Avenue Supermarts jumped 3.34% to Rs 3066.70 after the company's consolidated net profit surged 16.4% to Rs 446.97 crore on a 10.8% rise in net sales to Rs 7542 crore in Q3 December 2020 over Q3 December 2019.
Consolidated profit before tax stood at Rs 609.44 crore in Q3 December 2020, rising 24.4% year on year from Rs 489.97 crore in Q3 December 2019. Current tax expense rose 44% to Rs 159.84 crore in Q3 December 2020 over Q3 December 2019.EBITDA for Q3 December 2020 stood at Rs 689 crore, rising 15.4% from Rs 597 crore posted in the corresponding quarter of last year. EBITDA margin improved to 9.1% in Q3 December 2020 from 8.8% in Q3 December 2019.
Commenting on the performance of the company, Neville Noronha, CEO & MD of Avenue Supermarts said: The quarter has seen further improvement in our business and financial metrics. Our overall sales and sales mix is now trending very close to our usual times except for specific customer consumption changes post Covid-19. Apparel, laundry, footwear, travel and such relevant out of home usage categories are taking more time to recover. Agile OPEX management along with a good surge in festival shopping allowed us to deliver a significantly better quarter than the previous two quarters.
However, December month didn't trend as well as the festival months of October and November. Restricted store operations in certain cities post Diwali due to night curfews and weekend closure led to significantly larger declines in those stores versus same period last year. There continues to be a distinct behaviour of doing shopping more efficiently by shoppers. Lesser trips and higher basket values continue to be the norm. While there is a general reduction in basket values compared to peak pandemic levels, they still continue to be relatively higher than pre Covid-19 levels. We also continue to face inconsistent supplies from the non FMCG sector. Raw material prices are also going up. Availability in certain categories is likely to get worse before getting better. This could therefore have an impact on sales mix and margins in the near term.
Commenting further on DMart Ready, Neville Noronha said, This quarter we soft launched DMart Ready in select pin codes of Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Hyderabad. In addition, at some of our brick and mortar stores we have leased some part of the space to Avenue E-Commerce Limited (AEL) to commence E-Commerce operations in those cities. Post Covid-19 environment is creating opportunities to launch DMart Ready in more cities. However, we will continue with our approach of small trials, reviews and controlled acceleration for DMart Ready.
Avenue Supermarts owns and operates D-Mart stores. D-Mart is a national supermarket chain that offers customers a range of home and personal products under one roof. As of 31 December 2020, the company had 221 operating stores with Retail Business Area of 8.17 million sq. ft. (adjusted for space leased to AEL during the quarter) across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Daman, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, NCR, Chhattisgarh and Punjab.
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