Good day and welcome to the Latent View Analytics Limited Q3 FY 2026 earnings conference call. 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 and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Asha Gupta from E&Y Investor Relations team. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Sagar. Good evening to everyone, and welcome to Q3 FY 2026 earnings call of Latent View Analytics Limited. We are sorry about the delay in the start a little bit, but apologies for that. The results and presentation have already been mailed to you, and you can view them on the website, www.latentview.com. In case anyone does not have the copy of press release and presentation, or you're not marked in the mail, please do write to us, and we will be happy to send you the same. To take us through the results today and to answer your questions, we have the CEO of the company, Rajan Sethuraman, to whom we will be referring as Rajan, and we have the CFO of the company, Rajan Venkatesan, to whom we will be referring as Raj. This is just to avoid confusion while doing the transcript.
We will start the call with a brief update on the business, which will be given by Rajan, and then followed by financials, which will be given by Raj. As usual, I would like to remind you that anything mentioned on this call that reflects any outlook for the future or which can be construed as a forward-looking statement must be viewed in conjunction with the risk and uncertainties that we face. This risk and uncertainties are included but not limited to what we have mentioned in the prospectus filed with SEBI and the subsequent annual report that you can find on our website. Having said that, I will now hand over the floor to Rajan. Over to you, Rajan.
Thank you, Asha. For a change, this time we are going to flip the order, and I will. This is Rajan Venkatesan. I will go first, and I'll give the financial update, which will be followed by a slightly longer business update that Rajan will share, right? Good evening, everyone. I think this is the first time we're doing a call a little later in the evening because that's also because the board meeting happened in the U.S. this time, so Rajan and I are dialing into this call from the U.S. We're very happy to report a 12th consecutive quarter of sequential growth, and very happy with the business trajectory that we've been able to accomplish.
On a sequential basis, dollar revenues grew by about 5.7%, whereas in rupee terms, revenue grew by close to about 8% in Q3. In line with our historical performance in Q3, you would note that this is a quarter that's typically strong for us seasonally, owing to consumer you know, customers looking to exhaust their budgets, but more importantly also, contracts that we had stitched together earlier in the year, they need to get executed and delivered by 31st December, right? So, traditionally, Q3 has always been a strong quarter, and this year was no exception. We're particularly pleased by the strength of the financial services practice, which is continuing to sort of grow at an exponential pace.
The share of the BFSI as, you know, to the overall revenue has gone up by almost 4%, since the beginning of this fiscal, and that's a very, very encouraging sign. Specifically, a couple of the accounts that we had added close to about 12 months back are continuing to drive this growth, and we have been able to penetrate and add, you know, new statements of work across multiple stakeholders within these client organizations. Rajan will later on give an update in terms of how does the future or the next year look for especially for the financial services practice. But as we head into the end of the fiscal, BFSI will continue to remain strong and continue to deliver strong sequential growth even in the subsequent quarter, right?
The other good news is, of course, technology, which is our largest vertical, while there was a little bit of sluggishness in the earlier quarters, has also grown, returned to a growth path this particular quarter. This was primarily driven by, I would say, year-end, you know, projects at a few of the accounts, a few of our large accounts, which led to this growth. We were also able to secure price increases in one of our largest, our second largest account, we were able to secure price increases. That also led to a little bit of the growth that you saw in this particular quarter. CPG and retail, you would have seen that the results, while in the last quarter the commentary was very positive and bullish, in this particular quarter the results were a little more flattish in relation to Q2.
A couple of reasons that can be attributable to that. One, there were a few one-time projects that we had executed in Q2, where we were expecting follow-on work to come through in Q3, which has not happened. They've gone on a bit of a pause more. So this was with a large apparel manufacturer as well as one of the largest FMCG companies based out of Europe. In both these accounts, the projects that we executed did not result in follow-on work. But more importantly, I think, for one of the large clients of Decision Point, which is the world's largest beverage manufacturer, while there were several projects in the pipeline, there were timing delays in terms of start dates for some of these projects.
The good news is, of course, we've been able to win quite a few of those projects in Q4, so but the net result of that is you were not able to see the benefit of these small value projects that at this large beverage manufacturer in Q3. And that was the primary reason for the muted performance in the CPG and retail practice, right? In terms of headwinds and, you know, factors impacting growth, Rajan will, he'll, you know, talk a little more about some of the ground-level feedback that we are hearing from some of our clients.
But overall, for this year, I would say we are on track to deliver that revenue growth of between 19%-20%, so we should end the year with revenue between $119 million-$120 million. If a few of the projects that we are currently working on, we're able to sort of execute them, it could even go past the $120 million. But right now, the confidence is to deliver revenues between $119 million-$120 million in line with what we had guided before. I'm going to talk a little bit about, you know, the impact of the labor costs. So you know, while you would have seen that revenue on a sequential basis grew by about 7.9%, payroll and benefits specifically grew by 11.1%, which was disproportionate to the growth in revenue.
A couple of factors that impacted the higher payroll and benefits cost. One, of course, was the impact of the new Labor Code . Here I would like to take a pause and highlight a couple of things. You would have noted that the total impact on account of the restructuring that we have done was close to about INR 4.6 crores, or roughly about 1.6%, right, in terms of EBITDA, and that's what we had reported even in our press release.
The reason why we actually this number is much lower in relation to some of the other peers, or, you know, the earnings when they had put out their earnings, the impact for some of them was much larger. In fact, you know, we had been proactive about this even earlier, so we didn't sort of wait for this to come through and get final. In April of last year itself, we had undertaken a significant restructuring exercise where the basic salary for all our employees was already brought up to 50% of the overall CTC. This was the primary reason why we were not as impacted as some of the other peers. So because of the proactive measures that we had taken.
Having said that, we are currently in the process of working with a consultant to restructure the components of compensation for all our India-based employees to ensure full and absolute compliance with the new Labor Code. And we expect that this exercise will get done by 31st March 2026. We do not anticipate any further negative impact on account of such restructuring. If anything, there could be a positive impact, right? So I also wanted to make that very clear. But on an ongoing basis, the restructuring of compensation will mean that there will be an impact of between 10-15 basis points on our earnings going forward. So that's the level of incremental cost that we anticipate going forward, right? So this was one.
The other one of, in this particular quarter, which I would also like to highlight, is in line with our sort of position to make the company a lot more nimble and future-forward-looking. We also relooked at all the roles within the organization. There was, we did realize that there was, you know, some level of additional capacity that was built up over a period of time, and there were certain roles that also did not align with our sort of strategy going forward, right? So there was a little bit of a rationalization exercise that we undertook in this particular quarter where we let go of close to about 40-odd people, across different functions, including enablement, delivery, and also growth and market-facing roles.
So there was a cost of close to about $200,000 that was also associated with this one-time restructuring exercise that we had undertaken. So these were the two primary reasons as to why payroll costs and benefits, the rate of increase was substantially higher than the rate of increase in revenue. But we expect this to stabilize and normalize in the coming quarter. Coming to SG&A, of course, this particular quarter, despite having a fairly large one-off expenses in relation to this being our 20th year of our since the time we were set up, and there were certain sort of employee engagement slash gifts related expenses that were incurred in relation to the 20th-year celebrations, which were like a one-off.
Despite that, we have been able to exercise tight control on SG&A, and you will see that SG&A, compared to the previous quarter, came in at almost like 12% lower. This also, to some extent, was impacted or the lower SG&A spends could be attributed to lower travel, which is also a little seasonal because in general, November and December tend to be slower periods in terms of business development-related travel. So that also contributed to the lower SG&A spends in this particular quarter. But going forward, we do expect, even for Q4, SG&A to be in line with what was there in Q3, and therefore, if anything, you will see operating leverage play out, right?
In terms of investments for this particular quarter, we brought in Venky Ramesh, and Rajan will talk a little more about his portfolio, but Venky will be heading our, he'll be the Chief Client Officer for our consumer retail and marketplaces practice. He's someone who comes with deep understanding of the CPG domain and has worked in organizations like EPAM and Infosys in the past. So we were, you know, we brought him on board towards the end of November. We've also continued to invest in client partners in line with our philosophy on deepening client relationships. So we've added client partners across our consumers and technology practice.
We've also brought in an AI lead specifically for our technology practice, and we're already beginning to see quite a few initiatives that are being driven by this new AI lead that we're bringing in. Rajan will elaborate a little more about the strategy on the AI side during his conversation. So net-net, I think, you know, all of this the revenue growth, followed by tighter cost control on SG&A meant that our EBITDA, our reported EBITDA for this quarter came in at 22.4%. However, the adjusted EBITDA, which is adjusted for the transaction-related cost, came in at about 23%. If you were to add back the one-time Labor Code- related restructuring cost, the adjusted EBITDA for this quarter would be closer to about 24.6%.
On a full-year basis, we expect that our business EBITDA would be closer to about 24%, right, which is in line with what we had guided earlier in the year. That and EPS for this quarter, of course, came in much better. So you will see that the growth in EPS and EBITDA was much better than the revenue growth. There was, of course, a small benefit that we also had on account of ESOP exercise. So this is the last tranche of ESOPs that were given out pre-IPO that vested in this particular quarter. And in the U.S. typically, ESOPs are exercised, you do get a this is a allowable tax expense, and we did see the benefit of that coming through in this particular quarter.
And that resulted in a lower tax outflow compared to the previous quarter. But net-net, our EPS, as a result of this, grew by about 13% in comparison to the previous quarter. With that, I'm going to now hand it over to Rajan to talk a little more about the business and the strategy going forward, and we can later on open up for Q&A. Thanks. Thanks, Rajan?
Yeah. Hey. Thanks, Raj. Raj has covered quite a bit of the stuff, so I'm just going to add additional points that I thought might be of interest. One of the things that we are currently undertaking is an exercise around rebuilding our consulting practice, aligned with what the market expectations are.
If you remember, we have talked about our consulting capabilities and the work that we are doing related to analytics, roadmaps and prioritization of initiatives in the past. This was being done with a team that was cutting across all of our industry entities, bringing in capabilities related to functional areas as well as work related to preparing those kind of roadmaps and doing the fuzzy problem-solving. We have now reoriented the team to be a little bit more integrated with the entities, in the sense that even if we talk about, say, supply chain skills or marketing analytics skills, we feel that there are differences between what needs to be brought to the table from industry to industry. So therefore, rather than just have a common team, we are rebuilding the team with a specific domain focus and expertise, right, being the key criteria.
So this is an exercise that will pan out over the next few quarters. The people that we already had, we had reassigned them into the different entities based on their dominant expertise. So this, we will update you more on this in the coming quarters. A second area is the entire Databricks strategy and how it has been executing. Very happy that we are going from strength to strength there. We had talked about a significant bump-up in terms of the revenue coming in from Databricks-related work in comparison to last year. We continue to see that momentum. We had four joint wins along with Databricks in the quarter, right, and with the preceding months.
There are over 30+ leads that have been identified that we are working on, and we also continue to get funding support from Databricks for POCs where the client is looking for some initial investment, right, from Databricks or from our end. And therefore, that is good to see that as well. Overall, I would say that we are on track for the $50 million target that we had from a three-year perspective. A few things that we expect will happen over the next two years to help us get to that number. I mean, more focus on vertical solutions in the retail consumer goods manufacturing space, around migration, around supply chain analytics, around RGM, right, and other vertical solutions that we are building.
We are also expecting that the number of people who are certified and have core expertise will go up from 350 to 600 to 800 right over that period of time. We are adding more people into our on-site domain expertise required to support this growth both from a go-to-market as well as from an architecture solutioning perspective. Potentially, we will also look at acquisition opportunities in this space, specifically related to SAP. Given Databricks' partnership with SAP, that's one area that we are looking at in terms of other good opportunities there where we can get a significant bump-up right in terms of the capability that we bring to the table. A third point that I wanted to address is the Diamond Account Strategy that I had talked about in the past.
If you remember, we had mentioned that we have identified 25+ diamond accounts, which we believe will give the main thrust for the growth that we are anticipating over the next two years. This is continued focus area for us. Of course, we are trying different approaches in terms of how we can not only expand the opportunity landscape but also bring more focused content and value proposition and then have a rigorous discipline process, right, in terms of executing towards that. Raj talked about Venky Ramesh coming on board as the Chief Client Officer for the combined consumer goods retail and marketplaces practice. One of the things that he has been driving over the last couple of months in coming on board is to do a complete review of all the accounts that we have across Decision Point and LatentView.
In our discussions, recently, we spent time on looking at our top six accounts, for example, where we believe while we are currently doing only about $10 million of work, there is potential to do more than $150 million of work, right, in the areas that we have identified. So these are the kind of things that, you know, there'll be a focus on. CPG in particular, we see that our Diamond accounts in the food and beverages space and quick commerce, these are the areas where we will double down, right, in order to drive the growth.
Overall, I also see the similar kind of a trend in some of the larger accounts that we have in technology as well as in financial services, our top account in technology, for example, even with one of the business units that we are working, we see hundreds of millions of dollars of potential in terms of what we can go after as a total addressable market and currently in the process of expanding the relationships, right, in each of those business units. Similarly, the account that has driven the growth for us in the financial services space, we believe that we can double our revenue there, and you know, this could emerge as one of our top 3 accounts, in fact, in the next 2 years, based on just this focused growth strategy around the Diamond accounts.
The expectation and the intent also is that there'll be more integrated value propositions that will cut across multiple areas, that will help us, you know, deepen the penetration and widen that interaction as well, right, across the different businesses, geographies, right, of the clients that we are working with. Finally, I wanted to touch upon the AI strategy and the center of excellence. If you remember, we had announced this at the start of this financial year, in terms of putting our arms around all the work that we were doing, not only in the traditional AI machine learning kind of work but also in terms of generative AI and Agentic.
Over the last few months, we have been doubling down on some of the pieces of work that we are doing and what it means for us in the coming months and coming quarters. So there are three areas that we have identified that we will focus on to drive the growth in this space. One is around conversational analytics. We already have multiple solutions and products that we have built in this space. You will recall AI PenPal, LASER, the Beagle GPT solution that has been built by Decision Point. I have talked about this in the past, and this is an area where we see continued momentum and thrust, and we will focus on this. A second area is what we broadly call business process automation.
This is a space that traditionally has been in the IT services and maybe even the process outsourcing space, but there is opportunity to bring a lot more of an agentic approach to doing this work. We are already doing a bunch of pilots as well as even production-grade projects, leveraging these kind of capabilities. I'll touch upon that in a minute, but this is the second area of attention for us. And then the third is around the general topic of governance, specifically on evals and observability. And we believe that this will become important and significant in the coming quarters and years, especially as organizations double down on bringing in all the data that they have and applying the power of generative and agentic right to driving automation, efficiency right productivity, and so on. Now, how are we going to do this?
There is, again, a three-pronged, kind of, approach. One is, of course, to build very, very strong expertise and capability in the skill sets and the areas that are needed to deliver on this. Second is a very, intentional effort that we are undertaking across the organization in our diamond accounts, in the specific entities, for example, on identifying the kind of processes and the areas that we support our clients where an agentic architecture can drive the type of automation and productivity benefits and efficiency gains that I talked about. This is an exercise that's been underway for the last couple of quarters.
This quarter in particular, there's an initiative that we are doing in one of our top tech accounts called Velocity AI, which has identified over 10 opportunities that we are now engaging with the client on just in this one account. In the retail marketplaces entity, we ran a hackathon that identified over two dozen opportunities, and six of them qualified for final presentations, and three of them we have now selected where we are going to be initiating client conversations on how do we implement the agentic solutions that we have built. Similarly, across the organization, there is an exercise underway to identify more such opportunities.
The intent is to go and have conversations with clients on a proactive basis, telling them that, the work that we are currently doing or work that's being done from a process automation perspective by others, here is a completely new approach, using agentic architectures, which will drive that kind of benefits and, get a leg up in terms of, positioning ourselves for, for grabbing a larger share, right, of the work that's being done in that area. Finally, the third aspect of how, the AI strategy will pan out will be related to, investments that we make, in, partnerships as well as, maybe even strategic stakes in smaller, organizations that are building very specific solutions. Again, this is something that we discussed extensively in the board meeting yesterday, and, there is good alignment, on this approach.
This is something that, again, we will expect to pan out over the next several quarters. There are already multiple candidates that are on the table that we are evaluating, each of them bringing very, very specific solutions to areas that can be addressed using the generative and agentic approach. And we expect to make some of those investments in the coming quarters. So broadly, that's what we expect will drive the action in this space. I know that it's been a long introduction, but we wanted to cover the ground on some of the stuff. But we will stop here to take questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then one on their touch-tone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Srinivasu K. from TIA. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Congratulations for the great set of Q3 numbers. You mentioned that four joint wins and the 30+ leads with DBX and also funding support for POCs. So can you quantify Q3 Databricks linked revenue, and also what is the expected conversion rate for these 30 leads, at least for next couple of quarters?
Right. The conversion rate is a little easier. I mean, we are seeing at least 30%-35% success there. I mean, these leads, at least in terms of the early traction that we are seeing. The good thing with Databricks is that, while obviously, there's a universe of opportunities that you can follow, they are also very, very focused in terms of how they want to take the Databricks solutions to market. And there is a lot of internal validation that happens before the joint approach, and the proposition is built, right, for the particular opportunity. So in general, I would say the conversion rates are better, right, than what we right now we have seen with other partners.
For the four logos that we've won, I think, this year, if I'm not mistaken, the revenue that's come in through the joint approach is close to $1.7 million. This is out of a total of $16 million-$17 million that we are likely to do. So it's about 10% revenue coming in through the go-to-market action that Databricks is driving for us. I'm expecting that percentage will increase in the coming quarters. Of course, the rest of the money has been on the back of accounts that we have won ourselves or we have been doing work with them in the past, and we've either helped implement the Databricks environment or we have helped deliver use cases on top of a Databricks environment. So that's a broad projection that we have, right?
So in the expectation that $16-$17 million number, which is the overall Databricks revenue, that is the number that is expected to get to the $50 million mark in a couple of years from now.
Thank you, sir. Regarding your AI accelerators, like MARKEE, MigrateMate, some of them I've seen in your website. Across this, analytics, agentic automation, governance, what, what accelerators do sell repeat, repeatedly today? Like, is it, like, price, like fixed price or subscription, or, or is it, like, part of services?
Largely part of services, at this time. I mean, in fact, you used the word accelerators as well. So we are some of these, these are positioned as brick builder solutions. In most instances, they are in the nature of assets and accelerators. The one solution where there is a significant chunk being delivered out of the box is the MigrateMate solution, right? So the migration work, we have built a fairly strong suite of accelerators integrated into the solution. So that makes the job a lot easier. So while there is significant nonlinearity because of the effort reduction, they are still being delivered as a combination with the services model. So we still price based on the overall effort. To some extent, the migrators and the accelerators help position us better in terms of the pace at which the project can be executed.
Okay. So one general question, sir. What prevents our Indian outsourcing system integrators from copying these accelerators? Like, what is LatentView's defensible IP?
Actually, nothing prevents them. I mean, it is just a question of focused effort, right, in that area and the extent to which you are able to bring the combination of the domain technologies, architecture, expertise, and the strength of the relationship that you are able to build with the partner ecosystem as well. So it's just a combination of all of these things. In general, I mean, and this hypothesis can be validated otherwise. I mean, smaller companies are able to act with a bit more agility on these matters, whereas it could be a more cumbersome process, right, in larger organizations. That doesn't mean that they will not be able to do these things or replicate.
I mean, there is obviously a need to continuously look at how we can stay at the leading edge in terms of the kind of problems that can be solved and how it can be addressed using a generative or agentic or any approach, right, for that matter, and how it can be built and integrated into the partner platforms and the solutions that we are working with. So it's, it's just a question of how quickly you can move, the domain expertise that you are able to bring to the problem, your articulation of the value proposition, right, in the conversations that, that you're having, and, and the extent of connect and relationship, right, with the partner itself. So it's, it's a combination of all of these.
I mean, Databricks, for example, they had identified us as one of the few generative AI partners, right, that they are working with. And we have done several workshops along with them. It is not because domain expertise doesn't reside in other companies. It's just, like, how well we are able to bring all that to bear very quickly, using the new approaches, right, and the way we are able to articulate that. So that's what we hear from them, right, in terms of why they prefer to work with partners who are native to the AI ecosystem, for example. But I think the same hypothesis will extend, right, to the other topics as well.
Thank you so much, sir. All the best for the Q4.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all the parties in the conference, please restrict your questions to each per participant. You may rejoin the queue for follow-up questions. Our next question comes from the line of Srinath V. from Bellwether Capital Private Limited . Please go ahead.
Congratulations, guys, on the good set of numbers. Rajan, just wanted to understand this Databricks $15-$16 million, where would it, you know, be reported? Would this be largely in CPG and our industrials practice? Because the growth in those two practices has been a little soft, you know, so wanted to understand how they flow into our numbers. And second is, going forward, as, as these businesses scale, as the, you know, Databricks start funding our projects and bringing us leads, again, would it be fair to assume that these two practices will actually lead growth for us probably in FY 2027 or FY 2028? You know, just wanted, wanted some views on the same.
Yeah. Thanks, Srinath. Right, I mean, till date, the growth, in relation to the Databricks revenue has been largely led by the work that we do in the consumer goods space, in the industrial space, and in tech itself, in technology itself. And as I mentioned earlier, it is not necessarily all revenue related to LatentView going in and doing a Databricks implementation. I mean, that piece of work will be a part of it. But in many instances, it's the delivery of analytics use cases on an existing Databricks environment, right, that the client already has. And as we execute those use cases, there might be other additional data, right, that moves from whatever legacy or siloed ecosystems that they have. And we'll then take responsibility for moving that data and integrating into the overall picture.
I'm expecting that the growth will continue in those sectors. In fact, I mentioned that CPG, retail, manufacturing, right, these are sectors that we are expecting. The good news or the traction that we are seeing in the industrials manufacturing space is something that is giving comfort. In fact, we won a substantial engagement with an auto component manufacturer. And we are seeing quite a bit of traction there. In fact, after the next couple of days in the Bay Area, I'm actually proceeding to Detroit, where I'll be spending three days. There is a quarterly business revenue meeting happening there with this client. And we are expecting that there'll be more work that will need to be done, right, in on top of the Databricks environment.
So those sectors, right, technology, consumer goods, manufacturing, these are the ones where we see further action in the coming quarters.
Just taking forward on this question, you know, how do we understand in again, in the current business between pure migration and, say, use case-driven implementation of, of this suite of products within the, you know, customer who already have Databricks? You know, how, how is this mix for us, and how is it likely to, you know, progress over the next, you know, few years?
Our mix, interestingly, is the flip of what Databricks themselves are experiencing. In our case, only 20% or less of the revenue will be coming in from the migration, the hardcore migration work. Much more of it really happens on the back of the analytics use cases that we deliver, right, closer to 80%. But Databricks has also called out that, while in fact their own origins are more from a analytics machine learning perspective, right, in comparison to other hyperscalers or even a Snowflake, they continue to see a lot of traction just in getting the migration done. And they are also making it a lot easier for companies to move data into their ecosystem as well as leave it there and do analytics, right, even without moving.
I mean, their entire partnership with SAP, for example, is based on the premise that you don't need to necessarily move all the data at one shot or anything. You can continue to operate in an environment where a lot of the data resides in SAP, but you still use Databricks, right, for the analytics use cases. On the back of all of this, I'm expecting that the 20% will get bigger. In fact, the MigrateMate solution is seeing traction. This auto component manufacturer that I mentioned, for example, there is quite a bit of work around moving the data, right, into the Databricks environment. Several of the leads that I mentioned earlier, the 10 leads, are related to that as well. My expectation is that the 20% will likely become 30%-40%, right, in the coming quarters.
Thank you. Thanks a lot. I'll get back to the questions queue.
Yeah. Sure.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Prithesh Thakkar from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Oh, yeah. Hello.
Yeah. Prithesh, go ahead. Yeah.
Yeah. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. And thanks for giving me an opportunity. I just had a question on. I know Raj commentary indicated that there is some follow-up work anticipated, but it has gone on a pause mode. Just wanted to understand, will it be a growth headwind going into FY 2027? And, along with it, you know, one of the beverages company also indicated there is some slowdown. So if you can put a color on that, on the retailing CPG part of the business? Absolutely. A color I guess.
So, Prithesh, if I hear your question right, you're talking about some of the, firstly, the, you know, the maybe the headwind that you're seeing for some of our in some of the technology accounts. That's the one that you were talking about. The second one, it's around the sluggishness in the beverage company. I'll address the second one, first. See, in terms of the sluggishness in terms of the muted performance for CPG retail, in relation to the previous quarter while when I think the last quarter, at least, you know, the last couple of quarters have been fairly strong in terms of growth momentum for CPG in retail.
Last quarters specifically, while there was anticipation, because of quite a few, you know, deals and opportunities that were there in the pipeline, right, these were multiple, small value projects, which is typically the engagement model that we have with this large beverage manufacturer where we provide several point solutions or, in fact, execute RGM projects for specific products, you know, products in specific markets. That's the nature of the engagement with the client. There were multiple of such opportunities that were there in the pipeline, which, in reality, did not, we were not able to close them out in time for us to book the revenues. The good news is that these are now beginning to sort of get firmed up and signed up.
You will start seeing expansion in the CPG vertical in this particular quarter, especially Q4, right, because we've seen a lot of these pipeline opportunities getting closed. Specifically in relation to the headwinds that we are seeing in technology, I wouldn't say it's a broad-based vertical specific issue. It's probably more a client-specific, you know, I would say, you know, condition or situation that is playing out where one of the stakeholders that we work with in this, you know, large account is reevaluating the way they engage with contractors or vendors. This particular person is someone who typically prefers to work with FTEs as opposed to contractors. And therefore, you know, there is some relook at the way they're engaging with not just with us, with other vendors as well.
So I think this sort of pause and wait condition will go on till about 31st of March, post which we are expecting that there will be enhanced clarity in terms of the way forward for this year, right? But what this meant is that there is some level of either consolidation as or budget cuts that have been enforced across the entire organization. And we will see some level of impact from this to play out in especially in Q4 of the current year for the technology vertical. But on the positive side, while there is dependency or there is a very large revenue dependency from this particular stakeholder, there are multiple other threads that we have opened up in this large account. You know, these are in relation to people analytics.
These are in relation to, you know, some of, even supply chain practice that we are trying to get into, the devices practice. So there are multiple other threads that are going on right now, which should partially offset the drop in revenue that we anticipate from this particular consolidation exercise. We expect the net impact of this to be in the order of, say, maybe, you know, on an annualized basis, between $5 million-$6 million of revenue, on an annualized basis. But as we plan for the next year, like I said, we anticipate that this shortfall, as we begin this year, will be made up by wins that we will get from other stakeholders. I hope that answers your question, Prithesh.
Understood. This is really helpful. And on the tech side, I mean, on the top two account, just wanted to, you know, earlier also, you indicated that we had some, you know, productivity pass-throughs or productivity benefit that we called out last quarter. So that is there still on a, I would say, still, you know, impacting our top line? Or you believe as we assume FY 2027, that thing will go away and incrementally you would start, you know, fetching volume from there?
So in terms of productivity benefits, I mean, let me take that question. So the productivity benefits is not necessarily in terms of the revenue impact because of team size reductions at this time. Because in general, even with, especially with tech accounts, we have been already proactive in terms of proposing the right kind of team sizes, right, based on what we already see as efficiencies that can come through. The contracting and engagement is still being done in an effort-based model. The reduction or the revenue impact in this large account is mainly on because of their changing priorities in relation to freeing up capital for investments that they are making, right, in other areas like data centers, for example, right, or LLM models and so on.
In general, in the tech space, there is a bit of softness on lower priority analytics initiatives. They will pick only the most impactful ones. Every organization obviously has a spectrum of initiatives where they are trying to get as much benefit out of even nuanced decision-making as possible. Because that is what got reset a bit because of all the money flowing right into capital expenditure on the LLM on the AI infrastructure front. I'm expecting some amount of normalization will happen right over the next few quarters. I mean, we are also pivoting on how even those investments that they are making can benefit their organization. So while they're building a lot of this for their own clients, it's also a question of how do they use it internally right?
So, I talked about this Velocity AI initiative that we are running, right, with this particular account that is mainly aimed at identifying use cases where their investments and what they have built, in terms of modeling capabilities, can be turned to their own business, right, running their business. So, I'm expecting, therefore, some of that traction to come back as they make the pivotal.
Understood. So given all these puts and takes, I mean, do you believe FY 2027 could be, you know, a year where we can replicate a similar growth to what we are, you know, anticipating in FY 2026?
So that's the intent. I mean, we did a ground-up exercise, just preceding this board meeting. And we have received a set of numbers, based on where the current set of discussions are leading to. Now, we will be refining these over the next month and a half, right, before we wrap up the fiscal, so that we are having more confidence, right, in terms of what we are able to project for the next year. The just the trajectory that is called for to get to that $200 million number will require close to a 30% kind of a growth, right? So that's what we'll be targeting. But I'll be able to give you a better update on what the specific numbers would be, right, that will be able to provide us guidance, when we get to the next quarter.
Understood. And the last one on the, you know, severance pay of 70 bp s that we incurred this quarter so that will be a tailwind in fourth quarter. Is it a right assumption?
That is correct. Yeah. No, so definitely, yeah. The severance of about $200,000 that was paid out will obviously not be recurring in the next year, right? So it will be a tailwind for the following quarter.
Definitely. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you. My next question comes from the line of Aditi Patil from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for giving me an opportunity. Congratulations on good set of numbers. My first question is on renewals. So, can you talk about how renewals panned out this quarter? And did we see the overall TCV intact? Or did we see any pricing pressures and reduction in TCV in the renewal component?
So in terms of renewals for this quarter, like I said, except for this one specific account, Aditi, where there were, and this is more a stakeholder-specific situation that we are currently handling, right? We have not seen any pressure in terms of either volumes for the next year going down or requests for price reduction, right? In fact, in our number two account, which is also a tech account, we in fact were able to get a price increase, right? Likewise, with one of our largest industrials accounts, an account which is a $3 million+ account, we were again able to secure a 5% price increase, right?
So overall, I would say renewals for the next year, you know, continue to look fairly healthy, with no, you know, big anticipated budget cuts as well as price reductions, except this one particular large account where, like I already mentioned, the impact would be anywhere between $5 million-$6 million in terms of volume reduction. This is just more of a, I would say, a client-specific issue where they're deciding to do either more work in-house or just eliminate some of the these positions, right, because they are trying to restructure and bring things under a more central umbrella. So, definitely not a case of us losing work to competition in this particular case. It's just more a case of the company itself consolidating the work that they're doing.
Apart from that, most of the renewals are already in the bag. In fact, even with the large financial services account, we see very, very solid while there was a big ramp-up that we saw through the course of this year, we have a fairly good degree of confidence in terms of our ability to scale this account. So this year, we should end the year with about $7 million revenue from this $7 million-$7.5 million. We already have visibility for, I would say, clocking close to about $10 million-plus from this particular account for the next year, right? This is including renewals and extensions that are likely to happen through the course of the year. And of course, these are also based off discussions and planning sessions that we are continuing to have with clients, right?
So all in all, I would say, still fairly strong, renewals except for this one situation with the large account.
Okay. Got it. And on margins, so if we look at the nine-month FY 2026 EBITDA margins excluding the one-time labor code impact and the restructure, the transaction charges, it is around 23.6%. You mentioned that for full year, you are expecting 24%. So that means in Q4, the margins would be like upwards of 24%. Is my understanding correct? And what would be the tailwinds, if that is correct?
That is correct. On a full year basis, we expect the margins to be closer to 24%, Aditi. The tailwind there will be two specific tailwinds, right? So one, of course, we expect that while we have been extremely conservative in our, when we did the exercise, even though we have appointed a consultant to do a full-blown exercise on restructuring of salary components to comply with the labor code, and that exercise is currently underway, we have been conservative in terms of provisioning for the full impact on gratuity and post-retirement benefits, when we published the results for Q3. And that is the reason why there was an impact of almost 1.6% on the EBITDA.
This apart from this, the severance pay that I already did mention about, those would be a cost that we will not incur in the subsequent sort of quarter. Incrementally, you will also note that while historically, Q4 is the period in which they have been, you know, we incur substantial costs in relation to visa sponsorship, this year, given the changes in the visa regime and also the changes in the way companies are actually hiring, right, people with work permits, we anticipate that the outlay towards visa costs also will be substantially lower compared to earlier years, right, or in fact, even the earlier quarter.
All of this would mean that the EBITDA for the next quarter should could be closer to about 25%, right, between 24.5%-25% just for the quarter, which will mean that on a full-year basis, our EBITDA will be closer to 24%.
Okay. Got it. And on the restructuring part, I think the majority of the restructuring is in sales and marketing because QoQ drop in sales and marketing is higher. So, and you have also added talent in some of the high-growth areas. So, can you talk a bit more about your thought process in sales and marketing investments and rationalization at the same time?
So, I mean, sales and marketing in particular, it is always a continuous process of evaluation and figuring out whether the people that we bring in, right, that we have are able to stay in touch and in pace with, right, what the market is expecting. I mean, this, given the dynamic nature of the space, the ability to solution along with the clients in a very consultative kind of a model is an important criteria. So there will always be a natural process of evaluating and then adjusting for that.
The ramp-up that we have been doing over the last several quarters has been aligned with the Diamond Account Strategy, right, that that I talked about earlier, where we said that we need more people for the mining and farming, so client partners, account managers, part of the entity organizations as opposed to just pure hunters. This is something that we will continue to evaluate. Two other areas which we are experimenting with. One is whether there is a regional construct, right, which is more geographic rather than an industry-specific kind of a model. And second is the ramp-up that we are doing in relation to Databricks as well as the AI Center of Excellence. We have been bringing in people at the front end, both domain experts as well as go-to-market people, who will support the execution of the strategy related to Databricks and AICoE.
This, again, will be an area of focus as we move forward. So there will be a slow uptick in the numbers as we see growth in the revenue. But the churn and the reorganization is just the routine aspect of making sure that the team is effective.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, please limit yourselves to two questions each per participant and can rejoin the queue for follow-up questions. Our next question comes from the line of Sushovan from Anand Rathi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Is my voice audible?
Yes, sir. You're audible.
Yes.
Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. So just one question and two bookkeeping questions. The first one was basically, in another couple of years from now, how do you envisage your vertical mix to be? Will it be more, if there is some sort of flavor that you can provide? And on the bookkeeping questions, basically, what do you think would be your steady state margins and steady state tax rates? I think those are the two questions I had. All the others have been answered in essence.
Yeah. Let me answer the vertical mix question, and I'll pass it to Raj. We have already alluded to the growth that we are witnessing in financial services, right? And even consumer goods, I'm expecting that there will be accelerated growth there given the investments, also the renewed energy, right, with which we are approaching that space. Industrials, I am still a little unsure because the general macroeconomic challenges have impacted that space the most. But having said that, there are conversations in just a much longer sales cycle. And in technology, we talked about the headwinds related to priorities that tech companies have, at least the big ones have, right, in relation to the AI infrastructure investments that they are making. So we will have to see how that pans out.
But taking all of this into account, I would say that over the next couple of years, financial services and consumer goods will become larger shares of the revenue, right, that we'll be delivering. And tech will become slightly smaller because of some of the issues. Industrials could. There is an opportunity to grow there if things become a little less uncertain. But that is something that I would have to wait before I comment on. Yeah.
Sushavan, on the margins question, right, so obviously, this year, like I said, right, I mean, and as is the case with even the last couple of years, what you would have noted is, typically, we begin the year with margins, which are quite muted, primarily on account of one, you know, we start the year with higher visa costs plus all the impact of the wage hikes, typically tend to dent the margin profile of the business, at the beginning of the year. But as we go along during the year, revenue growth that sort of pans out in Q2 and Q3 starts improving the overall margin profile.
On a full year basis, we typically tend to track closer to about 24-20, you know, so this year we are guided that, you know, 23%-24% is the range in which we would like to operate, right, and while in the past that range is probably 24%-25%. Now, while we will sort of deliver to that promise, this year our endeavor, of course, is you know, and which is what we don't want to lose sight of, is to get to that $200 million revenue, right, by 2000, FY 2028.
Therefore, that will mean that we may need to make some investments early on in this year, right, and there are a few, you know, critical, I would say, senior roles that we will want to definitely look at, as we look to build out the sort of team muscle to deliver that $200 million. This coupled with also investment that will be needed on the AICoE and R&D side will also be very necessary for us to be relevant as well as, in some sense, build solutions that are forward-looking, right? So those investments will also be necessary.
And third, of course, while we've been a little slow on the M&A front, over the last, you know, 12-18 months, we wanted the Decision Point integration to be fully successful, as well as us had to have some reasonable level of confidence on the valuation numbers, right, because you would note that the industry itself is going through quite a bit of a change and shift with revenue models being challenged, effort-based pricing being sort of, you know, again, you know, revisited, things like that. So we've been very cautious in terms of spending dollars to acquire companies. But we anticipate that some of that will change now. We will look at a multipronged approach of investing in organic ways, you know, one of which could be, say, investments in companies that are building very, very interesting agentic AI-based technology.
Two, we could also partner with some of these, these companies, as opposed to investing where we jointly go to market, along with them. And third would, of course, be acquiring companies, under the traditional M&A playbook, right? And here, we could also potentially look at, larger ticket-sized, deals, right? So while I'm giving a fairly long-winded answer, to the question on margins, the reality today is that we need to make investments, for us to get to that $200 million mark. Right now, while we end the year with about $120 million, there's an $80 million gap that we need to cover. Some of that will come through M&A. But then the vast majority of it needs to come through organic growth for which we'll need investments both on the innovation side as well as go-to-market side.
We'll be in a much better position to guide you on the full year margins, right? So we don't want to give out quarterly guidances on margins because a lot of times, investments are front-loaded, and therefore, they could have temporary impacts on quarterly margins. But on a full year basis, you know, what we will definitely aim to do is not substantially disrupt our margin profile. But we could potentially see some front-ending of these investments, which could mean a 1%-2% drop in the EBITDA margins in the coming year. But those are necessary for us to get to that $200 million mark, right? The second question around ETR, again, while I, you know, this is more of a bookkeeping question.
On a long-term, sustained basis over a three to five year period, I would guide you guys to model an ETR of between 26%-27% because those are, I would say, the maximum tax rates across all the jurisdictions that we currently operate in. So 26%-27% is safer to assume. These benefits, so-called benefits that we sometimes get from exercise of ESOP options also will continue to sort of keep coming down. We do not anticipate any further benefit on tax from exercise of options. I mean, that number will keep sort of coming down. So it will not have a meaningful impact on the overall ETR for the group. So you can safely assume that 26%-27% will be the annualized ETR for the group.
Thank you so much for the elaborate answer. Just, just one last question. This, ESOP expenses, they do hit your, EBITDA also, right? I mean.
They do. They do. Yeah. So the ESOP—no, no. So what hits are, obviously, the ESOP expense hits are ETR. But there's a slight, you know, difference in the way ESOP is treated between India and the U.S. In India, the differential between the current fair market value of the share as on the date of the exercise and the exercise price cannot be claimed by the company as an allowable expense, okay? When we do ours, the employee pays full taxes on this as part of personal taxation. The company does not get; it cannot claim this as a payroll cost while filing for taxes.
But in the U.S., it is slightly different because for our U.S.-based employees, whatever is the differential between the exercise price and the fair market value as on the date of the exercise can be claimed as an allowable expense while filing taxes, right? So that's the slight disconnect. So every time we have an exercise, to the extent there are employees in the U.S. who exercise shares, we are able to claim that as a payroll cost. And that reduces our overall ETR. So it's a differential between while for the purpose of books, we will not be showing this as payroll cost, but only in tax when we file for taxes, we'll be claiming this as an allowable expense. So there is a differential treatment over there.
and that is what you see, resulting in a lower ETR, especially when in periods where the ESOP excise window is open.
Thank you so much. I think this was.
All right. We have time for a couple more questions. We'll wrap up by 7:15, our time. It's like 8:45 India.
Yeah.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shubham Sehgal from SIMPL. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, sir. You're audible. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question was, so, most pure play and Accenture-like firms today, they appear largely interchangeable to the enterprise buyers with similar talent pools, partner certifications, and overlapping use cases. So from a client's perspective, what are the two or three tangible reasons to LatentView over the other pure play firms? And how does this differentiation further show up in the win rates, deal sizes, or wallet share expansion rather than just, you know, like capability narratives?
I'll call out two things, actually. You have talked about this essentially in the past answer, right? One is, in general, our relationships tend to be a lot more on the business side, right, rather than the CEO organization because analytics use is typically driven by that. Therefore, there's a very, very strong connection to the business, right, the business problem understanding, the context we want, which makes it different, of course, than the technology that we have become.
Sorry to interrupt, sir. Your voice is getting chipped in between right now.
Okay. Yeah. So, it's really the connect and the domain understanding because we largely work with the business sponsors and the stakeholders more than the CIO/CTO organization. While it's an advantage, in some instances, it can be a disadvantage as well, I mean, because larger data engineering and IT initiatives tend to be driven more by the CIO/CTO organization. This is something that we are also understanding and navigating, right, as we move forward. But this is a differentiator, just a very, very close connect and proximity to the business side of things, right?
The second is our front-row seat in terms of working with the top tech companies, right, in the Bay Area and the Silicon Valley who are, in some sense, right, leading the race in terms of inventing the next new when it comes to AI and GenAI and Agentic and all that. And that gives us a certain degree of credibility, right, in terms of how we are able to talk about all of these technologies and tools and approaches, right, being brought to bear on the problems, right, that they are trying to address. I would really call out these two. Of course, there will be implications in terms of the profile of people, right, the training that we provide, how connected and close we are to the leading edge of everything that is happening, right, and all that.
And then, if you're able to marry that all with the nimbleness and the agility, right, that a smaller organization brings, then that is what kind of differentiates us. So, as I answered an earlier question, right, even in today's call, this is not like rocket science, or it's not like other organizations cannot replicate it. But, I mean, historically, it has always been a challenge for larger organizations given the multiple things that they focus on or are their own internal mechanisms and processes and so on. Obviously, as long as we are able to bring these kind of differentiators to the table, we continue to stay relevant, right, and clients reach out to us.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Surbhi from Bellwether Capital Private Limite d. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. My question is on the data engineering side. We've, you know, displayed a lot of excitement for this stream of work. Wanted to understand the kind of growth that we've seen in this side of the practice, especially as we move towards doing more end-to-end deals. Do we have a higher share of work coming on the data engineering side leading up to predictive and the consulting side of the work?
Yeah. I mean, it's been on the ramp up over the last, several quarters. It's also accelerated by the Databricks partnership. I mean, I mentioned how, just the data engineering work of getting the platform ready and, in some sense, creating that kind of an integrated picture across their multiple siloed ecosystems, right, that'll be very important prerequisite for getting any kind of analytics done, right, leave alone generative and agentic. Generative and agentic will mean that you, you need to pay attention to this even more, right? I talked about, how governance evals and observability will become important, right, in the scheme of things. This will mean that there will be even more requirements around metadata, governance-related metadata that needs to be captured and utilized, on any analytics, right, that gets done.
So it's not just about having some simple guidance and rules, but at the individual data element level, you might have metadata requirements related to who can access it, how long can they access it, for what purpose can they access it, when does it need to be deleted, whether it can be accessed in an aggregated form or a masked form, right, or at a granular form, right? I mean, all of these things will dramatically increase the quantum of data and metadata that needs to be managed along with the complex set of rules and requirements surrounding that, which naturally means that data engineering will be a fairly important aspect, right, of work that remains to be done.
Even the entire business process automation that I alluded to earlier, that can be done only if there is a great degree of confidence and faith in the data that supports, right, the execution of the process. So taking all of this into account, I would say that data engineering will continue to be a fairly significant component and piece of the work. And I'm expecting when we get to that $200 million mark that we have been talking about, definitely 25% of the work, right, that we are doing should be in the data engineering space. All right. We'll try to wrap up here.
Thank you.
At your time constraints. Thank you all for joining today. I will hand the floor back to the moderator.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Latent View Analytics Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.