AWL Agri Business Ltd (NSE: AWL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Jul. 15, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Angshu Mallick — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Shrikant Kanhere — Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer
Saumin Sheth — Chief Operating Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Dhiraj Mistry — Analyst
Abneesh Roy — Analyst
Harit Kapoor — Analyst
Rehan Sayed — Analyst
Kunal Shah — Analyst
Dhiraj Mistry — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q1FY26 conference call of AWL Agri Business Limited hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in 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. Please note that this call is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dheeraj Mistry, analyst from ICICI securities. Thank you and over to you.
Dhiraj Mistry — Analyst
Thank you and welcome everyone. I would like to welcome all for Q1 FY26 AWL Agribusiness Earnings Call. We have with us Mr. Anshu Malik, CEO and MD, Mr. Srikant, Deputy CEO and CFO and Mr. Soman, COO. I would like to hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Shrikant Kanhere — Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Thank you. And very warm welcome to everyone who is participating in this call of awl every business for the Q1FY26. As a ritual we will take you. Through a brief presentation. And after the presentation we will open. The floor for question and answer. We’d be happy to answer the questions. From all of you. We’ll start with the result summary. Q1. 26. We closed at a volume of 1.58. Million tonnes with a revenue of plus of 17. We are 21% upside in revenue.
However, the volumes were down by 5% predominantly on account of G2G business of. Rice which we had last year which. Was not there this time. If we normalize with that, this volume. D growth would be close to 2% instead of 5%. EBITDA at 570 crore and a PAT at 238 crore. This margin of course is seeing a. Drop as compared to Q1.25 predominantly because of high base year. When I say high base year it’s basically because of the favorable commodity cycle. That we had entirely last year in. FY25 which also made FY25 one of our exceptional for Q1. 26. When we look at. All gross margins. And EBITDA we have been able to deliver these numbers in line with the expectation in line with what we have been delivering over last couple of years. EBITDA of 3,600 crore plus per ton. And gross margin of 11,121. When we look at a quarterly Profit trend.
So it’s growing healthily. Standalone EBITDA normalized at a quarter trend at 484 as against 465 of the last quarter. So it’s been within the trend. When we look at a consolidated EBITDA normalized for last 12 months, I think. It’S been consistently growing. It’s consistently been recording 2000 crore plus. For last four quarters. Similarly when we look at a quarterly trend on a gross profit margins per ton, it’s consistently showing 10,500 kind of level which we have been saying for quite some time that this is what a normalized level of gross margin that we would be delivering average EBITDA per metric ton of close to 3500 ton per 3500 rupees per ton this quarter. And this is in line with our expected numbers. The market contains the edible oil prices. Where we have seen finally that palm.
Oil price is coming down and finally been going below soya bean and sunflower last year. Throughout the year what we saw was. The palm oil remaining quite expensive. But by end of this quarter finally palm came down and now been priced below soya and sunflower. Oil imports for the country for the oil year 24 and oil year 25. What we have seen since November 24. Is that November 24 was the only month when India imported more than last year. However since then in December January till. March 25, what we have seen is. Total imports in India have come down predominantly of course because the palm remaining. Oil as compared to soya and sun. Which finally now been corrected. So our expectation is that going forward. We should see a different trend of. Imports coming into India. On industry trend this is as per. The nuisance, the edible oil including mustard which is on refined consumer pack, the edible oil has not seen any encouraging. Number when it comes to industry. For the Q1 26. The rural grew. By 3% whereas urban grew only by 1%.
But the overall industry more or less remained flattish at 1%. Similarly in the wheat flour the overall industry grew only by 4% with DE growth seen in urban areas whereas rural area was growing at 19%. When we look at Basmati of course. For this we don’t have a rural and urban breakup but Overall industry in. Q1 26 grew by 7.8% versus 5.5%. That we saw earlier. Last year on the business update on edible oil we did close to 960,000 tons of volume food and FMCG 260,000 tons and industry essential 360,000 tonnes delivering overall volume of 1.58 million tonnes which is down by 5% as compared to last year. On revenue front of course the revenue grew by 20% predominantly because of the prices of edible oil going up staying. High as compared to the last year. That’s the reason why the revenue grew by 21%.
But when we look at these number excluding the government to government business of a rise that we had opportunity to do last year if we exclude that. The degrowth in volume is flattish at 2% negative whereas revenue grew by 21%. On overall company highlights alternate channel for US continues to grow now revenue at 90003900 plus crore maintain a strong growth momentum. Quick commerce continues to excite us and. It’S growing very increased by 73% in. Q1 and 79% on Y&Y basis last 12 months. Branded export is another thing where we saw encouraging numbers. IT grew by 22% and has now surpassed 300 crore of revenue.
Q1 EBITDA at 520 crore down by. 60% due to high base of last year. And when I said high base more to do with the favorable commodity cycle that we saw last full year strong. Last 12 month EBITDA of 2,384 crore. Which is quite close to one of the highest numbers which we have posted Last year of 2474 in FY25. Overall. Volumes declined by 4% excluding palm. When we look at edible oil revenue. At 13,415 crore up by 26%. Raw metal prices in Q1 was around 30% higher as compared to this quarter. And that’s why the revenue in edible oil grew by 26%. Q1 volumes were impacted by multiple headwinds, expanding improved. So we do expect improvement in coming quarters. Palm oil prices have now dropped below. The soy amping prices as I said earlier leading to normalization of our palm oil sales towards the end of the quarter.
Also the recent reduction in custom duty has also curbed the imports of refined. Edible oils from some of the stock countries under the Free Trade Agreement and. We expect that this will have some. Kind of favorable impact on the volumes that we will be able to post in the coming quarter. Edible oil portfolio when we look at for last three years continues to grow. At 11% CAGR quarterly census grew at 5% CAGRADE and of course we have. Been able to sustain the EBITDA volume. EBITDA trend also at plus of 350 crore. The capacity utilization in edible oil is. At a comfortable level of 59, 60%. So we have enough capacities left to absorb any future growth that may come up. When we look at the food and FMCG business, we clocked a volume of. 260,000 tons down 5%. However the revenue at 1400 crore plus is 4% plus. And if we remove if we excluding G2G business it grew by actually 4% year on year. In the first quarter the profitability for the food business in Q1 has improved. Of course there are some interventions that. Company has done on rice, wheat flour. And other wheat products has resulted into this profitability.
Wheat flour business in packaging Atta gained market share in last 12 months. So now our market share has gone. Up to 5.5% against 5.3. Pulsate basins continue to show a strong trajectory. Both grew in a strong double digit growth. In Q1 soya nuggets, one of our. Sub segments in the food continues to. Grow in double digits and also continues. To grow on the margins as well. Sugar POHA also we have seen encouraging. Results where it grew by double digit. When we look at food at MCG Also in last three years the volumes grew by 11% whereas the revenue has grown by 18% in last three years. When we look at last three years quarter, standalone EBITDA is something consistently we. Have been able to grow. These are 82 crore in Q1 26. We are adding new capacities in the. Food and after this IPO project completion. We will have more capacities coming in into the wheat flour as well as rice business which will help to grow these businesses. Industry essential. We did a volume of 360,000 tons which is 6% year on year growth. With a revenue of 2,230 crore which. Is again 12% plus and a segment.
Revenue segment result of 100 crores. This is basically a oleochemical and caster. Where both these businesses are doing fine and are today at 100% capacity utilization. When we look at the subsidiaries, the recently acquired GD foods which is manufacturer and also have a brand tops which is quite a strong brand in North India. Manufacturer of sauces, pickled jams and various condiments. The revenue for Q1 was at 96 crore which is up 9% year on year. We have seen healthy profit also coming. Up from this acquisition. There are a lot of key interventions. It’s only 75 days since we actually. Took over this company. We have done couple of interventions and. Initiatives post acquisition which includes rationalization of manpower, setting up strong controls and process. Institutionalizations around the processes, leveraging operational efficiency, operational synergies With AWS is one of the things that is under process right now. So the plan of course is to. Leverage AWS distribution as much as possible so that we can grow the basket of this market of this company from north to other territories in India.
And of course we would try and. Do some bundling with the Fortune products. So that this product reaches to more and more consumers. Automation is something which we are looking. At to see how can we automate the processes because currently many of the processes are still on a manual. And of course the objective of all. These intervention is to bring in more and more operational efficiency into the entire process. On Bangladesh, I think the situation or. The current status of the business is stable. For last two quarters we have seen. No major endurance in doing business. The liquidity is quite, quite available. Dollar availability is there in the country. And we have been able to do. A business freely without any intervention from the government. So while the Bangladesh the World bank. Has set the GDP growth at 4%. Level for the 2425 calendar year, we hope that even with this kind of growth also our business should be able to grow with a fresh liquidity from imf should also further improve the foreign exchange reserve for the country. Therefore, our expectation is that at least for next one year things would remain. Stable in the country and our business. Should be able to do what we used to do before the turbulence. On GTM and QCOM. Now we reach close to 8,70,000 outlets directly and the growth in urban outlets. Is 11% whereas growth in rural outlet is 26%.
Our rural town coverage now has gone up to 55,000. In March we were reaching to close to 50,000 towns. So this is actually added more infrastructure. For us to grow in a rural area. We have been doing a lot of. Interventions to ensure that food and oil, the entire distribution is used both for the oil as well as food. We are also doing lot of intervention in technology file. 100% of salesman now carries SAP software. Similarly we are implementing auto replenishment system. To reduce fill rate gaps for E Comm and other players including MFs. And also we are experimenting on the depot networking and delivery models for a limited product apartment in the rural depots. QCOMR continued to excite us in Q1 26 the overall alternate channel grew by. 12% whereas the Ecom grew by 33 and Qcom grew by 73%. That’s encouraging I think and is going very fast. Continues to grow fast. We are sharpening capabilities to optimize sales in this fast growing QCOM channel by.
Doing lot of things like improved product assortment, better availability. We are also trying to track the competition prices and their offers which are. Available on the and also the data driven promotion that is something we are resorting to when we look at the return on capital employed for the last 12 months ended June 25 edible oil. Delivered ROCE of 18% whereas food and. FMC the 2% since it’s still under the growth or investment stage industry essential at 17% and at the overall company level we delivered the ROCE of close. To 11.5 12% kind of number. So while this ROCE will continue to. Improve as we go forward from here. On 12 month basis when we look. At ROCE and capital employed for last three years trend the edible oil is consistently improving from 14% to now going to 18% in past 12 months. June 25 Food SMCP continues to stay within the range and similarly industry essential. Consistently doing 15% plus kind of ROCE. On marketing side there are a lot of interventions that we did from rural interpretation, rural penetration to high impact rural branding and all that. These are some of the glimpses of.
All the events that we did to. Capture a lot of festivals whether it is a Bihu or any other. Even including Rasiyatra which has recently concluded the recently released Nielsen reports now suggest that awl is the 8th largest player. In India’s FMCG sector. This is by market share in which is they have come out in Q4 25. So now AWL is ranked 2 in. Value growth and it is now ranked. 6 in the volume growth among the top 10 players. So when we look at in value terms after the Mondelez AWL is second and when it when we look at the volume growth we are the sixth after Mondelez Parlay, Hul Britannia and Netflix esg. We continue to do our bit on. All environments and social and governance part we have been trying to save doing a lot of projects to save the cost. Whether it’s just steam or power or water.
We have been continuously planting trees. June 25th we planted one 90,000 trees. We are consistently working on putting solar panels or renewable energy into our plants. Now our 16 locations have got renewable. Energies and close to 10 megawatt of energy is manufactured or supplied through renewable. Sources which is close to 11% of our overall requirement. We continue to do a lot of. Work on the rainwater harvesting and we also continue to do how can we use or reuse the water and in that direction we have installed zero liquid discharge system in our 11 plants with a capacity of 3100 kiloliters per day. On logistics front we are dispatching more and more through multimodal so close to 22% of our dispatches are through multimodal and dispatches through the green fuel which is PNG is close to 10%. We have been awarded green points by the railway for dispatching goods through railway which is a green energy use for dispatches and we do have a inclusion of AWL in FTFE for good index terms.
So this is all from my side. As far as the brief presentation on. The performance on the company’s concern. Now I will request moderator to open the floor for question and answers. Besides me I have Mr. Malik and. Mr. Swamin Seth and we’ll try to answer your questions. 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 touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We’ll take our first question from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuama. Please go ahead.
Abneesh Roy
Yeah, thanks. I have two questions. My first question is on rice business. Since the time you acquired Kohinoor, what were the initial expectations and what will be the expectation in the next one to two years and what could have been done differently? If I see performance of LT Foods and other listed players, we see their stock and their business doing far better. I do understand they have a big exports business which makes their business model very different. But given that constraint and given the kind of performance we have seen last two years, what is the way forward in this business? I know it’s a challenging business but what will be the way forward next one to two years? Where do you see the rice business?
Shrikant Kanhere
Abdish? Good question. First is that Kohinoor that we have acquired in May 22 is for the domestic operations. Export rights still continue with the original owners. So our job was to expand Kohinoor in domestic market. When we took the brand the volume was around 37 38,000 tons per annum and from there we have now pushed it to around 45,000 ton. Not very big volume jump. One of the principal reasons that we did not have our own plant to support the large manufacturing. So we had outsourced or hired four plants in Haryana to match the requirements for both Fortune and Coimur.
But this year with our Gohana plant now getting ready and has started operations. We are confident that the supply chain will become much more robust because when you want to go for expansion or both domestic and export, you need your own facilities. 1 and buyers from abroad want to see our facility. So at least now that is ready. As far as Fortune is concerned, we are already exporting to over 45 countries and we have very good market share in Australia, New Zealand. We are doing well in Middle east and we are looking for expansion in Europe. Saudi and us. Now obviously when you look at the competition, they are formidable. They have been there in this business for over 30 years. Obviously they have a first mover advantage. We have slowly built it up. Now Basmati Rice is growing at double digit this year and our market share has grown. So going forward we are confident that Fortune and Koinut put together will become a formidable third brand. Third big combined brands together to fight the first two and that is one.
Abneesh Roy
Right? And what will be your current market share in rice in India?
Shrikant Kanhere
Matt, if you see 8.3 matt June but quarter on quarter we have been going Matt is 7.3, 7.6 okay, okay. But this quarter is 8.4 so quarter ending June is 8.4 so that we have done little better. So it is slowly growing. But I can tell you that we are on the track to get higher market share in days to come. Understood.
Abneesh Roy
Now my second question is on the edible oil business. So when I see the gross profit and EBITDA both are down, this is from a PNL perspective in the rupee term so they both are down yoy and quarter on quarter. I do understand in Q1 the volatility was on the higher side. Now that duty cut has happened. If you could clarify because of the duty cut or because of any other reason, was there any inventory loss you want to call out in the edible oil business because of these two and now assuming the volatility is less and I did hear your interview in the media post results, how do you expect the gross profit and EBITDA from a rupee terms I do understand you measure from a per liter or per ton perspective.
But ultimately from a listed company perspective, PNL in rupee terms is also equally important. So from that perspective, how do you see the edible oil business? If you could answer all of this? And from an urban demand, when I see consumer update of other listed companies which have come, they are saying urban there is some bit of recovery, some are saying good recovery, some are saying versus behind. In your opening comments I did not find that. So if you could comment from an outlook perspective in your core business, how do you see the urban demand?
Angshu Mallick
So first I will start with urban demand. If you see Nielsen report they are saying Q last year that is Jan, Feb. March 25, that is Q4 of last year there was zero growth and this quarter they are saying is 1% growth. Now in edible oil we have seen country has imported less, the prices were on the higher side and that is the reason possibly the government thought of cutting the import duty and edible oil has not seen much growth both out of home consumption institute consumption as well as in home consumption. But going forward, what all has happened? One duty cut has reduced the price by almost 8 rupees a litre.
That is 1, 2 between CPO and Olin. The differential duty which used to be around 7.5, 7.25% has now become 19.25%. That is one that’s a big jump that we have seen which industry always wanted. And companies like us who have very large palm oil refining capacities will surely gain in terms of capacity utilization and reducing the cost. And second, palm oil coming down is another big advantage for Awl because AWL is the largest importer of palm oil in the country. So when the prices are low, institutional business are good. Household business will also be good because palm oil has a very large household base in south and parts of eastern India.
So we see AWL being the second largest brand. So obviously we have all the advantages to capture. So I think going forward AWL is well poised for growth in edible oil. Now as far as margin is concerned Shikant, you can talk.
Shrikant Kanhere
So abneesh on your margin question. I think very fair question to ask that at the end of the day what is the absolute EBITDA that you. See that edible oil will be delivering? I think assuming that we continue to. Deliver the per turn EBITDA margins of anywhere between 3,600 to 4,000 that is what edible oil has been delivering for last couple of years. And the volume growth which we have always been saying that in edible oil we cannot grow more than single digit. Which is 5, 6% kind of number. With that, keeping that in mind, I think the range of EBITDA oil in range for EBITDA in absolute term for edible oil can be anywhere between 375 to 400 crore for the quarter as we go forward.
Abneesh Roy
And any inventory loss you want to call out in Q1 either because of the duty cut or palm oil volatility.
Shrikant Kanhere
No. So duty cut whatever the. You know, I would not call it an inventory loss as our as such. But whatever heat has to be taken, we have already taken and that is reflective in these numbers. But as we go forward, if things. Stabilizes and palm prices remain below Koda and Sunflower, I think we will. We should get better palm demand and we should improve more margins and more margins should be able to help us getting better. Absolute EBITDA for the edible oil on.
Angshu Mallick
This abdish, I would say that see the duty cut was quite steep, 10% and at any point of time there are packed oil inventory and some of duty paid stocks in the plant because you run the plant on a continual basis. But the brand supports such kind of shocks at least minimizes it to large extent. So we have overcome that, I would say well, and still continue to deliver as promised in our EBITDA terms.
Abneesh Roy
On the urban demand. One last follow up question and I did not get the clarity. Let’s leave aside Nielsen numbers because it may or may not be giving the true picture. My question is, you did say because of palm oil price correction, you do expect both B2B volumes and B2C volumes to go up. And that’s a logical statement to make given the overall cost is down, food inflation and general inflation is at a multi year low. So what is your personal expectation on volumes? Given all this, you would be expecting a good recovery, right the next three quarters.
On the edible oil volume, see Q1.
Shrikant Kanhere
We lost 1% in palm oil, as simple as that. And that is because of the high prices of palm oil that reduced our market share as well as we didn’t grow. Now going forward, these changes that have happened is adding benefit to us because we have the largest infrastructure for refining palm oil in the country. We have the largest capacity to refine crude palm oil to refined palm oil. And that gives us lot of strength. And with the differential duty now so good that importing olene will not be viable. So these are some of the advantages that we have.
Second, with palm oil coming down, there are a lot of markets where palm does better and we have an advantage. I think single digit growth surely should be there.
Abneesh Roy
Okay, understood sir. Thanks. That’s all from my side.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Harith Kapoor from investech. Please go ahead.
Harit Kapoor
Yeah, hi, good evening. So my first question was on the FMCG side. You know, this quarter you have a clean kind of more branded base because there is no, you know, the government orders. And you’ve also reduced the share of the non basmati business which seems to have resulted in like a 5%, you know, kind of an EBIT margin for this business. I just wanted to get your sense on, given that you’ve done this, see this consolidation, how do you see the profitability for this business for the year? Because the year has started off better than you know, what you would have earlier expected or at least on the margin side.
So just wanted to get your sense because this is the highest EBIT margin you have done in a quarter, the highest absolute EBIT you’ve done in a quarter. So just help us understand the trajectory of this profitability for the balance here.
Shrikant Kanhere
See, all these days we have been very clear that we want to drive volume and we felt that is the most important thing. And we have been driving volume at the rate of almost 18, 20% per annum. We were growing in food then we found that there are certain places where we can relook at the strategy where the brand share is not so high and ability to earn higher margin was not there. So we started consolidating the regional rice or what is a non Basmati rice. Now in non Basmati rice there are few pockets which are very good like say Sonamoussoori in South or Miniket Baskati in East.
These are all brand driven and we drive it through our brand where we have good margin. So we have concentrated in these markets and these type of rice and got out of UP and Bihar rice where we were not making any great money. In Basmati we found that there is great opportunity to increase volume and increase margin and we have been pushing brand, both Koimur and Fortune and you will see that in our market share. One more retail penetration and visibility of the brands in terms of rice availability. So we have done a lot of schemes and work with Reliance and other retail outlets with the NCOM also we have done a lot of work to create visibility of the brand.
So in food we have been concentrating both on top line and bottom line together last one quarter. But going forward, once this is stabilized, we will surely push volume because that is what will give us advantage in years to come.
Harit Kapoor
Got it. So this margin number you would say is a little bit, not one off, but it’s not reflective of the fact that you want to drive up the volumes further. It’s a kind of quarter of consolidation at the bottom end and then hopefully we will drive up the volumes again which brings this number down a little bit but still maybe a little bit ahead of what you were probably expecting. Is that the way to think of it? I mean is there a Broad range that you think you can, you can talk about this year and there you will be on the side.
Or is it still that kind of. Low single digit number that you will go for for this year and then expand it over a period of time once this builds up?
Shrikant Kanhere
No, I think Harith, what you understood is absolutely right. That’s what Mr. Malik said, that while in this quarter we tried to consolidate some of the business and therefore the margins result in margin that what you are seeing. But as we go forward, I think this business will remain in investment and. Growth phase for sure. It’s not that we are now concentrating only on the margins, but of course with a complete focus on the top line, with an eye on the margin as well. And therefore not necessarily that we can replicate what we have been able to deliver in Q1. But yes, our commitment to grow the. Business volumes by double digit is something. Which we want to drive. However, having said that, the margin structure. Will surely be better than last year.
Harit Kapoor
Very clear. Just one question on the. On the oil side as well, I know you spoke of this, was that this quarter it seemed like there was any inventory loss. In June that would. Have, I won’t say partially been offset by the derivative benefit that sits in your other income but also shows up in your EBITDA plus other income segmental number. Is that the right way to think of it? Because if I look at the EBITDA. It is still in that 3,500 to 4,000 range on the edible oil business. And if that’s the case, then I would say this quarter also is broadly representative of what you should be doing going forward. Maybe plus and minus.
Shrikant Kanhere
Yeah, absolutely right. I think what you have seen in this quarter, more or less plus minus, we would be doing as we go forward from here. And therefore when you look at. Because the entire scheme is like this, you know, you know, I mean that’s where the hedging comes into the play. You have an inventory loss, it has to be compensated by heating gains and therefore one should look at putting everything together and your reading is absolutely right. So this is our normal run rate of ebitda otherwise also. And we should be continuing to deliver in coming quarters.
Harit Kapoor
Great. And one last thing, even on the industry essentials this time the profitability looks a little bit on the higher side. Is that in your view also a little bit of. In a way a little bit of a one off 100. Crore EBIT for the quarter. And if so in which part of the business is it in? Olio? Is it in Castor is it in. The oil cake side where the numbers Are a little higher?.
Shrikant Kanhere
Yeah. So I absolutely right. There are three elements to it. One is castor oil and the other business which is basically D oil, K pop square, castor seed and mustard. I think the EBITDA which you are. Looking for this quarter is actually on a higher side and not necessarily you may see in the coming quarters because of there is one off in our de oiled business. But our endeavor of course will remain to see that we continue to match. This but depending upon how the markets behave.
Harit Kapoor
Got it. Go ahead. I’ll come back. Thank you. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Rehan Sayed from Srinitra Asset Managers. Please go ahead.
Rehan Sayed
Yes sir. Good evening and thank you for giving me the opportunity. Am I audible? Yes, please go ahead sir. I have a couple of questions. First on the food and FMCG margin side. So like with Quadrant delivering 75 ppt. And 5.3% margin in food, can we. Expect this segment to give a positive. EBITDA in every quarter going forward and. Especially after post Kohana ramp up. What was your view in this?
Shrikant Kanhere
Yes, I think what this is what we have been saying on the food that food business today remains in an investing and growth phase and we by default are running it as a breakevening on the EBITDA kind of level. So whatever number you have you are. Looking at for the first quarter I. Think it’s and this is what we. Were explaining is something which came out of some consolidation that we did in rice business. But going forward all the other quarters I think you should see the food business doing giving better EBITDA than last year. That is what I can only say.
Rehan Sayed
Okay on the next question regarding the. Geography expansion like after achieving a stronger in South India which is under penetrated region, what are the next key focus for the industrial expansion in the segment area?
Shrikant Kanhere
See we have to see product wise expansion. Now South India still I think should continue to be in our focus because if we want to increase our palmoline packed oil business, sunflower oil gasness and Atta business and Basmati rice business then South India is the largest market and the best paying market. Let us be honest on that. So all these four products go together in south. So we will concentrate in south and work more hard so that we get into better markets and more share. We are not having great share there and we have great opportunity to detach.
Second is Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. These are some of the potential Market for soybean oil. And we feel that we can do better. And with our Hazira plant now having better stocks, both sunflower and soybean we will be able to supply better Haldiya also we have expanded our soybean facility. So Chhattisgarh was always covered from Haldia where we had shortage of oil. So now with 1500 ton plant new coming up there which has already commenced operation, our supply chain is now much more robust. And this year coming July, August onwards when the festive season starts, we should do well.
So everywhere what we do is that each market we are seeing which product does well and then we are going ahead. Mustard oil also has a great potential in rural market of upbringing Bengal. So we are putting a separate brand and separate team to only work in the rural market. So product by product, market by market, we are segmenting and then.
Rehan Sayed
Okay. Okay. So thank you for detailed explanation regarding this. Thank you. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Kunal Shah from Jeffreys. Please go ahead.
Kunal Shah
Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. So my question is on this regional rice consolidation. Can you give us some sense of how big the business was let’s say last year, full year and what by what percentage have you scaled it down to? If you can give some sense on that in absolute crore terms would be helpful.
Shrikant Kanhere
See last year, full year non Basmati rise. We were doing something in the range. Of around 50. Which were principally from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh. Then we had two plants in Raichur, one in Kathaki. So we have consolidated there. One in South. Then we were doing something in Maharashtra. Then we did some plant in Gujarat, Khambat area. So we have consolidated all of this and we are trying to see where there is association of brand. We are going ahead with it because E commerce is now doing well in non basmati rides particularly 5 kilo and 10 kilo. So we are trying to push regional drive through more through E Commerce, more through modern trade, more through E class outlets so that there is brand saliency and we get much more better margin.
Simply trading in non Basmati doesn’t give any great margin or only it gives you volume. So we have tried to consolidate it and trying to put more concentration in our Guana plant where new Basmati line has come up which will add almost say 200,000 tons of basmati rice we can process there. So we are concentrating to bring that one in. So. So Kunal, just to answer your question, last year end quarter we had NDR. Volumes of close to 180,000 tons. Now these 180,000 tonnes includes that G2G. Business also which was a very sizable business. Against this 180,000 tonnes this quarter we did 60,000 tons. Now if you normalize with that D2G business also it’s a quite a significant reduction of 30, 35% on the NBR portfolio. And as Mr. Malik said earlier also there are certain varieties of NBR where now we are coming out and we would be only focusing on the branded NBR rather than, you know, trying to sell it on a bulk basis or a loose basis.
Kunal Shah
Understood, Understood. So my actually what I was trying to arrive at is this growth excluding G2G I think 4% in foods which you have shared. If I were to also take out this regional rise, what would that number look like? If you can give any sense on.
Shrikant Kanhere
That almost 0% growth then. In volumes. It will be flattish. If I take out the G2G and the regional rice which we have stocked, if you take that out, so it will be almost flattish growth indicating that wheat flour business can be pushed further. But bulk pack and wheat flour B2B business was little less this year. So wheat flour pulses also did not do as well as we expected. Because the government had opened up the yellow peas in port. So the market of pulses came down particularly Chana and we have very big Chennai processing capacity. Both Chennai to Chandal. Chandal basin. So that market also we found that it did not grow the way we expected.
Kunal Shah
Understood, Understood. So roughly flat volumes if both of those are excluded. Understood. Second related question was. So my last call you had given this long term 23 year expectation of 10,000 crores in revenue. Any. Any thought on. I mean I think earlier expect was FY27 but any thought on where when do you aspire to reach that number? Now given you are taking this consolidation.
Shrikant Kanhere
If you take a last 12 months it is around 6100 exit. This year March 26we should be in the range of around 7000 crores. And then we need another 30% growth to grow. So volume growth and value growth both will happen simultaneously. Because Basmati rice is at its very low prices, we see an opportunity to grow volume and value. Dal basin. Our new lines have come up in Kari this year. So that will add to our top line and bottom line. Our Gohana plant will be ready. So the flower mill will be ready by September of the September that is 350 ton refined flat 200 ton chakkhi aata.
So that will add to our top line, bottom line, all put together, we should be very close to 10,000 by exit 27.
Kunal Shah
Understood? Understood. Understood. Understood. That’s clear. And the second is on the GD Foods business. So you mentioned 95 crores. I think turnover. This. What’s the sort of EBITDA margins that this business can do? Let’s say in two, three years from now. I mean not looking at any near term guidance but from a two, three year standpoint, what’s the sort of number which you would aspire to do here?
Shrikant Kanhere
No, I can give you what this business is delivering today. This business is today delivering a gross. Margin of 50, 52% and EBITDA margins of close to 11%. So that is already there. I think as we consolidate these operations and we do a lot of interventions from AWL in terms of sourcing and distribution and we take the volumes up, surely we should be able to deliver better than what it is today.
Kunal Shah
Understood, Understood, understood. And just final bit, with Kuhana now done, what should be roughly the capex on a full year basis this year? And I mean you think 500, 600 crores, that should be it, right?
Shrikant Kanhere
Yeah, I think that should be enough. Because after Bhana we have enough capacities. But in our business the capex keeps. Happening because of your territory expansion or market expansion. So you can assume, safely assume 500. 600 crore of capex every year of. Which 100 crore would of course would be maintenance capex. Kind of.
Kunal Shah
Understood, understood. Thank you. Thank you. That’s all from my side.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Hareet Kapoor from Investec. Please go ahead.
Harit Kapoor
Yeah, this one, bookkeeping was, you know, on the interest cost side. So you know it’s a bit lower this quarter also with the reduction in the duties, your, your payables or trade. Credits, however you classify that, that also. Will go down because inventory requirement comes down in rupee terms. So should that benefit you a little bit on the interest cost side going forward also? Is that a factor also? Next 2, 3/4 we should expect.
Shrikant Kanhere
Yeah, yeah. So interest cost ideally should go down in next quarter. So when you look at, look from a quarter to quarter, like if you look at quarter two on quarter one, it should go down. However, the quarter two versus quarter two of last year, it may not because quarter two last year didn’t have this. Duty hike and all that because duty. Hike happened in September 24th. That rationalization may happen over the year. But yes, with this duty cut and interest rate Softening. We should see savings on the interest rate as a whole.
Harit Kapoor
All right. Yeah, that was my question. Thanks.
operator
Thank you. We’ll take our next question from the line of Dheeraj Mistry from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Dhiraj Mistry
Yeah. Hi. Good evening, sir. So my first question is regarding this alternate channel. So we have been seeing very phenomenal growth especially from the quick commerce channel. And it is now contributing very large portion of our overall revenue. Can you give us some clarity in terms of what kind of product we are selling or let’s say what kind of mix we have in that? And likewise, what is the profitability when we compare it with the general trade channel?
Shrikant Kanhere
Okay. As far as E commerce is concerned, in E commerce now mostly everybody is now becoming quick commerce. So when I say quick commerce, we have both food basket and edible oil basket. All our products, all our brands are registered. And we have complete range available in all the channels. That is number one. Number two is that in oil we have almost 35 to 40% of the share. And some of the oil like rice bran, mustard, we have over 50% market share in any of the E. Com channels. Whether you take it Zesto or Instamart, anybody you can talk. That is one on food we have registered all our products and we have different market share in different type of products. If you take Atta, we have around 15% share. We take Basmati rice around 12, 15%. But based on 10% 12% like this we have different market share in different and the demands are there.
Our volumes are growing phenomenal. And 73% growth we have seen in E commerce advantage is that we have used it to ensure that fill rates are almost 85 to 90%. And what counts is your fill rate. If the fill rate is good, we have seen the uptakes are good and sales are better. Margin wise econ pays better.
Dhiraj Mistry
Got it? No. So my question was regarding the mix between edible oil and FMCG that what out of the 3,900 crore what you said in last 12 months what contribute what percentage contribution is coming from edible oil versus foods?
Shrikant Kanhere
See, when it comes to edible oil we roughly roughly do edible oil. Around. Edible oil is around 50. 55%. 59% is edible oil. Say 60% out of 3900 crore.
Dhiraj Mistry
Got it. Got it. And profitability
Shrikant Kanhere
60% is around 2400 crore is this and 1500 crore is food. But food is going faster.
Dhiraj Mistry
Got it. Got it. And a margin profile would be also better for foods business in quick commerce compared to let’s say in general trade channel because lot of logistic cost. And would you would be saving that?
Shrikant Kanhere
Yes. One is logistical cost. Second is salespeople cost because hardly any salespeople have to go. We have central department which manages everybody together. And third is that we have benchmarking so we can benchmark with the competition and ensure that our prices are either very close, little higher or little lower. But then we have a benchmarking system that enables us to get better margin. Got it, Got it.
Dhiraj Mistry
And sir, one bookkeeping question that we. Have seen that there is a huge. Jump in employee cost for the quarter as well as in some of the previous quarter also we have seen that jump. So what would be the steady set. Or let’s say annualized employee cost we should assume for your business. And second, you can. Can you quantify the one off amount in that income line item which is seeing significant jump in this quarter.
Shrikant Kanhere
So on employee I would. I’ll explain you. Basically the jump which you are seeing in employee cost is basically on account of the consolidation of GD foods now into these numbers. So basically when you come. You are. When you are comparing with June 24th, it’s not an apple to apple. So one is that. So if you normalize for that GD food the employee cost has gone up by close to 1112 percent versus last year which is quite okay. And for the full year if you look at. If you really want to look at full year employee cost number I think you can take a base of 25. And over that you can apply any number of close to 10 10% kind of inflation and that you will get. Get it for your marketing. Got it. And other. Yeah, what was your question? Sorry.
Dhiraj Mistry
So can you quantify the one off amount in other income line item?
Shrikant Kanhere
Okay, so basically it’s a derivative or rather I would say some of the. Hedges which we settled, you know that was. I was explaining to Avnish or some other person that when you look at. Inventory loss you should look at including the hedging. So this. So as for the accounting, actually according to us it’s a. It ideally should have got classified as a. As a cost of goods sold. But accounting doesn’t allow that. So therefore the one off is that settlement of areas.
Dhiraj Mistry
No. So I was asking what is the. Amount of that one off adjustment? The amount of 1 of that adjustment is close to 150 crore. Got it. Got it. That’s it from my side. Thank you very much sir. Thank you.
Shrikant Kanhere
And it’s not a one, it’s not a one off because it may or may not happen next quarter because it’s the way how you do the accounting. I think. Yeah.
Dhiraj Mistry
That I understood that. It’s just that I wanted to see.
Shrikant Kanhere
That what would be the normalized EBIT. Margin for the OE business because of that.
operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll take that as the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Shrikant Kanhere
Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for attending the call and asking the questions. We hope that we are able to answer your questions. Thank you very much. And do keep in touch with us. For any further queries. Thank you.
operator
Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir. On behalf of ICICI Security, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.