Ladies and gentlemen, good day. Welcome to the NIIT Limited Q3 FY 2023 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vijay Thadani, Managing Director and Vice Chairman of NIIT Limited. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon and good morning and good evening to others who are not in the same time zone as what we are. First of all, thank you very much for your interest in NIIT and for joining this call. This is a busy time for you to be attending many, many calls, and I thank you for making the choice to attend the NIIT Limited call. The agenda today is to discuss the business performance for the third quarter of financial year ending in March 2023. While my colleague, Sapnesh, and supported by our CFO, Sanjay Mal, Kapil Saurabh from Investor Relations, as well as our chairman, Mr. Pawar, we will all together try to answer everything, and we'll give you a more detailed brief. I just wanted to make some opening comments.
First, despite the turbulent macro environment that we see around us, the businesses have done well, compared to what we thought we would be able to do in quarter three. Second is that during the quarter, NIIT made a significant acquisition. We now have St. Charles Consulting Group from Illinois, U.S., who become a part of the NIIT family, we are very proud to have them as a part of us. Their expertise as well as capability that they've built over a couple of decades would be of immense use in charting the growth path and strategy for NIIT in times to come. As I mentioned, they are based in Illinois, U.S., and they are a leading provider of strategic learning interventions to top-tier global professional services and management consulting firms.
This has been a space, both in terms of capability as well as the customer segment, which has been, which was a blank in our strategy and therefore, their capability and the penetration in the attractive customer segment. Which by the way, is many ways a recession-proof, because every time there is volatility in the environment, professional services and management consulting organizations tend to do well. We feel very proud to have them. Including St. Charles Financial, which have been consolidated with NIIT and CLG's account from November 5, 2022, the overall growth is 16% QOQ and 18% year-on-year.
Due to the prevailing market environment globally, including India, parts of SNC, the other part of the business servicing GSIs, that is, Global System Integration firms and technology OEM customers, did face headwinds and therefore recorded muted growth. However, the solutions which are serving large BFSI firms and enterprises experienced growth, very impressive growth, owing to increased consumption. There is more detail behind this. Now I will invite Sapnesh to brief you on the quarterly results and the operating performance. After that, we will open it up for Q&A. Over to you, Sapnesh.
Thanks, Vijay. Thanks, everyone, for joining this call. Like Vijay pointed out, we appreciate your time. We are very aware how busy you are and with everything that's going on, we really appreciate you taking the time to attend this call. Please note that the financials that I will report include the numbers from St. Charles from the day they joined NIIT, that is November 5th , 2022 onwards. I'll provide a breakup at relevant points in the call, where I will separate the performance of different parts of NIIT with and without St. Charles numbers. From an overall perspective, let me start with the highlights at the NIIT level for the quarter, including the St. C Harles Consulting Group's numbers, which have been now consolidated with NIIT from November 5th.
The revenue stood at INR 4,546 million. It was up 18% year-on-year and 16% quarter-on-quarter. The EBITDA stood at INR 908 million, up 62% QOQ and 10% YOY. The EBITDA margin at 20%, up 570 basis points quarter-on-quarter. Net other income was INR negative 37 million, and I'll provide a breakup of this a little bit later in the call. The profit after tax was INR 550 million, resulting in an EPS of INR 4.1 per share. Let me now break this down by business for you. The Corporate Learning Group, including St. Charles Consulting Group, the revenue for the quarter was INR 2,636 million. This was up 22% year-on-year and 21% quarter-on-quarter.
In constant currency terms, the revenue was up 15% year-on-year and 17% quarter-on-quarter. The EBITDA was at INR 845 million, up 16% year-on-year and 58% quarter-on-quarter. The EBITDA margin was 23%, up 544 basis points from a quarter-on-quarter perspective. At an organic level, the CLG business had a revenue of INR 2,298 million. This was up 11% year-on-year and 10% quarter-on-quarter. In constant currency terms, revenue increased 6% year-on-year and 8% quarter-on-quarter. The EBITDA was at INR 749 million, up 3% year-on-year and 40% quarter-on-quarter.
The EBITDA margins were at 23%, up 91 basis points quarter-over-quarter. The margin improvement was predominantly driven by cost optimization as well as improved utilization of resources, as well as one occurrence of certain one-time expenses that were incurred in the previous quarter, predominantly around transition of new customers. Our planned investments in sales and marketing are continuing and have driven strong customer additions. We signed one new insurance group as an MTS customer this previous quarter, which takes our customer tally to 71. CLG also continues to receive 100% renewals from existing customers. Quarter three saw renewal of all seven existing customers, customer contracts that came up for renewal.
The business has also received a number of contract award confirmations in the quarter, which, and these contracts are in the contracting stage at this time, and we expect them to close towards the end of Q4, and will be in operation as we enter the next fiscal year. The revenue visibility at the end of the quarter was INR 321 million . Please note that the customer count and visibility does not include the customers that St. Charles brings to the NIIT family. We will watch the visibility and the operations over the next several quarters and then decide whether to include the visibility from St. Charles customers into the CLG visibility.
From an overall perspective, I continue to see a healthy pipeline of new customers as well as new opportunities that create both wallet share expansion opportunities as well as potential to enter new market segments. While the organic growth was impacted in H1 due to the environment, the performance in Q3 has been a little bit ahead of the guided range on account of faster than expected ramp up in a couple of new customers. Q4 is typically a weak quarter for CLG. We see either a flat Q4 or a tad lower than Q3. This year we are expecting similar growth or similar performance as compared to Q3 on an organic basis for the Corporate Learning
Group. Of course, with the addition of St. Charles to the family, we expect the overall performance to grow significantly sequentially. As a result, we expect the full year growth to be in the early [80s] in constant currency terms. INR growth is expected to be around 20% with approximately 20% EBITDA margin. Despite the near-term volatility in spend, I think it is prudent to continue to invest in the long-term growth trajectory of the company, given the large potential that we see in front of us. We hope that these investments will help us increase the share of wallet with existing customers and also enable us to penetrate new market segments as well as new geographies. Coming to the SNC business now. The revenue was at INR 910 million, was up 4% year-on-year and down marginally on a QoQ basis.
EBITDA was INR 63 million as compared to INR 25 million in the previous quarter. Q3 is typically weaker as compared to Q2 for SNC, the growth in Q3 has been muted due to the impact of slowdown in hiring as well as training spends. More specifically, as we look at our GSI, GCC and large tech customers. The consumption of training is seeing near-term compression as companies proactively prepare for the uncertain environment that they're staring at. This is leading to reduced hiring, which is impacting the demand for training from our customers. More specifically in the GSI, GCC and large tech OEM segment. We also address banks and a number of large Indian enterprises as customers, and there we are seeing expansion owing to the growth strategies or the growth that Indian large enterprises are seeing.
The part of the portfolio linked to global tech and services market is experiencing uncertainty, and net hiring is down. We are seeing a number of layoffs, reduced sequential growth and therefore this segment, specifically GCCs, GSIs and large tech OEMs, are likely to see temporary compression in demand linked with new hire training. The remaining portfolio, which is focused on domestic consumption, is expected to continue to see growth. Besides the near-term uncertainty, we continue to see a multi-year acceleration in demand for skilled talent as we look ahead. With wide range of offerings for deep skilling and digital skills, we are well equipped to help our customers with their talent transformation needs as they look ahead. Tech Group and BPAS, the two key initiatives over the last few years, have grown 11% year-on-year and contributed 35% to the SNC revenue in Q3.
Our B2C programs are ramping up and helping the learners achieve very strong career outcomes. Learners who joined us have been getting offers that are almost twice the starting salaries of campus hires. They're seeing significant outcomes and significant improvements in the salary with the kind of education and training outcomes that we are providing. Overall, for the SNC business, we expect the growth % for the year to be in the range of low to mid 40s%, with a single-digit EBITDA margin. We've talked in the past about the acquisition of St. Charles. I'm gonna do a repeat primer just so that anyone who's missed some of the previous calls has a little bit of context on St. Charles.
NIIT acquired 100% stake in St. Charles Consulting Group, a company based off out of Illinois, in the United States on November 4th, 2022. The company has served 12 out of the 15 top global professional services and management consulting companies. It has long-standing and trusted relationships with its customers. Many of them have been in relationship with St. Charles for over 10 years. Their solution set includes various L&D practices, including custom learning experiences, learning curation and managed services. Overall, their solutions are targeted to creating strategic learning interventions for their customers. Their focus from a customer segment perspective has been on top-tier strategy and management consulting companies. St. Charles has a network of over 500 expert L&D professionals, and several of them are used on different projects depending on the skill set and requirements of the projects.
As I've mentioned to you in the past, NIIT's inorganic strategy focuses on adding new capabilities, new markets, and new geographies to existing portfolio offerings. The St. Charles acquisition adds a new and attractive customer segment to NIIT's list of customer segments. The management and strategy consulting companies spend approximately two and a half times on L&D as compared to average Fortune 1,000 companies. The segment is a very attractive segment for NIIT, and with the acquisition of St. Charles, we are able to create significant penetration into this segment. The acquisition also creates a new capability for NIIT, by way of which NIIT would get a seat at the C-level table when the need for strategic learning interventions shows up in an organization.
As I've mentioned in the past, talent and talent transformation is on the top five agenda items of every CEO of a global corporation, and this additional capability will give us significant strength and create distance between NIIT and its competitors as we look at the large annuity relationship with our global customers and global prospects. The transaction was closed with an upfront consideration of $23.4 million, with the balance to be paid as an earn-out in tranches over the next four years, contingent on performance over this period. At the top end of the top end of this consideration is capped at $65.1 million, other than the cash and working capital adjustments. Overall, the financials for the quarter include an impact of $37 million in net other income.
This includes treasury income of INR 137 million, which is offset by INR 174 million in expenses, primarily related to the transaction-related expenses of St. Charles, under INR 64 million, including one-time finance, financing costs incurred to fund the transaction. The balance sheet continues to remain strong with enough liquidity for investments. The net cash position is at INR 11,089 million versus INR 12,597 million previous quarter, down INR 1,508 million. This includes the impact of two significant transactions. First, payment of upfront consideration of St. Charles, $23.4 million, and transaction expenses as I pointed out earlier, as well as the second tranche of the purchase of an additional 20% stake in RPS Consulting, which we acquired more than a year ago.
With this, addition of 20% stake, NIIT's stake now stands at 90%. The DSO days were at 61 days, marginally higher than 57 days at the end of Q3 last year, primarily due to calendar year-end invoicing and the timing difference of collections. Tax was at INR 145 million for the quarter. On a trailing 12-month basis, our ROC, including cash on books, is at 19.8%. As of December 31st, we had 3,272 NIITians on our rolls. This is down 27% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. To sum it up, we continue to see a large opportunity with multi-year growth opportunity in front of both of our businesses, a strong competitive position and the right to win in the markets we serve.
Near-term uncertainty has had a short-term impact on consumption of training, as I shared the last time we met. However, the CLG business has seen a recovery in growth and margins. As expected this quarter, SNC business has experienced muted growth given the environment we're in. I know I spoke a lot, but hopefully, I was able to provide you context for our discussion. Vijay, if you could now provide a quick summary on the team and strategic initiatives.
Thanks, Sapnesh. A quick update on strategic initiatives. I think in addition to the acquisition of St. Charles, which Sapnesh so well talked about, NIIT also acquired additional 20% stock in RPS Consulting for a consideration of INR 358 million as per the terms of the original share purchase agreement that we had signed in October of 2021. With this, NIIT now owns 90% share in RPS Consulting. A quick update on the composite scheme of arrangement for demerging NIIT into NIIT Limited and NIIT Learning Systems Limited. As shared earlier, the company had received necessary approvals from stock exchange and SEBI, and the scheme was filed with NCLT. First motion hearing was completed on July 25, and we had received directions for convening meeting with various stakeholders.
As per directions, shareholders meeting was held on November 15th. Resolution saw a unanimous support from investors and has been approved. The results of the same have been in the public domain, and we are now awaiting final statutory NOC before the final order. We expect at this point of time, the whole scheme is on track as per the original schedule that we had thought of, and we do believe that by end we should achieve a logical conclusion in the first quarter of the coming financial year. With that, I would now open the floor for Q&A. Operator, please.
May I request that in the first round, everybody gets a chance to ask one question, and then in the follow-up round, they can add many more.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Anyone who wish to ask a question may please press star and one at this time. First question is from the line of Baidik Sarkar from Unif i Capital. Please go ahead.
Gentlemen, good afternoon and nice pullback quarter. More than one question. In the domestic business, we've gone flat for three quarters now, and, you know, we've begun to understand that this is a H1 heavy business given all the acquisitions we've done. Does that thesis still stand that as well, Q1 of 2024, will that quarter see the next jump up in revenues? Your comments around hiring weakness is well received. The fact is India is still in a net hiring market, right? Does that get in the way of your earlier high growth trajectory of 30%-50% YOY?
Our margins that came in at almost 7% this quarter, do we see accretion from here on or do we go sideways for a while before the next leg up?
No. I think, your question is on two parts. One is to do with CLG, and I didn't quite understand that part, but maybe Sapnesh-
No, my question was actually on the domestic business, on the domestic SNC business. You know, we've gone flat for three quarters now at the top level line. I Let me repeat. I understand you've guided to be this was guided to be a hedge fund heavy business. My question was can we expect accretion, significant accretion in Q1 2024? You know, your I think it's Sapnesh's comments around some kind of hiring weakness in India. The point we're trying to make is, you know, we're still a net hiring market. Does that comment get in the way of our earlier, you know, 30%-50% kind of growth trajectory? Yeah.
Let me clarify something that you mentioned. If I heard you right, you said that we've seen flat revenues over the last three quarters. You're right, the revenues have been range bound in the last three quarters, but the revenues that were achieved in the first two quarters of the year actually saw growth which was quite significant. 145% in Q1 on a YOY basis, 119% in Q2 on a YoY basis. As far as Q3 is considered, 4% on a year-on-year basis. You're right in saying that we've seen range-bound revenues over the last three quarters. It is a seasonal market. We see significant upswing in training, specifically in Q2, and we saw that this year.
As compared to last year, this year has seen significantly higher growth, especially in Q1 and Q2. Q3 has been a different story. While you pointed out that India is a net positive market, the largest GSIs, if you look at them, they've had a net negative hiring scenario this past quarter. What the leaders are doing permeates down to the overall market market space. Also, as I had earlier pointed out, while the large GSIs have had maybe a net zero or slightly negative hiring scenario, the large tech OEMs have actually done significant layoffs, which have also dampened the mood. Those things pulled together had significant impact on the SNC business.
However, I did want to point out that about 75% of NIT's domestic business is focused on technology, which includes customers who are GSIs, GCCs, and the large tech OEMs. On the other hand, the balance 25% or so focuses on large Indian enterprises which are focused on the India consumption strategy. These include the large private banks as well as large conglomerates in terms of India enterprises. They have experienced growth, and our business with them has also seen mid-teens growth. I think having a balanced portfolio is a good thing. I do feel that there is a possibility of the hiring scenario rebounding as we get into H1, but the jury is still out.
I want to see how the mood starts to change in Q4 and maybe early Q1 before we solidify those comments. I would say that our thesis that we will see early or mid-forties in terms of growth for this year continues to hold. Next year we will be able to comment on as we go through the next several weeks in Q4.
Sure. My last question on margins at 7%, do we see accretion from here on or do we go sideways before the next leg up?
When you say margins from an overall perspective?
No, just for the domestic business. I'll come back to the CLG later.
SNC.
Yeah. I'm talking about SNC.
As far as the SNC business is concerned, this is in line with what I had mentioned for the year. The margins are likely to be single-digit margins for the year. And we are continuing to be in an investment phase, quite specifically for the B2C go to market for the domestic business. So we'll see margins being range bound in the single digits for the next few quarters before they start ramping up as we establish our product market fit and operating unit scale.
Thanks. If I may just squeeze in one last question for Sapnesh here. Sapnesh, your commentary on the macro weakness in the West is very well received and agreed upon. Given the opportunity spectrum, our ability to consolidate should still stand ground, and you know, that's perhaps reflected in our order book accretion at INR 321 million, 5% sequentially. How do you see this or imagine this accelerating in the times to come, especially given the investments we've done in sales and go to market? It's early days, but how should we imagine the quality of growth in the CLG business in 2024?
Like I've always said that we are very, very high on the opportunity that's in front of us. We have a very significant opportunity. We are among the top five managed training services companies in the world. The companies we compete against are the likes of IBM, Accenture, Conduent, and so on and so forth. I know for sure that they have bigger and better fish to fry than focus on learning. We have a great opportunity in front of us. We have been able to accelerate our ability to add new customers. With the acquisition of St. Charles and in future, more investments such as these, we'll be able to expand our wallet share with our existing customers.
We are all acutely aware that several of our customers have compressed spends given the uncertainty in the market. Over a period of time, as the uncertainty lifts, the spends will start going up, and we'll see growth on the vector of our existing customers. Like I pointed out, we are continuing to accelerate our customer acquisition, and that will actually accelerate growth. I see a strong growth opportunity in front of us. We have a strong ambition, and the ambition has only grown bigger. We have a strong balance sheet, and I think that's that bodes well given the opportunity for our growth potential.
Okay. Thanks, Sapnesh. I'll trail my best wishes. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Pooja Doshi] from [French] financials. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I wanted to understand what is your customer acquisition process in a corporate learning segment, and what is the switching cost from NIIT to the competitors?
That's a great question. I could spend a day with you on that, I'll try to summarize it. A customer acquisition process has a number of steps. A large step is ensuring that our prospective customers gain awareness of what NIIT can do. We do a lot of work with respect to thought leadership, consulting, attending conferences, running events to ensure that our prospective customers have the ability to become aware of what they can achieve with NIIT. A number of those customers, once they are aware of what NIIT is capable of doing, engage into conversations with us. Some of them at the point when they are ready to look at an initiative, several engage with us as in the formative stages of their thought process.
We are often able to consult with them to help them formalize what they want to do and then enable them to go to the next step, which tends typically to be an RFP. Most RFPs tend to be competitive. We've had some situations in which the customers have achieved strong confidence even in the formative stages, and they choose to single source for NIIT without RFP, but that's a minority. The typical process would be to do an RFP and then post RFP, a selection process that's typically done by a panel. That's the process. It takes about six months- nine months. Sometimes, depending on the need and comfort, it gets accelerated. It is typically three months-six months duration. Did that answer your question?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. If you could comment on the switching costs from NIIT to the others. Like, what is your right to win in the business? What stops customers from, you know, switching from NIIT to the competitors in terms of CLG training?
Su re. I think the biggest switching cost to a customer... You know, if you think about it, I'll try to use a very simple example to illustrate my point. If you are attending a class, there are typically 20 students in a class and one instructor. What an organization spends on training in direct terms tends to be a small fraction of what they actually spend. Their biggest spend is really in the time that their employees spend sitting through the training. With NIIT, what they have is an organization who is laser-focused on achieving outcomes from the training in the shortest period of time. What that means is that the students spend the shortest time getting trained, and they achieve the skills that are needed for the most critical tasks that they have to do.
If they were to look at switching, and God forbid they switch to an organization that ends up taking longer to train and still not achieve the objectives, while they might lower their cost of training or they may keep the cost of training the same, but the internal cost that they spend goes up manifold. That's really the fear or the large switching cost that most of our customers face. Where if the supplier that they switch to is not able to create outcomes, is not able to run a highly reliable system that their company gets used to with NIIT, they end up losing a lot more than what they are actually saving or spending on training.
The other thing I would point out is that in the last customer survey we did, which was just about a month and a half ago, we got an NPS score of 9.43. What that really says is that a very large majority of our customers, over 93%, are promoters.
Okay. Understood, sir. Lastly, if you could give me a revenue mix of mandatory versus non-mandatory training, the CLG side of the business.
It tends to be about 50/50. Of course, uh, customers, uh, for example, those who are in the segments which are highly regulated, like banking, financial services, insurance, um, uh, pharma, life sciences, parts of telecom, energy , mining , they have a slightly higher percentage of regulatory training as compared to those who are technology segments.
Okay. Understood. Thanks for taking all my questions. I'll get back in the queue.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to our participants, please press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Shradha Agrawal from AMSEC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Congratulations on a good quarter. Am I audible?
Yeah. Coming through.
Is it better now?
Yeah.
Hi. Congratulations on a good quarter. Two questions. Sapnesh, how do you define the demand environment now versus what it was, say, a quarter back in terms of, you know, how is the consumption of training in your existing large accounts? How has their budget changed in the last one quarter? Has it incrementally deteriorated further or has it been stagnant? Overall, from your large existing accounts perspective, how do you see the consumption of training, consumption of training spend?
I think, this question is more pertaining to CLG or YA?
CLG. Yeah, CLG. It is with reference to CLG.
Sure. I think it's a great question. In terms of consumption, we've done a lot of analysis on this. What I would say is, if you go back a few years, if you were to look at the year before COVID, if you took that, the consumption in the year before COVID as say, baseline, or let's say if you call that 100%, in COVID year, that consumption went down between 25% and 35%. Let's say if it was 100% pre-COVID, it went down to 65%- 70%. In the year after COVID, it started edging up a little bit. It went up to, say, from 65% to about 75%, or 77%.
This fiscal year, I've seen that dip a little bit back to maybe just at about the COVID level or a little bit above COVID levels. I would say 65%-70%. That's been the change in the consumption pattern. This is contrary to our expectation, because our expectation was that post-COVID, consumption had started going up, and our expectation was that that consumption would accelerate. The some sourness in the macroeconomic environment, predominantly owing to the uncertainty the consumption has compressed.
All right. That's very insightful. Despite, I mean, significant compression that we saw in our large existing accounts in the COVID years, we could still manage very high growth rates just because of, you know, acceleration in new client wins and faster ramp-up on those deals. This time around, I think, this negating aspect is not working as much in favor as we would have expected that to work, despite we being, you know, announcing a number of deal wins. In terms of net new addition to revenue, that seems to be not as much as what we have seen in COVID years. Any thoughts out there?
Yeah, you're right about that. That's at least what the numbers say. The only thing I would say if you look under the numbers is that while we've gone through what appears like two different recessions over the last three, four years, the first one, which was induced by COVID, resulted into us identifying an interesting growth area. Real estate became a very interesting second job for a lot of people. We were able to get a lot of growth in spite of the financial uncertainty out of our real estate business on which we had invested well ahead of time.
We saw significant growth coming out of that. The current financial environment actually does not favor a lot of real estate transactions given the mortgage rates. It is upon us to find avenues of growth. Our investment in St. Charles is one such avenue. It has required investment, and it is my expectation that it will create a return for us. We continue to look for avenues that will create growth opportunities for us. From an overall perspective, there are still 1,000 customers prospects in Fortune 1000. That has stayed the same over the last at least since I was born. Fortune 1000 continues to have 1,000 prospects and customers. We have only 71 of those as our customers.
Each of them spends a lot more than what they spend with us. What that says is as we acquire new customers, and as we start doing more with our existing customers by adding more capability to our portfolio, we have a multi-vector growth opportunity. I think that's really what excites us and gives us the ability to have the kind of ambition that we have articulated in front of front of our stakeholders.
The other question, Sapnesh, is on the margin guidance from CLG. I think, the nine-month average, we are pretty much running ahead of the 20% guidance. Why are we hesitating in upgrading the margin guidance for CLG? Is it that we are expecting a dip in margins in Q4?
I mean, look, you read newspapers just as well as I do. Maybe you read them a lot better than I do. There is uncertainty in the market. With uncertainty, there is only so much we can tell. The margin has been good. We worked hard to ensure that we are working hard to ensure that it stays that way. There is uncertainty in the market. On the other hand, to get ahead of uncertainty, we are making disproportionate investments in sales and marketing as well as capability building. That hopefully will not compress margins any further, but we want to make sure that we are not staying shy of making investments to ensure that we achieve that. I hope that answers the question.
I didn't mean it in a negative way.
No, no, it does. Certainly. If I can squeeze in one more question. On the domestic side of the business, you did indicate that global SIs and global large tech OEMs are seeing layoffs and hiring freezes, and which is why consumption of training is lower there. You also cater to large global SI in your CLG business. If I'm not wrong, tech is almost 20-25% of your CLG overall revenue. How do you see the prospects of, you know, tech in CLG overall, given what we are hearing in news and terms of layoffs by the large tech companies?
That's a great question. Tech and telecom forms the largest segment for the CLG business. We have been able to continue to acquire new customers and actually grow them at a rapid rate. While the training spends of tech and telecom customers have compressed some, but the rate of change of technology is so rapid that from a long-term perspective, even though we might see temporary reduction in consumption of tech training, we are likely to see significant expansion because across all the areas that you can think of, technology is changing at the most rapid pace.
Most organizations, whether they are banks or they're insurance companies or, commodities companies or oil and gas companies, most of them are using technology as part of their transformation strategy. If they're gonna use technology as their transformation strategy, then to have skilled talent who is able to use the technology to deliver the business outcomes that they have bought the technology for becomes critical. Now, we can say that, okay, for a little bit, the training spend will go down. The one thing that most enterprises are doing is disproportionately investing in technology, and that would result into increased investment in training of technology professionals. It will see a little bit of hiccup in the near term. From an overall perspective, technology is one of the biggest drivers of change and improvement in productivity.
Therefore technology training will continue to have growth.
That's good. That's very helpful. Thanks, Sapnesh, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, we'd like to remind the participant to limit their question to one question and one follow-up question only. If you have any follow-ups, you may join the queue for it. We take the next question that is from the line of Saurabh Sadhwani from Sahasrar Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My question was, in CLG, we have done very well this quarter, and I was wondering what led to this growth. Was it new trainings, or was it reskilling of employees, or was this more of regulatory and, you know, periodic training that the customer needs?
Let me first say what I believe caused the growth in training. It was predominantly ramp-ups, and faster than we expected of two customers that we had acquired recently. Predominantly on account of new customer acquisition. Now, from an overall perspective, the type of training that we are delivering, whether it is upskilling or reskilling or new skilling, that has not changed a lot over the last four quarters. We seem to be doing similar training for most of the customers. Most customers allocate budgets towards regulatory or new initiatives or BAU training, and most customers have not significantly changed their allocation.
What they have changed is, from an overall perspective, reduced the size of the pot, but the divisions in the pot have remained more or less the same. There may have been some tweaks, divisions have remained more or less the same. To complete the answer to your question, most of the growth that we have seen has been on account of new customers. It is plausible that at times of compressed training spends, a lot of what gets spent is on regulatory training. From an overall perspective, we've not seen a lot of change in what the money seems to come from.
Okay. Okay. And, and you say that the ramp-up that customers did was better than you expected. Do you expect it to be, you know, similar going forward in the year?
Well, sometimes it is a question of how soon a customer wants to ramp up or move away from one of their incumbents. In this situation, let me see how I can say this. In this situation, our customer happened to be a large aerospace company, and they were seeing a lot of demand for manufacturing of airplanes, and they wanted to ramp up their training in a very significant way by, we of course, hiring a lot of people and then training them. The demand side of their business was growing very rapidly, and they chose to accelerate the training because they wanted to bring on more people. The reason why I provide this detail is because this is very, very specific to our customer, and generalizing it is hard.
Some customers want to ramp up ahead of what's typical, others ramp up in what is typical.
Okay. Thank you. That answers my questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Siddharth Vasi]. That's an interested investor. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. Congratulations to the management. I think today we've hit record EBITDA numbers, so I think it's a day of celebration as well for the entire NIIT family. Reaching a number of INR 90 crore is great going, especially in this environment. Technically, my compliments to the management in terms of how they've been wading through such uncertainty and difficult times. I see CLG is doing really well, and I think that as the environment looks to improve, CLG will keep on getting better. No questions on that front from me. I just had a couple of questions on the SNC side of the business and a couple of more feedbacks to give the management, which I am hoping that they will, you know, obviously you are so responsive that you will take note of them.
Firstly, my question on SNC is, since, you know, although not similar models, but we are kind of competing with Scaler, upGrad, and these guys are running on private equity money and are just basically burning money like anything in terms of trying to acquire market share. Now, that is where I'm somewhere worried about the B2C segment. How are we planning to compete with these guys where they are willing to acquire customers at significant losses, and you have someone willing to fund their losses as compared to our strategy of being conservative? How do we ensure that we compete with those guys on an SNC level? I personally feel that a better strategy could be just to, you know, go B2B, train them there, and try to sort of continue to brand ourselves over there and then have them shift to us.
My second question, again, or rather feedback is like I look at our social media platforms in terms of, you know, what NIIT is doing on Facebook, Twitter, Insta, and I see that while we have a digital team, our views on our Twitter, we don't even get one o r two retweets. We don't get views at all. Similar for Facebook, Instagram. These could be organic ways to generate some sort of chatter. I see the NIIT Foundation getting more views on their Twitter feed than what NIIT does. On our website, we have videos which are not present anywhere else on our social media platform. While I see Scaler, Simplilearn people putting up their videos, I don't see the same for NIIT SNC.
That's one question as to how do we compete with the likes of upGrad, especially considering they are willing to burn a lot of money and we are not, which is a great strategy, I think, personally, I feel. Firstly if you answer this, then I'll come to my second question, please.
Sure. Thanks. Great questions and great feedback. I'm not going to respond to the feedback other than saying that we will do everything that we can to make sure that you don't have to repeat your time words. We will ensure that you will see a difference when we meet next time over. In terms of why and how will we compete against the likes of who you mentioned. I think the part that makes me feel confident that it is a battle worth fighting and winning, and we have a great chance to win, is the fact that our focus has been on creating outcomes. When a student spends six months with us, it's among the most important choices that they make.
Those who make that choice in studying at NIIT are able to see the outcomes. The outcomes are way ahead of industry benchmarks. That gives us a feeling that we will be able to compete and actually win, 'cause we are winning on the right terms. We are not winning on our ability to spend the money, but we are winning on our ability to create a transformation in a student that ends up changing their lives. I think that's a battle worth fighting. In terms of how will we ensure that we win? Some by taking your feedback to heart. In addition to that, continuing to focus on, A, creating outcomes. B, once we are able to have a critical mass, we know how to scale.
We have scaled in the past, and we have the playbook on how to scale. The key is to ensure that we prove the product market fit and then scale it. In simple terms, we call it nail it before you scale it, rather than the other way around, where you scale it and then at a later point in time when you've burnt a lot of cash, figure out, "Oh my God, we also have to nail it." Nailing it before we scale it is really how we are hoping to win this battle. I think it's a great question. In terms of, I think, you also mentioned that why the heck are we fighting this battle at all?
I think the big strategic point here is that on one side, we have great corporate customers that you alluded to in India who support us, who choose to buy training from us. The interesting thing is that if you go onto LinkedIn, a lot of our gNIIT students actually are working for the corporates who end up trusting NIIT with their training because they themselves had great experience. That's a big differentiator for us. The fact that a number of our corporate customers continue to trust NIIT in creating outcomes. Our view is that it is a lot better in long term for us to have a balanced strategy where we have the ability to transform an individual's life as well as collectively help an organization achieve their digital transformation.
Long answer to your short question, but I hope it made sense.
Thank you so much, sir. One last question. This is more in terms of the stock and in terms of valuations. As a shareholder, obviously like the numbers are great and we're undervalued. I can clearly see that in terms of the market value. What steps should we take within the CLG and the SNC to, you know, to reach out to investors to explain the value? Like for example, SNC will become a smaller version, a smaller part of the company. What plans do we have to go out to the larger investor community, the analyst community, talk to them, give them an idea about what we're doing in the business so that we also get a similar sort of valuation like what the private peers are getting?
If not the private, at least, you know, there should be a valuation which should support the fundamentals. Similarly for CLG, what analyst meets or what proactive steps are we planning to take in order to improve that? That also is a very important aspect for shareholder return and shareholder value. It's always great to see a stock at 500 rather than 300, right? Even though I know the value could be even larger than 500.
Absolutely great point. I think, we have to continue to communicate our story. From what I hear you say, we haven't done a very good job in doing that. It is our goal to actually significantly improve the way we are telling our story and tell our story to many more.
Sir, just one last point, not a criticism at all. I think your team has done a brilliant job. See, I think the team at NIIT is extremely responsive, especially Investor Relations, and I think you're doing a fantastic job. I just said that if you could focus on it a little more, that's all. No, no, bad points at all from my end. I think this is a fantastic company with a great management, and I really thank you for the opportunity you're also providing small individual shareholders like myself. Thank you so much, and congratulations for a great day today.
Thank you. Thanks for taking the time.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks.
Answering the last couple of questions. Go ahead.
Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. If I heard you right, you said, CLG growth of early teens organic for this year and mid-forties for SNC. Is this the number right that we have?
Yeah, you heard it right.
If I do my math, this would basically imply some QOQ growth for Q4. Or is it because of the CC that we see it slightly differently for CLG?
For CLG, Q4 typically tends to be a flat or a tad lower quarter as compared to Q3. That's just seasonal part of the business. Most of our customers get done with their budgets in our Q3 or their December, takes them a little bit to restart with the New Year's budget. Q4 tends to be either in line with Q3 or a little bit lower.
Typically lower.
Typically lower. Yeah. Historically, it's been lower.
Yeah. I mean, even if we have to achieve... Yeah, r ight. I mean, St. Charles just on number of days basis can become $4 million-$7 million. Even if we add that $3 million, assuming our number at around $40 million to be flat, then still the full year would more look like slightly lower than 11%. I'm saying that difference of 1% or 2%, if we have to do early teens, is it coming more from a CC difference? Understanding, looking at dollar growth versus CC.
That's correct. It's in Constant Currency.
Rig ht. For this Skills & Careers, last time also we saw Q4 to be a decline of close to 9%. Is that and the similar degrowth would make it 45%. Is that kind of a seasonal impact we expecting in Q4?
Yeah. That's typical.
Right. Just lastly, on the on this one time element that you mentioned on the other income, can you quantify that item and also mention what is the run rate basis, other income for us now?
I would like Sanjay Mal to answer the question. He's our CFO.
Hi. Thank you for the question. We had one-time exceptional expenses relating to the transition, which was about INR 174 million. We are in the process of basically having a purchase price allocation getting from that. We have on a post-PMI basis, taken an impact of about INR 45 million amortization of INR 11 and INR 34 of finance costs, which is this INR 1,000.
Sorry, you were giving the breakup of this 174?
Yeah. INR 174, if you want to look at it, these are exceptional expenses essentially relating to the transition.
Right. There is,
Cost, lawyer cost, you know, and, stuff like that. Diligence cost, finance cost.
Right. Right. Essentially the run rate outside of this is close to INR 120, INR 130, which we should see in Q4 because this won't be present in Q4. The net other income for Q4.
Yeah. Yeah.
One time is one for INR 150, INR 140, I'm saying. The balance is about INR 45, is what basically we have put it in this quarter. We believe that as we solidify in the next quarter the purchase price allocation, we will get the right number, which might be marginally similar.
S ure. Got it. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. I think we should close the call now.
Thank you.
Okay.
We take the last question from line-.
One last question.
Yes, sir. We take the last question from the line of [Surbhi Sierra from ICRA]. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible? Sir, just one question. Can you please repeat your guidance for SNC and CLG? Thank you.
SNC and CLG annual guidance?
Right.
We are... For CLG, from an annual guidance perspective, including of St. Charles, we are looking at mid-teens, early to mid-teens as in constant currency as growth. Upwards of 20% as profitability. With respect to SNC, we are looking at growth of early to mid-forties and single digit margins for the year.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that would be our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments. Thank you and over to you.
Thank you very much. I think thank you for a very enthusiastic response to our results. I think your questions always open up more frontiers in our mind to explore further as well as improve ourselves going forward. I think in today's conversation we got some very useful suggestions on how we might position ourselves in future. I think these comments really add value to us and therefore please feel free to share whatever suggestions you would like to, whenever you would like. If it's possible, we may not have addressed all the questions, but Kapil and Sanjay, as well as all of us are available for follow-up calls, we would be very happy to answer each and every question that you may have.
Thank you once again for coming forward to attend this call amongst various other commitments you had. We truly appreciate it, and we look forward to our future interactions. With that, we close this call. Operator, you may kindly-
Sure, sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of NIIT Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.