Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. I'm Chatika, moderator for the conference call. Welcome to Nucleus Software quarterly earnings conference call for the quarter and half year ended on 30 September 2022. As a reminder, all participants 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 telephone. Please note this conference is recorded. I would now like to hand over the floor to Ms. Swati Ahuja. Thank you and over to you, Swati.
Thanks, Chatika. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Swati from Investor Relations team at Nucleus Software. Welcome to all of you for this Nucleus Software earnings conference call for the quarter and the half year ended on September 30, 2022. For discussion, we have here from the management team, Mr. Vishnu R. Dusad, our Managing Director. Mr. Parag Bhise, CEO and Executive Director. Mr. Anurag Mantri, CFO and Executive Director. Ms. Ritika Dusad, Executive Director and Chief Innovative Officer. Mr. Brajesh Khandelwal, Vice President, Neo Business. Mr. Ashwani Arora, Senior Vice President, Global Customer Success Team. Mr. Ashish Khanna, Business Head, Financial Inclusion. Mr. Tapan Jayaswal, Financial Controller. As you all are aware, Nucleus Software does not provide any specific revenue guidance.
Anything which is said during this call which may reflect our outlook for the future or which may be construed as a forward-looking statement must be reviewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. An audio and transcript of this call will be shortly available on the investor section of our website, www.nucleussoftware.com. With this, we are now ready to begin with the opening comments on the performance of the company for the quarter and half year ending September 30, 2022. Post that, we would be available for the question answer session. With this, I now pass over to Vishnu, sir. Over to you, sir.
Thanks a lot, Swati, and warm welcome to all of you for this special quarterly earnings call. It is special because this quarter we have completed 30 years of creating intellectual property on Indian soil. This is extremely important aspect for us because 30 years back when India was getting into software business. India as a country. You know, our professionals were not described in very glowing terms. So we felt that we need to do something about this, and that is how we thought that we must create intellectual property on this very soil. We are glad to let you know that we have completed 30 years this quarter of that achievement.
Over these 3 decades, we have been able to create absolutely world-class intellectual property that has helped India to make strides in retail lending. Today, we are looking at retail assets in the banking industry worth INR 80 lakh crores. This number would not have been possible without a robust product, robust intellectual property, which would ensure that the loans are given to the right people, the repayments are tracked properly, and in case of default, the collections are made in a meaningful manner. It is only this rigorous discipline which has enabled the retail lending industry, which was almost non-existent thirty years back, to take such a sizable shape of having INR 80 lakh crores of retail assets. We are absolutely delighted that we play equally important role in the transaction banking space.
We are processing today, 6-8 crore transactions per month on our platform FinnAxia. We remain confident that with our sustained focus on delivering value to our customers, they will continue to lead the pack in their respective domains, and they will be able to deliver value to their end customers. With these words, I would now like to invite my colleague, Parag Bhise, to take the conference forward.
Thank you so much, Vishnu, sir, for your address and for guiding us and inspiring us all these years. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome you all to this investor call. It is indeed a moment of great pride for all of us, and I guess it would be for all of you as well that your company is completing 30 years in the software IT business. It has been 30 years since the visionary leadership of this organization led us to have our first product from Nucleus Software that came out from Indian soil in this domain. I would like to congratulate you all as well on achieving this milestone. As regards this quarter, this has been an interesting quarter for us, yet another interesting one.
Attrition is, thankfully showing a downward trend, and indications are that now it may settle down here. Thanks to both, I think the significant steps that we have taken in terms of salary revisions that I've been talking about, as well as, market dynamics easing out probably due to the global economic indicators. We still need to, however, keep a close watch on this very important aspect. We have made slow but very significant progress on the AMC revision front. That also we've been talking about, with one more large customer agreeing to and signing up for a significant rate revision on the AMC front, in addition to a couple of them that have already signed earlier, about whom we had updated you, earlier.
There are a few more customers and large ones at that, whom we are pursuing very aggressively to close in Q3 and Q4. The impact of these revisions would be visible in the financials of next 2 quarters. The AMC journey is a complicated one and time-consuming one, as with each of our customers, and especially considering that we are looking at very significant revision as compared to the ultra-deep discounted pricing that we have been doing all these years. Our customers are not used to such requests coming from our side. Once we are able to communicate the value being delivered to them in numbers terms, in most cases we find an in-principle alignment.
We also spoke about improving our project management capacity and capability in the past for ensuring smoother executions, and I'm pleased to inform you that we are taking specific steps to improve this situation. The key initiatives are one, intense project management trainings from industry experts that are personally being supervised and monitored by Anurag, my colleague, who you'll hear in some time during the Q&A. Also hiring from premium institutes, MBA institutes, some industry experts from other industry, who come to us with experience. This is an experiential experiment that we are trying out, and we are really getting some encouraging response already.
We also taken multiple initiatives for enhancing our branding and our visibility, with Nucleus participating in leading FinTech events in Philippines, Dubai, including, just last week in the Singapore FinTech Festival and in Australia simultaneously. We have garnered great response from these events, and we are confident that these events will help us amplify and enhance our market image. Thank you so much, and welcome you all once more. Over to you, Swati.
Thank you, sir. Now it's with Tapan, sir, to put some light on financial number.
Hello.
Hello. Yeah, Mr. Tapan.
Hello, Swati. Am I audible?
Yes, sir. Completely audible. Please. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Highlights from financials are. As for revenue, our consolidated revenue for the quarter is at INR 130.1 crores against INR 128.8 crores quarter-over-quarter, and INR 114.1 crores year-over-year. Overall revenue in foreign currency, including India rupee revenues, $16.6 million for the quarter against $17 million quarter-over-quarter and $15.5 million year-over-year. Product revenue for the quarter is at INR 106.2 crores against 108.0 crores quarter-over-quarter and INR 93.2 crores year-over-year. Revenue from projects and services for the quarter is at INR 23.9 crores against INR 20.8 crores quarter-over-quarter and INR 20.9 crores year-over-year.
As for expenses, cost of delivery, including cost of product development for the quarter, is 76.5% of revenue against 75.6% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 81.5% of revenue year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 99.5 crores against INR 97.4 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 93 crores year-on-year. Marketing and sales expenses for the quarter is 4.3% of revenue against 3.3% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 3.6% year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 5.7 crores against INR 4.2 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 4.1 crores year-on-year. General expenses for the quarter is 10.6% of revenue against 9.9% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 10.8% year-on-year.
In absolute terms, this is INR 13.7 crores against INR 12.7 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 12.4 crores year-on-year. Profit for the quarter is at INR 11.2 crores, that is 3.6% of revenue against INR 14.5 crores, that is 11.3% of revenue quarter-on-quarter, and INR 4.7 crores, which is 4.1% of revenue year-on-year. Other income from investment and deposit at INR 6.9 crore against INR 3.9 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 8.4 crore year-on-year. Other income for the quarter is INR 8.8 crore against INR 6.2 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 9.5 crore year-on-year. Total taxes are at INR 3.9 crore against INR 4.7 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 2.4 crore year-on-year.
Net profit is at INR 11 crore for the quarter against INR 10.8 crore for a quarter and INR 8.6 crore year-on-year. Other comprehensive income is INR 1.6 crore for the quarter against INR 0.02 crore quarter-on-quarter and negative INR 1.5 crore year-on-year. Comprehensive income, which includes net profit and other comprehensive income, is at INR 12.6 crore for the quarter against INR 11 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 7.1 crore year-on-year. EPS for the quarter is at INR 4.12 as against INR 4.02 in the previous quarter and 2.95 in September 30, 2021 quarter.
In terms of foreign currency hedges from September 30, 2022, we had $3.45 million of forward contracts at an average rate of INR 80.05. There is a mark-to-market loss of INR 72 lakhs, which is taken to hedging within the balance sheet. Revenue contribution from the top 5 clients for the quarter is 28.5% against 26.2% in the previous quarter. The order book position is INR 572.9 crore, including INR 538.9 crore of product business and INR 34 crore of projects and services business. In June 30, 2022, the order book position was INR 562.5 crore, including INR 527.7 crore product business and INR 34.8 crore projects and services business.
As for total cash and cash equivalents, as on 30 September 2022, it's INR 558 crore against INR 551.1 crore as on 30 June 2022. This includes balances in current accounts of INR 33.6 crore, various schemes of mutual funds, INR 409.6 crore, fixed deposits of INR 30.8 crore, investments in tax-free bonds of INR 78.8 crore, INR 5.2 crore in preferential. With regards to receivables, we are at INR 73.5 crore against INR 68.2 crore in this quarter.
During the quarter, there is a gross addition of 66 assets of INR 0.73 crores, consisting primarily of INR 0.44 crore on software, INR 0.164 crore on vehicles, INR 0.09 crore on plant and machinery, and INR 0.04 crore on computers. Now I'll hand over to Swati.
Thank you, sir. With this, we are now ready to open our Q&A session. I will now hand over to Ritika. Over to you, Ritika.
Thank you, ma'am. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the Q&A session. If you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad and wait for your turn to ask a question. If you would like to withdraw your request, you may do so by pressing star and one again. We will wait for a moment while the question queue builds. I repeat, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. First question comes from Vaibhav from Honesty and Integrity Investment. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for providing the opportunity. You know, last quarter we talked about some of the AMC revenue which we have not recognized. Is it? Has it come during the quarter or not yet? Are those contracts still under negotiation?
Thanks, Vaibhav, for raising this question. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, yes, 1 customer has got converted, but though it happened after the quarter end, so real impact is not visible in this quarter's financials, but you'll see that in the quarters coming in. As I said, there are advanced and very positive interactions happening with at least 4-5 other customers, which we expect to close in this financial year.
Lastly, the number of employees that we have at quarter end, if you can provide that number.
Parag will take that. Raghu? Parag will take that.
Yeah.
Rajat. Thanks, Vaibhav, for asking this. Our employee strength stands at 1,695, which is a decrease from the previous quarter. One thing which is very encouraging, as mentioned by Parag also, that our attrition in this quarter had been lowest among multiple quarters. This attrition is also not of the experienced professionals, but the youngsters, the young minds.
Mm-hmm.
We would like to raise this also, but that's a very encouraging reversal what we are observing now.
Okay. Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I repeat, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We are having a question from Deepak Shankar from Press Line TMS. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone, and thanks a lot for the opportunity. Firstly, wanted to understand, so what proportion of our old customers who have been already moved to new pricing norms, so just wanted to check that.
Percentage terms, as I said, you know, we had already talked about 2 large customers already earlier in the past investor calls and one more large customers already. 3 in total. As I also mentioned, I'll repeat that at least 4-5 in this financial year more we are expecting.
Okay. When do we expect that these kind of incremental revenues to flow in our revenues?
Q3 and Q4.
Q3 and Q4. Okay, thanks a lot. Have a lovely day.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I repeat, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We are having a question from Tamil Singh from TBS. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I just, I was dropped off the call. I just need some clarification on this, booking of this AMC revenue. In quarter one, I would like to believe that we have not really booked any of the AMC revenue that was deferred. Can you clarify, was any AMC revenue booked in Q1 or, in, because you mentioned I think 2 clients had already moved, had already agreed to revise pricing model?
Yes, in Q1 we did book that.
Okay. Is there any, can you give what is the delta in terms of how much of the revenue has not been booked so far?
Look, giving delta would be difficult, but as I said, you will see the impact in our next quarter and the next 2 quarters.
Okay. Can you share, for the domestic revenue, what percentage of it comes from PSU clients?
Sorry. It was not very clear. Can you please repeat?
What percentage of revenue comes from public sector banks?
Oh, very minimal. You would know from our client list that we are not so much into public sector. It will be minimal.
Okay. One last question. Have you heard about increased, you know, competition from, you know, one of the large global CRM players in this space? Would you like to comment on that and they're coming in at very, very low price? Is that my understanding correct? Would you like to talk more about that a little bit?
2 parts to it. There's as regards competition, yes, especially in the origination part we are facing that competition. You mentioned about pricing at a very low pricing. That is not our understanding. I don't think they're coming in. As per our inputs, those information is not so easily available, but very low pricing is not our understanding for sure.
Thank you. I'll get back.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We are having a question from Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just, first a clarification on the order book number. The voice was not very clear. If you could, repeat that number.
Sorry, Rahul. There was some disturbance. We are not able to hear you clearly. You will have to repeat the question.
Hello. Hello. Is it any better?
Yes, it is better.
Yeah. Sorry. I was trying to understand the order book data that you have shared earlier. Could you repeat that? I was not able to follow that.
Hello. Yes, sure. The order book position is INR 572.9 crore, including INR 538.9 crore of product business and INR 34 crore of projects and services business. In June 30, 2022, the order book position was INR 562.5 crore, including INR 527.7 crore of product business and INR 34.8 crore of projects and services business.
Right. Thanks for that. Secondly, on this qualitative thoughts that we have shared in terms of, you know, the initiatives taken on the talent induction, from campuses, and then industry experts and also on the FinTech participation across markets. If you could share in terms of, what are the initial positive that have come out of these initiatives. You would say that these are too early for us to figure it out, the outcome of those.
On the talent front, definitely there are positive, because this exercise we had started last year, as I had been updating that we had inducted 400+ freshers from colleges. After training, a large number of those are already on our floors, being part of the project teams, and they are contributing to the revenue. As regards to the other initiatives of project management training, capacity building and participation in various events, those have started lately. Impact of that would come in later quarters, probably next year. Yes, the impact of the fresh talent that we had inducted last year is already visible.
Any benefits accruing from this collaborating with industry expert in FinTech conference participations?
Sorry. Just to clarify the update on industry experts was that we are taking help from industry experts to build project management capacity, capability in the organization. It's essentially training and sharing of their knowledge. It is that kind of collaboration. FinTech festivals, we are participating there, so our visibility is increasing. A direct immediate positive impact of that I think will take some time. For sure our visibility is increasing. That we can experience.
Right. Regarding this AMC revision exercise, you have quantified that cumulatively in this year we will be pitching it and potentially converting 5-7 customers on the revised pricing. How we plan to roll out to a much larger universe that we have? Will most of them see this in the coming year or this is in which way limited to select few customers and that's why the exercise would not be very large in coming quarters?
Okay. Discussions are happening with much larger number of customers. Ultimately our attempt would be to do it for everyone. Why I said 5-7 is of course, because that's what we are looking at positively converting in this year. I had also said in my opening remark, since the revisions are significant in scale, with each customer there is significant time investment that we have to do the kind of preparations, the number of meetings, et cetera. It's slow progress, but it is definite progress.
Okay. Maybe probably over 2-3 years, this could be rolled out to the entire client universe.
Yeah. I don't think we'll go to the third year. I think, max within 2 years we'll need to get this done.
Sure. Just lastly, any thoughts on, you know, how the demand in the market is shaping up across 3 or 4 key markets that we operate in? That how it is changing, both, A, from an opening up kind of a perspective and secondly from the volatile, macroeconomic situation.
The demand continues to be there. We are getting good traction from the market. That's what I've been also updating in the past. The volatility in the global markets, yeah, as of now there is no impact that we see.
If you look at this current quarterly performance also and looking at our order book situation, is there any specific reason why we were not able to have some traction this quarter?
Okay. If you're referring to this in revenue terms, yes, because that's why I specifically talked about that one conversion, which happened after the quarter closure. It's just a matter of timing, I would say, and nothing else.
Right. Just last question, what percentage of our revenue could be dollar invoiced, and 2 or 3 major currency that we are invoicing into other than rupee, if you could share that.
My understanding is in the range of 60, but maybe Tapan, you can give some precise inputs. Tapan and Raghu, do you want to comment on that?
Hello.
Yes, Tapan.
Parag, could you repeat the question?
I think the question was that what percentage of our revenue is in dollar terms, if I understood it.
Yeah. Same thing.
Other major foreign currencies. Hello.
I'll revert it shortly in few minutes.
Yes, sir.
Sure. Those were my questions. I'll come back in the queue.
Okay. Thank you, Raghu. Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I repeat, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We are having a follow-up question from Tamil Singh from TBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the follow-up. I think in a couple of calls ago you had mentioned the 2 main drivers that we're focusing on for this year. One was basically getting this AMC revision through, and I think we are seeing traction on that. The second one was on conversion, converting clients from FinnOne to FinnOne Neo. Could you talk about the stats of the second driver, please?
Yes. Thanks for raising that. Yes, we did talk about those 2 key initiatives. While we talked about the AMC revisions already, on the second front also, the conversions have started to happen, I would say. There are implementations which have started in at least 4 accounts already, and there are more in the pipeline.
When a client moves from FinnOne to FinnOne Neo.
Mm-hmm.
What is the effect on the P&L?
P&L. Yeah. Effect, of course we expect a positive but a precise. I don't think more than that we have info at the moment.
You know, the way you may want to look at it is, in FinnOne we had multiple versions. In FinnOne Neo, all our customers are gonna be on a single version. That is gonna make a huge difference on how we support that single version. We'll be saving some costs on the support front and, customers will be having a very even more robust platform.
You know, sort of pulling on that thread a little bit. I imagine your large customers are pretty used to your, their customized FinnOne that they have. How easy has it been or, I mean, you know, we've launched FinnOne Neo for a while. Are they converting? I mean, you know, what are the struggles you're facing in being able to convert them to FinnOne Neo?
Yeah. You raised a very valid point. That is a challenge definitely we face, and it takes time for us to convince them, especially with large customers. At some stages we have to build some additional capacity. We talked earlier about a layer that we have outside our core product where some reporting capability or some you know complementary functionalities can be built in. It's a combination of both this and convincing the customer, showing them the value of the new product that has come in, both technologically and functionally advanced, and the benefits that they would derive because of upgrades. All those discussions happen. Yes, it is challenging. It takes time. It is easier with smaller customers, no doubt about it.
You raised a very valid point.
Apart from what Parag has said, on convincing the big customers I think when they are able to see the value through the large number of APIs that would be available the moment they go live on our FinnOne Neo platform, the speed with which they will be able to integrate with, you know, fintech and other solutions and, in some manner, reduction in hardware and also reduction in license costs for the database, et cetera, benefits. The customers are now looking at it in a manner that they want to, they would rather leverage the, you know, 100 additional benefits and if required, let go of the additional 5 benefits or 10 benefits that that were accruing to them because of their own customizations.
I see. Out of our top 10 customers, how many are on FinnOne Neo?
Sorry, I think the question is not very clear.
Out of our top 10 customers, how many are on FinnOne Neo?
At least 2 or 3. One of them partially, because these implementations are very large. The customers also go line of business by line of business. There are couple of customers who are partially converted, couple of large customers fully converted.
Is it fair to say that, assuming we can go from a couple to, you know, the top 10 customers being on FinnOne Neo, we should see a reduction in our costs?
No, I'm not very clear on the question. What are you implying?
Vishnu was saying that, you know, FinnOne Neo is one product for, you know.
Yes.
You know, all customers. The cost of maintaining that would be lower than maintaining different customizations for every customer as we currently do on FinnOne. My question is, once you know our top 10, assuming our top 10 customers can get onto FinnOne Neo, would that reduce, you know, would that result in significant cost savings for us?
Yes, I guess that's a fair statement. Once that they are all converted, there will be significant reduction.
Last question from my side. You know, you know, the 2 geographies, Far East and Southeast Asia, at one point were contributing anywhere between INR 30 crore-INR 40 crore of EBIT to the bottom line. You know, as of today, they're still in the in losses. What is happening there and how do we, how will we proceed on, in these 2 geographies?
I will take that. As I in fact indicated in the last quarter also that in both these places, in both these geographies, we had good or we had and we are having good business pipeline, very strong pipeline. Our capacity to execute that pipeline was impacted because of immigration controls. Those controls have been lifted and the things have come to normalcy now. Far East is very close to again being in black, and the same will happen for Southeast Asia as well. During this time when we were constrained as well, the customer delight was ensured, which is now going to help us in rebounding the things quickly.
Next quarter should be absolutely fine for these 2 geographies in comparison to the current one.
Okay. Essentially what you're saying is the top line, the revenues are there, it's just that we're not able to execute it because the travel restrictions had not been lifted, but now that is sort of taken care of.
I will say order pipeline is there, but that might not be concluded or executed yet.
Okay. All right. That's it from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. I repeat, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We will wait for a moment while the question queue is in place. Please go ahead.
Hi. Parag Bhise, to answer on the last question, right, on the major currency part. We are having 3 currencies, majorly, USD, Singapore dollar, and INR, where major revenue is coming.
The question was on the proportion, I guess.
Yeah. Major portion is coming from U.S. dollar, Singapore dollar, and INR. That is the majority.
Do you have percentage figures? Rough percentage? That was the question, I think.
It will be close to 89%-90% is coming from these 3 major currencies. Hello. Parag Bhise, am I audible?
Yeah, you're audible. I was just wondering if there is any follow-up question.
Thank you, sir. There are no further questions. Now I hand over the floor to Ms. Swati Ahuja for closing comments. Over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Ritika. Thank you so much, Ritika. Now we would like to thank all the investors for joining us today for this call. I would now hand it over to Vishnu, sir, for his closing comments. Over to you, sir.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued interest in Nucleus Software, and I would like to reiterate our commitment to build a long-term, value-adding entity in the corporate world. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. Bye.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using Chorus Call Service. You may disconnect your lines now. Thank you, and have a pleasant evening.