Strong revenue growth logged by V-Mart Retail Ltd. in the second quarter of the current financial year was largely driven by the company's internal efficiency improvement and positive rural sentiments, according to Chief Financial Officer Anand Agarwal.
For the September quarter, the small-size hypermarket operator has reported net loss narrowing down to Rs 57.99 crore. V-Mart Retail Ltd. had posted a net loss of Rs 86.42 crore in the July-September quarter of the previous fiscal, according to a regulatory filing.
Revenue from operations rose 20.3% to Rs 660.97 crore in the quarter under review against Rs 549.43 crore in the year-ago period.
Talking to NDTV Profit, Agarwal pointed to two main reasons for the retailer's revenue growth this quarter. “I think the growth has largely been led by two factors. A large part of that has come from the improvement we have done internally over the last one or two years.”
He added, “We have made a lot of changes in how we work, how we source, what products we buy, what pricing we sell them at, and how the products are displayed. A lot of streamlining around the pricing and product quality has started to yield some results, and that we have been seeing continuously for (the) last 3–4 quarters.”
A rebound of positive rural sentiments also pushed the revenue growth. “This quarter has particularly been more rewarding also because we have been seeing some amount of momentum coming back in rural markets and betterment in rural geography, which had been under stress for a lot of time due to Covid,” he noted.
As for the performance going forward, Agarwal said, “I would say 60–70% of the work is largely a result of what we have been able to drive through as a part of better optimisation and efficiency generation. We should see slightly better performance going forward as well.”
According to Agarwal, usually Q2 is not a very strong-margin quarter. “Despite that, this quarter has been fairly good and relative to last year and the last couple of years, this quarter's performance has been much better. On a full-year basis, we should be looking at improving our margins year-on-year. We should be bettering our margins not just for the upcoming quarters but also for the full year as well.”
The top executive added, “On a stable state basis 11–12% Ebitda margin is something we would still want to target and keep growing thereafter.”
Shares of V-Mart Retail Ltd. closed 0.41% lower at Rs 4,177 apiece on the NSE in contrast to the broader benchmark Nifty 50, which closed 0.91% higher at 24,213.3.
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