Akzo Nobel Q2 concall highlights –

Sales – 956 vs 926 cr

Gross Margins @ 44.7 vs 38.4 pc

EBITDA – 142 vs 106 cr ( margins @ 14.8 vs 11.5 pc )

PAT – 94 vs 65 cr

Double digit growth in automotive coatings business led by OEM demand. Marine coatings also grew strongly on the back of strong orders from Defence. Protective coatings also grew well driven by oil and gas and power segments

Paints business impacted by subdued demand, erratic rains. Tier -2,3 towns showing good sales pick up. Premium end of the Mkt doing better than mass mkt

Company’s paints business is now on negative working Capital !!!

Cash on Books – aprox 670 cr

Company’s good performance in smaller towns, rural areas led by distribution led gains and lower base vs larger competitors

Q3 likely to see festive tailwinds

Revenue contribution from new products launched in last 2-3 yrs currently at 10 odd pc

Company intends to jack up advertising and sales promotion expenses from 3.5 pc of revenues currently to 5 pc of revenues. Company – advertising heavily during Cricket World Cup

B2B – business has been surprising positively. B2C – remains challenging

Company’s current Mkt share in paints business is around 4.5 pc. Intend to take it beyond 6 pc in about 2 yrs by focussing more on the mass mkt where the company is still on a weaker footing

Velvet touch – premium brand continues to do well

Disc: hold a tracking position. Not SEBI registered. Biased

This is the only Indian listed company in GPU cloud segment. Screenshots from company website is here oliw :

Please see the companies website where one can see the competitive edge what this company offer

Q2FY24:
• Volume growth 17% yoy.

• Injection Moulding: In process of machine upgradation to enhance installed capacity.

• Developed 6 new products
15 new customers onboarded including 4 overseas customers.
Strong Customer retention with ~97% of revenue from repeat customers.

• Appointed Chief Marketing Officer.
• Company’s export revenue tripled on Y-o-Y basis to ₹15.32 Crores for H1FY24.
• Around 55-60% of the business is coming from dairy and beverages.

• Injection molding capacity expansion: It is in discussion phase as such. As and when it materializes, will let you know the exact numbers.

• Patents: One is a process patent which we have done for making the tube laminates, that’s a process patent which we are holding. The other is product packaging design patent which we are holding.

• Tube laminates: We are constantly evaluating this particular market so as and when we feel that the situation is correct to have a dedicated line for this particular segment, we will take a call for investing for a dedicated line for the tube lamination. At the moment, it is on halt.

• Over the period of 2-3 years, we expect it to at least go to 12 crores to 15 crores per quarter or at least Rs. 50crores- Rs. 60crores coming from export.

• In-Mold Label: In-Mold Label, we have commercially established the product and we have started manufacturing. We have received the initial trial orders from the customers and we will ramp up the production of IML products in coming quarters. So, that is the six products of what we have added in which that one of the products is Injection Molded product, Label products.

• Olive Ecopack: Rs. 100 crores- Rs. 110 crores revenue we can definitely look for next year. that number will be a break-even number.

• So, for next quarter, definitely, we’ll see the reduction in the Finance Cost.

• Customer advance for capex: It will be difficult to reveal the name of the customer but, yes, as I mentioned that few of the customers where we have almost monopolistic supply and as the customer is expanding their business, they wanted us also to increase the capacities and it helped us in increasing the capacities as we were doing a lot of investment and we needed that support and they accepted our request. That’s the only thing, I would say.

• In food packaging, since sustainable packaging still are not able to meet the functional requirement, we don’t see much entry of sustainable products entering into Food Packaging but there the more focus will be on to recyclability and using recycled materials. And in Food Service, the focus will be more on using sustainable products. And we would say, as a company we are well placed in both the sectors and so that will help us to achieve the growth in the next five years

• Capacity increase: we are working on increasing the capacities on the existing machines by doing some modifications and we have got very good results and probably in the next one month or so we should be able to announce that the increment in the installed capacity on these processes around 10%-15%.