Biyani unfazed by Future Lifestyle's dud bourses debut

Future Retail's fashion retailing arm, Future Lifestyle Fashions, made a rather uninspiring debut on the exchanges today. But CNBC-TV18's Farah Bookwala reports that promoter Kishore Biyani remains unfazed by the challenging times. Biyani is in fact confident that business will grow more than two-fold by March 2014.

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Born out of the de-merger of the lifestyle businesses of Future Retail and Future Ventures in November 2012, Future Lifestyle Fashions hasn't had a dream debut on the street.
While parent Future Retail was expecting Future Lifestyle to list broadly between Rs 170-200 a share, market analysts had made a conservative estimate of Rs 155-180 a piece.
But the company listed much lower at Rs 140 on the NSE and lost 10% on day 1 itself. But promoter Kishore Biyani remians bullish about FLF to the extent that he hopes to more than double the company's revenues of approximately Rs 1,300 crore earned over two quarters over the same space of time. Kishore Biyani, MD, Future Lifestyle Fashion, says: "Looking at revenues of Rs 3,500 crore for FY14, see FY14 EBITDA margin at 13%."
The company, which has a debt of Rs 1400 crore on its books, will also be paring down debt through divestment in its brands in the immediate future. The company expects to realize Rs 400-450 crore from the sale of its 26% stake in Biba, following which divestments in other brands will follow.
Biyani does not see any challenges on the debt side. But given that customers have curtailed spending, especially in discretionary categories, analysts feel Biyani's sales target is fairly ambitious.