Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Affle (India) Limited conference call to discuss Q2 FY24 earnings, hosted by Elara Securities (India) Private Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in 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 touchtone phone. Please note that the conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Karan Surani from Elara Securities (India) Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Akshay. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of Elara Capital, we welcome you all to Q2 and H1 FY 2024 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. Kind refer to slide 24 of company's Q2 earnings presentation for a detailed disclaimer. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum for his opening remarks. Thanks, and over to you, Anuj.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I trust all of you are keeping in good health, and I wish all of you a blessed Diwali celebration ahead. H1 FY 2024 marks a significant transformational milestone in our journey at Affle India. We have come a long way since 2000... and we conclude FY 2024 as our eighteenth financial year. Drawing on our past common strength, we are well poised to reach INR 18 billion or 1,800 crores of revenue this year, as we look ahead towards achieving our growth vision 2030. In Q2 FY 2024, we attained our highest quarter revenue run rate, highest EBITDA, highest consumer conversion, and the highest CPC rate.
We continue to enhance our consumer-centric platform offerings, as well as deliver synergies towards overall operating margin expansion, delivering stronger than ever quarterly EBITDA of INR 872 million. We have revenue growth of 21.6% year-on-year and PAT growth of 13.8% year-on-year in Q2 FY 2024. Our CPC business achieved 72 million conversions in this quarter at a CPC rate of INR 55.6. That resulted in CPC revenue of over INR 4 billion or 400 crore, an increase of 21.6% year-on-year. In terms of H1 FY 2024, we achieved revenue growth of 19.8% year-on-year and PAT growth of 16.7% year-on-year. Overall, through H1, our CPC revenue increased by 19.2% year-on-year. Our CPC business continues to be resilient, underlying the long-term sustainable business momentum.
Our strong anchoring in India and global emerging markets enabled us to perform well. Our growth in India and global emerging markets combined was about 20% year-on-year, and almost all of it was organic. Notably, this is despite the fact that there was a pullback effect of about INR 110 million or 11 crore due to regulatory changes towards applicability of GST in the online gaming industry in India. However, this impact was completely offset by an all-round broad-based growth in advertiser spend across other industries in India. If we were to exclude the impact of online gaming industry, our growth performance in India would have been much superior. However, global emerging markets performed really well for us, by about 28% year-on-year, wherein this growth was close to majorly all organic.
We are confident that broader market sentiments in India and global emerging markets will continue to be tagged, and that is almost 70%-75% of our current revenue. Speaking of developed markets now, I'm happy to confirm that our decisive turnaround plan has started to yield positive results, where we expect consistent growth, particularly in the length of H2 FY 2024. And that is despite the pullback effect in the Fintech vertical in the last quarter of about INR 140 million, about INR 16 crores. Our realigned approach towards upselling, cross-selling, integrated consumer platform propositions with emphasis on premium and key resilient verticals, with the highest number of full-time, full-time team members anchored in developed markets indeed, instills confidence in us to deliver broad-based consistent growth from here onwards in developed markets.
Despite the combined impact of INR 215 million or about INR 25 crores from the online gaming in India and from Fintech in developed markets, we delivered the highest revenue and EBITDA ever in this quarter, and our CPC business continues to be resilient and positions us strongly for multi-year growth ahead of us. We are continuously enhancing our strategic modes toward sustainable global market position. I would like to highlight key anchor initiatives that we have undertaken to power our long-term sustainable growth momentum.... The first area I would like to highlight is OEM anchoring partnerships. We are strengthening our strategic partnerships to create a scope deep touchpoints to enable premium use cases across OEM ecosystems and app stores.
We have secured our partnership with Samsung in India, where Samsung's platform sell touchpoint across the premium Samsung Galaxy App Store and discovery service placement, where two phases of development and integration have been achieved as of the last quarter. We are expecting to obtain completion of the most significant phase three in 2023 as well. We have also completed development and integration on Lenovo smartphones across all major international markets, including North America, Europe, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Latin. Next, anchoring Gen AI strategy. We are leveraging our core R&D capabilities and are investing in emerging technologies for our customers globally, with key emphasis on pursuing new tech IP and innovative use cases for responsible integration of generative AI technology. We have recently released our first Gen AI-powered product, which is a multilingual keyword recommendation tool for our iOS Apple App Store search ads advertising platform.
This will automate advertisers pay across search touchpoints and scale iOS user acquisition effectively on Apple App Store and engage with natural audiences who search for apps in their native languages. These are all significant achievements, and we are more ready than ever before with our products, partnerships, and people, and our overall position in the ecosystem is much stronger to unlock sustainable multi-year growth ahead of us. We also want to congratulate all our shareholders and investors. Their trust and support has enabled success in our ongoing strategic fundraise process. Affle secured a commitment letter from GIC Private Limited, which is an entity of the Ministry of Finance, Government of Singapore, for their binding offer to invest INR 7.49 billion or approximately $90 million in our company, and this will definitely strengthen our next four years of strategic growth initiatives.
This is a testament to the confidence in our resilience as a company. That has inspired even greater loyalty in all the Affleites towards ensuring consistent success and value creation for all our stakeholders against all the odds. Continuing to share our customer success stories this time, we have included three more case studies, which are focused on online trading, fashion growth with a consumer approach, and loyalty programs for global FMCG companies. Affle continues to be recognized as an industry thought leader. Our platform was named amongst the top mobile advertising companies in 2023 on Business of Apps. One of our platforms was recognized as a high performer at the G2 Fall Report 2023, as well as won an award in the Connected TV category at Software Advice FrontRunners awards.
Another platform was recognized as the best data technology in EMMAs and won silver in programmatic categories at MMA SMARTIES. With that, I now hand over our discussion to our CFO, Kapil Bhutani, for financials. Thank you. Over to you, Kapil.
Thank you,Anuj , and a very good morning to everyone on the call. Hope all of you are keeping safe and well. In financial year 2024, the company reported revenue from operations of INR 4,313 million, that is, INR 431.3 crores, a growth of 31.6% year-on-year. We delivered abroad their growth of 30% YOY across global emerging markets, including India. Emerging markets continue to be high growth momentum, now driving profit performance. INR 859 billion, that is, INR 870.9 crores, a growth of 19% year-on-year. Our EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 872 million, that is, INR 37.2 crores, an increase of 20.6% year-on-year.
Our EBITDA margin stood at 20.2%, despite the executed consolidation, our EBITDA margin was in the line of 22%, while it improved about 100 basis points on sequential basis. In financial year 2024, our EBITDA increased 17.3% YOY, and EBITDA of INR 2,653 million, which is INR 267.3 crores, while the EBITDA margin stood at 19.7%. In terms of topline, driven by our consistent efforts towards connecting platform strategies and data productivity, our data inventory cost stood at 2.5% of the revenue from operations in this quarter, resulting in improved operational efficiency and better margin realization on year-on-year and sequential basis. Our employee costs as well as other expenses remain relatively stable sequentially and increased by 2.1% and 62%, respectively, on comparable cost basis.
Our operating OpEx stood at INR 663 million, which is 66.8 crores, an increase of 3.8% year-on-year. We had an impact of high interest cost of INR 27 million. That is about 4%, of course, in this quarter, due to new term loan availed by our subsidiary for acquisition of YouAppi business, as well as a higher amortization. The increased amortization was on account of intangible assets that were put in use in this amortization of identified assets of acquisition of YouAppi, and this increase is in line with our historical improved trend. We remain focused on our working capital management, as there were no material changes in our collection risk.
Our associate operating cash flow for H1 stood at INR 989 million, 98 million close, which is close to our target of 3% associate cash ratio for H1. In regards to our commitment received for GIC Ltd, our second subsidiary of Ministry of Finance, Government of Singapore. The utilization of net incentive towards three identified uses and rest towards general corporate purposes. One of the uses is our INR 335 crore towards investing in technology and platform products. Second is INR 23 crore towards inorganic opportunities, and just INR 5 crore towards payment of outstanding liabilities for past acquisition. Please refer to our objects of this issue, detailed disclosure, which is given in our notice of our EGM and is available for consultations as well as mailed to our shareholders.
Given the growth initiatives that Anuj mentioned in this call, we are ready with our generative AI initiatives and are stronger than ever before with our products, platform, partnerships and provisions in ecosystem. We remain confident in long-term prospects. We'll continue to invest to drive sustainable profit growth for FY 4 and beyond. With this, I end my presentation. Let's quickly open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to only use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Karan Surani from Elara Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, Anuj. So question was pertaining to the India business. You mentioned saying that the gaming vertical has led to a lower growth year. But what are the other verticals, you know, that kind of hold well or possibly, you know, could see offsetting negative impact of the gaming vertical? That's one. And secondly, what is the normal case scenario for the India business in terms of growth over the next 2-3 quarters? Because historically, if you look at the growth, it's been, you know, very good at, you know, 20% and 20% plus kind of numbers. So should we assume that for the next 3 quarters, India business could be at mid-teens, low teens?
Thanks for your question, Karan. Well, this is, it is part of my, you know, detailed commentary, but yes, the GST impact on the gaming industry in India, you know, definitely has had a visible impact, and we have quantified it as well, that about INR 11 crore or INR 110 million worth of pullback effect has to be, you know, measured in that sense. And had we got back and you... Or if we were to eliminate the impact of that, and we just see non-gaming to non-gaming comparison, you know, our growth has been very, very resilient. And you know that we are a broad-based company. You know, we have over 10 industry verticals that we have already named for everyone.
In categories, we have EFGH, which includes entertainment, e-commerce, education tech, it includes, fintech, food tech, FMCG. You know, gaming is just one of the categories, and then, you know, of course, healthcare, hospitality, and so on. And a lot of these categories are, you know, having broad-based advertisers working with us, and this is where the strength of Affle is, you know, most clear, and it gives me a lot of confidence as well, you know, matter of pride, that we are, you know, broad-based sufficiently to be able to take the impact of even an INR 11 crore pullback in, in the gaming industry, for us in the last quarter.
And yet, if you see overall, India did really well to keep up and neutralize the impact and also across emerging markets, you know, where we saw broad-based growth across all our industry verticals. Overall, across emerging markets, we were still able to achieve 20% growth year-on-year, mostly all organic, because of this broad-based risk management approach. Now, going forward, on a normalized scenario where there's no one-off event or, you know, surprise events in fact, and, you know, because whenever there is any such surprise event, there will be a little bit of a hiccup until the industry finds its feet again, that particular segment of the industry finds its feet again, get back into a consistent predictable rhythm and pattern. Now, my long-term belief is, and emphasis is very clear....
We have a multi-year growth trend because in emerging markets like India and global emerging markets, the advertisers are under calibrated on digital. Expect 50%-60% of the ads to decisively go to digital in the next 3-4 years. Therefore, we will see broad-based growth trends. Yes, we should calibrate it within that range, around 24.
Right. Thanks. Very useful. The second question was around the international business. So, you know, even excluding UIP, we have seen a better performance in the international business. But, if you can give us some sense in terms of the U.S. business, you know, where is that standing? Because I think we're expecting some kind of turnaround there as well. So what is the kind of growth rate there? What is the kind of traction there are in that supply? And then on the other emerging nations, apart from India.
Sure. So, see, the way to see our business and, of course, our reporting, you know, since pre-IPO to now has been India, international. So we are tracking more color and emphasis around. The way to see it is India, under the global emerging markets and then developed markets of India and emerging markets globally seems to be a lot similar, and that's almost 75% of our business. And then roughly 25% is the developed markets. And in those developed markets, again, we have quantified it that barring one call, all the internal, you know, decisive steps that we have taken to turn around the... all the internal issues of the company, I think that has already been well rested, that we are in a very positive spirit and momentum to go ahead and capture the growth that is there.
In terms of our team, our people on the ground, I think the spirit and motivation, and I'm speaking, I've just come back, you know, from a sales offsite for North America, developed market focus team on, you know, plans for how we continue to grow from here. The pipeline is strong, the spirit is strong. So I think all of those internal issues are gaining steam right now. In terms of the external issues, all the pipeline and the results of all the industry vertical we are addressing in developed markets, in the U.S., are all doing well, except for the one that we again quantified for you in my commentary, where we talked about FinTech.
Because of the interest rates on loans being so high, I think there is an impact in the last quarter itself, we quantified it to be about INR 14 crore. And had that not been the case, you know, and you know, of course, you factor in these things, we're talking about INR 25 crore of revenue, which we could have absolutely, you know, seen coming in the pipeline this quarter because of India gaming and developed market FinTech vertical. Even without those, you know, even without that revenue and the effect that happened, we saw fairly resilient growth across other verticals. And gaming has been a positive vertical in developed markets for us, while of course, in India, that wasn't, you know, so positive in the last quarter.
So I think, developed markets wise, we have a lot of confidence right now that our team, our products, the way we are, you know, providing unique propositions on premium placements, even on Apple's ecosystem, I think we have a very, very strong position. I would say I'm bullish today more than ever before in terms of our position in developed markets. And I say that with, with U.S. as the anchor market, and also, seeing it extend towards Europe as well as Japan.
Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mayank from IIFL AMC. Please go ahead. Mayank? Mayank.
Yeah. Hi, am I on?
Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to... I was wondering, what was the contribution from UEFI during the quarter? Because, last quarter, we had around INR 45 crores of contribution in two months of consolidation. If we just adjust that in this quarter, assuming equal contribution, so INR 67 crores was from UFI, and then the YOY growth rate, you know, falls significantly to 2.5% YOY. And the two main sources of impact that you quantified were INR 11 crores from emerging markets and INR 14 crores from developed markets. So, am I on the right track? Is this right?
So, UIP, it is not very sequential as we are, as Anish mentioned, that we are on to integration path. So there is a somewhat of consolidation of revenue on the UIP side, and, it cannot be seen and consolidated on a linear way as, the last quarter.
Okay. So it may be even-
[cross talk]
So even-
I would say you're doing the math largely correctly, and the way to look at it is that most of the contribution from UIP is obviously towards developed markets. Now, in the developed markets, you know, we have seen a combined effect that we are stronger than ever before. But the fact that, you know, we did quantify that about INR 14 crore in category was a pullback effect in the last quarter. Now, if we take that into the overall account of what we said, so again, the way you have to look at our business is saying India and emerging markets is largely organic growth, and that together is 20%.
Then in developed markets, there is a pullback effect as well, and there is an add up to the fact that you have YouAppi added an additional month, and when you do the math of that, therefore you see developed markets, there is a growth of approximately INR 10 odd crores or INR 10-11 crores, because you see an addition of, you see a minus of INR 14, but you see an addition of around 20+ crores for additional months of YouAppi. And that's how... Because I know you're slicing and dicing it that way, what I would just encourage you to look at it as an outlier with my commentary, is India, global emerging markets, and then 20% year-on-year growth. So what happened in the developed market? There is a pullback effect, about INR 14 crores, and there's an addition of YouAppi .
So I think that's how you look at the math. But, you know, sometimes over analysis doesn't give you the essence of the business. And the essence of the business is that India and global emerging markets have very strong continuous growth, and in developed markets, particularly with YouAppi, now we have revived our position in a situation where we can look at consistent, you know, growth going forward. And I think that is a very important turnaround that we wanted to achieve within this, year. And I think in the last quarter, we will see decisive, very clear numbers, you know, answering what I'm saying right now in words.
Sure, sure. I know in the beginning, in your commentary, you mentioned about some partnership with Samsung. Sorry, I missed that. So could you repeat that, please?
Absolutely. With Samsung in India, I mentioned, and I'm just repeating what I was saying earlier, largely the same words that I've said before. Our partnership is with Samsung in India for their Samsung platform, which has 12 touchpoints across, and including premium Samsung Galaxy App Store and discover services, where we have already completed two phases of development and integrations with their technology and our technology. We have also achieved, you know, absolute clarity that within this quarter, by the end of 2023, we will have the phase three, which is the most significant phase, completely integrated and hopefully to be rolled out.
Sure, sure. Thank you. I have a few questions and then I'll round up again. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Chandrashekar from UBS. Go ahead.
Yeah, hi, good morning. Just a couple of questions from my side. So on the CPCU rate, we have almost come to around INR 56 this quarter. You had previously, previously said that the range would be, say, between INR 55-INR 58 for the year. Just wanted to check if in fact we can kind of hit this upper end of this range or even exceed it. And going forward ahead into the 5 25, et cetera, how do you see this growth in CPCU rates? Is there a kind of theoretical cap at which it stops growing? That's my first question. And second question, I just wanted to kind of get an update on this connected TV space. I think you had mentioned it last quarter.
Just to get a sense of how it is on the ground and what's the business model for this space. Thank you.
Aditya, thank you for the very important questions. I think your question about CPCU and the pricing band of CPCU between INR 55-INR 58, and whether we will hit the upper end of the band is an important question, but not so much from a quantitative lens, but from a qualitative aspect. Please see that what Affle is doing is consistently moving up the value chain to more premium segments of consumers, more premium segments, and touch points, be it through partnership with Samsung on Galaxy Store touch points, BSD, you know, Gen AI-related products, which is addressing vernacular capabilities on the Apple, App Store search ads and so on and so forth.
I think there is a very clear message that is coming out in all our commentary, and that message is directly towards going to the more and more premium segments so that we can deliver higher value to the advertisers, right? When you get them better quality touch points, better quality of consumer audiences, and, you know, greater tech-enabled power experiences, you do better partnerships, you do better pricing, you know. And better pricing almost necessarily means better margins in most business models. I think what Affle is trying to do consistently is to avoid. So we are a fast growth company, and we never allow a fast, you know, increasing revenue base to... We will not want to give that power to our customer to bring the price down, just because they think they're spending more with you.
The only way to defend that is to go more premium. You say, "After that, start becoming more premium, please pay more. We will deliver you more ROI," and that way it all makes business sense. So what you see in our CPCU pricing and what you see in our product and partnership initiatives in my commentary, is influenced in that. We will definitely, consistently inch upward and positive because we are a business company, not just to deliver revenue growth, but deliver profitable, cash flow positive, better margin revenue growth. And I think that delivery will be fine. Because you got to sell at the right price, you got to sell something premium.... and you need to take a defensible mode on those, ecosystem positions. And I think that's what we are doing with that. So thanks for asking that question.
Connected to that is your second question, is the CTV space, and the CTV is an important strategy for us, not only because we are a consumer platform company and a lot of consumer households are going to adopt Connected TV, in emerging markets, in developed markets, it has already happened in a significant way. So you will see more and more Connected TV as one of the influencing touch points to consumers. So you will have smartphone devices in your home, you will have tablets in your home, you'll have Connected TV in your home. And how can we create an integrated consumer experience, to drive conversions for the advertisers? And that's our endeavor. So the Connected TV product has been ready.
Household Sync, which is an important enabler for how Connected TV would connect to other connected devices in the household, is also something that will be out with the market. We have been consistently educating and building thought leadership across emerging markets with our customers. We are seeing positive traction. However, when a user converts to an advertiser, it would necessarily always be with some elements of, okay, there was a touch point on mobile, there was a touch point on Connected TV, and it has to work in conjunction. So it should not be, in our opinion, technology-wise, product-wise, composition-wise, we don't want to segment it out.
We want it to influence consumer platform, where you can connect with the consumer on one additional touch point, which is Connected TV, and may that play a positive role in the consumer conversion that we deliver to the advertiser. I hope that answers your question.
Got it. Very helpful. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arun Prasath from Avendus Spark. Go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity, good morning, Anuj and team. My first question is on the focus that you are having on this OEM partnership in the last couple of quarters. I just, I'm just wondering, this OEM partnership, we always had through Appnext. So what is this this time it's different from what we have been doing or what Appnext was doing for several years? Is it different materially? That means it's the partnership is only differing in the size or it's ultimately it's much deeper. Can you help us understand this, please?
Yes. Thanks for the question. Yes, premium partnerships mean that, you know, that you're moving up the value chain within the partner ecosystem. Okay? So there are different, look, touch points that one can go through. And I can safely say that going into the App Store as an OEM partner and partnering with them on and around the App Store is perhaps the highest premiumness that one could achieve. And this is highlighted in the commentary that I made earlier today. So going deeper with partners means that you are, you know, integrating tech at a deeper level. It also means that you are having a longer term relationship with those partners, a more predictable path for consistent growth, and you're doing higher impact.
Not only is the partner important to us, but we become important to that partner and take it to a new level. What Appnext was doing before was, in my assessment, a very important stepping stone to take on premium partnerships and deeper partnerships, which we have now, you know, brought to a level of maturity that we can now start talking about some of those partnerships, as I have obvious in my call today, like the Samsung one or the Lenovo one, and so on and so forth. By the way, many more, but, you know, I'm only highlighting those that I think are of a level of premiumness or level of impact that would give you a stronger indication to our strategy.
Great. So, which means that we will have a better conversion and predictability of the conversion is also removed uncertainty come for the customer as that's how we should say it?
I think, what it will do for us is, the conversion is always leading to the consumer. But what this is absolutely achieving for us when we have these kind of OEM deeper partnerships, is that it's a message to the ecosystem that Affle as a platform will help the advertisers to reach the most premium segment of consumers, to drive the most premium conversions, and therefore, Affle deserves a higher CPC of, I think, and, you know, deserves a better margin and so on and so forth. And I think that is, that is what premiumness does. And this is, you know, what I was trying to answer to the earlier question as well, when he asked, how is this CPC pricing going to go up?
Arun, the answer is, again, when you go and do premium products, right, where you're solving Gen AI, when you're going deeper on the lower digitization, when you go into the app stores and do deeper integrations and capabilities, when you go to the advertiser and say, "I have all of these products, these partnerships, this ecosystem-level market position, I deserve a better price." And of course, the advertiser would then say, "I'm paying you INR 56 or INR 58 CPC to achieve the ROI that they had in mind in the campaign." I think it makes business sense, and you're right. These partnerships, we are one step deeper and closer to charging more premium pricing to have better margins. And when you look at it with a four-year perspective, you know, can I reasonably say that these are multi-year, long-term business and partnerships? And then the answer is yes, then you will get more rounded, and I think that's why we are bringing it up to your attention.
So, if I translate this in terms of numbers, current margins is still have a lot of potential to go up. Is this the right way of reading this, what you have said?
I think there is already a good, you know, outcome that we have delivered in the last quarter. You see, with all 3 months of UAV fully loaded, and it's less than 6 months since we acquired it, we have delivered over 20% pickup in this quarter. So, and you know, and we all know that any acquired company was, you know, is at the lower level than that. That means minus that, the business is already, you know, on an organic basis, you know, is in a healthier zone of, you know, just about 21%-22%. And that is where, you know, we are constantly striving. And, and it's not just, you know, numbers, right? Numbers is a result of decisive action and clarity of strategy.
Clarity is go more premium, go more deeper, build better products, build, you know, the partnership ecosystem, make sure it is a predictable long-term path, deliver on the higher pricing ROI to the advertisers, and do it one step at a time. And that's how we're doing it. And therefore, I'm feeling that we are in a good order, as well as going into the next year, 2024, with a way more stronger position than we've ever had.
Just to add to what you said, we should look at it from the lens of sustainability and growth, rather than from looking at the margin. What will I say? This discourse is to bring out the sustainability and the growth.
Understood. Second question is on the realization. I understand that recently you have filed your stock exchange filing indicates some broad how you will be using the INR 70 billion, which is coming in. If you look at it, we had a cash balance more than INR 10 billion before this. Now, our cash balances are more, mostly more than INR 12 billion. So I'm just wondering how we can effectively use these resources without diluting ROCEs. What is your vision for this in the near term? As long term, we have much more better things. We can go for acquisitions whenever it is makes sense. But near term, do we find any use for this cash?
So, just to answer on this, if you see the first object of our utilization is on the tech development, and the AI development would not be very significant in one or two years. The time to utilize this money is, say, December 2027, which is about four years from now. So ROC, adjusted ROC or ROCE will not get into action till we have delivered and consumed the amount mentioned in the object clause for the purpose of innovative developments, right? So the impact is going to be very smaller, as we will remain large cash balances for the period of development of over four years.
Okay. All right. All right, Kevin. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ankur Rudra from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, my question is regarding the digital ad market in India. So continues to remain healthy, but there are applications like Truecaller, Daily Hunt, ShareChat, this has seen year-on-year decline or slowdown in ad revenue in 2023, largely driven by a falling CPM and ad impression growth and other videos continues to remain strong. So I wanted to know if these products in the market are underperforming and seeing better growth momentum, and what's going, what's driving the low CPM in for the market?
Thanks, Ankur, for that question. And, yeah, I've been in this business for over 18 years, and I have mentioned this for over the last 5 years to public market since we were on the roadshow of the IPO, that the only way, and I say this again to our industry as well, the only way that these emerging markets, that one could run a 20+% or 25% EBITDA company, is not by selling the commodity of impressions on CPM prices. That business too commoditized, because you're selling. There is in India alone, there are 650 million smartphone users, who on an average, our per capita usage of, you know, time usage of, or data usage of internet on smartphone devices in India would be one of the highest in the world.
The number of impressions generated, all of these kind of ads, is a portion of those impressions. Now, the impression which of the fact that people are using their smartphone devices and generating impressions, this is not where the value lies. The value lies is when you jump into that ocean of impressions, jump in deep, with unique equipment like the mDMP, the mFaaS, you know, deeper with the OEM ecosystem, you know, deeper product with the natural verticalization in there. And then you find those pearls of conversion, where the user has actually converted or delivered an ROI to the advertiser. When you bring that out, then you charge the pricing of increasing CPC rate of INR 56 or so on, to make a 20% return in CPC. That is how the business is differentiated. Now, we are a buyer of impressions.
We are a buyer of impressions from a lot of the publishers, so we know that what is happening. Of course, this is demand and supply economics. There's way more impressions and consumer adoption of digital today than the advertiser has expected than it is. In emerging markets, the total ad spend versus total digital ad spend ratio still has a lot of catching up to do. The consumer has gone into digital big time, so there is a lot more impressions than a budget to buy those impressions. In terms of demand and supply, the impression would go down. And as intelligence becomes more consumer oriented, then the value of each particular placement is, let's say, not as important.
Now, if I can get you converted to, you know, a particular advertiser on a less premium placement, then I will find a way to do that, right? So because that's where optimization comes in and algorithms, AI, machine learning, all of that is working to achieve that. So I wouldn't look into this point with nervousness. I would look at it with deeper understanding, that yes, there is a lot of digital consumption from consumers. There's a lot more ad spend coming from the advertisers into the system. With the right business model, there is a good amount of money to be made. And I think Affle has been doing it for more than almost a decade.
I mean, I do not know of any other ad tech company that is focused 75% on emerging markets and is consistently cash flow positive for more than a decade. And I think that has to do with the strategy. We saw it this way. So you have to sell something more higher value, take more risk, sell something higher value, and run a system which is differentiated. And that is why, you can be sure that Affle will defend its pricing, and we'll continue to charge more and inch upwards at a time to deliver better margin.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Animesh Yadav from Purnartha Investment Advisers. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity and good set of numbers. So, first question, a few quarters back, you know, you shared with us that you have outlined a clear and a concise action plan, and you expected that to turn around from Q2 onwards. So how do you see that, is it on track, and has Q4 numbers come up in terms of your expectation, or is there any gap which is... If you can share and guide us in terms of how do you expect that to reflect in terms of the measurable outcomes for Q3 and Q4?
Thank you. In our commentary, actually, we have already answered almost all of your questions. So let's put it this way. In Q1, it was in May 2023, I announced that we had to do an emergency operation on our developer, internal operation on our teams, and that was the price of action plan, which is the not being started, okay? We took that head on. We thought about it very carefully. We took those steps, and the operation was largely completed within the Q1 by June end, or let's say, by July, the operation was done. The recovery period was, you know, August, September, and so on. In the month of October, I can tell you that we have fully sorted out that operation.
We have fully cured, and we are full guns blazing, the largest motivated team of sales people on the ground in developed markets than we've ever had. And our products, our partnerships, I think we have, we have got a much stronger position than ever before in developed markets. And therefore, I'm confident that we will deliver, consistent, dependable, growth in developed markets from here onwards. Okay. Of course, we cannot change the macroeconomic factors, but what we can do is have strategies to complement, like we have across different verticals in India and global emerging markets. Similarly, in developed markets, we have the same broad-based cross-industry verticals growth strategy. Yes, last quarter, FinTech had a pullback, we could quantify it, and, we had a pullback in media and gaming, we quantify it. And, and yes, deliver, defensible, sensible, bottom line sensible results.
I think this is the time. You know, I'm taking into account that internal issues are fully sorted out, and we are out there to achieve our highest potential. The macroeconomic factor is permitting. We should be doing well consistently. If there is any particular industry vertical where there's any pullback today, we will keep this transparency of quantifying it, bringing it back to you. And, you know, it is measurable, but at the same time, building the trust that, hey, we have a broad-based growth coming in the company, and we will not take it back, you know, one-off here and there. Those are just ups in the journey, which any mature company should be able to deal with, and I think Affle is certainly dealing with it gracefully, and we're going to continue to deliver growth.
... Sorry, I think it will be helpful. Sorry, I'll join it, so that's why it noted. Just to follow up, to Kapil, other expenses look to be a bit high this quarter. So anything specific out of that or like, I mean, just, I mean, it is in line in terms of your expectation?
It is in line with our expectation. You know, the amount which is added is more like, more coming from the acquisition of URP. This is a period where we invest on marketing activity as festive season. So we invest more into the road shows and other things. So this is in line with our expectation.
Thank you.
The next question is on the line of Swapnil from JM Financial . Please go ahead.
Hey, hi, thanks for the opportunity. Couple of questions. First clarification, you mentioned that there was a hit of around INR 11 crore because of the GST changes that have happened in the industry. I just wanted to understand what the changes, INR 11 crore impact you mentioned, was that for the entire quarter, or that was from the time that the GST came in?
Thanks for this question, Anish. This change came in July, and the behavior of the clients changed immediately because they wanted to figure out what will happen. But 8% coming out from the amount positioned by them had a significant bearing. So everybody was calibrating their strategies and waiting for to come in, and it is very immediate. So the impact was in Q2. We will see how much it gets eased out in Q3, and we are yet to see a significant change in the behavior at the moment. So we are in close touch with the clients to see how it impacts Q3 or Q4.
Okay, that's helpful. And second question is with respect to your developed markets trends, right? Now, I was doing some my calculations over here, and I realized that, you know, revenue in developed markets in Q2 was around INR 70 crore. So if I adjust the current revenue that is, you know, if I adjust for the VIP acquisition, and then I added the 14 odd crore impact on FinTech, still, your quarterly revenue is around INR 35 crore. That's a difference of around INR 15 crore on a year-over-year basis, around 30 odd crore on a Q1 since. Now, I felt some kind like, where is this coming from?
I think I've already given the detailed breakup and the analysis of our numbers. What I can tell you absolutely is that in developed markets today, I'm not sure exactly what spreadsheet you're analyzing on. I would encourage that we talk to the investment relations team and get the correct set of numbers. Developed markets today, our revenue, our progression, so it's about roughly 25% of our revenues overall for this quarter is developed markets. That you can already do the math. On a INR 431 crore, 25%, that's the number for developed markets this quarter. You check out, you ask, you add this, you check out the and so on.
Whatever slice and dice you do, I can tell you one thing for sure: Our position, our number of active customers in developed markets on a broad basis, industry versus today, is stronger than ever before. The number of sales people on the ground who are passionate, believing in what we are taking to the market, and they come from companies, and they're top talent in the industry, are very committed and confident that we can deliver growth and success. The pipeline is strong, and there is... By the way, this market is so large in developed markets and numbers, whether you take the numbers you have or what I'm saying, is a very small number. So from a small base, with a competitive product to grow from here is what is most important. So where are we today? We are higher into the market than ever before.
We have solved our issues, internal ones. External ones, we have quantified for you. We have a strong pipeline, and we are going for consistent, progressive growth from here quarter on quarter. And on a small base, in a large market, with a differentiated position and with our entire team, and with the leadership that I've been directly talking to you about it right now today, we are directly on the ground making it happen. So I can tell you that that is the reality on the ground. We can keep doing the same as we have. It's super important to do that, and I've tried my best to give that to you in the commentary today.
Sure, Anish. If you could just clarify the number for developed markets, that's really helpful.
All right. I'll take this slide one more time. Okay? So in this quarter, 75% of our business is India plus emerging markets. Roughly 25% is developed markets. In the developed markets, most, a lot of the competition is coming from the U.S., a little, very little competition from Europe and let's say Japan. But overall, when we look at developed markets, about 25% of our total revenue is there. UFC has been a positive contributor within that and has helped to strengthen our position in developed markets, especially in gaming world. In terms of FinTech, we have already mentioned that AI in development, especially in U.S., was a positive effect, and we have quantified that to INR 18 crore. These are the all in my commentary proactively disclosed, and we can do all the analysis on the past.
What's most important is where are we today, and what does it mean going forward? I think we have given you some detailed insights on that as well.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Austin. Appreciate the question.
The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Am I audible? Firstly, you know, just wanting to your big picture kind of review, of course, you mentioned it in some certain ways. But the mix of business, both in terms of the technology that we offer and the mix of markets and all, what is the best way to understand the potential growth of the various markets, 50-100 size, which in India, other emerging and developed markets, both from near as well as medium-term basis?
See, our long-term growth trends, I will anchor deeply on that. And, you know, had we not been, you know, consistent about our growth vision for 2030, we would have not taken some of those actions that we have always talked about. You know, so I think our growth, our clarity of thought, you know, our confidence in our capabilities, the commitment to pursue it relentlessly and being resilient to changing, you know, dynamics and situations, I think all of that puts us in a position of a lot of strength.
With that big picture view that we have, Rahul, is very, very clear that we are going to continue to keep a strong, broad-based growth trend across our India and emerging markets, and we are going to consistently push for more premiumness, where we can improve our margins, our pricing, and position the ecosystem. Now, the mix of markets, India and emerging markets globally, I think it's fair to see the Indian markets for next, let's say, 2-4 years, will continue to deliver broad-based growth, for the whole industry and, of course, for us. The difference between everyone else and us is that we are gunning for only profit pools in this growth segment, right? So when you see growth coming, okay, digital advertising is going to grow, but not every dollar of growth is worth 20% EBITDA plus operations.
You know, so we have to pick those segments of growth where we see, you know, the profit pools are robust enough, for us to make an ROI for the advertisers. That's where we make margins for ourselves. And so we are very selective about which products and growth we are going for, and with that, we should be able to deliver good growth in India and global emerging markets. In developed markets, we, of course, those markets are called developed because, you know, there's already a lot of growth that has happened. So there is going to be, at a macro level, lesser growth there. However, the addressed markets are large. I would be think small.
We should be able to notch up, you know, and think above our weight to get better growth for our own sales and absolute basis, better than industry average growth in developed markets. So our long-term growth hasn't changed. You also asked about the short term, and I think just purely in the context and acknowledging the fact that our company is going to complete, actually is going to complete 18 financial years at the end of this financial year, I think the spirit to emphasize that we will and we will aim to reach INR 18 billion, which is INR 1,800 crore revenue mark this year, and we are well poised to work towards that direction.
It's largely in this context, very broad for you, that I'm saying that the important thing is the big picture and the tailwinds continue to be favorable with that longer-term view.
I just want to clarify, when you said so you are saying about the potential TAM, or you are talking about this TAM where margin can be achieved even by the expected size, is a very large market.
Your, your voice is not very clear, but, you know, you're asking about the total TAM or the TAM, so the margins are large enough. I'm talking about there is broad-based digital advertising growth that is expected to be very positive for India and global emerging markets. Now, that is something that is in any industry report that touch up is going to tell you that digital advertising is set to grow for many years to come in global emerging markets, because it is under-celebrated versus what it is in developed markets. In China, in U.S., in Europe, I believe that there is more than 75% of the total ad spend is digital. But we are nowhere close in India and other emerging markets to that percentage. So we will see higher calibration of ad spend going to digital.
That is a large total addressable market. Within that total addressable market, Apple makes very clear, calculated decisions about which topics of this growth should we put our revenue? Because we are running from every revenue in the market. If the price is too low, I would rather not take that campaign than to take it, right? So it's very important to run the optimization with the discipline, and the discipline to our sales team is that, "Hey, this is the range of pricing, this is how we work, and if we are not seeing sufficient ROI from the advertiser and margin for ourselves, is better not to do that, that revenue," right? So therefore, we are picking our battles carefully, and we think there is sufficient growth that we will derive in this space, and that will be premium in nature, and we will get-...
Sustainable growth mindset, therefore.
Appreciated the color. And lastly, if I can squeeze in, about this announcement of Elad. So do you see the competitive bandwidth getting slightly thinner and more responsibility coming up for you, or we would look for price placement?
No, I think, I, I don't see that to be the case. Whenever we acquire a company, there will always be, you know, a clear transition that must happen. When we did the acquisitions post our IPO, this was COVID times. And because it was COVID times, we maintained the structure of the business in such a way where we took three years due to the successful transition, integration, and until we achieved the level of, unit economics that, that we wanted them to come to. Now, since that has been achieved, and some of those acquired effective time to complete transition and, and so on. So I think Elad's, move, is expected, and it has happened honorably, it has happened effortlessly, and, you know, it's the right thing to happen.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Omkar from SBI Investments. Please go ahead.
Yes, my question was regarding if you look at the results. You have given the segregation of segmented revenue, India and outside India. If you look at the revenue growth for outside India, it's about 38%. But when you look at the margin, the growth of the margin is at least at around 7%-8%. That means there is compression in the margin, and that is around 70% of the overall business. So can you articulate what's the issue with that growth?
If you see our results, there is a footnote below the segment that the segment is based on the billing entity , whereas the earnings presentation is based on the user, where the user is based and where the ad has been served. So those data are not comparable, right? So this data is given in the earnings presentation for better understanding of geographically where the consumer is and how the market in that geography is responding. As Manoj mentioned earlier, it is consumer behavior which drives the growth and adoption by the consumer. So that is why we gave a different set of numbers based on the location of the ad, where it was served and where the consumer is located. That is why the reporting on the geographical information and the result sheet would always be a little different.
In India also, in standalone India, we would deliver certain ads which are outside India, so that will move to the other geographies. So they are not comparable numbers. Do you see the footnote of the statement?
Yeah. Okay. But if you look at the margins within India and outside of India, excluding the development, what are the margins? Are they comparable to India?
So the margin definitely would be higher in the international markets, as we have been seeing that the CPC pricing is higher in the international markets compared to India. The unit economics in India is much more tougher than the developed markets and other markets. Right, so we if you see our DRHP, you will see the CPC rate multiples. Those that we have not been giving it, but you can get an idea from the old records available publicly. You will be able to understand that India is the most exposed unit costs in our system.
The second question is on the growth of CPCU. Even though your conversion rate has, the growth in the conversion rate has fallen down, the pricing has improved. So is that going to be the strategy going forward?
Actually, the strategy is going to be to maximize the growth as well as the pricing by... I don't see that it has to be one or the other. I think both have to grow. You know, we're gonna drive for more conversions, we're gonna drive for more, more pricing as well. And I think both of these factors are very strong, you know, in the principal modes of the company. The ability to drive conversion, the ability to find those consumers that are going to be doing the necessary conversions, the premium placements, partnerships, touch points across, mobile, as well as, connected TV and so on. This is a strength and ability of our product.
And of course, being able to deliver an ROI business model and improving prices, both are very, very important. I wouldn't say that that you should go by one particular, you know, year or a few quarters of trend. This year has been, you know, slightly different from our usual pattern of growth, right? We saw some facts of various times, internal issues related to Jampp, external macroeconomic factors related to certain cycles and certain markets at different times. So this year was a complex year in that sense. But if you ask me for the long term way forward, am I bullish about more smartphone users and connected TV users doing more active digital conversions? Yes. Would you see higher value of basic conversions happening from consumers going forward and higher frequency of those conversions? Absolutely.
And so given those factors, I'm very confident that the number of conversions should continue to rise and should keep up with the long-term growth trends. And on pricing, I think I've answered it a few times on this call today.
The last question.
Ponga, sir, can you come back to you?
Clearly, what would be-
Sorry for the interruption. Can you please stay for the follow-up question?
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to management for closing comments.
All right. Thank you so much for your very interesting questions, especially related to the strategies of the company going forward. I'm very confident that our company is in a better position today than ever before. As a, as an 18-year-old, as a young corporate adult, Affle is, you know, definitely performing very well, and I'm very optimistic about how we will shape up going forward in, you know, many years to come. I would look forward to, you know, the upcoming AGM. Those of you already shareholders of the company, please participate, give us your participation and support. I wish you a very, very happy Diwali, and maybe may the next year be even more successful and prosperous for everything we want to do. Take care. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you all. With season's greetings for the festive season. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Elara Securities Private Limited, thank you for this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.