Angel One Limited

Angel One Limited

279.00
INR
-12.25
(-4.21%)
207.25BMarket Cap
Jan 18Next Earn

Q3 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 16, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the Q3 FY26 earnings conference call, hosted by Angel One Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the belief, opinions, and expectation of the company as on date of this call.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will remain 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 the operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchstone phone. I now hand the conference over to Mr.

Hitul Gutka from Angel One Limited. Thank you and over to you, sir.

Hitul Gutka

Good morning and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Angel One's Q3 FY26 financial and business performance.

The recording of today's earnings call and the transcript will be uploaded on our website under the Investor Relations section. The financial results, investor presentation, and the press release are also available on the website.

For today's call, Angel One is represented by the entire management of the company. We also have the senior leadership along with Dinesh Bhai, Ambarish, Vineet, Saurabh, Srikanth, and Hemen, along with SJ, our IR consultant.

The leadership team will give us a brief overview of the operational and the financial performance of the quarter gone by, which will be followed by a Q&A session. Please note that there may be certain forward-looking statements during the course of the call, which must be viewed in aggregate with the risks that the company faces.

With this brief introduction, I now invite Mr. Dinesh Sheth for his opening remarks.

Dinesh Thakkar

Thank you, Hitul. Good morning, everyone, and a very happy New Year to you all.

Thank you for joining us today. As we look back on the quarter and step into 2026, India's financialization journey continues to benefit from strong structural tailwinds.

Our young digital-native population, accelerating formalization, and stable policy environment, these forces continue to reinforce our conviction in long-term opportunity across investing, credit, wealth, and protection. Our strategy is simple and deliberate.

We are building a technology-led financial services platform that supports clients across every stage of their financial journey. This approach helps us to deepen trust, enable scalable platform-led monetization, steadily expands clients' lifetime value.

We have entered new business lines at the right inflection points where digital platforms can meaningfully improve access, discovery, and transparency, scale effectively, and do so in a way that promotes fairness and reduces bias. What further strengthens our long-term outlook is the convergence of broader product suite and maturing client base.

As clients progress through their financial lifecycle, we see higher engagement, greater wallet share, and monetization across multiple products. This creates a compounding growth engine while steadily improving unit economics.

With this conviction, we continue to invest in expanding both our client base and our product offerings, while also driving operational efficiency through disciplined execution and responsible use of AI. We are extremely mindful of the importance of cybersecurity and continue to invest in best-in-class processes, controls, and governance frameworks.

Trust is foundational to our client relationship, and cyber resilience remains central to preserving that trust. On regulation, we have always viewed a robust framework as an enabler of sustainable growth.

As we shared earlier, activity levels are normalizing and margins are reverting back to historical trends. Our standalone operating margin is already at a hefty 43%, reflecting the strength of our core business model.

We expect further operating leverage as we continue to acquire new customers and deepen engagement by offering more products to our existing customer base. As we scale into broader financial ecosystem, we are also strengthening our leadership, governance capabilities.

In this context, I am pleased to welcome Ajit Sinha as our General Counsel, with over 24 years of experience, including his tenure at National Stock Exchange, as we further strengthen our legal, regulatory, and compliance framework. The board has also approved our first interim dividend of rupees 23 per share and a stock split of 1 to 10.

We remain focused on disciplined execution, responsible adoption of technology, and keeping client outcome at the center of everything we do. I will now hand it over to Ambarish.

Thank you.

Ambarish Kenghe

Thank you, Diti. Good morning, everyone.

At Angel One, we believe enduring value is created by investing at the right time in technology, talent, and new business lines. Over the last few years, we have made deliberate investments across wealth, asset management, and credit.

The outcomes are clearly visible in our business metrics. Yet, we are just getting started.

We operate with a beginner's mindset. We are always at the beginning of something, focused on building what comes next and putting new opportunities in motion.

As our existing verticals scale, we will continue to build new capabilities, sustaining a disciplined cycle of investment, monetization, and earnings resilience. The mindset remains constant even as the environment around us evolves and we help shape it.

Technology and AI are central to how we drive growth and efficiency. Previously, we have talked about our support chatbot, AI-generated email responses, etc.

Beyond these use cases, a major focus area for us is institutionalizing AI across the organization. There are many things brewing internally on this front.

This quarter, we launched the beta of our in-house data analyst agent, an AI-powered conversational analytics tool that enables teams to derive insights from complex data sets using natural language. For instance, queries like Show me the monthly trend of revenues for top 10 cities from September to November, which can then be followed up with more queries in a conversational style.

In parallel, we are adopting agentic AI across our software development lifecycle to accelerate engineering velocity. For example, we have been using top-of-the-line tools to generate source code.

Together, these initiatives reduce decision and execution latency, improve productivity, and enhance operating efficiency, allowing us to stay ahead of the curve. This is not just about efficiency and velocity.

We believe AI will help us build fundamentally better products. Turning to broking, we are seeing early signs of recovery in line with what we had guided.

Our average daily orders have been improving consistently, from a low of 4.9 million orders in February, post the FNO regulatory changes, to an average of 6.2 million in Q3 FY26. We have always maintained that regulatory changes strengthen market structures and support long-term participation.

We continue to welcome the regulator's proactive, progressive, and consultative approach. Our franchise across direct and assisted channels remains resilient.

Our tech-enabled assisted business provides the strategic advantage through a pan-India network of over 10,000 APs and over 11,000 MFDs, offering deeper connect. We sustained a 20.4% overall retail equity turnover market share and strengthened our Demat market share to 16.5%.

In commodities, Q3 marked our highest ever orders and ADTO at 35 million and rupees 1.7 trillion respectively, higher by 21% and 43% quarter over quarter. Year over year, it is a gain of 53% and 169% respectively.

Our client funding book grew 10.4% sequentially to 58.6 billion rupees, reflecting rising client confidence and deeper wallet share. Our emerging businesses continue to show promising traction.

Strong mutual fund SIP registrations and robust credit growth highlight improving engagement across the platform. Credit disbursements reached rupees 7.1 billion during the quarter, growing 56% quarter over quarter, translating into an annual run rate of rupees 28 billion.

These businesses are designed to mature over time, solving client needs and driving sustainable monetization. Despite a year of regulatory changes and softer market conditions, our standalone EBITDA margin, comprising broking and distribution, improved to 43% this quarter, underscoring the strength of our operating model.

Wealth management continues to gain momentum, with Onyx's AUM crossing rupees 82 billion, while our asset management business scales steadily with AUM at rupees 4.7 billion. As we expand into a broader financial ecosystem, we are continuing to strengthen our leadership and governance.

I am delighted to welcome Ajit Sinha as our General Counsel, bringing over 24 years of experience, including most recently at the National Stock Exchange. To conclude, we are building Angel One as a full-stack, omni-channel, AI-native financial services platform, compounding through technology, trust, and disciplined execution.

The foundations are strong, our engines are scaling, and the opportunity ahead remains compelling. With that, I will now hand it over to Saurabh to walk you through the emerging growth verticals.

Saurabh Agarwal

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. Our emerging businesses continue to make steady and meaningful progress, with credit evolving into a key strategic growth engine.

During the quarter, we scaled disbursements to 7.1 billion rupees, supported by stronger demand, deeper partner engagement, and improving execution across the platform. What's compelling is how early we still are.

Only a small fraction of our client base currently accesses credit through us, despite the fact that our base already takes over 1 trillion rupees of personal loans annually from the broader market. The embedded opportunity within our ecosystem alone, therefore, even before considering secured categories, is quite substantial.

The strength of our customer base, combined with more disciplined industry environment and clearer regulatory framework, has increased partner confidence and capital deployment on our platform. We are deliberately building this business as a long-term platform play and not just a short-term distribution play.

Our investments are focused on deeper data loops, stronger intelligence, and more robust operating frameworks that help partners underwrite more precisely, operate more efficiently, and manage outcomes more predictably. This creates durable partner value and positions us to capture attractive economics over time.

We will continue to scale with discipline, but our strategic intent is clear: to build one of the most trusted high-performance credit platforms in the country, with strong unit economics and defensible differentiation. On mutual funds, we remain well positioned as a mutual fund-friendly platform, maintaining our presence and share in the SIP market, with 2.3 million unique SIPs registered during the quarter.

Overall AUM has grown to rupees 171 billion. Adoption continues to expand meaningfully beyond metros as well, reinforcing the long-term structural growth of the category.

Of the 3 million clients who have invested in mutual funds on our platform, more than 38% began their overall investment journey with mutual funds only, demonstrating that MF is not just an engagement driver, but also a powerful customer activation engine. A significant portion of these clients subsequently deepened their relationship with us through broking, reinforcing MF as a strong monetization lever also.

Our focus hence is clear: expand reach, deepen engagement, and build these businesses into durable franchises that compound long-term value. While we remain excited about the opportunity, we will continue to scale with discipline rather than optimize for short-term growth.

With that, I'll hand it over to Srikanth to walk you through the wealth business. Thank you.

Srikanth Angel

Thank you, Saurabh. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us.

Let me begin with a broader context. 2025 was one of the most challenging years for investors, not because markets moved in any one direction, but because every asset class behaved differently.

We saw significant global volatility, with returns being driven by focusing on asset allocation and not from betting on a single market or theme. In that sense, 2025 truly stood out as the year of asset allocation.

Adding to that, wealth management in India emerged as one of the most active sectors. It drew strong interest from established and new-age companies, attracting significant fresh capital and demand for talent pool across domain and technology.

Coming specifically to Onyx, excited to share that today we manage 8,217 crores in AUM, which is a 34% Q1-Q growth. We service the needs of 1,600-plus clients across densities.

This scale reflects how we have doubled down on our omni-channel proposition, combining technology with deep domain expertise to make sophisticated strategies accessible to emerging HNIs, HNIs, and ultra-HNIs. Throughout this year, research and domain expertise held us in good stead through market volatility.

Several of our research-led views across commodities, global markets, and new emerging areas played out well. This consistency translated into higher client confidence.

We saw deepening of wallet share within existing relationships, alongside the acquisition of new clients. Building a wealth practice requires managing significant assets under management at sustainable margins, and that remains our core philosophy.

Our investments in technology have demonstrated improving productivity while bringing down operating costs. For example, today 37% of our code base is AI generated, allowing faster build cycles and iterations.

With digital quotient as a key strategic pillar, we actively experiment with new use cases, especially in artificial intelligence. Our recent initiatives include an AI avatar, automated portfolio weekly wrap, AI-generated mutual fund summaries, and automated meeting notes that enhance client engagement for RMs while providing portfolio and market insights to our clients.

One of the outcomes of this approach is our portfolio assessment feature on the Onyx app, which gives investors deep analysis and a holistic view of their portfolio. Over 10,000 crores of portfolio value have been analyzed by investors via a digital platform.

Our focus in the coming year will be to double down on our early omni-channel successes, while we actively engage to activate Angel One's HNI investor base, with portfolio management being digitally facilitated through Onyx. Finally, on the investment side, asset allocation remains the core theme for 2026 as well, with a positive outlook on precious metals, select emerging markets, and commodities, supported by global liquidity and a potentially supportive central bank.

Disciplined diversification and execution remain key to capital appreciation. With this, I pass it on to Hemen.

Hemen Bhatia

Thank you, Srikanth. Good morning, everyone.

India's relationship with mutual funds is still at an early stage, especially when seen against the scale of household savings and rising incomes. This creates a large long-term opportunity, with passive investing set to play a bigger role, as investors increasingly seek simplicity, transparency and cost efficiency.

At Angel One AMC, our growth strategy is anchored around expanding our product suite and investing in investor education to drive informed adoption. As savings grow, passive products naturally find a more permanent place in investor portfolios, and our focus is to make this transition simple and well understood.

During the quarter, we strengthened our passive lineup with the launch of two new offerings: the Angel One Nifty Total Market Momentum Quality 50 Index and an ETF version as well, which are the industry's first smart beta offerings on Nifty Total Market Index. With this, our passive portfolio now stands at nine schemes across asset classes, offering investors broad choice through transparency and low cost structures.

We continue to see encouraging traction across key metrics. Our AUM stands at Rs 4.7 billion, spread across 1.9 lakh folios in over 16.9 thousand PIN codes, reflecting deeper engagement and growing adoption across Bharat.

Education remains central to our approach. Through digital content, vernacular communication and platform-led engagement, we are simplifying passive investing and helping investors build long-term wealth with confidence.

To expand reach, we are leveraging our strong captive distribution network, along with third-party online and offline distribution channels. As we look ahead, we remain focused on building a scalable education-led passive franchise that compounds steadily over time.

With that, I now hand it over to Vineet to walk you through the financial performance for the quarter.

Vineet Agrawal

Thank you, Hemen. Good morning, everyone.

As mentioned earlier by both Dinesh Bhai and Ambarish, I am pleased to share that in the third quarter, we saw clear signs of recovery, with meaningful improvements across both operational execution and financial performance. Despite three fewer trading days in the quarter, we delivered sequential improvement across both operating and financial metrics.

Total gross income increased 11.1% quarter-on-quarter to approximately Rs 13.4 billion, while total net income grew 9.3% sequentially to Rs 10.3 billion. Importantly, this growth was driven by multiple revenue streams, reflecting improving quality of earnings.

One of the key structural themes this quarter continues to be the diversification of our revenue mix. The share of gross broking income declined to 58.1% in Q3 FY26 from 64.7% in Q3 of FY25.

Share of interest income, including income from our client funding book and interest earned on deposits with clearing corporations, increased to 33%, up from 27.6% in the year ago. In addition, supported by strong growth in our credit distribution business and a healthy IPO environment, the contribution of distribution income increased to 4.3% in Q3 from 2.4% in Q3 of FY25.

We view this growth as volume-led and largely non-cyclical, given our expanding client base and product penetration. The remaining income was contributed by depository operations and other services.

Within broking revenues, the share of F&O declined to 44.3% of the total gross income compared to 52.5% in Q3 of FY25. This reflects a deliberate shift towards a more balanced and less volatile revenue profile, rather than any loss of competitiveness.

At the same time, we witnessed strong momentum in the commodities segment, where gross broking income grew 46.2% year-on-year to Rs 821 million, contributing 6.1% to the total gross income, compared to 4.4% in the same period last year. Turning to interest income sustainability, our average client funding book reached a new high of Rs 58.6 billion, up 10.4% sequentially.

This growth remains well within our internal risk thresholds, supported by adequate LTVs and robust monitoring framework. Along with higher fixed deposits placed with the clearing corporations, this resulted in 16.2% quarter-on-quarter growth in interest income to Rs 4.4 billion.

Finance costs increased 36.4% sequentially to Rs 1.3 billion, primarily due to higher borrowings on account of regulatory change requiring the upstreaming of client cash margins under MTF trades, as well as growth in the average client funding book. I would like to clarify that the elevated borrowings relating to this upstreaming activity are temporary and timing-related, and we do not expect this to have a lasting impact on our structural cost of funds.

On a net basis, the impact of cost of upstreaming funds on the EBITDAT is Rs 70 million for the quarter. Finance cost has increased by Rs 300 million with an increase in interest earned from the deposits by about Rs 230 million.

On the opex front, we continue to exercise strong discipline. Employee expenses, including ESOP costs, remain stable at Rs 2.7 billion, even after accounting for a one-time impact of the new labor reforms of Rs 38.6 million for past service period up to September 2025.

Other operating expenses increased modestly by 2% quarter-on-quarter to Rs 3.5 billion, largely driven by higher client acquisition, which we view as discretionary and variable in nature. As a result, our reported EBITDAT margin expanded to 39.4% in Q3 FY26, a sequential improvement of 489 basis points, despite ongoing investments in incubating new businesses.

This reinforces our confidence in the operating leverage inherent in the model. Reported profit after tax increased by 26.9% quarter-on-quarter to Rs 2.7 billion, reflecting both revenue diversification and cost discipline.

Finally, on the balance sheet, the period-end client funding book remains stable at Rs 59.2 billion, borrowings increased to Rs 59.7 billion, while net worth strengthened to Rs 61.5 billion as of December 31, 2025. Cash and cash equivalents remained healthy at Rs 135.8 billion, supported by higher client balances.

We continue to maintain strong liquidity buffers and conservative leverage, providing flexibility to support growth while managing regulatory changes. That concludes my opening remarks.

We will now be happy to take your questions. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session.

Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2.

Participants are requested to use their handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.

We take the first question from the line of Prayesh Jain from Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.

Prayesh Jain

Hi everyone, congratulations on good set of numbers. Firstly, a very book-typic question.

You have kind of presented two types of financials in your presentation: one is the consolidated financial performance, and then you have given broking and distribution, which is MF plus credit business. The gap between the two accounts for what?

Vineet Agrawal

Thank you, Prayesh. The distribution plus MF and credit distribution plus broking constitutes the standalone financials, and the other one is the consolidated financials.

Prayesh Jain

So

Vineet Agrawal

wealth management would be part of the consolidated financials. In this standalone, it includes broking, distribution of credit and MF only.

Prayesh Jain

Because I am asking that is if I look at the gap between the two financials that you have reported, revenue profile is not changed materially. In fact, it's weakened in the last couple of quarters, but the cost or the EBITDA loss of the gap is increasing every quarter.

Even on the PAT front, it's increasing. What explains that?

Vineet Agrawal

As we have been mentioning in the past, there is a burn of incubating the newer businesses, the asset management and the wealth management businesses, which is in the range of about 3, 3 and a half percent of the operating margin, and that's the gap.

Prayesh Jain

Even then the revenue profile should have increased significantly, right? The kind of scale-up we've seen on the wealth management AUM, the gap right now in the body shown on the two charts, the revenue gap is hardly, it's not changing at all.

In fact, it's just about 20 crores for the past two or three quarters.

Vineet Agrawal

As you would be aware, while the AUM continues to build up, there is a lag in the revenue realization because of the regulations where you cannot realize the revenue on the movement of the AUM up to a certain point in time. There will be some lag in the revenue realization from this AUM, especially on the wealth side, which will show up in the coming quarters.

Prayesh Jain

Okay. A more strategic question on the AMC.

When you would have started the AMC, you would have certain targets in your mind with respect to scale-up of the AUM and everything. How are we performing against it, and where do you see this scaling up, in spite of launching a few schemes?

Our AUMs have not scaled up. The existing clients that we have on the AMC front, whether those are largely our own clients, or how is the profile?

Do you see a significant scale-up here anywhere, any time in the next couple of years?

Ambarish Kenghe

I think this is Ambarish. These are long gestation businesses.

We don't think we should start viewing them in one or two years. Overall, very pleased with how the folios and the AUM has been growing, but Hemen, maybe you can give just specifics on the folios and AUM again so that becomes clearer.

Hemen Bhatia

Thanks, AK. Yes, see, the idea is to build a strong education-led passive AMC.

As you would know, mutual fund is a long gestation business, and it takes time to build the scale, create a brand, and then leverage onto what we build. Currently, we are very happy with the number of clients who have started participating in our ETFs and index funds.

It is growing at a very, very steady pace, and we've seen that once the clients grow, basically over a period of time, you start seeing that slowly and steadily in the AUM as well. That's how it is.

Prayesh Jain

Got that. Just last question, any color on the AP channels productivity on the distribution side, whether it's mutual fund, insurance, credit?

What is the kind of AP channel size in terms of these businesses? While, largely I think on the broking side we understand and we can do some reverse workings with respect to the broking side, but with respect to mutual fund scale-up, which is ideally I would presume that that's more on the distributor route, you would be earning income out of it.

What kind of size we have been able to reach on mutual fund as well as insurance and credit there?

Vineet Agrawal

Prayesh, we don't right now give any split of the distribution income between the direct and the assisted business. Overall it will be in that same ballpark of the broking business, which is roughly 75 is to 25.

For now you can take that, and as we go along we'll start giving more information in the following quarters.

Prayesh Jain

Got that. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time and fairness to others, we request you to restrict to two questions per participant and reach on the question queue.

We take the next question from the line of Nitesh from Investec. Please go ahead.

Nitesh Hutheram

Thanks for the opportunity. First question is on pricing per order.

That has increased in this quarter on a Q1Q basis. Last quarter I think we have taken a price hike.

It is now a new normal, or you see further increase in pricing per order going forward?

Dinesh Thakkar

Look, as all of us have said, we are operating at a fairly healthy margin. We are focused on building a great product and serving our customers.

There is no thought on more pricing changes.

Nitesh Hutheram

Secondly, on the OPEX, how should we build trajectory from a two to three-year perspective? We have seen pretty good growth in OPEX over the last three to four years.

How are you planning from a next, let's say, three-year perspective? Do you still see that OPEX growth will be lower than revenue growth, or it can be similar to revenue growth going forward?

Vineet Agrawal

Nitesh, a large part of our OPEX is driven by the customer acquisition that we do. We are quite buoyant about it.

We are very focused on that. Other than that, I think we continue to guide our stakeholders about operating margin of about 45%, 42-45% for the broking business, which we will continue to endeavor to obtain.

That should be the guiding principle for any future projections.

Nitesh Hutheram

lastly, on the wealth management, how many clients Angel One has, which will qualify in the HNI category, and what will be the operating model in that segment?

Dinesh Thakkar

Hi. Nitesh, on that, well, we are still working on those, because right now, as the wealth business is just beginning to scale and ensuring that more and more products are provided on the platform.

There is a digital platform that wealth has themselves built. Only this year, we are now looking to integrate wealth platform into our super app.

As more numbers emerge, we will come back to you with more information at a later time.

Nitesh Hutheram

Sure. Thank you.

That's it from my side.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Sanketh Godha from Avendus Spark.

Please go ahead.

Sanketh Godha

Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is on the gross broking income mix.

Honestly, if you see last eight quarters' data, largely the authorized person contribution remains in the range of 41-42 percentage. Despite adding so many number of clients, the direct customers' contribution significantly did not change in last eight odd quarters.

I just wanted to understand, is our reliance on authorized person to deliver the growth has increased of late, or there is a slowdown in the traction in the direct guys? That's point number one.

The second thing related to that thing only, two things which I wanted to check was that you used to disclose EBITDA margins of AP channel and direct channel separately in the past. If you can re-share that number, that would be useful just to understand the color of the profitability.

Related to this authorized person only, if you can give a color on how the margin trade funding book works. It is skewed towards AP customers, or more skewed towards direct customers?

That's the thing which I wanted to check.

Dinesh Thakkar

Look, many of these things we don't break out. Thanks so much for your questions, Sanketh.

Overall, both the businesses, direct as well as AP businesses, are fairly vibrant, both of them we are investing in. We continue to be excited about both the businesses, but we don't break out these specifics.

Sanketh Godha

The reason why I'm asking this question is because if the operating leverage need to play out very strongly in the company, I was under the impression that the direct growth should be much stronger because it trickles down directly to the bottom line. There is a kind of stagnation in the gross broking income between authorized person and direct.

That's the reason I wanted to check on that particular point.

Dinesh Thakkar

Look, we are investing in both the channels, and the split is remaining quite similar. The beauty of the assisted channel is that when you look at the long tail, when you start looking at tier 2, tier 3, and beyond, you get really good growth from there.

As we are expanding, I think both these channels remain fairly important for us.

Sanketh Godha

Sir, understood. Last one, Vineet, you probably missed on your opening remark.

The finance cost went up in the current quarter. I just wanted to understand it's largely because of the regulatory reasons, because of the upstreaming, or there was something else.

Vineet Agrawal

One is of course our client funding book has also grown. Some part of that is attributable to the growth in the client funding book.

The majority of it, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, is due to the regulation which came into effect from 1st October for the industry, wherein the upstreaming of client funds is required. As I mentioned, this is something which is transient.

It's not a permanent feature. Hopefully by some time during the quarter, we'll have a solution in place.

Sanketh Godha

The current run rate will continue. Is it fair to assume, or you will have a resolution to that?

Vineet Agrawal

For some period during the quarter, it will continue, but hopefully by the end of the quarter we'll have a more realistic number, which is going to be lower.

Sanketh Godha

Understood, Vinay. Thanks for the answers.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Gautam Jain from GCJ Capital Financial.

Please go ahead.

Gautam Jain

Good morning, sir. Congratulations for very good numbers.

Hello?

Operator

Thank you so much, Gautam. Why don't you go ahead with your question, Gautam?

Gautam Jain

Yeah. We have seen that the revenue per order in this quarter has gone up.

Is it fully factored in, or we can see further rise in revenue per order going forward? Whatever hike we have taken is completed, the full impact has come in the quarter, or we can see further rise in per order revenue?

Dinesh Thakkar

Gautam, thanks for the question. There are multiple factors that go into it.

There is a mix of orders. I think you've referred to a little bit about the pricing change we made.

The pricing change that we had made actually went into effect middle of the quarter. Some impact you saw of that also, but there are multiple factors going on this, and a lot of it depends on the mix of orders as well.

It can change some quarter

Gautam Jain

to quarter. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Raman K.

V. from Sequent Investment.

Please go ahead.

Raman Venkata Kerti

Hello, sir, can you hear me?

Operator

Yes, please go ahead.

Raman Venkata Kerti

Hello?

Operator

Yes, Raman, please go ahead.

Raman Venkata Kerti

Yes, sir. I just want to understand your credit disbursement business.

Does this business include your insurance business as well?

Vineet Agrawal

No, the credit distribution business is only for loan distribution of loans. Insurance distribution, though we do that, but it's a separate business.

Raman Venkata Kerti

From what I just want, from the PPT what I can read is the distribution business, revenue from distribution, does that include your credit as well as insurance, or only the credit disbursement distribution?

Vineet Agrawal

Raman, as per the regulatory guidelines, the insurance business can be done under a separate legal entity. It is done under Angel Financial Advisors, which is a wholly owned subsidiary, and therefore the standalone numbers that you see, which is broking plus distribution, MF and credit, that does not include the insurance distribution cost or the revenue.

That's part of the consolidated numbers. As I mentioned, the distribution business for credit and MF and the broking is part of the standalone that's there in front of the presentation.

Raman Venkata Kerti

Understood, sir. Sir, my last question is with respect to the asset management side.

We have been launching index funds and ETFs. Is there a plan of pivoting to actively managed fund, a flexi cap or a mid cap by the company?

Dinesh Thakkar

Thanks, Raman, for the question. We are very focused right now on the passive side, and you may see actually more come on that side, but nothing to talk about on the active side.

Raman Venkata Kerti

Thank you, sir.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Devansh Tandon from Findoc Finvest.

Please go ahead.

Devansh Tandon

Thanks, sir. Thanks for the opportunity.

My question is regarding the commodity turnover market share. In the recent business update that you have shared, it has reduced from 65% Q2 to 53%.

What led to this decline in the market share?

Dinesh Thakkar

Hi Devansh. Thank you so much for your question.

Look, I talked about this in my initial comments also. When you look at, let's say quarter over quarter, just the number of orders went up by 21% for us.

The ADTO, if you look at it, that went up by 43%. This is quarter over quarter.

You look at year over year same numbers, orders went up by 53% and year over year ADTO went up by 169%. What is happening is that there is a tremendous growth in the commodity market and the market is expanding.

What you are seeing is that the pie is expanding quite rapidly and even above 50%, that's a very, very healthy market share. We of course welcome when the market is expanding.

We are seeing the growth, happy about the growth we are seeing in commodities.

Devansh Tandon

Going ahead, shall we expect the number to remain in the same range, or where do you see it?

Dinesh Thakkar

I think overall I do think that maybe the drop in the share that you are seeing is definitely stabilizing. We continue to see a lot of growth in commodities.

We are expecting, again it's hard to predict the future growth specifically, but we do expect more growth in commodities.

Devansh Tandon

Sir, regarding the beta margins on the consolidated level, are you expecting it to remain in the same range only for next two to three years?

Dinesh Thakkar

Our request would be that, in fact which is why we sort of break that down, is that look at the standalone basis, because that is more, that shows you the strength of the core business. On the console level, things can change depending on what investments we make.

We want to continue to make investments in growth as and when opportunities arise, and therefore the console margins could change based on that. The guidance that we have given, you should, on the standalone basis, I think that will continue to be there, and I think we only see that business strengthening.

Devansh Tandon

Thank you, sir.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citigroup.

Please go ahead.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Hi, good.

Dinesh Thakkar

Please go ahead.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the participant has left the question queue. We will move on to the next question from the line of Vatsal Nagarle from Astramind Capital.

Please go ahead.

Vatsal Nagarle

Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Over the years, we have been able to increase our market share in cash and F&O at a steady pace.

One of our competitors, which was recently listed, they have a similar base and are gaining market share at a much faster pace and also spending less on marketing. Do you see any gaps in our strategy that we can address?

Also, how do we see the market share evolving going further?

Dinesh Thakkar

Vatsal, I didn't. The last part you faded a little bit.

Can you repeat the last line, please?

Vatsal Nagarle

Yeah. How do we see our market share evolving going further, and also, is there any gap in our strategy that we can address?

Dinesh Thakkar

Look, I think I feel that we've been always, we've been a player who's been around for more than 30 years, right? If you look at different phases that we've operated, and we've seen the ups and downs of this market and various businesses.

We really stay focused on what we are doing and how we are doing better. If you look at it, we have had a healthy gain, for example, if you look at even cash, right, we've had almost 100 basis points growth year over year in cash market share.

We have very healthy F&O share, very healthy commodity share also. There isn't, there's no gap in the strategy or anything.

I think we can, slightly different businesses, every business is different, and we continue to be focused on our strategy, focusing on innovation, technology, AI, and you'll continue to see strong growth. I think you're seeing that on a continued basis anyway.

So,

Vatsal Nagarle

is there any stable market share that you are targeting?

Dinesh Thakkar

No, nothing specific I think that I want to announce on that front in terms of the market share. We, of course, continuously want to be stronger in the market share, but most importantly do the right things for our customer.

I think the most critical thing is fundamentally do the right things for our customer, keep innovating, and everything else takes care of itself.

Vatsal Nagarle

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and 1.

We take the next question from the line of Sanil Desai from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.

Sanil Desai

Hi, good afternoon. My question is more in the circling back there.

I think you said there are some regulatory changes that led to the finance cost going up. The borrowings have also increased.

Can you just explain, what was the regulation change and why these borrowings have gone up, and you said, you're planning to reduce it going ahead. What are some of the ideas or plan of action you have to reduce these borrowings in the next quarter?

Vineet Agrawal

Yeah. The regulatory changes, the reporting requirement from 1st October, if we were to segregate the margin that we take from the clients, 3x and 5x of ELM, then the requirement was to upstream clients' margins with the clearing corporation and not use it for settlement of the trades.

Therefore there was a higher working capital requirement to that extent, which has elevated our working capital and therefore the finance cost. As I mentioned, it's something which is transient in nature because there is a software update that is going to happen in some time, which will help us segregate and then not upstream this amount.

Therefore hopefully by the end of this quarter, we see a decline in the borrowings and therefore the finance cost.

Dinesh Thakkar

Just to add to what Vineet said, I think what we did was in this short term increase that you're seeing, it is really better for the customer. We just wanted to make sure that there is no disruption in our customers, and that's something that we want, stay focused on their experience.

Sanil Desai

Yeah. Okay.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citigroup.

Please go ahead.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Hi, good morning, sir. Sorry my call got dropped off previously.

Just a few questions from my side. First, if I were to look at the industry landscape today, a lot of players with deep pockets or favorable capital regime are offering the MTF facility at far lower rates than the leading peers.

Now let's say unlike broking, where marginal difference in brokerage pricing does not really alter the customer return profiles, in MTF, huge divergence of let's say 5% plus can meaningfully alter the customer's returns. On that perspective, assuming this sort of a divergence persists in the industry, would you guys consider, let's say, differential MTF pricing based on ticket size, or even maybe lower your pricing if competitive intensity were to kind of sustain?

That's the first question. The second question is, what sort of aspirations do you really have in terms of scaling up your B2B2C architecture?

As you mentioned that as we go into the interiors of the country, B2B2C kind of becomes an important channel to get that last mile customer. In this line, would you have any inorganic plans also?

Dinesh Thakkar

Thank you so much for your question. I think let me address the first question and then I'll hand it over to Nishant, who leads our B2B2C vertical, to answer your second question.

On the MTF pricing, you're right. I think in the industry you see a bunch of different pricing schemes.

The thing to really, as you go into the detail of that, you realize that there is a lot underneath. I think sometimes these schemes are fairly complicated on how things are charged and what is actually the net effect of it.

That's what makes it harder for the consumer to discern. What we've done is we've kept the pricing fairly simple, and we think we are at the right pricing point in it and don't need to actually look at it much.

We've been growing the book quite well. As you saw, we grew our group, the book, MTF book, more than 10% quarter over quarter.

Of course, we always continue to monitor everything, but we don't see any need to look into pricing there at this time. Actually, Amit wanted to add something.

Go ahead.

Dipanjan Ghosh

What we also need to understand that the MTF as a product is an integral journey to a customer's broking experience. No matter what the pricing is, the customer remains engaged on the same platform.

Even if there is a deep-pocketed broker who is looking to reduce the MTF pricing, but ultimately it is about giving an extended service to an existing broking customer, and it is integrated in this journey. Therefore, to that extent, the customer will always remain in the same platform.

Dinesh Thakkar

On your last question with regards to the growth prospects for B2B to C, we have always followed a phygital approach in our GTM, which seeks to leverage digital outreach along with physical outreach, and therefore that gives us the unique advantage to be able to scale at par with other digital models, and also therefore deliver a high double-digit on a sustained basis. Today we are available in all the 19,000 PIN codes, by and large.

We have a very, very extensive expansion plan by adding other channel partner categories, be it mutual fund distributors, be it POSPs, or be it DSAs in future. Yes, the outlook remains to be very strong and robust as we move forward.

Dipanjan Ghosh

One more question also at an extended part, which is, there is a certain divergence between in cost if you were to build it out organically versus, let's say, acquire some of the fast-scaling players. Any inorganic plans that you may likely consider going ahead?

Dinesh Thakkar

Look, on all fronts, not just any specific front, as any company would do, we keep looking at inorganic opportunities wherever there is interest and we have conversations, but nothing specific, of course, that we can talk about on that front.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Bhavit, thank you, everyone, and all the best.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Amit Jeswani from Stallion Asset Private Limited.

Please go ahead.

Amit Jeswani

Hi, sir. I just wanted to know, there's a large margin difference between us and the newly listed peer.

Of course, our cost structure is a bit different. I just wanted to know, what do we model our fixed cost?

We have 20% delta right now. What do we expect that our cost growth would be?

Because we've already invested a lot in the new business verticals going forward.

Dinesh Thakkar

Hi Amit. Thank you so much for the question.

I think one of the things that you will see in our cost, in fact let's say for example if you look at the employee benefit expenses that Amit talked, Vineet talked about, we've not been, in fact we've been keeping quite steady on that front. We think we have built a platform, we built up a lot of these costs in the process.

We have a fully fledged platform and now from here as we scale, we don't expect the cost to go up, especially the fixed cost. Some of these acquisition costs, of course, would depend on what kind of acquisition is available, what's happening there.

We do think we have built up a really good technology team. We have built up really good, even infrastructure costs are built into it.

As we scale for a long time, I don't see us needing that kind of increase. Then some of the investments that we are making in the AMC, wealth, other places, I think that's great because we want to continue to invest in things like that for the future instead of worrying about short-term expenses there.

Overall I think we have built up a platform and a good base, and that's why you're seeing the cost stay steady, and you saw that sort of PAT increase quarter

Amit Jeswani

over quarter. Would you say that this 275 crores quarterly runway would go at around 10% next year?

Would that be a right estimate to think about next year? Assuming then if our volumes keep growing at 25%, that is where the operating leverage comes in?

Dinesh Thakkar

I think overall instead of guiding you on a specific cost item, my suggestion would be that keep our guidance on the margin of that 40-45% on the standalone basis, and I think that'll continue to happen.

Amit Jeswani

Basically that we've already achieved. Right now would you say that from here onwards our revenue growth should equal to our PAT growth or PBT growth?

Well,

Dinesh Thakkar

I think it depends on where we end up investing and what kind of growth happens. For example, if we take a lot of acquisition costs or other places, then you see that investing.

That's why I don't want to give you on a specific line item basis because that guidance then becomes, may not be accurate for you to follow. Best is to, I think follow the operating OPM margin guidance that we have given, and as we go along we can provide more information.

Amit Jeswani

That's only on the standalone business, right?

Dinesh Thakkar

On the standalone business. I would say, on the operating margin, look at the operating margin guidance on a standalone basis, and as we make investments, either increase, reduce, we can continue to keep informing you quarter

Amit Jeswani

to quarter. This is including the IPL 150 crores that will be hitting our balance sheet in Q1, right?

Vineet Agrawal

this guidance of about 40-45% is on an annual basis. There will be quarterly gyrations based on certain specific events like IPL, etc.

I would urge not to get too perturbed about it. On an annual basis, we should be able to achieve 40-45% operating margin for the broking and distribution business.

Amit Jeswani

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Abhishek Vagadre from UTI AMC.

Please go ahead.

Abhishek Wagadre

Hi, thank you. Just wanted to ask, what is the guidance for the MTF book scale-up, say by FY27?

How are we planning to fund it? Are we going to issue more CPs, or are we going to getting more limits from the banks?

Dinesh Thakkar

Go ahead, is that the question?

Abhishek Wagadre

Yes.

Dinesh Thakkar

Okay.

Abhishek Wagadre

Sorry.

Dinesh Thakkar

I think on the MTF one, you can look at the past performance. We do think, last quarter, for example, we grew 10% quarter over quarter.

I do think that we think that the cash market will deepen further in India, and we do expect that to happen. Hard to give you a specific guidance on the book itself.

I'd hand it over to Vineet for how we want to fund this.

Vineet Agrawal

The funding, the basket of borrowings, we continue to diversify and recalibrate based on the availability of funds across various channels. Recently RBI circulated a draft circular where they have taken a step forward in terms of enabling banks to offer lending towards margin trading funding.

That's something which is still in works. No final circular has come.

Yes, if banks do start offering funds for MTF, then we would also look forward to, but we'll continue to expand our other channels including commercial paper offerings and other avenues.

Abhishek Wagadre

Any rough number that you can give me for FY27 where we see the MTF book?

Vineet Agrawal

We don't give out any number. Technically we can grow this book substantially from where we are given the leverage that we have in terms of the net worth and the borrowing capacity.

It's difficult to give a guidance on any specific numbers pertaining to MTF. I think the trajectory that we've achieved in the past, you can extrapolate that to get an understanding of where we could potentially go, let's say in a few quarters from now.

Abhishek Wagadre

Thank you. That's it from my side.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Raghavesh from JM Financial.

Please go ahead.

Raghvesh Sharan

Hi. Congratulations on a very strong result for the quarter.

I had a couple of questions. First, can you give qualitatively how the customer acquisition cost has trended for this quarter?

What share of the customers we are acquiring through paid marketing? Even a qualitative answer would be fine.

Secondly, specifically on the cost front, given that the IPL is expected to be largely in the next year, does that change how we typically book our expenses for IPL branding between FY26 and 27? Just a data-keeping question: have we spelled out the ESOP cost for this quarter?

Thank you for the questions ahead.

Dinesh Thakkar

Thank you so much for the question there. On the customer acquisition side, I think we don't, you should just, there's no specific guidance we can give on it.

You can generally take it as flat where it is. We're not looking to give specific guidance on that.

On the channels, I think it's hard to, you mentioned that how many is happening through a certain channel or not. I do want to get into a little bit of detail on that because it's very hard to exactly assign which channel.

For example, do you go with first-click attribution or last-click attribution? Perhaps you can attribute to organic, but they may have seen your ad somewhere else.

It's very hard to attribute across channels. Internally we will do some of that, but it's not useful for us to give you guidance on that.

On IPL costs, I'd hand it over to Vineet

Vineet Agrawal

as we have been booking the IPL cost in the past, it will be based on the number of matches which are played across, say, the month of March, April and May. We would see some cost getting booked in this quarter, which is the last quarter of the current financial year, and there will be a significant cost that will come in in the first quarter depending on the number of matches.

The schedule is not yet out. Once it's out, we'll have a better clarity on that.

Dinesh Thakkar

We have actually, if you were to see our presentation, we've mentioned the ESOP cost for this quarter, which is about 504 million rupees, and in line with our guidance for the entire year.

Raghvesh Sharan

Thanks. I think that answers.

Operator

Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Vedant Sardar from Nirmal Bang Securities Private Limited.

Please go ahead.

Sanketh Godha

Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?

Dinesh Thakkar

Yes, you are. Please go ahead.

Vedant Sardar

Sir, can you give me the bifurcation of our MTA book, which comprises of about 25 lakhs and below 25 lakhs?

Dinesh Thakkar

We don't. I think we have that breakup in our financials.

Maybe Vineet can just give us. If you refer to slide number 30 of our presentation, there we've given a breakup in terms of less than a million— less than one lakh rupees, up to five lakh rupees, and more than five lakh rupees.

That's the only segregation that we provide.

Vedant Sardar

Sir. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one.

We take the next question from the line of Jayashree Bajaj from TriNetra Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Jayashree Bajaj

Hi, sir. Congratulations on the good set of numbers.

My question is that I can see credit disbursement has been an annual run rate of 28 billion, and yet the company currently relies on seven partnerships with the banks and NBFCs. My question is, as credit is becoming the fast-emerging engine of the growth, are we planning to maintain the asset-light partnership model indefinitely, or is there a plan to seek an NBFC license to capture higher margins?

Dinesh Thakkar

As of now, we are doing the distribution play only, but we are building capabilities to build it into a full-fledged platform play over time, where we can get much more credit for what we are doing for our partners over time. As and when newer opportunities come, we'll think of doing things on our own balance sheet or not over time.

Jayashree Bajaj

One more thing I want to get a little bit clarity on that: how do your AI-ML models specifically adjust your credit risk of new-to-market clients who may lack traditional credit histories and all?

Dinesh Thakkar

I think this is something that is up to the lenders to do themselves. We are largely a distribution platform as of now.

This is what the lenders do.

Jayashree Bajaj

Okay. That's all from my side.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one.

As there are no further questions from the participant, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dinesh Thakkar for closing comments.

Dinesh Thakkar

Thank you once again for joining us today. We hope you have been able to address your questions and share helpful insights.

If you need any further information, feel free to reach out to Hitul Gutka, our Head of Investor Relations, or to EZIA, our Investor Relations advisors. Have a wonderful day.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of Angel One Limited, that concludes this conference call.

Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.