
Eternal dilemma: Is Blinkit’s Q3 profit a turning point or a one-quarter wonder?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Eternal Ltd’s December quarter (Q3FY26) results were encouraging on many counts. Adjusted Ebitda (before employee stock options and after lease rentals) soared by 63% sequentially to ₹364 crore, mainly led by quick commerce business Blinkit, which clocked a small profit of ₹4 crore versus a loss of ₹156 crore in Q2.
This is a significant achievement, given that it has largely shifted to an owned-inventory-led model from a marketplace for third-party sellers since Q2. Notably, almost 90% of net order value (NOV) came from owned inventory versus 80% in Q2. The turnaround in Blinkit’s profitability could be attributed to the sharp improvement in contribution per order – i.e.
profit per order before fixed costs. Simply put, Blinkit earned ₹30 per order or 25% more than in Q2 owing to factors such as sales mix change, operating leverage and seasonality, even though the gross profit margin shrank by 20 basis points sequentially to 26.6%. While the GST cuts in September adversely impacted Blinkit’s NOV growth rate by about 3 percentage points, it still rose 14% sequentially to ₹13,300 crore.
NOV growth prospects remain strong even though Blinkit fell slightly short of achieving its dark-stores target of 2,100 by December. After adding 272 net stores in Q2, it added 211 net stores in Q3, taking the total to 2,027. Management attributed the moderating pace to slow construction activity in Delhi NCR because of pollution-related restrictions, and its own prioritization of order volumes over new stores.
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