Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the 4Q FY22 earnings conference call of Metropolis Healthcare Limited, hosted by InCred Equities. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions and expectations of the company as on date of this call. The statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the 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 Mr. Rahul Agrawal from InCred Equities. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Hi, good morning. InCred Equities welcomes everybody to this call today to discuss the fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2022 results of Metropolis Healthcare Limited. We thank the company and the investor relations team for this opportunity to interact over the call. We have the senior management team of Metropolis for this discussion, represented by Ms. Ameera Shah, the Managing Director, Mr. Vijender Singh, the CEO, and Mr. Rakesh Agarwal, the CFO of the company, along with the SGA investor relations team. I'll hand over the call to Ameera now for initial performance highlights, and then we'll get into the Q&A session. Over to you, Ameera. Hi, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Q4 and FY 2022 earnings call. I hope you and everyone around you is safe and healthy. I'm joined today by Vijender, our CEO, Rakesh, CFO, and SGA IR advisors. The presentation and press release has been issued to the exchanges and uploaded on our site. I hope everyone's had the opportunity to go through the same. I'm very pleased to share that our company recorded its highest ever revenue, EBITDA and PAT during FY 2022. Revenue increased by 23% year-on-year to INR 1,228 crores. EBITDA before CSR and ESOP increased by 20% year-on-year to INR 362 crores. PAT increased by 17% year-on-year to INR 215 crores. FY 2022 has truly been a transformational year for the industry. While there has been a lot of action and consolidation, we have witnessed landmark M&A deals that clearly indicate the leaders' confidence in the long-term prospects. This is further strongly evidenced by the fact that new players have emerged into the space, whether it is hospital players, large conglomerates, e-pharmacy players, PE players, et cetera. This is very similar to the phase we witnessed between 2012 and 2016, where a whole lot of new players entered the market, but very few could survive the marathon. We believe the increased online competition will expand the wellness market by educating customers, and good quality customers who value service and quality will naturally seek best-in-class brands like ourselves. New brick-and-mortar competition may create competitive pressure for price-sensitive B2B business for the top hundred tests. Our strategy of focusing on specialized tests above these 100, which most existing and new players do not do, will help us. These factors will lead to a faster shift from unorganized to organized, whose share today is a mere 15% of the market in our estimate. In the middle of so much action, we have continued to work on our expansion strategy, which we strongly believe will continue to give us well-rounded growth. Vijender will speak a little bit more on this in the remarks later. In the past few months, with the entry of new players, there's been a lot of discussion around disruption, test prices, its impact on test volumes and revenue growth. The question in everybody's mind has been what, therefore, happens to incumbents, and will business erode the way it happened in some other industries temporarily? As we are flooded with these questions and more, I would like to take this platform to explain the industry situation and our strategy at Metropolis. Let's step back and understand why the healthcare industry is not like any other industry. In healthcare, it is important to understand that trust, science, and consistency of the report and test play a very critical role. In diagnostics, the doctor's medication to a patient is based on the basis of a scientific, correct lab report. Also, we have to remember that in the illness space, tests are not commoditized. A liver function profile at one lab is not the same as another, so a simple price comparison is difficult when the ingredients are not the same. Doctors understand these nuances, although patients don't. This is where we believe pricing disruption will be more in the illness space because doctors, who are the biggest influencers in diagnostics value chain, are more concerned about the quality of the labs and the consistency of the report rather than only pricing, especially in situations of moderate to critical illness. Therefore, it is important for me to discuss the evolution of Metropolis in the last 40 years to help you understand our true value proposition. Metropolis is a science-based diagnostic lab chain in the illness space and a pioneer of specialized tests. We started as a specialized test lab and have slowly and steadily earned the trust of doctors over the last 40 years. We are the largest pathology lab chain in the country today with regards to our test menu, and that is a big differentiator in the minds of the doctor and the patient, so that when they get pricked by a needle, they're able to get all the tests that they need at one shot. This, in our opinion, is challenging to replicate, and any other player who wishes to scale up will have to go through the same process as ours. Discounts can give you a bump in revenue on a short-term basis, but the real question is: Are you really creating a consistent, quality-focused, scientific approach to diagnostics for the doctors to recommend your brand to patients? In fact, we also believe that there is a segment of business that will be influenced by low prices. This is the segment which has a low influence by doctors, which is not illness, but wellness-based. The competitive intensity in the budget wellness space, which is the low price, low revenue per patient wellness space, will increase and create margin pressures for people who are in that space. Therefore, we at Metropolis have stayed away from the budget wellness segment of the industry and have rather focused on the premium wellness segment, where scientific image and the right education to the customer matter. Our wellness revenue per patient is three times the budget wellness space and continues to grow at 50% in FY 2021-22, despite the competitive intensity. Let me now talk about how we have insulated ourselves from disruption. There are three types of customers who opt for a test: acute, chronic, and preventive. Acute patients are the ones who are suffering from a disease and require immediate treatment. Chronic patients are the ones who require testing at regular intervals to monitor their condition. While preventive customers are the ones who opt for wellness tests when they are well, and this is clearly not illness-based. As per the report by Bain & Company, acute patients, like one suffering from heart, lung, kidney disease or cancer or something critical, are the most influenced by doctors and less concerned about prices, as improvement in their health is their immediate priority. In fact, it is impossible for patients who are non-medical to understand the differences in tests, lab quality, raw material ingredients, and therefore the decision-maker. The chief influencer is the doctor and not the patient. Chronic patients who suffer from diabetes or blood sugar or thyroid disorders or the like are moderately influenced by doctors and slightly influenced by prices. They need consistent reporting from one lab, as they need to monitor levels of test results to the last result for them to know if they are okay. Changing labs just for prices and discounts would be harmful to their health, as labs give different results and different normal ranges based on different equipment. While wellness consumers are least influenced by doctors, less aware consumers are highly influenced by prices, and the more aware consumers care for quality and service. Hence, as the new players in the industry do not have doctors' trust, they can impact the preventive segment, followed by the chronic segment to some extent, but extremely challenging in the acute segment. We at Metropolis are a specialized acute-focused lab, with majority of our volumes coming from acute patients. Our main customers is a specialty doctor who trusts us and refers their patient to us. We have a smaller segment of chronic patients, and as chronic patients are moderately influenced by doctors and prices, we plan to mitigate this impact by loyalty benefit programs for the chronic patients. Loyalty benefits will help us to make our chronic patients business sticky in nature, and they will find more value in switching to another player. In a nutshell, while it may look that the whole diagnostics is getting disrupted like telecom, retail, FMCG, e-commerce industry did, if you dig deeper, you will find that in fact only a small part of the business is actually getting impacted, and we are generally well-placed to compete. Apart from these initiatives during 2022, we have stepped up our digital play with full stack investments across the digital sphere to make Metropolis technology-ready. We are investing in tech to ensure the entire ecosystem which engages with Metropolis is optimized. Let me highlight a few of these initiatives. During Q4 FY 2022, we have been able to roll out our new app with a revamped user-friendly UI. This app is being constantly monitored for reviews and feedback, and actions will be taken on priority. Customer can view, keep a whole lifetime reports, smart reports, easy booking, can track sample location and status through the new app. We have planned targeted marketing activities, especially with focus on seeding cities through Google search, SEO optimization and content marketing. Customer lifecycle management, where we engage our customer database through updated test offerings and offers as per customer profile. We have completely digitized our systems for our partners and doctors, enabling WhatsApp connect as well as complete automation from end-to-end process. This is leading to customer self-service and helping us to save employee bandwidth. We have spent INR 12-18 crore for technology initiatives through our digital transformation. We expect this to partly continue in FY 2023 as well. All these investments on digital marketing and expansion of service network will have some minor impact on the margins. Once the systems are set, these investments we make now will create a backbone for the next level of growth that we envisage in the business. It will help us to safeguard our margins, keeping in view the increased intensity of competition going ahead. FY 2022 has been an exceptional year, with COVID incomes contributing 16% of the top line. The non-COVID business grew at a robust 35% year-on-year for FY 2022. It grew 7% Y-o-Y in Q4 FY 2022, in spite of a COVID wave in January and February. While on a Q-on-Q basis, quarter on a quarter basis, it grew by 10% in Q4 FY 2022. In spite of multiple disruptions, we were able to upsell and cross-sell, maintaining a high level of superior product mix and growing our revenue per patient and test in Q4 FY 2022 and the whole year as well. A strong testimony of the strength of the Metropolis brand. In Q4 FY 2022, we have also started work on ESG as per our commitment. We will give more disclosures as we complete certain milestones. In FY 2023, we believe growth may optically look subdued in the Q1 of FY 2023 on account of a very high base in Q1 FY 2022 on the back of COVID wave. Business will normalize in Q2 FY 2023 onwards, unless no new wave of COVID hit us. We also expect the specialized tests and our premium wellness to grow in a nominal environment, which will benefit us in the continuous improvement in product mix, leading to an increase in revenue per patient. Having said this, we believe an aggressive network expansion, employee cost pressures, and digital investments will also have a little bit of impact. Therefore, for 2023, we believe we would target pre-COVID margin. That's all from my side. Vijender will now take you through some of the operational parameters. Thank you, Ameera, and good morning, everyone. Let me talk about the key performance highlights for FY 2022. On COVID and non-COVID business first I'll talk. FY 2022 started with deadly second wave of COVID-19, with India recording its highest ever case of COVID-19 during the month of April and May 2022. The cases reduced as we progressed before surging back in January 2022, with the third wave of Omicron. Accordingly, the COVID RT-PCR revenue contributed 19% of the revenue in Q1 FY 2022 and dropped gradually to 12% of revenue in Q4 FY 2022. Along with the drop in test volume, continuous pricing capping of COVID tests downwards also led to lower revenue contribution for full year. COVID revenue dropped by 17% in FY 2022. FY 2022 was a year of ups and downs in the sense that COVID continued to be present at some or the other parts of the country throughout the year. When COVID tends to persist, it takes a bit of toll on non-COVID business. This is because in general, people tend to postpone the tests which they can afford to when it's not safe to move out. However, in spite of all these challenges, our non-COVID business grew by 7% year-on-year, contributing 80% to total revenue in FY 2022 as compared to 77% in FY 2021. On acquisition of Hitech Diagnostic Centre, we successfully acquired Hitech Diagnostic Centre during FY 2022 for an all-cash deal of INR 636 crores. Happy to share that the non-COVID business for Hitech Diagnostic Centre grew by 35% in FY 2022 to INR 100 crores. That is 81% of the total revenue in FY 2022 as compared to 60% of the revenue in FY 2021. COVID revenue dropped by 56% in FY 2022 to INR 23 crores in FY 2022. That is 19% of the revenue in FY 2022 as compared to 40% of the revenue in FY 2021. Such higher revenue contribution of growth from the non-COVID business is a sign that business has been scaled up on strong fundamentals and is not a one-time beneficiary of the COVID wave. Its strong B2C connect has also led to this strong growth. Our focus now has been on time-bound integration of Hitech with Metropolis to extract the maximum possible synergies from the deal. Going forward, we plan to launch 100 new centers in FY 2023. Our work on integration has commenced fully, and we are confident to see an uptick in the margins of Hitech business led by better raw material purchases, IT process integration, increase in contribution of volume business, and using Metropolis sales and marketing infrastructure, along with increasing B2C contribution of overall business. Now on expansion of lab and service network. We embarked FY 2022 with a network expansion plan with a view to deepen our presence across geographies and increase the B2C ratio of the business. We had planned to add 90 labs and 1,800 service centers between FY 2022 to FY 2024. During FY 2022, we have added 16 labs and 509 service centers despite unexpected COVID waves. We are confident we will reach our desired goal of 90 labs and 1,800 centers as we have built a strong pipeline of new projects. I'll talk about home visit coverage. During FY 2022, we widened our home testing service to 200+ locations from 50 locations in FY 2021. This has resulted in 23% revenue growth from home testing for non-COVID business. Overall, home testing business including COVID has remained at similar levels of INR 135 crores. This is due to sharp drop in home testing from COVID tests, which is on expected lines. The economics of home testing keeps on improving as the center matures and volume throughput for home testing increases. Let me now come to key performance metrics and operational numbers. Revenue share of B2C-focused business in focus cities for non-COVID stood at 60% in FY 2022 versus 58% in FY 2021. Our near-term target is to be 65% contribution. Revenue contribution from specialized tests for non-COVID stood at 40% in FY 2022 versus 42% in FY 2021. Revenue contribution from wellness tests increased 9% in FY 2022 from 7% in FY 2021. We recorded strong 37% growth in number of patients to 13.4 million in FY 2022, while number of tests increased by 35% year-on-year to 25.7 million in FY 2022. The revenue per patient for non-COVID business increased by 2% year-on-year to INR 947, and revenue per test for the non-COVID business increased by 7% year-on-year to INR 447. Our revenue profile among focused, seeding, and other cities stood as follows. Focus cities, 5 cities, including the city and peripheral area around metropolitan region, contributed 60% to the total revenue in FY 2022. Leading cities, 8 cities, including the city and peripheral area around the regions contributed 20% to the total revenue in FY 2022. Rest of the other cities contributed 20% of the revenue in FY 2022. With respect to geographic distribution, revenue contribution from West region was 56%. South contributed 25%. North contributed 8%, while the rest was contributed from East international locations. I will now talk about this, the Metropolis trend at the ground level. Our analysis has shown that the productivity per center in our business has continued to move up higher. That is the revenue clocked by a new center in its first 12 months is increasing in each passing year. We have witnessed this in most of our focus on leading cities, which gives us confidence to keep expanding our network. In fact, the productivity of the centers opened in 2017 versus 2021 has also seen a marked increase signifying better screening and selection of franchise, better acceptance of the brand Metropolis, moving up the value chain in terms of product mix and channel mix. This will also mean that we will achieve faster breakeven levels in our newly expanded network than in the earlier periods. Taking case Mumbai city. It's a most significant focus city for us, which contributes highest revenue. The productivity of new center has increased even in the most recent period in spite of increasing competitive intensity in the city. We believe there is still a significant headroom for us to grow, and hence we have decided to add another 60 centers in FY 2023 to take the walk-in center network in Mumbai from 341 in FY 2022 to 491 centers. We intend to expand similarly across all our focus in leading cities to capture growth opportunities. Our focus will be to continue growing revenue from existing centers while new centers will become our growth engine. While revenue growth will continue through increasing volume, we also keep on putting efforts to increase the revenue per patient. This is done through upselling and adding value to the customers via tests that can be offered exclusively by Metropolis. To conclude from my end, our focus going ahead will continue on strengthening of the B2C business on the back of investment in digitalization, marketing and expanding the home visit service locations along with the planned network expansion. On the acquisition front, our efforts will be focused towards the smooth and quick integration of Hitech's operations with Metropolis to drive the synergies. That's all from my side. I will now ask Rakesh to take you through financial. Thank you. Thank you, Vijender. Good morning to all on the call. Let me give you a snapshot of our financial performance. The Hitech numbers are consolidated with Metropolis with effect from 22nd of October 2021, sorry, the day the acquisition was completed. Revenue for Q4 financial year 2022 was up by 5% year-on-year to INR 305.9 crores. Revenue for financial year 2022 was up by 23% year-on-year to INR 1,228.3 crores. EBITDA before CSR and ESOP for quarter four financial year 2022 dropped by 20% year-on-year to INR 82.6 crores due to high revenue base, including COVID testing in Q4 last year. EBITDA before CSR, ESOP and one-time acquisition cost for financial year 2022 increased by 20% year-on-year to INR 361.6 crores. EBITDA margin for the same period stood at 27% in Q4 financial year 2022 as compared to 35.5% in Q4 financial year 2021. EBITDA was impacted mainly on account of significantly lower COVID revenue and price capping by government that makes COVID testing margin significantly lower than non-COVID. Investment in digitization and marketing in an effort to improve customer experience and faster growth. Increase in employee costs on account of strengthening our leadership team and front-end staff. Investment in lab expansion, which means carrying month of fit-out cost before lab launches. EBITDA margin for financial year 2022 stood at 29.4% in financial year 2022 as compared to 30.2% in financial year 2021. Reported PAT for Q4 financial year 2022 stood at INR 40.1 crores. Reported PAT for financial year 2022 stood at INR 214.7 crores. Coming to our working capital ratios, our debtor days have significantly improved from 41 days in March 2021 to 31 days in March 2022. Overall, working capital days have reduced from 4 days in March 2021 to 14 days in March 2022 on account of early payment to creditors. OCF to EBITDA stood at healthy 98% in financial year 2022. Cash and cash equivalents stood at INR 181 crore as on March 2022. Total debt drawn for the acquisition of Hitech was INR 300 crore, of which we have already repaid around INR 42 crore. We plan to repay the external debt for acquisition by financial year 2024. For financial year 2022, we paid a dividend of approximately INR 40 crore, translating to a payout of 20% of PAT. In financial year 2023, we expect margin to reach pre-COVID levels. We are deploying all efficiency levers like automation and digital enhancement, zero-based costing, process re-engineering and improvement, and better breakeven of newly expanded network to maximize margin enhancement. That is all from our side. We'll now leave the floor open for Q&A. We request participants to refrain from discussing around recent news items. We will not be able to provide any comment on this call. 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 Praveen Sahay from Edelweiss Financial. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you for taking the question. The first question is related to the non-COVID revenue excluding Hitech, which seems down on a YOY side, around 3%. Can you give some more color on the volume of realization related to the non-COVID excluding Hitech? I think, as you know, the non-COVID is made up of the normal J business. It's also made up of some government contracts and the like. As we had mentioned in Q3, the volumes of the government contracts are a little bit lumpy quarter-to-quarter. That is the only reason why you're seeing it sort of a negative trend on a YOY basis. But if you look at the core business, it is not a negative growth at all. In fact, from Q3 to Q4, we've actually seen a significant growth on our quarter-to-quarter basis on non-COVID. Thank you. Thank you for this. Second question is related to the Western geography. There also a significant dip, one is seen. Is it only because of COVID or there is because of a competition realization in town? Can you give some detail on that? The geographical distribution has obviously changed with the acquisition of Hitech, because obviously South has become now a slightly higher contribution to overall revenue. Except for that, we are not seeing any negative growth on the West side. It is continuing to grow, and in fact, we have started a lot of centers as well, which are all growing well and breaking even faster than we originally had experienced. At this point of time, West continues to grow. It's only the COVID revenues and the COVID rub off revenues, which obviously the highest in West, which probably will have some impact, but on the non-COVID side, things are moving as planned. Okay. Last question I'll take and then come to Anukool. On the expansion plan, as you had mentioned about the 90 labs, out of which 16 already been commissioned, 74 are still in the next two years. Can you give us some. Or even in the network, like, around 1,290 networks are also going to be added in this two-year. Can you give light on the geographical mix. As already you had said that around 150 is in the Bombay. But more color on that, like how the South or the West and the North you are planning for the geographical expansion in these lab and network expansion. Vijender, you want to take that? Yeah. Basically what we've done is we've divided this whole network extension plan based on core markets and non-core markets. As we know that core markets are our major profit-making markets, we've decided to put in more infrastructure in these markets. There are a couple of other markets also like North India, East India and South India, where we are also trying to kind of expand into newer cities by setting up franchising network. It's really a mix of network across geographies. However, majority of the expansion will be from core markets because there we've seen returns are faster and we're breaking much faster than the previous data. The major expansion would be on the core market and on the satellite model? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll come back to you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prakash Kapadia from Anived Portfolio Managers. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking my question. Ameera, you did mention about, you know, competitive intensity being on the rise. You know, if you could give us some sense, is it just local players, you know, coming back due to COVID wave, or is it, you know, new funding by private equity players? You know, in this context, is specialized tests the only way to beat competition at our end? You know, if you could give some sense of what is, you know, the contribution of specialized tests for us on an annual basis in terms of percentage of revenues. First, in our presentation, the specialized tests was about 40 this quarter. I think overall for the year, if I'm not mistaken, is about 42% of our revenue. Just in terms of talking about competition and who's entering, you're seeing a variety of people entering, and let's understand the logic why. What's happened with certain amount of digital health movement trends happening, where we saw in the last two years that a certain segment of society is now trying to get telehealth or teleconsultations or certain society is getting e-pharmacy. There are some pharma companies who are saying that they are worried about being disintermediated. They are saying, "Can we build a B2C platform where we can combine our pharmacy, we can combine teleconsultation, and we can combine diagnostics and offer it as a combination platform to consumers?" That's one kind of an existing pharma company who feels that they have some relationship with either patients or doctors, is trying to get in. That's one. Okay. The second we are seeing hospitals who are saying that, "You can do pathology in my hospital, so why don't I extend it, and do it outside the hospital?" Now the dynamics obviously for doing pathology inside when it's captive and doing it outside when you have to go and earn the revenue only on the back of pathology are two very different dynamics, Prakash Kapadia. But that's the second kind of competitor that we've seen come in. The third is these health tech players. The new digital health tech players who have come in and are trying to basically, you know, offer a variety of services, which include e-pharmacy, telehealth, diagnostics, other things, all as a part of an aggregation to the consumer. We are seeing, you know, these three, four, I would say, are the main varieties. We've actually not seen that much amount of private equity funding at this point of time. In fact, there are a lot of diagnostics firms which are actually available for acquisition at this point of time. That's the nature of the competition. Okay. Okay. You know, in this longer-term approach to you know, grow the business faster and you know, gain market share. Where are these you know, smaller local players? Because you know, some of them had very good revenues due to COVID. How does that you know, shift in the medium term happen where you know, larger players can grow faster and you know, some of these smaller players get disrupted because you know, they also seem to have done well due to COVID. I'll just give you a quick understanding of the industry and the different layers. You have often said this, Prakash Kapadia. The industry as a pyramid. At the top, you've got sort of the four national players which are operating and which are pan-India and which, three of the four do sort of, you know, good amount of specialized tests, you know, sort of a larger testing. Right. At the middle rung you have about 30-40 regional chains, right, all across the country, which are focused in one territory. They are in one state, or maximum in two states. You know, in sort of a local constituency. Now, the people who have done well during COVID are the national players as well as the regional players, because they had the capability to do COVID testing and molecular biology testing in their local places. Consequently, the most of the ones which are on sale are also the regional players, because they have benefited so much during COVID. That kind of growth, they probably are not going to see for the next two years, right? The small players, which are the unorganized players on the bottom of the pyramid, are almost 150,000 such small labs. If you cover any of these labs, most of them have revenues from sort of INR 2 lakhs a month to maybe INR 5, 7, 8 lakhs a month. These are not very large labs. These are very small labs which actually have a captive patient or captive doctor base in about half kilometer around their location. It's a very hyperlocal business. They basically are tied up with, let's say, 10 or 15 doctors in that region who sort of send patients walking into that center. Now, with the trends that are happening in the industry where you're seeing digital health come in, you're seeing large distributions come in, this entire industry is going to get a restructure. You know, often investors have asked us what will be the catalyst to move more unorganized to organized. I would say this is the catalyst. You know, the market is changing, consumer behavior is changing, and I would expect the top players, sort of the national players, if they do the right strategy, will continue to grow and get stronger, in the time to come. I think it's the smallest players who are going to have a hard time struggling because neither are they able to give consumers the kind of technology-enabled engagement and services that customers want. Neither do they have the distribution, neither do they have the specialized test menu that keeps them away, or they don't have the brand. I think it's the smallest players that are going to get disintermediated in this process. Understood. That, that's very helpful. Lastly, from my side, you know, are we seeing any inflationary pressure? Because, you know, most of the businesses seem to be witnessing a lot of inflationary pressure. Any input cost, any collection cost, anything which you think is inflationary in this current time, and will, you know, price hike be on the anvil? Will, you know, the same pricing continue for us and the industry? If you could share some thoughts. Sure. We did a marginal price hike at the beginning of this quarter, just for example, from an inflationary perspective. It was again very marginal, only impacting very small number of geographies on the B2C side. Very incremental. This was not done really because of inflationary pressures. We are seeing obviously the imports that the industry uses for testing. The chemicals and the kits are mostly imported and therefore they are dollar, usually dollar and euro denominated. There is obviously some pressure from vendors on prices because of the dollar rupee currency exchange. We are sort of balancing that with, you know, our own efficiency initiatives to say how do we be more operationally efficient in the way that we manage our chemicals. Okay. This is across West India or specific geographies where we've taken some price increase on the B2C side? It's been specific geographies all across the country. Like I said, very marginal, very incremental at this point in time. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. All the best. Thank you. Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one now. The next question is from the line of Pooja Bhatia from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. In the core business comparing to pre-COVID levels, patient volumes are up 16%, but realization is up only 3%. How do you see the growth in realization? I understand that the test mix will change with more of semi-specialized, specialized, increasing, more wellness growing, I think more of home tests. But that's not gonna happen overnight. It could take a few quarters or maybe a few years. Is it the right understanding that realization growth could be, say, in low single digits? Yeah, I think the numbers you're quoting are overall, if I'm not mistaken, that includes COVID. So COVID, as you know, the pricing which started off as INR 4,500 came down finally to INR 300-INR 400 rupees, you know, per test across more geographies. Therefore the revenue per patient from COVID tends to be much lower than our non-COVID revenue per patient. In quarter four, for example, where you have a wave and COVID volumes will surge, that's very natural to happen that your test realization will not grow accordingly because it is diluted to the revenue per patient of non-COVID. Otherwise, if you keep aside any COVID business, we've actually only seen an increment on revenue per test and revenue per patient year-over-year. You know, I think it's it would be premature to give any sort of guidance on this, because the market is changing and we would like to wait and watch to see how things move. We continue to obviously put our best efforts on keeping on improving the product mix, moving people up the value chain. That's something that we've been successful at for the last many years and we would continue to try to do. Just to add to that, in case if we are expecting a low-teen to mid-teen growth, most would be coming from volumes and realization would still be a little subdued. It wouldn't be contributing much. Is this the right understanding? I think that would be assumption at this point. I think if you look at our past history, we have seen a very fair contribution from revenue per patient, and a fair contribution from volume. I don't, you know, see any reason why we would see a drastic change in that. Understood. On the doctor recommendation part, because it's not the price which is the major determinant of acute uptake. How do we manage this? Or what level of marketing promotion activities are you all expecting? How do we add more doctors to our network? Our energy is about increasing the coverage from our sales team and scientific team to meeting doctors. We have about 400 odd scientific medical representatives. We also have, you know, a large number of sort of pathologists and doctors. All of these are sort of our brand ambassadors who engage with doctors on an ongoing basis. The key way of engagement is actually scientific medical consortiums, continuing medical education programs, our teams visiting doctors. The key drivers are, one, about making sure that the number of calls made by the teams are adequate in terms of visits to doctors. Number two is the constant training to make sure they impart the right education and awareness to doctors and the right, you know, positioning of Metropolis. Third is obviously going to say how do we convert a doctor to prescribe, you know, tests that Metropolis offer which are necessary for the patient. These are all the drivers. It's not really about a push marketing, because we have seen a push marketing is not the way to build a quality business. It will give you short-term growth and with large amount of discounts, and that may not necessarily be sustainable. Ours is a very scientific-driven, sales excellence-focused, model. Understood. On the network expansion, you mentioned in the opening remarks that you expect faster breakeven on the new centers which are being added. What will be the timeframe for it? Would it be 12 months, 24 months? You're talking about the collection centers? Yes. We are seeing in strong geographies, in focus cities. Earlier, you know, we were looking at sort of centers, you know, breaking even within sort of 9-12 months. We're now seeing that timelines are actually shortening to close to 6 months to 9 months. The reason for this, I think, is a better selection of partner, stronger brand, more, you know, where consumers want to come to our brand, better engagement, a bunch of reasons. Understood. Very helpful. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Anubhav Agarwal from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you. Good morning. Ameera, you mentioned that quarter one revenue will be down year-on-year because of the high base. Just for clarity there. What is your expectation about non-COVID business? Do you expect that to grow year-on-year basis? I don't have an answer right away, but I would say yes, overall, I think it's the COVID base that would cause a concern, not so much the non-COVID business. Because the reason I ask is in quarter four itself, the non-COVID revenues are still higher than quarter one, non-COVID. Sequentially, do you expect June quarter non-COVID business to be higher than the March quarter non-COVID business? You know, it's a little difficult to look at our business sequentially, which is why we always provide information year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. There is a seasonal impact that comes in. Health is not a consistent subject, based on the infections and the diseases that happen in that seasonality. Usually we have seen if you look at the past which the data is available. If you look at the past 3-4 years, even pre-COVID, Q4 is usually a good quarter. Of course, in this quarter, there was COVID, so therefore the non-COVID was more subdued. Usually, Q2 is another quarter which is considered one of the highest because the infections are at the most during the monsoon period all across the country. Therefore gives rise to fevers and other infections. Usually a Q1 is a decent quarter. Q3 is usually the weakest quarter because of festivals. That's usually the pattern of how we've seen things play out in history. Okay. Just to correct, you're saying that non-COVID business should grow, whether it's a mid-single digit growth or high single digit or double digit growth, that's you're not sure about. I'm saying year-on-year non-COVID will grow. Yes. Okay. Secondly, on the margin guidance, when you talk about pre-COVID, can you help us understand that pre-COVID numbers? In the sense right now, if you look at the margin the company has done in the last two quarters, 3Q and 4Q. Are you talking about that fiscal 2023 EBITDA margin can be 200-300 basis points higher than that? Because pre-COVID you have done very different kind of margins. Can you help us quantify it, what trend are you talking about on the margin side? Yeah. I will Yeah. Go ahead, Rakesh. Yeah, I will take this. If you look at the pre-COVID level, we have done, you know, between 27%-28% consistently for 2-3 years before the COVID period came in. We expect that that is how we are guiding the market, that we expect that we will go to that level where we were in pre-COVID level. You know, we could from there we can, you know, look at increasing things as we go along. That, that's how it looks like. It's not. It should not take a very long horizon to pre-COVID, but I think 2-3 years before the COVID period can be the ideal numbers to look at. Rakesh, this quarter also you have done 27% margin, right? Mm-hmm. You are not talking about an expansion of margins from this level. Basically 27% is the margin which is obviously, you know, looking at before CSR and ESOP and all. There is a 1% there also. If you look otherwise, it's 26, around 26.2%. We are looking at saying that how can this 26.2% move upward to 27.5%-28%. That's how we are looking at from expansion of margin point of view. Obviously this is holding it back so that, you know, let's see how things goes in next 2-3 quarters, and then we'll move forward on this thing. At least we expect that the numbers will be more or less in line with what we were doing pre-COVID level. Okay, that's helpful. Last question is on this investments, and I'm talking about OpEx here, not the CapEx. OpEx on digital, you know, more treatment spend as well as incremental spend on this network expansion. Can you just roughly talk about what kind of how many crores kind of expense you're talking about, incremental from here? Very rough number, range is there. See, we have already given a guidance that for a network expansion we look at 0.6%-0.7% of margin dilution, which will happen because one is that when we open a lab takes its own time to open up, and we have a cost which comes in before that. That's one. Obviously when lab opens up, it takes its own time to reach to a level where we want to. Point six, point seven percent of dilution coming from there. Obviously some point five, point six percent of dilution coming from the digital network marketing and other things. If you look at both of this, we will, you know, look at 1.2%-1.25%. Obviously this number will keep changing as we move ahead, because some of the centers will become more matured as we move along, and that will start contributing to it. I think it will be more in that line, but obviously maybe with changing here and there. Okay. You know, 1% is more like INR 12-13 crore, the number we're talking about. Part of it we would have already spent in third and fourth quarter. That's why I was looking for more incremental, kind of, guidance from your side. I think the guidance is again very simple that we want to maintain at least the pre-COVID level, which we've spoken about, and that is where we are. Obviously there are dilutions happening because of a lot of things happening, and there are a lot of efficiency projects and cost efficiency things going on in between and automation projects are going on. Hopefully we will nullify these both sides and things, we can maintain the pre-COVID level. That's how it is. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one. The next question is from the line of Bharat Sheth from Quest Investment Advisors. Please go ahead. Hi, Ameera, congratulations on a challenging time, I mean, reporting good number. Ameera, when we are talking of the growth in different geography, how do we really would like to play in those geography vis-à-vis margin where the break even takes little more time? Second, in those geography where our brand name is not that, really, I mean, visible to the medical fraternity. How do we really plan to build that business? A good question. I think in markets where we have to remember two things. That, for example, markets where the consumer brand may not be very strong of Metropolis, but the fraternity, the healthcare industry and the fraternity know Metropolis. The issue is not about doctors not knowing Metropolis, it's more about consumers not knowing it strongly as a strong consumer brand. Really the differentiation is there. Even today, whether you take a Delhi or a Calcutta or Punjab or any of these markets, where we are not in the top two or top three in the market. We are more sort of number three, four, five. If you look at it, sort of the fraternity hospitals, lab doctors recognize Metropolis and you know, the quality of it. Of course, this will never be 100%, but it will be a large number of doctors. What we usually do when we go into a new market like Delhi is we start with the B2B business, where we actually go and educate doctors, labs and hospitals about our brand. In a market like Delhi, we've been doing that now for many, many months. We start our reports circulating in that market through B2B channels. As the brand starts circulating more and more, the brand becomes more familiar. At the right time when you feel like you're ready to make a large B2C investment, it then makes sense to start with B2C. Having said that, we all know building a consumer brand takes a long time, especially in healthcare, because it's not something you can do simply through advertisements and other ways like FMCG. Because it's not a business which is built on the back of advertising and marketing. It's a business that's definitely not for illness. It's a business which is built through engagement and trust and experience. Therefore we would start B2B, B2C like we have in many of these cities, but probably not in a huge way overnight. More in a creeping style where you keep expanding your centers and keep trying to work in that hyperlocal market to get B2C patients. Second question on when we are talking of specialty. Have we really added any more capability on the specialty side in last 2 years or how do we really plan to expand that portfolio? We've absolutely added a lot of capability. We have now got all kinds of. We obviously already did genetics. We have all kinds of genomics. We have added a lot of capability on multiple areas and constantly to make sure that we are pioneering in the test menu. We also do R&D in-house to sort of see how we can make more tests more affordable. Certain tests which, you know, may be quite expensive. Are there new technologies or techniques we can use to make them more affordable or more relevant to the Indian population? For example, when we get most of these technologies, they come with reference ranges, which are actually relevant for an American or European population because the R&D is done there. How to make this relevant for Indian population, which fits our genetic parameters. This is the kind of work we do behind the scenes that helps us actually go to doctors and say, "Look, you should use our test because we are the only ones who have an Indian reference range," for example. So there are many such things that sort of happen, but absolutely we keep expanding the menu. Last question from my side. I mean, when we are talking of this disruption. All these like several aggregator which has recently seeing a good run like in Zomato and in Swiggy. We are also seeing in this medical diagnostic industry, some of the aggregator is appearing. How do we really plan to work? I mean, whether compete with them or complementary to them. Vis-à-vis this one and a half lakh small labs which are already present. How do you really plan to grow with this kind of a scenario? We don't have to. We have to be very clear about who we are and what where are the areas we want to compete. We are very clear that we are not interested in competing with the aggregators on the low price wellness business. Because we feel this is a just a quest for acquiring consumers and in a very non-profitable, non-sustainable way on the wellness side. That is a business that we feel does not make sense for us at this point of time to compete with them to acquire consumers in that way. We are therefore not competing with them on the low price wellness. What we are doing is we are saying that how do we continue to participate in the wellness segment, but using our brand, our technology, our quality, our services, and therefore continue to compete more on the premium wellness segment, which is what we are doing. As far as the aggregators, we are very open to partnerships. We are open to working with all the aggregators in the industry. In fact, we already are. I think what you will see in the next few months is many of the aggregators which have been doing a lot of very high-profile marketing and spending a lot of money. We have to recognize with the change of the economic environment, many of them are also having a very hard time in securing funding. I think we'll see some sort of a consolidation in the aggregator space in the coming 6-9 months as well. I think we have to stick to our journey, what's good for us. If there are opportunities to work with the aggregators, we are absolutely open to in a way that economically makes sense. Okay. How much is our wellness portfolio? Size of the wellness portfolio that contributes to overall- Top line. This quarter is 10%. Annualized, if we. About 8%, if I'm not mistaken. Rakesh, 8%? We were pre-COVID level at 6%-7%. COVID time it had come down, and now it is increasing, you know, gradually. We are seeing that this contribution going from 7% in quarter one to 10% in quarter four. Okay. Thanks and all the best. Yeah. Ameera, I want to add one more point to this question on aggregator. I'll appreciate that. I think what we believe that, you know, with aggregators, I think the overall consumption in diagnostics will go up. Within this wellness, we hope that 20% would be illness also. This illness will become easy for a company like Metropolis because our focus is going to be also on doctor connect. For illness, largely the patients, they want to go to a doctor for their, you know, treatment and this becomes our TG. Overall, this will help us in creating more, you know, business opportunities. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants, please limit your questions to two per participant. If you have a follow-up question, you may rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Rahul Agrawal from InCred Equities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Just two questions from my side. Firstly, on non-COVID, you know, Ameera, a lot of discussion happening around the growth part. Obviously despite COVID in January 2022, we've grown both YOY and QOQ. But a simple question, when do we see non-COVID revenue excluding COVID albeit, obviously, growing at 15%? You know, we are all used to looking at that number, you know, this industry growing at that number and large organized players getting a lot of market share. The entire concern around this competition I think is because that number is not growing. They're still hovering around 5%-10% in terms of growth. Could you give us some sense as in, you know, from wherein you see, and obviously there is an assumption here that COVID will not recur, that when do you see this 15% non-COVID revenue stream, B2C revenue growing, for Metropolis? Rahul, I don't have a crystal ball, so it's very difficult to give an exact timeline. What I can tell you is that we have to understand that when COVID happens, the reason non-COVID comes down is because there are people sick with COVID and therefore that's the disease that takes priority. Therefore other things get ignored or they don't happen because you are at home recovering from COVID. In every quarter, even if you look at Jan to March, you'll see Jan had the lowest sort of non-COVID. Feb also had the lowest non-COVID and then March sort of picked up in a much better way and had a much better growth. These things tend to be very seasonal based on the kind of infections that you're seeing. This is not something that can be likely sort of push marketing. If somebody is sick, then they need to come. Generally what we are seeing is that as COVID has taken over sort of all the health issues for the past few months and past couple of years, other things have come little bit more on the side. I don't have an estimate as of late, but I can say that my mind tells me that if COVID we don't see another wave, my sense is that by Q2 we should see more of a normalcy in terms of a positive growth number going forward. I'm fully hoping that we don't see any more disruptions like any other severe infections or severe, you know, COVID variants that come along the way. Right. In normal circumstances, you know, removing COVID out, we should get back to that number, right? I mean, that's the entire effort is focused on that. Is that correct? I mean, of course, the effort is completely focused on non-COVID. I don't think there's any effort going into at this point on COVID. Of course, if people fall sick, we have to take care of them. The entire effort is going into non-COVID, building geographical expansions, building business, going to doctors, doing better coverage. That's all the efforts are going in that direction. Got it. Our smaller question was on routine testing. My sense is, you know, generally routine tests have high gross margins versus specialized, and on EBITDA level they're pretty much similar. You know, for a typical test like lipid profile or thyroid, what would be a reagent cost for Metropolis at, you know, volumes you do? Because that's the number I'm looking at on absolute basis, which is a minimum break even at gross level, right? I mean, could you help me with just one number here? You mean a gross margin percentage is what you mean? Yeah. I mean the reagent cost for a lipid profile or thyroid test, at current volume for Metropolis per test, you know, how much would it be? Would it be like $80, $100, $60? Difficult to give that number, because one, I mean, that confidential information, costing information is obviously confidential to the organization. What I can share with you is that there is the gross margin on routine tests. First thing to remember about testing and pathology is that the material cost is not the biggest cost on the P&L. The biggest cost on the P&L is the servicing cost. You know, while somebody may say, "Okay, if the MRP is INR 100, you know, and if your cost of a test is INR 20, then why can't you sell it at INR 30?" Out of that 20-80, almost INR 60 is a servicing cost. You have a cost of a lab rental, you have a cost of property, you have cost of, you know, consumables to do the collection, plus the cost of testing people, et cetera, et cetera. The material cost is something which is important, but it is not the only important factor in the entire costing. Traditionally, we see that routine testing has the highest gross margin. Routine testing can again come in multiple ways. Routine testing can come either through a strong brand like we have of a B2C, where you are able to get a fair market price. If a routine testing is coming through this kind of discounted aggregation that people are doing, then the servicing cost will actually completely destroy any profitability on that test. There would have to be losses incurred for them to be able to make sense of it. I think what we are continuing to see in some of the aggregators is, like I said, a consumer acquisition spree, at any cost. The thought is to say that, okay, we'll fund it till it makes sense. The real question in healthcare is whether consumers are going to react to that if they're only price. Like we already discussed, that may happen on wellness and chronic, but not so much else. Perfect. I mean, that's the point I was trying to drive to. That, you know, they're saying that INR 100 a test is profitable on TV. Basically meaning that maybe you're profitable on gross margin, but is it possible, you know, after you account for servicing costs? Anyway, we'll take that discussion forward. Thanks so much for answering that. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tarang Agrawal from Old Bridge Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Couple of questions. One, is, you know, lack of a cross-selling platform, an impediment, for you, for instance, you know, you have a hospital, pharmacy diagnostics, or now with the newer players, you have a host of other things on their platform where they're trying to cross-sell, which gives them some sort of economy and, a good customer stickiness. So is that you feel an impediment insofar as your business is concerned? And would you be sort of open to some sort of a partnership to, you know, have that in place? That's one. Second, pardon my ignorance, but if you could just give me some sense on how you define your specialized and wellness and other category of tests and some quantitative sense in terms of the breadth and depth of your portfolio there versus incumbents in the market? I'll start with the second. We have a large test menu of about 4,000 varieties of tests. If I compare to a couple of the other national players which also do a larger test menu, there would be a difference. We would be higher by maybe 20% over a couple of some of the others. Obviously the fourth player, which does mostly wellness and B2B, will do a very limited number of tests, about 200 varieties of tests. That's really not a comparison point in terms of the business market. The 150,000 labs which are on the street, which are doing that INR 2 lakhs to INR 5 lakhs, INR 7 lakhs business a month, will only do 50 varieties of tests. The slightly larger labs which do maybe INR 10-20 lakhs a month will do maybe 160 varieties of tests. Even top hospitals, where you guys go for tertiary care, will do 300-400 varieties of tests. A regional chain will do maybe 500 varieties of tests. I hope that gives you a sense on the level of complicated and very comprehensive tests that we do when we have a test menu of 4,000, which is equivalent to the best global players of offering everything under a platform. The reason I had mentioned in the speech was that this is difficult to replicate is because these volumes of these sort of scale and tests of the, you know, what you call as the bottom 3,000, 3,500 tests tend to be very, very small in number. You need to accumulate these volumes through a national distribution from all across the country to bring them to one place and commercially make it viable to get economies of scale to actually run those tests. Otherwise, for any player who doesn't have a national distribution, not only national distribution, but the ability to generate those tests, because these are very specialized medical tests, and you have to be able to go to a doctor and convince them on your expertise on each one of those tests. For example, if you are showing a neurological test, the question is, do you have a pathologist who's very knowledgeable on neurology? Do you have interpretations which require high knowledge on neurology? There are a lot of things that go behind the scenes. It's not just going and, you know, picking up a test. I hope that answers your question on the test menu and the scope of it. Yes. Just, I'm sorry to interrupt. Just to follow up on that. So out of your 141-odd labs, my sense is only a specific set of labs would be capable of administering these 35 tests, 3,500 tests and then, you know, servicing them over a couple of days or so on and so forth. Would that be the right way to look at it? That's right. It works in a hub-and-spoke model. What's unique about Metropolis is that we have almost 10 regional reference labs in India, which means that while we have, you know, 170-odd staff labs which do about 160 varieties of tests, we have 10 regional reference labs which do about 400-500 varieties of tests, which is the highest among all our peers. This gives us an ability to do more tests locally, which is very valuable in the quality of the business that you pick up, because you're able to give a faster turnaround time. Then we have the global reference lab, which is based out of Bombay, which does all the 4,000 varieties of tests. This is a very normal structure and practice, globally, that you consolidate the volume of specialized tests, because otherwise it economically doesn't make sense to do that. Got it. Coming to your first question on the platform play. I want to reverse the question and ask the question, why do people even think a platform play is the way to go? You know, I think this idea has come from China, where we have seen platform plays do well. If you look at the ecosystem of the Chinese market, before consumer healthcare came in, everything was state-run. Everything was run by the government, or in very large hospitals. Therefore, a consumer play where you could book everything together on one platform became a very attractive thing for consumers. That is not the problem in India. In India today, consumers already have access to a completely retail healthcare ecosystem. They are not forced to go to the government or go to any institution for anything. They already have all options, you know, at their table. The reason why your e-commerce platforms do well is because you'll end up ordering something from this e-commerce platform every day. Sometimes you'll order, you know, something small, the next day something small, and it makes it very convenient. If you think about your own lives, how often do you engage with healthcare systems? You may order drugs once a month. You may go for a test once a year. You know, you may need to go see a doctor once or twice or three times a year. This app is not gonna be something that you're gonna get onto every day where you're ordering something, and therefore the habit and the use of the app and the platform is far less frequent than what you would compare to an e-commerce player. I think the debate and the discussion for whether a platform play is truly going to succeed is a big question mark at this point of time for the Indian healthcare ecosystem. It comes to question of, oh, do we think we are missing out because of an upsell or a cross-sell? Is anybody able to do upsell or a cross-sell? Is it proven? It's not. At this point of time, there are a lot of theories around, "Oh, we will cross-sell from e-pharmacy to diagnostics," or, "We will upsell from here to there." Is it happening? I think we should check. I don't think so. Wonderful. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sayantan Maji from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Increasing. The latest entrant is Apollo. Even Adani is coming and, Tata 1mg also is starting. Looking to all these things, do you think that the market share will go down as far as Metropolis is concerned? I mean, I don't know how to answer this question because. Why? If we believe. Yeah. If we believe that there are only five groups that can succeed in every business, in every industry in India, that will basically we will say that entrepreneurship is dead in our country and consumers will only go to the five groups for everything. We have to remember that is not the case today. There are many groups flourishing and many people in even a particular segment of society, there are many businesses flourishing. I think it would be fear of the unknown to say that, "Oh, now if this group or that group comes in, everybody else is going to have a hard time growing." I think that would be a stretch in my opinion. I think we have succeeded. For our own part we can speak. We have succeeded very well in diagnostics and become a leader in the space based on the DNA, the hard work, the distribution, the specialized care, and more importantly, the expertise that we have built up in healthcare. This is not so easy to replicate. I want you to just think through your own examples and say that tomorrow if any one of these groups just came in and said, "Oh, now, we are offering, you know, all services." Are you gonna stop going to the doctors that you trust, because somebody else is offering it? I don't think it works like that when you're sick. When you're sick you want to go to people you trust. You want to go to where you feel you've got reassurance that you're gonna get better, that you're gonna get the right test. When you have cancer, you're worried about treating the cancer. You're not worried about whether you go to group A or group B. You want to go to the doctor, the lab, the treatment where you're gonna get the best treatment possible and get well soon. That is our belief and the way we've built the business and what we see of the market that we understand. No, I entirely agree. You are very intelligent, very enthusiastic, very firm on your beliefs, et cetera. You know, in our area only, let me tell you, only two or three IVF centers were there. Now BT has come. Then some RG, I forgot the name. Some three, four new entrants have come and they're very strong. I mean, naturally one will feel that the market share will go down, no? Because otherwise they don't have any business. From that angle I was asking. I don't have any doubt about your competency, your intelligence. The market. Yeah. The market is only 15% organized segment and 85% unorganized. Why is there the assumption that any new entrant is going to come and eat up the market share of the 15% players? Maybe it is possible that the new entrants will come and take some of the market share of the unorganized. I agree. Unorganized and it will be organized also because, you know, I mean, I don't know. You are in the field, so you are in a better position to express your opinion. In stock market also, see the moment, this, what you call it, Tata 1mg announced, the market price of share went down. It may be psychological. I don't say that it is in reality with a fact. There is a psychology with which the people think that, yes, market share may go down. May not necessarily, but probability. Well, sir, I can only talk about our industry, and I'm sure in the stock market, if everybody started following the psychology of anybody who advertises stock price or everybody else will go down, then nobody in the market will make money. All of you are obviously very, very intelligent investors, and I think you can probably see beyond the basics of the market. No, in your case, you see, a bit like, depending upon the experience, depending upon the intelligence, depending upon the, what you call, past experience for us to rely on you. I don't deny that. I was thinking, let me have an explanation. Fine. I will accept your explanation, and let us see next year what it does. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Namit Mehta from KC Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just a couple from my side. One, I just wanted to understand whether competitive entry changes the dynamics in terms of franchisees, whether in terms of acquisition or management or, churn. You know, are we seeing some of these franchisees going to the more aggressive peers, maybe offering higher margins and so on? Do we need to match those? You know, how do those dynamics play out? Franchisees are unlikely to go to new entrants because franchisees only survive based on the business that we generate for them. Therefore the brand is very important. Because if you remember that the sales generation is done by the organization and only the service fulfillment is done by the franchisee. Therefore, the franchisee is quite dependent on the brand to generate. If they go to a new brand, which offers them higher commission, but doesn't give them even half the business, then it's a loss-making proposition for that franchise. You know, I think if there is any poaching that happens, or any thing on franchisees, it tends to happen, and that's also very, very marginal. We don't see this as a big trend between the incumbents who already have strong brands and not really with new players. As far as acquisitions, like I mentioned, there are many deals available on the table. So far, at least a few competitors that have come in are hoping to build organic business by building distribution. I'm not seeing them in the market at this time for acquisitions. Understood. I found what you said on the specialized test business in terms of economies of scale and volume very interesting. Just wanted to probe a little further and understand how competitive that specialized test business is. In a Mumbai or a Chennai, you know, what kind of market share would you have in this particular segment? Will some of the new entrants even try to compete, you know, in those segments, given they don't have the volumes? You know, do you see people just sort of splurging money to be able to offer those tests, or is it more, you know, that people like you focused on quality and with the experience and with the volumes are the ones dominating those markets? First on questions, the answer is yes. The larger players do dominate this market. It's very difficult to give you a share of market because that data is not available in the public domain, in terms of any third-party data. But considering you know, 42% of our revenue comes from specialized tests, we definitely have the highest share of specialized tests in the industry. And of course, that would be fairly proportionate to the stronger markets that we are in. On your question about new players being specialized, I mean, the market has all kinds of players, right? We have seen in the past, not even in this round of competition, but in the earlier round of competition between 2012 and 2016, we saw one player come in and on a very specialized technology, decide to try and just build large volumes by discounting the price more than 60%-70% on a very, very specialized genetic test, and said that, "Look, I'll offer this at very, very low price. Let me build volumes." What landed up happening in the now in the 7, 8 years that they've been or 10 years they've been doing it, they did manage to build you know some volumes initially. It has always been a loss-making business for them. It has not really ever become profitable or contributed to their success. They were not able to diversify from that genetic test to other tests to compete with us on a pan-India basis. They were not able to get the doctor's trust and credibility even for that genetic test. Because in healthcare, there is a mindset that the more you discount, the question comes up, look, are they even doing the test? Are they doing a good job? Do I want to go to some place which is just discounting? How are they affording it, right? And am I getting a poor quality report, because it is so heavily discounted? Actually, the lower pricing and the discounting causes a concern amongst patients in illness and doctors around the credibility of the test report. We have not seen it actually the strategy of price disruption. We have not seen it be successful for the many players which have come into the industry and tried this. We have to remember that the 150,000 labs that exist are anywhere at a significant discount to, you know, all the national and the regional players. If pricing was the main thing, then actually the unorganized market would flourish far more than the organized market. I think there will be players who will try, obviously, on the specialized side, not all 4,000, but they'll try with 200, 300, 400 tests to try and make a mark. If they try to do it in a rush with discounting, I think they will struggle. If they try to do it in the way that we do it scientifically with expertise, they may have a chance of success, but then that will take time. Understood. Thanks. Last question from my side. Do you think broad-based brands which generally mean trust for the Indian consumer translate well in the healthcare industry? For example, you know, for you or for Dr. Lal, you had to build up your brand from scratch and develop that over a long period of time to the state where you are today. Somebody like a Tata coming in today, with that, you know, sort of day one reputation and trust, which is broad-based across sectors. Does that translate well in this industry or, you know, does that still require a very specialized brand focused on medical fraternity to succeed in this business? Well, I don't want to comment on any specific player, but I want to give you an example. Even the top two hospital chains of the country, they try to take their brand and set up diagnostics on their brand. And they have far more trust in healthcare than any of the groups that you are mentioning. Were not able to be successful in diagnostics because they had trust from the doctors on treatment. Having trust on treatment for heart or gastro or neuro is not the same as having the doctor's trust on diagnostics. Healthcare is an area of subspecialties. To give you an example, if somebody in the family, in your family has got cancer and they have somebody is suspected of having lung cancer. Let me tell you will not even go to a general histopathologist. Your doctor will say, "Go to this specific histopathologist who has got the maximum expertise in lung cancer." That is how subspecialty healthcare is, and especially illness. The expertise and the knowledge is what counts the most, and therefore the translation of trust, general trust from FMCG brands to specific acute illness diagnostics is not so easy. Perfect. Thanks so much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you for you guys to organize the call and thank you to all for attending and patiently hearing us for the last hour, 22 minutes. We hope we've been able to address a lot of the questions. I just wanna leave you with three messages that we have worked very, very hard over the last 40 years to build trust, credibility, experience and knowledge and expertise in this industry. There's a reason why we are leaders in the industry today. This has not happened by chance or by fluke. There have been many competitors that have come in try to do price disruption and other ways. We have to recognize that there will be some parts of the industry which will, like with the wellness segment, which may be more prone to disruption. The parts of the business which are built on strong fundamentals are in the illness space, which is where we operate. We would like to continue our journey of building out our expansion, geographical expansion, product expansion, technology changes, and really moving towards a company that is not only strong in science, expertise and knowledge, but also provides all the conveniences from a technology and a digital perspective to our consumers. Makes working with Metropolis and engaging with Metropolis a completely seamless experience. This is the journey that we are on, and we believe that we are very well placed to continue to compete, and to do well for us and our shareholders. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. On behalf of InCred Equities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.