This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
10/27/2023
We will actually provide you the highlights of our second quarter of financial year 2024 presentation. First talk will be Srikanth, who will talk about the consolidated numbers, first followed by Kiran and Ashwin, who will walk you through the year performance, and then Dinesh, who will walk you through detail, then Sanjay Roy for E&P, and then Srikanth back again for O2C and the summary. Over to you, Srikanth.
Thanks, Shini. Good evening to all of you. Let me start off with the highlights for the quarter. It was a quarter of the EBITDA as a record that almost 45,000 crores, which is about 5.4 billion, was up 30% year on year. And we saw performance across all the segments. Net profit, we delivered, again, close to 20,000 crores. That is 2.4 billion. Even that was up 30%. Consumer business, very strong. Retail was the highest quarterly EBITDA with strong footfalls and an 80% margin expansion. Digital services growth led by network relationship, strong subscriber nation, and growing 5G adoption with more than 70 million people having migrated to the 5G network. OTC EBITDA was very strong on the back of domestic demand, which held up very well, firm fuel cracks, and specifically PBC Delta. Another upside came from our KGDC gas production, which was sharply up and also which actually led to a strong performance for our oil and gas segment. So, just the quick highlights before and I'm sure my colleagues will take you through in more detail, but if you look at retail at 77,000 crores, the revenues were up 19 percent. EBITDA at 5,820 crores, which was up 32 percent. So we saw, you can see on a year-on-year basis, the store expansion numbers, the area and operation at 71.5 million square feet, which is again up 31%. We saw in this quarter festive demand and growth across segments. In fact, we had the best ever Independence Day sale, which was for consumer electronics, which recorded a 23% growth. If you see the store additions, we had 471 new stores in this quarter, and when you see the growth over the year, it is more than 2,000 stores. Moving to digital services, revenue close to 32,000 crores up 11%, EBITDA 13,500 up 12.5%. Again, if you see the subscriber addition, we had 11.1 in second quarter and on a full year basis, if you were to compare year on year, 32 million. Data traffic was also higher, close to 29% growth, which is 3.63 exabyte of data. Clearly, you can see traction across and the fact that the offering is significantly differentiated has led to customer engagement, which you are also seeing in terms of translating in terms of earnings. On O2C side, the lack in 48,000 crores of revenue, which is lower by 7.3%. That's more on the back of oil prices. If you were to see year on year, oil prices were lower by almost 14%. But if you look at EBITDA, 16,300 crores up 36% year-on-year. This is on the back of both volume increase, which is up 6%. It was on the back of gasoline cracks, which is up 47%. Even PVC margins were higher. And we continue to benefit from optimized feedstock sourcing. Overall, SAED was lower, but that was also in line with weakness in the mid-display cracks. However, the offset has been the fact that the domestic demand has held up pretty well. If you look at polymer demand is up 25 percent year on year. Polyester demand is up 12 percent. Oil demand is up about 5 percent. So overall, you know, the Indian demand is holding very well. And given that we are, we largely supply more than 85 percent actually get supplied into the domestic market, we benefited. So people are also, you know, you could see Dom's instructor restocking with lower prices because these prices are, you know, some of them are two-year or three-year lows. So you could see a demand coming in terms of restocking. On the oil and gas side, as I highlighted, revenues at 6,620 crores, up 72%. EBITDA, close to 4,800 crores, up 50%. And these are all-time highs. And also, when you look at it, it is benefiting from strong incremental volume, both gas and condensate, from the MGA field. And we just looked at the numbers. Just the KGG6 production alone is now averaging about 20.3 MMSE MD versus what it was in 19 MMSE MD in second quarter of FY23. So these are the numbers when you bring them together, you know, revenues of 2,56,000 almost flat there, but EBITDA has highlighted 45,000 crores, which is up 30%. And when you look at, as I mentioned, as you saw, all the EBITDA has been across the board. All the segments have done well. And in this quarter, you could see that the flow through EBITDA going into the net profit there. On a standalone basis, if you were to see, JPL is up 12%, RRVL up 21%. And there you can see that the net profit growth in the consumer business were tempered by higher depreciation, you know, with accelerated asset growth and higher network utilization. This is just the bridge for second quarter for a year on year basis. Again, across the board, you can see all the businesses contributing. And primarily on O2C side, you can see the sharp increase there on the back of O2C. Gasoline and PVC margins, oil and gas, you know, EBITDA is driven by volumes in KGD 6. Retail benefiting from a much more broader broad-based revenue growth in each of these categories. For example, fashion and lifestyle was up 32%, grocery 33%, consumer electronics about 11%. and digital services again benefiting from the from the numbers that I talked to you on the subscriber growth as well as ARPU was slightly higher contributing to the overall mix. And this is just the sequential quarter highlighting the fact that in the OTC segment you know fuel tracks PVC delta you know helped in terms of delivering on the numbers and oil and gas the ramp up of MJ field. On retail, benefiting from the store expansion, higher footfalls that we saw, and the festive season campaigns, et cetera, all of them done their bit in terms of, you know, seeing the growth. And on digital services, data traffic growth, starting to see the benefit of Jio Bharat phone and the increase in subscribers, both on a quarter-on-quarter basis as well as year-on-year basis. And then bringing it to the balance sheet, net debt lacked in 17,727. It is lower by 8,000 crores versus what it was in March. And, you know, our operating cash flows, which we have been highlighting, funded largely the capex of 38,815, which, as you know, primarily was towards 5G rollout and also for building our retail ecosystem. And the net debt was lowered on the back of the capital raise that we did of 10,347 crores. This is for Reliance Retail, which we raised from QIA and KKR. So that is reflected in the net debt number. The amount which we have raised is an incremental 4,967 crores from Adia, you know, comes through, will come through in October. You know we do expect that the capex intensity will significantly decline given that the 5G network rollout is expected to be completed by end of this year. So overall you know cash flows continues to be strong, balance sheet is strong and the fact that we continue to have superior rating you know augurs well overall. With this, I'm going to request Kiran and Anshuman to take us through on the Jio side. Thank you. Thank you, Srikanth. As usual, we'll start with the key business updates and follow it up with operating metrics and the financials. I think the key theme this quarter has been the phenomenal rollout, which continues of Jio's true 5G. As we speak, over 1 million 5G cells are deployed by Jio on a pan-India basis, which is also being used now by more than 70 million subscribers who have migrated from our 4G services to 5G. So healthy utilization getting unlocked against the investment and the capacity that we are building. In total, more than 150,000 towers today across the country carry both the bands, the 700 megahertz band, as well as the 3,500 megahertz band spectrum with respect to our sales. And as we speak, the monthly 5G traffic has crossed 1.5 exabytes on a monthly basis. Now, the key story here is that there are nominally more than one operator, in addition to Jio, rolling out 5G across India. But the fact on the ground is that more than 85% of the 5G cells deployed in the country today are from Jio. So that is the real reason why you are seeing the rapid adoption on our network as opposed to other operators. This 5G rollout significantly enhances our already well-established competitive position in the market. We are seeing dramatic adoption across key segments, especially the youth segment. They are really heavy users of data, and we can see that the adoption of Jio to 5G is the highest in this segment. Equally, if you look at the penetration of premium devices on Jio's network, looking at the numbers that we had in March of devices which are having an average selling price of more than 20,000 rupees as a benchmark, that base has doubled since March, between March and September. So that actually indicates that the premium experience and the premium services that GeoProof 5G is rolling out across the country is also attracting people who have premium aspirations. Equally, in addition to the mobility network, we have also launched geo-air fiber, which is our fixed wireless offering, which is a promise of providing fiber-like speeds over 5G spectrum to residences. This is augmenting our already well-established geo-fiber, which is our optical fiber-based service, but really giving it, taking it to the next orbit with respect to the speed at which we can roll it out across India. And the unique thing that Jio is able to do is that because of the fact that we are rolling out the standalone version of 5G, as opposed to our competitors who are using non-standalone, we are able to use advanced technologies like network slicing, which means that we are able to create dedicated capacity for homes which are not interfering with the capacity that we are deploying for mobility, which gives superior service to both. audiences, but leveraging the same physical capacity that people on a pan-India basis. Also worth mentioning is that, I mean, there are some very interesting apps which have been, I would say, launched by some of our competitors who seem to indicate that their 5G rollouts have resulted in many people joining the network. What is really left unsaid is that more number of customers have actually left those networks. And Jio is the only operator today in the country who has a consistent positive net ads, whereas the rest of the industry is actually quite negative when it comes to net ads. Well, they can talk about the gross ads, but the net ad story, there's only Jio who has added more than 11 billion customers over the last quarter, while everybody else has kind of lost some numbers. I think another testament to the fact that we have the 85% capacity share as well as the pan-India rollout, the rapid adoption of premium customers and the youth segment on our network. All of that is further reinforced by a unique first in the world type of a recognition that we have received. Ookla, which is a well-established organization, provider of benchmarking services, especially when it comes to coverage, speed, and quality. For the very first time in the world, anywhere in the world across even developed countries and so on, for the very first time, Jio has won pretty much all the nine out of nine awards that they have announced when it comes to mobile services. Everything from the fastest mobile network to the best coverage to the overall best to the best mobile gaming experience, the best video experience, customer rating in terms of the top-rated mobile network, and specifically on 5G, the fastest 5G, the best 5G mobile gaming, and the best 5G mobile video experience. So all nine metrics that they announced, Jio has won outright. The other leg that we are very, very much focused on, and this has been a consistent theme from the times you have launched, is to eradicate 2G services from India. So this is what we call creating a 2G MOOC Bharat. Of course, our 4G network and the 5G network is fan India. It is the highest quality, most affordable network. But there remains a problem with 2G. affordability of devices which has still kept a lot of 2G customers from being able to join our network and take advantage of all of the rich services that we offer. So Jio Bharat is the recent step that we have made in that direction. We have launched a series of devices, multiple models under the umbrella of Jio Bharat. The entry price point of this device is less than a thousand rupees. which is, I would say, on par with most 2G phones, if you can think about it. And we are offering a fully capable 4G entry-level smartphone in the hands of the 2G customers in India. And we are seeing a substantial adoption of that, especially through MNP. So that means people are actually porting their numbers and coming to this device. And the real secret behind that is even on such a sharply priced device, We are able to offer a rich video experience, music experience, both on streaming, video on demand, as well as live, and even features like UPI, which obviously brings international inclusion. So all of these services are really creating a differentiated offering, even on a sharply priced device, which is something that 2G users are loving. And in addition to that entry-level price point, we are also creating a good, better, best type of a lagger, where people have an option to even go for bigger screens and other added features for slightly more, by putting in a little bit more money, they are able to go after slightly better devices as well. So great lineup of devices that we are offering to the 2G segment in India, and we are confident that this dream of 2G will happen sooner because of this. On the air fiber side, which is, like I said, the fixed wireless, we are seeing tremendous demand. We launched it very recently in a few cities across India. Very shortly, we are looking to open it up across India. What we are finding is that a large proportion of the non-fiber-covered areas are really the ones clamoring for this device, because they've seen what geofiber can do in certain parts of the country. They have a very quick way to get those services into their homes. What we are doing as we speak is obviously ramping up the entire supply chain of all the equipment that is needed to connect these homes using 5G technology, and also ramping up obviously the additional go-to-market aspects, including who can go and install these in those homes. I think really the target for us is that ambition that we have of connecting north of 100 million premises in the quickest possible way is now getting rapidly or substantially accelerated because of the airplane. And if you look at the plans that we have offered, again, there's a whole ladder of plans that people can choose from. from anywhere as low as 30 Mbps to all the way up to 1 gigabit of speed that they can choose from. At the top end, it absolutely mirrors the capabilities that we have from our optical fiber service. So there's a full lineup of services, extremely affordable, bundled with a rich bouquet of content, everything from live channels to OTT apps, including in some of the In most of the plans, even popular services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and of course Geo Cinema from the Geo stable, in addition to 14 other well-established OTT apps, all bundled as part of the subscription that people take on AirFiber and AirFiber Nights. On the enterprise side, again, we are making quick progress. Today, as we speak, In addition to mobility and home that I spoke about, if you look at all of the large named enterprises in the country, Jio is present across 85% of them, so that means we have a relationship with more than 85% of the large and named enterprises. The top 20 banks and more than 400 DFS accounts, which is a big segment in India in the financial sector, run on Jio connectivity today. When it comes to bids from the government sector, again, we are seeing more than 80% bid rate when it comes to open bids. Again, showing recognition and adoption of Jio services, both in enterprises as well as large enterprise segment. Also heartening is that beyond connectivity, now we have a whole slew of other services spanning the Internet of Things, connectivity platform as a service and cloud. And what we are seeing is more than one out of four enterprise customers, that's more than 25% already, is using two or more geo-services. So I would say the attack rate of additional geo-services is also increasing with every passing day. And the heartening thing in all of this is that while we are deploying our 5G services, I spoke about both on the mobility and the home segment and also on the enterprise segment. The great news is that all of this is supported by our own indigenous stack that we have built and an entirely cutting-edge next-generation stack, cloud-native to the core. Today it is handling 100% of the 5G traffic that is operationalized on the Jira network. We are also now starting to deploy our own software-defined radios into our network, I would say in terms of adoption of the latest 3GPP standards, we are among the best in the world. In fact, probably even ahead of the world when it comes to adopting some of the, not just adopting, but operationalizing at scale some of the more advanced features as we spoke about in GeoDrew 5G. All of that backed by our own operating stack as well. So in addition to the core 5G technology, we also have the operation support system and the business support system. increasingly on Geo's own software stack. More than 100 unique types of network elements we are able to, both our own as well as from our global technology partners, we are able to manage through the stack. The 5G core is ORAN compliant. ORAN is one of the more advanced radio access network technologies that the world is looking to adopt. We are already compliant with respect to supporting those. And at the heart of it, such a large network with so many moving pieces cannot be managed by humans. So largely the entire AI ML stack that is required to manage this at scale and optimistically optimize it is also something that we have done. So this entire end-to-end stack which is required to operate this cutting edge 5G network is already deployed, operating at scale. And this positions us extremely well to compete in the private 5G market, which is obviously what is relevant for enterprises, not just in India, but globally. And also to be the partner of choice for many telcos, even if you're looking beyond the shores of India. So that's something that we can also feel proud about looking forward. With that, I think I'll hand it over to Anshuman, who can talk about operating numbers and financials.
Thank you, Kiran. Hi, good evening, everyone. Quick update on the operational and financial highlights for the quarter. We have seen steady growth in subscriber addition in this quarter and the numbers increased to 11.1 million. So it's been a steady increase quarter after quarter, unlike all the other operators who've been losing subscribers in this period. And scaling up of the digital platforms, combination of which has resulted in the revenues going up at the consolidated level to 26,875 crores. And EBITDA going up to 13,528 crores, a 13% year-on-year increase in EBITDA. As I said, 11.1 million subscribers net addition during the quarter. So we ended the quarter at 459.7 million subscribers with an ARPU of 181.7 rupees. The ARPU has been growing again steadily quarter after quarter, but mostly on account of the improvement in subscriber mix as well as greater data consumption. Please do keep in mind that we currently do not charge for the 5G services until such time that the services are commercially made available. We are still rolling out the network. So that data consumption is not leading to any additional revenue at this point in time. In terms of data traffic, very strong growth. The total data traffic for the quarter was 36.3 exabyte, up 29% year on year, with increasing usage on both the 5G network as well as higher engagement on the home STBs. So we're leading the industry transition now into the 5G phase on the mobility side with our 5G superior network and the GeoBara devices for the 2G users for them to upgrade to digital services. And then the air fiber for homes and SMEs, which is also now launched and gradually ramping up in the market. As I said, we have been increasing the pace of subscriber addition with our superior network and better quality service offerings that we're giving. Over the last four quarters, the pace of subscriber addition has picked up. And with the 5G rollout getting completed, they should only accelerate. We added three exabytes of data traffic for the last two consecutive quarters. So data traction, the overall data consumption on the network continues to grow very, very rapidly. and that's a healthy sign um as you know we are always very focused on creating the the whole digital ecosystem getting people more engaged more active on the network that clearly is happening over the last few quarters the per capita monthly data usage has increased by 20 year on year to 26.6 gb per user per month now and the air fiber will further accelerate the subscriber momentum in the next uh next few quarters Coming to the key operating matrices for RJIL, our connectivity business, the customer base, as I said, we ended the quarter at 459.7 million subscribers. That was a net customer addition of 11.1. Our pool for the quarter came in at 181.7. And, you know, this was mainly on account of increased, you know, better subscriber mix and increased data usage. Again, reminding that we are not currently charging for any of the 5G data consumption on the network. The total data consumption was at 3.6, 3,600 crore dBs, and voice consumption continues to remain very healthy. Moving on to the financial numbers for RJIL, the connectivity business, the operating revenue for the quarter was at 24,750 crores and the EBITDA was at 13,059 crores. EBITDA margin increased further to 52.8%, playing on the operating leverage theme that we've spoken about. And as we start getting more traction on 5G and home, we expect this to continue to grow further. And a summary of the Geo Platforms Limited consolidated financials. Gross revenue for the quarter was at 31,537 crores. Operating revenues at 26,875, which in dollar terms is $3.2 billion for the quarter. EBITDA came in at 13,500 crores. So $1.63 billion for the quarter. EBITDA margin at 50.3%. And profit after tax of 5,300 crores. Growing... by 4% quarter on quarter, but almost just 16 to 17% on 12% YOY growth in the profit after tax for this quarter. With that, I'm going to hand over to Dinesh to go over the results summary for Reliance Retail.
Hi, thanks, Anshuman. Hi, good evening, everyone. On the retail business, we had delivered a 19% year-on-year growth in gross revenues. which is a pretty healthy growth. If you look at across consumption baskets, grocery grew at 33 percent on a YOY basis. Fashion lifestyle grew at 32 percent, while consumer electronics consumption basket grew at 11 percent YOY. The EBITDA growth was at 32 percent. We continue to see the benefits of operating the average. Our EBITDA margin from operations was 8.1 percent, which is a 70 basis points growth on a YOY basis. Grocery and fashion lifestyle continue to be the key drivers of growth in EBITDA for our business. As we discussed earlier, we raised 15,314 crores of equity from global investors QIA, KKR and Adia. We also completed the transfer of warehousing assets to an Invit entity and total consideration of 5,150 crores was received on 25th October. Our operating metrics continue to show significant scale. Our footfalls grew at 41% YOY. The customer base was up 27% and our number of transactions was up 25% on a year-on-year basis. We continue to invest in expanding our store network. We opened 471 new stores during the quarter. The total retail sales area stands at 71.5 million. We continue to focus on launching new formats to better serve our customers as per their needs. During the quarter, we launched a new format called U-Star, which is a fast fashion focused youth focused format, which is doing reasonably well and we are scaling up this format in the coming quarters. M&A continues to be a core part, a theme for us to expand our capabilities. During the quarter, we completed acquisition of majority stake in Edamama, which is a kids wear brand, as well as we completed acquisition of controlling stake in Superdry IP for India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh territories. So we own the IP and we can expand further categories in this brand. Our overall revenue of 77,148 crores, EBITDA at 5,820 crores. Our digital and new commerce businesses contributed 19% to our gross sales during the quarter. So broad-based growth across channels. Looking at the financials, our revenue was 77,000 crores, which is $9.3 billion. EBITDA from operations at 5600 crores, which is 675 million dollars, 8.1 percent margin. Our total EBITDA was 5800 crores, which was an 8.4 percent margin and profit after tax of 2790 crores, which is 336 million dollars. Quickly covering some of the key highlights across our consumption baskets. So on the consumer electronics, the focus continues to be on expanding our store network. We had the best ever Independence Day sales on August 15th, which was up 23% on a year-on-year basis. The growth was quite broad-based, driven through launch of new categories. There were mobile phone launches. There were promotions being run across different categories, as well as some of the regional festivals, which fell during the quarter. All of them contributed towards growth. Rescue, which is a big differentiator for us, which helps us control the service that we provide ourselves to the customers rather than being dependent on third parties, that continues to grow our network as well as improve the service quality. Our product brands group, it launched new products as well as expanded the range that we offer in our existing categories. We launched the QLED TVs during the quarter. The merchant base where our products are present was up 2.6x on a YOY basis and this continues to be the focus for this business. Our Geomart digital business, the growth was led by phones and high-end televisions. There our merchant base was up 44% on a year-on-year basis. Moving on to fashion and lifestyle. So, offline business delivered a pretty robust growth. This was in spite of the festival quarter falling entirely in the current quarter versus last year part of the festival shopping happened in Q2. So, we had a reasonably robust quarter. As I spoke earlier, we launched the Eustar format and we are seeing very good traction, very good reception reviews from the customers. We also launched a new concept stores under our flagship trends brand. It's a future ready store with a lot of tech and immersive shopping experience and we have got received very good response from customers and we will be looking at scaling up this concept further. We continue to strengthen our own brands. Most of what we sell in our stores are our own brands and we continue to explore various partnerships. Performex, which is our active wear brand, tied up with All India Football Federation to sell products, merchandise. Also, Point Cove, which is another brand tied up with Viacom AT. We continue to invest in design and sourcing ecosystem to enhance our fast fashion capabilities and reduce concept to market time so that we have faster inventory turnaround as well as we have a good pulse on what's selling in the market via relevant fashion in our stores. Just as a reference point, we added 1000 plus new options every day during the quarter. It's a reflection of the success that we have been able to achieve in reducing our design to market cycles. Agio, which is our online platform, continues to do very well and grow from strength to strength. We focus on catalog expansion. Options count were up 50% YOY. A lot of brands are our own brands, which are available only on Agio. We had a geo all-star sale during the quarter which went off very well. We had strong momentum on new customer additions as well and we added over 2 million customers during the quarter. Our partner brands business continues to dominate and lead in the premium brands and luxury segment. We have as you know we have the widest portfolio of international brands and designer brands in the country. We continue to look for a partner with more brands and add into our portfolio. During the quarter, we acquired majority stake in Edamama, which is a kids wear portfolio brand that further helps strengthen our kids wear portfolio. Superdrive is one of the successful brands in our portfolio. We strengthened the partnership with the brand by acquiring a majority stake in IP rights for India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh territory. This is a very important brand for us and we look to scale this up further. Azure Lux, which is our online luxury platform with luxury brands, again continues to add new brands onto the platform as well as options which are available. The option count was up 61% on a year on year basis. Our jewels business continues to do well. We had good momentum and improvement in operational metrics despite the gold rates continuing to be high. The focus remains on differentiating in the market through new designs, new collections themes which are relevant for each market. During the quarter, we launched Vara Lakshmi which is a south focused regional collection and we launched two national collections Belasix and Abhar. Our new business is Laundry. We are making good progress. We are the largest player in this segment now. We continue to build on some of the marquee properties that we have built over the years. So our flagship event, Grand Laundry Festival did very well. It drove a lot of traffic across both our offline as well as online channels. We are looking to expand this category across our format. So, Trends, Azord, Centro, Blushless, which is our multi-brand lingerie and beauty format, which we have recently launched. Across all these formats, we continue to expand our in-house brands and we operate across the spectrum from mid-premium to luxury. We are focusing on general trade so that these brands have wide distribution, which will further deepen the penetration. And that continues to be a focus for all our brands in the portfolio within this segment. We also continue to enhance the portfolio through new launches. Thermals, athleisure and pajama sets is what we launched during the quarter. Urban Ladder, the focus is on, it's an omnichannel business. The focus is on providing more and more touch points to the customer where the customers can touch and feel the product through our experience centers and as well as buy online or in the stores. We are also expanding the category by putting it under many of the smart bazaars that we have launched so that it adds a new category into our smart bazaar portfolio. We have also recently forayed into the institutional sales within the segment. On the grocery side, again, we had a very strong quarter, 33% growth on a YOY basis. The growth was driven by our supermarket hypermarket format, smart and smart bazaar, which continued to do very well. Our flagship Paisa Vasool sale during August was a very big success. We had the highest single day sale on 15th August. We continue to push for general merchandise and other non-food categories and that share continues to go up. We had an interesting collaboration with many prominent brands to promote our Smart Bazaar format, Smart Bazaar Chaliye campaign. It was an industry first initiative where a lot of brands actually funded this initiative, driving traffic onto our stores. As the festival season starting, especially some of the regional festivals, we focused a lot on gift packs and other festive categories, which saw very good traction. One of the themes for us has been to look at regional brands, regional products, take them nationally that helps us differentiate ourselves as well as promote these regional brands, take them pan India, which helps them scale much faster. So that's something that we continue to focus on in addition to premiumization, which is a continuous theme for us. We also continue our integration of our B2B grocery business with Metro and that's something that's under progress. This will help us provide an omni-channel experience to merchants and further strengthen our value proposition for this segment. Our consumer branch business continues to have strong momentum across categories of beverages. We had launched Camper earlier this year and we had phenomenal success. We have launched many other brands in the general merchandise staples category. We had launched Independence. All of them continue to do well. The focus for the business has been to expand the distribution channel and deepen the engagement with general trade. We delivered 4x year-on-year growth in revenue in this business during the quarter. Beverages did exceedingly well and was up 7x on a YOY basis. Kempa has had very good traction. As some of you might have seen, we launched a cricket-themed energy drink called Kempa Cricket to ride on the World Cup wave and that has seen very good results. Reception from customers. Independence brand which we had launched earlier in the year continues its growth momentum. We are now expanding it nationally as well as expanding it to multiple categories. Our online businesses, Geomart and Milkbasket continue to demonstrate sustained growth. There's consistent increase in traffic as well as average bill values. We've been able to grow our average bill values on Geomart meaningfully through various initiatives. We onboarded MS Dhoni as the brand ambassador and launched the GeoServe campaign in October, which has seen very good success. Our grand independent sale saw very strong growth in traffic as well as growth in GMV of some of the newer categories like fashion and general merchandise that we have introduced onto the platform as we endeavour to develop Geomart as a cross-category horizontal platform. We continue to focus on platform enhancements to improve the experience for our customers as well as vendor partners. As some of you might have seen, we introduced the smart ingress for grocery within Geomart. So now Smart Bazaar is available online. Whatever you buy on the store is available on Geomart as well and gets delivered to your home in 24 hours if you were to order online. Our catalog expansion continues. Option count was up 3x on a year-on-year basis. The seller basis up 2x on a YOY basis. So, very good progress on developing the 3P category. That's it. Now, I'll hand over to Sanjay for the oil and gas segment.
Thank you, Dinesh. Very good evening to everyone on the call. Just a recap of the quarter gone by. As we can see, we have a pretty robust quarter on the back of KGD6 gas and condensate production. Essentially, in terms of quarterly performance, on a year-on-year basis, we've seen a 72% jump in revenues, which is about 6,620 crores. In terms of EBITDA, we've seen it grow by almost 50%, greater than 50%, about 4766 crores. This is mainly driven by the improvement in production that we are now seeing. We are well on course ramping up the production from the block, from the various fields, including the MA, the NJ feed to about 30 million standard cubic meters cumulative from KGD 6. As such, even prices were better as compared to the last quarter by over 6%. In terms of KGT6 MJ gas and condensate field, we successfully completed the commissioning as well as the performance test. All eight wells are on production, even as we speak, and are under ramp up. We're close to 30 million standard cubic meters. In terms of CBM, the production remains steady, the base production steady. And in terms of the 40-well program that we have initiated, we expect a production ramp up to commence from the fourth quarter of FY24. We are continuously looking for opportunities. We will be drilling our first exploration well in early November. This is as part of our infrastructure-led exploration efforts. In terms of production, as you can see, we're well on course to achieving 30 million standard cubic meters, which is nearly 30% of ABS gas production, and also nearly 24,000 to 25,000 gallons of condensate. That's what we expect to achieve. Our focus will be not to sustain this production going forward. In terms of the overall markets, you know, mixed aspects, in terms of the supply side, we did see strikes in Australia and a few leakages in some of the pipelines. Consequently, we did see lower supplies. However, we saw storages at historically high levels at about 96% versus the averages of 87%. Now, overall, the energy demand was quite tepid. And what we expect now is in the short term, in the near term, the winter will play a key role. The severity of the winter will dictate gas price movements. Overall, the Indian gas market demand remains quite strong. In fact, in the quarter gone by, we saw consumption of almost 180 million standard cubic meters up 10% from the earlier quarter of 162, mainly driven by gas-based, gas-driven power sector and also from CGD. As such, we are also aware that the ceiling price has been notified for the price is $9.96 cents per for the second half of the year. So overall we expect you know gas prices to remain firm and production will continue to grow to 30 million standard cubic meters. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks Sanjay. Moving to the last presentation on O2C. you know, revenues at a lack and 48,000 crores, lower by 7.3% on a year-on-year basis. That's more driven by the group price that, you know, on a year-on-year basis fell by 40%. We had a strong performance in as far as the EBITDA is concerned, up 36% on a year-on-year basis and almost 7% up on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The year-on-year performance that you see in EBITDA, was on the back of strong gasoline cracks up 47 percent. In petrochemicals, pet chem delta, PVC delta was up 7 percent. We also benefited from a strong domestic demand environment and we will see those percentages in the subsequent slides. Again, continue to benefit from, you know, feedstock sourcing. Of course, on the SAED side, while At 606 crores it was lower than what it was in at the same time last year and which was 4039, but it was also in a way compensated by the fact that mid distillate scratch itself were lower. PETCHEM downstream contribution was was impacted by you know lower delta I mean P down by 8 percent, polypropylene down 17 percent. The whole polyester chain if you were to see it was down about 13 percent. So, clearly downstream was impacted by deltas of course also the fact that you know in a it is in the context being a subdued global demand environment as well as the fact that it is also well supplied, but in our case it was to some extent offset by the fact that We had higher domestic sales and also in a way benefiting from the sharp decline in E10 prices which was down 46 percent. So, the lower delta was to some extent offset by Indian demand as well as the fact that E10 prices were low. Quarter on quarter was again benefiting from fuel cracks and PVC delta which was up 23 percent on a quarter on quarter basis. This is the broader business environment. If you were to see overall, you know, demand environment looks strong with oil, you know, at 102.7 up, 2.5 million barrels per day. When you see it from where location-wise, if you see, you know, China was almost 2.2 out of that, and then the rest of Asia was about 0.5. Again, when you see it from categories, you know, the demand was significant in jet, which has more than a million barrels per day demand. Also gasoline was also pretty strong at 0.7 million barrels per day. So oil demand has been good. Indian demand has been strong when you look at overall, that is across each of the transportation fuels demand has been strong. When you look at polymer and polyester demand you know polymer is up 25 percent year on year, polyester demand up 12 percent year on year. So, that that has been pretty good. And overall, you may look at refinery operating rates, you know, unsurprisingly it is up on the back of firm demand for refined products, though the cracker operating rates were slightly lower given product demand rates. So, this is just the breakup of the domestic oil environment. You can see that petrol demand was almost 6 percent, you know, the demand for diesel was up 4 percent, ATF was up 14 percent. So, broad thematics is really the fact that there is strong momentum and industrial activity that is, you know, demand for mining, the passenger vehicle sales, air passenger traffic, if you were to see air passenger traffic was up 22% year on year. So all these contributed to the overall number of 5.3%. Moving to the polymer side, as I mentioned, up 25% year on year. And a lot of it we saw, you know, we saw channel restocking given that PE and PP prices are actually at a two or three year low. So you saw that kind of demand coming in. But broad-based, if you were to see, you know, the demand is coming through in durables, in packaging, in infrastructure sectors, in e-commerce. So it is much more broad-based. PVC benefiting from demand for wires and pipes and infrastructure projects and some of the government schemes like Hargar, Jal Yojana, all of them we are seeing it in terms of having a positive impact on demand. On the polyester side up 12 percent year on year and here the pool has been clearly PET given that it is up 28 percent and also it is both PSF and PFI you know demand we saw on the back of festive season. Moving to the delta environment you can see that PE and PPE were weak both on a year on year basis as well as in a quarter on quarter basis. These are broadly global trends with demand being a bit subdued and excess supply continuing there. So when you translate in percentage terms, you can see that P and PPU deltas were lower by 8 and 17 percent respectively. So here the product price fell more than, you know, what the input price of NAFTA fell. So that hence the impact on the overall deltas. PVC was the exception in the sense that it was 7 percent higher on a year on year basis and it was 23 percent higher on a quarter on quarter basis and benefiting from a very sharp fall in EDC prices. Also ethane cracking economics remain favorable versus NAFTA. So, the 46 percent that I talked about in my previous slide. So, that is the broader environment for polymers. On the polyester side, both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, you can see the weakness, you know, year-on-year prices, the whole chain delta is lowered by 13 percent, again impacted by slower demand recovery in China. And on the quarter-on-quarter basis, this has been impacted by weak global demand. And if you look at regional PTA deltas that was down 27 percent with increase in PX prices, but the fact that there was strong demand in India helped support those margins. MEG was significantly weaker due to strong NAFTA prices. On transportation fuel, if you look at gas oil, demand per se, you know, was grew by only 0.2 million barrels per day to a total of almost 20.8 million barrels per day. Again, that was a mixed different locations, you know, was higher. For example, Asia Pacific and Middle East were higher, but there were all the offsets in Europe, Latin America, North America. So you saw that increase. that kind of regional divergence in as far as demand. But and also when you look at cracks you know from 41.1 it dropped to 28.8 because it was exceptionally high in second quarter of last year. So you saw that. Also there is European weakness which also pressured cracks. But on a queue on queue basis you can see that you know there was a sharp jump. Because if you were to look at the inventories while it has started going up, the fact remains that at 543 million barrels it is still lower than the five year averages. So, that inventory being lowered is also getting reflected in the way you know people are stocking up in anticipation of the tightness because of the heating season. We also saw the impact of export ban by Russia for diesel, the refinery outages, all of them playing through in as far as quarter on quarter performance is concerned. Jetcarrow, this product you saw a sharp increase, more than a million barrels per day increased to seven and a half million barrels. Again, demand coming in Asia Pacific, North America as well as Europe and while year on year demand was lower because if you recall in second quarter of 523, the reopening trade had taken deltas much higher. But overall you can see that on a quarter on quarter basis a very sharp increase, this is 14 to 26, that's about almost 47 yeah. That went up because you are seeing much more sweeter crude slate processing in the refineries and that is on the back of OPEC cut, so you saw more heavier go out of the market. lower mid disclets yields and therefore refineries also prioritizing diesel or jet. So you saw, therefore you saw the shortfall there translating in terms of higher deltas per karo. Also strong standalone jet karo fuel demand has been pretty good. On the gasoline side, you can see that overall demand went up to 27.1. Again, gasoline grew about 0.75 million barrels per day with essentially demand in Asia Pacific and also not in actually North America and Europe. Overallyou can seegasoline cracks include because of lower inventories, because of unplanned refinery outages,also China demand has been strong with the reopening. On the quarter-on-quarter side, you know, this has been supported by actually supply disruptions. We saw some of the refinery closures in Germany, in Rotterdam, so we saw that having an impact on the pricing. So this is the overall, if you look at the operating performance, production meant for sale at 17.1 million tons. And when you look at what we have done, so apart from the, you know, margin and demand that we talked about in the previous slides, when you look at operating performance, you can see that we, you know, we prioritize alkylate and high-round gasoline exports. Given the premiums, we focused on placing built-in products given the higher demand in Europe. Overall, because chemical demand has remained subdued, we have we have optimized the production to focus more on more on the on the lighter lighter feed on the lighter outputs. Gasifier performance has been pretty strong which also helped in minimizing the fuel mix and also eliminating LNG sourcing. This quarter we will see, you know, we have started the shutdown of, the supply shutdown of CDU, there is a catalytic cracking unit and a cocker and ROGC that was initiated in the second half of September for regular maintenance and inspection. On the overall when you look at how we see the OTC business. So, we do think that demand is expected to remain strong even if we have to look at estimates from IEA. You are seeing that for next year, we are talking about still 0.9 million barrels per day increase to 23, which was also up by 2.2 million barrels. So, demand for fuel remains strong. The refining system is definitely tight, which is keeping, which will keep the margins at above mid-cycle levels. Planned shutdowns, unplanned shutdowns, all of them given the tightness in the refinery system, you know, will cause margins to expand. For India, of course, for an Indian market perspective where we are a key player and where, you know, more than 85 percent of our products go, there the demand environment is expected to be strong and as you know, you know, it is directly linked to GDP growth rate. So, you know, that outlook remains pretty robust. So, we think that we may have an edge there. And also the fact that, you know, the broader geopolitical tensions, you know, things like oil production cuts by OPEC. All of them, you know, are expected to keep prices, price and both the margin volatility is going to heighten all of them. So those are things that we see where we are. Overall, when we see it from our OTC point of view, in that sense, from a business perspective, it does look pretty constructive. Moving to the last slide on summary, I just wanted to say that you heard through all the presentations, you know, earnings have been strong across all businesses, very strong operational performance. Net debt you saw has been lower with the capital rates and importantly also the strong capital, strong operating cash flows which help, which has funded all the capex. We think that, you know, CapEx will peak in FY24 with completion of the fast track 5G rollout by end of this year. And overall earnings momentum in consumer business, you know, we see a high visibility of that growth. And given that these businesses come with high operating leverage, and given the way we are expanding our footprint, you know, the investments that we are doing on technology platforms, the new products across the range, we have a very constructive view of how that business is evolving. Overall as I mentioned on fuel side market it is a tight fuel market domestic demand is good and very you know very limited down side bills are happening in this market. On upstream side NK field production ramp up you know this is happening and broader outlook is that you know supply uncertainties are will keep gas prices elevated. Overall, a strong business portfolio and execution to drive returns and value creation. Thank you. With this, I come to the end of the presentation. And let me take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Deepavali going into November. Thank you so much.
