Tata Communications Limited (TATACOMM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Tata Communications earnings conference call. We are joined today by our MD and CEO, Mr. A. S. Lakshminarayanan; and our CFO, Mr. Kabir Ahmed Shakir. The results for the quarter ended 31st December 2021 have been announced yesterday, and the quarterly fact sheet is available on our website. I trust you would have had the chance to look through the key highlights. We will commence today's call with comments from Lakshmi, who will share his thoughts on the business and our long-term outlook, followed by Kabir who will share his views on the financial progress achieved. At the end of the management's remarks, you will have an opportunity to get your queries addressed. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements made or discussed on the conference call today may be forward-looking in nature and must be viewed in conjunction with the risks and uncertainties we face. A detailed statement and explanation of these risks are included in our annual filing, which you can locate on our website, www.tatacommunications.com. The company does not undertake to update these forward statements -- forward-looking statements publicly. With that, I would like to invite Lakshmi to share his views. Over to you, Lakshmi.

Thanks, Vipul, and good afternoon, everyone. And before we commence our call today, I would like to extend a very warm new year wishes to all of you on behalf of Tata Communications. I hope you and your family are safe and healthy. With Omicron raging across the globe, there is some unevenness across the globe in terms of recovery, but we hope that all of this will be put to rest soon. But we remain watchful of the impact it may have on our employees and the business. Our data business continues to recover. And for the second quarter in a row, data business has grown sequentially. Data business revenue grew by 3% quarter-on-quarter, and this growth has been achieved despite macro headwinds and Q3 being a seasonally weak quarter for us as the year-end holidays bring down the usage services. This growth is particularly encouraging as we have seen growth across all segments of the data business. Digital platforms and services, except the collaboration portfolio has grown between 7% to 20% sequentially and a double-digit year-on-year growth, which we see as a good sign. We have also witnessed growth in all the regions, both in India and international markets, giving us the confidence that we are moving in the right direction. Revenue growth has been on the back of new wins as well as more active account and churn management. As part of our strategy, we are gradually changing our business model and focusing more on solutions. We are pushing hard for the deals, which give us more fixed committed recurring revenue, and this has started to show results. While usage-based services continue to remain soft, we have seen a steady growth in our fixed recurring revenue across all segments, giving us more predictability on the revenue. We continue to be affected by macro challenges. Firstly, the large deal closure remains slow as the enterprises are resetting themselves from the COVID and their expansion plans with respect to opening of new branches and global expansions seem to be put on hold. The second is the supply chain challenges that continue to affect delivery. The chip shortage has affected the availability of equipment and the delivery time lines haven't improved materially in Q3. We continue to manage the situation through active engagement with our suppliers and investing ahead of time. Three, the talent attrition continues to be a challenge, but hiring has now picked up, and we rolled out more than 800 offers in Q3 and target to roll out the same number in Q4. We have started picking up pace over the last few quarters. Though our business continues to be affected with short-term challenges, the steps are pointing towards growth, and we are confident about the long-term opportunity. Investing in innovation and capability building has been a pillar of our strategy. Our product portfolio continues to evolve on what's new and what's next thought leadership, which enables us to meet our customer demands today and be prepared for the next phase of growth. In the last 2 years, we've been focusing on our financial fitness, product strategy, capability building, and of course, immediate execution on all of these. Going forward, we will be investing in our growth engine, and we plan to further enhance our sales and technology capabilities. In FY '23, we are targeting to hire more than 1,000 people across the geographies to strengthen our sales, solutioning and engineering capabilities. We've also put in place additional retention and attraction measures to counter the talent war that's been going on in the market. We will continue to strengthen these even more in the coming quarters. Our core connectivity business has continued to show stable growth despite bandwidth rationalization and branch connectivity globally. This has -- this was triggered by the slow return to offices and hybrid mode of operations. Our core connectivity portfolio grew by 1.6% quarter-on-quarter and 1.3% year-on-year. The world is moving towards digital, and we, at Tata Communications, are leaving no stone unturned to partner with our customers in their digital journey. With a robust network infrastructure and digital offerings in collaboration with cloud and security space, we continue to support our customers by providing end-to-end solutions. A large part of our deal that we are signing now combines our network and other digital products, thus giving the customer a holistic digital experience. Our digital platforms and solutions grew by 5.2% quarter-on-quarter and 6.7% year-on-year. Our collaboration segment continues to be affected by decline in SIP usage-based services and seasonality impact of Q3. All other products in collaboration have witnessed robust growth. Our Microsoft Teams solution continues to grow at a rapid pace. We recently launched a GlobalRapide solution for Microsoft Teams deployment and management and the response for this has been stellar. Our Teams offering has clocked a consecutive quarter of over 100% year-on-year growth and is gaining traction. Overall, collaboration portfolio declined by 1.4% quarter-on-quarter and 8.9% year-on-year. The business is looking to secure that place in a hybrid world. We are providing the right tools through our cloud offerings and specialized security solutions to ensure a seamless migration and digitally scale up their infrastructure as opportunity landscape widens. Cloud business continues to gain traction. We continue to innovate our cloud and security offerings, including our cloud SOC solution. Our cloud-based virtual desktop-as-a-service, or VDaaS, infrastructure services in collaboration with VMware is one such example. It rapidly enables work from anywhere reality, helping to create a future for work that's highly adaptable and secure. The solution empowers remote workers with industrial-grade security, massive scalability and high performance wherever they are located and is hosted on Tata Communications' flagship IZO private cloud platform. Our cloud and security portfolio grew by 7.3% Q-on-Q and 19% year-on-year. Network transformation will be a huge opportunity in this hyper-connected digital world. Cloudification is driving the need for networks to become more intelligent, agile, secure and scalable. Our portfolio of cloud-based applications are enabling enterprises across sectors to evolve into a cloud-first and Internet-first organizations. Our recent survey brought to light that 90% of the enterprises haven't still achieved their digital-first goals. It is heartening to see more organizations adopting the new-age technologies and solutions and shifting gears. Next Gen Connectivity portfolio grew by 9.6% quarter-on-quarter and 24.3% year-on-year, led by strong growth in IZO WAN and SD-WAN. We recently extended our partnership with one of our -- one of the leading specialty chemical companies with our IZO Internet WAN solution across 130 sites in 40 countries. We are helping the company evolve from a private MPLS network to a public Internet with guaranteed end-to-end service level agreements. We are equipping their IT infrastructure with our innovative IZO Network Edge platform, which provides customer increased visibility and control of their applications and allows them to offer their employees, customers and partners with faster and more reliable and secure access to cloud-based applications. We also provide direct routing to Microsoft Teams, enabling the customer to deliver an enhanced collaboration. We are enabling a secure network transformation of a European leading supplier of solutions and services for electrical installations by delivering SD-WAN and managed security services across 80 sites around the world. An existing SD-WAN customer, we have now expanded our association by adding a layer of security in their network. Being their sole global network provider, we simplify their business operations by eliminating the need to engage with multiple vendors, enabling the customer to communicate seamlessly and securely across all their sites globally. The enhanced network also helps them to improve efficiency of their processes as well as deliver their 18,000-plus products and solutions to their customers with more agility, reliability and security. Our media portfolio continues to grow, aided by the resumption of sporting activities worldwide. We are supporting majority of flagship media customers cover sports events through Remote Production as broadcasters and federations have now move firmly to the new workflow. This has created a very strong engagement in the industry with focus on significant upsell. Through our media cloud infrastructure on the edge, we are able to deliver content to all parties involved in production in a matter of seconds with all editing and production done on the cloud at an increased speed. During this quarter, our media business grew by 18.4% quarter-on-quarter and 21.8% year-on-year. Our incubation services portfolio is also making strides in the right direction as we are committed to see these products and watch them scale rapidly into the future. Incubation services portfolio grew by 26.4% quarter-on-quarter and 67% year-on-year. Our MOVE and IoT offerings are being recognized by the industry and the adoption is picking pace. During Q3, we have seen an uptick in usage of MOVE in the auto segment, and we have also won some marquee deals in the IoT segments. MOVE and IoT combined, which we refer to as Connected Solutions, grew 30% Q-on-Q and 72.4% year-on-year. Recently, we won a deal to enable a local municipality in Saudi Arabia by bringing next gen smart city solutions. This is a milestone achievement as IoT business expands its global footprint beyond India. We will serve as a one-stop shop to provide the IoT hardware, platform, application and insights for the customer. The solution will upgrade the city's existing streetlights with smart streetlight solution through automation of controls for energy and cost savings. The overlay of the smart street lighting solutions based on our IoT fabric and platform will transform the city into an intelligent and energy-efficient township and enable the city to significantly reduce its carbon footprint. In terms of financial performance, our consolidated revenues for the quarter were at INR 4,185 crores and witnessed a growth of 0.3% Q-on-Q. EBITDA for the quarter was at INR 1,082 crores, with a margin at 25.9%. The profitability and cash flow generation continues to be robust, giving us the headroom to invest for the future. Profit for the quarter was at INR 395 crores. Our data business grew by 3% quarter-on-quarter and 3.4% year-on-year, witnessing across all segments. We continue to reduce our net debt on the back of strong cash flows, and net debt is now at USD 967 million, witnessing a reduction of $78 million as compared to last quarter. This is the first time since 2014 that our net debt has gone below USD 1 billion. We will continue building and upgrading our capabilities, technical infrastructure and pursue business opportunity as they come up. Our end goal is to connect our customers through robust, scalable and secure digital infrastructure and be partners of their choice in their digital transformation journey. We are excited for the coming year and remain focused on building a resilient organization as we move towards our long-term growth and objectives. I will now request Kabir to share an in-depth financial update with you all. Kabir, to you.

Thank you, Lakshmi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you once again for joining us for our Q3 earnings call. Let me take the opportunity to go through our financial performance for the quarter in a bit more detail. Tata Communications has been constantly adapting to the changes in the industry and in the needs and demands of our customers since the pandemic hit us. We continue to expand our product portfolio, strengthen our execution capabilities and invest for future growth. We have started to witness the results and recovery in our data business along with strong profitability, and it's the step in the right direction. For the quarter, consolidated revenue was at INR 4,185 crores, witnessing a growth of 0.3% quarter-on-quarter and a decline of 0.9% year-on-year. The growth in overall revenue comes on the back of recovery in data business revenue. Profitability remains a key focus, and EBITDA for the quarter stood at INR 1,082 crores, witnessing a growth of 3.5% year-on-year and a decline of 2.7% quarter-on-quarter. If you recall last quarter that we had a one-off benefit of INR 50 crores during Q2. And if we normalize for that, the EBITDA would have grown by 1.8% quarter-on-quarter. EBITDA margin came in at 25.9%, expanding by about 110 basis points as compared to the same quarter last year. Margins are higher than the stated range of 23 to 25 due to the benefit in staffing cost, which we will normalize as we hire more people as per our plan. PAT came in at INR 395 crores and grew by 27.8% year-on-year. This translates to an EPS of INR 13.8 per share in Q3. During the last few quarters, revenue growth has been slow due to various reasons. But during that time, the financial health of the company has considerably improved due to our sustained efforts towards process improvements and efficiency. Our operating cash flow generation has improved significantly and our net worth is steadily increasing, making our balance sheet much, much stronger. Net debt as on 31st December stands at INR 7,189 crores. Reduction in net debt during the quarter was INR 572 crores compared to Q2 and INR 783 crores compared to same quarter last year. Net debt to EBITDA is now at 1.7x as compared to 1.9x a year earlier. As I mentioned, strong cash flow generation, coupled with balance sheet strengths gives us the freedom to pursue future growth opportunities more aggressively. While we plan for aggressive investment for future growth, we have clear sights on the returns for our shareholders. Trailing 12 months ROCE is at 25.4% as compared to 21.1% during Q3 of last year. CapEx incurred during the quarter was INR 400 crores compared to INR 339 crores in the same quarter last year. We've increased our approved CapEx in line with our growth plans. However, the spent CapEx is lower due to the -- compared to plan due to the slower execution of projects as Lakshmi explained. This will pick up hopefully in the coming quarters. Data business for the quarter came in at INR 3,233 crores, growing sequentially by 3% and 3.4% year-on-year. All the individual segments in data business grew sequentially and year-on-year this quarter. We witnessed a consecutive quarter of sequential growth. We plan to build on this momentum and achieve our long-term growth objectives. We continue to navigate through short-term macro headwinds and implement our strategy that will help our business grow and deliver robust financial performance going ahead. Data business EBITDA was at INR 1,041 crores, witnessing a growth of 3.6% year-on-year. Margins improved by 10 basis points on year-on-year basis and came in at 32.2%. Profitable growth in core connectivity and reduction of losses in incubation services is a primary driver of this strong margin. To conclude my remarks, I would like to reiterate that the improvement in the business environment, Tata Communications has started to see a recovery, and it further bolsters our belief that we will grow at a faster pace as conditions further improve. We are implementing strategies to maximize our potential and continue to invest in the future of the company. Before I end, I have an announcement to make. I would like to announce that Vipul Garg has decided to pursue opportunities outside of Tata Communications. Vipul has been with the company for the last 5 -- more than 5 years, and he has steered Investor Relations along with various other responsibilities. Most of you know him on a first name basis. During his tenure, he has built a strong IR framework, helped onboard marquee investors and played an important role in communicating Tata Comm strategy with outside world. I'm sure Lakshmi joins me in thanking him for his contributions, and we wish him well and all the best for his future endeavors. That brings us to the end of the management commentary. Let me hand over the baton back to Vipul to open the forum for any Q&A.

Thank you, Kabir. [Operator Instructions] Okay. The first question is from the line of Riddhesh Gandhi of Discovery Capital.

Sure. Sir, just had a couple of questions. Sir, our revenue growth has obviously been slightly lower as you had indicated. Just wanted to understand is this all due to effectively the exceptional items of say COVID and, I mean, chip shortage, and then therefore, as the things had normalized, we see some amount of bunching where we will see higher actually growth happening in Q4 onwards? And just I wanted to understand if these were all driven by actually external issues? Or if we also were slightly aggressive in the way we were thinking the revenue growth was going to play out?

No. I think there are a few -- I think, yes, in terms of the -- our reading of the industry and the way we participate in it, I think we are quite confident that we will participate in the industry digital transformation. And our portfolio, we are continuing to strengthen and build to ensure that the participation will only yield the necessary results. In terms of the growth, and I think quarter-on-quarter, if you look at a 2% or 1.7% and 3%, it points all to the right direction. And as I called out in my commentary, a lot of this revenue uptick has come both from the wins as well as better management of churn and a tighter management of the accounts is -- are yielding these. Now COVID has had an element to play, especially in the usage services and the broader chip shortage and the OEMs elongated delivery periods is slowing down the conversion of orders into revenues. That is also playing a part. And there is also a part of -- in terms of us accelerating now our ability to have more feet on the ground in various geographies where we will look to -- and the attrition hasn't helped, but we are hiring people to support that and increase our sales and solutioning capabilities. So all of that -- so I would say, a large part is external environment. And internally, we are strengthening the product. And we will have to invest more on the sales and marketing and solutioning engine, which is what we are committing to do now in order to improve the growth scenario.

Sir, and the other question was I just wanted to understand from a group level perspective, obviously, you've got a number of entities in the Tejas and effectively Tata Tele and you guys, obviously, all sort of focused on the digital outlays and growth. And there's also obviously a lot of cross-linked directorships between these entities. So I just wanted to understand, is there anything that you guys are looking at from a group level? How should we be thinking about how the Tata Group is looking at it and tie Communications in the entire picture of things?

No, I think the group is very committed. I think the commitment was shown when the majority stake in Tata Communications was taken and investing further in the sector. So Tejas is one such investment, which is an OEM. And they made that investment with a clear strategy to have a bigger role and play in the scheme of things as 5G comes into play. So I think at a group level, yes, there is a design to see how we can exploit the synergies between various entities. So that would be the view from the group level. But as far as Tata Communications is concerned, I think we will keep our head down and make sure that we can deliver on our strategy while exploiting any synergies available between the group companies, which we are doing.

Got it. And earlier, we had some like discussion around potentially acquiring the SME business of Tata Tele. Is that still something which we are looking at? Or is that not right now on the cards?

So I think it would not be right to comment. And all I would say is we are looking at all avenues for growth. Obviously, if there are synergies to be had, we will look at it more closely, and we will let you know at an appropriate time. But from a growth perspective, currently, we are investing in products. We are investing in our sales and marketing. And we will also look at other opportunities even if it is inorganic, as we called out, now we have the strength to be able to do that. So all those options are available for us.

The next question is from the line of Sanjesh Jain of ICICI Securities.

A couple of them. First, on the core connectivity side. Last 2 years, I think core connectivity has done quite well. Even in the COVID year, core connectivity has delivered a 7% growth, 6% to 7% growth. And now we were in an unlocking stage, we were looking of more traffic growth as people go back to the office and a one-point-odd percent growth on a Y-o-Y basis where cloudification is rising, where digital economy is rising, can you just help us explain what's going on, on core connectivity side? And why it's suddenly underperforming on the growth?

No. I think overall, from an industry perspective, if you look at, the core connectivity is slated to be flat or even decline. And in that market, we are showing growth on the back of, especially in India, with more data center connectivity is coming, and international also, we are growing. So I think that's the nature of the core connectivity market, and we are performing in that segment quite above the market space. One thing, especially to look at is the OTT segment and the cloud player segment, who during the COVID times have invested with us, which is what led us a bigger growth last year in increased capacity. And those capacities are yet to be utilized fully because nothing has changed in terms of further improved capacity to be utilized, right? So those capacities are still under play. So I think that's the overall environment of the core connectivity, and I think we are doing quite well in that environment of core connectivity. Of course, the Next Gen Connectivity, which is all Internet-based and on-demand based and so on, which is where we are seeing that enterprises will grow in -- as they expand their footprint and open offices or look to see how to enable people from working from anywhere. And that portfolio has grown quite well, as I called out.

Got it. Last quarter, Lakshmi, you called upon a possibility of -- or an ambition to see the pricing angle in core connectivity to drive the growth. Any more color you want to add on that?

Yes. That is something we are still looking at. And I think I called out that the demand-supply economics doesn't support the pricing to be continuously declining, and we are still looking at it. We hope to come back with the design and start acting on it in the coming quarters.

But is there -- because I think in last year, some of your comments, you did mention that there could be higher growth in core connectivity as well. Is there any change in the view for you on the core connectivity side?

No, no. I think we called out the core connectivity growth in single digits only, right? So while the market of core connectivity will be declining, which is what the market data we shared during our strategy presentation. So the market in core connectivity is -- globally, I'm speaking is going to be flat or declining. And in that market, we said we will grow in the mid-single digits is what we called out in our strategy. And there is no change from that view.

We still hold that mid-single digit is possible in the segment?

Yes. Yes.

Second, on the collaboration side, even on the low base, it's declining on a Y-o-Y basis. So that takes care of seasonality. What's going on, on the SIP side? And how big is it? And we thought you were anticipating even growth in the SIP. Any view change in the collaboration side on the SIP particularly?

No. I think on the SIP, as you know, is a large part of our collaboration. I think it's been impacted by a few things. One is the rationalization of the usage itself as people continue to work from home and it's been a seesaw from home to office kind of a situation. And even when people went to office, they continued to use the regular home working models rather than using the SIP. So the -- there's some rationalization happening on the usage, which caused SIP to -- I think that is a structural shift. And also, we had company-specific issues as a result of the IUC increase that we called out. And because of that rate increase that we had to do, there have been specific issues with customers, and therefore, a decline in the traffic. And the third is the seasonality. So all 3 of them accounted for in Q3. But the first 2 shifts have been playing out since almost 1 year, since Q3 of last year. We think that this will stabilize as the economies open and people move to more stable hybrid working environment is what our outlook is.

Do you think VoIP can actually keep putting pressure on SIP like what we saw in voice?

No, I think ...

That is, can a significant portion of SIP traffic move over to VoIP?

No. See, I think, obviously, the collaboration and cloud-based platforms, as people move to using more of Teams and Ciscos and Zoom, a lot of revenues that we are calling out under SIP will get bundled under that.

It's better to look at it as a segment as a whole, which is underperforming, right?

Yes, that is right. And that is where I think we are hopeful with the Teams enablement has picked up. But even within Teams, and we called out in our strategy that we want to shift in the Teams more to a fixed recurring revenue for fully managed services as opposed to providing only the SIP underlay for the Teams, right, which would have also been purely only a usage-based and would have got impacted. Now the growth in Teams show that our ability to then bundle and provide a more holistic solution of Teams, which is on a fixed recurring basis as opposed to just a usage basis is a good sign. So majority of the Teams growth that we are seeing is largely on a fixed recurring basis, and it's not factored in the usage part to a great extent yet.

One question probably here to understand the shift. In the Teams, we are providing a lot more managed services and anything in SIP is just a connectivity. Do you think when a customer move from purely taking a SIP to or move Teams, will it be revenue accretive because that will speak of how the revenue eventually in the collaboration will move? So only a SIP from there if a customer transit to say pure-play Teams kind of a platform, do you think we will have a revenue accretion? Or do you think we will lose out on revenue in the transition?

We will not lose out on the transition. I think the Teams will be largely focused on customers moving from people having on-site PBX and migrating that to the cloud. And as they move to the cloud, it will be -- and as they activate their voice, it will be revenue accretive.

So that means once a customer move, we will be revenue accretive on the Teams side rather than just selling the SIP as a solution?

Yes. Yes.

Next on the transformation side, looks like that the business is not stabilizing today. And a year back, we saw that FY '22 would be a year of stabilization, but I don't think that's happening. So what's an outlook on the transformation business as a whole? Have you changed any -- anything on the transformation business for us?

The TCTS is going through certain customer-specific contract issues. And this quarter, specifically, also had a provision for one of the customers, which took the margins down, which -- but barring that, I think it is showing an improving trend. I think it will take a couple of quarters for it to fully turn around. But we remain quite confident that the capabilities that this company has, TCTS, is very niche with a great degree of domain knowledge, automation and process knowledge, which the telcos world over require as they increase their CapEx in fiberization and 5G spend, the demand for them will grow. So we remain committed to that business and transforming that business. But the recent run in terms of both the revenue and margins have been due to certain specific contracts, which we are working on to see how do we recover and try and turn this company around.

Got it. Last bit of question from my side. One on the order book if, Lakshmi, you said that last quarter, we saw a double-digit growth in the order -- large order deal wins. How has been the trend for this quarter on the order side? And the last question for Kabir. On the working capital days, it looks like we have improved significantly in the last 3 quarters. Do you think the working capital days what has been achieved in the Q3 is sustainable over a longer period of time? So these are my last questions.

Transition on the order book, Q3 has been -- Q2, we had a good order book. I think some of the order booking has got pushed out to Q4. So the Q3 is more a normal quarter rather than a standard that we had in Q2. So that's the color of the order book. And more on the funnel side, I think the funnel side is stable. The quality of the funnel is good in terms of larger deals in the funnel. Our win rates are improving. But I think our immediate task is to see how to improve the funnel, and thereby, continue to improve the order book.

And on the working capital.

Yes. Let me just pick up on the working capital. Yes, Sanjesh, our working capital progress has been really good. I'm quite delighted with what our collection teams are doing jointly with our sales support team. And we are bringing in quite an amount of, I would say, process discipline inside the organization, and that's started to show results as we speak. My DSO days have come down from 56 days to 51, so which is a healthy improvement, and it's our endeavor to maintain these sustainable levels. In addition to that, our PDD has come down quite a bit on the back of good collection efforts. So I would say these are a few of them and a couple more of process efficiencies and hygiene is underway in the implementation and the intent is to maintain and improve from these levels.

The next question is from the line of Pavan Ahluwalia of Laburnum Capital.

Yes. Some of them have been addressed. But one -- actually 2 questions. So when we look at the kind of sluggish growth in sort of communications, a part of it is due to the structural shift towards potentially more web-based usage. Has that basically paid out? So is that -- are we sort of done with that? Or are we likely to see that be a continuing headwind in the coming years as people use less and less sort of dial-in and more and more web-based conferencing. That was one question. And the second is, we are seeing from feedback from various IT businesses as well that while the spend by enterprises on software has been pretty robust, the spend on network upgradation, network VAS, et cetera, has been sluggish. And I'm guessing that is showing up in part in your growth numbers, order book numbers, et cetera. Any idea on why there is this gap? And over what period of time do you expect this to reverse itself?

Yes, Pavan, I think the first one on collaboration, I think we discussed it extensively in the earlier questions as well. But there is a structural shift in terms of people using more collaboration software to communicate, collaboration applications to communicate. But the underlying technologies will still be SIP and so on. So that is where our offering of Microsoft Teams and others will play rather than being able to sell a simply vanilla SIP product to enterprises. So that shift will continue to take place. I think we should be seeing the plateauing out of that, as I called out. Our issue has been, one, because of the industry structure. There's been a company-specific issue with respect to the IUC charges that we had and so on. And the third is the COVID situation, people not going back to work and continuing to use from home. I think all 3 issues, we think we should normalize in the coming quarters and should plateau it out is what I think. But once that happens and people start to shift to more of the collaboration applications, whether they use Teams or Zoom or Cisco or any of these products, I think that GlobalRapide, which we have now currently launched for Microsoft Teams, will come into play. People will shift because even if people implement Teams, they are not necessarily shifting their PBX to the cloud. So that's the next step that they will do. And as they do that, our collaboration portfolio should kick in. So we believe that once the SIP trunk sort of plateaus and the decline plateaus, the other ones will start to kick in, in the collaboration space. Now with respect to second question on the IT. Yes, I do see that where the enterprises, when they focus on the transformation, their immediate focus on transformation has been on the application side, how to use the data for more analytics and so on. But as they move more and more to cloud, the existing network infrastructure, especially if they want to leverage Internet will have to get transformed, both from a network perspective as well as from a security perspective. The dollars spend might remain flat, but they have to go through a change. And that is the change that we are looking to spot and make use of. And that is why in our network transformation, in our Next Gen Connectivity, we are growing. But I think there is a bigger potential to grow even faster as the enterprises start to focus on the infrastructure transformation as they transform their applications and data analytics. So I think -- but I'm not able to really quantify it for you as to how much is the lag, because I think that will depend on various organizations and their strategy and the road map.

And when you say the dollars spend would remain flat, does that then mean that we are basically looking to take share from other network providers who may not be as -- who may not have as compelling a VAS offering as us?

Yes, that is what we are because especially in the international markets, which is where a lot of these transformations will take place, our -- we will be in a challenger position to challenge the incumbents to help enterprise transform with Tata Communications rather than with the incumbents.

Are we truly -- I mean because I see all -- certainly, even in a market like India, right, I mean, Bharti has -- is doing a lot of work in the space, Vodafone has a very strong offering. Is that the case that most telcos around the world have invested pretty well in this. So are we really that much better than Vodafone or Verizon or whoever the competitors are anywhere else in the world?

Yes. I think especially when it comes to mapping the international footprint of customers, we truly can offer a differentiated offer. Our IZO product continues to be fairly unique in the market where we are able to give service levels on Internet. I think that is still very unique. And on the IZO overlay, we are also, and as I called out for one of the customers, the IZO network edge, which provides local breakouts through our network edge to connect to the cloud in a more agile fashion. So we certainly have a differentiation when it comes to customers having multi-geography footprint. And that is what we will have to push in the market and stake our claim in that space, and that's what we're doing.

The next question is from the line of Hitesh Arora of Unifi Capital.

Just wanted to clarify on the incubation services. See, we've largely been in -- the top line here has largely been in the 40 -- maybe INR 30 crores, INR 40 crores, and this quarter, it was around INR 54-odd crores. But we haven't really built -- broken out in this segment given -- especially compared to the opportunities that we have here. Any comments there? I thought the opportunity set is huge, we should have already seen a much larger growth here, but that somehow seems to be elusive thus far.

So on the incubation, there are 2 or 3 parts to this. One is the connected solutions portfolio of MOVE and IoT, and the other is the NetFoundry. I think the -- as in the -- overall in the IoT space, while people are talking about it, I don't think the full IoT benefit has been reaped or the enterprises invested that much in IoT as yet. I think we are focused on a few use cases in IoT in worker safety, worker productivity and then expanding that to more asset in man, machine and material. On the MOVE side, and in that -- and also the smart street lighting in India, and we are expanding globally as well. So I think the use cases are gaining traction, and we are focused on a set of niche use cases with our IoT fabric opportunities, and that is beginning to gain some traction. On the MOVE portfolio, I think the breaking out, as you call, we are quite confident will happen. As we strengthen our story around the automotive space, expanding our offering to beyond just the connectivity management to delivering other capabilities to autos like providing the over-the-air updates and so on, so those are still in the works. And thirdly, the other segment is around the semiconductor, which we called out. And that is still work-in-progress. We have a couple of pilot customers that we have acquired and that also has a potential to scale. So all of these new use cases that we called out around MOVE, we are building out the products and platforms around that. There are pilot customers that we have signed up, but the scaling will happen in due course. It is not in a stage of scale as yet.

Understood. Just one last question more on the financial side. Just to clarify, on the P&L items, there's another comprehensive income. If -- Kabir, if you could kindly clarify what was -- what does that -- what is it? It's a loss of, I think, around INR 4.68 crores.

Yes, I'm just -- yes, normally a lot of investments that we don't take it through the P&L actually goes through the OCI route. We take it to the outside -- through the P&L or through the OCI. The INR 4.68 crores, which is there is basically the foreign currency translation, that is the impact that you actually see in this quarter.

Okay. And would you know the previous number, there is 23.5 -- INR 23.15 crores, it corresponds to what? I think in the previous quarter, there is a number of INR 23.15 crores in the same head, INR 23.15 crores negative. What is that? Again, it's again a translation loss, foreign currency translation loss?

No. There was an investment. One, let me just look into my notes in a minute, give me, Hitesh, 2 minutes. So last quarter was actually a translation loss. And this quarter was on account of Canada Pension Plan is the translation that we had. So those are the 2 components for it.

Sorry, could you repeat, please? I didn't get it.

Yes, this quarter, we had an FC -- I mean our foreign currency translation was actually a gain this quarter. Last quarter was a loss. But this quarter, it's also -- we also had a Canada Pension gain as well. So that explains the FCTR in the OCI.

The next question is from the line of Naval Seth of Emkay Global.

I have two questions. First, as you had mentioned about increasing traction in MSMEs in your last Analyst Day, so can you throw some light how has been last 6, 7 months since the time we have stated that? What is the level of traction we have achieved? Second, again, in the Analyst Day, we had stated that there would be a level of debt we would like to maintain. So have we reached that? Is that too closer to our target? And as balance sheet now becomes very strong, so what is the strategy on inorganic expansion? Will you -- does that take front seat now? Or it will be at its own base as earlier kind of thought about?

Let me take the last 2 questions first, Lakshmi, and maybe you can talk about the prime section. On net debt, we had stated as our long-term strategy to be under 2x. 2x is the range that I would like to -- 2x to EBITDA is the range that we would like to be at. So we were around 1.9, 1.8. This quarter, we are at 1.7. And this quarter, we had the one-off benefit from various reasons, I mean, little unspent, and therefore, you see in the EBITDA line on our staffing cost benefit that we've got. I mean I wouldn't like to call it benefit because of a lower number of people and higher attrition. So that was one of the drivers. We got some tax refund this quarter, which is another driver. Plus, we also -- I also alluded in my commentary that our cash CapEx -- although our approved CapEx and the outlay that we have approved is in line with plan, our cash CapEx is lower because of the delayed lead times that we -- and chip shortage and stuff like that, that Lakshmi also alluded to. So those are the reasons as to why we've got slightly better from a cash perspective. And I mean, in the past, I have said this to you guys as well, I'm a fan of a range. And I would like to kind of operate in a range. We have a healthy balance sheet now. Even if you were to take our net debt coverage to 2.5x, we don't breach any of the covenants with our lenders and that gives us the healthy room for investment for -- and therefore, we create that room on one side. On the other side, we are obviously pushing the business to bring value-generating and value-creating ideas. And they go through with a toothcomb in terms of the NPV and IRR each of the projects generate, and that's how they are funded. And they are not funded just because there is room in the balance sheet, they are funded on the merits of value that they generate for us. So that's how we would like to kind of, I would say, manage the net debt line. So you will probably find in some quarters where our -- we need to take the right calls, we will probably go a little over our range that we have said. But otherwise, we should operate at a healthy level. Answering your question on inorganics, we had called out in our strategy, a placeholder for tactical and bolt-on acquisitions, and we continuously monitor and scan the market for looking at opportunities that add value to our portfolio or to our go-to-market organization, either niche or generic. So that is a call that our M&A and the strategy team is continuously evaluating. In past, our affordability limited our ability. Today, I think that constraint is no longer there, subject to, of course, the scrutiny of the hygiene of and the value that, that investment will bring to the table. But otherwise, if I have to give directionally, yes, we are a little more stepped up in our M&A I would say, scouting than what we were maybe a year or two years ago. Lakshmi, do you want to take the...

On the question on MSME, I think we called out in our strategy our prime segment, and we said we are going to call out a unit for addressing this prime segment. Just to clarify, we are not -- did not say MSME segment because these are still medium to largish companies, which to serve in a new phygital model is what we said, a combination of physical presence in the region as well as largely a digital motion to self-serve and everything. We are building out that model in terms of tools for self-serve and digital and bundled products and so on and so forth. We are seeing encouraging signs of adoption in the customers that we've approached in the early stage, but that will -- it will play out once we pivot to truly the physical model with fully digital self-service model and begin to offer more bundled services and bundled products in that customer base. So it's progressing quite well, and it's too early to call out the results of that specifically.

The next question is from the line of Aliasgar Shakir of Motilal Oswal Securities.

A couple of questions. First is on this incubation segment. I hear your thoughts in terms of each of the categories and how we are trying to kind of strategize growth over year. This is about INR 200 crores revenue run rate annually, and we are doing nearly about INR 400 crores of EBITDA loss year. So I just wanted to hear your thoughts on probably 3-year out period, I mean given the kind of overall scale that we have where do you think this particular business can reach, I mean, across the 3 verticals you have, which is MOVE, IoT and the other one? If you can share thoughts about any -- I mean, this INR 400 crores of loss, at what level do you think this will start delivering profit for us?

So let me first talk about the growth potential in the incubation services. And as I called out, in the MOVE and IoT, which combined, we call it as a connected solutions space, we think the potential is really huge. MOVE, traditionally, we had only addressed the auto segment with a limited connectivity management play. Now we are expanding to more use cases within the auto segment itself. And the second segment that we had called out is the semiconductors and -- born in the cloud, born connected kind of offerings as semiconductors come out and embed the semiconductors into the OEM devices, it will become connected. So that is another one, which is the product we are building out. So each of these products are -- we are working with pilot customers and building them out. But in terms of potential, we think there is a very large potential for them, and this can scale quite well. With respect to profitability, we are seeing a decrease in losses. And as this business scale, we will return to profitability, and that is what we have been saying. I'm repeating the same thing again. And we haven't given a specific number at which we will sort of breakeven. But we are quite confident that we are proceeding in the right direction with the reduction of losses there.

Understood. The impression we get is this is a business which is still much ahead of the curve. It's still in the exploration phase where we are trying to kind of explain the product to customers and see the reception. So I mean I'm just thinking from that point of view that the kind of investments we have done here, I mean, the kind of certainty we have in terms of, of course, opportunity is there. But given that this particular segment is so ever developing, there could be new category, new products, new -- a lot of changes that we'll bring upon. So the kind of confidence we have in terms of time lines in which this business can really deliver strong profitability.

No, I think the whole idea when we talked about our strategy was all our products need to become profitable, right? So we did that scrutiny ourselves, and we are quite satisfied, Ali, that these -- the area, if you look at MOVE, has very strong potential. It is not something that other MNOs are offering. There are other platform players, perhaps like Jasper and others who do some of what they say we will do. But nobody is there who will do all of what we say we will do. So I think like you called out, it will be a new category spanning the connectivity and bringing the data analytics relating to connectivity to OEMs and making a very strong play in their MOVE to connected solutions. So even the connected solutions by itself, like people talk about connected car, connected devices, connected health care products, all of them are beginning to play out. And we think that MOVE will have a very foundational play in that space. So we are quite confident. And as it scales, it will definitely be -- the pricing is improving as we shift to the platform and platform-based pricing. And that is what is helping us with scale to decrease the losses. It will become profitable. So I don't want to give out a number at what stage it will become profitable, but we will continue to invest because we are quite confident that this will turn around and yield the results that we're all looking for.

Sure. This is very helpful. Second question is on our subsidiaries. You did comment on the transformation side of the business where we are seeing some specific customer-related issues. But if I combine both, let's say, transformation business as well as the ATM business, both have been laggards for a while now. I mean I think ATM business was under deliberation about its long-term strategy. So I'm just thinking from that point of view, do these businesses have any restructuring requirements? Are we, I mean, contemplating anything over there in terms of -- because of the management bandwidth that it would be taking and the losses that they have? It's nearly about combined 10% of our revenue. So I mean, how are we looking at this business strategically?

See, both are very different businesses, and I think we have to [indiscernible] them on their individual merits. So I think we've commented on -- see, I think the transformation business, the core capability that we have in that business is about a very strong domain knowledge on the network side from a telecom, both on the wired and the wireless side. And combined with their automation and process capabilities is what will make them attractive to international telcos. So therefore, from a long-term perspective, we believe that this company can turn around and will turn around, barring the current issues. And it will take a couple of quarters for us to really turn this around and make it profitable. And growth will come because we will make the right investments there to help other CSPs to manage their networks, both fiber and cellular. So things structurally and potential opportunity-wise, there is good opportunity. I think this business is going through the short-term hiccups that I called out. Whereas the -- on the ATM business again, I think we have commented on it. We are looking to again turn this around with the combination of looking at the business model in terms of the owned ATMs and operating versus a franchise model. And we are seeing the turnaround happening from a changing the business model perspective. The early indicators definitely tell us that, that is in the right path. We have, again, this business has been hit by both repeated waves of COVID as well as more recently because of the flooding in some of the states where we are more prominently present in the Tier 3, Tier 4 regions serving through the Indicash brand, right? So we think that 2 things will shift this business towards better health. One is the business model shift that I talked about. And the second is the macro environment improving, which will enable us to shift the transaction volumes up. We've already seen the business has had one uptick from the RBI increasing the rates. So that is a positive direction for this business. So the transaction volumes will pick up in the near future. So that's our commentary on these 2 businesses, I think they will turn around. Structurally, they are managed independently with their own rules and so on. So we will -- we can reexamine once the business turns around.

Understood. That's very useful. Just one question for Kabir. I mean you did comment on acquisition. I just have a question on your investing you mentioned in growth. Is this going to be more OpEx-led, given that you did mention that we plan to hire about 1,000-odd people? And what would be your CapEx guidance? We have somewhere about INR 1600-odd crores of on an average CapEx that we've been doing. Now the kind of cash flow that we throw is quite strong. So given that we are comfortable with our leverage ratios, how we plan to use this cash apart from some of the acquisitions that you would be exploring?

Yes. Ali, investment is investment, whether it is OpEx, whether it's CapEx, I'm indifferent to it as long as they provide the right value and the right justification, go through the right hygiene. So there is no such constraint from that point of view, and we will do that. We've given, of course, there are contours we have given, contours of our profit guidance, contours of our ROCE guidance. So those are, I would say, the framework within which we will play between OpEx and CapEx. We have given in the past a guidance of $250 million of CapEx in a year is what we said we will spend this year. As I mentioned, our cash CapEx spend may be lower because of various reasons. It's not that we don't want to spend. Our purchase orders are out, but we will just not get them back into the company on time to get them capitalized. So there will be a timing and a phasing issue in this current year. But otherwise, there is going to be definitely focus on increasing that CapEx. So every lever, whether it is CapEx, whether it is acquisitions, whether it is innovation, whether it is BAU in terms of resources, if to both from a product development point of view and feet on street, I think we are examining each and every one of them to try and unconstraint from a resource perspective as long as they give us the right return.

Got it. And just asking from the point of view that we are throwing nearly $550 million worth of kind of operating cash flow. And so I mean that's a very solid number. And even if I take your CapEx of $250 million, there's still a very strong cash lying on the book. So I mean, will this be used for deleveraging, or I mean, kind of increasing your dividend payout? Or I mean how are we looking? Because this is like an annually, a very strong number that you'll keep throwing every year and hopefully growing this number.

Yes. Well, our subsea cables will, in a couple of years' time, will start coming to end of life, the ones which we invested earlier, Ali. So it is not about one quarter whether I get to 1.7x or not. We take a slightly holistic and a more medium-term view on our capital spends. That's the nature of our business, especially, I would say, on the core connectivity space, yes? And we need to continue to invest. And they will come in certain spurts of investment that we need to make, and we need to provide for that. That's what I would say. Yes, in a quarter, it will be higher here and there. And therefore, to an extent, it will become an auto deleveraging if we don't have investment choices. But long term, I would stick to what I have said before as our guidance.

Thank you, Ali. We're almost out of time, so we'll take -- we are out of time. We will take the last question from Mihir Sheth of Segantii.

So just a quick -- actually a question going back to actually your original comments on revenue sort of delays and order flow. I understand I appreciate the macro challenges, and I also appreciate that order flow cannot be even through the year. My question is a little bit more qualitative. Like if you were to ask your salespeople in terms of inbound inquiries and the level at which they're busy, is activity as intense as it was, say, 2 or 3 quarters back? Can you just give us some color how things are on the ground from a customer demand standpoint and how that -- because all I'm trying to understand is the direction of where we'd be 6 to 12 months from now rather than sort of obsessing about the last quarter or the quarter before that.

Yes. So Mihir, from an activity level, I think the activity levels are quite high and good, right? So even when there wasn't the customer demand, we are pushing ahead as you would expect in the enterprise business with more proactive proposals and so on. So I think the activity levels are quite good. And I think I -- because of our more proactive approach and trying to engage with the customers with more holistic solutions, the nature of the total size of the funnel, while it has not grown, the number of larger deals within that has grown. And secondly, I think it was good to see that our win rate there, even if it is marginal, has improved, which tells us that we can be competitive and we can compete effectively in those. I think that 2 things need to happen for us. One is internally ramping up more feet on street and increasing our sales, solutioning and marketing spend and activities there. The second is the customer side, not just the macro, but the trickle-down effect of their digital transformation flowing from applications and analytics of data to the network infrastructure is something that we think will happen, and that is what we are targeting to see how we can participate in that space.

So I guess if I were to sort of put all this together, right, and think about what fiscal '23 and '24 will look like, the macro challenges from -- seem to be transitory in nature, who knows what future waves will hold for us. But as of now, they seem transitory in nature. You have put the feet on the street already in the ground and you all are hiring more aggressively. And I would imagine that the customers' network transformation projects will be further along than they are say -- than they were, say, 3 months back and definitely versus 6 months back? So would it be fair to say that fiscal '23 and fiscal '24, you all would be gunning for a much higher revenue growth, given what we're seeing right now in the funnel? Or do you need the funnel itself to expand to start seeing good revenue growth?

Yes, I think the funnel needs to expand first and then we need to convert them into orders and then converting into revenue. So that is the first step. In terms of increasing the feet on street, I called out that we are increasing our hiring and we are rolling out the offers. But all these sales and solutioning team will have to come on board, get familiar with the offerings in the company and then they will -- it will go through their own line of motions, but we are quite confident, and that is why we are beginning to invest a bit early in the cycle to do that. The attritions haven't helped, but we are quite confident of tiding over that and increasing in the hiring. So with all these, we are certainly looking to see how we can crank up the growth engine to the potential that we believe there is.

Got it. Let me ask the question I should have asked in first place. I've been trying to ask it around about. So fiscal '23, fiscal '24, is it reasonable to expect strong revenue growth, I mean, based on the visibility you're seeing right now? Or are things still uncertain?

Yes. So Mihir, no, I don't want to give a forward-looking statement of that kind. I think we are giving you a commentary around various factors of how we see the deal flow, how we see that we can participate in the transformation, how enterprises themselves are looking to prioritize from application down through the network infrastructure, and all of that is a reality. So -- and given that commentary and given those investments, given whatever we said, we are quite confident that we will do well. That is the extent to which I can say I can't call out specifically about a quarter off or the financial year.

Thank you, Mihir. This brings us to the end of the call. Closing comments from you, Lakshmi, please.

No. I think I've said a lot of things. I only want to wish a very happy new year to all of you. I definitely see 2 consecutive quarters of sequential growth as a good positive sign, and we will stay committed to cranking up the growth engine. Thank you.

Thank you, Lakshmi. This brings us to the end of the call, and you may please disconnect now. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.