Ugro Capital Ltd Q1 FY23 Earnings Conference Call Insights

Key highlights from Ugro Capital Ltd (UGROCAP) Q1 FY23 Earnings Concall

Q&A Highlights:

• [00:24:18] An analyst enquired what percentage of sourcing is done through the DSA channel. Shachindra Nath MD replied that currently 55% of the business comes from the prime branches. Amongst the books, about 48-50% of the book will be generated by the intermediaries, the rest is through direct and other partnerships.

• [00:29:40] Chinmay Bhargava of Featurespace asked if it’s a significant datapoint to UGROCAP as RBI has pushed to onboard the PSU banks to the account aggregators. Amit Gupta CFO replied that it is a significant data point. It also depends on how much participation UGROCAP sees in what span of time.

• [00:31:52] Chinmay Bhargava of Featurespace asked about the proof of concept for newer models. Shachindra Nath MD clarified that newer model is expected to go live only in Dec. 2022. Once that’s implemented, UGROCAP will require some time for some data to get set and establish; post that it will be done.

• [00:33:29] Chinmay Bhargava of Featurespace asked about sector mix of education and hospitality going down to below 5% from 15% YonY and the plan for it going forward. Shachindra Nath MD answered that UGROCAP is already seeing a lot of encouraging signs in both these sectors. The plan is to slowly keep building this up.

• [00:37:13] Samiksha enquired about the expansion model, if it would be more branch based in future or focus will be more towards digital penetration. Amit Gupta CFO answered that in the earlier plan, UGROCAP did have a large expansion plan on the micro piece. UGROCAP added that any expansion further from here will only be on micro branches. Also, expansion will be in products of machinery finance, supply chain, and direct-to-customer.

• [00:40:33] Samiksha asked about the split between off-book and on-book disbursements for last 2-3 years. Shachindra Nath MD answered that as of March ’22, 16% of UGROCAP book was off book, as of Q1 end, it’s 21%. And the target for FY23 is 35%.

• [00:51:45] Jai asked about UGROCAP focusing on micro branches in the next phase of growth and if these will be a strong contributor to the co-lending portfolio. Shachindra Nath MD replied that micro branches would be bigger contributor in terms of the overall portfolio yield and profitability. However said, AUM growth may not be a large contributor as of now, but it’s increasing.

• [00:52:59] Jai also enquired if the company is applying stringent collateral checks on the micro secured business. Amit Gupta CFO clarified that there are checks and there is a clear policy on what’s accepted as a collateral and are much in line with what are acceptable by the banks.

• [01:02:43] Atul Prakash asked that in the restructuring portfolio, what’s the outstanding as on June end and out of that how much is in the zero plus, 30 plus and 90 plus. Anuj Pandey CRO said that total restructured portfolio at the end of June is INR120 crores, which is approx. 3.3% of the AUM. Out of this, 20% has become NPA, the rest 67% is current and 4% is in 30 to 90.

• [01:08:06] Vijay Chauhan enquired about co-spreading income as a percent of total topline. Nirav Shah CSO replied that the 10.5% includes the co-lending/co-origination income. The spread will be about 5.6%, and the rest will be the co-lending income in the quarter.

• [01:10:30] Mannan Modi asked about the transformation of Ugro to lending as a service model, if the company is seeing the partnerships and alliances fees going down. Shachindra Nath MD clarified that it won’t go down. The aspiration is to create a bridge. The constant endeavor is to bring some of UGROCAP’s large banks to become a direct co-lender to some of its partners.

• [01:13:13] Mannan Modi asked how many micro branches does UGROCAP plans to open in FY23 and the performance of the branches launched in FY22 in terms of productivity and payback period. Amit Gupta CFO replied that the company opened about 70 branches in 3Q and 4Q. As per the projections, UGROCAP has a 12 month breakeven plan for each of the branches. By 1Q23-end, first set of branches have broken even. UGROCAP is looking at between 25-50 branches by FY23 end.