BLACKBUCK LIMITED (BLACKBUCK) Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We'll start the meeting in a minute or so.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Q2 and H1 FI27 earnings conference call of BlackBuck Limited hosted by Radhi Capital. As a reminder, all attendees will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. If you have any questions, please feel free to press the raise hand button. We'll call you in turn and unmute your line so you can speak. Important note, if you need to ask a question, please ensure Microsoft Teams has permission to access your microphone when you log in, otherwise you will not be able to unmute. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Kindly also note that the audio of the earnings call is a corporate material of BlackBug Limited and cannot be copied, rebroadcasted, or attributed in the PR media without specific and written consent of the company. Please note that anything said on this call that reflects the outlook towards the future, which can be construed as a forward-looking statement, must be reviewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. A copy of the disclosure is available on the Investor Relations section of the website as well as on the stock exchanges. To give you an in-depth understanding of the company and answer all your queries, we have from the management side today, Mr. Rajesh Kumar Naidu Yabaji, Chairman, Managing Director, and CEO, and Mr. Satyakam, Chief Financial Officer. I now hand over the conference over to Rajesh for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Rajesh.

Thanks. Thank you, Vinita, for the introduction. You're able to hear me clearly?

Yes, yes. Loud and clear.

Cool. So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our Q2FI27 earnings presentation. It's been a good start to the year. I think last quarter we had presented you guys, you know, good results. As we get into the second half of the year, I think Q2FI27 also worked out really well for the company. Largely because of the fundamentals and the quality of business we have built, and which basically rides on larger industry, Tailwind's high quality of product, very strong distribution. And that has been the result of the compounding, you know, nature of results, you know, you're seeing with us. So, starting off with the snapshot numbers, on an overall basis, the company did about 253 crores of total income, which is a growth of about 51% on a year-on-year basis. EBITDA, close to 51 crores, which is a 40% growth on a year-on-year basis. Profit after tax, 41.4 crores, which is a 42% growth on a year-on-year basis. Functional metrics, more KPIs, which are the platform KPIs, where, you know, we report metrics which are under the hood, which help us achieve the revenue goals, the outcome metrics. Transacting customers, close to 9 lakh transacting customers, growing at about 13% a year on your basis, covers large part of the, you know, medium and heavy commercial vehicle customers, which are relevant for the intercity trucking audience. Users who are power users use more than or equal to two services, growing at about 20%, roughly more than half of these users are power users, which is close to 4 lakh 80,000. GTV of tolling, which is a large part of the payments business we do, growing healthy rate about 17% on a year-on-year basis, you know, broadly about 7,070 crores this quarter. So, yes, as I mentioned, overall, you know, a strong quarter results largely, you know, in the business as usual way with a lot of exciting things happening on new initiatives and continuing to preserve the nature and the quality of profitability of the core business. Pulling out again, the crux of the strategy, as I mentioned, all the quality of results are basis a strong business model. The business model is about solving, you know, the truck operators problems, we exist to solve their problems, we exist to help them get operationally better, we exist to help them make more revenue. So these are plethora of offerings. We keep building, we keep launching. And by launch of a newer offering, it adds back the strength to the older offerings, cementing the whole user using the platform more and more. On the platform side, translating customers continue to grow. The overall app usage, a very, very, very good number, continues to hold. On the distribution front, again, 10,000 touchpoint network continues to scale in the relevant areas. And 80% districts, we continue to be present, right? So, again, iterating the strategy, we build offerings, which are launched on our platform. Every new offering gives rise, gives strength, you know, of its own, at the same time, strengthening the older offerings. We sell, service, distribute these offerings to our customers through a physical touchpoint network, which is very, very, very essential for the nature of users, you know, what we have. And it's widespread, which means a trucker, because trucks are mobile, wherever he buys a service, he can get it serviced anywhere. He gets basically taken care of with such a wide distribution network. So using the strategy is what you're seeing the results sort of coming through. Moving forward, giving an update on the key KPIs. Some of them we've already touched upon. Going into the revenue from operations part from their starting, which is about 56% on an year-on-year basis, and on an H1 basis, roughly about 49%. Coming to the more better quality metric on revenue is basically the net revenues, which typically are the real revenues which we make as a company. That is basically about 183 crores, which have It's grown by about close to 35% on a year-on-year basis. Both the core and the growth businesses have grown very strongly this quarter. Contribution margin profile continues to be the same, much north of 90% levels. High-quality technology revenues, product-based revenues, and hence such kind of a quality contribution margin. That also grew by about 33%. You see a slight dip because telematics revenues, as we give an update in the previous quarters, have started to accelerate, and which I'll give you a bit of narrative ahead, but continue to accelerate this quarter as well. So you'll see the slight blip because in the host of revenues, telematics have a bit of a lower contribution margin. On the adjusted EBITDA basis, that's 55 crores, which is growth of about close to 30%. Again, I want to remind you here that there's a blended metric of the investments we're doing in our newer and emerging businesses. So think of it as we continue to scale our EBITDA by, you know, by whatever contums you're seeing, while absorbing the increasing costs of investment into new businesses, which sooner or later, at a later date, we would be helping you understand them by providing you splits, you know, of those as well. Moving forward into narrating some of the highlights, as we mentioned, the headline metric, revenues grew about 56%. Sequentially, we grew about 15% on a sequential quarter basis, you know, this particular quarter. In that, splitting it, core businesses grew by 31% on a year-on-year basis, and roughly 11% on a sequential quarter. And as many of you know, this generally is a seasonally low quarter because of rains. And also because this time the first quarter had a bit of dip in movement, all of that got compensated with a good Q2. One of the highlights within this is that obviously the GTV growth in tolling was 17%, which is strong growth. But within that, the whole full stack business on tolling where we have our own fast tags using our own subsidiary black book, TZF, you know, TZF, which where we have our PPI entity, you know, we saw significant uptick in issuing our tags as well. So that was a good story for this quarter, you know, under-tolling business. Telematics business, as I was giving a narrative on contribution margin, is actually scaling to newer heights. We reported last quarter that we did highest, you know, new device sales in that quarter. This quarter, we continued to break that and there was a newer high achieved. And you can, you don't find the impact of this directly in this quarter. As you can see, the deferred revenue item on the balance sheet continues to increase because the revenue recognition of the telematics happens across the year. It does not happen in the month we sell the devices. So you will see the goodness of this not only coming, which you've seen in this quarter, but continue, would continue to come in the quarters to come. So, basically, we have a core business where there are businesses which are matured and are growing in higher teens about 20% levels. But there are multiple newer streams which are emerging out within the core, which are helping us propel stronger growth in the overall core part of the business. Coming into growth businesses, which are basically largely the loads business and the vehicle finance business, continue to have the similar narrative, you know, as before. We're growing very strongly. Year-on-year growth is roughly about 2.7x, which is 166% growth on a year-on-year basis. Sequential quarter growth of about 25%. And here again, you know, throwing some color on super loads. And as you all know, we have scaled into newer cities. Those are scaling well. Existing cities are compounding, you know, with the productivity improvements, etc. We've done a lot of, you know, a lot of work on AI, because the whole process works on matchmaking, right? So we've done a lot of work on AI to improve productivities, right? So we've seen a significant uptick in productivities of people and of the cost we are investing in the existing sort of cities. And a very strong quarter from a, you know, growth of Unitechnomics as well, because we've tried to get into the margin levels in some of the, you know, existing cities at a level, which basically prove the long term profitability nature of the business as well. So, like, if you make, if you essentially try to make more money, and if the business essentially continues to compound, which means you've created a high quality business. So we're playing around a lot of that. And we've seen like good results in all of those dimensions. Talking about vehicle finance, where we give a narrative at the start of the year that this will be the year of EBITDA break even, we're on track to achieve that. It is again, you know, it's a largely partner led model. And at the end of the day, the partners are in the business of lending. So it has its own steady growth rate on which the business, you know, continues to, you know, grow. And the AUM managed by partners with us continues to steadily climb, and that will help us get to the EBITDA break-even point. Commenting on profitability, as you all have seen, there's a close to 30% growth on an adjusted EBITDA basis on a year-on-year, getting this to 55 crores. As we mentioned, core story is largely same, right? It continues to deliver consistent profitability and operating cash flows, right? Core businesses used to deliver anywhere in the range of 70% to 85% or even 100% of operating leverage before. Now, we've got a lot of areas in which we could invest more in. That's why you've seen that the operating leverage in this business is in the range of that 50% despite so much of investments we've done in customer acquisition upfront in this quarter. Right. So the nature of core business continues to be the same strong operating cash flow machine for the company. We are giving its due investments wherever it is needed. And we are seeing in a lot of niches a strong uptick in customer acquisition and revenue growth. While that story continues to compound and continues to grow at a consistent basis, we have stepped up our investments in super loads. And we will continue to do that. As we have more clarity on how this business is getting built out, as we have more clarity on how the playbook is getting built out, we would continue to invest and scale this business, right? Then, moving into giving a bit of commentary on the total expenses, which have grown by 36% on a year-on-year basis, which generally would have been in the teens level in the past, largely because of growth across core businesses and the investment in superloads, right? So, it's the other two parts which were the flavor of the growth and also would appear for you in the costs. Giving a bit of voiceover, largely a repeat on the P&L overview, most of these line items you have touched, total income grew by about 51%, revenue from Ops higher by 56%, net revenues grew by 35%, and your registered EBITDA grew by 29%, EBITDA by 39% to 51 crores, and PAT to 41 crores by 42%. So, largely mimicking the numbers which we discussed in the previous slides. So, that's all from our side, you know, and would love to take questions from all of you.

Thank you. We will now open the call for questions. Kindly raise your hand to ask a question. We will unmute your line. Please announce your name and organization name before you ask a question. As a reminder, we request all participants to restrict themselves to two questions and come back in the queue.

First question is from Gaurav Malhotra.

Gaurav, please go ahead and unmute your line.

Yeah. Hi. Am I audible?

Yes, Gaurav. Yes, you are.

Hi. Hi. Hi, Rajesh. Rajesh, just a few questions. You know, first of all, you know, you understand that this is a seasonally slow quarter for because of rains, everything. But essentially, the GDP of tolling has been in the same, you know, ballpark of around 7,000 crores, 68, 7,000 crores over the last, like, three, four quarters. So how should we think about this sort of growth moving ahead, say, in the in the second half of the year?

So, yeah, so basically, I think the way to, because it was a bit of a, you know, mixed year, right? The first, the first quarter was obviously the whole, you know, the entire oil crisis and the movement being a bit of, you know, deceleration led to the first quarter, you know, downward sort of a trend, like it could have been better. And again, this quarter with rains always has been a seasonally weak quarter. And generally, we see a degrowth from the previous quarter by about a few percentage points. And if you typically see the last year numbers also, because last time there was a request to understand this, we have provided the last 10 quarters data on the tolling GTV as well. So typically, the Q3, Q4 is when the whole sort of, you know, industry picks up. Similar to the trend of the last year, if you see in Q3 is where you typically start seeing the growth. And because of a very high market share, largely our pattern would also be indexed to how the market will work, right? So I would say that at this moment, you know, whatever is largely happening from a context of, you know, October, how the movement is picking up in the first few weeks, etc. Largely, I would say that it is a business as usual as it was in the previous years as well.

Thank you. Just a couple of more questions. One more on tolling. Ajish, you mentioned about some of the fast tags being rolled out on your own TPI license. So, this is the incremental fast tags or this is also the existing, some of them are being replaced with it? Just trying to understand how do we think about the MDR and going forward.

See, basically, long term, as we've always maintained, it will be a partner led model, right? We will, you know, everything will be essentially coexisting. And maybe the part with partners will still be doing majority of the numbers, right? And of the existing business, what we have with partners, none of that is the representative of what we were talking, whatever incremental we were issuing, in that there is a significant uptake in the BlackBug fast tax. Okay.

And just last question on super loads, you know, if you can give us some sense of, you know, how many hubs you are present in, you know, some sort of impact on working capital loads, just some additional data on super loads will be helpful.

I think same numbers as before, you know, like, you know, Gaurav, which we had mentioned that we're present in 14 cities, and of that two cities are like the earlier cities and the remaining 12 are, you know, the newer cities. And as we've always mentioned, it's a like largely a cash and carry business, where we receive the advance from the customers at largely along the time of, you know, the way the vehicle is essentially getting loaded. It's a very working capital light business, maybe having few days of working capital on an overall basis. I think that's the nature and largely similar nature from a business context perspective.

If I may squeeze in one last question on telematics, you know, you mentioned that there has been an acceleration. So this acceleration is, you know, on account of that new technology that AIS adoption, which is sort of making it into a push or you guys are becoming sort of more aggressive into this segment and, and essentially, you know, any sense on, you know, what, what kind of devices are being added? Is it from multi technology, single, etc?

Yeah, I think answering your question, very small part of the acceleration is attributed to new product launches, like the fuel sensor and the, you know, dash cam, which we are walking into, which are getting into in a big way over the years, fuel sensor, we've been giving the commentary, and dash cam, we are piloting as we speak, right? The large part of the acceleration is because of the AIS foundations, which are happening across states for various different use cases. And inside that, we are playing basically a material role towards like in that, like, you know, we're playing material role by capturing incremental market share. And that is leading to higher sales of devices, you know, incrementally every quarter.

Got it. Thank you so much. I'll come back in the queue, please.

Thank you.

The next question is from Avneesh Sharma. Avneesh, please unmute your line and go ahead.

Hi, team. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is with respect to this MDR, like what share of tolling revenue and the margins could be impacted by this MDR on UPI? You know, on a GTA of 7000 crore, 0.4% MDR, I think could be substantial. So just wanted to understand management's view on the same.

Yeah. So basically, in this context, roughly about 50% of our, over 50% of our transactions are sub 2000, right, number one. And for the remaining transactions, one of the specific use case, which is open for Fastag is basically a pre-debit PDN method of basically recharge. So through that, the remaining part of the transaction essentially gets covered. So through a method of obviously some are below 2000 and the ones which are above, we're using the pre-debit notification mechanism, which does not work on a latency of 24 hours to get the debit and the credit done. And that's specifically alert for Fastag. So, using a mix of these strategies, we believe the impact on MDR, on UPI will be significantly close to zero, possibly, for our business.

So, we might have to nudge our customers paying about $2,000 to start using this. But initially, the adoption for this PDN thing could not be as fast as we are expecting. So, anything on that? Like, how are we, you know, going to do this?

Yeah, so Avnish, while we'll understand the actual impact only once it is implemented, we have done some pilots in the first week of October and broadly what Rajesh mentioned broadly, the pilot followed that where either people were doing below 2000 or they were using the zero PD and mandate route. So even though we'll understand the actual impact only post implementation, it should largely be contained in our view.

Okay, understood. My other question is with respect to this core revenue. So, it grew around 31% year-on-year and 11% Q-on-Q. But the GTA was largely flat Q-on-Q and the tolling transactions fell around 2% Q-on-Q. So, just wanted to understand what drove the Q-on-Q growth in core. It was telematic devices, fuel, or just a better take rate on tolling.

Yeah, I think a large part of it was attributable to telematics. Like Rajesh mentioned, we did record numbers of new device sales in the current quarter. On the tolling side as well, there were some minor one-off benefits that kind of gave a kicker on the revenue this quarter. But otherwise, nothing material changes on the take rate on the tolling side as seen in the past quarters. Telematics, hopefully, with the AIS tailwinds, we should continue to grow faster.

Understood. And lastly, on the depreciation expense, so it's roughly doubled year on year, and the capex currently is around 771 million. So just wanted to understand the trajectory for the depreciation expense and any capex guidance for current year.

Yeah, so on depreciation, it is largely linked to the telematics growth, right? I think if you would have on the, because we've also given the half-year balance sheet, you would have seen that the growth on deferred revenues also has been 56% on a year-on-year basis, right? I think it has grown strongly, even I think four to five times that of the absolute growth in depreciation, right? So, we continue to touch newer highs in telematics. So, that growth path, as we figure out, depreciation will follow that route. Currently, no guidance on how it will pan out.

Okay. Okay, that was helpful. Thank you. All the best.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pratik. Pratik, please go ahead with your question.

Unmute yourself.

Hi, I'm Nawardami. Yes, Pratik.

Yes.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. So, we met a few fleet owners in Delhi, and what we heard was that most new trucks now come with GPS installed by the manufacturer, and they provide around 12 to 18 months of free subscription, and post that the OIN renewal, correct me if I'm wrong, is somewhere around 7 to 10,000 a year, while you guys charge 3 to 4K. So I think the price gap and the convenience that like black box, one app, you can drive multiple brands is the reason that people switch to you guys. So two things on this. So if you could share the, you know, what percentage of your telemetric revenue comes from like relatively newer trucks where people switch after the OEM subscription ends versus secondhand or older trucks. And secondly, let's say if the manufacturers bring the renewal pricing closer to you, like what price you guys have, how do you see that affecting your telematics growth?

Yeah, so basically, I think the way to think through is that first of all, the GPS is not mandated comes with a it's a basically, it's an optional, you know, accessory a person wants, right? So it was mandated, you know, few years back, actually, and then it led to a lot of friction. So it I think was rolled back. So, it's an optional, first of all. Second is, remember that all the repeat buyers of trucks, right, already have a fleet of trucks, right? So, they would want to manage their end-to-end telematics kind of operations management of looking where the drivers are and sharing the location with customers, etc. at one place. Because we've got a very heavy wallet share in the existing base already, most of our customers typically buy the incremental new trucks, whatever they're buying, they buy with the same software, right? So we obviously don't have data on how many new trucks which got into the market right now and how many we fix, like we don't have the data, and hence we're not able to share. But then it's literally like there is, you know, first of all, as you rightly said, on pricing and everything, we're so competitive that like people, you know, users. Second thing is that on the AIS side, there is a lot of operational complexity with respect to how the, you know, whole device gets activated, how the device has to be kept, you know, you know, sort of on with a very high service level, right? And it needs a lot of integrations with a lot of different, you know, government portals, etc. So that is, again, a very specialized game, which needs a very, you know, sort of a very focused approach at a state level. I don't think, you know, that's an area where I would say that OEMs are playing sort of at this point in time. And the third thing is that we have a very strong Panindia service network, which in the scheme of things for us, because it's a very important business for us, we do that really well, right? Anywhere, you know, a truck is down, etc. We get that done, like get the repairs done very fast. So I think all of this compounded together always has given us this edge, and has kept us sort of, you know, much ahead in terms of how we are perceiving this business, you know, than obviously the OEMs, what you're talking about. Um, we've like received this question many times, but yeah, I mean, this is how it is. And, uh, whatever I'm saying that the result of that is in the numbers, uh, you know, on how, how it is growing and, uh, how the numbers are like developing.

Understood. So I completely agree on the app and tracking part, but I just wanted to understand if they choose to like match your price, would that have an impact on the growth of the telemetrics?

That's what I explained, right? Like when a guy is buying a new truck, he already has 10 trucks. The guy is buying a new truck, he's generally a repeat purchaser, right? Like if you go and understand like a new truck purchase is generally done by a repeat truck buyer. It's not done by a guy entering the business. So because he is already has a fleet of trucks and is using a BlackBuck software, right? He first of all for a new truck itself doesn't, you know, use something as he uses us, right? So, there is no question on letting this customer go to anyone, first of all. So, the question doesn't arise, number one. And number two, obviously, with the kind of service, with the kind of efficiency in the AIS devices, with the kind of upkeep in the AIS devices, which is one of the biggest quantity sold devices in at least 14 cities. So, with all of this, it's very hard for others to compete at this point in time.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is a follow-up question by Gaurav again. Gaurav, please go ahead with your question.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity again. Rajesh, I just wanted to, you know, just spend some time on the OPEX. You mentioned that obviously, you know, super loads is where you guys are investing in. But you also mentioned that even in the core business, you are seeing some increase in OPEX. So can you just help us understand where this investment is going between tolling and telematics and what are you guys doing over there?

So, Gaurav, as you know, in our core business, the nature of our business is generally that whenever we acquire a customer or we are doing incremental sales, be it of devices, be it of fast tags, be it of any other product, we typically incur an upfront customer acquisition cost, right? And typically, we make the LTVs over the lifetime of the customer, they are with us, right? Whenever our sales grow strongly, in that quarter, we basically incur a larger expense because our sales engine is largely variabilized. So that leads to more acquisition, more cost comes into this quarter, and you see suppressed EBITDA, but for long term, higher growth and higher catch up of EBITDA, right? That is why if you go back and see our numbers a few years back, when there was no base of revenue, but we were going through a heavy customer acquisition cycle, we would make a very high loss. Then we kept our customer acquisition largely constant for a few years. Then you saw the whole EBITDA compounding. We didn't keep it constant because we wanted to turn profitable. We kept it constant because beyond that, it was a little unprofitable, obviously, to acquire. Now, wherever we're seeing opportunities, we are expanding and we are gaining more market share. So as and when there are spurts of increase in customer acquisition comes up, the EBITDA suppresses in that particular quarter.

So basically, if telematics is sort of doing very well and there's massive growth coming there, So, there is an upfront CAC involved, which obviously you guys will recoup through the life of the customer. That would be one sort of way to think about it, right?

Correct. That's the way to think about it. And that's why you can see that telematics is actually very easy to understand. Because in telematics, you also have a deferred revenue component. That also, if you can see, that scales, right? You can see it's on the balance sheet. So, yeah, so you can see most of this revenue accruing over a period of time.

Okay, cool. Thank you.

Thank you. Participants, kindly raise your hand to ask a question.

That was the last question for the day.

Thank you again for your time and participation. On behalf of BlackBuck Limited, this concludes today's conference. For any questions, please feel free to write to us on the email IDs mentioned on the invite. We appreciate your engagement. You may now disconnect your lines.