Tejas Networks Limited (TEJASNET) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Tejas Networks Ltd. Q4 FY26 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities Ltd. 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 the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Mohit Mishra from ICICI Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Yeah, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining on the Q4 FY26 results conference call of Tejas Networks Limited. We have the management with us of Tejas Networks on this call, Thank you, Mohit.

Good evening, and welcome, everyone, to our quarterly earnings So, at the outset, let me sincerely apologize for the delay. We have a delay of an hour. We had a lot of technical problems of loading other materials to the service site, and that largely caused the delay. So, once again, you know, profusely apologize for the delays for the start of the conference. So, let me begin by walking you through the Q4 financial numbers. So, in Q4, we had a revenue of $333 crores as opposed to $307 crores in Q3. And for the year, we had revenues of $1,103 crores. We had a net fact loss of $211 crores in Q4 as opposed to $197 crores of fact loss in Q3. And for the entire year, we had a pat loss of 909 crores. We had a growth in order book at the end of Q4. We ended with 1,514 crores at the end of Q4, as opposed to 1,019 crores at the end of Q4 of FI-25. So from a revenue mix, India once again dominated our business. 88% India. And from order book also, it was very similar, where it was dominated by the India business, as far as bookings are concerned. So even though we made the initial business, wireless business with international customers, auto revenue was driven largely by the sale of wireless products to India private and international customers. And as I mentioned, we had a significant order group year-on-year growth. So I would like to now hand you over to our CFO, Sumit, for taking you through the financial numbers and details.

Good evening, everyone. The revenue for the quarter four was 333 crores compared to 307 crores in the previous quarter. Quarter-on-quarter growth of 8%. A bit for the quarter was negative 219 crores as against 239 crores in the previous quarter. And profit after tax was 211 crores compared to 197 in the previous quarter. The full year revenue was 1,103 crores and profit after tax was negative 3909 crores. Inventory at the end of the quarter was put at 2,438 crores, compared to 263 crores in the previous quarter. Receivables at 3,258 crores, and payables at 478 crores. The cash position at the end of the quarter was 505 crores and net debt of 3,531 crores. At gross level, the borrowings were 4,035 crores at the end of the quarter. That I'll ask Arnott to take over the next few slides.

Thank you, Sumit. I'd like to add some color to the business that has happened over Q4 and also have a review of our business during the year. So during the quarter, you know, some of the significant things that happened in our wireless business was signing an agreement with NEC to manufacture and supply our 5G massive MIMO radios for a global customer. The other significant thing was we received an initial order for the expansion of 4G networks from a customer in South Asia. And we have multiple ongoing field trials for our 4G and 5G RAN products across South Asia and the Americas. And we recently successfully completed a 5G POC in South America. For our wireless business, in the quarter, we completed the shipment of a significant number of IP and PLS routers to BharatNet Phase 3. As you know, we are the largest suppliers in terms of number of circles for BharatNet Phase 3, and significant amount of shipment, and many of them, several sites are now carrying live traffic. We supplied a major amount of 100-gig and 400-gig WDM systems to our Tier 1 telco in India for their 5G backhaul network, for their enterprise services, and also for their services for hyperscaler data center connectivity. We were selected to build, you know, a nationwide network of a multi-terabyte DWM network for a hyperscaler data center application in India. And, you know, it was a proud moment for us for a very famous global sporting event. We implemented the backbone network of, you know, multi-country network for this event using our state-of-the-art DWM network. This was a global sporting event which happened recently. Other highlights during the year, our products got recognized at ET Telecom for our innovative satellite SATCOM IoT solution, and we also won the prestigious Golden Peacock Awards for our 5G grand solutions. We launched our state-of-the-art ultra-compact and hyperscale data center interconnect product At NWC, at Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, it was launched by the Honorable Minister of Communications. We filed 63 patents in Q4, bringing the cumulative count to 676, out of which 371 have been granted. We also received PLI incentives for F525, offered additional 69 crores, reaching a total of 469 crores for F525. A few corporate updates for the year. We have some changes at the board as well as our senior management. So we appointed Mr. Srikumar Vijayasekaran as additional director, non-executive and independent director of the company, with effect from April 15th, subject to the approval of shareholders. And Mr. Srikumar is a charter accountant with over 40 years of experience, covering audit and assurance services, Including eight years as COO at Deloitte. Mr. P.R. Ramesh, who was an independent director of the company, resigned and effectively closing business hours of April 18th. And Sushikumar has taken over his spot as the independent director of the company. I have been appointed as the executive. I am currently the executive director and chief operating officer, but I have been appointed as the managing director. and CEO of the company from effective today till 2028. And this is subject to the approval of the shareholders of the company. Two more updates. Mr. Freetham Uthaya, who is currently the vice president of product line management of the company, has been appointed as the chief operating officer of the company with effect from today. Mr. Elias Prasad, who is currently the financial controller Mr. Sumit Dhingra, our current CFO, has resigned from the services of the company, but it will be effective from the close of business hours on May 15th. So a quick review of FI26. So this year has been a year of consolidation for us. A lot of the technology and products that we developed over the last three, four years achieved commercial scale and deployment at a global scale. The BSNL 4G 5G network went live across 100,000 sites and was launched by the Honorable Prime Minister in 2025. We deployed our largest indigenous router networks in the country through the BSNL 4G backhaul network, or the MAN network, as well as in the BharatNet Phase 3 networks. We had a very successful global rollout of our WDM products with 400 gig and 800 gig wavelength services, both in India as well as internationally. And we also continued the deployment of the world's largest satellite IoT network with our, you know, the vehicle tracking system solution. We continued the innovation journey with our new products and technology launches. We launched our 64TR massive MIMO radio, 5G radio, during IMC at Indian Mobile Congress, and it was launched by the Honorable MOC. We launched our WDM system, our C plus L band-capable WDM system, which transmits over 76 terabits of data over a single pair of fibers. That was launched during IMC by the Office of State. We launched our cloud-native Converse 4G 5G core, also during the year, and we're undergoing trials at multiple locations across the world, across multiple customer networks. And we, at NWC during the year, last year, we launched our hyperscalable data center interconnect platform, which over a very compact form factor, launches over 50 terabytes of data in a single footprint. And we also talked about the patents filed during the year, 147 patents were filed in FY26, and more than 150 contributions to the 3GPP standards, the evolving 3GPP standards. Last year, we announced strategic partnerships with NEC and Rakuten, and in the last financial year, we kind of went, you know, developed these partnerships further. So, after we signed our first contract for the supply of massive mime radios with NEC for an international deployment, and with Rakuten Symphony, we have partnered with OpenRAN And we have multiple ongoing POCs across the world, and one of them was completed successfully, very recently. A significant achievement was expanding our wireless footprint, both in India as well as internationally. We covered new geographies, and the two deals we talked about are the 5G massive memory for the global customer and the Open RAN deployments. We also signed up several new applications. We do successful POCs for 5G private networks, and also the 5G RAN pilot for the Kavach network. So looking forward for a future business outlook, one of the – we see that AI is going to be one of the driving – One of the killer applications which are going to drive the mega trends for a network transformation, both in terms of the traffic in the network as well as transformation of the network architecture. So with the rapid adoption of AI applications, by 2023, AI traffic is predicted to be more than 60% of the total network that will be running in the traffic. We'll have more than 100 million physical AI machines connected to the network by 2035. The profile of traffic is going to change dramatically from the today's downstream heavy traffic to upstream traffic, where upstream traffic will outpace the downstream traffic networks, the traffic that is of today, and that will require significant network transformation. Most enterprises will adopt AI heavily with running Gen AI workloads of the cloud, and this is also going to drive, you know, from the traditional compute cloud-based traffic that the access is going to get transformed to an AI-based access from the cloud. So, with this trend, the AI, this is going to drive a network infrastructure-built supercycle, which basically means that the current communication service provider network, the CSP network, will not be sufficient to handle the traffic growth in the coming years. And the other transformation that will happen is that close to 50% of the new AI traffic will be processed at the edge nodes, where edge inferencing is going to play a big role in the architecture of the global AI networks. There will be significant investments in new networks with 400 gig, 800 gig connectivity, even at the access and at the edge to cater to the significant traffic growth. And AI is also expected to accelerate the adoption of 6G, and AI technology will be natively embedded in the RAM and edge and core of the network. From a business impact, we'll see a lot of the convergence of not only access and backhaul, but also it will converge with compute at the network edge to support the edge AI infrastructure and the edge-inferencing workloads in the network. There will be significant scaling up of our optical solutions and package switching and routing and converting with the edge compute in the edge and access networks. And the data center connectivity will go to multiterabit scale, which is already scaling up to that level, but it's going to scale up significantly to provide for the AI cloud interconnect. So we have built our current platforms which will scale very efficiently for the networks of the future to handle the traffic capacities as well as the traffic characteristics of future networks. Our new generation 5G products are being designed to scale and evolve into 5G advanced and 6G products with much higher uplink capacities. Our high-capacity optical, which supports 1.2 terabit per channel, is going to scale to 1.6 terabit and beyond to support the terabit-scale data center connectivity of the future. Our multi-terabit edge node is going to, again, scale in capacity and interface, and also going to integrate with compute capacity and compute infrastructure to support AGI applications. And our next generation access will evolve supporting further convergence of wireless and wireline access solutions. And AI will be adopted in our network management all across for driving automation, for driving network management, and fault prediction, and network configuration, and driving a huge amount of automation and optimization of the network. So, the key takeaways for FI26 is that it has been a year of consolidation and transformation for us. We did our technology that we have developed in the past, which commercial scale of deployment in very large networks. We expanded our portfolio significantly and launched several state-of-the-art products in wireless and wireline. We had several international wireless wins. You know, they were the starting point of our international expansion for wireless business. And we made progress with the initial strategic partnerships that we had launched with several global partners. So we are well positioned for long-term success. From an industry point of view, we see AI that will drive a lot of demand for network build-on, and as a result for our equipment as well. We have a product roadmap, which is well positioned to leverage the future opportunities that we see. And we have strong partnerships in place to expand our global customer footprint. So before I end the presentation, I do want to make a few comments about the financial results in FI26. As we mentioned, this has been a year of transition for us after the execution of the massive BSNL projects in FI25, We gave us a significant amount of revenues, and we needed a runway in FY26 to consolidate and transition our business beyond BSNL, and several large customer projects that we were actually planning for, both for wireline and wireless products, have got delayed, which resulted in significant revenue shortfall and the resulting financial loss.

However, we have not cut down on the investments

during the year because of our outlook for the future and the industry trend that we see.

Based on our FI 27 business outlook, we believe that with our current

investments and cost structures, we will be able to achieve better financial results. And NetNet, while it has been a tough year for us business-wise, much has been achieved to set us on a path for the future. With that, I come to an end to our introductory remarks and open the floor for Q&A.

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then 1 on their touch-tone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use hand fits while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Again, to register for a question, please press star and then 1. Our first question comes from the line of Shailesh Jahagirdar from Invest Yadmiya. Please go ahead.

Oh, hi. Am I audible?

Yes, sir. Audible seller.

So, my question is that in February, we got a massive memo deal for 5G networks and also a deal for 4G network in South Asia. Yeah. So, is there any data for quantifying these orders or deals so that we can consider the future outlook of this deal, how it will affect the revenue and the overall financials, and the timeline of this project?

Yeah, so, Shailesh, you know, typically we don't go into specific deal numbers and all, but a lot of the massive MIMO, 5G massive MIMO business will actually get revenue over the coming, over this current financial year in FI27. Some of the revenue of the 4G deal happened in the past financial year, and we expect more expansion on that during the current financial year. But beyond that, we do not share any deal-specific numbers for any project.

Okay. And my second question was the BSNL additional PO of 18,000 sites around it. So, the same PO is delayed, or is there any update on this?

Yeah, this is Sanjay Malik. So, thanks for this question. So, yes, it is the same add-on PO which has been there. So, the active discussions are still going on with the SNL team on the sites on which they have to have these 4G sites, and the configurations. So that discussion has been happening, and quite active discussion. We are still keeping our inventory here for delivering these sites in a quick turnaround once we get the PO. But, yeah, as of now, the discussions are definitely on.

So just to add on, so we have inventory, So, the timeline for that order would be pretty much less than the previous base in our respect.

Sorry?

So, we have the inventory for the upcoming PO for base mail. So, the timeline, I just want to ask that the timeline would be much lesser than previous PO.

That's right. That's right. So, because one thing is that now the sites are commercial. So, it's already tested out. So, once we receive the order, we have the inventory. So, definitely the delivery time would be much faster.

Thank you. That's all from us.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Pranav Shatria from MK. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the possibility. My first question is regarding the order book. I mean, the 1500 odd crore order book, you said almost 83% of that is coming from the India business. Does that include the BSNL 4G project as well?

No, it does not include the BSNL 4G project.

So this is purely BharatNet and other private telco, whatever you might have.

Yes, this is our customers, both in India as well as international, for our wireless and wireless business, but doesn't include the BSNL4G at all.

And should we assume that most of this will be sort of aggregatable in this year itself, and hence, you know, potentially the revenue should be somewhat similar, if not higher than this number? I'm asking directly not the exact number.

Yeah, a good portion of this will be revenueed in this current financial year.

Okay, and second question is regarding, you know, the cost of goods sold. So the memory prices have gone up. Does that impact the margins for your product at all?

Yes, the cost of memory does impact the cost of our products, Even though it's a small component of our product cost, usually those are much smaller compared to the much more expensive class A equipment that we use for network processing, for optics, and all those kind of things. But yes, the cost and the lead time is also a challenge for us, and we are addressing this in multiple ways. So there are also renegotiating our cost, our prices with customers as well as for the new opportunities which are out there to make sure that we protect our margins.

Okay, because I mean, you know, the purpose to ask this question was to understand, you know, how much should we expect, you know, the margin compression at a contribution margin level because it's not only the memory, even the chip prices have sort of in stock because, you know, that demand for the chips has also been. So, can you give some qualitative or quantitative number that, you know, how much could be the impact on the margins?

Yeah, as I said, you know, as you ask the specific memory where the increase has been, the largely has not been as dramatic as memory, but thankfully memory is only a very small user. As you know, it's like high volume components, so even, you know, large memories, The cost of those that are not very high compared to the

several thousand dollars of bomb

costs that we, you know, the costs that we have of our product, right? Upwards of many, many thousands of dollars. So it's a very small component. But nevertheless, I think we are kind of making sure it is accounted in our cost and basically renegotiating and reoffering new prices with the escalation to make sure that we protect our margin. The same holds for other cost escalations which are there, which are far more controlled and also in very controlled way, in the sense that because we also have long-term pricing contracts with our suppliers also, right? So those transitions happen very slowly, and we have the window of negotiating prices on any new deals that we sign to account for the cost escalation. Sure.

Last question from my side. Since you're not giving any revenue guidance, last year you did give revenue guidance, how should we look at the revenue growth for FY27 and margin given various, I mean, any quantitative or qualitative color will be helpful? Yeah.

We've never given revenue or any other financial number guidance in the past. And so I think we will stick to that. I mean, we are not in a position to give any new guidance. However, as I said, we have a stronger business outlook. And that's why I talked about that with all the investments that are made. And with our positive business outlook, we have continued the investments during the year, even though business didn't materialize because we figured out that the investments in product evolution and building the new technologies was very important for our future business growth. So we continued on that. So, obviously, our outlook is positive, very positive for the future, and we expect to see growth, but as a practice, we've never quantified in terms of numbers.

Thank you so much for all the answers. We wish you all the very best.

Thank you, Pranath.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ritesh Polaria from Gerig Capital. Please go ahead.

Thanks for the opportunity. I think a question is on balance, yet there is a good increase in intangibles under development from 400 to 960 crores.

What does that point mean, sir?

Yeah, so I think intangible underdevelopment commonly consists of our product development effort and also related to the IP or the technology license or the technology transfer that we did with NEC early part of or towards the end of the previous year. And that is partly getting reflected in the intangible underdevelopment.

So, that investment was about 550-odd crore. So, everything has been done or still it is to be done?

A large part of it is done. I think it is linked to milestones. And I think balanced milestones we expect to get done within the next one or two quarters.

With the commercialization of all the investments that we made, which are as part of the intangible assets, All of them will get capitalized as when we have commercial feasibility and commercial adoption of all the new technology and products that we've developed, including this licensing.

And from that IP only, you got this first order from NEC customer?

Well, that was part of the agreement with NEC that we licensed some technology and we built radios for the future.

So, is this part of the same agreement where you got the first order because the order book is 1500 crore and 80% is India. So, that would be a very small amount, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As I said, we signed the contract for the supplies, and so the revenue for that business will actually happen in a 527. So, it is part of the same partnership, even though the two contracts are separate. The technology licensing contract and this supply contract are different completely.

Okay. So, when do we see the revenue from this technology agreement?

Yeah, no, no. From this new contract with NEC, we'll see the revenue for that in this, in FI27.

Okay.

During the current financial year.

Sure. Sir, as this becomes a bit complex, could you at least give us some sense that what kind of, or what amount of opportunities you are chasing right now? And by what times of this we'll get Fluktefi or what are the milestones which we can look for?

Again, on this, definitely we have been chasing quite large opportunities, both, again, from wireless perspective, quite a few of those are international opportunities, which we have built over the last one year. And if you would have seen that we have started quite a few trials also. So, again, difficult to give the overall size of the funnel number, but it is substantial. And those will be getting again ordered in the coming year, and then, yeah, revenue booking also should happen from that in the coming year.

Sure, I understand you are constrained in commenting further, but just to take it a bit forward, will this opportunity will be multiples of what you got in BSNL?

Multiples of what we got in BSNL. The original one, it would not be that 100,000 size kind of thing, but because, you know, the numbers outside India are a little bit smaller as compared to BSNL. But I think from our product perspective, reference building perspective, and coming to the international wireless area, I think that would be very, very significant.

Sure. And regarding R&D spend for FY27, will it remain? Is there any cut down or are you still going strong on your R&D investments, whatever you are looking for?

So we will continue our R&D investments, but obviously we will tailor it to the business outlook that we have and obviously the business maturing. So as I said, we will be optimizing it to make sure that we get much better financial results. But as of now, we plan to continue with our investments because the business outlook that we see in FY27 should be able to achieve better financial results even with our current investments and cost structure. But we will keep optimizing that as we see the business progress during the year.

Sure. And one final question on receivables. Where do we see this number going in FY27?

I think on referrals, two points, Nick. One is the number that you see needs to be looked at in context of the corresponding advance that we've received as part of the BSNB 4G order, which is currently showing up in current liabilities. Having said that, we expect the collections or the remaining collections on BSNL to significantly happen during this current financial year. So, we expect the receivables to progressively come down over the next couple of quarters. Obviously, this will also increasingly be a function of also the incremental business scale-up that happens over the next few quarters.

Yeah, that I understand, but the entire BSNL 4G will be collected in this year?

A significant portion of that should get connected this year. That again also linked to milestones, and those progressively are getting complete, so we expect that to, you know, lead to collections of the next few quarters.

Yeah, that's it from March. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Pavneesh Kumar from Ritu Financial Services. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good evening. Am I audible? Yes. So, first of all, I had a complaint, like, the timing for the con call was 7.15, and we started around 8.15, and the results were, I mean, the presentation was out at 8.13 or 8.12, So we didn't get any time to read or analyze the presentation before the con call. And this has been repeated for past seven, eight quarters. I requested four, five quarters earlier also that time should be given to the investors to analyze and read the report at least. But still the same story.

Yeah, I think this time especially we had a lot of problems in uploading and that took a lot more time. So we have to progress the delay, and again, once again, I apologize for the entire delay and the short window between the upload and the start of this call. We'll make sure that it doesn't happen in the future.

Thank you. And secondly, sir, congratulations on the patents that you've got in this quarter and the developments that you've got on the third side. Well, the presentation that you gave was too technical for a layman like me, so it sounded like Greek and Latin for me, But whatever you said, I mean, congratulations for that. But as an investor, if we see the financials, I'm pretty disappointed with the way Tejas is going. And I believe the shareholders' money is being taken for granted. I do not see any progress in the financials. Even now, you are not able to give any kind of clarity on the future that we hold. Pretty bad situation that we are in right now. Very disappointed.

I agree, Abneesh.

I think, of course,

as part of the company's management, I mean, it's been disappointing for us also as well. There were a lot of business that, as you said, as I mentioned, that we had planned for, based on which we had made investments that got delayed. And, yeah, so we are the thing that after this BSML project, this has been a year of transition for us. And going forward with everything that we have done and invested in, that we should be looking at a much more better and predictable financial results going forward.

Sir, I just wanted to say, like, see, our share price has come down from the lifetime high of $14.95 to it came down in the range of $300 also. I understand that market forces are there that drive the share prices apart from the financials, but, you know, you should take care about the shareholders' money also, and some guidance should be given about the future. This is just my recommendation. The rest I leave up to your wisdom.

Sure. We'll take this into account.

Thank you, Voss. Thank you so much.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Pratap Malival from Mount Intra Finance Private Limited. Please go ahead.

Hello. Hi. Am I audible?

Yes, sir. Audible, Pratap.

Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to have a clarification regarding that earlier participant's question regarding the NEP deal for the supply of the massive MIMO radio. So, is that part of our current order book of 1,500 crores, or is that yet to come in? As you said, that it will be revenu'd out in FI27. So, is that already part of our order book?

Okay. So, for this deal, actually, so that basically means that we are entering this account with NEC. So, there is the first PO which has been received, which is part of the 1,500 crore. And as we go along, there would be the purchase orders would come as the rollout progresses through the year.

Okay. And this would be, can you give us any idea of how we kind of understand that this will scale up? Because, you know, as you're saying that the outlook for FY27 is that we get some better results, you know, Because FI26 has been a year of transition. So can you give us some idea on how this is expected to scale up?

You mean this particular deal or the overall business in general?

Both, sir. But in particular, the NEC deal. Because as you're saying that we get some follow-on purchase orders as well. So what can we expect the scalability to be?

As I mentioned, it all basically depends upon the rollout which the customer does. So, as the rollout happens, then, yeah, the new purchase orders keep coming. So, difficult to, again, give a number projection on it, but I would say I think the follow-on orders would be, again, better than whatever we have as of now.

Okay. Now, just one thing. When I look at our FI-27, we've had a loss of approximately 900 crores. Now, FI-27, as you're saying that, you know, it'll be a year of transition and we get better results. What is our path back to profitability? Can you give us some understanding on that front?

Yeah, I think we expect a much better business in FI27 based on the opportunities that we see. And with that and with – we will also manage our costs at the current level and optimize as required to make sure that we get to – we have a path to profitability. Because, you know, this has, as I said, this has been one of years where business got delayed, but we didn't want to compromise on our investments for the, you know, for the future opportunities. But going forward, I think we will ensure that, you know, one part of it is the business which is out there and our cost structure which is there. They are in line, and we do expect that, you know, from the business outlook that we see in FI27,

we should end up with much better financial results.

And we'll also, as the business progresses, we will monitor and optimize our costs accordingly.

Are we expecting to be packed positive in FI27?

Yeah, we don't give the financial guidance, but yes, that's the goal.

Okay, sir. Thanks for taking my question.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Tarshil Jhaveri from Crown Capital. Please go ahead.

Hello. Good evening, sir. Thank you so much for taking my question. Sir, as I understand, you're not going to give any guidance, but with regards to just our inventories and receivables, So that's putting a serious strain on our balance sheet. What is the company's aim regarding that? I understand even if I net off the other current liabilities for receivables, that still is like nearly double the revenue that what we've done in FY26. So, just wanted to understand, like, what do we expect out of this? And what is, has company, you know, modeled out if, you know, BSN order is even delayed by another year? Because that's not in our hands, right, sir? The POV, so what is the inventory level? Will there be deterioration? Will there be some other write-off that we need to take? So, what do you feel is the, you know, realistic outlook that we can have with regards to our inventories and decisions, sir?

So, I think on receivables, I broadly clarified in response to the earlier question, we are expecting to get the balance collections from the SNL significantly during this year, and that should lead to improvement from a receivable standpoint. But on inventory, also, I think, as you alluded to, I think the last part of this is also coming from the advanced procurement action that we took for the BSNL add-on order. Now, right now, we continue to be in discussions with them with respect to getting the order. And, you know, the inventory here is something that gets used in the radios that we sell, and those can potentially also be sold to other customers. But I think, so that's where it is. I think for now, I don't think we have any further clarity with respect to the BSNL add-on order.

The inventory for these products, the BSNL 4G products are not unique to BSNL. I mean, they are like a wide range of radios for 4G and 4G available to 5G, which are applicable for customers, for any kind of customers, right? So many of the opportunities that we are positioning ourselves internationally in the private 4G networks and all those kind of things all use the same products. So the inventory will also be used for many of those opportunities when they convert. So it's not very unique to BSNL. However, I mean, as you have noted that most of it had been procured for BSNL, So, a significant part of it will go along with the SNL add-on order, but independently, they will be consumed along with other business opportunities that we have globally.

Okay, fair enough, sir. And just another question regarding like a cash generation ability, sir. So, even in the current year, I think we've been able to only generate around the 135 crores of cash. So, that takes into account all the change in inventory and advances that we've gotten. And on basis of that, I think we have invested, I think, around 700 crores in intangible assets, right, sir. So, majorly, if I'm not wrong, our investment in intangible is debt funded. What is the rationale behind that? Because I don't know if this is sustainable at a certain level, right? So if we are not going to be path positive in FY27, we are, we might as be, you know, our funding are intangibles with debt, but it will take tax time to, you know, get traction, we'll get orders, we'll get minute orders. But in that time, I don't want that our company's balance sheet deteriorate so much that, you know, we have bigger issues than, you know, research and development, sir. So any comments on that, sir?

No, I agree with your observation, you know. The point is that since we are in the deep tech space, you know, being in a situation where you don't invest, In technology evolution is a higher, bigger risk for the future of your business than the other way around, right? So, from that point of view, we took in FI26, we took the call of that even with the business shortfall that we see, with the transition that is happening and with the technology that we needed to develop to leverage the future, that we'll continue with our investment. And we have done that. And as you see, we have launched many products which will help us for the business of the future. But I think going forward in FI27, as I said, the financial diligence of investments versus returns and revenues and all will be far more tighter because I believe the significant investment has gone in and we have achieved much of the goals that we had in mind. So, in FI27 and beyond, it will be a much more well-balanced investment that will happen in line with the business outlook, which will continue to evolve and monitor very closely.

Fair enough. So, just one last question from my answer. Right now, we are at around 1,500 crores of order book. So, if you may, any kind of target of the order wind that we want, I'm not saying specifically for this year, maybe with the new technologies over a period of three years, what is the target that we can have in terms of order wind? Because even if some kind of direction we can get, like, you know, in this, that would be really helpful.

Well, as I said, the investments have been made with an eye on significant growth. And this significant growth will be, of course, year-over-year numbers. If you leave out one of VSML projects, those kinds of projects will come, and there will be spikes in our business when they happen. But, you know, if you look at the business trend without those one-off projects kind of thing, whatever you see, we will, you know, definitely, you know, hopefully see business growth on top of what we have seen earlier in FI24 and so on. So that's all I can say. I think the overall growth in our opportunities, there will be significant growth in our opportunities. There will be a lot more investments happening from operators, from enterprises, from ISPs, and so on. And we are well positioned over there. So obviously, this investment has been made with a business which is several multiples of what we have done in FI26. Right? So, that's basically the outlook based on which we have made all the improvements.

Okay, that's just all the best. All the best.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Shailesh Shagidhar from InvestEarnyam. Please go ahead.

Hi, sir. I was in two again. So, I had a question about data center connected to business. So, TCS is actively building the data centers, actively participating in data center building. They have a plan of when we go to. So, do we have certain benefits of being a Tata group company and we can get a CEO from TTS in somewhere? Do we have a benefit, not in terms of amount, but in terms of being a group company? That's what my question was.

Well, I mean, independent of being a group company, we are engaged with not only TCS, but other of this data center builders for our products. And we have seen, you know, what a lot of our success in optical has been as part of those data center build-outs. So TCS is, yes, one of our important customers as well for that, for data center applications. And, yes, we are closely engaging them with their future business plans. But I'd like to highlight that they are not the only one for our data center business-related growth.

Thank you. That was my question.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Arpit Jain from Walford Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Yeah. Hi, hi, hi. So, over the last year, we filed a couple of patents. I just wanted an idea regarding when do these patents generate revenue for us, and what is the rationale behind filing so many patents? So, what's the future outlook regarding these patents?

Yeah, see, as a deep tech company, we need to file patents to, one is to protect our inventions so that our innovations are not replicated easily. The second part of this is that, especially in the wireless space, there is a lot of the patents that go into what are called the standard essential patents. These are patents which are used for building as per the new standards of 5G or 5G advanced or 6G based on 3GPP standard evolution. So as a wireless company and also from our other business, we need this patent portfolio to be both from a point of protecting our innovation as well as a defensive portfolio where you would be cross-licensing patents from other companies, which are absolutely essential in nature as far as developing your wireless products and technology are concerned. So in summary, both in terms of protecting your innovations and also for giving us a solid base for being able to cross-license patents and technologies with other technology developers.

Okay.

And this is more than a direct monetization of the number of patents that we have. It is monetization in a little indirect way.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. We have time for one last question. Sure.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rajakumar Vaidyanathan from RK Invest. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good evening. Can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

I can hear you.

Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. So, just a couple of questions. So, the first question is, is it reasonable to expect a break-even in FI27 and a bad positive in FI28?

I mean, we do not give guidance, but that's really the goal. As I said, investment and FI27, we expect to see far better financial results in terms of with the business outlook that we have and with the investments.

And the second question is on this elongated BSO that you have with the BSNL order, so do you expect that elongated BSO even for the order that is under execution because you have still not collected about 3,000 crores, so will the same issue will happen with the current order as well?

No, you are talking about the collections from the upcoming order?

Yeah, there are two issues. The one, whatever AI that is outstanding that you have shown as of March 26, that you said that you will be able to collect significantly in FY27. So, my question is the order that you are executing, which is about 1,000 finder codes, the orders on hand that you mentioned, right? So, there also the DSO will be an elongated DSO or there do you expect the collections to happen much faster?

Yeah, so two things. So number one, out of this 1,500 crores of order book, BSNL purchase order is still not part of that because, as we said, we are still in discussion to get that into the purchase order. Second, the collection for this should be faster than the original order because first time we kind of delivered the product, tested it, then there is acceptance testing, and then there is kind of rigorous testing against integration with their existing elements and all that. So, those things will not be there when we go for this add-on PO. Because these add-on POs would be same technology, similar products to be integrated or to be installed. So, the delivery time and installation time and acceptance time would be much faster.

Got it, sir. And, sir, the last question is, can you give me what is the total headcount as of March 26, this very March 25?

So, total headcount is roughly about 2,300 employees, and that has broadly remained the same compared to the previous year.

Thank you, Salish.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, with this, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

So, thank you, Mohit. So, thanks, everyone, for attending the call and for all your questions. You know, again, once again, first of all, once again, my apologies for starting this an hour later than the scheduled time. And secondly, as you've seen the results of FI26, you know, the key takeaway I want the gentleman to have is that, yes, the results have been quite disappointing, But at the same time, we are positive about our future, based on which we have made substantial investments during the year to make sure our products are ready and technologically ready and capable for the mindset the investments have been made. And I hope to work with you all and deliver a much better FI27. Thank you.

Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.