Eyeing 24-25% growth for FY14: MT Educare CFO

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Yagnesh Sanghrajka, CFO, MT Educare spoke about the changes in the education industry and the company's performance in the last one year. He says MT Educare's entry in the IIT space has greatly increased their visibility.

Karnataka is a core growth strategy and they have added to the student count this year. "Things are looking good for this admission season," he said The company has also introduced a digital app called Robomate. Also Read: Tips to manage your education loan Below is the edited transcript of his interview with CNBC-TV18: Q: If you could give us some perspective in terms of what is happening in the industry because for last two days we have seen a lot of interest come into the education space. In terms of business how is this shaping up as we start the new financial year? A: Nothing substantial has changed in the education industry overnight but sector focus can come in anytime and we cannot predict that but internally we are seeing good movement. This is admission season for us, admissions are going on in schools, science and commerce section which is our leading verticals. So we are seeing good flow in terms of the admissions. This year looks pretty good so as we go on, more visibility comes to us in Q2 and that is the way we are looking internally. We are also launching a couple of new initiatives which are looking good to us. We have a digital app which is Robomate which is taking off this year. So we are quiet excited with the year going forward. Q: Do you know enough about the admission rush at this juncture to be able to extrapolate your numbers for FY14? 20 percent growth in revenues last year, will you do better? A: Yes this year should be better. Little north of 22-23 percent is visible right now, better than last year. School section the admissions have been complete and that is showing very good traction. Last year we launched IIT which is the new service being offered in Mumbai apart from acquiring Lakshya in Punjab. Our entry into IIT space, even though this being the first year of course, does add a lot of visibility to our science section. Karnataka pre university college model is looking extremely good. We have added five colleges here in addition to five that we already had. So this year we are adding lot of student count in Karnataka as well which is a core growth strategy for us going forward as well. So yes things are looking good for this admission season. Q: So in terms of numbers how would that translate into your full year financials or is it too early to talk about that? A: A little too early right now but internally what we are looking at is at least about 24-25 percent revenue growth. This year Lakshya being added, we are looking at easily crossing Rs 200 crore in terms of revenue. Yes, our operating margins have gone up by 100 bps last year, we have seen improvement in operating margins that we will continue to see. This year also we are expecting at least 75-100 bps of improvement in the operating margins. However because of our capex in the college there will be an incremental depreciation. But in spite of that we are hopeful of keeping our profit after tax margins definitely intact. That translates into a good EPS number for us. So we are expecting almost about Rs 5.8-6 of EPS as compared to Rs 4.5 last year.