Philips Lighting to increase prices by 3-5 pc on select products

Philips Lighting is going to increase prices by 3-5 per cent on select products as the falling rupee has made imports costlier, a top company official said.

Although the company manufactures around 98 per cent of its products locally, it is dependent on imports for components, especially electronics.

The company is also facing rising input costs amid high crude oil prices, which have increased the transportation cost.

"We are going to selectively increase the prices on our products to the tune of 3 to 5 per cent in October or November... We would have to pass some of the increase to the customers," Philips Lighting CEO South Asia Sumit Padmakar Joshi told PTI.

He added that the company "tried to absorb cost as much as possible in the last 3 to 4 months" by adjusting the margins.

According to him, this is the first price revision by the company after the rupee fell past the 74-mark against the US dollar.

Joshi also did not rule out any further price hikes till the time there is stability in crude oil price and the rupee.

"If there is a further decline of rupee and increase of oil prices, in next quarters we would again be forced to look at our pricing," he said.

However, the company expects that the festive season sales of its lighting products would not be impacted "in a big way" as the inventory channels would have stocks for the season.

"There is always channel inventory at the value chain, which has distributors and retailers, so I believe that while we would increase our prices, for Diwali there would be lot of stock in the market... Stocks in the pipeline would take care of that," Joshi added.

The company does not expect any impact on the sale of its LED products as the 3-5 per cent increase would be "not that significant" for the customers, he said.

Asked about the segments which will see the price hikes, he said," Plastics (cost) has gone up in a big way Most of our products use plastics. If we look at increase, the increase would be on most of our portfolio but it may be a bit more on the portfolio which uses electronics components, which are mostly in LED products.