Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to CMS Info Systems Limited third quarter FY 2024 earnings conference call, hosted by Asian Market Securities Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results may differ from such expectations, projections, et cetera, whether expressed or implied.
Participants are requested to exercise caution while referring to such statements and remarks. 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 touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Prithvish Uppal from Asian Market Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah, hi. Thank you, Michelle. Good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased to host you, and the management team of CMS Info Systems for the third quarter and nine-month ended FY 2024 earnings conference call. We have with us today from the management team of CMS Info Systems, Mr. Rajiv Kaul, CEO and Executive Vice Chairman; Mr. Pankaj Khandelwal, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Manjunath Rao, President, Managed Services; and Mr. Anush Raghavan, President, Cash Management Services. I now hand over the call to Rajiv, sir, for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Pritesh. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to attend our third quarter FY 2024 earnings call. With the revenue growth of 19% and an adjusted PAT growth of 22%, it's been a strong quarter.
That actually makes it our seventh consecutive quarter with more than 20% year-on-year PAT growth. The strong and consistent performance highlights the robustness of our annuity-linked business model. We are seeing a very strong momentum in both our business lines, led by growth in the banking sector and higher outsourcing, and the growth in the retail sector, led by formalization. Our track record on bidding and winning large, complex banking outsourcing deals continues.
We are happy to share that we have INR 600 crore worth of wins in this quarter, which takes the cumulative wins in this financial year to INR 1,250 crore in our managed services and tech solutions business. Our CFO, Pankaj, will now take you through the third quarter financial highlights.
Thank you, Rajiv. Our consolidated revenue has grown by 19% to INR 582 crores, with managed services and technology solution now contributing 40% of our total revenue. Our adjusted EBITDA has grown 16% to INR 163 crores, and our adjusted EBITDA margin profile is 28.1%. Adjusted PAT has grown by 22% to INR 96 crores, making it the 11th out of last 12 quarters with greater than 20% PAT growth. Our adjusted PAT margin has expanded by 40 basis points on year-on-year basis to 16.5% in third quarter of FY 2024.
I'm also happy to inform you that our Board of Directors have declared an interim dividend of INR 2.50 per share. Both our business segments have delivered strong results. My colleague will take you through the respective business highlights, starting with Anush for the cash management.
Thank you, Pankaj. Our revenue in the cash logistics business has grown by 11% year-on-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter to INR 335 crore in third quarter, with an EBIT growth of 14% to INR 98 crore. The EBIT margin has expanded by 80 basis points year-on-year to 26.0% in third quarter. Our CashTech offerings, which we had shared in the Investor Day, is scaling well. So far this year, we have onboarded and servicing 40+ new retail logos.
Our platform offers retailers seamless technology integration, which enables process automation, risk mitigation, reconciliation, and faster settlement cycles. With this, we have accelerated our business point growth to 4,000 for this quarter, which is close to what we did... Added in all of H1 this year.
We continue to invest in our infrastructure with additional 500 vans year to date, and have upgraded our vaults at 40 locations to state-of-the-art technology and a QR-based track and trace mechanism for cassette swap. With this infra capacity, we have been at the forefront of cassette swap implementation and are placed in the industry to roll out cassette swap.
We have already added ATM cassette swap process in 12,000+ ATMs, and we expect 25% of our ATM network to be cassette swap compliant by end of FY 2024. With this, I hand over to my colleague, Manjunath, to share an update on our managed services and tech solutions business.
Thank you, Anush. Our managed services and tech solutions business revenue grew at 38% year-on-year to INR 233 crore in third quarter. EBIT grew 27% year-on-year to INR 41 crore, and the EBIT margin stood at 17.7% in the quarter. In the last earnings call, we had indicated that we expect to see key PSU RFPs get concluded this year. I'm happy to report that we have won-
INR 600 crore of new orders in third quarter, taking the new wins in the first three quarters of FY 2024 to INR 1,250 crore. In comparison, our total wins in FY 2023 were INR 950 crore. In our AIoT remote monitoring business, we have won orders for 2,000 new sites and are conducting pilots in non-BFSI sectors. With this, I would like to invite Rajiv for his closing remarks.
Thanks, Manju. To summarize, both of our businesses are showing great momentum. Our enterprise sales execution across banks and our solutions for retail, such as CashTech, are delivering very good results. A significant part of our last two to three years' growth was linked to the MS order book, the ATM growth and compliance. Going forward, we continue to see high growth from our managed services business, our retail and our AIoT businesses.
Based on current visibility and new wins, we are on track to deliver revenue in this fiscal year of INR 2,300 crore to INR 3,250 crore, which would be a 16% to 18%, 17% to 19% growth rate. We feel confident on our midterm outlook of FY 2025, which we had presented as an aspiration of INR 2,500 crore or INR 2,700 crore, to be in the upper half of that range. Thank you for your support in attending this call. We can now move to the Q&A.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions, may please press star and one on their touchtone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only 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 Aasim from DAM Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. I think Rajiv has partly answered my question, so I'll just, just rephrase it slightly. So I think, revenue, aspiration for FY 2025, you said that you would be most likely in the upper end of the range. Could you also just give some more color that would it be still more managed services driven, that rather with managed services growth still be faster than cash management, in FY 2025? And basically, with managed services growing faster than cash, what does that do to our consolidated EBIT margins over that year?
Thanks, Aasim. You know, our managed services business is obviously coming off a smaller base. It has grown very well. We had, in our annual investor day, indicated that by FY 2025, we expect the split of businesses to be in a 60/40 ratio. third quarter of FY 2024, we are already at that ratio. Forecasting it by quarter will be difficult, but I think we see a similar contribution from each business in the end of FY 2025 at a 60/40 level, which is what we had indicated in May earlier this year. From a margin perspective, the MS business EBIT margins are on the lower side.
It's a business where we are aggressively growing and investing for market share. Also, it has a product automation mix to it, which can impact margins on a quarterly basis. So I don't see any change in the margin profiles of the businesses from a medium-term perspective. We will give you more clarity, I think, at the end of the fiscal year when we have our analyst day.
Sure. I think... Okay, for now, I think from a base case scenario, one should pencil in, maybe a slight decline purely based on a mix, changing in favor of managed services.
Yes.
Okay. Okay, and a second question is basically on the compliance norm pricing catch-up. So you have mentioned 85% of your ATMs are compliant, cassette swap at 15%. Can you also, can we know the similar figures for RCM and CIT? And if you can also talk about where the industry is currently in these three markets.
Sure thing. Hi, Anush here. And as I said earlier, the rollout of ATM compliance was happening on a route-wise basis, with 85% of our routes which are fully compliant, especially with the addition of 500+ banks onto our own network this year. On the RCM side, it is following a process of city-wide rollout, and as we speak, we would be compliant in a little bit more than 40% of our RCM network. The CIT business, the quality of network that we're operating, we've chosen to sort of have exclusively compliant contracts on the CIT network.
So there are obviously some contracts which continue to come and go from certain public sector banks, which do not fully mandate compliance. We're taking a very strategic call to not load our network with any of that business in order to just chase revenue. So 85% of ATM is compliant, almost all of CIT is compliant, and 40% of RCM business.
When, you knowa, Aasim, when Anush references this, he's talking to you on the CMS network. We obviously can't comment...
Yes.
-on the broader industry and what the banks are doing, but this is on the CMS network. As a management, we have taken a call to consolidate our focus on working with banks and partners which are focused on compliance, and any other business which is, you know, lower yield, we will slowly stop working on that and focus on the high-yield business.
But, safe to assume that broadly, vis-à-vis industry, you would be higher or maybe in the ATMs case, similar to industry levels? Or would industry be much behind?
We should be higher simply because the investments required for compliances were significant. We have front-loaded this investment in FY 2021 itself, FY 2020, 2021 itself. So again, I, we will refrain from commenting on other market participants, but our focus on compliance has been, to lead with these investments. Well, I think most of the investments for our compliance have peaked. And I think you'll see the benefit of that in just the quality of the business and also the margin profile of the business.
Sure. And just last question, is basically on your M&A focus points. You've mentioned business services, fintech and financial inclusion. Can you just elaborate more specifically on these three, where your synergies lie with your existing strengths? And would all these be non-cash movement related, or would there still be an angle of cash over here?
Well, you know, from the Investor Day and what we talked about, I don't think there's any significant change in the way we think about acquisitions or M&A. And we did talk to you about the areas of our focus where we'll try to look for expansion. I don't think any of them have a cash element to it at all. I think this would be either broader towards infrastructure or financial inclusion or logistics or technology.
Okay. Thanks a lot for answering my questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your questions to two per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Balaji from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the good results. My first question is on the FY 2024 revenue guidance that you have mentioned, which is INR 250 to 2,300 crores. If I take the midpoint, it implies about 27% YOY growth for 4Q, which is a fair bit higher than what you have been doing. So basically, what is... What gives the visibility on such strong numbers in 4Q? The second question is on the ATM compliance, which you mentioned, of 85%. So we can see that, you know, despite that, your cash management revenue has grown only by about 11%.
I do understand that there was some pricing impact on a CIT contract, but, still, you know, one would have expected a slightly higher number, since there should have been some realization boost from this compliance. So, you know, what explains this phenomenon on the compliance percentage and the relatively lower revenue profitability of the ATM? So those are my two questions.
Thanks, Balaji. From a, your commentary or assumption before, I think there is, the fact that our order book wins, have been strong, that execution will lead to, some of that work getting billed in fourth quarter. Secondly, fourth quarter does tend to become a seasonally higher quarter, as we have witnessed even last year. So we have I, I think that's what leads the confidence of the commentary for revenue forecast for FY 2024.
On your second question on the cash logistics business, I think if you go back to, we have always guided to the growth potential of the business in the medium term to a 10% to 13% range. I think at 11% it's still very good growth. There was that CIT contract loss, which we had talked about earlier.
But I think more importantly, what we are seeing is, what I did say to Aasim in the question, is that, as a team, we are standardizing our operations and delivery to focus on the compliance work. So any customer or customer segment where compliance is not a priority for them or they are not able to do it based on their own business model, is the business which we will try and move away from. So, case in point would be, let's say, the white label business. The white label business and the operators are not in a position to maybe drive full compliance for whatever reasons.
I think we will let go of those businesses because we don't want to have our revamped infrastructure, you know, delivering services on both compliance and non-compliance. I think that's not the right thing to do.
Thank you, sir. We'll move on to the next question, which is from the line of Mr. Achal from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, team. Thank you for the opportunity. You know, the question I had in mind is, you know, with respect to if you look at... I mean, this is more top-down question we can kind of faces. If you look at the currency handling by the ATMs or per transaction value, number of transactions, we are seeing a marginal dip year after year, or rather for few last few quarters.
So, the question I wanted to ask you is, A, how does it impact the cash management company as an industry? And also, for us, how do we tackle this? How does it impact us? The second question is, is there any monetary impact or financial impact already seen in our 2Q or 3Q numbers?
Thanks, Achal. I think, broadly, if you look at it, you know, the fact that the interchange has continued to remain flat, for the last few years, despite the broader industry asking for an increase. I think that is leading to, more tapered, four percent growth in the ATM volume. We firmly believe that, deeper penetration of ATM is required, especially in semi-urban and rural, and that increase in ATM rollout either accompanied by an interchange increase or with what the public sector banks are doing in terms of growing the ATM channels and expanding that, will lead to a more secular increase in overall ATM usage.
However, with the current, concentration of ATMs, the overall dispense to the channel is remaining relatively stable and steady at, between 2.7 to 3 trillion of total currency handled. In terms of the, from a CIT perspective, I think we've sort of reiterated this in the past as well. We are more focused in terms of looking at the total cash handled through the CMS wall channel, which actually continues to grow quarter-on-quarter.
So even in third quarter, we had the highest ever currency handled at about INR 3.4 trillion. And, the more immediate impact on our revenue stream is in terms of the total activities that we do, which have actually increased by about 10% year-on-year.
Okay. Secondly, you know, with respect to the comment Rajiv made with respect to compliance, investments are already by and large is already there. So, with respect to, you know, the CapEx, how do we look at CapEx going forward? And another question I had in mind is with respect to the ATM addition, where do we stand? Because in the last call, you had mentioned about a fairly significant capacity, the ATM additions should happen in the second half. So how is that progressing, or are we seeing that getting pushed into two to FY 2025?
Achal, I'll talk about the second question, and Pankaj can tell you on CapEx, the plan on the CapEx side. In the... So a lot of the RFPs, which have got deferred or delayed rather, have started closing out. We have seen, contracts or sorry, RFPs for almost 33,000 ATMs, which have closed in the last, in, in the year-to-date period. And there are another 20,000 odd ATM RFPs, which are expected to close in, I hope, fourth quarter, first quarter of next year.
So we are seeing good progress on this. This had got deferred and delayed a little bit, but, I think this is moving along very well. And that's also part of the reason why, you know, for our, forecast, our bullishness and, also the order book, which we have. In terms of CapEx, your question, I'll let Pankaj give you our view.
So CapEx spend will be lower than our earlier guidance of INR 150 crore in FY 2024, with some of it getting spilled to next financial year, year on account of large order books which we book in the second quarter, third quarter.
Would you be able to give us the number, Pankaj, by any chance, for FY 2024, what CapEx we would look at and how much is already spent in nine months?
So we have given a guidance earlier from INR 150 crore-INR 175 crore, around, in the last call. We expect that this will be over INR 100 crore this year.
How much-
INR 100 crore-INR 125 crore is the forecast we have for the, what we think we'll end up in CapEx spend this year.
Understood. And how much is already spent, Pankaj, in nine months?
I think H1 we have reported the number. I don't exactly recall what the number. It'll be in our H1 results. So you will get it from there.
Got it. This is very helpful. I'll come back in the queue for the follow-ups. Thank you.
Thank you. May we request all the participants to limit their questions to two per participant? Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nitin Sharma from Emkay Research. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thanks. So two questions. First of all, on the cost end, both purchase of traded goods went up sharply. Similarly, service and security guarding also went up. How should we see it going ahead? And then I'll follow up.
So first, Nitin, could you just clarify the question again? You said two costs.
Yeah, the purchase of traded goods and services and security charging. Both of them went up sharply in this quarter, so how should one see it going ahead?
See, the cost of goods sold has increased because of the revenue mix change. So in managed services, our managed services business is now contributing this quarter around 40%, and that too, in that, lot of the banking automation business is there, which has resulted in the percentage of the cost has increased, third quarter 2023, 5.5% to 9%.
As regards your question on the service and security expenses has gone up because of the change in the revenue mix. Second is the vehicle cost. We have added 500 vehicles, which has resulted in the reduction in the fuel cost, fuel and vehicle hiring cost and increase in the other costs.
You should take those two together, the vehicle cost and service security, and then see the trend line on quarters on that.
Understood. Secondly, on this INR 600 crore order with, what is included there? It, it cannot be entirely remote monitoring, right? And also, how much of the order book is yet to be executed?
How much of the order book is, sorry?
Yet to be executed. Percentage has been, that has been executed so far.
So, our order book, we actually only refer to our managed services and technology business, right? We don't talk about order book in our cash management business. And the order book comprises banking automation, ATM as a service, AI and remote monitoring. The INR 600 crore order wins are only in third quarter. For the full year, the order book is about INR 1,250 crore. The revenue from this INR 1,250 crore will accrue to us in the next three to five years. So, you know, some of this will start getting in current year towards the end of the fiscal year, but a majority of this will accrue to us in FY 2025, 2026.
Understood. Out of the 4,400.
Sir, I would request you to kindly rejoin the queue for follow-up questions, please.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Aditya Pal from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir, you're audible.
Thank you. Just wanted to understand, in cash management services, what would be the split of business across RCM, ATM, and CIT? And when, if you're seeing 10%, 11% growth, what will be the growth attribution?
You know, we don't split our contribution of businesses within cash management. I think we always talk about overall business point and overall business growth. We don't detail our growth by sub-segment.
Okay. But if you can just give a commentary on if you want to attribute where the 11% growth is coming from, which one of the three is driving the growth?
So, you know, this was part of my opening and closing remarks, where we said that, a significant part of our last two to three-year growth came from the ATM market and compliance-driven growth, and our ATM-as-a-service business lines. The current trend and momentum indicates that our business in retail is growing very healthy. Anush also talked about the CashTech offering, which is doing well. Also, our AIoT remote monitoring business is doing well, and our broader managed businesses is, you know, growing very, very strongly.
All right. And so when I... So just talking about cash management services. So, when I look at over the last six to seven quarters, on a year-on-year growth has actually slowed down from high 20% to now low double digits. Anything that we have to read into it, or?
No, I think you should go back to what most people thought before IPO, that cash business cannot grow in the first place. And then we surprised people growing very 20%, at that time. You have to think of the larger business in cash management is linked to formalization and growth of the economy. So in a way, we will be linked to the growth of the economy.
A 10% to 12% growth in a large business is, I think, very good and very healthy. It will look optically lower than what we had in two years prior. But, from a long-term perspective, I, I think our goal remains to keep to see this business grow in the 10% to 13% range, which I think should be the market expectation also.
Understood. Understood. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pranay Jain from Dealwealth Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Could you throw some color on the outsourcing cycle in ATMs, and how our talks with the banking partners on the PSU private side is giving us an idea of what could come to us next year as part of the expansion refresh cycle and the outsourcing trend?
So, you know, I'll refer to the answer we just made. So the outsourcing trends are obviously different across different business lines, but the large ones, which were, which we were looking to work on were the whole ATM refresh cycle. 33,000 ATMs have already been are in the process of getting awarded this year. 20,000 ought to happen in the early part of next fiscal year.
In addition to this, I think there is, when you, when you think of, AIoT business, RMS business, and our software business, we are in talks with many banks in terms of their expansion, and actually for them, it's just about adopting new technology, right? This is technology which has not been used before at many banks, whether it's their branches or in their ATMs.
I don't think I can tell you what will likely happen next year. It's very, you know, in terms of order wins. Order wins will only conclude business is linked to competitive intensity, of course, in each business of ours. But our gross order wins over the last three years are being at the range of about INR 4,400-INR 4,500 crores. INR 250 crores of order wins in the nine months of this year. And we aim to keep, you know, doing well in this when contracts come up for bidding.
Okay. And, are most of the wins with regards to expansion in the banking and the refresh that we are seeing coming from non-metro PIN codes, is that the understanding going forward?
No, expansion, for sure, you're right. Expansion would be in the semi-metro and rural side. The refresh would be across the country, right? Because infrastructure, which was set up seven, eight , 10 years ago, was across the, you know, would be large only in the urban centers, and that would need to get replaced and upgraded by newer technology. Also, sorry, is that what your question was completely? I couldn't hear you completely.
Yeah, that, that was part of the question. And the second part was, how is the competitive intensity looking? Because our peers, whether it is Hitachi or, or Radiant or, or other, smaller ones, they're quite aggressive in, in pricing and wins. So how are we, tackling, competition presently?
And we've been talking about competitive density will be higher for the last 5 quarters. I think I've said this on every call. This is India is an exciting market for domestic and multinational companies. We expect competitive density to be intense. That's the job of competition, right? So whether that is you know obviously competitive density leads to pricing impact.
We've been doing a pretty good job of focusing on market share and growth, as you can see from our results over the last seven to eight quarters. Our job is to balance growth with market share and then margin profile. And in our core strategic businesses, we are very clear of focusing long-term business, we're very clear on focusing on market share.
And therefore, again, if you look back at some of my commentary, some of the lower yield businesses, which are not likely to get into compliance over the coming year or two, we are not interested in those businesses, and we'd rather step away from that and focus our energy on businesses which are stickier and better margin profile in the long term.
All right. And last, two-part question: one, on the remote monitoring, since we are seeing a lot of opportunities in India-
I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Chair, and I would request you to kindly rejoin for follow-up, please.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Ankit Kanodia from SmartSync Services. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. So my question is related to a news article which appeared maybe yesterday or day before yesterday, where it has been mentioned that, 40,000 aging ATMs are to be replaced in the next 12 to 18 months and 10,000 new ones to be added. So just wanted your thought on that, in terms of, how much of that can come to us and, how much of that will lead to only cash management business, and is there any scope for managed services business also with these new ATMs? If you can throw some more color on this, that would be very helpful.
So, you know, you know, this is, if you... I talked about the 33,000 ATMs which have already been closed out, 20,000 more. This is sort of part of the same trend or the article you might be referring to. The numbers may be a little bit here and there, but the number I'm telling you right now is what you should refer to.
There is a upfront opportunity of winning the automation business, and then there is a longer-term opportunity from sales and, sorry, by services, managed services. Some of this may come as ATM, as a service business. But from a upfront product automation perspective, our historical market share has been in the 15% to 16% range.
For the business which got contracted out, the 30,000 odd ATMs and recyclers, our market share there in the wins would be more about 25%. What will happen in the future, we can't tell you, but this is what the trend is right now.
Thank you. That was very helpful. Just one more question, related to that article only. Someone from our team, Mr. Manjunath Rao, he mentioned there that banks right now is looking at ATM as a selling point rather than a service point. So if you can just elaborate a little more on that as to how does that open up new opportunities for us?
Manju will help answer that.
Yes. This was, this was with regard to the branch expansion plans of the banks. You must have read that in the articles of the banks. Typically, on the ATM front, we have one to two deployments. One for every branch, there are two ATMs deployed. And in that model, the banks are now thinking of a smaller format of their branch and making it more automated and using that space as their cross-selling points. So rather than a traditional brick-and-mortar, they would be using more automation in their branches. That's what we get to hear from many of the banks that we discuss with.
Okay, how does that help us?
Oh, absolutely. Because, one, the banking automation business itself and as well as if the model moves on to ATM- as- a- Service model, then it would help us managed services business. And also, almost all our businesses get a play in that, including remote monitoring services.
Thank you so much. That really was very helpful, on the matter.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Sinha from BOB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Congratulations on the good set of numbers. I just have one question. I want to understand what is the run rate of, AIoT business or the remote monitoring business?
AIoT business is running at ARR of over INR 100 crore plus.
All right. It was a couple of quarters back, I think last quarter also it was, around INR 100 crore. So have you seen any sort of uptick in, you know, month-on-month?
We have, but I think we, it's a number we report every year. And we already mentioned that we've done 20,000 sites. We have won orders for 2,000 more. I think by the end of the fiscal year, we should be closing around 45,000 sites.
All right. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhargav Sanghvi from Asian Market Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. First of all, congrats for the good set of numbers. I have two questions, and my first question is regarding the provisioning. Like, what's the recent trend in the provisioning, and what's your outlook? If you can provide any outlook, that could be helpful. And my second question is relating to the pilot project in collection business that you mentioned in the last quarter. Like, is there any update on the progress? T hese two are my questions.
So Pankaj can help answer the first one on provisions, if I got your question correctly. And the collections business, of course, we should not confuse our provisioning and collections businesses. And the second question, Anuj can answer.
So on the provisioning part, with the rollout of the compliance and increased coverage of the, we have seen a decrease in our risk cost. This has allowed us to drive a corresponding reduction in our provision from 5.1% in FY 2023 to 4.1% in H1 of FY 2024. Further, we expect that close FY 2025, we will expect to close sub 4% basis.
Can you mention for the third quarter?
So, H1, we have done 4.1%, and we are expecting that at the full FY 2024, we will close less than 4%. So the third quarter was also lesser than the 1H number. So there is a gradual decrease in the corresponding provision because of the rollout of the compliance and the increased coverage.
Okay. And Anuj, on the collections.
Yeah, I think, as we said, you know, FY 2024 is a year where we will incubate few new businesses and run on advanced pilots. Collections is obviously one that we were looking at very keenly. I think the pilot is progressing quite well. We would love to come back to you and update you in more detail on that closer towards during the next investor day. We have signed more than 15 contracts with various banks and NBFCs, and I think there's a lot of learning which our team has been getting out of that.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Darshan Shah from Multi Act Equity Consultancy Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. One is on the order wins during the quarter. Can you just split it between CapEx intensive versus non-CapEx intensive out of that INR 600 crore of order wins?
So in terms of the third quarter, we tell you for the whole year to date. The year to date, order wins are INR 1,250 crore. I think less than one third of that will be, will need capital investment, the remaining will not.
Okay, thanks. And my second question is on dividend payout. So this is the first time we have given interim dividend. So is there any change in thought process of dividend payout policy? Because this, if we look at third quarter dividend payout, it comes to around 45% to 46%. Versus 25% to 26%.
So it's not a 45% to 46% for the quarter. I think this is an... So, let me clarify. We have done interim dividends before. You know, in FY 2022, we have done interim dividend. And, we, there is a change in dividend policy or thinking as such. I think from our perspective as a, as a company, we would like to not wait till the end of the year and, you know, do dividends. We have a fairly robust balance sheet, and we should be able to give, you know, capital back to shareholders at the at, you know, at, at frequent intervals. So I don't think you should link it to third quarter. I think this is year to date, we have done interim dividend.
Okay, thanks. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nilesh Jethani from BOI Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thanks for the opportunity and congrats on a good set of numbers. My first question was on the-
I'm sorry, sir, your volume is too low. Could you please increase the volume a little bit?
Yeah. Am I audible now?
Yes, sir. Please continue.
Okay, perfect. My first question was on the margin front. So from going forward, wanted to understand in both business, that is, managed services as well as cash logistics, what are the levers for margin expansion? I understand remote monitoring is one of the piece, but apart from that, what are the levers for margin expansion from here on?
You know, first of all, I do want to underline the fact that our margin profile is best-in-class globally. You will not... I would struggle to know of companies which have the margin profile which we've been delivering consistently. Second point I want to underline is that our margins have expanded substantially over the last three years, and in both of our businesses, managed services as well as cash management. Number three, I will go back to repeat myself again and say that there is very, we expect intense competitive intensity.
In this intensity, our job is to make sure we defend and grow market share and growth. Of course, our efforts will be to maintain margin profile as much as we can, but that's not, I don't think margin profiles can be linear in nature.
Lastly, it's like your fundamental question on levers of margin expansion. I think the mix of business is one. The second is really about productivity, if you are able to do more activities on the network, and third is just pricing. So the lever will not change dramatically for any company, including us.
And for us, the one thing which we have been good at, and we hope we can continue to do that in the future, is driving a very strong investment in technology in the core of our operations for the last several years, which has helped us systematically drive productivity. You're seeing that also help in reducing our, let's say, our risk of this year, and just to keep working on improving these things.
But we don't control inflation, we don't control how competition will be, and from the longer-term perspective, we have to be very careful and not just be only focused on margins, but we focus on revenue growth and market share.
So on this, revenue growth and market share piece, just wanted to understand, if more and more Brown Label ATMs come out in the market and say, we don't participate aggressively in that, but we participate for the other ancillary services and even managed services for those ATMs. So wanted to understand, today, whatever vans or whatever infrastructure we are in place and say additional, say, 70,000 to 80,000 of PSU banking ATMs are there for refresh.
I wanted to understand what CapEx we would require for capturing that market and whether that CapEx required today would be adequate for capturing the higher margins from here on. So I wanted to understand at today's infrastructure, what kind of additional ATMs, et cetera, we can service?
I mean, in a way, what you're saying is on our current investments on vans and capacity, how much more capacity could we really do? I think it's a function of, you know, this is always changing in time because we're expanding the network, right? When you move into a new location, your productivity will be low.
But I think that's, again, our productivity numbers have systematically gone up, whether you take it on per route or you look at just revenue per employee and cost per employee. I think we've been systematically working to improve those two things. From a perspective of your question on BLA, you're right, we are reasonably careful on that segment because it's capital intensity.
We don't mind the capital intensity, it's just that making a bet on how transactions will be for the next seven years, we, we don't think we have that good a quality, therefore, we will always be more conservative. We have rightly or wrongly, taken a call that we will try and cap the contribution of this business to under 15% of our revenue. We think that's the way to do position sizing, like, when you do capital allocation.
And that it gives us the flexibility to work in, with clients where we think we can get the adequate return of capital, and therefore, we are not getting over... I mean, our revenue could be much higher if you want to play a bigger role in BLA, but that's not our goal. And, I think I've answered correctly.
Yeah, and then the last point is really about, when you think of, you know, the work we do in our network, we are trying to make sure that we change that to a higher yield and higher quality, and we wean off the lower, let's say, the lower yield, and therefore, the lower margin business over this network. Three years ago, it was very different because we, network quality was different. Today, our network infrastructure is of a much higher quality, and we don't want to, use that to deliver services which are not in line with the way we want to grow.
From a need for capital, we've done roughly INR 200 crore CapEx, I think, Pankaj, for the last two fiscal years. This year, we were estimating INR 150 crore-INR 175 crore. It will be lower, but some of that will just slip into early part of next year. It's too early to know what the capital needs of this are, normally from a three-year cycle.
But, if next year you would hope to be at a INR 200 crore capital, plus some of the slip over from this year, so maybe it's a INR 250-INR 300 crore number for next year right now. But keep in mind that the EBITDA of the business has grown significantly over these three, four years, and therefore, the CapEx as a percentage of EBITDA will, is going down substantially.
Okay. And on this, so last question from my side. So on this upcoming, 80,000 ATMs available for refresh from the PSU side, just wanted to understand any ballpark understanding you would be having based on your calculation. Currently, what routes, et cetera, we are servicing, at least what kind of market share we can gain in this incremental number?
Impossible to know, but I just want to clarify, Vidya, we haven't at least talked about 80,000 ATMs right now. We have talked about 50,000 ATMs and of which 30,000 already closed down and 20,000 up. Now, there may be more from other banks, but I don't want to confuse anybody with an 80,000 number, which at least we haven't talked about.
But impossible to know which routes in the network this will go into, because these are spread across. The refresh will be already part of it. The expansion could, some of it will come on the same route, some may need new routes, but this is not something which we can sort of forecast.
Okay, got it. That was, I guess that was helpful, and thank you so much for answering each question.
Thank you. Thank you, sir. We'll take the next question from the line of Mohit Madhiwalla from Envision Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. So number one, with these new touchpoints that have been added this quarter, have they basically been in locations where you already have presence and are getting more density within those pin codes? Or is it more that, kind of exploring, other pin codes where you've got, another kind of... That's the first question. And second question is, if you could also provide an update on, what kind of annual expense that is expected on ESOP costs, let's say, at 2024, that is this fiscal, up until, let's say, the next two, three years.
So I'll, I'm not sure I'll answer the first part of the question and hand over to Pankaj for the second. So as far as the new business is coming in, I think, you know, we've, we've spoken about some of this earlier, but one of the core strengths of the logistics platform that we have in CMS is the fact that we already present in a significant number of pin codes, covering a large percentage of Indian districts.
So our ability to service any new business point that comes in, I think, is far ahead of, anybody else. What practically happens is, as when the new business is coming, it goes through an internal process where we use some of the technology to figure out what is the best way to service that.
In very rare cases, we may need a network expansion into a new area, but in most cases, it may be an expansion in terms of an upgrade of the infrastructure or the routes, in case we need to cater to that incremental demand.
More than 62% of our network is present in semi-urban and rural, covering greater than 16,000 pin codes. So that's really the strength that we offer to our customers. Pankaj, for second part of it?
So whatever ESOP we have issued, that's issued at a very close to the fair market price. 75% of the ESOP was issued at a weighted average fair market price, and 25% on a 10% discount. We have not given any big discount or we have not issued any RSU. Though the ESOP was issued at a fair market price, but the option value to be calculated on a Black-Scholes method and expense out in the P&L. So based on that, for next two quarters, we expect INR 10 to 11 crore of ESOP expense, and then next four quarters, around six to seven crore, and then it will reduce to INR three to four crore.
One more point I want to highlight, that 50% of these ESOPs are vested only in case of the performance, as defined in the ESOP policy.
Right. Thank you. So just to clarify, the ESOP policy is per quarter, right? This is a per quarter only that you have mentioned.
Yeah. ESOP, yeah, ESOP cost per quarter.
Right. Thank you. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chinmay Nema from Prescient Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for taking my question. My question pertains to the retail cash management business. The other players in this segment have talked about pricing revisions, price cuts. So, just wanted to understand, what kind of pricing power do we have in this, business? Have we taken any price cuts? What kind of price hikes have we taken in the past? Do we have fixed contracts, variable contracts? Any objective or subjective commentary on this would be helpful.
Sure, Chinmay. I think, let me answer it in a different way. I think fundamentally, when you look at the performance of the cash business, if we take nine months of the year, I think we are showing almost a 16% growth in our EBIT margins. I think that sort of speaks testimony to our pricing power and, the way in which we are able to deliver with a high operational efficiency. Having said that, I think nature of the way in which we are looking at our retail business is changing.
This is no longer just a per pickup price or a per pickup model. It's transitioning from being a logistics service to a more solutions-oriented play. We are bringing on board a lot of investments that we've done in respect to technology.
The CashTech is really a very strong ecosystem of collaboration between payment banks, fintech, CMS, and some traditional banks, to try and look at retail outsourcing in a very different way. How do we bring in greater process efficiency to the front office? How do we bring in greater risk management and resilience to the back office processing?
I mean, it's really about trying to help retail execute a lot more efficiently, making sure that their working capital cycle reduces, making sure that the risk exposure of the people who are working in retail is vastly different, offering accelerated settlements. So I think we feel quite positive about the offering that we have and the conversations that we have with retailers. As I spoke earlier, we brought on board more than 40 different logos just in this year. I think that's the way we're looking at it.
Gaurav, would it be possible for you to quantify what kind of price hike you've been able to take in the last three, four, five years?
No, good thought.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from the line of Pranay Jain from Dealwealth Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, on the AIoTs, just wanted to understand what is the opportunity we see over the next couple of years as AI-