Western Carriers (India) Ltd (NSE: WCIL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 18, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Kanishka Sethia — Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Whole Time Director
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Nidhi Vijaywargia — Analyst
Gunit Singh Narang — Analyst
Preeti Agarwal — Analyst
Presentation:
Kanishka Sethia — Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Whole Time Director
SA SA Sam Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Western Carriers India Limited Q1 FY26 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 the conference call please please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Nidhi Vijayawagi from MUFG In Time India Private Limited. Thank you. And over to you Ms. Nidhi.
Nidhi Vijaywargia — Analyst
Thank you. Renju. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you all to the earnings conference call of Western Carriers India Limited to discuss the Q1 FY26 business performance today. On the call we have from the management, Mr. Kanishka Sethia, CEO, CFO and Whole Time Director. Before we proceed with this call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today’s call may be forward looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. For more details kindly refer to the investor presentation and other filings that can be found on the company’s website. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks and then we will open the floor for Q and A. Thank you. And over to you, Kanishka sir.
Kanishka Sethia — Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Whole Time Director
Good morning everyone. I hope I am completely audible. Hello.
operator
Yes you are audible. Please go ahead.
Kanishka Sethia — Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Whole Time Director
Thank you. So good morning everyone and thank you for joining US on the Q1FY26 earnings call of Western Carriers India Limited. Today I am joined by my colleagues Ashish, Sapna and Surya. We appreciate your participation as we take you through the key developments during the last quarter, the broader economic and industry context as well as our financial performances. The first quarter of FY26 began in a global environment that is fast evolving and continues to be shaped by geopolitical developments. There is evolving trade dynamics, structural shifts in the supply chain. The IMF’s April 2025 outlook projects global GDP growth at about 2.8% for 2025 with world trade volumes expected to expand by 2.7% as well.
Global inflation is projected to decline to 4.3% in 2025 and further to 3.6% in 2026, creating a more stable environment for investment flows and consumer demands. The quarter one of the current financial year saw mixed trends with headwinds like the muted industrial outputs, SME and medium and small enterprise caution and rising competition in B2B Express and Surface transport. However, signs of Recovery are fast emerging. I’m extremely buoyed by the good monsoons that we are facing currently. The port volumes are also up. The evable generation is up. Fuel utilization for our company has also improved. Now, looking more from an India lens, we want to talk a little about the tariffs and how they are affecting us as a trade.
The tariffs are piling up on India. There is a base rate, a penalty and perhaps an additional rate which might come for pharma and semiconductors. Experts agree that tariffs will reduce exports, curtail growth, impact jobs and hurt investor sentiment. But is the situation all doom and gloom? Not necessarily. India has some advantages and a few opportunities that can be harnessed. An important consequence of tariffs is that it has forced a rethink for India’s export strategy. Another good factor that we need to look at is inflation. You know the cooling food inflation has taken inflation rates below RBI range to an eight year low.
This is a wonderful piece of good news for us. Retail inflation is at its lowest pace in the last eight years in July as food prices cooled, staying below the central bank target for the fifth month in a row. While the decline helps the central bank maintain a growth supportive monetary policy, it also points to the potential for lower farm incomes given the steady fall in food prices. The CPI rose just 1.5% annually in July, slipping below the lower end of Reserve bank of India’s 2.4% target. Going ahead, economists expect food inflation to stay subdued.
Strong monsoon progress, ample reservoir levels and robust tariffs showing points to steady agricultural and price stability. Though they caution that close tracking of the monsoon spread and timing remains key. However, concerns over potential U.S. secondary sanctions on Russian crude could disrupt supply chain for major importers like us. Although OPEC has share capacity, sorry spare capacity, global oil dynamics could shift and will need close monitoring going ahead. A favorable base effect, particularly on food has kept our inflation in check and you know this. According to economists polled by Mint, this decline could be bottoming out now.
Some of the challenges which persist include the prolonged conflict in Europe and Middle east which affects companies, logistics companies like us which have a large share of exim business. There is adjustment in tariff regimes and a move towards near shoring and diversification of manufacturing basis which are shaping long standing trade routes. Climate related disruptions include extreme weather events, affect port operations are adding to supply chain complexities prompting governments and businesses to focus on building resilient technology based logistics networks. From a sectoral point of view, the global logistics industry is undergoing a period of accelerated transformation.
Supply chains are increasingly being redesigned to be more agile, regionalized and digitally integrated. The global container shipping volumes which saw volatility in previous years, are now expected to grow modestly in 2025, supported by a rebound in manufacturing output and easing congestion at key ports. There is a lot of investments which is happening in automation, AI, demand forecasting, IoT etc. So this is what we see from a sectoral standpoint coming to more about Talking about the momentum we feel the momentum in the logistics sector, especially in our country, has been further strengthened by the operation performance of the DFCs, the Dedicated Freight Corridors.
During quarter one of FY26 the Western DFC recorded 15.9 billion gross ton kilometers which is GPKM, registering a growth of approximately 25% over Q1 of FY25. The Eastern DFC achieved 34.5 GTM in the same period which is almost 19% higher than the previous year. Together the two corridors are now moving close to 400 trains a day with the eastern section alone handling over 200 of these and the western section at around 182. This increase in throughput is contributing to faster, more reliable freight movement and improved asset utilization for shippers. For companies like us who are large in the multimodal space, this is an absolute game changer.
I would be remiss if I didn’t quickly mention the Sagar Mala project which continues to progress enhancing maritime connectivity and facilitating greater coastal shipping and inland waterways cargo flow and meanwhile with the development of multimodal logistics parks which is integrating warehousing, handling and transport facilities as strategic hubs, it is further helping reduce the overall logistics cost and turnaround times. Against this Background, the quarter the first quarter FY26 saw important developments for our company as well. On 17th July we inaugurated our 31 acre ICD MMCT at Diwaliya in Ahmedabad region in the presence of the honorable Industries Ministers of Gujarat.
The state of the art MMCT is strategically located with direct connectivity to major west coast ports including Mundra and Pipawa. It is equipped to handle all types of cargo and containers serving both domestic cargo and EXIM trademark with high efficiencies. Following the launch we commenced six scheduled rail services from our MMCT Diwaliya to key destinations across the country. To the north we are using facility at CMLK which is Khatu vas. To the south we started services to Bangalore and in the east we are at Calcutta and Guwahati. These scheduled services strengthen our multimodal capabilities, our reach and improve transit times, predictability and enhance reliability for customers across various industrial and consumption hubs.
In addition to the MMCT which is now running quite smoothly, we have also deployed specially engineered heavy duty containers for the transportation of steel coils. The this initiative is part of a three year work order valued at over 1100 crores that we recently acquired. The containers have been designed to meet the specific requirements of safety and efficiency in handling heavy steel coils as mandated by our principals. This development expands our specialized cargo handling capabilities many fold and is expected to be a major significant growth contributor going forward in this quarter and the quarters to come.
Another new business development that I want to talk about is that we have commenced EXIM rail services from Hindustan Singh Chandaria to Mundra which is a new service. It’s going on smoothly. We have some. We have seen good increase in DPD which is direct port deliveries as well as import EUs at various exports across the country. They’re seeing a lot of demand. Hence the major capex we had done last year and with the intention of further capex of approximately 100 crores in total in this financial of which approximately 9 crores has already been completed in quarter one and more of it is planned for quarter two.
The MMCT gives us a lot of focus on growing our businesses from western India. This financial which fits very well with our long term vision of getting more business from West India. As you know we are getting long term commitments with large customers than India with two large contracts signed earlier last year. Last financial year one was with Vedanta and the other with Jindal and these are both long term contracts spread over three years each giving us great visibility and planning opportunity. Both projects are now in full steam and gathering further pace going forward. So this is you know talking about the new businesses and new developments over the last time that we talked.
Turning now, turning now to the TU performance both domestic and exim. You know we’ll get into the details shortly. First let me talk about our financial performances. For Q1 FY26 the consolidated revenue stood at 416 crores approximately. EBITDA was 21 crores with a margin of just over 5% supported by operational efficiencies, higher asset utilization and cost discipline. Profit after tax stood at around 11 crores. These results enable us to continue progressing our investments in infrastructure, technology and capacity expansion in line with our long term priorities. Looking at the performance of the domestic and exim, there has been some pressure on the realization.
The major reason continues to be the geopolitical turbulence in the world which affects the recovery of EX IM business. Actually your company has done very well given the circumstances that we are actually net positive in our ex im to you movement in Q1FY26 compared to Q1FY24. The numbers that we delivered in FY Q1FY26 is 33286 compared to approximately 32, 888 which is a percentage and a quarter thereabouts of growth despite the continued geopolitical activities. This point is quite valid for us that despite the situation in which the last 20 days of the quarter one was actually quite badly hit by the Iran Israel crisis, we still managed to keep our exit numbers positive and this gives us a lot of hope that we will be able to grow our ex IM business, especially amidst several signs of stability in geopolitical scenario.
And we are very, very positive that we’ll be able to grow our ex IM numbers and do further recovery in quarter two and going forward. Other reasons which affected the net margins include a slight decrease in the lead by around 4% and less demand that we saw in North India in quarter one. Of course, now we see strong growth in both these areas in quarter two amid signs of stabilizing geopolitical scenario. Despite such turbulence, your company saw steady Exim business. Like I said, we saw imports, there was a good momentum in aluminium scrap of almost 8% stainless steel at around 17% of growth.
Like I said previously, we have commenced the Exim rail services for Indusan Zinc from Chanderia to Mundra Port which is a new service we have started. There has been a good increase in direct port deliveries and we are seeing almost 18% growth here domestically. As you know, we had a very stellar year. Last year we had a 32% growth and this year is off to a reasonable start. I would say we have consciously avoided low margin domestic traffic and we have not picked up consciously because basically our philosophy is to give performance, good performance and good service to our customers and we want to protect our margins so we are not chasing low margin domestic business.
At the same time, your company is working quite diligently on increasing return traffic which will reduce empty runs, which is expected to start happening in the second half of this year. So with the good management of demand, we are quite hopeful that in the next few quarters we’ll be able to show a stellar performance in domestic as well, just like last year. Like I said, we did a 32% growth year on year last year in domestic and we are trying to see how we can improve further in domestic after a steady Q1 nowadays very robust growth we are observing in Q2 with excellent demand pan India, particularly from eastern India.
Also our new multimodal cargo terminal at Davilia in Gujarat will also give a major boost in business volumes for us in the coming quarters. We feel and as we grow our service offerings to various industries, we’ll be able to grow piggybacking on this MMCT will serve both EXIM as well as domestic cargo and for domestic cargo we have already successfully launched east, north and south. Like I discussed, various customer verticals include styles, soda ash, industrial aggregates, food products, MSME and this number keeps on increasing day by day, week by week as we consolidate our operations.
To start with, obviously the MMCT is only domestic business currently and as EXIM Customs notification takes some time, we we are working on that but eventually it will have both domestic and EXIM cargoes. We have received very positive initial response from all industries for which we are very obliged. We remain confident that the combination of favorable policy environment, sectoral tailwinds and disciplined execution will allow us to continue delivering consistent performance in the quarters ahead. That concludes my remarks on the company’s performance for the quarter. I would like to once again thank all our stakeholders for their continued trust and support with the promise of better days ahead. Thank you.
operator
Shall we open the line for questions?
Kanishka Sethia — Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Whole Time Director
Please go ahead.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your touchtone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wait for a moment while the question QA samples. The first question comes from the line of Gunit Singh with countercyclical pms. Please go ahead.
Gunit Singh Narang
Hi sir, what is the main reason for fall in EBITDA margins year on year by about 340 basis points despite revenues almost remaining flat.
Kanishka Sethia
Hi, like I said, you know, the performance for the major reason for the pressure on the realization remains the continued geopolitical turbulence in the world which affects, you know, the ex IM business. You know, the container freight for example. I’ll give you some examples. For example, container freight to Gulf ports like Jebel Ali kept on climbing sharply through the crisis from $150 per 40ft to around $550 range. You know, exporters are seeing compressed margins and disrupted supply chains. Because of this, ships are increasingly having to reroute, you know, through the Cape of Good Hope instead of Suez Canal and Red sea adding almost 10 to 20 days in transit.
You know, so that puts pressure on, on the margins of our customers, which also adversely affects us. Similarly, there was a decrease in the lead by 4% and less demand in North India in quarter one. These were the reasons that, you know, the pressure. There was pressure on realization for this quarter.
Gunit Singh Narang
All right, so but if you look at the total volumes, I mean they are probably down by just less than 2% overall and even the venues are not significantly have fallen. So I mean, what kind of a fall in overall consolidated realizations are we looking at? Because I mean the fall that probably a significant impact is not there on the venues.
Kanishka Sethia
It’s a very fair question. The reason is that we’ve been able to protect our revenue without having to take low margin businesses. Gives us very hope that we’ll be able to improve our margins going forward. As the situation sort of now starts stabilizing. We internally were looking at our numbers. We saw we had excellent numbers coming in in the month of April and May, but June 10th or 11th, when the Iran and Israel crisis came into the front foot again, there was some pressure from the shipping related EXIM businesses that we had to rework out.
So what happens is whenever you have a major impact on the shipping lines, your container throughput sort of has a bit of a flux. Sometimes they come in, sometimes they don’t. And once you have a variation which comes in into your containers, the consolidation or the dispatch of the exim, which is the import containers or the domestic or the export containers takes a bit of a wax. For example, instead of 400 containers coming in on a month in Chennai, if you have 2000 containers which come all of a sudden, having been stuck for several months, that means you’ve lost revenue in the previous months.
And all of a sudden, if you get 3,000 containers where your throughput is say 100 containers, for example, a day, that means you’re looking at significant amount of money in terms of detention, damage, etc. Which is basically due to the global supply chain disruptions. Once your disruptions are gone, your numbers start tracking a bit of a rhythm. Then you will see that the margins will automatically start improving because a lot of the margin realization pressure is coming from things which we actually don’t control.
Gunit Singh Narang
All right, so got it. So till when did the hit from these conflicts end? I mean, till when did they go on? Did they continue in Q2? And as of now, I mean, looking at the current scenario, do we expect that things have normalized? And given that Q1 numbers have been maybe flat or lower than last year. Do we still expect a double digit growth in FY26 also? I mean you spoke about the new railway, the new line for Hindustan ring. So what could be the additional revenue from that in FY26 and also from the new, the new orders that we have.
Kanishka Sethia
Okay, so I’ll try to answer these in step by step. If I miss any, please do point it out to me. Like I said, we have commenced the EXIM rail services for Hindustan Zinc from their plant in Rajasthan, where the plant is at Chanderia, to Mundra Port. And this is a new service we have started. We’ve just completed the first batch over here to Mundra Port. And we have good clarity that this is a business that they are looking at expanding as we go ahead in the quarters and maybe have a better idea in the next call because the service we’ve just started a few weeks back, we are also seeing a good increase in direct port delivery movements also almost 17, 18% is what we expect it to be.
And there is very good growth in imports at various ports also that we are observing. So I don’t have the exact numbers but you know, the supply chains are showing that the good numbers are coming in. This is the, you know, the pressure because of the geopolitical turbulence currently as we speak today, signs of stabilizing geopolitical scenarios seems to be there. It seems to be a lot of optimism. But you know, given the kind of new cycles that we have become used to, it will be foolhardy for me to predict when and how quickly the economic geopolitical situations will stabilize.
But given where we are right now, I’m fairly optimistic that there is at the light of the tunnel and with the supply chains incoming and outgoing through the shippings stabilizing in India, I think our margins should be incrementally improving going forward. Cetera sparrows.
Gunit Singh Narang
All right, sir. And do we expect any volume growth this year?
Kanishka Sethia
So we are like I said sir, that what we could control we controlled. And we saw very good growth internally in the month of April and May. Unfortunately, you know, the Iran and Israel crisis which took part in the last three weeks of the quarter affected some of the growth numbers. But if things remain constant and the signs of stabilization in the geopolitical, we are very, very optimistic that we’ll be able to have very good growth both in ex IM as well as domestic. We’ve actually had a positive growth in EXIM in the last quarter and we are very hopeful that we’ll be able to grow this.
And the domestic performance was also not bad. It was off to a reasonable start. We had a 32% growth last year. So we are trying to grow the domestic business as well. And one of the big modes for our domestic business growth, sir, is going to obviously come from our multimodal cargo terminal at Delia which is a 32 acre facility. And we are very hopeful that it is going to turbocharge our domestic growth. And we are also, like I pointed out in my introductory note, we are consciously trying to avoid low margin domestic traffic. We want to do business which A adds value to our customers and B protects our margins as well.
So we are very conscious in trying to stick to decent margin domestic business. And given our moat in east and west, I think that is something that we are reasonably well at building.
Gunit Singh Narang
All right, sir, got it. So we are currently halfway through quarter two. I would just like to understand did the adverse impact of the Israel Iran war flow into Q2? And I mean looking at the current existing scenario, I mean of half the quad has gone by. So I mean are conditions better currently for these or I mean is that we expect it to get better going forward?
Kanishka Sethia
So definitely sir, better than at the end of quarter one when we were in the middle of the crisis. You know the numbers I have picked up. We are seeing good strong demand both in EXIM as well as in domestic. Our domestic service offerings have also improved to several other locations in north and south Ex im also we are seeing very good growth for aluminum scrap, stainless steel scrap. We are seeing import growth, we are seeing dispatches increasing as well. So there is a sign of growth in both domestic and EXIM business currently. And like I said, cetris paribus.
We hope that this will help us improve our performance both in terms of top line and bottom line going forward for the rest of the year.
Gunit Singh Narang
All right, thank you very much.
Kanishka Sethia
Thank you. Appreciate your time.
operator
Thank you. Next question comes to the line of Preeti Agarwal with SK Associates. Please go in.
Preeti Agarwal
Thank you so much for the opportunity. So as we see that metals continue to form the bulk of volumes. So beyond steel and scrap, which other industries, e.g. tile, food, chemicals, e commerce, etc. Do you see scaling meaningfully in your portfolio over the next two, three years?
Kanishka Sethia
Preeti JI is a wonderful question that you asked. I’d like to tell you that your company draws correctly around 50 odd percent ballpark from metals. Metals is a sector which is very aligned to our multimodal services as you can understand. But that you know we are seeing very good growth in our non metal businesses especially examples include, you know, tiles business, agrochemical business, industrial aggregates business, soda ash business. And so a lot of movement of these are also happening in containers through our western points including our own MMCT as well as our various other points across Gujarat.
And so you know there’s a definite focus from us to grow the non metal business where we are seeing quite good capabilities coming in. Included with the movement of these several cargo that I talked about is also our focus in growing our MSME business, trying to consolidate and grow our MSME business which has started contributing volumes to us in food products, agri products, garments, etc. Etc. Etc. So that is an area of major growth that we hope to get going forward as well. And we are also seeing good favorable growth coming from our mainline businesses including FMCG where we are seeing good growth signs. And we are also focusing on other businesses like PSUs as well as Pharma. So those are our strategies in growing our non metal businesses.
Preeti Agarwal
Understood sir. And when do you expect customs notification from EXIM and what incremental volume or revenue could you see these facilities contributing in by FY2626?
Kanishka Sethia
A fair question PTG. So the EXIM notification is a, is a long drawn process. We’ve just sort of started phase one of our operations at the mmct. So the container terminal is, you know, finding its feet, getting the volumes etc. So the EXIM business in terms of notification is slightly a bit out. We’re doing better pollution of the documentation etc. As you know Preeti Ma’, am, your company is doing custom house agency work at all major ports in India. And our senior leadership, including myself and our chairman, we are also ourselves Rule 8, you know, license holders.
So we understand the customs process quite well. So it’s a process. It will take its time but in long term we should have customs notification as well as start building other facilities at our cargo terminals including state of the art warehouses, et cetera which helps us increase our service offerings. Our idea being that we want to be the single window logistics service provider for all our customers so we’ll be able to add more value added services at the cargo terminal going forward.
Preeti Agarwal
Okay, understood sir. Thank you so much and all the best.
Kanishka Sethia
Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Darsheel Jain with RJ Investments. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello. Hello. Am I audible?
Kanishka Sethia
Yes sir. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, thank you for taking my question. So I have a Couple of questions. So starting with so the new Exim rail services from Hindustan Zinc, Chandaria Sliding to Mundra is a notable addition. So what is the potential scale of this service in terms of annual TEUs and additionally, do you see scope to replicate this model with other industrial clients as well?
Kanishka Sethia
Fair question. So you know, I don’t have great clarity or visibility on how much of this cargo they want to do on this route. We’ve like I said, just started this. These are early days but we are very hopeful that this should be, this should grow into a substantial business as they look at, you know, their western seaport as well as export markets. The same idea is to replicate this with not only Zyng but with several other customers for the sake of business interest. I can’t go into detail there, but allow me to say that this is an idea that we are working on on both fronts. Domestic to Exim and Exim to domestic for several customers, new and old.
Unidentified Participant
Understood sir. And my second question is that you highlighted that initiatives on return cargo will start showing benefits in H2. So can you quantify the cost saving opportunities if empty running is reduced by let’s say 5 or 10%? Also North India was weak in Q1, but Western and but Eastern India demand has, has been very strong in Q2. Can you elaborate on which industries or maybe customer clusters are driving this regional diversion?
Kanishka Sethia
Yes Jayanthab, So a two part question, I’ll give you two parts of answer in this. First part is, you know, the revenue generation, obviously the more service consolidation that you do, the more revenue you’re going to extract from that zone. East obviously is dominant because that’s where most of the metals are. But we are now after a week quarter one in north. We are seeing some resurgence of demand starting from north, obviously anchored by Hindustan Ring Chanderia. Like I said, we are also seeing growth from other industries. Second part of your question with regards to empty running.
See any time that you avoid empty running, be it rail, be it road, be it shipping, anything that adds to your margins, the amount of empty runs, empty hauls that you do is basically extractive of your margins. So, so now that we’ve started work on these two ultra mega large projects, we’re trying to see how much we can consolidate and try to reduce our empty haulage. The amount that we are able to reduce our empty haulage is going to add sequentially into our bottom line. So more than the top line, it’s going to add straight into our bottom line.
So we are very consciously working on trying to optimize our routes and triangulate our cargo and customers in such a way that we can start reducing this empty haulage. A lot of the capex which has just gone in right now has just implemented into building up the supply chains. So empty haulage reduction is something that we are now looking at as a next step in second part of this financial year.
Unidentified Participant
Understood sir, understood. Thank you for taking my question and all the best for the future quarters.
Kanishka Sethia
Thank you Jensen. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Isha Murthy with M and A Capital please. Aware.
Unidentified Participant
Hello sir, I just got disconnected between the calls so I don’t have any idea that this question is being answered or not, but can you just please clarify that as you have mentioned, TU growth was steady but realization were under pressure, especially on the EXIM side. So can you share the yield trend for EXIM and domestic separately? Also, how do you see it evolving in the quarter two and quarter three?
Kanishka Sethia
Okay, Ishaji, we did go through this, but for your sake I’m going to give you a brief answer here. The major reason for the pressure on realization remains the continued geopolitical turbulence which affects the recovery of EXIM business, which is a substantial part of our business. Despite that, your company has made very good efforts in actually improving its ex IM numbers. Our ex IM numbers are actually net positive. Despite of the geopolitical turbulence that we are in. Our Q1 numbers to Q1 numbers compares favorably this Q1 we did 33,286 TUs compared to 32,888 for the last Q1.
So you know, had it not been for the major escalation which happened in the last 21 days of this quarter, that is the Iran and Israel, you would have seen an even steeper growth in our exit number. The domestic numbers though they have been we had a 32% growth last year and so this year also we are off to quite a reasonable start, I would say. We have consciously avoided, like I said, low margin domestic traffic and the idea is to pick up businesses in which we can add value to the customers and at the same time keep our margins intact.
We don’t want to do low margin domestic business just for the sake of growing our top line. We are very very conscious on trying to create a profitable business which adds value to our customers. So the company is working diligently also on increasing return traffic which will reduce RMP running, which I just explained, which is expected to start showing results in H2 of this year. So with good management of demand, we are quite hopeful that in the next few quarters we’ll be able to show a stellar performance in both domestic and exim, both in terms of top line as well as bottom line.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, so. Okay, understood. Also I wanted to know, has the competitive intensity in B2B Express and surface transport had a measurable impact on pricing discipline?
Kanishka Sethia
It’s a fair question, Ishaji. So on the express and surface transport. See, we don’t do much of B2B Express but there is definitely very high rising competition there. You know, that’s a sector which has been totally disrupted over the last few years. Surface transport anyways remains under tremendous pressure. Surface transport though your company does surface transport, that is not an area of major focus for us. So these two businesses definitely face rising competition continuously. But our focus has been more on growing, you know, our businesses with industrials, SMEs, medium and small enterprises going forward which, which not only de risks us from the larger corporates but also gives us an opportunity to add actual value to the end customers.
And so signs of recovery in our businesses are very strong. I’m also extremely buoyed by the good margins. Sorry, the good monsoons that we are currently facing and the port volumes are up, the evil generations are up. Fleet utilization for your own company has also sequentially improved by creating very strong task force to ensure that we are able to utilize our fleets more. The more fleets that you are able to utilize in terms of A running and B optimization will definitely add to your no margins. So that’s what my take is.
Unidentified Participant
Understood? Understood sir. Thank you. All the best.
Kanishka Sethia
Thank you. Thank you for your time.
operator
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Riddhi Vora with SKS Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello. Am I audible?
Kanishka Sethia
Yes ma’. Am. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes. So yes you. As you mentioned that the Israel Iran crisis in the last three weeks of Q1 has significantly impacted the western sea routes. So like can you quantify the impact on EXIM volumes or revenue? And how are you hedging against the similar geopolitical shocks in the future?
Kanishka Sethia
Fair question, ma’. Am. So how the whole thing works out? I just want to give you an idea. You know the mainline shipping route? The mainline shipping business is the base for any EXIM or import business anywhere in the world actually. So that basically decides how the business opportunity is going to run. So now what happens is when you have any sort of non predictability which comes into your mainline shipping businesses, it will affect the way your cargo comes into your ports. The throughputs, everything is dependent, you know, on that. So if you have erratic vessel schedules, you know, it will, it will lead to congestion at the ports at the transshipment ports.
If you have congestion at the transshipment ports, this will lead to, you know, dip in the number of, you know, containers coming in. And this will basically have a contagion effect. So for example, if you’re cargo is not moving in a schedule, then what happens is if it is stuck at, if there is congestion at a transshipment port, you might have months in which your cargo doesn’t come and then you might have all of a sudden a month in which you have a cargo which is consolidated of two or three months. So that kind of affects the business in terms of detention and damage going forward.
Post Like I said, April and May, we were seeing stellar growth compared to last year, but then a lot of it got eroded due to this crisis. In the last three weeks again from July, things have sort of started stabilizing. We see where we saw very good numbers in July and we are looking at very good numbers currently in this month for the rest of the quarter as well. So this quarter is looking good in terms of top line and we are consciously working very hard on improving the bottom line at the parts of the business that we control, which is basically optimization of our routes, reduction in empty haulage, all of that turnaround, etc.
So efficient bringing in efficiency into our operations is what we can control, ma’. Am. And that is what we are very strongly focused on doing in this quarter and going forward. And with some help coming from stabilizing geopolitical scenarios which we do not at all control, that should actually help us buffer up our bottom line numbers even further.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, okay. This was quite helpful and thank you so much and all the best for the coming quarter.
Kanishka Sethia
Thank you ma’. Am. Thank you for your time.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints we have reached the end of question and answer session. I would now like to hand the conference over to NITI for closing comments.
Nidhi Vijaywargia
Thank you. I would like to thank the management for taking time out for this conference call today and also to all the participants. If you have any queries, please feel free to contact us. We are NUFG in Time Investor Relations Advisors to Western Carriers India Limited. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. On behalf of Western Carriers India Limited. The that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.
Kanishka Sethia
Thank you everyone. Thank you for taking the time .