Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q1 FY 2026 earnings conference call of Computer Age Management Services Limited hosted by MUFG IR. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Masoom Rateria from MUFG . Thank you. Over to you, Ms. Masoom.
Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Q1 FY 2026 earnings con call of Computer Age Management Services Limited. Before we proceed to the call, I would like to give a small disclaimer that this conference may contain certain forward looking statements about the company which are based on beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on date. The statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve an uncertainty. A detailed disclaimer has been published in the investor presentation today from the management of the company. We have with us Mr. Anuj Kumar, the MD and CEO, and Mr. Ram Charan .
I'm sorry to interrupt, but your voice is breaking.
Hello.
Yeah, that's okay, Masoom. Thank you. Your voice was breaking towards the end, but thanks for the introduction. Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining this 1 Q earnings call of CAMS . We will follow the standard format of taking you through a structured deck between Ram Charan and I, which will last about 20- 25 minutes, and then we will have enough time open for Q&A. You would have now access to the earnings deck. I will just give you a prelude just in terms of broadly how the quarter went and then launch on to taking it to the deck. Broadly, it was a quarter in which we did face some pressures and some headwinds.
I think given the fact that the financial metrics are still looking very strong and I'll get to them in just a bit, there's been a great job done by the team to get us the results that we have. You're aware that because of telescopic fee structures we do face some pricing pressures as AUM overall expands. We also briefed you back in January 2025 that in a large account we were trying to do a reset of prices just to bring them at par with the market. That reset was supposed to last the next three or four quarters. I think the good news is that that reset is almost complete. Over 90% of fee remissions, etc., we had to give have been given in the fourth and the first quarter. What you will see is a very marginal impact going forward.
The results that you see, both revenue and bottom line and PAT, are after doing almost 90% of the price reset in that large account. There is very little more to come after that. You are also aware that in the first quarter we typically take a cost expansion largely led by salary increases, increments, and those kind of things, and wherever we have annual maintenance contracts, wherever the price goes up. All that is on the base now, which means all that impact has also been taken from a 1Q perspective after all of this, which means some impact of telescopic pricing, setting tight about 90% of the price remissions and taking them in the base.
All the expansion and cost largely led by, and the last thing I would say is that specifically from a capital markets perspective, you are aware that the KRA business, not just for CAMS but across the industry, has been impacted given everything which has been happening, including the smaller number of new accounts that are being opened for F&O and regular trading, the market sector , also in mutual funds. Our KRA business from a year-on-year and a quarter-on-quarter perspective did these. All of this having happened in the quarter, for the quarter you still see an EBITDA percentage which is north of 43% and a PAT percentage which is just short of 30%. I think this indicates the resilience of the model that we've had quarters. If you go back to second and third quarter last year, we had tailwinds across the board, MF, n on- MF cost, all of that.
I think despite some headwinds that I stated about, most of which were known, bringing in the kind of financial metrics that we have posted, especially on the profit line. Across the board, if you look at financial metrics on a year-on-year basis, we've had, I think we've kind of delivered an act which is pretty strong. That is something I wanted all of you to know as a preface. I'll share, jump onto the main deck and I'm on the chart on business highlights. Very pleased to share with you that for the first time in history we crossed INR 50 trillion or INR 50 lakh crore of overall assets. Must also say that in July this did inch up to about INR 52 trillion, sometimes INR 52.5 trillion, and we'll see how the rest of the quarter lasts.
INR 50 trillion or INR 50 lakh crore was a significant achievement. We retained market share with 68% by AUM. At the same time, our equity assets surpassed the INR 25 lakh crore mark. Again, if I look at July, these have been hovering in the just short of INR 27 lakh crore, between INR 26.5 lakh crore and INR 27 lakh crore. Inflows continued despite all the volatility and just the plethora of news items that are coming in. That's again from a foundational metrics perspective. Very strong, strong act. Overall AUM across businesses in mutual fund grew 22%. Equity assets grew 24% which was ahead of the market, which is again good news. New SIP registrations year-on-year to about 1 crore and 12 lakh. These increased 19%. Market share jumped up for new SIP registrations by 6 percentage points.
Typically it's a very tough act to continue posting this kind of market share increase. We'll continue keeping you updated on what happens to it in the ensuing quarter. For that one quarter, it's a significant gain in market share. Live SIPs, these are SIPs which are live and which get the monthly selection, which basically adds to gross and net equity sales. That number grew 15% year-on-year and market share improved from 57% to 62%, which is again a very significant jump up. Unique investor base crossed the 41 million. It's about now at INR 4.15 crore, grew 27% year-on-year, faster than the industry which grew 22%. If you see the connectivity of foundational metrics, which is gross assets crossing INR 50 lakh crore, equity crossing INR 25, AUM growing 22%, equity assets growing 24%.
New SIPs significant up in market share, live SIPs significant up in market share, and investor base will grow faster than the market. I think all of those are great redeeming features for the quarter. Also, the fact that we had won a slew of contracts, new AMCs in about the last 14, 15 months, seven of them were waiting to go live. Typically, in the past, we used to take about one or two AMCs live in a year. The good news is that three of these are already live, including Jio BlackRock, which did it fit in NFO. This was not in the first quarter. Theoretically, the numbers came in the three. We don't see them in the results, and they garnered about INR 18,000 crore in their largest, in what was the largest end of score in the industry.
The balance four new AMCs are pledged to go live in the next 3-6 months. We also took Ceybank, which is the first official, I would say, international client in asset management live during the same period. They are live and working on the CAMS platform. That's across the board on the MF side. I would say that just from a foundational perspective, each of these can be straight away correlated to revenue bearing metric and therefore will help the story play out in the coming quarters, including starting with the second quarter. Beyond mutual funds, CAMSPay, although from a quarter- on- quarter perspective wasn't very strong, but 26% year-on-year growth, the payment gateway infrastructure part has become operational now. It was slightly delayed, but we'll continue to kind of partner as the revenue growth from now onwards.
CAMSPay grew 26%, and the payment gateway line alternative continued to solidify its market leadership. We got 24 new logos, like you know, these are full service logos. I keep saying none of them is a truncated service. 50 new mandates, three new clients in GIFT City. Overall, AUM of CAM service funds crossed INR 2.7 lakh crore during the quarter, which is great news. Insurance policy count, and I'm sure you've been reading about this in other newspaper articles, nothing to do with CAMS, but in general, the acceptance of repository is gaining ground without any bulk. This is largely consumer-led . That consumer-led metric has seen policies grow by 7% year-on-year, and again it has metric for the coming quarters.
Also, do keep in mind that while LIC signed up with us in March, we are still not live, expected to go live in the September, latest October time frame. You can expect, or at least I'm expecting, that this 40% growth in policy-based numbers should be repeatable given that whatever tailwinds we have in that area, we have consumer preference for holding the insurance policy is going up, and with LIC, with the market leader participating at some time, that momentum across the board is expected to get. You would have also seen an announcement on 29th, just a day or two back, that CAMSKRA has entered into a definitive agreement for acquiring the KRA business of what is called DotEx in common parlance NSE Data and Analytics. Do keep in mind this is like a slump asset sale.
We are not bringing in the infrastructure or that kind of employees or rents or leases, etc. This is largely the inventory of CAMS, goes up on a base of 2 crore TAM that can help with, that's about INR 13 lakh-INR 14 lakh. It is straight away accretive to revenue, does not bring some very marginal cost, which is rebuying about three or four employees and getting out of the leases. We won't be using the data center, etc. All of that just come and sit on the TAM system, that is a transition part. This is something we've been working on for some time, and again, coming from the NSE stable is great accretion to the overall KRA business and will be significantly revenue accretive but very marginal cost. A small fraction of the cost will come to us, CAMSKRA otherwise broadly continued to onboard strategic clients.
The good news is that one more of the top five broking houses, we know that we started breaking into BPs and brokerages in about the last 30 months. We've broken through one more, otherwise the aggregate new logo additions is 40, large, medium, small, all kinds. Also wanted to say that in all this, Think360 got a POC lead into a contract of an AI-powered insights and a platform for, you know, that Think traditionally has had experience and expertise in the molecular research area for drugs and therefore have some recall and some proximity to that segment of the U.S. market. They've started work on this. Of course, it has to scale up to become a regular large size contract. How this plan goes in the ensuing four or five slides, you have content on everything else that we've spoken about in the past.
I'm not going to spend too much time on this. The charts are there. Take a look and let us know if you have any questions either now or later. If you're in touch with us with this, I'll hand this over to Ram Charan to take us through broad financials and then we'll be ready for Q & A. Ram, over to you.
Thank you Anuj. As Anuj was mentioning, we had some tricks in during the quarter, some of which later alerted you in the earlier part of the year in terms of the price movements and the annual salary increase that happens traditionally on April 1st, effective April 1st. The good news is that from our trend perspective, the market has, in spite of choppy markets here and there, the market AUM has grown. It's grown over 7% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. It means from a foundational perspective it all goes well for the future revenue growth. Equity has also done well. It's grown around 24% on a year-on-year basis, on the back of which we had a reasonable revenue growth on a year-on-year basis. Overall revenue grew around 7% and we were at around INR 355 crore of revenue. Asset-based revenue grew 2% quarter-on-quarter and almost 9% year-on-year.
Again, this is considering the impact of the price difference or price reduction that was given to one of our key customers. From a yield perspective, I think Anuj has given the commentary. I'd just like to add that we have guided that there could be a 4% - 5% reduction in yield in the current quarter in addition to what we saw in the last quarter. It played out on similar lines. We have seen a close to 5% decline in yield. Going forward, as we have taken most of the impact in the base, we expect that barring telescopic, there is not going to be any significant depletion in yield going forward. If you see the math, on a five-year average basis, my telescopic depletion has been around 3% - 3.5% per year. You should expect closer or lesser to that going forward in terms of yield depletion.
However, because the first quarter has seen a sharper yield depletion than usual, on a year-on-year basis you could see a 9% kind of a yield depletion. The next three quarters would see a very, very moderate decrease, if at all any. In terms of yield creation from a profitability perspective, you've seen that the costs, we have said that we have some levers in case of some strain on the revenue and we said that we will pull those levers and we have done exactly that. We have seen cost control measures bearing fruit. We have had a very muted increase in costs on a year-on-year basis, including depreciation, which we continue to invest on various data centers and storage and servers. Including depreciation, our overall cost increase on a year-on-year basis is less than 11%.
Our aim for the year is to keep it around that range, probably 1% higher, but much less than what it was in the past. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, you will see that the cost has actually declined even if you take away the OpEx decline. If you consider that this is the quarter in which the salary has increased, it is a very, very muted increase in cost, which again is the way forward for us in terms of increasing the profitability margins. Given all these headwinds, the margin still was at 43.7%, a little down on a quarter-on-quarter basis and year-on-year basis. Traditionally, the first quarter has been the maximum strain on margins. As we go further, this kind of gets normalized.
While we are maintaining our guidance of things that we will see around 45% of margin on a steady state basis, there is a little upside in terms of the current quarter. We did not expect close to 44% margin, but going forward I think we should be able to hit the 45% + EBITDA. Obviously, assuming that the assets do keep up the pace of growth that we have seen in the last few quarters. We have ended the quarter with a very comfortable cash and cash equivalent of INR 788 crore, out of which INR 90 crore dividend was disbursed in the collection post the shareholder approval, and the board was pleased to declare an interim dividend of INR 11 per share. This is a summary of the financials and with this I hand it back to the moderator, we can open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use hand zips while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning everyone. Firstly, on this yield part, while I understand that the adjustment of the 1 degree renegotiation has happened, any further renegotiations that are expected in this year or early of next year that can impact the yield further? That's first. Second, on the yield front itself, as these new customers, particularly Jio BlackRock, kind of scales up, do you think that your yields can be under pressure? Because what we understand is most of these new wins have very low fees in the initial part, in the initial two or three years. That's my first question on the yield front. Second is on the non-MF businesses, particularly CAMSPay, which has seen a sequential decline in this quarter. What would you attribute that to and how should we think about this?
Thirdly, on profitability between the MF business and non-MF business, if you could spell out the EBITDA margins both ways, those are my questions.
Thanks. Sure, thanks. I'm sure you appreciate that our guidance with respect to prices, yield depletions, etc., plays out almost exactly the way we predicted to you in the last four or five years, which is that we don't want any asymmetry to exist between what we are anticipating in terms of events happening and what you see. We believe that with this large contract, 90% of that being in the base for the next about between a year and a year and a half, there's nothing much else to be dealt with. There could be very small events. From a large price correction perspective, do remember that we were the first ones to indicate this in the month of January.
From a price perspective, like Ram said, about a 3% annual depletion is something you can estimate to be in the base and nothing much beyond that except the balance 7-8% of this price adjustment will you see coming in. That's point number one. Point number two, from a new AMC and Jio BlackRock perspective, a large number of them have now gone live and will go live. Typically, their accretion to overall fees and overall profitability, etc., is small. In the case of BlackRock, their ambitions are very large. We will see how that scales up over a period of time. It is not true that we have given some very large price remissions. Typically, one or two of these elements are given at more, I would say, competitive pricing, but it is not that we have done anything very significant for these new logos.
We will see how this goes. Typically, our expectation is that the AUM build out of these new AMCs is very slow. Amongst the new ones, it takes several years, 4-5 years, for them to scale up. For them to have any material bearing on the P&L of CAMS always takes time. I don't think a lot of that is going to change, perhaps with the exception of Jio. That's the answer to point number two from a CAMSPay perspective, what you see. You will appreciate that we are 26% revenue up, which is good news from a quarter-on-quarter basis. There were some volume reductions in insurance. Insurance peaks in the fourth quarter, so whatever heightened activity the insurance companies see, we partly mirror that because all of this is a subset of the payments part of the insurance business, including autopay.
We are expecting some of that to come back as the first and second quarters progress. There were some lower volumes from key clients. One, largely because we are trying to migrate that very large MF distributor from other alternate platforms to our platform, which means that the existing ACH mandates, et cetera, have to move from place A to place B. We had a plan, the execution of this plan, just given the multiple dynamics in migrating these ACH mandates. All of that will happen. The third is that the growth, the setting up and growth of the payment gateway business was slightly slower, was about two or three months lower than what we were thinking.
Our expectation is that from this quarter, the quarter that we are sitting in, July or the September, you will see build back into the CAMS and therefore any wrinkle that you saw from 4Q to 1Q was a temporary wrinkle and it's unlikely that you'll see anything like that in the ensuing quarter of the year.
The only one question that I was on the probability of non-MF and MF, I think they continue to be on what they used to be. The non-MF probability, as we said, it's always between 10% and 15%. They were on the little lower side on this at 12% probably in the current quarter. MF continues to be 45%+ . That's the split up on the MF, non-inverse not great, probably a little lesser this time. Keep in mind the overall company margins are a little lesser, but nothing that's stronger either way.
Got that answer. Really appreciate the kind of guidance you have been giving us on the yield and the way it's panning out. Thank you for keeping us updated on that.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jain .
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Devesh Agarwal from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning everyone and thank you for the opportunity. Just further clarification on the yield part, sir, if you can tell us X of this larger AMC where you had the repricing, what would have been the impact on the yield for us?
If you see the yield depletion was 0.12 bps, I think, and that actually contributed 0.09% of it. It's almost predominantly everything; that's kind of the way this has played out.
75% is because of that repricing?
Yes, yes, that's correct.
Right. You did mention there is no m ore repricing or 95% of this large AMC repricing is in the base. When you say no more repricings are expected, are you saying like over the next 3-6 months or for the next two years, how should w e see about it?
Let me clarify that it's not as if no repricing, meaning when I say repricing I mean the usual commercial negotiations post the end of the pricing tenure will happen and that's business as usual. What we indicated was that there's not going to be anything major that's going to come around and this is probably for the next two years you will see stability of this and another posted. I think you have visibility over the next 18 months, 18 - 24 months,.
Right sir. When you give sir guide for this 3.5% depletion beyond FY 2026, I'm assuming you are accounting for all these new AMCs and they gaining size, including Jio BlackRock, or that will be over and above ?
As Anuj was mentioning, right, I think if you look at our asset base like INR 52 trillion, INR 53 trillion, etc., the new AMC's ability to adversely or positively affect yields is very limited. I think we are confident of retaining within the overall guidance that we have given.
From a metric perspective division, just think of it this way that today when you see the asset base of INR 50 lakh crore, under 2% of this belongs to AMCs launched in the last five years, which means whatever was launched in the last five years is significantly below INR 1 lakh crore. Either way, price or any other growth metric, what you would expect in the next 4-5 years, although the number of them is very large, at most we will see about let's say 2%- 3% of AUM contribution from these people, and therefore their collective ability to swing the panel either way I think is very limited.
I will hold whatever Ram said that beyond the next 18 - 24 months, the 3.5% depletion is perhaps something which stays in the base because that is an outcome of telescopic and some element of negotiation. This was one large element that we had to set by, the dialogue was old. If you ask me, it's a good thing that we got off that event. It took us some time to get past it, and given the fact that all of that has been now written in the base, largely between 4Q last year and 1Q this year, the cost doesn't manage well and therefore our ability to be a lot more predictable and accretive in the coming quarters is much, much higher.
Right, sir. With this repricing, sir, that has happened, can we say at the end of Q1 your top three or four AMCs will have very similar pricing, will be in a very narrow band or tight band?
Yeah, if you see our spectrum of 22 clients, there is a lump of five at the top which is consistently priced. There's a lump of another six, which is the number six to eleven, and which are also in the similar band. That is pretty consistent. As you go down, although those are smaller people, there are these three subgroups that you can think of the portfolio as, and they are all very tightly banded.
Perfect sir. One last question sir on the n on-mutual fund business. If you can again share your views in terms of the growth that we expect over the next two, three years and the margin, how you intend to ramp up, and what is the share that you expect of non-mutual fund business in your overall revenues in, say, next 2-3 years? That will be the last one.
No, Devesh. Like we said in the past, we will get the anonymous portfolio to 20%. No questions about that. Inside of non-MF, there are very strong points, which are KRA payments, and AIF, which are significantly profit yielding, and then there are elements which are not making money, which are account aggregator and insurance. Although insurance is getting somewhere towards breakeven, we are funding some of these things, and then between Think , MF Central, etc., we are still funding some of those things. The non-MF business at the peak will be, let's say, 35%- 40% EBITDA in the best business, and at the bottom maybe minus - 10%, which is why it converges at about + 15% . What is at 40% will probably remain at 40% .
What is at + 30% will remain at + 30% , and we are happy to keep those businesses there. The trick is to get the - 10% , - 15% guys over the hump and get them to positive territory. For example, in insurance, we are seeing that, let's say, at INR 25 crore-INR 27 crore, maybe INR 30 crore revenue, we will get to positive, and account aggregator, we get about a INR 1 crore revenue, we will get to positive. In most platform businesses, which have small, that's one of the fixed costs that we deploy, between INR 10 crore-INR 15 crore.
What I'm very positive about is that pouring more revenue into insurance, into account aggregator, and between Think, MF Central, and as I said, is also not very far, although we've been funding it for the last four or five years, but we are very sure of getting to that point. Therefore, 20% overall revenue contribution getting in the next three years, non-MF aggregate, give to be, let's say, between 25% - 30% profit contribution and not around the 15% is really in the realm of reality. You can expect that to happen.
Perfect, sir. Thank you so much and all the.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Uday Pai from Investec. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. Just one clarification on the yield side. You mentioned that out of the 0.12 basis point depletion this quarter, l arge part was account of that single AMC. Was the remaining purely on account of telescopic pricing or did we have a ny other repricing from any other customer? That's the first. Secondly, I would like to know t he breakup of KRA revenue in terms o f brokers and AMCs. That's the two questions.
Sure. The first question, there is just one more customer who had a very small price reset that happened. It was not significant. You could assume that a lot of this is because of the telescopic pricing. Again, as we said, going forward that could be not only zero price research happened. When we say price research, it's not a significant one. Every time there is a rollover, there is some discussion that depending on the growth of the there could be some moderation in rates that could happen. I think that's a BAU kind of an event that has happened, nothing significant from that perspective. Predominantly, it is the major customer yield location that you are seeing.
The second part of it, if you see from the AMC to brokers perspective, around 30% of the KRA revenue will be from the broker and DPs perspective and 70% will be from AMC. That is a metric that's been trending upwards over the last few quarters.
Sure sir. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijeet Sakhare from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning everyone. I have just one question on OpEx. Generally, what we've seen for the last few years is that the first quarter OpEx is roughly around the 25% mark as a percentage of overall OpEx for the year. Should we assume that to continue this year as well, which automatically implies that the OpEx number broadly kind of settled at this level? Any color on that would be helpful.
I'll just split it into three. The major cost is the employee cost. Then there is operating expenses and other expenses. Overall, if you see year-on-year, including depreciation, you'll be probably between 10% and 11% growth in the current quarter, which I think is a very moderate level. Going forward, given the nature of the business, we do not see a significant addition in manpower that is happening. We should actually have some cost increases happening from an employee perspective, but it will not be significant because the appraisal cost has actually been baked into this. Operating expenses is colored by OpEx. If you see the current quarter, also there has been a reduction in the revenue as well as cost.
If you take this away, it continues to be around 13% of overall thing, and other expenses in the first quarter will see the maximum because of AMC renewals, etc. We do not foresee any big increase coming up in the remaining part of the year or any of these exceptional things coming up. I continue to hold the view that we should be able to contain the cost increase at around 11% - 12% worst case scenario or probably a little less than that on a year-on-year basis for the entire year. Whether it will be following the trend of the fourth quarter, I think it will be with a small increase here and there because of some amount of employee additions that will happen.
Overall, if I were to project a cost increase on a year-on-year basis for the entire year, I would try to keep it at 10%- 11%.
Got it and thanks, Ram. Secondly, the non-MF businesses put together, I mean there are various ebbs and flows across the business line, but on a full-year basis for the entire non-MF vertical put together, how do you think about this year's revenue growth given the first quarter, how it has panned out for a couple of business lines.
I think Anuj mentioned the reasons why the first quarter year-on-year, this is the continue to see a good rebound. Our aim is very clear and we have the roadmap to achieve this 25% growth in non-MF revenue on absolute terms. We ended last year around INR 190 crore of non-mutual funds and would we be able to add 25% on top of it? I think we have the path to do it. I think we have the way to do it. We stick to that guidance that will give you a 25% growth in non-mutual fund on a year-on-year basis.
Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citi. The current participant has disconnected. May I move to the next participant? The next question is from the line of Madhukar Ladha from Nuvama Wealth Management Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. First, you know, really appreciate the upfront guidance on the yields. I think that was so very well done and very clearly explained. My question is, you know, first, how many of the mutual fund customers and the large ones come up for renegotiation in the balance part of FY 2026 and FY 2027? If you can just sort of break down for FY 2026 how many are there and then FY 2027 how many of the customers do, and second question is on any guidance on CapEx for FY 2026 and FY 2027 and the update on the technology transformation that you've been doing and moving the AMC stack on cloud.
I wanted to get a sense of where are we and from next year onwards what sort of benefit it would result in in terms of our EBITDA margins and how should we also think about depreciation going forward. These two would be my questions. Thanks.
Okay, I will take two of this . And on the rear, probably I would request Anuj to add some. From a price reduction perspective, the answer is any major coming up for repricing current year, the answer is zero. Nobody is coming up, and for the next year towards the tail end, there could be one or two customers who come in, but again it's towards the tail end of next year. That's why when we kind of get to the earlier question, we do see some amount of stability for the next 18 - 24 months. I think one of the reasons was this, that last year has been over activity in terms of prices, and we will see a period of stability for the next 18 - 24 months is our expectation. From a CapEx perspective, you will see that I split into two.
One is obviously the regular CapEx that we do, given that we have to keep pace with the growth in transaction volume, obviously requirements from a SEBI perspective for data centers, etc., BCP, etc. On a yearly basis, we project the current year CapEx to be around INR 60 crore. We have spent around INR 15 crore of it, so we are on target in the first quarter. We will end up spending around INR 60 crore, plus or minus a few crore. That's the expectation. On the rear or the new platform perspective, that's where the bulk of the CapEx additions would get added once the modules start going live. On a cumulative basis, we have spent around INR 50 crore on the platform so far. When I say cumulative, I mean for the last more than a year, right?
It's not in the last, would have spent probably INR 14 crore on it. Once the first module starts going live, which we expect probably 4Q of this financial year or 1Q of next financial year, we will start amortizing that. The amortization, we expect that the yearly amortization of the first module, we would have spent probably INR 100 crore in the first module, and the yearly amortization would be in the region of INR 15+ crore . I think that will be the yearly amortization that you take. That will be the increase in depreciation cost that we will start getting from most likely from next financial year, or it could be in the last quarter of the current financial year that will start impacting depreciation from that perspective.
We are also confident that the benefits that will start accruing to the business will make it, over a period of at least not immediately, over a period of a year or two, I think the payback will be more than adequate for fibrosity and the margin depletion will be negligible, if any. Over a period of, I think our projection shows the margin depletion will be negligible and if you do get outsized benefits as we hope we will, then I think it will be attributed to the margin. It's too early to call a specific number as what could be the benefit in the EBITDA margin because I think we have to wait for the first money to go live. We do have internal budgets and workings, but I think it's too early to expose that as a commitment from our side.
We will track it very closely and as we get closer to the first module going there, we will be able to give you a better picture on what is the benefits. We are very clear that this will have a positive impact on the profitability going forward. Whether it is going to approach directly from FY 2027 or from FY 2028 is something that we have to wait and watch. Overall, it is going to be a very beneficial looking market. Progress of rearchitecture.
So overall on the digital project, I think things are in very good shape. We signed a contract in June, July last year with Google Cloud. We started building a team. Today we have over 150 engineers, about 170, 180 external hires, a lot of them from blue-blooded institutions like the IIT, some MTechs, four or five doctorates, people who are applying for patents. Some of this is very structured and we know what is to be done, and some of that is somewhat a tinkering approach in terms of experimenting with various things. I think you will start seeing some announcements from us maybe by the end of August in terms of what the team is doing.
We haven't done any PR yet, but just to give you an example, the amount of effort efficiencies this will add, one is just to the engineering, coding, and platform process, and the other is to the operations process. Just to give you an example, today we may have a couple of hundred people who do reconciliation for us because we download bank statements, do matching in the system, and do literally hundreds of activities to make sure that these INR 300 lakh that reverses our system is completely freestyle and done properly in terms of reconciliation unit allotment. Once an automated platform of the kind that we are thinking comes in, the intensity of labor will go down to half or less than half. Similarly, for every process, we spend INR 300 crore SMSs in a year.
Today, if one or 100 of those SMSs have to be reconciled, when were they sent, when were they opened, if they bounced, why did they bounce? There is a lot of manual effort in terms to figure that out. All of that will be at a click of a button. Similarly, for analytics, controls kind of things, risk management, all of that will get into the purview of the new platform. Very happy with the way things are going. I think we haven't exactly yet put out any margin working. I think what you guys are waiting to hear is will this become kind of a past zero proposition in FY 2027 and if yes, by what margin? My guess is that we will be ready to share all that with you in the next maybe three or four months.
There is just a vast sweep of areas in which productivity will go up, accuracy will go up, risk will come down, finesse will go up, and we do want to talk to you guys about that, but we don't want to jump the gun. Broadly from an operating perspective, very good progress. From a specific guidance on margins and net costs on this, given two or three months, maybe by the month of October we will start putting things out which you can consume, and then obviously we can continue comparing notes in terms of whether progress will achieve or not.
Got it, got it. Ram, I think you mentioned the maintenance CapEx for FY 2026 at INR 60 crore, but I don't think you gave me the total sort of other CapEx amount as well. The total re-architecture CapEx for 2026, and similarly if you could give FY 2027 also, some broad color on CapEx.
Sure. I think from a real perspective I did mention that you spent from a CapEx perspective around INR 14 crore in the first quarter. We expect in Q1, in Q1 and we expect in the course of the year this will accelerate and we will spend close to INR 100 crore in the current year. The spend next year will be on similar lines. The spend next year will be on similar lines because we have reached almost at the peak capacity from a people perspective and from a design perspective. You would expect overall the cost of the project is expected to be around INR 450 crore -INR 50 0 crore. You will end up spending by the end of this year it will be cumulatively around INR 125+ crore. We expect a similar amount to be spent in the next year also from a depreciation perspective.
I would just like to alert that once we start amortizing this, it should be after the first module goes live, probably INR 100 crore of work gets transferred from work in progress to your asset and we start amortizing. Obviously, amortization period could be higher than three years, but it is going to be a valuable platform. That's why I decided that probably you should look at a INR 15 crore-INR 20 crore application incrementally per year on these modules.
Understood. Understood. All right, thanks. Thanks a lot for the responses and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible now? Good morning, sir. Just a few questions. You mentioned the reduction in pricing asymmetry on the mutual fund side of the business, and I understand there have been a couple of repricing by this large player in the last few years. Let's say two years out, 24 months from now, when this particular player looks at their mutual fund RTA yield, and on the more dominant portion of their book, which is equities, do you think that they will feel comfortable when they compare them with the other large three or four players, let's say 24 months or 36 months from now? I just wanted to get a quantum of whether the repricing and stabilization is done more from a long-term perspective, or is it just like relative divergence has narrowed for now?
Second, in terms of the nature of these contracts, I just wanted to understand, are these open for ad hoc repricing? Also, can a particular player always come up for renegotiation even if the contract is currently ongoing? Third will be on the alternate business. If I look at the revenue trajectory for the last four quarters, it has revolved around that INR 9.5 crore -INR 10 crore quarterly run rate despite multiple new logo wins. I just wanted to get some sense of what's happening out there.
Broadly, to answer your first question on whether when I said asymmetry, I meant what we know vs what you guys know. We want zero asymmetry there and feel happy that we've been able to kill that. The mutual fund market typically honors contracts and out-of-turn requests for adjustment. It's not that it's impossible, but they don't happen very often. Broadly, from a principal perspective, you can take it back. That's the way the market works. From this contract that we have discussed more than once on these calls, I think our way of servicing, when it was a world of physical paper and checks and all of that, it had come to almost a 95% digitally executed operation. Therefore, the request from the client was that since whatever they paid in the past, they paid in the past because of a different style of working.
Now, since the style of working after COVID is more or less the same, why not look at a uniform pricing? While we can say that it was out of turn, that dialogue started maybe in 2021-2022. It took us two or three years because it was a large quantum to set right. Like I said, I'm happy that is now behind us. With that being behind us, I think one principle that most of these clients believe should apply to them because scope differentials are very small. There was a time when scope differentials were deeper. We were doing ABCDEF for someone, we were doing ABCDEF and GH for someone else. So someone else had 30% more scope. Was it willing to pay? The answer was yes. That's how the market went.
In a digital era, there could be a client who does 100% digital and there could be someone who does 85%. I don't think we have any 80% digital client. The kind of work, the amount of work more or less is converging and therefore parity becomes an argument from their side and parity in a size cluster. If you are in a size cluster of the top five, the next five, the next five, the next five and the tail beyond that, to be looked similar is a requirement. You guys also have access to scheme accounts, so you can take a look yourself. From our side, I think one thing that we have done now is that anything which can look like a wrinkle in that principle.
Likely does not exist. You can also take a look once these schema accounts come out. I think that's one large objective that we have achieved. We also made sure that in some of these new clients, you may have seen one logo that we had, one let's say at a price of INR 100. The competitor offered INR 80 and then walked away saying we don't want to cut. Three months later, the same guy goes back and sells at INR 60. We said we'll let them go. We will not talk about resizing a sector with someone we've not even started business with. I think that principle we've been able to establish and underwrite.
On the AIF Dipanjan, actually if you look at the core AIF business, I think they have grown pretty well on a year-on-year basis. I think they have grown, take away the principal size of things, only from including GIFT City. They were actually, I was just looking at the numbers once you asked that question, they were actually around INR 840 lakh per quarter in the last testing year. They have now come up to around INR 970 lakh . So pretty okay, meaning it's not going to be a 50% growth this year. I think that we have to be very clear with you also. I think a 12% - 15% growth business is what we see the AIF to be and upside coming. In terms of GIFT City, I think it's played out that way. We continue to feel that it's a 15% growth business.
It's still a 15% growth business and GIFT City does ramp up significantly and that could go closer to 20%. Otherwise, we feel that it's probably largely in line and it's a highly competitive industry. We still maintain our leadership. We're getting 50% + market share and yields have grown reasonably.
Okay, sure. Ram Charan, I appreciate, on the AIF part it was lower in the last quarter, but if you look at from 2Q onwards, which is last four quarters, it has been around that INR 9.5 crore-INR 10 crore. In case you were to get to let's say 15, 16% growth on last year's base, you probably have to kind of scale up the current run rate by at least 10, 12% over the next few quarters. Is that visibility kind of out there for you guys?
Absolutely. We are winning a lot of new logos. I think we also have a lot of logos from the city perspective. We are also getting more into fund accounting. I think we are confident of getting this over 15% growth over a period of years. On a quarter-on-quarter, I think it could be 10%, 11%, 12%, that's okay. On a year-on-year basis, I think we are confident getting with a steeper growth. I think that we are winning are for full service as Anuj was mentioning, and the pricing is largely. It's not what it used to be two years back for sure.
I think we are getting a p ricing is reasonably stable at least compared to what it was in the initial stages. I think 15% growth is something that we have to effort. I think we have agreed to kill that.
Got it. Thank you everyone and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sabil Dabhoya from Unifi Capital Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on resilient set of numbers. Sir, just add one question of course on the yield part, sir. In the last quarter we had given a guidance of 6%- 7% year-over-year decline from Q4 FY 2025 in yield, and this has been now sort of revised to about 8%- 9%. Is my understanding correct.
I think what I had indicated in the last earnings call, if I remember right, was yes, it was around. I think on a year-on-year basis you will see a 7% decline in yields. I think it will be a little higher than that. It could be 8% but again this is an estimation of what happens in the remaining three quarters. I think the raise is broadly okay.
Okay, sir, and sir, just another question was on the non-MF non asset based revenue. If you could highlight anything unusual that happened this quarter?
Two things, actually, three things. Number one is the NFO revenue significantly down compared to the last quarter and that's something that we have limited. There are more NFOs in the next quarter. We do get additional revenues. The second part of it is OpEx expenses, and we've always said that OpEx is more an accounting thing, which is that you have to show it as you bill a customer, you show it as revenue, and then you show it as an expense. Also, that's come down significantly, largely because of the lesser mail traffic and some special audits that we did on behalf of AMCs last quarter and some bulk purchases we did for their stationery, etc. All of it, actually, the OpEx has come down. A sequence of this is more than INR 2 crore.
That's something that should not worry, does not worry you or anybody, because you know there's a tough money reduction in the expense. Also, it's not a margin accretive business. There is some amount of, you know. When you say price reduction of the AMC, there is some amount of impact of price reduction on the transaction fee also. Overall, the transaction fee has remained broadly stable. There has been some reduction in OpEx and NFO fees, etc., which has kind of caused this blip in policy quarter-to-quarter number. There's nothing exceptional that you need to know. This OpEx is something that is entirely driven by the spend pattern of that particular quarter, depending on campaigns that AMCs are running, depending on how risk that we need to do with our reimbursement declines, etc., or some of the stationery expenses. That's predominantly causing this difference. It is a INR 2.5 crore reduction only because of OpEx.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sanketh Godha from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Sir Ram, if I understood it right, you are at 2.16% yield today. Every quarter for the full year, it is 3%, 3.5% is the case to take a 2.16% yield, and we'll see maybe every quarter kind of 1% depletion to arrive at full year of 3% - 4%. That's a fair assumption?
Yeah, I think the next quarter could be a little higher as we said. Post that, I think that could be. We are actually, in my computation, around first transaction, around 2.25 bps, and only on AUM, around 2.13%, 2.14%. We would expect at least 0.03 or something decline coming in the next quarter. Yes, overall, I think your assumption is valid.
Got it. Perfect. My second question is with respect to payment business. If you can break up that payment business into MF and non-MF, point number one. Second, even insurance played a role to drive the growth and now you are getting into the cards as a payment gateway. Given it is highly competitive, how do you see it to play out, whether we will still remain predominantly MF and maybe insurance a bit, or you think we will make meaningful inroads in cards with respect to payment.
As you know, historically it's been entirely MF. Over the last few years, we have diversified successfully. My current recollection is it's around 50% + MF, and 45% - 50% of non-mutual fund is built up of the revenue. I will get the exact number across to you, but it's broadly these numbers, especially given that you sign new insurance companies. This is trending upwards from insurance companies or from a few education institutions that we have signed on. The focus, Sanketh, is to diversify and to get non-mutual fund related business in, and I think the card is one of the attempts at that. We have gone that live cards. I think the possibilities are huge, especially if you want to do from the insurance perspective for premium. We have directly stayed out of cards because of mutual fund. There are not very relevant credit cards.
Now we have got into it. We have got our own payment gateway setup integrated with Master, Visa, RuPay, and then we have started operations. We have done a lakh of transactions already in the last quarter. I think the cards will grow in the current quarters. We are on track to make this 60% non-mutual fund and 40% mutual fund as we go forward, probably in a 12 - 15 months from now. The margins could be something that we will watch out for because card transactions margins are little lesser than what we used to in an ACH model. Overall perspective, we are confident of maintaining the 15% + margins as well as growing this business.
The current last year we ended around INR 50 crore, so our internal target has ended around INR 70 crore in the current quarter, and I think we have enough tools in our hand to take it to that level.
Got it. Is it fair to say that what you are seeing in non-MF business, the heavy lifting probably will be done by the payment business?
It is true that payments will contribute a lot to it, but I think insurance will also grow well, and we will have to see whether the account aggregator and Think Analytics also keep there. Yes, it is true that a lot of it is on these two, insurance growing and payments growing, and KRA is staying stable.
Got it. Got it. Probably the last one, Think360 have seen a bit of evolution and it probably alluded to that point in the call initially. This INR 4.5 crore, INR 4.6 crore run rate, what we are looking at in Q1 for Think360, will it hold up in subsequent quarters? Second, just on an absolute basis, any additional revenue coming in 360 is EBITDA or not, for all it comes at a cost?
What was the second question, Sanketh? I think is revenue coming from?
Sir, just please additional revenue. What you are, whether it will add up to.
I think we are at a stage where we are close to breakeven analytics. I think the INR 4.5 crore run rate that you are seeing will sustain, and we are hoping that it will improve in the course of the year. One of the reasons why we see the non-mutual fund margins will increase going forward is that a couple of the businesses, which is significant insurance as well as sync analytics, in the course of the year will turn profitable, will definitely be breakeven, but hopefully it will also turn profitable. The run rate will sustain, and probably there could be a small upside to it and incremental revenue. I think the run rate is if you get to take over INR 5 crore a quarter, we start making money from tech analytics. I think that will happen in the course of the year.
Got it. Perfect. That's it for myself. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We'll take this as the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ram Charan for closing comments.
Thank you. Thank you to all the participants for their continued interest in CAMS and for the questions that were asked. Please do reach out to MUFG or to Anish Sawlani in case you have any questions and we'll be happy to address those. Thank you once again for your time.
Thank you. On behalf of Computer Age Management Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.