WeWork India Management Limited

WeWork India Management Limited

652.10
INR
-8.90
(-1.35%)
61.64BMarket Cap
Dec 02Next Earn

Q1 FY2027 · Earnings Call TranscriptJuly 17, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to WeWork India Management Limited's Q1 FY '27 earnings conference call. The presentation in this call is a concise version of the presentation uploaded on the company's website and shared with the stock exchanges.

This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on the date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict.

As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Participants connected on webcast may click on the Ask a Question tab to join the question queue after the management's opening remarks.

Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr.

Karan Virwani, MD and CEO. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Karan Virwani

Thank you, Michelle. Good morning and thank you for joining us for our first quarter FY '27 results.

Before we get into the numbers, one frame of how to read this quarter: look at us on a year-over-year basis, not sequentially, for two reasons. We're in a growth cycle, and in a growth cycle fixed costs arrive before revenue does.

When we sign new centers, rent and operating expenses start immediately; the desks fill up over the quarters that follow. Any quarter where we're expanding hard will look softer sequentially, even as the business underneath it gets stronger.

This is not a warning sign, it's a model working as it's designed. Second, Q4 of FY '26 carried a one-time customization revenue that isn't a recurring feature of this business.

Stack Q1 FY '27 against that quarter sequentially, and you're not comparing it like-for-like. Year-on-year is the fair test.

It measures us against ourselves at the same point in last year's cycle, before this year's capex and without last year's one-offs, and on that basis every metric is compounding. Let's zoom out for a second, because this is a good market to be compounding in.

India's flex space keeps taking share from traditional leasing. Quarter after quarter, it is no longer an experiment for occupiers, it is core to how enterprises plan real estate.

WeWork India sits at the forefront of that shift: the largest branded flex network in the country, concentrated in markets where the enterprise and GCC demand is growing the fastest. Everything I'm about to walk you through is what leading that market looks like.

With that, let's get into the operational performance. We closed the quarter at 79 centers across eight cities, 9.1 million square feet operational, and about 133,600 desks; 11 more centers and nearly 20,000 more desks than a year ago, growth of just over 18.5%, right in line with the pace of the flex category itself.

We serve about 113,000 members today, up 26,000 over the year, close to a 30% growth. Members are growing faster than desks.

We added roughly 7,000 more members than desks in this year. That's why occupancy climbed to about 84.9%, even as we keep adding space, more than eight points higher than a year ago.

Mature centers are running at 87.5%, and NPS stood strong at a +78. The base is sticky: 52% of desk sales in the network come from existing members, with renewal rates up to 84% this quarter.

That engine behind us, that's the engine behind this year's expansion. Revenue for the quarter was up to ₹698 crore, up 28.5% year-on-year.

EBITDA was ₹138 crore and a 19.8% margin, which is up 69% from last year. PAT was about ₹53.2 crore, which is against ₹8.4 crore last year, roughly a 6.5x jump and a 608 bps margin expansion.

One number needs context before Cliff walks you through the details: Q4 FY '26 included a one-time customization revenue I mentioned a moment ago. It won't repeat this quarter, and the second reason year-on-year and non-sequentially is the right lens today.

On capital, ROCE was up 28.6% this quarter, more than three times where we stood a year ago. Free cash from operations grew 176%, and net debt is down close to 90%, even as we near nearly doubled our capex.

FCFF came in negative ₹46.1 crore simply because H1 is a growth-intensive quarter, a growth-intensive half of the year; ₹188 crore of that capex landed in this quarter alone. Growth costs come first and then returns follow.

Just a closer look at the market that we operate in. Q2 calendar year '26 leasing hit 24.6 million square feet, a record a record quarter capping a record first half of 45.5 million square feet.

Flex led that market for the third straight quarter, up 89% to 11.4 million square feet in the first half. Share of all office leasing has more than doubled in five quarters to in to 27%.

Roughly 55% of India's occupiers already use flex, and we're on track for about two-thirds by 2027. Domestic companies now account for 46% of leasing, and more than half of that goes to flex operators.

Premiumization is riding alongside it: 76% of the quarter's completions were in green-certified, and 70% of leasing went into buildings that are under 10 years old, exactly the class of assets that we operate in. Our footprint sits across the eight cities where India's business growth is concentrated.

Bangalore remains home and our largest market: 30 centers and nearly 52,000 desks. Around it, new corridors are scaling fast: Hyderabad is up 68%, Chennai is up 66%, Delhi more than tripled off a smaller base, Gurgaon up 23%.

We're consolidating at home and build and building where demand is moving the fastest. We operate 9.1 million square feet today.

Add signed leases and LOIs of another 2.9 million, and total contracted capacity is about 12 million square feet, about 179,000 desks. That's a 32% capacity growth and nearly 44,000 desks that are already locked in.

First half additions are on track for 22,000 desks in this heavy in this heavy opening stretch of the cycle. By March of 2027, we expect to be operating about 10.3 million square feet and around 155,000 desks.

Beyond that, FY '28 and FY '29 supply is already in negotiation. Demand is showing up in sales.

We sold about 12,700 desks this quarter, which is up 28% year-over-year. April was our single biggest sales month with about 7,500 desks, and we did this without discounting; pricing multiples held steadily through the year.

Worth repeating: 52% of what we sold went to members that are already with us, and that's not one-quarter trend, that's been the base compounding. On who drives the revenue, 77% came from enterprise members, 65% from global companies, and North America riding the GCC wave is 46% of the revenue on its own.

No single sector dominates: technology leads at 28%, BFSI at 17%, and the rest is well spread. Our top 10 members are just 22% of revenue combined, and there's no concentration risk here.

That's the demand side, a growing that's the demand side, a growing market, record sales, and an expanding base. Let me also give you the underlying contracted picture before I hand it over to Cliff for the details.

The best place to start is what's already contracted: locked-in revenue, future revenue from our members that that our members have already signed up for, stands at about ₹3,063 crore, which is up 60% from ₹2,105 crore last year. Locked-in rent obligations only grew 30% in the same period.

Contracted revenue is growing twice as fast as contracted cost. For every rupee of new rent that we committed to this year, we added almost ₹4.70 of contracted revenue.

With that, let me hand it over to Cliff to talk you through our occupancy metrics and the rest of the financials.

Cliff Lobo

Thank you, Karan, and good morning, everyone. Karan mentioned members grew faster than capacity.

Here's the consistency behind that: capacity grew 17% year-over-year, members grew 30%. Member growth ran at 1.7 times the pace of capacity addition.

Portfolio occupancy moved from 76.5% a year ago to 84.9% today. Look specifically at growth centers, those open less than 12 months.

A year ago, that cohort sat at 45% occupancy. Today's growth centers are at 65%.

There's a timing element to that, but it also shows new buildings filling up meaningfully faster than they used to, which matters given how much supply we're adding. Total revenue, which is core workspace, VAS, and digital combined, came to ₹698 crore for the quarter, up 28.5% year-on-year.

Every segment grew year-on-year: revenue from operations was ₹687 crore, up 28%; core workspace grew 30% to ₹603 crore; value-added services grew 10%; and digital grew 27% to ₹26 crore. Digital is still under 4% of revenue, but those four products monetize the same square foot more than once and run at close to an 80% EBITDA margin.

The stack contributes materially more to the bottom line than the top line. This quarter's shareholder letter has a full spotlight on it, worth a read.

On a sequential basis, both core workspace and digital grew: core up 3.4% and digital up 22%, which shows the underlying business compounding steadily every quarter to quarter. Now, the one number that needs context.

Our VAS line includes parking, facilities, customization, and late fees. Last quarter, we recorded about ₹47 crore of customization income.

This quarter, it was ₹9.5 crore. That's not a slowdown.

On the ground, customization demand remains strong, but by its nature this revenue is lumpy across quarters, tied to when specific fit-out projects close. Strip customization out and the rest of VAS grew about 20% quarter-on-quarter.

This is exactly why Karan opened by framing today's numbers year-on-year. A quarter that includes a large one-off like last quarter customization income will never compare cleanly to one that doesn't.

On profitability, center-level EBITDA was ₹186 crore, up 52% over the last year at a 27.8% margin, nearly a five points of improvement. The cost side explains why: rent per square foot was flat over the year, opex per square foot only rose 5.6%, while revenue grew 28%.

That gap is our operating leverage. Portfolio breakeven occupancy is just 56.6%, and even our newest growth centers are comfortably above that.

Sequentially, center-level EBITDA moved from ₹212 crore to ₹186 crore, a dip of ₹27 crore, entirely explained by the ₹37 crore of higher customization income recognized last quarter. The underlying business is more profitable, not less.

Mature center EBITDA actually grew from ₹173 crore in Q4 FY '26 to ₹181 crore in Q1 FY '27. At the company level, EBITDA was ₹138.3 crore, up 69%, with a margin at 19.8% against 15% a year ago.

PAT was ₹53.2 crore against ₹8.4 crore, with a PAT margin moving from 1.5% to 7.6%. The sequential dip here is the same story.

It's the flow-through of last quarter's large customization revenue and not a change in trajectory of the business. As we begin our capex cycle, roughly 22,000 desks in H1 of FY '27, it's worth contrasting against the last expansion, which started exactly a year ago.

EBITDA grew from ₹81 crore to ₹138 crore, margin from 1. from 15% to 20% year-on-year.

Last year's cycle came with a margin dip of almost six points; this time is roughly half that. The portfolio is more resilient, and the drag from heavy expansion is shrinking with each cycle.

This kind of margin expansion and contraction is a natural part of any growth cycle, driven by occupancy ramp and one-time income like customization that comes with capacity expansion. It's precisely why we're asking you to read this quarter and every growth cycle quarter on a year-on-year basis.

Capital returns tell the same story: ROCE was 28.6% this quarter against 9.1% a year ago. We've tripled our return on capital in a year where we've also expanded the capital base.

Which brings us to cash and the balance sheet. Free cash from operations was ₹141.9 crore, up 176%.

We've invested ₹188 crore of capex this quarter, nearly double last year. Even so, FCFF was negative ₹46 crore, essentially flat with a year ago.

We doubled our investment in growth, and our own operations absorbed all of it. Net debt is ₹31.6 crore, down 89% from ₹297 crore a year ago, against ₹371 crore of cash on hand.

Net debt to EBITDA is 0.06 times, cost of borrowing is down from 10.4% to 8.5%, and our rating moved from an A- to an A+ over the year. Handing it back to Karan to take you through some more.

Karan Virwani

Thank you, Cliff. Before we close, a few minutes on what defines our next chapter.

Everything so far is the physical network, but our 113,000 members don't just need desks. When we asked them, the answer was consistent: they buy dozens of business services beyond the workspace, which include transport, hiring, insurance.

All of this is scattered across vendors, negotiations, and invoices. They told us that they'd rather do all of this through us, and that was a clear opportunity to get a larger share of what the members already spend, with customers who already trust us.

On the 15th of July, we launched Member Services, a business services platform built exclusively for our members that lives inside the WeWork India app. Here's how it works: we created a marketplace of business service partners and negotiated enterprise-level pricing and standards with each one of them.

Every member gets those terms. Whether you're a Fortune 500 or a five-person startup, there's no difference.

It works across every WeWork India location on a single platform: one place to discover services, engage partners, manage billing, and with us run with us running the workflow. We're starting with what members ask for the most, which is admin and IT, which includes employee transport, hardware rentals, network services, and HR, hiring, staffing, insurance, wellbeing, a dedicated set of services for GCCs as well, which includes set up, legal, accounting, talent, finance, and marketing.

Legal, marketing, and sustainability will follow in the coming phases. This is what we mean when we say work is evolving from standalone workspaces into integrated ecosystems.

We've spent years building the physical network and the technology layer on top of it; Member Services is that layer taking shape. Let me leave you with the year-on-year picture, because it says everything about the business and where the business is headed: revenue up 28%, EBITDA up 69%, profit is up 6 times, return on capital tripled, net debt is down 90%, our biggest sales month ever, we had more than half of it coming from members itself growing with us, and the deepest commitment in deepest committed supply chain in our or supply pipeline in our history.

FY '27 is a year of growth, and the case for it has never been cleaner. Thank you for your confidence that you continue to place with us, and with that, I'm happy to take your questions.

Operator

Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin with a question-and-answer session.

Participants connected on audio call may press * and 1 on their touchtone phone. Participants connected on webcast may click on the Ask a Question tab available on your screens to join the question queue.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. In order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, kindly limit your questions to only two per participant.

Should you have a follow-up question, please rejoin the queue. The first question is from Adhidev Chattopadhyay from ICICI Securities.

Please go ahead.

Adhidev Chattopadhyay

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity.

I have a couple of questions. First is on the 15,000 to 16,000 seats which we may open in this current quarter, will there again be some customization revenue one-time which may be booked as you get into the second quarter?

How should we look at the profitability of the new seats, how quickly they would ramp up to EBITDA breakeven? That is the first question.

Second question is, we had given a capex guidance of ₹500 to ₹600 crore for the year in the last quarter. Do we stick to that guidance or is there any revision to that number?

Thanks. These are my questions.

Karan Virwani

Thank you. Yes, we have close to about another 20,000 seats that are basically going to open between the last quarter and essentially by October.

Like we mentioned, there's almost 6,000 of those that are opening which are managed office deals already, some of which have already opened in July. As we sit July already saw almost sort of 6,000 desks open in the last sort of 15 days.

Margins are holding as expected, and if you look at the growth center occupancies, they're already well above breakeven, all the cohorts are delivering profitability to the business. We see that that will continue to kind of ramp up, and the sales velocity that we're on also kind of holds good to make sure that these buildings are actually ramping up in the way that we want.

In terms of customization revenue, I'd probably just touch on that a little bit. We have always had customization revenue as a part of our VAS over the years.

Typically, we used to do between ₹30 and ₹50 crore of customization revenue. Last year, because we did some extremely large managed office deals like JP Morgan, T-Mobile, Amazon, etc., there was a huge amount of customization that these companies kind of asked for, which led to this kind of revenue growth or these one-time revenues actually hitting basically in Q3 and Q4 of last year.

With that lumpiness or maybe to avoid the lumpiness, what we decided to do is actually change the treatment of customization in this coming year. In terms of customization where we have centers already built out and members sort of ask for us, we will continue to recognize those as in one-time sort of revenues.

These large customizations which actually are specifically to one customer in managed office, what we are going to start doing is basically amortizing it over the complete term of the member's commitment itself. This will now from this year onwards actually smooth out any type of lumpiness that we basically saw last year, and you'll have a more recurring base of customization revenue as the quarters kind of flow through.

Typically, in the range of between ₹10 to ₹15 crore in a quarter is what we kind of expect will be run rate when you look at this customization kind of revenue. Some quarters will be a little bit higher, some quarters will be lower, but that's really the range that we're looking at for this coming year.

Ideally, we don't have this issue again popping up. It was just because of a very big growth here last year and some large deals that we did that just kind of even took us by surprise as we went through the year.

Now, in terms of the capex cycle, we hold good on the guidance of between ₹500 to ₹600 crore, and that is the visibility that we have today. There might be some change if large managed offices come through the year and we have to deploy some large capex for delivering those, but that we will know pretty much by the next quarter if any of that's going to hit basically by the end of this year.

Adhidev Chattopadhyay

Sure, sure. That is very clear and concise.

Thank you and all the best.

Karan Virwani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Abhinav Sinha from Jefferies.

Please go ahead.

Abhinav Sinha

Hi. Karan, couple of questions.

Firstly, on customization revenues, what are the margins on this business?

Karan Virwani

Typically, it's actually a full flow-through. The cost that we have is similar to the rest of our business or normal business, which is essentially just the fit-out costs that we kind of put through into the space.

This is all revenue that basically flows directly to the bottom line, and it always has been. There's no real P&L cost apart from the regular corporate overheads and the sort of the management fee and all these other variable costs that we have with our regular revenue itself.

There's just no COGS like rental, etc., that actually pertain to this revenue stream.

Abhinav Sinha

Okay. Secondly, last year if I remember, we had much higher openings in the first quarter as a proportion of the year and also the margin dip was higher.

Now it appears that in 2Q our openings should be higher than this quarter, right? Maybe close to 15,000 odd I guess.

Should we see a margin dip in 2Q as well on a YoY basis or maybe even on a QoQ basis?

Karan Virwani

We don't foresee the margin dipping. We actually see potentially the margin moving upwards because of the large managed offices that are a component of that expansion coming up in Q2.

Nearly 7,000 seats will be managed office that opens in this quarter. Also the other centers that we have ramping up, we actually have good pipeline and some of that sales is actually happening.

To be honest, these seats were actually meant to open in Q1, they just kind of moved literally a week or two because of some of the design changes that some of these customers asked for. Then one or two centers we intentionally moved to July rather than June because we just wanted a better opening for them.

We feel that we're in a good place. You'll actually see, like we did last year, the margin sort of expanding through the year and as coming quarters come up.

I think that slide is why we wanted to kind of just show where the base is starting much higher than we did last year in the new capex cycle, and we've actually been able to manage to hold the suppression a lot better this year, in order to give it a much smoother outlook for the remaining part of the year.

Abhinav Sinha

Great. Thanks and all the best.

Karan Virwani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Siddhant Mayecha from Tusk Investments.

Please go ahead.

Siddhant Mayecha

Hi, Karan. Hi, Cliff.

Thanks for the presentation. Just quick question, if you could throw some color on the contract backlog, how do we read that?

Is this committed rent over the next 27 months?

Karan Virwani

Sorry, yeah, the ₹3,063 crore is current average commitment over the portfolio average, which you're right is about 27 months. As you can see, basically has grown almost 60% year-over-year.

On a sequential basis also is sort of growing almost 15%. That will consistently keep adding as the year goes and as these buildings ramp up and we obviously do new sales as well, while rental, which is the committed cost that we have, has only kind of moved up about ₹200 and [unclear] in the same period.

Siddhant Mayecha

Got it. Just one follow-up question.

In that case, am I reading this right? If it's 3,400 3,400 over the next 27 months, that's about 400-odd crore a quarter, but the current operating rent is about 600.

Is the 200 non-contracted rent or how do I interpret that?

Karan Virwani

Just to clarify, this is the remaining amount of commitment that we have, not exactly the 27 months. It's actually the amount of value that we have remaining in the contract.

Each month, some contracts are coming closer to expiry while we're adding basically new contracts at an average of basically 27 months. This number will constantly keep compounding to that scale.

Siddhant Mayecha

Got it. Super helpful.

Thanks a lot.

Karan Virwani

This doesn't account for renewals as well. As you saw, we had about 84% renewal rate in this quarter, you'd at least assume that there'll be an 84% renewal on 3,600 3,300 and then any additions from all of the new velocity or the new sales that we add in the coming quarter.

Siddhant Mayecha

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Karan.

Karan Virwani

Sorry, just the other added thing on this is, obviously the leases or the rental costs, a lot of it has already hit. This gap should actually increase as these sort of commitments keep compounding on top.

Siddhant Mayecha

Got it.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Yashas Gilganchi from BOB Capital Markets Limited.

Please go ahead.

Yashas Gilganchi

Hello, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions.

How has the supply pipeline changed since last quarter? Any light you can shed on what could be the approximate supply addition post FY '27, maybe through FY '28,

Karan Virwani

'29? We've made operational close to about 1/2 million square feet just in the last quarter, which is roughly about 7,000 seats that have actively opened.

Like we spoke about last quarter, for FY '27 we're largely locked up, or we've already signed up what we're looking to kind of open within this year, 10.3 won't move meaningfully between now and the end of the year. Even for next year, we already have identified our pipeline.

We're in the process of basically signing LOIs and leases, which over the next quarter we'll probably show you a more of a solid amount for FY '28, but you could consider that it will be in a similar range as the kind of growth that we basically seen from last year to this year. So, 10 10 and 1/2 will be somewhere actually closer to basically 12 odd million open.

A lot of the AUM that you're seeing even beyond March of 2027 are deals that we signed for FY '28, '29. There's some under-development assets also that have been locked up in that portfolio.

We're on track to consistently deliver what we need to. We see no issue on the supply side and we consciously also take a call not to sign up crazy amount upfront, too much in advance because we want that agility in the case that you want to either contract some capacity growth or potentially expand it also.

We think this visibility of roughly about 12 months 12 months of 100%, 18 months of roughly about 90%, and maybe 24 months of about 80% is a good place to kind of be, and that's how we continue to kind of roll out the AUM growth.

Yashas Gilganchi

Understood. I understand that VAS revenues as a percentage of total revenues were lower largely because of lower customization revenues, but going forward do we expect a change in the level of VAS revenues or what's a good level to assume on a full-year basis?

Karan Virwani

See, we've historically been at 13% to 15% VAS revenues. We think that we'll hold basically at those levels consistently.

So 11% to 12% on VAS plus about 3% to 4% on digital, which is what stacks up to that sort of 16%. That's sort of the levels that we continue to see.

We're hoping obviously with the launch of Member Services over time there'll be some addition to the bottom line or the margin that this menu kind of delivers for us, but I would sort of keep it to this guidance. The other thing that you can see that is growing is digital, which is growing faster than the rate of sort of core revenue.

That's another place where you'll see some margin expansion and maybe some higher contribution as we get through the year.

Yashas Gilganchi

All right, that's clear. Thanks, Karan.

Have a nice day.

Karan Virwani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Aliasgar Shakir.

Please introduce yourself providing your organization name and proceed with the questions.

Aliasgar Shakir

Hi. This is Ali from Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund.

Just wanted to clarify in terms of your growth guidance, I think we had an indication that we would probably grow somewhere close to about 20% in terms of pre-IND AS EBITDA. I just wanted to clarify there's too much noise in this quarter.

One, you mentioned your VAS revenue is down because of whatever one-time accounting that you guys did, that is now ironed out over the course of the lease period. Second, you mentioned, obviously, you have significant additions which probably has impacted your EBITDA.

Now that obviously you would continue to add more seats even next quarter as you are mentioning there'll be 15,000 seats. Will that trajectory of pre-IND AS EBITDA growth of 20% kind of what was indicated will continue for the full year basis if we declutter the noise on a quarterly basis?

When seat addition happen, what kind of impact do we expect on a quarterly basis? That's my question.

Karan Virwani

Sure. I think the growth obviously you want to look at is on a YoY basis, right, and look if you look at that YoY, the EBITDA growth has been almost 70%.

I think we 100% feel very confident that, even as the expansion rolls out and the year rolls out, we will definitely meet the guidance of 20%+ EBITDA growth and sort of revenue and EBITDA growth of over 20%. Like I mentioned earlier as well, with the new additions coming up, we don't see any major impact on the margin or the margin percentage.

In fact, there will be really an expansion in the margin from its current levels for sure, with all of the rollout basically happening by October. We have almost two quarters post that to really drive portfolio growth and occupancy growth.

All of that, as you can imagine, will basically flow through to the bottom line and will continue to balloon EBITDA as Q3 and Q4 actually comes about. We're already starting with such a much higher base, nearly ₹60 crore of growth just from last year to this year on the EBITDA base itself, right?

Just think of this as a starting point similar to we having last year, right, where where we started basically at a base of 82, we ended at about ₹165 crore. Today we're starting with a base of 138, and we will sort of end at obviously a much higher level by Q4.

Maybe not as much of a steep step up, but there will be consistent growth as we go quarter-over-quarter.

Aliasgar Shakir

This is clear. Basically, 20% annualized growth will be intact.

Just a quick clarification here. In terms of quarterly, how it should play out?

Do you think because you are going to add 15,000 seats in Q2, of course YoY you could still be better, but QoQ it may not meaningfully improve, yeah, and the entire growth that you're talking about 20% will be back-ended in Q3, Q4?

Karan Virwani

No, it will improve each quarter. The base itself will go up each quarter, expect definitely a growth on growth on 138 in the coming quarters, and expect that the margin of between 19% to 20% will continue to hold as the expansion happens also as the next quarter comes about.

We already have decent visibility of the portfolio. We're already pretty much July is done, we know the next 2 months what they look like.

We've had some large move-ins of deals. We've done a large deal for Cognizant, which is opening in Chennai.

We have a few large deals which have already actually opened in this month itself. We're feeling good about the next quarter.

It will just continue to compound.

Aliasgar Shakir

Okay. I'm just unclear why the impact will not be there in Q2, because if Q1 you add 6,000 seats and the impact was so meaningful, then why in Q2, despite adding such a large number of seats and occupancy may not be at optimum level, you think the impact may not be there, huh?

Karan Virwani

A lot of the seat additions in this quarter was largely WeWork-branded speculative seat additions. A larger portion of next quarter's additions are actually managed office, there's already some demand backed, which these centers will be opening at basically higher occupancies than we did in this quarter.

Over and above that, even the other WeWork spaces that we have lined up, we have already pre-filled and sold some of those seats, we feel good about the expansion or sort of the margin kind of holding. In some cases we'll have some operational rent-free and all of that as well, which will help the business.

Aliasgar Shakir

Understood. Okay.

Thank you so much. Very clear and nice.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Karan Virwani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Girish Choudhary from Avendus Spark.

Please go ahead.

Girish Choudhary

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Some of my questions have been answered, but I have one more. If you could help us understand we have seen a slight dip in the center occupancy rates, right?

Even if I look at the number of seats sold during the quarter was around 12,700, right? We have done 7,500 just in the month of April, right?

The net addition is only 3,100, right, which implies around 9,000-odd exits. If you could just help us understand the nature of the exits.

Karan Virwani

I think what you want to look at first is the overall capacity itself, right? If you look at the slide, March of '26 mature building centers had about 110,000 seats, but as of this quarter they are about 118,000 seats.

Almost 8,000 seats based on last year's expansion have now moved into the mature building cohort. Within that, the member count basically grew almost 5,000 desks between 98,000 to about 103,000.

While there's a slight dip in the mature cohort, it's largely driven by the extra added capacity that actually entered this cohort in the last quarter itself. The total base, if you look at the EBITDA margin, the center-level EBITDA margin basically of the mature cohorts, right, is roughly holding flat at basically about 20 28%, even with this new capacity coming up, which is not reflected maybe in this slide, but probably in another earnings presentation which we have posted on the website.

Essentially, you'll see that with the increase in the occupancy, or even with a slight dip in the occupancy, but larger capacity actually moving into the mature building cohort, the base of the EBITDA itself has increased, and the EBITDA margin of that cohort is actually holding.

Girish Choudhary

Got it. Thank you.

Karan Virwani

Just to maybe point out, right, like the growth centers, right, while it's at 64 or 60 5%, you can imagine a lot of these centers have actually opened just last month, right, or basically in the last 3 months itself. It's still holding at roughly about 65%, which is far above our breakeven occupancies, even with a lot of that expansion happening in the last sort of 30 days, 45 days as well.

Operator

Mr. Choudhary, hope that answers you all your questions.

Girish Choudhary

Yeah. Thanks.

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Sourabh Gilda from JM Financial.

Please go ahead.

Sourabh Gilda

Hi. Am I audible?

Operator

Yes, you are. Please proceed.

Sourabh Gilda

Thanks. Most of my questions are answered.

Just on the growth centers part, the in terms of capacity the net decline is just 0.5 or rather 5,000 seats. The decline in occupancy is rather significant from 72 73 to 65.

How should one read this? This is largely the drag led by the new additions that has happened in the quarter, or it is something else too?

For

Karan Virwani

two things. One is a bunch of that cohort moved to mature, like we kind of mentioned, right?

About 8,000 seats that were sitting basically some of the seats that basically were sitting in growth as of last quarter have now moved to mature. Almost 8,000 shifted cohorts to mature, while 7,000 new additions came in basically in this quarter.

That's the shift in the capacity that you're seeing. Like I just mentioned, about 7,000 desks which have just opened in the last 3 months are sitting in this growth cohort.

Those are fresh new members, fresh new ramp-up, that we're seeing. It's not a like-to-like comparison in terms of the actual buildings from last quarter and then this quarter itself.

Sourabh Gilda

Sure. Got it.

Very clear. Just a question on capacity addition.

We have been, although on a small base, but the capacity addition on a YoY basis has been drastic in cities like NCR, Hyderabad, Chennai. Just as you stabilize your capacity in this centers or expand your base in this new markets, do you see any change in margin profile in the way these different markets operates?

Karan Virwani

I think so yeah, there are different margin profiles and type of centers in each of these markets. Just taking Delhi as an example, we opened basically in Aerocity, which is an extremely premium micro-market.

We opened one center there, we're expected to open another center there towards the end of the year or maybe next year depending on when the delivery of that happens. These are priced at between ₹25,000 to ₹35,000 seat a rupees a desk, they are definitely higher-priced markets.

Hyderabad, Chennai, where you're seeing a lot of that growth, some of that is coming from large managed offices that we run, the margin profiles there are significantly higher, but the pricing will be almost half of that of Delhi. Margin profiles in the southern markets will be slightly stronger because the spread that we're able to make there is larger, between 2.8 to maybe even higher than 3x, versus the spread that we're able to make in more expensive centers is typically slightly lower, but the quantum of EBITDA ends up being bigger just because of the price.

Overall, we're holding the revenue-to-rent ratio across markets, like we've mentioned, at basically 2.9

Sourabh Gilda

to 3x. Got it.

That's very clear. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

The next question is from Sukhman Arora from Waterfield Advisors. Please go ahead.

Sukhman Arora

Hi. I'm really confused on customization revenue.

Is it revenue generated from designing the space that may belong to the client or is it part of the managed office offering? That's question one.

I'll ask another question once you respond to this.

Karan Virwani

Typically, what we were always doing before we really started doing extremely large managed offices is that we would build space that was designed as a WeWork, and customers would come and they continue to come and ask us to make changes: either add cabins, they want to collapse different offices and make a larger office, they need higher networking type of customization, etc. For all of this, we typically used to just charge them one time to deliver the work, and that was how our customization revenue has been over the last sort of eight years, and it continued to slowly build from a small revenue stream to a run rate of basically around ₹50 crore prior to last year.

Then what happened last year was we started getting and doing these extremely large managed office deals where initially we would spend or build out the space for these customers, but as they sort of moved in or as they continued through the design process, they continued to ask for specking up of the space, making changes, adding new spend, etc., which was over and above what we had priced the deal at or what we had actually committed in terms of pricing. They said that for anything that we're asking for basically over and above what we've already priced in the contract, we're willing to pay you upfront for the spend, and hence we actually billed them upfront and recognized that revenue upfront.

We see this as something that will constantly keep reoccurring as we do these large managed office deals. We're already seeing it in some of the deals that we have coming up.

In order to avoid this lumpiness and to avoid this sequential issue that we've had basically from last quarter to this quarter, what we decided to do was to treat them as amortized over the contract term when they're actually pertaining specifically to one client and one type of customization in managed office, and kind of pushed with it because these assets essentially belong to us and we can really amortize it over the contract term of the customer. From a cash basis, you will see that our cash flow will increase in quarters where we actually get this upfront sort of customization, but the revenue will be a lot more smoother.

From a cash flow perspective, it will help us in continuing to deliver the capex spend with all of the accruals that we have, but the revenue will be smoothed out through the contract term. Over the next few years, you will see this revenue stream continuously building up as we do basically more managed office deals with this customization revenue, and we expect that the customization revenue becomes a significant portion of the overall revenue over the next few years.

Sukhman Arora

Understood. This is helpful.

My second question is managed office is basically built-to-suit office space. What stops REITs from doing this?

Because a lot of REITs already do built-to-suit solutions for their clients. Can there be potential competition coming in from REITs?

Just a fundamental question.

Karan Virwani

I think fundamentally what we're seeing in the market is customers opting for an operator not because they are looking at space just in a single asset or a single location. They want a partner that can help them basically through their entirety of their growth.

Typically, customers use us in multiple formats. I'll just give you an example for Amazon.

Amazon has seats with us in Bangalore in a WeWork space, in Pune with us in a WeWork space, and we just delivered a managed office for them in Chennai, which is a much larger dedicated customized space for them. By having this sort of relationship, having the ability to come to one operator who can manage my entire workspace requirements or infra requirements across the country or even actually globally in our case, is one of the added advantages here.

Secondly, a lot of REITs don't want to get into basically managing the FM part of these customers. It's a high service level, high experience level ask that a lot of these customers are asking for internally itself, right?

We are able to do that because we specialize in that and we understand what these kind of customers want. Are there customers that just go to landlords and say fit out the space?

100%, I think that will obviously continue. As you can see, occupiers that are using flex are now about almost 55%, right?

There's a clear shift in what and how customers want to operate this real estate, want to keep it liquid. The other thing is that with REITs you have to give a longer commitment.

They're not willing to do deals at 3 years or 5 years, they want you to give a 9-year commitment. If they're investing the capex, they will definitely need that commitment.

However, we are able to offer more flexibility because we have the confidence that if that customer moves out, we can release that space or we can convert it into a WeWork or whatever it is, right? It's just a layer on top of the underlying asset class similar to maybe what you see in hotels and hospitals, right, where an operator and branded play becomes basically the marriage between the asset ownership and what the customer and the customer experience layer wants.

That's really what we're kind of basically bringing together.

Sukhman Arora

This is helpful. Thank you.

Karan Virwani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Murali Krishnan from Sundaram Mutual Fund.

Please go ahead. Mr.

Murali Krishnan, please proceed. Am I audible?

Yes.

Muralikrishnan Raghunathan

Thanks. Sir, just one question.

How should one read about the actual brokerage outflow and the accrual part? Just if you can explain on the flow of movement from being recognized and the payments, yeah, that's the only question I had, yeah.

Karan Virwani

Sure, let me take that. Brokerage typically is amortized over the commitment term or the term of the deal.

The cash flow is an immediate outflow because it's invoiced and paid immediately, but the recognition of expense is over the term of the contract, so that's how we do it. You will always see a disconnect between what the cash out is and what the P&L number is.

Muralikrishnan Raghunathan

Understood, sir. Understood.

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Rishith Shah from Axis Capital.

Please go ahead.

Rishith Shah

Yes, hi. Good morning, thanks for the opportunity.

Just one question regarding the relatively new segments, one is Rivet and now the services segment. In your view, how big can these segments be 1 year, 2 years down the line, and how you're thinking about the margins on these segments?

That's it.

Karan Virwani

Rivet I think we've spoken about before. It's at a very nascent stage.

We have some good pipeline for this year. As you can see, we've not actually booked any major revenue in this quarter, but we see some coming through over the next three quarters, it will increase as the year goes by.

I would look at both of these as really incremental, right, to the bottom line really, and the way that we see the flow-through is direct to earnings because none of these have any rental kind of cost, they don't have any asset type of need, there's no capex requirement to actually grow these businesses. Rivet is anywhere between let's say a 10% to 15% margin business, but it's a complete 10% to 15% flow-through to PAT directly.

Even with Member Services, our take rate on a lot of these services, we have two levels of monetization that we have here: one is a listing fee, where these service partners are providing us or paying us an initial listing fee itself to be part of the platform, and then we have a take rate of anywhere between 6% to going up to almost 16% depending on the type of service as of right now. That take rate could definitely increase as we start providing more value and actually start seeing revenues flow through.

On Member Services specifically, the way that we're operating is basically like an e-commerce platform of service where we're facilitating this kind of exchange between the service provider and the customer, and in a lot of case actually you'll not actually see this flow through revenue, but you'll see it flow through basically margin. There'll be one or two services where we recognize the top line, but what we've decided to do is actually make this a pure margin-type business.

Actually, it will just add basically to the bottom line and the margin expansion on the business.

Rishith Shah

Perfect, makes sense. Thank you so much for the answer.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Ankit Minocha from Adeizi Ventures Family Office.

Please go ahead.

Ankit Minocha

Hi. Good morning.

Karan, I just wanted to understand that this is about the promoter pledge. Could you explain the reasons for the promoter share pledge and if there are any kind of plans to reduce it in FY '27 or in the short term?

Karan Virwani

When we did the IPO basically last year in October, our plans were to raise probably about ₹4,000 crore. We pulled that amount back for a variety of reasons, largely pricing itself.

When we reduced 4,000 to about ₹3,000 crore, what happened was the stub of the debt that we would have loved to have paid off remained, which was about ₹570-odd crore, which continues to be what is pledged against the shares. Today I think it's roughly about 15% or maybe yeah, around 15% of our shares that are pledged.

As the market cap has improved, we see that pledge releasing slightly. You'll sort of see some of those shares, I think maybe around 30 lakh shares will get released in the coming quarter, so that pledge amount should come down.

Our endeavor is 100% to try to get this removed or pay off the debt within this financial year, either by sale of assets in the parent business and proceeds actually going out to paying this off, or if the pricing comes to a level that we feel is okay, we would do a block to essentially kind of clear this off, right, and keep this actually completely unpledged. I think that's the direction that we're going with.

That's the intention on the business.

Ankit Minocha

Thanks. That's really clear.

Appreciate it. Wish you guys luck for the year ahead.

Thank you.

Karan Virwani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Hitaindra Pradhan from Maximal Capital.

Please go ahead.

Hitaindra Pradhan

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Sir, just wanted to understand, since there's a lot of renewal coming in, what are the cost outlays when there is a renewal that happens, especially for the managed offices part in terms of the refurbishment or anything?

Karan Virwani

You're referring to renewals of leases?

Hitaindra Pradhan

Yeah.

Karan Virwani

Or of managed office transactions?

Hitaindra Pradhan

Managed office transactions when suppose a client is renewing, what are the terms in terms of the cost outlays, like the refurbishment and all?

Karan Virwani

If a client is leaving in a managed office situation, typically there is no cost outlay. We have back-to-back commitments with our landlords, and the way that we price those deals also is recovery of the capex within the term of the client itself.

From all respects, we have basically no risk over there. If a customer leaves, we'll either leave the asset or if we are able to release it, we'll release it, and that will give another kicker to the portfolio.

In some cases or in other cases we will actually kind of exit. We have had our first managed office, which is Microsoft, which was a 5-year contract.

We've seen a further 5+5 renewal already happen on that contract. We've continued with the real estate, we've continued sort of billing them.

We've given them the benefit of the capex sort of being paid off and reduced that from their total outlay, but other than that we continue to operate that space and continue to make the margin that we would have.

Hitaindra Pradhan

In terms of refurbishment, we are not specifically doing anything when the client is renewing. Is that understanding correct or we do minimal amount?

We do So

Karan Virwani

yeah, as we run the WeWork side of the portfolio or these branded spaces, we do regular refurbishments at intervals of right now we're doing it at year six and seven of a lot of those spaces where we're basically putting in anywhere between 5% to 5% to 15% of the 5% to 10% of the initial capex back into the space. When it comes to managed offices, I would say that typically the next customer has a higher ask in terms of what they want, how they want to customize the space, potentially another opportunity for this customization revenue that we've kind of spoken about, where we will be able to refurb and do it based on the designs that these kind of companies ask for.

That will be driven by the customer or the next customer if and when they choose to kind of take up that space.

Hitaindra Pradhan

Understood, yeah. That's helpful.

5% to 10% regular refurb that cost. Yeah.

That's clear. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question for today.

I will now hand the conference back to Mr. Karan Virwani for closing comments.

Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Karan Virwani

Great. I want to thank you all for joining this quarter's earnings call.

Like we said, the business is in extremely strong momentum. We're actually leading the flex industry, which is now really the showstopper amongst commercial real estate.

We continue to be the market leaders in that space, and the way that the underlying business is growing just on a year-over-year basis, the demand pipeline that we see, and the control on costs and the just the ability to expand the margins that will happen through the year, we feel confident about FY '27 being another strong year for the business, and leading that into FY '28 as well. You will see over the next few quarters that some of the sequential noise will play itself out, the year-over-year growth will continue to compound, and we're here committed to actually deliver for shareholder returns.

We just want to thank you all for trusting us over the last quarter or so. You've meaningfully improved the picture of the stock, and we've seen a lot of uptick, and we want to continue that momentum as the year kind of goes by.

Operator

Thank you, members of the management. Thank you, sir.

On behalf of WeWork India Management Limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you for joining us, and you may disconnect your lines now.

Thank you.