ORIENT BELL LIMITED (NSE: ORIENTBELL) Q3 2026 Earnings Call dated Jan. 27, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Aditya Gupta — Chief Executive Officer
Anuj Arora — Chief Financial Officer
Suyash Samant — Investor Relations
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Resha Mehta — Analyst
Ashvath Rajan — Analyst
Rohit Suresh — Analyst
Karan Bhatelia — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Orient Bell Limited Q3 and 9M FY26 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants line will be in listen only mode. 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 touchstone phone. Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand over the conference call to Mr. Suyash Samant from Stellar IR Advisor. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Suyash Samant — Investor Relations
Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us today. We have with us today the senior management of Orion Bell Ltd. Mr. Aditya Gupta, Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Anuj Arora, Chief Financial Officer who will represent Orient Bell Limited. On the call the management will be sharing the key operating and financial highlights for the quarter and nine months ended 31 December 2025 followed by a question and answer session. Please note this call may contain some of the forward looking statements which are completely based upon the company’s beliefs, opinions and expectations. As of today, these statements are not a guarantee of the company’s future performance and and involve unforeseen risk and uncertainties.
The company also undertakes no obligation to update any forward looking statements to reflect developments that occur after the statement is made. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Aditya Gupta. Sir. Thank you. And over to you Sir.
Aditya Gupta — Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to our quarter three FY26 earnings call. Through quarter three we have continued to focus on demand generation for dealers, product teamization, brand awareness and digitizing approaches. This has helped us to consolidate our momentum. Early stage products like cement and steel did well in quarter two and are expected to perform strongly in quarter three. Also. This is good news for us as it increases the project pipeline for tiling. Another green shoot has been industry Exports data in November 25 suggests that for eight months FY26 exports are estimated to grow by 8% over last year.
This should help by diverting capacities from domestic to international markets. We expect a positive waterfall effect for the tire industry from these developments and are optimistic that our initiatives on product and market working will help drive growth for OBL in calendar year year 2026 more so as not much new capacity will be added through 2026. We at ODL are seeing positive traction and engagement with consumers especially digital tools usage, B2B buyers and dealers. The company’s focus on demand generation has started resonating with our business partners who are finding it easier and more convenient to do business with us.
On the revenue front, quarter three top line has increased by three and a half 3.4% over last year. For the nine month period these figures are 474 crores up 1.1% from last year. 61% of our sales come today comes from vitrified segment which is higher than what it was previously. While GVT alone contributes 44% of our sales during Q3 branding activities and TV has continued. We have been on TV consistently for the last 3 quarters with Indy, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi and Indie channels. This is helping drive brand awareness. Overall, we see momentum building up for the industry and are confident of participating in this.
With this I would like to hand over to our CFO Mr. Anuj Arora to take this quarterly update forward.
Anuj Arora — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, thank you Anita Industry growth has remained muted over the past few quarters. In this environment, the company adopted a deliberate and disciplined strategy focused on primarization of products, strengthening core operations, optimizing cost, improving profitability and preparing the platform for the next phase of growth. We are now seeing clear signs that these initiatives are delivering results. A sharp focus on operational efficiency has led to a 4.5% reduction in the manufacturing cost on a life or like basis. After normalizing for product mix and energy prices, the gross margins continue to rank among the strongest in the industry, consistency sustaining levels between mid to high 30s.
While some of those savings were passed on to the customer, but a part was retained to ensure continued margin expansion, ensuring profitable and resilient growth. On a consolidated basis, Q3FY26 EBITDA increased by a robust 35% year on year to 10.8 crores. Profit before tax rose to 4.7 crores compared to 1.4 crores in Q3FY25. For the nine months ended FY26 EBITDA stood at 26.1 crores marking a 25% increase. Year on year basis, PBT improved significantly to 8 crores from 0.2 crores in the corresponding period last year, highlighting the strength and sustainability of the company’s earning recovery.
From the balance sheet perspective, the company continues to demonstrate strong financial discipline. The working capital cycle remains healthy at 31 days in line with December 24 levels. Importantly, the company is now virtually debt free on a net basis with a net debt of just 0.1 crores. This reflects a strong liquidity position, robust cash flow and effective working capital management, providing significant financial flexibility to Support future growth and value creation. With this, I would request moderator to open the floor for Q and 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, you press star and one on your 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. The first question is from the line of Resha Mehta from Green Edge Wealth. Please go ahead.
Resha Mehta
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you. Just wanted your, you know, thoughts and opinion on, you know, the export market. So you did call out that, you know, we are anticipating a 8% growth in the export market. However, if we see, you know, China has been setting up its factories in Garus and you know, Africa, which has been eating into our Indian exports. So you know, just wanted your comments there.
Aditya Gupta
So the current data that from different analysts, different sources that I see is yes, there is a recovery as compared to 25, though not. At the 24 levels. Also one more change which is anticipated from 1st of April is that there were some export benefits which Chinese government used to pass on to the exporters. Likely some of Those incentives effective 1st of April will not be there. So this should further help the Indian domestic market compete better with the Chinese player. So hopefully, if so still that complete clarity is not there. But if this works out, then probably this will be a further boost for Indian exports.
Resha Mehta
And what do you think, you know, will, will it take for, you know, demand to kind of come back in the domestic Indian market? So what is of course if exports pick up then, you know, it is beneficial for players like us. Second, how you know, so how, how is, you know, the construction activity, etc, how do you all see that picking up and you know, demand coming from there?
Aditya Gupta
So I think the domestic market, the first indication is how cement and steel. Have been performing now. Now this quarter two was good, quarter three is also expected to be good. And these are the initial stages of construction which basically implies that down the line when the finishing stage comes, there will be a robust demand for tanks. So that is another factor which we feel will help drive momentum. And interest rates are down, they are flat for housing. And also I think that should adjust. Excuse me, that should also spell demand. We have mentioned in the past that, you know, dealers have been downstocking for something. I think that trend is now coming to an end because dealer level, stock levels are down quite a lot from Say the last one to two years. And I think this should also stop being a factor for the industry going forward.
Resha Mehta
Do you see there is some gap between primary and secondary growth?
Aditya Gupta
See unfortunately for Vishnu, we do not get, you know, reliable secondary sales figures at an industry level. It is a very primary led industry and dealers are usually not comfortable sharing any data on secondary sales. So I think but as I said earlier, I think they are now at par because there was a time when lot of when dealers were overstocked. I think over the last one and a half, two years they have bought down their stocks to a level that they are comfortable with. So going forward I think primary and secondary should be in tandem and just.
Resha Mehta
The last follow up. So you know, you said cement and steel demand, you know, our lead indicators. So typically what is the time lag, you know, that we see, you know, for tile demand to come back in line with cement and steel?
Aditya Gupta
I think it would take say 3, 4/4 for it to start playing up. So I think middle of this calendar year and it will progressively keep improving quarter on quarter. But I think the full impact should start coming in in the second half of this calendar year.
Resha Mehta
All work. Thank you so much.
Aditya Gupta
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Ashvath Rajan from Arihant Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Ashvath Rajan
Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations t o the management for a good set of numbers. My first question is do we see these margins to be sustainable in the next few quarters?
Aditya Gupta
Definitely yes. Ashvath, I think you already spoken about the focus on cost management and how our gross margins have been behaving. So as operating leverage improves we expect to actually do better than what we have done in correlate sheet.
Ashvath Rajan
So we see this CC margins to be better in Q4 than Q3.
Aditya Gupta
So generally Q4 is better as compared to volumes. So automatically operational leverage will come into. Play and it will be better than Q2 Q3 though we don’t give future. Guidance but historically it has been the case. Q4 has always been better. So yes, if gas prices are stable, it will be better than Q3.
Ashvath Rajan
Coming to gas prices, there’s been news lately of 30% hikes in the US. Does this affect us directly or indirectly in any way?
Aditya Gupta
No. So gas prices are pretty much stable. I think on a. On a weighted average basis compared to the last quarter we are. Gas prices are up by 50 paisa only. So I don’t know about this 30%. So there’s no, no way. There is a 30% increase.
Ashvath Rajan
Okay sir. And on this top line is this volume LED or ASP LED for the most part.
Aditya Gupta
So it is all volume led. So from, from, from the last quarter. Onwards the growth has been volume led only. Quarter one in terms of volume was flat. Quarter two continued the volume momentum and quarter three is further up.
Ashvath Rajan
Okay, got it sir. And just to ask on utilization, so could you help us quantify what our utilizations were this quarter?
Aditya Gupta
So current utilizations are similar to the last quarter. It’s in the 60, 65% odd range only.
Ashvath Rajan
And so we did. This is my last question. We did have a pilot project on tile abrasives. So any progress on the same?
Aditya Gupta
So it’s continuing. I think initial response has been good for us. We are still in selected markets of north India not yet gone national which will happen next financial year. So positive movement but a slow buildup. We are not like rushing in into multiple markets at the same time.
Ashvath Rajan
Okay, so have we started selling? Tyler, this is already on a commercial basis or is it still on the pilot, pilot phase?
Aditya Gupta
No, no, we have, we are, we are selling now. It’s moved beyond the pilot phase. We are selling it commercially.
Ashvath Rajan
Okay. Okay, thank you. I’ll get back to the queue.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Rohit from Samatva Investments. Please go ahead.
Rohit Suresh
Hello sir. Thank you for the opportunity. So my first question is on your oriental, you know, OBTBs. So if I look in FY22, you know we had around 285 OBTVs, if I’m not wrong. And three years, it’s been three years but we are still, you know, just about 300. So I just wanted to know why has the growth not been that great for our obtb? Because that was where we wanted to grow the fastest. So just your takeaways and what, what’s been the, what’s been your learnings about the tile boutiques in the past two to three years and where do you see it going in the next two to three years?
Aditya Gupta
So OBTVs continue to be extremely essential to our strategy. Even Today more than 40% of our sales is coming in from OBTBS. Actually 42% odd. Now your query about number of OBTBS three years back and now. So we have made a very conscious shift to start chasing quality versus quantity. Over the last three years we have closed down number of a large number of OBTBs where we were not happy with the kind of display work or the customer service which they were giving. So, so you don’t see, you know, the net number. So gross ads have been there in the last three years, but the net ads have not been that spectacular.
Another thing which we have been doing is that for the last one and a half years we have been working more on, on our existing obtbs, making them larger and totally upgrading and renovating them. So that is something which we will continue for the next one or two years. That existing OGTVs will be made bigger and will be renovated to better, you know, showcase the product that we have today rather than going all out for new obtbs.
Rohit Suresh
Got it. Fair. So, so my second question would be, so the volume growth that we have seen this quarter, geographically, from where has it come? Has it been from our core markets or has it been more from, you know, the new markets like South and West.
Aditya Gupta
Of north and east have continued to do well. We are doing very nicely in western India also, actually that is leading in growth and south also has some geographies have started picking up for us nicely. Some states have started picking up nicely, but within south there are some states which are not doing well and there are some states which are doing very well. So overall south is growing, but muted.
Rohit Suresh
Hello.
Aditya Gupta
Does it answer your question? So among the new markets, west is doing well, north and east continue to do well, west is doing very well for us this year and south, certain states have started doing well for us.
Rohit Suresh
Got it. So just. I had just one question. So historically in the past one or two years our focus has shifted towards the retail part of it. But we have historically been also very strong on the projects part of it. So going forward, are we going to be more retail focused or are we also looking at to grow the project segment? Because I’m not wrong, now retail is now around 80% and this was a comparatively lower few years back. So will the focus be more towards the retail or are we looking at also the projects where we have historically been very strong?
Aditya Gupta
So it’s not either all kind of a situation. I think it is related. So we are focusing more on retail. That’s. That’s right. And that is where you see lot of these premium products that we are launching, lot of these digital tools that we are launching are basically aimed towards the retail consumer. So. So that continues, we feel that is kind of more sustainable, more profitable. So that focus will continue. While at the same time you’re right, you know, in last about 12 odd months, we have had some challenges on our large institutional businesses, large project businesses.
Our new teams are now stabilizing and we expect to pick up the slack which has come into these businesses from now onwards. We started seeing some early signs of revival day, but looking to do much better there. And these are totally different segments, there are different teams with different kind of pricing and different, even different kinds of products that they push. So going forward we like both, but compared to previous years, definitely we are giving a very, very big push on the retail.
Rohit Suresh
Got it. So just one last question was. So since the EU FTA has been approved, just wanted to know an Indian tile that is, that is, you know, that’s, that’s sold to the European Union with the fda. What, how, what will be the impact on the prices? So how, by how much will it reduce any broad figure on that?
Aditya Gupta
I don’t know. We do know that with the UK fta, which was signed, you know, some time back, there have been some queries have started coming in the EU fta. I’ve not gone through the details, but by the time, you know, the due diligence happens, legal scrubbing happens and it goes through the EU Parliament and Member states. My sense is that it will be effective on ground from 2027, not before that. And let’s see. But the details of the treaty are not yet out, so I have no clue of how, how it will impact the, the export duties.
Rohit Suresh
Fair enough. So thank you so much for the detailed answers. All the very best. Thank you.
Aditya Gupta
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashwant from Samadba. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I understand that the industry has been through, been through quite a tough time in the last few years and given that our sales are kind of stagnated for almost four years now. So what is the time frame that you guys see where, where you can probably get like a revenue of 1000 crores.
Aditya Gupta
Could you please repeat your question? Not very clear.
Unidentified Participant
I’m saying, given that the industry has been through a tough time in the recent past. So what is the time frame in which you see our company hitting revenues of close to 1000 crores?
Aditya Gupta
So I think you asked me to forecast the future as a policy. We don’t give out futuristic guidelines. I did talk about though that the green shoots that we are seeing in the market. I spoke about how early stage construction products are doing very nicely. I spoke about, you know, how projects, more projects are being launched and they will get into the finishing stage over the next few quarters. And also I talked about exports started to grow at an industry level. So I think some of the headwinds that the industry has been facing for the last two, three years will definitely slow down.
And this combined with our internal initiatives on demand generation on product side and on digitization will definitely help us grow much, much faster than what we have been doing in the past.
Unidentified Participant
There’s a point taken by just trying to understand, see you may have like a vision or like some vision or some targets which you have, right? I mean what you plan to reach or maybe the volume growth numbers. So I understand number reven might not be in your hands always but what about the volumes what you’re looking at in terms of volume growth the next three, four years.
Aditya Gupta
So you know three VB stay away as a policy from any future guidance. So I’ll not give you any specifics but I think overall the industry seems to be coming out of a stage of a time period of slow growth. And another thing which I spoke about briefly is that we don’t see any, any major capacity addition in mostly in 2026. There are hardly another 810 plants which we know of which will come into play through 2026. So capacity seem to remain similar same as what it has been in the last one or two years and some green shoots on exports, green shoots on early stage construction products. So I think the industry is now well set for better growth than in the past.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, got it. So in that case, in the next two years where do you see you, where do you see yourself spending your cash flows? Is it on opening more boutiques will fetch you the best returns or is it the marketing or again I’m sure it’s all of these. But I’m saying what are the top two, three focus areas where you’ll be spending money the next two years?
Aditya Gupta
So see we will definitely be spending to add distribution whether it is through OVTBS and all other distribution expansion activities. That is one area. Second area is marketing. Historically you know we started our TV advertisement some about two years back. In all we are extremely late at it and now from current financial differential year we are moving to a stage where we are investing and spending every month on TV I think but not across India. We don’t have for example we don’t have anything in Tamil Nadu, we don’t have anything in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and all. So we are going to spend much more aggressively on TV in FY27 and of course spend on adding up Distribution and displays.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, got it.
Aditya Gupta
We have, we have, we have. You know, I’ll just mention another thing that might help you. Anuj had talked about capacity utilization. So we did go through over the last four years a big capacity expansion, multiple capacity expansion projects. As a company we now have almost 42 million 43 million square meters capacity along with an associate company. So we don’t, we do not see any major capacity enhancing investment. We have enough spare capacity to kind of fill up for the next two, three years. So focus is going to be on the market, on market building, distribution, brand awareness.
Unidentified Participant
Sure. And what has been your experience in the southern market with your Housekote facility and all? Has that met your expectations as to what you had when you started? How is it tracking now? And I’m just trying to understand, does it make more trying to understand the importance of Pie India presence versus going stronger in your core markets? Because given that you already have strong competitors in the south. So I’m just trying to understand one your own assessment of what happened in House Kote so far and the southern market and then how do you think about the core markets versus the new markets.
Aditya Gupta
So one positive thing is that west, which has been a very weak market for us, actually even weaker than south has started responding well for us. So I think that’s one positive which we have from this financial year coming specifically to south that you’re asking for. The story is a bit mixed. We have done well in two states but we have not performed well in the the other three states. So overall it’s been a mixed bag. But we are seeing in some areas where we have, you know, certain regional uh, distribution reach and all things have started picking up.
We had one very big south focused, south dealer focused product launch that was in Q1. This product is from a Hoskote plant 4×2 that’s been doing very well for us. We are seeing good volumes building up on GVT which we are supplying from our brother plant to South India or Dora plant to South India. So that’s working well for us. So overall it’s been slow, it’s been slower than what we had hoped for. But there is, there is a decent response we are getting from the market enough to kind of give us the confidence that we need to invest much more aggressively in South India. It’s a very big market and once you get that going I think it would really put way the wind behind, put wings to OBL top.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, Got it. Thank you so much for response. I appreciate it.
Aditya Gupta
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashvath Rajan from Arihant Capital Market. Please go ahead.
Ashvath Rajan
Yeah, thank you for the follow up. My question specifically on the dealer’s inventory. So you did mention on there was some downsizing happening over the past few years. So currently what has the trend been? Is the dealer adding upsizing his inventory on any end? What is the review from their end in terms of customer demand?
Aditya Gupta
So Ashwath, the dealers as I said have been consistently a kind of going slow on inventory buildups and all and even reducing the inventories. And I think that story seems to have in my estimate played out and it is not going to be a very big consideration going forward. So I think we seem to be at an inventory level which the dealers are comfortable with. So. So I see that as a, as a bit of a good sign for the industry as a whole, especially for us. You know for the last nine months, one year I surely have been very aggressively pushing our team towards demand generation.
So our sales team today carries a target for what is the total secondary sales sale orders that you have generated for the dealers and given to them. And we have a, we have a clear digitized process for capturing that on our apps and all and that number has been steadily building up and this is also one of the reasons that you know we are optimistic about, about the future that we are not kind of pushing stocks into the dealer go down. We are not trying to do primary deals for him to stock more. We are kind of going and talking to a dealer about kok. This is what we are going to help you out with to, to sell out your stock and on the basis of that doing a discussion on primary sales.
Ashvath Rajan
Okay, noted. And on the OBTB how many more stores do we foresee adding for FY27 till FY27?
Aditya Gupta
So sure we have not done the FY27 EOP planning yet. I think there’s something which we are just kick starting so I can’t do give you a figure but as I said earlier our first and primary priority is to kind of revamp our existing 300 plus OBTB. Make them bigger wherever possible. Definitely change the, the branding and the display that we have the whole planogram or display planogram in this. So that has been a bigger focus. Some new obtbs will keep on coming up but that will be priority number two for us. Okay. We have also just for information while you know we did not talked about it in the past but especially in the south market, you know that question had come up. One of the reasons that we have found it a bit slow in south market is that uh, we were not getting display area. It’s a very competitive market. The existing display of dealers are already promised and accounted for by competitors. So last one year we started a project where we are doing not obtvs but putting up displays in these dealers. They’re saying one Cassidy at a time, 10 leads, 15 leads just to mark our presence.
So that build up is happening. So while the number of OBTX is very likely so at 300 plus no major change at all but the overall display in the dealer shop has been increasing because a lot of displays, a decent number of non mobi TV displays have also been put up.
Ashvath Rajan
Okay, yeah, answers my question. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Ashwant from Samadhba. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hi, thank you for the follow up. I just wanted to understand in the last four years what has been the number of OBTVs which are closed down on a gross basis number of closures.
Aditya Gupta
You have delve. Okay, so you are basically asking me first. I don’t have that number readily but my services we would have closed down maybe 20, 25 TV every year and OBTX. So you don’t have that figure separately. I think you can pass it on to you. I think you can just work it out. But I’ll give you, don’t hold me to it. But I’ll give you a sense that we would have closed about 20 odd every year.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, got it. And for each one that you open, what is the amount of money we put in from our end and not what the franchise contribute but what we have to put in from our end. What is that amount?
Aditya Gupta
So we have, we have three or four different models, you know and it very much depends on the particular the town and the size of the OBTX coming in and all. So we definitely. The branding is always ours, you know getting the, getting the OBTV up on all social media handles and all and managing that and you know, digitizing them with visualization tools and everything is all, all our expense some samples sometimes we also give some deep discounts on samples and all so very, very. It depends quite a lot. I don’t think our average figure is something which will make sense.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, okay, okay, okay. No, I’m just trying to understand what has been the cash drain on us because of this. The context Is that. That’s what I’m trying to understand. Understood. Okay. And secondly, on the digital part that we have, because this has been a. At least something which has been always been talked about, the differentiation based on the digital approach that the company has had. So right now what is the advantage that still remains with us versus the peers? Have they caught on and what has been the impact that you would, that you’ve been able to quantify? Okay, this has been the impact due to digital which others could not get. Or I’m just trying to understand, is it like a real game changer or is it a good to have?
Aditya Gupta
So see, I think that’s actually a question which is worth a PhD thesis. Let me try to answer this. There are two or three parts of it. One part is, you know, pure simple efficiency. Efficiency and ease of doing business. Right. So how much it has added to your top line and your bottom line is anybody’s guess. But the fact is that when I interview prospective sales employees and I ask them the simple question that what do you know about? And I’m talking about people who are from the T industry, 9 out of 10 times I get to hear that. When I ask them what you know about obl, they tell me that O Bell is a tech company. So, so the speed and the ease at which information is available to my dealers and my salesmen, sales people and all is 90 years ahead of what is the norm in our industry.
So there’s an ease of doing business. Anuj has spoken about our very healthy gross margins which you know, kind of go up to 36 to 38, 39% and all. I think that’s also because we are so highly digitized that wastage is minimal or any wasted kind of gets flagged off and gets collected. So this is one side of the story which is ease of doing business, which is efficiencies and stuff like that. That’s one piece. The other piece where digitization has helped us is the customer helping the customer to make a choice. Now we started our digitalization tool in 2019, May 2019 when we launched it.
Today we have, the tool has continuously improved. Today there’s a voice enabled tool and we have 500 odd dealers who are using it. So all of this helps because these are things which customer is not able to get from any of the competing brands. Today you walk into my OBTX, one of these 500 shops which many of them are not even OBTX and you can work out with actually design of your space, living room, bedroom, kitchen, whatever on our WhatsApp instantaneously which is something which is not available with, which helps you the consumer to make a choice and something not available with any of your competitors.
So I think this is catching up. The world is digital, our consumers are totally digital. Let’s not forget that. It’s not that the consumer is digital when he buys product A and it’s kind of old fashioned 19th century consumer when he buys product B. So I think this will keep catching on. The trade is a bit of a laggard on adapting on this but they also not slowly and surely catching up. So we see a big differentiator for us from this whole digital approach from the consumer acceptance and brand side also not just the first part which is efficiency and ease of doing business.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, got it, got it. Is helpful actually. And my final question. So in terms of the closures of the obtv, so right now for this year, what are we projecting? Is it the same at the same run rate or is it reducing? Increasing? How do you see that in terms of.
Aditya Gupta
No, because see we have not added so many new OBTVs and all. We have been much more careful and cautious in adding new OBTVs now because longevity of the OBTV is now of prime concern to us. So I think as we get better on this the need to acts so although VTV should reduce but as I said these are all something which we are yet to do our planning for FY27 in detail and some of these questions will definitely come up for discussion at that time.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, got it, got it all. Thank you so much, Appreciate it.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Karan from Asian Market Securities. Please go ahead.
Karan Bhatelia
Hi, am I audible?
operator
Yes sir, you audible?
Aditya Gupta
Yes Karan, please go on.
Karan Bhatelia
Yes, hi. Just wanted to understand the pricing environment in Murbi. You know when was the last price hike and do we anticipate any pricing actions in the near future?
Aditya Gupta
So currently there is a lot of price action but not in the price increase direction, in the other direction. And so I think more the pricing has been going down as always. I think that’s really been long. And for us also to share your own manufacturing ASPs have been maintained but our moldy ASPs have actually declined. Now don’t ask me how much, but they have declined because our purchase price from moldy has also declined. So that benefit has kind of gone to the dealer.
Karan Bhatelia
Right, Right sir, also wanted to understand sir, our share of GBT over last five years has increased from 13% to as high as 44% now. But the resultant impact on gross margin has been just one and a half to 2%. So, so how do we see the GBT portion now increasing over the next three to five years and the benefit on the gross margins?
Aditya Gupta
So Karan, at 44% I think we would be at par with the, with the industry leaders or very close to it. So this was clearly over the last five, five years back, six years back, this was clearly an area where we were not even playing. That more or less seems to have been corrected now. Now within gdp, your question was that increasing margins on gdp, why is it that margins have not responded that way? Right, so maybe that will answer that. See there is now our focus, there is our part of gdp. The entry level GVT product is now now facing a lot of price competition.
So we are still, we are moving into the higher end of GVT product. More surface finishes and all. All our new launches are aimed at that particular segment within gvt. Higher glossing, higher product. So that should help. And another reason is that you know, historically for us all the manufacturing capacity which you want to stay, you know, five, six years back, we hardly had any GVT manufacturing capacities in our own manufacturing. Not that now that has increased dramatically over the last five years. All coming in through mostly to internal cash accruals and all. But what has also happened is that our ceramics went down and we had, you know, a lot of dependent own manufacturing was depended on ceramics.
So as ceramic market went down, some of those products have gone out of the market. And so you see a bit of a netting of impact between, you know, lower end ceramics and uh, higher in GVT that has resulted in uh, revenues not growing as fast or margins not growing as fast.
Karan Bhatelia
Noted. One last question if I may. I wanted to understand the slabs market in detail. You know, how many players, you know, could are there in the market. How is the competitive intensity and how do we plan to get into the largest labs, which is slightly better? ESPN margin accretive. Yeah.
Aditya Gupta
So see I think Slab, Slab market is There are about 28 odd manufacturers of slabs in Moldi. I’m talking of outside moldy. There are just, I would say only two companies which have got plants outside of Mali doing slabs for year 20. With all the vendors in Mby doing slabs. A few of them, I think three, four of them are under shutdown. We expect another six or seven new plants to come in in currently year 26 on slabs. So you can safely say that we have about 25 to 30 manufacturers of slabs in multi different sizes and all the margins are not as great as what they were 1 1/2 years back.
If anything you know the there has been significant erosion in the also but I having said that I think that these lab markets will improve and within slabs, you know there is now a significant portion which is coming out in 15mm which is a very good, very good substitute for granite and basically natural stone. So I think the slab market will definitely pick up.
Karan Bhatelia
All right. And our plans to get into this market.
Aditya Gupta
Not as a manufacturer. We already in the market. We don’t have plans to get into it as a manufacturer. The the kind of capex it takes and we can capacity utilization, you need to make money. That equation doesn’t look very attractive as of now.
Karan Bhatelia
Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the future justification. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask question may press star and one on their touchstone 24. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Aditya Gupta sir for closing comments. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Aditya Gupta
Thank you. Thanks for patience. Thanks for being part of this call and look forward to seeing you in May with our full year earnings call. Thanks a lot.
operator
Thank you. On behalf of Orient Bell Limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may disconnect your line.