Britannia net up 22% on buoyant rural mart

The other channels such as Modern Trade, Institutional business face challenges with lower footfalls in offices, schools

NEW DELHI: Food company Britannia Industries Ltd on Friday reported a 22.4 per cent increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 452.64 crore for the third quarter ended December 2020. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 369.88 crore in the October-December period a year ago, Britannia Industries said.

Total revenue from operations rose 6.13 per cent to Rs 3,165.61 crore during the quarter under review as against Rs 2,982.68 crore in the year-ago period.

"General Trade, which is the largest channel for us, continues to grow at a healthy pace on the back of buoyancy in rural economy and recovery in urban markets," Britannia Industries Managing Director Varun Berry said.

"The other channels such as Modern Trade, Institutional business etc continue to face challenges with lower footfalls in stores and offices, schools, railway services coming back to normalcy gradually," he added.

The company continues to focus on direct reach, rural distribution, range selling, higher throughput, salesmen productivity and investing in enhancing its brand equity through focused product campaigns.

"On the cost front, we witnessed moderate inflation in the materials prices except Palm oil where we witnessed a significant increase. We neutralized the inflation by accelerating our cost efficiencies & sustained the new efficiencies that we witnessed during the Covid-19 induced lockdown," he added. Britannia Industries' total expenses were at Rs 2,634.46 crore, up 3.27 per cent from Rs 2,551.01 crore in the yearago period.