Q1 FY27 Earnings Call Transcript

“Computer Age Management Services Limited Q1 FY27 Earnings Conference Call” August 04, 2026 MANAGEMENT: MR. ANUJ KUMAR – MANAGING DIRECTOR AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER – COMPUTER AGE MANAGEMENT SERVICES LIMITED MR. RAM CHARAN – CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER – COMPUTER AGE MANAGEMENT SERVICES LIMITED MR. ANISH SAWLANI – HEAD, INVESTOR RELATIONS – COMPUTER AGE MANAGEMENT SERVICES LIMITED MODERATOR: MR. NIKUNJ SETH – MUFG INTIME Page 1 of 18 Computer Age Management Services Limited August 04, 2026 Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Computer Age Management Services Limited Q1 FY27 Earnings Conference Call, hosted by MUFG Intime. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nikunj Seth from MUFG Intime. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Nikunj Seth: Thank you, Sumit. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Q1 FY27 earnings conference call of Computer Age Management Services Limited. From the management, we have with us Mr. Anuj Kumar, MD and CEO; Mr. Ram Charan, CFO; and Mr. Anish Sawlani, Head, Investor Rations. Before we proceed to the opening remarks, I would like to give a small disclaimer that this conference may contain certain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on date. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. A detailed disclaimer has been published in the investor presentation. Now I would like to hand over the conference to Mr. Anuj Kumar for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Anuj Kumar: Nikunj, thank you very much. Good morning to everyone. Appreciate everyone joining the earnings call for the first quarter FY27. So I presume all of you would have read the press release and you would have downloaded a copy of the presentation. So I'll just quickly jump into the details. Just given the backdrop of the times we are in, I think it was a solid quarter from us. You've seen that EBITDA grew over 18% year-on-year to get to INR183 crores. This is our highest ever number. And despite the challenging market conditions, I think it did 2 things. One, despite the fact that AUM did not grow as much as it traditionally would have grown, we were able to post an 18% increase in EBITDA, 17% in PAT. Also the fact that this perhaps now almost puts in the background all the pricing adjustments of the last year because you know that we had dropped from similar levels to about 42% operating EBITDA and climb back in the next 4 to 5 quarters back to 46%. So to that extent, 46.4% operating EBITDA looks like a very nice number. EBITDA margin expansion, 270 basis points. This all of you know from 43.7% a year back to 46.4%. We are now heading towards -- our highest was a shade above 47%. So we are heading in that direction. And again, I would say pretty sound just given the times that the last 2 years, AUM expansion has not been as much as you would expect. And the fact that the pricing Page 2 of 18 Computer Age Management Services Limited August 04, 2026 adjustment, the onetime pricing adjustment is a bit of the backdrop, but not very recent, but 1 year old. Operating revenue grew 11.5% to INR395 crores. Within this, the 2 components are the MF revenue. The MF revenue actually -- absolute MF revenue grew under 10%. Asset-based revenue grew about a little over 11%. But if you see the non-MF businesses, they grew collectively over 28%. And I would say that I'm personally pretty happy with the progress of non-MF because you know that we've not done significantly margin dilutive stuff anywhere in the portfolio. We've taken bets. Those bets have paid off. I think a lot of the bets have paid off. Pay has paid off significantly. Alternatives despite all the competition and new players who entered in the last many years and continue to enter, we grew in the mid-20s. KRA, which is the third large non-MF contributor, obviously, did not grow given the backdrop of the price adjustment that the industry has taken. But I think from the second quarter onwards, things will start looking good in that territory also. So on a blended basis, 11.2% MF revenue growth, 28% plus non-MF growth. We expect, therefore, that non-MF growth will stay blended upwards of 20%. We are now in the kind of -- we've had half of the second quarter done, and we have some view of what will happen in the second quarter. So we believe that for the year, overall blended non-MF revenue will certainly be 20%. If you're lucky, it could come at 22%, 23%. MF revenue, we would like it to grow at least 12%. Blended, we are expecting about a 13% overall revenue growth, about a 16% EBITDA growth. So it seems to be on that track. And from a broad basis, if you see the growth levers, what are the growth levers? Like I said, payments, we started the cards business seems to be picking up very well. In AIF, the base has grown quite well. New logo acquisition has been sound. CAMS WealthServ has done well, continues to add heft, which you may have read in the presentation. Also the fact now that as far as GIFT City is concerned, you would have read that we have in principle approval to start a KRA operation. We are also in the process of applying for a payment service provider license. And we haven't applied that because there's a process related to the application. But once we have a wholesome offering of base RTA, fund accounting, KRA for which we have in principle, and this KRA just does not apply to capital market entities in GIFT is a far broader application. And then for payments, you know that over a period of time, these outbound funds are bigger attracting money. I would say it's just the beginning about 2 quarters old. But over a period of time, as I think a lot of -- there's a lot of press on portfolio rebalancing and trying overseas markets, a lot of people are adding all these things. Page 3 of 18 Computer Age Management Services Limited August 04, 2026 That trend should deepen the SIB kind of concept and overseas investment through GIFT city should deepen. All of that can drive the payments business also. So those growth drivers are in place, and I think they're doing well. From a new logo perspective, you know that we've taken 6 AMCs live last year. We've taken one live this year, which is AlphaGrep. We have 3 large installations, which should be live from now up to the end of the year, which is Carnelian, ASK and Neo and 1 or 2 with smaller ones also, but those are the salient ones. So all of that should play out in the coming months. Move to the next. From an MF perspective, therefore, you would have seen that AUM grew just under 15% year- on-year to be about INR56 lakh crores. Of course, the month of July has been a lot better. April, May, June were muted months. In July, we've been much better. We've kind of grazed close to INR60 lakh, but haven't got there yet, but we should get there. Market share stayed at about 67.2%. I think, again, from a foundational perspective, if you look at other growth metrics, so what happened to equity AUM grew ahead of market ,industry at 16% and at some change, we had 17.6%. Equity net sales grew ahead of industry growth. Live SIP counts grew ahead of industry. So, if I just took those 3, which is gross equity AUM growth, equity net sales growth and live SIP account growth, I think that sums up the equity picture because 60%, 65% of the MF asset revenue comes from there. So those are again, those are great foundational metrics which have been playing out for the last maybe about a couple of years, but happy to kind of share with you that all of that continues to do well. And [Showing first 8,000 characters — download PDF for full document]