ETERNALNSEQ3FY23February 10, 2023

ETERNAL LIMITED

7,305words
85turns
9analyst exchanges
1executives
Management on call
Deepinder Goyal
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Akshant Goyal – Chief Financial Officer, Mr.
Key numbers — 25 extracted
rs,
here were a lot of learnings that we had in terms of what worked and what did not work for customers, for our P&L and for restaurants. What we wanted to do essentially was to take a step back and put
21%
nt Goyal: Thanks, Sachin. If you look at the data that we had shared on a year-on-year basis, the 21% GOV growth was an outcome of 14% growth year-on-year on orders and about 6% growth year-on- year
14%
look at the data that we had shared on a year-on-year basis, the 21% GOV growth was an outcome of 14% growth year-on-year on orders and about 6% growth year-on- year on average order value. Specifical
6%
r-on-year basis, the 21% GOV growth was an outcome of 14% growth year-on-year on orders and about 6% growth year-on- year on average order value. Specifically, on a QoQ basis, the order volumes decli
23.8%
shant Goyal: As an aggregate, we think there is still room to grow here. We are at about close to 23.8% or 24% take rate in the last quarter. From here on, this will go up despite delivery charges perh
24%
: As an aggregate, we think there is still room to grow here. We are at about close to 23.8% or 24% take rate in the last quarter. From here on, this will go up despite delivery charges perhaps con
23 million
e in annual transacting customers. If you see that number is also pretty healthy as we have added 23 million new customers (in CY22). We’ve also mentioned that for the last quarter as well, new customer a
15%
some part of your operating profits in the form of indirect cost because that has grown like 14%-15% on a YoY basis versus a very muted trend in the first half of the fiscal year. So, what are these
1%
quarter but if you look at the average for the last three quarters that would be in the range of 1% to 2% growth. On an annual basis, if you look at these numbers, that would be more in the range
2%
er but if you look at the average for the last three quarters that would be in the range of 1% to 2% growth. On an annual basis, if you look at these numbers, that would be more in the range of 12%
12%
o 2% growth. On an annual basis, if you look at these numbers, that would be more in the range of 12% to 14% kind of growth. Therefore, it’s not meaningful when you look at it from an annual perspect
5%
t Ankur asked at the beginning, and you responded on growth versus profitability. You are at over 5% contribution margins right now. As we go forward, your guidance still is a break even by fourth q
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Guidance — 20 items
Akshant Goyal
qa
What we wanted to do essentially was to take a step back and put all of this together into a program, which we think can now last, going forward.
Akshant Goyal
qa
Going forward, as we’re seeing recovery coming back in the business already, we are seeing more customers coming back.
Akshant Goyal
qa
We expect to continue growing both on MTUs and frequency going forward and the combination of growth across these two should drive the order volumes up.
Akshant Goyal
qa
And depending on the offtake and what we learn from there, we’ll decide on how to expand going forward from there.
Vivek Maheshwari
qa
As we go forward, your guidance still is a break even by fourth quarter or latest by September quarter of next fiscal year.
Akshant Goyal
qa
But like-to-like in the same city where we are already present today, I don’t think there is going to be massive swings in margin going forward.
Vivek Maheshwari
qa
And Albi another question which will be my last one.
Vivek Maheshwari
qa
And that’s a major investment going forward that we foresee.
Akshant Goyal
qa
But generally speaking, the impact of Gold on our economics will get offset with the progress we make not just on the cost side but on the revenue side in the business going forward.
Akshant Goyal
qa
Zomato Everyday, which is essentially an offering where our customers will be able to order homestyle cooked meals at affordable prices could be a big lever as well if we’re able to execute that well and sustainably.
Risks & concerns — 15 flagged
You mentioned several drivers of the growth slowdown in your prepared remarks in the Q&A.
Ankur Rudra
Majority of the slowdown, I would attribute to the general macro, industry wide macro, than anything else.
Akshant Goyal
You mentioned that the growth has remained weak in January, but you've been able to get profitability in the month.
Ankur Rudra
Maybe I can take this forward, there's a concern among investors that is there any kind of tradeoff between growth and profitability here?
Ankur Rudra
In an environment where there is macro slowdown and the industry is not growing, we've grown faster than the restaurant food industry overall in this quarter.
Akshant Goyal
We attribute that to the general slowdown that I just spoke about as a response to the previous question.
Akshant Goyal
Last question, I wanted to have more clarity on consumption slowdown.
Sachin Salgaonkar
Certain QSRs are seeing a slowdown, others are not.
Sachin Salgaonkar
So, the question to you is, is there any particular segment where you are seeing a slowdown?
Sachin Salgaonkar
I read your report where you indicated which all segments are seeing a bit of impact, but any more clarity you could give in terms of any particular segment, any particular geography which is seeing a bit of a slowdown, or do you see that being more across the board?
Sachin Salgaonkar
I agree with you that there are some mixed signals there but at least from what we’ve observed, we don’t think there is any slowdown in any particular pocket of either a cuisine or a geography.
Akshant Goyal
My first question is while you have mentioned about the slowdown, but the press release also talks about green shoots in January.
Vivek Maheshwari
I’m saying that the fact that while we are talking about slowdown, you have also mentioned that you are witnessing green shoots in January.
Vivek Maheshwari
That is telling us that perhaps the slowdown has bottomed out and that’s our conjecture at this point.
Akshant Goyal
Lack of growth right now, as we have spoken multiple times, is because of the macro context and industry slowdown.
Akshant Goyal
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Q&A — 9 exchanges
Q
Hi, thank you. You mentioned several drivers of the growth slowdown in your prepared remarks in the Q&A. I was curious if there was any loss of market share, particularly with your most frequent customers that also contributed to this?
Akshant Goyal
Hi Ankur, thanks for your question. Akshant this side. For us it's very hard to measure market share on an ongoing basis because we compete with multiple players and at least some of them are unlisted. There was nothing that points to a significant share loss to us as far as we know. Majority of the slowdown, I would attribute to the general macro, industry wide macro, than anything else. Ok. You mentioned that the growth has remained weak in January, but you've been able to get profitability in the month. Could you maybe highlight what was the lever of profitability if there was no growth? An
Q
I have three questions. First question, Akshant, just wanted to understand if you could give a little bit more clarity on the mix of GOV. In this quarter we see a stable AOV, and the order frequency was lower, or any data point you could provide? And going ahead, how should we look at the drivers? Would the incremental GOV be driven more by increase in order frequency or it’s still AOV which will continue to increase?
Akshant Goyal
Thanks, Sachin. If you look at the data that we had shared on a year-on-year basis, the 21% GOV growth was an outcome of 14% growth year-on-year on orders and about 6% growth year-on- year on average order value. Specifically, on a QoQ basis, the order volumes declined and that was because of slightly lower monthly transacting customers and slightly lower ordering frequency in the quarter. We attribute that to the general slowdown that I just spoke about as a response to the previous question. Going forward, as we’re seeing recovery coming back in the business already, we are seeing more custo
Q
I have three questions. The first is on the frequency. If I look at the high-frequency users as a percentage of total annual transacting users, that has actually gone up which would actually help frequency at the company level. So, in which cohort of customers, which basket of customers, are you not seeing the major increase in frequency or where do you see a key roadblock and what are the initiatives that you’re taking to change that?
Kunal Swarup
Hi Gaurav, this is Kunal here. You rightly pointed out that the power user or power customer cohort has gained but next to that we’ve also talked about the increase in annual transacting customers. If you see that number is also pretty healthy as we have added 23 million new customers (in CY22). We’ve also mentioned that for the last quarter as well, new customer addition has been healthy. When you put this in context of the overall numbers and as we’ve mentioned in the past as well that for new customers, when they start transacting on our platform, the ordering frequency is lower. Therefore,
Q
My first question is while you have mentioned about the slowdown, but the press release also talks about green shoots in January. Can you just elaborate on that?
Akshant Goyal
What is your question, Vivek? Can you be specific? I’m saying that the fact that while we are talking about slowdown, you have also mentioned that you are witnessing green shoots in January. Can you just comment on that? Has there been any specific customer cohorts which has done better? Are you seeing a pickup in exit January which is what we should look at in the fourth quarter? Can you just elaborate on that comment, Akshant? Vivek, for the last couple of weeks we’ve been seeing the app opens in our business go up which we have not seen over the last 2-3 months. That is telling us that perh
Q
Akshant, I have a couple of questions on those annual unique transacting customer data points that you shared. Now if I look at 2022 versus 2021, just looking at the previous year’s customers, there it looks like the churn rate went from about 10% in 2021 to about 30% in 2022. Do you think this is attributable to the rollback of Gold? And related question to that, all these end of quarter trends that we see in MTU decline and frequency decline, is this mostly to do with the fact that some of those people who were rolling out of Zomato Pro / Pro Plus, their frequency reduced primarily and there
Akshant Goyal
Hi Vijit. I think the absence of having a membership program did impact us in the last quarter, but we are recovering from that now. And to some extent that has played a role in some customers attriting and lower frequency that we saw in the last quarter. But generally, on the annual trends, our retention is fairly healthy. I’m not sure how you came up with the math of 32% attrition. So, basically, I just looked at 2020 customers and in 2021 if you remove the new customers from that number and compare with the previous year, just a simple math on that. It looks like you lost 15 million of the
Q
My first question is on just the growth drivers. In the shareholder letter you talked about three factors or drivers that you think could help revive growth in the food delivery business. Do you see all of those three drivers as equally important, or do you think one is more important than the others? If you can just help us by providing some more color. And a related question to that is on the annual transacting customers that you disclosed for 2022 which is about 58 million and currently you have about 17-odd million of MTUs. What does it take over a longer term let’s say 2–3-year period to
Akshant Goyal
So, Manish, the answer to your second question is actually also a response to the first question. All of these initiatives that we have mentioned, they’ll drive higher frequency of ordering from our existing active customers who are very infrequent today, which will mean that more of our customer base will start ordering every month and hence a large portion of our ATUs will start converting into MTUs. Now within those two / three things that we mentioned, Zomato Gold, of course, is going to be important as a retention and frequency driver in the long run. Zomato Everyday, which is essentially
Q
I have 2 or 3 questions. First of all, modeling-related question, how will the Zomato Gold program subscription revenue be recognized going ahead? Will some of the revenue be ascribed to food delivery vertical and will it be considered while calculating contribution margins?
Akshant Goyal
Yes Swapnil. That’s right. The second question is with respect to Blinkit. I see that your dark store count seems to have come down by around 10% versus a couple of quarters back. So, what is the thought process here? Have we closed down some operations in a few cities because in the shareholder letter you have also mentioned that addition of 30% to 40% store additions in the next year. So, what is the strategy over here? Albinder Singh Dhindsa: Hi Swapnil, this is Albi. So, what you will see is the store count should start inching upwards from where we are in this quarter. The primary reason
Q
Akshant maybe for you, so you had Zomaland in this quarter, brand marketing spends went up. What is one of the metrics here you're looking at to judge the efficiency of the spending versus for example some of the more direct levers like say increasing platform discounts?
Akshant Goyal
There is platform discounts, there is digital marketing, there is broader mass media marketing and then we also market through some of the events that you mentioned. ROIs for each of these channels of marketing have to be calculated differently and looked at differently because some of them have smaller feedback loops, some of them have slightly longer feedback loops. Just like any other business, we continuously continue to evaluate the channels which are working well for us and slightly index our marketing spending more to those channels versus others and some of these things are also season
Q
I know it’s still fairly early but any initial reaction on the Zomato Gold impact on business? Are you seeing any increased ordering from the power customers? Also given that the threshold for free delivery on Gold is INR 199 which is practically half of your AOV. Is it fair to assume that there will be a bit of a drag on AOV because of Zomato Gold scaling up?
Akshant Goyal
Mukul, on the overall impact of Zomato Gold, it is very early right now. We are barely 2 weeks into it. The only thing that we wanted to share at this point which we have shared in our letter is that we are now close to 9,00,000 members which means that the program is scaling rapidly. But how it is impacting our economics and frequency, it’s a little early to talk about that. On your second question, it works both ways. Having an AOV baseline of INR 199 also helps move some lower AOV orders to higher AOV. On balance, I would not conclude that the order value will come down because of it. It mi
Speaking time
Akshant Goyal
29
Moderator
10
Vijit Jain
7
Vivek Maheshwari
6
Ankur Rudra
5
Kunal Swarup
5
Sachin Salgaonkar
4
Swapnil Potdukhe
4
Mukul Garg
4
Gaurav Rateria
3
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