MedPlus Q2 FY27: revenue up 21% YoY, but consolidated PAT nearly flat as lease costs bite margin

MedPlus' consolidated (primary basis) Q2 FY27 revenue rose 21.3% YoY to ₹2,037.1 Cr (₹1,679.3 Cr a year ago) and 8.4% QoQ (₹1,879.6 Cr), but consolidated PAT grew just 1.0% YoY to ₹56.1 Cr (₹55.5 Cr), and basic EPS inched up to ₹4.73 from ₹4.63. On a YoY basis — the primary lens — this is a clear case of profit growth trailing revenue growth: net profit margin (on total income) compressed to 2.73% from 3.27% a year ago. QoQ the numbers look dramatic (PAT +69%, NPM 1.75%→2.73%), but Q2 (Jul-Sep) is a seasonally firmer quarter for pharmacy retail, so that sequential jump is a seasonality artifact rather than a trend reversal and should not headline over the weak YoY print. The margin bridge: gross margin (revenue less cost of materials, purchases and inventory movement) was 25.1%, up ~58 bps QoQ from 24.5% — in line with, and slightly ahead of, management's guided private-label-led recovery of +0.3-0.5pp per quarter from the last concall. But gross margin is still down ~108 bps YoY from 26.2%, so the recovery is incremental, not complete. The real drag sits below the gross-margin line: consolidated finance costs (predominantly Ind AS 116 interest on lease liabilities tied to the expanding store network) rose to ₹250.0 Cr from ₹213.3 Cr a year ago, and depreciation (mostly right-of-use asset depreciation) also stepped up — together these absorbed almost all of the operating gains from the 21% revenue growth. No management press release or MD&A commentary accompanied this filing beyond the standard regulatory notes, so management's own framing of the quarter can't be cross-checked here. Against the prior concall's guidance, gross-margin recovery is tracking (met), but the FY27 target of 800 net store additions (146 added in Q1) and the ₹400 Cr operating EBITDA target are not independently verifiable from this Ind AS 34 statement — no store count or pre-lease EBITDA figure is disclosed this quarter. Street commentary ahead of the print (Univest's Q2 preview) framed the quarter as a test of whether margins stabilize back toward the 8-9% band seen through most of the last five quarters after Q1's dip to ~7.1%; no firm consensus PAT/revenue figure could be sourced, so vsStreet is marked unknown rather than guessed. Standalone (parent-only) PAT, by contrast, rose a sharp 68.3% YoY to ₹26.3 Cr (₹15.6 Cr) on revenue up 36.2% to ₹280.1 Cr — a basis divergence worth flagging explicitly, since the standalone entity carries a far smaller lease/store base than the full consolidated retail network, so it doesn't absorb the same Ind AS 116 cost drag. This also comes in a quarter of promoter-level disclosures: Agilemed Investments and Lone Furrow Investments (promoter entities) disclosed encumbrance/pledges covering roughly 10.72% of the promoter stake, alongside the board's prior comments on an exchange fine — incremental governance datapoints against a prior-concall backdrop the company itself described as defensive-toned with high risk. None of these directly move the P&L this quarter, but they sit alongside a result that, on the primary YoY measure, shows growth outrunning profitability.