Ladies and gentlemen, good day, welcome to CarTrade Tech Limited Q3 FY 2023 earnings conference call. This conference call will 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. The statements are not 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. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. If 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. Over to you, sir.
Thank you and good morning, everybody, thank you for taking the time out early this morning for this call. What I'll do is, you know, run you through a few key financial highlights, then we can, you know, clarify all your doubts and questions, you know, which you might have. I think the first part is really which is kind of our presentation, which we've, of course, shared with each one of you. Slide number two are the key highlights, is, we have on our nine month period had a revenue growth of 23%, adjusted EBITDA growth of 30% and adjusted PAT of 43%. As you can see here, you know, number of vehicles auctioned are more than approximately 1.1 million.
Annualized traffic is 35 million unique visitors per month in the last quarter. Organic traffic, which is unpaid or traffic you don't pay for, is 87.6. Again, 20 in the last quarter. We've also achieved the highest ever revenue at close to INR 116 crores per quarter. Nine months, close to INR 311 crores, and the highest ever adjusted EBITDA this quarter, which is INR 36.6 crores, which is almost about INR 85.1 crores now over a nine-month period. We've had a, probably our best revenue quarter or adjusted EBITDA quarter, tax is INR 14 crores for the quarter. Adjusted tax, adjusted pre-soft and tax before tax, which is before tax or pre-soft is nine-month approximately INR 52 crores.
You know, the company's, you know, obviously is debt-free and continues to have strong cash balances of approximately over INR 1,000 crores. I just wanna highlight that even though we had a, you know, highest ever revenue and even an adjusted EBITDA quarter, it has been a challenging quarter for us. I think these results are in spite of some of the challenges we faced in the business. If you go to consolidated financials, which is the next slide for each one of you. As I discussed, revenues gone up for the quarter about 30%. Adjusted EBITDA also for the quarter, 30%. This is Q1 year-on-year.
Over the nine-month period that I discussed with you, it is 23% revenue growth and 20% adjusted EBITDA growth. Adjusted EBITDA, as we discussed with, you know, is INR 36.6 crores, you know, for the quarter. Adjusted PAT is INR 22 crores and PAT is at INR 40 crores that we highlighted in the previous slide. If you see the margin, EBITDA margin without other income is about 19%. Of course, with other income it's close to 23%. Even our adjusted PAT has grown by 53% for the first nine months. When it comes to standalone financials, which is the next slide, you know, this has really been a good quarter for the consumer business, CarWale, and the standalone financials reflect that.
There's a 45% growth in revenue and a 128% growth in adjusted EBITDA for the standalone accounts. Even in a nine month period, we've shown the consistency in growth in the Consumer business, which is a 40% growth and, as you can see, a 92% growth in adjusted EBITDA. I think that's some of the things we've been talking about through the last few quarters, is that when we see revenue growth, our costs don't escalate in relation to the growth of revenue. You can see costs Q-on-Q almost flat with big growth in revenues. That reflects in the 92% growth in adjusted EBITDA. Costs are not growing in relation to the revenue growth. I mean, from these numbers you can see it.
Adjusted PAT standalone is up, you know, nine months, 100%. Even when you look at PAT as standalone, close to INR 11.8 crores or INR 12 crores. As you can see now, the margin, without other income in the standalone entity is almost 22%, which is double of the last year's period. So it was 11% in the third quarter last year, and it's now doubled to 20%, 22%, which shows the leverage in the business itself whenever revenue goes up. You know, if you go to the next slide is the which is Remarketing or the auction business, Shriram Automall's financial results.
As we've had a very good quarter in the Consumer business, the Remarketing business has had a lot of headwinds, it's been a tough quarter for them. Revenue is actually down 9%. EBITDA is down 44%. Although nine month revenue growth is 11% and EBITDA there is down by 9%. It's been a really tough quarter. I think this is primarily as we had talked earlier. They had, you know, some fall in our supply from repossessed assets. That's caused this revenue degrowth in the quarter. This is also a business which has got leverage. When revenue degrows, also EBITDA falls. It's...
As we speak, when revenue grows, also it grows at this is what I wanted to highlight in the overall financials. I'm happy to go into question and clarifications. I just wanna give a few more numbers which we normally give out in consumer business. One is that, our dealer share of this business has been going up over the last year. Now about approximately, 38% of our consumer business comes from dealers and 62% in the last came from OEMs. Our new vehicle business is 84%, 16% used. In the used business, we had reasonably you know, substantial growth over the previous year. It, the percentages were around 90-10 or 84-16. It shows the growth in the used vehicle business.
These are the other couple of, you know, highlights we wanted to give out to you. I think the other last point would be the share of the repossessed business itself, as I said, is going down as a percentage of our total business. And the retail business is going up, you know, share of our total business. That's the key highlight. I thought we can take Q&A and clarifications from you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star then one on touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use hands while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Vijay Jain from CP Group. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Hi, Vijay. How are you?
Hi, Vivek. Good morning and congratulations. Looks like a good set of numbers on the standalone business. Thanks for the remarks on the remarketing business as well. My question is, you know, looking forward into the next year, obviously this year in the standalone business, your margins are nice keep climbing, you have, you know, kept your marketing spend steady and employee costs steady as well. Looking forward into next year, how should we think about the standalone business in terms of margins, in terms of marketing spend? That's my first question. The second question is, if you could give an update on where we are right now with.
Sure. I think the first thing is that I don't think marketing spends will see any dramatic change over the next year. If that's the question. I think we feel that as you can see, our Digital Brand Index relative competition is strong, and we think that it'll be similar or in similar proportion to our revenue. Yeah, on the wages you will have definitely wage escalation based on increments, some additions to hire, etcetera. We do see that, right? And that's leverage in the business where even though wages will go up, it is not in relation with the growth in revenue. In fact, we should see if there is revenue growth, we should see margin growth as well, as we've shown over the last year.
The fundamentals of the business remain the same, where, increase in revenue does not have proportionate increase in cost. Just that's the nature of the business. We see that continuing, or the dynamics of that continuing. I'm sure, continue to roll out and continue to get, you know, stronger at, you know, it's just a still a very new business for us. It's very an early-stage business for us. I think we're on a 73 location, Aneesha, is that right? Is it 73?
Yes, madam.
We continue to roll out and continue to, you know, work closely with dealers and customers to make sure our experience for them is best in class.
Got it. Thank you. There's just two housekeeping questions then from my side. You already mentioned the mix of revenue on the Consumer side. If you could give the YOY growth rate for new versus used, OEM versus dealers, that'll be great. On the Remarketing side, if you could give a current split of mix between retail and repossessed, that'll be great.
Yeah, we can give retail and. Last year, same quarter, the retail was about 30%. It is down to 53%. Retail was about 19%, 20% versus 34%. I think that's changing. The mix is changing there in that business. On the growth of new and used, Aneesha, do you have it here handy?
Yes. On the new side of the business, the growth was about 27%. On the used side of the business, it was about 1.34%.
Thanks, Aneesha.
This is for the quarter, right?
You said YOY for... Okay. For the quarter would be, 19% and 161%.
Got it. How about between OEM and dealers?
The OEM business, you would want for the quarter, right? Not for the nine months.
Yes, for the quarter. That's right.
Give me a second.
We can come back.
INR 2,000.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Thanks, Aneesha. That's my question. I'll just ask you to-
Oh, sorry. I have the. OEM is about 24% and dealers 37%, Pujit.
Got it. Thanks, Aneesha.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shyam Mehta from Akera Investments. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for the opportunity. This is the first time I'm attending the call, so I just want to understand your revenue source in the standalone business. When you say consumer business, so is this advertising revenue you get or is this transaction revenue?
On the consumer business, we monetize car manufacturing dealers, who list their products for sale, for new cars and used cars for sale to consumers. We monetize both of them for advertising and lead revenue. The transaction revenue is very insignificant here. On the auction side of the business, there you have, you know, sellers and buyers, auctioning vehicles. These are transaction revenue.
That's also in the standalone, right? The transaction-
No, no. The remarketing is the auction and the standalone is the consumer business.
Remarketing is mostly the auto mode, right?
It is the company name is Shriram Automall. There's an online auction business which is listed separately.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Siddharth Khire from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah.
Hi, Siddharth.
Congrats on a good standalone performance on the margin. Sir, I wanted to get back on the growth outlook. I mean, obviously Q3 we have done quite well and reported a very strong double-digit growth. As you say, marketing leverage is very important in the business. Just wanted your thoughts on how you are looking at the growth in the coming year for segments going ahead?
You know, we normally don't give any growth guidance. To be honest, I think, you know, we've been through a year of a situation where the auto industry has seen. As you can see, last year this probably grew at about 25%-28% for the year. It's been a strong year for the growth in the used car industry, and also the used car demand has been quite strong. You know, it's hard for us to tell what next year in the auto industry would be like. I think growth rates will be much lower than this 25%-28% in the industry you're seeing, you know, next year.
Also what will happen, so that's one part. Also on the other hand, supply may be higher than demand. I think we've seen some shortages of cars this year. Next year you might find that the demand or the growth of demand slowing down. You might find the supply is higher than demand. Then that becomes a little more favorable for us because then dealers and manufacturers tend to spend heavily on advertising. We see, you know, similar, you know, market conditions. It's hard for us to give any real growth guidance at this point.
Understood. Just in terms of mix, which segment do you think can grow at a much faster pace? Like right now, dealers is growing at,
Yeah, I think this trend will continue for some time. This dealer and OEM, retail and repossessed, trend will continue. I think it's maybe a longer term trend. I just feel like in advertising, when you come to advertising, the first, you know, part is the OEM, which is, you know, far more aggressive. In the first year of this business, it's usually the dealers. Over time, you know, the advertising grows. I feel the dealer growth may continue to as possible outpace the manufacturer growth. It's possible.
Okay. On the margins, again, I mean, we have seen some, in terms of our unit, visitors also, slightly coming down quarter-on-quarter. Is it a seasonal phenomenon or is it because we have sort of funded some of our marketing spend that it has?
No, no, I don't think, I don't think it's related to that. I think it's just, if you see last year's same period, it was INR 21 million, it's INR 35 million now. October tends to be very heavy, September, October months tend to be very, Those two, three months is very heavy time for business, right, just seeing there. It's marginally about INR 37 million the quarter before, INR 35 million now. I don't think it's a reflection on the marketing spend. It's also a reflection of consumer demand.
Okay. you're saying level of 1,250 dot roughly expect subscriber number going ahead.
Yeah. I don't think the marketing will change too much, no. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Sir, on this abSure, I mean, if you see last quarter we had about, I think, 50 locations. Now we are at 73. We added only 10, I think, stores in this quarter. We, I think, had estimated towards 120 by the year-end. Is this still on track or do you think the ramp-up here is slightly slower?
Yeah, I think the rollout is a little less than what we predicted maybe a year ago. I think that's also conscious to make sure that, you know, we get the right location, the right franchisees, the right model, the right customer experience, et cetera, et cetera. As again, I said, abSure is still part of our used car business, so it's a very insignificant part of our total business. It's almost a very early-stage business. The volatility in that business, just because very, very early, is greater than the other business of carMart people. I think it'll probably be, you know, another very 20 location or 25 locations by March. It looks like that from here.
Okay. Okay.
Maybe 20 more. Maybe 20, yeah.
Any regional guidance you can, you would like to highlight maybe the next two, three years where you want it to be?
Sorry, I didn't hear that. I didn't hear the last question, sorry.
Apart from the Ram House, any two, three-year-out guidance you want to give about how many stores you want to be in abSure?
No, I don't think at this stage, you know, we'll give a future guide, a forward guidance on it. The idea is to, you know, reach as in and roll out as quickly as we can. You know, also to get in the right location, the right franchise and, you know, the right experience in that location.
Okay. Okay. Sure. I'll,
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. Next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vineet, Neeshan. Good morning.
Hi. How are you?
Quickly on the numbers side, obviously, as you mentioned, that standalone numbers are brilliant. Remarketing Group is business facing some headwinds. I was just thinking it through, like, on Remarketing Group, it's so much market dependent. Do you think there are levers that you can pull within the company to drive growth? You do mention the retail business growing, but do you think retail or any other business that you can put your efforts into can drive decent enough diversification from Remarketing Group?
No, absolutely right. I think this is something we discuss internally that, you know, It was just 20% of our business a year ago. It is 150% odd, right? I think the view here is that how do we grow other verticals within that business or within the company, right, or within the Remarketing company. retail, you know, retail vehicles from retail sources is, you know, becoming a significant contributor to us and growing at a significant pace. That's clearly one area. We like the commercial vehicle side of options. We like the multiple verticals there. We are focusing a lot on other verticals. you know, maybe one can say that, you know, we should've done it earlier.
You know, we risk in a way fall in one segment. Now it is happening. I mean, I think we're becoming more and more widespread out in supply sources now rather than, you know, some part of the company possessed.
Okay. Quickly on this abSure business, right? I know you mentioned that it's essentially small, and it's been a while. Is there any headwinds that you are seeing? Like, why do we not see any metrics being released on this business anymore?
Why do we see any, sorry?
Why do we not see any metrics being released on this business?
It's just very early. I think it's very early. We are still trying to, as I said, it's been a year and a half or so, maybe a little more than that. We're trying a few experimenting to figure out the first rollouts to again understanding customer experience, franchise profitability and again rolling out. These are early-stage business. As you know, in India, early-stage business, like one, two-year-old businesses is just still. There is. It's the most stable now in terms of our own understanding. We're just still trying. When I said it's very, very insignificant in our financials at this point. We also feel the next three to five years it'll still be in a very small percentage of our total business. We're very excited about it, and we've got a very good asset-light model.
You know, We're still trying to get full understanding on customer experience, franchise profitability and et cetera, et cetera. You know, when it becomes a little more stable, then we'll start rolling out metrics. We are still looking at certain metrics, et cetera.
Got it. Just one final question on the Remarketing piece again. We did see very minor revenue growth despite the stock repair, portion from the revenue on a sequential basis. Why did other expenses grow? Like, what.
Yeah. In fact, I think it's actually degrown by 9%. The Remarketing Group has not grown, it's degrown by 9%. Other expenses grew because we've bought certain contracts with certain customers and during the quarter we normally take confirmation of these contracts and deliveries to these customers on our valuation business. During the quarter we had I think about a couple of crores, INR 2 crores of confirmations of customers on our valuation business. Our valuation business is actually a low margin business. The corresponding cost got back, which is the cost of carrying out those inspections and valuations. Therefore, you see a little jump in variable cost, which is the other income. This is the other expense. Am I right, Aneesha?
Yes. Yes, Vinay.
This is probably a one-off. I don't think you'll see that again.
Got it. Thanks. Thanks, Vinay.
Thank you.
Thank you. The participant who wishes to ask a question, press star and one now. The next question is from the line of Nishin Jalan from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. Hi, Vinay. Hi, Aneesha.
Hi, Nishit.
Hi, Nishit.
Vinay, I have some questions on our two businesses. New car business obviously is doing well for us. There, I just wanted to understand, you partly alluded to this, that whether the dealer spending in terms of marketing, which had come down very substantially, whether as a percentage of revenues, how much they tend to spend, is it back to normal levels or is it yet to come to normal levels because this demand versus supply issue is still there, right? That will be my first question. Is there any room for us to add more dealers on the new car side or are growth will be more dependent on existing dealers spending more? What is the drivers of growth in the new car business?
Sure. You know, a year ago the market conditions were not favorable, where demand was much higher than supply. I think you're seeing that only a few products and there are still a few cars or ranges where, you know, supply is lower than demand. It's not, I would say, a fully favorable position. It is much better than a year ago. I think most predictions are over the next year, supply will exceed demand, and that's probably the best conditions for us. There are still a lot of dealers or manufacturers who sell less because their products are in a short supply. That's the first.
I think, you know, if the conditions were quite bad a year ago, it's much better today and probably in the next, you know, six, quarter, six months will get even better, as supply exceeds demand. The second question was, the focus on dealer, adding more dealers, right? Yeah. I think it's combination, adding more dealers as well as a spend time penetration of budget within the existing dealer's budget. It's still very early days. As we talked about earlier, hardly 33% of manufacturer's regular money is spent on digital advertising. In most countries it's 30%-40%. You should see a long-term shift of dealers budgets to digital, number one.
Number two, you should see more and more dealers coming on the platform, both for new cars and used cars. It's a combination of both those factors. That's one of the reasons you've seen the dealer business now grow at a faster rate than the OEM business.
Yeah. Yeah. Vinay, can you share with me a little as to what used to be the market spend of dealers and how much it has come back and how much is yet to come back? Any broad numbers just to get a sense how much of it is back?
We can give you. JP Morgan had done a report for us, which, you know, captures some of this. We will share that with you.
Okay. Would you be able to share some details on how many new car dealers we are in panel or we are getting business from? You just mentioned that one thing which is very clear is that the digital spend of dealers will increase, so that will benefit you, right? Their overall spend will probably increase, that will benefit you. I just want to understand.
Yeah.
How many dealers we already have, who are paying us and, how does it compare, to the, to the overall dealer base?
I'll share that as well. There are three core markets of dealers for us. There's a new car dealer, a used car dealer, and a used auction dealer which buys and then auctions, all three. We'll come back with the details for you.
Sure. And secondly, Vinay, the second question is on the type of business right now is auction, right? If I look at that, last couple of years have been good for auction business, but was not good for overall auto industry. So probably repositions were happening, people were not able to meet EMI. Now the growth is back, business is back. Is that a reason to think that the repositions are down? If that is true, then for next two to three years, if auto industry looks good, then don't you think that repurchases, vehicle auction business to continue to be under stress, under stress? Secondly, if I heard the number correctly, you mentioned repurchase basically 59% in this quarter, which was 70% year-over-year, right?
In this quarter it is 53%. It was 70% last year.
50 versus 72%, 73%. Okay. You are seeing some growth there, some bit meaningful growth in your rest of the business, 20%.
Oh, yeah. The rest of the business actually growing at faster because this is degrown. I mean, at a faster pace. Make sure that even the minus percentage, you know, it's only minus 1% because the repossession degrowth is much stronger.
Your comment on the first part of the question which I asked, can.
Yeah. Yeah, this trend is a good question. You know, this is something we've been debating and talking to multiple people or stakeholders like banks and NBFC, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, there are multiple schools of thought. One is you did have a period of last two years in COVID where loan disbursement itself was lower, right? I think for the same quarter where there was no disbursement of loans at all, people were mostly collecting money rather than disbursing. It's possible that the loans which were not disbursed maybe in the last two years still hits the business because if you're not disbursing a car loan, how do you repurchase it, right? That's one part.
They were just reworking existing loans and making sure that during those COVID quarters, they were restructuring loans rather than disbursing loans. It could be partly that. It is partly also the fact that industry is better, collections are better, the repossession itself is lower. It is also a fact could be that used car prices are reasonably higher or resale values are better during market cycles. Maybe customers are looking and let the vehicle get repossessed. It could be a combination of all these factors. It is hard for us to really tell that repossession is gonna change or not in the next three months or six months. I think what we've got to do as a business is really grow other verticals, right?
If repossession does come back, it's got there. It will help the company, but it's better that we focus on growing every possible vertical which is within our control, and I think that's where our focus is.
Just two, small follow-ups, Vinay.
Sure.
One, have you seen repossession rates have come down, have you seen a significant increase in passenger car mix in your auction business? Number one. Number two, in terms of profitability, will repossessed vehicles be more profitable? Probably we will be able to make more, offer more value-added services in that segment.
No, we make a margin whatever we sell, just because the supply is more fragmented. There is no better. Yeah. Then you say... Oh, sorry, the question before that was? Sorry, I'm.
The mix of cars, has it increased?
No, nothing. No change. No, no change. I think it's pretty similar. No, I don't think we've seen any product mix change.
If I remember correctly, it used to be one-third of the total volume. Is that still a right number?
I think the way we track it, commercial vehicles are 20%. That's the way we track it. It's the other way around.
Commercial vehicles, 20%.
20, about 20%.
This used to be 30%-35%, right?
No. you know, It was a little higher. It was better just pre our acquisition of Shriram Automall five years ago. I think, that is the one, once we merged our online business in, it is around this 30% commercial vehicles.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Vinay.
Thanks. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sij Punjabi from EMKAY Capital Advisors . Please go ahead.
Hi, Vinay, Neesha.
Hi.
Hi, Jignesh.
Yeah. You know, and what I'm trying to get at is, can you give us some color on both the new car business and Shriram's side? I don't want numbers. I just wanna understand what trends are you seeing there, and what do you think the next six months trends look like? Are you seeing some signs of weakness? Are you seeing buoyancy? Are you seeing a new class of buyers coming? Whatever. A little bit of color on both of those would be really useful.
Yeah. On the consumer side, which is our new car, used car consumer platforms, actually we are seeing reasonably good trends. We are seeing obviously the penetration of consumers is already pretty high. Consumers use the internet to research or buy a vehicle. On the OEM dealer side, which is far more important in this business, we are seeing far more adoption of digital generally in the last year and a half. I think this trend will only get stronger. Our relationship with dealers is getting stronger. Our relationship with OEMs is getting much stronger. We're also seeing OEMs interact deeply with us on digital, deep digital integration, which is this whole theory about how do you come online and get a complete experience with our vehicle, right?
Whether it's booking a car, whether it's getting a loan for a car, whether it's. We're seeing multiple interactions with OEMs and us around these. The basic trend towards digitization is getting better. In addition, I said from a new car demand supply standpoint seems to be getting more favorable, which is always for us a growth in the industry. Supply more than demand is probably the most favorable marketplace that we can let us, and I think we're getting there. It has been probably the worst over the last year. It was better in the last quarter, but it was probably quite bad because demand outstripped supply, and that's really not favorable for companies like us where we actually invest our money to acquire the cars to sell their cars. This is what we are seeing here.
On the remarketing side, I think the biggest issue for us has been our, you know, the repossession volumes coming down. On the other hand, we're seeing good growth on retail suppliers of vehicles. I feel that the used car industry or the remarketing side generally across the industry seems reasonably buoyant. We have to work hard on building other verticals within outside repossession.
Okay. Okay. If I were to summarize, next three, six months opinion is about in aggregate as well, and things look like.
We feel the market conditions are okay and really similarly, I don't think we see any reason that market conditions are changing any further from here, from what we just said.
Okay. Okay. One last question. We're also seeing a bunch of new model launches, which normally happens, but seems like they're bunching up now. Also the EV side, there's a few things happening. How would you read that? Do you all think it's all positive from your..
Yeah, we feel new product launches are highly positive for our business, so.
Yeah.
EV, I feel it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether it's an EV or an IC vehicle for us. New launches is definitely favorable for us.
Okay. Super. Thanks, Vinay.
Thank you. Thank you, Jignesh. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, you may press star then one. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citigroup . Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for this question, Vinay, I just wanted to check back on the comment you made on the Remarketing Group between repo and retail. Clearly, with repo going from 72% to 53% means retail is up, if I do the math right, it's up 60% YOY, right?
Yeah, possibly. It is in that range.
What I wanted to, what I was wondering is two things. Obviously the repo is down significantly, 10% YOY, might be even close to bottom. Do you think the retail momentum remains as strong as it is in these numbers, 60% YOY? Therefore, if I think about repo, even if it bottoms at this end, the retail growing at 60% should give you still decent growth of the overall remarketing business going forward, right?
Yeah, the mathematics is that. You know, see, this growth of retail is on a lower base, the base will become bigger. Of course the growth rates become harder.
Right.
I would just say that, yeah, we see retail growing because there's serious effort going behind it. Also it's a far, it's a, for us, a margin business, so it's a better business as well. It's far more defensible as well, because it's very fragmented supply. It has all the elements of what we like, but, you know, I can't predict whether it's 50% or what percentage. We see this is, there's a lot of effort going in here. As a company, if repossession does, you know, has bottomed out or does start to come back and grow, and our retail continues to be stronger now, it makes us much stronger. If we can, if repossession does come back.
Got it. Also just a quick question related to that. When I do the simple math of, you know, your realizations for vehicle auction, I know there are other limits in your remarketing business as well. I can see that the realizations are going up, right?
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit of that. It is, that is correct. It is a little bit. It is because of retail. The margin is better.
Got it. Just a final question on the retail Remarketing side. Most of this will be on the, will be driven by the used car listings from Consumer on the website.
No, they're not actually. It is not. That's still some part which we try to plug and get the synergies across on both platforms. It is also independent people giving vehicles to these auto malls and then being sold as auction.
Right.
It's not, yeah, it's not just, it's not CarWale. It's not just dependent on CarWale, that decision.
Okay. Should I think of this as more of a mix of local dealers against.
Local, local fragmented supply sources, right? Which retailers, which could be a consumer, it could be a very small broker bringing consumer vehicle in with multiple sources. It's one-on-one vehicle, it's fragmented. It's not bulk from a bank or an NBFC or a leasing company, et cetera, et cetera.
Got it. Have we hired a lot of people to kind of push that segment of the business?
Yes. Yes, we've been hiring them there. In fact, most of the hiring is there, to push the abSure segment.
Got it. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sachin Shah from Shah Investments. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning and, first of all, congratulations on a very good set of numbers. I have a couple of questions. First one is that how much would be your ESOP cost for funding over the next four five quarters? The second one was that I want to understand if there's anything in the pipeline.
Let me answer that. The ESOP cost is roughly INR 27 crore a year. That's in fraction of profit accounts and it will be probably around what it is this year. We don't see any significant change in next year, if that's the question. Alisha, is that number correct?
Yeah. That's absolutely right. Yeah.
We don't see any significant change in next year, no.
No.
Okay. Understood. Thanks. The second question, as I said, is there anything in the pipeline which you see from an inorganic expansion perspective?
Inorganic, is that the question?
Inorganic, yeah.
You know, we can't comment on this. We keep looking at businesses and companies, but we can't comment on this at this stage.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Sachin.
Thank you. Before we take the next participant, reminder to everyone, anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star and one. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Devi from Vent Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Am I audible?
Yes, you're audible. Please go on.
Yeah. Congratulations for your numbers.
Thank you.
I had couple of questions. One is on the abSure business, I wanted to know what is the current number of outlets, and previously we were guiding for 120 outlets by the end of the year. Are we on track for that?
No, we're not. I think on the call, Vinay Sanghi said we are about 73 now. I think we'll end up adding about 20 by March. We should be around 90-95 by the end of the year. That's what it should be.
Are the revenues from this segment becoming more meaningful now or is it too early?
No, it's too early still. It's a pretty early business, right? It's only a, it's almost like an early-stage business even in the portfolio.
Okay. The second question was on the media business. While the remarketing business has been subdued, the media business has pursued strongly. According to you, is this a sustainable number of unique visitors? Do we ever plan to monetize them directly?
At this stage, there's no plan to monetize the consumers directly. I think the steady growth of our consumers now is we think that most people who buy cars are on the internet. The steady growth should almost be similar to industry level growth in a way. We are also adding similar platforms, et cetera, so you might find a little better growth rate in terms of our user than industry. On the whole, do remember that our revenues are not dependent on number of consumers coming to the platform. It is highly dependent on the amount of money manufacturers and car manufacturers or vehicle manufacturers and dealer spend. Revenue are not completely correlated to number of customers coming to the platform.
This is, you know, one thing you should keep in mind, that the revenues are dependent on the percentage of digital money spent by car manufacturer and dealer to the advertising space.
Okay. Thank you for the clarity.
Sure. Take care.
Thank you. Participants who wishes to ask a question, hit star and one. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
I just wanna thank all of you for, you know, joining the call. As you know, I said earlier, we've been able all the way up to the highest revenue and adjusted EBITDA. It's been a mixed quarter where we wrapped up a strong performance from Consumer Group, and it's been a tough quarter for the Remarketing Group. Thank you once again for joining in and taking the time out to, you know, hear us out. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
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 line.