Kissht Q1 AUM Up 61% YoY, PAT Rises 59%

AUM stood at ₹8,001 crores, representing a growth of 61% year-on-year and 13% quarter-on-quarter.
On-book AUM was ₹3,716 crores.
Off-book AUM was ₹4,284 crores, constituting 53.6% of the total AUM (up from 49.7% in the previous quarter).
The split between on-book and off-book AUM is 46:54.

Profit After Tax (PAT) was ₹95 crores, an increase of 59% year-on-year and 16% quarter-on-quarter.
Return on Average AUM was 5.05%.
Return on Average Equity was 21.20%.
Pre-Provisioning Operating Profit (PPOP) was ₹256 crores, up 42% year-on-year.
Total Income was ₹677 crores, up 45% year-on-year. As a share of average AUM, total income fell by 249 basis points quarter-on-quarter, a deliberate strategy.

Credit cost was 6.80% of average AUM, down from 7.02% in Q4 FY26 and 8.85% in Q1 FY26. The company is tracking towards its guidance of a 15% reduction in credit cost for FY27.
Stage 2 assets stood at 3.15%, improved from 3.9% year-on-year. The quarter-on-quarter increase was described as seasonal.
Gross NPA was 2.25% and described as "range bound".
Net NPA was 0.36%.
Collection efficiency was 96.82%.
Provisioning coverage is conservative: Stage 3 ECL coverage at 84.1% and Stage 2 coverage at 80.4%.

Registered users grew 33% year-on-year to 74.6 million.
Total customers served reached 12.25 million, an increase of 26% year-on-year.
Organic channel sourcing contributed 31% of new customers, up from 27% last quarter and an average of 23-24% for FY26.

Net worth grew to ₹2,245 crores, nearly four times its level in March 2023, built on retained earnings and the May 2026 IPO.
Capital Adequacy in the NBFC subsidiary rose to 40.2% from 25.3% last quarter, significantly strengthened post-IPO.
The company is supported by more than 45 lending partners.
Opex as a percentage of AUM improved to 18.0% from 19.9%, indicating operating leverage.

LAP AUM stands at ₹617 crores, accounting for 7.7% of total AUM.
The business operates across 101 branches in eight states.
It is described as a technology-enabled product featuring model-based underwriting, AI-validated property valuation, and smart document processing.
The company expects the LAP business to achieve breakeven by Q3 FY27.
Over 40% of LAP customers are sourced from the existing personal loan customer base.
The target ROE for the LAP business is 20%+.

The company's underwriting stack analyzes over 7,200 signals per borrower.
Underwriting models have evolved to transformer-based systems (similar to GPT) with an AUC (Area Under the Curve) of 74%, up from 66% in 2023. This performance is 2.5x better than using a bureau score alone.
In collections, AI voice agents now recover at more than 80% of human efficiency (up from 70%).
A multi-agent fraud system runs over 50 separate checks, including for deep fakes and forged documents.
AI-assisted support covers 100% of calls for quality and has cut response time to under 90 seconds.
More than 80% of the company's code is now written with AI assistance.

The company is deliberately acquiring a higher proportion of high-quality, lower-risk customers, who are priced lower, leading to a reduction in revenue margin but improved overall profitability.
The company paused lending in ~450 pin codes in the previous quarter based on early warning signals. It has since reopened 40% (180 pin codes) of these as signals turned modestly positive, while 270 remain paused.
The company has begun building capabilities in mutual fund distribution through a subsidiary that has secured AMFI registration, aiming to enhance fee income from its existing customer base.
Management reaffirmed its FY27 guidance for AUM growth, Gross NPA, credit cost, and profitability (ROE/ROA).
The long-term growth strategy focuses on the personal loan and LAP segments, with an aspiration to add new lending products (e.g., gold loan, business loan) over a decade-long horizon.

The reported cost of borrowing for the quarter was influenced by a change in calculation to a daily average basis and the timing of debt raises near the quarter-end.
One incremental debt raise in Q1 was done at a loaded cost of 12.9%.
Management guidance indicates an expected reduction in the overall cost of borrowing by a minimum of 100 basis points over the next three quarters, with the potential for a 200-300 bps reduction over three years.
The company is engaged with rating agencies (India Ratings, CRISIL) for a potential upgrade, which could meaningfully impact borrowing costs in FY28.

The Indian economy was described as "steady," which benefits lenders.
The RBI's neutral stance and unchanged rates provide predictability.
Two developments were noted for monitoring: geopolitical risk in West Asia potentially affecting oil prices and customer confidence, and the RBI's push on FCNR(B) deposits easing system liquidity.
Management noted a divergence in industry bureau data, with headline asset quality appearing benign but stress building in pockets, particularly in small-ticket loans and instances of multi-borrowing.