Updater Services Limited (UDS) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 and F526 Earnings Conference Call for Updater Services Limited. 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. Before we begin, a brief disclaimer. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and it may involve risk and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star than zero on a touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ragunandana Tangirala, promoter and MDF of Data Services Limited. Thank you and over to you, sir.

Yeah, thank you. Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to all the participants joining today's call. Joining me on the call today are Amitabh J. Toria, Senior Executive Director, Mr. Ram Praveen, our Chief Financial Officer, and our Investor Relations Advisor from SGA. We are also joined by Elizabeth Jacob, Founder and CEO of Athena, as well as Mr. Suleen Munshi, CEO of Denev. I hope you've all had an opportunity to go through the investor's deck and the financial results. The same are also available on the StockXStreet platform and on the company's website.

Before I begin, I have two important leadership announcements to share.

I'm pleased to announce the elevation of Amitabh Yekuriya from non-executive director to senior executive director for a term of three years. Mr. Jephra also has been on our board and has had a deep understanding of our business and its strategic direction. In his new executive role, he will also be hands-on on strengthening operational excellence, streamlining business processes, and driving long-term strategic initiatives across the organization. We are also delighted to have them. Step into the expanded mandate and look forward to the value they will bring in its capacity. We've also appointed Ram Praveen, our group financial officer. Ram is a qualified child accountant with about 23 years of experience spanning across agri-solutions, manufacturing, IT assets, and banking. He brings deep expertise in the business partnering, cost management, governance, and finance transformation. His career includes senior leadership roles at Coromandel International, Caterpillar India, Cognizance, and Investment Bank. We are excited to welcome him on board and are confident that his experience will be an important asset as we continue to scale up the organization. We have also decided that to simplify our structure and to be able to give direct attention to some of our key DSS business. For now, we will have CEOs of Denev, Athena, and Matrix reporting directly to the MD and the senior leadership team. Now, turning to the business, FA26 was, without question, a challenging year for UDS as a group. We dealt with a very uncertain external environment, as well as certain internal challenges and challenges that demanded our attention. We have addressed them with seriousness they deserved at the same time. It's to say that the underlying business continues to demonstrate resilience with our revenue growing around 7% year on year. Upwind, I want to take a moment to specifically address the situation at A1, which was discussed even in our Q3. Avon is one of our subsidiaries. Over the last two quarters, Avon took a total provision of approximately 23 crores relating to receivables from its relatively new logistics and trade brokerage business. We want to be completely transparent with all of you. We are taking all necessary steps, including legal action, to recover these amounts. Being prudent and conservative, we have already fully provided for the entire 23 crores. The core business of Ibon remains intact and operationally stable and has grown at 9% over last year. We don't expect this to be a recurring issue. Overall, FI26 was an important year for us as we built our internal capabilities and Thank you. In the last year of research, we defined our client relationships, improved contract-level profitability, continued to invest in technology-led operations, and made meaningful strides. Let me now take a few minutes to share our perspective on the broader ISM industry, ISM industry landscape, because the structural tailwinds are compelling, and I want you to understand how it is. The integrated facility management system is at an important start. The industry has been dominated by. I'm waiting primarily on price. Thank you. We remain conscious.

We'll dive into overall what's happened in the BSS segment, and then I will hand over to Sunil Munshi, who's our CEO for Diné, as well as then to Elizabeth Jacob, who is the founder and CEO of our other sales enablement business, which is Athena. We have particularly invited them on the call today to give you a visibility into the depth of talent that actually manages these businesses. And to hear from them directly, because as Raghu mentioned, we have simplified our organization, and now Elizabeth, Sunil, and the CEO of our Matrix business, Ravi, report directly into Raghu and the senior leadership team. This year has been a year of pause and reset in the BSS business, with each of our three companies, Denev, Athena, as well as Matrix. Seriously rejigging their operating structures, teams, and processes to reposition us for growth and continued profitability this year and in the future. As mentioned, we are simplifying our organization and using technology to make our processes faster, more accurate, as well as to reduce costs. We expect that these actions are showing results this year with their full impact being... The BSS segment revenue for FY26 reached approximately 965 crores, which is broadly flat year-on-year, while the top line was range-bound due to specific headwinds in certain businesses, and we will address that in more detail later in the call. Adjusted bid-up, adjusted for one time on account of A1 for the division, stood at 85 crores, with margins standing at approximately 9%. The revenue for Q4 stood at 234 crores. But really what's exciting for us is the improvement in EBITDA margins, which stood at close to 11%, reflecting the impact of our sustained cost optimization and portfolio quality improvement effort. At an overall level, our sales enablement business under Deneve grew 11% over last year, with an EBITDA of 26 crores, with a margin of about 4.5%. During the quarter, revenue at Denev grew. And EBITDA grew almost 70% with margin improvement to 5.5% plus for Q4. Our sales enablement business under Athena in FY26, the revenue stood at 113 crores for FY26 with an EBITDA of 23.6 crores and an EBITDA margin at 21%. While our EBGC business under Matrix underwent a challenging time and witnessed a 11% revenue decline in FY26 over last year, and the audit and assurance business grew at 5.8% in FY26 over last year, the EBITDA for the Matrix business stood at 14.9 crores, an EBITDA margin of 2.0 crores. As mentioned by Raghu earlier, we now have our three CEOs of Denev, Athena, and Matrix reporting directly to the MD. We therefore thought it would be a good idea to invite two of them on this call and for you to hear directly from them. I will hand over the call to Mr. Sunil Munshi, CEO of Denev, to take you through all the business highlights of Denev, and then he will hand it over on to Elizabeth Jacob.

During FY26, Thank you. Technology, spending, headwinds, and macroeconomic uncertainty continue to create almost near-term turbulence, particularly in the first half. ...due to market disruptions and evolving AI landscape, so for us, a meaningful recovery in Q4. And importantly, to combat these disruptions, there is a way for the market to recover. We have to actively shift it from purely human-led processes to incorporating AI-led driven methodologies, campaign intelligence tools, advanced intelligence workflows, and the transition is now in the... We also added new business from our existing best enterprise customers as well. And what's particularly increasing in these new businesses that's been added in FY26 have been signed at higher margins. Our proprietary AI-led sales intelligence platform, IntelliBank, continues to see increasing client traction. The platform continues to evolve almost monthly, and we continue to invest in it. In fact, during the quarter, we further enhanced platform capabilities with deeper account intelligence, improving the AI tool insights and automated sales and other workflows, and enhancing our CRM integrations accordingly. We also actively integrated... We have specific AI-led motion capabilities across several states of our dimension life cycle, which has helped us to improve productivity, reduce manual interventions, and deliver better ROI-driven outcomes. The strategy for F537 involves making the core demand-gen business or the engine more robust for automation, implementing a digital workforce model. We've done around five. which has already yielded better conversion percentages, and we hence plan to scheme these efforts meaningfully throughout the next year. Global technology planning trends and geopolitical tensions, as we know, particularly in West Asia, continue to create near-term uncertainty for the overall industry. That said, we believe today is well...

Thank you, Sunil. Good morning, everyone. The company witnessed a meaningful impact on the revenue due to the full-year effect of the loss of two major customers and the downsizing of operations by another customer during financial year 25 and earlier. This created a significant revenue headwind that was difficult to offset in the short term. Importantly, no new customers were lost during financial year 26. Despite the challenging environment, we added four significant new logos during the year. One, each in the real estate and the consumer durable segment, and two in the BFSI segment. In addition, the pipeline across newer verticals is more active than it has been in some time, providing early visibility for future growth opportunities. Revenue for FY26 stood at 113 crores as compared to 136 crores in financial year 25, and EBITDA declined to INR 23 crores from INR 35 crores. The sharper decline in EBITDA relative to revenue reflects the operating leverage nature of the business, where costs take time to realign following revenue contraction. In response, Athena has proactively accelerated efforts to diversify its client base beyond BFSI into sectors such as healthcare, retail, and real estate, thereby reducing concentration risks and broadening revenue streams. As a result, the BFSI concentration reduced from 86% in financial year 25 to 81% in financial year 26. We believe that this diversification strategy is beginning to show encouraging early results. Technology transformation remains a key strategic focus area for the company. Following the successful completion of earlier authentic AI voicebot proof of concept, we are now witnessing increased client interest in AI-enabled customer engagement and sales support solution. Our objective is to progressively integrate AI-led automation tools across client processes to improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and maintain cost competitiveness in an operating environment that continues to evolve rapidly. We are also very excited to have recently won two contracts for authentic AI solutions. So while we've had a very tough year, we are seeing early signs of turnaround and are cautiously hopeful of a recovery clear on. I will now hand over the call back to Mr. Amitabh Jaipuria to give an update on Matrix.

Thanks. Thanks, Elizabeth.

So I won't take too much more time because then we'll hear from Ram on the financials. So, basically, in Audit and Assurance, we did see some challenges during the year. One large customer has reduced their spending, but apart from that, the other logos did well. We have also won 12 large clients across FMCG retail, quick commerce, and manufacturing, and also added within this four large Sensex listed companies, which is a strong endorsement of the quality of the supply chain and retail audit capabilities. We remain excited about the growth trajectory of A&A and are internally reorganizing it around customer and industry verticals. We are also in the process of building a dedicated sales and marketing team to accelerate growth. Within the EBGC business, which is our employee background verification business, as we have been guiding over the last, for almost five or six quarters now, that we are seeing continued softness in IT hiring, ITES hiring, and that continues. My recruitment volumes have been particularly impacted in these segments. BFSI, which had taken up some of the slack earlier, also has turned a little soft. Focus is now on efficiency and growth, profitable growth, rather. And the idea is to automate as much of the internal processes as we can to speed up our turnaround time and to reduce cost. The other piece is really in terms of technology platform that is getting created for this. So, to summarize broadly, despite near-term sector-specific challenges in certain businesses, the long-term outlook for the BSS segment remains positive. And our strategic focus continues to be on technology enablement, AI-led transformation, efficiencies, and building scale. We have had a tough year, but we believe we have turned the corner, and this year promises to be better. The Q1 trends are also encouraging. I will hand the call back to Raghu for concluding remarks before the financial update. Raghu, over to you. Yeah, thanks, Amitabh.

To summarize FY26, It's been a year of strengthening our operational foundation, improving business quality, and building long-term capabilities across both our IFM and BSS segments. We have navigated a set of challenges, some internal, some external, with transparency and discipline as we enter FI27 in a stronger organizational position. Our strategic priorities remain firmly centered around Profitable and sustainable growth, sustained margin improvement across businesses, strong cash flow generation and capital discipline, improvement in return on capital employed, technology-led operational excellence across verticals. We continue to see strong structural opportunities across core sectors. Driven by increasing outsourcing, workforce formalization, compliance requirement under the new labor code, GCC expansion, manufacturing sector growth, and rising demand for integrated service delivery partners. These are multi-year tailwinds, and we believe UDS is in a well-positioned to capture a rightful share of this opportunity. We also remain disciplined in our capital allocation approach, with a healthy balance sheet and a net cash quotient. We continue to evaluate value-accredited acquisition opportunities that complement our existing capabilities, improve margin quality, and strengthen our long-term growth prospects. Given our diversified client-based, scalable operating platform, strong execution tracks across, and increasing technology integration across businesses, we believe UDS is in well-positioned to deliver steady, profitable growth and create long-term value for all our stakeholders. I would now like to hand over the call to CFO Ram Praveen. To take you through the financial performance for Q4 and FI26. Over to you, Ram.

Thank you, Raghu, and good morning, everyone. I'm certainly pleased to be here in my first earnings call of UDS, and I'm looking forward to be engaging with you on a regular basis. And thank you through the financial highlights of Q4, FI26, and UDR FI26. Let us first talk about the Q4 FI26 performance. The total revenue from operations for Q4 grew by 3% year-over-year to $750,00 in FY26 as compared to $726,00 in FY25. The IAFM segment grew 5% year-over-year to $515,00, while BSS strategy grew by 1% year-over-year to $235,00. The revenue split between IFM and BSS stood together. Same range of 69 is to 31%, respectively. EBITDA for Q4 stood at 49 crores, while EBITDA margin standing at 6.6%. If you want to do at a segment level, IFM segment EBITDA stood at 4.4, while the BSS stood at 11.5. The overall PAT is at 27 crores for the Q4, FY26. Switching over to FY26 full-year performance, for the full year, the total revenue from operations grew 70% year-over-year to 2,960 crores. The IFM segment grew 10% year-over-year to 1,995 crores, and the BSS segment grew 1% to 966 crores. A revenue split for the year between these two segments, IFM and BSS, Student, the ratio of two-third and one-third ratio. The adjusted EBITDA, after taking this one-time loss due to A1 incident for the year, stood at INR 176 crores, with adjusted EBITDA margin standing at 5.9 crores, sorry, 5.9%. At a segment level, IFM segment margin stood at 4.5%, while BSS stood at 8.8%. The overall FAT is at approximately 83 crores for the full year. Adjusted return on capital employed is at 14.9%. As Mr. Raghu mentioned, on the balance sheet, UDS continues to remain a net cash company, which is good on a long-term basis. Net debt to equity should be at negative 0.24 as of 31 March 2026, representing us strong cash generation and disciplined capital management. On headcount, we have crossed Sunday 8,586, with 59,000 and odd coming from IFM segment and close to 16,000 in the BSS segment. During the year, as Ms. Elizabeth and Mr. Suriel mentioned, we have added good logos in the BSS segment as well as in the... IFM segment reflecting continued strong strength of our business development pipeline and trusted clients in our UDS platform on continuous basis. While we spoke about the financial performance, I just want to highlight a few of the initiatives, or I would say imperatives being undertaken to improve the overall operation efficiency across the UDS group. The first one is on the governance. Strengthening governance across the group through tighter controls and standardized process is being taken up. On FPN Day, as we progress through the latest technologies, we believe transforming FPN Day through advanced analytics and deeper business insights is critical for any value-driven strategic decision-making. Shared services is always in the cards and structuring the shared services across key departments of finance, procurement, payroll to drive process standardization, scalability, and cost optimization across the entities. Last but not the least, technology and AI play a critical role across all industries, and UDS is also witnessing the same. As explained by Ms. Elizabeth and Mr. Sunil, we continue to invest in AI-led technologies across all the group entities so that it helps us to grow to a scalable level. And also, I want to bring these few thoughts. Bringing in senior leadership into UDS group, like me and Mr. Avita, demonstrates clearly the management's strong commitment to build a robust systems, controls, and IT infrastructure. As a CFO, allocating good capital for AI-led investments will ensure sustainable growth and be relevant and competitive in the market. With that, I would like to open the floor for questions.

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on the touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star 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.

Participants who wish to ask questions may press star and 1 at this time. Participants who wish to ask questions, may press star and one.

The first question is from the line of Viraj Shah from Turtle Investment. Please go ahead.

Hi, sir. Good morning. Sir, the question is, the company is currently at around 450 crores of crashing books. How do you plan to capitalize this and utilize this towards equations or what is the plan going forward? So, Raku, may I?

Yeah, please. Yeah. So, Vira, thanks for that question. Yes, as we have continuously maintained that we are, and demonstrated, we are a cash-generating company, and our net debt is zero. So, we plan to utilize this cash. So, all options are in front of the board. Acquisitions, of course, remain the primary use of this cash. At the same time, the board will consider options to also reward loyal shareholders in the future and to invest for internal organic growth. So, Ram mentioned about AI and technology. He also mentioned about talent. So, technology and talent are really the two uses of this cash for internal organic growth. There is acquisitions, which is inorganic growth. And then there is also in terms of rewarding shareholders. So between these three is really where this cash will be deployed. And what exact ratio, I can't tell you right now because that's really a board decision. But you will see us move forward on all three as this year progresses. So that would be, yeah, that would be the answer.

Sir, also in Athena, we have been seeing losses of certain clients. Are we witnessing any early signs of recovery in that business? And what kind of margins would be at a normal steady state? Any questions on that side?

Yeah, so we have, you know, my colleague Elizabeth also on the call. So as she explained, the major customer losses have completely stopped. So, these losses were in FY25 and earlier, and as she explained, the impact of some of those rolled through during this year as well. That is why you saw a decline in revenue. As she mentioned, we have also got four new logos in areas which are non-BFSI as well. So, our BFSI concentration has dropped from 86% to 81%, as she mentioned. Our margins have also stabilized in the region of about 19% to 20%, and this is, you know, in terms of financial EBITDA, and we are seeing that holding. The key piece for Athena now is, one, to diversify its customer base and grow. Two, to reach scale with its agentic AI work. So, as she mentioned, we have right now, we are in POC stages and encouraging results with three or four customers. And we will update you in our next earnings call in terms of how those are moving forward. But those are the two key pieces for Athena. We remain very bullish about this business. And what we are also seeing is that the entire conversation about how bots will take over humans' jobs in this segment hasn't quite played out in this part of the business. Because we are in the outcalling sales and revenue-related businesses, as we have repeatedly talked about in our previous calls. So there, this has not happened, and we don't see it happening because there is a persuasion element that is involved. But we are staying ahead of the curve, as she mentioned in her speech as well, by doing our own agentic AI deployments. So I think that should give you enough color on Athena.

Sure, sir. Thank you so much. I'll be back to the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we take the next question, we would like to remind participants that you may have restarted one to ask the question. The next question is from the line of Vivek Desai from Investec. Please go ahead.

Hi. So my question, I had a few questions. The first one being that you gave an overview of the overall performance of all the verticals, but BSS vertical had the sharpest decline in revenue this quarter among the last seven, eight quarters, but margins stood strong, and you also pointed out that it was due to the optimization efforts. So if you could throw some light on what was done in the BSS vertical in terms of operations to give some color on the revenue decline and the margin expansion, that would be great. And the quarterly performance of Athena and Denev, if you can give the numbers, if possible, on the margin and revenue that was pertaining to BSS. The second one was on the IFM vertical, wherein in Q2, we had mentioned that we are taking up some large deals. Because of that, we have some front-loading of expenses happening. So where are we on that, and how do we see that panning out in numbers going forward? And the last question was on the operating expenses, the other operating expenses, which have declined sharply in this quarter on a YOY basis. So if there is something to note over there, something particularly happening this quarter, that will be great. Thanks.

So, let me start with the BSS piece, right? So, you're right, growth slowed down this year. But if you adjust for the Avon episode and the Athena decline, so the Athena revenue has declined by almost about 25 crores over last year. So, last year, we were at 140 crores total income, and this year, we are at 116, 117 crores, right? So, there is a 25 crore decline there, and we'll explain why that has happened. But Deneve has actually grown 11% during the year, right? So Deneve is the largest part of our business, as you know. So Deneve has shown strong growth. Athena has declined. We have explained the reasons. Avon Transport, the business itself, has shut. This was the episode that we encountered and the hit that we have taken. So that division was 40 crores last year. You take that out, basically, because that has contributed to that decline number. If you adjust for that, Avon solutions, which is the non-transport part of the Avon business, has also grown 11%. And global flight handling has grown 30%. During the year, right? So if you account for Athena's decline and the shutting of Avon Transport, the other three core businesses, which is Global Flight Handling, up 30%, Deneve, up 11%, and Avon Solutions, also up 11%. Matrix, which is the other part, has been flat. And I gave some commentary earlier in terms of that one large customer in A&A and the continued softness in hiring. So, Matrix is flat, but BNAF, strong growth. A1 Solutions, strong growth. Global, very strong growth. So, that's the color on growth as far as BSS is concerned. And that is what gives us confidence to believe that in FY27, current year, we will continue the momentum. Also because the Athena decline has also been arrested. We have seen signs in Q1, for example. Right. On the IFM part, you talked about that some contracts that we had where costs were more front-loaded. So, you are absolutely right. So, this year, in the UDS standalone numbers, you will see a decline in our PAT number, and that decline builds in some of that EPC and ECL-related provisions that we have taken on just to be extra prudent because we did see that coming. And also, you have to remember that in last year's numbers, there was a 9 crore non-business related income because there was a revaluation of our stake in two companies of Powerbots and what we had to pay to Athena. So if you reduce that 9 crore, then our last year's ISM number, especially in UDS, I'm talking about UDS particularly, was actually 78 crores. And this year, there is a 19 crore decline. And out of that 19 crores, basically, you will see about 12, 13 crores because of the front loading of costs and also because of ECL and the EPC provisions that we have taken. The balance numbers are basically because of a reduction in interest income in UBS standalone. You see that and that is what rolls through to the group as well. And there is also a 4 crore hit that we have taken at UBS level and overall a 5 crore number on the wage code liability that we have taken on board. So that is what has contributed to that decline. But with this, the cleanup is largely done. And this year is a clean year in terms of how we have started. So that's really the color on that. You asked a question on EBITDA margins, as well as on overall back margins. So yeah, I mean, you know, we have had some challenges. But largely, if you look at global, for example, huge turnaround in margins, we talked about it moving from 3% to 6%, right? And we have also looked at good movement in fusion, which is our food catering business. We are seeing that number go up from 6% to almost 8%. Margins in our washroom hygiene concepts business, which is also part of IFM, are very steady at about 37-38%. So overall, IFM has dropped, but that has dropped because of the reasons that I just talked about in UBS standalone. As far as overall Denev is concerned, margins are stabilized. So we saw a sharp decline earlier over past years, and we gave commentary on that last year. But this year now, margins have largely stabilized. And we can now see growth on those margins, which Raghu also referred to. Athena margins are very stable. They are 20% plus, as I had spoken about earlier. Matrix margins are also now stable. So they are in the 11-12% EBITDA range, and they are very stable. So that is really the BSS margin profile that we have reported. So I hope that gives you a lot of color on these questions that you had from Investec.

Yeah, thanks.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Priyam Shirvastava, an individual investor. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you so much for the opportunity. I wanted to ask the IFM business, despite there has been revenue growth, but the earnings, it is earning low return on capital. So what are the steps companies taking to address this?

So, thanks for that question. So, you're right. Growth is good because actually we are ahead of industry. So, if you look at our overall growth in IFM, we are actually at a 10% over last year. And if you look at the total, also we are at 7%. If you look at what our peers in the industry have reported, we are actually well ahead of that. So that is correct. The margins, the explanation was what I just spoke about for the Investec question, which was the decline in the standalone UDS number by about 19 crows. And that explanation I have already talked about. So, the go-forward action, one-time cleanup, done, prudent provisioning, done. So, that will not roll through this year. We can see that. The lower interest income, frankly, you know, interest income is a capital allocation decision, right? So now we have Ram, who is also, you know, an expert at treasury management. We also have a mountain of cash that we are sitting on. So interest income will go up. But the fact is that we don't want to be measured by interest income because interest income is a byproduct, right? Business income and what we do with that cash is really the important questions. But this year, you know, the year under reporting F526, interest income did go down. So that was another reason why you see that, you know, falling through to our pack line. And the other, of course, as we talked about, was the one-time wage code impact of almost 5 crores plus for the entire group and 4 crores for UDS. That, again, is not going to repeat. So, I think we are feeling good about where we are right now, even though this year's numbers, especially overall, if you look at it, because of AVON and because of the wage code impact, there have been challenges.

Okay, okay. My next question was, the company has 240 crore in net cash and 450 crore including mutual funds and NFTs. Why is the company not pursuing a buyback even at like low valuation?

So, you know, I will just answer, you know, with shades of what I mentioned earlier when somebody asked about what will you do with this cash. So, it's a similar thing. So, we have uses for this cash in terms of organic growth, in terms of inorganic growth, and in terms of rewarding shareholders. That's really the use for this cash. Now, what format rewarding the shareholders takes, that is the board decision. I will not be able to, you know, give you a more detailed answer on that in terms of what the board will consider. But there are primarily two routes. There is a share buyback route and there is a dividend route. It's up to the board to decide what they want to do. That said, let me also say that we are in an industry and we are in a space where we believe there are strong growth opportunities. And finally, at the end of the day, we don't see ourselves as not having growth opportunities and therefore having to return very large amounts of cash. So, while it's a board decision, it will definitely figure in their conversations, but what exactly that will mean this year, I'm unable to say, but it will happen. I mean, some form of reward will happen, whether it's dividend, whether it's share buyback, whatever that might be.

Okay, okay. Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kushal Maheshwari from Verb. Please go ahead.

Hello, sir. Am I audible? Okay. Thank you for the opportunity.

I just had one question. So, how much of FY27 revenue is already visible through existing contracts?

So, Kushal, normally what, this is a great question, normally what tends to happen is that when you start the year, you start with about 80-85% visibility, and you build the balance 15% or thereabouts, right? And that is exactly what has happened this year as well, and we are clearly seeing that. So, we have visibility of between 85 and 90%, the balance 10% or thereabouts we'll have to find.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Participants who wish to ask questions may press star and 1 at this time. In order to ask a question, please press Chiron 1 now.

The next question is from the line of Dekshah from Siddhant Partners. Please go ahead.

Hi, Nehul, this is from Siddhant Partners. We have to suggest if you can help us on the guidance for the next year in terms of revenue and the breakup in terms of IFM and ESS. How are you looking at for FI27?

So, we are encouraged by what we see in the early fines in April and May. But at this point in time, I would avoid a formal guidance in terms of where we are going to go. The pipeline is healthy, and we do believe that we will grow ahead of industry. Last year, if you look at it, industry has grown at under 6%. So, all our peers, if you look at the growth numbers, somebody

has reported 5.3%, somebody has reported 5.7%, somebody has reported a decline of 3%, right?

And one competitor, because of large overseas revenues, has reported a growth. So, we are actually ahead of the India pack. We believe we will continue to be ahead of the India PAC, and that's really all I can say. I don't want to give you formal guidance right now, Mehul, but at the end of our Q1 call, we will have much clearer visibility in terms of where we are headed, and with our Q1 earnings call, we hope to give you some kind of an indication of where we will end the year.

Okay, okay. That helps. Next one is the acquisition. In the past few quarters, we have been referring to some acquisition wherein it was toward final stages of negotiation. So, is it still on or the deal is off?

So, it is still on.

The conversations have taken longer than what we had envisaged. The DD is almost closed, but there are other negotiating items that are right now being done. At this point in time, we cannot guarantee that a deal will happen, but we remain cautiously hopeful.

Understood. And the last one is, in the initial, I missed the initial portion of the call, wherein the breakup was given for BSS in terms of Dene, Vatina, and Metrix. If someone can just repeat that breakup in terms of revenue and education, that would help, sir.

For the full year?

Yeah, for the full year. So, it's by 26. Some makeup was given, but I cannot note it now.

So, Denev revenue was at 590 crores. Athena revenue was at 116.8 crores. Matrix revenue was at 128.6 crores. Overall BSS was at 968 crores. That was the revenue for this year.

Okay.

This year in the sense, F526.

F526, correct. And in terms of EBITDA, then?

So EBITDA, you know, we basically have, I can give you the numbers. So Denev EBITDA was at 26 crores. Athena EBITDA was at 24 crores. Matrix was at 15 crores. Overall BSS was at 68 crores.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question of the day, and I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

Raghu, over to you.

Yeah, thank you, thank you all of you. We expect to give you better numbers like first

quarter, but that's not something which we can commit now. Thank you for all the questions. Thank you for participating.

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

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.