Demand has been quite decent: Subbu Subramaniam, Chief Financial Officer, Titan Co. Ltd

Update on the Indian Equity Market:

On Monday, NIFTY50 closed -0.13% higher at 11,936. NIFTY50 gainers includes BPCL (+2.2%), Axis Bank (+2.1%) and Adani Ports (+2.0%). NIFTY50 losers includes TCS (-3.0%), HCL tech (-1.6%) and Cipla (-1.3%). Auto (+0.8%), Metal (+0.5%) and Financial Services (+0.4%) were the top gainers and Realty (-1.6), IT (-0.9%), and Media (-0.8%) were the top losing sectors.

Excerpts from an interview with Mr. Subbu Subramaniam, CFO, Titan Co. The interview was published in Livemint dated 05^th December 2019.

• Titan has embarked on Omni channel in five flagship stores in Bengaluru. They are planning to adopt Omni channel across all their divisions. Their websites are done; their e-commerce platforms are quite robust now.
• The Omni part has just about started; they are starting with the watch division. They have started it with Bengaluru, but this could get rolled out fairly quickly.
• Even as they start rolling out for the watch division across the country, they may  start in a couple of months in Tanishq, as well in jewelry division.
• So, Omni is going to be the way they will all do business. People can look at a product anywhere, whether it is online or offline, and choose to take the goods from anywhere. So, that is the strategy, it is more of an enabler.
• Jewelry margins depend to a large degree on top-line growth, because that is where economies of scale work and the operating leverage kick in. On a gross margin basis, they are generally in the same ballpark as they have been.
• As they stand right in the middle of the quarter, he restrained from giving any number at this point in time, but EBIT should generally, be in the ballpark of growth – margins that we have been having in the financial year.
• Demand has been quite decent. November itself has not been bad. Despite Diwali being a little early, demand has been generally fine. Of course, they also had more promotions, which was required under the circumstances. The wedding season has been quite decent.

Consensus Estimate (Source: market screener, Investing.com website)

• The closing price of Titan Co. was ₹ 1,175/- as of 09-December-19. It trades at 68x/ 49x/ 41x the Consensus EPS estimate for FY20E/ FY21E/ FY22E of ₹ 18.7/ 23.9/ 29.0 respectively.
• Consensus target price of ₹ 1,216/- implies a PE multiple of 42x on FY22E EPS of ₹ 29/-