V2 Retail: Consolidated PAT up just 6% YoY as revenue grows 28%, NPM nearly halves

V2 Retail's consolidated revenue rose 27.8% YoY to ₹905.6 Cr (total income ₹908.1 Cr) for Q2 FY27, but consolidated PAT attributable to owners grew only 5.7% YoY to ₹18.2 Cr — profit growth trailing topline growth by roughly 22 percentage points. Net profit margin compressed to 2.01% from 2.43% a year ago and from 4.19% last quarter (Q1 FY27), even though operating profit margin actually expanded YoY, to 13.28% from 12.06%. Standalone and consolidated are near-identical this quarter, so there's no basis divergence to flag; the consolidated PAT figure is primary per our convention. The gap between expanding OPM and compressing NPM sits below the operating line: finance costs rose 6.0% YoY to ₹29.7 Cr and depreciation & amortisation jumped 81.8% YoY to ₹68.3 Cr, as new-store right-of-use assets and leases from the aggressive rollout hit the P&L. Sequentially, revenue fell 9.2% and PAT fell 56.5% from Q1 FY27 (₹997.2 Cr / ₹41.9 Cr) — this is largely the seasonal Q2 (monsoon-quarter) pattern typical of Indian value retail rather than a reversal, so the QoQ decline should not be read as a trend break. On guidance: management's FY27 revenue growth target of "at least 50% YoY" (reaffirmed last quarter) now looks stretched — H1 FY27 revenue is up only 41.9% YoY, implying a steeper required H2 ramp. The EBITDA-margin guidance ("maintain despite new area addition") was effectively beaten at the OPM level. Same-store sales growth, which the filing itself doesn't disclose, decelerated sharply to 0.5% in Q2 from 7.5% in Q1 per the company's own 2 Oct business update, prompting management to cut FY27 SSSG guidance to 5–7% from 8–10% — this was the data point the market reacted to, sending the stock down roughly 19% ahead of today's formal results; no specific consensus PAT estimate for the quarter turned up in search, so vs-street is marked unknown rather than guessed. Store rollout itself stayed on pace: 49 new stores opened (3 closed) this quarter, lifting the network to 427 stores, with H1 net additions of 106 keeping the full-year 170-200 store-opening target within reach. No company press release was available in our records for this specific filing to cross-check management's own framing against the numbers. Other quarter developments — the August senior-management appointments (Manu Agarwal, Dinesh Malpani) and the routine insider-trading window closure — are procedural and don't bear directly on this quarter's financial print. The quarter sets up Q3 FY27 (festive season) as the key test of whether the company can close the gap to its FY27 revenue guidance and whether the SSSG slowdown proves temporary.