Page Industries, also known as Jockey India, had a phenomenal rise in the stock market in last 10 years until August 2018 when its shares skyrocketed by more than 120 times - from Rs 300 to Rs 36,000. But, in last 9 months, the company has got a big shock as its shares dipped almost 45 per cent, a loss of Rs 16,000 crore in market value because of the shrinking consumption in the country.
Overall, Genomal family-controlled Page Industries had a better financial performance in the last financial year. The company's profit has grown 13.5 per cent to Rs 393.94 crore on a revenue of Rs 2,852.20 crore, which went up by 11.8 per cent. But, the quarterly performance, especially in the second and the fourth quarter, gave hint to stakeholders that the innerwear maker is vulnerable to the consumption volatility. In the second quarter, the revenue and profit hadn't grown on expected lines. In the fourth quarter, the profit declined 20.4 per cent to Rs 74.98 crore, when the revenue slipped to Rs 607.86 crore.
The serious trend that the global brokerage Credit Suisse found out was the company's shrinking margins, which contracted by 4.4 per cent. Credit Suisse downgraded Page Industries to 'underperform' from 'neutral' following disappointing earnings. They expect the weak trend to continue as the management has not yet seen a pick-up in the ongoing quarter. The extent of weakness in the company is "very high compared to peers" despite the company increasing prices by 5 per cent across product lines, the research firm said.
The Genomal family was Jockey's exclusive licensee for three generations in the Philippines, where Page Industries managing director Sunder Genomal's father set up the first factory in 1959. Sunder Genomal set up Page Industries in India in 1994 along with his two brothers for manufacturing, distribution and marketing of Jockey products. Besides India, Page is one of the biggest licensees in the world for innerwear maker Jockey, with exclusive licence of the brand in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, UAE, Oman and Qatar.
Page is also exclusive Indian licensee of swimwear brand Speedo. Sunder Genomal's son Shamir is the company's Deputy Managing Director. As of March 2018, the company's workforce comes to 20,000 with manufacturing operations spread over fifteen locations including Bangalore, Hassan, Mysore, Gowribidanur, Tiptur and Tirupur. The company has a distribution network of over 50,000 retail outlets in 1,800 towns.
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