BENGALURU:Last September, Indiantelevision.com had estimated that the marketing spends by one of the biggest spenders on advertisement and sales promotion (ASP) in India, nutrition, health and wellness company Nestle India Limited would be about Rs 450 with a variation of +10 per cent.

Background: Being a part of a multi-national group, the company is generally quite tight lipped about sharing financials unless it has to legally do so. Details about the company’s advertisement spends are not indicated even in the company’s annual reports – what you have is a combination of the Advertisement and Sales Promotion spends declared as a single entry in the notes forming the part of the company’s annual financials. There is really no way that one could pin an exact number for these spends unless one has an inside track on the company’s marketing budgets. The projections and numbers in this report are pure conjecture based statistical tools used on the historical annual numbers revealed by the company in its annual reports. The author has no knowledge about Nestle’s strategy, past or present.

Note: 100,00,000 = 100 lakh = 10 million = 1 crore

In its FY-2014 annual report for the year ended 31 December, 2015, Nestle has indicated ASP spends at Rs 445.47 crore (4.52 per cent of Total Income from Operations or TIO), or just 1.01 per cent off the Rs 450 crore mark mentioned by us. Please refer to figure 1 below that has been updated until FY-2014.

CAGR for Nestle’s ASP in absolute rupees in the eleven year period from FY-2004 to FY-2014 has increased slightly to 12.56 per cent as compared to the 12.55 per cent for the ten year period between FY-2004 and FY-2013.

Indiantelevision.com had also estimated that Nestle would report TIO in the range between Rs 9534.09 crore and Rs 10640 crore for FY-2014. The company has reported TIO of Rs 9854.84 crore, well withinthe range indicated by us, while just missing the Rs 100 billion mark by a small fraction. The company’s TIO CAGR has gone down over the eleven year period starting FY-2004 until FY-2014 to 14.48per centas compared to the CAGR of 16.93 per cent for the ten year period between FY-2004 and FY-2013. Please refer to figure 2 below for actual y-o-y growth in TIO.

In the company’s earnings release for FY-2014, Nestle managing director Etienne Bennet said, “2014 was a challenging year and I am satisfied that in a difficult environment, we have delivered both top and bottomline and our results are broadly in line with the Food and Beverages segment of the FMCG sector. We increased investments behind our brands and maintained healthy profitability despite strong headwinds in milk solids costs that were higher than international markets and were not passed onto the consumer fully. We remain focused on value portfolio management and are continuing to reshape the portfolio and communication to strengthen our leadership as Nutrition, Health and Wellness company.”

Nestle’sProfit after Tax (PAT) has shown a lower CAGR during the eleven year period from FY-2004 to FY-2014 of 14.5 per cent as compared to a CAGR of 15.54 per cent over the ten year period FY-2004 to FY-2013. Please refer to figure 3 below for PAT performance. PAT for FY-2014 was Rs 1184.69 crore (12 per cent of TIO), sixper cent more than the RS 1117.13 crore (12.3 per cent of TIO) for FY-2013.

Overall, the company’s PAT, both in terms of absolute rupees and as per centage of TIO shows an upward linear trend for the eleven year period between FY-2004 and FY-2014.