Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL) on Thursday posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 363.24 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, a minor drop from Rs 365.84 crore recorded during the same period a year ago. A consensus estimate of Bloomberg analysts was expecting the firm to post a consolidated net profit of Rs 395 crore.
During the quarter under review, the company’s consolidated revenue from operations rose to Rs 2,915.82 crore, compared with Rs 2,730.74 crore recorded during the same period a year ago, it said in a regulatory update.
“We delivered a weak performance in the fourth quarter of FY22. Overall, sales grew by 7% and our full-year sales grew in double digits. However, this growth was driven by pricing. We continue to believe that with the relatively non-discretionary, mass pricing of our portfolio and very good performance on market shares, volume growth will return in the medium term,” GCPL managing director and chief executive officer Sudhir Sitapati said.
“From a category perspective, we saw a strong performance in personal care, which grew by 18%. Homecare delivered a weak performance and declined by 7%. From a geography perspective, India grew at 9%. Our Africa, US and Middle East business continued its robust growth trajectory, growing at 15% in rupee terms and 14% in constant currency terms. Performance in our Indonesian business was weak, declining by 15% in rupee terms and 16% in constant currency terms,” he added.
The company’s overall Ebitda fell by 9% (without one-offs), driven by global commodity inflation and scale deleverage in Indonesia.
GCPL’s fourth quarter standalone net profit rose to Rs 417.53 crore (Rs 250.70 crore in the year-ago quarter) on total revenue of Rs 1,635.34 crore (Rs 1,499.74 crore).
Ebitda margins, though sequentially higher, contracted by 1,380 basis points on a year-on-year basis due to higher commodity inflation, adverse mix, scale deleverage and a high base, it added.
The company’s Indonesia business delivered a “weak performance” with a sales decline of 16% in constant currency terms.
GCPL also appointed Rajesh Sethuraman, former vice-president of Digital Process Transformation at Unilever, as Asean CEO. It also named Vijay Kannan, global chief information and digital officer of Shell’s Global Lubricants business, as head of business transformation and digital.
