D-Mart Q4 Profit Rises 3% To Rs 427 Crore

Avenue Supermarts Ltd, which owns and operates retail chain D-Mart, on Saturday reported a 3.11 per cent increase in its consolidated net profit to Rs 426.75 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2022.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 413.87 crore in the January-March quarter a year ago, Avenue Supermarts said in a BSE filing.

Its revenue from operations rose 18.55 per cent to Rs 8,786.45 crore during the quarter under review from Rs 7,411.68 crore in the corresponding quarter of the preceding fiscal.

Avenue Supermarts' total expenses surged 18.71 per cent to Rs 8,210.13 crore in Q4 FY2021-22 against Rs 6,916.24 crore a year ago.

For the fiscal ended March 2022, Avenue Supermarts' consolidated net profit grew 35.74 per cent to Rs 1,492.40 crore. It had reported a net profit of Rs 1,099.43 crore in the previous financial year.

In 2021-22, its revenue from operations jumped 28.3 per cent to Rs 30,976.27 crore. It was Rs 24,143.06 crore in FY21.

Avenue Supermarts CEO and MD Neville Noronha said: "March 2022 month again had robust recovery and very satisfactory like for like growth vis-a-vis March 2021. In general, the quarter performance and past two waves of stop-start-stop give us extreme confidence in the resilience of the business to recover in the short term".

D-Mart's FMCG business is recovering well, he added. 

"The value proposition is being distinctly seen by our customers in this segment. In the discretionary non-FMCG segment, as of now, it is hard to estimate if the relatively lower growth is due to a secular change over time due to the e-commerce shift or inflation or due to significantly higher Covid related negative economic impact for certain shoppers," Noronha said.

Talking about DMart's growth in the brick and mortar segment for FY22, he said the company ended the year with growth across key financial parameters of Revenue, EBITDA and PAT.

"Two years and older, DMart stores grew by 16.7 per cent during FY2022 as compared to FY 2021. We have 214 stores that are 2 years or older. Our sales from General Merchandise and Apparel moved slightly up at 23.40 per cent as compared to 22.90 per cent in the previous year," he added.

In FY22, D-Mart opened 50 additional stores, taking the total to 284 stores.

"Our store footprint continues to grow across the country. We had a record opening this year primarily because of delayed openings in the previous year due to Covid," he said.

Its e-commerce business DMart Ready also had gradual expansion during the year, which is present in 12 cities across the country. 

"Post Omicron wave, the e-commerce business has slowed down its growth trajectory. However, in general, we are quite happy and excited about this business. We are learning every single day. DMart Ready has again had a tremendous year. Topline sales this year were slightly more than double that of last year," Noronha said.

At a fundamental level, D-Mart believes that for grocery, e-commerce is a channel of convenience while brick and mortar is still the channel of joy, except for the effort to reach the store and the time to wait at the checkout. 

"Each has its own unique magic. We will operate both channels to the best of our abilities with a mindset to improve on these principles and ensure that the value to the shopper remains supreme," he said.