Sonata Software Limited ($SONATSOFTW)

Hello, everyone. My name is Inba, and I'll be moderating today's session. Welcome to the Sonata Software Limited Analyst and Investor Conference Call for the Fourth Quarter and FY 2026 ended March 31, 2026. We have with us today on the call, Mr. Srikar Reddy, Executive Vice Chairman of the company; Mr. Rajsekhar Datta Roy, CEO of International Services; Mr. Sujit Mohanty, CEO of Domestic Business; Mr. Jagannathan CN, Chief Financial Officer. We also have our extended leadership team on the call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded. During the call, please note that the management may make certain forward-looking statements that involve risk, assumptions and are based on information currently available to the management. Sonata does not undertake any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements that may be made in course of this call. We advise participants to exercise discretion while making any investment decisions. We will begin with the opening remarks from the Executive Vice Chairman, followed by a business overview and financial highlights. After that, we will open the floor for questions. With that, I hand over the call to Mr. Srikar Reddy for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.

Good evening, everybody, and thanks for attending the call, and welcome to the analyst call. Before you hear from the management team on the financial performance and their view of the future outlook and the plans, we felt that it's important from a Board's perspective to share our views on the leadership transition. Since Samir Dhir expressed his inability to extend his contract beyond the current contract period, the Board had to take a call on the succession. As you know, the Board has appointed Rajsekhar Datta Roy as the CEO with the main focus on the international business. The reasons are many. Raj has been with the company for greater than 30 years, understands the culture and the DNA of the company, focused on customers, employees and investment in new technologies. Raj has also held multiple roles in the organization, including business development as a Chief Technology Officer and as the Chief Delivery Officer. He's also been a primary architect of Sonata's AI strategy built on the Harmoni concept. As the tech world is adopting itself to the new paradigm shift to the AI space, we believe Raj is the right leader to lead the company into the new world of AI. The Board is extremely confident on his leadership and the rest of the leadership of the company to take it to the next level in terms of transforming the company and adopting the new strategies aimed on AI. The Board is also fully supportive of the management and will continue to assist help guide the management wherever required. Thank you for your continued support. I'll now hand over the mic to the management to make their presentations. Thank you all again.

Thank you, Srikar. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everyone. I will provide the key updates on Q4 '26 and FY '26 business and financial performance. Starting with international business. During the fourth quarter, we benefited from a few growth drivers. We clocked AI-led order book of $16.9 million in Q4 '26, and for the whole year, it was USD 49 million of order book, AI-led order book, and now contributed to around 18% of overall order book. AI-led pipeline is $280 million as on Q4 '26. We are actively pursuing AI opportunities across 100-plus clients, helping them unlock the value through operational efficiency gains, time to market through enhanced velocity and customer experience, transformation of business model. We secured 2 large deals in Q4 FY '26. The total large deals in FY '26 was about 8 large deals. With a major global fintech company as a part of the program, Sonata will institute their modernization of the core banking platform. Am I audible now?

Yes, sir. You may continue speaking.

Okay. We secured 2 large deals in Q4 FY '26, for total of financial year '26 we had total of 8 large deals. With a major global fintech company as a part of the program, Sonata will execute their modernization of the core banking platform to AI-led implementation to unify their user's experience, enable better institutional customer experience and faster outcomes for their client with Sonata -- with software holding company backed by a PE firm focused on acquiring and scaling founder owned vertical B2B SaaS companies. There's a multi-gear managed services cloud support contract across the organization. We added 7 new customers in Q4 '26. In FY '26, total 23 new customers have been added. Top 10 clients contributed revenue share of 54%. Number of clients greater than $5 million run rate stood at 12 in Q4 '26. Number of clients greater than $3 million to $5 million revenue stood at 9 in Q4 '26, up by 1 number from Q3 '26. Q4 '26 order book stood at $95 million with book-to-bill ratio of 1.166. We remain confident that our investment verticals health care, HLS and Banking, Financial Services, together these two verticals now contribute 30% of our total revenue in Q4 '26. Total headcount stood at 6,283 in Q4 '26 against 6,404 in Q3 '26 with attrition of 11%, 90% of workforce are AA trained. On-site, offshore revenue mix 32% to 68% in Q4 '26 against Q3 of 37:63. Utilization reported at this quarter is 91.8% in Q4 compared to 90% in Q3 '26. Let us now walk through our financial performance for the fourth quarter and the financial year 2026 for international services. In Q4 '26 USD revenue stood at $82.4 million, flattish quarter-on-quarter. In constant currency term, it represents a growth of 0.6% quarter-on-quarter. Rupee revenue stood at INR 779.2 crores, growth of 5.5% cross quarter-on-quarter. EBITDA, before other income and ForEx for the quarter 4 '26 improved to 20.2%, up 70 basis point Q-on-Q from 19.5% in Q3 '26. This EBITDA accretion is primarily driven by operational improvements across delivery, SG& A reflecting better delivery efficiency and cost optimization. Utilization improved to 91.8% up from 90% in Q3 '26. As informed previously, our utilization and headcount levels were driven by sustainable productivity improvement and operational efficiency in delivery enabled by AI adoption, differentiated AI solution, Agentic implementation across project. Our offshore revenue mix improved to 68% from 63% in Q3 '26. We also benefited from pyramid optimization and price increases. ForEx fluctuation was beneficial in quarter-on-quarter and all these levers were partially offset by higher AI-led CSP bundle deal cost. EBITDA after other income and ForEx for Q4 '26 stood at INR 183.8 crores, growth of 25.2% quarter-on-quarter and 50.9% year-on-year. In Q4 '26, PAT stood at INR 84.2 crores, growth of 40.6% quarter-on-quarter and 35% year-on-year. Reported ROCE and RONW for the quarter stood at 24.5% and 30.3%, respectively. International services DSO for Q4 '26 reported at 64 days against 71 days in Q3 '26. In the financial year 2026, our international services dollar revenue stood at $328.4 million, a degrowth of 2.1% year-on-year. Rupee revenue stood at INR 2,948 crores, growth of 4.2% year-on-year. EBITDA before other income and ForEx for the financial year '26 stood at 18.4%, 1.4% accretion compared to 17% in FY '25. EBITDA after other income and ForEx for FY '26 stood at INR 607.7 crores, growth of 18% year-on-year. FY '26 PAT stood at INR 292.7 crores, growth of 18.7% year-on-year. Now let me provide an update on domestic business. Despite inward headwinds from one large client, renewal this year due to direct MS relationship with, we continue to make a good progress in financial performance. Revenue for Q4 '26 stood at INR 1,759.2 crores. This may reflect a degrowth of 25% Q-on-Q and 8.3% year-on-year. Growth -- gross contribution for Q4 '26 stood at INR 75.3 crores, degrowth of 1% quarter-on-quarter and degrowth of 3.9% year-on-year. PAT for Q4 '26 stood at INR 46.3 crores, degrowth of 3.9% quarter-on-quarter and growth of 2.5% year-on-year. DSO for Q4 '26 is 47 days compared to 42 days in Q3 '26. Reported ROCE and RONW for the quarter stood at 43.5% and 39%, respectively. Domestic business revenue for FY '26 stood at INR 7,772.1 crores, growth of 5.9% year-on-year. Gross contribution for FY '26 stood at INR 288.7 crores, degrowth of 3.5% year-on-year. PAT for FY '26 stood at INR 171.7 crores, degrowth of 3.6% year-on-year. Update on the consolidated business now. For the quarterly update, consolidated revenue for Q4 '26 stood at INR 2,536.2 crores, degrowth of 17.7% quarter-on-quarter and degrowth of 3.1% year-on-year. PAT for Q4 '26 stood at INR 130.5 crores, growth of 25% Q-on-Q and 21.4% year-on-year. Reported ROCE, RONW for the quarter stood at 28.1% and 32.5%, respectively. Consolidated revenue for the financial year '26 stood at INR 10,701.2 crores with growth of 5.4% year-on-year. PAT for financial year '26 stood at INR 464.4 crores in FY '26 compared to INR 424.7 crores in FY '25. Consolidated EPS reported for FY '26 stood at INR 16.74 per share against last year's INR 15.3 per share. We have recommended a final dividend of INR 4.15 per share. Update on cash flow. Cash generation remains strong during the year with a closing cash balance of INR 606 crores and a net cash position positive of INR 31 crores, a significant improvement from Q3 FY '26. To conclude, in a difficult year characterized by macroeconomic challenges and client ramp-down, Sonata displayed a resilient performance by growing PAT 18.7% year-on-year for international and 9.3% for consolidated business for FY '26. We also were able to win and ramp-up few large deals during the year, which gave us some tailwind as we enter the new financial year. Our Q4 '26 performance continued to reflect disciplined execution and continued progress across our strategic priorities. The benefits from AI-led productivity initiatives are becoming increasingly visible across delivery and enterprise operations, strengthening our confidence in driving sustainable efficiency over a long-term period. Our endeavor will be to maintain EBITDA at similar level. While the macro environment continues to remain dynamic and client decision cycles remain elongated, we are encouraged by momentum in our pipeline, especially around our own digital and AI-led transformative initiative. We remain cautiously optimistic and expect gradual improvement in growth over medium-term. I now hand over to Raj for his commentary on international business.

Thank you, Jagan, and thank you everyone for joining us today. It's an absolute honor to address you for the first time as the Chief Executive Officer of this company, focusing largely on the international business. Having spent 3 decades here at Sonata and have worked in various roles from business development, technology delivery, and recently as a Chief Technology Officer and Chief Delivery Officer, I fairly understand the business, the clients, the employees, and the culture very well. And I think it provides a unique opportunity for all of us to build on the foundation that has already been laid and what the opportunity is presented in front of us. I think we proudly inherited a company with very strong customer relationships, depth of engineering, operational discipline, which has been at core, our culture with people and how we operate. And these strengths will remain central as we move forward and will also continue to guide us as we go to the next phase of growth. At the same time, I think it's important to also appreciate the context in which we are operating. One, I think, is the technology shift that we are seeing with AI and the various opportunities as well as the headwinds it presents. And I think that's an interesting area and how we -- and we'll talk more as we go along. Second is the macroeconomic environment and the uncertainty that it presents. But one thing is for sure is that, that AI is now on top of the agenda of every enterprise and how they are planning to utilize to leverage in each of their business context. Our point of view is that all organizations will reimagine how they operate, how they use technology with AI, right? And the need to adapt and evolve will be faster than before. The speed will go up in the midterm in terms of the velocity, what we call the enterprise velocity, and that will lead to demand, especially where organizations move from system of record intelligence to system of autonomous action. This presents multiple opportunities for Sonata, and I think we are well positioned today because of a few things that I want to mention. Number one, I think, is our strategic and long-term relationship with client, which we intend to strengthen, partner. We are working with many of them already on their AI initiatives, and I think that will only benefit us going forward. Number two, our mix of business. I think predominantly we have a larger part of engineering versus managed services, and we see the need for engineering and the speed that it needs from delivering value to customer, driving more demand in that space. Third is our size. That gives us a unique position to have more headroom to grow even in this situation. We also have invested over the last year or more on building capabilities. I think our people have largely been certified, about 90%. We have built differentiated capability with Harmoni.AI and AgentBridge, right? And that shows in the pipeline increase that we have in the AI-led opportunities. We also have a strong partnership ecosystem, Microsoft, of course, and AWS, and others. And that also gives us confidence that we are well positioned. Going forward, I think there are value pools where I think we can be very well positioned. And one is to how to reimagine the business processes in the context of AI. Second is the legacy modernization and how do you modernize legacy applications and platforms. Also around SaaS, around environments that is going to unlock value for our clients. And how do you transform our delivery into an AI-led delivery? We have made progress on that already, and I think we need to accelerate -- we can accelerate that much faster. And of course, the responsible-first AI services that is needed more and more as people adopt AI. So these are important value pools that with Sonata can distinctly operate in. And going forward, I think we'll strengthen this further, and you will see us looking at new ecosystem partnerships and in focusing on certain verticals and subsegments. And at the intersection of subsegments and the partnership, we'll have a very differentiated potent capability to take to the market, and that will be a focus as we build on this. We'll continue to invest on our capabilities, workforce readiness, ecosystem partnerships to enable this. And my focus lies that -- where -- is that, in the understanding of the -- where the market is headed and remain confident on how we can proactively position the company to get best of the opportunities that lies ahead of us. My immediate focus is to first ensure continuity and that we have the -- we continue to be deeply focused on our short-term priorities, strengthen further our client relationships, accelerate the delivery transformation to be AI-led, and build a roadmap for the AI capabilities. And not the last, but the most -- one of the most important is to continue to drive our operational improvement momentum that we have built in recent times. Thank you very much for your continued trust and partnership and look forward to the next chapter together positively. Thank you.

Sir, may we open the lines for questions now?

Shilpa here, Inba. We have -- Mr. Sujit is going to take a few minutes to talk about domestic business. Post that, we can open the line, please. Go ahead, Sujit.

Yes. Thanks, everybody, for joining this call. Our domestic product business continued to demonstrate resilience and relevance in a dynamic market environment. Despite facing the headwind due to one of our OEM partners starting direct billing with some selected large customers, we continue to make good progress in our business. Revenue for Q4 FY '26 stood at INR 1,759 crores. Gross contribution is at INR 75.3 crores, and PAT for Q4 FY '26 stood at INR 46.3 crores, which is a growth of 3.9% quarter-on-quarter. We are making steady progress across the strategic pillars which we have spoken before. We are expanding our market coverage and we are having a sharper focus on the SMC and corporate segment. We have grown this business around 27% year-on-year. We have broadened our partnership with other hyperscalers and OEM partners. We are executing multiple GTMs with each of these hyperscalers. We are also expanding our business related to tools and platform offering from OEM partners other than the hyperscalers. We are also focusing on large hybrid system integration deals that integrate physical server storage and other ISP infrastructure, including IT security, with leading cloud platforms. These strategic bets are core to building a more diversified, resilient, and future-ready business for us. In accordance with the current interest for the use of artificial intelligence in most of the enterprises, along with our OEM partners, their AI tools and platform offerings, we are working with most of our customers in their AI initiative. We are setting up their AI infrastructure, implementing and helping them in using the AI tools, and working with them in building the AI user cases and POS deals [00:23:07]. Over the first few quarters, we have remained focused on strengthening the quality of our revenue mix, deepening strategic customer relationship, and building scalable cloud-led managed services capabilities. Overall, we remain confident in the direction of the domestic business. Our focus is not only on the growth but on building a diversified, scalable, and future-ready business with sustainable value creation for customers, shareholders, employees, and partners. With this, let me hand over to the moderator for question-and-answer session. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take the first question from Dipesh Mehta of Emkay Global.

A couple of questions. Just first want to get sense about the tweaking in the strategy planned in IITS business. Can you help us understand what will be the focus area of investment? Partly you covered in your prepared remark, but if you can elaborate further in terms of vertical and sub-vertical, where you, I think, indicated some of the sub-vertical kind of strategy. So vertical, sub-vertical, where we intend to make investment and how one should look at it from medium-term perspective. And if you can touch upon also M&A in that part, how M&A fit into overall growth strategy? Second question is about the IITS growth performance perspective. I think last 4 quarters largely remain flattish, between 0 to 1% kind of growth rate. How one should look growth trajectory there? Earlier, we -- growth was impacted for a couple of client-specific issues as well as RMD vertical kind of challenges. Can you provide some update on those some of the challenges, how we expect it to play out? And last question is about the -- overall, if I look, let's say, last 4 quarters, there is a significant movement across vertical and GTM or service line. So there is a sharp volatility kind of thing. Can you provide broad sense on near-term demand trend and any specific headwind across this vertical and GTM which we report, and which vertical likely to lead the growth?

Yes. Raj, will you take the call?

Yes, yes. Thank you, Jagan. And let me give you a quick commentary I think on where we are thinking. You will appreciate that it's about, I think, 15 days since I have just taken over. But I'll give you a preliminary direction on where we are looking at. I think we will continue to have the verticals that we have, so we'll have continuity on the verticals. What we will do is, we'll sharpen focus on particular areas of the vertical where we are strong and where we see the demand growing. I think that's what it is. The exact specificity of which areas is something that we'll formulate in the next couple of months, and then we'll provide you an update in detail about that. Number 2 is on investments that you have worked, I think we will expand on building our offerings and capability, both in terms of what go-to-market capabilities that we have, that we will invest in aligned to this strategy of sub-verticals. We'll look at new partnerships as we go forward. While it might take some time to fructify, but new partnerships. And third is how do we build on differentiated capabilities in delivering with AI. I think there are three large buckets that we are looking on going forward, but as I said, we'll provide more specificity in a couple of months from now. The second thing was around growth. I think we continue to maintain resilience in the short-term and have the current momentum continuing for now. As we move forward and as we move onward and make some of these changes, we'll come back and update you on further. The good part of this is that, we see a healthy pipeline on AI-led opportunities that's coming up, and our focus will be that how to quickly convert them and convert them into revenues. But despite the macroeconomic and general challenges that we face with clients in terms of decision-making and stuff. The third point that you mentioned is about how do we look at our -- what's driving -- which verticals are going to drive? I think we still see growth being driven by our technology, BFSI and HLS in the short-term as we try and see how to bring back RMD into the growth path.

So to add to Raj's update on the business, on the M&A front, we are looking for, in case there is an opportunity come for us with a good prospects in the particularly new technology area, we may evaluate for it. But at present, we don't have any plans specifically to grow the business through the M&A leverage. We will wait for a couple of more quarters, and in the medium-term, we may open up this further.

We'll take the next question from Amit Chandra of HDFC Securities.

Hello. Am I audible?

Yes, sir.

Yes. So my first question is in the continuation of what the earlier participant asked. So last year -- last few quarters there were few client-specific issues, specifically in the retail, also in health care, and largely in the BFSI vertical that we're facing, and that impacted the growth. For the full year FY '26, BFSI was the vertical which had the maximum damage, and we have seen some stability there. So if you can elaborate more on how we are around planning to scale up the BFSI? And also, you mentioned about the sub-verticals within BFSI. So which sub-verticals are we focusing on? We also had some deal wins in the BFSI vertical. So how to look at the growth coming back in the BFSI? And is it also coming from existing clients, or we are hunting for new clients in the vertical?

So I think 3 questions, Amit, on -- that we had. I think, yes, I think we had issues in the past with some of the verticals, RMD, BFSI, that you mentioned, some client-specific issues. I think we are largely behind us today on those issues and we need to build it. But that said, I think BFSI is still under pressure, and we need to be clear that there might be further pressures in existing clients for contraction, if any, but not very significant as we see. The second thing is on your sub-vertical focus. Like I mentioned, that we'll work on this further. We have a view today, but we want to validate that, and then we'll come here and provide you those inputs as we get further clarity amongst ourselves. The number three is, I think, on how do we see growth. So I think in the short-term, looking at all the decision-making cycles and what we have, I think we'll continue to maintain a similar growth trajectory in the short-term as we build for future. I think the new wins is in a very interesting financial services space, largely in payments area. And that remains interesting opportunity for us because we are helping them modernize some of their core system in providing a unified client experience. And that definitely will be something that will help us consolidate in the payment space. So that's the quick summary.

And sir, we have seen like TMT coming back in this quarter, and obviously it has been the strength of like Sonata. So how are we seeing this spending from the top line there? If you can give some picture in the sense that how do you see spending coming back there? Or the AI-led benefits that all the pass-throughs is now behind, or we can see some increased spends or some increased engagement with the top client in the TMT vertical?

I think interesting question, Amit, on the top client in the TMT vertical. Yes, we -- I think we see a little bit of upturn now from them, and I think we should look at it on that client. But as you know, with some of these clients, I think it changes, and there are some recent developments. So we need to watch out how much of that is sustainable. We are watching this very, very carefully that whatever we are seeing, the upturn is actually sustainable. Number two is, we are trying to pivot to areas where the spends are going up versus the spends which were getting cannibalized, so as to speak. And I think that's working out. But we still need to see, as you might know, that some of these things, their financial year and our funds is shortly coming up and we need to see what this means and is this sustainable. So we are watching this out carefully, but we have had a slight upturn.

So the last question is on the margins. Obviously, we have now been able to scale up the margins that we have talked about earlier, and in terms of utilization, we are operating at the max utilization like levels. So now that we have reached the margins that we desire to, so can we expect some increased investments in the business for growth, or we are planning to keep the margins at this level until unless we have the clarity for growth? And what is the like, medium-term margins that we are likely to operate in?

I'll take this call. Amit, the margins -- we will see -- we are evaluating the options for the investment. We will continue to do investment because the growth, particularly the transformation to AI will continue to happen for us, and which has got a very good traction. If you see, the order book levels have become 18% of our total order book. We have progressed very well. We will continue to invest on this. Our efficiencies have and utilization have reached the best possible place where it can be. We will continue to invest, we'll continue to monitor. We will -- for the short run, we'll have a similar kind of margin. So we'll see based on the requirements for the future growth. We will definitely be open for investments and for the growth to come in, in future.

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Praveen Kumar from Equitas Capital Advisors.

I had a couple of questions. The first one was on the disclosure on the large deal pipeline. If I compare the current quarter's number at 11 to the previous quarters, which used to be in the 28 to 32 kind of a range, that seems to be a sharp drop-off in the large deals pipeline on the international business. So can you throw some light on what's happening there? Why this sharp drop-off? And is there any specific issue that you would like to call out here? That's the first question.

Am I audible?

Yes.

Yes. So if you look at the large deal pipeline, continues to be strong. I think the overall trajectory hasn't changed. The reason pipeline would have come down is because we have announced 2 large deals this quarter if you see in one of the prepared commentaries. So that is the reason in the short run there will be a drop there. But overall pipeline momentum and the count of large deals, as you can see on that Investor Day, continues to be strong.

Sorry, I'm confused a little bit because in the previous quarters the number used to be around 28, 32, or in that range, right? Now even if I account for a couple of deals converting, the deal -- the large deal pipeline which have disclosed, the numbers, to add up, that is 11. So there's quite a sharp drop-off, right? So I'm not 100% clear on what you're implying.

No, this is -- no, just to add a flavor to it, it is not a particular point of time. What is the open large deals we are just reflecting on this. The number from this time March 31 to now, it is already changing that for the -- during the year-end time, we would have converted many of the deals into a large deal, and then subsequently it is getting added more and more on this. It is just a point of time, it doesn't reflect anything on a pipeline now overall.

Understood. Second question was on the domestic business. So we understand the challenges that are there from the large client going direct, et cetera. But -- so how do we see that panning out, and when do we see the domestic business returning to growth on a gross contribution basis and on an EBITDA basis?

Praveen, this is Sujit. So you could have seen last financial year we started with this little bit of headwind where we lost one of our largest customers. But if you would have seen over the last 4 quarters, we have almost covered up the whole loss. And as we stand today, we believe that during this fiscal year we should be back to our growth trajectory.

[Operator Instructions] We take the next question from Bharat Gulati from Dalal & Broacha.

Am I audible?

Yes, sir.

Just a couple of questions from my side. So firstly, just wanted to understand on the margin trajectory on the international business. In the short-term, you said it would be stable. So do we expect these utilization levels to sustain at this 91.8%, 92% range? Or just trying to understand what is going to drive this constant margin trajectory?

Yes, so we have guided that we'll be in the similar kind of a margin -- on -- with respect to utilization, yes, depending on the business requirements, utilization may come down a little bit because we have reached the best possible situation for us in the utilization front. But going forward also, the -- if the operational improvements -- because of the adoption of AI and Agentic AI will continue to help us to maintain the margins in the business trajectory what is coming in. Hence, our onsite-offshore mix is also one of the best at present situation. So we will may be able to maintain the similar margin over a period of time. In case it requires additional investments for the growth, we are open for it.

And just on the domestic business just wanted to add on to the last participant's question, what -- I just wanted a clarification on -- are we in -- keeping our outlook intact to get the growth that we historically had in that segment of our business? And how do we look at our existing business in that segment given that direct competition has come in, and how are customers panning out?

Bharat, this is Sujit. So on the direct competition from the OEM partners, I think, see, as a policy they have not given anything in writing, but as per our understanding, we don't see that we'll be losing any of -- any further of our large customers. That is point number one. Point number two, even if now some customers are going to be directly billed because they are not in the top 20, 30 list, materially it will not impact that much, if at all it happens. But as I said, as for our understanding of the current situation, our understanding, though, we have Microsoft India talking about their future policies, we don't see any further hit in the coming quarters. In fact, in the recent past there are 2, 3 customers who were in discussion regarding direct billing. But we have -- we worked with Microsoft and customers, and jointly we made sure that those customers finally signed through -- in a partner route through us. So this is where we stand. So from direct billing point of view, we are not expecting to lose much. I hope I have answered your question.

And sir, just on how do we see growth? I mean, new customers, how do we see that addition and how do we see -- just on the growth front, do we see that historical growth come back, or will there be a slight impact to growth going forward?

No, I think in 1 or 2 quarters we'll be back to our old growth rate. And see, the -- during this whole 4 quarters, it's not that we are not winning other customers or not adding business. It's just the fact that such large customers who was with us almost for 15, 16 years, we had built up a huge business, the impact was such high that we took few quarters to cover it up. And I just mentioned in the few minutes back, we have almost covered it up. So we are hopeful and we are very confident that this financial year will be back to our business.

Our next question is a follow-up from Dipesh Mehta of Emkay Global.

Just want to understand on the domestic business. Earlier we indicated about 1 client impact in last November onwards and another client in H2 of FY '27. Are we indicating that other client hit which was supposed to happen is unlikely to play out now, and that gives us confidence about growth on sustainable basis from here on? And second question on the margin, how should one should look that business? Because when we indicated earlier about expansion to new client as well as new partnership, usually it starts at either breakeven or loss. So which could have a ramification on margin trajectory? So if you can address both of these questions?

So as I just mentioned for the previous question we are not anticipating to lose any further customers to direct billing. That is just to answer your first part of the question. Now coming to the growth and the future business, so we'll continue to have our GTMs. We'll continue to have our existing customers. We have our plan to get new customers. So the future business will be as usual, and we don't expect any further hit. Is there anything else?

Margin, I was more interested, because the new business may come at lower margin. That was the expectation.

Yes, sorry, Dipesh, I just missed that. Okay, so from the margin point of view in our business, when you go for very large deals, as you said very rightly, that when you enter to the contract, there is a chance that you work or you operate at a very, very low margin or almost nil margin. But that is built into our business plan. And we have a mix of existing customers, what we call the farming and then we have a plan every year for new additions, which we go for the hunting. So this is a -- we have a mix of these 2 businesses and the earning of low margin for the new business which comes from new acquisition and compete accounts, that is already built into the business. So when we say that we are going to have a regular growth during this financial year, that has already been taken into account. And the second point is that, also we keep changing our business nature in terms of -- from a pure play resale to get into a little bit of system integration, multi-cloud management. So this is how the business is also changing. And these are the requirements from the customers as they are also becoming much more experienced in operating under multi-cloud situation. So multi-cloud management, security management. All this become a part of additional services which we have already started providing. So because of all these things, we are very confident that the margin situation from the market, we can handle it.

Dipesh, just to add a point to that, what Sujit is highlighting is, this is not changing the business model substantially what it was last year to current year. This is the situation for us for a long period of time, and we know how to handle it over a period of time. And the entry-level margin may not reflect the sustained margin for the business. Later we add services, we add other components of it, and keep expanding on and mine the account much, much deeper. So in this business, it's the current situation exists in the past, and this exists that current situation.

Understood. And last question is about the IITS. Just want to get sense on the Dynamics part, that business remain relatively weak through the year and the same on Data part. So if you can provide the revenue by GTM what we disclosed? Data, it was expected it to be very strong growth kind of thing, but somehow it remained under pressure. So if you can give some perspective on Data and Dynamics to GTM?

Thank you, Dipesh. And I think 2 questions. I think Dynamics growth remains very, very important to us, and we are -- we continue to be in the top-level partnership with Microsoft. And as we go forward, we'll further strengthen our Dynamics go-to-market as AI business solution. And so that remains our key focus as a part of the go-forward strategy. We have interesting pipeline which has come up with Dynamics with AI recently, and we are looking forward to convert them to get some tailwind as we move forward. As far as Data goes, it's largely been contributed by the BFSI, one particular client ramp-down, and a little bit by that RMD client ramp-down. But thereafter, I think we are building go-to-market with Data. I think one of the things with AI, the opportunity is that, what the data for AI, and we are creating a data product for AI as a data source. And that will help drive further momentum as we go forward, but that also remains a focus.

We now move to our next question. That's a follow-up from Praveen Kumar of Equitas Capital Advisors.

I had a quick follow-up on the international business. I think over the last several quarters, the management has called out lengthening deal decision cycles and broader macro, and today again Raj in his commentary has called that out. So just wanted to understand that given that Sonata has been -- has a -- has had a significant AI focus and significant AI readiness over a period of time, and given the modest size of that business. What are the hindrances in terms of getting more traction in this -- even in this kind of an environment? If you could throw some light on that?

Yes, I think all the 3 points. I think AI definitely presents an opportunity at our size, and I called it out when we made the initial commentary. The decision-making cycles is, I think, to -- for clients largely on AI has been on to take the larger plunges rather than experimentation. We are trying, we are seeing green shoots of that coming up, especially in the engineering space. But yet I think the decision-making continues to be elongated, not so much by technology or what it can do, but the macro environment in which the client is. I think that's the inhibiting factor. That said, we will continue to further strengthen our capability because at the end of this, I think AI will -- demand will go up in the medium-term, and Sonata will be more ready in its focus areas to address that growth opportunities.

Our next question is from Asis Das of Mirae Asset Securities India.

I would like to understand your thoughts around FY '27 growth outlook. So in the previous call, basically we highlighted that in TMT vertical, the non-engineering segment continues to face the budget pressure. And also we saw that if in FY '26 BFSI declined significantly and basically the companies in IT services space, basically talking about, there is spending remains healthy in the BFSI side. So I would like to understand the outlook of BFSI and TMT as well as the overall growth outlook for FY '27.

So I think on the BFSI, it was largely affected by 1 large client ramp down, and that showed rather than the BFSI in other -- other customers continued to be in similar trajectory. Two parts there is of the answer. One part of the answer, I think the recent deal win in the BFSI should further help us grow in BFSI. And we are also seeing some client ramp-ups, especially as they modernize their application landscape with AI. I think that's a positive. But we also noticed that some large clients have -- the economic situation is also leading to some contraction. So we are watchful about it, but I think there is a slight tailwind because of the ramp-ups and the new win that we have. That's on BFSI. As far as TMT goes, yes, I think we are seeing an increased traction in TMT, but I think we need to see how much sustainable it is as we grow. And that's what we watch out for continuously, that it needs to be sustainable growth and so that it can be seen to continue as we go forward. Largely, I think we see TMT, HLS, and BFSI still driving our goal as -- overall growth in FY '27, as well as RMD continues to recover.

Our next question is from Sushovon Nayak of Anand Rathi.

Yes, just 2 bookkeeping questions. One is on the CapEx, right? I think there's almost a 70% increase in the absolute value of the CapEx. Any particular reason on what's the -- what's exactly there and what do you expect as a steady state? That's one. And on the IT services business, the margins also, I think they have gone up to 20%. What do we expect to be the steady state? Do you expect some improvements over and above this? I think these are the two questions.

I'll take this question. Both the CapEx is because we had launched a new facility in Chennai for 1 large BFSI customer. This is like a one-time activity, so hence there is an increase on the CapEx for the current quarter. However, this will not continue and we don't have any plans of growing any other facility at present. So if there is any updates, we will come back to you. This is a very smaller facility kind of a situation. Earlier quarter we didn't have anything. We have optimized the facilities also as possible earlier. The next one is on the margin. Our endeavor is to maintain the EBITDA at the similar levels. We will continue to strive for it. However, if there is an opportunity for growth and that requires an investment, we are very much open for that.

Sir, can we take the first half CapEx annualized as the fair number for the CapEx going forward? Is that fair?

Yes, we can share that separately. Not expected to be in the similar levels of previous year -- overall year, not for the 1 quarter. One quarter into four is not the number, whole year financially.

That was the last question for today. I turn the call back to Mr. Jagannathan CN for closing comments.

Thanks for that. In a difficult year characterized by macroeconomic challenges and client ramp-downs, Sonata displayed a resilient performance by growing PAT by 18.7% year-on-year for international business and 9.3% on consolidated business level. We also were able to win and ramp-up large -- very few large deals during the year, which gave us some tailwind as we enter the new financial year. Our Q4 '26 performance continued to reflect the disciplined execution and continued progress across our strategic priorities. The benefit from our AI-led productivity initiatives are becoming increasingly visible, and across delivery and enterprise operation, strengthening our confidence in driving sustainable efficiency over long-term period. Our endeavor is to maintain the EBITDA at similar level. While macroeconomic environments continue to remain dynamic and client decision cycles remain elongated, we are encouraged by the momentum in our pipeline, especially around digital and AI-led transformation initiatives. We remain cautiously optimistic, expect gradual improvement in growth over medium-term. Thank you all for joining for the call. Once again, thanks for all the support and continued confidence in Sonata Software. Thank you.

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the leadership team, I would like to thank you for your time and for your continued interest in Sonata Software. Should you have any follow-up queries that were not addressed, please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team at [email protected]. You may now click on Leave button to exit the meeting. Thank you for your participation. Goodbye.