Ladies and gentlemen, good day. Welcome to the PB Fintech earnings call for quarter four, financial year 2022, 2023. We have with us Mr. Yashish Dahiya, Chairman, Mr. Alok Bansal, Executive Vice Chairman, Mr. Sarbvir Singh, Joint Group CEO, Mr. Naveen Kukreja, CEO Paisabazaar, Mr. Mandeep Mehta, Group CFO, Ms. Rasleen Kaur, Head Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may enter star 1 on their touch-tone phone. To remove yourself from the queue, please enter star 2. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star 0 on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Yashish Dahiya. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you very much. Apologies for the late start. We've had a bit of a lead line issue and that's where I'm also taking this call from a mobile. We're all taking this call from a mobile for that reason. Apologies in advance for any drop in quality, etc . Without further ado, we are laying out our performance results for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2023. Which is a month year. Our revenue grew to INR 2,558 crores, marking growth of 80% over year 2022. Our Q4 revenue is INR 859 crores, which is 61% YOY growth.
PAT loss reduced from INR 220 crores in the previous year to INR 9 crores in the previous year's same quarter to INR 9 crores this year. That's a margin of about -1%. It was -41% last year. We were on an Adjusted EBITDA basis. We were INR 28 crores positive for Q4, which is 3% margin. This last year was -INR 80 crores, which is -15% margin. Both the growth of the core business as well as new initiatives, loss reduction have contributed to this. Our existing business Adjusted EBITDA increased by INR 54 crores for the quarter and INR 218 crores for the year as compared to the same period last year.
If you recollect, we had spoken about INR 150 crore-INR 200 crore every year kind of increment. That's INR 218 crore in the last year. This growth is driven by primarily three things. Renewal income, which is the most, you know, robust part of the growth, obviously, because that's sort of done because of our past network, not the B2C network. Growth of new business and higher efficiencies on new business. Our annual run rate on the renewal income is now INR 388 crore, which was INR 265 crore last year in the same quarter. This typically operates at about 85% margin and is a significant source of profit growth. We are now at an annual run rate of INR 14,000 crore insurance premium.
The operating metrics we look at is the premium per inquiry, which is now at 1,754, which is our highest ever. It is 27% higher than last year. I have to add here that while this is for the quarter, this is for the for the full year. March will have some contribution too, because March was a bit of an exceptional month from a savings business perspective, where certain tax advantages led to higher sales of the savings products than usual. Our fee pack continues to stay at 88%. Our existing business did INR 504 crores for Q4. Out of this, credit linked revenue was INR 120 crores.
The credit business continues to grow quite decently and has been EBITDA positive now since December 2022. We are now at a run rate of about INR 16,000 crore dispersals and more than half a million credit card issuances on an annualized basis. Approximately 35 million customers have accessed the credit score platform. In the credit cards, the key theme and in lending, the key theme is digitization. Today, 75% of the cards being issued are end-to-end digital. While this may not seem like a lot, in the past this was not the case. It was much lower. Until a few years ago, end-to-end digital was almost negligible. Co-created product strategy is shaping up well, with now 6 products we have which are on, you know, a co-created platform.
Our new initiative revenue has obviously grown quite well. That is INR 355 crores in Q4. The Adjusted EBITDA loss on new initiatives is INR 36 crores. Again, moving from a margin of minus INR 61 crores to a margin of, you know, minus a few percentage points given where we are right now. This is clear that while we have grown, you know, our losses have come down. If you recollect, our new initiative losses had peaked at INR 90 crores. We are down to INR 36 crores now. PB Partners, our agency aggregator platform continues to lead the market in scale and efficiency of operations. It has the highest proportion of non-motor business, now 34% and is presently in 15,000 PIN codes in India. Our UAE business has grown to 0.7x.
Essentially, new initiatives currently doing well, currently scale well. We are fairly hopeful of having a positive PAC in our current year, which is 2023, 2024. Happy to take questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Participants, to ask a question you may press star and 1. The first question is from the line of Madhukar Ladha from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Hi. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. I want to get a sense of, you know, March as you said, was an exceptional month. Maybe you could give us some color on how much you would quantify as additional insurance sales in the month of March. Also, my sense is that there could also be some pre-buying given that the tax incentives expire. Although the ticket sizes would not have been more than INR 5 lakhs, even in the lower ticket size we could have seen some pre-buying. Maybe you could help us understand what you're seeing over there.
I will request Sarbvir to answer this question.
Hi. March affected mainly our savings business, both on the core side as well as in PB Partners. We estimate, I mean, this is a difficult one to say with accuracy, but we estimated that, you know, in our overall business, I mean, if you look at our overall, roughly INR 2,100-2,200 crores of business, 7-8% difference could be there because of March. Yes, you are absolutely right that clearly in April there was an impact of excess, or there was some demand which got pulled forward into March. Clearly April was low. You've seen in that team because I'm sure you would have seen that.
That's the savings business. On the terms and loan business, clearly April has been a pretty strong month year-on-year.
Understood. Got it. You know, second, I want to ask a question on PB Partners. Now, this is the Q1 where we'll see some renewal revenue, correct me if I'm wrong, in PB Partners. I want to understand what will be the economics of the renewal business in PB Partners.
I would say that renewal revenue is still small in PB Partners, partly because the renewal rates in this business are not as good as the renewal rates in our direct to consumer business. Right now I wouldn't necessarily call them out and say that it would be a big issue or a big delta. As far as the economics is concerned, the economics are slightly better on the renewal than they are on the fresh business as you would imagine. Again, it's not a meaningful number at this point.
The take rates would be equivalent on the renewal business, as they would be on the new business on the PB Partners side?
Pretty much. I would say pretty much because, you know, the renewal business works a lot based like a new business almost in motor insurance. Largely the renewal business is on the motor portfolio. The life portfolio will not exist here, right?
Right.
On the motor side, the renewal is pretty close to the new business. On the life business, the economics will be different, right? There the renewal revenue is obviously different than the fresh.
Right. Understood. Understood. I haven't gotten a chance to obviously take a look at your presentation because, things were delayed and it's just now just come right while the call was on. What was the growth in new business for term and health? Have you called that out?
We don't call that out, separately. We don't call out, segment by segment. New business growth was, 31%.
For all of life or this is life and general put together?
Yeah. We're looking at life and health.
Life that's term and health, right then, 31%?
That's term, savings and health, right.
Oh, even savings. Okay. Understood.
Yeah.
Understood. All right. That's it from my side. I'll come back in the queue as I go through the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arjun Vikas from Alpha Wave Global. Please go ahead.
Hi. Am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
Hi. Hi, AC. Hi, Sarbvir. Actually it's been a great set of numbers. Just quick a couple of questions. Again, didn't have a chance to go through the presentation, but wanted to check if we call out.
Any revenue or growth split on the personal loan side between credit cards and personal loans and other products?
Hi, like we mentioned, we don't give segment-wise growth but segment-wise competition. We have mentioned actually the growth rates for personal loans and credit cards in the presentation. On our ROE basis, around maybe personal grew by 53% and credit card would be in the range of about 80% growth.
Understood. Just a hygiene question. Given the macro environment, you know, that we are in, just want to check on the fixed expenses side, how much of a increase are we expecting in headcount as well as, you know, salary per head, kind of, at an average level going into 2024?
Yeah, I think fixed expenses should increase by about 8% from March to April. Quarter on quarter you should see about a 8% increase. For the year then you should not see an increase from there onwards. I just had a small clarification on the previous question as well, Arjun. Because I know this can cause a calculation mistake. The core business to be very specific, the extra business we got because of the high value or the savings part on the core side was about INR 50 crore, INR 50 crore. You know, as you look at the performance, when you look at that 31% you probably need to take that out to kind of take a genuine year-on-year comparison. Okay.
Thanks. I think that was the previous participant, but understood. No, thank you so much. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi. Congrats on a great result set. Quickly on the piece on how the savings piece would have benefited in March quarter. Right. Currently you're already sitting two months in Q1. Do you see that sort of reversing and on a like-to-like basis there might be a drop in numbers on the premium issue?
I'll take that. I think April clearly you saw the industry was down year-on-year on the retail side. I think that is there. May, we'll have to see how it happens. It may look better than April, but I think there will be an impact. I think this March was an exceptional month, and definitely there'll be some impact into this quarter as well.
Understood. And another question on the new initiatives piece. I see we are now running at almost INR 355 crore in revenue, while the core Policybazaar's revenue is close to INR 390 crore as far as my quick math has helped me. I think with the scale at which it has reached, can we also share some more operating metrics on the line as in like, you mentioned PIN codes, how many partners, what is the churn rate? Any, any first details there?
I think it's best to kind of treat the market where the competitive market, there's a lot less, I think it's best to stay with these numbers. I would also not get carried away by Q4 and, you know, saying that, you know. Both those numbers are not really comparable. These are two very different types of businesses. I think the retail revenue of INR 380 crores or almost INR 400 crores is, I think significantly more valuable than the previous three revenues.
Yeah, I agree. I just mean at the scale at which we are operating it will be great to have some more color there.
Sure. We'll consider that. We'll think about what other metrics we can present.
Just final one question, if I can squeeze in. Any color on what the renewal mix looks like this quarter? I know this is a question that troubles us every quarter.
Renewal mix in sense?
In the core Policybazaar, premium, what % is renewal? The renewal rate has been improving over the years. There's no particular change there.
Our rate is, you know, on a premium basis of the premium that we collected the previous year, this year on health about 103% get renewed. There is no change whatsoever that one needs to talk about in terms of health renewals or any other renewals.
Understood. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nipesh from Investec. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, can you talk about, you mentioned that there are better efficiencies on the new business in our online business? Can you quantify that how the contribution margin or EBITDA margin in the new business panning out on the insurance side?
I think, I would say that, you know, because of the extra gain that we got in Q4, you would have seen throughout the year, we almost take, you know, anywhere between 40%-60% of that incremental revenue falls to the bottom line. In a quarter like Q4, it's towards the higher end of that range. What is really happening is that when you know, when you're able to increase your revenue beyond a certain point, it drops to the bottom line, and that's what really happened. The same three levers that Yashish's mentioned, one is growth in new revenue, I mean, new business. Second, renewal revenue. Third, you know, overall efficiencies that we have in terms of our fixed cost. I think these are the three levers that played out in Q4.
Little bit higher than in previous quarter because the revenue was higher. If you think about it, in the year-on-year on Q4, our core business revenue is up by about INR 118 crores, and that has led to a INR 54 crore extra EBITDA. If you look at an annualized basis, the revenue is up INR 510 crores. That led to a INR 218 crores extra EBITDA. Essentially what Rajbir is saying, roughly 40% plus is going through the EBITDA. If you look at the contribution level, roughly 55%-60%, let's say 55% is flowing into the contribution. Now our margin are not 55%, so that's a combination of renewal revenue being a slightly larger proportion. Maybe you get some impact from that.
The remaining impact is just because, as you grow your, you know, your fixed costs are not growing, you get that impact as well. Some efficiency is on the core business in terms of operating efficiency. Sure. Sure. If you look at from next TPV point of view, I think renewal income are growing, you know, proportion of renewal income growing and improving our profitability is quite clear. Do we also expect that the new business will start to make profit, and there the margins will improve significantly, given the scale that we will reach? We don't do calculations in that manner that new business and renewals business profitability is calculated separately because the renewals cannot happen.
We appreciate without the engine, the bogies can't move. You can't have renewals if you don't have new business. So that's absolutely dependent on it. It's accumulation of the past effort that happened. Thus we cannot think that's important is the new business growth. From a financial perspective, it's important to consider renewals, that's all. But we look at it as an NPV internally. We expect our new business over a medium-ish term to keep growing at 30% year-over-year. That, you know, if we don't grow at that rate then, of course, you know, there... That, that is the question mark. But otherwise, we should because we think industry will grow at about 10%-15%, and we should grow at 2 to 3 times the industry level. Mm-hmm. Sure.
Let me try to flip the question. NPV per unit of premium in the online business has that been trending upwards? If you can just share the degree of increase in NPV as % of premium for us. Let's say in last 3 years it was X%, and now it has become 2X% or something like that. It's a non-GAAP number. Right now it's at about 2.8x, which is basically your NPV divided by direct costs. Let's, you know, if you want a sense of it, that's about 2.8x as of today. Okay. And what was the number approximately, let's say 3 years back or 4 years back, if you can share? See, there are many things here.
See, it depends on mix, it depends on multiple factors. Typically, the way as a management team we decide on such things is not to look at the current year output only. We say, "Does it make sense for the company medium to long term?" Just to give you a very simple example. Suppose in a particular product line, our contribution in the first year is zero. We know at the NPV level this is a very, very healthy business to do. In such a case, we will be very, very clear that we want to increase the new business as much as possible. In the short term it will result into a little bit of mix change and it can look worse as a total % contribution which will come out of it.
Eventually for the company perspective in medium term, that's the best thing to do. Let me share, you know, eventually it's the engine which will drive the bogies. We have to invest in getting more business if it's possible. So as a management team, we are very clear on these things. Now if there's a mix change for a particular reason in a particular quarter, obviously we may see a little different number. Practically, if you look at any particular vertical, whether it's life, whether it's health or motor, and not look at a quarter-on-quarter movement, the things have not changed drastically. There is improvement, which is a very, very gradual slow improvement. So there's no drastic change anywhere as such. Sure. Thank you. Thank you.
Lastly, on the trade business, that business is doing really well in terms of growth, profitability. What is the outlook there? What sort of growth should we envisage in that business over next 2 to 3 years? Sure. As you can see from the presentation, on a full year basis, this business grew by about 10-5%. Our card, credit card issuance growth was higher than that. In credit, if you look at the industry, the industry in a good year grows by about 16, 17, 18%. Every 5, 6 years we have some downturn. On a 5-year, 3-year basis, it grows by about 13, 14%.
We have a similar philosophy that as a digital business, who is in a growth stage, we should grow by about 2-4x of the industry. We are hoping that we can continue to maintain that momentum, which we've done in the last couple of years. On the profitability side, you know, we've now shown and demonstrated that, you know, we're able to operate at 40% or thereabout margin. The incremental business is roughly at that kind of margin. Hence, with the efficiency coming in from a fixed cost perspective, the EBITDA ratios have continuously improved, resulting in, you know, we becoming a little bit better positive from December onwards. We'll continue to see improvement in the ratio going forward. Sure.
Just a follow-up on that, I noticed that the share of trail revenue or trail in disbursement and trail in credit cards has increased. What is driving that? Does it impacting our current, currently, current quarter's revenue on our trade business? Sure. Yeah, like I think, we've seen in the last couple of quarters that we have undertaken a co-creative strategy where we work with the lending partners or credit card partners and co-create the products either to expand the market or innovate on the product or the process side. In some of these partnerships, our revenue is for the lifetime of the product, resulting in a very healthy trail.
Strategically also, it helps us build a trail revenue which, you know, actually appears very similar to the trail revenue or annual revenue in insurance, coming in at 85% or so margin. Since a very valuable strategy, you're right. If you can, if you can see the NPE or the trail revenue for the last quarter, I think we mentioned it's about 10% of our revenue. We are right now investing into increasing the trail, which means that, yes, there is a one-time revenue that is pushing out in the future. Despite that, we have managed to kind of maintain the 40% margin and become a little bit profitable.
In future, from a 1-3 year perspective, we are hoping that this will actually strengthen our profitability position as the trail revenue next year starts to come in at 85% margin. Sure. Thank you. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arya Sen from Franklin Templeton. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, this is Arya Sen. I just wanted to reconfirm that the estimated wave of additional revenue because of the frontloading of savings product is INR 50 crore?
Yes. On the core business, I just wanted to clarify. On the core business, the policies we received which were INR 5 lakh plus, et cetera, that was exactly INR 47 crore. The premium I received on the core business in March for policies which were more than INR 5 lakh was INR 47 crore. You could make your own assumptions on how many of the policies less than INR 5 lakh, et cetera, et cetera. We, you know, we don't, you know, we can't really assess that.
Arya, we have maintained that, you know, once it's a platform where customers come for very different reasons. This impact was much less for us compared to the industry. There was obviously an impact on the industry, but, it was very, very, very muted. You know.
No, I would say, I would say this INR 47 crore, a bulk of it would not have come if that single event wasn't there. Yes, it was a one-time event, I would say. Maybe if that event wasn't there, this INR 47 crore might have been INR 10 crore. I don't know. We, you know, I'm just giving you a broad assessment. Yes, there was a little bit of extra that we have seen, and that is the case. That is the premium level, that's not the revenue level for sure.
The INR 50 crore you mentioned earlier is also at premium level or at revenue level?
That INR 50 crore is INR 47 crore. I was just giving the exact number rather than.
Okay. That is at premium level, not at revenue level.
Yeah. Premium level. It is at a premium level, yes.
I mean, the related question would have been the PST business seems to have seen a sharp jump, and the jump in the non-PST business is much less. You are saying that effectively there was not that much of a contribution from this as per you.
From the core business, I'm explaining, let's say on the core business, let's leave the PST out of it. The core business, it was about, INR 47 crores. PST net margin took dive. Look, let's not get confused about PST a bit too much. Yes, the 365 or whatever, 350 is a great number to get excited about. The net revenue is roughly 0 on PST. I think, that's what you need to keep in mind. It's basically a pass-through business at the end of it. Let's just keep that at the back of our mind, before we kind of start really deliberating on how PST is becoming bigger than the core business and all that stuff. It's like, yeah, it's a payment gateway. Arya, we have been investing in building out the life and health with the partners as well.
Again, like I said, a business that's low base, it will continue to improve and there would have been a little bit of backdrop pre-COVID on that part of the business. You know, it's very, very tough to actually how much is the increment of April to March since we have been building it up over the last 6, 8 months. So right now health and life has become meaningful, but we have to see over years or maybe quarters, not years, to say that that is the real sustainable number. You know, just looking at 1 month won't give us too much information on the 3 partners, increase of life and health. Yeah. We feel good about the policy business. We feel very good about it. We're confident we're going to maintain leadership in that business.
We feel good about all aspects of it, but comparing it to the core business would be, we would be, I think we would be very. The main highlight of the three partners, to be honest, Arya, is actually two highlights. One. Our total loss in all the initiatives put together is less than 10% of revenue. The second one, our contribution, which is the operating margin in a way, is minus 1%. We are almost breaking even on the operating side on the initiatives. You know, from initiatives perspective, those are the two main points to be noted, rather than just the top line.
Sure. I haven't gone through the presentation. Is there any change in your FY 2024 additional EBITDA guidance in the core business? Earlier you were expecting INR 150 crore-INR 200 crore, right? That remains constant.
The, we had given a few guidances in the past, which we are not changing, which is we should be, you know, we hope to be and feel confident we should be back positive next year. We also, have given some guidance on the PAC being about 1,000 crores in 2026, 2027. Those two stay. With that said, we are not giving any guidances and we are not in the business of giving guidances. Actually we won't be giving any further guidances than that.
Sure. Thanks. That's all from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Jeswani from Stallion Asset. Please go ahead.
Hi, Yashish and team. I was just trying to figure out. One thing is very clear that 50 crores is the premium, right? I'll just repeat it again. 50 crores is just the premium, right? 46 crores is the additional premium in savings and our entire business that came because of this tax impact on the core business. Right? That is the premium and not the revenue. Got it. That would broadly translate to about 14-15 crores of revenue. Broadly. You've done well, Yashish. You've done well with core. Congratulations on that. That's the point. Yashish, two points. First, just trying to think about FY 2024. You said your fixed costs will go up 8% this year. On the just to be clarified, I said March, which is last quarter fixed cost.
If you look at our last quarter fixed cost, our average fixed cost for the next year will be 8% above that. Got it. March quarter. The March quarter. Okay. We are at INR 1,700 crores revenues on the existing business. You said we should grow two to three times faster than the industry, right? For the existing business. Is that what you meant? Absolutely. Okay. Two to three times faster. Got it. Yashish, just one question on April dip. How large is typically the dip between Q1 and Q4 on the B2C business, the existing business? Because cash advance won't get impacted. I'm just trying to understand what quality of that impact. Let us go through that a little bit. I'll just hand over to Sarbvir in one minute.
The impact you will see will only be on the savings business. Okay. While we don't break out health and life, actually we are seeing some momentum in health and life compared to the last 12 months. Health and life are actually growing a little better than the past. You know, I'll hand over to Sarbvir to kind of answer that question in a little more detail.
Typically, Q1 is 10%-15% below Q4. In savings this year, that number will be much higher. As Yashish mentioned, in term and health, we are on a year-on-year basis seeing very good progress so far. We'll see how it all shakes out. You know, we still have another 40-45 days to go. We'll see how it all shakes out. I think there is a normal seasonality of Q1 from Q4, and this year that will be a little bit more exaggerated because one part of the business will, you know, see a bigger than usual drop. Yeah, I think that's how I would leave it at this point.
I think one last thing. I think the savings business is not seeing an impact only because people utilized March. I would say the INR 47 crores of premium that came to us in the core business was perhaps business, you know, a lot of it may not have come to us in the normal course of events. Customers may not have come to us in the normal course of events. There's also another impact that we should be able to start seeing some, you know, which is the two types of tax structures. I believe a lot more customers will end up choosing the type of tax structure which is a lot, you know, which is a more simple tax structure. That should also have some impact on savings.
There are, of course, opportunities as well which we are working on, because people who used to think they will invest INR 1.5 lakh could start thinking they want to invest INR 5 lakh. Lots of things that are going on, but probably tax is going less and less of a reason to buy savings products. One thing the, which we have always maintained, the whole Pulsar business is about three Ds: debt, disease, and disability. We do savings, we do kudos, but the focus has always been on term and health. In a particular quarter, it may look better or worse, but you know, those are very, very short-term trends. There can be so many different things which may happen. Some not in our control, some in control. You know, COVID was a very big two years here and there.
All the data actually had become quite junk, to be honest. It's very tough to extrapolate based on what happened in last 2 years because of COVID. Overall, if you look at the trend and the opportunity in term insurance and health insurance, that's massive. That continues to be the case not today, not next year, but for many, many years to come. you know, as more and more people are becoming aware of the need of these products, and as we are able to drive more innovation, easier way of buying, giving more confidence to a customer around the claim part. I think that will just help the situation of people wanting to buy these products on their own. When they want to buy, they come to Policybazaar, and we obviously benefit out of that.
Perfect. Are we seeing a revenue delta on the existing business, okay, has been INR 500 crore and our contribution delta has been INR 280 crore. If I fundamentally think about a 30% kind of growth, that means we grow at INR 510 crore again next year. Would it be fair to say our contribution growth will be INR 282 crore again? Will it be higher or lower?
No, we won't get into that debate and conversation. You know, because our business, our cost is growing by 8% fundamentally. If our revenues grow at 30%, there is a lot of operating leverage. Ideally, I will not comment on your analysis, but your analysis is your own. I think I would like to stop there. We've given the past. And, okay. There are no tricks in the past. There's no game. Maybe your analysis is right. Maybe. I don't... I'm not gonna, you know, verify your analysis.
Got it. I wish you all the luck actually this game. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Your focus was important.
Sir, please go ahead.
Oh, Yashish Dahiya. Hello?
I think they're done. You can go to the next question.
No next question.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sameer Shah from DeNero Wealth. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, end marketing and consulting inside of the business as to how the business works, how the fees are charged, and how you look at the revenue growth for the next few years?
Can you repeat that?
Uh, so I-
Mr. Shah, your audio is breaking, sir. I request you to please check.
Am I audible now? Hello.
Yes, sir. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Sir, could you please talk about the online marketing and consulting business? I wanted to understand how the fees are charged in this business and how should we look at the revenue growth three years from there for the next three years.
You want me talking from a statutory audit perspective. Some of the revenues which we may have, where we may be doing some marketing activities for the insurance company or some others. Those are, you know, I wouldn't really get into our individual revenue lines. I think anybody who follows the market would know them quite well. They would be a very normal thing. They are just activities where we are promoting insurance products and because it is not related to the broking activity. I'll just leave it there.
Okay. In terms of the number of policies sold, if we see since FY 2021, the growth in number of policies sold hasn't been much, but the premium per policy has increased. What could be the reason behind it? When can we see the number of policies sold growing?
Sorry. The reason you are seeing it that way also is that the mix has changed. Our life and health businesses, which have a much higher ticket size, right, compared to our motor and two-wheeler business, have grown in as a proportion. That's why when you... Sorry. Actually, if you divide it the way you are doing it's actually not that useful because different businesses have totally different ticket sizes. What you're really seeing is a mix effect rather than any individual effect. Yes, I think NOP growth is a challenge for the industry. Not that much for us, but it's something that we keep working on.
As you look at the time period you're speaking about, 2021 to 2023, let's say, the growth in the two-wheeler segment and the motor segment has been much, much lower. You know, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I think the delta in growth rate between the two might be almost 30% or so between, you know, the health and savings versus the two-wheeler and motor, and that is what will explain. There wouldn't be a difference in, you know, that significant a difference in terms of premium rates. It's not that our number of policies are not increasing. Yeah, number of policies and number of two-wheelers are not increasing for us nowadays.
Okay. Okay. Sir, one last final question. Would you like to give any indication or guidance for CapEx for the FY 2024 and 2025?
CapEx?
Yes. Yes.
See, in our business, the only CapEx we do is The computer, laptop and server.
I think my Yeah.
If you look at the PC number that we have, that's also very, very low because by nature of the business we don't have any CapEx.
In one of your interviews I've heard you talk about front loading the CapEx for the business. I was referring to that.
I think there may be some confusion here. We don't really have any material CapEx to talk about. I think it might be a comparison with other businesses that may have a large CapEx. I think I understand we're talking about one of the interviews where I was explaining was that suppose if I have a steel plant, you'll have a lot of CapEx, and that obviously gets counted as CapEx. Whereas if you really think about in similar terms, our brand, and our infrastructure, our technology platform as well as our brand spend, that is in a way our CapEx which builds future traffic. Like today we get about more than 80% of our sales come without any need of marketing spend.
That demand comes, we haven't built a brand and we haven't built a infrastructure to kind of attract so many customers, in a meaningful manner. I think I was referring to that. We as well, do not have a material CapEx line. See, Gaurav, there have been a lot of questions in the past around the loss that companies like us make on initiatives. As he mentioned, when you have businesses become more digital in nature and does not really require a balancing investment, in such cases, all the investment that you do on brand, on marketing, on tech development technically is done because you have to build that business. The nature of these spendings are such that they have to come in P&L.
That was basically the point you are saying in that interview that some businesses require CapEx, but we don't require CapEx, and whatever we do comes in the P&L every year. Guys, those explanations are not meant for you guys. You are analysts, you are professional investors. Those are meant for the retail consumer because many a times the retail consumer get hassled by businesses like this, you know, losses and valuations and all that. One is trying to explain to the retail consumer that, "Look, don't compare it to a steel plant, et cetera." Obviously that's not meant for this group here. Just like the INR 150 crore-INR 200 crore extra EBITDA every year is not meant for this group. That was meant for the retail investor to understand.
You guys obviously on your Excel sheet, you don't need me to explain that.
All right, sir. All right, sir. Thank you a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
I quickly on any update on Bima Sugam , like it's been a while that nothing has come out from media or anything.
We haven't specifically heard anything. I think we stay of the opinion that any platform is a very welcome change, and it is great for us to have access to a lot more services which should help us expand our business. Yeah, we feel very hopeful about it. Yeah, we haven't had any official update recently. Yeah, I think.
Okay. Just one more housekeeping question. Like we said last quarter, can you break down premium between core, new initiatives, corporate and PB Partners?
Just give us a second. Yeah. Okay. I'll give you the new initiative. We'll get back to you. I think we'll give you the right one.
Sure.
Again, it's more around revenue than around premium. There's a bit of confusion there, but we'll get you these numbers.
Sure, sure. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ms. Nischint Chawathe from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. I think on similar lines, you know, you've been sharing the renewal premium number. If you can share it for the Q4 as well.
Sorry, what question?
you know, on similar lines, you have been sharing the renewal premium, you know, renewal premium figure as well. If you could share that for the Q4.
I think we will update all of this in the deck, if that's okay. We'll just update it and kind of put it on the deck. Both the premium numbers and the, you know, how much is new business and how much is previous premium. We'll put it up there. Let me actually attempt to give you some information. If you look at the core business in Q4, our premium is up INR 2,643 crores. That's it. Yeah. Actually, you know what? About INR 2,520 crores is the core business. About INR 2,520 crores is the core business. That is actually evenly split between new and renewal. Just that's some clarification, but we'll put something more clear up there.
Got it. I think if I calculate, you know, your take rate, which is just, you know, very simply, you know, revenue divided by, you know, the total PM. You know, that ratio seems to have gone up this quarter significantly. How should we read that?
That is a little bit. Again, if you notice that has been inching up a bit because of the mix change. Again, this quarter because the nice business was a little bigger than normal, that's the main reason it could happen. Otherwise, sort of quarter to quarter, line by line, the take rates haven't changed at all.
Mix change in our business means nothing but change in certain needs. You know this better than us. There is a little bit of mix change between guides, which sort of behavior that occurs. If you look at individual product lines, nothing has changed.
Got it. One small question, and this is on new initiatives. I'm looking at slide nine, where there is a significant almost doubling of, you know, revenue. You know, you still sort of, you know, seem to be in EBITDA red. You know, at what point of time do you really break even? You know. I know it's a very small portion, but still.
I think the guidance we've given is 26, 27. Our new initiatives will not be negative. They'll be pretty close to... We've given our new initiatives. See, new initiatives are competitive area, right? We've given ourselves that delay of two, three years where we are confident we're getting to that profitability. We've given ourselves two, three years of delay that if we have to... It's like a marathon, right? We don't know when the other guy is gonna run a bit faster for the next three kilometers. We will, you know, see how we handle that situation. We have said we don't want to say how we will run the entire marathon, but we are very confident that over a three-year business demand a certain return and will also have that.
That implies we will be, we will not be making loss because others will also have to kind of break even at some stage.
Between these are still in the build-out phase. you know, by the estimate that we are doing today, you know, the $5 million number per quarter, that's what we want to maintain for a time being. I think at a specific of what our core business is delivering, it is going to come down and, you know, we have to completely capitalize to invest in these businesses right now that are getting mentioned. In the next three years, by 2027, we definitely want to be in a position where you don't need to invest anymore. Pave the path, get to that number. Currently we are very comfortable with about the $5 million investment apart.
Fair point. I was just wondering, you know, whether there is any movement within the internals of new initiatives, right? Because we just get to see one block.
No, the reason we don't want to give any guidance except for the fact for next year, because that part we feel good about. We want to leave some leeway for us to compete. You know, We will be competitive in this area, as we have been. We don't want to remove our flexibility.
The same applies. If you look at the contribution margin graph, you'll see that continuous improvement is there. The effort is that even though, you know, we have to work continuously to grow this area, it has to become more and more efficient.
Sure. Sure. Thanks. I guess just one last point is, on the motor renewals, you know, in the PSP business. I believe on the revenue side, your kind of, you know, your arrangements could be very similar because whether it's in motor, whether it's a renewal or new, it's gonna be, you know, the same. When it comes to, you know, what you're sharing with your partners and also that seems to be pretty much similar, is it? Or you probably have some, you know, something that you could scream out there.
I think we I would encourage you to think of it in a slightly different way. I think motor will be always scale and efficiency driven. In the non-motor businesses I think is the opportunity where you have to, as you are able to, you know, learn how to sell those businesses and which is where I think we are doing a far superior job to others, which is why I think our efficiency is much higher. That's where I think you can hope to get more contribution and eventually profit dollars. I think on the motor side, it's a very, very cutthroat business, and I think it's unlikely whichever way you look at it. The renewal in motor is very much like a freight stream.
I would not really put any emphasis on that at all.
Yeah, I think the effort to, for anybody to try and, essentially what I'm hearing is, not pay the partner enough on renewal. I think that's the wrong direction because that would lead to partner churn and that would lead to partner disloyalty in a big way. I don't think that's a very accurate description of the PSP business. It's a platform business. You know, as a platform you are getting a small percentage of providing that facility and as a best if you look at it is like a payment gateway, as you mentioned earlier.
In a payment gateway you make a small margin for providing a platform or facility, exactly the same way you look at the PB Partners business where, you know, agents are using your platform and since they're using that platform, you are entitled to a small part of the revenue. That's all.
I understand where you're coming from, I would also encourage you to look at the motor agency business. There you'll find there's absolutely no difference. I think anyone thinking that there'll be a difference on the PSP side is probably going to be surprised.
Sure. Just one last one. The 24% is largely health is what one could say.
Sorry, what's that?
24% of non-motor is largely well.
It's non-motor. It's non-motor
Okay, sure. Great. Thank you very much, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Adarsh from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is from Great Numbers. First a few questions on the, you know, the core platform business.
Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Adarsh. The volume is very low, so I would request you to please increase the volume of your device. Thank you.
Yeah, hope it's better now. Yeah. Shanal, the question was on your core business. The last two years have been tough on the industry protection volumes and we've still grown. Just wanted to understand your assessment of where we stand in terms of what part of the protection market we are in. You know, because, you know, hopefully things recover now, but we've kind of done well in the last two tough years on protection. If you can, you know, obviously, the second question is, our savings business has scaled up a lot. If you can give some color or texture on where we are in terms of premiums and broad numbers and what would be the product mix, ULIPs, non-par is, you know, the guaranteed product. Any sense and color on that? Thanks.
I'll take that. On the term business, we actually, we are around 20% of the fresh business in the country. As you correctly said, you know, while the market hasn't been super hot in the last few years, in fact has declined, but our business has continued to grow. In Q4 the good news was that the market also did better. I think there has been finally a turnaround in that market. We are hopeful that next year will also be similarly better. The reason we are little bit more confident is that we have divided our business into various segments and we are not just looking for growth from core term. We are also looking at how we can do more things for self-employed, for women, for NRI.
There's a full strategy in place, and I think we are more positive about protection in the new financial year. In terms of health insurance, I think we have seen growth and we continue. Again, we improved during the year because there was a very tough comparison in the first half because of COVID. In the second half of the year it continued to improve and we are seeing increased interest as well in health insurance this financial year as well. On the savings side, without going into exact numbers of what we did, but our composition remains very similar. We are still a capital guarantee shop where we sell a ULIP and non-par together. That is the largest part of our business.
In the last financial, I mean the last quarter, because of the tax issues, we did have little bit more of pure non-par as well. There we had a very special product which we had co-created, and there we were able to drive significant volume through that product, which was offering the highest return in the market. I think that helped us in March. Other than that, the general idea remains the same, to sell capital guarantee, which is a unique solution that we offer to the retail insurance market.
Good. This is helpful. The second question is on new initiatives. When you say that our contributions are just a -1%, it broadly means that we are now paying as much as what we were getting from the manufacturers with higher volume, which is not the case a few quarters back. Just want to understand, has the industry structure improving? What are you doing to change it? The industry's come to a point where people are not paying over and above what you make passing on more, right? Is there discipline coming in or there's something different that we've done?
I would actually say three things have happened. One, that we have improved our overall economics, simply because if you can imagine, we've been now in the market for about six quarters. I think we no longer, you know, the brand that Policybazaar has, the systems that we have, the platform that we've been able to establish does not require us to be necessarily the most aggressive in the market. Second thing that has helped us is the mix of having more health and life business. That obviously is a more positive business. That there we are able to, you know, generate positivity.
The third thing, as far as the market itself is concerned, I would say that, yes, it is somewhat more disciplined than it used to be, but there are always players, you know, who have sort of raised money and are willing to throw money around in the market. That is the nature of this market, which is what I think we were trying to say earlier also that, you know, one quarter doesn't make a trend. I think you have to look at the market. New people come and go, and we will do what it takes to be super competitive. Of course, strengthening our overall platform and stickiness with agents, and that's something that, you know, I think has played out in Q4 as well.
Thanks. I'll just squeeze in one more question on the credit business. When you give the renewal kind of business, I just wanted to understand what is how does the economics stack up on upfront revenues on credit vis-a-vis a more trail model? What I'm trying to understand is like if you make a 3.5%, 4% take rate in year one, when you do it on trail, is it quite different? You know, if you can explain what's it like that any of those products where you're getting a trail income on credit.
Without going into the specific numbers, I'll try and explain the philosophy. There are two kinds of products that we have co-created. One is credit cards and one is personal loans. Personal loans typically will have a lifetime of about 3 years average. Credit card has a longer lifetime, and during the cycle so we will also discover how exactly longer. As I mentioned earlier, our revenue on new business over the lifetime of the product and hence why the overall NPV we expect it to be higher than if we were doing only upfront business. Like you pointed out, the upfront revenue is lower and it's a deliberate strategy to kind of build out the future revenue.
On an NPV basis, we expect it to be reasonably higher than if we were doing upfront-only revenue. Having said that's not the only reason we are doing this. I explained on why we are doing this. To build out the, you know, expansion of the market or innovation of the product over time. It's also to build a relationship with the consumer because you can imagine, if we are connected to the payment, we get connected to the usage then, we can over time start to have some part of it or a lot of it and see how it plays out via that. That part is early, right? There is an NPV enhancement, but there is also a relationship build.
You would appreciate, right, if somebody comes and takes a 10-day loan on our platform and we transfer the customer to, let us say, another player for a lender for 3% or 4% payout. That's not a very smart thing to do because I have got a very cheap customer acquisition, so we would rather that kind of a transaction really happen on our platform. That's, that's what we are, you know, headed towards in some way.
Got it. This is useful. Thank you, team.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take the last question from the line of Madhukar Ladha from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you again for taking my questions. Just some data keeping questions. You mentioned as an answer to my first question that there's a 31% growth in new business premium. I just wanted to clarify this is on the platform business, right?
This is a core business, yes.
Core platform business. Right.
Yeah.
I think can you give me the core business renewal premium for the full year FY2023?
Sorry. You asked for the renewal AP?
Renewal premium for, the full year FY 23.
Yeah, just one second. On the core business. Let's see. The total core business premium is broadly INR 8,000 crores, let's just say. Okay? Roughly INR 8,000 crores.
INR 8,000 crores. Okay.
INR 8,500 crores. INR 8,500 crores.
Right.
About 50% is new, 50% is renewal. It's broadly 4,000 something each.
Got it. Got it. Okay. Look, did you give out some of the corporate premium for Q4?
The hundred-
The revenue.
INR 120 crores.
That's for premium. Okay, got it. Finally, just, you know, wanted to get a sense with the changed commission norms, do we expect, you know, higher commission payouts for you guys? Are we seeing any change from the manufacturers, in terms of, you know, some people getting more aggressive? Some color on that will be helpful. Yeah.
Yeah. I would say two things. Number one, I think everyone has to come up with a board-approved policy. People are still working on it. As far as we can tell, just from our discussions so far, we don't see any change to our commission, either up or down. It's. Largely we have always linked our commission to the quality of our business and the overall profitability of an insurance company. To that extent, we are in line with what we deliver. In fact, I think we probably deliver better profitability than most channels. We don't see any change. We do see a smoothing of the process. I think the process will become easier, as we go through this change. This change will take time.
From our perspective, we're definitely not looking in any direction. We're not looking to increase or decrease, you know, our day rates .
Yeah. In general, we do not encourage, you know, higher day rates between this and that. Usually, like 99% of the time on a platform like ours, it's almost impossible. Not almost, just us. I'm just saying all platform like us, it's almost impossible for a partner to pay more and get more business. Almost impossible. Maybe you can influence the business by 10%, 15%. Bulk of it will actually come from product improvement and process improvement. That's what one needs to focus on. What we do request our partners is to be fair to us and not use us for cross-subsidization of other channels. Hence, to look at us on an overall combined operating ratio, because I think we bring to the table better claim ratios and better persistency than.
I don't think. We know we bring better persistency and better claim ratios. To consider that and at least not pay us worse than other channels is what we request. That's just more of a most favored nation status kind of thing or let's say not a disfavored nation status. Other than that, we don't urge for a, you know, I don't think for any partner higher payout will help.
Just to add, I would say that we regret all the difference that we can get to put it into the consumer population. You'll find that increasingly we have differentiated populations and they come because of the differences in channel economics.
Got it. Thanks. Thanks again and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Yashish Dahiya for closing comments.
Thank you very much for attending this call, and taking giving us all those opportunity to answer all those questions. Apologies once again for being slightly late and for ending this call a little later than we may have planned. Thank you so much. Bye now.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of PB Fintech, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.