Cartrade Tech Limited (CARTRADE) Q2 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to CarTrade Tech Limited Q2 FY 2027 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants' line 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 “*” then “0” on your touchtone telephone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Sayali Ambre from CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you, and over to you, madam.

Sayali Ambre:

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you all to the Q2 and Half Year ended September 2026 Earnings Conference Call for CarTrade Tech Limited. To discuss the Quarter's Financial and Business Performance, we have from the Management, Mr. Vinay Sanghi – Chairman and Managing Director, Ms. Aneesha Bhandary – Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Varun Sanghi – Chief Strategy Officer. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking and may involve risks and uncertainties. For more details, kindly refer to the investor presentation and other filings that can be found on the company's website and on the Stock Exchanges. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to the Management for their opening remarks. Post then, we can open the floor for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you, Sayali, and good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining the Half-Yearly Earnings Call and the Q2 Earnings Call as well. I just want to jump straight to Slide #4 in your presentation decks. As you know, the company's margin expanded this quarter to 36%. The four-year growth story shows PAT growth of 60% CAGR over the four years. Revenue growth over the last four years is 24% CAGR. EBITDA is up 74%. When you look at the capital strength, the cash reserve has crossed INR 1,400 crores. Return on equity continues to be strong. As you know, the EPS is almost 7x in the last four years. If I go to the next slide and talk about the key metrics of the company. The company in this quarter, I am glad to inform you, has recorded its highest ever revenue in its history at INR 236 crores of total income. PBT is highest ever, again, in this quarter is at INR 85 crores. We continue to be India and also the world's leading automotive platform, also leading used classified platform and vehicle auction platform.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 We receive 76 million MAUs average for this quarter. Organic traffic has jumped to 96%, and we have 500 physical locations, 1.6 million vehicles. We are auctioning at the rate of 1.6 million vehicles a year. As I already said, revenue is highest at INR 236 crores. Adjusted EBITDA, which is a cash proxy, has crossed INR 106 crores for the quarter. PAT is at INR 66 crores and as I told you earlier, our cash balances are at INR 1,400 crores as of 30th September. If you look at the consolidated performances of the company, the revenue at INR 213 crores for the quarter is also its highest ever in its history. As you have seen, the revenue has also sequentially grown from the previous quarter, from Q-on-Q by INR 12 crores, which is up from INR 201 crores last quarter, INR 213 crores this quarter. There has been a sequential jump on growth of revenues. There is also annual jump of 10%. The half-yearly growth has been 13%. Other income is down. I think other income is down primarily due to the write-backs last year in the same quarter, we had approximately INR 10 crores of write-backs, there is a footnote below, and INR 14 crores in the year of write-backs at OLX of some written-back some expenses to income, and therefore, the other income is down from 19% in the 2nd Quarter and 5% annually down but as I said, total income is at the highest ever, INR 236 crores, and revenues is highest at INR 213 crores. Employee costs are stable at 8% growth over last year, which shows the leverage in the business. EBITDA is up by 20% over last year. EBITDA is also sequentially up 20%. If you see the EBITDA at INR 76 crores, is higher than the INR 63.59 crore the last year quarter and of course higher by 20% from previous quarter, INR 63 crores as well. EBITDA margins come out at 36%. As you know, your company is focused on building a best-in-class margin structure. You can see here, EBITDA margin has jumped from 33% last year quarter to 36% and 36% over 31% previous quarter same time. For half yearly, the EBITDA margins are 34% versus 29% last year for the half year results. EBITDA is also up 30% year-on-year over last year for the first six months. PBT, as I told you, is the highest in our history, 85.45, which is up over 79.92 last year quarter and 74.52 previous quarter. The 7% growth is also taking into account the lower other income, which is actually bringing down the growth rate only 7%, which is the other write-backs of OLX in the same quarter last year. PAT is up by 3% at INR 65.95 crores or INR 66 crores over INR 56.75 crores last quarter and INR 64 crores last year, is a 3% growth in PAT. Let me clarify here, it is driven by INR 10 crore writeback in the same quarter last year. Therefore, the growth is showing at only 3%. Let me also stress here that the tax impact on OLX, our income tax impact last year, we had tax shelters on OLX, and this year we paid tax on OLX. So, there is a base effect of last year, which is kicking into the PAT of this year. These are two or three reasons why the PAT is up only 3%. One is because of the OLX write backs last year and other income.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 Second is because of the tax impact at OLX this year versus last year, OLX had tax shelter. These are the reasons why the PAT is at 3%. Overall, the revenue is at its highest ever, and PBT is also at its highest ever in the history of the company. If you look at the consumer group, which is the next slide, revenue from operations are up 4%, EBITDA is up 5%, and margins have come to 41%, and PAT is up 13%. Of course, half yearly is up 10% on revenue and 16% on EBITDA. Part of the reason is, as you know, last year, there was GST reduction on 22nd September. There is also a base effect of the 2nd Quarter last year. If you look at the 2nd Quarter last year revenue, the growth was 37% in that quarter. If you really look at a two-year period, you will see a 20% CAGR in the New Auto business. I think there is a base effect again of a very strong 2nd Quarter last year in the New Car business. If you go further to the Remarketing business, profits have grown by 47%, margin is up 30%, revenue is up 13% half yearly, 12% for the quarter, and EBITDA margins, 29% growth in EBITDA for the quarter. PAT has grown by 47% in the quarter on the Remarketing business. OLX is actually, revenues had a very strong growth. We had 28% half yearly growth, a 26% quarter growth. EBITDA margins are up to 32% in OLX, and EBITDA growth is up to 36% here. There is a de-growth in profit after tax, primarily because of two reasons: As I once again said, the other income is sharply down from INR 13.51 crores last year in the same quarter, to INR 4.41 crores this year, which is account of those write backs. In addition, you have seen the tax up by 58% over last year in OLX. These are the reasons why the PAT is down, but as I said, EBITDA growth is at 36%, which is its highest ever, and revenue there is highest ever at 26% as well. This is the financials of the company. We feel very optimistic about the business conditions and the business of the company. As we have already said, we move towards our goal of achieving a company of INR 1,000 crore profit in the next four-five years, and we continue to strive towards that. As I said again, PBT has come to INR 85 crores, so directionally, we have headed there. EBITDA is up by INR 13 crores over the previous quarter. If you look at the coming quarters, we feel, as I said, the business environment is strong. We feel the OLX growth rates, which you see, will be surpassed in the coming quarters. We of course think the growth rate will cross 30%, 35% in the coming quarters at OLX. We also believe that the EBITDA of the group has grown 20% from Q2 over Q1. We believe we will have similar growth rates of EBITDA sequentially from Q2 to Q3. Q3 this year is likely to be our best ever quarter in almost all our businesses. Obviously, the growth is going to be strong over Q2. Then again, as I said, as we go ahead, we are very optimistic about the future. As we continue to build a lot of products for the future, our main focus is building a technology for all our customers across New Cars, OLX, and SAMIL. We have attached a few slides to this presentation. Some of these slides have been discussed in previous Analyst Meets.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 I thought I will stop here, then we can take questions and answers. I again want to reiterate the confidence we have in the business environment and the business performance. Thank you. Moderator:

Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press '' and '1' on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press '' and '2'. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sanchit from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Sanchit:

Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions, so I will start with my first question. Standalone revenue growth this quarter was 4% versus, let us say, 18% last quarter. I wanted to understand how much of an impact of seasonality and the GST effect of base you mentioned is there. Do you have a sense if there is a broader slowdown, anything you are seeing in digital ad spends from OEMs or something specific to where they allocated the digital ad budgets? Especially in the backdrop of OEMs seeing commodity cost pressures. We have seen commentaries from them that they are trying to cut back on discretionary spends. Are you seeing any kind of impact from there?

Vinay Sanghi:

Let me just take this one first. We actually think it is a complete base effect. GST was lowered on 22nd September last year. Therefore, if you see the 2nd Quarter last year, we had 37% growth. The base is high, and obviously this year, if you have seen since that growth of 37%, we have grown on top in this quarter. Obviously, as I have already given some guidance, we expect the coming quarter to be the best ever in the history of the New Auto business, which is very likely, even as I said today. So, we do not see any real change, but there is a significant base effect of last year. If you looked at the business over the last two years, we are more than 20% CAGR in the business. But there is a bit of a base effect of last September of the GST reduction in our business and the industry itself, right? If you see the industry growth rate post that, if you take it sequentially has not been strong, it is basically a lot of the growth concentrated on that September period last year. But really no change in approach of OEMs or the business as such.

Sanchit:

Understood, thanks. Quite clear. My second question is on OLX. You have highlighted earlier that elite buyer is something you have been focused on, and then you have been focusing on product cadence and OLX revenue, if I see, it has been growing in that trajectory of INR 10 crores a quarter. Should we see an acceleration in this given your product cadence or something around these lines should continue? Something around OLX revenue, especially in the backdrop of product cadence.

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes, the OLX growth rate will get stronger. We already see visibility of it. We had given that guidance earlier in the previous quarters as well. Their new product development is kicking in and some of that is getting immediate results. Some of it will take longer, but the existing product growth also exists, and therefore, the growth rates you see right now will get much stronger in this quarter coming and the next quarter after that as well. So, you are going to see a stronger growth rate in OLX. It will be higher than 26% anyway. We do believe very strongly about the

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 new product adoption. We also believe strongly about existing product growth, both of them in OLX. We are very optimistic about the OLX growth rates. We also announced, as I said, retail initiatives of partnerships with Landmark. We have announced e-commerce coming up in the future quarters. Of course, with Elite Buyers getting deeper. Elite Seller product is now live in a large part of our business. All of that is going to contribute to the growth in the coming quarters, and you will start seeing that this growth rate of 26% being surpassed in the coming quarters as well. Sanchit:

Understood. The final question is can you talk about trends in OEMs versus dealers and revenue mix and also New versus Used?

Vinay Sanghi:

There is really not much change on OEM and dealer mixes. It has been almost same. It is about, I think 65%-70%, Aneesha, is about-

Aneesha Bhandary:

Yes.

Vinay Sanghi:

If you take Used, yes, but pretty much not much change.

Aneesha Bhandary:

Yes.

Vinay Sanghi:

Nor is there much change in New and Used. There is not much change.

Sanchit:

Understood. Right. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Siddhartha Bera from Nomura. Please go ahead.

Siddhartha Bera:

Yes. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

Vinay Sanghi:

Hi, Siddhartha. How are you? Thank you.

Siddhartha Bera:

I am good, sir. Thank you. Sir, first question is on the consumer business again, the standalone business. If I even look at sequentially, in the past we have seen slightly more acceleration than this time. If you can sort of call out any other sort of slowdown we have seen on the OE side, is it that this time the festive shifting to Quarter 3 also would have been a reason why the growth is slower and on this business, how do you see the second half, like the way you have mentioned for OLX? If you can give some color here also will be very helpful.

Vinay Sanghi:

Sure. Thanks, Siddhartha. The one big event last year, in fact, it has been game changing and great credit to the government in the entire automotive industry. I think anybody in automotive has seen a massive jump last year. There is a base effect there. It is also correct that the entire festival season last year ended in October. I think this year it will overflow to November, so it got slightly delayed and that effect you will probably see this quarter. That has also happened. I

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 would just say that the main reason, as I said, there is no real difference in the way OEMs. Just to tell you, as I said, this October is going to be our best ever number in the history of the New Auto business. I am again saying, a lot of it is just a base effect sometimes which happens over the previous year to this year. We do not really see any other major change. In OLX, like I answered earlier, the growth rates are just going to go up. This is just the beginning of this journey. I think for many quarters you all have been asking what these growth rates might be, and if you have seen the growth rates, it is accelerating. Like you heard, it has gone INR 10 crores up in revenue Q-on-Q. I think the nature of these businesses are such that once it starts, and once we have visibility and once we see, we can give you guidance enough to know that, listen, this is just the start of a journey, and we will obviously be very optimistic both in near-term and of course the very long term as well, in growth rates and the business growth. The other good thing about these businesses is that when these revenues go up Q-on-Q, you have seen this quarter, Q2 versus Q1, our EBITDA is up by INR 13 crores. Q-on-Q, EBITDA is up 20% Q-on-Q, this is, across the group. So, it has been a very strong, solid performance. When your EBITDA goes 20% quarteron-quarter, that is just the leverage in the business because costs have not gone up, revenue goes up. If revenue goes up in Q3, which will go up, it will be probably our best ever quarter next quarter, and costs stay where they are, you can see margin expansion. You can see our goals of 40% margins as a group coming in. You can see obviously OLX margins going up. You can see CarWale margins going up and all of that happening. I think that is just the nature of the business, and obviously we feel very optimistic about OLX growth rates coming into Q3 and Q4. Siddhartha Bera:

Got it, sir. Sir, can you share the breakup of OEM dealer and new and used for the consumer business for the quarter, if it is handy?

Vinay Sanghi:

Sure. Aneesha, can you just take that?

Siddhartha Bera:

Yes.

Aneesha Bhandary:

It is the same ratio, Siddhartha, what we have followed in the past. About 74% would be OEM in total revenues.

Siddhartha Bera:

Okay. I think in the past we used to have around 70, so it has been a slightly increased probably.

Vinay Sanghi:

Maybe slight 3%, 4%. It is also a factor of last year and this year anyway.

Siddhartha Bera:

Got it. Sir, on the OLX side also, in the past we did share some more color on the sign-ups in buyers and sellers. If possible, share some more insights in the last quarter and Quarter 2, how those have trended, and your initiatives on the other areas like escrow and financing, which you had talked about. How should we expect the rollout in the second half?

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 Vinay Sanghi:

Sure. I think the first thing is the Elite Buyer program, which we also disclosed, launched for business. We have seen a massive uptake. It has only been about 30 days, we have seen a massive uptake in the number of Elite Buyers per day, and the monetization of that as well. This is going to grow further and, like I have said earlier, there are 6x buyers to sellers on OLX. Almost a very large percentage of our monetization is only seller-directed. This is the first buyer-initiated monetization model. Of course, we see this becoming one of the largest parts of OLX's business going forward. So, that is just the growth potential of OLX on the buyer side. On the Seller side, our monetization on number of paid users goes up every day, and that is partly the growth rates you are seeing. There is very rarely rate escalation, so the growth you are seeing is basically mostly on almost all on either more customers being acquired or new product launches or new products for these customers. Elite Seller has been a massive success in OLX. That is one of our new products for sellers, for businesses and consumers, and it is now becoming a significant part of the seller revenue model. Apart from that, when you look at new product development here, there are multiple initiatives going on. One of the biggest initiatives apart from Elite Seller and Elite Buyer is going to be ecommerce. I think we are already in product development stage of building a platform where if today you want to buy, as you know, 25% of India's mobile phones sold are sold on OLX. If you want to buy a white good, you want to buy mobiles, you want to buy a car, we are moving more to a commerce model where you will be able to find it and buy now with escrow and logistics facilities. We have already gone deep into integration, the partnerships were acquired, building technology were acquired. I do not want to give a date, but in the coming quarters, it is not far away, where these will go live for non-auto products like mobiles and others. Also for auto, especially in cars where this partnership with Landmark, where we talked about it earlier, where a lot of the physical operating work is being done with them. Obviously, our role will be the technology, product, customers, etc. This is the first off, Landmark is obviously something we feel very excited about. They are probably the leading dealer group in the country. Along with that, we look at doing it with other dealer groups as well in the future. Very optimistic about commerce and the side of that with OLX for cars and non-cars. It is a big part of the next five years for us, where we try and give more to our existing consumers. On loans, especially used products and used cars, integrations have started with banks. We are looking at more banks. Early days yet, but it could be very significant to the company 12 months from now. I think like we talked about Elite Buyer one, two quarters ago, and today it is. I think the same model applies for loans or something else or retail, where when you start today, we are giving you visibility, but a year later, we will be telling you it is a very significant part of our business. That is just the product creation cycle where you start and it starts contributing one, two, three, four quarters later. That is where we are at, I think. It is partly because of all of this, and mostly around existing products, that we feel the growth rate of OLX will continue to grow. The growth rate is not just the numbers, right? This 26% will keep improving. It is because we have visible and existing products, and of course, the new products will contribute in the future.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 A lot of the growth that we are talking about even in the next quarter and the quarter after that are really around existing products. Siddhartha Bera:

Got it, sir. Thanks a lot.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jyoti Singh from Haitong Securities. Please go ahead.

Jyoti Singh:

Yes, thank you for the opportunity. Two, three questions from my side, sir. One, basically on the shared business expense, which became nearly double. Are there any new grants and what is expected or dilution over the next two years? Another, I do not know whether you have mentioned or not, on the other expense side that grew 22% and around half year growth was around 24%. What is driving that? Another third question around VAYA Live. When we are expecting to go full-fledged and live?

Vinay Sanghi:

I will take your VAYA Live question first. It is also in this presentation where we uploaded where various aspects of VAYA Live are shown. VAYA Live is going to be pathbreaking for the company. There are two products of VAYA Live. It is a product where the entire automotive ecosystem gets connected. The first product is what we call VAYA for Business or Enterprises, where manufacturers and dealers get to use the product to understand all understand their own products and how they fare in the market. It also has their target users for sales. The second part of VAYA Live is VAYA for Consumer, which is for someone like you and me, which is going to be the number one sales agent for any consumer who wants to buy or sell a car or a bike. Right? If you want to sell your car, you need to put five photos and VAYA Live will give you a customer and give you a price and a condition report instantly. If you want to buy a car, it will help you compare cars, it will help you give you what other customers think about it. It will give you pricing, it will give you offers, it will give you discounts, and assist you through the entire buying journey. If you want to buy a used car, it will assess a car, it will price a car, it will find a car and all of that for you. So, it is a sales agent at your fingertip as a consumer. So, the VAYA Live has got two different distinct users. It has got OEM and dealers on one side of the product, and it has got consumer on the other side. We are very hopeful that sometime this quarter. We are already testing it out and we did show a demo of this to analysts in an analyst meeting earlier. But we are very hopeful that somewhere in this quarter, it will roll out for both OEMs and consumers, and it will become one of our leading flagship products for cars and bikes across new and used, across buyers and sellers in the coming years. It is a new way of transacting, and also it is built completely on intelligence. It is built completely on proprietary data, so it is impossible for someone else to do. It got all the buyers, sellers, vehicles and all our proprietary instances, data, behavior on all our platforms synced so that the customer gets the best benefit of all this intelligence, I think. So, we are very confident and optimistic about it. Really, over the next one, two, or three quarters, I think you will all see this being one of the flagship automotive products in the country, across OLX, CarWale, BikeWale, etc.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 The second question, the share-based payment, the amount of ESOPs are just for management, and team members, but it is very insignificant. We really do not see any significant dilution for shareholders at any point. If you see the ESOP cost continuously over the last five years has been coming down in the company, and I do not think at this point, it is a very insignificant part of the total cost of manpower itself in the company. The third question was on other income, other expenses. Aneesha, you want to take that, the other expenses. Aneesha Bhandary:

No, in this we have classified even in the past, they are expenses towards tech and licenses that are procured, but these are more fixed in nature. It is not variable.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Swapnil from JM Financial. Please go ahead.

Swapnil:

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Vinay Sanghi:

Hi Swapnil.

Swapnil:

Hi. I have three questions, actually. The first one is on your monthly unique traffic numbers that you disclose, which is at 43 million for this quarter. The question I want to hear is that traffic is down 18% YoY and 9% Q-on-Q. Is there any particular reason that you can highlight why there is a meaningful slowdown over here? Is that related to AI now taking prominence? The second question is related to your OLX Elite Buyers. We disclosed 1 lakh buyers in July, and then there was a press release also wherein you said that on a daily basis, in some days, you are adding more than 5,000 buyers. Any update on that number at the end of this quarter? The third question is with respect to your employee cost. In the OLX business, that employee cost has run up 15%16% Q-on-Q, but in consumer business, that is down 12%. Is there any particular reasons why these numbers have changed? Because our commentary in the past has been that typical OpEx costs are flattish after Q1, for the rest of the year. Yes, thanks.

Vinay Sanghi:

Sure. The first is the traffic question. The traffic is, compared to last year, and you talked about the entire enthusiasm around GST, where you had multiple people inquiring or checking on prices and the impact of taxes coming down when they want to buy a product, car or bike. I think that impact, where you had the large number of users coming on board, and therefore the traffic last year showed a huge growth as well. So, there is an impact of that. I think the second thing is somebody else also said this earlier in the call, that the season is postponed this year. So, really what happened in September last year is happening in October this year because the festival season delayed this year by about 10 days or so. So, that is another impact of September which is taking place there. We do not see really any impact of AI in users or genuine users. We also measure lead numbers and other numbers and other metrics which are quite stable in the company, which is really what we monetize, right? So, that is pretty stable in the company, and we do not see really any impact on end users in the company from the traffic standpoint. Also, if you see, organic is up to 96%. We also end up controlling some of the quality users we want to bring, and we are able to manage our marketing costs extremely well. So, if you see, it is almost 96% today, the organic. I think these are all the leverages we have in this. But we really think that a large reason the traffic is at 76 million versus last year is primarily because of GST

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 and the festival timing changing to this year. I think that is the first part. Sorry, because the question is probably you asked two, three questions. What is the second one? Swapnil:

Second question was on Elite Buyer.

Vinay Sanghi:

Elite Buyer. Elite Buyer continue to grow. We had said this is the rate. I do not want to comment on a further growth rate. Maybe in the coming quarter we will tell you how these numbers have gone, but it continues to do well and continues to grow. This is early days. I think this is the starting point. There is no sense in imagining that it is not going to be stable. It continues to grow over the next quarter and the quarter after that. Sorry, the third question?

Swapnil:

On the employee cost, OLX cost has gone up.

Vinay Sanghi:

Cost has slightly gone up and CarWale is slightly down because, primarily, we have looked at our used car business across both companies and tried to invest more in the used car business in OLX, in terms of cost and management, and try to bring down slightly our CarWale management and management cost in the used car side. Both are a common business, and I think that is the effect you might be seeing in terms of one going up and one going down. But it is stable. I do not think this will change at all now.

Swapnil:

Got it, Vinay. Got it. Sir, just a follow-up, just to the first question. Are you saying that in the next quarter we will possibly see an improvement in the traffic side and therefore more conversion on the revenue side also?

Vinay Sanghi:

We have already given guidance right now that Q3 is our best quarter in our history in the automotive side, without doubt. The revenues will be the highest ever probably in our history in Q3. It is partly because of festivities, partly because it is postponed. We are actually very optimistic about the New Auto business over the next few quarters as well. We feel pretty confident about the New Auto business. That is correct.

Swapnil:

Got it. Thanks a lot.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you. Thanks, Swapnil.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dheeraj Kadam from InCred Equities. Please go ahead.

Dheeraj Kadam:

Hi, Vinay. Congratulations on a great set of results. I just had two, three questions. First, can you just shed some light on what is the intersegmental revenue that has been a big item in the past two quarters?

Vinay Sanghi:

What is it? Intersegmental revenue?

Dheeraj Kadam:

Yes, intersegmental revenue elimination that is there between the segments.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 Vinay Sanghi:

Aneesha, you want to take this question?

Aneesha Bhandary:

Yes. I think he is referring to the intercompany segment elimination that we do based on the used car business which is being transferred or any other related business which is between the entities. In the last two quarters, which is Q1 and Q2, it is for the used car business which is now consolidated.

Dheeraj Kadam:

Okay, sure. Coming to the OLX segment. OLX, it has been performing since the past two quarters, we are witnessing a very high growth. I think that is mostly on the back of the products that we launched in Q3 and Q4 with the Elite Buyer, Elite Seller, Verified Badges, all of that. What would be the contribution of these new products compared to total OLX revenue right now? Is it like has already become 10%, 15% kind of a thing?

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes, it will be little lower than that. But the contribution of growth, just to clarify and I did that in the earlier question as well. OLX is growing a lot on its older products, what we had, and our management of those customers and our customer experience and the products we had, and improvement in those products. The new products have started to contribute, and Elite Buyer is one of them. But as I said, a lot of this contribution on new products will come in the future as well. What we feel most optimistic about are not only new products and their growth and their launches, but we feel very good about the existing business growing. Our effort is first to keep existing businesses growing and also to build new products is the second objective here. But the growth rates you are seeing are 26%, and the growth rates are going to increase over the next quarter and the quarter after that, is a large part due to the existing products and not just new products. I think new products will come on top of that. That is why we feel good about the company and the business because old products are also delivering, and we are obviously working heavily on the new products, so they contribute in the future too.

Dheeraj Kadam:

Okay, sure. Very good. I just wanted some more clarity on the Remarketing segment. We have witnessed good growth this quarter, and there was great growth in revenue, and then there was a very good growth in terms of the EBITDA terms, right? So, can you just shed some light, like how many cars have we put up in auction? What is the conversion rate? What has been the average revenue per car sold kind of a metric?

Vinay Sanghi:

I think the big, I will just say highlight and Aneesha Bhandary can give the number, but the growth in SAMIL is primarily being driven by retail business of SAMIL, right? We have a retail business which is more like individual retail users selling to dealers.

Dheeraj Kadam:

Online auctions. Yes.

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes, it is online auction. That growth has been very strong. I think if you see, generally, we feel very optimistic about the retail business within SAMIL. The repossession has also grown, but generally the retail business growth has been stronger. That is one of the reasons we are seeing margin expansion, because our margins are highest in the retail business, and you are also seeing

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 retail growth and volume growth. Aneesha, you want to just quickly share number of vehicles auctioned and conversion? Do you have that? Aneesha Bhandary:

Yes. One second. It is actually in the presentation, too. We have about 1.56 million vehicles which were listed, of which 2.35 lakh were auctioned. These are annualized for Q2.

Dheeraj Kadam:

Okay. What is the conversion and revenue per car? In the past 10 years, we have seen that SUVs have increased a lot as a percentage of the total car pool. Are we seeing any kind of increase in the selling price of each car as more and more SUV might now be coming into the auction pool? Are we seeing any kind of tailwind like that?

Vinay Sanghi:

The ARPUs are stable. Most of the vehicles come into auction pools. If they are retail, it tends to be three, four, five-year-old vehicles if its repossession tends to be newer. These are a reflection of the market, more or less, depending what comes. It tends to be a mix of your newer and older vehicles.

Dheeraj Kadam:

Okay. Yes, sure. Thank you so much. That will be all from my side.

Vinay Sanghi:

Sure. Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Singh from BNP Paribas Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.

Himanshu Singh:

Hi.

Vinay Sanghi:

Hi, Himanshu.

Himanshu Singh:

Thank you for the opportunity. On the consumer side, you said the base was high in Q2, but if I see the base was high in Q1 also, and it is continuing to be very good, like (+25%) in the second half. How do you see the growth rate in the second half for the consumer business?

Vinay Sanghi:

We actually feel optimistic about the business and the growth of the business. I think the base effect was most in Q2 and a little bit early in Q3. But obviously numbers and actual numbers being very strong in Q3, Q4 as you go on, of the New Auto business.

Himanshu Singh:

Okay. Sure. Just on the monthly traffic, I was just seeing last year there was a sudden jump in Q2 from 44 million-52.5 million, and now we are again back to close to 43 million. Should we see this again jumping because of the festive season to above 50 million-53 million in this quarter then?

Vinay Sanghi:

I do not want to give guidance on total traffic, but yes, obviously the festival will be better than the non-festival periods of traffic. The consumer enthusiasm is more. But as I said, to compare it with the previous periods where GST reduction and enthusiasm around that is where they had a lot of people inquiring or checking where the traffic was obviously up because of those reasons

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 would be different at this point of time. That traffic does not exist because I think now it is pretty clear what the prices are. I think at that point people were just coming and checking what has happened with pricing. Himanshu Singh:

Right. I also see that monetization has improved on the traffic. Is there any new product which has come in the consumer segment or any traction which has come in any of the sub-segments?

Vinay Sanghi:

There are a number of new products launched and getting launched. There are almost many, six, seven new things we launched this quarter as well on the new car side. We have also discussed this in earlier meetings where there is a whole price check, buy shop product which got launched earlier in the previous quarter on New Auto. There are trade-in agents, loan agents, and many products coming in this quarter. So, the attempt is that over the next six months in the New Auto business, again, VAYA Live, VAYA Consumer, which we talked about earlier, our New Auto products which are coming out this quarter. So, there are multiple things we are working on from product team to bring out new products in the New Auto business as well, which enhances your experience as a shopper or your ability to buy a new vehicle, a bike or a car. That investment is continuous. I think we are building more products today, I think we have talked about this earlier than we ever have in our history. We are launching products out at a very high pace, which is partly fueling all the growth in OLX or CarWale or Shriram Automall. We are also at this point heavily focused on building intelligence in our business so that consumers, dealers, and OEMs get the benefit of all the data we have. So, yes, that is a continuous effort right now going on.

Himanshu Singh:

Okay. Sure, sir. Thank you, sir.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashutosh Chaubey from ITI Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.

Dhimant Shah:

Yes, hi.

Vinay Sanghi:

Hi.

Dhimant Shah:

This is Dhimant Shah from ITI.

Vinay Sanghi:

How are you, Dhimant? How are you?

Dhimant Shah:

Yes, all good, sir. Two questions on consumer. Is there a push-pull that can transpire to accelerate growth if at all, if you see that okay, you have budgeted for the current year, let us say a 15% growth, and in the half yearly you find that it is only 10%, is there a push-pull that you can do in terms of offering something to the counterparts in terms of further enhancing growth? That is question number one. Question number two, in terms of VAYA, you will have a fixed base of IT expenses. How much can the expenses go up only owing to VAYA and how much will the fixed base of IT expenses hence possibly enhance to? Last question is, you had a tax break and what

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 is the potential use of this huge cash funnel that resides on the balance sheet? Can we do a buyback at some stage? Can you provide some clarity on that as well? Vinay Sanghi:

The first question was on the consumer group. See, the way we think about the consumer group growth is how do we bring more products to our consumers? How do we improve existing product performance for our customers? That is the fuel to growth. Whether the customer is a consumer or is a dealer, an OEM, I think the best way for us to grow is giving them more capability and optimizing a product so that they use it more and bringing in more users every day. That is our role. The more users come because, mostly, the product of CarWale, BikeWale is superior to others, so they find this the best place to go. To me, that is the fuel for growth. When industry grows, it is better. It is obviously better for us. If ARPU grows better. In any situation of industry growth, it is better. Sometimes, like last year, you have positively abnormal situations where taxes are reduced, and you have a huge jump, which is what happened to us last year. But those are not normal situations, and we have to accept that the new bases are set. If you look at the automotive industry from last September to this year, it has barely grown after 22nd of September. Most of the growth happened on that period. Right? After that, it has been more or less moderate growth. I think because we had such a jump after that you find moderate growth after that. In fact, there was some reporting of FADA that said that this Navratri sales were lower than last year Navratri, same time. That is obvious because there was a pent-up demand of the GST reduction there. I think those are things, but our focus is always in the shortterm, medium-term, long-term, the best way to grow is build great products for our customers. I think we spend all our energy and effort and time and mind share, and not just me or not just our team here, but we have hundreds and hundreds of engineers, product design people, product strategy people who, this is what they do. This is how revenue grows and product and all of this, and our new products come out and existing products get better so that revenue grows and traffic grows and consumer NPS grows. The second question on VAYA. VAYA tech costs are more or less fixed, so we do not see really any change in tech costs with VAYA or any of the other products we launch. We are very sensitive to that. We also see that, I think you may be indicating whether there will be more token usage, etc., We work very hard at the company in optimization of token cost, to see that where intelligence is used, where our own proprietary data exists and machine learning is used, where we cache data and have compute cost. So, we are very sensitive to that. We understand that we have got to deliver great products in India. We also understand in India, great products at very low cost is very important as well. So, we do not really see any material change in tech costs on VAYA, if that is the question. Sorry, the third question I did not get. Sorry, can you repeat the third question? I cannot remember.

Dhimant Shah:

The use of cash pool and potential buyback.

Vinay Sanghi:

I think, yes, the cash, and the good thing in a company like ours is there is no CAPEX really. There is no really working capital expense, and most of the profits we generate, almost all the profits we generate go to cash, which is the great dynamics of the marketplace business where, obviously you just keep generating cash every quarter. So, ideally, this cash, we have talked

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 about before, will get used for M&A, if at all, but M&As are hard to find, and we have been very good with M&A in the past, but we obviously have not found anything at this point in the last two to three years or it will go to distribution back to shareholders in the form of buyback and dividend, which we will be wanting to do. The tax shelters are actually gone in OLX and not in the standalone group. We still have benefits in the standalone company. And therefore, distribution currently, by regulation is not allowed through buyback or through a dividend at this point of time. Dhimant Shah:

That period will possibly come to a closure in the current year. So, next year you can use it for buyback.

Vinay Sanghi:

No, I do not think it is this year. It is not this year.

Dhimant Shah:

At least not this year, but maybe next year.

Vinay Sanghi:

I think this tax benefit continues for one or two years more, which is actually beneficial for the company as well.

Dhimant Shah:

Sure. Thank you so much.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vivek Doshi from Nippon AIF. Please go ahead.

Vivek Doshi:

Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Just one question on the Consumer Group again. Sir, how much of the slowdown in the current quarter for this festival can we expect to come back in Q3? What would be the growth rates and how do we think about the growth rate from here on? Do we expect the growth rate in Q3 to accelerate from here on back to the 16%-18% sort of a level, or how do we think of the growth for the consumer business from here on?

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes, I do not want to give guidance around specific growth rates. But we do feel that Q3, as I told you already, we want the best or probably the best in our history, in the consumer business. This is as strong as ever. There are base effects of September last year. We have got to see how much of that gets covered, how the industry performs over the next two, three quarters, like you are seeing in all other manufacturers as well. But we are very optimistic about the performance of the business, and we do feel that in the coming quarters, we will see better numbers in absolute and in growth rates than in the past. We are very optimistic about the future. There are base effects of last year, especially in Q2, which you have seen already.

Vivek Doshi:

Sure, sir. Thank you.

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Nagpal from Helios Capital. Please go ahead.

Rohan Nagpal:

Just want to check on the consumer business. Is the right way to look at this 20% sort of CAGR over a two-year period to adjust for the base? Is that how you see the business continuing through the remainder of this year?

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes. One way to look at it is that you had the 20% CAGR over two years. That is specifically in Q2 because the impact of late Q2 last year was very heavy. But that is one way to look at it. Obviously, as far as we are concerned, we look at the health of the business and look at what OEMs are doing, what customers are doing, what dealers are doing, how the business tracking, how the business metrics tracking. They are all good. I think the one way to think about it is last year is abnormal because 37% growth in that quarter. I think it is a little abnormal. You can have a base effect there. But the idea is to keep improving, getting better, and not talk about CAGR, but talk about absolutely getting better in the business itself every day, so that when the base effects go, which is now last September to this September, you get back to your trajectory of growth and on many other metrics as well.

Rohan Nagpal:

Okay. If I just look at a sort of 20% CAGR over two years, that implies significant acceleration sequentially in Q3 as well. So, just wanted to get a sense of whether that is how one should sort of roll the business out or is like a 20% acceleration sequentially a little too aggressive in your view based on what you are seeing?

Vinay Sanghi:

I do not want to comment on sequential growth for Q3. I think at this point, the guidance we are giving is saying, listen, Q3 is going to be the best in our history ever. That is what we are saying. I do not want to comment on whether it is sequentially at a particular growth rate or at this point. It would be hard for me to do so.

Rohan Nagpal:

Okay. Fair enough. On the consumer business, in terms of the revenue that is generated from lead generation, could you provide some color on whether the increase in revenue that we are seeing is coming from volume or realization?

Vinay Sanghi:

Let me get the first part. The increase in revenue is coming from lead generation mid-business, was it that you were saying?

Rohan Nagpal:

In the consumer business there is a certain amount of revenue that we generate from lead generation. How much is the lead generation portion of the revenue, and what is the mix over there in terms of volume growth versus realization growth?

Vinay Sanghi:

In our New Auto business, the growth is allocated to better conversion funnels, better management of users, better conversions for the OEMs and all of those metrics. If you look at our revenue, it is lead or transaction revenue but mostly associated with that. No matter which part of the funnel, whether you are taking advertisements, whether you are taking leads, which is a very significant part, or transactions is also getting significant, it eventually comes down to

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 performance-driven metrics. Which means that if you are coming as a customer, how many cars you will buy or how many bikes you will buy or somebody. Now you might come in advertising and contribute, you might come in a lead and contribute, you might come in as a transaction and contribute. Depending which part of the funnel you as a consumer may want to follow. But yes, it is attributed, I would say, lead is the largest. I do not think there are price escalations. A lot of these are volume escalations and conversion escalations. They are not really rate escalations. Rohan Nagpal:

Okay. Understood. That is it from my end. Thank you.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vimal Jamnadas Gohil from Alchemy Capital Management Private Limited. Please go ahead.

Vimal Jamnadas Gohil:

Yes. Part of my question has already been answered. Sorry to harp on the consumer piece. Now, Vinay, it does seem, and apologies also for looking at it on a bit of a short-term basis, but I think next quarter also, if I were to look at it closely, we reported INR 86 crore of revenue versus we are still below that level. So, two things here. Are we looking to surpass that in the second half and also, do we see this business getting back to that 20% growth in the latter half of this year?

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes, I think definitely, obviously, we are saying that we are very confident of achieving our best high numbers, so we have to surpass that. I think that is obvious. There are base effects of last year. It is hard to predict whether in one quarter or two quarters we will get to 20% growth because of the base effects. But yes, the objective of the company is, of course, to have growth rates like that. Like I said, in OLX, the growth rates are way beyond, like we are best in class in the country. Here, you go through a phase of base effects, but the objective is absolutely to get back to growth rates of best-in-class growth here as well. That is why when you have a very strong last year, which has happened in this case, where you have 37% growth in a quarter, the base effects tend to kick in. I think here, you will see in a quarter-to-quarters, the growth rates back naturally in this business as well.

Vimal Jamnadas Gohil:

Understood. Just another question on VAYA. Would you be able to quantify, because this is a new product for us, a new offering. Would you be able to quantify how much of an investment have we made till date, the cost heavy investment?

Vinay Sanghi:

I will be honest with you. The costs are not significant, and I will tell you why. Because a lot of VAYA is built, first of all, it is built on AI code. The second part is that it is built on proprietary data. We do not buy data or use LLM data. If you use LLM data or LLM sources of data, you will end up using a lot of cost and tokens. We do not do that. We use only proprietary data. So, a lot of what we are building here is not significant cost. It is not material, as I said. It is a very revolutionary product because I think the strength of a business like ours and to be able to do this, build best sales agent or build different products like this, is because the data you carry, right? It has got millions of consumers on the new car side, millions of consumers on the used car side at OLX, millions of sellers on both CarWale and OLX, right, on cars and bikes. When

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 you have that kind of data and the instances of that data or vehicle data, by the way, largest listings in the country or very strong percentage of listings in the country or vehicles of the country. Manufacturers tied up, OEMs tied up, banks tied up, that data helps us provide products like this, and it is not built on cost. It is built on the capability to build intelligence around that data. The cost is not material. It is not material, that is what I am saying. Yes. Vimal Jamnadas Gohil:

Understood. Thanks, Vinay. Thanks a lot.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Vimal Jamnadas Gohil:

All the best.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sanjay Natvarlal Shah from Pranishta. Please go ahead.

Sanjay Natvarlal Shah:

Thank you. Two questions. One for the consumer marketing group. Can you comment a bit on the trend we are seeing with respect to offline versus online spend of OEM? And within the online spend, the kind of trends that we are seeing for classifieds such as ourselves versus others. That is one question. Should I just ask you the second question later?

Vinay Sanghi:

Yes. One is the offline-online spend of OEMs. Yes, go ahead. What is the second question?

Sanjay Natvarlal Shah:

The second question is, when we think about the tie-ups such as we have for OLX with Landmark, is there any financial investment or any kind of a share of the car purchases that we have to also participate in or is it just a technology and a platform contribution from our perspective?

Vinay Sanghi:

Sure. I think the first part is that there is no real shift in OEM or online digital conversion of spends. In fact, there is a trend over the last few years where digital spends are going up for OEMs and offline spends are, of course, being more measured. That is just because online provide a more performance-based objective for them. If you see here, I think the biggest gainer is if you see the consumer group growth over the last five years, almost 26% CAGR. That is because of the direction of how OEMs have gone. This is still about 18%-20% on platforms like ours out of the total spend. As I said here, obviously, we have outpaced all market growth in terms of the spends. We see actually this going in a similar trend over the next two to three years. We see the online digital spends going up. If an OEM had to sell a car or a bike, the number one place they would come was CarWale. If the OEM had to build a brand of a product from scratch, they might go television and do it or YouTube and do it. I think therefore there is a distinct difference on how OEM and dealers think about their spends. Obviously, we feel that there is huge trend towards digital across OEMs and dealers on their spends. That trend will continue for a long, long time. I think in most countries, 40%, 50%, 60%. India is still at an early stage of that. The second is Landmark. We are very actually enthusiastic with the Landmark arrangement.

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CarTrade Tech Limited October 28, 2026 I think for many years definitely on the analyst community and others have talked about that, “Listen, are you building a full stack model where you buy cars and you sell cars?” We have always said that “a marketplace like Amazon where all dealers can participate, all stakeholders can participate, whether buyer, seller, whether a bank, etc.,” and that is what CarWale and OLX provides, is a huge marketplace where 65% of all cars sold in India are listed for sale. The question is, we also thought that, “listen, if we are to provide a curated marketplace within CarWale or within OLX, how do we do it?” Obviously, the one way to do it would be full stack. Buy cars ourselves, fix them, keep them, house them, sell them, and do all of that. The second way was to get into partnership with big, big groups. We obviously chose the second because we said our strengths are in product technology, customers. We obviously believe groups like Landmark are very, very good at physical storage, buying physical actions, selling, all of that. We said, “Listen, let them put the operating and the physical heaviness. Let us do the tech and the product and the customer side of it.” That is how these partnerships are forged. I think with Landmark, we are working out whether from a margin structure, whether we should invest some part of the working capital or not, and that is based on how much margin we want to share. Those equations are being worked out as we go on ahead. Sanjay Natvarlal Shah:

Understood. Thank you. No, thank you very much.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Ms. Sayali Ambre for closing comments. Over to you.

Sayali Ambre:

I would like to thank the Management for taking the time out for the conference call today, and I would also like to thank all the participants. If you have any queries, feel free to contact us. Thank you so much.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you, everybody.

Aneesha Bhandary:

Thank you.

Vinay Sanghi:

Thank you.

Moderator:

On behalf of CarTrade Tech Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.

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