Fractal Analytics Q1 earnings show 92% profit surge, but shares fall on segment weakness

Fractal Analytics Q1 net profit jumps 92% to Rs 72.3 crore

The company posted revenue from operations of Rs 912.5 crore in the June quarter, up 20% year-on-year. In Q4, Fractal's revenue stood at Rs 886.3 crore and net profit at Rs 115.8 crore. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) margin expanded to 16% in the quarter, up from 12.5% in the year before. AI company Fractal Analytics reported a 92% year-on-year jump in first-quarter profit to Rs 72.3 crore, driven by strong demand for enterprise AI services and healthy margin expansion. The company posted revenue from operations of Rs 912.5 crore in the June quarter, up 20% year-on-year. In Q4, Fractal's revenue stood at Rs 886.3 crore and net profit at Rs 115.8 crore. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) margin expanded to 16% in the quarter, up from 12.5% in the year before. "Revenue growth was led by the company's Healthcare and Life Sciences (HLS) industry, which clocked 69% growth year-on-year," the company said in a statement. Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) grew 36%, while Fractal's largest industry, Consumer Packaged Goods and Retail (CPGR), grew 19% year-on-year. On the other hand, Tech, Media and Telecom vertical (TMT) declined 22% YoY. Geographically, Fractal's largest market, Americas, which constitutes nearly 70% of its business, grew 24% in the quarter. Europe grew 25%, while Asia-Pacific and other regions declined 2%. "Enterprises are putting real transformation budgets behind AI now, and we're seeing it directly in the size of the deals coming to us. TMT was the drag on our headline growth this quarter. Excluding TMT, our business grew 35% year on year, which is a better read on the underlying demand we're seeing," Srikanth Velamakanni, group CEO and executive vice chairman, said in a statement. Fractal also said it now has 58 clients contributing over $1 million in annual revenue in Q1, up from 54 a year earlier, reflecting increased enterprise adoption of AI-led transformation services. The company's net revenue retention, a key metric indicating increased spending from existing customers, stood at 117% in Q1. The company listed on Indian stock exchanges on February 16, with an initial public offering of Rs 2,834 crore. On Thursday, Fractal's shares were trading at Rs 866 on NSE, about 3% lower than the previous trading session.

Fractal Q1 FY27 slides: 92% profit surge amid AI pivot, shares fall By Investing.com

Fractal Analytics presented its Q1 FY27 performance update on July 24, 2026, showcasing a 92% surge in net income and significant margin expansion as the enterprise AI company pivots toward product-led growth. Despite the strong operational performance, shares fell 5.86% to $811, extending a decline that began after the earnings announcement, as investors weighed structural weakness in the technology-media-telecom segment and the absence of formal numerical guidance. The presentation revealed revenue growth of 20% year-over-year to INR 9,125 million, with adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 189 basis points to 17%. The company emphasized its transformation from a consulting-focused analytics firm to a diversified AI services and products company anchored by its Cogentiq agentic AI platform. Quarterly Performance Highlights Fractal's Q1 FY27 results demonstrated strong profitability expansion across multiple metrics, as illustrated in the company's comprehensive performance overview. The quarter featured net revenue retention of 117%, indicating robust expansion within the existing client base. Revenue per billable full-time employee reached USD 83,000, up 3% year-over-year, while the company maintained a net promoter score of 77, up 4 points from the prior year. Operating cash flow improved 20% year-over-year to negative INR 1,030 million, with management noting that Q1 typically shows negative cash flow due to variable pay disbursements for the prior fiscal year. The company ended the quarter with INR 16,378 million in cash and cash equivalents, including INR 6,891 million in IPO proceeds, having fully repaid its long-term debt in April 2026. The drivers of net revenue retention reveal the strength of client relationships, with existing clients contributing 17% growth while new client additions added 3%, offset by zero churn. Detailed Financial Analysis The company's profitability metrics showed consistent improvement across all key measures, reflecting both revenue growth and operational leverage. Gross margin expanded to 46% from 45.4% in the prior year quarter, while adjusted EBITDA grew 35% year-over-year. Net income reached INR 723 million, representing an 8% margin compared to 5% in Q1 FY26. Excluding the share of loss from associate Qure.ai, net income was INR 957 million with a 10.5% margin. The waterfall analysis of net income growth provides detailed insight into the drivers of profitability expansion. The analysis shows that SG&A and R&D efficiency contributed 1.6 percentage points to margin improvement, while gross margin impact added 0.3 points. Finance costs declined as the company repaid debt, contributing 0.2 points, while exceptional items added 0.8 points. Tax impact reduced margins by 0.7 points due to higher profitability. Balance sheet and cash flow metrics also showed improvement, with days sales outstanding declining to 71 days from 73 days in the prior year. Segment and Geographic Performance The company's revenue diversification across industries and geographies showed mixed results, with strong growth in most verticals offset by significant weakness in technology-media-telecom. Healthcare and life sciences emerged as the fastest-growing segment, expanding 69% year-over-year to represent 23.5% of revenue. Banking, financial services and insurance grew 36% to account for 13% of revenue, while consumer packaged goods and retail, the largest segment at 37.8%, grew 19%. The TMT vertical declined 22%, though management noted that excluding TMT, Fractal.ai would have grown 37% year-over-year. Geographically, both Americas and Europe showed strong growth at 24% and 25% respectively, while APAC and other markets declined 2%. Americas represented 67.4% of total revenue, with Europe at 21.4%. The company demonstrated deepening client relationships across all revenue brackets, with the number of clients generating over $10 million in annual revenue increasing from 6 to 9 year-over-year. Strategic Initiatives and AI Platform Development Fractal outlined its strategic framework around three integrated AI pillars designed to address the AI-native enterprise across people, process, and technology dimensions. The AI-led Transformation pillar focuses on reimagining business workflows with measurable outcomes, targeting business and functional CXOs. AI Foundations addresses the technology dimension, building ontological layers of knowledge and governance for CIO, CTO, and CAIO organizations. The AI Work & Workforce pillar redesigns talent and workforce capability, targeting CHROs and business leaders. All three pillars are powered by Cogentiq, the company's flagship agentic AI platform, which management emphasized is becoming central to the go-to-market strategy. The company's integrated capabilities span multiple domains and solution towers. The company invested 6.7% of revenue in R&D during Q1, up 55 basis points year-over-year, with management stating an ambition to reach 10% over time as gross margins expand. Fractal holds 40 granted patents with 33 applications pending. Product Portfolio and Partnerships The company's R&D-backed product suite showed meaningful traction across multiple offerings, supporting the pivot toward product-led revenue. Cogentiq generated a qualified pipeline of $4 million with 10+ clients across 10+ industries. Asper reached a $9 million annual run rate, up 59% year-over-year, serving 20 clients globally and managing over $60 billion in portfolio revenue. Analytics Vidhya grew 40% to $4 million in trailing twelve-month revenue with a net promoter score of 90. Partnerships with frontier AI labs and hyperscalers gained momentum, with the company reporting 42 joint engagements in the trailing twelve months and approximately 1,900 certifications across seven partner programs. Key collaborative deals in Q1 included implementations for Fortune 100 food and beverage companies, a Fortune 5 retail client, and a Fortune 50 US payer, spanning use cases from collaborative commerce to agentic business transformation and AI platform learning. Client Case Studies and Value Demonstration The presentation featured detailed case studies demonstrating the impact of Fractal's AI solutions across different enterprise use cases. A leading US housing finance institution case study illustrated how AI-powered underwriting accelerated lending decisions. The AI-driven underwriting system reduced preparation time by approximately 50%, roughly doubling throughput and standardizing decisions across hundreds of reviewers. The solution unified loan documents, guidelines, transaction history, and risk signals into one workflow, generating source-cited recommendation memos with full audit trails. Another case study highlighted a Fortune 50 US retailer's fuel pricing transformation, where Fractal built an AI-powered engine that reduced pricing adjustment time from 5-8 hours to approximately 15 minutes. The real-time pricing system refreshes competitor and internal data every 15 minutes, automatically detecting gaps and recommending prices in the same cycle. By anticipating competitor moves and market conditions, it protects the retailer's lowest-price promise and reduces the risk of lost sales volume. Corporate Overview and Market Position Fractal positioned itself as a globally recognized pure-play enterprise AI company trusted by over 100 Fortune 500-sized enterprises, with trailing twelve-month revenue of INR 34,517 million and 6,029 employees. The company highlighted industry recognition across multiple categories, including Leader positions in Supply Chain Analytics from ISG for two consecutive years, Data Engineering Service Providers from AIM for three years, and Generative AI from AIM for four years. Gartner named Fractal as a Representative Vendor in Retail Assortment Management and the Hype Cycle for Consumer Goods. Forward-Looking Outlook and Challenges While the presentation did not include specific numerical guidance, management commentary from the earnings call indicated expectations for TMT segment recovery beginning in Q2 FY27, with healthy sequential growth anticipated from existing client pipeline expansion. The company outlined plans to increase the mix of outcome-based and license revenue from 42% to 60% over the coming quarters, with Cogentiq revenue to be reported separately starting in Q2. Asper is expected to strengthen in the second half of FY27, while Qure.ai is projected to move toward profitability with a backlog exceeding INR 100 million. Key challenges include the structural weakness in TMT, which declined 22% year-over-year, competitive pressure as multiple firms pursue enterprise AI opportunities, and the CFO transition following Ashwath Bhat's departure after 5.5 years. The company also faces margin pressure from annual merit increases and continued hiring to support growth. The quarterly profitability trends across multiple periods demonstrate consistent improvement despite these headwinds. Despite strong operational performance and significant margin expansion, investor concerns about execution risks, segment weakness, and the lack of formal guidance contributed to the stock's decline to $811, approximately 26% below its 52-week high of $1,118. The company's ability to sustain profitability improvements while navigating the TMT recovery and scaling its product portfolio will be critical to regaining investor confidence in coming quarters. Full presentation: This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Earnings call transcript: Fractal Analytics posts strong Q1 2027 growth as shares fall By Investing.com

Fractal Analytics reported a strong start to fiscal 2027, with Q1 revenue rising 20% year over year to INR 912.5 crores, or about $97 million, and diluted earnings per share climbing 78% to INR 4.09. Net income nearly doubled, adjusted EBITDA margin widened, and client retention remained strong. Still, the stock fell 3.94% to $827.55 from $861.45, leaving it below its recent close and closer to the lower end of its 52-week range as investors weighed a weak technology-media-telecom segment, a CFO transition and the lack of formal numerical guidance. Key Takeaways * Revenue rose 20% year over year, supported by growth in healthcare, banking and consumer sectors. * Net income increased 92% to INR 72 crores, showing stronger operating leverage. * Adjusted EBITDA grew 35% and margin expanded to 16.8% from 15.1%. * The company said its AI platform Cogentiq has more than 10 clients and is gaining traction. * Shares fell 3.94% in the latest session, suggesting investors focused on execution risks and segment weakness. Company Performance Fractal Analytics said Q1 FY2027 was marked by broad-based growth and improving profitability, even as one important business line lagged. Revenue reached INR 912.5 crores, up from the same period a year earlier, while gross margin improved to 46%. The company also reported zero churn, net revenue retention of 117% and an improved net promoter score of 77, all signs of healthy customer relationships. The quarter was not evenly strong across the business. Management said growth excluding the TMT vertical would have been 37% year over year, highlighting how much the telecom and media slowdown weighed on the headline number. Europe grew 25% and the Americas grew 24%, while APAC and other markets declined 2%. Fractal is trying to position itself as a broader AI services and product company, not just a consulting and analytics firm. It is organizing around three vectors: AI-led transformation, AI foundations, and AI for work and workforce. That strategy is meant to capture demand as enterprises move AI spending from experimentation to core budgets. Financial Highlights * Revenue: INR 912.5 crores, up 20% year over year; constant-currency growth was 9%. * Net income: INR 72 crores, up 92% year over year. * Diluted EPS: INR 4.09, up 78% year over year; INR 5.39 excluding the share of loss in associate Qure.ai. * Gross margin: 46%, up 29 basis points year over year. * Adjusted EBITDA: INR 155.4 crores, up 35% year over year. * Adjusted EBITDA margin: 16.8%, up from 15.1% a year earlier. * SG&A as a share of revenue: 24.3%, down from 26.2%. * Cash and cash equivalents: INR 1,639 crores, including IPO proceeds. * Long-term debt: fully repaid in April 2026. * InvestingPro data shows the company holds more cash than debt on its balance sheet, with liquid assets exceeding short-term obligations -- a sign of financial flexibility as it invests in AI platforms. * Days sales outstanding: 71 days, down 2 days year over year. Earnings vs. Forecast No consensus forecast was provided for the quarter, so the results cannot be measured against Wall Street estimates. Even so, the reported numbers point to a solid quarter by most operating standards. Revenue growth of 20% and EPS growth of 78% suggest the company delivered a stronger profit mix than sales alone would indicate. Net income rose 92%, faster than revenue, while adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 189 basis points. That combination usually signals good cost control and operating leverage. The quarter also looked stronger than a simple top-line print might suggest. Fractal said gross margin expanded, SG&A fell as a percentage of revenue, and working capital improved. Those trends indicate the business is becoming more efficient even as it invests in new products and hiring. Market Reaction Fractal Analytics shares fell 3.94% to $827.55 from $861.45 in the latest session. The stock is now about 26% below its 52-week high of $1,118 and about 13% above its 52-week low of $733.7. The decline suggests investors were not fully satisfied with the quarter, despite the strong profit growth. According to InvestingPro data, the stock is trading at a high P/E ratio relative to near-term earnings growth, which may explain some investor caution despite the operational improvements. The main concern appears to be the weakness in TMT, which management said was partly structural and partly related to execution. Investors may also be reacting to the CFO departure and the absence of formal numerical guidance for the rest of the year. The stock move was modest compared with the scale of the operating improvement, which can happen when the market worries about the durability of growth. In this case, the quarter showed strong profitability, but the market seemed to focus on the parts of the business that are under pressure. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 6 additional exclusive tips about Fractal Analytics, including insights on profitability trends and balance sheet strength that can help investors assess the company's long-term prospects. Outlook & Guidance Fractal did not give specific numerical guidance for fiscal 2027, but management outlined several expectations for the coming quarters. The company expects TMT to bottom out and show healthy sequential growth starting in Q2 FY2027. Management said new deals from existing TMT clients are already in the pipeline. Cogentiq, the company's enterprise AI platform, is expected to become a much larger revenue contributor. License revenue currently makes up 3% of total revenue, and management said it should grow meaningfully. Fractal also plans to report Cogentiq revenue separately starting next quarter. Asper.ai is expected to strengthen in the second half of FY2027, helped by a 59% rise in annual recurring revenue to $9 million. Analytics Vidhya is also expected to keep growing, while Qure.ai is seen moving toward profitability as its backlog exceeds INR 100 crores. Management also said it wants to raise R&D spending to 10% of revenue over time, but only as gross margins expand. The company expects the mix of outcome and license revenue to rise from 42% to 60% over the next few quarters. Executive Commentary "Our overall growth excluding TMT would have been 37% year-over-year," co-founder and Group CEO Srikanth Velamakanni said. "Ideally, we would like to grow at that kind of pace overall." The comment shows that management believes the core business is growing faster than the headline result suggests. "The TMT performance is bottoming out. We expect healthy sequential growth in TMT the next quarter," he said. That is the clearest sign that the company expects a recovery in one of its weaker segments. Velamakanni also said the market is changing quickly as AI moves into core budgets. "A year ago, AI was just an experimentation budget spent in pockets. Today, it is the core budget," he said. He added that "the deal sizes are going up" and that larger RFPs are coming through. Chief Financial Officer Ashwath Bhat, who is stepping down after 5.5 years, said: "In Q1 2027, we delivered 20% revenue growth, 35% adjusted EBITDA growth, and 92% net income growth." His remarks underscored the quarter's profitability gains. Risks and Challenges * TMT weakness: Revenue in the vertical fell 22% year over year, which could continue to weigh on growth. * Margin pressure from wages and hiring: Annual merit increases and higher headcount reduced gross margin in the quarter. * CFO transition: A finance leadership change can create uncertainty during a period of strategic change. * Competitive pressure: Management said many firms are chasing the AI opportunity, raising execution demands. * Cash flow volatility: Operating cash flow was negative in the quarter because of variable pay payments, even though it improved from a year earlier. Q&A Analysts focused on three main topics: the TMT slowdown, the growth path for Cogentiq and the company's broader execution plan. Questions from Morgan Stanley and others centered on when TMT would recover. Management said the improvement should come from existing clients already in the pipeline, not just new customer wins. It also said the weakness reflects both market structure and execution issues. Analysts also asked about Cogentiq. Fractal said the platform is product-led, with some implementation work, and is built for enterprise use cases such as underwriting, e-commerce, supply chain and customer service. Management said it will begin reporting Cogentiq revenue separately next quarter. Other questions covered R&D spending, the mix of outcome-based revenue and the impact of annual wage increases. Management said it plans to lift R&D to 10% of revenue over time, but only after gross margins expand. It also said the wage increase had only one month of impact in Q1 and will have a fuller effect in Q2. Analysts further pressed on Qure.ai, the Fractal Alpha segment and the company's growth outlook. Management said Qure.ai revenue rose 160% year over year to INR 24 crores and that its backlog has grown sharply. It also said the loss increase in Fractal Alpha reflects a reclassification of product investments, not a deterioration in core performance. Full transcript - Fractal Analytics Ltd (FRAL) Q1 2027: Moderator: Thank you, Inba. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We'll be discussing Fractal's performance for the first quarter of FY 2027, which ended on June 30th, 2026. Our results, investor presentation, and fact sheet have been filed with the exchanges and are available on our investor relations website. Joining me on the call today are Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Pranay Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, and Satish Raman, Chief Strategy Officer. Before we begin, please note that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking in nature. These statements are based on our current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Such statements or comments are not guarantees of future performance, and Fractal undertakes no obligation to update them. Please refer to the cautionary statements in our investor presentation and regulatory filings. Today, we'll hear from Srikanth on the business update, from Ashwath on the detailed financial performance, then take questions. With that, let me hand it over to Srikanth. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Svetlana. Good morning, everyone. Let's get straight into the quarter. Revenue for Q1 was INR 912.5 crores, up 20% year-over-year. In constant currency terms, revenue growth was 9%. Here's how that breaks down by industry. Vertical-wise, our healthcare and life sciences business continued to be a growth leader, growing at an exceptional 69% year-over-year. It is now our second-largest industry vertical. Banking and financial services grew 36% year-over-year. CPG and retail, our largest vertical, grew at 19%. Our worst performance was in technology, media, and telecom vertical, which declined by 22% year-over-year, dragging down our headline growth this year. Two things are worth mentioning regarding the TMT vertical. Firstly, our overall growth excluding TMT would have been 37% year-over-year. Ideally, we would like to grow at that kind of pace overall. Secondly, the TMT performance is bottoming out. We expect healthy sequential growth in TMT the next quarter. Let's look at geographically. Europe led revenue growth with 25%, where Americas were close behind with revenue growth of 24%. APAC and others were down by 2% year-over-year, largely impacted by the TMT industry issue as well as the conflict in the Middle East. Let's look at some of the other metrics. Here are three numbers underneath that matter as much, if not more. First, our Net Promoter Score was 77 in Q1, up from 73 a year ago. Two, our net revenue retention was 117% in Q1, up from 108% last year. Revenue from new clients contributed to 3% of revenue growth during the quarter. 0% churn came from client base in Q1. Three, clients kept buying more from us over time. Here's what it looks like. Number one, the number of clients contributing to more than INR 20 million in TTM revenue was 5 in Q1, up from 4 at the same time last year. The number of clients contributing to more than INR 5 million in TTM revenue was 19 in Q1, up from 18 the same time last year. The number of clients contributing to more than INR 1 million in TTM revenue stood at 58 in Q1, up from 54 the same time last year. We are also de-risking as we deepen. Our top 10 clients contributed 51.8% of revenue in Q1, down from 55.9% a year ago. Let's look at profitability. On profitability, Ashwath will go deeper, but here are some headlines. Net income grew 92% for the quarter to INR 72 crores. Our gross margin was 46% in Q1. Q1 adjusted EBITDA grew 35% on revenue growth of 20%. Q1 adjusted EBITDA reached 17%, up 189 basis points year-over-year. Set side by side with Q1 last year, adjusted EBITDA has moved from 15% to 17%, and net income margin from 5% to roughly 8% in a single year. Those are the numbers behind this quarter. Here are three highlights I want to mention. First, this quarter, we won one of the largest single programs in Fractal's history. We're building the AI foundations for a large healthcare player and modernizing their data estate using AI. We'll share more details within a few days. Second, in July, we signed an MoU with Mumbai's municipal corporation, the BMC, to pilot Vaidya.ai, now also called as Cogentiq Health, our healthcare AI platform, across several of the city's public hospitals. It's a pilot for now. The BMC will evaluate it on staff training, citizen feedback, and doctor experience before deciding on a citywide rollout. If this pilot leads to a citywide rollout, it becomes a blueprint for other states and cities to follow. Third, momentum on our own platform. We have started AI-led transformation deals with Cogentiq across CPG and financial services clients. This is very important for us, and it's a great revenue engine that we expect will keep growing. That's the quarter for now. Ashwath will take you through the financials in more depth. I'll come back and talk about demand and where this market is headed after that. Over to you, Ashwath. Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Srikanth, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into the details of our Q1 performance, a few highlights. In Q1 2027, year-over-year, we expanded our margins meaningfully with gross margin at 46%, adjusted EBITDA at 17%, and net income at 8%. Q1 net income grew by 92% year-over-year to INR 72 crores or close to $28 million. Year-over-year, revenue grew by 21% in Fractal.ai. Of this 21% growth, 17% growth came from existing clients. The number of clients with INR 1 million plus revenue went up from 54 in Q1 of last year to 58 in Q1 of fiscal 2027. Coming to the details of our performance. In Q1 2027, our revenue from operations grew by 20% year-over-year and by 3% quarter-over-quarter to INR 912 crores or $97 million. On a constant currency basis, growth was 9% year-over-year and negative 0.4% quarter-over-quarter. As mentioned by Srikanth before, we had a robust year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter growth in HLS, BFSI, and other industry verticals. Revenue contribution from Must-Win clients went up from 79% in Q1 fiscal 2026 to 85% in the current quarter. To strengthen our AI for work and workforce pillar, we have integrated iqigai and EdTech-related teams from Fractal.ai into Analytics Vidhya, and our segment numbers for fiscal 2026 have been restated to reflect this change. Moving on to profitability, I will start with gross margin. We define gross margin as revenue from operations minus direct costs, which include both employee expenses and other direct expenses. Our Q1 2027 gross margin expanded by 29 basis points year-over-year to 45.7%. While weaker INR drove 273 basis points improvement, we had 75 basis points of negative impact from annual merit increase and another 169 basis points from increase in number of people to support future growth. Moving to adjusted EBITDA. With revenue growth, operating leverage in SG&A continues to help us improve adjusted EBITDA margin. In Q1 2027, SG&A as a percentage of revenue reduced from 26.2% to 24.3%, which drove up adjusted EBITDA margin by 189 basis points year-over-year to 16.8%. Adjusted EBITDA was up 35% year-over-year. In Q1 2027, we invested INR 61 crores into research and development, 31% higher than the previous year. Out of the INR 61 crores, INR 41 crores or 4.5% of the revenue was expensed. R&D spends are mainly for building Cogentiq, Asper, and Analytics Vidhya. These investments have resulted in following outcomes. Cogentiq has seen early wins with more than 10 clients across industries. Asper's ARR has gone up by 59% to $9 million as of June 2026 versus the same period last year. Analytics Vidhya revenue in Q1 2027 has grown by 42% in dollar terms. I will move more to Fractal Alpha segment. Fractal Alpha segment includes Asper.ai and Analytics Vidhya. On a like-to-like basis, Fractal Alpha revenue grew by 20% year-over-year in Q1 2027. Analytics Vidhya in that grew by 57%, and Asper was flat. As mentioned before, Asper's ARR grew by 59% in dollar terms versus the same period last year. There is a time lag between signing of contracts and revenue. Hence, we expect the second half of fiscal year to be much stronger for Asper. Asper is being used by 20 clients in the CPG industry. The gross margin for quarter stood at 65%, and segment loss was at INR 14 crores. Increased loss is largely due to the integration of iqigai and EdTech teams from Fractal.ai segment into Analytics Vidhya, as stated earlier. As the integrated unit scales, the operating leverage will materialize with better profitability. Moving over to net income. In Q1 2027, ESOP charges, including cash bonus linked to options and one-time retention bonus, declined to 1.2% of the revenue versus 1.4% of the revenue in the same period previous year. Talking about Qure.ai's performance, our share of loss went from INR 22 crores in Q1 fiscal 2026 to INR 23 crores in Q1 fiscal 2027. I'm happy to report Qure.ai's revenue has grown by 160% year-over-year in Q1 2027 to INR 24 crores. Net income for Q1 2027 for the whole group grew by 92% to INR 72 crores. Net income margin expanded by 296 basis points year-over-year to 7.9%. Excluding the loss of share of loss in the associate, net income for Q1 2027 is at INR 95.7 crores or 10.5%. Diluted EPS is at INR 4.09, which is 78% higher than the same period in the previous year. Diluted EPS without share of loss of associate is at INR 5.39. We covered gross margin, we talked about EBITDA and net income. Let's talk about cash. Our cash from operations was negative INR 103 crores because of the payment of variable pay for the previous fiscal year in Q1 2027. Cash from operations is 20% better versus the same period in the previous year. DSO has improved by two days from 73 days in Q1 fiscal 2026 to 71 days in Q1 fiscal 2027. As of June 30th, 2026, we had cash and cash equivalents, including mutual funds and fixed deposits of INR 1,639 crores or USD 173 million, including IPO proceeds of INR 689 crores. As mentioned in our previous earnings call, in April 2026, we fully repaid our long-term debt from IPO proceeds. In summary, we delivered 20% revenue growth, 35% adjusted EBITDA growth, and 92% net income growth. Before I hand back, this is my last earnings call with Fractal. It has been a privilege representing Fractal over this last five and a half years. I would like to thank my incredible finance and legal team, Srikanth and Pranay, our executive team, especially Satish, with whom I have spent countless hours, 6,000+ Fractalites, and our board of directors. Signing off with innumerable memories and gratitude. Back to you, Srikanth. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Ashwath. As Ashwath mentioned, this is Ashwath's last call with us. After five and a half years as a CFO, he is moving on for personal reasons. Ashwath has stewarded Fractal through multiple material events like its IPO, acquisitions, fundraisers, and through a lot of quarters like this one, where the job was to explain the numbers honestly and let the story speak for itself. A lot of what's disciplined about how we report to you is because of him. Thank you, Ashwath. On behalf of everyone at Fractal and everyone on this call who's gotten to know you through these numbers, we wish you very well for whatever comes next. On the transition itself, we have made a ton of progress in identifying Ashwath's successor, and we'll share more details once we have completed the full process. Before we open it up for questions, I want to spend a couple of minutes on explaining to you where AI is headed right now. AI has become mainstream. It's part of the core budget in almost every large company we see today. However, the changes in AI are also creating enormous opportunities for companies like Fractal. Number 1 is trust. Companies want to make sure that they have control over the AI, and the AI is doing exactly what they want, and there's no gap between their expectations and the performance of AI. Especially, they want to make sure that their knowledge stays within the enterprise. This is an enormous opportunity for companies like Fractal. Secondly, companies have incredible amount of data assets, but the knowledge and the context that comes from these data assets is critical for how the AI performs. building that context layer and the knowledge layer and the ontological layer is an enormous opportunity for companies like Fractal again. 3, because of this enormous AI foundations that are being built in companies will be able to transform not just a part of a process, but their entire workflow end-to-end with AI. This is a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity. We have organized Fractal to make sure that we are able to address these opportunities like AI-led transformation, AI foundations, and AI to help you reimagine work and workforce. AI is compressing work significantly as well. When AI compresses work, it means that the cost of running AI will come down. Not just the token costs, which are currently going out of hand. They will come down automatically in the next few quarters, but also the cost of building AI, cost of running AI, and cost of the entire process with AI, because labor cost will also be avoided, will come down dramatically. The first order effect of this is to feel like maybe that means the revenue opportunity shrinks. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Companies are going to spend more and more on tech, and it will create enormous opportunities for companies like Fractal to not just reimagine every workflow with AI, build the foundation, but also to help companies reimagine their work and workforce with AI. How companies buy also is changing. Partnerships decide who is even in the room for the biggest deals now. We have created some really solid partnership with companies like Databricks, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Five of our largest deals this quarter came through a partner. A year ago, AI was just an experimentation budget spent in pockets. Today, it is the core budget. That is what we work with, and that is what Fractal was built for. We feel our future is bright, and we have a long way to grow from here to the next level. With that, I will stop here and hand it over to you, Inba. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now move to the Q&A segment. To ensure we provide space for as many participants as possible, we request you to limit yourselves to two questions per turn. Participants connected on Zoom, we request you to please use the raise hand icon located at the bottom toolbar on your screen. When called upon, you will receive a prompt to unmute. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question is from Gaurav Rateria of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Gaurav Rateria, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Best wishes to Ashwath for the future endeavors. It has always been a pleasure talking to you, interacting with you. I have couple of questions. I will just maybe say them all in an order, then you can answer as per your convenience. The first is around the visibility that you highlighted in the TMT vertical of healthy growth sequentially into Q. What drives that visibility? Is it from the same existing clients, or have you won certain new clients or new deals which drive that visibility? Second is the Cogentiq pipeline. Really good to see the qualified pipeline number that you shared. Could you also highlight the nature of the deals in terms of the kind of engagement, whether it is going to be more like a product-led kind of a deals, whether it is kind of having a services component? That would be helpful. The last is that, from a visibility perspective, I understand that we start always small with the clients, then we scale up, and that reflects in your multimillion-dollar clients going up in numbers year-after-year. At the same time, there has been a kind of volatility in the business, right? Maybe because the nature of the business is like we always start small, and these are small engagements, and it can be volatile between the quarters. Is there anything to think about, like what can be done in order to create more consistency and visibility? Is it the nature of the business automatically will evolve with the larger engagements with AI-related work, which automatically will provide more visibility? Thank you. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Gaurav. Firstly, you are absolutely right that we are seeing the TMT issue bottoming out, and it is coming from new deals from existing clients. We have a pretty significant pipeline in that, and we know that our next quarter is going to look better because of what we already have in the bag. That is mostly newer deals from existing clients rather than completely new clients. Secondly, on your question around the Cogentiq pipeline and Cogentiq deals, we see these as product led. Most of these revenues are product led. There could be some FDE or implementation component to it in some ways, but these are completely product led. We have built Cogentiq for underwriting, which is seeing a pretty solid traction. We have built Cogentiq for e-commerce. That is also seeing some really solid traction. Cogentiq as a platform being used to build is also seeing some traction as well. This is a very important part of our business, and we expect it to become significant. As the value of building the ontological knowledge layer on data becomes very, very crucial, platforms like Cogentiq are seeing a lot of interest from clients because these are built for the enterprise. They can use a multiple set of models. Like you have seen, people really want to control their outcomes inside the organization, regardless of whether they have or lose model access. That creates a very large opportunity for companies and products like Cogentiq. That is really on the second one. Third on how business evolves from here. Certainly, the deal sizes are going up. We are seeing some changes in dynamic. Number one, certainly there is competition, and there is RFPs. There are much larger RFPs coming through right now than we have seen in the past. The size of the deals are bigger, and the ambition of what they want to get done are also much larger. As Fractal becomes more public, becomes more visible, and has a phenomenal track record behind us, we become very capable of addressing those very much larger deals that come through. You've not seen that yet in the numbers, but I expect that we will see them in the numbers in the coming few years. Secondly, on the volatility part, one has to sort of also understand that the shape of demand is dramatically changing. This is the largest opportunity in front of us. There are some things that are expanding like crazy. There's an insatiable appetite for helping companies reimagine their workflow, building their AI foundations, and helping them reimagine their workforce with AI. Those are just growing very rapidly. On top of that, any existing work, anything that feels like it's not as, let's say, relevant today than it was before, that could be completely vanishing as well. Things like ad hoc analysis, building dashboards, these are the kinds of things that are going to go to zero anytime soon. If not already zero. There is demand that will be vanishing as well, which will be a much smaller component, but it will go. The third thing is that if the kind of work that we do, which is really interesting and important, can also be done faster, quicker, and cheaper, which means that overall work can shrink in terms of compression. We will see compression, everyone will see compression. Everyone will see some work vanishing. The work that is coming through is so huge that it more than makes up for that. That's really the way to process the change. There will be some changes in deal by deal, because there's something that we may be doing which is not relevant today in a much more AI-first world where things are much easier to do. Something that we would have taken a year to do could be done in a month, which means that that per se looks like it shrunk, but there are now 1,000 such deals rather than 10 such deals earlier. That's the kind of way in which we have to process this change overall. Gaurav Rateria, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: It's quite ironical, right? The deal sizes are also increasing, the kind of engagements that are coming our way is also of the nature where the work can be done much faster and better. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yes. Gaurav Rateria, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Which also creates larger workflow, but probably a smaller kind of work to be done, yeah, in the beginning. Thank you really for your detailed answers and great explanation. Very helpful. All the best for future. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Gaurav. Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: Thanks, Gaurav. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Our next question is from Aditi Patil of ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Aditi Patil, Analyst, ICICI Securities: Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on the technology vertical. Was there any unexpected client-specific issue which may have come up during the quarter apart from the ones which we had called out in the previous quarters? On the annual wage increment, can you again explain, have we done the annual wage increment for FY 2027 in Q1, or it was of the previous year, which had some impact in Q1? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Aditi. Really appreciate this. Number one, on the TMT vertical, it's not that it was unexpected or something. One thing that we have sort of told ourselves is that we are no longer going to talk about client-specific issues unless something very dramatic has happened. There are client-specific issues that happen all the time in every client relationship, and therefore, we have chosen to not talk about that in future because it is distracting. We have to sort of take more accountability for our own performance. Having said that, the quarter TMT did have. It performed worse than we expected, for sure. We think that the worst is behind us. Now TMT will start to look better, at least on a sequential basis for the next quarter and thereon. On the second question was on the wage increase. It's been done. It's effective June 1st. You're only seeing one month of impact on that in this quarter, April, May, June. We have done the overall merit increases for the year as of June 1st. This is sort of slightly unexpected. Normally, we do it on April 1st. This year, we made it effective June 1st. One month of that is already in play. Aditi Patil, Analyst, ICICI Securities: Okay. Got it. Can you share contribution of Cogentiq revenue, or how big you expect it to become by end of FY 2027? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yes. Our overall license revenues are 3% of revenue. We expect that to go north of that. We are seeing a lot of interest, just remember that the deal sizes are much smaller when it comes to product revenue versus services revenue, and therefore you are seeing some of that. As a fraction of overall revenue, it's still at only 3%. We want it to go up. It will go up soon. Number one. Number two is that specifically within Cogentiq, we are seeing a lot of pipeline and a lot of interest. We have to convert them significantly in order to make that a much larger part of the pie. What we are seeing is the need for something like that becomes stronger and stronger as the need for trusted AI, where you are not completely dependent on a model, becomes more important. Your organizational context, your organizational data, and the ontological layer becomes very, very crucial as well. In that context, when people are trying to reimagine their workflow, they need a platform that they can rely on, Cogentiq fits in really nicely with that. We expect this to become even more crucial for clients in the coming few quarters. What we are doing is, apart from building the Cogentiq platform, which can help you solve any problem with, and reimagine workflows with AI. We are building specific products on top of the Cogentiq platform which go to a certain industry and solve a certain problem. For example, what we've done with Cogentiq Underwriting is it helps insurance companies underwrite better using Cogentiq, and we are seeing a few clients sign up for that. Similarly, our Cogentiq e-commerce product is helping companies reimagine how they grow their revenue with e-commerce. Similarly, we are doing it for supply chain, we're doing it for customer service, and a few other places. These are now, we have identified our top leaders to come and take charge of those products that are being built on Cogentiq platform. That build-out has happened over the last year or so, and now we're beginning to see the rollout and some traction because of that. We expect this number to go up, and become a more significant part of our revenue going forward. We will come back with a Cogentiq revenue number every quarter, but we are just figuring this out exactly how to do. Cogentiq revenue, license revenue. Cogentiq revenue might have license revenue and some of the FD revenue. Exactly how we'll report it, we'll figure it out and come back to you next quarter with the Cogentiq revenue, as well as the overall license revenue for Fractal. Aditi Patil, Analyst, ICICI Securities: Okay, got it. Thank you for answering my questions, and all the best, Ashwath, for your future endeavors. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thanks, Aditi. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Our next question is from Pritesh Thakkar of PL Capital. Please go ahead. Pritesh Thakkar, Analyst, PL Capital: Yeah, hi. Thank you so much for taking my question. I have a first question on the vertical front. Again, we have a weakness coming in on the TMT side of the vertical. At the same time, I'm seeing HLS growth has been decelerated, if I look at over the last two to three quarters now. How should we anticipate FY 2027 growth trajectory there, and which verticals would likely to contribute meaningfully to those growth? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you for that. Pritesh, thank you. Firstly, yes, our growth rate in HLS is very impressive, but it is lower than the previous quarter what we reported to you. One thing I should mention is that the overall growth, excluding TMT, is 35%. Because of TMT, it's come down to 20 because TMT is showing negative growth. As soon as the negative growth gets arrested, we will start to see the overall growth rate go up. That's really the expectation, that every other part of the business is growing nicely as of today. If the TMT vertical solves for itself, it should address the overall growth and improve our overall growth rate in the coming few quarters. Pritesh Thakkar, Analyst, PL Capital: How we should anticipate which vertical should contribute meaningfully to the growth for about 2027? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: It will be across all verticals. We are seeing growth across. HLS will be a very important part of that. Our banking and financial services continues to grow very nicely. Some of these places, we have also brought in new leaders. We have Leandro, who's taken on the role of the Chief Practice Officer for banking and financial services. We are also finding a new head of Europe. We are making some progress on that hire. This new head of Europe also might help us expand our Europe growth even faster. Today, Europe is growing at 25%, and we expect that growth rate can be meaningfully accelerated with some additional new leadership that we hire. In a similar way, we are hiring new leaders in parts of the business where we feel like we have significant growth opportunities. Growth opportunities are across verticals. AI is not doing well in one industry or the other. It is creating opportunities in every vertical. It is our execution that has to improve so that we are growing across all verticals. I will say that the opportunity exists across each and every vertical for Fractal. As we execute better, we will see our growth rate pick up. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Mr. Thakkar, do you have any more questions? Pritesh Thakkar, Analyst, PL Capital: Yes. I just had a question on the partnership that we called out in our PPT. We're calling out 42 TTM joint engagements. Are we also calling out the revenues that we are fetching out of this partnership? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: We do track the revenues that we generate through our partnerships with the most impressive foundation model companies as well as some of the AI foundation layer companies that we work with. We look at that internally both in terms of what revenues are we originating because of our partnerships, and what are the joint work that we do, either because we've brought the deal to them or otherwise. We have not yet reported that to you, but we will consider bringing some of that information to you. Suffice to say that the overall partnership-led revenue for Fractal has been small. Like I've said in the previous quarter also, it's a new muscle that we are building. As the market shifts to more partner-led kind of growth, and partners become very crucial to how companies are making their overall decisions. This is something that is a growth vertical for us. It is a growth vector for us. It was not a big part of our revenues overall. Most of our revenues used to come from direct client relationships. What we are seeing is that these partnerships create a very nice window of additional growth, and it has become very strategic to us. We are building out our partnership capabilities and overall partnership execution muscle, and you will see some of that coming through in the next few quarters. Pritesh Thakkar, Analyst, PL Capital: Understood. Lastly, on the expense side, I heard Ashwath calling out we had integration cost this quarter, which led the incremental cost to fall in this quarter. What is that one-off cost, if I just want to understand? Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: Yeah. Shekar, I'll take that. Pritesh, sorry, it is not really integration cost. What we have done is we have reclassed or restated between the segments. We are building this product called iqigai. It's going to be Cogentiq iqigai. From Fractal.ai segment to Fractal Alpha segment under Analytics Vidhya. It is just movement of investments from one side of the segment to the other side. We have restated last year to reflect the right numbers year-on-year. It's not a one-time cost. It's a investment that we have been doing in Fractal.ai side of the business, which has been moved over to now Fractal Alpha under Analytics Vidhya. Hence you see higher investments in Fractal Alpha under Analytics Vidhya, hence the increased loss in Analytics Vidhya. As that Analytics Vidhya, which is mainly AI for work and workforce grows, we have seen pretty good growth there. Again, the loss and operating leverage will kick in, loss will go down. It's not a one-time cost, it's a restatement of costs or investments from one side of the P&L to the other. Pritesh Thakkar, Analyst, PL Capital: Understood. Lastly, we also raised this question on the merit cost that we incurred this quarter. Is it a full quarter on our cost that we incurred across company-wide, or are we expecting any residual impact coming in quarter two? Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: We gave merit increases as of June 1st and across the company. It was not limited to a part of the company. It was for across the company. Since it was done effective June 1st, in the next quarter, there will be three months impact. The 75 basis points that I called out was gross margin-related impact in Q1. The full P&L level, it will be more close to 120 to 130 basis points impact. It is for one month in the first quarter. Again, it is effective 1st of June, so it will have three months impact in the second quarter. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Mr. Thakker, we would request you to return to the queue. There are several participants waiting for their turn. Pritesh Thakkar, Analyst, PL Capital: Thank you so much. All the best to Ashwath. Yeah. Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Thanks, Pritesh. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Our next question is from Moez Chandani from Ambit. Please go ahead. Moez Chandani, Analyst, Ambit: Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. First question in terms of industry growth. Any qualitative sense in terms of how you're seeing industry growth shape up? You did mention that while there could be some volume compression due to AI, that would be more than compensated for by the huge multiplication of use cases. Is there any sort of slowdown in terms of the broader industry while volume compression works its way through, but the new use cases take time to show up? Is industry growth still, say, possibly at high levels of 16%-17% that was expected earlier? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: I think overall, the demand for AI-led problem-solving and AI-led transformation is enormous. It's growing very fast. It is sort of taking share from many other industries. Management consulting, market research, advertising, technology services, business process services. They're all being influenced by AI. The total addressable market is increasing. Its growth rate. Tech companies are increasing their tech spends. They're going from 4.5% of revenue to maybe up to 6% of revenue, if you look at the overall tech budgets. That has its own momentum. If you see the AI addressable part of that, it is dramatically changing. From Fractal standpoint, the addressable spend that we can chase is just going up quite well. I think the key thing is how do we execute against that? It's not easy to execute well, because there's also many players who want a piece of this pie right now. Everybody's interested in this AI-led growth that's happening. It is not that industry is not expanding. Industry is expanding dramatically. It is that it is also becoming more competitive. Therefore, our execution has to really get better to improve our growth. That's really the best way to think about this. I hope I've answered your question. Moez Chandani, Analyst, Ambit: Got it. Yeah. Thank you. That is very helpful. The other question that I had was also, on this TMT decline which we saw. Was this again maybe an impact of the competitive intensity that you just mentioned, or was this just particular clients maybe pausing discretionary spends for their own reasons? Any specific reasons that you may want to call out? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: I do not want to get into blaming anyone for our performance, right? Just one way to think about that is that companies, if you look at the big tech firms that we serve, they're very impressive, very big companies, and they have been spending tremendously on AI CapEx. You've seen that their AI CapEx has gone up, almost doubled. There is a lot of OpEx pressure when CapEx is gone up by this much. Therefore, you're seeing big adjustments taking place in the TMT industry in terms of how they look at the overall spends and allocating more of that to CapEx and less of that to OpEx. Some of that could be playing out in the way our performance is showing up in that vertical for now. Again, still the TAM is expanding there as well. I think it's about how we address this and how we reimagine ourselves in order to become even more relevant to TMT. There is definitely a massive shift happening in the way TMT companies think about their overall spends relative to other industries. That could be playing some role. I will take most of the blame on our own execution, but there is some of that playing out, as I explained. I hope that answers your question, Moez. Moez Chandani, Analyst, Ambit: Yes. Thank you so much for answering my question. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Our next question is from Om Kavadi of Venus Park. Please go ahead. Om Kavadi, Analyst, Venus Park: Hi. Thank you. Hi. Could you guys hear me? Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Yes. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yeah. Om Kavadi, Analyst, Venus Park: Thank you for the opportunity. A couple of questions. The first one is on TMT vertical. Sorry to pester on this. Just one clarification, when I look at number of clients beyond INR 20 million, it has come down sequentially from six to five. I am assuming it is in the TMT vertical, but please clarify on that. A connected question is, when you look at this TMT vertical, you have indicated that things have bottomed out, and you could see a good acceleration from second quarter, is what I understand. From that point of view, from the point you started this quarter, you would have thought about some outlook for the year, right? I am not asking of the guidance, but from a qualitative point of view, that outlook for FY 2027, has it changed when you see at the end of this quarter? broadly, you feel because things are recovering from a full-year point of view, nothing would have changed drastically. Could you just comment on that? I would come back on the second question. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yeah. First Sorry, one second. What is it? I forgot your question. Om Kavadi, Analyst, Venus Park: That on INR 20 million plus. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yeah. On the INR 20 million. Yes. That's right. Your guess is correct. The six, one of them which was INR 20 million-plus, a TMT client, is now less than that. Therefore, that is what it is. The only additional thing I'll add to that is that taking a full-year view of this versus a TTM view of this, there could be some changes. Therefore, the best way to look at it is that at the end of this year, how many clients do we have which are INR 20 million plus, and is that gone up from six to seven, or stayed at six, or gone from six to five? That is best seen on a year-over-year basis. On a TTM basis, you are right. One client has slipped below the INR 20 million number, and that is part of the TMT vertical. That is correct. Secondly, on the outlook for the year, certainly our first quarter, we feel like we have certainly underachieved what we could have achieved. Part of this is also because what we have seen is that the shape of the demand is shifting quite rapidly. Everything is changing at a very rapid pace. We are very competitive and very capable, yet we have to make sure that we move extremely fast to capture the enormous opportunity that's in front of us. That execution is crucial to us. Part of the way we've done that execution is by reorganizing our own go-to-market, bringing it under a new Chief Commercial Officer, Matt, and then building these AIT, AIF, and AIW vectors. AIT for AI-led transformation, AIF for AI foundations, and AI for work and workforce reimagination, AIW. This change, and bringing the new leaders, and organizing ourselves to go to market much more rapidly, is playing out as we speak. Once this whole thing settles down, we think that our growth rate will dramatically accelerate from there. That's really how we are thinking of it. It is improving our execution in light of where the market opportunity is shifting. The opportunity is very, very huge, and I'll reconfirm that it is completely left to our execution to become as big as we can be. There's no other law of gravity applying to us. We have an enormous opportunity in front of us. As far as the outlook for the year is concerned, of course, our quarter one is not as great as we would like it to be. We hope that some of that will start to get addressed in the coming quarters. Om Kavadi, Analyst, Venus Park: Sure. One other question is on the operating profitability front. How would we see R&D spends as a % of sales over the medium term? Is there a possibility that it would increase? The second part to the question is, where are we in our journey in terms of increasing the mix of output/outcome/license? I believe that is roughly around 40-odd%. How are we seeing this number going in the next one or two years? Thank you. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yes. We are at 42 right now. That outcome output license as well as license revenue is at 42, and 58 is the input-based pricing. We are inching gradually forward on that number, and we want to get it to 60 overall over the next few quarters. We are moving in the right direction. What AI is also creating as an opportunity is to go and be very bold in looking at a process, reimagining the process, and doing it on an outcome basis, therefore crunching the overall budgets that are required to do so. Those will be output outcome-based deals, and we are seeing, as Fractal's appetite to do such deals and capability to do such deals increases, we expect this number to substantially go up. Now, second question is on R&D as a fraction of sales. We have said that we will continue to increase R&D spends as a percentage of revenue, and we will take it to as much as 10% of revenue. We've also been very clear that we will do it only on the back of expanded margins. As gross margins expand, part of that expanded gross margin we'll put into higher R&D. We have set up a system by which we'll be pretty disciplined about that, and only expanded gross margins, a part of that will flow through to higher R&D spends the next quarter. Because of that system, while R&D spends as a fraction of revenue might increase, it will happen only on the back of higher overall gross margins. Our gross margins are expanding, and therefore, we expect that we will also be able to increase our overall R&D budgets in proportion to that. Last point I'll mention is that our R&D is getting more and more disciplined. One of the things that we've done in this space of AI, what we are seeing is R&D to revenue conversion should be faster. It should not be slower. That is a push that we are also saying, is that the enormous amount of R&D that we are doing should convert to revenues at a faster pace. Therefore, even with the R&D team, my conversation is that work backwards from revenue, right? Yes, R&D is super important, but you have to have revenue in mind and work backwards from revenue, and you will see some of that alignment also kind of streamline and improve our overall R&D productivity as we go forward. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Mr. Kavadi, we would request you to please join the queue back. Om Kavadi, Analyst, Venus Park: I'm done with my questions. Thanks a lot. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Thank you. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Our next question is from Sucrit Patil of Eyesight Fintrade. Please go ahead. Sucrit Patil, Analyst, Eyesight Fintrade: Hello, am I audible? Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yes, Sucrit. Yeah. Sucrit Patil, Analyst, Eyesight Fintrade: Yeah. Thank you. First of all, my name is Sucrit Patil. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Sucrit, okay. Sorry. Sucrit Patil, Analyst, Eyesight Fintrade: My first question to Mr. Pranay is, just beyond the regular outlook, what are the top two and three priorities you are focusing on the next few quarters? Along that, what do you see as the biggest risk in client adoption and industry competition, and how are you preparing to manage them while sustaining the company's competitive position in AI and analytics? That's my first question. I'll ask my second question after this. Thank you. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Pranay, are you there? Pranay Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Fractal Analytics: Yeah, I'm there. I'm sorry. Could you please repeat the question once? Sucrit Patil, Analyst, Eyesight Fintrade: Beyond the regular outlook that you have given, I just want to understand what are the top two and three execution priorities you're focusing on in the next few quarters. Along that, what do you see as the biggest challenge in client adoption or industry competition, and how are you preparing to manage them while strengthening the company's competitive position in AI and analytics? Just a forward guidance on this. Pranay Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, Fractal Analytics: Okay. Excellent. Great. Firstly, we are approaching the market with a three-pronged strategy. One is AI-led business transformation, second is AI foundations, and third is AI workforce transformation. The first really implies that we are building specific applications to solve key business problems or improve key business processes, which could be on the side of demand, supply, operations, and which really depend on the specific industry. These drive your core metrics, whether that's revenue or profitability, customer retention, et cetera. To ensure that these applications scale rapidly and securely at the scale of Fortune 500 companies, this requires very robust foundations. That implies strong data foundations, the ontology and knowledge layer, security layer, the orchestration layer, and the application layer. The third is that ensuring that how does the workforce deploy and use this? For that, we do the AI workforce and workplace transformation. Again, we are seeing a lot of traction in that. Continuing to enhance what we are building and deploying for our clients across these three areas, that's one of the core initiatives. The second big thing is around, as Srikanth mentioned, we are bringing in more leadership across industry verticals. Then the third, as Srikanth said, that the shape of the demand is changing quite rapidly, and that also has implications just operationally in the talent that we are bringing in and also the internal talent upgrade that we are doing to be able to meet the shape of demand. Sucrit Patil, Analyst, Eyesight Fintrade: My second question to Mr. Bhat is, I know you're taking the exit, just want to understand a forward guidance on what you think about this. From a financial point of view, what key risks or challenges do you anticipate in the coming quarters, and what specific measures are being taken to manage margins, cash flow and balance sheet strength, especially in areas like data privacy compliance, cost pressures, or client payment cycles. Thank you. Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: Thanks, Avrit. Yeah, I think in terms of the overall balance sheet, balance sheet is in a pretty good shape. Our DSO has come down both year-over-year and even quarter-over-quarter to 71 days. Even within the 71 days, it's around 54 days is the bill AR, because a lot of companies do report only bill AR. That compares favorably to some of the industry benchmarks. The balance sheet has been in good position. Again, our cash conversion to EBITDA of around 70% has also been in good condition. In first quarter of the year, we always pay variable pay for the previous year, hence you see a negative cash flow. Otherwise, all the ratios there are. ROC is close to 13%. Overall, the balance sheet is in a very good place. We do hedge, only take the forward cover for cash flow hedge. That also, again, helps us with some of the cash flow management. I don't think of any additional financial risk. In terms of the data privacy and security-related stuff, yeah, we take our, obviously, cybersecurity extremely seriously. We have invested a lot behind it. Recently, we were again rated by Black Kite in the highest category in terms of cybersecurity. That risk has been kind of addressed over the period of last three or four years by us. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Mr. Patil, we request you to please return to the queue as several participants are waiting for their turn. We now move to our next question that is from Anish Khanal of Eternalys Capital Trust. Please go ahead. Anish, could you please ask your question? Anish Khanal, Analyst, Eternalys Capital Trust: Hi. Am I audible? Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Yes. Anish Khanal, Analyst, Eternalys Capital Trust: Am I audible? Yeah. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Yes. Anish Khanal, Analyst, Eternalys Capital Trust: Yeah. Hi, Srikanth. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is on the Qure.ai. So how are you seeing the growth on the Qure.ai, given the Fractal Alpha segment loss has increased to INR 14 crore in June 2026 from INR 4 crore in June 2025? So how is the growth in that particular segment, and especially in Qure.ai segment, plus with the analytics segments? So that is my first questions. Next questions is on adjusted EBITDA margins. While we have grown from 15%-18% on a YY basis, though marginally declined from the quarter four FY 2026 from 22%-18%. Sorry, 17% I think June 2026. So how are you seeing the adjusted EBITDA margin growth trajectory? As Srikanth has mentioned that TMT has bottomed out, so can we see the EBITDA margin improvement also once that TMT segment will grow in upcoming quarters? Thank you. These are my two questions. Ashwath Bhat, Chief Financial Officer, Fractal Analytics: I'll answer, Srikanth, on the segment profitability. Fractal Alpha, which includes only Asper.ai and Analytics Vidya, that is the place where the loss is up from INR 4 crore to INR 14 crore. As I mentioned in my remark, it's mainly because of the investments that we're making in some of the products within Analytics Vidya. That's what is driving it. If you again look at the last four years, our losses in Fractal Alpha segment has come down substantially as the revenue has been scaling up. In this quarter specifically, as I mentioned, Asper revenue growth was flat, which should accelerate in the second half of the year because the annual recurring revenue has gone up by 59% in dollar terms in Asper. There is always a timing gap between the revenue, the contract signing, and when the revenue starts getting recognized for the subscriptions. Once the Asper gets back to growth, Analytics Vidya has also seen good growth in the first quarter, and that should continue. With that, we expect the profitability to kind of keep improving as, again, how it was done historically. That's a good indicator of what we can achieve in terms of the profitability in Fractal Alpha. Qure.ai is an associate company. We only consolidate 31.5% of our share of the losses. There, as I mentioned, the revenue for Qure.ai went up year-on-year basis by 160%. Losses in Qure.ai was INR 22 crore last year, our share of the loss. It was INR 23 crore this year, same quarter. Qure.ai does have a big jump from first half of the year to second half of the year. We have also seen their backlog kind of go up quite substantially to INR 100+ crore right now where they stand, versus around INR 20 crore at the same time last year. With that, the Qure.ai profitability situation should also be improving. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Just last point I want to mention here also is that our profitability in the first quarter is always a little lower than the following quarters. Just from a sequential basis, It's not a great comparison. Our year-over-year is a better comparison, and we will see that year-over-year, our profitability will continue to improve. One of the most frequently asked questions at the time we went public was that, A, your margins are inconsistent or not as. I always answered that by saying that we have very healthy gross margins. Over the last three earnings calls, we have also shown that our gross margins, our EBITDA margins, all of them are improving quarter-over-quarter. We have become much more steady in terms of managing profitability. It's a muscle that we have built now, and we expect that profitability will continue to improve over the next few quarters as we continue to expand our growth. That's really the best way to think about it. Anish Khanal, Analyst, Eternalys Capital Trust: Thank you. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Anish Khanal, Analyst, Eternalys Capital Trust: Thank you, and all the best, Ashwath. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Anish. Anish Khanal, Analyst, Eternalys Capital Trust: Thank you. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, everyone. That concludes the question and answer session. Before I hand the conference over to Anjali Garg from Fractal's Investor Relations team for closing comments, request Srikanth to share his final remarks. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Inba. You know that the growth this quarter wasn't as high as we would like it to be. Excluding TMT, growth was much better. When you look past that number, you'll see that our clients are growing with us. They're deepening their relationship with us. Our margins are expanding. Our revenue mix is shifting towards more outcomes as well. Zoom out further. The tailwind gets better. We've seen that enterprises are moving AI into their core budget. The AI addressable spend is dramatically improving overall, which means that amazing days are ahead of us. We've never been more optimistic about where this business is going. The market in a lot of places is still making up its mind. What comes after that, we believe, is much bigger version of the business that you're looking at today. We look forward to building that and making you part of that growth journey for us. Thank you again for your trust that you've extended to us. We look forward to building Fractal along with you in the future. Back to you, Anjali. Anjali Garg, Investor Relations, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, Srikanth. Thank you everyone for joining us today. If you have any further questions, including any that we were unable to address during the call today, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. We look forward to seeing you again next quarter. Thank you once again. We wish you a good day. Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder and Group CEO, Fractal Analytics: Thank you. Q&A Moderator, Fractal Analytics: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today. You may now click on the leave icon to exit the meeting. Goodbye. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.