Conference Calls and Earnings Call Transcripts for NSE and BSE Stocks

Conference Call between Persistent Systems Management and Analysts on Q4FY20 performance and full year overview. Listen in to the full transcript. 

Key Highlights

Dr Anand Deshpande, Chairman and MD

Christopher O'Connor, CEO

Comments from Christopher O'Connor

We had a productive year, we crossed the $500 million mark for the first time. In INR that's a 5.9% growth rate for the year. We are pleased with that performance.

Q4FY20 revenue was at $127.05 million, translating into a 1.8% decline QoQ and 7.1% growth YoY. EBITDA stands at 13.8%, PAT at 9%. We remain focused and have work to do in that area.

Full year: $501 million. Growth 4.3% in dollars, and 5.9% in INR. EBITDA at 13.8%, PAT at 9.5%. 

We had some marquee wins, as well as growth in large accounts. Added several hundred new companies to Persistent as customers and clients. We have built a COVID19 care response solutions for Salesforce. We continue to scale our COVID19 solutions as they became needed. We did see a drop in our royalty revenue, and that had a direct impact on our bottomline. We are done with the rebranding exercise, which had some real expense and that's behind us. 

We start the year in a better position compared to the previous year in terms of our expenditure. The units themselves - technology services grew strongly. We grew at 14.7% YoY. In the alliance business we saw ups and downs. YoY we saw change in our royalty structure that has impacted us. Full year revenue is 4.7% down from the last year. 

Covid related - we brought 11,000 people home in a week. We saw this coming and started WFH before India started its lockdown. Nearly across the board our clients were supportive. We have set up processes for regular communications, and manage productivity while also ensuring regular checkins with employees to see how they are doing. It's also given us the opportunity to talk with our analysts, customers, peers in the industry. It's been a surprisingly impressive door-opening exercise, in this pandemic. We anticipate some degree of a U shaped recovery when it comes to COVID19. 

Conference Call between Tata Coffee Management and Analysts on Q4FY20 and full year earnings performance and outlook. Listen in to the full transcript.

Call Participants: Mr. Chacko Purackal Thomas - Managing Director & CEO, Mr. K. Venkataramanan, ED - Finance & CFO 

Introductory remarks from Chacko Purackal Thomas

Good morning everyone! I would like to thank all the analysts who are on the call. I wanted to mention that as per government advisory on Covid-19, we had suspended our operations but have since resumed the same with the units operating, though at low capacities but following all statutory norms and guidelines issued by the government. 

There has been some impact on our operations due to Covid-19 on our Q4 results but mostly on our Indian operations. We are closely assessing the impact for 2021. I would now move forward to comment on the overall performance of the company along with some observations on the trends in the pre and post Covid-19 scenarios. 

Firstly, I am very happy to report that in the financial year 2020, the company at a standalone and consolidated level has delivered a steady performance. Our standalone results - the total income for financial year 2020 is higher at Rs 776 crores compared to Rs 757 crores in the previous year. Standalone PAT is higher at Rs 73 crore compared to Rs 71.6 crores in the previous year. 

The terminals for the quarter in particular have been varying from 129.95 cents per pound to around 117.35 cents per pound as on April 1, 2020. The London coffee terminals have also been dynamic and have witnessed lows in Q4 from USD 1,382 per metric tonne to going down to USD 1,204 per metric tonne. While the market experienced stress on prices, we have been able to realise better returns for our coffee by improving our operational efficiencies and continuing to drive optimisation in efforts. 

Meanwhile, pepper prices have also remained stagnant in the last quarter since export was prevented as a preventive measure on account of the pandemic. Our focus is in driving significant cost control and cost optimisation projects across the company have also resulted in substantial savings for the financial year. As far as our instant coffee operations in India and Vietnam is concerned, I am pleased to report that our instant coffee, India business continues to perform well. Good sales performance was seen across all geographies and we continue to have a very order book in the coming quarters despite all the challenges in the uncertainties that we have seen around Covid-19.

The operations around our Vietnam soluble coffee plant continue to show good performance both in terms of production and sales. In Vietnam, the Covid-19 spread was addressed with stringent preventive measures and hence we did not pause and eventually operated nearly at full capacities towards the end of the year. A very robust sales pipeline is underway and our key customers have continued to show interest in  our products. 

The consolidated results have shown marked improvement with our  subsidiaries registering a good performance on account of increased profit to higher volumes. Consolidated total income went up 9% from Rs 1,987 crores compared to Rs 1,822 crores from the previous year. Consolidated profit after tax was significantly higher at Rs 141 crores compared to Rs 107 crores in the previous year. 

To summarize, I would just like to mention that by operating through the blends of volume growth, crossing of operational efficiencies and our fairly good performance across all geographies. We have been able to deliver a stable financial performance for the year despite the extraordinary challenges faced by the business at large. We continue to constantly navigate and evolve in the changing environment by focussing and ensuring smooth operations in our units as well as continue to focus on cost control initiatives all across. 

The standalone Q4 results are impacted primarily due to two major reasons. One is that there has been sequential crop drop specially in Arabica and all the three products. Not to forget the Covid impact in the last few days, maybe 10-12 days due to which our shipments had to be postponed and the logistics and operations were impacted. 

The harvest of Brazilian crops is expected to commence now. Obviously there is a Covid scare everywhere. Notwithstanding that, the Brazilian crop is expected to be a good crop for the year and so the prices are expected to be steady unless obviously if there is a sudden issue with the Brazilian crops which is unlikely. 

Earnings Call between SBI Life Insurance Management and Analysts on the Q4FY20 and Full Year Performance and Outlook. Listen in to the full transcript.

Conference Call with Varun Beverages Management and Analysts on Q1CY20 performance and outlook. Listen in to the full transcript.

Call Participants: Ravi Jaipuria - Promoter and Founding Chairman, Varun Jaipuria - Whole Time Director, Raj Gandhi - Director, Kapil Agarwal - Director & CEO, Vikas Bhatia - CFO

Introductory Remarks from Ravi Jaipuria

Good Afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us in the earnings conference call. I hope all of you had the opportunity to go through our results presentation which provides details of our operations and financial performance for the first quarter ended March 31st, 2020. We started the new fiscal year on a strong note with healthy demand and robust volumes. Growth across our domestic and international markets enabled us to deliver our top line growth of 23%, EBITDA growth of 24% and PAT growth by 50% during the quarter. 

However, a countrywide lockdown and similar restrictions in many of our international geographies during the last 10 days of March moderated both our domestic and international business. Performance during the quarter would have otherwise been even better. Total sales volume was up 26.2% YoY in Q1 2020.

We registered double digit volume growth in the month of January and February. However, organic sales volume got severely impacted in the last 10 days of March due to the lockdown. As a result, organic volume for the quarter declined by 13.7% in India and 9.3% on a consolidated basis.

Over the last two months, worldwide economies and various industries across India and International markets have been facing an unprecedented situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our primary focus during this challenging period has been towards undertaking all necessary measures to ensure cash flows, ensure safety of our employees, business partners, communities and to overall safeguard the interests of all our stakeholders.

On the operational front, in compliance with the government authorities and advisors, we have temporarily closed operations at our office across India and have already implemented work from home. As per the relaxations provided by the government of India for essential services and particularly packaged food and beverages, we have got the permissions from respective state governments to operate in several production facilities.

These units are currently operational at a lower utilization level and we are undertaking all necessary measures to ensure and maintain the IS standard of hygiene and social distancing. In anticipation of the favourable uneconomic season,  we have built up additional stock of inventory in the month of March and we have been able to sell most of the inventory. Furthermore, with initial relaxation in lockdown measures, we have also started to see an initial recovery in demand and in sync, we have fairly started production in most facilities. I have also been actively in contact with all our distributors in order to ensure streamlined delivery and supply. 

Our business model consisting of its own logistics supply chain systems and end to end infrastructure facilities provide adequate cushion to our business operations despite an industry wise supply chain disruption in the country. We are also very encouraged that VBL has a healthy balance sheet and strong financial status which we believe, most certainly should see through this disorderly challenge. 

To conclude, we are currently facing curtailed demand both in India and in our international geographies as a result of the ongoing macro situation. We believe in the near term, there should be a gradual bounce back in volumes. This will be enabled by easing of lockdown restrictions and restoration of consumer sentiments. We are confident that once things stabilise, we will once again see encouraging growth and we will further strengthen our position as a leading player in the beverage industry. 

Raj Gandhi providing highlights on operations and financial performance:

Good afternoon and a warm welcome to everyone joining in today. Here’s the overview of the financial performance of the first quarter ended 31st March, 2020. 

• Revenue from operations grew at 23.1% YoY in Q1 2020 to Rs. 16,764.4 million

• EBITDA increased by 24.2% to the level of Rs 2,711.6 million

• Total sales volumes were up 26.2% YoY at 114 million cases in Q1 2020 as compared to 90.3 million cases in Q1 2019 

• CSD constituted 67%, Juice 7% and Packaged Drinking water 26% of total sales volumes in Q1 2020 

• Post lockdown restriction imposed by the Govt. of India due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organic sales volumes got severely impacted in the last 10 days of March. Resultantly, organic volumes for the quarter declined by 13.7% in India and 9.3% on a consolidated basis even after double digit organic growth in the months of Jan and Feb

• Realization per case has come down by 2.3% in Q1 2020 essentially on account of lower sales realization in Zimbabwe in USD terms

• On the positive side, EBITDA increased by 24.2% to Rs. 2,711.6 million in Q1 2020 from Rs. 2,183.8 million in Q1 2019. EBITDA margins expanded by 11 bps in Q1 2020 as the major part of savings in raw material cost was offset by higher fixed cost amid negligible sales during the last 10 days of March

• Gross margins improved by 300 bps during Q1 2020 primarily due to favorable PET chips prices 

• Depreciation and Finance Cost have increased by 36.4% and 47.3% respectively in-line with the increase in scale of business post consolidation of South and West India sub-territories w.e.f. 1st May 2019

• The exceptional items amounting to Rs. 665.3 mn for the current quarter represents provision for impairment in the value of certain plant and equipment, glass bottles & plastic shells

• The Company has made an assessment of the impact of Ordinance and decided to continue with the existing tax structure until utilization of accumulated minimum alternative tax (MAT) credit and expiry of other tax benefits/holidays available

• In accordance with the Ind AS 12 "Income Taxes", the Company is also required to re-measure its deferred tax balances, for amounts that are expected to reverse in future when the Company would migrate to the new tax regime. The Company has re-measured its outstanding deferred tax balances and written back an amount of Rs. 731.85 mn to the Statement of Profit and Loss.

To conclude, in these challenging times, as an organization, we have instituted some cost realization measures to conserve cash flows and ensure steady profitability. The company has also been timely servicing all its debt obligations. Overall, our focus remains on free cash flows over the coming years and in the whole, we look forward to delivering sustainable, operational and financial performance going ahead.