Britannia Industries FY20 results: Profit rises 21% to Rs 1,403 crore, revenue up 5%

Biscuit maker Britannia Industries clocked 21 per cent growth in its consolidated net profit at Rs 1,402.63 crore for the full financial year ended March 31, 2020. The country's leading food company had posted net profit of Rs 1,159.12 crore in FY19, Britannia Industries said in an exchange filing on Tuesday.

Consolidated income of the company rose by 5.48 per cent to Rs 11,878.95 crore in FY20 as compared to Rs 11,261.12 crore in FY19.

For the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2020 (Q4 FY20), Britannia Industries posted a 26 per cent rise in its consolidated net profit to Rs 375 crore, helped by lower tax cost. Consolidated revenue grew by 2 per cent to Rs 2,808 crore compared to Rs 2,764 in the same period last year.

On the cost front, the company witnessed moderate inflation in the prices of key raw materials for the bakery business. Commodity prices at global level too witnessed moderation due to low demand on account of lockdown in most parts of the world. The company's operating profit increased by 40 basis points on the back of cost efficiencies and reduction in wastages.

Commenting on the performance, Varun Berry, Managing Director, Britannia, said, "After 9 months of moderate growth, we started to see growths coming back in the first two months of this quarter which was then hit by COVID-19 and lockdown in March, impacting the revenue and net profit growths by an estimated 7-10 per cent."

"In this period, we continued to garner market share through our focus on the building blocks of distribution, diligence in marketplace and brand building through focussed product campaigns," Berry added.

Also Read: Britannia Industries share price hits all-time high ahead of Q4 results

On COVID-19, the company said the pandemic has impacted human lives and economies significantly, globally, disrupting supply chain and operations of several businesses. While the company faced some challenges in the first month of the lockdown, it recovered quickly and progressively liaised with the government to get approvals for operating all its factories and depots across the country, Britannia said.

During the coronavirus-led nationwide lockdown, Britannia Industries saw a revenue growth of 20 per cent in April and 28 per cent in May, versus the corresponding months in the previous year.

"We are diligently studying the impact of COVID 19 on short-term and long-term changes in consumer preferences to adopt the learnings in our strategy going forward," the company said.

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In a separate development, Britannia Industries' board approved grant of 2,50,000 stock options to Varun Berry, Managing Director of the company. Each option granted will entitle him, upon exercise of the options, to receive one equity share of the company of the face value of Re 1.

Share price of Britannia Industries gained 1.2 per cent to the fresh 52-week high of Rs 3,479.55 in Tuesday's early trade ahead of announcement of the firm's March quarter earnings later today. Britannia shares opened at Rs 3,449 and ended day's trade at Rs 3,450.30, up 0.42 per cent, on the BSE.