Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the earnings conference call for JM Financial Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and 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. Kindly note that any forward-looking statements made on this call are based on the management's current expectations. However, the actual results may vary significantly, and therefore, the accuracy and completeness of this expectation cannot be guaranteed. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vishal Kampani. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. On behalf of JM Financial, we extend a very warm welcome to all of you to the earnings conference call to discuss our financial results for the half year ended September 2024 . We have uploaded our results, presentation, press release on the website and stock exchanges. On the call, we also have Mr. Chirag Negandhi, MD, JM Financial Limited; Ms. Sonia Dasgupta, MD and CEO of Investment Banking, JM Financial Limited; Manish Sheth, MD and CEO of JM Financial Home Loans; Amitabh Mohanty, CEO of JM Financial Asset Management; Anuj Kapoor, Head of Private Wealth Business; and Nishit Shah, our Group CFO. I will give the key updates, and I'll hand over the call to Nishit to take you through the numbers, and after which we can have a Q&A session.
As you would have seen announcements on October 18th, 2024 , the Reserve Bank of India has lifted the restrictions on JM Financial Products on providing loan-against shares and debentures with immediate effect. In terms of the transaction of increasing stake in JM Financial Credit Solutions, we have received our approval from the Competition Commission of India, and we're actively engaged with RBI and awaiting approvals from the RBI. I've already updated most of you on our May 2024 and August 2024 call of the few of the strategic initiatives we have taken in the group. The first being the pivot in our wholesale credit businesses, moving from on-balance sheet lending to off-balance sheet loan book-driven business to more to focus more on a syndication driven model.
And we will do this across asset classes like real estate, distressed credit, corporate credit as well as promoter credit. The idea here again is to move away from long-term loans and project finance kind of businesses from our NBFC balance sheet and really focus on more shorter term liquidity financing, promoter financing, corporate lending and loan against shares kind of businesses, and also focusing more on syndication than booking balance sheet driven loans. On the focus businesses, we will continue to cover the entire breadth of capital markets, corporate advisory, wealth management and asset management. We are seeing tremendous traction in these businesses.
The estimated value of transactions for it, for which DRHP for IPOs is filed by us, already stands at over INR 50,000 crores, and we expect to file maybe another 50,000 crores in the next six months. The AUM of our mutual fund business has reached 12,500 crores, of which equity AUM is at almost 9,500 crores. Happy to report that we've opened our 126th branch for our affordable home loans business, and we're expecting strong traction through the festival season. In addition, also happy to report that we've seen some tremendous amount of cross-selling between our wealth and our investment banking divisions, taking lead market shares in pre-IPO placements and a lot of alternative products.
All in all, it's been an excellent first half and an excellent quarter two for our focused area businesses. Once we finish the purchase of the minority investor stakes in JM Financial Credit Solutions after RBI approval, we will very quickly pivot and focus wholeheartedly stronger on the private credit syndication business as well. With that, I will hand over to our CFO, Nishit Shah, to take you all through the numbers, and then myself and the entire team is available for questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Vishal. During the quarter ended September 2024, our revenue stood at INR 211 crores. Profits after tax and after non-controlling interest increased by 19% year on year and 36% quarter on quarter, to INR 232 crores. For the half year ended September 2024, our revenue stood at INR 2,305 crores, whereas profit after tax and after non-controlling interest increased 12% year-on-year from INR 361 crores to INR 403 crores. The gross NPA for the quarter ended September 2024 stood at INR 835 crores, compared to INR 813 crores for quarter ended June 30, 2024.
The provision on gross NPA has been conservatively increased to INR 588 crore as compared to INR 479 crore for quarter ended thirtieth June 2024. The incremental provision of INR 109 crore has resulted in the provision coverage ratio to increase from 59% as on June 30, 2024, to 70.4% as of September 30, 2024. We believe that the additional provision coverage on the existing GNPA assets is more than adequate, both from a regulatory and a provisioning perspective. We are at various stages of recovery of these assets. Had we not taken the provision, the profit after tax and after non-controlling interest would be higher by approximately INR 47 crore.
During the quarter, we have taken a net loss on fair value changes aggregating to INR 101 crores in relation to security receipts, which are accounted under impairment on financial instruments. The loss on change in fair valuation of the security receipts is primarily due to delay in resolution of the underlying assets. During the quarter, due to a change in the capital gains tax rate, there is a reversal of deferred tax liability on unrealized gain on investment, aggregating to INR 39 crores during the quarter. In terms of the focus loan book, the affordable home loans AUM stood at INR 2,366 crores, compared to INR 1,714 crores as on September 30, 2023, which is an increase of 38% year-on-year.
The SEBI margin trade financing loan book has further increased by 58% year-on-year to INR 1,918 crores. On an overall consolidated basis, the net worth, excluding non-controlling interest, stood at INR 8,668 crores, which translates to a book value of INR 90.6 per share. On a consolidated basis, the gross borrowings, the gross debt to equity stood at 1.25 times, and the cash and cash equivalents stood at INR 5,448 crores as of September 30, 2024 . I hand the call over to the moderator for questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their 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. The first question is from the line of Digant Haria from Green Edge Wealth. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. It's good to see the performance in investment banking and, you know, the wealth division. So congrats on that. My question is on the loan book rundown. So we have probably run down almost 2,500 crores this quarter, you know, if I look at the consolidated loan book. If you can just help us, like, you know, did we sell down? Was it a natural rundown? And, you know, did this accelerated rundown lead to certain additional provisions, you know, that we took in the credit solutions? And any color on what's happening there, and, you know, what can next two quarters look like in this particular piece? That would be great.
Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, that over the next two to two and a half years, you would see most of our loan book. I'd also mentioned that a significant portion of our loan book now is the post-COVID loan book, and it's actually performing decently well. Third, frankly, there is a dearth of a lot of new credit opportunities on the wholesale side. In the real estate side, sales have been very strong, and therefore, the pricing for many of these loans is, you know, at absurdly low levels from banks and some of the other larger kind of NBFCs. So, you know, it's natural that many of these assets are being taken over, and we don't want to match rates or keep these loans anyway on our books.
Therefore, you've seen this rundown. It's a very healthy rundown, and we are very happy with it because the more cash we can accumulate and the more we can buy back debt, it's better for us. So this is a combination of real estate book rundown, which has been approximately almost INR 800-INR 900 crores, and FIG has a natural rundown of another 400 crores odd. Bespoke has seen a rundown of almost 1,000 crores, but that will build back. So that a lot of deals are already in the pipeline for syndication.
So as I mentioned, that Bespoke will be a book which we maintain around 2.5-3,000 crores in the corporate side, but a lot of it gets syndicated out, so we don't see the need to have debt on our balance sheet to grow that book. It is just our equity is good enough to be able to generate a good ROE. On the MSME side, as you all know, we announced on end September that we've sold down our MSME book, and the first tranche of the sell down has been executed, so that is again part of the degrowth. All in all, very healthy and extremely sort of happy.
... with the rundown of the book. Even the loan assignment on the MSME side, which we have sold down, has been a profitable exit. And what we have conservatively done is that the profit that we have got from the exit, we've provided against the profit as well. So we will sell down the balance book in the next two quarters, and then we will see healthy returns accumulate from that book as well. So all in all, very good. I also address the question on some provisions, Digant, while you're here. So this incremental provision is just from a regulatory and conservative perspective. If you see the stock of gross NPA, it has barely moved. It has moved only from INR 813 crores to INR 835 crores.
We've only increased the provision from 60% to 70%, to be very conservative and make sure the regulators are very comfortable.
All right. Yeah, that, that's good color. Thanks, Vishal. And on this provisions on SRs that we had to make on the ARC, you know, do we think that for the timing we are done, or we have to, like, assess, reassess every quarter and, you know, make those, you know-
Yeah. So ARC actually is every six months. As you know, you know this business, Digant. It's really March quarter and September quarter. It's not much in the June and the December quarters, and we have to reassess the book. So, you know, we are being very conservative. Wherever we are seeing timeline delays, we are in fact pushing auditors that we want to actually provide more. And it is just better to keep doing that instead of it becoming lumpy sometime, you know, at the end of two years and three years. But again, I mean, I think these are very, very sort of the value in many of these security receipts has not gone down.
Fair value accounting is really because of time delay, and there is considerable time delay in many of the assets, so it's just prudent to make sure that we are taking these provisions.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks, Vishal. And, you know, now the second question is on, you know, our in our housing finance book, you know, the income, the PPOP has been slightly, you know, declining in the, you know, versus the first quarter. Is it because of the sell down of those education loans?
Yes. Yes. It is absolutely... No, no, this is housing finance is a housing loan sell down-
Okay.
which we have done because, you know, we face issues of, you know, beating. So, you know, we are trying to make sure that we're selling down portfolios profitably, and we are trying to make sure that over the next, couple of quarters, we align this quite carefully, so we don't see, you know, ups and downs between quarters. We try and make sure we're selling every quarter and make it more consistent. But, you know, as management, they obviously want to make sure that they're able to do the best deal and sell at the lowest rate, right? So when they get the opportunity and they have four, five bidders interested, they always try and time it, you know, from a best, timeline perspective, from their balance sheet perspective.
So the only reason there is a drop is purely because in June quarter we had sold assets, and in September quarter, we've not sold any assets on the affordable loan side. The asset that we've sold down to, that was our MSME portfolio, which is a high-ticket portfolio, which is portfolios above 50 lakhs in loans, which is the portfolio from JM Financial Products that has been sold, and you know, we stopped doing that business. Affordable housing, we've not stopped. We are growing, and we are looking forward to the festive season as well as next quarter to grow the book, and our target remains to be at 3,000 crores.
Perfect. Perfect. Thanks, Vishal. And my last question is now on the AWS or, you know, the retail broking slash distribution business. You know, we have, have we reached an inflection point? Because I see the profits have jumped significantly in this quarter. You know, the revenue has obviously jumped, but the profit jump has been much, much sharper. So is this a trend which we should expect now going forward? Obviously assuming markets stay good, you know.
Yeah, I think if... See, this is a combination of both. It's an investment in more branches, investment in franchising network, steady increase in recurring assets under management and of course, you know, more relationship managers. So I think we are going to invest in the business. Markets, as you know, and all of us know on this call, will be volatile in the short term, but it's okay. We are building the business, you know, from a long-term five- to 10-year perspective, so we're not gonna slow down. In fact, if markets cool off a bit, it's good for us because I think we'll be able to hire at better terms, and, you know, we will keep building.
So we are going to use any slowdown in this market over the next two years to build a business even stronger and even larger for the next bull market which comes back here. Having said that, it's anyone's guess, you know, where the market will be in the next two quarters. I personally and frankly feel that this correction is very healthy. It was much required, both from a timing perspective as well as a value perspective. You know, many of the IPOs are getting, you know, priced very expensive. You know, deals were getting difficult to do. So I think this correction is very healthy, and in fact, it will even boost more business for our corporate advisory and capital market business over the long term.
Perfect. Perfect. Thanks for all the detailed answers, Vishal. Thank you, and all the best to your entire team.
Thank you.
Happy Diwali wishes to you.
Wish you the same. Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Upadhyay from Berggruen PMS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, good afternoon. My question was this, what you clarified on affordable housing. So the AUM what we see has increased, okay, Q on Q, but then income has fallen, and that MSME is into financial products where you sold, okay, the portfolio.
Yeah, yeah. So, Manish will explain the detail of both why the Q on Q fall is there in affordable home loans, and he'll also explain the transaction MSME in detail. Yeah, Manish, over to you.
So, Himanshu, there are two different transactions. MSME is a business consisting of loan against property above 50 lakhs, as well as loan to the schools. That is a business which is in a company called JM Financial Products Limited and NBFC and not in HFC. That business we have technically exited, meaning we are no longer originating that business, and that business has been sold down in two tranches, around 1,000 crore AUM. First tranche has come through in quarter two, which is around 400 crores. And again, that business which we exited profitably, Vishal said, out of that profit, we have made some more provision so that, you know, because that is a business where employees also have moved on, and we are no longer suiting that kind of a business. That is on the MSME side of the business.
When it comes to JM Financial Home Loans, a pure play, affordable housing finance business, we are growing that business. Okay? Quarter one and quarter two, if you really see, the AUM has gone up from 2,200 crore to 2,366 crore. Okay, see, that is a business where in quarter one, we have sold 100 crore of pool under a direct assignment route, under a direct assignment transaction to one of the AAA housing finance company. Okay? And the current year, current quarter, we have not sold. So that is what Vishal was explaining, that this business, which is affordable housing finance company, where we are seeing a lot of BT out or a foreclosure, then I cannot charge a prepayment penalty on this business.
Where we have seen last quarter only, you know, 150 odd crore, kind of, BT out or a foreclosure. So what we are going to do going forward is to even out that affordable housing finance profitability, we will sell down opportunistically, you know, every quarter on quarter, and that is a business model which everybody in affordable space is kind of following, and which is what we are going to follow.
Okay. Okay, thanks for your elaborate reply. And next question is, we have decided this syndication now for FIF and wholesale model. Can you give an idea in volatile market, how difficult is syndication of transactions or downsell them? And secondly, when can we expect the first sell down for the deals? Or are we looking at any deals in wholesale business or FIF? And again, on the distressed credit, and what is
I'll take that question. So I think we are already doing a lot of syndication on the corporate side. When I meant we will pick up on syndication, that is gonna be more on the real estate side, which we will pick up from next quarter. And so that activity is on. I think the debt markets principally are less volatile compared to the equity markets, and this is all private credit syndication and not debt syndication. Also, our AMC is building, you know, a good strategy on the AIF side, on the credit side. As they scale, a lot of the origination can be partnered with our AMC, and a lot of the assets can be even shown to our AMC, as well as reverse flow from our AMC for distribution.
So I think we are working on that whole strategy, and we will present a lot more detailed work after six months on how we plan to execute that strategy and how healthy our ROAs will be in that business, you know, without the use of a substantial amount of leverage.
And, Vishal, a lot of things are changing. What will be the top three priorities for you as of now, and which you would like to complete in FY twenty-five, you know, in the terms of,
The first priority is to complete the purchase of our partner's stake in JM Financial Credit Solutions. We are working on providing all the data to the regulators so they can come back and give their sort of you know positive go-ahead, so we can complete that transaction. The second obviously is making sure that we have the best resources and best people working for us across our corporate advisory, capital markets, wealth and asset management business, and making sure we're scaling in terms of distribution across wealth as well as asset management. And the third will be the continuous robust growth that we are seeing on the affordable housing loans business, and scaling that business and making sure we are at three thousand crore AUM by March 25. These would be our three priorities right now.
What would be your thoughts on inorganic opportunities? Because in next two years-
Nothing as of now. Nothing as of now, at least for the next six months to nine months, organizationally, we have no bandwidth to look at anything inorganically.
Okay. Okay, thanks. I'll join back in later.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sagar Tanna from Alchemy. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vishal.
Hi.
With respect to the lending book, we will continue with the MTS and the Bespoke, right?
Yeah, we'll continue with Affordable Home Loans, which will continue, which are average ticket size of 11 lakhs. All lending over there is below 50 lakhs, but average ticket size is 11. Bulk of the new loans being originated are between 8 lakhs to 15 lakhs, and we will continue our Bespoke Lending business, which is assume a 3,000 crore-ish book. Today, it's shrunk to 1,500, but, you know, we can pick it up back to 3,000. But this book will be largely used to sell down. And MTF will grow, and as RBI has given us the permission again to restart our Loan Against Shares business, that book will start growing from this month itself.
So what would be the yields in these three, four buckets that we are talking about?
Affordable housing is 13.5%-14% yield. Bespoke is around 12.5%-13% yield. Loan against share is around 12%-12.5% yield, and margin trade finance is similar, 12%-12.5% yield.
So a blended yield of ballpark 13% odd?
Yeah, correct.
Got it.
So last year, you can assume our cost of borrowing is 8.5,9. Yield is 13. Look to make fees of around 1%-1.5% over and above that. So we try to maintain a 500 basis points total spread between lending as well as fees on origination and fees on sell down.
Got it. That was helpful. Second thing is, if I want to understand now, you know, this time we've given in our PPT, the breakup of the various focus businesses. But if I were to just ask you the PAT for first half for the focus business, excluding the treasury, how much would that be?
Yeah, I think we have that number. So if you look at corporate advisory and capital markets on our presentation, page seven, the PAT for that business is INR 142 crores. And if you look at page eight, the PAT for the wealth management business, as well as asset management business put together on a adjusted basis will be INR 68 crores ex digital for wealth management. And if you assume eighteen crore if you see the eleven crore loss for asset management, it will be 68 minus 11, which will be 57. And if you wanna look at the numbers ex digital, it's 101.
So if you assume that, just look at the actual profit, let's ignore the losses we are making in digital and ignore the losses we are making in asset management, then the half-year PAT is 142 plus 101, which is 243 crores.
How much would it be in FY 2024, last year, for on a full year basis, excluding treasury income and non-focused businesses?
Let me just come back on that number to you, because last year we were reporting it as IB and AWS
That's right.
Which had some amount of lending income from bespoke, which is not there in these numbers. But I think if you include those lending numbers itself, I think it will be flattish. So if you remove the lending numbers of bespoke, there should be at least 30%-35% growth roughly.
I'd appreciate if you can give that, absolute number for FY 2024.
Yeah. We'll have to break it up last year and give it to you, so we can't do it right now.
No, no worries. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chintan Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thank you for the opportunity and, congratulations on very strong set of numbers, especially on the investment banking business. So I have-
Thanks.
I have two, three questions, sir. Firstly, on the capital allocation plan, so now we are expecting a rundown of the wholesale book, and the rundown has been quite steep even in this quarter. So probably over the next one or two years, we could see cash flow of around INR 3,000 crores-INR 4,000 crores odd. So apart from the repayments, what would be the surplus cash which we would be left with? And any thoughts of how that allocation would be done apart from once the transaction is completed?
Yeah. So I think we've put a slide on page 12, which talks about our treasury assets. So if you look at the treasury assets, roughly it's, you know, INR 6,600 crores, roughly right now. But you have to remove INR 400 crores from that because those are property assets. So I think INR 6,200 crores odd is group liquidity. And when I say group liquidity, we can make all of this liquid in 10 days, less than 10 days. And almost more than half of it is absolutely liquid within, you know, 24 hours' notice.
I think that number of 6,200, 6,300 crores odd. We will need INR 1,300 crores of that to purchase the stake. So when we remove the INR 1,300 crores, we are left with roughly INR 5,000 crores of cash. And today, this INR 5,000 crore cash is actually cash. We don't really require it for anything because our loan book is actually equal to the debt that we have to pay down. So it's roughly INR 9,000 and INR 10,000 crores each. What's the exact number Nishit just spoke about? So it is. So whatever now cash that we generate will be surplus cash from a perspective of ALM, because we have much longer liability maturities compared to the cash that we are gonna generate.
So what we will do is we will use the cash that we are generating in advance, use that cash to deploy in Loan Against Shares business. Some part of it will be deployed to, you know, gain back the bespoke business on a syndicated basis, and some part of it we'll try and buy back whatever debt we can. So that will be kind of the use of the INR 3,000 crores-INR 4,000 crores further we will generate over the next two years. Yeah. So now if you I mean, I can't put a number to it, but roughly, I mean, if you assume that, you know, we get INR 3,000 crores further over the next say eighteen months to two years, you can just assume we will use at least INR 1,500 crores to build back bespoke.
We'll probably use another INR 1,000 crores to LAS immediately in the next six months to a year, and maybe INR 500 crores, or we will do a debt buyback of later year maturities.
Sure. So that is quite clear. So basically now we are moving from the wholesale lending to the other avenues of lending, right? Broadly.
No, no, no. We have, so if you see, we have, you go to page five on our presentation, where we explain what on balance sheet to off balance sheet means for us. What it really means for us, that we want to improve the risk-reward metric. So on that page, we've broken down what is the part of the loan book that will run down? And what is the part of the loan book that will continue? So real estate will run down, FIFG will run down, and MSME, which we have sold, and digital is already sold and is running down very, very fast. What we will grow is affordable home loans.
What we will grow is bespoke, but bespoke, to my mind, gets capped at INR 3,000 crores, for which we will use our cash liquidity, and we will grow SEBI MTS plus capital markets, which is basically LAS business for our wealth clients. So these are the three segments that will grow. So basically, affordable home loans is a very liquid asset. I mean, we have tons of demand for, you know, our matured portfolio. When I say matured, I mean more than 12 months old. So we'll also have a capital market model there, where almost, you know, a certain percentage between 10% and 20% of that book will be sold down every year. Affordable home loans will grow at around 25%-30% consistently, and we are targeting INR 30,000 crores for March 2025, and we feel comfortable.
SEBI MTS has almost hit 2,000 crores. Our plan is to take it to 2,500 crores by March 2025, and our plan is to add another 500 crores of LAS business by March 2025. Bespoke, as I said, it's kind of a yo-yo. It's really, we'll increase the book only if we are finding interesting deals which we can syndicate and make distribution fees on. So that's kind of the breakup. Real estate will keep running down. The balance 4,000 crores we expect to run down over the next three years. FIFG, which is 777 crores, we expect to fully run down in the next one year. MSME digital, we fully expect to run down again over the next six months to nine months.
Sure. That's... Thank you very much for the detailed answer. So now, secondly, on this, on dividend, I think we have also written, okay, we will distribute the surplus to the as per the regulatory requirement. So any thoughts, means, as per the, subject to the regulations, so any thoughts? What could we, how are we planning to distribute the dividend to shareholders, reward them, or any thoughts on that year?
Yeah, so I think, see, as a group, we don't need, you know, equity for a significantly long period of time, so which is a big positive. We are fully funded, for our growth businesses, and so whatever fee, you know, additional funding we need, we already have those cash resources. So what we will do is, once we are through with the purchase of Credit Solutions and, the provisioning, as I said, on the asset side is almost 100% complete this September. Going ahead, we will, have a proper dividend policy from next year, where a significant portion of the earnings from our treasury assets, from our NBFC profitability, as well as our capital market profitability, will be paid out as dividend, yeah.
So we will not, as I mentioned before, we will not pay out our capital. We will pay out the profits that we make from our capital and business, as dividend year.
Sure, sure. It's all about the profit, yeah. And, so the secondly, I think in the last quarter, we had mentioned that to reward the employees, probably we have been giving some, or we are planning to give ESOPs of those individual businesses which we are heading into. So, has there been any change, look, anything done on that? So have the, have the employees been given-
So on the asset management business, phase one is already implemented, and on wealth management and stockbroking, it's under implementation and we are confident that by December it should be implemented.
Okay, sure. But so can, sir, while at the time of probably, if they want to sell out the stake, so would it be like, are we planning to list them separately in some, what, future demerger, or it would be like-
Yeah, so we have no plans to list any subsidiaries except for Affordable Housing Finance at the right time. Because outside of Affordable Housing Finance, all of our businesses are nicely integrated. It's one nice, tight business. If at all we need to create liquidity for this ESOP, we may consider a demerger, but it's too early to think about it right now. Right now, we only want to achieve much higher scale in terms of our revenues, and just be a bigger business in each of these segments.
Sure, sure. And just lastly, on the cost to income ratios. On the cost to income on the AWS front, we are already almost running at 60%-70%; current quarter is 86.7% cost to income. So gradually, as and obviously in the initial phase, I think we're making investments, but where do we see this cost to income probably in FY 2026 or 2027? So till what level can it moderate to? Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's a function of two things: the function of revenue growth and how much growth we are seeing, and how much market share of that growth we want to capture. I personally don't see, at least for the next six quarters, any easing in the cost to income purely because we'll keep making investments. But you're right, I think we will review it maybe sometime around March 2026. So at least for the next 18 months, assume that the investments will continue. And we have seen very, very good traction. I mean, Dimple unfortunately could not join the call, but I think almost every new branch that he's adding on the broking and third party product side, I think the breakeven is literally right now less than 12 months. So I think we don't want to stop investing.
We're getting good momentum. Client addition is very strong. Cash market share is being maintained at very good levels, even FNO market share is at very good levels. We continue investing in digital. It's a long-term build, and we don't wanna shy away from it because of short-term losses. It's a necessary business to build that also is renovating cost to income at the higher levels. Amitabh, you may wanna talk a little bit about asset management and how we are thinking about investments there for the next six quarters. Anuj, if you wanna speak also for a few minutes about wealth management and your investments in wealth management over the next eighteen months.
Hi, everyone. On the asset management side, it is our strategy to be in the active part of the business predominantly, and that's why we'll be investing very significantly in the investment teams, systems, processes, that will take up a lot of our investments in the next at least two years. Plus, as Vishal had mentioned earlier, we are looking to build an alternatives platform in the AMC business, and we will be building up a very strong investment, mid-office, compliance teams over there. Some of these teams we will inherit from other parts of the group, but we are not going to shy away from building a very strong investment team and the support functions.
So that will take up a large part of our investments on the AMC side for the next, almost two years.
Anuj, you on the call? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. On the wealth management side, I think, we continue to give significant focus on expanding our workforce. We are currently present across 10 cities in India and Singapore and Dubai overseas. We are targeting some team movements and hiring experienced bankers, and we would be looking to offer competitive, but not excessive compensation to them. So we have faced... We have seen some success already down south in those hirings. We are engaging significantly across the board in enhancing our penetration into tier two and tier three cities, and that will be on board. So clearly, we would continue to invest in quality talent and expanding our presence across India in wealth. And as the team grows and as we achieve scale, we will be investing in the right kind of technology to support.
For instance, we migrated to Wealth Spectrum as our back-end software last year, which is used by some of our peers in the industry. And overall, in terms of the customer experience and client reporting as well, we are making investments in both technology and our operations, and we will continue to do so in the next few years.
Yeah, Chirag, anything you wanna add on the overall business? Okay, he's in a flight. Sorry. Yeah, sorry, he's on a flight, so he can't add. Sonia, anything else you wanna add on the corporate advisory and capital market investments?
So I think momentum is very strong. We continue to lead the league tables. We have seen a strong traction across the. There are a lot of risks in the kind of transactions we are doing in the capital markets, IPOs, and we continue to see a strong momentum also in the advisory business. I'm hoping to close some of the deals that we've already announced and many more. And we continue to focus on making sure the focus on cross-sell and delivery investment bank continues, and we are able to deliver the firm to all our clients in totality.
So I think overall, if you see that every single CEO has to get involved in managing the corporate advisory, capital markets, wealth and asset management, the vision is very clear that we have to go for scale. I think the India opportunity is extremely exciting over the next 10 years. And scale, more market share for us is very critical, and we will do that profitably. We think our brand allows that to happen faster.
And in every single business, whether it's investment banking and equities, where we're anyway very strong, on wholesale credit, which we are pivoting, we've got a phenomenal response from all of the customers, and we are waiting for that platform to grow on the real estate side for us, whether it's asset management, the traction we have seen on the equity side and the traction we've already seen on the alternative credit side there, whether it's wealth management, broking, every single place there is tremendous excitement, and we're looking forward to much more scale. So again, long answer to a short question. Very good reasons why cost to income will stay a bit elevated, but it's very necessary for building a much larger business three to four years out.
... Sure, sir, and that's a very elaborate one, and thank you for that. So just lastly, if I may ask one question on the affordable housing piece. So on affordable housing, so I think we have mentioned that we have seen some rise in the BT rates. So could you give just some trends on how the trends in the BT out, and what are the key reasons for the same? And secondly, how much would be our affordable housing cross-sell to the existing retail brokerage customers or any other or to the existing customer base? What would be that percentage of the total? Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, so I'll just quickly give one pointer. Manish will take it from there. So, see, we're not, we're not saying we're seeing some incremental rise in BT rate. We are saying that there is a very healthy BT rate in this business. The idea for us is that you have to have a good eye on what you can sell down before it is anyway gonna get transferred from your book, and therefore, the sell down strategy is extremely crucial in the affordable housing business to make sure that you manage BT very well. I'll pass it to Manish to answer that in detail and take your other question as well.
Correct. I think, Vishal, you said it. So, you know, in affordable housing business, the call which you take on the credit is either minus one CIBIL, minus one CIBIL or what we call it is NTC, New to Credit. So he's with you, for six to 12 months. Once he make up his credit CIBIL score, obviously he's getting pushed by any other better private sector or a public sector bank. That is one of the primary reason of BT out for further, and it is not specific to JM, it is across industry. As well as, you know, these are the customers which is more sought after, from a PSA perspective.
So we have seen last so many years, you know, our BT out rate is 1.5% per month, roughly 18%-20% is a BT out rate, and which is what we have seen even during the current quarter. What we are doing is, we spot the opportunity and sell down some of the good customers so that we can upfront book the profit, because otherwise we cannot charge any prepayment penalty, and that is the trend which we have seen. On your second question, there is absolutely no cross-sell. Forget the JM Financial Services, there is absolutely no cross-sell amongst any of the customer or JM Financial Home Loans with any of the customer or any other JM Financial group activities. It is absolutely different, self-originated, on the ground in tier two, tier three cities.
Yeah. So I think on just to quickly add on that question, I think if you see page six, you know, which we've highlighted our refocused businesses, I think there is tremendous synergies between the first three businesses over the long term. But there is not much synergy with our home loans business. That's an independent business where we've invested seven years ago. It's showing great traction. We will keep building it, and at the right time, we will list it.
Sure. So, I think that's it from my end. I'll get back in with you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
All the best to you.
Thank you. Happy Diwali!
Thank you. A reminder to all participants that you may press star and One to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Pallav Garg from Star Health. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Can you guys hear me?
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. First of all, congratulations on the good set of numbers.
Thank you.
Very quickly, I just wanted to check on the FIG piece.
Yeah.
So obviously, that is the one which you all, you guys are running down. So is that right now, we have that on our book, but going forward, we are while we are maintaining the syndication function as a business in the group, but we are kind of moving the book outside, right? So is that something which is going to be housed under AIF of any sort, or is that the strategy or is it a-
Yeah, it's absolutely correct. So, what we will do on the... Right now, on the AIF strategy, the idea is to focus on performing credit as well as the next AIF will be our LAS finance AIF. I think Amitabh and team already working on that. And we will quickly follow through after that with AIF for financials. So FIG actually was one of the first businesses we started degrowing, even before we took a decision to degrow real estate. I think from January onwards itself we started degrowing the book. But we will morph that into an AIF, and we will also continue doing syndication for the same. There is demand for some of those smaller NBFCs, and we'll continue doing syndication for the same.
But, we will not take any form of significant exposure in our books. It will be absolutely minimalistic, if at all.
Okay. No, no, sure. So, if you can quickly just throw some light on the procedures to set up that AIF and the probable timeline. Like you said, six months down the line, probably you'll be looking at that. So is that still-
Yeah, I'll have Amitabh talk to you.
So we already have an ongoing fund which is on the performing credit side. So that is still on, and we hope to do the final close in the next few months. So that strategy is still on. The new one, which is the lending fund, we are in the process of taking all the regulatory approvals. The good thing here is that the team is already in place. So there's a very experienced well-networked team ready to move in on day one, so that will not take a lot of
... time to set up and, our distribution capabilities and, brand, I think once the approvals are in place and, the teams and the processes are in place, I think within the next two quarters, maybe, latest by, first quarter, FY 2026, we should be able to start the fund.
Okay. Yeah, that is it for myself. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll take the last question now, because I think it's almost 5:30 P.M.
Okay, sir. The last question is from the line of Kevin Shah, who is an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah. So good afternoon and congratulations for your numbers. I have only one question. It's regarding the financial instruments impairment, which was shown in this quarter. I mean, for six months of about 301 crores and also in 2023, it was around 500 crores. Trying to just know the bifurcation of this impairment in different segments and also till how many quarters, this impairment is gonna continue?
This provisions are primarily in the wholesale mortgage segment.
Okay, the entire amount?
Majority of it. Can come back to you on the exact breakdown.
It'll be a large majority. You can easily assume 80%.
And any idea how many quarters will it continue?
I think this is perhaps the last quarter on the wholesale mortgage side. In fact, on the entire run, the book, which is running down, this probably should be the last quarter. So as I explained when I started the call, and Nishit also explained it, that we've just taken the provision coverage ratio up from 60% to 70%. The new stock addition in terms of NPA has barely moved. It's just moved from 870 odd crores to 835 crores. It's like 20 crore movement in NPA, but the provision we've increased to 109 crores. So there is no asset quality impact. It's just the provision we have taken, which I think is the more prudent thing to do.
And, you know, it's the right thing to do, and I think even the regulators, you know, would like a significant amount of provisions to be taken. You know, in a book which is running down, right? It's just more prudent to have high provisions.
Mm-hmm.
These provisions do not reflect or are not even connected to the recoveries that we may have. The recoveries, albeit, are delayed, but they are definitely going to be higher than the net NPA numbers that you see on our balance sheet. We are very confident of the same. It is only a timing delay. We're not gonna see a value loss.
Okay. Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. We have reached the end of our Q&A session. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Vishal Kampani for closing comments.
Yes, thank you everyone, for attending this call. I'm sorry we had to rush this call through for today, because a lot of our senior team members present here are traveling next week for Diwali. We wish all of you a very happy Diwali, and we remain very excited about our new journey, and the focus businesses. And we will again see all of you next quarter. Thank you again. Wish you all a very happy Diwali.
Thank you. On behalf of JM Financial, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.