Berger Paints (I) Limited — Q2 FY26

Firstly, on the mixed deterioration that we have seen this quarter, should one expect a similar mixed deterioration going forward, or was this a conscious choice for this quarter given that you had some benefits of lower raw material prices and you could have managed your gross margins well?

Secondly, on volumes, now, given October has also seen some impact, and I guess maybe last year some of the festive demand would have also been sitting in October. Given that there is an impact, how should one think about volumes for 3Q and 4Q?

Lastly, on margins now, with the exterior and the normal emulsion paints coming back in the coming quarters and the benefits of raw material, do you think that there can be a case made to further investments in ad spends, or there is a possibility that it translates down in margins and you move up higher versus the earlier guided band in your margins?

And sir, for the second part, which is 3Q, if you're expecting, say, a mid-single-digit kind of momentum for the full year, does that kind of... Just want to get your thoughts? How should we look at that? Because we had some expectations given the changed weather conditions. Is there a revisit to that expectation for the full year?

So the second question is on the competition. Would love to know if there's any change in competitive intensity and wanted to kind of just get any updated comments on the new entrant versus what we were kind of seeing last quarter.

What has really changed in this particular quarter that margins at the EBITDA level have taken such a big beating?

What's the kind of raw material cost advantage that we are going to see in the second half of this fiscal with the crude being so benign?

Given that, there is a natural hedge in the business to the sales growth itself. Now, despite that, we have seen a material impact. How should we see this? Do you see it to be an ongoing activity?

The first one is, I think our earlier expectation was this volume value gap will narrow by fourth quarter of this year in the sense that volumes will start, I mean, value will start tracking volume growth. Do you believe that expectation to still be reasonable? If not, by when do you expect the volume value gap to narrow to almost nil?

Given that in the first half, we are at 15%, and you had highlighted in one of your previous responses that by fourth quarter, you expected to go towards maybe 17%-ish or so, would it be fair to say that at least this year, it looks like the margin range will probably be closer to 15%, 16%-ish than it is to 17%?

If quarter four exit has to have double-digit growth, so is this growth primarily from the offtake and secondary, or will it be getting into the newer products, newer areas, and tier three, tier four market expansion?