Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to Mr. Ajoy Chawla, Managing Director, Titan Company Limited. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Chawla. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being on this call so early in the morning. Sorry to put you through this, but, yeah, unavoidable. It's been a great quarter. Certainly a festive quarter on a high base. We are delighted to have seen this kind of uptick in demand. And, I must also say it is coming on the back of lot of volatility, competitive intensity, and I must compliment all our teams across all the brands and divisions and subsidiaries, who have risen up to the challenge and delivered a good quality execution to kind of take advantage of this. So it's the team effort that has helped. And I now hand over this for a few opening comments to our CFO, Ashok Sonthalia, after which we'll start the Q&A. Thanks, Ajoy, and very good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining this call. I just thought this time that 3, 4 important points related to quarter or going forward, I will just point out so that you may please take a note. We are very happy to announce that we completed 67% stake acquisition of Damas, and the accounting of that you will see from January 1. Consolidation of Damas books into Titan consolidation will start from January 1. So quarter four results, you will have Damas consolidation. With CaratLane international business, which is primarily jewelry business, TEAL, and now Damas also, the consolidated view of Titan is becoming increasingly important. We have also made sizable investment as well in these businesses. Therefore, I urge you to start looking at consolidated performance as well, because that's going to be increasingly important. From the beginning of this financial year, we have started providing business view of domestic and international market performances. We also provide reconciliation between statutory reporting and the business view reporting in our IR presentation. I do hope this will help you to get a complete picture of business performances. One more important point, which we find sometimes people don't account for, we always disclose amount of bullion and DigiGold sale through a note in our IR presentation, as well as statutory accounts, and we always exclude them from any performance-related metrics. So as these amounts are sometimes significant, I request you to pay attention to these notes while kind of assessing our performance. The other important development which all companies have faced in India, that Labor Code impact has been accounted for in our quarter three books. The impact on a consolidated level is INR 152 crore, which has been shown an exceptional item in the consolidated, as well as INR 138 crore in standalone financials. So these were some of the important points which I thought I'll point out to them. Now we can open the floor for question and answers. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use their handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take the first question from the line of Videesha Sheth from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Hi, morning. So my first question is if you can briefly touch upon the growth trends that you've seen in fourth quarter till date, especially in context of further sequential growth presentation? This is addressed to any particular division or overall? I'm sorry. I meant from, from the jewelry segment perspective. Arun Valla. Okay. Good morning, this is Arun Narayan, CEO, Jewelry. Thank you for your question. So the fourth quarter, we've just seen a month gone by, and I'd like to leave it by saying it's been a good month. The real difference, what we have seen in January versus the months leading up, is that the gold rate has been volatile. Right through this year, we have seen a secular rise in gold rate, and that leads to a certain behavior. When gold rate is volatile, it's difficult to call. So I wouldn't want to leave you, you all with anything that you know is indicative of how it may play out in the rest of the quarter, but only to say that the month of January has been good. But now we are seeing a bidirectional movement of gold rates, so it's too early to call out or give you a guidance or say anything that could guide you on where the rest of the quarter could kind of move. Okay, just a follow-up to this, Arun. So the gold old exchange campaigns intensity has sustained? I mean, the old gold mix has sustained at higher levels, which you would have probably seen in the third quarter, or would that have come off? ... Yes, it's sustained, and our own investment and efforts behind that call-out also sustains. Got it, got it. My second question was more from an industry perspective for jewelry. Is there any indication of consolidation happening either on the retail side or supply chain side due to higher gold prices? I mean, is there any indication of winding up of operations of small contract manufacturers or even mom-and-pop retailers, which could ideally benefit the overall organized industry? Nothing, nothing, nothing to really call out as something something new, which we are seeing. Of course, formalization continues, but beyond that, nothing, nothing to call out and report. Sure. I've got a few more questions, but I'll get back to you. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Manoj Menon from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, team. Great performance. My questions are completely slightly beyond the quarter on the short term. Look, I think this sort of unprecedented gold move which you have seen, the previous participants spoke about possibly a hypothesis of formalization. But my question is more inward-looking. You know, when these sort of, let's say, material, let's say, beyond the demand planning changes, which actually happened, in particular to the supply side, gold price, et cetera. If you could talk about, let's say, any behavior in consumer. For example, we would have discussed between 2 carat to 18 and possibly even 14 earlier, but there are practical challenges for consumers to buy anything on, you know, beyond 18, you know, on the lower side, because, as I understand it, can be sluggish, et cetera. Or from a supply chain point of view, you, let's say, you manufactured a 10-gram chain, which had a certain, you know, lead time, and a certain, let's say, you know, time, time for lifting in the store, et cetera, and then suddenly the price is, like, you know, immediately higher. Just could you talk a little bit about how nimble, you actually handled these, let's say, and which is a competitive advantage? Thank you. Okay, thanks, thanks, Manoj, for that question. I think the agility, perhaps is only on responding to the need to be accessible in jewelry and the need to keep price points clearly in mind, so that we offer choice as close to what we offered in the past at certain price points. And therefore, the pivot to lightweight jewelry across the board, introducing 18 carat traditional gold jewelry also in certain parts of the country where we have seen a greater openness to it. We are seeing parts of North and East being more open, but in West and South, we are seeding the thought. And similarly with studded jewelry at lower caratages. We always had 14 carat jewelry in both, CaratLane and Mia, but now we've also introduced, that in Tanishq and also up to 9 carat, in CaratLane and Mia. So, these are the ways in which we are responding to keep jewelry, accessible. That being said, of course, when there is a changeover or when you have to give sufficient choice across multiple caratages, there is a bit of complexity, and there is a bit of transition that, the system undergoes, which is where what we've been through, last couple of months. But we think we'll be able to tide over that, and early signs also are quite, positive for these changes that, we are ushering in. Thank you. So I'll just, Manoj, I'll come in on your supply chain piece. Yeah. It is not that lead times dramatically change or complicate life. It is simply the changeover and ensuring that you are able to have segregated lines internally that matters. And as far as we are concerned, even when we work with our vendor partner ecosystem, we supply the gold, et cetera, to a large extent, so that doesn't really impact us. The concerns you might have had in terms of either lead time or volatility in price, et cetera, because it's mostly our gold. Okay, understood. Thank you. Thank you, Arun and Ajoy. We just want to follow up on the first one. Is that the making charges in India is a percentage of the gold price? Now, what I broadly observed from most of the at least the branded players who advertise, you know, listed, unlisted, both put together, it's the next percentage discount on the making charge. Is that now a through the year sort of phenomena, given that the gold prices are higher? Because from a Tanishq point of view, at least I observed that you had pockets or seasons or windows in which you used to have it. Well, would that be a necessity now to have these through the year? What would we need to have, Manoj, making charge? No, no. Maybe the discount, discount on making charges, given that the... it's a percentage and it has as well gone up 70%-80% in line with gold inflation. Historically, observation is that Tanishq actually had those discount windows, you know, but, but given the gold prices where it is, would you either you have to relook at the percentage making charges or have an all, all year sort of a discount, I mean, or, or maybe you are able to manage it, in a better aspect? So far, I think we've been able to manage it across both the gold as well as the studded portfolio. And we have windows, pre-Akshaya Tritiya and pre-Dhanteras, where, it's across the board, and rest of the year, it's on certain grammage of price bands, largely, catering to the wedding customer. So there is a playbook that we have, which is continuing. We have not seen the need to kind of alter or change that despite, the conditions that you're alluding to. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much, and I'll fall back in with you. Just a second, if I may, one request, one comment. Beyond the L1, L2, L3, the franchising model, which Tanishq had, over a long period of time, are you looking at any other franchising models at this point, which is already there in the market? ... Well, we keep exploring various models, but nothing really to significantly alter the franchising model that we currently have. Okay. So no 4-4 model for now, actually? Not really. Sure, sure. Thank you, and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Arnab Mitra from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Yeah, and congratulations on a great quarter. My first question was on buyer growth, where, you mentioned buyer growth has flattish this quarter, but there's also mention of 45% new buyer contribution, something that I think was not mentioned last couple of quarters. Are you seeing any improvement in that metric? And how does it square off between not having buyer growth, but 45% new buyer contribution? Does it mean that your existing, let's say, loyalty or members, are-- that's where the frequency reduction has happened? Yeah, thanks, thanks for that question. The new buyer share has more or less stayed consistent. I thought maybe it's just more or less in the ballpark, I would say. However, we do have many ways of keeping our existing customers warm and bringing them back to the store. Initiatives which happen at a store level, as well as CRM centrally, as part of our Encircle program, and now also with Tata Neu. So, yeah. So it's a lot of existing customers who continue to come back, but new pretty much being in the broad ballpark. And, I think also perhaps we are blessed to be in a category where despite such significant increases in raw material cost, we are still able to kind of hold a certain buyer, you know, buyers in our hold. So that's really credit to price elasticity and our ability to kind of hold that despite inflation in gold rates. I think the One second. The specific question you had was, has it gone up or down? Vis-à-vis last quarter, it has improved. Last quarter, new was 42, this quarter is 45. But vis-à-vis last year, same quarter, which was 48%, it is lower. So it's an improvement sequentially, but a small reduction compared to the previous year. Got it. One follow-on question on this was, is there any different trend in studded buyer growth, in terms of that trending better than overall buyer growth? Yes, it is a few percentage points better, and has been also the case last many quarters. Got it. My second question actually was on jewelry margins. So given what's happened with gold and the mix, which you cannot really control, I mean, if consumers want more gold coins, do you, beyond a point, essentially focus internally more on EBIT growth as a jewelry business? Or do you still hold on, try to hold on to those lines on, you know, margin range that you want to hold? Just wanting to understand how you think about it in this very high revenue growth environment. And also, if in the... Just specifically for the quarter, if Ashok could highlight if there were any one-offs in terms of inventory, hedging gains or losses that were there. Hi. Thank you, Ashok here. You rightly pointed out with the, with the rising gold price environment, getting a, a good fix on margin outcome is becoming challenging, you know, and margin remains an outcome. So in the way we, we keep prioritizing growth, customer acquisition, market share, et cetera, but at the same time, we have always said that we are very mindful of margin. So you are right, the EBIT profit growth in absolute amount is becoming more and more important than profitability margin, you know, because profitability margin increasingly is becoming challenging in the rising gold environment. So that's what. What was your second part of the question? Were there any one-offs in terms of hedging gains or losses in the- No, in quarter three, there is no one-off. Last year, quarter three, custom duty gain was there, which you remember. If we normalize, then 50 basis point drop is there in quarter three compared to last quarter two. Got it. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Thanks. That's it from my end. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Sheela Rathi from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Again, my question is, with respect to the jewelry business. You know, you know, you referred to that, you know, buyer growth has been flat. And, at the same time, when we look at the studded growth, it has been lower than the jewelry business growth. So how should we think about the transaction value of customers? I mean, logically, if buyer growth is slow, it would mean that new buyer growth is slow. We would believe that, you know, the transaction values are going up. Of course, there's a gold price increase also. But if studded is lower, how is actually the consumer behaving? Because this was a quarter which was a high wedding calendar quarter also. Are new consumers who are buying for weddings not coming to Tanishq or is there some real change in how consumer is behaving? Okay. I'll just set the record right on this. Our buyer growth on studded has been a few percentage points higher quarter-on-quarter, not only this quarter, but also many quarters leading to quarter three. However, the ticket size growth on gold, because of the gold content being higher, is much higher in plain gold than it is on studded jewelry, because diamond prices aren't going up, but gold is going up. So we are seeing a ticket size, a bigger ticket size jump in gold versus diamonds. And that's why the buyer growth translating into revenue is much higher in gold compared to studded jewelry. That being said, it is also true that we are seeing a greater traction at higher price points, in gold jewelry and in studded, and there is pressure at lower price points, on account of inflation, and rise in, gold rate. Plus, of course, a certain profile of customers seem to be, accepting this, rise, versus others who may be waiting and seeing if gold rates kind of cool down. In general, wedding buyers are the ones who, you know, where it is not discretionary, and they are the ones who, therefore, we needed to give a lot of comfort to, from an exchange standpoint, and we are seeing wedding buyers stay, obviously invested as a consequence. Okay. Just, my second and final question, again, linked to the first question. What would be now the average transaction value of a new customer, a studded jewelry customer, and, you know, a gold jewelry customer? So I think the total ticket size is hovering closer to INR 1.7 lakh at an overall level, approximately. 1.9. 1.9, sorry, for the quarter, 1.9 lakhs. We may not be able to give you this by studded and plain gold, but I think the question you asked, the studded ticket size has also gone up by 15% in the quarter three, while plain gold ticket size went up by 44% or something like that. So there is a differential in the ticket size growth. In both of them, I've seen ticket size growth. Yeah. INR 1.9 lakh, and a new customer, what is the transaction value? I'm sorry, we won't be able to give that level of detail because it may not- Understood. Understood. This INR 1.9 lakh would be the highest we have seen ever? That's true. Yeah. Yes, yes. Understood. Thank you very much. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Devanshu Bansal from Emkay Global. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Good morning. Congratulations on a good performance. So first question is on jewelry, gross margin. The comparable gross margin, so that we report in our standalone financials, has dipped by about 200 basis points in Q3. While operating leverage and other cost efficiencies has offset 150 basis points of this impact. Why I'm sort of checking on this, because we have not seen such kind of a gross margin dip in previous quarters. I wanted to check the nature of these growth investments that we're making in the business. What happens if sort of both growth profile of the business takes a dip? Are these sort of investments reversible in nature, or we may see some margin challenge if growth doesn't show up? So I guess that you are looking at Titan Company performance slide and alluding from there, what has happened to jewelry. Because you are right, largely, Titan Company standalone numbers reflect jewelry number, but the drop in GC is... He is doing normalized, so 1%. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so normalized, yeah, you are right, 1% drop, and we have been talking about that in rising gold prices. There are two, three ways margin gets impacted. One is, of course, gold coin salience has gone up quite a bit. Studded jewelry margin, because of the gold content, goes up in the, in terms of value. The studded jewelry margin also goes down, while gold jewelry remains the way they are. And this put together, I think- ... And you also need to check whether you are including bullion in your calculation. So please exclude bullion, which has been given- Sir, I've excluded that. So then Q3 last year, there was no bullion reported by you, and this year, it's very small, about three- No, I just wanted to check that you are doing the thing. You might have done that rightly, but all these things are leading to this kind of thing. And that is what we said, if gold prices keep rising like this, whatever we are doing, you know, 14 carat, 18 carat, 9 carat light jewelry, they would eventually catch up when gold prices stabilize. In the continuously rising gold prices, jewelry margin will kind of exhibit this kind of, you know, pressure. But absolute, because of the growth coming in, I think absolute EBIT or absolute PBT, whichever level you want to look at, have been growing nicely, decently. But yeah, not in the same percentage as revenue. And business mix is another thing. You know, when you look at the company level, TCL level, then the business mix also plays a role... Jewelry is becoming, and in quarter three particularly, it has become more dominant because of 40% growth, while other businesses have grew nicely, but you know, they are 17%, 18%, 14%, 15%. So because of 40%, now jewelry, jewelry, which is slightly lower margin business, has gone up in the portfolio mix, and that also has suppressed TCL India, or TCL consolidated, you know, margin a little bit. Okay, understood. Understood. Yeah. Sir, I've also wanted to understand, there is a good component of sales coming from gold exchange and some of the installment schemes that we have, which is relatively immune to the gold price. So wanted to check what is the mix of these two currently for our business and maybe what we are targeting for the upcoming year through gold exchange and the installment schemes? Yeah. So, I'll answer that. The jewelry purchase plans, we started with Golden Harvest many years back, but over the last almost two years, the program that's gained traction is called Golden Advantage, which is a grammage program and very relevant solution for anyone planning to buy jewelry in, this inflationary, era that we are in. And, as you all are aware, anywhere from 20%-25% of our business comes from our jewelry purchase plans, and that's kind of sustained, even at this point in time. Although we are seeing more customers prefer the new Golden Advantage over Golden Harvest, which is very logical and, probably a more appropriate solution for these times. That being said, even our sale through Golden, our sale through the gold exchange programs have gone up, both the Tanishq exchange program, where people come back to upgrade their Tanishq jewelry, as well as those who bring back gold bought elsewhere. And almost like we've been saying, more than 50% of our business today has an element of exchange of either types. And in quarter three, we saw a good jump in that. Yeah. No, you can- So, but broadly, can we understand that 70%-75% of your business is relatively immune to gold price volatility? Is this a right inference? See, there will be a, you know, like a double accounting between these two, because there are those who also... You know, there is an A intersection B as well. So I don't have a figure right now to give you, but our, our idea is to move in that direction that, you know, in the direction that you're alluding to, because that's good for business and it's also good for the consumer. So directionally, that's where we want to move, but it may not just be, there will be an intersection between the two as well. Just to add one clarification, that in Gold Exchange Program, upsell also happens. So, you know, to that extent, the upsell element is having impact of gold price, but customer is taking it in his stride. So all these, you know, intersections are there, so straight deriving 75% is not right. Yeah, I think I would just add a comment here. I think nobody can be immune from gold price increase, even if you may be exchanging 100%, or you may be having a via Golden Advantage plan. There are enough people who may change their mind when they see gold prices are gone up substantially or they are not in a position. So I think it's a very- I would stay away from making that assumption that you kind of alluded. Yeah. So last small question from my end. So eyewear growth is 11% with ASP contributing about 5-6% of that. So the volume growth is still low at 5-6%, right? I'm talking about the customer-level sales in eyewear business. Two questions here. One, we were working on the mass and mid-premium end of the market, right? As indicated in the MLS meet. So what has driven this ASP increase? And the sub-part to it is, as in, when do we expect the volume growths to pick up in this business? Hi, good morning. This is Raghavan here. Thanks for your question. See, as far as Q3 is concerned, our domestic growth was almost 17.5%. Right? That was the overall growth. In terms of volume, the volume growth was around close to 9%. But the way to read the- Sir, I'm referring to the UCP sales, right? So that is reported in the PPT. Yeah. The UCP sales is 11%. You're absolutely right. So the omni-channel sale, what we have reported, is 11%. That's a revenue growth. And this revenue growth has been reported by a volume growth of close to around 8%. So from a volume growth standpoint, it is more or less, you know, within our zone. This is what we had estimated, around an 8%-10% growth. So this is what we will continue to deliver. So that is what it is. Any shift in focus that we had indicated earlier, we were targeting value and mid-premium, so, what has led to this ASP increase? Yeah. So in terms of, positioning, right? I mean, Titan Eyeplus is positioned as a multi-price, multi-brand, destination. So when it comes to multi-brand, today, we offer anywhere between, 15-20 international brands. So there is a kind of a tailwind, for premiumization through our international brand, collaborations. And yes, so quarter three has also been aided by a, ticket size, increase, because normally, November and December, we see an NRI season effect, and it has a direct correlation on the international brands. So we had the benefit of the ticket size also going up in November, December. ... Fair enough. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time and fairness to others, we request you to restrict to two questions per participant and rejoin the question queue. We take the next question from the line of Siddhant Dand from Goodwill. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Excellent set of numbers. Just wanted to ask, which geographies have contributed to the international profits? And, are there still new stores that are unprofitable, and what would be the average margin in the mature stores? So Siddhant, I will give you one color that international margin had at least one time this time, this quarter, because we had some primary sales of INR 200 crore, close to that, and that has to the. If you adjust that, the margins are about 5%-6%. And then gradually it is going up, as we have always talked about, from the loss to gradually it will improve, to reflect jewelry margin, which we have in India, you know. We of course all the stores, because of the high more complex product and studded jewelry ratio being high in North America, but operating cost also being high, more or less margin profile remains same as you see in India. There is nothing significantly different in international market. Okay. Could you just elaborate on the exceptional item? Okay, so we had, you know, INR 194 crore of primary sale by our Dubai to Damas for some of these, the two stores which we are getting Tanishq, converted into Tanishq. And because Damas consolidation is starting from first January, and till that it was not, so that is kind of sale of our Dubai region, where this additional profit is sitting. But from first January onwards, when Damas starts getting consolidated, then these kind of transactions will get eliminated. But before first January, because these transactions happened, they could not be eliminated. Understood. Understood. Any update on what percentage of stores will be converted to Damas, or what percentage of revenue will be converted to Tanishq from Damas? No, there is nothing like that. Damas will continue to grow on the Arab segment, and they will continue to grow their retail network on that side. There were few stores which were in the catchment, which was more appropriate for Tanishq kind of offering, and some of those stores are getting converted. You will see some of the quarter four also, and we will report that as the when we present quarter four results. So some more stores will get converted apart from these two. Okay. It is store-by-store assessment, and we don't have the final number, but it is not a very, very major activity. You know, Damas will keep growing its retail network on the Arab side of the segment. Yeah. Okay, that's great. My second question was regarding the deal margins. There was some exceptional seasonality that you mentioned. Just a broad range of what kind of margins could we expect that business to have? You know, just, you know, conservative numbers. TEAL, TEAL is a project business where we do percentage of completion method on a part of business, which is automation solutions, because they do projects, and that margin will reflect nature of projects which are getting executed in that quarter, and some ups and downs can happen. Manufacturing services business, which is the second part, is more stable product kind of business, and combination of these two, and TEAL is still not that scaled up entity. You can see these margin variations. But I can only tell you, TEAL is doing well with a good order book and good visibility for the future. But quarterly margin ups and downs, you might expect in future also. Okay, that's great. I'll join back for a couple more questions. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Jignanshu Gor from Bernstein Research. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity and good numbers. I wanted to check on the jewelry business. We have, of course, seem to have ramped up our activity, marketing efforts, both discounting gold schemes, et cetera. And as I think we discussed, the margin has taken a hit on a normalized basis. I think my question is, in the longer term, what do you... If this gold price stability does not happen during the year, would you want to revise how you approach the problem you are solving? Is it a margin profile? Is it ROSI? Is it absolute margin growth? What are we really solving for? Or is it market share in revenue terms? How do we think about your approach to decision-making here? Hi, Jignanshu, this is Ajoy Chawla. I want to first make a few observations and correct you slightly. Firstly, our approach has not been to drive discounting to grow. That is part of par for the course for most festive season and other occasions, and it's, it's been there. We've not... In fact, our discounts have been slightly lower, if, if you ask me, than more. In fact, our entire approach has been to create excitement in the customers. ... on two counts. One is by freshness of products and product innovation and campaigns, which kind of appeal to them and showcase these. And the second piece is to leverage exchange as an emotional connect with customers. We have had offers in exchange all along. This time what we did was make it a different kind of narrative, which is based on the fact that we import a lot of gold in this country. So I think these are the two fundamental shifts that have happened. And therefore, to that extent, will the, you know, is discounting or something that has driven down gross margins or something like that? No, that's not the honest answer is, it's business mix, as Ashok shared, because jewelry has become a larger share of the business. Within jewelry, the rising gold rate has impacted the studded margin as it is expected to, which we've explained earlier in terms of the material cost, relative weightage of gold and diamonds in the material cost. And thirdly, it is to do with gold coins in a period like this, of rising gold prices, as well as festive quarter, where the product mix within jewelry also undergoes some change. So frankly, these are the only pieces. Now, whether operating leverage will continue to kick in, it depends on the scale of the business. We believe it should, but I think as Ashok pointed out, please start looking at absolute growth in our EBIT and PBT and compare it to the absolute growth in gross contribution and absolute overall growth. That might be more relevant. Once gold prices stabilizes, maybe we can come to some understanding of where it settles down. Okay, that's helpful, Ajoy. Thank you. Second question was on CaratLane. So we saw a significant margin uptick here, but there's no specific mention of any base effect here for customs duties, or anything. So, just wanted a bit of color on how to look at the CaratLane margin performance, especially as you rightly said, with studded sort of also going a little down little given gold price. So what has really led to it, and how, how should we think about it in the future? Ashok will respond to this. So CaratLane has a high proportion of studded, and that is where the last quarter there was some impact of customs duty, but it was not so significant like Tanishq or Titan jewelry business that we needed to call out. But there was some element of that, for sure. As you are aware that there has been operating leverage at play in CaratLane, which is available from the financials of CaratLane. The studded proportion has slightly come down, because they also introduced 9 carat, 14 carat modern gold jewelry, which is getting good traction, and particularly in the online space and gifting space, et cetera. So I expect that overall margin we had. If you remember, a couple of quarters back, we had said that gradually, CaratLane, with its scale, will start inching towards double-digit EBIT margin. I think they have reached there, maybe slightly earlier than what we expected, but I think they would stay there, low, low double-digit margin, EBIT profile. That is, I would say. I think if Somin is on the call, he wants to add anything. Somin, are you on the call? Yes, I am. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, we can hear you. You can add if you want to, if I have missed. Yeah, sure. No, I think you pretty much covered everything. I think our studded ratio is anywhere between 85%-90%. We have been hit by the escalating gold rate in quarter one quite badly. I think we recovered a bit better in quarter two and quarter three. That's one part. And I think revenue growth was the single largest factor. And we have been consistently managing our costs over the last 6 quarters, if you look at our figures. I think, so revenue growth and the cost management are the two main factors, and recovery from the margin drop that happened in Q1 are the three things that I would attribute Q3's you know the profit performance. Introduction of 9 carat diamond jewelry, Shaya diamond, which is silver and diamond combination. They are low in terms of contribution today, but they have a positive impact when it comes to margin. Okay, that's very helpful. Just a clarification on this: So studded growth in volume terms is broadly same, or studded share in volume terms rather, is broadly the same as last year. Is that a fair point? I think, I think we'll let that be. Okay. We'll give you more details in the Investor Day. Somin will share a little bit in, during the Investor Day. Yeah? Yeah. Sure. Thanks. Sure. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Harit Kapoor from Investec. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning. So just two questions from my end. The first one was, you know, on domestic jewelry. So, you know, over the last six months, last two quarters specifically, have you been kind of positively surprised with the level of gross contribution you've been able to hold, as well as, you know, the relative inelasticity, if I can call it that, on the grammages, while they obviously would have declined? But has both these elements kind of, you know, positively surprised you? And, in that context, you know, your comment on kind of consumer behavior and expected going forward also would be helpful. That's my first question. ... So I won't answer the gross contribution, is Ajoy here. I'll let Ashok answer that, but I'll just talk a little bit about the consumer and how we are looking at it. I think, if you step back and see, there was a lot of people on the fence, if I go back to quarter one and quarter two, waiting for gold prices to correct. That's my reading, if I recollect right. And, the moment they saw that gold prices are only going up, and there were enough rumors in the market that it will continue to go up, and then the festive season came, followed by the wedding season, a lot of customers really jumped in on this, on account of this entire FOMO, fear of missing out. And I feel that is continuing even now, you know, and it remains. Now, of course, with the volatility in gold price, maybe it might stabilize a bit, or people may once again think, pause and wait. So I think that's the larger consumer story, which is why we are seeing that we've been able to hold. The second piece, I think, is more internal to us. I think our teams have gone out on a limb and done extensive work on product, on retail, on customer outreach, on exchange, and I think it speaks volumes for the exchange... for the execution that has really played up. So I think somewhere, some credit also goes to the teams for having done that. On gross, gross contribution, I leave it for Ashok to answer. So, Harit, I don't think we, you know, specifically and separately disclose jewelry gross contribution, but maybe you are taking Titan as a proxy for jewelry. And to that extent, you know, we explained in the earlier question also that, you know, those elements are playing out, particularly in last five, six quarters, where gold prices are going up in a very, very accelerated manner. And as long as this trend continues, except in January, first time we saw a really huge volatility and correction, but again, it has started going up. And what we are told by people like you and economists, that structural things underlying gold bullishness stay. So, you know, one can expect that gold prices might continue to go up, and in that environment, there will be stress on margins. Some parts we will be able to mitigate through operating leverage. As long as we are able to deliver good revenue growth, we will get operating leverage, and we will be able to maintain EBIT level or PBT level margin profile. Great. And the second question was on this, you know, earlier participants have asked about formalization, but my question is from the perspective of, in an environment where, you know, the cost of doing business as far as inventory is concerned, dramatically goes up, you know, and the entire market doesn't have the balance sheet that you do. Do you expect pace of expansion in the industry to kind of, you know, relatively slow down? Not for you, but generally to slow down, given this, the inventory cost is so high and it's primarily a COCO model, ex your business, you know. So just some thoughts on that. It's difficult to comment on how the industry will behave. You know, it'll be very speculative. I think we should wait and watch how it plays out. It's been only a few months. To draw conclusions of a long-standing nature on that may be inappropriate. But certainly it puts us, you know, in a, I would say a bit comfort, not huge, but a, it's a advantage, competitive advantage for us, because we are able to at least fund our inventory, I think, better than others. Great. Wish you all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Amit Sachdeva from UBS Group. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations on great set of numbers. My question is on the studded data. I just wanted your comment on how the consumer behavior in this segment is shaping up, now that you own both the narratives of LBB, which is on one side of consumer value proposition, and Panish Diamonds on the other. But I also note that higher value segment was growing faster, but you know, INR 1-2 lakh was a bit under pressure, but you also launched lots of things in sub-INR 1 lakh segment. So just wanted your kind of, you know, input here, how this business consumer behavior is shaping up, and also the studded promotion in that context, how it is responding to some of the initiatives and price points that you have taken. So, some color on that, that would be very helpful. Sure. Thanks, Amit. Arun here. You're right in saying that, we have been seeing pressure, sub-INR 1 lakh, not 1-2, but sub-INR 1 lakh in studded jewelry, but also with gold rates behaving the way they are also in gold jewelry. Sure. Above INR 1 lakh is a different picture for studded jewelry. And a lot of efforts from our side, like I said earlier, to keep jewelry accessible, has really been top of our mind. And what you see even in January with the Festival of Diamonds and with a new face to our daily wear studded portfolio with Ananya Panday, et cetera, are all efforts we are doing to woo that customer back into the store. So having said, continues to be high on our priority. I don't think... I mean, it will take lots more effort for us to do that. So- ... I will only leave it by saying that, you know, let's say the trends that we are seeing, in a sense, maybe the slowdown in less than INR 1 lakh may be plateauing a bit. We're not seeing an activation there. And even in January, we are seeing some early signs of results from the efforts we are putting in. But, you know, to be honest, it will take a lot more than that to win that customer back, given what we are seeing in terms of price inflation here. So I have one additional comment to add here. As a portfolio of brand between Tanishq, which has a substantial contribution of buyers in the sub INR 1 lakh, sub INR 50,000, Mia, CaratLane, and hopefully going forward in the future, Beyond, which is a different kind of play. I think we should look at the portfolio play eventually, and that's our game plan, to ensure that we own that customer in the sub INR 100,000 space, and more importantly, bring in many more customers in the studded space in the sub INR 100,000. In fact, the stress on gold in the sub INR 100,000 buyers is far higher than you know, studded. So which is fine, we understand, and there'll be different solutions for them. Yeah. Got it. Well, that's very helpful, you know, Ajoy and Arun. So just a small one here is that obviously last year we've seen studded being in mid-teens, and then last quarter was a bit better. In this promotion cycle, are we seeing the similar growth in studded as the last quarter, or acceleration or some sort of from a trend point of view, what so far you've seen in January? Is there a comment that you would make? It's too early to call, too early to call that, Amit. Having said that, I would say that quarter three has been better than the period prior to that. But quarter four will still allow us to wait and call it out at an appropriate time. It's perhaps a little too early. Also, our Festival of Diamonds is the longest campaign, so we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. Got it. No, thanks so much. That's all from me. Congratulations once again on great set of numbers. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Mihir Shah from Nomura. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. So firstly, one clarification on ticket size, assuming constant gold prices, is there a material swing or difference in ticket size across quarter? So usually third quarter is the highest saliency for you. So does wedding and festive quarter have a material difference, as in 1.9 can be material different for the remaining, three quarters? Just for clarification on that first. Yeah. So I mean, there are two forces, so to say. One is the consumer mix and the need state mix, and second is the gold rate increase. So, what we are seeing in quarter three, we are seeing play out in quarter four as well, because it is also a wedding quarter, and we have seen gold rates increase significantly even beyond December into January. So, yeah, so we are seeing quarter four begin to behave similar to quarter three. So I'll just add one more, one more flavor on this. Typically, during Akshaya Tritiya and Dhanteras, there are a lot more people who come in. Many new buyers also come in because they buy small tickets, they buy coins, they buy all kinds of... So actually, during those periods of 15 days, you normally land up seeing a slightly lower ticket size. But it's, as Arun said, during wedding purchases, et cetera, you see higher ticket size. Got it. During Festival of Diamonds or diamond activation, you see higher ticket sales. Higher ticket sales. Understood. So, so assuming these swings across quarters may not be as material, is predominantly the understanding, right? That's correct. You're right. Secondly, despite- Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost the line of the participant. We'll move on to the next question from the line of Jay Doshi from Kotak. Please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on great execution. The question is, in the past, you know, you've indicated that passing on making charges to consumers in a rising gold price environment, you know, is gradual over a couple of quarters, and so you, you know, invariably saw some dip in margins. When I look at this quarter's performance on a YOY basis, despite all the margin headwinds, be it mix or, you know, in a volatile environment, your EBIT growth is exceptionally good and strong. So, you know, my question is: were you, are you positively surprised by the acceptance of, you know, making charge, you know, as a percentage of sales, you know, this, in this upcycle of gold price? Is this a kind of behaviors that you would have expected in any case at the beginning of the quarter? Hi, Jay, this is Ajoy here. I'll take that question. What we have seen... So I think there are two, three things at play. Firstly, there is a slight shift in the repeat and new buyer contribution. If you see, new buyer contribution compared to last year on year is 3 percentage points down, and typically they come in at lower ticket size, whereas repeat buyers come at higher ticket size. Secondly, because of weddings and the repeat buyers being high, you typically find a richer product mix that we are able to sell, compared to new and, let's say, you know, non-wedding. The third angle I would like to say, which is, which goes in the opposite direction. Because of higher gold prices, there is a tendency for customers to kind of slip down the complexity order. Which I mean is that instead of buying very high making charge products, they may tend to slip to slightly medium-size, medium complexity products. So these are two forward and one backward, and there's one more forward, which has helped us a lot in quarter three, is the collection that we launched was phenomenally successful. It so happens to be we did exceptionally well with the Mriganka collection and the campaign which the team put out, that created desire, what I would call as irrational desire. So I think all these three, four factors combined have seen the outcome that you're seeing. And the final point I would say, which is not related to gold, but to do with studded, the team put in a lot of work in doing many high-value exhibitions across the country. That has helped a lot in the quarter, and I'm sure will continue to help us in this quarter four as well. So all these forces have come together to kind of give you the outcome. Many of them have added together to give us a big bumper quarter. Let's see how things go on as we go forward. Thanks, great execution, and, you know, wish you the very best. Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Vivek from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, sir. Couple of questions on this gold price a bit. One is, you know, not very long back, there was this concern that... Not concern, but there was this debate whether, you know, the younger generation prefers gold as much, whether as investment class or as consumption category. Do you think that the way which prices have gone up, so much excitement around ETFs, and I'm sure you would have seen gold ETF data yesterday. Do you think that, you know, that alters this behavior and the next generation will be far more, you know, geared towards gold versus what it could have been otherwise? No, looking at the performance of CaratLane and Mia in our portfolio, we are actually seeing, youngsters stay with us and continue to be, invested in, jewelry, both as an investment as well as for adornment, more. And whatever we are doing on, you know, to keep products exciting, in terms of new collections across, all our brands, is also, kind of keeping them, excited in the category. So we aren't seeing, an adverse move here. We're only seeing a good response to the excitement that we are bringing in, both in terms of the store additions that, we have done, which is quite significant, for Mia, and also in terms of the new collections, and campaigns that we are, bringing out. Okay. And sure. But, you know, from a medium-term perspective, how do you think about this behavior? Because, you know, Mia, CaratLane, are still entry level. Do you think the interest level of younger generation gets much higher because of, you know, because of all the narrative around gold and the fact that it has come under the consideration set, whether it's ETF or gold jewelry? Do you think something changes, or you don't think, as much as, you know, you can, you gauge today? No, we are seeing, I mean, we are seeing it stay positive, which is why our investments in store expansion continue to be, you know, fairly robust on both- Okay. -on, Mia. So we are taking a positive view of the future. It's, it's positive only. Even from what I gather, anecdotally, both CaratLane and Mia have had enough inquiries for gold products. They may do different kinds of gold products, 18 carat or modern gold. Tanishq has seen good modern gold. So I think by and large, I would stay on the track of what Arun said. Even younger customers are interested in gold, and that may sustain. Got it. And the second point on this, gold price bit, you know, and again, I'm not sure if, because I have not at least come across anecdotally also. But in a scenario where gold prices are moving up, does that also, you know, a worry that the customers to go into a neighborhood store just from a gold purity perspective or otherwise, or availability, sheerly the availability with the jeweler, and that benefits organized players, including yourself? Quite likely. Got it. Got it. Thank you very much. Wish you all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take that as the last question and conclude the question and answer session. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ajoy Chawla for the closing comments. Thank you. It's been very good quarter, and thank you for all the wonderful questions that keep us thinking. Look forward to interacting with you soon. Bye. Take care. Thank you. On behalf of Titan Company Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.