Varun Beverages said that it has extended its exclusive bottling and trademark licence agreement with PepsiCo in India until April 2049
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Varun Beverages, leading bottler of PepsiCo, posted a consolidated net profit of ₹1,525.3 crore, up 15.1 per cent in the June quarter over ₹1,325.49 crore. Net revenues grew 20.4 per cent to ₹ 8,451.23 crore.The company said that it has extended its exclusive bottling and trademark licence agreement with PepsiCo in India until April 2049 removing restrictionsInterim dividendThe company’s board approved an interim dividend of 25 per cent of face resulting in a total cash outflow of about ₹. 1,69.1 crore.Ravi Jaipuria, Chairman, Varun Beverages, said, “We have extended our exclusive bottling and trademark licence agreement with PepsiCo in India until April 2049 and removed the earlier restriction requiring VBL to operate solely as an SPV for PepsiCo’s business, strengthening our long-term partnership and creating greater operational flexibility to pursue opportunities that can deliver scale and synergies,” he added.The company said its consolidated sales volume grew by 19.8 per cent to 466.7 million cases in Q2 CY26. The company follows January-December as the financial period.“In India, we saw healthy volume growth in twenties since the onset of season i.e. from March onwards except for April which was about flat resulting in overall volume growth for the quarter of 14.4 per cent,” he said, adding that the company expects to witness double-digit growth in the second half of the year.Energy drinksOn the impact of FSSAI’s direction for removal of “energy drinks” descriptor from products such as Sting, Jaipuria on the earnings call said, “They have come out with a clear guideline that we should remove the word “energy” from the labels within 90 days......They just want the word “energy” to be taken away which does not change anything for us.... We saw a temporary dip in June and July in the energy mix....but now the new labels are out in the market for us..so we are seeing uptick in volumes back for Sting.”Raw material costsResponding to a query on the impact of geopolitical tensions on the earnings call, he said, “In India, early stocking of key raw materials and savings in sugar consumption with higher mix of low sugar and no sugar products helped in maintaining gross margins despite the high inflationary raw material environment.”“We have enough raw material stocks for Q3. So we acquired more goods at a higher price, but we averaged out the cost in the second quarter and the balance would come in the third quarter .....so our pricing would remain the same and overall effect would not be large because we have averaged out the pricing,” Jaipuria said.On its strategic alliance with the Asahi Group in the value-added fermented dairy space, the company’s management said, “We are bullish on dairy as a category and Calpis is a great addition to our portfolio and will strengthen our processes and manufacturing capabilities and learnings from Asahi.”Published on July 28, 2026










