Radico Khaitan says vodka volume in India jumped 49% in the quarter

Radico Khaitan said its vodka business posted a sharp rise in India during the fiscal second quarter, helping lift sales, profit and margins even as the company’s regular liquor range declined.

In an unaudited earnings presentation filed on Tuesday with the National Stock Exchange of India, the New Delhi-based spirits producer said vodka volume reached 2.96 million cases in the July-to-September 2026 quarter, up 49% from the same period a year earlier. Based on the company’s rounded growth rate, that increase was roughly 973,000 cases from a base of about 1.99 million.

The vodka gains came as Radico Khaitan continued to benefit from stronger demand for higher-priced products. The company said volume in its Prestige & Above segment rose to 5.28 million cases from 3.89 million a year earlier. That was an increase of 35.8%, or about 1.39 million cases. By contrast, volume in the regular and other segment fell to 4.55 million cases from 5.04 million, a decline of 9.7%, or about 490,000 cases.

Total quarterly volume increased to 10.02 million cases from 9.34 million, up 7.2%. The company said that figure includes production or sales under royalty agreements. The filing refers to the unit simply as cases and does not specify a liter equivalent in the table.

The results show a clear shift in Radico Khaitan’s sales mix toward more expensive brands. While total volume grew 7.2%, the Prestige & Above portfolio expanded nearly five times faster. That helped push net revenue higher and widened operating margins despite the drop in lower-priced products.

Net revenue for the quarter rose to 1,745.1 crore rupees from 1,493.9 crore rupees a year earlier, an increase of 16.8%. A crore equals 10 million rupees. Revenue from the Prestige & Above segment climbed to 996 crore rupees from 718.4 crore rupees, up 38.6%. That segment alone added 277.6 crore rupees in quarterly net revenue, more than the company’s total revenue increase of 251.2 crore rupees, underscoring how much of the growth came from premium products.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, rose to 356.5 crore rupees from 236.1 crore rupees, a gain of 51%. The EBITDA margin increased to 20.4%, which the company said was an expansion of 462 basis points from a year earlier. Net profit rose even faster, reaching 230.9 crore rupees compared with 139 crore rupees in the same quarter last year, an increase of 66.1%.

Radico Khaitan is one of India’s major domestic spirits producers. The company has its corporate base in New Delhi and a registered distillery in Rampur. It sells vodka, whisky, gin, brandy and rum in the Indian market. The latest quarter suggests the company’s growth is being driven less by broad volume gains across all categories and more by consumers trading up within its portfolio, with vodka playing a central role in that shift.

The company’s filing did not provide a detailed category breakdown beyond the headline vodka number and the broader segment data, but the scale of the vodka increase stands out against the overall group performance. The 49% jump in vodka volume far exceeded the 7.2% increase in total cases sold, making the category one of the main contributors to the quarter’s acceleration.

That pattern matters for profitability. Premium spirits generally carry stronger pricing and margins than regular labels, and Radico Khaitan’s results reflected that. The decline in regular and other products did not prevent the company from posting double-digit revenue growth and even stronger gains in EBITDA and net profit because the mix improved sharply toward higher-value brands.

The second-quarter update also fits with the company’s first-half numbers. For the first six months of fiscal 2027, Radico Khaitan reported sales of 20.01 million cases and net revenue of 3,429.8 crore rupees. The second-quarter performance accounted for roughly half of the first-half volume and revenue and showed stronger momentum in the premium portfolio than in the rest of the business.

The figures were disclosed in the company’s official earnings presentation dated October 27 and lodged with the NSE’s regulatory archive in Mumbai. Because the results are unaudited, they remain subject to review, but they offer a detailed picture of how demand in India’s spirits market is evolving for one of the country’s best-known liquor makers.

For Radico Khaitan, the quarter showed two trends at once. The company sold more cases overall, but the bigger change was in what consumers bought. Higher-end labels, especially vodka, expanded quickly, while regular references lost ground. That combination lifted revenue growth above volume growth and gave the company its strongest improvement in margins and profit among the main indicators reported for the period.