Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Limited Q1 and FY2026 Earnings Conference Call. 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. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Meghna Luthra from InCred Equities. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am. Thank you, Hamsheh. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of InCred Equities, I welcome all to Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Limited's first quarter FY2026 Earnings Conference Call. We have along with us Mr. A. Balasubramanian, MD and CEO, Mr. Pradeep Sharma, CFO, and Mr. Prakash Bhogale, Head of Investor Relations. We are thankful to the management for allowing us this opportunity. I would now like to hand it over to Mr. Balasubramanian for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir. Yeah, thanks, thanks, Meghna. Thank you for the introduction. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining today's investor call. I hope you have had the opportunity to review our earnings presentation, which is available on both the stock exchange as well as on our website. Let me quickly begin with the outlook on the economy and an update on the major industry. The global economy is undergoing major changes in policy frameworks, which could have significant implications for global growth, trade, and capital movement. Rising trade tensions and heightened policy uncertainty are expected to weigh on global economic growth and performance. However, the situation is still developing, and despite notable policy disruptions, particularly around tariffs, global growth has experienced only a mild impact so far. As far as India is concerned, the macroeconomic outlook remains strong. The economy expanded by about 6.5% in FY2025, aligning with its long-term growth trajectory. The Reserve Bank of India has maintained a FY2026 growth forecast of 6.5%. This is a commendable achievement given the global volatility. Current economic indicators suggest a steady momentum, and favorable monsoon conditions are also expected to support agriculture production, rural consumption, and also keep the inflation in check. According to both the IMF and World Bank, India is projected to be the fastest-growing major economy in 2025. Key drivers of growth include increased government spending, global construction activities, and the renewal of rural demand. In addition to strong growth, India's macroeconomic fundamentals are stable. Early inflation has dropped significantly, averaging 2.7% in Q1 FY2026, and is expected to remain below 3.5% for the full fiscal year under the RBI 4% target. The country's fiscal position is sound, with the government on track to meet its FY2026 fiscal goals. India's external sector is also stable, with the large current account reading showing a surplus and foreign share reserves nearing a record $100 billion, and the Indian rupee remaining one of the most stable currencies globally, thereby enhancing India's appeal to international investors. With inflation under control, the RBI has shifted its focus towards supporting growth and has adopted a more accommodative monetary stance. Given the favorable inflation outlook and current yield levels, it offers attractive yield returns, and the easing of monetary policy is expected to positively influence market performance as we move forward. Despite some global trade uncertainties, we remain optimistic about the Indian market, given the stable domestic growth outlook, healthy corporate profitability, strong macroeconomic fundamentals, and supportive macro-growth policies. Moving to the Indian mutual fund industry, the quarterly average AUM of the industry as of June 30, 2025, stood at INR 72.13 trillion, compared to INR 58.96 trillion as of June 30, 2024, which is a growth of about 22% on a year-on-year basis. During the quarter ended June 30, 2025, the industry witnessed strong equity sales of around INR 1.034 trillion. The total NFO collection during this quarter was about INR 6.5 billion, primarily coming from equity funds, mainly driven by sector funds, thematic funds, and multi-cap funds, which are large by some of the key competitors in the industry. The industry SIP contribution for June 2025 stood at INR 272.16 billion, growing by 5% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The total number of mutual fund holders stood at 285 million as of June 2025. The individual average AUM for June 2025 grew by about 21% year-on-year, from INR 37.47 trillion to INR 48.38 trillion, contributing around 61% of the total industry AUM size. B30 cities, with an average AUM of INR 1.38 trillion for June 2025, accounted for about 18% of the total industry AUM. Coming to Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Limited performance, we have witnessed a healthy business momentum in Q1 FY2026. In fact, the net sales for Q1 FY2026 delivered strong growth, exceeding the net sales of the entire FY2025, circulating a strong overall positive business momentum driven by improved fund performance across all categories and various ongoing initiatives that we have been engaging with the market. We also maintained our overall market share over the last two quarters. This is in line with what we have been highlighting for the last two or three quarters, the steps that we are taking from building the business to the next level and how it's paying out. On the place to shine during the quarter, we achieved a significant milestone of crossing INR 4 trillion in mutual fund AUM. The most we have done was commitment to the growth that has risen out of the past. Our overall average AUM, including alternate assets, stood at INR 4.43 trillion, growing by 21% year-on-year. Our mutual fund quarterly average AUM reached INR 4.3 trillion, growing by 14% year-on-year. The quarterly equity average AUM stood at INR 1.8 trillion, growing by 11% year-on-year. Our SIP contribution in June 2025 stood at INR 11.4 billion with 3.846 million accounts. For 3.8 million accounts, our SIP AUM contributed around 45% of our total AUM, referenced signature asset. In fact, I must also mention the SIPs we have moved to the contribution model. That's something which I just wanted to highlight. The total number of investors' portfolio for June 2025 stood at 10.6 million, witnessing 14% year-on-year growth. On the equity investment front, we are seeing consistent improvement in the investment performance, strong returns delivered across all multiple schemes, reflecting enhanced performance driven by the process that we have implemented across the equity schemes and fixed income schemes. On the fixed income side, the performance remains robust across all categories. We are also expanding our product offering with innovative launches to better serve the diverse needs of our growing investor base, with one or two funds being planned in the overall pipeline of products. After hosting an exclusive event called Vantage Point in the last quarter of last year, which brought together the top MFDs across the country, we are now also hosting a regional growth summit for deeper engagement and mind share with our distribution partners, empowering them to amplify our market reach and strengthen our positioning for sustained growth ahead. In fact, we have covered all the key markets, which contribute about 80% of the AUM in the last three months by way of the engagement that we have rolled out. On the alternate business front, we are also continuously enhancing our PMS and AIF offering across both equity and fixed income to better serve the evolving needs of HNIs and family offices. During our growth summit event that we have been doing, the interest ebbing towards our AIF product offering has been very encouraging, thus improving the scope for scaling up the business through MFDs' contribution also in this business growth opportunity. Following the receipt of the ESIC mandate, which we won last year, we commenced managing the rate portfolio, and the AUM stood now at about INR 24.26 billion for the last quarter ended on June 30, 2025. Our TMS and alternate assets fund assets witnessed impressive eight-time growth, including the ESIC mandate, rising from INR 3,368 crore to about INR 20,627 crore. As we present, we have completed the first close of the ABSL Structured Opportunities Credit Fund Series 2 with the fixed income credit fund and are also preparing to launch the ABSL India Equity Innovation Fund, fortuning us to build a robust and comprehensive product portfolio that effectively addresses the evolving investment needs of our clientele while accelerating growth momentum across our TMS and alternate assets business. Our offshore assets stood at about INR 10,518 crore for Q1 FY2026. Under the GIFT City platform, we have fundraising underway for the India AAS Engagement Fund, ABSL FlexiCare Fund for our inward remittance, and ABSL Blue Chip Fund for the outward remittance. While on one side, we continue to build these fees through our receipts and GIFT City platform, we also witnessed a few withdrawals from a few large customers in view of the portfolio restructuring, which they have undertaken, taking into account the emerging global political uncertainty, as well as other challenges on the basis of their own portfolio allocations. We have seen some reductions and withdrawals on the overseas portfolio. However, it does not have much impact on the overall AUM, as well as on the overall contribution to the profitability. On the passive front, our focus remains on building our AUM by launching innovative products in ETFs, index funds, and fund of funds, while driving customer acquisition through our digital platform and distributors. As of June 2025, our total passive assets reached approximately INR 30,400 crore, growing 22% year-on-year, with our customer base reaching 12.3 lakh followers. Our current product suite comprises two distinct offerings designed to meet various investment needs so that various fund of funds that can be launched in the future can use any of the products available as part of our bucket in the passive platforms. Moving on to the financials, Q1 FY2026 revenue from operations has stood at INR 447 crore, up 16% year-on-year. Q1 FY2026 operating profit is at INR 254 crore, up 21% year-on-year. Q1 FY2026 profit before tax is at INR 372 crore, up 22% year-on-year. Profit after tax for Q1 FY2026 is at INR 277 crore, up 18% year-on-year. With this, I would like to conclude and open the floor for any questions. I'll be joined by Pradeep Sharma as the CFO, as well as Prakash Bhogale, our Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Yash from Citig roup. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Thanks for taking the question. Just a few data giving questions from my side. One is if you could share the operational revenue from the non-mutual fund business and also the ESOP expense for the quarter, by single quarter. Oh, yes. Pardon? Prakash Bhogale is just answering. Oh, yes. Other than mutual funds, non-operational income from the alternate assets is around INR 32 crore for this quarter. The ESOP expense is around INR 1.6 crore. Sorry, 1.6? 1.6 crore. INR 1.6 crore. Okay. Sir, SIP AUM share, if you could please repeat. I know you mentioned it in the opening remark, but I think I missed it. Sure. SIP AUM, it's around INR 84,000 million. Okay, the share. Okay, the share. Okay. the share. Okay. Lastly, just on the market share, if you could share the divergence between the flow and the stock market share for net equity and equity-oriented flows, please. Yeah. On the overall market share, we remain more or less flat compared to the last quarter. I think, as you all know, over the last year, quarter on quarter, the fall was continuing. At the same time, the fall was getting narrowed as we progressed in various steps that we have taken. In this quarter, more or less, the market share remains somewhat flat, backed by the focused equity funds that we have identified where we need to get to the rightful market share. That's something that's working. As a result of that, the first quarter net zero didn't disclose the number per se. Otherwise, when I look at the number, first quarter net sales numbers are equivalent to our last year's net sales numbers, which is an encouraging trend that we are seeing. Hopefully, we are able to maintain this on the basis of the strategies just explained. Okay. Thank you, sir. That's the last from my side. Thank you. Thank you. Before we take the next question, we would like to remind the participants to press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Lalit Deo from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Good evening. Firstly, on the company side, we've reversed the segment by wage across equity and equity and passive side. The second question was on the employee expenses. This quarter, we are seeing some sequential declines. Could you give us the reasons why there has been a decline in the employee expenses? How should we look at it for the whole year? Lastly, just a clarification. Does it say that the overall net sales in this quarter have been higher than the prior year or have been higher than FY2025? Is this only for the equity segment, or does this include every segment? The last question is for the equity what I mentioned. The other two questions in terms of yield, Prakash to answer. Lalit, the yield on the equity is around 67, 68 basis points. It is in the range of around 24, 25. Equity is in the range of around 13, 14 basis points. And employees? The employee cost is mainly on account of the variable pay. It was a little bit on the higher side in the last quarter. Okay. Solution. Yeah. How should one be looking at it across the whole industry? Lalit, actually, this on a yearly basis, we see this variable pay basis business performance and all. What numbers normally, if you see the Q4 numbers, you will have to analyze it for the full year. That will be the normal trend. Sure. I think on a broad basis, just to add to what Lalit has mentioned, the employee cost varies at what we have earlier guided. One, building our team as far as this H&A team concerns, now we already have about 90-80 members. Anyway, right now, we have taken a call. We'll go up to 100 team members. We'll structure, we'll register that and see the outcome of this from a broader business outcome point of view. Second, the alternate side, we have been having in mind that to have somebody to build as a business in addition to the existing team of people who could be a driver of this business for the larger growth. That's something we have been thinking. Of course, this headcount would come partially a little bit in our role, a little bit come in the mostly will come in the Sun Life role. That is, we are planning. The headcount will increase, but not actually a significant increase in the cost as a result of that. As and when we get to this year, once we convert that into a subsidiary company, for which we will take some steps in the current financial year, that may warrant some bit of marginal capital investment, which is not very significant. However, we may have to, of course, have the right set of people at least to carry out the company-related work. As well as if we want to hire somebody to build the business, that quantum will take. Anyway, that will take about six months for us to crystallize it. Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one at this time. The next question is from the line of Tanmay Chaudhry from Mentor Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is on the equity AUM side. We have seen 7% cushion growth. I just want to know, was it majorly driven by M2M, or have we seen good traction in the net sales also? As per, can you also comment on the market share over the net sales? Yeah. I mean, just to explain earlier, Tanmay, on this. I think one of the net sales, largely, which I mentioned about, it's the net sales with adding to the overall AUM. Market share has remained somewhat flat. That's actually largely on account of one of the net sales is improving on certain segments. There are certain schemes which, of course, have not been favorable from the overall investors' point of view. Therefore, the market share remains somewhat flat. The overall number, if you have to look at it, given the large size, of course, the industry itself is too large. We still have to go further in terms of showing that in the reflection on the overall market share. Otherwise, the path is towards that. Okay. Got it. Sir, one more question on the liquid flow side, like income-oriented schemes. As I can see, around more than 60% of flows or AUM comes from the corporate in T30 cities, right? How do you see that corporate flows ongoing? Are we penetrating more corporates? Sure. The way we always approach the institutional business, given the institutional business predominantly is that I do a customer business. We currently handle roughly about 9,000 corporates across the country, covering the large eight cities. Given the fact that we have an established track record in the fixed income space, and also given the fact that our engagement at the ground level is extremely good, we'll come to the question of first aid solutions by the institutional team of about 55 people. That team is now taking additional responsibility to expand the market in the next 12 locations, taking the coverage to about T20 locations. That's one we already planned. We also planned where the team, each of the companies, about 9,000 companies, we target to take it to about 12,000 companies. Each company has also got the family offices and promoters driven from opportunities. They also hold additional responsibility to actually reach out to the family offices using that relation that they have built in order to sell some of the other product segmentations, including alternate solutions. That's the approach we have taken. That's the way we have also aligned the care with each of the teams to take full advantage of the presence that we have in the segment. These opportunities which will be provided to the investors will not only be in the fixed income solutions. We've also seen flows coming in our index fund that we launched last year, which is like old maturity kind of things, where we are seeing new attractions. We also launched equal taxation attention-oriented funds with a two-year, up to two-year period. We have aligned one of our funds in order to serve the needs of the customers. We're also educating these customers in the current low interest rates regime, which are the least, the minimal risk that they can take. However, they can get relatively tax advantage kind of return over a period of time, such as balance advantage fund. We are actually positioning them for them to consider investing. Last but not the least, from a family offices point of view, we are targeting AF and asset class. Could we write asset class within the fixed income space with interest rate being very low? As we go down the credit line, credit rating, the yields are better, and there are people who actually seek those investment opportunities. That's also something we are doing. The AF sector, we have seen recently, a flurry of fixed income opportunities in the AF fund is largely coming from the participants coming from this kind of family offices. Okay. Fair enough, sir. Just one last question. In the last PPT, the SIP contribution number is a bit different from the latest PPT. Is that restated, or can you just correct me over that? Sure. I'll just ask Prakash to highlight on this. Yash, earlier, we used to report SIP book in our presentation. That methodology we have changed to SIP contribution from this quarter onwards, which is in line with what MTI has also started disclosing on their website and which other players have also started reporting in the presentation. That is the only difference. Otherwise, from the flow side or on the AUM side, contribution, it remains the same. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Before we take the next question, we would like to remind the participants to press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Abhijit from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead. Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. The first question is on yields. If I recall correctly, I think equity yields are now down 1 basis point sequentially, you know, despite about 78% equity AUM growth. I just wanted to double-check if there have been any tweaks with respect to commissions, or this is just, you know, the normal slab momentum? Yeah, Abhijit, I'll ask Prakash to answer. No, Abhijit, this is largely on account of increase in the AUM. If you see, our AUM has increased to around INR 1,80,000 crore from last year, last quarter, which is INR 1,69,000 crore. There is no tweak in the brokerage structures. It is mainly because of the increase in the AUM. Okay. Got it. That's why if you look at the bottom line, the yields more or less remain the same, especially at the operating profit level. If you take, the yields have risen better than last quarter as well. Yes, sir. Secondly, in terms of net flows, I think, again, going back to last quarter, I think we had highlighted that you're seeing some traction in two, three funds, like frontline balanced multi-cap and maybe a couple of other thematic funds as well. Anything specific that you want to highlight with respect to the flow movement that we are seeing over the last few months as well? Sure. The way we said that the enterprise team is right from investment to the sales team and also with the distributing partners, given the fact that we have large funds in our bouquet, we want to identify seven or eight products in consultation with the investment team and position that as a product where we need to get flows in terms of with respect to the competition. That's why we have a large cap fund, flexi-cap fund, the multi-asset fund, balance advantage fund, and GenX fund. These are the five focus products that we kept. In addition to that, we also kept two other products on the thematics of the conglomerate fund and some of the long-term solution products that we have, which is the Balbaushev Fund Retirement Fund. This is the way we have positioned the product. The entire sales team is also encouraged in order to have their engagement. From a fund management point of view, in order to get higher mind recall, a uniform push is also being given from the fund management side also, right from Haresh to Haresh, the entire team talks only on these five, six products so that we are able to get a higher market share. This is what we are seeing in terms of traction, whether it is the flows, whether it is SIPs. That's why we are seeing actually increased flows. It will take some time for it to see a significant change in numbers, but at least the trend is positive. In addition to that, that's why it's doing well. Arbitrage fund is one category where the industry was also growing their side, but our growth was a little less. We also have taken some growth steps internally as to how do we manage these funds very effectively, efficiently so that we can meet the expectation of investors as well as the large allocator of money in the segment. Also have been addressed. Therefore, the holistic growth and those segments of the market where the flow is coming, at the same time, we can get our rightful mind share, our market share, rather. There's one segment where right now we are not positioned enough, which is the middle and small cap segment. We thought, let us focus on reviewing the performance on that fund with respect to the competition. When the time comes, we'll start pushing this fund. All right, sir. Super helpful. Just one last question on the industry side, sir. This recent consultation paper with regards to scheme classifications and a couple of other additional points regarding one additional scheme apart from the current one. Any broad thoughts that you can share from an industry perspective? Sure. This was, of course, it's come as a draft paper at this point of time. In fact, it was also discussed in the committee under one of the CIO committees and the operation committee, some of the draft proposals with respect to the one aligning of the schemes. Majority of the industry has accepted it. If I have frontline equity, which is a 20-year track record that we have, just with creating a brand as frontline equity as a name. Now that has become a history. Now we've made it large cap. The uniform has come across the industry. We used to call it Blue Chip. Now you know what a Blue Chip is, a large cap. That's something we all have got aligned and fully done with that. The second is the fund size has become larger. Whether you can launch one more fund, the discussion was there at the MT level as well. MT themselves wrote back to SEBI that then it will completely take away the purpose of classification. It can probably create more confusion amongst the people than how the portfolio will be constructed, how the expenses will be charged. It will go back to the old system of multiple schemes coming from the same category. This confusion will come. There is no, not even, I mean, majority of people are agreeing with that. Our service fails to let us put to the public opinion and by way of draft. Therefore, it has come. My own assumption is, given ultimately why the classification has come, not in one in the interest of first the customers to have better clarity in terms of what product we buy. A single product from each fund house. I can say that we are one of the old fund houses. We used to have two liquid funds in the past. Because of the size and various things that we used to do, today I don't have two liquid funds. It was then a concise decision, which was taken by SEBI. Why that should get reversed now will always remain a question mark. Having said this, I think SEBI is also looking at various thematic funds that are being launched. They do have an opinion that how many thematic funds we can create unless until you are able to create at least about 60% differentiation between the existing funds, the thematic funds. This also over a period of time would get curtailed. This needs to be seen as to how market in general people react. At this point of time, members of the industry, a majority of them, I would say 99% of them or 98%, 95% of them were especially on the same category, were not fully funded. Still, another draft report has come. All of us will respond to that. Got it, sir. This is super helpful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one at this time. The next question is from the line of Meghna Luthra from InCred Equities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thank you. A couple of questions. One, what is the yield on the ESIC mandate? Two, have we taken any cuts on the distribution commission in recent quarters, or do we plan to take some like our peers have done? What does the pipeline on the specialized investment fund look like? What question is there? Yes. Did you want? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry, sorry. Sorry. You You think you said. Okay. ESIC mandate, anyway, the government mandate, it only gives the headline number, no doubt, but doesn't give us much profit. We'll barely, of course, have some costs to declare, which I call it as an investment that we ought to make to serve the government of India. So we're happy to do that. With respect to the SAF, we do have a plan. We already taken approval from our Board to have a separate brand, which I can, of course, share, which is called Apex. Internally, we're already named, and we'll come with a press release on this very soon. At the same time, we have already identified a product opportunity that we can create in the SAF space, covering fixed income, covering credit, covering arbitrage plus equity, as well as long short. While we have internal capability to manage most of the product innovations, we don't have internal capability to manage the large, sorry, what do you call, long short kind of fund, absolution kind of fund. We are in the process of finalizing, rather than looking for people, and the process of finalizing very soon, but I think it should come on board. The second question was on the. On the distributor commission. On the distributor commission. In fact, Meghna, we have now taken that call, given the fact that, one, as a fund house, we have the longer-term vision of building scale further, which essentially means as long as I'm able to maintain the current margin and the growth aspiration, then we must also have a balanced approach with respect to the revenue that we can get, as well as the distribution commission that we can pay to build our side. Therefore, we aren't taking that call. While we do have room, I can't say we don't have room. At the same time, we don't want to take that call at this point of time, given the need of the business to grow the business to the next level of growth and build scale. Okay, thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining. With this, we conclude our Q&A calls. Thanks for all your support. Thank you. On behalf of Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.