CarTrade Tech Ltd (CARTRADE) Q2FY27 Concall Transcript - Sep-2026 Qtr
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Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to CarTrade Tech Limited Q2 FY '27 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant line will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing "*" then "0" on your touchtone telephone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Sayalee Ambre from CarTrade Tech Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Sayalee Ambre (CarTrade Tech Limited): Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I welcome you all to the quarter two and half year ended September 2026 earnings conference call for CarTrade Tech Limited. To discuss the quarter's financial and business performance, we have from the management, Mr. Vinay Sanghi, Chairman and Managing Director; Ms. Aneesha Bhandari, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Varun Sanghi, Chief Strategy Officer. Before we proceed with the call, I would like to mention that some of the statements made in today's call may be forward-looking and may involve risks and uncertainties. For more details, kindly refer to the investor presentation and other filings that can be found on the company's website and on the stock exchanges. Without further ado, I would like to hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks. Post then we can open the floor for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Vinay Sanghi (CarTrade Tech Limited): Thank you, Sayalee, and good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining the half-yearly earnings call and the Q2 earnings call as well. And I just want to jump straight to slide three, or in your, slide four in your presentation deck. As you know, the company's margins have expanded this quarter to 36%. The four-year growth story shows PAT growth of 60% CAGR over the four years. Revenue growth over the last four years is 24% CAGR, EBITDA 74%. Shareholder, when you look at the capital strength, the cash reserves just crossed 1,400 crores, return on equity continues to be strong, and as you know, the EPS is almost 7x in the last four years. If I go to the next slide and talk about the key metrics of the company, the company in this quarter, I'm glad to inform you, has recorded its highest-ever revenue in its history at 236 crores total income. PBT is highest-ever again in the
Vinay Sanghi (CarTrade Tech Limited): is at 85 crores. We continue to be India's I mean India and also the world's leading automotive platform. The number Also, leading used classified platform and vehicle auction platform. We receive 76 million customers a month or MAUs, in in in 76 million MAUs habit for this quarter. Organic traffic has jumped to 96%. And we have 500 physical locations, 1.6 million vehicles, we are auctioning at the rate of 1.6 million vehicles a year. As I already said, revenue is highest at 236 crores. Adjusted EBITDA, which is a cash proxy for us, crossed 106 crores for the quarter. PAT is at 66 crores. And as I told you earlier, our liquid our cash balances are at 1,400 crores as of 30th September. If we look at the consolidated performances of the company, the total income at 213 crores for the quarter is also its highest ever in its history. As you've seen, the total income has also sequentially grown from the previous quarter from Q-on-Q by 12 crores, which is up from 201 crores last quarter, 213 crores this quarter. So, there's been a jump, sequential jump on on growth of revenues. There's also annual jump of 10%. The half-yearly growth has been 13%. Other income is down. I think other income is down primarily due to the write-backs last year in the same quarter. We had approximately 10 crores of write-backs, there's a footnote below, and 14 crores in the year of write-backs at OLX of during there some write didn't back some expenses to income. And therefore, the other income is down from 19% in the first quarter, sorry, in the second quarter, and 5% annually down. But as I said, total income is at the highest ever 236 crores. And revenues is at highest at 213 crores. Employee cost are stable at 6% growth over last year, which shows the leverage in the business. EBITDA is up by 20% over last year. EBITDA is also sequentially up 20%. So, if you see the EBITDA at 76 crores is higher than the 63.59 crores the previous quarter, and of course, higher by 20% from last year's 63 crores as well. EBITDA margin come out at 36%, as you know, your company is focused on building a best in class margin structure, and you can see here EBITDA margins have jumped from 33% last quarter to 36% and 36% over 31% last year same time. For half-yearly, the EBITDA margin is at 34% versus 29% last year for the half-year results. And EBITDA is also up 30% year-on-year over last year for the first 6 months. PBT, as I told you, is the highest in our history, 85.45, which is up over 79.92 last quarter and 74.545 last year. The the the 7% growth is also taking into account the lower other income, which is actually bringing down growth rate to only 7%, which is the other write-backs of OLX in the same quarter last year. PAT is up by 3% at 65.95 or 66 crores over 56.7 56.75 last last quarter and 64 crores last year. It's a 3% growth in PAT. Let me clarify here and it is it is driven by a 10 crore write-back last quarter in the same quarter last year, and therefore the growth is showing at only 3%. Let me also stress here that the tax impact on OLX, an income tax impact last year we had tax shelters on OLX, and this year we paid tax on OLX. So, there is a base effect of last year, which is kicking into the PAT of this year. So these are two or three reasons why the PAT is up only 3%. One is because of the OLX write-backs last year and other income, second is because of the tax impact at OLX this year versus last year OLX had tax shelters. So, these are the reasons why the PAT is at 3%, but overall the revenues are the highest ever and PBT is also at its highest ever in the history of the company. If we look at the consumer group, which is the next slide, revenue from operations are up 4%, EBITDA is up 5% and margins have come to 41% and PAT is up 13%. Part of this reason is the the and of course half-yearly is up 10% on revenue and 16% on EBITDA. Part of the reason is as you know last year there was GST deduction on 22nd September, and there is also a base effect of you know last the second quarter last year. If we look at that second quarter last year, the growth was 37% in that quarter. So, if you really look at a 2-year period, you'll see a 20% CAGR in the new car business and the new auto business. I think there is a base effect again of a very, very strong second
Vinay Sanghi (CarTrade Tech Limited): last year in the new car business. If you go further to the re-marketing business, profits have grown by 47%, margin is now 30%, revenues up 13% half-yearly, 12% for the quarter and EBITDA margins are at 30% here. 29% growth in EBITDA for the quarter. And PAT has grown by 47% in the quarter under re-marketing business. OLX is actually revenuehad a very strong growth. We had a 28% half-yearly growth, a 26% quarter growth. EBITDA margins are up to 32% in OLX and EBITDA growth is up to 36% here. There's a de-growth in profit after tax primarily because of two reasons, as again, once again, say other income is sharply down from 13 crores last year, 13.51 crores last year on the same quarter to 4.41 crores this year, which is account of those write-backs. And in addition, you've seen the tax up by 58% over last year in OLX. So these are the reasons why the PAT is down. But as I said, EBITDA is at 36%, which is its highest ever, and revenue is at its highest ever, at 26% as well. So this is the financials of the company. We feel very optimistic about the business conditions and the business of the company. You know, as we've already said, we move towards our goal of achieving a company of 1,000 crore profit in the next 4 to 5 years, and we continue strive towards that. As I said again, PBT has come to 86 crores, so the directionally, we've headed there. EBITDA is up by 13 crores over the previous quarter. If we look at, you know, the coming quarters, we feel, as I said, the business environment is strong. We feel the OLX growth rates, which you see, will be surpassed in the coming quarters. We of course think the growth rate will cross 30-35% in the coming quarters at OLX. We also believe that the EBITDA of the group will grow, has grown 20% from Q2 over Q1. We believe we will have similar growth rates of EBITDA you know, sequentially from Q2 to Q3. Q3 this year is likely to be our best ever quarter in almost all our businesses and and obviously the growth is going to be strong over over Q2. We again as as I said, as we go ahead, we we're very optimistic about the future as we continue to build a lot of products for the future. Our main focus is is building a technology for all our customers across new cars, OLX, and SAMIL. We've attached a few slides to this presentation. Some of these slides have been discussed in previous analyst meets. And, you know, I thought I'd stop here and then we can take questions and answers. And I again want to reiterate the confidence we have in the business environment, the business performance. Thank you.
Moderator: Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sanchit from Citi Group. Please go ahead.
Sanchit (Citi Group): Hi, am I audible?
Vinay Sanghi (CarTrade Tech Limited): Hi Sanchit, good morning. We can hear you.
Sanchit (Citi Group): Hi. Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my question. I have three questions, so I'll start with my first question. So standalone revenue growth this quarter was 4% versus, let's say, 18% last quarter. I want to understand how much of an impact of seasonality and the GST effect of base you mentioned is there, and do you have a sense if there is a broader slowdown? Anything you're seeing in digital ad spends from OEMs or something specific to where they allocate their digital ad budgets, especially in the backdrop of OEMs seeing commodity cost pressures? So, we've seen commentaries from them that they are trying to cut back on discretionary spends. Are you seeing any kind of impact from there?
Vinay Sanghi (CarTrade Tech Limited): Let me take this one first. So yeah, we actually think it's a complete base effect. GST was lowered on 22nd September last year. And therefore if you see last, the second quarter last year, we had a 37% growth. The base is high, and obviously this year, if you've seen since that growth of 37%, we've grown on top in this quarter. And obviously as I've already given some guidance saying we expect you know this quarter, the coming quarter to be the best ever in history of the new auto business, which is very likely even as I said today. So we don't see any real change, but there's a there is a significant base effect of last year. If you look at the business over the last two years, we're more than a 20% CAGR in the business, but there is a bit of a base effect of last September of the GST reduction. In our business
Vinay Sanghi (CarTrade Tech Limited): industry itself, right? If you see the industry growth rate post that, if you take it sequentially, it has has not been strong. It's basically a lot of it is got concentrated around the growth from considering that September period last year. But but really no change in approach of OEM's or or the business as such.
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