Hi, good evening, everyone. This is Nitin Gupta from Emkay Global. I would like to welcome all to the Q1 FY25 results conference call of Berger Paints India Limited. I thank Berger Paints management for allowing us to host. We have with us today Mr. Abhijit Roy, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Kaushik Ghosh, Vice President and CFO, and Mr. Sujyoti Mukherjee, Vice President, Finance and Accounts. I shall now hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks, post which we will proceed with Q&A session. Over to you, gentlemen. Thank you, Nitin. A very warm welcome to all of you in the Berger Paints earnings update call for Q1 FY 25. Of course, this year we are doing it on the Zoom platform. For your information, the management presentation on the results have already been uploaded in the stock exchange and in the company's website. We will also run you through the presentation, along with the opening comments from Mr. Roy. You know, hold you, and follow it with the question and answer session. So with that, I actually hand you over to Mr. Roy for his opening comments. Thank you, Sujyoti, and good evening, all of you. With me today is Kaushik Ghosh, who's the CFO, and we'll make a small presentation first and then move on to the question and answer session. Allow me to share the presentation. Why is this not getting reflected on the screen? Can you allow the sharing? Yes, it is allowed, I think. Is it coming? Yes, the first slide is there. I can't see anything on my side. Is it moving now? Yes, it is visible. No. Is it moving to the next screen? No. Hasn't yet moved. So that's the problem. I'm stopping sharing and re-sharing again. Let me see if it works. Can you see the screen now? Yeah. Let me see if this shifts down. Yes, the next screen is there. Okay. You know, so good evening once again. You know, just a quick look at what we have done in quarter one. Strong double-digit volume growth, highest market share gain amongst listed players on year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis. Operating margin outperforms guidance and price increase undertaken on differentiated products in the first quarter itself by us, and followed by two other price increases in July and one due in August. Out of the two, one in July and one in August twelfth, which we are going to take place. Going by what we have done in the last few quarters, we have been consistently outperforming the industry growth rate. So if we look from quarter one of financial year 2024, the blue line indicates the industry growth rate, and the red one is what we have been delivering. So consistently above the industry rate right through. In this quarter, the industry grew by -0.8%, and our growth rate was 2.7%. The industry growth has been calculated based on the performance of the results declared by five listed paint companies, including us, and the growth percentage is calculated for Berger Paints India operation, which includes Berger Paints standalone, plus STP and Saboo Coatings based out of India, which are small operations, but since they are in India, we have included those operations as well. As far as market share and profitability is concerned, we have been constantly gaining for the last few years. So in financial year 2021, based on the five listed companies again, 18.6% was our market share. It moved to 18.9%. In 2023, it moved up to 19.3%. Last year, we were at 19.7% by the end of the year, and in quarter one of this year, we have jumped to 20.9%. So this is as far as market share is concerned. If we look at the operating profit margin movement as well, you will see that, you know, we have always hovered, except for some aberrations, between 15 to 16.5-17 range. So our guidance has always been that we will be between 15% and 17%. There were two aberrations in quarter two and three, which we had gone down, and the industry had gone down in those quarters... And then quarter one of last year, we were at 18.8%, which was the highest ever, and in that, decorative was nearly 20%. So therefore, from there, because the bases were very high, though we did 17.2% this quarter, which is the second highest in so many quarters of, from 2022 onwards, but still there is a negative, small marginal negative growth rate. But we are expecting that we will do slightly better in quarter two over the 17%. So our guidance of 15%-17%, where we have been hovering, we will be slightly bettering that in the first quarter and in the second quarter as well, hopefully. As far as quarter one performance is concerned, you know, total volume growth was 11.8%, value growth 2.4%. The double-digit volume growth was registered for the quarter, but the value growth moderated over the corresponding period on account of three major factors. Number one, impact of product price reduction of about 5%, taken in Q3 and Q4 of last year, so that's straightaway 5% to be subtracted. High volume, low value, construction chemical products, which showed greater growth and traction, so that mix changed little bit in that way. The luxury product sales were impacted or softened a little bit. Primarily, states of Kerala and West Bengal, which are big markets for us, which are primarily luxury markets, had a very subdued quarter, and that impacted our, you know, mix, and hence, the value growth looks lesser than the volume growth. One, in terms of two-year, 3-year and 4-year growth rates, standalone, two-year was 12.2 volume growth, 3 years, 20.8, and 4 years, 32% in terms of volume growth rates. If you look at value growth rates, it's 6.2, 20.1, and 35.8. We have maintained strong compounded growth rate consistently over the past few years. Operating profit margin. Last year, if you look at it on the left-hand side, below the green brush, 37.5% was our, you know, growth rate, and 18.8% was the margin for quarter one of last year. This year, it is -5.9% and 17.2% in terms of EBITDA to sales or the margin percentage. Unusually high profit growth last year and margins, you know, was aided by the low-cost inventory. Now, little bit of inflation in RM prices has happened in the recent past, especially for methyl methacrylate and butyl acrylate, which are used for emulsion making, for water-based paint. We took a strategic call to enhance advertisement spending, especially during the general election; we were very visible. The other part is the product price increases undertaken in the quarter and subsequently to improve margins marginally going forward after compensating for RM inflation and increased advertisement costs. So we expect that marginal improvement in the operating margin will take place in quarter two after the price increases, in spite of some of the raw material price increase, which has happened so far. As far as figures are concerned, you would have seen that already. Value growth of 2.4, operating profit growth of five point or degrowth of 5.9% and PAT degrowth of 6.4%. In gross margin terms, we are more or less hovering around similar levels of 39%-40%, where we normally are stationed. That's where we have been for the last many quarters. From quarter four of financial year 2023, which is, what? 39.6, 39.4, 40, 40.3, 40.3, and now 39.2. So that is where we have been, expect that it will show marginal improvement again, as I have mentioned, it will go back probably to 40% or 40%+, in the second quarter. Decorative business recorded double-digit volume growth. Construction chemical and waterproofing business had a strong performance. Project business had an improved showing on the back of outperformance in the real estate sector. And we went for aggressive network expansion. The basics have been going on pretty well. We added 1,900+ retail touchpoints, installed 1,800+ Colour Bank machines, and renewed focus on urban markets with a new team in place. We are very hopeful. We had a weak presence, relatively in the urban areas, especially the big metros in the west and the south, where we have a relatively weak presence. We have created a separate team now to focus with a very senior manager in charge, and we expect that we will see some results and very positive results in the urban markets in the near future. As far as recently product, launched products are concerned, two of them are doing quite well. Easy Clean Silky Touch, this is an upgraded version of Easy Clean. As you know, this is a leader in its category, and we have launched a better finish product, which is more akin luxury finishes, and this is called Easy Clean Silky Touch, doing quite well in many of the markets. We had introduced Roof Kool & Seal some months back, around November, December of last year. It's picked up momentum. It's doing quite well. In fact, we are looking at advertising this strongly in the near future, with the line, "Cracks, Chhat ke cracks ko kare totally seal, ghar mein de thanda feel." So this is something which we are expecting should do well. Innovative products and services which we have launched over the years in the recent past, Seal-O-Prime, Anti Dust, which is a leader in its category. Imperia Amaze, this is a wood coating, acrylic finish. Home Shield Waterproof Putty, this is the first waterproof putty that was launched in our country and has now been, you know, copied by almost everyone in the industry. Long Life 15, which is a 15-year warranty product on the exterior. Easy Clean, which is clear leader in its category even today. Express Painting, the first painting service which was introduced in India and continues to remain very strong. So most of these are innovated, or all of them are innovated by us, actually, and, you know, has been now, become a standard of the industry. As such, you know, most players are, you know, into this. But we remain to hold leadership position in, many of the products, and the service is also going very strong, the express painting service. As far as paint studios or exclusive stores for paint selling is concerned, we now have about 616 franchisee stores across the country, mostly in the urban markets, and we are going to take it up to 1,000 plus by the year-end. This is something which we think, you know, for our urban initiative, which we have undertaken, this is also important, to get a foothold in the urban markets and become stronger there. On the digital side, we have taken many initiatives, but, you know, three of them I would like to mention. One is Salesforce, the introduction of Salesforce for our painters. It has already happened for Express Painting, lead generation and follow-through. That is also on now in Salesforce. As far as the dealer side is concerned, that's going to be introduced in the next two months. So we will have all the painters, the contractor, customer side of it and the dealers on Salesforce. As far as the website is concerned, you know, this is a new website which we have introduced recently. It has a lot of innovations in it, a very interesting website. It has seen increased footfalls, you know, or rather eyeballs, you know, coming in. And this website is very mobile friendly as well, along with, you know, and will allow us to, I think, you know, create a larger set of leads for our businesses. The other part is the My Colour App, which is gaining popularity. We now have 130,000-plus users who have downloaded and are regularly using this. This is, you know, basically to choose the color in your house, and it is AI-based, you know, so it, it suggests possible color combinations depending on the area in which you are there. And it's very interesting, thing which we have created. Already on its own, without advertisement, we have seen this many downloads. I think, you know, it has a good future, and we should be able to use this to get closer to the customer. Industrial business, protective coating business had a modest performance, somewhat impacted by the general elections. But, you know, it business picked up in June, and in July it picked up further. So we are seeing good traction now in protective coatings business. Because the infra business is supposed to be doing well, this business should grow at a good pace. Automotive and general industrial business saw muted growth in the quarter on the back of subdued growth in the commercial vehicle segment, but in July it showed some improvement. Hopefully, in August it will be even better. In powder coatings business line continued its steady growth. As far as significant projects in industrial businesses are concerned, in the last few months, we have done Chenab Bridge, Vande Bharat train, bogies, basically IICC, Yashobhoomi, which we painted Chennai Airport. So many of the infrastructure projects, as we are the leader in this category, we keep doing some of these projects. Cash flow situation, it has been improving steadily. At one point of time last year, you know, we had debt on our books. Now, we are in cash surplus, which is the normal situation for us. As of June 2024 end, we had a surplus of INR 657 crores, and every month it keeps going up. So, and we are, as far as you know, the two projects which we will be spending some money on, one is Panagarh project, the other one is Odisha. We will have enough money to, you know, be able to, not borrow anything. It will probably be mostly be internal accruals. Almost all of it, will come through that, you know, and we will still be having some amount of cash with us at any point of time. Financial results consolidated, total income from operations 2%, operating profit -6.2%, PAT at -0.2%. As far as you know, international operations are concerned, company's overseas subsidiary, Bolix S.A., Poland, continued its growth trajectory on top line. Profitability showed robust growth, both in constant currency and Indian rupee, helped by improvement in operating margin. Company's overseas subsidiary, Berger Nepal, continues its dismal performance both on top line and profitability, faced with persistent liquidity issues and unfavorable market conditions. However, of late, we see signs of improvement. And in this month, I think, we will be able to grow marginally in that market. Last quarter, we had a very large, you know, degrowth, but now we are seeing it changing already. Company's subsidiary, STP Limited, had a good quarter top line growth. However, profitability recorded a marginal degrowth on account of adverse mix impact on lower sale of admixtures. Admixture sales were impacted due to the election. You know, a lot of the infrastructure projects, you know, was stalled. It is going to come in on second and third quarter, so we should see improvement there in terms of the mix in STP. SBL Specialty Coatings also had a muted top line growth in the quarter, and it suffered a profit degrowth on account of scale and mix impact. The joint venture, Berger Becker Coatings, even though it had a healthy top line growth, however, profitability saw a marginal decline impacted by product price reduction passed on to customers to regain market share. And company's joint venture, Berger Nippon Paint Automotive Coatings, had a steady business growth, riding on a good show by passenger vehicle segment and robust profitability on the back of improved raw material prices. Of course, other than business, you know, on the ESG front, we did a lot of good work. 19.59% electricity generated from renewable energy last year. We had 839 tons of waste recycled last year. Last mile delivery through e-vehicle to reduce carbon footprint has been initiated in many of our depots. And 49,149 KL of water was recycled last year, which is a 53% increase from financial year 2023. This type of work continues. In quarter one, we have seen further improvement on all of these parameters, and we hope that, you know, this year we will have... In fact, we have gone for Dow Jones Sustainability Index. For the first time, we will have, we will get scored on that, and, you know, so therefore, we, we are hoping that we will begin with a good score in the first place and keep improving from there on. Looking at the business outlook going forward, we expect that the normal monsoon is likely to show a rural demand condition. Decorative business value growth will improve in quarter two, aided by product price increases to some extent. That's about, you know, 2-odd% of increase should happen in terms of value growth. Industrial business outlook seem better on the back of increased government spending on infrastructure post-elections. And geopolitical factors, however, may pose some risk to inflation. If that doesn't happen, then we should expect, you know, better result both on the top line and the bottom line in quarter two and going forward as well. Thank you, and, you know, that's all that I had to say from my side as far as the presentation is concerned, and we can open up now for question and answer. Thanks, Abhijit. We will now start with Q&A session. I hand over to my colleague, Pinky Mathur, for the Q&A session. Thanks, Nitin. Those of you who have questions can raise your hand. We will announce your name and unmute your line, after which you can ask questions. Please state your full name and the organization you are representing. First question is from the line of Abneesh Roy from Nuvama. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Am I audible? Yes, yes, Abneesh, you are. You are. Firstly, congrats on the market share. I think very resilient performance for many years. My first question is on that only. So, sir, you also claim market share expansion. I'm sure it's based on the math in terms of the results which come out. The player which got listed a few years back, Indigo Paints, they also claim market share expansion. So wanted to understand, who is losing market share? Is it the market leader or is it the number three or number four player? And is this sustainable? Because in the past, we have seen if the market leader in any category in consumption loses, they know how to get it back. So what will be your comments on both these aspects? Yeah. So it's an interesting question, and, you know, I thought someone will ask, and since you have asked, this is the first question. Let me answer it in this way: There are two parts to it. In quarter one, typically, you know, the gains have happened for, if you look at the five companies together, there is a gain from, you know, the listed company that you mentioned, which is Indigo, I presume. And there is a gain for us as well. And, you know, though AkzoNobel results is more positive, but they haven't gained in this quarter if you look at the figures. The reason is that, you know, in fact, you know, Kansai also has got a growth little bit. If you look at last year performance, and then if you look at the quarter performance, then you will see an improvement in the growth rate. Because whatever we have seen so far, Asian has lost in the first quarter little bit because of the results which has happened this quarter for them, and, you know, it has been gained by two, three other players. If you look at last year versus this quarter, then the biggest gain you will see is for us, followed by that of strangely, Nerolac. Because, you know, from the perspective of first quarter value sales, for Nerolac and Berger, the first quarter is always much higher, and then it tapers down a little bit in second quarter, you know, in terms of value sales. So it is not the growth percentage alone which is very important, it is also the total value that you do in a particular quarter, which will enable you to judge, you know, how your share has moved. So in this case, our values and our market share has gone up from 19.7-odd to 20.9, if you compare from the yearly total of last year to the quarter market share of this year. However, if you look at quarter to quarter, which means quarter 1 of 4 years back, quarter 1 of 3 years back, quarter 1 of 2 years back, quarter 1 of last year, and quarter 1 of this year, then quarter 1 of last year, we were at somewhere around 20.2%, and today, in this quarter, we are at 20.9. It's a jump from 20.2 to 20.9. If you look at quarter-over-quarter, quarter one of last year versus quarter one of this year. But if you look at yearly, we had dropped from 20.2 to 19.7 by the end of the year, and from 19.7, it has now moved up back to 20.9, and that I said, is because of our first quarter being very strong, you know, in terms of value sales. So it may slip from 20.9 to 20.4 or 20.5. Typically, we go down by 0.4-0.5 by the end of the year. As you said, the leader tends to come back more towards the third and fourth quarter because they are much stronger in the southern belt, where fourth quarter is the strongest. You have this equation changing a little bit quarter-to-quarter, but overall, as you saw, our market share, we have been gaining year-on-year by 0.3%-0.5%, and this year also, we are likely to gain by 0.5%-0.6%. Sure. Understood. That's quite useful. My second question is on the new player. Their results also came today. It seems they have done around INR 80-90 crore sales based on the math, but they did say that because of the CWIP, the actual number is higher. So it becomes difficult to really judge how they have done. So my specific questions to you is, in terms of tinting machine or say discounts, or say, in terms of the warranty, or extra grammage, is there any demand from the end customer or the painter or the dealer to you? Or do you envisage because these are early days, would you need to do any tweak in those four aspects? Second, Kansai said that, their confidence level of, fighting new players, new competition, is now higher versus what it was, say, before the launch. So around 4-5 months back, it is higher now. Would your confidence level also be higher because, you are, extremely important, and larger player than Kansai? So to that extent, your understanding and your, impact, what you have felt till now, will be far more, helpful for us to, understand as an outsider, if you could comment on that part. Yes, Abneesh, you know, it is very early days. You know, it's difficult for us, you know, to actually... So the initial hype that was there, you know, I think, has come down, you know, somewhat. The fear factor or, or the amount of, you know, noise that was there, has dissipated to a large extent, I would say. Now it's performance-led, and we have to see how it happens. As of now, you know, it is primarily what they are doing is trying to spread, to as many, locations as possible. They are giving these free machines, along with that, some material, but that's placement which is happening. It is the repeat cycle, which is very important. We need to keep a watch on that, how much of it is rotating. As of now, it's just placement which has happened in only 1-2 months, you know, that too. So that is why I'm saying it is slightly premature to say how it will move forward, you know, how, how, how the repeat will happen. Because one-time placement is fine, but, you know, we need to see how the movement happens, you know, and that is crucial. Of course, you know, they have put in a lot, many manpower on the ground. A lot of work is happening there. And I expect advertisement also to break soon, from September onwards, which will support the distribution on the ground. But as I said, you know, the confidence, you know, we never lost it, you know, so I don't think, you know, we have regained anything. But I would place it that, you know, we are watchful. We are seeing how things pan out. But as I, the initial, you know, hype around it, along with even for the dealers, you know, it has come down substantially, I would say. ...And on those four aspects, Abhijit, the tinting machine, the size and the live talking it does with the headquarters. Second is in terms of, say, the discounts or, say, from the architects and painters, any feedback and extra grammage, do you need to give any of these? Yeah. So, let me tell you. So the, that feedback and all that they talk about from, you know, the instant information, that we also get, information which is coming in at a frequent interval. I don't think that makes any difference to the competitive, you know, scenario at all, and it's no great advantage because everyone, I think, Asian also gets that information, so it's not something which is different, you know. The second part is related to the grammage, extra grammage that they were giving. I am told that it has been stopped already, you know, recently. So, a part of that saving, which they have, is possibly being reallocated, to the painters, in terms of extra payout. That's what we have seen so far. You know, just happened 15, 20 days back. So I don't know whether that is, you know, a firm decision on their part or in, is it just, withdrawal for the time being, but they have stopped this, you know, in some of the markets at least, this free stock, you know, which, which they were giving, the 10% extra. So that's, that's something which we have seen already. I, I don't think it was having any great traction anyway, so, that's not, you know, something, which was giving them great results. So, that is what is another departure which has happened from what they had initially started. So this is all that I can say at this stage. Sure, sir. Thanks a lot. Very helpful, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from line of Karthik Chellappa, Indus Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you very much for the opportunity, sir. Am I audible? Yeah, yeah, you are, Karthik. Okay, great. Thank you, sir. Congrats on the quarter. I have two questions. The first one is, if you look at the first quarter, standalone business alone, the gap between value and volume is almost 10 percentage points. Half of it is explained by the price cut. The balance half is probably explained by mix- Yes. with value products probably doing better than premium. Yes. Now, despite all this, our gross margins year-on-year have held up pretty well. Right. Would you attribute all of this just to the low-cost inventory, or are there any other factors at play? No. So, you know, what you are saying is right, absolutely. You know, that, there is a gap. Half of it, as you said rightly, is explained by the price drop, which has happened. The other half is due to mix. But, you know, just because it is high volume and low value does not mean mix that the margin is, you know, not strong. The margin is quite strong, but the, you know, volume is there, but the value is, you know, relatively low. So, for example, just to give you, like, say, water thinnable primer, is a low value, you know, product at times, the economy water thinnable primer, but it has very high volumes, and the margin is also quite sharp. In fact, you know, it is sometimes better than, you know, the average margin, gross margin. So therefore, margin is protected. However, you know, the value sales start suffering and the volumes keep going up, you know. So this is the ASP, you know, starts dropping little bit, compared to... It sometimes can also be the reverse, that, you know, you have a high ASP product, but the margin might be very low. For example, enamel, you know, the ASP is about INR 230, but the margin is one of the lowest. So it is not necessary that just because the value is high and the volume is low, that the margin is going to be also very high. It doesn't happen like that in paint. Okay. So, sir, then the corollary would be that if tomorrow premium or emulsion were also to rise in the mix, it need not necessarily mean a gross margin expansion. There might be so many other variables at play, including the variance within emulsions, which you have sold. Would that be a fair conclusion? Normally, the luxury category emulsions has higher margin levels, so if that goes up, there will be an improvement in margin, provided something else doesn't start dropping, so no other high-margin products also start sinking. Okay, excellent. My second question, sir, is: would you be able to share what would be the total dealer outlets with tinting machines today, and what would that percentage be of total dealers? So it's almost 90%+ in terms of the saturation level that we have in terms of machines, with relevant, meaningful dealers. We also have large number of retailers and sub-dealers, of distributors and wholesalers, who also sell our products. But, you know, I'm not counting those. But if you take, you know, the universe where we are supplying and which has meaningful sales, out of that, 90%+ will be covered, covered with machines, and this number will be in excess of 40,000. Excess of 40,000. Okay. Last question from my side, sir, is on the volume growth of 12%, could you give some color on geography-wise? Which are the geographies, at least qualitatively, which outperformed and which were the ones which were underperforming? So, we- You did highlight West Bengal and Kerala- Yeah. But apart from that, any other color? You know, there was, you know, underperformance from Andhra Pradesh, the Andhra Pradesh, Telangana area. Okay. We did badly in Kerala. You know, Kerala, I think it has uniformly for the entire industry- Yes, yes. There was an underperformance this quarter. West Bengal, again, for the industry at large, in fact, we did slightly better than the industry, but it's been little down and out, you know, in the first quarter, but things are improving already. That, that is it. I think largely other people, other places, we were fairly well-placed. And the outperformers? I would prefer not to answer, you know? Okay. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay, fair enough, sir. Wish you all the best for the remaining quarters. Right. Thank you very much for patiently answering all my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Just a reminder, those of you who have questions may raise your hand. Next question is from line of Ritam Mukherjee. Ritam, please specify your organization name and proceed with the questions. Hello, am I audible? Yes. Yes, Ritam. Hi, Mr. Roy. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. I'm from Thomson Reuters, and actually, I wanted to take some color from you on your Bangladesh business. I'm given to understand that your unit, Berger Paints Bangladesh, is the country's biggest paint maker and almost at a 65% market share. Considering the scenario that unfolded in the last few weeks, especially this week, can you give me a color on how your operations in Bangladesh currently stand? As in, if you have restarted your operations, if it was down, if there was an interruption, at what capacity are your factories back to work, et cetera? So Berger Paints Bangladesh is an independent company. It doesn't. There is no, you know, implication for us in terms of our performance. It is neither there in the Berger standalone result. It is not there in the Berger consolidated as well. It is a independent entity controlled, you know, from a, you know, basically, it's a U.K.-controlled company, and we have got nothing to do. I am there in the board of that company, but that's it, you know, so, there's no, linkage with our results, therefore. However, just to reassure you, you know, everyone is safe in that company. That's number one. Number two, every asset is safe. And, it has come back to action, on the ground from yesterday. Sales have begun, but, as you know, the situation is not very bright as of now, but I think situation should improve, and we should be able to be on a growth path there as well. But it has no implications, because it doesn't get included in our standalone or consolidated results. Sir, one follow-up. In your press releases, you've said that the Berger Paints India has operations in Bangladesh, so needed some clarity on that. No, I have not, we have not released ever. Berger Paints India has any operations in Bangladesh. We never had, and, you know, we have no intention of having as well. All right. Okay. Any reason as to why no intentions, considering it's also a, it's also a- It's listed separately, and it's an independent company, you know, so. So it's going to operate separately. It's going to operate independently. There is a separate board for it. It is headed by a chairman who's an American. There are board members which are, one gentleman is a French gentleman citizen. You know, there are Bangladesh-based people who are there, who are very eminent people from Bangladesh. Only one or two members are from India, and, you know, so it is run as a separate multinational company, headquartered out of U.K. Fair. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Roy. Have a nice... hope to talk to you again next quarter. Right. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from line of Amit Purohit. Amit, please specify your organization name and proceed with the questions. Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on good set of numbers. I represent Elara Capital. Sir, just wanted to understand on the industry growth, how has been, Q1 at an industry level? I understand peak double digit. So generally, how should one read the industry growth for Q1? So industry growth, in terms of volume- Yeah ... you know, will be probably around 8 odd percentage, you know, that, that will be the industry growth. Always it is, you know, dominated by the industry leader to a large extent, and since they have indicated that they have grown by 7%, so estimated growth will be around 8, 8.2, possibly. The other part is, you know, related to how it will look like. You know, my guess is that it will improve as the year progresses, from second quarter to the third quarter, and the best will come in the fourth quarter. Okay. So, have you seen some signs of improvement already? I mean, just to get a sense qualitatively. Yeah, you know, there has been some improvement from, you know, what it was in the first quarter. No substantial improvement, but there is some improvement. Just, sir, just a clarification, you indicated the dealer count of 40,000 was the where the printing machines are there. Yes, sir. Overall, dealers would be direct, indirect, put together would be what number that would be for us or- No, so that's why I said, you know, we have direct dealers of about 47-48 thousand, you know- Okay. Out of which, you know, about 40,000 is already having machines. And there will be many more indirect ones, which are basically retailers or distributors, or that of wholesalers. And that will be another probably 8-10 thousand at least, you know, which will be there in the system. Sure. I remember, about one and a half, two years back, we have taken an aggressive stance of expanding our dealer reach. Yes. Do we continue? I mean- Yes. What is the kind of addition that we are looking this year and probably next year? We continue that. You know, we are going to continue, you know, in terms of network expansion, because we have—there are large tracks of India where we are underrepresented, under-indexed, and therefore, you know, these are the places where we have to add, you know, quickly our, you know, dealer numbers in those locations where we are not present. We expect that, you know, it to reach about 8,000 at least, you know, this year. Additional 8,000 is what we are looking at. In the first quarter, we have done about 1,800 machines, and we expect that typically it tends to pick up in the second and third quarter. So we are reasonably confident that we should be able to cross the 8,000 numbers this year. Sir, is it safe to assume that much of it would be in the tier two, tier three, or we are now looking at metros as well? Metro, you highlighted you have a separate now. Yeah centers as well, to focus on. That's right. So, you know, metros, you know, will be much of it will be in our stores which we are looking at. Okay. In the upcountry, tier two, tier three towns, you know, that's where the number of machines will be coming up in larger numbers. Okay. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks, thanks. All the best to you. Thank you. Thank you. Just a reminder, those of you who have questions may raise your hand. Those of you who have questions may raise your hand. As there are no further questions, we consider that as the last question for the day. I hand over to management for closing remarks. Okay, thank you very much, you know, and it was a pleasure meeting all of you again, you know. Do you have anything to say, Kaushik? No. No. Thank you so much. Yeah, and we also thank Emkay Global for conducting this call. Thank all of you for your participation. Thank you. Thank you, and have a nice weekend. Thank you. Thank you. On behalf of Emkay Global Financial Services, that concludes this conference.