Ladies and gentlemen, could we have a welcome to the Q1 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call of Quick Heal Technologies Limited, hosted by Valorem Advisors. 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 continues. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star, the zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Nupur Jainkunia Valorem Advisors Thank you and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and a very warm welcome to you all. My name is Nupur Jainkunia from Valorem Advisors. We represent the investor relations of Quick Heal Technologies Limited. On behalf of the company, I would like to thank you all for participating in the company's earnings call of the first quarter of financial year 2026. Before we begin our quick cautionary statement, some of the statements made in today's earnings conference call may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated. Such statements are based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to management. Audiences are cautioned not to place any undue reliance on these forward-looking statements in making any investment decisions.
The purpose of today's conference call is purely to educate and bring awareness about the company's fundamental business and financial quarter under review. Now, I would like to introduce the management participating with us in today's earnings call and hand it over to them for their opening remarks. We firstly have with us Dr. Kailash Katkar, Managing Director; Dr. Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director; Mr. Vishal Salvi, Chief Executive Officer; and Mr. Ankit Maheshwari, Chief Financial Officer. Without any further delay, I request Mr. Vishal Salvi to give his opening remarks. Thanks, and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much, and good evening to all of you. I'm Vishal Salvi, CEO of Quick Heal, and thanks for joining me today. I want to walk you through the Quick Heal Technologies Limited's Q1 FY 2026 update. In FY 2026 Q1, it was softer than expected, and we faced some headwinds, especially in our consumer business, and a few key enterprise deals got deferred, which impacted our near-term revenue. I want to emphasize that these challenges don't define us. Instead, they have strengthened our resolve. We have doubled down on building out our partner ecosystem and accelerating the adoption of next-gen cybersecurity solutions. These are foundational steps that will pay off over the coming quarters. Innovation is at the core of what we do. One of the highlights for this quarter is the launch of AntiFraud.AI Premium.
Introducing a premium model lets us activate adoption among consumers by lowering the barriers. It's a way to build trust and expand our user base, which will fuel the future opportunities. We also received analyst recognition for our secure product suite. It's always great to see validation from global analyst firms and confirm that we are on the right track with our enterprise security solutions. Beyond products, we are investing in deepening our relationships with partners and consumers. We hosted a successful event in Bangalore, tied with the focused d ata privacy awareness campaign. These efforts help us to build trust and demonstrate our commitment to protecting customer data in a meaningful way. On the marketing front, we launched a 360-degree brand advocacy campaign in Tamil Nadu. We engaged over 100 micro-influencers and leveraged user-generated content.
This approach creates authentic connections with local communities, which is crucial in building up brand loyalty and awareness. Starting this year, we are focusing on strategic expansion in select international geographies. I'm excited to report that we have roughly doubled our revenue year on year in key overseas markets. This shows that our solutions resonate beyond India, and we are successfully growing our global footprint. To support our partner-led growth, we brought on board a new Vice President of Channel and Alliance. Expanding our partner ecosystem is critical for scaling, and having a strong leadership in this area is a big step forward. Quick Heal Academy continues to capture key logos and we did onboard a couple of marketing clients in this space.
To wrap it up, yes, Q1 FY 2026 presented some challenges, but we are optimistic because of the strategic progress that we have made, from the product launches to brand building, to expanding internationally and strengthening our partnership. Quick Heal is well-positioned to deliver sustainable value in the fast-evolving cybersecurity landscape. With this, I would like to invite our Chairman and Managing Director, Dr. Kailash Katkar, for our positioning in the cybersecurity landscape.
Thank you, Vishal, and good evening to all of you. Quick Heal has been my lifeline. What started in a small shop with a simple mission to protect people from viruses, malware, has grown over the last 30 years into one of India's most trusted cybersecurity brands. Today, we protect not just individuals but small businesses, large enterprises, government institutes, and many more. We do this through solutions built right here in our own R&D center and lab, Seqrite lab, one of the largest in the country. One of the things I'm most proud of is our positioning as a trusted native cybersecurity provider. In today's world, digital threats are rising fast, especially with global tensions and complex cyber risks. Our role has never been more important. Our products don't just protect; they help India stay digitally secure. We are aligned with the government's Atmanirbhar Bharat vision.
I know quarterly numbers can sometimes seem like a snapshot that doesn't tell the full story, but cybersecurity isn't a short-term game. It's a long-term mission, and we are in it. We have a strong foundation, a deep talent pool of experts, a respected brand in the market, world-class infrastructure, including our malware labs, and the most important, the trust of millions of customers. The demand for cybersecurity is only going to grow, and we are ready with the right people, the right technology, and the right vision. Thank you for your continuous being with us. Your support means everything. I would like to invite Sanjay to speak about the innovation that we are driving at the company.
At Quick Heal, our purpose is to innovate, simplify, and secure the privacy aspect of our work. We innovate to stay ahead of emerging cyber threats, simplify complex security challenges for our users, as well as businesses and enterprises, and secure digital environments across all aspects. This vision comes to life through cutting-edge platforms like Gobi.ai. Our AI-driven threat detection will continuously learn and adapt to identify sophisticated attacks in real time. Most recently, we have introduced SIA, Security Intelligence Assistance, as a part of our XDR, which is an extended detection and response platform. SIA acts as a contextual and intelligent assistant, helping cybersecurity teams interpret threat data, correlate incidents, and respond faster with actionable insights. By combining automation, threat intelligence, and intuitive design, we are making enterprise-grade security smarter and more accessible.
These innovations reflect our ongoing commitment to protecting the digital world through technologies that are intelligent, scalable, and built for the future. Further, our mission is to make cybersecurity more inclusive and accessible. We have also partnered with Bhashini, the National Language Translation Mission. Through this collaboration, we aim to deliver cybersecurity awareness and assistance in multiple Indian languages, ensuring that language is no longer a barrier to staying secure in the digital world. As we look ahead, we remain committed to building a safer digital future, one where security is intelligent, intuitive, and within reach of everybody. With this, I would like to hand it over to Ankit to talk specifically on the financial performance of the product.
Thank you, Sanjay. Hello, everyone. I would like to update you through Quick Heal financial performance for quarter one, FY 2026. The numbers reflect some challenges this quarter. I will also elaborate on some important operational insights that can help us understand the company's strategic position. Starting with top line, we see revenue declining to ₹ 57 crore in Q1 FY 2026 compared to ₹ 70 crore and ₹ 65 crore in Q1 and Q4 of previous years, respectively. This dip largely is a result of softer market conditions in the consumer segment. Going over the receivables and challenges we faced in collections in earlier quarters, we have taken proactive measures to curtail invoicing this quarter for fewer specific partners. Having said that, we have seen a positive trend in collections in the month of July.
In the enterprise segment, we have seen deferral in few deal closures, resulting in a flattish year-on-year result. The latest order of cyber literacy programs that we have disclosed in May, which is already reflected in our order book, has initiated in Q2, as the academic institutions have just opened up. Moving to operating costs, overall expenditure has been consistent at ₹ 66 crore this quarter, the same level as Q1 last year. While the R&D spend is optimized, our commitment to innovation remains strong, delivering cybersecurity products to protect our customers against cyber attacks. EBITDA for the quarter is -₹ 9.7 crore. Profit after tax for the quarter stands at -₹ 5.5 crore. To summarize, the financials reveal that we are currently navigating a challenging quarter, marked by revenue softness and continued investment in growth and innovation.
Going forward, the key focus will be on driving revenue recovery while managing expenses to improve margins. I am confident this balanced approach will deliver better operating leverage and create shareholders' value. Thank you for listening. I would like to open the floor for the question and answer session.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while answering questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue is tempered. Participants who wish to ask a question may please press Star and one at this time. The first question is on the line of Jitendra Agarwal from Relax.
Yeah, Jitindra on the call . Hi, good evening.
Good evening.
Just one thing, right? This is on the B2B segment of the enterprise business, right? We've consciously increased the addressable market that we have over the last 15- 18 months. To what I understand, last year March, the full stack was ready, right? If you look at the total addressable market that you have and you actually look at the revenue growth that you're actually posting in that segment, which is like a single digit at best, I guess, on an annualized basis. Can you just explain where is the gap? Are we missing out in terms of people in sales who are able to push that product into the market? Is it pricing that you get priced out because of competition?
Is it something like execution that you're not able to actually execute or implement whatever you would have done in terms of your strategy? I want to have a more detailed understanding of what is going wrong in the enterprise business. I'm not so concerned about what is happening on the B2C business. That will help us. Thank you.
Thank you so much for that question, Jitendra. I think one is you need to, first of all, I wanted to tell you that, from the way we are running this business, we don't see any major things which are going wrong in our enterprise strategy, okay? I'll tell you why. One is that, as you rightly said, you know, the full stack of all these new products was launched and introduced somewhere last year. You know, a lot of this actually requires EV out and GTM for it to start having the inroads into the customer segment that we have targeted, okay? If you remember, one of that was related to our data privacy set, and we were talking about how we were launching and building it and, you know, how we were obviously very aspirational in terms of its growth.
Unfortunately, because the guidelines have not yet been issued by the Government of India, we have been waiting. Having said that, the good news is that we have created a very strong pipeline of data privacy deals. I'm also happy to share that we have one large DFSI deal in this quarter, okay? We're starting to also now get into a winning position in the market, and that's the good news, right? While we were talking about it, now we are starting to see that again getting, 55%. Now, overall, if you look at it from zero, in terms of contribution for the enterprise revenue, right now, our new product segment stands at somewhere between 13%- 15%, okay? That's a steady growth which is happening. If you look at our pipeline, we are extremely bullish.
All the foundation that we have put in place is now coming to bear, and we are starting to have good conversations, okay? The last thing I wanted to say in this, Jitendra, is that if you look at any enterprise cybersecurity business, it has got a gestation period, right? We need to be committed to it for it to start breathing benefits. All the hard work that we have done is setting up the foundation, and we remain bullish in terms of how we are going to grow in this market. Also, a very important aspect that you should know is that we have constantly grown. I mean, of course, if you look at Q1 quarter- on- quarter, it is appearing to be flattish because some deals got deferred. Otherwise, it would have been a very different story.
Like I said, we have now won a very large deal in the data privacy segment, and the good pipeline is there. You know, we can start seeing some growth coming up in this coming quarter. I hope that answers your question.
Okay. My next question is for Mr. Katkar. If you could explain, now that Vishal is on his way out, what is your thought process in terms of looking out for someone? Are the promoters going to come back into the business, or do we again look back for a potential CEO?
As a part of our succession planning, the company is currently engaging in an active search for a new CEO to lead us into the future.
The promoter family does not intend to come back, is it?
Not as a CEO because I am a Chairperson as well as Managing Director.
Correct.
The Managing Director can definitely manage in the entering period, actually.
Okay. Is there any time limit? Are you talking to some people, or is there any sense as to by when you think you should be able to close a new professional?
I think whoever we might select, it might take two to three months' time as a notice figure part of it. We will try to close it as early as possible.
Perfect. One thing I want to ask, it is more on the business side, right? A large part of your investment over the last couple of years has gone into creating this enterprise platform product, whatever you may call it, right? Generally, in a product business, once revenues start coming, we see a J curve in terms of margin expansion, right? If you go back, I had asked this question, say, about two, three years ago also. I think the management's thing was that we will have 50% revenues coming from B2C and 50% from B2B. I still remember asking the same question, "What if B2C declines?" We are effectively at the same run rate, which is what the fear I had.
I think it seems to be translating into something like, if not exactly the same number, but it seems to be exactly translating into something of a similar thought process. Can you give a three-year, five-year thought process? This is what I think my revenues will be. This is what my cost structure would be. Otherwise, it is all talks in terms of products, in terms of strategy, you know, how you're trying to get into that business. On the other side, where you have to monetize all that knowledge, I think we are lacking. At least that is what I can make out as an outsider because we are investors and not really running the business. If you can just help us understand, I don't want any quarterly revenue this quarter, next quarter. I don't care.
If you can show some thought process, what it will be like in three years, five years, and let's this time not discuss %. I want you to tell us, "This should be my ideal revenue run rate on the enterprise business. This should be B2C. B2C, I really don't care.
Getting back to this, Vishal here. I think the most important message is that this enterprise pivot was very critical for the future growth plans of the organization, right? If we had continued with only consumer, we would have been in a very declining situation as far as the business is concerned. The fact that we have pivoted helps us to maintain, if not decline, at least maintain our run rate, which has been there for the last few years. That's number one. Number two is, we have continued to be in the investment space on the products and solutions, which are very critical for enterprises today. Yes, we haven't yet been able to demonstrate the growth that we are looking for. As you have seen for the last one year, we have been growing our team. We have been doing multiple things to set the foundation for the future.
Our new sales organization is fairly young. Our Head of Sales has just finished one year in the organization, and these things take time for us to navigate the change and get everybody onboarded. That is what we have been constantly focusing on. We feel very confident about the foundation that we have created, and we have not deterred from investing. It has to be a patient game in terms of looking at how we can now use this foundation for the growth that we have anticipated. We have never given a guidance as far as the future is concerned. What we have said is about how we are investing for the future. Having said that, the leadership team, the promoters, the board seem confident about the business models and where we are in, and we will continue to do that.
We feel confident that in the future, we will start showing the curve and the improvement that you are actually talking about. Okay, I will come back. Let others ask the questions. I will come back if I have more questions. That is helpful. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question may please press Star and one at this time. To ask a question, please press Star and one now. The next question is on the line of Deva, an individual investor. Please proceed.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yeah, yeah. Dewang, go ahead.
Okay. I just have a few suggestions and a little bit technical question. I've just recently started investing as an individual investor in this company. Prior to doing that, I was going through the products to understand the quality and how good are the products. The missing part which I felt is I could not come across any videos on YouTube related to unboxing the product or configuring it or how to install it. I believe something like a Quick Heal AntiFraud is a product similar to Truecaller. While configuring Truecaller, it just took me about 15, 20 minutes, and I was up and running. With something like Quick Heal, it's been almost six or seven days I'm still struggling in configuring the app and understanding what are the features of this app.
If the management could post more videos with the technical team on YouTube, I think since we predominantly are into the B2C market, it would be a lot more helpful to promote these products and sell them well in the market.
Dewang, thank you very much for your feedback. This is something which we have also noted because, especially a product like AntiFraud.AI is basically helping consumers to understand all the risks which are there on their phone, existing on the phone, as well as those which are coming from outside. Therefore, there are certain privileges which are required at the time of setting the application, and that can be a little difficult for a normal user. That is something which we have noted. While we have also tried to improve that whole user journey so that the experience of onboarding is simpler, I think your feedback is well taken. I don't think we have right now created any videos related to unboxing. Apart from that, there are many other videos that we have created. We will definitely take your feedback and we'll work on expediting such videos as well.
None of the videos were useful to me as a young user. I have reasonable experience in the cybersecurity field to basically understand the product inside out.
I think your feedback is noted, Dewang. We'll work on it.
Okay, that's it. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next questions, we would like to remind participants that you may press Star and one to ask a question. The next question is on the line of Jitendra Agarwal from Relax Capital. Please proceed.
Hi. Obviously, the B2B business or the enterprise business has been disappointing. You, yourself, in your comments said that the pipeline looks interesting. I'm not sure if I read through the presentation. Is there any place that you discuss what the pipeline looks like? Because if I'm an outsider or an investor, I'm actually just lost. I just don't have any idea how the new revenue line or order book looks like. Can you share some qualitative aspects?
Yeah, over the.
Get in there, Vishal here. We have been disclosing order books for the last two quarters, okay? The order book that we have shared is ₹ 24 crore, okay? In fact, as I told earlier, it says that, you know, it's a very healthy order book. There is a deferred revenue of around ₹ 2 crores. We have a very good, you know, and this is already something which is in the hands, okay? Right now, we do not disclose that pipeline, you know, specifically in terms of numbers. Maybe in the future, we could give some guidance, but right now, we don't. I can tell you that the things that I have talked about earlier, and I'm sharing it again now, is that it is improving and it is looking healthy for us, and it gives us a confidence about our future.
Exactly, because it's a very classic B2B business, and we as outsiders are actually lost. There has been a lot of data improvement over the last couple of years. This is something that you should ideally discuss internally and disclose on a very regular basis, right? This is my order book. This is the pipeline I'm talking. At least we as outsiders will know that, okay, it takes 12- 18 months for this to get either into your book or to go to a competitor. At least we have something to basically what I'm trying to ask is, you know, I need to understand what these numbers will look like in the next two, three years. The way the presentation goes or the way the numbers go, I actually am at a loss, except for words or in terms of stock.
There is frankly nothing that I can rely on in terms of numbers. We have, I can give you a couple of companies that are there who are into product business, but they genuinely discuss this is the pipeline which we are bidding in. Now, whether I get the bid or I'm not getting the bid or someone else will get it, which is fine. At least as an outsider or as an investor, I can do some probability that my last win rate was X%. My incremental win rate will be Y%. Then I can at least have some judgment as to how that number looks like. Can you please discuss this internally so that we as outsiders have some comfort as to what that number on the B2B business will look like?
Yeah, yeah. I think your feedback is taken on board, Jitendra. Like I said, if you remember in previous investor meetings, I had mentioned that as we fine-tune our metrics, we will start sharing. That's when we started sharing our order books. Even in this investor deck, we have shared our order book is automatically released. I think the next thing after that to make sure is to give you more color in terms of how the order book will get converted and what is the time frame. We will definitely work on that and improve and give more granularity in the coming quarters.
Perfect. Thank you. Thanks a lot. That's it from me.
Thank you, Jitendra.
Thank you.
Participant who wishes to ask a question may please press Star and one at this time. The next question is from the line of Mihir Manohar from Carnelian Asset Management . Please proceed.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for giving the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yeah, I hear you.
Yeah, I see. I said I wanted to understand on the B2B side, in terms of what is the current status in Parliament or on the judiciary side or the legislative side, when could one expect these innovations to happen? Why is it taking so much time? I'm thinking mostly the product side and I'm releasing the product offering over here. I mean, how do we see these particular products? Is there competition? I mean, are we having all others are providing products? What is the strength of the product when we see the strength versus the existing products or the competition if you want to get into it?
Thank you, Mihir , for that question. The current status that I can share with you, what we understand is that we are waiting for the final go ahead from the government. As you know, the government had issued a draft implementation framework for feedback from the public, which has been provided. Now the final draft is with the government for them to issue it. I think the good news is that some of the organizations are forward-looking, and organizations have already started their journey. They're not waiting for the act to actually come into enforcement. As a result, as I just mentioned to you, the good news is that we have won one large deal with an Indian DFSI client. That gives us a lot of confidence. The client has bought all aspects of the data privacy lifecycle from data classification, identification, to content management.
Now, as far as our product is concerned, we have used this time to invest and build more features and functionalities into the products. The content management aspect, which came into play only after the act was introduced, is something which we have integrated in our products in this period of time. It's already now released and available for our customers, and we already have our first customer. This is what we have been doing in terms of using this time to continue to add more features and functionalities. We obviously are betting big on this and continue to be betting big on this because of the pipeline that we have created. We'll continue to have a good go-to-market for that. Now, as far as the competition is concerned, there are players, there are Indian players, and there are global players. I think we feel very confident.
The way we have beaten other players, global as well as Indian, in this deal that we have won, we feel confident that we'll be able to compete in this market. Because it is going to be a very large TAM, we will have a fair play as far as the B2B commission is concerned. I think all of these three things are very critical. Like I said, some of the organizations who are forward-looking are not waiting for the act to come in. We are already doing multiple POCs and proposals there, which hopefully, we'll be able to close more deals this quarter as well.
Okay. Is this a tier-one DFSI, or would it be tier two?
It's a tier-one insurance client.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Mihir
Participants who wish to ask a question may please press Star and one at this time. Hi there. No further questions. I now hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us and asking us great questions from us. Have a good evening. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Quick Heal Technologies Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.