Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Thyrocare Technologies Ltd (NSE: THYROCARE) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 12, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Preet Joshi — Investor Relations
Rajdeep Panamar — Chief Commercial Officer
Unidentified Speaker
Rahul Guha — Chief Executive Officer
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the ThyroCare Q4 FY26 earnings conference call hosted by ThyroCare Technologies 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. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr.
D. Joshi from Thyroid Care. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Preet Joshi — Investor Relations
Thank you, Supnali. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. I’m Preet Joshi from strategy team at thyrocare. It is a pleasure to welcome you all to the Q4 FY26 earning call for Thyrocare. Joining me on the call today are Mr. Rahul Bhua, our MD and CEO. Mr. Rajiv Panamar, our Chief Commercial Officer. Dr. Ramesh Kinna, our Chief Operating Officer and Mr. Vikram Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer. I hope you have gone through our results release, the quarterly earnings presentation and the press release which has been uploaded on stock exchange website.
A transcript of this call will be available in a week’s time on the company’s website. Please note that today’s discussion may be forward looking in nature and must be viewed in relation to the risk pertaining to our business. After the end of this call in case you have any further questions please feel free to reach out to the investor relations team. I now hand over the call to Mr. Rahul Buha to make the opening remarks. Over to you, Rahul. Thank you. Preet. Good morning and welcome to the call.
Thank you for taking out time from your busy schedules to join us this evening. As in all my calls, I will start with a quote from Nelson Mandela in recognition of our foray into Africa. It is in your hands to make a better world for all who live in it. We believe Thyrocare can take its business model to Africa and make affordable high quality diagnostics accessible to all. Before I get into specifics, I want to take a step back and talk about how we see the diagnostics industry evolving in today’s healthcare landscape.
Diagnostics is no longer a backend support function. It is central to clinical decision making and increasingly to preventive health management. Patients today expect convenience, speed and reliability as a baseline and are actively looking for trusted partners who can deliver end to end diagnostic solutions seamlessly. This shift aligns closely with our own mission at Thiocare to make preventive healthcare easy to deploy, consistent in quality and accessible to all. Against this backdrop, FY26 has been a year of meaningful progress for us, not just in terms of growth but in terms of strengthening the foundation of the business.
We are very proud of some of the key milestones that we achieved in FY26. Spirocare was certified as a Great Place to Work, a recognition by the global authority on workplace culture, reflecting our commitment to fostering a positive, inclusive and empowering environment for our people. We were recognized at the 4th National Diagnostic Forum in awards by Voice of Healthcare with two prestigious awards Best Diagnostic Lab Chain of the Year national and more importantly Patient Centric Diagnostic Company of the Year National.
During the year we onboarded Madhuri Dixit as the brand ambassador for Thyrocare, which is an important step in strengthening brand recall and consumer trust at a national level. Our diagnostic portfolio continues to do well robm growing in line with the company growth rate, but the highlight was Jansh which which grew at 66% this quarter year on year, showing the move towards more specialized disease specific testing even in the annual health checkup space. We expanded our diagnostics portfolio significantly into the specialty space.
One key addition was allergy testing which was introduced using the Placardia platform and currently has over 250 SKUs. We started our foray into genomic testing on May 1, a segment that is nascent but directionally significant for Indian diagnostics. The global genomics market is projected to exceed 100 billion by 2030 and India, with one of the highest burdens of genetic disorders including thalassemia, sickle cell disease and hereditary cancers, represents a structurally underpenetrated opportunity.
Carrier screening, pharmacogenomics and cancer predisposition panels are seeing early but accelerating demand, particularly amongst urban health aware consumers. With a franchise network of almost 11,000 collection points and a deep brand trust in preventive testing, thyrocare is well positioned to bring genomic testing to a broader patient base at accessible price points, democratizing a category that has largely remained confined to metro hospitals and specialty clinics. We are approaching this methodically, starting with defined panel offerings, particularly non invasive prenatal testing, building clinical validation and layering physical education before scaling aggressively.
We now have more than 10,800 franchisees. As a result, we processed 210 million tests in FY26 which grew by 23% year on year. It’s important to contextualize that this volume is higher than some of our biggest competitors combined. We served 19.2 million patients in FY26 which increased by 15% year on year. As we continue to scale, our focus remains anchored on delivering high quality diagnostics with consistently faster Turnaround time. In Q4FY26, 97% of our samples are processed in NABL accredited owned laboratories with every report being reviewed by qualified MD pathologists.
We have also made significant progress on our quality metrics with complaints reducing to 3.0 those 6 per million tests thus sustaining a 6 Sigma level of performance. Also, during the quarter we delivered an average Turnaround time of 3.43 hours from sample receipt supported by our laboratory operations and a strong well integrated logistics backbone. This allows us to ensure timely access to critical diagnostic information across the country. Thus, overall FY26 has been about building scale with consistently while continuing to invest in capabilities that will drive the next phase of growth.
With that, I will now hand it over to Rajdeep to take you through the business and commercial updates.
Operator
Thank you Rahul thank you Rahul and good morning to everyone joining us today. I’ll take a few
Preet Joshi — Investor Relations
Minutes to walk you through how the business performed during the year and the key drivers behind this performance. At an overall level, we delivered strong growth this year with consolidated revenue delivering 21% year on year growth in FY26 and 20% year on year growth in Q4 FY26 primarily driven by our core pathology business. Over the year our flagship brand Aarogyam continues to lead preventive healthcare segment growing at 20% year on year this quarter complemented by JAJ which caters to curative and chronic health needs though just being 2% of Jant has also grown at 66% year on year this quarter and is becoming a strong pillar of our lifestyle offering.
Let me now break this down across our key business segments in FY26 in FY26 franchisee business delivered 18% YoY growth and in Q4 FY26 21% YoY growth. It has now been almost three years since we implemented the pay for performance structure which has led to renewed energy and motivation within our franchisee network to move up volumes and enter higher slabs. Supported by this renewed energy along with strong brand equity and market demand, our franchisee base has reached its highest ever level of 10,800 active franchisees in Q4FY26.
To further accelerate growth, we have expanded both our field and central teams enabling us to penetrate deeper into India and open high transacting stores more quickly. The activation of our specialty division will complement our broader growth strategy by strengthening our Omni Channel presence enabling us to become a one stop solution for our partners and drive higher wallet share within our existing network. To further strengthen engagement and relationship with our franchisees, we regularly conduct structured interactions.
This year to further drive franchisee engagement, we hosted 13 franchisee meetings across different locations in India with the healthy participation from our franchisee partners where 774 partners attended. Insights and feedback from these interactions directly inform how we strengthen process service delivery and quality outcomes Moving to our Partnership Business as we know this continues to be a strong growth engine for us. In FY26 partnership business grew at 32% and in Q4 FY26 the growth was 23%.
This growth has been led by strong momentum in insurance and health tech segments along with continued scaling of existing accounts. Our API based integration are also enabling partners to expand diagnostics offering across multiple cities seamlessly which is strengthening our positioning as a preferred B2B partner. In Q4FY26, growth at 23% in our partnership has been lower than expected versus previous quarter in this financial year. But it is important to note that this is a one off dip. This dip is primarily because last year we had a one off boost in our partnership business primarily due to an aggressive push on camps especially during the Mahakum period and the initial investment to build traction in the insurance segment as well.
This year we have normalized our pricing into the insurance segment and therefore the growth has been slower in this segment and of course the scale of camps this year has been much lower. The extent of the one off was approximately 4 crore in Q4FY25 and normalizing for that, the partnership segment still grew at 32% which is in line with the historical growth across the previous three quarters in the year. Thus our overall focus has been on building depth across channels, improving partner productivity and expanding the value we deliver through a wider test portfolio and stronger service capabilities.
With that I will hand it over to Dr.
Operator
Kinna to walk you through operations and lab initiatives.
Preet Joshi — Investor Relations
Thank you Rajdeev. Good morning and a warm welcome to everyone joining us today. I will focus on three areas today. First, our Lab Network expansion, second, operational capabilities and research and third on how we are improving patient experience. So let me start with our first area of the Lab Network. Our Lab network now stands at 40 labs in India and one in Tanzania. This year we expanded our geographic footprint further across India and opened seven new labs each at Bhagalpur, Mandi, Roorkee, Kashmir, Devangiri, Vijayawada and Gwalior.
This helped us expand our reach in significant geographies and add capacity there where nearby labs capacity was about to get exhausted and meet better TAT commitments. But beyond capacity, lab expansion plays a much larger role. It builds patient trust at the first point of contact, especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, driving repeat usage and referrals. It also strengthens our B2B proposition, making us a more compelling palindia partner for corporates, insurers and hospital networks. And finally, our hub and spoke model ensures strong economics, allowing incremental volumes to flow into existing infrastructure, driving better utilization and operating leverage as a network scale.
Now let’s move on to the second area of operational capabilities and research. During the year we continue to strengthen our test portfolio and operational capabilities including the addition of Padiya based allergy testing platform and other 20 plus specialized tests including histopathology, a new HPLC platform, specialized coagulation tests, next generation sequencing and the BioFire PCR platform to the portfolio. Our genomic expansion is underway with a strong focus on building a comprehensive specialty test portfolio.
Starting with nipt, we are adding tests in a structured phase manner to enhance clinical depth and drive growth in precision diagnostics. We also continue to translate real world diagnostic data into actionable clinical insights. For example, our fever study based on approximately three years of data from our Jarge fever panels revealed that one in three fevers are linked to more complex infections such as dengue, typhoid, malaria and influenza. This reinforces the need for timely and comprehensive testing which we address through our JAAS fewer profiles.
One more example is our Bharat Arugyam score study which is based on the data collected between 2023 and 2025 from over 1 lakh patients over the country. With 96% of individuals exhibit risk for at least one health condition, indicating that very few people have completely optimal health parameters. Now coming to the third focus area of patient experience, which is something I care deeply about, Diagnostics is fundamentally a trust business. Every improvement we made this year was driven by a simple question, does this make the patient feel more confident on us?
To maintain credibility, we continually reinforce the four foundational pillars that underpin trust in medical diagnostics. First is accuracy and quality. This continues to be non negotiable for us supported by NEV related labs and ongoing equipment updates, whereas our 90% samples are processed at NEV related labs. Second is faster resolution when things go wrong. I agree no service is perfect every time, but what sets a trusted brand apart is how quickly and transparently it resolves the issues.
We strengthened our complaint management channels, reduced resolution timelines and improved proactive communication with the patients. This year we achieved six Sigma levels in complaint management with the state metric standing at 3.06 complaints per million tests for Q4FY26. Third is faster reports. We have worked extensively on improving logistics and lab processes bringing our turnaround time to 3.43 hours in the quarter and fourth, strengthening trust with the doctors who are often the first point of contact with patients.
We continue to deepen our engagement through multiple forums, meetings and on ground interactions. During the year we conducted nine doctor meets with participation home approximately 300 doctors. Additionally, we recently started inviting doctors to visit our labs where 256 doctors had visited our labs across India where we showcased our quality systems, advanced equipment and strengthened quality control processes while also addressing awareness gaps around our capabilities. Thus, overall our focus has been on building an operations backbone that can support scale without compromising on quality or experience.
With that, I’ll now hand it over to Vikram for Financial Performance Good morning everyone and a warm welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I am pleased to report that we have delivered another strong quarter along with our Soviet Union year performance for FY26 driven by revenue growth. We continue to deliver growth in the early 20s with all our key strategic drivers performing well. Our stand on business remains strong and continues to grow higher than industry average. Both our franchisee and partnership business continues to execute very well on the international front our consumer operations but has also grown by 75% for us year on year in radiology.
As covered in earlier course. Also we undertook some strategic consolidation of centers during the year. While this has temporary impact on the growth, the overall financial performance has improved with a stronger bottom line. Overall overstudy performance reflects disciplined execution and we remain focused on delivering consistent growth going forward. Now let me take you through the key financial highlights for the current quarter starting with revenue. Our standalone revenue came in at rupees 210 crores which is up 21% year on year driven by strong growth across franchisee and partnership business.
On a consolidated basis, revenue stood at R2.24 crores reflecting a healthy 20% year on year growth. Moving to margins and profitability, our consolidated gross margin has improved to 74.7%, an increase of over 113 basis point year on year. This was largely driven by better negotiations and a strong growth in test volumes which has helped improving operating efficiency. Employee and other overx cost has increased year on year primarily due to annual inflation, higher volume growth and continued investment in the new growth areas like specialty.
Our EBITDA margin for the quarter was 34% with EBITDA growing 31% year on year. Supported by strong revenue growth and improved gross margins. Profit after tax stood at rupees 48.7 crore with a PAT margin of 21.7%. This represents about 28% year on year growth. Now moving to our full year performance for above 26. Standover revenue reached rupees 774 crores while consolidated revenue stood at rupees 829 crores reflecting a strong 21% year on year growth. Authority revenue grew by 22% in 26 by 3.
Revenues are depend of 6% to in the year on profitability. In absolute terms EBITDA for the year stood at rupees 262 crores. And profit after tax was Rs. 163 crores reflecting strong growth of 38% and 81% year on year earning per share. Adjusted for last year bonus issue came in at rupees 2.99 which is up by 64% from rupees 1.82 last year. Our balance sheet remains strong with the net cash and investment of rupees 230 crores and zero debt as on 30th March 26th. On the cash flows we generated rupees 203 crore from operating activities after tax given by.
Before I hand over I would also like to share that board of directors has recommended a final dividend of rupees seven for equity share for the year ended 3-31-2026. At that I now hand over to Rahul for the strategic updates. Thank you.
Rajdeep Panamar — Chief Commercial Officer
Ladies and gentlemen, the line for Mr. Rahul Goa has been disconnected. Please stay connected while we join him back. Ladies and gentlemen, the line for Mr. Rahul Kua has been connected. Pan over to you sir.
Unidentified Speaker
You can take up the strategic update.
Rajdeep Panamar — Chief Commercial Officer
You may
Unidentified Speaker
Proceed. In the meantime if Rahul is unable to connect. Can we ask Rajdeep to update the strategic piece on behalf of Rahul? Rajdeep, are you on call?
Rajdeep Panamar — Chief Commercial Officer
Rajeep sir, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi — Investor Relations
Yeah, I’ll take it from here. So yeah. Thank you Alok. And thank you Vikram. Briefly I would like to take a few minutes to recap to the strategic direction. And then as we open it up for Q and A first I will reiterate our value proposition to customer. We will continue to remain an affordable option to all patients with good quality and one time reports. All our efforts on our value proposition is towards ensuring low cost to the patient. Assurance on quality of testing through our certifications and engagement with doctors.
We have made substantial progress on this which I updated in my initial comments and is reflected in the presentation as well. This will remain at our core and will continue to guide all that we will do. Second, our Strategy we continue to maintain our strategy of being the B2B partner of choice to all front end diagnostic service companies in India. Whether it is a small diagnostic center in a semi urban area, a pharmacy in a metro, a small nursing home, an individual doctor or a leading online diagnostics platform and health tech marketplaces, we are happy to work with them through our genomics expansion underway with a strong focus on building a comprehensive specialty and we are ensuring to provide a low cost robust testing solution so that they can serve their patients in the most effective manner if they require phlebotomy.
We are happy to mobilize our phlebotomy network of over 2000 phlebotomists including our network partners to serve them better. This strategy has been working well for us with both our franchisee and partnership business posting strong growth. As a natural extension of this strategy and in line with our vision to make quality diagnostics affordable and accessible, we are expanding our specialty segment, I.e. Allergy and genomics by deploying an on ground technical sales team to drive deeper doctor led engagement, thus also making our strong entry into the curative segment where we are extending the same quality standards we have already established in preventive diagnostics while maintaining affordable pricing for patients, further strengthening our position as a comprehensive partner to our network.
That in brief is our mandate as management. I’m back. I’ll cover the last yeah please. Please Rahul thank you everyone for giving us a patient hearing. I will once again end with the quote from the Mahatma Find purpose. The means will follow and our purpose remains to provide affordable high quality testing to the masses. With that we will open up for Q and A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin with a question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press STAR and then one on the Touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may press STAR and two participants you are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue sends us. A reminder to all. You may press N1 to ask a question. We will take the first question from the line of Sukrit Deep Atif from EyeSight Centric Private Limited.
Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Good morning. I have two questions. The first question to Mr. Forward looking one, how do you see Thyrocare going over the next few quarters in diagnostic and preventive space? What are the main priorities? Onward level, like adding new tests or using digital platforms and improving customer trust. Out of these, what do you feel will help the company stay ahead of the competition and build a stronger position in the market? That’s my first question. I’ll ask the second question. Thank you. Sure.
Our strategy remains more or less the same. So the key drivers of growth for us are franchise expansion. If you see over the last four years we have been able to maintain a 25% CAGR on our franchise expansion, culminating in almost 11,000 franchisees by the end of this financial year. And if you go through the disclosures, we’ve also shown how an FY22 franchisee matures, FY23 franchisee matures 24, and so on. Right. So actually if you look at the next four quarters, you know, it’s actually work that has been done almost two years ago because those are the franchisees that were added two years ago that will start contributing to the growth in this financial year.
FY27, to speak, the franchisees that we are adding now will contribute in FY28 and 29. Right. So franchise expansion remains at the core of our, our execution. The other is our partnerships. As I mentioned earlier, if you look at every major health tech player, we work with them. If you look at every major, what we call wellness provider, we work with them. But we have just started to scratch the surface on insurance and other allied segments. So I believe there’s a lot of work to be done to capture the opportunity in that business because there are many players now who are in the health tech or health care space that also want to offer their patients diagnostics.
Right. And Thyrocare, being a B2B partner, is actually the only partner who offers them that ability to expand their portfolio of offerings in healthcare to their patients. So I think those two have been our traditional drivers of growth and will continue to remain the traditional drivers of growth. The only new element that we have added for FY27 is specialty. As Rajdeep had covered and I had covered, we have made quite a few investments in genomics, allergy, histopathology and other areas more towards moving the mix of thyrocare into the specialty space.
Of course, FY27 will be our first year of the foray into specialty, so it will be on a very small base. But definitely if you look at three year out horizon, specialty will be a very large component of our Growth going forward.
Rahul Guha
Thank you. My second question to Mr. Gustav, looking forward, how will
Preet Joshi
You balance spending on technology, new lag and shareholder returns, costs under control, what long term and short term measures maybe such as automation, supply chain improvements or vendor partnerships will be put into place to make sure margins stay strong
Operator
Even if the cost rise or then there’s any compliance changes that happen. Thank you.
Preet Joshi
And maybe before I hand over to Vikram, I’ll just give you a little bit of our operating philosophy, right. Which is more like, you know, a Warren Buffett kind of operating philosophy which is you know, first, second savings, then expenditure. Right. So we, or in our case first margin protection then expenditure. Right. And so what I have always been guiding is that any operating leverage that comes out of the growth, you know, obviously we’re growing at 20% plus and you know your cost doesn’t increase that much.
Any operating leverage that comes out of the business is what we invest in growth. But we try our best to preserve the base margin. So very much a philosophy of first margin preservation and then surplus goes towards investment, towards capex growth, new initiatives and so on. So that’s at a philosophy level but I’ll let Vikram take it at a more detailed level.
Operator
Yes, I think you have covered it all. So basically though we are investing into new things but as I said we are very calibrated into the investment,
Preet Joshi
What we are doing into the new things. Let’s say for the genomics we are starting with the top 10 cities not of India, over India. So we are calibrated in the investments which we are doing. And plus on the supply chain also as you covered, let’s say you have seen that our gross margin has improved by 113 basis point over the last year. So the benefit of scales continues to come and we continue to invest that thing into the growth. So we will protect our margin. Whatever operating results that will come.
That is going to be a guiding factor for the investments which we will do into the new teams. Thank you and best achieve.
Operator
Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Raman KV from Sequent Investments. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Hello sir. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on good set of results. I have just two questions. One, one with respect to the margins we have seen during the quarter there is a strong uptick in the gross margin. Can you just help us understand where the reasons for the gross margin expansion and is this the new normal and can you also help us understand that whether the Tanzania business has break even which led to the contribution towards the higher gross Margin
Rahul Guha
As well as the diagnostics. That diagnostic business has rebounded with sharp margins during the quarter. So can you also throw some light on that aspect?
Preet Joshi
Understood. See on the margin front, you know, a large part, if you look at quarter on quarter, I think margins are more or less stable. Right. So I think if you look at it going forward, I think margins will be in that, you know, 73 to 74 range. It’s a mixture of basically, you know, good negotiation with the vendors to be able to realize volume benefits from the volume that we are able to purchase as well as last quarter there would have been some, how do you say, catch up effect of the rou. But you know, that is now fully baked into Q4, 24.
So I think you can expect, you know, the steady state margins for the business to be around 73 to 74 barring any, you know, abnormal price hike in reagents that may come out as a consequence of the war or you know, the supply chain side. But otherwise it should be in that range. I forgot your second question actually.
Rahul Guha
So the follow up on that was whether the Tanzania business has breakeven which contributed
Preet Joshi
To the higher margin.
Rahul Guha
And
Preet Joshi
Also from the ppt, I can see that your, even though your diagnostic business revenue declined by 9 to 10%, your margin has increased in the diagnostic business. So with the latest acquisition which you announced,
Rahul Guha
Think diagnostic, are you planning to expand your diagnostic business as well?
Preet Joshi
Yeah, see we still haven’t broken even in Tanzania. Right. So it’s, I would say we’ve been in Tanzania now about 18 months odd and you know, we still haven’t broken even. So that is not the reason though the Tanzania losses are minimal. I think it’s less than 1 crore is the, you know, the overall Tanzania quarterly losses. So to that extent we have come down quite a bit on the Tanzania front. And if you look at it overall, I think our gross margins as I said have sustained because this year has been a fantastic year in terms of test volume growth and we were able to get a significant amount of volume discount from our vendors.
Rahul Guha
Understood, sir. And sir, my last question is there has been a huge uptick in the test volumes during the quarter.
Preet Joshi
So is it because there as have you been seeing any GLP1 traction starting from this quarter and going forward can we expect the same
Rahul Guha
Like 15% test volume growth in the coming year? For the coming year?
Preet Joshi
Yeah, I think look this, this quarter the test volume growth was a bit of a strategic investment. So we, for the quarter I think we delivered almost 29% test volume growth and that comes largely from, you know, we received actually some good deals on the biochemistry side and we were able to as a result, you know, reduce our prices a little bit on the biochemistry side. And we became very competitive in biochemistry. Just for background, Thyrocare was always known for thyroid, which is a particular technology called immunoassay.
And we’ve been very, very strong in that space. But this quarter, because we were given some good offers in biochemistry, we launched a set of biochemistry parameters at an attractive price. And actually we were very pleasantly surprised by the test volume uptick that we saw.
Operator
And the second part of the question, whether this will be the new normal like 15% test volume growth in FY27. Can we expect that?
Preet Joshi
See, we always try to overall guide to a mid teens kind of number and mostly from volume and mix. I think this year we are now reasonably confident to revise it marginally upwards. I’m of course very cautious. I would say a mid to high teens is a good growth expectation for next year of which I expect volume growth to be the maximum driver. Right. I would say almost 75% of the revenue will come from volume and maybe about 25% from mix. We have no intention at this point in time to increase prices.
Rahul Guha
Thank you, sir.
Operator
Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Yash Doshi from Unified Capital Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Congratulations for a good set of numbers. Actually, while going to the press release I found that you had mentioned that we’ll be venturing into allied business of consumables and diagnostics. So maybe can you just clarify on that which type of segment we are planning to enter in near
Rahul Guha
Future.
Preet Joshi
I would like to keep it internal to the company for the next one or two quarters because we are just working on the overall launch plan. So I think it will become clear to you by June or July of what segments we are entering into. Right. But I will tell you the strategy is we have realized in many, many segments we are a large consumer of, you know, allied diagnostic tests. Right. And sufficient that we can also launch our own brand. And so we are planning to launch in that space. I can’t share too many details because it’s just in the launch phase.
If I could request, if you can be patient till June, July, it will become very clear where, which areas we are entering.
Rahul Guha
Okay. So basically it’s kind of, if I infer it’s kind of some backward integration as we are the consumers of those consumers. That is, you could say
Preet Joshi
To some extent that it just Think of it as in the allied services space.
Rahul Guha
Understood. And another part I want to know is during the quarter samples, I think in the presentation is of non mentioned how many
Operator
Samples have we processed
Preet Joshi
During the quarter we would have processed. I have. It’s there in one of the disclosures we processed 80.3 lakh samples in Q4 of FY20
Rahul Guha
And another part was a specialty segment. Can you throw a light on
Preet Joshi
The investments made the field post how many people have we employed
Rahul Guha
And
Preet Joshi
What is the strategy around basically communicating to the franchisees
Rahul Guha
Doctors? Just a light on specialty segment changes.
Preet Joshi
See, the Capex investments would not be much. They would be in the tune of about 5 to 8 crores. Right. The real investments are on the OPEX side. We’ve put a team of I think about 40 people on the specialty side, you know that will their effective job is to go out and explain to doctors that Thyrocare is in the specialty space. This is our test menu and of course we always approach it with our philosophy of good quality testing made affordable to. All right. So I think that’s the extent of investments that we have made.
The large investment of course is you know, on the pricing side we always come in with a disruptive pricing. So to that extent, you know the percentage gross margin in specialty will be lower. But of course given you know, our realization per test is only 30 to 40 rupees specialty test can be in the thousands. Right. The absolute gross margin per test is of course much, much higher and the overhead costs are not to that extent. So we should get a decent amount of operating leverage. But we will be very aggressive on price.
Okay,
Operator
Thanks for that interrupt in between us. I would request you to kindly rejoin the queue for more questions. Thank you. We will take the next question from the line of Chintan Sheikh from Girit Capital. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity and congress on a good set of numbers. So my question pertains to, you know, we are trying to expand test menu getting into the specialty, Increasing the, you know, share of allied tests which you you guys will be working on over the course of next year. How do you see wild per franchisee move? Because when I look at our past few quarters, we have been in the range of 450 to 550 kind of number Wild per France. Right. With this test menu does that entail, you know that that number to inch up linearly upwards going forward given that we extended our test menu over there and and if you can spell out, you know how this scale up happens between the Matured from the new franchisee to mature franchisee out with, you know, while the franchisee number moves and uh, if you can spell out, you know, what is the current uh, mature buy number,
Operator
Uh, which they consistently doing and is there any seasonality to it as well? That will be my first.
Preet Joshi
Sure. See franchisee addition, I expect to remain at the 500 per quarter run rate. Right? Some quarters will be good, some quarters will be bad. Seasonality wise during the festive season Q3 typically people do not open franchisees, whereas in Q1 and Q4 is when people open up franchisees. And so therefore we see a good boost typically Q4 to Q2 and then of course it slows down in Q3 and then picks up again in Q4. But I expect about 500 per quarter is because we have resourced that way. The constraint is not the demand side.
The constraint is our ability to onboard and scale up the franchisees to make them successful. So I believe,
Rahul Guha
You
Preet Joshi
Know, we are resourced for 500 a quarter. I think that’s a good run rate, you know, to be able to maintain. Now coming to your second question, which is, you know, with the new test menu expansion, right. I expect our average revenue per franchisee to go up, but I don’t expect a huge increase in the franchisee count. Right. If you have, if you look at it, thyrocare has always been a routine and semi specialized company, right?
Unidentified Speaker
And
Preet Joshi
So many of our franchisees, they will not turn away a customer because thyrocare doesn’t have the particular test in the menu, they will give it to someone else. So it is a hope
Operator
That by launching these tests in our network,
Preet Joshi
Right. That these franchisees now will not give it to someone else, but actually now move it to thyrocare. And so therefore the benefit will be in the average revenue per franchisee, not in virgin franchisees who have never worked with hero care companies. Right. To your last question on the scale up. Actually in the presentation we have shown exactly how the scale up works, right? If a franchisee gives us X in year one, it gives us two and a half in year two, three and a half in year three, four in year four and five, X in year five.
So one, two and a half, three and a half, four, five. And that number has stayed pretty stable over the last four years. Right. And that goes to my opening comments where I said, look, the work that we are doing in Thyrocare and Franchise Edition is not for this year, it’s for next year and the year after. Right. The benefit we are getting in FY27 is the work that was done in FY25 and FY26. And so that momentum continues. We haven’t seen a decline in that. And I’m hopeful that, you know, as the franchise addition quality increases, that number will only get better.
Rahul Guha
Got it. And this 500 seems to be a little higher than what we earlier guided around. 1200 annually, 1500 annually. Now we are targeting 2000 means we are kind of aggressively on trying to onboard and penetrate the market. And that would be the right reading.
Preet Joshi
No, see, you should take 500 into three, which is about 1500. Okay. Because Q3, you know. Yeah. So against 1 200, I think we are now comfortably achieving 1,500.
Operator
Got it. And this quarter I am seeing test for while to inch up to seven and a
Preet Joshi
Half versus seven six and six point seven seven historically. Is, is this the new normal that there is some, you mentioned some, you know, some scheme you, you, you guys have run in the, in the test menu which will lead to higher tests this quarter. So it will, it will normalize
Operator
To 7 per. While that would be the, that should be going ahead, remember.
Preet Joshi
Yeah. Just to clarify, at least it is my impression that it is closer to 10 in this quarter.
Rahul Guha
I’m just dividing the test by vials, number of vials coming.
Preet Joshi
Okay, then that is on the higher side because see, the test per patient is about 11. Right,
Rahul Guha
Right.
Preet Joshi
And typically it’s about two and a half vials per patient. So I, I don’t know that calculation where it comes. I’ll
Rahul Guha
Check with. Yeah,
Preet Joshi
It should be closer. See if you take 80 million vials and 209 tests, it’s roughly three tests per vial, which is kind of where I thought the figure would be.
Rahul Guha
Okay, I’ll check and confirm. I’ll turn back. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Surya Patra from Philip Capital. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity and congratulations to the great set of numbers. My first question is on the investment priorities. If I see for FY26, the CapEx number looks really low. While we have already invested into genomics the way that we have been talking about and also talking about the new specialty areas. So hence what is the Capex likely to be for FY27 and what investment priorities that we would be having for the next year? All right. On Capex, I think there is, you know, some up and down because of the rou.
So I’ll ask Vikram to explain it fully. Right. Vikram, you can just take that so that ponti code is the Capex payout number which you looking in the cash flow there was some opening capital advance and the opening sh number approximately the total capitalization during the year is on 35 crores besides the machines which we have taken on the agenda. So to answer you, we have invested into the Capex for the capacity also and we have opened new seven wraps also. So there is no conservatism or there is no underspent in the capex.
We will continue to invest into the Capex as per the requirement.
Unidentified Speaker
Okay.
Preet Joshi
Approximately 35 crores across New reps, near new capacity. Okay. So in fact that is also relatively low looking at the kind of operating cash flow that we are generating sir because we know this is a business where cash requirement is limited rather it is a cash flowing business. So hence also it indicates that, okay the kind of investment that we will be making that will be indicating the kind quantum of growth that we can see. So from those angle any investment plans
Operator
And priorities if that we’d be having in the quantum if you can share for next year.
Preet Joshi
Let me take that Vikram, just to explain. See the, the growth of this business is actually not determined by Capex, right?
Rahul Guha
We have
Preet Joshi
Sufficient lab capacity, we are present all over India with 40 labs. Our average lab utilization is roughly about 65% and you drop a pin everywhere, anywhere in India you will find a chiro care lab within 150km. Right? So from that point of view our growth driver is not lab count and you know Capex our growth driver is actually franchise edition and that is very asset light as you know because we don’t have any company owned so stores, it’s all franchise owned, franchise operated. Right? So to this business it has always been asset light maintenance.
Capex is roughly about 40 crores with new expansion and all of that we expect the Capex to be in that range and as a result the cash flows to be, you know, available x the capex as well. Our major focus is franchise addition.
Rahul Guha
So yeah, so
Preet Joshi
Second
Rahul Guha
Question is on the kind of specialty area
Preet Joshi
That you have mentioned particularly the genomic investments and genomic opportunity that you have highlighted in your opening remarks. So is it possible to kind of give a sense that what is a quantum or what is the kind of a business mix that or test mix that we can anticipate, let’s say three years down the line in the area for genomic or specialty as a whole. Because you have also mentioned in your presentation about the immunocap biofire panels and all those kind of things. So what is the share of test mix from the specialty side?
Let’s
Rahul Guha
Say in the next three year time considering FY26 as a base year.
Preet Joshi
Yeah. See our competitor specialty mix is roughly about 15 to 20%. Right. I. I anticipate in three years reaching that levels within Thyrocare as well.
Unidentified Speaker
Okay. In the regards to genomic the kind of a sense
Preet Joshi
In terms of the revenue potential that you have mentioned. So it is significantly under penetrated as of now. It looks like mainly because of the price point. Is that understanding right, sir? That’s
Rahul Guha
Correct.
Preet Joshi
And just one question. Book booking question about the financial year end. See, what is the kind of a lab number that we are currently having? What is a wellness mix? And also if you can share what is
Unidentified Speaker
The mix of your franchisee in terms of the urban and non urban region.
Preet Joshi
Understood. I missed the middle question. We have 39 labs plus one in Tanzania. I missed the second question.
Operator
Wellness mixer
Preet Joshi
Wellness. Will be about 33% of our overall mix. Right.
Rahul Guha
And
Preet Joshi
Year on year growth it would have grown at about 19, 20%. So that is the wellness mix judge is also in my opinion considered wellness. That is only 2% of our revenue today but grew at 66% year on year. So I think these are our two major wellness brands. And then on the mix of franchisees I would say we are roughly about 20% urban metro tier one and I would say 80% tier two and beyond and whether the same. Yeah. I request you
Operator
To join back the queue please as we have participants waiting for their turn. Thank you. Participants are requested to restrict to two questions at a time please. Next question is from the line of Lokesh Manik from Valen Capital. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Hi, good morning Rahul and team. Am I audible?
Operator
Yes,
Preet Joshi
Rahul, just a clarification on capacity and lab expansion. Just to understand it better. So for a given capacity at a lab, as you are seeing your test per patient increasing from 8, 9, 10, 11 touching this year, the number of patients served then reduces for a given capacity. Either that happens then you need to open a new lab or you have the technology present in the current lab to accommodate even more patients at an even higher test per patient rate. So if you can just clarify on that because you mentioned 65% capacity utilization.
Operator
But I’m just seeking a clarification from you on this.
Preet Joshi
Sure. See, the driver of capacity in a lab is the tube, not the number of tests in the tube. Because once you load a tube in the machine,
Rahul Guha
Machine,
Preet Joshi
Whether the machine has to process one test or 10 tests. Right.
Rahul Guha
The capacity
Preet Joshi
Doesn’t vary that much. Right. My capacity is largely linked to how much time it takes to load a tube into a machine and unload a tube from a machine and take it to another machine. Right. If you see actually our revenue or tests per patient has increased. So correct enough in a way, test for patient actually doesn’t consume any additional capacity or very marginal. Right. So to that extent we are good on the capacity.
Rahul Guha
Understood? Understood. Rahul, my second question was, you know, since you are pouring into specialty now, do you foresee an increase in, you know, test revenue per test? Because the specialty will be at a much higher pricing. You won’t take price hikes but they’ll be at a priced higher. So your blended revenue per test will increase. Would that be a
Preet Joshi
Better understanding? Yes. And that is something we are all tracking to see how that mix moves. But yeah, one would expect a material movement in revenue per test over the next couple of years.
Rahul Guha
So how much can any ballpark, rough figure, how much under percentage term increase that we can expect?
Preet Joshi
Difficult at this point to speculate. Give me one or two quarters. Then I will come with a comprehensive.
Rahul Guha
Sure, sure. That’s it. From my side. Thank you so much.
Operator
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Binu Pathiparam Pill from Elara Capital. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Hi, good morning gentlemen. Congrats on a great set of numbers. Just a follow up on the Middle east situation and the impact on reagents earlier. Amend you highlighted back as workers
Operator
As of now, what’s the situation? Are you seeing any availability issues or price significant price increases?
Preet Joshi
No, availability has not been a concern as of now. Because you know, the supply chain actually doesn’t route via the Middle East. It routes mostly from Europe this side. So to that extent, yes, it has taken a little longer. But we always carry two to three months of inventories. So we haven’t faced any disruption on availability front. Of course, with the dollar being where it is right, many of our vendors has come back requesting for price increases. But given our volume growth, you know, we have been able to mitigate a large part of that.
But you know, should the situation continue, I think you know, definitely raw material prices will increase and then we will have to evaluate how we pass it on.
Operator
Thank you. Participants are requested to restrict to one question at a time please. Next question is from the line of Yash Doshi from Unified Capital. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Yes, sir. So just on the one bookkeeping question. So currently as you see your tax rate has been 23, 24,000. So I get to know that it’s based on deferred tax benefit. So can you just enlighten me on what are components of deferred tax? And another is going forward earlier tax rate will be
Operator
Close
Rahul Guha
To 27, 28%.
Operator
I’ll let Vikram take this question. Vikram,
Preet Joshi
There are NSF. That is because of the deferred tax timing difference. And going forward we expect our tax rate of 28 to 29%. Thank you.
Operator
Yes, I requested to join. Back the queue please. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Ibrahim from an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Preet Joshi
Hi. I just want to know the market opportunity for the specialty testing and alert services which we are going to announce in.
Operator
So
Preet Joshi
What will the market opportunity in
Operator
Next two to three years? How big will be the opportunity?
Preet Joshi
The specialty testing overall pathology market is estimated to be between 50,000 and 60,000 crores. Right. And of that roughly 15 to 20% is estimated to be the specialty space. Right. So if you do that, we are talking about a 7,000 to 10,000 crore market. Right. That’s a top down estimate of the overall industry.
Operator
Thank you. And
Preet Joshi
What about the allied.
Operator
Only one question please. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Shubham Harney from Poornatha Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Rahul Guha
Hello.
Preet Joshi
So
Rahul Guha
My question is an insurance business. How insurance business has done in past year and what are your growth expectations for next year?
Preet Joshi
Yeah, our insurance business overall, you know, has done very well. If I look at the year on year growth for the, you know, the insurance business we started very aggressively last year. But year on year we’ve grown at almost 45%. Right. In the insurance space, insurance is of two parts. There is pre policy, medical checkup and annual health checkup. Typically a lot of insurance companies offer a free annual health checkup with their policy. Right. And Thyrocare serves both these business lines.
It’s of course on a. On a very nascent size of business. As I said, we are just scratching the surface. And as you know, insurance policies itself has grown by about 25%. That being said, we still managed to grow this segment by about 45% and this continues to remain a focus area for us.
Rahul Guha
And what your plan for next year expectation?
Preet Joshi
I don’t comment on individual segments. As I said, I have given an overall revenue guidance. Right. At an individual segment there will always be plus minus depending on execution.
Operator
Thank you. We’ll take a last question from the line of Yash Doshi from Unified Capital. Please go ahead.
Rahul Guha
Yes. What will be the EBITDA margins Going for or really close to 33, 34% or due to specialty segments, we expect a margin
Operator
Expansion.
Preet Joshi
See, specialty segment will be, you know, at a nascent stage. Right. So I don’t expect and I will not build any major upside from the EBITDA margin side on this facility. Sales in FY27 we can discuss in FY28 and onwards. But then till then I think it will be difficult for the full year. I think we delivered roughly about 32% reported EBITDA and a normalized EBITDA at around 34%. I expect that to be stable into the next year. As I mentioned, any further operating leverage that we get, we will continue to invest in growth.
So I would expect if you take full year FY26 as a base, we anticipate to maintain that EBITDA margin.
Operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rahul Kuha for closing comments over to you.
Preet Joshi
Thank you everyone for joining us and spending time with us this day. My apologies for having had to cancel the conference call at the last minute on Thursday. That was because the board meeting took longer than expected and therefore we did not have enough time to upload the presentation and the results, so we had to reschedule. But thank you for being patient with us and joining us this morning. As always, we continue to remain focused on our strategy which is to be the most affordable, good quality diagnostic testing partner for anyone in the healthcare business.
And we continue to execute on that strategy. We have been investing in improving our quality, improving our reach and ensuring our turnaround time is as close to best in class. And we’ve made substantial progress on all of this and that is what is driving the results that you see. I’m also very happy to see Rajdeepanwar, a new tier Commercial Officer, Dr. Ramesh Kina, Our new Chief Operating officer, and Vikram Gupta, our CFO leading the call and driving the strategic direction for the company. And I’m sure we, with this core team fully in place, we will continue to drive the exceptional execution that you have seen in the last two years.
Thank you for all your support in this journey and I wish you all a good evening. Thank you.
Rajdeep Panamar
Thank you on behalf of Thyrocare Technologies Ltd. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your line.