Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the V-Mart Retail Ltd Q4 and FY25 earnings conference call hosted by HDFC Securities. 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 the star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Jay Gandhi from HDFC Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Yeah, thanks, Keith. This is Jay from HDFC Securities. Welcome to V-Mart Retail's Q4 FY25 earnings call. From the management at V-Mart, we have Mr. Lalit Agarwal, Managing Director of V-Mart Retail, Mr. Anand Agarwal, CFO of V-Mart Retail. Before we start, we would like to point out that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking in nature, and a disclaimer to that effect has been included in the earnings presentation. Kindly note that this call is meant for investors and analysts only. With that, I hand over the call to you, Lalit Ji, for your opening remarks. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for bringing the call early in the morning. Sorry for keeping this call in the market hours, but yes, it was a weekend before we announced our result, so we had to do a call today morning. Anyway, good, healthy signs being visible. We are able to see continued growth in the market from the retail perspective in the tier two, tier three cities largely. We have also seen some upswing in the tier one market because of the fashion changes which is being visible. Otherwise, the economy looks little confused. I mean, not that it is very low, but there is a lot of hue and cry over the effect of the tariffs in the U.S. and stuff. Media is covering a lot of those stuff. The consumer is a little confused in what kind of decisions should they take, what is the impact which is going to come on. Over the period, it is being seen positively. Maybe we do not see a large impact coming on our consumer market, in our consumption market in the smaller town. Overall, the industry has been doing fairly okay. We see growth coming in for most of the value retailers. The bigger retailers or the branded retailers still continue to show a little neutral or negative sign for the result. The consumption at that level seems to be a little impacted. Otherwise, store openings from the competition side have been fairly agile. They have been very fast. There is a lot of competition, a lot of stores which are getting opened up. Everybody has some plans to open up some retail stores in the market where we exist, or which are likely markets for us to open up new stores. We are seeing a lot of dynamism, but yes, we are also seeing a lot of movement from unorganized to organized. Consumers are definitely believing more in the organized trade. The organized retail percentage is moving up, and that is being shared by all of these retailers which are opening stores in those markets, including us. That is a good sign for organized retail in India. That could be a little detrimental for the consumers, for the smaller, what we call the mom-and-pop stores and those people who try to sell from those traditional mode of selling. I think overall, the fashion element has gone up. The consumption also is getting derived from that particular side. Youth is the key driver of consumption now. We are seeing a lot of movement in that. We have also seen a lot of work being done at V-Mart in trying to attract the young audience, the Gen Z audience, which we have been focusing on. Relatively, we used to receive around 20%-23% of youth which is under 25%, and now we see that has gone up to 30%-33%. That is a positive sign. That is also a sign that we are being accepted by the young crowd, and that is the largest population which is becoming more bigger decision-makers and more bigger consumption makers. That aspect is very highly being focused on. We believe that they are just not the consumers, but they are also decision-makers for the family because they are the people who have more information versus the elder ones. That is how the whole consumption is tweaking, and that is where we believe that being a content-rich company, being a company with an omni-channel, with a digital presence, with the presence of the store, and the kind of variety and the kind of products that we display and highlight, we need to be a little more interesting to the youth. That is where our focus is. That is why our entire merchandising team, the design team, the sourcing team, they are getting aligned. The whole technology piece is trying to understand, and analytics piece is trying to understand a little more. We are building those infra. We are trying to align and integrate these teams together to create a better outcome. There is a lot of stuff which is going on. There is a lot of stuff which is on the planning piece. A lot of integration, a lot of automation is something also that we are looking forward to. Overall, business seems to be good. Vendor community is also growing. The manufacturing capabilities are also becoming a little larger. People are investing in manufacturing. People are investing in apparel manufacturing as well, which is a positive sign. There is also a large opportunity of exports. That could also become a little bit of a threat if there is a larger opportunity of exports for Indian manufacturers. There is one risk that we see that the amount of manufacturers available, good manufacturers available in the market could be a little constraint going forward if continued overexpansion or overinvestment does not happen in this particular sector. Yeah, that is a good sign for apparel and textile industry in India, and that is what we are all aiming for. Overall, I think monsoon seems to be looking good till now. We believe the farm income and then the rural income is supposed to grow. There is going to be more employment. There is definitely going to be more economical betterment or better consumption that the consumers would have, and that is what we are expecting. We believe the rate of growth that we have seen for the last year should continue even forward, and that is what we are expecting. There is definitely some shift of festivals. Last year, we saw Eid coming in the mark. This year, in the first quarter, we do not have an Eid. The April month was not—month on month, year on year was not great, but period to period, what we compare post-Eid to post-Eid, we are seeing some continued growth coming in. That is what we will have. We will definitely focus on strategizing, building the new stores, focusing on adding similar 40%-44% of retail area, net retail area in the coming year. We may be a little more aggressive if we get good properties. We are looking forward to all of those. We still continue to be very economical in our property selection, very conservative in our selection, as well as the rentals that we pay for those properties. We do not want to make mistakes. We are trying to cut down those mistakes. We are trying to learn from our past mistakes because we have closed down a lot of stores. We closed down some stores in last year as well. We have got a list of the learnings that we have, and how do we not make those mistakes and open those stores which have more rate of success? We continue investing in our team. We believe the team is very, very important in the scalable growth of the business, and we see a lot of opportunity, large opportunity coming. We have also—we had issued a big ESOP plan for the team. That is where you will see some expenses coming in. We believe in that. We believe in that We believe in that strategy that we need to partner with our people. We need to really partner with our vendors. How do we really create a better ecosystem which will create value for everyone? That is how we are trying to grow the organization, and that is the whole philosophy. You will see some expenses coming in on that account as well. That remains our focus to create efficiency in our system, bring in automation, bring in the scalability aspects wherever required, whether it is in terms of process building or in terms of team building and integrating with technology. I think that is where a large part of our time management bandwidth and senior management bandwidth is being devoted. The board is very actively looking into all of these areas. We continue to be a very government-oriented company. We still continue to also invest in the ESG measures and the social measures and the environmental measures. We will definitely want to be a sustainable and a little more ethical retailer. That is how we are based. I'll hand over to Anand. Anand has got to explain and tell you. Over to you, Anand. Thank you, Lalit, and good morning, everybody. Q4 has been a fairly strong quarter with good profitability reflecting both strategic execution and improving consumer traction in almost all our core markets. Broad-based improvements across both V-Mart as well as Unlimited led to an 8% overall like-to-like growth, with Unlimited actually registering a much stronger 10%. This quarter also faced a lot of weather-led disruptions, with winters tapering off earlier than expected after a delayed onset. January and February saw much softer sales, but festive demand around Holi and early Eid in March provided a good recovery tailwind. Overall, this was the sixth consecutive quarter of sustained growth, reflecting the continued impact of the systematic changes introduced in product upliftment, particularly in terms of assortment design, quality, and replenishment. Overall revenues grew by 17%, reflecting internal efficiency improvements and benefits coming in from the strategic closure of the underperforming stores of the previous year, as well as the changes done on the product side. The sales per square feet and the sales per store, both the matrices, continued to improve in line with the SSG. Apparel ASPs decreased marginally, primarily due to lower winter and higher summer seasonal mix in the quarter. There is no further correction planned in ASPs, which should remain in the similar range going forward, except for any seasonal mix-related changes. On the margin side, the total margins at 33.1% was 140 basis points higher than last year, mainly due to the higher full-price new merchandise sales through from an early summer launch, despite a 47% lower revenue contribution from LimeRoad marketplace business, which flows in 100% into total gross margins. Margin drop in provisioning against inventory resulting from better aging profile also helped the margins to grow stronger. The smaller winter window led to lower discounted sales this year, which may lead to slightly higher winter liquidation next year, but nothing substantial. Going forward, I believe the margins should not grow any further, but may remain largely range-bound as we stand ready to grow market share in core growth categories. Moving to expenses, at an overall level, total expenses were 130 basis points lower than last year, in line with the 3% reduction in quarter three. This continued reduction is due to the operating leverage arising out of the sustained L2L growth, the reduction in LimeRoad marketing expenditure, and also the favorable impact of closure of the unprofitable stores done in the previous years. The manpower cost for the quarter was up by 45%, mainly due to the increased ESOP expense and increased sales incentives, which were in line with sales growth. Previous year, in fact, had a reversal of ESOP-related expense, and hence the growth in the manpower cost in the current year optically looks higher. With a normalized base, the ESOP and therefore the employee expense should now get normalized going forward. ESOP expense for the quarter accounted for almost 1% of revenues and 0.5% of revenues for the full year. The other expenses declined by 10% due to decline in the LimeRoad business and the consequent logistics cost reduction in marketing costs for both online as well as offline businesses and other efficiency improvements apart from the benefits coming in from L2L. Coming to EBITDA, for the V-Mart core business, EBITDA for the quarter came in at 9.5%, which was 170 basis points higher than last year, and Unlimited at 10.8%, which was also 170 basis points higher than the previous year. For total V-Mart, including the 43% reduced loss from LimeRoad, the total EBITDA for the company came in 69% higher at 8.7% for the quarter. Without the ESOP expense, the EBITDA actually stood at 9.6% for the quarter and 12.1% for the full year. Moving on to the change in the accounting for operating leases and the resultant exceptional gain. During the quarter, we undertook a reassessment of our lease term estimates in accordance with IND AS 116, which is for leases, reflecting a strategic view of the store portfolio. As a result of this excise, the company recognized a net exceptional gain of 24 crore which has been disclosed separately in the financials. This is a one-time non-cash accounting gain and supports the strategic plans for sustained higher new store growth. Going forward, this change shall result in roughly 50% lower accounting losses for a new store in the first half of its entire lease cycle versus the old practice. This change does not impact the pre-IND AS 116 P&L in any way, which we shall continue to share as in the past in our investor decks going forward as well. We have provided a detailed note and reconciliation of the pre- and post-IND AS 116 impact on the P&L in the investor presentations for reference. Additionally, I'll be happy to take up any additional specific queries related to this separately one-on-one by pre-appointment after the call in the interest of time for the call. Moving on to working capital, the quarter closed at 987 crore of inventory, which was at 102 days. There has been a slight build-up in the inventory at year-end as we prepare for peak summers and wedding season and also in preparation for new store launches planned for Q1 in the current financial year. Overall, the inventory remains healthy. There's a lot of work which has been happening on the product side, which includes technology-led improvements in designing, sourcing, quality control, and replenishment cycles leading to overall improved sales through and thereby better inventory health. CapEx for the year was at 122 crore, which included spend on 62 new stores and the upgradation of existing stores. We have been pressing the pedal on renovations of the existing stores with better results. The working capital has increased temporarily, mainly due to inventory upstocking, but remains in a comfortable range. Increase in working capital led to a negative net free cash flow of 122 crore for the year, despite an improvement of 38% in the overall cash conversion cycle during the year. There is no long-term debt on the books, and we remain comfortable on the cash front with ample working capital limits available to leverage future growth, which will be financed through internal approvals. Coming to the store expansion and the outlook, we opened 13 stores this quarter and 62 year to date with nine closures. The guidance for NSO remains at the same around 12% area addition every year, net of 1%-2% mistakes that may still need closures every year. We celebrated our 500 store opening in the first week of April, and as on date, we now operate a total of 503 stores, having opened six new stores in the last one month. That is all from my side, and I now request the moderator to open the house for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your touchstone telephone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset 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 Sameer Gupta from India Infoline. Please go ahead. Hi everyone. Good morning and thanks for taking my question. Sir, firstly on LimeRoad, there was an expectation that this will be an EBITDA break even at exit of FY2025. The last three quarters, the absolute amount of losses here at around INR 60 million-INR 70 million have remained steady. If you can just update the outlook on this going forward as to when do you expect LimeRoad level EBITDA level break even. Hi, Sameer. Hi, hi sir. LimeRoad, I think we have talked in the past in the last quarter as well. We expect the LimeRoad business to continue to build towards the omnification for the V-Mart setup, and thereby it is going to continue to be in a build-up phase for some time while we still keep on reducing the e-marketplace exposure. Thereby, as a result, we will see continuous improvement in the operating results for LimeRoad, but we are not anticipating or not saying that we will be breaking even in that business in the current year also. There will be some amount of marginal losses, but they will continue to keep coming down every quarter as we progress. The last year losses were almost 55% lower than the previous year losses, and we also anticipate for FY 2026, while it may not be a break-even business for the full year, but it will remain in a very comfortable range of definitely less than 50% of what, roughly around 50% of losses that we did this year. Got it, sir. Got it. This is helpful. Secondly, sir, I mentioned you on employee cost. Now, ESOP of around INR 161 million this year, do you expect this to be a recurring expense going forward? Because this pertains to ESOPs that have vested this year. I'm sure there will be more vesting or if there are some more vesting that comes in next year. Just from a modeling perspective, is it a part of a recurring expense or was more like a one-time expense for FY2025? Some part of this expense is one-time because this was the penultimate year for the first lot of performance-led ESOP vesting, which was not, let's say, provisioned for in the previous year because of non-performance. This year, there was some amount of expense out of the INR 160 million, which was one-time. Largely, you should have around INR 80 million-INR 100 million of expenditure on ESOP going forward, which is again coming from the actuarial valuation. It is very difficult to pinpoint or exactly quantify, but there would be some amount of ESOP expenditure going forward as well. Got it, sir. One last question, if I may squeeze in, is more from a strategic perspective. Now, sir, the whole group of value fashion, which is linked to tier two, three cities, which is yourself, Vishal, V2, Style Bazaar, all of which we track, all of these seem to be doing well. In your experience, what is the driver here? Is it more like overall, in general, the tier two, tier three space, the economy is more buoyant? Is it some big retailers who have shut shop or are consolidating? Government spending has gone up ahead of crucial state elections, or is it reverse migration? Less number of people are now migrating to larger towns? Anything that you can point out, and how long do you think this momentum can continue? I think the momentum, as I said in my opening remarks as well, this is just not a momentum driven by economy. It is a major shift also happening from unorganized, which is the traditional form of retail, to a little more formal retail, which is organized retail. That movement is continuing to happen because there is definitely a lot of exposure of retailer, which is happening in these towns and cities. There is definitely a lot of new varieties, new ways of retail, new ambiance, which is creating great comfort, which is being given. There is real value, which is being delivered to the consumers. The consumers are now finding it very, very convenient to shop from organized retail, and that continues. I don't think there's a major shift in some economical perspective or there's a major shift in a particular retailer getting closed up, or there's no such thing which is visible. Largely, I think this is an informed market, as I said, largely driven even by the youths of India who have more information gigs, and then they have larger information on their mobile handset now. They understand where to shop from, where to go and shop to. All of these retailers which are opening up shops in these particular markets are creating a better percentage of organized retail, and that is what has moved from 15% five years before to now almost 30%-35%. In certain markets, it goes above 35% as well. Got it, sir. That's all from me. I'll come back in the queue. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ankit Cheriya from Philip Capital. Please go ahead. My first question is on manpower. If I look at your store, manpower per store is significantly higher versus some of the peers in value fashion, even if I adjust for the store size. Given the technology interventions we are doing, do you think you can do with lower manpower in the store while also understanding customer experience? Some of your peers, the staff is not talking to the customers; it is only for replenishment, while in your case, they help the customer. Is there a bridge between the two where you can lower the number of employees per store? Ankit, we definitely believe in little differentiated retailing, and I do understand. There's a form of hyper-market retailing, and then there's a form of value fashion retailing and fashion retailing in general. We believe our consumers are still a little more semi-literate. They don't really understand, and they get a little confused when they come to a larger store. They don't understand too much of signages. They don't understand too much of products. People have to assist them both for styling as well as making them understand their need or getting involved to their needs. People still are not very organized. Consumers are not very organized in terms of looking at the product, the way they handle the product, the way they handle the stacks or handle the hangers in the store. People are a little more disorganized in our segment, and we believe we need to give a very good service, and we believe that we need to definitely provide them with assistance and make the store look better and good every time. It is also a function of the store site and the sales per square feet that the percentage of cost looks. Yes, there is an opportunity. We are definitely trying to explore as an opportunity. It is just not on the front-end retail manpower side, but also on the overall manpower that how do we bring up the productivity? How do we generate higher productivity from the same resources? That is where we are trying to work on. Yes, largely this will continue as an expense in the front-end. We may not be able to get compared with those little more hyper-retails or commercial. Some second question is regarding your warehouse. Given that over the next two years, we could add 130-140 stores, do you think at the back end at the warehouse now, the first leg of the warehouse was done two years back? Now, over the next two years, you need to expand your warehouse further for 600-650 stores over the next two years, and we can see some CapEx come next year for the warehousing? Yes, there will be some incremental investment which has to go in because we did not prepare ourselves for the next seven years. We definitely prepare for the first three years. There will be an incremental CapEx which will go on, but not a massive CapEx, but yes, small CapEx because the area that we built was around 500,000 sq ft. The opportunity to build an area in that particular warehouse land is almost around 800,000 sq ft. We may build it maybe after one and a half years. Yes, within the warehouse also, there are a few automation investments which will get added on. There will be some CapEx and some regular CapEx which will also come in the next year. My last question is for Anand. Anand, this time, if I look at from a post-index perspective, Unlimited margins are higher than V-Mart EBITDA margins. On pre-index basis, if you could just say, are the Unlimited margins continuing to be high as V-Mart, or have reached the V-Mart levels, and they can sustain or get better from there? Ankit, while the pre-index EBITDA margins for Unlimited are getting better, they are still not as good as the V-Mart margins. As I have been stating for the last many quarters, as we grow and as we include or have more Unlimited stores, new stores in the southern territory, we will continue to build up or improve the EBITDA margins for Unlimited as a chain. The primary reason, underlying reason has always been that the legacy stores, roughly around 51-52 in number, where the operating efficiency or the sales per sq ft is still marginally lower than the entire chain, and the rental costs are still slightly higher. They are not unprofitable stores. They are profitable stores, and we keep continuing to build on them. As we increase the ratio of the new stores which perform at much higher profitability levels with lower rental costs, the entire chain's profitability will keep on getting better and slowly equate the V-Mart numbers in the coming years. Sure. That's helpful, Anand. Thank you so much. I'll come back in the queue. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tejes Sah from Avendus Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. First question is, what would be the store expansion target for the current fiscal year, and what would be the composition? Will we go deeper into the existing market, or will we add new states or new geographies for the year? Yes, as I said in my opening remarks, we would continue to add between 30%-48% of retail area on our existing base. That could turn out to be around 65 stores or something in this particular year. We would definitely—we have almost reached all the states in India. We would want to penetrate into most of the territories. We divided our geography into five different zones, and each zone, there is a target which is issued. The zones are, as you know, we've got a North Zone, we've got UP as a zone, we've got Bihar as a zone, we've got South as a zone, we've got East as a zone, East and North East. These zonal teams have got their target. They will penetrate. We'll penetrate into the existing cities as well as the new towns. Almost 30%-35% of our new store openings should also come from the existing cities where we see a lot of opportunities for adding up more stores. That is how we would focus on. We will continue to focus a little more on the southern India part as we see more opportunities in that particular market. We will continue. There are some markets in southern India, like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which are looking good. We will continue to invest in those markets. Plus, there are other markets in the northern zone, what we termed, which includes parts of Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and even Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan. We have not been too much—we do not have too much of penetration in these states, but we want to continue, we want to expand to these markets a little more. We will also continue our expansion in both the strong dominant territory, which is UP and Bihar, where we still see a lot of opportunity in this market. Okay. Second, gross margin expansion was strong this quarter. You have indicated a very strategic intent in part to moderate it. Obviously, on a year-over-year basis, it actually evens out. I just wanted to know, was there a heat effect in the seasonality for the quarter where the discounted sale was not there, and hence gross margin affected strongly? Yeah, absolutely right. I think Anand has also mentioned in his remarks. There has been one bad winter in this particular quarter where the whole January and the February month where we do sell a lot of winter inventory and discounted winter inventory also gets liquidated. That also got affected because of the erratic weather and the early summer which came in. The summer incidentally, we launched our summer collection very fast. We got a very good full-price sell-through of summer inventory, which also increased the margin. Even the heat factor, which has got preponed, and both Hodi and Easport got preponed, that also added on to the gross margin. Yeah, it is one of the cases. Overall, we haven't increased our margins. We haven't seen any increment in our margin. We would definitely still want to focus more on liquidating the old inventory or the inventory which is still not discarded as a seasonal inventory, which we feel against what we targeted, there has been a little higher leftover of the winter inventory. That will get discounted in the next year. Sure. Lastly, on the e-stock plan, just wanted to know, are there any specific performance targets linked to it? Is the structure geared more towards incentivizing retention or performance? The question is also because we are hearing from other retailers that there is a very genuine squeeze of quality manpower in retail now. If you can club the thoughts on that and share your insights there. I think Tejes, one, we've got this e-stock policy that we have is a long e-stock policy. Earlier, we used to have a term-based or tenure-based e-stock. In the last four years back, we passed a resolution from our shareholders that we would have a performance-linked e-stock. That is where we had issued a four-year performance-linked e-stock, which is largely driven from a goal or target of at least 20% growth year on year that we should target. Then 90% achievement of that, we've got some process of issuance of e-stock. There are more details in our annual general report. Largely, this is a philosophy that the organization has been believing in, that we always believe that our people are our biggest asset, and they should also create similar wealth as the shareholders create. They should be a part of our ecosystem, and they should also become a part of our invest as a part of our shareholder team. That is what our philosophy is. There are more than 80 people who are covered under the e-stocks team. There is a large team which is there. Most of this team is also an old team which has been existing there. We just do not fear because it is not coming out of the fear that the people will look at the people, but it is coming more out of the feeling that we all should create value, and we should all create even wealth for the team going forward. That is the whole perspective. Yeah, on any financial side, maybe Anand can help you. Can you answer Tejes's question? Yeah. Tejes, I think Lalit exactly said that. This is purely a performance-linked e-stock scheme. As Lalit mentioned, this is again linked to the performance of the company and therefore the contribution of the employees. It is spread over four years. In year one, you get certain e-stocks. In year two, you get certain e-stocks, and so on and so forth. It's a rotating cycle for the policy. More details, you can get onto a separate call, but there are more details also available in the annual report. Sure. Thanks and all the best for the coming quarter. Thank you. Before we take the next question, we would like to remind participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good morning to the team. My first question was on SSG growth. If you can share our vision in terms of how do you expect, what are the growth drivers going forward, because we are mostly volume-focused, our philosophy is volume-focused. Do you see control and conversion driving SSG growth, or do you see more category addition on the non-apparel side to guide this growth, or within apparel, we are getting into more subcategories? How are you seeing SSG growth going forward? Yeah. Lokesh, good question. Largely, we believe that we definitely have two, three mechanisms of bringing in additional revenue or the growth. One, definitely, we believe that we should continue the repeat consumers' inflow in the market, in the stores. Our repeat sales or repeat consumer sales is almost in V-Mart, almost 70% of our total sales. That is the biggest cohort of consumers who come back and shop from our stores. Two, we believe there definitely has to be some new inflow of consumers. There are no consumers in the market. There are more newer consumers, set of consumers which are coming in, largely from teenage group or from the young group. We will definitely have more consumer walking into our store. We would believe that we should also try to increase the frequency of our existing consumers and have the middle larger bill values of our consumers. Larger bill value would come both from selling or contributing more to their wardrobe and also adding certain newer categories or certain newer items, like maybe we just initiated and launched in some stores, our beauty segment and our artificial jewelry segment, which has seen some good traction. We also launched a variable segment, which is the smartwatch and the speakers. They also have shown some promising signs. Some growth could come from that particular side, which is going to be very, very small. Larger growth will come from bringing in the newer generation consumers, which is the Gen Z consumers. That is where we grew from our base of 22% to 32% now. That is where we would continue to focus on, and that should drive our sales for this growth. Great. Lalit, please suggest a clarification on this. Hypothetically, if we were to see much higher growth in non-apparel in the variables of the beauty and the artificial jewelry, would you still stick to 80% apparel portfolio mix, or you would be willing to be a little agile and let that come down to 70%? How do you see that going forward? It won't be so much of a shift because these are—I mean, we call it as a non-apparel, but these are even fashion items. So we consider them as fashion, and these are fashion accessories and fashion additional items. I don't think it is going to be a major shift. Yes, there could be a 2%-3% shift which can happen over the period of time. Great. My second question was for Anand. Anand, from going forward from now on after the lease adjustment, would the pre and post index PBT be the same? No, Lokesh. The pre and post PBT will not be the same. There will still be an impact of index adjustment. The change which will happen is that the significant delta between the two pre-index and post-index, that used to be roughly around INR 600 million, which will keep on growing had the policy changes not happened, will continue to come down or will come down materially. For a new store, roughly, the expenditure that we would book in a P&L would come down by almost 50%. For a continuing store, because there are multiple stages of the lease contract, it is very difficult to quantify at this stage. Because we've been following the index regime, IND AS 116 regime for the last seven years, there are various stages of the unwinding which will happen. Suffice to say that the pre-index and the post-index EBITDA will not change, but the pre-index and post-index PBT will definitely still have some difference, but it will not be as stark as it used to be. Great. Just last question on the GST credit accumulation of about 100 crore, which was last year, FY 2024 number. I do not know the number this year. What is the strategy to utilize that? I mean, that is an unused fund left at the government level, which then requires you to take debt to fund the gap store situation. That's a very, very pertinent question, Lokesh. Very, very good question. That remains a challenge, and that remains a challenge for a growing business. In fact, in this year, there has been an added complexity being added by the government in terms of the reverse charge on rentals for smaller landlords as well. That balance continues to grow. There is a net addition of probably 14 crore or 15 crore in this year as well, almost 20 crore this year. That remains a challenge. We are identifying certain areas wherein we can mitigate some part of that challenge, but very, very difficult to surpass this given the state of affairs that we currently are in. Anand, do you see this if you grow the non-apparel, this arises because of the GST difference between expense and sales? Sales is at 5% because of your apparel, and expenses are at 18%. The non-apparel category can compensate for this. Do you see that happening so you can get and plus you can grow the non-apparel side also? Lokesh, this happens largely because you keep investing into newer store expansions as well. All the new store expansion which we do, which is the CapEx investment, and all of these CapEx investment also has a very large portion of GST, which is almost towards 28%, 18%, 28%. That whole accumulation of asset GST credit is something which creates a larger part of that credit deal which we have. For practical purposes, I would call out that we need to include that as a part of our CapEx investment because we may not be able to get back this money from the GST authorities. It will be very difficult for an ongoing organization, which is always increasing the inventory as well as increasing in the assets, to actually nullify this particular problem. If you spend 18% GST products, then you can take an input tax credit. No, but we still have the 18% input credit that you have. It will be delta difference will be only a small margin. Understood. Very much. That's it from my side. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhargav from Ambit Asset Management. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good morning, team. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is on the average transaction size. If you look at the transaction size value, it is flat on a year-over-year basis at close to about 977 crores. Is it possible to sort of see an increase in this amount going forward? The average transaction value is I understand what you are asking. For us, the average transaction size, as we're going forward and as we see more and more youth coming into the market and into the store, generally, we have seen that youth do not do a bigger size basket. They come and buy one piece, one or two. The frequency of coming in is much larger, but their number or the bill size is a little lower. That is what we are also focusing on. We may not be able to immediately transact the higher ABV, ABS. We still believe that we want more consumers to come in multiple number of times and check out the inventory regularly. We are also focusing more on fast fashion. We are focusing on larger drops at the store at an every-week level. We do believe that consumers will want to come back and want to shop again and again. That is what we are trying to promote, not promote too much of overbilling by the consumer at one point of time. I mean, in terms of cross-selling, we don't believe that in our stores there is a potential for cross-selling other categories. Definitely, there is. That is how you got almost four pieces in a basket that we have. That definitely is an outcome of cross-category sales. As I said, going forward, if I say that, okay, we will be able to grow this ABS or the average bill size that is more higher, it is still difficult. It will definitely come in. What we see the difference is wherever there is a higher per capita income, we are seeing a very high ABS. States like Bihar and Odisha, where there is a very low per capita income, the bill sizes are really, really low. It also depends upon the economy of the country and also the state of the small towns in India, which is also the rural population. My second question is that this decline in conversion is more a function of increase in footfalls, right? I mean, there has been a substantial increase in footfalls and hence the drop in conversion. Yeah. Because we believe now the consumers are just not coming to one store. They do check out with multiple stores, and they want to because in the same lane, in the same road, there are multiple stores which are there. They would come to one store, go out, check with other stores, and then come back to shop again. There is a higher inflow of consumers and an outflow of consumers that happens. The consumers are definitely more aware. They want to be more informed, and they definitely want to take the decision after checking out the complete market. That philosophy we are seeing more and more happening. Anand wants to add something. Bhargav, while the full year conversion numbers, at least till the third quarter, were coming on the declining side, if you look at the quarter four numbers, the conversion actually has not suffered. It has now largely stabilized. In fact, what Lalit has been saying exactly has been now holding true. We have come to sort of a plateau where we should see either stabilizing around these numbers or marginal up or increase, but we should not see any significant reduction going forward. My last question was on the RFID status. Is there any progress on that front? I mean, we are trying to evaluate the ROI also of RFID because as of now, I'm not able to see a lot of ROI of the RFID. We are still piloting with one segment of the business and/or one few stores in the business. Once looking at the success of the whole pilot store and the pilot area, we will take a call in maybe after six to eight months. Thank you very much. All the very best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Varun Singh from AAA PMS. Please go ahead. Hello, Mr. Varun. Hello, Mr. Varun. Can you hear us? Yes. Can we leave this question? Yes, sir. We'll move on to the next question. It's from the line of Jay Gandhi from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead. Moderator, are you not able to connect, Jay? Yes, sir. Just a second. Yeah. Are Are you there? I just got Jay. Maybe by the time Jay comes, maybe we can move on to the next question. Yes, sir. Yes, Moderator, maybe we can end this call if things are not really connected. Yes, sir. Yeah. I think let me put a final comment. If there are any questions left, maybe we can connect directly to the team. Thank you for being there. It is definitely a very good opportunity. You will be so good, Anand. Yeah. It looks like there is a great opportunity in the market. There is definitely a lot of consumption upstream that we would anticipate coming forward in the next three to five years. We definitely are getting geared up, prepared for all of the same. The entire market is very, very booming. A lot of action happening in the value retail space. We would continue to focus on our key things. We are in no hurry to reach to a certain location or a certain geography or a certain number of stores. We continue with our expansion plan at that level. We would continue with our similar growth rate of between 17%-20% overall level. Have the trust in us. We are seeing a lot of positive things happening in the organization as well as in the market. Thank you so much for being there. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye. Thank you on beautiful V-Mart Retail Limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You know this.