Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited (MOTILALOFS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Sejul, the moderator for this conference. Welcome to the First Quarter FY '25 Earnings Conference Call for Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. We have with us today, Mr. Raamdeo Agrawal, Chairman; Mr. Motilal Oswal, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. Navin Agarwal, Group Managing Director; Mr. Ajay Menon, CEO, Wealth Management; Mr. Pratik Agrawal, MD and CEO, Asset Management; Mr. Ashish Shanker, CEO of Private Wealth Management; Mr. Sukesh Bhowal, CEO, Housing Finance; Mr. Shalibhadra Shah, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Chetan Parmar, Head Investor Relations. A short disclaimer before we start this call, this call will contain some forward-looking statements that are completely based upon the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as of today. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve unfrozen risks and uncertainties. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to invite Mr. Navin Agarwal, to make his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Motilal Oswal Financial Services earnings call for the first quarter ending fiscal year 2025. I'll take you through the company's performance and start by talking about the need for transitioning our broking and distribution business into the wealth management business and the rationale for the same. Today's investors are more informed and seek more than just transactional services. They demand personalized investment advice that considers their long-term financial goals. This shift in investor and consumer behavior, signifies a move towards a deeper engagement in financial planning, which include diverse asset classes and effective risk management is paramount for the clients. The focus is shifting from near investment transactions to comprehensive wealth management that includes retirement planning, tax optimization and many other services. Moreover, today's investors and consumers are driven by a sense of purpose and a desire for meaningful engagement with their financial advisers. They expect personalized purpose-driven advice that helps them navigate their financial journey with confidence and clarity. This evolving expectation underscores the necessity for a more comprehensive approach to wealth management. As we transition from broking and distribution business to Wealth Management business, our strategic objectives are clear. First, we aim to enhance client relationships, building deeper, more meaningful connections that position us as trusted advisers in their financial journey. Second, we will offer comprehensive financial solutions that extend beyond broking aligning with our clients' aspirations for wealth creation and reservation. Our wealth management business is well geared to tap growing needs of customers with a robust network of 2,400 internal relationship managers, over 8,800 external wealth managers, and a geographical presence that encompasses over 98% of the country's PIN codes. We offer bespoke research, integrated wealth platform called RISE through a super app, open architecture distribution model, a large base of high net worth clients, clients having more than 1 crore DP balance constitute 75% of the total DP balances of the group. The transition to Wealth Management is not just a change in nomenclature, but a strategic evolution for us. It reflects our dedication to providing holistic advice, and this transition will enable us to better serve our customers and help them achieve their financial aspirations with confidence. Let me now take you through the key highlights of the operational and financial performance. Our consolidated profit after tax, including OCI, other comprehensive income, was INR 1,021 crores for the quarter, up by 52% year-on-year. Our consolidated operating net revenue stood at INR 1,133 crores, up by 32% year-on-year. The return on equity stood at 44%. Our consolidated operating profit after tax stood at INR 431 crores for the quarter, up by 41% year-on-year. Our assets under advice crossed INR 5 lakh crore mark at the end of June '24. Our Wealth Management business profit after tax stood at INR 177 crores, up by 69% year-on-year. Our asset and private wealth business profit after tax stood at INR 157 crores, up by 30% year-on-year. Capital Markets business profit stood at INR 57 crores, housing finance at INR 28 crores. We had a robust net worth of INR 9,784 crores as of 30th June, up by 41% year-on-year. And we are happy to report that ICRA has upgraded our rating outlook to AA positive. Turning to our segmental performance. Our Wealth Management business, which is hitherto our broking and distribution business. Net revenues for this business stood at INR 530 crores, up by 42% year-on-year. Profit after tax stood at INR 177 crores, up by 69% year-on-year. We offer a very strong blend of over 2,000 internal relationship managers and over 8,800 external wealth managers. Our assets under advice in this business grew to INR 265,000 crores, up by 105% year-on-year. Our distribution AUM grew by 42% year-on-year to INR 26,171 crores. Distribution net sales stood at INR 1,449 crores for the quarter. Our cash market share in the first quarter increase by 186 basis points year-on-year to 8%. Our Futures & Options premium market share grew by 225 basis points year-on-year to 9.5%. We acquired 150,000 clients in the first quarter. And we covered 2,500 plus business location that encompass 98% plus of all the PIN codes of the country. In the capital market business which comprises of institutional equities and investment banking business, our net revenue in the first quarter stood at INR 134 crores and profit after tax stood at INR 57 crores. In our investment banking business we successfully completed 6 deals with an issue size of nearly INR 5,400 crores and we were ranked #1 in the QIP league table for the first quarter of the financial year. In the asset and private wealth business, which comprises of asset management, private equity and private wealth businesses, our net revenue stood at INR 385 crores, up by 32% year-on-year, and profit after tax stood at INR 157 crores, up by 30% year-on-year. The asset management business AUM across mutual funds, PMS and AIF grew to INR 87,580 crores as of 30th of June, up by 70% year-on-year. Net revenues for the first quarter stood at INR 164 crores, up by 46% year-on-year due to a mix change in favor of mutual fund assets. Strong performances across mutual funds, PMS and AIF schemes resulted in a gross sales of INR 8,840 crores for the first quarter, which is up by 4x year-on-year. Net flows, which were negative INR 1,020 crores in the first quarter of last year, turned to a positive INR 5,021 crores in the first quarter of this year. Mutual fund AUM grew to INR 60,500 crores, up by 81% year-on-year. Alternate AUM grew to INR 27,000 plus crores, up by 50% year-on-year. AIF AUM crossed INR 12,000 crore mark. We added 570,000, 5.7 lakh new SIPs in the first quarter, and our SIP flows for the first quarter stood at INR 1,200 crores and the SIP AUM stood at INR 14,600 crores. Our private equity business fee earning AUM was INR 10,640 crores across growth capital and real estate funds. Net revenues stood at INR 36 crores. Private wealth AUM was at INR 138,800 crores, up by 65% year-on-year. Net revenues stood at INR 185 crores, up by 27% year-on-year. The RM count grew to 576 numbers, up by 37% year-on-year, which has led to increase in operating expenses. 31% of our RM have a vintage of less than 3 years, which is typically the period where they're not contributing to the profits. Turning to the Home Finance business. Profits for the quarter stood at INR 28 crores. AUM was at INR 4,122 crores, up 9% year-on-year. Disbursements were at INR 252 crores for the quarter, up by 171% year-on-year. Net interest income stood at INR 83 crores, up 9%. Yield on advances stood at 14%, cost of funds at 8.4% and spreads at 5.6%. The sales RM strength was at 951, up by 117% year-on-year, resulting in higher cost-to-income ratio. Our plan is to further double up this RM count in the course of the year. Our gross and net NPAs stood at 1.17% and 0.63%, respectively. Net gearing was at 2x, capital adequacy at 46.5%, return on assets at 2.6% in the first quarter. Our total equity investments, including alternate funds grew 47% year-on-year to over INR 7,000 crores, and our cumulative XIRR on these investments stood at 19.6%. To sum up, the 10-year track record of the group has been an operating profit growth of 34%, which we are quite optimistic about in the years to come. Our dividend payout has been about 20% of the operating profit average over the last decade, and we will continue to maintain this payout subject to working capital and business growth needs. Our net worth after this dividend payout and several buybacks have compounded at 22% over the last decade, they're hoping to maintain or improve upon this. The strong trends of demat account addition, SIP addition are all major tailwinds. We believe that the outlook for the coming years is only brighter than the performance that we have delivered in the last decade. We can now open the floor for Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of [ Pravin Desai ], who is an Individual Investor. Mr. Pravin, may I request you to please unmute your line and speak. Mr. Pravin? Due to no response from the current participant, we will move on to the next participant. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Mahek from Emkay Global.

I have 2 questions. So one is around the wealth management business. So distribution has -- distribution income has seen a sequential dip. So can you explain that? Secondly, the net interest income at INR 185 crores odd is largely flat on a Q-o-Q basis. So is it something like the lending yields have dropped in or something like that? And third is just a clarification that the capital markets business now consists of IB and IE business. That's all, these are my 3 questions.

So answering the first question on the distribution revenues. So sequentially, quarter 4 revenues of distribution business included insurance income of almost about INR 30 crores, which is higher than the normal other quarter run rate because quarter 4 includes higher distribution of insurance products. So to that extent, you will see the fall on a sequential basis on a quarter-on-quarter basis. However, Y-o-Y basis, insurance distribution revenues have also grown, that's the first thing. Second is as far as the NII is concerned, so actually, sequentially, we had kept the exposures -- lending exposures lower because of the large event of the election results. So that is the reason you will see that NII is largely flattish because of also keeping higher liquidity and also the lending book growth started only post June month. As far as the third question is concerned on the Capital Market segment, that includes our now institution equities and investment banking business.

Yes. So I just wanted to confirm that like any kind of commentary on the yields in the distribution business? Like are they flat? Or are they consistent?

Distribution yields are flat on a Y-o-Y, Q-o-Q basis.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Pravin Desai, who is an individual investor.

Congratulation for the good results. And as we have asked in the last meeting for the bonus, you gave a very good bonus to all the shareholders and make them happy. So we are very happy with the company and the Board and our hearty congratulation to Raamdeoji, Motilalji and the committee member. We wish the company will progress in such way as it is progressing since inception. And this budget, there is no scope for buyback. The buyback scope has been reduced. Now see has only the right issue that will come in the -- we think that, that will come in the next budget that has been escaped from their sight. Their adviser have not run their attention for the right issue, but they will put thinking on that also, right issue also, also the cost of investor interest and the capital gain also they have increased, that is a hard step for the investor. But your company is doing very good for the investors. Thank you very much. Thank you very much all the time. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Uday Pai from Investec.

So I had a couple of questions. Firstly, can you help us with the 1 DPD number in the housing finance business? Secondly, what is -- in the brokerage side, what is the regulation that you impact on the derivatives segment? And how do you foresee the impact of it on our business? And lastly, what is the net new money in the wealth management business for this quarter?

So the first answer is for 1 plus DPD Housing Finance business is 5.7%. I'll answer the third one as well. So third -- on the F&O side, I've just read it.

Yes. So on the F&O side, I think the -- we are just reviewing the whole thing that how the impact will come from [indiscernible] should not come from our -- how the contract size and all will work. As of now, the translating charges impact is not much on overall revenue. We are looking at around -- on an annualized basis, the impact is around INR 40 crores for us. So on the overall scheme of things, it will not be a big shift. That will also be automatically at the end of the day, the customer will get the overall hit at the end of the day. So we don't see much impact compared to what we are seeing on the overall industry perspective. And looking at the overall derivatives also our cash market share is comparatively much higher compared to what the industry average is. So to that extent, the impact will be very miniscule. That is what our estimate is.

And the wealth management and net new money?

Flows in the wealth management business is INR 5,000 crores.

INR 5,000 crores.

Yes.

The next question is from the line of Sanjaya Satapathy from Ampersand Capital.

My question -- the first question that you have used the word transformation in your communication quite a lot. Can you just clarify that, what really major changes that you're planning to do?

Yes. So basically, we have been talking about the cross-sell ratio in the past. But given our experience in our own private wealth business, we have cross-sold a variety of products depending on the financial goals of the customers. The idea is to now have a dedicated team work on that client base to provide more holistic solutions that the group has already been offering across the private wealth business now to the broking and distribution clients also.

Understood. But is there any digital plan there, which will be -- where the company is still to catch up a lot?

So the RISE super app that we spoke about is that digital proposition encompassing all our offerings to these clients because the scale, just the sheer number of the clients here in this business are much higher. And apart from that, if you're referring to benchmarking to the pure discount brokers on the digital side, I can let Ajay take that benchmarking or comparison of our app versus some of those.

So at our end, on the overall digital side, we are doing -- having a lot of initiatives being started off now. And the RISE launch is perfectly aligned to see that how we can look at the clients overall AUM to be built to the digital modem. So whether on the distribution side, the RISE app will help us in achieving a lot of our numbers in terms of how we want to penetrate the SIP flows, the mutual fund flows and the other third-party products. So to that extent, I think digitally, we are very well aligned with our customers. Even today, more than 50% of our turnover is online and the clients are well aligned with the overall online strategy, which we are built for our set of clients. And that is how we are trying to take it up further also with all these new initiatives.

Basically, my question also was in the sense that there was something about some client they're retargeting disclosed some RBI actions from time to time. So is there any way to quantify your digital spend to say that, okay, we are spending so much more, and that is why we will be able to do a better job or something which can help us quantify it?

So overall, on the digital side, we are spending in a big way, around INR 150 crores is we have spent on the overall business model from a tech to the digital side to build the overall back-end systems and the front end. And this is continuously being built up. And we are also building a lot of things on the security side of the business as well as on the infra. So -- and that has been taken care as for the size of the business, which is going to grow going forward also. And so at the same time, we are also investing in a big way on AI and the artificial intelligence which we want to build upon. So holistically, we are well aligned to what the overall requirements will be there from a digital perspective, and we will be more than ready to take care of the overall requirements as far as the regulators are concerned and also from a customer perspective.

Sir, I'm sure you would have probably -- I mean, addressed this already that you can still decline in your wealth part of the profit, and there were some one-off items with which you had mentioned regarding some maturity of AIF. Can you please, I mean, make us understand a little better than that what has happened to that side of the business profit this quarter?

So actually, that is as far as our asset and private wealth business is concerned, where basically, what we are talking of is the booking of the share of profit which is basically the carry income that we charge in quarter 4, which is an annual event on our alternate side of the assets, which we have highlighted that, that is charge in the quarter 4 impact of revenues included that fee income because of which sequentially quarter-on-quarter, the revenues are lower.

Understood. My question is that I'm talking about the operational side, will the retail, that side of the business where the market having gone to a new high, the profit there had consequentially declined.

Yes. So sequential decline is due to 2 reasons. One is on account of the distribution business, which I explained in the call, insurance revenues were higher in quarter 4, which is generally a quarter 4 is a bump up of the insurance income. And secondly, also, overall, volumes were lower on a quarter-on-quarter basis across the industry, the brokerage revenues have been lowered and sequentially, that is the reason where sequential revenue profits are almost flattish, marginally lower.

And one thing we are seeing that your AUM has gone up terribly and the profit relating to that, is there some kind of fluctuation because of the product launches and the different cost and then subsequently it normalize as the margin improves.

Actually if you see, revenues and profits have actually gone in line with that. So if you look at our profit on a Y-o-Y basis, profit is up 40%. And if you look at the wealth business, maximum surge in the AUM by almost 100%, the profits are surged by 70% on a Y-o-Y basis.

I'll talk about sequential, but I got your point.

The next question is from the line of [ Ishan Batra ] from Complete Circle Wealth Management.

Congratulations sir on a beautiful quarter. I have some questions regarding, you mentioned that AI a lot -- AI In the past answer, and you mentioned how you're going to be using AI. So my first question is whether it's going to be developed in-house or you're outsourcing and outsourcing the development of the program? And then my next question is with is reference to algorithmic and high-frequency trading? And how -- and whether do you have a plan to allow it to investors for the same or whether you have a further plan of action with this 2 size of trading?

So on the artificial intelligence side, we are having our team already in place, and we have hired a senior resource, which will be joining us next month to enhance the overall scope on the artificial intelligence. And we'll be surely building it up in-house, and we may have some tie-ups with some vendors but majorly it will be in-house developed, the overall artificial intelligence. Coming to the SIPs, we already have some tie-ups for the algo's trade and high-frequency trades for our customers. And we are also building it up more aggressively going forward. So we are coming up with some strategies for our retail clients, which can be used for trading on the digital side and the option side.

Okay. So with reference to you have an in-house team for AI, may I ask why did we not choose hiring outside because certain platforms, both by OpenAI, Amazon and Microsoft. They have performed far better and have been very popularly used by other brokerage houses for their own algo and for their own AI-based trading models?

So from an algos perspective, and all that, we surely are having third-party vendors, but that AI which we are talking about, development is more to just look at from an overall business analytics perspective, how we can improve the productivity of our internal team, how we can look at customer touch points much better and much more proactive is where we are trying to build it out in-house. From a trading perspective and the algo perspective, we surely have ties with the third-party vendors.

The next question is from the line of [ Aditya from SOWiL Limited ].

So my question was like I didn't hear your answer on the clarity which you have seen continue in the F&O loss sizes. And you did mention that the increases taxes for the F&O segment will not have a material effect. But what about the total leasing charges, do you think you can depart on those charges which is on the brokerage front?

So if I look at the overall transient charges, which is going to impact because of the new regulation coming up October 1. As I told you, it's an impact of INR 10 crores a quarter for us, which is comparatively very small on the overall revenue, which we are having. We will review it how we want to recover it from a customer. At the end of the day, if the volumes increase, that will be much more beneficial at the end of the day. So it's a calibrated effort which we'll take up. Regarding the loss size, we are awaiting SEBI's clarification, how it will come and what will be the whole impact. But we have seen earlier cases that such things have a short-term impact, but in the longer term, the customers get aligned to the overall strategy and then the things are able to work out. But then this is something which only time can tell. But as I told earlier also, our proposition of the cash market revenue and the overall net new revenue is well aligned to take care of these changes, if any.

The next question is from the line of Akshata from Financial Express.

Actually, you clarified this. Sir, I wanted to ask about the STT. So how much impact would you see on an annualized basis, what is the number that you mentioned?

So it is about the transaction charges that we mentioned in the number. So on an annualized basis, that impact is INR 40 crores.

INR 40 crores. Sir, apart from that, I wanted to ask about STT charges that have increased. Do you think that will impact F&O volumes in any way now that [Technical Difficulty].

So in fact, that has been the case even in the past. If you look at continuously, the STT rates have gone up, but I think volumes have only grown in the market. So we don't see this to be any material impact on the volumes.

Okay. So any number that you have is to how much amount of STT will you be collecting if the volumes stay the same, like you said?

I don't have that number handy. We can share that separately.

[Operator Instructions] We will take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Shalibhadra Shah for closing comments.

On behalf of Motilal Oswal Financial Services, I would like to thank every participant for attending the Q1 FY '25 con call. In case of any further queries, please do get in touch with our Investor Relations desk. Thank you, and have a good day.

On behalf of Motilal Oswal Financial Services, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.