Good day, and welcome to Cyient Limited Q3 FY 2025 earnings conference call. 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 this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'll hand the conference over to Mr. Krishna Bodanapu, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Cyient Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you very much, and good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Cyient Limited's earnings call for the third quarter of financial year 2025. I'm Krishna Bodanapu, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director, and present with me on this call is Mr. Prabhakar Atla , the President and Chief Financial Officer. I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. A detailed statement in this regard is available on our investor website, which has been emailed to you and also posted on our corporate website. This call will be accompanied with a remaining small presentation, the details of which have already been shared with you. Before we begin the highlights for this quarter, I want to share an important organizational update. Mr.
Karthikeyan Natarajan has decided to step down as the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Cyient effective immediately. I have taken charge of the operations of the business in the interim and will revert to you once we have further developments. I want to say, for the record, my gratefulness to Natarajan for his contribution and commitment to the long-term success of the business, and I wish him the best for his future endeavors. Our commitment to accelerate Cyient's growth and maximize value for our shareholders remains firm and focused. We have built a proud legacy of leadership, and I'm confident that together we will continue to strengthen our position through the execution of our strategy and delivery of strong operational performance. I assure you that this transition will be seamless, and our future holds even greater potential.
The management team is fully prepared to lead the company during this transition period, and the board, of course, will continue to provide oversight, guidance, and counsel. My team and I will be available should you need any clarifications on this development, but thank you for your patience, and thank you for your continued support and trust. Continuing to the highlights of this quarter, we opened a new center of excellence along with a number of state-of-the-art labs for Allegro MicroSystems. Our relationship with Allegro has flourished over the past two years, and we're incredibly proud of the team and the contributions that they have made to Allegro MicroSystems product portfolio. Semiconductors, as you know, are at the heart of innovation across industries, and this center of excellence factory strengthens Cyient's position as a leading partner for companies seeking to develop, manufacture, and sell cutting-edge semiconductor products.
Further, I'm delighted to announce that we have secured approval from our board of directors to explore additional capital raising options for our recently acquired semiconductor subsidiary. This is in line with our strategy for the semiconductor business towards capital readiness to drive accelerated growth in the near and medium term. Semiconductors is a very important market around the world, and there's a lot of things that are happening and a lot of acceleration in the market. As you know, when we announced the setting up of a dedicated business and spinning off our business into that unit, the intent was to leverage our unique capabilities that can address this very fast-growing market. We also opened a new office in Sydney. This is located in one of Australia's most dynamic business districts, and we will have over 100 associates who will form a critical part of our growth strategy.
This investment also reaffirms our commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions to our customers while establishing a stronger localized presence. In addition to bolstering support for Cyient's connectivity clients and the communications clients, the new office will help us explore and expand opportunities in new sectors. Our founder chairman's unwavering vision, spirit, and commitment to excellence have not only shaped Cyient into a global leader but also left an indelible mark on technology and innovation landscape. He was recognized with the Golden Peacock Award for Lifetime Achievement of Leadership in Technological Innovation and the ICSI Lifetime Achievement for Translating Excellence in Corporate Governance into reality. Both are well-deserved recognitions of his extraordinary contributions, and we are immensely proud to celebrate these. These awards are a further testament to the value that we place on corporate governance, which I hope is reflected in all our interactions with our investor community.
With this, I would like to hand over the call to Prabhakar, who will take you through the detailed financial updates for this quarter.
Thank you, Krishna. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for your kind participation in the call today. Thank you for your time, and thank you for the attention. Before we proceed with the financials, a quick comment on the norms of disclosure. The norms of disclosure and segments under which we report our growth performance will remain the same as the previous quarter, i.e., DET, DLM, and others. The focus of this call will remain DET segment, which also includes the communications business, and therefore all metrics are like to like to the previous quarter. The Q3 FY 2025 dollar revenue for DET stood at $175.2 million, a QOQ growth of 2.4% in constant currency, and a year-on-year de-growth of 1.9% in constant currency. In rupee terms, this revenue stood at INR 1,480 crores with a QOQ growth of 2.1% and a year-on-year de-growth of 0.8%.
This revenue performance for the quarter is broadly in line with our expectations. Our two largest business units, transportation and connectivity, continued their growth journey with 3.7% and 5.7% QOQ growth in constant currency. While sustainability unit remained flat-ish quarter-on-quarter in constant currency, and we see continued growth in the cluster of new growth areas. The Q3 FY 20 25 DET EBIT margin stood at 13.5%, down by 32 bp s quarter-on-quarter, and this QOQ movement was driven by wage hike impact, which was the highest we had for any quarter in FY 20 25, along with currency headwinds, which were partially mitigated by revenue growth and efficiency improvements. The Q3 FY 20 25 PAT for DET stood at INR 124 crores, a de-growth of 30% QOQ and 28% year-on-year, translating into an EPS of 11.25% for DET for this quarter.
This significant negative movement in PAT during the quarter was largely due to significant negative movement in other income, especially from unrealized FX losses arising from major currency movements during the quarter. As you would recollect, we commented on the previous quarter's earnings call that we had significant tailwinds to our Q2 PAT from unrealized FX gain due to favorable currency movements in that quarter, and our other income for that quarter was INR 47 crores, of which unrealized FX contributed to about INR 34 crores gain in the quarter. In this quarter, this line item has gone unfavorably even beyond the gain we made in the previous quarter, leading to unrealized FX losses to the tune of INR 50 crores, which is a QOQ movement of minus INR 84 crores, resulting in a sharp QOQ and a very overall negative movement for PAT in the quarter.
The Q3 FY 20 25 DET FCF stood at INR 245 crores, a positive movement of 39% QOQ, translating into close to 200% FCF to PAT conversion for the quarter. This INR 245 crores remains our best quarter to date in terms of FCF performance. In our view, the Q3 FY 20 25 was a quarter of significant performance for DET. We did quite well in terms of revenue growth and extremely well in terms of cash conversion, while the PAT was impacted due to FX movements in other income. Moving on to the group numbers. Group numbers are a combination of all three segments we have, including Cyient DLM. For Q3 FY 20 25, group revenue stood at INR 1926 crores, which is a growth of 4.2% QOQ and a 5.8% YOY, with an EBIT de-growth of 108 bp s QOQ and a de-growth of 288 bps year-on-year. PAT de-growth by 28.4% QOQ and 31% YOY.
The group EBIT and PAT are normalized for one-off M&A expenses because of the recent asset accretion by DLM, Cyient DLM, and you'll also see significant positive movement in FCF, both QOQ and YOY. I would also like to add that from this quarter, our group PAT and DPS will include the impact on the investment we made in Azimuth, which was announced in the previous quarter. Given that we own a 27.6% stake in Azimuth at current valuation, we will treat them as an associate company and add their profits and losses to the group earnings in line with the accounting standards. With this, I would like to thank you once again for your time and hand over the call to Krishna for a more detailed commentary on DET performance.
Thank you, Prabhakar. I'll quickly give you an update on the DET performance from the BU perspective. If you look at the, and Prabhakar alluded to some of this already, on transportation BU, we're seeing some good growth, a 3.7% growth quarter-on-quarter, and it is because of the ramp-up in new deals in aerospace in the last one year, combined with some good steady demand from existing customers, including our largest customer, which is the aerospace customer. The rail transportation business remains flat-ish. At least we believe that all the challenges we have are over from that perspective. So net-net, we're seeing some good growth here, and quarter-on-quarter, it's a 3.7% growth, and of course, there's a little bit of de-growth compared to the year, but we will make that up in the fourth quarter. Connectivity is another sector where we're seeing very good growth.
Quarter-on-quarter, we're seeing 5.7% growth on account of strong execution and ramp-up, especially in some of the North America regions. We continue to have some very good orders in hand, and we'll continue to execute this, and this vertical will continue to witness growth in the short and in the medium term. Where we do have a bit of a challenge has been the sustainability sector. The sector is down 1.3% quarter-on-quarter, and much of it is because of the project-based nature of work in this vertical. A couple of the large projects that we've been working on are at the end of their life cycle, and some of the newer projects are yet to gain scale. I'd still say that the good news here is some of the newer projects have been won.
There was a little bit of a delay in winning some of these projects, and that's why the ramp-up has not happened like we thought it would, but we will see the full impact of this work at the end of this quarter and into Q1. Also, the external environment for sustainability is very strong, and the macro demand for energy remains healthy for us to focus on this. You may have heard President Trump on Monday after his inauguration during the speech, "Drilling in the U.S. is going to be a big focus area, and energy sufficiency for the U.S. is going to be a big focus area," and our capability really centers around that is our ability to design and build plants, and therefore we believe that we're very, very well positioned. In terms of new growth areas, we had a 2.1% growth across the currency.
Semiconductor business, which I talked about, is doing really well. We have some nice deals there. We'll continue to announce some good progress, including, of course, on the capital side, but more importantly, on the business side with some new deals that we're winning. Automotive remains flat-ish, but that's also the automotive environment is a tough environment, so we're happy that we're able to maintain our business, and healthcare while marginally was down quarter-on-quarter, but year-on-year we've been healthy compared to this year. I also want to highlight that we are also winning some very good deals in some of the emerging technologies and the emerging areas.
There is, at least in applications of AI, we've seen at least $11 to $12 billion of deals won, which are going to be quite important to sustain the technology momentum going forward, so I also want to highlight that the technology-based deals are doing quite well. Lastly, if we come to order intake, the order intake is the highest ever at $312 million. It's double of what it was in Q2. It's almost 50% higher than our typical quarterly run rate, and 5% growth year-on-year despite all the macro challenges. This Q1 QoQ growth was across the business. It was in transportation, sustainability, and in connectivity. We won 113 large deals, and the total contract potential of these deals is $234 million. I want to highlight that after some challenging times, order intake is at an all-time high.
Order backlog is at an all-time high, so now it's back to what we do best, which is execute to this order intake and order backlog. With that, let me move on to the guidance for the rest of the year and how the rest of the year looks. I want to say that we are taking a prudent view, obviously. We have had a challenge this year. It's not been our best year, so we do want to take a prudent view and be transparent with you in terms of what the rest of the year looks like. There will be a degrowth, and if you look at the first three quarters' revenue, that does suggest that we will have a degrowth, and the degrowth will be in the 2.5% or so range.
We are being prudent, and therefore we're saying 2.7%, but it'll be about in the 2.5% range. What has also happened is a lot of the deals that we originally were anticipating will ramp up in Q3 and therefore deliver in Q4 are now right-shifted. I do want to assure you, though, having said that, that these deals are one. We will see the ramp-up in Q4 towards Q1. Therefore, we're very confident that FY 20 26, or at least the first quarter of the FY 20 26, looks very strong. That also has a bearing on margin.
We have given an aggressive salary increase because we're at the cusp of executing to our good growth, and we don't want to lose people at the moment, so we want to make sure that all the salary increases have been effected, which were impacted in Q3, and there's further salary increases which will happen in Q4, and that's why we're saying Q4 exit margin will be 13.5% range, which will be what it will be for the year. But having said that, I want to say that's also important because with the growth that we're anticipating in Q1, margin will also improve quite significantly, so we want to set ourselves up for a good base before we go into the next financial year.
So obviously, we'll pause here and take some questions, but I'll once again say thank you very much for the support. It's not been the best of the quarters, or sorry, it's not been the best of the year, but I do want to say that we are seeing some very, very tangible opportunities in Q1. We're seeing some very tangible opportunities in Q1, and while it is a little bit disappointing that things didn't work out in Q4, they're just a little bit shifted, and that is true both from a margin perspective and from a revenue perspective. So I just want to assure you things look fine, and we are going to execute towards this growth, and we're preparing ourselves for this growth that is about to happen in a very meaningful manner from Q1.
Lastly, I also want to say that while Prabhakar is moving on, we have a great leadership team. We have an absolutely committed, fantastic, industry-leading leadership team, and we are all committed to making sure that we deliver on our promises and our commitments. With that, I'll hand it over to you.
So, shall we open the floor for questions?
Yes, please.
Thank you very much. We'll now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone 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. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The first question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. Sir, just looking at the guidance in the fourth quarter, also we may have a marginal deal for a Q1 Q base, and that's.
Yeah, I can hear you.
Yeah, let him go ahead. Yeah. So fourth quarter, we may again see a decline in the revenue marginally, maybe to the extent of flat to 0.2% to 0.3%, and that's not a good exit rate for the next year in FY 20 26. And we started the year with a high single-digit growth. Now we are guiding for 2.7%. So what is exactly happening apart from the right shifting of the deals and the macro? Is there any learnings which we have to tighten up going forward? And even on the margin, it's not a good exit rate at 13.5% in the fourth quarter, so that seems the impact on FY 20 27 could be big.
Sandeep, thank you for the question. Firstly, I'll say we will not decline under any circumstance in Q4. Q4 will be a growth quarter. I'll say it's not going to be a huge growth quarter, but even as things stand, it is a growth quarter. We will see a bit of growth. We are now working on how we can maximize that growth. I want to assure you that Q4 will be a good, solid growth quarter. Now, the second thing, okay, why did we then say 2.7? You might do the math. I just want to be clear. There's also a lot of currency movements that are going on. There is a lot of currency issues that we're dealing with, so we just wanted to be prudent to say that this is the worst-case number. We will only do better than that.
The second thing is on margin also, yes, 13.5% is a bit lower than what we would have liked it to be, or it is lower than where we thought it will be. But again, the revenue has right-shifted, and I think the biggest challenge that we see in this year has been we did not start off the year with the order book that we needed to execute with that single digit, and we thought that we would be able to win deals through the year and execute and so on and so forth. So the key takeaway from me when I say that we have a very strong visibility into FY 20 26, which is the next year, is because the order book has already built up. This $312 million or so of order intake, and then we'll again have a decent or a good order intake number in Q4.
So the order book has built up. Yes, we have had some execution challenges where some of the projects have been right-shifted, especially in sustainability. But if I look at what is in the pipeline and what's already booked, I can say that, yes, because it mathematically might not work out, but I can assure you that looking at the situation on the ground, we will have a very good FY 20 26.
Sandeep, I'm just,
yeah, yeah. Go ahead, sir.
Just to continue on the margin discussion, and I'm assuming many people in the call will have discussion on the margin exit for Q4 FY 20 25. If you see, we already commented in the previous calls also that for FY 20 25, the margin will follow the revenue trajectory, and as you also know, in the previous year, FY 20 24, we have shown that we have got a good control on the margin levers. We took the margin all the way up to 16% in the year, 16.2% in one particular quarter, so we said that for the current year, margin will follow revenue as a trajectory, and we also know that we have control of the levers. We're not closing down our investments right now. Like Krishna spoke about the investments we are making in people, we're also making investments in sales.
And at the same time, we're also going to move towards, if you remember in FY 20 23, we did the phase one of cost optimization program , which also led to a significant margin improvement in FY 20 24. The phase two of that will also kick in right now for us from Q4 onward. So all together, from where we are looking at, this is a solid platform for us as we're getting to Q1. As we execute the orders that we got in Q3, which will flow through to Q1, as we continue to invest in people and also work on the levers and optimization of cost, we'll look at a very strong Q1 in terms of margin. The right Q4 exit is going to be softer than what we thought it would be, but at the same time, that leads to a stronger Q1 in terms of margin per capita.
Okay, okay, and just a second question in terms of resignation of Prabhakar as the CEO. So what are the plans? Are we looking to elevate internally, or will they bring outsiders? What are the plans? Because I think what Krishna Sir has said that he may be taking care of the operation in the interim only.
Yes, Sandeep, we're evaluating all the options. As you can imagine, the board is quite involved in a decision like that, so it's a bit premature to comment on that, but I will just assure you that I'm here fully, and I mean, I've always been here fully, and I'll continue to be here fully, and the leadership team is exceptionally motivated and committed at this point, so we have some runway. We will evaluate all the right options, but for now, I believe, or we believe, including the board, believes that we have a good option in place, and therefore we don't have any need to accelerate any decision. We will take our time and come to the right conclusion.
Okay. We'll come in the follow-up. Thanks.
Thank you. I request all the participants kindly use handsets while asking the question. Next question is from Ankit Pande from DSP Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of questions. First question is on the order book. So historically, sir, we have always seen that second half for Cyient has always been strong when it comes to order inflow. But historically, also, we had lacked in execution in the first half of the year. So this time, I mean, just from your previous answer also, so I just wanted to understand what is giving you confidence that this time the execution of this order book would be better in the first half of next FY?
No, that's a fair question, and I'd say that what gives us the confidence is how the order book has built up because it's just not a number, right? Behind the number is when does the project start, what is the capacity that is required for the project, what are the capabilities, so when we look at those and we map out to what is possible in the first half of next year, I feel very confident. I mean, because it's not just a lot of the Q3 orders were typically driven by one or two customers. This time, the Q3 orders are across the board. Of course, Prabhakar Atla , who are our largest customers, is a big part of that, and their orders have come in to expectations, but there's a lot of others that have come in.
And when we map out, because you have to also take that number and map it out against a timeline. And when we map it out against the timeline, there is a very good opportunity to execute to that timeline. So therefore, it gives me a lot of confidence to say that the order book is not for the end of the year, but it is through the course of the year. And that's why I'm confident because, I mean, yes, historically, our Q2, sorry, our second half has been better than our first half. But that is something that we've actually, for the last couple of years, have worked quite diligently on to make sure that some of the reasons out, and we're now starting to see that. This year also, if you look at it, Q1 was tough, but Q2 onwards, things were much better.
So we are working on that to make sure that it evens out over the course of the year.
Aniket, to add to Krishna's question, we already spoke of it was a strong order intake for us in the current quarter, or at least the Q3 of the year. But at the same time, we also commented previously that in FY 20 25, we've been seeing truncation of POs. We're getting POs in tranches, which basically means that if you do a year-to-year comparison of the current OI with the previous year's OI, it will be much different. We currently are having a much shorter execution timeline for the POs that we have compared to longer durations we had in the previous year's order intake. So that's what gives us the confidence of Q1 more strongly than what we had in Q3 of FY 20 24.
Thank you for that.
Increased order intake quarter on quarter for the year, but also the fact that the timelines are very different. These are shorter timeline execution orders compared to the previous years, which were longer in terms of duration for execution.
Okay, okay. Prabhakar, just to get more clarity on, if I look at your four verticals: transportation, connectivity, sustainability, new growth areas, okay, at current order book, which you are having right now and which you might and which will have in next quarter also, which vertical, like which two or three verticals would be high-growing verticals for your next year according to you as of now?
So for FY 20 26, Kawaljeet, we are very confident of all the four verticals. Transportation, you'll see that the momentum is back in business. We've been growing consistently quarter on quarter. Connectivity is also back into business in terms of quarter on quarter growth. On both fronts, we have very strong visibility for FY 20 26. Sustainability, there is some more runway that we have to build in the next two quarters for us to continue to grow significantly next year, which we believe we can because it's also very volume-centric business, unlike communications or aerospace, which are very longer-term businesses for us. This is very volume-centric. So there, we will require one or two quarters of runway to once again do the order book for continued growth in FY 20 26, but we still see the vertical also grow next year.
So all the three large verticals, we're very comfortable with the scenario we've seen for next year. And the comfort comes not only from the order book in hand, but also the sales pipeline that we tracked across various stages. It also has seen a significant increase year on year as we stand today compared to the previous year. Now, in the previous calls, we've always been cautious in commenting in terms of sentiment we see globally that is leading to some softness in our commentary for the future. But as we look at today, as we look at the pipeline and the order backlog and the order book that we have in hand, that conservatism, that caution we had, it was a well-founded caution to start with, but we feel more confident today with the things that we currently have in hand across all the three areas.
Okay, so sir, is it right to assume that the nature of deal or the change in tenure of order book actually is also bringing more confidence in you that this year's execution would be better?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Some bit of right.
Okay.
But shorter tenure could be a topic of discussion. Longer is always better is what we would always believe. Shorter option means that we can do a lot more clear about what we will do in the next and the following quarter as against what we would have in other scenarios with the longer tenure people.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much for answering my question patiently.
Thank you.
Best of luck for next year. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Kawaljeet Saluja from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Krishna. Hi. My first question is that what is the reason for Karthikeyan's sudden resignation?
He, Karthikeyan, was for some time, personally and professionally, and we thought, with where things were in the organization, that was the best way for us.
I mean, would you look for a replacement, or do you intend to carry on with that role for the future?
So, Kawaljeet, I think right now, obviously, we have a good opportunity on hand. And I'm choosing my words carefully because I think we did have challenges last couple of quarters. I think we've converted some of those challenges into opportunities. So the intent is, at least for the immediate term, I'm going to run the business along with the rest of the leadership team because we don't want to derail from actually executing to these challenges in any manner by defocusing any of us. So this is the current view from the board. This is what the board wants me to do, and I'm very happy to do it. Again, I think we see a fantastic opportunity to execute out of the challenges. So we want to put our heads down and get this done. In due course, we'll decide what to do.
Very candidly, obviously, that's an important decision, and that's something that the board will get very involved in taking. Unfortunately, I won't be able to say very much more because that's all there is to it.
Okay. The other question, Krishna, that I had is that, setting aside the last 12 months, what is it that Cyient could have done better, and what are the remedial measures taken to ensure that you get back to the growth trajectory that you aspire to?
See, I think we had a long conversation on the board, and I'll request Prabhakar to add to this afterwards with us. But I think there are two or three elements that we need to focus on. One is sales force efficiency, and we've done a lot of work in the last three, four months around sales force and getting the right sales force in place. The second thing is the solution portfolio. I think we built some very good solutions and some very good capabilities around technology, around digital, around and so on and so forth. But I think we were a little bit broad-based. We needed to get a little bit more focused on what our particular set of customers needed, not just a generic offering.
And I think over the last six months or so, our CTO and his team have done a very good job in terms of fine-tuning them. And that's why I said we've won a few million dollars' worth of deals on AI and engineering already. But then the pipeline is actually very important. I think we have about a $20 million pipeline of just AI deals in engineering, which is very, very big. So I'd say if I were to simplify it and say it, I'll say we needed to sell better, and we needed to execute better and more relevantly. To me, these are the two things, if I reflect back, that we should have done better, not just in the last 12 months, maybe in the last couple of years, because what plays out today is what was done 12, 18 months ago.
Okay. That's quite clear. Just a final question, Krishna, that I had for you and Prabhakar is that, when you look at your telecom portfolio, are there any risks to the revenues from change in the administration in the US, especially when it comes to funding of some of the telecom fiber optic rollout programs?
So I think there's coverage. I think, standing today, we don't see there's any significant risk, or actually there's any risk, for two reasons. We believe that the digital infrastructure story of the U.S. will continue irrespective of administration change. That is important for a digital economy, which also is an important agenda for the current government. That is the first part. The second part is quite some clients that we know or we work with don't always depend on the federal funds to fund the network. That's optional for them to take if there's issues, but most of them prefer to fund those network rollouts on their own because the motivation can become unhindered with any regulations that come along with it. So we're not seeing that as any challenge.
And I'll also add to that that the opportunity further we're seeing is that with all the satellite communications now becoming more and more mainstream, we're also seeing opportunities with some of the large satellite communications providers. So I think what the reality is, the way it will also work is the large CSPs, the communication service providers, will continue to invest on their network. And we're seeing that. We're seeing that in the things that they're putting out because this has no bearing on the government. But the government will also now start to supplement some of these satellite communications, etc., which is the growth area for us. And we're very, very well positioned in that area also with some good capacity and capabilities.
Just a quick follow-up on your reply and Prabhakar's reply. Prabhakar, can you remind me if your entire U.S. revenues funded directly by the telcos as opposed to any federal funding? Is that what you're hinting at?
Yes.
Was that a fair bit of it was federally funded? There are alternatives like SAT communication, etc., to substitute the fiber optic with alternative communication channels, which I think some people in the current administration are very well geared to.
So you're right, Kawaljeet, in the first statement that you made, that most of the work we do for the clients we work with are not for programs that are funded by the government. That's funded by the federal authorities. So it's a self-funded program.
Okay. Got it. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Shraddha Agrawal from Asian Market Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. You indicated, sir, that execution timelines on the current order book are much shorter than what we had seen in the previous years. So would it be possible for you to define the ACV in the current order book number so that we get a better sense of what is the executable order book over the next 12 months?
The annual contract value will be a significant part of it. It will be about 70% of that is typically now in the ACV. Historically, it would have been lower. Historically, it would have been more in the 60% range, whereas what the order book has built up in the last couple of quarters is really in the 70% range. That's because, as we talked about, the execution, what used to be two-year orders have been now curtailed to one year. But I have a good example of a deal that we signed just before the end of the year, which I was involved in. The total contract value is 75 million, but we're only counting 25 million at that.
So this is sort of the flip of it, but this is just to give you a sense of how customers are thinking about it because they have a $75 million intent over five years, but the commitment is $25 million over two years. But in the FY 2025, only 25 is reflected. I just want to be clear on that.
Right. And your commentary on the transportation segment seems to be pretty positive, unlike some peers which have indicated continued caution in aerospace due to supply-side challenges. So what gives you confidence of maintaining this trajectory in aerospace vertical, and what are your hopes? And do you think this vertical can be going at above company average growth number in 2026 as well?
No, absolutely. I think what gives me confidence is what our customers are telling us, but more importantly, just the purchase orders that some of the ones with the longer-term view have given us. So one is from existing customers, we're seeing good deals go. Also, I'll say that we are taking a good share from some of our competition. For example, with a particular customer, though their spend on outsourcing is down 20%, our POs were up about 5%, which means that we took a lot of share from others. So one is our positioning, and we're doing quite well from that perspective. And at least these customers, all the programs that we're working on, are quite bullish and therefore are spending the money. The second thing is we've also signed up some new customers. One announcement that we made recently is Deutsche Aircraft.
That's a great new customer for us. They're one of the few OEMs that's in the design phase. Most of the other OEMs, even the work that we do, is more in the MRO space, but MRO phase, sorry, whereas that is in the design phase. So both the combination of the new deals that we've won, but I'd say the most important piece is what our customers have given us from a PO's perspective that gives us the confidence that, however the sector is, our business in the sector looks quite good.
Right, and just last question for Prabhakar. Prabhakar, now that you've kind of downgraded your margin guidance for Q4, but when we talk of strong execution on revenue growth in Q1, so do you think we can aspire to get back to that 16% exit margin that we had initially in charge for Q4 to come through in Q1 for us? And also because salary hike would also be behind mostly.
We will better that number in FY 20 26 again, Shraddha, otherwise we're not great. Because, like I said before, we have done this before. We've done this for four consecutive quarters, every quarter, quarter, and quarter, because we focus on those levers, and we know exactly what and where and how it has to be done. That is something that doesn't bother, I think, us. Something that we're not overly concerned about, so that number is something that we'll see again in FY 20 26, and like we spoke of the minimum revenue conversation, we're focusing on what can we do to accelerate revenue growth. If it means we need to continue investing in sales, we will do. If it means we need to continue investing in technology, we will do. If it means we need to continue investing in people, we will do.
If it means we have to put 1% of margin towards growing revenue, we will do that. Our focus right now is to monitor the opportunity we had, and Krishna spoke before, and drive revenue growth and ensure margin picks up as the result of what we do is growing revenue.
Got it. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mihir Manohar from Carnelian Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. Wanted to understand on the right shift of revenue, which is happening. I mean, at the start of the year, we were looking for a ramp-up to happen in Q3, then in Q4, and now eventually that expectation is there in Q1. So just wanted to understand what kind of projects and in which area, which vertical are these leading to this right shift, and what exactly is leading to right shift, and is it like client budgets getting squeezed, or the project not being important, or is he evaluating alternative vendor? How to get him to spend around that? And how do we get confidence now that there will not be two, three quarters where we were expecting the project to ramp up? So how to get the confidence that this will happen in 4th quarter of 2026?
Absolutely, so I'd say if you look at the growth and if you look at the quarterly numbers, the two businesses that are the two big businesses are doing quite well. If you look at both aerospace and sustainability, sorry, connectivity, both of them have shown some decent growth quarter on quarter, and that momentum continues. There, I would say maybe we're a little bit behind where we would have been or about where we would want to be. So the one that has driven a little bit of the challenge is the sustainability sector because that is a project-based work that we do, and a lot of work that is over has to be backfilled, and we've had a challenge in some of the backfilling.
So where I'm saying about where my confidence comes from for the second half of the sorry, for the first half of next year is both of these businesses, which is transportation, connectivity, and of course, new-based areas. Three of them are in a very positive trajectory. Now, what has dragged us down, if you look at it this quarter, and we won't fully recover in Q4, that's why Q4 growth also is a bit muted. What has dragged us down in this time frame is really the recovery in sustainability because sustainability, we were hoping that the project wins will happen early in the year so we can add some of the large projects we're ramping down that we will ramp up into some of the newer projects.
That hasn't happened, but sustainability order book has built up reasonably well in Q3, and we're working on further actually significantly increasing it in Q4. So once sustainability also kicks in, and with these numbers, then we will see quarter on quarter growth that is really meaningful because if we remove sustainability, and of course, I don't want to be selective, but I'll just say if we remove sustainability, our growth was close to 5% quarter on quarter. So that means that there is enough momentum and there is enough growth in the other three VUs. Sustainability, we're seeing the order book build up, and that will translate into growth overall for the next quarter. So that's why, again, not to be selective, but if you remove sustainability, growth is quite good.
Okay. Sir, so in sustainability, is the challenge, I mean, concentrated, I mean, is it, let's say, challenging two clients, three clients, or is the challenge across the sustainability board, and is it the case that client budget is a problem, or is he evaluating alternative vendors for some collaboration?
I'd say sustainability works in a unique way because sustainability clients will the way it works is we win a large contract, we execute it for 12 to 18 months. Typically, it will be 15 to 20 million, 30 million, even kind of a number. And then at the end, they ramp down because the design is done. Much of the work that we do in sustainability is design-related. Now, once that is done, we needed to make sure, for example, there was one client which was even probably a top three or four clients from sustainability, which will ramp down to zero because that's the nature of the work. We were doing a design of a large power plant for them, or not power plant, a large FPSO for them, which is a floating oil platform.
The design was done, and therefore now they're going to move on into the construction phase, etc. It's not that we've lost a client. It's just that that's the nature of the project. Now, we need to build the next project and backfill it. That backfill took a little bit of time. Now we understand the business also quite well. So we're making sure that the sales pipeline builds up in such a way that we have back-to-back projects. So it's not that the customer is lost in any manner. It's just that the work is a project-based work.
Sure. Sure.
The last thing I want to say on that is, again, coming back to what President Trump said on Monday, there is going to be a lot of new energy projects, especially in the U.S., and we're very, very well positioned for this. So while much of our capacity and capability is in the U.K., we are working on what we're doing to make sure that that translates to good capacity to support the American market also.
Sure. The second question was on the change in the organizational update which is there. Are there any specific areas that we will be trying to fix?
Sorry, say that again?
I mean, with the change in the organizational update which is there, are there any specific areas, either in terms of pyramid or in terms of sales pipeline, that we will be trying to fix?
So I think there are two things that we're working on. One is on the sales side to make sure that we have the right sales team. There have been a lot of changes, and we are working on making sure that the new people are more effective than the previous people. So that's one thing. And the second thing, like I said, is just making sure that we're selling the right things to the right customers. There are customers that still use a lot of traditional services: plant engineering, mechanical design in aerospace, geospatial data in utilities. But there are also customers who need more evolved or not evolved, sorry, more technology-based services. And when I say technology, it includes digital, it includes cloud computing, what have you.
We are getting a lot more focused on selling what the customer needs, not what we want to sell the customer.
Thank you very much. Mihir, I'll request you to come back for a follow-up question, please.
Yeah, that's it for my side. Thank you.
Thank you. I'll just take one more minute. A request to all the participants. Kindly respect your two questions per participant and join the queue again for a follow-up question. Next question is from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Most of the questions have been answered. Just one question, if I may, Krishna. So when we started the year, we had a high single-digit growth guidance, and at that time, I think you had made a comment that we have done a bottom-up assessment of clients and deals and everything rather than an aspirational top-down assessment to arrive at the guidance. And from there on, we have had almost a 10 percentage point drop in what potentially the revenue growth could be. So it looks like beyond the bottom-up analysis, there is clearly an issue with the industries that we are operating in or the kind of businesses that we are doing because of which visibility doesn't necessarily pan out the way we expect.
With that kind of a backdrop, just trying to understand whether even having guidance is helpful at all or not. If you look at mid-cap IT companies, except a couple of ER&D players, most of them don't even provide that. Do you think it might just be a better way to just have that pressure out of the way by not having been tied up to a number and deliver as things pan out?
I think what you said was absolutely right. If you look at our own evolution, for five years of hard work, we built a balanced portfolio by choice because we wanted to make sure that we have a sustainable growth over a period of time. One key takeaway we had in FY 20 25, and I'll probably not ask the same question once again earlier, was that building a balanced portfolio is one part of the work. Balancing the portfolio performance is the second part of the work. That is what we are currently working on. You rightly pointed out these four teams that we have built, while there are some common elements of what we do for each team, there are different industry sectors in each team. Our value props can be different in each team, and the execution cycles can also vary among those teams.
So our job in hand right now is to make sure that we synchronize, or in other words, having built a balanced portfolio, balancing the portfolio performance that we replicate the template of what we delivered in Q3, as what you can see. Despite the largest vertical we have sustainability not having a strong quarter, we still had a 2.5% growth quarter on quarter in revenue. That is a template that we will replicate going forward, not necessarily on a quarterly basis, but on a yearly basis. If we can get to that point, which we will get to as we execute all the things that we currently have in hand, that is when we can truly see the value of what we execute the portfolio. That is the growth narrative on the team.
Right. No, I was just coming from the fact that while you pointed out the weakness in Q4, you sound pretty positive about Q1 FY 20 26, and if there are certain elements which are not in our hands or which are material enough to deviate from your commentary, then is it even important to give that kind of a visibility on Q1 as well?
You're right. We will work through Q4 in what we are doing right now, and we'll also take a special look at the frameworks in which we are providing guidance to all of us. That is what we will work through for FY 20 26.
Thank you very much. Participants, kindly respect your two questions per participant. Rishi, I'll request you to come back for a follow-up question, please. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. First is the clarification. I think 16% EBIT margin. I missed the comment you made on FY 20 26, whether you indicated we are confident to deliver 16% EBIT for 26 or we made some other comment. Second question is about the order book. Now, we announced order book very strong and then 13 large deal with contract potential. So I just want to understand definition of both the number, whether the overall order book includes this potential number as well or this potential number is not captured. And just want to understand whether the potential what we captured in order book, that is how we defined it, whether that potential we have seen any slippage in the past. Thank you.
To the first point that you made, what we said earlier was that we will hit 16% once again in FY 20 26. We are subordinating our margin goal for FY 20 26 to revenue growth goal. Therefore, we are currently not commenting on the full-year margin goal for FY 20 26. We'll focus on driving revenue growth with the opportunities we have at hand. Just to repeat, we will hit 16% in FY 20 26 once again. We're currently looking at the full-year number at this point in time because we're going to work on revenue growth first. The second question you had, can you just please repeat once again?
So you gave two numbers. You gave total order intake number as well as 13 deals with contract potential kind of number. The question which I have is the contract potential number is part of the overall order intake which you reported? If answer is yes, whether we have seen any slippage in the contract potential number. So if I give number 312 is the total intake, 234 is the contract potential in 13 large deals. So whether these two numbers are included kind of thing in, let's say, total order intake. And if yes, any slippages we have seen in the potential number which we might have modeled, let's say, in previous three quarters?
Now, both numbers are order intake that we have reported there, and what is the subset of the other?
Yes. So if I understand correctly, $312 million includes potential from these 13 large deals?
Yes. The order intake, that's the potential. So $312 million is the order intake we had in Q3 of FY 20 25 that includes the large deals that we have reported.
So whether it would be 234 million is captured in 312 or actual sign is only captured in 312 out of these 13 large deals?
Only actual sign is captured in this 312.
So out of 234, subset of the 234 million is captured in 312?
Yes, that is correct because only if it's a signed purchase order against which we can build legally. Right? So because in the 200-plus TCV number, there will be deals where there's an intake. And also, there will be multi-year. But what is there in order intake is numbers that are backed by a signed purchase order. So I just further clarify this that a part of the large deals that we want are also order intake that are firm and committed for execution. That is included in the total number of order intake that we have provided right now. Krishna gave an example earlier that it's $75 million deals that we have won, but PO for which is only short for a lesser value.
So whatever is the PO value is included in the $312 million, whereas the other number that you see includes total potential that we have talked about in the large deal that we have won. Does it clarify enough?
Understood. And that is my second question related to it. In the past, also, we have provided total contract potential for, let's say, last three, four quarters. Whether we have seen any material slippage in some of those numbers compared to what we anticipated at the signing kind of thing, any slippages there happening, or it is broadly the similar trend we observed here compared to, let's say, previous two years?
So I would say the past is perhaps not a great measure of how we can measure our future in terms of how things are working out in the industries around us. But I would say in the current view we are taking, the order intake is very strong, which is what we have in hand. Right? The potential of the deals that we have won, we are taking the way it is coming forward. The sentiment has improved significantly compared to the previous year. So going forward, we expect the slippages if any that we may have in the past to also come down.
Thank you very much, Dipesh. We'll request you to come back for a follow-up question. Next question is from the line of Vihan Subramanian from Zaaba Capital . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just one question from my side. Given over the last year through multiple interactions, I think management team has always come across extremely confident, right, on the outlook and so on. Even when we just look at Q2, you were extremely confident about 2H, right? So the disparity I'm trying to understand is when quantitatively you're undershooting so badly, why not just tone down the guidance and not mislead investors?
See, I'll say we have been giving the view that we have, and that's why if you look at what we have right now, what we've presented as the business outlook right now is what is the reality, right? That's what it is based on how the Q4 will pan out. Now, what we're saying is we are confident for Q1 because of how the order book has been. Yes, there might be a couple of quarters where we've missed what we said we will do. I will take responsibility for that. But we also have many years of experience of doing what we said we will do.
So yes, we do have a challenge, or we did have a challenge on our hands, which led to some of these misses and some of these right shifts and so on and so forth. But our confidence also comes with our legacy of performance. I mean, if you look at the previous three years or four years, we delivered significant growth. We almost delivered 50% growth over a three-year period before that. So our confidence comes from what we are seeing as what we're seeing as the order book, what we're seeing our clients tell us, and what we believe that we will execute on. We don't want to, we are not misleading anybody. We are telling you what we see as we see it and as we reckon what it means for our business.
Vihaan, like I said, before going forward, we also request and revisit the framework within which we are going to provide a guidance.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as a last question. I'll now hand the conference over to Mr. Krishna Bodanapu for closing comments.
Thank you very much. I'll just say that we are going through a transitionary period a little bit right now. But see, while there are going to be some challenges in terms of leadership and in terms of while there are going to be some challenges in any transition, as a leadership team, we're very, very committed to execute this. Like I said, the board has reiterated their confidence in the entire leadership team, and I'm very confident that we have a very motivated and strong leadership team. So while there were challenges, I think we are now looking at an opportunity situation for us to execute, and we will take this as the opportunity to execute and work towards a very, very strong FY 20 26. Thank you, as always, for your support. We will be in touch.
If there's anything specific you'd like us to answer, all of us are available, and please do let us know. Thank you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Cyient Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.