Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Tata Communications Earnings Conference Call for Q3 FY 2023. We are joined today by our MD and CEO, Mr. Amur S. Lakshminarayanan, and our CFO, Mr. Kabir Ahmed Shakir. The results for the quarter ending 31st December 2022 have been announced yesterday. The quarterly fact sheet is available on our 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 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 statements made or discussed on the conference call today will be forward-looking in nature and must be viewed in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties we face. A detailed statement and explanation of these risks are included in our annual filing, 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.
Thanks, Chirag. Good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you all to the Q3 FY 2023 earnings call. I'm wishing you all a very happy New Year. Coming to the results of Q3 FY 2023, we witnessed another healthy quarter reflecting strong growth momentum in our data revenues and our profitability continues to be robust. Our YTD PAT is up 31.6% and ROCE is at 28.4%. Our results reflect the disciplined execution of our reimagined strategy, focus on deeper with pure, and our abilities to impact both the cost and revenue side outcomes for our customers with our new portfolio of products. Our products to platform shift, increased investments in the front-end sales, particularly in the international markets, and building new capabilities across the portfolio has helped data revenues grow by 11.1% year-on-year again this quarter.
To add more color to our data growth, we have added INR 948 crores of incremental data revenue in FY 2023 till date, against an incremental revenue addition of INR 903 crores in FY 2021 and FY 2022 combined. Our continuous investments in our core infrastructure and digital capabilities give us the confidence to efficiently cater to our customers' evolving digital transformation needs. We continue to be a leading player in India's large enterprise B2B segment and are continually investing in our undersea cable assets, which form the backbone of our suite of offerings, almost 30%-40% higher versus our closest competitor over the last few years. Growth in international markets continues to show encouraging trends and is steadily progressing towards our long-term ambition of improving the international revenue pipe.
Large deals order book in the enterprise segment has exceeded the full year FY 2022 performance, Final additions in the enterprise segment have improved significantly, both from an India and an international market perspective. With our media business making strong strides, we announced our intent to acquire The Switch Enterprises LLC for a consideration of $8.8 million. With this transaction, we will gain a strong foothold into America's media and entertainment market. We have an established leadership in global sporting events, catering to a global audience. This acquisition will help us strengthen our region to region as well as the region to global play in the live sports industry, bringing these sports closer to the global audience.
Not only this, upon completion of the acquisition, it will also open gates for us to the live production business, which will complement and further strengthen our offerings in the media portfolio. These synergies will help uniquely position us as an end-to-end media ecosystem player in the entire content development value chain globally and deepen our modes. Moving to our performance for the third quarter of FY 2023, our data business remains instrumental to our overall revenue growth momentum. It improved sequentially by 2.9%, coming in at INR 3,793 crores. Our digital platform and services revenues stood at INR 1,056 crores, registering a healthy growth of 17.2% year-on-year and 5.8% Q on Q. Our Q3 consolidated revenue was INR 4,528 crores, improving by 8.2% year-on-year and 2.2% Q on Q.
EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 1,077 crores, while EBITDA margin stood at 23.8%. The profit for the quarter was INR 394 crores, flat on Y-on-Y basis. Let me talk about our margins, the aspects shaping the EBITDA trajectory. We are making planned investments in platform portfolios and also sales and marketing, particularly in the international markets. Our investments in enhancing our talent and tools are in line with our strategy, and we will continue to stay invested. These investments, coupled with our product mix, plays a part on our margin profile in the given growth in the DPS, given that the DPS growth is higher than the core connectivity segment. We had some headwinds of inflation as well, which has resulted in some near-time volatility in our margins.
That said, we intend to stay the course as we continue to sharply focus on executing our strategy. We are seeing good traction across the DPS portfolio and a good pipeline on our sales funnel. We have a good pipeline of new products and feature releases in the coming months. From a medium to longer term perspective, we will see benefits accruing from our sharp focus and investments in our product with platform shift. More importantly, each part of our data portfolio is driving stickiness, deepening our modes, and will help us to improve our yields in the medium term. Let me give you some more details about our data portfolio. One key essence which is heartening is the huge transformation that is happening with the way our GTM is being approached.
Most of our customer discussions are moved beyond connectivity to those factors that affect them, which are cost efficiencies, as well as helping the revenues to grow through our secure and intelligent digital fabric. Let me spend some time talking about our strongly growing incubation portfolio. The incubation portfolio progressed multifold, growing by 125.3% year-on-year and 1.1% Q on Q. Our connected solutions, which is the MOVE platform, is a sophisticated platform delivering connectivity management and data enablement with APIs across the globe. Our MOVE business continues to grow strongly and expanded by more than 2.1x compared to last year. Our on-campus connected solutions opportunity is driven by our IoT offerings, where we cater to both enterprises and smart cities.
This quarter, we completed our first international order of smart street lighting solutions, which have opened up opportunities in international markets. Our core connectivity services grew by 6% year-on-year and 1.7% Q-on-Q. We will continue to invest in the core capabilities, thus transforming our networks to be smarter and more agile to cater to the new market needs. Coming to our digital platforms and services portfolio, it has grown by 17.2% year-on-year and 5.8% Q-on-Q. Our multitude of offerings in the digital platforms portfolio are intended to consistently deliver more holistic solutions, stitching multiple products together for our customers' ecosystems. Our digital fabric helps create a robust moat around increasing customer stickiness and insulates us from structural pricing decline seen in the legacy business. The portfolio grew broad-based across all offerings.
Our collaboration portfolio grew by 8.8% year-on-year and 6.2% Q-on-Q. We continue to benefit from an increasing customer interest in our new offerings, namely Tata Communications Global Rapid, InstaCC, and Tata Communications DIGO. DIGO continues to grow in capability as a customer interaction platform, where it focuses to unify all customer interactions. In our augmentation strategy, we now integrate seamlessly with other CX ecosystem players like InstaCC platform, Salesforce, and more to enable contextual omnichannel interaction capabilities for businesses. Further, we have partnered with Meta as a business solution partner and with Google as Google Communication partner, which enables us to add more channels to our omnichannel offers globally, WhatsApp, Google Messaging, RCS, and more. Besides the rich set of connectors, we would also launch this quarter the Engage 2.0 beta version that can enable the marketing campaigns.
Moving to cloud hosting and security, this portfolio registered a growth of 23.7% year-on-year and 8.8% Q-on-Q. In Q3 FY 2023, we are focused on increasing customer experience with digital onboarding, automated provisioning, and transparent billing through our TCx portal. We also created a single pane of glass for multi-cloud management using our cross-product integration, which is cloud security and network. We have created several upsell opportunities in our premium customer base, contributing to higher gross revenue growth. The global cybersecurity threat landscape continues to be grim, as a result, we are seeing good traction for our security offerings and solutions, especially among enterprise customers looking to strengthen their estate with our threat management solutions.
We have been continuously expanding our threat management platform with new use cases and playbooks to ensure that we can help our customers faster detect threats as well as respond to them. Coming to our next-generation connectivity offerings, this increased by 26.8% year-on-year and by 5.5% Q-on-Q. The increasing adoption of the Internet and the shift to cloud is helping us drive growth in this segment and expand our market share. Our offerings such as IZO WAN and IZO SDWAN are gaining traction with our enterprise customers as we enable them with our simplified and cloud-like solutions to aid them in their network transformation journey. Our media services revenue grew by 17.1% year-on-year and declined marginally by 0.9% Q-on-Q.
We are witnessing a sustained push towards the digital services, more focus on cloud and edge-based workflows for better performance and user experience in our media business. To sum up, as a digital ecosystems enabler, we remain committed to building innovative and scalable platforms to empower enterprises. With that, I would like to invite Kabir to give an overview of our financial performance. Kabir?
Thank you, Lakshmi. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll take this opportunity to take you all through the highlights of our financial performance for the quarter. Q3 of FY 2023 continued to witness the healthy growth momentum. Our consolidated revenue for the quarter stood at INR 4,528 crores, improving by 8.2% year-on-year and 2.2% on a sequential basis. Data revenue for the quarter stood at INR 3,593 crores, improving by 11.1% year-on-year and by 2.9% on a quarterly basis. The reported revenue numbers this quarter, like the previous quarter, continues to have certain Forex benefits going from a strengthening dollar. Our EBITDA for the quarter stood at around INR 177 crores, reporting a margin of 23.8%.
Our YTD PAT is up by 31.6% and our PAT margins for the quarter stood at 8.7% and YTD is at 11.1%. Last quarter, we revisited our deferred tax asset recognition policy. With our international operations becoming profitable, it's allowing us to utilize our NOLs, helping us to drive a healthy balance sheet and maximize our returns. Our ROC is up at 28.4% and is up by 3.6% year-on-year with, and within our ROC guidance of 25%-30%. Net debt for the quarter stood at INR 6,270 crores. Net debt to EBITDA is now at 1.4x compared to 1.5x last quarter. Most notable part is that our debt has been consistently coming down.
Our cash flow generation continues to be healthy, reporting a free cash flow of INR 335 crores this quarter. To sum up, I'm quite delighted that our fit to grow strategy is coming to life as both the healthy balance sheet and financial prudence has allowed us to fund inorganic growth opportunities, and the acquisition of Switch is an outcome of our broader finance strategy. Let me now talk a little bit about our consolidated EBITDA margins, which have declined 100 basis points this quarter to 23.8%. Our YTD EBITDA margins stand at 24.7%. Both the current quarter and the YTD are in line with our EBITDA margin guidance of 23%-25%.
This fiscal, we have laid strong foundations for achieving our growth ambitions through deepening customer engagements and investing in expanding our global sales and product organizations to address emerging market opportunities. With pandemic receding, COVID benefits we had are no longer there. Today, our revenue mix is driven by a higher growth in DPS, where margins are lower versus core connectivity. These factors may build in some volatility in our quarterly margins, we will continue to operate within our margin guidance of 23%-25% for the full year. We always maintain that there will be times we'll operate at the lower end, and there will be times when we operate at the higher end. We've been operating at the higher end of the range for the past several quarters.
That said, if we have the right profitable results, you know, from the business to fund customer success, we will stay the course and fund those opportunities. At the same time, we are focused on levers which will sharpen our moats and help us improve our trajectory in the medium term. Cash CapEx for the quarter stood at INR 440 crores, though our approved CapEx is close to INR 500 crores. This is due to delayed deliveries and better payment terms. Moving to subsidiaries, we see a steady improvement in TCTS. TCTS revenue improved by 6.6% year-on-year and 3.7% sequentially, coming at around INR 333 crores. EBITDA for TCTS stood at INR 13 crores for Q3. Our payment business continues to make positive shifts as we expand our portfolio under the franchisee model.
Revenue for the quarter came in at INR 50 crores and an EBITDA of INR 2 crores. As on date, we have added close to 2,800 franchisee ATMs to our portfolio and working steadily on increasing this further. Our continued focus on delivering best-in-class bespoke solutions is enabling us to drive both the cost side and the revenue side outcomes of our customers. This will help us in a long way in being a strategic partner to the digital and network transformation journey of our customers. Our new positioning with our digital fabric, combined with our strong balance sheet and healthy operating performance, gives us the headroom to invest, both organically and inorganically, innovate and grow, align with the evolving needs of our enterprises. I will now ask Chirag to open the forum for Q&A. Thank you for your attention.
Thanks, Kabir. The participants can click on the Raise Hand icon at the center bottom of the page on the WebEx application to join the Q&A queue. Once we announce the name of the participant, we will be asking to unmute from your kind end. The participant must unmute by clicking on the Unmute Me button that appears on the page of their website. Post this, the participant can ask the question. We will wait for a minute for the queue to assemble. The first question is from the line of Sanjesh Jain of ICICI Securities. Sanjesh, you have been requested to unmute. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thanks for taking my question. I got few of them. First, let me touch upon the revenue side of the question. Lakshmi, can you help us understanding how the order book and sales funnel have seen a trajectory in this quarter? How is this new sales effort is helping us to drive that faster? That's number one. Number two, on the enterprise side, I think this is the fastest ever growth in last many years that I have seen, where we have seen enterprise revenue growing by 20% YOY and 6% quarter-on-quarter, while the wholesale business, which is service provider, is seeing a decline. Is it a conscious effort where we want to change the revenue mix or it's just a coincidence to see? What is driving this strong enterprise revenue?
That's the second one. And the third one on the collaboration side of the business. This is probably first quarter on a YOY basis we have seen growth after many quarters. Can you help us understand within the collaboration, the three new product which touched upon, which is Global Rapide, Insta CC, and DIGO. DIGO is growing, and where are we in terms of drag from the segment? These are the questions to
Sanjesh, what did you say? Where are the drags you said?
Yeah, the SIP was a drag on us, right? On the collaboration business.
Yeah, yeah.
Is that over, we are growing there, or it is still remains declining for us?
Okay. Thanks, Sanjesh. Let me take each of those three questions. The first one relating to order book and sales funnel. I think I've been maintaining that our order book is getting better every quarter and our sales funnel is improving. I think it's interesting to see the mix in our funnel as well is quite healthy in terms of digital platforms is much higher in our sales funnel compared to core connectivity, which is in line with what you would expect in line with our strategy to grow the BPS and incubation portfolios. In terms of what is driving that, I sort of alluded to that. There are two, three things I would want to point out.
One is, we are able to have a more engaging conversation with enterprise customers at senior level, beyond connectivity. We are able to go and talk. You know, we are able to meet with not just the head of network, but meet with, a CIO, a COO and a CMO, for examples. Even sometimes we held, you know, half-day workshops with CEOs. The positioning that we have as a, as a digital fabric, when we tell them that, "Hey, car is nothing but another node in the network," and all the way to, you know, what happens in the factories with, industrial connectivity as a service, which is part of our connected solutions.
Then say how we can help them to connect various personas, branches to the network and transforming the network with internet and software-defined WAN, but also software-defined LANs and branches, taking them all the way to the cloud, and between the clouds, how we connect. Also address some of their customer experience problems through our customer interaction platforms and so on. We are able to have a more holistic conversations with customers. That is one, I would say, where we feel that, you know, something that I call internally as a relevance quotient is increasing with our customers. The second is, and as a reflection of that, we are able to have better pipeline.
As we improve our footprint, in terms of our coverage in the markets, the funnel is growing. We are also seeing that our win rates are inching slowly forward, not as rapidly as I would want, but it's definitely improving and inching better, which is helping us to convert the deal. That's the sort of the color and flavor I would like to give on the order book and the sales funnel. In the to your second observation that enterprise is seeing the fastest growth, is it a conscious effort? I mean, exactly. You know, all our narratives on our strategy, if you saw, it is all tuned towards the enterprises.
Service provider is an important segment, but that's, you know, we buy from them, they buy from us, it's more of a trading relationships that we have. It is still a significant segment, and we continue to address that segment. The core of the growth and core of whatever we have articulated in our strategy, the new platforms, are all addressed towards the enterprise segment. It is a conscious effort, and that is what is bearing fruit.
It also includes reclass. If I may, it also includes a reclassification, Sanjesh. We've done especially primarily in the Mecca region where we don't have a license and we have to go through, you know, some of the service providers. Hitherto we were classifying that as a service provider, you know, revenue. We are now looking at the kind of revenue it is. If it is pure play connectivity, which is this resold by them, and as Lakshmi said, buy and sell, that continues to be service provider. If the end customer is actually an enterprise and that's what we are doing and we are using the service provider to reach them, then we have reclassified that. That impact is about 2.9%. Which still doesn't take away the point that Lakshmi is making.
Our strategy is on enterprises. That is where we do our coverage. That's where is our feet on street investment is also, you know, going, and that is bearing fruit. It will be remiss if I don't mention that there's been a reclassification in this quarter also. Sorry, Lakshmi.
Yeah. Fair. Fair. Fair. Fair.
The third part of the question, on the collaboration, Sanjesh, yes, I think, you know, collaboration, I think we have talked a lot about this in the last few quarters. It, GC particularly was a large part of our digital platforms and solutions, and as it started going down, we had an impact, even though there were other parts of digital platforms that are growing. I'm glad to say that overall collaboration is back on the growth trajectory. There has been a significant effort-
In terms of pivoting the segment away from purely depending on the usage-based, GSIP to a more fixed PMP plus the usage kind of a model that we are going with, the Global Rapide, InstaCC, which has seen not just our own InstaCC platform, but also partnering with Genesys and AWS to deliver a holistic, you know, solutions in the area of Contact Center as a Service. All of that is helping to put this back on the growth track. With respect to your question on GSIP, yeah, we are betting less and less on that. While we would want to keep it steady, you know, slowly our, our, dependence on that is going away.
We would like to see that, stabilizing. Now it is stabilizing, but the dependence on that is not that much as we were a few quarters ago.
Thank you, Lakshmi. Thanks for all those answers. The second is on the acquisition, which is The Switch. What is the synergy? I know we have given the potential revenue which they do, but want to understand more how much will it contribute to the profitability and what is the synergy from Tatacom to Switch and from Switch to Tatacom and how a merged entity can deliver a much better, if at all, there's a probability for that. Once merged, will this be an EBITDA accretive or initially you see that be a loss-making, and from there on we take it to more profit-making?
Let me talk about the synergies and invite Kabir to talk a bit about margins. Firstly, you know, all these acquisitions that we do, as we had said that, you know, we would do that for capability or regional and customer reach and they have to make, you know, financial sense. That having said, The Switch particularly is very interesting because they are one of the leaders in the U.S. market, taking a lot of regional sports and taking to regional U.S. audiences. If you look at our media business, which I briefly commented in my statement, our media play has been largely what I would call as a global-to-global play. We take global events and take it to global audience.
That is where our strength was, and we are one of the strongest players in that space. The other two segments, if I were to call, is a region-to-global play and a region-to-region play. In those places, it's like a regional sports taking to like, you know, maybe the cricket would be a good example where it's a regional one. While it's got some global appeal, it's not as global appeal as, you know, in terms of number of countries the audience reach out. Those are the three players that we see, the global to global, region to global and region to region. We are pretty strong in the global to global. We have some play in the region to global.
What Switch does is, helps us to strengthen the region to region in the U.S., which is a large market. It also helps to take that region to region to region to global through our global footprint. That is one synergy. The second synergy that we see is they have a product for production which we do not have at the moment, and that production capability enhances and will enhance our product offering once we merge, and we can take that offering to our other global customers. These are broadly the synergies from markets and product perspective and how we see the segments in our minds. The third question regarding the margin accretive. Kabir, do you wanna-
Yeah. Look, with first year being, you know, integration and it will be dilutive, you know, Sanjesh. As Lakshmi mentioned, with all those synergies that we actually see and the business case and the rationale, overall, you know, we do see that the overall margin portfolio for media business will definitely be helped by The Switch and being able to then sell more, you know, we're able to give more value to, you know, to our customers. In the medium term, you know, that EBITDA will pick up. In the first year, it's all about integration and about the thing that will be a bit margin dilutive.
I think if you take the PMI costs out, then it should be okay. But as a business-
Yeah.
you know, we are very clear that it'll be margin accretive.
Got it. Got it. Just last question on the cost inflation. Are we behind in terms of peak of the cost inflation and from there onwards inflation will be more stable? This quarter we have seen almost INR 150 crores of cost getting added, to the total operating cost. Are we behind in terms of the majority of the cost investment which we intend to do?
Let me unpeel that for you know, Sanjesh. For example, on hiring, you know, I think now we are seeing the full impact of the hiring come through. In fact, we did not see that full impact in Q1 and Q2, as we still had, you know, I would say attrition along with the hiring. Now that attrition is stabilized, it's behind us and I'm, you know, assuming things will probably reverse with all the layoffs that we actually see. So that the pressure on that side on talent market should come down. We see the full impact of that, you know, of that staffing cost increase, you know, come through this quarter.
There are other elements of inflation that will continue to be there, which energy, for example. If you actually see there are a lot of energy costs that impact our power and, you know, and in pop locations across the world, you know, both Europe and U.S. That I don't think I can put a finger on it and say when, you know, that will come down. I don't think anyone can say in both in Europe and in the U.S., the energy crisis that we actually see today. We are in some places where we have the ability to pass on the price, we will do that, but there are a lot of longer contracts which we have where we don't have the ability to pass on the price.
We will have to take that hit and manage in our P&L overall. That's how I would, you know, I would put both of these together. You know, one of the reasons, as I mentioned, is also the COVID benefits, which we've always called out. You know, we used to have about 50 crores of benefit every quarter. That benefit is no longer there, you know, this quarter as we are resumed to, I would say 100% normalcy. We are back in office. Travel started. We're spending on marketing. We are going to events. That's all coming back to normalcy.
Just on that power cost, I think we speak inflation is behind that. I don't think anybody is anticipating the power cost to go up from here. I know decline is something we cannot expect. I'm telling you from the inflation perspective, we are done, right?
I hope so, but the impact of it will trickle in, you know, Sanjesh, because not all of that has also been up, you know, come in for us because we also had contracts and, you know, and stuff like that.
Understood.
That's why I understand. The Y-o-Y, Sanjesh, is also the staff cost. I think we had called out, as early as last. You know, we said we're gonna start investing in the front end of the sales and marketing. We also said that we would add to our products and platforms in developing new capabilities. I think the INR 150 crore that you are talking about here, Ramya, a fairly large part of it is also.
Yes.
the staff cost. As you know, you know, in specific digital skills and so on, there was a wage inflation and retention schemes that had to be put in place. There were many factors that went into it. Which is as a Y on Y, the staff cost is a fairly significant part of the increase that we see.
Got it. I have few more questions, but I better come back in the queue. Looks like we are in an interesting journey, and I hope all the best for you guys in the coming quarter. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Sanjesh. The next question is from the line of Shubham Shukla from Voyager Capital . Shubham, you have been requested to kindly unmute yourself. Please unmute and go ahead and ask your question.
From the debt level of our company. Like, the debt has like reduced from like, INR 6,400 crores to INR 6,270 crores, which is good. Our finance cost has gone up like 25% quarter-on-quarter, like from INR 98 to INR 123 crores. Just want to understand what the reasons are. Like, it can only be due to like... Is it only because of the increase in cost of borrowings or, like, there's something missing?
Shubham, I'm sure you're seeing the news as much as I do. You see the Fed hikes, that has been happened since March onwards. Even this last quarter, there were, you know, three hikes that have happened in September, November, and December. 75 basis points, 75 basis points, and 50 basis points respectively. I would say, it's great that we've been able to do the cash generation that we have been doing for the last two years and reduce our debt, significantly in the last two years. Otherwise our interest costs would have been a lot higher than what you currently see in the P&L.
It is, it's completely because of the Fed taking the interest rates up, which we see, you know, all the, all the economies also responding. For us, a lot of our, in fact, I would say most of our debt is dollar denominated and it is as a result of the base rates going up.
Okay. Thank you. Like, my second question is on around the other income. Like, if you could give some colors on, like, what it includes and is it like It is at its lowest like in last four to five quarters, which also affected our margin for this quarter.
Well, see, I would say, other income is has its vagaries in it when we have income tax refunds and then the interest component of those income tax refunds that come through. I can't give you an idea on the projection because these are related to old cases. Again, I would say I would really like to thank the cross-functional teams in, you know, in tax and in regulatory and in treasury who actually are putting their might behind in clearing up all these old dues. We've collected quite an amount of all of those refunds of the past and this is not predictable, Shubham. I wouldn't know as to when the order is going to get passed and when the case will come up for hearing and when will we actually get.
This, the other income gets impacted, you know, largely because of the interest, income that we receive for the refunds that are due from the authorities.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
Thanks, Shubham. The next question is from the line of Mr. Abhishek. Abhishek, you may now go ahead and ask your question.
Hello.
Yeah, you are audible. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hello. Yes, Abhishek, please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. My question, what is EBITDA margin of Switch Enterprises LLC? Second question, company has grown at 6.5% Y on Y in nine months. What is the follow-up of the company that growth should be come in double-digit?
Well, we have not, you know, spoken about the EBITDA margin of Switch. That's one of the, you know, part of one of the portfolios within DPS, within data. We are restricting to and answered on how we would like to the margin progression of our data port. I wouldn't want to go into CRED where, you know, talking about the profitability of that. We looked at the merits of the whole acquisition, it makes strategic, you know, sense for Tatacom and for the media services portfolio, that's the reason why we are quite optimistic about this opportunity and we have lucky to have Switch as part of our portfolio.
There's some background noise somewhere. Hello?
Yeah, Abhishek, I think we've already answered the growth and quite extensively in the previous ones in terms of funnel and pipeline. We are quite encouraged about what we see as opportunities. Thanks, Abhishek. The next question is from the line of Mr. Pratap Maliwal. Pratap, you may unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, Pratap.
Yeah. Thank you and thanks for taking my question.
Pratap, can you please be a little louder?
Yeah, sure. Is this better?
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Yeah, sure. I just wanted to ask, the share of EBITDA by segments, the breakup of the data segment into core connectivity, the DPS and incubation. It was given last quarter, I don't think it's there in the present fact sheet. Can we have those numbers, please?
Pratap, we've taken a call that I've said it about last three, four quarters when these questions have been asked, saying that we would like you to look at our data business, you know, as a whole, because there are vagaries that happen. These are all at various stages of evolution. We are investing in platforms, we are investing in capabilities. Some of them need upfront investment, some of them are design wins where we invest and we learn from it, and then we scrap it, and then we reinvest again. There are multiple, you know, elements that actually go in and sometimes quarter-on-quarter, these tend to. Without context, if these numbers may give a wrong picture.
That's the reason why we've taken a call, you know, to take this off. I would encourage you to look at, you know, the overall data portfolio, which probably gives a little bit more stability and little bit more clarity, you know, from a future growth perspective as well. That's one of the reasons, and we don't intend to give those breakdown anymore, Pratap.
Okay. Sure, sir. Now you just said about the Switch TV acquisition, I think a previous participant had asked, not the margin, but the potential revenue. Can we please have that number, the revenue base?
Yeah. We have already mentioned the revenue. It's about, you know, $80 million of revenue last fiscal, you know, of this business. Yeah.
That's INR 80 million. 80, right?
80.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You just said that there were some FX benefits that we got for our margins. Can we quantify that because of the stronger dollar? Can we quantify the FX benefits please?
On margins, it's a very small portion, but on revenue it was still material. On margins it's a very minor portion benefit that we've got on dollar.
Okay. Sure, sir. Just one last observation I had that I think you've addressed this in the previous quarters from other participants as well, but regarding the DPS segment growth, that we've had 6% increase in growth, but there's been a decline in the net revenue. What was it about the product mix? I think we had good growth in a lot of our DPS products. What is actually driving that?
Yeah. It is, as you rightly said, it is largely mix, you know, which is contributing to it. There are some upfront costs and certain deal specific, you know, vagaries that probably explain DPS. I'm less worried about it because these are the right things. Each and every individual proposal, you know, is the right thing for us to do. I wouldn't worry about quarter-on-quarter vagaries about net revenue. I think our focus is on improving the mix of our business more towards DPS, you know, versus core connectivity. While we do that, there will be headwinds, you know, on margin that will come through overall at a company level because of this shift between DPS and core connectivity.
It also has, in the short to medium term, headwind between, you know, products within, you know, DPS as well. I think that's the, that's the right thing to do until we gain scale in each of these products. Therefore, that is the right business call to take.
Sure. Thank you. Thanks again for
Thank you.
yourself. Please go ahead and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope I'm audible.
Yes, Ali, you are.
Hi. Quite a detailed explanation on the, you know, revenue funnel and, you know, the trajectory. I just wanted to, you know, look at it in the context of your cost increases. You know, I mean, Kabir, you've been mentioning in the past that we are investing for growth, both on the CapEx side and on the OpEx side. In that context, you know, as we've seen, some increase in cost in this quarter, could you share some visibility in terms of, you know, this increase in cost is, you know, related to any specific, you know, projects that we are pursuing given the point that, you know, I see Lakshmi also explained in terms of the funnel, you know, looking strong. How should we see this cost?
You know, should we expect, you know, growth to inch up, and, you know, are there any specific, you know, projects that we are seeing that should come by in the near term?
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Ali, for that question. I've kind of said it in bits and pieces, but let me summarize for everyone. It's at various levels that we actually see the margin explanation. At the net revenue level, as I explained, it's largely mix, which is, which has resulted in, you know, in the net revenue fall. If I go below net revenue to EBITDA, these are All of that, you know, we had to kind of retain and attract, you know, the right talent in our, in our organization. That was one.
Not just I would say on the product and engineering side, but also investment on Feet on Street, investment, and largely shifting towards the international geographies, where the cost is higher, as you could imagine, you know, of an FTE, you know, out there. But these are the places where we are also seeing the benefit already come through. When you are investing in, you know, in those geographies, when we are, you know, getting sales coming in international geographies and they become profitable and I'm sitting with, you know, NOLs in those geographies, they actually utilize faster and our PAT is up. EBITDA may still be lower, you know, because they may not be, you know, getting full there.
As they become profitable, because I'm even adding a little bit of revenue to what I have, I'm seeing at a PAT level it is being, you know, accreted. Staffing cost is one big element. The return to office and the COVID savings going away is the, you know, other element. There are minor, you know, things like energy costs that I talked about in relation to these two. That is minor, but on its own, it's still, you know, a material amount. I would say these are the three broad elements on cost, you know, that sit there and combined with mix explains the margin profile. None of which is something which we did not know. None of which is something is we did not plan for.
This is the reason why quarters ago when I talked about, I did say that, "Look, we will operate at the low to mid part of our guidance range in the year." In the first two quarters, we had the benefit on the market shift that came in the voice business, which again, I talked about last quarter as well. To that extent, our consolidated EBITDA actually had a benefit and a bump up, and the erosion got delayed a little bit. You know, in the, you know, first two quarters we did not have. That's so we benefited from that which was also transparently, you know, shared with all of you in the last quarter call as well.
That's how I would sum up, you know, Ali, with all the drivers, you know, for not just for you, but for everybody in the call as well who may have, you know, further questions.
Let me just expand on one element of it. I think Kabir talked about and I in my opening remarks said that all these are planned investments. I emphasize that a lot of sales and marketing investments are going in international geographies. We had said that as part of our strategy, because you know while we are a market leader in the segments that we choose to operate in the B2B segment in India, in international markets, it's a huge market, and our market share there is still not what it can be potentially. I've been saying that, you know, the network is a INR 1.5 billion market in India, whereas it's a INR 145 billion market in the international market. We are.
There is much more upsides to be had, with the right products, the right solutions which we are investing in. I think we have to invest in the right sales and marketing capabilities in those regions, which is what we have begun to do. Which is also why we are beginning to see some of the results come through. Those investments, you know, in our opinion, have to be done, and we will stay invested in both those aspects of sales and marketing, as well as in further enhancing our product and platform capabilities.
Got it. This is very, very detailed and, you know. Only point that I wanted to just clarify, so I understand these are planned investments, but given that, you know, we are adding a lot of resource, we should expect the growth to inch up in the near term with, you know, whatever new funnel of, you know, I mean, order book that we are seeing.
Yeah. No, I think the, these resources did not materialize just this quarter. You know, we've been talking about this for the last three, four quarters, and gradually the people have come in, and with that, is what you see the results.
Okay.
It is already, you know, Ali, it's already visible in the last two quarters. Last two quarters is when we've started touching to our double-digit growth ambition. Double-digit growth ambition is, you know, is what we will continue to, you know, to push for. So this investment has already started, you know, started seeing benefits and fruits in the last two quarters. As Lakshmi said, we are committed to it and we should really stay on course.
Correct. Just a second question on the 5G investments that, you know, the other two telcos have made. They've been quite vocal in, you know, basically their offerings in the enterprise side. We have not, you know, sort of spent on spectrum, but of course, you know, our offerings are well understood. Do you think the competition with, you know, from these two telcos will increase or are you seeing anything on the ground? Do you think their capabilities can increase with this spectrum? I mean, your thoughts here.
No. you know, our strategy with respect to 5G is very focused on the private network that we can enable for enterprises.
Right.
We have built our capabilities quite strongly to be able to compete in that space. We announced the launch of our lab and our stack of solutions on 5G a quarter ago. It's in Pune. We have had several customers use the lab as a service to trial the use cases. We are also taking these capabilities to the international market where we are addressing in this space. We are just not focused on 5G. We have a pedigree with our IoT fabric solution, and we want to offer this truly as an IoT fabric regardless of the technology. Whether it's LoRa, whether it's Wi-Fi 6, unlicensed LTE or 5G or in future 6G.
You know, we will have a industrial connectivity as a service and IoT fabric capabilities that we have built. We are already selling that capability in multiple forms with various customers. With 5G, whenever, you know, we are waiting for DoT to sort of announce, you know, or firming up what they have announced in terms of the opening up for the enterprises to set up these captive networks. We are all set to go when that happens. As I said, this capability is not just for India, but we are also talking to international customers to take and deploy this capability.
Are we seeing intensity from the competition also growing?
Yes, of course. I mean, they have invested in spectrum. They are, I mean, in every sphere there is varied competition, right? Even in our, if you talk about DIGO as a product that we launched, yes, there are competitors. You talk about MOVE, there are competitors. You know, I think that is not the concern. I think we are very focused on our customers understanding what they seek and want. We want to be a lot more technology agnostic, OEM agnostic solution. Our MOVE solution is intended to make our customers more MNO agnostic, if you will, right? We are not an MNO player with mobility spectrum, even on the 4G or 3G or 2G for that matter. MOVE still delivers a connectivity management solution for our customers.
We come at it from a different angle. I'm sure there will be competition in all the spaces, but we are quite confident of what we are building and to be able to deliver value to the customers.
Got it. This is very detailed. Thank you so much for this.
Thank you, Ali. The next question is from Mr. Vinit Manek from Karma Capital. Vinit , you may now go ahead and ask the question. Vinit , request to please accept the unmute request.
Please answer this question. Just wanted to check one thing with you. That on the increased interest cost quarter-on-quarter, there wasn't any element of Forex, change in the Forex that might be impacting it to us because our payments would be presumably, and the interest payments would be in terms of the U.S. dollars. Was there any impact of that available during this quarter or maybe in the last two quarters?
it's very... First of all, you are absolutely right. It's dollars, so there is hardly anything. There is a very minor, you know, impact, you know, at all. I would rather say there's hardly any impact from Forex on the interest cost.
Okay. Any other line item has been impacted because of the change in the foreign exchange happening about that?
I did mention in my speech that our revenue has been positively impacted like it's been there for the couple of quarters with the strengthening dollar. Revenues is more material. The profit is also positively impacted, but not that much material.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Thank you.
Of course. Our foreign currency translation reserve and then, and the network, all of those in the balance sheet, you know, does get impacted because of, Forex movements.
Yeah, no major impact on the income statement side, largely, except the revenue, which is a positive effect.
Yep. Yep.
Okay. Thank you. Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Vinit. The next question is from the line of Mr. Neel Nadkarni from Dalal & Broacha. One second. Let me sort that. Looks like Neel has dropped off. Sanjesh Jain from ICI Securities, you may join the queue again. Sanjesh, you may go ahead and ask the question. We'll unmute you now. Sanjesh, are you there?
Yeah. Hi. Sorry, I couldn't find that unmute button. Apologies. I hope you can hear me now.
Yes, Sanjesh. We can.
Yeah. Just one follow-up from the revenue side, which we spoke earlier. Considering the sales funnel as well as the order book we see today, are we reasonably confident in terms of growing 20% CAGR for next few years? It's not a guidance. Just wanted to understand, is it possible for us to grow at a 20% CAGR in the DPS portfolio or do you see any challenges for that?
Okay. Your question is on the digital portfolio.
Right. Right. Right.
I think it is possible. I think in order for our whole data revenues to grow consistently at double digits, we need to have our digital portfolio. Sometimes I mix up digital portfolio, and I include the incubation there together, has to grow at that level. You know, that's clearly our mission. That's definitely possible, and that's what we would be aiming for and targeting to do.
No, is our order book and sales funnel as it is building, gives us that confidence that it is quite achievable?
I mean, that gives, it gets close to the guidance then. All I would say is, that's what I have been saying, Sanjesh, that we are investing in all these places, you know, these products and platforms, and they are getting stronger. Yes, there is a good momentum in terms of the funnel buildup. I think I also mentioned that if you look at the color of the funnel, there is more in DPS in the funnel than in the, in the core connectivity. The mix is already more positive there. I think that's the best color I can give. I think we have to execute on those and definitely, we will aim to push the DPS growth to that higher trajectory.
A small request. It would be great if we can call out order book, so that gives us a confidence and visibility in terms of how the revenue is stacking up. We did this in between, again, I think we pulled it out. This is a humble request from our side. If you can, now include that.
Yeah.
That would be very helpful.
We'll try and look at whatever indicators that are helpful to you. I think we pulled it out three years ago because one is the color of the business had a lot more of usage. When we talked about order book, one assumes a certain degree of usage and say that's the order book, but the usages are never sort of guaranteed, and either it comes off or it doesn't come, and there were a lot of fluctuations as a result. In the last two, three years, we've been trying internally to work out the algorithms that we can get right. The predictability on the usage-based contracts, we can get it right. I would say we still haven't got it absolutely right. You know, anything that we give could be misleading as well.
You know, we hear you. I think we would give it out at the right time. We understand the reason why you're asking as well. We will start to give at the right time. We are beginning to give more and better color through words, but as figures, we will start to do that whenever the time is appropriate.
Thanks, Lakshmi. Thanks very much. That's it from my side.
Thank you, Sanjesh. We will take one last question from the line of Neel Nadkarni. Neel, we will unmute you now. Please unmute and, you may ask your questions. Neel, you can speak up. Ask your question now.
My question is again on the margins, sorry to bother you in that. What I get from the call is, we have done material investments on improving our funnel, our sales mix, et cetera. Is it fair to assume that we are at this is the bottom end of the margins, but we have indicated that we want the margins to be between 23% and 25%. Is it fair to assume that from here on, the margins should improve going forward? Primarily because the thinking goes that if the top if the funnel is looking better, if the execution is going to be better and the operating leverage should kick in, and given the business model, it should kick in a very big way.
Is it fair to assume that the margins from here on should actually start improving?
Well, I would say 23-25. I've been saying that consistently for the last 2.5 Years now. There will be times when we will be at the lower end, there will be times we'll be at higher end. Because of COVID, because of lots of, you know, other, I would say, tailwinds that we actually got, we've been operating at the higher end of, you know, of the range. For us, going outside of this higher end will be irresponsible because then we will be choking the right investments to make and setting high bars, especially in digital platforms and, you know, and services areas where you need to allow for experimentation, you need to allow for POCs to come through and then identify the use cases.
We do have, you know, a one three 30 approach for our innovation, you know, programs internally. This needs that right level of support, you know, at every place. I cannot answer the question in yes or no, whether this is the bottom or whether this will go up. 20%-25% is the range. Our endeavor will be. If, for example, in one quarter, it goes below 23%, I am not going to, you know, sweat myself because we have made a right, you know, investment decision, you know, for our products. These markers are good markers, you know, for us to guide us to how to run the business.
If these markers go away for a quarter for the right business reasons, I think we are not worried as management, and you as investors should not be worried either.
Sir, to your other point, we, you know, a lot of while we are seeing the growth, in each of the portfolio, whether it's the connected solutions or, you know, in collaboration with DIGO or even Global Rapid, these are only getting started now. I think they are a mix of a platform plus platform as a services play. I think it'll be. We have to continue to invest, and we are upgrading these products and launching. Global Rapid, we are launching a Global Rapid 2.0 with a new set of tools and services capability. Each one of them have a different profile and trajectory. We are continuing to enhance these products and do that.
I think for a while longer, I think we would be continuing to invest. It's not of the scale where when you talked about the operating leverage should be kicked in big way. These are multiple products at varying degrees of investments with a combination of product and with the combination of services play attached to that as well.
I would also encourage you to look at holistically, you know, the business in totality. Look at the operating performance of the business, not just as EBITDA, but look at PAT, look at free cash flow, look at our ROC, look at our reducing debt. Despite the, you know, increase in interest costs that a couple of you have asked, our PAT has actually gone up, right? With all of those levers, these are all giving us the elbow room, the headroom to actually make the right investments, you know, in the business. After a point in time, one shouldn't get fixated about, you know, numbers in the middle and do what is the right economic value that actually drives.
Frankly, that has been the guiding force in the last two years, you know, for this particular company to change the trajectory and get onto this particular path. I fundamentally believe, Lakshmi and the, my other colleagues in the GMC are completely committed, you know, to this rationale, and that's how we are actually driving the business, and we believe drives long-term value to all stakeholders in the business.
Appreciate. I think so, fairly good, reply. All the best. All the best. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thanks, Neel.
Thank you.
I would now request Lakshmi to share his closing comments.
Thank you, everyone. I think we are very, very delighted in the progress that we are making in the overall strategy execution. We are making good progress in the platforms to, you know, in the shift. Many of these products are beginning to get good traction in the market. As I said, we will continue to stay invested in both the talent and building the talent to help us shift to the digital play and also invest in the products and platforms. The most encouraging thing is the kind of conversations that we are able to have with our customers is really encouraging to see. Thank you very much for all patient hearing. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Lakshmi. For any follow-up questions, you may kindly write to investorrelations@tatacommunications.com. This brings us to the end of the management call. The recording will be available on our website in the next 24 hours. You may please disconnect now. Thank you.