Akzo Nobel India held a conference call on 10 February 2023 to discuss the results for the quarter ended December'22 and way forward. Mr. Rajiv Rajgopal - Managing Director, Mr. R Krishna - Chief Financial Officer and Miss Harshi Rastogi - company secretary of the company addressed the call.

Highlights of the Concall

• Revenue growth was led by B2B business. Growth across the both segment - the Paints and Coatings, and it continue to make trades in gaining the market position.

• Raw material costs are abating in last few months. Currently gross margin is at around 39% and is up around 60 basis points compared to the last quarter

• The company is focused on scaling distribution, both off-line, which is through the traditional channel, and online and is increasing its reach. Today it is present are over more than 5,500 towns and cover over 20,000 paint retailers, 4,000 B2B customers.

• The company had started last year the low-cost innovation center to drive differentiated products in Thane, which is going to look at India and countries like China, Latin America over a period of time and really first developed for India and if it does well, progress it to the world.

• India is not decoupled from the global headwinds that the world faces. India is a part of the global economy. While the growth momentum continues, the company keeps in mind that there is a global slowdown. For India, the favorable is that the interest rates have started getting benign while the crude oil and currency volatility continues.

• In decorative paints October was a very difficult month because of the monsoons. But November and December it managed to recover and really grow sharply.

• Projects business continues to do very well on the backdrop of a very conducive real estate sector.

• The urban markets grew faster than rural. Rural grew but more led by distribution gains.

• Product mix was in line with previous quarter. The company has not taken any price increase in paints.

• Strong growth sustained across businesses in Coatings. Automotive and Specialty Coatings major business driver was premium segment. Wanda, which is into the middle segment and mass market, did well, but also picked up growth after a long time in the OEM segment.

• In Industrial Coatings infrastructure boost and growing steel sector is supporting Coil growth and packaging segment was driven by the B&B (Beer & Beverages) segment

• Robust growth was witnessed across marine & protective segment. Pickup in M&R activities is driving marine business. Infrastructure, Oil & Gas were notable drivers for protective business

• Powder segment continues to grow double digit. Architecture, Automotive and GTC segments were supported by strong order

• The company targets to generate around 5-10% of revenue from new products.