Ather Energy Ltd. (NSE: ATHERENERG) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 04, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Murli Sashidharan — Analyst
Tarun Mehta — Chief Executive Officer
Analysts:
Analyst
Nishit Jalan — Analyst
Kapil Singh — Analyst
Vishal Goel — Analyst
Rahul Kumar — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen. Good day and welcome to Ather Energy Limited Q1FY26 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants line will be in 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 Tanzino on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand over the conference to Mr. Murli Shashidharan from Ether Energy Limited.
Murli Sashidharan — Analyst
Thank you. And over to you sir. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a very good afternoon and welcome to ather Energy Limited’s Q1FY26 earnings conference call. We have with us today Mr. Tarun Mehta
Analyst
Executive Director and CEO Ather Energy and Mr. Sohel Parekh, Chief Financial Officer, Ather Energy. Before we begin, I would like to add that anything that the management might say on this call which might be seen as forward looking statements may involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements or comments are not guaranteed by Aether Energy Ltd. And and the actual results may differ from those statements. So we will begin with a brief overview by Mr. Tarun Mehta. So on to you Tarun.
Tarun Mehta — Chief Executive Officer
Hey, thanks Manali. Welcome everybody. So we are reasonably young in our life as a listed company and this is only our second earnings call. So first want to thank everybody who’s joined in today. And given that many of you might be following us only recently or might be still new to our story, I just want to take a couple of minutes and just explain what we’re building at Ather. We started Athaba 12 years back and there are two big bets that we have taken in this business that have come to really represent Ather over the last decade. The first bet has been on the premiumization of our industry and the bet on the upgrading Indian buyer. We believe that the tool industry, particularly the scooter industry is going through a fantastic phase of minimization and will continue to do so as per capita incomes go up. Majority of households already have a scooter or a bike and are buying one. Increasingly that is of an upgrade to them and their families. And that’s the trend that Atherd wants to ride. We built a brand over the years particularly focusing on this.
The second bet has been on R and D and technology. Atef has been well known in the industry and to the consumers for a strong investment and a strong focus there. Over the years this has led to a very strong patent portfolio. In fact we finished Q1 with 417 patents filed, almost 60 patents 6070 patents more than the almost 6070 new patents in the quarter with half of our workforce in R and D. So we believe for EV businesses, the best EV businesses will be those who will be able to navigate the future of ev.
You will have to have a very strong R and D base and that’s what Ather continues to invest behind. With that, let me just zoom in a little bit on how Q1 was. So Q1 for us was a very strong quarter typically coming from Q4 to Q1 in our industry Q4 May there is a little bit of a volume run up because of the March exit numbers specifically with subsidies coming down and Q1 often portray often showcases a little bit of trip in volume. Despite that we saw very strong performance. Our units sold were at 46,000 units which were up almost 100% over the same quarter last year. Total income was at 672 crores which was up 83% over same quarter last year. Gross margins were up even better.
They were at 154 crores which are 117% up year on year and on a percentage basis hit a high of 23%. This even if you were to see our margins without any government incentives, they come to about 20% which is a 700bps improvement over the same quarter last year. Very strong performance over Q1FY25 on top line margins and also EBITDA. We finished Q1 with a minus 16% EBITDA which was also 1700bps over same quarter last year. This jump in volume was also matched with a growth in market share for us. We went up from Obviously compared to Q1FY25 we were almost double from 7.6% to 14.3%. But even compared to Q4 we grew our market share by about 70bps from 13.6 to 14.3. This growth to better understand this growth I think it’s important to focus on our strategy which has been distinct basis the geography.
So for example in South India Ather generally has been a strong player and there our strategy has been in building up our dominance. Q1 FY26 was the first quarter when for the entirety of the quarter Ether became the number one player by volume ending with a 22.8% market share. This I would say is down to the increasing popularity of RISTA in the southern markets in the recent months and quarters. While Rista launched last year, we started focusing focusing on RISTA in the southern markets only recently and that’s leading to a strong performance in volumes Moving up in middle India and North India, most of the growth is driven by distribution expansion. So for us over the in Q4 earnings call I had called out that we are on a big network expansion. We added 86 stores to our total network. In Q4, FY25 Q1 was even better. We added 95 stores, averaging more than one store a day and expanding pretty rapidly across the country. We are now up at 446 stores. Obviously, as you can imagine, there’s still a fair bit of headroom available here and we believe there’s an opportunity to add many more stores in the coming quarters. These stores particularly played out in a big way in middle India for us Middle India are the five states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, mp, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Over the last few quarters we’ve been focused on adding more and more distribution and more and more stores in this zone. And that’s leading and that’s led to a strong market share performance which has.
In Q1 we ended with 10.7% market share up almost two and a half times over same quarter last year and expanding pretty rapidly. I believe that these stores that we have added and continue to add in this zone will continue paying a very strong dividend as store throughput continues to shoot up every month over the next few months. So this year a fair bit of growth will continue coming from the middle India geography. Rest of India, particularly North India, we have added stores and we have expanded our network. But really our focus is shifting on network expansion into this zone as we speak. This is a very large zone. States like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, the really giant geographies, all of Northeast, very excited about them.
Nd we believe an expansion of distribution here can drive and pay dividends for us over all of next year and present us and put us in a really good position as we get ready with new products, specifically our EL platform and our low cost products in the coming years. So South India, all about consolidation and building up our market leadership. Middle India, we’ve already begun a strong work on network expansion that’s starting to already pay off reserves and I believe over the coming quarters will continue to pay more results. And rest of India, where we are now moving our attention and in the ensuing quarters you will see specifically next year you should hopefully see strong results from this cohort. Also, if I move my focus to adjusted gross margins, they’ve obviously seen a strong improvement as I called out up from an average 19% last FY to 23% in Q1.
A lot of this is also Driven by our non vehicle revenues which have now hit 12 percentage revenue contribution. This is a mix of our accessories, our warranty programs and software. Software is trending very, very favorably for us and has and has been actually holding up really well despite an expansion into all parts of the country today with very high attach rates. So our accessories either helmet, our halo sales have also commenced and they are also adding to this charging infrastructure is also up. We added almost 400 charging points last quarter hitting 4,000 charging points everywhere. All of this is obviously matched by a Cox reduction. Cox came down in Q1 almost 7% compared to the average of FY25 EBITDA improvement. So in Q1, given that we had the IPO pretty much in the middle of the quarter, early May, some of our investments could commence only a little later.
So there is probably some amount of deferment, I would say maybe 2030 CRR in this quarter. But even after factoring that Q1 was a terrific improvement over Q1 last year, EBITDA losses have narrowed down from minus 33% to minus 16% even on an absolute basis EBITDA has come down and operating leverage is signed to show results here. What’s ahead for us? Just zooming out from numbers a little bit. Obviously on the watch outs we continue navigating and continue focusing on the rare smacking crisis in the industry. Our teams have been hard at work at multiple approaches here. In the medium term I foresee fairly strong options which should hold up really well and I am pretty positive about volumes and performance there. In the short term, which is this quarter, there could be an impact of about a week odd. In terms of potential business impact, we will try and we’ll try and contain that with our channel inventory as much as possible. As of now, I am optimistic that any impact of rare earth magnets would be restricted to Q2. What’s exciting for the future is looking ahead.
First in the next few weeks we have our annual launch day Aether community day celebrations on end of this month, the 30th of August. So we’ll be unveiling our new generation software Etherstack 7 there. We will also be unveiling critically our new platform, the EL platform, which is a new scooter platform designed for cost and scalability. In this event, on the 30th of August for us, LFP battery packs have already gone live. So very happy to announce that and you will hopefully see the impact of that in our financials in Q2 and Q3 as the percentage contribution to sales starts becoming more and more visible. And finally, our factory 3.0, which is our expansion for next year, is on a good track and we’ll have more updates to share on that in the coming quarters. With that, let me just take a pause. I think the summary for the quarter is done and we can move to.
Operator
Q and A now. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchdown 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. The first question is from the line of Nishit Jalan from Access Capital. Please go ahead.
Nishit Jalan
Thanks for the opportunity. Coming at some good set of numbers. Tarun, my question is two questions. One on the cost reduction side we have seen gross profit per vehicle improving by about three or thousand rupees. Qq three, three and a half thousand rupees. So just one. And this is despite that. Yeah, incentive came down by around 5k in this quarter. So just wanted to understand how much of it is driven by sell prices and how much of it is driven by vav. Basically company specific and industry specific factors number one. Number two and how do you see this going ahead? Our entire benefits from sell price reduction and all have come through right. Or more we will see coming here. So some, some indications, some thoughts around how should we look at bomb cost going ahead? Right.
Second question.
You did talk about seven days of impact because of rare earth issues in this quarter. You mean seven days of production impact and retail impact will be much lower because of inventory. Because we are getting into the festive months also now. So probably your production run rate needs to pick up. So will we be able to do that or not? And thirdly, you are unveiling this EL platform on 30th of August. Right. When do we see products under EL platform getting launched and which will be the key states or anything that you will be targeting this platform primarily or will it be more pan India across states or something? Thank you.
Tarun Mehta
Thanks for the visions Anushit. So I’ll take a quick stab at them. So yes we saw gross margin improvement and I think what you will see as you dive into the numbers is that our average selling prices have actually held up quite favorably despite subsidies coming down to 5,000 rupees. So it’s actually a combination of our value engineering work, favorable commodities.
Also the Strength of the brand. We’ve been able to calibrate prices upwards and ensure good attach rates of software, good attach rates. Product SKU has been very heartening even with Rista, not just 450. So product SKU has been very favorable. Software attachments have been very favorable. All of them have contributed to a very steady asp despite subsidies coming down and revenue realization despite subsidies coming down.
It’s a mix of on the cost reduction front, I would say it’s a mix of cost reduction and commodities, particularly sales in our case. That has played out this quarter on rare earth very quickly. So it’s a blended thing basically. Obviously we are factoring higher production and higher throughput for this quarter over the previous quarter, particularly with the new stores and the festive buildup that’s ahead of us.
So when I say seven to ten days, seven days of impact, that’s factoring all of that in. So the right way to see this would be not like production stop for seven days, but a possible gap in our ability to supply our dealers demand for up to about a week for this entire quarter. Obviously teams continue working hard on minimizing this. Also this was a larger gap a few months ago, but a lot of strong R and D work has helped minimize this at this point.
This will have some impact on retail. I would be amiss if I say this will have no impact on retail because our channel stocks are not that high. But there is channel stock and that’s the advantage of having a channel. So the impact on retail would be lesser than that of wholesale. So net. I think it would be a small impact in Q2 hopefully. Obviously if anything changes we’ll keep buyers on it, but otherwise it seems fine.
And EL platform when? So we’ll be unveiling the platform this month and later this month. Pardon me, I will not be able to share timelines on the product today, but I think next year we should see some good action. But I will not be able to give you more specific timeline than that. EL direction I’ve been always clear will help us expand the market because it’s a cheaper platform for us to manufacture. It’ll also be manufactured largely out of our new facility which is more vertically integrated so has better assembly costs. So overall EL opens up the day, opens up the gate for more accessible priced products in the coming year.
Nishit Jalan
Thanks. Thanks Taran. Just one clarification here. What I meant on EL was that obviously it will be a cost effective product. So will you look to launch more in middle India, north India and all or will you do it pan India even in the certain markets? And all in terms of this strategy because you may not want to cannibalize your higher price products in southern states, or do you think that both these will coexist and you will launch it parallel across all your states or all your dealers?
Tarun Mehta
As of now, we don’t have a DP on this. We are excited about els. Not just a product that can expand tam, but also a product that can potentially expand the margins. So given the potential for expansion on both, I see no strong reason today to guide EL on only one specific geo. But obviously as the product shapes up more and we get closer to the launch, you will see our actions. Call this out.
Murli Sashidharan
One, that means small thing related to numbers. Typically OEMs come up with their monthly numbers on first of the month. So will you be also doing that? And secondly in your presentation I can see that Q1 FY26 volumes is 46078 but when we look at the FIAM numbers, those are on the higher side. So just wanted to understand, maybe we can make it offline also. But there’s a gap between the numbers which we see in five and which you see in your presentation.
Nishit Jalan
Can you repeat the. So your first question was would we announce numbers on the first of the month?
Murli Sashidharan
Yeah, typically if you see for example all the companies, auto companies for example, on 1st of August they reported numbers for the July month. Right? All the, all the listed companies. So just wanted to understand if you guys will also be doing that now that you’re a listed company. And secondly the numbers.
Tarun Mehta
We have no plans of announcing monthly numbers beyond what you see in Bahan. Honestly, I think our industry has an overload of numbers. There are already 1 numbers. There are other retail announcements. If on top of it we also start announcing monthly wholesale numbers, I think it’ll be confusing. So right now I don’t see a very strong reason to announce monthly dispatches. But happy to revisit at a later point if there’s a compelling reason. Your second question was what is the difference between what and what?
Murli Sashidharan
So basically we get this aether sales numbers from SIAM data also. Right. And there is this vehicle sold number in the presentation. The numbers don’t add up. It’s about a thousand, two thousand unit difference every quarter.
Tarun Mehta
Sorry, I’ll have to just check back on that. I’m not sure. The financial numbers that you see are wholesale numbers. So that is what has been dispatched to dealers and received by them. I think there could be a difference because of transit in case of ciam. Again, please pardon in case I’m wrong. I’m just reading this off the top of my head. Numbers might be dispatch data so there could be a transit gap depending on the quarter. We don’t count vehicles which are under transit and not received by the dealers as our wholesale in our pnl.
Murli Sashidharan
Okay, got it. Thank you so much and all the best.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kapil Singh from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Kapil Singh
On a strong performance. My first question is on the rare earth issue. Could you help us understand how you have handled this situation? What kind of solutions have been worked out? Are these short term or long term? And is there any cost involved that we should keep in mind?
Tarun Mehta
So for the rare earth, the key challenge boils down to the fact that China has banned the export of heavy rare earth magnets, which leaves a few possible options for anybody. Either you partly assemble your motors in China and don’t import magnets or you move production to heavy rare earth free magnets which are rare earth magnets, or you move away from rare earth of any category and move to ferrite. Now in our case, we’re exploring all. I will not be able to share at this point.
I’ll likely be able to give more color by the end of Q2 once we finish the transition. But at this point, honestly we are exploring all options. I am more optimistic about moving to rare earth magnets out from heavy rare earth magnets because rare earth magnets don’t have an export ban and have a little bit of more supply available globally with China not being the only one. So I’m more optimistic about going heavier free to rare earth magnets cost impact at this point, there is a small impact of additional logistics because we’ve obviously had to scramble our supply chains. But we expect it to be a small number at this point and also temporary.
Kapil Singh
Okay. And will there be any performance impact also with this.
Tarun Mehta
We are the reason we are taking our taking time in engineering is spending a lot of time in RD is because we are working hard to ensure that there is no impact on the product performance at all.
Kapil Singh
Second question is on demand. You know, just your, you know, general understanding of how I know your numbers are obviously, you know, ramping up very nicely. But what is the general feeling at this point about, you know, electric vehicle demand, the consumers who are not converting to electric right now or what is the key hurdle your view?
And then lastly, I have a question on, you know, we’ve seen some improvement in Non vehicle revenue also. So, you know, some of the products, I think accessories have started growing in the market. So any color you can give in terms of how the customer experiences.
Tarun Mehta
So overall, I believe the key focus for us as an industry has to now move to towards converting the more mainstream customers. I believe that now that EV penetration is starting to get in the 20% range in scooters, we’ve gone beyond early adopters and even maybe early majority. We are getting into the innovators and early adopters.
I think we’re now getting into the early majority crowd, which is the 20 to 50%, 20 to 60% kind of market opportunity. And for these customers, I believe the key focus has to now move on to really giving them assurance, really giving them comfort that electric is a very good safe choice. I believe that for most scooter buyers, electric Audi looks like an upgrade. Electric Audi looks fancy. Electric Audi looks premium.
I think what they need is comfort that the battery is going to be good, the safety is going to be good, that service is going to be good, that resale price is going to be good. And I believe that we will all have to focus our communication more towards those topics. Something that we are already doing as part of our Ether Advantage campaign in marketing, which is live right now. You will notice we’ve, we’ve pivoted our communication very heavily towards these topics.
Kapil, your second question was the non vehicle revenue? Yeah, so non vehicle revenue, honestly direction will always hopefully trend higher and higher because service revenues will keep increasing with a higher base of installed vehicles in the field. That’s a very strong upside. Also we’ve been very focused on two things.
First is accessories. So accessories halo is starting to now contribute meaningfully. Accessory sale of accessories per vehicle was stronger, quite materially stronger in Q1 over previous quarter. Software has been trending again very favorably as I called out. And the numbers are there. 89% attach rate in Q1. Also finally, even charging infrastructure had a fairly strong quarter with very strong monetization this time around. I don’t want to oversell charging infrastructure, but in terms of contribution to the expansion, it did have a very strong contribution this quarter.
Kapil Singh
Okay, thanks and look forward to the journey. Best patience.
Tarun Mehta
Thanks Kapil.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vishal Goel from hsbc. Please go ahead.
Vishal Goel
Hi, thanks for taking my question and congrats on your good sales of results. So my question is more on expansion in more mature states and cities as well. The EV penetration has sort of stagnated now. For example in Bangalore or Kerala. So what is your view on the same and what has been your experience with the new showrooms? Does the company have to invest significantly in that local brand building activity there? I just want to take your view on this part.
Tarun Mehta
So first on stores, ours is a complete, ours is almost completely a dealership model which means our partners spend the capex to get the stores and the service centers up and the opex is on them. So at a company level there is no additional cost increase or capex because of distribution or service infrastructure expansion.
I see a significant opportunity for our brand in middle India and north India. Even in south India there are pockets which we continue to see opportunities in, particularly in Tamil Nadu where there were several cities, I think like maybe a couple like dozen or maybe like 12, almost 15, 20 cities where either did not have a store until a few months ago.
So there is distribution expansion opportunity for us here also I think at an industry level, as I called out, I think the focus has to now move towards giving people more comfort, giving people more assurance. And I do believe that we will continue to see strong traction, strong results. ASPs are holding up really well. Customer interest is coming in really well and a lot of this growth, at least at the industry level will not be very linear. You will see spurts every time you crack a new cohort of customers.
You will certainly see growth spiraling very rapidly and then maybe a couple of more muted quarters. But at this point the factors are really loaded in favor of electric unit. Economics is strong and brands are very credible products. I’m very optimistic.
Vishal Goel
Thanks. Just so basically you’re saying that for.
Tarun Mehta
A local brand building your dealership is.
Vishal Goel
Coming in and the company is not taking much of the cost there.
Tarun Mehta
Our brand building spend happens at a at a more central level where whether it is statewide campaigns or national campaigns, it has invest meaningfully in marketing. And I’m a believer that a young brand like us out to spend in marketing and brand building but we don’t have to spend for getting the infrastructure. So the store is not on us and the service infrastructure is not on us. But the marketing spends are largely by.
Vishal Goel
By ather. Okay, thanks. And just a follow up question.
Tarun Mehta
I just want to make one more point, One more factor that I am optimistic about for driving industry growth is that two of the largest scooter manufacturers from Nice World now have their their EV portfolio live which are two Japanese counterparts. And I believe that their entry on the electric side is going to drive a significant awareness about electric for the mainstream customer because put another way, 70% of people who buy a scooter today and are buying those two brands wouldn’t even see an electric if they went to their showrooms in the past.
Now they will, which will drive further awareness and further consideration for pure play EV brands like ourselves and for the industry. So I think one of the strongest things that has happened in the last few months is these fans are also getting into electric.
Vishal Goel
Right, thanks. And that’s very clear. So my follow up question was that what could be the blended impact of this mandatory ABS thing on your portfolio?
Tarun Mehta
It’s a little early for us to be sure, but one factor that really helps us is that I think the entirety of a portfolio has a disc break in the front, correct? Yes.
Vishal Goel
Yeah.
Tarun Mehta
The entire portfolio has a disk break in the front. And a very large chunk of our portfolio has a disk break in both the front and the rear. So we are, we don’t have to take that cost on or we have to take a lower element of the disc cost on compared to many other players out there in general. And we at ETHER are pretty bullish about safety being a big theme for the Indian two wheeler buyer.
I believe just like what we saw in cars, safety features and focus on safety will become an important selection criteria or an important filtration criteria for the customer of the future. So directionally we don’t have a dissonance with this path. Obviously we would prefer for this to be not mandated and it will be more optional at a brand level. But if it is mandatory, I think we might be slightly better placed than some other brands. Also, given that our ASPs are slightly higher, the contribution of ASP contribution of ABS soup, our COGS would be a little lower than many other brands out there.
Vishal Goel
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Kumar from Baika area. Please go ahead.
Rahul Kumar
Yeah, hi. First question I have is what’s the strategy on the vendor diversification for products like traction motors notwithstanding this railroad crisis. But in general future.
Tarun Mehta
I think this is a little bit of a high level response. I believe we are now in an era where the number one priority for supply chain has got to be de risking and hedging as not just us or not just our industry but across industries. We are going to be no different. We are going to be focusing on that in a big way.
We want to now ensure that our supply chains are have alternates at a country level, alternates definitely at a supplier level. And I’m saying tier one, tier two of suppliers Also so we focus on that in a big way. Even in the past in our prospectus we had called out how expanding the number of suppliers has been a very big strategic imperative at Ethan in the past with the vast majority of our bill of material being dual or even triple sourced.
And that if anything becomes an even higher selection criteria for us and a focus for our engineering and supply chain teams. I think with the entire crisis that we had on magnets in the last few months, this will, this is opening up new and new innovative ideas about how to de risk on that front, how to de risk on the lithium and cell front and the rest of the raw materials anyways had a very strong India supply chain which itself was also fairly diversified. So this will be to summarize a fairly large in fact the highest priority for our supply chains in the coming, coming time.
Rahul Kumar
Okay, and just for the new plant which you have in Aurangabad, what’s the, what’s the ramp up plan over there?
Tarun Mehta
So you know IPO proceeds have only come to us last quarter and we are just wrapping up some compliance work at the site. Work will be commencing very shortly. In fact we are probably, probably this quarter itself. We will have a few announcements hopefully to make. We will keep you updated as those as you move on those steps. Right now we are targeting sometime next year for go live of this plant. Okay.
Rahul Kumar
Okay. And last question. Are you planning for a motorcycle launch? Ev motorcycle launch.
Tarun Mehta
We continue to work on a platform. We’ve called it a Zenith platform with our focus being on mid performance bikes around the 150, 180cc mark roughly. Having said that, we are right now only we are working deeply on the platform. This will take a little bit of time and our current short term priority is on the Yale platform and the scooter products that it will yield in the near term. So expect the motorcycle announcement to be definitely not this year. It’s still some for us motorcycles is still priority to Afris scooters.
Rahul Kumar
Okay, gotcha. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kapil Singh from Nomora. Please go ahead.
Kapil Singh
Hello. Yeah, hi. So Karun, one question was on. You know the incentives which you will be getting for the plant. Can you give some indication of that as well?
Tarun Mehta
Second Kapil, just give me a second. I’ll just request Sohail to answer this so that he gets the facts right. So Kapil, we have a significant capital.
Rahul Kumar
Subsidy chunk which will go which will be received against the total Capex investment and from an OPEX point of view, we have a 2.5% GST uptake that we will receive from the state share.
Tarun Mehta
Which is all the vehicles which is.
Being sold out of the state.
Murli Sashidharan
So over and the capital subsidies over a period of seven years and GST subsidy is over a period of 15 years. And this is over and above the.
Tarun Mehta
Standard sops that are that are already.
Rahul Kumar
In the as part of the going.
Tarun Mehta
Live where there is an exemption on.
Rahul Kumar
Discounting and exemption on elected duties, stamp duty, land price, all of that. Okay. And am I correct in understanding that the current fund does not have these kind of incentives or we currently have these kind of incentives also? So there are similar, not exactly Apple.
Tarun Mehta
To Apple, but there are incentives that.
Murli Sashidharan
We have in the current plan as.
Tarun Mehta
Well and we continue to accrue as.
Murli Sashidharan
And when the milestone is reached.
Tarun Mehta
So that is also duly accounted in.
Murli Sashidharan
The books even in fact last year as well.
Tarun Mehta
But the scale is different because the size of investment is different.
Rahul Kumar
Okay. And one question was on the employee cost. I think you did allude a little bit to it. But like if you could give some indication whether it’s at a reasonably normalized level or you expect this to step up further.
Tarun Mehta
So Kapil Tarun back here. I expect the operational teams, the wage bill to continue increasing for some time on the operational team front, which is our manufacturing and our sales and service teams. I believe that I expect their cost to continue increasing for the next actually few years on the R and D front and the corporate teams, I think we are very close to to achieving a steady state headcount. There will be some more expansion, but I don’t expect them to be very noticeable. That was obviously annual pay revisions but the big expansion will continue happening for a while on the operating teams.
Kapil Singh
Okay. And similarly the other expenses are these are at normalized levels because you know, last quarter was quite high and low. So just checking if this is the normalized run rate and then it will.
Murli Sashidharan
Grow in the right way to see.
Tarun Mehta
Yeah.
Murli Sashidharan
So right way to see our EBITDA would be. We believe that EBITDA loss is better at about 20 to 30 crores because we because of the presence of the IPO right in the middle of the quarter, some of the expenses did not start on time. So maybe to that extent you could normalize. But yeah.
Kapil Singh
Okay. And just finally the capex number for the full year. How much do you expect to spend and do you have like any indication what could be the cash burn for the year?
Tarun Mehta
It’ll be difficult for me to share forecast on that at this point, the big CAPEX outlay for us compared to last year would obviously be Factory 3.0 in Aurangabad Chaturupati Nagar. Outside of that, I expect our CAPEX would be quite similar to our CAPEX last year, given that last year we had some pending payments coming from RISTA and capacity expansion continually happening for Rista, while this year there is some capacity expansion and a fair bit of R and D. So I think that part of CAPEX might be quite comparable. Plus whatever will come due for factory 3.0.
Kapil Singh
Okay. All right, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Murali Shashi Dharan for the closing comments.
Murli Sashidharan
Thank you for taking the time to join us today and for the questions and perspectives you have shared. We value continued dialogue and look forward to keeping you updated on our progress in the quarters ahead. Until then, thank you once again and have a good thank you.
Operator
Thank you. On behalf of Ather Energy Limited concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And now you may disconnect your line.