Eveready Industries India Ltd (EVEREADY) Q2FY27 Concall Transcript - Sep-2026 Qtr
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Eveready Industries India Limited Q2 and H1 FY '27 Earnings 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 this conference 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. Ashish Sahu from Adfactors PR Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Ashish Sahu (Adfactors PR Investor Relations): Good evening, everyone. Thank you, and welcome to Eveready Industries India Limited Q2 and H1 FY '27 Earnings Conference Call. On the call, we have with us Mr. Anirban Banerjee, Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Bibek Agarwala, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Anirban Ghosh, GM Finance and Head of Investor Relations. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in this call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect developments that occur after this statement is made. Documents related to the financial performance of the company, including the investor presentation, have been uploaded on the stock exchanges and the company's website. With this, now I hand over the conference call to Mr. Anirban Banerjee for the opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Anirban Banerjee (Eveready Industries India Ltd): Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Eveready Industries' earnings call for the second quarter of the financial year 2027. We have already circulated a detailed presentation on the company's performance during the quarter, and I hope you found the information useful. I will focus on the key operational and performance updates. The quarter continued to be shaped by a volatile macroeconomic environment, heightened geopolitical tensions, the ongoing West Asia crisis, fluctuations in global commodity prices, and currency movements, contributing to continued uncertainty across global markets and the broader operating landscape. The consumption trends showed resilience, despite the uneven monsoon conditions and persistent inflationary pressures for the quarter under review. Subpar rainfall created some uncertainty around the rural demand, while rising commodity and input costs continued to pressure industry margins. Zinc prices remained elevated, registering a 36% increase on an average compared to prices per ton in the corresponding period last year. Inflationary pressures were also evident across chemicals, basic metals, and electrical equipment, adding to the cost pressure on our battery and lighting businesses. Despite these challenges, our proactive hedging strategy, calibrated pricing interventions, and continued focus on operational efficiencies helped us manage input cost pressure and protect profitability during the quarter. We will continue to closely monitor commodity price movements and take a measured approach to pricing, acting where necessary to safeguard margins while maintaining competitiveness. During quarter two, Eveready maintained its strong financial performance, delivering double-digit revenue growth and marking its eighth consecutive quarter of year-on-year revenue growth. Revenue for the quarter
Anirban Banerjee (Eveready Industries India Ltd): stood at 428.2 crores, registering a growth of 10.7% year-on-year. EBIDTA grew by 8.9% year-on-year to 58.8 crores with a EBIDTA margin of 12.6%. Profit after tax was at 31.9 crores against a loss of 7.9 crore, which included an exceptional loss of 37.7 crores last year. This consistent performance reflects our and continued focus on delivering sustainable profitable growth. Our distribution network continued to support our performance during the quarter with encouraging traction across both traditional and emerging channels. E-commerce and quick commerce channels penetration remained a key highlight, registering over 50% growth year-on-year in quarter two, reflecting changing consumer purchasing preferences and our presence across digital platforms. We remain focused on strengthening our abilities to improve product accessibility and reach a wider consumer base. Moving to our battery business, the segment delivered a healthy performance during the quarter, supported by positive trends across our product portfolio. Alkaline batteries continued to be a key contributor, registering a year-on-year volume growth of 30% in Q2 FY '27, reflecting the increasing consumer preference for high-performance batteries and the continued progress of our premiumisation strategy. We grew our market share in the alkaline segment this quarter versus the same quarter last year. Our carbon zinc battery business remained stable during the quarter, registering growth despite elevated raw material costs and continued inflationary pressures. Through calibrated pricing actions and effective cost management, we navigated these challenges while maintaining the competitiveness and profitability of our core battery portfolio. The Jammu facility is now operational, with production being gradually ramped up in line with existing inventory levels and market demand. As production gains momentum, we expect improved capacity utilization in the coming quarters. The facility is expected to support greater manufacturing localization, improved cost efficiencies, and strengthen our ability to meet rising demand for alkaline batteries. In our flashlights business, rechargeable flashlights continue to gain traction amongst consumers, registering 32.2% growth year-on-year during the quarter, supported by increasing adoption of rechargeable solutions and our expanding product offerings. Although demand for conventional battery-operated flashlights remained subdued, our rechargeable portfolio's performance more than offset this decline, enabling the overall business to grow. In the lighting business, emergency LED bulbs remained a key area of strength, delivering 26% year-on-year growth during the quarter, reflecting our continued efforts to build a stronger presence in emergency lighting, supported by consumer demand for dependable and energy-efficient products. While the broader lighting environment remained competitive, we continued to prioritize categories with better demand visibility and opportunities to improve our product mix. Innovation and product diversification remained key priorities for Eveready as we expand into emerging product categories. A key focus area is our recently introduced portable liquid mosquito vaporiser, which combines the convenience of a rechargeable design with effective mosquito protection. This patent-applied innovation marks an important step in expanding our presence in the anti-mosquito repellent market. After the initial launch in select markets, we are now focused on scaling distribution, building consumer awareness, and driving wider adoption. Our mosquito racquet portfolio has also performed well,
Anirban Banerjee (Eveready Industries India Ltd): with Eveready emerging as one of the leading players in its organized segment within just three years of launch. This reflects the strength of the Eveready brand and its ability to build consumer trust and establish a strong presence in new categories within a relatively short period. Alongside this, our recent launches include the Shor rechargeable flashlight with an integrated animal alarm. Shor reinforces Eveready's innovation-led approach to flashlight category, combining powerful illumination with integrated animal deterrence features to address the specific needs of farm safety for farmers. The launch expands the portfolio into specialized usage occasions while strengthening the company's focus on differentiated utility-driven rechargeable products. We also launched Instabright, a differentiated emergency LED bulb offering up to two times brighter illumination during power outages compared to other LED emergency bulbs in the market. Instabright strengthens Eveready's emergency lighting portfolio through utility-led innovation and delivers a practical lighting solution. The product reinforces company's focus on feature-led product development and expanding its presence in value-added lighting solutions. Another encouraging development is the good performance of our electrical accessories portfolio, which is steadily becoming an important part of our broad product offering. We continue to strengthen our presence in this space through better distribution and a wider range of offerings. Our adjacent electrical category, including electrical accessories, insulated tapes, wires, and MCBs, continue to gain momentum during the quarter. Looking ahead, we remain confident about our business prospects, supported by continued shift towards premium products, strong performance across key categories, and our expanding product portfolio. The momentum in alkaline batteries, rechargeable flashlights, and emergency lighting, along with new opportunities in anti-mosquito liquid vaporizers and electrical accessories, provide a strong foundation for the coming quarters. We also expect our Jammu facility to scale up gradually to improve manufacturing efficiency and strengthen cost competitiveness over time. While inflationary pressures and elevated raw material costs remain area of focus, we will continue to adopt a disciplined approach to pricing, cost management, and operational execution. Our priority remains building on the progress made so far and delivering consistent profitable growth while creating long-term value for our stakeholders. Thank you.
Moderator: We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Akshay Deshpande with PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Akshay Deshpande (PL Capital): Hi, thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on a good set of numbers. So, now, I have two questions. My first question is on the margins. We could see that the margins have compressed during the quarter, despite a decent revenue growth. Just wanted to understand what has led to the compression in the margin and how do you expect the margins to play out in the coming quarters? And my second question would be on the Jammu facility. We have started operations in there, wanted to understand how will this plant help us to grow going forward and when we will see, really see the impact of this on our revenue?
Bibek Agarwala (Eveready Industries India Ltd): So if you see this current quarter, the margin compression
Bibek Agarwala (Eveready Industries India Ltd): 20 bips, and this is primarily because of the as we spoken about the very high, elevated material cost and some channel mix and the product mix. But however, this is very well controlled with a calibrated price increase. So, it is very usually very moderate level of things. And Jammu is already settling down as we stayed that in the May, we have done the commercial production. The plant is running in full almost as an desired level of our capacity. And we have started billing from the September from our Jammu plant.
Anirban Banerjee (Eveready Industries India Ltd): Does that answer your question Akshay?
Akshay Deshpande (PL Capital): Yeah. Yeah. Understood. Thank you so much.
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