Avenue Supermarts Q2 profit rises 64%, revenue 36% on FMCG, staples demand

"The FMCG and staples segment of the business has performed better than general merchandise and apparel segments. Discretionary items in the non-FMCG segment while recovering have still not come back to pre-pandemic levels. The inflationary stress is more acute at lower price points in discretionary non-FMCG categories," Neville Noronha, CEO and Managing Director said.

For the first half of FY23, consolidated revenue came in at Rs 20,676 crore, as compared to Rs 12,972 crore a year back. EBITDA margin stood at 9.2 percent as against 6.9 percent in the same period, the company said in an exchange filing.

Food category contributed to 54.75 percent of the revenue, non-foods 20.5 percent, while general merchandise and apparel contributed the rest 24.75 percent.

"As and when footfalls increase, we assume we should be inching towards our pre-pandemic contributions for apparel and general merchandise sales," Noronha said.

"Like-for-like growth (LFL) for all stores that are 5 years or older as of end of September 2022 was at 6.5 percent annualized/20.8 percent absolute," he said. LFL indicates growth in sales as recorded by the same number of stores a year ago. "The newer stores have revenues per store significantly lower than the older stores."

DMart Ready operations have been expanded to 18 cities across India. While the expansion in 18 cities looks like a big leap, in most of the newer cities these are just experiments with capital allocations commensurate with outcomes, the company said.