Raghunandan NL · Nuvama Research
Firstly, on net sales per unit, it has gone up 8% Q-o-Q, it is at the highest ever level. If you can talk about what has led to this ASP increase and whether this is sustainable? Is there any one off impact?
There is no one off. It's a simple function of the mix of the model of higher SUVs, lower smaller cars. That's all.
Raghunandan NL · Nuvama Research
Can you please indicate the retail for Q1 and dealer inventory at end of the quarter? Just the last thing before I fall back, if you can share the discounts and exports number?
The dealer inventory is fairly in control. In fact, we have been the most conservative, probably, in the industry to manage it well. We have been calibrating our whole sales as well. So, it's just about 33 days. Export revenue is in the range of about Rs. 6,500 crores overall, and discount is flattish compared to the last quarter.
Amyn Pirani · JP Morgan
Secondly, just on the mix obviously this quarter your exports have been doing well for a while now but this quarter the gap between exports and domestics was even higher. So, can you help us understand any specific color on the ASP. Is it just a basic mix, or is there some country mix or some FOREX benefit also which we are getting due to which this ASP has gone up?
See overall, if you look at an overall broader perspective, it's fairly even-steven, there is not much of a difference between domestic and export. As Rahul articulated earlier, it is pretty much the model mix which is impacting it, going towards more the bigger cars.
Gunjan Prithyani · Bank of America
Just follow up again on the retail number for this quarter. If you can sort of share the color between how is the growth between the rural and urban that you are seeing and clarification that the discount number that you said is same as last quarter? You mean that is in terms of the rupee per car that's the number that you are talking about, if you can clarify that?
So, the retail was about 380,000 units, and the de-growth was lesser in retail than in the wholesale. At the retail level, our de-growth was about 3.7% year-on-year, while industry de-growth was about at 1.3% year-on-year. Yes, it is flat on a rupees per car basis, flattish.
Gunjan Prithyani · Bank of America
And the 2nd question is more on the demand environment. Of course it's been quite soft start to the year, how should we directionally be thinking about demand heading into festive or second half of the year? We do also have a launch pipe, two launches that we spoke about. So, are we still confident on that guidance of 2% to 3% industry growth and us outperforming?
So, in the beginning of the year, yes, the industry body had given a kind of a guess of 1% to 2% growth. Q1 has not been up to the mark. Q2 has some positives, we are waiting for the festive season. There are other positives also, like the monsoon and rural is holding up. So, we are looking at Q2 and the festive season with optimism, part of the festive season runs into Q3 also. So, we are hoping that it should be a better festive season than what we have seen in the financial year so far. You are right, we have two strong launches, both in the SUV space, one in electric, the other not in electric, and they are both in this financial year. So, we have some optimism towards that.
Gunjan Prithyani · Bank of America
Just last one on CAFE norms. A lot of noise has been there in the press around the conversations with the government. Now of course, that is still to be finalized but can you share some thought process around how is there an acceptance to revisit, be it small car, be it hybrid? How are the conversations around the emission norms? When should we see better clarity on this?
See to the extent the discussions are in SIAM, I won't be able to answer because SIAM is the best spokesperson for that. Having said that, the discussions have been proceeding well between industry and government. Both sides understand each other's position quite well. It is a complex topic, but there have been sufficient discussions, and all the complexities are on the table. It is expected that between one to two months, all of us are hoping that the final regulation will be out so that we have clarity for the powertrains starting from 1st April 2027.
Amit Hiranandani · Phillip Capital
Just on the exports front, we are seeing that Maruti exports have been much better than the peers. Just want to understand what Maruti is doing differently versus peers. Also how is the exports market shaping up? Is there any kind of a discounting war ongoing in certain markets to gain some market share and also the outlook on the same please?
Thanks for this question. See, a lot of efforts have gone in the full past decade at a very deep structural level for building exports. The biggest thing is the network. So, we have improved the network both in quantity and in quality, in depth of penetration across markets. We have launched more products in more markets. We have carried the successes and examples of those successes from Indian marketing and Indian servicing to these foreign markets like customer handling processes, finance at dealerships, customer complaints, reach out efforts. All these efforts have helped. I should also say that Suzuki has been kind to make their global distributors available to us. So, in Q1, it is so interesting that the rest of industry, if we exclude Maruti, there was a negative growth of 2.1%. Maruti exports grew by 37.4% and which pulled up the industry growth to 13%. Now we command 47% share of total PV exports from India. So, it is a build up over a long period of time. We have spread in now about 100 countries and we want to take it forward. A big increase will be when we launch our EV in about a 100 countries of the world, including Europe and Japan. One big factor has been Japan. You may be interested to know that Japan is now, in Q1, the second largest export destination in all our global markets and Jimny and Fronx are doing exceedingly well there. Sorry to interrupt you. You had one question on discounting. No that's not the case, we are working with very sustainable, healthy margins.
Amit Hiranandani · Phillip Capital
Just one last quick question. Why other income was higher and the CAPEX outlook for this fiscal?
So, other income has been higher as you can see it from the results. It is predominantly driven by two things. One is definitely a more efficient treasury operation. The second part of it is the market has been supportive. So, there was a mark to market impact, whether it is the kind of a three year reference yields or the one year reference yields, both have softened. So, as a result of that, the mark to market impact has been positive. So, we had an outlook of about close to 10,000 crores for the year, and we are tracking at about the run rate. We are around 25-ish percent for the Q1.
Binay · Morgan Stanley
My question is on supply chain resilience when it comes to electric vehicles. Is there a discussion between the SIAM and the government because on one side every company in this earnings call has come out and said that electric vehicle ramp-up outlook in the near term is uncertain. But we also have CAFE norms, which are in a way pushing the sector towards electric. Whereas, do you think there is enough supply chain resilience to make the sector future proof? Anything SIAM or the government are jointly doing together to address that?
Binay very good question. I hope we had an equally good answer. This is a challenge, it was known, there are other questions around EVs also like lithium availability, or some other critical minerals availability. Fortunately, the government is seized of the matter and they are taking a realistic view. The ministries are talking to each other. So, there is some level of understanding on this. Therefore, in CAFE norms, a multi power train approach or a strategy is a much de-risked one. We are ambitious on EVs, and we are ambitious on other clean technologies also. Supply chain resilience is not fully established, but industry is working towards it. It may involve some cost and there are also efforts on other fronts whether some magnets can be made elsewhere either in India or abroad. The government is working on those kinds of efforts also. So, it's the kind of uncertainty that you see in business, and you have to take those challenges in your stride.
Binay · Morgan Stanley
Secondly, Rahul just on the coming festival season like you talked about, you will have two SUV launches coming through to that. Any thoughts of market share gain versus cannibalization? Anything you want to share about both of them anything different that you are trying to do so as to maximize the impact and have more market share gain in the SUV space?
See, one of our SUVs is the EV. You are aware and we have taken many steps to give the consumer a lot of confidence, particularly after sales. For example, fast charging, charging at home, 24x7 assistance, service on wheels and everything that Maruti stands for - service proximity support, etc. So, that should increase confidence in EVs in India and increase adoption also. Your question on cannibalization, this has been a question for the past, I would say, 20 years. If you have a big portfolio and you space your models close to each other so that every space is filled, so this is a kind of a risk that we have handled in so many product launches in the past and our idea is the total volume should go up. We have to keep in mind that only Maruti Suzuki has this advantage in India that we have two distribution channels. We have the NEXA, we have the Arena. So, we go granular in serving the customer.
Rishi Vora · Kotak Securities
Just first on the EV launch. So, when are we going to export the product? Is it this month or is it within the next two months? So, it does not happen in the month of July. Right?
See, we will have to dispatch cars to about 100 markets of the world including India. So, some amount of staggering will take place. But we will start very soon and complete all within this financial year. Today is the last day of July and it has not happened today.
Kapil Singh · Nomura
One question I had on the electric vehicle launch in the global markets, particularly Europe and Japan. Since we have been doing groundwork on these markets, where you are launching. Any understanding, general understanding of European and Japanese market you could give like what are the adoption rates for electric vehicles? How you are seeing that market progressing and the competitive intensity in those markets as well? Any qualitative color would be helpful.
Interesting. So, Europe today has about 12% EV penetration, but the appetite is high. Japan has a lower penetration. But yes, we are confident of that market, because our parent comes from that market. If we can go by their assessment of the past two models, which are the Fronx and the Jimny, the experience has been positive. So, we are hopeful, I can also tell you that this export will be fairly diversified. We have about 100 countries of the world, so we have a sense of confidence on the sales. See, obviously this will not be like India, where Maruti Suzuki is a dominant player. But there is a lot of appetite in the market and with a good product we are hoping to service.