MPS Limited (MPSLTD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone from New York this time. Welcome to the MPS Q1 FY '20 (sic) [ FY '21 ] Earnings Call. Trust you're all safe, healthy and staying positive. I've been in New York since the past 4 weeks to support the integration of HighWire into MPS, given that bulk of the HighWire operations and customers today are in the Western Hemisphere. In our opening segment, I will discuss our performance in Q1 across the business segments and how we have adapted to today's unprecedented environment. Sukhwant Singh, Senior Vice President of Content Solutions, will give us a quick overview of the business while Harsh Gupta, VP of Growth, will discuss the eLearning business segment. I will wrap up the business segment discussions with an overview of platform business. Next, I will discuss our announcement on the buyback, and finally, conclude with the road ahead with HighWire now as part of the MPS group. Looking forward to interacting with all of you over the next hour. FY '21 started with Q1 ahead of our expectations. At a consolidated level, the revenue and EBITDA were recorded at INR 82.26 crores and INR 21.32 crores, respectively. While revenue was down by 2.8% against the same quarter last year, EBITDA was flat. Consolidated EPS was mostly impacted due to decline in Other income. Sukhwant, over to you now to provide commentary on Content Solutions as we saw it in Q1.

Thanks, Rahul. So the core publishing and Content Solution business appears to have bottomed out in quarter 4 of last financial year with signs of a strong recovery in the quarter 1 of the current financial year. Revenue and EBITDA grew by 8.4% and 21.5%, respectively. Our educational publishing solutions, which comprises MPS North America and Books, expanded business through addition of new customers from the EdTech space, significant increases in volume from a large educational publisher and also increased volumes from other learning companies. The journals segment maintained its scale compared to the quarter 1 of the last financial year after a decline in the quarter 3 and quarter 4 of the last financial year. The digital solution also maintained their position from the last year after witnessing a decline in the quarter 4 of the financial year '20. So that was an update on -- yes, yes.

Thanks, Sukhwant. Keep up the momentum. I'm sure everyone on this call is equally, if not more eager, that this revival in the core content solutions business is here to stay. Harsh, now please shed some light on the eLearning business.

Thanks, Rahul. From an MPS perspective, COVID-19 has had the most severe impact on our eLearning business. So we are hopeful that this impact is more of a pause rather than a sustained decline as corporates and educational institutions, who form the customer base in this business area, reimagined their L&D ecosystems and settled into a new normal where digital leads co-learning rather than supplementing, reinforcing or remediating. Some of our larger customers have spaced their project, which was on hold. We also saw delays in getting raw content from clients, which further impacted our ability to create learning modules. The new work environment has forced all of the organizations to reimagine their learning and development strategies with a strong focus on digital learning, and we believe that this will have a positive impact on the business in the medium term. In addition, conversations with large opportunities, which were on hold due to COVID-19, have been reinitiated. Thank you.

Thanks, Harsh. Wish you and the teams best wishes and all our support you need to revive the eLearning business. Intuitively, this segment should grow by MPS with educational institutions, customers and corporates. Moving on to the platform business. All products and segments of the platform business declined in revenue in Q1. THINK is expected to recover in Q2 itself, with certain custom projects moving from Q1 to Q2, while DigiCore should recover by the end of the calendar year. Both segments have respectable pipeline of opportunities from a variety of customers. They also have product upgrades, extensions and integrations that are expected to add revenue. The mag+ business is expected to bridge the gap with previous year in Q2. The short-term recovery is largely driven by custom projects with new clients and the expansion of a large client engagement to new geographies. The mag+ team's mission is to transform the business that includes launching a new product that supports HTML5 authoring and seamless delivery to multiple delivery formats and unlocking marketing synergies with other MPS businesses such as MPS Interactive. Moving on to buyback. The Board of Directors of the company in its meeting held on 11th August 2020 have announced a tender offer buyback of 566,666 equity shares from equity shareholders, representing 3.04% of total paid up equity capital of the company at a price of INR 600 only for equity share for an aggregate maximum amount of INR 34 crores. The buyback will result in improving financial ratios, like earnings per share, return on capital employed, return on equity by reduction in the equity base of the company, thereby leading to a long-term increase in shareholder value and achieving an optimal capital structure. This would also enable the company to distribute surplus cash to equity shareholders broadly at the portion of the shareholding, thereby enhancing the overall return. 15% of the number of equity shares to be bought back are reserved for the small shareholders. The buyback offer price represents premium of 85.84% and 85.44% over the closing price of the equity shares on NSE and BSE, respectively, as on July 29, 2020, being the date of intimation to the stock exchanges for the Board meeting to consider the proposal of the buyback. For more details on the buyback, investors can refer to the detailed public announcement in this regard made in the newspaper today and also available on the MPS website. Moving on to the acquisition of HighWire. We believe that the HighWire's acquisition places MPS in a very unique position to grow its market share in the publishing platform market. According to an Outsell platform providers report, the publishing platform and system subsector of the content creation market is worth more than $1.5 billion. The top 3 markets -- the top 3 players' that includes HighWire, revenue is about $75 million. The rest of the market seems to be scattered and largely underserved. In a year that HighWire celebrates its 25th anniversary and, MPS, its 50th, we're excited to draw upon the wealth of knowledge, which we can continue to shape the future of digital content. The acquisition of HighWire further deepens our commitment to the academic and STM community, whom we have founded to serve back in 1970. We will further invest, build and grow HighWire to advance global discovery, research and innovation, which aligns with our overarching vision of making learning smarter. Together, MPS and HighWire will bring together some of the sharpest minds with deepest institutional knowledge in the scholarly industry, convene a broad community of societies and publishers to identify, discuss and address existing challenges and new opportunities. We will use our unique skill set and scale to develop the technology critical to rapidly transforming industry, and we'll mutually expand the user base into new geographies and adjacent market verticals. We can now open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have a first question from the line of Vaibhav Badjatya from HNI Investments.

[Technical Difficulty]

Sir, sorry to interrupt. We're not able to hear you very well. Please use the handset.

Hello? Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Yes. Yes. So the question is on platform business. You mentioned that the platform business is highly -- the industry as such is highly fragmented and how players also does not have -- very -- they are not in -- big in size. Just wanted to understand why is it so? And what can change going forward which can significantly increase the potential for us to kind of bankroll other opportunities that are available within the same segment? That will be my first question.

Thank you for the question. Yes, I think overall -- I think we've been talking for a while now with -- in many, many earnings calls, we've been discussing how the MPS is seeing a huge opportunity on the platform space given the efficient way in which some of our technology solves publishers' problems. And I think the problem statement for the MPS business, specifically on the platform side, has really been about having a critical mass of customers. We -- through the THINK acquisition -- if you look at the history, the 2 significant ecosystems that we possess today on the publishing platform side, essentially, are THINK and DigiCore. DigiCore has -- organically, we've added about a dozen publishers over a 3- to 4-year period. So you can understand what the annual rate of adding publishers has been. We then acquired THINK which gave us a captive customer base of about 40 to 45 customers, which -- because of rationalization, as we've seen in the past, reduced to 35 core customer base. So we have a -- we then had a captive customer base of about 50. And our assessment was, till you get to some 200 customers, we don't have the critical mass to really scale. What the acquisition of HighWire has done is it's given us access to an additional over 150 customers, which basically takes us, as a combined organization, our publishing platform customers to over 200. And I think just by simply cross-selling into this captive customer base of 200, I think we are pretty much on a growth path for the next at least 2 to 3 years, given the number of products in the MPS platform portfolio. Of course, we will also be actively responding to RFPs, stepping up marketing to acquire new logos. But just within this captive customer base of 200-plus, we believe there is tremendous organic growth opportunities. Overall, one of the reasons this space -- a few reasons why this space is so exciting: a, we've seen publishers acquire some of the leading platforms, which has made other publishers nervous. So for example, if I'm a publisher and if all my authors are managed through a competitor's platform and all my subscribers, which are my readers, are managed through a competitor's platform, while I'm not too concerned about data protection, I could be -- as a small publisher, I could be even concerned about data protection, I am concerned about, do I really have influence on the road map of the platform given that it is now owned by a competitor. So that is one dynamic which is leading to an opportunity on the platform side, a revenue opportunity. The second dynamic that is playing out is many of our customers and many of the target customers is really midsized publishers, societies, university presses, who are under tremendous pressure to either reduce costs or do something very unique in their business model. Given that our platform business is largely driven from India, whereas our competitors' platform business is largely driven internationally from Europe and the U.S., we believe that we will also appear to be more competitive than our competition. Of course, we want to continue to be a premium market player. So unlike our content business, where we play the role of an undercut around price, we will -- our approach here will be to be in the middle of the pack rather than trying to be low or high. And I think that will, again, present many customers that are not on HighWire or with MPS today, an additional attraction because that -- their own business is under pressure. We've been able to reduce spend on content as much as we potentially could. There's very little left. And now the platform space will also see some opportunities of customers looking at companies that can offer an attractive pricing over a longer period of time. The other thing that makes us really attractive is, on average, platform contracts are at a minimum of 3 years. We also have contracts that go on to 5 years. And typically, once you land a customer, that customer is pretty much with you for, on average, and this is it -- no -- on average, a decade, but also very often with you for 2 or 3 decades. So it's very sticky revenue. And from a profitability standpoint as well, this is a very high-margin revenue because essentially, once you've invested in the product core, your marginal costs to deliver the product are fairly limited. Yes, there are costs associated with customizing and implementing the platform, but those are billable activities. Those are not activities that we have to absorb. So implementing, configuring, customization is also additional revenue stream and is also a good margin revenue stream. So all these factors are making us very excited about the platform opportunities, specifically in the publishing, and especially, in the scholarly publishing space.

Got it. Sir, actually, my point was a little different in the sense that is, till now, no single platform has been able to achieve good scale. Is it that something that is in the nature of the requirement of the customers that they have -- are so different between different customers if they have to have different platforms. Is it the case?

No. So again, I think there should be a better understanding of what -- when we're calling a platform a platform, what does that mean? So today, we have DigiCore which is a platform on which all the content authoring and the content development and the content management happens. So it is more a content authoring and a content management platform. We have the HighWire suite of platforms that are more focused on delivering the content to the end customer. And then we have the THINK ecosystem, which is focused on, that once the content is delivered, managing the order to cash cycle. So all 3 ecosystems, DigiCore, THINK and HighWire suite of platforms, they are all complementary platforms that integrate with each other at different stages of the publishing process. So we are using the word platform loosely, essentially you have one technology stack that is focused on creating the content, one technology stack that is focused on producing the content, another stack focused on delivering the content and another stack focused on getting -- managing the order to cash process. And also not to forget, we also have a tech stack focused on analytics. So these are all complementary products, and that is why we are very bullish because with the HighWire acquisition, essentially, what we do is that at every stage of scholarly publishing from manuscript submission to delivery, MPS has a product. And that's where it's coming from.

[Operator Instructions] We have next question from the line of [ Alok Kulkarni ] from PineBridge Investments.

Rahul, my question is regarding -- you mentioned that these offerings are complementary in nature when we consider HighWire acquisition along with our platforms that we currently have. So -- but if I check the website of HighWire, they mentioned that their key solutions are hosting, submissions, analytics and identity. And if I remember currently, many of our platforms also operate in similar areas, though there could be differences in features. So how exactly will this fit in with our current offering? That is one part. And secondly, what kind of turnaround do you foresee for this business because the revenue has declined from $24 million to about $19 million. And we don't know the profitability. So if you can give some direction in terms of profitability for this business, say, over next 2 to 3 years. Those are my 2 questions.

Yes. So I'll start with the first, and -- Alok, you're obviously looking at marketing materials. Marketing always is ahead of product development, at least 6 months ahead. So the way -- just some data points for you. When we look at the content, so HighWire has a manuscript submission system -- manuscript submission and peer review platform for which they have about broadly -- I mean, close to 50 customers. MPS has 1 customer in manuscript submission and peer review. So not really -- we don't have much of a presence there. And that, too, the customer is in the Indian subcontinent. And it's been more of a partnership to -- for MPS to develop that particular product. Moving on from manuscript submission and peer review coming into content editing and content production, HighWire doesn't have any suite of products there. MPS, of course, has MPS Track, which is a workflow solution; DigiEdit, which is a content editing system; and DigiComp, which is a production system, all part of the DigiCore suite. Moving on to -- so there is no HighWire presence there, and MPS would have about 12 to 15 customers in that space. So now the content is ready to be distributed. So we come to content hosting. HighWire has about 150 customers in the hosting space. And again, let's understand in the overall value chain of publishing technology, it is really the hosting environment which is strategically most important because that environment basically means you are helping publishers create revenue. You're on the revenue side of the publisher. On the hosting side, MPS does have a product called ScholarStor, but we have -- while HighWire has 150, 155 customers, we have 4. So not much of a presence there. But yes, we do have some limited presence. Moving on to -- once the content is delivered, then we look at content fulfillment. So how do you fulfill the order? And how do you collect the cash? So that -- in that space, really HighWire doesn't have anything and we have THINK. And then moving on to the analytics arena. On the analytics side, MPS and HighWire, in fact, have very complementary products where MPS is very strong on providing analytics based on a standard called COUNTER. So we are extremely strong in adhering to the COUNTER standards. In fact, every time COUNTER does a new version release, MPS is either first or second to become COUNTER certified. So we are more an analytics powerhouse adhering to the COUNTER standards. Where HighWire is very strong is in building custom analytics that deal with -- and on that side of the business, we would have about 50 customers spread between publishing and libraries. Where HighWire is very strong is building deep analytics to do with custom publisher requirements. So while we are providing data that is relevant from a compliance standpoint, HighWire is providing analytics and data that is relevant from a sales intelligence and business intelligence standpoint. So again, very -- and they have about, again, 50 customers in that platform. So very, very complementary in that space. With respect to Sigma, which is an authentication module, MPS doesn't possess any customers there. And really, it is a very, very independent platform, and it would fit in more into the content creation and content management space. So it's an authentication module, and again, a very healthy customer base as well. The other piece on the revenue side is a couple of data points. One, we are suddenly inheriting a customer base that is where we have -- where we are providing them a technology that is the most important piece of technology in the -- this landscape, which is the hosting side. The second data point is, because HighWire is providing such a critical piece of technology, they have been very successful in cross-selling. So you'll notice that when I'm saying that they have 155 customer base, I'm also mentioning 50, 55 on the various products, those are not unique customers. Those are essentially customers that they've cross-sold to. And they've been able to do that because they're essentially talking to the CTO of the company and have access with CTO of the company. So we're hopeful that from a revenue standpoint, the cross-selling opportunity will be much more significant now that we are providing the underlying technology on the hosting side, which is the most important piece of tech in the publishing value chain, arguably, but more -- depending on how we speak with. But because you're creating revenue, it is the most critical piece of technology in my view. Now coming to the profitability, turnaround, margins. As we know, typically, we've seen in past acquisitions that MPS tends to be able -- very quickly able to create efficiencies and reduce costs and create good margins for the acquired entities. From our perspective, we expect -- as you've seen in past acquisitions, the number that you were referring to, Alok, actually is closer to $17 million, it's not $19 million. The number is closer to $17 million. And we expect that to contract further to $13 million to $14 million as we takeover because typically, when we -- as you've seen in past acquisitions, the companies tend to lose momentum on the revenue side 2 to 3 years prior to MPS buying the acquisition, and then we tend to also acquire them at a very competitive price as a result of that. So we expect, on the top line side, $13 million to $14 million type of revenue in the first year of operations. That is our expectation. Of course, that is a conservative expectation. We're hoping that we will beat that expectation. From a margins standpoint, we will only be satisfied when we are operating in margins that we currently operate on, on a stand-alone basis. So if you look at the MPS stand-alone business, those are the type of margins that we would be looking to achieve on the platform side at the very minimum. So of course, platform business should be a higher-margin business than our core business. But the first level of satisfaction we will derive is when we hit that milestone with this new acquisition operates at a stand-alone margin level, which, I believe, is 40%, 45% depending on the quarter you look at. I'm talking EBITDA margins. In terms of time lines, turnaround, et cetera, I think we will start to see the first round of profitability because what we've acquired is pretty much breakeven. We will start to see the first significant level of profitability in Q4 of this financial year, where we'll see -- where you'll see the first significant level of profitability. Of course, time will tell how quickly we get to that level. But first level of profitability we should see in Q4, a reasonable level of profitability. And the level of profitability that is the first milestone, as I described, would either be achieved in Q1 or Q2 of next financial year depending on how the turnaround shapes up. We have today assembled a core integration team that has members from both the MPS and the HighWire side that are very clear on this line of thinking and the goals.

Yes. Just a small follow-up on this. Is the senior management of HighWire staying with us or they will not join us?

So the CEO passed on the baton to me as part of the transaction. So HighWire did not come to us with a CEO. I'm spending a bulk of my time on the HighWire acquisition. I'm sure you can sense -- it's simple arithmetic. I'm sure you can sense the margin opportunity and the revenue opportunity which is making me focus more on the HighWire side. And of course, we've assembled a core integration team with members both from HighWire and MPS to be able to enable the milestones that I described.

Okay. But the sales team will join us, right? I mean the entire sales team will join us?

Only the CEO is not joining us. Everyone else has joined us. And of course, things will progress in the coming quarters.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from the line of Mehul Jain (sic) [ Rahul Jain ] from Dolat Capital.

This is Rahul Jain. Am I audible?

Yes, Rahul. You are.

Yes, sir, you are.

Yes. Yes. Firstly, congratulations, Rahul, on this big acquisition. I just wanted to understand one thing. When do you see this getting consolidated, effective date? That is part question one. And question number two is on the eLearning side of the business. So this business has been on a challenging path again. So how much of this impact is led by a pandemic kind of a restriction or any other challenge from the demand perspective as well as supply perspective? And where we see this turning -- when we'll see this turning back to the desired level?

Yes. I'll start with the -- I think the first question was more accounting related. And so I think the HighWire results will be consolidated into MPS in the Q2 results. So July, August, September results will feature HighWire in entirety, given that we did the acquisition on July 1. So that's the first question. On the eLearning side of the business, it is 100% pandemic-driven and demand -- and more on the demand side. If we go back to the first 3 quarters of the past -- previous financial year, FY '20, we were seeing revenues to the tune of INR 18 crores per quarter. And every quarter, we were seeing about INR 1 crore increasing in revenue, every sequential quarter. And margins were fluctuating between 18% and 20%. So the turnaround of the eLearning business was well underway. And sitting -- in January, we were sitting pretty with an order book -- a very strong order book, very strong pipeline, and then COVID-19 hit, and everything hell broke loose. So from our perspective, all of this is entirely demand driven. Having said that, what we are -- what Harsh also alluded to earlier in the opening remarks was that we are hopeful that this is more of a pause rather than a systematic decline because we've seen existing business where projects have been put on hold. We have seen new projects taking -- facing delays in starting up because we are not receiving the raw content from the SMEs. And we're also seeing that some of the large opportunities that were -- that we're discussing with, the new customers as well as existing customers, has slowed down. But activity has picked up in the last 60 days. So we are expecting recovery will now begin in the eLearning business in Q2. We're expecting recovery in Q2. And of course, our goal is to get back to that INR 18 crore a quarter level type of revenue at 20% margin. And that's the first milestone that we will -- where we will say that, okay, we are at least back to the old level. And until we get to that level, I think, hopefully, growth will be quicker. And then once we get to that level of INR 18 crores, INR 20 crores, 20% margin, then, of course, we expect this -- things to be more moderate on the growth side, similar to 10% type of growth. So from our perspective, there's a revival that needs to be done on the yearly side. Every quarter, we will improve and be satisfied when we hit that INR 18 crores to INR 20 crores a quarter type of revenue at 20% margin. And underlying things do look good. We are seeing more educational institutions quote RFPs. They're looking more -- looking at more competitive providers rather than focusing on local providers, so looking at more international providers like us. Additionally, we are seeing corporates also engaging in new areas. So for example, virtual onboarding is a brand-new area where corporates are looking for outside help. A lot of the classroom training is now being replaced by digital. And many of the people are waking up late. So COVID hit, people were running around -- panicking and running around in a scurry. And now when the training schedule is playing out, they're realizing, how do we execute this training? We don't have any digital learning material, and everything is classroom-based. So I think there was a bit of a panic that led to a pause on spend, which hopefully, should now recover. And we're already seeing a scurry of activity on the opportunity side. So fingers crossed and time will play out.

Right. And just a follow-up, if I may. On this -- hello?

Yes. Go ahead.

Yes. So as you said, many corporates were not prepared for this digital mode of training. So how this is expected to change the economics of the business in terms of our own cost of delivery and any other kind of an optimization? That is question number one. And second, what has helped us recover volume in the other 2 businesses in this -- on the content side, especially in this quarter?

Yes. So I think -- yes, so everything that we produce is digital and even more so on the interactive and the eLearning side of our business. We don't prepare any classroom training. We don't have instructors. We don't do that type of work. Our work is entirely digital and interactive-driven on the eLearning side. That's why it's called eLearning. So from our perspective, the more people go from classroom to digital, the more our revenue increases, our opportunities increase, and margin costs are minimum because most of this is -- most of that is already in-house. So from an operating standpoint, we expect that, that will add to revenue and improve margins. So we don't see any changes in our operating model. Hopefully, we should expand and add people at the most. But really no economic change other than it should be margin accretive and revenue accretive. Coming to the content business, essentially, if we look at the content business, we have 3 verticals. We have journals, which is our largest business. We have books, which is the second largest business. And we have a digital business that consists of various types of work from learning in new media to accessibility to graphics and creative and so on, specific to the digital side, which is -- which basically the digital business moves in synchrony with how the journals business and the books business move because the same set of customers that order work on the core side also order work on the ancillary digital side. So with respect to our journals business, we expect recovery to take place over a 2- to 3-year period. So our goal really will be for journal business to really hold its scale. In order to get growth, we're looking at a 2- to 3-year recovery, which basically means this financial year and next financial year, we are pretty much hoping to hold our position. We're hoping to actively participate in RFPs and win new business which will play out only in a couple of years because that's how contracts shape up in the journals business. On the books side, success is dependent on quality, delivery as well as commercials. And that is why we've been able to recover very quickly on the books side. All of the recovery that you see in Content Solutions in Q1 is entirely related to either -- entirely related to educational publishing, either in the content development space or in the books space. So that's where the recovery is taking place. It's taking place because last year was a bit of a pause for 2 large publishers who were looking to merge. That merger failed and one of them has really picked up product development. So we're seeing a lot of work coming from them. Additionally, we've been able to acquire -- because this merger was happening and we were very concerned about concentration -- client concentration, we had -- led a very vibrant campaign last year, and we acquired a lot of new client logos. They were more untraditional type of companies. They are more EdTech type of companies that we're -- where we're assembling content for them. And that's the other key reason why that business has picked up. Our goal really with Content Solutions will be to maintain the journal scale, to continue to relentlessly grow the books business, and then hopefully, in a couple of years, we'll be able to stay -- or see a major step-up in the Content Solutions business because the journals business will start to recover, but that is at least 2 financial years away.

[Operator Instructions] We have next question from the line of Sachit Motwani from Param Capital.

Hello? Am I audible?

Yes, sir. Please go ahead, sir.

I just wanted to confirm one thing. Rahul, you said currently HighWire business is at EBITDA breakeven, correct?

Correct.

And you're expecting by Q4, they should -- you should see significant amount of profitability from that, correct? Is that -- I just wanted to confirm the same.

Yes, correct. So what we're looking at is Q4, we should see meaty profitability. And the goal for the team is to, by Q1 of next financial year or latest by Q2 of next financial year, get to the level of stand-alone profitability.

Okay. And like, can you give us some color on the geography mix for HighWire and also some on the balance sheet, do they carry any debt on the balance sheet?

So all debt was extinguished prior to acquisition by the seller. That was the condition for the sale. So the seller extinguished the debt. On -- so that's on the balance sheet. On the geography, very similar to MPS, 60% of the revenue is North America, the rest is Europe. They also have a couple of customers in Australia. From a delivery standpoint, and I'm going to give you round numbers here, there are about 30 people in the U.S., 30 in U.K. and 30 in Ireland.

Okay. So it's about 100-people team?

[Foreign Language] Closer to 90. So more like 85 actually. So closer to 90, yes.

[Operator Instructions] We have next question from the line of Suraj Subramaniam from Airavat.

I'm sorry if I missed this earlier. What is the revenue accretion you're getting from the HighWire acquisition?

So we're supposed to get USD 17 million. But we are expecting that there will be some revenue loss because it typically tends to happen. You only see it post acquisition. So our expectation is that we'll be closer to $13 million, but what we're supposed to get is $17 million.

We have next question from the line of [ Anuj Jain ] from [ Equitation Capital ].

My question is regarding employee additions in the last quarter. 100-odd employees we have added. So can you throw some color what is that?

That much up/down takes place in our business. So as you've seen, our revenue on the Content Solutions side has increased. So that much up/down -- 100 people up/down movement is part and parcel of the nature of the business, given that the business is largely people dependent. So I wouldn't read too much into 100. Yes.

Okay. Is it an indication that the pipeline in the content is strong for the future?

Of course. I think that...

Pipeline for the content business is strong for the...

Yes, yes, yes. You're absolutely right. We're straightforward in that. You're absolutely right.

[Operator Instructions] We have the next question from the line of Manjeet Buaria from Solidarity Investment Managers.

I just wanted to understand, and I'm sorry if I've missed this, I joined 5 minutes late. But in case of HighWire, does it also enable us now to get a seat at table with customers basically whom we could have not approached earlier based on our product suite?

Yes. So I think that's absolutely right. It does -- it gives us access to a new set of customers that we did not have access to. And the scholarly community is a very close community, either you're in or you're out, there's no medium. There's no happy medium. So it gives us access to a whole new set of customers. These are mostly societies, university presses and associations. We did have access to them through THINK, but to a limited number of them. And also the people that we had access to were kind of mid-management. Given the importance of the publishing technology, we are, at the minimum, engaging with the CTO now, and in many cases, also even the CEO because as publishers get smaller, the publishing technology, of course, is extremely important because think of it this way that if you're a company that has one retail store and if the retail store goes kaput, your entire business goes kaput. So the underlying publishing technology is so important that we're not only getting a seat at the table and getting more access to customers but we are getting -- we are moving from a conference room to a board room in terms of the -- if I can share the analogy in terms of the type of engagement that we're acquiring.

Okay. That's actually great. And I have just one more follow-up. Given that this is such a critical function, as you mentioned, right? So why is the industry so fragmented? Why aren't -- over the last probably 5, 10 years, we've seen 3, 4 players kind of consolidate and become big bulls in this industry. Because when it's so critical, why would you want to operate with a small [indiscernible].

So I think price has been the biggest reason. Price and familiarity and having access to local players. Those would be the 2 reasons. I think the second piece pretty much gets eliminated from -- due to COVID because no one really is meeting in person. But I think price would be a very significant lever. But the top 3, of course, are very expensive.

So -- but then, again, it's a big counterintuitive, Rahul. Even that if a product has so much operational importance, typically, we see the price sensitivity is much lower, especially when it comes to software as a segment or products as a segment. So why has this customer segment always been so price sensitive almost when something is so critical, as you mentioned, on the revenue side of things then?

Because it's reflective of the market, right? So if you look at publishing, publishing is heavily concentrated, the top 50 control publishing, right? So -- and -- so the publishing market in general is fragmented. In certain spaces, you have 10 customers control 60% of the market share of publishing of their market. So because their market is fragmented, the ability to spend is also fragmented to and concentrated amongst a certain customer base. There is a long tail of publishers. And pretty much if we look at the big 3, I won't mention the competition, but the big 3, the other 2 compete -- that compete with HighWire, they are all companies that -- I mean, the teams are entirely based in the U.S. and Europe. So of course, the costs are much higher, which means they have to charge higher prices. They don't have an option. These are all low-margin businesses. So it's a bit of a catch-22 where the comparative companies are not able to scale and attract the large customers because they don't have the history or the pedigree or the track record and the larger ones are not able to make -- to be more competitive to go after the tail because the costs are so high. Again, we can get into an academic conversation, but I think the takeaway really is that this is a huge opportunity for MPS from our sale price perspective.

Right, right. That's great. Rahul, one final follow-up, and then I will come back in the queue. When we -- so when we look -- think about HighWire, the way we have to think is, again, we will be winning business because we'll be most -- more cost competitive for providing similar value as the other -- some of your peers or maybe over time, better value in terms of the product, but the main selling point would be our pricing would be better?

No. So the main selling point will be the product. And the reason for that is: a, and when I say product, there are 2 aspects to this -- 3 aspects to this. One is being able -- firstly, having an underlying product that is a leader and being able to have the free cash and the money is available and the centers in India available to invest into these products. So a lot of the companies that we are competing with as HighWire today, they have very limited headroom to invest into product development because they are operating in high-cost centers. So our -- what will differentiate us, MPS, and HighWire is we are going to aggressively invest into the product. So we want to make sure each of our products is 2 years ahead of our competition. We want to make sure that our products are more end-to-end and comprehensive. So we're not at one stage of publishing. We're every -- we are a product at every stage of publishing. So given that we expect our products to be more end-to-end and comprehensive and also 2 years ahead in tech stack and features and functionality, we're hoping that will be the dominant driver for growth and for business. Secondly, one of the things that, again, because of having centers in India, we also believe that we will be able to do more customization and be better at implementation than our competitors because our competitors cannot afford to do much customization, which is a huge point of pain in the publishing world because academics are very precise. They have precise requirements, and they want to work with partners that can meet those precise requirements rather than hearing that this is our product, take it or leave it. So our consultative approach and ability to adapt to customer requirements is again going to be a big, big differentiator. And finally, we expect also on customer support to be able to add -- to be able to throw resources at the problem which our competition cannot do. So I think product and service is going to be what we're going to lead with and that's what's going to make us different. Price is just going to be icing on the cake. It's not going to be really what we lead with. It's going to be -- it's going to help close the deal.

As there are no further questions from the participants, I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Rahul Arora for closing comments. Over to you, sir.

All right. Thank you, everyone, for your time today. I think this is a very interesting stage that MPS is at and interesting in a positive way. We are at an inflection point. I think we've had a couple of difficult years as we've seen our content business decline, we've seen our platform business stutter a little bit, we've acquired an eLearning business that we are very happy about the growth prospects, but those have not been fully unlocked. As a management team, we're very satisfied that we've used the last couple of years to build: a, management depth; and b, build relationships with our customers that will help us now unlock the opportunities. I think this is a change of tide in the journey of MPS. Every business goes through ups and downs. And I think the downs part was over pretty much in Q4 of last year. So I think -- I'm very hopeful, and along with my management team, we're looking to steer MPS upwards now. So looking forward to all your wonderful support. Please keep asking the questions that you're asking because it makes us pause, it makes us think. If any of you need to reach out to us, please do reach out to us. But thank you once again for your wonderful support and look forward to now a prosperous phase coming out of a downward cycle. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, sir.