Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the CarTrade Tech Limited and 9 months FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call organized by MUFG Intime India Private Limited. 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. Aryan Sumra from MUFG Intime. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you all to the and 9 months FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call for CarTrade Tech Limited. To discuss this quarter's financial and business performance, we have from the management Mr. Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director, Ms. Aneesha Bhandary, Executive Director, and CFO. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking and may involve risk and uncertainties. For more details, kindly refer to the investor presentation and other findings that can be found on the company's website. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks, and then we can open the floor for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, and good afternoon to everybody, and welcome to Q3 FY 2026 Earnings Call. I'd like to start by slide three, which has been shared on the investment deck, which talks about the company over the last three years. As you can see here, over the last three years from FY23 to FY 2026, if you look at the company, the revenue CAGR has been 32%, EBITDA CAGR has been 112%, and the profit CAGR has been 83% over three years. So you can see the consistency in performance, and that's why we want to bring it out quarter after quarter. Three years is almost 12 quarters, and you can see the consistency in the company's delivery and performance and the execution capability.
If you look at the center block, it shows that our cash reserves have gone back to INR 1,145 crore, and for the first time you can also see the return on equity has reached double digits, which is a very, very strong business performance from the company from where it was. And if you look at the last block, where the shareholder value, if you see the EPS CAGR has been 92% over the last three years, and of course, the share price is up 94% in the last three years during this phase. So the numbers to look for are the PAT CAGR at 83%, the EPS CAGR of 92%, and the share price CAGR for 94% over the last three years.
If you look at, and we move to the quarter or the Q3 results, and you go to slide 4, you'll see CarTrade has achieved its highest ever revenues at INR 228 crore in any quarter ever in our history. EBITDA has gone up by 56% to INR 78 crore. It's by far our highest ever EBITDA. Not only our highest EBITDA by far, it's also almost INR 15 crore more than the previous quarter. EBITDA is up 23% even sequentially from the previous year, previous quarter, right? So 56% year-on-year growth, 23% sequential Q-on-Q growth to INR 78 crore. We've been talking about margins for many quarters with you, and you can see now margins have gone up to 37%, which is getting best in class in the country now, and it shows the unit economics and the leverage we have in our business.
If you go to the revenue, EBITDA, exponential growth, and profit after tax has come at INR 62 crore, which is up 35% year-on-year, and this is primarily due to our extraordinary item of the Labour Code provision as for the new regulation being provided at INR 6.5 crore during the quarter. Otherwise, profits will, of course, be up by 49% if you look at after you include the Labour Code impact. We continue, as I said, 150 million users, yearly users in all our three platforms. The consumer group has grown by 27%. EBITDA is up 55%, and of course, we achieved a 43% margin on EBITDA in the consumer group, which is, of course, now getting at a very, very high rate of margins. And we've talked about how we have the unit economics and the leverage in this business over the quarters, last few quarters.
The remarketing business profit is up by 68%. Revenue is up by 12%. EBITDA is up 23%, and as well, our margins in the remarketing group are 30% now. OLX has reached the highest ever revenue in its history in this quarter. It's up 18%. PAT is up 37% in OLX, and OLX also now reached a 37% EBITDA margin ratio. If you look at slide 5, you can obviously continue to be the number one automotive platform used, product platform, vehicle auction platform in the country. Traffic is up to 85 million MAUs during the quarter. 95% organic traffic continues. Vehicles were auctioned at a rate of 1.9 million vehicles a year. We talked about the revenue at INR 228 crore. It's highest ever in our history. Adjusted EBITDA is INR 101 crore. It's a cash proxy. It's the first time it's INR 100 crore in a quarter.
So you can say INR 101 crore of cash generation during the quarter. PAT is INR 62 crore. As I said, the PAT would be at INR 68 crore if not for the labor code. And the cash balance continues to be INR 1,145 crore, as we've talked earlier. If we go to slide six and look at the consolidated results of the company, revenue is up 18%. Operating revenue is up 19%. EBITDA is up 56%. Margin out here on a consolidated basis is 37%, up from 33% last quarter sequentially. So from, I mean, we see from basis point increase in margins sequentially, just quarter on quarter. And from last year's margin of 28%, we have landed up at 37%. PBT is up 58% before exceptional items. PBT post-exceptional items are up 46%, and PAT is up 35%.
If you look at the nine-month results of the company, revenues are up 24%. EBITDA is up 77%. The nine-month margins come at 32%, and the PAT is up 74%. PBT is up 87% for the nine months. So you see the growth in both margins, profitability, of course, and the revenues over a nine-month period, which shows the consistency in the performance of the company. If you go to slide 7, look at the consumer group. For the quarter, revenues are up 27%. We've talked about EBITDA at 55%. EBITDA margins have reached 43%, and even sequentially, if you look at EBITDA is up 6x just in this one business, and margins have gone from 40% to 43% sequentially. Over last year, margins have gone from 35% to 43%. PBT, as I said, is up 43%.
If you look at the nine-month numbers, the consumer group has done extremely well with a 32% growth in revenue, 106% growth in EBITDA, and a 74% growth in PBT, with a 51% growth in PAT. If you look at the remarketing business, there's a 12% revenue growth and a 68% profit growth during the quarter. Margins for the first time crossed 30% in the remarketing business. If you look at the nine-month figures, 22% up in revenue, 57% increase in EBITDA, and an 80% growth in PAT for the year. So the remarketing business has had a very good year in the first nine months of the year. If we look at OLX, OLX has had its highest ever revenue in any quarter. It's crossed INR 61.7 crore, 58 crore in operating revenue, which is up 18%. Profitability or EBITDA is up 70%.
OLX margins are 37% now, and PAC is up 37%. PBT is up 73%. There is a tax now. OLX has exhausted its carry-forward, its tax shelters, and of course, now in this quarter, taxes have been paid in OLX as well. Yes, PBT is up 73%. If you look at the nine-month data, OLX's EBITDA is up 63%, and profit after tax is up 92%. This has been a very strong quarter for us. We feel very, very optimistic about all the three businesses. Just to highlight, all three businesses have achieved the highest ever revenue. All three businesses have achieved the highest ever margin. We feel very, very optimistic. Business has been very strong in all the three businesses.
We are even more optimistic about the current quarter guidance to match, and feel very optimistic that obviously our numbers will get better and better from here. The business or the market seems to be, especially the new car industry or the used car industry or the used product industry, seems to be growing. Actually, we feel optimistic about the current quarter and the quarters coming ahead. This is what I had to say. I'm happy to take any questions now and clarify all your questions and doubts.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets 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 Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
[Foreign language].
Thank you. Thank you, Sachin.
My first question is with regards to this U.S.-India, right? So there is obviously some chatter about how it can potentially impact Indian auto industry. Do you have any views on that? If anything, how does it impact CarTrade's consumer business if at all?
Are you talking about the EU 40% tariff on vehicles?
Yeah.
Is that the question?
No, no, no, no. This mother of all trade deals that you have signed with EU in terms of free trade agreement.
I'm not obviously studying in great detail. It's only been a day old. But the one thing which might affect or help the consumer group are two things. One is if tariffs or duties on imported European vehicles come down, it could lead to further demand in the new car industry, which of course could benefit the consumer group. And the other could be there could be opportunities to bring other such vehicles in directly even by it could be a business opportunity for the consumer group considering the reach of consumers and the distribution of CarTrade Tech as a group. So obviously, we'll try to examine if there are opportunities where consumers here wanting cars from the EU could use platforms like CarWale or others for that need.
It's something we'll have to watch and see what the potential of this is, but it's too early to say at this point.
Thank you. My second question is on OLX business side. Obviously, you did highlight in the previous earnings call that momentum is ticking. We saw that we improved growth rate by roughly 150 basis points. If I look on a Q-on-Q basis, 16.6%-18.1%. Do you see further momentum here? And on the same line, on cost side, we saw that actually both employee and other costs decline in Q-on-Q. What is resulting in this decline, if you can highlight?
Yeah. You're talking about OLX costs or overall cost?
Yeah, overall cost.
Yeah, we definitely see the growth rate of OLX going up from the current growth rate in this quarter. So we do feel that you will see that even further and more amplified, the growth rate is going up in OLX, number one. We feel very strong about the business, both the automotive and the non-automotive side of it. So yes, you will see, in our opinion, a higher growth rate on OLX, the revenue side. Costs are, I would just say, stable. There may be some minor fluctuations on manpower and other costs, but generally stable. We don't see any real serious decrease in costs, or we don't see any increase in costs either. They're just stable, I would say, in OLX.
Understood. Understood. Just one final question on the new auto side, if I can take that, right?
Sure. Sure. Sure.
Last quarter, obviously, we had 137-odd% growth on this business. This quarter, that is down to 27%, but still very, very healthy, no doubt. There must have also been some bias that that would have played out compared to 3Q FY 2025. How do we look at this ahead, right? Do we still believe this is roughly a mid-20s to maybe 30s sort of a growth, or there is potential for this to maybe inch down further by, let's say, a few percentage points?
The growth rate, actually, the first nine months is 32%, right, in this business. There is a little bit of base effect of last year to Q3 to Q3 previous year, but generally, it's 32% over a nine-month period. We see no reason why that we feel quite confident that actually the new car industry in the last two months has done extremely well. And like we said, we are obviously beneficiaries of the car industry itself. So we do see that definitely sustaining this growth rate. I'm not able to give guidance whether it's higher or lower, but yeah, generally, we don't see any reason for the growth rate to come down at all. I mean, we feel very optimistic about the new car business.
Got it. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Sachin. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Siddhant Behera from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.
Hi, Siddhant. Thank you.
Sir, first question is again on the OLX side. I mean, we had talked about multiple initiatives on the growth side, which we had taken in quarter three across Elite Buyers and two or three more product initiatives getting rolled out. So can you just talk about how has been the acceptance, what percentage of our user base have accepted that? Just to understand sort of how the growth momentum should pick up in the coming quarters, some more details on that.
Yeah. The Elite Buyer actually done extremely well in the last quarter. It was really commercially fully launched in the last quarter, and we feel very good about the adoption of the Elite Buyer program. We also feel that this will become a very large revenue opportunity for OLX in the many coming quarters and years. We're already seeing very high traction in the last 30, 40 days of the Elite Buyer program. And it will, in opinion, as I said, in the coming quarters, impact the revenues very favorably, number one. Other products and verification, like we said, is likely to be launched in the next 30 days or so, which is a completely new product to further enhance customer experience on trust and safety on the platform. So that will get launched sometime in the next 30 days. So we feel optimistic about that as well.
The growth rate continues also to be in existing products on B2C charges for dealers or C2C consumer charges, etc., etc. Overall, feel very optimistic about the revenue potential of OLX and the growth rates which are going to come in the quarters ahead.
Got it, sir. But sir, if I look at the visitors, monthly unique visitors for OLX, it sort of has seen some softness compared to last quarter. Is it something more seasonal or anything more here to look at?
There was a very slight seasonality, I would say, in September and September and a little bit of end of December. But generally, traffic has been stable of OLX. User engagement has been stable. Traffic has been stable. Very, very stable.
Got it, sir. And sir, lastly, on this margin profile for the OLX, I mean, we have seen sort of a lot of cost benefits also coming in in the current quarter. So is there any one-time cost thing which has come, or do you think this 35%-36% margin that we have done for the quarter, I mean, as we see a pickup in growth?
Yeah, we think the margins will probably improve, honestly. I mean, in all our businesses, the leverage is high, right? I don't think costs are increasing. So if revenue goes up, margins will improve, as we've said, quarter after quarter in all our businesses.
Got it, sir. Thanks a lot, sir. I'll come back to that.
Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Diya Brijwani from White Whale Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Hi, I can hear you, yeah.
Yeah. This is Hardik here. Just a couple of questions. First one was on, during the quarter, we were pursuing the car retail deal, and then that kind of did not pan out. So can you just maybe spend a few minutes just explaining the rationale and thought process and how we walked away from it?
Yeah. I think we did announce that we were pursuing the transaction, and we then, towards after studying it, at that point, decided that for that specific period, decided to put it on hold. I think the reasons mostly were around understanding, obviously, the potential in our own business seemed so high that we said, "Listen, this is the right time for that or not." We continue to be very optimistic about the new car industry, which is what the acquisition was about. And we obviously continue to be optimistic about OLX and all other businesses. So the amount of opportunities within the company itself, we felt, it is better to hold any inorganic opportunity at that point. And yeah, that's one of the reasons why we studied it, and we said it's better to put it on wait at that point of time.
I just want to also highlight to the earnings call that also in our results, we have provided some diligence cost, which is also factored into the quarter three results, which you've seen. The results and the margins are after all some diligence costs have got incurred. It's in the expenses of the company already accounted, so yeah.
Okay. Got it. And then just on the previous question in terms of the consumer growth, I think you maintained, I mean, you spoke that you expect to sustain this kind of growth level that you've seen over the nine months. I just wanted to understand a little better in terms of the drivers of this growth. I mean, when there's a slowdown, I guess the OEMs and the dealers need to kind of push more, and so they increase their marketing expense. But when the industry is going through a better phase, I mean, would that kind of marketing expense sustain? And so to that extent, can we still maintain this kind of growth or not?
So the industry is going through a very good phase in October to December 1st. The entire last three months, the industry has grown rapidly. It's had unprecedented growth and volumes in the car industry. I just like to highlight that we're beneficiaries of growth in car sales. Obviously, we will benefit. We're also beneficiaries when manufacturing dealers spend more money on digital, which has been a long secular trend. We also benefit in car RPU when prices go up in terms of RPUs, which means people move towards a bigger vehicle like an SUV. So we benefit multiple, multiple ways. We also gain market share because we're the most cost-effective way for a dealer or a manufacturer to sell a car. We have, as I said, also a large, large number of almost all car buyers in the country coming to our platforms.
So clearly, there's a dependence and high relevance the industry has towards platforms like CarWale and BikeWale or OLX, for that matter, for used cars. So in any situation, whether the industry is down, which we've seen over the last year and a half, or when the industry is growing rapidly, as you've seen in the last quarter, our growth rates have been maintained and grown further even. So we've also shown and disclosed in a previous quarter the last three-year trend of growth, where the industry goes up and down, and we found that irrespective of that, CarWale or the consumer group growth rates have stayed extremely, extremely robust during all those phases.
Got it. So I guess this is more of a structural shift from maybe offline to digital spend, and then within that, away from, let's say, Google towards platforms like SLC.
It is offline to digital spend. It is growth in the industry. It is growth of RPUs in cars. It is different kinds of cars being sold. If you see today, more than 50% of cars sold are SUVs. So it's many, many things altogether. But by and large, there's a big shift to spending on platforms like CarWale, where the relevance for manufacturers and dealers who spend is very, very high.
Understood. Just one last question was on the operating leverage. So now, if I were to just look at our consumer and OLX, I mean, I think we average around 40% plus margins. How are you seeing if you continue with this 25%-30%, let's say, growth rate, I mean, your expenses have pretty much not grown for the nine months. Is there any kind of areas you need to invest into, or will expenses remain at similar levels in terms of growth?
We think expenses are stable. They're not likely to see any fluctuation or any incremental change at all. So they're not likely to change. We've always said that our margin will keep growing, right? And I think we've reached 37% in the group, 43% in the consumer group. We think they'll go further.
Got it. So essentially, all the growth that comes through, a very large part of it, will continue to pass through.
That's correct. That is correct. That is correct. That's just the nature of the business. Yeah.
Okay. All right. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nishit Jalan from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, hi, Vinay. Hi, Aneesha.
Hi.
Hi. Congrats on good setup numbers. Right. My question is, obviously, industry tailwinds are there. And now that you have studied CarDekho also, just wanted to understand on the consumer side of the business, do you think a part of the growth is also driven by market share side of the things, right? How is it kind of panning out, right? And while operating leverage will be there in our business for sure, and globally, there are companies which make 50%+ margins also. So will it be incorrect to assume that in the next 2-3 years, if the growth continues, you could also be a 50%+ kind of a margin?
Sorry, what's the last part? I didn't hear the last part.
Basically, what I was saying was that if the growth rate continues over the next 2-3 years, these margins could expand from 40-odd% to 50%+. Basically, what should we look at as the incremental EBITDA margin on the revenues, right? Because your incremental costs are lower in a way, right? So how should we look at, especially the OLX and the consumer business, because that's where the benefits will be much more substantial?
Yeah. Two parts. One is the first part, which is the growth in the car industry itself. After since the reduction of the GST, we've seen the car industry grow. Our growth rates, if you see a 32%, were even before the GST reduction took place. So clearly, we're beneficiaries of car growth rates. We also benefit when growth rates have been more muted for the car industry itself, right? Because our growth rates have been high in both cases. So we see that the reason that is the case is because consumers come to a platform like CarWale or others to fulfill a need of buying a car or finding a car, etc., etc. And because of the number of consumers and the relevance to consumers, which a platform like CarWale has, manufacturers and dealers need to be obviously spending more on platforms like ours compared to others.
That could be offline advertising. That could be Google. It could be Facebook or other horizontal platforms and also direct vertical competitors because we feel we're far more efficient than our competitors are. So I think you're seeing a factor of that, that we are gaining market share, number one. Number two, you're also seeing a factor of industry-level growth and move towards digital. And like I said, number three, it's also a product mix where, as you've seen in the last 3-4 years in India, there's a huge shift towards SUVs by itself, right? So the RPUs of cars have basically gone up as well. All these factors do matter. And clearly, our job is to make sure that the consumer coming on our platform, our product and improvements or development cycle continues so that consumers keep coming and growing on the platform.
And that's what we are focused on. So that's the first part of the question. The second was, of course, I mean, over the last 10, 12 quarters, we've demonstrated to you that costs in companies like this are stable. We see no reason for that to change in the coming quarters. And therefore, yeah, margins as increased revenue, a lot of that revenue will go to margin. And I think if you see the last three years, margin's gone from 9%-37% as a company, as a consolidated company. So I don't see a reason for that. I think the trend will continue. Margin will continue to grow.
Yeah. Yeah. Just one follow-up. You did talk about the RPU going up, right? So RPU going up, the benefit is indirect in the industry revenues going up and the ability of OEMs to spend more on NP goes up. Is that the indirect benefit that comes to you, or there's something else also which is there?
It does benefit where the car prices, yeah, I suppose, the average, rather than small cars or sedans, SUVs which are higher priced, sell. It benefits all stakeholders, right? Anybody in the chain, it benefits.
It benefits because the industry revenue goes up and the ability of the.
The industry spend goes up, I would say. Yeah. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I think you answered it, but I missed out. On the OLX side, right, you have started to take on a lot of initiatives to monetize to Elite Buyer and Seller and all these sort of things. Sorry, sorry if you have commented earlier, I missed out. But where are you?
No, no, no. Actually, Elite Buyer has done extremely well in the last quarter for us. We feel very, very optimistic that this will become one of our flagship revenue earners in the coming quarters and years ahead, number one. Number two, even existing revenue drivers have gone up or improved. UX has improved. Customer engagement has improved. The growth rates, of course, of revenue have grown. We've achieved higher revenues. But on top of it, we feel the growth of revenue will go even up further. I mean, and margins in OLX will also increase further. We feel pretty confident of that.
On the used car side of the business, right now, you are monetizing more from dealer subscription and now very recently Elite Buyer, Elite Seller program. Any plans to get into more value-added services also, like financing or an insurance or a service or some warranty whatsoever, right? Because that also.
Financing is something we're working very closely on, on a fintech perspective. But like I said, we'll be a marketplace company. We're not likely to take any risk or balance sheet risk or lending risk ever. So this is like a marketplace model where we're working very closely with a couple of very big banks and NBFCs on launching products on used car financing. I think in the next few quarters, you'll see products like that launch for used cars where our relevance is very, very high. If you see data which we've disclosed in the past, where 65% of our used cars sold in India are listed on OLX, more than 1.5 million used car buyers come to every month, more than 1.5 million used car buyers come to OLX and CarWale together.
In the last quarter, we also actually earlier this month, and we publicly disclosed that as well, we for the first time combined the CarWale OLX offering for all dealers in India. So we launched a subscription for dealers, which is combined of OLX and CarWale to increase the base for both companies. So there are many, many used car initiatives going on, and you'll see a lot of the results coming in the next few quarters around the used car side of the business, both in fintech side as well as in the car used car business.
Got it. Got it. Okay. Thanks for the answers and all the best in the future.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Agicha from H.G. Hawa. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, sir.
Good morning, Amit.
Yeah. Congratulations for an excellent set of numbers. So with INR 1,145 crore of cash on the balance sheet, how should investors think about capital allocation priorities in the next two years?
Yes. It's a good question. At this point, we are also generating, like you've seen, INR 100 crore a quarter, right? I mean, we showed you the adjusted EBITDA number. So it's INR 1,145 in the bank plus INR 100 crore of cash every quarter at this rate. As profitability grows, even the cash generated would grow. We have almost no CapEx in the company and almost no need from an investment standpoint in our current business. All our businesses are high-margin businesses. So the intent would be, of course, to look at whether any inorganic opportunities come in the future. And we've been very good at acquisitions in the past. We've done multiple successful acquisitions. So part of the use, if at all we come across an opportunity, would be that. And obviously, the long-term intent would be to return money to shareholders.
Oh, one more question. Connect with the employees. Are there any talent constraints in data science, AI pricing models, or dealer analytics that could require higher future investments?
We've actually made a lot of investments. It goes in our operating cost. A large part of our manpower cost is product engineering, design, AI talent, etc., etc. So a lot of the investments are being made. These margins and these costs are after making those investments. We're first a technology company before everything else. So this is part of what we do every day. A large part of our team is product engineering, design, and AI talent. So we're building products for OLX, CarWale, Shriram every single day. And new products as well. We also created CarTrade Laboratories, which builds only new cutting-edge products a few months ago. So these investments are done, and they're part of the operating costs in the company.
Thank you for answering my questions, sir. All the best for the future.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Siddhant Behera from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the follow-up, sir.
I see that.
Sir, a quick question on the remarketing business. If I look at the volumes for CarTrade and the auctions, it seems that the conversion has dropped a bit compared to the last quarter. Any particular reason what is happening here?
No, no. It is only in the last quarter. And I'll tell you specifically in the used car industry or the used vehicle industry, new vehicle prices came down in September with the GST reduction. Used vehicle pricing took some time to correct itself. I think it took 2-3 months to correct because those are more subjective by nature. So a lot of the sellers tend to be waiting back and saying, "Listen, am I going to get a better price?" And when they realize that used car pricing has changed forever, then they start selling. So it's a bit of a delayed process. And maybe that's why you're seeing a slight conversion difference. That's primarily due to price reduction on the new car side, which affects and impacts the used car industry as well.
This conversion, then, I mean, normal scenario should pick up in the coming quarters?
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's already better. It's already better. So yes, that's it.
Okay. Okay. And on the, sir, growth side for the remarketing also, I think the last few quarters, we had seen a very strong growth, obviously, with the low base. But now going ahead, do you think there can be further acceleration to this, or this is rendered we should assume for this business?
No, I think we should continue to grow. We feel strong about the business. We do believe that normally Q4 is much better than Q3 for this business. We do feel the growth rates and the absolute numbers should get better.
Understood. And the last clarification, I think you have mentioned about INR 1.8 crore of the due diligence cost in the standalone consumer business.
That's correct.
That should be there in the concern numbers as well, right?
It's in both numbers, yes.
In both numbers. Okay. Sure. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anjali Bajaj from Naredi Investments. Please go ahead.
Good morning, sir. Good evening.
Good evening.
Other income from OLX India business declined frequently in the quarter three compared to quarter two. Could you please explain the key reason for this drop?
Sure. Aneesha, you want to explain this? Hello.
Hello.
Hello. Aneesha, sir.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I want to explain the other income in OLX.
Yeah. So as we had disclosed in the previous quarter, the quarter two, we had other income write-back in OLX, which was disclosed in a detailed note in the financial statement itself. In Q3, we do not have any write-back, which is there, which is why there is a dip in the other income.
The way to look at it is also in the Q3, the normalized other income. I think Q2, because the write-back was a special item in there.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arpit Shah from Stallion Asset. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hi, Arpit.
Hi, Vinayaji. Congratulations on a super set of numbers, great expansion on margins across all businesses. Just wanted to understand, let's say, for the years ahead, what kind of incremental revenues now would straight pass on to profits? Would it be 80%, 90%? How should we look at that?
Yeah. That's been the track record, Arpit. I don't see any reason why that would change.
Got it. And you just mentioned that we're going to be launching something like an OLX verified for Seller and a Buyer in the next one month or so. How big do you think that opportunity would be for revenues going ahead? Because I believe this I just see for Meta, maybe Instagram, Facebook, that actually is about $2 billion-$3 billion every year in terms of just selling verified subscriptions. But how big that number could be for OLX? Any sense?
I don't give a revenue guidance around it, but it's a very important product for OLX and dramatically enhances user experience. It's very innovative the way it's been brought out at OLX, and you'll see it in a few weeks. But we feel very, very good about the product and very optimistic about it. The revenue, of course, upside will be significant. But we also see that it's a big, big feature for all users on OLX. It changes a lot on how they interact as a buyer or seller on the platform.
Got it. And how should we look at the remarketing business growth? Because the growth hasn't decelerated from what was earlier to, let's say, a couple of quarters back, and it's now moved to 12%. The margins, of course, offset for that kind of revenue growth. But how should we build revenue growth for remarketing business?
I think we've had a 22% nine-month growth if you look at it. I think that's the way to look at it. Sometimes the quarter is the base effect of the previous year. Yeah, I would think of it a lot of the business over a nine-month period. The business actually is in a good situation, both the retail side and the repossession side. I see some of these growth rates continuing. I don't see much change. In fact, the markets are quite favorable for Shriram Automall as they are for OLX or CarWale.
Got it. Structurally, the classified segment's growth should keep improving now, quarter-on-quarter. How do you think what the rate?
I feel OLX growth rates will go up. I think consumer group, which is 32% in the first nine months, has already been very strong, the growth rate. So I think you'll see a positive growth rate from what it is in OLX. The 18.5 will get better. In CarWale, as I said, 32% YoY growth rate in the first nine months. So I don't see it's been very, very strong anyway.
This growth will keep coming despite the margin that we are at, right? We wouldn't have to spend a lot in getting that growth, like the 37%?
No. We don't see much change. We don't see much change in the cost structure of the company.
Got it. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aditya Yadav from Transient Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. And congratulations, sir, on a great, great execution. Congratulations to the team as well. My question, sorry, yeah, this has been talk of the town, but my question was regarding the AI wave. And so there are two parts to it, sir. One is there, of course, there was talk of threat of disintermediation where the site visits go down hypothetically, where the LLM itself generates the answer to the query of the user. And the second part was the use of AI tech within the company itself. So I would ask you to provide color on both the sides.
With the first part, we are seeing some evolving models globally also where they are the, I mean, the data owners like us are moving into a licensing agreement with the LLM organization where you are charging a licensing fee or that sort and not providing unlimited access. And we're seeing some of those kind of models evolving. And so yeah, I would urge you to provide color on both things, like outside the organization and inside the organization both. Thank you.
Sure. The first way we see AI in the group is at multiple levels, right? I think and then the first thing which we work on is to improve user experience, right? Is if you come onto our platforms, how does our data and intelligence help you perform a task better? So lots of work is going on and being done and launched even around helping your experience on CarWale or OLX or BikeWale get better, number one. And like I said, the one thing we've always prided ourselves on is going deep into the journey so that it's very hard for LLM to duplicate what we do. For example, if you come to CarWale and you want to get a loan approved in a second, our tools help you get an approval from multiple banks within one second.
I don't think any LLM would be able to do that, right? So our task is always to go deeper into a process of the journey of what we do so that no horizontal platform or an LLM can replicate or duplicate what we do. And the strength we've got is when we look at AI products within our experience for users, we obviously have public data. We obviously have our own public data. We have our own private data, and we have our own private consumer data or customer data, right? All of that is being used for giving you a better response as a user. The LLMs only have public data. They don't get to see all the other three levels of data, right? As much as we are a technology company, we're a data warehouse for the automotive industry.
And in all the other industries we cater to, so for example, today, millions of mobile phones are sold on OLX or hundreds and thousands of millions of furniture items are sold on OLX, right? So the amount of data around that helps us serve our customers better. 65% of used cars listed in India are inventory in OLX today, right? So I think we feel that all of this data which we've got of consumer or products or price gives us a differentiated advantage on the AI front to help serve our customers better, right? I think that's what we believe. On licensing and sharing content, no, we don't share content with or proprietary content or our own data with LLMs at all in any licensing arrangement.
We think the data we've got and the brand we have and the platform we have is a differentiator or is differentiated, and we would not want to be licensing or sharing it with anybody else.
Okay. Okay. Understood. And regarding the consumer group, what other optionalities do you see that you've been talking about, like going deeper into the user journey, facilitating loans is one such part of that? And do we see other optionalities also in the business where we could be trying to get a larger revenue share of the user car buying journey, especially?
The multiple journey is going on. There are multiple helping a person in the car buying journey, helping a person sell a car, to get a loan, to buy a car, to buy other value-added products. In OLX, there are multiple journeys which help us serve the customer better and give them a better experience and go deeper in the process of buying or selling a product.
Could you provide some color on that?
In which business? I mean, are you talking about OLX or CarWale? Which one?
CarWale, the consumer group.
In the consumer group. So in CarWale, for us, one of the things we help consumers do is how do they sell a car when they buy a car, right? And how their trade-in managed, right? For us, buying a car is a journey. It's not about just buying a new car. It's about all the surrounding activities around it. And for building technology or products which help a user do all those tasks in what we call a one-click environment is what we work towards. And for that, we need to work with the ecosystem, which are dealers, manufacturers, banks, etc., etc., to provide products like this. So I mean, that's an example of how we're thinking.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's all for my side.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.
Hi, Vijit.
Apologies. Hi, Vinayaji. Sorry, I joined a little bit late in this question. I apologize.
No worries.
My question is, this quarter, of course, we saw all the GST rate cuts that happened on cars, etc., and on a number of other categories too. Two questions. One, at OLX level, did you see any surge in listing activities, etc., as people might have replaced at a higher pace than they would have done earlier on both cars and other categories? So did you see any indicators there, and how should we think about that as it impacts your business moving forward? And second, also, how the car price changes affects your business across all three categories? If you could give me the broader color on how you think about these issues.
Yeah. We partly answered this before, but the new car and the start of the new car side, the reduction in the new car prices of GST had an immediate benefit to the new car industry, obviously. And we saw over October, December, the new car industry grow rapidly, reset scale, highest ever numbers they've ever done. And obviously, CarWale and the consumer group are obviously beneficiaries to that immediately, I would say. Consumer demand, traffic demand, buying demand, all that automatically went up on CarWale. I think what we saw, I mean, and this is a trend very normal when prices fall sharply in the new product industry, is used car. The used car industry is almost in a status quo mode where people are wondering whether to sell an old item at a lower price or not.
Because if the new car prices come down by 10%, the used car price necessarily has to come down by 10%. I mean, this is the way the economics work. So I think for people who are selling a product, it takes some time to digest that, understanding that what I have is going to get effectively 10% less, right? And that takes one, two, three months to adjust itself. So OLX has grown a lot of that. Towards the end of December, you find that people are becoming more accepting to realizing that the asset value has gone down in the used product they own, right? Because the new product itself comes down. And we found that starting to happen in December onwards in the used car industry or the used product industry.
I think in January, we're seeing a little more of that where people who have used products are now saying, "Listen, this is a new norm of pricing." Generally, as you've seen over the long periods of time in multiple cycles like this, as the new product industry pricing goes down, the new car industry, the new product demand goes up, the used car demand goes up with the lag. Because when the used car product prices start going down, you'll start now finding demand for the used product going even higher. So you should have a massive growth in the used product industry in the next 12-15 months, which follows typically the new product price decreases.
Okay. There's usually a lag there of.
There's a lag because it takes time for people mentally to adjust to the new prices. But when they do, then the demand dramatically goes up because the affordability of the used product goes up.
Right. Makes sense. Thank you for that, Vinayaji.
Thank you.
The second question within the OLX business, right? So I mean, if I look at the last quarter, right, and you launched obviously a lot of products here, Elite Seller, Super Series, etc., and there was a big quarter-on-quarter jump in the last quarter. And if I use that exit rate that you might have had in September quarter, would you say that these GST-related changes minus them, OLX would have been higher than this in this quarter? And this is why you're guiding to much better growth rate than 18% YOY going forward?
I'm not linking the GST at all with OLX. I don't think OLX was positively or negatively affected with the GST. I just feel like OLX is getting better at everything it does every day, right? It's an M&A, which is a little more than two years now. And the product changes, the product improvements, the new product launches. By the way, Super Series was launched in January, not in December, but it was announced in January. So we feel like a lot of what we're doing is starting to pay off. And of course, at the center of it is user experience and transaction volume on OLX is getting better. And we obviously have visibility towards the end of quarters on how the next quarter is going to be because there's a rate and the run rate, right?
So that's why I've given a guidance earlier in the call, saying that the growth rate of OLX will go up automatically, right, in this quarter of January to March. And that's the guidance we've given. Yeah.
Got it. Thank you, Vinayaji. The last question.
Sure. Sure. Go ahead.
On the consumer business, right? On the consumer business now, I mean, we can see your trends on traffic across CarWale and BikeWale. In terms of revenue market share, apples to apples, would you say it's roughly on par with your traffic share, or would you say it's?
Sorry, just say it just a little bit. I lost the last part. Just repeat the question I just asked last time.
Yeah. So within.
Sorry. You said revenue shared, right? The revenue and traffic, are you comparing the revenue and traffic growth? Are you saying that?
Yeah. So roughly, if you have a certain traffic market share among classifieds and you have a certain revenue market share, would you say your revenue market share is above or below the traffic market share is what I'm trying to understand?
I don't want to get into competitive market shares at this point. But the reality is that CarWale, if you look at the traffic market share, is very dominant in the business it's in, right? And that comes from the number of users which come itself. Clearly, that dominance is displayed in all facets of its business, all its engagement scores, etc., etc., and how we serve our customers, manufacturers, and dealers. We also feel very strong about the revenue growth at CarWale, right? We have a 32% growth nine months. And if we look at the last three years' CAGR of growth of CarWale, it's been extremely strong. So I would like to keep it at that. But really, we see that CarWale is becoming clearly a dominant new car platform.
Got it. Understood. Just last question for Aneesha. If you can give me the split mix between new and used and OEM versus dealers? Thank you.
Sure. Similar visit to what we have disclosed previously. The used continues to be like 15 versus new being at 85. The OEM dealers at the ballpark 70/30 kind of a ratio. OEM being 70 and dealer being 10.
Great. Thanks. Within the remarketing business, what would you split between retail and those three categories that you split remarketing into?
Sure. Retail is about 49% of our business. Retail continues to be about 40% of the business, and the balance is corporates.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Aneesha. Those are all.
Thanks, Vijit.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deep Shah from NV Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes.
So my first question is on the consumer business again. I just wanted to understand over a two-year horizon, do you see growth kind of tapering down? Because firstly, during the IPO, you all had mentioned that the penetration of digital ad spends is around 19%, that currently would have increased to around 35%-40%. So it's much closer to global peers. Secondly, it's largely a duopolistic market. So do you see or do you use pricing as a conscious lever? So just then the base would also catch up. So just wanting to get an understanding of the consumer business over two years, how do you see growth coming in here?
Sure. I think the first thing is that spends of manufacturers are in the 18%-20% range on platformed cars. I think the 30%-40% you may be referring to are if you include OTT platforms and television on YouTube and other things like that. There's a huge headroom for advertising from the offline world to grow in the online world in the automotive industry. So the 17%, 18%, 20%, we think obviously will grow much larger over the next few years, number one. Number two, we also feel among digital advertising platforms, whether if a manufacturer is advertising on us or other horizontals, we feel we offer far more value to dealers than consumers. So we see a clear increase in our market share in spends. Number three, we definitely see the automotive industry growing at a particular rate for the next 5 years.
We've shown that even if the industry growth is more muted, we continue to grow because of the shift towards spending on platforms like ours. Number 4, we definitely see, as prices and RPUs of cars and the mix of cars changes, we benefit from that. So the multiple, multiple factors, I think, right from user growth to all these 4 factors, which is why we see that the consumer group has continued to grow in the last 3 years. Even this year has grown at 32% for the first 9 months. We see no reason for this change for the coming few years at all.
So the 20% penetration you said is on the auto portal side, right? The 30%, 30 hours is for.
No, no, no. It's on automotive plus all other such digital platforms.
So would Meta or Instagram, all of that, would come in here, or?
Yeah. That would come in that. Yeah.
Oh, okay. On pricing, do you see that as a conscious lever to, I mean, increase your support, your top line?
Yeah. Prices change based on product change and mixes too, right? I think we're not a company which charges more for doing the same thing. We normally try and increase value to our users, to manufacturers, dealers when their prices change or when we provide more services to them. I think that's the way we think about it.
Okay. Noted. And just in addition to the previous question on a mix on the remarketing group, the 10% corporate that you mentioned, how would you differentiate between the retail and the corporate? What do you include in the corporate piece?
Retail is a single user. Corporate is someone who's got bulk vehicles. This is different. I mean, a corporate would be individual.
Fleet owners?
Yeah.
Fleet owners would be corporates?
Yeah. Fleet owners could be corporates. Yeah. Individual is just a single individual. Yeah.
Okay. And the last question was on OLX. You mentioned that the growth would pick up from them. Could you just elaborate on the non-auto portal? I mean, when you had acquired this, the focus was largely on the auto piece of the business. How are we scaling up the non-auto piece? And could you just?
Actually, the non-auto piece has also grown rapidly. I mean, in this period, the non-auto growth has been slightly ahead of the auto growth. So it's been pretty strong. There are multiple parts of it from electronics to goods to mobiles, furniture, bikes, jobs, real estate. So multiple parts of it. We feel very optimistic about all those. In fact, in mobile phones, there's almost 25% of all phones sold are listed on OLX. We've shared that market share data as well publicly. And even in furniture, if you today in India are selling a table or a chair or anything else, OLX is a single destination where 180 million-190 million Indians come every year to sell something or buy something. So it's a very strong platform for used products from a non-auto standpoint. Of course, in auto, 65% of cars are listed on OLX.
But even on non-auto, we find that the traction and the adoption is extremely high and very optimistic over the non-auto side. It actually fulfills a very major need for the population of India that if you ever want to sell something, I think this is the only methodology you can use to sell what you have. It could be a piano. It could be anything. And then we said before that a lot of this operates hyper-locally. So if you are listing an item in a particular geography, within a 5-kilometer geography, there's a buyer for you. So very strong platform, very strong transaction metrics, and extremely strong adoption by users.
All that said, thank you so much and all the very best.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shrenik Mehta from IndoElseWealth. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for giving this opportunity. I had two questions. Number one was on the ROE. So you have a fairly strong glide path to the growth here. When do you think in the next 2-3 years, we can come to a more ROE which is closer to, say, the growth that we want to take, which may be in the range of 20%-25%?
I don't give a guidance on when that will happen, but clearly, we see the ROE going up because as profitability goes up and there's lack of CapEx or other big investments being made, we clearly see the ROE going up in the company.
Yeah. Okay. Second, I was thinking a little bit about the AI. So do you have some AI use case which you've utilized in your company and has been very successful to bring the business growth for you? Any one use case?
There are multiple interventions of AI. I think the one which is already live, which all users use even today, is if you list a product on OLX and let's say you list a car and you put a photograph of something else, our AI tool immediately will check on it and obviously guide you to say, "Listen, this is the wrong product." So there are multiple small interventions like this, but AI is bringing the craft to enhance user experience on CarWale or OLX. There's a lot of pricing information. So if you go to CarWale today and you're buying a used car, it'll immediately guide you, tell you what price you should pay, which is all intelligently. As you know, used car pricing is an extremely complicated item, and this is all done through AI. So multiple interventions, but there's a long, long way to go.
This is the beginning of the AI interventions in the business.
Okay. Appreciate your feedback. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will take that as our last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Aryan Sumra for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. I would like to thank the management for taking the time out for this conference call today. I would also like to thank all the participants. If you have any queries, feel free to contact us. We are MUFG InTime, Investor Relation Advisors to CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you so much.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of CarTrade Tech Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.