Central Depository Services India Ltd (CDSL) Q2FY27 Concall Transcript - Sep-2026 Qtr
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the CDSL Q2 FY '27 earnings conference call, hosted by HDFC Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in 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 touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, please note that CDSL does not provide specific revenue or earnings guidance. Anything said on this call which reflects CDSL's outlook for the future, or which could be constituted as forward-looking statements must be reviewed in conjunction with the risks that the company faces. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Thank you, and over to you.
Amit Chandra (HDFC Securities): Yeah, thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of HDFC Securities, we welcome you all to the CDSL Quarter 2 FY '27 earnings call. Today, we have with us the management team of CDSL represented by Mr. Nehal Vora, MD and CEO, Mr. Mr. Girish Amesara, CFO, and other senior leaders from the management team. We will start with a brief overview of the quarter by Mr. Nehal Vora and then we will open up the floor for the question-and-answer session. Thank you, and over to you, Nehal, sir.
Nehal Vora (Central Depository Services India Ltd): So first of all, thank you, Amit. A very good afternoon and a warm welcome to everyone joining us today. I hope each of you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. Thank you for joining us to discuss CDSL's financial results for the second quarter ended September 30th, 2026. A detailed investor presentation has been uploaded on our website for your reference. I'm joined today by the leadership team of the CDSL group. Let me begin by briefly sharing the broad the broader market context and some of the key developments during the quarter, before the CFO takes us through the financial performance in greater detail. During the quarter, India's securities market saw continued activity, particularly in the primary market, even of against a more volatile broader market environment, led by real geopolitical issues. IPO proceeds exceeded $9 billion or 86,500 crore to in the July to September quarter. This is the highest ever period
Nehal Vora (Central Depository Services India Ltd): has seen about 34 IPOs, the highest in a single month since December '96. Demat accounts additions also remain significant. The industry added approximately 32.7 lakh accounts in August, the highest monthly addition in 7 months. By the end of September, the overall Demat account base has reached approximately 24 crores. CDSL continued to account for approximately 80% plus of the industry's Demat accounts with about 19.34 crore accounts by the end of September 2026. We shall be shortly be publishing the number of Demat accounts for October end on our websites. The IPO search growth in Demat accounts and the other market developments underline the importance of building capacity ahead of need. Our continuing investments in technology and people are aimed at ensuring that CDSL remains resilient and equipped to support the evolving scale of the Indian securities markets, while maintaining the dependable service and helping investors navigate both favorable through these challenging market conditions. Further to the appointment of our executive directors on CDSL during the last quarter, we have also continued to strengthen our leadership across two important functions in this quarter. Shri Farooq Patel has been elevated to the role of Chief Regulatory Officer and Compliance Officer of the company with effect from September 1, 2026. We also welcome Shri Kinjal Shah as our Chief Technology Officer with effect from September 22nd, 2026. We welcome them to their respective roles and look forward to their contribution. Also, additionally, a significant and important initiative in which RBI has enabled depositories to include information on bank deposits in the consolidated accounts statement through the Account Aggregator system is a step towards providing investors with a more comprehensive view of the financial assets in one place. On the investor education and protection front, we continue CDSL continues on its efforts towards further strengthening investor education. As a part of the World Investor Week 2026 and project [inaudible] Jagrukta campaign theme of Samajhdar bane, investing simple, CDSL-IPF organized an experimental and sorry CDSL-IPF organized an experience-based learning investor awareness initiative aimed at investors of different demographic groups across media. Its 50 cycle rallies across 12 states and and over 5th 45 districts reached around 10,000 participants. Our partnership with with the Amar Chitra Katha is gaining popularity and to sustain its momentum, we also launched The Garden of Prosperity in 12 languages with Amar Chitra Katha and distributed investor education comics to nearly 30,000-plus students across 60 schools. I would really encourage all of you to look at all this on the CDSL-IPF website for you and your families. As part of the Re-Imagine Symposium, that registrations are now open for the second edition of our Re-Imagine the ideathon, inviting students to propose practical ideas around financial awareness and cyber safety. I would especially request the investors listening today to encourage the young people in as per your families as and and other known people to participate in this. Building a more informed and secure market will also require us to look at and see what the next generation expects us to do to shape its future. The CFO will take you through the financial results for the quarter and half year. The earnings call presentation has been also put out on the on basically the stock exchange website and is available on the CDSL website, which provides a detailed breakdown of revenue and expenses for the last five quarters along with the necessary information. Some markets will continue to move through periods of optimism as well as certain amounts of issues which are happening on the geopolitical front. But what market what matters to CDSL and to the wider ecosystem is the strength of the foundations behind them. For institutions like ours, that means continuing to build infrastructure that is secure, resilient, and continues and be trusted by millions of investors is what our core focus remains. Our priorities remain unchanged, strengthen the core,
Nehal Vora (Central Depository Services India Ltd): for the future through initiatives like, various initiatives which basically with SEBI and other parts of the ecosystem continue to do for us. And as and also invest a lot of time and energy in the investor education initiative. So, truly making investors truly self-sufficient. We remain grateful to our regulators, SEBI, RBI and Ministry of Finance, and all depository participants, issuers, investors, market intermediaries, shareholders, and employees for their continuous support and trust. With that, I'll hand it over to CFO to take us to the financial performance in great detail. Thank you and Jai Hind.
Girish Amesara (Central Depository Services India Ltd): Thank you, Nehal. Good afternoon to everyone. I will start with the standalone. For the six months ended September 30th, 2026, the total income is achieved at 685.21 crore as against 602.26 crore for the six months of the previous year. In terms of net profit on standalone basis for the six months, we achieved at 307.79 crore as against 279.51 crore for the first half of the previous year. In terms of quarterly numbers, the standalone total income is at 358.70 crore as against 289.90 crore for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. The standalone net profit for second quarter is 163.34 crore as against 127.50 crore for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. On a consolidated basis for six months ended 30th September, the total income is achieved at 757.80 crore as against 636.53 crore of the first half of the previous year. The consolidated net profit for the six months ended September 30th is at 290.97 crore as against 242.34 crore for the previous year. For the For the second quarter on a consolidated basis, the total income is achieved at 417.30 crore as against 341.57 crore for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. And the net profit on a consolidated basis for second quarter is at 173.30 crore as against 139.93 crore of the corresponding quarter in the previous year. The other income in standalone financial results include dividend received from subsidiary of 39.50 crore, which was received in June quarter, as compared to 62 crore received in the similar quarter during the previous year. The said dividend is eliminated on consolidation, as that is received from a subsidiary company. If we consider the standalone profitability without considering the subsidiary dividend, the net profit for six months on a standalone basis is at 268.29 crore as against 217.51 crore for the corresponding first half of the previous year. With this, I will request Sunil to take us through CVL numbers. Thank you, and over to you, Sunil.
Sunil (CDSL Ventures Limited): Thank you, Girish. Good afternoon, everyone. I am presenting before you the H1 FY '27 results for CVL. During H1 FY '27, revenue from operations grew by 20% to 99.91 crores as compared to 83.52 crores in the previous year. Other income declined by 16% to 7.82 crore from 9.31 crore in the corresponding period. Consequently, the total income increased by 16% to 107.73 crore compared to 92.84 crore in the previous year. Total expenditure increased by 33% to 75.81 crore, compared to 57.01 crore in H1 FY '26. Profit before tax moderated by 11% to 31.91 crore from 35.83 crore in H1 FY '26, and profit af- after tax for H1 FY '27 stood at 23.74 crore, compared to 27.0- 09 crore in H1 '26, representing a decline of 12%. With this, I'll open the floor for questions and answers. Thank you.
Moderator: 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 touch-tone 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 will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We'll take a first question from the line of Amit Chandra from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.
Amit Chandra (HDFC Securities): Yeah. Sir, thanks for the opportunity. And
Amit Chandra (HDFC Securities): And congrats for very strong set of numbers. So, my first question is, you know, we are seeing very strong recovery in this quarter and, you know, thanks to the IPO, like the revenue in this quarter, and the recovery in the online data charges. So just to understand if there is any kind of one-off in the IPO or is it purely driven by the higher number of IPOs? And also, if you can provide some color in terms of what could be the steady state IPO revenues that we can assume, or the mix between IPO and the corporate action. And on the online data, obviously, there has been recovery, we had the pricing impact. So, is it safe to assume that this is the new base and the pricing impact is behind? And also here the growth of 20% QoQ is slightly lower than the 30% growth that we have seen in the incremental view of accounts. So is there been any change in terms of fetch versus, you know, the newer accounts opening charges that we have in the online data? Thank you.
Nehal Vora (Central Depository Services India Ltd): So, on the first one, Amit, I think it's the number of IPOs which have come in. And I think looking at what terms of the prospectuses which have been filed at SEBI, we hope that this trend continues. It's not specific to any particular IPO or a one-off. It's a general uptick on the number of IPOs which are hitting the market and probably may be expected to hit, but again, that's a forward-looking statement, so we will not able to comment on that. The important point which I'd like to make here is that we continue to invest in our infrastructure that as the surge happens and these were a series of questions in the past calls that, you know, why are we investing in technology. It's times like these where we see really the dividend, where when the number of activity goes up, CDSL is able to manage that kind of load and will continue to embark on this journey to invest in technology as well as the employees. On the second point, I'll ask Sunil to answer on the online charges.
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