Radhakishan Damani’s DMart reports Rs 447 crore in net profit for Q3 FY21; Ebitda margin improves to 9.1%

Radhakishan Damani-led Avenue Supermarts, which owns and operates supermarket chain of DMart stores, on Saturday reported a 16.3 per cent year-on-year (YoY) unaudited consolidated net profit jump to Rs 446.95 crore for the third quarter of financial year 2020-21. DMart’s profit for the quarter ended December 31, FY20 stood at Rs 384.01 crore. The total consolidated income for the company was also up 11.3 per cent from Rs 6,815 crore to Rs 7,587.32 crore during the said period while operating revenue was Rs 7,542 crore for Q3 FY21. Avenue Supermarts subsidiaries included Avenue E-commerce, Align Retail Trade, Nahar Seth & Jogani Developers, Avenue Food Plaza, and Reflect Wholesale and Retail.

“The quarter has seen further improvement in our business and financial metrics. Our overall sales and sales mix is now trending very close to our usual times except for specific customer consumption changes post Covid-19,” said Neville Noronha, CEO & Managing Director, Avenue Supermarts. Among the categories taking more time to recover for DMart were apparel, laundry, footwear, travel and other relevant out of home usage categories, according to Noronha, even as its “agile OPEX management” along with a good surge in festival shopping for DMart allowed it to deliver a significantly better quarter than the previous two quarters.

However, December month didn’t do as well for the company as the festive months of October and November. Its 162 stores, which are two years and older, did around 96 per cent of December 2019 sales in December 2020. Moreover, restricted store operations in certain cities after Diwali because of night curfews and weekend closure resulted in significantly larger declines in such stores in comparison to the same period last year, according to Noronha.

Also read: Bitcoin bull run continues as price soars nearly 4X in 3 months; market cap crosses $730B mark

DMart’s Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) for the December quarter was Rs 689 crore vis-à-vis Rs 597 crore for the year-ago period. The EBITDA margin was 9.1 per cent in Q3 versus 8.8 per cent in Q3 FY20 while basic Earnings per share (EPS) for Q3 FY21 stood at Rs 6.90, up from Rs 6.14 for Q3 FY20. The total consolidated expenses during the December quarter also increased from Rs 6,325.03 crore for Q3 FY20 to Rs 6,977.88 for Q3 FY21.

The company had soft-launched its e-commerce app DMart Ready during the December quarter in select pin codes of Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, Noronha said. It had also leased some part of the space at some of its brick-and-mortar stores to Avenue E-Commerce Limited (AEL) to begin its e-commerce business in the three cities. “Post Covid-19 environment is creating opportunities to launch DMart Ready in more cities. However, we will continue with our approach of small trials, reviews and controlled acceleration for DMart Ready.”