Brands
Q2-17: Ad exp up, gold hedging helps Titan’s numbers
BENGALURU: The Titan Company Limited (Titan) which believes in delivering value through brands had higher advertising spends (ad spends) in the quarter ended 30 September 2016 (Q2-17, current quarter) as compared to the corresponding year ago (y-o-y) quarter Q2-16. The company’s ad expense in the current quarter was up 9.4 percent y-o-y at Rs 98.08 crore as compared to the Rs 89.64 crore in Q2-16.
The company’s bottomline (Profit after tax- PAT) increased 23.5 percent y-o-y to Rs 180.76 crore in Q2-17 as compared to Rs 146.35 crore. Total comprehensive income (TCI) in the current quarter was increasedfurther by a gain of Rs 100.26 crore due hedging instruments for gold price hedging, the unutilized portion of which Titan recognised as an expense head in its profit and loss statement. TCI in Q2-17 was 89.7 percent higher y-o-y at Rs 269.37 crore as compared to Rs 141.97 crore in Q2-16.
Segment Performance
Titan has 4 revenue segments – watches having five majorwatch brands –Titan, Xylus, Nebula, Sonata, Fastrack, and three point of sales brands – World of Titan, Helios and Fastrack; Jewellery with Tanishq, Zoya, Gold Plus from Tata and sub brand Mia; Eyewear under the Titan EYE+, Fastrack, Glares and Cabana brandsand ‘Other’ such as precision engineering among others.
Titan’s Jewellery business is its major revenue generating stream that contributes more than70 percent to the company’s revenue. In the current quarter, jewellery business revenue was almost flat (grew 0.2 percent, grew by Rs 4.79 crore) y-o-y to Rs 1,987.51 crore (74.3 percent of net sales) from Rs 1982.72 crore (73.9 percent of net sales). The company says that performance of the diamond studded jewellery segment was much better than plain gold segment.
The company’s Watches division is the next major division in terms of revenue contribution. Revenues from watches declined5.2 percent (reduced by Rs 28.75 crore) y-o-y to Rs 52.369 crore (19.6 percent net sales) from Rs 552.44 crore (20.6 percent net sales). Titan explains the reason for the decline in a release that says the Watches division continued to exhibit a decent performance in the domestic market but the overall business declined due to lack of growth in some of its international markets as well as its service business which went through re-structuring.
Titan’s Eyewear business which contributes about 3 to 4 percent to the company’s revenue, reported 6.6 percent (increased by Rs5.86 crore) y-o-y growth in revenue to Rs95.19 crore (3.6 percent of TIO) from Rs 89.33 crore (3.3 percent of TIO).
Titan’s TIO in the current quarter was also flat (declined 0.2percent, reduced by Rs5.57 crore) y-o-y to Rs 2,675.77 crore from Rs 2,681.34 crore.
Advertisement spend trends
Please refer to fig A below for Titan’s Ad expenses over a nineteen quarter period starting Q4-12 (quarter ended March 31, 2012) until the current quarter. It may be noted that Titan has started reporting its numbers as per the Indian Accounting System (IND AS) since Q1-17 and hence the numbers in the charts may not be accurate – this report and the charts are meant as an approximate representation of the company’s numbers.
During the nineteen quarter period under consideration in this report, Titan’s Ad spends were the highest in Q1-16, both in absolute rupees and in terms of percentage of TIO. Lowest Ad spends during the same period in absolute rupees and in terms of percentage of TIO waslowest in Q4-13 at Rs 66.63 crore and 2.5 percent of TIO respectively.
Also, during the nineteen quarter period under consideration in this report, Titan’s ad spends show a linear increasing trend in terms of absolute rupees as indicated by the broken blue trend line, while ad spends in terms of percentage of TIO show a slow linear decline as indicated by the broken maroon line in Fig A.
Company Speak
Titan Managing Director Bhaskar Bhat said, “This was an extremely good quarter for the Company with respect to profits. All businesses of the company recorded profits in the quarter. The Jewellery business had an extremely good studded jewellery activation and the Watches business launched its second smart watch, Juxt Pro. All our retail channels grew. The festive season has commenced very well. For the Dussehra to Diwali festive period, Tanishq registered a growth of 39 percent over last year. In watches, for the same period, our World of Titan stores grew by 14 percent and Helios stores by 11 percent in retail sales.”
Note:(1)Titan has started reporting its numbers as per the Indian Accounting System (IND AS) since Q1-17 and hence the numbers in the charts may not be accurate – this report and the charts are meant as an approximate representation of the company’s numbers.
(2) The unit of currency in this report is the Indian rupee – Rs (also conventionally represented by INR). The Indian numbering system or the Vedic numbering system has been used to denote money values. The basic conversion to the international norm would be:
(a) 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10,000,000 = 10 million = 1 crore.
(b) 10,000 lakh = 100 crore = 1 arab = 1 billion.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
