Linc Ltd (NSE: LINC) Q3 2026 Earnings Call dated Feb. 12, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Navin Agrawal — Head Institutional Equity
Rohit Deepak Jalan — Director
N.K. Dujari — , Director Finance
Analysts:
Rakesh Wadhwani — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Link Limited’s Q3FY26 earnings conference call. 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 call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Naveen Agrawal Head Institutional Equity and XKP Securities Ltd. Thank you. And over to Mr. Agrawal.
Navin Agrawal — Head Institutional Equity
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It’s my pleasure to welcome you on behalf of Link Limited and SKP Security. To this financial results conference call. We have with us Mr. Rohit Deepak Jalan, Director, Mr. N.K. dujari, Director of Finance and CFO and Mr. Sangeet Sanchetty from Uterus Advisors LLP. The company’s IR advisors. We’ll have the opening remarks by the. Management followed by Q and a session. Thank you. And over to you, Mr. Jalal. Thank you.
Unidentified Speaker
Yeah, you can continue.
Rohit Deepak Jalan — Director
Thank you. Thank you, Naveen. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us For Link Limited’s quarter three FY26 investor calls. The third quarter of this year played out in a mixed operating environment marked by modest top line growth and continued margin pressures. Operating income for the quarter stood at 129 crores. 129.29 crores. Registering a year on year growth of 5.8% over the last few quarters. Our growth has been measured rather than aggressive, but this has been a conscious choice. Our focus has been on strengthening the product portfolio and building long term growth drivers rather than chasing short term expansion.
Encouragingly, several new products launched recently are witnessing positive early traction and we expect their contribution to scale up progressively as distribution expands. Our innovation pipeline remains active and we continue to invest in brand relevance, distribution reach and category expansion which we believe will support sustainable growth over over the medium term. On the strategic front, our international initiatives and joint ventures are progressing steadily and are at various stages of maturity. The joint venture with Mitsubishi Pencil Co. Japan remains operationally stable and the recently launched product has received an encouraging response from the market. Joint venture with our Turkish partner operations have commenced and remain stable with a gradual transition towards automation, the order book for 2026 looks quite promising.
Subsidiary with Morris Korea this venture remains linked to our upcoming Bengal manufacturing facility which is slightly behind schedule and is now expected to become operational by quarter one of FY27 Kenya subsidiary the sales momentum has begun to pick up and we expect this positive trend to strengthen further in the coming periods. Lynkon subsidiary business operations have commenced and this venture is expected to gain more meaningful traction from the coming financial year. The joint ventures continue to remain in the investment phase, although we are encouraged by the fact that losses have moderated as initial scale up and market development costs begin to stabilize.
While the ramp up across certain initiatives has taken longer than initially anticipated, we believe the foundation being laid is both deliberate and necessary. The benefits of an improved product mix, operational efficiencies and strategic partnerships are expected to become more visible as volumes, scale and investments mature. In summary, despite near term pressures, we remain confident in the long term value creation potential of our strategy and believe that the steps taken over the past few quarters position Link limited for stronger and more sustainable performance going forward. With that I will now hand over to Mr. Dujari for the financial update.
N.K. Dujari — , Director Finance
I appreciate Your presence at Q3FY26 earning call of Linked Ltd. In Q3FY26 our operating income stood at 129.29 crores marking a 5.8% YoY growth. Operating EBITDA for quarter three FY26 stood at 12.9 crore with a margin of 10%. Operating performance was impacted by a one time increase in employee benefit expenses arising from recent changes in labor regulation. Excluding this non recurring impact, operating EBITDA margin would have been approximately 10.7%. PAD for the quarter stood at 6.77 crore translating into a margin of 5.2% representing a year on year contraction of around 191 basis point. This was primarily due to lower operating margin and losses from joint venture amounting to 83 lakhs.
During the quarter we generated 33.81 crores of cash flow from operations and closed the period with a net free cash position of 10.14 crores reflecting continued financial discipline. Asset productivity remained healthy and fixed as a turnover at 4.05x indicating efficient utilization of asset base. The cash conversion cycle improved from 63 days in FY25 to 61 days as of 31st December 2025. With that now I open the floor for question and answers.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We now begin with the question and answer session. Each participant is requested to limit himself or herself to a maximum of two questions. Time permitting, we shall reward for any further questions that you may have that remain unanswered. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchdown telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may Press Star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question reassembles. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask the question. The first question is from the line of Rakesh from 9 diverse capital. Please go ahead.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Hi team. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, there is a slight change in the PPP this time compared to the past. So it will be great if you can help me with a few data points. So first of all, what was the total volume of the pens for this quarter?
N.K. Dujari
Volume for the quarter was 16.4 crores.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Okay. 16.4 crores. Okay. So that. Just a second. That is. And for the pantonic plant.
N.K. Dujari
Pantonic. The volume was around 6.5. So.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Sir, so volume growth compared to last year is 20%.
N.K. Dujari
Yeah. For writing instrument there’s a volume growth.
Rakesh Wadhwani
But is it 20%? Because last time it was given 136.7 billion. Now.
N.K. Dujari
That region only. 4%.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Any reason for that?
N.K. Dujari
Because of the change in the product mix.
Rakesh Wadhwani
And so. So realization would have come down drastically. Okay. So what will be the realization for this quarter?
N.K. Dujari
Link will be around 5 rupees.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Okay.
N.K. Dujari
Will be the same.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Okay. So. Okay. So earlier last quarter it was 6.6.3. Now it has come to 5. So the reason is it because of the competition? New competition coming in the market in the same price range that has led to a decline in the asp.
N.K. Dujari
So there. There is not. That is not the reason. I believe the reason is because of the change in the product mix. We have launched few product. We have focused on the below 5 rupees segment. Also there is no price. The decrease which we have taken there is a change in the composition of.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Okay. Okay. In the total business. What will be the revenue share from the export for the quarter?
N.K. Dujari
Export here is more or less same. There is no major change. It is to 20%. Around 20%.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Okay. 20% of the revenue has come from export. Just wanted to ask you one question. We. In the. From the last two quarter we are talking about increase in business on the export. But I don’t think it is like increasing because if you see last two, three years, the revenue from the export is around 100 crore. And this, if I look at the current run rate also it will be. Around 100 crore only for this year. Any reason for export slowdown?
N.K. Dujari
I think Rohit will take this question. I request Rohit to take this question. But more or less I can tell you this much, that there has been growth in market in certain markets. But overall figure has not, you are right, overall figure has not gone up. But within that figure we had very good performance from few of the geographies. Rohit, can you take this question?
Rohit Deepak Jalan
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there has been, you know, uncertainty in certain markets. And, and that was, you know, slightly the reason. But if we look at, you know, our exports to, you know, East Africa, basically that has, you know, dropped because of the Kenya subsidiary. And from the Kenya subsidiary, you know, there has been encouraging response for exports in that region. Okay, that is the only reason. Yeah. And like I said, you know, uncertainty. So we’ve opened, you know, quite a few markets and we are of course in the very initial stages of, you know, partnership.
So you know, in export markets it takes, you know, slightly, you know, longer to build and develop those markets because the feet on street, the sales team are purely, purely, you know, at our distributors, you know, disposal. Okay, that was helpful with respect to the new products that we have launched. Like markers. Markers, anything. What is the house, I respond and what is the revenue from those products? So the response from, you know, the MAPA category has been, you know, encouraging. We have actually not yet launched across, you know, the country. And we are there in two or three zones out of the five domestic zones. The shares, exact share of marker category, I don’t have it, you know, handy, but we can get back to you with this number.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Okay. And the reason for not launching the Pan India product is because of the manufacturing issue or manufacturing, not manufacturing or is it because you want to go slow one by one reason? So actually, you know, we, with every investment we make, you know, there is a capacity, right. If we, if we launch, you know, Pan India and if we feel that, you know, the capacity we have right now is not, you know, enough for the entire, you know, country.
So that’s why we are gradually, you know, scaling up our capacity and also we are opening new markets as we move forward. Okay, one last question from my side. Looking into the average realization coming down in the, in the linked brand. So the margins have been impacted there. If we adjust one time index, they around or 7 point or 10.7 to 11. So can we say these margins will be maintained or there will be under. Further pressure on these ones?
Rohit Deepak Jalan
So since we started, you know, you know, in the mass price segment we had created some space and we had started focusing on the 10 rupee and the above price segments. So we realized that it is a big chunk of the market size and we’ve introduced few products at the 5 rupee MRP price segment and with increasing numbers in that price segment, of course the ASP is expected to, you know, drop slightly. However, with, you know, balanced approach and since our future strategy, you know, is highly towards higher price segments. So over a period of time with the balance it should, it should improve. Okay, that was from my side. Thank you very much and all the rest.
Rakesh Wadhwani
Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Participants, you may press star N1 to ask the question. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star N1 to ask the question. We will wait for a few moments before handing over the call to Mr. Buzari for his closing remarks. A reminder to all the participants, you may press Star in one to ask the question. As there are no more questions, I’ll now hand the conference over to Mr. Bijari for closing comments.
N.K. Dujari
Thank you everyone for joining the investor call of Link limited. We received feature with some. We hope to get some better performance in future quarters. Thank you.
operator
Thank you very much.
Rohit Deepak Jalan
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Thank you on behalf of STP securities limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.