Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Vandana, the moderator for this conference. Welcome to the Indus Towers Limited third quarter ending December 31st, 2022 earnings call. For the duration of the presentation, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode. After the presentation, the question and answer session will be conducted for all the participants on this call. In case of a natural disaster, the conference call will be communicated for further announcement. Present with us on the call today are the Chairman and Independent Director of Indus Towers, Mr. N. Kumar, along with the senior executive team of Indus Towers, Mr. Prachur Shah, MD and CPO, Mr. Vikas Poddar, CFO, Mr. Tejinder Kalra, COO, and Mr. Dheeraj Agarwal, Head Investor Relations. Before I hand over the call, I must remind you that the overview and discussions today may include certain forward-looking statements that must be viewed in conjunction with the risk that we face. I now hand over the call to our first speaker of the day, Mr. N. Kumar. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Kumar. Thank you, Vandana. Good afternoon, everyone. A warm welcome to all of you today afternoon. Thank you for joining us on the earnings call of Indus Towers for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. As you all may be aware, Mr. Prachur Shah has joined Indus Towers as Managing Director and Chief Executive with effect from third January this year. He brings with him vast experience of over 22 years spread across business domains, including operations, strategic planning, oil and gas management, among various other strengths he has. He is also known for building a culture that is value-driven and encourages innovation while maintaining the highest levels of safety, sustainability, and governance. In his last role, he served as the CEO for the oil and gas vertical of Vedanta, and I have great pleasure in welcoming him to the Indus family and wish him all the success in the future. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank both Tejinder Kalra and Vikas Poddar for leading the company commendably during the period before Prachur Shah joined us from September. I'd now like to hand over the call to Prachur to take you through the key highlights of our quarter Q3 FY 2023 and brief you on all question and answers. Over to you, Prachur. Thank you, Mr. Kumar. A very warm welcome to all the participants on the call. Joining me today are my colleagues, Mr. Vikas Poddar, CFO, Mr. Tejinder Kalra, COO, and Mr. Dheeraj Agarwal, Head Investor Relations. I would like to express my delight at having joined Indus Towers, the largest passive infrastructure company in India and one of the largest globally. I believe this is an exciting time to be in the telecom space in India, marching towards Digital Mission and the ongoing transition to 5G being a key enabler of this journey. Along with my leadership team, I strive to realize Indus Towers' mission of enabling connectivity in every part of India. Before I begin our agenda today, I would like to take a moment to recognize the contribution of our field force and its relentless efforts towards our vision of enabling pan-India connectivity. During this quarter, we installed six new mobile towers along the Kedarnath trek in Uttarakhand, which is one of the most popular religious treasures in India. These towers enable communication from Gaurikund to Kedarnath temple at an altitude of 12,000 ft. The connectivity is helping in transforming lives of locals, connecting pilgrims with their families, and also making it possible to summon help during an emergency. We will continue with these feats of installing towers in remote and difficult terrains to enable digital inclusion. Moving on the key themes I would like to discuss today. On the industry front, the government continues to take measures to create the swift deployment of telecom infrastructure across the country. To this end, it is working with cross-sectors like NHAI, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Indian Railways to align their Right of Way policy with central notified policy for faster declaration of land building available with them. Indian Railways have amended their policy and allowed IP-1 infrastructure players to deploy telecom infrastructure on their land trust property. Given the scale of railways and other institutional infrastructure, such actions will benefit in rapid rollout of telecom infrastructure, especially for 5G. Talking about 5G, we are pleased to see that the 5G rollouts are in full swing as operators are working towards their plan for a pan-India 5G rollout in the next 12 - 15 months. In less than four months of launch of 5G services, more than 50,000 5G base transceiver stations, i.e., BTS, have been deployed across the country, with the top two operators together putting up more than 5,000 BTS per week in current month. This number should increase as the operators accelerate their 5G rollout across the country. As a leading passive infrastructure player in the country, we are committed to facilitate the swift rollout of 5G services. We are seeing increased demand in the form of additional loading of 5G equipment on our existing sites. We remain well-placed to cater to this demand and maximize the opportunity arising out of it. As the network matures with greater 5G adoption, we expect that there will be a need for increased capacity as well, driving the demand for new sites. With regards to 5G adoption in India, we can draw parallels from the global 5G adoption story, which continues to play out strongly, as confirmed by statistics mentioned in both the Ericsson Mobility Report and the Deloitte CII report. As per Ericsson, global 5G subscriptions grew by 110 million in the September quarter to 870 million and are expected to reach 5 billion by the end of 2028, accounting for 55% of all mobile subscriptions. Comparatively, global 4G subscriptions increased only by 41 million, with 5G expected to reach 1 billion subscriptions two years sooner than 4G. The number of commercial 5G service providers also increased from 218 in June 2022 to 228 in September 2022. As per Ericsson Mobility Report, 5G subscriptions in India are expected to reach 500 million mark by 2027, with a penetration of about 40%. The formidable 5G adoption journey will further drive the already strong data consumption by the sizable Indian customer base. The total data consumed across the top three operators combined grew by 19% year-on-year in the September quarter. The average data consumed per user per month across the top three operators stood at more than 20 GB for the quarter, registering a year-on-year growth of over 18%. Complementing this growth is the estimate from Deloitte CII report that India is set to lead the smartphone industry with 1 billion devices by 2026. The report from both Ericsson and Nokia have also indicated how India's data usage is among the highest in the world currently, and the average data consumption per user per month is expected to increase to around 40-50 GB in the next five years. The rapidly progressing migration to 4G and 5G, supplemented by strong data consumption, should continue to fuel the demand for passive telecom infrastructure, both in the form of loading on existing sites and installing new sites, and we remain well-positioned to address this demand. Moving on to our operational performance. We witnessed steady growth in addition of macro and leaner towers. During the quarter, we had net additions of 1,466 macro towers and 1,307 corresponding co-locations. Our gross co-location addition was healthy at 2,130. However, higher churn at 823 resulted in lower net additions. Our total towers and co-locations at the end of Q3 were at 189,392 and 339,435 respectively, each growing by 2.5% and 1.3% on year-on-year basis. Our tenancy ratio dipped marginally to 1.79 from 1.8, but continues to be amongst the best in the industry. We continue to see good demand for our leaner tower portfolio, adding 1,408 co-locations in Q3 after reporting an addition of 1,535 co-locations in Q2. Including leaner towers, our net co-location addition stood at 2,715 for the quarter. We believe that the need for capacity expansion and new sites will be primarily fulfilled through leaner structures. As a, as a result going forward, we are expecting a significant growth in the share of our leaner structure portfolio in our overall business. I would now like to touch upon ESG aspect, which is a key component of our long-term business strategy as a responsible organization. We have started taking necessary actions for achievement of our set targets across environmental, social, and governance dimensions. I'm happy to report that we are making good progress on this journey. To name a few focus areas, we are constantly reducing our diesel consumption despite increase in energy demand in sites. We are bringing a full control over handling and disposal of our waste. Workforce diversity and safety remain key focus areas, and new initiatives are being taken to improve them further. A robust business continuity plan is in place to ensure zero or minimal disruption to network with fastest recovery during disasters. We are now extending it to all the critical areas across the organization. We are quite hopeful of our all around efforts giving desired results in our ESG journey, and we will start reporting on the same in the coming quarters. I would now request Vikas to take you through our financial performance for the quarter ended December 31, 2022. I look forward to your questions. Over to you, Vikas. Thank you. Thank you, Prachur Shah. I'm pleased to share with you all the financial results of the third quarter ended 31st December, 2022. Before moving to the financial performance, I would like to present our operational performance. The total tower and co-location count was 189,392 and 339,435 respectively, each growing at 2.5% and 1.3% year-on-year basis, and 0.8% and 0.4% on quarter-on-quarter basis. This was supplemented by an addition of 1,408 co-locations in our lean tower portfolio, taking our lean co-location base to 5,683. Now coming to the financial performance. Our reported revenues declined by 2.3% year-on-year to INR 67.7 billion, of which the core revenue from rentals was down by 5% year-on-year to INR 41.7 billion. Year-on-year growth numbers were impacted by a combination of tapering of existing revenues, discount on co-location revenue, optimization of site configuration by our customers, and change in revenue recognition pertaining to revenue equalization assets. Normalized for these factors, our gross revenue and core revenue grew by 2.6% and 2.8% respectively year-on-year. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, our reported gross revenue and core revenues from rentals were down by 15.1% and 12.7% respectively. The decline was largely due to the high base effect of previous quarter due to deferred revenue recognition of past settlements. Adjusted for this, gross revenue was down 0.4% and core revenue was up 0.2% respectively quarter-on-quarter. Our reported EBITDA declined 68% year-on-year and 57.8% quarter-on-quarter to INR 11.9 billion. EBITDA margin was down 35.9 percentage points year-on-year and 17.8 percentage points quarter-on-quarter to 17.5%. The decline in EBITDA was mainly due to a provision for doubtful debt of INR 22.7 billion. The provision for doubtful debt is higher as the customer has indicated challenge in complying with the higher payment plan in future till the fundraising materializes. Accordingly, the company has adopted stringent ECL computation, resulting in additional allowance for doubtful debts during the quarter. Normalized for these factors, EBITDA grew by 3.5% year-on-year, and 1.5% quarter-on-quarter. Our reported energy margins were at -1.2% in Q3 FY23, compared to +14.6% in Q2 FY 2022. Adjusted for one-off in the previous quarter, energy margins were at -1.2% in Q3, compared to -3.5% in the previous quarter. Our constant endeavor to drive operational efficiency in our energy portfolio, coupled with seasonal benefits, have aided the sequential energy margin improvement. We have reported a loss of INR 7.1 billion for Q3 FY 2023, impacted by the substantial provision for doubtful debts and an exceptional item relating to impairment of revenue equalization assets. As per Ind AS 116 accounting, revenues recognized based on straight lining of rentals over the contract period and the corresponding revenue equalization asset is created. The revenue equalization asset of INR 4.9 billion for the aforementioned major customer was impaired during Q3 FY 2023. In addition to the non-recognition of INR 0.7 billion pertaining to revenue equalization for Q3 FY 2023. Normalized for these items, our profit after tax grew by 4.6% year-on-year and by 3.3% on quarter-on-quarter basis. Our cash flow from operating activities improved from INR 11.2 billion in Q2 FY 2023 to INR 22.7 billion in Q3 FY 2023. Our free cash flow for the quarter was at INR 6.2 billion. Our reported pre-tax return on capital employed and post-tax return on equity for the past 12 months were at 12.5% and 12.3% respectively, impacted by the provision for doubtful debts and impairment of revenue equalization assets. Moving on, I would like to apprise you of the receivable situation. Our receivables decreased by INR 14.4 billion during the quarter to INR 50.6 billion. Adjusted for the provision for doubtful debts, our receivables increased by about rupee INR 8.3 billion. The customer paid a part of the billed amount till December as per the agreement. However, with no fundraising in sight, it is likely that the customer will face challenge in complying with the higher payment plan as committed. Accordingly, we have taken measures to de-risk the balance sheet. We continue to watch the development at the customer's end pertaining to the fundraise plan, which is critical for clearing its old dues with us. In summary, we had a steady quarter from an operational performance standpoint. Our financial performance is reflective of the collected collection challenges we faced from one of our major customers. However, the rapid rollout of 5G services across the nation provides a growth runway to the telecom space, and we remain optimistic about it. I would now request the moderator to open the floor for question and answers. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer interactive session for all the participants who are connected to the audio conference service from Airtel. Due to time constraints, we will request if you could limit the number of questions to two to enable more participation. Management will take only two questions per participant to ensure maximum participation. Participants who wish to ask questions may please press star one on their touchtone enabled telephone keypad. On pressing star one, participants will get a chance to present their question on a first in line basis. To ask a question, participant may please press star one now. Next question comes from Mr. Sanjay Jain from ICICI Securities, Mumbai. Mr. Jain, you may ask your question now. Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got couple of them. First on the 5G loading opportunity. I just wanted to understand purely from the ability to load the 5G equipment on the existing towers. Do we have enough provision for an operator to come and load 5G, and if possible, and how many bands can they roll out simultaneously? Or do you think there will be a situation where the operator has to shift to a fresh tenancy for loading this 5G site? How is the situation on the space availability of the tower purely from the 5G rollout perspective? That's number one. Follow from the 5G. In opening remarks, we did mention that weekly run rate of 5G site addition is 5,000 per week. We have already done 50,000 of it. At a weekly run rate of 5,000, by next 12 months we will be rolling out close to 250,000 BTS, which is more than the tower. When we say BTS, what does it mean, or at this period you anticipate a complete 5G loading on the existing towers? How should we see these rollout plans and what are you seeing on the rollout side by the operators? These are my such initial two questions. Thanks for the question, Sanjay. First to answer on, you know, whether do we have enough capacity, space, and the loading capacity on the existing towers. The answer is most of the towers, yes. So far, whatever rollouts we have done, we have not faced any challenge where we have to refuse loading of 5G on any of the existing towers. What typically goes on the tower is the radio and some antenna in some cases, especially in the areas where, in one of the operators case, for example, they have 700 spectrum for 5G being rolled out. Some sites they have to either put up antennas, otherwise they may have multiply band antennas and therefore no antennas required there as well. Limitation in terms of space and capacity on the towers is not an issue. Today, 5G is allowed only in 700 MHz and 3.3.5 GHz band. Should the, you know, operators need to reform the existing frequencies into 5G, those radios are already up on the towers, so they are not going to come in as additional loading on the towers, but it's just a frequency switch from, let's say, 4G to 5G or 2G to 4G or whatever. Limitation none when it comes to the loading capacity on the towers. I think we are good with that. I don't think the operator would need to go to an additional site for rolling out their 5G requirement there. Second, your second question was on the 5G BTSs and, you know, 5,000 run rate and the total number of towers they have and so on. In case of one of the operators who's rolling a standalone 5G network, because they are rolling out in 703.5 GHz. There are 2 radios per frequency. Sorry, 1 radio per frequency and therefore 2 for that operator on a particular site. The other operator is only rolling out in the 3.5, so therefore 1 radio. The BTS which we refer to is the frequency-specific radio on a site. If there are 2 frequencies of 1 operator and 1 of another operator on the same site, then there are 3 BTSs going on the same site. Therefore the count which you're calculating in terms of number of towers and so on, I think that's the way to look at it. No, fair enough. Now I got a fair idea. Second, on the opportunity to further expand the tower footprint, considering that initially 5G will largely come in loading, and considering that one operator is using 1,800 as an uplink and other operator 700 as an uplink, which puts me to a thought that we may not see a tower upside from the 5G rollout. It can largely get restricted from a tower company perspective, just being a loading opportunity from the 5G. Just wanted to get your thought around the opportunities is in the 5G. Will it be limited as a loading for us as a tower company? That's number 1. Number two, considering that the capacity creation is happening on the 5G, is it fair to understand that the 4G rollout may see a material slowdown, and hence, a lot of tenancy slowdown we saw in this quarter is a resultant of that? Okay. Let me answer both the questions one by one. One, when we are talking about whether 5G is going to be primarily a loading opportunity or are there going to be new sites that are going to be required for 5G. Initially, when the operators are doing the 5G coverage on their existing network, it is just largely going to be a covering or a loading kind of an opportunity for the tower co. As the data and the capacity utilization is going to build up on the 5G layer, operators will certainly need additional sites to fill up the capacity gaps and the coverage gaps that are going to come up as a result of the data utilization that is going to build up in the 5G layer. That certainly may be depending upon how quickly they are going to do the 5G rollout in the country or how fast the data capacity builds up in the network could be anywhere between 1-2 years before new sites, standalone sites are required for 5G. When it comes to 4G, where the networks are being rolled out because we are currently still not seeing 5G as a, you know, blanket coverage layer. You will need a layer of 4G for giving the continuity of the data coverage, you know, across the geography. We don't think 4G is going to slow down. We are actually seeing the opposite. 4G equal amount of loading going up on the existing sites to take care of the data needs and then 5G is being built up parallelly. We don't see 5G, 4G slowing down. In fact, a lot of rural coverage if the operators are going to be approaching are currently initially gonna be happening on the 4G space as well. Both are going on parallelly at the moment. A last set of questions largely to Vikas. One purely on the accounting side, the straight line method, what we have discontinued and which has resulted in RTP coming down. Is it only respective to this one operator or as a policy we have done it for all the operator? That's number 1. Number 2, on the CapEx this quarter, we have seen an acceleration to INR 1,000 crore. It is just to reinforce the 5G loading and to augment the batteries and the DC side capacity. That's reason why the CapEx has gone up. Yeah, these are my last questions. Thanks. Yeah. Sure, Sandeep. I think, as far as the accounting treatment for the revenue equalization asset is concerned, that's specific to the operator because of the uncertainty that we are facing. The other operators continue to basically be treated under the Ind AS 116 accounting. On the CapEx side, broadly, I think there are two drivers that we had in quarter four. One of them is of course what you mentioned, you know, the 5G related augmentation in our power infrastructure and so on. The second driver is also the fact that we are basically seeing operational momentum in terms of new rollouts and new builds. They are pretty much work in progress, and we are sort of investing in that area. Fair enough, Vikas. Thanks for all the questions and best of luck for the coming quarters. Thank you very much, Mr. Jain. The next question comes from Mr. Arun Prasad from Spark Capital, Chennai. Mr. Prasad, you may ask your question now. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on the air receivable issue. I think, since this receivable issue started in the early quarter of the last year, we kind of said that post December 2022, operator has agreed to increase this payment payout. Now it seems like, you know, all the hopes are based on the their ability to raise the funds. My question is, as if they are not able to raise the funds, what are the options we have at our disposal to collect the regular invoice amount plus the pending amount? That is my question number one. Thanks for the question. I think the situation is a little bit dynamic, we are working with them to understand the current situation and our actions will be based on what we receive. I think we have done, as Vikas mentioned, we have done a mid-stream of the balance sheet in the interest of the company we share. Okay. We continue to look at the situation on how the payments come, we make all the payments. Thank you. All right. I was asking as per your MSA and under the contractual terms, what are the options you have at your hand to collect in case they continue to prolong this delay? I think, Arun, as Prachur also mentioned, I think, we are working closely. We are fully engaged with the customer. There are options that we are evaluating. We will certainly consult and take the guidance of our board eventually. All those things are basically currently being evaluated. It's very difficult to really, because it's a dynamic situation, it's changing every week, every month. It's very difficult to really talk about any specific action right now. Certainly I can assure you that there is a lot of focus from the senior management, as well as the board members to get to a solution on this one. Okay. Our second question is on the tower addition in the last one year. It seems that some of the anchor tenants added more than 25,000-30,000 towers in, say, calendar year 2022. Of that we have just got around close to 4,000 - 5, 4,500 towers. Basically a market share of less than 50%, in the previous year it was almost close to 43%-50%. How should we look at this from the market share perspective? Is it somewhere related to our inability to invest because of the ongoing receivable issue or it is generally that we have been losing market share with the market? I mean, generally, you know, there is a question can be answered in two parts. I think, when you look at the market share, you know, when it comes to macro sites, I think we are currently doing about 50% of the new business. We maybe started late in the game is probably the limit hours, which means we are starting to catch up now, we believe we will be completing equally very soon. I think that's where I would like to speak. Anything else you would like to add? I think the volume wise is, I don't know, as Prachur Shah rightly said, scale up of the micro towers is happening. Obviously, in some cases, when if the operator has a sharing opportunity on a nearby tower, that always becomes their first preference, because of the speed to market sometimes, and obviously from a cost perspective, which additional CapEx is avoided. Nevertheless, we are now scaling up the numbers and also trying to see how we can reduce the TAT for building up the sites as well and feed the demand towards the operator. That scale-up is currently ongoing. Okay. Going forward, can we assume similar kind of a CDC additions, given if the rent payment, does much more than or continues at the current pace? Our run rate in the coming quarters should increase given the requirement that we see from the operators and the way they are expanding the network. Thank you. As a follow-up to the CapEx question, there is like the current CapEx will continue to be higher than the to be there in the coming four quarters I assume. Basis of around INR 200- INR 300 crore on a quarterly basis. That means annually there is a INR 1,000 crore increase in the CapEx. Yeah. Arun, unfortunately, we cannot give you any forward-looking view or outlook here. Pretty much, like I explained the quarter 3, CapEx spend higher is largely driven by the 5G augmentation and basically the momentum, the increase in the momentum that we are seeing in our rollout. I think pretty much, you know, this sort of stable business as usual investment is clearly that we see going forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Prasad. Participants who wish to ask questions may please press star one on their touchtone enabled telephone keypad. The next question comes from Mr. Nikhil Shah from Reliance Securities Mumbai. Mr. Shah, you may ask your question now. Thank you for giving the opportunity. First question is on this exceptional item of INR 4.9 billion. Can you give some details on this? Nikhil, as per the Indian Accounting Standard 116, which is on the lease accounting, basically the long-term revenue contracts have to be recognized on a straight line basis over the contraction period, and accordingly, there is a revenue equalization asset that gets created. In the case of this particular customer, because there is a challenge that is clearly visible to us, it is very uncertain that those long-term contractual revenues will be collected. There's that element of uncertainty because of which we have impaired that revenue equalization asset pertaining to this customer, and that amounts to INR 4.9 billion on our balance sheet, which we have impaired. That's the exceptional item that we've disclosed in this quarter. Any visibility over near term in terms of similar amount or similar item will get repeated in coming quarters or it is almost done? Specific to this customer, we have impaired the entire revenue equalization asset. Along with that, we have also stopped recognizing the revenue equalization related revenue in this quarter, which is the INR 0.7 billion I spoke about. To that extent, obviously, we will follow a very consistent practice going forward. Okay. The second question is on provisioning INR 22.22 billion plus provision. Do you see now it is more or less done and the concern could be much lower in coming quarter or still there is uncertainty on that side? That's a bit forward looking, Nikhil. I would only say that, you know, we have basically de-risked our balance sheet to a large extent, recognizing the uncertainty as far as the collections are concerned. Clearly the higher payment plan that I was talking about the previous quarter sort of is dependent on the funding which has not materialized yet. There is a higher uncertainty that we are facing. Accordingly, we have de-risked the balance sheet by providing the INR 23 billion roughly on account of the customer. Which takes care of a large sort of outstanding sitting on our balance sheet. Going forward, there might be more provisions, but it's difficult to quantify at this stage because like what you said, it's a dynamic situation. A lot will depend on how the payments are received, how the collections happen going forward. We will see how it goes. In terms of revenue breakup, can you give approximate numbers of this customer contribution currently having? Mr. Nikhil, I mean, we really don't give customer-wide information because of the confidentiality that we have with the customer. Unfortunately, I can't help you with that. Just a last question on this earlier discussion that you are indicating that 4G is still ramping up despite 5G is already launched. We also indicated in one of the reports that by 2027, 40% will be the 5G penetration. Whatever could be the penetration, maybe 20%, 30%, 40%. By what level of penetration of 5G do you think that 4G will then slow down or will fall worse? Mr. Nikhil, I think, this question operators can obviously ask, answer better. What we have seen from the scale of rollout the operators are doing, they are almost trying to get to, let's say, more than 90% of the sites with 4G coverage. That means the all existing sites. Some we are also seeing a trend of fresh standalone 4G sites being set up as well. Because of the handset penetration, probably, I don't think 4G is slowing down at the moment, and 5G penetration of handsets, all of us know where it is at this moment. We clearly don't see 4G stopping. Depending upon the geographic coverage and what strategy the operators would like to take on rolling out 5G and, you know, which cities and rural, how they want to handle it. Currently, the visibility which we see is still 4G expanding for some more time before we can say, you know, 5G is the only technology growing. We see both happening for now. Okay. Thank you, and all the best. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Shah. The next question comes from Mr. Kunal Vora from BNP Paribas, Mumbai. Mr. Vora, you may ask your question now. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. My first question is on the receivables. Is it fair to assume that most of the old receivables are now provided and the receivables which you have now are mostly for the current quarter? This quarter, the receivables increase there would be within extreme provisions. Going forward, is there a trend which you can look at? What's the payment understanding you have now from the customers who we are not receiving payments? Yeah. Hi, Kunal. I think a substantial part has been de-list with this provision that we have created in this quarter. As far as the payment understanding is concerned, like we said earlier, I think the discussions are ongoing. We haven't received any sort of new payment plan or a revised payment plan. Pretty much, we are still hoping for the current payment plan to sort of guide us as far as the future is concerned. We are in discussions, if there is any update, eventually we will let you know. Right now, there is no revised payment plan that we have. Just to understand, like from October to December, whatever billing you've done, what proportion of that you have collected? I think, I would say basically a significant part was collected, but certainly it was less than 100%. Basically, I really, because these are, these percentages do vary, so I really don't want to, take a percentage here. Rest assured that we are collecting a substantial part, but there is still a part that remains uncollected, which is why our receivables are going up. We are working on this. Sure, sure. My second question is on the advantages and disadvantages of linear towers. Would you consider shutting some of the macro towers and replacing them with linear towers? Are there any CapEx advantages? If you can talk about the CapEx, OpEx economics for the linear towers. Incrementally, should we expect mostly linear towers getting constructed? See, linear towers, both from a CapEx spend perspective, as well as, from an OpEx perspective for the operator, are definitely economical. Depending upon, the rural or the urban requirement, because urban, if densification is to happen, there are very few possibilities of setting up these macro big towers. A lot of, rural and lean sites are now getting into the rural densification, you know, of the network. When it comes to rural coverage, still, there are certainly ground-based sites that need to be set up, but those structures are also becoming linear and therefore CapEx-wise economical and OpEx-wise, economical as well. Coming to, you know, whether we will be shutting down any of the towers, I don't see that happening unless otherwise, you know, in some cases where because of the operator network orientation reasons, they choose to exit any site. You know, if a tower is becoming, weakened, we will obviously in that case, hold up the tower and kind of exit there. Other than that, we don't see anything like that, coming to us from the operators for now. They want to close down the bigger towers and go to the smaller ones. The new are being certainly set up as, the linear structures to a large extent. Sure. For the linear towers, what's your return expectations? Assuming that there is a single tenant, what kind of return capital would you expect from these towers? Typically, I think we have shared this in the past also, Kunal. I think for linear towers, our because they are CapEx light, OpEx light so structure, our return profile is better than the macro towers at a single tenancy level. Typically we get somewhere, let's say high single-digit to a low double-digit sort of a return profile from the linear towers. Again, it depends on geography, on the circle, various other factors. Broadly, high single digits to low double digits. I have one last question, which is even as we saw the growth CapEx increase, we didn't see any increase in rental revenues. Would that happen with a lag? Yeah, certainly. I mean, the growth CapEx that you see is basically, like I said, a lot of it could be work in progress as well. Certainly the revenue will happen with a lag. Like I said, I mean in terms of our, when I explained the sequential growth and the year-on-year growth, there are other factors also because of which, you don't see that in the numbers yet. Okay. That's informative. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Vora. The next question comes from Mr. Siddharth Gupta from Voyager Capital, Mumbai. Mr. Gupta, you may ask your question now. Hey, good afternoon, sir. I must express my disappointment at evasive answers with regard to the operator that you're not naming. I mean, it's not obvious that the board is cognizant of the fact and will be engaging with the company. My question is twofold. Firstly, do we again fix sort of payment as you suffered, like we're negotiating on a payment plan. Do we have any security in terms of the operator in terms of one of their foreign promoters stake in our existing companies pledged with us? If yes, does the board have a contingency plan as to when would this be encashed against their particular payments? This is clearly hurting the company on a very deep level. The security being shared with our own company, the market cap of which is eroding rapidly, it is a major cause of concern for all investors. If you can take the management to shed some light on that'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, sure, Siddharth. I fully acknowledge the concerns that you've raised. I think, clearly, like we said earlier, all of us are working on this particular issue. It's a serious issue, we realize. As far as the payment plan and the security is concerned, if you look at the history, we were certainly secured to a large extent, through the branding pledge from the promoters. That was sort of monetized through a deal back in the quarter four of last fiscal. We did receive the proceeds of that in the month of March and subsequently some more in the month of May and June. We did manage to control our receivables with the security that we had. Subsequent to that, we do hold some secondary pledge on some more shareholding of one of the promoters. Because that's a secondary pledge, we don't think there is much value left in it, based on the market share price today, et cetera. Pretty much the trade receivables that we have with the customer are largely unsecured at this point of time. As I said earlier, we are working towards a resolution, but there's no sort of revised payment plan or an update on the payment plan yet. Okay. Does the board have a sensitive mindset as to when, by when do we call it quits and we drag the company to the IBC or till when do we negotiate with the company within a timeline that even if it's a broader one that could be presented to the investor? Yeah. Siddharth, I think to be honest, I think at this time, and currently we are discussing with the board as well. I think we have, we are engaging with the customer. As I said, because of lawful reasoning, as the, as we move forward and depending on the payments that we get, right, we will enact our plan and we'll share with you. As of now, our intention is to keep working with the customer to resolve this matter. Right. And we are also fully cognizant of what needs to be done. And so working on that. I just want to add, Siddharth, that till December, the payment plan basically envisaged the part payment of the dues and that plan has been met. January is pretty much the first month, wherein a higher payment plan needs to materialize, and we are watching that situation very closely. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Mr. Gupta. The next question comes from Mr. Sachin Salgaonkar from BofA, Mumbai. Mr. Salgaonkar, you may ask your question now. Hi, thank you for the opportunity. A couple of questions. I think in your press release you guys indicated that there are challenges, you know, with one of that operator to complying with your higher payment plan in the future. The question out here is, you know, if one operator can't pay higher payments, then what incentive do other operators have to comply to that higher payment? Anyways, you guys are not taking any significant action against that operator, right? You know, you're not shutting down their towers. You guys have no secured amounts from that. You know, I mean, at some level, other customers of yours are forced to pay slightly higher, which, you know, the, you know, one of the operators is not doing. How do you resolve this issue between, you know, all three operators? You're raising a very interesting point, Sachin. I think, first of all, I think we need to understand that, as per the MSA, if there is any delay in the payment, the MSA provides for the interest to be charged for the delayed payment. It's a very important point because the customer who is delaying payment is basically charged interest. If the other customers adopt a similar way to delay payment, then there will be an interest cost involved. That is one factor. The second important factor for us to realize is it's not the same situation with all customers. You know, I mean, our customers are at different stages. You know, we have one customer with a very difficult financial situation, very stressed financial situation, as we all know, whereas the other two customers are, you know, actually healthy. I don't think simply because one of the customer has less ability to pay should really put a question on the ability of the other two customers. Currently, we are not seeing that situation. I hope we sort of continue to see cooperation from other customers. Okay. What is the probability that you guys might waive off that interest payment from one of these customer who is not paying? Because, you know, we are not able to collect, you know, the current money, and we are also expecting interest to be collected, right? Yeah. We have collected interest from the customers. It's not that we are giving off. That's reflected in our finance income in this quarter. We did manage to collect interest on the delayed payments. You know, one of the statements what you guys have also mentioned in your press release is that ability as a going concern of this entity. If that is the scenario, how should we look at that? We have relied on the auditor statement, basically the entity is seen as a going concern, of course, with some dependencies on their lenders and other parties. I think we sort of maintain that position. If there's any change in that position, accordingly we will do the needful. Okay. When could we get an update? For last more than one year, you know, obviously you guys are engaging with the customer. Your board is cognizant about it. I do acknowledge it's an evolving situation. How far are we away from, you know, getting some kind of a resolution, assuming there is no fundraising happening at that operator? I think if you look at it, that way, I think we have been progressing on this. It's not that we haven't made progress. At different stages, in different quarters, we have made progress and we have updated. Like I said, till about March quarter and the June quarter, we had the security and we were monetizing that security and managing the receivable. Thereafter, we did engage with the customer and negotiate a payment plan. We were sort of working towards that plan, obviously subject to the fundraising which has not materialized. There are discussions ongoing, and we are keeping the investors updated on that. If there's any further update, we'll certainly let you know. I'm hearing you guys are making progress, but sometimes it looks like one step forward, two steps backward, right? You know, again, we are seeing an additional allowance of doubtful debt which is being taken again. You know, just wanted to understand, you know, when we come at a point where we could see a sort of a decent amount of resolution. The related question is, do you even think about taking a call of shutting down certain towers or sites, or that is not even something which is under consideration? Sachin, if I may say, I think, I think the question that you have asked is a very pertinent question. I think that the question on what actions we take on operations, what action we take on connection fees is dependent few other things. As Vikas mentioned, there was a payment plan agreed with that customer for the quarter ending December, which they did submit, and there was a higher plan that was to be met in January. We are working very closely to monitor that situation. Depending on how those payment plan gets activated, we will take the appropriate actions. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Salgaonkar. The next question comes from Mr. Kishore Iyer from Cholamandalam NS, Chennai. Mr. Iyer, you may ask your question now. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. I mean, most of my questions have been answered. Thanks. Hello? Hello? The next question comes from Mr. Giriraj Daga from KMVKS Family Trust, Mumbai. Mr. Daga, you may ask your question now. Yeah. Hello sir. Again, the same point on the receivable side of it. Just to get some broad numbers right, as per my understanding, the receivable total outstanding, including the gross up, will be closer to INR 80 billion-INR 85 billion. The numbers look scary because that is the last year PBT also. When I look at last year FY 2022 PBT, that was INR 85 billion. The point is that will we continue to make the new receivables which will look outstanding because that's the. Everybody is asking the same question. I think how far will you continue to go? In terms of priority ranking, you understand you have already given that in terms of unsecured receivables will not be in the priority list also. If board is aware about that, because surely when you look it like this, it looks like the compromise, we are compromising the share of the minority interest shareholder. That way, what board is taking any action or will you continue making new receivables? Giriraj, I think we'll be belaboring this point a bit. Clearly, first of all, the receivables figure that you're computing on a gross basis, I presume that is all customers. Yes, we have a receivables issue. I can only assure you that we are not compromising. We are working in the best interest of the shareholders. There are various options, and we are basically evaluating those options to ensure that, you know, we don't do something which will have a long-term erosion. The board is fully involved, the senior management is fully involved. Rest assured that we will take the right action. Simply, you know, taking an operating action and as you are envisaging, you know, you're reducing services or shutting down services, well, there are those options, but that may not be in the best interest. We are evaluating, and we will take the right action when the time comes. You ask any kind of cut-off date? No. To be honest, it all depends on how the payment plan pans out. I think this is a discussion we'll keep you updated. I mean, it all depends on how the payment plans are and the point of visibility we get. I think we'll get to that and take the action. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Daga. Due to time constraints, I would like to hand over the call proceedings to Mr. Prachur Shah for the final remarks. Prachur Shah. I think, despite the situation that we've all discussed just now, I think we remain confident on strong business fundamentals, both on the 5G side and the growth that we are seeing on the towers. The 5G journey that the industry has embarked upon makes this a very exciting phase, as I outlined in the beginning of my commentary. We believe there are strong catalysts in the telecoms space that will help the industry continue to be on the growth trajectory. I thank you all for joining the call, and have a good day. Bye. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for connecting to AURE Conference Service from Airtel, and have a pleasant evening. Thank you.