SIS Limited (SIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the SIS Limited annual earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vamshidhar Guthikonda, President, M&A and Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone. I'm sure many of you would have seen the management presentation that was streamed at the URL that included the invite. So glad to, again, lead you over here where we can have a more interactive discussion, where we can take your questions and respond. I have with me on the call all the speakers in the presentations: Rituraj; Devesh; Mike, who's Head of our International business, Dhiraj, our CEO and Head of our FM and Emerging business; Tapash who's the CEO of India Security; and Oscar Esteban who heads cash services business. So the entire unit heads and top management is there on the call, and we look forward to answering your questions. So we'll just wait for a minute for the question queue to be freed up before we start taking the questions. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal.

Congrats, first of all, very interesting commentary on 2025 aspiration. Looking forward to that. Just wanted to understand how do you see inorganic versus organic contribution in the aspiration to double share in both India security and subsidy management space. And from a time line perspective, given that we are going through a fairly tough phase and you also halted the pressure for your competitors right now, do you think a big portion of that will be more near term versus FY '23, '24 event?

Well, firstly, thanks for participating and sitting through the management presentations. I hope it has been able to give everybody a little bit of insight about service line-wise results as well as outlook. Coming to the vision 2025, it's a 4-year plan. You asked 2, 3 pointed questions, so one by one. Our focus predominantly will continue to remain on organic development. As we scale over the next 4 years, and we've modeled this out, so we've modeled it out by SBU by month for the next 48 months. This modeling exercise was already taking between December and mid-February with all SBU heads and forms the baseline for the vision 2025 document and the ESOP, which is now rolling out to more than 700 key managers. So if I give you specific numbers, less than 15% of our next 4 years revenue development is being planned for M&A. 85% or predominantly is organic development. Number two, let me clarify that in sync with this model, even as we speak today, we are completely focused on the organic side. We have been looking at inorganic selectively. And we have executed in the last 4, 5 years as a listed company several transactions. So you'd know the thesis on M&A. But let it be very clearly understood that M&A is only strategic for -- either for market share and geography or to enter a customer segment or to add a service portfolio gap. The real growth has to be organic that [ PSI ] support. I hope that helps.

Yes. No, that was helpful. One quick one on the strategy management side. I think it's very visible that the focus has increased in the space. Can you offer some views on what is the pricing ability in the space? Has there been any change of that in last 1 year? Do you think we now have a higher ability to merge clients to reduce the DSO days in the FM space? And in relation to that, is there any acceleration in the shift from unorganized to organized space, which we can exploit going forward?

Well, for the FM space, like Dhiraj already outlined in his presentation, we see facility management to probably be the biggest gainer in our entire portfolio because facility management pre-corona used to be a cleaning and hygiene issue. It was an outsourcing and efficiency issue. Today, it -- facility management has transformed into a health and safety. It's about having a safe workplace for employees or a safe place for your customers to visit. So I see the per square foot expenditure on FM services going up because it's become a business continuity imperative. That's the way I see it playing up. And I think Dhiraj has already outlined that we have made a significant improvement in Q4 versus Q3. So I think the FM story is pretty much intact. As far as DSO is concerned, we are operating at very good DSOs at this moment at March ending. And I'll be happy just to maintain that.

The next question is from the line of Sudheer from ICICI.

First question is to Devesh. On the Henderson clarification you gave earlier, actually, you were alluding to the fact that there is no change in the implied valuation of the entity. Simultaneously, you are saying because the minority investors or the exiting promoter chose to exercise the option in 2020 rather than because in '23, there is an impairment or there is a write-down of the value. But Devesh, if -- as per our understanding, as per Ind AS rules, the future financial liability related to the noncontrolling interest put option is actually carried at present value at any balance sheet date. So if the time value of it is accounted for already at any balance sheet date, logically, it should not really matter if the exiting promoter is exercising the option in 2023 -- or in 2020 because anyway you are carrying the value at the present value on any balance sheet date. So how do we understand this? Any clarification on this aspect will be helpful?

Yes. So under accounting rules, when you have to value that future liability for the remaining shareholding, you obviously have to take into account a number of assumptions and factors. And one of the assumptions and factors we took into account was the business plan which was agreed to between the shareholders and the series of activities which were required to achieve the business plan right up to 2023 because that was one of the last option dates in the agreement. It has, of course, a number of assumptions around the plans, the growth and other organic, inorganic matters which are there. Now that's the way you value that future value. And the present value is only based on discounting factor. The difference between that future value and present value is not what activity it takes at some -- year-to-year, but simply a discounting factor of that time period. So obviously, what has happened is that -- and the way the accounting works is that the entire future value gets reflected in goodwill. It is not reflected in any investment value, but it reflects -- it reflects fully in the goodwill. So when you make a purchase of the 60%, obviously, some element has gone to goodwill and other intangibles. But this entire 40% has also gone to the goodwill line. Now of course, the founder has chosen for his own reasons, reasons best known to him, to exercise the option in 2020. Obviously, there's not enough time between then, 2019 and 2020, to execute all the plans which the business had planned to achieve over the next 3 or 4 years. So what we did was because this entire consideration was -- future consideration was sitting in goodwill, and that was also a very large number, and so a significant write-down of the liability. So conservatively, we had a discussion and consulted with the auditors as to how we should treat this entire event. So they also suggested that because this was there -- right now, it is largely towards there, you're going to write down the liability. It is a significant amount. So our recommendation is also you adjust the goodwill to that extent. So we went by the auditor guidance, we went by the audit committee advice, and that is why we wrote down the [ figures around here ], similar to that.

So if I just take a quick moment to interject. Sudheer, let me just put it very simply, the way I understand it, okay? All our acquisitions are 2-stage, 3-stage acquisitions, where we acquire majority and then we acquire over time linked to performance of the business, right? So what we basically do in very simplistic terms is to try and assume how much we'll have to pay 2 years down the line or 3 years down the line, depending on how the business performs. We had obviously made a similar calculation for Henderson. And because the promoter is going out 3 years earlier, our payout is significantly lower. So our future liability to this deal is significantly lower than it would have been in 2023 when the business would be significantly larger. So therefore, we are adjusting down. The true value of the business remains as is. In my head, this is just simply a reassessment of what was payable for the remainder 40% if it was done in '23 versus it being done now.

Yes. But just one thought on that. Is -- I completely understand the fact why goodwill had to be written down when proportionately the future financial liability on the liability side is written down. So there's something going down on the liability side, and goodwill has to proportionately go down on the asset side. But my question is more on the future financial liability itself coming down. Because if you are saying every other variable is ceteris paribus, every other variable is remaining the same, only the exiting promoter is exiting in 2020 instead of 2023. Based on my limited understanding, because we are anyways carrying it at the present value of the future financial liability and not time and adjusted future financial liability, my understanding is that it should not have changed, and that's the clarification or that's the explanation I was trying to look at that.

Yes, I understand. But as I mentioned, the whole computation of the future liability was based on an agreed business plan between the 2 shareholders, which had a number of assumptions and number of growth rate assumptions, number of other ways of growing the business in organic, organic everything. So it's all based on that, an agreed business plan, a kind of business plan between the 2 partners. So when we went to the auditor in the beginning of the transaction and said now this is what the situation is. You have 2020, you have 2022, you have 2023. You have this agreement, you have the business plan. How do you think we should go about it? So they guided us to go out by the business plan, to go by 2023 exit. And so this is the way you should be valuing the future liability. So both times between 2019 and 2021, we've gone by the auditor's guidance to make the computation of the value. Of course, during the last year, the growth plans could not be executed. And even the inorganic plans could not be executed. And the promoter chose to exit. So when the promoter chose to exit, we went back to the auditor and said, "Now what should we do?" And this is what they guided us to do constantly by the auditor's advice on this matter. But as Rituraj said, the inherent value of the business has not changed. It's strongly placed. It's got significant and good cash balances, good customers, good clients. So inherently, the value of the business has not changed.

Sure. And on the cash conversion part. Actually, this year, we had seen very good cash conversion and net debt levels going down. Any thoughts on why we are not actually repaying the debt, and at gross level, it's not going down? Instead in this quarter, I think that the gross level debt has actually gone up. So any color on that?

Yes. So as you would note some from my presentation that in March, we raised INR 190 crores of NCDs. The primary purpose of the INR 190 crores of NCD was to pay off the existing INR 150 crores of NCDs. So if you roll forward to 15 days after March 31, to 15th of April, you will see that the NCDs -- all NCDs of INR 150 crore have been repaid and the gross rate has come down. And just to add a color about repaying the debt. I would like to inform that when we settled the transaction for Southern Cross Protection in September, October 2020, we did not draw down on debt, but instead we paid it out of free cash flows, which had accumulated and accrued in the business. That was also a conscious part we took that we had access to the debt, but we did not take access to the debt, but use that cash to pay it down -- to pay off the liability to the Southern Cross Protection shareholders.

So I'll just jump in there as well. Devesh, please excuse me. So 2 things, Sudheer, you've asked a very fundamental question. The first thing is that the gross debt is actually lower than reported on 31st March because of what Devesh explained. I think we are at INR 100 to INR 150-odd crores. So it's lower than last year, first thing. Second thing is, yes, we could use the cash on hand to actually repay debt. But you have to understand that we are a business which is doing roughly INR 820 crores monthly revenues. And out of this -- nature of business is such that almost 85% is statutory payments and wage payments every month. So the cash that is sitting on my books may look large. And the question is natural that why is it not used to repay outstanding debt, et cetera. But the point is that the cash is only equal to 5 weeks of working capital for SIS, maybe 6. So I don't think that we have so much extra cash just as yet. And I'm sure at some point in time, if we do have that, just like we are meeting SXP payment through internal accruals, we will look to take up more and more repayment and buyback and outstanding shares purchased through accruals and not debt. But as of right now, you must understand that the cash might look large to you. But in my head, it's only 5, 6 weeks worth of working capital. And given the current environment, I think it's better to sit on cash.

Yes. Fair enough. Fair enough. One last question, if I may. Actually, Rituraj, your presentation is very, very impressive and, in fact, highly ambitious also despite the current problems that overall, as an economy, we are going through. But just if I prod a little bit further on that, you're essentially targeting -- or you are alluding to the fact that you would look to see the market share of India security at 10% versus the current 5%, so is the case in the case of facility management services as well. So which means you're talking about doubling the market share. And these 2 segments' assets are growing in the range of 15% to 20% on a CAGR basis. So the growth rates you're talking about here are really high. I mean if I put it -- if I had to quantify these or put it, add some numbers to the face of this, you are essentially talking about 30%, 35% sort of growth rates for the domestic part of the business. So is that the right way of understanding it? Or it's just an expiration at this venture, which is contingent on several economic factors?

Well, you have to first understand that the vision 2025 articulation is predominantly and involved facing articulation. We've just given you perspective of it. You must understand very clearly that this is to excite the internal audience, to drive confidence in the internal audience, right? It is an aspirational objective. Like our last 3 financial 5-year plans have been, this is also a highly ambitious, highly aspirational objective. As far as the stock market and your models are concerned, please proceed in the same guidance that we've given you since last 3, 4 years. SIS continues to pursue 20% year-on-year growth, 20% return [indiscernible] and greater than 50% OCF to EBITDA. These are the 3 metrics I've spoken about at several occasions in the past, and these are the 3 metrics that you should use in your model. Please understand that the vision 2025 is an internal commentary. It is designed to show people the opportunities that lies ahead.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Abhijit Akella from IIFL.

Just a couple of clarifications on the results. First is just with regard to the margins in a couple of the segments, they seem to have taken a little bit of a dip in this quarter, particularly India security and FM as well. So I'm sorry if I missed any commentary by Devesh given earlier. But if you could just elaborate on what exactly has driven this and how you see this trending forward in coming quarters?

Devesh, do you want to take that question?

Maybe Rituraj can take your question.

Okay. Sure. I think let me say that the important thing for us is to look at the gross margin line. If you look at the India security business gross margin line, that remains intact. There's no change on the gross margin side. The change in EBITDA is because of gratuity accounting catch-up that has happened in Q4 and some SG&A movement. Otherwise, the India security business is pretty much reporting similar margin profile as it did in Q3. The FM margin is compressed because of the negative operating leverage. The business scale actually -- monthly revenue scale has come down. So it's looking lower right now. But if you normalize it, gratuity, if you normalize it for SG&A, that will still show up at close to 4%. And when the business scales back to INR 120 crore plus revenue, I'm hopeful that it will come back to the 6-odd-percent range. So a very high-level comment there is SIS margin profile continues around 6% ballpark when you normalize it. It's at par with what it was Q4 of last year. And pretty much, that's what we've maintained through this year. And that is acknowledgment to our pricing power in the face of acute cost cut pressure by all customers. They have not cut essential services and SIS SBUs on margins the way one had initially anticipated, including myself. So I think gross margin is intact and the normalized level of EBITDA margin for all businesses is going to level out at the 6% range like it was pre-corona.

Got it. That's helpful. Just one clarification there. Is it fair to assume that the gratuity catch-up was like a 1 quarter phenomenon, and it's not going to repeat itself going forward? And then second, how about the SG&A side, is that a more recurring kind of step-up? Or is that also -- is there some one-off in that as well?

Well, I'll let Devesh tackle the gratuity catch-up. I'll quickly -- on the SG&A, I think all businesses -- around about mid-December, we took stop to say that India is going to go back to normal, everything is going to go back to normal. We started pushing up some SG&A expenses in Q4 in anticipation of a big jump start of the economy. Obviously, like most, we also did not see the second wave. And that's why you have a surge in the SG&A cost between Jan to March. I don't see that to be a permanent phenomena entirely. And I think it will level out. But Abhijit, again, my advice to everybody is do not get super excited with an outlandish 7.5% EBITDA performance of SIS International in one quarter because that's not the steady-state number of EBITDA margin for international business, more than 7%. Similarly, the steady-state margin performance for our FM business is not 1.9%. These are just quarter-to-quarter aberrations that are happening in a crisis here. The important thing is to look at the gross margin profile. And that remains stable, which basically means that this will -- given a few quarters of wobbly behavior would settle down around the 6% ballpark range as it was pre-COVID.

So I'll tackle that first 2 question. Yes, in the last quarter of the year, we have forecast a normal custom, got the actuarial valuations done by the action. And this is a catch-up on -- based on that. So our assumptions which reduced every year, that is what is used actually to give us this value. We'll try and reduce these aberrations quarter-to-quarter from this year onwards. So we'll try not have this thing at the end of the year.

Yes. No, that's very helpful. The second thing I had was just with regard to something that you just touched upon, the international margins in particular. So in Mike's presentation as well as the FM presentation earlier, I noticed that I think P4g in New Zealand clocked something like 22% margins last year and SXP was 11% while Terminix was also really high this year. So is there some element of kind of -- one-off kind of contracts in there that we should expect will normalize over the coming year? Or do you see some of that sustaining going forward?

So Devesh and Mike, do you want to take that question?

Yes. Maybe Mike can do that, right? Mike, are you on.

Yes, I just gone off mute. I thought they were automating it, my apologies. SXP had some extra revenue this year due to COVID in the retail space, which allowed them to increase their EBITDA percentage quite substantially actually for the year and was transformed [indiscernible] what it was [indiscernible] SXP. So they produced revenue of 121 million at -- with a 13.6 million EBITDA, so 11.2%. So some of that flowed through in relation to their business. They've ceased all their COVID work. But pleasing, we've had a couple of very small acquisitions, which we have taken from a profitability of about 10% to mid-30s. So they are very synergistic for us, improved our geographic coverage. The P4G, that suffered pretty badly. That was almost exclusively a major event business when we bought the business, and we thought to diversify it, which we've successfully done. And we're quite fortunate really because COVID killed off events completely. It also affected their film production industry. So we expect that the P4G margins are -- won't really [indiscernible]. And in fact, we believe there's still considerable opportunity for growth in margin and certainly good opportunity to grow revenue.

The next question is from the line of [ Sriram Rajaram ] from [indiscernible] Capital.

So my question is basically on the India security business and also the FMS business. So if you can elaborate a bit more on what is the impact of work from home for these 2 business lines because I see a large part of revenue, especially on the FMS side, coming from the office space. So if you can elaborate a bit more on that and provide some color for the next couple of years [indiscernible].

Devesh, would you like to take that?

Yes, sure. So if in FM, yes, there have been some offices that have been closed, presumed the [ indiscernible ] sector. But there's been, in parallel, a huge demand pickup from the health care sector, the pharmaceutical sector, areas that we specialize in, and we are the largest in the country. We manage almost 400 hospitals in the country. And we see that sustained demand for the next couple of years. We've been also adding more on the manufacturing side, including increasing our range of services that we offer in these manufacturing and the logistics segments.

Okay. And for the security business in India?

Yes. Shall I? Yes. In security business, work from home, primarily, we have seen this it, [ IT-ICS ] sector and hospitality sector, hospitality sector, not that way, work from home. There are otherwise, totally down, but primarily IT-ICS sector. And then our statute -- our good thing was that our business share in it its was not too much. It was within a reasonable percentage. And then accordingly, we concentrated our focus into other areas, which was growing. Now for IT-ICS sector, if we are doing, say, 100 before, and now the minimum thing, which is being maintained in the range of 40, 50 so that's good enough. And then for next 2 years when we have shifted our focus, that will not really impact to that extent to our overall plan.

Can you share some data point here? I mean, how much percentage of total business would be the IT and offices, the work space?

So I'll see some numbers off-line. But broadly, if I remember numbers from last year or for the first 9 months, the IT-ICS sector was, I think, less than 10% of the India security vertical. While it was significantly higher in the facility management state. It was in the 10% plus somewhere around 2% in the India security site. I'll tell you more the numbers post the call.

The next question is from the line of Alok Deshpande from Edelweiss Securities.

I'm [indiscernible] to position a very, very challenging year. A couple of questions. First, Devesh, you mentioned in your presentation about transitioning the business from a services to Solutions business. I just wanted to understand that a little bit better given the fact that you are looking at sort of a 20% transition or 20% contribution there. Can you just help me understand the sort of help us an example how perhaps a service-based client can switch to a solution-based kind of service there?

Well, there can be several examples, yes. But I think the most current example that I can think of is, let's say, like we were just discussing IT sector, which is like maybe 10% of our India security business. And of the overall business, the IT sector revenues will be below 5%, you consolidate it. Another such large sector is the banking sector. In fact, the banking sector is larger than even IT. What's happening in the banking sector is that the banks are on a massive cost cut, right? They want to get rid of all the guards standing outside bank branches, particularly in night shift. And also, if you remember, there's a lot of guards that you see sitting in the ATMs or sitting outside the ATM, which they all want to get rid of now. Just remember the count, right? They are more like more than 2 lakh ATMs in the country and more than a lakh, lakh and a half or off-site ATMs so the banks actually were using 5 lakh-plus guards to be sitting outside bank ATMS. Now they want to reduce all of that, cut all that cost. What they are doing is alarm monitoring and response. They want to put in alarms instead of guards. They want to monitor these alarms remotely, and they want to have emergency response or beat patrol, somebody to go and check at certain frequency, et cetera, rather than having a full-time guard. In the last quarter itself, in the last 3 months, we've picked up 13,000 such ATM locations in the last 3 months, which adds up to maybe 10% of all ATMs in the country which are off-site. So I think this is a customer-led change from a manpower headcount-type solution to a -- service to a solution where they are asking us to provide alarms on an OpEx model. We own the alarms, we leave it to them. It's a 4-year, in some instances, 5-year contract, and we are doing all the technology-based monitoring remotely out of good now. And we are using the IOPS technology platform to use our area offices, spread across 600 districts to give them Google coordinates to go and check these sites, fill up a form on their mobile app and upload the status of this ATM check once or twice every day. So that's a classic example of moving from a service to a solution. But I think Alok, this is not just happening in banking, this is happening across sectors. I mean, I'll call on my colleague, Dhiraj, who is actually leading the One SIS project where we are actually doing multi-service solutions. We are mixing security, facility management, all of it together. So maybe Dhiraj can give you a quick example of One SIS. That's another type of solution, not a security migrating to a more tech-oriented security solution, but a combo solution, a multi-service solution. Dhiraj, could you just help with an example, please?

Yes. So what's happening with the COVID is another trend that we have seen that clients want a single solution provider. They don't want to deal with multiple vendors, both from a safety point as well as the coordinating point. And we are getting more and more contracts on a one is a year basis. That includes not just our usual housekeeping, mechanized housekeeping, security, or even the tax equity, but other value-added services from horticulture to linen handling to even providing qualified staff for the health care sector. We just took up a large hospital in Mumbai, where we are providing patient care attendance and qualified nurses, too. So it is that entire outsourcing of all noncore activities that are coming under the One SIS. And they are usually on an output base, not a cost-plus model, which allows us to earn a higher margin. And at the same time, often save costs for the client side also. So this is a model that we also want to adopt and promote more in the future. And I think this will be a trend that many of the clients do.

So Alok, just to close that out. The good thing about solutions, why we are pushing solutions so hard is because solutions means that you need to use your balance sheet like leasing of equipment. Solution means that there are lesser competitors who can tackle that level of technology. Solutions also means that you have longer duration contracts. Solution also means that your pricing is outcome-linked, not input-linked. Overall, Solutions business means that you operated a higher gross margin line by almost 5% compared to a standard service.

Right. April, just to understand the cost economics a little better. So because banks are cutting down their cost, selection, ATM, we want to reduce the cost of security per ATM. So in this case, the revenue per ATM for SIS will also go down, but because the tech-based solution, the operating leverage and all those things come in, and you actually make, let's say, more profit per location despite lower revenue per location. Is that the simplest way to understand this?

Yes, absolutely. And I thought you like a higher margin, better than higher revenue. The last time...

Yes. No, no. So I think that's that I want to take. And second thing, regard was also one of the earlier participants have asked whether how higher margins can go. Actually, I had a slightly opposite question that given that the Vision 2025 will require SIS to be probably be more aggressive. And obviously, the -- like you said, the targets are aspirational to motivate the internal team, et cetera. The question is, will the level of investments -- will also those investments go up? Will some of that mean that your higher SGA costs will probably be there and those kind of thing? So my question is how confident are we in terms of sustaining 6% rather than actually thinking on the upside?

Okay. So let me put it like this. SIS operates 306 branches across the country. In larger cities like Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, we have like 20 branches in one single 50-kilometer radius. So we are not suddenly going to add another 300 branches to achieve our doubling market share objective. Absolutely not. The branch growth is going to be negligible because I think the time to really leverage our pan-India presence has come. The second thing is, are we looking to increase market share by pricing ourselves low, the answer is absolutely no. We do not want to become the cheapest and the largest security company in the country. That's not our objective. I'd rather be not so large, but hold my premium pricing. So you must understand that this market share growth is not going to come at the cost of gross margin compromise. That's not how we're looking at it. This market share growth is going to come from the 5 factors I called out. You have to understand, Alok, that labor reforms means that my addressable market is going to go up significantly. When the government spends INR 5 lakh crore on infrastructure over the next 4 years, the locations where they need FM services is going to go up or security services or CCTV cameras is going to go up. So the trends I called out is for that reason. I see the market expand and then I see also our market share expanding within that. So the opportunity is very clear. And I think we are in pole position because of our #1 spot that we are occupying, our pan-India presence. And most of all, the showing of SIS is during the crisis year. Mind you, we are an essential service. We are supposed to go to work when others go to work from home, right? So last 12 months has allowed us the opportunity to demonstrate the fact that we are not only #1 for namesake. We are actually also a reliable service partner. And I think this also has called out a lot of other companies, which have not been able to do the same over the last 12, 14 months. And I think if the market responds, the -- based on our performance, then some market share will be coming our way naturally.

The next question is from the line of [ Dev Arjun ] from ICICI Mutual Fund.

Yes. I just wanted to understand with the competition getting weak, how do you see the value and volume proposition or -- and secondly, in terms of how this sector is likely important for you? And with COVID, how this sector expose the changes for you in the India security services?

So I think the first and the most important thing I would want to call out is that FY '21 results have underlined the difference between staffing and essential services like private security and FM. Staffing per se, if you look at it from a customer's perspective, staffing is basically a varied -- and a tool to variabilize your cost. As you variabilize your cost for situations like the one we are currently facing. Whereas essential services or services that are needed in good times and in bad times, right? When you add a new manufacturing line to your plant, you need more cameras and security people. But even when the plant is in lockdown for 50 days, you still need your security staff and you still you need your CCTV camera. So I think this is very clearly evident in not just our Security Solutions business. But overall, I'll give you some statistics, which are important to register here. Last March, our revenue, excluding cash, pre-Corona month revenue, excluding cash, was INR 720 crores. In July, it went down to INR 709 crores. So our maximum impact was INR 720 crores going down to INR 709 crores. In [indiscernible] security vertical, he was at INR 303 crores pre-Corona monthly revenue. I think even went down to some INR 10-odd crores decline in July. We started as a group and as SIS Security in India, we started recovery as early as August, September. In fact, in September, our consolidated monthly revenue was INR 740 crores versus INR 720 pre-COVID March 20 number. In March of '21, we are at INR 826 crores. So the change between March to March is INR 106 crores of monthly revenue growth. And that comes -- SIS international has contributed. But even on the India side, [indiscernible] business as high as security has contributed, and we have rejigged our customer focus. We started something called [indiscernible], 8 sectors that we are going after, 8 sectors that we will take a case-to-case call and 8 sectors that we will avoid going to because we are not sure about, gee, the credit worthiness of those sectors, they are more severely impacted. So we are not taking on new contracts with malls. We're not taking on new contracts with hotels, even as they are coming, many offers are coming, [indiscernible] is declining those. We are focusing on sectors we want to work with. We are working with health care. We are working with e-commerce. We are working more and more with banks. We are working more and more with sectors who we believe are truly resilient. And because of that, I think you will -- last point I'll say is that you must mind the fact that [indiscernible numbers as SIS security numbers or even overall 7% year-on-year revenue growth in FY '21 is without price change. It is purely volume-oriented. This is the first year in many, many years, at least in my '19 years where we haven't had rate revisions. Government of India has not hiked minimum wages this year. States haven't hiked minimum wages this year. There were some parts and pieces in international markets. But by and large, in India, there is no price escalation. It's all volume growth that has helped these numbers come through. Sorry for my long-ish answer, but I just wanted to give you some context.

The next question is from the line of [ Manav Muta ], an individual investor.

I have been going through your profit and loss statement and balance sheet and everything. But being a layman and a retail investor, I could not understand what is this SG&A. And what is this one-off -- significant one-off expense? Or is this a recurring cost what? So can you please explain this in a layman's term?

What page are you referring to?

What is it?

Can you refer me to the page you are looking at?

No, I'm not looking at the -- I'm not looking at your book right now. I generally studied your statement and that is where I come to know about what is this SG&A, and that's why I was curious about it. What is this SG&A and what...

And the full form of SG&A is selling, general and administrative numbers and typically refers to the fixed costs of any business. The terminology, which we use.

Okay. And is this a fixed -- is this a recurring cost or what?

No, it's like the salaries of the people, the rental of the premises, travel expenses and different kinds of administrative and support expenses required to maintain the organization and the offices and the running, et cetera. So these -- obviously, these are generally fixed in nature.

The next question is from the line of Vidit Shah from IIFL.

My question was around just the more near-term challenges. So while March numbers almost back to pre-COVID levels, just wanted to get some clarity on like how April has gone? And what are we seeing going forward for the next couple of months at least? Can we see monthly revenues drop back into the same extent that they did 1 year back? Or is it much more better off this time around?

Vamshi, are you taking that? Okay. Look, I think last year, when COVID struck us, we didn't know the scale of impact that it will have on our revenues. But 1 year down the line, we know that as an essential service, even government is not going to shut down private security or FM or cash logistics. And even customers need these services for their own business continuity. So nobody is going to say, even if a mall is shut, he's not going to say that, "Please remove all the CCTV cameras from here and remove all the security manpower that you have deployed." We have been know that from experience now. So having experienced the last 12 months, I believe that the impact, if any, will be on select sector and that impact will be more or less covered up by spike in demand in other pockets like health care, manufacturing, e-commerce, et cetera. So I think that's our general outlook. And I think April has been a tough month. We've been grappling with too many COVID cases being reported from our staff, et cetera. But is there any change in the revenue for April month? I don't have the result with me right now. But I mean, I haven't heard anything, which showcases a very big drop or a sudden drop of any kind.

Okay. That's helpful. Secondly, just needed some clarifications from Devesh's presentation. I think Devesh gave out OCF EBITDA to EBITDA numbers by business segments. I kind of missed that. So if you could just repeat that, that would be helpful.

So that -- I don't give it out -- are you talking by business segment?

Yes, I think you said 190% was facilities management, but I missed the other 2.

The [indiscernible].

I don't think I mentioned [indiscernible] I think.

[Operator Instructions]

If we have no further questions, then probably we can design the [indiscernible]. Just wait for a minute.

We have the question, which is from the line of [ Kumar Shankar ] from SIES.

I heard that there was a buyback issue of INR 400 crores. They are now -- just now you told that the cash that you're having is only for the 5 to 6 weeks of working capital. How can you manage this buyback [indiscernible]?

Devesh, just on the buyback.

So just one second. The cash on the books is worth 5, 6 weeks, my friend, but the undrawn cash credit line is also in place as a backup. So we have enough backup. So I don't think there is any reason to worry about the cash flows of the company. And as far as the buyback is concerned, several people have asked me the question, "Why did we do only to INR 100 crores buyback? We could have done INR 300 or INR 500 crores buyback." Yes, we could have but the point is, like you said, we believe that at this point in time, the company is better to sit on cash, and we thought only INR 100-odd crores was [ sparable ] to give back to patient shareholders. And that's why the buyback number only added up to INR 100 crores. If times were better, and we were not in the middle of second wave, maybe we could have given out more cash as buyback. But anyways, this year, it's INR 100 crores.

Any other questions?

Sir, we don't have any one left. We don't have any other question.

Yes. So thank you, everyone, for joining the call. I know it's a bit late in the day. And I know some of you are also joined in for the video sealing, which was started at 4 o' clock. So it's a bit of an [ extent ] session. But thanks to all of you for [indiscernible] the entire 2.5 hours. And hopefully, you've asked and we've answered all of your questions adequately. If any of you have any further questions or information, do feel free to reach out. And I get that a couple of you who have some additional data requests. I will respond to those over the next day or 2. Meanwhile, I hope all of you continue to be safe and follow all the COVID protocols, and we look forward to seeing all of you in the physical meeting sometime in the near future. Thanks to all of you, and take care.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, everyone. On behalf of SIS Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.

Thanks.

Thank you.