1:32For this year, what do you see it stabilizing at?
3:31So the price of the metal keeps going up, but what about consumer, which is what you and I are talking about?
4:57Will it be more driven by, like you said, you know, it's coins that are doing better?
6:09Can you just give us an outlook on the other businesses' growth margins? What are you expecting?
10:25And also wanted to ask you on the interest cost per quarter, I'm guessing because of higher inventory levels, that's why that has perked up I think to around 250 crores on a quarterly run rate. That will stay?
We have the Titan management. We just talked about gold with the bank, but now we have Titan. Well, that's right. Titan is a stock that's glittering in trade. The numbers look quite good, and to be one to understand what's the way ahead, first we have Mr. Ashok Sonthalia, the CFO at Titan. Hi sir, good morning. Congratulations on a solid set of numbers first of all, but the interesting part will be what can you guide us with the way ahead? Let's focus on the larger segment, the jewelry business first. What kind of growth number are you looking at for the entire of FY26, given that we have a high number of wedding dates? So if you could tell us about that on the growth and also what are the triggers with regard to the margins going ahead? Because higher sales of gold, lower making charges, and lower studded share, all of them are margin dilutive, right? So what can you guide us on that front?
So thank you very much Nigel. I think it has been a pretty satisfying quarter and year just gone by. While there have been many external challenges which continue to be there and sometimes get aggravated, but as far as going forward and what we can see today, looks like we can still deliver 15 to 20% growth number for FY26. The year has started pretty well. April had ended with Akshay Tritiya day and we were quite satisfied with the performance. And as far as margin is concerned, we are saying that we will endeavor to maintain 11 to 11.5% jewelry operating profit margin and that's the guidance for the time being.
So 11 to 11 and a half percent jewelry business margins with growth of around 15 to around 20%. We got that on board. What about studded share as a percentage of the mix? You know, I recall earlier it had gone up to I think it was moving towards mid 30s, then it came down to mid 20s. For this year, what do you see it stabilizing at?
You see, that's something which we strive to do. Studded, you know, so there are teams responsible for studded jewelry growth and they continue to work with new designs, collections, etc. And the gold also similarly, you know, teams and merchandising teams, a design team work on that. So it is more for us an outcome. Both segments are growing, and actually the buyer growth in studded this time was better because of a very high price of gold. Consumer sentiment was slightly lower, while the investment-led buying in gold was seen more where the coins and low making charges products were in greater demand. But we think that should change as the wedding days are there. And FY26 as a whole has better wedding days compared to FY25. We believe once the price, people get settled around the price level, they will come back to adornment and not investment for the gold jewelry.
And then I guess it's an adjustment thing, but do you think it will hurt in a more durable way consumer demand at these prices? And by the way, the forecasts are that given the overall situation, because the buying is not coming from retail. I mean central banks around the world are big buyers, I put out a piece on that earlier. And they are largely price insensitive buyers. So the price of the metal keeps going up, but what about consumer, which is what you and I are talking about?
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Sonthalia, A. (2025, May 8). Watches Are Likely To Grow In The Range Of 18-20% In FY26: Titan Company | CNBC TV18 [Interview transcript]. CNBC-TV18. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1130949/
MLA
Ashok Sonthalia. "Watches Are Likely To Grow In The Range Of 18-20% In FY26: Titan Company | CNBC TV18." CNBC-TV18, 8 May. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1130949/.
BibTeX
@misc{sonthalia2025_1130949,
author = {Ashok Sonthalia},
title = {Watches Are Likely To Grow In The Range Of 18-20\% In FY26: Titan Company | CNBC TV18},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC-TV18. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1130949/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
