I had the chance to attend the Vaidya Sane call today. Here is the quick gist of what I’ve picked up so far (will re-listen and add more if I missed out on anything):
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Flat revenue growth this year was an outcome of their marketing spends largely being directed to their products. This lead to the walk-in patient type changing from the year long treatment that they come to seek (disease reversal) to being patients seeking short term remedy for their ailments. The management has already addressed this by hiring a new marketing agency and changing their campaign which is now directed towards bringing in the desired type of footfall to their clinics and hospitals.
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In FY25, the focus is on increasing footfalls in the existing clinics and hospitals viz a viz looking at aggressively adding more clinics. So that there is better capacity utilization.
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Higher marketing spends and campaigns focused on getting more footfalls to the clinics and hospitals in FY25. The higher marketing spends will be offset by reduction in other expenses/spends. These cost cutting measures along with in-house manufacturing of products will lead to margin expansion.
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Guidance for FY25 is topline growth of 20% and EBITDA margin expansion to 10%, margins may go higher than this as well.
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The mission 2025 stated in their own deck is inaccurate and the plan for 1000 clinics, 10 hospitals is their plan for the next 4-5 years. The bed expansion in their existing hospitals will take place in 12-18 months. All of this sounds more realistic now.
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To me Dr. Sane sounded a bit subdued but confident on the call today (compared to his usual bullish and confident tone). This is for the better I believe as what he is planning to achieve in FY25 came across as more realistic (this point is entirely my opinion, you may choose to differ)
Disc: Invested as a tactical 2-3 year bet. Will continue to monitor their execution over FY25. Personally for me it has been underwhelming in FY24.