Whirlpool Of India Ltd

Subsequently, there were new product improvements in productions both in DC, frost free and other parts of the portfolio also, the impact of which is visible in this quarter's revenue growth. And then there's a lot of investment on the sales execution side as well, be it Aris, be it the display compliances, be it the focus on the premium mix, premium lines and the high DCM SKUs, et cetera, et cetera, and the customer relationships.

As a result of this, we've seen some benefit of all these actions translating into revenue growth. In addition to that, the current quarter has also benefited from the timing of the Diwali Festival as Diwali this year was in November versus October last year. And hence we've seen a phasing of volumes moving from September up to October this year. And the benefit of this flowing through in the revenue growth in the current quarter. What has happened is as a result of all these cumulative actions that has happened throughout 2023, we've seen a sequential improvement in our revenue growth trends and momentum across key categories of a business, i.e., both refrigerators and washers grew in high double digits in this quarter.

Moving on to profits, our EBITDA came in at 39 crore at 2.8%. That's 105% growth versus a year ago. And our PBT came in at 22 crore at 1.6%. That's a 35% growth versus a year ago. The improvement in profit was driven by the strong volume growth, the actions, very, very focused actions on driving the high margin premium SKUs product mix and the cost productivity supported by the strong P4G that's productivity for growth program which helped us save cost across most line items of the P&L, and the impact of decrease in commodity prices as well. All these things have helped both then offset the impact of price production, which we took at the beginning of the year, and the regulatory cost of charges on the refrigerator business, which we had to absorb in the P&L during the year.

Coming to cash, cash is a good story. We generated 470 crores cash from operating activities for the nine months ended December, 2023. And this cash was generated predominantly by improvement in working capital on accounts receivable and inventory management. With this cash generation, our balance sheet becomes even healthier with a very strong cash position, and this allows us the flexibility to invest in the right product innovation and projects to drive growth and value creation for the shareholders. With this, I'll pass it back to Mr. Eswar for the closing piece.

2023. The market itself was growing in October 2022 to March 2023 by mid-single digit growth. Whirlpool of India had quite significant challenges and impacted by the price index challenges in October to December of 2022. We lost a significant amount of share. We took a price correction in Jan to March, 2023, as I said, and we also launched our new direct code ranges into the market between Jan and March, 2023.

It was still continuing to lose share versus year ago from a volume market share point of view.

In April 2023 to September 2023, the market was flattish to slightly declining in terms of volume and we were able to do a couple of things. One is in addition to the direct cool ranges, our frost free range upgrades also got into place. This is the product I was showing you earlier. So that got to the market between, call it April and June, July, 2023. We also started focusing very significantly on the execution, stepping up the execution across these months and setting the stall for that. Our volume market share started declining a lot less compared to year ago during this time period.

In October 2023 to December 2023, the market continues to grow by a very low single digit growth. But we've been able to start getting positive on the volume market share of the year on year as the additional retail educators that we put in, they started functioning fully at the pace at which – because they need a little time to wrap up and so at the pace at which they're supposed to wrap up. So we're happy with that as well as the impact that's coming from all the new products that we've got into the markets as well as the mixed drive that we want to take them strategically. So that's basically the market share trend that we have so far.

And I'm just going to close with my last slide before we open up for questions, is how are we going to deliver sustainable and profitable growth over the long term? I take you back to the same five strategic imperatives inspired with our brands. If I look at this, it's very clear that in the best years, we had superior consumer insights and these superior consumer insights is what we're going to focus on starting from now. We're going to go out and figure out how to get the best consumer insights that drive two things, one, best in class innovation, like some of the stuff that you saw. But the second area is best in class communication, which is how do we tell this news to the consumer, whether it be through impact stickers, whether it be through our retail executives, whether it be through other forms of communication.

Second, product leadership. We will continue to overdrive premiumization. We will also look to fill gaps in our core categories, but the intent is really to deliver winning products across the board. The third area will be resilient supply chain. We will continue to drive the quality of our products up through WCM. We will continue to

drive P4G in a very strong way. P4G is our defense against any chaos that can happen in the market. And we will keep ourselves focused on what we can control to improve margins as we go along.

The fourth area is executional excellence. We're going to focus both on driving reach, which means covering more stores across the country and extraction, which means getting more from each store within the country, getting more from each display through a lot of focus on sales and marketing execution, including a best in class retail executive program that focuses on the quantity of retail executives that we have, the quality of retail executives that we have, and more importantly, their retention because that's a major variable. And lastly, we will grow the consumer direct business ahead of the industry. We believe that these things should be able to get us over the long term, a high single digit revenue CAGR with a high single digit PBT margin percentage over the long term, over multi years. Yeah. So that's all I wanted to share. Happy to pass over to Roopali again.

Thank you, Mr. Eswar and Mr. Jain. With that, I hand over the proceedings back to the Operator for commencing the Q&A session, please.

And going forward, this is the guidance that we give in terms of the growth. You see, like I said, we have to operate from where we see right now what things are. While the GDP might be growing significantly, the durables industry is not growing significantly as of now. So we factor all these things when we are given the guidance.

Obviously, if other things change, then our guidance will also change in the future.

But at this point in time, based on what we see of what's happening with the market on durables, with the competitive situation, et cetera, this is the best guidance that we would give. So that's the answer to the first question.

The second question is on margins. So the answer to your question is I think double digit margins for me, as I look at it, it's going to be quite challenging for anyone to go to the double digit margin. As we look across the industry from whatever we can see, nobody's operating anywhere near that. There have been a lot of players who have come in, there are headwinds from competition. There's also headwinds, as you can imagine, from regulatory requirements that will come going forward. So do I see the best players operating at double digit margins? I would say it's a little challenging to even imagine that. But I would say a high single digit margin is something over the long term that one can aspire towards. Keep in mind that the competition is the one piece that keeps the whole thing going.

And the second thing, of course, like I said, is every regulatory change costs a significant amount of money. And we can expect regulatory to increase as we go along. And that's the direction that we've seen or got from whatever we've seen from the government. So given those things, my personal view is that double digit margins are going to be very challenging for anybody to get to, high single digit margin is the guidance that we are giving. So that's the answer to your second The third one, the 24% stake, I think, just to be clear, the Whirlpool of India – So first of all, nothing has changed from the point of view of India's importance to Whirlpool Cooperation, nothing at all. What actually is the situation is very simply that the

global Whirlpool Corporation has decided to sell up to 24% of its stake. So to go from 75% up to at least 51%, that is basically the decision from the Whirlpool Global Corporation. What is the idea? The idea is that the Whirlpool Corporation will continue to hold the majority interest in the company. And India is supremely very, very important for Whirlpool Corporation from a global point of view, as you saw from Jim Peter's message.

Why is the Whirlpool Corporation doing this? It has very clearly stated this in its US notice that was released to the Indian market as well followed by communication from our side as well, that basically the proceeds from this will be used to retire debt at the Whirlpool Corporation level, and that is the sole purpose of this effort.

So from the Whirlpool Global Cooperation side, there is no change, if anything at all, there's even more of a focus to make sure that India is very strong and continues to be stronger as we go forward with respect to investments and technology, innovation, et cetera, et cetera. But this is being done by the Whirlpool Corporation to retire its debt so that debt retirement can then open up the company to invest further and further as we go along, because less debt driven company is always a better thing. Thank you.

Second, on the strategies to drive innovation and consumer insights overall, what is the budgetary spend that we are targeting on R&D and new product introduction?

And does that already bake in your assumption of high single digit margins when you're guiding over the medium term? And lastly, with respect to the portfolio of Elica, larger or other smaller appliances companies are now diversified with M&A in this space, in cooktops, in chimneys. And some of them have seemingly in the early stages, a good foothold in the premium segment. So what has been our journey

here and how do we propose to tackle the competitive pressures and yet drive double digit growth back in the grouping portfolio, which has been soft this year so far, along with margin expansion? Thank you.

In terms of the next few years, if you can think about it, while I don't want to give a specific number because that's very internal in our planning and so on and so forth.

I think if you talk about long term, like you said, four years, you could call that long term. If you say four years, then you're looking at growing the share because otherwise, it's quite unlikely to be able to grow high single digits without growing the shares. So share growth is certainly part of our whole story. And we are very clear on how we're planning to do that, which is through all of the steps that I highlighted to you in the presentation. So yes, to answer your question, share growth is very much part of the story across the next four years.

Now, on the budgetary spend on R&D and new product introductions, yeah, absolutely. I think we take that into account when we talk to you about anything of that sort. Very much so and X factor into our financials and our calculations as we speak to you, also because in this category, the amount of money you spend on R&D and new product reduction has to be calculated because it is quite a significant impact. So that answered your second question, very much considered yes.

Thirdly, on Elica, I think yes, there is a lot of competitive pressure, but we want to improve our business or drive our business financially responsibly with Elica. And I think that's very important for us. So we're not doing any short-termism in our thinking. Without going into a lot of detail, we're also aware of several other impacts that will come into this business as we go forward and we are readying ourselves for that. I think there is something really special about a company that has got it set up here locally that can actually do stuff, that can actually manufacture stuff, that can put together stuff and set.

And in a lot of industries, a lot of players can come in and import and get away with it for some time, but I think it's probably difficult to get away with it for a very long span of time. So I think we've got to stick to our strategy, we've got to stick to the

high quality of products that we produce. We will not compromise on that. And we continue to believe that driving the right products and the right innovation is what will basically help us tackle these competitive pressures, which will come and go. A lot of people – Yeah. That's about it. Thanks.

And in terms of the production capacities that exist right now, are there any significant CapEx plans that you have to expand these? And one final thing is just a rough sense of sales mixed by channel. These will be great to have. Thank you so much.

Excuse me. I can tell you that refrigerators are more than 55% of our business.

Washer is about 30 odd percent of our business and other categories put together, make up the rest. And Elica is outside of this, of course, and Elica's numbers you have already. That's with respect to the volumes and the value. On the production capacities, I think your question where you're leading to is, is there any massive CapEx that we plan? Well, to be honest, we are reasonably well covered for now.

And more importantly, we factor these into our financial planning as we go forward.

So when we're giving you the guidance, we've made sure that capacity planning for factories is very much included in our financials. So we've done that mathematics to say, when do we need capacities in which factory, at which plan of time across the next seven years? And we've taken that into account already. So that should be okay.

We'll take our next question from Niraj Jain. Please go ahead, Niraj.

We have been seeing a decline in ad spends consistently over the last three, four years, while at the same time the peers, especially the unlisted peers, have been very quite aggressive.

So any strategy on how are we planning to increase the ad spends, especially when we are expecting margins to continue being in single digit on the account of competition? And lastly, I want to know if some royalty and technical know-how fees have been consistent at around 1.5% over the years. May I know if there is any tenure for this engagement and any revision that can be expected in any time soon, especially with the change and the parent company ownership stake going ahead? That's it. Thank you.

But it still doesn't have its kind of, say fair share with respect to the premium portfolio. And we're seeing it more in the right direction because of the focus that we're putting on premiumization in terms of the business.

So whether I take direct-cool, DC refrigerators, or I take frost free or I take even semi-automatic washing machines where we have a lot of strengths or top load washing machines, for example, we definitely have opportunities to grow in the premium portfolio significantly compared to the entry portfolio opportunity. So our plan is to leverage this to really drive the premium portfolio shares. And there has been a movement, like I said, in the right direction on these categories.

The second question that you talked about is on brand building, strategy on management. It's a great question. The way we look at how we're spending right

now from where we are, and I want to be transparent about it, is we need to make sure we're spending on the right things from where we are. Our current focus is to spend on things that can drive a solid return on investment, basically. So if I put in money, I should get a return on investment that's clearly visible. Where it is clearly visible, we're going and investing in a very big way.

So I talked to you about retail executives. Now, retail executives, very frankly, are a lot about brand building as well, because you're talking here about thousands of people on the shop floor who are talking about your brand and its benefits to your consumers. And these are the people who help you get your sales, but also help the consumer make the right choice. So if you look at the amount of effort we're spending on it, not just in terms of the number of people that we're hiring, but also in terms of the money we're spending on the quality training of these people which I would say is really, really good. And also on the retention programs, we are investing a lot.

And the reason we're investing a lot is very simple. It's because it's a solid ROI on everything else, like I said. And similar is a thing for me on e-commerce marketing, for example, where we can see the solid ROI we're investing. We will at a point in time in the future come to a place where we will, again, continue to have, I think a lot of levers. We continue to have a lot of levers in which you can invest. It's very difficult to invest in all the levers at the same time. So each of these levers and brand building, as we traditionally call it, advertising is one of those levers. Similarly, we'll adopt a similar approach, which is to figure out the ROI through a methodology. And once we figure out the ROI, we will invest at the right time into that as well.

In the meantime, we are driving our brand very strongly compared to what we were doing some time ago through whatever we're doing in the stores, which is actually the single biggest point of influence for purchase. A massive number of decisions of purchase are actually made in the store. And through e-commerce marketing, which we're doing right now, we are doing our digital communication, digital marketing, as well as e-commerce marketing. So that part of it is happening.

Other levers, and there are many levers to drive the business, to drive the sales, to drive the revenue and the profits, as well as to drive market share. Large scale advertising is one of those levers. We will look at it at the right time, evaluate it with the right ROI, prove the ROI, and then we'll expand it. That is the second part. So certainly it's a part of our future plans, but it'll be done at the right time and with the right ROI. The third thing, I'm going to defer to, Aditya.

Operator, can we move to the next question, please.

We understand business ups and downs, but any interaction channel being open helps us immensely. The question that I have, one, is your strategy of premiumization. And one of the disadvantage that I believe is that your peers, like LG or Samsung have larger manufacturing facilities across Asia. So that puts Whirlpool through three types of disadvantages. A, is the cost. B is the frequency of refreshes, and three is in terms of number of SKUs because they have a greater scale. So how do you plan to mitigate this and increase your share in the premium space?

In terms of the manufacturing facilities, I would say, to be honest with you, it's not something that concerns us at all because the way we look at it is that we're a global cooperation. We've got products and designs and engineering structural knowledge that comes from multiple markets, whether from North America, from Latin America, from parts of Europe where we have technology, parts of Asia where we have technology, and of course in India. So we've got access to global technology, global knowledge, global scale in several areas of engineering and manufacturing.

Secondly, we've got three world class plants here. As I told you, we've got WCM bronze ratings in all three plants. And as you know, the WCM ratings are not just for certain parts, it's to do with the completely comprehensive and full scale

assessment of the ability of a plant to deliver products with great quality, cost and safety. So I would say that from our landscape, do we have enough to basically deliver the products that we need? Absolutely. These are the plants that have delivered the national award winning world class DC refrigerator that I spoke to you about. These are the same plants that have basically come up with the fastest convertible in the market in 23 minutes. These are the same plants that have come up with the heater technology.

So I do believe that we are well served. We have enough identified and invested at the right time to make sure we have enough capacity, we have enough flexibility in our market. Actually, my key focus would be on really driving the demand. That I think is what we really need to do. To be honest, I'm not really worried about the supply part of it at all. There will always be some gaps in the categories like I spoke of in my presentation, and we will certainly look to fill them as we go along. There will be capital decisions that we need to make and so on and so forth, and those will be taken and done at the appropriate time.

So I would say from our side, we're not at all worried about this, and with more and more, making India happening. I think it's only right that we make all our products out of here. So almost all our portfolio is basically made out of here. Even the categories that we may not ourselves make, which will be very small, we source them from Indian producers. So we have very, very small import dependency. And I would say if you have a massive import dependency, you should probably think about it twice.

The next question is from Yash Jain. I request Yash Jain to ask your Request Mr. Yash Jain from Ambit to please unmute and ask the

But where I've got capacity and I've got the expertise and I've got a good cost base on refrigerators and washers, again, the answer is not, no, it's never no, but there has to be a really solid reason as to why we'd go out, because the cost has to really work for us. The cost benefit has to be significant for us to consider doing that. As you can imagine, every time you don't make it in your factory, you will incur a bit of a hit. So you have to look at that versus the benefit that you get financially from anybody else. So I'd say we are sorted for now on this. If there are opportunities that come up, which are significant and long term, we have no problem looking at it. But we just focus on the core categories, we keep it internal.

Thank you. With that, we move to the next question from Ms.

Natasha Jain, we would request to please unmute yourself and speak.

challenge and therefore a reduction in the quality of the product? I just want to understand, going forward, while you've detailed out the product leadership in terms of your opening remarks, in terms of quality specifically, and in terms of cost cutting, I just want to understand that relationship.

And secondly, my question is on Elica. Now, we understand that Elica is one of the top three players in terms of kitchen appliances. Now, when we did some channel check, we found out that even Whirlpool has launched its own brand. The products were quite similar, both in terms of features and also property. And so what I need to know is what is the rationale for [inaudible] tracking your own brand when Elica is already there, doesn't that dilute the entire presence of Elica as a brand? So those are my two questions. Thank you.

Absolutely not. See Natasha, you're absolutely right. But if you go back and see our financials over the last five years, there has been a volume demand impact. There's also been, if you remember, a commodity cost rise. Part of the reason is also that we never compromise on the quality, never.

There may be people who have to compromise on the quality and reduce their cost, but you can see it in our P&L, our profits have gone down over time. One of the things that stayed constant for us is actually, and I can tell you our quality parameters over the years are actually improving. So we right now are looking at probably the best year in terms of quality that we reduce that we put out into the market. And if you look at the products that we put out into the market and the claims that we've talked about, fastest convertible, right? Convertible in 23 minutes, two times the vitamin preservation, 10 in one convertible modes. All these are investments into product quality, we're not taking them out.

So if anything at all, we have gone and invested more and more in product quality with the belief, and this is a true belief in my 33 years of experience, that product quality investment will always pay off. So I just want to be very clear, there is no question of reducing product quality. We lost demand in the market, which is the result of the things that I explained to you about, we lost some consumer traction in the market because we are not able to push our products well enough. But the product quality, if anything, has only become better over time. In fact, like I told you, in DC, we've just got the energy conservation award basically out of all the

refrigerators in India. We were chosen by the president of – by the BEE and awarded by the president of India.

So just want to reassure everybody on the call, quality is our number one thing. We will not compromise on that. Never. That is Whirlpool. So I hope that answers the question very clearly. And now our job is to make sure we go and generate the demand that the quality warrants. Because the demand will not just come by making good products. You've got to go out and make people know that there are those good products, which is what we do by investing in retail executives, which is what we do by investing in communication, which is what we do by driving communications.

The second point that you talked about on Elica and Whirlpool, why do we need two brands? Very simple. I think cooking is a category which is nascent. Cooking is a category in which you will have multiple brands going forward. We do believe in having both Elica and Whirlpool, because Whirlpool is also a well known cooking brand globally. To have both Whirlpool and Elica as a portfolio play is a far-far better strategy. So if I go back to my, let's say shampoo days, you will see big shampoo companies having more than one shampoo brand in the market driving different things.

So therefore, what we basically want to have is a portfolio of brands that can compete in this market because we believe that over time, this market will become quite significant, both from a revenue and from a profit point of view. And we do believe that there is play for both markets, and there are differences between Whirlpool and Elica in terms of the ranges. Basically, they're all hobs, hoods and chimneys, no doubt. They all have a power source, they all have burners and so on and so forth. But there are clear differences in design, there are differences in aesthetics, and there can be differences in functionality as well between Elica and Whirlpool. We do think it's a very good idea to have multiple brands.

distribution end? Now, within that, how much is the gap that is available to increase the wallet share within the existing retailer, which is, so essentially the distribution expansion vertically and horizontally, if you can help us on that. That is question number one. The second question is on the new product launch is, do we plan to pour into any product or any new vertical lines especially taking the product portfolio market from the parent? And the third question is on the cost line items.

Now, you did mention that there's PG4 program that you would be running now, which would run across those cost line items of P&L. So if you can help us with the details onto, which is the cost line item which we should track ahead for maximum delta change that should be visible ahead. Thank you.

So there is plenty of opportunity for us to increase the distribution, but obviously the distribution also comes at a certain cost. So we are always evaluating the cost of rolling on the distribution versus the return of what you get from that distribution.

So that's a constant ongoing exercise, basically. As you can imagine in India, the more you've got to distribute, lower down the order, the more you got to go into a smaller town, et cetera, to basically distribute. So we've got a big Pan-India presence on distribution. We continue to look at ways to optimize that and drive that further.

And that's there in our year on year results.

One of the key KPIs that we have for our sales force is actually billing points.

Distribution billing points. We track that. What is important in this category is also not just have number of distribution points per year, but also track it on a quarterly

and on a monthly basis because the more frequently you can bill to a billing point, the better off. So we have a complete range of tracking that we do across this. Also, keep in mind that a lot of change to expansion is happening across the country. A lot of modern trade expansion is happening across the country. So all of these also help in driving total sales. So just comparing distribution points will not give you a picture, but as part of driving traditional trade distribution expansion is something that we always do while making sure that we are doing the right thing also for chain stores, for modern trade, for e-commerce, and so on and so forth. So that's answer to your first question.

On the new products, what you call the new vertical lines. I think first of all, we have a lot of opportunity within refrigerator, washers and cooking itself, which are our core categories, to drive a significant amount of growth to make our brand much stronger, to make sure that we supply much better, to make sure that people are buying our products more often. There's a huge amount of opportunity that we have within these categories. On other categories. We continue operating in the categories that we operate in, and we will continue looking for opportunities that are interesting, but they have to be financially attractive.

So this is something that we always keep our mind open on and we keep looking, but I think the most important thing, and because all those things are nice, that's like icing on the cake. The cake actually is the business you've got. So my clear belief is, make sure that you do very well on the business that you've got before you start jumping on something else in the hope that it'll save you. No, you have to make your business work for you first, which basically means for me, refrigerator, washers, air conditioners, microwave, ovens, cooking, dishwashers, and so on and so forth. So there's enough out there. And by no means are we at a market share, which is so high that I should start defocusing on these categories.

So I would say we're clearly focused on what we need to do, and there's plenty of space for us to grow, plenty of opportunities to grow. Within these however, there is plenty of opportunity for us to grow within refrigerator itself in different segments.

So we track the segments, market share and market performance. We literally track it by segment, whether it's entry or mid or premium or high, et cetera. And based on that, we're working plans to make sure that our market share grows in the right segments. The last question that you have is on the cost line, P4G. So I will just pass it across to Aditya.

And we have targets and we monitor the progress against targets on all the cost lineups on a weekly basis and assess it on a monthly basis and do course corrections if required. But if you ask me from my point of view, let's say what is the biggest sign for me is the material cost. Over the last six, seven years, the material cost has gone up from about 62% of NR to about 69% today.

And that is where we've lost the margins, is a combination of various factors. We've seen inflation, we've seen regulatory of charges, and the industry has not been able to take up pricing. So what is important for us is to make sure that we have enough coming out of the material cost, which will help improve our margins in medium term and long term. So this is one of the biggest cost element, which we will be tracking very, very closely to see how do we get productivity either on the design aspect or on the sourcing aspect or on the negotiation aspect through various initiatives, working with vendors, DTV, tear downs, et cetera, et cetera, localization, and being able to deliver our guidance in terms of margins and profitability.

So keeping all these things in mind, we have an exports business, we've got a team that looks at exports, we continue to focus on it. I think it's also been a little

challenging in some of the markets, basically from an economy point of view, not from our business point of view in some of our neighboring markets, it's not been easy in those markets, plus, with regulations coming in. Therefore, I would say the exports opportunity at this point in time to the markets we export in, but I do keep in mind that unlike a local producer of India was just making products in India and exporting, we cannot export everywhere in the world. We cannot export to the countries where we already have business. So we can only export to countries where there is nobody else who's basically managing the business.

We will continue to drive exports. Do I expect that to be a blockbuster in the next two, three years? No, I don't think so. For two reasons. Number one is we've got hell of a lot of work to do from our side to really get us to the glory that we need to get to. And I think that we're clearly focused on that. In the meantime, any opportunities that we have on exports that are sensible, that work from a regulatory point of view, we will absolutely grab. So I do expect to see the numbers go up over time, but I would not expect something really majorly traumatic unless something else happens in the marketplace, which either relaxes the regulatory situation or changes the financial position or I mean the financial consideration basically, that other countries would expect, et cetera. If these things change, then our position would definitely change.

A big thank you to both Mr. Eswar and Mr. Jain. And on behalf of the management, I would also like to thank all the participants for taking out time to be with us here today. Thank you. Look forward to meeting you in the future.