Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals Limited (NSE: CROMPTON) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 07, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Promeet Ghosh — Chief Executive Officer
Kaleeswaran Arunachalam — Group Chief Financial Officer
Bhavani Kumawat — Chartered Accountant
Anand Kumar — Group Sales and Services Head
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Siddhartha — Analyst
Aniruddha Joshi — Analyst
Natasha Jain — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Electricals Limited Q1FY26 Investor Conference Call hosted by Access Capital Limited. 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. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhavani Kumavat from Access Capital Limited. Thank you. And over to you.
Bhavani Kumawat — Chartered Accountant
Yeah, thanks Neera. Good evening everyone. Sorry. On behalf of Access Capital, I welcome you all to Crompton greaves consumer electricals Q1 FY26 earning conference call. Today. We have with us management represented by Mr. Promethe Khosh, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Kaleeshwar Arunachalam, Chief Financial Officer. Ms. Veta Sagar, Chief Business Officer, Butterfly Gandhi Mati Appliances. Ms. Natasha Kedia, Head Investor Relation and Corporate Communication. We thank Crompton for giving us the opportunity to host the call and will now like to hand over the floor to Andy sir for his opening remarks post which will open the floor for Q A.
Bhavani Kumawat — Chartered Accountant
Thanks.
Bhavani Kumawat — Chartered Accountant
And over to you sir.
Anand Kumar — Group Sales and Services Head
Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining this call and thank you Access Capital for hosting this call. My colleagues around the table have already been introduced by Access and I’m sure you’re familiar with them. So going to introduce them yet. Let me quickly jump into the quarterly earnings.
operator
Sorry to interrupt you. You’re sounding little feeble.
Anand Kumar — Group Sales and Services Head
You can’t hear me.
operator
This is better. I think you have to talk a little louder.
operator
So. Yeah,
Anand Kumar — Group Sales and Services Head
all right. I do have a graph voice guys. So sorry, can’t be helped. But I. I will try and speak up. Okay, so before I dive into the details of the financial performance and the business performance quarter, there are a few highlights that I do want to talk about. Generally you know, the theme of the Q1 results we believe reflects our continuing resilience and agility. We do believe that our performance is ahead of the industry in various categories. And we know that we have recorded market share gains on a year on year basis.
Our high growth categories solar pumps and small domestic appliances led the way with SDA growing not only faster in the industry but but also on strong double digit numbers. Significantly, our solar pumps business also demonstrated very strong growth momentum. We earlier in the quarter secured the largest ever single order of 101 crores in solar pumps from the Maharashtra Energy Development Agency. Demonstrating the continued strength of our position in solar pumps in the back to growth categories areas that we’ve been focusing on over the last few quarters. Lighting remains stable despite headwinds from continuing pricing pressures.
Revenue was flat While Butterfly grew in line with the market and expanded its market share in core categories, we also have a bunch of businesses which have high exposure to season. These are categories like tpw, residential battery pumps and air coolers. While the industry saw a sharp slowdown, we also saw a slowdown due to the shorter than usual summer season and erratic monsoon pattern. However, the company performed relatively better we believe gained market share despite the challenging environment. On an overall basis, we have held on to our material margins. I’d also like to highlight two major strategic priorities that are shaping Crompton’s future.
First, we have embarked on a transformational journey building on our go to market strengths. The focus is on expanding reach, improving counter share, enhancing consumer advocacy, powered by stronger sales fundamentals, digital enablement and capacity development. All of you know that our products both impact and are impacted by the environment. Climate change is altering demand patterns and driving changes in consumer behavior. At the same time, we are mindful of the environmental impact of our products. As an industry leader, we are committed to delivering products that not only meet but also anticipate evolving consumer preferences. We see sustainability not just as a responsibility, but also as a driver of smarter choices, sharper innovation, product differentiation and consumer affinity.
Doing good in business and doing well for shareholders is inextricably linked to also doing well for the environment. Importantly, we have both the scale and the capabilities of being able to offer sustainable products at affordable price points to consumers. We believe this is a major differentiator. Accordingly, we are today announcing ambitious sustainability goals reflecting our commitment to responsible growth. By 2035 we are committing to reducing our scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas commissions by 50%. Additionally, we are also committing to reduce by 60% the emission intensity per unit of sales of our product by 2035, most particularly in our highest selling category, the fans category.
With that, let me get into the nuts and bolts of how we performed the last quarter. As we are all aware, weather related disruptions clearly had an impact on the industry as they had on us. Our revenue this quarter on a standalone basis stood at 1819 crores. Material margins remained healthy reflecting sound financial management and adaptability in a demanding environment. EBIT came in at 155 crores and even margin at 8.5%. This quarter we also became a zero debt company having fully repaid the last loan that we had of a 300 crore NCD. We of course remain a healthy net cash positive company.
This underscores our commitment to financial discipline and long term value creation. Our pat for this quarter was 125 crores with PAT margin at 6.9%. Moving on to business specifics, in the fans category performance was subdued largely because of serial disruptions. However, our Innov we had a series of innovation led launches. These included Fluido, Nitio and Nucleoid. These not only resonated well with consumers but strengthened our premium portfolio and brand positioning. While the ceiling fans category witnessed a downturn, we do believe that we did better than the industry leading to market share gains. The TPW fans and air coolers businesses, both highly exposed to weather, witnessed a decline online.
With industry levels in pumps, the business continued to see very strong momentum. In the solar pumps segment, our business has doubled over a similar period since last year. We successfully executed orders and we have materially grown our order pipeline even apart from the order that we have publicly disclosed of about 101 crores which is the largest order we have got. Agri pumps and residential pumps both of course get impacted by unseasonal rains. Having said that, we do believe that we are performing well in these segments compared to industry. In appliances, the small domestic appliances business delivered strong double digit growth.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a business that has been demonstrating strong double digit growth quarter on quarter for the last several quarters and that has sustained in this quarter as well. The growth was underpinned by demand for our mixer grinders as well as for our induction cooktops. In large domestic appliances we introduced an industry first 2000 TDS certified anti scaling technology in water heaters backed by a whole lot of innovation work that we’ve done to come out with this product. While the air coolers business again this was the high season for air coolers and like everyone else we we similarly had had the business was impacted.
Large kitchen appliances recorded a sales of 15 crores and seems to have added and seems to be getting strong resonance with consumers. In the cooktop segment which has been added a slew of products been added to our cooktop range that’s doing very well. We have also broadened our chimney range in the large kitchen appliances business onto lighting. Industry wide price erosion persists. Despite this, revenue was stable at 232 crores. Remember this is pure lighting products that we have currently in our portfolio. The standout this quarter was a sharp improvement in profitability. EBIT rose 41% YoY to 21 crores with margins expanding 370 basis points to 12.6%.
This is the result of our continued focus on improving product mix as well as operating efficiencies. In our lighting business. Our B2B lighting business was a key driver this quarter delivering double digit volume growth led by commercial flood, high mast and poles categories. We also secured several project wins in the industrial segment which contributed meaningfully to the performance. In the B2C segment, outdoor and decorative lighting witness traction as we continue to pivot towards higher value designer LED design LED offerings. Moving on to Butterfly, we have an exciting update this quarter. We unveiled a refreshed brand positioning for Butterfly.
Now as you know, Butterfly has been through a continued transformational trajectory and this is the latest update on that trajectory. We unveiled a new brand positioning which is built around the philosophy of celebrating change. You’ve probably seen the new Butterfly brand logo which talks about this. This positioning is designed to resonate with evolving consumer aspirations and is supported importantly by by a series of innovative product launches under the Ideas first series with over 40 SKUs being introduced aimed at strengthening Butterfly’s premium and differentiated portfolio, Butterflies growth revival continues. Its growth trajectory is in line with the industry.
Revenue rose 3% to 187 crores and there was strong traction in mixer grinders, gas tubs and pressure cookers, all of which are the core business of Butterfly. In each one of these core categories, Butterfly Cane share EBITDA grew 39% reflecting the product mix and operational efficiencies. Overall, our kitchen portfolio which includes Butterfly, SDA and large kitchen appliances perform very well this quarter. We continue to harness our brand equity and innovation capabilities to drive differentiation across categories. Our consumer centric design approach backed by in house R and D and marketing excellence has enabled us to launch high impact products that address evolving consumer preferences and also reinforce our leadership in key segments.
Excuse me. With that I will conclude my preemie remarks. I assume you have have also seen the presentation that has been put up on our website. There’s also a press release that made and all of us here are happy to address questions and many of you may have if I may if I may ask of everyone, please restrict your questions to one or two. If you have more questions question please come back into the queue and allow other people to ask questions.
Anand Kumar — Group Sales and Services Head
Right,
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 click on the raise hand icon to ask your questions. Kindly unmute your audio and announce your company name before proceeding with your question. First question is from the line of Sadh Bera. Kindly provide your company name and proceed with your question.
Siddhartha
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. This is Siddharth from Nomura. Sir, my first question is on the Growth. If you can provide some color about how has been the growth or decline in the categories like fresh fans, pumps and SDA in the quarter. And if you look at these categories which are more impacted like the TPW and air coolers, what percentage of our ECD revenues will these be in the quarter?
Promeet Ghosh
So the Siddharth, if I understand the volume was a little feeble. If I understand the question, you wanted to know how these individual segments under ECD has performed and within this how the seasonal categories are performed, is that right?
Siddhartha
Right.
Siddhartha
Okay.
Promeet Ghosh
So one, as you know we don’t give specific details but I just want to give you a few color on the overall ECD performance. Our ECD business has declined by about 8%. But when we did a industry benchmark we saw the industry decline is at about 11% and then we collaborated with that, we we saw significant progress has been made on market share across all the categories that we are in now individually. If you look at it, a large part of this decline is attributable only to seasonal categories. Seasonal categories, I mean here would include table pedestal wall fans, air coolers and residential pumps.
These are the categories that is impacted by the decline. If you look at our growth categories which is solar pumps, we have doubled our business year on year. Our SDA business which we have been investing over a period of time continues to grow at healthy double digit growths. It has got a trajectory of growing at about 15 to 18% and we are continuing on that our back to growth categories which are two focus areas that we called out earlier. Lighting is ahead of the industry growth and butterfly is continuing to grow back on the growth track for the last two quarters.
So fundamentally the quarter one performance is largely impacted by seasonal businesses and significant amount of this decline is attributed to TPW and air coolers. Now within TPW and air coolers also if you look at an industry benchmark, we have gained market share in both the categories which means that our performance is superior compared to where the industry delivered for Q1.
Siddhartha
Understood sir. So second question is again, I mean if we go ahead, given that this unseasonal impact is likely to be restricted only to quarter one, are we seeing any green shoots of improvement now as we go ahead into quarter two for these segments? And second again is on this fan, we did showcase and launch more multiple new categories across induction and BLDC fans. So how what percentage of the revenues are currently being contributed by these categories and how should we look at the ramp up going ahead for these categories?
Promeet Ghosh
Yeah, so let me take this into two or three buckets. From a macro perspective we see that the long term demand is pretty much intact and we see the long term demand is positive. And across categories we believe there is right to grow for us on various initiatives that we have been discussing in the past. On top of it we have also talked about few new categories that we are entering. One of them being solar rooftop that we announced in last quarter. You would also see progress update on this as we move forward in the coming quarters.
Now within the segments that you talked about, particularly you wanted to know about fans and some of the new category announcements or subcategory announcements that we made in the new platforms. We are very pleased to share with you that the two new launches that we have made on BLDC under the nucleus platform, nucleoid plus the other SKUs doing extremely well. We are actually not even completed a Pan India launch on that because demand is outweighing supply. We are trying to see how do we cater to the demand as we move forward. It is doing very well and as you would know we continue to be the number two player in BLDC and endeavor is to become the number one player in BLDC and these launches are pretty much supporting us.
And there are few more launches planned in the subsequent quarters within BLDC to strengthen our portfolio presence and drive on the BLDC category growth and further gain market share.
Anand Kumar
To answer your question Siddharth, I suspect this is a question that will come up repeatedly. I’ll say people the bother are are the indications from the market are positive.
Siddhartha
Great to hear that sir. Thanks a lot. I’ll come back in the queue.
operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Aniruddha Joshi. Can you proceed with the company name?
Aniruddha Joshi
Yeah. Aniruddha Joshi from ICICI securities. The two questions on solar pumps. Congrats for the great set of numbers. In terms of. If you can share more details regarding the business model, how are. How are we doing the sourcing arrangements? Again what are the margins in this business and again what are the working capital? Are are these numbers closer to what Crompton’s console numbers are? And secondly in terms of rooftop solar which you alluded to in earlier quarter that entry we are doing entry in the rooftop solar. So any further progress updates? If you want to share on that.
Yeah, thanks. That’s it. From my side.
Anand Kumar
We the way that we work on our solar rooftop business is that product, the entire product we are responsible for. We have a partner who executes on our behalf and and also Helps source consumer orders once the government has chosen us as a bidder. This is the approach that we’ve been taking since we launched this product about now, two years ago. It’s working very well for us as far as margins are concerned. Are the. Keep it margins for.
Aniruddha Joshi
Sorry sir, but your voice is bit feeble.
Anand Kumar
Okay. All right. Okay. I. I will, I will. Maybe. No, you can. There’s nothing to pull because it’s up there. Yeah. So mar. Like maybe I’ll repeat, we. We are responsible for the entire product. The installation is executed by a partner of us. Okay. This is the. This is the model that we followed one partner. This is the, this is the model that we followed for the last two years. Insofar as margins are concerned at the EBIT level, the margins are very similar to the. To the overall margins that Crompton Records. And working capital in this business is.
What shall I say is comparable to the working capital that we have in other businesses. Return on capital in this business is strong. Right. So I should clarify here that the way that we’ve been going about our business is why even as we ramp up our position in the sale, we’ve obviously also simultaneously being careful about how we ensure that the essence of the business and the business fundamentals remain very robust.
Aniruddha Joshi
Sure, sir. And on, on rooftop solar. If you can indicate about the launch and.
Anand Kumar
Yeah, so you will. I think as we said we, we are entering this business. Needless to say, we made the announcement after we’ve done a bunch of work on how we are going to execute building the team for that, building up the, you know, the supply chain for that product. As and when we secure orders, we will come back and disclose them to you.
operator
Thank you, sir, we’ll request you to come back in the queue. We have next question from Aditya Bhartia. Sir, you can go ahead with the question. Aditya, please unmute your line and go ahead with your question. We’ll take the next question from Natasha Jain. Natasha, you can go ahead with your question. Thanks.
Natasha Jain
Yeah. Am I audible?
Anand Kumar
Yes, go on.
Natasha Jain
Yeah. Hi. So, good evening. So my first question is on the ECD segment now. Barring fans, your pumps you said have done very well. Appliances have done very well. And I presume appliances again is a very high margin business here then if I remove those two, the probably the degrowth in terms of fans is sharper when I talk about margins. Now that number when I compare to your peers, I think probably we have underperformed some peers given that all the peers numbers are out. So if you could, you know, we’ve been talking about a lot of new product developments on the BLDC side.
These are high margin products and then fans comparatively is slightly less seasonal than other product categories. So that BLDC should have probably saved our margins a little more. So can you explain, is this completely reverse leverage or something else is kind of pulling the growth here downward?
Anand Kumar
No, actually, actually, Natasha, I’m not sure the conclusions you arrived at are robust. Right. Insofar let’s take each one of these, you know, in turn, you, you said that the appliances business has strong margins. The answer is, is that it has good margins, not necessarily better margins than our fans business or our pumps business. Right. The overall, if the movement in margins is fans is very similar to the movement in margins and other products in our ECD business. In fact, it is not at all particularly impacted insofar as each one of these businesses is concerned.
There are seasonal products and non seasonal products in the fans business. There is the ceiling fans business, which is more replacement and therefore less seasonal, but seasonal nevertheless. Having said that, there’s the TPW part of the business which is very seasonal. So a significant portion of our annual TP DPW sales happen in the first quarter in ceiling fans. Also, the first quarter is the best quarter, helped by the fact that replacements happen most particularly when the weather is warm. Now, insofar as our pumps business is concerned, again, pumps is related to water scarcity. We have three segments that we are in.
There is solar pumps, there is residential pumps and agri pumps. Both resi and agri are impacted by weather, not in this case by hot weather, but by extensive rains. Right. In fact, you would have noticed that even the solar pump business is impacted by unseasonal monsoon rains. So our own estimate is that the solar pump business has at best, on an industry level been flat. Our performance is a different matter. Right. So I would certainly not attribute make the attributions that you, you were making, Natasha.
Natasha Jain
Fair enough, sir. I, I appreciate your detailed answer on that. It helps in terms of understanding a little further. Just last question on fans again. I mean, can you call out how’s the inventory as of now and any festive feelers in terms of the other appliance category, how are we seeing them? And any green shoots on the ground? That’s it.
Anand Kumar
So I’ll go back to saying what I said earlier. And so far as the indications, yes, the indications are positive. What we’ve seen so far in this quarter, indications are that we have, we, we’ll have some green shoots going forward. The second question that you said was what first question?