Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the UTI Asset Management Company Limited Q4 and FY 2026 earnings conference call. From the management we have with us Mr. Vetri Subramaniam, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Vinay Lakhotia, Chief Financial Officer and Head Corporate Strategy, and Mr. Sandeep Samsi, Head, Investor Relations, Marketing, and Corporate Communications. We also have investor relations team from Adfactors PR. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
Before we begin, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Please note the disclaimer mentioning these risks and uncertainties are on the disclaimer slide of the investor presentation that has been shared earlier. I will now hand over the conference to Mr. Vetri Subramaniam for opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on this call. Our financial results presentation and press releases have been shared on the stock exchanges as well as on our website, and we trust you have had the opportunity to review them. Today I'm joined by my colleagues Vinay Lakhotia, CFO and Head of Strategy, and Mr. Sandeep Samsi, Head of Investor Relations, Marketing, and Corporate Communications. Before I take this opportunity to provide you with a brief perspective on the market scenario, our performance, and our way forward, I would like to take a moment to thank UTI shareholders, Board, and Trustees for the confidence and trust they have reposed in me in continuing to build on UTI's legacy. Having been closely associated with this organization for nearly a decade, I believe we have built a strong foundation across our investment capabilities, distribution, and technology.
Our focus now is to accelerate growth from this base, improve our growth, and continue delivering long-term value to all the stakeholders. Let me begin with a brief overview of the macroeconomic environment and industry trends. The year FY 2025, 2026 has been a year of resilience in investor behavior, even as markets have witnessed volatility. The key differentiator has not been the short-term movement in flows, but the enduring structural stability in investor behavior towards financial assets and of course, particularly mutual funds. Despite global uncertainties, whether in geopolitical developments, trade shifts, or capital flows, India's fundamental growth drivers have remained intact. Domestic demand continues to be strong, and the financialization of savings is clearly sustaining momentum. We have been seeing this clearly in the growth in systematic investment plan investments. Talking now about equities and mutual funds in particular.
On the industry trends, FY 2025, 2026 continued to witness strong retail investor participation. Total mutual fund portfolios at approximately INR 27.39 crores as of March 2026. Retail mutual fund folios, equity plus hybrid and solution-oriented schemes increased to around INR 20.82 crore. The industry's average assets under management reached INR 79.46 lakh crore as of March 2026, demonstrating steady expansion driven by both market performance and sustained inflows.
Retail AUM stood at INR 42.89 lakh crore, and this underlines the growing contribution of individual investors to the overall mutual fund industry. SIPs continue to be a key driver of flows and investor discipline. The monthly SIP contribution stood at INR 32,087 crore in March 2026, while SIP AUM reached nearly INR 15 lakh crore, accounting for 19.94% of overall MF industry AUM. While there has been some moderation in inflows across certain categories in recent months, investor participation remains broad-based.
Industry equity mutual fund inflows stood at INR 40,450 crore in March 2026. This is remarkable and indicates continued interest in equities as an asset class in spite of intermittent market volatility. Let me now move on to talk a little bit about our company performance, and I'll take you through our performance highlights. The financial year 2025-26 has been a year of strong execution across our core strategic priorities from strengthening retail flows, deepening distribution relationships, scaling our product franchise, and investing in technology-led operating leverage. We have also undertaken several structural initiatives to strengthen the operating platform and expanded our geographic presence in a calibrated manner while maintaining net zero incremental costs by managing branch operations efficiently.
We have significantly improved our supervisor to feet on street ratio from approximately 1:1 to 1:5 over these recent years, with one manager now overseeing around five relationship managers. Our total employee strength, which stood at 1,402 employees as of March 2024, is now at 1,248 as of March 2026. Talking about the group, UTI Group's total AUM stood at INR 23.42 lakh crore as of March 31, 2026. Our mutual fund AUM reached INR 3.88 lakh crore compared to INR 3.39 lakh crore last year.
In FY 2026, we added 7.16 lakh new investors, as identified by their PAN, taking our total folio base to 1.38 crore. During the year, our gross new SIP registrations crossed 14.5 lakh, of which 76% were through digital channels. On the product side, we successfully launched the UTI Multi Cap Fund, which mobilized about INR 1,000 crores with strong participation across banks, national distributors, and MFDs.
In addition, our UTI Arbitrage Fund crossed the INR 10,000 crore AUM milestone during the year. Our passive business continues to scale well, with ETF AUM at INR 18,963 crores and index fund AUM at INR 5,934 crores aggregating to INR 24,897 crore during the year, and we continue to maintain leadership position in the smart beta category. We expect our momentum in this passive business will continue to be supported by a robust pipeline of new launches during the coming year.
On the institutional side of our business, which falls under our TMS division, both the EPFO and CMPFO concluded the process of appointing new portfolio managers through an open bidding system. For the third consecutive term, UTI AMC was selected as one of the portfolio managers for EPFO. In the case of the CMPFO, we were chosen as one of the two portfolio managers for the second consecutive term.
Both mandates have been awarded for a tenure of five years. Switching to our pension fund business. Our pension business grew during the year with total AUM at INR 4.02 lakh crores, representing an 11.8% increase year-on-year. While the private sector pension AUM grew by 46% year-on-year. This continues to remain an important strategic growth area for us. An important area of focus for us through the year has been digital transformation and productivity enhancement. Our digital business initiatives have delivered strong outcomes, including a 234% increase in revenue, 33% increase in transactions, and a 31% reduction in cost per transaction. We recently launched one of the industry's first AI-powered contact center solutions, Vani, which has already automated 59% of our inbound calls. This has materially improved customer response time and service efficiency.
We also launched an in-app WhatsApp payment facility via CAMSPay and are the first AMC in India to offer this service to investors to transact and engage in live chat via WhatsApp and make payments. To bridge the gap between complex financial insights and reach a diverse investor base, we also launched an industry-first AI translated vernacular initiative with the launch of our monthly fact sheets in Hindi. We are also translating our fund manager communications into eight regional languages, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, to provide our views in regional languages for our pan-India audience. As mutual funds go deeper and deeper into the heartland of India, we think being able to provide communication in different languages will hold us in good stead. From an investment performance standpoint, we continue to remain focused on process consistency and disciplined execution.
In fixed income, 50% of our AUM ranked in the top two quartiles over the one-year period and 60% over the three-year period. Similarly, our hybrid strategies and our value-oriented strategies have continued to show strong long-term performance in the equity space. Our passive strategies have a consistent track record of low tracking difference, which is very important in terms of the investor outcomes. Our equity research coverage has further expanded in line with the growth in the market. This strengthens our ability to identify opportunities across market segments. Overall, FY 2025, 2026 has been a year when we have strengthened our business across distribution, product capability, digital infrastructure, and institutional trust, and I would add, also a very significant people refresh.
Going ahead, our foremost strategic priority is to grow our mutual fund AUM while building a more resilient, diversified, and scalable franchise, all to be done while maintaining strong cost discipline. With that, I will now request Sandeep to take you through the operational and financial performance of the company in detail.
Thank you, sir. I will speak about UTI AMC's performance during the fourth quarter and for the full year ended March 31st, 2026. Speaking about UTI Mutual Fund's performance, UTI was able to capture a market share of 5.5% of the gross sales of the industry during this quarter and market share of 6.1% of the gross sales for the financial year FY 2026. Our equity quarterly average AUM for March 2026 stood at INR 95,824 crores, rising by 5.46% as compared to the quarter ended March 2025. Our quarterly average AUM for the index and ETF funds stood at INR 176,673 crores, up by 24.86% in the fourth quarter. ETF and index funds annual net inflow stood at INR 24,897 crores. In FY 2025, 2026, we added 7.16 lakh new investor PANs, taking our total folio base to 1.28 crores.
Our SIP AUM witnessed a growth of 5.91% over the corresponding quarter of last year, reaching INR 39,813 crores as of March 2026. The SIP inflows for the fourth quarter stood at INR 2,457 crores. The SIP gross inflows for UTI Mutual Fund witnessed a year-on-year growth of 13.42%, with an average SIP ticket size being INR 3,381 for March 2026. For the full year, SIP inflows were INR 9,442 crores, higher by 13.42% as compared to INR 8,325 crores in FY 2025. The active SIP folios as on March 31st, 2026 stood at 29.53 lakhs, a 9.71% growth as compared to March 2025. Speaking about UTI AMC's financials on a standalone basis, the core income, that is sale of service, for FY 2026 amounted to INR 1,255 crores as compared to INR 1,180 crores for FY 2025.
The normalized core PAC for FY 2026 is INR 460 crores as compared to INR 447 crores in FY 2025. The normalized PAC for FY 2026 is INR 643 crores as against INR 653 crores in FY 2025. The employee cost of INR 437 crores includes the one-time item on account of revision of family pension benefit of INR 25 crores incurred in quarter two of FY 2026. Excluding this one-off item, the normalized employee cost is INR 412 crores. On a consolidated basis, the core income from sale of services for FY 2026 amounted to INR 1,539 crores as compared to INR 1,445 crores for FY 2025. The normalized core PAC for FY 2026 is INR 452 crores as compared to INR 492 crores in FY 2025. The normalized PAC for FY 2026 is INR 511 crores as against INR 731 crores in FY 2025.
The employee cost of INR 553 crore includes the one-time item on account of revision of family pension benefit of INR 25 crore incurred in quarter two of FY 2026. Excluding this one-off item, normalized employee cost is INR 528 crore. On UTI Pension Fund Limited, our 100% owned subsidiary, UTI Pension Fund Limited, has recorded a growth of 20% year-on-year in its AUM, reaching INR 4 lakh crore as on quarter four of FY 2026, and currently it manages 24.36% of the NPS industry's AUM. UTI International, which represents our international business interest, has an AUM of $1.74 billion, that is INR 16,144 crore, as of March 31st, 2026. Our international clients are in more than 30 countries, and they are primarily institutions, pensions, insurance companies, banks, and asset managers.
One of our flagship funds, the UTI India Dynamic Equity Fund domiciled in Ireland, has an AUM of $540 million, which is INR 5,012 crores, as of March 31, 2026. On UTI Alternatives, it has an AUM of INR 5,280 crores. It currently manages five active funds across performing credit and multi-strategy themes. UTI Structured Debt Opportunities Fund II has exited all the investments and made the final distribution in quarter three FY 2026 at an above benchmark performance, with an IRR of 13.4%. UTI SDOF III has an AUM of INR 609 crores, and the fund is currently in the investing stage. During the second quarter, UTI Alternatives launched the fourth fund of the SDOF series. This fund has been planned as a INR 1,500 crore fund plus, with a INR 500 crore greenshoe option. With a current AUM of INR 674 crore.
UTI Multi-Opportunity Fund I has an AUM of INR 1,598 crores. Currently, the fund is in investing stage. UTI Real Estate Opportunities Fund with its commitment of INR 187 crores is currently in fundraising and investing stage. I would now request the Managing Director and CEO for his concluding remarks. Sir?
Thank you, Sandeep, for sharing the operational and financial updates of the company. I'm also pleased to inform you that at the board meeting today, UTI AMC has declared a dividend of INR 40 per share for the financial year 2025/2026. The same is subject to the approval of shareholders at the ensuing annual general meeting. We would like to open the forum for questions and answers. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.
Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one on your phone. We'll take our first question from the line of Gaurav Jain from ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Sir, thank you for the opportunity. My question is on the expenses side. There is some one-off you called out in Q4 FY 2026, but I could not understand the same completely. On reported numbers, what we are seeing is year-on-year, there is a sharp increase. If you can help us understand what is the one-off and for FY 2027, how should we build or think about the employee expense and also the other expenses bit. If we look at FY 2027, I don't think there is much one-off in the other expenses bit that for the full year has also grown 15%, which is on the higher side. If you can help us understand how should we think about the OpEx from FY 2027 perspective.
Yeah. Hi, Gaurav. Vinay here. On the employee cost, there is a one-off on account of VRS and family pension. The total quantum of that is close to around INR 130 crore that we provision in the Q3 of this particular financial year, plus on account of labor code, there has been an impact of close to around INR 4 crore as well, because we have to provide for an additional liability of INR 4 crore. Total employee cost that you see is close to around INR 412 crore at a standalone and INR 528 crore at a consolidated level. In terms of guidance for the next financial year, because obviously there will be a benefit on account of VRS, the run rate on a quarterly basis should be around INR 90 crore-INR 95 crore for the standalone entity and INR 125 crore-INR 130 crore on the consolidated firm.
Obviously, because we are building capacity expansion into all three lines of business. With respect to the other expenses, yes, it has increased at 15%, and I would say some of these items are not actually a cost but as an investment that we are doing in our business, both on the digital front as well as on the physical front. On the digital front, we have upgraded our IT infrastructure, especially with respect to the cloud infra, and because of that, there is an additional expense line item of close to around INR 8 crore. On the physical part, since we have expanded close to around 90 UFCs in the last one and a half years, that has obviously increased our cost.
The guidance for the other administrative expenses, it should increase close to around 7%-8% for the standalone entity and maybe 100 or 200 basis points more for the consolidated entity since for UTI Pension Fund, we are expanding into newer geography. For the consolidated one, it could be in the range of around 10%, and for the standalone, it's around 8% for the other expenses. Gaurav, is that answer your question?
Yes, sir. Just one follow-up on the employee expenses bit. Basically, Q4, when I'm looking at the consolidated employee expense, it is INR 132 crores. That is the normalized run rate, what you are saying, post VRS, and there is no one-off in this?
Yeah, for Q4, there is no one-off in this.
In that case, sir, on a year-on-year basis, at the consolidated level, even after VRS, we are at a 14% increase, right? I mean, Q4 to Q4. Q4 FY 2025, our employee expense was INR 116 crores. Q4 FY 2026, we are at INR 132 crores. That has still grown at 14% even after VRS.
Yeah. Some is on account of additional provision on variable pay and quarterly incentive. As I told you, at a consolidated level, since we are expanding into all the three lines of business, there have been additional recruitment in all three. That is why it is increasing.
Okay. Sir, my next question is to Vetri, sir. That post taking over as CEO, if he can help us understand what are the key three, four areas or aspects that he plans to work on for the coming year, and what is his roadmap that he wants us to guide for how he wants to run the company from here, that will be helpful, sir.
Gaurav, before that, let me clarify the run rate. For standalone, it's close to around INR 90 crore-INR 95 crore per quarter, and for the consolidated, it's around INR 125 crore. Over to you, Vetri.
Yeah. As I said in my opening statement, Gaurav, I think from our point of view, the company has carried out very significant refresh of its platforms, of its technology, of its infrastructure, of our reach in terms of the branch expansions that we have done. If you ask me what is the single line agenda, the single line agenda is growth. We are operating with roughly 270 branches. I give you the employee count, which is now in the 1,200 number.
If I look at all of these numbers put together, I would say we are operating below our capacity. The simple target over the next few years is to grow faster than certainly our peers in the top 10 of the industry, such that we can start to get the benefit of the operating leverage that is now already built-in because we have absorbed a lot of those costs.
From a people point of view, I mentioned in my opening comment, there's been a significant refresh in terms of the people and also I would say over the last few years, there's been a dramatic transformation. If I just look at the age group of what we call our frontline cadre, the average age of the team has dropped from 41 years in FY 2021 to 36 years in FY 2026, and Gen Z now makes up 38% of the workforce.
If I go back five years, it used to make up 5% of the workforce. There's a very dramatic people refresh which has taken place. My call out to the internal team is to make sure they are well-equipped, they are trained, they have best-in-class support, be it from our data platform, be it in terms of technologies available to them, to be able to raise their productivity and their efficiency so that we can raise our share of gross sales, net sales, and achieve a much higher level of AUM without in any way having to add further costs on the people front, particularly within the context of the MF business. The single line agenda is growth.
If I were to drill down into the second line agenda, it would be to sort of grow our share of SIPs disproportionately, because I think that is the key to growth, particularly on the equity side of the business, the active equity side of the business, and we know that is a much higher yielding part of our business mix. Clearly, on top of these two, all the technology refreshes that we've done are allowing us to engage effectively with the young cohort and in the digital space. If you look at the new SIP sign-ups which are happening, I would say, given on which data point you look at, more than 50% of the SIPs are now originating digitally. All the investment that we've made in digital is something that we hope to use once again to be able to increase our growth rate.
Single line agenda, grow the business. Second, manage the cost, increase the efficiency, and use all the other tools that I mentioned.
Very helpful, sir. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you. .
Thank you. Before we take the next question, I would like to remind participants. To ask a question, please press star and one on your phone now. Next question is from the line of Naman Maheshwari from Shanghvi Family Office. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
Okay. Very well captured on the single focus of growth as an engine. Since last three, four years, we had not witnessed a sharp correction led by so many headwinds into the market, but this could have been a good time to acquire customers, right? March was, to some extent, pretty risky for the overall equity market. How did we see the customer acquisition going during this time? During this split. What were the major schemes that are engaging interest of SIP buyers? Also, do you collect the data of first-time SIP buyers with you? Or how do you track that? If you could give some light on that. Those are some questions.
Yeah. Naman, you're right, there was a lot of volatility which came into the market, and we are very happy to see that investors have been consistent in their SIP. While generally March sees a higher number of SIP closures because people achieve their target. People have started their SIP in the month of April and close it in the month of March. Overall, there was not a very high amount of redemption pressure that the mutual fund industry saw. You had asked a very interesting question on how do we track the first-time SIP investors, and we track them on the basis of the PAN number that we have, and as both Vetri and Vinay mentioned that we have invested a lot in the digital infrastructure.
We have now created a complete data lake, and we get to know each and every investor whenever he or she comes in and start their folio, we get their entire database. We know that whenever there is a new customer who's coming, all the data that they have. The major scheme that the first-time investors generally look at are the index funds, and we have seen good traction, especially from the Fintech platform for the Gen Z investors, and they generally take their first investments at around INR 1,000, INR 1,500 SIPs.
Sorry, this is Vetri here. Just to add to what Sandeep said.
One of the numbers that we are now tracking closely, and we are also putting that into our sales matrix so that we know what those numbers are and we know what strategies we can use to drive it, is the new customer acquisition, which to us basically means, are we getting a customer with a PAN number which we earlier did not have in our MF folio base? The idea is to target that number. I mentioned that last year we added 7 lakh PANs, so this year we are targeting to grow that number significantly. A lot of the activity that we are doing in the digital space as well as on ground, including B30 cities, etc , as an example, women investors as an example, is to widen that pool because that has been our historic legacy.
Also we think that is a great way to create the customers who as they grow, you will grow with them. What we also have now with our Salesforce marketing automation is the ability to communicate with these clients using our Salesforce marketing automation and being able to cross-sell and up-sell opportunities to them. We implemented the Salesforce Marketing Automation sometime in the middle of last year. Early days at this point of time, but we are starting to see that driving engagement with those customers helps you make them think through their investments better and also gives you that opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell. New customer acquisition is certainly a key part of that, and now with digital, there is an ability to target and communicate appropriately with them to raise your share of AUM with them.
Okay. Actually, I didn't mean to ask you from the SIP stoppage. Actually, I wanted to understand that did you witness any sharp inflow from first-time SIP doers when the market was in March, when there was extreme volatility? Did that help you fast-track some customer acquisition by educating them rightly? Because we have a very strong feet on street, right? That is what I wanted to understand. That did it accelerate during this volatility window, right?
Not so much because sometimes sharp market corrections also pause people's thought processes. Plus, March, as I mentioned, is a period when people look at SIPs and renewing their SIPs. However, one good factor that we saw when in the month of February, the number of new SIPs which we opened were quite good. Even in the industry level, but for industry level, the numbers were slightly lower. We did better than the industry in that sense. Volatility has been helping in terms of getting new investors because now they look at the market being at a lower level and starting their SIP, but not so much in the month of March itself. Maybe because of the sharp volatility which we saw in the market.
Vetri Subramaniam here. I don't think there's a specific call-out on March per se. We track our SIPs which are sort of, let's say, canceled or ceased vis-a-vis the total SIP book, and the new SIPs that we are adding. We also compare how are our performances relative to the industry because the same number you also get from AMC. I would say in general, we have seen our numbers have been slightly better in recent months, but I wouldn't like call out something which is particularly distinct in terms of a trend.
Okay, sir. Fairly understood. Congratulations and all the best for the upcoming quarters.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Meghna Luthra from InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thank you, sir, for giving an opportunity. Sorry I joined a little late. I'm not sure if these questions have been asked. Can you please explain the impact of the revised norms, SEBI's new norms from April 4th?
The TER on account of exit load has been cut by five basis points and obviously there have been some rationalization in the base TER as well. As a fund house, we are of the view that whatever impact is there that we'll be passing on to the intermediaries. We don't foresee any challenges as far as this rate cut is concerned on our AMC yield.
Okay. Got it. Sir, secondly, what do you see as the yield impact going forward for the year?
It's a combination of actually what our assets mix as well. Maybe a basis point or two dilution could be there because ETF and index fund is growing at a slightly higher yield and on the fixed income side as well, there's a stronger appetite for a low duration product which have a slightly lower yield as compared to a high duration or a carry yield fund. Maybe a basis point or two dilution in the overall yield number per se for financial year 2026, 2027.
Got it, sir.
Sorry, just to add on that, Vetri here.
Yeah.
From my point of view, the most critical line to grow is the revenue line.
Right.
Of course, I would like my higher yielding products to grow faster, but eventually from our point of view, there is a cost base that we have and anything that helps us grow the top line faster, we are happy to take it. There is a separate challenge of can we raise our share of higher yielding products relative to what we have in passive. We know our share of passive as a percentage of our total AUM is much larger than some of our peer group. Managing yield for the sake of managing yield is not a thing that I'm in favor of. I would rather manage revenue. Yes, certainly we would like to raise our share of net sales coming in from active equity schemes.
Got it. Sir, on the employee front, are we seeing this as a normalized run rate or how do we see employee costs from here on?
Given some guidance on the employee run rate going forward, at least for the standalone entity, it's close to around INR 95 crore per quarter and at a consolidated it will be closer to around INR 125 crore per quarter. Higher on the consolidated side because we are building capabilities in all our three subsidiary lines of business.
Got it, sir. Lastly, sir, on the pipeline of the products, what is there for the coming quarters, or what can we expect?
Yeah. We are going to file multiple passive funds with the regulator. Now we have received the board approval. Some of the funds that we are going to file with SEBI are UTI Nifty 500 Index Fund, both on the index side and the ETF side, UTI BSE Sensex Sector Leader, again both on index and ETF, UTI Nifty India New Age Consumption, and UTI Nifty India Internet Fund. These are the four funds with both index and ETF side.
I can just add to what Sandeep was saying. Our focus has been only on the core diversified categories, which is why you see even in the last, I would say three, four, five years, we stayed away from launching a flurry of sector and thematic funds.
Right.
We are continuing to be guided by that principle. We will launch in the passive the full bouquet, because we think of those as access products where, from our point of view, we are providing access to themes and sectors which investors are welcome to take and pursue. But in the diversified space, we have covered the core categories, and there's no interest in doing anything beyond that. We do plan to, however, launch at least one fund in the SIF category during this current year. It's a process in terms of getting all the board approvals and regulatory approval. I think if you see the industry data, it is clear that there's been some action in SIF, but it's not that the growth over there has been particularly dramatic.
We think we have one or two good product ideas, and certainly we would like to launch one of them during the current year. I think that would be the target over there. Separately, we've also received the permission from the IFSC, which is GIFT City.
Mm-hmm.
Our subsidiary, rather, which is UTI Alternatives, they already had their license in the GIFT City, but that was for a wholesale, what they call a non-retail SME license. We have now just last week received the approval for retail SME. We will intend during the course of this year to also use GIFT as a two-way solution, both for partnering products which domestic investors might want to invest overseas, as well as providing vehicles in GIFT City for global investors who might want to invest through that route into our domestic funds.
Okay. Got it. Sir, lastly, on the flow front, what would be the share of the banking channel in total equity and hybrid?
Just give me a second, Meghna.
Sure.
Yeah, the share would be about 1.5%.
Okay, got it. Thank you. That's all for now.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from the line of Mohit Mangal from Centrum Broking. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity, sir. I was actually looking at your PPT.
Mohit, I'm sorry to interrupt.
Yeah.
Can you use your handset mode, please?
Yeah. Is this better?
Yes. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Actually, I was looking at your PPT, and I was actually a little surprised that your equity net flows both on quarterly and yearly has been kind of negative. Though from 2025 to 2026 we see some kind of a moderation. What are our strategies to improve the net sales within the equity space? Our hybrid is doing well, that is fine. Within the pure equity space, what can we do to increase our market share as well as bring it in the positive territory?
Yeah. Mohit?
Yeah, let me answer that better here.
Yeah.
There are two, three things you need to do. One is, of course, as I mentioned earlier, we need to raise the SIP book, right? That is a key metric for our sales team now. To raise the SIP book, and that is where I believe we will be able to build the most sustainable level of both flows as well as over time it builds into a lot more stable AUM. That is point number one. Secondly, when you look at that net flow number, you're absolutely right. Actually, year before last was hugely negative. Last year the negative number came down. This year it was, I would say almost close to zero. Now, this reflects the fact that some of our strategies have seen large outflows over the last few years.
See, this is really a question of repositioning the sales team in terms of saying how do we take multiple products to the market and how do we make sure that we are able to simultaneously sell and bring in net sales from different schemes. One of the things we are happy is that this year we were able to, if you look at our sort of core, what we would call 19 funds, eight of them actually saw positive net sales. We've now reached a situation where, unlike in the past where maybe one or two flagship schemes dominated the entire inflow. We are trying to diversify the inflow across the entire basket of funds that we have. Very simply, I would say everything from value to GARP in the middle and quality growth.
From my point of view, the only way to avoid the cyclicality which is otherwise inherent in this business is the fact that your flows are pro-cyclical to performance. I would like to dial that down by making sure that we have competent silos for each of these different sort of strategies.
All market strategies, the salespeople are able to take some performing products and equally, what I'm increasingly seeing in this marketplace is that a fair number of distributors, as well as other investors, are also open to saying, "Where is the opportunity for me to participate in a fund which may be currently is suffering because market conditions are not favorable, but where perhaps something might change to my advantage in the future?" What we are trying to double down on is training the sales team and empowering them, making sure that they are able to carry multiple products to the market rather than the firm be reliant only on a narrow set of funds.
That's the way we try to diversify, and that is what, along with the SIPs, I think will hopefully let us turn the corner and increasingly build it into a sustainable number.
Understood. This is helpful. I was actually looking at taking this forward, and I was looking at your employee number. Your employee number has reduced, but your sales team has kind of increased. That is something within your strategy, to increase your net sales. Should we refer to it that way?
Sorry, will you repeat that question?
Yeah. Basically I was looking at your number of employees. Your number of employees were around 1,400 in Q3. That got reduced to 1,250 odd, but your sales was around 775 but that's around 799. I just wanted to understand that you're increasing your core sales team members, but at the same time reducing your overall employee strength as well. That's the right way to look at?
That's the right way to look at it because I think historically, if we look at our workforce, I won't just say Q3, but if I go back a little bit in time, the ratio of people who were actually responsible for bringing in business relative to those who were in, let's say, corporate related functions, who were not really people who were bringing in the money, that ratio was not a very favorable ratio for us. What we are trying to do through all of the people refresh that I mentioned is essentially correct this. Of course, there will always be a large investment team, there will be a large assurance related team, obviously the CFO and those kind of control functions as well. It needs to be more balanced than where we used to be.
Having said that, I don't see the RM count going up too much further from here. I think we've reached a stage where with 260-odd USCs, as we call it, I think we are pretty much fully staffed to the extent we require.
Understood. That's helpful. Lastly, on the international piece, basically, this was not a good year and even the last quarter was not good. I think we had strategies earlier as well to grow this piece as well. Just wanted to know how, going forward into financial year 2027, should we look at this subsidiary, basically?
To put it very simply, this is a little bit of a schizophrenic view on India. Domestic investors, hugely positive, hugely committed to investing for the long term. Then, you see a completely opposite viewpoint with global investors where they are pulling money out of India right, left, and center and rotating it to every other developing market and, of course, to developed markets. This is a freight train that we can't do much about because appetite for India is a function of many things. When you see, I think if you look at calendar 2025 and just the first quarter of the calendar 2026, effectively foreigners have pulled out $40 billion out of India. Our international business honestly is just feeling the pain of that outflow front and center. We are looking at sort of trying to diversify that AUM.
We did launch a government bond ETF saying why do we only have equity products? We should also have bond products. It doesn't help when your currency drops 9% over the year, and then your bond investors also end up with a hugely negative return. It's just been a very difficult market to position India right now with global investors. I've seen this time and again, it's a cyclical business. There are some points in time where nobody is interested in the country and there are other points where they want to bring the money back in a flood. Right now I would say it's just hold our ground and where possible, we are looking to bring in some of our institutional clients into our alternative products. We are trying to use that as a...
We actually started this last year itself, but it takes a while to get global investors completely to understand the domestic alternative product. Thankfully, UTI Alternatives, having returned money on two of its strategies during this year, has a solid track record. I'm hoping whatever traction we see in the alternative space will help the international business sort of overcome some of the headwinds in their P&L account. The larger challenge of India being seen negatively is a headwind that we have no way of overcoming right now.
Understood. Makes sense. Lastly, on SIF, basically, if you can just elaborate on how do you see this piece and will the yields be similar to that of mutual fund? A little bit on that would be helpful.
I think it's too early to call that out. I think if you can do something which is genuinely differentiated in terms of risk and reward to the investor, my intention would be then to price that at a superior yield to the mutual fund. If you are offering something which is more in the nature of a plain vanilla structure, which is only slightly differentiated from the traditional MF product, then your yields may not be different. I think it's still evolving. There's a whole series of long shot opportunities which are available in that SIF space. Some of them over time, once we have the ability to execute them in a way that it makes a material difference to the investor, right?
I can charge higher fees if the investor ends up with a risk and reward ratio or with a return, which in his mind is superior to what he's getting from the MF product, then of course, I would like to earn a higher yield. I think it's still very early days over there to give you a guidance on that. If I can offer a product with superior risk return, long-short, etc , of course, I would certainly like to retain a higher yield for myself.
Understood. Are we kind of exploring that area? Is there anything in the pipeline?
I think the first product will be just little bit more than a plain vanilla product, so I would not expect it on the first product.
Mm-hmm.
We are trying to launch some in that long-short space over time. It's still in sort of testing phase, which could use quant. If we launch that successfully and we are able to build a track record, certainly we would like to position that as a differentiated product and we would like the benefit of that to reflect in my yield. Again, if you just look at the market, I'm sure you've seen the data yourself. I think it's very early days. The space is still evolving in terms of what does the product offer, and B, does it really meet the need of an investor which the traditional mutual fund product is not able to offer? I don't think we have solved this both ways. I think the whole industry is trying to figure this out.
All right. No, I think that's helpful and very clear. Wish you all the best, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from Vijiya Rao from BOB Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Vijiya, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Am I audible now?
Yes, please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, sir. Please provide us the yields breakup of the segment, equity, debt, liquid, and ETF. Secondly, your funds are little underperforming. What are you doing in this respect so that your overall AUM grows a little smartly? These are two questions from my side.
Vijiya, I can provide the yield breakup. Equity and hybrid is 75 basis point. ETF and index fund put together is around 8 basis points. Cash and arbitrage around 10 basis point, and income fund is around 18-19 basis point. Combined put together depending our asset mix is weighted average yield is around 32.
Yeah. The second question, sir. Can you give color on how your funds are performing, whether or not, then what are you doing to have more funds in the first quartile?
Well, I would love to do anything if you have ideas about how I could get all the funds into first quartile simultaneously, but I'm not sure, having been a fund manager for many years, that there is any easy way to do that. I look at it now from a business angle. From a business angle, I'm saying that I've got to make sure that I've got funds which are ring-fenced for different market seasons, because what will be the market season which will cause a fund of a particular market cap or fund of a particular style to do well, what season it will be is not in my control. What I can do is make sure that my strategies, either by number or by AUM, though I can really control number, not AUM, are distinctly positioned from each other.
That is something that I think we have established quite well in terms of saying what is in our value-oriented strategies, what is in our blended strategies, what is in our quality growth strategies. I would only say our biggest problem has been more in the quality growth, which to my mind is more a function of the season of the market. Of course, there are things that we could have done better in terms of stock picking. That's a continuous process. But essentially the season did not match what those funds were trying to do. In the GARP side, which is the blended side, you could say there is some scope to improve execution. Those are tinkerings that we continue to do.
I feel very positive that maintaining this diversified set of funds which are operating across the spectrum may not result in all my funds being in top quartile at the same point of time. At the same time, it gives me a platform which is a lot more sustainable through market cycles. I think that's a conscious choice that we have made. That we would like the platform to be diversified. We will tolerate the cycles that come. We will back our fund managers through the cycle. We engage with the marketplace to explain how these funds are differently positioned. We engage with the market to try and explain to them how they can exploit the positioning that we have developed for each of these funds to be able for them to meet their investment goals and their aspirations.
To my mind, that's the way to do it rather than saying that, I would like all the funds to be in top quartile. What I have seen as a fund manager, if you aim for the first quartile, you will get there at some point of time. When the market season reverses, it directly causes you to swing to the back foot. I'm approaching this as a business platform and saying, how do I build diversity across my platform, which will make my business less cyclical and more sustainable.
Yeah, true, sir. Very helpful. I was more inquisitive about the measures you are taking. Yeah.
Yeah.
That's helpful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mahesh A, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. My question is to Vetri, sir. Congratulations for being
Sorry to interrupt, Mahesh, can you use your handset mode, please?
Sure. Is this better?
Yes.
Yes, please go ahead.
Oh, great. Hi, my question is to Vetri Subramaniam, sir. I want to understand from a balance sheet perspective. We hold almost INR 4,000 or INR 4,500 crores of cash and investments on our books at consolidated level, and this equals to almost 35%-40% of total market cap. When I look at the listed AMCs, this is significantly on the higher end. I want to try to understand, how do you look at this investment in cash book from a strategic perspective? And is there any way you are planning to create value for shareholders through this part of the balance sheet? As in any buyback plans given the valuations are on the lower side and also the latest buyback reform announced in the budget. How do you see this significant portion of our balance sheet?
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Mahesh A. Well, we have that amount of cash on our books also because we are a very old institution, and we have built up that balance sheet over time through the good work that we've done in terms of serving investors, and that's where that cash balance has come from. As you would be aware, in recent years, whatever we are generating in terms of profits, we are pretty much paying that out in large measure back to the shareholders by way of dividend. We will continue that policy. There is no need to add to that cash pile. We also believe for a company of our kind, there is a need to have some investment or rather some liquidity on the books, some cash on the books. There could also be opportunities down the road in terms of M&A, etc .
We will not add to that cash in the future because we will keep dividending out, but no other plans to do anything dramatic with the cash at this point of time.
Okay. Understood, sir. Thanks. Just a follow-up on the dividend side. The last couple of years, we declared some special dividend as well in addition to regular dividend. This year, I believe it's all the regular dividend. Going forward, do you have a guidance on a percentage of profits that we intend to declare as dividend or is it volatile that we saw in the last couple of years? How do you give guidance on the dividend policy going forward?
Well, if you look at the trend line, I'm not discussing policy, but if you look at the trend line, I think including what we've just announced today, which is INR 40, I think roughly we are at about 93%-95% almost in terms of a trend line. I think that's a good way to think about it. The trend line itself is suggestive of our basic view that there is no need to add any more cash on our books. We have enough liquidity for any corporate optionality that we might want to preserve. Anything that we generate in the businesses, we are happy to just give it back to shareholders. This is not a capital-intensive business.
Okay. Thanks, sir. That's all from my side.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mandira A from Investor. Please go ahead. I'm sorry, Mandira. No. Use your handset mode, please.
Yes. Can you hear me now?
Yeah. Please go ahead.
I joined a little late. Could you help me with industry AUM has been reaching approximately INR 80 lakh crores. How is UTI positioned to capture the larger share and expanding this pie?
Yeah. We are very happy that the industry is reaching new milestones and that just reinforces the belief that people have in the mutual fund penetration and in mutual funds overall. For us, we are focusing on three clear growth areas. We will continue to deepen our retail participation, particularly in the SIP and for the long-term flows. At the same time, we will not only reach out to the metro cities, but we are also strengthening our distribution in the B30 cities and the emerging markets. As Vetri mentioned that we are focused on growing our equity funds to ensure that at any point in time some of the funds are required and are able to cater to the requirement of the investor.
We also mentioned that we are very strongly investing in our technology as well as in process improvement, and therefore, also in our communication. We are well-poised to lead and create new possibilities to participate in this growing mutual fund journey. As we discussed that we are also looking at launching new passive funds so that investors can achieve their life cycle goals. Does that answer your question, Mandira?
Got it, sir. Got it. Secondly, what trend are you seeing in investor behavior during the volatile market? Is there any change in the ticket size or the participation pattern?
Yeah. As we discussed that, we have seen over a period of time that investors have become more resilient, and they understand that this volatility which is there in the market will go away eventually. They believe in the long-term growth story of India. We don't see so much of redemption pressure that we used to see in the earlier years, because investors are now aware about how these markets are functioning. Having said that, March is generally a period when you see a lot of SIPs getting closed because of multiple reasons. One is people start their SIPs in the month of April, and their natural cycle closes in the month of March. People look to change their SIPs because they would have done some portfolio readjustment.
Those things will always happen, and that will show you a higher redemption of SIPs in the month of March. Overall, if you look at the trend, and especially if you see the month of February, the trend has been very encouraging where we saw a drop in the number of SIPs which was being stopped at the industry level, and that number was even better if you look at UTI's overall SIP book.
Got it, sir. That was really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Esha Shah, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. I just have one question, basically on the industry slides. We have been seeing there's a cutthroat competition in this AMC space with the fintechs and everyone coming with their products now. In such a competitive environment, how are we seeing the key distribution on UTI? Is there any sustainable visibility over there?
Yeah. If you look at, we have been doubling down on our distribution, especially with the banks as well as with the fintechs. These are two segments which are growing, and especially the fintech because there are a lot of new fintechs which are coming, and the younger generation find it very easy to invest through a fintech platform. We have increased our engagement with them, and we are seeing good traction coming, especially from the fintech platform.
Yes, sir. That answers my question. Congratulations on the good set of numbers. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand over the call to Mr. Vetri Subramaniam for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you for that, Ms. Ashri. Thank you everybody for joining us here on this call today. Hope we've been able to provide you an insight into what our thoughts are and how we are looking to move ahead in the future, and look forward to engaging with you again next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining the call. In case of any queries, feel free to connect with Adfactors Investor Relations team. You may now disconnect your line.