in time would be very helpful. The other thing that I would highlight is that working capital continues to be strong performance. As you can see, in the last eight quarters, we basically had five quarters with negative net working capital. The reason why September 25 had gone up significantly on working capital was because of The GST change impact that happened. March went up because of air conditioner sales. But if you see in June, we have recovered all of the ACON working capital, collected the receivables, and therefore we go back into negative networking capital, and we are reasonably happy with the efficiency of the operation. So move on to the strategic imperatives, apologies for the voice. As we said, the imperatives are basically four in number, inspire generations with our brands, win with product leadership, building a competitive and resilient supply chain, and excellence in execution. We go to slide 14. This is just a reminder of what we've done in the past in terms of inspiring with our brands. As I've said before, we were the early pioneers in colors and finishes. We introduced pedestals. We introduced auto defrost and very cool. We still have the first three-door refrigerator in Frost Free in the country. We introduced the Platina range, and we introduced the first heater in top-load washing machines. So, a pioneer in the Indian Durables industry. Let's take a look at what we are doing now. Slide number 15. Thank you. Slide number 15. To introduce to you Whirlpool Luxurian, which are the four-door premium refrigerators. We're introducing the 654-liter four-door premium refrigerators. These are several, several firsts. We have something that we pioneered called the freshness detection technology. This has been developed by our engineers in India with the help of global technology, but really pioneered in India. And the greatness of this, I'll talk to you about a little later. This literally will tell you whether your fruits and vegetables are fresh or not, and if it's time for you to start consuming them, so you eat healthy. And this, I think, is quite a cool, revolutionary kind of development Thank you. We are also, in this range, introducing the first ever glass and glass. The entire thing is made in India, thought through by... Pune lines where we've invested 245 crores on this technology. Next slide, please. On the next slide, I'll just show you some examples of the premium range, starting from the left to your left. One of the really exciting things that we're doing in this, these refrigerators, the 654-litre luxury refrigerators, are the gold standard of refrigeration. Normally, a side-by-side kind of refrigerator, which you get for $70,000, $75,000, $80,000, would have one evaporator, which cools the entire fridge and freezer. And because one machine is cooling the entire fridge and freezer, there is a challenge on evenness, and there is a challenge on how Well, the cooling is done. Now, the beauty of our system is that this is a triple evaporator. So, you can see there are three circles there, three blue kind of graphics. So, the top of the refrigerator is basically your fridge, and that's got one. It's always a freezer. Right inside. We did a few hours of research with consumers to understand what is the ideal product, and it was very clear from our research that consumers really believe that the four-door is far more preferable than the side-by-side format. And the features that we're talking about here, and what I'll talk about a bit more, they're all added based on consumer research. So the beauty of this is the fastest convertible, the flexibility to store large vessels, which would be difficult in a side-by-side because the fridge zone is quite small. Whereas here, as you can see, the fridge zone is quite large. So you can put a patila or a big vessel where you've cooked dal or sabzi or whatever it is. You can put it right in the refrigerator without having to worry about the size in the fridge bar. And the other beauty of this is because they are independent air flows. The smell from the fridge, the freezer, will not go into the fridge. As you can imagine, the airflow is within the evaporator section on that side. And therefore, whatever smell is in the freezer will stay in the freezer. Whatever smell is there in the freezer and convertible, which is the right, will stay there. And whatever smell is in the refrigerator will stay there. So there is no transfer of smells between, say, your meat, which is in the freezer, and your vegetables, which may be in your fridge. Several more benefits of the triple cooling system. This is a tremendous value for Indian consumers, and I do believe that we will start the shift to four-door refrigerators with this. Technology I have not spoken about. It has never been seen before in India, and I dare say probably never in the world. So this is something we've developed here. And what is it? It's basically there are sensors that... Fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables, once they are plucked from a tea, automatically start emitting ethylene gas. And as they get riper and riper, tending towards boiling, they emit more and more ethylene gas. What this does is this particular chamber of the refrigerator, which is just below... I talked to you about the glass door. I talked to you about the differentiated CFMs on the first page that I showed you. The interiors are dark gray, a very, very premium dark gray with fantastic theater lighting inside the refrigerator. So you're going to have lighting inside the refrigerator, so you can easily see what product you have in your refrigerator, right? And it looks absolutely fantastic. So there's obsidian interiors, there is multiple finishes, there is the first glass metal, and lastly, if I look to the bottom right quadrant. This, like I said before, is the fastest convertible in the market. In our entry level between 255 and 360 litres, we have the fastest convertible in the market. And so this is something that we are bringing to the large refrigerators as well. This was a must do for us. And I'm so glad that we've been able to achieve that with the fastest convertible in the market in the large refrigerators. Next slide, please. We not only launched Ligurium, which obviously we're very proud of, but we also launched large size in... We have a top load bloom wash, which is our hero. We've also had 11 kg with a completely new color, which is being quite well received in the market. It's called juniper green. And what is really cool about this is that typically, if there's a quick wash cycle that other machines have, whether you put in a small load or a medium load or a large load, typically other machines wash it for a certain amount of time, for example, 35 minutes. But this, we have done it in such a way because we wanted to add value. To the consumer, the consumer sometimes uses small loads, sometimes medium loads, and sometimes large loads. So, based on that, we have customized the amount of time that the washing machine will work for. So, small loads are 30 minutes, medium loads are 35 minutes, and large loads will be 40 minutes. It also has what we call soft sense, which is a system by which we, through the dispenser, automatically release the right amount of softener at the right time, without you having to worry about how much softener to put in. So, it's automatic. And obviously, the... So we're very, very proud of this. Slide number 20. As I said before, in semi-automatic washing machines, our Dynamics dispenser technology, which I have explained in previous times, which is basically that we are able to guarantee zero detergent patches on semi-automatic washing machines using this technology. And the reason we are able to do that is because it pre-mixes to a very efficient scientific system water and detergent completely before it goes inside the washing area. And we have now launched even 8kg capacity in the dynamics dispenser. And now 50% of our semi-automatic washing machine has this dynamics dispenser, which is decommoditizing semi-automatic washing machines. So semi-automatic washing machines for us is not just about price and capacity, which is what the entire category has been playing on, bring in larger sizes and cut the price. We are actually adding value to this category by bringing in something like dynamics detergent dispenser, which will help you. This continues to accelerate. We go about 80% volume. Our market shares are in the single digits, and obviously our intention is to try and get into double digits as soon as we can and get into mid-double digits, which would be a good achievement. And the beauty is that these are high-value categories that premiumize our total business. Next slide, please. Number 23, we're bringing in new products in Elika as well, and you can see that in the results. Whether it is the slim BLDC filter a soil collector product with the slim design kitchen hood, or the plug-and-play kitchen hood, which is a kitty plug-and-play, as we call it, it doesn't need an exhaust, or the flexi hop top that we have with the full brass direct multi-flame burners and cast-iron fan support, as well as black. Toughen glass and auto ignition, we continue to innovate on the premium end while driving the popular industry. Just to let you know that we have been able to get international accolades on innovation and design. The A-Design awards are given by an Italian-based organization, and they are very prestigious awards globally. And we are very proud to say that our products in Frost Free, whether it is jade marble, these are the glass doors in Frost Free that we introduced last year, or the 3D Proton Next, where we have upgraded significantly our three-door Proton range. Both of these got silver awards on design. And the comments that you see there are the words of the award committee from Italy, which basically talk about the sleek facade featuring marble patterns and gold accents transforming the plants into an architectural centerpiece. Or in the case of Proton, saying it distinguishes itself in a crowded refrigerator market by utilizing a three-door format that prioritizes better organization because of the fruits and vegetables having a separate... So, very happy with that. Next slide, please. Slide number 25, we continue to really focus on excellence and execution. This has been at the centerpiece of what we do, whether it is with our... Thank you. What is it, the core of our supply chain? We've got a robust P4G program. Firstly, we'll talk about manufacturing. As I said, we're very proud that we started our new four-door premium refrigerators in Pune Plant in July. It starts shipping out as we speak today to customers. The new four-door premium refrigerators we call Luxurian. But we're also very proud that despite a lot of war-led supplier constraints as well as wage code-led constraints that happened in Noida, it affected a lot of our conference suppliers in April, May, June. We were able to come up with record manufacturing numbers in our plant in Cuba. So, very proud of our team for that. P4G, we continue to drive our robust P4G program to drive cost efficiency that covers all lines of the P&L. I will be honest, it's obviously in this environment where all the costs are escalating quite significantly, especially with respect to oil prices and as forex. It's obviously much more difficult to control compared to what we've been able to do in the past because of the war efforts, the war impacts. I'm going to hand over now to Mr. Aditya Jain, our CFO, to talk to you through the financial performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ishwar. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Aditya Jain, Executive Director and CFO of the company, and I'll take you through the financial performance of Whirlpool of India Limited. I'm on slide 28, and on this slide, this slide talks about the financial performance of Whirlpool of India on a standalone basis. As you can see from the slide, we delivered a top-line revenue of 2,582 crores. This is the highest ever revenue for the quarter in the industry of Whirlpool, which we have delivered. So, very pleased to announce that. And this is a double-digit growth of 11.4%. This revenue growth was driven by a multiplicity of the factors, a, our industry, which is the refrigerators and washers, multi-brand outlets, volume grew in mid-single digits, which also helped us. But that was not the only factor which drove our top line on top of the industry growth. Our market share also grew, and we grew market share in double basis points across all the Thank you. The third is in line with the strategy of premiumization. Our premium portfolio, which is the front-load washing machine and the aircon business has done pretty well, which also aids, given that these are high-value products and higher ASD products, aids in the top-line growth. And last but not the least, In this quarter, we took multiple price increases to combat or mitigate the impact of the world-led commodity inflation. And as a result, in a combination of all these four factors, we delivered a record revenue and a double-digit growth of 11.4%. So, quite happy to see the momentum on the top line and the market shares. But when it comes to profitability, it's been a challenging quarter for us. The EBITDA came in at 120 crores at 4.6%. We saw a squeeze of margins, wherein EBITDA margins squeezed by 377 basis points. And we delivered profit before tax of 120 crores at 4.6%. And again, the profit margins squeezed by about 320 basis points. Why was there a squeeze on the profit margin? So this, specifically this quarter, has seen an unprecedented cost increases on account of the geopolitical instability and the Middle East war. As you would have seen, the crude oil prices, which... Similar time last year, we were operating at $67, and now operating at $97, at least in this quarter. And hence, there's a material impact of that on various raw materials and the components which are driven from oil, and that has impacted our cost. Second big impact came from the currency. Same time, last year, we've seen over one year the currency is depreciated by more than 10%, which in a usual year would be around 4% or 5%, and that has also led to a material impact on all the commodities, because we buy less than 30% of our products or the raw materials which are imported, but then there are a lot of components which are indexed to U.S. dollar as well. Apart from these two things, there were other cost headwinds coming from the minimum basis revisions in Haryana, the labor cost inflation which happened in Noida, the diesel rate increase, the war-led premiums which we had to pay in this quarter to arrange for to ensure that the supplies are uninterrupted, and then the LPG, et cetera, et cetera, going up and all that kind of things. And so these are all unanticipated or not projected kind of increase. And then there was an anticipated cost up charges on account of the new energy regulations, which came at the beginning of the calendar year, which impacted RF and Aircon portfolio. So, to mitigate this impact, we took a couple of price increases in the quarter, but then the price increases were not sufficient enough to mitigate the 100% of all the cost increase, which was like of a very different magnitude, which we saw in the quarter, and as a result of this, there was a net under recovery, and hence the squeeze on margins. Our P4G program continues to do well. That's our program wherein we look at cost productivity across all lines of the P&L, the design productivity, the negotiation productivity, or the indirect procurement productivity. So that efforts are on track, but that the impact of war and other items are significantly ahead to be mitigated because of either the cost productivity or the pricing actions. Slide 29. On slide 29, this talks about our consolidated performance. On a consolidated basis, we delivered a top-line growth of 2,727 crores in this quarter. Again, a double-digit growth of 12.1%. We delivered an EBITDA of... 139 crores at 5.1% and delivered a PBT of 139 crores at 5.1%. Again, on a consolidated basis, we saw a similar margin squeeze of about 300-plus basis points. The highlight on a consolidated basis is the RLICA business that continues its robust performance and delivered a double-digit 26% revenue growth and a PBT growth of 22%. Thank you. With this, I will hand it over to Ms. Shweta for the Q&A section.

Thank you, Mr. Ishwar and Mr. Jain. I would now request the moderator to open the Q&A session.

Thank you, Shweta. We will now start with the question and answer session. Participants present on the audio bridge who wish to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Look, for clarity of questions and better audio experience, the participants are requested to ensure that while asking their questions, they are using headphones to avoid background noise. Also, in the interest of time, we sincerely request the participants to limit their questions to two. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question assembles. The first question is from Atul Mehra from Mothila Doswal Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, good evening, and thanks for the opportunity. So just to begin with, I want to understand with the recent refinancing that the parent has done, kind of taking care of their near term till 2028 liquidity requirements. So, what is... The likely impact that can have on us, if any, and any particular thought process on the remaining stake that they want to sell, anything on these two counts that you can help us with from the perspective of parent balance sheet improving and consequently their thoughts around India.

Thank you, Mr. Mehra. I'll give you a very straightforward and honest answer to that question. I know as much as you do on this topic. Ever since the stake of Whirlpool Corporation went down to below 50%, we're at 39.75% now, the way we are working is that, and this is for all our shareholders and investors to know, the way we are working is completely at arm's length. We do not report or discuss any business matters with them at all. The only... Forums that we have to have a discussion, the technical team does that, is a technology licensing forum where we look at new products that could be in the pipeline, and then we take a look at which of those new products could be interesting for us to take in the pipeline, which is part of the agreements that we have. And the second is we have a brand and quality forum where we give them an update on what's happened in the past in the brand, I think over the future, what's happened in the past. With the brand in terms of following all of the technical guidances and the legal requirements and all of that stuff. Similarly, on quality, we just give them an update on if there's any major or significant issue that they need to know. Because these are the only things that actually at this point in time matter to them as somebody who has given us their license. So, I honestly have zero understanding of the refinancing implications. Neither have I reached out, nor has anybody in my company reached out to understand that, nor do I have any idea of what they're going to do, are they going to sell, not sell, etc. I depend on the same information that you depend on, which is whatever is released in their quarterly reports by the global CEO of Whirlpool. Thank you.

Thank you. That is clear. So secondly, on one of the questions we have discussed in the past is that on the capital allocation, from the perspective that the cash that we have on the books is highly signable. So if you can update us on any further developments, deliberations that the board has had on this particular aspect, given the quantum of money that we are sitting on the balance sheet is quite large. Any progress or any conversations that you can enlighten us with on this particular aspect, since it's an important aspect from a shareholder?

Yes, sir, certainly. It's a great question and one that's been asked of me a few times. So the board also is very, very cognizant of that. So I can tell you that within the next 12 months, we need to have a complete blueprint of, and that is what we need to do. What do we need for manufacturing? Capacity increases, what we need for manufacturing new products, which we're accelerating. Resources is basically local, and whatever else is contractually agreed with the corporation in terms of their support. So we're increasing the speed of our pipeline, so there'll be capital required for that as well. Then on top, automation in our plants, which is an area that we really want to invest in. That's on the existing business. So new products, capacity increase, automation. And then on top of that, we are also looking at inorganic opportunities. I will not be able to say anything more about it at this point in time. But this is an area certainly of interest to us because we do believe that we now have a very good pipe in terms of execution. Our business is highly, highly competitive, and we're not complacent at all about our position. We are getting relatively stronger in terms of how we execute, whether it's in sales or in service or in production or engineering. And therefore, in organic opportunities, the next 12 to 15 months would be absolutely the right time. So I can openly tell you that within the next 12 months, I need to have a very clear plan on how to utilize the cash, including any other options. But whatever I'm not able to use, then there could be other options for that as well. I hope I answered your question.

That makes sense, sir. And finally, sir, we have done a commendable job on market share gains across categories. I think that, like you mentioned, along the quarter, you all have taken some pride increases. So can you give us a little bit more in terms of thoughts on when do we kind of fully be able to pass on these pride increases so that the margin outlook improves from your own? So anything as a path towards that in terms of the management, how do you guys think about it and what are the further actions we are taking to improve the margins in conjunction with like market share gains that we've already had?

Yeah, again, very good question and obviously one that plagues us all the time. The price in this industry, I think, has been a bit different from many other industries in India, where they have priced the other industries, individually, obviously, companies by themselves, have priced to account for the inflation of commodity pricing. That has not been the case, as far as I can see, in this industry, based on market pricing that we observe. Now, there is always, as you know, a big tension between raising the prices and weather. You are still price competitive or not. If you recall in 2022, you know very well, I've explained to you before, that we took up the prices unilaterally, whether or not others would follow, because we thought it was the right thing to do. And that resulted in a crashing of market shares. It resulted in a lot of loss of customer confidence, consumer confidence, etc. So, the answer to your question is, The price increase that we can take is going to also at some point in time be not only based on what we want to take, but also what we are able to take. And if our key competition does not take the price increase, then it would be a bit foolhardy for us to just do that to recover margins. Because in this business, having volumes does not guarantee you profits, but not having volumes... So, And we will do the right thing for our business, basically, always balancing between volume, market share. I am our priorities to make sure we don't lose on all fronts. I think going forward, July, August, September, to answer your question, will continue to be very challenging because very simply, we are a refrigerator, air conditioner company is more than two-thirds of our FEMU. And this is the weakest water for refrigerators and air conditioners. But the commodity costs are very high. The forex is very high. So all the negatives will still stay. But the volumes in JS will not be, you know, as strong as, nowhere near as strong as the volumes we had in AMJ. It may grow versus a year ago, for sure, but absolutes will be low. It's going to be... Hopefully after that, I am genuinely hoping that there is some end to this, like all of us are, for humanitarian reasons more than financial reasons. There is an end to all of this, and we can get back to our normal lives, and hopefully normal costs.

Thank you. Before we take the next question, a request to participants to please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, we request you to rejoin the queue. We take the next question from Rahul Agarwal from Ikegai Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Very good evening to everyone on the call. Sir, pardon me, but I had three questions, but very quickly, on revenue growth, You know, double-digit, a good achievement. A lot of factors have, you know, driven that, as Aditya explained. But, you know, For the full year, if I look at the full year, there are certain partial price highs still to be taken. Is the full year revenue growth looking at the current 11-12% range or is it going to be like some 15-20% purely because AC and LEC are growing upwards of 20%? And then we'll also have to take some partial price highs if possible. That's question number one. Question two, you know, related to the earlier question on margins, the way I'm looking at it is, you know, of course, gross margin levels will be down on a YY basis for the full year. But can we do some cost engineering and, you know, can we have OPM, you know, the operating margin flat on a YY basis? You know, 6, 6.5%, something that we did last year. Is that a possibility? And thirdly, on the CAPEX side, as you said, you know, you're planning to do your blueprint, but just in terms of capacity for ref and washers. What would be that at end of June? If we just clarify that, what is the CapEx budget for 27? And in case if there is more capacity which is coming in for these products, how will Whirlpool India look like at end of March 27 for ref and washers on capacitors? These were the three questions. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Agrawal. I'll try to answer these and I'll defer to Aditya for the capacity for the CapEx budget question. Full year revenue, sir, at this point in time, it's so difficult. You ask anybody, so difficult to predict what the numbers are. Now, what I am really hoping is that we will be able to get good revenue growths and hopefully market share gains across the year. That's what we are driving towards. But what the market will grow at is very difficult to predict. But there's a lot of impacts. The impacts of all the cost increases is also on the common map. And we cannot forget that that common man is paying more for many things right now. The government has done a fantastic job of reducing GSP rates on consumer goods and televisions above 32 inches and air conditioners and so on and so forth, quite a few. But then this stuff has come on top, which is obviously, you know, there was a help from one side and then a hurt from this ongoing stuff. So, I would say, without exaggeration, that even now, We are literally figuring out how to manage on a month-on-month basis in terms of production, in terms of availability, etc. We are not out of the woods as an industry on all of these things. Any mismatch anywhere can actually make a huge difference. So, let's say the accuracy of anything that I say would be close to zero. So, all I can tell you is that to all our shareholders, we are focusing really hard on making sure the hard-fought games we have. On-market shares don't go away. We are trying to do it in a way that's financially responsible, but it is not a great year for margins, for the reasons that I mentioned. You hardly ever have the perfect storm of significant daily waste increase, massive refrigerator and air conditioner regulatory change, which costs. Crores and crores and crores of rupees. And at the same time, you know, this kind of impact on commodity prices and forex. This is like a black swan event, in my view. And so we'll have to just somehow tie through this black swan. But we need to keep our operating parameters. And that's what I would like to reassure you, Mr. Duval. We will keep our operating parameters, whether it's networking capital, whether it's our execution focus, whether it's our ability to take new products into the market strongly. We are going to keep extremely tight on that so that when the bad times are over or the tough times are over, whoever has been very kind of disciplined, my experience across the world is that, you know, they benefit when those tough times are over. On your second point on GM, can we keep the op-maja flat? I absolutely will not be able to comment on it for the same reason. If, you know, it all depends on when and how fast these issues that I spoke of, which are extraneous, solve themselves. Like I said, it will be a challenging year for all of us, basically, in the industry. And I don't see any immediate solutions, because predicting this is completely... On the CAPEX budget, I'm happy to, you know.

And Mr. Gull, thank you for your question on CAPEX. And as we've indicated in the past, given the amount of cash we have on the balance sheet, you know, so budget is not a constraint for us when we're taking capital decisions, honestly. What we're looking at is the right project having the right ROI and the right financials. So, and if the project makes the right financial sense, we are ready. Please to go ahead with those kind of CapEx projects. So hence, probably it's not the budgetary constraint or a budget which drives us while taking capital decisions, but it's all about the right projects. Also, secondly, to your point on capacities, for example, as you've indicated in the past as well, our capacity on an animal basis across all products is about 70-75% utilization. So, there is no immediate requirement to put a large capex, immediate, I mean the short-term, let's say next six months, 12 months, to a large capacity capex, but we have a very... We have a stringent, very strong, ongoing process wherein we keep evaluating our capacity requirements based on our estimates for the next couple of years, and that is a part of our normal planning and capital budgeting process, and that is a part of our run rate, capex, etc. So, our intent statement is, you know, as Mr. Ishola also explained, that we are looking at the footprint, we are trying to accelerate the new products or the innovations. For example, we have invested in four-door refrigerator. There are more models which are expected to come in the balance of the year, etc., etc. So, we are making sure that we are investing cash and capex in the right projects. Without looking at any budget as a constraint. Hope that clarifies.

No, that clarifies. Actually, what I was asking was, obviously, it's not a constraint. We know that balance sheet is supportive enough to incur the capex. What I meant was, what is the cash outflow for capex budgeted for fiscal 27? That's the number I was looking for. And second was just to quantify the ref's number of units and washer's number of units, which the company currently has across three factories. That's what I was looking for.

So, Mr. Gadal, as you will appreciate that we're constrained to give the exact numbers, you know, calling out exact numbers, so we're really constrained in sharing that piece, but just to give you comfort that we'll be in line with the run rates is where it is, subject to the new products, etc., because that we're evaluating on a constant basis. If we have a new idea which comes... Right now, to say that there's something which could be turned around in six months, and which is a very valid, which is a very good idea from a marketing standpoint, and makes a good financial sense, we're happy to take those kind of calls as well. So it's very difficult to pinpoint a number to say that this is what we're looking at from an exact number perspective. But yes, the base ongoing Caprix is about hundreds, plus we keep investing based on specific initiatives, innovations, automations, etc.

All right. Got that. Thank you so much, and all the best for the rest of the year.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you. The next question is from Rahul Jha, from Bowhead. Please go ahead.

Thank you for allowing me to question. So, my question is that we have done really good on the front load washers, and this is despite us being not present in Chroma, which is a reliant digital with this project, product at least, from what I have seen. And despite that, we have gained significant market share. So, my question is that how soon do you think we can enter with this product in the larger chains, and what sort of timelines do you expect us to hit the 10% kind of market share for front-road washers?

Okay. Thank you for that question, sir. Well, without getting into specifics, we are in some of these large chains. As you know, the whole process of listing and delisting keeps going on. That's something that chains also do as part of their work. And obviously our intent is to try and be in all these, so long as it makes financial sense for us to do. So one thing that we try to do is we don't try to just do whatever is required to go and get it listed. I don't think that's a very good way of working. So where it makes commercial sense, then we will do it. And where it doesn't, we will keep discussing till it makes commercial sense to both parties. So what we're looking for is to get in and not get in at any cost, because then there is a financial also to worry about. So, that process is ongoing, and we'll continue to do that. Like you rightly said, we are able to really get significant throughput increases on our front load, which is what makes us happy. Distribution increase is something that you can always get, you know, but in the places where you are, your throughput, that is how much cells per display unit, that needs to increase. That's what gives confidence to our customer partners. There are actually parts of the country, and I won't go into the detail, where you're already at close to a 10% volume share. As you can imagine, we've got about a 5 watt volume share right now, but it's made up of some places where it's smaller, 3%, etc., and some places where it's close to 10%. So we have the template, the KPIs, we understand what we need to do to make it happen. And like I said, it's always a question of doing the right thing commercially. Sometimes the commercials do not work. And that is something that we don't like to compromise on. So if we wanted to get 10 share at any cost, honestly we could do that within a year's time. But I think the cost would not be a good cost to pay for the log grant. So we are pacing ourselves, obviously still with an aggressive bent of mind. It would be lovely to get to double-digit volume share in the next two to three years. It's not an easy market. It's a tough market. Those who have the shares obviously hold on to it for dear life. So it's very competitive and very exciting.

Secondly, sir, on competition in the top load washer category, we have seen some of the erstwhile players who did not have that category with them. They have also entered. And is that the reason that we have lost some market share in the top load and despite losing some in the base quarter as well? So, because top load used to be a very strong product from Walpool, at least that's what the feedback is.

Oh, it's a fantastic question, actually. And it shows great technology of the market. So thank you for that. Yes, to some extent, the competition and top load, as you rightly pointed out, more players have come in and very aggressively to try and get some share, especially at the lower ends. We are sticking to our strategy. And very simply, it is to make sure that we grow responsibly financially, right? So the growth is not coming at the expense of financials. At the same time, we premiumize so that it's better value per unit for us and for our customers. And it's also a better margin per unit. So we are definitely driving the premiumization through our high-dism strategy. And lastly, I think what I'm most excited about is, as I've said before, the speciality, I think, of Whirlpool, which we are, let's say, rediscovering our mojo, is... We don't just rely on great global innovation. Like I just said, we have obviously access to all the global innovation we need, but classic example, Dynamics detergent dispenser is not available anywhere else in the world except India, right? And tomorrow it will go to other parts of the world, but it was made in India. Auto defrost, made in India, made for India. The IntelliCrisper that we've just built in on the four-door Luxurium, made in India. And I think what I would love to say is that... In the next 12 to 15 months. It's semi-automatic. We decommoditized the business. Now, if more players are coming in at lower cost and selling at entry level, etc., we have to find a way to decommoditize categories. That's what adds value to consumers. It adds value to our customers, and it adds value to our industry and to ourselves, obviously. So we will absolutely do that in top-load washing machines as well. So there will be some very cool stuff.

One more question, if I can ask. So, when do you plan to increase capacity on the front road washers? Because with the scale that we are, the growth trajectory that we have, we would be hitting, I think, capacity limits maybe next year in that.

No, so that's not a problem. And we do something called long-term capacity planning, which is a very structured program that we do. And we do that every year and update it every six months if we need to. We are completely on top of what we need to invest in from capacity point of view in all our three plans. We always look at can we do it internally, can we do it externally, etc. As far as front load is concerned, we are quite cool. We are growing really fast, but there's still significant capacity that we have to utilize, and we don't even operate on three shifts. So, there's a lot of, let's say, space that's available to basically make it, you know, much bigger volumes. So, there's no immediate need for any capacity investment in front row. But we're always on top of that.

Thank you. The next question is from Ankit Merchant from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Merchant.

Yes, we can hear you now. Please go ahead.

Yeah, so my question was on the margin front, right? So there's been a lot of volatility in the margin in the last five quarters that you speak, the various issues. On a slightly medium term, what is the kind of margin trend that we can see in the business and when can we see some of these factors, especially related to?

25, 26, we have more or less been increasing margin all the time. The real margin impact, which has been quite challenging, has come in the last six months. And two major factors, like I said, fundamentally, one is significant regulatory impact, which was basically because of two reasons within that itself. One is the energy change on REFs and ACs, which typically happens once in three years, right? So this is the year in which it happened. And the The second one is obviously e-waste. Now, very simply, on e-waste, it's a question of When and how it's going to get resolved, which is not only up to us. It's the entire industry. It's actually more than one industry that we need a solution to. And I don't want to go too much into the detail of that, but this is something that we need to and hope for an equitable solution, which is sensible for everybody. So e-waste, I'm hoping, is a matter of time before we come up with something which actually works for us and others in the industry and is not one-sided. As far as regulatory challenges are concerned, this will typically happen once in three years, so technically speaking, if 26 January is the refrigerator one now, as per the calendar, the next one should be 29 January. So other than that, we don't expect anything else, but even that, I would submit, is quite a lot of change. Every three years to change energy, especially on refrigerators, where, by the way, I'm not sure if you're aware. But India is just behind Europe on energy in the world. So our energy standards on refrigerators, especially in this category, are better than America, are better than South America, are better than Japan, better than Korea, better than China, better than Malaysia, Singapore, better than Australia. So we are already at fantastic... to say that we are already at a very high level. Like I said, it's once in three years on. For example, we are already at a very, very high level of energy efficiency. Lastly, the impact of commodity pricing, commodity and forex. This, anybody's guess, your guess is as good as mine. We all pray. Hopefully, it's not too far away, and it happens within this fiscal itself.

Thanks, Shishwar. And the only other point I would add is, for example, the fixed cost, and that is what we monitor and control very efficiently in our business. While we've also spoken about a P4G program, but outside of this black swan kind of events, which materially impacts the cost. But we have a very tight governance in monitoring and managing the operating fixed cost of the business, whether it be people cost and whether it be the operating expenses of the company. So at least we make sure that while other things are happening and we're seeing a material cost headwinds, but these costs are kept under control and under check to ensure that there are no other inefficiencies in the business while we're managing the whole lot of external environment. And our P4G program helps us do that. And we will continue to do that going forward as well and ensure that our fixed costs and operating costs are under control while we manage all the external environment-related headwinds as well.

Yeah, my second question, I

just wanted your thoughts on this, that the entire industry is currently growing on single digits, and, you know, we are making 10 margins right now. Is there a situation where in the next 12 to 18 months, you know, all these years kind of come together, it would decide that we need to grow profitably and pass on some of these, you know, additional costs on to the country's quality? Can this happen in the next 12-18 months, and is there a scope as well to, let's say, pass on a 10% price act to the consumer? What will be the elasticity of demand if we do that?

Sir, so firstly, on the first question, as you know very well, it is absolutely against the law for anybody to come together on pricing, which is why we decide what to do on pricing independently. Obviously, we check what's happening in the market, which is just... Basic market intelligence, when consumers are being offered prices, obviously, we know what the pricing is. So, there is no, absolutely no chance of any industry-wide agreement on pricing because that would be illegal. And as not just the head of Whirlpool, but as the president of SIAMA, I would absolutely discourage any such activity by anybody because it's an offense. It's a criminal offense. So, the answer is no. Is it possible that different players at different points in time decide to incorporate more pricing into their business? It would seem to me a logical thing to do. But then, again, everything doesn't operate on logic. Some people might want to use the opportunity to get more market share and therefore not take up pricing. These are things that happen every day, right? It's happening as we speak. So somebody may take up the price, somebody may not take up the price. Then if you take up the price and others have not taken up the price, then there is a price that you pay for that, right? And the price that you pay will be volume loss. And is the volume loss worth it or not? So we have a lot of sensitivity analysis that we do. Obviously, I'm not able to go into the detail of that, but we do a lot of work on this area because it's quite crucial in this industry. You know, a 5% price difference. So, my answer to your question is, I'm sure they will do what they need to do. Again, absolutely it is. We've been able to recover all the costs through pricing. So, depend on what happens in the market. If we see a competitive situation going in a certain way, we'll act in a certain way. If the competitive situation goes in a different way, then we'll have to act accordingly. Always keeping in mind the balance between revenue growth, market share, and profit.

Thank you. Mr. Merchant, we request you to rejoin the queue. Before we take the next question, a reminder to participants to please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from Nausha Chaudhary from Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, firstly on Alika business, I wanted to understand if you can give us some specific what exactly is helping this growth and what should be the expectation for the full year and in coming years, and on the remaining stake, is there any plan to, you know, take it fully?

Great, thank you. To clarify that we have 100% ownership of Elika, 100% ownership of Elika, so there's no remaining stake. All of it is World Pool of India. Mr. Pralad Bhutada, who is, I would say, the father of the cooking industry in India, for me, a phenomenal man who built up, you know, multiple brands, including Elika in India. He continues to run the business for us, but it's 100% subsidiary of World Pool of India. So that's the first point. So there's nothing left for us to buy. Second, I think Elica, there are three things that have been working very well for us on Elica this year. First is the market has been more responsive. There has been a good growth in the kitchen appliances market, unlike the refrigerator market, for example. The second thing that's really worked is we've been able to focus on both ends. We've been able to focus on the lower end and introduce some very good products there to get more of the mass. But at the same time, we've been able to put in some very good, like I showed you, high-value products with great margins that have been able to counterbalance that from a volume and margin point of view. So, this double strategy is working really well for us in terms of the new products that we've brought to market, obviously with a very efficient system. The third thing that has been very helpful, in Elika's case, unlike the refrigerator washing machine business, is that the pricing has more or less been able to cover the cost increases. Not 100%, but very, very close. So, very different kind of interest. Thank you. And we will continue driving this business really hard.

Should we expect 20% plus kind of number from Enika for the full year?

Difficult to say, sir. Again, as you know, it's very difficult to make such predictions. I don't like to make big statements like that. So we hope to continue to drive the business strongly. Nothing will be spared to make it drive strongly. But also a lot depends on, because it's not like we have a low single-digit market share, a lot depends on how the market grows. So if the market growth continues to be strong, then we can expect some good growth. But if the market growth weakens, which is quite possible, given everything else that's happening around us, then maybe not. So don't have an exact answer for you. But obviously we try our level best to make sure our growths are really kind of strong.

On the AC business, I want you to understand your strategy, your focus market, and in absolute terms, how big can it be for you in the next two, three years? How are we going about it? Can you explain on that?

Sure. I think on AC, I would like to say again that what we want to do is responsible growth. So, I just want to be clear again, at least the current strategy that we have, that obviously can always change depending on our discussions with the board, etc. It's responsible growth, which means we'll not want to grow at any cost. So, in the last two years, we've been able to grow our business quite significantly, not 10 or 20%, but much, much higher than that, because we were coming off a relatively lower base. We hope to continue growing at a very strong pace, well above 10 or 20%. And I think the reason why we'll be able to do that is because we have a very solid assortment, which is not over-proliferated, and therefore we have efficiencies in our business. We're able to manage our inventories quite well. We are obviously sourcing from outside, sourcing from outside right now. We don't manufacture our air conditioners, but the design is basically ours. So they're manufacturing to our specifications. We have a very strong plan for execution. The results have been very good. I think we're the fastest growing, if I'm not wrong, we're the fastest growing in terms of offtake AC. Of course, our base is small, but still, you can be small and not grow the fastest. But we were the fastest growing in offtake this year as well as last year. So we hope to continue that growth, but we hope to continue that growth responsibly. So the strategy really will not be to pump a huge amount of volume into the market and then hope for a good day. We try to basically, as far as possible. More than probably what the market does, stay closer to consumption in terms of how we ship. And that's the strategy that we'll continue to do because we are very aware of the fact that if you overship and then the offtake doesn't happen, then you'll have a double whammy, which is you'll have to get rid of all the stocks that you have by discounting, etc., which reduces the margin, which is what I would call not that responsible. Plus, whatever stocks you have left, you'll have to do something about the disposal of those products as well. So, responsible growth is what we'll be looking at. And we've got a proper portfolio, whether it's 1 tonne, 1.5 tonne, 2 tonne. We've got a proper portfolio, 3 star, 5 star, etc. And we're going to go about it in a fairly structured and scientific way, where it makes financial sense to us.

The next question is from Priyank Chedda from Valium Capital. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi, sir. Hardening to see ESOP plans getting covered till N-2 and N-3. Congratulations for that. Just trying to reconcile the revenue growth numbers, right? If ACs, they contribute 10% of the sales, growth at 50%, that contributes to 5 percentage points to the overall growth. Which means the balance 7% is from washing machine refrigerator, which again, if I have to link it with the GFK, looks like it's a pure volume growth. So is there no element of pricing contribution coming up for this quarter? And whatever price ranks you mentioned should be coming up for the coming quarter. That's my question number one.

Okay, so thank you for that question. You're right about AC. I wouldn't say exactly on the 10%, but you're right about AC in principle, that that growth is significant, and that's driving a certain amount of volume for us. Like I said, so is workload. If you see, the market itself hardly grew. So the mathematics, as you rightly pointed out, the market grew about 4-5% across effigators and washers. And our market share, as I told you, grew about 30-35 basis points. So if you take it on our base of market share, this will basically come to about a 6-6.5 kind of number. So some amount of the pricing has come in, because you can imagine the pricing starts increasing, but in GFK, the price that you see is the price that is off-taked out of the store. Right? If I have shipped in, it does not necessarily come into the GFK. So, um... Yes, we have taken up prices in April and May. As I said before, I'm not going to say exactly what the numbers are, but we have taken up prices two consecutive months because we had to. And it was not fully reflected in April, May, June, but it will be fully reflected in July, excuse me, July, August, September and beyond. And thank you for the comment about the ESOP. Much appreciate.

Yes, to whatever you have been able to. Yeah, thank you for that. The second question again on, sorry, hopping on one of the only weakest link which is the margins for our industry, right? I mean, if Aditya can say split out say 400 bps of gross margin compression has been contributed by various reasons. There are five reasons which you have mentioned in your press release, maybe a few large ones contributing to it so that we can understand exactly where is the pain arising out for, and maybe other parts, Mr. Ishwar. See, in your assessment, the industry competitive dynamics are... Whatever categories they would want to. If we don't take the prize X or maybe we don't lead the prize X, why would we expect the competition also to do the same? I'm just taking a reference with the mobile phones with no volume growth still passes on the full prize X. AC being one of the highest competitive categories, hardly, barely we have seen any margin pressures coming up over there season to season. So just your thoughts on...

Thank you for the question. Getting to the exact numbers, probably we are constrained to share the exact numbers of the split-off. The factors impacting the gross margin. But I would just give you a little bit of indication. At a very high level, let's say there are two big things which impacted us. A, what did it stuff, which is a combination of all the things between the oil prices, FX, and a lot of other things. And then the second big element, especially on the material or the gross margins, was on the energy regulation upcharges impact on revenue or business. If I just split. Broadly, to say that in the order of magnitude, the war impact was much higher, and then half of it was, if the war impact was X, probably half of it or less than that was the energy regulations impact, which impacted the overall gross margins. Probably that's the best I'll be able to share at this point of time.

Yeah. On your second question on the price tax, well, this, as I said before, it depends on the industry. So, have we led the price tax? Yeah, we've taken two price tax in April and May. But we also need to watch what's happening in the market. That's what I was saying before. And if the market responds in a different way, then I cannot blindly, you know, do stuff. So, I have to protect balance between volume growth. Market check growth, and profit protection. And so we have to do the right thing. Like I said, if your volumes crash, if your volumes go down, the numbers become far, far worse. So this is not a business in which you want to drop volumes, you know, significantly, as as before, because then nothing can protect your P&L. Because it's not a very low involvement business. There's a lot of investment in feed-on-street, there's a lot of investment in stores. So, therefore, I would say we will calibrate what we do on pricing. We will do the right thing for our brand, but always keeping in mind that the right thing is not just to price up all the time, irrespective of what the rest of the market does. We know what happens when we do that, and we learned that in 2022, and we know exactly what will happen. And we've done a lot of analysis on that. So, this is something that we will continue to observe as we go along. And, yeah, and who does the pricing, etc., etc.? This is a good question. Sometimes, you know, we'll do it. Sometimes, some other big brand will do it. But typically, big brands are the ones that basically lead this. If the seventh player or the ninth player takes the pricing, nobody really is going to, you know, respond. So, it's always the top two or three. So, we've done what we need to do, and we keep monitoring it very, very carefully, and we'll continue to act based on what we see in the market.

So, keeping in full faith, just last thing, if gross margin is mirroring all the impact of war and regulations, why is so that P4G actions are not being witnessed in the delta change of gross margin fall, which is exactly the same delta change in the... A bit margin. So maybe we would have expected, say, gross margin fall, or maybe the A bit margin fall to be lower than the gross margin fall because of the P4G actions. Just on that. Thank you.

Let me, sure, I think let me answer this, because P4G. The numbers that come are basically on all the engineering work, design work. This is the last year. The impact of the crisis that we've had, the Black Swan event, is actually very big in this industry. And like I said, if you're not able to cover that fully through pricing, then it's a very big number. So we've been able to do our P4G like we normally do. But also please keep in mind that P4G is very much, let's say, something that we need to do in times where it can easily be done. But if you come to a place where you're literally not able to get materials to manufacture, negotiation would become a very difficult thing to do. You see what I'm saying? So if you say you want polypropylene, 100 kilos are available. Who wants it? And if you at that time you want to, you know, make a, I'm just making it up a 10% discount, you know, likely not to get even one kilo. So it's a very, like I said, it's a very unusual time, I would say, for our industry because there is a lot of pressure on materials. We are doing our P4G like we normally do, with the same diligence, with the same, in fact, even more, I would say, focus. But there's only so much you can do in times like this, you know, because availability is also important. And if, you know, you're not able to manufacture plants, then it doesn't matter what your gross margin declared is, you cannot sell any product. So it's a very complex, it's a very complex time. Because our industry depends a lot on crude related, you know, oil related products. Like I said, there are many, many things that in our industry we require, whether it's plastics for washing machines or refrigerators or whether it's EPS for packaging, which is quite substantial. There's tons of it, whether it's products required for foaming. So all of this is related. So, we are absolutely doing that, but we are not able to get, you know, substantial savings to offset all the impact of this Black Swan event.

Thank you very much. As we are nearing the end of allocated time, we will now take the last question from Manjit Bawaria from Samia Advisors. Please go ahead.

Sir, thank you for taking my questions. The first one was in FY25, you know, we had sale of services to Whirlpool Corporation, and I think entities controlled by it to the tune of about 250 crores. If you could share some details on whether this will continue going ahead now that they are not our parent, let's say beyond FY28, and you know, what was the sort of margin we made on that business? Because, you know, it was a services business, so I just wanted to understand whether this was a very high margin business for us. That's question one. Question two was, you know, on AC again, You know, it's a very crowded segment. And, you know, many well-run incumbents have also struggled to make a healthy ROI on a sustainable basis. You know, they have good years, they have bad years, but not very sustainable. So what gives us confidence that, you know, we'll be able to make a healthy ROI over here, you know, more consistently? That's question two. And, you know, third was just a suggestion, sir. You know, we are completely aligned with the management team getting ESOPs, you know, in the India business, because that's what they are driving. But I think the ESOPs vested face value. From a minority perspective, we would have thought, you know, if the ESOPs vested at close to current market prices when the scheme came in, it would have been more fair. So, you know, if you guys agree with it, you know, it's something that could be reconsidered by the team and the board. Thank you so much.

So, thank you, Mr. Manjeet. So, let me take up the first question regarding the sale of services. So, this is the sale of services to Whirlpool Corporation, which used to happen in the past. There is an agreement as a part of the transaction. We have agreed with the Whirlpool Cooperation that these services will continue until March 29. So that's what is the agreement which is also in the public domain. We have made disclosures because it is a related party transaction and the margins are on arm stand basis which is a cost plus kind of a business. Now what happens beyond March 29 is purely on the discretion of Whirlpool Cooperation if they want to retain the services in India or with us or how they want to do it, but right now our agreement for those services is till March 29 and at arm's length on a cost plus.

Thanks, Saithia. On the AC point, you asked the question on healthy ROI. So, I think I kind of partially covered it previously. The way, see the AC business as we see it is a very, very interesting business, but in a way, it's a risky business. And what is the risk in it is that if the summer season is fantastic, then your products sell like hotcakes and you're short of supply. But if the summer season is not very good, like last year, 2025. Then you end up in a situation where you're sitting on tons of stock if you're reproduced. The way we try to keep a healthy ROI is very simple. Like I said, responsible growth. We are not, you know, putting massive targets. For example, let us, you know, triple our business from this year to next because our base is small and produce a huge amount of product and then sit on it and don't know what to do. So we're calibrating our growth so that we grow responsibly. The AC business, de facto. It's a lower-margin business than refugiators or washers because of the kind of comparative pressures that are there. But if we can manage it in such a way that we don't have a lot of obsolescence and we don't have a lot of inventory sitting, which becomes an inventory-carrying cost, or it will have to be discounted and sold, then it is quite a reasonable business. So our interest would be in AC is to keep increasing the absolute margin per unit year on year as we drive this business. And at the same time, make sure that your profit year-on-year is getting better on the AC business. And at the same time, make sure that you have much better than a 10 or a 20% growth in the AC. We could go for another strategy that says, let's go for a 100% growth or a 200% growth, but that will have its own risks. So the way we make sure that it's a healthy ROI is what I call the responsible growth strategy. So we don't just go and list at any cost. We don't do that. So if somebody says, yeah, less, but give me this percentage more, then we don't do it because it doesn't make financial sense for us long term. Once you agree a trade deal, then you're stuck with it for years. So that's my answer to you. We try to do it in such a way that we're increasing the margin in AC year after year. So if this year the margin is X, next year it should be 1.1X, the year after that 1.2X, after that 1.3X, etc. That makes sure you're growing profitability. And we make sure that we try to grow the business in a healthy way. I'm utilizing our tremendous strength in both traditional trade and in organized trade, and not depending on you on one channel. So that is the answer to the question of the healthy ROI. Your suggestion, thank you so much for the ESOPs point that you made. So I just want to highlight to everybody that you talked about vesting at face value or vesting on, you know, vesting at market rates. See, We had done an extensive exercise benchmarking a lot of recent ESOP plans that were floated and approved in the market. And without mentioning names, a lot of strong companies have actually issued shares at face value, and that's been fine. And we also checked with all the governance rules that are typically given by advisors on this. And their advice was, if you do it at face value, make sure it's very strongly linked to performance. And I'll just explain. I'll take a few minutes to explain this. I'm sorry, I will exceed time by about three minutes, but it's really worth it. So, we are linking it extremely strongly to performance. 100% of our investing is based on performance. Okay. And just for you to know, previously, the same leadership team was actually getting shares from the Whirlpool Corporation, as I'm sure many of you are aware. And in that case, half of the shares were based on time investing, which basically meant If you had 100 shares, 33 would vest this year, 33 next year, 33 the year after that. This was half of the shares. And the other half of the shares was cliff-vesting based on performance. What we've done now is made 100% of the shares for senior management, vest only after three years, which is cliff-vesting, and completely based only on performance. So this is a very big change already for the senior management. And by the way, it was also being given at face value. So, from a senior management point of view, as you know, in terms of paying, we look at base pay, bonus, and... Cutting edge, even with respect to the industry. It is just a bonus. Try to incentivize management to give a stronger performance. That has been the philosophy historically. We are following through on that philosophy, but making the conditions even more stringent in agreement with the board before we present it to you. So, like I said, versus time-vesting for 50%, we are now only doing performance-vesting, which is already a big change for the senior management, right? Second, where it was-vesting one-third, one-third, one-third on time-vesting, now it will all-vest only after year three. That's another big change. And lastly, individual performance, there was no penalty on the long-term incentives. So just to explain, if the company did its numbers globally, then you would basically get your long-term investing. But what we've now done... Is to say, if two of the three ratings are inconsistent, or let's say not good enough, as determined by the board or by the leadership team, then the management even has the chance to get zero in there. So if you get two out of your last three years, you've not got good ratings, ratings are below average, you'll get zero. So that is a new condition. So we've already made it much more stringent than what our current management team was actually getting. Do protect and safeguard our future. Lastly, if I may add, sir, and I wish to place it on record, that we are not only the leadership team. There are literally six people on my leadership team, including myself and Mr. Ajit Jain, who are also individual shareholders of Whirlpool of India. So with our own money, not e-sops, with our own money, we've bought shares. So we are as much shareholders as anybody else in the company. So our, let's say, personal stake is very much there. And these are pretty big amounts for us, you know. So, I hope.

No, no, that was very helpful. Really appreciate the detailed explanation and also appreciate the hard work which has gone in over the last three years since this team really started it all around. Thank you so much.

Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. We'll take that as the last question. I'd like to hand the conference over to Ms. Shweta Srivastava.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. With that, we would draw this call to a close. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. On behalf of Whirlpool of India Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect your lines.