Tanla has suffered from a serious of issues and when it overcomes one, the next one is there.
- 2 years back there was intense competition leading to revenue fall and margin loss in NLD business.
- While the above has stabilized now, ILD business has tanked over last few quarters. At one time Tanla had 75% of revenue in this market. Now it has 25% possibly. Hopefully in Q1FY25, it will stabilize.
- New platform launches have not performed in general. Wisely ATP is same boat.
- Vodafone-Idea deal which was delivering ~70crores GM, is gone and last 5-6Cr/qtr will come in Q1 and then the platform business losses will be over
- Industry went through consolidation. Each of the acquired players such as valuefirst or Kaleyra would have been giving business to Tanla. Even TeleSign would have been giving. These business would have already gone away, or if any of Telesign is left, will go away in Q1.
- So, it seems in a way all the bad things that could happen, will be over and done by in Q1FY25. Last 2 years havent been great and the entire benefit of buying Valuefirst business somehow got lost in all these.
- Now for good part (nothing great) -
a) the industry has gone thru consolidation. No one will presently want to do price wars. All acquirers will be wanting to bring up EBITDA. Competition intensity will be lower.
b) The NLD business (incl OTT) is still growing in range of ~15%. Once all disruptions are through, this growth will start showing. Tanla with laser focus on domestion enterprise business might overperform and add marginal marketshare.At stable gross margin of around 20%, it can hopefully, be predictable once again. The international business of Valuefirst is yet to be consolidated and it will give some drag as its EBITDA -ve or breakeven business.
c) Tanla seems to be doing well in OTT - this is re-assuring.
d) The platform business after Vi impact in Q1 can start showing 20-25% growth from Q2 without much help from Wisely ATP. If Wisely ATP deals happen it can do a crazy jig over next few quarters (but better not to count anything from it at this point - even the management is clueless on when business will happen - whether domestic or international)
Basically the business results would return to normalcy with steady growth. Few quarters of steady growth should be re-assuring for investors. If it can do some good acquisition to broadbase its business - it will be good. They generate good cash and investment requirement is not much. Unfortunately with Tanla’s standalone balance sheet they can’t do much of buy-back, unless they merge in karix and valuefirst. They need to figure out some good acquisitions either in CPaaS itself or in somewhat related space.
In short better days ahead, but great days can’t be there, unless platform start performing.