Good evening, everyone. On behalf of Ambit Capital, I would like to welcome you all to the Q3 FY26 earnings call for BLS International Services Limited.

Joining us from the management today, we have Mr. Nikhil Gupta, Managing Director; Mr.

Shikhar Aggarwal, Joint Managing Director; Mr. Amit Sudhakar, Chief Financial Officer; Mr.

Loknath Panda, COO, BLS E-Services Limited; and Mr. Gaurav Chugh, Head, Investor Relations.

I thank the management for the opportunity to host this earnings call. We now begin with opening remarks from Mr.

Gaurav Chugh, post which the forum will be open for an interactive question-and-answer session. Thank you, and over to you, Gaurav.

Thank you, Moin. Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for taking time out to join this call today. Before we begin, I would like to point out that some statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature, and a disclaimer to this effect has been included in our earnings presentation shared with you earlier.

I would like to invite Mr. Shikhar Aggarwal for his opening remarks, post which Mr.

Amit Sudhakar will discuss the financial performance of the company. We will then open the floor for an interactive Q&A session.

Over to you, Shikhar.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us on BLS International's Q3 and nine-month FY26 earnings call. We trust you've had the opportunity to review the results, press release, and investor presentation.

We are pleased to share that the company delivered a remarkable performance in Q3 and nine months FY26. For the first months—nine months of FY26, our consolidated revenue and PAT experienced a robust growth of 46% and 36% year-on-year, reaching ₹2,184 crores and ₹537 crores, respectively.

This is nearly to the equivalent of the revenue of last year itself, that we have achieved in nine months. This performance was driven by higher application volumes, multiple contract wins across major geographies, diversification of service portfolios, and consolidation of acquired business over the last two years.

Q3 FY26 was also a strong quarter for the company as revenue grew by 44% year-on-year, driven by healthy momentum across both our businesses. EBITDA for Q3 FY26 increased 25% year-on-year, while PAT recorded a growth of 33% year-on-year, reflecting disciplined execution and operational efficiencies.

Our visa and consular service business continues to witness strong growth traction in Q3 FY26. While the revenue grew 20% year-on-year, our EBITDA increased by an impressive 28%.

This growth highlights BLS's strong execution capabilities and positive impact of our successful transition from a business—of a business model from a partner-led to self-managed model. The number of applications processed increased by 18% during Q3, rising to 10.7 lakh applications compared to 9.1 lakh in Q3 FY25.

Net revenue per application also improved by 19% to ₹3,383 in Q3 FY26 compared to ₹2,841 in Q3 FY25. We continue to expand our global footprint by winning newer contracts and renewing existing contracts during the quarter.

The company secured a five-year global contract from Slovak Republic to establish and operate visa application centers in over 80 countries. The company was also awarded a three-year contract by the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India to establish Indian Visa Application Center in China.

Further, the company also won a lot of new contracts from the Cyprus government in multiple countries like South Africa, China, Mongolia, etc. In addition to these new contracts, we renewed our mandate with the MEA, Government of India to provide attestation and apostille services across 17 major cities in India.

Our digital business also continued to witness significant momentum. Revenue from digital service in Q3 FY26 more than doubled to ₹287 crore from ₹137 crore in Q3 FY25, registering a remarkable year-on-year growth of 109%.

This is primarily on account of growth in BC and loan distribution business along with increase in scale in assisted digital and citizen service offerings. The company's asset-light and scalable operating model remained a key enabler of growth, supported by a wide and growing network of 151,000-plus touchpoints and 45,800-plus service channel partners.

The BC business is witnessing significant traction, with GTV generated increasing to ₹27,000 crore during the quarter as compared to ₹21,000 crore during Q3 FY25. In addition to this, the company also achieved a significant milestone of having ₹10,000 crore of aggregate bank balances in the bank account opened through BLS E-Services channel.

The loan lead generation business also witnessing strong traction, as the company generated loan leads worth ₹9,700-plus crore during the quarter, which has significantly increased from ₹2,900-plus crore in the last quarter. Another key highlight for the digital business was winning a ₹100 crore project from Government of Bihar for establishment of the permanent enrollment centers for Aadhaar.

This mandate complements the recently received order from UIDAI to operate Seva Kendras with aggregate value of around ₹2,000 crore. We are continuing to strengthen our technology across both our business by leveraging AI, advanced analytics, cloud platforms, and automation to enhance security, scalability, and performance while delivering smarter, faster, and more reliable digital solutions to customers and partners.

Our continued investment in technology is helping us deepen trust with governments while strengthening our customer-first approach. While the company is consistently growing, it has also followed a policy of rewarding its shareholders through years by way of dividends.

In line with this, the board has approved an interim dividend of 200% of face value, that is ₹2 per equity share, in the board meeting today. Before concluding, I would also like to speak on the recently announced budget, which offers an optimistic outlook for travel and tourism sector.

The budget demonstrates a strategic commitment to revitalize this crucial industry, with increased funding allocated for infrastructure development, as well as support for setting up five regional medical tourism hubs. The inflow of tourists into the country is expected to increase.

Additionally, the change in tax rates for overseas tourism packages, along with risable disposable income, are anticipated to lead in growing number of overseas travelers into the future. For BLS, as one of the largest global visa outsourcing players, these initiatives are encouraging and are expected to have a positive impact on the business.

To conclude, the period ahead offers meaningful opportunities for BLS International as global mobility continues to normalize and governments increasingly rely on trusted partner for public service delivery. Our well-diversified presence across geography and service lines, expanding scale in priority markets, and a strong pipeline of engagement positions us to build on our momentum.

Now, I'll handle over the call to Mr. Amit Sudhakar, our CFO, to walk you through the financial performance.

Thank you. Amit?

Yeah. Thanks, Shikhar.

Good evening, everyone. I'm pleased to share the consolidated financial results for the third quarter and nine months ending December 31st, 2025.

In Q3 FY26, our total revenue grew a strong 44% year-on-year to ₹737 crore, up from ₹513 crore last year. This came from steady growth in both our visa and digital businesses.

EBITDA for the quarter rose 25% to ₹198 crores compared to ₹158 crore last year. The profit before tax was ₹191 crore, up 36% from ₹140 crore in the same quarter last year.

Profit after tax grew by 33% to ₹170 crore from ₹128 crore in Q3 FY25. Now looking at the nine months consolidated financials for FY26, revenue increased to ₹2,184 crore, up 46% from ₹1,501 crore last year.

Nine months EBITDA grew 35% to ₹615 crore from ₹455 crore last year. Profit after tax was ₹537 crore, a 36% jump from 300 and ₹394 crore last year.

We nearly hit last full year numbers in just nine months, thanks to more visa applications and better operation efficiencies. Coming to the segment highlights, in visa and consular services for Q3 FY26, recorded revenue of ₹449 crore, up 20% from ₹376 crore last year.

This was driven by 18% more application volume from 10 lakh seven—10.7 lakh per quarter this quarter versus 9.1 lakh last year. EBITDA rose by 28% to ₹180 crore with a margin at 40%, an improvement of 275 basis points from 37% margin last year.

For nine months, visa and consular service segment revenue rose by 13% to ₹1,369 crore from ₹1,207 crore in nine months FY25. EBITDA jumped by 35% to ₹558 crore, with margin improving to 41% from 34%, reflecting our focus on efficiency and profitability.

In digital business, Q3 revenue more than doubled to ₹287 crore from ₹137 crore. EBITDA for the quarter was at ₹18 crore.

For nine months, digital business segment revenue reached to ₹815 crore, up from ₹293 crore in nine months FY25. EBITDA for the nine months FY26 was ₹57 crore compared to ₹42 crores last year.

The company continues to generate strong cash flows and healthy balance sheet, hence the board has declared an interim dividend of ₹2 per share. With that over to the moderate for questions.

Thank you.

Hi. Good evening, management.

Am I audible?

Yeah. As we saw in this quarter, our visa applications grew very well to 17% YoY.

Okay. The management also talking from many quarters that many big contracts are coming globally for awarding.

My question on that that can you just say in next one year or two years which of the country's contracts are going to renew and how much that will be worth, company-wise? I know that there will be a opportunity of very big, but just the company-wise that in next one or two year which big country is going to give a big order?

As we have said that we have grown, our application volume has also grown by 19% this quarter, and we have already announced that we have won a lot of new contracts with different governments this quarter. There are many governments which are coming out, and we are actively working on it as we regularly do.

As and when the results come, we announce that to the market.

Okay. The second question is on employee expense.

This quarter, the employee expense grew significantly from QoQ if I see, it was 108 to 123. Is there any one-off or this the expenses due to the UIDAI centers, I assume?

I think this is primarily because of the UIDAI.

This will be in from the normal range from now on, right? This will continue in the future also.

There is no one-off.

Correct. In terms of numbers.

Okay. Just one of a bookkeeping question.

Can you just give a revenue of ASPL, Citizenship, iData, and also in this quarter, we will have a revenue of UK Hotel also. Can you just point the number of these four?

Which one? First?

Aadifidelis?

Hello?

Which are the companies you're talking about?

ASPL, Citizenship, iData, and UK Hotel we have acquired last quarter.

Aadifidelis, about ₹200 crore was the revenue. Citizens Invest is about ₹12 crore.

Third one, UK Hotel is about ₹11 crore.

IData?

iData is about ₹70 crore.

₹70 crore. Okay.

Are you going to continue the visa application, as you're seeing travel is going on, the 15% growth you have mentioned for the FY26, will it be continued to FY27 and '28 also?

We have already said that, next five years, our target is to achieve 20% to 25% growth.

No problem. Thank you and best of luck for the future.

Yeah. Good evening, sir.

Congratulations on the great result. I want to understand the revenue growth split between organic and inorganic, and also regarding the EBITDA margin, as I see that it has been contracted on year-on-year basis.

Could you elaborate what's the key driver behind this, and how we should think about the margin normalization going ahead?

Amit, you can take this.

Yeah. The organic growth has been somewhere around 26% in current quarter.

Inorganic growth? The balance.

The 26% you're talking about the inorganic, right?

No, organic.

Okay. My second question was regarding the EBITDA margin.

Hello, sir, am I audible?

We can hear you.

Yeah. My second question was regarding the EBITDA margin.

As I see that on year-on-year basis, the margin has been contracted, what's the key driver behind this, how should we think about the margin normalization going forward?

As we have explained it in our last call also, the sales mix has changed a little bit because of visa business we have improved our margins YoY if you see the segment results.

In

digital business, the growth has been more than 100%—in the digital business, our growth has been more than 100%. There the margins have contracted because of Aadifidelis, which is at a lower EBITDA margin business.

Sir. That was helpful.

Thank you, sir.

Hey, guys. Great numbers.

Just a couple of things on the consular services business. I see that if I just compare the nine-month numbers for FY25 versus '26, I think the revenue has come from around ₹440 crores to ₹280 crores.

It's actually degrowth in that piece, right, ex of visa revenue essentially? If you could just talk about that business.

Firstly, is that number correct? Secondly, what is the revenue model there?

Who are your customers? Is it only India or is it outside India as well?

Also why is it going down and what the margin profile looks like for that, because it looks like your margin profile is improving as that revenue share is reducing.

Amit, you can answer, because I didn't understand what revenues you're talking about.

Our margins have been improving in visa business.

No, okay, let me explain. See, if you're in your visa and consular business, you have the net revenue that's coming from visa applications.

That number has been steadily going up, right? If I take your total visa and consular revenue and subtract that—you understood that now?

Hello?

You missed out.

Okay. I'm saying that if you take your total visa and consular services revenue, right, and you subtract the visa revenue, which is your net revenue per application revenue, right, that is the consular revenue, correct?

There's a difference between the revenue and the net revenue is basically the cost of services that we exclude or we reduce. There is no separate revenue of visa or consular services.

It's all clubbed into one. The way we should look at revenue is only the net revenue should be looked at, the gross revenues typically including the cost of service basically happening.

No, this is... Your 40% EBITDA margin is 40% EBITDA margin is on, yeah.

See, if you look at our visa revenue and you reduce the cost of services, which is a direct services cost, then that is the net revenue.

Okay. Where does the consular revenue get booked?

It's a part of it. The visa and consular is one single segment.

We don't report separately visa and consular services separately. It's part of that.

No, but then if I just do number of applications into net revenue per application, you're grossing up the consular revenue into the net revenue per application? Am I understanding correct?

That's what I am trying to tell you that the visa and consular services is a single segment that we report. We don't separately report visa and consular separately.

If you look at our ₹449 crores of revenue in the visa segment, this is both for visa and consular services. EBITDA of ₹180 crores of 40% is for both the businesses together.

Exactly. Within that, is the visa revenue ₹362 or is that just the net revenue for the entire segment?

Okay. I can explain you.

₹449 crores is the revenue from operations of the visa and consular services. There are certain costs of services that we have to incur.

This is basically, at certain places we have partner models, we have to pay to a partner. We have to pay to certain vendors.

Net revenue is the actual revenue that comes to my kitty after paying off various direct cost. So, ₹362 crore ₹362 crores is the net revenue for me.

You can indirectly look it like a gross margin,

gross profit of the business, whatever the direct cost we reduce. Okay.

Understood. That is the net.

Understood. That means your cost of services have been coming down.

That's because of your own model, the shift to own model.

Correct. Exactly.

Therefore, that employee cost is going up and the other expense.

Understood. That's helpful.

Cool. Nothing else from my side.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Hello. Good evening, sir.

Am I audible? Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Yes. I actually just had one question regarding all our acquisitions.

A, do we have acquisitions planned in the future? Going forward, do we have a pipeline of companies we are looking to acquire?

B, internally do we have an IRR we want to make at BLS on companies acquired by us?

I think on the first part I can answer, that as you have seen, we've been acquiring companies in the last few years. Last year itself, we spend around ₹1,300 to ₹1,500 crores on acquisitions.

Again, the synergies just started to come in. We've combined those offices, etc.

I think definitely, we have our M&A team. We are constantly looking at opportunities.

We are very conservative in the kind of companies we want to buy. It gives us long value addition.

Regarding the IRR...

Can you elaborate on conservative, sorry? When you say we are extremely conservative, you mean on a valuation front?

You mean on the kind of companies we look to acquire?

On synergies. We look at only allied services, visa, consular, or government services business, which can provide synergies to our business.

The valuations are healthy. We can grow the business quickly.

From our existing offices, we can synergize, there can be cost reduction, etc. Those are the couple of parameters that we look at before buying.

Sir, then the UK acquisition we did, I don't think that actually synergizes with our business, right? What was the thought process there?

We have already answered that in the last investor call also about that acquisition, that we are wanting to get into allied services, and that was a one-off thing that we did. To utilize the experience as we want to get into more travel services, and going forward, we want to get into hotel management kind of experience where there is no upfront capex deployment.

Is the understanding correct that if we find another possible acquisition in hotel management at a good valuation, we would look to acquire or is this a one-off?

No. As we have explained that last time also, that this was that we did to gain experience, and now we utilize that experience to get into management contracts, not in asset-heavy money.

Understood. Sir.

Lastly, on the IRR generated to BLS as an investor in these acquired companies, what range do we look at?

We look at the ROI at least in double digits minimum to get a return, and especially when it is outside India, that is quite a decent return which we are looking at.

Say on iData or Aadifidelis, etc., we look at getting double-digit returns over a longer-term period of time as a company that has invested in these businesses.

That's right.

Is it possible for you to give a payback period or something of sorts, because we have a very large goodwill on our books, and if you give a payback period, maybe even ballpark, on the three, four companies we've acquired recently, it would help us understand your thought process much better. See,

currently what we have acquired, they are all have a payback within five to seven years.

Five to seven years. Oh, okay.

Understood.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. Sir, I'm new to our company, I would like to understand what all entails in the digital services, what all services come under our digital offerings?

In digital offerings, we have basically currently three verticals. One is the business correspondent, which is a banking wherein we provide the last-mile banking.

Then we have a loan distribution company, which we acquired last year. The third is the e-governance, where we call it G2C, government to citizen.

We provide services on behalf of the government to the citizens. These are the three verticals we have.

Sir, please correct me if I'm wrong. BLS E-Services, which is again a listed arm, is that catering to all the digital services or is that wrong understanding?

No, that's correct. That is the one which is providing all the three services.

Thank you so much, yeah.

Hello, sir. Which geographies or visa categories are currently seeing the strongest growth for BLS, and do you expect this trend is continuing over the next quarter or the next year also?

See, globally, all the geographies for us are growing. We have seen good growth coming in from the Middle Eastern market, the South Asian, East Asian market, India, China, Latin American countries.

Definitely, the trend we see continuing. Going forward, if definitely there is some war that is happening between Russia and Ukraine, that gets streamlined, which there is hopes, and definitely we'll see a good growth in volume coming from that region as well.

Because pre-COVID, that was a very big volume for us, pre-war, but I think after this ends, probably the volumes if they come back, then that could be a very big region.

Okay. Now India and Europe trade deal is almost done, do you expect some more volumes in from Europe also?

It's too soon. As the trade deal was announced, but it will take time for it to get ratified by different bodies in Europe.

Definitely, there will be a jump in the relationship between Europe and India, and definitely we see that volumes could increase in the future because of that.

Sir. That's all from my side.

Hello. Am I audible?

Sir, I had two questions. The first was, Slovak contract and other international acquisitions can contribute what kind of value in the top-line terms?

Second was, which quarter can be considered strongest for the company?

Amit, you want to answer that, or we cannot hold in those numbers?

See, volumes you will be able to know once these contracts have been active, but quarter-wise, Q4 Q1 and Q4 and Q1 are the ones which are the highest volumes and revenues we get.

Okay. Sure, thank you.

Thanks for the opportunity. Hope I'm audible.

Regarding the Slovak Republic contract, should we expect a temporary margin compression due to upfront expenses before the centers reach optimum utilization?

We will be utilizing a lot of centers from our existing centers as well across the world. There will be economies of scale.

Definitely initially in any contract that we win or deploy in different countries, there is a investment, but after that, it is quite streamlined.

There was a mention of AI in the investor presentation. How are you leveraging AI and can you quantify the impact AI had on your bottom line in the last quarter?

See, it's very difficult to quantify right now kind of in savings that we have made, but we have implemented AI in a very practical manner in different departments of the organization, right from HR to call center to customer engagement. Our answer percentage has increased, a lot of calls have been picked up, quality has improved, our recruitment has become better, we are able to recruit more people faster.

Very difficult to quantify in terms of costs, but we definitely have a cost saving that we have seen in terms of some of the angles, but I think it's too soon to quantify exactly the number.

There will be savings, right?

Correct. That's saving, there will be also efficiency.

Yeah.

Right. Lastly, just wanted to get some views on the reason behind allocation of capital and management bandwidth to the digital segment, because it effectively dilutes the consolidated margin profile.

Also regarding this, how do you see the mix of visa and digital services over the next two years?

As you have said that this was because of one of the acquisitions that we did of Aadifidelis Solutions which is at a 3% EBITDA margin. The digital business definitely is growing, and as we see that we can add more services to that loan business, more margin will come in.

We definitely feel the mix will maintain, because we see major growth coming in both the segments of the business.

Do you foresee margin expansion in the digital services?

Visa business also, if you see, the margin has expanded to upwards of 40% now in the last few years. Definitely, we see a growth in the future in the digital business as well.

Right now, as and when we introduce more value-added services, ancillary services, we will see. Understood.

That's right. The reason I was asking is that because the contribution of the visa segment itself is coming down gradually.

Even if the margin had expanded to, say, 30%, 40%, the net impact on the blended margin, it's not that meaningful simply due to the fact that there's severe margin contraction happening in the digital services.

Amit, I think what we have discussed is that this was acquisitions that we did to enhance the company, and I think we are very happy with that. Because going forward, we can grow that company from our existing centers and zero mass.

Definitely we feel that whatever is achieved now will maintain, and our target is to improvise it.

Got it. That's from my end.

Thank you.

Hello, sir. Congratulations for the good set of numbers.

The digital services you explained have been growing quite well and all those things. That is good.

Actually the as you explained that the salaries and employee benefits have gone up, now almost by more than 50% year-on-year. What will be the percentage of the if you take the blended level of our turnover is about ₹740 crores in this quarter and the employee cost is ₹123 crores.

What do you expect to be the normalized employee cost going forward?

See, if you see our last year audited numbers, our employee cost was about 14.75%. Now our nine months is about 15 and a half 15.5%.

Overall if you see, we are in that range of 15% employee cost.

Okay. It will be similar because of this UIDAI or Bihar and all those things what we are doing, that is not going to increase it significantly?

No. See, we have got people on board and revenue will start coming now from this quarter onwards.

As you mentioned, it will be in the range of around 15%, 14.5%, 15%, similar to the last year's level. Okay.

Secondly, what are the cash and cash equivalents at the end of this quarter?

About 14 ₹1,400 crores.

Okay. What was it last quarter?

It was about 12 something, 1290 or something.

There is accretion of about ₹100 crore fall. Okay.

This Chinese operations what we have been allowed by the Ministry of External Affairs to set up offices across China for this purpose, has the work started there and because there is expected to be a lot of exchange between India and China which had been halted post-COVID, etc.? Do you see a good significant revenue coming from that Chinese operations?

Hello?

Yeah. We see a good jump in revenue in the future.

Because exclusively we will be operating from Indian side.

Correct.

That will be a good booster for us. Okay.

Thank you, sir. All the best.

Thank you.

Am I audible?

Sir, good evening. I hope you heard the name of company called Atlys.

The new-age business like Atlys who gives hassle-free visa services in India of almost all the countries, and personally, I even tried that and they did a great job. What negatives and positives will have on our business from these type of service businesses?

Can you please elaborate on this?

See, we are in the business of exclusive government contracts wherein anyone who has to apply for visa for the governments we work for will have to go through us. Any travel agent or any startup or any company that works in visa domain has to go through one of the providers, us or our competitors for applying for any visa.

We are in the business of exclusive outsourcing and that is what we are focused on.

Okay. My second question is on slide 10, it's mentioned that your digital services margin drastically reduced from 14.2% to 7%.

Can you please explain about that?

Amit, you can explain that. As we explained earlier, this is because of the Aadifidelis, the new acquisition we did last year.

There the margins are around 3% to 4% EBITDA margins. That mix has changed the overall percentage.

Thank you so much, sir.

Thanks for taking my question again. I have one question on the e-visas.

I just wanted to check in terms of when you go to governments or embassies to renew contracts, have they been discussing implementing e-visas as a process instead of the manual process, one? What part of that process would necessitate people to still come to an embassy?

Maybe the biometrics part is one that stands out. If you could just walk me through what an e-visa process would look like, let's say, if someone like Spain, who's a large customer for us now or a source of income, moves to exclusively e-visa for their visa application process, how would that affect our business?

How would we still play a role and what would be the revenue impact according to you?

I think if you do your research and you see that in Europe they have announced in the next few years, they are also digitizing part of the process. That will lead to an increase in volume for us itself, and people will have to still come to the centers to give the biometric.

It is only part of the process that we will only handle which is digitize. All the governments that we are working for, the numbers will grow in the near future and the governments to handle the capacity better, they want to digitize part of the process where we will be digitizing it for them.

Certain applications will come in that category, all will be processed through us. We see the new technologies that are coming in the future as enhancing our business.

Biometric was not there five, seven years back. It got introduced seven years back.

Definitely we feel that we have very good grip on the market and we are in touch with the governments. We feel that going forward itself, we will see a good growth in numbers as you can see, more volumes coming in and we are adopting whatever technology is coming on.

In case of, let's say, a renewal, so that didn't require...

No. That does not.

The customer will still have to come to a BLS center. That's the main point.

Correct.

Okay. That's very helpful.

Thanks. That's nothing else from me.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for joining this call today. If you have any further questions or clarifications, you can reach out to Gaurav Chugh or EY team.

Thank you so much. Have a good weekend.