Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd

NSE:IBULHSGFIN

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited Q1 FY '23 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Investec. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhuvnesh from Investec. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Bhuvnesh Garg, analyst]

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. To discuss the financial performance for Q1 FY '23. And to address your queries, we have with us today Mr. Gagan Banga, Vice Chairman, MD and CEO; Mr. Ashwini Hooda, Deputy Managing Director; Mr. Sachin Chaudhary, Chief Operating Officer; Mr. Mukesh Garg, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Ashwin Mallick, Head Treasury; Mr. Ramnath Shenoy, Head IR; Mr. Veekesh Gandhi, Head Markets; and Mr. Hemal Zaveri, Head Banking.

I would now hand over the call to Mr. Gagan Banga for his opening comments. Over to you, sir.

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Thank you. A very good day to all of you, and welcome to the quarter 1 fiscal '22-'23 earnings call. I hope all of you and your families are doing well and are safe. Before we get into the numbers for the quarter, I will briefly give you an update on our operational performance. As a leader, there is no greater joy than to witness optimal execution of strategy towards desired results. Almost 3 years back, the management of the company took the decision to pivot its business model in a completely different direction. From having grown our balance sheet at a CAGR of over 20% for over a decade, we decided to shift to a balance sheet light model. We were amongst the first few companies to stick our neck out and declare that an asset-light model, a combination of co-lending and portfolio sell-down, partnership with banks is the future for nonbanks.

While at that time, we were met with mishears, now the point of view and commentary of businesses, lenders, investors as well as research analysts seems to have completely changed. Every nonbank lender today is looking to increase co-lending partnerships to take advantage of an equity-light model. Not only nonbanks, even the banks have realized the benefit of this model, and are wanting to increase their partnerships as well as are investing monies in implementing the technology platform for the solution. IBH has been a huge beneficiary of taking steps early and is clearly ahead of its peers in this race.

By the beginning of fiscal '22, the company had already tied up its intended co-lending partnerships and has started ramping up disbursals under the model from quarter 2 fiscal '22. With the partnerships maturing over the year and through its established originate and securitized model, the company reached a quarterly disbursal run rate of INR 1,500 crores through the asset-light business model in the second half of fiscal '22.

Normally, the first quarter is comparatively weaker for businesses than the fourth quarter. In spite of that, in quarter 1, fiscal '23, the company has scaled up its disbursals under the asset-light model to INR 2,260 crores. We have completed our co-lending tech integration with 3 partners and expect to complete the tech integration with the remaining 4 partners within the current financial year itself.

As tech integrations are completed, the pace of disbursals will scale up further. Total retail disbursals for the company in quarter 1 were at INR 3,000 crores. Our digital lending platform will help us expand our reach to Tier 3 and 4 towns through lean branches and aid in our target of adding 250,000 retail customers between fiscal '23 and '25.

Technology-backed underwriting will also help increase our efficiency and reduce our turnaround time of disbursing the loans. Overall, we are confident and on track to achieving our targeted retail disbursals of INR 15,000 crores during fiscal '23. Another point of delight for the management is that in line with our guidance, the AUM of the company is now on the right trajectory. We ended quarter 1 fiscal '23 with an AUM of a little over INR 73,000 crores. And we are now on track to grow it at about 10% for fiscal '23.

As I had guided in the past, under the asset-light model, our AUM will keep compounding while our balance sheet size and on-balance sheet loan book will stay flat or marginally reduce. The macro for residential real estate is also, as a backdrop, continuing to show growth momentum. As per a recent Knight Frank report, housing sales in the top 8 Indian cities recorded approximately 60% Y-o-Y growth in H1 calendar year '22 and approximately 19% growth compared to H2 calendar year '21. By volume, housing sales in the first half of calendar '22 reached a 9-year high in terms of half yearly sales. Residential project launches too showed growth momentum witnessing an approximate 56% Y-o-Y growth in H1 calendar '22 and 25% sequential growth.

As I mentioned during the last quarter's earnings call, we are continuing to scale up our capacity by adding manpower and opening new branches. In quarter 1, fiscal '23 on a gross basis, we added 657 new people to our workforce and opened 9 new branches. We are currently at a run rate of approximately INR 1,000 crores of loans per month. As employees get trained and productivity improves with vintage, we are on track to disburse and increase this number to about INR 1,500 crores by the end of the fiscal, without significant proportionate increase in manpower.

The commercial real estate market, too, has started showing strong growth momentum. In the first half of calendar '22, commercial office space absorption registered a growth of 107% Y-o-Y, with 25.3 million square feet office space getting transacted. New completions too picked up significantly with 24.1 million square feet space getting delivered in the first half of calendar '22 which is a growth of 61%. This is an opportune time for us to recommence doing our wholesale loan business. As I had mentioned in my last earnings call, we've already received SEBI approval for one of our AIF funds, through which we intend to disburse wholesale loans. For this fund, we've already finalized our first disbursement of INR 200 crores to a leading developer in North India. INR 200 crores per loan is the sweet spot that we see for the fund. The documentation for the said disbursal is underway, and we expect the disbursal to happen within August '22.

We also aim to launch and operationalize 2 more AIF funds within the current year, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals. Overall, the goal is to get to about INR 10,000 crores of annual disbursals through these 3 AIF funds. Combined through the retail asset-light model and the AIF model for wholesale loans, we should be able to grow our AUM by the guided 10% in fiscal '23. While we pursue both the tracks, we will continue with the exercise of derisking the balance sheet through reduction of the legacy wholesale book. We are on track to reduce it further by 20% by the end of the calendar year from March '22 levels.

As an important track on our institutionalization of the company, the de-promoterization of Mr. Gehlaut, the founder of the company, and its group companies have been approved by the lead lender of our working capital consortium. This was a key step in the overall process. We expect the complete process of de-promoterization to be completed within the current calendar, subject to the receipt of other requisite approvals.

I will now quickly cover the headline numbers for the quarter. I will request you to please refer to Slide 3. As at the end of June '22, our assets under management stood at INR 73,047 crores, while loan book stood at INR 60,194 crores. Since September '18 on a gross basis, IBH has successfully paid over INR 1 trillion to the system. As we did this, our net gearing has reduced from 7x in fiscal '18 to just 2.5x now. As I had mentioned during the last quarter, the net gearing will stabilize at the current 2.5x level, as incremental business will be done in an asset-light model, and the AUM should grow by about 10% in the current year. Our capital adequacy at the consolidated level stands comfortably at 34%, of which Tier 1 capital is 27.5%.

With the increase in repo rate by the RBI and in line with our industry peers, we raised our reference rate in our retail product by 140 basis points and on the wholesale product by 160 basis points. Of the total of 40 basis points of rate increase was passed on through the first quarter and the rest is being passed on in the current quarter. The rate increase resulted in our book spread, expanding marginally by 30 basis points at the end of quarter 1 fiscal '23.

Our cost of funds on book is standing at 8.1% and book yields at 10.8%. An increasing interest rate cycle is always beneficial for our spreads as over 99% of our advances are on floating rate basis, wherein we pass on the rate increase almost instantaneously, while a large part of our funding mix that from NCDs is on a fixed rate basis. The rate increase will thus help us to maintain our spreads or marginally improve it and also maintain/improve our net interest margins going ahead.

Our net interest margin on loan book for quarter 1 fiscal '23 was at 3.75%. And our PAT registered a Y-o-Y growth of about 2% and came in at INR 287 crores versus INR 282 crores last year. We continue to work diligently on maintaining a fortress balance sheet through the pillars of strong capital adequacy, low gearing, high liquidity and robust provisioning, which provides a strong base for growth in fiscal '23 and beyond.

Now please refer to Slide 6 of the earnings update for an update on asset quality. As at the end of June '22, our gross NPA stood at INR 2,159 crores, down from INR 2,318 crores in the previous quarter. Our net NPA stood at 1.71%. Our Stage 3 provision cover stands at 42% compared to 41% in the previous quarter. Our total provisions at INR 2,080 crores are at a healthy 3.5% of loan book, which is 2.8x of the regulatory requirement and 96% of gross NPAs. Higher provision cushion places the portfolio in a strong position to negotiate any macroeconomic uncertainty and provides a strong base for growth.

On the back of strong pickup in the real estate sector, the company has seen strong recoveries in the last few quarters, loans restructured under the restructuring framework 1.0 and 2.0 of the RBI have now reduced to just INR 74 crores from INR 155 crores while loans given under ECLGS have run down to INR 176 crores from INR 217 crores disbursed. We expect this trend to continue in the coming quarters as well. As such, these numbers are extremely, extremely small.

Our retail collection efficiency too has normalized to pre-COVID levels and stood at 98% -- 98.7% for quarter 1 fiscal '23. The pristine quality of retail assets turned out by Indiabulls has been the primary reason for its sell-down relationships to have remained strong and have grown over the years. We started disbursals under our asset-light model from fiscal '22 and the asset quality of these assets too has impressed our partners. Since fiscal '22, we have disbursed retail loans of INR 5,500 crores under the asset-light model and 90-plus delinquencies today stand at a very low number of 0.10% for these INR 5,500 crores of disbursals that we have done.

As communicated last quarter, we expect our overall gross NPAs to remain in the range of 3% to 3.5% for some time. As the AUM starts to grow, we expect stability in our gross and net NPAs. For fiscal '23, we expect credit costs to remain at between 100 to 150 basis points. And from fiscal '24 onwards, credit costs should reduce substantially from these levels.

Moving on to the next important pillar of our operations, liquidity and ALM management. As at the end of June '22, we had a liquidity buffer of INR 5,765 crores, which is approximately 10% of our loan book. Given the improving business environment and the relatively stable asset quality and funding access, the company has rationalized its liquidity buffer to minimize the negative carry and has utilized the liquidity for business development.

Coming to the topic of ALM management. As we've been discussing over the past few earnings calls, we had voluntarily created a reserve fund for repayment of the $350 million of -- worth of dollar bonds, which became due on 28th May 2022. On the due date, the dollar bonds were successfully repaid utilizing the proceeds of the voluntarily prefunded fixed deposits. We have repeatedly provided reassurance to all our debt investors that the company has a conservative approach to ALM management, and we plan well ahead for due repayments.

As mentioned, since September '18, we have repaid over INR 1 trillion to the system. The company's ALM management and liquidity planning does not assume refinance of domestic or international borrowings or term loans. IBH will continue to maintain a strong capital and liquidity position to provide comfort and confidence to its bondholders and other debt providers. In this principle, the company has decided that it will be setting up a similar voluntary prefunding arrangement for its ECB loan repayments due in fiscal '24 and FCCB repayments in fiscal '24 and '25.

Next week itself, we will create the first tranche of prefunded fixed deposits for the ECB loan repayments coming due in fiscal '24. As per RBI's master directions for housing finance companies, introduced in February '21, Indiabulls Housing was required to maintain a liquidity buffer in terms of liquidity coverage ratio of 50%. Against this requirement, the company's LCR stood comfortably at 246% as at the end of June '22. Please note that the liquidity coverage ratio is only bases the high-quality liquid assets maintained as defined by the Reserve Bank of India. The actual liquidity available with IBH was actually higher.

Our ALM as at the end of June '22 is published on Slide 7. The ALM is shown on a cumulative basis up to each bucket. We are positive across all buckets and will have a positive net cash of approximately INR 14,000 crores at the end of the first year. Our detailed 10-year quarterly ALM is in the appendix slides of the earnings update on Slide 16 to 20. This is the update for the quarter.

Our situation today reminds me of 2011 when our retail disbursals were in the same handle as today. Our ratings too were at the same AA level. And we, at that time, used to rely heavily on portfolio securitization to raise funds. The home loan lending rate at that time was between 9.5% to 10%. And the real estate cycle was in an uptrend. And most of the things are the same. We are today at a significantly advantageous position. The home loan lending rates are still in the corridor of 7.5% to 8%, and affordability has vastly improved on account of steady wage inflation and stable real estate prices.

But most importantly, Indiabulls today has a team which has a rich experience of over a decade in scaling up this product. This is the same team which took Indiabulls from being a new entrant in 2009 to being the third largest mortgage originator in the nonbank space. And that's a position that we continue to hold on to. The team is now fully geared to repeat its performance and take Indiabulls to again not only remaining the third largest mortgage originator, but becoming a multiple of the fourth and the fifth in terms of disbursements. The vast experience of the team will enable it to achieve this feat in lesser time than what we took during our first leg of growth.

I remember a couple of years back, I was part of a panel discussion at a conference where the panelist had asked me my thoughts on the future of nonbanks, given the liquidity constraints being faced by the sector post the IL&FS crisis. I had given a cricket analogy at that time that considering this as a test match, the nonbanks were in the period of the first 10 to 20 overs of the first day of the match where in the pitch assists the fast bowlers. There is swing and uneven bounce for the bowlers and the batsmen have to carefully play out these overs. While -- well, I can now say that we have very ably navigated those initial overs and the batsmen are all well set. The sun is now shining bright and the ball is coming nicely on to the bat. All we have to do now is to create a partnership and put on a good score on the board.

Similarly, all macro indicators are shining bright for the housing finance space and for Indiabulls. And all you have to do now is scale up our set asset-light model to bounce back to our glory days. As we do so, I'm confident that all our stakeholders, shareholders, lenders as well as employees will be duly rewarded for the faith that they have reposed in the company's management and its long-term growth journey.

With this, the IBH management team is now open for questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of [ Abhiram Iyer ] from Deutsche Bank.

[Unknown Analyst]

Congratulations on a good set of numbers. You mentioned that the liquidity buffer stands at around INR 5,700 crores. May I ask why this is a bit different from, say, the cash and investments of around INR 7,000 crores mentioned in the presentation on Slide 16. Is that a sort of difference in terms of some cash being restricted? And the second thing is you mentioned that you'll be setting up sort of similar arrangements for your other external borrowings, which are coming due in FY '24 and '25. Obviously, they're a long way away. But could you just give us some color on the time line for the same?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Sure. So there are 3 types of liquidity buffers that we track. There is one which is the regulatory buffer, which is high-quality liquid assets, which are defined by the RBI, where we have to maintain 50% of maturities. And as I mentioned, we are at over 250% there. Then there is an internal working where we look at all of our cash and investments and strip those to what is going to be available to us on a T+1 basis. So INR 5,700 crores are investments, which will be available to us on T+1 basis. These would be fixed deposits, investment in high-grade bonds, government securities, so on and so forth. There would be other investments, which would be stickier, which would appear in the line of investments that can't really be liquidated on a T+1 basis. This could be in inventories and stuff like that, which are not considered as part of our liquidity buffer. And therefore, we exclude that. And that's the differential, I believe, between the INR 7,000 crores and the INR 5,700 crores. Ramnath, correct me if I've answered this correctly or not.

[Ramnath R. Shenoy, executive]

Yes. That's correct.

[Gagan Banga, executive]

As far as repayments are concerned, we are particularly sensitive to overseas stakeholders. We have quarterly repayments which come up. The chunkiness of repayments have largely evened out. That said, there would be some ECB loans, which are dollar loans, which are lend to us by banks which are overseas. And then there are foreign currency convertible bonds. We've done 2 tranches of those. Again, those are invested by overseas investors. We believe the line of sight that local banks have on cash, et cetera, make them a lot more privy to information versus overseas lenders/investors. So for all of our overseas borrowings, we will follow a principle much like we did in our dollar bond repayment, which is 1 year before the repayment coming due.

On a quarterly basis, we will set aside 25% in terms of fixed deposits, such that fixed deposit four tranches of that can automatically convert into the repayment on the due date. The first such maturity will be of some dollar loans, which will -- for which we'll be setting aside approximately INR 500 crores per quarter, give or take, that number is roughly INR 2,000 crores in about a year's time from now. And starting next week, we will keep setting aside INR 500 crores a quarter, so that's 1 year from now, that INR 2,000 crores which is not a very large sum of money from a repayment perspective, but to give comfort to overseas lenders/investors, we will continue to follow this practice for all of our overseas borrowings.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of [ Hari ].

[Unknown Analyst]

[indiscernible].

[Operator]

We're not able to hear you clearly. A lot of disturbance.

[Unknown Analyst]

Can you hear me now?

[Operator]

Yes.

[Unknown Analyst]

They say that the more and more boring investor calls become the more dependable, consistent and on-message the management team is, and I want to congratulate you because this is getting into a good groove here where you're addressing the same set of issues continuously, and you appear to be doing what you're saying and saying what you're doing. That said, I have a couple of observations. Number one is, can you tell me what is the size of the legacy loan book, which you said you would reduce by a further 20% by calendar? What is left?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Yes, roughly $2 billion.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And the reason I ask is I want to go back to what I mentioned in the previous call. The price to book of the company, as I speak to you as of close of business today is 0.35. So the company has a market cap now about, call it, INR 58 billion, whereas if it's given 1 book, it should be at 165. So roughly there's INR 108 billion haircut on -- for whatever set of reasons, but if we were to attribute purely to the concerns about the legacy book, et cetera. So related to that, here's my first question. You said that you accomplished a reduction in this quarter. Can you tell me very roughly what percentage of the recoveries -- what was the percentage of recovery? In other words, if you sold INR 100 worth of these legacy loans, what are you recovering, are you recovering pretty close to 100% or 90% or 80%? Or how does that compare to the provisions you have in the book?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

So [ Hari ], we carry provisions of approximately INR 2,800 crores. This book is worth about INR 15,000 crores. So we carry almost like 18%, 20% of this book is provided in some sense. What gets into NPA, we are generally being able to recover anywhere between 70% to 80% of what's going into NPA. This book has been static for a while and therefore, the slippages into NPA are going down on an incremental basis, which is reflected in the stability of the gross NPA, et cetera. And our recoveries from whatever we've classified in the past is nonperforming, that also continues. So I continue to believe, as I've said to you in our previous calls that the company's valuation today is locked and cannot be an outcome of the fact that the market expects us to lose INR 10,000 crores on this book. The fact of the matter is that if this entire book is to, tomorrow, in theory, become an NPA despite not having being an NPA while the worst period of the rate cycle was on, we will lose around INR 3,000 crores, which we already keep as provisions. So net-net, we will lose nothing on our -- neither on our earnings nor on our capital.

And hopefully, that's sort of an extreme worst case that we are speaking about here. I believe that the market needed to see some sort of stability in our AUM. This is the first quarter after 15 quarters that the AUM has stabilized and that should give a bit of comfort to the market. And as we grow this AUM now, we are -- I'm quite hopeful that the price to book catch up to at least 1x book will happen sooner than later. My belief continues to remain that the overhang on the price is because of lack of buyers.

Buyers today are looking for growth. We are finally at least remain -- come back to stability. And we should, hopefully, in a quarter or two get back to growth as well. The good news is that for the first time in our history, the influential high net worth investor in India, who is also an opinion-maker. These are the type of investors who are now coming in into the stock at these levels. And this is something that we had permanently lacked, which is why the volatility in the stock used to be very, very high. These guys have their ears on -- these investors have their ears on the ground. They have access to management. They know exactly how our disbursals are panning out. Their [ final checks ] are that much more easily done. And since they are operating in the local environment, it happens. If we are able to continue to create a base of domestic investors, I'm sure this catch-up will happen even faster. And that's what personally I am focused on right now basis advice of well-wishers such as you. So that's how I would like to summarize this.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. No, because it seems to me that the more granularity you provided on the fact that the level -- the pace and the level at which you -- and the amount of recoveries you're getting as you derisk this book, the discount should, obviously, disappear because there is no other reason to believe -- and even Moody's, et cetera, have commented about quality in the wholesale loan book. And so I think you're on the right track, but it just seems to me that this is a very unjustified haircut to the book value, which as the market understands and you provide more granularity, hopefully, will go away and get the stock to a much more sensible level.

I have one other quick question. Look, the -- I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. There's been recent concern about rupee weakness. You do have a certain amount of dollar obligations. My recollection from the past is that you're fully hedged and you're not exposed to FX rate. Is that correct?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

That is absolutely correct. We are fully hedged. And we've hedged it at pretty sensible levels. Today, towards -- in our Board meeting, this is also a topic of discussion, and we were pleased to inform the board that our hedges have worked out beautifully for the company. So there is absolutely no risk that we carry, irrespective of the movement of the rupee. And that's the principle we have historically followed, and we will continue to follow.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Kayur Asher from PNB MetLife.

[Kayur Asher, analyst]

My question has been partly answered. But could you throw some light on the plans regarding a potential equity raise or funding via convertible debt? I understand this was also one of the key Board agenda.

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Yes. So at this point in time, we chose to defer this. There is no immediate plan. There was -- this was considered actively at the Board level. And -- but given our current capital adequacy at give or take 35%, we feel that equity or convertible is not the way to proceed. That said, if there has to be any sort of dilution, it would happen -- at least in the near term, I expect it to happen more as an outcome of a strategic discussion. That can't ever be taken off the table. That's something that would only provide stability to the company. But aside of that, a typical capital market raise is not something that we're looking to do any time in the near future. We would want the return on equity to at least double from here before we consider any such corporate action.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Shabad Thadani from Arkkan Capital.

[Shabad Thadani;Arkkan Capital;Investment Analyst, analyst]

Congrats on a decent set of numbers. Just a couple of questions from my side. One is on the wholesale book. The reduction of 20% that you talked about, can you just give me a sense of how much of that you expect to be driven by repayments from the borrowers just given the pricing that you're taking? Or how much of that is by virtue of transfer of assets out to ARCs and so on?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Shabad, all of this will be through [ regular ] repayments. There's no transaction structured or any other which we are factoring in. In normal course, there is refinance that some of these borrowers will end up doing, but that's a normal course of business that's more led by the borrower than by us. I do know that there is a $200 million refinance, which is being worked out by one of our large borrowers. So if that is to happen, they would be -- 50% of our 20% target will be met by just that one transaction, but that's not at our behest, that's at the behest of the borrower. So we expect regular repayments and whatever actions borrowers have to take for this 20% reduction, we are not looking at doing anything out of the normal course of getting our repayments as per the schedule.

[Shabad Thadani;Arkkan Capital;Investment Analyst, analyst]

Okay. And then just a follow-up on that. Some of the provisions that you've taken, obviously, over the last 12, 24 months have been with respect to that particular portfolio, right? So as those repayments start coming in, would you see an unwind of some of those provisions start flowing back through the income statement?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Not at least in fiscal '23. And -- so I would say not at least in the next 1.5 years. We are going to look very hard at the hardening interest rate cycle to see how demand plays out while one expects that home loan rates should not go beyond 9%. But if they are to go beyond 9%, then does demand come off? If demand comes off, all the momentum that we are seeing on the real estate portfolio side, does that get affected? So we will wait and watch as to how interest rate transmission happens. There has been a 140 basis points hike in just about 4 months.

So we do know that there is going to be some sort of pushback as far as home loans are concerned, how big is that pushback? Is it of significant value? Does it impact the sales cycle on the real estate side? That's something that one would need to watch out over the next 6, 12 months before one can take any decision around provisions. So right now, as I guided this year, we expect 100 to 150 basis points of credit costs and next year, that to come down, but no unwinding per se to happen at least for the next 1.5 years.

[Shabad Thadani;Arkkan Capital;Investment Analyst, analyst]

Okay. And then just last question. I think last quarter, you had guided to about INR 2,000 crores to INR 3,000 crores of retail and CDs being placed into the market during the course of fiscal '23. Obviously, market dynamics have changed now. So do you think you need to start looking for replacement channels or financing for that? Or was that just more of [ gravy ] that you can run the business with?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

So what I recollect, I have said that we will do about INR 2,000 crores to INR 3,000 crores of total bonds. I'd also mentioned that we were going to do one INR 500 crore 10-year bond, which we have already done about a month back. We would continue with a quarterly cycle of public issues, each of which should garner anywhere between INR 100 crores to INR 200 crores. So let's say, optimistically INR 1,000 crores is coming from there and the balance happening through private placements. That's how I would like to look at the bond issuance process. But to that end, I see no reason why we will not be able to achieve this.

Now that the results are out over the course of the next 2 weeks, we will do our first public issue. We should be able to do 4 such issues in the full year and garner anywhere around INR 800 crores to INR 1,000 crores through that. And that should continue any which way. So that number of about INR 2,000 crores should happen despite the increase in interest rates or volatility in the bond markets.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of [ Sonika Ajwani ] from Indiabulls -- I'm sorry, a shareholder.

[Unknown Shareholder]

Can you hear me?

[Operator]

Yes, yes.

[Unknown Shareholder]

Gagan, your results are really good. Just want to check what you're doing something for the shareholder. I've been holding shares for the last 3 years, and the shares are all going down. Every quarter, we hear a lot of good things, right? But the value of the share is still, if you compare it for the last 3 years, it's been going back to that.

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Thanks for holding on to the shares and thanks for being a shareholder and a supporter. As management, we had to, over the course of the last 3 years, recalibrate the entire business, as I mentioned. Years ago, we started this journey of recalibration and building an asset-light business model. I remember it was October '19 that we spoke about -- early October '19 that we spoke about this asset-light business model. In around 3 years, we've got it to a reasonable level of scale.

And as we get to -- get past this INR 1,000 crores a month to INR 1,500 crores a month, just the retail franchise value 250,000 customers, high-value customers being added, it has a lot of -- creates a lot of franchise value, which should end up in the catch-up of at least the company going back to 1, 1.5x price to book, which is where I see us going back in the short term. So I think now that -- as I mentioned a short while back, now that the AUM has sort of stabilized and should grow hopefully for -- at a rate of about 10% for the year, we should be able to get and convince some investors on the positive side to look at us as a growth storm.

And I think that's the best way to position us and that would be the endeavor of the management besides focus on continuing to perform on a fundamental basis. Markets, unfortunately, are beyond our direct control, so aside of this, there is very little I can do, but you have my assurance that we continue to work very, very hard to make sure that we are walking the talk, what we are saying we are doing and what we are doing we are saying. So that's how we will continue to operate.

We'll take one last question, and then we have to run.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of [ Mahendra from Kanakia ].

[Unknown Analyst]

Hello? Hello? Am I audible?

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Yes, Mr. [ Mahendra ].

[Unknown Analyst]

My questions are company granted stock option at INR 96 at very low price compared to book value, intrinsic value and even lower than your own were -- low share price baffles me. Why not at the promoter selling price of INR 269? Why not at year high? Why not at average price? What price the company repurchase a share? And why not at that price? This is a clear cut case of transfer of shareholder wealth to hold the [ repays ] of shareholders.

Number two, the company was kicked out of NIFTY 50, lost AAA, destroyed shareholder wealth by more than 90% from the all-time high. EPS is about 1/4 of all-time high EPS even though now the capital per share is higher. Currently, very low ROE but higher salary and perks to the management and board. September 3, 2020, slide presentation shows that dividend of INR 43 for 2023, and INR 58 for 2024, but even now earnings may not be even that much. Due to all these failures, management and board must resign if they are on a mission to inflict the pain and destroy the shareholder wealth.

Number 3, the last. Start paying interim dividend, put the company on sale, start treating shareholder like partner, owner in Warren Buffet terms, start buying back shares and not selling shares at ridiculously low price and lower than your own words, low price baffles me. Selling price of less than book value is not acceptable. All you must be realizing now that how dare can shareholder wealth destroying decisions were made to sell not onetime, but two times FCCB and paying interest in hedging [indiscernible] higher than the rate of -- you are lending the money. So these are my questions.

[Gagan Banga, executive]

Sir, you are, obviously, paying because of the way that the stock has performed and as I'd explained to the previous gentleman who had asked the question that we are trying to recalibrate the company. The company's true resources, who were trying to recalibrate the business, trying to build a granular business, are the hundreds and thousands of employees who are the beneficiaries of these employee stock options. It's not as if the promoter is getting anything. It is professionals who are running the company on a daily basis, who are managing our branches, who are engaging with our customers and are creating the franchise or recreating the franchise who are benefiting, hopefully.

The same employees have also exercised options at INR 1,200 and INR 1,600 and so on and so forth. So as a retention tool, all financial institutions have to periodically give stock options and those stock options would be based on the price of the day. They can't be offered at a discount. Otherwise, the hit would come on the P&L. So we are careful that no hit comes on the P&L. And that's something that we would continue to do.

As far as management is concerned, management had taken through the period of COVID very steep salary cut, which was restored only a couple of quarters back and not even restored, even today, I'm earning about 50% of what I used to -- less than 50% of what I used to earn. So -- and same I can say for my other senior colleagues. If you have to -- if you lose talent, we will not get anywhere. That said, we will continue to make efforts towards trying to claim back our glory days, as I had mentioned in my comments. And hopefully, the stock will perform, and hopefully, you will get good returns on your investments. That's the only commitment that I can provide to you at this stage.

With that, I would like to thank everyone for supporting the company. We've had a reasonably good quarter. And hopefully, we should come back with an even better performance in quarter 2. Thanks for your support, and I look forward to speaking with you again after our quarter 2 results. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.