Affle (India) Ltd Q3 FY22 Earnings Conference Call Insights

Key highlights from Affle (India) Ltd (AFFLE) Q3 FY22 Earnings Concall

Management Update:

• AFFLE said that in less than two years, the team has achieved more revenue in 3Q22 than the full year revenue of FY20 reported post IPO. For the nine-months, AFFLE surpassed the previous full year’s cash flow from operations by 35%.

Q&A Highlights:

• Anmol Garg from DAM Capital asked about the reason why India business revenue increased significantly while PBT saw a drop in 3Q. Kapil Bhutani CFO said the margins for India is about the same as 2Q22. However, YoY, there was a slight differential because of the data inventory cost in the festive season, with a lot of demand and supply in question. QonQ, the margins are stable.  PBT drop was attributed to increase in the cost of HR investments.

• Anmol Garg from DAM Capital also asked about the Jampp contribution during 3Q22. Anuj Sohum MD answered that the Jampp’s contribution on revenue was about a third. And in terms of EBITDA performance, AFFLE was able to bring Jampp up to the 7-8% EBITDA in 3Q. On the CPCU versus non-CPCU revenue contribution, AFFLE added that it’s a healthy mix.

• Rahul Jain with Dolat Capital asked that from a TV ad spend data perspective India is the only market that continues to grow at this pace and what’s AFFLE’s view on the momentum. Anuj Sohum MD said that today in digital advertising as a percentage of total advertising India stands at about 25%. AFFLE believes that the advertisers have no choice but to shift at least 50% of their total budgets on digital. Therefore, there is massive runway for growth.

• Vikas Mistry from Moonshot Ventures asked about the amount of cash the company has and what it’s going to do with it. Anuj Sohum MD said that the company believes there should not be undue stress to do something just because there is cash in the bank. AFFLE makes sure that acquisition is taken seriously.

• Mayank Babla of Dalal & Broacha asked about free cash flow for 3Q and some color on the case study about Byju’s where AFFLE did optimization for the lower final conversion metrics . Anuj Sohum MD said the cash flow for 3Q is about INR500 crores. And on the case study, the company commented that the business it is in, the focus is always to align the outcomes in terms of conversion to deliver ROI to the advertisers. AFFLE’s focus is to always optimize high intent users.

• Pritesh Thakkar with Asian Markets Securities asked about the trend of converted users as the trend is higher than usual. Anuj Sohum MD replied that looking at trend, the historical trends are great indicator of what’s to come in the future. For the last nine months, AFFLE delivered 138.7 million conversions from converted users and that’s done at about INR50 CPCU rate.

• Pritesh Thakkar with Asian Markets Securities enquired that on the margin front, the company had some appraisal cycle in 3Q, and what’s the impact from wage hike. Anuj Sohum MD said the company has some INR1.35 crore cost coming in for the ESOP in 4Q22 that has contributed to a slight increase. Secondly, AFFLE increased its manpower by about 6% and rest is in the increase in salaries.

• Samir Choksi of Indus asked about the connected device mix. Anuj Sohum MD answered that the company is a consumer centric consumer platform. Wherever the consumer goes, whether it’s mobile, wearable devices, connected TVs or offline, AFFLE will follow and go to all those places with the consumer, whether it is the metaverse or the physical real world. Therefore, the mix numbers really doesn’t matter.