MSTC LTD (NSE: MSTCLTD) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 14, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Manobendra Ghoshal — Chairman And Managing Director
Bhanu Kumar — Director (Commercial)
Subrata Sarkar — Director (Finance)
Ajay Kumar Rai — Company Secretary
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Deep Modi — Analyst
Saurabh Ginodia — Analyst
Vinay Nadkarni — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Ms. Q1FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Equerry Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Deep Modi from Aquarius Securities. Thank you. And over to you.
Deep Modi — Analyst
Thank you. Good morning everyone. On behalf of Aquarius Securities, I welcome you all to Q1FY26 earning conference call of MHTC Limited. From the management we have with us today. Mr. Manabendra Ghoshal, Chairman and Managing Director, Ms. Banu Kumar, Director Commercial Mr. Subrata Sarkar, Director of Finance and Mr. Ajay Kumarai, Company Secretary PR. We will begin the call with the opening remarks from the management and then we will open the line for question and answers. Now I hand over the call to Mr. Manabendra Ghoshal. Over to you sir.
Manobendra Ghoshal — Chairman And Managing Director
Thank you. Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining us today. Let me begin by welcoming all our esteemed investors for today’s call. After a largely flat FY25 which also had quite a bit of ups and downs in both the external environment in general as well as some challenges specifically for MSTC, we had a good start to FY26. We have also in this period had an opportunity to reassess our core business trends and look hard at new areas where we can leverage our strengths for driving growth. As I had already briefed you in our last call, some part of our traditional business such as the coal auctions from Coal India, which had not been there in FY25 in a large part, is now back with us and this should supplement and drive our revenue streams for further in FY26 MMRPL.
Our 50:50 joint venture with Mrs. Mahindra Aalto has also performed as expected in Q. Even though there is a loss at present in this venture, the outlook is positive over the long and medium term due to the expectation of higher volumes to be driven by OEMs after cut in of the EPR policy. We are looking forward for that. MSTC’s revenue increased about 12% year on year in this quarter in Q1 primarily due to strong performance in the E Commerce segment. While expenses have remained largely on the same levels with only incremental increases. So PAT and PBT were higher year on year basis by about 10%.
This growth was largely driven by our E Commerce segment with major contribution from E Auctions which is our bread and butter mineral block auctions, Property FM Spectrum auctions which we conducted in this quarter as also coal and Iron options which are steady revenue streams. Regarding major business highlights of Q1, our Director Commercial shall be briefing you in detail for a brief snapshot of the way forward. I would like to inform you that we have identified development of software applications as an area that can be used to leverage our strengths. We have not only been doing this on our own but have also developed a good strong collaborative model of partnering with such entities so that we can pool resources and expertise.
Our work for KPKB and various portal developments are basically proof of concept developments of this model. Apart from this, we have the major trust in FY26 to obtain business from private players. I’ll now request Director Commercial to elaborate on these aspects followed by Mr. Subrato Sarkar, our Director Finance to provide an Update on the Q1 financials.
Bhanu Kumar — Director (Commercial)
Thank you sir. Good afternoon everybody. The key highlights of the first quarter for this current financial year is we have transacted a business of about INR 140.88 billion. In terms of rupees for the goods that have transacted through our portals the PBT is promising with 59.63 crores. Visa was 54.48 crores last Q1 and accordingly PAT also is 44.32 in comparison to 40.46 of the same time last year. Financial performance consolidated stands at 57.63 and 42.34 is a PAT. Now as far as the business is concerned we have shown increase if we Compare with the Q1 of last year, about 12% increase.
That is about 8 and a half crores or so mainly due to our regular businesses like you know, auction of scrap coal, iron ore, etc. But here what I would like to emphasize is in spite of the fact that the scrap rates have fallen during this quarter and in fact it’s continuing to fall, we have been able to show good steady growth because of the increasing volume in those transactions. As our CMD had already said, the major highlight of this quarter has been the FM channel allotment. This again was a very customized portal similar to what we had done in Spectrum Auctions.
Our main another product that we have launched this time is Up Current Portal. This is actually envisaged to bring all the OEMs and the major dealers of equipment especially that is used by the industry. So we expect that, you know this will give a impetus to the industry in going digital for the transactions in leasing of equipment or procurement of equipment. We had showcased this in the India Steel Summit that was held in Mumbai in April and the response that we got was quite promising and that actually had given the confidence to build it further.
The portal has just been launched and we are just in the process of onboarding OEMs and other stakeholders which is likely to stabilize in a couple of months time. So that is a product as such that has been launched and we are looking forward to similar such products for the industry. Another major highlight that has happened recently is the renewal of the Defence Agreement. We have been doing a defence scrap disposal since 1982. So that has been a very long association and the confidence that is reposed by the Ministry of Defence has once again been upheld.
And the transactions we envisage will be a little more than what we had done in the past. As far as the future, what we are planning, what brainstorming we have in house is we have identified certain areas and one of the main areas is establishing exchange platforms. We see some potential in Coles Minerals, EPR Exchange, Carbon Credit and all where there are not much players and even the policy framework is not ready as yet. So that is an area that gives us a good opportunity and definitely we would like to be a part of that and drive the growth there.
Apart from that, we have done some small projects for our own administrative ministry which has given us the confidence to do such projects for other ministries and government departments where, you know, they need to digitize lot of their transactions and have API integrations with various stakeholders platforms. So that is another project that we have done in a very small scale and there is scope for improvement in that area. Then we have, you know, we also want to enlarge our transaction portfolio to cover reverse auctions, private procurement, bulk asset monetization, industry specific bidding formats. Basically these models that we have been doing for years is more to focus towards the government sector, the central government, state government and the PSUs.
But in order to drive growth in the private sector, which is going to be the focus in the near future, we have to probably build some new business models because the requirements of the sector are quite different from what is required by the government sector. So that is a focused area trust area for us. And as far as other financials are concerned regarding Q1, I will hand over to Mr. Shubruta Sarkar, our director for. Thank you.
Subrata Sarkar — Director (Finance)
Yeah, very good morning sir. And afternoon of course to all. So with that revenue growth has been 8.91% from 86 crore to 93.66 and expenses are also gone up like that only including that the mild increase of 9.13 from 29.12 to 31.78 reflecting that growth in the EBITDA also from 56.88 to 61.88 the growth of 8.79% and PVT growth is from 54.48 to 59.63 that is 9.45%. Accordingly PAT has also grown from 40.46 crore to 44.32 crore growth of 9.54 and EPS consequently has grown up from 5.75 to 6.630 9.5% growth. Look at this trade bear analysis.
Basically it is growth is propelled by the growth in the revenue from E commerce that has come up from 61.55 to 70.03, the growth of 13.78% and other income almost remaining stagnant and marketing revenue almost remaining stagnant. Expenses little bit increased. So PBT has gone up to from 54.48 to 59.63 and paired from 40.46 to 44.32. This is on the standalone front if you look at the consolidated financial after. The. Only thing that is being added or is the share of our profit and loss from joint venture so it is a minuscule loss 1.98 crore. So we with that PBT stands at 57.65 as compared to 53.28 of the same period. The growth of 8.20% and PAT at 42.34 from 39.26 growth of 7.85%. So EPS is growing obviously at the same rate from 5.58 to 6.01%. So if you look at the summary of our PNL statement so that revenue from operation and other income break up 77.43 and other income is 16.23. Last year it was 69.04 and 16.96 and total revenue comes to 93.66 as compared to last year’s episode five benefits rising slightly from 21.72 to 23.25.
Cost this year is nil. Depreciation is almost at the same level from 2.31 to 2.25 and other expenses has rose slightly from 7.40 to 8.53 PAT PBT is from 54.48 to 59.63 and PAT is 40.46 to 44.32 in the concentrated front also just share share has been added on final like that is a 1.98 crore up at the concentrated profit of 57.65 for pvt basis as compared to 53.28 and back from 39.26 to 42.34. So so far financials are concerned. That’s all from our side. I think we can now go for Q and A. Management outlook is there from our side.
That’s all from our side.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue you may press star and two participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sourabh ginodia from Smiths Ltd. Please go ahead.
Saurabh Ginodia
Yeah good morning sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, in the opening comments you had mentioned that we are doing some work to develop certain software applications. So can you just elaborate what what is the scope of opportunity and what exactly are we trying to do over here?
Bhanu Kumar
Actually we have seen some opportunity when we were developing software for the various ministries and the industry we saw that you know there are some ready made products that can be used by the industry like you know some small ERP applications and integration portals, posters, then gap analysis, then dashboard. These are small small applications and these can be done in very quick time and maybe in a collaborative way with our association with some SaaS vendors which we have embarked upon about couple of years ago. So this gives us a good opportunity. But to estimate as to you know, what kind of software or what will be the potential potential of that entire segment is a little too early to comment upon.
Saurabh Ginodia
Okay. And second thing you had mentioned that we’re trying to increase the share of the private business in the overall revenue. So what are the steps are we taking to increase the share of the private business?
Bhanu Kumar
Yeah so as I had mentioned, see the way the government or the public sector functions is not the way the private sector functions. They want very quick response and they are probably not interested in bidding modules and all. They just want the best price. So you know it is going to be more of a listing kind of, you know, platforms that we will have where they will just list their products and then they will fix up the price and the material is taken off in a very quick time. So the model itself will be different, the revenue streams will be different.
So that is something that we are taking inputs from the private sector building upon and the focus is going to be more for smaller and medium private sector organizations because the large ones are especially the scrap generating ones. The large ones are all, many of them are already with us. So apart from the, apart from expanding the scope for them, we are also focusing on the small time business units so that you know, our human effort is also reduced to a great extent and there is quick disposal. So that is the idea behind this entire venture.
Saurabh Ginodia
Okay. And another thing is that what the last four quarters we have spoken about various new initiative which the company is trying to develop but actually, and some of these initiatives may actually take some time to get reflected into our revenues. But if you see the E Commerce vertical in totality over the last eight to nine quarters the revenue has been in a range of 85 to 90. So when one can expect a significant growth in the E Commerce revenue from. This new initiative, it will always be.
Bhanu Kumar
A very steady growth only it’s not going to happen in overnight. There cannot be any exponential growth. So as you can see some things are trickling in and that is why the Q1 results are much better than what it was last year. So this way we anticipate a very steady growth. Whatever we have witnessed in the Q1, it is likely to grow in the same way in the near future. There’s not going to be a very exponential growth. There is no opportunity that will give us that kind of, that will drive that kind of a growth.
Saurabh Ginodia
Okay, understood. And what would be our annual capex requirement and if you can also share some light on the future capital allocation policy for the company?
Subrata Sarkar
Yeah, so far Catex is concerned basically being a asset light company. Our main, still our main focus is on upgradation of the software and procurement of better hardware for our data centers and peripherals. So still we are focusing on that. So that will be our main focus area so far CAPEX is concerned. We are trying to allocate maximum of our profit part right now to that part only. So after the assessment in the second or third quarter we will take a call on that.
Saurabh Ginodia
Okay, but will it be possible for you to roughly give any range for the capex? Because annually given the kind of bandits we have done in Q1 we would expect the cash flow to be around 160, 170 outflowers for the full year.
Saurabh Ginodia
So far cash flow is concerned and the CAPEX is concerned because we are as told in the outlook we are at the midst of certain new projects so certain projects that may require certain hardware and software requirement so that are. We are collating that and some part of tendering process and etc. Are also going on Once that price comes up and it is finalized and only we can come to a conclusion to that particular figure but that much one and we can assure our investors that there will be no dearth of capex so far this growth is concerned that will be as you can see from our cash flow.
So we will obviously allocate maximum part of our cash flows to our growth in the form of capex but typically in the our hardware, software and other peripherals networking equipment.
Saurabh Ginodia
Understood. I have few more questions, I’ll join but in the chat.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vinay Nadgarni from Hathaway Investments. Please go ahead.
Vinay Nadkarni
Just wanted to check out, you said SM channel auctions, what was the amount that we realized out of that?
Bhanu Kumar
Actually for these auctions you know the revenue part is not much, it’s quite minuscule. We get per license allocation so as and when the orders are placed we get a very small sum probably in thousands only. But what is important here is such complex and complicated kind of platforms when we establish it gives us an opportunity to capitalize on that and prove our credentials for complex solutions to the industry’s requirements. So we haven’t actually earned much from. The FM radio wave auction
Manobendra Ghoshal
but have been auctioned so 63 licenses across 15 cities for 15 years across 43 cities. So there’s been a large spread. But as the director commercial mentioned that the financials are not commensurate with the. This basically is showcasing our capability of developing very complex simultaneously moving platforms.
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay, and what about Coal India auctions? What would be the revenue earned out of that in this quarter as compared to the last quarter?
Bhanu Kumar
Actually I think the first quarter only the operations had started full fledged so we had earned about 1 second about 4 crores from coal India auctions.
Vinay Nadkarni
This is the revenues?
Bhanu Kumar
Yeah, this is the revenue.
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay, just two more questions. One is what is the current cash and cash equivalent that you’re holding?
Subrata Sarkar
Oh, we have not published the balance sheet so but so far cash profit is concerned, you can well imagine it is, it is, it is in the what? PBT, PBDA, EBITDA, you know so like 40, 40 crore plus is the cash profit. So that much you can imagine so far. Cash and cash equivalents we will come up in the month of September after minusing all these capex etc so cash flow will come up with the September quarter.
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay, and what is the total amount of business that we have done in this Mahindra jv, which you said has started picking up now.
Subrata Sarkar
You want like there is there been a loss, not much significant revenue from this JV company?
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay.
Manobendra Ghoshal
It is. The business has started picking up in the sense that the outlook for EPR is not now in place. The outlook of a business picking up in the future, at this point of time, it is still not making a profit. And we expect that over the next two to three quarters after the EPR policy gets implemented through the OEMs, that it should start coming back to a level, as I had mentioned, in fact in the last investor call, that the time for the entire process to stabilize would be the next two to three years.
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay, just wanted a little more detail on that portal. And how are you going to monetize that?
Bhanu Kumar
As of now we have just, you know, showcase the portal itself and we are just onboarding all the, you know, equipment manufacturers and dealers. So as and when the transaction actually happens, obviously there will be a fee for the transaction. We have not yet final the revenue models or finalize the transaction envisaged any transaction as of now, at least in the another another two to three months. So we are still working on it. Maybe after the next quarter we will be able to, you know, give you a better, better view on that and.
Vinay Nadkarni
You see a good potential for that.
Bhanu Kumar
Yes, yes. Because now what is happening is everything is happening through a phone call or through, you know, offline modes. And that is probably not giving enough opportunity or enough variety to the person who wants to procure such equipments or lease such equipments. And even the terms and conditions are quite vague. So once we have all these things in a digital format, the customer will definitely have better options and he will be able to get the best value for his money.
Vinay Nadkarni
Can I ask one last question, if you don’t mind?
Bhanu Kumar
Yeah, please, yeah.
Vinay Nadkarni
Just want to know, are we, are we in any way enterprising ourselves because we have such a robust platform and do such a good auction business? By any chance, are we enterprising ourselves?
Bhanu Kumar
See, as far as the government sector or the special projects are concerned, yes, because, you know, that gives us the credibility and the standing in the industry. So maybe there we are not looking at profits when we have to, you know, do complex projects for the government of India. But as far as others are concerned, not really. I think we are a commercial organization based on the industry requirements and the competitors, you know, charges and the scope of work or, you know, the kind of services that they give. We are pricing it accordingly. We are not really undercharging, but government.
Vinay Nadkarni
Government would be 90% or more of our business. Hello?
operator
Hello?
Vinay Nadkarni
Yeah, can I. Am I audible?
operator
Yes, sir, you are audible. Hello? Mr. Manoj, we are not able to hear you. Hello? Hello? Hello?
Bhanu Kumar
Hello, Are you able to hear me?
operator
Yes, ma’, am. Now we can hear you.
Bhanu Kumar
Okay, so I was responding to the query as to whether we are underpricing ourselves. So just for a couple of projects for the government of India, maybe we are underpricing, but otherwise, are we. We are at par with our competitors or slightly in a better position because of our better credentials.
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay, and just one, Yev. Is government. What percentage of revenues are driven from the government today?
Bhanu Kumar
The government as such is giving lot of business almost about 85 to 90% of it. But as I said, only for certain projects. Maybe the revenue is not to the, you know, at par with the effort that put in for all others. We are pricing ourselves as per industry standards.
Vinay Nadkarni
Okay, thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to the participants. Please press Star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Raman, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello, ma’, am, can you hear me?
Bhanu Kumar
Yeah, please.
Unidentified Participant
Ma’, am, my first question is with respect.
operator
Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Raman. May I request the management to put yourself on mute whenever you are not speaking because there is a lot of disturbance and echo from your Life. Thank you, Mr. Raman, you can go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes, ma’. Am. My first question is with respect to the carbon trading platform. I just want to understand the. The time of this particular platform and what will be the potential revenue or volume with respect to this the company aims and is there any competitive.
Manobendra Ghoshal
May I take that one? Now, when we talked about platforms, we listed out possibilities that these are the possible products in which we can possibly develop platforms. It is not that we have identified X or Y or Z as specific commodities or specific resources for which we have started developing platforms. We are in the process of bidding for and developing certain platforms which we would not like to detail at this stage. And during that exercise, we found a. That we have the capability of because of our background in developing E auction platforms. So exchange platforms is just a further step which leverages our existing capabilities.
And while doing that exercise, obviously we would be identifying the kind of resources for which these platforms can be developed. It is at a nascent stage, so numbers is not really.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sir. So my second. With second Question is with respect to the poll option how much incremental revenue can we expect from this coal India’s auction? Because in FY25 as you mentioned there was no revenue from this particular coal option. So how much incremental revenue are we expecting in the current year?
Bhanu Kumar
See, as I think I had just replied to the other gentleman. We earned about 4 crores from coal auctions in the first quarter. So that should be the average. Not just from coal India. We are doing coal auctions for many other entities like Meghalaya government for PDCL for Jharkhand state and others. So roughly about 3 to 4 crores per quarter is the revenue from coal auctions.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And my last question is with respect to the jv, I just want to understand. I mean you. I don’t know whether you answered this question earlier or not. But I just want to know what was the current revenue in the Q1 and what at what quarterly run rate will this JV be a breakeven?
Subrata Sarkar
I think our CMD has already replied basically that breakeven is now we are harping basically as a JV income. We are harping basically on the success of this epr. So once that that is already there in the vehicle from 1425 it has already been mandated. So still it is yet to pick up. And the total mathematics of breakeven is now depending upon the TPR. Because that will drive the sufficient number of vehicle that we are expecting to generate the revenue to have our managing our fixed cost. So that still what we feel lot before of course the last quarter with the current estimates as of now that we feel not before the fourth quarter of this year.
Not because if this trend goes on because EPR is still to pick up and it is the policy is yet to be tested in the market.
Manobendra Ghoshal
And there are in fact a lot of clarifications required in the EPR policies for which the automobile manufacturers and the automobile manufacturers associations are already in talks with the government. A lot of it will flow from the result of those clarifications.
Unidentified Participant
Okay sir. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to the participants. Please press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Vishwajit Kumar, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks for the opportunity. I have one question related to the jv. How many scrappings we have done till now as per the government portal. I can see from January till today we have done almost 80,000 government vehicles. So how much revenue we have generated from this?
Manobendra Ghoshal
May I take that, Vishwajitji? I Think there is, we need to clarify that there are two parts of this. What you have looked at is basically the portal through which the E auction portal developed by MSTC through which end of life vehicles are auctioned. And Apart from this, MSTC has a joint venture with Mrs. Mahindra Auto which is a separate entity totally which basically operates registered vehicle scrapping facilities. So these are two different parts of the business. The part that you are talking about is essentially the auction platform which vehicles are auctioned and MSTC is directly derives revenue.
So it’s a part of a MSTC E commerce business.
Unidentified Participant
So my question is related to the first part of that. So how much revenue we have generated for the first part of the business. I’m not talking about the scrapping because government has authorized MSTC to do all the scrapping.
Bhanu Kumar
To it because it gets gets into the normal scrap business. So total figures we have already given, it’s a part of the scrap disposal auctions auction revenue. So we have not segmented it as, you know, separately from ELV auctions or from some interest industrial unit or things like that. It just is a drop in the total revenue of scrap auction.
Subrata Sarkar
Part of that 68 crore.
Bhanu Kumar
68 crores is the total, you know, revenue from scrap auctions of which ELV auction is also a part. It is a common portal for all these products.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the clarification. I have one more question related to the data center. New data center in the gallery. So what is the status of that? Do we have any update on that?
Bhanu Kumar
The new data center is yet to be set up. In fact we will be getting the premises only during this month though we have started certain operational functions out of that office. So data center is likely to take another at least four to five months.
Manobendra Ghoshal
At the very minimum.
Bhanu Kumar
At the very minimum, yeah. But our operations have not stopped because we already have a robust data center at Kolkata with a, you know, doctor site at Mumbai. So this is just going to be an additional doctor site just you know, upon our infrastructure.
Unidentified Participant
So we are not doing any new business from the new data center or this is just like a doctor purpose.
Manobendra Ghoshal
Only and when it comes up we will basically take a call on what would be the available extra capacity and therefore how to monetize that allocate them.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks, I will go into the queue. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. As there are no further questions, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Manobendra Ghoshal
First of all, let me thank all the investors who have taken their time out and interacted with us. As I have said earlier also these interactions also give us quite a bit of guidance to us as to what we are doing wrong, what we are doing right, and therefore are a major part of also guiding us in the way forward. Who keep giving us our comments offline online so that we are able to take your company forward and increase revenue streams through the expectations of the market. Thank you so much.
Bhanu Kumar
Thank you.
Subrata Sarkar
Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Aquarius securities and MSTC Ltd. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.