Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Affle India Limited , Q3 and 9 Months FY25 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Dolat Capital. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Olivia. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of Dolat Capital, we welcome you all to the Q3 and nine months FY25 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 Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company, and Mr. Kapil Bhutani, who is 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 risk and uncertainties.
Kindly refer to slide 25 of the company's earnings presentation for the detailed disclaimer on the same. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum for his opening remarks. Thanks, and over to you, Anuj.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I trust all of you are keeping in good health. First and foremost, I must share that I feel deeply honored to be reappointed as the Chairperson of Affle for the next 10 years. Together with the continuing management role as the MD and CEO of Affle, this would ensure credible and long-term entrepreneurial leadership commitment towards Affle's 10x growth journey and the compounding impact on our shareholders' value creation. In Q3 FY 2025, Affle delivered a landmark performance driven by our consistent focus on sustainable growth.
For the first time, we surpassed INR 6,000 million in quarterly revenue, INR 1,000 million in quarterly PAT, and achieved over 100 million quarterly CPCU conversions at the highest CPCU rate till date. During the quarter, we delivered revenue growth of 20.6% year-on-year and a PAT growth of 30.5% year-on-year.
Our focused execution on higher productivity, operational efficiencies, and continuous innovation enabled us to achieve the highest-ever EBITDA of INR 1,314 million and a record 245 basis points EBITDA margin expansion on a year-on-year basis. Our CPCU business delivered 103.3 million conversions at a CPCU rate of INR 57.8, and we earned CPCU revenue of INR 5,968 million, an increase of 25% year-on-year and 10.2% quarter-on-quarter. In terms of nine months of FY 2025, we achieved revenue growth of 24.5% year-on-year and PAT growth of 32.9% year-on-year, and our CPCU revenue increased by 31.9% year-on-year. With global digital spending continuously on the rise,
we see significant opportunities across our top verticals and key markets. India and global emerging markets together contributed 73.6% to our revenue in Q3 FY 2025 and grew by 19.7% year-on-year.
Speaking of developed markets, our strategic initiatives in the recent past to integrate platforms, teams, and operate with a single local entity structure in the US makes us well-hedged, and it de-risked us from any currency risks or tariff risks, thus ensuring business stability. In Q3 FY 2025, we saw robust growth of 23.3% year-on-year in developed markets, and it contributed 26.4% to our quarterly revenue. Our consistent business momentum across geographies and industry verticals has strengthened the market position of our tech platforms. We continue to exceed our performance targets and are confident of delivering 20% plus growth in FY 2025 and sustaining this growth trajectory ahead. The global macroeconomic environment has been marked with uncertainty. However, our industry tailwinds remain intact. Return on advertising spend, known as ROAS, and ROI are more critical than ever before for our customers.
Our unified Affle 2.0 Consumer Platform Stack and our conversion-driven CPCU business model positions us at the forefront of delivering scalable and profitable outcomes for our customers globally. Our focus on innovation and investment in next-gen technologies, including AI, continues to strengthen our competitive moat. As we expand the use cases of our Gen AI tech IP, we are proud to have received a new patent grant in India, further enhancing our comprehensive tech IP portfolio. We received the patent related to system for switching and handover between one or more intelligent agent conversational agents. Additionally, we received one more patent grant in India that was
already granted to us in the US for method and system to utilize advertisement fraud data for blacklisting fraudulent entities. This underscores our commitment towards responsible adoption of emerging AI tech to drive value for our customers.
This quarter, we have included three customer-approved case studies in our presentation. The first case study highlights our unique capabilities in scaling fintech services in India, targeting high lifetime value iOS and iPhone users. The second case study highlights our success in making urban mobility more efficient in global emerging markets with the use of AI-led vernacular strategy. The third focuses on the e-commerce vertical, enabling deep funnel conversions in developed markets. Our Affle 2.0 Consumer Platform Stack continues to be recognized as a top performer and recently won the Best Partner Award at 2024 OPPO Ads Awards,
Silver Award in AI and ML category at the Maddies 2024, Best Use of MarTech at India Digital Awards, and multiple other awards at MMA Smarties APAC.
Finally, as also discussed in the last quarter's earnings call, to strengthen our governance, we have been onboarding new independent directors progressively since last year as part of the transition plan for some of the directors who are completing their term this year. We aim to further augment our culture of tech innovations and entrepreneurial leadership with even deeper commitment towards consistent execution and attainment of our long-term 10x growth goals. With that, I now hand over the discussion to our CFO, Kapil Bhutani, to discuss the financials. Thank you, and over to you, Kapil.
Mr. Bhutani, please go ahead.
Hello. Can you hear me now?
Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, Anuj. Good morning, and hope all of you are keeping safe and well. We have continued to raise our performance bar to conclude Q3 of financial year 25 with the highest-ever quarterly revenue, EBITDA, PAT, and CPCU conversion. In Q3 financial year 25, we have delivered consolidated revenue of INR 6,017 million with a robust growth of 20.6% year-on-year, led by broad-based business growth across key industry verticals and in India, international markets. It also marks our seventh consecutive quarter for sequential growth with a 10.8% quarter-on-quarter increase in revenue.
This highlights our ability to build success off each previous quarter as we continue to execute our strategic initiatives effectively across our business strengths. In Q3, on a standalone basis, India revenue grew by 34.7% year-on-year, while on an adjusted basis, India growth was about 19.8% year-on-year.
We delivered strong growth in operating profit with our EBITDA increasing by 35.9% year-on-year and 15.9% quarter-on-quarter. This resulted in EBITDA of INR 1,314 million, reflecting a margin of 21.8% of the revenue, compared to a 19.4% margin in Q3 last year. As guided in our previous call, we continue to calibrate our platform offerings on premium inventories, touchpoints, and deeper ecosystem-level partnerships. Despite these ongoing calibrations, our unified Affle 2.0 Consumer Platform Stack continues to provide us operational efficiencies across our tech platform, resulting in a further decrease in our inventory and data cost, which stood at 30.3% of our
revenue this quarter versus 61.1% in the previous quarter sequentially. Our employee cost increased by 1.5% quarter-on-quarter but declined by 6.5% year-on-year.
As our past investments in human resources, coupled with integrated team strategies, continue to provide us efficiencies over the last four quarters, thus normalizing our human resource cost. Other expenses stood at 8.3% of the revenue versus 7.6% in the previous quarter of Q2, increasingly primarily on account of ongoing investments in business promotion activities to further capitalize on emerging opportunities across markets and maintain our growth momentum ahead. We continue to deliver higher profits before tax. We achieved a profit before tax of INR 1,237 million in this quarter with an increase of 48.4% year-on-year and 9% sequentially.
Our profit after tax for the quarters was INR 1,002 million, marking an increase of 30.5% year-on-year and 8.9% sequentially. Our operating cash flow for the nine-month period was INR 2,837 million. We continue to prioritize efficient working capital. As such, there were no material changes in collection days.
Our robust financial performance, supported by a healthy balance sheet and strong cash flow generation, has further cemented our competitive positions in our tech industry. With performance advertising on the rise, we are well-positioned to seize emerging opportunities, driving sustained growth and continued success through FY 2025 and beyond. With this, I end our presentation. Let's open the floor for questions.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and 1 on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star and 2. 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 comes from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital Market Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity and congrats on strong execution. My question pertains to how you see the environment both on the developed market side and the emerging market side. The question specifically wants to highlight how the holiday season for retail space has played out because our commentary that we are hearing from the IT peers is that this has been a very strong quarter and it was a strong holiday season. Similarly, in India, there is a lot of consumption theme buzz right now after the budget announcement. So we saw a very strong Q4 in the previous quarter.
So does, first of all, what is your view on both the side of the economic front? And secondly, how does that should shape up the seasonality for Q4 this time versus last time? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. First of all, I think in terms of the overall trend lines, you can see from our commentary and discussion that it is an all-round, broad-based growth momentum that we have seen for many, many quarters, for many, many years in our company, and this year is no different. What you see here is that in this year, we are also seeing a lot of operating efficiencies coming into play, and that's because of the successful integrations and strategies that we put in place, as well as our very good adoption of AI technologies across the board, helping our customers to get higher ROI and ROAS so that we can defend our pricing,
so while the volume is going up, the business is growing, we are able to also increase our pricing.
I think that is showing the strength and the premium nature of our business. That applies across verticals, across markets, be it India, emerging markets, and even in developed markets. I think that momentum should definitely support our trajectory. Of course, in any advertising business, there is some seasonality. If you look at the historical track record of our company, we've always seen Q3 being the highest quarter and Q4 being flattish or sometimes a little bit lower than Q3. Given where we are today, our goal is to stay inspired. What we did last year was we beat Q3. Even though it was still flattish, but we beat Q3. That was a long-term trend that we could beat.
Yes, seasonality plays an effect in Q3, but we have an overall growth momentum that is also helping us, right?
So when we go ahead and we get more budgets from our advertisers, it's not only about seasonality then. It's about delivering performance, giving them ROI, ROAS. And that becomes a strong case for winning new customers, getting more budgets from existing customers. So we are hoping that Q4 will continue to be in line with what we have seen with Q3 and hopefully expecting more bottom-line efficiencies as we execute. So we are optimistic. And I think it's not only about Q4, but also I think going forward, right, into the next financial years ahead, our commitment to delivering long-term 10x growth kind of goals that we have set for our company is intact.
The thesis is intact. And we are very confident that we are on the right trajectory.
Sure. Sure. Thank you. That's very assuring. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you so much. The next question comes from the line of Vijit Jain from Citibank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Anuj, so if you can talk broadly about how the overall ads ecosystem outside the big guys has changed over the course of the last one year, any interest from your side in acquiring any supply-side platforms or businesses now that it's been about two years since you acquired and integrated YouAppi, and I ask that question because I keep seeing all these commentaries which suggest that having more first-party data or having more end-to-end offerings is attracting a lot of ad dollars, especially in the DM markets. Do you see that overall playing out?
How do you see that playing out, and if you can give an overview from your vantage point, that will be very helpful.
Sure. Well, first of all, Affle, if you look at since pre-IPO till date, whatever published information we have always given to all our investors, one of our key sort of unique aspects is that we offer a unified platform. It's an end-to-end unified platform. And where we make a very specific point that we are unifying and simplifying an otherwise fragmented and complicated digital ecosystem. What are we offering to our advertisers? An end-to-end driven, ROI-driven conversion with consumers, which includes not just the demand side, also the supply side, and all the other technology components that go within the system to deliver the end conversion.
So as a platform, we are clearly a unified end-to-end platform. And of course, we have had greater emphasis from, of course, the revenue comes from the advertisers. So the demand-side platform typically gets a lot of attention.
When you talk about, look at our whole structure, the Affle 2.0 Consumer Platform Stack, that is an end-to-end platform. This is a complete platform. Should we still look for an acquisition, whether on demand side or on supply side? That depends on many factors. Now, typically, if you look at all our acquisitions have had long gestation periods. You may have seen a lot of acquisitions done since IPO, but we are very selective. We always wait for the right time. We look at the targets carefully. We integrate them fully, maximize them fully, and then we look at what's next. We are going to be careful in terms of what we do in terms of acquisitions next.
But there is no particular gap in terms of our existing platform's capabilities or the comprehensive end-to-end capabilities that our platform today offers into the market. You also talked about that maybe in developed markets is slightly different. I think the fundamental thesis is the same. When we are going out and executing in developed markets, we are looking at premium touchpoints. We are looking at CTV, iOS devices, giving the CTV-led conversion model, differentiating verticalization of our platforms and going into different industry verticals, serving those customers with ROI-oriented outcomes.
And that, I think, is holding us in good stead. Also, the customers are looking at learning from us, right? We are a thought leader in the market.
We're going out there and sharing with them how we can deal with new age Gen AI use cases, whether it is in creative creation, content creation, or even on governance. How do you fight digital fraud where Gen AI could be used in a good way? Could some people, some actors out there could use it in a bad way? Now, Affle is not only creating patents, but also creating use cases, demonstrating that we are doing responsible adoption of AI. So all of these factors, when you put that together, we have a very strong competitive moat and a competitive advantage as we go out and execute.
And this is not something that we are now pivoting towards. We have always maintained this position of our platform since a very long time.
And I mean, all the UDRHPs or the draft presentations, roadshows since that time, I'm talking 2018, since that time till now, we're in 2025, we are consistently talking about an end-to-end platform. And these capabilities are inherent in our approach to the market. I hope that answers your question and the specific thought that in your mind whether we're looking to acquire any supply-side platform particularly.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Anuj Sohum. My second question is just on the employee cost side. I believe the expectation, at least I had here, was there was going to be wage hikes in some geographies, but I see that the employee costs are down 7% YOY. So if you can just explain, is that just ongoing integration efficiencies and those kinds of things, or is there more to it?
Absolutely. So when you look at last year into this year, we have completed the full integration of all platforms. And across markets, we have unified the teams, the entities, and so on and so forth. So there are some efficiencies that have come from there. Of course, people have got appraisals and so on. That's where you see sequentially our cost has gone up. And we do take care of our teams very, very well. We also have a comprehensive stock option plan, which many people are beneficiaries of. So overall, we have a comprehensive structure. The team is super motivated, aligned.
And we are also enhancing the internal operating efficiencies because almost all the teams and departments are leveraging not just the assistance, but the automation and the autonomy that we are deriving from using Gen AI capabilities internally.
So we are able to do a lot more, a lot faster with the same number of people. So people can get paid more. They can be even more productive. We don't need to increase our workforce dramatically. So we can keep growing our revenues and our productivity without increasing headcount. And I think that you will continue to see, especially in tech platform-driven, scalable companies and businesses. So we are certainly one. And we are realizing the full power of it. It's quite a fantastic thing to have happened to us. And we are unlocking new use cases and new ways to drive even higher productivity.
So everybody is way more productive. And therefore, that leads to employee satisfaction and value creation.
Got it. Thanks, Anuj. Those were my questions. I'll jump back into the queue.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. My questions are mainly growth-related. And I will start off with your emerging markets growth. My back-of-the-envelope analysis says that there has been some tapering of growth in other emerging markets in this particular quarter. Just want to understand, is there any particular reason for that, or is it macro-related? I mean, it would be great if you can just help us understand how does your growth stack up versus the underlying market growth in other emerging markets. And a slight follow-up to that, a similar analysis to your 19.8% growth in India for this quarter versus the broader digital and tech market growth in the country. Thanks.
Right. First of all, I think I'm very satisfied with the broad-based growth and performance of our company. I think the emphasis for us this year consistently has been on deriving not just growth, but growth together with deeper profitability, better pricing, and so on and so forth. So it is not just to be seen in one dimension of growth, but it has to be seen as premium growth, premium conversions, better price conversions, better profitability, and so on and so forth. So we are choosing the business that we want to do in order to achieve the growth that we have while attaining all of those metric points leading all the way down to cash flow, right?
When we work across emerging markets, it's extremely important to know how are you pricing because the customers generally, the willingness to pay for a customer and how promptly they eventually pay to us, all of these factors in terms of our customers, we have a very disciplined execution. A sales team can bring an order, but until we go through the check on all of these fronts, whether the pricing is right, whether the payment terms are right, and so on and so forth, and we make sure all of that is taken care of, then we onboard the business or a campaign. I think that I'm very satisfied about
because that shows disciplined, sustainable, cash flow positive, and profitable growth for our company. That's what we are achieving across markets.
And this discipline is very important because our company is running across so many countries around the world. And therefore, the process to ensure that we are achieving each of these metrics well and therefore delivering sustainable, sensible growth is what you are seeing in the results. There is no other factor to that. So if we look at it one quarter to another, I think you should probably do the analysis back of the envelope even on a broader sense. And you will find that it is sustainable, sensible growth. And there is no real trend of tapering off or any particular concern on that front.
So I, as a CEO, I can tell you I don't have that concern that, hey, we have any area of tapering of growth. I think it's sensible execution that I'm pushing for in the company. And the same goes for India.
I think in India as well, we are always making sure that just because our business volumes are growing, there should be no customer coming out and saying, "Can I get a discount?" or "Can I get a lower pricing?" and so on. We keep it very competitive, very premium, and that sort of approach.
Okay. I get your point on the sustainable profitability improvement as well while pushing for growth, which is, I think, very evident on your gross margin. You have been able to maintain or slightly improve the gross margins. But if I were to just extrapolate that, are you suggesting by any chance that gross margins will keep on improving henceforth? We are close to around 39% right now. Should we see that improvement going ahead? And in pursuit of that, you are okay with slightly less growth versus the broader market growth?
No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, we are a very aggressive company. We are not saying less on anything. It's not always a trade-off. You can see, we have a business plan of achieving long-term 10x growth for our company, and on that business plan, you have to calibrate and say how much growth and what parameters, so for each of those parameters, revenue growth, margin percentage, operating efficiencies, profit, cash flow, we are monitoring all of those metrics in an integrated fashion, right, and therefore, it is very important for us to make sure that we must achieve all of them.
It's not just one of them, and it's not that, "Okay, let's go for margin," and, "Okay, let's go for lesser revenue." No, it's not like that. I think we can get all of it, but we need to be positioning ourselves right.
I mean, if we position ourselves for, "Let's go for right kind of customers who will continue to increase their spend, who will pay us well, who themselves make enough ROI from those consumer transactions that they don't mind paying us what we ask for earning for ourselves," now that's where we are going, right, so give them premium conversions, high lifetime value consumer conversions, and then you can extract the right kind of margin, the right kind of execution, and internal efficiencies come into place. We are looking at it holistically. I don't think it's a necessary trade-off. So far, we have not reached that place in terms of trade-offs, so we have a plan.
We stick to that plan, and if we are achieving that plan with all metrics achieved, that's, I think, the outcome we look for in every result that we're aiming for.
Got it, Anuj. Thanks for the opportunity and all the best. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Arun Prasath from Avendus Spark. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity. Anuj, my first question continues with the previous participant discussion so what I read, what I inferred was that in emerging markets, you don't have probably there are some pockets of challenges in collecting money, and hence you let go of those business outcomes not to take the business and hence that is the emerging markets are kind of growth is lower than the developed markets. Is this a right takeaway from your explanation?
No, I don't think that is correct. I think what is the right way to understand what I said earlier is to say that we are not looking at it only at one dimension. So what we are saying is that there are many kinds of organization cultures, all right? Some companies where sales is king, right? Anybody brings an order, "Okay, let's just take it on," even if it means there is lesser margin or even if it means people think we'll solve the problem later on. Affle culture is not that way, right? While we have sufficient cash, we have sufficient position to take that. But it's the DNA of the company. The DNA of the company is saying that we
will look at all the metrics to be achieved successfully in all campaigns in all markets across all customers.
I think that disciplined execution should not be seen as, "Oh, there is a certain element of this." Let me give you a very simple example. At any given moment, when let's say you are using a device and we can show you one ad, okay? Now, to you as a consumer, we will show you, say, one ad at any one given moment. Which ad should we show? The decision-making algorithm that is working on this is saying, "What is the probability of getting the conversion from this person?" One. And therefore, let's show a particular advertiser's ad. But then you'd also look at which advertiser is bidding at a higher price for that moment.
And if we get a higher price, is that going to translate to higher margin? If it translates to higher margin, will we also eventually get the collection?
So the whole risk management algorithm from first consumer decision-making to conversion decision-making to profitability and margin and cash flow decision is all seeded as part of the algorithmic decision-making, which is made in split seconds, right? So when there is a moment of truth where you are on your device, you're using an app, the algorithm that's working behind is doing all of this calculation in every split moment of decision-making, right? So it's not like Kapil and Anuj are sitting there and just saying, "Okay, let's not take this and take that." Even if we, let's say, take all the business on board and without putting the necessary checks and balances, the technology stack as
well as the DNA of the organization will insist because even the salespeople, they earn commissions only on collections. So even the salesperson is going to check themselves. The algorithm will check.
So this is a sensible, sustainable, profitable growth plan and execution DNA of the company. That's all that I'm saying. Now, I'm not sure why you would want to interpret it as a trade-off between, let's say, revenue or collections or something. But this is the algorithm. This is the DNA of the company.
Does that answer your question, Arun? Hello, Arun. Are you there? Please unmute yourself in case if you've muted yourself.
I'm audible now?
Yes.
Yeah. Anuj, thanks. That's a very broad explanation. But I just wanted to double-click on the disparity in the, I mean, slightly better growth in DM versus EM. Is there any single driver that you would like to point out, say, certain verticals doing well or certain geographies doing well, which is not doing well probably in EM markets? That kind of a.
I would just say that in terms of the organizational emphasis, you would have seen that we were last year turning around developed markets, and therefore there is a certain momentum that it creates, right, in terms of where are you attending more marketing events, where are you investing a bit more sort of efforts in terms of thought leadership and so on, and I think it's just a case of organizational momentum. I don't think it has to be read into anything. We are constantly calibrating towards maximizing growth in all regions, but there could be an effect of the fact that we were so deeply focused on turning around North America.
We're seeing a natural momentum carryover effect of that, and I think that should continue.
I wouldn't read into it as that there is any weakness in one or there is any unique carved-out strength in any vertical in developed markets. But what I'm seeing, it is broad-based growth across all markets. And to me, the trend lines look fairly sensible on a broad basis. Yeah.
Yeah. Understood. Understood. My second question is on our acquisitions, past acquisitions, especially Jampp and YouAppi. Now, would you say that in terms of what you can control and what you can do, you have done completely all that? I'm sure you would have done that. But in terms of output, do you think in terms of, say, margins or profitability levels, do you think we have reached the levels satisfactory to you, or is it still some way to catch up from the rest of the portfolio?
I would say I'm very satisfied with what we have done so far in integrating, turning around acquisitions. I mean, it's not always straightforward. But the kind of conviction with which we have done the integration plans and the outcomes that we have seen, I would say that our team has done a fantastic job of making sure that each of our acquired businesses has been integrated properly. Of course, there were many, many challenges, but also in terms of margin expansion, optimizing for greater growth, or cross-selling, upselling opportunities, the technology stack efficiencies. I'm very satisfied with what we have done.
And I wouldn't change too much in terms of what we're looking out as outcomes. But going forward, I think there are some new opportunities of greater scalability, better efficiencies going forward. And we are still work in progress on that as an organization.
We will keep on tapping into that and hopefully deliver better results as we go along.
Just that in terms of profitability gap, do you think still you can close the gap, or this is the kind of a steady-state level for those acquired platforms like Jampp and YouAppi?
I think there are still. I think the integration is complete. So now I would no longer go and look at it on a piecemeal basis that, "Okay, let's optimize this or that," because once you integrate everything over a period of three to five years, it becomes harder to separate it out and measure it or optimize it like that. But at a holistic, so let's say one whole cash flow generating unit, there are efficiencies to be extracted. And that is to do with various things that I already talked about in my commentary that we are working on and optimizing and making sure that we can be even more efficient than we have been.
I'm very happy with where we are, but there are certain initiatives that are still underway that will extract better efficiencies going forward.
Understood. Understood. Finally, take and squeeze in one bookkeeping question for Kapil. Kapil, just can you give what is the proportion of our revenue coming from invoice, which is fully invoiced and billed and received in US dollars or the currencies which are tethered to the US dollars?
Can you clarify the question?
Proportion of revenue billed and received in US dollars or currencies tethered to US dollars?
So the international market business or non-India business is predominantly in USD.
Including in emerging markets? We bill it in USD?
Yes. Most of our entities work on USD except in India, work on Rs. as our functional currency.
So roughly two-thirds of our revenue is billed in US dollars?
Yes. You can say that. Two-thirds of that can be approximate. But yes, because our cost of operation is also in USD, right, the majority of it. And yeah, it's naturally high.
Yeah. So cost and revenue both on USD means at a margin level, any USD that is rupee depreciation should help us at a margin level, not at the top end, not at the cost?
As I mentioned while answering your first question, our cost of entry and data costs are also in USD predominantly. If my revenues are 60% on USD, then 70% of my cost is on USD, right? And that naturally hedges us. So there is no major exchange gains or losses which we confront.
Understood. Thank you, Anuj. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Deepak from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. Congratulations on good result and crossing 100 million users. So if I look at your CPC rate, now this is the highest CPC rate we have delivered in this quarter, and we have indicated that in the past also that as we go more premium, this is likely to inch up further, which is showing in the numbers, and those premium inventory come at the premium cost as well. But if I look at your inventory cost per converted user, it has largely remained flattish, Q2 to Q3. So we have managed it very well. So I wanted to understand how did we do that? I mean, is it because we are doing more OEM-level partnerships where we are able to negotiate better ad placements, or is it
less to do with experimenting with marketing campaigns?
What is that which is helping us maintain our inventory cost lower but our CPC rate going higher?
I would attribute that completely to the strength of our platform and algorithm and not to some one-off here or there partnership or cases or a particular category of execution. End of the day, when our platform operates, it looks at consumer conversions without being biased by a particular category of inventory, but at the same time, I think the optimization, because we're talking about billions and trillions of data points being processed and decisions being made on the fly, and the only reason for us to do that efficiently is targeting premium consumers, but also know that premium consumers means that you can't bombard them with ads.
You just want to make sure that you show the minimum amount of ads to get the maximum number of conversions, and that's the job of the algorithm, and I think we're doing it well.
Okay. The second question is to Kapil, sir. So what I could see is that whatever cost we are saving on the inventory front, we're investing back into the business. That's why other expenses is kind of elevated because 20% QoQ growth. Understand that because Q3 is a seasonally strong quarter for us. So going ahead means what could we see the quarterly run rate of these other expenses? Will it come down because it was more to do with seasonality?
As mentioned in our previous calls, we have been focusing on attending a lot of events, right, from, you can say, last five quarters, and you would have seen increase in this line item steadily. We expect that this line item to stabilize or grow a little as our focus to reach out to or convince the customers is going to be there for the next four quarters, right? We want to get into the customers with more understanding of how to get more ROAS or ROI from the campaigns they run with us and how to compare us with other clients, other vendors.
Okay. Then, sir, what would be our then margin target, let's say, going forward in FY 26?
As previously mentioned, that our medium-term targets are that we are looking at a bit of stabilize at around 23% in medium term. PAT and that to be around 17% to 18% in medium term.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Medium term doesn't mean next year. It just means that over the course of the business growth plans of the company, we will obviously keep inching up as we go along.
Thank you. The next question.
At this point, just one line. If you will see last three quarters of last year and this three quarters, this line expense, this is where our emphasis is to reach out to and educate more clients on our business, how we are delivering better than other competitors of ours.
Noted. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good morning, Kapil and Anuj. Am I audible?
Hello. Yes, you are. Thanks.
Yeah. Firstly, Anuj, congratulations for being reappointed Chairman and MD and CEO for the next 10 years. We hope we have the similar journey what we've seen in the last six years as well and maybe more. Anuj, my question one was on the Facebook coming out with Advantage+. Now, it seems a trend where they are enabling their own users or their own advertisers to optimize their campaign. Does this become a competitive threat for us in the sense that they've been trying to not share data, but through AI, they can solve that problem for advertisers? Do you see that as a threat in the long term or if with the walled garden?
Look, I think the fact that each of these platforms have to adapt to the needs of the advertisers seeking higher ROI and higher ROAS and to open up a bit more. I think that is a good trend line. That's the trend line that will help us a lot more because still a lot of the advertisers have the inertia of spending for impressions and clicks versus going for deeper funnel conversions or paying for deeper funnel conversions. I think this is a positive trend line. As far as the advertisers' budgets are concerned, I mean, so far, at least in the last two decades, we have seen that the advertisers' budgets have been
earmarked separately for some of the walled gardens and then a separate bucket for dealing with the non-walled gardens.
And we have seen that the spends on the non-walled garden side, the thesis is clear that it should grow more because the advertisers are over-calibrated on how much they have been spending on Facebook or Google and so on and so forth. So I see that going forward, the balance of power will shift. And as the advertisers become better aware of what's out there, as well as with automation and AI and so on and so forth, we would see a greater amount of budget spends moving out from the organizational inertia because the advertisers today have big teams just working on Google, big teams just working on Meta or Facebook. So a lot of times, the budget allocation is because
of the internal organization structure that we have these big teams. We have to give them that budget.
So I think over the next few years, we will see a transformation there where budgets will balance out more in favor of the non-walled gardens platforms. And we think that we will be significant beneficiaries of that. I don't see a threat with respect to what Meta is doing at the moment. What we see instead is an opportunity that we could go to the advertisers and educate them and say, "Hey, open it up. Open up the budget and let's see. Let the optimization algorithms dictate where the end goal will lead to better performance." Now, let me give you one insight. If you talk to the teenagers today, I think most of them will tell you that they're not using Facebook.
And that's the challenge that I think Facebook needs to relieve, at least in the markets where I have direct connection.
Even in my own family, I see nobody on Facebook is a very, I think, our generation kind of a usage pattern. But I think the youth is not on it. So that's the problem, right? Because the advertisers know that they will go after this particular segment. If you look at emerging markets where there are new rural to urban users who are new smartphone users who are emerging in India and Indonesia or Africa or Brazil and all of these markets, again, those guys are not having that affinity that, "Hey, I'm going to go to social media and post something on Facebook," right? So I think the trend lines are shifting, and a lot of the government regulations clipping the power of some of these bigger platforms for
various reasons, regulatory or otherwise, is actually trends that are working to our advantage.
I'm not seeing it as a threat at the moment at all.
Understood, but even from the point of view, these tools basically enable the internal team of advertisers to become more competitive versus you, where you have that edge today to deliver better ROI based on your tech stack. From an enabler point of view, for these walled gardens, to enable the internal team, does this increase the competition for you between the advertisers' internal team and you to allocate budgets?
Not exactly. So we also give our platforms and tools to those advertisers and the teams. And we are also educating them to say, "Hey, it's competitive bidding," right? So for example, advertiser A is competing with advertiser B to drive conversions on Apple's platform. And so those teams have the tools and the ability to say, "I want to bid higher because I want higher volume." Otherwise, somehow they're not getting enough conversions from Apple's platform if they don't bid high enough. And that's how we are able to maintain our premium pricing, right? Because we have 1,000 advertisers' campaigns live at any given time, and we have to show one ad.
And so I think for a platform like ours, we also empower the advertisers. And we believe that this is not a scenario where the internal teams should not be empowered.
We, in fact, believe that our tools should be more and more self-serve and so on. And then they have to bid and optimize for how much conversions they're looking for, right? So in its competitive bidding, if they price themselves for conversion too low, Apple's platform and algorithm will not serve out their ad campaign because the other advertisers are willing to bid higher and get it. So I think it is very competitive. And we, as a company, have always gone out and empowered our customers, right? 75% of our revenue is direct with customers, 25% of it through agency platforms and so on.
So we are very much advocating that the agencies, as well as the advertisers, their teams need to be empowered, educated, given the tools to real-time see what's happening in their campaigns with full transparency.
And then in terms of the model, they have to, if they want higher volume, they have to pay more. And that's how we are keeping it aligned. So I don't see that as a threat. And the kind of users that Facebook can convert for these advertisers versus the kind of users that we can convert for these advertisers might be very different. So there is no apples-to-apples comparison, right?
Understood. Understood. That's it from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ashwin Mehta from Ambit Capital Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Anuj, congrats on a good set of numbers. So one slightly future question in terms of we were in an era where we used to separate out non-genuine machine traffic and focus on human conversion. But with Agentic AI, you will have machines driving conversion. So how are we preparing for that, and how soon can this emerge as one more mode of conversion?
Thanks for asking that question. I think for the benefit of everybody else, let me be a bit more descriptive. I think what is being said is that when we talk about fraudulent entities, we fundamentally, in the past, would simplify it and say that these are non-human entities, and going forward, there will be a new entity, which is, let's say, authenticated bots or agents acting on behalf of entities, which could be organizations, could be individuals.
And some of those entities might also do some conversions. For example, your fridge might be empowered to place an order for certain groceries up to a certain price limit based on a refrigerator home agent, which is acting on a delegated behalf, where it says, "Okay, it's INR 1,000 every week you can spend on buying groceries." Now, how do you sort of see whether that is an authentic agent, is a non-human interaction, and so on? I think the wild visualization of the future all of us can do. But in terms of adoption curve, let me tell you that the adoption of AI and the adoption of such intelligent agents is
today faster than the adoption that we saw of internet and the adoption that we saw of PCs prior to that, right?
If you look at the technology innovation landscape, and in that, you see how quickly were personal computers adopted, how quickly in organizations, everybody must have a personal computer, how quickly everybody must have a smartphone, to how everybody should be connected to internet. And now the adoption curve of AI or Gen AI by end consumers, right, is clearly faster than all of what we have seen in the technology world. So these possibilities are real, and they will certainly happen. And if you look at our patent portfolio, how we are talking about verticalized, specialized agents, conversational agents,
switching off context from one to the other, how do we take care of fraud in these kinds of contexts where there could be impersonation, right? Where somebody is acting you have an agent, but another agent is acting as if it's your agent.
So all these complexities will certainly come in. And we have to the largest extent built that into our roadmap. It's already indicated in the IP portfolio. Some of the patents are already granted, as I talked about earlier, but we are clearly on that path and keeping ourselves future-proofed and future-ready.
Okay. Sure. Sure. And just one bookkeeping question from Kapil. What was the intangibles capitalization for the nine-month period?
About INR 12 million on the nine months. Yeah. We are in line for the last three quarters.
Okay. Okay. Thanks, Kapil, and all the best.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Chirag Kachhadiya from Ashika Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Chirag, please go ahead with your question and unmute yourself.
So I have just one question. The pace of development and innovation in AI is moving at rapid scale. So do you think in any way it will impact our business model going forward, the way costs are falling and developing LLM and AI that we have witnessed in the past one month? So your thoughts on that.
There are two or three sort of aspects to looking at. When you look at technology progression, so there is technology progression at the fundamental scientific level, right, where people are still building the underlying layers of science to power AI. And initially, the cost of doing that is very high. And then every incremental change, the cost becomes lesser and lesser and lesser.
What we've seen with computing, earlier, those computers were very expensive to make and then became cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, more power inside the hands of the consumer at a much more affordable cost, right? So I think from core scientific progression to what we call applied science, right? So once it goes into application level and you start seeing more and more applications coming in, so those become more bite-sized, more usable, and even a layman, I mean, anybody can start sort of using that. Now, so that's sort of one dimension of the technology curve that we are talking about that's linked to the earlier question from Ashwin as well.
The second part of it is in terms of business model. I think the business model that we are offering is a very fundamental business model.
The fundamental business model meaning that we are taking the risk off the table from our advertisers while giving them full power, transparency, trackability, as well as their ability to decide their budget and pricing. But we are taking the risk factors out of them in the sense that once they get a conversion, that's when they pay. So for example, when Ashwin asked, "What if there is a fraudulent conversion?" right? So when there's a fraudulent conversion, the chances of a non-authentic bot paying on behalf of you to deliver something to you is highly, highly unlikely. But if it does happen, as far as our advertiser is concerned, they would only pay when they receive, right, the ROI.
So I think the point that I'm making is that we are taking the risk off the table from our advertiser side and therefore ability to command premium pricing, conversion-led pricing, taking the onus of technology innovation, dealing with that in comprehensive ways is a defensible and long-term business model, right? When you do outcome-led pricing, that is actually the holy grail of business, right? Where you're telling somebody, "I'm going to deliver you X value." And when you get that X value, then you pay me a proportionate, justifiable, appropriate value from it. And I think that is a very, very strong business model.
And I think that the business model will hold good going forward, especially when the complexities and technology go up, the need for a tech platform like Affle in between to bridge that, to simplify that, and to unify that for the advertisers while keeping them de-risked and saying, "You pay when you make money," is, I believe, defensible. But I will still watch it closely. And if along the way we see that any fine-tuning is required to the business model, then we will keep the market and the stakeholders proactively informed. But at the moment, I think our business model is robust, defensible. It is based on financial fundamentals that shouldn't change. And the need for our tech stack and
platform and to de-risk the advertisers is only going to increase, right? The complexities are going to increase.
There is the need for a tech platform like Affle, and therefore the dependence of advertisers on a platform like Affle and willingness to pay for it, all of that should only become better going forward, in my opinion. But let's wait and see how the world unfolds there.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, please restrict yourselves to one question due to time constraints. The next question comes from the line of Ruchita from iWealth. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. Good morning. So most of my questions are answered. My only question was on the taxation rate. So going forward, what should we assume?
Hi, so we have been consistently saying that our long-term tax rates will be in the range of 19% plus minus few basis points on a long-term basis.
Got it. Got it. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Onkar Ghugardare from Shree Investments. Please go ahead.
Hello. My question was regarding actually a follow-up to the earlier questions asked about tapering of growth. If you see the percentage growth, it has been coming up. Even though you mentioned that you are choosing the growth, which is favoring operational efficiency. So just wanted a thought on that because earlier it was around, say, 28-30%. Last quarter, it was around 24-25%. This quarter is closer to 20%. So just wanted a thought on that and your guidance on that.
I think I'm, first of all, very satisfied with the kind of growth that we have seen, and it is exceeding the growth guidance or targets that we have defined for ourselves, whether it is our internal business plans, which are approved by the board, or whether it is the commentary that we have shared with our investors and stakeholders. So I think that is something that is showing that we are in control of what's happening. We are able to realistically predict the trajectory and to deliver on that. And the fact that we have exceeded on all those expectations, whether it's on revenue growth or on profitability growth or on cash flows and so on,
I think it's a very, very clear trend towards sustainable long-term growth. So our base of business has grown, but we are still in a very, very big addressable market.
And for many, many years ahead, I think we can see this kind of a broad-based, all-round, sensible, sustainable, profitable cash flow, positive growth for our company. If you are feeling that it is tapering off and you're feeling that it's not sufficient, I would request you to recalibrate that based on what you've heard today.
Okay, so you maintained that 20% upwards of 20% kind of growth with expanding margin on a medium-term basis.
Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's how I think we should be modeled. If you're modeling us, look at it as a long-term basis, model us towards the direction of 10x growth for the company and consistent long-term sensible execution, balanced execution in terms of revenue growth and defending margins, improving operating efficiencies, and delivering better than revenue growth on bottom-line growth, right? That's who we are, and that's what we will deliver.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments.
Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today, and I hope this conversation continues, and I look forward to our next call, which will be the end of this financial year, and we hope that the emerging technology trends, as well as the commentary and the case studies that we are providing, is building a deeper understanding and appreciation for the fundamental moat and the business model that we have, so this has been a good discussion. I wish all of you well, and I look forward to the next opportunity to present to you. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Dolat Capital Market Private Limited, that concludes this conference. You may now disconnect your lines.