Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to CarTrade Tech Limited Q4 and FY23 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 on 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 conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director, CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining this quarterly earnings call and also the final, the year-end financials call as well. First of all, it gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you and we have also uploaded a presentation and I'll go straight to the presentation to give you some key highlights for the quarter and for the year. On slide three, first gives a summary of some of the key metrics. It gives me great pleasure to tell you that we've achieved the highest ever revenue in the year, in the quarter, and also highest ever Adjusted EBITDA in a quarter or in the year. The revenue has grown by 20% for the year. Adjusted EBITDA has grown by 28% during the year.
You know, we continue to be India's leading automotive platform. We're almost now 200+ physical locations. In the last year, March 2023, we auctioned 1.1 million vehicles. On Car, on our consumer platform, we received 34 million, in the last quarter, we received 34 million unique customers every month. I think what again is remarkable is that 86% of these came organically, which shows why our margins have stayed strong. Revenue for the year was at INR 427.7 crores, which is, as I said, a growth of approximately 20%, and for the quarter was INR 116.6 crores, which is also the highest in any quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA was INR 124.9 crores for the year and INR 39.8 crores for the quarter, which also is the highest ever. Profit after tax is INR 40.4 crores. Do remember that this is also after a deferred tax of approximately INR 11 crores in this PAT. Adjusted PAT, adjusted for ESOPs as well as deferred tax, is approximately INR 80 crores for the year. We continue to be a strong, you know, business with completely no loans or any kind of debt with a strong cash balance, almost INR 1,100 crores in the company. If I go to the next slide, which is the consolidated financials for the year, which is slide 4.
As you can see here, the revenue for the quarter is INR 116 crores. The revenue for the year, the net revenue for the year is INR 421. The net is, it's netted for some of the transaction business and comes to a growth approximately 20%. Expenses from last quarter to this quarter stayed stable. Adjusted EBITDA has gone up to INR 39.8 crores in the quarter compared to INR 36.6 crores in the previous quarter. For the year is INR 124.9 crores versus INR 97 crores the previous year, which is a growth of approximately 28% during the year. I think the other thing is the Adjusted EBITDA margin, as you can see, it is 34% for the quarter.
If you remove other income, the Adjusted EBITDA margin comes to 20% during the year and 20% during the quarter and 17% for the year. The other key highlights in the consolidated accounts are, of course, the adjusted PAT and the PBT which are below. The adjusted PAT for the quarter is INR 23 crores and INR 80 crores for the, for the year, which is a growth of... The adjusted PAT has grown about 42%. As you can see here, the profit after tax has actually turned profitable during the year at INR 17.49 for the quarter compared to a loss last year.
The loss last year due to that, due to an ESOP entry, on an ESOP cost which was taken in our, in our accounts last year. If you go to the standalone financials, for the quarter, which is just the standalone accounts, which mainly includes the consumer business, or the consumer platforms, you can see that the quarter's had INR 58.7 crores in net revenue, which is a growth of 35%. The year revenues are INR 204.94 crores, which is a growth of 38% in the standalone. As you can see, costs remaining stable in the quarter. Therefore, you've seen a big jump in our Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of a 101% growth.
This is something we've been talking about, in multiple calls, you know, over the years that increase in revenue, results in a disproportionate increase in EBITDA. As you can see here, 35% growth in revenue in the quarter has led to a 101% growth in EBITDA during the quarter. On, in the year, 38% growth in revenue has led to a 94% growth in profitability. The EBITDA margin is 41%, with other income and 19% without other income, which has also grown in the year to 15% versus 5% in the previous year.
Most of the numbers in the standalone account are extremely healthy, and we feel pretty good about the business on the standalone consumer business for the last year. If you look at the next slide, which is the remarketing business, we've had headwinds here. In the quarter has been a slight de-growth and for the year we've had a slight growth of 6%. EBITDA has also been hit, in the year, we're down 13%. And Adjusted EBITDA margins are also hit, from 24%- 18%. Even though Shriram Automall continues to have an Adjusted EBITDA of INR 15 crores versus INR 12 crores the previous quarter, so there's slight better this quarter than slightly better than the previous quarter.
There've been quite a few headwinds in this business, and we've talked about this in the last two quarters, where the headwinds are mostly on account of the supply coming from repossessed vehicles, which has seen a little bit of a downturn, with markets being a little better. The actual, we've seen a good big growth in our retail business. In fact, I'll share some of these percentages a little later on supply coming from various sources. We've still seen headwinds in the repossession side of this business, and growth on the retail side of the business. Overall, we've seen headwinds in the entire consolidated Shriram Automall business and we feel that hopefully in this year at a later stage it will correct itself.
If we look at the next slide, which is the organic monthly unique visitors, it's about 34 million in quarter four versus 29.8 million in the previous year, same quarter. We've seen a reasonable growth in our unique visitors per month. As again, I wanna stress that this is 86% organic, which is one of the reasons why the consumer business has seen, you know, leverage in its Adjusted EBITDA going up. The next slide really are Google Trends and our popularity around brand affinity which is a reflection of our online search popularity. You can see here the gaps continue to be there versus our competitors. CarWale index 83 versus 21 being the next, BikeWale at 90 versus 45 being the next.
We've seen, you know, a strength on online search popularity continuing. The next slide about auction listings and volumes. Here you can see the, for the quarter has been 286. For the year it was 1.1 million. I think listings have been more or less flat and so have the auction volumes, which is a reflection on SAMIL's financials, Shriram Automall's financials by itself. You know, these are high-level metrics. There are some other ratios I'd like to talk through. One is our percentage of used car to new car revenue in the consumer group. This year the used car revenue has gone to 16% of our total consumer group revenues, which was 9% last year. It is 91% new cars last year, which has gone to 84%.
16% used cars this year versus 9% the previous year. I think the other thing we've seen here is the growth rates. The used car business has grown about 136%, whereas the new car business has grown about 26%, which really makes up the entire growth of the consumer business. If you look at the OEM dealers split in our consumer business, it was 65% OEM and 35% dealer. That's become 61% OEM and 39%, so the dealer business has got better. If you look at the Shriram Automall, some key metrics which we give out, the percentage of repo business has gone from 69% last year to 55%. We've dropped in the repossession supply, in terms of percentage of our total business.
Our retail business has gone from 21%- 33%. So we've seen huge growth on the retail side. Of course, as I've said, we've seen lots of constraints on the repossession business. This has gone from 69%- 55% of our business. These are some high-level metrics of the company. You know, I'm happy to, you know, answer questions which you might have and clarifications you might need.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have our first question from the line of Siddhartha Bera from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi, Siddhartha.
Sir, just first a housekeeping question. This OE and dealer revenue mix or growth, can you share for this quarter how it has been for the standalone business?
You want the split?
Yes.
It is for the quarter, it's 60- 38. I said for the year it's 61 39, so it's not much different. Aneesha, is that correct?
Yes, sir. I said for, just in the quarter it's about 60- 38, so very similar.
Okay. Okay. The new and used will be? New car and used revenue mix.
For the quarter,
For the quarter.
It's been similar, 16- 84.
Okay. quarter-on-quarter, not much change.
Not much change.
Not much change. Okay. Sir, second question on the growth side, I mean, we have shown a good growth momentum in the current quarter. What is the outlook for the coming year? Given the trends or given the sort of the traction you are seeing from the OE or the dealers, what is your expectation for some of these growth momentum? Is it I mean, will it sustain or normalize or how to look at the next one year?
You know, we don't give any guidance, we generally think that if you see the OEM new car sales in India have grown about 28% this year. I think most predictions are around the fact that it'll grow at 8-10% in the coming year. You know, we feel pretty good about the business environment in the last quarter. We're just hopeful the same business environment continues, you know, for the next three months, six months, one year. We feel pretty confident. I can't give a growth number, we feel pretty confident.
I just wanna stress one more thing that if you look at the 5-year CAGR of the company growth rate for the past 5-years, of course, it's there in the annual report and it's at about 23% and 69% growth in EBITDA over a 5-year period CAGR. you know, we've had a consistent growth and profitability growth track record for the last 5-years. we feel pretty good that this year should not be any different. I mean, the market looks fine at this point.
Okay. No, because I mean, on the new car side, we expect growth to slow down meaningfully this year. It may not be more than 5%-6% is our view. On that context, I mean, given that, I mean, generally, like you have said in the past, in case demand slows down, it leads to more incentive for the OEM to advertise more. Should we expect that for us, growth should continue to remain in healthy double digits, is what I was just trying to understand?
Yeah. What we said is that when demand doesn't... Not when demand slows down, but when supply is more than demand, it helps us, is what we said. Which means that there are shortages in vehicles. You know, the supply of manufacturers is more than demand. It's a more favorable than when vehicles are under shortages, because naturally manufacturers and dealers don't need to advertise. Yeah, I think we're moving more to a market where demand exceeds supply. We still want the new car industry to grow. I think it's a combination of all of that.
Okay, got it. Second, sir, on the margin side, I mean, obviously we have continued to demonstrate good, margin trends for the last two quarters. Is it something we can expect that with, at least a double-digit growth, we should sort of continue to build on what we have reported, in the last nine months? Or?
Absolutely. I think our cost structures and unit economic structures and the way the companies are built is that in revenue growth you see a more disproportionate growth in EBITDA. You've seen this demonstrated now across the whole year, 34% net to a 92% growth in profit. I think that's quite clear that growth in revenue leads to a disproportionate growth in EBITDA. Our basic business model and cost build up has not changed. And this is typical to businesses like ours, marketplaces business like ours, where costs don't increase with proportion to revenues. In fact, we have two principal costs, marketing and people. If you see over 5-years, our marketing costs are flat, over 5-years. And at 34 million customers a month, right?
It's still flat over 5-years. You know, we do feel good about the fact that with revenue increasing, costs don't go up in proportion.
Yeah. Because on a quarter-on-quarter basis, our marketing costs have gone up. Given that.
Yes.
if you're expecting demand to slow down, so shall we expect current trends to sustain or, I mean, there can be upside risk to that, the trend is sort of getting?
I think we should assume the same cost structure as we have till now.
Okay. Okay. Lastly, sir, on the abSure side.
There will be some escalation in costs. I think there'll be some escalation in costs because from the first April we all have an increment cycle. You'll see some escalation in costs.
Right.
Because of increments.
Yeah.
That adjusts itself through the year.
Okay. Sir, on the... Lastly, on the abSure side, we have not commented much this time. Just wanted your thoughts on what is happening there?
The auction side, actually, we've had a tough year and I think the tough year is because-
Sorry, sir. Sorry to interrupt, sir.
What was the question?
I'm sure. I'm sure.
Oh, the abSure. Sorry. My mistake. I heard auction. On the abSure side, actually, we've This quarter and the last three months, I have slightly modified it. I think we've got abSure outlets, and we've added another range, what we call signature outlets. I, and I did not stress, but we are close to about, I think, 90, Aneesha, am I correct?
Yes. Yes.
It closes 90. It's, as I said, we've added a new dimension here because we wanna scale up now. We're quite confident that we've tested the model. I think the whole abSure model is created so someone can book a car online and other logistics of delivery, et cetera, et cetera, get certified cars, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of that is now played out. As you know that, you know, we've tried to build a very asset-light model, and we continue in that endeavor. And our objective is to grow these abSure and signature outlets over the next 2 to 3, 4 years now. It's, as I've also just highlighted that our used car business has grown 136%. Part of it is abSure, part of it is, you know, just our classified used car business growing itself.
We feel confident and bullish about it. It's a very, very small still part of our entire business. Used cars itself is only, as I said, 16%, so it's a small part of the consumer group. You know, we feel confident about it for the future.
Got it, sir. Thanks a lot. I'll come back.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Ankit Kanodia from Smart Sync Services . Participants are requested to kindly restrict their questions to two at a time so that the management is able to answer queries from all participants. Mr. Kanodia, please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. First of all, congratulations on good set of numbers.
Thank you.
Consumer set of business. My first question is related to the main pain point which I see in your presentation and which you alluded to in your opening commentary also, which is the auction listing volume and particularly the repossessed vehicle. Would you throw some more light there as to what is happening there and what can change for the better in the coming time?
I think what we've seen is, volume on the repossession side, you know, slightly de-grow. We've been hearing multiple reasons. One is, of course, the fact that, you know, the economy has done better and clearly people are able to pay loans. That is one factor why repossession itself has gone down. I think the second factor, which is given is and when we talk to our customers is that, resale value, used cars or used vehicles is up and therefore people will not surrender vehicles but pay off their loans. I think these are two big factors we've seen. We're not sure, you know, whether this is cyclical and whether this will.
These are cycles with the repossession industry gone through several times in the past as well. You know, these are cycles and a cyclical part of the business. I think where we've made effort to counter this drop, and we are 69% repossession volume, so that's where it's hurt us. I think where we feel good about the business is we've been able to substitute a large part of that with growing fragmented supply, retail supply, which basically makes us a healthier business for the future. When the repossession volumes do come back, our retail business would also, you know, be of certain strength and therefore enable the company to have a much, much stronger future. That's the good part. But repossession has been a very tough, you know, 6-8 months.
Thank you. That really helped. My second question is, I think we have been discussing this for last two quarters now. We are around a INR 2,000 crore market cap company now and INR 1,100 crore of cash. At the board level, are we having any discussion on buyback? Maybe even a small buyback of INR 100 crore or INR 150 crore can do a world, good confidence booster for the investing community. Do we have any discussion on the board level or have we decided on a.
Yes, we do discuss this from time to time. I think we also discuss the regulation around what quantum we are allowed to buy back and not buy back. It's still under consideration of the board. I don't think we've come to any conclusion as yet, what to do or what not to do.
Sure. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you.
I'll come back in the queue if I have more questions.
Sure.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to participants to press star and one to ask a question. We have our next question from the line of Raj from Arjav Partners. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yes.
Now first thing I want to say is for 12:00 P.M. call, you are uploading everything at 11:55 A.M. I think it is bit unfair for all the investors, I guess, sir, you know.
Yes, sir. I'd like to apologize for that. Sorry for that.
Yeah. Yeah. Other thing.
We'll take, we'll make sure that next time we don't do that again.
Yeah. Please. Please do.
Apologize for that.
Thanks. Yeah. Other thing I wanted to ask is, what is there in your other income exactly?
Aneesha, you want to explain this?
Sure. Our other income includes treasury income, which is because we have large funds, which is about INR 1,100 crores. These are parked with highly conservative mutual funds and overnight funds, which yield a return which is classified under the other income.
All right. How much of interest is being earned on these funds?
Ballpark, 6%.
How much?
Ballpark, about 6%.
6% interest you earn.
Correct.
All right. All right. Also regarding I wanted to ask about adjusted PAT. What adjustments have you done in it?
Adjusted PAT-
This is adjusted for deferred tax, which is about INR 11 crores, right, Aneesha? ESOPs of cashless ESOP is about INR 27 crores. Is that correct?
Yes. Yes, sir.
INR 27 crores ESOPs. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. There's also PAT below, which is approximately about INR 40 crores. The adjusted is about INR 79 crores.
Yes.
All right. Also for FY 24, can you give a rough outlook on the operations of the company? Like, how do you see going ahead?
We don't give a guidance, what I can say is that we feel pretty good about the state of the business and the state of the market on the consumer group, which is the new car and the used car consumer platforms. In the near future, it seems that the repossession industry will still continue to go through what it's gone through in the last 6-8 months. There again, we're making lots of efforts to get supply from other sources, so we can continue to grow at Shriram Automall as well. You know, we feel pretty confident about the business, and there are many reasons why. I think one is really the traffic of consumers on our platform and really the leadership we have on our search popularity and marketing costs related to that.
On the consumer side of the business, the traction of used cars growing, which we see a very strong positive for our business. Really on the Shriram Automall, as I said, we've established a new vertical of retail, segmented retail supply. We feel quite confident about the business. There are some headwinds on the repossession side which continue to be there. On the whole, we seem very, very reasonably confident about the business.
Thank you. We request you to come back in the queue for follow-up questions. We have our next question from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vinay. Congratulations.
Hi, Sachin.
On a great set of results.
Thank you.
I wanted to talk regarding the OEMs advertising spend, right? I believe since COVID, the demand supply mismatch has resulted in ad spend going down as % of revenue for these OEMs. What do you think is the trajectory on this? How long does it take to revert? Do you see this happening in a year, 2, 3 years? How do you see it?
It seems positive because the demand supply, you know, position has actually changed in the last six to eight months. Just to give you a context, OEM business grew by 29% for us this year. Am I right, Aneesha? The 29%.
Yes.
Feel pretty good about it, that markets are changing. OEMs are starting to spend more money than they did. Digital emphasis is increasing. In fact, the year before that was a tough year because really supply was not available and OEMs chose to not cut, but hold advertising. But a lot of it bounced back in the last year, which you can see in our results as well. At this stage, actually the market is equally favorable. It's very similar to what it should be. There is demand. There is in a couple of manufacturers, demand is much more than supply. Generally across the board, supply seems to be getting better.
Understood. My second question is related to the first one itself, right. When OEMs are shifting to more of their ad spend digitally, a lot of the spend is, I think, happening also on video and other such formats, which I don't think CarTrade has as of now. How are you trying to get that wallet share from OEMs?
We're a different segment, right? You're right. I think out of our total digital spend, out of the total digital spend manufacturers spend on, you know, OTT platforms and even horizontal tools, we're really a verticalized business for them, which gives them the lowest cost of customer acquisition. I think the reason CarWale is compelling to manufacturers is just because it's the lowest cost of customer acquisition from them. With all the 34 million customers coming or most people buying a new car coming to our platform, this is the single biggest destination for accessing customers. As I told you, as they have more and more supply and demand curves is lower than supply, you know, they need these customers to increase their sales.
We are more of, as I said, a verticalized business with very focused set of customers for them, and in many cases the lowest cost of acquisition for them for a customer. That's where we make our own space, you know, in this whole digital advertising space. If they put an ad on a OTT platform, it's a very generic customer they see which is who's seeing the ad, and therefore the cost of advertising is much higher for them versus putting up ads or partnering with CarWale.
Sure. Just one clarification on this one. Do you see the vertical versus horizontal shift in the OEM advertising spend or is it roughly been stable?
Yeah, we think it stays this way. You know, both have their own purpose. horizontals gives them a different kind of reach and brand capability. verticalized gives them an immediate customer with the lowest customer acquisition. It will probably continue as it is. What we try to do as a company is try and go deeper and deeper in our offerings to manufacturers, so that we always stay relevant to the manufacturer. You know, the deep integration even now within multiple integrations with multiple manufacturers, so that their offering becomes stronger for the customer. That's where, you know, that's where we invest all our product and technology today, so that we stay relevant versus horizontals. I think that's the...
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to participants to press star and 1 to ask a question. We have our next question from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity.
Thank you.
Can you hear me, Vinay? Hi. Hi.
We can hear you, Vijit. Thank you.
Great. Hi. Hi, Vinay. Hi, Aneesha. My first question is on the standalone business. You share the traffic trends on a quarterly basis. Are there any other metrics of traffic engagement that you can share, you know, in terms of, say, user-generated content like ratings, reviews, uploaded every quarter or time spent, whatever makes sense. Is that possible to do?
We can try and share it to you. I don't, I don't have it right now, but we can try and share it with you. We're also publicly available on many comparative platforms. We do look at things like time on site, bounce rates, page views and things like that, which are clearly best in class even when you look at those numbers. We do need to look at it. I don't have it right now, but maybe we can try and share that with you in comparison what's available to us, with us.
Got it. Vinay, just related to that, is user-generated content on the website something that you think is important and relevant to the business in the way you do it? Do you track that? At least those things, right, whether people are uploading their own reviews and stuff, could be indication of how, you know, copyright content for you or other, you know, proprietary content for you.
You know, user-gen content is important, but it's not the primary content or the most visited content on our website. I think what tends to be is comparative shopping, comparing one car with the other car. People come for many reasons, and one of the big reasons they come to us is to understand what car to buy. That partly comes from user content, but lots of it comes from understanding expert opinions, understanding, you know, comparative features, understanding maybe a video or 360 or a different view of the vehicle to finding out a dealer to buy from, what price to pay, et cetera, et cetera. Even though there is a lot of user-gen content, it's not the primary reason in India why they come to us.
Got it. My second question, Vinay, is on the remarketing business. I think, I believe in the last call also you mentioned, and you've said a couple of times now that, you know, the repo market is going through a tough time. The consumer market and the remarketing business is doing well. When I look at those metrics you shared, right, it looks like, you know, likely the repo business is kind of flattish QOQ and the retail business continues to do well. I mean, just based on those numbers, right, 70%, 69% of the business last year versus 55% this year, 53% previous quarter, it looks like you're now at around INR 29-30 crores. In repo and retail is around INR 24-25 crores.
I'm just wondering if, on an absolute basis, has repo bottomed out in your view? This used to be around INR 39-40 crores.
It seems to have bottomed out. Yes. If that's the question. It seems to be. I think it.
Got it.
Although it's down, it's pretty much similar for last two quarters, but it seems to be bottomed out, yeah.
In terms of margins, just on a sequential basis, obviously in this business, while, you know, absolute revenues is kind of flattish QOQ, your margins have improved. Is that also a function of the mix?
Yeah, yeah.
If it is, you know, more
Retail by definition. Retail by definition is a higher margin for us. I think there are two things in retail. One is if you can build retail, fragmented supply, as we call it.
One is margin slightly better, but also our ability to differentiate, right? From all any kind of competition might come in the future is very high because then you have high level of fragmented supply, it's very hard for people to replicate, right? There are two advantages of that. One is the immediate margin, but bigger thing is the ability to defend and create moats around our business, which will be impossible for someone to break through a little later.
Got it. Vinay, just to understand this right, the retail is essentially, C2B2B for you, right? You're buying from.
Yeah, it could be C2B2B, it could be C to B, it could be customers coming to us, it could be customers coming through a very small broker or middleman to us. You know, both ways.
I see. Got it. Understood. Thanks. Those are my questions.
Very fragmented, very small middleman brokers. They're not bulk. I mean, very insignificant in terms of per person volume.
Got it. Understood. Thanks.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sanjay Parekh from Sohum Asset Managers. Please go ahead.
Thank you. My question to Vinay is that today on standalone, we're doing INR 156 crore turnover and the core operating profit, which is excluding other income, is INR 23 crores. Just in three years from now, for a leadership that we have, clearly which is showing up in our ratings and viewership, the downloads. This seems to be quite low in terms of the overall pie, which is largely advertising and referrals from dealers. Three years from now, the question is that three years from now, can we grow at 25%? If yes, then should this operating leverage kick in in terms of 25% margins in three years from now?
I mean, I'm not trying to get a number. I'm just trying to get your vision for 3 years for this company on standalone first.
Is the question that 25% on top line? Is that the question?
Yeah. First is the top line 25% growth because the pie looks quite small for the leadership we have and the opportunity that I'm trying to understand. The second is, if that 25% growth were to come through, we've done 19% core profit, operating profit margin in the fourth quarter.
That's right.
Should this be around 25% in 3 years from now?
Right. I think it's a good question. you know, the one thing I wanna highlight here is that about 13-14% of money spent by any manufacturer and dealers in advertising is on digital. In most countries it's about 40%. One can see that manufacturing dealers monies in the next three, four years or 5-years going on 13-14% or maybe 20-25% or 30% digital. That's one factor of growth for us. As I told you, the last 5-years CAGR of our entire business is about 23% and a 69% growth in EBITDA.
We definitely feel that, you know, if we are able to grow as a number you've given at 25% or 30% or 20%, the EBITDA will grow at a higher clip and the margins should improve. As we've demonstrated, you know, last year as well, coming to this at 19%. I think the same question was asked last year. We feel that any kind of revenue growth from here leads to increase in margins. There may be odd years where, you know, man power costs go up a little higher. Generally we feel pretty confident that revenue growth increases in margins.
Yeah. Thank you. That is very helpful. The second question is on a standalone. While, you know, there's a cyclical weakness currently, but again the same question here is, you know, I mean, our attributable EBITDA is 50%. And I think roughly if I remove other income, you know, we are at a INR 50 crore INR 45 crore EBITDA. You know, we as economic interest get ready 50%, so that's INR 25 crore. Three years down the line, again, for the same question here, it will certainly not grow at that rate. Do you see once the cyclical part is over, this should be more like 10%-15% top line and then again we get an operating leverage or what would be your lens?
Yeah. Yeah. I think I tend to agree that, you know, as we build our other verticals, you know, one is we are hoping that the repo-less market, as I said, it is cyclical, so it, you know, 3 to 6 months later, should come back. Secondly, we can build other verticals like retail, which are higher margin, also are more, you know, defensible. We should see a reasonable growth in this business. As well as this is again a very similar business where it's a marketplace. We don't take commission on vehicles, it's an asset-light business. As we see volumes go up or revenues go up, we clearly have a differentiated margin structure here as well. I think it's pretty similar. They're both marketplaces.
One is a C2B2B marketplace and one is, you know, a B2C marketplace. The, the nature of the business are quite similar.
Sure. No, very helpful. The last is, you know, I mean, clearly we understand you're conservative. That's a very good virtue as a management. You know, we have INR 1,100 crores cash now. You know, in terms of how do you think about acquisitions?
In terms of the, you know, the clearly the payback period, a little bit of your understanding of what are the areas, if at all you are thinking, would help.
The way we think about in any investment or acquisition or user's money is that it's really gotta be a business which is gonna help our current set of users, or it's gonna be a business where our current product and technology can be used for a new set of users or consumers. The intent here is of course to look at businesses which are synergistic to our current businesses. Obviously a threshold for us to do this is high because we like to see that when we look at an investment acquisition, the management team which we are investing behind or the business model or the scale of that business is of a certain level. And I think we've in the past done 3 such acquisitions. All 3 have been successful.
In fact, Shriram Automall, CarWale are both acquisitions and all been successful. Therefore, you're right, the threshold is high because we wanna make sure we get it right. We're not a company which is in the past, you know, done you know, tens and twenties or thirties of investments and acquisition. So we are prudent about it. We, we like to, you know, have a proper thorough look at what we are doing, and if we find something of even a little bit higher size of acquisition, we are not afraid, because as long as we are convinced that, you know, we can make it work.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Pramod Amthe from InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Couple of questions. One, what's your recent experience in terms of availability of used cars? Has it improved and what's the outlook for the same next year? Second relevant to the same is what has been the inflationary price trends for used cars, and how do you expect that to behave going forward?
Yes. It is actually really hard just post-COVID, but in the last 6 months we've seen supply get better. I think that comes from, as I said, I think at that point of time, that as new car supply improves, people tend to sell their old car and buy new cars. It's very hard to sell your old car when a new car's not available because you tend to replace it. As new car availability's gone up and deliveries have increased and as new car market, as you can see, has grown by 28%, used car supply has got better. I think that's one big trend which is good for the used car industry.
The other thing of course we've seen not only in used cars but also in new cars is a trend you may be seeing as well, is that the average ticket size or customer preference or behavior to buy has changed. Which means that today if someone is buying a new car, they tend to now buy the highest variant of the same type, which is a very different behavior to which was there maybe 3, 4, 5 years ago. The average ticket sizes for most car manufacturers itself has gone up. As a result, you're seeing even the used car market, the average ticket size going up. We've seen inflationary trends where the used car average ticket size or price has gone up, number one. That's similar to new car industry as well.
These are all good things for the car industry when you have average price of new cars and used cars going up because people are making new choices on model, make, variant. Supply is increasing in used car market or sales increasing in new car market. These are just basically favorable trends for the entire car industry in the last year or so.
Do you compare on a like-to-like feature, how have the used car prices going up? What's the trend there? I understand people are upgrading.
We do actually on our website look at the average listing price today versus what it was, you know, 2 years ago or 1 year ago, 3 years ago. We have that data. Also we look at our abSure outlets, the average selling price today versus what might be, you know, some time ago. We tend to compare this just to know what's happening in the car industry. Of course we've got relevant data available with us.
The second question, the third one is, related to the competitive intensity. Do you see that easing already, considering the funding challenges which we see in global markets and that percolating down? As a result of which will also may get reflected to you in terms of reduced competition to procure these used cars.
We are a marketplace and all-inclusive marketplace. We of course, as you know, are profitable and generating cash and some of the other players in the industry are losing money or losing cash. We are not a business which buys cars or takes position on vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. Many of the other players whom we are referring to as competition actually buy cars, refurbish them and sell them. They're almost like online dealers. Some of them are even our customers because we don't see any conflict in them putting vehicles in our marketplace to sell. You know, we almost with some people who we're terming as competition, they're actually now more customers to us than competition I think.
Let's put it this way. You know, for us, we've tried to keep a very inclusive marketplace where everyone can play a part. Whether you're a bank, you can sell loans, whether you're a dealer, you can sell vehicles, you're a manufacturer, you can sell vehicles, or if you're one of these online dealers, you can also sell vehicles on our platform.
Thank you. I request you to come back in the queue for follow-up questions. We have our next question from the line of Pratyush Agarwal from White Oak. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. Am I audible?
Yes.
Sir, you're not very clear. Can you speak louder, please?
Yeah. Is it better?
Yes.
Yeah. I just have one sort of, question?
Both on BikeWale and CarWale, right. We see these non-automotive advertisements as well. First question is sort of like you mentioned, right? These websites are very vertical specific, and it makes a lot of sense for automotive guys to target on these websites, right. One, first question is really that why are there sort of non-automotive advertisements? Second, you know, sort of if you can provide a rough mix of auto versus non-automotive revenue from these two sites?
Sorry, I didn't get non-automotive, automotive on which website?
Both on CarWale and BikeWale, right? We see these, I mean, on your website there also seems to be non-automotive advertisements.
No, no. The non-automotive is very insignificant. Our number is very insignificant. I think what happens is when you Most of the advertising is automotive, which are either manufacturers and agencies, et cetera, and dealers. Sometimes you have free space on a website, you use a program which allows you to fill it up. It's like a fill rate. The quantum of revenue generated is very insignificant from a non-automotive. I mean, I would think, I don't know, it's in terms of total company, less than like, I don't know, not even 1% of our revenue.
Got it. if you could
It's just a matter of fill up because you wanna keep your ad space free, so it's just there are various programs which allow you to take ads for, like non-automotive. Yeah. Yeah.
It's not a function of getting more, less traction from the automotive guy. It's just, it's more of just filling ad space. Is that correct?
It's just filling ad space. Yeah. It's not, as I said, less than 1%. It's not significant and not something we focus on.
Right. Sort of, you know, given, last year both and from what we understand from the digital ad market. Sort of how has your conversations on pricing been, you know, in the past year, and how do you see it going forward?
You know, for us, it's been a lot about working with manufacturers and dealers. Pricing has been stable. It's not gone up. It's not gone down. I think for us it's also about getting more budgets and providing more value, and I don't see us increasing or decreasing prices. I think there may be some gradual inflationary increase, but not dramatic increase in prices or decrease.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Rakesh Jain from Axis Capital. Please go ahead. Mr. Jain, we aren't able to hear you. Your voice is breaking.
Hello. Hello.
Yes.
Hi, Rakesh. Hello.
Yeah. Hi. Vinay, just one question on booking side. The other expenses have seen jump from last two to three quarters. Right? Any particular reason or are there any one-offs being recorded?
Aneesha.
On a consolidated level.
On the consolidated. Aneesha, you wanna answer that?
Sir, the last quarter was INR 24 crores, which has gone up to INR 25 crores. Is that the number you're looking at?
INR 3.2 crore is the number I'm looking at.
Other expenses, Aneesha.
I was looking at other expenses.
I'm sorry, we couldn't understand that. Can you repeat?
I was looking at the other expenses. Rakesh, you could just explain because quarter end in December and quarter end in March.
Yeah.
The other expenses at consolidated levels was INR 24 for last quarter and has gone up to INR 25 crores. Is that the number you're looking at?
24.19 has become 25.34. I think that's it.
Yes. Yes.
No. Okay. I'm looking at INR 3.2 crore versus INR 3 crore last quarter. Not sure if there's an adjustment to that.
I'm sorry. Can we come back to this slide to see what you're looking at?
At the console level. Your console level other expenses is 3.2 at March quarter, and it was INR 3 crore last quarter.
No.
No. I think you're looking at the wrong slide or...
No, I'm looking at the press release, the quarterly press release.
Let me just quickly have a look at that, please, and I'll come back to you in a minute.
Sure. Sure. Sure. Just one more thing. you mentioned that there's only one-off details you were mentioning, the ESOP expense of INR 27 crores, right? Is that right?
It's in this, quarter was about INR 7.3 crores. For the year was about INR 27.9 crores.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Got it. Got it. Thanks so much.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sagar Sanghavi from ADD Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two set of questions. Vinay, in the prior calls you have been talking of, there'll be a couple of new revenue drivers or segments that would also kick in revenues for some period of time. That is, you're talking of insurance revenue, insurance commission revenue or loan disbursement fees, or maybe transaction-based revenue with a dealer, car dealer. When do you expect such revenues to kick in, and what would be the margins for this kind of segment? That is one.
Shall I just answer this?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, please.
What we've, what we've discussed and what we've said earlier is mostly today people, like all of us, come to CarWale to find a car, select a car, find out a dealer to buy, what price to pay, compare cars, et cetera, et cetera. We monetize manufacturer and dealers for advertising revenues.
Right.
I think what we said in the future is building technology and products for our platform as well as manufacturers for getting to a more purchase online methodology, which basically means can you get a loan approved online instantly? Can you book your car online? That's where the whole CarWale abSure signature movement came around. The intent is to get closer to the transaction where you can book online, book a loan online, or maybe even buy an insurance policy, you know, online, et cetera, et cetera. This is not a thing which you can do at one point or time. This is a journey. It may take two, three, four years, and that's where we are investing all our future product and tech in.
I think our point was that as we go on, today you can find a car on CarWale or select a car on CarWale. Tomorrow you'll be able to buy a loan on CarWale. Day after tomorrow, you'll be able to sell your old car instantly at CarWale. The day after that, maybe buy an insurance policy or get a car delivery. This is all work in progress. Over the next, I would say, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5 years, this is really where we'll have an additional source of monetization. Like the loans are already online. If you come to CarWale today, you can get instant approval for a new car or used car already, right? There are various elements of it being built as we go on.
It's not significant today, the revenue. It'll take some time for it to become significant, maybe two, three years. While our digital advertising revenue continues to grow, this will become additional source in the future.
Okay. Let's assume you will be having, let's say, INR 100 of incremental revenues from all the sources on the standalone business. You are given here most of the cost is fixed, linked to inflation. What kind of incremental EBITDA margins that we should be looking at over the next two, three, 5-years?
You know, the incremental EBITDA, as we discussed earlier, would mostly come from our advertising revenue growth because of the leverage we have, right? This would, yeah, the cost against this would be mostly product development costs and technology costs because the customer acquisition is really the same. You know, it's hard to say at this point to give a guidance around what incremental margins or EBITDA margins will come from this. Clearly it's an investment we are making already. If you see our financials, these investments are already being made. In fact, they're an operating cost, these technology and product investments, and we continue to do that and invest in it. We do see margin increasing as these revenues kick in.
I can't exactly quantify the amount of margin increase, but yeah, there is very little cost against some of these future revenue streams.
Vinay Sanghi, does that answer your question?
I think we've lost it.
We move on to the next question from-
Hi. Sorry, before we take the question, I would just want to go back to Rakesh's question. I even went through the press release. These numbers are not really there, Rakesh. Could you please help me and understand which, where, what numbers are you referring to?
Do you want me to unmute him?
Yes. Yes, please.
Just a moment please. Mr. Jain?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah. Aneesha, maybe I'll get back to you. Maybe we can connect after the call.
No, no problem. No problem.
Yeah, sure.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have a question from the line of Shirish Vaze from Moneylife Advisory Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, sir, for taking my question. My question pertains to we had announced setting up of CarTrade Ventures. I just wanted to understand thinking behind this and the kind of corporate structure that we are looking for this. Is this, would this be like an in-house VC fund? Or what exactly would be the structure for this? Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. See, one of the things we've always talked about is that we would like to invest or acquire companies in our automotive ecosystem. We have 35 or 34 million customers a month coming, and today they can come and find a new car or a used car. Tomorrow, we like them to avail of a loan or an insurance policy or service their vehicle or sell their old car or other things in the automotive ecosystem, right from automotive software, et cetera, et cetera. What we've done is really formed a team which is really looking at augmenting our current products and services with investments and acquisitions. I think the brand CarTrade Ventures was formed for that.
The intent is to use over a period of time our generated earnings, our cash earnings every year, and some, of course, our retained earnings, and look at whether we can add additional products and services to these set of customers or if we can buy technology which our current customers can use. I think the intent here is that can we incrementally grow faster inorganically apart from the growth rates you're seeing inorganically in our business. I think the one good thing we feel about our business is, compared to all the other internet, automotive internet companies and others in the internet space itself, both our business are cash profitable and generate cash, and are pretty stable over a five-year period.
We feel good that, you know, can we add more products and services to these sets of users? Can we bring new products and services to our users? I mean, or buy new technologies as well. You know, the intent of CarTrade Ventures is that. As I said, we will keep looking at transactions and investments in the automotive ecosystem and see if something comes along.
Got it. Thanks, sir. That was my question. I'll get back in touch.
Thank you.
Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Vinay Sanghi for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. I just want to thank all of you for joining this call. It's been a eventful year for us. One of our businesses, the consumer group, has done well, and the other one has faced headwind. Overall, we've had this highest ever revenue and highest ever profitability, EBITDA as well as PBT. Well, again, thank all of you and look forward to interacting with you in the future. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
Thank you.
On behalf of CarTrade Tech Limited, we conclude this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.
Thank you.