While I have not looked at Page recently, but do try to find out why its not performing when others in similar or slightly similar fields like Trent(with its Zudio), Zomato(with its Blinkit) are growing @100% etc…You may want to prefer places where performance happens and also AS per what Management says(check conf calls of last few qtrs/years) and also narrow down on companies which are outperforming their sectors and expected to outperform in future.
Page market cap less than 5bln, while few companies which do not earn any profits or with difficult path to profitability are trading at >$10 bln…
Valuation appears rich due to slower industry growth and am sure headwinds are behind. ARS would yield fruits with better inventory management and once inner wear demand bounces back, page will have an edge due to it’s premium positioning, strong brand, pricing power, distribution reach, new segments (athleisure, juniors) and honest management (strong corp governance).
Future is now bright- Volume growth will come, margin will improve (pricing power and operating leverage) and cash turnover should improve (lower inventory days)… stock appears attractive to me at this valuation.
5 Likes
zudio is pure hype, just look at their catalog - there is literally nothing in terms of designs or assortments. besides, world over, there is no moat in that ultra fast fashion market, today zudio, tomorrow there will be another story. zudio is like the worst of the fast fashion of the lot. temu, shein, etc. atleast have more assortment, what does zudio have? hype only.
page of course has to now show revenue growth, else derating will pickup, but on balance I do think they are well placed to scale up from these levels. Even in a real tough market, they actually have held up well vs. competition on growth and profitability and like the management keeps saying they dont want to play the discount clearance game, that is strategic. Page commands a premium for these reasons, but yes, growth now is imperative
3 Likes
The question that you still need to find answer for is “why zudio or blinkit is growing and Page not”. I have nothing against Page (it had been a 15 bagger for me from 2009 to 2014-15 BTW). The quest for finding the reasoning of anomalies (with an open mind) will help grow as investor.
2 Likes
It’s simple - when per capita income is low and people don’t have enough money no one cares for brands. In other words, brands lose their value. In such cases, companies that provide cheaper items continue to do well. To be honest, I envisaged this during the time of covid itself. The same I commented on burgerking too. Moreover, this is after all an innerwear business which people don’t buy that frequently.
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With your analogy, why is relaxo not growing since it caters to the lower end of market and people should be buying it more.
I think it’s just the market conditions which are against consumer durable.
2 Likes
Since I’ve started investing in stocks (2013), PAGE had been on my watchlist. However, being a novice investor then, its valuations scared the daylights out of me. As time passed, I learnt some companies command better valuations in the market (esp. consumer facing companies) and PAGE is one of them. However, I continued to stay away from the company as the growth was faltering heading into the pandemic.
However, during COVID and maybe in 2021, the growth for the company rebounded and the valuations of the company were similar to/slightly lesser than where we are today and also similar/slightly lower than its all time avg PE (this is around Q1/Q2 FY22). At this time, the mgmt was supremely bullish about the prospects of the company and had guided for a topline of $1 billion (~INR 8,000) crores by 2026. This worked out to 15%+ growth for a beloved consumer facing company, with steady/improving margins, amazing cash flows and a great dividend yield.
I figured my years of waiting on the sidelines to pick up PAGE were finally over and I decided to dive in owing to this amazing window that had opened up - a consumer facing stalwart set to grow again and valuations being favourable (relative to what it had been for PAGE). I invested ~3% of my pf in PAGE between 2021-2022.
Circa 2024, I’m sitting on ‘no gains’ at my averaged acquisition cost between 2021-2022. So, what has gone wrong? Well it was the managements bet on their ‘Athleisure’ category. That to me has simply bombed. Just like many media based tech companies, ed tech companies made projections of growing their toplines faster than the speed of sound during/post COVID, PAGE did something similar, it projected amazing growth rates in its ‘Athleisure’ category leading into 2026. And for a while it did work, when everyone was home and later when COVID subsided, people were still home owing to the hybrid work culture and the sales kept on humming. However, the music finally stopped in 2023 when people were back in offices, all the revenge buying was done and peoples behavior more or less remained the same and everyone that made insane projections were left holding a lemon, to me PAGE seems no different.
Personally, I don’t see this changing dramatically in the near future either, I mean just go through managements latest concall and the general industry trends,
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Athleisure is the most impacted category
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Most of the inventory is still clearing slowly
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Existing inventory in the market was created when raw material prices were higher, there goes any scope of margin expansion due to the cooled off raw material prices
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Most of the industry is trying to get rid of its inventory via heavy discounting, to PAGE’s credit it isn’t doing the same, however the supply glut will take many quarters to clear
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Won’t be able to price the products any higher in the current environment. Don’t see the need to increase it for the next 1 year. Having tracked the company for long, they’ve always taken 3-5% hikes every 12-18 months, not sure if they did that last year, they aren’t certainly doing it this year.
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Consumer buying trends remain weak and won’t correct till the next festive season. Who is to say it’ll correct then?
Other Qs swirling in my mind,
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Why would someone buy an overpriced ‘Jockey’ T-shirt (part of the Athleisure catalog) when one can buy a T-shirt from literaly any brand. I mean who wants an underwear brands branding on their t-shirt?? Will the growth really come from here?
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Generally, in the Athleisure category there is an insane amount of competition. You can buy similar stuff from any of the large format stores, other brands and not to mention all the stuff available online. How powerful is the ‘Jockey’ brand will be seen in times to come. I have my doubts if the company really has an edge here. Their sales will improve when the market conditions improve, there is nothing else to it.
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Overall trends in the consumer facing industry remains weak. I own and have owned a lot of consumer facing stocks, most of them have said the same thing. Be it Nestle, P&G, HUL, La Opala, RBA (and other QSR players), Hawkins etc. I keep wondering if all the amazing economic data coming through from the government spending is papering over the stress the households are facing in buying everyday or more frequently used products. Is the economy really purring? I’m personally very confused.
I had purchased PAGE as part of my coffee can pf with an intention to own it for the 5 years that they had provided the projections for, from 2021 - 2026 (and maybe beyond depending on performance). Just like the management’s projection, I feel, I’m also left holding a lemon now. I have waited here 2 years without any growth. Will give it a few more quarters to see if things turnaround, otherwise, I feel the base created by the ‘one-time’ Athleisure sales during COVID will take a long time to be replaced by the growth in other categories and the stock will meander and go nowhere for some more years. At such point in time, I think, it’ll be best to deploy this money elsewhere.
For the time being, I’m in wait and watch mode with very low expectations that the company will be able to meet its expected goal of $1 billion in sales even by 2028/29. I simply feel the category they’ve bet on won’t fire as expected and I would love for the management to prove me wrong and make me richer 
26 Likes
This thought came across my mind too. But looking at other few things like real estate company sales/launches (godrej properties, dlf, macrotech,etc vehicle sales (maruti, tata motors, m&m, etc) phone+ gadget sales (redington) it seems the spending power has increased.
On flat growth in the names mentioned above (hul, page, qsr, etc)…feel there is lot of competition and alternatives. For example earlier Mcdonald was king of QSR…then came KFC, burger King and also many smaller and quirkier burger chains. Similar situation in FMCG.
Page needs to reinvent itself or else it would be along and dark road to Oblivion !!
It could end up being another underwear company
Disc. Not invested, tracking
3 Likes
Story remains the same 3 months into the new year.
@narenarora, even in a crowded market as long as they are able to grow their volumes and sales (by maintaining their margins and profitability), they should be fine. As they say, the proof is in the pudding. That for any company, moat or no moat shows the true demand for its products. Unless these two things pick up, I see the stock price going nowhere. No matter what the management makes us believe about the great brand, increasing distribution, their out of this world strategy etc. their fortunes are tied to the rest of the market. The overall market recovers, they’ll recover. That is my take on the situation.
1 Like
Upcoming new competition for Page from its own veteran (I think so…):
Source [Page 13]: https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachHis/03473576-fbb9-45cd-a879-bcf2061eb64a.pdf
4 Likes
Hanes and Fruit of the Loom are already here.
No impact of any of them in the market
Any idea who is the large player is left.
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PDS does not do brand entry business, so this is unlikely to be any real threat