Good day and welcome to the investors call of Aurionpro Solutions to discuss the Q4 and FY 2023 results. As a reminder, participants lines will be in a listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance with conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star zero on your touchtone phone. Please note this conference call is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Aashvi Shah from Adfactors PR. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Vikram. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Aashvi Shah from Adfactors PR. We represent investor relations for Aurionpro Solutions Limited. On behalf of the company, I welcome you all to our earnings conference call for Q4 and FY 2023. Today on this call, we have guests from the management, Mr. Ashish Rai, Vice Chairman and Director, Mr. Vipul Parmar, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Ninad Kelkar, Company Secretary. We will begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management, followed by a Q&A session. Please note that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Actual calls or actual results or projections could differ materially from those statements. Aurionpro Solutions will not be in any way responsible for any action taken based on such statements and undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements.
I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Ashish Rai for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thanks, Aashvi. Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to this earnings call for Q4 and FY 2023. We are of course, very pleased to announce these results. FY 2023 was in many ways a landmark year for us in terms of execution on pretty much all aspects of our LEAP strategy that we've communicated before, we can't be more proud of the disciplined execution from all our businesses. We met or exceeded our targets on pretty much every operational parameter that we track actively. Both of our core divisions exceeded their operational targets for the year, which points to the exceptional execution from Aurionpro teams across the world. I'm sure by now you've received investor deck that details our performance in the quarter. Allow me to briefly summarize the key performance highlights.
Revenue for the quarter stood at INR 191 crores, million rupees, which is a growth of 39% on a year-on-year basis and 13% sequentially on a quarter-on-quarter basis, which is one of the strongest sequential growth we've had for some time. EBITDA for Q4 FY23 stood at INR 40 crore rupees as compared to INR 30 crores in Q4 FY22, which is a growth of 33% on a year-on-year basis and a 9% sequential Q2 basis. EBITDA margins for the quarter stood at 21%. PAT for Q4 FY23, which is the profit after tax, stood at INR 27 crores, which is a growth of 23% on a year-on-year basis and 2% sequential.
In FY 2023, the company achieved its revenue target of INR 659 crores, which is a 31% growth year-on-year. EBITDA and profit after tax for FY 2023 were higher 30% and 35% respectively on a year-on-year basis. Earning per share for Q4 FY 2023 stood at INR 11 rupees, and for FY 2023, it stood at INR 42.69, which is an increase of 38% on a year-on-year basis. Let me move on to updating you on some of the key strategic priorities, especially around the channel and capacity, which are more immediate in terms of impact, as well as the product build, which is more mid to long-term in terms of impact.
Over the last few quarters, we've highlighted our focus on building out the sales channel and expanding outside our established home markets, which is primarily Asia. We've gone about building this with a very sharp focus, and I'm pleased to report that we've made very strong progress in building out an exceptionally high-quality sales team across U.S., across India, Middle East, as well as core Asia. The channel is more or less fully built out, as well as bringing on board some incredible partnerships with Tier one technology partners, which will greatly enhance our reach as well as impact globally. What makes FY 2023 performance stand out for us and makes it even more special is that the teams achieved this while also meeting our long-term objectives of accelerating R&D to create next generation platforms. Right?
While our core platforms are pretty much fully built out across banking as well as TIG, as we expand our markets, there is a level of incremental build that does consume material efforts. In FY 2023, we surpassed pretty much every year in our history in terms of progressing on the product build and the new product launches. If I highlight a few of these, we launched a brand new corporate digital banking product, AuroDigi, that's already won its first client which is really encouraging for us. We launched the SME platform, Aurobees, during the year. That's again seeing significant traction. We've made some announcements on this from time to time. We went live with the payment offerings, B2C live in India, B2B in Singapore. We had great additions to our solution set in lending and transit as well.
On the platform services in India, we launched a hybrid cloud services offering that adds significant value to our existing platform offerings. All in all, a very large number of launches, probably the most we've had in our history in a single year. We also made great progress in adding capacity across the enterprise. We've added 500 people in the second half of the year, 500+ people in the second half of the year. That allows us to progress our product build agenda aggressively. We also added manufacturing capacity for the hardware divisions to allow them to scale more aggressively in the current year.
If you take all of these together, these achievements now allow us to be ready for a phase of rapid as well as sustained growth, you know, through both increasing our market share in the home markets where we are already, you know, quite significant in terms of our presence, as well as expansion in the identified growth markets for each of the businesses. As I look ahead to FY 2024, we started the year with a pretty strong pipeline, thanks to both the direct sales channel as well as our partnerships now firing on all cylinders. We enter the year with a strong order book of about INR 820 crores. Most of the order book, you know, it's sort of executable over the next four quarters, so that gives us very strong visibility into the next four quarters.
We also feel very good about the execution machine walking into this year. We have driven strong growth for the last two years now, while we needed a lot of work last year in terms of building out capacity channels as well as the organizational framework to handle the growth, this year we are a lot better placed in terms of both capacity and talent. We expect to maintain the growth trajectory going forward, we expect FY 2024 growth to be in the range of 30%-35%, which is a slight uptick on our growth last year, right? Building a technology business that can create and preserve value over the long term needs one to have durable defensive moats and an ability to adapt to the changes that sweep the industry from time to time.
We feel even more strongly now than before that our chosen strategic framework centered around highly differentiated products and platforms allows us the ability to react much better to the demand environment as it evolves, which in turn will allow us to, over the medium to long term, deliver significantly superior returns on capital compared to the industry. We want to be in the top 10% of the tech industry in terms of both growth as well as margin. We've done that over the last two years, and we will remain focused on continuing this well into the current year and far, far beyond. That's all from me now. For now, I hope this has given you a useful overview of the overall business context and our strategy and performance. I look forward to addressing any questions that you may have.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star and one on your touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset for asking a question. We will wait for a moment while the connection reassembles. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone now. We take our first question from the line of Mitul Mehta from Lucky Investments. Please go ahead.
Congratulations on a great set of numbers.
Hi, Mitul. Thanks.
Just wanted to get some sense on both your businesses, you know, with respect to working capital. If I, clearly, you know, compare it with the working capital of last year to this year, this year obviously has been, you know, the working capital has slightly deteriorated. Last year, our cash flow conversion was significantly higher. This year, that has not come through. Can you please, you know, make us understand as to where this working capital is stuck? I mean, is it more in the banking products of the business or your infrastructure business? If you, I mean, and the payment gateway business. If you can just give us some color on your working capital. Secondly, sir, you know, we've invested some capital into building manufacturing capacity and capability.
Are we going to further invest in that area? If yes, how much? Is it possible for you to also, you know, help us to understand the return on capital employed in both the businesses? You know, we can dissect much better.
Okay. I got that. Thanks, Mitul. working capital is essentially two things, right? working capital, you know, broadly it's inventory and it's receivables, right? we've obviously, since we got into manufacturing the hardware side of the business, we are now carrying a bit of inventory which will add to the working capital in the business. Bulk of it still is the receivables. Receivables for us, if you look at our DSOs, that's gone from something like 94 last year to about 110 that it stands on right now. It had been going up to about 115 in September. It was 115 in September. It came down to 110 now. you'll see that come down another five or 10 days over the next six months.
What is happening to the enterprise right now is because we are growing at a pretty fast clip, one, in some cases, we will use working capital as a competitive tool for the business, right? In some cases, we want to carry inventories. In some cases, we want to, you know, agree to longer payment cycles because, you know, that's how it's kind of the product business typically would tend to get skewed that way. The other side to it is we are starting off way more projects than we can finish, right? That again, given the kind of business that we built up around essentially product deliveries and taking, making customers live on the products, finishing projects is again very important. We've been building capacity through the year.
A lot of that has been built out. We feel the first half of the year would be a lot better in terms of actually finishing our projects and hence getting the DSOs down. By and large, you know, I would want to look at it this way, right? I think our ability to generate return on any capital employed by the enterprise is very high. We believe we can drive pretty much industry-leading returns on capital. We don't really get too worried about working capital getting stretched from time to time, right? It's not necessarily a bad thing if we can drive 25%-30% returns on any capital employed. We will probably see it come down by another 10 days in the next 6 months.
In our business, I think one has to be prepared for DSOs staying at a 90-100 day level at least, right. Then time to time, we'll use it as a competitive tool as we can, right. That's basically on working capital. I can through the call maybe explain more if someone has another angle to it. On the second question, you're right, we made investments in two firms over the last couple of years, SC Soft in Singapore, and Toshi, which is basically that, Aurionpro Toshi already exists now out in India. Both of them, the way to look at it is this. We are building out in our heads the most integrated end-to-end stack in the transit value chain, right.
When it comes to transit payments, right, we don't want to sit in a box which says we make software or we make the payment stack or we make the validators or we make the gate. We essentially span the whole value chain, which gives us immense competitive power, right? Hence the reason to invest in manufacturing. The return on capital that you'll get from it will come from the transit businesses that we have, you know, across, right? Basically we believe we will be able to drive very, very high margins from the transit business in steady state. I mean, right now we're rapidly growing, but at some point in time over the next few years, the business acquires scale and is a lot more steady.
We believe it will match the 25% ARC we have across the enterprise from all the businesses, CROC ARC. We believe the transit business as a whole will get that. Manufacturing is a critical part of that chain. It allows us to be a lot more competitive and the overall business will drive the 35% ROC. The last part, are we gonna invest in scaling up capacity? We announced a little while back, expansion in Malaysia. We announced this tie-up with a contract manufacturer out in Malaysia, which allows us scale that capacity on the validators side. It's already kicked in. We did our first deliveries over the last couple of months, and that really allowed us the ability to scale significantly compared to where we were.
We set up out in India as well. We will continue to expand because we do see that growing at rates far faster than overall Aurionpro growth rates, although it's a small business right now, right? I hope I've covered all the points. Through the call, you know, if there is any follow-ups, I'm happy to take those.
Thank you. Mr. Mehta, do you have any further questions?
I have one question. Can you please allow me to?
Please go ahead, sir.
Ashish Rai, can you hear me?
Yes.
Sir, let's say this year we ended our sales at INR 650 crores. Can you give us a breakup between the two business, the transit payment business? I mean, of course, that includes the manufacturing business also.
We published that. I think the split is roughly 52% is banking and Fintech and 48% is what we call Technology Innovation Group, which embeds the manufacturing assets, the transit assets, as you know, the Smart Mobility, Smart City assets in India, as well as the hybrid cloud and Data Centre Businesses. It's essentially INR 340 or so for banking and about INR 315 for TIG. I'm assuming that both the businesses would be having similar margins. No, not really. Banking is, let's say, about four or five points more than TIG. The technology innovation margins would be approximately, let's say, 18%-19% to be higher. Yeah.
Look, I think in the range of, let's say, 15%-16% on TIG and in the range of, certainly, about 20s in the case of banking and Fintech. Closer to 25 or so. I just wanted to understand your strategy going forward. You know, clearly the technology innovation business seems to be a capital-intensive business.
How are you sort of, you know, directionally will be investing in your business? Would you be investing a lot more in your technology innovation business or you pretty more or less hit the sort of peak in terms of manufacturing, capacity?
Look, it's not a capital-intensive business. I would sort of differ on that, right? I think it will consume capital at a little bit of an elevated rate while we are growing rapidly. Right. In a steady state, if you look at the transit businesses that we run, right, and especially now we are going a lot more global. If you... Earlier we were doing in contracts in India, now we are out in the U.S., some pretty nice contracts. We're out in Central America, we're out in Latin America. We are out competing and winning globally. The business is extremely profitable.
We believe, from a capital intensity standpoint, and in given the fact that we can, you know, hive the inventories off to contract manufacturers and stuff, we can run it in a fairly capital efficient fashion and still drive, you know, pretty good margins. The thing about TIG right now is there is, there's elements of business in India, which has a longer end payment cycles, and probably a little bit lower margin. Over time, you see the mix changing. TIG is essentially the group in which we incubate a lot of different businesses. There's always a few mature businesses and then which can become, you know, sort of independent divisions themselves over time.
There are small businesses where we are investing capital initially, and as they mature, we could really not be a problem. I think one thing to understand about Aurionpro is, by and large, we expense all our R&D spend. Right. We're not really capitalizing our assets. If we were capitalizing it, you'll see profitability probably nine-10 percentage points better than what it actually is. We went in, you know, in Q4 R&D of four, 3.5%, but you know, it's going up. It's, the thing to look at it is because we don't capitalize and we expense all R&D from time to time, some businesses appear to have a different economic profile than what we think they will be long term when they're stabilized.
We believe transit is a very strong business. We believe we can drive good margins on the hybrid cloud services, on the data center design business as well. I don't think it's seriously capital intensive.
Is there any retention money, which is stuck in the TIG business?
We have something of the range of INR 30 odd crores, stuck as a retention money. As stuck as in, yeah, retention money. I think we can move on, Abhinav.
Mr. Mehta.
Yeah.
Do you have any further questions?
It's okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to participants to wish to ask a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone. We take our next question from the line of Vivek Gautam from ES Investments. Please go ahead.
Congratulations on those set of numbers. Our company has been listed for quite some time now and, but the improvement in performance has been happening for the last few quarters. What has been the change, what is the change which has happened, which is responsible for it, and how is the future looking like in terms of opportunity size for us? How is the competition scenario for us? Who are our major competitors in both the segments we are operating in? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Vivek. Good question. Yes, we've been listed since 2005 or so. We've been listed quite a bit of time. We have evolved over time as an enterprise. I think what's more relevant to answering your question is we started a strategic pivot about three years back as an enterprise where we revamped our strategy and what we are focusing on is becoming a global IP-led product and platform vendor. Right? Which is sort of focused on a few chosen segments. I'll probably come to that, first, why build out a global product and platform vendor? Our core interest was, one, we don't want to be a commoditized IT services vendor over the long term because we feel margins in that business will over time go down.
You know, whether it's because of structural cost issues, whether it's because of AI, whether it's something else, we don't believe we want to be a commoditized services vendor. We said we want to be centered around IT and build our own. The second is when we say we want to build out a product business, we said we don't want to be a single product business. We don't want to be a one-trick pony because that exposes our shareholder and the business to a lot of lumpiness in revenue stream, you know, cyclical sort of demand. We said we want to have multiple IT assets, right? We want to be diversified. Third, we said we don't want to be in a single sector, hence we said, what are the adjacent sectors we can be present in, right?
That sort of brought in to say, Okay, you are centered around product, you are multi-product. Second, you are across multiple sectors. For example, we use the same payment stack, but transit is slightly different in terms of economic behavior compared to banking. Right? We went that way. That is what brought to our ambition to become a global product player. Where are we in terms of it? Banking, we've got absolute Tier one assets in lending as well as transaction banking. You know, you probably saw Chartis with tech leaders quadrant, product on the lending side and not, you know, there's basically no vendor, no software provider from India who is in the leaders or even Asia who's in the leaders quadrant. We are the only one.
Similarly on the transit side, we believe we are building one of the most integrated end-to-end stacks. What tools are Tier one? California, for example, total competitive global RFP, and we are one of the three winners in that, and we're already rolling out in five, six California cities. If I can win there, we can win pretty much anywhere. I think, you know, a lot of proof points as to why we believe we are absolutely a winner in terms of IT, right? You know, essentially the segments that we chose, one, the segment should have a very long demand runway, which is corporate loan origination, which is transit, in our view, CLOI.
Second, we say the leadership in the space should be contested enough for us to go for a global leadership position. It should be fragmented enough, contested enough for us to go for it. Third, it should be a segment which we can build out a Tier one IP, just like I explained on the lending and the transit side, right? As long as it meets those conditions, we go in and we try and build a business out, right? That's essentially what the play has been on the strategy side. Who do we compete with? Banking, we compete with probably the largest global vendors. In some cases, we collaborate with them. In some cases, we compete with them, which is the likes of Fiserv, Finastra, FIS.
On the transit side, again, we compete with most of the biggest players in global, yes, LS, Wix, a lot of players, right? We also collaborate very actively with them. For example, we collaborate very actively with Finastra, we collaborate very actively with Mastercard. We've been, you know. We play on the global field. We are fairly small in very, very large spaces. Right? But we have absolutely top class for us to go out and compete, right? We feel good about where we are and we believe, the last point probably what I'll close with is, you know, point the last two, three quarters we are doing well. Actually, we put the strategy in place almost three years back. It takes us time to do the product build.
It takes us time. Product is not an easy business. You know, services is a very linear business. I hire 1,000 people, I can get 1,000 people of revenue. Product takes capital to build. It takes time to succeed. It's harder. Still we have, I believe at least 10 or 11 quarters of consecutive 25%-30% growth. We feel we can continue this for a very long time. I hope that answers.
Yeah. Is due to the slowdown in banks in the U.S. markets and how is the opportunity size in the second segment of transaction banking, especially India and outside gradually? Thank you.
I did not get the question fully. Can you repeat that?
Yeah. No, my question was about the slowdown in the very small banks in U.S. getting impacted due to the recent banking crisis. Is it impacting us in any way? That was number two. Number three was about the opportunity size for our transaction banking, metro station, rapid rail transportation and other ticketing solutions you are offering. How is the opportunity size over there?
Okay. I'll take the first one. We look, the banking, I don't know whether we need the banking crisis or not, right? There is a high interest rate environment in the Western world. There is a lot of talk around recession. We hear as much about recession as you hear about recession. You know, if it happens, it happens. We believe in general, we don't sell to small and midsize banks, right? The product we have is around corporate loan origination, which only the largest banks need. We believe a high interest rate environment is generally a good thing for corporate loan books in general for corporate banks, right?
What we see at least so far is the large banks that we serve doing pretty well, able to drive margins. What also is happening is in a high interest rate environment, typically the investment bank side slows down, so there is less fee income, there's less M&A transactions, and banks seek to invest even more on the corporate loan side because I think that's the side of the bank that matches making money, right? So far from what we have seen, we only see an increased demand. We don't necessarily see any reduction in demand. Our pipelines are the strongest they've ever been. We'll see, you know, if there is a wide worldwide global recession, or even a big one in the Western World, it probably affects everyone. Right.
We, we would believe we have the ability to outperform, the industry, no matter what comes. I think that's number one. Second, part to it, I think there were several products mentioned. Probably it's hard to address, you know, the target size market by market. I'll come back to what I was saying on the previous question. We selected segments where we believe the addressable market is very large. If you look at each of our products, even products which are the leading products in Asia, right? If you say lending is actually, pretty big in core Asia, on a global basis, we probably have less than a 4%-5% market share, in some cases even less than 2% market share.
We happen to sit in a very unique spot where the segment sizes are all double-digit billions, very, very large. Second, we have a very, very competitive product stack. Third, we have very small market share, right? If you have a very small market share and a very competitive product, logically you should be able to expand for a very, very long time. I think that's what we believe will happen as we go forward, right? Segment's very large, market share very small. Product proven to be competitive on a global level in many cases. Where it is not, we are working towards making them globally competitive, right?
We would believe the product sets we are left with right now, we would fancy our chances in terms of continuing to grow fairly strongly in each of those segments.
Thank you.
Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Hiten Boricha from Sequent Investment Trust. Go ahead.
Hello.
Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. Yeah, yeah. Good evening, team. I have a couple of questions. The first question is on the order book you mentioned we have around INR 880 odd crores orders book for FY 2024, which will be executable for next four quarters. Can you shed some color on what kind of order inflow or inquiry on orders we are getting for next year, FY 2025? My second question is on the division. You mentioned we are looking for a growth of around 30%-35%. If you can help with which division is going to contribute more, banking or the TIG. The third question is you also mentioned something on capacity addition in hardware, so some more comments on that. Thank you.
Okay. Hi, Hiten. Thanks. Order book, INR 820 crores, as it stood end of March. We believe at least about INR 700 crores from it should be executable over the next fourth quarters. It obviously depends on capacity and how we plan our projects. The rest of what we are projecting we will deliver next year will have to come from the sell and deliver that we do within the year, right? That's essentially how the order book pans out. How does it look for FY 2025? FY 2025 is, we're probably still over INR 120 crores, INR 110 crores from the current order books when we go into that year. Most of it will be sold this year.
From a pipeline standpoint, we feel we are in a very, very good position. The pipelines have been, they're probably 40% bigger than they were, let's say six months back. It's actually climbed up quite significantly. I don't think that's necessarily a reflection of just the demand. We have added a lot of sales salespeople in U.S., in India, in Middle East, in Southeast Asia, as well as we've signed up some very, very interesting partnerships which will give us a leg up in terms of demand generation, right? Pipelines are the strongest they've ever been by a mile. I think that should bode well for FY 2025 in terms of what we convert and maybe middle of the year we'll come in and provide an update on that.
The growth of 30%-35%, how does it spread between divisions? What happened last year was we had banking at about INR 340 crores. The banking finished at about INR 340 crores, and it grew about 15%. TIG finished at about INR 315 crores or so, and it grew at 55%, right? Obviously, TIG has grown very, very strongly. Banking is very, very software driven, product driven, and banking was busy testing capacity as well as launching new products. We expect to see the benefits of those new product launches as well as the build out capacity in terms of direct execution to come to us this year.
What I would expect or what we would expect is TIG to moderate in growth, not grow at 55, but grow, you know, kind of materially lesser and banking to step up in growth. Both of them more or less converge in the middle. That's how we'll get to the 30%-35%. That's the growth. The third part about capacity, manufacturing, you know, we've announced, we've added somewhat to the capacity in Ghaziabad in terms of how efficiently we run it, a little bit of machinery and addition in terms of shift work, et cetera. We will continue to scale that capacity a little bit more because the demand is just staggering. We'll work on it.
On the validator side out in Singapore and Malaysia, we've signed an agreement, which we announced a few months back with the contract manufacturers. We've got the capacity tied up. We've got zero concerns about being able to scale up for the next few years actually with that capacity. I think we are fairly sorted there. Yes.
Yeah. Thanks for the detailed explanation, sir. On the capacity side, can you share the, can you quantify the amount? What was our CapEx in FY 2023 and what are we going to spend in 2024?
Capacity is multiple parts of CapEx. One is, you know, deal acquisition, right? First I think between SC Soft in Singapore and Toshi, plus the CapEx, we're talking at something in the range of INR 50 crores, which includes both the inorganic investment that we put as well as the CapEx behind those.
Mm-hmm. The number for 2024, sir?
2024 we are not really planning anything, you know, materially incremental. We need to close off the SC Soft 10%. We now own 90%, so we need to finish that off. We've got some incremental investment in Toshi. I would say in the range of INR 30 crores is what we should expect.
Okay. Just a clarification question, sir. May I?
Yeah.
You have mentioned the margins in TIG is 15%-16% and banking division is more or less around 20%. Is it EBITDA margin we are talking about or is it EBIT margin? The second you mentioned you had some comment on ROCE. I missed that comment. Can you please repeat it, sir?
EBITDA, that's EBITDA margin, right? Essentially what I said is banking is five points above enterprise. TIG is five points below enterprise, right? The idea is for TIG to climb up. It's a business that's growing at 55%. Because we expense pretty much most of the product base and all, it's hard to really get the margins up if you keep growing at 55%. As the growth moderates, the margin levels will go up. The second part on ROC, I'm not quite sure what it was, but essentially our expectation on ROC is to drive 25% and above. That is the ask, right? Any capital that any business wants to use in the business, we demand a 25% at least.
In cases, you know, it's higher, right. As we get bigger, our ask on what ROI we need on any incremental capital that we reinvest back in the business, it's only getting more stringent for FY 2024, right. Last year we were keeping the threshold at 25%.
Understood. Understood. Thank you for the explanation, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Deepak Poddar from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hi, Deepak.
Hello, sir, many congratulations for the good set of numbers. Sir, just I want to understand on the margin front, I mean, we spoke in length about growth and in coming years, what sort of margins we are looking at in this growth environment?
Look, our target remains at 21%-22% on EBITDA and 15%-16% on profit after tax, right. At that level, we believe we would be probably the top 10% player in the industry. That's what the goal is. You know, we'll be among the most profitable shops in Indian tech at least. That's where we plan to stay. The thing to note about our EBITDA numbers, you know, compared to since, you know, 99% of Indian tech is services, so probably it's relevant, is that we also do R&D, the plan is to do 9%-10% next year around that, right. Which we most of it, unless there is some specific reason we would not capitalize. Right.
The actual EBITDA, if you were capitalizing, would probably be far, far higher than it, right? That is the nature of a product business. They tend to be pretty good on EBITDA as they stabilize. Our plan right now, while we expense most of our R&D is to 21%-22% on EBITDA and 15%-16% on PAT.
Correct. Understood. R&D spend, 9%-10% of revenue. Is that what we are in research in coming years to continue?
It probably will not continue, right? I think, you know, it's not abnormal in the industry to get to. We were probably at about seven and a half, eight. I think it will climb up. The thing is that, for most of our products, the opportunities in front of us are so large that, you know, we will need to invest capital to capitalize on those opportunities, right? By and large, we want to stay away from doing any major capitalization creating sort of intangibles on the balance sheet, right? It can climb up quite a bit. The goal for us is to keep the EBITDA there and, you know, the excess that we get, route that into R&D. Keep EBITDA still at 21%-22%.
Okay. Because I thought generally because of your operating leverage, your margins can be much higher, right? At some level, even at the EBITDA level, than what we are currently doing or what we envisage.
It could be. If you really wanted to say, let's stop all R&D expense and let's just run the revenue streams as they run, of course you can drive much bigger margins. I mean, for us, we feel at our current levels, we are already one of the most profitable shops around, from a return on capital standpoint, from a return for shareholder standpoint, I believe that is the right spot for us. And we use the incremental that, you know, over the 21, 22, to keep funding R&D. What happens is, unless you're capitalizing, right, no accounting report captures the value of IP, right? What is the goal, right?
When you're looking at a capital allocation decision, the idea is, what will drive the most long-term intrinsic value for the business, for the shareholder, right? For that, you know, one is obviously we grow faster than the industry, which we are doing. You know, industry growing at 10%, we grow at 30+. That is very good. We drive better margins than the industry. Industry probably is at 16%-17% EBITDA. We drive 22%. That's good. The third part, which no accounting report captures in terms of long-term addition to intrinsic value is the value of the IP which we are generating, right? I think that is really important for us to generate really long-term sort of additions to intrinsic value per share of the enterprise, right? I think that's what we drive.
I don't think I would want to ever get to a 0% or a 1% or 2% R&D. I don't think it really makes sense from a long-term sort of shareholder return standpoint.
Fair enough.
Hope that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah. That makes absolute sense. My second question is on your inorganic. Is there any plans of inorganic acquisition or expansion in the near term or medium term?
Look, we will always be open to the idea of inorganic acquisitions as we've shown in the past. For us, there is basically two things that drive that decision. How we're running the business is we're not trying to sit in a box that says software or that says hardware or that says IT services, right? We are saying we are a tech vendor who occupies the whole value chain, right? We will try and be fit on as many points of the value chain as we can, whether it's around service, around hardware, around software, and that is what allows us to drive sort of industry-leading margins, right? In that sense, nothing's important to us. On the value chain, if there is an adjacency or there's an opportunity to do backward integration, we will go and do an acquisition.
Usually, that acquisition will be. We will not acquire for revenue, we will not really acquire for clients. We will acquire for backward integrating into the value chain, enhancing the value that we add, right? Which is like the SC Soft acquisition, right? It allowed us to get in on the electronic hardware validator side of the business, and we keep backward integrating that as well. We keep building more and more of our parts even inside the validators, and do less and less of outsourcing, right? That is essentially the hardware R&D side. Similarly, Toshi Automatic Systems acquired because it allowed us to play on the vending machines, the Kiosks and stuff like that, right?
If we find an adjacency, if we find opportunities to backward integrate and occupy more points of the value chain, we will go and do an acquisition. Expect more of a akin kind of acquisition rather than, you know, big bang, we buy for revenue kind of thing. You know, we don't believe that's a good use of our shareholders' wealth.
Understood. Understood. Sir, you spoke in length about your transit platform, right? Currently, what % of revenue is from this platform?
I think we don't declare that. We'll probably start doing that soon. I think it's acquired scale. I would say it's So TIG overall is now almost 50% of the enterprise and transit is a significant share of that, right? I am hesitant to give you an exact number, but it's acquired quite a bit of scale.
Okay. Understood.
We will probably in three to six months, we'll probably consider whether we want to start reporting it separately.
Understood. Fair enough. I got it. Yeah, that's it from my side, sir. All the very best. Thank you.
Thank you, Deepak.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Umesh Matkar from Sushil Finance. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hi, Umesh. Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Congratulations on good set of results. You mentioned the banking to pick up growth this year. Also, are you entering into new markets like U.S.? Also, which products have you launched in the banking segment?
Okay. Back, yeah, banking, we definitely are planning for banking and Fintech overall to grow for us much more significantly in FY 2024. Where will it grow? One is we have taken the product out to more markets. We've got a bigger sales channel in Southeast Asia. We've got, we're getting to a bigger channel in Middle East, and we are entering selective deals in the U.S.
U.S. for sure, even with the current order book, will grow quite materially in FY 2024 because, you know, I think sometime back, three or four months back, we announced a $80 million deal in the U.S., which, you know, will significantly convert to revenue in the year and that adds on top of the current business which is going on. Southeast Asia, we are seeing very interesting deals in the pipeline, and we are close to winning a few of those, and that will again add to the business. The question about products, we continue to sell loan origination, collateral management, limit management. We added corporate digital banking as a new product a few months back. We already acquired our first client on that product.
I think that is very relevant for the market right now. We also have co-developed a product with Finastra, which is the number one trade finance solution provider in the world. There again, we see significant traction in the pipeline there. That would probably, over the next few years, that will go global because it goes directly to the client base of that large vendor where, you know, our sort of licensing gets sold. I think that again will scale up. There is a lot of demand on the banking side that will translate over the next 12, 24 months, right? We do expect that setup to grow very strongly.
Yeah. TIG has witnessed a strong growth of 16% year-on-year. What led to a healthy growth? Also is data center included in it? What would be its contribution in this segment?
Yeah. Look, I think we are. TIG, the main lines which are, which have been growing is transit. It's the data center and cloud side of the business. And our smart city side is more or less stable, probably even slid down a little bit. We don't really declare explicit exit prices, so I would not give numbers. But the segments which have grown, so data center, you know, data center and cloud, we built up probably one of the most effective teams in the industry that is really driving growth for us. It's certainly growing higher than the Aurionpro's rate of growth. It's probably higher than the TIG rate of growth. The same thing with TIG and Smart City sliding down a bit, right?
I think, overall, two segments, two parts of the FTI business going very strongly.
Yeah. My last question would be, Smart City projects, they have witnessed a small slowdown in past few months or so. Are you expecting a pickup, considering the election in next year?
You know, to be honest, that one of the segments which, you know, we're not really planning any significant growth in that business. It's important business for us in terms of capability that we build, that we can use elsewhere in enterprise. It's important for us to really go and do deals which are really interesting from us, for us from both a margin standpoint as well as, client relationship standpoint. We'll continue, we will continue to do interesting things in the business. We are not expecting a significant ramp-up in demand or our ability to service it for this year.
Okay. Thank you very much, and wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Neeraj Kumaria. He's an investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, Ashish. A couple of questions. One is around the borrowings, right? This year we need to borrow some additional funds to the debt going up. What is the plan to make the company completely debt-free? Do you see the borrowing going up this year? That's my first question. Second question is around the some of the projects that we invested heavily, like Noida Metro, Nagpur Metro. When do you think they would be able to contribute significantly?
Hi, Neeraj. Yeah, thanks. Look, borrowing, we don't really have a big plan to go zero debt. We think the borrowing level in the business is pretty low. You know, depending on which metric you like using, you know, e-coverage ratios are great. Your debt to equity is probably at zero point one. The long-term borrowing in the business will, it remains stable. I think it was probably INR 52, half, last year. It's only INR 48 now or INR 47, INR 48. It is not significant. There is obviously a slight uptick in the short-term borrowing, which is essentially vendor financing, you know, for projects which we are executing on, which will taper off. It's a point in time thing.
It's essentially, you know, three, four, five months kind of thing when we are in the middle of some specific projects, and those are, you know, short-term vendor financing borrowing. In general, I, it's the leverage level in the business is, like, really low. I don't think there is really much thought that we would give to when the long-term thing retires and goes to zero. You know, it will probably happen by itself over two, three years. It's not really a big concern for us. On the Noida Nagpur side, I think those contracts are doing fine. They are running their contribution to revenue. We've done upgrades, we've expanded those as well. Overall, the transit business in India has grown manyfold from the earlier Nagpur Noida contract days.
Those contracts continue to run very well. We expanded on to UP Transport, Haryana Transport, Kanpur Metro. Since the global business has expanded, and we do see us being very competitive at a global level, we, you know, we want to be very selective in terms of new business that we take on in India on the transit side. We will continue to remain one of the most competitive people in the field. We will continue to win share, but we will participate in deals where we feel it aligns with the metrics that the organization expects. We'll continue to scale the business globally, in U.S., in Latin America, in Central America, where we've seen a lot of traction.
Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Vishnu Sorisha from NVS Brokerage. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. Hello?
Hi, Vishnu.
Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good evening, sir. My congratulations for your upcoming numbers. Sir, my question is regarding the growth prospects and how will be your company in future into IT software and IT services? I've seen sale of software services have grown double than sale of equipment and product licenses. What are the plans to expand into these both segments? Our gross profit is around 29% and tax margin is about 16%, which is equivalent to or similar as of the last year. May I know that what are the future prospects will be?
Yeah. I'm not sure if I got the full question, look, margin levels we expect to keep at the level we are very happy with the levels we are at. You know, we, you know, from time to time, we may need to move the R&D expense line a little bit here and there, so it may move a point in either direction, but we feel very happy with the margin levels. That's, that's something we will want to keep. Growth in the business, we will want to, you know, continue accelerating as we go. Like I was saying in our response to one of the earlier questions, we have built up a great set of product assets.
We are either already there or we have a very clear plan to get to building product sets which are globally competitive, one of the top products in the world, right? When you combine that with having very small market shares in very large segments, we believe we can continue to power growth in the business quite rapidly as we grow, whether that's in banking, whether that's in transit, whether that's in some of the services business. I think that's essentially the growth plan. We've got the talent to kind of back it up in terms of we really know what it looks like. When we say the leading product in the world, we say this is what it looks like. This is how. If I'm not there already, this is how I'll get there. Right?
That's essentially the plan, and then we go and compete. We see a lot of success, going there. There was another side to your question that I'm forgetting.
As we can see that the prospects of the company is about to grow. I can see in the working capital changes that our receivables are three times higher than our trade payables, which are twice as high as compared to last year. How will it be manageable with the working capital as we are growing in the sector there?
Yeah. Look, receivables, so you're right. Last year we were at about 94 DSO. Now the DSO we finished at about 110, so that is clearly higher than last year. I would say part of it clearly attributable to growth in the business. You know, what's really happening is when you are really running at breakneck speeds or starting more projects than you can finish, you know, we've had issues in terms of collecting payments. What we have done is over the last quarter or two, the capacity has really come up, where we've been obviously finishing off the projects. You'll see that, the effect of that.
Second, we'll be a lot more selective in terms of, you know, as we are growing bigger, we're getting a lot more selective in terms of the business that we pick up, right? I would expect the 110 to come down to 100 or so over the next six months, and then we will revisit and see where we want to get to. One thing I would want to be very, sort of, you know, transparent about is, we will, I think, given the current nature of the business, stay at a 90-100-day level, no matter how efficiently everything is running. That is the nature of our business, and we are very comfortable with that level.
We believe, the kind of returns we can drive on any capital employed in the enterprise are high enough for us to stay with longer lead times. The thing is, you know, ultimately it's a question of return. A little bit more capital employed in the business is not really a concern if you can drive 25% returns on it, right? Because I can't think of many alternative uses for that capital that will drive a 25% return, right? If we are doing a very high margin business, if we are winning, we are very comfortable with the 90-100-day level. From time to time it will jump up depending on, you know, our capacity to execute well.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Ashish Rai for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, thank you everyone for joining the call. We are very happy with how we executed last year, and we intend to stay focused on executing with a very, very high level of discipline as we go. We will, we'll make sure we took some feedback on some of the information areas which are of interest and we probably don't disclose right now. We'll go back and visit that and see whether we want to start disclosing some additional things which are of use. We'll stay focused on executing. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Aurionpro Solutions Limited, I conclude this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.