The delay in onset of monsoon season impacted Q1, says Eveready Industries managing director Amritanshu Khaitan, but Q2 is expected to see a pickup in battery and flashlight sales.
The company reported a 49.9 percent jump in net profit at Rs 15.89 crore for Q1FY16 as against Rs 10.6 crore for the corresponding period last fiscal. In terms of growth, the company's LED business has contributed entirely and is expected to increase further, he adds.
As was seen in 2000, cheaper Chinese imports have flooded Indian markets, but Khaitan is not worried on this account.
"The dumped batteries are of extremely poor quality. While it impacted growth in 2000, it doesn't impact imports now," he adds.
The company is mulling a price hike in the premium category segment in Q2 and Khaitan is eyeing a 12-15 percent growth for FY16.
Below is the verbatim transcript of Amritanshu Khaitan's interview with CNBC-TV18's Sonia Shenoy and Anuj Singhal.
Sonia: It has been about an 8 percent revenue growth that you have seen, but if you go through the segmentwise performance your batteries business is seeing a low single digit growth. Have you seen muted demand this quarter and do you expect weakness to continue in that segment?
A: Battery and flashlight categories per se have a dependence on when the monsoon sets in the country. Both these categories do get impacted due to the sentiment regarding the monsoon. If you see the monsoons arrived very late in the month of June. We have already seen sentiment changing in both the categories starting July when rains in the cow belt area of UP, Bihar and Bengal have picked up and these growth rates should go back to higher levels in the second quarter.
If you look at the flashlight category the degrowth of 10 percent in Q1 will get totally reversed in Q2 due to this upswing which we see taking place.
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