Clearly, the demand for a lot of summer products has revived. A lot of peers of yours, for instance, have reported pretty strong growth, nearly 70% for you as well. Can you give us a sense as to what really the numbers stack up like? What is the outlook for the rest of the summer season?
Vir Advani: Let me tell you first how we did last year before we got into the current summer. It was a great year for Blue Star. We closed revenue at Rs 9,685 crore and EBITDA at Rs 665 crore, which was a 35% growth over last year. EBITDA percentage also improved. The great thing about our last year’s performance is that both our segment 1 and our segment 2 results have been strong. Both have come in at about 350 crores of EBIT roughly. So, we have a very even balanced growth in both B2B and B2C.
Of course, we want to talk about the summer and about our cooling products. Room air conditioners had a fantastic Q4. April, of course, has been very strong for the industry as well as for us, as has our commercial refrigeration products, deep freezers, water coolers, etc. I think that the outlook for the summer is, of course, strong. In May and June, in various parts of the country, rains will start and so we should really look at January to June as overall market growth. I think it should be around 30% to 35%.We have seen pretty strong growth when it comes to your peer companies for ACs. Do you think that the outperformance will continue? What is the outlook when it comes to your market share?
Vir Advani: We closed last year with a market share of 13.75%, slightly higher than the previous year. We did well last year and we were able to maintain our margins at 7.8% at a segment level, which is excellent in a very competitive market. We started the year last year on a low because of the washed-out summer. Of course, we were able to make that up in Q3 and Q4, which has been an all-time record.
Blue Star as a company crossed sales of one million units of mini splits and air conditioners. That is a big milestone for us, especially because we commissioned our new factory in Sri City only a year ago. Going forward, the industry should grow at about 30. We are as usual expecting to grow a little faster than that. On the back of several initiatives we have taken, you are aware, we now have a full affordable product range, something that we did not have for several years, it is doing exceedingly well in the market. We are very optimistic about the outlook for this year.
Explain about the growth there. EBITDA is up. Were there some extraordinary line items in profit after tax and that is the reason why it is down?
Vir Advani: So, last year, you may remember, we had sold our Thane land for 171 crores and so at a PAT level you may see us flat for the full year and for the quarter, obviously, it would be down. I would encourage you to look at EBITDA. EBITDA has grown 35% over last year. We are at Rs 665 crores for the full year. Even for the quarter, you would have seen operating EBITDA at 242 crores, up 35% again. So, we are happy with the cost management programmes that we are running. We are taking our cost while bringing down prices in our product range and, again, not just in our room air conditioners consumer business, but it affects our B2B businesses as well.
The high point for the quarter gone by, of course, is the unitary air conditioning business, up 35%. Is it possible for us to understand that? Is this just an inventory pile-up which has happened before the summer season or this is real demand?
Vir Advani: This is actually real demand. We are amazed to see the movement of products in the market. Obviously, March is a year-end for many of us, all the big players, and there is a tendency for brands to obviously push primary sales in February and March. However, after a long time…, last year, of course, was a washed-out season, but if you look at this year, we have had secondary and tertiary sales in April, in the month of April up 70%, 80%, 90%, that means that almost all the inventory that was put into the market in Jan, Feb, March is getting cleared out extremely fast. You may have read news articles.
You yourself would have done channel checks. Of course, there is some shortage of material across the industry. Each of us is managing relatively well, I would say. So, as Blue Star is concerned, we have some shortages in some markets and some SKUs, but fortunately, since we have our own manufacturing in-house now, our supply chain lead time is substantially shorter, and so we will be able to make up some of these shortages as early as the next week to 10 days.
When we look at the air-conditioning demand, it is no longer luxury. It is more like a necessity now. If the AC goes off in the studio for half an hour, we want it to be started again. So, it is more like a necessity now. Has this necessity demand now started coming from towns and from cities and from talukas and kasbas, which earlier were not on Blue Star’s radar? Are we getting demand from pockets which were unheard of now, earlier?
Vir Advani: Absolutely. We are seeing unprecedented demand from corners of this country that we could not have imagined even two or three years ago. Of course, metro demand is strong. Of course, replacement air-conditioners are there. Of course, studios like yours, I understand, will be expanding and will need air-conditioning, but it is really that tier 3, tier 4 buying that is happening. It is the first-time, young buyers. More importantly, they are from all strata.
I get WhatsApp messages from all kinds of people asking me if I can buy an air-conditioner. In fact, now it has become, can I buy an air-conditioner for my son or daughter, they are getting married? So, it has become that kind of product. We have been waiting for this golden period for our industry for many decades. There is a fundamental shift in demand that we are all seeing and it is an industry-wide phenomenon. We are just happy that in Blue Star we took this decision of creating our affordable product range when we did, because if we had not done that, we would have missed out on this round of growth. So, we are extremely bullish right now.
For the next three years, for the industry, it is going to be 15% to 20% kind of demand growth. Standing today, if one has to look at the three-year outlook, whether it is electricity penetration or high summers or the sheer shift from organised to unorganised, the air-conditioning industry for the next three years will grow between 15% to 20%.
Vir Advani: I agree with your outlook. As far as Blue Star is concerned, our capacity right now is about 1.1 million units. We sold about that many last year. You know we are expanding on a modular basis. So, we have investment plans to go up to two million units over the next few years, so that is actually the trend.
While we talked about room air conditioners and mini splits a lot, this unprecedented demand that is coming from multiple markets is also coming for our central air-conditioning products, for our refrigeration products. We are very happy to see quick-service restaurants, pharmacies and all kinds of formats opening up across the length and breadth of the country., I do not want to leave out those parts of our business. We expect a similar growth trend across the entire B2B and B2C portfolio.
What is the industry size and what is your market share? If you are expanding, I am sure others are expanding as well. Three years from now, what would be the total capacity of the industry?
Vir Advani: Everyone is bringing on capacity in phases. It is a little unclear as to the capacity today. Everyone is planning for a 20 million unit market in a few years. So, if everyone is planning for that, we should expect that capacity will be higher than that. Very clearly, this is a competitive industry. It is going to be competitively very intense. We are very focused on our EBIT margins. We are very focused on our return on capital. I think you would have seen in spite of the large capex we have made over the last three years, our return on capital continues to be industry leading.
We run our business very honestly looking at profitability metrics, EBIT and ROCE. We will continue to invest as long as it is accretive where so far we have done a good job across whether it is deep freezers, central air conditioning, room air conditioners. We have positive EBIT and ROCE there. I think we will continue to invest in line with that 20 million unit market outlook. You asked about our market share. We, of course, talk about value. From a volume point of view, the industry would have done something over around 10 million units last year.
We did about just over 1.1 million. But from a value point of view, Blue Star sells more 5-star ACs, more inverter ACs, higher end products, specialised products as well for commercial use. So, our value tends to be higher than the industry average.
Every industry is going through some breakout moments. Whether it is on energy transition, whether it is mechanical, whether it is going digital. Is there a technology breakthrough in the air conditioning industry which could be disruptive for your industry?
Vir Advani: Absolutely. We are looking at various disruptions. First of all, even the basic improvement in the technology is substantial. It is not normal. What I am talking about is that we are going through step function changes in efficiency. We are going through step function changes in what is acceptable. We are dealing with both aspects on an ongoing basis.
Every two years you will see a product portfolio from the industry which is dramatically different from what it was two years ago and the government is also supporting us in that effort and is pushing us in that effort because the government is very clear that this is a product that is needed by the masses and yet we have an obligation to the world as far as decarbonisation is concerned. We are an overregulated industry for good reason and we will continue to push the boundaries.
What you are asking about is disruptive technology and that is moving away from the vapor compression cycle, the basic technology which has been around for 125 years in air conditioning. We are about 10 years away from that, whether it is magnetic cooling, whether it is alternate materials, phase change materials. Blue Star has started doing some R&D on that front. I would say that we are still a ways away, but we are confident that over the next five-seven years, we will be able to get involved in that transition. Probably 10 years from now, we are looking at cooling without a box if I can put it that way. So, we will see how it goes.