Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Bluestone Jewellery and Lifestyle Ltd (NSE: BLUESTONE) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated Apr. 24, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Rhea Dharia — Senior Associate
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha — Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Vipin Sharma — Chief Merchandising Officer
Rumit Dugar — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Akhil Gulecha — Analyst
Aditya Pal — Analyst
Vikram Devanathan — Analyst
Percy Panthaki — Analyst
Abhishek Shankar — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Unidentified Participant
Unidentified Participant
Karan Gupta — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and Gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Bluestone Jewelry and Lifestyle Limited Q4FY26 conference call hosted by EY. As a reminder, all participant lines will win the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Riyadharia from EY Investor Relations. Thank you and over to you msria.
Rhea Dharia — Senior Associate
Thank you. Ikra. Good morning to all the participants on the call. Welcome to the Q4 and FY26 earnings call of Bluestone Jewelry and Lifestyle Limited
Operator
Before we proceed with the call, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward looking statements that may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. It must be viewed in conjunction with our business risks that could cause future result, performance or achievement to differ significantly from what is expressed or implied in such statements. Please note that we have mailed the result and the same is available on the Exchange. In case you have not received the same, you can write to us and we’ll be happy to send the same over to you to take us through the results and answer your questions.
Today we have the management of BlueStone Represented by Mr. Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Vipin Sharma, Chief Merchandising Officer and Mr. Rumit Dugar, Chief Financial Officer. We will start the call with a brief overview of the quarter gone past and then conduct the Q and A session. That said, I will hand all to Gaurav. Over to you Gaurav.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha — Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Dhea Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us at Bluestone’s quarter four and FY26 earnings call. FY26 marks a milestone year for us as our first full financial year as a listed company and delivering four quarters of year earnings post listing. During the year we demonstrated strong growth momentum, deepening distribution penetration, significant improvement in cohort productivity and strong operating leverage. This operating performance sets up nicely going into next year and beyond.
We are in a unique position to fill the large consumer experience and product market gap with our Omnichannel Experience, Pan India Distribution and design led product approach across categories. We enter FY27 with robust exit growth as demonstrated in Q4 with a clear focus on execution, driving deeper wallet share among existing customers while continuing to expand our customer base. Let me briefly touch upon the demand environment, key retail parameters and financial performance. Also. It is imperative as we execute towards such a large opportunity that you get to hear and interact on strategic aspects with various leaders.
At Bluestone. Today we have Vipin, our Chief Merchandising Officer on the call who can take you through the most strategic aspects around various parameters and how we think about executing across these vectors. Coming to Demand Consumer demand trend remained resilient in Q4 with consumers continuing to spend at their preferred price points in the categories of choices. In our view, quality merchandise assortment is key across demand vectors, categories and price points and remains a critical execution priority.
Same store sale growth of 34% this quarter demonstrates demand environment is resilient. Growth was broad based with homogeneous SSG growth trends across all three months of the quarter. A key driver to our performance continues to be our omnichannel model seamlessly integrating digital and physical retail. As of March 26th we operated 340 stores across 130134 cities, adding 17 stores during the quarter and 65 stores for the year, significantly strengthening our national footprint to give more color on long term impact of Omni Channel at a city level growth in Rachi and Lucknow demonstrate ability to drive coverage and density with strong productivity beyond metros.
This reinforces our conviction that the product market opportunity goes beyond metros and it’s large and under penetrated. Repeat customers continue to contribute meaningfully reflecting rising brand loyalty and wallet shares. Our rapid realignment of entry level offerings leveraging our vertically integrated model enabled us to restore price accessibility without compromising designer experience. The benefit of this recalibration are clearly visible in Q4 and are expected to continue through FY27.
I will now briefly walk you through our financial performance for Q4 and FY26. I’ll keep this concise as detailed disclosures are already available in the stock exchanges and I hope that you had a chance to go through this. For the quarter, standalone revenue grew 49.1% year on year and we delivered revenues of 2,441 crore for the full year. As highlighted earlier, our revenues are recorded on retail sales basis including franchisee stores providing a clean and transparent view of underlying consumer demand.
Our Q4 and FY26 our pre index EBITDA performance demonstrates embedded operating leverage in the system and we continue to set our fixed cost base. The room for growth remains large, balance sheet remains strong with solid capitalization levels and sets up well to execute against the opportunity. With this I would like to hand over the call to Vipin.
Vipin Sharma — Chief Merchandising Officer
Thank you, thank you Gaurav and good morning everyone. It’s. It’s My pleasure to be sharing my opening remarks on this earnings call today for Bluestorm. Right from the beginning, I think our focus has been very clearly on building a jewelry brand that is led by design. And our intent has always been in terms of trying to reimagine jewelry that plays a role in the life of consumers, particularly the modern Indian consumer. If you look at our endeavor has been always centered on moving jewelry from lockers to the wardrobe, playing a role in the life of consumers.
And this kind of focus on lifestyle jewelry that is designed to play a role in terms of expressive modern consumers that we have in India today, along with the digital first experience and consumer first approach, lays the foundation on which we have been building Bluestone right from the beginning. If I look at more recent, I think last one year, as we all know, there has been an unprecedented rise in the gold prices. This rise in gold prices triggered a dislocation in terms of overall merchandise that we had on certain price points and in certain categories.
And that became our focus in terms of immediate actions that needed to be taken to plug this gap caused by a significant rise in terms of gold prices. And I think at the same time, it was also an opportunity for us to put a real test on our approach in terms of vertical integration, the foundation of a manufacturing and design approach in terms of how we develop our new products and offerings. With this focus, I think we were able to respond with this vertical integrated model in a very responsive manner at a very fast pace.
And I think some of that effect we saw in terms of the performance that we see coming back to our regular levels in terms of the overall growth that we saw in the previous quarter. I think what is of particular significance here is to highlight the fact that our design works in close collaboration with manufacturing, with a focus on innovation and techniques that allow us to sweat the gold more effectively. Included along with this innovative approach is the opportunity to look at alternate materials that the modern Indian consumers seem very open to.
Not just as a means to achieve certain targeted price points, but also as an expression of, I think, their own personalities and a sense of style that the modern Indian consumer is very interested in. I think at this point it would be relevant for me to highlight one of the new initiatives that we’ve undertaken is the probably industry’s unique and first kind of its own experiment. As we set up an exclusive store that focused on offering men’s and kids jewelry to our consumers. I think it is very clear.
I think it is well recognize the association that jewelry in general has with women and the kind of designs that are created. But if we see a modern man in the Indian context who wants to be very expressive and in terms of expression of the style, I think it’s our endeavor to say how do we give more focus to the kind of exciting products and offerings that we have? And the men’s and kids stores that we have set up is a great example how we are looking at extending our offerings not just in terms of the depth of product portfolio, but also in terms of the width in different offerings and with focus in terms of what can engage the consumers in a very strong fashion.
The format allows a much sharper, much more relevant kind of discovery led experience for a consumer in a store that is predominantly focused on what they are interested in in terms of specific product categories, broadly in terms of demand trends, I think Gaurav touched upon those points. But if we look at consumer, I think fundamentally consumers traction with our overall offering continues to stay strong and our focus will continue to be on looking at making our portfolio stronger and more and more design led.
As we move forward, we continue to see this structural gap that exists in terms of what the consumer expects and what broadly the market delivers at scale. I think Bluestone comes in, steps in with its own point of view with an approach that is Omnichannel Pan India distribution at scale and design first approach across categories making us a very strong and unique player in terms of a modern consumer’s lifestyle. With these widening across price points and we are expanding into underserved demographics while maintaining strong economic discipline.
This positions Bluestone to support network expansion, improve repeat engagement and drive sustainable compounding growth over time. With that, may I request that we can begin our Q and A session? Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and one on their touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Please note, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, kindly limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow up question, please rejoin the queue.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Akhil Gulecha from Hornbill Capital. Please go ahead.
Akhil Gulecha
Hi Gaurav and congratulations on a great set of results. Can you just quickly share how many of the current stores are franchisee stores?
Rumit Dugar
So out of our Total portfolio of 340 stores, about 67 are franchisee stores.
Akhil Gulecha
And what is our plan going ahead? Are we going to run them down in the next few years when the contract expires or are we planning to close them up before the contract expires?
Rumit Dugar
So see, principally, I mean the approach that we had taken when we started doing these franchisees stores, the idea was to use franchisees as more of capital access or a capital structure tool. Now given where we are in terms of size, scale, balance sheet capitalization, obviously that kind of structure from a cost of capital perspective doesn’t make sense. But from a relationship perspective, we are not accelerating their exit. They have a five year contract term. We are honoring that entire five year contract term.
From a trend line perspective, I think 27 and 28 should see a significant drop in terms of this classical franchisee model that we have had historically. So 27 and 28 is going to see a substantial drop in terms of the franchisee owned company operated stores.
Akhil Gulecha
Got it, Got it. Thank you. And see almost an 80% rise over FY25. So any thoughts on the trajectory of that going ahead?
Rumit Dugar
Sorry, we, the question was not very clear. Can you please repeat the question?
Akhil Gulecha
Yeah, so our ESOP cost has seen almost an 80% rise from FY25. So any thoughts on the trajectory of that number going ahead?
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Sure. So the trajectory of ESOP cost on the P and L is something that we have shared in our management commentary also. But let me, let me take this opportunity to, opportunity to elaborate a little more. So I think ESOP as a tool. So ESOP is a tool to kind of make sure that the ownership is fairly well distributed, especially in the senior leadership of the company and that people at the top, they’re actually aligned with the long term objectives of the shareholders also by making them, by making them a shareholder as well.
So I think one of the thoughts that we had before going IPO was to strengthen our management team. So. Sudeep Romet, Vipin, Mikhail Harshit. So essentially these are the five top management folks beyond myself. So essentially two years before that, we believe that as we go IPO we should make sure that for next five, six, seven years everyone is aligned. So if you look at our ESOP allocations historically also. So at an overall. Okay, so first, at an Overall level, almost 90% of our ESOPs are with the management with top six people in the company.
So ESOP is not something that we use as a broad based compensation tool across the, across, let’s say various functions, etc. But we use it as a very specific and a very potent tool to make sure that the entire management is aligned with the shareholders. And hence it’s more of a management stock option plan, less of an ESOP employee stock option plan. And hence it’s not something that should be seen very linearly in the sense that it’s not so as our employee costs increase. It’s not that every employee in the company has ESOPs and so on and so forth.
It’s more of to keep the management aligned and hence I’m sharing another number with you which is that 90% of these ESOPs are with the top six people in the company. Secondly, a lot of this ESOP were actually allocated around 50, 60% of these were allocated a few months prior to, sorry, a couple of years prior to going IPO to make sure that that alignment is there for next six, seven years at least as we prove ourselves in the public markets. Also now what happens is while the vesting of many of these options is over six years, seven years and so on, the way accounting works is that we need to front load all the charge and hence when we see almost 94 crore, almost 93 crore of that charge came in the first year itself.
But then it’s dropping down to 58 crore and then 28 crore and then bottoming out and essentially we don’t see in future going forward. Also we don’t see ourselves deviating much from this plan. Beyond this we have around 1.7% of unallocated ESOP pool on a fully diluted basis and we don’t foresee ourselves breaching that in next three to four years.
Akhil Gulecha
Got it, Got it. That was very detailed and very helpful. So thank you so much and best of luck going ahead.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Pal from MSA Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Aditya Pal
Hello, I’m Audible.
Operator
Yes you are.
Aditya Pal
Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Congratulations on great set of results. I just have a couple of questions so quickly, wanted to understand on your thought process of inventory turns because if I see from FY25 to FY26 our inventory turns have fallen from 1.3x to close to 1.13. And also this is keeping being cognizant of the fact that we had opened 80 stores in FY25 where we opened only 65 stores and historically also used to comment on the concourse that we have a 7030 split between store level inventory versus corporate.
So out of the 2652 crores of inventory that we closed in FY26, what could be the split?
Rumit Dugar
So maybe I’ll just take the split and then Gaurav and Vipin can comment on the. On the inventory bit. The split is not significantly different from what we had communicated earlier. So it’s pretty much in the same territory.
Vipin Sharma
Right. I think if you look at in terms of while quarterly variances happen based on how consumer behavior is for that specific quarter. I think more fundamentally the question is really touching upon a few important aspects. If you look at in terms of what’s happening at a consumer level in terms of its life cycle and how we looking at setting the cost base and capital productivity. I think overall we are in a high growth phase setting up new stores. We are also vertically integrated where we have inventory from one end to the other.
In terms of franchisee participation, probably not very comparable. And our overall mix and margins are also significantly different from the rest of the industry. I think if you take all of these factors into account, we would probably understand that.
Aditya Pal
The question is more about if you look at the trajectory we closed inventory terms of 1.34 when we added such a huge amount of net new stores of ATP stores in FY26 we’ve added 65 stores. Yet our inventory turn is. Is coming down. If you can connect to how the mature source how many mature stores we have and how they are performing so that we will get an understanding to connect to connect the blue tone cockpit to blue tone mature stores so that we will. When a trajectory is right.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Sure. So I think this year one of the most one of those kind of one offs that happened in this financial year was the sharp increase in gold which attacked which has actually led to a very sharp increase in the value of closing inventory. Because this is a one off and this is the case with almost all the players in the industry where the closing inventories is kind of disproportionately high. Higher than the sale numbers for this particular financial year. So I think that is one thing that has impacted otherwise.
If I were to normalize for that, I don’t think the inventory turns should have changed that much. Especially because we are calculating that on the closing inventory as gold normalizes and I think it has normalized over the last two to three years, two to three months. We have not seen too much of an activity or it has been range bound. I think we are seeing the inventory efficiency coming back and I think if it remains stable over next one year the inventory efficiency should be much better than what it is right now, especially when you look at the closing inventory level.
Aditya Pal
Can you just talk a bit about how the mature stores, one out of 340 stores, how many would be mature stores and how they are performing? Because last quarter you had come out in your presentation where you said that they are in an on a run rate of the. The FY 1920 cohort is in a run rate of 14.4 odd crores. And how. Yeah,
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
So. Good question, good question. So basically, so you’re right. I mean a lot of these returns etc, when you calculate it, you’re just calculating at the balance sheet level which also carries, let’s say manufacturing inventory and so on the right. And those things actually normalize and kind of taper off over long term. So the right way to look at it is how mature stores are performing. And as more and more stores move towards maturity, the company wide inventory turns will also kind of tend to go towards that.
So internally we track that obviously and I think mature stores, the stores which have seen more than three to four years of operations there we see these terms to be hovering somewhere between 1.7 to 1.9.
Aditya Pal
All right, all right. And earlier, earlier, earlier. Just one last question then just squeezes. One last question. Hello.
Rumit Dugar
Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Aditya Pal
Thank you so much. Just quickly comment before I come back in the view. Quickly commenting on how we are looking at the new store edition in FY27 and FY28.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
I think generally what we have maintained or what we’re trying to maintain for last one to two years is adding close to 20% to our distribution on an annual basis. We believe that that’s kind of a right mix of new and old stores giving a good blended productivity.
Aditya Pal
Understood. So 20% on 340 or 20% on 340 -67 which is the franchise rules.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
340.
Aditya Pal
All right. 340. We
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Don’t see franchise store separately because it’s more of a capital structure and not an operating structure. So at an overall store level on 340.
Aditya Pal
All right, thank you so much. Gaurav, Lumit and weapon. I’ll come back in the queue. One more question. Thank you so much.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and 1. The next question is from the line of Vikram Devanathan from Prodigy Investment and Management. Please go ahead.
Vikram Devanathan
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I just have one question. Indo RHP in page 249. It was mentioned that the company plans to add 219 new stores over FY26 and FY27. But in FY26 you added only 65 stores and you’re guiding for 20% store growth. So I just wanted some clarification on why the store expansion plan has been revised down.
Rumit Dugar
So I think just to contextualize we should look at how the external operating environment has been specifically from a gold price perspective. And I think a lot of the decisions that we take are in context of the broader operating environment. The gold price has seen a significant increase. We need to obviously make sure that we have enough conviction from a demand behavior perspective as to how the demand is going to react to such a sharp increase in gold price. If you see from a trajectory perspective, I think Q4, we’ve added almost 17, 17 stores in the quarter, which is a significant, significant pickup.
And I think that’s a tactical call that we at the management level take looking at how the external environment is, what the demand trends are, et cetera.
Vikram Devanathan
Okay, thank you. Just one more question. So this 20% store growth, how many years do you think we can maintain this kind of store growth? Or another way to ask this question. Over the next four, five years, do you have any target of total store base which you would like to have, which demand can support?
Rumit Dugar
So let me sort of contextualize this question in terms of, you know, the market opportunity set. You know, as you, I mean as you, as you all know, there are very few Pan India brands in such a large category which is close to 80, $90 billion growing at very solid pace from a growth perspective. Further, there are secular tailwinds driven by use of Internet consumer behavior need for products more from a consumer perspective rather than jewelry for the locker. If you look at players occupying this whole design led omnichannel first kind of space are, are fairly limited and that opens up a substantial headroom for us to grow and drive market share.
If you look at large Pan India players that drive similar pricing structures that we have are significantly better penetrated from a city standpoint. Further, our format is different from the traditional big box retail and this format allows us to better deliver better density and higher productivity. And thus I think if you look at it from a city presence perspective, from a density that we can drive at a city level, I think the headroom for growth is massive. I think we obviously calibrate in terms of how fast we want to grow distribution, how much revenue, productivity and cohort vintage we want to have at a, at a blended level.
So I think those are, those are sort of tactical puts and takes that we take. But I think as Gaurav mentioned, I think a 20% takeover on distribution is a fairly good number which we can continue to deliver over several years.
Vikram Devanathan
Okay, and you expect all the stores to eventually converge to a 14 to 15 crore kind of revenue per store at peak utilization rate
Rumit Dugar
At the minimum.
Vikram Devanathan
Okay, thank you. That is all.
Rumit Dugar
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Harish Advani from Access Capital. Please go ahead.
Aditya Pal
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity and congrats on a great set of results. So in your opening commentary you said that the monthly exit rate has been pretty strong going into Q1. So can you tell us what is that March exit number looking like?
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
So no specific commentary on March exit, but so I, as we continue to kind of work on our categories and our merchandise specifically, we see, we see the results getting better and better. So the momentum, the momentum has only strengthened. I think with every passing day. It’s only strengthening.
Aditya Pal
Okay,
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
I can’t comment on a specific number, but there is, there is still, there’s still some use left there.
Aditya Pal
Got it. Also, similarly, you said that we’ve redesigned the entry level portfolio now. So can you kind of quantify in terms of what this entry level portfolio would be contributing to our revenues, say for Q4 or say for the full year? Whichever number you could share
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
That breakup will not be able to provide
Aditya Pal
For competitive
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Reasons. We wouldn’t want to.
Aditya Pal
Similarly, see now this time around we’ve had a lot of gold sale and our studded share has come down to about 55. So given that now the gold price scenario has more or less stabilized, as you said, where do we see this number moving in the next six months? Do we envision it going back towards the 60, 65 band or possibly even higher now that the customer has learned to deal with these kind of gold prices?
Vipin Sharma
So I think there is last one year there has been quite an upheaval in terms of the way gold prices move. So obviously consumer tends to anticipate and have one’s own kind of mindset around the buying behavior. Fundamentally from our point of view, I feel that for us it’s like looking at the built overall network which has its own cost base and kind of operating leverage. So for us it’s an opportunity to dip into a greater share of wallet from a consumer point of view. Kind of looking at making sort of expanding our portfolio without diluting our focus on design LED product portfolio.
That’s playing a meaningful role in the lives of modern consumer and I think three core pillars there are what’s happening to consumer life cycle. If we want to look at over next two to three quarters in terms of how what we are expecting, I think our thinking on approaching this from a product portfolio and product development point of view, fundamentally nothing has shifted on that aspect and focus is clearly on looking at taking the brand forward and setting the cost base for capital productivity with an eye on greater share of the wallet.
Aditya Pal
Okay. And there would nothing, there would be no element of any seasonality out here that maybe say the customer was preferring more of gold versus
Operator
Harish, please rejoin the que for more questions.
Rumit Dugar
Sure,
Aditya Pal
Thank you.
Rumit Dugar
Maybe we can just answer that and then Harish, you can come back in the queue. I think from a seasonality perspective, I mean the seasonality is largely there in Q3, right? Like which is there pretty much across the board. So as I think Vipin was kind of addressing it, it’s not. You should not look at it just from a quarter to quarter perspective. I think it’s more fundamental in terms of how we contextually think about it across consumer life cycle, which is making sure consumer product, because consumer product demand is not static.
They have different use cases, different material choices, etc. So I think that’s the way to contextually think about it. I think quarter to quarter you may have some variances because of gold prices etc. But. But I won’t read too much into that.
Aditya Pal
Okay, thank you and all the best. I’ll rejoin with you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Costu Pavaskar from ICICI Direct. Please go ahead.
Aditya Pal
Yeah, thanks for giving me the opportunity. Congrats for a great set of numbers. Sir, I have a couple of questions. First question is on the margins. So you know, adjusting for the inventory, inventory gains, the on sequential basis margins have seen a, a dip. Is it mainly because of the mix change in mix? Because your studded mix this quarter was 55% last quarter it was much, much better. And also on YY basis as well, you know, the studded mix was down. So if you can help us understand that.
Rumit Dugar
Sure. So one is look, fundamentally you should look at how the business and operating leverage kind of functions. Right. So first is the best comparisons are YOY because seasonality in revenues drives a significant delta on operating leverage and ours is a fixed cost kind of business model. Thus YoY is the best comparison. And if you look at YoY, there has been a substantial improvement in the margin at the pre index level. Second is this improvement is despite the shift in mix, which kind of demonstrates that as the growth accelerates, as we build more presence across categories and drive more wallet share with our existing customers, there is still a fair amount of operating leverage which is ahead of us in the business and we’ll continue to mine that.
Thus, I think sequential is not the right way to look look at the business at all because of a fixed cost nature and the seasonality. So YUI is the best comparison.
Aditya Pal
Understood. My second question is on same store sales growth this quarter, 34% growth. Again, you know, if you compare it on some of the other quarters, compared to that, it is quite strong. So what led to the strong shg or if you can dissect it in terms of how was the growth or the transaction growth and you know, whether this has any element of even the gold price high. So just understanding because the trajectory is quite strong and whether, you know, this kind of trajectory will continue. Second question to this is, you know, once your stores get mature like you are expecting some of your mature store revenues to reach to around 14 crores, you know, so if large crowd of these 340 stores attain certain maturity, then your SHG growth level should come to certain level.
Maybe not 34%, but it should, you know, moderate a bit. So if you can give us some understanding on that,
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Sure. So on the variance in sssg, I understand that as a public company it’s only a fourth quarter, but internally we’ve had data for the last six years since the stores have been in operations. If you look at FY20, same store sales growth that was close to 30%. Okay. Year prior to that it was even higher than that. So 34% is not something which is very new for us. In fact, anomaly for us was Q3 of last year. So Q2, Q3 of last year. And I think that was largely because of the sharp rise in gold price.
In fact, if you look at the plot of how and when gold rose, you will see that Q2 and Q3 of last year was when the gold grew sharpest and those were the quarters where our SSH had been lowest. So the fact that we perform well when the gold is stable and fundamentally it kind of, it comes from the use case that we are catering to the products and the customers that we are catering to. They are not investment led customers. They are the ones who actually want to buy jewelry in order to wear it, in order to use it.
And hence I would say the SSA that we see in Q4 is kind of, it’s like for us it’s getting back to being, it’s getting back to normal in terms of maturity. I think there are. So initial few cohorts are performing well in I think past quarter we had shown their performance also separately and those stores continue to grow well. So when we look at this SSG of 34%, there’s not a skew towards, let’s say newer stores. It’s fairly well distributed between older stores and new stores. So we don’t see any of the stores kind of capping out in terms of their potential.
I think the potential can be much, much bigger than what even our oldest stores are showing just that internally in our data we don’t have, we don’t see what is that mature level stores even. So all the cohorts are going.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Percy Pantaki from IFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Percy Panthaki
Hi, two questions from my side. Let me put them up, up front. So one is just wanted to understand if you have any kind of mechanism to sort of offset the negative impact of the gold price inflation on the roic. So let me explain. So when the gold price goes up very sharply, you see a restatement of the hedged part of the inventory to the MTM and that increases your inventory in the balance sheet. However, the positive impact of the gold price inflation on the overall sales growth is not material and therefore you have a situation where the sharp inflation in gold price increases your balance sheet size much more than it does to increase your P and L and that results in the ROIC getting dampened.
Just wanted to understand if like this is a structural part of the business model or is there anything you can do to offset this impact? So that is question one. Question two is with the gold price inflation a lot of consumers are going towards the plain gold jewelry and that is putting significant pressure on the gross profit. So while your sales have gone up almost 50% this quarter, the gross profit x inventory gain is up only 36%. Yoy. So just wanted to know if like the pressure in the gross margin is also something which will continue if the mix remains where it is currently or do you have some way to offset this gross margin pressure even if the mix is the same or you think that the mix itself will sort of change because of some initiatives of your own.
So these are my two questions. I put them up front. Thank you.
Rumit Dugar
Thanks. Thanks Parsi. Let me take the first one on gold price. Right. So I think the foundational trigger for that question is the recency bias in terms of the gold price performance, right? Which is, which has sort of been about close to 100% in the last whatever, 15, 18 months. Now if you believe that that is how gold will continue to behave over the longer term, then I think what you’re asking is a fair question. But I think if you look at broadly these normalized gold price movements over several years, you can take five, ten year blocks.
Then I think obviously all this kind of short term volatility, etc. Kind of normalizes and thus I think long term ROIC of the business remains pretty strong. And to give you that from a context perspective, when there is consolidation in gold prices over a certain period, we see behaviorally the consumer demand comes back significantly and comes back very strongly which drives other vectors from a margin perspective, operating leverage perspective, etc. So I think that is one second is I think obviously there are multiple levers, right?
If you, if somebody has that view that this kegr that the gold has seen continues to be there for next five years, 10 years, then obviously there are different kind of capital structures that can be deployed. Like franchisee, own franchisee, operator is one capital structure where you basically then move that capital to franchisee balance sheet or outsource that capital to the other balance sheets, etc. So, but I’m saying that fundamentally you have to this involves taking a speculative view on how gold price is.
What we look at is long term trends and I think we’re fairly comfortable from a long term trend perspective. So I think that’s on question one. On question two, I think it is not the right way to just look at broadly from a mix studied mix perspective only as sort of one operating metric. So at a broad level the right way to think about this is across three vectors. One is consumer life cycle and brand and sweating the cost base and capital productivity. From a consumer product perspective, the demand is not static as through the life cycle they purchase different categories and materials driven by income growth occasions choices.
The idea from our perspective is to be able to capture that larger wallet share and add more consumers into this fold. In the context of overall growth across studded and plain, you should think of it as additive and not substitutive. There is still a fairly large market opportunity across both these product categories and the consumer picks up different things at different points in time. Second, from a brand approach perspective, we continue to remain product first with an omnichannel experience and this will continue to percolate and reflect in our premium pricing that we offer.
Given our premium design Approach in whatever relevant product stack that we pick to operate in. Right. So, so whether it is a plain gold or a studded, our pricing structures are premium and continue to remain premium. And lastly, you should see more importantly from a fixed cost based perspective and as we expand our product portfolio and this is additive to the broader productivity, it will just allow us to sweat our assets better and drive operating leverage, allowing us to expand absolute EBITDA absolute margins at the EBITDA level and add capital productivity.
Because margin is only one vector, you have to also see the inventory turns. So from an ROCE perspective it’s not that plain gold is dilutive to ROCE and diamond is significantly accretive. So at the end of the day, your return on capital is driven by how many times you’ve turned that capital and at what margin. And as I mentioned earlier and pricing is, is similar. And even if you look at last one year our margins have been fairly stable despite the drop or the mix change. Despite the significant change in gold prices, we have been delivering fairly good margins with continued operating leverage.
So with this additive structure it should only accelerate growth and accelerate ebitda. Accelerate EBITDA margin and improve capital productivity.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Shankar from ICICI Direct. Please go ahead.
Abhishek Shankar
Yeah, hi. Congrats on a good set of results. I just needed three data points. So what was the SSG for full year FR26 and subsequently what was the SSG for in Q4? FY25?
Rumit Dugar
See, I, I think the best way to look at it on a is on a quarter on quarter basis. And I think we’ve given the data for the last four quarters yoy on SSSG because we’ve been significantly expanding the, the store count right through the last, through last FY26 and even FY25. So I think the best way to measure, measure SSSG is you know, how we are performing on a quarterly basis.
Abhishek Shankar
Okay. And another question, what is the student revenue contribution for full year FY26? I think last year in FY25 it was around 68%.
Rumit Dugar
See I, I think we can, we can come back with that exact number. But again, as I said, the exit, it’ll be close to 60. But at the exit rates and variances obviously are there on a quarter on quarter basis. Right. So that whole mix shift can depend on how gold prices kind of moved in that quarter, how consumer demand was in certain categories, certain price points. So I think the right context that you should kind of look at Is what is a broad growth that we are delivering, what is the market share gain that we are driving.
And third is at an aggregate level what is the operating leverage that we are delivering. And I think if you look at all these three vectors, we have performed exceptionally well across FY26 and our exit growth remain very, very strong.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajiv B from Nuama. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hi, good morning and thanks for the opportunity. So I AM on slide 28 and this is the gross profit and contribution profit gap. Now I just want to understand this cost is largely fixed in nature, is it? And, and let’s say if we were to get another grow another 50% next year so then we will see another let’s say close to 160 basis point leverage on this line item again. And the second part is if you can also talk about how should we think about the advertisement cost for future. Thank you.
Rumit Dugar
So maybe I’ll pick the direct cost and Gaurav can talk about amp. So the delta between gross profit margin and contribution margin is largely direct cost and direct cost is split between the cost of manufacturing because we are vertically integrated. There is cost of manufacturing. It includes payment, gateway, shipping, logistics, etc. So I think a lot of operating leverage from a manufacturing productivity perspective, capacity utilization perspective came through between FY25 and FY26. But this is, this is not really a fixed fixed cost to that extent from where we are right now.
So there is obviously an element of fixed cost on the manufacturing side. But with revenue productivity and better capacity utilizations, I think bulk of that is kind of reflecting in our performance in the last couple of quarters. So you should not model it as an absolute fixed cost cost. I’ll hand it over to Gaurav to talk about anp.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Yeah, so on ANP Ragheer, our thought is so as we were expanding our distribution for past two to three years, we believe that we should not go overboard on brand building until the distribution is in place. So that whenever we decide to do that we would get better ROI on that. In terms of numbers, our so what we, our plan is to kind of keep it at, to not drop it at below 6%. So I think over last two to three years we have come down from 12% to 6%. While in absolute terms it has gone grown up marginally but the revenues outpaced it.
So in percentage terms it has dropped from 12% to 6%. Now we are comfortable at that 6% level and as we move forward we will, we’ll increase it in absolute terms while keeping it static in terms of, in terms of percentage. Now what that will also do is that will actually open up a lot of extra, lot of additional marketing budget for us which, which we’re not utilized or which we’re not used or which we should not use up in the past. So as we increase our marketing budgets, a lot of this incremental budgets would actually go on building the brand on the brand spends itself etc building long term growth in the business.
So so far our marketing spends had largely been kind of performance marketing, sales driven online only very, very tactical ones. But going forward we’ll be making significant investments in building long term growth and we believe that that will accelerate growth even further.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Komanika from Samiksha Capital. Please go ahead.
Rhea Dharia
Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my question. So in your Q3 FY26 presentation you gave us like the performance of the 18 stores that were opened in FY19 20 and you also gave us the information around EBITDA margin which are like a 23.8% gain by Subita. So I just wanted to check. This also includes any inventory gain and if yours then how much
Rumit Dugar
It doesn’t include any inventory gain.
Rhea Dharia
Okay, so this is excluding any inventory gain. Okay, that’s it.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Diya from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi sir, am I audible?
Vipin Sharma
Yeah.
Unidentified Participant
What revenue growth are we targeting for FY27 and for FY28? Do we have any plans or goals in mind?
Vipin Sharma
So we have no specific comment that is forward looking this point I think.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Pal from MSA Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Aditya Pal
Hi, thank you so much for the opportunity. Again, Umit Gaul. Just wanted to understand. So out of these three party stores, are there any stores or say a particular cohort of stores that are not performing as per our expectation? And what went right there? What went wrong there? Just trying to understand your thought process.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
What was the second part? What was the last statement?
Aditya Pal
I’m saying out of the 340 stores
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Was
Aditya Pal
There, was there any store that didn’t match your KPI? Maybe in year one, that is before 13th month. And what, what were learnings from there? So I’m just. What I’m trying to do, I’m trying to connect this, the, the, the lower inventory turn to the store math.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Sure. So, so essentially Aditya, what happens is when you open, let’s say 50 stores, all 50 stores will not have a very, very uniform performance because some stores will be higher, some stores will be lower. So I think the best way. But that’s not actionable, right? What actionable is and for actionable thing, you actually look, need to look at the cohort. Now those cohort might be by vintage, those cohort might be by let’s say the store sizes, those cohorts might be by the tiers of the city, etc.
So when we do that cohorting, what we realize is that there is not much, there’s no material difference between one co and the other. Okay. And hence we continue to believe that it’s a, that’s fairly well distributed and the opportunity in front of us is huge in terms of stores not working or stores closure, etc. We’ve not done any closure. And I’ll just make it very clear that if you open a store in a location and let’s say 10, 12 months down the line, we realize that the location was wrong or there was some other operational issue with that store and we relocate it.
And after that starts working, we don’t call it a closure, we call it relocation. So with that context, we have not closed down any stores.
Aditya Pal
And that is why I started with that clubbing. Clubbing the stores into a particular vintage that is less than 13th month.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Right. So, so see there, there would be variations. So there would be stores which, which would, so that. Okay, so the difference between best and worst store can be let’s say 4x of each other also.
Aditya Pal
But
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
I think what’s important, what’s important is that thus that the growth, that the year on year growth trends are not that different. And the beauty of compounding is whatever number you start with, if your compounding carries on, you actually hit a very big number.
Aditya Pal
Understood? Understood. This makes, this makes it clear. Just one last question you met. So the other current liabilities, in the current liabilities aspect it increased to 1001 crores. So how much would, how much of that 1001 crores would be? Gold mine scheme, franchise deposit. And other than because the reason the market increased quite a bit.
Rumit Dugar
So from another tenant liability perspective, you know this is, this is sort of an aggregate, aggregate value that consists of customer liability that drives you know, multiple vectors in the business ranging from repeat behavior, revenue stickiness, upselling, source of funds of the business. And this component covers customer advances, consumer lease, gold gift vouchers and customer schemes where they pre save every month for the next purchase, either in Value or in grammage. So when they do it in grammage, obviously there is that mark to market effect also.
That kind of comes into play for the consumer goal that we have. So part of that is also driven by the mark to market as the gold has been kind of moving through the year.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Karan Gupta from ASIT Sir Mehta Investments. Please go ahead.
Karan Gupta
So my question is related to the term gym, right?
Rumit Dugar
You’re not very clear. There is some disturbance in the line. It’s not very clear.
Karan Gupta
Yeah, so now I think it’s clear.
Rumit Dugar
I’m sorry, we’re not able to hear you very clearly. There’s a lot of disturbance in the line. Mr.
Operator
Gupta, can you use a handset mode please?
Karan Gupta
Yeah. So now audible here.
Rumit Dugar
Yeah, yeah, much better. Thank you.
Karan Gupta
Yeah. So my question is on the general. What is the general number for FY26? And I’m seeing the trend is declining year over year since FY24. Understand the inventory part. In last two years, if you see the gold prices in dollar terms also more than doubled. But how should we look at this embroidery going forward? As a profitability trick? What will be the sustainable number? And again, this is also related to our the inventory turn. What is the rationale behind the store size that we have? If you just compare with the beer, which is something close to double in size and their inventory term is also close to 2.5 to 3 times in the range in comparison with our inventory turn.
So how do we solve this thing? Yeah, that’s fine.
Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
Right. So for store size, essentially as a rationale there is. See in our category, the store rentals typically are a very, very low percentage of the revenues. Now when we started opening the stores, our stores were typically very, very small sized stores. And what we realized was that in many of those cases we had to actually relocate within next two years of opening. Now the cost of that relocation is actually pretty high. And the rental delta between let’s say opening a 1200 square feet store and 2000 square feet store generally is not that high.
Because on high street or in a mall, when you actually try to look for a smaller store, it’s not that the rental is not proportional, that if 2000 sq ft is coming for x 1000 sq ft will come for expired. So that that’s generally not the case. Right, so, so, so that is essentially the rationale behind let’s say why to open slightly bigger stores with slightly higher renter so that you can save on the relocation cost at the latest. Secondly, okay, if you’re comparing, let’s say inventory terms basis what is available on the balance sheet of two different companies, then that might not be the best thing to do because you actually have to look at a lot of nuances in the balance sheet and the way those two companies operate.
For example, let’s say that if company A has all franchisee stores, then technically their inventory turns would be infinite because they’ll just park all the inventory on franchisee balance sheets and the sales they’ll book upfront. So the sales numbers will inflate, whereas the inventory numbers will deflate. So what you’ll see is inflated numerator, deflated denominator, and so on. So essentially the only way to compare two companies, or at a channel level which company is doing better is to load equivalent and hence that comparison is generally moot.
Operator
Thank you. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Rumit Dugar
Thank you everyone for participating on the call today. Look forward to seeing you next quarter. Thank you and have a good day.
Operator
Thank you very much on behalf of Bluestone Jewelry and Lifestyle Limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us today. And you may now disconnect your lines.