Thyrocare Technologies Limited (539871) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Thyrocare Q1 FY '27 Earning Conference Call hosted by Thyrocare Technologies Limited. [Operator Instructions] I now hand the conference over to Mr. Preet Joshi from Thyrocare. Thank you, and over to you, Preet.

Thank you, Ganesh. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Preet Joshi from the strategy team at Thyrocare. It is a pleasure to welcome you all to our Q1 FY '27 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are Mr. Rahul Guha, our MD and CEO; Mr. Rajdeep Panwar, our Chief Commercial Officer; Dr. Ramesh Kinha, our Chief Operating Officer; and Mr. Vikram Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer. I hope you have gone through the results release in the quarterly earnings presentation and the press release, which has now been uploaded on the Stock Exchange website. The transcript of this call will be available in a week's time on the company's website. Please note that today's discussion may be forward looking in nature and must be viewed in relation to the risks pertaining to our business. After the end of this call, in case you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to the Investor Relations team. I now hand over the call to Mr. Rahul Guha, who will make the opening remarks. Over to you, Rahul.

Thank you, Preet. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As in all my calls, I will begin with the quote from Nelson Mandela in recognition of our foray into Africa. "It is in your hand to make a better world for all who live in it." We believe Thyrocare has the opportunity to take a proven business model to Africa and make affordable, high-quality diagnostics accessible to many more patients. Before I get into the quarterly highlights, I would like to briefly step back and share how we continue to give the diagnostics industry and our own journey. Diagnostics today is no longer just a back-end support function, it has become central to clinical decision-making and increasingly to preventive health care. A INR 600 lipid profile can prevent a heart attack, which would cause INR 1 lakh to treat. Patients today expect convenience, speed and reliability as a baseline. While health care providers seek trusted partners capable of delivering consistent quality at scale. This evolution aligns closely with Thyrocare's mission of making preventive health care, affordable, accessible and dependable for everyone. As health care continues to evolve, we believe technology will play an increasingly important role in diagnostics. At Thyrocare, we continue to strengthen our digital capabilities across the diagnostic value chain from patient bookings, logistics, laboratory operations and reported. These investments are improving operational efficiency today while creating a strong foundation for future AI-led capabilities in preventive health care. I'm pleased to share that the quarter brought some meaningful external recognition of this work. We received the India's most trusted customer-focused diagnostic brand 2026 award at the pride of Healthcare Excellence Award and Summit in Hyderabad. We were also recognized as the Financial Express Healthcare Awards 2026, where we won diagnostic chain of the Year and Pathology Lab Chain of the Year. These reflections reflect the dedication of our teams and across our customers and partners continue to place in us. It has been 5 years since API Holdings has taken over Thyrocare from Dr. A Velumani in July 2021. I wanted to take a moment to share with you the journey over the last 5 years, of which I have had the privilege of working with this amazing team. Between FY '18 and FY '20, our pathology business revenue, excluding COVID, was growing at a CAGR of less than 10% and volume growth, too, was in the same range. And of course, during FY '21, our pathology business, excluding COVID, hit an all-time low of 304, a degrowth of 20% versus the previous year. During the same period, our franchisee base has declined from 4,500 to 2,700 active franchisees during this period. It has been a tremendous effort to build up the business from that base. And I'm proud to say that after a strong growth of 20% in FY '26, in Q1 FY '27, our pathology business has grown even faster at 26%. This is the culmination of all our efforts and all investments in improving our service levels and quality. I'm proud to say today our active franchise network has grown to over 11,700, a fourfold increase versus when we took over. Our laboratory network has expanded from 17 labs in FY '21 to 44 labs today. If you drop in anywhere in India, you will find a Thyrocare pathology lab within 150 kilometers and samples don't travel to Mumbai anymore, except for specialized tests. Our test menu has increased nearly fivefold to more than 1,375 tests. Alongside this expansion, we have strengthened our quality infrastructure with over 100-plus MD pathologists. All our own laboratories being NABL affiliated, well above any competition. And it is important to see the 100% in light of the fact that only 2% of NABL ads in India, 2% of labs in India are NABL credit. We continue investments in technology and automation to support the next phase of growth. Our home collection network stands at 2,000 phlebotomists, probably the largest phlebotomy network in India with exceptional service levels with an all-time level arrival standing at 99%. We are now extending the Thyrocare strategy into specialty diagnostics. The next phase of Thyrocare's growth journey from routine to remarkable, the next frontier of diagnostics. Specialty Diagnostics remains underpenetrated with limited accessibility, premium pricing and fragmented delivery. These are the same structural inefficiencies that Thyrocare successfully addressed in preventive diagnostics. Our differentiated operating model built on scale, automation, quality and affordability gives us a strong right to win in this market. This is not just a portfolio expansion, it is the deployment of a proven execution engine into a significantly large and fast-growing segment. We have commenced this journey with allergy and genomics, while our test portfolio will continue to expand. Our focus is on building clinical trust through scientific rigor, consistent quality and industry-leading turnaround times. We are confident that the same disciplined investments and execution, the established Thyrocare leadership in preventative diagnostics will create a durable competitive advantage in specialty diagnostics. Our ambition is to build India's most trusted, accessible and scalable facility diagnostics platforms, expanding our addressable market and creating the next long-term growth engine for the company. With that, I will now hand over the call to Rajdeep to take you through our business and commercial performance.

Thank you, Rahul, and good evening to everyone joining us today. I'll take a few minutes to walk you through our business performed during the year and the key drivers behind this performance. At an overall level, we delivered strong growth this year. We've consolidated revenue delivering 24% Y-o-Y growth in Q1 FY '27, primarily driven by our core pathology business. For the year, our flagship brand Aarogyam continues to lead the preventive health care segment, growing at 21% year-on-year this quarter, complemented by Jaanch, which caters to curative and chronic health needs, though just 2% of overall pathology revenue, it has also grown 36% year-on-year this quarter and is becoming a strong pillar of our lifestyle offerings. Let me now break this down across our key business segments. In Q1 FY '27, franchisee business delivered 27% Y-o-Y growth. It has now been almost 3 years since we implemented the pay-for-performance structure, which has led to renewed energy within our franchisee network to move up volumes and enter higher flash. Our franchisee base has reached its highest level ever at 11,700 active franchisees in Q1 FY '27. Equally important, we continue to invest in strengthening our relationship with channel partners. During the quarter, we conducted 6 structured partner needs across India and Malaysia, providing a platform for open dialogue, feedback and knowledge sharing. These engagements continue to play an important role in enhancing service levels, shaping future business initiatives and strengthening partner relationships. As Rahul highlighted earlier, this quarter also marked the commercial go-live of our Specialty Diagnostics business, an important milestone in our long-term growth strategy. We believe specialty diagnostics has the potential to become a meaningful growth engine for Thyrocare by complementing our preventative diagnostics business and strengthening our omnichannel credentials, enabling us to become a more comprehensive diagnostics partner while increasing wallet share within our existing network. To support this, we have established a dedicated specialty commercial team, which works closely with physicians, hospitals and health care institutions to scientific discussions, one-to-one engagements and lab visits enabling clinicians to experience our quality system and operational capabilities, cost trend while building our business and confidence in our specialty office. At the same time, we continue to strengthen our medical leadership and invest in capability building across our commercial and operations team. Our objective is not simply to introduce new tests but to drive sustained clinical adoption by combining affordability, scientific engagement and our nationwide network. We believe we can make advanced diagnostics accessible to much larger potential populations while building a scalable long-term specialty diagnostics business. Moving to our partnership business. This continues to be a strong growth engine for us. In Q1 FY '27, partnership business grew at 26% Y-o-Y. This growth has been led by strong momentum in insurance and health tech segments, along with continued scaling of existing accounts, our API-based integration are also enabling partners to expand diagnostics offerings across multiple cities seamlessly, which is strengthening our positioning as a preferred B2B partner. Thus, overall focus has been on building depth across channels, improving partner productivity and expanding the value we deliver through a wider test portfolio and strong service capabilities. With that, I will hand it over to Dr. Kinha to walk you through operations and lab initiatives.

Thank you, Rajdeep. Good evening, and a warm welcome to everyone joining us today. I'll focus on 3 areas today: our lab network expansion; our operational capability and research and how we are improving patient experience. Let me start with our first area of lab network. Our lab network now stands at 43 labs in India and 1 in Tanzania. This quarter, we expanded our geographic footprint further across India and opened 3 new labs, each at Mirzapur, [indiscernible]. Now let us move to the second area. Our operational capabilities and research. We further strengthened our specialty diagnostics portfolio with the addition of our [indiscernible] energy testing platform and over 20 specialized tests, including histopathology, specialized coagulation test, next-generation sequencing, PCR like BioFire, or exome sequencing, that micro [indiscernible], et cetera. These launches especially new genomic tests built on the foundation we delayed on noninvasive related testing that is NIPT. As we continue to expand our genomics portfolio in a paced manner, while genomics remain at an early stage in India, it represents a significant long-term opportunity with the global market projected to exceed USD 100 billion by 2030. Our approach remains measured introducing clinically relevant offerings strengthening physician education and scientific engagement and then scaling adoption over time. We also continue to translate real-world diagnosis data into actionable clinical insights through our [indiscernible]. For instance, the analysis shows that the right in noncommunicable disease risk starts earlier than commonly perceived particularly for heart health and diabetes, both commissions show a sharp uptick in the 21- to 40-year age group, with heart risk doubling by the 30s and diabetic risk more than doubling by 40s. Together, these patients -- we started to indicate that health is built gradually over time, highlighting the importance of early and regular preventive assessment. Now coming to the third focus area of patient experience, which is something I care about. Diagnostics is fundamentally trust business. Every improvement we made this year was driven by simple question. Does this make the patient and doctor feel more confident in us? To maintain credibility, we continually reinforce the 4 foundational pillars that underpin trust in medical diagnostics: First, accurate and quality. This continues to be nonnegotiable for us supported by an ability labs and ongoing equipment upgrades, where our 97% samples are processed at any [indiscernible] glass; second, faster resolution. When things go wrong, we send our complaint management channels, reducing resolution timelines and improved proactive communication with patients and continue to achieve Six Sigma levels in complaint management with the said metric standing at 3.1 complaints per million test for quarter 1 FY '27. Third, faster reports. We work extensively on improving loss and lab processes bringing the turnaround time to 3.37 hours in the quarter. And fourth, strengthening trust with doctors who are often the first point of contact for patients. We host clinician needs at our own laboratories, giving physicians at first and view of our quality systems, advanced equipment and operational processes. We conducted 23 doctor meets during the quarter with participation from approximately 100 doctors helping strengthen awareness and confidence in Thyrocare's capability while forcing deeper clinical engagement. Thus, overall, our focus has been on building an operations backbone that can support scale without compromising on quality or experience. With that, I now hand it over to Vikram for the financial performance.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before we get into the quarterly results, I would like to build on what Rahul highlighted on the operational and financial transformation in the last 5 years since [indiscernible] acquisition of Thyrocare. All of our strategic qualities, expanding needs, strengthening reliability and enhancing COVID have been executed consistently, and the results of that are affected in our performance. This snapshot of our long-term EBITDA, we are growing 20% consecutively over the last 8 quarters and surpassing the industry growth. These KPIs across the business have consistently strengthened like concert record base, partnership and business, volume growth, lab infrastructure and our test menu expansion. We are moving from voting diagnostic to specialized areas such as genomics and average testing. On profitability, excluding COVID years, the EBITDA have expanded from 23% in the FY '23 to 32%. Return on capital employed has also improved from 15% in FY '23 to 34% in FY '26. Importantly, we have achieved all this while continuing to invest in our business with [indiscernible] with 250 towards of CapEx investments and required OpEx investment to execute all the initiatives which we want to and so to ensure strengthen, reach, reliability and [indiscernible]. Now coming to the quarterly results, I'm very pleased to report a very strong start to FY '27. Building on the growth momentum of last year, we delivered standalone revenue growth of 26.1% and consolidated growth of 24.3% in the first quarter. Our Pathology business continued to perform well across our segments with both the franchisee and Parley business delivering growth of over 25%. Of our international [indiscernible] business also recorded strong conditions, reporting a 2-core increase revenue over the corresponding quarter last year. In radiology, we achieved significant sequential revenue growth of 8% over the previous quarter, indicating our gradual recovery in the business momentum. On a year-on-year basis, core revenue declined 4% primarily due to the conservation of centers. However, the business has [indiscernible] improved profitability, which is affected in quarterly reasons. Starting Q1 '27, we have started presenting a total view of our radiology business which includes the performance of Nuclear Healthcare Limited and [indiscernible] Hitech Limited. Now [indiscernible] the significance to scale and we feel that we should give a complete view of the radiology segments. This will provide a more complete representation of our radiology operations. I would like to clarify that first [indiscernible] already been getting consolidated in our financial segments. Therefore, this has no impact on the consolidated financial results. Now let me take you through the key financial highlights for the current quarter. Starting with revenue, our standalone revenue came in at INR 225.6 crores, which is up 26.1% year-on-year, driven by strong growth across franchisee and partnership business. On a consolidated business, revenue stood at INR 240 crores, reflecting our robust 24.3% year-on-year growth. Moving to margins and profitability. Our gross margins at 74.1%, reflecting an improvement of more than 290 basis points over here. This was largely driven from better negotiations to 28% growth in cash volume [indiscernible] and to improve our operational efficiency. Employee and other [indiscernible] costs increased year-on-year, primarily due to a inflation, higher volumes and investment in new growth areas like specialty and a fee expense. Our EBITDA margin for the quarter was 32.2%, with EBITDA growing 34% year-on-year. Profit after tax stood at INR 51.3 crores with a PAT margin of 21.4%. This also represents 34% year-on-year growth. Earnings per share for the quarter was at [ INR 3.23 crores ] compared to INR 2.41 crores in the prior period, again, an increase of 34% over the last quarter. Overall, over study performance reflects disciplined execution and focus on profitable growth. We remain committed to delivering consistent financial performance while continuing to invest in strategic initiatives and the support of our long-term growth agenda. With that, I will now hand over to Rahul for the strategic updates. Thank you.

Thank you, Vikram. Briefly, I would like to take a few minutes to recap to you our strategic direction and then I will open it up for Q&A. First, I will reiterate our value proposition to the customer. We will continue to remain an affordable option to all patients with good quality and on-time reports. All our efforts on our value proposition is towards ensuring low cost to the patient assurance on quality of testing through our certifications and engagement with doctors. We have made substantial progress on this, which we have updated in the initial comments and is reflected in the presentation. This will remain at our core, and we'll continue to guide all that we do. Second, our strategy. We continue to maintain our strategy of being the B2B partner of choice to all front-end diagnostic services companies in India, whether it's a small diagnostic center in a semi-urban area, a pharmacy in a metro, a small nursing home an individual doctor or a leading online diagnostic platform or HealthTech marketplace. We are happy to work with them to provide low-cost robust testing solutions so that they can serve their patients in the most effective manner. If they require phlebotomy, we are happy to mobilize our phlebotomy network of over 2,100 phlebotomists, including our network partners to serve them better. This strategy has been working well for us with both our franchise and partnerships business posting strong growth. As a natural extension of the strategy and in line with our vision to make quality diagnostics affordable and accessible. We are expanding our specialty segment by deploying an on-ground technical sales team to drive deeper doctor-led engagement, thus also marking our strong entry into the curative segment, where we are extending the same quality standards that we have already established in preventing diagnostics while maintaining affordable pricing for patients further strengthening our position as a comprehensive partner to our network. That is our brief is our mandate as management. Thank you so much for giving us a patient hearing. I will once again end with the call from the Mahatma. "FInd purpose, the means will follow," and our purpose remains to provide affordable high-quality testing to the masses. With that, we will open up for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Yash with Unifi Capital Limited. Please proceed with the question. As there's no response from Yash, we'll move forward with the next participant. Our next question comes from the line of Aditya Chheda with Ingrid Asset Management.

I hope there's no issue with the line.

We can hear -- like there's a problem with the participant. Okay, we'll move forward to the next participant. The next question comes from the line of Abdulkader Puranwala with ICC Securities.

Just to start with first on your specializing foray. So in the next 3 to 4 years, how significant could your genomics and allergy testing portfolio could be I mean, any guidance on that front would be very helpful.

Sure. See, as I said, we just started on the specialty front. So it's difficult to give specific guidance so early in the process. But to just give you an indication, our rough estimate is for most of our peer set, specialty forms between 15% to 20% of the portfolio. I think our ambition would be to reach the same levels in the 3- to 5-year time here.

And so to rule this out across your -- the current lab network, what is the kind of investments you're planning to incur in the next couple of years?

Actually, most of the investments have been already done. See, unlike the routine testing, where you need to deploy the CapEx across all labs. On the specialty front, actually, you can have a more centralized model. So most of the investments are going into our Mumbai lab or our Delhi lab, which are our central processing labs. So that CapEx is already done. I mean, now it will be mostly expansion CapEx if the volumes increase far below beyond what we thought. But I don't anticipate the significant amount of CapEx going into this business at least next year.

Understood. And sir, your thoughts on the divestment of the Imaging business. Any timeline you're working with there? And how should we look at this business.

Yes. See, I just took approval, as you know, just to give all people on the call, the background of this, right? The nuclear business has not been growing. And we also have not been investing in the nuclear business is in fairly conservative looking at the return on capital profile of that business versus our pathology business. So we haven't been investing. So therefore, we felt -- let us see if there is a a partner who is ready to invest into the new tier of business and grow it and give us better dividends than how it is right now. I anticipate the process will take 6 months, right? But we don't have any definitive what you call buyer at this point in time. So it's difficult to comment, but I anticipate it will be at least 6 months.

Okay. Understood, sir. And sir, just a couple of questions on your results. So when I look at your pathology revenue slip versus the volumes or the wire split, while there has been a significant increase in the franchisee in terms of the value side, but for the partnership business, the volume growth could see is higher than the value growth. So anything to read there?

Yes. See, it's a bit of a -- you shouldn't look at the B2C business or what we call partnership business at a [indiscernible] level, right? If you look at it, tests per patient, right, is what is increasing, right? And so -- and as you know, as we add more tests in a per patient, the wire still remain the same, right? So to that extent, you will see some price erosion because we discount the incremental tests to encourage patients to do a more comprehensive panel versus the few initial tests that they thought about. So that's the effect you see when you look at it at wire level, but at the test level, it's more or less in line.

Understood, sir. sir. And last one, if I may. What would be the ESOP charge in the premium for the quarter.

I'll ask Vikram to take that question.

Yes. So ESOPs, so it would be around INR 3.5 crores in the P&L quarter. And now why we have stopped reporting this because now what we said this has stabilized now. And for any estimate, you can take it as the last 4 quarters of this, which is just INR 3.5 crores would be [indiscernible] size in the quarter.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] with Purnanta Investment Advisors.

Congratulations for a good set of numbers. My first question is what is the logic behind making change in definition of tests conducted.

So I'm not able to hear you properly, changing definition of?

Tests conducted.

Yes, the test number. So I'll explain this. See, what used to happen earlier is in the test volumes, some of the calculated parameters who are also put into the test numbers, which are normally not billed to the patient. It's a small variation, but we felt it would be more prudent to remove those because those don't get billed and we have only put the tests that actually require processing on the machine and billing. The reason we have done that also is, over the last 6 months, we've introduced a number of calculated parameters. And so therefore, that volume will increase. And so to give everyone a fair picture, we just decided to remove the calculated parameters and restate the numbers. We have given in the disclosure all the quarterly numbers, there's hardly any variation. So -- but we just felt it's important to restate it so that everyone gets a clear picture.

Got it. And second one was on, in this quarter, we have added 900 franchisees, while our yearly target is around 1,500 franchisee. So will we revise this yearly target now?

So I will let Raj answer that.

We, I think -- yes. So I think this is -- you can call it out and which we always mentioned when we discuss about growth is that the franchisee business the way it grows, what you see in today want to give you reserves in future. So if you look at this number increasing is something which has been set in as a strategy last year if you talk about even last -- second half of last year, when we increased the deal size when it comes to the full sales team. So this growth what you are seeing is actually blend of both the stores which we open. And on a higher side, the numbers are usually the branded stores, which we have started opening. So I think -- if you look at the numbers, I think the question you asked about the revision of the number, you can consider it. But to be very candid with you, this is also one of the impacts of what additional sales team has been built up and geographical increase is what it is showing as a contribution in the numbers for this quarter. So this will stay stagnant for the next financial year. The 1,500 number which has been taken was kept in mind with the yearly growth what we do as a business. So to answer your question specifically, the revised number may go as per the way we have performed in this quarter. So you can consider INR 500 to INR 700 as an average addition every quarter.

With the exception of [indiscernible] where it is normally we have found between Q2 and Q3, it's difficult to expand the base. But yes, Rajdeep is right. I think you can take this for the remaining quarter.

So new revised number yearly would be around 2,000 franchisee.

No, no, 700 plus INR plus 500, so.

And last one on ...

Sorry to interrupt, sir, but you may please reenter for more questions. Our next question comes from the line of Chintan set with Keri Capital.

Congrats on the great set of numbers. Talk based on franchisee growth this quarter, right, we have been guiding the last quarter that we'll be growing at mid- to high teens kind of number that our expectation for FY '27. And because of these 4 FY '24 addition much lower. So that was the figure to our guidance that will be growing franchisee growth for the current year to be a mid- to high numbers. But this quarter, we delivered a very strong set of both volume, if you look at volume grew almost 20% -- 22%, then we some pricing growth for the current quarter for the fant.If you can just highlight what went [indiscernible] this quarter versus what we were expecting? And how should we think being through for the remaining part of the year now.

Got it. So look, it's too early for me to revise guidance. If you look at Q1 FY '26, we did roughly INR 180 crores. Q2 '26, we did INR 200 crores, right? So we are sitting on a very high base of last year, so particularly when it comes to Q2. So I think it's too early for me to revise guidance. I will still hold to the mid- to high teens guidance at this point in time. But what -- on your second question on what we thought and what works better than expected, I'll hand over to Rajdeep to talk about.

Yes. I think 2 strategies, and this is if I brief you all the franchise network, which was one of the previous question which was asked, as the strategy is working out for us. And in particular, with the addition of things like what we have added in recent past is the [indiscernible] as [indiscernible] is helping us out in actually bringing in more and more franchisees and also the field team enablement, which we have done in last financial. So if you are looking at and what Rahul is also mentioning, the numbers which may be looking very fancy like 900 as of now, will grow with the same speed earlier, the franchisee business was growing. So in the starting of the business, they may not looks so high in the Q2, what is there in the Q1. That is why we are saying that an estimate of a mid- to high teens will help you to actually do the right forecast for the next quarter. That is the reason for this number what we are saying.

Got it. And you revised as explained in the previous comment that we have revised our cash number a little bit lower versus what we have reported in the past. And that is silent kind of sand and set the patient number for us is order data we have kind of sequentially seen a drop in cash per patient, but this is what like to like now, right? You have to use the updated patient base. But if 1 has to look at is for franchisees has remained at around INR 500, that is -- given the maturity, do you see December further up in the subsequent quarter or the full year?

On the question -- the first question, I'll ask Vikram to address the question. On the second question, I wasn't able to fully follow the question. Would you mind...

Yes, sure, sure, sir. So my question was that the test per patient because the restated number of cash numbers versus what we have historically reported. But if look at the [indiscernible] franchisee, right, that will be the key metrics that I typically follow. That has kind of around INR 500_odd crore or INR 510-odd number. But given that FY '22, we didn't add much of the franchisees. Lot of it was got added in FY '25, and that maturity level will start hitting in FY '27, there where one can expect this number to start improving further. That was our expectation that while for franchisee will start moving upwards of FY '25, '30.

Test number is like-for-like and all numbers in the boot are like-for-like. So you can do the calculations on that front. So on the [indiscernible] franchisee, what we are observing is 2 effects. One is, of course, as we continue to add to the base, while the older franchisees mature, the newer base up at a lower level, so you kind of then stay at the same level, right? So it's a mix of older franchisees maturing but new franchisees entering at a lower pace. And the other is mention is now going deeper and deeper into India, right? So we are now in Tier 3, Tier 4 markets, where you can't expect the same 500 samples a month in those markets. So you're seeing these 2 events play out in the sample for franchise.

So alternatively, what I was looking at, given that we are adding more number of cash specialty into the picture, right? One can expect a widening of our test, this number should start to kind of reflect in some improvements. That was the [indiscernible]

That is the hope. We continue to be very focused on driving the mix towards higher-value tests and that effect, we should start to see.

This blended HP for the current quarter, which has seen improvement. We expect this to play out in the coming quarter?

No, no. See, specialty is a very small space right now, right? So if I look at it, we have done almost 55 million tests or INR 5.5 crore test, right? The specialty will be not even 1% of that, right? So I think it will be some time before it reaches a scale where you will start to see the effect in the revenue per test.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you may please rejoin thank you for the questions. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Salim Jain with [indiscernible] Capital.

So my question is a bit comprehensive one. I want to ask that are holding group. As we move that 100% promoter holding is placed and the dividend payout and also recently, eBay also sold 10% stake in Thyrocare to repay the debt, so is there any plans of -- we also knew that there would be IPO of AB Holding, or they would be reverse merger with Thyrocare? Like what is the group plan to actually utilize the share can revise the company, the parent company? Like what would be the effect on Thyrocare on that? I want to understand the strategy and focus around that.

Yes. You see -- right now, I -- firstly, the news that quoted that API is going for IPO is unfounded. That is mostly speculation. At this point in time, there are no plans on that. As the second, Sanya, we have been at API Group reducing the debt quite substantially. We were at INR 1,700 crores debt last year. We are now INR 1,800 crores debt last year. We are now down to INR 1,050 crores. And as you -- if you have been following, we have been, what you call, selling nonstrategic assets, seeing what all options are there to monetize to bring down the right? I think API will consider an IPO when it is profitable ex Thyrocare, as well as [indiscernible], right? That is the time when any corporate action will be considered. I think we are at least 12 months away from both those milestones. So I think right now, the API team is just focused on improving the business, getting all businesses to breakeven and become profitable ex Thyrocare. And that is the focus. And once that is achieved is when all discussions on IPO and other actions will be under discussion.

And could give any guidance about dividend of Thyrocare for this coming year?

No, we never give dividend guidance. So I think we will take it as a [indiscernible].

Next question comes from the line of Yogesh with Haitong Securities.

My first question is on the specialty front. Given that our legacy business model has been of preventive care, now that we are moving into the specialty segment, which is primarily a prescription-driven business. So what kind of efforts are we making to get the prescriptions from the doctors to get the doctor coverage? And what kind of target have you set for ourself to have a coverage of certain amount of super specialists and specialist doctors.

Yes. I think I will let Rajdeep take this question, and Rajdeep from that background and really setting up the entire infrastructure and team and all of that for that as well as he's best placed to answer these questions.

Yes Thank you, Yogesh. So I think predominantly, pathology as an industry has been conventionally driven by our doctors. And it's -- I always call out it is 90% prescription business when it comes to PAT as a business. Definitely, preventive is growing much faster, way faster than the kind of prescription business, but the fact remains fac. So I think it's not something which we have to reinvent the way it exists in the industry by building up a specialized team who is scientifically enabled them getting into the field, cost is doing the same kind of, I would say, calls or working, they were doing earlier for bringing the franchisees. Now they are bringing the doctors on board, talking to the doctors, giving them scientific understanding about the products which we have, for which we have enabled a proper structure of the team. The other thing -- the other way around of doing the same thing is again, communicating to our existing network of franchisees, which we are quite capable of doing just uploading communications on our software with which they do test bookings. So there are multiple such kind of initiatives, which are not very difficult for us as an organization at this case. And definitely, in the end, we've been for a longer time in the industry and in the end, the report finally goes in the hands of doctors. Now it's not very difficult for us to go back to them and say, but now we are also doing these tests, even for us or for the partners to go and do this. So we are driving it from the both ends, the conventional way of going back to the doctors and also pushing it via our franchisee engine. I hope I answered your question.

Yes, sir, just to understand, I mean what -- any target that we have set for ourselves with regards to doctor coverage?

I think it will be very early, and this particularly, this segment is at a very nascent stage. We have just started a few cities out of the overall country. However, we have activated rest of the network for it. But we have not actually set up a target. You can call out, and I always communicate in the previous call also I mentioned, it is a 0 year for specialty. So considering any numbers basis of what we are doing as of now will be very difficult for me to give you.