Total expenses of TCPL in the December quarter were at Rs 4,087.07 crore, up 22 per cent
New Delhi: FMCG major Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) on Thursday reported a 6.5 per cent decline in its consolidated net profit to Rs 281.92 crore in the third quarter ended on December 2024 impacted by the tea business.
The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 301.51 crore in the October-December quarter a year ago, according to a regulatory filing from TCPL, the Tata group FMCG arm.
Its revenue from operations rose by 16.81 per cent to Rs 4,443.56 crore during the quarter under review against Rs 3,803.92 crore in the year-ago period.
“We have a strong quarter, growth across the businesss. At the overall level, it was 17 per cent and at the organic level, the growth was 9 per cent. Our Indian business did extremely well growing at 20% quarter on quarter. But more importantly, at an underlying level, it is growing at 10 per cent,” TCPL Group Chief Financial Officer Ashish Goenka told PTI in a post-result interaction.
However, the tea business has impacted the margins of the company as it “prioritised growth at competitiveness over profitability” which has played out well for the company. The tea prices have gone by close to 30 per cent from last year.
“While we have taken calibrated price increases it is not sufficient to cover the full impact. It impacted our EBITDA, margins below 220 basis points,” Goenka said adding “Assuming India tea margins at Q3FY24 level, consolidated EBITDA margin for the quarter would have expanded 75-100 bps.”
TCPL’s beverages segment had a strong quarter and in salt, TCPL took a price increase after a gap of two years.
“There were apprehensions that we may lose volume but contrary to that we gained volume by one per cent and within that the premium portfolio grew by 31 per cent,” he said.
For the quarter, India Beverages business revenue grew 9 per cent, excluding Organic India and coffee continued its strong trajectory with a revenue growth of 28 per cent for the quarter.
Besides International business delivered another strong quarter of topline and market share, he said adding markets as the US has started growing.
“For the quarter, the International business revenue grew 8 per cent,” said TCPL adding its “profitability continued to improve significantly”
Total expenses of TCPL in the December quarter were at Rs 4,087.07 crore, up 22 per cent.
Tata Consumer’s total income, which includes other income was at Rs 4,495.16 crore, up 16.34 per cent.
In the December quarter, TCPL’s overall branded business was up 18.3 per cent to Rs 4,026.15 crore. It was at Rs 3,403.31 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.
TCPL’s branded businesses include tea, coffee, water and other various value-added businesses.
Its revenue from the branded business in India was up 19.31 per cent to Rs 2,833.68 crore in the December quarter.
TCPL’s international branded business was up 15.95 per cent to Rs 1,192.47 crore.
While, its revenue from non-branded business was at Rs 446.12 crore, up 8.66 per cent during the quarter. This segment includes TCPL’s plantation and extraction business of tea and coffee.
Commenting on the results, Managing Director & CEO Sunil D’Souza said, “We delivered a topline growth of 17 per cent in Q3 FY25, growth was broad-based with strong performance in India Beverages and Foods.
“During the quarter, we recorded robust double-digit growth in the India tea business, backed by strong volume growth. There has been continued momentum & market share gain in the India salt business and strong growth in Tata Sampann,” he said.
TCPL’s recent acquisitions- Capital Foods and Organic India performed well and … is expanding these businesses in the Food Service and pharma channels respectively.
“In India, we continued to strengthen our Sales & Distribution infrastructure with the scale-up of split routes for our salesforce, resulting in significant improvement in range selling. Channels of the future i.e. e-commerce and Moden trade continue to fuel growth momentum,” he said.
Tata Starbucks — a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Consumer Products Ltd and Starbucks Corporation — continued to expand its stores across India with a total store count of 473 stores across 74 cities.
It added 16 net new stores during the quarter and entered 4 new cities.
Shares of Tata Consumer Products Ltd on Thursday settled at Rs 967.60 on BSE, up 0.79 per cent from the previous close.
