Bajaj Auto thriving in chaos; maintaining 20% margin for 6 quarters: Rakesh Sharma

Economic Times

5 days ago

Rakesh Sharma, ED, Bajaj Auto, says Bajaj Auto has maintained 20% margin for six quarters. The company focuses on the bottom line through strategic initiatives. Expansion in Africa may affect EV business margins. The EV sector now contributes 21% to domestic revenue, up from 10% last year. Managing margins involves balancing EV, three-wheelers, motorcycles, international business, and currency movements.
So much is happening in the world. I hope your business is going all well. Looking at the numbers, both earnings as well as the monthly sales, things seem to be quite alright.
Rakesh Sharma: Thriving in chaos.
Till the time it is thriving, it is all good. Tell us more about it. What is the future looking like?
Rakesh Sharma: Well, it is a short-term equilibrium and we do not know when the next disturbance is going to come. But when it comes to the domestic business, we are seeing that with its ups and downs from quarter-to-quarter, hopefully an annualised rate of growth of the industry at about 5-6%, like it has been last year and that primarily being driven by the top half of the industry which is the 125cc plus segment. We expect that to grow at almost twice the rate of the average rate. The penetration of electric vehicles should continue in the same manner and that is very heartening because despite the reduction in subsidies, we can see that both in two-wheelers and three-wheelers, penetration is not flagging off and in the international business, which constitutes almost 40% of our revenue, we find that Africa is steady though still underperforming, but we are cautiously watching it because we do not want to be having an excess stock situation there.But Latin America has done extremely well. It has become the largest region amongst emerging markets for motorcycles in volume terms and it is almost twice that of Africa now in value terms. We had anticipated this quite early and taken a lot of moves in the Latin American continent and that is really helping us. Asia is also steady. The cost environment is steady though there is a headwind we are facing with the rupee appreciating a little bit. The noble metals are slightly up but the base metals slightly down, the overall cost environment is looking steady.
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When I speak to shareholders, some of your veteran investors say the following: Bajaj is innovating a lot, from bikes to exports to reorienting themselves in the whole KTM experience and now EVs. But what about their bread-and-butter business? Their domestic entry-level bike business? When will they get the market share back? When will we get a sense that Bajaj is regaining its market share and rather than inching up is jumping higher?
Rakesh Sharma: Let me tell you the bread and butter is also the three-wheeler business and the international business. We have got lots of toasts there. Mr Bhargava made this thing very famous that the butter from the toast is missing. Every auto guy now uses bread and butter after that.
Rakesh Sharma: Yes, but your question is a very pertinent one. Just before I come to it, one of the things which I find in Bajaj Auto is that it is quite a versatile business in the sense that we have got international business, we have got three-wheeler business, and we have got domestic motorcycles business, the EV business and there is a substantial spare parts business. So, there is an inherent mitigation of risk there. Even in international business, they are spread in 100 countries. Africa just fell off last year and the recovery has also been muted. Had we not gotten a great competitive position in Latin America, we would not have been able to recover like this. When I am saying recovery, I am talking about value recovery and EBITDA recovery because we look at both the top line and bottom line equally strongly. That said, the inherent architecture of the business has evolved over the last 10-20 years because of the pursuit of a deliberate strategy. Now we are coming to this point about the market share in entry-level bikes. The entry-level bikes from a topline perspective constitute about 48% of the Indian industry. That contribution is reducing but at a very slow pace. We will go for market share in this area as long as it is a blue ocean. Currently, it is a red ocean and they find that if they have to optimise growth, competitive position, and profitability, that optimisation is not possible in the bottom half. To pursue market share, the degrees of freedom in terms of innovation, etc, are slender and what happens is that you end up using the price card and that is not sustainable and that erodes the bottom line. So, we are present over there. We are trying and we will continue to try. In the last three-four years, we have tried various technical interventions, five-speed and tubeless tyres, digital consoles, even ABS but with marginal success. What is really needed is a pricing strategy and big pricing breakthroughs are not possible in the entry level. So, we are happy to take a very measured look at it and not be very aggressive. They are not saying that they will vacate it. It is a large segment. They will be there, but on their terms. They are not there singularly with the objective of increasing market share at the substantial expense of the bottom line.
Classic Bajaj Auto margins of 20% have come back. Can I say that going forward also you will continue to focus on categories, product, and innovation where you would like to keep your margin in and around 20%? At the entry level, if it does not offer you 20%, it is good to have business, where you are happy to skim it down.
Rakesh Sharma: By the way, it is six quarters of 20% margin. You may find this very surprising, but it is not that we sit in the conference room and say that we got to hit 20% and all that. It is not like that. Obviously, we have a very sharp focus on the bottom line, but our margins are the consequence of pursuing each strategy. Now, if the Africa business certainly expands, it will have an adverse impact on the margins in the EV business. What we are very happy about which I must call out is that the EV business now constitutes about 21% of our domestic revenues. It was 10% last year and obviously it is much below the 20% mark and we have been able to navigate this rise of the EV business and still keep to 20% margin.
This is a very dynamic management which has to be done month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter but it is very difficult genuinely for me to say that yes, we will be on point at 20% because at the end of the day it is a blend between EV, three-wheelers, motorcycles, international business, currency movements, etc. But one thing is for sure that we will always aim to be best-in-class as it goes on the margin front too.
Give us some sense on the export outlook because though the commentary or rather the guidance stands at a robust 15-20% that you have guided for, some reports suggest that you have taken 4-5% price cuts in the African market. Is that true and if it is true, then are these price cuts likely to sustain?
Rakesh Sharma: We expect a quarter-on-quarter 15-20% increase in exports largely driven by Latin America and parts of Asia. We monitor 30 countries very closely because they account for about 70-75% of industry. Of these 30 countries, 26 have shown growth even in Q4 and collectively they have grown at about 26%. Collectively Bajaj Auto has grown 31% in these places. So, we are outpacing these industries. There is a basis on which we have said that. When it comes to some of the price cuts which you are talking about, having an overall EBITDA approach to each business unit, some markets where we have an overwhelming share and where Bajaj Auto defines the industry, where we have 60% of the share and the next person is 10%, or 5% and sometimes we feel that we have to continue to keep the industry ticking, there may have to be price adjustment. So, we have taken price cuts in one or two places. For example, in Uganda where we have a 90% market share. Now, it is not so much to gain share, we cannot go above 90%. It is between 85% and 90%. We cannot go above that, but we want to keep the industry's wheel moving. We monitor the payback period because in African markets, it is a commercial purchase. This is not a personal purchase. Bikes are used as taxis. We monitor the payback period of the customers, the drivers, riders who are buying these as to how many months they recover and when it falls below a certain point, we do try to make adjustments which in better times we recover. Tthis is not a very tactical play aimed at gaining a share here or there. It is about keeping the industry ticking.
Along with that, you mentioned that the final certification for rare earth magnets from China is still pending. Help us understand if the supply is disrupted post July, how severe could the production impact be not just for Bajaj Auto, but for the broader Indian EV ecosystem? Do you believe that finding any of the suppliers in the short-term or alternative supplier will be a challenge for the industry?
Rakesh Sharma: The process that has been outlined is that the importer has to do self-certification, which in the industry's case is mainly the vendor and that has to be then certified by a couple of agencies within our ministries and then it goes to the Chinese embassy in India which again certifies it and then sends it across to China. Over there, it is a two-step certification or an approval process which is at a provincial level, which is the province in which the exporter would be based and after that in China's ministry of commerce. Over 30 applications have been processed even by the Chinese embassy over here and sent to China, but we have not yet heard back. The first thing which we are awaiting is to see how smooth this process is going to be, how long it is going to take, and as soon as some of the approvals start to come, we will get an understanding of that, that I think if that happens smoothly and that we move or lengthen the supply chain period but if the approvals for non-military uses are forthcoming, then it is alright. It is just that we have to manage the supply chain time periods. If this does not happen at all, if something breaks down which I am hoping will not, then developing alternate sources is a very medium-term option because China has over 80% share. The extraction and refining process is very complex and it takes time to master it and other places have the reserves, but they will need that time. Having to substitute the component completely also will require integration into the vehicle systems, testing, and validation. All those are mid-term. Therefore in the short term, we are hoping that this process works. If it does not, then Bajaj Auto will start facing disruption from July onwards and whatever I hear from my industry colleagues, a lot of companies will see disruption in July onwards in one line or the other.