Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q1 FY24 earnings conference call of Go Fashion (India) Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectation of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star 0 on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Gautam Saraogi, Executive Director and CEO. Thank you. Over to you, sir. Yes, thank you. Good evening, and warm welcome to everyone joining on the call. Along with me, I have R. Mohan, our Chief Financial Officer, and HJ, our Investor Relations Advisor. I hope you all have received our investor deck by now. For those who haven't, you can view them on the stock exchange and the company website. The retail sector in India has experienced a notable decline over the past few months. The current operating environment has presented significant challenges for businesses in this industry. While the market as a whole has slowed, our company has demonstrated exceptional resilience and growth, allowing us to outperform the market. We delivered a revenue of INR 190 crore, registering a growth of 15% YOY. Our PAT also grew by 8% to INR 26 crore. This growth has been on the back of volume growth and consistently increasing number of EBOs. Despite the challenging environment, our SSG grew at 2.46% for Q1 FY 2024. Same-cluster sales growth was at 16% on a YOY basis. 96% of our sales in Q1 FY 2024 are full-price sales. The average selling price of our EBO stood at INR 70-71 for the quarter. In Q1 FY 2024, the company has added net 25 new stores for the quarter, with this stands our EBO total at 655 stores. An essential aspect of our expansion strategy is our focus on venturing into new markets and establishing our presence in different cities. In nine regions, we have expanded our network to six new cities during the quarter, bringing our total presence to 149 cities This strategic move reflects our commitment to tapping into untapped markets and catering to a diverse needs of consumers across different regions. We plan to expand by 120 to 130 EBOs every year. We focus on establishing additional EBOs across Tier Two and Tier Three towns, deepen our presence in existing geographies and also grow our existence in newer geographies. This expansion aligns with our aim to bring our products and services closer to the consumer, enhancing accessibility and convenience. To further enhance the customer experience, we are also exploring omnichannel engagements, leveraging technology to create a seamless shopping journey that transcends physical and online boundaries, reaching consumers across various cities. We have presence across 1,820 large format stores. Our LFS business has come back to normalcy during the last quarter. As part of our efforts to improve the efficiency of our business operations, we have prioritized maximizing the utilization of our working capital. During the previous quarter, we were able to reduce the number of days in inventory by 19 days. Overall, our working capital days stood at 136 days in Q1 FY 2024. The strategy has enabled us to optimize our operations, resulting in increase in our operating cash flow. Our Pre-Ind AS working capital operating cash flow stood at INR 35 crore, and our Post-Ind AS operating cash flow stood at INR 49 crore. Our ROCE and ROCE of the business on an annualized basis stood at 19.1% and 19.8% respectively. A critical factor contributing to our success has been establishing a robust branding team. This team has played a pivotal role in crafting a clear and compelling brand identity, effectively communicating our unique position to our target audience, and creating strong and lasting presence in the market. The Indian retail industry is projected to maintain a steady growth rate of 9% CAGR till 2030, driven by increased discretionary spending, increasing urbanization, changing fashion preferences. India's fashion and apparel retail sector is expected to contribute significantly, accounting for 45% of this growth. By the end of the decade, the industry market value is estimated to exceed $2 trillion. Looking ahead, we are enthusiastic about the future and remain committed to our innovative and creative approach in bottom wear. Our determination to introduce new and designs will respond with our customers, driving further brand loyalty and engagement. By expanding our brand destinations, we aim to offer our customers more delightful shopping experience, which in turn will enable us to achieve a growth rate of 20%+ CAGR and gain a larger market share in the years to come. With this, I would like to hand over the call to our CFO, Mr. R. Mohan, for the update on Q1 FY 2024 results and financials. Thank you. Thank you, Gautam. Good evening, everyone. The company has delivered strong growth despite subdued demand and challenging environment. Our revenues for the quarter stood at INR 190 crore, as against INR 162 crore in Q1 FY 2023, a growth of 15% year-over-year. Gross profit stood at INR 117 crore, a growth of 16% YOY, with a GP margin of 61.3% for the quarter. ...GT margins increased by 70 BPS on YOY. Our EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 64 crore, as compared to INR 53 crore in Q1 FY23, a growth of 21% year-on-year. Our EBITDA margins stood at 33.8%. Profit before tax for the quarter stood at INR 35 crore, a growth of 9% year-on-year, whereas profit after tax for the quarter stood at INR 26 crore, an 8% year-on-year growth from Q1 FY23. Our tax margins stood at 13.8%. With this, we will now open the floor for the questions. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Yes, hi, thanks, Gautam, for the opportunity, and congratulations on a good set of numbers, under challenging circumstances. Gautam, I note that the ASP for the company has increased by 7%-8% in Q1, while the reported SSG is at about 2.5%. This suggests a mid-single digit or even higher volume decline. Just wanted to understand two things here. One is, what are the drivers of this better ASP, which has grown by 7%-8%? Secondly, obviously, times are challenging, so what are your sort of initial expectations on volume growth revival? Yeah, thanks, Devanshu. Thanks for addressing. On the first question, see, this 7% growth what we had in the ASP is largely driven by the change in product mix. Just to go a little deeper, if you take the 2.5% of SSG we have, in that, only to the extent of 1% or 1.2% was impacted due to the historical price hike. The balance has been completely driven by product mix, so our volume degrowth SSG number is -4%, and reported SSG is +2.5%. In this +2.5%, 1%-1.2% would be relating to price hikes, which we had done in December 2021, and the balance is because of the product mix. The price hike, impact on SSG is largely tapered off. Got it. How sustainable is this, Gautam? Just to complete this question. From a better revenue mix perspective, there's less, I would say, about 6% growth in ASP. Is this what you expect to continue going for the next three quarters as well? We are hopeful, we are hopeful, Devanshu, that it will continue at 5%-6% increase in ASP. You know, I think because of the newer products what we are coming up with are being a slightly higher selling price. I think we should be able to keep, you know, our original target of SSG was 10% on a value level and 5% on a volume level. We would ideally hope that our product mix can drive about 5%-6% increase in ASP. Okay. Okay, about the volume growth revival, as in, what are your initial expectations on that? See, the, the consumer market is has been a little struggle over the last 4, 5 months or 6 months. Look, we are very hopeful that this, this quarter will be a good quarter in Q3. Q2 onwards, we are very positive that things should start normalizing little bit and by, maybe by when we hit the Q3 festive quarter, we should have a good, big festive. We are expecting that in Q2, if we are able to at least have, we expecting to have more degrowth in volume, I think we've done a good job. We've delivered a -4% in SSG level. We would be hopeful that this coming quarter in Q2, we'll be able to make that negative and zero at least. Even in Q2. Got it. That's fine, got it, yeah. In Q2. Our first target is that this -4 should come down to 0 before we think about positive volume growth in Q2. Got it, got it. Secondly, on the cash flows, working capital side, we have generated about INR 25 crore operating cash in Q1, versus last year, full year, we generated about only INR 20 crore cash. Right. Just wanted to understand, can we expect this kind of cash flow to accrue in coming quarters as well, or this is more of a seasonal thing and you will be investing in working capital going into next? Devanshu, this is a good question. We have generated good operating cash flow because of, we have, you know, we have, created some efficiencies, efficiencies in inventory. We have optimized inventory. What will happen is, in Q2, our inventory will slightly go up because that's going to be a quarter just before the festive quarter. On a quarterly basis, cash flows will go a little up and down because of the seasonality perspectives. However, on an annualized basis, we are expecting that we will deliver 50% of Pre-Ind AS EBITDA to operating cash flow. Right now we are at 65%. If I do my current conversion of Pre-Ind AS EBITDA to operating cash flow, right now I've converted 65% of my operating EBITDA to OCF. On an annualized basis, we will be looking to generate and convert 50% of our pre-interest EBITDA to OCF on an annualized basis. Some quarters might be up and down, on an annualized basis, we would look to maintain 50. Got it. Just a related question to this, Gautam. My estimates suggest that you may be, you may end up generating about INR 70-80 crore of operating cash this year, so based on 50% or whatever, and, we already have, about INR 140-150 crore of cash. Does this suggest that we will be, sort of increasing our pace of store expansion? What are the plans of, utilizing that cash on the balance sheet? Yes, it's going to go towards store expansion. This year we, we are going by a target of 120-130 stores, next year we will try increasing that number to 150-170 stores, because we are building our BD team as well. We've had new recruits in our BD team, it will take some time for them to settle down because business development also is a unique skill set. I think by next year onward, we should target to look to open about 150-170 stores. This year our target still remains the same as 120-130. Got it. Gautam, I have more questions. I'll come back in touch. Sure. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sameer Gupta from India Infoline. Please go ahead. Hi, sir, thanks for taking my question. Firstly, want to address, want you to address this challenging quarter for retail. What, in your opinion, are the reasons for this? In your experience, have you encountered such an environment before? Typically, when or how much time does it take to turn around? In this context, can you give some broad consumer trends within your category, which are the segments which are more affected or less affected, geography-wise, price point-wise? Any, any color, you know, on making us understand this slowdown a little better. Yeah, sure. See, I think the slowdown, from what I understand, is that the consumer sentiment has been skewed towards more towards services than hard real consumer goods. We've seen that consumers have preferred spending on services like travel, leisure, hotels. I think the, little priority of consumers over the last couple of quarter, quarters have shifted towards that. In my experience, look, we see, do come back to normalcy. It's very difficult to predict how long, but we are hopeful that by Q3, we should have some sort of normalcy. Q2 will be like a transition or revival quarter. By Q3 is when we feel that demand from a consumer perspective should be back in some sort of normalcy. What was the second question? Any broad consumer trends that you can talk about? Yeah, see, I think what has happened is, see for us, what we've noticed is that the, the, the metro cities or Tier One cities have done fairly better than Tier Two, Tier Three. Our presence is more Tier One to begin with, more metro cities to begin with, so we have done better than most other companies from that perspective. We have seen that for the North India has done fairly well. Like Delhi NCR, if I take in Q1, Delhi NCR was the cities which, which had the maximum highest sales growth. For us, certain pockets have done very fairly well and some pockets have struggled. Because we are a more metro city brand or top 8 cities brand, the impact of the slowdown has been far lesser on us than probably when compared to others. Got it, sir. Any trend on footfalls? Are you clocking similar footfalls as you were, or is it primarily the- What we have, what we have started doing is, we have started tracking footfalls by the mechanism of bill cuts. We have seen that in Q1, we have seen a decline in bill cuts. When bill cuts drop, it's a clear indication that footfalls have dropped at a store level. Got it, sir. Because the bill cuts, because there is a drop of bill cuts, that's why there has been a degrowth of minus 4% on the volume, volume efficiency. Got it, sir. Second question, if I may. This 2.5% SSS growth this quarter, now I understand that you are still expecting for normalcy in 2Q, but are we still good to guide for a double-digit SSS growth and a 20% plus sales growth this year, or you think that that may be a stretch given the first quarter performance? See, I think we will be in a better position. For an annualized basis, what rate we would end up achieving, we will be probably in a better stage to give it probably at the end of Q2. In Q2, we are hopeful that if we are able to get a 5% SSSG in the current scenario of things, if we are able to do a 5% SSSG with low volume growth, I think we'll be in a good position. Got it, sir. Third question, if I may. Other expenses are down 7%, and this is despite some 24% increase in stores. Is it just ad spend phasing or, you know, there are certain costs that we have cut down and these are likely to come back as volumes pick up? These are largely, these are largely ad spends. See, I'll tell you the rationale behind spending in this quarter, and I'll tell you from my experience of so many years in retail, whenever there is a slowdown in the market, advertising, should be very frugal. See, because when the consumer intention of buying is not there, doing a very high ad spends don't make sense. The reason we didn't do ad spends was because we didn't want to waste money. I mean, the idea was not saying that, look, we want to maintain our margin, that's why spend la- that's why spend less on advertising. That was not the mindset. The idea was that the consumer is not willing to buy that easily right now. You know, tough environment like this, spending higher on advertising and wasting money does not make any sense. Got it, sir. I'll come back in the queue if I have any follow-ups. Thanks, thanks for this call. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prerna Jhunjhunwala from Elara Capital. Please go ahead. Thanks for the opportunity. Would like to understand this reduction in inventory days. We saw a reduction in Q4 as well as now in Q1. What steps we have taken and how sustainable these reduction in inventory days are? I think we are pretty much sustainable. We put in a lot of effort. We re-evaluated the how much raw material we had, how much finished goods we had at the warehouse. We have taken those necessary steps to optimize them. Today, we have about INR 221 crore of inventory, which is about 107 days. We are looking to bring it down to 90-95 days by the end of the financial year. In Q2, inventory days might slightly go up again because we would be building some stock from a festive perspective, but on an annualized basis, we would ideally expect our inventory days to come down to about 90-95 days. Okay. This is largely with store rationalize, like, store increase and rationalization of inventory, or any other steps apart from this that you have taken? See, the only way inventory days can actually come down is either the revenue goes up or the absolute inventory will come down. We are looking at both. A, because of higher revenue growth this year, the inventory days should come down, and we are also reducing our inventory at the warehouse level. See, the inventory at the store level is optimum. I don't see any further efficiency there. What inventory we are looking to optimize is more at the warehouse level. Reduction in the warehouse inventory and increase in revenue, both will contribute to further reduction in terms of the inventory days, from 107 to 90-95 by the end of the financial year. Okay, understood, sir. Second question on competitive intensity with Raw materials prices coming down, competitors would be looking forward to reduce their ASPs. How are -- how is the competitive intensity in your segment, and how are you reacting to the same? See, currently the competitive intensity in our segment is low. Having said that, this product is also made by the likes of the other large format stores and other popular brands. No one has actually reduced the prices, because the way the cotton prices have actually fluctuated in the past, it will be very, very unreasonable or risky for us to reduce the prices, and then tomorrow, if the RM prices increase again, then again, we'll have to take a hike. I mean, for any brand to reduce the bottom wear prices right now, very unlikely. Not only bottom wear, whether top wear or bottom, any form of apparel, for them to reduce the prices will be very unlikely right now, and we've not seen anyone do that. Okay. Sir, any color on revenue still performance till date, because you are expecting volume rigor to come down to 0 for the second half. Some color till date would be helpful. Yeah, I mean, look, we did a 15% growth at the value level on a YOY basis at the company level, and we were 7% volume growth at the company level. If you ask me if I'm happy with the performance, it's a, it's a good performance. Ideally, I would want it to, I want it to be as close to 20%, and our endeavor will be that in the coming quarter, we'll try to push it to that number. As such, considering how the overall market scenario has been, 15% is a good number. Okay. EOSS in, how has been the EOSS? I know you don't discount, but, in the season, generally people prefer to buy and purchase more. How have you experienced EOSS? See, for us, our EOSS usually happens in Quarter Two and end of Quarter Three or starting of Quarter Four. Quarter One, so we've not had any EOSS as such, and our full price sales ratio has been also intact like before. In, in July, we have started our regular EOSS, like what we have done before. It's pretty much the same trend like what we had in historical years. There's no real change there. Okay, thank you so much, sir. For any further question, I'll come back. Thank you. Thank you, Prerna. Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to the participants, if you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your touchtone telephone. The next question is from the line of Rakesh Wadhwani from Monarch AIF. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Just wanted to understand, in a bottom wear, which products are doing better, because we have seen a volume decline, but, revenue has been going up. Which products are doing good? Rakesh, we have not seen any one particular product standing out. Our product mix perspective has been pretty similar to earlier quarters. Our TVR living, which used to contribute to 45%-50% of the business, has continued the same ratio. Even our other value-added products have pretty much been at the same pace. I think from a product mix perspective, there's nothing, any one product which has stood out or, or performed badly. There's no, there's no such product. And that one, and second question, regarding the store opening, you guided next 120, 125 stores FY 2024, and in the coming year, we'll be looking to add around 150 stores. I just want to know, if, so you will be looking at the rent or you will be looking at the space continuously, where do you think the stores will be coming? Will be coming in top 8 cities only, or it will be going down to Tier Two, Tier Three cities also, Tier One or Tier Two? See, I think, I think, Rakesh, what is going to happen is that the ratio of top eight to Tier Two, Tier Three, what we have currently, the same ratio will maintain. Our expansion also will happen in the same ratio. If you ask me from a region perspective, it is going to be definitely a lot more concentrated in South and West of India. North and East is going to be relatively slower in expansion compared to South and West, because by default, South and West has a lot more larger cities than North and East. Okay. Just, just a discussion on the store point. Do you think that we have got enough space available for store opening, or it may also lead to a collaboration outcome in the sales going to other outlets, do you think that much space is available for you to open the stores? Yeah, definitely. We are still very under-penetrated in South India. In terms of expansion, we very, very have a clear roadmap, and we are very confident that we'll be able to add those numbers in South India. Now, coming to the cannibalization perspective, see, look, when you are growing in clusters, and that too in big clusters, some stores do get cannibalized, and that is why we monitor the, the rate, SCSG, which is same-cluster sales growth. When the same-cluster sales growth is going at a good rate, that means the cluster-wide growth is pretty healthy, that even if a few stores get cannibalized, the overall growth of that cluster is pretty big and pretty large. We don't see a problem in that penetration in, in South India from that perspective. One last question from my side. Are the stores that are opening last one year or two year max, how they are performing? Have they reached to the level where the older stores are performing or they are lacking? Last. See, the... No, this is a good question. See, the newer stores what have opened in the last six months, have actually lacked in performance. I wouldn't say lacked, but has been little below the average of how a new store does. The reason being because of the consumer environment. See, you know, what happens in a consumer environment is, usually the newer stores suffer, suffers more than the vintage and the older second stores, because you want your footfalls to be driven in the newer stores, right? For it to reach some sort of maturity. So in a tough consumer environment, the newer stores, suffers more. So our newer stores have slightly struggled, and we've seen that as the consumer sentiment improves, that number also will come back to normal. Fine. Fine. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nihal Jham from Nuvama. Please go ahead. Good evening, Gautam, am I audible? Yeah. I think the first question was on the part of cannibalization that you mentioned. When I look at the difference between the SSG and SCSG that you report, it in a way, it, it, it catches where the stores are opening up the potential cannibalization. Would it be actually this difference would more or less as you keep opening the- Hello, I'm not audible. Sorry, I can't hear you properly. I'm so sorry. Am I audible now? Yeah, you're audible now. Thank you. Yes. I was asking, of this 121 stores, would you share the similar cluster which can increase in the difference between SSG and CSG? Yeah. See, I mean, look, we are growing in clusters, and that's how our growth expansion has always been. See, our views are a excellent medium of advertising, and when we open more and more in clusters, it acts as a stronger medium of advertising. I think as we keep growing in clusters, there will be a gap between SSG and SCSG. Now, how much gap will be maintained is very hard to comment. Ideally, this 2.5%, I don't think it's fully impacted because of the cannibalization factor. I think the consumer sentiment is a little weak. We would've estimated that after cannibalization also, we would have delivered a SSG of 6%-7%, minimum. I think this reduction of SSG more than cannibalization, is to do with the overall consumer sentiment. Got that. The question also was that currently, if I look at the last quarter, we have been disclosing this metric, the difference is around 12%-13%. Would that difference be ballparked similar in the future quarters, or you expect based on your store plans, that maybe this number could increase with more cannibalization and more stores opening in a similar cluster? You're talking about the, you're talking about the SCSG and SSG? Yes. The two? Yes. I'll tell you, we have seen from our experience that SCSG is usually double of SSG. The SCSG is a new data point, what we have started tracking in the last two, three quarters. It's very early days for us to say, to say at what rate that will settle down versus the SSG. Immediately, at immediate trend, what we have seen, it's usually SSG would be half of SCSG. Point taken. Gautam, the second question was, in your press release, you mentioned about the branding team. Is it an incremental initiative or there's something more that's being done, and can you just highlight that? No, see, look, though we have cut down the cost on branding, on advertising, we have cut down considerably, but we have started doing a lot of influencer marketing for many of our products. In fact, denim was one product. We launched couple of styles in denim, which did fairly well, and we had a good digital campaign. Our branding team, digital team, I would rather put it that way, are strengthening this point. Got that. Basically, you're saying that the incremental spending could be more SEO, more influencer-driven, which is a new avenue that we are taking, and that could be... Influencer was always there. Look, this, what we have spent today, this 1.5%, 2%, whatever we spent on advertising, this is largely towards brand building. Brand building advertising usually is through, through YouTube, through influencer, and that we have always been doing. Mm-hmm. It's just an additional advertising what we're doing, but that is what we have cut down this particular quarter. Okay. Sure, I, I think, I'll, I'll come back to you later for a question. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manish Poddar, from Motilal Oswal AMC. Please go ahead. ... Sir Gautam, can you just, so three questions. One is, can you explain this working capital which is corrected? You know, if I had to just break up between RMFT and work in progress, how many number of days would that work corrected, and is it also linked to, let's say, you know, mark to market of RM? Sorry, the last one was linked to? Is it linked to mark to market? Let's say, you know, cotton price is going down, and inventory being valued at lower of, you know, cost or market value at the purchase price. Okay, okay, I understand what you're saying. Sorry, just one more thing is, how do you calculate working capital? Let's say, when you give it for Q1, do you multiply this quarter and you take it into 4, or you take last trading 12 months as a working capital, this number of days? Sorry, thanks. See, usually from what, on the re-revenue part, you take this quarter's revenue, on the inventory part, usually it is a metric of opening, closing inventory, you take an average. Mr. Mohan can correct me if I'm wrong. I think that's the way it is done. Inventory being calculated, based on taking the opening and closing inventory, we take an average, then we use the quarter achieved revenue, then we calculate inventory days. From a working capital days perspective, it's basically inventory plus debtors minus payable, that's how we calculate working capital days. Now, coming to your question on the absolute inventory, I think, look, INR 221 crore is the inventory what we have... INR 223 crore is the inventory what we have as on June 30th. I'm not having an exact breakdown with me right now, right now, as far as how much is finished goods, at the warehouse and RM at the warehouse, but what deduction we have done is largely on the warehouse front. I can share this offline. I'm not having it handy right now, but the inventory what we have reduced is on the warehouse front, at the RM and especially at the RM level. The slight update, it is not opening and closing. Gautam, it is only closing, where there is, as on a particular date, inventory what divided by the outside. Yeah, it's closing this, Manish. Basically, your closing inventory divided by your monthly, quarterly sales. That's how we calculate 110 days. Effectively, this quarter multiplied by 4 is what you're doing to get the number of days. You're not taking any seasonality in the, in the sales for this inventory. That's what, that's what I understand? Yeah, we have taken the quarter sales as is, and then done the division, converted that into monthly, and the numerator is the absolute value of INR 223 crore inventory. Correct. And then the second question is, let's say, you take this SSG or, you know, the cluster growth, whatever number you want to take, 2% or 16%, and if I just look at the EBITDA number, you know, operating profit excluding ad spends, there is roughly about a, you know, 200 to 250 basis points gross EBITDA margin compression. Are you trying to say, let's say, at 2% or 2.5% SSG, the margins would contract by roughly 200 to 300 basis points with the rate of expansion, which you all want? No, Manish, it's, you know, it's difficult, it's difficult to make that correlation, but I'll tell you in a I'll answer your question in a slightly different way. Because the overall company revenue, see, usually if you take a rent to revenue ratio at a company level, Manish, it will be in the range of 12%-13%. This time it has been higher, it has been in the range of 15%-16%. Because the revenue has been muted, the rent to revenue ratio automatically has gone, gone up, and even the salaries to sales revenue ratio has automatically gone up. That's because of muted revenue. Even though we've had operating margin increase, that's because of lower advertising spend, our rent and salary ratios to revenue have gone up because of muted spend. If I, if I take out CapEx and not, not even, not even OpEx, with this SSG number, let's say, if the SSG is same 3% band, you know, give or take 1%, you should have, let's say, 200 to 300 BPS, like, EBITDA margin contraction, if you want to open the kind of stores which you are operating. That's what I want to think about, right? Well, Manish, I think, look, I think you're partly right. The only thing is because there is a new store sales element also in the company revenue, exactly correlating the SSG with the EBITDA would be slightly difficult. I know what your question is, but because there's a new store sales element as well, it will be very difficult to exactly come down on how much would be the increase or decrease in the EBITDA because of SSG. Okay, okay, I, I take this offline problem. And the last one, just in terms of- I am so sorry to interrupt you. Just, just one last one, a second. Sure. Just with the data points. If I look at the number of suppliers, sequentially, there is, you know, number of suppliers has increased materially. What, you know, are you changing vendors? What are you doing out there? Just helpful. No, no, we are not changing vendors. We are just increasing our supplier base. This is at a CMT or subcontracting job work level also, and target suppliers also. Right now, our current volumes are still the same with the same suppliers. It's just that our base is increasing. See, as a company, we are adding more stores. Our company is growing year-on-year at a rate of 20%. We are also investing a lot of time in getting new suppliers on board, with the suppliers. Have the numbers changed with our existing suppliers from a sourcing perspective? The answer is no. The, the ratio still remains the same. Okay, got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to the participants to please limit your question to 2 per participants only. You may rejoin the question queue if you have a follow-up. The next question is from the line of Ankit Kedia from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead. Three questions from my side. First is. You know, given that we have seen more revenue mix change towards premiumization, a lot of our old stores are 300 sq ft stores. How are we managing our inventory in these older stores, given the mix change you are seeing from a consumer demand perspective? Ankit, I think, look, we have started signing slightly larger stores. I mean, our average is usually between 300 and 400 sq ft. We have started signing stores are slightly larger of 450-475 sq ft to accommodate this additional size. In our existing stores also, we don't have too much of a trouble, because for bringing in the new products, some other ratios of other existing products are optimized to bring in the new SKUs inside the store. At the end of the day, our product type, we are just holding our garments and keeping at the store level. If we are slightly optimizing on the ratios of the existing SKUs, it's easy for us to bring in the new size. It is a challenge, but we are able to manage it. is it fair- The new stores what we are signing, we are signing slightly higher. We're signing 50 to 70 sq ft higher, sir. Is it fair to assume that, in the older stores, leggings and churidars, you know, inventory would be lower today than it was couple of years back itself? Not only the existing stores, even in the new store, because, see, what happens is, in leg, and legging and churidars historically used to be 70%-80%. Over a period of time, it's come down to 40% or 60%. The inventory ratio at a store level will dynamically change with the sales. If the churidars sales are coming down, hypothetically, I'm telling you, and legging sales are coming down, hypothetically, so even the ratio of legging and churidars at the store level will automatically reduce. That's an ongoing thing. It happens on a real-time basis. It has nothing to do with historical or new stores. Understood. My second question is regarding the LFS. You know, we are seeing revenue per LFS decline by 10% in the quarter. Now, quarter 4, we had some issues with Reliance, you know, POs coming in. How is that now? Have things gone back to normal, or we are seeing more demand pressures coming from LFS and hence, you know, the revenue is declining out there? No, no. See, I think at an LFS level, Ankit, things have started normalizing. It started normalizing May onwards. If I say how things are today, things are absolutely normal with LFS from a dispatch and operations perspective and demand perspective. It is just because some part of April was impacted, that's why our LFS growth is only at 3% on a YOY basis. How things stand today, it's normalized. In probably in Q2, you'll get the true picture of how LFS is doing. If I have to see the volume growth, last quarter, you shared at the company level, versus the EBO level. What should be the volume at the company level growth? At a company level, we've had 7% volume growth. At the EBO level, we've had 10%, and at LFS level, we've had -2%. Understood. My last question is on the rentals. What could be your fixed versus, you know, revenue share rentals, if you can share? You know, last two quarters, we are seeing rentals increase, obviously, because the SSSG, our revenue growth is being slightly muted. Just to, you know, are we signing more fixed rental deals? Are there more revenue share deals? How should we look at that? See, from our perspective, maybe some of our best performing stores in malls are on revenue share. If I take a proportion of rental versus revenue share, we are largely fixed rental, because majority of our stores are also high street. The ratio of fixed rental to revenue share, the fixed rental will be much higher. Understood. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ankit. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sabyasachi Mukherjee from Bajaj Finserv. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi, good, and thanks for the opportunity. My first question is, you know, on the ad spends, you said that the environment is not that great, and hence you have kind, kind of cut down on the ad spends. What would be your guidance for the full year? Do you see an increase in the ad spend going ahead in Q2, Q3? I think, see, from an ad spend perspective, we will be anywhere... See, this quarter we have been just below 2%. I think, on an annual basis, we'll be between 2% and 3% this year. Last year, we were between 3% and 4%. This year, we will end up between 2% and 3%. Between two and three. Okay. Okay, noted. Yeah. On the, you know, the store closures, I think we had three store closures during the quarter. You know, are they airport stores? What was the reason...? Actually, see, one of the three stores where, where we had 2 stores in the market, so we had actually opened a relocation store. One of the relocation stores, the newer store opened last quarter, and usually, whenever we relocate a store in an existing market, we let the older store be there for 3 months. I think out of the 3, 1 is more of a relocation. The other 2 stores are high street. They're not airport. 2 high street stores that, that were closed during the quarter? 2 closed, and 1 was also a closure, but it was more of a relocation closure. Any specific reason behind the closures? Not the relocation, but the two closures. No, the rental cost was very high. See, these are some of the markets where sales have not improved after COVID, and historically, these, the markets have been good. See, we wanted to take some time before we decided to close it. On the rental part, you mentioned that the rent-to-revenue ratio has increased this quarter. This, I mean, purely because of the, you know, muted sales that we have on an EBO basis, or is it like, we are facing some serious, you know, rent escalations from the, you know? No, no. No, no, I think it's, it's, it's 100% related to muted sales. The escalations are pretty much standard, which are at about 5% or 15% every three years. It's not the escalation, it's largely to do with the new taxes. Got it. And if you have handy the, the breakup between the inventory of, you know, fabric, garment, warehouse, stores. Actually, I'm sorry, I, I don't have that file with me right now, otherwise I would have shared it. I'll share it offline with you, actually. I will do that. Sure. Sure. I can, like, I, I know for a fact that our inventory, which has come down from INR 230 crore to INR 223 crore, the reduction has largely happened at the warehouse level. It was INR 100 crore, I think, at the end of Q4. Basically, 230 overall, I think INR 7 crore inventory that has come down, purely, that is, coming from the warehouse reduction. Is that a fair assumption? It's only warehouse reduction. From what I understand, it's completely warehouse reduction. At store level, we've not optimized inventory, because we had about 45-50 days of inventory at the store level, which was adequate. Got it. Thanks. Thanks, Gautam. That's all from my side. Through offline, I'll share this data with you. Sure, sure. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gautam Rathi from CWC. Please go ahead. Nishit, you know, just a couple of questions. Just wanted to understand, you know, how many clusters do we have? Because we talk about this same cluster growth rate. The question I'm trying to understand is: how many clusters do we have, and what has been the trend down that, right? I'll tell you what qualifies to be a cluster. Any cluster which has two or more multiple stores, that qualifies to be a cluster. We have about 150-160 clusters, and about 400-440 stores are mapped in cluster. 400 out of your 650-odd stores, 450 are cluster-based stores and 200 are. I don't have the exact number, but 400-440 stores. Somewhere between that is, are mapped in clusters. Because the number is changing, I'm not, I'm not sure I have the exact number, but it's between 400 and 440. Which is very fair. The second, just to follow up on this, is this, how is this number growing? How many new clusters have you been adding or do you look to add on an annual basis? See, that's, we don't have a target on how many clusters we would add, because that's a by-product of how many stores you add. Right now, we've not set a target towards that. In the last three, four months, we have not seen any increase in clusters. Okay, fair. This is where your, your growth is, is very close to your, your cluster growth of [QHG]. Yeah, it will be market, correct. Okay, fair. The second thing is, you mentioned that, you know, you're, you are looking to, see open, slightly bigger stores, you know, to house the entire collection that you have in certain places. The follow-up on that is, that comes with the assumption that your revenue per square feet, will, will, will remain constant, which will mean that those bigger stores will mean, higher revenue than your historical average of INR 80 lakh-INR 1 crore, right, per store. Is that, is that fair? Look, yeah, no, I'll clarify this. See, the, the bigger size, when I mean is, we are opening 50 to 70 sq ft larger. We're not dramatically increasing very large stores. Having said that, in our model of business, whether I have a 400 sq ft or whether I have a larger store, my operating expenses in that store are the same. My CapEx also is pretty much similar. Only what is the differentiating factor is the rent. Today, if my rent is in my rent-to-revenue budgeted ratio, then my store level EBITDA will not fall. Having said that, if you calculate it on a per sq ft basis, then it, the sales per sq ft will fall, but my absolute EBITDA as a, as a% to revenue does not fall. More than sales per square feet in our business, the more important thing to track is whether the averages of a store is falling and are the EBITDA% of a store falling. Those are the 2 important ratios which has been tracked in us, in our business. Because ideally, if I find a store slightly larger in size, but the rent is very much in my budget, I'll take the larger store, because tomorrow I might have the benefit of adding more, SKUs also tomorrow available. For me, my decision factor to open a store is on the basis of rent rather than square feet. Which is, which is absolutely fair. I was just trying to understand, is this a deviation from the strategy, or it is more an, if you're finding bigger stores, you will take it, right? Unless it is a deviation in strategy, then I'm, I'm pretty sure that I was just trying to understand that should we. Because one of the way we think about it is the number of stores into the revenue that the store could generate. Has the revenue generation potential also gone up? That was probably the thought process. Yeah. Our process is that our averages, which are currently at INR 80 lakhs-INR 90 lakhs per store, that should increase. See, for us, sales per square feet does not matter so much beyond the point. For us, the averages of a store matter more. The averages of a store and the average EBITDA. That should increase with, with slightly bigger stores, right? Exactly. That should increase. The sales per square feet might fall because the square feet is increasing, which actually does not mean anything. Yeah, fair. You are saying that slightly higher stores, your sales per square feet might fall a little, but the absolute increase in square feet will mean that your overall revenue from that store will be higher, per store? ... higher, without compromising on EBITDA margin. Which is perfect. Very, very helpful. Thanks a lot, Gautam. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mehul Desai, from JM Financial. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, you mentioned that, you know, you will be happy if you end, end up Q2 with, flat volumes. Is this more an ambition or you are seeing something, a similar trend playing out in July so far? Very early to say right now, Mehul. Early days, I think probably if we once enter August, and we are halfway through August, we'll have better clarity. Because right now it's too early, because July is a complete new SS month, so it's very difficult to judge based on July's performance. We have to, probably by the middle of August, we'll have better clarity, or end of August. Sure. How do you look at your gross margin trend for the balance year given that your ASPs are trending well, product mix is improving, and my sense is that, you know, RM environment remains benign. Keeping this in context, how, how do you see the gross margin trend shaping up for you for the balance part of the year? I think, I think by the end of the year, we should deliver a gross margin on an annualized basis of about 61%. Okay, understood. 61%. Last year it was around 60. I think maybe this year we will be at about 61%. Got it. Got it. Thanks. Thanks, Gautam. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Binoy Jariwala from Sunidhi Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. What would be the rent expenses in this quarter? It is, I'll tell you exactly. It is INR 26.9 crore. INR 26.9 crore. How much of this- This is before Ind AS. This is before Ind AS, this is rent paid. Right. How much of this would be covered above the EBITDA line? No, this I'm talking about Pre-Ind AS rent. I mean, this is fully above the EBITDA line. Okay. Okay. second is, Gautam, you know, if I look at the other expenses, and if I, if I adjust it with the advertising and sales promotion expenses, they would have been, flattish, YOY, despite you adding roughly about, 122 odd stores in the trailing twelve months. Right. Just wanted to understand, here, are there any one-offs that was sitting in the base quarter, or, have we undertaken some cost rationalization exercises or anything? We have not... Cost-cutting and cost optimization is something as a company we have done for years. Every month, every quarter, we do it. Having said that, I think other SG&A and, admin, the other expenses column, ex of, advertising, I think, it is largely because certain costs are fixed, I guess. With the increase in revenue, I think that gets rationalized over a period of time, that gets optimized over a period of time. To my knowledge, I, we've not cut any significant costs, or there are no, as such, one-off items in the base. Nothing to read from the freight expenses also or nothing of that sort? No, nothing. It's in the normal course of business. There's nothing like that. Understood. Okay. The last question is on the, you know, as of now, you said that you're augmenting your the real estate BD team, right? As of now, as we speak, what is the bandwidth? How many properties can you evaluate? See, currently, I think, 120-130 is the range. I think by the end of this year, we should have a team that could deliver conversions of 150-170 stores starting next year. See, we've already started recruitment. Some people have joined, some people are getting trained. Mm. I think we should get the get some positive result in the increase of number of stores by starting from, say, Q1 next year. Okay. As, you know, based on the historical understanding that, you know, for about, for delivering 100, or let's say for closing 120 to 130 stores, you need to evaluate roughly about 1,000. Correct. odd, real estate options. Correct. That's a strike rate of 12%-13%. Right? Correct. As of now also, our, our bandwidth would be the same as 1,000, or that we are... No, the 1,000 number would increase. Because the 12%-13% of conversion does not change. Even when we are delivering 150-170 stores, we'll have to evaluate a lot more options. That's why we are building our BD team. Many have joined, many will join again with the balance part of the year, they'll get trained by the end of the year. We start seeing those results coming starting Q1. The 12%-13% does not change. If you have to deliver 150, 170, we have to evaluate that many more options. In a year's time, okay, so, you know, asking this differently: In a year's time, how confident are you that you will be able to evaluate 25% more real estate? We are adding more people in our BD team, and once they get trained, it's a matter of time before the options start coming in. Everything is people dependent, so once we've added enough number of people in our BD team and we will see those options start flowing in. The, the people in the BD team have to also be trained on how to evaluate the location and what is our criteria when we finalize the location. It takes some time for them to also settle down in terms of what targets we set. It should happen from Q1. Understood. And the final, the final sign-off on the property, happens through you, right? ...Yeah, I'm, I'm part of the BD team, BD committee, which is in our head office. Every property that gets finalized needs my final approval. I mean, there's a lot of, there is a lot of layers, and there's a lot of team members who evaluate it before I do, but I have the final sign off. Fair enough. Okay. Just a confirmation, Pre-Ind AS EBITDA, was it roughly INR 37 odd crore? No, no. Our Pre-Ind AS EBITDA for Q1 is 21.3%. 21.3%. Yes, our Post-Ind AS EBITDA after capitalization rate is 34.1. Understood. Okay. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. You're welcome. The next question is from the line of Vaishnavi from Amundi. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. Sir, on the gross margin this quarter, with relation to the raw material prices being softer, and if I look at the gross margin with the subcontracting expenses included, the gross margins, sorry, without the subcontracting expenses, only the pure COGS gross margins, it's down by almost 81 basis points on a YOY level and by around 300 basis on a quarter-over-quarter level. Does this have to do with the sales channel mix being more towards LFS and the other channels away from EBO? No, Vaishnavi, I think the right way of looking, cost of goods sold will be combining subcontracting and material consumption, because some quarters we might, we might have garments which are purchased because we also buy, we buy, we also buy garments, right, as a sourcing model. For us to look at individually might not be the right way. The right way to be looking at it is as a single line item, cost of goods sold. That we have delivered 61.3%, a 70 basis points increase. This 70 basis points increase, what we are seeing is because of the slightly increase in EBO sales. The RM prices, I did a very detailed study, and there's a lot of our RM was purchased when the prices were high. Right now, because that older inventory was purchased at the older price, we have actually not seen the benefit of the reduced cotton prices yet. Because we are in the stage of optimizing inventory, we have not been purchasing a lot of late. Our COGS is largely based on the older RM price. The 70 basis point decrease what we are seeing is largely because of the EBO, which was 71% earlier and 73% now. The quarter-on-quarter decline in the margin front, which is almost 250 base? Last year, Vaishnavi, Q4 was an exceptional quarter because we had some write-backs and write, write-backs on the revenue because of the LFS, discount reversals, if you remember. Mm-hmm. Q4 is not a, is not the right quarter to compare with. I would compare Q1 versus the entire FY 23 as a comparison, not individually Q4. Okay, understood. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference back to the management for their closing comments Thank you everyone for joining us. I hope we've been able to answer all your queries. We look forward to such interactions in the future. We hope to live up to the expectations of you all in the future. In case if you have any further details, you may contact Mr. Birenlal Virvadia from SGA, our investor relations partner. Thank you. Thank you. On behaf of Go Fashion (India) Limited, we conclude today's conference. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.