Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
C.E. Info Systems Limited (NSE: MAPMYINDIA) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 20, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Rakesh Kumar Verma — Co Founder and Chairman
Rohan Verma — Chief Executive Officer
Sapna Ahuja — Chief Operating Officer
Nikhil Kumar — President – Geospatial Business
Analysts:
Anmol Garg — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Gautam Rathi — Analyst
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to CE InfoSystems Q4FY26 earnings conference call. 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 0 on your Touchstone phone. Please note that this conference has been recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Anmol Kark. Thank you. And over to you, sir.
Anmol Garg — Analyst
Thanks, Everett. Good morning everyone. On behalf of Dam Capital, we welcome you all to Q4FY26 conference call of Map My India. We have with us Mr. Rakesh Verma, Co Founder and Chairman of the Company, Mr. Rohan Verma, MD, Mapples DT Private Ltd. Mr. Anuj Jain, CFO of the Company, Ms. Sapna, Chief Operating Officer and Mr. Nikhil, President of the Government Business. I’ll now hand over the call to Mr. Rakesh Verma for his opening remarks. Post that we can start the Q and A sessions with the entire management team.
Over to you sir.
Rakesh Kumar Verma — Co Founder and Chairman
Thank you Anmol. Good morning all of you. Thank you for joining us for the Q4 and full year 2026 earnings call of MAPMA India. I extend a warm welcome to all our shareholders, analysts, investors, partners and members of the financial community joining us today. Let me begin with our Q4 financial performance compared to Q3 FY26. The fourth quarter delivered a strong sequential improvement with revenue growing by 54.8%. EBITDA increasing by 141% and PAT also growing by 171%. Q4FY26 EBITDA margin has expanded 460bps year on year to 44.6%.
And PAT margin has expanded 230bps year on year to 31.3%. The board was pleased to express its gratitude to all the shareholders by declaring a final dividend on for FY26 of rupees 350 per equity share of rupees 2 each at the rate of 175%. These results reflect improved business movement, strong execution and a meaningful recovery in operating performance during the quarter on a yearly basis. Let me give you perspective Since IPO days five years have gone by. Our revenue growth CAGR for the five years is at 24%.
Our EBITDA growth CAGR over the five years is at 19%. Our fat growth over the five years CAGR is 11%. I think this probably will give you some good perspective of from the time we went for IPO and where you all joined and own the macmandia shares. Probably gives a good perspective of our past. In many ways, the trajectory that we witnessed through much of the FY26 has meaningfully reversed in the last quarter. While the earlier part of the year saw a gradual softening in momentum from Q1 through Q3, Q4 marked a positive inflection point with improving business activity and stronger execution.
We are encouraged by this shift and remain optimistic that this renewed upward trajectory will sustain through FY26 27. Supported by a stronger order pipeline of over 1750 plus crores, improved visibility and growing demand across our businesses, FY26 has been a year of consolidation, resilience and strategic execution for the company, marked by meaningful progress across leadership alignment, organizational accountability and technology adoption. At the same time, we continue to sharpen our focus on technology and innovation, particularly around the adoption of AI to drive productivity and innovation.
It is important to note that during the year we secured several large and strategic order wheels across automotive OEMs, enterprise digital transformation, government, logistics and mobility segments. We have also witnessed a meaningful increase in our open order book and pipeline visibility. The strong growth in executable orders provides us with the enhanced revenue visibility and strengthens our confidence in delivering improved growth momentum for FY27. One of the most encouraging developments for us continues to be in growing adoption and engagement of the Mapwell’s app ecosystems which has recorded 45 plus million download till date and 10 plus million downloads during the year.
We are seeing increasing consumer acceptance, improving user engagement metrics, stronger retention behavior and expanding use cases across navigation, mobility, EV experiences, logistics, safety and geo intelligence. The mapels platform today is evolving beyond navigation into a comprehensive digital location and mobility ecosystems for consumer enterprises and developers alike. We remain highly confident about the long term opportunities ahead of us and are committed to creating sustainable value for all stakeholders.
With this I would like to close my opening remarks and thank you for your patience.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star N1 on the touchdown telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press STAR and two participants are requested to use handsets while asking A question ladies and gentlemen. We’ll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Anmol garg from DAM Capital Advisors. Please quiet.
Anmol Garg
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Couple of things that wanted to understand firstly what led to a weaker performance in both A and M and CNE vertical for the year and what is the outlook now for rest of for FY27.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
I don’t know if I understood the question. It was clear or not. Can you repeat anmur?
Anmol Garg
Yeah. Am I audible?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Yeah.
Anmol Garg
Yes sir. Wanted to understand what led to a weaker performance in both automotive and mobility and consumer enterprise vertical for the year. And what is the outlook now for FY27?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
See first part is the entire year had a muted growth overall from 463 to 474 crores. So naturally overall growth in either one of them is not much expected. It might be a little bit growth more in the one and a little bit slow down in the other. That’s how it makes up the same number on a quarter on quarter. If you look at it, C and e has increased 142%. Sequential quarter on quarter I’m talking about has increased 142%.
Anmol Garg
Right sir. But overall CNE vertical has shown a decline for the full year. Just wanted to understand what led to what were the issues at least in the previous quarter towards the first nine months of this year.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Now you’re talking about the full year. So if the CND declined by minus 3% A&M increased by 9% and so coming to CNE specifically its decline if you are talking about 3%. Well CND also includes the government and the government business that was expected for the whole year was has been a lot of them got delayed or deferred for the for the next year. So that’s why you see that decline.
Anmol Garg
Right sir. So considering there is a deferment of contracts on the government side. So should we return back to 20% kind of plus growth levels in FY27?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Oh you’re talking about overall or just the government
Anmol Garg
Overall?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
See overall as I gave you the five year CAGR has been of 24%. Right. While last year itself it has been like 1% 2% times. So your question is can we expect to come back above 20% for FY26? That’s the guidance you are asking about,
Anmol Garg
Right Sir.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Rohan,
Rohan Verma
I mean I’ll talk from the government angle. I think we are fairly confident that we will do this. If you see we closed the government
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Business with an open
Rohan Verma
Order book of more than 200 crores. Significantly more than 200 crores. And I think for the first nine months we had already explained in Q3 what were the dynamics across the different, across the different segments. But we saw strong Q4. That’s the inflection point that we have seen. And so the government business itself should see a significant growth in this year. And also the IoT business, which is basically underpinning or being driven across government, but also automotive and the corporate, that is also going to see a significant growth.
So in that sense we are fairly confident and fairly excited about the year to come. And a large pipeline, the overall pipeline for the company is about 70, 50 crores which is the order book. And in general across this different segment, there are lots of large opportunities or I would not say lots of large opportunities. Some extremely large opportunities in each area. And so even if a few of those convert, this probably will have a significant impact in the future of the company. But besides those few extremely large opportunities, there’s obviously a fairly robust and diversified pipeline funnel which are to be converted into ordered the same way that happened last year.
So overall things are looking good. We’ve had our strategy session, you know, we’ve had an annual planning session, we’ve had a budgeting exercise and I think all the teams are ready to go.
Anmol Garg
Okay? Okay, Understood, Understood. Secondly, you know we have always given a data point which is revenue conversion from our open order book in our annual report. Now this number has been coming down from some 21, 22% in FY22 to now nearly about 13% in FY25. How would this number would be in FY26? I’m just asking so that we can project how much of the current order book will convert into revenues for next year.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
See in FY26, the conversion from open order. Let’s say that open order book FY26 beginning was 1500 crores. Correct. Anmol
Unidentified Participant
Correct.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
From that 1500 crores around 17% got 18%. I guess 18% got converted into revenue. So that makes it from 1500 in 18%. You can calculate it is something like 270 crores. The rest of the 200 crores revenue came in FY26 was from the new order that we booked which was how much new order we booked
Rohan Verma
780
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Crores. We booked new orders in FY26. Out of that, 200 crores got converted into revenue itself leaving behind 580 crores for the future.
Anmol Garg
So sir, Going ahead as well. Should we expect that the order conversion would be in the range of 17 18%
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Of the open
Anmol Garg
Order book?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Hard to explain because depends on different contracts. But we have given you a trend. Previous year it was different. Next year could be different, it could be higher. The potential could be higher towards more higher side than the lower side of the percentage.
Anmol Garg
Okay, understood, understood. And just one last thing from my end. So we are close to about 600 crores of cash with us. So how are we planning to use it? Just wanted to understand our capital allocation policy over here.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Very good question Anmol. If you see our cash and cash equivalent is what you are talking about as close to 600, right. The previous year also it was similar but the year we generated lot of cash also. So overall what we have done. The Capital allocation in FY26 was 120 crores for organic growth. This organic growth included the growth in the government business. It included in IoT business. It included in creating intellectual property. So these were the three primary ones. Some small acquisition also happened, but that was a smaller number.
So overall 120 crores of capital allocation did happen last year.
Anmol Garg
Right? Right. And how are we planning to go ahead in FY27? Like we are planning to acquire companies or invest it more organically or thinking about any dividends or buybacks.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Our first priority which we believe is the right, right way to do is to provide organic growth. Now remember, there are three verticals market segment wise. Government, auto and corporate. In terms of segments, you can think we already are giving you mapled and IoT led so investments in IoT part of it because IoT also requires capital. I can explain the reason. When we get the IoT business, it is done on an OPEX model for the customers which has two parts where hardware and software are put together and that’s where we get the subscription on a monthly basis.
But when the hardware goes into goes to the customer, it is treated as a fixed asset in the company’s books and gets depreciated over the next three years. So as we keep growing IoT business and you will see a very good growth in the IoT in this year and the coming years because we have now a full year management focused on growing the IoT business. Similarly, when we come to the government business there is a requirement of working capital requirement there particularly in the form of receivables because the government payments in our case we have not seen any write off in the government business which is the hallmark of our selecting which government business we take or we don’t take.
The only thing that happens is the delayed payments in the government. That’s all. So that means if there’s a delayed payment on the government it requires working capital support. In that scenario. Mappers DT and gtropy both requirements in internal capital allocation in whatever the legal format is. But we need to invest there.
Anmol Garg
Understood? Understood. Sure sir, thanks for answering my question. I’ll get back in the queue.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Asmukh from Tata. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hi sir. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. So firstly again on the order book to revenue conversion. So here definitely this year was very difficult in terms of revenue conversion and you pointed out that there were some government orders which got delayed. But if you can just elaborate on the front or let’s quantify where were the impacts and, and whether those let’s say deferrals will come in FY27 as far as the revenue growth is concerned.
Rohan Verma
Yeah. I mean as we explained during the Q3 earnings call, some government contracts were delayed. Now Q4 you already seen the strong or sharp recovery. And so we see that, so we see that going into FY27 as well. With that open order book in government side being significantly past 200 crores with a pretty strong pipeline and hopefully some extra large deals Also on the annual besides a robust pipeline. So we are fairly confident on how this year will play out when it comes to government.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. And any, any update on our FY28 guidance?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
FY28 1000
Unidentified Participant
Crore revenue guidance which we had.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
We have been talking about it a lot with you people one on one also in the earnings call. Also that back in 23 we set a roadmap of thousand crore target for ourselves. And the roadmap showed that in FY28 we will try to achieve it. Okay. But for the last one year we have been saying that while thousand crore number is not changed the question is only could be of timing. So our roadmap continues with 1000 crores. The team, the entire leadership team is working on it. The timing is something we’ll have to watch year, every year.
So let’s say right now you know where we have reached and what could be the expectations. We Talked about that 24% has been the CAGR over the years. Last year the growth rate was muted, maybe 1%. Now once we pick up that with a large open order then we’ll have to wait for FY27 to happen and we’ll know where we have reached from 474 crores to the next.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. It is just that because. Let’s say because we already had open order book last year as well. Right. And this year because of few factors your government order got delayed despite hundred crores billing already happened this year. As an analyst we are not able to let’s say get that confidence that we can grow 2530 sort of in FY27. And because of that I wanted few data points. So. Yeah.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Yeah. So for the data point. Now from that last year we said that we could convert open order by 18%. Correct. And certain orders got. Execution got deferred to this year FY27. Otherwise it would have been higher than 18%. So one is a conversion. So now we have a 1750 crores of open order. So one way to look at it is see that whether it is 18 or 20% of the open order getting converted. I’m talking from an analyst angle only. If that number let’s say is 20% then 20% of 1700 is almost like 350 crores.
And then the current year also we saw how much we could convert right away. So something. So all those things add up to. When you say look at that then you will find that yes, there is no reason not to believe that we cannot grow at 25% in the FY27. But the actual versus real, actual versus potential can vary. And that you will watch it over quarter, quarter after quarter.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. Just one request. If you can quantify how. Let’s say what was the size of the government orders which got delayed.
Rohan Verma
Hard to say. I mean new orders that could have. That could have been won and then could have been executed in part. Especially some extra large orders. So it’s hard to say that what is that number. But again like Mr. Ambassador said last year the in year orders of 780 crores, about 200 of them, 200 crores of them were consumed. So that’s about 25% in in year orders. So I mean with new set of orders this year we’ll see what can be. How much percentage can be consumed. But it’s all pointing in the right direction.
Only at least from our perspective you can track it by quarter.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gautam Rati from cwc. Please go ahead.
Gautam Rathi
Hey. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Hope I’m audible. Mr. Verma, just the first thing. Right. Like the previous participants of what they are trying to hint is. Is the lack of visibility that we have on, on how the revenues are getting converted across line items just in continuation. And you are asking us to believe that if we have been doing in the past five years, why will it not happen? But this year clearly was a disappointment, right? Overall year basis I’m just talking about. So just specifically you are trying to compare Q3 versus Q4 and you have coached us for so many years that do not look at our business quarter on quarter.
It’s a year on year business. Now suddenly we are seeing the momentum is picking up back. But when I see the numbers specifically you said in Q3 that there is no reason why Q4 growth should not be similar or better than last year. Q4, if I take that number, it looks like it’s a 45,50 crore miss in the revenue. It should have been 190 odd crore. It’s about 145. Can you help me understand? Because as an analyst, as an outsider, we do not understand it. Can you help me understand specifically where is this 4550 crore missing?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
I mean unless I start telling you the names of the accounts, how do you. I mean it won’t be clear to whatever. However I try to explain it. We are making an overall statement that yes, Q4 by itself and come on a sequential basis. You have seen the kind of growth, 51% revenue growth or something like that on a sequential basis. If more revenue could have been converted in Q4 it would have been 75%. That’s the gap. The gap is maybe five accounts or six accounts. But the orders exist. The gaps can supply.
You want to see.
Rohan Verma
And Gautam, just keep in mind it’s a B2B business primarily. So if the orders getting the order gets delayed even by a few months then that automatically defers the revenue conversion on that. So when we talk about, when we talk about it we talk about basis. What we believe is when the orders will come and post order, how soon we’ll be able to execute it or deliver on it. Sometimes the new orders that we are expecting which can convert into revenue do get delayed. It’s a natural course of activity.
So many times we talk about it based on the funnel that we have which is in the late stage and where we have significant confidence. If that flips by a few months then unfortunately it doesn’t convert into revenue. It doesn’t change the fundamentals of the business. It just changes the timing.
Gautam Rathi
Ron, I totally get it. But see you did your last call around first second week, it was already 4045 days which you had seen the business right order book was there already like 1500 crores at the start of the year. 1750 crore or 1780 crore at end of Q3. So I don’t think so. You did not have the order. There is some. And you. You had the visibility, right? You Mr. Verma indicated that he feels it would be a similar growth quarter. But still there was some kind of a miss. I’m just trying to understand as an outsider because you guys are seeing it internally.
There is a myth, right? There’s a 45 odd crore miss almost 30% of revenue in Q4. I’m just trying to.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
I can help you without naming a couple of them and if Rohan can help with couple more because naming is not right. So yes, there was an IoT order in the automotive sector which we could. We had thought that it happened in the Q4 only. We thought that we will be able to consume it in the quarter itself. And if we had, if we could have consumed it, its value could have been 20 crores. So you are talking about that 45 crores, right? I’m. I gave you the name without naming. I give you a specific account now that 20 that got delayed for certain not execution capability of ours.
But there were certain regulatory things which we had to fulfill and now we have fulfilled that. So that will start reflecting in Q1 and Q2.
Rohan Verma
It also depends on the customer’s fleet being ready to go on the roads. Right. Because in Iot we have to install it in the customer’s vehicle. So as Mr. Verma said if there’s like a large fleet that has to get rolled out of the customer, if their vehicles only are not ready to roll out then how do we install the IoT and start billing for it? So he kind of talks to you about it existing order. That existing
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Order that they came before. Yes. So
Rohan Verma
That gives you one example. The other example I can give you is in the government side last emergency response system for one of the largest states in India. Very large order for us should have been executed in Q3 then should have been executed latest by Q4 but the government itself was delaying on the. So it is a little bit out of our hands. So that gives you one other government order. And third, we had won a very large tender in the again in the IoT space related to government. Unfortunately that went for a retender.
Otherwise the execution of that should have started already. So I think these are. Yeah, go on.
Gautam Rathi
No, actually this helps. Right. So that’s what. So as External we don’t understand exactly the dynamics. What I am hearing right now is large part of the miss was more customer related than our execution capabilities. See this was at least not clear to us. This gives some more color and fairly what I understand what you just explained is all customer related issues. 20 odd crores IoT plus some government side pushouts and is it fair? These are just pushouts right? Someday it has to come. It’s just getting delayed.
It’s not that just
Rohan Verma
Push outs
Rakesh Kumar Verma
To Q1 and Q2.
Gautam Rathi
We
Rohan Verma
Also really wish that these are all got executed in Q4 but whatever these are just push outs
Gautam Rathi
So that helps. So these are just pushouts and other thing just on a full year basis. What I wanted to understand right so see in. In the CNE business you have three broad parts. One is your consumer IoT the second is government and then there is core CNA business which is like your the APIs which you give to to the E commerce companies etc etc. Right. When we just try to come out because you you have fairly in past also given what is your government business and you have also indicated what is the IoT business which sits in consumer.
If we just carve out those things it looks like this core CNE business is stuck around somewhere in the 80, 85 crore range for 3, 4 years. It was only 25 where this number was north of 120 crore. This is all back of the envelope calculation. Can you just help us understand how does this. Let me give you our plan
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Because I know it not only confuses you guys, it confuses us also. So going forward from Q1 we are thinking of changing that reporting of CNE and A and M to auto, auto and retail as one, corporate as a second one and government as a third one. So we are thinking on those planning for it and if we go ahead with that then we will break up for FY26Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 also so that you can have a comparison. Now coming to your difficult question which confuses us also and confuses you. I don’t know if Rohan
Rohan Verma
Yeah, I mean I’ll just say that in the corporate world once the large apps integrate our APIs and SDKs as one example, as the usage ramps up, our revenues ramp up. So you’ve seen one of the largest new entrants in Quickcom, one of the largest ecom companies. We have looked at it. I think they’re going very aggressive in Quickcom now. It’s expanding rapidly. We have front and center in that in their app. I mean, it’s probably one of the best examples. I’m talking about Amazon now
Gautam Rathi
They’re integrating
Rohan Verma
Map India’s APIs and SDKs. Anybody using Amazon now will see Mapple’s, I think in Bangalore
Rakesh Kumar Verma
They fully launched it. Bombay also they are rolling out now
Rohan Verma
As they scale. I mean that’s. But that’s just one example I’m trying to.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
So
Rohan Verma
There is a gestation period in some of the corporate, you know, API SDK customers. Our objective is to be inside of as many, you know, apps or as many enterprises and as their user scale that should, that should lead to better outcomes. Also I would say on the corporate side of IoT and this is across the group the three companies, but primarily two are focused in the private sector, one is almost exclusively focused on the public sector. But there is a pretty strong push in the corporate world to put more and more of our IoT solutions and we’re seeing some significant wins there as well.
So with IoT these tax revenues kind of compound, you know, as their number of vehicles also increase. So I mean, I would say it’s in a good stage and probably you’ll see CNE also which is the corporate and government kind of, you’ll see some good growth there going forward.
Gautam Rathi
Amazing. Amazing. If I may just squeeze one more for Sapna. Sapna. This Q4 auto business seems like a bit soft, right? Because the kind of growth we are seeing in the automotive world, even if I adjust for the Hyundai variation which you are having, is it a bit soft and is there a reason or is it normal in your mind?
Sapna Ahuja
So I believe that the contract that we have in place, the open orders that we have in place in the automotive space, most of our business, there’s a new order set come, they will give us business in future years unless they are IOT related. So whatever contracts that we have with us and broadly you have an idea that where all we are present and where all we are not, we have been. We have seen growth in quantity, you know, aligned with the industry. But you know that that applies to the programs that we are presenting.
And attach rate has grown only over the as compared to last year. It has grown in totality. Our presence in, you know, across different programs has increased. Accepting of course we have already named hundai that is led to that. That difference which could have, you know, otherwise given us good growth.
Gautam Rathi
Fair. Okay, thanks a lot. I’ll come back in the queue.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajatji from Fortune. Please go Ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, all my questions are answered. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajakumar Vaidyanathan from RK Invest. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello. Yes. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So just couple of questions. Yeah, the first one is from these government contracts. You know, I see that the AR numbers have gone up significantly. So any reason for that?
Rohan Verma
I couldn’t hear your question clearly. What were you saying?
Unidentified Participant
Talking about your account receivable number that you are showing for March 26 that has gone up significantly. And based on your presentation, I understand it is due to poor collection from government contracts.
Rohan Verma
Yeah, I mean the government business, actually things are, things have really. So over the course of years, what we went with, the government business. Let me give you some color. You know, at the beginning of the year we decided to kind of operationalize our wholly owned subsidiary, call it Raffles dp with the focus that we will grow our government business within that. And so the team moved to that subsidiary. Orders that had been collected in MAPMA India from the government, that open order book was subcontracted down to the subsidiary and the team kept working on collecting new orders and had, I think, I would say really good success in different areas.
Whether it was in defense, whether it was in oil and gas, whether it was in emergency response and urban planning. The other point of the year was. So one is we had to kind of make sure that this subsidy became a full fledged operational company which was able to operate the business in a healthy manner. So the cadence of sales continued, the cadence of delivery, the cadence of collection, all of that had to go smoothly. And so that’s why we are happy that we crossed 100 plus crores in cash collection from customers.
We crossed 100 crores in billing or revenue from the customers and we crossed 200 plus crores in the open order book. So there’s a strong foundation led very ably with a very good team at the next level which is focused on building very strong platforms for DOV tech, whether it is in the civil area or whether it is in the defense area. And some of it is fairly advanced frontier tech as well in the digital twin space or the defense space, you know, combining GIS, combining 3D, combining AR VRs. So in that sense I think we are excited for what the government business can do.
But at the same time, yes, as we always said, we are calibrated, we are careful that we take on the business where we believe we can collect the money.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, but do you think this aberration will get corrected Go forward or you think it’s going to remain elevated for some time?
Rohan Verma
Which operation, sorry,
Unidentified Participant
This higher DSO days, will it get corrected go forward?
Rohan Verma
Yeah. See I think if you look at our DSO vis a vis industry, we are fairly good vis a vis industry. But having said that, even internally we set ourselves to pretty high standard and so the teams last year also we could connect so well. This year we want to collect even better. And so in that sense, yes we do want to further improve. But if you take, if you benchmark to overall industry you’ll find us to be a much, much stronger, fiscally prudent, clean balance sheet company compared to those who are in the government or even who are in our similar situation.
Space of GIS listed or unlisted.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. So the worry is, you know your AR has gone up significantly with the revenue remaining almost flatline. So that is a concern.
Rohan Verma
Last
Unidentified Participant
The arb that trade receivable it was 133 crores in last year. That is March 25th. That has gone to 13076 crores in March 26th.
Rohan Verma
I mean I don’t know whether. Yeah, I mean I think this is just the nature of government and I don’t think we are
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Yeah
Rohan Verma
Receivable and I don’t think it is overly concerning us. Like I’ll tell you why we also look at the flow of collection. So when we look at what was the receivable from Gulf like what was the receivable the year before when we started this year? Have we collected almost all or all or almost all of that cash? Answer is yes we have. So that is a good sign. That means flow is coming from the customers. Right. It’s not getting stuck now. So when you look at VR versus when you look at what is actually overdue versus what is within the credit, I think you start getting different perspectives.
So and the flow has been pretty solid. So it’s VR but it’s not overdue necessarily. The overdue component will be lower than what you’re seeing as the br.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
One of the reasons we are we are actually moving on two fronts in the government. One part, as Rohan has been saying our we are, we have almost if not if not really fully but almost zero bad debt in the government. That is very important for us to note the collection period might be higher but that’s again a nature of that beast. Now for us to as a company to keep growing we are in a good position as the C Info Systems Ltd. That entire group of companies that MDT mappers DT the government business is not.
Not concerned about non availability of the funds. So when this is a very interesting good situation to to operate upon where what if they get any good quality business they will not leave it.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. Got it sir. So the second question is given this vast situation government finances are already strained. So do you think this will be one more excuse for the government companies to defer the. You know the contracts with us?
Rohan Verma
I mean I don’t know whether we can predict what happens above our pay grade to predict what the global governments or Indian governments will do. I think we are. We are seeing. I mean we are also concerned about it that you know what’s the. What’s going to happen. But at the same time I think we’re getting only positive signs from government that. Not that the kind of activities we are involved in necessarily impacts it. But we’ll see. As of now for us you know
Rakesh Kumar Verma
It’s
Rohan Verma
BAU but you know something to also
Nikhil Kumar
Landed our revenue projection from the contractor to minimize that impact.
Rohan Verma
Yeah. I think we are dealing with the situation the best we can deal with. But I mean how can we say what will. What will the government of India and government of US etc do.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. So the last question is this thousand crore top line guidance
Operator
For a follow up question. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. In order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference please limit your questions to two per participant. The next question is from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Hi, good morning. So my question was I had only one question which was on the order book slide. You have mentioned a figure you giving the order book. The billing figure is 520 crores and the sales figure is 470 crores. So this difference is due to what exactly? If you can just explain us.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Oh okay. Simple answer. When we book an order we have to book the order with gst.
Unidentified Participant
Okay.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
When we do the revenue we do it without the GST. So if there is a 1750 crores of open order in some ways you can think not somewhere it includes 18% GST. Because when we do the billing, we do the billing with GST because we are obligated to collect that money. Did that answer your question?
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Yes, very much sir. Thank you so much for that.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gautam Rathi from CWC. Please go ahead.
Gautam Rathi
Hey, thanks for the follow up Mr. Verma and Rohan, can you like we see this order inflows from fixed price contracts has been increasing materially over the last three, four years. Right. Earlier your variable as well as fixed price used to be similar. But suddenly, specifically last two years, the inflow in fixed price price seem to be quite strong. Can you help me understand how fixed price contracts are different? Is it like irrespective, you will have to deliver this and will be paid in full over the next three, four years which you write in the presentation.
Because in volume based, at least that volume has to happen, right? Like autos have to produce, APIs have to be consumed. Are fixed price different in that manner?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Well, first, what I mean, if I may ask you. Sorry, I should not be asking you. Time for you to ask me. But if I may ask you, is the fixed price good or bad in your thinking?
Gautam Rathi
No, I’m just trying to understand. Actually I don’t know enough and that’s why I’m trying to understand.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Okay. Fixed price are different types. In the government, if you can take it, it is a milestone based project delivery. Okay,
Gautam Rathi
Okay, so
Rakesh Kumar Verma
That’s right there. In the corporate sector, the fixed price is based on certain parameters. Like you know, some of the big customers, you know who they are for us, they expect certain deliveries to happen during the year and they say for this I’ll give you a lump sum of so much money. That is a kind of a fixed price. Another fixed price model could be that there is a minimum guarantee that I will pay you so much and if the consumption increases, I will give you more. And so these are the different types of fixed price.
Unless Rohan remembers something else.
Rohan Verma
Yeah, I mean and Iot related is if supposing we are told that these are the number of vehicles that we have to install and that’s kind of fixed or at least either fixed or minimum guarantee either way. So then we know that what the fixed price of that order is. And if supposing we are told that the term of the order is five years or three years when the hard drive with SaaS has to be delivered first, that’s all fixed.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
And the fixed also could be, you know, where they pay us on a quarterly basis, we will do the billing also on that quarterly basis.
Gautam Rathi
So my question mainly was is fixed price contracts better in terms of conversion to revenue versus variable where you also have to depend a lot on what the customer produces eventually. Like does it give you better visibility is what I’m trying to understand? Or is it like similarity
Rohan Verma
With very clear visibility fixed price. So with volume projections. Yeah, it does depend on the customer. It can flex up or down. I mean but usually historically it has been flexing up only I think we have been a bit conservative now. I understand we are a bit conservative now when we project volume. So that’s why you might be also seeing the mix change a little bit.
Gautam Rathi
Got it. This is helpful and just if I may, one more Rohan. Amazing performance on the IoT business, right? But also it came with a strong margin uptick in Q4 specifically. Any specific thing happen differently in Q4 or how should we look at this?
Rohan Verma
See the IoT performance of the IoT led business performance is a reflection of the actions of the business leaders across the three group companies. Which means that all the folks leading automotive, corporate and government as well as retail, they all have been able to lean in and make, you know, grow the IoT business in a pretty healthy way. So there is some top line growth but there’s also good margin that folks are bringing in. And also I think over the course of the year that was the objective that how do we optimize the cost and increase the efficiency and productivity.
So and that exercise by the way is still on in the sense that while we believe that we have a pretty strong and stable kind of foundation, team led well with the next level, also organized well and focused, we still see opportunities for cost efficiency which we are focused on. So let’s hope that you know this. Over the course of year I think we increased EBITDA from 14% to 16%. Last quarter of course was sell, it was 33% but over the course of the year that was the number and we are hoping to increase that 16% in this year.
Gautam Rathi
So just was trying to understand is 33 the right number to look at going forward or is it like somewhere 17 might improve to say whatever 18, 19, 20 is. That way
Rohan Verma
33 was for the quarter. I mean every quarter will vary, right? I mean there’s operating leverage in this process. Also there’s a fixed cost and all of that. So I can’t say by quarter what the margin will be. But directionally, you know, we have pointed out that, you know, in the steady state this can be a higher margin business than 16%. Clearly. And we are on that trajectory, which is good. I mean there’s still headroom for margin expansion.
Gautam Rathi
Got it. Thanks a lot.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sri Narayan Mishra from Baroda BNB Paripat. Please go ahead.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
Thanks for the opportunity. My question is again on the IoT margins for Q4 which are below the margins now what we are seeing is that globally DRAM and NAND prices are going up significantly and still you have been able to post good margins in the IoT segment. What I can also see is that our inventory levels have also increased for IoT products. So is it that we have made inventory gains on new orders for IoT and that’s why the margin is high?
Rohan Verma
So I mean, our inventory levels have grown.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Yeah,
Rohan Verma
Inventory levels have grown to stock up to support the increased demand that we see for IoT across the three businesses. So we basically maintain inventory to meet the forecast. We try to minimize overage, we try to minimize, we try to optimize our supply chain correctly. And so that’s why inventory is going up, because we believe that the demand is going to go up. Yeah, unfortunately prices are increasing. We are doing our part to try to mitigate those price changes. There’s continuous kind of value and engineering that we do and other things that we do.
But yeah, I mean,
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
So my question was, is there inventory gain in the margins because we have stock inventory and we would have supplied that at higher prices. So is it because of that?
Rohan Verma
You mean, is it. I’m trying to understand the question, but inventory quantity has gone up. No, no, no.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
What I’m saying is that IoT prices are going up because your memory prices are also going up. So we have significant inventory of IoT devices. Is it possible that in new contract which would have supplied these inventories there we would have made extra margins because we would have purchased at a lower cost and when we would supply, the prices would have gone up and that’s why higher margins in the segment.
Rohan Verma
I don’t think that’s the reason. I wish I fish. No, that’s not. The reason for margin expansion is simply operating leverage. I mean it’s not. Yeah, it’s just operating levels. Revenue went up, the mix was better, you know, more SaaS, that mix was better and yeah, that’s where the margin went up. Inventory is just a function of what our future demand is.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
So basically you don’t buy inventories against a specific order, Right. You stock up in advance or is it against.
Rohan Verma
No, no, we buy inventory based on the overall forecast across the portfolio of products and portfolio of projects or customers that we have. It’s not. There might be few very specific make to order projects, but usually we have a portfolio of products and one or more of which are by customers.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
So going forward, how should we see this margin? Will it normalize again to 18 to 20%?
Rohan Verma
I mean, over the course of the year, like I said, you know, every year We’ve been able to increase the IoT net margin. Last year it went to 16% from 14% and this year also we’d like to increase that.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
Okay, okay. But you are still seeing price increase, right? So from last year, what will be the inflation in IoT devices?
Rakesh Kumar Verma
You know, when you have a combination in the IoT business, not just hardware, but a hardware and a SaaS. So when we do the pricing, we’ll think about it and accordingly price the price. The entire solution to a customer, it’s not classic trading if it was a classic trader. Yes,
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
I know there is a soft SaaS component to it, is that because prices are going up. So ideally there should have been compression of margins, but we have delivered macro margin which is good. But I just wanted to understand what is contributing to this.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Well, yeah, you are not wrong by saying that prices of the hardware is going up, the cost of purchase or acquisition is going up. So obviously we also look at that and when we get the orders now or the new orders, we try to make sure that that’s accounted for.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
Okay. Okay. And so my second question is on, on in Q2 we had highlighted that we had made certain investments for a specific government project. So are all those investments now behind us? So no such Investment expected in first H1 at least? Right.
Rohan Verma
I mean, see again, so let’s say for that specific order, the investment that was made now future investment, those future investments will reduce. But in general if we want to expand, this is related to government and IoT in general, if we want to expand our business into certain areas, we have to kind of do investments. So I mean not going to specifics of what might happen in the future with specific orders, but I mean as an overall portfolio we are on the right track when it comes to government and IoT.
It
Nikhil Kumar
Was initially capex driven. Now on opex it’s giving a better.
Rohan Verma
Correct. So like Nikhil is saying, it was originally capex driven and now the OPEX is giving increased margins.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
Okay, okay. So. But such investment may continue in future as well. That’s I understand, to get more orders, right?
Rohan Verma
I can’t say right now. I
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
Can’t
Rohan Verma
Say right now.
Sri Narayan Ramkishore Mishra
So. Okay. Okay, sir, thank you. Thank you,
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Due to time constraints, that was the last question for the day and I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Rakesh Kumar Verma
Yeah, thank you all for listening to us. I hope we have been able to give all of you good perspective about the future as well as the achievements that we made in Q4 and we hope to remain transparent the way we have been. And also I believe that investors should have confidence in what map Mindia as a group, is building its business, making sure that the capital allocation happens in the right place and is able to earn margins and revenue growth in the. In the maximum way we can. Thank you so much for attending the session today.
Operator
Thank you on behalf of TAM Capital Advisors. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.