Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Affle India Anuj Khanna Sohum, Kapil Bhutani and 2025 earnings conference call hosted by Ambit Capital. As a reminder, all participants' 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. Ashwin Mehta from Ambit Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Neha. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of Ambit Capital, we welcome you all to the Q2 and H1 FY 25 conference call of Affle (India) Limited. I take this opportunity to welcome the management of Affle (India) Limited, represented by Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum, who is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company, and Mr. Kapil Bhutani, who is the Chief Financial and Operations Officer of the company. Before we begin with the discussion, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve some risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide 25 of the company's earnings presentation for a detailed disclaimer. I will hand it over to Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum for his opening remarks. Thanks, and over to you, Anuj.
Thanks, Ashwin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I trust all of you are keeping in good health. In H1 FY 25, we have delivered a landmark performance on all fronts. We have outperformed H1 as well as H2 of FY 24, and we are confidently on track to deliver 20% plus revenue growth in FY 25 and convincingly on track to deliver even greater growth in terms of EBITDA and PAT this year. In Q2 FY 25, we attained our highest quarterly revenue run rate, highest EBITDA, highest PAT, and highest CPCU conversions. We continue to enhance our consumer-centric platform offerings to leverage synergies towards overall operating margin expansion. We delivered stronger-than-ever quarterly EBITDA of INR 1,133 million, a growth of 29.9% year-on-year with robust margin expansion.
We delivered a revenue growth of 25.9% year-on-year and a PAT growth of 37.7% year-on-year in Q2 FY 25. Our CPCU business delivered about 95 million conversions during this quarter at a CPCU rate of INR 57.1 that helped us achieve a CPCU revenue of INR 5,416 million, an increase of 35.2% year-on-year and 4.6% quarter-on-quarter. In terms of H1 FY 25, we achieved revenue growth of 26.8% year-on-year, PAT growth of 34.3% year-on-year. Overall, for H1, our CPCU revenue increased by 36.1% year-on-year. Our CPCU business continues to demonstrate strong growth, underscoring the strength of our unified Affle 2.0 Consumer Platform Stack, fully powered by our Converged AI Supply Cloud. Together, it enables robust cross-platform efficiencies and elevates our ROI-driven CPCU use cases with strong competitive advantages.
With global digital spending continuously on the rise, we see significant opportunities across all our top verticals and key markets, driven by advertisers' increasing commitment to digital channels. India and global emerging markets together contributed 73.4% to our revenues in Q2 FY 25 and grew by 25.3% year-on-year. Developed markets are also experiencing sustained growth momentum. In Q2 FY 25, we saw a robust growth of 27.5% year-on-year in developed markets, which contributed 26.6% to our quarterly revenues, affirming the impact of our strategic realignment and platform consolidation efforts achieved over the last few quarters. Our continued investments in technology and new product use cases are yielding positive results. As we expand our suite of GenAI-powered capabilities, we are also strengthening our competitive moat through our comprehensive patent portfolio.
During the quarter, we were granted two additional patents in the U.S. related to enabling user interactions with live streams such as podcasts via machine learning and optimizing user identification through IDs, thus enabling high-quality consumer engagements. In line with our commitment to best-in-class ESG practices, Affle subsidiaries have achieved ISO 27001:2022 certification, underpinning our proactive implementation of robust data security controls and excellence in our information security management. We have also appointed one new independent director to the company's board in India. With three of our five independent directors completing their tenure next year, we have ensured a phased transition plan to further strengthen our governance. We continue to innovate and expand our tech offerings and use cases, consistently unlocking new client success stories. This time, we have included five case studies in our presentation.
Three of our case studies cover India, Brazil, and Indonesia regions, highlighting our unique capabilities in scaling fintech services across emerging markets. The other case studies highlight our success in driving increased e-commerce usage in the United States through iOS SKAN-based optimizations and our global success in geotargeting high-value gamers to drive conversions for gaming advertisers. Our Affle 2.0 Consumer Platform Stack continues to be recognized as a top performer, and we recently won the Gold Award across mobile marketing platform and e-commerce and Q-commerce categories at the ET BrandEquity MarTech Plus Awards 2024. With that, I now hand over the discussion to our CFO, Kapil Bhutani, to discuss the financials. Thanks. Over to you, Kapil.
Thank you, Anuj. Evening greetings to all. I hope all of you are keeping safe and well. Continuing our strong business momentum in Q2 financial year 2025, we deliver consolidated revenues of 5,429 million, a robust growth of 25.9% on a year-on-year basis and 4.5% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. It was a broad-based growth across industry verticals and across our market. On a standalone basis, India grew by 31.6% year-on-year, while on an adjusted basis, India's growth was about 19% year-on-year. EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 1,133 million, an increase of 29.9% on a year-on-year basis. Our EBITDA margin was 20.9% with an expansion of 65 basis points on a year-on-year basis and 76 basis points on a sequential basis. In H1 FY 2025, our EBITDA increased by 31.8% on a year-on-year basis to INR 2,178 million with an EBITDA margin of 20.5%.
In terms of OpEx, our inventory and data costs stood at 61.1% of the revenue from operations in this quarter, with a sequential reduction of 53 basis points while a marginal increase on a year-on-year basis. As we continue to calibrate our platform offerings on a premium inventory, such points deepen ecosystem-level partnerships in line with our discussions during the previous earnings calls. Our employee costs declined by 3.3% on a quarter-on-quarter basis as our past investment in human resources, coupled with integrated team strategies, have continued to provide us with the efficiencies over the last three quarters, thus normalizing human resource costs for us. Our other expenses stood at 7.6% of the revenues versus 7% in quarter one last year, increasing margins primarily on account of our ongoing investment in business promotion activities and trade events.
Participation particularly required as we expand our product propositions as well as we expand our footprints into newer geographies. We achieved profit before tax of INR 1,135 million this quarter, an increase of 55.1% on a year-on-year basis and 6.5% sequentially. Our profit after tax for the quarter was INR 920 million, making an increase of 37.7% on a year-on-year basis and 6.2% sequentially. Our effective tax rate stood at 18.9% during this quarter, which was in line sequentially. As guided in quarter one financial year 2025, we see this effective tax rate to be a normalized tax rate for us. Our operating cash flows for H1 were 1,459 million with an OCF to PAT ratio of about 81.7%. We continue to prioritize efficient working capital management as there are no material changes in our selection list.
Our strategic investment in platform, people, and low leverage balance sheets have reinforced our competitive position, supported by strong cash flow generation and robust financial performance. As the global digitization accelerates, we are well-positioned to be sustaining our momentum through financial year 2025 and beyond. With this, I end the presentation. Let the floor be open 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 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. Before taking our question, a gentle reminder. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address the questions from all the participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. I repeat, please limit your questions to two per participant. Thank you. The first question is from the line of Ashwin Mehta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Thanks, Anuj. Congrats for a good set of numbers. My first question is that we've seen equalization of growth in India and EM along with the DM growth, which is a positive. So qualitatively, if you can give us a sense in terms of trends in India versus EMs, and how are you seeing the holiday season in 2H pan out across geographies? Do we still see a similar seasonality in 4Q as we have historically seen, or is the pace of customer addition strong enough for that seasonality to not necessarily be there?
Thank you, Ashwin. The results definitely for Q2 have been all-around strong results, be it India and emerging markets overall, including India and developed markets, and we remain very confident about what we can achieve over the long term in terms of sustainable growth momentum across all of these key regions. Especially for this financial year, I have in my commentary also very clearly mentioned that we expect very strong profitable growth for the company, stronger than the revenue growth with margin expansion, and even on revenue growth, over 20% growth for this whole financial year is where we are headed, very, very confidently and convincingly. With respect to the festive quarter, I think the month of October has already gone by, and we have seen strong momentum for this quarter like we typically see.
October, November, December is typically the best quarter of the financial year, even though last year we were able to beat that in Q4. This year, again, we are keeping that outlook that we will have a strong Q3 and a strong Q4, and therefore we are very, very comfortable across all the key regions that we are operating in, the key verticals that we have. I think it's a very privileged position to be in, that we are a very naturally hedged company with a broad-based presence across global markets, as well as within those markets, we have quite a number of verticals that we are addressing. So it's a very good place to be in.
Thanks, Anuj. That's good to hear. My second question is more broader in terms of the key trends that you see under GenAI for advertising, and how are we preparing for the same? Because areas like personalization, content creation, data, and insights all have material implications from GenAI. So it would be good to hear from you in terms of the steps that we are taking to be prepared for this.
Sure. So today, a lot of our product use cases have already incorporated GenAI capabilities within them, whether it is new template, creating vernacular content, ads, as well as keywords, as well as helping our advertisers who may not have all of those vernacular capabilities to, on the fly, using GenAI, creating and curating those assets. So, creation of ads or content or supporting that, because that's something that our GenAI capabilities are already powering some of those use cases. We are also seeing a lot of GenAI implementation and optimization of our operating levers. So as our company is growing and will keep growing in terms of revenue, I think on the operating expense side, we will see some efficiencies of GenAI because perhaps we don't have to go ahead and increase our operating costs that much.
So we will have more productivity from our base of employees, and that would lead to much more margin expansion as we go along. So I think that's another area of positive impact that we're seeing. Now, when we extrapolate this further, let's say into a longer-term vision of how in a GenAI world with all kinds of agents and bots, when you have each one of us might have a personalized GenAI agent representing us as an authentic alter ego, helping us to do certain other things in the digital world on our behalf, on an authentic delegation. Each household may have its own agent, right, from dealing with what the fridge might order for you or deal with other gadgets in the household. And basically looking at every corporation would have a digital agent, every individual would have a digital agent, every household would have a digital agent.
And a lot of these online interactions would happen between human to agent, agents to agents, and so on. Now, as far as one can intellectually map these possibilities, Affle within its context of digital advertising, has deeply mapped these possibilities into the future on what we stand for and what we believe is the best way to curate this future. That roadmap we have built, we have then distilled that into 15 unique intellectual property patent applications that we have already filed, which is on record as of December 2024 itself.
We are clearly showing demonstrable steps to our shareholders that we are preparing forward, not only using GenAI today in our products and use cases, bringing it to the advertisers, but also using it deeply in our operations and enhancing productivity of our teams, but also providing a much longer term, like a five-year forward roadmap to what all could happen here. Are we prepared? Are we thinking ahead? I think the answers lie in the patent portfolio. Some of the clues you can find from there on what Affle is thinking and planning for. I feel at the moment that as far as we could have prepared ourselves, we are ready, and we are future-ready.
Thanks, Anuj. I'll go back into the question queue for any further questions.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deep Shah from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good morning. Thanks for the opportunity. And congrats on a good set of numbers. The first question is around this antitrust regulation which is going on in the United States. So while it might be sub judice, and I don't expect a comment on particular regulation per se, but if you could help us understand how does it impact our industry and in which condition we are better off, because the initial hypothesis suggests that should that condition or should that regulation go through, our condition is actually better because the strength of the leader comes down. But that is the initial hypothesis. Is that true? So your comments on that would be very useful. Second, so when on your term question, when we say 20% growth, you mean for the medium term, right?
Because given how well we performed in first half, this year growth should be much higher. I understand that jump recovery happened third quarter last year, but then we also had the GST, India GST impact on RMG, which took away those revenues, so just a clarification question on near-term that when you say 20%, it's for the medium, right? FY 25 growth could actually be higher given how well the first half has been. Yeah, that's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. Regarding the antitrust case, I think it's very important to understand that we are navigating in an ecosystem where when we approach an advertiser, our customer, they're not asking us, "Hey, how do you compete with Google?" They have a separate budget for what they're spending on Google's platform, and typically, they have a separate budget where they're looking at a team is different, the team that is looking at non-Google, non-Facebook, non-Walled Garden platforms. And those budgets, those teams are different, so we, in many years, have not been asked this question that, "Why should we spend with you? Why should we not spend with Google?" Whereas when investors like you would look at it, you would see it as one whole sort of common space. Having said that, the spaces are sort of interrelated.
I mean, if an advertiser is spending less on the Walled Gardens, then consequently, there would chances are they'll spend more on the non-Walled Gardens, right? And therefore, the thesis is clear that we are net-net seeing a more bullish outlook towards the non-Walled Gardens because it's not only the antitrust issue which is challenging these larger players, but also the data privacy laws, right, across jurisdictions. The data privacy laws are not as worried about Affle as they are perhaps worried about what Meta, Twitter, Google, and platforms like these are going to do in their respective countries, so a lot of these antitrust or data privacy-related regulations and so on are actually strengthening the non-Walled Gardens, right, so platforms like Affle would actually benefit much more.
You can see that in other publicly listed companies in the U.S., I think the performance of some of those companies or the multiples that the investors are putting into their performance is an indicator of that, right? Because people are seeing that, "Hey, in the ad tech space, all these larger macro trends are providing long-term tailwinds to platforms like Affle." And therefore, we are again quite bullish and excited about the global possibilities that we have, including developed market opportunities that we have ahead of us. Regarding your second question, I have learned over all these years that while, as the DNA of our company, we are a super growth-oriented, aggressive growth-oriented company, we are very, very strong in our DNA to defend bottom-line financial fundamentals.
Having said that, being conservative when giving forward outlook of growth and not be going wrong. So giving 20% plus, and that plus is very important, revenue growth outlook for this financial year is an important message. But more important than that is that we are saying that we are convincingly looking at providing greater growth percentage on a data impact in this financial year. The longer-term outlook also, I would say, if you do a five-year modeling for our company going forward, look at it on an annual compounding, top line 20%, bottom line 25%. This kind of annual growth compounding is something that is a sensible modeling to do for our company.
Given what's happening in GenAI, given what's happening with respect to antitrust, data privacy laws, all of that taken into account, I believe this is achievable, it is realistic, and that is what is exciting about leading this company. Thank you.
Perfect. Thanks for your detailed answers. All the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial Limited. Please go ahead. Mr. Swapnil, your line has been unmuted. Please go ahead with your question.
Can you hear me? Hello?
Yes, sir.
Okay. Thanks for the opportunity. So I had a question related to your cost. So on a quarter-on-quarter basis, if you see last two quarters, we have seen some decline in your employee benefit expenses. I understand that you had taken some cost restoration effort decisions over there. So that's okay. What I'm not able to understand is in the balance sheet, your other intangible assets seem to have increased meaningfully over the last couple of quarters. So if you could just address that, that would be my first question. Thanks.
I think you want to take this question.
Thank you. So when we added YouAppi in last year, quarter one, we have started integrating that stack and developing newer models on the YouAppi for a greater integration platform. So YouAppi came in, and you can say the investment in the YouAppi platform started in, say, quarter two last year. You would have seen the spike there. With regards to our potential issue which we raised last year, we had clearly mentioned that we'll be putting additional effort on the GenAI side. And we had clearly marked 50% of our raise in the professional capital towards developing the GenAI technology for a period of time. At the moment, we are not putting up a very great pressure on a great budget on the AI side, but our normal plans on AI development of AI technology is taking shape, and we are increasing our investment a little bit.
So you can say that there is an increase of over 10% on a year-on-year basis, kind of a thing on the intangible side.
Okay. Any forward guidance you would want to give on the capitalization that you're doing?
For this year, for next two, three quarters, this is the growth trend. What you have seen in H1 is going to be the trend for next two, three quarters.
Okay. Got it. And the second question is on your gross margins. So how do you see your gross margins moving in the medium term? We have been around this 61% gross for a decent period of time. I mean, if you can just guide us, will we see some improvement over there, or we should build the current levels of gross margins? Thanks.
So you can build us on the same model as the current quarter, as we have mentioned in last few calls, as we are integrating, as we are going deeper with our premium placements and OEM inventories, right, and our efficiencies are coming in into the bottom line from other line items. And we are happy with the current proportion of the media margin and other margins we earn. And as we are delivering the efficiencies on OpEx and PAT, right? And we believe that in the next two, three quarters onwards, you will see some improvement on the efficiency in data inventory cost also. But at the moment, you can model us for medium term on the same basis.
Got it. Thanks. Thanks both for the questions that I wanted to ask. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks. Hi, Anuj. My first question is, in India, if I look at the e-commerce space, the fintech space, and possibly even the entertainment space now with Zomato probably launching this District, we're starting to see likely a bigger uptake in push to acquire new customers or retarget dormant customers, etc., right? So do you especially benefit from that also in 3Q ahead with the Q-commerce and food tech space in general? So my question is likely near-term as well as more longer-term because I can see e-commerce, fintech, entertainment, all these categories kind of heating up. So that's my first question.
Yes, you may ask your second as well. I'll answer both of them together.
Yeah, yeah, sure. My second question was, in U.S., if I see some of the other digital advertising platforms like AppLovin, etc., they've seen some pretty solid growth rate in the current quarter as well. And the outlook that they've given ahead is also pretty positive. So my question goes outside of the Walled Gardens in the U.S. and digital ads market, could you give a sense of where you're growing relative to the rest of the industry or what you would consider your comps in general? That's my second question. And I also had a last question, which I'll just throw in here. In terms of strategic partnerships that you do, right, are there any OTT apps as such that you think you could do strategic partnerships with and that would be beneficial from expanding your ability to serve ads in general? Those were my three questions. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. Regarding India and e-commerce, fintech, entertainment, gaming, all of these are important verticals that you have named, which cover our E, F, and G categories of verticals. And even hospitality where travel kind of finds its place there, or even healthcare, we are seeing that in most of the emerging markets, not India. Look at Indonesia, look at Brazil, look at Africa. All of these emerging market regions have similar trend lines in these verticals. And it's all about growth. And what is fueling this growth? New smartphone users, existing smartphone users upgrading to higher income levels, higher quality of devices, and so on. Each consumer is doing more volume of conversions, and they are also increasing the average value of those conversions. So the digital transaction space is growing and going up.
All the consumption, all the bread-and-butter consumption, basic things, these are all lifestyles, right? E-commerce, Fintech, entertainment, gaming, healthcare, education. These are fundamental consumptions which will be there on a very broad basis over the long term. Having transactions on that from digital platforms leading to user acquisition use cases, leading to retargeting those users for repeat conversions through the lifetime of their journey, not just driving conversions to online devices, but also trying to drive footfalls of these important consumers to the physical stores or locations of these brands and advertisers. All of these three use cases will continue to thrive for the long term in emerging markets, and we will continue to benefit from it. Talking about United States, and we talked about some macro trends earlier, which we are bullish about.
We also asked about what are the comparable companies, who do we benchmark, who do we follow and track and see what's happening. Certainly, AppLovin, certainly the Trade Desk. One is more focused on CTV, the other one is more focused on gaming. And what's unique about Affle is that we are way more anchored on India and emerging markets at the moment, and we are entering into developed markets in a stronger way, more calibration on that dimension. We have also strengthened our gaming credentials. You'll see the case study that we have introduced in our earnings presentation several times. We have shown gaming case studies. They're very strong. You look at AppLovin, they're talking about their focus areas are gaming.
They talk that they are a gaming company, and then they talk about ad tech, and now they're starting to talk about e-commerce, Trade Desk, very focused on agencies, very focused on CTV. Affle is quite unique. If you look at our direct-to-customers business, over 70% business is direct to the customers and advertisers, the agency component. These agencies are important strategic partners and channels, but we have a good balance overall. I think gaming, CTV, I think we are very well balanced as a company and not over-anchored on one particular country or one particular vertical. Whereas, of course, the U.S. is such a large market that, I mean, while I'm saying it today, let's say next three years, if our U.S. business continues to grow, it will have a dominating effect, right, overall in the company.
So if you see AppLovin or Trade Desk, they are largely the biggest part of the revenue is coming from U.S., and it's anchored on a few key verticals, and that's it, right? Whereas Affle is a much more broad-based de-risked organization today and fast-growing as well. Third question, strategic partnerships. I wouldn't say as much focus on the OTTs at the moment, but we are looking at CTV on a broad basis and seeing right from OEMs or other content partners in CTV. We are looking at it in a much more holistic way from a consumer journey perspective and trying to do strategic partnership where it is appropriate. But I wouldn't name or call out any specific OTT for strategic partnerships.
Got it. Thanks so much. Thanks so much. Those were my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepak from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. So my first question revolves around verticals. I just want to understand, is there any particular vertical that you may want to highlight which should drive the revenue growth in both EM and DM market? And how is your conversation with the fintech vertical in USA?
Thanks for your question, so we look at our categorization of verticals into categories E, F, G, and H, and we enumerate that in our earnings presentations forever, as in since pre-IPO till now, and we are seeing categories E, F, and G are the very strong categories, and H is still catching up. In categories E, we see e-commerce as the leading category, leading vertical. In category F, we see fintech. In category G, we see gaming, so these are the three verticals. Incidentally, the three case studies that we have also highlighted this time are covering these three: fintech, e-commerce, and gaming across different geographies, and we see that these will continue to be strong, resilient verticals. I mean, barring one quarter here or there, one country or the other, I mean, there will always be some hiccups along the way, but those are just hiccups.
And we see long-term sustainable growth in these verticals across geographies. In North America or in the U.S. market, we see fintech as also an important vertical. We do have a few of the customers where we are doing well for them, but we see a lot more emphasis on gaming as well as e-commerce because we are strong in all of these three verticals, right? So we are keeping a balanced approach and going out there and trying to win customers in this area. But I remain very, very positive about the outlook of not only these verticals but the other verticals as well in our overall categories. We see broad-based consumption increasing on digital. Even in developed markets, we see a lot of scope for greater growth.
Okay. And the second question is relatively long-term in nature. Now, as we have done our platform integration, it's a consolidated platform. Would M&A be still a priority for us, or would M&A take a backseat since first we would want to reap the full benefit of this platform integration and then maybe focus on M&A? And would the subsequent acquisition, if at all, if it happens, would the integration be much quicker since now it's in full stack for us?
Yeah. Thank you. So, I think what we have done is, in our integration, I talked about it. In fact, we call it the Converged AI Supply Cloud. That's on the backbone of how we are consolidating, ensuring that we have consolidated our power of all the different platforms and integrations in a certain way and a certain process. I think we have achieved that successfully so far. There's still always work in progress and things that we can improve and do, and we are always working on that.
But in the longer term, I would expect that any other acquisition that we will do, now we feel much more confident, especially after having onboarded YouAppi and integrated it as an organization, as a platform within the Affle group in less than a year, we feel very confident that we can absolutely achieve full integration within one year of any acquisition, make sure that we bring the acquired business to similar levels of profitability, let's say 20% EBITDA or so within the first year. And we see, and we have actually shared that the last time when we did the YouAppi acquisition, we had indicated it, but with some caution because we were just coming at the back of the macro-related unique challenges. But I think we were very successful in demonstrating what we did in YouAppi. So going forward, also we will be looking at acquisitions, certainly.
I wouldn't say that, "No, we are done with it." No, neither am I saying that we are going to focus on this acquisition. It's going to be a carefully calibrated approach. Acquisitions is always and should always be carefully calibrated, and we have a very good track record on that, so there's no reason to not keep pursuing it, but at the same time, what has worked well for us will be what we will do even going forward. We'll be very careful. We'll do the assessment, and our guiding principle to all our investors and analysts who are tracking us is that the acquired business should not put a drag on our bottom line margins or performance. We will make sure that within the first year of the acquisition, we bring it up to speed to 20% EBITDA and so on.
If we are not confident about delivering that, chances are we will not do the acquisition, right? So we look at all aspects of it: strategic alignment as well as bottom line financial fundamentals and the ability for us to integrate it and bring it into our journey. So all of this will be taken into account comprehensively if and when we do another acquisition.
Okay. Thank you.
I hope that answers it.
Yeah. Thanks. So my last question would be regarding CTV.
I'm sorry for interrupting you, sir. I request you to come back for a follow-up question.
Okay.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anmol Garg from DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on a good set of numbers. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, Anuj wanted to understand that in the last few quarters, we have seen our non-CPCU business reduced to now negligible levels. So has this business been classified to CPCU business, or has there been any closures of contracting the non-CPCU part?
Even when we had the non-CPCU business, I had always provided such guidance that we expect this business to graduate to becoming CPCU business, and we educate our advertisers, incentivize our teams to ensure that that happens, right? So the focus has been CPCU business. I mean, it is a single cash-generating unit as an organization. It's a very, very strong business unit. Even when we do acquisitions, you will see that we are always talking about transforming those acquired businesses into CPCU business, so sometimes we have non-CPCU components and so on, and we are aligning it back, aligning it back, and making sure that we are doubling down, tripling down focused on this because we are still, in my view, a very small company. We have a long, long way to go. There's a lot of market share to be won.
There is a lot more territory to conquer in the CPCU business globally. So this is how I would like you to look at it rather than seeing it as, "Oh, something is lost in the non-CPCU part." Not at all. The gain in the CPCU part is where the focus has to be. And if there was anything material that we have lost or something to be concerned about, our governance process would have absolutely disclosed it in the way that we have always brought not only good news but any challenges. So there is nothing that you should spend your energy on over there. We see it as CPCU business is growing fast, is doing well. There's a lot more to be done there. Affle is a focused company. And while it is doing everything on CPCU, it is also very naturally hedged across verticals, across geographies.
That's how I would like you to analyze it and maybe not put too much focus on the non-CPCU part.
Understood. And secondly, if you can indicate if the RMG spends have come back to pre-24 levels, or do you believe that it's still much lower and there is an opportunity that those spends might come back in coming quarters or years?
I think it is different. I mean, when we look at numbers, life becomes easier, right? As in every game, I mean, the ecosystem is evolving, the landscape is evolving, and the RMG segment is evolving. This segment has huge potential for further growth, so there's a lot more to be achieved. I wouldn't say that it has bounced back in the same way to the same extent, but I would just say that where we are today, we are comfortable with it. From here, we see a clear path of growth, so we don't see anything pulling it back at the moment. We see a better, more sensible calibrated growth, let's say, so sometimes you need a bit of a shake-up to settle things back and then have a more robust foundation to build upon, and I think that's what has happened in the RMG segment.
Understood. Understood. Thanks. Thanks, Anuj. That's it from my end.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arun Prasath from Avendus Spark Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Good morning, Anuj. My question is on the balance between the growth and margins that we have so far done beautifully over the last two and a half years, three years. So sometimes you have come out and said that there is an opportunity, so I will a little bit invest more and so that my growth will be higher in the future. And sometimes you have held back this. So right now, where we are in this cycle, are you seeing that the investment is enough and that should pay off for the growth, or is it time to cut back? So a little bit of thoughts on that, please.
Thanks. I think in terms of balance between growth and margin, you pointed out our company has a very strong DNA. I mentioned earlier we are an aggressive growth-oriented company, and we are a very long-term player in thinking 10 years, even 20 years ahead, and many of our discourses and internal conversations with key leadership team members, and at the same time, we have an extremely strong DNA towards, "Okay, how are the cash flows? What is the profitability?", and so both of these aspects are core to the DNA of Affle: growth powered by product innovation, being future-ready, thinking long-term. At the same time, very clearly, what is the daily cash generation, weekly cash generation, monthly cash? I mean, the discipline as well as the ambition. Both of these aspects are there. In terms of balance, you're asking me to choose one or the other.
It is a deep part of who we are. There is no way to say, "Okay, this quarter we focus on this and not that." I think it goes together. Fortunately, for the kind of business that we have, we can actually achieve both. Why? Because it is an asset-like business. It's a tech platform business. On the cost side, if we are having the right kind of talents and algorithms, the cost shouldn't grow that much. And the business should be scalable. So if you're aggressive, get more customers, get more market, more geographies, more verticals, let's get it on board. The only area where we make a clear distinction, and that I would continue to make, it's not about balance. It is business fundamental. There's all kinds of advertising revenue out there. You can go out there and tell somebody, "You know what?
I will make almost nominal margin. Give me your business. Give me 50 million more of the business. I'll get you so many more conversions and so on." There can be loss-making, low margin, or I would call poor quality revenue, and such revenue also exists in the market. Now, we are a disciplined company. We say no to that, so if we are getting a campaign or an advertiser who's basically wanting conversions and not ready to pay the right CPCU price, then we're saying, "Hang in there. We have other advertisers. We can pull the price up." We don't have to take the lower quality of revenue, so we are very clear that we are looking for profitable, long-term, sustainable growth. We are ready to say no to revenue.
We're not trying to just bring you a higher revenue and lower profitability and then saying, "Hey, we'll make money out of it in the future." I'm saying there is no such scenario. And we are very clear that there's enough revenue to make that is profitable today, will continue to be, and we don't have to compromise margin for growth. We will not compromise margin for growth. And that is our DNA. That is who we are as an organization, and I don't think that will ever change. I hope that answers your question, Anuj.
This is illuminating, but I was asking more in specific with respect to, say, verticals. Have you invested enough in all the verticals that you are confident that you don't need further calibration there, or you think there are some verticals where you are weak, so you have to invest and there is a growth available, or maybe in certain places where the competition could be strong, probably need to invest more? So from that perspective, can you help us understand this?
Sure. So in terms of organic investments that we are doing, which Kapil also talked about earlier, that we are constantly improving our tech platforms, we are constantly investing and improving. So we are not saying, "Though we have invested enough, let's enjoy the ride." We are constantly pushing for further improvement. There's a clear roadmap at all points in time. So there is no complacency. There is alertness, and there is ambition to go ahead and keep improving and becoming better and better and better. So in terms of, "Am I comfortable with the level of organic continuous ongoing investments that we are doing?" The answer is yes. Is that sufficient to beat any competitor in the world in any market in the world? I believe the answer is still yes.
In terms of investing to, let's say, strengthen or double down on certain verticals in certain markets and doing acquisitions for that and investing into those acquisitions, I have also answered that we will evaluate it carefully. If we see enough strategic leverage and value in who we meet as a potential acquisition candidate, we will look at it. If we are confident that we can deliver strategic value as well as financial fundamentals, even in that, within the first year, we will go ahead and do those acquisitions. So I think that's my answer to your question. So we are investing all the verticals, and we are constantly investing to improve organically in those verticals.
All right. All right. Second question is on the competition. Maybe we have become at least reasonable sizes in some of the emerging markets and in India. Maybe they are small in the markets. But in these specific markets, India, say, India, Indonesia, and other emerging markets, how is the competition now as compared to, say, two or three years ago? Do you see smaller players getting eliminated and only those survive or becoming bigger? And is there anything advantage we can gain out of it? Because having become bigger in these markets, can we push more and say at a much higher margins, at a much higher growth? Is it a possibility, or we have still not reached that stage in India and emerging markets as well?
I think it's still a work in progress stage in terms of competition. The good news is that most of our advertisers or ecosystem partners, they are evaluating us with all the, let's say, top global players that one would, some of them we named earlier in the call, which one would look at. And we bring in our best people on the ground in all the emerging markets. Whereas most of these other, let's say, global companies listed in the U.S. or in Europe are focused on developed markets, and their best people are fighting the battles in developed markets because there's a disproportionate revenue for those companies from those markets. So they hire maybe one-off here and there country directors in some of these emerging market regions.
And even though they come from these big global companies, their ability to compete against our best people on ground, I think that gives us a lot of advantage in terms of how we execute in emerging markets. So competition-wise, I think we have found ourselves in a good place. We compared with the best and beat them in emerging markets. Then use those credentials and case studies and go and win in developed markets against them and say that, "Look, we are beating them in complexities of emerging markets. Give us a chance in developed markets as well." So I think those kind of competitive positioning is how we are navigating. And at the moment, I would say that the numbers that you see and the growth and the margin expansion is at a sensible, sustainable level.
Thanks, Anuj. Very interesting on this.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Adnan Amboli from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. So thanks for the opportunity. And congrats for the good sets of numbers. My first question is related to any guidance on CPCU rate. You said that the main lever for increasing CPCU rate is basically premium inventory and direct package. So any guidance on that?
Okay. I think I've heard you correctly, even though the voice was a bit muffled.
Sorry, sorry.
No worries. I'll try to answer, but hopefully I'll get it right. In terms of the CPCU rate, what is the most important factor for us to extract better CPCU rates from the advertisers is what we call competitive bidding. So if we have a broad base of customers and they are all fighting to get the same conversion at that time, in that month or in that time of the campaign, then we have the ability to make sure that we can get command a CPCU rate. So that is one of the factors. Create the competitive tension, make sure that they bid higher for the CPCU rate. That's one. Second is, can we take it to unlimited levels of height? No, there is another factor, which is that what is the fundamental value of that consumer's conversion?
What is the lifetime value of that consumer's wallet for this particular advertiser? And if you are converting that consumer for this advertiser, will it make ROI eventually for the advertiser? Right? So those are the kind of parameters and boundary conditions within which we operate. One, get to highest level of margins by making sure there is competitive pricing so that we're selling it at the right price, pushing that right price to a level where the advertiser is still making money. Right? It has to be a win-win proposition, and otherwise it wouldn't work. So I think those are the ranges in which we are working. And to get to the premium users, the premium conversions, which have high lifetime values, go to premium touchpoints.
Go to iOS devices, Samsung devices, go to App Store inventories, go to the right kind of consumer segment to drive premium ROI for the advertisers. But then you also want scale. Right? So it's not just about premiumness. So we are looking at this in a balanced way, and we believe that the CPCU pricing will continue to move in the right direction overall in terms of it will keep inching upwards as we have already done over the last many years.
Perfect. Perfect. Sir, another question is, can you just clarify for me, how does the inventory cost look? So how does the contracted publishers look? Is it like you buy the inventory and pay them upfront, or is it revenue-sharing basis? And second is, how much of the inventory cost is forward-looking? If you can clarify that.
Yeah. I don't know if I can answer everything, and some of that would result in trade secret. But I think it's very clear that we are buying the inventory. We are paying for the impressions or showing the ad, and we are charging the advertisers for driving conversions. Okay? So on one side, we are basically the buyer of advertising space, and on the other hand, we are taking responsibility for driving the end conversions and therefore charging the advertisers against that. In terms of whether it is just the price per impression or effective price per impression, or are we doing a revenue share, I would like to reserve that. In certain publishers, it could be a revenue share. In certain publishers' case, it would be just a clear bidding-based process and using our intelligence and making it happen.
So where we have strategic partnerships, we may do revenue share, but most of the supply sources are connected programmatically. We are bidding for it. We're buying the space. We're using our voice, and we're making sure that we are optimizing and maximizing the outcome for the advertisers at the lowest cost of converting the user. So yeah, I don't know if I missed any of your other questions, but that's as far as I can remember. You're asking me about, oh yeah, you asked about the forward-looking. How much is forward-looking? So I would say at any given time, let's say in India, we are also looking at calibrating deeper to understand those consumers who are non-shoppers today. Right? So in India, there are 700 million, let's say, connected devices. Out of that, what percentage of those devices are shoppers today? We constantly keep predicting that.
And so a good part of the spend goes in that dimension as well, across not only India but other emerging markets. I wouldn't quantify it today, but I would say at least 10%-15% of the cost is forward-looking.
Thank you, sir. Yeah, that answered my question. Thank you.
Thank you. The next follow-up question is from the line of Deepak Rothe from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. So sir, my question revolves around CTV. So as we are talking about more premium inventories and entering into CTV channels, I just wanted to understand what would be your approach to managing the ad latency and buffering issues, which is prevalent in CTV? Because if a consumer doesn't completely engage with the ad and switches between the channel in CTV, that would lead up to higher inventory cost for us. Right?
See, so far, we haven't faced the specific challenges that you're talking about, about ad latency or the switching costs of the consumer. Because the way we look at maybe the companies that are only focused on CTV and there's this one-dimensional engagement point with the consumer, maybe trying to grapple with some of these aspects. For us, CTV is one additional touchpoint in that consumer's life. That consumer is on their mobile phone. They are in their office. They are traveling. They're coming back to their home. They connect to their household. They're still on their mobile device, and they then go on to the CTV. There are multiple mobile devices in the home because there are multiple individuals. Maybe there is one CTV or two in different rooms of the house.
The CTV is one channel to influence the consumer, and the mobile and other touchpoints of the consumer journey are very important to the overall connected device experience that Affle talks about. So in this process, there could be certain challenges, whether it's ad latency or something else. But eventually, what we are talking about is how most of the tech challenges will get overcome over a period of time. And the most important insight, Deepak, is that you and I, as consumers, are going to be on the mobile device, on connected TV devices, other connected gadgets. It's an expected pattern. And Affle's role is not just to look at one channel or the other, but to say, "I'm looking at the consumer centricity of Affle's platform.
We are a consumer platform, and the consumer platform is focused on all connected devices that this consumer will touch with. Right? And maybe on CTV, there could be certain unique challenges. Maybe on mobile, tomorrow, there will be other wearable devices, and they will all go through their journey of consumer adoption and overcoming challenges. But I don't see CTV and ad latency as an issue that we are disturbed by at the moment. Yeah?
And there would be overlaps of customer also. For example, what we are targeting today on mobile-only installer, those will be the same. Some overlap would be where we will be targeting the same consumer on CTV channel as well.
Of course. Yes. I mean, the consumer is the same. You see, I mean, these are. I mean, if somebody's trying to drive a conversion with me, they would say that, "Hey, I mean, you've shown the ad on mobile. Show it on the CTV also." Right? I mean, ideally, it should work like that and to drive the conversion. So we have to look at it in a consumer-centric way versus one touchpoint at a time because that is not the strategic direction that we are taking. We are looking at it as a consumer-centric platform. Wherever the consumer goes, we have to map and provide that engagement point.
Yeah. Thanks, and all the best.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take this as the last question. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you, everybody, for your very insightful questions. We look forward to the festive quarter. I mean, the festivities have happened for Q3, and we have already seen good momentum. But the rest of this quarter is ahead of us, and we will look forward to connecting back in 2025, early 2025, and hopefully with much stronger results and performance as guided earlier today. Thank you and stay well.
Thank you. On behalf of Ambit Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.