Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Just Dial Limited Q1 FY 2024 Earnings Call. At this moment, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, you may click on the Raise Hand icon to ask a live question. Please note that this conference is being recorded. We have with us today Mr. VSS Mani, MD and CEO, and Mr. Abhishek Bansal, CFO from Justd ial. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Abhishek Bansal, CFO. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Justd ial's Earnings Call for first quarter of fiscal 2024. Our operating revenue for the quarter stood at INR 247 crores, witnessing 33.1% growth on a year-on-year basis and 6.2% sequentially. This growth is primarily driven by healthier collections witnessed during FY 2023. Last year, full year collections grew about 44.3% year-on-year, and second half collections had grown about 56% year-on-year. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 36.3 crores, representing a margin of 14.7%. Our employee expenses have increased 22.6% on YoY basis, led by about 9% increase in headcount, revenue-linked incentives, and partly due to increments.
We have taken certain measures to keep employee costs under check, and as you can see, headcount has been flattish over the past three quarters. Other expenses have anyway been well controlled as they declined about 2% on a year-on-year basis. We expect employee cost as percentage of revenue to moderate going forward, and overall, we should see improvement in margins as we move in further quarters for the year. Our advertising expenses for the quarter stood at about INR 5.4 crores. Other income stood at INR 81.4 crores for the quarter versus a loss of INR 60 crores in same quarter last year, since increase in bond yields had impacted MTM treasury gains in that quarter. Profit before taxes stood at INR 106.1 crores, growing 10.6% sequentially.
Effective tax rates stood at 21.4%, which was higher, since bulk of our treasury MTM gains are currently short term in nature, and hence provisioning for taxes happens at short-term capital gains slabs. Profit after taxes stood at INR 83.4 crores versus INR 48.4 crores loss in same quarter last year. We continued our focus on monthly plans as we sold about 68% of our contracts on monthly plans this quarter, and our monthly ECS collection from our customers now stands at about INR 47 crores a month versus INR 33 crores a year ago. Deferred revenue was also very healthy at all-time high of about INR 450 crores, growing 27.5% year-on-year. Active paid campaigns at the end of the quarter stood at about 548,000, which was up 13.4% year-on-year.
March tends to be the strongest month for us, followed by a slightly weaker April. Despite that quarter has seen sequential 10,000 net campaign additions, which is quite reasonable. Recent month, June, has shaped up pretty well. Overall, cash and investments stood at INR 4,159 crores as on quarter end. Coming to operational highlights, traffic trends have been quite impressive, thanks to recent revamp of both our mobile and desktop platforms and addition of lot of rich content on our search pages. Total traffic stood at 171.4 million unique users for the quarter, growing about 16% year-on-year and 7.6% sequentially. Mobile traffic stood at 146.5 million users, growing about 17.5% year-on-year.
The notable part in traffic is pre-COVID, when we had peak traffic of about 160 million quarterly users, approximately 45 million-50 million came on account of our paid marketing efforts. We were spending about INR 15 crore-INR 16 crore a quarter at that time. In the most recent quarter, we spent just 1/3 of that amount, and out of 171 million users, around 150+ million came organically. Organic, what we call as free traffic, has been growing very healthily for us, which is a positive. For our core businesses, it has always been that traffic leads monetization, and we are confident that recent traffic trends should be supportive of monetization growth in coming quarters. That, coupled with cost controls, should result in healthy profitability, which is what is our key objective: to have sustainable and profitable growth in overall business.
With this, quick update, we shall now open the floor for questions and further discussion.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on Q&A icon to raise hand. The operator will announce your name when it is your turn to ask a question. Please accept the prompt on your screen and unmute your microphone while proceeding with your question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have a question from Vivekanand Subbaraman from Ambit Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much for the opportunity. We'll start with a few housekeeping questions. Abhishek, could you help us with the split of revenue in your top 11 markets, revenue and campaign, top 11 markets versus the rest of the country. That's the first one. Secondly, would you be able to comment on the ESOP provisions included in the employee cost? Was that the reason why it was a bit bumped up during the current quarter? That's on the housekeeping side. Just to confirm on the A&P side, I heard INR 4.5 crore. Is that correct? That's my set of questions on housekeeping. Maybe you can address these first before I get into some of the others.
Vivek, on your first question around revenue split. That stands at around 60/40 now. Top 11 cities contribute about 60% to revenue, with volume contribution standing at 40%, and vice versa for non-top 11 cities. ESOP provisioning, for this quarter, it was marginally negative, about INR 40 lakh negative, on account of certain ESOPs lapsing during the quarter. Advertising spend, it was about INR 5.4 crore for the quarter.
Helpful. Thanks for sharing the revenue split as well. This quarter, we are seeing that again, the non-top 11 markets seem to be growing very, very fast, and that's where the recovery has been very strong compared to your pre-COVID levels. I mean, almost 2x of pre-COVID from the markets outside of top 11. Abhishek, just to understand this further, how much more legs do we have to monetize the non-top 11 markets, the brand that we have perhaps in the non-top, you know, markets outside the top cities? There is also very healthy campaign momentum in these markets if I compare it to pre-COVID levels. Could you help us understand this better?
I think in top 11, it seems that your revenue recovery is not that strong, but in non-top 11, you are really breaking away from what you were doing pre-COVID. What are the factors that have led to this?
Vivek, to answer your question, if we were to split our 33% revenue growth on a year-on-year basis for this quarter, there is a healthy growth in top 11 as well. Top eleven broadly would have grown about 25% year-on-year, and the non-top eleven would have grown about 46%, 47%. Definitely, non-top 11 on a growth basis, doing better versus top 11, but that is also because of the base effect. In fact, in top eleven cities as well, our particular realizations have been improving both on year-on-year as well as sequential basis. In Tier 2 , Tier 3 cities, whenever we enter a city, we enter with a very entry-level pricing of, say, INR 750 or INR 999 a month.
At this point of time, Tier 2, Tier 3 realizations are about 45% of Tier 1. There is a significant scope for Tier 2, Tier 3 to catch up with Tier 1 cities in terms of realizations. Having said that, even if we were to look at overall realization, which is just about INR 1,500 per campaign per month, that is highly affordable for any SME. Not that in Tier 1 cities, the average ticket size is so high that it would be unaffordable. Yes, Tier Two, Tier Three cities are growing at a faster pace at this point of time, which has been the case for past several quarters, that they have been gaining in market share overall.
Helpful. Very helpful. Just my last question is on the new initiatives, particularly the ones that were under development, like JD Xpert or JD Shopping or JD Real Estate. Some of these initiatives that you had planned to like foray into and focus on verticalization or content enrichment. Could you give us an update on some of these initiatives and where they stand right now?
These initiatives around, say, either Xpert or Shopping, which were primarily around adding a transactional layer for either products or services. The platforms as such are ready. We have the capabilities to be able to either get products delivered or get services fulfilled. At this point of time, as we have mentioned in past quarters as well, we do realize that in order to scale up transactions, there needs to be a significant money that needs to be given to both the vendor side as well as the user side. These platforms, since they would likely have negative unit economics for a reasonable period of time, at this point of time, the focus is on core business to generate healthy free cash flows. As I said, the platforms are ready.
We would look to scale them up at a appropriate time.
Great. Thank you. I'll return it to you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Naman Jain, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Congratulations, Abhishek, for a good set of numbers. I have a couple of questions. One is in regards to the continuation of previous question. So you mentioned that, you know, at the platforms are ready for JD Shopping or JD Xpert. So the cash that we have on books, are we planning to utilize and conserving it for those platforms, or do we have, you know, other growth opportunities in mind to utilize this cash? That is one. Second question is in regards to the EBITDA margins. I understand that we are close to 15% right now, and by the end of the year, we intend to be close to 25%, which we were during pre-COVID times. What is the roadmap to reach there?
Naman, on your first question, regarding the INR 4,160 crore cash that we have on books. Yes, it could get utilized for either any organic or possibly inorganic opportunities in future, but honestly, on an inorganic side, nothing on the table as of now. Even on the organic side, the way ecosystem is that even if I were to pump in INR 200, INR 300, or whatever crores of money, we are finding that as soon as you stop that advertising or incentives, the transactions drop drastically, be it for any particular platform. For us, we have a very healthy core search business, where we do think there is a good runway for generating year-on-year sustainable top-line growth and at decent margins.
The idea is that the treasury is optimized to earn about seven quarters pre-tax deal at this point of time. We will take a call what best to do about this cash in future quarters. On your second question regarding EBITDA margins, 15%, the margin that you see, that is the PNL EBITDA margin for, say, INR 247 crore revenue that we booked. As you would recall, last year, say, full year, we collected INR 945 crore, with the recent quarters at about INR 260, INR 270 crore. On a cash basis, anyway, the business is already at 20% plus margins. As we move into future quarters and those collections translate into PNL accrued revenue, that should aid margins.
At the same time, the cost control initiatives that we have taken, we don't expect our cost to go up. Conversely, we are taking steps to sort of optimize or even reduce those, some of these costs. A combination of these should help us reach those pre-COVID margins in another two to three quarters.
Okay. Just a follow-up on, this, Abhishek. Basically, the cash that we have on books is close to INR 4,160 crore. While you mentioned that, you know, pumping in INR 300 crore-INR 400 crore of cash wouldn't really help the business, because as soon as you stop doing that, the, you know, the users or the transactions would drop off. But it's a sufficiently large amount of corpus that we hold, and, you know, the core business should be able to aid any requirements of cash for other businesses of the company. With this such large corpus, any plans of distributing it back to the shareholders? That is one. Second, on the margin front as well, the employee cost in the last quarter was on the higher side.
Any particular reasons for that?
Naman, on distributing cash, at this point of time, we haven't taken any specific decision or discussions have not been initiated around that. As we move into future quarters, we would see whether to return it back to shareholders, and if so, what could be the most tax-efficient way to do so, or whether the cash could be deployed for any other value-accretive opportunities. On employee cost, this particular quarter, as I mentioned, part of the employee cost increase is revenue-linked itself. The way incentives get recognized in PNL is, it is in proportion to the revenue that we accrue. Part of the increase is due to that. Secondly, there are certain increments that are due in this particular quarter.
So these are some of the key reasons for sequential employee cost increase.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Abhishek.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Kewal Asher from DSP Asset Managers. Please go ahead. Mr. Kewal Asher, kindly unmute your microphone and go ahead with your question. There is no response, we'll move on to the next question from Lavanya Tottala from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, Abhisek. Thank you for the opportunity, and congrats on good set of numbers. My question is on sequential. If you see the deferred revenue trend, there is some moderation. Like, earlier, last four quarters, we were growing at 5%-6%, but this one is a bit slower. Anything specific or did you see more slowdown this quarter? How do you see it going ahead in the next two quarters?
Lavanya, deferred revenue is simply, the addition is basically whatever excess cash that we collect in that quarter versus the revenue that we accrue.
Mm-hmm.
March quarter, Q4, typically tends to be the strongest, quarter for us. led by a strong, March month, and subsequently, the year starts with a slightly weaker April. That is the key reason that sequentially, our deferred revenue had slightly, lesser increase. In fact, historically, we have even seen, deferred revenue dip sequentially in first quarter. The better way to look at it would be that, year-on-year, there was a healthy increase.
Mm-hmm.
Collections year-over-year had about 27%-28% increase for first quarter.
Okay, this should pick up from this. This is only the seasonality which impacted this quarter then?
Yes, that should be the case.
Okay. On the employee cost, which you were mentioning in the earlier question, do you expect any more increments which are left over for coming quarters, or most of the increments for the year is done in Q4 and Q1?
So, uh-
Other than the revenue in, this thing.
There could be a bit of increments coming during the third quarter. The way we are planning at this point of time, that should not have any meaningful increase in costs.
Okay. Okay. On the I mean, sales strength increase plan, this quarter, I mean, broadly, the sales strength has been flattish, but we saw increment in cost. Sales strength increase, how you are planning for the next year?
Overall, sales headcount, we had significantly ramped up during the first two quarters of last year and two, three quarters prior to that.
Mm-hmm.
For this year, last two, three quarters have been flattish. I think for next one to two quarters, we are not expecting a meaningful increase in sales headcount. As we move towards the end of the year or, say, second half of this particular year, we will take a call on having higher manpower, keeping next year's monetization objectives in mind.
Got it. Got it. One last question from my side is that, in the first question, you were talking about top 11 and other cities. Just for basic understanding, did our presence or presence in number of PIN codes increase as compared to pre-COVID, in terms of other cities like Tier 2 and Tier 3, as compared to pre-COVID, like, our presence?
In terms of presence, I think, whatever areas pan-India are meaningful from traffic perspective or presence of SMEs perspective, we, like, by and large, cover most of them. The only key difference could be that there could be a geography, basis the strength of, or the count of businesses present in that geography, we might require, say, 20 ft on street, but pre-COVID, I might be having, say, just 10 ft on street. Now, I might have increased it to 14, 15. Those kind of increases could have taken place. There won't be many geographies where we were not present at all, say, pre-COVID, and now we are monetizing those.
Okay. Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hi, Abhishek. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First, on the paid subscription growth. This quarter, we had around 10,000 additions QoQ. In the context that we have around 550,000 odd paid suppliers, this works out to around less than 2% growth. If I were to amplify that would be, like, less than 10% growth for the full year. Would it be fair to say that this would be the growth trajectory that would continue to see in the near term, or there are any plans to, you know, increase that growth?
If I were to put it simply, 8%-10% growth in suppliers, plus a few, some bit of realization growth, would ensure that you would at best grow at mid-teens. Is there any incremental revenue possible, incremental revenue growth possible? That's my first question.
Swapnil, paid subscription additions of 10,000 sequentially, as I mentioned in my opening remarks as well, we need to look at it in the context that March typically tends to be a strong month for the company. Hence, our particular subscriptions are bunched up in that month. April slightly stands on a weaker note. Annualizing sequential growth rate would not be appropriate. Like, overall, as can be seen, there was a very healthy jump in realizations over last two to three quarters. I think, overall, for a full year basis, if you're targeting, say, 20%+ growth, it would be a reasonable, healthy mix of both paid campaign growth as well as ticket size growth.
Would it be possible for you to share the breakup of the realizations growth and volume growth that you're targeting for this year, let's say?
See, realizations growth, as I mentioned, that in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, there are certain cities which were at, say, INR 1,000 a month, where we have taken pricing to INR 1,250 a month. Similarly, another INR 250 increase while INR 1,250 per month kind of cities. While that may translate to, say, a 25% growth in Tier 2, overall, the idea is, as I said, anywhere between, say, 12%-17%, 18% average growth on the ticket size, which is doable, considering my average INR 1,500 per campaign per month ticket size is highly affordable. Rest due to paid campaign growth.
Actually, that's exactly my point, right? You're, suggesting, like, on the lower end, of the relations growth will be around 12%, whereas your full year collections growth, target is 20%. That leaves out just 7%-8% growth for paid supplier growth.
Oh, okay.
That's why I'm trying to understand, like, realistically, what are you guys targeting to grow on a-- h ow much paid supplier additions do you intend to do each year going forward?
Okay. Let us understand how this exactly works on the ground. Suppose I have a geography, I do not give my geography a target that, okay, you have to grow your paid subscriptions by X% and ticket size by Y%. The way in reality it works is that I might target that this particular geography needs to grow, say, 30% year-on-year in its revenue. That particular geography might decide that for us, it is since we have not taken price hike for last six months, nine months, we can take 20% price hike. For the first couple of months, the paid subscribers might stay flattish or even might dip a bit, and then they could grow back again such that the end objective of 30% is met.
The first target is revenue growth, and that comes as a mix of ticket size as well as suppliers. Rather than saying that, "Okay, I'm targeting only 12% on the lower end for realization, and that leaves only 7%, 8% for collections," that is not how it is. Another way to look at it would be last year. During the full year, we grew our collections by about 44%, though we were coming off a lower base of post-COVID impact. The second half collections grew about 56%, 57% year-on-year. If we were standing in first half last year, no one would have anticipated that, okay, second half could witness so much growth if we were to just try mathematically extrapolate basis, campaign growth and ticket size growth.
Overall objective is top-line should grow at 20%-25% on a sustainable basis, and that should be a reasonable mix of ticket size growth and campaign growth. There could be certain quarters or even one or two years where one might surpass the other, but overall, both factors would contribute to this top-line growth.
Got it, Abhishek. My second question is on the capitalization of cost towards new initiatives. Would it be possible for you to share the number that you have been capitalizing this for the last one or two quarters?
From this particular quarter, the new initiatives are now getting depreciated. Whatever, about INR 30 crore, which was intangible assets under development, they have now shifted to fixed assets. There was just about INR 1 crore of capitalization or whatever, intangible assets under development cost for this particular quarter. From coming quarters, there would not be any intangible asset-related cost that would be hitting at this point of time.
Will it be fair to say that, your, the focus on, new initiatives has come down drastically given the market scenario now, and, that is also leading to this lower, capitalization?
We had planned new initiatives in couple of phases. The phase I was primarily about getting the platform ready in all respects so that it can fulfill whatever transactions flow through the platform. Since those objectives have been achieved, those platforms now stand capitalized, that is shifted to fixed assets. For subsequent investments, we would like to wait and watch. We would want to get our core business, very much on a healthy trajectory, which we are seeing, and we would look to pump in funds for new initiatives as and when we think it is appropriate to scale up transactions for these verticals.
Right, Abhishek. Thanks a lot for those answers. Good luck. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on Q&A icon to raise hand. We have our next question from Srini Koganti, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yes, Mr. Abhishek. I think most of my question was answered. My question was, what is the sales growth rate that we can expect? Looks like you were saying 20%-25% top-line growth is what we target. Is that accurate?
Yes, that is what, we would be targeting on a sustainable basis for the business.
Got it. Okay, my second question is, out of the new initiatives that you have started, which one is showing any traction or any promise? I mean, is it too early to talk about, or do you see any signs?
As I mentioned, at this point of time, the focus is on getting core business on a steady growth path. Within the two initiatives that we have taken, the Xpert, which is transactions for services, that would align with our core strength, considering 2/3 of our revenue comes from service-oriented categories versus JD Shopping, which is more on the product side. There are organic transactions that happen through these particular platforms, but in order to boost those particular transactions, we need to actually incentivize users and vendors, which we think we will do as and when we think the ecosystem is such that there can be visible unit economics in medium term.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for the great numbers.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Abhishek Banerjee from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Abhishek. Can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah, see, the core business performance, I can understand, right? The margins are likely to go up, that is understandable. What I'm finding a little difficult to, you know, really wrap my head around, is the fact that last call, you sounded pretty, you know, enthusiastic about JD Xpert, and you also mentioned that, possibly the launch is going to be in three, four months time. Today you sound obviously a lot less enthusiastic about it. What really changed?
Abhishek, it's not about enthusiastic versus less enthusiastic. I think the way ecosystem is shaping up in last six to 12 months, and which we would have hoped for it to shape up for last several years as well, that business ultimately needs to be done for profits. I might do a big bang INR 5,000 crore advertising and say that the platform is launched, et cetera, et cetera, but two months down the line, again, I will be answering myself: where is the cash flow, or what is the unit economics in some of these? What we have taken a call is that, yes, the platforms are fully ready. Technologically, product-wise, we have all the capabilities.
For example, in JDXpert, we have delivered over 100,000 bookings in last three to four quarters, which is a very substantial number. Whether we think that to own INR 100, we should be spending INR 200 on each transaction, at this point of time, we don't think that makes business sense. It's just a sort of wait and watch. We are anyway making tweaks to the platforms, keeping them optimal basis, user feedback, et cetera. The significant spend to ramp up transactions, that we will reassess when we think we should be spending.
Understood. Okay, okay. If you can give me some numbers, which helps me understand this better. What is your CAC for the JD Xpert business as of now?
At this point of time, these particular platforms have been launched only as a pilot or a beta stage.
Yeah.
It wouldn't be appropriate to evaluate any of these numbers. Broadly, the platform typically has, say, on the monetization side, it's 20%-25% take rate that you can typically expect. On the cost side, the biggest cost is the advertising cost or the cost that you incur to get user to do first-time transaction, second-time transaction, and so on. On top of it, obviously, you will have overheads in terms of building and maintaining that platform, fulfillment charges, et cetera.
Understood. For when it comes to advertisement, right, you have an asset where people anyway would come to maybe search for a carpenter. Why would you not use an asset that is a core platform?
See, for the categories where I have these services transactions, I am already monetizing source revenue also in these categories. Had I been a player who was just a vertical player, who has built these platforms, yes, that particular question could have been relevant. I already have a business where last year I earned INR 945 crore, 60%-70% via services. Yes, experts-oriented categories would be a subset of that, but the way I would look at it is that: How can I increase my revenue and profitability from those categories? I cannot let my revenue get cannibalized, just for the sake of newer transactions.
Thank you. We have our next question from Rupesh Tatia from Intelsense Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir, can you hear me?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah. This March booking bump up and then, you know, in April, May, they're coming down. This kind of doesn't seem to have happened last year. When I'm looking at numbers, you were at 461K on March 2022. 484K on June 2023. March 2023 and June 2023, sorry, 2022. That there was a 23,000, you know, sequential addition from Q4 to Q1 last year. To, when I look at this trend versus this year, it looks like there is some sort of, you know, slowdown or some sort of loss of momentum. I mean, please talk about it.
Okay. Rupesh, the comparison that you are doing, we need to understand that last year we were coming from a relatively much lower base of post-COVID impact. Last year, when we collected INR 945 crore, that was a 44% growth over previous year. Peak pre-COVID campaigns were at about 536,000, odd, as I recall. The 460 to 480 increase that happened, last year, same quarter, we were coming out of that particular impact. Now, this particular year, as I mentioned, that April had little bit of weakness, which impacted sequential numbers, but June month again has been quite healthy. I think, with the latest momentum that we are seeing, we should be achieving our particular planned targets for the rest of the year.
Despite that particular weakness, ultimately, 1Q collections at INR 258 crore or so, did have a 27%-28% year-on-year jump. It's not that I just have to see what is the campaign addition. As I mentioned, we would want to look at what is the overall revenue that materialized. When I take price hikes in certain geographies, that also tends to have a short-term impact. In this particular quarter, certain Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, where we were at very low pricing, we consciously decided to increase prices, which would have resulted in subscriptions remaining flat for some time in those particular geographies. Once the new pricing gets absorbed by the market, it should again be a recovery path in coming quarters.
Okay. Can you maybe just give a broad view of seasonality in your business? In 12 months, which are kind of like, you know, strong months and which are, you know, kind of like weak months.
Traffic-wise, first quarter tends to be stronger because in summer months, we find several particular categories, for example, AC repairs, et cetera, drawing a lot of traffic. There is some bit of seasonality around possibly other events, such as, say, a wedding season, et cetera. Otherwise, there isn't much of a seasonality. On the monetization side, historically, the last quarter has been strong for us. As a result, since we sell annual subscriptions, a lot of our SME customers renew their subscriptions in the month of March. That is the kind of seasonality that happens on the monetization side.
Okay, okay. Can you talk about JD Mart, how many paying customers we have as of quarter exit, and what is the realization?
JD Mart, which is a, say, B2B side of business, that had about of the overall campaigns, about 22% campaigns pertain to B2B, that would translate to about 120,000 to 125,000 campaigns.
There was no growth sequentially? I have a number of 120K on Q4.
Overall, if you see, there is a just 10,000 sequential campaign addition against that, and B2B has 20-22% share. B2B campaigns would have grown by about 4,000 to 5,000 sequentially.
How do you see this panning out through the year?
At this point of time, overall revenue-wise, B2C also is seeing a healthy recovery along with B2B. In next, two to three years, we expect that B2B side of revenue should possibly have higher growth versus the B2C side.
Okay, okay. How about realization growth in B2B?
The B2B realizations are about 10%-15% better versus my non-B2B realizations. Those particular categories also see a price uptick, as in when we take price hikes in a particular geography. When I increase my prices in a certain geography, that, in most cases, impacts both B2B as well as B2C side of customers.
For full year, you said overall company level, 12% realization growth, so that number would be similar for B2B as well?
Sorry, I didn't say 12% realization growth for the full year. What I mentioned was that in case, there is a 20%-25% growth, part of it would materialize from campaign addition growth, the rest through realizations. Realizations, again, could grow anywhere between, say, around mid-teens or so. It could be slightly higher or lower, depending on a particular quarter or a particular year.
B2B would be similar to that number or it would be higher?
B2B ideally should be higher, because in B2B, our particular ticket sizes are much lesser versus where the industry stands. Since there is a lot of catch-up that B2B can possibly do, realization growth on the B2B side should be higher than B2C.
Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you for answering my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Mohit Motwani, from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Hi, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Abhishek, I had just had one question. Right, you have voiced out multiple times that, you know, you want to get the core business back on track, and that's the primary focus right now. Just wanted to understand, is there any target of quarterly revenue collections that you are looking at, you know, which would indicate that, you know, it has now completely, you know, recovered and is now completely on a good, very good growth trajectory? If your paid campaigns are of any indicator, indication, they are at all-time highs right now, have surpassed the pre-COVID levels. Just wanted to understand your targets for collections and paid campaigns.
As I mentioned, that the target is to overall grow our business at a healthy 20%-25% rate on a sustainable long-term basis. That would partly be a function of campaign additions and ticket size growth. There isn't any specific quarterly target. Obviously, the annual targets are broken down into quarter, months, geographies, et cetera. It's not that there is a particular number which we hit and say that: "Yes, now the core business is back on a steady track," this, that. We need to obviously, consciously work towards growing traffic on the platform, traffic growth, which is already coming through in terms of 170 million+ quarterly users. That overall should help us achieve our planned monetization numbers as well.
Sure. Thank you, Abhishek.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Sarang Sunil, from RW Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir, thank you for the opportunity. My first question is: How exactly were you able to ramp up the quarterly unique visitors count? I appreciate how mobile has turned organic versus pre-COVID, but was there any particular driver that played out suddenly this quarter, and was this something you expected? That was my first question. My second question is, I lost the line during the introduction. What is the monthly subscription? Was that, like, 60% for the quarter? The B2B split that you gave, 22%, is it the revenue split? Yeah, those were my three questions, sir.
So Sarang, on your second question, monthly subscriptions sold during the quarter were broadly about 68%, so 68% of the sign-ups were done on monthly basis. On your third question, revenue contribution of B2B, that was about 26% for the quarter. On your first question, around what led to this significant sequential growth, I think two factors played a role. One, Q1 typically tends to be seasonally stronger quarter for us, driven by summer months, as I was mentioning. Second, there has been a recent revamp in both our desktop and mobile platforms, which went live in the months of March, April, or so. The results pages that you see, the details pages that you see on our platforms, they are very rich. There's a lot of content that is shown upfront.
There are a lot of data points which help in faster decision-making for the user. For example, you get to see what is the number of inquiries a particular merchant receives, whether that particular merchant is top-rated, popular. There are a lot of tags that are given. Some of these initiatives have increased traffic for us. I think revamping platforms, coupled with the summer months, helped us get that sequential growth.
Sure, sir. Thank you. Thank you for that. Sir, one last question. Sir, any other initiatives that you could, you know, give us a color about, like JD Homes or something of that sort?
See, most of the initiatives are centered around getting rich content in listings as much as possible. Whenever you do any particular category search on the platform, or even if you search for any specific business, we want to be able to showcase as rich information. For example, even in case of service-oriented business, we want to be able to showcase that, say, this is the service catalog for this business. This particular business renders all these services at these particular price points. Focusing on faster user experience, better content, these are the key initiatives that you will see unrolling as we go further into the year.
Sure, sir. Okay. Thank you so much, sir. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Abhishek Banerjee, from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, hi, Abhishek. I dropped off then. Regarding the new initiatives part, even if I look at the core business, right, there was a revenue margin guidance of around 25%-26% by year-end. Does that still hold?
Abhishek, yes, pre-COVID, this business used to generate about 25% plus EBITDA margins. We have been able to achieve our pre-COVID numbers or surpass those numbers for traffic and our top line. This is the key, margins is the key metric that we want to achieve ASAP.
Understood. In terms of the demand for your services, I see, you know, strong traction there. Is there any pricing increase which is likely to come in over the next few quarters?
Abhishek, we have two types of listings: the premium listings as well as non-premium listings. Premium listings typically get a price reset at regular intervals, which is completely software-driven. That particular price increase is basically linked to how much traffic growth is panning out for a particular category in a particular geography. In case there is some degrowth in a particular category, we also pass on that benefit to our customers. Non-premium listings, wherein one can pay any amount above a certain floor price that we set, those are taken at, say, half-yearly or whenever we assess that there could be price increases. For example, in this particular quarter, we had certain price increases in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, where we felt that pricing is very much on a lower side.
Part of that particular price increase will flow through PNL as and when the deferred revenue starts getting accrued. What I collect in this particular quarter will get recognized as revenue over the tenure of the contract, which is typically 12 months.
Understood. In terms of revenue trajectory for the core business, right, what do you think is a sustainable QoQ number?
From our perspective, we won't look at a specific QoQ number because there can be certain quarterly fluctuations. As we mentioned, that on a long-term basis, we would strive to grow this particular business on a 20%-25% on a top-line basis, and generating, say, 25%+ EBITDA margins.
Got it. If I consider that you grow, say, 25% in FY 2024, and, you know, nothing substantial happens on the cost front, will the 25% margin be met mathematically?
Yeah, by the end of the year, it could, definitely be met.
Understood. Understood. Thanks so much, Abhishek. That was very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Hemal, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Can you hear me?
Yes-
Hello.
Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Abhishek. Thanks for the opportunity. Just two quick questions. What is the tax rate we should assume for this year and for next year?
Hemal.
If you can guide us.
I can explain how tax provisioning happens for us. There are two components to, say, profit before taxes. One is materializing out of our profit from core operations. That gets taxed at almost a full tax rate of, say, 25.2%. There are some deductions that we get, but broadly, 24.5%-25% tax rate. The treasury income, at this point of time, majority of the treasury is in short-term bucket. Just before 31st of March, since the new tax guidelines were to kick in from 1st of April, what we decided was the part of the treasury which had become long-term in nature, and where we could lock in higher yields by shifting to higher duration, we had done so. What that effectively means is that while I will not be...
I will likely not be selling any treasury to realize my MTM gains, my MTM gains will continue to get taxed at a corporate tax rate of 25.2%. As and when, three years down the line, when they become long-term in nature, the tax rate will shift back to 20% with indexation, which will effectively be 12%, 13%, and there will be tax reversal at that point of time. The total INR 22.5 crore tax that we see, only INR 4.5 , five crores is current in nature. Rest all is deferred tax, which is just provisioning because of short-term tax rate applicable on MTM gains.
In order to answer your question, for the full year, the first quarter tax rate that you see, 21.5% or so, that is what, 21.5%-22% is what we are expecting for full year at this point of time.
Okay. Thank you for that. I missed this, maybe you already answered, my apologies. On the employee cost, which has increased this quarter, is this a one-time quarter, or is it going to continue next throughout the next three quarters also?
Employee cost, the sequential increase in this particular quarter was a bit chunky, led partly by increments. In coming quarters, we do not expect such a continued sequential addition. Employee costs should moderate going forward.
Would it be fair to take the, this quarter's number and annualize it? Is that a ballpark estimate? Would that be okay?
There could be. Second half of the year, we could have certain headcount additions, especially in sales, keeping our next year numbers in mind. This quarter, annualized, plus there will be some additional cost due to incentives which are revenue-linked. That is what I would forecast at this point of time for, say, half year. As and when we go into Q3, Q4, we'll see whether we need to do any headcount additions.
Okay. My absolute final question: Any update from any integration with Reliance Retail? Any conversation ongoing that you can share with us?
There is a integration that is likely to go live soon on MyJio app. MyJio, which has a vast user base and several Reliance group companies are already integrated in that. Our integration is also in almost final stages. That is one integration that is ongoing. There are other few integrations as well around integrating some of their transaction-led platforms, so with ours, but those are in pipeline. As I mentioned that the core focus is to get the core business on a sustainable and profitable growth path.
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Srini Koganti, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mr. Abhishek. Given that we've got INR 4,200 crore of cash and a healthy growth of sales as well as profits, wouldn't it? Can you share your thought process on about purchasing or doing a share buyback so that the company itself is investing in a good business? What are some of your thoughts regarding that, please?
Srini, regarding the cash that sits on our books, whether we should possibly consider any buyback or distribution via any other alternative means, honestly, we haven't put any thoughts around that. As and when we go into future quarters, we will possibly have a discussion with the board on best utilization of this cash. I don't think it would be prudent on my behalf to right now comment on whether we think that is the right strategy to adopt.
Absolutely, sir. Yeah, especially that we are getting only 7%- 8% on the treasuries. I honestly feel, the stock is really undervalued at this stage, given all the growth and the cash. That was the reason I was trying to get your thought process. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from Amol Pise. Please go ahead. Mr. Amol Pise, please unmute your microphone and go ahead with your question. There is no response from Mr. Amol Pise's line. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Abhishek Bansal for closing comments, as there are no more further questions.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us. In case you have any further queries, please feel free to reach out to us. We will do our best to address. That's it from our side. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir. On behalf of Justdial Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.