Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited Q1 FY23 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Investec. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone telephone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhuvnesh from Investec. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. To discuss the financial performance for Q1 FY23 and to address your query, we have with us today Mr. Gagan Banga, Vice Chairman, MD and CEO, Mr. Ashwini Hooda, Deputy Managing Director, Mr. Sachin Chaudhary, Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Mukesh Garg, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ashwin Malli, Head Treasury, Mr. Ramnath Shenoy, Head IR, Mr. Vikesh Gandhi, Head Mortgage, and Mr. Hemal Jhaveri, Head Banking. I would now hand over the call to Mr. Gagan Banga for his opening comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. A very good day to all of you, and welcome to the quarter one fiscal 2022/2023 earnings call. I hope all of you and your families are doing well and are safe. Before we get into the numbers for the quarter, I will briefly give you an update on our operational performance. As a leader, there is no greater joy than to witness optimal execution of strategy towards desired results. Almost three years back, the management of the company took the decision to pivot its business model in a completely different direction. From having grown our balance sheet at a CAGR of over 20% for over a decade, we decided to shift to a balance sheet light model.
We were among the first few companies to stick our neck out and declare that an asset-light model, a combination of co-lending and portfolio sell-down in partnership with banks is the future for non-banks. While at that time we were met with naysayers, now the point of view and commentary of businesses, lenders, investors, as well as research analysts seems to have completely changed. Every non-bank lender today is looking to increase co-lending partnerships to take advantage of an equity-light model. Not only non-banks, even the banks have realized the benefit of this model and are vying to increase their partnerships, as well as are investing money in implementing the technology platforms for the solution. IBH has been a huge beneficiary of taking steps early and is clearly ahead of its peers in this race.
By the beginning of fiscal 2022, the company had already tied up its intended co-lending partnerships and had started ramping up disbursements under the model from quarter 2 fiscal 2022. With the partnerships maturing over the year and through its established originate and securitized model, the company reached a quarterly disbursal run rate of INR 1,500 crores through the asset-light business model in the second half of fiscal 2022. Normally, the first quarter is comparatively weaker for businesses than the fourth quarter. In spite of that, in quarter 1 fiscal 2023, the company has scaled up its disbursements under the asset-light model to INR 2,260 crores. We have completed our co-lending tech integration with three partners and expect to complete the tech integration with the remaining four partners within the current financial year itself. As tech integrations are completed, the pace of disbursements will scale up further.
Total retail disbursements for the company in quarter one were at INR 3,000 crores. Our digital lending platform will help us expand our reach to tier three and four towns through lean branches and aid in our target of adding 250,000 retail customers between fiscal 2023 and 2025. Technology-backed underwriting will also help increase our efficiency and reduce our turnaround time of disbursing the loan. Overall, we are confident and on track to achieving our targeted retail disbursements of INR 15,000 crores during fiscal 2023. Another point of delight for the management is that in line with our guidance, the AUM of the company is now on the right trajectory. We ended quarter one fiscal 2023 with an AUM of a little over INR 73,000 crores, and we are now on track to grow it at about 10% for fiscal 2023.
As I had guided in the past, under the asset-light model, our AUM will keep compounding while our balance sheet size and on-balance sheet loan book will stay flat or marginally reduce. The macro for residential real estate is also, as a backdrop, continuing to show growth momentum. As per a recent Knight Frank report, housing sales in the top eight Indian cities recorded approximately 60% YOY growth in H1 2022, and approximately 19% growth compared to H2 2021. By volume, housing sales in the first half of 2022 reached a nine-year high in terms of half-yearly sales.
Residential project launches, too, showed growth momentum, witnessing an approximate 56% YOY growth in H1 calendar 2022, and 25% sequential growth. As I mentioned during the last quarter's earnings call, we are continuing to scale up our capacity by adding manpower and opening new branches. In quarter one fiscal 2023 on a gross basis, we added 657 new people to our workforce and opened nine new branches. We are currently at a run rate of approximately INR 1,000 crore of loans per month. As employees get trained and productivity improves with vintage, we are on track to disburse and increase this number to about INR 1,500 crore by the end of the fiscal without significant proportionate increase in manpower. The commercial real estate market too has started showing strong growth momentum.
In the first half of calendar 2022, commercial office space absorption registered a growth of 107% YOY, with 25.3 million sq ft office space getting transacted. New completions too picked up significantly, with 24.1 million sq ft space getting delivered in the first half of fiscal calendar 2022, which is a growth of 61%. This is an opportune time for us to recommence doing our wholesale loan business. As I had mentioned in my last earnings call, we've already received SEBI approval for one of our AIF funds, through which we intend to disperse wholesale loans. For this fund, we've already finalized our first disbursement of INR 200 crore to a leading developer in North India. INR 200 crore per loan is the sweet spot that we feel for the fund.
The documentation for the said disbursement is underway, and we expect the disbursement to happen within August 2022. We also aim to launch and operationalize two more AIF funds within the current year, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals. Overall, the goal is to get to about INR 10,000 crores of annual disbursements through these three AIF funds. Combined through the retail asset-light model and the AIF model for wholesale loans, we should be able to grow our AUM by the guided 10% in fiscal 2023. While we pursue both the tracks, we will continue with the exercise of de-risking the balance sheet through reduction of the legacy wholesale book. We are on track to reduce it further by 20% by the end of the calendar year from March 2022 levels. As an important track on our institutionalization of the company, the de-promoterization of Mr.
Gehlot, the founder of the company, and his group companies, have been approved by the lead lender of our working capital consortium. This was a key step in the overall process. We expect the complete process of de-promoterization to be completed within the current calendar, subject to receipt of other requisite approvals. I will now quickly cover the headline numbers for the quarter. We'll request you to please refer to slide three. As at the end of June 2022, our assets under management stood at INR 73,047 crore, while loan book stood at INR 16,194 crore. Since September 2018, on gross basis, IBH has successfully saved over INR 1 trillion to the system. As we did this, our net gearing has reduced from 7x in fiscal 2018 to just 2.5x now.
As I had mentioned during the last quarter, the net gearing will stabilize at the current 2.5x level as incremental business will be done in an asset-light model and the AUM should grow by about 10% in the current year. Our capital adequacy at the consolidated level stands comfortably at 34%, of which tier-one capital is 27.5%. With the increase in repo rates by the RBI and in line with our industry peers, we raised our reference rates in our retail product by 140 basis points and on the wholesale product by 160 basis points. Of the total, 40 basis points of rate increase was passed on through the first quarter and the rest is being passed on in the current quarter.
The raise increase resulted in our book spread expanding marginally by 30 basis points at the end of quarter one fiscal 2023. Our cost of funds on book is standing at 8.1% and book yields at 10.8%. An increasing interest rate cycle is always beneficial for our spreads as over 99% of our advances are on floating rate basis, wherein we pass on the rate increase almost instantaneously. While a large part of our funding mix apart from NCDs is on a fixed rate basis, the rate increase will thus help us to maintain our spreads or marginally improve it and also maintain/improve our net interest margins going ahead.
Our net interest margin on loan book for quarter 1 fiscal 2023 was at 3.75% and our PAT registered a YOY growth of about 2% and came in at INR 287 crore versus INR 282 crore last year. We continue to work diligently on maintaining a fortress balance sheet through the pillars of strong capital adequacy, low gearing, high liquidity and robust provisioning, which provides a strong base for growth in fiscal 2023 and beyond. Now please refer to slide 6 of the earnings updates for an update on asset quality. As at the end of June 2022, our gross NPAs stood at INR 2,159 crore, down from INR 2,318 crore in the previous quarter. Our net NPAs stood at 1.71%.
Our stage three provision cover stands at 42% compared to 41% in the previous quarter. Our total provisions at INR 2,080 crore are at a healthy 3.5% of loan book, which is 2.8x times of the regulatory requirement and 96% of gross NPAs. High provision cushion places the portfolio in a strong position to negotiate any macroeconomic uncertainty and provide a strong base for growth. On the back of strong pick-up in the real estate sector, the company has seen strong recoveries in the last few quarters. Loans restructured under the Resolution Framework 1.0 and 2.0 of the RBI have now reduced to just INR 74 crore from INR 155 crore, while loans given under ECLGS have run down to INR 176 crore from INR 217 crore before.
We expect this trend to continue in the coming quarters as well. As such, these numbers are extremely small. Our retail collection efficiency too has normalized to pre-COVID levels and stood at 98%, 98.7% for quarter one fiscal 2023. The pristine quality of retail assets churned out by Indiabulls has been the primary reason for its fair sell-down relationships to have remained strong and have grown over the years. We started disbursements under our asset-light model from fiscal 2022, and the asset quality of these assets too has impressed our partners. Since fiscal 2022, we have disbursed retail loans of INR 5,500 crore under the asset-light model, and 90-plus delinquencies today stand at a very low number of 0.10% for these INR 5,500 crore of disbursements that we have done.
As communicated last quarter, we expect our overall gross NPAs to remain in the range of 3%-3.5% for some time. As the AUM starts to grow, we expect stability in our gross and net NPAs. For fiscal 2023, we expect credit costs to remain at 100-150 basis points, and from fiscal 2024 onwards, credit costs should reduce substantially from these levels. Moving on to the next important pillar of our operation, liquidity and ALM management. As at the end of June 2022, we had a liquidity buffer of INR 5,765 crore, which is approximately 10% of our loan book. Given the improving business environment and the relatively stable asset quality and funding access, the company has rationalized its liquidity buffer to minimize the negative carry and has utilized the liquidity for business development.
Coming to the topic of ALM management, as we've been discussing over the past few earnings calls, we had voluntarily created a reserve fund for repayment of $350 million worth of dollar bonds, which became due on 28th May 2022. On the due date, the dollar bonds were successfully repaid, utilizing the proceeds of the voluntarily refunded fixed deposits. We have repeatedly provided reassurance to all our debt investors that the company has a conservative approach to ALM management, and we plan well ahead for due repayments. As mentioned, since September 2018, we have repaid over INR 1 trillion to the system. The company's ALM management and liquidity planning does not assume refinance of domestic or international borrowings or term loans.
IBH will continue to maintain a strong capital and liquidity position to provide comfort and confidence to its bondholders and other debt providers. In line with this principle, the company has decided that it will be setting up a similar voluntary pre-funding arrangement for its ECB loan repayments due in fiscal 2024 and FCCB repayments in fiscal 2024 and 2025. Next week itself, we will create the first tranche of a pre-funded fixed deposits for the ECB loan repayments coming due in fiscal 2024. As per RBI's master directions for housing finance companies introduced in February 2021, Indiabulls Housing Finance was required to maintain a liquidity buffer in terms of liquidity coverage ratio of 50%. Against this requirement, the company's LCR stood comfortably at 246% as at the end of June 2022.
Please note that the liquidity coverage ratio is only based on the high-quality liquid assets maintained as defined by the Reserve Bank of India. The actual liquidity available with IBH was actually higher. Our ALM as at the end of June 2022 is published on slide seven. The ALM is shown on a cumulative basis up to each bucket. We are positive across all buckets and will have a positive net cash of approximately INR 14,000 crore at the end of the first year. Our detailed 10-year quarterly ALM is in the appendix slides of the earnings update on slide 16 to 20. This is the update for the quarter. Our situation today reminds me of 2011 when our retail disbursements were in the same handle as today.
Our ratings too were at the same double A level, and we, at that time, used to rely heavily on portfolio securitization to raise funds. The home loan lending rate at that time was between 9.5%-10%, and the real estate cycle was in an uptrend. While most of the things are the same, we are today at a significantly advantageous position. The home loan lending rates are still in the corridor of 7.5%-8%, and affordability has vastly improved on account of steady wage inflation and stable real estate prices. Most importantly, Indiabulls today has a team which has a rich experience of over a decade in scaling up this product.
This is the same team which took Indiabulls from being a new entrant in 2009 to being the third-largest mortgage originator in the non-bank space, and that's a position that we continue to hold on to. The team is now fully geared to repeat its performance and take Indiabulls to again, not only remaining the third-largest mortgage originator, but becoming a multiple of the fourth and the fifth, in terms of business. The vast experience of the team will enable it to achieve this feat in lesser time than what we took during our first leg of growth. I remember a couple of years back, I was part of a panel discussion at a conference where the panelists had asked me my thoughts on the future of non-banks, given the liquidity constraints being faced by the sector post the IL&FS crisis.
I'd given a cricket analogy at that time that considering this as a test match, the non-banks were in the period of the first 10- 20 overs of the first day of the match, wherein the pitch assists the fast bowlers. There is swing and uneven bounce for the bowlers, and the batsmen have to carefully play out these overs. Well, well, I can now say that we have very ably navigated those initial overs, and the batsmen are all well set. The sun is now shining bright, and the ball is coming nicely onto the bat. All we have to do now is to create a partnership and put on a good score on the board. Similarly, all macro indicators are shining bright for the housing finance space and for Indiabulls.
All we have to do now is scale up our tech asset-light model to bounce back to our glory days. As we do so, I'm confident that all our stakeholders, shareholders, lenders, as well as employees will be duly rewarded for the faith that they have reposed in the company's management and its long-term growth story. With this, the IBH management team is now open for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Participants who would like to ask a question at this time may enter star then one on their touchtone telephones. If your questions are answered, you may withdraw them from the question queue by entering star then two. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. To ask a question, please enter star one now. We will wait for a moment as the question queue assembles. Our first question is from the line of Abhiram Iyer from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. You mentioned that the liquidity buffer stands at around INR 5,700 crores. May I ask why this is a bit different from, say, the cash and investments of around INR 7,000 crores mentioned in the presentation on slide 16? Is that a sort of difference in terms of some cash being restricted? The second thing is you mentioned that you'll be setting up sort of similar arrangements for your other external borrowings which are coming due in FY 2024 and 2025. Obviously, they're a long way away, but could you just give us some color on the timeline for the same?
Sure. There are three types of liquidity buffers that we track. There is one which is the regulatory buffer, which is high-quality liquid assets which are defined by the RBI, where we have to maintain 50% of maturities. As I mentioned, we are at over 250% there. There's an internal working where we look at all of our cash and investments and strip those to what is going to be available to us on a T plus one basis. INR 5,700 crore are investments which will be available to us on T plus one basis. These would be fixed deposit investments in high-grade bonds, government securities, so on and so forth.
There would be other investments which would be stickier, which would appear in the line of investments but can't really be liquidated on a T plus one basis. This could be in inventories and stuff like that, which are not considered as part of our liquidity buffer and therefore we exclude that. That's the differential, I believe, between the INR 7,000 and the INR 5,700. Ramnath, correct me if I have answered this correctly or not.
Yes, that's correct.
If anything else to add, then please do. As far as repayments are concerned, we are particularly sensitive to overseas stakeholders. We have quarterly repayments which come up. The chunkiness of repayments have largely evened out. That said, there will be some ECB loans, which are dollar loans, which are lent to us by banks which are overseas. Then there are foreign currency convertible bonds. We've done two tranches of those. Again, those are invested by overseas investors. We believe the line of sight that local banks have on cash, et cetera, makes them a lot more privy to information versus overseas lenders/investors.
For all of our overseas borrowing, we will follow a principle, much like we did in our dollar bond repayment, which is, one year before the repayment coming due on a quarterly basis, we will set aside 25%, in terms of, fixed deposits, such that that fixed deposit, four tranches of that can automatically convert into the repayment on the due date. The first such maturity will be of some dollar loans, for which we'll be setting aside approximately INR 500 crores per quarter. Give or take that number is roughly INR 2,000 crores in about one year's time from now.
Starting next week, we will keep setting aside INR 500 crore a quarter such that one year from now, that's INR 2,000 crore, which is not a very large sum of money from a repayment perspective. To give comfort to overseas lenders and investors, we will continue to follow this practice for all of our overseas borrowings.
Got it, sir. Thank you very much for the answers.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question is from the line of Hari. Please go ahead.
Gagan Banga, good morning. Thanks for the call. Hello?
It's okay. Can you hear me? There's a lot of disturbance.
Can you hear me now?
Yes. Thank you.
Gagan, thank you for doing the call. They say that the more and more boring investor calls become, the more dependable, consistent and on message the management team is. I want to congratulate you because this is getting into a good groove here where you are addressing the same set of issues continuously, and you appear to be doing what you're saying and saying what you're doing. That said, I have a couple of observations. Number one is, can you tell me what is the size of the legacy loan book, which you said you would reduce by a further 20% by calendar? What is left?
Yeah. Roughly $2 billion.
Okay. The reason I ask is, I wanna go back to what I mentioned in the previous call. The price to book of the company as I speak to you as of close of business today is 0.35. The company has a market cap now about call it INR 58 billion. Whereas, you know, if it's given one book, it should be at 165. Roughly there's INR 108 billion rupee haircut on for whatever set of reasons. If we were to attribute it purely to the concerns about, you know, the legacy book, et cetera. Related to that, here's my first question: You said that you accomplished a reduction in this quarter. Can you tell me very roughly what percentage of the recoveries?
What was the percentage of recovery? In other words, if you sold INR 100 worth of these legacy loans, what were you recovering? Were you recovering pretty close to 100% or 90% or 80% or how does that compare to the provisions you have in the book?
Hari, we carry provisions of approximately INR 2,800 crore. This book is worth about INR 15,000 crore. We carry almost like 18%-20% of this book is provided in some sense. What gets into NPA, we have generally been able to recover anywhere between 70%-80% of what's going into NPA. This book has been static for a while and therefore the slippages into NPA are going down on an incremental basis, which is reflected in the stability of the gross NPA, etc. Our recoveries from whatever we've classified in the past as non-performing, that also continues.
I continue to believe, as I've said to you, in our previous calls, that the company's valuation today is warped and cannot be an outcome of the PAT that, you know, the market expects us to lose INR 10,000 crore on this book. The fact of the matter is that if this entire book is to tomorrow, in theory, become an NPA, despite not having been an NPA while the worst period of the real estate cycle was on, we will lose around INR 2,000 crore, which we already keep as provision. Net, we will lose nothing on our neither on our earnings nor on our capital. Hopefully that's sort of an extreme worst case that we're speaking about here.
I believe that the market needed to see some sort of stability in our AUM. This is the first quarter after 15 quarters where the AUM has stabilized and that should give a bit of comfort to the market. As we grow this AUM now, I'm quite hopeful that the price to book catch up to at least one time book will happen sooner than later. My belief continues to remain that the overhang on the price is because of lack of buyers. Buyers today are looking for growth. We are finally at ease with coming back to stability, and we should hopefully in a quarter or two get back to growth as well.
The good news is that for the first time in our history, the influential high net worth investor in India, who's also an opinion maker. These are the type of investors who are now coming into the stock at these levels. This is something that we have permanently lacked, which is why the volatility in the stock used to be very, very high. These investors have their ears on the ground. They have access to management. They know exactly how our disbursements are panning out. Their damage checks are that much more easily done, and since they are operating in the local environment, it happens.
If we are able to continue to create a base of domestic investors, I am sure this catch-up will happen even faster, and that's what personally I am focused on right now, based on this advice of well-wishers' strategy. That's how I would like to summarize this.
Okay. Now, because it seems to me that, you know, the more granularity you provide on the PAT, you know, the level, the pace and the level at which you're the amount of recoveries you're getting as you de-risk this book, you know, the discount should obviously disappear because there is no other reason to believe. You know, even Moody's, et cetera, have commented about quality in the wholesale loan book. I think you're on the right track, but it just seems to me that this is a very unjustified haircut to the book value, which, as the market understands and you provide more granularity, hopefully will go away and get the stock to a much more sensible level. I have one other quick question. Look, the
I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. There's been recent concern about rupee weakness, and you do have a certain amount of dollar obligations. My recollection from the past is that you're fully hedged and you're not exposed to the FX rate. Is that correct?
That is absolutely correct. We are fully hedged, and we've hedged it at pretty sensible levels. Today, in our board meeting, this is also a topic of discussion, and we were pleased to inform the board that our hedges have worked out beautifully for the company. There is absolutely no risks that we carry, irrespective of the movement of the rupee. That's the principle we've historically followed, and we will continue to follow.
Thank you, Gagan. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Hari. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Our next question is from the line of K.O. Rasher from PNB MetLife. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. My question has been partly answered, but could you throw some light on the plans regarding a potential equity raise or funding via convertible debt? I understand this was also one of the key board agenda.
Yes. At this point in time, we chose to defer this. There is no immediate plan. This was considered actively at the board level, but given our current capital adequacy at, give or take 35%, we feel that equity or convertible is not the way to proceed. That said, if there has to be any sort of dilution, it would happen at least in the near term. I expect it to happen more as an outcome of a strategic discussion. That can't ever be taken off the table. That's something that would only provide stability to the company. Aside from that, a typical capital market raise is not something that we're looking to do anytime in the near future.
We would want the return on equity to at least double from here before we consider any such corporate actions.
Understood. Thanks. Thank you so much. That was the only question.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Shabad Thadani from Arqaam Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Hi, Gagan. Congrats on a decent set of numbers. Just a couple of questions from my side. One is on the wholesale book. The reduction of 20% that you talked about, can you just give me a sense of how much of that you expect to be driven by, you know, repayments from the borrowers just given the pricing that you're taking? Or how much of that is by virtue of transfer of assets out to ARCs and so on?
Hi, Shabad. Shabad, all of this will be through actual repayments. There's no transaction structured or any other which we are factoring in. In normal course, there is refinance that some of these borrowers land up doing, but that's a normal course of business. That's more led by the borrower than by us. I do know that there is a $200 million refinance which is being worked out by one of our large borrowers. If that is to happen, there would be 50% of our 20% target met by this, that one transaction, but that's not at our behest. That's at the behest of the borrower. We expect regular repayments and whatever actions borrowers have to take for this 20% reduction.
We are not looking at doing anything out of the normal course of getting our repayments as per the schedule.
Okay. Just to follow up on that, some of the provisions that you've taken obviously over the last 12-24 months have been with respect to that particular portfolio, right? As those repayments start coming in, will you see an unwind of some of those provisions start flowing back through the income statement?
Not at least in fiscal 2023. I would say not at least in the next year and a half. We are going to look very hard at the hardening interest rate cycle to see how demand plays out. While one expects that home loan rates will not go beyond 9%, but if they are to go beyond 9%, then does demand come off? If demand comes off, all the momentum that we are seeing on the real estate portfolio side, does that get affected? We will wait and watch as to how interest rate transmission happens. There has been a 140 basis points hike in just about nine months.
We do know that there is going to be some sort of, you know, pushback as far as home loans are concerned. How big is that pushback? Is it of significant value? Does it impact the sales cycle on the real estate side? That's something that one would need to watch out over the next six-12 months, before one can take any decision around provisions. Right now, as I guided this year, we expect 100-250 basis points of credit costs, and next year, that to come down, but no unwinding per se to happen, at least for the next year and a half.
Okay, thanks. Just last question. I think last quarter you had guided to what 2,000-3,000 crore of retail NCDs being placed into the market during the course of fiscal 2023. Obviously, market dynamics have changed now. Do you think you need to start looking for replacement channels of financing for that? Was that just more of, you know, gravy that you can run the business without?
When I originally said that we will do about INR 2,000-3,000 crores of total bonds, I had also mentioned that we were going to do INR 1,500 crore 10-year bond, which we've already done, about a month back. We would continue with a quarterly cycle of public issues, each of which should garner anywhere between INR 100-200 crores. Let's say optimistically INR 1,000 crores coming from there and the balance happening through private placements. That's how I would like to look at the bond issuance process. To that end, I see no reason why we will not be able to achieve this. Now that the results are out, over the course of the next two weeks, we will do our first public issue.
We should be able to do four such issues in the full year and garner anywhere around INR 800-INR 1,000 crores through that. That should continue any which way. That number of about INR 2,000 crores should happen despite the increase in interest rates or volatility in the bond markets.
Okay, perfect. Congrats again and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Sonika Ajwani from India Pulse. I'm sorry, a shareholder. Please go ahead. Ms. Ajwani, your line has been unmuted.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Hi, Gagan Banga. Your results are really good. Just wanna check, you know, what you are doing something for the shareholder. I've been holding shares, right, for the last three years, and the shares are all, you know, going down. Every quarter we hear a lot of good things, right? But the value of the share still, you know, if you compare it for last three years, has been going back to back.
You know, thanks for holding on to the shares and thanks for being a shareholder and a supporter. As management, you know, we had to, over the course of the last three years, recalibrate the entire business. As I had mentioned, three years ago, we started this journey of recalibration and building an asset-light business model. I remember it was early October 2019 that we spoke about this asset-light business model. In around three years, we've got it to a reasonable level of scale.
As we get past this 1,000 crore a month to 1,500 crore a month with the retail franchise value, 250,000 customers, high-value customers being added, it creates a lot of franchise value, which should end up in the catch up of at least the company going back to 1.5 times price to book, which is where I see us going back in the short term.
I think now that, as I mentioned a short while back, now that the AUM has sort of stabilized and should grow, hopefully at a rate of about 10% for the year, we should be able to convince some investors on the positive side to look at us as the growth stock. I think that's the best way to position us, and that would be the endeavor of the management besides focus on continuing to perform on a fundamental basis. Markets unfortunately are beyond our direct control. Aside from this, there is very little I can do.
You have my assurance that we continue to work very, very hard to make sure that we are walking the talk, what we are saying we are doing and what we are doing, we are saying. That's how we will continue to operate.
No problem. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take one last question and then we have to run.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Mahendra from Kanakia. Please go ahead.
Hello?
Yes, Mr. Mahendra.
Hello? Yes, am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Hello?
Sir, you are. Please proceed.
Okay, good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. My questions are, company granted stock option at INR 96 at very low price compared to book value, increasing value, and even lower than your own worth, low share price baffles me. Why not at the promoter selling price of INR 269? Why not at year high? Why not at average price? What price the company repurchase the share and why not at that price? This is a clear-cut case of transfer of shareholder wealth to all the rich shareholders. Number two, company was kicked out of Nifty 50, lost AAA, destroyed shareholder wealth by more than 90% from the all-time high. EPS is about one-fourth of all-time high EPS, even though now the capital per share is higher. Currently, very low ROE, but higher salary and perks to the management and board.
September 3, 2020 slide presentation shows that division of profit 43 for 2023 and 58 for 2024. Even now, earnings may not be even that much. Due to all this failure, management and board must resign if they are on a mission to inflict the pain and destroy the shareholder wealth. Number three, the last. Start paying interim dividend. Put the company on sale. Start treating shareholder like partner, owner in Warren Buffett terms. Start buying back shares and not selling share at ridiculously low price and lower than your own worth. Low price baffles me. Selling price of less than book value is not acceptable.
All, you must be realizing now that how bad and shareholder wealth destroying decision were made to sell not one time, but two times FCCB and paying interest and hedging cost higher than the rate of you are lending the money. These are my questions.
Sir, you are obviously pained because of the way that the stock has performed. As I explained to the previous gentleman who had asked a question that we are trying to recalibrate the company. The company's true resources, we are trying to recalibrate the business, trying to build a granular business are the hundreds and thousands of employees who are the beneficiaries of these employee stock options. It's not as if the promoter is getting anything. It is professionals who are running the company on a daily basis, who are managing our branches, who are engaging with our customers and are creating the franchise or recreating the franchise, who are benefiting, hopefully. The same employees have also exercised options at INR 1,200 and INR 1,600 and so on and so forth.
As a retention tool, all financial institutions have to periodically give stock options, and those stock options would be based on the price of the day. They can't be offered at a discount, otherwise the hit would come on the P&L. We are careful that no hit comes on the P&L, and that's something that we would do. As far as continue to do. As far as management is concerned, management had taken through the period of COVID a very steep salary cut, which was restored only a couple of quarters back. Not even restored. Even today, I'm earning about 50% of what I used to, less than 50% of what I used to earn. Same I can say for my other senior colleagues. If you have to.
If you lose talent, you will not get anywhere. That said, we will continue to make efforts towards trying to claim back our glory days, as I mentioned in my comments. Hopefully the stock will perform, and hopefully you will get good returns on your investments. That's the only commitment that I can provide to you at this stage. With that, I would like to thank everyone for supporting the company. We've had a reasonably good quarter, and hopefully we should come back with an even better performance in quarter two. Thanks for your support, and I look forward to speaking with you again after our quarter two results. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.