Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to CarTrade Tech Limited Q3 FY 2024 earnings conference call. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as of the date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director, CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, and good afternoon to everybody, and thank you for joining this Q3 earnings call. I wanted to, you know, present the Q3 earnings data and details today. We've uploaded a presentation and if you can go straight away to slide 5 of the presentation itself, it talks about the key metrics. I wanna first tell you that we're delighted that there are 48% growth in revenue and a 56, a 60% growth in profit of continuing businesses in the last quarter. We are the number one automotive platform in India. We are the number one used classified platform in India with OLX now, and the number one vehicle auction platform in India with Shriram Automall, all our three businesses.
As you know, we have almost 70 million monthly active users or unique users per month across our platforms, including OLX, CarWale, BikeWale, et cetera, et cetera. OLX itself has more than 100 million downloads on a mobile phone in India. We have 350+ physical locations that include all our Automall outlets, Assured outlets, and OLX outlets as well. 90% of our 70 million users come organically, which means we have very low marketing costs. In fact, in OLX, almost 100... A large part of the users are app-driven. Almost about 88% of our users come through an app. We have on Shriram Automall auction at a rate of almost 1.4 million vehicles a year. Our net revenue is, for the quarter, is INR 152 crores, INR 151.9 crores.
Adjusted EBITDA is INR 43.2 crore, and profit from continuing operations after tax is INR 22 crore. As you know, we also are sitting on INR 720 crore cash balances, and of course, we are a debt-free company. If you go to slide 7, which talks about the consolidated financials of the company, as you can see here, we have a 48% growth in revenue, and a 35% growth in net revenue, which is INR 151 crore, which is also, and a growth of 32% growth of revenue from operations, in the nine-month period. And adjusted EBITDA is up 67% without excluding other income. And the adjusted EBITDA with other income is at INR 43 crore for the quarter.
It's also INR 115 crores for nine months versus INR 85 crores last year, which is up by 36%. The Adjusted EBITDA excluding other income is up by 57%. So the operating metrics of the company have been very strong as a group. The profit without considering discontinued operation, which is our transaction C2B business in OLX, but including our classified business, is up 33% for the quarter, which is at INR 26.75 crores is the profit before tax. And the profit before tax for nine months is up 81% at INR 68 crores. The profit after tax for continuing businesses is up 56% to INR 22 crores and 156% for the year.
I just wanna highlight the continuing operations, the operations which are continuing as of 31st December, have got a INR 22 crore profit for the quarter, profit after tax for the quarter, October to December. Of course, then there is the loss pertaining to discontinued businesses, which is the C2B transaction business we acquired in August this year, which is total of INR 63 crore for the nine-month period ending 31st December. I just want to again highlight that the health of the continuing businesses is strong at a 22% or INR 22 crore profit after tax. The other thing I want to highlight is on the EBITDA margin. If you look at the adjusted EBITDA margins, without other income, it's up to 19% from 16% last year, nine months.
So, you know, as I said, the continuing business has been quite strong. When you look at the standalone results of the company of CarTrade Tech, as you can see here, the revenue is up for nine months, 22%. Revenue up for the quarter is 18% at INR 49.4 crore. If we include other income, it is flat because the other income is slightly down because of the monies used in acquiring OLX itself. But over a nine-month period, the net revenue is up by 19%. If you look at the adjusted EBITDA, excluding other income, it's up 35% for the nine months, showing the strength of the CarWale business.
If you look at the EBITDA margin, excluding other income, it's up to 23% from 14%, last year. And for a nine-month period, 15% versus 14%. So the October-December margins have gone up to 23%. The profit after tax is up to INR 9 crore. It's slightly down because of losses in other income due to the acquisition of OLX as a standalone basis. If you look at slide number 9, which is the Remarketing results, the Remarketing has been, it's been a tough quarter for the Remarketing business, as has been for the year before. It continues to be, primarily because of the, sluggish nature of the repossessed vehicle supply.
As we've talked earlier, the fact the repossessed business itself has gone down from a contribution to now totally from last year's same time, it's gone down from 53% of our business to 49% of our business. Our retail business has gone from 34% last year to 39%. So the contributions to the business are changing. For this nine-month period, the revenue is down 6%, profit is down, PAT is down 11%, and the adjusted EBITDA is flat at INR 26 crore for the nine-month period. If you look at the Sobek Auto results, the results are, if you look at the quarter itself, the revenue is about, for continuing operations, is INR 45 crore. As you can see here, this is all the business will continue into the next quarter.
INR 45 crores continuing, the Adjusted EBITDA is INR 12 crore, and the profit for the business itself now is INR 11.46 crore for the quarter. The discontinued business loss, which is INR 45 crore, which is a combination of the losses incurred in the business and a combination of the shutting down cost incurred in the business. But as I said, as on 1 January, what is going to continue is the INR 45 crore revenue line item, and of course, in this quarter, we expect that business to be profitable as well. If you look at, you know, the brand scores, CarWale is slide number 11. CarWale's Google scores tend to be strong, still at 78 and much higher than its competitors, as is BikeWale.
If you look at slide number 12, which shows the strength of OLX versus any of its competition, and the brand of OLX as well. You know, this is what I wanted to highlight as part of the presentation. I'm happy now to answer any question on the financials or any other metrics of the company. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, can you hear me?
Hi, Vijit. How are you?
Hi, hi, Vinay. Good, good, good to see you. Good, good set of results. Congratulations on that.
Thank you.
I just wanted to quickly understand, and I know you covered it a little in your opening remarks, but I'm not sure I got it. Where is the P&T costs currently sitting? And because when I look at, you know, what you reported in September versus now, it looks, you know, like some of these costs have maybe moved, on the OLX side. So if you can just clarify where the P&T costs are sitting, and within this cost structure, that you have in slide 11, barring that loss from discontinued operations, is everything else pretty much how one should expect this business to, see numbers going forward? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. I think very good question. You know, we had indicated the P&T costs, external P&T costs, which we incurred for transition of technology, is about INR 60 crore for the period till December. In fact, we had emphasized INR 60 crore only till March. We've actually preponed the transition of tech, and we did it three months early, and therefore, this tech transition is completely finished now on thirty-first December. As on first January, we are completely operating in our own environment, and some of these costs are being established still. Of course, the part of that entire tech cost on the last quarter and the period prior to that were incurred in both businesses, the transaction business and the classified businesses.
Both businesses carry their relevant tech costs, the classified and the tech. So, the way the tech costs are laid out in discontinuing operations and the classified business, they carry the relevant costs pertaining to that business. If you look at, I think, the next question, which is more pertinent to us, is the financials of INR 44 crore and INR 11.46 crore, is this likely with costs baked in or not? I think that is the question, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah.
You know, this is more or less a reflection of the classified business. There will be, you know, in this quarter, some additional investment in costs on technology, et cetera, which we're doing. And, you know, it's possible that, you know, that cost will be incurred in this quarter or being incurred in this quarter. And also, it requires full normalization of tech costs and optimization of tech costs, which is still going on. But, you know, I don't answer about a short-term answer, but generally, this is going forward. I mean, I would say if not this quarter, maybe the next quarter, this would be the normal way to look at the finances of the company.
I see. So,
As I said, it may take one, two quarters, but this is where we wind up. So the reflection October, December will be a reflection of the company's financials, you know, going forward. As I said, it may take a quarter to normalize and get to here. Yeah.
I see. So Vinay, essentially, we basically, if I understand that right, what you're saying is, about, if I remember this right, it was supposed to be INR 60 crore incurred over the course of 6 months, so INR 10 crore a month, and that is essentially INR 30 crore for the quarter of October to December that you might have incurred. Now, those INR 30 crore are currently split between loss from discontinued operations costs and in your costs above that.
Yes.
You could see further reductions. So you think that-
That model is a normal way it's done. We could see, you know, in. And it's not actually, I think in this quarter, it could go slightly higher, actually, to be honest. Slightly higher. But it will normalize. I mean, this will be normalization, which will come to eventually. There's some work to be done transitionally. So, that cost of INR 630 crore is fixed. It is just fixed because it is outsourced to third party by us to in the transition process. Now it's internalized, so it is more variable. So it is possible that it may be up, a little up now, but will normalize. It will come down and normalize, that is optimized.
I see. You would believe that this Adjusted EBITDA number that you have, let's say in Q4 on the INR 446 crore of net revenue, or rather INR 430 crore of revenue from operations, sorry, INR 43 crore, my mistake. INR 12 crore, give or take a few, you know, depending on how much success you have in cutting those costs, you could go to maybe INR 10 crore or INR 8 crore or somewhere thereabout, so 20%-
There'll be some... It, yeah, it's hard to answer this quarter, but we will come to that definitely in a quarter or so. Definitely. Yeah, that's the objective. We have to optimize to that level. That should be better. That is correct.
Got it. Got it. Thanks, Vinay. And then just a follow-up question on the overall rest of the business. So if you can give your quick comments on both the retail and repo part of the remarketing business, and then on what you're seeing in the standalone CarWale, BikeWale business. Thank you.
So really, actually from the Shriram Automall repo and retail side, repo has been a real challenge for us. Actually, this is a reflection that the Indian NBFCs and banks have NPAs are under control. It's just a reflection on that. And what's been good for them has hurt the supply which we get, and that's been hurting for a year and a half. As you all of you can see, the economy the way it's been functioning and the economy how well it's done, especially for banks and NBFC, that's why in respect to NPA is a concern. It's a clear reflection of supply of repo which we're getting.
It's hurt us, and I think over a year and a half, we've tried to mitigate that hurt by adding other segments, and partly that has been our retail supply of vehicles. Retail continues to grow. In fact, it's up by 25%–27%, you know, in this year. But it is the repo still hurting, and just because Shriram Automall is very dependent on repos as supply, it's been, you know, hurt because of that. The fact that we managed or maintained numbers over the last year and a half is just because we built another segment.
So when repossession does come back and, you know, as banks give out more loans and, you know, then we will be in a better place because we are building an alternate supply channel which is growing. And as that continues to grow and repo come back, I think Shriram Automall will be in a far better position. But it's been a tough year and a half for them. I think on the CarWale side, things have been as you can see in the numbers and the growth, healthy, right? The used car side of CarWale has grown. The new car side has grown, the new vehicle side has grown.
And actually it's a reflection of partly the further digitization in the automotive industry, but also the reflection of the robustness of the auto industry. If you see new car sales, two-wheeler sales, both have been up in nine months and that volume increase plus you know further digitization efforts of manufacturers and dealers. And I think the other part which is actually has been better, better in the industry is supply constraints are not really there. So the demand is strong for auto, for, for cars and two-wheelers, but also supply has not been a constraint for manufacturers. There are some manufacturers have shortages, but generally product and supply is available, which is, which is a good thing for, for companies like ours, which depend on you know a transaction and earning revenue from manufacturers and dealers.
Got it. Thanks, Vinay. And, if you or Aneesha could just give me the, you know, housekeeping numbers, for the quarter, the split between new and used and dealer and OEM, that will be great.
So new is, in CarWale, I mean, the way CarWale reads it, 84% is new, 16 is used. Dealers and it's 62, 38. OEM is 62, and 38 is dealer for the quarter. Actually, for nine months.
Changed.
But the quarter and nine months did not change much. Yeah, there's not much change, yeah.
Okay. All right. Thanks, thanks. Those were my questions. Thank you so much.
Sure, thank you.
Congratulations again.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vinay, congrats on the results. Quickly coming to repossessions, basically on the remarketing beat. I understand you, you did talk about supply being slow and all, but if you look at the numbers that you posted in later slides, it looks like, the vehicles listed for auctions have actually gone up, decently well over, over the quarter as well as, YOY. It's just the conversion rate that seems to have dipped, have dipped.
Yeah, there was a significant supply from... Yeah, that's true. There was a significant supply from, and that's got diverted from couple of sources which didn't convert. One was from these flood kind of vehicles, which were the couple of floods in India and the supply from there, which the conversion rates are very, very low. So it looks a little skewed for the quarter, but there were a couple of sources of supply which are not really high conversion sources, new sources. One of them was this whole flood situation in the south.
I understand. So basically, some of this one-time supply came that,
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That's correct.
Got it. Coming to the, that same question that Vijit also asked, like, makeup of that, 30-odd CR of product intake. So, if I recall correctly, last quarter you mentioned that one-time cost of, discontinued operation or basically of the transaction business is likely to be INR 25 crore–INR 30 crore.
Yeah.
The number that we are seeing is roughly INR 46 crore. So does it imply that you were-
Sorry?
INR 46 crore loss from discontinued operations.
That's not, that's not one time, Sachin. What the 45 and 30 are not... There was roughly 25–34 one-time shutting cost, but the 45 is all costs related to that business. It's not the shutting cost, that's just a loss.
Right. In that way, so basically one-time is same, right? As you guided roughly. Yeah, but you were saying, like, the other product and tech costs or any other costs that were involved for this synergy, that are also parked in the INR 46 here.
Yeah, and even the carry forward losses of that business, right? So that business was, when we acquired from August 11, was a loss-making business. So there was a period of operation which incurred a loss, which includes in that INR 45. There was also the one-time shutting cost in that and provisions related to that. So everything pertaining to the discontinued business and the tech costs pertaining to that as well, all of it is in that INR 45 clause.
Got it. And can you break down the tech costs? How much is here and how much is in the classified business for PNL?
Aneesha, would you be fair to say that about INR 15 crore is in 63, 71? Is that correct?
I'm sorry, the CS cost?
The PDD cost in the transaction will be INR 15 crore, right?
Yes, sir.
That's it.
Going forward, this loss from discontinued operation should be zero, right? In the current quarter, Q4.
Yes.
There should not be any of the carry forward.
No, no, not at all. Yeah, the business is shut source. Yeah. There, there are some transition, as I said, right, as I did tell, the other, question, that there are some costs or people management costs which we retained because we believe the land value, the classified business, which have come on to the OLX classified business. But the continuing of the business, that business is shut, so there's nothing to look in there.
Understood. And just one final question on basically the consumer business or the new auto business. So new auto, obviously, as we all know, the volume wise, it's growing well, value wise, it's growing even faster. I know our numbers at 18% YOY growth do look good, in isolation, but the industry seems to be doing much better. And, as far as my understanding is, there's also some shift happening to digital advertising. So ideally, I would have hoped for a 20%–25% on growth in this business. What is happening? Is the new advertising that's coming to digital platform, going to some other channels or some other methods that we are not a part of? I mean, our growth related to industry seems a bit low.
Well, you know, 25% is normally what we feel, and we are at 22% for nine months, 18% for the quarter. I wouldn't say it's gone to competition as such, it's just more... I mean, I would say it's more quarter management and management from the previous quarter this year, quarter growth. But, really, the, the amounts are or the numbers are pretty much in this range. Competition has not changed much, right? Honestly, because competition is still only Google and Facebook, so not much has changed in this business, to be honest.
So I was thinking from the perspective of, like, there is a recent trend of video advertising happening or short format advertising happening. Is that taking some market share? Not, not your direct competition maybe, but something that's chipping away from the digital advertising pie that we have.
I think what is happening is that when you look at video, it's mostly on OTT platforms or digital platforms like, I don't know, maybe like sports advertising, which is now more of the cricket matches or other advertising is taking place on like Jio or Hotstar, et cetera, et cetera, or Sony LIV. So you find that is happening, but that's not really competition of us. For us, it's more about the competition is not so much on advertisements on video, but mostly on television. It's mostly around, because they're very performance driven. The manufacturer dealer advertises with us, they tend to calculate return on investment by car sold, right? So our competition tends to be more Google, Facebook, than video or advertisements in OTT platforms.
Sure. Makes sense. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to participants that you may press star and one to join the question queue. The next question is from the line of Siddhartha Be ra from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, again, on the OLX, just wanted to understand how has been the integration process. And, you had indicated that, we can look for some more synergies on the growth side when the platforms get consolidated. So some thoughts, how you are looking at the growth from the current, numbers which we are doing in the coming year?
Yeah, we've actually the whole last five months was about after the acquisition, was about stabilizing the classified business. But I think the biggest risks were two risks, right? One was the loss-making business, which we had to shut so that we arrest the losses in the loss-making business, and then the classified side was profitable. And then it was the technology transfer and traffic transfer from you know, a global environment to our own control and our own environment, which took place on thirty-first December. So really, OLX, the platform or the consumer platform or the back-end platform, and the technology come into our possession on first January, which is about a month ago. And traffic stability happened, right? I mean, traffic is quite stable on...
Our consumer traffic is quite stable on the new platform. So that was the first two risks and the first two tasks which we had. Now, from here, for us, it will be, you know, how do we grow the classified platform, the business which we are really excited about, and we continue to be excited about that, whether it's the automotive side or the non-automotive side. I think we are right now in the planning stage of execution to that. We have a reasonable growth and and definitely a margin growth in the OLX classified business. And the biggest synergy, of course, are the automotive side, right? The used vehicle side, whether the buyer and seller business, the dealers listing, consumers buying or consumers selling and dealers buying. Those are. That's where the synergy exists for us.
Where we are trying to see that how, along with CarWale, we can provide better value to our dealers and grow our revenues and, of course, grow sales for dealers in India. That's the intent here. But that work is going on, and I think we should see a reasonable growth in the automotive and non-automotive side of OLX.
... Got it. Some sort of outlook, like, can we grow in the, like, the trajectory which we have for the standalone business, a similar trajectory can we expect for the next year, from the current levels? Or do you think that may take longer, depending upon the execution about in the business?
No. Is the question that can we see a similar growth in OLX or the standalone? Is that the question? Or-
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Correct. Correct.
You know, it's hard to compare and say it will grow at the level of standalone business, but the intent is to, of course, grow the automotive and non-automotive side both, and the intent is to grow margins along with that. I did discuss in the last call that one of our main objectives was to make, you know, get discontinue the loss-making business and get OLX to a profitable, high-margin business, and that effort is still on, I'll be honest.
Got it. Sir, on the finance side now, any color? I mean, we have now close to a year seen decline in revenues for this business. Any thoughts or outlook about when can we start looking at growth according to your ground-level understanding of this business?
We feel, you know, we actually thought the repossession fall has bottomed out, right? We actually thought that even six months ago. I want to say that it bottomed out now, the repossession fall, and therefore, all our growth in retail becomes growth. But the repo continues to fall, which shows the strength of the economy itself. It's hard to predict whether the repo side will fall. It's still, you know, 48% of our business, so it's hard to say it's completely stopped, right? I think, but it's hard to predict, to be honest. I would think that the volumes are now on the repo side should not fall further. And therefore, any increase in the retail should just be growth for us.
But you know, every time we think that, the repossession volumes continue to fall. So it's hard to tell, but I would think it's probably bottomed out.
Okay. Okay. But, will it be fair to say that this is representative of the industry and?
Yes.
May not have-
No, no, absolutely representative. You, you can see in the poor financial performance of the banks and NBFCs, yeah.
Okay. So no market share gain perspective from any player?
No, not at all. No, not at all, no.
Okay. Got it. Okay, sir, I will come back to you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ankit K from Smart Sync. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on the second quarter numbers. So my first question is related to the remarketing business. In your opening commentary, you indicated the point that the repo is now down from 53– 39, and the retail has gone up from 34– 39. So I just wanted to know, what is the balance? So 39 is repo, 39 is retail. What is the balance?
No, the repo, again, the repo is 48%, retail is 39%.
Okay. But there is still 25%–30% balance.
Yeah, that's the long tail, the other corporates and other sellers, and that's just long tail.
Okay. So you don't have any growth there from that side? Your focus is only on the retail and the-
There is, there is growth. I think, I think what I was trying to say, the repo, the 48%, has been falling, you know, over a period of a year and a half. The, the retail is something which has rapidly grown. In percent, this is in percentage to our volume. This is not, it's not a growth percentage. This is really suppose we sold a 100% or our revenue is a 100%, 48 comes from repo, 39% comes from retail. And that adjustment is taking place is what we are saying.
Okay. Is it fair to say that probably only when the auto finance companies start showing up NPA, we will see the repo-
Yes.
Volume back?
That, that is exactly the point. That is exactly the point, yes.
Okay. One last question related to the mix which you mentioned, that new is 84% and old is 16%, and OEM is 62% and dealers is 38%. I'm talking about the percentage of revenue. So, how do you see this going forward, given that you now have OLX in our scheme of things? So how do you see these percentages moving in the next 2–3 years? I know you can't give an exact number, but directionally, how do you see this?
We feel over time, it's logical that the dealer share should grow. The 62–38 should probably change, and the dealer business should grow faster is what we feel. I mean, that's just because if you see the history of digital advertising, it starts with the bigger manufacturers, and then flows down to fragmented dealerships. So, yeah, logically, over the next 2–3 years, the share of dealers will be faster growing, will grow faster than the share of OEMs.
In terms of new and old, 84 is new today, and old is 16.
I think because we've now acquired OLX, 100% used, it's possible this may remain because CarWale remain mostly new. I think that probably will get factored in OLX's results and may remain similar.
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to participants that you may press star and one to join the question queue. The next question is from Pankaj, from Affluent Assets. Please go ahead. Pankaj from Affluent Assets, you may go ahead with the question.
Hello, how are you doing?
Yes, hi, Pankaj. Yes.
Okay. Sir, this quarter we have reported losses from the discontinued operation. So-
Yes.
is the discontinued, is the operation completely discontinued and
Yes.
closed down, or do we have any negative loss or any negative news coming from that end?
No, the C2B transaction business which we've discontinued, discontinued completely.
Closed down completely?
Yeah.
Right. So what are the growth, next for us going forward? Do we expect to see this INR 20 crore per quarter, the bottom line, go on next year onwards, or, do we have any more room for growing our bottom line?
No, I think there are two parts. One is that the profit for the last quarter after discontinuing operation was INR 21 crore–INR 22 crore. That is at the current level of revenue and the current level of performance. Obviously, if our revenue grows next year or as our revenue grows, we do expect the profitability to grow as well.
Do we have any operating leverage playing out here?
We have a lot of operating leverage because we see our two main costs are people cost and marketing costs.
Yeah.
Our marketing costs are not growing with our revenues, and our people costs grow in proportion to our revenues. So as our revenues grow, you know, and actually our profitability grows at a much faster rate. As you can see, in the last three, four years, our margins are continuously improving.
So what are our internal targets? Where do we need to be? Where do you want to take this company to? What are our targets for top line, bottom line, so say, in FY 15, FY 25, 26, also?
So you know what?
Can you share?
We don't give guidance, but if you see, if you see our consolidated results, and you see our Adjusted EBITDA or our profit EBITDA without other, without excluding all our interest or treasury income, it is 22% in the quarter, right? Last quarter. That is... And, and for nine months it's 19%, versus 16% the previous nine months last year.
No, I got that.
So-
I got that.
Obviously, our intent is companies which are really good tech marketplace kind of companies, over a long period of time we want to get to a 30%–35% margin, right? And we are in that direction as increased revenues to keep improving our margins. That's the intent. But I think that 30%–35% will take us time, but eventually our goal would be to keep improving our margins.
Right. Any sales target for next year?
We, of course, internally have made budgets and targets, but we don't, we don't go out and give guidance at this point, so. But we have, of course, internally we have targets and, and objectives on profitability and revenues.
Okay. Sure. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Vikas Kasturi from Focus Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir.
Vikas.
Hi, sir. I had a couple of questions. So one is on, in the presentation, I saw this brand, Drive A Smile. Is this same as abSure?
No, it's not. Drive A Smile is our, a section or a part of our CarTrade Foundation, where we help people in medical education needs within the mobility or ecosystem. So it's really our initiative, the CSR initiative within the group, which, you know, helps out the needy within the automotive industry or the mobility industry.
Yeah. Got it. Thank you. My next question is, sir, I was just looking at the OLX, OLX acquisition, and at that time, sometime in August, September, you had put out a presentation, and in it, you have given the breakup of both OLX and, at that time, they had that used car business. And I think you paid around INR 560 crore. And when I look at the OLX, the profit number that you have shown, which is about INR 111 crore, so it comes to something like 5x earnings. Is that correct, sir?
What we had said is we had acquired the company for INR 520-odd crore.
Yeah.
The OLX classified business had a profit of INR 111 crore that time what we declared, and the OLX transaction business had a loss of INR 100 crore.
Right.
If you remember.
Yeah.
This was before tech costs were factored in, and what we had showed clearly there.
Right.
And therefore, we added the tech costs, the profitability, which was INR 11 crore net, would come down. So we obviously felt that the loss-making business, which was losing INR 100 crore a year or something, we could not possibly turn around or manage it in the company.
Right.
So we shut that down.
Right.
What was left was the classified business, which was showing INR 111 crore, and there were tech costs allocated to that, which is what we've done now. And therefore, you see in this quarter, the continuing businesses with an INR 11 crore or INR 11.46 crore profit.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And, sir, and this tech cost, you had also said that it is kind of, it will taper down at the end of December, and from January onwards, it will not be there. So, so how much of that would reduce, sir? So you had shown, INR 111 crore for OLX, and that is the only continuing, the classified business, that is the only continuing piece. And from January onwards, that tech cost is also not there. So what would-
The 111 was before any tech costs. We had-
Right
... also indicated that the tech costs are likely to be INR 30 crore for the quarter-
Right.
INR 30 crore per month, over and above this, which is, of course, what is showing in the continuing business as well as the discontinued business equally. What we are now saying is that the CarTrade cost being borne just by the classified piece is already borne, and it may optimize over the next, you know, one or two quarters, because it's moved to our own environment, and for that it requires a lot of optimization of cost from our side.
Got it, got it. But 11 crore, what you see in the classified business now, the continuing business is a clear reflection of what is carried on post-January. Okay. Okay. Got it, sir. Sir, just changing gears a little bit. And sir, is there any plan? I remember speaking to your management about two years ago when you had just IPO'd, and at that time, one of the thought processes was that at some point you would want to integrate your online auction and your offline auction business. You have a CarTrade Exchange and you have SAMIL, and there would be some sort of an integration between those two pieces. Is that still on the cards, sir?
Yeah, CarTrade Exchange is a 100% subsidiary of Shriram Automall. And the methodology there is integrated, which is Shriram Automall provides them the typical facilities, which is, you know, the Automall, 150 Automalls across the country, et cetera, et cetera. And Shriram Automall does do a hybrid of, you know, physically keeping vehicles and doing online sale. So it is pretty much integrated, yeah.
Okay. Okay. Got it, sir. One last question, sir. Any, is this kind of your model? I mean, I think you own about 55% of Shriram Automall. I think the rest is with the Shriram Group. Is that going to be the end state, or is that also likely to change, sir, with you acquiring more percentage of that?
No, that's the current state. There's no intent to do anything else. That's the current state. Shriram Finance has a lot of value in Shriram Automall. It's also a big supplier to Shriram Automall.
Right.
Plus they've got a fantastic experience and foothold, you know, in the whole commercial vehicle market. On top of that, they're one of India's leading automotive financial. You know, they add tremendous strategic value and are great partners to have, and the intent is this is what the current state is, yeah.
Sure, sir. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for kindly explanation, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask questions, please press star and one. Before we take the next question, a request to participants to please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, we request you to rejoin the queue. The next question is from Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vinay. I just have one follow-up question.
Yeah.
In OLX business, we don't see any tax expenses there. Are those likely to come in the coming quarters on-
In OLX?
In OLX, yeah.
Initially, it may not be split, but of course, there's other tax expenses as well.
Sachin, is your question about tax expense?
Yeah, there is no tax in OLX, so I'm just wondering, will it come in the future?
Tax, T-A-X.
I think there's carry forward losses that may not be mistaken.
Yes. Yes, Sach, no, so, Sachin, for this financially as a legal entity, they do have losses, so there is no tax expense. And for whatever tax expense or for losses that will be recorded in this year, we will not land up paying tax in the next year. All brought forward taxes we have lost because of the change in shareholding, on account of the acquisition. Is that clear, Sachin? You would be able to-
Yeah. So basically, until we run out of the current losses, which is roughly INR 63 crore of losses, we don't end up paying any taxes, is that right?
That's right.
Yeah. Okay. All right, thanks.
Thank you. Next question is from Ankit K from Smart Singh. Please go ahead.
Thank you for allowing the follow-up. My question basically relate to the cash, which we have on our books right now, it's close to INR 700 crore. As we have been seeing, ever since you got listed, our business is predominantly asset light and doesn't require much cash. We have also done a good acquisition, where we have used around INR 500 crore, but still we have INR 700 crore of cash left. So, do we have more acquisition plan or do we, are we thinking on buyback route? Because given the kind of growth which we are seeing in over the next one or two years, probably the it is not priced in into this market now. Any thoughts on that?
Yeah. You know, we do have INR 700 crore cash in the parent as well as a subsidiary, intent, and also we feel confident that we will, that the company will be profitable and generating cash and continue to generate cash over 1, 2, 3 years. The obvious answer would be that we are of course looking at related M&A and investments. We're a company which has been very strong with M&A and made successes on the M&A we have done, and grown the company and its revenues and its profitability through M&A. So obviously we're continuously on the lookout for adjacencies or synergistic businesses where we can make a difference and which add value to our consumers and users. So that is obviously an exercise for the company.
You know, I mean, it is, you know, of course, we don't find any use of this cash for M&A or any, or investments, and we continue to generate cash. The idea would be at appropriate time to, you know, do buybacks or devote the return back to the shareholders. That would be the intent.
Thank you. One last question. This is a follow-up to the Vikas's question, where he asked about it. If I got it correctly, so, is it fair to assume that the OLX business now, which you have, is only the business which will have that INR 111 crore profit minus?
Yeah.
But it is going to, which is going to continue to reduce over a period of time, right?
No. What I, what I told Vikas was that the continuing business is absolutely correct, is the business which is INR 45 crore revenue on 11 point some, 11.4% profit. In the first, to get to 11.4% already has some tech costs in it. In fact, I answered to say that the tech costs may slightly go up in this quarter, but will come down to these levels in a quarter or two. So it is, and may come down even further after that. But our intent is to keep optimizing these tech costs, because the infrastructure costs, server usage costs, multiple other costs, which we're still getting a hang of, and it will move from a global environment to our own environment. So it is still, you know, a little bit of work in progress.
But the continuing business is INR 44 crore and 11.4 crore. So it may, as I said, the cost might go up slightly in this quarter, but they will eventually normalize to these levels, is what I said.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Welcome. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Palak from MIV Investment Management. Please go ahead.
Hi. So I really missed one of the previous questions regarding the tech cost and the classified business. So can you please explain the cost for the classified business, and then which line item it is included? Is it a part of other expense?
Sure. I'll explain the cost, and Aneesha can explain the line item. But, what I said earlier is that the tech costs in the last quarter have been factored in the continuing business, in the classified business, as well as divided in the discontinuing business. The total INR 30 crore tech cost incurred in the entire period of 5 months, has been divided equally between the classified business and transaction business. The classified business, which is the continuing business, got the tech costs already included pertaining to it. We think that these costs will continue from January to March onwards. They have a slight escalation in this quarter till they're fully normalized, but eventually come back to this level. Aneesha, you want to explain where it is factored, this tech cost in the financials?
Yes, so as you rightly said, it's for the classified business, it's included in the other expenses that we disclosed in the deck. And the discontinued operations, it's all part of the INR 45 crore, INR 18 crore that we see as a single line item.
That's all. Yeah. Thank you. I got my answer.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. We'll take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference back to the management team for closing comments.
I want to thank all of you for joining on the call today, and we'll, you know, as time goes on, we'll continue having conversations with all of you. Thank you once again for joining, and take care, and all the best. Thank you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of CarTrade Tech Limited, that concludes the conference. Thank you for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect your lines.