Affle 3i Limited ($AFFLE)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Affle 3i Limited Q4 and 12-month FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call hosted by AMBIT Capital. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashwin Mehta from AMBIT Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you, [ Iqra. ] Good morning, everyone. On behalf of AMBIT Capital, we welcome you all to the Q4 and 12-month FY '26 Conference Call of Affle 3i Limited. I take this opportunity to welcome the management of Affle 3i Limited, represented by Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum, who is Chairperson, MD and CEO of company; and Mr. Kapil Bhutani, who is the Chief Financial and Operations Officer of the company. Before we begin with the discussion, I would like to remind you that some of the statements made in today's conference call may be forward-looking in nature and may involve some risks and uncertainties. Kindly refer to the Slide 2 of the company's earnings presentation for a detailed disclaimer. I will hand over the call to Mr. Anuj Khanna Sohum for his opening remarks. Thanks, and over to you, Anuj.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call today. I trust all of you are keeping in good health. Affle's growth story is of consistent compounding for the last 5 years. We have delivered on our medium-term guidance across both top line and profitability on the back of our robust AI-powered consumer platform stack. FY 2026 has been a strong foundational year in our 3i journey as the first full year of our third decade as Affle 3i Limited. We have advanced our vision with disciplined execution and clear strategic intent. We are firmly on course to deliver on our medium-term guidance of 20% CAGR as we progress towards our 10x decadal growth vision. We concluded another year on a remarkable note, registering our 13th consecutive quarter of sequential top line growth despite a challenging macro environment. In Q4 FY 2026, we delivered revenue of INR 7.24 billion, an increase of 20.3% year-on-year, sustaining the growth momentum that has defined Affle's trajectory over the past years. Our continued focus on improving operational efficiency and productivity translated into EBITDA of INR 1.61 billion, growing over 20.3% year-on-year. PAT stood at INR 1.2 billion, increasing by 16% year-on-year, with the growth remaining relatively subdued given our lower effective tax rate in the base quarter last year. Our profit before tax from operations, excluding other income, grew in line with EBITDA at 20.8%. Our CPCU business continued to scale, delivering 120.3 million conversions at a CPCU rate of INR 60, translating into CPCU revenues of INR 7.21 billion. Our growth has been consistently broad-based across key industry verticals and geographies. India and global emerging markets together contributed 71.6% of our revenues, while growing by 21.2% year-on-year. Our developed markets delivered a resilient performance, growing 18% year-on-year and contributed 28.4% of our revenues in Q4 FY 2026. This growth was achieved despite some temporary softness in select markets and verticals during the quarter due to the geopolitical events. However, our growth was driven by disciplined sales efforts, deeper customer engagements and new logo additions.

Ladies and gentlemen, the line for the management has been disconnected. The management has been reconnected. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

My sincere apologies for the disconnection and the disruption. I will restart from, I believe, the last line that was heard was that our CPCU revenue of INR 7.21 billion was achieved. Our growth has been consistently broad-based across key industry verticals and geographies. India and global emerging markets together contributed 71.6% of our revenues, while growing by 21.2% year-on-year. Our developed markets delivered a resilient performance, growing 18% year-on-year and contributed 28.4% of our revenues in Q4 FY 2026. This growth was achieved despite some temporary softness in select markets and verticals during the quarter due to the geopolitical events. However, our growth was driven by disciplined sales efforts, deeper customer engagements and new logo additions. We continue to unlock new avenues for growth, further strengthening our position as a trusted privacy compliant and results-driven platform. For the full year, we delivered revenues of INR 27.1 billion, a growth of 19.5% year-on-year, with EBITDA of INR 6.1 billion at a robust growth of 26.3% year-on-year and PAT of INR 4.55 billion, growing 19.1% year-on-year. These outcomes are underpinned by our continued investments in AI and platform innovations, enhancing campaign effectiveness, conversion quality and operating efficiency. During the year, we further augmented our capabilities through the integration of OpticksAI, Niko into our consumer platform stack, driving improvements in creative optimization and automated campaign management. We are deepening our AI native capabilities across the organization with focused efforts on upskilling our teams and embedding AI into day-to-day workflows, enabling higher productivity and more effective execution. This quarter, we have also featured 3 customer-approved case studies across key industry verticals in our earnings presentation. The first case study highlights our capabilities in driving high-value iOS shoppers conversions for a quick commerce player in the Europe, leveraging our ability to target high lifetime value users at key intent moments to drive first-time purchases. The second case study focuses on driving existing gamers conversions for a global gaming advertiser, where we boosted repeated conversions and ROI through AI-driven audience modeling and interactive creatives. The third case study highlights our ability to scale new user conversions and maximizing ROI for an Indian fintech customer, leveraging on-device in-app premium placements through our AI-powered intent and recommendation engine and dynamic creative optimization. Apple continues to be recognized as a technology thought leader across industry forums. Our platforms have ranked amongst the top ROI driving ad partners and growth leaders globally in the Singular ROI Index 2026, earning several other placements across various categories. We also received several accolades across leading industry forums during the year, notably the Best MarTech Platform of the Year, along with 5 other accolades at the DIGIXX Summit and Awards 2026. Most effective tech platform at the Maddies and wins across categories in the 16th India Digital Awards. We continued our efforts to take stronger strides in ring-fencing our technology moat. We received 5 new patent grants during the year, taking our comprehensive IP portfolio to 18 unique patents granted, 21 filed and pending. With over or around 300 unique enforceable patent claims, our patents span across fraud intelligence, human versus nonhuman distillation, precision targeting, contextual and gesture-based advertising and next-generation AI native ads and engagements across key industry verticals. The breadth and depth of this position or portfolio of our IP is unique and defensible. From the standpoint and the vantage point of the digital advertising -- can you still hear me well?

Yes, sir, we can hear you.

Thank you. The breadth and depth of this position with the unique and defensible IP ensures that when the digital ecosystem continues to evolve and it is evolving rapidly, we have been future-proofing our business for the next phase of digital advertising growth. As we look forward, the structural tailwinds of our efforts in FY 2026 are compelling. We see global ad spends rising with AI expanding the frontiers of ROI-based returns-based advertising in ways that will fundamentally reshape how brands engage and convert consumers. These are structural shifts that play directly to Affle's core strengths. Our first-party data intelligence algorithms, unique IP on ads and audience intelligence and our deeply verticalized approach across key industry verticals and geographies collectively positions us to capture a disproportionate share of this growing opportunity. We are future-ready, and we remain agile and steadfast in our commitment to delivering sustainable, profitable growth and creating enduring value for all our stakeholders. Lastly, on inorganic efforts. We continue to actively pursue growth opportunities that are strategically aligned with our 3i vision. To further bolster our readiness in closing the deals, our Board has approved a preferential issue of equity shares to strengthen our balance sheet. Post our shareholders' approval, our corporate promoter, Affle Holdings, will invest to acquire 7.4 million warrants at INR 1,487, totaling to approximately INR 11 billion with 25% upfront payment. This will ensure that we are well capitalized and ready to move swiftly this year on the right acquisition opportunities. This is a proactive step towards executing our inorganic growth strategy with the calibrated discipline and conviction that has defined our organic growth journey. With that, I now hand over the call and discussion to our CFO, Kapil Bhutani, to discuss the financials. Thank you, and over to you, Kapil.

Thank you, Anuj. Wishing everybody a good day and hope all of you are keeping safe and well. As we turn the page from financial year 2026 to financial year 2027 in Affle's consistent growth story, we do so with a greater conviction, concluding FY '26 on a stronger note. For the full year, on a consolidated basis, we achieved revenue of INR 27.09 billion, representing 19.5% year-on-year increase as our unique ROI-linked CPCU business model continues to be in a high growth momentum. Our sustained focus on operational efficiency and profitable growth translated into EBITDA of INR 6.10 billion for the full year, registering a robust 26.3% year-on-year growth with a margin of 22.5% on an improvement of 120 basis points year-on-year. We achieved operating cash flows of INR 5.02 billion during the year, increasing by 25% CAGR over the last 5 years. This underscores the quality of our earnings, our disciplined working capital management, our consistent ability to convert profitable growth into strong cash flows. Our PAT for the year stood at INR 4.5 billion, an increase of 19.1% year-on-year with a PAT margin expanding to 16.3% versus 16.2% in financial year 2025 despite lower other income during the year. Our profit before tax from operations, excluding other income, stood at INR 4.80 billion for the year, growing 28.5% year-on-year, outpacing our EBITDA growth and reflecting an underlying strength of our core business from operations. Now coming to quarter 4 for financial year 2026. There were some macro challenges due to geopolitical events, which required recalibration. Despite this, we achieved our 13th consecutive quarter-on-quarter top line growth. On the consolidated basis for the quarter, the revenue stood at INR 7.24 billion, registering a year-on-year growth of 20.3% and a sequential growth of 1%. We were able to sustain balanced growth across India and international markets. On an adjusted basis, our India revenue grew by 19.5% year-on-year. Developed market increased by 18% year-on-year and emerging market registered a robust growth of 22.3% year-on-year. We recorded EBITDA of INR 1.61 billion for the quarter, registering a growth of 20.3% year-on-year. Our EBITDA margin stood at 22.3%, broadly in line with Q4 last year. In terms of OpEx, our inventory and data costs stood at 63.3% of the revenues for the quarter, an increase of approximately 90 basis points sequentially. Our employee benefit expenses remained largely flat as we continue to leverage our ongoing investment in AI and innovation, driving greater productivity across teams and operations. Our other expenses declined by 4.3% sequentially, reflecting a natural moderation in business promotion equity following a sequentially active quarter 3. We achieved a profit before tax of INR 1.4 billion during the quarter, an increase of 19.5% year-on-year and 1.3% quarter-on-quarter. Our profit after tax stood at INR 1.2 billion, marking an increase of 16% year-on-year and 0.2% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The PAT growth in percentage terms is subdued on account of lower tax rate in quarter 4 last year. However, on a full year basis, our ETR was in line at 18.6% versus 18.3% last year. We continue to prioritize efficient working capital management. And as such, there were no material changes in collection risk during the quarter. Building on the 5-year consistent and profitable growth, we remain confident and resilient -- we remain confident of resilience of our business model and strength of our AI-powered consumer platform stack to sustain this momentum through FY '27 and beyond. Even as the global environment continues to present new challenges and opportunities in equal measures, our disciplined financial management supported by healthy balance sheet and robust operating cash flows provide strong foundation to capture emerging opportunities ahead. With this, I end our presentation. Let us please open the floor for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Ashwin Mehta from AMBIT Capital.

So, one question in terms of how is the competitive dynamics evolving in the Gen AI era, especially from walled gardens as well as the Gen AI natives. And while we've talked about on the creative side, the OpticksAI platform helping us. But on the campaign management and the targeting side, how are things changing versus earlier? And what are our priorities in terms of investments there?

Thanks, Ashwin. Regarding the competitor ecosystem evolving, there's not -- no significant change. I think all of the competitors are responding towards AI in their own sort of initiatives and ways. And largely trying to do what is appropriate and obvious at the moment. I would say that the competitive edge that Apple has versus, let's say, most of the other competitors is that we are working with the advertisers directly. We are integrating as part of our CPC unique business model, deeper conversion level, first-party data integrations with our advertisers directly. And I think that makes us a very unique position. What also is different and unique about us is the fact that we are across all the top key industry verticals, and our platform is being verticalized deeply integrated with the advertisers across those unique verticals. So it's not just like a horizontal solution. We are very focused on those industry verticals and our premium sort of positioning for that. And even our, let's say, AI algorithms or AI-related experience are deeply verticalized for those industry verticals. So that gives us another sort of differentiation and edge. In terms of how we are performing versus the competition, I find that across e-commerce, entertainment, fintech, food tech and now increasingly also in health care, we are seeing some real competitive advantages of our verticalized approach and direct to advertisers approach. It will be hard for competitors to respond to that because a lot of them are not on CPCU business model, as you already know, and a lot of them are also not directly deeply integrated with the advertisers' first-party data. So I think that makes a big difference. In terms of the walled gardens, I would say the -- on AI side, the automation tools that the walled gardens are providing, I think that's definitely helping them. We can see it from the results. And that's across the board trend that we would see that in ad tech, AI will be a clear tailwind, whether it is the walled gardens, whether it is Apple, whether it is the other competitors. Then the main question is that who will capture more of this increasingly expanded AI-oriented digital ecosystem. And I think on that, our approach is very clear, direct to advertisers, first-party integration, CPCU business model, and deep verticalization to ensure that there's a premium integration that is provided that's not easily comparable or replaceable with any other competitor. So that's how I would look at the competitive landscape. In terms of our own technology evolution with OpticksAI, Niko AI, we are seeing adoption across our customers, and they're clearly seeing value addition happening both on the iOS side of things and Android ecosystem. We're also seeing it going beyond mobile to CTV, and we are seeing very, very good impact overall of how AI is being implemented. One very key differentiation that I would like to highlight for everybody's benefit is that as more and more agentic AI tools come around the Internet across industries, across different business cases, and even as more and more consumers start having more and more agentic AI, what's going to be super important in digital advertising is what we define as human versus nonhuman filtration. It has to be very clear to our advertisers and technology platforms have a duty to show that, hey, if we are showing an ad, we are actually able to filter out whether this was a human engagement or whether this was an agentic or nonhuman engagement. You would notice that Apple has been talking about this ever since pre-IPO days of 2017 when we filed several patents to distinguish between human versus machine activity. And this is an area where we've got several patents granted over many years. And this time, with the advent of agentic AI and the, let's say, explosion of AI-generated apps or content in the Internet, this particular intellectual property or proposition or capability of Affle's 3i consumer platform stack is becoming an outstanding differentiator as we talk to the advertisers, right? So how do we filter out human versus nonhuman traffic. And this problem statement is something that Affle has got some unique moats around it. And I think the competitors are not responding to this bit as much. So all the competitors, wherever you hear, AI is about automation or generating content, but very few people are talking about technology where they can filter out whether this is an engagement from a human or a nonhuman. And I think this is an area where Affle is very differentiated.

One follow-up to this. So you talked about filtering the human versus nonhuman traffic. But in terms of targeting the nonhuman traffic for conversions, how would things work differently versus how they have been when we are targeting humans?

So you see when an advertiser would spend budgets, let's talk 5 years from now. I mean, today, I think it's still very early and agentic will evolve over the next 5 years. The advertisers would most certainly want to make sure that a big part of their budget is spent to actually deliver on human engagements and driving conversions directly with humans. And there would be a smaller part of the budget that they would also say that, okay, use that to influence authentic AI agents that are acting on behalf of the humans, the consumers. There will always be this bigger challenge, okay? So let's put it into 3 buckets. A big part of the ad spend will go to target humans. We are addressing that very well. Another smaller part, but a meaningful part could go towards targeting the AI agents, which are authenticated and are, let's say, assisting the humans or the consumers. And we must absolutely ensure that there is no loss of budget or engagement to the noisy non-authenticated AI agents. There will be tons of those which are pretending to be Ashwin or Anuj or -- and our -- what we call as digital fraud, right? So there will be a huge need for filtering that out while clearly having this technology differentiation that we have and the IP that we have will come to our advantage. But this will be an evolving trend over the next 5 years. And like I said, we have a competitive moat, and we are ahead of the curve versus what most of the competitors are talking or demonstrating in their road maps at the moment.

Next question is from the line of Arun Prasath from Avendus Spark.

Anuj, my first question is on gross margins. If you see last 7, 8 quarters, we are continuously seeing a reduction in the margins from a percentage perspective. While I see positive in this because we are able to absolute -- deliver absolute growth in the growth -- both gross margins and EBITDA margins. My question is that this gross margin reduction, is it because we are responding to the competition? Or is it because of the vertical mix change? Or is it a conscious decision? And if it is a conscious decision, how much of this you would say that has contributed to our growth and where this leads to in terms of future -- in future, there is only limited way you can do this. Your thoughts on this, please?

No, I think we are very range bound, I think, within our unit economic model. We are very disciplined in how we execute this. So you will have -- first of all, no investors should see any particular surprises in terms of how we execute. We should be very predictable, dependable in terms of how we continue to grow our CPCU pricing, how we continue to grow our overall volumes of conversions and keep the data inventory cost at a sensible level and a calibrated level. So this is an overall long-term view that I can give to you. In the short term, in the, let's say, last several quarters, you would see that we have been calibrating and investing towards launching more verticals in more geographies, going deeper in our verticalization approach direct to advertisers and also emphasizing on premium positioning for the Apple platform. Why is it a premium? Because it is targeting higher value lifetime users. To get to those higher-value lifetime users, you have to target premium device models, premium touch points on those device models. You've got to go to CTV, you've got to go to more, let's say, you have to find the high lifetime value users for the advertisers. That involves deeper investments, and I use the word investment, not expense, but accounting-wise, of course, everything is expensed out in data and inventory costs. Deeper investment to build audience intelligence and advertiser intelligence that is verticalized and highly integrated with the first-party data intelligence of our platforms. And I think this area of investment has been a conscious decision. Having said that, it doesn't take away from the overall sensibility of our unit economic model. And therefore, you have seen overall expansion and growth in a sensible manner. So it should stay range bound. And there's still a long runway for growth, delivering 20% plus growth over the next 5 years is our goal. And therefore, verticalization, going towards a premium positioning, more premium positioning, more first-party data integrations and these areas of investments across developed markets where we are clearly under calibrated at the moment, there's a long runway for growth. So we are investing in that area, and that's what you're seeing in terms of the margin profile. But over a period of time, we would think that even this particular aspect would lead to further improvement, and we should see better margins and even more stronger bottom line performance.

Understood. So one clarification on this. Say, 39% to 36.5% to 250 bps reduction in the gross margin, largely if it can be attributed to the investments, how long does it take to these investments to pay off? I mean how long this can -- we can get back to, say, 38%, 37% -- 38% kind of margins? Is there any time line you are operating with? Or it just still early days?

I think about a year, we should be able to achieve the level of verticalization and the level of intel that we need to develop across all the key geographies. And hopefully, around that time onwards, we should see another year of bringing it back to better levels of -- where we don't need to invest as much.

My second question is on ESG. In the era of abundant intelligence and inexpensive intelligence, there are 2 things one can happen. One, what we have built over, say, last several years, almost a decade, someone with a really resourceful competition can probably build it in a shorter period of time. So either it can -- it can lead to consolidation or it can encourage new players. How do you see this playing out at least in the medium term? Do you see first consolidation and then the new players or to first encourage new players, which will lead to a consolidation later?

So first of all, it's -- we are a very strong business-to-business platform, right? We are deeply integrated with the advertisers whose data integrations and apps integrations is a nontrivial matter to do it across industry verticals, across geographies with our very broad-based and diversified presence takes a lot of time. It's not as simple as, okay, let's launch an AI model and get done. So you need to go and do the contracts with these advertisers across all these 10, 12 verticals, across geographies, integrate the apps and the data layers and then you can start training an AI model on that. This is not something that's readily available that you go on the Internet and you crawl around and you have built intelligence. This is not the kind of intelligence we are talking about. The kind of audience intelligence and the advertiser intelligence we are talking about is deeply verticalized and this intel requires a fairly long execution period to get through. So for new entrants, it's going to be really hard. For the existing incumbent players, they will have to compete with Apple to get to that depth of verticalized data integration and processing and intel to go on a CPCU business model from where they are today, which is still very much on impressions and clicks. So changing your business model, changing the technology stack, going and convincing advertisers for a deeper integration. Let's take an example, let's say, a company like Trade Desk, which is doing -- it's a demand-side platform focused on serving ad agencies as partners. So the transition -- and they're not necessarily focused on nor talking about nor investing at the moment on the CPCU business model. So for them to, let's say, start transitioning to CPCU business model, going direct to advertisers, integrating deeply on the first-party data of the apps of the advertisers, it's going to be a massive transition. So incumbent organizations will find it challenging and new entrants would also find it challenging. So I wouldn't say that it is low-cost AI. It is deep verticalized premium advertiser and audience intel, which is not readily available where you can't just say, okay, I've taken a cloud connection Internet and now I've become intelligent. It doesn't work like that.

Next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citigroup.

2 questions. One, with this fundraise that you've announced. I know in the past, you've said that you look at the trailing 12 months operating profit as a benchmark or something to use for M&A activity. So my question first is, are we looking at somewhere around $200 million is the ticket size? I understand it can go up and down, but is that the general ballpark? And related question, have you kind of narrowed focus on the kind of asset you want to acquire there as well? That's my first question, and then I'll come back with the second.

I would give the answer to the second question first because in the last earnings call also, I had mentioned that we have evaluated several companies, more than 10, and then we've shortlisted about 4, where we are doing deeper due diligence, we are doing deeper assessments as well as negotiations. I wouldn't want to give any color to the size of the transaction because there are a few transactions that we are talking about very, very small transactions. I don't want to confuse your analysis on that. There are some larger ones. So there's small, midsized and larger ones. And we may do more than one in terms of how we execute through the rest of this financial year. So I would say stay tuned. As and when we are closer to and have a definite announcement on it, we will be very proactive in explaining our approach and strategy. But it is important to also note that given the ambition of the organization and the kind of shortlisted pipeline of the opportunities that we are actively engaged with, it is now prudent. It is now the right time for the company to be ready with the necessary capital and seriousness to send the right message even to the Boards of the selling organizations to know that we are serious, we are here and that we have the necessary financial resources to execute in the very short term if it is needed. But we will -- like I said, we will take our own time. There's no pressure to act like today or tomorrow, but we are making sure that we execute at the right terms at the right price with the right target company. So we will be very patient, very calibrated, and we will bring the right transaction to unlock value for our shareholders.

My second question is in your remarks, Anuj you said -- you said a couple of times that in this next phase of growth in advertising will be direct to advertisers and first-party data integration and so on. And I know that there's been some recent tensions between ad agencies and some -- not you guys, but some other DSPs as well. So is that a not to that? Do you see the whole structure of industry kind of changing post-AI? Is that not to that? And related question that I suppose is if you can give me a color on what your current footprint is of -- in terms of your active SDK integrations that you have with our publishers and how that has trended over the last one?

Right. So what I can tell you is that in terms of the industry trend, all I'm saying is that you have to be closer to your customer. And if you look at our earnings slide, there's one particular slide that gives the entire Affle 3i consumer platform stack details, one slide that tells you how we are direct to advertiser by design. And there, we call AI as advertiser intelligence. And not just that, we call it verticalized AI, which is verticalized advertiser intelligence. And then on the other side, we're talking about AI as an audience intelligence, where we have 4 billion consumers devices that we are able to reach out. And therefore, we are profiling or processing audience intelligence at scale. And that is highly personalized to deliver personalized recommendation. There's vernacular intel, creative optimization, all of those things, the kind of scale and premium verticalization that we are talking about, this is the model that we are talking about. We are saying this is what we believe in. Now there are a few pathways to go to the advertiser. And for us, 75% of our pathway is direct with the advertiser. There's no other company involved in between. 25% plus of the revenue is through large ad agency group partners. But even there, our tech stack is directly integrated with the end advertiser's app because we are driving CPCU business model. So we -- our business model requires that even if there is an agency or a partner in between, we would still need to integrate with the end advertiser directly. It's a necessary requirement. That's what I'm emphasizing about. I think the role of ad agencies will continue to be relevant. It will change. It will evolve. It will become a lot more efficient or perhaps even higher value roles and functions that they could play. So I wouldn't really you opine on their future. But all I'm saying is that for a tech stack like ours, we need to connect and be deeply integrated with the advertiser. So that's the main emphasis point there. In terms of the SDK footprint, our direct-to-consumer conversions approach of the business allows us several pathways of working. So on that slide, you would see the supply side integrations, the OEM and operator integrations, there is even walled gardens integrations. And we are working on the mobile device. We are working on the CTV devices, the connected household devices and also on digital out-of-home. I mean, of course, that's a very small part of our sort of business, but we are looking at the consumer journey as an end-to-end connected journey. We work with a lot of the SDK partners as well. Our own SDK is also doing well. And one of the areas of the footprint expansion is that, going deeper with those publishers because once you have the kind of advertiser demand that we command in the market today with the verticalized integrations, that is unique advertisers demand. So all the publisher side of the ecosystem, we are able to absolutely work with and find deep next wave. So maybe I'll just leave it at that, but the footprint is expanding. Today, our footprint, not of the SDK alone, but across all the channels that we have to reach out to the consumer conversions directly has over 4 billion connected devices footprint, and that's not insignificant.

The next question is from the line of Aadil Khan from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance.

Congratulations on a great set of numbers. I have a couple of questions. So firstly, when it comes to acquisition, like you mentioned that you've gone down to 4 entities. So what kind of capabilities are we looking for in these companies? And secondly, if you could give us a time line?

Thanks, Aadil, for your question. In terms of capabilities, our focus is to take on direct access to a lot more advertisers and sales force out there with certain levels of initial integrations that they may have already done with those customers and advertisers in developed markets or even globally. And then -- we were assessing them whether those integrations and relationships can be tapped on by Apple to really bring a transformative life to our strategy to go and take that acquired company and make it the verticalized first-party data integrated direct-to-advertiser platform that we're talking about here. So again, the target is to get to a larger base of customers and have a sales team with ready relationships, have a tech stack with some ready integrations and then to transform it and enhance it to the playbook of Apple which is to make it a much more premium platform versus the way it is operating at the moment and to enhance its competitive mode using Apple's approach and strategy as well as our technology. So that's what we're looking at. The goal is to strengthen ourselves even more in developed markets and be much more verticalized both with the advertiser verticals as well as at an ecosystem level right from the advertiser to the consumer platform, the consumer conversions. How can we go fully simplifying and unifying the ecosystem from the advertisers to consumer conversions, and that's our strategy and approach. In terms of the time line, I think we are working -- there's a realistic chance that we may conclude a meaningfully sized transaction within this year itself. And I say year, I'm not meaning the whole financial year, but within this calendar year. And these transactions do take time because we're talking about the full due diligence process, the negotiation, the conclusion of the governance processes around it. And once we are closer to the definitive agreements and dates, we will certainly provide the clearer time line. But for now, I think it should be reasonable to say that within this year, calendar year, we should see a transaction, hopefully, of a meaningful size.

Next question is from the line of Divyesh Mehta from Invesco India.

Sir, with respect to the gross margins, what the investment we are doing, can you give some context as to how much more investments are pending? And when should we expect these investments to taper off? That's the first question. Second one is, given how the market is shifting with the ad tech, do you think this is the right time to enter into the SSP space in a meaningful way? That's it.

Thanks for your questions. I think I've already given some guidance on this answer on gross margins that we are investing with a very clear purpose-driven strategy, which is to be deeply verticalized, be a premium platform that has intelligence across key geographic regions and key industry verticals, and that requires the right kind of investment, going to lifetime value -- high lifetime value consumer conversions, that kind of a premium positioning requires certain investment in intelligence building, and we are doing that really well at scale. Now I did mention that it will take about a year more, and then we will start seeing greater benefits of that in the second year and hopefully improving the margin percentages in the financials progressively. With respect to your second question regarding SSPs, our view is very straightforward. We see these terminologies where an organization is just playing on the SSP side or companies that are only playing on the SSP side, let's -- for those who don't understand this terminology, there are companies that only focus on the supply side. My opinion is not very strongly in favor of that. My view is that anybody who's in, let's say, provision of technology for advertising has to find a way to be very close to the advertiser, very close to the customer, going for deeper integrations with the advertisers and the customers in order to ensure that you can serve their interest well. And you have to have a direct-to-consumer convergence business model in order to absolutely ensure that you're delivering ROI to the advertiser versus just playing a very point solution at one end of the ecosystem saying only supply side. I think those platforms will be commoditized and it will be very, very hard for them to compete in the market. So even if we do any acquisitions, our strategy is very clear. We are looking for finding a larger customer base, a larger sales force that can serve that customer base and a tech stack that already has some preliminary integrations. And then how can we expand that into our overall premium philosophy and transformation towards a verticalized integrated platform, going direct to advertisers, direct-to-consumer conversions. And therefore, our play as Affle is always going to be an end-to-end platform. There will -- you will never see us gravitate as a point solution on one side of the ecosystem distant from the end customer who's paying, which is the advertiser.

Next question is from the line of Anmol Garg from DAM Capital.

A couple of things that I wanted to understand. One thing is that I wanted to understand is that in case we acquire something, can we look to operate at a different model like cost per impression or cost per click? Or are we -- would we want to convert that company to the CPCU model itself?

Our endeavor would be to convert and transform over a period of time, but not doing it in an abnormal or not in the natural course of business. So if you noticed that in our previous acquisitions that we did in year 2020 to 2023, we acquired companies that were not naturally on a CPCU business model. They were not -- even on a unit economic model, they were not profitable. They were just barely breaking even. And we have transformed all of those business into now a CPCU business model, but it takes time. It takes effort. Our goal would be to make sure that when we acquire -- first of all, any business that we acquire, the valuation and the financial sensibility has to be very, very conservative, very, very prudent. We are putting our hard-earned money into -- instead of building, we are making a decision to buy. So we will be very sensible, value-driven and conservative in terms of the valuation. In terms of what we acquire, it should give us a clear and a meaningful starting point, a bigger base as a starting point on which we can then ensure that we can grow the Apple's CPCU business and platforms on that base in those markets. So let's say, we do an acquisition and that target entity has a base of customers, a sales team, let's say, in developed markets, North America and Europe. And soon after that, we will train those sales teams to take our products and propositions on top of that to upsell, to cross-sell those deeper CPCU conversion use cases to those customers. And naturally, over a period of time, we would see, hopefully, that their own -- the acquired business as we had it before over the first year, second year, possibly by the third year would be fully transformed to the CPCU or more premium positioning that we have with the advertisers.

Very helpful, Anuj. And in continuation to this, you have spoken about that CTV is a clear growth area into the industry. So just wanted to understand like how CPCU model will work in the CTV type of engagement or largely that would work on an impression kind of a model?

No, the CPC model can work on CTV engagement, can work on digital out-of-home engagement, can work on mobile. And I think the answer is very simple. If you have the intention to deliver ROI, all it requires is to back that intention with execution action to go deeply integrate with the advertiser. So for example, if somebody sees an ad on the CTV and that person, let's say, engages with that ad in many different ways that can be done. We have a lot of unique ways that, that can be done. For example, you have your mobile phone, we can straightaway scan a QR code or maybe not even that. There could be some other ways. You look at the mobile phone, it can create some complementing experiences on it, and we can create reengagement and repeat conversion possibilities on the mobile device. And the user is out there at digital out-of-home in a shopping mall or something like that, we can again create those kind of engagements that can drive either on your mobile device straight away you go and you can do a conversion or a transaction with the advertiser's app or in a physical mall situation, you can actually have a footfall driven there. Now to do the, let's say, conversion-related business model, the fundamental insight is that the conversion has to happen inside the advertiser's environment, right? So whether it is the advertiser's app or whether it is the advertiser's storefront or whether it is the physical storefront, these are the places where the conversion event would happen. And therefore, Apple has to have deep first-party data integration with the advertisers to ensure that we are achieving that. And that's how we do it. CTV is an important part of the journey. What we have to think about it is not just -- not the screen. We are a consumer platform. And consumer platform, the consumer is on multiple screen touch points. In-app mobile, this is a very big and a very important touch point for us. CTV, which is the households, connected households, very important touch point for us. And we are closing the loop overall with a very small but an important use case, which is to say that the brands also want to drive conversions on their physical stores. So digital out-of-home is also another area that we would look at. But I would say it would suffice to say that over 90% focus is on in-app, mobile and CTV at this moment and a very, very small percentage would focus on digital out-of-home.

Understood. Understood. And if I can take one more.

Sorry to interrupt Mr. Garg, please rejoin the queue for more questions.

Okay, sure.

Next question is from the line of Hardik Goyal from Union Mutual Fund.

Sir, just one question from my end. Given the current geopolitical situation and some signs of recessions coming in, are you seeing the global brands are tightening their marketing budget? And how can we see its impact on Affle per se? Are brands shifting from general branding towards a higher ROE model of CPCU?

Thanks, Hardik, for the question. I have been leading Affle for 21 years, and we have seen several financial crises, several crises in the journey of 21 years. And I've been an entrepreneur for more than 30, I've seen a fair bit of that. We have built Apple's business model for resilience and for fundamental deeply integrated moats with the customer and aligning our entire existence with the -- for the benefit of the customer. I think this kind of alignment is very dependable, very trustable and especially when times get tough, it becomes very important. So when times get tough as they are and have many times in the past, we are of the clear view that the CPCU business model is going to be resilient, is, in fact, going to be the go-to business model for the advertisers because the businesses don't -- when recession happens, it's not that businesses stop. businesses find it harder to make revenue. And in that time, they want to spend their advertising dollars with great prudence and careful measures to say that if I'm spending this ad money, I better get ROI. I think it is common sense, but we have seen it repeated a number of times that all budgets get tighter. And when budgets get tighter, when the going gets tough for everyone, only the tough really can get going. And this business model is a resilient business model. It is a tough business model. And I think we have anchored ourselves on it for this very reason. And when we were going public in 2018, 2019, and I was on the road shows, people were asking, are you sure you're ready to go public? I said, yes, I think this business model, I can deliver to the public market investors a resilient, dependable and durable long-lasting success pattern. Last quarter was a tough quarter geopolitically. -- right, Jan, Feb, March 2026 was a tough quarter. And it was a quarter without the benefit of festive seasonality. Typically, in advertising businesses anywhere in the world, you will find that their highest quarter is October, November, December because of Diwali, because of Christmas, school holidays and shopping without the advantage or the tailwinds of the festive quarter, with the headwinds of geopolitical issues, Jan, Feb, March was very resilient for us. We were able to grow at least the top line better than and even EBITDA better than the last quarter. I mean, in terms of fundamental performance, CPCU business in a very small snapshot of the last quarter has already shown you resilience. I think if I was an advertiser and the economy was in a tough place, I would gravitate to CPCU business model much faster than they are otherwise doing.

[Operator Instructions] We will take our next question from the line of Swapnil from JM Financial.

My question is regarding the warrants issue. So first of all, I would like to understand the cap structure of your Affle Holdings Limited. And a related question to that is basically where is Affle Holdings getting the money from to invest in Affle India? And lastly, why warrants route instead of a QIP?

I'll take this question. Swapnil this is a call for Affle 3i Limited and not a call for Affle Holdings Private Limited. However, the second question of yours is why a warrant and why not an equity. We already have a substantial amount of cash. When we are on a negotiation on the pricing with the target companies, there is a requirement to show the strength of the capital. And if you need to take some leverages, you need to build up the capital for us, right? So we don't -- we have -- as we said that we will take some time to close the acquisition in this calendar year. We wanted to shore up the availability of -- or certainty of availability of the cash on the table, right? If you can -- do you have any follow-up question on this? But what is the source of funding of Affle Holdings? If any notification comes from Affle Holdings to us, we will definitely disclose it to the stock exchange.

Next question is from the line of [ Bhavesh Parekh ] from 360 ONE Capital.

Congratulations on a steady set of numbers. Kapil, a couple of bookkeeping questions. Our other expenses declined 3% in F '26 after rising about 40-odd percent in F '25. Would you attribute this entire decline to moderation in business promotion expenses? Or is there some other efficiency driving this? And how do we look at movement in other expenses going forward? And could you also explain the movement in other income? It declined about 17% in F '26. Is this all treasury related? Or is there something more to this?

Thank you for the question. Largely, it is the decline or the moderation in the business promotion expenses. There is no linear spending on the business promotion expenses. It is generally Q2 is the highest spending quarter for us and some amount in Q1 also, which where we shore up our marketing efforts as we participate in various events or we do client meetings at a larger scale, right? So these are the places where we spend -- these are the quarters where we spend largely. So the moderation is largely on account of the marketing spends. The other efficiencies are definitely there, but significant is this one to call out.

Sure. And on the other income?

Other income, the other income is part of the treasury operations as we have been keeping our borrowings, right? So there is some amount of reduction in the cash on the -- in that extent. But however, we have been accumulating cash. Largely, the decline has been on account of exchange gains over this quarter and during this year as a large part of our expenses, which come in terms of the data inventory cost for employees outside India, these are the exchange expenses which we are -- expenses which we are booking in this year.

Understood, sure. Secondly, on the cash flow...

I am sorry to interrupt, Bhavesh, one question at a time, please.

Sure.

Next question is from the line of Samarth Patel from Equirus Securities. As there is no response from the current participant, we will take our next question from the line of [ Onkar Ghugardare ] from Shree Investment.

So as earlier mentioned that 20% growth for the next 5 years is what you can do. But you have guided for around 10x of the revenue in the next 10 years, that would want you to grow somewhere around 26% CAGR. So all of that remaining portion would come from inorganic growth. And like in the generation of the AI, don't you think the growth can be -- with the tailwind of AI, the growth can be much more than the 20%, which you have projected for the organic front? Or is the base effect catching here?

No, there's no base effect catching here. It's -- I think it's a sensible sort of growth calibration at the moment to look at modeling our company for organic growth of over 20%. And with the clear and deep understanding that even if we go ahead and do any inorganic transaction, our goal would be that the combined entity -- the combined entity must be deeply growth-oriented and should average towards the 20% growth in the near to medium term with a very clear emphasis that the bottom line efficiencies of the organization, delivering close to 23% to 25% EBITDA over a period of time, which is where you can see the trend lines last year to this year, our EBITDA has gone up in the mid-20 -- 22% to 23%. And our goal is to constantly move the notch up. This is a sensible level of growth for the industry that we are in and for the tailwinds of AI that we're already factoring in. Can it grow faster? Well, there is a possibility to calibrate it like that. But then that would be, I would say, not as profitable growth in terms of just going for top line growth, getting the numbers from all kinds of advertisers, not every pocket or segment of advertising on digital is as profitable as the ones that we are focused on. So I think we calibrate ourselves to deliver premium conversions for those verticals where we think that we can make the right kind of outcomes. And many times, there are sales orders that our customers send to us through our sales teams that we would even decline. If we think that those campaigns are not appropriate or will not lead to the right kind of profitable, sensible outcomes, we would not necessarily take every revenue on board. So what we are talking about is high-quality revenue, predictable, sensible calibration for the kind of growth that we're talking about. And getting to 10x growth it's a committed plan, and we are on track to getting there.

Next question is from the line of [ Tanay Shah ] from [indiscernible] Capital.

Sir, my question is regarding an ad tech ecosystem, another ad tech player who has partnered with LLMs like OpenAI for advertising pilots on ChatGPT, which went live in March '26. And I believe ChatGPT is also rolled out in the U.S., Australia and Canada. So I'd like to know whether we are also conducting some pilot experiments on this stage? And if yes, what are the learnings which we have?

Yes, definitely, we are doing our own integrations, doing our own experimentations around it. But what I can guide you towards and what I would want you to think about is that see these LLM platforms as like an ecosystem level play. So you would see that very soon, these platforms would have like app stores and different apps using their LLMs to launch unique specific products and services for the end consumers and other businesses. And I think what will happen here is that you're not just integrating -- it's like you don't have to necessarily integrate only with Apple and Google as long as there are, let's say, there will be millions of apps. AI-generated apps, human-generated apps, websites that will use these LLM platforms to launch. So our goal is to work at an ecosystem level with the end user touch points, which are these apps that will be powered or running on top of these LLM platforms to create the -- so think of it as a new sort of in our categories, ESG heads in the category G, soon you will hear from us, we'll talk about Gen AI apps as a vertical or as a category of advertisers, the new age Gen AI apps, which will also need to do 2 things. One, they need to find the consumer so that they'll use their app; and b, in order to do that, they'll spend ad budgets on a CPCU model with us. Secondly, they also want to make money from advertising because not all these new Gen AI apps will be paid for by consumer subscriptions, okay? So they need ad revenue. So they will work and integrate with a platform like ours. So working with the underlying LLM platform is one level of experimentation, but the real takeoff and the value and the scale is in the visualization of this entire ecosystem being fully ready and prepared for that advent of Gen AI apps and sites, wanting ads, wanting to do advertising. And I think that's what Apple is prepared and ready for. And I think we are in a good place there.

Next question is from the line of Sanjay Ladha from Bastion Research.

I wanted to understand the customer revenue cycle, meaning what is the repeat customer percentage for 1 year, 3 year and 5 years? And why I'm asking is, are we able to increase wallet share with existing customer? Or is it onetime sales for one particular time? Do the 3-year and 5-year customers still work with us?

Yes, absolutely. So the growth for us is anchored on a few ways you can look at it. Existing customers spending more in existing markets, existing customers spending new budgets with us in new markets where they were not working with us before because we're a global platform. So we always calibrate and we go to our existing customers, hey, you're working with us in all these markets. Look, we have these case studies with you. But we are also working in other geographies where some of those customers may have presence. So we will then take them with us to those new geographies and extract budgets from them for that. Then we have a sales team, a marketing team that's constantly looking for new logos, new customers across all our industry verticals, both in existing markets as well as we are constantly expanding and saying, let's launch and look for new customers and logo in the new markets where we are a little under calibrated, for example, in developed markets. So we do see broad-based growth and expansion coming on our customer base. And there are several customers who've been working with us for over decades. Now we have a 21-year journey in the company. And definitely, there's a lot of dependence on existing as well as a good healthy mix of new logos coming on board across existing and new markets.

Sir, can you share any repeat customer?

Names? Okay. I think what I can tell you is that for the last -- Kapil, could you take that question?

Hello? Yes. We will not be able to disclose that kind of detail of the information, please.

If I can squeeze one more.

I'm sorry to interrupt, Sanjay. We have other participants waiting for their line. We will take our next question...

Sanjay, what I would recommend is reading the case studies that we are highlighting. We disclosed so many case studies, so many awards that we are winning for our customers, for ourselves, the work that we do for them. That should give you a very good understanding of our verticalized approach and how we serve our customers. And the short answer is not a onetime engagement. It is cyclical to the extent that's year-on-year budget to budget. And in India, it's Diwali to Diwali and so on. I think how the advertising budgets are planned for the year, we calibrate that together and then we execute through the quarters with our customers.

Next question is from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital.

Am I audible?

Yes, Lokesh.

Great. Anuj, you briefly touched upon digital OOH. And my understanding is that this segment in the advertising world has seen a subdued growth in the offline side. So just to take some bit from your foresight of -- and your experience in this industry, what you saw in 2019 is today happening in '25. Are you seeing something develop in the digital OOH space because mobile and how difficult conversions will be because mobile and CTV are more personalized device versus a digital OOH, which is a public device. So if you can share some details on that, how you are seeing -- foreseeing things in the next 3 to 5 years?

Thanks for that question, Lokesh. If you see our platform's definition, it doesn't say that it is a mobile advertising company. It doesn't say that we are a CTV advertising company or a digital ad. Many of the competitors do that, by the way. You can say somebody say we are a mobile advertising. Somebody say we are CTV focused. Somebody will say we are a Facebook company, Google. I mean, they're very destination specific. Whereas what is Apple defined as we are a consumer-centric consumer platform company. So where is our focus is on the 4 billion consumer connected devices that we are reaching out to. Now those 4 billion consumers, let's say, if you're focused on the consumer, you would say that, okay, first and foremost, we should be on the consumer's mobile. It's very important, right? Because if you don't have that touch point, then it doesn't make sense, right? Next is you would say, let's go from the mobile to the connected household. There's a CTV screen there. Can we do something there that will enhance the probability of conversion. Third, you would say that, okay, should we limit Apple to just delivering conversions for our advertisers online, which means the user is converting on the mobile phone, on the in-app or on the app or the advertiser or on the app of a marketplace. Is that all that we should do? The advertiser also has physical stores and footprints. They also have their online store, their apps. Why should we not say that, okay, when this consumer goes out of their home or out of their office, the mobile is always carried with them. And when they're out of the home and out of the office, can we capture that incremental budget on the consumer's journey and only from that angle alone. The digital out-of-home comes into play as saying that, okay, the mobile is there because if you are on digital out-of-home, can we make it from a, let's say, a screen that everybody is ignoring and walking by to an engagement screen with the mobile phone where you actually drive a conversion or drive a footfall that can be tracked measured. And only to that extent, we are interested in making sure that we don't lose our consumers' journey. So as long as they have their mobile phone with them, any other connected device that they come in proximity with, we should have an ability to drive the probability of conversion of that consumer for that advertiser. And as a consumer-centric platform, we are saying we are going to go where the consumer goes, and therefore, these devices become important only in that context. So digital out-of-home will be a small part, but it could be an interesting one to do to drive what we call retail online to offline footfall driving. And there are many advertisers who are absolutely keen to do that, especially for the high lifetime value users, like those users who would buy from the brand online. And also when they see a store, they want to walk in there. So I think those are the kind of lifetime value users that we are converting for our advertisers. And in that context, it fits in, but it's not the emphasis point.

Next question is from the line of Arun Prasath from Avendus Spark.

Anuj, my one question is on your LTV. You spoke about how LTV is what is important for us to track. In an inflationary scenario, does your customers' LTV also goes up in line with the inflation? Or does it track higher than the inflation? And if so, does eventually the CAC budget also catches up with the revised LTV and which may potentially benefit us if the inflation remains higher in the longer run?

That's a very deep and a very broad-based question on economics across various industry verticals that Affle is deeply focused on. But I think the short answer is that as the GDP or the disposable income of the consumers go up, I think their ability to spend that on the advertisers' goods and services broadly should go up, right? So inflation actually one makes things expensive for the consumer and that potentially could impact their disposable income. But let's say, in growing economies over a long period of time, one would expect that the purchasing power is improving. And as the economy grows, we would see that the CPCU rates would grow. And that's what we have seen at least in the last 10 years, right, across industry verticals, we are seeing the CPCU part of the ecosystem with pricing. We're able to grow our volume of business. We're also able to increase our pricing. And that's why we are in a very privileged position as a business. When I talk about LTV, I'm just saying that not all consumer conversions are the same, right? So my dad is driver in Lucknow may also be using an old version of his iPhone and my dad is also using an iPhone, but let's say, from the same car from the same destination, 2 people are ordering food online. I would think that the value of my dad's conversion would be much higher for our advertisers than his driver's conversion, right? So I think that's the distinction we're making. How can we go and drive more premium, higher lifetime value conversions for advertisers and tell them that when you work with Affle, you are working with a premium platform that algorithm is trained to find the highest ROI for you in driving conversions for you. And I think that's what we are trying to aspire towards and consistently pushing for. And that fundamentally will move the CPCU much higher and the margin profile much higher over time. And that's the kind of audience and advertiser intel that we are verticalizing for, that we are investing in, which is what I was talking earlier when they say, hey, your gross margin is being invested into data and inventory cost. I said, absolutely because we are verticalizing towards premium inventories and driving towards that greater possibility ahead.

No, I understand that, Anuj, what I'm asking is, while, of course, we are moving up the ladder from lower LTV to higher LTV customers. What I'm asking is the LTV at each corporate level also goes up once the inflation settles at a higher level. That is the clarification I would like to see.

I'll take this.

I wish I could answer it linked to inflation, but I would basically say that the last 10 years trend is showing that the CPCU rate is going up. And I think that is just simply a function of how the economy is growing and how the consumer spending power is growing.

Just a very brief answer on this, Arun. We model at 2% long-term average inflation rates as we do our long-term planning. Inflation definitely are there in the economies across geographies, across economies. On an average, we built in about 2% inflation on a CAGR basis on a long-term basis. Some years, it will be high and some years will be down, right? So it's a function of normal economics being put into the business planning. I hope that answers your question in a crisp way.

Understood. One bookkeeping question for you, Kapil.

I am sorry to interrupt Arun, no more questions, please. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

Well, thank you very much for being on the call today, and we look forward to a very, very strong performance going forward into FY '27. The tailwinds are strong. The foundation is strong, and we are optimistic and bullish on how we will navigate all the challenges ahead, both organically as well as inorganically. We're looking forward to a fantastic year. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. On behalf of AMBIT Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us today, and you may now disconnect your lines.