Page Industries’ investors are heaving a sigh of relief. Its March quarter (Q4FY26) result indicates that the cycle of weak consumer demand and inventory correction in distributor channels, which hampered earnings, may finally be ending.
Page, the exclusive licensee for Jockey and Speedo in India, reported double-digit volume growth in Q4 after a gap of more than three years. The last quarter of double-digit growth for the company was Q2FY23.
Volumes rose 11% year-on-year to 54.5 million pieces, helping Page exit FY26 on a decent note after muted growth during most of the year.
In Q4, revenue grew 14.1% year-on-year to ₹1,253 crore, beating analysts’ estimates and leading to earnings upgrades. FY26 revenue rose 6% to ₹5,247 crore.
The management was upbeat: demand improved steadily through the quarter. More importantly, it indicated that the long inventory correction cycle in athleisure and distributor channels has largely normalized.
Page is aiming for better revenue and double-digit volume growth in FY27. Motilal Oswal Financial Services estimates 13% revenue growth to ₹5,900 crore, driven by premiumization and demand recovery.
Page is gradually moving beyond basic innerwear and increasing focus on higher-value categories such as bonded innerwear collections, athleisure and outerwear. The management highlighted strong response for products like bonded innerwear (without stitched seams) and JKY Groove, a younger athleisure-focused range that sold out faster than expected during recent launches.
But trouble is brewing due to input cost inflation. The company’s gross margin contracted by 250 basis points to 58.4% in Q4, hurt by rising prices of cotton and other raw materials. The Ebitda margin contracted 63 bps to 20.8% even as Page trimmed staff costs and other expenses.
Absorbing costs
According to ICICI Securities, the cost of Page’s strong volume growth highlights pricing power pressure. Page took a 2% price hike effective March. Unlike past cycles, this time Page was forced to absorb these commodity shocks to move inventory, indicating its pricing elasticity is constrained, it said.
Page indicated that it may absorb part of the raw material inflation instead of fully passing it on to consumers to protect market share. It maintained an Ebitda margin guidance of 19-21% for FY27 versus 22% achieved in FY26, despite elevated marketing spends and technology investments. ICICI said that defending margins via cost-cutting rather than pricing power is structurally unsustainable.
Page is now expanding JKY Groove across almost 500 exclusive stores along with online channels, indicating confidence that athleisure demand is recovering after a prolonged slowdown. This is important because future growth may increasingly come from premium categories.
The online business is becoming an important growth engine. E-commerce contribution has increased to about 15% of revenue from 10% last year. The management indicated that the company continues to maintain leadership across major online platforms in core categories.
Industry dynamics are becoming more favourable for large players like Jockey. Over the past few years, several D2C innerwear and athleisure brands expanded aggressively through heavy discounting and marketing spends. The management now says many smaller brands have slowed offline expansion, reduced discounting or consolidated operations due to profitability pressures, benefiting Page.
The stock has gained about 10% so far in this calendar year, trading at FY27 PE multiple of 51, showed Bloomberg data. Despite a strong Q4 performance, its valuation is expensive given the uncertainty over cotton prices and consumer demand continuing.