Pantaloon's revenue growth of 57 per cent in the March 2008 quarter is the slowest in the last five quarters and was driven to some extent by higher other operating income and higher institutional sales.
The retailer's sales growth has come off from 80 per cent in the second half of FY07 to 60 per cent in the last two quarters. Same store sales appear to be picking up --for the March quarter they were about 15 per cent---but are not encouraging enough.
What's worrying is that the retailer's gross margins came off by 290 basis points in the quarter to 29.7 per cent because of a higher proportion of value retailing which increased to about 70 per cent from 66 per cent seen in earlier quarters.
Besides, the retailer sold a larger amount of relatively lower-margin electronics goods. While the operating profit margin improved by 140 basis points to 8.4 per cent, it was because of lower expenses on staff
