Mobavenue AI Tech Limited (539682) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Mobavenue AI Tech Limited Q1 FY '27 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Valorem Advisors. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Purvangi Jain from Valorem Advisors. Thank you, and over to you, Ms. Jain.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and a very warm welcome to you all. My name is Purvangi Jain from Valorem Advisors. We represent the Investor Relations of Mobavenue AI Tech Limited. On behalf of the company and Valorem Advisors, I would like to thank you all for participating in the company's earnings conference call for the quarter ended on June 30, 2026. Before we begin, let me mention a short cautionary statement. Some of the statements made in today's earnings call may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated. Such statements are based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the management. Audiences are cautioned not to place any undue reliance on these forward-looking statements in making any investment decisions. The purpose of today's earnings call is purely to educate and bring awareness about the company's fundamental business and financial quarter under review. I would now like to introduce you to the management team joining us on today's call. We have with us Mr. Ishank Joshi, Founder, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Vijay Basantani, Group Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Tejas Rathod, Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Without any delay, I request Mr. Ishank to start with his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to welcome you all to our earnings conference call for the first quarter of the financial year 2027. I would like to begin by extending our sincere thanks to the Valorem team for hosting us today's call. I will cover some of the strategic and business review in this call. Vijay, our CFO, will take you through the financials. Tejas, who is our Founder and CTO, will walk you through the technology and the Mobavenue Neural Engine, which is our most significant technology milestone this quarter to share with all of you guys. For some of the people, who may be new to the company, let me start with a brief overview of the company and the business model. Mobavenue AI Tech Limited is an AI-native global adtech and a consumer growth platform, helping brands, enterprises, publishers, agencies connect with high-intent consumers and drive measurable outcomes across the customer journey. Our platforms bring together proprietary AI, deep data intelligence, and programmatic advertising capabilities across mobile, web, video, connected TV, and other digital environments. At the core of our offering is our A3 framework. We call it Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, through which we help our customers and clients to build reach, acquire relevant customers, and re-engage users, positioning us as a full-funnel consumer growth platform focused on driving sustainable digital growth. Today, we serve around 155 plus brands across 12 countries with growing presence across India, international markets, including U.K., Latin America, Southeast Asia, Middle East, U.S., and Singapore. Our client base is also increasing, diversifying, spanning across e-commerce, fintech, banking, BFSI, travel, gaming, health care, retail, FMCG, consumer goods, and other digitally native and emerging businesses. What differentiates Mobavenue is that we are not a traditional media intermediary. We are building a technology-led, outcome-based growth platform. Our proprietary technology and deep consumer intelligence enable us to deliver measurable outcomes for our clients at scale. Today, our platforms process more than 1.3 billion signals every day. We reach approximately 2.6 billion devices globally, monthly, and deliver these decisions in under 15 milliseconds, demonstrating the scale and the speed of our technology and machine learning infrastructure. Importantly, our asset-light operating model allows us to scale these platforms across both developed and developing markets with limited incremental infrastructure investment, supporting scalability and operating leverage that we have got. We believe this combination of proprietary technology, AI-led decision-making, deep consumer intelligence, and an asset-light model positions Mobavenue well to participate in a structural shift towards measurable, outcome-driven digital advertising and consumer growth. So that's about Mobavenue and its journey over years. And FY '26 was a year of foundational pieces at Mobavenue, which we came together. Q1 FY '27 is the quarter we began building on the base with intent, a quarter of disciplined execution, a profitable growth, and a clear step in our evolution from an AI-powered platform toward an AI-native ecosystem and towards becoming a truly global company. For the quarter, revenue from operations was INR 728 million, up by 56.9% year-on-year and 16.3% sequentially. Our EBITDA was INR 154 million, up by 77% year-on-year. Margins at 21.2%, up by 240 basis points, and profit after tax was INR 117 million, up by 95% year-on-year. The margins at that is standing at 16.1%, up by 320 basis points. While Vijay will take you through in detail, I would like to highlight that growth was broad-based and direct advertisers demand across all the sectors, our deeper enterprise relationships, our expanding international footprints, and our continuous progress towards our AI growth platforms. I want to focus on the industry shift we described through FY '26 over last quarterly calls, which continues to play out. Budgets are moving from media-led platforms to outcome-led platforms. Brands want measurable growth, not reach in isolation. And that plays directly to who we are, an AI-powered adtech and consumer growth platform, not a media intermediary, which I shared earlier. Some of the 4 key development points that I want to share in the road ahead and which we have done in the last quarter, one is bringing a new brand identity. This is not a cosmetic. It reflects our evolution from an adtech player into an AI-native advertising and consumer growth platform built for global markets. We unveiled it at Times Square in New York, alongside with our United States entry, a technology company built in India stepping into a global stage. That's truly a big achievement for us. We launched our core Mobavenue Neural Engine, our unified AI intelligence layer, the engine, the core of our stack that powers every product across our A3 framework. Commercially, it is how advertising spend converts into measurable outcomes and why our unit economics improves as we scale. Tejas will walk you through in the technology updates as we move ahead in the call. Global expansion, we've been expanding globally, and we commenced operations in the United States, one of the largest scalable markets. We entered capability first rather than geography first. Progressed through Singapore as our regional gateway into high-growth Asian market and launched PrsmX operations in the Philippines. We also launched an Apple ecosystem, we call it as PiiX, an AI-powered growth intelligence platform purposely built for Apple ads ecosystem, integrating Apple search ads, custom product pages, App Store optimization, and creative to be added soon. It complements SearchX on Android and completes our acquisition coverage across both major mobile ecosystems in the world, giving clients dedicated access to some of the highest value users in the market. Our company this quarter also launched an AI marketing maturity study with mobile and Marketing Media Alliance and E&Y, benchmarking AI adoption across more than 60 marketing leaders in over 11 industries, positioning us as a practitioner at the center of AI in making -- marketing conversation. We measure ourselves by outcomes. We've been talking about that over the last so many calls, but by quality of each one. Our revenue per outcome improved steadily through FY '26. Q1 FY '27, our platforms delivered 14.16 million verified outcomes at INR 49.94 per outcome. Now delivering more outcome is one growth lever, delivering high-value outcomes with better pricing efficiency is what compounds our model over time. And Tejas will talk about it as we go on the technology side. Our operating framework remains A3, Awareness, Acquisition, and Activation, now spanning both Android and Apple ecosystem end-to-end. Our long-term philosophy remains the same, the Rule of 50, the sustained annual revenue growth above 30%, together with EBITDA margins of 20% or higher. Now we see this not as a 1-year target, but as a shape of compounding business within our broader vision to 2030 ambition to build a global, profitable, and a growing AI-native platform from India for the world. Our priorities and for FY '27 are consistent with levers that we defined in FY '26. First is to deepen enterprise and mid-market penetration in India, scale globally on an asset-light, outcome-based model through agencies, resellers, direct advertiser team, platform partnerships, and selective inorganic opportunities, both in India and global markets. And keep enhancing, which is very critical for us, is AI and product roadmap. We shall continue to scale the Neural Engine and extend our purpose-built platforms across Apple, streaming TV, DOOH, retail, reward media, and creative optimization. With that, I would like to hand it over to Vijay for financial review and share financial details with all of you. Vijay, over to you.

Thank you. Thank you, Ishank, and good afternoon, everyone. Q1 FY 2027 was a quarter of steady profitable growth and continued margin discipline. Let me take you through the numbers of quarterly performance to start with. Revenue from operations grew 56.9% year-on-year and 16.3% sequentially to INR 728 million. The comparison bases are Q1 FY '26, INR 464 million and Q4 FY '26, INR 626 million. EBITDA delivered a year-on-year growth of 77% from INR 87 million to INR 154 million and a sequential growth of 15.8% from INR 133 million. EBITDA margin for Q1 '27 stood at 21.2%. PAT delivered a year-on-year growth of 95% from INR 60 million to INR 117 million and a sequential growth of 39.3% from INR 84 million. PAT margin of Q1 FY '27 stood at 16.1%. Talking about growth drivers, growth was led by direct advertiser demand in structurally expanding sectors, quick commerce, BFSI, fintech, and retail, and by premium omnichannel formats such as connected TV and video streaming, which lifts the monetization quality alongside the volume. Growth got further accelerated during the quarter as we expanded our international footprint through our agency reseller model, reflecting the increasing depth of our go-to-market model. Margins are supported by improving monetization, stronger optimization efficiency, disciplined cost management and models, natural operating leverage as revenue outgrows employee and overhead costs. Data and supply costs remain our largest line and are largely variable moving with revenue and platform volumes. We continue to invest selectively in technology, product, and international capability, and this balance between growth and profitability is central to how we run the business. Our direct clients contributed 65.2% of the revenue this quarter with the balance through agency reseller and platform channels. International markets contributed 20.7% with India being the anchor as our U.S., U.K., and ASEAN operations scale, we expect the international share to build gradually over the coming years. The balance sheet remains strong, supported by FY '26 preferential raise and cash-generative business. Capital is being prioritized towards AI stack, international expansion, and platform capabilities, alongside selective inorganic opportunities that had clear capability of market access. With that, over to you, Tejas, on the Mobavenue Neural Engine.

Thank you, Vijay, and good afternoon. Last quarter, I described our shift to neural network-based decisioning. This quarter, I want to introduce the product that shift became, the Mobavenue Neural Engine. The Neural Engine is our unified AI intelligence layer, one proprietary engine at the core of GMP 360 that powers every product across A3. In FY 2026, we completed the move of our core decisioning from rule-based and traditional machine learning to fully neural network system. The Neural Engine is the productized form of that work. One common intelligence layer rather than separate models bolted into separate products. We architect it around 3 stages. We call it P3, Process Signals, Predict Intent, Produce Outcomes. Let me make that tangible because what matters to a marketeer is not architecture. It is what they can do now. The Neural Engine collapses the advertising life cycle into a single system, so a marketer can move from planning to a live campaign in under 59 seconds. It does this through 4 integrated capabilities. First is planning. The engine generates marketing plan from brand objectives, audience insights, and marketing intelligence, customized by budget, category, or objective, and recommends placement across connected TV, OTT, music, and youth platforms. Second is execution. It launches the campaign directly from the platform, compressing what used to take hours into a minute. Third is creative intelligence. It generates placement-ready creatives tailored to the audience, channel, and campaign objective, compressing the traditional creative timeline to under a minute. And fourth is conversational reporting. The marketer asks in plain language how a campaign is performing and gets instant answers across impressions, conversions, audiences, and channels. Plan, launch, create, and measure. Historically, 4 disconnected tools and several days of work now happen in one place under a minute. This is the practical difference between AI-powered and AI-native. Workflow speed is separate from decisioning speed. Once the campaign is running, the engine decides in under 15 milliseconds inside a live auction, whether to bid, what to bid, which creative to serve, which audience to target, processing over 1.3 billion consented privacy compliant signals in a day's time. And because of this architecture is closed loop, every outcome becomes a new signal that sharpens the next decision, so the system improves as it runs. We own all P3 layers on our proprietary technology infrastructure. Most platforms own 1 or 2 and license the rest. That is a structural advantage. Every signal improves our prediction, every prediction improves our outcome, and none of that intelligence leaks to a third-party vendor. To make it more concrete, for a fast-growing hyperlocal client optimizing on downstream purchase signals rather than installed alone at -- alone scaled quality install several fold because the engine learns which install actually converted and not simply how many we delivered. The Neural Engine is the platform on which we move from AI-powered to AI-native, where the engine autonomously launches, adapts, optimizes campaigns with minimum human intervention. That transition is already underway through agentic workflows and near-hourly model refresh. Over the next 12 to 18 months, a growing share of optimization decisions will be made by our engine itself with our team focused on higher order strategy and creative judgment. With that, back to Ishank for closing remarks.

Thank you, Tejas and Vijay, bringing this quarter together, and thanks to my team. We have shared and we have started FY '27 growing profitably while taking deliberate steps for the long term. Our focus for the rest of the year is simple: scale, profitability, and innovation. Now scale will be by deepening enterprise relationships in India and building presence in new markets, profitability by holding and improving margins and capital allocation discipline in line with Rule of 50, and innovation by continuing the shift from AI-powered to AI-native platforms. Now all of this points to one single direction, evolving Mobavenue AI Tech beyond adtech and consumer growth platforms into a global AI-native operating system for advertising and consumer growth, connecting intent, intelligence, and impact at scale as part of our 2030 vision. Now I would like to thank you and thank all our shareholders, investors, customers, team, partners, employees for their continued trust. With that, we would like to open the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Rahul with Eternal Capital.

So you can just correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the direct clients contributed 65.2% of the Q1 revenue versus 73.9% as of FY '26. So should we interpret this decline as simply a function of a faster growth business? Or is there a shift in the go-to-market mix? And like what is the medium-term strategy on this? And what is the optimal mix that you see between direct clients and agency reseller partnerships?

Vijay, you want to start off with and then I can carry on with it.

So you are right in saying that the percentage 65.2% and earlier it was 73.9%. Well, this is because of the reason that we have entered international global footprint with our initial strategy of going to the clients through agency or a reseller model. This is just to begin a small or a medium-term strategy so that we make a good footprint at international level to clients through agency or a reseller model. While the long-term strategy remains a direct advertiser approach, which will be implemented. And accordingly, you will again see some shift in the ratios for the long term. And our direct advertiser base will be back to the same normal position.

And so as we see the AI capabilities become increasingly commoditized across adtech, what is preventing larger global platforms from replicating the functionality of a Neural Engine? And is there any moat that we have in our proprietary models, let's say, the volume of the consented signals or any integration of the technology across our GMP 360?

Sure. So 2 things. We own the whole stack. So we are not adding intelligence on top of someone else's platform. And our commercial model ensures that the AI works because we get paid on outcomes. So it is very different than someone else is copying that because lots of companies wouldn't have all 3 stacks in-housely created. We have Awareness, Acquisition and Activation. That is our own proprietary technology where it covers full stack journey of the -- any of the advertiser. The moat for us is how we utilize our data points. More signals make our -- more signals make our models better and better model produces better outcomes and better outcomes bring more spend and that loop is our business. Our AI capabilities closes that loop. If someone else is having any third-party licensing platform, they will not be able to do this simply because they wouldn't have all that data signal coming to that platform rather than it might go to that licensed platform. For us, it is our moat that we have since all the platform in-housely made created and that is our proprietary technology, it goes to system as a closed feedback loop. And then our next decision is from that particular feedback, which we have received from our own data. So that is our basically moat that every signal is our own signal, and that is getting introduced inside the system as a feedback.

Yes. Just to add on that, I think one of the key things is to build the machine learning infrastructure. So over last 2 years, we have really pushed our machine learning infrastructure, and that can be seen from the operating revenue per outcome that we have put it across in our models. While we are increasing the outcomes, we are also increasing the price per outcome, right? So that brings us a value for not only our customers, but for us as a platform company also.

And if I can just squeeze one more in. So what are the key new products and geographies? Earlier also, you mentioned that your international strategy is through the reseller. But what are -- what is going to be the growth driver for the company? And what are the timeline for these growth drivers to become meaningful contributors?

So what we -- we have a clear GTM that we have shared earlier also with all our investors and shareholders and well-wishers. One of the key things is that we look at India and emerging markets. In emerging markets, states like Asia, Philippines, Latin America, these are some of the markets which looks like India. They would be around 2 or 3 years behind in their digital ecosystems, but they would have capabilities like India. So they would have large Internet base. They would have people doing transactions online. So that is clearly one of our GTMs for international expansion. The other is going in developed markets. One of the key things is going in U.S. It's one of the largest digital advertising market. So U.S., U.K., these are 2 critical markets for us, which we are looking forward to go forward in the coming year. We have a roadmap of next 12 to 18 months in terms of increasing our penetration, both in evolved and the emerging markets. So this is clearly one of the growth levers. In terms of products, our core focus always lie in building purpose-built platforms, which can be integrated in our GMP 360, which is Growth and Marketing Platform 360. So clearly, this quarter, we are focused towards getting us into Apple ecosystem. So it's an early sign of launching our products beyond connected TV, beyond Android ecosystem and in an even more premium market like Apple. And we look forward that those growth drivers will be kicking in, in the next 12 to 18 months.

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from the line of Anil Kukreja, an individual investor.

Am I audible?

Yes, you are.

Am I audible? Yes. So first of all, congratulations on the great set of numbers to the whole team. My question is basically your Q1 revenue growth was about 56.9%, which is a very good growth number. And how do you see the sustainability of this growth rate in the next 4 to 8 quarters? And if you see these growth rates normalizing, what could be the factors why it could normalize?

So I think we've created a framework for us in terms of what we look as a business. We do not optimize it for a quarter or 100 days. We optimize for the whole year and what we look at 2030 as a vision for us. So we call it as Rule of 50. In terms of normalization, we look at that we should grow by 30% year-on-year. Of course, there would be quarter-to-quarter or year-to-year where some of the growth factors will kick in as we expand in the global markets beyond India. But we keep as a metrics for long term that 30% can be really calculated. And we look at 20% as an EBITDA margin. We, as a growing company continue to invest in our technology, in our platforms while maintaining the base margins as 20% and improving it on a year-on-year basis point. So you can consider that as a core to model it for you or to any other investors.

And a follow-up question on that. This current revenue growth, do you -- I mean, what was the -- what was it driven by? It was mainly the generic market growth or you gained some market share as well?

The general market growth cannot do 56.9%, right? So one of the key things is our global component. So since we have established around 12 months back, we started putting our efforts in U.K., in Latin markets, and now Philippines, in U.S., in Singapore. So all of these markets slightly are kicking in. Of course, U.K. is kicking in faster because we first went there. The second important is we are also focusing on the premium inventory and premium intent users. So whether it is from streaming, connected TV, Apple ecosystem that we have just launched, DOOH and some of the other markets. So these are 2 important factors which resulted for the growth that you look at in this quarter. And yes, that's about the growth.

So basically, your current -- sorry, last question. Your current revenue per outcome INR 49.9, almost INR 50, right? So how do you further see it improving? Like this will be driven, like you said, by high-value customers or your AI improving and even maybe your product mix improving, what could be the driver for the growth of this number specifically ARPU?

Yes. Great question. So there are 3 important pillars here. Most of our revenue today comes from India as a market, which India as a market is a volume market, while, of course, our technology is enabling to improve the price per outcome and our revenue per outcome. That's a base component. The second way we look at is like we can have more outcomes and then, of course, with the help of our AI technology that we've been building up that we are improving the revenue per outcome, too. The second important parameter is because we are going in the global markets. Now the global markets are like they are not a volume-driven market. They are a value-driven market. So that is how we will be improving both the revenue, the outcomes and the price per outcome. So we're looking forward that we are able to reach higher volumes, more better volumes and higher revenue per outcome. Like that's how we look at from both India as well as emerging and some of the emerged markets. Does that answer your question?

Yes, yes, it does. Okay. And one last question, actually, I just want to know. You will be expanding like you recently opened up in U.S. or Singapore as well. So how do you see differentiating yourself with the global players right now? And how will you capture their market share? And what is the strategy out there?

So how we look at -- we've been doing most of our platform business in India. And emerging market, as I said, is around 2 or 3 years behind India. What they have shown similar structural advantages for digital native companies. So in those markets, we are looking forward, again, with the outcome-driven approach because mostly, most of the brands, whether it is digital native brands or old native brands, they are moving towards platforms who can give them not impressions, but just how can they drive outcomes for their business. So emerging markets, our strategy is simple. We start off with pilots with them and start building one of the products, and there are cross-selling that we do for all our products as we kind of stable the active customers. So that's the approach for us, and that has been working fairly well for us in most of these emerging markets because our models are being trained for emerging markets. Now for the emerged markets, our strategy is with getting our platform to agency and resellers, start building our GTMs in those segments and then move to the direct customer engagement. So that's the way we look at solving the emerged market. Emerged markets have competition, but also there is a space for platforms which can deliver better. And that is where we are addressing that there is always a scope of delivering better for our advertisers, and we have enough cases for them to solve for across their consumer growth journey.

And who do you see as your key competitors in the global space?