Quick Heal Technologies Limited ($QUICKHEAL)

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Quick Heal Technologies Limited Q4 and FY '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Hena Khatri from Valorem Advisors. Thank you all over to you, ma'am.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and a very warm welcome to you all. My name is Hena Khatri from alarm Advisors, and we represent the Investor Relations of Quick Heal Technologies Limited. On behalf of the company, I would like to thank you all for participating in the company's earnings call for the fourth quarter and financial year ended 2026. Before we begin, a quick, short cautionary statement. Some of the statements made in today's earnings conference 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 conference call is purely to educate and bring awareness about the company's fundamental business and financial quarter under review. Now let me introduce you to the management participating with us in today's earnings call. We have with us Dr. Kailash Katkar, Managing Director; Dr. Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director; Mr. Ankit Maheshwari, Chief Financial Officer; Deepak Jha; and Sneha Katkar from the Strategy Office. Without any further delay, I would request Mr. Dr. Kailash katkar to start with his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you, Hena. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The revenue of the revenue for us has remained stagnant over the decade and even degrowing for the last 2 years, nearly INR 100 crores of profit that we used to post every year has eroded. In fact, we have posted INR 10-plus crores of losses this year. Adding further, this is the worst quarter in the terms of profitability in the history of Quick Heal for as long as I can remember. I know you guys are curious to understand what is happening. The answer is simple. We have been transforming, a transformation from B2C antivirus company to holistic cybersecurity company, serving consumers, enterprise, government, not like an English jargon, but transforming our products, transforming with rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape, transforming our target customer segment, transforming our business model, transforming the DNA of the organization to make this happen. The enterprise vertical, which used to represent 20% of our top line 5 years back has now become a major contributor to the business, and now represent more than 50% not by default, but by design. Why is this transformation required and how is it impacting us? We all know that globally, B2C antivirus industry is struggling due to the industry headwinds and the degrowth. Many of the oldest company who just focus on consumer business have perished over the years. More so recently due to the hardware price hike, we have witnessed a sharp fluctuation in the business. We are one of the few companies globally who have risen and made the transformation a reality, and thus are able to stay strong. But it demands patience, agility and investment. We have never shied our way for it and have constantly invested in both R&D and sales and marketing, along these many years. The degrowth in consumer business over the years has been compensated by the growth in the enterprise business. Based on the progress we are seeing, we believe we should be able to navigate these challenges of business degrowth. Over the next 3 to 4 quarters, this enterprise business contribution a major share of our revenue. I would also like to pass on the confidence that Quick Heal will continue to hold leadership position in the consumer segment as well. I envision to move enterprise verticals to represent close to 80%, 90% of the top line in coming next 2 to 3 years, and I'm bullish about the future, even though the quarter and yearly financial results are not very encouraging. With this, I would now like to hand it over to Sanjay for further business updates.

Thanks, Kailash, and very good evening to everyone. The cybersecurity landscape is undergoing rapid transformation, driven by AI-lead threats, increasing geopolitical tensions, evolving regulations and growing digital adoption across industries. Organizations today are no longer looking only for reactive security solutions. They are seeking predictive intelligence and proactive cybersecurity capabilities. . The cybersecurity industry today is dominated by vendors from the U.S. and Israel. However, with rising global polarization and cyber warfare increasingly becoming the first line of attack and defense, we foresee a significant market opportunity emerging for us as an Indian cybersecurity vendor. Throughout the year, we have clearly demonstrated our capability and thought leadership across multiple instances. During the multifront, digital assault under operation Hindu Sindhoor, [indiscernible] labs served as a critical defense center for India's digital infrastructure tracking and identifying over 650 coordinated cyber incidents and including spear phishing, malware and DDoS attack linked to 35 state-backed and activist groups. Our research team also untoward high-impact transitional cyber [indiscernible] network. As Kailash highlighted, we are no longer just an antivirus company. Today, we are a trusted cybersecurity expert with solution spanning, endpoint security, AI-driven detection and response, data protection and privacy, threat management, zero trust security, mobility management and specialized security services, all powered by [ Secrite Labs ], the largest malware analysis facility in India. Last year, we also launched digital risk protection services and ransomware recovery as a service. We began onboarding initial customers within just 2 to 3 months of launch, which reflects strong market acceptance and the growing relevance of these offerings. The DPDP Act, which is similar in spirit to the European GDPR framework has opened a meaningful opportunity for us. We anticipate this shift several years ago and invested early in building in-house products to help customers address evolving regulatory and compliance requirements. I'm happy to share that we have already onboarded several large BFSI customers and are working closely with them in their compliance journey. We are also witnessing strong customer interest and market pull as the government-defined compliance time line approaches in May 2027. AI is now reshaping the cybersecurity landscape at an unprecedented pace. Attackers are increasingly using AI to discover vulnerabilities, automated exploit development and scale attacks much faster than before. This significantly reduces the response window for defenders and makes speed, intelligence and automation far more critical than ever. At Quick Heal and [indiscernible], we are actively leveraging AI across threat detection, malware analysis, threat intelligence and response automation to enhance protection at scale. We believe AI will not replace cybersecurity companies, but it will clearly differentiate organizations that can adapt quickly from those that cannot. Our focus remains on ensuring that our technology, research capabilities and innovation stay ahead of this industry shifts. With continued investment in AI-driven technologies, threat intelligence, data privacy and scalable global capabilities, we believe we are well positioned for the next phase of cybersecurity growth and transformation. I would now like to hand over to Ankit for financial updates.

Thank you, Sanjay, and good evening, everyone. Let me now take you through the financial highlights for FY '26. This has been a mixed year for us from a performance standpoint. While the enterprise business delivered consistent growth, the consumer business continued to face headwinds. Revenue for FY '26 stood at INR 261 crores compared to INR 280 crores in the previous year. Deferred revenue stood at INR 34 crores as against INR 14 crores. Order book stands at INR 55 crores as against INR 6 crores in FY '25. Let me now discuss each vertical in detail. The enterprise vertical recorded consistent growth, supported by a healthy buildup in deferred revenue and the order book. During the year, we successfully executed the order relating to cyber literacy received in February 2025 and secured an additional order relating to implementation of integrated cybersecurity solution worth INR 64 crores, which is reflected in our current order book. This further strengthens our confidence in the transformation to a holistic cybersecurity solutions provider. This growth was largely driven by robust momentum in the government segment. While we continue to strengthen our government business and deepen penetration within private enterprises, we have also begun making strategic investments in Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America to expand our market share as we saw initial successes in these territories. We had onboarded marquee BFSI customers for our data privacy product last year, and this market opportunity has expanded meaningfully during the current year with organizations increasingly prioritizing regulatory compliance initiatives. Coming to the consumer vertical. The consumer vertical continued to face persistent headwinds due to broader industry slowdown. In addition, the IT hardware market witnessed significant price inflation of up to 400% during 2026 compared to 2025. As our channel partners operate across both hardware and software segments, we observed an opportunistic and meaningful shift in their investment focus towards the hardware business temporarily during this phase. Overdues, which has historically remained elevated in our business, worsened further during the year. Hence, we have tightened our control on the credit cycles with the partners, thereby impacting our top line. We continue to closely monitor the situation with a clear priority on bringing down the overdues. Having said that, we have a long-standing relationship with the channel partners and have witnessed and overcome such cycles in the business together in the past. Our EBITDA for the year stood at negative INR 29 crores and was impacted by the decline in top line. At the same time, our overall cost base remained largely flat, supported by multiple cost optimization initiatives undertaken during the year. I would also like to highlight that in line with our prudent accounting practices, all R&D investments continue to be fully expensed off in the year incurred. PAT for the year stood at negative INR 11 crores. Our balance sheet remains strong and debt-free, providing us the flexibility to continue investing in R&D and market expansion opportunities. As a result of our focused collection efforts, our overdues have improved significantly, which was INR 167 crores at the end of last year, has further went up to INR 176 crores at the end of H1, now stands at INR 138 crores. Our cash and investments stood at INR 224 crores at the end of the year and INR 249 crores as we speak. Quick Heal Foundation celebrated 10th anniversary, setting a new benchmark of touching beyond 90 lakh lives to date. With a strong foundation and a clear strategic road map, we remain committed to delivering consistent and sustainable growth in the future. Thank you, everyone, for your time and continued support. We will now open the floor for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have the first question from the line of Devang Shah from [indiscernible] Financials.

Yes. The question is like this was the worst quarter we have ever seen in the company. Is the next few quarters also, we are going to see some hiccups or like the phase is coming to the end on the near term?

So Devan, thank you. In our commentary, we have clearly stated that this will be there for some more time. But this is a transitionary phase. We are getting ready for the future and...

3 quarters.

And this will be there for...

Max 2 quarters.

And sir, what are the plans for the AI adaptations?

What's the question? What is the plan for AI adoation?

Yes. Is there any plan like we are going to adopt the AI on the like software basis or something like that for the expansion of the business or something?

So I'll say for us, like AI is not a future road map like it is already being integrated into multiple layers of our cybersecurity stack. We are using AI and machine learning across threat detection, anomaly, malware classification or even response automation. So at the same time, we are also now adding AI capabilities into different cross functions, not only I'll say product, but also our internal functions. So that is definitely helping us optimize cost and speed up our development. So cybersecurity domain as such is where we are like, I'll say, AI is being used like anything across. So our approach combines AI with deep threat research, telemetry and human experts in security, I'll say accuracy matters more. And that's where we have been using AI. And I'm seeing -- in coming quarters, we'll be seeing a lot of optimization on that front as well, yes.

Okay, sir. And the last question from my side. Just want to know like on the revenue front also, we are going to see the -- like a drop over there or the drop over on the revenue front would not be so much like...

So we would not be able to comment on this. But yes, our cost structure almost remains fixed being 60% is the manpower cost and other cost is OpEx, which is almost fixed. So there will be some pain on revenue, especially in the consumer business.

And like if this year was -- like the quarter was really very bad. So is there anything like the management has taken over like for the remuneration cut or something or the percentage for the remuneration remain the same?

It remains the same. So this is the transitional phase where we believe that we will come out from this comfortably. So we are not taking any of those drastic steps. And as per the normal process, we are going ahead with the plan.

[Operator Instructions] We have the next question from the line of Devansh from Quick Heal Technologies.

It's a mistake. I'm not from Quick Heal. I'm from Eternal Capital. The moderator might have written it incorrectly. Okay. So my first question was, I would just like to understand what are like the top growth drivers that the management believes is going to take the company forward for the next, let's say, 3 to 5 years?

Yes. So Devansh, as we said that enterprise is the growth engine. And in that, especially the new products which we have launched last 2 years, which includes ADR XDR, data privacy, which in my commentary also, I spoke on that, that's post the rules and regulations came in, that's another growth engine. Also, we have launched DRPS and RRAS last year. So these are the 3 or 4 growth engines. Apart from it, we have a Make in India story where we are looking government business and international penetration as well.

Okay. Understood, sir. And just what are you -- like what are the revenue splits you're expecting from these particular segments across -- what are your targets internally?

So we don't share these targets to the outside world. But in the commentary also, Kailash Katkar said that in the 2- to 3-year time frame, our revenue from enterprise will go up to 80% to 90%. And we will continue to remain our leadership position in the quickly consumer business.

Got it, sir. And with this, all these data getting on the cloud, are you seeing any particular traction from that particular segment? So instead of hardware, a lot of this data is being stored on cloud?

So cloud adoption is getting -- is increasing year-on-year. And in fact, in our presentation also, we said that it is more than 30% now. So cloud adoption is increasing.

And this is also helping us with respect to the DP solution that we have actually is data privacy solution is also making right sense because we are data that is being going outside the organization as well as scattered across the organization needs to be monitored and controlled. So that's -- like I mean, say cloud journey is like security plus data privacy is something that really helps us. And so for us as well, if you see our products, people -- we used to have almost 20% of our EPP and EDR solutions deployed on premises on cloud 2 years back, but now that has contributed 40%. So cloud adoption in security solutions has also gone up.

Noted, sir. And just one last question. I just wanted to understand any sort of metric that you would like to give. So let the cloud adoption increases by 20% in FY '27, what kind of metric are you looking -- if that industry gains 20%, what are you looking at? How would your line segment grow?

So see, as we have been telling that we have increased our number of offerings, where when things like organizations going for cloud adoption, their attack surface increases. And that is where our newer services like DRPS, digital risk protection as well as cloud-related offerings like [indiscernible] for accessing those cloud workloads really makes sense. And that's where these solutions will have more traction as the cloud adoption increases.

Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions from the participants, we now conclude the question-and-answer session. I now hand the conference back to the management for the closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your time and continued support. Thank you.

Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of Quick heal Technologies Limited, we conclude this conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.