Prime Securities FY26: A Charity Shop Called Investment Banking
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1. At a Glance
Prime Securities just printed a full-year profit of ₹13.16 Crore on revenue of ₹136.71 Crore. The catch? It lost ₹13.22 Crore in Q4 alone—a quarter that somehow managed to both exist and undermine the year’s math.
The stock trades at 73.6x earnings, perched on a merchant bank license, three acquisitions since mid-2023, and a balance sheet that looks tidy on paper but holds practically no debt. Working capital ballooned to 644 days—the company is now as much a financial museum as it is an operating firm.
Revenue grew 54% year-on-year (annualized from ₹88.98 Cr to ₹136.71 Cr), but profit fell 66% year-on-year. The gap between these two numbers is the story.
2. Introduction
Incorporated in 1982, Prime Securities operates as an investment bank and financial advisory boutique. It holds a Category 1 Merchant Bank License—authorized to advise on and arrange transactions in corporate finance, M&A, IPOs, QIPs, and debt placements.
The company has moved aggressively into new territory. In April 2023, it acquired majority stake in Bridgeweave Limited, a UK-based AI/ML company. By December 2023, its subsidiary Prime Research and Advisory acquired 60% of Prime Global Asset Management Pte Ltd (Singapore)—a fund management play aimed at global institutional investors and family offices. In October 2024, it entered wealth management via Prime Trigen Wealth. Most recently, December 2024 saw it acquire 41.68% of Ark Neo Financial Services.
The board also approved an Alternate Investment Fund in March 2025 and authorized a ₹600 lakh equity share buyback in January 2025.
MD & Group CEO is N. Jayakumar. In October 2024, Sailesh Balachandran and Maneesh Kapoor were appointed Joint CEOs.
3. Business Model: WTF Do They Even Do?
Prime Securities prints money from advisory fees. In FY23, the revenue breakup was: Merchant Banking & Advisory Fees (~51%), Restructuring Advisory Fees (~35%), Interest income from investments (~3%), Bank deposits (~7%), Gains on investments (~2%), Other (~1%).
It is a debt-placement, M&A-arranger, and corporate-restructuring outfit masquerading as a bank. The business model is commission-dependent and episodic—big deals in one quarter, silence in the next. This is why its quarterly sales swing from ₹12.33 Cr to ₹46.91 Cr like a pendulum in a hurricane.
The recent acquisitions (Bridgeweave, Prime Global, Ark Neo) suggest the company is trying to diversify beyond pure advisory. Wealth management is a hedge. A fund management arm in Singapore is a bet on the global institutional market. But these are new, unproven revenue streams layered onto a core business that just posted its worst quarter in three years.
The pattern is not seasonality. It is the absence of material revenue events in certain quarters colliding with fixed costs (employee cost ₹63.1 Cr in FY26, nearly half of revenue) and large one-time losses (Other Expenses spiked to ₹52.16 Cr in FY26 vs. ₹3.99 Cr in FY25).
5. Market Expectations & Historical Multiples
This section describes how the market is currently pricing the company and how that compares with its own history and peer group. It is descriptive, not
