Thank you, Rutuja. Good evening, everyone.

On behalf of InCred Equities, I welcome you all to Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC's fourth quarter and full year FY '26 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.

Yeah. Thank you, Meghna, and and good evening to everyone, and thank you for joining our Q4 FY '26 investors call.

I hope I hope you all have the opportunity to read through the earning presentation, which is available both the stock exchanges and our company website. Let me begin by sharing our perspective on the current macroeconomic environment, followed by update on the quarter ending FY '26 for our mutual fund business.

The ongoing conflict, as is known, in West Asia and the wave of global uncertainty are fundamentally changed the world order. Surging energy prices have changed the global macro perspective, and are posing challenges for global economic growth.

For India, the disruptions in the in the Asian market due to the geopolitical risk have driven energy costs higher, and depreciated the Indian rupee versus U.S. dollar, which continues to remain a risk in the very short term.

The risk-off sentiment has prompted FIIs outflow, and broad-based equity market corrections across emerging market, as a result of that. The IMF now projects global growth to moderate to 3.1% in 2026, down from 3.4% in 2025, with headline inflation expected to rise modestly.

The peak of tariff-related uncertainty is behind us, and potential productivity gains from AI provide a meaningful structural tailwind over the medium term. India has demonstrated commendable resilience through this period.

Domestic growth momentum remains fundamentally healthy, and I expect the GDP growth to be about 6.75% for the year, preserving India's position as the fastest-growing major economy. CPI inflation expected to rise modestly.

However, it remained at a comfortable position within RBI tolerance band, with subdued core inflation and a healthy food stock providing additional buffers. India's growth outlook continues to remain continues to be underpinned by strong domestic demand, improving investment activity, a supportive monetary policy stance, and healthy bank and corporate balance sheets.

Turning to equity market, the last quarter witnessed a sharp transition from optimism to caution, with market correcting from near record highs, driven by persistent FII outflows and global risk-off sentiment and rising crude prices. Encouragingly, sustained participation from domestic mutual funds and retail investors cushioned the decline, underscoring the growing maturity of domestic liquidity, and reinforcing that disciplined, long-term investing and trusted guidance have never been more valuable.

Coming to an update on the mutual fund industry, the quarterly average AUM for the industry as a whole stood at ₹81.5 lakh crore as of March 2026, compared to ₹67.42 lakh crore as of 31st March 2025, registering a year-on-year growth of 21%. The industry recorded its highest-ever SIP contribution, approximately ₹32,000 crore for March 2026, representing a year-on-year growth of 24%.

Total mutual fund folio stood at approximately 29 crore as of March 2026. During Q4 FY '26, the industry saw total NFO collection approximately ₹11,200 crore across equity and debt funds, with equity collections driven by predominantly flexicap fund, multi-asset allocation fund, and small- and mid-cap fund.

Despite equity market volatility, industry witnessed continuous flows into various schemes, highlighting sustained investor confidence and the long-term growth potential of Indian equities. Individual average AUM for March 2026 stood at ₹47.4 lakh crore, contributing to about 60% of the total industry size.

B-30 cities with an average AUM of ₹14.43 lakh crore, accounted for 18% of the total AUM, growing by 19% year-on-year. Coming to the ABSLAMC performance highlights, at ABSLAMC our overall average AUM including alternate assets now stands at ₹4.74 lakh crore, growing by 17% year-on-year.

Our mutual fund quarterly average AUM stood at ₹4.36 lakh crore, representing 14% year-on-year increase. With this, our equity mutual fund quarterly average AUM stands at approximately ₹1.97 lakh crore, growing by 17% year-on-year.

Our SIP contribution for March 2026 has seen reasonably good pickup to touch ₹1,204 crore, growing by 11% quarter-on-quarter, where we closed about ₹1,080 crore to ₹1,204 crore, supported by 40 lakh contribution coming from SIP accounts. Building on this momentum, we are at the forefront of driving our SIP adoption through our "Sabse Important Plan" campaigns, reinforcing the value of investing through the market cycles and systematically.

Our ambition at ABSLAMC is to reach every household in India, making "Har Ghar Mein SIP" as a reality. We're working in that direction, which will help us in improving SIP number further.

Total investor folios for March 2026 stood at 1.1 crore, with new SIP registration for the quarter approximately 6 lakhs, growing by 16% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. This is another area where we have shown improvement in the current quarter, SIP registration which actually halved in the previous quarters, reflecting on both the [unclear] as well as the number of registration happening in the quarter.

Over the last year, we at ABSLAMC have made meaningful investment in strengthening the investment team, on people, and sharpening our portfolio construction processes, and investment framework, reinvented investment framework in order to deliver consistent investment performance. These have in fact resulted in a sustained improvement in our investment performance in equity, directly translating to growing investor confidence and distributor confidence, and consistent flows across our core funds' offering.

In fact, in the current quarter, we continue to see momentum coming in our flows in our flexicap fund, balanced advantage fund, multi-asset allocation fund, small- and mid-cap fund, GenNext fund, and multicap funds. Market expansion has always been a key priority for us, and continue to deepen our presence across our emerging market.

Today, we are present in about 19,000 PIN codes spanning across the country, reflecting our commitment to bring in quality investment solutions to every to every corner of India. Building on this foundation, we plan to add several new locations in FY '27, further expanding our geography footprint.

In fact, in the current quarter, we have seen our retail productivity improving across our markets, which is reflecting on number of distributors getting added to our funds, as well as number of distributors getting activated across markets across different markets in order to further drive our business. We have enhanced our technology platform and digital capabilities with a clear focus on delivering a seamless experience, including the launch of our new Investor App, is reinforcing our commitment to simple, transparent, and accessible investing.

We also launched a new Partner App with enhanced capabilities, and we remain focused on leveraging technology to drive smarter wealth creations and long-term value to our investors. In fact, in our digital platform, we have added some of the features which will actually bring in bring in the number of customers additions, and having customers with multiple folios, and so on and so forth, and also improve the service standards in our app, which will in fact help us in terms of adding more customer base as time should come.

Moving to our alternate business, the PMS and AIF category has maintained a strong momentum, complemented by a comprehensive suite of curated offerings. Our PMS and AIF assets grew significantly from ₹11,300 crore to ₹32,000 crore, which is again growth of about three times, which is also supported by ESIC mandate that we won last year.

As you all know that Sameer Narayan, who is our PMS head, managing the investments as the head of investments, now he's taking additional responsibility of our offshore fund management, along with building the business and expanding our global investment capability as the head of offshore business, both on money management as well as on building the business as and PMS. With his deep commitment and and passion, I'm sure these two asset classes will start building some more outcome as time to come.

We'll continue to raise funds in some of the funds that we launched last year in India AIF fund, fund based out of GIFT City, ABSL Flexi Cap Fund for inward remittance in GIFT City, and Global Bluechip Fund which again created which has given a huge experience for the investors to provide globally competitive solution to the investors. We plan to launch ABSL Global Emerging Market Fund very soon through the GIFT City.

Karan Dhave, who was part of our AB Capital talent pool, is now taking charge of debt AIF platform in order to provide fixed income credit-oriented performing credit-oriented funds, while he leads our performing credit strategy with the focus on scaling our offerings in this space. The ESIC mandate accounted for about ₹20,000 crore as of March 2026, while PMS and AIF, excluding ESIC mandate, registered year-on-year growth of about 14%, reflecting healthy underlying momentum backed by strong performance coming from our PMS business as well.

On the EPFO mandate, which last quarter I mentioned about we won the equity mandate, this quarter we signed the agreement, formal agreement we signed, and now we're already we're already operationally to get the inflows after fulfilling few other formalities in next few days. I'm sure the current quarter, we'll get to organize the EPFO money in the fixed income space as per the mandate given to us for next 5 years.

We are currently in the fundraising plan in the Special Opportunities Fund Series 2, and Structured Opportunities Fund in Series 2, and Money Managers Fund in the AIF space, along with ABSL India Select Sector Fund in the equity space. On the real estate front, our AUM grew approximately about ₹740 crore, registering 15% year-on-year growth.

We currently have a fundraising underway for the Aditya Birla Real Estate Credit Opportunities Fund Series 2, and focus on senior secured lending to post-approval brownfield real estate projects across Tier 1 cities. In our passive business, we continued to witness significant momentum, with our quarterly average AUM crossing the ₹40,000 crore mark to stand at ₹41,200 crore in Q4 FY '26, representing year-on-year growth of 25%, and our customer base expanding to about 16.90 lakh crore.

ETF quarterly average AUM grew by 68% year-on-year, significantly outpaced the industry ETF growth of about 40%. Our passive product suite now comprise 54 distinct offerings across equity, fixed income, commodities, and multi-asset solutions designed to address the diverse investment needs of our investors.

During the quarter, we launched two new products in the passive segment, which is the ABSL MSCI India ETF Fund, and this will be based out of GIFT City feeding into our fund in India, and hopefully we get about flows from FIIs investors in this fund, and for which we launched this fund. At the same time, we have also launched BSE Top 10 Banks ETF, wherein we have started seeing some of the flow of investments, especially for those who are dedicated investment they make in the financial services index.

We are happy to announce that we have incorporated our wholly-owned subsidiary, Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC International IFSC Limited at GIFT City, and have subsequently obtained the retail license to further strengthen our presence. In the earlier presence in GIFT City was in the form of a branch as an external arm of Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC.

Now, it has become 100% wholly-owned subsidiary company. With this, we'll be able to launch products for inward remittances and outward remittances for as small as a ticket size of about $1,000, as even as low as $2,000.

We launched our SIF vertical under the Apex SIF brand, with our first offering, the Apex SIF Hybrid Long Short Fund. With the evolving investor needs and the rapid expansion of India's affluent segment, this category represents significant growth lever for us.

Building on this momentum, we plan to introduce a pipeline of new offerings as guided by SEBI new circulars in the near term to further strengthen and scale this platform. In line with this, we have further enhanced our investment capability with the addition of two specialists, bringing deep expertise in long-short as well as derivative-based strategies using options and futures market.

Moving to the financial numbers, Q4 FY '26 revenue from operation is at ₹458 crore as compared to ₹429 crore in Q4 FY '25. Our Q4 FY '26 operating profit was about ₹252 crore as compared to ₹233 crore.

Our Q4 FY '26 profit after tax was ₹187 crore as compared to ₹208 crore. This is actually on account of increase in reduction in other income due to the mark-to-market actions for the quarter.

Revenue from operations for the full year FY '26 was at ₹1,845 crore as against ₹1,680 crore. FY '26 operating profit was at ₹1,015 crore as compared to ₹944 crore.

FY '26 profit after tax is at ₹975 crore as compared to ₹913 crore FY '25. We're pleased to announce the board has proposed a dividend of 25.5% per share, be somewhat equivalent to about 78% of profit distributions for the current quarter for the full year.

With this, I would like to open the floor for any questions. I'll be joined by Pradeep Sharma to take any other questions that you may have.

Good evening, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity. My first question is on the regulatory impacts.

From the 1st of April, we see that there will be a 5 basis impact on the equity AUM. How do you intend to mitigate the impact, and what would be the net impact on our books?

Yeah. See, I think this is the broad impact generally post the regulatory changes is in the range of about 3 to 4 basis points roughly.

However, given the fact the way the industry has been operating, the way we also been operating, we will try and do the structures in such a manner that it does have least impact as far as the P&L concerns, given the fact that the reduction is actually quite marginal. Suitably making the structures that we have both on the commission structures and other expenses, keeping all those things in mind, we'll try and make it neutral to everyone and win-win for the overall business without having any kind of deep impact either for the distribution community or for our AMC business.

Okay. You intend to pass on to the distributors basically, and there will be 1 or 2 basis point impact.

That is what you intend to say?

No, we have not quantified any kind of exact number. I think we will of course roll it out in the current quarter.

As of now, the assumption that you're making as far as the AMC impact concerns will be very marginal, because we would look at from all angles how do we maintain the overall profitability. At the same time, when we also look at passing on, optimizing the entire thing will also of course since it goes across the entire distribution community, we also feel even from a distribution point of view, even if it is marginally passed on, impact will be the least.

Understood. Sir, how has been the flow market share versus the book market share this quarter?

In line with the market only. In terms of market share, you are saying?

Market share. Flow market share versus book

market share.

In line with our market share, yeah.

Okay.

In line with market share. We have seen improvement in terms of our flows.

I think if I want to just give you some kind of colors, one, we actually this quarter is better than the previous quarter in terms of flow of funds coming into the funds that we have been promoting, backed by reasonably good acceptance, more and more approvals are also coming in from the banking channel. That sort of thing is good news.

Second is the way we looked at it, as we've been saying for last 1, 1.5 years, we'll continue to focus on reducing the fall in the market share before we start rising. That's something again has happened in this quarter, too.

I think the overall reduction is very, very marginal, I think, narrowed quite significantly. With improved flows broadly, I would say, it should come reasonably close to the market growth momentum very soon.

Understood. Sir, my last question is on a few bookkeeping questions.

First is, what is the SIP AUM? Secondly, if you could quantify the ETF AUM, your fixed income includes the ETF AUM, if you can give me the ETF AUM?

Lastly, the PMS and AIF revenue for FY '26 and Q4 FY '26?

Sure. I'll take the second question, which is the ETF equity, out of ₹40,000 crore, roughly about

₹11,500

crore is the ETF, which includes gold and silver. Roughly about ₹11,500 crore,

roughly

₹11,500 crore. Balance is actually fixed income target maturity fund, you can call it.

As far as the

other question, SIP book is about

₹76,000 crore is SIP book. With respect to revenue, One second, just hold on.

Yeah.

As far as the PMS and this revenue, I'll just tell you. Revenue coming from PMS and...

Revenue share from PMS and AIF alternate is around 6% on gross basis, Mohit, and on net basis, it will be around 3.5%.

Yeah. Understood.

Sir, just one follow-up. You said SIP AUM is ₹76,000-odd crore.

Last quarter, it was around ₹87,000 crore. It's just the M2M movement, right?

Yes.

Yes,

yeah.

It's purely M2M, yeah.

Pure M2M, right. Thanks, and wish you all the best.

Thanks.

Please. Thank you so much.

Hello. Good evening.

Just a few questions from my side. First, you mentioned in your previous comment that your flows in the funds that you have been pushing or funds where performance is good, there has been improvement in flows quarter-on-quarter.

If I look at the overall active equities as a cohort for you, and look at, let's say, 4Q versus 3Q or 4Q versus last year 4Q, how would the quarter-on-quarter and YoY look like for the entire active equity basket as a whole? My second question is on the expense side.

You mentioned in your commentary that you kind of have expanded your team on the SIF side, you also have ambitions to continue to scale up your alternates and PMS businesses, offshore businesses. When I look at the employee expense growth, how should one think of, let's say, for the next 1 or 2 years in terms of the growth?

Finally, I have a few data-keeping questions. One is SIP flows for the quarter.

The second is ESOP expense for the quarter and year. Third is the number of employees outstanding as of March 31st.

Sure. As far as the flows concern, Deepanjan, I think the last quarter also I mentioned, and this quarter also, the way I look at it, what we're trying to build in addition to arbitrage fund, which also considered as active equity, where we've seen good pickup in the first half of this year in terms of our arbitrage fund, and then we started seeing pickup coming in flexicap fund, multi-asset allocation fund, multicap fund, and the balanced advantage fund.

That's why I think we continued to see inflows. Even we are also promoting these kind of 5, 6 focused products.

On the thematic side, we continue to see flows in GenNext fund, and now we are seeing good pickup in the small- and mid-cap fund. We are now seeing flows in the small- and mid-cap fund.

That is the way we are pushing it. Third, of course, where we also losing some assets in the early part of the year is ELSS schemes, thanks to significant improvement that we have seen in the performance.

In fact, our outflows have come down quite. Although the asset as a category is not getting flows, but we had a bit of excess outflow initially for underperformance of the schemes.

That's got narrowed quite significantly. This year, we have seen a significant pickup.

In fact, I must also share with you the number of funds that have delivered Q1, Q2 performance in equity now has gone almost about 85%. In fact, current quarter, we have almost significant portion of our funds is in the Q4, and it's being accepted.

In fact, during the current quarter, we got our products approved part of the banking channels, which is also one of the piece we are working on it. Now wherever we got one product added, now two products got added from the list of funds that I just shared to you.

I think each quarter-on-quarter basis, we have improving on it, and hopefully this year, we will see the momentum continuing as far as the flows concern. That's we are pushing the team for improve the productivity point of view.

Then other two questions, I'll ask Pradeep to just give you insight.

Yeah. The other one was on the employee expenses you were talking about.

Basically, see, there we launched the new employee ESOP scheme in Q4, which we had the impact in the current quarter, and that will continue in the next year in coming quarters also. However, that impact is not that really visible in the Q4 numbers if you see.

There's not increase from Q3 to Q4, largely on account of there was some employee-related reversal because of the performance, variable pay performance, that has been offset during Q4. However, going forward, there would be a impact of around ₹8 crore to ₹10 crore per quarter in next year.

Next year.

In next year. This would be on account of ESOP and all.

As far as you said on the employee, the two new employees, I think that should not be much impact. That is only a running employee cost, and normal inflationary employee cost should be there.

Yeah. As far as your employee cost in addition to what Pradeep mentioned, I think from a team point of view, we are more or less there, except we have our ETF passive gentleman left.

We'll be adding one or two-member team to build our passive business. Of course, you have an existing team, no doubt, but to head that business, we have some serious plans in order to bring in higher focus on passive growth as well.

That's something which you will do. Second, of course, some people have left and therefore, some people are coming in.

Largely if I look at it from employee cost point of view, there'll be marginal increase, not big-time increase. Simultaneously, we also keep looking at optimizing the existing resources, what additional responsibility they can take, and therefore, this will remain somewhat under control.

As far as the ESOP concern, while he mentioned about next year's impact will come, in fact, I must mention, we rolled out our ESOP plan this year well on time, at close to about ₹845 price. In fact, this also boosted the confidence and motivation of our people, for almost about 110 employees we covered.

Therefore, I would probably say that with the improvement in performance, and team also got motivated post issuance of our ESOP, and this also should add to the overall positivity for the fund.

Got it. If I can get the data points that I asked for: SIP flows for the quarter, number of employees, and yes, those were the two questions.

Sure.

SIP flows are ₹1,204 crore.

One second, just give me a second.

So ₹1,208 crore is for the March, and if you see for quarter, it is ₹3,600 crore. Employees are 1,650 employees as of March end.

Sorry, 1,615 you said, right?

5-0, 5-0.

Yeah, 1,650.

1,650.

Okay. Just one follow-up, maybe.

If I look at your this year, you started with around 1,630 employees, you went up to around 1,700-plus, and now you're back to 1,650, despite the business momentum picking up. What is really getting captured in this employee count number?

There will be always some ongoing vacancies at RM level, etc., at the bottom of the pyramid, as well as we always keep on optimizing our employee strength and also keep on improving the productivity levels by way of implementing the new tech solutions, etc., etc. I think 40 to 50 employees plus-minus will keep on happening always, depending on the optimization.

Also

we also onboard certain segment of the business, off-role people, then they come on to the on-board. Roughly about 80 to 100.

Got it. Thank you, and all the best.

Thanks.

Hi, sir. Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity.

Three questions from my side. First one, sir, on this regulatory impact, I just wanted to understand when will we be getting some clarity on what is the full extent of the impact, because we are already in the third week of April, and I think would it be like that we will have an idea as we close April, or would it be like that optimization will continue for few months as we move in here?

If you could give some clarity on that? Secondly, in terms of book customers, how has all the movement been during the quarter?

The reason why I asked is that in the SIP slide, the growth that we are seeing in terms of flows as well as new SIP registration, that is not reflecting so much in terms of the contributing SIP accounts. I just wanted to understand the dynamics there, that are our existing customers opening incremental SIPs, or how is it playing out in terms of onboarding, say, new to ABSLAMC customers?

Also, if you could help us understand that in terms of this incremental SIP flow growth that has happened during this quarter, which channels are providing that? Is this coming from online channel or any other kind of distribution partners who we have added?

If you could give some color on that. Lastly, sir, also if you could share the yields by asset class, that would be very helpful.

Yeah. As far as your first question concern with respect to the optimizations, I think see this is after multiple round of discussion, when the first circular came and the final circular came.

All of you would have known, and as an industry, we worked with SEBI and brought it to a scenario where it'll have least impact, including the broking form with whom we deal with on the equity side. In fact, I was personally involved in ensuring that rather not ensuring, working with other team members of the industry to see to it that it has least impact.

That's the broader approach in which we did. Whatever the final that has come, the way we have worked out at this point of time is from AMC profitability point of view, we will try and make it neutral, if not positive.

As far as the distribution concerns, and we are in any case in a scenario where we have always been ensuring that the distributing partners should work with us very closely. Therefore, we kept the commission structures in a manner it remains somewhat attractive for them in order to grow our business.

There will be some marginal reductions could come. That's why broadly I'll see it, without having too much impact as far as them concerns.

The way we are currently working out is from our profitability point of view, somewhat neutral kind of model, that's why we are working on it. That's why we are looking at building the whole plan.

As far as the SIP is concerned, of course, we have seen some bit of cancellations this quarter, maybe I would say increased cancellation during the period of volatility. It used to be somewhere around about 40% to 50% for the industry, I'm talking about.

It went up to as high as about 92% for the industry. In fact, our SIP cancellations were actually lower than the industry, I would say.

At the same time, this normally happens. Any such kind of volatile period, we do see SIP cancellation increasing.

That in my view is not generally the worry part, because SIP registrations have not come down quite significantly. SIP registration remained somewhat strong.

Even our number for the quarter if you see is about 6.71 lakh, as against 5.4 in the previous quarter, that is the trend that we see. Therefore, this is something one good big achievement I would say as industry all have done, including ourselves, making SIPs are not strict to the market volatility.

In fact, I myself was during the volatile period, keep harping on the importance of not canceling SIPs. In fact, I came with a mantra which is called: if you have an SIP, continue SIP; if you canceled SIP, start your SIP; if you never invested in SIP, start SIP.

Something like we actually came with a campaign during that period. It was being appreciated by people, because during the volatile period, giving guidance to the investors is extremely important.

In fact, we as a fund house were all around the place in re-emphasizing the importance of SIP. In fact, that has been appreciated by a lot of our partners and investors that Birla is actually batting on front foot in promoting SIP, which hopefully should help us in building our SIP.

That's one. As far as the channel concerns, in fact, we have seen digital of course remains a dominant component, no doubt.

MFDs we have seen improvement during the current quarter due to the high engagement coming from our sales team, because improvement on performance, the narrative gives them more confidence for them to actually go out in the market, not having fear of reaching out. That something is helping our sales team actually go out in the market, talk about with a lot of proud that yes, we are doing well.

That is helping us in improving our quantum coming from MFDs. Of course, long way to go, no doubt.

Second is product coming as part of approved list of banking channel also is improving the contribution, both the flows and SIPs. Third, of course, is the ND channel.

Before ND channel, our direct team channels also we are seeing an improvement on direct team channels, both the HNI space as well as the PF and trust. We also have a channels coming on the institutional space.

That space is also we are seeing STPs now contribution is coming. In fact, last quarter, some of the even institutional customers who predominantly invest in equity as well had in equity when the market fell.

That's way broadly I see it. As far as yield concern, I'll just give it to Pradeep to give you insights.

Yields in equity category are around 62 to 60 62, 63 basis points, and debt side, it is around 24 to 25 basis points, liquid is around 12 to 13 basis points, ETF is around 6 basis points.

Sir. Understood.

Thank you for the detailed answer. Yes, sir, I think really great set of numbers on the SIP side.

Sir, just one follow-up if I may, in terms of the month of April. Just wanted to understand that how are we seeing the month of April now that the volatility has kind of reduced a bit, and the markets have also started to show some encouraging signs?

Just wanted to understand how you are seeing incremental offtake in the month of April.

Sure. I think March quarter, I think there was also pressure on fixed income side due to the rupee volatility as well as interest rates.

Banks are under tremendous pressure to raise deposits. That did have an impact as far as the fixed income flows concerns.

In fact, post RBI giving more liquidity and the borrowing calendar is more skewed towards the short term rather than the longer end, as again bond markets have come back to normal, liquidity has come back to normal, flows also come back to normal. In fact, as I speak, our number has come back now close to about ₹445 in terms of running number.

That's something as an overall basis, I would say. As far as equity is concerns, we did have our conference.

Normally we have in the beginning of every year, we run a conference taking all our distribution partners to one locations. We lock ourselves to talk about what we have done last year and what we intend to do next year.

In fact, we got a reasonably good response coming from distributors from across representation of India. That's something got a feeling that everyone wants to actually add and accumulate during the fall period rather than reducing the exposure.

That's one feeling I got. Therefore, this in my view assuming these about 400 distributors participate in our conference, assuming I take that as a voice of representation of the whole community, probably we should see the flows not getting impacted, given the fact market has also come back quite nicely.

From our side, we are seeing improved contribution, though it's too early for me to give that number, but I'm seeing an improved traction. In fact, I must mention post our conference in Hyderabad that we had last week, entire my sales force have become extremely confident in order to improve their own productivity in every market where they operate.

That is the way I would put it.

Understood, sir. This is all very helpful.

Thank you so much, sir, and all the best for FY '27.

Hi, sir. Am I audible?

Yes, you are audible, yeah. Yeah.

Hi. Harshit here.

Sir, I joined a bit late, maybe you got covered it, but what was the equity yields which you mentioned, sir? Equity segment yield?

Yeah. I'll just tell you, yeah.

Equity yields were 62 to 63 basis points, and debt it was 24, 25 basis points, liquid 12 to 13 basis points. Okay.

Sir, when I look at the equity yields, at least if I back-calculate broadly, there is a good around 2, 3 basis point yield reduction which would have happened this quarter. I think if I take every other thing constant, then probably a 3 basis point yield decline in the equity segment.

Is it anything particular to do here?

No, there's no specific reason. I think this is the function of telescoping pricing as well as mix of products.

Both these things will have impact on this versus if you see for last year, we had also actually in the earlier calls, we have said last year we had some reversal because of the regulatory changes. If you see from last year to this year, there is a marginal drop of 2 to 3 basis points.

I think otherwise, there is no specific point. Sorry.

Just on the sequential part itself, and wanted to check that probably it looks like equity declined.

It's broadly product mix.

Continue, Harshit.

Within equity, you are saying there could be more passives or basically index funds, etc., would have increased, that would have led to that yield decline?

Yes, yes. Product mix, yeah.

Otherwise on the core product, there is no fall. Of course, as mentioned about see, some of the funds are also bit growing in size, to the extent the telescoping pricing impact that he mentioned.

I would say that is one component of it. Otherwise, even growing our passive has also get added to that segment.

Got it.

Got it. Sir, just the other point, you mentioned that the impact of the TER revisions, you would want the distributor commissions not being impacted.

Then you said that we also want to ensure that our business is neutral in terms of the economics. How can that be?

Do you expect that we will be have to taking some hit?

No, just to clarify that, Harshit, we did some kind of math, just back-of-the-envelope math we just did. Let us assume a scenario that we're able to make it somewhat neutral or negative, let us assume, for the distributing partners, what is the impact it'll come.

Given our current brokerage structure that we have, existing distribution structure that we have. I would say we would be in the I would not say too high, I'll not say not too low as well.

I think we are a little above, say, median, I can say, when compared to the industry people. Therefore, we felt that what is the impact it will come, that is assuming that 2, 3 basis points is actually comes at the cost of to the distribution side, then we felt the impact is very marginal right from the people who get a larger AUM versus smaller AUM.

For us also, given the fact this has come, we also re-looked at some of our cost structures, how we can improvise this. Therefore, we looked at across the board how we can actually ensure that impact is less.

It's also coming from the fact that, as I mentioned earlier in the call, that whatever said and done, the initial fear which was there when the first circular came versus the final circular when it came, in that call also I mentioned it'll be more or less neutral, if not highly positive. That we continue to maintain that.

This have to get evolved, in my view. Therefore, we cannot say this is the way exactly it'll work.

Because anyway, once this is done, implemented, we'll come back to a normal distribution structure, which normally we keep about 60%, 70% is the distribution structure. We'll come back to that model.

Therefore, we should not get confused in terms of who'll get the impact and who's going to get benefiting. We have to ultimately come back to the distribution model.

Understood, sir. Sir, one last question.

If I look at my net equity flows across all the active funds basically, I think last year, if I assume that in the interim we had some higher redemptions from the older schemes, then we had some higher redemptions in the online basically. Are we because of the performance now being much more stable and a larger track record of stable performance, is it fair to assume that right now we are at a stage that on a monthly basis, we are getting ₹250 crore, ₹300 crore of net inflows as a bare minimum right now?

Just trying to understand that have we reached a point that net of redemptions, we are right now at a point that ₹250 crore, ₹300 crore monthly inflows are more predictable inflows which we can get every month?

Yes. I think that trend is there, Harshit.

I think you articulated nicely in terms of how we are shaping up. In fact, what I normally say is last year flows actually is two times higher than the previous year flow in terms of our flows.

That's again nothing but an effort that we are doing it. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, whatever steps we have to take in order to bring in the talent side, wherever we have to improvise it, and responsibilities changing, and so on and so forth, each of the areas the focus that we brought in, all have started paying.

Even it takes some time for people to get adjusted and start delivering. In fact, when I mentioned about 80% of the funds today is in Q1, Q2, is already I think an outcome of what we see.

When the product is coming part of the approved list is also the function of how now is coming in the radar with rest of the competition, on and so forth. I think we are moving in the right direction, I would say.

Sir,

is ₹200 crore, ₹300 crore number, which we have already now at a stage that now that is the base minimum monthly flows, we are there at? Or do you think that still we are not at ₹250 crore, ₹300 crore, it's still maybe few months we get it, but it's not that number which we have reached on a more steady-state basis as of now?

I would probably say the number would be much higher than what you are indicating. I don't want to say it right now, but we would probably push for higher than these numbers.

Understood. This is

helpful.

Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Thanks. Thank you.

Hi. Thank you, sir.

Just one question is, sir, you mentioned on the banking front, we've got some approval for some products. Can we get some more color on that, and how do we see the strategy in the banking channel changing?

I understand it's still small proportion of the overall channel mix.

Sure. See, I think the way we look at our banking channel is who are the large key partners for Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund.

It's basically starting from HDFC Bank, Kotak Bank, Axis Bank, and ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and the other smaller banks, we can say, IDFC Bank and others. Bank of Baroda, large distributors.

While we used to always have presence, but I think each one will have to generate in terms of volume coming in. That we are seeing it across each of the channels.

Second is, like HDFC Bank, they had tightened their product recommendation after the 2019 financial market crisis. They don't promote more than three or four products in part of the list.

In fact, I'm happy to say two of our products is part of their recommendation list. That's something is also helping us, because our engagement is good, connectivity is good, and product coming on recommendations, it lead to increase in flows.

That's something we are seeing. We have seen Kotak Bank is also part of our wealth management team and retail team of Kotak Bank, who can buy for us.

In fact, two, three of our two of our products are part of their recommendation list. As I understand their constraints, they cannot give more than two products per fund houses on the basis of their performance selection.

I'm happy to say these are some of the products coming in part of their recommendation list purely on the basis of performance improvement, engagement, their own conviction, and understanding of what we are doing would deliver then the much-desired outcome. That's the way we are pushing it.

This is something would help us in keeping that momentum continuing.

Got it. On the flows part, would the banking contribution be materially different than the past, specifically on the equity assets?

I would say materially different from the past. There were flows had come down quite significantly from this channel because the product were not part of the recommendation list.

Now with the engagement being there, the product coming part of recommendation would lead to actually increased flows. Of course, even pushing the sales team to take full advantage of high engagement with the team, which I think the team is also doing it.

On MFDs, they have the regular flows because we have deep connections. Even MFDs when we connect, we don't look at them only as our distribution alone.

We actually add a lot of value addition we give by providing guidance, and we run program called Legacy Leaps, we run a program called Fulcrum in order to encourage the next generation of the distribution partners who have long association with distribution partners for 30 years. Old generation wants to develop the next generation.

In fact, we as a fund house take a lot of leads in helping the next generation to build the business. All such things we are doing it in order to ensure our traditional channel, MFD channel improves, while the alternate channel continues to get better.

Direct is something we have made an investment. Last 1, 1.5 years, we've been making investment on direct team.

Also we bring in more sharpness in terms of improving the numbers. Then the last piece actually is the digital channel.

Last year, I still remember we got close to about 15 lakh new customers added through the online channels in some of our funds like PSU Equity Fund and few others. That segment also we are pushing ourselves as to how we can increase the contribution from the digital channel as well.

All around these kind of sharper focus, I'm sure each of the channels will start contributing better than the previous year. That should help in terms of keep building the momentum.

Great, sir. Lastly on the product pipeline, what would be on the equity side?

Yeah. One, of course, the SIF we have already filed.

That's something which will launch very soon. Second, under the new category, we have looked at some of the merit for having what is a life cycle kind of funds we are looking at.

We're also looking at some of the REIT and InvIT fund, if SEBI gives approval. That's something we are looking at it.

It's the part of our regular exercise. In fact, we're also looking at our GIFT City product.

I must mention that we were the launch in GIFT City product investing in emerging market without knowing how the emerging market is going to do. In fact, that fund had done exceedingly well, giving good experience to investors, giving about 30% dollar 35% dollar return on a 1-year basis.

That's something it was a closed-end fund. We are now looking at launching the open-end fund in the GIFT City.

We have this plan, all this in place. As far as the domestic concern, in addition to life cycle fund what I mentioned about, I think fund of fund well, but we're not seeing much growth, deserving growth, I would say.

That's something again we are pushing

it. Got it, sir.

Thank you. That's all from my end.

Yeah.

Thank you everyone for joining for this call, and with this, we conclude our Q4 FY '26. Thank you.