Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to welcome you to Q4 FY 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Tejas Networks Limited, hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please press star zero on your telephone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mohit Mishra from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good evening, everyone. This is the beginning of Tejas Networks Limited Q4 FY 2025 Earnings Conference Call. We have Tejas Networks management for the call, represented by Mr. Anand Athreya, CEO and Managing Director, Mr. Arnob Roy, COO and Whole-time Director, Mr. Sumit Dhingra, CFO, and Mr. Kumar N. Sivarajan, CTO. I would like to invite Mr. Anand Athreya to initiate the opening remarks, so we can have a Q&A session. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Mohit. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining the Q4 FY 2025 earnings call. I'm here with Arnob, Kumar, and Sumit in this room. I would like to give you a very key update. The first one is, as of yesterday, your company completed 25 years. It was incorporated on April 24, 2000. I have the founders here, Kumar, Arnob Roy, and Sanjay Nayak, who was our previous CEO. I want to thank them and congratulate them on this fantastic milestone. Thank you, guys. One key important update I would like to give you is that we shipped 100,000 sites of the BSNL 4G project. That's something that we were on for the last one and a half to two years. That milestone is a great milestone that we have accomplished as of last quarter. In terms of revenue, Q4, we landed up at INR 1,907 crores.
It was a 1.4x year-over-year. And for the financial year FY 2025, we hit INR 8,923 crores, which is more than $1 billion, and it's 3.6x year-over-year. In terms of profit after tax, we were negative INR 72 crores. And then the FY25 profit after tax, we ended up at INR 447 crores. The order book at the end of Q4 was INR 1,019 crores. And some of the key business highlights is, as I just said, we shipped close to more than 100,000 sites for the BSNL 4G/5G network. This is one of the largest single vendor RAN networks in the world ever delivered in record time. So I think I'm very proud of the team and also the consortium of TCS, C-DOT, and also our customer BSNL for actually helping us make this happen. We also signed a very strategic technology collaboration agreement with NEC Corporation Japan.
This is for the development of advanced wireless technologies, RAN technologies, and also 5G Core and EPC, and also a joint go-to-market. As two companies, we can take it to our customers. We also have had several key wins for our leading-edge optical platforms, both on the PTN and FTTX mobile backhaul, and also for broadband services and power-utility networks. We also are expanding our sales footprint in Americas and EMEA and ANZ. In terms of corporate update, on the occasion of 25 years of completion of registering Tejas Networks, we are considering the performance of the company in the last fiscal year. The board has recommended a dividend of 25%, which turns out to be INR 2.5 per share, subject to the approval of the shareholders. We also received around INR 123 crores for FY 2024 and plus a tranche of INR 189 crores as PLI incentives.
And we also won the Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough Award from ET Telecom recently. From a summary point of view, I'm really proud of what Tejas has accomplished. In fact, this is the largest revenue that we've had in 25 years, and it's a very milestone, a big number. So I want to thank our shareholders, our investors, and also our employees and our customers for helping us achieve this fantastic milestone. Yeah, I'll hand it over to Sumit. We'll go through the financials and other details. Thank you.
Good evening, everyone. For the financial year FY 2025, we had revenues of INR 8,923 crores, EBIT of INR 905 crores, profit before tax of INR 698 crores, and PAT of INR 447 crores. Looking at the fourth quarter, the revenues were INR 1,900 crores, which is 1.4x year-on-year. EBIT for the quarter was INR 18 crores, and PBT of INR -45 crores. The profitability for the quarter, and to that extent, the full year is partly impacted because of the provisions for inventory obsolescence and write-down of INR 117 crores that we did in this quarter, Q4. The number for the full year was INR 181 crores. We also wrote off certain expenses related to intangible assets that were developed during the quarter. So that sort of suppressed the profitability for the quarter. Moving to the key financial indicators, eventually at the end of the quarter, it stood at INR 2,367 crores.
This will get converted to finished goods and get shipped over the next few quarters. Trade receivables at the end of quarter were INR 4,864 crores, and the increase is mainly because we had higher shipments, particularly on the BSNL 4G project during the quarter. We collected about INR 1,900 crores during the quarter, and we expect to make further collections over these receivables over the next few quarters as the milestones get completed. Cash position at the end of the quarter was INR 827 crores and a borrowing of INR 3,269 crores, implying a net debt of about INR 2,300 crores. I'll hand it over to Arnob to take over the business update.
Thanks, Sumit. I just wanted to give a little bit of color to the business of FY 2025 and the upcoming year. So for financial year 2025, the revenue mix was India Government 3% of our revenue. This is a year-over-year decline of 66%. And that's primarily because, as you're all aware, India Government business is very tender-driven. And depending on the timeline of the tender and timeline of the execution of the tender, the revenues depend on the particular time and the quarter and financial year in which they get executed. And that's the reason why it's very lumpy part of the business. India Private grew significantly and was a dominant share. And of course, as you mentioned, our BSNL 4G shipments through TCS is considered as part of the India Private business.
But apart from that, I think we saw a good amount of growth of our wireline business in the India private sector among the private mobile operators. International, we had a year-over-year increase of 18%. In the overall scheme of things, it's still a small number. It was like 3% of our overall business. And it was driven mainly through key shipments to the US, Africa, South Asia, both our existing customers and a few new strategic locals as well. We closed the year with a backlog of INR 1,000 crores, INR 1,019 crores, where INR 900+ of that was from India and INR 100 crore-plus from the international. Moving on to FY 2026. As you can see, FY 2025 was a milestone year for us in terms of revenues, income, and driven by the large BSNL 4G project. So obviously, FY 2026 will be different in terms of revenue, revenue profile, and so on.
And our business of FY 2026 has to be seen in the perspective of the revenues of the previous years, right, from FY 2024 and so on. So the good thing is that our portfolio got expanded significantly in FY 2025 and increased our addressable market. During the year, we invested significantly in R&D and sales to support the development and execute on the roadmap for our products, especially in wireless. And the good news is that it has got expanded significantly, the portfolio. So now we support 5G over multiple bands, and it gives us a really good opportunity to upgrade 4G networks, not only in India but worldwide. We enhanced our portfolio with advanced 5G massive MIMO radios. So we have now a portfolio of not only our own 5G radios but also the ones with the partnership with NEC.
And also leveraging some of the advanced beamforming technology and all those kinds of things to support more sophisticated and advanced features in our radios as well. We also acquired a field-proven 4G/5G core, and that was part of the NEC partnership, kind of. And a lot of future development in the core is going to happen with a baseline of this core software, which has seen a lot of international deployment. We also expanded our IP/MPLS router family based on the way, as you know, we deployed a very large network in the BSNL network for the 4G/5G backhaul. And over the year, we completed the deployment, completed the commissioning of that network, which is carrying a significant amount of their mobile traffic as well as their broadband services are carried over this network.
We also added to the family by additional sub-products, both in the modular as well as the fixed platforms. We enhanced our optical portfolio from 400 gig to, I believe, 800 gig and 1.2 terabit per channel DWDM systems. This is kind of absolute state of the art in terms of what's available across the world. And with this, it puts us in the league of the leaders in the optical networking products and companies. We also enhanced our FTTX portfolio with the XGS-PON, obviously 10 gig PON products, and shipped a few initial customer orders. And with this, we'll see a lot more traction coming for our 10 gig GPON products internationally. But from there, I think the market for our product segment, all the product segments, as you know, we have a wireless product segment with the RAN and core.
For the wireline segment, we have the routing switching, we have the FTTX, the front-end, the fixed-end services, and the optical, the packet optical and the DWDM transmission. These are the three product lines in wireline. All of those product segments are projected to grow globally, not only in India but also in the international market. That gives us great opportunity, especially with the expansion and the maturing of our existing portfolio. The domestic opportunity pipeline that we have includes large players in the government sector, which we have discussed before. Many of them are in a very advanced stage of negotiations and so on, and hope to expand over the next one or two quarters. We have had several new customers and new application wins in both private and government sectors, many of which we announced during the year.
We have deployed and executed these projects very successfully, and they are six trends of business we expect to expand in FY 2026. We had a significant event in terms of the partnership with NEC, which not only gives us access to advanced technologies but also access to global customers, which are NEC's customers, and also their prospective customers, which helps us pinpoint go-to-market opportunities with NEC. With this, we expect our international wireless business to get a significant boost with this partnership. We also invested in expanding our global sales footprint. We set up more offices in Southeast Asia, in ANZ, and expanded our operations in sales operations in Americas. We had also, on the back of a few strategic wins in those markets, we think that it will give us a strong momentum for increasing our international business in FY 2026.
So that concludes our presentation of the results of Q4 and outlook for FY 2026. And we'd like to open up the floor for questions.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the screen through telephone. If you wish to wait for yourself or to question two, you may press star and two. Participants are encouraged to use hands only while asking your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have our first question from the line of Vimal Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. So firstly, question for Sumit. Sumit, on this inventory obsolescence and various of the write-downs of intangibles, which is amounting to roughly INR 120 crores, is there any spillover expected in FY 2026?
I think evaluation of inventory for obsolescence, write-down, etc., or even charging of certain expenses, it's an ongoing evaluation that the company does every quarter whenever we go for results. But in various types and forms, it keeps on getting evaluated. I think as we completed this project and we were coming towards the end of this year, this initiative was taken, and we took these obsolescence and write-downs and provisions. I mean, it's an ongoing exercise, so there'll always be certain provisions that we continue to make. But this is also a sort of one-time significant effort that we have to make.
So basically, what you mean is there can be provisions will happen, but the magnitude may not be as large as this one?
I think evaluation. This is an ongoing exercise, always on a quarterly basis. Any organization would do so.
Yeah. At the start of, I'd like to add that given the nature of our business, that we are a product company, we have to continuously invest in many different innovations and also products in anticipation of technology changes or building newer innovations in our products. And all of them don't often realize fruition, right? So from that point of view, I think it is expected that some amount of our efforts that we put in or the investment that we put in, that maybe sometimes we need to write off our inventory, which is out there, which is not sellable. So it is the nature of our business, even as an outcome of the nature of our business, given the kind of product company that we are.
As we do this determination at the end of every quarter and every year to see what kind of length of the provisions we need to do.
Sir, is there a chance that this particular quarter, because we finished a large contract, a mega-sized contract, is there a chance that this particular quarter, the expenses would have been particularly higher? Because I would have imagined that this kind of a provision would have been set out over four quarters or maybe more, or over the year rather, which has happened in one single quarter almost. So how should we look at this? I mean, INR 140 crore, of course, it will depend on how much is expensed out or what is the kind of revenue we build for FY 2026. But my point is that if we continue to have such large provisions going forward, it is going to hamper profitability when we are entering FY 2026 at a significantly lower revenue base.
I think typically, at the end of the year, always this exercise is undertaken, and given that this is one of the large provisions or rate of service taken, we wouldn't expect such large numbers going forward. I think progressively, as we continue, normal provisions will continue to happen, so to some extent, I can say that this is a one-time initiative.
Fair enough. Fair enough, Sumit. So the next question is on. I need a date on, of course, which you committed to me with consistently, speaking about in our previous calls. One is on the follow-up contract from BSNL for 4G and 5G. The second one is on the BIAL order wins that we had last quarter. The third one is on Kavach. And the fourth one is on BharatNet. I think it's interesting to see what the plan need to be, where are we in terms of either tender or execution?
Yeah. So for the add-on on BSNL, I think we are in advanced discussions on this thing, and we expect, as you can see, that this thing's going to take time and beyond what we can plan for. We can say that we are in an advanced stage of discussions and will hopefully close in this quarter, if we are able to close this quarter. Regarding BIAL, we wanted last year, we did our shipments in phase one and successfully executed the project. We've got add-on business as well. And that business is expanding, and we hope to expand that business going forward in FY 2026 as well as their networks expand. Kavach, I think the tender is getting delayed. We've completed our POC successfully, but I think they are taking more time for the tender reissuance of the tender and for finalizing the specifications.
BharatNet, as you know, in most of the circles, their sites have been assigned tender. Many of them have the POs and their ongoing discussions with the system integrators on the particulars of the products and the quantities that will be shipped. They're also in the process of the OEM selection and also finalizing the quantity, so we are again at a very advanced stage of discussions with them, and this is also something that we hope goes in this quarter.
Fair enough. Another incident of commentary in your notes, you mentioned that FY 2026 will have a different kind of revenue structure, which is understandable coming from this kind of case. However, for FY 2024, we had closed the year at a revenue growth of close to INR 2,500 crores, with an order book of INR 1,000 crores. How do we expect to sort of beat INR 2,500 crores in FY 2026?
As you know, we don't give revenue guidance, right? If you look at our opening backlog and the business pipeline that is in front of us, and that's why I want to give you a flavor of that, both in terms of the large projects as well as the run rate projects from the private sector. If you look at all of that, I think there is a significant very good opportunity of having a pretty significant business in FY 2026 as well. There is a good amount of business pipeline built out there, and especially with our expanded set of products, I think we are looking at FY 2026 very positively.
Sir, just one clarification on what you mentioned here. Some of the orders that you got or are expected to execute for the newer products, will it be fair to say that this will be a bit more short-sighted in interest compared to what we've done for BSNL? So some of the order intake, which will come within FY 2026, will get executed within FY 2027, which is why the order book for Q4 may not give you a correct picture of what is to come in FY 2026. There could be a positive outcome.
Let me put it this way without getting into any specific guidelines. I think most of the opportunities that I talked about, we do expect them to close and get a large part of them getting executed in FY 2026. Of course, the larger orders, there will be some overflow onto FY 2027 also, but a significant part of the opportunities we expect to get completed in FY 2026.
Fair enough, sir. Just one last data point. If you can help me with the number of employees that have been hired in FY 2026? The employee cost, which is capitalized this year?
We're roughly at around 2,380 employees at the end of the year, and sorry, what was the other question?
No, sir. Your employee cost, that is capitalized this year? Last year, it was somewhere near 2,250 or 12.
Yeah, it's about INR 289 crores of cost was capitalized.
Fair enough, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Akash Mehta from Canara Robeco Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. So my question is, I mean, in continuation to the previous participant, so just wanted to understand in terms of the order, which is at about INR 1,019 crores we are expecting. So what kind of addition we are expecting from the major projects that are there in terms of Kavach, the Vodafone Idea one, additional BSNL, and BharatNet, and other projects that we could see over the next, I mean, getting executed probably over the next couple of years? If you could just help with that.
Yeah, I think we don't share specific numbers with respect to each and every deal, and many of them are yet to materialize. They're very close, and since we don't give specific numbers, so it's very hard to say what FY 2026 is going to look like and the numbers that we are expecting from them. But, as I think, the size of the projects, the opportunities are, you can probably make some estimate about those, and we look forward to fairly successful FY 2026, but not comparing it with FY 2025.
But I mean, if you could just help us with any broad opportunity size from that perspective, that would be kind of helpful. I mean, not guidance in terms of revenue, but what you are internally targeting in terms of these projects.
No, I don't have any specific numbers to share with any of them. I mean, each of those large opportunities of BharatNet and the BSNL add-on and all those kind of things are. I mean, they are several hundred crores and upwards of some of them upwards of 1,000 crores also. But beyond that, I don't have any specific numbers to share for each of them. But these are large.
Understood. Fair enough. Second is on you mentioning that there are certain large projects in government sector that will come through in the next couple of quarters. So can you help us in terms of what kind of projects this could be?
Yeah. So those are the ones that I think Vimal was referring to, the add-on BSNL, Kavach, BharatNet, and so on, both the central and the C-DOT partners. So each of these are very large too. Some of them are several hundred crores. Some of them are several thousand crores as well. Those are the large projects where we are hoping to win a significant share of.
Okay. Thank you. That's it for my side.
Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Manish Ostwal from Nirmal Bang Securities. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I have a slightly longer question. In the last couple of years, we have expanded capability for the past year and the geography, and we have built the teams in different markets also. And you said in FY 2026, the outlook for domestic market is expanding. So if we take a three- to five-year view on the business, where the size of opportunity can you quantify the size of opportunity which we are target to capture or participate in? And secondly, in terms of performance evaluation internally of delivery against our budgets, what are the key metrics you look at internally to judge the performance benchmark? So can you share details around these two things? Thank you.
Outlook over the next few years are good because overall, in all the product segments that we operate in, they are all expected to grow significantly anywhere between 3%-4% to going up to 6%-7% globally. India, the investments are also growing substantially. India is one of the fastest growing markets. From an environment point of view and our products and the relevance of our product point of view, I think we are in a very good position right now. We have, especially in India, we have incumbency in many of the customer accounts. Our key investment and the key challenge is really growing our international business as well. It's mainly a question of execution of successful business in a growing market for us. I think the market growth and opportunity is not a challenge.
It's like the question of being able to execute successfully, especially with the newer products and the various portfolio that we have. So the second part of the question was regarding KPIs. I think it's very simple. The KPIs are, again, just the financial numbers in terms of revenues, margins, profits, cash flow. So I think all of this has to work out to the numbers and the financial performance of the company. Those are the key parameters that we monitor and we evaluate ourselves on.
Sir, the NEC, the tie-up which we have, so if there are some credit rating notes, we have seen some royalty yearly basis. So can you quantify the amount? And secondly, from this piece, what is the size of opportunity we can invest as for Tejas Networks? And the first point in this question is when you say we have increased the size of opportunity from different aspects, but in terms of competitive landscape for participants that are opportunity, can you talk about the competition level in terms of cost structures, in terms of where we are losing? Can you name a few competitors also in this case where we are competing one-on-one?
Yeah. So as Anand mentioned, the NEC agreement is for development of advanced wireless RAN and core technologies. And as part of that, as part of that, also to licensing their products and for joint go-to-market. So with this, it gives us a lot of access to NEC's existing customers worldwide who are deploying the products, as well as some of the newer opportunities that they're looking at globally, right? This gives us a significant boost to our joint branding and joint go-to-market with their existing as well as the newer customers in the international market. So that's the big value coming out of that. Quantifying the number is not possible right now. I mean, we don't have that, but we are looking at, of course, significant revenues. And most importantly, these are going to be international business.
That's something that we are very keen to really grow, and it's very important for our business to increase our footprint globally. And this gives this initiative a significant boost. Second part is competitive landscape investment. One of the reasons that we invested significantly last financial year and continue to support that is for accelerating our product roadmap. I think right now, over the last 12 months, all the different initiatives that I talked about, all the product portfolio expansion that I talked about, has now got us into a very good competitive space with the leading-edge product manufacturers across the world. And they are the people that everybody is familiar with. In wireless, they are the Nokia, Ericsson, and so on. For optical, it's like Ciena, Nokia, and so on. And networking for the service providers: Nokia and Cisco and so on.
So all of them are global competitors against whom we compete not only in India but also in international markets. And with all the investments that have been made, all the development that has happened, we find ourselves in a very good competitive position with respect to them.
Thank you very much, sir, to answer all my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sailesh Raj from Nippon India Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello, sir. Am I audible?
Yes, you are. I was there.
Yeah. So, Rajesh, congrats on a great year, and just wanted to ask, what is the tariff-related news for? What is the impact of that on us, and how are we looking at that risk in the long or medium term?
Yeah. So the whole issue with the tariffs and how varied land finally is yet to be determined, as you know, there are discussions that are going on between the different countries. So the way we see it is that we see it with respect to our competitive landscape. Most of our competitors also manufacture outside of the U.S., right? I mean, in different geographies, including Asia and various countries in Asia. So I think whatever the tariff impact on India is going to be, they're going to have the same tariff impact as well. So I think from the point of view, it's going to be neutral, right? Because I think they're also going to get affected by that.
I think the part that could potentially impact is that if there is a negative sentiment in terms of business, global business, and the investments from our customers go down based on the negative sentiment, if there's a conservative approach that happens in terms of their investment in the network, I think that secondary impact probably has rather a larger risk than the exact tariff itself.
Thanks, and just a follow-on question on the PLI scheme. When do you think we are eligible for the PLI scheme benefits?
Till April 27.
And after that, that will be for exactly? You said?
Yes. That's right.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
That current scheme is for five years, which will end in April 2027.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sonali Bhareja from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to understand in terms of the write-off if I see over the last since FY 2022, our inventory levels were around INR 200 crores. And then the BSNL contract was significantly expanded. We are also attributing some of the capex. So the write-off, what kind of equipment does it come with? Because it seems to be very significant in proportion to the FY 2022. And also in terms of intangibles, can we talk about what kind of projects these relate to? That's the first question. On the BharatNet contract, we've seen a lot of announcements from alternative vendors for other companies in the value chain of the companies. And as per management, we've made some announcements for some of the products as well. So are there any other companies on the electronic equipment market we are considering with?
And what projects are in announcements in terms of this on investment and involvement in the BharatNet project? Just in terms of final proposed picture or end project, whatever the estimate be on the magnitude of the project, what is the feature that they are targeting for this project?
Specific to BharatNet, as I said, the announcements have come from the system integrators, mainly, who have won the deal, and those projects are a combination of a lot of services, a lot of supply and deployment of fiber and all those kind of things, and then a significant portion is also about the equipment, right? So this is where I think the system integrators are working with the OEMs, with the equipment provider, in finalizing them, and as well as all the OEMs, including us, are going through all the testing and certification processes, which are part of the without which you cannot be deployed in the network, so all that is happening in parallel, the discussions and negotiations with the system integrators, as well as testing and certification of our parts, so I think they will, as I said, they will probably close Q1.
And whether we announce it or not, or announce it, it will depend at that point of time that there is significant enough in terms of announcements and all those kind of things. But since this is a deal between private entities kind of thing, we'll need to see what can be announced, what cannot be announced. However, their announcements is because it's like a public tender, and that's what has got announced over there. Regarding the inventory and write-offs, as I said, that's the nature of our business. We have to do a lot of experimental development, a lot of trying out new ideas, new inventions, and all those kind of things. And some of them may not lead to fruition, may not lead to products getting released kind of thing.
So there is always some amount of, and since we develop a significant amount of hardware as part of our products, there will be some amount of inventory which goes stale or which becomes unusable in terms of business because of products that we put into production and so on. And similarly with projects as well. So because this is the nature of the business, if you are in a very direct services kind of business where we are only executing customer contracts and business was based on that, then there is a very direct connection to the business as well as the customer business and the investment in the company. But for us, it's more of a we are a deep tech company. There's a lot of investment that goes on to innovation. And some of them, many of them are successful. Some of them are not successful.
And that's the nature of the game. And this happens. I mean, I think this quarter has been a large one. And as Tommy said, I think that always we don't expect it to happen to the theme of these amounts. But this is the nature of the business. This is nothing unusual. I think the number is maybe a little more higher this.
Is it fair to say that on the inventory side also, there's some time for the experimental stuff that we were doing for batteries and there was an inventory write-off? I mean, I'm just trying to understand how old this inventory is or not. I mean, because most of the development has happened over the past few years in the inventory.
No, I think the development is ongoing, right? That never stops. It's not always connected to a particular business. And as you can see, while we were executing the BSNL for the network, a huge amount of investment kept happening in 5G as well, right, in terms of looking forward for business. So some amount of inventory is connected to that, right? I mean, maybe one particular approach tried, they tried multiple designs and finalized on one of them, the one which gives the best performance and kind of thing, right? So those are experimental stuff that comes into the picture. Some of it is heavy inventory built over through some customer business forecast and which may not have got consumed or kind of thing, right? And/or got end-of-life kind of thing. So it's like a combination of these.
As long as you're in the hardware business, there is those kind of events do happen, especially in the hardware product business. Those kind of events do happen. And as I said, they will happen, but maybe always not to the theme that you've seen right now. And same thing to do with the project write-off. There will be experimental projects which may not reach commercial success, and we write them off. And this has been one of large numbers this year.
And just to add on my other question, what I was trying to understand, are we contributing with international vendors as well in the BharatNet contract? And how easy would this be? Is there any impact on the number and the size of these other OEMs? I mean, what kind of delivery of OEMs are we competing against? Just to understand, what is our right to win in the BSNL contract?
Yeah. I think we have to realize that any business that we do, any customer that we compete in, are we just an international vendor? So it's not something new for us, right? When we compete in private operators like Vodafone Idea or in Airtel or telecom, we are always up against international vendors. Then we always have uniqueness and differentiators in our products, which help us win whenever we do kind of thing, right? So it's the same over here. There are several we won a business for routers against global competition. That's all the names that you know of. And it's a similar situation over here. And so just because international competition is there, it doesn't mean our chances are any less. We do that on a regular basis, not only internationally but also in India. Because all those global vendors operate in India.
So it's part of it. It doesn't increase or decrease our chances of success in any meaningful way because that's what we do every day.
Sure. Thanks. Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Deepak Sharma and Individual Investor. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thanks for the opportunity. As a retail investor, just my concern is, as stated, it's not covered by any research analyst. So from the retail investor point of view, we are looking for some numbers or at least a broader idea about the sector opportunities. But without numbers, it's very hard to judge where we are and will be next two, three years. And after all, from stock price to salary or capital revenue, everything is numbers. I'm not saying you give me the number of quarter on quarter or even yearly. Can you please give a hint? What are the exact opportunity size for the sector in India for BharatNet, Kavach, and Vodafone? And so what are the opportunity sizes globally you are looking for 2026?
So as I mentioned, we cannot discuss specific numbers and for specific customer opportunities. For the large government vendors, as I said, they range from several hundred crores to several thousand crores. Those are fairly large deals. I mean, may not be as big as one BSNL 4G deal, but significant nonetheless. And so those are some of the significant projects based on which we took on the base for our FY26. But at the same time, a lot of our investment and initiative is towards the private operators, both in India as well as internationally. And each of those opportunities, I would say, the large I mean, the smaller customer opportunities are in terms of, I would say, would be in terms of several million dollars, could go up to $5-$10 million.
The larger opportunities could go up to $50-$60 million kind of a thing also, right? Or sometimes maybe bigger than that kind of a thing. But it would be spread around a lot of customers, a lot of different operators in different parts of the world as well as in India. That is the kind of spread of large deals as well as the smaller deals kind of a thing. The combination of those would work towards making our FY 2026 numbers.
Okay. Now, can you put some highlights or any idea about what is the correlation with the sales of telecom companies and your revenue, not even the total revenue?
Well, yeah. I think their CapEx has a direct relation to us. Of course, a lot of the CapEx goes into the infrastructure of fiber or towers and power and all those kind of things. But roughly 10%-15% of their overall CapEx goes into active equipment, the kind of stuff that we sell. So when you look at their CapEx numbers and projections, I mean, that's the kind of factor that can use to have this kind of thing that will happen in the active equipment space.
Okay. Now, sir, one more question. What is the expected growth rate you are expecting from the domestic and international markets from telecom companies in the next one or two or at least three years?
As I mentioned, I think the overall industry reports show a projected growth in all the product segments that we have right now, 3%-4% going up to 7%-8%. Our addressable market is fairly large over here. Each of those segments of service providers, the wireline is multiples of tens of millions of dollars. And same with wireline also, example of $40 billion globally. In each of these wireline and wireless cases, it is a pretty large addressable market and growing at a fairly good clip. From that point of view, I think we are very bullish and encouraged about our prospects going forward, not only in FY 2026 but also beyond that.
Just a subpart of this question, this last question. BSNL, you have stated that one lakh sites of BSNL. So if you are a BSNL, if you are competing with Airtel, Vodafone, or even Jio, then at least how many towers means how many 4G towers required by the BSNL to compete with at least these companies?
So roughly, from what I know, the BSNL has 20,000 towers, but many of the operators have upwards of 200,000. Upwards of 200,000 towers, many of the private operators have. So we do look forward to a lot of the expansion of BSNL network to be able to compete with those private operators. And that is a significant opportunity for us, both in terms of expanding the 4G network as well as upgrades to 5G, which is part of the tender that came out, right? I mean, there's a significant amount of 5G upgrades as well. So a lot of work is going on in this area, a lot of trials and testing and processes going on. And hopefully, we should see some good business coming out of that incumbency that we have in the network.
Okay. Okay, sir. Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. We have another question from the line of Hiren Kumar Desai, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. My question was regarding employee cost. I think it's around INR 100-110 crores. I'm assuming that this is all fixed cost. So what kind of revenue is required to have breakeven on a quarterly basis?
Yeah. So employee cost is predominantly fixed in nature. I think as we progressed over quarters, there has been an increase in the employee cost, mainly coming out of investments that we need to do in R&D, in sales and marketing, and other functions. A part of our employee cost is also capitalized based on R&D projects that we are working on. So I think from the perspective of quarterly revenue and the revenue required to break even, I think a large part of this cost are vendor costs rather than the material cost is fixed in nature, right? So depending on the, well, not giving the exact number, depending on the margins that you assume, which is basically between 20%-30% range, that would give you the implied revenue required to be recovering the fixed cost that we have.
Yes. That answers my question.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Vimal Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Just quickly to follow up, sir. So if I may help you with one more point, for this particular year, what was the ESOP cost that we recorded in our P&L? Last year, I think we were at 107 crores. What would be the number for this year?
It will be roughly around INR 80 crores. We can give you exact numbers later.
Okay. No problem. This is a run rate. Is it expected to be at this level or will reduce?
I think it's a question of how we over time choose to reward employees. I think over the last couple of years, also because of RSUs that were part of the transaction and otherwise, I think expense may have been a bit higher. But I think we generally continue to be broadly at similar levels as well.
Fair. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Is this any capital outlay? Finish. Why don't you finish? So my question was about any initiative. The capital outlay has been recorded in our balance sheet already? And which line items did we see that?
So it is not yet recorded. I think as we go along, as the project delivery milestones get completed, you would see that progressively over the coming year. It will show up in intangible assets under development to begin with.
Fair.
Only a small portion has been recognized in the books.
Right.
I interrupted you in vain. You had completed your responses.
Yeah. Yeah. Time for one last question, please.
I don't know.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay. Can we close the call?
As you see, sir. If you want to take another question, I will take another. If you want to close the call.
Okay. We'll take one more.
Okay. Next question is from the line of Manoj Sahu from Lakshya Investments. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my call. Just wanted to check on this BSNL 4G upgrade order. Does that involve any contracts for the maintenance part also, or it was just the one-time upgradation?
So I think the physical contract includes maintenance over a period of seven years after the network is commissioned. So all these, in fact, in general, any business where we supply and deploy our equipment always comes with multi-year maintenance. And sometimes they get renewed year over year, but in this particular case, it's over multiple years, I think seven years of maintenance, which comes along with the contract.
What would be the runway per year for the maintenance?
There's no specific number that we can share.
Okay. And regarding this BSNL 5G, there is a news item which says that government wants to upgrade it to 5G. So your company will get a first priority of some part of the order would be reserved for you. Can you elaborate on that, or it will be on a competitive bidding basis? 5G.
It's a combination. I think a lot of the 5G upgrade, whichever is going to happen in the same existing bands in which 4G is deployed, that will come through the upgrade of our equipment, and that's where our equipment is designed for that, and even the original tender which we executed has scope for this 5G upgrade in those bands, so those upgrades will come through our equipment. There will be newer bands, some of the performance bands of 3.5 gigahertz and so on. There, we expect the new tenders which come out, so 5G upgrade is going to be a combination of these.
What would be the size of this 5G order that you expect to get from this BSNL order?
Again, no specific numbers. It all depends on the number of sites they upgrade and all those kind of things. But it could be, obviously, it will not be as large as a fresh 100,000-site deployment. But based on the number of sites they upgrade, it will be, I think the cost will be kind of a fraction of the total base cost which is there because this will be 5G upgrades. But it depends on the number of sites that get upgraded. That will determine our revenue. But again, it's definitely significant in terms of several hundred crores for sure, right?
It will be like for the 1 lakh sites that were upgraded from to 4G, so those would get upgraded to 5G, those 100,000 sites?
No, no, no, no, no. I don't think that all of those sites will get upgraded to 5G.
A fraction of that, yeah.
Okay.
Okay. It's a deal. I want to thank everyone for participating in this session. Have a good evening. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. On behalf of ICICI Securities, we conclude this conference. Thank you for joining us.