Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Tanvi, moderator for this conference. Welcome to the conference call of Route Mobile Limited, arranged by Concept Investor Relations to discuss its Q3 and nine months FY 2023 results. We have with us today Mr. Rajdipkumar Gupta, Managing Director and Group CEO, Mr. Gautam Badalia, Group Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Investor Relations Officer, Mr. Suresh Jankar, Chief Financial Officer. At this moment, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's earnings call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve certain risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to slide number two of the presentation for the detailed disclaimer.
Please note this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rajdipkumar Gupta from Route Mobile Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thanks, Tanvi. Good evening, everyone. Wish you all a very happy new year. I want to thank the entire RML team for delivering a staggering performance quarter after quarter. We have yet again exceeded our expectation in the quarter gone by. It gives me great pride to highlight that we have surpassed our pre-IPO FY 2020 audited revenue of INR 9,563 million and adjusted PAT of INR 843 million in just this quarter of Q3 FY 2023. By clocking our best quarterly revenue of INR 9,857 million and adjusted PAT of INR 1,010 million. This is despite the recent COVID issues, the Russia-Ukraine war, supply side issues, and current headwinds in various markets.
Our focused approach, deep domain expertise, and most importantly, our modular approach of creating multiple levers of growth across multiple geographies have been the bedrock of our success. We continue to progress significantly growth and quality deals wins all across the globe and including India. Some of the key highlights since Q2 FY 2023 are as follows: We won a couple of exclusive end-to-end deals with mobile network operators. RML is now exclusive partner for international A2P messaging for leading MNO in Sri Lanka, as well as for Uganda Telecom Corporation in Uganda. While there is lots of discussion about mobile network operators stepping into our domain, these deals will justify why Route Mobile is an indispensable partner to the MNO.
There are various other unique opportunities with MNO that we are working on, and I'm confident that there will be more such partnerships that we will announce in days to come. In terms of our geographical expansion, Route Mobile is strengthening its presence in GCC region with entry to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with CITC license win. We formed a step-down subsidiary in Mexico as a part of our LatAm expansion strategy and step-down subsidiary in U.K. to focus on Mobile Identity and other products. Route Mobile has awarded the Best Governed Company in Listed Segment, Emerging Category at 22nd ICSI National Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance. Enterprises are increasing their adoption of new products, and we continue to witness strong momentum. The worldwide growth of digital transactions carries a substantial increase in digital fraud, which presents a critical challenge for all the stakeholders.
To address this issue, we are launching a mobile identity management product that will help enterprise to gain actionable insights and curb digital fraud and provide a simple yet more practical solution, such as password-less authentication. Our solution is already live in Colombia and Peru and is being used by marquee enterprise, including banks. For our email business, we have upgraded our email infrastructure, which was delayed due to the hardware supply challenges. This new setup will enable us to bid large enterprises for email businesses that include banks. We are indeed very optimistic about our email play. Our senior management team has been doing a fantastic job during Route Mobile's superlative performance across multiple geographies.
To accelerate our next phase of growth and profitability to maintain our razor-sharp focus, there will be some realignment at the senior management level, including hiring a few seasoned industry professionals to drive dedicated SBU. We shall make relevant disclosures concerning these at the appropriate time. Last but not least, the board has decided to meet on January 26th to discuss the proposed interim dividend considering the superlative performance of the company in Q3 FY 2023. With this, Gautam will walk you through our financial highlights in more details. Thank you. Over to you, Gautam.
Thank you. Thank you, Rajdip. Good evening, everyone. Wishing you all a very happy New Year, 2023. We've already uploaded our quarterly earnings presentation on our website, as well as on the stock exchange websites. Hope you had a chance to go through the presentation. I'll quickly summarize our financial and operating performance during Q3 FY 2023 and nine months, FY 2023 before opening the floor for Q&A.
At the backdrop of our best quarterly performance till date, we have indeed demonstrated that we are one of the largest CPaaS companies and one of the most diversified players in the emerging markets, if not the largest. The undercurrent in the business continues to be very robust despite the recessionary headwinds. We will definitely surpass our FY 2023 revenue guidance of 60% by a margin. The key takeaways from our financial performance in Q3 FY 2023 is the superlative growth. We demonstrated YOY revenue growth of 75% and QOQ revenue growth of 17%, with focus on improving profitability. We have done fairly well on both counts, as highlighted in slide 18 of the presentation. As Rajdip highlighted, we have surpassed our pre-IPO FY 20 revenue and adjusted PAT in a single quarter, that is Q3 FY 2023.
In volume terms, we processed 27.7 billion transactions, which is the highest quarterly billable volumes processed by us till date. In terms of geography, India continues to be our largest market by termination, accounting for over 45% of our revenue by termination. You may refer to slide six. We are on track to surpass our guidance of $175 million revenue from India in FY 2023. We continue to witness very strong momentum on the next generation products across multiple geographies. We have demonstrated YOY growth, I mean, for the new products of 53% and QOQ growth of 19%. You may refer to slide 19 of the presentation. With respect to certain one off costs, bad debts amounting to INR 58.4 million were written off in Q3 FY 2023, which relates to Mr. Messaging's pre-acquisition period.
The said amount shall be adjusted while computing the EBITDA for Mr. Messaging for the purposes of calculating the deferred payouts for the shareholders of Mr. Messaging. There was also a reversal of ESOP expense to the tune of INR 82.58 million owing to resignation of some employees. With this backdrop, let me walk you through the financial performance. In terms of Q3 FY 2023 performance, revenue from operations grew by 75% from INR 5,628 million in INR terms in Q3 FY 2022 to INR 9,857 million in Q3 FY 2023. There was a sequential growth of 16%, rounded up to 17%. Route Mobile's organic revenue growth, excluding revenue from entities acquired during FY 2022, was 34% on a YOY basis and 17.2% on a sequential basis.
Billable transactions increased from 16.3 billion in Q3 FY 2022 and 26.9 billion in Q2 FY 2023 to 27.7 billion in Q3 FY 2023. Average realization per billable transactions increased from INR 0.31 in Q2 FY 2023 to INR 0.36 in Q3 FY 2023. Gross profit margin expanded from 21.1% in Q3 FY 2022 and 22.3% in Q2 FY 2023 to 22.4% in Q3 FY 2023. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 66%. EBITDA grew by 17% sequentially from INR 1,094 million in Q2 FY 2023 to INR 1,283 million in Q3 FY 2023. EBITDA margin was 13% in Q3 FY 2023 as compared to 12.9% in Q2 FY 2023. Effective tax rate for the quarter was 17%.
Adjusted profit after tax grew 63% on a YOY basis and 10% on a sequential basis. Adjusted tax margin was at 10.2%. nine months FY 2023, revenue from operations grew by 86% from INR 13,760 million in nine months FY 2022 to INR 25,606 million in nine months FY 2023. In terms of certain KPIs, for nine months, Route Mobile's organic revenue growth, excluding revenue from entities acquired during FY 2022, was 36% on a YOY basis. Billable transactions increased from 34 billion to 79 billion from nine months FY 2022 to nine months FY 2023. Average realization per billable in nine months FY 2023. We had a Net Revenue Retention of 125%.
You may refer to slide 16 of the earnings presentation. We added over 700 new customers in the nine months FY 2023 across all products. Gross profit margin expanded from 20.9% in nine months FY 2022 to 22.4% in nine months FY 2023. EBITDA grew by 72% from INR 1,879 million in nine months FY 2022 to INR 3,237 million in nine months FY 2023. In terms of operating leverage, EBITDA as a percentage of gross profit stood at 57%. EBITDA margin was at 12.6% in nine months FY 2023. Effective tax rate was 12.3% for nine months FY 2023.
Adjusted profit per tax grew by 93% from INR 1,450 million in nine months FY 2022 to INR 2,803 million in nine months FY 2023. There was improvement in adjusted profit margin, which increased to 10.9% in nine months FY 2023. We onboarded 66 new employees during Q3 FY 2023 and 61 employees left during the period. Net cash as on December 31, 2022 was INR 7,482 million as on December 31, 2022. Operating cash flows for nine months FY 2023 was marginally negative, owing to some strategic business initiatives towards a large firewall contract and discharge of a prior GST liability under Reverse Charge Mechanism.
We believe the EBITDA to OCF conversion will start to trend 50% and above from Q1 FY 2024 onwards. With this, we open the floor for Q&A. Thank you.
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 withdraw 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. The first question is from the line of Abhishek Bhandari from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for the opportunity, and happy New Year to the management. Sir, I just had, you know, questions around the, you know, competitive intensity in the industry. You know, some of your peers, you know, have been reporting very weak-ish, you know, revenue growth.
To hear you. We request you to please repeat your question.
Is it better now?
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We can hear you.
Sorry for that. Let me start again. I just wanted to, you know, get your views on the, you know, growth outlook, you know, for the industry in medium term, as well as, you know, the competitive intensity as some of your peers, you know, have been, you know, reporting fairly weak-ish revenue growth, though the, you know, volume growth is still on the 15%-20% range. Maybe, you know, around the pricing, are you seeing a stabilization? What do you think could be a medium-term growth outlook? To that, you know, what do you think is the, you know, competitive part, you know, especially from, you know, some of your peers in the CPaaS itself, like Twilio, as well as, you know, the telecom companies who are trying to enter into the space?
Abhishek, Rajdip here. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Abhishek, I think first of all, you know, because I just want to clarify again, our entire growth is not just coming from one market. Our growth is coming from various different market. I think on a competitive side, I think there are four or five large CPaaS player all across the globe, and we are one of the top tier one aggregator as per the ROCCO report. I think our growth is coming from Latin America, Europe, Asia and other markets, and Middle East as well. For me, I think competition is definitely there in global market also, but we are fairly balanced in Africa, LatAm and Asia and Middle East. I think almost all the top aggregator of the world, they use our connectivity in this market.
That is the reason if you see there is a huge growth at quarter-on-quarter from last 7 quarters, which we have reported. Gautam, if you want to add this to this.
Yeah, sure. Hi, Abhishek. From a growth perspective, I think, I mean, the good thing is the organic revenue growth, I mean, we have surpassed the portfolio growth rate. I mean, that speaks volumes about, I mean, our execution. From the robustness of the business at this point in time from, I mean, the month till date, the revenue run rate that we are clocking, I mean, we have not been kind of witnessing any slowdown whatsoever. Even for next year, we have good amount of visibility in terms of deals that we have won, the new volumes that will start to kind of kick in. As Rajdip highlighted, we have multiple engines of growth, multiple levers of growth across multiple geographies.
We're very bullish about LatAm, and we believe, the LatAm growth trajectory will be, I mean, very strong, I mean, in days to come, and we are investing in the right markets over there. From a GCC standpoint, I mean, it's kind of now deeply entrenched into a lot of adjoining markets besides UAE. We believe a lot of growth will start to come, I mean, from some of those markets like Saudi, Kuwait, and from India, I mean, we definitely, I mean, as we've always been highlighted, highlighting that we have been late in terms of our India domestic entry strategy, but now we are kind of making our presence felt and definitely taking a lot of market share from competition.
Just to add, Abhishek, I think our firewall product, you know, at the kind of deployment we are doing right now with various operators, there's one slide also showing that. I think that particular division is doing really good, and we are in talks with multiple operators as we speak. Very soon we will announce some more, exclusive partnerships.
Got it, sir. Thank you. Sir, you mentioned at the start, you know, some kind of leadership changes with new growth plan. If you could, you know, elaborate a bit more. I don't want specific names or something, but what is the new org structure you're thinking about? Is there any difference, you know, go-to market you'll be thinking about from a new growth paradigm? Because it looks like the growth is now more focused on outside India. Maybe you could elaborate on that.
Route Mobile is always, as I mentioned, right, India is just one of the market for us. We operate from 22 market, and every market where we are operating and we see a very solid growth flow there. In terms of leadership change, I think we are hiring some top management, especially to take care of our Mobile Identity division. We are launching a product in Barcelona, probably, which will be a very unique solution to mitigate the risk of digital fraud. That is exactly what I think most of the fintech company, most of the, you know, like banks are facing right now. Probably you can say Route will be launching their first fintech solution in month of February.
To lead that, we are definitely hiring somebody from industry who has multiple years of experience to lead this product.
Got it, sir. Thank you, and have a good 2023.
Thank you very much, Abhishek.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
I'd like to give the possibility. I hope I'm audible.
Yeah.
Yes, you are.
Yeah.
First of all, congratulations for the good performance. Rajdip, I wanted your thoughts around the competition density.
Manik, your voice is not very clear.
Yes. If you're using-
Hello.
Yes, yes. Are you speaking through the handset now? We have lost the connection for Mr. Manik Taneja. We'll move to the next question from the line of Mohit Motwani from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I wanted to ask a couple of questions. First question was around the volumes, which, you know, was flagged quarter-on-quarter. There would have been some impact on some of the geographies. Do you want to call out any geography where there was some more impact than the other geographies in terms of volumes?
Mohit, I think, you need to also understand. Let me just give you a small example. One single SMS, international SMS terminating in Bangladesh will charge $0.12, and same, in Pakistan, $0.14, where when you go to India, ILD messages are $0.04. I think it's a combination of geography mixed, you know, like in which month we have a higher traffic and what price. One should not look at my numbers without based on volume. Based on the realization per transaction. You know, like as we speak, I think we are working very closely with another Sri Lankan operator where each SMS is going to be around $0.10.
Sure. That's helpful. Can you give us-
Let me just add to what Rajdip said, right? I mean, just to kind of give you a sense on volume side. I mean, we'll also need to account for, I mean, Diwali. While Diwali was in early October, but a lot of the promotional spend, including some of the sell by large e-commerce companies, happened in Q2, right? Which traditionally happens in Q3. To that extent, I mean, if you were to normalize it, I mean, there was volume growth that was there. There was also a large ILD price increase that had happened in Q2. Some of that volume also had kind of shrunk because of, I mean, whatever was non-critical had shrunk owing to that. I think the large impact was because of Diwali being in early October.
Hence, a lot of volumes were there in Q2, which was, I mean, which needs to be normalized. Yeah, over to you.
That's helpful. Can you also, provide us the revenue for Masivian and M.R Messaging for the quarter?
Okay. Sorry, what do you want, Mohit? If you can repeat.
Can you, yeah, provide us the revenue for Masivian and Mr. Messaging for the quarter?
Yeah, yeah. one second. Masivian revenue was about INR 601 million in INR terms. for Mr. Messaging it was INR 2,031 million in INR terms.
Sure. Thank you. For Masivian, you know, considering I understand that Masivian is one of the strongest quarters, with Q4 of the calendar year, the strongest for Masivian. How was the year-on-year performance that you witnessed for Masivian in the Q4 of the calendar year, can you maybe?
On a year-on-year basis, I think we are looking at, over a 20% growth.
Okay. Just the last one from my side. Can you give us some color on the contribution of WhatsApp in the new product revenue? Not maybe a specific number, but some color on the contribution from WhatsApp.
Mohit, we do report our new products revenue, and, it is a mix of, I mean, not only WhatsApp, Viber, various other new products. So I mean, we don't call out any each of these products separately.
Okay. Okay, that will do. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Couple of questions. First, about the some of the industries which we report. If we do calculation, BFSI seems to be showing some mutedness on quarter-on-quarter revenue growth perspective. If you can provide some sense about industry specific commentary about how you see demand trend. Obviously growth has materially moderated in BFSI compared to your YOY trend in H1 compared to Q3 what we see. If you can give some sense. Second question is about the exclusive arrangement or a deal which we announced for SMS Firewall solution in Sri Lanka with Sri Lanka Telco.
Whether the gross margin would be very different than our enterprise business, where we get roughly around 20% gross margin considering it is firewall deal, or it could be largely operating like enterprise business, if you can give some sense. Last question is about cash generation. I think partly earlier, Gautam alluded about weak cash generation. I am not clear about the negative or muted cash generation, which he said is for Q3 or for nine months. If you can clarify and how you expect it to play out for next few quarters. Thanks.
Sure.
So I think-
Over to you.
I'll address the second question about the firewall, you know, like margin. I think the most of the firewall solutions are like a SaaS solution, and then we become a gateway for those operators. It's about 30%-35% margin. It is definitely much higher than the traditional SMS margin. Gautam, you can take the next question.
Yeah. Dipesh, your query around the cash flows. I mean, when in our commentary, it was for nine months, FY 2023. This year, essentially, I mean, Q3 and Q4 will have some degree of impact because of the strategic business initiative for a couple of firewall deals. From Q, from FY 2024 onwards, it will result in high free cash conversion. Just wanted to kind of update you. I mean, about it. Coming to your query on, your first query was around the BFSI, right?
Right. The volume.
BF-
Yeah. BFSI revenue growth seems to be muted. If I do the way you give nine months cumulative numbers-
I think, Gautam, I think we need to just make it a bit clearer. We didn't see any kind of degrowth in the BFSI, you know, like, volume. Gautam, if you can just answer.
Yeah. I think in terms of financial services, you are right. If you're comparing this with... Dipesh, if you can just help me understand, are you comparing it on a quarter-on-quarter basis or on a YOY basis?
I'm comparing both way. QOQ it is muted, so flat. YOY also, if I look your H1 growth, and now Q3 YOY growth, H1 your growth used to be 75%+, almost 80%+ kind of number. Now it is less than half of it. I just want to get some sense.
As I said, I think some degree of this growth was also attributable to Diwali being early in the previous month. We serve a lot of critical traffic from our perspective. We are not seeing significant drop, I think, in terms of the transactional messages from a BFSI standpoint.
I think, Dipesh need to also understand when we onboard a new customer, all of a sudden that volume will be added for that particular quarter. After that volume will be become stable, right? For the next quarter or next month. There were certain banks we have added in last few quarters. Those volume has been added to the last year, maybe last quarter. The same volume is going to be continued with this quarter also. There won't be that kind of a jump which has been in the last previous quarter.
Understood.
Broadly, you are not seeing any demand pattern change across industry because your retail, if I look at it, retail is showing significant weakness. Even telecom and allied services, the way we report, is showing some different trend compared to, let's say, earlier trends. Broadly, you are indicating we are not seeing any pocket of weakness, particularly on industry side. E-com also showing, if you one look at QOQ, it is double-digit down. Even YOY it is down now. I just want to get that sense, see across industries, anything which you want to highlight.
I don't see as any. There's any, you know, I think we always believe that, I think we see lots of digital adoption happening all across the globe in all the markets where we operate. You know, like, we operate maximum in emerging markets where we see the digital adoption ratios increasing day by day. We believe that this transaction is going to increase multifold in coming days. We are very bullish about our growth in coming days. Yes, based on certain firewall deal, we may send just 10 million traffic and we make $1 million revenue. Instead of sending 100 million and making $1 million revenue, it all depends on market mix also. One need to consider that way.
Dipesh, we also process a lot of ILD traffic, I mean, when it comes to financial services as well.
Because of the price increase, as I said, the non-critical components of the communication, I mean, that definitely has impact because the price increase was significant. So I mean the it's not only related to I mean domestic NLD traffic. It's a mix of NLD and ILD. On ILD front, definitely there was some volume dip which had happened, and that's largely because of the price increase.
Understand. Last question, in other industries, any industry which is doing exceptionally well for us, if you can call it out?
We have that already laid out in the presentation. digital native continues to be strong. We are kind of deepening our wallet share with most of the digital native companies.
Gautam, I am referring to the industries which you highlighted, the six industries. Outside of those industries is doing very well. If you can prefer to highlight anything which is doing well outside of six industries you put in 50.
No, no. As I said, digital native industry, I mean, that continues to be as robust. I mean, even at the size and scale that we're talking about.
Dipesh just, let me give a perspective out here, you know, like to answer your question. As I said, if I'm serving Google for India, I'm not serving Google just for one country. I have a potential of serving Google for more than 100 country. If I onboard one single OTT player as a customer, it is very simple for us to just provide a connectivity for the global market. Okay? OTT player and digital native customers, when they onboarded on our platform, we are serving from multiple countries, and that is the growth we've seen from last few quarters. Understood. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity and apologies that I got disconnected the last time around. I had a few questions. First of all, with regards to the CFO to EBITDA conversion that Gautam alluded to at the start in his opening remarks. What we've seen is that our cash flow conversion has suffered materially over the course of last three years. Essentially, how should we be thinking about cash flow going forward? Is there a structural reset in terms of the cash flow profile? That's question number one. The second question was with regards to the competitive intensity. In the last six months, we've seen telecom service provider becoming much more aggressive, especially when it came to some of the, some of the large contracts. What are you seeing on the ground now?
The third question was with regards to any potential pricing deals either on the NLD or the ILD side. Over the last couple of years, we've seen ILD pricing go up. In the past year that you get to even seeing a similar phenomena happen on the NLD side. If you could help us understand what are you seeing on the ground. Thank you.
Maybe you can ask him the first question.
Yeah, sure. Sure. Hi. Hi, Manik. Manik, just to kind of give you a perspective in terms of the cash conversion, right? I mean, over the last three years, we've seen structural changes in the industry. Right, in the midst of COVID, all the traditional regional companies, I mean, the business was massively impacted, and it was only the digital savvy businesses, I mean, which continued to thrive. And for almost, and for all these large digital technology companies, our receivable cycle happens to be well within 30 days. I mean, 30 days is the credit period.
When the economy started to open up and all the regional traditional companies started to kind of, come back to normalcy, that's when the working capital cycle started to prolong a little bit because most of these digital companies, the payment cycles are a little longer than most of the other digital native companies or large technology giant companies, right? That actually led to some amount of, free cash getting stuck in terms of increased receivables. As we are kind of inching now towards a more stable environment where the change in the working capital, I mean, will get normalized as we move forward. It will lead to higher cash conversion going forward.
The only caveat in this is this quarter and the next quarter, we have two large strategic business initiative deals, I mean, from a firewall standpoint, which may warrant some working capital getting stuck. From FY 2024 onwards, the cash conversion will be far higher and should gradually trend towards northwards of 50% from a conversion standpoint.
Sure. Manik, on the question of competitive in, like, the landscape, as I said, you know, like, for me, we compete in a global market, and I think opportunity for me is very high. When we talk about emerging market or, you know, developed market, I think we are operating and we are serving customer in all the markets. I think there are very few people, few companies, who are in this space who are, you can say, top five CPaaS player probably there. I think we are a champion of emerging country. As I said, most of these CPaaS players, they're using Route Mobile as a connectivity partner. I think we see lots of growth coming from them to Route Mobile.
I don't see there is any change in long term because it's more about the partnership model we work with them rather than competing with them. There are certain markets, certain domestic players where we go, we do compete with them in certain markets. According to me, I think, we are fairly well placed, and we don't see much of competition in global market, or the market where we operate.
faktisk, my question was more on the domestic market because over there we have seen one of the large ESP get aggressive with one of the PSP.
No, I think I've already, you know, like in my first address, I've already clearly mentioned that we work very closely with operators, you know. One operator coming and trying to disturb the market is not going to work at all. You know, like, it's a very large market, and I think India, the digital adoption and transactions are increasing day by day. There is a huge market, and there's a market for everyone. We will treat them as a competition, another competition. If there are 10 competition in Indian market, we'll take them as a eleventh one. The question is, again, you should have a DNA of CPaaS player to serve the customer.
Onboarding a banking customer takes almost six to eight months. That is something, a DNA which we have built in or some of the CPaaS player has built over seven, eight years or 10 years kind of thing. For them, somebody's like to have a multiple backup connectivity is also required. There are so many things required in your platform to serve a large banking customer. I think probably they can win one or two banks or customer, but going and serving N number of customer of that scale is impossible for them, honestly. Again, if there's a competition, we are happy to compete with them. I don't think they are going to sustain with those pricing even if they go and close multiple deals.
Sure. Thank you for that detailed response.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is on the line of Moez Chandnani from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening. My first question was on the revenue per transaction. That's gone up significantly this quarter. Is there anything specific driving that, or is it just because of a geographical mix change that's happened this quarter?
Yeah. Hi. It is largely due to the geographical mix. The rest of the world, we've seen significant increase. ILD price was also increased for the Indian markets.
Okay. Sure. Understood. Also secondly, on your ESOP program, I understood that there was some reversal of charges this time around. With your new employees coming in, do you expect higher than expected costs in your ESOP program going forward, or you think that the current levels will sustain?
In terms of the ESOP cost. I think I already kind of given that there was some rollback. Whenever, I mean, new employees will join, I mean, ESOP is definitely an employee engagement program from our perspective. I mean, it is there to attract good employees. It will be there. But the scale and proportion of that may not be as high as what it was last year.
Sure. Lastly, on your cash flow, operating cash flow, I understand that from FY 2024 you'll be at 50%+ operating cash flow, but could you give some indication of what your OCF to EBITDA number will be for FY 2023? What sort of OCF to EBITDA percentages are we looking at, you know, at the end of this year?
I mean, the endeavor will definitely be to kind of, inch closer to 50%.
Okay. Sure. around 50%?
That's correct. Yeah.
Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask any questions, please enter star and one on your touchtone telephone. The next question is on the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My question is on the, you know, partnerships that you have announced. In terms of the E2P partnerships and the, you know, and the network firewall partnerships that we have announced. What is the timelines in terms of revenue that we can expect, and what is the revenue potential from these, you know, like, partnership and deals? Also in terms of the acquisitions that you have done, if you can, you know, provide some more color in terms of the performance of these individual entities. How they have been performing?
I think.
Amit, hi. Rajdip here. Revenue from this partnership, I think it will take about 10 weeks to deploy the entire firewall, for the Sri Lankan operator. We are looking forward to have, this revenue to be part of our, overall performance from, April onwards.
Okay. The earlier announcements that we made, you know, regarding, you know, the Uganda Telecom and the, you know, firewall deal.
Uganda is already live, and we already, I think, serving them now. I think that is live.
Okay. Okay. On the acquisitions, sir, if you can provide some color on how the individual acquisitions are doing?
Sure. Gopi?
Yeah. Hi, Amit. I think good thing is I think both Masivian and Mr. Messaging are doing really well. I mean, when we onboarded Mr. Messaging, it was at a run rate of EUR 5.5 million a month. I mean, that has already trended up to almost EUR 7.2 million-EUR 7.3 million . In fact, in December, they've even outperformed that. But December being kind of a seasonal month, we are I think fairly confident that I think that's already, that business is already trending at EUR 7.2 million-EUR 7.4 million a month.
In terms of Masivian, I think we've done few investments, last year in terms of expanding the teams, and even from a product line expansion standpoint, I mean, we are looking at creating a new product out of that team, I mean, in partnership with the Indian technology folks. At this point in time, I think we see Masivian, I mean, continues to kind of drive almost a 20%+ growth rate. Able to also win a large $5 million deal, which is the multi-geography deal. That of course sees our presence across multiple geographies. That is on their revenue scale, I mean, a significant contributor.
We are reasonably confident, I think Masivian, I think this year also, I mean in FY 2024 also will be able to kind of clock, growth rates northwards of 20%.
Okay. You know, in terms of the, you know, strategy, you know, in terms of acquisition strategy, since you have been aggressive on the acquisition side, how do you see, you know, in terms of deployment of the cash that we're having? Are we planning some more acquisitions in some more strategic areas, or we are planning to grow the business more organically from here on?
Amit, let me just answer this question. You know, like Andrew has said, we are launching few products very soon, and I think this is well. Probably in terms of acquisition, we're not looking out to acquire any large companies or invest heavily on that side. Right now we are focusing more on how to integrate and create upsell and cross-sell opportunity within all the companies we acquired. That is our focus for next few quarters. I think we want to make sure all the integration and upsell, cross-sell opportunity to be created well. Which we have seen a very good, you know, like traction between all these company where we started using each other's product, you know, fairly well.
As I said, the Mobile Identity product which we are launching is a, you know, brainchild of Masivian, and we both, team from Bangalore, RouteLab, and team from Colombia, they worked together to build this product, which is a very unique product and probably a product for the fintech market to be launched in India very soon.
Okay. I have one last question. You know, we have seen that, you know, there has been multiple price hikes on the ILD side. Okay. You know, what is the thought process behind this, you know, massive price hike by the telcos? Is it, you know
You know, by indication of the fall in volumes. They are increasing the prices to, you know, offset the, you know, fall in volumes that we are seeing.
Amit, I think if you see global market, you know, like I think that's a trend going on all across the globe now. Any international OTT brands transmitting all across the globe are paying higher price, and that is a very common trend. India is still a very low price. If you say $0.04, you know, as compared to $0.12 or $0.13 in Bangladesh or Pakistan. I think, yes, it's a completely prerogative of operator to decide, and for that it is a pass through. Operators really need to be, you know, like think logically before they increase pricing, because if they really want to increase price, they may lose some traffic. I don't think operators are going to increase price in India for next at least for few years.
1 year for sure, because they have seen certain degrowth in traffic, which somehow they are a little bit careful. This is my understanding. I might be wrong also. On a domestic side, there are some discussion people are talking about to increase pricing. I have no idea. We have not got any update from operator as we speak. Probably I don't think, because enterprises are definitely spending a lot of money on this kind of communication, and probably increasing price at this point of time won't work for operators. I don't think there's any price going to happen in next one year for sure. I might be wrong also. Even if it happens, for me, it is just a pass through.
Okay. Okay, sir, thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashish Chopra from Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope I'm audible.
Yeah.
Yes.
Thanks. My first question was actually on the cost side. If you could just explain the costs below the purchase of SMSs? I think the employee costs this quarter went up from INR 39 to INR 47 crores, while there hasn't been any material change in the total number of employees. And even the other operating expenses, which even after excluding that provision of INR 6 crores, I think that's gone up from INR 38 crores-INR 39 crores to the similar number of INR 46 crores-INR 47 crores as well. If you could just clarify the jump in these two expenses?
Sure, sure. Ashish essentially, the employee benefit costs. I think, in this financial release, the employee benefit, ESOP expenses, I mean, that's been clubbed with the employee benefit expense and hence, that cost is seemingly higher. Earlier it was a separate line item. Hope that clarifies or you have something specific on that.
No. Gautam, I was actually talking about the employee expenses excluding the ESOP charges, which would have been INR 38 crores, INR 39 crores last quarter and is INR 47 crores this quarter.
One second. One second. Ashish, just one second, one second.
Sure.
Ashish, if you adjust the ESOP cost, right? I think the ESOP cost is not being adjusted. If you adjust the ESOP cost for both the periods, the cost has actually reduced.
Okay. Okay. Could you just share the employee expenses excluding the ESOP charges?
I can share it, with you.
Yeah.
I will share that with you. Your second query was on other expenses. other expenses-
Yeah.
If you adjust for the bad debts, I mean, with respect to Mr. Messaging, there was increase in the data center cost because of the increase of our global scale of operations. Plus, there were some employees where there was a commission structure, so there was increase in commission with respect to the performance of some of the employees
Okay. Okay. Would the second element be the non-recurring one among the two and the data center costs continue going forward? Would that be the right way of looking at it?
Data center costs will continue going forward, and the other one will kind of be a function of performance.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah. The other question I had was, so I think in terms of seasonality, how should we think about transitioning from 3Q to 4Q? We've seen last time around when there was a sharp drop and that was on the back of maybe most of your businesses, especially the overseas ones, having a fairly strong finish to the calendar year. Is there a certain kind of defensible level of volumes below which you don't expect it to decline in the fourth quarter? Particularly also considering the fact that the seasonality in the domestic side at least has been a little bit more muted this time around since some part of it already came in 2Q.
Hello?
Yes, sir. We can hear you. Management members?
Yeah, yeah. Ashish, if I can understand your query correctly, are you kind of looking at what is the Q4 expected sort of a run rate?
Yeah. Just in terms of, I mean, if I were to compare, the 4Q for this year versus the last year, I wanted to understand should the seasonality be lesser of a factor considering that, you know, we've already not seen as strong a seasonality in December quarter this time around, in terms of volumes growth as you mentioned that some part of it had come in 2Q itself?
That's correct. That's correct. But having said that, Q4 will be slightly muted than Q3. That has actually been the trend historically as well. If you look at the Q4, had one month of I think messaging revenue. If you adjust for that, it was slightly muted to Q3. It will continue to be a little muted. There was a specific operator deal that we had for this quarter, for the last quarter, which was about $5 million-$7 million. That contract is due for kind of bidding this month, this quarter rather.
Adjusted for that, I mean, it will be slightly muted, but, I mean, from a full year perspective, the guidance will be northwards of 70% growth.
Okay. Okay, okay. Understood. No, that's helpful. Gautam, in terms of just the attrition numbers, so I think you mentioned around 61 employees leaving and 65 joining the organization this quarter, right? Which I guess on your base is almost like, 8.5%, 9% for the quarter, or on an annualized basis, more like 35%, 36%. Is that the normal, I mean, is that par for the course with respect to the business? Is that something that is much higher than your comfort levels? Where should we think the comfort levels on attrition to be for your company?
It is a mix of two things. I think it is definitely, I think midsize, I think IT companies, I mean, they're also witnessing same kind of attrition trajectory. In our case, I mean, there was some other aspects, I mean. Masivian, I mean, we were kind of looking at building a lot of this product, right? We have taken it to a level at the end. At a point in time we realized that we have to bring that, I mean, and globalize it from a global launch of that product. That's where, I mean, we had some amount of attrition at Masivian, and then we were able to kind of add it or pad it into our Bangalore the center of excellence, right?
The intent was to kind of create a team and, create, kind of, a working, technology relationship between Masivian and the India team so that we could kind of look at launching the, product, I mean, at a global scale. A lot of Masivian product tag is largely in Spanish. The intent is, I mean, when we're looking at launching it across various markets, the intent is to kind of globalize it and have it more in terms of English. That's where we've kind of, done a little bit of chop and change, I mean, between the two entities. That's also a large part of, this, increase and then we will hire things here.
Understood. Thanks. One last bookkeeping one from me. Could you share the operating cash flow number for the third quarter?
One second. For the nine months it's about, INR 6 crore+ .
Sorry, INR 6 crores?
Yes.
Okay. Okay. You mentioned that this may soften up in the fourth quarter with given the firewall products deals.
That's correct.
Understood. Got it. Thanks so much for taking my questions. All the best.
Thank you.
Thanks, Ashish.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohan Kumar, Individual Investor. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Congrats on a great set of numbers. Most of my questions have been answered, but if I may ask something a little out of the box. When you're speaking to other funds around you, what is the biggest pushback you're getting with respect to what investors want to see or what the funds want to see with respect to the company's performance? If I look at the last few quarters, the company's consistently performed fairly well when it comes to whether it's top line or bottom line, but the stock's not done that great. I'm just trying to understand if there is something that you're hearing from investors that probably is raising a few flags here or there.
I think it's a two-way answer. I think, Gautam, you will answer. Let me answer it, and then probably you can answer.
Sure.
honestly, we are getting great support from our investors, and I think, we are getting support in terms of their inputs on different products which we know we are just discussing with them also. I think, how the market is behaving is something Gautam can answer, your question, but definitely we want to focus more on developing new products and, we have the capability and, the team now, and our focus is definitely going to be build, something in-house and, for a global market, which is exactly what we are building right now. I think most of the investors, they always try to see new things to build, and I think which we are doing, and definitely they want to grow.
They want to see the growth from where we are going to, which markets we are going to focus on and how we are going to define a strategy for those market and what is our growth plan for those markets. I think these are the few things which we keep on talking with them, and I think we're getting great support from all our investors as of now. Gautam, you can just add to that.
Sure. Thanks for asking this query. I mean, honestly speaking, we've been really happy with the way we've been performing over the last, not only last three quarters, but I mean, last, I mean, since we IPO'd and even before IPO. I mean, we are doing really, exceptionally well, and we continue to tread the path.
Honestly, I mean, it's more than micro. I mean, it's got more to do with macro. I think there are challenges in terms of what's happening, I mean, globally, I mean, in terms of the tech space. There are, I mean, some funds where, there are, I mean, write-downs because of their tech exposure and other things. That's leading to some amount of realignment in terms of their portfolio. Some of these things have definitely impacted them in terms of little bit of supply and other things. Hopefully, I mean, with things kind of moving, I mean, from a macro standpoint towards normalcy, things would start to kind of... And we should definitely start to get rewarded in terms of, I mean, the way we have been performing.
Our aspiration, I mean, is to kind of reach a billion-dollar revenue, and I think we are working in that path at this point in time. From, from our run rate perspective also, I think we are now close to, I mean, we should be very close to $0.5 billion run rate, I mean, by next year. And we are also kind of now contemplating few other strategic moves, I mean, which would help us accelerate our journey to a billion-dollar revenue. With, with fingers crossed, I mean, hopefully the street should start rewarding, I mean, our performance.
Do you have any further questions? We'll move to the next question, which is from the line of Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial Limited. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. My question is regarding on the new product sales. If I see your numbers for the last three quarters, the growth run rates have come down significantly if I were to compare that with the last year. Another question is like, despite this low base of, you know, revenue, why haven't we been able to, you know, increase that growth run rate? I mean, we are at 20%, 19%. I think previous quarter we were 8%. Is there a possibility we can see some improvement going ahead here?
Definitely, yes, Swapnil. I think we do have an internal target for our sales people to focus more on new products in global market. We are onboarding customer on WhatsApp, not only in India, in Indonesia, in Middle East and in Africa also. In coming quarters we will see the impact of growth in all these new products, including the some of the products which we are building.
Can we expect that to go beyond this 15%-20% that we are growing right now?
Definitely, yes. Definitely, yes.
Okay.
In fact, just to add to Rajdip's point, the, I mean, the modus operandi for us going forward, I mean, is to create strategic business units and, I mean, like the U.K. entity that we have partner formalised. The intent will be, I mean, for various other such new products to create dedicated teams to drive the core business. We believe, I think, in days to come, I mean, the growth rates will only accelerate. I mean, at the beginning of last year, I think we had guided almost doubling our revenue from $10 million of revenue. I think we are on track to achieve it. Now with this email, I mean, the platform upgrade, I think the email trajectory also should start to kind of show good traction.
Okay. Second question is with reference to the gross margins. Now, given the new dealings, and expansion in some of the geographies, increase in R&D messaging, how should we start looking at your gross margins in the near term?
I said, see, I keep on telling in all my previous call also that we are definitely looking out to add new product revenue to our portfolio. In coming days we have the aspiration to increase our GP from 25%-30%, and we are working towards that. In coming quarters, we will definitely try to achieve this number. We are in very early stage, and as I said, only channel adoption of this new channel of communication adoption ratio is very slow. The way it is growing, and I think we are onboarding multiple customer every single quarter on different product, and we do see a lot of traction happening on it.
We do have internal target for ourselves that to how to increase our GP in coming quarters down the line, and we are working towards that. We will definitely see increase in GP in coming quarters.
Will it be possible to quantify in some sense, like.
It's not... You need to also understand, Swapnil, that we are working in a different geographies, right? We work in a Africa geography which is definitely very low in terms of GP. If you go to Latin America, that is more than 35% GP. We work in certain market where GP is almost, say 14%, 15%. You know, so we are not just based on one country and one set of customers, you know, like where you can actually give a guidance for a GP. What we are trying to say out here is that we are definitely working on a product mix so which will increase our GP in coming years or coming quarters down the line.
Okay. Sure. Just one last follow-up question. How should we think about the organic growth trends? If I were to exclude your Firewall deals, there have been some of the sectors or competitors who have started calling out recessionary pressures. In that sense, would we be able to continue to grow at around 30% that we have been growing at right now? Or, we should start looking at some tapering off there?
Swapnil, if you see our growth in last five years, you know, like we always grew by 30%, more than 30%, you know. We will try to grow with that rate. I think the question is the product mix or other things, and I think organically if you see there is a growth also which Gautam has already mentioned. We are still doing some of the integration with some of the large Indian banks which is happening as we speak. Probably that traffic will make in this quarter or next quarter, probably we see the growth in those as well.
Okay, Rajdip. Thanks a lot for answering the questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rajdipk umar Gupta for closing comments.
Just want to say Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your time, and have a very good evening. Take care. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Route Mobile Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.