Aditya Birla Sun Life Amc Limited

Aditya Birla Sun Life Amc Limited

889.05
INR
-15.10
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253.66BMarket Cap
Feb 14Next Earn

Q3 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 22, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Limited Q3 and 9M FY26 earnings conference call. 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 touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I now hand the conference over to Miss Meghna Luthra from InCred Equities. Thank you, and over to you, Miss Luthra.

Thank you, Ritu. Good evening, everyone.

On behalf of InCred Equities, I welcome all to Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC's third-quarter, nine months and FY26 ended earnings conference call. We have along with us Mr.

A. Balasubramanian, MD and CEO, and Mr.

Pradeep Sharma, CFO. We are thankful to the management for allowing us this opportunity to host them.

I would now like to hand it over to Bala sir for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.

A. Balasubramanian

Yeah. Thank you, Meghna, and good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

Let me begin by extending my warm wishes for a happy and prosperous new year to everyone. I hope you all had the opportunity to review our earnings presentation, which is accessible on both the stock exchanges and our company website.

Let me start by outlining the current economic outlook and provide an update on developments within the mutual fund industry. As is known, the global economy has entered a phase of recalibration, and despite persistent tariff tensions and policy volatility, growth is stabilizing towards trend levels of approximately 3.2%, as estimated.

Nations are fundamentally reassessing supply chains and trade partnerships, and response to these disruptions and continuing. Meanwhile, inflation continues its moderating trajectory, allowing central banks to pivot their focus towards supporting growth.

This convergence signals a shift from crisis management to strategic adaptation. India continues to outpace global peers with remarkable consistency.

Our real GDP is on track to expand by a robust 7.4% in FY26. While CPI inflation has moderated to a favorable 2.2%, the golden moment of strong growth paired with low inflation continues.

We maintain a positive outlook for FY27, projecting nominal GDP growth of 9.75%. This optimism is underpinned by several factors: the transmission of monetary and fiscal stimulus, expectation of easing of tariff pressures, robust rural demand supported by strong agriculture output, and continued fiscal support for rural India.

We anticipate inflation to normalize around 3.75%, well within the RBI comfort zone, and preserving a space for growth-supportive [unclear]. Conditions appear favorable for a capital expenditure cycle, with capacity utilizations at elevated levels and healthy corporate balance sheets.

While global uncertainty remains the key risk, India's fundamental position is strongly for sustained growth momentum. Hopefully, the budget should also drive the future growth more aggressively.

Indian equity markets told a tale of two forces in this quarter: external pressures testing resilience, and domestic strength [cushioning?] the cushion.

There was intermittent volatility with global uncertainties, FPI outflows, and profit-booking pressures. These downward movements were largely offset by robust domestic institutional participation.

Overall, equities concluded the quarter on a firm [footing?] , the structural strength of India's equity ecosystem, despite short-term market fluctuations, as we witnessed the last few days as well.

Continuing with the mutual fund industry update, the mutual fund industry quarterly average AUM stood at 81 lakh crore as of 31st December 2025, compared to 68 lakh crore as of 31st December 2024, registering year-on-year growth of about 18%. The industry recorded SIP inflows of approximately 31,000 crore for December 2025, reflecting quarter-on-quarter growth of about 6%.

The total number of mutual fund folios stood at approximately 23.97 crore as of December 2025. During the Q3 FY26, the industry saw [traction?]

of approximately about 31,300 crore across equity and debt funds, with equity collection predominantly driven by sectoral and thematic and flexi-cap funds. Individual average AUM for December 2025 stood at 49.28 lakh crore, contributing about 60.1% of the total AUM.

B30 cities, an average AUM of 15.12 lakh crore, accounted for 18.4% of the total AUM, growing by 18% year-on-year. At Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC performance highlights: our overall average assets under management, including alternate assets, now stand at 4.81 lakh crore, highest-ever AUM achievement, growing at 20% year-on-year.

Our mutual fund quarterly average AUM has reached 4.40 lakh crore, representing 14% year-on-year increase. Within this, our equity mutual fund quarterly average AUM stands at 2 lakh crore, growing at 11% year-on-year.

At the AMC, we firmly believe that the SIPs continues to remain a cornerstone of long-term investing in India. Our SIP contribution for December 2025 stood at 1,080 crore, supported by 40 lakh contribution coming from SIP accounts.

In alignment with this vision, we have launched a new SIP-led initiative under our investor education program, Plan for Life. This campaign goes beyond wealth creation.

It encourages investors to think long-term, plan for life milestones, and importantly, prepare for retirement through systematic withdrawal plans. Our total number of investors portfolio for December 2025 stood at 1.08 crore, witnessing 3% year-on-year growth.

We are driving growth by building scale through increased market attraction. Our overall fund performance has improved significantly, leading to better market perception and, importantly, stronger flows into our core product.

While the momentum gives us the confidence, building on this strong foundation, one of our key priorities continues to be strengthening our core equity offerings, particularly flexi-cap fund and multi-asset allocation fund, and our balanced advantage fund, as well as some of the thematic funds that we have been seeing flows, like conglomerate fund as well as the consumption fund. These are some of the key product focus that reasonably improved flows coming on this segment.

Our focus remains on scaling these flagship products through a combination of SIP inflows, robust contribution across all distribution channels, improved fund performance, and increased market engagement. Our drive to build scale through enhanced traction, coupled with improved overall performance, has led to better market perception and rising flows in core products, creating momentum for continued growth.

Turning to the alternate business, the PMS and AIF equity segments have demonstrated robust momentum, supported by steadily expanding suite of credit offerings. We continue to enhance and refine our solutions to address evolving sophisticated requirements of HNIs and family offices and some of the institutional investors.

Our PMS AIF advisory assets experienced substantial growth, expanding from 3,853 crore a year back to 22,000 crore in Q3 FY26, representing eight times increase in the size. Of course, the winning of ESIC mandate accounted for about 28,000 crore as of December 31, 2025, while our PMS and AIF AUM, excluding ESIC mandate, registered a strong year-on-year growth of about 70%, reflecting robust organic momentum in our core alternate business.

During the quarter, we received EPFO allocation letter appointing us as one of the managers for the fixed income mandate. We are now progressing through the required regulatory formalities and expect to be on board of the assets before the current quarter ending.

On the fixed income credit side, we successfully completed the final closure of our ABSL India Structured Opportunity Fund Series 1 commitment of around 500 crore during the quarter, and currently have fundraising underway for Series 2 ABSL India Structured Opportunity Fund 2, and money managers [credit fund?] .

We are also preparing to launch ABSL India Select Sector Fund under AIF category in equity. Our real estate business has built significant momentum and gained considerable traction, driven by strong investors' interest and robust deal pipeline.

During the quarter, we launched Aditya Birla Real Estate Credit Opportunities Fund Series 2, a Category II AIF focusing on lending to post-approval, brownfield [projects?] across Tier 1 cities.

700 crore, registering year-on-year growth of approximately about 44%. The offshore average AUM stood at 14,841 crore.

We have incorporated our newly owned subsidiary company, Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC International IFSC Limited, in GIFT City to expand our GIFT City operations, and are currently in the process of securing regulatory approvals, and hopefully before the quarter ending, we will be up and running. We continue to see flows through our current branch setup across our existing funds, such as India ESG Engagement Fund, ABSL Flexi Cap Fund for inward remittance, and Global Bluechip Fund for outward remittance under the LRS scheme to deliver globally competitive solutions to our investors.

Our passive business has continued to demonstrate good momentum, with quarterly average AUM touching 38,600 crore, representing a year-on-year growth of about 28%, and customer base expanding to 15.1 lakh folios. Our ETF offerings have witnessed robust tractions, with ETF quarterly average AUM growing by 40% year-on-year, significantly outperforming the industry ETF growth rate of about 24%.

We are building towards better long-term outcomes by improving on tracking differences as a key focus, while also improving tracking error. Last year, industry-wide, we witnessed good inflows in precious metals like gold and silver, and our offering in this space make an exceptional case for diversifications.

As of today, our passive product suite comprises of 52 distinct offerings across equity, fixed income, commodities, and multi-asset allocation funds, designed to address the diverse investment needs of our investors. Moving to the financial performance: Q3 FY26 revenue from operation stood at 478 crore, up 70-- 7% year-on-year.

Q3 FY26 profit after tax, it was at 358 crore, up by 19% year-on-year. FY26 profit after tax stood at 270 crore, up by 20% year-on-year.

Our nine months revenue from operation stood at 1,387 crore, up 10% year-on-year. Nine months profit before tax stood at 1,046 crore, up by 11% year-on-year.

Profit after tax for the nine months stood at 788 crore, up by 12% year-on-year. With this, I would like to open the floor for any questions that you may have.

I will be joined by Pradeep Sharma to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your 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. The first question comes from the line of Mohit Mangal with Centrum.

Please go ahead. Am I audible?

Yes, you are. Please go ahead.

Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is towards the employee benefit expenses.

Even if I remove that labor code extra cost, the employee benefit expenses were higher by around 20% YoY. What explains this increase in employee benefit expenses?

Pradeep, you can answer. Mohit, actually, employee benefit expenses have gone up YoY basically on two counts.

That is, one is the additional impact of the gratuity based on the new labor code, right, which counts to around 2.82 crore. That is one.

Second is on the ESOP cost. This is actually our parent company, ABCL's, some ESOPs were given to our select employees.

There is a cost of ESOP of around 4.6 4.66 crore for this quarter. These are the two which are actually increasing the cost for the quarter.

Okay. Going forward, we should expect this to be recurring, or is it one-time?

No, gratuity is a one-time cost. It's not recurring.

The ESOP cost would be there for next four quarters, three more quarters, on that account. That is basically post this rolling out of the stock option for the employees in the recent board meeting.

Yeah. Understood.

Second, if you can share segment-wise yield of the quarter? Yeah.

For equity, our yields are around 64 64, 65 basis points. For debt, it is around 24 basis points.

Liquid is around 13 basis points. Understood.

Yeah. In terms of this PMS and AIF, can you give some revenue numbers for 9M and Q3?

Yeah. Alternates revenue for Q3 was around 34, 34 crore, which is around 4.5% of our total revenue.

Understood. That is helpful.

Sir, lastly on yield, sir, how do you see yields actually going forward for the next four to five quarters? Do you see a meaningful decline?

How do we see the yield, basically? Yeah.

I think broadly, Mohit, I think we at this point of time, we estimate the impact of the circular would be minimal. To the extent, very limited impact we should see.

At the same time, since you are looking at building the size and reality is also having a momentum coming in the overall key portfolios in terms of traction, to the extent as the size of the fund increases, of course there will be a corresponding increase in revenue, but may come at the marginal reduction on these things. Again, I don't see it very significant.

At the same time, since you're also looking at building our other businesses, especially the alternate as well as the PMS, and broader and overall basis from the AMC point of view, we should see an improved performance rather than any significant reduction in the fees. Right.

Sir, when you say that yield is minimal impact because of the circular, do you mean to say that we'll be able to pass on to the distributors? No, I think we'll see, I think as we come closer to implementation date, of course, we will see how best it has to be optimistically utilized for the benefit of everyone, keeping in mind the investor the center.

As a preliminary assessment is actually we will have to just balance it out to ensure it has a minimal impact. All right.

Understood. Sir, my last question is on SIF.

Your thoughts and when would we be able to launch it? Yeah.

In the case of SIF, we have already filed applications and then approval also is, of course, awaited. We thought that we'll launch on this month, and since we have asked for the revised structure in the portfolio, their approval is likely to come this month.

I think hopefully in month of February we'll launch it. By the time budget would also be out, and our first fund will be launched in the month of February.

We'll also, of course, plan to launch the equity long-short fund. We're making applications.

Once we are confident that we have the talent pool to manage that fund once the person comes on board, I think should also [launch?] .

At least one fund will launch, which is a hybrid fund, which is at the equity taxation, sometime in February. Understood.

This is very helpful, sir. Thanks, and wish you all the best.

Yeah. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question.

Next question comes from the line of Prayesh Jain with Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.

Prayesh Jain

Yeah. Hi.

Good evening, sir. Sir, firstly is on our fund performance has been improving, and quite a few schemes are appearing in the top quartile on one-year return basis, and they contribute to a large portion of our equity AUM as well.

In spite of that, we kind of continue to lose market share on the equity side, as well as if I look at the SIP data that you've provided, that also keeps coming down. Now, generally, it does take a lag effect, I understand, from fund performance improvement to market share improvement.

Still, it's been some time that our fund performance is improved, but we're still not seeing any even market share not being stable, right? We keep seeing decline month-on-month in terms of market share.

When do you see the effect of this fund performance translating into market share gains, both on SIP as well as normal market share?

A. Balasubramanian

Yeah. Thanks, Prayesh.

See, I think the way I look at is, I think if I look at the whole of last one, 1.5 years, the market share loss has been coming down in terms of as a basis points. That's something that we have seen.

Now we have almost come to a stabilizing kind of thing. We have now almost come to a stage where it's now getting stabilized.

That's one. Second is on the fund performance moving from one to two and three, and that's something we're already seeing it start reflecting.

Most of our funds, while we have done very well on a 1.5 years, is now started reflecting on the three-year. Normally, what happens is as the short-term performance starts appearing in the long-term performance, it comes as part of the recommendation list.

We are already seeing that happen in the last two quarters. The number of approvals that is coming from the organized channel partners, that is something should be taken as a signal of products coming as part of the recommendation list, and basis which it's coming in.

Second, some of the online platforms, where we also saw significant flows on funds which were top-performing funds. We already start seeing some of our funds appearing in that segment as well.

It takes some time for all these things to come at the public so-called public domain. I think these are some of the things where it is seeing it reflecting on net inflows coming in.

Funds like Sun Life Equity, which is Flexi Cap Fund, Conglomerate Fund we are seeing improvement in terms of flows, Balanced Advantage Fund has seen good flows, and Multi Asset Allocation Fund has got good flows. I think of course, the category in which where we even seen industry-wide the ELSS scheme.

If I knock that off, and then other schemes they are getting the flows already began. See, SIP is right If I look at SIP number minus the STP is something which comes from large-ticket investors.

They, of course, dynamically manage that. Therefore, minus the STP if you have to take it, I think we're already seeing that SIP numbers on equity getting better.

Of course, there's no question that it has to gain further momentum, given the fact that industry also coming in the segment. I think lastly, of course, from a sales team point of view, the high focus that we have put in place in terms of improving the productivity of every RM across the country with the improved fund performance and reasonably high level of engagement and become of activities in the retail segment which our retail team is doing it, I think should start reflecting in terms of improved performance coming on the numbers as we move forward.

That I'm reasonably confident the way things are shaping up. I think it's will remain improve these numbers on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

See, as far as the market share is concerned, of course, if anyone look at top 10 players versus rest of the players, you must also, of course, remember that overall market is expanding, and more players coming in. I think we also have to keep a close watch on our absolute performance improvement.

In fact, when I look at this year, whole of this year nine months numbers, I'm close to about 6,000 crore of net sales that we've got on some of our equity as a product, and overall as a fund house, we got almost about 25,000 crore of net sales. These are numbers is actually reflection of the confidence with the team which the team is driving the whole thing.

I think improved performance will only further boost the confidence the entire team across the country and the distributing partners to bring the numbers up. That's something I'm already seeing it as the reflection coming from our Prayesh, are you there?

Prayesh Jain

Yeah. Sorry.

Sir, if I got your number right, you said 4,500 crore of flows in this year in this nine months?

A. Balasubramanian

No. Total is about 25,000 crore roughly the overall as a fund house, including fixed income.

Equity will be close about 6,000 crore of net sales across all our equity schemes put together, including arbitrage funds. Okay.

Sir, you have Which I take it as a trend, I'm just saying. I'm just saying why I'm saying Prayesh this number is though is not disclosed generally.

It is a number which normally we keep track of it how we're progressing on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Those numbers are not generally disclosed anywhere, but I'm just going by the trend that I'm saying.

Flexi Cap Fund, I'm seeing some inflows. Multi Asset Allocation Funds, we are seeing inflows.

Maybe the rate of inflows could be lower, but I think what I see is actually it's a beginning of the reverse of the trend. Itself will gain momentum.

Yeah.

Prayesh Jain

Right. Sir, anything on the distribution side where you would want to take action given that we are there in the top quartile performance, any commission actions that you would want to take wherein you kind of increase a bit of commissions and take some pressure on your yields and get the volume growth, which can help you?

Is there anything of that sorts as a part of the strategy?

A. Balasubramanian

See, that's something we keep doing it, Prayesh, as part of our strategy products which can generate volume. At the same time, if one has to consider for a brief period, in terms of support the sales activities, that's something we do it.

Already the focus products that I'm talking about it, the team do have some kind of flexibility to push for the volume. That's something we keep doing it.

I think as we start seeing you keep in mind even for employees' point of view, in order to motivate employees cheer to run around the market, improve their productivity, we do incentivize drive with But that's something we keep doing it. I'm sure this strategy will ever be always ever-evolving, and nothing is one-time we have to do it.

This anyway is a continuous process. We also run another segment-wise distribution partners which we call as the Privilege Club.

Something again we keep driving it in order to help them improve their overall ranking and what are we can do in terms of various activities that we undertake. That remains as one of our focus area.

Prayesh Jain

Got it. The last question.

Is your flow market share coming closer to or is it very close to your back-book market share, probably in the month of December or currently in January? How is it kind of panning out?

Is it very close to your back-book market share?

A. Balasubramanian

Yes, somewhat we can say. I think see the way I see is the moment we see the rate of falling comes down, then somewhere it reach the equilibrium, then they'll start reflecting on the reverse trend.

Prayesh Jain

Got that, sir. All the best, and thank you so much.

A. Balasubramanian

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question.

Next question comes from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh with Citi. Please go ahead.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Hi, good evening, sir. A few questions from my side.

On the expense side, if I look at your other expense run rate, and not looking at quarterly volatilities, but looking at it more from a let's say rolling 12 months sort of a thing, it seems that the run rate has meaningfully been controlled despite you're kind of growing your alternate space, you're also kind of probably scaling up your sales personnel on the MF side given the traction in flows. Just wanted to get some sense of how should one think of the trajectory on the other expense side in case, let's say, you were to kind of scale up initiatives, given that your performance is now back on track?

The second question is on the flow share. I'm trying to triangulate this math that your SIP market share is fully yet to stabilize, but obviously your redemptions are probably kind of narrowed down, resulting in improvement in net flow trajectory.

Just from a channel perspective, would it be fair to assume that when performance improves, maybe the MFDs or the more assisted channels are the fastest to pick up in terms of both net new money and maybe lower churn rate? Are you seeing that or maybe I can stand corrected in case that's not the trajectory.

The third question is on the similar lines. You mentioned some number on the flow part in reply to the previous participant's question, but you included arbitrage also in it.

Is it possible to give you some idea of the quantum excluding arbitrage? Just two data keeping questions, if you can spell out the employee number and SIP AUM number as of December 31st?

A. Balasubramanian

On the expense part, Pradeep, you want to answer?

Dipanjan Ghosh

Yeah.

A. Balasubramanian

Dipanjan, actually the expense, see, in our initial two quarters, we had our Vantage Summit and Growth Summit across the country, and actually for this increasing the engagement of our distributors and investors. Q3 has those activities have been low, and that is why you see that there was no increase on quarter-on-quarter basis.

In fact, it is flat. If you see on year-to-date basis, I think that average, I think, would continue to be in coming quarters.

These all activities of our field engagement with our distributors and investors will keep on happening. However, there would be some quarter-on-quarter fluctuation when some few quarters will have those events, few quarters may not have.

I think the right way to look at is the to-date average. Okay.

The employee number is currently it is around 1,680 people, 83 to be precise, and SIP AUM is around 87,000 approx, 86,984, around 87,000 crore. Just to answer the other question, Dipanjan.

As far as the channel concerns, definitely the organized channel, which is the banking channel, ND channel, and MFD channel, which contributes roughly about 80% of the AUM, and we do have very strong relationship is built historically. The performance improvement definitely improves the confidence of our partners and go aggressively and push it.

The MFD is one channel which we are already seeing some traction. Organized channel, of course, goes by the recommendation of the product, which I mentioned earlier.

Some of the organized channel which sell, say, three, four products of each of the category, we are already seeing is coming as part of the recommendation list, barring one or two where we are in the borderline case for the product to become part of approved list. As for the NDs concerned, again, some of our products are now coming as part of the As it comes as part of the recommendation list, then naturally there is a higher responsibility, ownership, and incentive to sell the product from those channel partners' part.

That I see the trend is reversing. As for the online, which is digital platform concerns, while we do have presence with each of these partners, which built over a period of time, is strong partner for all of us, they go by criteria they apply in selection of the funds, and some of our funds again coming as part of their the recommendation list and therefore build a strategy around it, how do we get higher volume.

We have seen this kind of volume coming in a few quarters back on some of the funds. Basis their understanding and evolving situation, that's something will push.

I think largely if I look at it, it will be mix of all these channels, because we can't say this is one channel. We, as a fund house, have got separate channel responsibility for each of the channel partners with the people around it, and therefore that With respect to the flows, I'll just give you a broader trend in terms of, though we don't give the individual fund-wise or category-wise flows, but as overall equity category I just gave the number.

I think broadly, we can take it about 60 to 60-40 kind of ratio, 60 for arbitrage and 40 for other funds. Though we don't give individual numbers, but broadly that's the kind of mota-moti you can take as a breakup.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Got it. Just to clarify, this was for 3Q or 9M, this data that you mentioned, the last data point on flows?

A. Balasubramanian

Nine months, yeah, correct, for the full year, nine months, yeah, correct.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Sir, if I can squeeze in one small question, and thanks for the answers to the previous questions. Your performance is improving after some time, right?

What we've seen over the last few years for some of your peers where we saw turnaround in performance, while AUM market share picks up, it never really recovers to the previous peaks, and maybe that's a function of market fragmentation, or maybe changing industry dynamic in terms of distribution, difficult to kind of pinpoint. Having said that, in this environment, given that your performance improvement somehow coincides with the timeframe when there's a regulatory change also, would it be fair to assume that you'd want to kind of maybe take a differentiated stance with respect to payouts to your distributors such that maybe there's a motivation to kind of aggressively push your products a little higher, or you'd kind of follow suit in terms of passing on the hit to the distributors?

A. Balasubramanian

No, no. As far as the growing the business concerns, that commitment, because if we have to grow a little faster, we'll have to apply multiple strategies, which includes temporary incentive that need to be provided for pushing the sales.

Normally, we do that on a select basis. It is nothing new to us.

At the end of the day, again, we should also, of course, have responsibility for profitability target that we generally keep. We have to do the fine balance between profitability versus overall growth in AUM versus the revenue.

That's something we keep doing it. I cannot say this will not do that.

That thing our industry is so dynamic, it's very difficult to take a single stand and basis we push it. Now that performance improvement is coming, performance pool comes, recognition comes, and the volume starts coming in.

Therefore, we have to give a little higher push, that means temporary adjustment of the pricing, which of course normally we are open. Again, we try to, of course, do the balancing between growing the size and maintain the overall profitability expectation.

That's something we'll continue to keep.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Perfect. Thank you, sir.

All the best. Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question.

Next question comes from the line of Abhijeet Sakhare with Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.

Abhijeet Sarkhare

Hi. Good evening, everyone.

My first question was if you could indicate how have been the yields on the fresh inflows that have come up in the last couple of months compared to the overall book yields? The context is just to kind of check this with reference to your earlier comment that the idea will be to keep the yields intact, right, not just because of the telescopic decline, but also the new regulations that will set in from next year onwards.

On the incremental flows, more or less the same. There is nothing different.

A. Balasubramanian

We have not done any NFOS per se in this quarter. Therefore, more or less, yields remains the same as what Pradeep mentioned earlier.

The intent of maintaining overall yield I was just mentioning, given the fact, of course, the regulatory framework might have marginal impact, but broadly, the intention is to keep the trend on the margins more or less the same. That's the attempt we'll make through a mix of product, through a mix of momentum that we are bringing in certain high-margin asset classes.

Abhijeet Sarkhare

Got it, sir. How should we think about the expense growth for next couple of years?

A. Balasubramanian

Abhijeet, expense growth would be the normal expense growth, no shockers on that account, except, which would be in line with inflation and closer to that, except we may see impact of the new ESOP scheme, which we have rolled out in the month of January. Next few quarters, we will have impact on the manpower cost on account of this new ESOP scheme.

Abhijeet Sarkhare

Yeah. The base Sorry to interrupt.

A. Balasubramanian

Sorry. Otherwise, other expenses would be in line with normal inflationary, except in employee cost on account of ESOP cost.

That's already kind of showing up in the third-quarter employee cost, right, the impact of ESOP? Third quarter no, third quarter is not completely showing, because the new ESOP scheme of ABSL AMC has been rolled out in January.

Third quarter actually is having the impact of the parent company ESOP given to select employees.

Abhijeet Sarkhare

Yeah. Okay.

A. Balasubramanian

That ESOP cost will be spread over three years. ESOP cost will be spread over three years, which will have to make a provision for,

Abhijeet Sarkhare

yeah. Okay.

Sir, last question, I missed the data on equity flows that you mentioned the previous question with respect to the nine months' flows, sir. If you could please repeat that?

A. Balasubramanian

I said overall, the flows have been improving in the equity, and broadly I said as a fund house, close to about 50,000 crore of inflows, which includes fixed income, equity, and arbitrage. Within the equity, I mentioned close to about 6,000 crore kind of inflows, rough-cut number, that's what I just mentioned.

Within that, the focus products that we are pushing, which is the Flexi Cap Fund, Multi Asset Allocation Fund. In fact, we are also getting start getting flows on the small- and mid-cap funds, though may not be in the same order as what industry is getting it.

These are some of the trend reversal that I'm seeing on at least about seven or eight product in terms of flows improvement.

Abhijeet Sarkhare

Got it, sir. Very useful.

Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, we have come to the end of question-and-answer session.

I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

A. Balasubramanian

Yeah. Thank you, and thank you, everyone, for joining, and with this, we conclude our Q3 FY26 earnings call.

If you have any query, you can, of course, call or write back to Pradeep Sharma and Shivani [unclear]. Yeah.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Limited, that concludes this conference.

Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.