EBITDA in the second quarter stood at Rs 330 crore, down by 36.2% from Rs 517 crore recorded in the same period last year. EBITDA margin was at 6.2% in Q2 September 2020 compared with 8.6% in Q2 September 2019.

Commenting on the performance of the company Neville Noronha, CEO & managing director, Avenue Supermarts, said: "Within the continued uncertainty from Covid-19, our business has seen improvement and it continues to gradually progress towards prepandemic levels. Month-on-Month sales have improved during this quarter – August was better than July and September was better than August. The highlight being that footfalls continue to be significantly lower than pre-Covid levels but basket values are significantly higher than pre-Covid levels. Both these data points are trending towards pre-Covid levels. Footfalls are getting better and basket values are reducing month over month.

Two years and older DMart stores did 87.5% of September 2019 sales in the month of September 2020. We have a total of 158 stores which are 2 years or older.

FMCG and staples demand remains robust. September 2020 sales of all stores exceeded September 2019 sales for FMCG and Staples while General Merchandise and Garments did lesser sales in the same period. However, discretionary consumption has seen significant improvement over Q1FY21.

We continue to focus on new store openings and have opened six new DMart stores during the quarter. We have closed two of our Mumbai stores for customers and converted them into fulfillment centers (FC) for our ECommerce business.

The progress of the pandemic and its impact on consumer spending during the festival period will determine our financial performance for the next quarter. While large suppliers and FMCG business is trending better on sales as well as supplies, supply chains and manufacturing in the non FMCG SME sector will take some time to get back to pre-Covid levels."

Avenue Supermarts owns and operates D-Mart stores. D-Mart is a national supermarket chain that offers customers a range of home and personal products under one roof. As of 30 September 2020, the company had 220 stores with Retail Business Area of 8.20 million sq. ft. across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Daman, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, NCR, Chhattisgarh and Punjab.