Granite Materials: Profits Down Despite Flat Revenue
Granite Materials is a building materials business in India. The CEO has asked for help understanding a sharp fall in profitability.
Revenue moved from ₹593 Cr to ₹575 Cr over the past year, while operating margin fell from 22% to 13% — a drop of 9 percentage points and roughly ₹56 Cr of operating profit.
What the finance team has established so far:
- Sales volume changed by +9%
- Average realised price changed by +1%
- Input costs per unit rose 19%
- Fixed overhead rose 4%
The COO believes the problem is "the sales team discounting too aggressively". The Head of Sales believes it is "procurement failing to control input costs". The CEO wants an evidence-based answer, not an argument.
drivers
- volume change pct
- 9
- fixed overhead change pct
- 4
- realised price change pct
- 1
- input cost per unit change pct
- 19
profit bridge
- revenue last year cr
- 593
- revenue this year cr
- 575
- operating margin last pct
- 22
- operating margin this pct
- 13
Diagnose the profit decline and recommend a response. Provide:
- Analysis — structure the problem and isolate what actually drove the margin fall.
- Risks — what your recommendation depends on.
- Recommendation — prioritised actions with expected impact.
Show the arithmetic behind your conclusion.
100 points, 60% to pass.
- root cause25
- recommendation25
- problem structuring25
- quantitative analysis25
Reveal suggested structure
Profit = (Price × Volume) − (Variable cost × Volume) − Fixed cost
- Decompose the change: how much of the margin fall is price, how much volume, how much unit cost, how much overhead?
- Size each driver before forming a hypothesis.
- Test the two stakeholder claims against the numbers.
- Prioritise by size of impact and speed of fix.