One deal away from turning EBITDA positive: Intellect Design

EBITDA loss widened due to a one-time internal marketing and promotional costs of Rs 6 crore, he said. On timeline for turning EBITDA positive, Jain says, 'the company is just one deal away'.Below is the verbatim transcript of Arun Jain’s interview to Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Latha: Why this lowered guidance and by quite a margin, from 22 percent to 26 percent, to 16 percent, to 22 percent, what is worrying? A: Let me address two investor concerns which is being raised. One is on the EBITDA positive; I think that is concern number one. Concern number two is why the guidance is lower. I think if you look at it, with volatility in the global market where the Brexit and Donald Trump phenomena, is creating uncertainty in the market for the decisioning of the digital investments. We have very healthy pipeline, we are confident, but we are cautious. So, we wanted to be there for the appropriate guidance and that is why we are seeing -- 23 percent remains there but on lower side is something that happens then we are reducing to 16 percent -- if anything happens in the post US election or anything on Brexit high courts and various things are happening which forces the bank to take and postpone such decisions. So, that is why the guidance is lower. However, 16 percent to 22 percent from the industry perspective, I think it is a fairly good guidance. Last sequential quarter of 14.7 percent is a proof of that point that our value proposition of being a digital leading player in fintech space is getting acknowledged in the marketplace.Latha: These two deals that have been deferred and two deals that were lost in this quarter had they anything to do with Brexit at all?A: Two deals deferred which is linked to the Brexit and global volatility phenomena, so we had 22 deals when we started, we had 3 deals we won, two deals we loss and two deals got deferred, so our win rate is 42 percent there. One thing is to be seen is that we have still won a UK deal, one of the largest insurance player of UK has given a digital transformation deal worth over 50 million pound over the next three years. That is where we see that there is a sliver line in that market place so we can’t generalise it, we can’t paint that UK is bad and no deals will be there. However, on another side the two deals in Europe got postponed and deferred for 2018 rather than 2017. So, we were expecting those deals should coming in 2017 they moved to 2018. So, that moved out of the bucket. So, out of 7 deal decided now we added 9 more deals to make it 24 definite deal bucket of Rs 50 crore, Rs 30 crore and Rs 20 crore. Overall we are very positive, our management team is very positive that we should be able to grow 18-22 percent in next 12 months. We are cautious about next two quarters, but next 12 months we are confident about 18-22 percent.For entire interview, watch accompanying video.