Aadhar Housing Finance Limited (NSE:AADHARHFC)
India flag India · Delayed Price · Currency is INR
500.10
-17.35 (-3.35%)
May 6, 2026, 3:30 PM IST
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Q2 24/25

Nov 6, 2024

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Aadhar Housing Finance Limited Q1 FY25 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ranish Bhuva from ICICI. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Ranish Bhuva
Company Representative, ICICI Securities Limited

Yeah, thank you, Sumit. Hi, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Aadhar Housing Finance Q1 FY25 earnings call. On behalf of ICICI Securities, I would like to thank Aadhar management team for giving us the opportunity to host this call. Today, we have with us the entire top management team of Aadhar, represented by Mr. Deo Shankar Tripathi, Executive Vice Chairman, Mr. Rishi Anand, MD and CEO, Mr. Rajesh Viswanathan, CFO, and Mr. Sanjay Chinda, Head of Financial Planning. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Rishi for his opening remarks, and then we'll open the floor for Q&A. Over to you, sir.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you so much, Ranish, and a very good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Aadhar Housing Finance, I extend a very warm welcome to all of you. We are overwhelmed to see the response we got post our listing, and we are strongly committed to achieve great milestones in the years to come. Our company was founded on a simple yet powerful belief that the dream of owning a home should be a reality and within the reach of every Indian. This belief has driven us to work tirelessly, bridging the gap between aspiration and reality for countless families across the great nation. As we navigate the evolving landscape of affordable housing in India, we remain deeply committed to our mission. The demand for affordable housing has never been more pressing, and we take great pride in playing a pivotal role in meeting this need.

Additionally, the proposed budgetary announcements to construct three crore additional houses in the rural and urban areas under PMAY Awas Yojana, along with interest subsidy in the affordable loans through CLSS program, will further provide impetus to the overall business growth. This initiative will greatly benefit the EWS, LIG segments of the society, helping millions realize the dream of homeownership. Moving on to this quarter's performance, our AUM stood at INR 21,726 crores, marking a significant growth of 21% YoY. We continue to deliver 100% retail secured book with no exposures to corporates or developers. Our average ticket size remains at 10 lakhs on AUM, with an average LTV of 59% on AUM. Salaried customer segment continues to dominate our book at 57%. With this, we continue to be the largest low-income housing finance company in the country.

The mix of home loans versus non-home loans stood at 75% and 25%, respectively. The quality of the book remains pristine, with a drop in GNPA numbers of 15 basis points and one-plus drop of 83 basis points YoY basis, with collection efficiency very healthy at 99% plus. We also continue to maintain a healthy spread of 6% against a guidance of 5.7% for the quarter. Disbursements in the quarter stood at INR 1,497 crores. Our distribution network has been our core strength, which differentiates us. In the quarter ending June, we have now reached a total of 536 branches spread across 544 districts in 21 states. This quarter, we have added 13 new branches and ventured into a new state in Himachal Pradesh. With the increase in touch points, we are now serving more than 274,000 live customer accounts across the country.

To enhance our market penetration even further and to go deeper into the low-income segment, we are planning to increase our reach with deeper impact strategy in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Maharashtra in the phase one. This will help us reach out to tier four cities and beyond to small talukas and small district headquarters. As a part of our ongoing enhancement of technology capabilities, we have implemented multiple fintech capacities covering bank account aggregator, income tax statement aggregator, and RPA technologies. As a part of strengthening our cybersecurity posture, we have implemented web application firewall for customer-facing applications and deployed safe email messaging to customers by implementing Brand Indicators for Message Identification. On the data analytics front, in Q1 FY25, we have implemented a Reject Scorecard, which is an automated machine learning-based credit risk underwriting scorecard for better tasks and better credit efficiencies.

Apart from this, the data analytic team also on a regular basis assists in predictive analysis of bounce and roll forwards and go-to-market assistance to the branch team, to the business team. I would want to give an update on the board. As already informed to the exchange, Dr. Punita Kumar- Sinha has been inducted as an independent director on our board with effect from 7th August 2024, subject to approval of the AGM. She comes in with a rich experience of 30 years in the investment banking and financial markets. We believe that Dr. Sinha will be a significant addition to our existing distinguished board of directors. This quarter has been a strong start to the financial year. I would like to give confidence that Aadhar remains committed to its core focus area, that is EWS, LIG segment.

We will keep expanding our network within the states and investing in technology and data science. Our drive for innovative ideas will persist, helping us enhance efficiency, achieve growth, and maintain sustained profits with improved asset quality. We firmly believe and live by the emotion that "Ghar Baneg a Toh Desh Baneg a," and we will continue our journey with this guiding sentiment. I would now like to hand over to our CFO, Rajesh Viswanathan, to take you through the retail financial performance of this quarter.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thanks, Rishi. Good afternoon to all, and once again, welcome to the earnings call of Q1 FY25. I will start with borrowings. Our overall borrowings as of 30th June 2024 is INR 14,000 crores. This is quite comparable or for a similar figure which existed at the year end, which was about INR 13,950 crores. We have diversified sources of borrowings with more than 39 borrowing relationships.

Our borrowing mix at the end of 30th June is 52% of our borrowings comes from banks. NHB share is 26%, and NCDs make up the balance, 22%. In quarter one, we have borrowed only INR 500 crores at an incremental rate of around 8.3%, 8.4%. This is because we had the primary proceeds from the IPO of about INR 1,000 crores gross which came in, which resulted in lower borrowings in the quarter. During the quarter of this INR 500 crores borrowings, we have drawn down INR 200 crores from NHB. Undrawn line from NHB is around INR 200 crores, which we plan to draw down in the current quarter, and we will also be applying for a fresh line from National Housing Bank.

With the view of diversifying our borrowing sources, in quarter one FY25, we have entered into a borrowing agreement with Asian Development Bank for an overall amount of $60 million, of which $30 million was availed in the current quarter. The rates for these are similar to what other DFIs give to HFCs like us. As we have disclosed in the last meeting, the ALCO had proposed a 25 basis points rate increase to our customers with effect from 16th June 2024, which has been duly applied to our customers. Now, coming to our fixed and floating share of borrowings and assets, our fixed borrowings are 22%, and on the asset side, our fixed side of the loans are around 20%. Liquidity, our quarter-end balance sheet liquidity is around 2,400 crores. Obviously, this was accentuated because of the IPO proceeds not being fully utilized.

However, we intend to carry liquidity in the balance sheet in the range of about 8%-10% of our assets. In terms of undrawn sanctions, we have around 900 crores, 400 crores undrawn sanction of bank term loans. We have NHB 200 crores that I had said undrawn, and 250 crores we have undrawn from DFI ADB. On top of this, we also have a WCDL of around 340 crores, which we can draw at any point of time. Typically, in terms of financial highlights, our spreads in the current quarter end have come near 6% as compared to 5.9% at the FY24 end. In terms of overall yields in FY24, 8.9% in the quarter as compared to 30 basis points increase on a year-on-year basis. Our cost-to-income ratio is where we have seen improvement.

It has come in at 36.7%, which is an 80 basis points improvement from the full year figure of FY24. If you remember, I had specifically said in the last call that in quarter four, the OpEx is higher by about INR 12-INR 13 crores because we had some one-time costs which typically get booked in quarter four of the year. As you would see, our OpEx in the current year, current quarter adjusted for that, you can see the difference in OpEx or the lower OpEx on account of that. All the above has resulted in our PAT growing strongly by 37% to INR 200 crores in quarter one FY25 from about INR 146 crores in quarter one FY24, resulting in an ROA of 4.1%. Our ROE post receipt of IPO proceeds stands at 15.9%.

As Rishi has said, our gross NPA is 1.31% at the end of 30th June 2024, which is an improvement of 15 basis points over 1.46% on AUM, which was reported in quarter one FY24. The movement in NPA from the FY24 number, as most of you would understand, is basically on account of the seasonality impact, and if you look at the historical trend, even within Aadhar, the quarter one is where we generally see a 20 to 25 basis points movement in the NPA, but we generally believe that as we end towards the end of the year, we would be in the same tram line of around 1.1% to 1.2% of 90 plus GNPA. With this, we can open the floor for Q&A.

Operator

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 the 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. The first question is from the line of Rajiv Pathak from GeeCee Holdings. Please go ahead.

Rajiv Pathak
Senior Investment Analyst, GeeCee Holdings

Yeah, good evening, everyone, and congratulations on a good set of performance. So just a couple of questions. One is, I think I believe this quarter we had this RBI circular on accounting for the disbursements. So if you can quantify the impact that it would have had on the disbursements of this quarter, would it be in the quantum of INR 400-500 crores or so? That was my first question. Second is on the yield. So as you alluded to that, we have increased the lending rates. So on an incremental basis, what would be our yield on loans and the cost of funds on the incremental basis? And third is, if you can guide us on the credit cost for the full year and the year going ahead. Thank you.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, Rajiv. I think I'll take the first part of the question, which is the RBI circular. The numbers that you see and that have been reported, which is typically INR 1,497 crores, which is a 4% YoY growth, is after the adjustment of the RBI circular. While you have indicated a number of INR 400-500 crores, I would want to say that this 4% would have been upward of 25% growth if it were not for the circular in position. Having said that, we would want to confirm to everybody on the call and the group at large that we have, in letter and spirit, implemented the RBI circular in totality.

The second part. Okay. The incremental yields and the incremental cost of funds?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah, Rajesh here. In terms of incremental yields, we are approximately about 12-13 basis points better than what we entered at quarter four. And in terms of so basically, we would be in the range of about 13.5%-13.6%. Incremental cost this quarter actually doesn't make much sense because we drew only about INR 500 crores. It came in at 8.4%. But typically, we would be probably in the range of about 8.2%-8.25%. We would be looking at an incremental cost of that. The other thing which I just wanted to do a top-up to what Rishi said in terms of RBI circular, because this is more of a regulatory thing. All of us, all the entire industry has rightfully accepted and gone by the circular.

What is more important is that we are still retaining our view that we will be still growing disbursements in the range of about 18%-20%, which will result in an AUM growth in the range of about 20%-23%.

Rajiv Pathak
Senior Investment Analyst, GeeCee Holdings

Okay. That was very helpful. And on the credit cost?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

So, credit cost, if you look at it, typically, if you look at in our particular company last year, if I remember correctly, our credit cost was about INR 31 crores, and we ended the year at a credit cost of around 45 to 50 crores. So majority of the credit cost actually comes in quarter one and quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, you will see an improvement. We are looking at a year-end credit cost in the range of about 27 to 28 crores, which I think we'll be comfortable with that.

Rajiv Pathak
Senior Investment Analyst, GeeCee Holdings

Okay. So even anything which may come from LAP book or anything will get covered under this?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yes, yes. Because typically, see, LAP, obviously, in terms of and this is a good point that you raise, Rajiv, and I think I will have to clarify that very upfront. We get 250 to 300 basis points of kicker in terms of yield on LAP. It actually goes sometimes up to 350 basis points of yield kicker when it comes to LAP. And if you look at credit cost, in the worst of times, the NPA gap between an HL and an NHL was only about 60 to 65 basis points. So in that sense, the risk-adjusted spread is quite strong. So if you look at credit cost as a number in terms of basis points, yes, it will be 27 to 28 basis points. But in terms of the P&L protection, the risk-adjusted spread is quite protected because we get about 300 to 350 basis points higher.

Yes, and this 28 basis points that we are referring to is inclusive of non-housing and inclusive of LAP. Yeah.

Rajiv Pathak
Senior Investment Analyst, GeeCee Holdings

Okay. Okay. Thank you so much and wish you all the best.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, Rajiv.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Kunal Shah
Director, Citigroup

Yeah. Hi. So firstly, when we look at it in terms of the coverage, so on stage three, it's come off. We see most of the other HFCs being much lower than the coverage which we have. So would we look at getting towards those levels, or will it be like 35%, 40% coverage that we would want to continue on stage three?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

I think, Kunal, I think on Stage 3, if you look at it, we have progressively increased from 30%-35%, and last time we entered at 40%. This year, because the incremental NPA movement will probably come in at a rate of around 22%-24% when they actually come into Stage 3. That is why the percentage would have come down from 40% to 34%, 35% in quarter one. But yes, we would like to be in the same range. As you correctly said, we would like to be in the range of around 30%-36%. If it goes up to 40%, we'll be happy. We are anyhow carrying, as most of you would know, we are carrying a management overlay of INR 46 crores, which we had created at the time of COVID. It has just been carried still.

One more disclosure is in terms of RBI and NHB asked us to do a comparison of the provisions that you carry in the books under your ECL methodology versus what is supposed to be carried as per the IRACP norms of RBI. And if you look at it, we are in excess of the requirements of RBI by almost about 70 to 75 crores. So in that sense, from a provisioning perspective, we are comfortable. And rest assured, we will not be wanting to look at releasing this management overlay in any hurry. If the opportunity does arise, we would be actually looking at means of topping that up.

Kunal Shah
Director, Citigroup

Sure. And secondly, on LAP, what was indicated in today's MPC meet, be it with respect to risk weights or the end-use monitoring, which I think RBI has asked now all the players to strictly adhere to. So maybe how is it happening at our end in terms of the entire end-use monitoring, and are we able to see in terms of how much gets towards the business, how much is for the consumption? So if you can just share that and any impact that it can have in terms of the pace of growth.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Kunal, I think the reference point was more with respect to the top-up loans. So top-up loans for now, in our consumer segment, the ticket size is too low. We actually do micro loan against property or top-up loans, which is in top-up loans in the average ticket size of about six lakhs, and loan against property is about eight lakhs. Now, loan against property, obviously, the end-use is monitored. We take something called the Udyam certificate, where we ensure that it is going towards for the self-employed segment, it is going towards end-use of his business. As far as top-up loan is considered on account of top-up loans, the end-use is currently not monitored, but given the RBI direction or the indicative direction, I think we will devise a process to do that.

Having said that, historically, we don't do too many top-up loans because of the segment that we deal with. For our segment, creating one house is itself a lifetime, once-in-a-lifetime kind of an activity. So for him coming and taking a top-up is very difficult. We have a total exposure of about INR 540 crores to INR 550 crores under the top-up program in about INR 22,000 crores of book. So that is the extent of top-up loans that exist in our book today. And in terms of risk weights, Kunal, what we did was, if you remember, RBI had increased the risk weight for unsecured assets about six months ago. And what we had done is wherever we had, on our AUM basis, wherever we had proof of this being taken for the purpose of which was non-personal, we left it over there.

Which was personal, we've increased the risk weight to 100. So in that sense, the risk weight is already taken. And that was one of the reasons our CRAR actually fell from about 41% to 37%, 38% in one quarter.

Kunal Shah
Director, Citigroup

So risk weights is almost taken care of. The only thing is end-use monitoring that we will do it for the top-up loans.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. I don't think that will be. That is more of a way of. The company is too small. So yes, whatever directions come, we will comply with it, Kunal.

Kunal Shah
Director, Citigroup

Sure. And one last question, if I can chip in. Maybe you alluded to in the opening comments with respect to the CLSS and PM AY. So what is the extent of benefit? And maybe I would say in terms of the push to the growth, which can come in paid in the disbursements now. We have those schemes. We have the allocation of CLSS as well. So how much can it help in terms of the overall AUM growth?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Kunal, one is that let me give you a little figure of what we did in the previous Aadhar of CLSS. We disbursed close to about INR 1,800 crores of subsidy, which impacted about 80,000 plus consumers. So that was the contribution that Aadhar did in the entire CLSS program in PM AY CLSS 1.0. The new contours are still not out. We don't know what are going to be the contours for the CLSS program. The overall budget allocated is INR 4,000 crores.

The way it looks, it is going to be for the last four, five months of the year. So in totality, I think the allocation is more than sufficient. Will it give a huge upside on the business? See, in the previous Aadhar, CLSS was always a refinance program. My business would come in, I would once the disbursement is done, it is taken to the regulator.

The regulator will look at the eligibility from a CLSS perspective and then give a refinance. So upfront, I don't commit to the customer that you will get a CLSS. But yes, maybe anywhere between 8%-10% of the customers who are sitting on the fence will move on the positive side of taking fresh home loans. It was more of word of mouth rather than a big jump on your AUM. So that's how the overall AUM growth that we're talking about, 23%-24%, will definitely have a portion of the CLSS impact.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nitesh from Investec. Please go ahead.

Thanks for the opportunity. What are the plans for distribution expansion and branch addition this year?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Nitesh, in terms of distribution, as I indicated today, we started about 535 branches. Now, we have added another state in this quarter, which is Himachal Pradesh. Now, we are in 21 states. As we go ahead next couple of years, we will keep introducing 75 new branches. 25 of those will come in the existing locations, and 50 will come in the deeper impact strategy that I spoke about, which is small talukas and small sub-districts of existing states. In phase one, we have shortlisted five states to do our deeper impact strategy, which is typically Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, UP, and Maharashtra.

Sure. How is the productivity of the field officer for us? On average, how many files are being disbursed, and how are the trends on that?

Okay. At our company, we will monitor our people on the volume generated because our average ticket size is quite low. And obviously, we do on the number of units also, but primarily, the way we drive is on units. And we have different layers of sales teams right at the front end, which is called the direct selling team member. The average productivity is about INR 15-16 lakh. The supervisor who manages these people has a productivity of about INR 60-70 lakh. Then you have an Area head whose productivity will be anywhere between INR 2.5-3 crores. So that's how the hierarchy works. And if I were to translate into number of units, typically, it will be 1.5 units disbursed and about 3-4 units logged.

Sure. And how are the trends on that, and is there any initiative to improve the productivity over a period of time?

See, that is, Nitesh, an ongoing activity which happens 365 days a year. We have our training team which keeps hand-holding and training our front-end employees. The factor of accretion also plays a very important role because the way the data is evident, people who come in new 0 to 3 months kind of vintage will have a lower productivity, say, eight or nine lakhs. People who cross the 6-month bracket move to a 18-20 lakh kind of productivity. So our endeavor is always to, one, is train people on the product and hand-hold them to cross the 6-month bracket. So it is a continuous activity, and we will continue to do our best on that front.

Sure. Secondly, what is the incremental ticket size on housing loan for the quarter?

Housing loan incremental ticket size is 13 lakhs, and non-housing standard 8.2 lakhs.

Kunal Shah
Director, Citigroup

And just a data-keeping question on BT out rate and sourcing mix. What is the sourcing mix for the quarter? Channel mix and BT out rate for the quarter?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

BT out is, Nitesh, this year, this quarter, we had a BT out of around 5.5%, which is an improvement compared to the full year as well as the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter is typically the very high quarter. But some steps we have also taken on the BT out side. We have involved our data analytics team to give us some preemption on the BT outs, which is tagged back to our call center and our specific retention team, which we have created. So this has also helped us in retaining some of our customers. So that has also helped in reducing the BT out. The second question that you had was the breakdown of disbursements in terms of this. Rishi, we'll just give it to you. Okay. So the breakdown of the sourcing mix stands at broadly 45% comes from overall external channels.

The corporate DSA contributes about 35%, and the balance is all in-house.

Okay. Thank you, sir. That's it from my side.

Thank you, Nitesh.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajiv Mehta from YES Securities. Please go ahead.

Rajiv Mehta
EVP, YES Securities

Yeah. Hi. Good evening. Just a couple of questions. If you can firstly break the Q1 disbursements into April, May, June, and what is the run rate of July?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

To be very honest, that is a very micro number. We don't really give monthly numbers. The only thing I want to reassure you is it's a business as usual from June onwards. We have seen in July and June are trending well. So that is giving us enough confidence to claim that we will have an 18%-20% disbursement growth leading to a 22%, 23% AUM growth. So whatever little impact which of the circular which Rishi said, we would have seen the last of it by 15th of June or June end. So June was a strong month, and July again is a strong month. Without giving the numbers of.

July has been good. July has been a very strong month, and June has been a fairly strong month.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

If I can add to it, from a pure board-approved budget perspective, month-on-month basis, Rajiv, we are exceeding the numbers.

Rajiv Mehta
EVP, YES Securities

Got it. Got it. And in the initial commentary, you spoke about incremental yield being 12, 13 basis points better than Q4. Now, is this a function of product mix, or have you also taken product-level rate increases for the new originations? Are we pushing pricing incrementally on fresh loans in both the products?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

I would say no. Not as we speak, we are not pushing incremental rates upward. I think it is to do slightly with the mix. Initially, the mix was 73-27 towards NHL. In the quarter we are speaking about, sorry, it dropped, right? Okay. It is to do with the mix, and it is also to do with, I think, broadly, it is to do with the 150 branches that we launched in the previous year towards the deeper impact, where the yields are slightly higher than what you get in metros. We have a 2%-3% movement away from NHL specifically.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Quarter one.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Specifically in this quarter. Another point to note that all the disbursements that we have done till 15th of June have got repriced by 25 basis points. Whichever of this is floating has automatically got repriced. So to that extent, the yield that we are carrying on this would have gone up by 25 basis points.

Rajiv Mehta
EVP, YES Securities

This PMAY even applies to non-housing loans, right?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. Yes. Yes. Very much. So as I explained, approximately 80% of our portfolio is floating, so it will apply on the 80% of the portfolio.

Rajiv Mehta
EVP, YES Securities

Got it. Got it. And just lastly, if you can also elaborate on trends in employee attrition?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

So employee attrition across the front end of the business side has been in the range of 28%-29%. Obviously, front end will be slightly higher, and the supervisors are lower. And these are much within the acceptable limits given these are typically front-end direct selling teams.

Rajiv Mehta
EVP, YES Securities

Just lastly, just last question. On this Opex growth, when I look at it on a Y and Y basis, it is also pretty moderate. I'm sure it is coming out from the efficiencies. But what is the incremental headroom of getting more efficiencies from the current cost structure and hence further improving the Opex to asset ratio?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. I think on a lighter way, we should not give everything out in the Q1 itself. But having said that, we are always set on a cost to assets. We would like to drop it by about 10 to 12 basis points. 10 basis points is what we would like to drop. On 12 basis points, we'll be fine. And we have said that on a cost to income, this will look at in the range of about 75 to 100 basis points in a full financial year. I think from investment perspective, I think it is as business as usual. As you would know, our IT programs are fully invested. Our data analytics programs are fully invested.

Distribution is to a great extent fully invested. Whatever incremental investments that we are making in deeper impact offices are pretty asset-light. So I don't think that will have a thing on OpEx. But having said that, at any point of time, if we feel that there are new avenues for growth and we have to sort of invest for growth, considering that we have now growth capital also, I think we will not shy away from that, but overall, we would like to drop cost to income by about 75-100 basis points in the current financial year.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. And Rajiv, if I can come back on the attrition now, I have the final numbers. Overall attrition has been in the range of 35%. If I break it down, the regret attrition is where the company regrets the employee going is 18% only.

Kunal Shah
Director, Citigroup

Okay. Okay. Thank you for answering all my questions, Investec sir.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, Rajiv.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Garg from IIFL Securities. Please go ahead.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Yeah. Hi. Good evening, sir. Congratulations for the good set of numbers. So just have two questions. So how much was the write-off in the Q1 and in the financial 25? And the second question is, any reason for the fall in the Stage 3 provisioning in this quarter vis-à-vis last quarter?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Sorry, I didn't get the second part of the question. You said fall in provisioning. You said provision cover?

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Yeah. Provision cover, yes.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. So as I explained in provision cover, typically what has happened is whatever flows into new Stage 3 in a quarter would typically get provision in the range of about 24%-26%. And that is the reason the provision cover would have come down from, I think, 41% to about 35%-36%. It would be sort of range bound in this range only about 34%-37%. Probably on quarter ends or year ends, when we have a very good quarter in terms of NPA, this may drop down to in the range of about 37%-38%.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Okay, and how much was the write-off in the Q1?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Write-offs in the year was in the range of about INR 7-INR 9 crores.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

INR 7-9 crores. Okay. So are you following any model for this ECL equation? How many years of data you use for this ECL model?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

How many years of data we use? We use five years of data. We use the past five years of data.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Past five years of data. Okay. Okay. Got it, sir. Thank you, sir.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, sir.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, Kunal.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Subhranshu Mishra from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.

Subhranshu Mishra
Research Analyst, PhillipCapital

Hi. Good afternoon. Two or three questions. The first one is around the top-up loan. What percentage of our AUM are the top-up loans? Second is, again, around the top-up loans, what would be the exact mechanism to establish the end use of top-up loans? And third is around the growth that we guided for. So ballpark around 5% to 7% would be inflationary growth in the ticket sizes, and there would be some degree of loss of working days in the entire fiscal year due to the first quarter days loss. So how do we look at to decompose the growth guidance that's being given? Thanks.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Okay. So Rajiv, if I can take the first two questions, and Rajiv will come on and chip in the third part. Top-up loans today stand at about close to 3% of our AUM, which is approximately about INR 600 crores. What do we do in terms of end-use monitoring? Today, we typically take an undertaking from the customer on where he's going to use the funds. But is there a real end-use monitoring mechanism? No, there is not because the ticket size is too small in the range of about 3 to 4 to 5 lakh rupees. And knowing our customer segment very well, creating a house itself is a one-lifetime kind of job for him. So taking a top-up on his existing house and using it for something else is slightly difficult in the segment that we operate.

Having said that, when we talk about home loan and top-up together, we are regulated by LTV, loan to value from the regulator, which is typically, as an illustration, up to INR 30 lakh. Let's say it is 90% loan to value. Instead of using 90%, we use 85% loan to value. And when we do top-up, we do typically top-up on the original valuation rather than the new valuation. So we build our own risk mechanisms around top-ups. And as I told you, the number of top-up, the value of top-up is very small, which is close to 600 crores in the 22,000 crores of book that we have today.

Subhranshu Mishra
Research Analyst, PhillipCapital

Right. And so it's fair to assess that it's not possible to assess the end-use of the top-up loans, right?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

No, it is. I will not say it is not possible to assess the end-use. For example, when we give fresh loan against property, which is equivalent to a top-up program, we monitor the end-use in terms of taking an Udyam certificate from self-employed people that the money is being utilized towards his factory or whatever job he does. So that is quite possible. And for example, there are a certain percentage of consumers who are salaried in nature and take top-up loans. We would typically know that they would be taking for higher education of the child or a medical accident at home. So from an undertaking perspective, it is monitored, rather controlled.

But from a pure end-use monitoring that I should go and give the payment in name of the third-party vendor, etc., that control is, if a regulator would advise us, we would want to build that as we go ahead.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. And in terms of the growth decomposition, I'll try to answer to the best of my capability. I think if you look at home loans, our average ticket size for the whole year last year was ranging in the range of INR 14 lakhs. And we would see probably something like an 8%-9% growth in terms of inflation-led impact on that. But the more important thing is that we do on disbursement basis anywhere between 25%-26% non-home loans. And the non-home loans, if you look at the average ticket size, it has been quite static at around 8.5%. And so 75% will grow by something like 8%-9%, and the balance 25%-26%, which is non-home loan, in that sense, will be static.

The balance growth, which we are guiding of 18%-20%, has to come from our growth-added offices and improved productivity of our front-end staff.

Subhranshu Mishra
Research Analyst, PhillipCapital

Understood. And if I can just squeeze in one last question, what is our strategy of opening a new branch, whether in an established geography, established state, or a new state we are entering? What are the various data points and checks that we do in order to open up a branch?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Okay. So primarily, Subhranshu, we do two things. One is we are already available in most of the states for good five years plus. So our teams there or the senior team members there would typically pull out locations saying that these are potential locations. The list of those potential locations in the beginning of the year, which is typically the budgeting time internally, would move on to the data analytics team. The data analytics team would typically map it against potential across the financial services business in that location. They would map it against delinquencies. They would map it against credit behavior. That is one. Second, it would go to the technical team to map the property types. What are the kind of property segments that are available, and what are the kind of properties that we would be doing? So do we have potential in our segment?

These are the three aspects from where the data comes, which is the business team, the technical team. When I say technical team, it is the property valuation team, which is our in-house team, and the data analytics team. All the three are clubbed together, and that's how we typically choose a new location. Now, when it comes to existing locations where we are already available, to illustrate maybe an example of Jaipur, we are in Jaipur. We typically have a broad strategy, nothing hard and fast. Any location where a branch reaches about close to five crores of incremental business, that's the time we look at the opportunity of opening another branch. For example, in Jaipur today, we have six branches, and we're wanting to open the seventh one. In Delhi, we have eight branches.

In Hyderabad, we have seven branches, and so on and so forth. So in existing locations, while we look at data analytics, but it is more from a perspective of we know the potential, we know the market, can we expand within the state in various, for example, east-west to north-south. So that's how we do it.

Sanjay Chinda
Head of Financial Planning, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Just to talk about the new branches, Chetan told how we decided about the new branches. Rajiv, the deepening is strategy. The strategy of more of a deepening in those states where huge potential is there and my branches that are a little far away from those locations. That's why, after analyzing from data science, business team, and the potential, we go open the branches in those centers.

Subhranshu Mishra
Research Analyst, PhillipCapital

Understood. This was very helpful. Thank you.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, Subhranshu.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nischint from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.

Nischint Chawathe
Director of Research, Kotak Institutional Equities

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I hope I'm audible. Can you share the statewide breakup of your AUM? I think you've discontinued that slide from this quarter. I'm not sure if I understood.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

No worries. I'll give it to you, Nischint. Okay. So broadly, if I can pick up states and give you the AUM breakdown, Maharashtra contributes 13.4% of my AUM, Uttar Pradesh contributes 13.5%, Rajasthan 13.1%, Gujarat 11%, Madhya Pradesh 9.7%, and so on and so forth. So for example, Tamil Nadu 8.5%, AP and Telangana put together about 11%, and that's how it moves.

Nischint Chawathe
Director of Research, Kotak Institutional Equities

Got it. So basically, not much a change is was done.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah, Nischint, and as we have explained right through the last two, three years, our aim and strategy is to ensure our distribution strategy in terms of number of branches as well as our AUM and disbursement should not be more than 15% in any state, and I think we are managing to hold that very well.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

But the broad view is that these two states will be on top, or probably Rajasthan, Gujarat, UP, and Maharashtra would probably be in the range of around 15%.

Sanjay Chinda
Head of Financial Planning, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

UP and Maharashtra will be on top because as per demand scenario of the country, Maharashtra in terms of value, UP in terms of number is always highest and will continue to be the highest. And you have rightly said that our strategy remains the same. Five states used to contribute 62% last year. This year, they are contributing 61%. That shows that certain states which were contributing less, they are now contributing more because of our deepening strategy.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Got it, and southward, I guess the expansion in south would be sort of a little more gradual.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Hopefully gets a little more.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

So, South AP, Telangana numbers I just told you, we are close to about 11% already. Tamil Nadu, we are expanding. In fact, we've created two zones in Tamil Nadu now. Tamil Nadu numbers, I will try and give you. What is the question? Already 9% there. So we are very, very focused on the south location, Nischint.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

If we see that in one or two%, AUM will increase in AP Telangana and Tamil Nadu going forward.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Maybe a data point to add there. One is that we are very sure of in terms of AP, TL, we are very confident and sure. In fact, one of the five states that I spoke about in our deeper impact strategy happens to be AP Telangana.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Got it. Just a little bit of outlook on spreads, and I'm not sure whether you gave an outlook over there, but we are looking at from the yield side, rate hike, increase in share of non-mortgages as in non-home loans. So how do we really see the yields and cost of funding maybe panning out in the fourth quarter this year?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yeah. I'll stick to spreads, Nischint, if you don't mind. I think 6% now. I think as we end the year, we should be broadly in the range of about 5.8%-5.9% exit spreads. And as Rishi has been saying over the, and we have been saying over the last two years, the company has always demonstrated in the past that we are capable of working in a spread range of about 5.6%-5.75%. And over a two-year phenomenon or two-and-a-half-year phenomenon, we may hit that. But currently, one year as we exit the year, we should be looking in the range of about 5.8%-5.9% and probably end up something in the middle of that.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

We're very confident of delivering upward of 5.7% even in the two-year bracket.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

That's it.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Then essentially what you're trying to say is that the cost of borrowing could kind of maybe between the fourth and the fourth quarter go up by around 30-40 basis points, is it?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

To a certain extent, we would see the, as we said, incremental cost of funds. If you look at it, we would see anywhere an increase of about 20 to 25 basis points which would come in. We would obviously try to, because we are yet unsure of the way NHB is going to lend to us, a big combination of the entire cost of fund proportion. And if you remember, the funding that we took from NHB, about 50% of the funding is to come from the AHF scheme, which obviously comes to you at a lower rate of COF. The spreads expand when the COF reduces. But we are yet unsure of how much the AHF will be granted in the current year. And as Rishi had talked about, there are various discussions happening of whether any blended rates could be offered at the NHB level.

We'll have to wait it out for that. But having said that, we have in our internal calculations looked at a 25 to 28 basis points increase. That was also one of the reasons that we took a 25 basis points increase in the RPLR in the month of June.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

NHB funding, if I can extend it, NHB funding, that's something to do with NHB, right? Not with our ability to sort of generate the assets in the CLSS?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

No. It's completely what is to be done at NHB's level. And we are more than happy to take whatever comes our way in terms of, because it is linked back to EWS and LIG. And as you would know, a significant portion of our disbursements and AUM is in EWS LIG.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

For a certain period, EWS LIG.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Sure. Just two final questions. On the banking side, how much, what proportion of this 52% is linked to MCLR versus EBLR? And just one final one, if I have to look at coverage on Stage 1 loans, do you really differentiate between home loans and other mortgages?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

We do differentiate between home loans and other mortgages. I will just give you the percentage, but I will just pull out the number which you asked first of MCLR and non-MCLR. 30% of our resets happen on a one-year MCLR. 37% happens on a six-month MCLR, and three months and others are approximately 35%.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Okay. Got it. Got it. And just on the ECL coverage, yeah?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

In terms of stage one, HL would be in the range of just a second, just pulling it out. Stage one, 40 basis points would be NHL, and 27 basis points would be HL.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Sorry, coverage on Stage 1 is 76, right?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

No, no, no. I'm talking about the provision that we carry, 0.27% and 0.4%.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

No, no. I'm just saying that as a percentage, at the company level, on Stage 1, your coverage is 76 basis points. So if I really try to split it between the two verticals, I mean, ideally, I would expect, let's say, home loans to be slightly lower and other mortgages to be slightly higher.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

I wouldn't have this data point exactly. Probably we can circle back to you if you don't mind, Nitesh, on that one.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. No, just one small thing. No, the simple reason is that your growth in other mortgages has gone up, but then your coverage on ECL loans over the last four quarters on stage one has actually kind of come down from 94 basis points to 76 basis points. And this is stage one, so it's probably nothing to do with the asset quality trends, yeah.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Absolutely. I'll just check it out. I'll just come back to you on that one if you don't mind.

Kunal Garg
Team Lead of Credit Risk, IIFL Securities

Perfect. Thank you very much and all the best.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you, Nischint.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Munshi Soni from MK Ventures. Please go ahead.

Hello. Hi. Am I audible?

Yes.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yes, please. You are.

Subhranshu Mishra
Research Analyst, PhillipCapital

Yes. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to know from a long-term perspective, what is our AUM growth guidance for the next three years? And secondly, could you also please break down your portfolio yields by home loans and non-home loans?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Yes. So from a pure guidance perspective, this year, we are anyway speaking about 22%-23% growth on AUM. The way we look at it, three years hence, which is year three from now, we should be in the range of about 20%-21% AUM growth. And then you wanted a breakdown on the incremental AUM yield between HL and non-HL. HL stands at 13.06%, and NHL stands at 16.9%.

Okay, and so our AUM growth would be 21%-22%. What would be the co-lending mix? Is it going to be 20% or?

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

That's right. I think on a direct assignment piece, we would be around 20%. Co-lending is still in its nascent stage. We only do it with one bank. And what is a fresh assignment that you will do in a year, which typically will be in the range of about 8%-9% of our opening book?

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

So at least in the current scenario, DA plays a very important role in our liability mix and strategy. Co-lending, the industry is still observing how it will pan out, and we will move with the industry trend.

Okay. Got it. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take this as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing remarks.

Rajesh Viswanathan
CFO, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

I think thanks a lot for all of y'all to join in on this call on this evening. I know it's a busy season for all of y'all in terms of results. I take the opportunity on behalf of the entire management, Mr. Deo Shankar Tripathi, Rishi, myself, and Sanjay, and the entire team to thank all the participants and for the lively questions that we asked. I hope we have managed to answer all the questions and hope to meet y'all soon with the quarter two results. Thank you very much.

Rishi Anand
CEO and Managing Director, Aadhar Housing Finance Limited

Thank you so much, everyone.

Operator

On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

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