5paisa Capital Limited (5PAISA) Earnings Call Transcript
January 20, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Felicia, moderator for the conference call. Welcome to 5paisa Capital Limited Q3 FY '25 Earnings Conference Call. We have with us today Mr. Gaurav Seth, MD and CEO; and Mr. Gourav Munjal, Whole-time Director and CFO; and Mr. Ameya Agnihotri, Whole-time Director and CTO from 5paisa Capital Limited. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand over the floor to Mr. Gaurav Seth. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for joining. Good to have all of you with us, and wishing you a very happy New Year. So I'll get straight to it and focus on our last quarter results. Q3 FY '25 has been a challenging quarter for the entire stock broking industry. On one side, regulatory changes have impacted client participation in exchange turnover and business income, while on the other hand, the index corrected by about 10% during the quarter and has affected new client participation. Overall, the industry acquired 99 lakh new customers in Q3 FY '25 compared to 1.31 crore in the previous quarter, so a significant drop of 24%. Regulators continue to focus on protecting investor interest and enhancing transparency among investors. One of the notable changes that SEBI has done as part of its F&O norms is the true-to-label regulation, aimed at improving transparency around charges for investors and that has impacted our allied income. Additionally, SEBI introduced Phase 1 reforms for the F&O market starting December 1, 2024, sort of first month of the last quarter. And these reforms include measures such as limiting the number of weekly expiry dates for auction contracts, increasing lot sizes and acquiring higher margins on expiry dates. These changes affected exchange turnover volumes, subsequently impacting our broking income as well. While these changes may have a temporary effect, we believe they will ultimately empower investors and support the long-term sustainable growth of the market and our business as well. On the acquisition front, last quarter, which was Q3 FY '25, we acquired 1.11 lakh new customers, bringing our total customer base to 47.4 lakh. Compared to last quarter acquisition, the slowdown in new customer acquisition reflects broader industry trend. Our ADTO or average daily turnover declined to INR 3.03 trillion, 20% Q-o-Q drop, primarily due to regulatory changes that I explained before. Our client funding book grew to INR 265 crores, which is an 8% quarter-on-quarter increase, and mutual fund AUM reached INR 1,386 crores, which was a 73% year-on-year growth. Our financial performance, broking revenue dropped 8% quarter-on-quarter to INR 43.9 crores, primarily due to new regulations related to SEBI F&O norms. Allied income decreased by 39% quarter-on-quarter to INR 16 crores, impacted by the true-to-label regulation. And our total revenue stood at about INR 85.3 crores, reflecting a 15% year-on-year decline. On the expense front, our expenses have been in line with what we budgeted, and other expenses decreased by 14%, driven by reduced client acquisition costs and also ongoing cost optimization efforts. With this, our Q3 FY '25 profit after tax grew 8% year-on-year to INR 16.2 crores, with profit after tax margin of 19%. For the 9 months ended FY '25, profit grew by 20% year-on-year. Now on the product side, we made significant progress. And some of the things that we've done as part of -- in the last quarter and the months preceding that, we revamped our web platform with React.js for enhanced performance, scalability and cutting-edge trading experience complemented by an all-in-one dashboard for multi-asset management. Our revamped flutter-based mobile app is now 100% live for all users on Android as well as the iOS platform. It delivers faster, feature-rich experiences, including FnO 360 for advanced derivatives trading and an upgraded MTF journey as well, which is for higher ticket transactions. New credit tools like VTT OCO position grouping and integrated option chain positions empower users with greater control and efficiency as well as flutter-driven onboarding and streamlined online Re-KYC process to ensure faster and secure activations, boosting user engagement, satisfaction and retention. Together, these innovations solidify our position as a leader in seamless tech-driven trading solutions. Additionally, we have made significant efforts in optimizing platforms for lower latencies, increased throughput and reducing expenses. And finally, I think in conclusion, I would say that we remain committed to enhancing our product and deliver superior customer experience. We are confident that these efforts will drive revenue and profitability and growth for us in the coming quarters. So that's a brief from me. Gourav, do you want to add something?
I guess we can start the questions.
Yes. Okay. So over to you.
[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Nemin Doshi from Geojit.
I have 2 questions from my side. Firstly, with respect to the payback period of our CAC, how do we see this being affected in light of this regulatory changes? And secondly, is there any change in strategy from a customer acquisition perspective, given we see a sharp decline in F&O volumes industry-wide?
Okay. Thanks. Good questions. I think on your first question, if I read it right or heard it correct, you're talking about the payback period for client acquisition, right?
Right, yes.
Yes. So currently, I think in the ballpark of about 6 months, we see that going to 8 months with some of these new changes. And with the caveat that obviously, these changes are still too early to -- these are our initial estimates, too early to determine. And I think your second question was about, is there a change in our client acquisition strategy in light of the new norm, right?
Yes.
Yes. So principally speaking, we want to be more thoughtful about our client acquisition strategy. And I don't think we are changing anything drastically as far as the kind of customers or clients that we wanted, why we want to acquire people or customers who can benefit from our products in the long term and also being good customers for us, right, if you look at the lifetime value and also the cost of acquisition. So those basic principles of acquisitions still remain the same. Obviously, we would -- depending upon how these norms play out -- come in, which are the fine tune the cohorts we want to go after, et cetera.
Got it. Got it. And sir, lastly, if you can just throw some light on the cross-sell that we -- from a customer acquisition cost perspective, how -- is there a cross-sell opportunity? And how are we able to cross-sell the mutual fund products or different products across our value chain of the customers? So any sort of color on that would be helpful.
Yes. Certainly, I mean we -- I mean I think we appreciate and actually understand the importance of cross-sell. So whether we are cross-selling, let's say, a broking customer, mutual funds or mutual fund customer, broking solution, I mean, journey can start either way. But I want to kind of again caveat it by saying that we think that there is ample opportunity in this market in the investing and trading space. So we're looking at cross-sell between these investing and trading products only, which is our current sort of bouquet of offering. And that is something that we would continue to focus on and track religiously.
[Operator Instructions] A question comes from the caller ID 02268497499.
Hello. Am I audible?
Sir, I request you to introduce yourself and ask a question.
My name is Uday. I'm working with Investec Capital. I had one question on the pricing. Are you envisaging any change in your pricing policy due to these regulations or to mitigate the impact of this regulations?
So right now, we are not changing anything. We are closely monitoring that how the volumes will go up or down in the near future. And we will review the competitor and industry actions towards the same. And after all this, accordingly, we will take actions. But till now, we haven't changed any pricing.
[Operator Instructions] A follow-up question from Nemin Doshi from Geojit.
Sir, firstly, from an MTF perspective, we have seen our book growing fast over last few quarters. So how should we think about this book in near future, especially in light of the changes that there could be a rate fall in coming quarters?
So it's -- I think we -- I mean, as a general, don't want to speculate. I mean, as a business, we adjust, whether it is pricing or product or strategy based on market conditions, right? And that's something that we would look to do. It's very hard for us to say at this point in time where the rates are headed. If you're saying, why did the book grow to a certain amount, I mean, we obviously MTF would be a focus. But I would not -- I don't think so we would be able to speculate or determine at this point in time that what impact interest rates will have on our MTF book in the future. It's too early to say.
Also the overall impact of this industry would not be that much because anyway, it is more driven by the market correction and market improvement. So any reduction in 0.5 percentage or the 1 percentage will not impact these kind of the customers because anyway, they are paying between in the range of 17% to 18%. So it's more towards -- it's more will -- I mean impact by the market improvement.
Okay. Okay. So we won't be indulging in aggressive pricing strategies to attract and grow our MTF book?
We are clear, right? We have, in the last quarter, reduced it 2.045% per day, which comes around 16.42%. We had already reduced by 2% to 3% in last quarter. Until now, we are not thinking about to reduce it more because it makes sense for us to get a spread of 4% to 5%, at least, especially when the market is open for 240 days out of 365. And yes, we know that there are players who is competing in this space and they may -- are burning from their own pocket. But until now, we are not in a position to reduce it further and our rate is 16.42% as of now.
Okay. Got it. And lastly, sir, how do you see this broking environment, especially for 5paisa panning out over near term? Especially in light of these regulatory changes, do we see any further changes in cost structures? Or do we just have to wait and watch until the situation settles down?
So I think -- excellent question. Again, this is a more regulatory-driven environment, right? And I think we are being in the industry used to dealing with regulation and compliance. I think as I said that we think this is a net positive for the industry. And even if we look a couple of years back to the peak margin environment, right, when that ruling came in about 2021, the markets had a temporary effect. And then the new base was set and then they will grow from there. So hopefully, the exchanges also pan out, I would not like to speculate. But I think overall, it's good long term for the customer and for the market. How our business will pan out and what decisions we take, I mean, we would have levers like, obviously, we would -- there are decisions that we would take and there are decisions on what competition is doing in the market is doing, right, in terms of pricing levers and so on and so forth and product composition. And those are things that we would evaluate if need be in the next, let's say, a couple of months or quarters. That's how we're looking at it.
Okay. Perfect. Sir, that would be a fair assumption that we have levers to play out and maintain our profitability.
I mean, yes, we do have. We can think about all the cost optimization in many areas. But again, we need to take a bet between the profitability and growth. We need to maintain a balance between our acquisition, our infrastructure and IT spend, product development as well as to get a market share with -- with along, of course, with the profitability. We need to deep dive and come back with a good strategy. But yes, we do have levers overall.
[Operator Instructions] We don't have any questions. Now I hand over the floor to the management for closing comments.
So thank you for joining us on the call today. I hope we've been able to answer all your queries. If you have any further query or need any assistance, please feel free to get in touch with us. You can mail us at ir@f5pa.com. Thank you again.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using Door Sabha's conference call service. You may disconnect your lines now. Thank you, and have a good day.
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