Metropolis Healthcare Limited (NSE: METROPOLIS) Q4 FY23 earnings concall dated May. 16, 2023
Corporate Participants:
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Surendran Chemmenkotil — Chief Executive Officer
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Prakash Agarwal — Axis Capital Limited — Analyst
Tanmay Gandhi — Investec India — Analyst
Shyam Srinivasan — Goldman Sachs — Analyst
Rahul Agarwal — InCred Capital — Analyst
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Aditya — Securities Investment Management Company — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q4 FY 2023 Earnings Conference call of Metropolis Healthcare Limited, hosted by Axis Capital Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements do not guarantee the future performance of the company and it may involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict.
[Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I now hand the call to Mr. Prakash Agarwal from Axis Capital Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Prakash Agarwal — Axis Capital Limited — Analyst
Yeah, thanks, Ryan, and good morning everyone. On behalf of Axis Capital, I, Prakash Agarwal, welcome you all for the Q4 fiscal ’23 earnings call for Metropolis Healthcare Limited. Today from the management we have Ms. Ameera Shah, Managing Director; Mr. Surendran Chemmenkotil, CEO; and Mr. Rakesh Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer.
With this, I hand over the call to Ms. Ameera for her opening remarks. Thank you.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Q4 FY ’23 earnings call. As mentioned, I’m joined by Suren and Rakesh and our IR advisors, HGA. We have uploaded our updated investor presentation and press release on the stock exchanges and the website and I hope you had the opportunity to go through the same.
FY ’23 has been a financially challenging year for the diagnostics industry. While we witnessed the entry of many new competitors, leading to more B2B discount and decentralized testing, on the B2C side, the industry witnessed certain changes in consumer trends like the increased adoption of digital technology. At the same time, there was a mismatch in the profit and loss in the first quarter when COVID revenues fell off deeply, while manpower costs from previous years has increased due to COVID.
The new industry trends in the last 18 to 24 months had weekend the unorganized players with the decline in volume growth as consumers are shifting to bigger brands and better customer experience. Further, in the absence of a regulatory environment, consumers are assuming the 2,000 labs who were approved for COVID PCR test are the more advanced labs compared to the rest of the organized sector of 3,000 [Phonetic] labs and migrating to these 2,000 due to brand. This will provide a long runway of growth for the organized sector.
Let me update you on the competitive landscape in the industry. Investors have been hearing a lot about competitive intensity in the last year. And while it is certainly true that the entry of many new competitors has brought a different dynamic to the table, the ground reality is that the competitive intensity is more nuanced than general and high in some pockets and not high income. The industry has been witnessing pricing pressure, particularly in the B2B semi-specialized segment, where the intermediate margin or customer discounts are expanding, but the price is not changing for the customer. And for Metropolis, this segment comprises a single-digit of our overall revenue. This is the easier entry point into the industry as the most scientific approach takes great expertise and time to build trust.
We are not facing heat in pricing on the B2C side, as customers come to us when they are unwell for critical areas and pricing is truly not the major factor in their decision-making or in the specialized segment in B2B where again, trust and quality drive prescription. This business, the value business and the highly discounted B2B was never our focus and therefore, does not dent Metropolis growth prospects. Even in our core markets like Bombay and Pune, there was a fear of competitive intensity impacting Metropolis growth. We have not seen this to be an obstacle in our growth in FY ’23. In fact, our growth in Mumbai and Pune from has been extremely strong and outperformed all peers.
Equipped with a strong scientific plan and opportunity to build density of centers in these markets, along with strong prescription generation from doctor and B2C activities, we believe a double-digit growth will continue in our key markets. As more illness volumes increase and as we have already now seen non-COVID normalizing, the organized players will be the biggest beneficiary and will grow at a faster pace by vis-a-vis the players which are focusing on discounts and low pricing first rather than science and customer. At Metropolis, we are successful in building this trust amongst the doctor fraternity and our consumers, which will help us with more sticky business and repeat it.
Specifically, FY ’23 was a challenging year for Metropolis, but also a critical year for our transitioning to Metropolis 3.0. Some of these challenges were external challenges like the financial impact of a steep drop of COVID PCR testing, higher time for normalization of non-COVID testing, many new competitors entering during COVID, which increased market intensity and the digital adoption by consumers, which itself was new in healthcare and required the industry to build new capabilities. Some were internal challenges like the change of the CEO, the vast rumor surrounding Metropolis and the promoters’ intent to raise investments, the unexpected income tax search faced by us and several large healthcare players and an unethical competitor using the Hitech brand for nine months and trying to fool consumers despite a legal trademark owned by Metropolis.
While some of these affected the momentum of business in FY ’23, the long-term opportunity continues to be robust and I’m happy to share that despite these challenges, Metropolis successfully reported 18% non-COVID revenue growth, which is the highest amongst leading players in the industry. Even excluding COVID, excluding the government contracts and excluding the acquisition, the growth was 15%, similar to pre-COVID. We continue to keep a laser-sharp focus on execution and we strengthened the quality of our business last year. We retained and expanded our talent pool, grew our network business significantly and built material new capabilities for the future.
We have also just concluded our Metropolis 3.0 three-year strategic planning and we’ll be happy to share details in the next quarter in that call. However, we would like to touch briefly upon few of the points. We will be looking at a very aggressive network expansion in the next three years. We will focus on penetrating deeper in our core geographies by expanding our reach into Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns and these allocations where Metropolis enjoys brand recognition. We’re also widening our geographies by entering relatively new market in North and East and have been able to successfully grow in these markets as well.
In this last year we have opened five new labs in the North in Bareli, Dwarka, Ambala, Noida and Faridabad. And have grown faster than competition in the specialized segment. Our growth in North India was at 30% in Q4 FY ’23 due to improved brand recognition amongst doctors and hospitals and more D2C activities kicking our brand to the consumer for wellness. We continue to commit our energies and resources to our strategy of opening 90 labs and 1,800 plus centers by 2025 across the country. Of which we have so far completed 30 labs and how 1,057 centers in the last two years.
The second thing we’ll be focusing on will be wellness testing. We’ve created the right set of wellness packages based on data analytics and science and have been educating consumers via our D2C engagement model for wellness packages. We believe that revenues will be a strong pillar of growth for Metropolis going forward and we don’t use price as a USP like many peers in the industry, but the brand promise of better content that you could improve your health. The trust that results are accurate and the ease to engage with Metropolis at the click of a button. Our average realization for these premium packages is INR2,000 plus and these tests are margin-accretive to Metropolis. In Metropolis 3.0, we will continue to focus on our wellness business and take our current contribution of 15% closer to 20% in the future.
The third area we will focus on is our specialized test and menu. As we know that Metropolis has the widest range of test menu on our umbrella and we are continuously adding more and more. This last year we added 83 new test in FY ’23 and in this next year we will continue to engage with the scientific community, educate them on the better and alternative test available with Metropolis and add one test every three days. We are also adding people in our sales force to strengthen and accelerate our doctor engagement activities in our new geographies to gain doctor’s trust for higher volume, especially for fresh lifestyle.
We have increased our doctor outreach program by conducting CMEs, which is Continuing Medical Education programs and approach new specialized doctors in our core geography and new territories as well. We have done approximately 200 CMEs in the FY ’23 and have approached more than 10,000 new doctors through one-on-one connect and 20,000 doctors, particularly through Metro bot, especially the doctor practicing in the field of oncology, gastroenterology, neurosurgeons. These are all the specialized doctors in the country. We are happy to inform you that these doctors have been continuously engaging with our team to exchange thoughts from that outcome. In the next year, we plan to conduct more than 500 CMEs and continue to expand our reach to many more doctors on a continuous basis.
The fourth thing that we’ll focus on will be to continue to strengthen our IT infrastructure. As we know, we have been driving significant growth via digital channels and we have adapted from being only scientifically focused pre-COVID and driving doctor-led B2C business to now also being a brand-led business driving D2C, which is direct-to-consumer testing. We have built our new technology stack with new and improved app, redesigned website and a new channel via WhatsApp Messenger, that will help us serve all our customers better and drive more efficiencies in the business. Pilots of the new technology have been rolled out and will be completed in quarter one of this year across India. This will significantly improve customer experience, although our NPS is already high, we believe that this can go even further and improve our visibility and data analytics in the business.
If we look at the last opportunity will be inorganic opportunity and a complementary business. Apart from the organic growth, we will continue to explore bolt-on acquisitions to grow via the organic route. We believe sooner or later, the industry has to consolidate with two large players controlling the majority of the market share on a pan-India basis and regional competition in specified pockets. We continuously look out for opportunities which will be a strategic fit for metropolis in terms of culture, D&A, sticky consumer play but at the right track.
We’re also exploring opportunities in the basic radiology space, which is a strategic cross-sell for Metropolis due to its wide reach through its network across the country and brand equity. Basic radiology usually is things like ECG, X-rays, sonography, MRI and CT. We are extremely happy and proud to inform that Metropolis is the first diagnostics company certified as a Great Place to Work. In the industry of a short pool of talent we have been able to retain and add more talent to our organization.
I’d like to just quickly comment on our ESG initiatives. And most of our initiatives, really focused on energy conservation, water and waste management, strengthening the diversity and inclusion program and improving the diversity and new hire ratio, launch of an exclusive program on women’s leadership. We foster diverse and accountable governance by partnering with external consultants to initiate with the consulting firm the process of ISO, continue to maintain high ethical standards, protecting and securing data, infrastructure and identity and from a governance perspective complete patient privacy and electronic health records. We have enabled a program to set targets for each of these and track our progress against these consistently.
With this, I’d like to hand over to Suren, for an update on the year gone by, along with the execution plans going forward. He has nicely settled into Metropolis and is bringing in stronger execution rigor and I’m confident of the success of our plans with the new momentum that I’m seeing.
Over to you, Surendran.
Surendran Chemmenkotil — Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Ameera, and good morning, everyone. So on business trend, while our reported numbers show a decline, the underlying story is very promising. Our core business growth, that is revenue excluding COVID testing, Hitech and the PPP contract, which is not our core focus area, our revenues for quarter four grew by 15% year-on year. This is under pre-pandemic levels. The same 15% growth was delivered for the whole year as well. The PPP contract’s impact was due to government decision to insource a business, which is earlier managed by Metropolis. All tender business will come to an end, depending upon the years it was contracted for. This has impacted quarter four numbers. However, the positive news is that the core business revenue is growing faster than the market and the peer, driven by volume growth of 13% and RPP increase of 2% for full-year ’23.
The quality of growth is strong as driven by B2C revenue growth, which has been 17% for quarter four ’23 and 20% for full-year ’23. We have been able to deliver 18% B2C growth in Mumbai and 23% B2C growth in Pune, highlighting our strength in our core geographies despite competition from existing players and entry of new players. The growth in these markets is a mix of volume, RPP and product mix. At the end of March, we have taken a price increase of approximately 4% on about 900 low-volume tests, which should give a net benefit of on overall revenues of approximately 1% for full-year ’23-’24 and also we will evaluate a price increase on other tests in the course of the year.
For margins, our operating EBITDA margins are comparable to pre-COVID in the range of 27%, while the reported margin is about 25.5%. The gap is on account of new investments in network expansion, which diluted the margin by about 120 bps. In spite of this aggressive lab expansion, we have delivered the highest margins amongst similar industry players. This has been a combination of operational efficiency, realization benefits and product mix, giving — driving specialized test and premium wellness. We believe with normalized volumes and higher productivity from new business, new investments in the network, we will be able to deliver better margins in the future. In prescription from doctors for illness and specialized B2B segment, where accuracy and test are more critical, we do not envisage much pricing pressure.
We believe technology is important for the evolving business needs and during COVID, while we saw digital platforms play a superlative roll in all industries, including healthcare, this trend not continued as significantly post COVID. Now, the use of technology is more inclined for servicing the consumer and enhancing the overall experience less as a customer acquisition tool. While many wellness and affording tech-savvy consumer-preferred digital booking and home visits, many middle-class consumers on the illness side prefer walk-in to a center for their diagnostics requirement or getting a home visit via a form. Hence, we have been deploying equal focus on the digital platform and our network expansion strategy.
A Metropolis customer can access services as comfortably through both options. While home visits continued to grow, this is a normalized growth and not a hockey-stick growth. While most peers do home visits through franchisee centers, at Metropolis part of it gets accounted directly and part of it is scattered through our retail franchise centers. Both get accounted as a part of the B2C revenue, but it is difficult to differentiate home visit versus walk-in at the retail franchisee central level.
Moving on to update on Hitech, as mentioned Hitech was a strategic fit under the Metropolis umbrella to expand a middle-income brand in Tamil Nadu. As mentioned, poaching by an unorganized player in the South, which had impacted revenue growth of for about nine months. However, we defended our trademark and won and stabilized our operations and brand and still grew positively. We are confident on Hitech business going forward. Our strategies will be add another 50 centers in the next one year, having a faster industry growth in full year ’24, focus on margin expansion with increased efficiency and productivity, operating leverage playing out.
Margins in Hitech for full-year ’23 stood at 27%, which we believe will increase going forward. Addition of test menu to attain better product mix and productivity per center, deployment of talent, especially from the scientific engagement perspective to cross-sell more specialized test, which is currently offered by Metropolis and also by creating a digital journey for customers for acquisition and servicing of customers.
Coming to the strategy for Metropolis going forward. We will have a clear focus on expanding the network aggressively. We aim to expand our lab network in strong states of Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra to provide complete testing services in Tier 2, Tier 3 markets and strengthen our leadership position at the state level. Additionally, we plan to enter strategic locations to penetrate newer markets, especially in the states of Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. We plan to open 30 new labs, around 800 centers in full year ’24 as compared to 14 labs and 540 centers last year.
While the larger network will surely drive us the volumes and revenue, we would also want to increase the visibility of Metropolis brand across the country and improve revenue productivity for center. We have deployed lot of data analytics in the strategic planning of labs and collection centers and a separate distribution and project team which will be directly reporting to me for opening up labs till they reach maturity with a stipulated timeframe. With this focus, our goal is to start labs and centers on-time and improve success rates on opening new centers. With stronger execution rigor, we believe the business will be on track to deliver better volumes and growth. Not only our focus will be to expand our network, but also as I mentioned focus on enhancing the productivity of each center, especially the young network through our B2C engagement model.
We have been working on, working to strengthen our digital and technology capabilities over the last one year. We have been introducing various B2C engagement program via our web, mobile app and social media platforms. Through this engagements we ensure customer acquisition and educating the customer who has the right set of tests, packages or symptom to take an appropriate test. We have recently enabled our system to engage customers who have WhatsApp chatbot, is virtually AI, which which will help to solve most of the queries via WhatsApp chat and casual services. The feature has function like test booking, center location optimization, reports with historical trend, suggested test, etc. and also be able to track the lifecycle of a member enabling us to have focused engagements.
We believe in our industry, whether for ordering medicine or booking diagnostic tests, these are transactional purchases where some consumers log into the app only when they need to order something or to book a test. We do not see a much browsing time on the app, or engagement over content and this is seen by low time spend by the consumers on this app. So, while Metropolis will completely omni-channel, we believe this will be used more for servicing a customer and for customer lifecycle management. Online customer acquisition will happen, primarily via the website and majority of customer acquisition will be offline.
On the back-end, we have been piloted our new sales and service CRM and the initiation tools, which will enable the customer experience. In full year ’24, we will roll out significant lab automation and process automation for better productivity and a separate module for our B2B customer for ease of doing business. We are definitely working on increasing our revenues through digital media. And alongside making our back-end system stronger for better processes and control for enhancing productivity.
Now, on the wellness. We have also been — we have seen volumes picking up from the wellness segment and are hopeful of this trend to continue. Additionally, the spread of healthcare services and insurance has made the diagnostic industry the critical segment of the industry. The collaboration of various corporates and MNCs, diagnostic center for healthcare checkup for their staff and families will further boost the volume, especially for the large organized players on pan-India basis. For Metropolis, our wellness segment has gone exceptionally — shown an exceptional growth of 45% last year with revenue contribution moving to 15% of the total pie. We believe the opportunity here continues and we aim to take this number closer to 20%.
On the B2C engagement, we have done about 800 number of health checkup camps in the last year and would be activating these efforts to engage more direct to consumer for targeting customers’ repeat testing. These health checkups camps are basically done for last societies or to capture a catchment area within a specified geography. These camps typically add more branding and customer outreach for Metropolis, which will officially help us in consumer acquisition and retention. This will act as a funnel for customer acquisition and cross-sell and up-sell for chronic as well as wellness testing.
Now, to sum it up, we have witnessed a consistent high-teen to mid-teen growth of non-COVID revenues for the last four quarters not only by continuing to be very respected doctors across the country, but also by introducing technology and consumer connect that makes life easier for consumers. In quarter four, we have seen 15% growth in our core diagnostic business, excluding Hitech and PPP contracts. We believe Metropolis is rightly placed to attain higher market-share across geographies and should be able to outperform the industry growth on revenue front with better margins to follow.
With that, I’ll hand over to Rakesh Agarwal, CFO of Metropolis Healthcare.
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Thanks, Suren, and good morning, everyone. I will take you through few key highlights for the quarter and year ended full year ’23, following which we will open the floor for Q&A session.
Let me begin with operational highlights. First, our B2C revenue has grown at 17% for Q4 financial year ’23 and 20% for full-year financial ’23, indicating our strong doctor and consumer connect across market. Our B2C business for our focus cities like Mumbai and Pune has grown by 18% and 23% respectively. This is again witnessing our strong brand presence in our core geographies. The growth in focus cities has been a mix of volume and value growth. Volume growth indicating increasing market share and the value growth indicating better product mix and sustainable pricing.
Revenue share of the B2C business for focus cities stood at 60% in financial year ’23. We stick to our target of 65% contribution from B2C business in focus cities in the short to mid-term. Revenue contribution from B2C stood at 50% of the total revenue as compared to 47% in financial year ’22 and 42% in financial year ’20. Our B2C includes revenue from home visit and walk-in at our own and franchisees centers. It does not include B2B collections done by franchisee centers revenue from ARC, that is exclusive vis-a-vis franchisee centers.
Our specialized and premium wellness segment are the faster-growing segment. Revenue contribution from specialized test excluding COVID and allied test stood at 33% for quarter four financial year ’23, indicating a growth of 16% on Y-on-Y basis. Contribution from revenue from wellness increased from 11% in Q4, financial year ’22 to 15% in Q4 financial year ’23 with a growth of 43% on Y-on-Y basis. Wellness segment for full year ’23 grew by 45%. We have not only seen growth in our core geographies, but also on our lower core geographies. Our revenue in non-core market like North has grown by 30% for Q4 financial year ’23 on a Y-on-Y basis, on which 25% has been account of volume growth and 5% on account of realized benefits. Of the above, core growth of 15%, 14% has been driven by volume growth and 1% has been on account of the realization benefit.
Let us now come to the Q4 and full year financial year key financial highlights. Total revenue for Q4 financial year ’23 stood at INR283 crores and for financial year ’23 stood at INR1,148 crores. Non-COVID revenue for financial year ’23 stood at INR1,104 crores at a growth of 18% for financial year ’23 on Y-on-Y basis. Non-COVID revenue for Q4 financial year ’23 grew by 9% for Q4 financial year ’23 and stood at INR276 crores. EBITDA before CSR and ESOP is at INR72.5 crore in Q4 financial year ’23 as compared to INR82.2 crore in Q4 financial ’22.
EBITDA before CSR and ESOP for financial year ’23 [Phonetic] stood at INR304.4 crores. EBITDA margin before CSR and ESOP stood at 25.7% for Q4 financial year ’23 and 26.5% for financial year ’23. Profit after tax stood at INR33.5 crores in quarter four financial year ’23. PAT margin has been impacted on account of higher interest cost due to equation of Hitech diagnostic and higher depreciation on account of investment then to fill the future engine growth. Since we have paid out our majority of the debt and balance INR79 crores is planned to be paid in H1 of this year. We expect increase in PAT margin going forward.
PAT for financial year ’23 stood at INR143.4 crores as compared to INR214.7 crores, down by 33%. However, we had one-time exception gain in financial year ’23 — ’22 of INR16 crores. If you exclude that one-off gain, but from the base year, PAT will be down by 26%. We envisage PAT margin to grow going forward on the back of low interest cost on account of debt repayment by H1 of this financial year.
Coming to our working capital ratios, our debtors days as on March ’23 stood at 30 days and there is a slight improvement as compared to March ’22. Overall working capital stood at 14 days as of March ’23, which is at similar level as compared to March ’22. Our OAC [Phonetic] to EBITDA is stronger at 102% for financial year ’23. Cash and cash equivalents stood at INR106 crore as on March ’23. Gross debt stood at INR79 crore as on March ’23. We plan to repay this debt by H1 financial year ’24.
This is all from our side. We now leave the floor open for Q&A. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Tanmay Gandhi with Investec. Please go ahead. Tanmay, your line is unmuted, you could please ask your question.
Tanmay Gandhi — Investec India — Analyst
Hello. Hi, good morning. So, my first question is on the PPP revenue. So, it accounted for almost 5% to 6% of the revenue in 4Q FY ’22, right. So, why is this not a core segment for us to focus on given that it’s margin accretive realization accretive and why we are unable to renew the contract given we have strong presence in specialized testing?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Thanks for the question, Tanmay. I think PPP has not been a focus area for Metropolis because frankly, this contract was a one-off contract, which focused on specialized test. All the other PPP contracts in India only focus on routine tests and it’s very commoditized. And the quality of service is expected and therefore the price connection, we don’t feel matches the kind of products that Metropolis provide. So therefore, it is not a core focus for us. The macro contract was a one-off contract, which focused on specialized test, which is why we had bid for it. And we won it for the initial three years, which then got extended for another two years because they were very happy with our work. At the end of five years, the government decided to do this testing on their own. So actually, they have not done a new tender at all and they have not given it to anybody else either. They decided to in-source it. So, tender business as we know will come and have a contractual period and therefore, our focus has always been more on the core business, which is about sort of a continuing revenue, which is not based on our contracted business in short period of year.
Tanmay Gandhi — Investec India — Analyst
Understood. And secondly, on the realization front. So, if you look at our wellness realization, so it has declined by 8% to 9% year-on year. And even if you look at last three, four quarters trend, it has been declining. So, anything to read into it and how do we expect realization growth going forward?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Yeah, I think Metropolis has always been in the premium wellness space. And if you just step back and look at that, our earlier realizations were close to 2,800, we are currently close to 2,100. So, it’s really not in the mass space at all where most mass health checkups are in 500, 400, 600, so we are very much still in the premium wellness space. We’re just based on different markets. So for example, in our urban city or in a city like Bombay, you may — we still get much higher realization or a Pune or other market, but in obviously smaller markets, your realizations will be lesser. So, as the geography mix is changing slightly and as we are trying to create even more inclusivity into our packages, our range is really between 2,000 to 3,000 and we expect to maintain within that.
Tanmay Gandhi — Investec India — Analyst
Got it, thanks.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Shyam Srinivasan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Shyam Srinivasan — Goldman Sachs — Analyst
Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. Just the first one is on volume growth. I think core like what you’re calling out core business volume growth of 15%, can you help us disaggregate it into like same-store plus network? I’m just trying to see what’s the impact of the new network additions that you have done over the last couple of years. How — what is the kind of volumes it’s contributing versus our pre-existing stores?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
So yes, you are right that our core business volume growth is around 14% for the full year and 15% for quarter-ending Q4 and the total revenue contributed by the new network, which is coming in after April ’22 is around 4% and this is increasing as the network is maturing. So, whatever came after April ’22, the contribution is 4% as of now on the total revenue and the volume contribution is again in a more or less in range and wish to grow as we matured enough in future.
Shyam Srinivasan — Goldman Sachs — Analyst
Rakesh, thanks for that. So, if I then break it down, 10% has come from old stores before April 2022 and 4% has come from stores after 2022, is that correct?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yes.
Shyam Srinivasan — Goldman Sachs — Analyst
Okay. So, in terms of the 10% growth on the mature stores, if I can use the term, so what is driving growth there for us specifically. Is it penetration increasing at these stores or if you can help us understand the dynamics there, please?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
So, yeah, definitely one is obviously the patient coming in per store is increasing for us and we are seeing that continuously. We are going as rightly mentioned earlier also that D2C reaches we are increasing in our core areas and we are doing lot of health camps, which is giving us a lot of visibility. So, we are continuously seeing the patient per center going up in our own center as well as franchisee center and that is the major area, which is increasing our volume and growth in the current center.
Shyam Srinivasan — Goldman Sachs — Analyst
Just last couple of questions. I’ll keep it short. Mr. Surendran talked about price increases, 4% price hike in March. So, what’s the motivation for taking price increases? And when we talk about evaluating price increase for the rest of the portfolio, so what gives us the comfort. I think Ms. Ameera also talked about competition. So just trying to weigh in the competitive dynamics versus the price hike what we are contemplating.
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
So, this price of 4% is done basically on very selected test of 900. So, we have not changed the overall portfolio. This 900 tests are basically specialized segment test, where there is a low volume and we feel that the competition pressure is much lower in this 800, 900 test and that is the reason why we have taken a bit of moderating price increase in this test and as said by Surendran this whole increase of price will give us around 1% of the growth in the coming year, which will be full year ’23-’24, and we will contemplate as we go forward in the — in ’23-’24 that whether we have further opportunities of price increase, because we have seen our competitor actually increasing price more aggressively, but we have been bit muted in this. But we will see if the opportunity arises and will get this opportunity in ’23-’24 [Phonetic].
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Just to add to that, we believe that the brand premium is strong and people would accept price increases, but I think the key question to ask at this point is the focus on volume or is the focus on RPT realization. So, while we believe that there is an acceptance of price increase, we are choosing at this point to grow the volume without really impacting realization through price and really impacting the realizations more through product mix as we keep moving up the ladder and as we keep trying to push more and more specialized test. So, I think that’s more of our strategy, but we believe, like we said that the brand premium can sustain the price increase if we choose to go in that direction.
Shyam Srinivasan — Goldman Sachs — Analyst
Very helpful. Last data point. Maybe you can get it offline as well, but just the split of volume into RT-PCR. I know it’s getting smaller PPP contract, core volume when you call it which is non-COVID, non-PPP, non-Hitech. So if we can get the split even later is fine, but just a request. Thanks.
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, we will get back to you. Definitely.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Rahul Agarwal with InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Rahul Agarwal — InCred Capital — Analyst
Yeah, hi, good morning, thank you for the opportunity. First question to Ameera, essentially on the market behavior and the sentiment. So, in three-part question, have you seen entry of new players, specifically in the last 12 months, because I see none? Second is in terms of employee attrition behavior, do you see that has normalized for maximum brands like you because it was — it seems like it was higher than — there are lot of entry of new digital labs. And third is on the — since normal life is back and normal infections are back, obviously that helps non-COVID volume, do you see next three years better than the last three years, specifically on the non-COVID business. That’s the first question.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Thank you. Thanks for the question. For sure, I’ll start with the last one. I believe the next three years will be definitely superior to the last three years as far as non-COVID goes. Obviously, the two years of COVID really brought down the non-COVID business. And obviously, this last year with a lot of consumer trends and disruption happening with competitive entry, as well as the trends changing and more than anything, non COVID not coming back to its normalcy was like I said, a challenging year. So, I believe the next three years for the industry for the organized sector will be I think quite strong for non-COVID and I certainly think Metropolis will be ahead of the pack, just from the perspective of the opportunity for us as well as the execution plan that we have.
Your second question, as far new people coming in the last 12 months, I would say after the announcements that were made of bunch of pharma companies coming in, hospital companies etc., I think some of them are still in preparation mode. Couple of them have not launched yet. One of them has not launched yet, and I think that launch will happen this year for pharma company, but I think, otherwise everybody is already launched and is already operating in the market. So, we don’t — we are not expecting at this point any new entrants to come in who have not already come in.
And thirdly, your question around attrition and just one point that you know even when these new players have come in, like we said, we have not really seen any of the new players do anything in a very different way. It’s definitely more off a sort of a similar and pursuing two parts of business. One is the value wellness business, which is around INR500, INR600 patient as well as the B2B discounted business, which is a semi specialized. But again, the revenue per test tend to be much lower. Not only because these tests tend to be less critical clinically but also because of the high discounting. So, we’re not expecting to see anything very different from that from any new players coming in.
On the last question of attrition, the occasion, we saw during the COVID years was more on the scientific side, because everybody who wanted to start COVID testing was looking for trained people in the molecular biology department. So, we certainly saw technical team attrition at that time. The last year, the attrition we saw was actually not because of the digital players, was more because of the players from the hospital pharma companies entering and who wanted salespeople in their offline work, right. Actually if you see the the people who started as digital players have actually all moved to offline as well. Because they have understood that the demand online, which actually spiked during COVID for COVID testing as well as for wellness has definitely come down and that demand is now non-sustaining that growth of revenues anymore and therefore all of them are attempting to again go after this B2B discounted semi-specialized business offline. And therefore, their cost base is increasing quite dramatically and without obviously or the lack of sort of the large test menu, or all of that, the challenges will be obviously there. But I think we’re definitely seeing the competitive intensity not be as big as it was last year.
Rahul Agarwal — InCred Capital — Analyst
Perfect. And second question is on numbers, just specifically on PPP, this INR76 crores in fiscal ’22 has come down to INR67 crores, what should we expect for fiscal ’24, because I’m not really sure what was the macro annual revenue? And secondly, on the margins, does that hold-up at current levels, 25.5% going-forward or do you expect more dilution because of your investment into infra and IT? That’s all from my side.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Sure. So, on the PPP, we, like we said the PPP contract ended in February of ’23 and therefore, it has not reflected completely in this Q4 either, it only reflected for one month in Q4 and the two months in Q4, there was no revenue from PPP. Obviously, this business will not continue into FY ’23-’24 and that was about INR67 crores for the whole year in FY ’22-’23. As far as the margin goal, we are definitely aspirational that we would continue to protect the current margin.
As you know, we are continuing on the expansion — lab expansion, we’re adding 30 labs this year along 600 to 800 centers. And therefore, we want to continue to focus on expanding our market, our market share and our revenue growth. And we believe that these — this investment in margin, while it will continue to dilute, instead of the operational EBITDA at 27%, we have reported EBITDA of 25.5%, this 1.5% will continue to invest back in the business, because we know that at the point we stopped investing in new labs, we can very easily move back to an operational EBITDA level. So, I think that will continue to be our plan over the next couple of years.
Rahul Agarwal — InCred Capital — Analyst
Just a clarification, the INR67 crores was entirely macro is it?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
That’s right.
Rahul Agarwal — InCred Capital — Analyst
Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. All the best for fiscal ’24. Thank you.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Anuj Suneja with ICICI Prudential Life. Please go ahead.
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Yeah, hi. So, just one question on the lease liabilities front. If you can just explain, so I understand that labs have come in, but lease liabilities are up from INR180 crores broadly to about INR186 crores year-on year. So, could you please explain what all is included in this lease liabilities?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so basically the lease liabilities consists of two, three things. One, obviously we keep moving from the rental piece of the equipment, which we purchased. So, there is a two modeling equipment. One is the purchase model and the rental model. The moment we go with the rental model, there is one lease component, which is already included in that. The last year, we have moved a lot of contracts of ours from outright purchase model to lease model, because we had seen lot of benefit out of it. And if you can see, overall, our gross margin has increased.
So, that is one area where the more shift from a purchase model to a lease model from the equipment point of view, we will see this lease liability going up. Obviously, second is that our — the moment we open up a lot of APSC, PSC, there is a rent component, which is one of the major component coming into that. So, as we increase our lab, our central and we again have a [Indecipherable] plan this year, so the movement we increase our these centers so that rent component will come as lease liabilities. So, these are the two major components. But I will say that these equipment change of equipment contract from a outright purchase to lease model has made some difference in this amount.
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Okay, so that’s one. Just one last question, on the borrowings piece, so borrowings have come down significantly, which is a really big positive from INR259 crores to broadly around INR70 — INR80 crores now. So, would it be right to say that you have already paid up the loan that you have taken for Hitech?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yes, so there is only INR79 crores left out, which we are planning to pay in H1 this year and that will also help us to reduce our interest cost, which may reflect next year of PAT margin as well.
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Prakash Agarwal with Axis Capital Limited. Please go ahead.
Prakash Agarwal — Axis Capital Limited — Analyst
Yeah, thanks. Just one question on the guidance you gave on double-digit growth, so with expansion that you’re talking about, how do you think the double-digit would shape up. Would it be early teens, mid-teens or high-teens or it could cross even that?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Look I mean I think at this point, the point I mentioned about double-digit growth was actually specifically for Bombay and Pune. Look, I think on the core business side, I think there is a lot that we’re doing. There are many, many levers in place as far as the growth of business. One is obviously the geographic expansion, the infrastructure we talked about building, also potential realization and product mix improvement, wellness, so there are lot of levers at play, which are all under execution as we speak. And we are hopeful to sort of surprise ourselves this year to where the core business can reach.
So, I just want to be a little bit careful around giving too much guidance, but I think we are very hopeful, like I said about certainly this year and the next couple of years on the core business, just keeping aside the PPP side, but otherwise I think we are very excited and hopeful about this year and the next couple of years.
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Okay, great. You also mentioned about focus is on volumes, given the expansion and also spoke about that you’re investing 1.5% in the expansion of new centers, etc., so do you think with the current competitive landscape, achieving this 25% plus-minus is still achievable? Would that be correct to model it?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Like we said, look, the current margin is a reflection of three, four things. One, obviously, the competitive intensity has already been playing out for the last 18 to 24 months. And that’s already captured in the current margin. We are seeing obviously some segments of the business margin is not growing as fast. Some segments where the business margin is growing faster. So, it all depends upon which segment, which channel, which product to focus on and that’s going to determine your ultimate margins. But it’s also a reflection of some amount of efficiencies and productivity in the system. So as I mentioned, we are hopeful that we can continue to protect the current margin. And while we continue to expand [Indecipherable].
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Lovely. And lastly on your comment on bolt-on acquisitions. So, these are largely North and East and have the valuations come off versus what you would be seeing in the last two, three years?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
See frankly, in the last two, three years, we really did not attempt to do any bolt-on acquisition because the bolt-on acquisition size would be obviously quite small and the reality is the level of effort and integration required to do any acquisition, big or small is the same. And we never really attempted to do bolt-on the last two, three years. I think we were too busy with COVID and the crazy industry. But I think going in the next few years, certainly we would like to do that, that would be entry points into new markets. So, some of those could be even in West and South markets in which we do not have currently sort of strong leadership. It could be in small — it could be in a city in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, it could be in North and East. It could be Madhya Pradesh. So, it will be across the country but basically, looking at it from a city level and not looking at it from a state level.
Anuj Suneja — ICICI Prudential Life — Analyst
Okay, great, thanks. I’ll turn back to queue.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from with Sayantan Maji with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is on EBITDA margin. I read in your comment in your presentation that it will be back to pre-COVID levels once the network expansion that you are doing fully matures. So for example, if the network expansion happens in FY ’25 and it takes a — the last — in centers that added in FY ’25 if they’re maturing FY ’26-’27 [Phonetic], so by then over the longer-term, you expect the margins back to 27%, 28% that we were doing pre-COVID.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
So, pre-COVID, our margins were approximately between 26.5% to 27%, yes, our expectation is that once the lab expansion matures and gives us sort of normalized EBITDA, we do hope that we can come back to those places.
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Okay, great. And you mentioned about I think 800 collection centers in FY ’24, so we have added 1,000 since we undertook the network expansion. So, the remaining 800, most of it is coming in FY ’24, while say 50 labs, which are remaining out of the 90 labs, 30 are coming in FY ’24 and 20 in FY ’25. Is that correct?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, roughly, roughly. Actually, 30 labs out of the 90 has already come in and 30 more labs planned for this year. So, then that — we leave with about 30 more labs to come up from the plan of 90-30, and on the centers, 1,070 collections centers has already come up and roughly 800 will come in this year. So, we may be almost completing that aspiration in this financial year itself.
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Okay, got it. And the next question is on Hitech. So, in Hitech, the revenues have sort of declined from INR100 crore if I’m talking only non-COVID from INR100 crore to INR88 crore. So, is it due to the restructuring that we’re doing with the normalization of lab, service network? So, is it like a temporary thing and we expect the growth to come back to what the company — overall company is reporting in the next year?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, so Hitech, I think we have already explained it. There were some disturbance last year, which has happened because of some unethical poaching of the brand, etc., so I think that affected the momentum for us in Hitech for almost nine months, which is now back. If you look at the overall revenue, INR100 crore also included the [Indecipherable], which basically you’re not excluding that. So, we have moved INR83 crore, INR84 crore of revenue has moved to INR88 crore, which is not a big number, but yes, we are expecting that this number will in line with or maybe more than what we are expecting in Metropolis this year.
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Okay, got it. And my final question is on other income. So, on other income that has reported a steep decline this quarter. So, we used to report INR3 crore, INR4 crore, INR6 crore in the last quarter versus INR1.2 crore. So, what is the reason for this. Is there any one-off impact on this?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Other income is accumulation of a lot of factors. So one is, obviously you know the what is the cash you we have in hand and what is the interest income you’re earnings. So, if you look at, currently because we are more focused on repaying our loan, because that’s at a higher interest rate. So, that is a focus and we — and our cash in hand is quite small. So, the interest income generated from that cash in hand is lower. And if you look at quarter-on-quarter basis, last year we had other income of INR1.5 crore, which has come down to INR1.2 crore, which is not a significant drop.
But yes from overall year also, if you look at INR13.4 crore of other income in financial year ’22 has actually gone up by INR15.2 crore in financial year ’23. So, I will check back the numbers here, because you are giving a different number, so we will see why these numbers are showing a decline. Yeah, in quarter three financial year ’23, if you look at INR6.8 crores, there was one-off — one gain of some forex exchange and something. So that I think is coming into that. So, just we’ll explain that, otherwise it is in line with what we are looking at every quarter.
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Yeah, so that’s what actually was my next question, because in the presentation in Q4 FY ’22, it shows INR1.5 crore, but when we reported that was INR5.7 crore, so there were some dissonance over there. Anyway, so the large part of the decline is mainly due to interest income is what you’re saying?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
Yes, yes, yes.
Sayantan Maji — Credit Suisse — Analyst
Okay, okay, that’s it. Thank you for taking my questions.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Girish Shetty with Banyan Tree Advisors. Please go ahead.
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Hi, sir, congrats on a good set of results. Sir, just wanted to know on the breakup, so like you said, ma’am said, that the PPP revenue will go to zero from INR67 crores, right. And if I see your core business which is growing at around 15%, PPP zero and the COVID business will become negligible. So, how do you decide growth for the next year? Is this — overall base for this year like, [Indecipherable] but overall growth will be around 5% for FY ’24?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
No. I think that would be definitely more subdued than what our expectation is. So obviously, we are looking at the pieces in three parts. We are looking at one COVID, obviously, as we know is only going down. Even this year, there has been reasonable contribution from COVID, which obviously is as WHO has declared COVID is over and PCR testing is certainly not happening in any significant numbers. So, COVID will certainly go down. Yes, the NACO PPP will be zero and now it is going to be really up to the core business to be able to continue to grow through all the levers to be able to deliver sort of strong number. But we don’t — we certainly don’t think that the overall number is going to be as low as 5%.
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Okay. Ma’am if I see the number of tests, like if I compare the non-COVID period 2019 where you used to do around 17 million tests and now we are at 24.5 million. So, if I look at the four-year number, it comes to around 9.5% growth over a 4-year period. So, this also includes Hitech. How do we see this? Is this a normal or is the core business still not normal? How do we see this volume growth over a four-year period and comparing like-to-like as in non-COVID to non-COVID margin.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
As you see, we have done about 11% revenue CAGR in this four-year period and the volume growth, like you said, is about 9.5%. The challenge with looking at a CAGR when you are looking with the crisis in the middle for 2.5 years is a bit challenging because the reality is that in those two years the non-COVID obviously crashed. So therefore, it would be a — it would not be like-to-like to actually look at a CAGR period for non-COVID alone. But the numbers are the numbers, the whole industry CAGR obviously for these four years is very low for the simple reason that there was a crisis for 2.5 years. So, actually not sure how to normalize that number. But I think if we look at the next three years of the business for non-COVID, I certainly believe it will be stronger than the last four years assuming that there is no crisis from a epidemic perspective.
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Okay. Sure, ma’am. And just on the core business breakup, so if I was to break it up into premium wellness and other parts, so premium wellness has been very well like 45% growth and the other part, if I see is around 12% growth. So, fair to say the core business excluding premium wellness you can consider 12% to 13% growth. That’s a fair number and premium wellness is expected to grow at a faster rate going forward? Would that be the right assumption?
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
See, some of these things are not totally separate. I’ll tell you why. And it’s difficult to look at them completely separately because you are also part of premium wellness’ bundling of packages. So for example, you have consumers or patients who will walk-in maybe requesting two or three tests. And then you will present to them offerings that see they feel they have an advantage to do a larger package, since they are getting blood and they collect — blood is being collected anyway. And we will choose to move to wellness package.
So, these things are not so separate. Actually the one feeds into the other in many ways. So, while we are calling it premium wellness, it’s also including bundling of sort of packages and upselling sort of existing patients or consumers who walk-in and then who may chose to move to a larger package. So, we have to see these sort of together and not so separate, because there is an overlap between the two.
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Sure, ma’am. That is helpful. Just last bookkeeping question. So, other expenses, if I see pre-FY ’22, you used to do like INR250 crores, INR220 crores, which is like 25% of overall sales, which went up sharply in FY ’22 and now in FY ’23 as well. So, if I break that other expense up, it is the main cost component is rent, legal and professional and the post aid of full-year expenses. So, what can we classify here as a one-time expense or will this be a similar number like 30% of sales going forward as well, like we did this year?
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
So, other expense obviously has moved up mainly, one is obviously because the inflation is there and that increases the — all the expenses, which we incurr, so that obviously is one part of it. And obviously, if you look at the other expense, one component, which is increasing on variable rent because we are expanding our network in a big way and we have to pay a variable rent to our franchisee partner. So, one component of this other expense, which is increasing a bit, other than the other items is the variable rent, because if you look at in last three years, we have expanded our collection centers in a big way and that is the plan going forward also. But to your question of whether this will remain at a 30% revenue or it will go down to 25%, which was pre-COVID, so I think this will be a factor of revenue generation and how the revenue move up. So, my sense is that somewhere it will remain between 25% to 30%, but it’s not expected to go further up.
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Sir, legal expenses was around INR80 crores this year as well? It used to be in the INR38 crore, INR40 crore range before.
Rakesh Agarwal — Chief Financial Officer
So, just give us some time. I think we’ll take this point and we’ll come back to you on this.
Girish Shetty — Banyan Tree Advisors — Analyst
Sure. Thank you. Thank you, ma’am.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Aditya [Phonetic] with Securities Investment Management Company. Please go ahead.
Aditya — Securities Investment Management Company — Analyst
Yeah, hi, thanks for the opportunity. I just had one question. So, you mentioned in your opening remarks that we are looking to pour into basic radiology test. So, earlier when we used to talk to diagnostic companies, they weren’t keen on radiology business as it was capital-intensive business. So, just wanted to understand what has led to this change strategy?
Surendran Chemmenkotil — Chief Executive Officer
So basically, like Ameera mentioned, we are talking about the basic radiology staff, right, we’re talking about ECG, x-ray and sonography, right and definitely ECG doesn’t require too much of a capex and I know it’s easy to expand across the country. That’s the first thing that we’re trying to take it forward. And then of course, we have some assets around X-ray, which we have not been — it’s relatively underutilized and we try to maximize the usage of this and also use it to package, along with the wellness packages that we have.
And also wherever I mean at least in our key markets like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, etc., we’ll just try to take this forward into some more centers. And sonography, of course it’s got its own some amount of limitations, so we will cautiously, but carefully go into some of the big markets that we have. So, that’s the plan around radiology assets. We’re just taking some steps as we start this year and we’ll try to expand it as we go forward.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Just to add to that, we have to remember that Metropolis has approximately almost 380 to 400 centers, which are actually owned and operated by us what we — and the retail segment called patient service center. These cases are utilized purely for blood collection and sample collection at this point. And therefore, we do have an ability to also add radiology into these without adding infrastructural cost in any significant way, because we already have the real estate with us, and it’s about adding one more service in centers that already exists. So therefore, we believe that this could be an opportunity with the brand trust that consumers do have for Metropolis, offering a holistic service of basically radiology plus pathology will give value to the consumer and patient. So, they don’t have to go to two different location.
Aditya — Securities Investment Management Company — Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints that was the last question for the day. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Ameera Shah for closing comments.
Ameera Shah — Managing Director
Thank you to all the people for joining us today in this conference call. As mentioned, I think while we have all seen lots of noise and a bit of chaos in the industry in the last 18 to 24 months, we do believe that the dust is settling. COVID has come back, has sort of has left us and non-COVID, which is our regular business illness has come back to normalcy. We’ve also had a chance to put behind some of the challenges of the last year and we start afresh with Suren on-board as well and a very strong team. We have a very aggressive plan for the next two to three years on where we would like to go and we believe this business is all about good management, execution rigor, operational excellence and really being able to fine-tune all the things and be able to make each things stronger. And I think we are very much on track to be able to do that. And we are, like I said, quite hopeful and excited about what we believe the industry will bring.
COVID was a great catalyst for many new people to come in, but it was also a great catalyst for the industry to become stronger from an organized sector perspective, because for the first time consumers started recognizing pathology in any significant way in their lives and started recognizing branded pathology as something which they make a decision on. So, we do believe this is going to be a strong inflection point for the industry going forward and we are very hopeful that as I say, strong brand, which is trusted by doctors and consumers, we can go on to capture a significantly higher market share of it.
In our next call, the next Board meeting, we would actually go into a lot of detail around the market and the details and the nuances of the market and help sort of all participants get an even closer sense on how we plan to navigate this in detail. So, very much looking-forward to that conversation and thank you everybody for joining us today. We continue to focus very strongly on our core business growth, which has been very high, even in a challenging year, probably industry-leading and we feel quite hopeful that, that will continue to be the case for this year and the next couple of years.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]