With this, I now pass it over to Vishnu Sir. Over to you, Sir.
Thanks, Swati, and warm welcome to the investor call for the first quarter ending June 30th, 2021. The first quarter this year was one of the toughest for us. As we were barely recovering from the COVID-19 second wave, as we had mentioned in our investor call on June 4th, we were hit by a ransomware attack that almost crippled us for a couple of weeks during the month of June 2021. Thanks to the phenomenal efforts by our leaders and our partners, we are fully back on our feet and have emerged wiser and stronger. The other challenge that we as an industry are facing is that of industry-wide attrition due to huge increase in digitization work to the country. To ensure that Nucleus continues to add value to our customers in an uninterrupted manner, we took some major steps. The compensation has been raised substantially.
While this has affected our profitability, we are confident we will be able to get back to our standard profitability in not too distant a future. We believe that this is an investment in our future. With those words, I would now like to hand over to our CEO, Parag Bhise. Over to you, Parag.
Thank you very much, Vishnu, for your comments. I echo Vishnu's sentiments. The quarter that has gone by is arguably one of the toughest quarters that I have seen in my 30+ years of association with the company and the industry for that matter. We were hit by three major problems in quick succession within the same quarter. The last one of them being something that the entire industry is facing, the senior resource demand shock challenge, the way we look at it. We have responded to all three of these challenges appropriately. While it is still not sure where the bloodbath caused by the extreme surge in demand of trained technical people will stop, we are obviously closely monitoring the situation and will respond to it as required.
While our profits have been impacted due to the rise in personnel cost, with the business opportunities shaping up that are visible to us and already in our hand, we are quite confident that we'll be back on track soon. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Tapan Sir, please highlight the financials.
Hello. Thank you, Parag Sir. Key highlights from financials are: we have our consolidated revenue for the quarter is at INR 108.4 crore against INR 124.2 crore quarter-on-quarter and INR 128.4 crore year-on-year. Overall revenue in foreign currency, including India rupees revenue, is $14.8 million for the quarter against $16.9 million quarter-on-quarter, and $17.3 million year-on-year. Product revenue for the quarter is at INR 89.9 crore against INR 105 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 107.1 crore year-on-year. Revenue from the project and services for the quarter is at INR 15.5 crore against INR 19.2 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 21.3 crore year-on-year. Moving on to the expenses side of it.
Cost of delivery, including cost of product development for the quarter, is at 81.2% of revenue against 63.6% of revenue quarter-on-quarter, and 62.6% of revenue year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 88.1 crore against INR 79 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 80.3 crore year-on-year. Marketing and sales expense for the quarter is 5.7% of revenue against 3.7% of revenue quarter-on-quarter and 1.6% year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 6.2 crores against INR 4.6 crores quarter-on-quarter, and INR 2 crore year-on-year. Moving on to general and administration expenses for the quarter is 11.8% of revenue against 7.3% of revenue quarter-on-quarter, and 6.9% year-on-year. In absolute terms, this is INR 12.8 crores against INR 9.1 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 8.9 crore year-on-year.
EBITDA for the quarter is at INR 1.4 crore against INR 31.5 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 37.1 crore year-on-year. Other income from investment and deposit at INR 8.8 crore against INR 6.7 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 10.7 crore year-on-year. Total other income for the quarter is INR 10.8 crore against INR 7.2 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 13 crore year-on-year. Total taxes are at INR 3.1 crore against INR 8.2 crore quarter-on-quarter, and INR 10.1 crore year-on-year. Net profit stands at INR 6 crores for the quarter against INR 27.4 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 36.3 crores year-on-year. Other comprehensive income is at -INR 3.2 crores for the quarter against -INR 1.5 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 2.4 crores year-on-year.
Total comprehensive income, which includes net profit and other comprehensive income, is at INR 2.8 crores for the quarter against INR 25.9 crores quarter-on-quarter and INR 38.7 crores year-on-year. EPS for the quarter is at INR 2.07, as against INR 9.42 in the previous quarter and INR 12.51 in June 2020 quarter. In terms of foreign currency hedges on June 30, 2021, we had $5 million of forward contracts at an average rate of 75.14. There is a mark-to-market loss of INR 3.69 lakhs, which is taken to hedging reserve in the balance sheet. Revenue contribution from the top five clients for the quarter is 26%, as against 27% in the previous quarter. The order book position stands at INR 534.9 crores, including INR 490.4 crores of product business and INR 44.5 crores of projects and services business.
In March 31, 2020, the order book position was INR 477.9 crores, including INR 445.9 crores of product business and INR 32 crores of projects and services business. Total cash and cash equivalent as on June 30th, 2021, are INR 734.3 crores against INR 692 crores as on March 31st, 2021. This includes balance in current accounts of INR 35.1 crores, various schemes of mutual funds amounting to INR 528.1 crores, fixed deposits of INR 29.6 crores, investment in tax-free bonds of INR 113.2 crores, INR 28.3 crores in preference shares. With regards to receivables, we are at INR 69.5 crores against INR 85.7 crores previous quarter. During the quarter, there is a gross addition of fixed assets of INR 2.62 crores, consisting primarily of INR 0.34 crores on plant and machinery, INR 1.18 crores on software, and INR 1.10 crores on computers. Now I hand over to Swati.
Thank you, Sir. With this, we are now open for an Q&A session. I will now hand it over to Harpreet. Over to you, Harpreet.
Thank you, Swati. With this, we will open the floor for Q&A interlude. Participants, if you have any questions, please press zero and then one on your telephone keypad and wait to be answered. I repeat, you need to press zero and then one to ask a question. First question of the day we have [inaudible] from HNC Private Limited. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Great. Am I audible now?
Yes, you're audible.
I have a couple of questions, Sir. First is, I'll put together if you want. Sir, are we still seeing difficulties in the NBFC sector, as you said in the last call? If you see, as of now, the most of the NBFC now stands at a pre-COVID level, and the collection efficiency also is nearly stands at 90%. We are still facing difficulties. Please could you give some color on it?
Parag, do you want to take it?
Hello?
Yes.
Hello.
Should I respond, Vishnu?
Yeah, please.
Yes. This is Parag. Thank you for your question. NBFC front, from a business perspective, orders, et cetera, now we are not seeing any challenges. As I indicated in my initial comments that the business perspective looks good, including NBFC. To be specific, no, we are not now facing any challenges. We are getting good collection.
Okay. We are not facing any difficulties as of now from the NBFC?
No, not at the moment.
Okay. The second question, we can see there is a huge jump on the employee benefit expense, which stands at 85% as a percentage of sales during the quarter, and the last quarter was 59%. Will it continue for the coming quarters, Sir? We are quite actually higher than the peers on the employee expense as of-
You're talking about personal expense, is it?
Yeah. I'm talking about the personal expense, like employee benefit expense.
Okay. This quarter is exceptional because if you note, our revenues are also down because of the problems that Vishnu Sir talked about. We faced three problems in succession. COVID, we were impacted severely, followed by ransomware. Because of it, for a few weeks, we were not operational, and the huge demand because of it, the attrition is at its peak. It is an industry-wide phenomenon, but we are also facing it. This quarter we were hit by, on one side, the revenue shortage. On the other side, we had to revise our salaries significantly. There was a dual impact
We don't expect the same in next quarter, at least that is not the expectation because, as I said, the business is looking good. At least the other two problems are behind us, and we should be fairly doing much better on the revenue front, at least. That's my belief.
Okay, we'll still maintain 64% on a year basis.
We are not very sure. As Parag has highlighted, this is Vishnu.
Okay.
We do hope to recover from obviously this, hopefully, the worst quarter. We will certainly recover. How long will it take for us to.
Okay.
get back to the same ratios? We are not in a position to comment right now.
Okay, Sir. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, we have Divyesh Mehta from Dolat Capital. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yes, you are audible.
Okay. My first question is that even in the last quarter, you had seen some revenue decline which was due to supply side factors or lower attrition from the order book. Is it the same case this time? Even if it is the same case, I think the decline in revenue is a bit steep. If you can give some clarity on that. What is the current status in July and August? How are things going on right now, and how do we expect to again get traction from the order book? Because our order book is increasing, but the revenue is not. Can you share the quantum of the bonus on hike given and what is the attrition percentage? That's it. Thank you. If you can answer this.
Okay. As far as the attrition percentage is concerned, I think it is a fourth of 30% annualized. In fact, in one month, it was fairly close to 40%. However, thanks to the substantial increase that we have given, it is suddenly somewhat under control, and as Parag has mentioned, we are keeping a close eye on how things are unfolding at the industry level, and we will be taking steps accordingly. Broadly, this is what we can say at this juncture. If there's anything else that you would like to understand, please let us know.
If you can give an idea as to why there was such a steep decline, and how are you planning to recover from this?
Okay
Pending orders would fall into the revenue?
As far as the steep decline is concerned, as we had mentioned earlier, the COVID-19 second wave and the ransomware attacks, these were the two main reasons, along with the attrition that I have talked about. As far as the order book is concerned, it is a combination of both immediate-term, short-term, and long-term orders that are there, and that's how you notice an increase in order book. Part of it may or may not be executable immediately. That is the reason for while order book is highest, partially we may not be able to execute. I hope that answers your question about steep decline and the order book.
Great. That's it. Thanks a lot. I will come back later and let you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next we have Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Vishnu, from the ransomware side, could you little bit elaborate in terms of what was the precise impact? Is it some client-side revenue recognition which could not happen for some period? Is it some revenue reversal or it is loss of time which led to this impact from ransomware on revenues?
Essentially, it was loss of time. For some of our customers, thankfully, we were able to recover within days. For some other customers, it took us a couple of weeks. It was basically a loss of time, where some of our teams could not work, and that is what has resulted into a drop in the revenue because of ransomware. As we have mentioned earlier, we did recover, in fact, in timely manner from ransomware. There's a partner who helped us out in this recovery. They have mentioned that this is one of the fastest recovery that they have seen. Clearly, we have come out, as I had mentioned, wiser and stronger.
We need to be far more vigilant than we were, and that's what now we are very closely working on to make sure that we have learned from this incident.
Sure. Of course, you said how you would recover over a period of time and difficult to gauge, I can understand that part. Just simply from a pure supply side factor and ransomware side factor, which is more like a 1x kind of an impact. Is it fair to assume from a July, August run rate basis, we are at least back to our, let's say, Q4 kind of a run rate, or it is too early to even conclude that?
Yeah, it is too early to conclude even that, because while we have started functioning fully by end June or first week of July, the impact that the suspension of work by whatever days, weeks that happened, we are still working out how is it going to impact the revenue for this quarter as well as when it's cheaper.
Right. On the attrition side, as you said, it went alarming all the way to 40% monthly run rate on annualized basis. Is this new hike effective month of July? If yes, then has this helped in some curtailment of the attrition in the July data so far?
Certainly, this hike is effective April 21. However, because of the issue that we were facing, the communication was done in the month of July, and yes, we do feel that the worst is behind us even on this front.
You are essentially trying to say that although the salary was revised up from April, for first quarter, the increments were rolled out, the arrears were rolled out in the month of July from a cash flow point of view?
It was not cash flow point of view. Cash flow was not an issue. The entire process.
Yeah, understand.
Yeah.
People who received this money for increased salary was paid eventually in July. People didn't receive that increased salary in April, May, June as those months happened because that communication itself happened in July, although it is effective from April.
You got it absolutely right.
Okay. That's why even any benefit from an attrition point of view, the decision-making could have helped only in July, not earlier, right? They were not aware of this hike.
You got it absolutely right. Yeah.
Right. Again, moving back to my original question, which is, has July attrition cooled off to a normalized level or the market is still hot and that's why it will take some more time for us to normalize?
Okay. Let me put it this way. Market seems to be hot. We are keeping a very close eye on how things are unfolding. As of now, we feel the worst period is behind us. We will let you know when we connect in the month of October or early November, whenever the next board meeting is.
Right. Sorry if I can squeeze one more. Just last question. Have we done any kind of analysis in terms of who we are losing this talent to? Is it going to startup ecosystem or more going toward IT services, which is again hiring big time? Given the nature of the talent we may have could be little more specialized on the product side, so where we are losing these people, and which kind of company we are losing to these people?
Prema, would you like to take this?
Sure, Sir. Thank you. There are many kind of companies. There is no specific place that I can name. There are multiple of them. There are midsize and also the big size that people are going to. Of course, the compensation is the major factor for which people end up leaving. It's startups as well as the big size that people are going to.
Sure. Thank you. That is it from my side.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Next we have Himanshu from PGIM. Your line is unmuted, please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. I have two, three very basic questions related to the business. See, in one of the calls we stated that existing product has huge opportunity. And we have only done a very small portion of it. The steps we said that we need to expand geographically. In few markets, we have one or two customers only, hence we need to gain market share in those markets. Generally, in this business, what leads the customer to change his vendor or add a new service line. What is your strategy besides a good product to gain market share in these geographies? What progress have you made in last one year? I think this was stated in Q1 FY 2021.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. I think right through the year that has gone by, we have been reaching out to our prospective customers through various web conferences. Thanks to that, there is adequate amount of inflow of inquiries for our solutions. What is happening is, while the inflow of inquiries is adequate, the decision-making cycle is slightly longer. We do have some orders coming in, but we don't see them at the pace that we would like to. At the same time, we are confident that as things start settling, we would be able to see upsurge in the orders coming our way.
No, see, my question was this is what you are saying, but my question was on our strategy to gain market share and what leads the customer to change his vendor or let's say, add a new product to his system. In many of the markets, where you stated that we have only one or two customers, hence the focus has to be to gain market share in those geographies. Just on those aspects, if you can elaborate, my question is to understand the business.
Yeah, sure. Okay. The way I would answer this part of the question is, with our implementations, wherever whichever markets we have, we are demonstrating the value that is getting delivered to the prospective customers from the existing customers that we have in those geographies. Then we encourage them to look at all line of business starting to use our solutions. Once that goes live, they are able to see the value, and over a period, then we visualize those other lines of businesses, they would be able to see the value in our product. For example, buy now, pay later is a functionality or is a need that is rising in a substantial way. There are adequate number of queries on that part of the functionality, which we are talking to at least maybe 5 -1 0 customers.
Once these customers who want to start offering buy now, pay later functionality product to their prospective customers, once they see how easily they can offer that to their customers, we are confident that they would use our product for their automobile offering, their mortgage offering, and so on. That's the way we are approaching this situation. Himanshu, I hope I have answered your question now.
Yeah. Can I ask two more questions?
Yeah, please do.
We had said-
Huh? Yeah, please do go ahead.
We had said that we have three modes of business growth. One is product, the second was upgrading, and third was service business from Germany and Singapore, where we do customized product, which is the service business. How is this business of services doing in terms of growth? Because what we understand with the digitization and so many things improving and we being more specialized, are we getting higher traction or do you think that business can also have a higher growth or what are you seeing ahead in the future?
I would request my colleague, Anurag Mantri, who looks after this business as well, apart from his CFO hat, to answer this question.
Hi, this is Anurag. Thanks for your question, and you are absolutely right that in these days, services dimension is actually gaining lot of traction, and we are also leveraging on the same. We are expanding our digital services offering in services business, and in recent times, we have received some very good traction from Southeast Asia market as well as Middle East. We are expecting some significant increase in services business around the digital transformation offering.
Okay. One more thing.
I hope this answers your question.
Okay, yeah. Are the margins also improving in such businesses where the customized solutions are there, and are you able to differentiate we being because we're in financial domain?
Definitely, yes. The way I would like to answer is that the margins are not that great in the traditional IT services business. In last two years, we have predominantly moved towards the transformative services business, and there we are taking a unique blend of our functional and domain knowledge as well as technical expertise to our customers, and that is helping us to demand a premium or higher margins.
Okay. My last question.
Yeah.
As investors our understanding in the product business is it's a steady business in cash flow terms. Our revenue line will be more volatile, but once customer is logged in, it will remain with the company for a long period of time. Incremental costs are low. For getting the or selling the product. Hence, such companies will pay good dividend. We see Oracle or let's say, Atlassian, SAP, and all these companies where dividend would be more than 50%-60% of the profit. Why and what risks does the board see and we as investors are not able to see? Can you elaborate on the Because I think there is a lot of questions historically has been asked.
As investors, we come with such a mindset because we look at other product companies in such domains behaving in this way, and this company behaves in a different way. I think the difference is the way you see risk, and we are not able to comprehend. Can you elaborate on three, four minutes on the risk which board and management is able to see and we investors are not able to see in the business?
Okay. Let me attempt answering it this way that we are scheduled to have a board meeting essentially on this single topic alone in near future. When we connect next quarter, we'll be able to give you a comprehensive perspective on how board is looking at this, as you have very correctly said, the longest standing question.
One thing, just elaborating on this. Do you think the risk we are seeing or do you think as investors we have some decent understanding, but it is just a conservativeness of management, the risks are able to understand the investors? Do you think the gap is between our understanding of risk itself? The way management and board thinks and we investor think is very different.
Fair enough, that's what I would just like to repeat, that Board is meeting essentially to discuss these issues in near future. When we connect next quarter to update you about the current quarter, in the month of October or early November, that is the time we'll bring you up to course.
Okay. Thank you. I respect your answers. I really appreciate the way you conduct the call for conference. Thanks.
Thank you. Thanks for appreciation.
Next, we have Dipan Shankar from Trustline Chambers. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. Firstly, would like to understand outlook on our business, specifically on export side. How is the outlook looking on the current business environment?
Our outlook as far as our business is concerned, continues to be good. As we have mentioned in last call also and earlier today also, we continue to get good queries and very serious queries, both on our product and services part of the business. We obviously are facing the challenges that the industry is facing in terms of attrition, et cetera, for which we are taking necessary steps. We see a much stronger company coming out of this difficult period. That's the way I would like to describe the outlook of our business.
Okay. The employee cost, this current quarter run rate, will it continue in future also or are we expecting some more increase in this cost?
That's an excellent question, Mr. Dipan Shankar. I think we are keeping a very close eye on the developments in the marketplace. You are tracking the industry, so you know that 300,000 people, companies are planning to hire 100,000 people, and so on and so forth. As my colleague, Parag, mentioned, this is really a bloodbath. It is difficult for us to say anything about.
The costs are going to be what the ratios are going to be. All I can say is we are keeping an extremely close eye and we would respond to the developments in the marketplace appropriately. We are absolutely confident that we'll come out stronger.
Okay. That's good to hear. Lastly, during our AGM discussion, we also discussed about getting more inputs on our disclosure on cloud business. Can we expect any action front in the coming quarter in getting more-
Yes, certainly. You can expect. You can certainly expect more disclosures on cloud business.
Okay, sure. Thanks a lot and all the best.
Thank you. Thank you for your continued interest.
Before taking next question, I will announce. Participants, if you still have any questions, you may please press zero and then one. Next, we have Vaibhav from HNI Investment. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sir. Thanks for providing the opportunity. I have one observation or comments to offer and then two questions probably. In terms of upcoming board meeting before next quarterly result is for the deciding on cash distribution or capital allocation, whatever topic you said. We would prefer that whatever you decide in terms of whether it's buyback, whether it's additional payout or whatever it is, it has to be a long-term policy. It should not be that one reasonable self-dividend is declared and then again our payout is reduced again to 20%, 30% or so. I think given the nature of the business and cash generation, as one of my earlier participants said, the dividend payout has to be higher on a constant basis. Given the fact that we have already accumulated INR 734 crore of cash, and I can't imagine where we are going to deploy that.
I would request management and board to think on that front rather than just giving 1x thing to satisfy investor. It has to be a continuous capital allocation policy rather than just 1x policy. That's an observation. On the question front, when you have this revenue decline, obviously some of the installations at client end has been delayed or because we are not able to deploy it means that we are not able to work. If we are not able to work, obviously clients, they also suffer to some extent. Are there any penalties or any revision in contracts that can happen due to this, or you are not foreseeing this as of now?
Thank you for the comment as well as the question. Let me just assure you that your preference of having a long-term policy rather than 1x will certainly be communicated to the board. Now coming to revenue decline, thankfully, I would like to say because of the value that this company continues to deliver to all our customers, all our customers have been understanding enough, appreciative enough of whatever.
Hello?
No reversals or no penalties whatsoever. I'll my colleague, Parag , our CEO, to give you maybe a deeper update on this.
Yeah.
Yes. Thank you for that question and contribution. No, of course, there have been a temporary impact that customers have faced, no doubt about it. Hello, are you able to hear me?
Yeah, it's not Sorry, I think it's just some voices are mixing up probably. I think there's some problem in Vishnu's line, if I'm not wrong.
This is Parag here. I'll add to what Vishnu said, that while I guess because of the challenges we faced, there was a temporary impact on some deliverables of customers. Thankfully, all our relationships with customers are very long, and they are understanding it. We were, of course, keeping them very regularly updated on how things are moving. There have been certainly no penalties or anything of that sort. As we bounce back, we expect that everything will be normal with most of them. To answer specifically, there have been no penalties.
Okay. Second question is around the employee cost. Obviously, the numbers are in front of us. But maybe I missed the number of employees count, if you provided earlier. If you can provide the number of employees at the end of June and at the end of March and June 2020, all the three numbers, that would be really helpful.
The numbers.
Mention all the three numbers.
Yeah.
Sure, Sir. We are having 1,732 headcounts as of June 30th, 2021, and 1,932 headcount was at March 31st, 2021, and 2,117 as of June 30th, 2020. Okay. Got it. I think that's it from my side. I will come back in the question queue. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Next we have Parag from Covalent Capital. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, you're all good.
All right. Thank you. Question for Vishnu. I understand that attrition is high in the industry and our costs will go up. What are we doing long-term in terms of making attrition manageable? Are we looking at increasing the ESOP and other long-term compensation in line with what typical product companies like Oracle or Cisco do? How would that impact the way ESOP's structuring at Nucleus?
You're talking about long-term, what we are looking at, how to tackle this attrition or retention. One of the long-term strategies, and we believe that is what is going to work, is that we are going in big time in terms of recruitment of freshers. You might have come across our press releases in the media about hiring of 500 professionals, and they're essentially freshers. That's what we believe will help us long-term. Whatever we have done in terms of increments, we have done, as Vishnu has been saying repeatedly, we are monitoring it very closely. We'll respond as the market responds. We don't know yet. We think we've done significantly, but if that's not enough, we'll see what else needs to be done. Long-term strategy definitely is of hiring freshers and making them ready at the earliest possible.
That's what we believe is going to help us.
Let me just add.
Yes, go ahead.
to what Vishnu now mentioned. Yeah. You wanted to understand also our perspective on ESOP. We are not exactly in favor of ESOP, but at the same time, we are looking at alternatives to ESOP, and we will talk about them in coming quarters.
Okay. Is there any specific reason why you're not in favor of ESOP?
Sorry. Repeat again.
Is there any specific reason why you do not favor ESOPs as a long-term compensation and retention tool?
Yeah, that's an outstanding question, actually. Thanks for raising it. We want to be extra careful when it comes to maintaining the integrity of the system, and we do fear that with ESOPs, the risk is relatively higher. That is the reason we are avoiding ESOPs as an instrument for taking care of the long-term needs.
So do you see-
Does that answer your question?
Significant dilution happening?
Sorry.
Convert ESOPs. If ESOPs are awarded
No, it has nothing to do with dilution. It is more to do with how it is structured and how there is a risk of being played around with. We'll talk about this maybe next time when we are ready with our comprehensive thought.
All right. Thank you.
Next we have Vivek Ganguly from Nine Rivers Capital.
Thank you for the opportunity. I had one question. While we were talking about the impact of the ransomware, and while we said that it is sorted, I got the impression that there is some lingering impact of the ransomware attack on the company in terms of the ability to execute projects on an ongoing basis, and that's why you said, we'll see over the next two quarters how we recover from that. Please, can you clarify on that? Is their impact still an ongoing thing or has it been totally sorted and we are out of that phase, and all necessary actions have been taken post that?
Thanks for raising this very relevant question. There is no lingering impact of ransomware attack that happened in the last two days of May and the entire June. There's no lingering impact from that perspective, from execution of business perspective. When I said that it'll take some time. There were a few programs which got suspended for two weeks, maybe some would have got suspended for a slightly longer period and ensuring that they are back on track can take some time. That is what I meant by it will be clear in the quarter outcome.
Okay.
Does that answer your question?
Yeah, absolutely. My next question is on the employee cost. There was a overall, over last quarter or last year, there was about a 20% hike that you'll have given. Has that been done uniformly or a particular the people or the set of, or a class of people you all want to retain, you all have given them disproportionate hikes, and it is much lower in the other section. Is that how it has worked out? Going forward, on a steady state basis these pressures can still be there, but if the attrition and the external macro pressure were to kind of abate, would INR 92 odd crore be the steady state number to work with?
Yeah. That's right. That's a reasonable assumption to make. If things were to abate now, that's the number. There'll be a slightly higher number would be the steady state number to work with. Having said that, your earlier part of the question, yeah, as you have yourself very correctly elaborated, the increments are obviously given depending upon the market reality. Market reality is different for different set of skills and so on, so forth.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Next we have Samarth Singh from TPF Capital. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
Yes, hi. This is Samarth Singh from TPF Capital. My question was, I read a recent article regarding the merger between Centrum Capital and BharatPe, and how Centrum Capital would be using sort of BharatPe's loan origination systems. My question to you is, do we see that as a risk to our business in the future where NBFC is combined with fintech players who sort of have their own loan origination and servicing systems?
Let's just look at this marketplace as it is unfolding. Clearly, you have fintechs who are wanting to offer their loan origination solutions to our set of customers. There are other players who want to offer similar functionality. I think there is this more than adequate competition that exists for the solutions that we provide. Now, having said that, the humongous amount of investments that we have been making and we continue to make, that gives our customers a kind of confidence that, yeah, all their needs could be fulfilled by us. That is what gives us confidence to make the bold statements to all of you analysts and investors that, yes, this is a long-term play which would continue to deliver value to all its stakeholders and of course, customers being the number one of them.
That's the way I would like to answer your question. I hope you're comfortable with it.
Yeah, thank you for that. Just, I guess one statement. We appreciate management not giving out ESOPs and rather taking the hit on the P&L. It gives a clearer picture of what the real P&L is and doesn't dilute shareholder equity. We appreciate that, and hopefully in the board meeting to be held, as you mentioned, soon, there is a talk about a buyback so that we can further reduce the shares outstanding.
Thanks a lot, Samarth, for your appreciation.
That's it from me. Thank you.
The last question of the day we have from Vaibhav from HNI Investment. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for putting the follow-up. Just slightly on a longer-term impact of this increase in employee cost, which is obviously driven by attrition. This is a fairly recent phenomenon. This has happened just mostly in last six to nine months. This has hit the whole industry completely unguarded. Nobody was actually predicting that this would actually happen. Given the kind of our business, which is product business, and we have generally long-term contracts with our customer for AMC as well and for product maintenance, installation, everything. Do you think the profitability actually has been impaired on a relatively medium or long-term basis because of this increase in cost, or do you have the relevant clauses?
Yes.
Sorry. Hello?
No, please go ahead.
Yeah. The profitability has been impacted on a relatively medium and to long-term basis due to this, or do you have the relevant increment price contract with the customers?
That's a brilliant question, Vaibhav. Thank you so much. While we do have the adequate clauses in the contract, but even beyond the contract, this is a value delivery that we make to our customers, which gives us the confidence that even if it is not there in the contract and if we go and talk to them and explain the logic to them about how they need to ensure that we remain profitable for their own benefit, for their own long-term benefit, we are confident that they will listen to us and will do the needful.
I hope that answers your question.
Yeah, I think that's helpful. I will also add to what earlier participants said in terms of ESOP. I think I completely agree with management on the integrity issues that are involved in ESOP, and it's very essential to have a good long-term culture. ESOPs have a lot of these issues. I commend the management for having this in mind while deciding on ESOPs. That's it from my side. Thank you.
We deeply appreciate your appreciation of some of these long-term decisions. They are difficult to make, but we see the value getting delivered to all our stakeholders over the coming decades thanks to these decisions. Thank you. Thank you so much.
With this, I would like to now hand over the floor back to Swati for final remarks. Over to you, Swati.
Thanks, Harpreet. We would like to thank all the investors for joining us today for this earnings conference call. I will now pass it over to Vishnu Sir for his closing comment. Over to you, Sir.
Once again, this was another opportunity for us to connect with all of you, and we would like to thank all of you for your continued interest in Nucleus Software. I take this opportunity to reiterate our commitment to build a long-term institution and make sure that we take care of the needs of all our stakeholders. Thank you so much.