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spk01: Greetings. Welcome to the SIFI Technologies financial results for third quarter fiscal year 2023 through 2024. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Praveen Krishna. You may begin.
spk03: Thank you, Holly. On behalf of SIFI Technologies, allow me to wish you a very happy new year. I'm joined on the call today by Raju Vexena, Chairman, MP Vijay Kumar, Executive Director and Group CFO, and Kamal Nath, CEO. Following our comments on the results, there will be an opportunity for questions. If you do not have a copy of our press release, please call Grayling Global at 646-284-7000. 9400 and we will have one sent to you. Alternatively, you may obtain a copy of the release at the investor information section on the company's corporate website at www.siffytechnologies.com slash investors. A replay of today's call may be accessed by dialing in on the numbers provided in the press release or by accessing the webcast in the investor information section of the Siffy corporate website. Some of the financial measures referred to during this call and in the earnings release may include non-GAAP measures. SIFI's results for the year are according to the International Financial Reporting Standard or IFRS and will differ somewhat from the GAAP announcements made in previous years. A presentation of the most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP and a reconciliation of such GAAP measures and of the differences between such GAAP measures and the most comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP will be made available on CIFI's website. Before we continue, I'd like to point out that certain statements contained in the earnings release and on this conference call are forward-looking statements rather than historical facts and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. With respect to such forward-looking statements, the company seeks protections afforded by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These risks include a variety of factors including competitive development and risk factors listed from time to time in the company's SEC reports and public releases. Those lists are intended to identify certain principle factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements but are not intended to represent a complete list of all risks and uncertainties inherent to the company's business. I would now like to introduce Mr. Raju Exna, Chairman of CIFI Technologies. Chairman.
spk05: Thank you Praveen. Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call. A combination of pro-industry regulatory initiatives in India and increasing investment climate and lot of skilled human capital are the factors that continues to dominate enterprise business strategies for India. Business leaders are united in their view that India is central to their growth plan and are aggressively ramping up their local investments. Let me bring in Kamal, our CEO, to expand some of the business highlights for the last past quarter. Kamal?
spk04: Thank you, Raju. As enterprises pursue their digital transformation and digitalization objectives, they are also recalibrating their digital infrastructure across hybrid cloud, network, security, and edge infrastructures. Customer experience, business continuity, cybersecurity, application modernization, and overall adoption of AI models are the prime drivers for this recalibration. Our infrastructure investments and services portfolio are fundamentally aligned to meet the customer goals. Simultaneously, we are continuously engaged with our customers to identify their specific needs and selectively recalibrating our propositions to support the same. Let me now expand on the business highlights for the quarter. The revenue split between the businesses for the quarter was data center co-location services at 32%, digital services at 28%, and network services at 40%. As on 31st December, 2023, SIFI has deployed 6,920 contracted SD-WAN service points across the country. SIFI provides services via 974 Fiber nodes across the country. a 15% increase respectively over the same quarter last year. This quarter, CV invested US dollars 0.15 million in startups in the Silicon Valley area as part of our corporate venture capital initiative. To date, the cumulative investment stands at US dollars 7.22 million. A detailed list of our key wins is recorded in our press release, now live on our website. Let me bring in Vijay, our Executive Director and Group CFO, to elaborate on the financial highlights for the quarter.
spk06: Vijay. Thank you, Kamal. Wish you all a very happy 2024. Let me briefly present to you the financial performance for the third quarter of financial year 2023-24. Revenue was INR 8659 million, a decrease of 3% over the same quarter last year. EBITDA was INR 1689 million, an increase of 4% over the same quarter last year. Loss before tax was INR 20 million and after tax was INR 14 million. These are compared to a net profit in the same quarter last year with a substantially higher depreciation on account of ongoing infrastructure expansion projects and interest cost. Capital expenditure during the quarter was INR We continue to invest in adding more data center capacity, extending our network footprint, and skilling our people on new tools. These investments are being made ahead of the curve and will reflect on our net profit for the near future. The interest on compulsory convertible debentures raised in our data center subsidiary for data center expansion has been accounted partly as equity in accordance with the gap and is recognized as expense in the statement of income. The cash balance at the end of quarter was INR 6037 million. I will now hand over to our chairman for his closing remarks. Chairman.
spk05: Thank you Vijay Kumar. As you can see our investments both in capital and resources are backed by our belief that the market is just warming up to our services. There is still a lot of runway, and we have the right portfolio of services. We just have to accelerate our engagement. Thank you for joining us on this call. I will now hand over to the operator for any questions. Operator?
spk01: Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.
spk00: Your first question for today is coming from Greg Burns with Sidodian Company.
spk02: Good morning. Could you just give us an update on your current data center capacity? How much, how many maybe megawatts of capacity you might have added in the quarter and what your roadmap is for the rest of 2024? Thank you. We have a
spk06: data center operational capacity across six cities and 11 facilities of about 100 megawatt. And this quarter, that is January 2024, we will be making another 38 megawatt facility operational. Apart from this, there are two other Greenfield data center projects at Delhi and Chennai, which will go live in quarter one of fiscal 24-25. In phase one, both of them will have a design capacity of about 26 megawatts each.
spk02: Okay. So the 38 megawatts, is that in Mumbai? I think that will go online soon. in this fiscal fourth quarter?
spk06: Yeah, it's going live January 2024, this month.
spk02: Okay. Okay, and I guess with this capacity coming live, do you expect to see a little bit better operating or earnings leverage next year now that you're going to start generating some revenue off of some of these investments you've been making?
spk06: Yeah, you're right. It should happen.
spk02: Okay. Okay. Great. And then the decline in digital services this quarter, was that mainly driven by the technology integration services? Was it just timing of projects? Is there anything else going on there that we should take note of?
spk06: Two things. One is it is timing of the existing projects in terms of effective handover to the customer. And second is a change in a conscious change in the profile of the technology integration services projects where the focus is largely on projects where there is services component, which is significant.
spk02: Okay. Okay. So given that change, are you just becoming more selective? How will that, I guess, translate into the P&L? Just lower growth, more selective, higher margin projects? Is that what you're looking for now?
spk06: Yeah. So it would basically mean less of pass-through projects and more of services projects, which should be higher margin projects.
spk02: Okay, great. And then with the COTAC investment, how much have you drawn down on that and how much remains available to you?
spk06: We have drawn down a total of 1,000 crores, out of which 400 crores has been deployed for projects we have executed in the last couple of years. 600 crores is meant for new projects which we are picking up And as per the arrangement, we are entitled to draw another 600 crores anytime up to October 2026.
spk02: Okay, perfect. And then you mentioned some industry regulations, positive industry regulations for you. I think One of those was the data security or data privacy regulation. Could you give us an update on that and maybe some other, any other pro-industry regulations that you might have been referencing in your prepared remarks? Thanks.
spk06: Yeah. So it is essentially the Data Protection Act, which is material development. Apart from that, all the regulators, have been encouraging enterprises to host their data within the country. And there is also an encouragement towards hosting these in clouds, which are set up outside of their premises. So most of the banks or insurance companies are developing their digital transformation strategies to host in clouds, which are largely private clouds hosted with data center providers like us.
spk02: Okay. What is the status of the Data Protection Act? Is it near the point of getting passed or is it, I guess, sorry, where is it in the process of being passed?
spk06: The law is live. The law is live as we speak. What is pending is the regulations relating to implementation of the law, which should hopefully come in the coming months.
spk02: Okay, perfect. All right. That's everything for me. Thank you.
spk05: Thank you, Greg. Thank you.
spk00: Once again, if there are any questions, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.
spk01: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1.
spk00: There are no questions in queue.
spk05: Thank you for your time on this call. Look forward to interacting with you through the year. Thank you very much.
spk03: Thank you, Holi. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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