Vertoz FY26: Revenue Climbed 15%, Profit Stood Perfectly Still, and the Borrowings Quadrupled

General information and entertainment, not investment advice. The author is not a SEBI-registered adviser or research analyst. No recommendation, no promised returns. Markets carry risk including loss of capital. Figures may not be current. Consult a registered adviser before acting.

1 — At a Glance

Vertoz closed FY26 with consolidated revenue of ₹291.86 Cr, up from ₹254.42 Cr — a 14.7% climb that, on its own, reads like a growth story. Then you reach the bottom line. Net profit came in at ₹26.07 Cr against ₹26.01 Cr the year before: a gain of six lakh rupees on a company this size, which is the financial equivalent of standing still for a full year and calling it cardio.

The reason sits in plain sight on the data sheet. Interest cost more than doubled, from ₹2.32 Cr to ₹5.51 Cr. Depreciation rose from ₹13.35 Cr to ₹16.01 Cr. Tax climbed from ₹2.22 Cr to ₹5.76 Cr. Operating profit genuinely improved — EBITDA reached ₹53.40 Cr against ₹43.56 Cr — but everything below the operating line ate the difference.

Borrowings are the other headline. They went from ₹21.16 Cr to ₹88.12 Cr in twelve months, roughly a fourfold jump, against a net worth of ₹228.34 Cr. The market currently pays 12.4x earnings here, below the peer median of 18.7x.

A company growing its top line while its profit refuses to follow is one of the more honest tensions a balance sheet can present. Whether the EBITDA strength eventually reaches shareholders, or keeps getting absorbed by financing and reinvestment, is the question FY26 leaves open.

2 — Introduction

Vertoz Limited was incorporated in 2012 and describes itself as an AI-driven platform in MadTech and CloudTech — serving advertisers, publishers, and agencies across digital marketing, advertising, and monetisation. It was India’s first publicly listed AdTech company, originally on NSE Emerge before migrating to the Main Board. The company changed its name from Vertoz Advertising Limited to Vertoz Limited on 29 July 2024.

The corporate structure is, to put it gently, generous. The consolidated FY26 statements roll up 49 subsidiaries and step-down subsidiaries across India, the USA, UAE, UK, and Hong Kong — a forest of LLCs and Incs that would take longer to read aloud than this section.

FY26 was an eventful year on the announcements wire. In February the company completed an 80% acquisition of Webimax LLC, a New Jersey-based digital marketing firm. In May the board approved the FY26 audited results, appointed Mrs. Nupur Joshi as Company Secretary, and declared the company’s first-ever dividend. By June, Vertoz had filed its fourth patent application in India and flagged that it was exploring fund-raising options.

The through-line, per management’s own framing in the February concall, is a repositioning: Vertoz says it is “no longer just an advertising-led business” and now operates across advertising, media monetisation, digital identity, and cloud infrastructure.

3 — Business Model: WTF Do They Even Do?

Strip away the slide-deck poetry and Vertoz does two broad things. The MadTech side is advertising and marketing technology — programmatic ad-buying through a platform called IngeniousPlex, an affiliate platform, a DOOH (digital out-of-home) platform, an ad exchange, and audience-monetisation tools. The CloudTech side is domain and cloud infrastructure, where through its Connect Reseller platform the company claims to be the world’s second-largest player in domain processing, managing 3.48 lakh active domains.

By its own count it serves over 25,000 MadTech customers and 18,000+ CloudTech customers, reaching 350 million+ audiences. Clients named in its materials include Network18, Swiggy, Axis Bank, and Mahindra.

Here is the structural reality the numbers expose. Of FY26’s ₹243 Cr-odd of expenses, the single dominant line is direct service / manufacturing expense at roughly ₹186 Cr in FY25 terms — this is fundamentally a business that buys media and resells it with a layer of technology on top. Operating margin landed at 16.7% for the year. Respectable for a reseller; thin for the “AI-driven platform” the branding promises.

The model’s tell is the receivables. Trade receivables sat at ₹81.6 Cr at year-end on ₹291.86 Cr of sales — meaning a meaningful chunk of “revenue” is money customers have agreed to pay rather than money in the bank. Debtor days ran at 102. For a company that processes 13.71 billion queries per second, getting customers to pay an invoice apparently still moves at human speed.

Does a 49-subsidiary structure spanning four continents make a ₹292 Cr revenue business more resilient, or simply harder to audit? FY26 doesn’t answer; it just adds the 49th name to the list.

4 — Financials Overview

Figures are consolidated, in ₹ crore.

The story is entirely in the gap between the second row and the third. EBITDA grew at 22.6% — faster than revenue — which is what operating leverage is supposed to look like. PAT grew 0.2%. By the arithmetic on the data sheet, the ₹9.84 Cr of incremental EBITDA was consumed by ₹3.19 Cr more interest, ₹2.66 Cr more depreciation, and ₹3.54 Cr more tax. The