01 — At a Glance
The Diageo Heir Who’s Got a Maharashtra Hangover
- 52-Week High / Low₹1,645 / ₹1,247
- Q3 FY26 Revenue₹3,694 Cr
- Q3 FY26 PAT₹418 Cr
- Q3 FY26 EPS₹5.75
- Annualised EPS (Avg Q1–Q3 × 4)₹24.60
- Book Value₹116
- Price to Book12.0x
- Dividend Yield0.86%
- Debt / Equity0.05x
- 3-Month Return-4.52%
Opening Sip: United Spirits delivered ₹3,694 Cr in Q3 FY26 revenue — up 7.6% YoY — and PAT of ₹418 Cr, up 11.8% YoY. The premium portfolio is firing on all cylinders: Johnnie Walker partied at Sunburn, Don Julio crossed ₹100 Cr NSV in just 9 months (fastest ever for an innovation brand), and Smirnoff Minty Jamun turned India into a top-5 Smirnoff market globally. But Maharashtra decided to throw a state-made liquor (MML) grenade into the Popular and Lower Prestige segment, and now everyone’s talking about brand equity versus cheap hooch. The stock trades at 57.5x earnings — which is the kind of valuation that requires a very steady hand and a lot of faith in premiumisation. Whether that faith is premature or prescient is the actual question here.
02 — Introduction
When Your Biggest Competitor Is a State Government
There is a special kind of corporate adversary that no amount of A&P spend can defeat — the government that decides it wants to make its own whisky. Enter Maharashtra Made Liquor, or MML, the state government’s answer to “what if we sold budget booze and called it competition?” USL’s management visited Maharashtra literally every month trying to understand the damage. Spoiler: it’s real, it’s painful, and it predominantly hurts the lower end of the portfolio.
But here is the remarkable part of the United Spirits story in Q3 FY26: exclude Maharashtra, and P&A volume grew 6%, P&A NSV grew 14%. That’s “high end of our historical range,” as the CFO calmly noted on the concall, as if describing a mildly interesting weather pattern. Rest of India is humming. It’s just one state, one segment, creating a disproportionate amount of noise.
Meanwhile, the premium portfolio has quietly been building a fortress. Luxury is growing. Scotch is growing. Don Julio crossed ₹100 Cr NSV in the 9-month YTD — making it USL’s fastest ₹100 Cr innovation brand ever. That’s tequila, in India, crossing a hundred crores before most analysts could finish pronouncing “agave.” The Smirnoff Minty Jamun innovation put India in the top 5 Smirnoff markets globally. The street ignored it because Maharashtra was making noise. That’s the full picture.
What you’re looking at is a tale of two portfolios inside one balance sheet — the premium segment compounding beautifully while the popular segment navigates a government-sponsored storm. The question for long-term investors isn’t whether Maharashtra blows over. It’s whether the premiumisation thesis accelerates fast enough to permanently reduce Popular segment dependency. Based on the data, it’s working. Slowly, methodically, and with significantly better gross margins.
Concall Gem (Jan 2026): “Excluding Maharashtra, our P&A volume has grown by 6%… and NSV growth is 14%.” — CFO Pradeep Jain, keeping it very calm while describing what is actually a very healthy business underneath the Maharashtra cloud.
03 — Business Model: WTF Do They Even Do?
They Sell You Dreams in a Bottle. And Sometimes the Dream Costs ₹3,000.
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