Whirlpool of India Limited ($500238)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the analyst call of Whirlpool of India Limited. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Deepak Agarwal from Axis Capital Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[indiscernible] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Axis Capital Limited, we welcome you all to Whirlpool of India analyst call for the fourth quarter financial year FY '26. From the management side, we have the Chairman of the Group, Mr. Arvind Uppal; Mr. Aditya Jain, Chief Financial Officer of the company; and Ms. Sweta Srivastava, Company Secretary, joining the call. We thank Whirlpool of India to give us opportunities to host this call. Now I hand over the floor to Sweta ma'am. Thanks and over to you ma'am.

Thank you, Deepak. Good evening, everyone. I would like to welcome you to the Q4 Financial Year '25/'26 Analyst Call of Whirlpool of India Limited. Please note that the call is being recorded, and the audio call and transcript will be available on the website of the company. Also, the presentation to be made by the Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer, is available on the website of the company as well as the stock exchanges. Before we move forward, I would like to remind you of the cautionary statement that forms part of the presentation. During this call, certain forward-looking statements may be made. These forward-looking statements are based on certain expectations, assumptions and other factors which may affect the business results. Please read the cautionary statements carefully, and the contents of this call should be interpreted accordingly. With that, I would now like to hand it over to Mr. Eswar.

Thank you, Sweta. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Narasimhan Eswar, Managing Director of the company. I'd like to welcome you to this analyst call. Thank you very much to Axis Capital for making this happen. Thank you, everyone, for taking out your time to join us. Without any further delay, I'll start with the update. So the update, as usual, we split it up into 3 areas: The business overview, the strategic imperatives and how we're doing against them. And lastly, the financial performance. I shall cover the first 2 and Mr. Aditya Jain, the CFO, will cover the last one. If you move to Slide 6 of the presentation, please. And you can see the slide numbers at the bottom right-hand side of the page. We'd just like to start off with some key highlights of '25, '26 Q4. This is for the India stand-alone results. We are happy to see that we delivered a revenue growth of about 7.4% versus last year, happy because the first 2 quarters of this year, because of a lot of competitive pressure that happened to the market, which was extraordinary, we had a revenue drop versus a year ago in Q1 and Q2 of this fiscal Q3, we made our way back in Q4, we've grown by 7.4% versus last year. We are also quite happy that even if temporarily only for a month, but in March 2026, in refrigerators and washing machines combined, in the multi-brand outlets volume market share, we secured the #2 position. The reason why we're happy about this is not just because of the #2 position, but because it shows us in our organization and people who believe in us that it's possible to get here and also gives you the confidence that once you get here, you can aspire for even more. Now how we got to that position was basically because we had some shared leadership in a couple of different areas where we made some progress. In direct cool refrigerators, in multi-brand outlets volume market share, we got market leadership straight for 3 months in a row, in fact, 4 months from December 2025, #1 position there. We secured after a very long time, the #2 position in top load, in quarter 4 market share for multi-brand outlets volume market share. And we also secured for the quarter, the second position in semi-automatic washers. Now these were the 3 top categories in which we secured good market share positions. In front-load washers, where our market shares are much lower as we launched only in 2022, coming in later to this category, we're happy to note that our volumes have actually doubled in this quarter, and we showed a triple-digit increase in market share, consistent with the past several quarters, again, on multi-brand outlets volume market share. In our relatively smaller business of Aircon, and I know that many companies have declared very strong results of million units and so on and so forth. But for us, we exceeded 100,000 units in the March month, which considering where we were 3 years ago, is a fairly good achievement. And it also shows the power of what we can go on and achieve in the coming months and years because our quarter volume growth was more than 50%. Elica had a wonderful quarter. Revenue was up 30% and profit for Elica was up 48% PBT. Also, what was very nice to capital off was March 2026 marked the highest ever shipment month in the history of Whirlpool of India Limited, handsomely beating the last great record, which was in April 2019. All in all, from a revenue and a volume growth point of view, a much better picture than the previous months. Margins were impacted in this quarter, as you would have seen already from the reports, due to energy change regulations in refrigerator and aircon, which we moved into quicker than most others because of our lower inventory and also the incremental EVS impact that we continue to accrue for in line with government mandates. We continue to closely monitor the supply situation. As everybody knows, the supply situation arising from the Middle East war is of concern to not only us, but all industries across the country, both with respect to cost and supply of components, products, et cetera, it is quite challenging, and we continue to work on that very, very seriously and diligently. Coming to the last part before we move into the detail, we are happy to report that even in this quarter, we got a negative net working capital in our ref and washer business. Any increase in our net working capital was only because of planned investments in air conditioners, which was obviously on the positive side because aircon works on different number of days of receivables compared to -- and inventory compared to our ref and washer business. Can we go to Slide #7, please. So this is a chart that I always share. I'm not going to walk you through the entire chart because there's a lot of detail in there. But the industry continued to basically grow with very low single digits in Jan '26 to March '26, so subdued industry growth. Decline in refigerators so far for the whole year, driven by decline in direct cool refrigerators. I'm now talking about the industry. In terms of big highlights for us in this quarter, which is the extreme right column, Q4 '25 an '26, Jan '26 to March '26. I think the biggest highlight was our bringing in the new ranges of refrigerators, both in direct cool and frost free into the market. So for those who are unaware, there's a big energy change that happened in January on both refrigerators and air conditioners. What that really means is every refrigerator and every air conditioner had to be replaced with new technical models, every single SKU that we have, and this is what we call as a phase in, phase out. And when you do this phase and phase out, those who enter it at a slightly earlier stage end up having to lose some amount of display share and stock share in the market as they transition their products to the new products. And this is quite a monumental thing for the entire industry. We were into it a little bit earlier than the others because we had lesser inventory on refrigerators as we closed out the year at air conditioners. We also introduced some very exciting new products that I'll talk to you about later. We introduced the new 3 door Proton, which is doing very well in the market. We introduced a new 9-kilogram with steam option in the front-load washing machines, and we introduced a new model in the direct cool Auto defrost premium refrigerators. We also added some amount of retail executives to further drive our business and our ROI, and we had a very good quarter in terms of air conditioner and front-load washer scaler. Our volume market shares for this quarter declined by double-digit basis points versus last year, predominantly driven by refrigerators where we had this phase in and phase out as well as significant competitive pricing activity still happening, which we have chosen not to follow completely, which is a deliberate strategy. But as we recover our phase in and phase out as we move faster than others on the phase in and phase out in the month of April, May, June, I hope to be able to recover that market share back again as we ramp up our display shares and our stock. Next slide, please. So this is the breakup that I always share of the share -- market share by segment. As you can see there, 3 dashes basically means triple-digit basis points, 2 dashes means double-digit basis points. Overall, if you take a look, in front-load washers, we continue to grow triple-digit basis points for the seventh -- sixth or seventh quarter in a row, and we continue to do very well there. In top load washers, we were able to grow strong double-digit basis points in quarter 4 2025, '26, behind some incremental initiatives that we had put in with respect to new products. In Semi-automatic, we were able to report triple-digit basis points growth. So overall in washers, with strong growth and in air conditioners as well in terms of shares. We declined triple-digit basis points in direct cool refrigerator and frost-free refrigerator and volume market share in Jan '26 to March '26. Like I said, the primary driver was a regulatory changeover that we moved faster than others, which we will make up for pretty soon. And the secondary driver was competitive pricing, which continue to be very aggressive and we didn't follow to the same extent to balance between market share and profitability. Next slide, please. Slide #9. Let's now talk about the top line. In terms of sales growth, in the first half of the year, we had a minus 4%, as you can see on the left side of the chart. We started off with minus 3% and minus 5%. So it's pretty much tough between April and October, April and end September because of very heavy competitive pricing on the one hand. And on the second hand, the industry impact was quite significant because of delayed onset of summer and early months last year. So it was a very tough year for -- very tough first 6 months of the year for the entire industry, which any part of the industry, which relies on cooling products like refrigerators or air conditioners. We started making a recovery in Q3, as you know, with a 4% growth in revenue. And in Q4, we've now made a 7% growth. And our second half momentum is actually driven by 3 things. One is a significant scale-up in our air conditioner business, which is fledgling compared to some of the big players, significant scale-up in our front load, we call it HA, horizontal access, but it's the front-load washing machine business and overall share gain in washers. We've also had significant accelerated growth in premium products across refrigerators and washers. So this is what drove our top line. In H2 '25/'26, refrigerator has remained challenging, like I said, because the regulatory product changeover in Q4 that we are right now going through, which should end very soon for us and the competitive pricing impact. Next slide, please. If we move to Slide 10, we look at margins versus last year. These are the gross margins. So just to remind you, 2022, '23, we're 27.6% margin '23, '24, we went to 29%, '24, '25, we improved to 30.6%. This year, we've arrived at a 29.9% margin, driven by basically the air conditioner mix and our margin. So just to explain, air conditioners for us grows disproportionately, then our overall gross margin goes down because the gross margin percentage of air conditioners is lesser than that of refrigerators and washers which we are fully aware of. However, air conditioner is able to provide scale to us, which helps alleviate fixed costs and air conditioners is able to provide significant revenue to us, both of which matter a lot. So it's a very conscious choice that we took to drive the air conditioner business at the right time. And so you can see that without the condition mix impact, our gross margin will have continued to grow. And the reason that is the case on refineries and washers is because of our the productivity for growth cost-saving program that we do and continue to do and believe in extremely fiercely. Next slide, please. Slide #11 now talks about the profit before tax margin. If you look at Q4, last year Q4, we had a 7.6% PBT margin in '24, '25. This year, we would have been slightly higher than that, except for 2 significant costs that I had already highlighted at the beginning of the year, in January -- beginning of the calendar year. One is the energy cost of charges because of the refrigerator and air conditioning, which has not yet been compensated by pricing as of March 31. And the second is a very significant incremental e-waste provision that we do. to make sure that we are conservatively accruing for potential e-waste cost. If e-waste costs are sorted out going forward between the recycle as the producers and the government obviously, that could be a help in the future for us. If I go to the right on the full year PBT margin, last year's PBT margin was 5.6%. If you just take out the incremental e-waste provision we have made versus last year, we would have held our margin. So this is purely the incremental e-waste provision that we've made, not the base e-waste, the incremental e-waste provision that we've made this year that is basically reducing the margin on a full year basis. Next slide, please. We continue to remain efficient in working capital. This is a slightly complex slide, so kindly stay with me. As you can see on the first 3 columns, the blue columns in March '22, March '23, March '24, as a company, we were operating on a positive net working capital, which obviously is not the ideal way to operate. A negative networking capital is a wonderful way to operate. By September '24, with a concerted effort across the company, we have brought it down to a negative net working capital kept it there in December '24. In March '25, it was slightly positive but much lower than the previous years. June, again, it was negative. And then if you see today, if you look at March 2026, the first column is our actual net working capital, which has gone up versus the previous year. But if you just take a look at the little piece next to that in green on the right, that is our refrigerator and washer and our regular T2 business. That is now operating on a negative net working capital. So if you compare March '26, excluding AC, with March '25, we are actually better off on net working capital on refrigerators and washing machines. The planned investment of air conditioners, net working capital is what took our net working capital up in this quarter. And obviously, it would be recovered in the coming quarter. Next slide, please. I now move on to our strategic imperatives. We are now on Slide 14. Our strategic imperatives continue to be the same. One, inspire generations with our brands; second, win with product leadership; third, build a competitive and resilient supply chain; and lastly, excellence and execution. Moving to Slide #15. This is just a bit of our history. We introduced pedestals to the country. We introduced auto defrost and direct cool refrigerators. We were one of the early pioneers in providing colors and finishes in refrigerators from the drama really kind of only steel only gray or white the agent does in the past. We were the first to introduce 3 door refrigerators in the country. We were the first to introduce dark interiors with the Plantina range, which are extremely premium, and we were the first to introduce heaters in top load washing machines. Net, a pioneer in the Indian durables industry, we have continuously done innovations that are made for India by engineers by our Indian workforce inspired by Indian consumers with Indian consumer knowledge. And I hope to show some of that again as we go through the next few slides. Our focus has been to premiumize our business. Going on the next slide, please. Let's start with direct cool refrigerators. In direct cool refrigerators, the premium end of direct cool references, we have the auto-defrost range. Auto-defrost range, we've rebranded it to call it no tension refrigerators because the single biggest pain point for direct cool consumers is the ice that forms in the freezer section for any direct colleague and it causes a lot of trouble. So you can see some of the creatives that we put out there. But in a sense, we introduced a new launch black steel that's been doing really well for us in VidaMagicPro, which is the brand name for the auto defrost range, and that's doing really well for us. Next slide, please. Moving on to the top load washing machine business. In the top load washing machine business, you will recall that in previous meetings, I have basically said that within refrigerators and washing machines, we'll make sure that within some amount of time. We will cover all the gap areas that we have in our portfolio where we can add value to consumers, grow our market share and grow it profitably. In the top end, the Blue more series, we had a potential grams. We've now introduced a high-capacity top load washing machine in line with consumer demand is the 11 kg bloom wash, and there are some amazing new features in this. The first one is that this new 11 kg bloom mash has got a quick sense technology. Now there are many top end top load washing machines that have quick core cycles. But usually, they are one wash cycle, whatever be the load. This one has got 30-minute cycle for a small load, 35 minutes for a medium load and 40 minutes for a large load. And the machine automatically senses what type of load it is and takes care of it. So this is the quick sense feature. We also have in the same machine soft sense, which automatically releases the right amount of softener at just the right time. Lastly, we brought this into a brand new and beautiful Juniper Green CFF, which actually brings out the premium look in an even better way and offers an amazing new color to the premium top load washing machine consumer. Next slide, please. Moving to Slide #18. We now talk about premiumization in 2 categories. This is the third one, semi-automatic. Our dynamic technology in our mid- and premium range is doing really, really well and driving the semi-automatic category. This is a technology that promises and delivers on 0 detergent patches for those who are using powder in semi-automatic washing machines, which is the #1 pain point of Indian consumers, the patches that stay on in the clothes after you use the detergent in the wash. This business is doing very, really well for us. It was just introduced 2 years ago in 2024 in June, if I recall, right? And it is now a significant proportion of our business. Nearly half of our business is in this technology and is driving triple-digit basis point share gain in its segments. Next slide, please. Continuing with the premiumization story. Triple doors are the premium end of frost-free refrigerators in the middle to premium area. And here, we've launched -- relaunched our Proton 3-door model with the Proton Next series. We've not only done a technological and design upgrade, but we've also done a capacity upgrade, providing even more value to the consumers. This is doing really well for us. And the magic of the 3 doors is that with this technology, we now have 43% lesser coal are loss versus the top loads that you normally get because of the 3 doors and the need to open each door much lesser. Second, your fruits and your vegetables stay as they're supposed to because the fruits and vegetables have a separate draw as you can see, and there is no order mixing with other things that might be there in the refrigerator apartment. And of course, the 360-degree and has schooling with fresh flow. Next slide, please. If you go to Slide #20, a front-load washer. Now this is premium by itself, whether it's 7 kg, 8 kg or 9 kg or 10 kg, the front-load washers accelerated for us in '25-'26. Our total business has grown about 60% more than last year. We've had triple-digit basis points market share growth pretty much through the year. This uses sixth sense technology like all of our premium products do and this business is doing quite well for us, and we hope to grow it more and more in the coming months, quarters and years. Next slide, please. And of course, our AC business. Like I said, maybe a small number for others, but a giant number for us from where we're starting out. We've been able to bring in some really good technology and drive some really good go-to-market. And for the first time, we've been able to cross 100,000 units in monthly sales in March 2026. Our air conditioner business, even in a relatively tough year, has gone up by more than 40% versus last year, following quite a strong 80-odd percent growth in the previous year. Next slide, please. And of course, our fantastic Elica products. The new product ranges continue to drive premiumization, whether we're talking about the filterless kitchen hood, or we're talking about the ductless kitchen hood that has been launched recently or indeed this beautiful product, a built-in hub with 4 burners, which has got heavy-duty full brass burners, multiplay direct, with cast-iron pan support. And this cast-iron pan support is also back to the heat guard to make sure that you don't feel any heat while operating the tops. So all of these wonderful products continue to drive our premiumization strategy very strongly. This is probably the most exciting news of the lot. This might look like the cloak of Darth Vader, but what it is, is actually is a black cloak that we've deliberately used to cover our new products that we're launching. Many of you have asked us when are we launching into the frost-free large capacity space, well, the answer is in Q2 of 2026, thereby filling a significant gap in our frost-free portfolio. Please state even for this. In the next quarter, I hope to show you all of the different models that we're bringing in and the features of this, but this is something that we're extremely proud of. We've waited for more than 2 years to deliver this. And we are very happy to announce that we are going to be in play in the large capacity frost-free, which is one of the big chunks missing from our portfolio. Next slide, please. We continue to focus very strongly on driving excellence and execution, with visibility of our premium lines, with a very strong sales and service incentivization program that focuses on driving premiumization and value, focusing on very strong customer relationships that we've built over the last 40 years and a very, very good management of our supply chain in a very complex environment. On the service front, we are continuously improving in our service KPIs. The chart that you see there is the Net Promoter Score. As you know, the Net Promoter Score is the score difference between when consumers after installation or after service, give you a score on a scale of 10, 9 plus 10 whoever gives you what percentage of people give you 9 and 10 scores out of 10, minus the people who give you ratings between 1 and 7. So this is continuing to grow for us very strongly. And this is despite the fact that we're starting to sell a lot more air conditioners where the requirement for service and getting Net Promoter Scores is even tougher because people want instantaneous installation, instant service, very difficult, especially in this Delhi heat that we are facing right now to live without an air conditioner for most people. Despite that, our service organization is doing a tremendous job in keeping the scores up. Now we move on to our supply, 2 big things in this, quality and cost. And quality, as you know, we follow the world-class manufacturing practices. We continue to follow that. We've achieved a silver in Pune and bronze in the other 2 manufacturing sites, with our Puducherry and Faridabad. And we hope to take them to a silver across the course of the coming quarters and years. On cost leadership, basically, we have -- if you see from 2022, '23 to today, over 3 years, we have done a stand-alone gross margin improvement of 220 basis points across these 3 years. And that's all because of the P4G program that we do, productivity for growth, which is a very systematic program that covers all lines of the P&L involves almost everybody in all of procurement, engineering innovation and manufacturing as well as supply chain. And this program continues to do strongly for us covering off many of the other cost impacts that we get in other areas. Next slide, please. And with that, I'd like to hand over to Mr. Aditya Jain. Aditya.

Thank you, Mr. Eswar. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Aditya Jain, and I am the CFO of the company, and I'll take you through the financial performance of Whirlpool of India Limited. I'm on Slide 27. This slide covers the financial performance on consolidated basis for Q4, i.e., Jan to March 2026. In this quarter, we delivered a revenue of INR 2,181 crore, which is a high single-digit growth versus last year. As we heard from Mr. Eswar , industry was not a big help in this quarter. Industry grew in low single digits. And on top of that, the entire refrigerators portfolio was impacted by the new energy regulations, which came into force from first January 2026, as a result of which a massive amount of phase-in, phase-out was supposed to be done. Despite those headwinds, we were able to grow revenue in high single digits and the factors which drove our revenue growth are as follows: A, our washer business did pretty well, and we grew share in the washer business. We attained a #2 position in semi-automatic as well as top load vessels. And on HA, which is a small business for us right now, we grew market share, which is the NBO volume market share in triple digits in this quarter. This was driven by the commercial and the consumer-focused product innovations and our mantra of executional excellence. Our AC business did pretty well. In AC, we grew by 50% in this quarter. And AC being a high ASV product, which is the average selling price of AC is roughly 2x of the other core business, that also helps in driving your top line. Third big element was the segment premiumization. What it means is our focused interventions and our ROI-based ideas are focused on driving incremental growth in mid and premium segments of each of our categories, which again helped us driving premiumization within the category and hence driving the revenue growth. Last but not the least, it was a fabulous quarter for our Elica cooking business, which grew revenue by 30% in this quarter. On the profitability side, we delivered an EBITDA of INR 121 crores at 5.6%. The EBITDA was lower by 33.7% versus last year. And our profit before exceptional items was at INR 110 crores at 5% and our profit declined by 29% versus last year. The big reason for decline in our profits versus last year was on account of regulatory cost up charges. There were 2 big items which impacted our profitability in this quarter. One was the incremental e-waste expense, which we accrue as per the e-waste notification, which came in September last year; and b, the aircon and the ref energy upgrade cost. Let me give you a little bit more color why you are a little bit more impacted by this energy change cost impact. As you would have noticed on the working capital slide, in December, we had a negative working capital, which meant that we were managing our inventories very efficiently, and there was very limited quantity of inventories, which we carried forward from 2025 into 2026. And as a result of which, most of our Q1 business came in from the production of the current quarter, which was BE upgraded refrigerators production on which we had to account for the new energy cost. And this was not supported by a commensurate pricing in the market till March because of multiplicity of factors and the varying level of inventories, which everyone would be carrying. And just a perspective, outside of these 2 items, which is the energy cost upcharge and incremental e-waste provisions, our profit would have been higher than last year. Our Elica, as said, had a fabulous quarter, and they delivered a revenue growth of 32% and a profit growth of 48% in this quarter. Next slide. I'm on Slide 28. In this slide, I'll cover the financial performance on a full year basis. We crossed the INR 8,000 crore numbers from a top line perspective and delivered a top line of INR 8,034 crores, which is a growth of 1.4% versus last year. Just to give you a little bit of color, this came on a backdrop of a flattish or a muted industry because the industry for the whole year was roughly flattish. And in fact, the ref industry declined largely due to the direct cool as there was delayed onset of summer and the monsoons got advanced. So we had -- the industry had a pretty bad season -- and on top of that, there was a big energy change in the back half of the year, which again impacted the refrigerator business. So despite those headwinds, we were able to offset those headwinds and still grow our revenue by 1.4%. The various factors which led to this growth was, a, our washers portfolio, which we spoke about, did well even on an annual basis. Aircon continued to be a good story on an annual basis. We grew Aircon business by 40%, despite that the summer was pretty soft and not conducive to the aircon growth. But then we manage our business very well. And Elica again, did build on an annual basis with a double-digit revenue growth of 12%. Other factors were segment premiumization, which is a high focus area for us and our ROI-based investments continued to deliver good returns. Coming on to margins. We spoke about our P4G program that's running through the length and bit of the organization, that is lifeline of the organization in which we look at cost takeouts across all lines of the P&. That continue to generate cost efficiencies and as a result of which we were able to offset the commodity cost headwinds as well as the impact of the currency depreciation, which we have seen during the year. And because of this P4G program, our core P2 business margins, which is refs and washers business, improved versus last year. Our overall reported gross margins/material margins were lower versus last year by 50 basis points, largely on account of aircon mix because at a material margins level, the profile of aircon, the margins of aircon are relatively lower than the T2 business, but then you get a lot of leverage both on revenue growth as well as fixed cost leverage. On profit side, we delivered an EBITDA of INR 481 crores at 6%. It was lower by 12.6% versus last year, roughly 100 basis points. And our profit before exceptional items came in at INR 426 crores at 53%, lower by about 12% versus last year and 80 basis points was lower by 2 basis points versus last year. The single biggest factor, which led to the decline in profits versus last year was the incremental e-waste provisions. And let me just remind you that the new notification for e-waste came in middle of September last year. So last year had pre-September rates, which were based on market-driven rates and post September 24, e-waste provisions based on the new circular, which came into effect. And in the current year, we are accounting for the e-waste as the new circular. And hence, we have an incremental material year-over-year impact. And outside of that e-waste impact, our profit margins were flat to last year. Our reported PBT declined by 19% as we accounted for the onetime impact of wage code provisions of INR 38.8 crores on a consolidated basis. Elica continues to do well, grew revenue in double digits at 12%. And its profit on an annual basis grew ahead of revenue at 15%. That's it on the results. With this, I will pass it back to Sweta for the next session for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Mr. Eswar and Mr. Jain. I would now request the moderator to open the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Priyank Chheda with Vallum Capital.

Thank you, Eswar and team. Firstly, keeping your promise to do the call and hand holding the minorities along with you and what a wonderful performance. First clarifying for the incremental regulatory e-waste provisioning and whatever the electricity -- energy upcharge. So what was this? If you can quantify for the cost for Q4 and FY '26, and also the rationale behind doing -- would it be incremental means that would it be -- it's for the whole of the following year based on the volume assumptions we have accounted for the following year? Or would it be repeated also the cost would get further repeated for FY '27. And have you seen this channel inventory now matching up with the norms and the regulatory on the ground so that you can recover that cost because everyone would also have a like-for-like impact on the cost.

Sure. Thank you. I'll take that one. So we are not giving any further breakups within the regulatory piece on what is the incremental e-waste and what's the energy up charges because that would be a very, very high level of getting into the detail, which we're not keen on doing. But to answer your questions, Mr. Priyank on the e-waste. Let me take each of those separately. On e-waste, we are providing at the highest possible rate that we can provide for. And the way I would look at this is -- at this point in time, there's a lot of discussion between the ministry, producers like ourselves and the recyclers in terms of what would probably make the most sense, and there's quite a bit of discussion on this topic. If there was any rationalization of these costs, then obviously, we would stand to benefit. If there was no rationalization of these costs going forward, then we wouldn't lose anything. So that's the best way that I can put it. And the magnitude obviously depends on what the rationalization is. And those kind of requests and discussions are ongoing as we speak because the industry -- the entire industry, not only this industry, but all industries, but specifically this industry is feeling the heat a lot from this incremental e-waste provision. So that's in the first part. On the second part, if you look at the energy upcharge, the energy upcharge is a permanent upcharge to the bone, right? And this is because the bill of materials cost goes up. When you go -- basically, what happens is last year's 3-star becomes this year's 2-star. So in a sense, what you have to do is if you want to have a 1- to 5-star range in your portfolio, you have to basically upgrade each of the levels one stop. And when you do that, you have to use more expensive compresses, more expensive insulation, more expensive vacuum panels, et cetera. And therefore, basically, with regulatory changes like this energy upgrades, cost goes up unit by unit. The logical thing would be that when the cost has actually gone up, that logically, if it was one company that was just doing this, there was only one company in India, then that company would take up the price because it is a cost incremental to your business, right, and you would recover the price. It's a very competitive market. And while I'm saying that, let me also add on that I had kind of said that the cost situation would be challenging this year for the entire industry and also for us because of the regulatory up charges because the energy changes even in the last quarter. But of course, on top of this, we now have the impact of the war effect basically on costs as well as supply. So yes, I believe the industry has taken whatever actions it has to take. Each individual company, obviously, does whatever they been best. We have done what we deemed best, and you can figure it out for the market. I don't want to talk about what we've done in April and May because that would not be appropriate, but it's out there in the market. And we will have to see what happens with the market and what the market does. We always have to keep in mind that we have to cover our costs and keep ourselves profitable at least to a reasonable extent. At the same time, we're in a very competitive market, and we need to make sure that we're not outpriced. So if it comes to a place where we're outpriced and we start having an impact on volumes in a material way, then we alert do what we need to do to protect our business. So it's always the delicate balance that we need to do between managing our volume and our market shares and our value and managing our profits. So I hope I answered your question, the energy charge is here to stay. I think the next year is supposed to be 3 years from now. So every time there is a energy upcharge, there will be a cost of charge. And theoretically, the best way to do that is to recover it by pricing. Practically, that is decided by what individual players do in the market and what other individual players do in response to what the competition does.

Perfectly. So hence, my follow-up question, and I thought so, I'll take your perspective what can be the scenario that can play out with the Middle East raw material and freight charges going up as well as regulatory costs, further loading up. So the 2 scenarios, which we can think of it can happen is maybe a competition rationalizes and the pressure eases then this is followed with the pricing growth. And then this scenario would lead to maybe a market share consolidations within gains to the incumbent. Or do you think that there can be a down trading itself by a consumer, whether cost loading happens so high, and it would over all the efforts that we would be doing. I mean, just your thoughts on what can be the possible scenario that you think can be playing out in our industry?

Yes. It's a great question. I wish I knew the answer to this question. Anything can happen. It's very difficult to predict the macroeconomic environment. What we are focused on is not so much on what's happening at a 2 macro level because obviously, we have 0 influence on anything. We, as a company, I'll tell you what we are focused on. we are focused on figuring out what's happening on the supply situation from 2 points of view. One is what's happening with respect to availability of products, right? Quite a few of the products are dependent on coming through the Strait of Hormuz. Oil is dependent on that, which is required for a lot of things that we do in our industry. Many of the materials, plastics are built based of oil. EPS that we use for packing is based on oil. [indiscernible] in it that you may use is based on oil. So there's a lot of things as based on that. And the second thing that obviously is a very big impact other than the price of oil is obviously the ForEx rate. And that is also important because typically, in this industry, we make almost all of our products in India, which is incredible. But obviously, there is some amount of imported components for all industry players because all the components are not made in India, right? So typically, between -- depending on the company, between 20% and 35% of products components may be imported, right, depending on the company. And so that part of it is subject to ForEx. So both of these is what we are monitoring on a daily basis, making our plans against that, making sure that we are talking and working very, very closely with our suppliers on an hourly basis, because what you actually have to do is make sure, first of all, that you have supply of competence to be able to make your products. If you don't make a product, then there's nothing to sell. So this is the first point. And the second point is how do you manage your costs. Both are significant challenges for all players, not only in our industry but pretty much in every industry and pretty much around the world because this is something that affects everyone. And it's up to individual people, how individual companies, how this is being managed. We are working a huge amount on this to make sure that we can keep our factories going, produce great quality products at the best possible cost that we can make. Then the second part is, obviously, there is a certain amount of pricing that maybe the market will bear. It's a very competitive market. And beyond that, also the question is what the consumer will do. So there are so many variables on this. That to actually guess what is going to happen I think it's like a roll of the dice. So what we are doing is focusing on what we can control and what we should be delivering, which is our everyday work and staying close to the ground in terms of managing our supply looking and taking the right decisions that we feel on cost and on pricing, and then monitoring the market very closely, and we will keep on modifying dynamically our actions as we go through because it's an incredibly dynamic time.

Sorry to interrupt, Priyank. We request you to please rejoin the queue if you have any further questions. Our next question is from the line of Naushad Chaudhary with Aditya Birla Mutual Fund.

Congrats for a decent set of number in a very challenging time. First, I wanted to understand on the AC piece of business, what would have been the full year revenue contribution from what is our aspiration for the next 2, 3 years in this category? And how much capital it would require to reach to a stational number?

Thank you very much, Mr. Chaudhary. I would not be able to share the exact AC contribution because we don't lay out that number, but AC is still a small proportion of our total business. As you know, refrigerator still covers more than 50% of our total business. Washing machines cover about 25%, 30% of our total business. AC would be the next big play basically along with Elica. That would be the kind of thing. Our aspiration on AC, I can certainly answer that. I think we would like to grow in AC across the years strongly but responsibly. And what I mean by that is that we would obviously like to increase our market share in this very dynamic and fast-growing -- and I'm talking about the last 5 years, fast-growing industry of air conditioners. It's something in which we have low shares. And therefore, for us, the sky is the limit. But having said that, we are very, very conscious that there's also a category in which working capital is very heavily utilized at least in certain quarters. And it's also not at the margin profile even for the most established players. It's not the margin profile of our refrigerators or washing machine business. And therefore, I would say that we would like to grow this business very responsibly. We would like to grow this business very strongly, but focused on offtake, focused on making sure our products are selling out, and we are putting in as much products as are selling out. So the focus is not so much on loading huge amounts of inventory into the market and hoping for it to sell. We are trying to sell much more to offtake, a closer relationship to offtake. And that way, we can make sure that we will grow, we will grow responsibly, and we will make sure that we are not stuck in a situation where we are sitting on a lot of inventory, which we then have to liquidate with taking whatever actions which may not be helpful for the P&L, if that makes sense. That's what I would say would be our strategy, responsibly, strongly growing the AC business.

Any specific market where you'll be more aggressive on the AC business?

Oh, no. We love all of India. So we are actually just to be very straightforward on that. Whirlpool is a completely pan-India brand. So we don't have any particular places. There are some places where, of course, we are stronger than in other places. But the split of the AC business is also slightly different. And therefore, we are focusing where we need to focus. Obviously, we focus where the markets are strong. And the second type of area that we focus, for example, are the markets where our market shares are very strong in other categories. So, a, where the category itself is strong, and b, those markets where our market share is very strong in repetition washers, which means we have a very strong brand profile. Those are the 2 kind of areas that we focus on, but that is a significant proportion of the country. It is not 3 or 4 states.

The second question on the cash balance, which we have on the balance sheet. Any thought on that in terms of utilizing that cash, either for building or acquiring some additional category or if at all, any buyback plans to use that cash.

Yes, I'll pass this on to Mr. Aditya jain. Aditya?

Thanks for your question. From a cash perspective, the first thing I'd say, it's a good problem to have. So it's good to have a good cash on the balance sheet. And the second piece is like our approach to investments is a little different since the time we've become an Indian origin company wherein the -- now we don't have any budgetary constraints, et cetera, and our decisions are purely guided by the right projects, the right ROIs and the right payback. So there's no constraint given that we don't have a constraint on cash and there are no budgetary constraints. So that's the only factor which drives the decision-making. And a couple of areas we're in looking forward to investing a little bit more aggressively than in the past, a, it is on the ongoing business, especially driving the product innovation. We invested a lot of money in setting up front load factory a few years back. Mr. Eswar spoke about the premium frost-free refrigeration. So a large CapEx has been spent in setting up that facility as well. And as you get into the future, having the cash and balance sheet gives us the flexibility to bridge all the portfolio gaps, which exist today and accelerate our innovation pipeline. The second area which we're looking at right now is the entire automation in our factories. It not only helps the process and the quality, but would help us -- give us a lot of cost savings as well. And hence, that is the other area is what we're evaluating to see that how can we utilize the cash. Third important area is the entire cost management. and the projects wherein we can trade off a little bit of CapEx with the cost with the right level of paybacks as we've seen that the cost environment is going to get more and more challenging, while we have P4G programs, but then the regulatory costs and other pieces, headwinds keeps coming in. And hence, finding out a lot more projects wherein we can invest in and get our costs down, be it factories, be it products, be it network optimization, et cetera, et cetera. Fourth area for us, which we're valuating is all about, as you said, about getting into a decent categories, looking at backward integration. And why are we looking at those kind of options given I think the geopolitical situation and supply chain uncertainty is going to stay in some of the other manner. And then doing that piece not only helps us get us a little bit more certain from a supply chain stability point of view, but again, can get us a lot of cost efficiencies as well. Now outside of this, there are always options to go into the market and look at inorganic opportunities like we did Elica about 6, 7 years back. And probably just from a sure cash point of view, it is sufficient enough to look at a company of a similar size. So these are some of the options. Now do you have an exact time line in terms of what we're doing. Ongoing business, we do it in day in, day out, and they're looking at all those opportunities on an ongoing basis. But when it comes to a little bit more inorganic, we're looking into all those options. We started work and along with guidance from our Board members, we're taking appropriate steps in that direction. We assure you as a management and with the inputs from the Board, we are looking at investing cash in a manner which generates the long-term value for the shareholders.

But one thing on the cash is very clear to our head that we are going to use this in the business in either of these forms, either organically or inorganically, but this is not going to the shareholders in either form or debiting or buyback?

So buyback is something that we have not looked at, at this point in time because we think there is a lot of opportunity that we can actually take. Like I was saying, especially on innovation, there is so much more that we plan to do across the next 12 to 18 months in terms of bringing innovative products to the market, and I would say 12 to 24 months, actually, as we invest. Plus, like Aditya was saying, we are very interested in looking at other opportunity areas in the market, which can add overall value to the company. And obviously, if those opportunity areas come through, then it would be a really good use of cash. If those opportunities are not to be found across the next year or so, then obviously, then that is not incrementally available. But we do believe that we are at that time of our existence where aggressive investment across the next 12 to 24 months can really take us into a different level of growth on both revenue and profitability.

Our next question comes from the line of Atul Mehra with Motilal Oswal Asset Management.

Sir, firstly, I wanted to get a sense of now that we are an independent company away from the parent, what is the vision that we have aligned out for the next 3 years, 5 years? Because like I think it was mentioning, we are not constrained now like how we were in the past, right? So I'm sure when you are looking at the drawing board, you guys would have had a 3-year 5-year strategy road map. So if you can outline that? That is my first question, sir.

Absolutely. So [indiscernible] outline that except to the Board. I'll try to give you a very kind of top order thing without going into the numbers and stuff like that because I think that's less critical. As you might have seen in the beginning of the presentation, sir, we are quite excited about the fact that even if it's for a month, we are #2 in the refrigerated in washing machine space. If you would ask me, what is my dream, which I think is a better way of putting it, I would say that obviously holding that position for a long span of time. And it may not be the next month, it may not be the next 3 months or 4 months because it's a hard fat battle with very tough, very well-established competitors. But for me, it's wonderful to be #3. It's even more wonderful to be #2, whether it's for a month or for a quarter or for more, let us see, but we will continue to keep fighting to be in that position and hopefully improve on it. But all of this is only a stop towards the eventual position. So we would like to be the best in the federalism washing machines. And we know that it's going to take us years to do that. We are humble enough to recognize that but we are very clear in our vision to be the best in the gets washing machines, which is something that we have done globally for many years across the world in many markets. So it's not like it's the first time but we need to do that in India. And that is why all the men and women of World pool get up every day in the morning and come to office. It's not for this quarter's results, it's not for today's results or tomorrow's results. It's for what we eventually want to come. And would it take 5 years? Would it take 8 years? Would it take 10 years? That's a good question. I would hope to say definitely that than 10 years, but that's why we come to office, to be honest with you. We've never publicly said that before, but I say it today, that's our dream to basically become the #1 player in refrigerators and washing machines, which is why we need to be there across all the segments. While doing that, we will hope to have a healthy business in other aspects as well. For example, in the air conditioner space, and I'm now not getting into the detail, but I don't think right now we have an aspiration to be #1 in air conditioners because it's too much to chew on. But for me, refrigerant washing machines, which we have played for 40 years, know the space very well, have the ability, have the knowledge and the experience now have the resources, the energy for sure and have the organization. we need to march steadily towards that goal across the next few years. Having said that, we also need to do that in a profitable manner. It's not about just getting to market share, spending money left at and center, and we don't have anybody who support us on the financials or any of that sort. So it's all got to be self-generated. We will do that in a responsible way. So it may take us a little bit longer to get there. It will not be 5 years, it will probably be more than 5 years to get to the leadership position in refrigerators and washers. We know that. But one day, we hope to get there. and we hope to get there while improving our profitability across time. I've already mentioned that this is not the short term. This is more the long-term thing I'm talking about. I have already said to you that '26, '27 will be difficult financially for the entire industry and also for Whirlpool because of all the energy changes because of all the war impacts that are happening, which are very, very significant and kind of continuing to be not so clear as we go along. But all these things will end one day. What will not end is our passion to be the best at what we do. We would for like grow our business, grow our air conditioner business, maybe have some associated other business, which are synergistic in a go-to-market perspective, but add value to us, from both a revenue growth and a profitability standpoint, which I think what Mr. Chaudhary's question was, which we answered, would we absolutely love to have businesses like we acquired Elica. There could be other businesses that could be very interesting, but it's got to also be similar on go-to-market ideally, though we are not close to other options. And we want to do that profitably over time.

Got it. Sir, secondly, my question is in this thought process of utilizing cash towards potential synergistic acquisitions, et cetera, et cetera. My only apprehension on this is you have a stock, which is according to you trading at attractive valuations because you have bought stock in the open market, right? So as a CEO, you believe the stock is undervalued and you have bought it in the open market. But for some reason, it appears that you don't want to deploy that cash for a buyback. So this very strange from the perspective that you have a stock, which is trading at 1/3 is valuation that it was trading at in the past. The management believes it's undervalued. You guys have bought the stock in your own personal portfolios, right? But despite that, you are not considering a buyback. So it is very strange and basal why despite having no use of cash and despite a very attractive in terms of valuation on the stock, the Board and the management is not considering a buyback it's really not understandable. If you can elaborate a little bit on that.

No. Thank you, sir, for that. And I'll just give my little perspective, and then I will ask Aditya, who understands this the topic a lot more than I do, I can assure you. I think I certainly believe that World pool India has a bright future. There's absolutely no doubt, which is why as you might have noticed, thank you for noticing. Some of us did pick up with our own money, basically, the stocks, Whirlpool of India stocks basically. Having said that, I think there are quite a few opportunities in front of us that we are considering. And these opportunities can add a lot of value. It's early days. I'm not saying we're anywhere close to anything, significant. But it's early days, and there are opportunities that we think, and I think as a businessman that could add significant value to Whirlpool of India, without going into the detail of what those opportunities are, and we continue to evaluate those opportunities. It would be remiss of me not to really play that out. And please keep in mind that it's November when the transaction happened where Whirlpool Corporation went below 50%, following which we've had, hey, one energy change, which is probably taken a lot of energy out of all of us. And we've also had an impact of war. And in the middle of all of this, you can imagine the amount of work required to keep us going. We need to do our day jobs and then look at other things as well. it's going to take us a little bit of time to consider that. Obviously, we want to do what's best for our shareholders, but we really do think what's best for our shareholders in the long run, and we are not looking at today's share price and feeling depressed or demoralized at all. We are looking at what we are doing and saying if everything was to come back to status quo in other aspects, we should be -- when times get right with the kind of momentum that we are trying to build, with the kind of discipline that we're trying to work with, we should be able to achieve quite a few of our goals. And there could be significant opportunities that we want to pursue. And we will not be able to pursue that if we do some things in a rush or in a hurry, under pressure. So I'm going to ask you to trust us a little bit more on this. We have a very well-informed board that is also looking at these things. And we've not had a huge amount of time post this acquisition -- post this transaction, as you can imagine. But I think Whirlpool India can do a lot more in the coming 12 to 24 months in terms of utilizing quite a few of the assets that we have that you mentioned. And I would like to help grow this business as my primary kind of source of excitement and happiness. That's what we would like to do. Happy to listen to Aditya's point of view on this, if you have anything more to add.

So I think Mr. Eswar, you said it all. I think the limited point here is that we have a vision, we have a vision to grow and we have the vision to be the #1. And in that vision, there are opportunities on the way to deploy this manner -- to deploy this cash in a manner which can take our company to the next level. So it is a question of a little bit of short term versus long term. And we believe that with a vision to grow, we would need that on the way to make our company successful and which will ultimately lead to a long-term value creation for the shareholders. And that's where a thought process is as of now, and we will evaluate that in a little bit more detail in the next 12 to 24 months and take the right decisions.

Right. My only feedback is focus should be on shareholder growth and not just business growth. At the end of the day, shareholders won't return on the company's investments, right? So do consider a buyback in terms of as part of the many avenues that you are considering, while you're considering many other potential M&A, et cetera. Do you also keep in mind that a potential acquisition is just acquiring your own shares, which could be undervalued. So please keep that in mind as a suggestion.

Our next question is from the line of Umang Mehta with Kotak Securities.

My first question was on your capital progress. You heard that premium refs, frost-free is something which is on cards. But anything else which is ongoing in terms of capacity expansion? And any plans of any CapEx for room AC because what we understand is globally because Whirlpool didn't have any manufacturing, we always were kind of on the back foot. Is it possible to commit any CapEx and start production in India in the near future? That's the first question.

Sorry, Mr. Mehta, your voice broke a little bit. Could you just repeat in brief the question? I'm so sorry, your voice broke.

No worries. Sorry, I hope I'm audible now. Just what are capacity expansion plans, [indiscernible] CWIP of INR 200 crores. Can you share some thoughts or insights? And any plans to expand AC capacity or put up AC manufacturing in India in the near future?

I'll take the first question, which your question was on basically the CWIP. The CWIP right now pertains to the premium refrigerators we spoke about since we've not started it since it is going to come in the next quarter. So the CapEx is still line in CWIP and it has not got capitalized. I just want to clarify that piece.

Yes, sorry. So basically, Mr. Mehta, we hope to bring in a few things across the next 12 to 24 months. And I say 12 to 24 months because some buttons have been pushed. But as you know, this is a high engineering business, and it's not very easy to bring everything into market in 12 months. There's quite a few buttons that have been pushed by the Board with the Board's advice by us in terms of what we will do. And like I said, our accent will be firstly, to make sure that we cover all portfolio gaps that we have in refrigerators, washing machines. We are also open to looking at other areas of investment where there are significant opportunities in the near future in terms of expansion into those categories, right, associated categories. In terms of the air conditioning investment into CapEx, this will be a commercial and strategic decision. The reason I'm saying that is because there is quite a bit of capacity in the country. available with 3PL players who can supply air conditioners to you with your design, to your specifications to your technical requirement. And you've got to balance that off with investment into CapEx of your own plant. Now that does make sense at a certain volume possibly, and we are continuously evaluating that decision. And then we need to make the decision, we absolutely will do that. But for me, I just need to make sure that if I get into a new plant, then I should make sure that the depreciation does not hurt by P&L any more than it needs to. So the short answer to the question is it totally depends on how we go across the next few years, and it depends on what happens with the 3PL manufacturers that we have, what kind of partnerships you can strike what kind of deals we get strike and what economics would make sense for us. So as long as the economics is making a lot of sense for us, we are fine. If at some point in time, the economics of setting up your own plant is better than the economics of sourcing from then we certainly would not hesitate to take the decision at that point in time.

Got it. And the second question was on your margins. So 2 points to it. One was what was e-waste expense absolute number in '26, and where is it likely to land in '27? And any crystal ball gazing you can do in terms of what margins can we look at either in terms of gross or EBITDA in FY '27? I know there are many moving pieces, but as of now, what would be your best assessment?

Yes. Sir, as far as the e-waste is concerned, we're not giving out. You will see the e-waste data, I can't remember it at the off my head, but you will actually see it when we are publishing our annual report, it will all be there because it's statutory to declare that. Margins, to be honest, we can't give any guidance right now. As I said before, this is an incredibly unusual time. If it had been a normal year, even then I probably would be loathe not to give any guidance on margins because it's such a competitive market, right? It's not like -- I don't want to say which category, but there are some industries where you take a price increase for one year and then everybody is clear. This is the kind of business where the price list changes on a monthly basis. So this is not the kind of place where we can just give out any margin guidance, honestly, I wouldn't do that. Also, in this current context, I would say it's almost impossible to predict. Like I said, we are focused on making sure that we're doing the right things for the short and the long term, taking all of cost and all of revenue into account. But any guidance I would absolutely not be able to give on margins. I will say that, as I said before, before the war impact started, I said '26-'27 would be a challenging year. Because of energy regulations coming in because of these incremental e-waste provisions that all people have to make it wouldn't be a challenging year because of the competitive thing. The war is there on top. So we're just praying for good outcomes, and we are working incredibly hard to make sure that we make as best an outcome as possible out of what we have in front of us.

Next question is from the line of Natasha Jain with PhillipCapital.

First question is on refrigerator. So the past couple of years, we've seen that the industry growth here has been pretty much flat despite of being a cooling product and summers being good. So could you throw some light as to what's happening in this category? I understand even penetration is not that great here. So why is this category being a laggard in terms of appliances?

Yes, ma'am, it's a great question. I would say I can't give you a definitive answer to this question, but what you have observed is true. At the entry level, the direct cool refrigerator business, the industry has not done well in the last 5 years. And I'm not talking about market shares and movement between players. I'm talking about the entire industry. I think post COVID in terms of the recovery that's happened from the economy, I think that's 1 of the factors. You had a situation where it's a little bit like a K curve. It's not been one-sided kind of growth for everybody. It's been a bit of a cup. The downward part of the K-curve is basically impacted DC, the Direct Cool business and the semi-automatic business as because these are entry-level products at the entry of BC. And then of course there's a middle end of premium as well. Now you also have a situation where if the bottom part of the K-curve is not moving as fast. And I'm really, really hoping and looking forward to that moving up fast because that trickle down has to happen, plus with all of the recent activities that have been opened up with income tax labs opening up, GST being brought down on products, not so much for refrigerators or washing machines, but certainly for air conditioners and panels and cars and so on and so forth. There's a lot of housing programs being done by the government. I think it's around the corner. Now is it 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months from now? I do not know, but it's generally not 3 years away, where penetration should start growing again. As the trickle down happens, the penetration starts growing again also because of all these other events that I mentioned. And when that happens, I think BC will start picking up, SA will start picking up. These are not sunset categories, absolutely not in this country. What actually, I think, ma'am, practically speaking, in my view, is happening is a lot of people who have refrigerators as that are 8 years old or 10 years or 11 years old, and you would expect them to upgrade to a new model, potentially saying, "Hang on, let me just maybe carry on for another 2 years by doing some amount of repairing and some amount of managing somehow" because we do a lot of jugaad innovation in our country. And I think that's probably happening here as well, where decision-making on buying the next refrigerator is getting postponed. It cannot be postponed forever because at some point in time, machines that you bought 15 years ago, 14 years ago, 20 years ago, for sure, you can't repair it beyond a point in time. All machines have a life. So I think it's a matter of time before that comes in. So there are 2 big things that I think are going to happen. I think the bottom half of the curve is going to start lifting because of all the impact that the government is putting in, but also because of the fact that the trickle down effect has to happen. And the second part of it is that as people have postponed their purchases, but now there is a point beyond which you cannot postpone. So when it comes back, you should hit -- I think mathematically, you should get a double whammy health, which would be very nice to see especially for somebody like us who is very strong in BC and in semi-automatic. We would love to see that take up.

Got it. So do you think a B rating kind of thing in refrigerator could pump up the demand?

Ma;am, it's a very nice question. It's very probably a tricky one to answer. I think what is really important in DC and semiautomatic is making sure that the price point makes a lot of sense for the consumer for the value that they're getting, right? On the 1 hand, having more energy efficient products is very good because it helps save energy. It helps conserve energy for the country. It's a wonderful thing. On the other hand, if you increase -- keep on increasing star ratings, then the cost also goes up, right? The refrigerator will not be the same cost for a 2-star and a 3-star and a 4-star. Basically, it's impossible to be at the same cost. So energy rating cannot increase without a commensurate increase in cost. And there's a commensurate increase in cost, then over time, there has to be a commensurate increase in pricing. It may not be immediate, but over time, it has to happen. And therefore, as we know, when price goes up, demand could potentially go down. So this is a very complex relationship. We are doing the right thing as the country as an industry by upgrading our energy-efficient machines and so on and so forth. It might have, beyond a point in time, if overused, then it could potentially have an impact of pulling down demand instead of pushing it up. And that's where I think that tight balances, which is what is always speaking with to the ministries about.

Understood. Sir, one last question and 1 feedback. So in terms of washers, the question is fourth quarter and the first quarter continues to be a good quarter. Could you throw some light in terms of how Whirlpool is performing there and especially our front load -- fully automatic front load category. And the feedback, sir, saw very strong traction for your RAC on the ground and good feedback in terms of both product quality and cooling. I just wanted to leave you on that.

Thank you very much, ma'am. On washers, like I said, our front-load washers -- washers overall, we've had some pretty solid results. We've had share increases in the last quarter, as I said in the presentation, there's been volume market share increases and obviously, value market share increases in all 3 categories in the last quarter, in fully automatic and semi-automatic and in front load. Specifically, on my front-load washers, as you might have seen, we have strong double-digit shares in top load, nearly close to our DC shares, actually. We've got pretty strong double-digit growth in semi-automatic, but our front-load washing machine share is still only single digit. So we have tremendous opportunity in that because we are known as a washing machine company. We invented the washing machine globally. So I would say it would almost be unfulfilled potential if we don't take our front-load washing machine to where it needs to be, which is the top echelon of front-load washing machines. But it's an incredibly competitive market. A lot of existing, very strong players have big stakes there. So it's not going to be easy, but we are moving ahead one step at a time. And like I said in the last 6 or 7 -- probably 8 quarters, which is over the last 2 years, we've had either high double-digit or triple-digit basis point share growth in every quarter versus the previous year. And thank you for your comment on the room air conditioner. Much appreciate it.

Since you are hearing the closing time for the meeting today, we'll take one last question from Mr. Achal Lohade with Nuvama Institutional Equities.

Just two questions. First, I know the industry and the company has gone through a lots of ups and downs. But if you were to look at from a steady state perspective, what is the margin range once you look at for Elica and for the rest of the business? That's my #1 question. And secondly, in terms of the adjacency, is it fair to say that it will be in the large kitchen appliances or you could also evaluate something in the smaller plan. Those are my two questions.

Thank you very much, sir. Like I said, we are not really giving out any margin guidance now for the future. But just to be very, very top line, I had said even 2 years ago, that our intent over the long run would be to grow the business high single digit year-on-year comparable growth rate. I think maybe we can up that a little bit and go into early double digits as we think about the future, at least that's our ambition, and let's see where life leads us. On the base business, the margins, I think, to be honest, in the long run in this category because of the modeling that if you do your modeling on the regulatory impacts and if you do the modeling on the competitiveness of this industry, you can see today that there's hardly anybody who's in double-digit margins, right? It was not the case 6, 7 years ago in what we call "the good old days," right? Those were the days where you would be sitting on 11%, 12%, 13% margins. Honestly, I think that's going to be very, very difficult for any player to do whether or not you're sitting on double-digit margin today, I think, is not that relevant. What is relevant is it's an incredibly competitive market in which there is a significant regulatory cost component, energy changes that are kind of slated to come across the years. And therefore, over a long span of time, I think to get to a high single-digit margin is probably what is likely in the refrigerator, washing machine air conditioner space, right? And I think that kind of is probably the best that I can tell you. Now what Whirlpool will do or will not do, we will see as we go along. But that's kind of in line with what I said. And that would be long term. It's not definitely not -- I'm not saying medium term at all. As far as Elica is concerned, as you know, it's already in a strong double-digit kind of range. I think with Elica, the key for us is -- Elica is such an incredible brand. And I would say compared to Whirlpool, it's not -- nowhere near that level of distribution because it's a more niche category. And I think there's plenty of potential for Elica across the next decade to be in many, many, many more homes. As India premiumizes, as India aspires more, Elica is this incredible, incredibly designed product, made in India, conceptualized in India, delivered in India, inspired by Italian design. And that is something that I think as we look to that business, I would always hope to keep it in the double-digit margin range. But over the next maybe 5 to 7 years, I would love to take a little bit of that margin and put into driving revenue growth. because I think there is a significant opportunity to drive that category whose penetration is probably less than 5% today, much less than 5%. And I think to get to a washing machine level of 12% to 20% or to a refrigerator, which is in the mid-30s to sub-40 level. Elica has got tremendous potential for growth as well, like ACs have in this country, like washing machines have in this country and like refrigerators country. So I hope I answered that question. On the adjacency. I think, like I said, we started looking at it is early days. We have had to look at a lot of factors. I think the overall, obviously, any business that we get into, whether it's an adjacency or an acquisition or whatever it is a merger, we have to become better owners of the business than the current business. And that, I think, is what is going to be the key. So the obvious things to look at is where are the synergies with respect to go to market? Where are the synergies with respect to what kind of business you want to get, for example, we'd not be really interested in very low-margin businesses. That's not of any interest to us because Elica is a classic example of the kind of business that we would definitely like to have, which is a really good margin business, capable of growing very strongly. We have a lot of potential to grow that business we have the margins with which we can invest into the business. That's a classic example of the type of business. And by the way, similar go-to-market, similar go-to-market, not the same, but a similar go-to-market. And therefore, that's the kind of profile of adjacency or acquisition or whatever you want to call it, that we would like to look at, not something which is completely off the wall. So is it large? Is it small? I think that's less important than is it -- is that beautiful? Is it profitable? Is it synergistic? I hope I answered your question.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Sweta Srivastava for closing comments.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. With that, we would like to draw this call to a close. Thank you.

On behalf of Whirlpool of India Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.