Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the CMS Info Systems Limited Q2 FY twenty-five earnings conference call, hosted by Elara Securities 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 touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Prithvish Uppal from Elara Securities Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi. On behalf of Elara Securities, I'm pleased to welcome you to CMS Info Systems Q2 FY twenty-five earnings conference call. Joining us today from the management team are Mr. Rajiv Kaul, Executive Vice Chairman, Whole Time Director, and CEO, Mr. Anush Raghavan, President, Cash Management Services, and Mr. Pankaj Khandelwal, CFO. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Rajiv Kaul for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Prithvish. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining our H1 call. In a slower than expected H1, we were able to grow our revenue at a strong 16%, which represents a consistent and a strong growth business momentum. H1, as you know, has seen some prolonged and intense monsoons and a fairly extended election cycle, which has affected consumption trends, which led to lower activities on both our cash logistics network as well as our BLA network, impacting revenue and realizations to some level. On our cash logistics business, we continue to expand the network. We've seen an 11% growth in our touchpoints to 1 lakh 43 thousand points, which also showcases and demonstrate the results of our investments in building capacity and deepening our coverage.
In the retail business, where specifically our direct-to-retail segment, we now are working with 60 direct lines, up from 40 in March. Coming to our managed services and technology business, we have secured new orders worth INR 200 crores in H1, bringing the total order wins to INR 400 crores for the period. Although we secured INR 1,600 crores in orders over the last four quarters, only 15% of these have been executed, largely in part due to some delays, which is bank-dependent technical testing, integration issues, primarily in the PSU bank space. Our efforts in incubating new adjacencies are showing good results. Our IoT RMS business is scaling well, and we are now running multiple pilots with retail clients in addition to BFSI, for specific AI use cases which we have developed.
The bullion as well as the CIT businesses also are showing good growth. I would like to now hand over to Pankaj, our CFO, who will take you through the financial summary.
Thank you, Rajiv. In Q2, our consolidated revenue grew by 15% to INR 624 crores, led by 28% growth in the managed services and technology solutions business, and 8% growth in cash logistics business. PAT grew by 8% to INR 90.4 crores, and PAT margin stood at 14.5%. This lower PAT growth, despite strong revenue, is attributable to couple of factors. As already explained by Rajiv, we had to invest and ramp up capacity for order book won, but the execution was delayed. So we incurred the cost while the revenue equivalent will happen in Q2 and later... H2 and later. This also led to much lower CapEx spend, only 30 crores net of savings in H1 out of FY 2025 projection of 300 crore was spent.
Segment-wise, the cash logistics business grew by 8% year-on-year to INR 390 crores, with EBIT of INR 97 crore and EBIT margin at 25%. Our managed services and technology solution business saw a 28% YOY, year-on-year growth in revenue to INR 264 crore, with a EBIT of INR 40 crores and EBIT margin at 15.1%. Now, I hand over to Rajiv for his closing remarks.
So, you know, as a management team, we have earlier highlighted both our strong performance in the last three years and the opportunity ahead for us as we expand. While we do so, and many questions we are asked: How will we balance our different goals? Our key goals remain to drive revenue growth, market share gain, and margin growth in that order, while delivering strong ROCs in the mid-twenties range. We are focused on investing our strong cash flows for capacity addition, growth, incubations, as well as M&A. We are continuing to make important investments to our platform, whether it's our route network, technology, as well as adding talent in critical areas. We have invested significantly in unifying our operations platform across cash, managed services, and RMS under our new president, Puneet Bhirani.
This is critical for strengthening our customer value proposition and improving customer satisfaction as these businesses scale up and giving us a competitive advantage. Our market position across key business lines is stronger, the competitive intensity is much better, and we are focused on gaining market share in key businesses along with driving strong revenue growth. On the M&A front, we have a robust pipeline of deals under evaluation. Given our track record of scaling up businesses, our customer access, our brand in BFSI and retail, a deep countrywide network and balance sheet strength, all of these attract founders and companies who want to partner with us or get acquired.... From a midterm perspective, there are some initial encouraging developments. The ATM interchange rates seem to have a higher probability to increase.
The ATM channel remains one of the most secure and reliable digital financial inclusion tools in India, and penetration remains low in rural India. There is some momentum towards a large PSU bank increasing cash ATM for outsourcing. The RBI currency chest white paper indicates RBI's plans to revamp the currency chest infrastructure and distribution logistics with CIT companies as key stakeholders. This reinforces a critical role for cash and the needs to invest in enhancing the supply chain efficiencies. All of these can be midterm growth drivers in line with the market opportunity, which we have detailed in our investor deck presentation and shared with you in prior calls and meetings.
Coming to October, did witness some intense rains in parts of India, but with the initial encouraging festive season data, the renewed focus on government CapEx and banks' liquidity easing out, hopefully things should get better in H2. On our part, we are intensely focused on getting our order book to go live so that we can have a strong Q4 and a good base for FY 2026 growth. With that, I would like to open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin 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 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 Karan from Monarch Networth Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Am I audible?
Yes, sir, you are audible.
Yes, so sir, my first question would be on our cash logistics business. If you see that from the last year to this quarter, sir, our growth is kind of slowing down. And even though it's quite heartening to see that managed services growth is being very solid, can you just throw some light on, you know, other than the seasonal challenges that we got, how do we see the next two quarters pan out for cash management services?
Sure, Karan. I think that given the penetration, the percentage of outsourcing, formalization and growth economy, we feel this business can grow at 10% or so in the next five years. In fact, if you think of H1 last year to this year, the growth in the business is, roughly about 9% revenue. We grew in the last three years at a higher pace, in parts due to both market share gain during COVID, compliance rollouts. But even growing 9% in this H1, where the overall economic activity is a factor, I think is fairly decent growth. Our touchpoints, which is really linked to more formalization, I think have grown at 10% in this half.
Got it, sir. And sir, if you just can allude to our EBITDA margin, if I look at our adjusted EBITDA margins, adjusted for ESOPs, that has also seen a year-on-year pressure of around two hundred and seventy basis points, right? And a QOQ pressure as well. Is this a factor of just operating leverage because of, higher growth and some kind of fixed costs sitting in the PNL? Or, are we seeing that some normalization of EBITDA margins should be in this range now going forward?
I think that's a great question, and, you know, let me take that opportunity to give our perspective. You know, as we think of it, when you look at H1. First of all, we are an annuity business. Having said that, we have some seasonalities linked to our automation business. The contribution of our automation business in this year, in this half, was close to, I'm talking H1, right? So don't confuse with Q2, I'm talking about H1. With roughly about 12%. Last year, at the same time, our contribution of this business was maybe 2%. So there is an impact on what you see as a margin profile, which gets a little affected with this. Having said that, overall, of course, the PAT numbers could have been better.
I think in our mind, the impact of the consumption-led impact on both our cash activities and BLA would have been about an INR 5-6 crore difference in H1 than we would have expected. And about INR 3.5 crore would have been investment in just people and for incubations. If you think in our business, I would think it would be better to look at H2 last year versus H1 this year, where first of all margin profile, because the mix was almost similar, 10-12% revenue from automation businesses. And therefore, if you think H2 last year, the EBITDA was about 25.5%. H1 this year is about 25.3%. I think these are numbers for this type of business. Second half of the year, I would hope.
We never give margin guidances. It's impossible to control and know what factors are out there. But with the more, with our order book execution going live, services revenue contribution to increase, it should have a positive implication in our margin profile, as you see. However, we've guided to this our last call also. For a business like us, you have to finally look at ROC, and I think maintaining a mid-twenties ROC remains our goal.
Got it. Got it. And sir, if I can just squeeze the last one, can you just also help us understand what kind of acquisitions or if you're looking at any M&A activities? And if we're going to see some M&A this year or have you already narrowed down on potential targets? 'Cause we have some cash lying on the balance sheet, and we alluded to it in the past calls. So if you can just throw some light there as well, that'd be great.
You know, you and I know that we are controlling M&A timing is not in anybody's hands. We are working on some specifically. Again, the situation from an M&A discussion and M&A, what is the word? The chemistry in M&A discussions are much better than it was in the last one and a half years, where I think many companies were hopeful of, you know, hopefully different exit paths and different options in life. I also feel that the competitive intensity across our ecosystem is moderating. It never, in a market like India, it'll never become low, but it is moderating. And we hope M&A would be more in line with the way we like to run a business, right?
I mean, you can do M&A aggressively or you can do M&A in a synergistic manner. We are working. Our pipeline is very robust. In fact, right now, I think we have to be very careful of where we invest our time in M&A deals. And the goal is to obviously think about how do we expand our suite of offerings? How do we scale in some of the businesses we have already explained to you before? And if there is any consolidation in our core sector, we'll be very happy to look at it, if it works out. Can't commit on whether it will happen in H2 or not, but our goal remains to do a synergistic deal, sooner than later.
So just any clue on what spaces are we looking at in M&A? What sectors, what spaces? You said synergistic, but if you can just give a broad overview.
I think in the interest of time and to open the floor for other people's questions, I would say, please look at the investor deck, which is on our, on our website. We have clearly detailed what are the areas we focus on M&A, where our energy is going into.
Okay. Thank you. No worries. Thanks.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one now. The next question is from the line of Divyanshu Mahavar from Dalal & Broacha Stockbroking Private Limited. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity. Wishing a very happy Diwali to all the management team in advance. And sir, I have just a couple of questions. First, on the cash logistics business, if you look at the cash logistics business, more kind of a matured business. So if you look at our revenue, we get 8%-10% revenue growth. But if you look at the bottom line on our EBIT side, we just only get 2%-4% EBIT growth. So why is this? Is it like that the operating leverage doesn't come to the bottom line, or where is this growth not matching to the revenue? Is anything inside our cost increasing? Just wanted to understand that part.
You know, if you think of our cash business, you said it's, you know, I don't think 10% is a mature business. 10% growth is fairly good growth. The EBIT percentages are very robust at about 25%. What you're seeing in H1, I think if you just add the fact that I did allude to it in one of my answers, I think the impact on consumption, both in our cash network and BLA, that would have had a INR 5-7 crore impact on our PAT. You take some of it down to the, onto the cash EBIT, I think you would see a much higher growth percentage.
I think you want to just keep in mind that linked to consumption, there is already capacity in the business, and if the utilization gets affected by any seasonal or any other characteristics, there is a minor dip at that time, but we are still managing to grow the business at a fairly, you know, I mean, maintain a robust EBIT profile for the business.
And if you look. And the same in managed services, we get a higher growth. Like, if you look at in this quarter, we have a 28% YOY growth. So, but on the EBIT side, it is just a 3% growth. So what actually happened in between that? I just wanted to know the math scheme. Is it the cost is going up or something is in managed services also?
I think managed services, two implications. One is the fact that the mix of the business was very different. The mix of product revenue contribution is very high. Last year, in first half of the year, the contribution of products was maybe 2%, while as this time it's 12%. So there's a fairly significant shift. Product businesses are important businesses to get access to new clients, but come at a lower margin profile. So that is one. The second was the BLA sector. Given overall mobility was affected with the rains, the H1 Q1 had an impact of election cycle. I think the numbers, the utilization of the ATM network and BLA was lower, so I think that led to lesser revenue, which flows down to the EBIT.
And sir, last one question, that what could be the reason of the increase in the trade receivables in the first half of the H1 FY 2025?
Let me ask Pankaj to reply to that.
H1 usually is slow in the terms of collection. Given the liquidity crunch, payments from the banks have delayed. Out of total AR increase, INR 175 crore is on account of payments slipping from Q2 to Q3 for a key project of a large bank.
Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your question to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Yashodhan Nerurkar from Edelweiss MF. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, hi, thank you for taking my question. So I just wanted to understand, I mean, if our business is more or less dependent on the banking sector, you know, how exactly they are planning their ATM additions. So considering that the banks are under some stress, does it lead to moderation of our growth? That's one. And, is there a pressure in terms of, you know, reworking of the pricing on the BLA side as well as, you know, the cash logistics? So that's first question. The second was about, you were talking about, you know, executions getting delayed. So could you come again as to why this execution was delayed? Because we had upfront a certain cost and the revenue would be, you know, followed up in the coming quarters. So could you help me understand that as well?
Thank you.
Okay. So, you know, the first question around the overall. We work with banks, we work with retail. I think these are our two large sectors. From a competitive intensity of in the ecosystem, I think the competitive intensity has reduced. We saw intense competitive pressures across managed services and cash networks in the last one and a half years. I think that seems to be getting better, but only time will tell if that remains or not. I don't think there's an issue we foresee in terms of pricing pressure or something, but banks were. The lot of PSU bank deployments got bunched up, the order cycles got elongated. Orders have been placed for about 40-45 thousand ATMs to be deployed.
However, having said that, the delays we saw is not only relevant to us, but the entire industry. Given these are integrated contracts, a lot of them have seen multiple OEMs which need integration and testing, both at the bank IT level, then NPCI and MasterCard and Visa, which has led to delays in execution. And that's why some of the services revenue you would have hoped to have seen in H1 is gonna slip to H2. The overall value will not go down in the contract cycle. It's just the timing of that is getting impacted. So we had 1,600 crores of orders won in the last four quarters. As of now, only 15% has got executed. By now, we would have hoped to have at least 30-35% executed.
In line with this season, our capital investment has reduced significantly, where we thought in H1 we would have spent about INR 120-150 crores of CapEx. I think we are CapEx spending roughly about INR 30 crores.
Okay. So in terms of the pricing, even on the BLA side, where I think you had alluded earlier that around 75% of it is somewhere fixed. So is there any sort of indication from the bank side that, you know, they would try to negotiate the pricing model, or you would be willing to continue with the similar one?
So specifically to BLA, you know, let me underline this. We may not have interacted much with you earlier, but our overall BLA as a revenue contribution will be 10-12% of our revenue. We are not very aggressive on the BLA business as such. We are focused, of course, on businesses where we can get more longer-term and fixed price contracts. It's not 35%, but I think we look for more fixed price contracts in BLA than transaction linked. The BLA sector did see very aggressive price bidding in the last six to nine months, primarily from MoF, Ministry of Finance, project incumbents, which are trying to defend their revenue as the project ran end of life. We are limiting our exposure on BLA at this point and not being aggressive with that at all.
So I don't think banks, once they agree on a price or something, go back and change it. I actually think that with the whole compliance rollout and all, I think prices will only tend to get better, going forward. Interchange is an issue because at the INR 17 interchange, banks are not able to deploy new ATMs. Therefore, there has been a lot of industry work going on between the banks and the regulators to relook at interchange, to make it viable for them to roll out more ATMs. We are led to believe, I don't think we have full knowledge of this, that there is a strong likelihood that the interchange may go up, so that deployments can start picking up in the rural areas.
Okay. Thank you so much. That's very helpful. Just to, I mean, as a guidance-
May we request that you return to the follow-up queue?
Yeah, sure, sure. Works. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Balaji from IIFL. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. So, Raju, you did mention that product revenue accounted for about 2% of overall revenue in the first half of last year, versus 12% this year. So if I take that out, then I can see that the managed services has almost stayed flat YOY. This is the revenue I am talking about. So I did listen to some of the reasons you alluded to on, you know, why there has been a weakness in the first half of this year. But is there something, you know, one needs to be worried about?
Because I know something which was expected to grow at 25%-30%, we have had a six-month period where the growth almost was negligible. So that would be one. The other one would be more on the housekeeping front. This would be on what is the estimated CapEx for the full year, considering that there has been a delay in terms of execution?
Great question, Balaji. I think, you know, when you think of our managed services business and you split it between services and products, we, the services revenue is an annuity type revenue, right? And therefore, we are, we are dependent on new contracts going live so that the revenue will accrue. And it accrues at a slower pace, right, as month on month, and these are six- to nine-year contracts. Given the fact that some of these projects haven't gone live as per our hopes, we did accelerate some of the product business because that's a little more easier to go execute and get them live and build.
And so we shifted our priority in Q2 to making sure that we can get at least the revenue streams going, so that we are able to maintain the ongoing services which will come from the products later. Q3, Q4 would hopefully see the order book execution coming in, and we'll start getting the benefit of that, both in MS services growth as well as the margin profile of that business. And also more importantly, just getting these contracts started on their journeys. From a capital CapEx perspective, I think we had initially thought this year would be INR 300 crore CapEx. But given where we are and how much we have spent, I think the rest of the year for the full year, I think Pankaj's estimate will be roughly at INR 250 crore CapEx.
Okay. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Manav from SB Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My question would be regarding the 25-27 guidance. Is it still intact? Are we still in for the 1,500 crore target as of now?
Sorry, Your line wasn't too clear, but I'm guessing you're talking about FY 2025 revenue guidance, which was, if that is the question, I think our revenue guidance was 2,500-2,700 crores. Yeah, so I think, you know, at half year, we are at 1,225. We are trying to still see how much we can do in H2. We will hope to be somewhere in the midpoint of the range. I think that's what we are trying to goal ourselves for, to end the year. I think achieving the higher end of the margin will not be possible given the H1 we have seen, but we are still trying to be focused on trying to get to the midpoint, so that our original goal of doubling revenue from FY 2021 to 2025, we are able to meet.
So we have five and a half months ahead to work on that.
But don't you think the consumption growth could affect our growth in the coming half?
Sorry, sorry. Can you be a little bit louder or closer to the phone?
Yeah. Sorry. So, my question was, don't you think the muted consumption could affect our growth and reaching that, double target in the second half?
No. Listen, this is a fairly. If you think of our revenue growth, aspiration and what we are trying to do, they are strong growth numbers. We have as a team delivered in the past. We're hoping to deliver it. We don't have all factors in our control, but we will try our best to see as much as we can do, we'll do. As of now, I don't have a number to tell you. I don't. We normally shy away from giving any guidances beyond the range we have pointed out to, and we have five months left. If order execution picks up, we should see much better revenue in second half of the year. Coming to steady consumption, I don't know how consumption will trend.
Initial data in October, again, I'm saying initial data, this is just cash index data, is looking good, when you look at our retail collections and whatnot. But again, you know, two or three weeks don't determine the whole half. We'll have to see how overall economy does. We are still linked to the overall consumption economy, right? So I think I don't want to go away from that linkages. As the economy does improves or does better than it has done in the last six months, I think we should see some benefit of that.
Got it. And my other question would be, regarding our cash management business. Do you think it has reached its peak or it has consolidated, due to the recent UPI transaction growth, and people are more relying on that, rather than going to, you know, using cash as a transaction system?
I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think cash usage compared to GDP and all have significant declines if you look at five-year, ten-year data. I think you think of our business, you think of our touchpoint growth. We talked about touchpoint growth of 10%. We talked about revenue growth of 9%. I don't think that is. I don't think that looks peaking. And then most importantly, I think the amount of outsourcing, which is still not done, and popularization. So I definitely hope what you're saying is not true. I don't see any indicator that we have peaked or the opportunity has peaked anywhere.
All right. Got it. Okay, got it. That's all from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Ankit Kanodia from Smart Sync Services. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. My first question is, basically, if you see from March 2024 to September 2024, the increase in our debtors is INR 270 crore, and, if my calculation is correct, the increase in revenue is lesser than that. So can you... I think it is about INR 169 crore. So can you just throw some light on this as to why this is happening? And, what is your view, some more color on to why this is happening?
So I explained earlier that, out of total AR increase in this particular half, INR 175 crore increase in on account of a payment slipping from Q2 to Q3 for a large key project for the large bank. You will see that any of our metrics, where the, working capital increase is generally higher in H1 than the H2. If I will give the context, that, in FY 2023 and FY 2024, OCF of H1 was only 25% of the full year OCF. So working capital increase is higher in the H1 than the H2, and the main contribution is by AR.
Got it. Got it. And sir, regarding the bad debts also, so we have written up around INR 55 crore in the first half. Is there any additional bad debt sitting in the debtors column, which we need to recognize in the H2? Any color on that as well?
No, we provide for, based on the expected credit loss, and we have adequately provided it. In past, when the, penalties or the deductions or the gaps was higher, we have provided higher. It was around 5.3%, 5.1% earlier, and which is gradually reduced to this quarter, this half, which is 4.3% of the revenue.
It's not all bad debt, right? These are provisions of risk cost. This includes multiple things. This is reconciliation differences, penalties, any cash losses we have. So our provisions in H1 of this year are about 4.3%, and I think this number was roughly 4.1% for last year, about 5.1% for FY 2023. We have guided to the 4%-5% range as a range to estimate, just as a trend line, what we think.
Thank you so much, sir. That was very helpful. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Bhargav from Elara. Please go ahead, sir.
So thank you for taking my question. I have two questions, one is on remote monitoring and another on the bullion logistics. So coming to the remote monitoring, you mentioned that in your opening remarks that you have done some pilots in the remote monitoring space, especially the beyond ATMs, like pharma, hospitality, and retail. Could you highlight few points on the following aspects? Like, so are you facing any challenges in terms of like execution or competition? And one more thing, in the realization, like if you compare it with the BFSI, I mean, the banks realization, how it is different from the bank? Is it lower or higher? Like how is the profitability over there, like in terms of margin and the return profile?
and last, on the remote monitoring, so what are the opportunity size that you are seeing in the beyond ATMs, so remote monitoring? So this is my first question on remote monitoring. I'll have the second one after you answer this.
So, you know, I would say that if you want to look at the TAM for remote monitoring, please refer to the presentation we have on our website. I think that'll give you a size of the TAM as we estimate it. Coming to your question on the BFSI, sorry, the retail, let me clarify, which I had already said in my comments very clearly. We are piloting, we were developing last year AI use cases for use in retail sector. As you know, we built our business primarily on the BFSI side. As an area of expansion, we are looking at retail hospitality, where we have invested money in creating use cases, AI use cases, specific to clients. Those use cases are getting piloted right now.
I don't think right now we would be able to give an estimate of the margin profile and whatever, but I don't think that it should be significantly different than what we are doing right now. The opportunity size may be a little more different, just because with banks there is concentration and retail is more widespread, and therefore use cases are going to be very specific to each client's needs at that time. I think this is just an important area for us to invest, to expand and build a horizontal platform for RMS business for the coming five years. Our RMS business, I think, otherwise is doing well. I don't... You mentioned something about competition and execution.
I think in retail, given these are just pilots, you know, obviously pilots, you are learning and changing as per what clients want. I think it's, there's nothing about a specific execution risk, which I could point out to right now.
So one follow-up on that. So you mentioned the space in the retail segment is really higher than the bank side. So, how can we expect the realization to, like, move if this goes well? So we can expect a higher realization from these retail now?
Let me not put the horse, you know, the cart before the horse. Let me just let's just wait to see how we win. Again, when you think of building businesses, we are building them from a long-term perspective. I think initially, as we move into these sectors, we will look for getting marquee wins and important clients as references to build our base. I don't think worrying about gross rate, you know, revenue rates and pricing is I don't know, at least we don't think that's a concern, neither is that a big area of concern or a priority. I think important to establish our footprint there. When we have something which is different than our current type of business profile, then we will come and update you.
Oh, okay, sir. And one last question on the bullion logistics. Has the revenue for this started kicking in the Q2? If yes, what's the revenue for Q2 from the bullion logistics?
We don't split revenue by any of our sub-segments. I think beyond what you see in the financials, that's what we have. But it's scaling up well. We are incubating this in-house right now, and we are, you know, building this business. We will tell you... We will definitely come and tell you more at the end of the financial year on important metrics on how we're doing this business.
Thank you. Thank you, sir. That's all from my end.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Divyansh Gupta from Latent Advisors. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Couple of data keeping questions. So we used to disclose earlier, sometime, the activities per trip. Is it possible for you to let us know what would be the number this quarter and, let's say, previous quarter, or just the trend of it?
I think what you may be referring to is total number of activities on our network. I think we'll update you on that number at the end of the year, as to how those are going. We have told you, I think, what we do on a quarterly basis, tell you the number of touch points, and I think that's what you shared, a hundred and forty-three thousand for the cash network.
Got it. Got it. The other question was, the collection business that we have been incubating, what would have been the, let's say, the cash burn in this quarter that we charge in the cash management business?
I think specific to collections, we won't know. Again, you know, these are numbers we will be more accurate and comfortable sharing on an annualized basis. But I think our incubations and investments into incubations across would have been roughly about one and a half pre-close, for the quarter.
Got it. And just the last question: What would be our network compliance and the cassette swap compliance status percentage?
Let me get Anush to pipe in and give you an update on that. Anush?
Thanks, Rajiv. So overall, cassette swap, I think we are right now about 25% compliant, as we had shared earlier. Very recently, there's been an update from the RBI, urging the industry to sort of, you know, accelerate and expand on cassette swap and achieve a further milestone by end of March. From a network perspective, I think we shared earlier, our network is almost fully compliant on the ATM and our cash side. So almost any business that we do for those businesses will be on a full compliance basis.
Got it. Just one last question: What would be the quantum of cash that we would have handled this quarter?
Roughly about INR 3.4 lakh crores.
Got it. This number has been similar to, let's say, December twenty, 2023, also, we were around the same number. So is there anything we-
It was, it's higher than March. I think it's grown about 4-5%, 5%, from last year, Q2.
Got it. Yeah, three point three to three point four. Got it. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Nemish Shah from EMKAY Investment Managers Limited. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity.
Sorry, sir, your call, your audio is not very clear. Could you try and speak into the phone more or louder?
Yeah. Am I audible now?
Much better.
Yeah, so I needed two data points on a managed services business, so if you could just share what was the Q1-
Sorry to interrupt you, sir. Sir, can you use your handsets while asking the question?
Hello.
Yes, sir, you are loud and clear now.
Yeah. Thank you. So I wanted two data points. If you could help me with the mix of products versus services in Q2 versus Q1 for our managed services business.
I think we've said it was about 12%. I already said 12% for the half. Q1 and Q2, certainly, I don't have the number handy right now, but I think it was 2% last year, H1. This year it's 12% for the half of the year. For the complete company, I think you can use that to do your calculations. I don't know what you're trying to arrive at, but hopefully that should give you enough data points to calculate what you need.
No. So, the reason I was asking is, so since the service mix was lower and probably that would have impacted our margins, so then was just trying to compare to Q2 and the Q1 numbers.
Q1, Q2 of this year, you specifically?
Yes.
Let's come back to that towards the end of the call and calculate and give you the number.
Yeah, sure. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Malav from Prabhudas Lilladher and Stock Brokers. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello, sir. Any new revenue target for FY 2027 and so on, if you can share?
No revenue target for FY 2027. I think right now the focus is on achieving the guidance we have for FY 2025. At the end of FY 2025, we'll come and update you on what we are doing overall with the company and how we think of FY 2027 and FY 2030, more from a strategy and a direction perspective.
Okay.
I think, for the prior question, just the data point on Q1 and Q2 is 10% and 14%, respectively, of the overall company revenue.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Aasim from DAM Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, hi. Hi, Rajiv and team. So one question on the cash management growth, the segment growth. So we have grown strong in the past for reasons you mentioned during the call, but for the last six quarters, I think growth is at best 12%. This quarter it is 8%. So would you say that growth going forward would be, you know, more measured at best, you know, low double digits? Or can this still be a mid-teen growth segment, excluding any one-time price hike that may come through from RBI?
I think, you know, we've guided to the fact that the cash business has the potential to grow in the 10%-13% in the midterm. And I think we are sort of ballpark in that range, subject to plus or minus a little bit of the consumption and activity level. So, I think the guidance or not the guidance, just the bottom up-...for a large market share player like us, with our margin profile, I think we are saying about 10%-13% is the growth potential for the midterm of the business, without any significant M&A or, anything else happening there.
But at 10%-13%, would be more unit addition growth-driven, right? Or are you also expecting upgrades in pricing?
I think there's the revenue growth is a combination of almost all of these elements, right? It is about-
Rather, would it be more volume driven, is what I was thinking. Because I think price hikes from RBI and all, those take time also, so one should not ideally be building that in the business proposal, right? That's what I wanted to get a sense from you.
I think so. It's a good point. I think it's important for our other investors also listening. If you look at our the revenue and the points growth in the last few quarters, I think they've all been around the 9%, 10%, 11%. Somewhere we are, you're expanding capacity, pricing kicks in. I think there's a long-term track record of pricing change in our business, which you have talked about. So not just regulatory overall, but the opportunity for us is to increase penetration, take market share in some of our key businesses. And therefore, we are focused on driving that. I think as the sector consolidates, there may be opportunities for pricing, which is difficult for you or I to predict right now.
Mm-hmm. Okay, got it. And second question, I think I missed this in your opening remarks, but, on the managed services margins in Q2 or in H1, would you attribute a larger portion of the margins coming off on the delayed order executions, or would the product sales being in the 10%-12% range is the primary driver of margins coming up?
No, I think there are, there are two factors. One is just, the overall, consumption being down, and therefore, BLA transactions on that part of our revenue stream coming down lower than the realizations get impacted, which affect the bottom line straightaway. The second is the orders which could have gone live, we are hoping to go live, basis having won them, didn't flow through into the revenue accrual in first half or Q2. And that obviously has a straightaway impact on our mix, and therefore, the margin profile.
Got it. Okay. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press four and one now. The next question is from the line of Sunny Roy, from an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir. Am I audible? Hello?
Yeah, you are.
Yeah. So, I just wanted to know, are you sticking to the annual guidance of 2,700 crore that you earlier alluded to for FY twenty-five?
I think we have alluded to, we have referred to a revenue growth number for this year of INR 2,500-INR 2,700 crores. That's the range. But, given where we are in H1, I think we are looking at more coming towards the midpoint of that range.
Okay. And so any guidance for FY 2026 as of now?
Not at all. Right now, I think we just wanna end Q4 on a strong base, so that we get a good base for FY twenty-six.
Okay, sir. That's it. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Nihal Shah, from Prudent Corporate Advisory. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. So, in the cash logistics business, I understand that because of the volumes, the operating leverage didn't play out. But, in the managed services business as well, we are seeing a margin decline of around 300-400 basis points. So why would that be? So is that because of the changing product mix?
That's right.
Okay. And so AIoT's contribution has increased or decreased? So how is AIoT playing out?
I think AIoT contribution is growing as per what we have alluded to. I think it will be roughly our software AIoT businesses are. I'm not saying Q2. I think we talked about this on an annual basis rather than quarter. I think they largely will be around the 5% contribution to revenue. And we think in the midterm, that can go up to 8% or so. Right now, we will. I mean, specifically to the exact number, we'll let you know at the end of the year how the business is going track.
Okay. And that has a higher, EBIT margin, right? So what would that be?
We don't break EBIT by each business line. I think the EBIT numbers are reported at both cash and MS level as a group.
Okay. Okay. But so, the assumption is correct, right? So there, the margins would be a bit higher than the overall margins.
I think we have many businesses at very high margin profiles compared to the rest, right? If you look at our cash logistics business, I think that has a fairly robust margin profile. AIoT has, given the technology nature, has a robust margin profile. Our software business also is like that. Our product revenue business would be obviously lower margin profile.
Mm-hmm.
Our cards business-
Yeah.
-which is one of the smallest businesses, has seen a significant margin improvement in the last one year. So again, you know, there are many drivers for margins across business. But overall, if you think of it, and you look at our, you know, performance, I think it's been fairly steady.
Sure. And, so there are a lot of reports that there is some shortage of ATM machines in the country, in some parts of India. So, we also had a plan to make the machines. So, where has that progressed?
So I think overall supply chain issues may have been there in different parts. We have a plant, a manufacturing plant, which we had invested in to align with Make in India norms in India for large contracts and as and when we are winning the order book, which will need ATM machines from our partner, Hyosung TNS, they will be partially manufactured at a plant in Chennai. I think this is more for a large part will be used for our order book execution.
Okay. So big progress is there, right? So we are making some parts in Chennai.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Harsh from Kuber Investments. Please go ahead, sir.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity. Good afternoon, Rajiv and team. My financial questions have been answered. Just one question that I ask is that how are you seeing cash utilization in the urban areas, especially in the festive season, given all the commentary that we're hearing regarding slowing consumption?
Yeah, so you know, festive season data is like you know just two weeks, right? And therefore, I don't want to make a normal of two weeks data. We are seeing the metro, I think, at a little weaker. Metro, not urban. Metro, a little bit weaker.
Mm-hmm.
Than semi-metro and rural. I think semi-metro and so, semi-urban is growing positively. The metro is, sort of flattish to a minor dip as of now. But again, I'm saying these are very, you know, two-week data is not something which you start projecting based on that. We'll have to see how October, November, December... OND is normally a good quarter. We'll see how that plays out. And, yeah.
That's fair enough. And also, in this quarter, we had a large inventory charge that was there. I joined late, so I didn't know whether it was covered or not, but, could you maybe throw some light on that?
So the inventory reduction is on account of the deployment of the product automation business. So we have purchased those machines and the parts in the Q1 or prior to that, and which were deployed in this particular quarter.
Sure. Thank you very much. That was my questions.
Thank you, sir. The next question is from the line of Ganesh Shetty, an individual investor. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity. I just want to know whether the new businesses are coming up from the same clients scaling up their businesses, or we are acquiring new set of customers also.
I think in some of our... You know, there are obviously limited number of banks. Within each bank, we try to sell new service lines. But if I did mention this in my opening comments, where if you think of a segment in retail, our direct to retail, where we're directly working with retail clients compared to a couple of years ago, I think the number of direct clients have gone up from 40 at the end of March to 60 clients we're working with right now. So it works depth and breadth. I think for a business to be growing, you need both depth and breadth focus. Selling more solutions to the same customer or gaining share, as well as increasing your base and...
But given the banking sector, we've been there for a long time, and some of our core business lines are being used there. I think we are looking to grow with them with new solutions like AIoT, and RMS.
Sir, so my second question is regarding managed services business. The managed services business, like, is a niche business for which you have integrated and developed for such a large extent. And, going forward, are we adding some new facilities or new products into the same business so that, you know, we can scale up or we can give more services in the same category to our existing customers? Can you please throw some light on it?
No, it's a great question. I think the last significant incubation we have done in the managed services business is our AIoT, RMS business, started about three years ago. Within that, I think having gotten very good traction in the BFSI side, we are now taking that and we are trying to grow in the retail side with that solution set. Right? The second area of interest for us, I would say, I wouldn't say we have started yet, is generally trying to do more with software for banks and NBFCs. So I think we have been examining areas of expansion. This will be primarily M&A-led, as and when we get the right opportunity and the right company to partner with.
That's all from me, sir, and all the best for the coming quarter. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to management for closing comments.
Thank you. I would like to reiterate a few facts, a few points here. Our execution has been fairly good. I feel our competitive intensity in the market has reduced, and we're feeling stronger and better about the opportunity ahead. Our performance remains very steady. If you think of H2 last year to H1 this year, I think we're trying to make sure despite a weak-ish macro, we are performing very well on absolute numbers in terms of our revenue, EBIT and PAT. With the order book execution hopefully going live towards Q3, Q4, we should start seeing that impact and accrual in both revenue and margin and profile of the business for the second half.
The goal is to end with a strong Q4 for our base for FY 2026, and to also have a overall H2, which is better than we've had in H1. Thank you so much.
On behalf of Elara Securities Private Limited, that concludes the conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.