Mrs. Bectors Food Specialities Ltd Q1 FY23 Earnings Conference Call Insights

Key highlights from Mrs. Bectors Food Specialities Ltd (BECTORFOOD) Q1 FY23 Earnings Concall

Management Update:

• BECTORFOOD said that its new production line of biscuits at Rajpura plant has started commercial production in July 2022, which has an installed capacity of 12,000 tonnes per annum.

• BECTORFOOD saw growth in both volumes and realization. However continued to experience pressure on raw material prices. And the company added that it took price increases to mitigate these pressures.

Q&A Highlights:

• Percy Panthaki from IIFL asked about the growth of domestic biscuits business YonY and on a 3 year CAGR basis. Anoop Bector MD replied that domestic biscuit has grown well in high teens over last year as well as over the same quarter last year.

•  Percy Panthaki of IIFL also asked about GM being flat YonY with input cost increasing. Manu Talwar CEO answered that the company did some GM improvement in first 6-8 months of ’21- ’22 and post that GM got hit and saw a dip of 1% vs. 2Q.

• Percy Panthaki of IIFL enquired about big inflation in other expenses. Anoop Bector MD answered that it was due to fuel prices going up that had an impact of 1%. Second impact was due to freight and forwarding going up. Additionally in 1Q22, with COVID second wave, travel was almost zero and mix of exports being higher.

• Amit Purohit of Elara Capital asked about bakery side, if the company expects a sequential ramping up of business from here on as things are opening up.  Anoop Bector MD said that on the bakery side, the company is targeting strong double digit growth of about 20% for the medium term and continues to hold firm on it.

• Amit Purohit of Elara Capital enquired if the other expense going higher was due to entry into new markets. Manu Talwar CEO replied that in domestic side, the new market launches has been very small that were in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune. The majority of domestic growth is from existing markets.

• Amit Purohit of Elara Capital asked about the margins for full year. Manu Talwar CEO replied that the company is seeing a softening of material prices, which will start reflecting in margin improvement over next few quarters. The aspiration continues to be reaching 13-14% EBITDA margin.

• Sonal Minhas with Prescient Capital asked what part of price rise is still pending to catch up with rise in RM prices and the timeframe. Manu Talwar CEO said that as company it is through with large part of the price rise. One price rise came in mid of 1Q23. Going forward the company is looking at price increases but it will take some time.