V-Mart reports 6% revenue growth and 21 % increase in EBITDA Y-o-Y in for Quarter 4, FY'21

V-Mart Retail Ltd., India's leading value fashion retailer, announced its audited financial results for the quarter and full year ended March 31, 2021. The results were approved at its Board meeting conducted through video conferencing on 28th May, 2021.

The Company reported a full-year income of 21,097 Cr. arecovery of 66% Y-o-Y, in a very challenging Covid impacted year. Despite lower operating days, reduced topline and marginalised savings due to largely fixed cost structures, YoY EBITDA recovery remained high at 61% with 12.2% EBITDA vs. 12.9% reported for last year. Reflecting the Covid impacted performance and the added impact of IndAS 116 induced lease rent accounting, the company reported its first-ever yearly loss at 2 -6 Cr in its 19 year history.

Q4 which saw a renewed customer demand on the back of improved customer footfalls and strong pent up demand coming in for new summer season fashion saw a Y-o-Y recovery of 106% with an income of % 356 Cr. While the overall footfalls in the quarter remained low at 88% YoY, an increase of 8% in basket size and higher customer conversions helped improve the topline. Improvements in inventory freshness and better full-price sales helped deliver a relatively better EBITDA growth of 21% YoY for the quarter.

Marking a new milestone in its retail footprint expansion, the Company opened 20 new stores in FY21 (7 in Q4), taking the total store count to 279, growing the total retail area by 7% Y-o-Y to 23 lacs sq ft at FY21-end.

With a healthy 90 days of inventory for the quarter (lower by 10 days YoY) and a 8 400+ Cr. cash reserve, on the back of a recently concluded QIP fund raise in February, the company is placed in a strong position to expand and grow its presence.

During the quarter, the company continued to embark on achieving its strategic transformation objectives, including digitisation and strengthening across the front-end and back-end operations with agility, prudence and customer centricity.

It is noteworthy that in Q4, the Company achieved the Great Place to Work (GPtW) certification, which is indicative of its lively work culture and high employee morale; and winner of Most Admired Affordable Retailer in Visual Merchandising concept at IFA- Images Fashion Awards.

Commenting on the Company's Q4FY21 performance, Mr. Lalit Agarwal, CMD said, "Notwithstanding the pandemic, we did reasonably well in Q4. The business prepped up quickly. The company secured 110% of the corresponding sales for the same quarter of FY'20-'21. We managed to achieve footfall recovery of over 80% for the quarter as a whole. We are also well poised as far as inventory levels and freshness is concerned, with strong sales without much discounting."

"V-Mart is concentrating on quicker mind-to-market strategies as far as fashionable apparels are concerned. For instance, our range of streetwear, sweatshirts, hoodies, and top-of-the-line ladies' dresses. This is being done to meet the rising aspirations of the youth and younger families."

"We are further boosting our private label offerings, which are now approximately 65%% of our apparels section. We are developing product quality enhancement and vendor development programs to enhance the fashion quotient across all our departments."

"We are in the process of revitalizing the Omni platform by creative and compelling products and shopping experience as it could offer a tremendous boost to our overall sales going forward. Our internal team is working on improving the website and mobile app interface for a better customer experience."

Talking about sales outlook, Mr. Agarwal said, "The Company came up with innovative marketing campaigns and promotional offers that resonated well with its customers, driving footfalls and sales during festive and weddingrelated shopping, as well as giving an impetus to summer and autumn and winter merchandise sales. Marking an auspicious beginning of festive and wedding season shopping, the gift offer and TV commercial 'Breakfree Livefree' of the company became a talking point amongst its customers, and connected deeply with their intent to derive maximum value from every penny spent. All these steps aided higher footfalls and conversions, resulting into a higher sell-through rate for both existing and fresh merchandize."

To keep up the spirit of creativity and consistent performance we are doing succession planning for all our employees so as to encourage them to perform better. This would help them to align individual contributions as well as organizational objectives.

Shares of V-MART RETAIL LTD. was last trading in BSE at Rs.2727.8 as compared to the previous close of Rs. 2800. The total number of shares traded during the day was 1690 in over 457 trades.

The stock hit an intraday high of Rs. 2847.4 and intraday low of 2690. The net turnover during the day was Rs. 4623580.

Source : Equity Bulls

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