Thank you all for joining the Q1 FY '27 earnings call of BLS International Services Limited. Before we proceed, let me remind you that the discussion may contain forward-looking statements that may involve known or unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors.

It must be viewed in conjunction with the company's business risks that could cause future results, performance, or achievements to differ significantly from what may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. From the management today, we have Mr.

Nikhil Gupta, Managing Director; Mr. Shikhar Aggarwal, Joint Managing Director; Mr.

Amit Sudhakar, Chief Financial Officer; and Mr. Loknath Panda, Chief Operating Officer of BLS E-Services Limited.

I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Shikhar Aggarwal for his opening remarks, post which Mr.

Amit Sudhakar will discuss the financial performance of the company, and then we will open the floor for an interactive Q&A session. Thank you, and over to you, Mr.

Shikhar.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on BLS International's Q1 FY '27 earnings call. We hope you've had the opportunity to review the results, press release, and investor presentation uploaded on the stock exchanges as well as on our website.

We are pleased to report a strong start to FY 2027, delivering robust year-on-year growth across key financial metrics. Revenue and EBITDA grew by 25% and 24% year-on-year, respectively, reflecting the strength of our diversified business model, global footprint, and disciplined execution capabilities.

We also achieved two significant milestones during the quarter recording our highest ever quarterly revenue of ₹891 crores, EBITDA of ₹252 crores, and PAT of ₹202 crores for the first time in the company's history. This performance was supported by healthy contribution from both our visa and consular service and digital business, which continue to demonstrate resilience and strong operational momentum.

Further, our extensive geographical footprint spanning over 100 countries, together with our strong operational framework and comprehensive suite of global mobility and travel services, has strengthened our ability to mitigate the impact of external uncertainties and market-specific challenges. This diversified business model continues to support sustainable growth while enabling us to pursue emerging opportunities across geographies and service offerings.

The visa and consular service business continues to witness strong traction, where we delivered robust growth during the quarter, with both revenue and EBITDA increasing by 22% year-on-year. The growth was primarily driven by strong traction in our visa business, along with increasing momentum in citizen services business.

The performance was well complemented by operating leverage benefits and sustained efforts towards process optimization. Although application volumes in the core visa and service business remained broadly stable year-on-year, the net revenue per application grew by 11%.

The growth was driven by higher pricing from newer contracts and better revenue mix, highlighting our ability to enhance monetization and deliver great value across customer touchpoints. During the quarter, we continued to strengthen our global visa and consular platform through a series of strategic initiatives.

We commenced Belarus visa applications in Mumbai, expanding enhance to efficient and seamless visa application across multiple travel categories. We also launched a Visa With Ready BLS International awareness campaign to help applicants navigate better visa process, and introduced a AI-powered bot for our missions globally, enabling 24/7 virtual assistance, reinforcing our focus on technology-led service delivery and customer convenience.

Our digital service business has also shown strong momentum, with revenue growing by 32% to ₹330 crores this quarter. The growth was led by healthy traction in the BC business and loan distribution business, along with sustained expansion of our assisted digital and service offerings.

As the business continues to scale, we witnessed significant operating leverage benefits resulting in a strong 46% year-on-year growth in EBITDA to ₹27 crores. The BC business is witnessing significant transactions, with GTV increasing to more than ₹29,500 crores during the quarter, as compared to ₹26,200 crores during first quarter last year.

During the quarter, the digital service business secured a contract from the government of West Bengal to undertake beneficiary verification and card approval services under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY and Ayushman [Vay Vandana?] across schemes across the state.

Additionally, the company strengthened its presence across banking, insurance, government-led citizen services through key mandates and partnerships, including a fresh mandate from Tamil Nadu Grama Bank and partners with Coverfox Insurance to provide services through our network of 1.58 lakh BLS touchpoints. We are continuously strengthening our technology across both our businesses by leveraging AI, advanced analytics, cloud platforms, and automation to enhance security, scalability, and performance while delivering smarter, faster, and more reliable solutions to partner, customers, and client governments.

Our continued investment in technology is helping us deepen trust with governments while strengthening our customer-first approach. To conclude, the period ahead presents meaningful opportunities for BLS International.

Our diversified presence across geographies and service lines, growing scale in priority markets, and strong engagement pipeline positions us well to sustain growth momentum. Now I'll hand over the call to Mr.

Amit Sudhakar, our CFO, to walk you through our financial performance. Thank you.

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

Let me take you through the numbers for the quarter ended 30th June, 2026. I will cover our consolidated performance, the revenue mix, the two business segments, and finally the balance sheet and the cash position.

The consolidated revenue for the quarter was ₹891 crores, up 25% from ₹711 crores in the same quarter last year. This is the highest quarterly revenue the company's history.

Importantly, the growth was broad-based. Both our businesses contributed, we were not dependent on any single engine.

EBITDA was ₹252 crores, up 24% from ₹204 crores. Our EBITDA margin was 28.3%, which is broadly stable year-on-year basis.

We have grown revenue by 25% without giving up margin. It reflects our operating leverage in both our businesses and continued discipline on our costs across the group.

Profit after tax was ₹202 crores, up 12% from ₹181 crores last year. Revenue mix: visa and consular services now accounts for about 63% of the consolidated revenue against roughly 65% a year ago.

The digital service has moved up to about 37% from around 35%. Our EBITDA, visa consular business still contributes close to 90% of the total.

Digital is growing faster and steadily taking a large share of our revenue, while visa and consular remains the profit engine. Over time, our digital margin improves, we expect the contribution gap to narrow.

That is the direction we are working towards. Visa and consular services segment revenue was ₹560 crores, up 22% from ₹461 crores.

The EBITDA was ₹226 crores, up 22% with margin of 40.3%. The margin is steady against the same quarter last year, which is the outcome we were targeting.

Growth here came mainly from continuous traction in our core visa business and increasing momentum in citizenship invest. Our core visa operation, we processed 11.3 lakh applications during the quarter.

The application volumes were broadly stable year-on-year. The net revenue per application, however, was ₹352-- ₹3,521 lakh rupees, against ₹3,167 last year, a growth of 11%.

Digital service segment revenue was ₹330 crores, up 32% from ₹250 crores, our fastest-growing business this quarter. The growth was led by healthy traction in our business correspondent and loan distribution businesses, along with continuous expansion of...

...6% from ₹18 crores. Margin improved to 8.2% from 7.2% last year.

It is a high-volume distribution-led model, we add transactions over our largely fixed-cost base. Profitability improve faster than revenue.

This quarter, EBITDA grew by nearly one and a half times the pace of the revenue. We expect that the pattern to continue as the business scales, though margins in this segment will remain structurally lower than the visa and consular service.

Balance sheet and cash: our balance sheet remains strong. As on 30th June, 2026, we held a net cash of ₹1,617 crores.

It is a asset-light business model that converts profit into cash well, and that is what gives us the flexibility to have today. To summarize, a record quarter on revenue, EBITDA, and profit.

Both segments grew. Margin held up in visa consular and improved in digital.

The balance sheet remains strong with no net debt. We are entering the rest of the year with a good momentum, a healthy pipeline, and the financial flexibility to invest where we see opportunities.

With that, I will hand over it to the moderator to open the floor for questions. Thank you.

Hello, sir. A very good morning to you.

I would like to ask that the company has been a high-return, asset-light business, so as the company expands through acquisition and adjacent opportunities, could you explain the capital allocation framework it uses to determine whether a deployment of capital will create more shareholder value than reinvesting in the core business?

I think, first of all, I want to clarify that we have grown more organically than through our acquisitions. That was just utilization of money.

Our CFO Amit, you can explain the capital allocation strategy that we have.

See, we have a capital allocation priority is to give for organic expansion of our existing businesses. Secondary is for the M&A activities in which we are focusing on, which will improve the ROI of the company.

The third is to pay in the form of dividend to the shareholders. If you see over the last couple of years, we have utilized the funds for the M&A, as well as improved the dividend payouts.

Sir, what return threshold must an acquisition or a strategic investment meet before capital is allocated to it?

Currently what the investments we have done in M&A, all are working on a return of more than say early 17%

to 20%. That's the baseline.

That's right. That's the baseline of a return we are expecting from our M&A.

Sir. My second question would be on as we have done a couple of acquisition and significant goodwill has been created via those, could you quantify the economic value that these acquisitions has created so far?

Hello?

Amit, can you hear them? I don't know if Amit is audible.

What is the question that you have again? Let me try to answer.

Economic value of these acquisitions? Hello?

Yes, sir. I was asking, as significant goodwill has been created via the acquisition made in the past, till now, what kind of economic value has been created via those?

I think I will let our CFO answer this question. Maybe you'll have to come back on this once he's available.

We can go to the next question.

Sure, sir. Lastly, I would like to ask your growth expectations over the next 4 to 5 years, excluding any contribution from future acquisitions, that's purely organic revenue growth guidance.

Correct. As we said previously, at the increased base, whatever we have achieved last year, our target is to grow 15% to 20% for the next 5 years.

If you see the first quarter numbers, we have surpassed that. We've grown 25% on revenue and around 24% on EBITDA.

Our target is even last time we announced that our target is just to grow 15% to 20% organically in the next 5 years. We are I feel on track on that.

Sir, what kind of EBITDA margin baseline can we consider going forward for full year FY '27 and FY '28?

As you said, in the visa business, we've achieved around 40% EBITDA margin, and our digital service business, our EBITDA margin has grown up to 8% now, which was 7.2% before. Our target is to maintain those margins.

As we have been saying over the last few years, our margins have increased a lot, but our target is to maintain the margins on the increased revenue and profitability of the company.

Sir, as a consolidated entity, what would that number be?

Consolidated entity, our EBITDA margin are 28.3%.

That's the guidance you're giving?

It is what we have achieved.

Sir, for full year FY '27, what would that number be?

I think we should ask four questions. We should limit our questions.

We should give other people also chances.

Sure, sir. No problem.

Thank you. That's it.

All the best for the future.

Thank you.

Hello?

Am I audible now?

Yes, I just had a few questions. First, I wanted to ask on the tax rate and on our depreciation and amortization expense for the quarter.

Our tax rate is 14% versus 8% last quarter and 10% last year same quarter. Is that something we will that will remain in the 14% rate going forward as our, Aadhaar business, etc., increases?

That's first. Second is on the depreciation.

The increased depreciation and amortization cost, is that because of the new acquisitions, or is it something else? Cuz again, that is ₹32 crore versus ₹25 last quarter and ₹23, last quarter last year same quarter.

Yeah. Shikha, as far as the tax amount is concerned, that depends on the profit in the respective countries where we do get the profit from.

If the mix is different, the effective tax rate changes. Our estimate is that we should close the financial year at around 12%.

Your

second question was on the depreciation and amortization. That has gone up not so much because of the M&A.

It has gone up more because of we are investing mainly on the new contract of Aadhaar project.

Okay. There

because of the lease accounting standard, it gets reflected in the depreciation and interest.

This ₹32 crore broadly can be something that will maintain going forward for the next few quarters? Broadly this range.

It may go a little higher in the next quarter because by the time our full investment will be over, and then it will gradually remain the same or will come down thereafter.

On the capex we've done on the Aadhaar front, which is what's causing this depreciation jump, how long would it take for revenues to come in?

It's basically in a three-phase investment. The first phase we have completed.

Second phase is now in the final stages. In the next quarter, we will complete the whole, and by the fourth quarter, we expect the full revenue will start coming in.

Got it. Maybe around Q4 is what we're expecting.

That's right.

That's right. Q4 to Q1, the full revenue will start coming in.

Start coming in. All right.

Great. Lastly, sir, do we have any new contracts in the pipeline on the visa front or anything we'd like to speak about on that front?

We have announced that all the contracts that we keep on winning, we keep on announcing. Recently we won contract with the Belarus government.

We've announced that we've won contracts with Portugal government, Slovakia government, Italy government. We've announced already that.

Bidding for multiple tenders

are... What's the new pipeline, sir?

Or rather how...

There are multiple tenders in the pipeline that we are bidding. There are different stages, and as and when anything gets finalized, we will announce it.

The pipeline would be for the next 8 to 12 months?

Correct. Not only 8 to 12 months, but more than that as well.

Understood. Great, sir.

That's all from my side. I'll come back in the queue.

Thank you.

Hi. Am I audible?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. Sir, my question is about the visa application volume.

What we see here is that the volumes were flat year-on-year basis in your seasonally strongest quarter. This is despite the Slovakia contract, where you had almost 80 countries, and the Cyprus contract, which has 15 countries.

The question is, what was this organic application growth, excluding the acquired entities, and when do you think those two mandates actually start contributing to the volumes? See,

if you see in the first quarter this year, there was the impact of the war as well. In spite of that, our volume has increased from our other contracts, and we have able to maintain this volume of 11.3 lakh, which is almost similar to the first quarter last year.

I feel that we've actually grown this quarter from our other contracts, and despite the war, those are the numbers that we achieved.

How are these numbers faring in the current quarter? Do you see still the impact of the war, or do you think...

I would say that whatever guidance we have given, that 15% to 20% growth we expect year-on-year for the next couple of years.

This is for the consolidated business, right?

Correct. I'm talking about consolidated business.

Yeah. For visa, I was trying to see

if this... We are stable in our volume.

Stable in terms of the volumes.

Correct.

The growth will largely come from value increase and not so much the volume increase.

I don't know if I can comment on that right now because obviously the quarter is ongoing, and I cannot give numbers on the quarter. As I have told you, last quarter, in spite of the war, but the war is over now.

Numbers have started to come back. Sir,

my other quick second question: you're holding good amount of cash in the balance sheet. Have you considered a buyback now that those regulations have eased out?

Is that something that could be triggered in the next few quarters unless there is some acquisition in the pipeline?

I think this will be taken up with the board, and if any decision comes in, we will certainly let you know.

Okay. Is there anything in consideration or not as of now?

As of not, it is not there, but maybe in the next board meeting or something.

All right. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Hi, sir.

Thanks for taking my question. My question is again around buyback.

See, honestly, from all the perspective, you look at BLS as a company, we have large cash balance of about ₹1,600 crores. We have extremely large reserves of about ₹2,500 crores.

Then now the buyback regulations also easing up, and the fact that the company is relatively quite cheaply valued considering the growth and ROCEs and cash flows that we generate, why is there's no serious consideration around looking at buyback is what I'm trying to understand. We can easily do ₹500, ₹600 crores of buyback given the reserves that we have and the cash that we have.

See, we have a good pipeline of acquisitions, and if you see last year only we did about ₹1,100 crores of investment in new acquisitions. Once we have those appetite for acquisition and the expansion of the business, we would prioritize that as the first requirement.

Buyback or increase in dividend both are also on the agenda. When the board meets, they may discuss it and may take a call on that.

Right. The thing is now, last year also we generated about ₹900 crores of cash.

Even if you are looking to spend say ₹1,000, ₹1,500 crores of M&As a year, we still have that cash getting accumulated because we're generating ₹1,000 crores of cash every year. Doing buyback, that I don't think should disrupt your M&A as such.

Given the kind of valuation that you're trading at, it would honestly be way better to sort of do buyback rather than putting some money on the dividends or trying to increase the dividend.

Yeah. Again, as I said, now this call will be taken by the board and...

Because, see, from an outside investor perspective, I think one thing that is not very clear is around the capital allocation policy, because again, I think one of the previous participant when they asked the question, I don't think there was a response around how you look at capital allocation. That's the only thing that if the company can come out better in terms of explaining how they'll...

No, I think I don't know if you were clear enough, but we've announced that capital allocation, we are utilizing our cash on the acquisitions, on dividends, future growth, well, contracts that we expect to win, deployment of infrastructure there, technology, etc. That is our capital allocation policy that has been there from day one.

We are actually taking all the decisions depending on that policy.

As investors, we are not able to figure out, if say, for example, iData acquisition that you did last year or SLW that you've done, what's the return that investment is generating is what the community is sort of trying to figure out is what my understanding is.

I think each acquisition we announce the kind of multiples that we have bought the company for, what are the returns we're expecting. Right, Amit?

Even quarterly we are displaying that. As Amit has said, 15% to 20% return we are generating on all our acquisitions.

That was helpful.

Yeah. Sir, good morning.

A couple of questions. First is can you give us some outlook on the revenue per application?

Because if you look at the last 3, 4 years, you were compounding at about 25% plus, but in the last 1 year, that has kind of fallen off. Is this an impact of some of the contracts nearing the end of their tenure, or is there some other factor which is influencing this?

What kind of growth rate can we pencil in when it comes to revenue per application? That is question one.

The second one is that when you look at the next 1 year, now in your visa consular business, what revenue run rate, or what is the revenue that will fall off as a result of contracts which are expiring in the next 12 months?

On this net revenue per application, this has improved in the last three years is on account of the business model that we have changed from partnership model to our own management that we have started doing it directly. That has given the major improvement in the net revenue per application over the years.

Now most of the places we have our own offices, and therefore now the net revenue is now getting stabilized at these levels.

The growth rate will be what you've already registered, let's say 11% to 13% kind of compounding? Is that something that we can go ahead with?

That's right, because how we look at it is we look at the travel industry growth, which is about 7% to 8% CAGR, and then we try to improve it by another 5%. We look at somewhere between 12% to 15% growth in the revenue.

Sir, this figure should be ideally independent of the footfalls, right?

Which one?

The net revenue per application should be a figure which is independent of the footfalls or the visa applicants, number of visa applicants.

No, it's basically the net revenue divided by per application is the net revenue per application is what we show. That 3,000...

No, the fee that you charge... Hello?

Yes. Sir, the fee that is

basically this is an indication of the fee that you charge to, let's say, any traveler.

I'm

I'm just curious as to why, this should have a, that per-application number, why should have why should it have a footfall kind of a, why should why should it be a function of the footfalls?

Per application, you will work out on the number of people who are coming in, right?

Sir, you said I think footfall growth of 7% to 8% and another 4% to 5% pricing improvement. Ideally, this should be only pricing, right, this figure?

Then there is a mix of applications also. We charge an X price per application for, say, European visa.

There'll be a separate pricing for people traveling for Indian visa and the other. This is a mix of all.

Got it. Sir, the second question, please?

What was your second question?

What is the revenue on your current visa consular business run rate which will kind of fall off as a result of the contracts getting concluded in the next 12 months?

There are contracts some are getting concluded, some new we are winning. Basically we look at overall.

We still feel that we can maintain this 10% to 15% growth.

Got it. Sure.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on your results.

Just wanted to understand, I saw mentioned in the footnotes that in E-Services, we are planning on a ₹138 crore acquisition. Can you just give some more color on this?

We have done this acquisition. We have informed about 6 months back that we have signed a term sheet with them.

This is a acquisition we have done company name is [Apyati?] Technologies, which is a Bangalore-based company.

They have two verticals. Main is the BC business, which we are already in BC business.

Interestingly, we have majority of our BC business is coming from State Bank of India, whereas they have majority of their business coming from non-SBI. There we see a synergy of consolidating our BC business across India.

Then they have another technology business, which are providing software solutions to banks and NBFCs in India. We see that another opportunity of expanding that business going forward.

These are the two major verticals which we are focusing on.

What is the revenue and margin profile in [Apyati?] Tech?

Again, last year audit they had from these two segments, they had about ₹275 crores revenue and had about ₹20, ₹21 crore of EBITDA.

₹20, ₹21 crore of EBITDA, okay. All right.

Second question, actually just wanted to understand on the Aadhaar project which you are mentioning. What was the revenue contribution in this quarter?

This quarter, one second...

Also if you could also help with the revenue contribution from the acquisitions, Citizenship, iData, and the hotel.

IData, this quarter, it has contributed about ₹72.5 crores revenue. [Audi Fideles?]

was about ₹225. [CIA?]

was about ₹17.5. Aadhaar, we did about ₹17.5 crores revenue in this quarter.

Aadhaar ₹17.5. Good growth in Citizenship, I think ₹11 crores to ₹17.5 CR.

What anything driving, anything specific driving that growth or which is this So Citizenship last quarter last year Q1 was ₹11 CR. This year, you are saying it is ₹17.5.

What drove the growth and whether it will be maintainable?

Yes, it will be maintainable. See, especially there's a tailwind with the way things are happening in Middle East.

A lot of NRIs there, not only from India, but other countries, they're looking now at opportunities of getting say permanent residency or citizenship of any say European or other countries. We are seeing a traction in that business over the last one quarter now.

Also, as we said that we acquire businesses to grow them, to use cross-synergize from our existing network. That's what we have done here also.

It takes a little time. It has led to some good results this quarter.

If I understand correctly, people of Middle East trying to move out of Middle East, right?

Move across the world. Not only there, all across the world.

Understood, sir. All right.

Thank you.

Hello. Am I audible?

Yes. Yeah.

Hi. My question is on GP margin, to be specific.

Our EBITDA margin is stable sequentially, but GP margin of a visa business is declined sequentially. If I just recalculate the net revenue, the total net revenue of visa business, multiplying the net revenue per application and applications, then it will come down as per the last quarter Q1 also and also Q4 of FY '26.

Is there any reason for that?

See, overall the visa and consular segment, the total revenue was ₹560 versus ₹461 last time. Mhm.

There's a growth of around 22% in the segment overall.

The visa revenue is growing 22%, but gross revenue per application what I'm saying is growing faster, the GP ratio is declined. If I recalculate gross profit of a visa, it is coming around ₹400 crores in this quarter.

The GP is around 51%.

Last year it was ₹360, which is now ₹400, there is an 11% growth has been there in the revenue also.

That's what I'm saying, the gross revenue is growing faster than the net revenue. There is a decline in the GP ratio.

Let me check the number. I don't want to comment without checking the number, but overall there is a growth in the business.

You can send me the details. I can share the working also.

Okay. The second question is on the Aadhaar centers.

Till now, how much capex we have done in the Aadhaar center and in phase one and phase two, how much capex we have deployed, and what is the expectation capex of a phase three?

See, we have invested about ₹75 crores till now, and the whole project will get over with about ₹125 crores of investment. This will have a 6-year contract, as we have explained, and it is about ₹2,500 crores of total revenue in the 6 years span.

Also this will take a hit in EBITDA because the other business have a lower EBITDA margin than the visa segment, right?

This is going to be a little less, about 10% to 15% EBITDA margin business.

Awesome. The last question is just a data taking, what is the revenue of a UK hotel in this quarter?

UK hotel was about ₹16 crores revenue this year versus ₹2.5 last year.

That's all from my side, and thank you and all the best for the future.

Thank you.

Yeah. Sorry.

Thank you all for joining the call and for your continuous interest in our company. We hope you have able to answer all your queries.

In case you have any more questions, please reach out to us or our investor relationship partner, E&Y. Thank you once again and see you in the next quarter.

Thank you.