Landmark Cars Ltd (NSE: LANDMARK) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 29, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Sanjay Thakker — Chairman & Executive Director
Aryaman Thakker — Executive Director
Surendra Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Unidentified Speaker
Analysts:
Rahul Dani — Analyst
Pritesh Chheda — Analyst
Lokesh Manik — Analyst
Abhisar Jain — Analyst
Sabyasachi Mukerji — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Presentation:
Operator
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Landmark Cars Q4 FY ’25 Earnings Call hosted by Monarch Networth 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. Should you need assistance during this conference, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Also, this conference may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. I now hand the conference over to Rahul Dani from Monarch Networth Capital Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Rahul Dani — Analyst
Yeah. Thank you, Davin. Good afternoon, everyone. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of Monarch Networth Capital, I would like to welcome you all to the Q4 FY ’25 earnings call of Landmark Calls. Today, we have with us Mr Sanjay Thakkar, Promoter and Executive Chairman; Mr Thakkar, Executive Director; Mr Agarwal, CFO; and SGA the IR Partners. We will start the call with opening comments on the management and followed by Q&A. Thank you, and Over to you, sir. Thank you.
Sanjay Thakker — Chairman & Executive Director
Yeah, thanks, Rahul. On behalf of the company, I extend a sincere welcome to everybody who has joined the call today. The results and the presentations are uploaded on the stock exchanges and the company website. I hope everyone had a chance to have a look at it. Financial year ’25 has been a for us marked by strategic expansion, strong execution and disciplined growth. On the top-line front, we recorded the highest-ever pro-forma revenue for the full-year. An outcome of our wide brand bouquet, which resonates with every customer aspiring to own a premium or a luxury car in India.
In financial year ’25, on a year-on-year basis, the passenger vehicle industry grew at 5%, whereas landmark grew at about 21%. Our expansion into three fast-growing brands, Kia, MG and Mahindra has bolstered this growth as at the start of financial year ’25, we had set-out a goal of opening 24 new outlets. I am proud to share that we have successfully operationalized 23 of them ahead of timelines and well within budgeted costs. We will operationalize this spread from June 2025, which is next month. With this, we have demonstrated not only our execution — executional excellence, but also our readiness to scale with discipline.
Turning now to the broader macro and macroeconomic landscape and the Indian passenger vehicle segment. The last quarter was — has been marked by macroeconomic headwinds, including global trade tensions and domestic unrest, which particularly weighed heavily on consumer sentiments. The Liberation Day announcements have shaken the auto industry globally. The Indian auto industry, long protected by high tariff barriers of over 100%, is likely to see a drop-in import duties over a period of time. India remains a bright spot-on global map.
Various ongoing free-trade agreements, discussions are improving the prospects for auto business. With discussions around reducing import duties gaining traction, the Indian auto market could become even more attractive for global brands. As a multi-brand retailer aligned with leading international OEMs, Landmark is well-poised to capitalize on these developments. Landmark is also a large partner for BYD as well as MG Motors, leaders in EV space with clear price and product advantage. Rising EV adaptation in India will clearly benefit landmarks in these — in the times to come.
Global benchmarks show that leading auto retailers in US and China hold between 1.5% to 2% market-share in passenger vehicle space. Compared to this, our current share in PV market is approximately 0.5% by volume and a little more by value, indicating the significant long-term growth potential that lies ahead. With stable macroeconomic backdrop and strategic initiatives, we are well-poised to capitalize on the long-term growth opportunities and aspire to increase our market-share in this growing market. Coming to financial year ’26, the industry is projected to grow in mid-single digit. Our focus remains on significantly outperforming the industrial growth in top-line as well as the bottom-line.
With this, I pass this over to Ariman, who will share his insights.
Aryaman Thakker — Executive Director
Thank you. Our quarter-four FY ’25 performance was satisfactory. Mercedes’ sales were temporarily affected due to a weak customer sentiment driven mainly due to capital market volatility. Because of this, we had to forgo our variable earnings, which impacted on the margins. However, we are seeing it as an aberration and the volumes have returned to their normal growth pace this quarter. The top-end vehicles priced over INR1.5 crores continued to contribute to 25% of the sales volumes and the brand is expecting double-digit growth for the rest of the calendar year.
BYD is having its best year in India so-far and has achieved a sale of over 700 cars in both April as well as May. For context, they sold a total of 3,000 cars in calendar year ’24. The new launches along with the homologation of the EMAX 7 and the Ato 3 is helping to drive this volume growth. Our strategic choice to build a portfolio of multiple OEMs enables us to navigate OEM specific or market-driven fluctuations. Over the full-year, our newly added brands, including BYD, contributed approximately 21% to the total pro-forma sales revenue.
We are hopeful that within a few quarters, the new brand share will increase further. New brands like MG, Kia, Mahindra and Mahindra are shaping up well. We have already become the top three dealers for MG with a 4.5% market-share and growing steadily. With new launches planned across all of these brands, we continue to remain optimistic for their future. Several of our OEM partners have announced price hikes. Kia and Mahindra and Mahindra implemented an approximate 3% price hike from April ’25, while Mercedes-Benz has announced a price hike of up to 1.5% effective June ’25 with another one to follow in September.
This will further solidify our average selling price. On the heavy commercial vehicles front, Ashok Leyland is doing well for us. The volumes are increasing and with the industry expected to go through a replacement cycle, we expect this business to perform over the next few quarters. In our after-sales business, workshops for newly added brands have started contributing to the revenue as per expectation. Workshops for Kia Hyderabad will get operational in-quarter one of FY ’26 and the impact will be felt in subsequent quarters. We are expecting to return to our 10-year growth rate in the aftersales business this year.
One of the key advantages of landmark’s growing scale is our enhanced bargaining power with our vendors. Due to the large-volume of vehicles we service across our network, we were able to renegotiate contracts and secure more favorable rates for high consumption products such as paint, tires, engine oil, etc. We have also negotiated favorable terms with finance and insurance companies. These efficiencies are expected to support improved profitability. This has been made possible due to senior industry people who have been recruited to have a sharp focus on the finance and insurance business.
Our efforts on cost rationalization delivered tangible results over the course of FY ’25. By H2 of FY ’25, we successfully brought down employee cost and other operating expense to approximately 4% and 3.8% of pro-forma revenue — revenue respectively, meeting our sub-4% target. This disciplined approach will continue to guide our cost structure as we scale. We are aiming to further reduce these costs by 10% in the next year. An update on our operations in Punjab. We have exited the state of Punjab by selling our two remaining showrooms and one workshop for the Jeep brand.
This move aligns with our ongoing strategy to consolidate operations where we are not seeing store-level profitability and to drive efficiencies. For the coming months, we can look-forward to a variety of new models from our partner OEMs. MG is gearing up to introduce the new Majester along with the M9 and Cyberster under the MG Select brand. Kia has a recent — has an upcoming launch of the Glavis, which is already getting a very positive response. I will now hand it over to our CFO, Surendra Agarwal, to take us through the financial highlights.
Surendra Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you,. A very good evening, everyone. Allow me to share some key performance Metrics that will represent we have performed in-quarter four FY ’25. Our total pro-forma revenue for the quarter stand at INR1,526 crores as compared to INR1,300 crores in the same quarter of the previous year with a growth of 17.4% on year-on-year basis. Of this, our new car pro-forma sale was around INR1,281 crores across all our OEM partners and the after-sale revenue was booked at INR245 crores. The gross profit for the quarter is INR188 crores with a 17.2% margin on reported revenue as against a gross profit of INR171 crore in Q4 FY ’24. This was disciplined the lower-than-expected sale of Mercedes-Benz on year-on-year basis. Despite the lower-than-expected sale of Mercedes-Men on a year-on-year basis, all the new workshops are yet to reach their full capacity, thus impacting the gross profit margin. The EBITDA stood at INR60.8 crores with 8.14% year-on-year growth. The EBITDA margin was recorded at 5.57% on reported revenue basis. The depreciation stood at INR35.6 crores, reflecting the impact of India 16 for newly-launched outlet. It was marginally — marginally higher than the previous quarter due to operationalization of new incremental outlets. An increase in finance cost was mainly driven by higher inventory on the back of addition of new showroom and capex requirement for recently opened locations. Our profit-after-tax after removing the net impact of India stood at INR5 crores versus INR13 crore in-quarter four FY ’24. Cash PAT for Q4 FY ’25 is INR19 crores. Other notable quarterly operational metrics includes the steady and sustainable rise in the average selling price of new car sales. The average selling price of the car for the quarter has gone up INR20.38 lakhs in the previous quarter to INR21.24 in Q4 FY ’25. The number of service was 89,340 with average revenue per vehicle service at INR27,420. Our new car inventories maintained at under 45 days, lower than the industry average of approximately 50 to 55 days. Now for the corresponding figure for the full-year FY ’25, we achieved total pro-forma revenue of INR5,626 crores in FY ’25 compared to INR4,655 crores in FY ’24, showing a 20.9% year-on-year growth. Our gross profit — profit for FY ’25 was INR710 crores as against INR651 crore in financial year ’24 reported 9% growth on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA for FY ’25 stood at INR235 crores and the corresponding figure of FY ’24 was INR227 crores. Our profit-after-tax after removing the net IndAS impact stood at INR25.8 crores versus INR62.9 crore in previous year. In financial year ’25, we reported approximately INR152 crores net operating cash-flow, our best-performing since listing. I would like to update you that the Board has approved dividend of INR50 pesa per share. In coming times, we are opening nine new outlets, including this, our depreciation for the year is estimated at approximately INR145 crore, including the impact. The final impact may vary depending on outlet size and commencing timeline. With this, I open the floor for Q&A.
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 1 on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles we have the first question from the line of Pritesh Chheda from Lucky. Please go-ahead.
Pritesh Chheda
Yeah, hi. Sir, I could understand the last line that you mentioned about nine new outlets to be opened. So I think until last presentation you were saying that we have taken this 24 outlets one times lucky and we’re going to pause a bit. So if you can go through highlights there. And I have a couple of more questions for me first to take this.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah, Pritesh, there is nothing new over here. We have — we had announced that our Patna would start in June or so. So that is something which will be operationalized in the next maybe 45 days or so, which is already something that we had said that was work-in progress. We announced some weeks back that we are acquiring the workshop, a ready workshop of our competitor in Hyderabad, of Kia. Now that will get operationalized next week or maybe 15 days that’s and our own workshop of Kia, which was — which was the only project that was delayed in this whole 24 outlets that we are talking, that will get operationalized.
So in Patna, the sales and service are counted as two. They are actually not two. It is actually one, but sales and workshop are accounted as two. And the MG select outlets in Ahmedabad, which is also going to be a part of the MG showroom itself, itself where we are carving out the MG showroom are the matter technically counted as different outlets. So there is really not any major expansion or any new outlets that we are doing, which are not reported.
Pritesh Chheda
Okay. So my second question is on the car sales margins. So if you want to highlight some granular details there because our car sales is up, let’s say, on a pro-forma basis by about 20% plus 20%, but when we look at the EBITDA and I’m just doing a rough path ex of the repair EBITDA, the residual limit is obviously the car sales EBITDA. So that doesn’t go up. So what all comes into play there and to Ariman’s observation that you guys have renegotiated the rates on with bar companies and on finance and insurance, which should bring higher-margin. So you may want to quantify what kind of margin expansion on that renegotiation is possible next year? Because these questions split into two-parts, sir.
Sanjay Thakker
I — what was the first question, Pritesh, since you are on the road, I’m not able to hear you there is some road noise coming, so not clearly able to understand.
Pritesh Chheda
So on the car sales, you’re up 20%, but your margins the absolute EBITDA is down and the margin is down. So maybe want to highlight a little bit more granular what went into play here.
Sanjay Thakker
So in new cars, Pritesh, the last quarter especially was one of the few in recent memory where we were unable to meet our Mercedes-Benz targets. Now, as far as our margins are concerned, they comprise of what is known as a fixed margin and what is a variable margin. Now variable margin is an important component of our business. Now for once in, I don’t know, maybe three years or four years that we were not able to — we means I think the entire merceries network or did not meet their targets. The good news is that this is corrected and the numbers are clocking from April onwards. So that is not something that we are so much concerned about.
But that took away approximately 1.5% of our merceries sales margin, which is an important aspect of what we are doing. Also, it is a — the newer brands that we have had play or where we are entering the market, there was some amount of discounting for those brands and we hope to get back to some decent margins in this current year.
Now as far as your second question is concerned, what we have been able to renegotiate, Ariman spoke about with, say, a paint vendor or banks for finance Commission and insurance commission are is a — yeah, is a little better than what we had. On a percentage basis, I would say that our — it would have on the after-sales business, a 0.1 or 0.2 impact on our margins. It’s on a base of maybe INR1,000 crore-plus. We are now of — we will cross INR1,000 crore-plus of after-sales revenue. So that’s what we would kind of hope to get-out of that.
Pritesh Chheda
And the finance and insurance?
Sanjay Thakker
So finance and insurance, again, we have been able to negotiate better commission rates for both of these. I won’t have the number on a percentage basis to answer you maybe later on tomorrow or so.
Pritesh Chheda
Okay. Thank you. And I’ll come back if you have more questions.
Sanjay Thakker
Thank you. Yeah.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lokesh Manik from Capital. Please go-ahead.
Lokesh Manik
Yes, hi, good evening, Sanjesh, sir and the team. My first question
Operator
Sorry to interrupt, but your line seems to be muffled.
Lokesh Manik
Are you? Is this better?
Operator
This is much better, sir. Please proceed.
Lokesh Manik
Yeah. Great, great. Sir, my first question is on the slides in the presentation slide, you said you’ve nicely shown that the — any outlet takes about roughly 13 months from start to maturity profitability. So given that context, in the first-half, we have opened 14 outlets with — so by that logic, can we expect Q3 of this year to have optimum profitability coming in from these 14 outlets, which you have shown in the first-half that you have started? Would that be a fair assessment?
Sanjay Thakker
Yes. I mean, what we have given is a kind of a — it’s not a hardcoded number. This is our experience that in approximately 12 months’ time things turnaround. Our experience for the outlets, which have completed seven outlets, I think we reported — which had completed 12 months and which we moved to what we call the existing or old outlets have turned profitable and we have moved them. So they are of different shapes and sizes. Our Kia outlet will take a little — because the workshops are getting operationalized only next month. So if the outlet that you are talking about includes a Kia outlet, it will be — it won’t happen, but generally, the answer is yes.
Lokesh Manik
Understood. And sir, by when — so we have also seen a drop-in our gross margins for this FY ’25, which was about, 18% 19% has come down to 16.5%. So do you envisage reaching 19%, 18%, 19% gross margin in FY ’26? That was my second question.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah, yeah. So the reason for this drop-in margin, which Surendra explained a little in his talk so is because of the after-sales mix for new brands is still around 9% approximately of the total turnover for the new brands and that will obviously increase. Kia workshops will get added as the business of Mahindra and MG after-sales will also increase. For a reference point, for existing brands, this number is around 17%. So the gross margin of after-sales business, as you know, is around 40%. So we are — every kind of a percentage added onto that mix in the newer brands will increase the gross margin. So we are hoping to get back to that pace in this year.
Lokesh Manik
Sir. Last question, sir, if I squeeze one in. Today, there was an article that Chinese companies are restricting supply of magnets, which is expected to impact Indian car productions. In that scenario, would that be an advantages? How do you see it as an advantage or a disadvantage — advantage in the sense you won’t have to give any discounts to dispose of your inventory or sell your car? A disadvantage there may be a shortage of supply. So how do you see this, your outlook on that?
Sanjay Thakker
So, yeah, Lokesh, it’s difficult to say. I also read this article as you did in the papers today. I — my initial reaction was in fact positive. And in fact, on our group of our core team members, I wrote this message saying that please show this to the customers so the decision-making becomes faster, we can also reduce our inventory. So I don’t see this problem. I mean, I really don’t know this subject as well, but in the short-term, this would be positive, it should be good to clean-up the book — the inventory.
Lokesh Manik
Great, sir. That’s it from my side. Thank you so much.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask questions, you may please press star and 1. Our next question is from the line of Abhisar Jain from Monarch AIF. Please go-ahead.
Abhisar Jain
Hi, sir, good evening.
Sanjay Thakker
Good evening, sir.
Abhisar Jain
Yeah, hi. Sir, my question is on Slide number 17 where you have shown the breakup between the existing outlets and new outlets in terms of the key metrics, how they did for Q4 as well as for full-year FY ’25. So, sir, two-part question on this. One is that out-of-the 17 outlets that we are qualifying still as new, which has given a negative INR40 crore PBT for us in FY ’25. How is the traction coming up because some of them would be three months old, some of them would be six, nine months old. So out of these 17, how many do you see turning PBT breakeven within the next six months?
And the second part of the question is this INR40 crore negative PBT number, do you have any internal target or estimate that how much it should be for FY ’26, how much lower it should be?
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah. So Abhisa, the answer is that, yes, this number — but just to put the number of approximately INR40 crores in perspective, it includes a lot of rent and salaries that we had to pay before we started the operations since we cannot capitalize this. So the internal target is to basically have no store at a loss by end of this
Operator
Excuse me, sir, your audio is not coming through. Ladies and gentlemen, the line for the management seems to have disconnected. Please stay with us while we reconnect with the management ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your patience. We have reconnected with the management. Sir, you may proceed.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah,, sorry, my line got disconnected somehow. Yes. Hello. Yeah. Our line got disconnected. So what I was saying is that our loss actually was because of the front-loading of expenses before we started the operations. So these are in any case not operating losses in any case, which will never — such quantum cannot happen. The answer to your second thing is that we are hoping that only a few outlets remain non-profitable at worst by the end-of-the six months period that you kind of mentioned and all come into a breakeven or a profitable zone.
So sir, in that context, for the full-year number, including the eight, nine new outlets that will come in and I understand that not all of them are particularly big or brand-new outlets. They are you know the adjustments that you mentioned earlier in the call, but for the whole, for the new outlets, what kind of negative PBT number we should pencil in as a range, if not exactly.
Unidentified Speaker
So for — yeah, that’s a fair question. We
Unidentified Speaker
— see, let’s look at what we are going to be opening out of that. We are opening Kia workshops. Now I don’t see any way the Kia workshops will make a loss. In fact, they will be profitable. We are talking about the MG Select brand where we have a situation where the entire sales has been sold. I don’t know whether we mentioned that on the call. Right now from what it appears is that the small volume of cars, which is going to be coming in is all already sold-out before the cars are launched, the as well as the M9. So I don’t think that they will be loss-making. Again, they should also be profitable businesses only.
That leaves us with the Mercedes-Benz Patna operations. Our next Mercedes-Benz business has been good. I — Patna is a unchartered territory for luxury cars. We will wait to see how it happens, but it is not a very heavy cost operation generally.
Abhisar Jain
Yeah. Okay, sir, understood. Sir, second question is on BYD. As mentioned that the sales for BYD picked-up in India in April and May, right? So just wanted to understand that any specific reason for this pickup because the PV industry as such still continues to be slow and has some limit increased for BYD to be able to sell more number of cars this calendar year in India is — do you have any estimate from them or your own channel checks?
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah. So the thing which has happened,, is that their home location has happened for two of the four models that we are selling currently, which is the EMAX 7 and the Ato 3. Now what it means is that the limit 2,500 unit limit, which is applicable generally doesn’t apply to these two models. So the supply becomes infinite theoretically. Right. So that’s what has happened and we are seeing traction in those models, which are now supplied without any limit.
Abhisar Jain
Yeah, but, there was earlier issues of also clearance at the custom level for all these units for all these cars and other issues also were the volumes despite the.
Sanjay Thakker
The cars are classified as CBUs and duty has been paid as per CBU. They are not trying to get any duty concessions. They are paying full duty and paying the — paying it and selling it here.
Abhisar Jain
Yeah. So sir, BYD volumes, is there any outlook for this year for their whole? And are we able to maintain 20% market-share in even the higher volumes? Give or take it?
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah more or less, maybe if not 20 then 17 18 kind of a thing. Every — because it’s a small volume, a little five, seven cars will change the percentage. But the — if this space continues, then their volume could be in the region of anywhere between 7,000 to 9,000 cars for the year. All-India
Abhisar Jain
Understood. Sir, that’s the last question. What would be the total rental expense for all the outlets that we have in-place for full-year now in FY ’25 or for this 130, 132 outlets. He has a computer open, let’s use him.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah. Hold-on, sir. For the next full-year. No. Currently what is FY ’25 and then FY ’26 also, we won’t bring them without.
Surendra Agarwal
So last year, it was around INR100 crore and the next year it will be around INR110 crore. This is what I’m telling without indest thing.
Sanjay Thakker
Right, right. Just the rental that we have to pay to the landowner, right? Yeah.
Abhisar Jain
Yeah, understood. Okay, sir. Thank you so much and best wishes for a better FY ’26.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lokesh Manik from Capital. Before you ask your question, let me remind participants that they may press star and one to ask a question. Lukesh, you may go-ahead.
Lokesh Manik
Yeah, hi. Thank you sir, for the opportunity again. Sir, my I just needed a clarification that these 25 outlets that we have opened in the financial year ’25, are they operational or they are expected to be operational now going-forward? And if so, then when do you expect complete operationalization of all these others?
Sanjay Thakker
They are operational. They are all-around — when we have said operational, that means that they are operational, not like a ready to start business, but in business.
Lokesh Manik
Okay. Okay. And another one, Surendra sir just gave a number for INR100 crores rental expense. This is for new outlets. Just a clarification.
Surendra Agarwal
Total company, total company.
Lokesh Manik
Okay, okay. Total company-level, it is INR100 crores.
Surendra Agarwal
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Lokesh Manik
Okay. Okay. That’s it from my side, sir. Thank you again so much.
Sanjay Thakker
Okay.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Saby Sachi Mukherjee from Bajaj Asset Management. Please go-ahead.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
Yeah, hi, thanks for the opportunity. Sanjaji. Few questions here. First one on the — again on the gross margins. Now if I look at the car sales gross margins, you mentioned that this quarter Mercedes Ben’s sales were not that great missed the target for the first time, not only you, but Mercedes as a whole. And the second thing probably you mentioned that the other brands had some discounting. Now I had this opinion or maybe I don’t know, I remember discussing with you that whenever a brand gives discounts, I thought we don’t have to bear that. But apparently, you know we had to bear some portion of it in this quarter. Can you clarify that?
Sanjay Thakker
In the markets that we are getting into, we need to make our presence filled. The new brands where we were new entrants into the markets with the brands, we had to kind of get the customer buying of for our brands. Now the discounting is completely out-of-the window as far as Mercedes-Benz is concerned, because that is all-India one price. Now by definition, if the discounts can happen, the discount is also passed on by the manufacturer as consumer offers. But for new entrants where we don’t have exclusivities and just to remind you, we have exclusivity for many — most brands are for many geographies. There we don’t have this kind of a pressure, but in newer brands and newer geographies may come up this kind of entry-level strategy we need to play.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
Okay. Sanjaji, again, again a clarification here. Let’s say in Hyderabad, we have M&M, we have Kia outlets, right? So — and there are — I believe there are other franchises who have the outlets of these brands. You mean to say that for us as a new entrant in this market, we had to give extra discount to attract customers over and above what the brand is giving.
Sanjay Thakker
So that is — that is correct to say, but that Sachi is generally given by dealers give a part of their margins by way of discounts as a nature of the business, it is just that because we have a geographical exclusivity, our margins are protected in those regions because we don’t have a competing quote that comes in. But to answer your question in a — I mean if it was a Hyderabad, yes, we need to give a little bit of margin away from our little bit of discount away from our margins to attract customers and popularize our new showroom.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
And the same thing I believe happened in West Bengal as well.
Sanjay Thakker
Theoretically, I’m just giving you a answer, not specifically getting market-by-market, but yes, yes, yes.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
And to your opinion, how long we have to do this?
Sanjay Thakker
Not for long. So what happens is that the similar thing had happened, say, in MG Motors when we had started where which was of the three new brands that we had started, it was the first of the block. So what you — we are seeing is that there we are able to roll-back those discounts once we have established ourselves in the market. So this is an initial burst of maybe six months or so where our people get accustomed, the customers also start talking about us and all that.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
Sanjay jeep, I mean, I hope you understand where I’m coming from. Pritesh, first question, I think Pritesh asked that our pro-forma revenue Grew by 20% and our — this is new car sales, I’m saying and the EBITDA has declined by 44% is half Y-o-Y. I’m not sure. I mean this is — this is extremely disappointing to the core. I’m —
Sanjay Thakker
If we can actually do the math, Sabya Sachi, maybe in the next one or two days, if you want, we are not really that alarmed by this situation. The new brands and what is the impact we have also given on our presentation slide, what is the breakup of how — what brands give, how much contribution to our business. And we have also given the breakup of new and old brands. So if you look at it, this is — and in the market which was really soft in January and February, this we think is something that is — we I think steered the ship quite okay.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
Okay. Again, a follow-up on the other expenses line-item in the P&L, I see it has increased quarter-on-quarter from INR59 crores-odd in 3rd-quarter to INR63 crores, 62.5 crores in this quarter. I thought you know, since majority of the store openings, outright openings have been done with Q2, Q2 and Q3, I believe Q4 would have been similar to what we had incurred in Q3, but still there is a jump from Q3 levels. What exactly happened last year?
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah. So surely. So if you will see the trajectory of our other costs as a percentage of turnover, so what we had kind of said we — and this was what we said 3/4 back where we stuck our neck out and said that our other costs will go down below 4%. And that has gone below 4% and we are again guiding that it will go down further in the current year-by approximately 10% further. Now there are costs which are incurred which in our business, we can’t really look at it on an absolute quarter-on-quarter basis. I’ll give you an example, like Mercedes Golf tournament is held in this quarter. It is just held in this quarter every year. So I’m giving you a very basic example. We have some drive events which are very high-end and costly. They are done once in a year. So if you look at it, our business in a yearly basis, it will help because that’s how the nature is somehow.
Yeah. So it is mainly advertisement expenses that we have incurred that are small, small items, but the major chunk is those large-scale events that we do during this period.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
Okay. Got it. On an overall basis, FY ’26, if you can help us with probably what could be the total other expenses and employee cost, that would be helpful.
Sanjay Thakker
So the guidance, see, we had kind of — we are already below the 4% threshold of — in both of it. We have given a half yearly breakup also for the other costs as well as and the manpower cost. And we are saying that we are as of now internally looking at 10% reduction in both as a percentage of turnover.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
So 10% from the absolute value of FY ’25 or is it like 4%?
Sanjay Thakker
No. As a percentage of total, like if it is a 4%, then it’s a 0.4% reduction and it will become a 3.6%.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
3.6% typically.
Surendra Agarwal
Yes. Yes, that’s what he is trying to.
Sabyasachi Mukerji
Understood. Understood. Yeah, yeah. Got it. Yeah, that’s all from my side. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Briaj Kaswan from RRR Investments. Please go-ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello, sir. So my first question would be that like this year, we’ve seen that most of our margins have been affected in the business, like the material cost has been high because of discounting or variable margin yet going, the employee cost has been higher than 2023 and 2022 numbers, it has been lower than FY ’24. Yes, but — and it’s because of upfronting of cost for the new outlets and also the expenses cost has been higher. And then if you go beyond EBITDA, we also see that the depreciation and interest cost as a percentage of revenue has gone up. So if we are seeing that all these five major components of our balance sheet, of our income statement all have gone up and our EBITDA margins have eroded to 5%. The management’s guidance for long-term PAT margin has been around 2% to 3%. So how are we looking to like go up to that for the next year and after next year, what are our projections for the margins?
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah. So I think the important aspect that we haven’t yet discussed on this call is the upfronting of the depreciation because of also. As the retail outlets open, the — this the depreciation is higher in the initial years and then they start going down. So the good news is that the — once the business gets mature and starts delivering, at that time simultaneously, the depreciation will also start coming down. Now the component of after-sales, and this is something which I had mentioned earlier, for new business, for gross margin to kick-in, we need after-sales business, which is a 40% gross margin business. For older brands, that is 17% of the turnover of those brands. For newer brands, it is 9% currently.
Now this 9% will keep on-going up and it will reach at 1.15%, 16%, 17% in the times to come. Now once that happens, the stable state margins will be reflected. The good news and I’m also drawing this from Pritesh’s question, are we on a continuous type of a treadmill that new outlets keep on opening and this margin is under pressure? No, we did what we had to do as a one-time kind of a blood transfusion kind of a thing where we added three brands where we wanted to have the turnover back-in. You rightly said that we are a percentage of the turnover. First, get the turnover in.
Now we have solved the first issue and clearly, we are also guiding that our — we will significantly outperform the industry growth this year. Now once the turnover comes, everything else one-by-one starts falling in-line. The EBITDA will fall in-line, the gross margins will fall in-line. Line and the PAT will fall in-line and depreciation over a period of time will taper down.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that answer. And one more thing about our business model that I had a bit of concern of was that we had opened a lot of outlets this year a lot since the past two years and most of them were through acquisitions, I think. And the problem with this is that if we are going to expand a lot in the future, open a lot of outlets, do a lot of sales, the most — the key is the higher of them already will have a lot of outlets of our brands. So like is the expansion going to be acquisition from now on or how will that work?
Sanjay Thakker
Our expansions out of this 24 outlets that we are talking about is not that high. It could be — my sense is three or four locations out of 24 were acquired, really not that many. And if they were acquisitions, then we would have hit the ground running. Now we look at build versus buy kind of a scenario. Yeah, the number is around 78, eight out of 24 were acquired out in this period. So wherever the acquisitions have happened, those have hit the ground running and many of them are already profitable. But the point is that the — whatever we start greenfield takes a little bit time to ramp-up. It is cheaper, but it takes a little time to ramp-up around a year for it to kind of come to the decent level.
So over a period of time, we don’t have a strategy that is defined, but today around 25% of what we are — we have done acquisitions out — I’m talking about the 130 odd outlets that we have.
Unidentified Participant
Yes, sir. But the concern is that going-forward, if we are going to greenfield even 50% — 75% of the outlets, but that will be much difficult because most if we are going to put an MG outlet or a Kia outlet or any of the others, most of the top where cars are sold, most of those markets will already
Unidentified Participant
Have a and
Sanjay Thakker
I agree with you. I agree with you. That is why it — what has happened is that once we have — I’ll give you an example of what happened in Kia in Hyderabad. As soon as we started our greenfield, we were able to acquire our competing dealers showroom as well as workshop in like six months’ time. So this is the strategy that we follow that first get into a geography, first get into a brand and then try to eliminate the local level competition.
Unidentified Participant
That that’s nice. But that’s also I was getting out that after this, like if we are going to expand our business in the segment, the markets in India is already there. That’s why we are doing the greenfield in, but now, but the highest-selling margin is, the high per-capita income cities in the country will already have a Mercedes outlet, right? That is so, but then like that there will be additional outlets because this business will be a viable for every entrant like Bombay, there are two dealers of Mercedes-Benz, Delhi, there are three dealers of Mercedes-Benz. So once the volume goes up, there will be a space for third or a fourth. That doesn’t matter once the market expands. It is not that the first guy only does the business.
Unidentified Speaker
Yes, I’m coming to that like most —
Operator
Sorry to interrupt, sir. We request you to please rejoin the queue for follow-up questions. Thank you.
Unidentified Participant
Just last. Okay. Thank you so much.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Pritesh Cheda from Lucky Investments. Please go-ahead. Pritesh, your line has been unmuted. You may proceed with your question.
Pritesh Chheda
Can you hear me?
Operator
Yeah. You are audible now.
Pritesh Chheda
Yes. Yeah. Sorry. So sir, can you tell me the number of cars sold-in total in FY ’25 and number of cars sold-in FY ’24? And then this DYD number that you mentioned of 700 cars. So for the month of April and May, so now basically it’s the same run-rate at least for this volume kind of volume for the year or how should we look at it? Pritesh, just to clarify that 700 BYD cars is not what we sold, that is the sale of BYD in India.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah, yeah. So just as a clarification, I’m saying and so we are — we believe that the demand is fine. The supply needs to be consistent. We have had some past experiences where some consignments and somebody I think Abhisar mentioned, things look okay as of now. But with import model, there is always a disruption of possibility. So difficult to stick my neck out and say that this will happen. As of now, things look good in the month of April and May and these are published figures that I’m not talking to you about like registrations, All India and all, which is showing a 700, INR800 range sale-in these two months.
Pritesh Chheda
No problem. And how much cars did we sell-in total across all the brands in FY ’25 and versus FY ’24?
Sanjay Thakker
Pritesh, we had stopped reporting that sometime back-in mind. No problem. No, no problem, sir. Yeah. And my last question is this new product sales margin that we were discussing. So you mentioned that Mercedes incentives was not available this year. So would you like to quantify this quarter, this quarter, this quarter, quarter
Pritesh Chheda
Only this quarter. So can you quantify the absolute mercedes incentive this year and absolute Mercedes incentive last year? Is it possible to quantify that or you’ll check —
Sanjay Thakker
We’ll have to check — check that, but it says on this call, let us avoid it right now.
Pritesh Chheda
No problems. Thank you very much and all the best, thank you.
Sanjay Thakker
Yeah, thank you. T
Operator
Hank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Sanjay Thakker
Thank you. Yeah. So thank you all. Sorry for the glitch in-between that we had. So we are cautiously optimistic and we are looking-forward to this being a year where we actually turn things around and many of the questions that you have had get answered by themselves when the numbers get published a few quarters from now. I believe that every quarter is going to be the better quarter and our expansion is behind us. So we are also as a team are looking-forward to execution and getting the profitability, which has been the only reason why we have been doing business. And the free-trade agreement that we have been talking about, let us hope that we see clarity on that and some new doors open up for us, which will change the trajectory of our business. So these are my comments as the ending comments. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. On behalf of Monarch Networth Capital Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines