Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Tata Communications Earnings Conference Call for Q4 FY 2024. We are joined today by our MD and CEO, Mr. Amur Lakshminarayanan, and our CFO, Mr. Kabir Ahmed Shakir, and our Head for Investor Relations, Mr. Rajiv Sharma. The result for the quarter ended 31st March 2024 have been announced yesterday afternoon, and the quarterly data pack is available on the website. I trust you would have had the chance to look through the key highlights. We will commence today's call with comments from Lakshmi, who will share his thoughts on the business and the long-term outlook, followed by Kabir, who will share his views on the financial progress achieved. At the end of the management's remarks, you will have an opportunity to get your queries addressed.
Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that some of the comments made or discussed on today's call may be forward-looking in nature and must be viewed in conjunction with the risk and uncertainties we face. A detailed statement and explanation of these risks are included in our annual filings, which you can locate on our website, www.tatacommunications.com. The company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements publicly. With that, I would like to invite Lakshmi to share his views. Over to you, Lakshmi.
Thank you, Chirag. Welcome to Q4 FY 2024 earnings call. FY 2024 has been a milestone year for the company, as overall revenues surpassed the INR 20,000 crore mark, and the data revenues, the INR 17,000 crore mark. I'm happy to share that our reported 4Q FY 2024 data revenues were up 26.9% Y o Y, and grew to 21.9% on a full year basis. Incremental data revenues for this fiscal were at INR 3,085 crore, of which core contributed 18.5% and digital 81.59%, 81.5% . Our fourth quarter FY 2024 EBITDA is up 2.1% year on year, and full year EBITDA was lower by 2%.
Our full year EBITDA margins were at 20.2%, and fourth quarter FY 2024 EBITDA margins were at 18.6%. Our core EBITDA, excluding subsidiaries and the impact of acquisitions for the year, is at 23.7%, which is holding well within our ambition range of 23%-25%. Coming to the margins and the dip that we see this year, there are five factors which have affected these. I've talked about these before. These are our organic investments in people and platform, both in the markets as well as building the platform, our M&A related expenses this year, consolidation of the acquisitions which are loss-making, a drag from the subsidiaries, and the changing mix in the revenues with digital.
Let me share that we have an improvement plan in place across all of these parameters that should see a positive trajectory on the margin side, as well as with our investments on the growth side. We remain confident about our doubling of data revenues by FY 2027, and we are aware that we need to grow 15%-20% every year in order to make this happen. While I had called out that our reported data revenues grew by 21.9% on a full year basis, our underlying data revenue growth for the full year was at 8.8%, a tad lower than 10% in FY 2023, affected by the macro conditions. In this context, let me talk about our order book and funnel.
While funnel continues to be robust, order book had been flattish for the past few quarters, and I'd call them out before. There are two parts to this order book. One is the enterprise, which is a large focus of, the majority of the team members in the sales, and the OTT and the SP segments. Enterprise order book continues to be robust. Both India and international enterprise revenues have witnessed a positive growth momentum and grown double-digit this year. Our India enterprise revenues grew by 12.6%, and our international enterprise revenues grew by 10.5%, and some of the geographies showed more than 20% growth. However, the other part of the order book, which accrues from OTT and hyperscalers and the service providers, they have been lumpy in the last couple of quarters.
An equally important aspect is, with the CIS portfolio getting larger, a good part of our revenues are now usage revenues, and they don't reflect in the order book. As such, two aspects that you need to take note of. First, that the business model is moving towards an element of usage, and usage revenues will be cyclical in nature. I want to reemphasize that Kaleyra and Switch, they are run as an integrated business with our CIS unit and Switch with our media unit. I mentioned before, they are all led by one leader each as an integrated business. Customer opportunities are being looked at holistically, as opposed to looking at it from the individual product lens. Moreover, new business opportunities are being taken up by Kaleyra, as it is our go-to platform for our CIS ambitions going forward.
And this started happening, even some of the DIGO opportunities were done on Kaleyra paper in the last quarter as well. Incrementally, the health of the overall business will not be governed, not just by the order book, but also be a combination of order book and usage. Coming to our digital portfolio performance, our Q4 digital portfolio revenues stood at INR 2,082 crores, growing strongly at 71.6% year-on-year. For the full year, the digital portfolio grew by 55.4% on a reported basis and by 14.7% on an underlying basis. Our digital portfolio have grown at two-year CAGR of 37%, and all parts of the portfolio have delivered, with the next-gen connectivity growing at a CAGR of 30%, cloud and security growing at 21%, collaboration and customer interaction suite growing at 40%, media at 64% over the last two years.
Media, excluding Switch, has grown at a CAGR of 21%. Our collaboration and CIS portfolio, excluding Kaleyra, has a two-year CAGR of 5%. This is a complete reversal of a declining trend this business faced until 2022, FY 2022. A couple of thoughts on our medium-term aspirations. We remain confident about our data growth ambitions, as it continues to be driven by our expanded portfolio of capabilities, as well as our increasing customer relevance with this portfolio and increasing presence in the markets.
Our acquisitions and organic capabilities have made our digital fabric even more relevant to enterprises today, as we help them to solve challenges with their cloud strategies and simplifying their network transformations. There have been slowness in decision-making, which has hurt growth, but with our expanded portfolio, we are very well prepared to benefit as macro starts improving. Our medium-term structural drivers continue to be our India market leadership, our expanding scale in international markets, our increasing customer relevance, and our new product rollouts, including what we are planning, such as AI Cloud. One of the other growth catalysts for us has been the acquisition of new logos, and in FY 2024, the new logo revenues were up 90% year-on-year, albeit from a smaller base, justifying our increasing presence in the market and relevance across product domains.
To summarize, we believe that our global digital fabric is a powerful concept, which enterprises, especially in the international markets, are beginning to realize. With our network fabric, cloud fabric, customer interaction fabric, and IoT fabric, we are addressing a large number of problems that enterprises are faced with, and our digital fabric is coming out as a reliable, agile, and resilient solution for them. We are confident about a larger opportunity, and with a strong conviction, we will continue to improve and derive value of these investments, and continuously augment our capabilities. With this, I'll request Kabir to share the financial highlights.
Thank you, Lakshmi, and good afternoon, everyone. To begin with, as Lakshmi said, FY 2024 has been an eventful year for us. The year we saw the Fit to Compete and Fit to Grow , pillars of our financial strategy come to life. Our focus on driving profitable growth, strengthening our balance sheet, laid the foundation to enable us to complete three acquisitions in a single year while investing incrementally in our organic capabilities. Some of these inorganic and organic investments were solely on the back of internal cash accruals. We are encouraged by the early success we witnessed as the integration of Switch with our media business and Kaleyra with DIGO is progressing well and ahead of anticipated timelines. Our financial KPIs have departed because of the strategic actions we have taken. That said, their performance is in line with our expectations.
As we harvest revenue and cost synergies from these investments, we will see these indicators come back to their ambition range over the medium term. FY 2024, as a historic year, we delivered the highest data growth, growth in our data portfolio, coming in at 21.9% and crossing the INR 17,000 crore mark for the first time ever. Our FY 2024 underlying data revenues grew by 8.8% on reported currency basis. The reported current revenue numbers this year continue to have certain Forex benefits accruing from strengthening dollars. Normalizing for this Forex, our underlying data revenues grew by 6.6% year-on-year, and the positive impact on consolidated EBITDA margin is only 20 basis points. Our reported EBITDA came in at 20.2% this year on the back of investments in our organic and inorganic capabilities.
Our core EBITDA, excluding subs and the impact of acquisition, for the full year, is at 23.7%, which is well within our ambition range of 23%-25%. Our ROCE came in at 18.8%, driven by the impact of the rolling 12-month average of our EBIT performance, which has an element of dilution from our inorganic investments over the last six months and increased capital allocation for organic opportunities. The ROCE numbers will witness a further dilution over the next two quarters as the full impact of Kaleyra gets baked in. Going forward, as we benefit from the synergies from our acquisitions and begin realizing operating leverage from our organic investments, our profitability will improve. On the KPIs, it is fair to say that the first improvement you will see is on leverage, and this quarter there is a marginal improvement.
This will be followed by improvement in ROCE and then later, EBITDA margins. Our focus continues to be on creating elbow room and capacity for multiyear growth, as we have to be ready to participate in new opportunities, including AI cloud, multi-cloud connectivity, and CloudLyte. Now, coming to our quarterly performance. Our consolidated revenue for the quarter stood at INR 5,692 crores, improving by 26.6% year-on-year and 1% on a sequential basis. Data revenue for the quarter stood at INR 4,656 crores, improving by 26.9% year-on-year and by about 0.8% on a quarterly basis. Our EBITDA margins for the quarter were at 18.6%. Our PAT margins for the quarter stood at 5.6%.
We have provisioned for a deferred tax asset this quarter, amounting to INR 186 crores on account of an assessed recoverability of the past tax losses as we redomiciled our international business from Bermuda to Switzerland. Our cash from operations for this year was INR 2,829 crores, and FCF for the full year was at INR 747 crores. Net debt for the quarter stood at INR 9,126 crores, and our debt to EBITDA is now at 2.16x. Cash CapEx for the quarter stood at INR 435 crores, though our approved CapEx is close to INR 1,131 crores, largely driven by our commitment to invest in new opportunities and technologies, underpinning our consistent growth on investing for growth.
Moving to subsidiaries, TCTS revenue improved by 9.1% on a full year basis. Our payment business is now a 98% franchisee model, which has helped improving the business margins over the last couple of quarters. This quarter, the margins came in at 13.2% against 9.4% last quarter. Our energies, on a continuous basis, are oriented towards driving the right capital allocation across the organization with an eye on return on every penny invested. With a robust capital governance framework in place, we are investing in the right opportunities to help us stay ahead of an ever-disruptive technology curve. Our investments today are helping us participate in mega trends such as the AI Cloud and enhanced collaboration experiences. At the same time, we are also optimizing resources through an ongoing strategic review of our business and subsidiaries.
We are confident that these levers will sharpen our moats and help us improve our margin trajectory in the medium term and deliver the right value to our customers and shareholders. I will now ask Chirag to open the forum for Q&A.
Thank you, Kabir and Lakshmi. We will wait for a minute for the queue to assemble. The first question is from the line of Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities. Sanjesh, you have been requested to unmute. Please unmute yourself and go ahead and ask your question. Sanjesh, you have been requested to unmute. Please go ahead and ask your question. We are unable to hear you.
Chirag?
Yeah.
Can you hear me, please?
Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I think there was some technical problem. Yeah. Good afternoon, every-
Good afternoon, Sanjesh. Go ahead, Sanjesh. Sanjesh, I'm not sure if your connection is bad. We can't hear you. Why don't we take the next one and come back? The next question is from the line of Balaji Subramaniam from IIFL Securities. Balaji, you have been requested to unmute. Please go ahead and ask your question.
Hello? Am I audible?
Yeah, Balaji, you're audible. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. My first one would be a bit on the housekeeping side. So if I look at the EBITDA performance of Switch and Kaleyra, there seems to be INR 110 crore negative swing quarter-on-quarter. So, you know, could you shed some light on what exactly resulted in this? Is it some kind of one-time severance cost or one-time restructuring cost or something? And how should one look at it going forward? That would be my first question. The second question is more on the collaboration and CPaaS portfolio.
So, you know, one can see that, on an organic basis, your revenue, quarterly revenue, in this part of the business has been around, has been between INR 380 crore-INR 440 crore for the last few quarters. And, you know, why is it, you know, kind of, stuck at that level? And, other related question would be on, CPaaS itself. So globally, if we look at, CPaaS, the revenue growth seems to be coming off, be it the likes of Twilio or be it the likes of Tanla and Route Mobile. So, you know, what are the, new capabilities that you think, you know, will become, key in terms of, driving growth going forward? Thank you.
Thank you. So, Balaji, I think maybe the first question, Kabir, do you want to take the EBITDA?
Yeah. Let me then answer the first, first question, Balaji. I think, you know, it is both, a combination of Switch and Kaleyra, you know, which resulted in the swing. But let me take Kaleyra, because that is, probably a significant portion, you know, of the swing that we talked about. That is as a result of about three, four elements, and none of them, let me state upfront, is a cause for worry. The first is, I think once we start integrating Kaleyra, and you see a full fourth quarter go through, then I think the intimacy on understanding the seasonality of the business will be a lot better for all of us.
Q3 is indeed always a good quarter with a lot of festivals and a lot of activity, you know, happening for that kind of a business. So therefore, I would say, the seasonality indeed has an impact on the, the negative, sorry, the net revenue margin, and that was one contributor in Q4, that it was lower than last quarter. The second, I know, contributor is I would say, as we are integrating, we are harmonizing, you know, our policies on multiple things, on accruals, on recognition of, you know, of costs, on PDD and expected credit loss.
You know, all of those policies, you know, harmonization that we do in line with Tata Comm, which is, I would say, the second, you know, reason, you know, for that shift. Finally, I would say there have been some one-off legal expenses that we have provisioned for, and that is not uncommon in a large U.S. listed, you know, public company takeover, so which has actually come through in, you know, in the second quarter. I would say these are the three, you know, large reasons. Restructuring, since you mentioned it, let me clarify. There is a little bit of restructuring there, but we have taken it below the line, you know, as exceptional items, and it is not impacting the EBITDA numbers. I hope that clarifies.
Lakshmi, you want to take the next?
On the second part of the question, you had two parts to the second question on the collaboration and CPaaS. You said the organic is stuck between a range and not growing. One of the whole collaboration business itself has multiple colors to it. It has got its, the traditional GSIP we had, a Cisco-powered solution. The other one was the is a Microsoft Teams solution that we have, and we have newly launched another product called JAMVEE. So these are the, these are the main ones. And there, I think the the the GSIP revenue, with the switch to apps, had seen a decline with COVID and was continuing to decline.
It got stabilized with our introduction of the GlobalRapide, which we combined all of these into a platform business and more into a fixed revenue business as opposed to dependent on usage, and that stabilized but has not grown well. So I think there are many factors, but I think we are looking at, you know, launching with Microsoft a product in India, and we'll be a partner to launch that, so that will hopefully give some fillip to that business. The other part is the collaboration in CPaaS. We have reported last year, the DIGO, which we launched, had, you know, in percentage terms, grown very well. But this year, right from the Kaleyra acquisition, the DIGO business teams and the Kaleyra business teams started working immediately upon close.
Some of the deals in the pipeline that would have happened on DIGO has happened now on the Kaleyra. So it's difficult to split the organic numbers in that in a sense. So these are some of the reasons. We are aware of the collaboration. The GlobalRapide portfolio has had ups and downs, and we are in ongoing process to revitalize that portfolio. On the CPaaS, your question and observation that the growth is coming off with many global players, and you're right. I think the global players you know they publicly stated that they want to focus more on profitability.
I think the purely being on the SMS side was a race to the bottom, and I think, in my view, there is some sense prevailed there to see and bring focus back to profitability. And in that sense, many players have focused more on profitability than growth. The way we are looking at our business is more as an interaction business, a combination of SMS, a programmable voice, emails, multiple channels. And we are also building layers of software on top of these channels to bring more orchestration and intelligence on that. So we will be continuing to invest to build these new capabilities.
It's our view that enterprises, in the way they interact with consumers, are fragmented today across multiple channels, and we have an opportunity to position a more converged and intelligent platform that orchestrate across multiple channels. So that is where we will invest, and that is where we believe will be new opportunities besides the channel expansions from SMS to WhatsApp and others. So we will focus on both dimensions, increasing the channels, and also increasing the platform play.
Okay. I had a quick follow-up to for Kabir. So, you did call out some one-off legal expenses, so could you please quantify that? And also, on the seasonality front, one can see that at least at the gross revenue level that you have reported, I know that doesn't seem to be the case, because there has been a QoQ growth. I do know that, you know, part of it is because the acquisition was consolidated, was consolidated maybe only for 85, 86 days a quarter. But at least, you know, down at the revenue level, things, you know, doesn't seem, things don't seem to have come off materially.
Yeah, the legal expenses so far is shy of $1 million, which is what we've actually provisioned, you know, as of now. And all the other things, you know, there's a lot that you need to lift under the hood to understand the revenues, you know, NR mix, you know, Balaji, so where may not be visible for you. So it's quite visible. Yes, you are absolutely right. You know, it's a usage business, so 80-85 days, you know, was indeed, you know, one of the elements, you know, which get in there. But I would say when you look at it, the NR mix, you know, is indeed proving an element that's also a sizable portion of it.
Thank you, Kabir and Lakshmi. All the best.
Thank you, Balaji.
Thank you, Balaji. The next question is from the line of Mr. Mayur Magar from Aegon Life. Mayur, you have been requested to unmute. Please go ahead and ask your question. I think, Mayur is, unable to join the queue. The next question is from the line of Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities. Sanjesh, you have been requested to unmute. Please unmute yourself and go ahead and ask your question. Sanjesh, please go ahead. Sanjesh, we still see a technical issue at your end.
Do you want to disconnect and log back again, Sanjesh?
The next question is from Mr. Vibhor Singhal from Nuvama Wealth. Vibhor, you have been requested to unmute yourself. Please go ahead and ask your question.
I hope I'm audible?
Yeah, Vibhor, please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for taking my question. So, couple of questions, one on the growth part and one on the finance part for Kabir. So Lakshmi, on the growth part, just wanted to pick your brain on two things. How do you see the cloud business shaping up? I think this year was not a great year, not just for us, I think, but mostly the overall IT services vendors as well, in terms of cloud adoption and deals also kind of going slow on the macro front. So how do you see that playing out in FY 2025? Any green shoots in pockets where you could probably highlight, or what is your outlook for that segment, let's say, in this year?
Secondly, on the CPaaS side, just wanted to understand. I think, I mean, post-COVID, of course. During COVID, of course, we saw a great pick up, a very sharp pickup in this industry, in this industry overall for all the players, which has kind of died down right now. What is the pricing environment in this domain like? Is there still cutthroat competition, which is continuously creating a pressure on the pricing in this segment? Or as you mentioned, as more and more players are focusing on profitability, is there any scope of stabilization of prices or maybe an uptick, because of new platforms coming in? If you can answer these two questions, I'll probably have a couple of follow-ups for Kabir.
Thank you, Vibhor. On the cloud side, you know, we are largely focused in India, while we do have some customers that we serve internationally. You know, our view of the cloud is the cloud adoption today is not complete. I think there are many still on-prem users that are, and we are trying to position our cloud as a purpose-built cloud that is multi-tenanted, which has the flexibility and offers all the benefits of a private cloud to the customers. And we say that over a three-year period, our TCO would be much better than any public cloud player. It's been, you know, we've achieved a reasonable scale, where we are operating fairly national mission-critical applications on our cloud.
So it's proven its base, the technology and our engineering capabilities and services. What we are doing to sort of boost the growth, one is the macro that you called out, that is there. But from our side, we are preparing to strengthen our industry cloud, where we have a government community cloud. We have a financial services cloud, which is compliant with RBI. So we are strengthening these areas, and similarly, our Kubernetes and analytics cloud capability and the storage capability. So these are all the things that we are investing and strengthening, and repurposing the teams in a way that they can take this to market more effectively.
So we are using this period, where there has been slowness to organize ourselves and preparing for the future. But the potential is still large because not everyone has moved to the cloud. The second aspect of this is, you know, some of the workloads that cannot move to the cloud for various reasons, because they need to be on-prem, because they don't want to incur a large amount of network backhauling costs and the latency associated with taking to someplace and bringing it back. Or, you know, they cannot afford a failure in an application not being able to be accessed because there is a network failure or a failure on the cloud side. They are keeping all of them on-prem. So the classic cases in point are manufacturing, for example, some of the m anufacturing execution systems, many people have it on-prem.
Some of the store systems are on-prem. So there we are launching our Edge product, you know, to make sure that, you know, these workloads can operate at the edge. So that is something that we are preparing ourselves. We've already launched it in our media business, and we'll be launching it for other segments soon. Many customers are in the early stage one usage of these products with us. So that is how we are preparing ourselves for the upcoming cloud wave. And of course, the AI Cloud will be another game changer on its own. So this is how we are preparing our business for cloud and edge. On the question of CPaaS, you're right, I think there are, I did, I didn't mention, I think people are, you know, it's public information that some of the major players announced that they wanted to focus on margins.
Internationally, we are seeing that play out, but, you know, India market is, as you say, is still, I think you used the word cutthroat, and you wouldn't be too far incorrect with that statement. So our, you know, our positioning in this needs to be, as I called out, you know, to expand to channels other than SMS, and vertically expand to software layers above the channels to bring more orchestration, to bring more intelligence to interactions.
Got it. That was really helpful. Just a quick follow-up on the cloud question that I had. So typically, we have seen that in any of these technology adoptions, be it cloud or analytics or basically RIMS before that, Indian enterprises tend to basically adopt a new technology with a lag of at least two to three years. It's historically been the case. Do we see that playing out in the case of cloud as well? Are the Indian enterprise at least I mean at some years behind their global counterparts in terms of cloud adoption, or let's say, in terms of moving to public cloud vis-à-vis the private cloud that they are kind of focusing at this point of time?
I haven't seen the data, but the data clearly is... Yes, there has been a lag. But in a way, that lag is good as well, because internationally, what we are seeing, people who moved to public cloud are now having second thoughts because the costs of public cloud have gone up. It is easy to get in, but there are other costs that hit them as they grow. So I think that should be an opportunity-
Right.
For us to address that properly in the India market.
Sounds good. Thanks, thanks, Lakshmi, thanks for answering my questions. Kabir, just a quick two questions. One is, you mentioned that the cost, the legal expense cost, that has been provisioned up till now is around $1 million yet. So are there any more expenses that we are expecting, in the coming quarters, or are we done, with most of them?
Sure.
Secondly, last quarter, we spoke about, basically, getting our interest costs down by refinancing of some of the bonds or expensive debt that we have on our balance sheet. Any progress on that? Or, if you could give maybe some kind of a timeline, when we are looking to maybe, execute that.
Two things. I mean, look, legal, I can only tell you what I know. I mean, if something comes up, you know, I hope it doesn't, but if something comes up in future, then it comes up.
Right.
So I can't speculate that, for now, Vibhor. So these are... I mean, all of them are in public domain. I mean, there's nothing that, which is not privy to all you guys. I'm sure you've searched out, you'll know what are the things that are there, from Kaleyra, whether it's the warrant holders or, you know, or otherwise, which are, which we need to defend, which we will. Yeah. On, you know, on the refinancing, part, yes, we will be doing it. It will be imminent, you know, anytime soon, and once that is there to be, you know, declared, we will, you know, come out. We are looking at...
We've already, I mean, signed or rather, you know, with the consortium bankers in terms of when we will do, and we will execute in the next couple of weeks. And when that time is there to announce, we will announce that, you know, as well. And you are absolutely right, it will be refinanced, you know, at a rate which is, which will be, you know, more attractive than what we did, the lines of credit, when the $200 million refinancing we had to do for the bond repayments that we did in the end of November for the Kaleyra bond holders.
Got it. Got it. That's great to hear. Just last thing, I, I'm assuming the guidances for FY 2027 in terms of doubling our data revenue, margins, ROC and leverage, they all remain intact?
Absolutely, they all remain intact. As I mentioned in my speech, we will get the debt to the leverage ratio much faster. In fact, we made a marginal improvement. Last quarter was 2.2x, 2.21x. This quarter is 2.16x. I mean, in FY 2025, it will come under 2x, so that's not an issue. ROC, it's not yet bottomed out because it's a 12-month trailing. That's the formula. So you will have two more quarters where you will see a little bit of a deterioration in ROC, and then it will start coming up. So that will happen the following year. And EBITDA will be the last one to come back to the range of 23%-25%. Completely committed on all three parameters as it stands today.
The growth as well, doubling of data revenues, I'm assuming.
101%, yes. That's the main and the most important one. Completely committed. You know, Lakshmi made it very, very clear. We remain confident of the opportunity we have. We remain committed to doubling our data business.
Got it. Got it. Thank you so much. Thanks a lot, guys, and wish you all the best.
Thank you, Vibhor.
Thanks, Vibhor. The next question is from Sanjesh Jain from ICICI Securities. Sanjesh, you have been requested to unmute. Please unmute yourself. Go ahead and ask your question. Yeah, Sanjesh, please go ahead.
Yeah. Can you hear me now?
Yes, Sanjesh.
Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. I got few of them, Lakshmi. First, on the digital piece as itself, it appears that the entire segment have significantly slowed down, and now we are at a 5% YoY growth. Two quarter back, we were at 24% growth. There's a material shift in the growth rate, what we were looking at, and we were hoping for an acceleration with a solid funnel and the order book we have today. So how does it look for FY 2025? Where, where do you think FY 2025 we will land up with whatever order book funnel we have today? Are we confident of delivering a 20%+ growth next year with the, with the order book and funnel and the visibility we have today on, on this business?
Yeah. So Sanjesh, on the digital, I have been calling out on the order books. We have said that our funnel is good, but the order booking is slow, and that is what I had called out, and I'm still in my commentary. There is slowness in decision making. The only thing that I would contrast it with saying that in our enterprise side of the business, we grew close to 13% in India and a good double-digit in the international markets, despite the conditions of macro conditions that the enterprise business in the international markets face. On the on-going forward basis, I think, there are a few things that we have to keep in mind. You know, it's not as though the macro conditions have suddenly improved.
If anything, in the U.S., you know, with inflation and the possibility of interest rates not coming down, there is gonna be more caution and the other geopolitical Middle East conflicts that are there. So the caution is going to be in the air, so I think there is no doubt. I think the bigger picture that I see in all my interactions with the customer is, you know, the proposition that we are making to customers, is that appealing to customers? Are we now able to engage at senior levels with customers, as they see the attraction of Tata Comm? I think clearly, yes. Our awareness in the international markets is still very low, and we are trying to increase that awareness. With increasing footprint of sales we have, that alone is not enough.
I think we need a lot more. Our participation levels will increase as the macro conditions improve. So, you know, that's the... And the opportunity for us, is the need still there for customers to transform the network? Are we still relevant in that space? You know, we are very relevant, especially with our new products for cloud networking. You know, there is even more relevance. And to call out our 30% this year.
Okay. That's fair. That's fair, Lakshmi. Just, just, stripping down digital a little bit more, within the four sub-segment, where, where are you more confident, is that next gen connectivity, are we more confident or cloud hosting and security? Because these are the two lines, as you articulate, looks to be much more on the stronger footing than the remaining two. Will that understanding be fair?
Yeah. I think next-gen connectivity, clearly, you know, we have seen the growth, and even there, as you called out, the momentum of growth in the last two quarters have come down. The characteristics of next-gen connectivity is the time period from order booking to turn-up of the revenue is a bit longer because, you know, we have to implement the network, implementing, as you know, SD-WAN across multiple sites do take time. So the time taken... But, you know, if you ask, you know, that's a large portfolio, and that growing will help us to shift the needle, so we are clearly focused there. The cloud and security is also large, but, you know, the cloud is largely in India. Security is a mixture of India and international.
We are doubling our focus in the international markets by taking some of our cloud SOC opportunities there. So that is a critical opportunity. The third is the interaction fabric, because we have invested in Kaleyra. We see a lot of excitement from customers, because Kaleyra has a powerful platform. And combined with the brand of Tata Comm, there is a lot more confidence in using the platform. So we see a lot of opportunity with customers. And as I said, we are going to be further investing in the platform. Besides realizing all the cost synergies that we see, and further invest in the platform to build out the software layers for orchestration and intelligence. So that is our third. The fourth is IoT fabric. And Sanjesh, there, you know, they are, you know, in... We have start.
I don't want to call out any particular fabric to say, you know, we're going to be focusing more and less there. All four are equally focused. They are run by separate teams, and we are allocating our...
Thank you, Sanjesh.
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, I think, I think there is some gap in between. There were blanks, but I got the broader message. The next question on the India business, Lakshmi, that looks like has significantly deteriorated or decelerated to 5%-odd kind of a growth. I hear that there is an increased competitive intensity in the Indian market. Do you believe next year could be a fierce competitive year and India market may struggle to grow? Well, do you see that scenario panning out?
So I have followed India. We have grown, 13%, so I don't know where-
Revenue into enterprise market.
The enterprise?
Yes.
So, just for the 13% is only for the enterprise, Lakshmi. I guess, overall, India piece has grown only 5.8% YoY.
Yeah. So that's why I did call out the service provider and the OTT segment there. In the OTT segment, we put large hyperscalers and others into that segment, Sanjesh. And there, I think the context is these people had invested in a lot of capacity during COVID and post-COVID, and there was some moderation, and it should pick up again with them investing in more data centers. It should come back up again. So I think that's more a cyclical nature. But, you know, the focus on enterprise is a topmost focus, and we are very happy with the 13% growth. I think we can do more with our expanded portfolio, and we'll be pushing for accelerating that further.
Got it. Got it, got it. I got one couple of questions. Sorry for I'm pulling it a little bit more. But on Kaleyra and Switch, what has been our YoY growth for us? Because we don't have a comparable number for last year. Can you help us understand how have we been growing on those both businesses?
You know, Sandesh, let me chip in here. You know, although we call out underlying, you know, data revenue at 8.8% and including acquisition so much, if I have to be honest, you know, about it, and this, Lakshmi alluded in his qualitative, you know, description, we are running this business as an integrated business. So let's say Kaleyra, right? We are stripping out, you know, all of Kaleyra's, you know, numbers as acquisition and reporting the balance as underlying, which is a little unfair. Why? Because we had a DIGO funnel, which before the acquisition, and now we are looking at which is the best way, you know, to serve our customer. And in majority of the cases, we are going, as Lakshmi has pointed out, we are going with a Kaleyra paper, right?
Okay.
We are, you know, selling that product. So, the same with Switch as well, right? We are going in a combined way together. And even from an org structure point of view, we have one common leader for these businesses who are looking at these products as one integrated offering, you know, to the customer. So after a point in time, we like splitting hairs, you know, to then say, you know, what will be separately this growth without that and stuff like that. I mean, I'm still reporting it for better governance and transparency to the street, because one of them, you know, came to us with money having been paid to acquire that capability.
For so 12 months, we will have that, and, you know, hopefully, Switch, you know, that, that problem will stop in, in May. It will have completed the 12 months, and we will get on to a completely regular, you know, way of reporting growth. It will take six more months for Kaleyra. And in Q3 of FY 2025 onwards, then you will see all that completely normalized. So, so it's a little difficult, you know, for us to peel that out, by me.
No. We got it, Kabir. My only intention of asking that question was to understand with Kaleyra in place, because that's a heavy portfolio. Will the 20% growth become difficult if Kaleyra doesn't grow by 20%?
Life is not easy, Sandesh. We are, we will... Yeah.
No, no, because we are just hearing that globally, the CPaaS business has much-
Yeah, I know. So I think, you know, the market, we can only keep an eye on the future. My belief is that, you know, the B2C players, their interactions with the consumers are not gonna decrease. There is gonna be more channel diversity. That is what is gonna happen. SMS will decrease. Today, 99% of the interactions or 95% of the interactions are all on SMS channels. That will diversify into other channels, and as I said, you know, we have already diversified into other channels. We will further diversify with other capabilities there. And we have to build out the stack on top, which is where more value-added offerings will be there for customers, and that will also help us to deliver better margins in the platform.
So that is what we need to do. So in the long run, you know, I don't believe the interactions with consumers are going to be reduced in any form or shape. It's only going to be increasing. Only the channel diversity is gonna happen.
No, fair enough. Fair enough. Just one last question from my side. We are today at 18.6% margin. The ambition is to be in 23%-25% range. Can you help us understand the bridge, what is going to drive or what are the levers for the margin we are looking? Because the mix is only going to deteriorate towards more digital in terms of margin profile. I understand ROCE profile will improve, but, what are the levers are we looking where we already have few tracks on the margin?
I will take that, Sanjesh. Sanjesh, we are confident we will get back to the 23%-25%. Multiple moving parts within that. First and, you know, foremost, you should see a good improvement in FY 2025 itself. So this is all not back-ended to FY 2027. So we will see that already, you know, next year, you know, a little bit of an improvement, as Lakshmi talked, called out. We did spend money on M&A, not just the impact of the acquisitions, but also cost that was actually spent on due diligence and, you know, fees and stuff like that. So those elements will come off, which are not going to be there.
Second, we are obviously spent a lot of money in terms of our organic, you know, investments in the zero, one, three stage. Those should give me operating leverage, you know, as well, and that should come back because I'm not going to continue to spend money on them. You know, I will be looking for growth and revenue, you know, coming in from there. So the, so the NR margin should directly flow into, you know, into LOB, into, into EBITDA. So that is, I would say, the second lever. And the third one is, you've seen, you know, we've, you know, done, some strategic review, took a call, a hard call on, on one of our subsidiaries, TCTS, on getting out of an onerous contract. Our TCPSL business is, you know, is, is doing well already.
We've, you know, moved the profitability needle up, you know, significantly. Likewise, there are other elements also which we will, you know, be more sharper focus there and sweat it out. So I would say multiple such levers that we will, you know, play into picture and bring that entire thing.
Got it. Do you see net profit margin improving, or you think it will be below the net profit, the leverage will be more for us?
Sorry, you want to say net, net margin, or you mean PAT?
Net, net revenue margin.
See, net revenue margin, you know, that's your point is right. Net revenue margin will have the dilutive impact of the change in mix as we drive digital portfolio harder, right? Because they come at a lower net revenue margin compared to the core connectivity business. So there, there's going to be headwind. And the way in which we are managing is that inter-tower, inter-business headwinds, you know, the businesses themselves need to take care of. Intercompany, you know, within the company level, what headwind is there is what should get offset by the operating, you know, leverage. But as we mentioned earlier as well, we have a glide path for each of them.
Now, the glide path is whether it is organic operating leverage or whether it is cost synergies coming in from the M&A or revenue synergies then flowing in, you know, into margin. You know, I think all of those levers are there by product category, and we have even broken it down, you know, to a more granular level by drivers as well. That is what, you know, the governance that we follow to get them to the destination much.
Fair enough. That's great. Thanks for answering all my questions, sir. Best of luck for the coming quarters.
Thank you, Sanjesh.
Thank you, Sanjesh.
Thank you.
The next is from the line of Mayank Babla from Enam AMC. Mayank, you have been requested to unmute yourself. Please go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah, hi. Am I audible?
Yes, Mayank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. Sir, a while back, you had announced that, you know, Tata Comm's partnership with NVIDIA. I was wondering if you could give us some detail about this partnership, you know, the nature of it and the scope or potential it has for us. Thank you.
I won't be able to give a lot of details at this stage, Mayank. What we are doing is, you know, there is a solid partnership that is emerging. We are working very closely on the various aspects of the architecture and the build-out, and we'll be preparing ourselves for the launch during this year. And there's a lot of good interactions that happen in terms of, you know, the use cases and very many things. So, as far as our ambition is concerned for AI Cloud, we believe, you know, AI has a huge potential. And in India, particularly with the launch of our AI Cloud, we will be able to help and move the needle for...
You know, the government has announced, you know, a huge commitment to use AI as well. A lot of startups and enterprises, they have to go through the maturity curve or from the hype that is there today to actual use cases and training with their data, get more data discipline to make use of all of these. So there is a big potential, and we think that even the AI Cloud, even though it will be built in India and launched in India, there is a potential for even international customers to use this in due course. So we are quite excited about the opportunity, and we are working very diligently in going through all the details, making sure the launch is successful.
Sure. Sure. Thank you so much, and best of luck.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mayank. The next question is from the line of Mr. Gautam Rathi from Chanakya Wealth. Gautam, you have been requested to unmute yourself. Please go ahead and ask your question.
Nishit Rathi from Chanakya. Just, Lakshmi, just, I think I missed the number, but you said that you added the number of new logos you added, you gave a percentage. Could you just help us understand that? Did that number was something like 90%?
Correct. I know I talked about the revenue growth in new logos is a 90%. Now, there are a few things we have done, you know, from the sales teams. We had brought about a team that focuses purely on going after the new logo, and that has helped us in a way. And that focus helped us in acquiring new logo. And secondly, is the quality of the new logo that we get as well, in terms of what revenues we get. So that's been a change that we did last year in terms of how our sales teams got organized, and that is what I was reporting as...
I think the one thing we have to keep in mind is, you know, it's starting off from a fairly low base, but it's delivered good results as a result of the focus that our sales team has brought about in new logos.
Lakshmi, if I understand it right, what you're basically telling us is that the more structural part of the business, which is your enterprise business, is seeing decent traction and is growing well, though you would want it to go faster. But it is the more cyclical part of the business, which is kind of right now a bit more impacted. Is that understanding right? And historically, when you've seen, you must have seen many of these cycles. How much time does it take for it to come back, and can it come back pretty strongly whenever it does, when the cycle is correct?
I think your observation is very spot on. I think the enterprise business, both in India and internationally, is quite good. And as you called out, it's not as fast as we would like it to be, but it's still seeing good growth. You know, the growth got pulled down largely from our OTT and the service provider segment. I wouldn't call them cyclical, but what has happened, especially with the OTT segment, is, as I mentioned earlier, I think there was a lot of capacity that they had built, and also last year, they focused more on their build-out of data centers and others.
And therefore, the growth on the network side didn't happen for us as much as the previous years. And also the OTT business, in some parts, we also had the, you know, the messaging business, which had some cyclicity. The other part to the question is also, if you look at our portfolio, the next-gen connectivity had very good growth. The cloud and security also had double-digit, even though it's not as much as in the past. The collaboration, as was observed earlier, is has been static, and there are many moving parts in that. We sort of revitalized that portfolio with a very combined GlobalRapide, which is a GSIP, a Cisco, and a Microsoft. There are moving parts in that business that happens.
And we were prepared for that business to be of a lower growth, which is why we started investing in DIGO at that time. Therefore, we'll focus more on the customer interaction side. On the GlobalRapide side, we believe the growth will come back. We've also invested in and launched a product called JAMVEE. They're all in very early stages, so they should come back. So, you know, each of these portfolio has a different rhythm within our company. Some of them are affected by the macro as well, so it's a combination of factors. But as I called out, the four fabrics in the company, we will continue to invest in all the four fabrics.
The big chunk of focus needs to be in the international market, which is where, there is a lot more of, headroom for growth, purely by the size of the market. But the international markets also have strong incumbents, and we are looking to replace the incumbents through the power of the offer that we have, and the capabilities that we bring to the table. And we are seeing that steadily happen. Clearly, with our brand, as I said, the awareness levels are very low. I mean, interestingly, in one of the products we did a test, and the awareness levels are low, and I think we need to improve our awareness levels.
Despite our investments to increase the sales headcount and the strength there, it's nowhere sufficient to reach the full aspirational potential. And therefore, we will be increasing our marketing spend. We will have to continue to spend on the sales and increasing the capacity of the sales, and getting our teams to do more larger deals, which means that they do take time to shape, they do take time to close. So we will have to get used to all of these cycles, but the opportunities are there.
Sure. Lakshmi, you know, just wanted to understand, like, you know, like some of the deals, is it possible that there are certain deals that have been won, which are, because of the slowness in the market, are taking time to scale up? Or are there certain, you know, is there certain pressure on the usage side? I'm just trying to understand, you know, see, there are two ways that the revenue comes back, right? One way is you win new deals, and they will show up in the subsequent quarters eventually, right?
The other thing is there are certain parts of it, you know, we are lapping certain quarters, where certain parts of the portfolio started slowing down a couple of quarters back, and you know, once they come into the base, the base impact will come out of it. Or the third is, you know, that the usage or certain deals start scaling up. So I'm just trying to understand if you could give some sort of color as to how should we think about it, the drivers of growth for maybe specifically FY 25?
Yeah. So FY 25, you know, largely the focus and the drivers of growth would be the, you know, the next gen connectivity, whatever we booked the orders last year, as we start to deliver, the revenues will come.
Awesome.
So hopefully, you know, the order booking will improve as the conditions improve, because parts of what we book in here gets realized in the year itself, especially if the order booking happens in Q1 and Q2. So we are hoping that conditions will improve, and we can do that. In the usage side of the business, you know, it's more about, you know, acquiring new logos, going to the existing logos to diversify the channels beyond SMS. And we are seeing, as I said, you know, with with Kaleyra, particularly with Kaleyra and Tata Comm now working together, the leadership is in place, and the motions of how we take it to market is falling into place. So with that, we will see some acceleration.
We are acquiring customers, but it is also a factor of how these customers, actually ramp up and put their traffic through our platform. So there are a couple of dependencies to it, but we'll have to work through those, through those factors. I think there was a question on the cloud. I did mention, you know, there was a, as everybody else, we also, you know, saw a slowing down, but we were still at a good double digit on the, on the cloud and security portfolio. And as things improve, we believe that should accelerate. So, you know, the, the way... That is how I would see how it will shape up. And I did say that the, the order booking had slowed down, which will have an impact.
But we also have, you know, a lot of organic business growth possible in the usage side from Kaleyra, the Switch integration, which brings the occasional use. The number of events that we do in the media is increasing, and that should, that should help us as well. So different portfolios will have different cycles, and we are monitoring. How it pans out immediately in the quarter or, or something is difficult to say. But as I said, you know, we are very cognizant of the fact that we need to deliver at least a 15%-20% growth in order to realize our ambition that we stated out, and we are very, very focused on delivering on that ambition.
No, I think, I think, which is very fair, the question, and I think to some extent, I, if I understand it right, you're saying that, in a quarter or two, you don't know, but for the full year, there are enough and more levers for you to kind of, deliver the 15%-20% growth despite the, the, the slowness in the, macro and the, the last couple of quarters that we've seen. You feel that that is a doable task, from what you see today, right? How it pans out eventually, it's a different matter, but that—we just wanted to understand, from where we are in terms of, in terms of orders which we booked and, and the slowness that you've seen, is it, is it-
If your question is, do I have 100% visibility to deliver what I'm saying? The answer is no. I mean, if it was there, then, you know, I'll probably be on vacation tomorrow onwards, right? So, you know, that's not the case. We have to still a lot of work to be done, in order to—because in your order, booking is as important as the orders booked last year. Some of these conversion do take time. You know, all I'm saying is from a qualitative perspective, you know, we would—the kind of conversations... I just had a trip to the U.K. last week. The conversations have been very good. The customers still want to engage.
You know, I was just telling, and one of the customers did tell us that changing the network is, you know, is touching live wire. You know, there are applications are running today, and changing anything, they have to do it very cautiously, right? So, it's not like in the application world where I can build a new application and, and put a new application. So this is, somewhat different. So, you know, we understand the, the mechanics the customers, go through, but all I'm calling out is the opportunity exists. You know, obviously, we have to get into the consideration set, which we are now increasingly getting into, and then we have to win and close it. The confidence level of the growth comes from the fact that, the inorganic acquisitions will start to play, this year.
At least we will see the benefit of those coming through. And that is why I'm saying that this year is critical for us to ensure that these, the go-to-market motions of both Switch and Kaleyra, we get it right, and we bring the full year benefit of the acquisitions to play. And organically, you know, we should go to more enterprise customers to pitch ourselves in the international market. So, those are the colors that I can give you in how we are seeing the picture.
That's very fair. Just two more questions. One is on the IoT stroke Move portfolio, right?
Yeah.
You know, it's a portfolio, you know, there was a JLR announcement also that you put out, the partnership getting more stronger out there, and, you know, and autos have started to do well. So that's one portfolio. How should we think about it, you know, given that you had an early leadership in that platform? It's been. It's at least optically, it looks like a fairly disappointing year in that in that portfolio there. Any light on that portfolio, particularly the IoT Move portfolio?
... Yeah, I think the, you know, if in the, in the whole, I think we club it all into incubation and, and give the numbers to you there. There are, Move by itself has, delivered a double-digit growth, but nowhere near, the expectations, we ourselves have of that business, right? So we have to do a lot more. I think the key levers for that, business is to strengthen our, position in the auto OEM world. You know, we have won a few in India, but in the international markets, we need to expand beyond JLR. So that is very critical for us to achieve.
The other ones in helping the MVNOs to launch and the airlines, you know, they are sort of going on as normal, so but the big needle shift will come from the OEM business, which is what we will need to work towards. The second aspect of the portfolio is about the IoT business. I think the IoT business, we had a big fillip as a result of a major deal in the international market last year. And the replication of that is what we need to work on for that business to grow. We are also expanding the capability there with a lot of video analytics combined with our edge. So that's a new product that we are taking to market.
I think that is still in the early phases of, shall I say, you know, getting the offerings right, and pivoting the business from one to another, right? So that is what we are doing in that business. We'll keep a very close watch on that to see how we deliver the growth.
And then the last question is on the balance sheet side. We see a big increase in the current liabilities line item. Some of it could be explained, I think, by a big increase in current taxes, and there seem to be some other current liabilities which have increased. Kabir, can you just help us understand what this could be? How should we think about this?
Three to four elements, Nishit. One, I mean, the absolute increase is also because of the impact of acquisitions. So when they come in, you just add them together. About, rather, INR 250-odd crores is just on account of the impact of acquisitions. If I take that aside and then look at BAU business, I think there are three components to it vis-à-vis last year. The first one is we are in a continuous mode in terms of balance sheet cleanup, so past balances on vendor records and stuff like that, which we cleaned up. So therefore, that cleanup, you know, has removed, of course, the credit, but from a working capital point of view, it has the opposite effect. We've had some increase in prepaid expenses that are all growth related.
They are deal specific, you know, but that's another chunky, you know, item that we had. So those are, you know, two big elements from a, you know, a BAU perspective. And, you know, yeah, I would say, you know, those are the ones which are impacting, you know, our working capital numbers. I mean, sorry, the last one was, we did create this new entity, Novamesh, which you are aware of. As we actually transition it, you know, we had put a pause to the billing and the collections of it in March, until we get the new GST registrations and, you know, and all of that, you know, as well.
So, does that mean that some of the revenues in the month of March are unbilled, and standing in unearned revenues in your revenue?
Yeah, that's, that's correct. And also, there is a reclassification of long-term borrowings, you know, to short-term when you see the, you know, the period. The moment it's less than one year, they get reclassified as well.
That's very helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Nishit. Thank you, Gautam. In the interest of time, we will proceed towards closing the call. Before we close the call, I would request Lakshminarayanan to share his closing comments.
Yeah. Thank you, all. I think we... I mentioned there are critical things that we need to do for the year ahead. Our number one focus is to make sure that the Switch and Kaleyra acquisitions are well integrated in the business. The process is, you know, very strongly on. In the portfolios of network fabric and cloud and edge, and the interaction fabric and the IoT fabric, you know, we're gonna keep sharp focus to make sure that they can deliver.
I think we called out on all the levers available for us for the growth in the margins, and we will look forward to executing on those levers. I think the biggest excitement for me is as we talk to the customers, the ability to engage at senior levels and increasing relevance of Tata Comm's portfolio to them is the most encouraging sign for us, and we'll have to capitalize on that to get into their consideration set and participate in opportunities, and then win those deals. So I think those are the factors that I would be focusing on.
Thank you, Lakshmi. Thank you, Kabir. This brings us to the end of the management call. In case of any queries, please write to investor.relations@tatacommunications.com. The recording will be available on the website in the next 24 hours. You may please disconnect now. Thank you.