Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, thank you for joining us on the post Q4 FY 2026 results conference call for CMS Info Systems Limited. It is my pleasure to introduce the senior management team of CMS who are here with us today to discuss the results. We have Mr. Rajiv Kaul, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO; Mr. Pankaj Khandelwal, CFO; Mr. Anush Raghavan, Chief Business Officer; and Mr. Puneet Bhirani, Chief Operating Officer.
We will begin the call with opening remarks by the management team, thereafter we will open the call for a Q&A session. I will like to now hand over the call to Mr. Rajiv Kaul to take the proceedings forward. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Siddharth, thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you all have the link to and you can see our presentation. I hope some of you at least have had a chance to read our shareholder letter, which we published last night. If not, I would recommend you have a look at the letter also in parallel to get a better flavor of what we're gonna talk to you now. We're gonna cover the last year. We'll talk about some of the wins in this year and the shift in our business, and we'll talk in detail about capital allocation. We'll quickly move forward towards FY 2027 and FY 2030. Slide number 3. To summarize, FY 2026 was a hard year.
Even though Q1 was aligned with our plans, Q2 saw a sharp impact from four factors which converged around the same time. To detail them out, there was a significant impact in H1 on consumption linked to a very prolonged adverse climate cycle and geopolitical issues. We think this had an impact of almost INR 25 crore on our revenue. The SBI cash outsourcing delay caught us off guard with a significant investment in routes and infrastructure.
This RFP closure delayed from February to April to December had a huge INR 100 crore revenue impact for us in the year. We learned, and we have made fixes in our operating processes post that. The off-site ATM market contracted after AGS exited the sector, and many private and public sector banks were not able to find MSPs who were willing to deploy new ATMs on the transaction fee models.
This has affected our ATM cash management business with revenue impact of almost INR 30 crores. In total, just these three items, the impact to our FY 2026 revenue was INR 150 crores on our services revenue base. Had this revenue come in, our rev growth for the year would have been 13% for services and 9% overall. We also, if you remember, had mentioned this in Q2, we had to give out larger than usual wage hikes, which are linked to our long-term employee settlement cycles, which are done every three to four years.
Overall for FY 2026, our revenue grew to INR 2,487 crores, which is about a 3% growth. Our services revenue, which is our annuity revenue, that grew to INR 2,312 crores, almost a 6% growth rate. On our part, we called for an analyst meeting as soon as things were looking good in September to avoid any surprises and to share with you as we saw the lay of the land changing. We took quick actions to fix and control what we could. In September, we told you about what we're gonna focus on to try and arrest this decline.
We have always maintained that a good management team has to focus on balancing revenue growth, market share, and margin profile. I think we focused the remainder of the year on protecting our revenue and trying to gain market share. End result is that our cash logistics business grew in market share by 200 bips, and at the managed services business, we moved from number 5 to number 3 position. We have been always a big deployer of technology and leveraging it.
We were able to accelerate that using AI, and we were able to drive significant cost efficiencies. Our immediate focus was on our route network, and using ML, we were able to reduce our route network by a sharp 10% in the September 2025 to March 2026 part. Given the overall weakness in the MSP segment, we were able to drive a more sensible commercial model of fixed price contracts. Historically, the industry has not been to get off the transaction fee model.
I feel at this stage, for all practical purposes, the transaction fee model is dead in the ATM business. We, in fact, ourselves won a contract for INR 700 crore at a reasonably high transaction fee of INR 19 per transaction, but we still chose to stick to our principle of not doing any transaction fee business model deals. We didn't want to take the risk, even though this could have meant an INR 75 crore annual revenue to start with at reasonable margins for the first few years.
We chose to preserve that INR 100 crore of capital for expansion and diversification into businesses which would have a more sustainable return metric. After years of strong growth in the prior years, we also examined our longer tail of lower-yielding customers and tried to drive price increases where possible, and in cases where we couldn't, we migrated some contracts where the prices did not make sense. We also significantly tightened DSOs around our managed services business segment.
Our OCF to EBITDA ratio in H2 was 173% compared to a -40% in H1. We had told you that we will be making a big investment in technology. Even in a tough year, we continue to do that. In fact, we ramped up our tech investments to almost INR 40 crores of investment, which is 1.6% of our revenue, up from our usual 1% of revenue in the prior years. We also made a significant investment in a gig delivery model of about INR 15 crores.
We feel this is very critical to convert some part of our fixed cost network into a variable cost structure and for expanding our retail business into tier 3, tier 4 markets in India. The Q2 deterioration was arrested by Q3. We sharply recovered in Q4. Q4 saw of 6% Q on Q services revenue growth. In fact, if you notice, we have given you a 12-quarter trajectory. We have been sort of stuck in the INR 535 crore-INR 575 crore services revenue for 8 quarters and have meaningfully broken out.
In February, we had mentioned that Q3 will be the bottom for us on margins, and we aimed to expand margins by 150-170 bps in Q4 and another similar expansion in FY 2027. I'm glad to report that we are able to sharply improve margins by 280 bps in Q4. Overall Q4 services revenue is at INR 609 crore, 6% growth. The total revenue for Q4 is INR 633 crore at 2.4% growth.
EBITDA for Q4 at INR 162 crores, which is 15% Q-on-Q growth, but flat year-on-year. PAT for Q4 are INR 79 crores, 38% growth Q-on-Q, but a 19% dip Y-on-Y. The full year numbers on services revenue at INR 2,312 crores at 6% year-on-year growth and overall total revenue at INR 2,487 crores, 3% growth year-on-year. EBITDA for the year at INR 600 crores, -5%, and PAT of INR 303 crores, -20%. The EBITDA and PAT numbers mentioned here include the wage code impact. Now, for historical purposes, we will show you the segment breakup.
However, we have guided you to the fact that segments no longer make sense anymore for us because this was our IPO when our business was mostly 70% cash management, 30% managed services. That split since then has moved to 60/40, and last year went to 55/45 split. Given we are able to drive a lot of our business and growth towards integrated contracts, where splitting a margin is not possible and feasible.
On our overall EBITDA margins in Q4, from last year, Q4 was 22.6%. They dipped to 15% in Q3 and have come back up to 19% in Q4 of this year. For the full year EBITDA margins for FY 2026, they have contracted by 360 basis points, from 19.2% to 15.6%. Let me shift gears now. After patiently waiting for the right opportunity and the right price and valuations for the last four years, we finally did 2 acquisitions in FY 2026. We have kept you as periodically abreast of our M&A thinking plans and the sectors of focus.
We have intensely worked on 15 opportunities, letting some go after a lot of time, analysis and investment of time. Either the sectors finally didn't make sense to us to take a risk on, or the valuations were way out of our comfort zone. All of this experience has sharpened our approach, how we quickly screen deals and the terms we operate on. The two deals in the year specifically, Securens is a key deal for us to scale in the Vision AI segment and to grow this business. The deal has closed and integrated and will be accretive to us in FY 2027.
In Q4, we signed our deal with FSS for the managed services business. This not only helps us consolidate the managed services segment, but more importantly for CMS, it allows us an entry into mid-size private banks for cross-selling. It also helps us influence and shift those contracts from a transaction fee model historically to fixed fee models when those contracts expire. We hope to close this and integrate this deal at the end of Q1.
We have been able to drive this shift of transaction to fixed fee by showing the value of such contracts to the largest banks in India, and the rest of the market will follow in a matter of time. I'm now on slide number 9. As we talked about M&A, I wanted to talk about capital allocation. This is covered in significant detail in the shareholder letter we have published last night, and I would request you to go through that letter.
To summarize, our IPO was an offer for sale, no capital raised. Over these five years, the company has averaged a high 70% OCF to EBITDA and generated almost INR 2,275 crores of cash, out of which INR 1,000 crores have gone in for organic growth into capital investment. In fact, even if you look at the trends of CapEx investment, we have invested capital when we have been clear and convicted of the investment opportunity and the returns on it.
We went from an average of INR 200 crores of CapEx investment in FY 2022 and 2023, and it dropped to INR 100 crores in FY 2024 and 2025, as most of the contracts which were being bid were transaction price owner trade, and the prices were very low, and we stayed out of those businesses. Which affects our FY 2025, FY 2026 growth, but we preserve capital for better times. In FY 2026, in the middle of the storm, we upped our CapEx spend significantly to drive higher growth in the coming years, and we have invested INR 350 crores of CapEx in FY 2026.
Dividends are broadly in terms of shareholder returns, I think have been linked to PAT and have grown each year till FY 2025. We have returned INR 438 crores through dividends to shareholders, including the special dividend we did in FY 2025. To those of you who know us well, CMS is a self-funded compounder and not a grow-at-any-cost operator. Let me pause before I move to slide 10. We are seeing a significant change in the business mix, which is critical to our transformation journey and to continue growing at our historical growth rates.
This slide shows you a massive shift in the customer mix. In our prior years, our growth was led by the managed services segment and the SBI. Due to the transaction fee model being impacted in the country and that affecting the growth opportunity, we have been steadily and consciously diversifying our base to other large banks, especially in the private sector and retail segments. You can see the sharp shift in the mix, which was 58 42 in FY 2025. End of FY 2026, this mix has shifted to 48 52.
That's a very big shift in just one year and will hopefully accelerate in the coming years. Slide number 11. At the Analyst Day, we introduced to you a new way of thinking about CMS, we identified the three platforms we think will lead our growth through FY 2030. The ATM management solutions, the retail and currency logistics business, and the technology and payment solutions. These businesses were a 63, 30, seven split in FY 2022. In the four-year period, you can see this mix change again in these segments.
It's 58, 26, 16. The technology and payment solutions business has had a significant mix change from 7% to 16% of revenue. In fact, it was 12% revenue last year itself. This is now an INR 370 crore business now for us. What is driving this shift is HawkEye, which is now INR 200 crore revenue and has doubled for us in the last two years. Through the Securens acquisitions, we have scaled this business significantly. We today have 50,000 sites live, which are being actively monitored by a software.
Think about this. This is a phenomenal scale when you compare this to the fact that it took us 20 years to get to 70,000 ATMs, 20 years to get to 65,000 retail points, but four years to get to 50,000 retail to RMS sites. This is targeting a large INR 8,000 crore TAM for us. Within BFSI, which has been historically our strength, we have quickly moved to gain a market-leading pole market share of 36%. That is the power of this technology-oriented business.
We end FY 2026 with a solid order book, not only from size, which is INR 2,000 crores, but even if we say so, it's a high-quality wins. None of these deals is linked to any transaction contract. Transaction fee link contract. All of them are fixed fee models. We are especially proud to have had a unique year. We had three huge deals and wins from SBI, ICICI Bank, and HDFC Bank.
These are marquee banks, and to have big contracts, long-term contracts signed for CMS in these years is huge for us and gives us a good tailwind as we move forward into the coming year. In fact, these contracts help us secure 85% of the FY 2027 target and goal we have. We have these contracts in hand and going live. End of 2025 itself, we have set out our FY 2027 revenue goal. Despite the hit we took in FY 2026, we are still maintaining that revenue as our goal.
Our services revenue goal remains at INR 2,700 crore or INR 2,800 crore, which will mean a 17% to 21% growth on FY 2026 numbers. At an overall revenue goal, total revenue, we are targeting INR 2,800 crore-INR 2,900 crore, which would mean a 13% to 17% growth. On margins, we have historically never guided to margins. There are emerging pressures on possible impact to consumption linked to inflation or geopolitical impact. We are still aiming to be in the 25% EBITDA margin range.
Q4 has helped us significantly ramp up margin profile, and we will look to maintain and defend that in the rest of the year. We've had a lot of feedback on this topic in the last nine months. It seems to be a favorite topic for many of our investors. Our position on shareholder return has been very clear. We will do what is equitable and fair to all classes of shareholders, and in the prior years, it didn't make any sense given we weren't fully clear on our capital needs for growth.
The taxation structure was unfavorable to many classes of shareholders. The taxation rules since then have changed. We have done two deals. We have invested a significant INR 350 crores of CapEx last year, and we have weathered the FY 2026 storm, and we are well-positioned for the coming years. With clarity on our capital needs and our cash balance of INR 650 crores, the board has approved an INR 168 crore buyback, roughly a 3% of our outstanding equity shares at a INR 340 price point. After this buyback, we'll still retain sufficient liquidity for our foreseeable growth needs.
As a team, we are meticulously focused on a higher TAM as a goal for us and to help us continue driving high growth rates. Our three platforms today target a TAM of INR 20,000 crores. We are seeing a strong market consolidation and linked to that a pricing upside opportunity in the coming years. Over the last four years, we've grown our services revenue at a 12% CAGR. This includes the slower years in FY 2025 and FY 2026.
Over the next four years, we see our opportunity to accelerate this growth to a 13% to 14% CAGR, which is more in line with our historical growth of 15% CAGR. Thank you for your patience and your belief in our tough year. With this, we end now and move on to Q&A.
Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click on the Raise Hand icon from the Participants tab on your screen. We will wait for the question queue to assemble. We request all participants to restrict to two questions and then return to the queue for more questions. To rejoin the queue, you may click on the Raise Hand icon again. We will take a first question from Baidik Sarkar of Unifi Capital. Baidik, please unmute your microphone and go ahead with your question.
Rajiv, hi. Good morning. It's been a tough year overall. Hope 27 beyond is better for you and the team, and thank you very much for your leadership, Rajiv. Couple of questions. You know, like you alluded to in your opening comments, there was softness in private bank ATMs in H1 of last year. How's that sentiment overall behaving today? You know, and that especially in the context of what's happened in the last two months, they're all macro at a global level, but decision-making does, you know, come into things at a country level as well.
How are you reading decision-makings there? And this question is from the perspective that our guidance of INR 2,900 crore is a very strong task. The exit that we have in Q4 pegs our revenues at roughly INR 2,500 crores. Of course, the HDFC wins probably adds it to what, you know, takes that number to roughly INR 2,600 crores. Which means we still need a line of sight to balance the incremental INR 300 crores. How would you rate the quality of decision-making in this environment and, you know, the probability of us getting there, Rajiv?
Hi, Baidik. Anush here. Let me answer some of your questions. First of all, you know, you, let me take the one on what is happening to the overall ATM industry, how are banks thinking about growth. You know, as Rajiv spoke and as we also shared earlier, we are sort of starting to see two or three trends. The first has been the shift in the mix of banks preferring to move from what we traditionally call ATMs, which are cash dispensers, into recyclers, which enable them to transfer a lot more of the transaction banking activities from a bank branch to an ATM site.
This can do cash acceptance, it can do video KYC, it can do card issuance. You know, it's sort of similar to what a digital banking unit would have delivered. We're sort of starting to see banks change that. The second is a change which is being pushed by primarily CMS of urging banks to switch from a transaction price model to a fixed fee model. I think in some of our earlier calls, we had told you how the effective market clearing price for transaction fee has been constantly inching up higher.
The last RFP that one bank did, this came at close to INR 25, which is anyway is not a economical price for that bank, given interchange is at INR 19. In FY 2027, we know, the 6,000 to 7,000 units that we see in different stages of bank RFP pipeline planning are mostly all, either product purchase and with subsequent services outsourcing or will be a fixed price outsourcing deals.
The second point on how are we thinking about our revenue shift. Similar to our last call, Our goal at that point in the end of Q3 call when we spoke to you in February was to exit FY 2026 on a strong revenue momentum, so that we enter Q1 with about INR 650 crores of revenue. Between INR 577 crores of Q3 to INR 650 crores for Q1. INR 609 is sort of a step in between there in Q4. A lot of the execution and order execution as well as revenue ramp-up of some of the new wins that we've had are underway. The INR 650 should get us to our INR 2,600 crore run rate.
It also means that through the year, we have to win and deploy about INR 100 crores of products and the balances things that need to be additional orders which need to be executed. If I look at FY 2026, we won about INR 2,000 crores of overall orders, of which we have close to about INR 400 to 500 crores of work which is still to be executed.
On the margin front, I understand, you know, the fuel inflation is something that has just happened. In our typical pricing, how does pass-through work on our ATM lockdowns? Is this something that we can pass on overnight or do we have to absorb this before this gets escalated?
I think there's a rhythm and a routine to how we've done this over the, you know, last decade and a half. We've sort of been, as a company and a team, been through various inflation cycles, benign ones and more, you know, difficult ones. Different playbooks, different tools. Simply put, there are some of our contracts which offer a CPI, WPI-linked inflation increase. Our effort is to constantly have more contracts move into a regime like that.
For the ones which don't, we do have periodic price resets. Effectively, I think the way I would look at it is as we move from 2026 to 2027, we'd also shared in our analyst meet in September, when we met, that we are trying to pass, get price increases across a lot of our contracts. The normal inflation-linked increases get set off with price increases which are part of these efforts on an annual basis.
In case there are some things which are more extraordinary or, you know, things that we can't plan for, you know, it may be certain states which have undergone a much steeper minimum wage increase or fuel price increases which are beyond, you know, beyond normal. Those are times where we try to, you know, pass on a price increase which is outside these annual cycles.
I think the industry gets together at these moments to discuss with the key clients. Again, it's really client relationships and the value you drive. Some of it is, I don't think it's linked to, directly linked to headline inflation. I think either it's linked to a contractual terms or negotiations which are logically based in what the ground reality is. The private sector engagements, it is far different than it'll be in the public sector.
No, no, I understand. Mine was a very topical question given what happened yesterday on the price hikes. The simple point being that, you know, does it, you know, represent a risk to our 25% margin aspiration? That's the only thing I'm trying to drive at. I mean, are we-
Yeah. No, no, sorry. I think it's a fair question, Baidik. you know, you know, we have and you've known us for some time, we are very reticent on margin forecast because not always easy to control what our competitors will do and the market will be. I think we've had a good Q4. We don't wanna get carried away with extrapolating that straight away into next year.
I think we will wanna wait and see what happens in Q1. Right now, there is just unknown volatility given we all feel in India that a lot of the price impact on fuel may have been deferred for whatever consideration. Let's see this play out. We've seen one price hike yesterday. I don't know what more will come in. We don't know what'll happen to work from home as a concept right now. I think we'll wait for Q1 to see how things pan out. Our effort, given the investments we have made and the nature of our contracts, some of the M&A we have done, is to get to our 25% zip code.
Sitting in May, impossible to tell you today if we will hit it, achieve it, or miss it. I don't think there is significant risk as of today, but we would prefer to be conservative on this. If we are able to drive the revenue growth, I think it gives us a better margin to I mean, like last year, we talked about in, I think in the Q2 or Q3 call, we did wean away some of our lower yield retail customers.
That's revenue gone, also lower margin business gone. If we have to sort of wean away some business at the end of the year, if you drop INR 25 crore, INR 30 crore, INR 40 crore revenue to maintain a higher margin profile, we'll look at that in H2.
No, just a quickie question for a check back.
Yeah.
You know, there seems to be a ramp-up in your requisition costs, I understand. The acquisitions have not yet been closed, nor the FSS one. I'm just curious, what's driving this sequential ramp-up from INR 56 crores to INR 59 crores for the acquisition?
Depreciation ramp-up, you said? I, Pankaj can answer. Sorry.
Yep.
Depreciation, there is some change.
During the year, we have done around INR 350 crore of the CapEx, and as well as Securens we have already added. Related to that, the depreciation has increased from INR 54 crore to INR 59 crore.
Got it. Got it. Just the last question?
Yeah
on the FSS acquisition, you know.
Sir, sorry.
Is it expected to be earnings accretive from the first year itself, or do we wait before it turns accretive?
Let's finish the deal in Q1, Baidik. After that we can tell you better.
Sure. Gotcha. Thanks, Rajiv Kaul.
Thank you so much, Baidik Sarkar. We request all participants to restrict to two questions only. If you wish to have any follow-up questions, please raise your hand and you can rejoin the queue. We'll move to our next participant, Praveen Kumar from E quitas Capital Advisors. Praveen, please unmute your microphone.
Yes. Hi, am I audible?
Yes, Praveen. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, Rajiv and team. Thanks for the opportunity. The investor letter was very, it read in a very heartfelt and frank manner. Thanks for writing that. Had a couple of questions. one was, if I look at your FY 2027 revenue guidance, if I were to do something like a pre-mortem on that, you know, assuming, let's say, one year down the line, for some reason that's not achieved, what are the top two or three reasons you would, you know, that happening? That is my first question.
It's a great question. Can you tell us a second while we think of the answer to that?
Sure. Second question was on the kind of transaction linked kind of project that you walked away from, which happened in the, you know, later part of 2025, right? Just wanted to understand who, which of the other-- I mean, did any of your competitors take up that? Because, you know, you have been hinting that industry is moving more and more towards the fixed price kind of model. I was just wondering, given that size of contract, was it taken up by someone? If so, how do you look at that? Yeah.
Where we are right now on revenue, and I think Baidik also referred to that, the INR 633 crores, you extrapolate that right now just out of simplicity into four, that gets you to INR 2,500 crores. We are executing and going live on the GFC contract, which should get us another INR 50-INR 75 crores of revenue in the year. That gets you to closer to the INR 2,600 crore number. We're talking about another INR 200 crores to hit.
I'm talking about the bottom end of the range. Let's forget the higher end of the range right now. INR 200 crores, I think there are orders and order wins which could help us contribute to that delta. What could go wrong? What could go wrong on the revenue side right now, would be if there is a sharp dip in consumption in, let's say Q1, right? Because Q1 is then into a four issue. There could be risk to consumption both at the retail side or at the transaction per ATM level.
We have seen in March and April, a dip in currency supply in the country, which impacts ATM transactions. I think if that trend continues, let's assume for the next 10, 12 months, there could be an INR 50 to 70 crore impact on the revenue. Unlike last year, we don't have a I mean, last year forecast was based also on INR 100 crore of revenue we were presuming would accrue to us from the SBI contract, which didn't happen. We don't have that risk right now.
We don't have any such large risk, which is sort of assumed to happen and will not, and therefore could sort of dip. Whatever is in the math is a contract either going live or already signed. There is a delta from INR 2,600-INR 2,800 crores. Absolutely. I think in the rest of the year, we need to go work hard to earn it. That's the answer to your first question. Your second question was, did somebody else take the contract? Yes. Should we name it? No.
Will those ATMs go live? Hopefully. Will we get some part of the business from there? We should. Again, you know, it's really, at INR 90, I think it's a great price because that's the max you can really get at interchange today. For us, it was really about could we foresee us making money over a seven-year cycle of the contract. We couldn't. I mean, we could, but not at the levels, at the threshold, and the return metrics we have. I've said this historically also to some of you, is that growing our business is not a challenge.
There is business. Growing this business at a 25% zip code on EBITDA margins, the ROC levels, is a challenge. Therefore, for us to keep aspiring to grow double digits, maintaining that return profile, is something we have created as a ring fence around ourselves, and we have to keep maintaining the high threshold. I do think there will be some players who can make reasonable returns on that project. There is a little more risk. We prefer to take that INR 100 crores and deploy it when we find a segment or a company where we like the return ratios more in favor to what we prefer.
Thank you. Thanks for the response.
Thank you so much, Praveen. We'll take our next question from the line of Umang Shah of Banyan Tree Advisors. Please unmute your microphone.
Hi, sir. Good afternoon. Thank you for the letter and the way you communicate every time. I had two questions. First question was, in the analyst meet last year, you had broken down the cash logistics business into ATM cash, retail cash, and CIT. Can you give that number for FY 2026?
Umang, would you like to ask the second question as well?
Yes, yes, I'll do that.
Sure.
Certainly. Sir, we see that off-site ATMs are reducing by private sector banks, and we also see number of transactions, as per RBI data coming down. In this context, why would banks want to increase off-site ATMs? That was first part. Second is that between off-site and on-site ATMs, do our services change? If yes, which is more profitable?
Hi, Umang. Let me answer the second one first. you know, very good question. It's a trend that, you know, we had called out early that we are seeing a shift between the behavior of on-site and off-site ATMs. Like I said, I think banks at the point have changed reasons for why they need a certain network and scale.
If you'd asked me this question five years back or even 10 years back, both private and public sector banks expanded ATM growth rapidly, mostly on the back of independent ATM deployers or what we call the BLA model, executing this on a transaction basis simply because there was a significant arbitrage to be earned between, you know, interchange fee, which is what one bank settled with the other versus the cost of running an ATM network.
It made sense for banks to invest and create net ATM capacity, which was probably running ahead of what they truly needed in terms of their debit card issuance and spread in terms of savings account. Five years back, we started seeing some banks, specifically the private sector banks, changing and taking a pause, saying, you know, this is not about having the biggest or the largest network.
It is also about using the network for the right reasons, which is driving penetration and growth in newer areas that they are entering into. If you set up a branch, they typically wanted the branch to be surrounded by one or two ATMs. It helped in building CASA. It also helped in branding and distribution. Right now, if you sort of see what banks are doing, they are treating the ATM channel as a way to effectively
Act as an alternate servicing mechanism to their bank branch. It's not just about cash distribution or cash withdrawals anymore, it's also about trying to cater to the customer life cycle and the needs. Some of the work that we're doing, and let me take ICICI Bank as an example. Two years back, they had, I think, about 20% cash recyclers and 80% cash dispensers. Two years since now, since we've been started working with them, it's gone the other way, where 80% cash recyclers and 20% dispensers.
Now to most of us, we still call an ATM an ATM. Fundamentally, from the views of a banker, a cash recycler provides service to a whole set of customers who are otherwise walking into a bank branch to deposit that cash. These could be, you know, SME customers, these could be traders, these could be retail accounts. All of this then moves into a cash recycler. Second, as we are going live with the MVS, Algo MVS software this year, that allows a bank to upsell a lot of the value-added services or a lot of the non-financial banking services and package that into a cash recycler.
This could be account opening, it could be video KYC, it could be asking for cross-selling a loan, which is specific to you as an individual, not just a traditional loan product. It could be instant card issuance, it could be passbook updation in the context of public sector banks. I think, you know, we are seeing the cycle shift.
Banks are willing to commit their own CapEx as opposed to getting private parties to put up CapEx here. On the back of this CapEx, they're looking at transferring a lot of the expensive transaction banking activities from a branch to an alternate channel model. I'll just go back to your earlier question on the split. I think you know, if you look at it, we also said we will re-segment our revenues into the three platforms. All of ATM cash goes into ATM Solutions.
We have retail and CIT combined, and we have technology and payment services. The specific mix of those splits are captured in our presentation. Yeah, I think on the cash MS split, we said it's the 60/40 historically has gone to 55/45. Beyond that, I don't think we even have the live numbers. We are starting to internally just focus on the three platforms and measure them. That split is already mentioned, I think you talked about the transactions and the stability.
Okay, cool.
Sure. Thanks, sir.
Thank you, Umang. We'll take our next question from the line of Divyansh Gupta of Latent PMS. Divyansh, please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. I have three questions for FSS business. The 1st one being that whatever revenue that FSS was doing, some would be through CMS and some will be through other players. How are we thinking of moving all of that business to CMS? Will the contracts expire and only CMS will take up those business revenue opportunities? The 2nd one is more a basic question and a build-up on that. The fixed fee versus, let's say, a transaction, does it get fixed at FSS level?
If yes, is there a certain percentage of revenue that FSS is currently doing on transaction basis, which that ways leads us to some bit of exposure to that kind of revenue stream? The third one is that while we have mentioned that there is a cross-sell opportunity of HawkEye and ALGO MVS, do the current client base do not have that offering and therefore it's more of a, let's say, we doing an inception sale to them that these are the advantages, or it's a replacement of existing vendors, and therefore, again, how do we see that timeline moving to CMS?
Hey, Divyansh. Let me go one by one. As far as the first question is concerned, the contracts that we are transferring from FSS would be all the managed services contracts. For FSS, we are already one amongst the largest cash management partners. I think when we talk about incremental revenues, it's mostly, you know, the parts that were not attributed to us in terms of the overall managed services for these ATMs, and possibly for some ATMs that we are outsourcing to others.
In terms of when we have sort of done our internal math in terms of, the focus is really more on getting the customer innovations done, bringing back the quality and stabilizing those networks for the banks. We're not really right now thinking too much in terms of arbitrage of what we do versus what others, other people do. I think fixing the quality and stabilizing the network is our focus right now for Q1 and Q2.
To your second part, yes, there would be some contracts of this which would have a transaction exposure. However, the reason that we are differentiating this from what we typically bid for is in contracts like this, which have already, you know, had two, three, four years of transaction history and aging, it's a lot easier to understand how those
ATMs are performing and to take certain calls of what needs to be continued running, what investments you need to make to either fix and improve the sites, or what ATMs need to be shut down. It's an entirely different call from a capital allocation perspective of bidding for a new contract, going and hunting and, you know, chasing and setting up those sites and then waiting for the transactions to come.
I do want to add here a couple of points here, Divyansh. One is, FSS, if you're aware of the company, has run a very good quality managed services business for the last decade. It's a respected name, both on the technology side and what they've done for banks, historically done very well. For their own portfolio needs, this is a business they were looking to maybe exit for some time.
We as a company have analyzed maybe five managed service providers from acquisitions at different points of stage of time. In our mind, the FSS business is the highest quality business out there in the sector, the client relationships and the profile of the work they do.
Their transaction-linked business, which is there, and I think a very good question, has thankfully been contracted mostly to what I would say a high-quality base at reasonable price points. There may have been some impact in the last one year to that base of business given how overall transactions have occurred. That reflects in the deal value and the pricing which we have negotiated.
We also have a trend line on when these contracts can end and what we can upsell and how we can convert them. To your question on, you know, cross-selling with HawkEye, primarily, let's say HawkEye and ALGO. ALGO would be new opportunity, right? It would be new opportunity for us if we're able to crack one or two deals. I think they'll be totally accretive.
The HawkEye business, I again think that some of the mid-sized banks haven't really deployed aggressively, or they are doing it, I would say that with a smaller quality or a lower quality vendor and not across the whole base. Consolidating this also, you know, as we said, CMS was a number 5 MSP. Before even FSS acquisition, we became a number 3. Post that, I don't know what happens to the stack rank there.
Also helps us consolidate and deliver some synergy and cost savings automatically, right? Because a team which is going to be handling a larger base of ATMs, both at a managed service level itself helps us drive synergy out there.
Got it. Got it. The second question was the revenue ramp-up that you mentioned, right? Let's say INR 625 into four, INR 2,500. HDFC around INR 50 to 60. Just looking from a lower guidance perspective, what would be the ramp-up of the SBI and ICICI contract? Rather on a general basis, if we've been a seven-year or five-year deal, how should we think the revenue ramp-up happening across years?
Well, I think, you know, the Excel modeling, I'll leave it to you. I think we have given what information we should share about some of these customers and contracts. I think the SBI contract is over a period of seven to 10 years. The ICICI, HDFC ones, Anush Raghavan can correct me, is about four or five years, roughly.
ICICI is longer.
ICICI is longer. HDFC is how many years?
five years. You know, all of that revenue is not gonna be exactly divided by five in the first year. Obviously, some of it is linked to either a pricing change or to a base increase. For sake of simplicity, divide it by the number of years and just assume that will flow through for the first year itself.
Got it. Got it.
Also, the bases don't remain static, right? Bases change, right? There is churn always, right? Something gets shut down, something gets added. I would love to say this is very conservative, but we won't know, right? Of how the base of the machines changes with some of these banks over a period of time. This is bases what we have right now.
Got it. If I may ask another question.
Sorry, Divyansh, would you mind.
I join back. Rejoin the queue, please? Thank you so much. We will take our next question from Govindarajan Chellappa of CSIM. Govindarajan, please unmute your microphone. Yes, please. Go ahead.
Yeah.
Hi. Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple of them. One, there seems to be heightened activity, M&A activity across the globe in this space again. First question is especially on NCR and Brink's merger. Would you see any opportunity or threat? Do we run a Hitachi kind of risk here? I know Brink's is very small, but just your thoughts on that.
Govind, the second question.
My second question is, see, you still have a reasonable exposure to about 28%, I think is what you mentioned to MSPs. That space, at least the smaller ones, have struggled to find funding. Of that 28%, are there still any of the MSP
customers of yours who you would classify as at risk in terms of their own balance sheet, their own ability to get funding, their ability to pay you up? A related question is, in your balance sheet, I see about INR 58 crores of loans and advances, I am guessing that is to a client. If you could just talk about the thought process around that?
On NCR and Brink's acquisition. We'll see how this pans out. I'm sure they'll get regulatory approval to do this around the world. I don't think we are sort of looking at this and saying, you know, they are too small or too big. I fundamentally feel the base we have in the network and density we have in India is impossible to replicate. It's something I mentioned towards the end of my letter also saying you cannot replicate what CMS has in terms of network reach and density.
Can that mean that at some point of time, NCR as an MSP customer can shift some base to Brink's and Brink's invest to grow? Absolutely. I think we have time to ramp up, and therefore, I mean, I don't think we are necessarily our diversification are linked to that, but I think our expansion business will make sure that we have enough growth to compensate for some of these trends which it happens. Is there any opportunity? I don't think so.
There's no opportunity, right? Is there a risk? We presume there'll be risk. Will that finally pan out or not? God only knows. I do think this is a more complex global merger. If I was sitting at Brink's in the U.S., my priority would be to focus on the top five markets, which for them is U.S., Canada, and large geographies in Latin America.
These are complex deals where global teams have to align and merge, and therefore, you know, far away in other countries, let's see what the impact is and when it comes in. Brink's, those of you who are aware or not aware, in India is predominantly a player focused on the bullion space. Global Bullion, they are the largest company and huge and do a great job in that.
They have some network presence in India, but linked to basically, I think, the larger tier cities. In the cash management space, they are a very small player. I think if they had to scale in India, this would need significant investments across the country to invest in infrastructure, vans, routes and all. Let's see what that happens. We'll know when we know on this. Your second question was on.
The MSP.
On MSP base. Yeah, I think that 28% of. As we finish FY 2027, or as we get into FY 2027, let's see what the base of revenue from the managed service customers comes into. You're right, that sector is going to be, as I said, the prior growth was led by some of these customer segments. The next 4 or 5 years growth will not be led by these segments. For us to model, we are modeling as a lesser growth from these segments.
The slack will be picked up by our expansion into the new platforms we talked about and some of the newer customers, especially the larger private sector banks we talked about. Your third question was linked to loans. Advances and loans. Pankaj, George or Anush, if you know.
Yeah, I'll just quickly cover this, Govind. You know, if you, if you recollect, about 4 or 6 months back, in I think in our 3rd quarterly call, we spoke about some of the mid-size MSPs being under liquidity stress, and us going about solving for this in different ways. As we speak, and we also said that by end of FY 2026, we hope to sort of have these addressed.
As we speak, you know, with one of them, we've entirely solved for it. The ratios have come down. We have much lesser exposure. With the second one, you know, we made this announcement in the fall in FSS, wherein, you know, post the acquisition will be a combination of our receivables from them, plus a cash consideration.
In the case of a third MSP customer, we've converted what was our exposure into a secured outstanding, which was backed both by physical assets with a significantly higher cover. Also, more importantly, getting access to receivables directly from the bank in current escrow facility, which covers both the, you know, the loan amount as well as the normal work that we render for them.
Okay, yeah. Basically, you've converted unsecured receivables to secured loans. That's the right way of thinking about it?
Yes. Unsecured to secured, plus, you know, getting the collections from their banking customer directly into an escrow account. Yeah.
Okay. Just one small clarification. My question on the exposure to MSPs was not in terms of growth opportunity, but in terms of risk of further receivables issue. Of the 28%, do you see any of your customers having any issues on balance sheet?
No, Govind, I think we took a provision last year already in Q2. I think the activities we've done, both, which Anush detailed about, should cover us from any potential risk in this area.
Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We have Darshan Shah from Multi-Act Equity Consultancy. Darshan, please go ahead. Darshan, please unmute your microphone so that we can hear your question.
Hi. Am I audible now?
Yes, Darshan, please go ahead.
Hi, I'm Akshat from Multi-Act. I had two questions. The first one is on the margins, right? While we've guided on EBITDA margins, you know, reverting back to 25%+, for FY 2027 and also for the longer term. If you really look at the cost structure below EBITDA, right, our depreciation over last three years has jumped from almost INR 132 crores to INR 210 crores approximately for FY 2026. You know, as a percentage of revenue also, it's inched by about one and a half to two percentage points.
You know, in terms of EBITDA margins, what is the thought process? You know, because these investments, when do they yield results in terms of better EBITDA margins, et cetera? That is one. Second is on the buyback. You know, what would be the participation from, you know, Rajiv Kaul on this buyback, and what is his view on whether, you know, they'll be participating in tendering their shareholding? Yeah, those were my two questions.
Akshat, I think, let me tackle the first one, which is I think when you look at FY 2026 in context, you know, you should also look at it in terms of how our overall construct or the structure of our business is changing. We are switching from being a 70% cash business to investing into longer-term growth potential, especially around our technology businesses.
Those will necessitate more upfront investment, but will yield results and more recurring revenue streams on a five to seven-year time period. You know, the context of CapEx investment and depreciation would mostly be linked to some of our longer-term investments. You should also see in the fact, in the light that in FY 2026
We did get headwinds in the form of consumption weakness, slowdown, and transaction impact, especially for some of our both the ATM as well as the retail business. In a way, sort of the margin and the structures are weathering both of these, you know, ups and downs. As we think about FY 2027, we, you know, there will always be a sort of a lead and lag effect to, you know, from an EBITDA and a PBT or a PAT perspective.
You know, when you look at Securens or we look at FSS, I think we would normally want to assume that it would take a few quarters for the synergy benefits to kick in, whereas the depreciation, you know, gets recognized from day one. We do hope that over a period, you know, things should get better.
You know, also, Darshan, I think in the last couple of years, Pankaj has alluded to in the comments that the right way to think about this is ROCs. ROCs, apart from this year, you know, have been fairly strong in their 25% range. I think we focus on that. To your second question on participant buyback, specifically called me out, but, you know, I don't intend to participate in the buyback at all.
Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you for your, you know, clarification on both these questions. Really helpful, and all the best for the year ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Darshan. We will take our next question from Amish Kanani of Knowise Investment Managers. Amish, please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Sir, congrats on a good Q4 margin recovery and, you know, top three banks in our bank. First question, sir. How do you see the pipeline this year, since these three large contracts is already done? You know, how do you see the other contracts? You did mention in the presentation that, you know, we are looking at from 6,000 to 8,000 ATM looking for moving from fixed fee to fixed fee pricing model.
Just in general, how is the pipeline vis-à-vis last year? Is it looking similar, better, or maybe little lower because of the three large contracts that we've already had? In that context, maybe you can cover the FSS, you know, acquisition. You did mention we have a lot of mid-cap banks, you know, for want of a better words, in our, you know, kitty. How are we planning to cross-sell overall things? Maybe, you know, pipeline in the context of those new clients, bank clients that we've had.
Amish, you know, very valid points, Amish.
Thank you.
I'll just start off by saying, you know, despite all the headwinds and the challenges that were on FY 2026, I think INR 2,000 crores order wins has been amongst the best years that we've had. We've executed, I think as I said earlier, close to about 75% of this. There is still 25% of work to be done in terms of this execution. That's, you know, we enter FY 2027 with just, you know, I suspect Q1, Q2, H1 really sort of being a fairly intense year from an execution perspective.
Both of some of these orders to be rolled out, the integration of FSS and, you know, just generally looking at how the macro setup is. We do see in FY 2027 banks coming back into the refresh cycle. They'd taken a pause in FY 2026. We see them coming back into this. However, I think it is a little early for us to comment on how exactly this will work out.
Simply because given how the overall situation is, we do have some RFPs which are in different stages of the pipeline. I think we would wait to, you know, maybe at the end of our Q1 or Q2 call to comment about how exactly this is panning out.
Got that. Then on margins, you know, we had a fairly good margin bump up in Q4 over Q3, though YOY looks very flat off. The question is, sir, you know, if you can explain the nuances of the margin, maybe within cash versus the business. At an EBITDA level, there's a huge swing in the cash business. The question is, where does this come from? If you can give us some flavor of, you know, the improvement that has come versus volume versus price increase that we've had because of the low, you know, pricing that we had in the past.
The question is, from 25%, we do understand that our aspiration is to maintain, but how much is due to, say, a better pricing versus operating leverage? You know, we understand the fuel price hike is a big overhang. How have we improved it? You know, what are the levers that we are using to kind of make it stable and maybe improve it further?
Amish, I'll just quickly jump in. If you go through our past calls, we really don't get into these level of detail on margins. I think for us, given FY 2026 was a significant dip, we sort of went out on a limb to say we will push back our margin profile. You're right. A significant part of the, you know, as revenues start climbing back up, you get the operating leverage. The work which Puneet and his team have done on rationalizing our routes, Anush and his team have done in trying to get pricing hikes and the new fixed price contracts, I think they are all starts contributing back to the margin profile.
Your question would be, I also think would be linked to how much of this is sustainable in the future. Don't know. I think we have a good base. Q1 historically, not historically, seasonality-wise, is a lower margin profile. Bases, wage hikes, and increments and whatever happens. We'll wait to see how Q1 goes through. We will also finish all our contracts.
By then we are almost done all our contract execution. The new one, HDFC, will go live this quarter. We will have a sense, better sense of the year. On the margin side, I think, cash and managed services, I told you, they are fungible really. You know, it's very difficult to sort of for us to even call out, how much is where.
And overall fuel cost and vehicle cost as a percentage of our business is roughly about 6% of our overall revenue. If that goes up by X%, you can start doing some calculations on that. We have built a pretty tight operating network. I also do wanna caution here saying as we roll out new contracts and new businesses, there will be expansion and investment back into our route network and all. You can't exactly time it to quarter by quarter, but hopefully we should be able to maintain those sort of margin profiles.
Sure, sure. Thanks. Thanks and all the best. A great letter to the shareholders. Thanks.
Thank you so much, Amish. We will take that as the last question. I will hand it over back to the CMS management team for the closing remarks. Over to you, team.
No, I mean, I really don't have anything more to say. I think we've given out this time a very detailed letter which normally would have come in the annual report. We thought it's a good trend to get it more circulated widely at the end of the year for every investor read that specifies and details out exactly the way we are thinking so that you are able to both get a better sense of the business, what we are doing, which can't be covered in a presentation accurately, and also hold us accountable for it.
We are still maintaining a North Star goal of FY 2027 and FY 2030 despite having a reset in the FY 2026. Not easy, but we feel quite confident that we have done a superb hard work in the last six, eight months to fix things which were breaking down and the things which were under control. You know, wish us all the best and thank you for your belief and patience in a tough year. Talk to you at the end of Q1.
Thank you so much. On behalf of IIFL Capital Services Limited, that concludes today's conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now click on the leave icon to exit the meeting. Thank you for your participation.