Tata Consumer Products reported strong revenue growth in the third quarter but tea price inflation hurts gross margins. The food business, international branded business and cost savings supported EBITDA.

Talking about the company’s performance Sunil D'Souza, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, said, “Strong topline 23 percent up, 29 percent group net profit and this is the third successive quarter of high double-digit growth. So we have established sort of a track record of delivery even for the year-to-date, even margins have expanded.”

“Tea prices have not started to taper off so we remain confident that we are execution in place we will be delivering good results in the future. Our out-of-home business Starbucks and NourishCo Beverages are showing sequential improvement, he added.

On ‘Soulfull’ acquisition, D'Souza said, “We have always maintained that the M&A that we look at, the inorganic growth will look at both strategic filters and financial filters and ‘Soulfull’ passes muster on both. It gets us into new categories which is breakfast cereals, snacking. It is margin accretive, it has a strong pipeline.”

On growth, he said, “Indian beverages the margins are a transient issue it is just a matter of time. We feel very confident that we will be able to continue growth going in the future for the very simple reason that we put the right building blocks in the place.”

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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)