Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q4 and FY 2024 earnings conference call of KFin Technologies Limited, hosted by IIFL Securities Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Devesh Agarwal from IIFL Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Muskan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Q4 FY 2024 earnings call of KFin Technologies Limited. From the company today, we have Mr. Sreekanth Nadella, the MD and CEO, Mr. Vivek Mathur, CFO, and Mr. Amit Murarka, the Head, Investor Relations. I would now hand over the call to Sreekanth for his opening remarks, which will be followed by a Q&A session. Thank you, and over to you, Sreekanth.
Thank you so much, Devesh. Very good morning to one and all. Thanks a lot for taking time this morning to hear about our quarter performance as well as the full year performance. Very excited to state our ongoing journey and the commitment to excellence as well as the shareholder wealth creation. We have logged a revenue growth of about 25%, an EBITDA growth of about 25% as well, and a PAT growth of nearly 33% this quarter, making this one of the better quarter and hopefully a quarter that will set the basis of growth for the fiscal year 2025.
On a full year basis, our revenue growth is at about 16.5%, EBITDA at about 23%, and the PAT growth at about 26% roughly. The diluted EPS for the quarter ending 2024, the last quarter is about 30%, and for the full year, it's about 25% year-on-year growth. This journey marks our secular growth across the business segments. We continue to maintain that the bedrock of our business will be and had been the Indian mutual funds business. We've been the first registrar and transfer agent, you know, from a share transfer standpoint in India.
We continue to grow that business, and it is the residuary 30% plus of the younger businesses, which broadly cover our international alternatives, pensions and the acquisitions around fund administration. As you can see, the growth this quarter in those business lines had been near about 50% year-on-year. Issuer solutions about 20%, and the mutual funds business is roughly about 3% year-on-year growth for the quarter. It's been a very satisfying year thus far, and of course, it is still at the very beginning of our growth journey. We believe that the mutual fund business will continue to expand at a very rapid pace, as has been you know identified through a series of survey and market research reports.
We expect the AUM to double over the next five years or lesser than that. Looking at the pace of the SIP expansion, it is expected to happen much sooner than later. The alternatives market had been tearing up as well. We have witnessed a 60% increase in the AUM this year over the previous year, and the revenue that has nearly doubled during this process. The pensions market itself, though, had a slowdown compared to the previous year. The overall industry grew about 12%, but we have grown 28% year-on-year in the segment. We are a fintech company, and we continue to drive through technological innovations, many are industry-first product and platform.
Happy to inform one and all that the share of the value-added solutions and services has improved from 5.3%-6% on a full-year basis. This is despite an extraordinary growth across all lines of businesses, which explains that an absolute number of the value-added solutions have grown much faster than we have identified. We believe that we continue to invest in areas which are not market dependent. It provides a good hedge. It provides us the stability especially during the down market cycles. Many of the businesses that we are looking at currently are not necessarily related to the movements of the market. As an entity, we continue to be the largest investor solution provider in India.
In terms of the total investor and the folio count, it totals to near about twenty-six crore folios between the share transfer and the mutual funds and the alternatives, making us one of the largest registrar and transfer agents, not just in India, but in the world. Our market share on the overall market share on the AUM continues to grow outpace that of the market, which is obviously a good indicator in terms of times to come how our both overall AUM and equity AUM will continue to grow. You might have witnessed that the equity AUM, there had been a slight dip in terms of the market share. That is sequential in nature.
That is something that happens, you know, once every, you know, few quarters, when certain fund houses do better than the others. And the last few quarters, definitely, you know, have seen a faster growth in some of the asset managers managed by you know, by the other registrar. And to that extent, you know, we do believe that some of these cyclicality will hit and hopefully in times to come, you know, we will have better fortunes in terms of equity market share as well. But notwithstanding all of that, we continue to grow the mutual fund business at a very, very rapid pace, even as we have some of the newer fund houses who have grown quite rapidly in the past few years now.
On the issuer solutions, we have added near about 200+ clientele in the previous quarter. We have several mandates, which we can't just yet announce the names in terms of the confidentiality reasons, but then, you know, we believe that there will be good changes in time to come. We have added a series of new clients, you know, who have transitioned from the other registrars, including Birla Corporation, Muthoot, and a few others which are in the pipeline, including Muthoot.
We have launched several new solutions in issuer, you know, line of business, especially on the IEPF claim management, given the amount of complexity associated with that, as well as the immense revenues that come out of that particular line of business process. We believe that in time to come, this will add a significant amount of gravitas to our line of business, including addition of new clientele and transition of clientele, given very few have such a solution at this point in time. We have, beyond these two businesses, in terms of the financials, very happy to inform that we have been awarded the one of the first supervisory tech platforms.
We continue to partner with the regulators across India and the globe to create solutions which aid in, you know, a very proper and a secure marketing... sorry, the monitoring of the markets, so to speak. This is a platform that we have created for SEBI in terms of the supervisory technologies. And the platform that we've created, especially around Guardian, which is about insider trading related solutions, has now been adopted by several of the Big Four accounting firms, given it is the only solution that exists in the country and probably anywhere in the world, in terms of leveraging account aggregation as a tech solution for monitoring insider trading across other corporates.
We have continued to expand our data lake solutions, not just to our clients, but also to the clients beyond, you know, who are currently not with us in terms of the RTA side of it. We have won a series of contracts in the wealth as well as in the fund accounting side, including on the asset management side. International business, our number of clients have increased to 57. In the last quarter, I had updated that we have moved the number to 54, which marks that, you know, three new clients, you know, have been won during this intervening quarter.
This obviously adds the biggest scope of growth for us as even as, you know, we break through the initial resistance in each of the new geographies. I'm sure one would appreciate that going into a new country, creating platforms and solutions, fully compliant in a regulated environment, takes certain amount of time, and it takes a little bit more time to convert the clients or rather the potential clients into a real client. It takes time. It's a time-consuming process, but it's a very, very rewarding process, especially when we all know the stickiness of these contracts, where we seldom, you know, lose a contract that once we have.
It's a very complex piece of work, and last quarter, I had updated about wins in pilot. Happy to announce that we have cleared 70% of the milestones in terms of the go live and into the upcoming quarter, we will be going live, which marks the first fully live contract in pilot, even as several new potential clients we are in discussion with on the back of this particular contract, which we're about to tell you about. We have also been winning nearly a 60% plus contracts in the GIFT City. During the previous quarter, we have added three new asset managers.
We have secured additional contract in Hong Kong from our existing clients, even as the pipeline has increased beyond $25 million, which we believe, in all, all the different phases of sales, lifecycle, and hopefully we'll have many, many wins to come to, even in future of this year. Alternatives market, you know, had been the fastest growing for us. In the previous year, our revenues have nearly doubled, in the period of FY24. Even as the AUM has grown 60%+, year-on-year. We totally manage about 472+ funds, making a marking a market share of nearly 37%, in terms of the total funds that are there in India.
Here we've not only won new mandates, but we have also been pioneering several transitions from other registrars in the country and beyond. We continue to have the only, you know, fully integrated transparency and fund accounting platform with full digital stack for alternatives market with a multi-currency, multi-geo, multi-asset, now, multilingual capabilities as well, for XAlt, which is something we've launched in the previous quarter. Migration of all our clients is underway, is ongoing at this moment in time. We believe that in the next coming quarter, we would have wrapped up the migration of existing clients, even as all the new clients are directly onboarding to this particular platform. National Pension System, I already called out. Again, again, the business, pension business been growing much, much faster than the industry.
Nearly 3 times, 2.5 times the pace of the industry we've been growing. Our market share has moved from 0 to nearly about 10% in a matter of 3.5 years, marking our delivery excellence and our fintech innovation that we're bringing to an industry which we believe will, you know, rapidly rise in years to come, even as pensions as a topic will be adopted by the larger populace of the country. The overall industry performance is something that is, you know, very visible to everybody. Mutual funds have had a spectacular year, 30% plus growth year-on-year for the industry.
We offer a fairly reduced risk profile, not necessarily on a single AMC, given we manage 60% of the industry. You know, it is a secular growth across all of them. We do believe that there are quarters when a certain AMCs grow versus certain others in different quarters. All of that, you know, gives us good confidence to continue to grow at the similar growth that we have witnessed in the previous year. The FIIP, which is obviously the most resilient factor of this business, has moved in the last three years from about INR 92 billion to about INR 192 billion, so more than doubled.
And this obviously provides a much needed resilience, not just for the mutual funds market, but also for the capital markets itself. Our growth in SIP had been higher than that of the industry. We're at about 43-44% on the total market share, as against 33-plus to 33.5% on the overall AUM. Which implies that the catch-up that is required between 33%-44% will happen over a period of time into the coming quarters and years. On the alternatives, we have still, I think, nearly about 50% plus of the capital committed versus the capital drawn down gap that exists. Which means that on the same client wins that we already have, there is a significant amount of capital that yet to be drawn down by the fund managers.
Which means that the revenue on existing client itself, there is a significant scope for growth in this year and over the coming years, even as new clients we continue to add every single week, literally in the case of alternatives. Expansion of Demat accounts obviously augurs very well for our issuer services business. In the preceding quarter, we have grown 20% plus year-on-year in the case of issuer solutions. We have excellent visibility in terms of a similar growth profile that we could see into through the fiscal year 2025. Quickly moving on to the international, which I have already covered a bit of it. But we have in fiscal year 2023, 41 clients in total, and this year, you know, we have concluded with 57.
So that marks an additional 16 clients. The growth of this business, especially the wins, as I've called out, the transition, can be a bit protracted at times. Which means that at no point in time will we have a full year's revenue, given we are winning new clients. For some clients, there may be a transition revenue, for some there may not be, for some which we may have gone live now or some which we may go live six months and so forth. So it is hard to, you know, exclude any one-time revenues in this, but this would be an ongoing phenomenon of new client wins and some contributing to a one-time transition revenue and some that may not.
But a full year revenue of the wins that we've had, you know, through this year, can only be felt 6 months from now. But of course, the wins we've had during FY 2023, some of that has already been baked into the numbers, even as 5 more clients are yet to go live in the Q1 of this year. We have added 1 of the first TA contracts in Singapore. The one that we called out in the previous quarter, we have gone live. I've already called out about the Thailand deal as well, and we continue to look at opportunities to expand Philippines as a market.
Recently, we have held conferences in Philippines, partnered with the regulator to add you know significant value to that entire ecosystem, even as we intend to deliver the same in Malaysia and Singapore in this particular fiscal year. In terms of people, I would like to just shift a little bit focus to where we are on the expense management and in terms of the people. You would have seen there is a 2% growth quarter-on-quarter in terms of expense and a little over 20% plus over the previous year. This is our commitment for delivery excellence and investments for future growth. A good part of definitely the payroll expense you know is something that we are investing in in terms of audit and surveillance management.
It is an exceptionally regulated industry, as we all know, that also gives us the moat that is required from competition. We have been investing significant amount of monies, both in terms of the platform solutions and into the people to add the resilience that is required for the regulatory compliance works. And it is something that we believe is, you know, over the next one year, we would have done with our investments in terms of CapEx compliance requirements on the platform. And which is something that, you know, we believe over a period of time will pay rich dividends in terms of reducing the operational costs associated with that. Some of these are one time in nature, if I may.
And once done, they will be tapering off, both in terms of headcount as well as the spend on the technology. Next one, of course, was going to be on the investments in the leadership of the, of the businesses itself. We are creating, CEOs of the future, for every line of business. We believe that each of these businesses themselves, can be, $100 million businesses, in times to come. And accordingly, people who have the caliber of that nature are, being recruited, and some of the cost is there. And of course, that is something that will continue to happen even as we build an organization for the future and indeed, a global fund administrator, from India. We have been very excited about, the wealth management space. I've been calling it out.
We have recently signed with one of the largest NBFC to deliver to the wealth solutions, even as we have nearly completed the new wealth platform, which is fit not just for India, but for the rest of the world. We anticipate to launch this particular platform late Q1 to early Q2, even as we have onboarded several clients in this quarter, at you know, various specific business process modules being adopted in the case of wealth management for these clients. We have also signed one of the largest custodian bank for an accounting solutions for the alternatives market.
And last but not the least, very happy to inform you that, two of the subsidiaries, you know, the acquisitions that we have done in the preceding year and the one prior to that, Hexagram and Webile Technologies, have both turned a cash profit. In fact, Hexagram has clocked a 40% EBITDA margin, much higher than expected in the context of the new wins that we've had, and hopefully this will be the start of the significant growth trajectory for all of the subsidiaries of KFin Technologies at this point. I will take a pause here, and I will turn it over to Vivek to cover the financial performance, after which we will take any questions. Over to you.
Thank you, Sreekanth. Good morning, everyone. On the financial performance, the revenue from operations has sequentially gone up quarter on quarter by about 4.4%, and year on year for the same quarter by about 24.7%. If you see the composition of the revenue mix, the revenue from domestic mutual fund is about 69%. Within that, the fee-based revenue, you know, and the AUM revenue is something which has grown, you know, exponentially in terms of the growth. The issuer solutions continues to be about 13% of the revenue. International and other, you know, services, revenue has grown from 9% last year to 11% this year, and that's what Sreekanth explained in terms of the composition of the new wins that we have been having.
The global business services, the market service business, the contribution to revenue is about 4%, and then there is other operating income of about 3%. So overall, you know, with the buoyancy of the domestic mutual fund market, you know, we have seen that, you know, the companies have. Their clients have actually moved from, you know, in terms of tier structure to a better structure in terms of their cost, and we have seen a dip in terms of the yield, while overall it remains robust. So overall, 16% change year-over-year in terms of growth on revenue from operations. EBITDA margins, you know, have seen 6.8% growth quarter-over-quarter and 23% year-over-year.
We believe that, you know, we continue to operate in that range of 40%-45%. For the quarter, we have ended with 45.8% EBITDA margin, while for the year, we have clocked about 43.8% margin, which is 238 bps, that's higher than last year. PAT is 30.6% growth sequentially in terms of same quarter last year. Quarter on quarter, there's a growth of 11%, and, you know, if you see year on year, we have seen a growth of about 25.7%. So INR 246 crore of PAT, and the PAT margins are in the range of 29.4%, which is 220 bps higher than last year in terms of the overall margins.
So the economies of scale, the investment that we have been doing in terms of technology and people, is paying off in terms of market rewarding us, in terms of, you know, new contracts coming in. And we have now maintained a cash and cash equivalents of more than INR 400 crore, despite repayment of RPS during the year. You know, it's a healthy cash and cash equivalents that we carry, and as a result of that, the board has, you know, actually recommended a dividend of INR 5.75 for this year, which is subject to the shareholders' approval. So this is a maiden dividend by the company. We've never declared a dividend in the past. This is going to be the first year subject to shareholders' approval. Happy to take questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking the question. Ladies and gentlemen, we wait for the moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Abhijeet Sakhare from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hi, good morning, everyone. Just on the international slash alternatives, if it's possible to give, you know, further breakdown of, let's say, international and alternatives separately. And then, part B is that how much of this revenue is actually linked to AUM growth, and how much of it is actually, you know, platform deals and something which is, let's say, one time in nature?
Hi, Abhijeet. Good morning. So the international, the, and the other investor section, as you know, covers about 4 distinct items, which is the GFS, which is our international fund services, alternatives, Hexagram, which is on fund accounting administration. So part of that, of course, also is for the international markets… Broadly, the pure international is roughly about 40% of that, near about 35% plus 35% thereabout will be alternatives, and the rest will be the other businesses. In terms of the revenues attributable to one-time platform deals, et cetera, especially the international one, almost all of that is on AUM base.
The platform-based revenue is usually resilient in the Hexagram side of it, you know, which is a platform-based fund accounting solution that we have.
The Hexagram part of it is, when you say its platform, is—do we understand it as, you know, one time, or, it's, you know, part one time and part of it is actually recurring and some sort of a license fee that is, you know, charged every year?
It is the latter, so every contract that we have on the fund accounting side, when a platform is deployed, there is a one-time platform fee, and there is an ongoing customization change request fee that comes, because no platform ever remains exactly the same. So this is sustainable top revenue that we generate every single year, even if the contract has been implemented in a given year. Outside of the change-related revenue that we draw, there is also the annual maintenance contract, which can range anywhere between 25%-35%. And on the increased value of the platform, including the change request. So it is not a one-time episodic revenue, but it is a recurring revenue attributed to every contract that we have. Okay.
Got it. And it's good to see the number of deal wins and, you know, the pipeline sort of filling up, but it will be useful if we can, you know, start giving something like, you know, a TCV number or some way to, you know, track what is the forward outlook on growth coming from this business.
Absolutely. So I think, you know, during this year, sometime you'll definitely see that happening. As mentioned, in the last year, we were waiting for certain amount of gravitas to happen for each of these businesses. I mean, I think the magnitude is important. And as you've seen, a 50% growth year-on-year and, each of the businesses are getting larger, it would be a lot more meaningful into the coming quarters as, the size of each of the businesses, you know, starts to make sense in its own individual way. And we will do that.
All right. The last one for Vivek is, you know, what's the expense growth outlook for next year?
So, you know, expenses will continue to grow in a range of about 10%, and that's what we expect that, you know, except the investments that we will do in terms of expansion into new markets, which will be one-off, as we are looking at getting into, you know, more aggressively into Thailand, awaiting RBI approval. And, then Singapore, we want to expand further, in terms of having physical presence. So there will be new investments that we will do, which will take a slight one-time hit in terms of setting of expenses, but that's what the outlook is.
Got it. Thanks a lot. I'll come back in the queue.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhukar Ladha from Nuvama Wealth. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning. Congratulations on the good numbers. First, you know, you—I think partly you covered that in the previous questions. So, so you mentioned, 40% is international, 35% is, the alternatives India business, right? Are those numbers correct?
That's correct. Of the international business, that segment of international.
Of the segment of... Yeah, yeah. And, did you quantify the one-time? I, I believe there is some one-time revenue in this quarter. Did you quantify that any chance?
Won't be more than 5% of the total revenue. Again, when you say one time, I want to be a little, you know, KFin about it. The one-time revenue is for Hexagram usually, which is where we have platform-based fees. We offer fund accounting as a platform for asset managers, whether you're a pension fund manager or an insurance fund manager, and that is there. In the case of pure international fund services and for alternatives, there is no one time. Everything is a recurring revenue. There can be a little bit of transition revenue that we may get, but that will be immediately followed by recurring revenue on a monthly basis on the basis points.
Understood. Understood. So only on the Hexagram side, there is the 5% sort of one-time contribution in the total sort of revenue for the quarter?
Yes.
Got it. And we're also seeing a good margin improvement in the investor in the international other investor segment. Right? So, what is driving that actually, and what should we expect in the near term, maybe in the next couple of years?
So as I've explained, first of all, the section of international solutions is a, you know, aggregation of a few lines of businesses. And as they achieve the requisite scale, they we will carve out individual sections of that, which may happen this year for some of the businesses, for sure. The profit growth is, you know, is only but expected in the context of the scale and the efficiencies one would draw as you start winning more and more clients. My personal belief is that they are all still subscale and the margin expansion that is possible in each of those businesses is far higher than what we could accomplish as of now. For example, the international fund services.
We have a lot of funds, but probably, you know, not a lot of AUM, as you might have seen it, because, you know, a good number of them are small to medium-tier agencies. And to a certain extent, you know, the markets in Southeast Asia hadn't been anywhere close to that of Indian market. So the world is expecting that the next, you know, three to four years, you would see a significant uptick in the growth of the Southeast Asian markets. As that happened, from our current client itself, the AUM will grow. That is a mark-to-market growth, for example, as what we have seen in Indian markets this year and the previous year.
So the margin expansion for international is actually far higher than for Indian mutual funds for three distinct reasons that I had called out, and I will, you know, for the benefit of all, explain again. One, the unique dynamics are significantly in favor of us, which means that as against the 3.7, 3.8 yields in basis points per AUM, we earn nearly 5.2 there. Second, in terms of the effort required, for example, INR 1,000 crore of AUM to process in India may require 1 million transactions. The same in international markets can be done with about 100,000 transactions. That means with about a tenth of the effort, you will be able to deliver equal amount of AUM, right?
And three, we do not have telescopic pricing, and in fact, in most cases we have roll-up process, which means our unique price itself will keep going up, you know, as years pass by. So technically, the scope for the margin expansion for international is far higher than that of India. And what you are seeing now is basically as we are adding more clients and certain amount of standardization, industrialization comes to play, there is already a margin expansion in so. We would like to believe that, as the scale further increases, you know, quarter after quarter, year after year, we should see a far higher margin expansion possible in this business. And same is the case with pensions, same is the case with alternatives. Alternatives is another classic example.
It's a very bespoke, asset management, fund administration, unlike mutual funds. No two clients, in fact, no two funds of the same client are, you know, same or similar. But once you have sufficient number of funds, we should be able to drive, at a business process level as against a client level. That would drive a significant amount of efficiencies and the cost reduction and hence the margin expansion over a period of time. We will track that.
Understood. So just, you know, again, on the previous caller's question, you mentioned that there would be certain increase, one-time sort of expenses because we're expanding in Thailand, and in and in other international geographies. Could you sort of quantify what is? So 10% is sort of the normalized run rate of growth in expenses, and the one-time expenses expected in the 5-10 size, could we sort of have a quantification of that?
So I, I do not want to generalize, but let me explain in terms of what, you know, under what circumstances do we have a one-time expense, right? First would be the starting of a new geography. The starting of a new geography, and I'm loosely using the word geography, but let's say a country. A certain amount of platforming work needs to be done, and it is quite complex, and it takes a little bit of time to, you know, think of it like a brand new RTA coming up in India, right? It, it hadn't been easy for anyone to set up another RTA here in India, but we're able to do it in five countries in five years.
So as complex as it is, I believe that, you know, we have understood the best way to go about it. And, obviously, for that intervening period of starting a new country, there is a certain amount of one-time expenditure that will have to go for the platform generation. Second, obviously, till the time we win the deals, there is no revenue, and the cost of the leadership and the feet on the streets, that you have to set up for your initial, you know, seed clients. A lot of that after happens, honestly, organically through word of mouth, et cetera. That is another, you know, one-time expense that you would see, typically. Now, we may or may not start a new geography every single year, though we have done it in the last five years.
So if there is no new geography starting, there is really no one-time expense associated with that particular country, so to speak. Now, second, even if we are not starting a new country, we may have one, let's say, three or five new contracts, in a new country. In some cases, we generate the revenue for transition, too. Now, that depends on the commercial dynamics with the client. In some cases, it is possible that we do not earn a transition revenue, but a mere, you know, go-live revenue onwards. In some cases, it is a brand-new client, which means a fund who's starting with zero ringgit or dollar AUM. In some cases, it is a transition from an existing fund administrator to Capintend, right? Obviously, in the latter case, there is going to be a certain amount of transition.
In the former case, where it is a brand-new fund, there is no transition because you're just setting somebody up. So it is a combination of all of these. I would really love to give. I know there's a lot of interest in understanding this particular question of one time, but if you're going to win 3-4 deals every single quarter, you know, you will always have this, you know, some that may have a one time, some that may not have. As is the case with the expense, same is the case with the revenue as well. So there may be a one-time revenue, there may not be a one-time revenue. But I would urge the stakeholders to consider this as an ongoing regular phenomenon.
This is something that I do not believe will stop in the near term, because we'll continue to win deals. And as that happens, we may have one-time expense and one-time revenue, or we may not have. But broadly, they will more or less, you know, cancel each other out, the effect of both the revenue and expense associated.
Understood. And just on the one more question on the issuer solution side. Have we lost a few companies on in the NSE 500? Because I think the number of clients share has dropped over there. Is that reading correct? Or... And why would that typically happen?
Clarification, we have not lost any of the clients. In fact, we have been transitioning clients from other registrars to Clear, including State Bank of India, you know, earlier this year, Usha Martin. The previous year, we have done the transition of Varun Beverages, Devyani International, Castrol, Union Bank of India, so on and so forth. What you would have seen is based on the new IPOs that have been launched this year. We have one-
500 companies. So if you see, I think on the, on the slide, it is showing that NSE 500 companies, the market share has dropped QOQ from 37.3% to 36.8%, or have I made a mistake?
That market share needs to be measured in terms of the market cap of the companies, not the number of companies itself. Of course, the market cap by itself is not in our control. Again, some companies perform well in certain quarters and some not. It's not account of the companies as much as it is the market cap of the company.
I think that you've given separately as market capitalization. By market capitalization is 46.1%, and by number of clients, it's showing that 37.3 going to 36.8.
Sreekanth, do you want me to take that?
Yeah, please go ahead.
Thanks. Madhukar, you know, see, for the NSE 500 companies, like what Sreekanth was alluding that, you know, the movement of market capitalization is not something which is under our control, right? And hence, I mean, the number of clients in that bucket, the number of folios and the market capitalization, all three parameters basically are all dependent upon, you know, how the bucket of that 500 companies keeps, you know, changing, depending upon the market cap movement of respective companies in that, you know, the segment. And hence, I mean, what you are seeing here is pure movement in the number of clients based on the market cap fluctuations in that particular, you know, the 500 bucket and all. So, there is no loss of client as such.
It is purely that, you know, more transitory in nature, that some of the clients who might have, let's say, underperformed versus the other clients. And hence, I mean, those clients which got added into that, you know, the NSE 500 companies may not be, let's say, our client at this stage and all, and some of the clients might have moved out of that bucket. So there is no loss of client. It is simply that, you know, the clients shifted from NSE 500 to, let's say, NSE 1,000, you know, set and all, because of pure market cap movement.
Understood. Understood. I got it. I got it. Thank you for the explanation. Thanks a lot. That makes sense. Understood.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bharat Sheth from Quest Investment Advisor. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity, Sreekanth. Just one question. When we can, the kind of business that we are in, people is our one of the major asset apart from the technology side. Is that correct understanding?
Without a doubt, absolutely.
So what is our strategy to retain, I mean, our this asset and from long, medium-term perspective, what exactly we are going to do? Because our ESOP is getting over, so how do we plan to retain this?
A great question. Thank you. And that is something that, which is much celebrated, within management as well as with our board. Yes, I think the last pool of ESOP, you know, is probably nearly at the end of line. And, as all growth companies with good corporate governance, you know, we will look to have additional pool, you know, it's in the works. But, that is not the only mechanism to have, you know, top talent working for an entity. I think, you know, we are all working for, you know, a very larger, I mean, a larger goal beyond just the commercial growth and, probably at an individual level, career growth, itself.
Which is, you know, we believe we have a very unique opportunity, to create, as I've been calling it out time and again, the very first global fund administrator coming out of India. You know, in some sense, it is the moment of how Indian IT industry, you know, late 1990s grew. One odd company has started the process of creating a global company, and then, and after 30 years, look at where the industry is. I respect the fact that, you know, the fund administration industry is not as large a market itself as a pure IT industry, but it is still, you know, roughly, a $20 billion-$22 billion dollar revenue industry today, right?
I mean, look at the global fund administrators, you know, there is not one from India, and there is not a decent reason why not. So we are all working with that much larger anchor goal of creating something, you know, that doesn't exist now. Those things matter a lot to all of us, and not just on the commissions, of course. You know, we continue to provide, you know, best-in-class structures, which is something that is probably visible in the payroll expense that you would have seen quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year. Apart from the other, you know, incentive mechanisms, whether it's based on long-term incentive plan or the use of management, you know, beyond this.
Also, the growth of international gives a very unique opportunity for our leadership, to work beyond borders. We have already sent nearly about 15 people to work out of Kuala Lumpur, a few people in Thailand. Very soon as we expand, into Singapore and the rest of the world, you know, we are able to provide opportunities to work, and, you know, have a very, enriching career, you know, in various parts of the world. So we believe that a combination of all of these, you know, would be the critical reason for a talent to, persist with us. And, if you look at our top talent, you know, we are very happy, at the moment in terms of our top talent retention over the past four years.
Great. Second question now. We have already making a presence in the Southeast Asia market as well as Middle East also. So any strategy for going into the Western developed market, and what would be that strategy, maybe in the short term, medium term?
Thank you so much. You know, without a doubt, you know, moving, movement or rather, you know, starting to win mandates in Europe and U.S., is our immediate next goal in addition to Singapore and Dubai. It is, but stating the obvious, I mean, you know, nearly as much as the growth of this generation, you know, had been and will continue to be in Asia, the current residuary wealth is pretty much distributed between Europe and the Americas. Near about 70% of the global wealth sits out of Europe and U.S. And to be a global fund administrator, not being there, we're truly not global. We are probably at best regional in Asia, you know, and parts of Asia, if I may.
So that is not what we intend to do. When we say global, we truly believe that it is across U.S. and Europe included. We haven't yet started our operations in that part of the world, notwithstanding the fact that we have about, you know, three odd funds that we manage, you know, for a client in Canada. But it is not a rapid expansion, and that is something that is purposefully being done. To call out more specifically, the growth in the West will largely come on the alternatives side of it. And to be a credible fund administrator in alternatives, you need to be not just excellent in transfer agency, but more in fund accounting and administration.
For that, the first port of call is to have a platform, which works for, you know, each of those domiciles. And that is what our focus has been. We have launched, as I called out in Q4, a platform, you know, for transfer agency for the entire world called Exalt. Our fund accounting platform largely supports many parts of the world, as it is a multicurrency and a multi-asset, but it still needs to take into account a series of structures set up that are there in typically Cayman Islands and Luxembourg and Ireland, so on and so forth. And we are, and we have been working on that part of the part of it. So it is a carefully constructed strategy to look at geographies, and what is required to start.
Because our line of business can't be equated to an IT or a BPO business. Where technology does not differentiate between whether it's India or U.S. or Europe, our line of business requires us to create the, you know, the capabilities for a respective country. So we believe that during this year, you know, should our platform be in a state to move, we will make all efforts to start at least one geography in Europe, if not more. But it is a three-five-year plan. You know, we believe that, over the next 3 years, we would have definitely started many countries in Europe and definitely in the U.S. as well. Now, this is outside of any M&A activity.
As all our investors know, we have been extremely progressive on our merger and acquisition strategy. Not just acquiring, but making them profitable, you know, within the first 1 to 1.5 years. We are constantly on the lookout, and should any of the, you know, target acquisitions work out, you know, probably we will start sooner than later.
Last question, we have already won, say, some of the clients which are there in the GIFT City. So any plan to open an office in the GIFT City or a company registering in the GIFT City to have a better accessibility as well as a lot of tax advantages?
We already have an entity in GIFT City, which is there to support all the locally domiciled funds. That is, in fact, the mandate. We cannot manage the AIF, the alternatives that are based out of GIFT City, outside of GIFT City, so we have a center there. However, we are working towards creating a much larger center and a footprint to move all our personnel who work on international business to be there. Should that, you know, and that is obviously might go through the regulatory process. Today, we have nearly 1,000 individuals who work on international business between the global fund services and the global business services on the market.
As and when we get through the necessary regulatory approvals, we will set up a larger base in GIFT City, even as we already have one today for the alternatives.
Okay. Thank you, and all the best.
Yes.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. In order to ensure that management is able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, please limit a question to two questions per participant. Should you have a follow-up question, we request you to rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Aejas Lakhani from Unifi Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Congratulations, team, on, you know, phenomenal execution in 2024. Credit to all of you. Sreekanth, just two quick questions. Point number one is, on the main business of domestic mutual funds, are there any client negotiations that are, you know, likely to come up in FY 2025 that could compress yields? That's question one.
Hi, good afternoon. We have had, I guess, a year which had the most number of commercial negotiations. That was the year that just concluded in March 2024. We have no more client negotiations pending for the next year.
Perfect. Sreekanth, question number two is, you know, I'm inferring from your previous conference calls where, you know, you've spoken about, you know, potential acquisitions in Europe and America, which you've been sort of, keeping the cash pool for. And, you know, just triangulating from the dividend payout that has been already announced, is it fair to, and your previous comment, right, you know, of your Europe region, is it fair to understand that nothing large or material is, is poised on the table at the moment, and the Europe endeavor is largely gonna be organic rather than inorganic?
No, great question. So we, so as, Vivek had articulated, there is a little over INR 100 crore of cash on books, and, you know, including receivables, it'll be higher. And every month there is, cash coming into the books, and we have retired all our debts, including, the RPS previously on. So given the current cash and what is accruing, you know, every month, we believe that what we could accrue, should be adequate, for an acquisition, that, you know, we will look at. And should there be a further need, you know, we can always, do a certain amount of leverage. Cost of equity is far higher than that of debts anyway.
I guess it's fair to say that, you know, we are very intentional of acquisitions, but not very large acquisitions. You might have seen through our strategy, you know, our largest acquisition was, you know, less than $10 million. We don't need such large acquisitions. In fact, we are unfavorably predisposed towards large acquisitions in terms of their success rate. We prefer to have, you know, the M&As, you know, in the range of 10-15, maybe max $20 million, because it is our ability to convert them and, you know, make them more profitable in real quick time, and importantly, assets which open significant addressable market.
It is not our M&A strategy to buy out companies just to add revenue and profits to the book. We look at companies which open up addressable market. For example, if you look at Hexagram, it has helped us to create our international strategy in terms of fund accounting and administration. When we acquired the Deutsche Bank set up in Malaysia, it's given us the start for the entire international business itself. Our investments into the account aggregation is also... That's how the M&A strategy typically is for us. It is not necessarily to buy large, you know, entities to just add up the top-line number.
So, the long and short of it, I think the cash, what we have and what we would be accruing into the coming months and quarters, we believe would be adequate for any acquisition that we may have. And it is only after all of these given due consideration, we have initiated the dividend policy as well, you know, this year.
Perfect. Sreekanth, the headcount was closer to 5,300, flattish, you know, in the first half. What is the headcount count today? And could you also speak about, you know, the, you know, strategy where you had, where, you know, you were, migrating people to Bhubaneswar, and, you know, you're, you're looking to set up something in Vijayawada as well. So, how's that transitioning? How is that, sort of progressing? Because that was helping you moderate OpEx costs. And what has been the IT spends for the year? Thanks. That's, that's also myself.
Absolutely. Thank you. No, it's so that strategy, we are doubling down our commitments for our tier two locations. Last, when we spoke, the headcount in Bhubaneswar was about 60. Today, it's about 300. Right, I think it's been an excellent journey for us, partnering with the universities, and the quality of the personnel had been absolutely a revelation for us. So earlier in Bhubaneswar, it was largely tech, technology team, and we have operations also being run from there. Same is the case with Vijayawada. Of course, we are creating different centers of excellence for different type of work. You know, for Bhubaneswar, it's largely on data and analytics. On Vijayawada, it's aspects of, you know, mobility solutions.
Gujarat, we are looking for certain aspects of technology and some aspects of operations. We believe it is the future of work. We cannot have a large centralized setups in large metro cities, you know, to cater to clients with, you know, ever-expanding payroll costs and real estate costs associated with that. And more importantly, I think, the other downsides could be around attrition, so on and so forth. And we all believe that it's very important we have a social responsibility as well. I think when we have qualified, talented personnel sitting in Tier two, it is the duty of every corporate to be able to provide the employment-generating opportunities, you know, in every Tier two, Tier three city.
So those three cities that you spoke about, while this is the start, we believe this journey will continue. You know, we are constantly looking at opportunities. The future of work model for us largely relies the collaborative platform base of working instead of physical proximity of individuals. So we have worked extensively over the past three, four years on that, which means that we can open any number of nodes in various parts of the country, not bound geographically at all. As for the headcount, yes, it's been flattish, and I think that's a sign of productivity gains driven through automation more than anything else, right?
All the investments into the technology, this is exactly how it's manifesting, which is not to just keep adding more and more headcount, you know, as the volumes and lines of businesses increase. Having said that, we definitely have a few more people today than what we had in the average of the previous year. And as I said, that's largely on account of two factors. One, additional headcount, you know, for regulation and compliance, which, I believe that is, you know, short to medium-term in nature. Right now, I have the count definitely on the books, but we are automating a lot more of that component, so the dependence of human beings is coming down.
Second is, the growth of the subscale businesses such as alternatives and international and other businesses, where, you know, still such standard scale is accomplished, we will need a few more people. But, both of these will taper down into the coming year.
Got it. What has been the IT spend as a percentage of revenues?
As a percentage of revenue, it should be about 20-21%. I mean, if you have a specific number, you can probably go on that, but I believe it will be around 21%.
Yeah, it is 21%. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, and all the best to you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pranuj Shah from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation. Just two questions. One, on the yields in the mutual fund business, I've seen a decline this quarter, even the equity share has gone up. So is this entirely because of telescopic pricing? Or like Sreekanth, you mentioned between there were a lot of renegotiations you had in FY 2024, so there is an impact of that.
It's a combination of three distinct factors. Definitely, telescopic pricing. Obviously, we have all witnessed a dramatic increase in the AUMs this year, obviously contributed by, you know, individual asset management companies. And, some AMCs grew much faster than the others, which is, you know, publicly available information, as you know. And obviously, when, you know, when AMCs go through, you know, series of, when they clear the hurdles, in terms of the telescopic rates, you know, obviously there is organic reduction, in the rate that happens as because of the rate itself. Second, yes, certain amount of rate renegotiation also has contributed to that.
Third, whilst equity definitely has grown, it should also be noted that the passives have grown faster than equity, right, for the entire industry, not just for us. So obviously the asset mix change also has slightly adversely impacted. So a culmination of all of those three is what has resulted in the yield compression. I think it should be... It's heartening to see actually that the yield compression isn't significant in the context of several renegotiations, a significant spike in AUM, as well as an asset mix, which had actually more, you know, predisposed in favor of ETPs. Which actually means that, you know, there is upside from here than downside.
Thanks for that. Just on the renegotiation part, was the impact primarily in Q4 or it was spread out throughout the year?
It's spread out. I think, you know, a bit through the year. You know, some may have been in Q3, some in Q4, depending upon which contract and the client.
The second one, on the dividend, you have a 40% payout this year. So is that still payable from year to year, or that would be a standard, stated policy of around 40%-50%?
Vivek, would you want to cover that?
Yeah, sure, Sreekanth. Thanks. So dividend will depend on yearly performance, but we would like to, you know, establish that whenever there are good results, you know, company would recommend dividend to be paid to the shareholders, the board would recommend. And this is basically a start of the maiden dividend, and we do hope if the market is supportive and the results continue to be encouraging, you know, we should, we should honor the returns to the shareholders. But, you know, each year will be different. But, you know, given the management's recommendation, we would like to continue the trend of dividend payouts, subject to the results being encouraging.
You know, we do expect the way the market outlook is and the, you know, the results that are coming up in terms of the overall Indian economy and our segue into Southeast and our aspiration to go beyond. We should continue to do well, and we want to actually honor and respect the shareholders' returns.
Thanks for that. Very helpful. Just to enlarge your headline, EBITDA margin target would still be in the 40%-45% range for full year going ahead?
Yes, we remain committed to 40%-45%, and if you see the last quarter, it has actually crossed, but our guidance remains 40%-45%.
Okay. Thanks a lot. That's it from my side.
... Thank you. The next question is from the line of Supratim Datta from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. So my first question is on the issuer's RTA business. Now, if I look at the issuer RTA business, it looks like the market share within Main Board IPOs has increased significantly in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter, although we haven't seen any quarter-over-quarter revenue acceleration. So just wanted to understand that, you know, is there some delay in the revenue from, you know, these coming through? And another question on the issuer solutions businesses, could you give us also what is your market share within SME IPOs? I we can answer it for you in my second question. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Thanks for asking that. On the revenue quarter-on-quarter growth, it is the nature of this business. Q2 and Q3 of every year will always be much better quarters in Issuer solutions compared to Q1 and Q4. That is largely on account of a series of corporate actions around dividend declarations, buybacks, a lot of mergers, demergers that happen. So if you see the corporate retail business over the last X, any number of years, you'll always find a Q2 jump over Q1 significantly higher.
A Q3 will also be higher over Q2, but when it comes to Q4, much of the corporate actions would have died down, and hence you would always see a slight degrowth impact on quarter-on-quarter basis, though you will find a reasonable jump from a year-on-year standpoint. In terms of the... I hope I answered, I know, that question. Second, in terms of the IPO market share, we, you know, we have 45%, you know, market share by value in terms of the IPOs. And, as I called out, we've been successful in transitioning existing clients as well, I know from some of the competition.
That is largely based on the superior, you know, technology that we, you know, we offer, as a solution to our clients. And the industry, you know, has been witnessing that, and I hope the trend will continue. Now, coming into this, you know, Q1 of this year, you know, all the IPOs that we've done in the previous year and obviously the expansion of DMAT, you know, in itself in the previous year, will act as a force multiplier or, you know, from this quarter onwards, even as new IPOs, you know, we have one, you know, those will, be launched. Sometimes it is also a timing factor. For example, you know, we have a significant number of large cap IPOs.
You know, though the mandates were one, but they have not yet gone public. Well, that, of course, is a factor of when the company wants to go, you know, public, and, you know, hopefully in this quarter and the coming quarters we'll see a significant uptick in that side as well. SME IPO is a segment that we have started venturing only in the previous year. Traditionally, if you see KFin Technologies, you know, we were more focused on the main boards. So we can't really claim to have any significant market share in the SME IPO.
But you know, now that we have taken it as a strategic item for us to also get into SME IPOs, you will see a significant growth in that segment in you know, in this year and onwards. Of course, we have near about 5,000 plus unlisted clients now. Some of them you know will also go on to the public route, and that will also help us. But broadly, what you know, you would witness is a pretty revitalized focus to drive the issuer service business you know much faster, in a much more concerted manner than in the past. And hopefully that will you know result in a faster growth trajectory in this line of business in this year and onwards.
Got it. Got it. Thank you for that, detailed answer. Now, moving to the international business, could you give us a, you know, sense of, you know, how much of the AUM would be contributed by your top five clients? And, you know, you have now added, you know, a few client in Thailand and Singapore, and how much of AUM would they be able to add in FY 25? You could give us some sense around those numbers. It would be very helpful. Thank you.
Yes, sure. So our top five clients would contribute to near about 60% of the revenue, right, in the international fund services. And in terms of FY 2025, as I said, my total pipeline is near about $25 million on a recurring annualized basis, should all of them be one. But of course, there is always going to be timing gap as well as the, you know, deals that may not be one or get deferred, so on and so forth. But, you know, we have large deals, large size deals. I know I've been mentioning this in the past three quarters. Of course, only one of them got fructified, which is a Thailand-based deal.
The two deals that we are chasing, one is in Philippines and one based in Malaysia. You know, we are hoping they would fructify in this quarter itself, given the stage of closure both those deals are at this moment in time. But of course, nothing is done till it's done, so we'll have to wait and watch. But outside of that, you know, we are doing a significant amount of you know upsell and cross-sell. If you recollect, we have about you know 24 client contracts for fund accounting in that part of the world and about 37 for transfer agency. And some of them are common, which means for the same time we're able to offer both....
But what we have started to do is use this opportunity to significantly cross-sell, you know, TA to the clients of FA and, you know, vice versa. And of course, getting more contracts from the same client. As we have seen, for example, we have a presence in Hong Kong. We are managing the distributed transfer agency work for one of our clients, and we have just signed a full-fledged MF TA contract with the same client, right? So the client could be the same, but then we're able to win additional contracts from the same clients as well.
Thank you. Thank you, that's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citig roup. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, sir. So just a few questions. First, you know, taking cues from the last question, now, on your issuer solutions business, I understand that, you know, not all of the revenues are linked to folio account. But if I look at on an annualized basis, you know, you know, like, issuer services revenues per folio, that has increased over the last one or two years to a decent number, in FY 2023 and 2024, versus FY 2022 levels or even 2021 levels. Just wanted to get some sense of, you know, how much of this is linked to higher value-added services or higher non-folio linked revenues coming in from that segment?
How much of it is led by, let's say, more number of IPOs happening during the year or maybe in the course of the next year? In other words, if you were to kind of forecast this number, how should one kind of think about the revenue trajectory from both a folio and a non-folio perspective? Second, you know, you mentioned the number of 5% of revenues during the quarter being linked to upfront income on the Hexagram entity, which also will have a certain recurring component attached to it going ahead. So this 5%, will it be 5% of your total revenues for the quarter, or 5% of your international and other investor solution revenues?
And the last question from my side is on the domestic alternatives business. You know, I understand that, you know, you have shifted to more of an AUM-linked revenue model, whereas, maybe some of your competitors might still be on a flat fee, with a slab-wise structure per scheme revenue model. Just wanted to get some sense of the stability in pricing in this particular business segment that you see evolving in the marketplace.
Understood. All great questions. So, just in the reverse chronological order, yes, we have migrated to AUM-based pricing, and I believe that is the right way to you know, commercialize this particular piece of work. It is a highly bespoke work. It can't be done on a headcount-based model, and honestly, there is precious little talent that's available. If you attend any of the alternatives industry conclaves and symposiums, you know, one of the most common grievance you would hear from the industry, not a grievance, at least of feedback, is that they want to create several more you know, structured funds, several more you know, nuanced way of fund setup.
But, the fund managers are actually stifled by, to an extent, a lack of the technology and the people who can actually, you know, create those kind of funds, right? Which are probably very common if you were to go to Singapore or, you know, some of the other parts of the world. So to that extent, and given the complexity of the work that is involved with that, in fact, I believe that we are... Even though we have converted into AUM-based pricing, I believe that we are significantly still undercharging, you know, for the work and the complexity of the work we do. There is a significant scope for expansion on the billability.
To give you a comparison, you know, a typical fund administrator, if you were to have a fund in, say, Mauritius or Luxembourg or U.S. or anywhere, they will charge anywhere between 15-25 basis points. Here in India, we are charging just about 2-3 basis points, right? And you see the gap, and that is largely a factor of maybe undue competition, and which is not right, actually, to be honest point. Let alone a fixed fee structure, which is just completely meaningless, honestly, to run in this line of business. So yes, we have converted into AUM-based fee, and I'd like to believe that in time to come, we actually have to find ways to increase the basis point billability as against reducing it.
Sorry, and you had the first question, if I may ask the question.
Yeah, the first question was on the issuer service, business.
Yeah.
Just wanted to get some sense of, you know, from a folio-based growth versus a non-folio-based growth, how has it been for the last one or two years? Because, I mean, we don't get that entire segregation between folio-linked revenues and non-folio linked-
Yes, yes, I'll cover that. I'll cover that, sure. So, in issuer services, roughly about 70% of the revenue of the issuer services is folio-based pricing. Yeah. About 20% plus would be the, corporate actions, related item, you know, which I explained to you, would be events and merger/demerger activities, buybacks, so on and so forth. And roughly about anywhere between 8%-10%, now, when within your range, because it's gonna fluctuate, will be the value-added services that we provide for the client communities. For example, the electronic voting platforms, electronic AGM platforms, insider trading platforms, you know, and ease of administration. There's a whole lot of valuation that we render under the corporate secretarial function, which is a critical stakeholder for issuer services.
I, I think probably a rule of thumb, you know, unless there are material changes in the industry, could be a 70/20/10 between folio, corporate actions and corporate events, which is basically the platform solutions.
... Got it. So my question was more from, you know, if I look at now, you're going more into, let's say, SME IPO, or let's say, more unicorns come up for listing over the next, let's say, 3-5 years. How is the pricing differentiation between, let's say, a large corporate versus a small corporate? I mean, folio addition is one thing, but then there is also... I think the pricing is not similar would not be similar across corporates. How should one think of that?
The pricing is not, yeah, no, no two clients have the same pricing. I mean, it's a free market economy, and, you know, we win. You know, we bid, obviously, based on a series of factors like, you know, anybody else does. You know, looking at the profile of the client, their ability, their ability and intent to pay. And this is basically a very important function. You know, you are the investor relations side of it, as a stakeholder, relationship committee, which every large company has. The work we render has a direct bearing, and it's a board-based committee work out there. Now, there are some companies who may not particularly focus on this, and they may look more at, you know, expense, or the otherwise of it.
But progressively, you know, in the corporate governance side of it, every company wants to have a very solid registrar, because that is what's going to drive how you are engaged with your shareholders as a company, right? You know, your shareholders may end up having issues on share transfers, dematerialization, rematerialization, on, you know, series of compliance reporting that may have dividend payouts and all of that. Now, every company would want a marquee, you know, tech company who can do that work. So short answer, costs, you know, or rather, the price would vary from client to client. And, you know, it would be based on a series of factors about their, you know, payability, our winnability quotient, you know, you know, our understanding of, market intelligence as to where the market would come from, so on and so forth.
So sorry, I won't be able to give a specific answer, except to tell you that it varies by the client, and the range is actually quite spectacularly large, anywhere between INR two a folio to even INR 20-INR 25 per folio for different client.
Right. And lastly, on the data giving question, on the 5%, you know, sort of, upfront booking of income on the FA entity, is it on-
No, that is, that is only for the international, not for the total company.
Got it. Got it. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to the time constraint, we will take this as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Devesh Agarwal for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
On behalf of IIFL Securities, I thank the KFin management for giving us an opportunity to host the call today. Before we conclude, would the management like to add any closing comments?
Thank you very much. This is Vivek Mathur. Appreciate the interest shown and the, you know, the questions which have been asked. We look forward to engaging sessions in future as well. Thank you so much for joining today.
Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. Muskan, you may now conclude the call.
Thank you. On behalf of IIFL Securities Limited, that concludes the conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.