Eveready Industries India Ltd, the country’s largest dry-cell battery maker, may monetise its unutilised land and assets soon. The money will be used towards reduction of its debt and also to fund growth plans.

According to Amritanshu Khaitan, Managing Director, Eveready has surplus real estate across many cities which are lying idle “for quite sometime”. These will be monetised over the next 12-18 months. He could not reveal further details about the location of these assets.

“The board has given an in-principle approval for monetisation,” he told BusinessLine . The company had roped in a management consulting services to identify potential cost-saving areas.

For the quarter ending March 31, 2018, the company slipped in red reporting a standalone net loss of ₹16 crore. In the corresponding quarter last fiscal, it had reported a net profit of over ₹10 crore.

The loss was primarily due to a 66 per cent increase in advertising and promotional spends on categories such as appliances and LED-based lighting.

This apart, there was an 18 per cent jump in employee cost for the quarter (about ₹7 crore) leading to a further fall in profits. Distribution costs also shot up.

According to him, the net loss and ‘negative operative EBITDA’ (of ₹4 crore) are “just a one-quarter phenomenon” and hopefully, the company will see good top-line growth this fiscal (FY19) onwards.

For the full year (FY-18), standalone net profit saw a 42 per cent year-on-year, decline to ₹55 crore, while operating income saw a 7 per cent rise to ₹1,456 crore.

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