Computer Age Management Services Ltd (CAMS) Q2 FY23 Earnings Concall Transcript

Computer Age Management Services Ltd (NSE: CAMS) Q2 FY23 Earnings Concall dated Nov. 07, 2022

Corporate Participants:

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Prayesh Jain — Motilal Oswal — Analyst

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Ansuman Deb — ICICI Securities — Analyst

Sagar Gandhi — Future Generali Life Insurance — Analyst

Punit Kumar — Reliable Investments — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q2 FY ’23 Earnings Conference Call of Computer Age Management Services Limited. We have with us Mr. Anuj Kumar, Managing Director; Mr. Ramcharan SR, CFO; Mr. Anish Sawlani, Head, Investor Relations.

This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectation of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict.

[Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I now hand the conference over to Mr. Anuj Kumar, Managing Director. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Thanks, Faizal, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for sparing the time today for attending our earnings call. I hope that am audible to all of you.

The way we will structure this is like we’ve done in the past, I will run you through a small presentation on how the quarter was, and the key highlights and then I will hand over to Ramcharan, our CFO, to speak specifically about the financials and then we will have enough time left over for a Q&A session. So I’ll begin I guess most of you must have downloaded the presentation, I will just take you through a sequence of salient highlights.

Overall, when I speak about our core business, which is the mutual funds business. Our assets, which is the core, you can think of it as the operating metric in the business, we’re at the highest ever and scale past the INR27 trillion or INR27 lakh crore mark the average assets were at INR27.1 lakh crore, which is an all-time high. This represented a 3% increase over 1Q. So after a period of time when there was almost muted growth, this was the first time in maybe 3 quarters that we saw an inch up in the overall asset. CAMS funds continue to maintain a dominant 69% market share in overall assets of the mutual funds market so that collectively is reflective of a steady quarter for the core business.

On the alternative side, we continue to see both real growth in the market, also potential growth accelerated signing many, many new alternative funds getting registered. So all of those pointing to what could turn into an exciting marketplace. We registered a 32% year-on-year growth in revenues, which is a very encouraging number and then comes WealthServ digital onboarding platform scaled past 50 sign ups since launch. This is number we referenced in the past about just about a year-and-a-quarter about 14 months, about 50 assignments. Of course, it’s a long road. And we need to and we will do a lot more, but a very nice milestone for us at 32% growth in revenue is a strong growth number.

On NPS. The CRA business. We launched the CRA platform and cloud in March 2020, we are at 9.5% share and number 2 position in the eNPS, the direct to consumer part of can the NPS, the eNPS part. On CAMS finserv, which is the account aggregator and it’s adjunct with the PSP offering, we have been seeing momentum in the markets, 35 Class mandates have been signed till date. And overall at the market level, you would have seen that now both SEBI and PFRDA have released circulars to enable capital markets participants and pension funds to join the ecosystem which is very, very encouraging. Our digital properties myCAMS and edge360 clocked a quarter-on-quarter volume growth at 10%. This was some share gain from other electronic channels, which is very encouraging. We continue to service a growing clientele and our engagement with them on the digital side continues to improve.

MFCentral, it solidifies our role in the MF ecosystem and the encouraging thing that we’ve seen during the quarter is a lot of interest in the APIs, especially the cash APIs that one API, which has now enabled across the ecosystem and there are participants which are live, if you go to the apps and websites, when you get cash statement, it is coming out of MFCentral and that number is likely to expand. So we have seeing what I would say sustained initial interest on the API participation with some of the core platforms already linked and functional and of course, during the current quarter and next, we are expecting this to solidify quite a bit.

And lastly on CAMSRep, which is the insurance business, the repository business. You have seen sustained, I would say, an important in terms of change in architecture of the overall marketplace, which is around KYC becoming mandatory and electronic insurance issuance becoming mandatory from a given date those dates. The date for the second part is yet to be announced. However, riding on that e-insurance accounts and e-policy numbers doubled in volume during the quarter, and we are expecting the growth to remain sustained as investors become more interested in the format of holding the policies and also as the necessary steps from a regulatory front accomplished for us to get to that strategy and then PolicyGenie, which is our deep contract tracing solution assisted insurance companies in closing, over INR100 crore of unclaimed benefits till date. This is just the beginning as we said in the past, but it’s a unique high impact tool, which is helping address one of the related needs of the industry, and we are happy with the progress we’re making.

Overall, I’ll move forward, our growth and I’m talking about the mutual funds business or growth in overall AUM SIP registrations and transaction volumes, if you ask me 3 just fundamental foundational operating metrics, it is these. AUM, like I said, went past INR27 lakh crore at INR27.1 lakh crore, which is an all-time high. Our NFO collections were over INR12,000 crores during the quarter, but the significant thing was the spanning over more than 40 schemes. So you can think of a 13-week quarter and you can think of NF almost 40 schemes in that period, which was a pretty large number. And then in terms of SIP registrations in the first quarter gross registrations were at INR37 lakh. In the second quarter at INR38 lakhs so that number is holding out at an aggregate value quite well.

Our share at 61% during the quarter is holding out quite well and I would say the most encouraging of these is the anxiety inflows which at industrial level, you’ve seen cross INR13,000 crore for a month at cash level they cross INR7,500 crore and have grown by 5% over the previous quarter. So, as you know this SIP collection continues to remain the backbone of the equity net sales number across the industry, while the gross sales of net sales number and continues to inch up increments almost every month and is providing the necessary tailwind. And I would say as a sustaining force to the industry in terms of investor participation Live SIPs grew by over INR14 lakh between July to September. So again a strong number. And then when I look at transaction volumes, which is about what investors are doing with us and our funds that number scaled up from just over INR111 million to INR113 million, so about INR11 crores in the last quarter were INR11.3 crores in the current quarter.

We have the next chart is just an illustrative ranking chart, this is just, although it’s loan metric all of you know these numbers very well. There’s nothing new on this, but just to show the contrast between where CAMS funds stand, especially in the top pecking order of the top 15 funds. I think this just contrast the overall market, the quantum of assets that our funds hold, the quantum of assets that we do not hold, competition holds. This is just to frame all of that and give you a single one page pictorial view. Well, like I said, this metric is well known to all of you, and we will move forward.

Overall in films of share and share gain, you know that share gain is measured as a percentage of assets in the industry. Pictorially, I think the illustration shows you that over a 12-year period starting about 2010 to 2022 CAMS funds gained from 56% to 63% in ’17. And then 63% to 69%, the non-CAMS part has, therefore, got pared down over this period, from 44% to 37% and 37% to 31%. And then just in terms of that’s largely in our market attributed to these skilled players, share is typically — your share gain is attributed to the scale players. But if I talk of the non-scale players, which is the new players who came in and what could they do so outside of the scale plans, in the last 10 new MF launches that we are restricting ourselves to launches.

We are not including in this name changes, ownership changes and those kind of entities, but new launches, new to the market entities amongst the last end, we had won 5 when you see these scale which has been raised across these 5 almost INR45,000 crores, of course, the time period could be different between what we achieved and what someone else achieved, but between INR10,000 crores to INR45,000 crores just a large scale difference in terms of scaling up holding operator. So that’s interesting metric chart in terms of how shares have changed over a sustained period, share has changed over a shorter period and our new launches in the market have performed over a period of time, both us and the mandates that did not come to us.

From a mutual fund industry and CAMS AUM perspective, I spoke about this 69% share, net flows into equity assets remained positive during the quarter. SIP flows increased 5% quarter-on-quarter, 27% year-over-year and again like I would say, there was a time 3 or 4 years back, it used to be said that this could be the game-changing metric. The middle of the pyramid, whatever the government participation in the mutual fund industry. But it looks like that’s beginning to happen in a fairly sustained relevant, where SIP collections, SIP numbers are not just indicative of retail participation, they are indicative of overall market AUM growth and net sales numbers. In terms of industry versus CAMS, these numbers are published. You know them INR27.1 lakh crore versus INR39.6 lakh cores year-over-year, just short of 6% gain for us, against 8.3% of industry quarter-on-quarter, 3.1% versus 3.5% on the equity side, the gain so much better as you can see. When you come to the bottom of the chart INR12.2 trillion or INR12.2 lakh crore is our asset base of the gross price of INR18.4 lakh crore, which is the industry, 21.2% year-on-year growth on the equity side for CAMS versus 20.1%. So 1% delta and then 7.5% on the quarter-on-quarter side versus 6.8%, so about 0.7%.

On the transaction side and again these are numbers that you are aware of. Transaction volumes growing 11% year-on-year. Strong good engagement metric with consumers. SIP book grew 5% quarter-on-quarter, but 26% year-on-year also stands at INR3.27 crore, INR32.7 million on end of the quarter. Systematic transactions processed during the quarter about INR93.6 million, again, growth, very similar to the book growth at 22% year-on-year. Live investor folios at INR53.9 million and then unique investors year-on-year, 32% growth at 24.2 million. So all of that again foundational, I would say, directional metrics in terms of how many investors are coming in and how they are participating in the market. All of that looks operationally very good.

I’ll move forward on MFCentral, you will see that about 1,000 users are registering every day, almost 9,000 to 10,000 logins every day and then upwards of 1 lakh, about 125,000 downloads. Now this number can be much larger, will be much larger, but for the initial period, we just closing the year of being out there in the market and this is the consumer participation what the consumers consume through the API based participation will be numbers on top and you don’t see here. But I would say reasonable progress as we go deeper and kind of make active attempts and market this platform even better. All of these numbers are likely to scale, very positive feedback on the functionalities that are enshrined in the design of similar of MFCentral.

I wanted to talk a little about adjacencies and how they have been slowly converted into products for the benefit of the marketplace. When you see ReconDynamiX, we’ve spoken about this earlier. The proprietary reconciliation tool, which is put to use for mutual fund reconciliation, but is also now actively solicited and sold to the insurance and online sectors, loan against mutual funds, MFCentral et cetera. And then you have seen that across the board, products like Wincentive, which is a sales and incentive administration tool, which enables the front end of the food chain for asset managers to have meaningful negotiations with the marketplace with the intermediaries and give then give the Wincentive plans and schemes, which are then set out for approvals and then gets out of the system, so that in a very restated unstated way, they can be administered. It’s a large expense for the sector. So it has to be done with very high accuracy and an ironclad way and this is the tool, which enables all of that to happen.

Similarly, our APIs for AMCs and intermediaries are powering their expansion through digital means. CAMS pay, which has a variety of solutions and the underpinning used to be the natural the solution now has expanded the UPI. You read about some of our IMCs is now being live on UPI auto pay and that’s going to give a fillip to the SIP market. Additionally, in terms of how payment mechanisms, additional payment mechanisms will be available to the consumers and then across the board through e-KYC, e-sign AML checks, et cetera, a variety of solutions are now part of the platform sold and offered as part of the platform, but also offered independently if somebody a trusted just to improve the use cases and turn adjacencies into meaningful businesses for the group.

I wanted to spend some time on the alternatives like I said 32% revenue growth year-on-year, which is a very meaningful number, new business addition in terms of new logo wins, 19 new wins in the PMS space during the quarter. So more than assigning every week and that’s something that we pulled ourselves on to capture a significant and disproportionate share of this market as it expands. So that’s the sustained number. I wanted to speak to you about the 50 funds which have signed up for AIF and PMS for digital onboarding that’s something that I mentioned at the beginning, and I will also mention that Fintuple Technologies, which is an investment we we’ve made as the majority investment in a startup firm, which has solutions, platform-based solutions in the area of integrating with custody and general onboarding for both PMS and AIF has now had a couple of medium size meaningful wins with large brands and large players in the market in the last 7 months. We will continue to cover that in the ensuing quarters. But we just thought that this being the second quarter when people has been part of CAMS, just to make a mention that the progress has been encouraging and our GIFT City operations now have 5 signed up clients.

On account aggregator and TSP, I spoke a little initially. We are seeing significant momentum in terms of proliferating sign ups across various entities, but now, specifically, on the wealth and advisory side and on the broking side, we’re finding participants becoming entrusted and becoming part of this ecosystem largely it was led by the bank still about 3 months back. We are covering the marketplace through targeted events, largely in terms of end-use cases of this product. And then overall, our unique value proposition, which couples our digital solutions along with core AA offerings is now part of a very well received bouquet of solutions in the marketplace. Guidelines for SEBI related entities have been released. We are under to prep to become the FIP gateway for our part of the industry. And overall, both in terms of SEBI management entities and PFRDA management entities there are now specific guidelines for them to become part of this overall architecture. So in general encouraging news across the board.

NPS I spoke about at 9.5% and market share. We are the number 2 position in new NPS sales, eNPS sales during the quarter 4 FY ’23. And then on the insurance of the insurance repository side. Like I said, that because there was sustained media buzz on what could be the future of the industry, part one is for KYC have become mandatory, part two is for e-insurance or holding insurance in the insurance format. The new issuance to be mandatory in that format for that to become mandatory at some point in time in the near future. Riding on that we are seeing uptick in the consumer awareness and what assigned to see that to see the number of new policies and number of e-insurance accounts doubling over 1Q and of course, this is what I call green shoots, these are first signs. The sustained increase has to remain this way over the next few quarters, but we believe that our structural changes happening in the industry. It will certainly benefit the consumer and the way they interact with the insurance industry and will certainly be means for us to expand our business.

And then we said that our overall digital solutions including insurance repository services do continue to improve and expand policyholder experience, I spoke about the depressing tool initially. One more thing I would say is that CAMSRep had applied for the Sandbox project with IRDA for developing an industry platform for assignment. This is the digital policy assignment. This completion, the Board has now done the Sandbox is fully functional, and we are kind of en route to commercializing this product by adding a meaningful number of insurers and financiers as you know, just like loan against mutual funds, loans against securities, loans against insurance will become more familiar, common product over the coming years and happy to share with you that we have taken the full position in this particular area.

I will pause here and hand over to Ramcharan to now cover the financials.

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Anuj.

So I’ll just take the next few minutes and go through the broad financials for the quarter. As Anuj was mentioning, there was a recovery from the asset growth side on a year-on-year basis, the asset central management grew by almost 6%. So tracking that my mutual fund revenue as well as the overall revenue grew by 6.3% year-on-year. On-quarter on quarter too, we saw a growth in AUM almost 3%, so the revenue also grew by around 2.5%, largely on the back of growth in mutual funds and growth in mutual funds and asset-based revenue. So for the quarter, we ended up with a revenue of INR242 crores, which as I said, is up 6.3% year on year-on-year. The corresponding number was INR227.6 crores in the FY ’22 Q2. On a sequentially we were up at 2.4%, which compares to INR236 crores in the Q1 of FY ’23.

Mutual fund revenue broadly mirror the growth in AUM. The growth was 6% on mutual fund revenue year-on-year basis, which is mirroring the growth in AUM and on a sequential quarter basis, it was up 2.3% against AUM growth of 3%. And most of the mutual fund revenue growth came from the asset-based revenue which again mirrored the same percentage of 6.6% growth year-on-year. We ended the quarter with INR185 crores of asset-based revenue versus INR173.5 crores in the corresponding quarter last year, that’s a 6.6% growth. And sequentially, again, we were up by 2.3% quarter-on-quarter. The number last quarter was INR180 crores, again, broadly mirroring the trend in the growth in assets. The assets growth also had a disproportion grew in equity, which actually helped in sustaining to an extent our yields. Equity AUM actually grew as Anuj was mentioning around 21% year-on-year. This is a very healthy growth and hence the mix — asset mix was favorable for us, it was around 45% of the total assets for CAMS is the equity component.

From a non-asset-based revenue, the growth was 3.6% year-on-year, driven largely by increase in call center revenue, OP and application revenue. There was some reduction in the transaction revenue NFO which kind of depressed us a little but overall up 3.6% year-on-year. The number for the quarter was INR33.2 crores, that was the non-asset-based revenue. Sequentially quarter, it was up by 1.2% in there was some drop because of OP as well as call center. From a non-MF revenue against smart growth 8.2% year-on-year and 4.3% quarter-on-quarter. The non-MF revenue for the quarter was INR23.7 crores, almost INR24 crores.

And again, as you saw in the earlier part of the call, the AIF is doing a smart growth in terms of greater than 30% year-on-year and 6% quarter-on-quarter. So AIF continues to grow or continued to grow in fact based on the requirements from this call the last few quarters. We’ve also published a chart, which gives you the overall breakup of the non-MF revenue. And if you see the increasing trend of AIF, the almost like 3% of the total company revenue was no AIF no. Similarly CAMS pay is showing a smart growth in terms of more than 30% year-on-year and Rep is now beginning to see the uptick in terms of the new notifications that is expected or the KYC mandatory for general insurance that is coming into play. So the non-MF revenue is growing 8.2% year-on-year on the back of smart growth in AIF as well as the payments business.

And just a small commentary on the yield, because that’s a question that often gets to gets asked. In terms of yield, as we’ve already kind of guided, that could be a small yield compression that happens in some quarters in some quarters it may not. It is a combination of various factors. What we have seen play out from a quarter-on-quarter basis, a small depletion yield contributed by 2, 3 factors. From a year-on-year basis, actually yields are very stable, but from a quarter-on-quarter basis there is a small decrease. Again this is the telescopic pricing will play its part on this and equity slabs are more prone to this telescopic pricing depletion and as the equity asset growth there could be some impact of that. Although the mix has offset this to a large extent, the increase because of the depletion, because of the equity slabs telescopic.

There were some pricing, contracts that were kind of finalized during the last few quarters with some of the major customers and the impact of this is there. And the good part is most of this has been closed for the next 2 or 3 years. And also within the mix, you would see that the debt has fallen at a pace which is higher than the liquid, and you would understand that the realization for a debt asset is much higher than what we get for liquid assets. So within the non-equity segment also the fact that debt and given the market conditions, which you’re all aware of has fallen steeper than what liquid has fallen so that’s having a small impact on the mix benefits too. So overall, while the yields are stable on a year-on-year basis, quarter-on-quarter, we did see a small depletion in the yields. It is attributable to these reasons.

From a profitability perspective, I think we said last time, there are questions on whether this is the bottom in terms of the margins and the commentary that we have consistently given was if the assets stop kind of recovered little, then we will see the margin improvements. It is what we have seen in the current quarter. From an operating EBITDA perspective, we are at — it is the Ind As number, we are at 43.8%, INR106.1 crores, 43.8%, which compares to the 41.1% that we had in the last — the sequential quarter. This is that we are up 8.2% quarter-on-quarter and on a year-on-year basis, it’s almost flat at 0.3% up. The margin was 46.5%.

And from a PBT perspective we at 38.9% again, which is up 11.4% quarter-on-quarter, there was some other income that we receive as in terms of interest on income tax, et cetera. That’s why there is a difference between the operating EBITDA growth and the PBT growth. But on a sustained basis, our operating EBITDA has been growing — has grown at a percentage of 8.2% on a sequential basis and flat on a year-on-year basis. That tracks the growth in PBT, which is up 11.4% quarter-on-quarter and almost flat year-on-year. The thing to note here is that this includes the charges that we take, we have not slowed down on the investments that required for the new businesses. You saw in the earlier commentary from Anuj, the investments that are continuing to happen at MFCentral has continued to happen in the products in the AIF that’s continuing to happen in CRE, that continue to happen accounting aggregator with TSP. We’ve not slowed down any of those investments those continue to come and as per our guidance in the earlier quarters the investments will continue for a quarter or 2.

While we are seeing very encouraging signs from the market in terms of account aggregator TSP, the actual substantial revenue flow is going to take a couple of quarters, but this is something that we have taken the cost in the books. We have actually taken the price impact. We have taken the other inflation of SEBI that’s happened in the current year, we’ve taken the technology hiring that’s needed to be done to keep the platform, the new initiatives up and running, and on top of this, we have posted out — we’ve posted our operating EBITDA margin of 43.8% and that’s the way we look at the margins for the current quarter. The profit numbers are also after considering the ease-offs, which is the non-CAMS charge, which for the current quarter was around INR6.5 crores.

And the Board has declared an interim dividend of INR8.5 per share and we ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalent of around INR446 crores, this is before the interim dividend that’s been declared by the Board. So this and summary is the financial highlights for the quarter, for the half year, again, I mean, we did — we have closed the half year with revenue of INR480 crores almost as opposed to INR429 crores in the last half year. It’s up 11%. From a PAT perspective and operating EBITDA perspective, we are marginally ahead. Our operating EBITDA is INR204 crores for the 6 years — 6 months period, and about INR138 crores for the 6-month period in terms of PAT.

So all in all, it’s a quarter that I should say is characterized by the fact that our margins have started creeping up again. We continue to make investments and the investments are going to bear fruit a couple of quarters down the line. We are seeing exciting trends in terms of AIF, in terms of TSP, AA. And in terms of the insurance repository and all those revenue optionality as you call it would be probably the upside in the coming quarters.

With that, I kind of handover the call to Faizal. You can probably take it over and moderate the questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.

Prayesh Jain — Motilal Oswal — Analyst

Yeah, hi, good morning, everyone. Just firstly on the insurance repository business. Now, if I look at the data that you have shared and in that sense, the revenues have been flattish on a sequential basis in spite of the fact that we’ve kind of doubled the accounts and the KYC has gone up. So what is the revenue model for this segment. And now once that there is a mandate from the regulator about converting all the possible insurance policies to eIA accounts, what would be the revenue potential for the industry?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Prayesh, I’ll answer the question. So the number that you see in terms of the flattish number quarter-on-quarter insurance has two components, one is the outsourcing business, which we have again kind of put out several times in the past is not the focus area for us, it’s more kind of an outsourcing business labor arbitrage. We continue to have good relationships on that, but that’s something that is kind of not the focus for us. If you see purely from a digital revenue off from a higher revenue, it has actually grown smartly and the numbers that Anuj spoke about, the number of policy conversion that’s happened in this quarter year-on-year basis is almost doubled in terms of this.

So if you combine the two, you will see this difference, but on a standalone basis the issuance deposit revenue has grown both quarter-on-quarter, as well as year-on-year. The business model for that is three front. One is the policy converts and we get paid for every policy that gets converted into the Demat form or electronic form. We get some agency for the accounts that are maintained with us, which is per policy and we also get some may on transaction as you understand the current architecture is that the number of transactions that happens to be minimal because it will be basically changing your master data, changing your phone number, address etc. So, currently, the revenue from transactions is little less because the scope for transacting in that portal asset space today is less, but the bulk of the revenue is from the policy conversion and this is just the beginning, see the e-KYC is not yet operational and the KYC mandatory is not yet operational, it’s been postponed from November to January and all of us are awaiting clarity from the regulator on how this Demat is going to happen.

So what Anuj was mentioning is that in anticipation of that because of the awareness, we have seen spot in the number of policies. When the actual notification does happen and IRDA is in very close touch with the various insurance repositories including caps on the preparedness for this in terms of the infra requirements in terms of handling the customer requirements, etc. So once that gets finer, then we will see the real action coming in this space.

What we’re seeing is the initial spurt in volumes because of the wide reporting in the news and people being more aware of this requirement or this possibility of Demating policies. So the short answer is that, yes, we are seeing uptick in insurance repository, but the actual will start once the regulators steps in and gives this notification.

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Sorry, I’ll just add a little to that. So, Prayesh, when we think of the business, think of it this way, that there is a mass of almost 30 crore plus life insurance policies out there and 20 crore plus general insurance policies, as and when this becomes mandatory, all of that will become the purview of e-insurance and all of those digital policies. When we say number of policies doubled, its more localized quarter-to-quarter metrics, think of it this way that if new policy addition in camps was and I’m just throwing a number was, you say 1 lakh in a quarter in 1Q, that number has become 2 lakh in the quarter. Why did it become 2 lakh from 1 lakh, why did it double, because consumers are reading reports that some of this will become compulsory, they will come to the website, tinker a little and perhaps go and open an account and start linking policies. So that’s very preliminary action, which has happened.

The real mass hasn’t happened yet, because that will happen in two parts, one new issuance of policies initially will become and that’s our understanding will become mandatorily digital, which means that will have to be issued in digital. And the second is that the past period mass of paper policies, which are undergoing either undergoing renewal every year premium is being paid, they will become digital in the second part of this implementation, that’s going to take time. I mean that will only happen when the statu gets announced those specific dates are not announced yet.

Prayesh Jain — Motilal Oswal — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. Secondly on continuing on the insurance repository the transactions that something like a premium payment reminder or say a premium payment that comes through a loan against the policy or all these transactions will also be charged or these all are still under discussion and it will take time to get a clear picture on this?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

So I’ll answer it in two ways. First is the loan against for the assignment that you spoke about, that’s the sandbox that was mentioned earlier. So that has been IRDA has permitted us to do this sandbox and we have tied up with one insurance company and one financial and proved the concept in the sandbox, it is going to be commercially exploited. So that will start very soon. So that doesn’t have to wait for the larger question of transactions being broadened. So that’s going to start pretty soon probably from next quarter where we have a commercial model and the financials will be something, insurance company will be something and that will happen.

The second part in terms of the premium collection, the reminder, the claims, etc., that’s a broader reengineering of the platform that’s underway and once that happens, the scope of the transaction revenue will increase many fold and that was what I alluded to when I said that the scope now is currently limited to changing your information on master data, on address name etc. So once the platform becomes a policy servicing platform, which is expected within the next couple of quarters for sure, then the scope of transaction revenue will be much higher than what it is now, which is all the component that you spoke about in terms of policy collection and routing through payment, we are doing claims, policy statement etc.

Prayesh Jain — Motilal Oswal — Analyst

All right, thanks. Thanks, that’s helpful. And lastly on alternate, sir, what would be our market share currently and how do you see this business kind of see 32% Y-o-Y growth you’ve seen in this quarter, do you see this sustaining or even getting better from hereon?

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

So overall from a market perspective, if you see the food chain, the number of alternate — alternative funds registering with the regulator, that is where the whole activity starts, if you — I’m sorry if you see in the last two quarters, that number has grown phenomenally over the past year, that’s point number one. Point number two, we have seen expanded consumption from clients in the suppliers on the base are expanding new schemes and bringing in new investors and that is one of the ways of growing and the other is both camp well serve and the RTS servicing have won a number of new logo.

So this 32% growth obviously has been a very sustained number which has come in. We are expecting this growth trend to continue, I will not comment on specific numbers, we will continue updating you quarter-on-quarter, but I would say that we are seeing the momentum will continue. Of the outsource part, which is the fraction of the market that outsources unlike mutual funds everybody does not outsource, we are upwards of 50% on the market, so we’re holding a dominant share and we are expecting with the offerings that we have and now with the addition of into — to the overall set of offerings, we are expecting this share to continue sustaining and growth.

Prayesh Jain — Motilal Oswal — Analyst

All right, thank you. All the best.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Sahej Mittal from HDFC Securities, please go ahead.

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Hi, good morning, Ram and Anuj. So firstly, I mean on the negotiations with AMC’s right, so where are we in terms of negotiations on the pricing side, if you could give some color, given the kind of yield compression all these AMCs are facing. So where are the negotiations with the RDA’s if you could talk about that a bit. And second one was on opex, so if you can quantify the investments so out of that 27 odd crores, what are the investments which we are making in the new businesses and part of which will sort of stabilize after two quarters to get a better sense of the long-term normalized number, yeah.

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

So, yeah, sure. On the price negotiations with customers as with our agencies, this is something that will happen periodically. So the good part is a lot of these contracts have been signed up in the beginning of this year for one, two years — none of one year it is one year, it’s actually two or three years depending on which AMC it is. So barring one all the major contracts with the agencies have been signed and the results that you see is the — contains the result of the negotiations and what was the commercial outcome of those discussions were. So this is an ongoing thing. So there is nothing that I can specifically kind of say is going to happen in the next six months or one year whenever the contract falls due again, but only comfort I can give us in terms of the major customers, barring one all those things have been concluded and do not — are not expected to come up in the next two years, right?

And in terms of the question on investment, so we have been little conservative on that. So for example, the investments that we make on the account aggregator TSP etc., and a lot of the marketing and sales-related expenses, the people that we get on the roles for CRA etc., are actually part of the opex as you mentioned. What I would look at it is, it is not from the perspective of those costs actually going down because we would kind of retain the development cost on the books, because to add additional features to ensure that this platform stabilizes, etc. So while on an approximate basis, I can tell you the total money we spent from opex perspective between 3 crores to 4.5 crores in a given quarter on these expenses. I would rather put it this way that once the revenue starts flowing that should be compensated revenue for this, would I see a huge decrease in these expenses, I think we would rather wait for the platforms to stabilize to include more features in that, to enhance them in order to — visible to the market etc., and we would not be in a hurry to unwind all the investments that we’re doing in the platform development.

There’ll be some rationalization that happens, yes, after going there’ll be something, but we are looking it more from the revenue kick in that will happen a few quarters down the line.

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Great. And maybe one follow-up on the first question, so I’ll maybe reframe my question. So in the last three to six months in terms of negotiation which you did with the AMCs, if you can register and the highlight that whether there was any downward revision in the pricing with any of these AMCs not quantifying, but I mean just directionally also what help give us some sense?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

It’s in both, we have seen both, we have seen contracts that have been rolled over, we’ve seen contracts that have had a small — for a downward revision price that’s more to do with their volume growth and various other factors in terms of that particular dynamics with that AMC, but it’s a broad industry trend. We’ve also seen a lot of rates being rolled over and no reduction happening also, so both we have seen.

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

And one follow-up on the — one data keeping question was on the ESOP expense. So what is the quarterly run rate which we should assume, I mean, last quarter you told INR9.5 crores, this time it is like INR6.5 crore. So going forward for the balance FY 2023 and for FY 2024 give us some numbers?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I clarified last time also, so you are right. So this is something like a cliff rate, the way we have to amortize as per accounting standard is the end of the anniversary of the option suddenly the cost amortization will come down. That’s how the standard requires us to amortize the cost. So just to give you a guidance for the year we expected the cost and we expect the cost to be around INR27.9 crores, okay? And what we have taken to the P&L in the first two quarters has been I think INR16.1 crores plus or minus a few lakhs, so I think it’s INR16.1 crores. So the balance you would see a lesser charge-off on ESOP for the INR11.5 crores, INR11.6 crores for the remaining two quarters, it won’t be the same number each quarter, but this is a number that we could work with because INR11.5 crores to INR11.7 crores charge for the remaining half of the year.

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

And for FY 2024?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Sorry, for the remaining six months?

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

For FY 2024 and for FY 2024?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Sorry, for FY — for next year FY 2024, the total expense and we’ll have to wait and see what is the additional grant that happens, so I’ll give you that caveat, the next year the expenses will be around INR14 crores.

Sahej Mittal — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Got it, got it. Thanks, that will be all from my side, thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Avinash Singh from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Yeah, good morning, a broader question I mean, I mean the way business new business is shaping up, there are so many sort of business areas, so like starting with mutual fund now the opportunity on the insurance side on the alternative side account aggregator, I mean, there are many and quite scalable. Now there are two sort of I would say, of course, that play I mean of massive volume growth opportunity in each of the areas, but this volume growth also come to price competition or kind of being a B2B also comes the price increases. In all this backdrop, I mean, if we were to just sum it up because of some of the areas are just emerging. How do you see, I mean your top line net revenue growth over the next couple of years. That’s one question.

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Sure. So let me start with AI first, where we are seeing because it is complex suite of services around over a platform, prices are largely holding. Do remember that each of the markets that I’m going to speak about none of them is a two-player market, there are four player, five player and basically multi participant markets unlike mutual funds. But in the AIF we are finding that price is holding, which means we are not seeing too much of price attrition because of competitive pressures, yet we will have to see because there are five or six players that participate, how that turns out.

In this quarter, you saw that we have spoken about a 30% year-on-year growth. Now, of course, the base isn’t that large yet, although it represents 50% of the market also share the basis in that plan, as the base expands, I would say, any revenue growth between 20% to 25% will be a creditable growth. So for both this year and next year if we are able to accomplish that number, I think we will be happy and to be able to hold the price line. So that’s on AIF.

On insurance, you know that it’s a license market, but there are four license fees and it is reasonable to expect some degree of price competition, price competition has already happened in that industry if you see in comparison to any other Demat holding, I would say the prices are comparable to even lower than that. So as the market expands, although the amount of investment each player has to make is humongous and the quality of service will come under test because right now it’s not been a core player, not everybody not every consumer have any insurance account, there will be a time when everyone has and the pressure of performance will mount. We expect that there could be some price attrition from this level may not be very large, but a 10 to 20 price attrition may happen, but we are confident of turning in reasonable profitability at those prices. But you’re right both in AIF and in insurance, it’s a set of players who are participating. And if we continue to do value-based competition rather than price-based competition, it will obviously accretive to everyone, including to the marketplace.

Account aggregator and PSP, although again there are named players and it’s a license market, we are seeing some degree of I would say irrational pricing, is that going to last for a long time? We don’t know. We are up against set of players. We have not encountered in the past, so we are trying to figure out their behaviors etc. Camps has always been a value player, which means we don’t try to enter a market at zero, near zero pricing and then try to expand share and then think of price increases, that’s a very hard do a cycle to be a part of. But then there are players who will always believe in those things. So that is one market I would say the account aggregator market which has seen some degree of irrational pricing. We will continue to keep you guys updated on how that pans out.

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

So on a net-net I mean if I were to sort of, we were to just protesting together and of course your whole large party mutual fund, what kind of revenue growth expectation do you have for the second half of this year and next year whole console revenues?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Are you asking for the company as a whole?

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Yes, yes.

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Sorry, you voce is not clear, if you don’t mind, if you can repeat the question.

Operator

[Technical Issues]

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Yeah, is it better now?

Operator

[Technical Issues] still the same, we can hear some disturbance from your line.

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Yeah, is it better now?

Operator

Yes, sir.

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Yeah, so my question is, I mean in this backdrop of quite detailed explanation of segments, what sort of a consolidated business revenue growth for the company as a whole you see for the second half this year and next?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

So while we would — generally don’t give specific guidances on revenue numbers, yeah, we had, we were around INR480 crores in the first half of this this year. So what we will say is the new business revenue whether in repository or in account aggregator would probably not kick in a large extent by this — by the next quarter or two, so that is more kind of a FY 2024 story because of regulatory reasons for insurance repository, as well as you know the market being what it is and we’ll have to kind of further develop for the purpose of ATSB very exacting phases, AF will continue to grow.

So we have always said that it will be — 90% of revenue is the mutual fund revenue. So it will be guided by what happens from an asset growth perspective and we should be confident of mirroring to a large extent if not 100% the growth in assets that we expect over the next six months as the top line growth. I think that’s where we will leave it at.

Operator

Mr. Singh, does that answer your question?

Avinash Singh — Emkay Global — Analyst

Yes, yes. I’m done. Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from the line of Ansuman Deb from ICICI Securities, please go ahead.

Ansuman Deb — ICICI Securities — Analyst

Yeah, good morning, sir and thanks for the opportunity. My question was regarding the cost that you said, considering that we have already spent on the AIF as well as the [Indecipherable] as well as the platform that you pointed to the insurance thing. Also some of these of course would be lower. So in many ways, could we understand that the quarterly cost that we’re seeing in Q2 is broadly should remain at this level going ahead, which means that Q1 was kind of a bottom of — and bottom margin and if that is the case, would we be able to kind of think of a margin more like around 45, mid ’40s going ahead. That is my question.

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

So, Ansuman, broadly I would agree with you that quarter one was probably — we saw the salary cost coming in, in terms of the increases we had to give, given the job market and the tech resources. Let me put it this way that we are not on a hiring spree, it’s not as if we’re going to keep adding rather other than technology resources investments we make in security and infra, it’s not going to be a huge investment that we are going to incrementally do on other things. So I think the cost will be pretty stable at least for the next couple of quarters. Again the April cycle, we’ll have to see, but for the next couple of quarters, we expect the cost to be reasonably stable. That’s not to say it’s going to be the same number, but it’s going to be reasonably stable. And from a margin perspective, I know the common refrain has been the operating leverage playing out and that’s been your view too.

So we have to wait and see, while we are comfortable with where we are in terms of margin now, whether it will go beyond 45 is something that we’ll have to wait and see. But as we already continue to guide, we will be in the early ’40s in a reasonable quarter. I think we’ll continue to hit that number. The upside could come when the new business start giving substantial revenue going forward, but that’s probably a couple of quarters away.

Ansuman Deb — ICICI Securities — Analyst

Right, sir. And last question from my side is on the possible star in terms of revenue optionalities, you were mentioning about AIF and now, it has been shaping up well. So now if I were to look at the main sources of revenues would be totally AIF DAKSP in FY 2024 and the insurance repository, right, these three would you put it as a top three kind of possible revenue sources?

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely we’ll put them as first three and maybe, although I think that list is a good enough list in terms of order because AIF is largely a signed business which yields revenue with about two to three months lag is easier to predict. So should remain at the top. Insurance depending upon how fast the regulatory guidelines come in with specific dates, because right now it’s a statement of intent, the firm dates have to be announced. But as and when that gets announced, there will be a scramble to meet them. And like we’ve said, because consumers are anyways savy on digital management of their investments. We don’t see too much reluctance coming in from investors to open their insurance accounts, so that could be number two.

And then with all the momentum that we’re seeing on the account aggregator side, I would stack them as one, two or three in that order, but certainly you’ve got the order right.

Ansuman Deb — ICICI Securities — Analyst

Right. And there is a positive surprise in term space, the payment thing then what is driving that growth in, is it purely a number of transactions or anything that?

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

No, it is purely number of transactions and the ACH continues to be very stable and with the major market share from Mutual Fund perspective. We’ve also seen some uptick from a digital perspective, which is your non-ACH in terms of, as we said UP order we launched although it’s in a small way, we also have the net banking, we have the debit card, we have the IMPS specification that’s in because of the regulatory changes. So the ACH remain stable kind of being the major share from my perspective, digital revenue has come up in the last quarter and that’s the positive surprise that you’re seeing.

Operator

Thank you. Mr. Deb may we request that you return to the question queue for follow-up questions. We’ll take the next question from the line of Sagar Gandhi from Future Generali Life Insurance. Please go ahead.

Sagar Gandhi — Future Generali Life Insurance — Analyst

Yeah, good morning, sir. Sir my question is while you’ve highlighted that alternative insurance and AK will be your top five businesses in your new segment, does that also remain the order of when I ask you something like this, which business will clock 20 crores of EBITDA first, so will the order remain the same or will the order change?

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Well, without making too much of forward-looking statement, I think 20 crore EBITDA has to be a result of and again I’m talking in a very approximate manner of 40 crore or 50 crore revenue. The way things are looking right now just in terms of current size of course tough to predict future size in terms of who will get their first. Alternatives looks like will be the first to get there. I’m sure the other business would like to prove me wrong but that is the way I would look at it right now.

Sagar Gandhi — Future Generali Life Insurance — Analyst

Okay. And this will be followed by insurance and broadly in your estimate, it may not happen that way, but that is how…

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Yeah, certainly, the only difference I would say between insurance and today is that if regulatory guidelines state reasonably aggressive date for the market behavior to change, then consumers react very quickly and the options they have go away. While in the case of account aggregator for consumers to react, the first part is already done, which means everybody is linked at least in banking all the banks are FYP, but for active change to happen at the consumer level and consumer is not just the individual consumer I’m talking the FIU or the Financial Information User, that may still take a bit of cycle times, yeah, I mean that is the way we would think about it right now and we will continue updating you as the whole thing affords itself.

Sagar Gandhi — Future Generali Life Insurance — Analyst

Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Punit Kumar from Reliable Investments. Please go ahead.

Punit Kumar — Reliable Investments — Analyst

Good morning, sir. My name is Punit, I’m calling from Delhi. I would like this question to be answered by Mr. Ramcharan, I’m looking for basically, I’m seeing the two sides of the Company, I would like which side I should look at? First side that the investor presentation, so many engine, so many companies which create future that is one side. Second part of the first side is Mr. Anuj presenting with some lakhs of crores plus some lakhs crore, we’ll get billions of transactions added etc., these are the positive sides. The negative side I see in the consolidated P&L is yes, the increase from 231 crores to 249 crores, which means that we have added 18 crores and we have added 21.5 crore to the retrievers. So its — sales is actually minus 3 crores. And if I see the bottom line [Technical Issues] So which side should I look, how is the company doing I cannot and I’m confused. Thank you so much.

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

So, I’ll try to kind of clarify, I’m sorry, if something got confusion to you. So the only numbers that are relevant is obviously the consolidated numbers and those numbers are uploaded in my in the sebi website as well as in the exchange and the earnings presentation has the same number. So just as a summary, the sales have gone up by 6.3% year-on-year at 2.4% quarter-on-quarter, that is the 242 crores numbers that you see which is attributable to the increase in the assets under management by the similar number, there is no confusion on that and you don’t have to worry about subsidiaries separately because barring one, which is a very small component remaining things are 100% subsidiaries. The subsidies are more from a regulatory perspective because IRD will require a separate company, RB will require a separate company for account aggregator and then other things like that and SEBI for KYC.

So for our purposes purposes, all of these are 100% subsidiaries, they have done only for regulatory reasons, there is minority interest barring one. So you should look only at the consolidated numbers, which is the number that we have, which we have uploaded in the website, as well as the number that you see in the earning presentation. So the 242 crores is the increase that you have seen, the asset-based revenue increase you have seen, the sequential growth in profit has been 8% on EBITDA perspective and 11% from a PBT perspective, these are the same numbers that you will see in all the presentation and from a PBT perspective, you’ve seen a 11% growth quarter-on-quarter and stable year-on-year, that’s the 197 crore, that is 97 crore number that you will see.

And from a pack perspective, you’ll see a number of 72.14 crores, that is the number you will see from a consol perspective, as well as what you will see from the earnings presentation. So the numbers that we spoke about are all consolidated numbers, there is a single number that you would see, as a investor, if you feel that somehow it is confusing, we will take the feedback and the kind of address it to you separately. But you don’t have to worry about the subsidiaries, you don’t have to worry about every other filing, you see consolidated number that we filed with the exchange, as well as with the earnings presentation that is relevant for this.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. Should you have any further questions, please reach out to Anish Sawlani at Shareholder Relations at @camsonline.com. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ramcharan, Chief Financial Officer for closing comments.

Ramcharan SR — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, thanks. On behalf of the Cams management, I would like to thank the participants for their continued interest in CAMS and for any further questions, please feel free to contract contact IR Orient Capital or Anish Sawlani at the coordinate that I mentioned in our presentation. Once again, thank you for your participation and continue to please follow CAMS and please get back to us in terms of any questions.

Anuj Kumar — Managing Director

Thank you, [Technical Issues].

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]