Volume Growth in FMCG Results: Why It Tells You More Than Revenue Growth

Every FMCG earnings season, the headline number is revenue growth. It’s the first figure in the press release, the first line on TV and the one most people remember. But if you only look at that number, you can miss the most important part of the result. Volume growth in FMCG results tells you how much more stuff people actually bought: more packs of soap, more bottles of hair oil, more kilos of detergent. Revenue growth on its own can’t tell you that, because part of it may come from simply charging more for the same pack.

This guide explains how to split a company’s sales growth into volume and price, why analysts and fund managers care so much about the split, and how to read the volume language in a real results release. We’ll use two recent June-quarter (Q1 FY27) results from Hindustan Unilever and Marico, plus a couple of made-up companies to keep the arithmetic clean.

What volume growth in FMCG results actually measures

An FMCG company’s revenue for a quarter is, roughly, the number of units it sold multiplied by the average price it got for each unit. So revenue can grow for three reasons:

• Volume: it sold more units, or more tonnes, than a year ago.
• Price: it raised prices, or cut the grammage of a pack while keeping the price the same, which works out to the same thing.
• Mix: customers moved towards costlier products, say from a basic bar of soap to a premium body wash, so the average price per unit went up even without a price hike.

When a company reports “volume growth”, it’s trying to isolate the first part. Some companies fold mix into their volume number and some don’t, which matters when you compare them. Hindustan Unilever, for example, defines its Underlying Volume Growth (UVG) in its June 2026 quarter results release on BSE as volume growth “including the impact of mix of turnover realisation of products sold”. So an HUL volume number already includes some mix. Read the footnotes before you compare one company’s volume growth with another’s.

Why price-led growth and volume-led growth are not the same thing

Picture two shops on the same street. Both report 10% higher sales this year. The first one sold the same number of items and raised prices by 10%. The second one kept prices the same and sold 10% more items. On paper they look identical. In practice the second shop is in much better health: more customers are walking in, its products are getting into more homes, and it hasn’t tested how much more customers will pay.

FMCG works the same way, only at a much bigger scale. Price increases are usually a response to costs. When palm oil, crude-linked packaging or copra gets expensive, companies pass some of it on. That protects margins for a while, but it rarely lasts. Once input costs ease, competitors cut prices, smaller regional brands get aggressive, and the price growth fades or even turns negative. Volume growth is the part that’s still there when the pricing tailwind is gone.

Price growth is borrowed from the commodity cycle. Volume growth is earned from customers. The market usually pays more for the second kind.

There’s also a demand signal hidden in volumes. FMCG products are things people buy every week or every month, so volume growth across the big players is one of the better real-time indicators of how Indian households are spending. When volume growth slows across the sector while prices keep rising, it often means consumers are trading down to smaller packs or cheaper brands.

How to split revenue growth into volume and price: a worked example

The maths is simple once you see it. If revenue equals volume times price, then growth multiplies rather than adds:

(1 + revenue growth) = (1 + volume growth) × (1 + price/mix growth)

Let’s take two hypothetical companies, both selling a ₹30 pack of soap. These numbers are made up for illustration.

Company A’s revenue grew 10.2% (₹330.48 crore against ₹300 crore). Company B’s grew 10%. If you only saw the headline, you’d say A did slightly better. Now split it:

• Company A: volume growth is 2% (10.2 crore packs against 10 crore). Price growth is 8% (₹32.40 against ₹30). Check: 1.02 × 1.08 = 1.1016, which is the 10.2% revenue growth.
• Company B: volume growth is 10% (11 crore packs against 10 crore). Price growth is zero. All of its growth came from selling more.

Company B is the stronger business this year, even with the smaller headline number. If input costs fall next year and Company A has to give back some of that 8% price increase, its revenue growth could drop sharply. Company B doesn’t have that problem.

A shortcut people use is to subtract: 10.2% minus 2% gives roughly 8% price growth. That works fine when the numbers are small. When they’re bigger, it drifts. For example, if revenue grows 21% and volume grows 11%, subtracting suggests 10% price and mix growth, but the precise figure is 1.21 ÷ 1.11 − 1, which is about 9%. Not a huge gap, but worth knowing when you’re comparing companies closely.

Reading volume growth in a real FMCG result: HUL’s June 2026 quarter

Hindustan Unilever’s results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 are a good example of how companies present this. According to the company’s results release filed with BSE, turnover was ₹17,184 crore, underlying sales growth (USG) was 10% and underlying volume growth was 5%. HUL’s CEO described that 10% as “driven equally by volume and price”. Business Standard’s report on the results put turnover growth at 10.3%, up from ₹15,579 crore a year earlier.

That’s the company-level picture: half volume, half price. The more useful part is the segment split, because it shows where the volume came from and where pricing did the heavy lifting:

• Home Care: 14% USG, driven by high-single-digit UVG. Most of the growth here came from selling more.
• Beauty & Wellbeing: 12% USG, also with high-single-digit UVG.
• Foods: 7% USG with mid-single-digit UVG.
• Personal Care: 4% USG, which the release said was “led by pricing, as palm oil inflation persisted for the second consecutive year”. The investor presentation in the same filing shows Personal Care UVG as a low-single-digit decline.

Look at Personal Care for a second. It grew 4% in value, but volumes fell. That’s the price-led pattern from Company A above, only more extreme: the company is selling fewer units and making up for it by charging more, because palm oil (a key input for soap) has stayed expensive. It’s not necessarily a bad decision. Protecting margins during cost inflation is sensible. But a reader who sees “Personal Care grew 4%” without the volume line would draw the wrong conclusion about demand.

Notice also that HUL gives exact percentages for company-level volume growth but only bands like “high-single digit” or “mid-single digit” for segments. That’s common. You won’t always get a precise segment volume number, so treat those bands as rough ranges and compare them quarter to quarter rather than reading them as exact figures.

A second example: Marico, where volume did most of the work

Marico’s Q1 FY27 numbers show a different pattern. Its Q1 FY27 media release reported India business revenue of ₹3,003 crore, up 21% year on year, with 11% underlying volume growth in India. The company called that volume figure its highest in 20 quarters. Consolidated revenue grew 23% to ₹3,957 crore.

Using the formula from earlier, 1.21 ÷ 1.11 gives about 1.09, so roughly 9% of Marico’s India growth came from price and mix, and 11% from volume. That’s our arithmetic, not a number Marico published. But it tells you something: this was a quarter where both volume and price pushed in the same direction.

Within the portfolio, the release flags two contrasting brands:

• Parachute Rigids (the coconut oil packs) grew volumes 10% and revenue 23%, with price growth moderating as Marico passed on some value to consumers amid easing copra prices.
• Saffola Edible Oils grew revenue 7% but had a high-single-digit volume decline, which the company said came from rationalising supply of select variants to maintain profitability.

Saffola is a good reminder that a volume decline isn’t always a demand problem. Sometimes a company deliberately sells less of a low-margin product. The release tells you why. That’s why you should always read the commentary next to the number rather than reacting to the number alone.

A volume decline with an explanation is information. A volume decline with no explanation is a question you should ask on the next earnings call.

Questions to ask when you read the volume line

1. Is growth volume-led or price-led? Split it using the formula. If price is doing most of the work, ask how long the company can keep pushing it.
2. What’s the base? A 10% volume number against a weak quarter a year ago is less impressive than the same number against a strong one. Marico, for instance, reported a two-year volume CAGR of 10% alongside its 11% quarterly figure, which helps you see that the growth wasn’t only a weak base bouncing back.
3. Does the definition include mix? HUL’s UVG does. Other companies may report pure tonnage or unit growth. Check the footnote before comparing.
4. Which segments drove it? Company-level volume can hide a weak segment, as HUL’s Personal Care showed.
5. What happened to margins? Price-led growth during cost inflation often comes with flat or falling margins. HUL’s EBITDA margin narrowed 40 basis points to 23% in the quarter, according to Business Standard. Volume-led growth with easing input costs, like Marico’s quarter, can lift margins.
6. Is the company cutting prices? When commodities fall, price growth can turn negative, and revenue growth can lag volume growth. That’s not a bad sign if volumes are strong.

Where volume growth fits in your results checklist

Volume growth is one line, not the whole story. You still need to look at gross margin, operating margin, advertising spends and cash flow. Our guide on gross margin explains how input costs show up before they hit profit, and the piece on constant currency growth covers the equivalent question for companies with big overseas businesses. If you want a full framework, our guide on how to analyse quarterly results of a company walks through each section of a results release in order.

With the September quarter (Q2 FY27) results season underway, volume growth is the number to watch when the big FMCG names report. If several of them show revenue growth well ahead of volume growth, it usually means pricing is carrying the sector. If volumes pick up while price growth cools, that’s a healthier sign about demand. Either way, you’ll learn more from the split than from the headline.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Company A, Company B and all pack counts and prices in the worked example are hypothetical. Figures for Hindustan Unilever and Marico are taken from the linked company filings and reports. Investing in stocks involves risk of loss. Please do your own research and consult a SEBI-registered investment adviser before making any investment decision.