1. At a Glance
Quick Heal is India’s OG antivirus brand that now seems to be fighting more viruses in its own P&L than on your desktop. Market cap? ₹1,010 crore. Current price? ₹186 — a 56% fall in one year. Five-year return: barely 4%. The company that once sat proudly on every PC now sits nervously on a stack of cash and hope.
Q3 FY26 brought a sigh of relief: ₹71.5 crore in revenue (+1.3% QoQ) and ₹6.6 crore in PAT (+5,909% QoQ). The EPS stood at ₹1.22, taking the annualised EPS (Q3 × 4) to ₹4.9 — which means a P/E ratio hovering near 38× annualised if the market forgets about its past sins. Debt? Zero. But so is the dividend.
Once a market darling with 30% share in Indian cybersecurity, Quick Heal’s stock now behaves like that antivirus pop-up everyone ignores.
2. Introduction
Quick Heal’s journey is the digital equivalent of a Bollywood hero who peaked in the 2000s and is now trying to reinvent himself on OTT. Founded in the dial-up era, the Pune-based company dominated India’s consumer antivirus market with the famous orange box. Then smartphones happened, cloud happened, and ransomware learned machine learning — but Quick Heal stuck with CD installs and reseller networks.
Fast-forward to FY26: it’s reinventing itself as a cybersecurity platform through its enterprise brand SEQRITE and AI-driven detection tools. The transformation, though, feels like watching Windows XP trying to run ChatGPT.
But credit where it’s due — the company has survived every storm, still has zero debt, ₹392 crore in reserves, and an R&D obsession that burns 46% of revenue. Now, it’s betting on Gen AI, Zero Trust, and government contracts to reclaim relevance.
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
Quick Heal operates two main segments:
1. Consumer Segment (63%) – classic antivirus, internet security, total security — basically software that shouts “threat detected” every time you open a pirated movie.
2. Enterprise & Government (37%) – operates under SEQRITE, offering endpoint
protection, data-loss prevention, network security, and managed threat response to corporates and ministries.
The company distributes through 300+ distributors and 35,000 dealers across 22 cities. No subscription economy, no SaaS billing — still heavily channel-driven, though R&D labs in Pune now build AI-powered solutions.
New toys include AntiFraud.AI, Seqrite Malware Analysis Platform, and Zero Trust Security Suites. If only the profit margins trusted the management equally.
4. Financials Overview
Quarterly Results – Consolidated (₹ crore)
(Figures are as reported; EPS annualised = Q3 EPS × 4)
| Metric | Q3 FY26 | Q3 FY25 | Q2 FY26 | YoY % | QoQ % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 71.5 | 70.6 | 73.5 | +1.3 % | –2.7 % |
| EBITDA | 9.2 | –3.8 | 9.2 | N.A. | 0 % |
| PAT | 6.6 | 0.1 | 7.9 | +5,809 % | –16 % |
| EPS (₹) | 1.22 | 0.02 | 1.46 | — | — |
| Annualised EPS | ₹4.9 | — | — | — | — |
Commentary:
That 5,909% profit jump looks like an AI hallucination — but it’s real, only because the base quarter was practically zero. Margins are recovering after two years in the ICU, but the company still needs CPR (Cybersecurity Profit Resuscitation).
5. Valuation Discussion – Fair Value Range Only
P/E Method
Annualised EPS (₹4.9) × Industry PE (40.1) → ₹196
Lower range (20×) → ₹98
→ Fair Value Range: ₹100 – ₹200
EV/EBITDA Method
EV/EBITDA = 62× (current). Sector average ~25×.
At fair 25×, EV ≈ ₹370 crore. Implied equity value per share ≈ ₹180.
DCF Snapshot (Simplified)
Assume FCF grows 8% CAGR, terminal 3%, discount rate 11%.
Intrinsic range ₹160 – ₹200.
📜 Disclaimer:
This range is purely educational
