(Reuters) -Indian watchmaker Titan reported a nearly 13% rise in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday as demand for premium jewellery and gold coins from affluent customers remained resilient despite higher bullion prices.
The company reported consolidated net profit of 8.71 billion rupees ($101.97 million) for the quarter ended March 31, compared with last year’s 7.71 billion rupees.
Gold prices rose nearly 17% in the quarter, with 10 grams of the 24-carat variant surpassing 90,000 rupees ($1,062.39) by the end of March.
Despite record-high prices, demand has persisted, with many exchanging old jewellery for new to manage budgets for festivals and weddings, Reuters reported.
While demand cooled in Titan’s lower-priced segments, affluent customers continued to buy high-end jewellery and investment-grade gold coins, Titan had said in April.
This helped its mainstay jewellery business, which includes the ‘Tanishq’ and ‘Mia’ brands and accounts for the bulk of revenue, post a 25% rise in sales.
Gold coins, which are part of Titan’s jewellery segment, saw sales jump of 64% year on year, as more Indians turned to bullion investments.
Titan’s profit margins, however, contracted to 11.9% in the quarter from 12.1% last year, pressured by the lower profitability of gold coins compared to jewellery.
The company’s finance chief, Ashok Sonthalia, had said in an interview with Reuters in February that rising gold prices could threaten its margin target of 11% to 11.5% for fiscal 2026.
Its second-largest business – watches – also reported an 20% rise in revenue to 12.16 billion rupees as the company pushed premium offerings under its Raga, Sonata and Fastrack brands.
Separately, the company stated its managing director and CEO C. K. Venkataraman will retire by the year-end and be replaced by the jewellery division head Ajoy Chawla.
($1 = 85.4150 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Ananta Agarwal in Bengaluru and Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Vijay Kishore)
