The cost pressures are mounting both in terms of oil and currency because quite a few of the input components are important and, therefore the rupee depreciation impacts the company a lot, said Sunil D'Souza, Managing Director, Whirlpool.

"I would expect to see that as this prices start to impact the input, you would start to see industry looking to increase prices," D'Souza told CNBC TV-18.

"We will move in-line with the industry as and when it moves," he said.

Whirlpool reported a largely in-line set of fourth quarter earnings with strong topline growth but margins disappointed a tad bit.

The year-on-year (YoY) revenues for the fourth quarter were up at Rs 1,257 crore against Rs 1,114 crore. The YoY EBITDA was up 11% at Rs 140 crore versus Rs 126 crore but margins were down a bit at 11.1% as compared to 11.3%.

Watch: Whirlpool not looking at higher volumes at the cost of margins, says Sunil D'Souza

Edited Excerpts:

Can you take us through how the revenues have done in the current quarter? We are already one and a half months into this quarter are they better than the demand in the last quarter?

Before this quarter itself, we have gone from strength to strength. If you take the last three financial years we have grown topline by 5%, 14% and 24% in sequence. The good news is even the March quarter came in at a 24%. So, very strong topline growth, Rs 12,570 crore. Bottom line profit after tax (PAT) we delivered Rs 91 crore and, therefore an increase in an earnings per share (EPS) of 23%.

The good news is that for the full year of 2018, which ended in March, overall our topline is now close to Rs 5,000 crore and we have delivered a decent bottom line of Rs 351 crore PAT which is again a 13% growth against previous year. This was done despite all the turbulence in the economy of cycling, post demonetisation, GST changes and then a bit of commodity inflation that we saw.

In the middle of last year, we had seen commodities start to climb and started to plateau at the end of the year and opening of this year. So, we managed that cycle well in first quarter. Oil has gone from $60 same time last year to $77. Oil has a direct impact on us in terms of raw material as well as indirect impact in terms of freight cost etc... because we are a freight heavy industry.

Are you saying that all this means margins will fall further?

All that I would say is cost will rise further and as cost rises further, it starts impacting all the players. I don’t think anyone is immune to that and, therefore you will start seeing this as the prices will start to move up. As we had said during the GST period, when the tax incidence went up, ultimately the industry moved up. So, the cost pressures are mounting both in terms of oil and currency because quite a few of the input components are important and therefore the rupee depreciation impacts us a lot.

I would expect to see that as this prices start to impact the input, you would start to see industry looking to increase prices. We will move in-line with the industry as and when it moves.

Will it be a conscious decision by the company then to sort of gain market share at the cost of margins?

I do not think Whirlpool is in the business of pricing and growing volume and we have also maintained that. Even if you take the full financial year overall we have just about maintained the operating margins. The PAT is bit down because of the extra incidence of tax which is up by about 1.5%. Right now we are at about 35% tax incidence, but overall bottom line margin is about the same. The team has managed that by tackling commodity and currency volatility through strong cost measures. We made sure that our product portfolio is filling in gaps to increase value and the sales team is going out into geographic expansion.

So, while the industry is soft, I think we have outfaced industry but not by pricing itself but by making sure that execution on the ground is better than everyone else both in terms of the portfolio and geographic reach. So, we are hitting more billing points, we have expanded both our mass and premium portfolio and I think that is what is giving us the growth.