Shares of Info Edge Ltd (Naukri) surged during the trading session on Monday to hit new all-time highs after the company shared its business updates for the period ended on March 31, 2023. The company informed about the same through an exchange filing on Sunday. Standalone billing for the quarter ended on March 31, 2023 came in at Rs 826.9 crore, up 10.45 per cent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis from Rs 748.6 crore in the March 2023 quarter, said Info Edge in the exchange filing. For the fiscal year 2023-24, standalone billings rose 5.47 per cent to Rs 2,495.9 crore, from Rs 2,366.3 crore in the previous year. On a segment-wise basis, the standalone billings of recruitment solutions grew 7.18 per cent YoY to Rs 625.4 crore for the March 2024 quarter, while it inched up 1.32 per cent YoY to Rs 1,883.2 crore for the FY24. Real Estate billings rose 26.4 per cent to Rs 131.1 crore. On a yearly basis, it grew 23.58 per cent to Rs 385.1 as of the year ended March 31, 2023. Other standalone billings rose 14.82 per cent for the January-March 2024 period at Rs 61.4, while they came in at Rs 227.5 crore for the April 2023-March 2024 period, increasing 16.07 per cent from the year ago. Following the update, shares of Info Edge fell more than 9.01 per cent to Rs 6,189, hitting its new all-time highs and commanding a total market capitalization of more than Rs 80,000 crore. The scrip had settled at Rs 5,677.25 in the previous trading session on Monday. Citi has upgraded Info Edge to 'buy' from 'sell' with a target price of Rs 6,650. It previously had a target price of Rs 5,150 in the counter. Nomura has maintained a 'buy' tag with target price of Rs 6,210 on Info Edge. Last week, domestic brokerage firm ICICI Securities gave a 'buy' call on Info Edge (India) with a target price of Rs 6,993 on the stock.
"Recruitment billings grew better than our expectations," said Nomura. "This comes on the back of 4.2 per cent, 1.4 per cent and -1.3 per cent YoY billings growth in Q1, Q2 and Q3, respectively," it said.
The company is fairly optimistic about the slowdown in IT hiring to have bottomed out given near-peak utilization levels among large IT services companies, companies considering starting campus hiring in FY25 and strong deal wins, it said. Nomura has cited a slow recovery in the recruitment classified vertical and poor performance of its listed investments, as key risks for the Naukri. Kotak Institutional Equities expects Naukri to report 3 per cent YoY revenue growth and 99acres to report 23 per cent YoY revenue growth. However, the sequential performance may remain flat. Other segments (JS and Shiksha) to report 17 per cent and 8 per cent yoy revenue growth, respectively, with JS monetization still remaining subpar, it said. "Non-IT sector to support continued weakness in IT sector for Naukri. We model EBITDA margin of 40.5 per cent, up 10 basis points QoQ and we expect Naukri EBITDA margin to be at 59.5 per cent up 50 bps qoq," Kotak added.