Good day. Welcome to Aadhar Housing Finance Q1 FY 2027 earnings conference call hosted by DAM Capital. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Sanket Chheda from DAM Capital. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Very good evening to all of you. We have with us management team of Aadhar Housing to discuss their Q1 results. From the management side, we have Mr. Rishi Anand, who is our MD. Mr. Rajesh Viswanathan, who is our CFO. Mr. Sanjay Moolchandani, who is the Head of FPA and Investor Relations. We also have Deo Shankar Tripathi, who is the Executive Vice Chairman. Without further ado, I will hand the call over to Rishi sir for his opening remarks. We will follow that up with question-and-answers. To you, sir.
Thank you so much, Sanket. A very good evening to all of you. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Aadhar Housing Finance performance for first quarter FY 2027. We start the new financial year on a steady note, continuing the momentum we had built through FY 2026. As you would recall, we had closed the last year crossing a very important milestone of INR 30,000 crore in AUM. In quarter one FY 2027 has been all about carrying that execution rigor forward with disciplined growth, calibrated risk, and continued investment in productivity across our branch network. Our AUM as of 30th June 2026 stood at INR 31,364 crore, a growth of 18% YOY. For Q1 FY 2027, our disbursement of INR 2,036 crore is reported on check clearance basis. Disbursement on check handover stands at INR 2,359 crore, which is on a like-to-like basis growth of 19% YOY.
Effective quarter one, we have taken a step of transitioning our loan accounting to check clearance basis model of disbursement recognition, which is a forward-looking approach. A significant milestone in our commitment to governance, transparency, and putting customer at the forefront. Just reiterating, if we were to compare disbursement on check handover basis, then the disbursement in quarter one FY 2027 is INR 2,359 crore, which is a growth of 19% on YOY basis. This transition needed not only systemic changes but also an alignment of the entire operating model. Having taken this step, as we move ahead, we are firm and strict with our medium-term guidance of 20% AUM growth, 20% profit growth, 17%-18% disbursement growth for the full-year. Next three quarters, we are targeting a disbursement growth of upward of 20%.
Our portfolio continues to remain fully secured and retail in nature, with a balanced mix of home loans, which is at 73%, and non-home loan at 27%. We continue to maintain well-diversified book with an average ticket size of INR 11 lakhs, 60% loan-to-value ratio, which remains within our comfort levels. The salaried segment continues to be 55% of our AUM. Balance transfer out during the quarter in question stood at 5%, which is one of the lowest BTO rates in the last 8- 10 quarters and improved by 20 basis points as compared to Q1 FY 2026, which was supported by a focused retention effort and data-driven customer engagement. On the operating environment, demand for low-income housing finance continues to remain healthy and structurally supported.
It continues to be largely end user based and first-time home buyer driven, particularly in the emerging markets, where we have deliberately built a strong franchise, which gives us comfort that this growth is not speculative in nature. Our approach, as always, has been to protect spreads rather than chase yields, which we are doing by tilting the mix towards emerging branches, by staying disciplined on loan against property, and by continuing to drive productivity per branch and per employee so that operating leverage does the work that pricing cannot. Even after a 15 basis points reduction in our RPLR effective February 2026, our spreads have held at 5.8% as on June 26. On asset quality, our portfolio continues to perform well. Collection efficiency remains strong at 99%. Gross NPAs stood at 1.31%, an improvement of 3 basis points on year-over-year basis.
Stage two comes in at 3.3%, continuing to show an improvement by 40 basis points on a year-over-year basis. As we have said before, the first line of defense for us is always the bounce rate, and this has remained stable throughout the quarter. We remain watchful of two external factors that the broader industry has also flagged. The ongoing geopolitical uncertainty around the West Asia situation and its resulting impact on segments like fuel-dependent trade and travel, and the monsoon outlook, given its bearing on the rural and semi-urban cash flows. Our exposure to NRI-linked customer segment continues to be minimal, and our underwriting teams are tracking lead indicators closely at the branch level, as they always do, rather than making any broad-based tightening.
On distribution, as on June 26, our network stands at 628 branches across 22 states and covering 550+ districts, in line with our calibrated need-based expansion approach. We continue to see most of our new branches, particularly in the smaller deep impact ones, reach productivity level within our expected 9- 15 months window, and that discipline remains central to how we think our cost to income is controlled. Our geographical diversification remains strong, with no single state contributing disproportionately to our AUM. Our approach of combining branch expansion with productivity improvement of existing branches continues to support our sustainable growth. Let me briefly touch upon our AI initiatives. We are institutionalizing AI as Aadhar's operating backbone, a six-layer AI architecture embedded across origination, underwriting, surveillance, collection, and retention with every intent tied to a tracked outcome like NPA, turnaround time, cost to income, retention, and yield.
We are building five proprietary reusable platforms spanning across document intelligence, voice intelligence, decisioning intelligence, and enterprise access layer, and management intelligence that we believe compound into a genuine competitive advantage over a period of time. Overall, Q1 FY 2027 has been a quarter of steady, disciplined execution. We remain confident of delivering our medium-term guidance of 20% AUM, sustained profitability, and industry-leading asset quality while staying alert to the environment around us. Aadhar remains committed to its mission of enabling homeownership for low-income families while delivering consistent and sustainable returns for stakeholders. With this, I would now hand over to Rajesh, our CFO, to take you through the financial performance in detail. Rajesh, over to you.
Thanks, Rishi. Good evening, everyone. I would like to take you all through the financial performance of Q1 FY 2027. In Q1 FY 2027, our AUM has grown by 18% on a YOY basis. Our overall borrowings as on 30th June 2026, stood at INR 20,000 crores compared to INR 16,876 crores a year before this. The growth of borrowings is 19%. The borrowings mix as at 30th June 2026 is 49% from banks, NHB share is 24%, NCD share is 17%, ECB share is 7%, and others is 3%. Our incremental borrowings for quarter one FY 2027 was INR 2,238 crores, which came in at 7.3%. In Q1, fresh NHB borrowings were INR 746 crores at 6.9%, which included an AHF borrowing of INR 149 crores at 4.3%. The exit cost of funds as at 30th June 2026 stood at 7.7% versus 8% a year before.
In terms of fixed and floating nature of our book, 78% of our borrowings and 73% of our assets are on a floating basis. Undrawn sanctions on 30th June 2026 is INR 991 crores. Liquidity as we entered quarter one FY 2027 stood at INR 2,371 crores. Portfolio yield exit is 13.5% in quarter one FY 2027, hence the exit spread stood at 5.8% as at 30th June 2026.
Our cost-to-income ratio for quarter one FY 2027 stood at 36.3%. Included in total expenses is INR 14 crores related to fresh ESOPs, which was granted in January 2026. There's a P&L charge of about INR 14 crores in quarter one FY 2027, which was not there in quarter one FY 2026. GNPA as at 30th June 2026 is 1.31%, as compared to 1.34% in Q1 FY 2026. As at 30th June 2026, our stage 3 provision coverage ratio stands at 34%.
Capital adequacy ratio for Q1 FY 2027 stood at 42.9% for Tier 1 and 0.5% for Tier 2. Our Q1 FY 2027 PAT stood at INR 282 crores compared to INR 237 crores in Q1 FY 2026, resulting in a growth of 19%. Q1 FY 2027 ROA and ROE is 4% and 14.7% respective. The number of employees as at 30th June was 5,671 employees. With this, we open up 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 touchtone 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 Renish from ICICI Securities. Please proceed.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a steady number despite the challenging quarter. Sir, my first question is on the asset yield. I just wanted to understand how we are managing asset yield so well, and that despite a 15 basis point cut impact intense competition, we have been able to sustain yields on sequential basis. What are the things we are doing it differently sort of which is helping us sustaining these yields during such a tough environment? Is it driven by some changes in pricing policy or maybe AUM mix change or different customer segment or maybe different ticket size? Just wanted to understand from you, sir, how we are able to manage yields even in such a tough environment.
Thank you, Renish. Maybe on a lighter note, one correction, that it was not a challenging quarter. I think the quarter was good. While we took a conscious call of looking at disbursement on clearance, I think it was a well-informed call. I would say it was slightly delayed because of the systemic changes that we were wanting to do. Not a challenging quarter. Yes, a Middle East issue, et cetera, has been playing around.
Sir, I was referring to that only.
See, there are two, three things to it, and I referred in my opening speech as well. As an organization, one is we are not overexposed, rather I would not say substantially exposed to NRI loans because of the segment that we deal with. Second is, the pockets where there are certain challenges where NRI exposure is large, our exposure in those states are very low. We follow that thumb rule of no state contributing on AUM incremental disbursement and distribution greater than 15%. That we've been following for the last, I would say five to seven years. Today on hindsight, if I look at the strategy that we had adopted about five years back, it is playing out very well.
Our second strategy on urban and emerging, Renish, is helping us maintain the yields and if you recall a couple of quarters back on the same call we had called out urban emerging strategies.
Yes. Yes, sir.
How this would eventually start balancing out our, not only the yields, but also the ticket size. While in the market we see the ticket size has substantially jumped for a lot of players, our ticket size has moved from INR 10.4 lakhs to only INR 11 lakhs because the emerging has started to play out. Similarly, even on yields, that was your question. Even on yields, while urban sees a little bit of more competition, the emerging locations help us manage the yields.
I think that strategy of our distribution being large enough, we being in Tier 3, Tier 4 locations substantially, and the urban emerging is playing out for us.
Okay. Is this something to do with, let us say, the high-yielding state contribution increasing versus, let us say, the mature market contribution remaining static?
I would not say that because our contribution from all the major states have been stable state. If you look at this particular quarter, and I'll give you an example, our contribution from Delhi has increased slightly, which is a state which gives us lower yield. In spite of that, we've been able to maintain the yield. There is no substantial change in the contribution from any particular states, Renish.
Okay. Great, sir. Sir, my second question is more on a strategy front for medium term. Obviously we keep on hearing from various industry participants about increasing competition in this space and its corresponding impact on the yields. Sir, what is your assessment? If one is to assume that, given the strong historical performance of the space, it will keep on attracting many new entrants, which might be leading to aggressive loan pricing. From Aadhar's perspective, how are we positioned to sustain this 20% growth in medium term and, more importantly, within our spread guidance range of 5.5%?
Renish, even as we speak today, June quarter, we've ended the book yield at, book spread at about 5.8%. We have always guided the market that at any given point in time we will be a company with a spread of 5.5% upward. That is where, again, I will come back to my urban emerging strategy today. Out of the 628 branches, approximately 350+ branches happen to be in the emerging locations. Emerging gives me substantially high yields compared to urban locations. You talk about new entrants coming, then we will have to start looking at which segment they're coming.
They're primarily, as we read the industry, they're coming in the affordable segment. We are one notch below in the low-income segment. Will there be an overlap between what others do and what we do? Yes, there will be definitely a 5%, 5.7% overlap. If our emerging strategy plays out well, which we are seeing early green shoots, it is playing out very well, we are very confident that we will always be a company upward of 5.5%, and that we've maintained over a period of time.
Okay. Got it, sir. Just last thing on the disbursement side. Sir, what is the July disbursement number? Just wanted to get a sense, despite this recognition policy change, how are we placed to compensate or maybe the offset then impact which you had to take in Q1?
Renish, as I told on the opening statement that we have given, if it were a like-to-like disbursement, which means check handover to check handover, our growth is 19%. Since we moved to check realization, obviously the growth numbers are slightly lower. By strategy, the numbers that I have not done check realization moves to quarter two.
Quarter two numbers should be, and there is no reason why I should have a disbelief around it, should be close to 25% or upward of 23%, 24%. As I look at July, we are already at the last day, and we should be hitting a number very close to INR 900 crore.
Okay. I think Q2 itself, you will compensate the loss which we have saw in Q1, I think.
I will not term it as loss, the entire business that is getting carry forward, it generally happens over a couple of quarters. Yes, quarter two will substantially cover up for a shortfall of quarter one.
Quarter one. Okay. Great, sir. Sir, thank you, and best of luck, sir.
Thank you so much, Renish.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Firstly, with respect to this check realization, the impact was only on disbursements or even on the interest income there was a circular which was issued. Was there any impact in terms of the interest income recognition as well in any of the line items in this particular quarter? Any which way, yields are quite flat, it doesn't appear to be there, but just wanted to clarify that. Yeah.
Not major, Kunal. I think we will also start recognizing interest only when the check gets cleared. To that extent, there will be a two, three-day impact. It will not be material.
Okay. Hardly two, three days kind of an impact in the interest income.
Correct.
Okay. Secondly, in terms of the employee cost, not looking at year-over-year, but sequentially, if I look at it, ESOP cost was there last time as well, and it continues this quarter. What could have been the reason for the sequential increase? Last time also, the overall employee cost was higher because of the volume-linked incentives which would have been paid. We have not seen any improvement on the employee cost front. Besides that, what has led to the higher employee cost? Secondly, on the overhead, it appears maybe it's managed very well. It's hardly up 5%-odd year-over-year and also down more than 25% quarter-over-quarter. Was it more like a structural one or again, it has a one-off and maybe the employee cost getting offset by the overhead cost? Yeah.
Basically, on operating cost, typically the fourth quarter, you'll have some contests and competition expenses, et cetera, would get built in over there. That is more of a quarter four sort of an event that will not apply typically in quarter one. Having said that, if we manage to do anything like 10%, 11% growth in the full-year on non-employee cost, I think we would have done a very good job. In terms of increase between sequential quarter on employee cost, that is mainly because of the annual increment, which is typically in the range of approximately 10%- 12%, which would have come in in the quarter one of the current year. Otherwise, there's no chunky item which is basically sitting in the Q1 FY 2027 cost. Q1 FY 2027 versus Q1 FY 2026.
Reason for the 27% increase in the year-over-year basis is predominantly because INR 14 crore to INR 15 crore of quarterly-
Okay. Which is Yeah
which is not there in the last year. If you adjust for that, I think the growth would be approximately 14%, 15% even on employee cost, which more or less is about 11% increment, which we would have given out.
Sure. In terms of this rise in GS2, GS3, would we still say it's more of a seasonal, and we will be able to pull it back through the fiscal because any which way indicated that bounce rates have been stable. Was collection efficiency strong enough and we will be able to pull it back and even 40 basis points of credit cost will eventually come down and the full-year credit cost would settle much lower?
I think if you look at it historically, Kunal, for all of you who track us, if you look at it, this is more of a seasonal quarter. For the last two, three years, this has been a phenomenon that the first quarter credit cost remains between 40-45 basis points. As we end the year, the credit cost comes and settles down at about 23-24 basis points. I think we are fairly confident. Before you look at last year, 1.34% was headline NPE and we ended the year at 1.08%-1.1%. I think we are quite confident of holding the 1.1% level as we end the year. I think that would mean the credit cost will again settle down anywhere between 23-25 basis points.
The reason to ask was couple of players, they have shown very limited increase. They have been able to manage it quite well despite the seasonality. That's the reason for the question.
No, I think, in our case, we normally see quarter one, because of seasonality, going up anywhere between 30 basis points-35 basis points. In our case now, it has gone up by 25 basis points, and 22 basis points rather. We are quite confident of pulling it back to 1.1% level as we end the fiscal, and with the credit cost charged to about 23 basis points-25 basis points on the P&L. Deo, you want to add?
Yeah, I was just adding, Kunal. You know what gives us more confidence is that on a year-over-year basis, a 3 basis points reduction in NPE and a 40 basis points on stage two, that gives us more comfort on how we are going to be ending the year.
Okay. Sure. Got it. Yeah. Thanks. That answers all the questions. Yeah.
Thank you, Kunal.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shreya from Nomura. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is on your liquidity that you mentioned of INR 2,371 crore. In terms of how many months' worth of liquidity you are holding, what would that be? What was it in June? Where did you keep it in March? Is there a pile of liquidity that you did? Any color on how you think the cost of fund would move through the remaining three quarters? That's my only question.
Very important point on liquidity is that if you take the liquidity and you compare it to our overall borrowings, our overall borrowings was INR 20,000 crore. If you look at INR 2,371 over INR 20,000 crore, the percentage will be higher than 10%. Throughout the quarter, we try to keep a liquidity of anywhere between 7%-8%. This typically goes up towards the end of the quarter because there are drawdowns at the end of the quarter. To that extent, you will see a higher liquidity which happens at the end of the quarter. Throughout the quarter, we try to maintain a 7%-8% of borrowings as a liquidity buffer. Coming back to the cost of funds, first quarter has been where we have seen very limited movement in cost of funds. If you look at the way the market public information is there.
There's a general view that the interest rates may go up. We have not seen it happening till the month of July, for example, for us. Having said that, one good thing that we have in our company is that 75% of our assets can be repriced. Typically, if we have any pain on our existing borrowings getting repriced by banks on the floating rate book, we will also, as per our RPLR model and after taking necessary approvals of our ALCO and board, be able to pass it on to our customers if the need be. We believe that at least we don't see that happening definitely in a quarter or maybe two quarters. That is the way we are reading it currently, but things may change.
As we read it currently, we don't see any imminent impacts happening in the current quarter and probably even the next quarter.
Right. Sir, what would be your view on, say, if these interest cost of fund rates remain very volatile, you would want to keep your customers protected and not pass on volatility. What would be your view on that?
See, typically what would happen in a volatile scenario, what will happen is a bank will also not adjust its MCLR so proactively. For example, they will also want to wait it out to see whether it is a permanent impact or a temporary impact. If they feel there's some sort of permanency to the impact, then they will obviously impact the MCLR of that. Incremental cost of funds do keep changing, especially in the capital markets, and that is where we are very specific. Wherever the interest rate there is an opportunity, we go and raise funds in the capital markets. Otherwise, we step away from capital markets. Having said that, as I said, volatility, we do not generally pass it on to customers. We also wait for it to be permanent, and it should hit our balance sheet.
Once the higher interest rates hits our numbers, then only we will pass it on to the customers because we have a very robust RPLR model and it has to pass the stress of the RPLR model before we can start passing on to customers. Any one month or two month impacts, which we see in the model, we generally do not pass it on to the customer. We wait it out and then only pass it on to customers.
Got it. Sir, one follow-up question. What you shared about your strategy of expanding into the emerging markets, say in the markets away from the Tier 1, 2 markets, is there any demand-side challenges that you're facing in those segments? I'm not talking about competition, is there any demand-side challenges in Tier 1, 2 cities that you might be facing in terms of lower number of files coming to the branches, et cetera?
You're talking about Tier 1, Tier 2 cities you're talking about the emerging locations?
No, non-emerging in your portfolio. Tier 1, 2.
Urban locations are growing at a larger speed, that's where I said we'll have to do the balancing with emerging also start to grow at a larger speed. Urban demand is slightly more than what we had expected, at least in the last two quarters that have passed by.
Okay. There's no demand-side issues that you are?
No, not at all.
Okay.
Not that we are seeing any.
All right. Okay. Thank you. This is useful. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Shreya.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ritesh from Investec. Please proceed.
Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is on disbursement recognition. I think in Q1 FY 2025 also we have made some changes with respect to the disbursement recognition. There was a RBI circular at that point in time. Can you help me to understand what was the difference that time and what was the difference this time, which impacted our disbursement?
Yes. Hi, Ritesh. Ritesh, you are referring to the RBI circular which we had implemented in quarter one of last financial year.
Yes, sir.
There, if I can take a minute here to explain, the process is sanction, disbursement, check handover, and realization. These are the four major steps in the journey of how the process happens. Earlier, we used to recognize disbursements as disbursements. The moment it would get disbursed in the system, we would start recognizing the interest. From there, with respect to the RBI circular, we moved to something called check handover. Check being handed over to the consumer. That actually happened in quarter one of FY 2026. Now from the check handover to realization, we realized that there is a gap of anywhere between five to seven days, and we have eliminated this gap of five to seven days and moved to real time realization.
When the check get realizes to either the seller account or the customer account, as the case may be. From there on, we start recognizing the interest. That is the change that has happened this quarter.
Sure. Second question is, how do you think OpEx to AUM trending will, let's say, over the next two to three years for us?
I think from an expenses cost to income, we believe that we still have the ability to drop cost to income by approximately 30 basis points- 40 basis points on a yearly basis. On a cost to AUM basis, I think that will work out to about six to seven basis points every year. If some of the AI projects that we are taking up, which Rishi explained, if that starts pushing in and improves productivity and overall cost benefits, probably we would see some more cost benefits in terms of cost to asset. As of now, we are holding in a cost to AUM range of about six to seven basis points on a yearly basis and cost to income of 30 basis points-40 basis points.
Because if you look at it over the last two years, we would have dropped about 150 basis points on cost to income. When I look at cost to income over here, I'm including the ESOP cost, which would be approximately INR 15 crore a quarter when I'm doing a cost-to-income calculation. If you exclude that, I think our cost-to-income ratio would be in the range of about 33%-34%.
Sure. Last question, sir, just two data keeping questions. One is, if you can share H1 DPD as of end of June 2026. What is the BT out rate for quarter one of 2026?
The H1 DPD is 7%.
BT out.
BT out.
It's 5%.
It is 5%, which is an improvement of approximately 20 basis points. Right? 25 basis points over the same period last year.
Sure, sir. Thank you. That is it from my side.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your touch-tone telephone. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sonal Gandhi from Asian Market Securities. Please proceed.
Thank you for taking my question. My first question was on the NHB drawdown. What I heard was you have done about INR 740 crore, INR 750 crore of drawdown and probably it was at a lower rate. If we exclude that, what will be cost to finance for the quarter?
I think the overall blended cost is INR 750 crore at approximately 6.9%, included in that is AHF of INR 149 crore at 4.3%. I think the remaining INR 500 crore or INR 600 crore would have come in at
Sir, my question is even excluding NHB borrowings.
Excluding NHB borrowings?
Yeah.
Excluding NHB borrowings, I think it will be in the range of about 7.4%-7.45%.
Okay. I think last quarter this was 7.3% or 7%. I'm not sure. Can you just help me with the last quarter number?
The last quarter number, I wouldn't have it exactly now. I'll try to pull it during the call and give it back.
Sure. No worries, sir. My second question was even incremental yields, I think those are gone now. I know you've taken a PLR rate cut. Anything that is helping you? Emerging I understand, but anything apart from that, and how do you see incremental yields moving from here?
Incremental yields, as you would have seen, have remained flat, and I don't see any reason why the incremental yields should drop at any stage. Again, I will come back to the same point, that if we are able to calibrate our urban emerging strategy in the medium term properly, which I don't see reason why it should not, then I don't see any negative movement on the incremental yields, which means my spreads, which we've always maintained upward of 5.5% will be maintained and secured.
Okay.
For example-
Just check that.
Sonal, I'm sorry. Illustratively, urban today gives me yields of anywhere between 11.5%-12%, whereas emerging gives me an yield of anywhere between 14%-14.8%. If this calibration of even if in the medium term I reach 50% of business coming from urban and 50% from emerging, I am able to control the incremental yields.
Got it, sir. The second one is on disbursements. Sir, look at disbursements and other mortgages. I think that is down almost 22% versus home loans. Home loans have still grown. Is there anything that is impacting this growth apart from the recognition of disbursements?
No, Sonal. Non-home loans, slight reduction in the last two quarters, I would say, was a part of the design, given the situation around West Asia crisis and by philosophy, non-housing loans being slightly more riskier. I would say it was a conscious decision that we had taken. There is no specific reason why it should not get back in the coming quarters once the West Asia issue is resolved.
Got it. Do we expect that the growth will accelerate in non-home loans, probably into which?
I will not say that it's going to accelerate, we will get back to normalcy incrementally doing a 70/30 kind of incremental disbursement on home versus non-home.
Okay. That is certain.
Currently it stands at about 76/24, and historically we've been doing 70/30. This differential is on account of certain restriction in certain markets that we have internally adopted.
This should start normalizing from 2Q or this would be a little later in FY 2027?
Ideally, if you ask my view, I should ideally wait for the current quarter to see how the crisis is going to stabilize. From a quarter three perspective, it should be back to normalcy.
Got it. Sir, the other question was, when I look at your AUM per branch, so in Madhya Pradesh, there seems to be a 3% YOY decline, and Telangana is also growing at 5%-6%. I think the other states are doing pretty well, including Maharashtra. Any challenges that you're seeing in these two states, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana, and is it something which is Aadhar specific or it is something to do with the industry?
One is, unfortunately, readily I don't have the data. I don't see any issue because if there was a larger issue, it would have got highlighted. I don't see any issue on decline on AUM per branch. There will be certain branches where we put restrictions, certain states where we put restrictions in terms of which were more export-oriented. There you might see a slight decline. This would be on account of those branches contributing at the overall level.
Got it, sir. For medium-term, you've maintained the guidance. I believe 2Q is going to be pretty good. For FY 2027, should we expect similar sort of AUM growth, 20% and PAT 20%?
Yes, as I indicated in my opening statement, for the current financial year, a 20% growth on AUM, a 20% growth on PAT, and a 17%-18% on disbursement is what we will stand by. The coming quarters, from an incremental disbursement perspective, the next three quarters will be a disbursement upward of or close to about 20%.
Got it, sir. Those answer my questions. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Sonal.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Akhil from Hornbill Capital. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi, Rishi, and congrats on another set of steady numbers. If I look at your branches in the last two quarters, in the last quarter, we opened only five branches, and in this quarter, we've opened only two branches. Firstly, why is that? Secondly, are we still on track for our 40, 50 per year branch opening guidance?
Hi, Akhil. Yes, we are completely on track. There were two reasons. Quarter four, generally, we avoid opening any new branches because it disturbs the apple cart completely. Generally, we do it between quarter two and quarter three because then we give them some time to stabilize. Having said that, we kind of, I would say, not waited out, but we could have opened five, seven branches in quarter one. We restricted to two. As we look at the current quarter and the upcoming quarter, which is quarter three, we stand by our numbers of 45-50 branches.
Okay. We will make it up for the loss that happened in the first quarter.
No, there was no loss. We could have opened five branches. When you open branches, there are a lot of nitty-gritties around it, agreement signing, identification. Towards the end of the month, the month that we are sitting on, towards the end of June, we got a couple of proposals which got moved to July. That's about it.
Got it. If I take your number of INR 2,360 crore of disbursement this quarter, your repayment rate seems to be jumping to around 21%. Did we see higher repayments this quarter? What happened?
No, when you take the INR 2,360 crore of disbursement, you should add the INR 350 crore to AUM also. Once you do that, our overall repayment rate, if you look at it'll be about 16%-16.5%.
Okay. Got it. Just lastly, the accounting change that we have done this quarter, is this an industry practice or are we the first one to do it in the industry?
No, sir. One is there is no change in the accounting. It is about from when do we start recognizing the interest. We have moved from the check handover and disbursement, the old terminologies, to realization. I think everybody, most of the companies, as we know today, have already moved or are in the process of moving to check realization. I think in the true spirit of RBI circular, this was warranted, and we took a little more time because of systemic changes that we need to be done. As I understand, and to answer your question, most of the companies have already moved to check realization.
Got it. Thank you so much, Rajesh and Rishi, and best of luck.
Thank you, Akhil.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Karan Gupta from CAVI Capital. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks. Appreciate the opportunity. Just one quick question on the capital structure. I know this has come up before, but just wanted to get management's current thoughts on this level of capital adequacy that we're maintaining, and are there any thoughts of returning some capital back to shareholders since it's dragging down our ROE significantly?
I think there's no current plan of handing it back to shareholders as of now. We believe we will require capital for growth. That was the intention of raising INR 1,000 crores of primary in the IPO, so that at least for the next three, four years, we are secure for our growth plans. As of now, there is no reason to or there's no thoughts of returning it back to shareholders. 40%-43% capital adequacy, and if you see most of the peer sets, I think most of the peer group of companies who are doing affordable finance is sitting because one element which we have to understand over here is the overall risk rate of the balance sheet.
The overall risk rate of the balance sheet comes in about 45%, and that is one which helps us. In case in future, not that anything is on the anvil, in case in future there is any changes in the risk rates, this can increase our capital adequacy. Further, what we also do from a pure risk management practice, we also set aside capital for operation risk. We have internally calculated about 6%- 7% of capital that we set aside for operating risk as per best practice ICAAP methodology. These buffers are any welcome. Yes, as of now, no plans of returning back capital.
Okay. In that case, where do you expect the ROEs to be maybe two years down the line? What is the spread that you expect to be increasing the ROE sequentially?
Yeah. If you look at spreads, basically, as Rishi has suggested, we believe that over a two, three-year period, we would be ending in the range of about 5.5. There's no appetite to go below that. In terms of ROAs, if you look at our annual ROAs, it typically comes in at anywhere between 4.3% and 4.4%. We believe that is a good stable state ROE to look at. 4.3% is a good stable state ROE to look at. Going by that methodology, I think ROEs, if you look at the full-year ROE of a couple of years down the line, we would be hitting around 17% ROE, which I think is the plan that we are working on.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Parth from DAM Capital. Please proceed.
Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, just one thing I wanted to understand is, how come our BT rates have been so controlled at 5% and have been improving past quite some time? What are the initiatives or the policies which you have implemented some color on that would really help.
Great. Thank you, Parth. Yes, you're right. If I look at quarter one FY 2027 to FY 2026 comparison, we would have improved our BT out rate by 50 basis points. We closed the quarter at about 5%. I would say there is nothing I can't single out one thing that would have impacted our retention efforts. I think it's a combination of a lot of things, right from our customer service teams at various critical branches to our central retention team of about 20-member team. Every consumer who is desirous of moving out to a different company has to go through the retention team. The retention team is completely equipped with a lot of data analytics inputs in terms of segregating the customers into red, amber, green. Where are the customers who can get top off? Why is the consumer going? Is it only because of rates?
There are multiple factors that play around. These teams have been completely supported by giving them delegation on what are the yields they can drop for a consumer who is. That also depends on the MOB spent with us, the bounce rates, et cetera. I would say, Parth, there are multiple things that have gone, and it has taken us a while. Not that suddenly we've reached 5%. These efforts started or the initiative started about two years back, and it's taken a lot of efforts for us to reach the 5% mark. Yes, all the benefit goes to the teams who are doing it.
Yes, sir, understood. That was my only question. Thank you.
Thank you, Parth.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand over the conference to management for closing comments.
Thanks all of you all for joining in at this late evening on a Friday. Thanks to Sanket and the DAM Capital team for hosting the call. As we end the quarter, we are reassuring on our near-term guidance of AUM growth of 20%, next three quarter disbursement growth in excess of 20%, and profit growth of 20%. I'm sure that as the year pan out and as we have more discussions, we will be able to deliver that. Thanks a lot and look forward to the quarter two call. Thank you very much and have a good night.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone.
Thank you. On behalf of DAM Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.