Bread and biscuit maker Britannia, which had finally started to see some relief in sales growth after a prolonged slowdown of nine months, has been again hit by the coronavirus pandemic. While Britannia reported a 26% rise in its fiscal fourth quarter net profit, helped by a huge cut in tax expense, it said that the lockdown has hampered its growth revival. “After 9 months of moderate growth, we started to see growths coming back in the first 2 months of this quarter which was then hit by Covid 19 and lockdown in March impacting the revenue & net profit growths by an estimated 7-10%,” Varun Berry, Managing Director, Britannia, said in a statement on Friday. Other than coronavirus pandemic, the company has also witnessed an impact of inflation in the prices of key raw ingredients for the bakery business.
The coronavirus lockdown imposed by the government on 24 March 2020 has dealt another blow to the FMCG industry which had finally started to witness signs of recovery after almost one year of slowdown. Other FMCG players such as Dabur and Parle have also said that the lockdown dampened their growth numbers for Q4 quarter.
Key takeaways from Britannia Q4 results
- FMCG major Britannia reported consolidated revenue growth from sales of goods at 2% for the last quarter of fiscal 2019-20 to Rs 2,808 crore.
- The maker of bread and biscuit reported consolidated Net Profit increase by 26% for the quarter at Rs 375 crores.
- The total tax expense has fallen to nearly half to Rs 85 crore from Rs 155.65 crore.
- For the full financial year 2019-20, Britannia’s consolidated revenue grew by 4% at Rs 11,444 crore. The FMCG major reported consolidated Net Profit increase by 21% at Rs 1,403 crores.
- Britannia has reported a revenue growth of 20% in April 2020 and 28% in May 2020 versus the corresponding months in the previous year.
However, Britannia continued to garner market share on the back of its distribution network, endeavours in marketplace and brand building via product campaigns. “While we faced some challenges in the first month of the lockdown, we recovered quickly and progressively liaised with the government to get approvals for operating all our factories and depots across the country,” the company said. Britannia also said that the company plans to look an eye on the changes in consumer shopping patterns and needs to adapt to the changing times.
