Intense Technologies Limited (532326) Earnings Call Transcript
November 6, 2024
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Intense Technologies Limited Q2 FY '25 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. [ Richa Singh ] from CDR India. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you, Michelle. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today on Intense Technology Q2 and H1 FY '25 Earnings Conference Call. Today from the management, we have Mr. C.K. Shastri, Managing Director; Ms. Anisha Shastri, Director; Mr. Jayant Dwarkanath, Director; and Mr. Nitin Sarda, CFO of the company. Before we commence, please note that today's statements made on today's call will be forward-looking in nature. A note to that effect has been included in the earnings release of the company, which is available on the stock exchange and our company website. I would now like to invite Mr. C.K. Shastri for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Richa. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure, as always, to interact with our stakeholders, key stakeholders, for this financial results for H1 of FY '25. I'm very happy to inform you that we've had a year-on-year 44% growth from last year. Last year, we had a revenue of INR 56.21 crores compared to this year's INR 81.21 crores. It's a significant growth of 44%. And even in terms of EBITDA, there's been a growth of 39%. Last year, we had INR 11.67 crores for H1 and INR 16.27 crores for '24-'25. These numbers are very encouraging, and it is a proof of whatever strategies we have put in on Project Butterfly is paying off. As -- and we are investing in a lot of high-end technologies like AI, big data and MLOps. I will hand it over -- I'll hand over the details or detailed operations to be addressed by Anisha Shastri and our CFO. And we are there to take all your questions thereafter.
Thank you so much, Mr. Shastri. Good afternoon, everybody. Very, very happy to have you all on our call. I hope you're having a fantastic festive season. I understand that there are quite a few of you on this call today who are joining us for the first time. So I will give you first a quick brief of what we do as an organization, and then I'll head to my operational update. So as an organization, we are a platform-driven services company. Our strengths lie in -- predominantly in centralized communication governance, data and managed services using our low-code platform. So we have IP assets. We have platforms, strong platforms that have been tried and tested to India scale. And we use these platforms to deliver services to customers in BFSI, telecom, and we recently opened up government last year. I'll give you a little bit more of a use case-based context subsequently, so you understand just what we do with our platform. We operate in across 4 continents, and we've recently also reopened the U.S. operations for us. We sent one of our strongest salesperson from India to open up that geography for us. And we also signed on a very, very well-known personality in the BFSI industry in the U.S. with great connections to help open doors for us. And we're hoping that this change in strategy will help bolster our journey towards opening up the U.S. in a big way for us. This quarter, I'm happy to tell you that we added a new customer in the insurance vertical in India. We added one new logo in the U.S. as well in the tech space for managed services. And we converted one of our existing engagements into a transmission-driven engagement as well. I'll tell you a little more about that subsequently. In terms of Project Butterfly, the ones joining today may not really know what the significance of this is. But about 1.5 years ago, we set forward on a path which said we have so many large logos to our credit in the country. We work with some of the largest private banks, insurance companies, telcos, et cetera. But we're not really able to leverage these relationships to farm these accounts better and provide more value to our customers. And so the birth of Project Butterfly, basically getting out of our cocoon and turning into a beautiful butterfly, the significance of this was threefold. One is how can we provide more value proposition to our existing customers and thus increase our wallet share from our existing customers? Two, how do we open up operations across the western parts of the world where margin profiles typically are better? And third, how do we bring in efficiencies and processes into our existing organization so that we can deliver more effectively, more agilely, as well as more profitably to our customers? I'm happy to inform you that on all these 3 parameters, we have seen good progress. We added a few green shoots last year in order to increase our bouquet of offerings to our customers. In general, by virtue of working with a lot of large enterprises, we've always had very strong data management capabilities, but those were usually just packed into our communications offering. Today, we offer it as a separate managed service as well to help companies improve the quality of their data so that they are then able to leverage that data to cross-sell, upsell to their customers better, and also stay compliant with the regulations that SEBI, RBI, et cetera, have for banks, IRD, et cetera. for insurance. We also added government as a new vertical. We never earlier had the muscle to be able to take on government as a vertical because, in government, you need deep pockets. You need to have the patience to be able to wait for your receivables to come in. You need to have money to give performance bank guarantees, EMDs, et cetera. But we are very strong on our cash position, and this has given us the ability and the appetite to be able to take on government as a vertical. And I'm happy to inform you that, that has also taken shape in a great way. You are seeing the result of all of these efforts in our numberses over the last few quarters. In addition, we also wanted to see how we could expand on our communications offering. So today, we do enterprise-grade communications for a lot of large logos that you may be associated with on a daily basis, whether it is for life insurance, whether you're banking with them, credit cards, whether it's returns that you file, the phone bills that you receive, et cetera. And our idea was to see how we can build upon that and how we can provide additional -- we can expand on this value proposition so that we also get into the transmission services space. I'm happy to inform you that we stepped foot on this a quarter ago. And last quarter, we also added a couple of other customers of ours to these transmission services engagements. As such, our green shoots are taking off steadily, healthily. On the government front, our focus has been -- so the central government has given out certain large budgets to state governments, to ULBs, for IT enablement so that there are smart city projects running, there are [ Swatchparath ] projects running. So urban local bodies are basically funded by the center and the state to run these projects, and also for IT enablement, to run these projects successfully. So we've been looking at opportunities in the government space where we can use our platforms to deliver automation, to deliver citizen services, et cetera to various states. Another space in the government sector that we are looking at also is the education vertical. You know that the government last year came up with the National Educational Policy. The government is also investing very, very heavily on skill development of citizens and providing opportunities to them, therefore. And we being a homegrown technology company, we are well poised to help in this journey as well. In the form -- we have educational ERPs that help in the maintenance and management of educational institutions. And we also have platforms that -- which we use to deliver other dashboard, workflow automation, many such use cases to education bodies as well. So in government, this is largely the focus that we have had. On the communications front, like I said, erstwhile, we just used to be a designer company. We used to design large-scale enterprise communications. Today, we're proud to say that we do the designing of the communications. Our marketing automation platform decides who should receive a message at what time, on which channel, so that the enterprise is spending less on engaging with their customers, but engaging more meaningfully with their customers. And then finally, sending out the last mile SMS, the last mile e-mail, et cetera. We don't have gateways of our own. We've partnered with other transmission providers to be able to provide a one-stop communications solution to our customers. That's a little bit on what we do as an organization and where we are on the sales standpoint. From a people standpoint, we continue to invest in sales. We've consciously -- over the last 2 years, we've consciously cut down on hiring in any other part of the organization. Our only agenda was twofold. One, to strengthen our sales and marketing, which we -- in the past, we had been weak on this front. We didn't really have the luxury of being able to invest in marketing, invest in sales. But over the last year, we've very, very consciously increased our sales presence. Like I mentioned to you, we sent one of our top performers to the U.S. to open up the U.S. market. We've added a few more sales folks within India last quarter. We've added -- we've partnered with a couple of rain-makers to help make introductions at top level so that we can farm existing engagements better and also open up new doors for us. Another area of people focus was to see how we can make our organization more efficient and more lean. When we started the year off, we were almost 600 people. And today, organically and through sustained efforts of ensuring we monitor performance and we reward appropriately. Today, we are about 530 people in strength. And this is about the size that we would continue to remain for some time. We wanted to strengthen our leadership, bring in some professionals who have proven themselves, have proven track records outside with other similar-sized organizations, as well as people who can bring in some expertise from larger organizations, processes, metrics, et cetera. We brought Nitin on -- our CFO, Nitin, we brought him on early last year, which was I think Q3 of last financial year. This previous quarter, we also added a Head of Delivery who comes from the pedigree of being able to manage large-scale BFSI deliveries for large SIs in the country. And he is bringing in a lot of rigor in our delivery processes and the way we measure productivity as well. We also hope to add a head of sales, again, from industry pedigree, who can help bolster this growth trajectory that we are on to the next level. Apart from this, we've not really added any other resources as such within the organization. On a marketing front, we have spent significantly on improving our brand presence across. We've participated in 3 events last quarter as well. And just in the duration of the year, we've already participated in about 6 events, and we hope to continue to do so. We had a fantastic event just last month where we were very well received by the telecom ministry as well and by some large telcos in the country, and we got quite a bit of PR for it as well. On the U.S. front. Earlier, we used to try to replicate the model that we had in India since we worked with a lot of large enterprises in India. We would try to see how we could continue to work and target large enterprises in the U.S. as well. But we have now kind of rejigged our strategy. For a size of our organization, we believe we are better suited at focusing on regional banks, community banks. The U.S. has about 10,000 banks and credit unions put together, so the canvas is extremely large. And the smaller organizations are also $20 billion, $100 billion in size. So there is a lot of opportunity for us to tap into that market, and that's our focus for the U.S. geography. On a product front, we continue to invest in innovation. For those of you who have tracked us across the years, you know that we are otherwise a very tech-driven organization. We focus on innovation. We focus on ensuring that we are able to provide that kind of value to our customers. And that's why many of our engagements with our customers have stuck on for decades together with us. We continue to invest in generative AI, LLM and SLM-based capabilities in our product. In fact, our latest addition to our product is on how we can improve content generation and make that automatic so that customer communication, drafting, designing, et cetera, all of that becomes easier for the customer. So our road maps are typically focused around -- twofold. We build on leveraging AI to improve the customer's value proposition or to improve the efficiency with which we deliver our services to the customer. And in fact, last quarter, we were recognized by Celent. Celent is a very, very large analyst, a very reputed analyst, especially in the U.S., European market. And we were recognized as luminaries in our customer communications space. So this is also proof of the pudding that our platforms are customer-focused and focused on delivering value in the spaces in which we operate. This is largely the update that I had for you on the sales, people and product standpoint. Before I hand it over to Nitin for financials, I just wanted to walk you through a couple of case studies that we have delivered using our platforms so that you get a better understanding of what we do as an organization and what we are capable of. The first piece is in the communications space. So communications is our bread and butter. That is our flagship platform. And one of the leading banks in the country used our communication platform to centralize their communications across all their systems. So if you take a typical bank, for example, they probably have about 100, 200 different systems operating across loans, across credit cards, across your CASA, your deposits, et cetera. Every line of business has multiple of systems, and each of these systems otherwise individually communicate with customers. So the customer eventually gets inundated with a lot of messages. Some may be relevant, some may not. For instance, if say, Rahul hypothetically has received a INR 50 lakh bonus, but you're still trying to sell him a INR 10 lakh personal loan, which is kind of irrelevant to Rahul. Versus maybe Shweta has received -- has maybe been defaulting on her credit card payment for the last 10 months, and you'll still go and try to sell her home loan. It's kind of impractical. The bank is spending a lot of money in communicating with customers, but it's not converting into anything. In addition, when you have your communication spread across these hundreds of systems, it's so difficult for you to stay compliant. And the regulators today are really cracking down hard on banks, insurance companies, et cetera. And they're tracking communications with customers to the peak, right? So our platform came in as the centralized communication dashboard. And with our platform, this bank was able to realize almost INR 100 crores in just communication spend savings annually. That's huge, right? Typically, if the bank was spending, say, INR 500 crores a year, saving 20% on communication spend is directly hitting their bottom line and directly hitting their market cap. So that's the kind of value that we provide to them using our communications platform. And they get centralized visibility around every communication that they have sent. They know that if they've already sent 4 promotional messages to Rahul, suppress the fifth one. Or if Vivek has received a regulatory information message from one system already, don't send it through another, suppress it. Or if Anisha has a 0 balance statement, then don't send out the statement. So like that, we've really been able to save them on their communications spend and bring them that centralized governance across the entire bank implementation. The second use case that I would like to present to you is what we did with a large-revenue body. We -- erstwhile tax filing used to be a very manual Excel-based approach. Without a chartered accountant, you could just not file your returns. Versus today, it's a next, next, submit, done. So we've completely automated the entire tax filing process. Every form is about 400, 500 screens with thousands of business rules and validations and computations put in that. And we used chartered accountants to develop these forms, not engineers. Because I mean, engineers are smart, but not smart enough to understand taxation. So we brought in domain experts and they developed them using our low-code platform with 0 code whatsoever. So we are able to provide such kind of managed services as well to government bodies, to private sector players, et cetera. These are a couple of use cases that I wanted to just highlight so you get a feel for what we do with our platforms and what we are capable of achieving in the future as well. I'll now hand it over to Nitin to focus a little bit on the financials. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Anisha. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I wish everyone a very Shubh Deepawali. I'll briefly summarize the financial results and possibly provide contextual clarity for better understanding of our financial results. To begin with, I would like to state that Intense Technologies has been paying -- has been consistently paying dividend for the past 5 financial years. We expect us to implement that dividend paying policy consistently. To begin with, we see our Q2 H1 revenue results as very encouraging. All our efforts to broaden our spectrum and to add value-added offerings as part of Project Butterfly has started to yield traction, and we can see that reflecting in our results in top line. As a result of this, we have been able to clock INR 83 crores for H1 of this financial year as compared to INR 57 crores for the past financial year. So that's a quite jump that we see there. From a cost standpoint, there's a marginal increase in employee cost from INR 15.7 crores to INR 16.7 crores. So there's an increase of INR 1 crore in employee cost. Although our employee strength remains at 524 as compared to 533 in Q1, we have added certain high-compensation delivery leads and sale leads in MENA and U.S. market. So that's the reason why we have seen that increase in employee cost. And besides that, we have also taken a compensation policy to provide a quarterly -- benefit of quarterly incentives to our high-performing employees who are meeting their quarterly targets. So as we have achieved -- more of those employees have achieved their targets, they've become eligible. So there's another reason for uptick in employee costs. Secondly, I presumably understand you will have a lot of questions on the interpretation of increase in other costs. So as part of other costs, we have 2 -- some items there. One is the professional consultant cost which has increased from INR 78 lakhs to INR 5.18 crores. So basically, as part of our endeavor to provide value-added services to our customers, we have -- we are leveraging on the expertise of domain experts from the client industry to deliver designed customer-centric approach in our ongoing engagements, such as data services, education department, delivery services and all. So as most of this delivery has been completed for -- and all these costs for the domain experts is onetime, which is also linked to milestone-based, delivery-based revenues accruing from our green shoots. So these are those costs. And out of this total increase of INR 4.35 crores, INR 3.75 crores can be attributed as onetime costs linked to those external expertise. Despite this increase in costs, we were able to comfortably achieve our desired margin for this quarter. And coming to our cash flows. During the half year ended September 2024, there is a cash outflow from operations. Again, that is a result of revenue accruals and bidding to customers. I would like to bring to everyone's notice that we were working with an educational department for one of our states to deliver services from one of our platforms. And as a result, that's a high-value engagement that we are currently enrolling as part of our citizen services. And most of these milestones were delivered in early September -- early and mid of September. We were able to invoice in September. And as a result of that, we have ended up with large receivable position in September -- for the year ended September. But I would also like to state that we have collected those receivables in October. Currently, our receivable position has come back to INR 48 crores from our H1 sales. And my DSO is in a healthy range of 110 days as against 167 days computed based on September financial results. I would also like to state that we have realized 40% of our receivables from September 2024 post September results. Now I would also like to state that we have a very strong liquidity position for this. Our bank balances in terms of bank fixed deposits and investment in mutual funds as per our treasury operations, we stand at INR 63 crores as against INR 60 crores in Q1. That's the update I have from the finance standpoint. We will now open the forum for further questions.
[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of [ Saki Naser ], an individual investor.
Congratulations on a pretty strong set of numbers. My first question would be to Mr. Nitin. Sir, about this provisional cost, you said that INR 3.75 crores is a onetime expenses. So without that, could we assume that our profitability would have been INR 7 crores-plus, sir? That is my first question. My next question would be to Ms. Anisha. Ma'am, what is the -- could we see this quarter as a base for the next 5, 6 quarters going ahead?
Sure. So thank you, [ Naser-ji ]. Responding to your first part of the question as to the onetime professional costs that we've incurred on hiring domain experts. So the thing is these costs are closely related to the revenue that we derive from our greenfield segments, the data services and all. So the current engagements are ongoing with multiple customers, and a few of the delivery-related milestones have concluded in Q2. That is where we are also seeing a corresponding cost to it. From a cost standpoint, there is -- again, there's a lot of scope of work that remains to be delivered. Corresponding to it, we might see some expense populating in this particular bracket. But yes, this will be very close to -- these are revenue-driven costs.
And for your second question. We continue to work towards that same trajectory. I would not want to give any forward-looking statements, but yes, that's our effort.
The next question is from the line of [ Aman Soni ] from Invest Analytics Advisory LLP.
Given that the company has achieved a revenue of INR 73 crores in first half, could you provide some color on the expected run rate for the full year? Additionally, what is the target revenue for FY '25?
So we closed H1 at INR 81 crores plus other income. And we hope to continue the run rate. Again, like Mr. Naser's question, we would not want to make any forward-looking statements, but our effort is to continue this momentum.
Okay. Secondly, can you also share some color in kind of contracts we have right now that are open for execution? And what kind of visibility do you see for the next 2 to 3 based on the existing contract?
I'm not sure if I understood your question correctly. But if your question is around which of our existing contracts is still under execution and whether you see those revenues reflect in the subsequent quarters?
Yes.
Yes. So there is a healthy number of projects of ours that are recurring in nature. So quarter-on-quarter, we deliver similar services across. So that annuity will anyway continue. And then the newer projects that we added on in Q4 and in Q1, et cetera, some may come to conclusion in this quarter, but newer projects that we added on in Q1 will continue.
We'll take the next question from the line of [ Sumit Kotari ], an individual investor.
Congratulations for a great set of numbers. My question was to Nitin here. Nitin, you mentioned that we have the [ PAT ] of close to INR 48 crores as on date, which is a significant recovery. So can you just tell me how much is [ BFT ] as a part of this INR 48 crores in terms of percentage?
That would be around 12% to 15%, Sumit.
13%?
12% to 15%.
12% to 15%. Okay. Great. The second question is you mentioned in the presentation that there has been some price increase in the managed services contract. So can you quantify the price increase, and how it would affect the operating margins for the company?
I think you're referring to one of the engagements that we renewed the previous quarter. The increase is about 65%, I'd say, from the previous number to this number. But overall, as part of our overall revenue number, it's probably 5%, 7%. So it won't really significantly move our overall number.
Okay. Okay. So -- and one more thing. We have added 2 more clients in the U.S. market. So can you quantify the revenue potential for these clients?
So these are engagements that have started small. We're delivering certain managed services for them. We hope to increase these -- once you kind of prove your capability, then the customer will be willing to trust you more from another continent. So that's where we have started. Potential is good and the potential is also recurring in nature, which is a great thing.
The next question is from the line of [ Pratik ], an individual investor.
Congratulations on good set of numbers. So I have a couple of questions. In your opening remarks, you mentioned about winning a logo in the U.S. So can you throw some light on what kind of opportunity that you're getting? And also the second part to the same question in terms of what traction are you seeing with the rate cuts coming in? How are the clients reacting or how are they showing interest?
Sure. So this is our managed services opportunity, application development and maintenance, with a tech company, a tech client in the U.S. As such, I think we're not large enough to be adversely impacted positively or negatively by any of the larger macros that happen in terms of rate cut or elections or any of that. So -- and our exposure to the U.S. just yet is not as significant. We've only added about 3 customers now in the U.S. So we don't see any of those things have too much of an impact on our [indiscernible].
Okay. Fine. Got it. All right. And any color you can throw in terms of deal size or the contractual length of the work that you're getting in U.S.?
So these are recurring in nature. I would kind of refrain from speaking absolute numbers. But the good part of it is that it will steadily reflect quarter-on-quarter, I think, at least for 2 years.
Okay. All right. Yes, that helps. And in terms of the urban local bodies that you mentioned. So again, similar question, any -- what kind of projects and any contractual lens for the India business from government?
So urban local bodies spend in 2 -- basically in 2 different directions. One is infrastructure growth, like your pipeline, your sanitization, those kind of things. And the second side is on IT enablement to manage all of these projects, to have governance dashboards, metrics, et cetera. So our focus is usually more on the second side. Of course, that also means that there are some projects where you have to provide associated infrastructure, and then deploy your software, build out custom bespoke applications, et cetera, for them. So we do that. But we largely focus around anything that has something software to do with it.
Okay. Got it. And in terms of traction, so just if you can give some color in terms of government spending or government contracts, H1 of this year and H2 of this financial year, how is it different? So my question is more towards how, say, probably the heat wave or elections would have affected the contracts on -- from H1 and to now H2. How the government is spending? Some color on that.
So existing contracts, touch wood, are not affected. I will say definitely that some items in our pipeline have slipped through quarters. Things that could have been closed maybe a quarter or two ago are still continuing to linger because of election uncertainty, et cetera. So it does have a little bit of impact on our pipe. But existing contracts that we already have and are in the process of delivering. Those things are not affected.
Okay. Got it. And sorry, that's helpful. Can I squeeze in one more question?
Sure.
Yes. In terms of bid pipelines, if you cannot share the absolute numbers, just the number of contracts that you would have bid for or you would have shown interest, both local government bodies and national government bodies?
I'd say that we're still in the process of streamlining our processes to be able to get to that kind of figure where we can give you quarter-on-quarter pipeline predictability. So now may not be -- I may not be in a position to give it to you as such, but visibility looks decent.
[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of [ Narayan Vyas ], an individual investor.
Nitin and Anisha, many, many congratulations for delivering such a wonderful result.
Thank you.
My question was I saw that we have added some intangible assets. So what exactly it is regarding?
I'll take that question, Mr. Narayan. So basically, Intense has been spending on developing platforms which we use for deployment at our customers, and also we provide our tech-enabled services around it. So for the past 2 financial years, we have been developing these intangible platforms in close -- based on the feedback that we received from our customers, from our consulting team which directly deals with most of the RFPs. So all those expenses for the financial year ended 2022, 2023 and '24, particularly, we had incurred close to INR 20 crores, INR 20.91 crores, to be precise, on the intangible assets towards this platform. And almost -- more than close to 5 of those platforms which are under development have started to -- we started to monetize them. We have deployed them, and we are seeing benefits coming over. So that particular spend which was sitting in under development intangibles have been moved to intangible assets. And we have started to amortize since we see corresponding revenue accruing to the company.
Yes, yes, sure. I get it. Well, another question of mine is that I recall we secured 2 logos in America. So should we expect some addition to it after the election results have been announced and might be some factor pushing it?
So definitely, that's our goal. In fact, we added a couple of sales resources in the U.S. to now targeted-ly focus on that. We had -- I was also in the U.S. last quarter. So we're definitely seeing some traction build up. The election results will really not have any bearing on whether we do business and how much business we do per se. I mean, for our scale. But we're definitely hoping for more traction in the days to come.
Okay. All right. Well, I have last 2 questions, if I may ask.
Sure, sir.
Well, firstly, can you please provide geographical revenue bifurcation? That will make it easy to understand the geographical landscape we are working on.
Point noted. Probably, we will see how we can incorporate that information.
Yes. Thank you, Nitin. And just last question, can you please give some guidance on the margin levels we are focusing to achieve? Project Butterfly has created wonders for the company that can be seen in the results. But what further can we expect on the margin side?
So we'll be bringing in the new Head of Delivery. We're bringing in -- we've added a lot of tools internally tools, industry-renowned tools like Jira, CRM, a better HRMS, et cetera, to give us that kind of visibility into utilization metrics, efficiency metrics, productivity metrics, et cetera. So given that now we have gotten on to this path, I'm positive that when we have this conversation next year, it will have a decent impact on how -- at the end of it, how much margin we generate.
Yes. Okay. That works. And the last thing that the current focus of ours is core-ly on CRM. Or are we doing some other activities too? Like for the data and cloud part?
So we don't really do much on the CRM space per se. The customer communications that you're referring, then yes, that's a big space for us. Data is another big space for us. And so in data also, we focus predominantly around data management. So data quality, data remediation, standardization, enrichment, like these spaces is what we operate on. In data migration, we've done engagements where we've migrated data from on-prem systems to cloud-based environments, et cetera. So we do that kind of work in data. In the communication space, we're anyway strong.
The next question is from the line of Amit Agicha from HG Hawa.
Yes. My question was with respect to the CAGR, growth in revenue, which I'm seeing, it jumped from INR 32 crores to almost TTM of INR 120 crores. That is a [ INR 4 crore ] rise in revenue. But the PAT has increased from INR 6 crores to INR 14 crores. Like the revenue is growing, but not equivalent, the PAT is not growing. And other question was with respect to the [ fluctuations in cash flow ]. So can you put some color on that?
Just to reiterate the numbers that you have stated. For the half year ended, our numbers for the last financial year stood at INR 56 crores, which has increased to INR 81 crores. That's the increase in the top line.
Sorry to interrupt. I'm talking about the last 10, 12 years.
Last?
10 to 12 years. The CAGR of revenue is good, but the CAGR of profit is not good.
Okay. Well, that's a very broad question to answer in terms of time line because 10 to 12 years would encompass 3 different business cycles. And we are, as a company, has also -- we have also evolved as a company wherein we used to primarily deal with CCM with the licensing and A&C at some point of time to bringing in new platforms in early 2019, 2020. To where we are today, wherein we have -- we are focusing on managed services and trying to come up with transaction-based business models. So what I can definitely tell you is that the -- at this point of time, the objective of the company is to improve customer stickiness so that we are able to provide the services, improve our stickiness to them. And the cost optimization is an integral part of it. And we are very constant of optimizing cost as we progress along our journey.
And what I would also like to add is if you look at maybe 5, 10 years ago, we didn't really have the appetite to invest in sales and marketing. Versus today, we actively invest very, very heavily in sales and marketing both. So some of the margin shrinking that you are seeing is also because we are now -- our risk appetite to invest in growth has increased as opposed to earlier.
That was helpful. And the other question was with respect to the fluctuations in cash flow.
Yes, please. So from a cash flow standpoint, our liquidity remains strong and stable. For the first quarter ended, our cash flow liquidity base was sitting at -- stood at INR 60 crores as against INR 63 crores for the September quarter. So from a liquidity standpoint, we are pretty stable. But yes, now as we onboard a lot of customers from different industries, and particularly with government, there is always an element of delays in terms of being able to execute for reasons beyond our control. But we have formulated a very strong risk assessment and risk mitigation strategies so as to not really impact those at material levels.
The next question is from the line of [ Marut Shah ], an individual investor.
In the first half, we achieved around INR 81 crores. I want to ask how much of that is from the government sector? And is that contribution onetime or it has some particular element, like AMC, et cetera?
So from a revenue composition standpoint, from a government as well, we have different segments within the government. We have PSUs, we have urban local bodies, and then we also work with some of the state governments directly. But 25% of our revenue would be a good percentage, probably would be a better representative of our revenues coming from government segments. In terms of the recurring aspect of that revenue, yes, the contracts that we have entered into are multiyear contracts. So once we have implemented, our solution will continue to be there. There will be services surrounding it. There will be AMC revenue surrounding it. So that will continue to accrue. But yes, in terms of amount, it might be a little low. And just on that, it also gives us an opportunity, since we have established that credibility of being able to deliver those projects at such scale, there will be repeat contracts that we expect to come to Intense. So that would also be an element besides the new business that we are gunning for.
Okay. A follow-up question to that. Like going forward, are we thinking of increasing the share of the government business? In what line we are thinking about?
We are investing equally heavily in government as well as BFSI, telco.
Why I'm asking is because the government sector, the invoicing and the payment realization takes time and it hits the cash flow number. So that is what I'm trying to gauge, is like going forward, will this share will increase? The government share?
It's a good question, sir. We are balancing it very well between the PSUs, government and the private sector, if you really look at it. Some of the opportunities which you know today that government of India and other governments are the biggest, largest spenders of money in the IT. Just the income tax alone is INR 4,500 crores project which Infosys is executing, and they have subcontracted to us. Similarly, if you look at large projects like passport and all of that into the thousands of crores given to TCS and all of them. So the spend ability is good and the payments are also not that very bad. We are very choosy about these things. That's what Nitin was mentioning, that the risk assessment is done very -- due diligence is done thoroughly before we participate in any of these.
Okay. I have one clarification from Nitin. Like in the opening remarks, he said something about the receivables and it was billed in September, and some of the portion got realized in October. Can you repeat that part?
So basically, our receivables -- sure, sure. So our receivables for -- as -- if you look at our September financial results, stands at around INR 77 crores. So 40% of it, we have realized in October -- in month of October. And from our sales that were there in H1, outstanding is around INR 48 crores. So our DSO is range bound to 100 and 120 days is what we had stated earlier.
Okay. So 40% we have realized in this quarter.
In October, yes.
We take the next question from the line of [ Pratik Vadya ], an individual investor.
So I wanted to check in terms of H2. What is your -- what are your primary growth drivers? So I believe in terms of focus area, it should be government PSUs. But any specific other areas that you could throw light, which probably could have been you working on during the first half and then probably could realize in the second half?
In fact, government PSUs is one aspect of it. Our goal continues to remain BFSI. So a lot of sales bandwidth, marketing bandwidth, et cetera, we spend on the BFSI sector. So our focus would be around improving our wallet share from our existing customers, trying to upsell, cross-sell new things to them so that we are able to provide more value to them as a vendor they can depend on without having to go multiple places. That would be -- continue to be our core focus, and the rest of the green shoots as well.
Okay. That's helpful. And purely in terms of lumpiness, are there -- is there any lumpiness in terms of revenue or cost that you would have realized during the first half which could probably normalize during the second half this year?
Earlier we used have Q4 heavy quarter. So this is something that we have proactively renegotiated contracts where we are able to recognize revenue across the quarters rather than recognizing it once in Q4. So we don't expect that lumpiness to be there in the current financial year.
Even our accounting for that matter, expenses also, we tend -- we used to accrue a lot of expenses to Q4. And we received a lot of feedback from multiple investors like yourself. And we worked consciously on that to ensure that we also budget for our expenses across quarters, whether it is incentive, variable payout, whatever it may be, right? So we are trying to see that we remove the lumpiness as much as possible.
Sure. Okay. That's helpful. And the other question I had in terms of Project Butterfly. So in terms of the spending part of it, can you throw some color, where we are? How much is it pending? And overall, how -- so yes, the numbers do reflect in terms of the margin improvement and scale. But from your perspective, how satisfied you have been in terms of the project execution and what lies ahead?
Your first part, did you mean spending or pending?
Yes, both spending and in terms of any pending activities on the project.
Okay. Okay. Great. So our spends that we were focusing on was only sales around sales, and we will continue to invest in sales even in this quarter. See, even with your sales strength, you don't necessarily always get lucky in the first attempt. In fact, our founder keeps mentioning that a senior reputed sales leader had once told him that, if he wanted 1 good sales person, he would hire 5 before he found that 1 good salesperson. So we'll continue to invest in sales until we are satisfied with the kind of -- the strength and force with which we can go and approach the market. And that's the only area of spend, really. All other spend are very immaterial, like for instance bringing in tools, CRMs and HRMS and project management tools, et cetera. These are not significant spend at all. And marketing. Marketing is the other area where we consciously started spending more on events, on digital marketing, advertisements, et cetera. And that will also continue the way it is. As such, in terms of initiatives that are pending, I'd say we had started off with about 5 green shoots in mind. And maybe only 3 have actually taken off the way we would have hoped for them to. The other 2, we found the market is a little too crowded, a little too competitive in terms of prices and margins, et cetera, as well. So we kind of pivoted out of wanting to continue to focus on those spaces and retargeted our efforts on the green shoots that are actually performing.
Okay. Got it. That's helpful. And I have a follow-up for Nitin. So in your opening remarks, you mentioned about incentives being given out on a quarterly basis. So I wanted to check, are these on the technical side? Or are these on sales or marketing efforts that have been achieved?
Sales. Predominantly it's on sales.
Predominantly on sales. And how do you see those incentives going ahead in terms of the second half? Do you see them normalizing? Or do you see them being in the same range going ahead?
There are 2 aspects to it. One is the periodicity of payment. Earlier, the periodical payment that we used to do was on an annual basis. But then we realized anyhow having it cost accrued and sitting in books. So there are 2 things. So one is the payment that we do on a quarterly basis to our sales folks. And in terms of our pipeline like you see, we expect to continue the current momentum that we have gained in Q1 and Q2.
These measures were more focused on seeing how you can improve motivation levels for sales folks. So when you incentivize on a regular basis, they also taste success, taste money, their hunger improves. That's kind of the direction.
Fair enough. All right. Got it. And how do you -- sorry, just one last. How do you see that impacting in terms of the margins? So I know you're not providing any kind of guidance, but some ballpark or some trajectory towards that?
This is already factored into what we had budgeted for the year. It won't have -- there is no addition, I'd say.
The next question is from the line of [ Sumit Kotari ], an individual investor.
Nitin, our stock is in [ ESM ]. And is there any reason why SEBI has put the stock in that? And why [indiscernible]?
Thank you for asking that question, Sumit. As a matter of fact, we have been -- so basically, I'll just put you -- I give you the framework that SEBI has put in place. Unfortunately, irrespective of your standing in the market, that since Intense has been listed for more than 3 decades, right, we are dividend-paying organization, so there is very little that we can do. We have been having discussions with the authorities. But see, it's more -- not most of the eligibility criteria is more on the volatile side of the price, it's more on the volume side of the price, and we don't really have any control over it. So I can definitely assure you by saying that the reason we are categorized in ESM is because of the volatility of the price that it has witnessed in the last few weeks before it was put into that category, rather than -- we remain completely fully compliant with all the regulations and there is no deviation from those standards.
I will add to Nitin, Sumit. What we would want you also to help us is we have the marquee names. We do great work in technology. We help large banks, reputed banks, reputed customers. If you see who's who is our customer profile which we have. We've been paying dividends for the last 5 years. We have deep pockets now to invest and grow and scale. Despite all these things, they say that ESM rule is such that you can come out of it only if you cross INR 500 crore market cap.
[indiscernible] surprising...
[indiscernible] I am planning to go and meet senior officials in the SEBI. But however, if you have any suggestions in the future, we really welcome because it's a nuisance for all of us.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it brings some suspicion on the company, why is it in ESM? Because you're doing so good, you are like net cash company having fantastic numbers. And it is so surprising to see that our stock is in ESM and not in a continuous [ plan ]. So sure, I'll be in touch with you. Nitin, my second question is -- I know we are not providing any guidance for revenue, and I also know that there will not be too much of lumpiness in Q4. But would it be fair to say that second half would be equal or better than first half?
Yes. We -- I can only say it is safe to say that we'll continue the momentum. And if there's any upside, why not, Sumit?
We'll take the next question from [ Narayan Vyas ], an individual investor.
I have rejoined the queue for 2 questions which I have. Nitin, can you please name some competitors in the BFSI and in government space?
I'll take that question, Mr. Vyas. So across our platform for different pieces of work that we do, we have different kinds of competitors. Like for instance, in the communication management space, the CCM space, we have competitors like Quadient, like Adobe, like InGen. On the transmission front, we partner more with the transmission service providers. So I wouldn't really -- they're partners and competitors. It's a very commoditized world. On the data front, there are a lot of services companies that provide data services, including the big 4, your Ebai and KPMG, et cetera, of the world as well. And on the low-code piece, there are a lot of American products, like OutSystems, Mendix, Appian, et cetera. Newgen also has a low-code platform of their own.
Okay. And what about the government space? We have some competition in that, too, here?
In the government space, I mean, essentially, you're competing with government -- with service providers, essentially...
I'll reframe it correctly. Like what I want to ask regarding the government part is, do we have any procedures and all for giving the government orders? Like they open some auctions, bid for that? Or we -- I want to understand the procedure.
100%, yes. All government contracts go through RFP procedures. You have to comply. They're either based on price or they're based on QCBS, so based on a point system. So as long as you have a strong technical value proposition and your price is competitive, that's how you make the cut.
The next question is from the line of [ Pratik Vahdya ], an individual investor.
So I just wanted to check in terms of the PSU or government contracts. So we see a lot of tech companies providing -- as and when they win the order, providing those details on the exchanges. So I wanted to check, is there any confidentiality issue of you not putting it out? Or is there something else that I'm missing?
Yes. So we do actually have some confidentiality NDAs that you sign up. So because obviously refrain from putting out in the public domain.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you now.
Thank you very much. As always, it's very -- it's a pleasure to talk to all of you. And your critical inputs will enhance our approach to the market and all that. And we really welcome any inputs. Even otherwise, you can just drop an e-mail to us, we will -- we are always available. Thank you very much.
Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of Intense Technologies Limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Thank you.
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