CRISILNSEApril 24, 2026

CRISIL Limited

12,435words

107turns

11analyst exchanges

0executives

Key numbers — 40 extracted

rs,

tative guidance on its future performance. Further, in the interest of fair disclosures to investors, operational details relating to specific business segments, customer contracts will not be possibl

7.1%

r opportunities for our businesses. Crisil expects India's GDP, Gross Domestic Product to grow at 7.1% in the base case for this fiscal, compared with 7.6% in the last fiscal. We see increasing down

7.6%

dia's GDP, Gross Domestic Product to grow at 7.1% in the base case for this fiscal, compared with 7.6% in the last fiscal. We see increasing downside risk to our base case with the current ongoing con

6.8%

ent West Asia conflict and disruption prolongs through April, we expect the GDP growth to slow to 6.8% this fiscal. On the inflation front, we project an average of 4.5% in Fiscal 2027, with the poten

4.5%

pect the GDP growth to slow to 6.8% this fiscal. On the inflation front, we project an average of 4.5% in Fiscal 2027, with the potential to touch 4.7% depending on the duration and the impact of th

4.7%

On the inflation front, we project an average of 4.5% in Fiscal 2027, with the potential to touch 4.7% depending on the duration and the impact of the conflict. And finally, the Rupee has been under p

3.2%

the global economy is navigating a complex environment. We forecast global growth to moderate to 3.2% in 2026. Against this backdrop, the US economy is expected to remain resilient, growing to 2.2% i

2.2%

o 3.2% in 2026. Against this backdrop, the US economy is expected to remain resilient, growing to 2.2% in 2026. This is supported by its energy independence, strong domestic consumption, and investm

11.9%

operations continues to demonstrate healthy momentum. For Financial Year 25, our revenues grew by 11.9% year-on-year, reflecting broad-based performance across all businesses. The momentum has strength

30.1%

across all businesses. The momentum has strengthened further in Quarter 1 FY26, with revenues up 30.1% year-on-year, aided by both underlying business growth as well as certain timing effects that I w

12.4%

fects that I will touch upon shortly. Moving to profitability, our profit before tax increased by 12.4% in full year 25, indicating disciplined cost management alongside continuing to invest in our gro

35.7%

gside continuing to invest in our growth agenda. In Quarter 1 FY26, our profit before tax grew by 35.7% year-on-year, supported by operating leverage resulting in improved margins. At the profit after

Guidance — 20 items

Amish Mehta

opening

“If the current West Asia conflict and disruption prolongs through April, we expect the GDP growth to slow to 6.8% this fiscal.”

Amish Mehta

opening

“On the inflation front, we project an average of 4.5% in Fiscal 2027, with the potential to touch 4.7% depending on the duration and the impact of the conflict.”

Amish Mehta

opening

“We forecast global growth to moderate to 3.2% in 2026.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“The momentum has strengthened further in Quarter 1 FY26, with revenues up 30.1% year-on-year, aided by both underlying business growth as well as certain timing effects that I will touch upon shortly.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“In Quarter 1 FY26, our profit before tax grew by 35.7% year-on-year, supported by operating leverage resulting in improved margins.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“At the profit after tax level, we delivered a 12.6% growth in full year 25 and a robust 45.9% growth in Quarter 1 FY26.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“There are two specific items in Quarter 1 FY26 that I would like to call your attention to for better context of the numbers in Quarter 1.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“Quarter 1 FY26 includes a foreign exchange gain of INR14.4 crores compared to a loss of INR5.2 crores in the first quarter of the corresponding quarter last year.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“Second, I think the accelerated closure of renewals in one of our global businesses has led to incremental revenues of approximately USD4.5 million in quarter 1 FY26 when compared to the same quarter of last year.”

Dinesh V.

opening

“As mentioned, this is largely a timing effect, and we expect this to normalize over the course of the rest of the year.”

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Risks & concerns — 15 flagged

We see increasing downside risk to our base case with the current ongoing conflict.

— Amish Mehta

On the inflation front, we project an average of 4.5% in Fiscal 2027, with the potential to touch 4.7% depending on the duration and the impact of the conflict.

— Amish Mehta

And finally, the Rupee has been under pressure.

— Amish Mehta

This led to a decline in bond issuances in the second half of calendar year 2025, which offset the Y-o-Y increase in the first half, resulting in flattish growth for the year.

— Subodh Rai

The impact of West Asia conflict reflects in India's manufacturing PMI, which plummeted to 53.9 in March 2026, marking its lowest level since June 2022.

— Subodh Rai

The gross NPA ratios which were elevated at 7.5% in FY21 amid COVID disruptions and legacy corporate stress have steadily declined to about 2% by FY26.

— Priti Arora

Now, this has been driven by many factors; the IBC-led resolutions, the tighter underwriting, structural shift towards retail portfolios alongside corporate deleveraging, reducing the incidence of large ticket stress.

— Priti Arora

The prolonged elevated energy prices could pressure borrower cash flows and raise stress risk in the select retail and MSME pockets and sectors which have significant dependence on crude, crude derivatives, and natural gas as inputs.

— Priti Arora

Some moderation has been visible recently amid the market volatility and a more cautious investor stance.

— Priti Arora

The leverage which peaked in FY20 due to the weak earnings, but the recovery phase saw strong EBITDA growth and debt reduction through internal accruals.

— Priti Arora

We estimate the corporate profitability to remain almost flat in fiscal 2026 and decline by around 100 basis points in FY 2027, primarily impacted by the West Asia crisis- related disruptions.

— Priti Arora

The segment delivered a strong Q1 Financial Year '26, reflecting sustained demand for analytics-led advisory and technology-enabled risk solutions across geographies.

— Dinesh V.

Crisil Integral IQ continued to see healthy demand for risk and credit lending solutions, while Crisil Intelligence maintained strong momentum in data analytics, consulting, and credit and risk offerings, supported by both domestic and international clients.

— Dinesh V.

We focus on security, privacy, model risk controls, and human-in-the-loop protocols.

— Amish Mehta

Furthermore, uncertain environments typically increase demand for credible risk opinions and insights, and this should augur well for our ratings and intelligence businesses.

— Sanjay Chakravarti

Q&A — 11 exchanges

Congrats for the great set of numbers and thanks for taking my question. I appreciate the color that you have shared in terms of your embedding Gen-AI in your products, but it would be very helpful if you could kind of, describe in greater detail the opportunities and threats from AI in each of your businesses, right from say India Ratings, GAC, Crisil Integral IQ, Crisil Intelligence, and Coalition Greenwich. Because what we understand is that, you know, each of these businesses will have its own nuances and some may be more vulnerable to AI compared to others, and the productivity gains also

Amish Mehta

Thanks, Balaji. I think like I mentioned, I think Gen-AI for us is a way to open more doors, to improve our competitiveness and drive better value for our clients and for ourselves. So, while Gen-AI increases the availability of generic content and basic synthesis, trust, proprietary data, and the defensible methodologies, regulatory credibility, and the human judgment, given the expertise, that we bring across the work that we do. I think they become even more critical as differentiators. Across businesses, we see opportunities outweighing risk, as long as Gen-AI is deployed responsibly and i

Yes, thanks for the opportunity. So, my first question is with expansion of scope in the GAC engagement with S&P, could you just help us understand the unit economics of the business, particularly in terms of what is revenue margins?

Amish Mehta

This is a business where we partner with S&P Global Ratings. We've been doing this for more than 20 years, I think we are in our 23rd year. This is a business where we work at a transfer pricing fixed margin on the cost that we incur, and it is benchmarked with, whatever in the industry that we operate. So here the idea is to go and add value to our clients, being able to drive larger growth opportunity not only within S&P Global Ratings, but to do work beyond S&P Global Ratings. And I think that's what we've been able to expand with some of the other divisions of S&P Global. We are trying to

Yes, thanks for the opportunity. Can you hear me?

Management

Yes, so one of the key growth levers that we discussed is basically increasing wallet share across the segments and that is within core markets, adjacent offerings and newer client segments and geographies. So could you elaborate on specific opportunities that are targeted in each of these areas and how company's executing on them? And additionally, which new client segments and geographies are currently strategic priority for the company?

Amish Mehta

So let me address the second question first. I mean, like I mentioned we have grown, we've opened up the West Asia market, the Middle East market specifically. We are also evaluating growth in the private markets, we're trying to drive growth in regionals, both in US and Europe and around the globe. And these are regional banks which are beyond the top 20 corporate banks, the corporate investment banks. So I think there is an opportunity in different segments that we are trying to drive. We are focused across every market where there is growth in the financial services sector and in banks. The

Comments, some comments on the RAS business side, some total what kind of growth will you see? Because last year was about a 9% to 10% growth year before that was flagged. So, any directional comments may not be giving out a number, but some directional comments on growth in this piece?

Amish Mehta

So, I think the overarching comment I would make is that we are wanting to drive consistent growth across all our businesses. And we believe there is opportunity to grow across all our businesses. Whether it is the rating segment, or it is the research analytic solution segment. Whether it is the intelligence business in India, or the global Coalition Greenwich business, or the global Integral IQ business. Each business have got their own growth drivers, own value drivers, for different market environment to operate it. So, like we mentioned that in the first quarter this year, you've seen the

Hi. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. So, my first question is on the ratings business. Now, consistently, the business, the revenues are growing upwards of, you know, 16- 17%. So, I'd really appreciate if you could kind of spend some time to explain what's driving this growth. Because when we look at the broader parameters in terms of resales volumes or even the large corporate credit growth, it doesn't seem to be kind of suggesting a similar level of growth. So, is it the mix or the pricing or if you're kind of gaining market share, that would be really helpful? And I'll take my second ques

Subodh Rai

Okay. So, I'm assuming you're referring to the performance in Q1 of this year. Yes, sir. So, if you look at the revenue growth, it is largely driven by a pretty robust surveillance revenue, and also to an extent by new rating revenues. When it comes to surveillance revenue, in general, it is driven by the new rating revenues performance in prior year. So, for example, in, what you're going to see in ‘26 will be largely driven by the new revenues we did in 2025 and partly what we did in ‘24. In those years, we had very strong momentum on new revenue. So, that is now reflecting in fairly strong

Yes, sir. Good evening. I have two questions. The first one is on the ratings front. If you look at the last 5 years, what is the rough price increase you might have taken on a CAGR basis on a 5-year block period? So that is question one. And the second question is that with respect to growing the business inorganically, if you were to evaluate the white spaces that exist today, what are those and by when do you think you plan to build those?

Subodh Rai

First question on pricing side, pricing is fairly you know, I'll say a complex subject depends on time to time how the situation in the market, etcetera. That decides, I mean there's no particular trend that I can share with you for the last 5 years. Like I said you know, we work on pricing in a very disciplined manner. That's all I can share with you. Yes, I mean clearly I intend to make sure that we are covering inflation, the value of our work that we do, and be able to continuously sustain margins in the right fashion while delivering value to our clients. I think the second question that

Thanks. High-level question. We've seen a few acquisitions by Crisil India and some of them have been global acquisitions. So on a allocation basis, when these are global acquisitions, what is the thought process that goes in wherein the acquisition will be done by Crisil India or will it be done by the parent?

Amish Mehta

So I think of areas where Crisil operates in, those businesses where Crisil operates in, if there's an acquisition that makes sense for Crisil, we will evaluate that and that is the acquisition that we will go for. I think we are very clear, it should help enhance our strategy, accelerate our strategy in the businesses that we offer and I think that's how we look at every acquisition opportunity which comes. So is there a overarching principle when the acquisition will be by the S&P and when it'll be because there are obviously areas which are overlapping? There is hardly any area of overlap,

Thank you so much for the opportunity and congratulations on a great set of numbers for the quarter and on the calendar year as well. So, my question is on like, if you could quantify what proportion of your analytical workflows are already AI-assisted today, and where do you see the biggest productivity gains?

Amish Mehta

Like I mentioned earlier, we are trying to use AI across our value chain across all the workflows that we have. All our employees are being trained to make sure that they are able to use different LLMs, the value of the LLMs, and use that to drive value for every work that is happening. So, this is something that is across the organization, not in any one area or the other. Where we work in client environments, we make sure that we are leveraging the value of that for our clients. Where we are doing work in our own environment, it could be very different across different parts of the businesse

Hey, thanks for the follow-up. So, I just wanted to get a little bit more details on the comment on accelerated renewal in the benchmarking business and how should we kind of now think about the following quarters? Does it like smooth out some of the seasonality or like what are you kind of trying to indicate with that at this time?

Dinesh V.

Yes, that's right, Abhijeet. I think this year we've been able to close contracts which typically we would close in subsequent quarters in prior years in the first quarter itself. So, you're right, this will very much have an impact of smoothing in subsequent quarters and some of the seasonality that you've been used to seeing in the RAS segment should hopefully normalize to some extent. Okay, got it. Thank you.

Thank you everybody, I would like to just say that the focus of the organization is to continue to drive growth and sustain margins, I think that's something across all our businesses is what drives us, while leveraging technology, Gen-AI to be a key differentiator for all our businesses. That is something that we are, working on and we will continue to drive that agenda. Thank you very much.

Management

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Speaking time

Amish Mehta

Moderator

Abhijeet Sakhare

Subodh Rai

Varun Bang

Dinesh V.

Pritesh Chheda

Bhavin Vithlani

Balaji Subramanian

Arpit Kumar

Opening remarks

Amish Mehta

Hello everyone, and a very warm welcome to each one of you. Trust all of you are doing well. I am pleased to share that during 2025 and in the first quarter of 2026, we have delivered growth amid a dynamic macroeconomic environment. Our customer-centric approach and domain-led solutions have enabled us to drive meaningful impact for our clients, aligning with our purpose of making markets function better. Our core values of integrity, excellence, partnership, and discovery give us a winning edge in the market. Let me begin the presentation by looking at Slide 4. Our journey began in India as India's first credit rating agency. This year we are entering our 40th year of operations, and over that journey, we have continued to expand our strategic and analytical footprint both in India and globally. We are one of the world's leading providers of insights-driven analytics, helping financial institutions, governments, enterprises, and multilateral institutions make mission-critical decision

Dinesh V.

Thank you, Amish. Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let me briefly walk you through our financial performance for the full year Financial 25 and the first quarter of 26. I am on Slide 11 of the presentation. Starting with the topline, our income from operations continues to demonstrate healthy momentum. For Financial Year 25, our revenues grew by 11.9% year-on-year, reflecting broad-based performance across all businesses. The momentum has strengthened further in Quarter 1 FY26, with revenues up 30.1% year-on-year, aided by both underlying business growth as well as certain timing effects that I will touch upon shortly. Moving to profitability, our profit before tax increased by 12.4% in full year 25, indicating disciplined cost management alongside continuing to invest in our growth agenda. In Quarter 1 FY26, our profit before tax grew by 35.7% year-on-year, supported by operating leverage resulting in improved margins. At the profit after tax level, we delive

Subodh Rai

Thank you, Dinesh, and good afternoon, everyone. I am Subodh Rai, Managing Director of Crisil Ratings Limited, and I shall be taking you through the segmental performance of rating services for calendar year 2025 as well as Q1 2026. I'm currently on Slide 13, which highlights the key growth drivers for the credit rating industry in India. First, let's discuss the bond issuances quantum. Despite a brief surge in Q2 2025, the growth in bond issuances was flattish in calendar year 2025 as the yields had hardened in the second half of the year. In Q2 2025, the bond issuances grew by 64% on Y-o-Y basis driven by few large bond issuances. However, from Q3 2025 onwards, the geopolitical and trade uncertainties led by US tariff actions on India resulted in hardening of yields. Additionally, banks offered lucrative rates to large corporates, leading to a substitution of corporate bonds with bank loans by many large corporates. This led to a decline in bond issuances in the second half of calend

Priti Arora

Thank you, Subodh, and good afternoon to everyone who's joined in. Let me start with Slide 16 and provide a little bit macro context to our business. So if we see over the last five years, the India's banking sector has seen a sharp and sustained improvement in the asset quality, as you can see on the left-hand chart. The gross NPA ratios which were elevated at 7.5% in FY21 amid COVID disruptions and legacy corporate stress have steadily declined to about 2% by FY26. Now, this has been driven by many factors; the IBC-led resolutions, the tighter underwriting, structural shift towards retail portfolios alongside corporate deleveraging, reducing the incidence of large ticket stress. We expect the incremental slippages to remain contained and the credit costs to stay near cyclical lows through the unsecured retail and the MSME books that will remain to be a key monitorable. Like Subodh and Amish mentioned, I think one of the key external swing factors is the ongoing Middle East situation,

Duncan McCredie

Thank you, Priti. Hello, I'm Duncan McCredie, President of Crisil Coalition Greenwich. I'm going to outline the key trends in the global corporate and investment banking sector through 2025 and a business update on Crisil Coalition Greenwich. I will be referring to Slide 18 of the analyst presentation. Global revenue pools in CIB were up in 2025 thanks to good performances in global sales and trading, equities, and fixed income, as well as primary capital markets. While Liberation Day tariffs temporarily froze the primary capital markets, there was an upward trend from the end of Q2 onwards. The markets saw a marked increase in large and cross-border M&A deals. Primary capital markets issuance saw strong activity with the backdrop of buoyant secondary markets. Fixed income divisions of banks saw strong performances year-on-year as well, with increased volatility stemming from Liberation Day and continuing all the way through the year, primarily driven by macro trends. Equities division

Dinesh V.

Thank you, Duncan. Good evening everybody once again. I'm on Slide 19 of the presentation and I'll walk you through the performance of our research analytics and solutions segment. The segment delivered a strong Q1 Financial Year '26, reflecting sustained demand for analytics-led advisory and technology-enabled risk solutions across geographies. Starting with the quarter, income from operations grew by 34.9% year-on-year to INR735.6 crores. Growth was driven by continued traction across Crisil Coalition Greenwich, Crisil Integral IQ, and Crisil Intelligence, supported by deeper client engagements and expanded solution adoption. Q1 '26 also reflects a full quarter of Crisil PriceMetrix income, acquired in Quarter 4 2025. Therefore, Quarter 1 2025 is not directly comparable to Quarter 1 2026. At the profitability level, segment profit increased by 66.9% year-on-year, with margins expanding to 22.7% compared to 18.3% in the corresponding quarter last year. This reflects operating leverage

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