Growth, demand to revive on back of good monsoon: V-Mart

A slowdown in consumption, especially in the rural sector, weighed on the growth of V-Mart Retail, CMD Lalit Agarwal told CNBC-TV18.Speaking to CNBC-TV18 after the firm declared its fourth quarter numbers, Agarwal however said a stronng monsoon should see growth revive.The retail chain reported a 70 percent decline in standalone net profit at Rs 48 lakh as in the fourth quarter compared to a net profit of Rs 1.60 crore in year-ago period. Net sales during Q4 rose 4.28 percent to Rs 177.50 crore. Below is the transcript of Lalit Agarwal’s interview with Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Sonia: It does not look like there has been too much of a growth. In fact your margins have fallen this quarter. Is it a very tough situation in the markets?A: Yes, the market seems to be a little tight and the consumers have not been spending all out. We have seen a bad winter season and we have also seen a lower consumption requirement from the customers. And in primarily in the Tier-III cities, which is affected by the rural consumption, rural agri income also, we have seen a bad two monsoons in the consecutive two years and I think that has impacted this quarter’s sales primarily in January and February where we had bad winters followed by lower consumption from the customers.Latha: What is your like-to-like sales for Q4 and for FY16?A: For FY16, our like-to-like to sales was almost neutral, minus one percent but for Q4 it was bad, it was negative 7.5 percent. This is what we got. We also had a little pressure from the competition, a lot of small regional players cropping up in multiple cities and we saw some growth of e-commerce also in these Tier-III cities during that quarter. So, it is a mixed reaction, we should wait for this quarter to begin. Even now, we are not seeing too much of growth, but yes, things are going to be better if the monsoon is good.