Ola Electric Mobility Ltd

NSE:OLAELEC

Q3-2026 Earnings Call

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Ola Electric Q3 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. Before we begin, a few quick announcements for the attendees.

Anything said on this call, which reflects our outlook for the future or which could be construed as a forward-looking statement may involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements or comments are not guarantees of our future performance, and actual results may differ from those statements.

To begin with, I would like to request Shri Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Managing Director of Ola Electric, to begin the conference.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Good evening, everybody. Friday evening here, but thank you so much for joining us. Actually, I want to start by introducing our new CFO, Deepak to everybody. Deepak Rastogi, he's also on the call with me. And actually, may I request everybody to switch off their videos, those whoever have switched on.

So welcome, Deepak, to the company. The news was made public about a couple of months back. And maybe, Deepak, I'll request you to make some opening remarks, and then we will open it up to Q&A. But looking forward to the interaction today.

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

Thank you, Bhavish. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this call. So let me start with Q3. Q3 this quarter marks a structural reset for Ola Electric as EV penetration growth slows down and we identified gaps in execution, we made a deliberate choice to realign our retail footprint, cost structure and operating model to a sustainable steady state. We chose to fix the fundamentals rather than optimize for short-term volume.

The result is a structurally lower breakeven business with significantly improved operating leverage. Now let me start with the key numbers. For Q3, we delivered INR 470 crores of consolidated revenue. This is the highest ever gross margin -- consolidated gross margin we have achieved, which is at 34.3%, which is 16% points higher and 3.4 year-on-year basis and 3.4 basis points higher on Q-on-Q.

This also -- actually, we have also delivered 32,600-700 (sic) [ 32,680 ] deliveries during this quarter, and we have produced 72,500 (sic) [ 72,418 ] cells. The performance reflects the strength of our vertically integrated model, Gen3 platform economics and disciplined execution.

We continue to see gross margins stabilizing in the range of 35% to 40% during the year -- financial year '26, '27. Over the last few years, we have invested approximately INR 5,300 crores across manufacturing, battery innovation and R&D. This has created full vertical integration across motors, batteries, cells, electronics and software, along with scalable manufacturing infrastructure and a strong product road map.

The heavy CapEx phase, which we have been investing so far is behind us now. Our current footprint supports 1 million vehicles and 6 gigawatt hour of cell capacity and the focus now shifts to scaling into this capacity.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Actually, Deepak, I want to highlight this point for everybody that the company has been in investment phase for -- since pretty much the inception about 4, 5 years ago. And we've created capacity, and this is covered in our shareholders' letter in detail, about 1 million units a year in the automotive side.

And by March, which is next month, about 6 gigawatt hour will be installed. So now after that, our CapEx cycle finishes, and there will be no new CapEx requirement until we grow into that. And that actually revenue potential is about INR 15,000 crores to INR 20,000 crores.

And on gross margins, like you said, for the last few quarters, we've been guiding or forecasting that we'll get to the 35% range and this quarter is more or less there. This also actually has been possible because of this vertically integrated business model of ours [Foreign Language] .

And we still see through FY '27, this gross margin going between that 35% to 40% range. And just for context for everybody, this is much higher than even ICE industry, where the gross margins are typically around high 20s or 30%. So this has been a meaningful advantage.

And even on our capital investments, if you see in the shareholders' letter, we actually give you a comparison between us and others. There is no other Indian OEM who has invested this much into pure EV-centric technologies and EV-centric manufacturing. And this is a very important strength of ours. And the good news is that the capital cycle is now -- investment cycle is now largely behind.

Now onwards, like Deepak mentioned, we are focused on doubling down into growing into this. And we will also cover -- Deepak will cover, and I will also give some commentary on the service challenges faced, which we want to be very clear and acknowledge that and then how sales recovery we see happening.

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

Thank you so much, Bhavish. So as Bhavish mentioned, on services, we acknowledge that execution gaps impacted brand test among prospective customers. However, this is a service scale issue and not a product quality issue.

Independent survey indicates over 90% product satisfaction and warranty provisions for the current financial year, and that is expected. The warranty provisions for the current financial year are expected in the range of 2% to 3%, which is among the lowest in the Indian EV industry.

Through our hyper service initiative, we have redesigned parts availability, expanded technician trainings, strengthened governance and deployed AI automation. As a result, service backlogs have reduced nearly 50% from 14 days to around 7 to 8 days now currently, and we are now completing 80% of service tickets on the same day. As service metrics stabilize, we expect our underlying strength to reassert itself.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

I think on this topic also, Deepak, like you mentioned, many times we get asked [Foreign Language] firstly, like Deepak said, we do have a service challenge, which we are working through. That has impacted brand trust and hence, sales are down in the last couple of quarters.

But the good news is that firstly, we have improved our service operations meaningfully in the last 3, 4 months or so. Deepak mentioned the numbers. But more importantly, our engineering and product strength is very meaningfully real and much better than our competition.

Most customers, when I meet them across stores and when I travel, they say, so your product is very good. We want to buy your product, but please improve your service accessibility and service turnaround times. That's what we've been focused on.

And like Deepak mentioned, one of the things we've been telling the Street is that the way to assess product quality between us and competition is to just look at the warranty costs. Now for our Gen 1 platform because that was the first platform we had was higher than industry averages.

But now actually, we are much better than our Indian OEM peers and actually in line with global benchmarks in terms of what kind of repeat rates or what kind of failure rates or warranty costs we are having to take in our P&L.

And in the shareholders letter, you'll see that at about 2% to 3%. So the headline here is, yes, there is a service challenge. We are fixing it. We are fixing it and it's meaningfully improving. We do have some journey to cover and brand trust will take its time to recover.

But as a result of our cost improvements and the structural operational model improvements, we've actually been able to create enough headroom and a lower breakeven point. So as we improve our service and as sales recover, we will see a faster road map to profitability.

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

Thank you, Bhavish. So -- as we -- during this quarter, we have executed a comprehensive operating model reset. Consolidated quarterly OpEx, including leases, reduced from INR 840 crores at peak expansion to INR 484 crores during this -- in Q3. And we expect steady state between INR 200 crores, give or take, INR 250 crores to INR 300 crores over the next couple of quarters. At this level, our EBITDA breakeven reduces to approximately 15,000 units per month, which is 85% -- with 85% or 90% of OpEx fixed cost, which means we would have to just put in some incremental fixed cost when we actually grow our business over time, which actually will drive a very, very strong margin through this.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Before that, Deepak, one more thing I want to just bring to everybody's notice is in the shareholders' letter, Page 5. We have given a very clear road map for sales recovery and growth. And basically, it's 3 themes. First, we have to fix our service and rebuild the brand trust with that, which the company is in the middle of doing.

It will take us another quarter or so to fully institutionalize service. And this time, what we have done is really taken the foundational building approach to fixing the front-end operational challenges that we faced. And we are seeing good results in that in terms of service improvements as well as cost structure improvements.

So the road map to recovery is fixing service. That will actually let the product advantage shine. And I want to highlight a very interesting chart that we've put in here for all of you on Page 6. which is actually I'm sure when you guys also do your channel checks and all, you'll see the customer -- fundamentally, a 2-wheeler customer wants range in his product.

And our products deliver the best range by far in the industry. And you can see there a chart where our range to price index, and this is real range, not certified range. Our real range to price index is almost 50% higher than competition.

So very meaningful benefit that our product has, which the customer acknowledges. Our existing customers definitely acknowledge it. But the prospective customers who are holding back due to the brand noise around service, once that goes away, they will also start acknowledging it.

Another important thing is we have the largest customer base in the industry given the fact that till date, whatever number of 2-wheeler EVs have been sold, almost 30% are actually Ola vehicles. So 11 lakh customers use Ola, and they actually have always referred as well. And as service improves, we are very confident that they will start referencing Ola again.

Another important point, which Deepak mentioned is the structural cost reset that we have done. And you see that in Page 7. About a year ago, our cost -- OpEx cost was about INR 850 crores. And one of the feedback we took on the Street was that because we were talking about segmented financials earlier, it confused the Street.

So this time, what we've done is actually focused all our commentary on consolidated financials, while we give segmented financials to the public for transparency. So all the numbers we talk about here are consolidated financials, which means even with the Gigafactory ramp, these costs are actually under control.

And the second thing is since our business model in the front end is a fully company-owned model, we've added lease expenses to our operational expenses in the commentary. So 1 year ago, it was about INR 844 crores. And now with our cost actions, in Q3, we are reporting INR 484 crores, but we've taken a lot of cost actions in Q3, which is in a couple of quarters, going to take us to about INR 250 crores, INR 300 crores level in terms of OpEx.

So very meaningful improvement. Now this is a large change. And like Deepak said, a large part of it is actually fixed in nature. So as we increase volumes back up to the 20,000, 30,000 levels, the cost will not increase linearly. That variable cost is only 10%, 15%. So what this does is actually in a period where the industry is -- penetration is growing slowly and where we've had our own service challenges, it actually lowers the threshold of breakeven and arrests the cash burn in the short term, but also as we improve our sales, gives us very strong operating leverage as we come back in our volumes.

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

Finally, on the Gigafactory, Q3 marked the key milestone wherein we doubled the cell production to 72,400 cells, achieved the first commercial deployment in-house 4680 Bharat Cells. And launched Ola Shakti. We are currently at 2.5 gigawatt hour installed capacity scaling to 6 gigawatt hour by March '26.

This positions us uniquely as the only Indian company to operationalize a scaled Gigafactory and strengthen a long-term cost and integration advantage.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

I'm just going to add a little bit Deepak, on the Gigafactory. So the Gigafactory, we are the only Indian company. I want to underline that and write that in bold letters, only Indian company to have operationalized the Gigafactory.

And actually, outside of China, one of the very few companies which have operationalized the Gigafactory. And it actually highlights the company's strong capabilities, talent and execution strength as far as manufacturing and R&D go. And the Gigafactory is ramping up. And this quarter was a highlight because we put ourselves into commercial production in this quarter. Before that, it was all pilot production. This quarter, Q3 was into commercial production.

We gave our customers vehicles with the 4680 Bharat Cell, and the feedback has been quite amazing. And like I mentioned in the past, the range benefit that customers want, our 4680 Cell enhances that meaningfully. And you cannot deliver the range that people want without this level of a cell.

And in addition, 4680 is not the end of it. In fact, it's the start of it. We give on Page 9, a road map of our cell technology where we go from -- in the next 12 to 24 months, 4680 goes to 46100 goes to 46120.

Each next generation of cell actually gets us more energy density and more fast charging performance. And this is kind of a technology R&D loop that we've already proven with our automotive business, where over 3 generations, our gross margins went up from 10% to 35% now and our product quality improved meaningfully. Similarly, on the cell, this will have a similar journey on gross margins as well as scale, manufacturing scale and hence, competitive advantage.

So this is something which we believe is going to be a very significant lever for strategic strength as well as optionality in revenue in the future. As I'm sure everybody is following how globally the energy storage industry is also growing.

And the Gigafactory for us is going to obviously feed our own auto business, but also really get revenue and growth into this energy storage opportunity, both in India and globally. That's the future optionality.

And the first product we launched there was Shakti. Shakti has gotten very good response. We are ramping it up in a step-by-step way as the Gigafactory ramps up. But this really improves the kind of optionality. And I personally believe the energy storage business globally and even in India is going to be a much bigger business than automotive. Although automotive is our current focus, and our focus is to stabilize that business by solving the service challenges and by getting back into sales growth. But the Gigafactory from the foundation of this company was a very core part of our vision to both build strategic control and margins in automotive, but as well as really grow into the larger energy storage opportunity.

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

To conclude, Q3 was about strengthening the foundation, restoring service execution, resetting costs, deepening vertical integration and advancing our sales strategy. The heavy build phase is behind us with a structurally lower breakeven and embedded operating leverage, we are well positioned to enter the next phase of growth with significantly improved economics. Thank you so much, and I look forward for your questions now.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll now begin the first question from Mr. Arvind Sharma of Citi.

[Arvind Sharma, analyst]

The first one would be more on your aspirations for the sales. The production you said has been much -- has been around 32,600 deliveries -- sorry, not deliveries and 15,000 is a breakeven. Given the endeavors on the sales part, by when do you think that Ola would be closer to this breakeven at least?

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Arvind, we will not be giving a time target of when we will get to either 15,000 a month or higher. But I want to say that -- see, we are -- we acknowledge the service challenges. We have to solve them. Brand trust will take some time to recover. But the inherent strength of the company in manufacturing, R&D and product are very well intact. And they are so far ahead of competition that I don't feel it's so easy for anybody to catch up.

So in that sense, we don't worry about short-term market share. We are fixing the service challenges in a very structural institutional way. It will take some time, but I do hope to give you guys some positive news. Luckily you don't even need to wait for the quarter.

Sales numbers [Foreign Language] you can track every week, I'm sure you guys do. So you will -- we are seeing that goodness in regional sales metrics where we have solved service challenges more deeply, like, for example, in the South, et cetera, maybe in some markets in the North.

We see volumes have improved almost 2 to 3x in some markets, wherever we have more meaningfully solved service challenges. So we expect that to play out across the country as over the next few months, we more meaningfully solve some of these challenges.

[Arvind Sharma, analyst]

The second question would be more on an accounting thing. There was a fairly sharp increase in the employee cost in this quarter, even if one was to adjust for the one-off expenses from INR 550 million going to almost INR 920 million. What do you attribute this to? Because last quarter, you had said that it would structurally be going down given the optimization efforts that we've undertaken. So it kind of nullifies the gross margin expansion at the EBITDA level.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

No. See, the one-off employee costs will be largely linked to the exits -- employee cost going up is largely linked to exits, Arvind. We -- like I said, we have done a lot of this cost actions in this quarter, and those costs are front-loaded.

And the scale of those cost actions actually you will start seeing in the OpEx benefit in the coming quarter. Deepak, you want to add to that?

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

No, I think, Arvind, I will take this question offline because we do not see the way you are looking at the data right now. So let me -- we can take this question offline and then if there are any which are basically there.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

If anything, it will be linked to this onetime thing. But I also don't think -- I don't see the data like that.

[Arvind Sharma, analyst]

Sure, sir. Just one final question. Just a statement that you made that Ola is past the big CapEx part. On the cell part, you are still expanding beyond this Gigawatt hour, right? The one goal that you told about last time, that still remains.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

See, Arvind, we have a PLI allocation of 20 Gigawatt hour. Our Phase 1 in that was 5 Gigawatt hour, which will be done with this. Now as you know, we are the only guy in the PLI scheme who has done anything. The other guys have not done anything. So we are in talks with the government to either elongate the time lines of the PLI or if we need to do anything, we will think of capital in that case separately. But hence, for our business priorities, we don't expect any more Gigafactory expansion as far as the current road map goes.

[Arvind Sharma, analyst]

This would be enough to cater to both the automotive as well as the BESS needs.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Yes. Just as a rule of thumb, Arvind, 6 gigawatt hour installed capacity means, let's say, practically, you can get 5 out of it with the yields, et cetera. So 5 gigawatt hour, if each product takes 3.5 to 4 kilowatt hour, that's about 1 million -- 1.2 million products. So between our Shakti business and our auto business, that's the headroom we have in our own Gigafactory.

[Operator]

We'll take the next question from Mr. [ Ishan Bhargava] of Bank of America.

[Unknown Analyst]

The first one is more fundamental in nature. The EV industry has plateaued around 6% to 7% adoption for a while now. As you have addressed in your shareholder letter as well, the industry is entering a more mature phase now. So what, in your opinion, would trigger this next leg of growth ahead?

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Ishan, see, firstly, like any technology adoption industry and EV is a technology adoption industry, -- there's actually this notion very well established in the valley called Crossing the Chasm in terms of market adoption. I'm sure some of you analysts would have read the book there.

So basically, what happens is the early adopters adopt and then the followers need more education and more stability in terms of product experiences to adopt.

It's exactly what has happened in the EV industry. We have been focused on penetration. The incumbent players don't really focus on penetration. They focus on just having a product with -- just to play in the industry. So as we have in the last few quarters, focused on our own operational view, focus of service, we've not communicated in a very meaningful way the benefits of EV to the customer.

The reality is the benefits of EV are very strong, OpEx savings, 90% lower cost of operations. And for the 2-wheeler customer that matters in a meaningful way. So this next level of a customer, which is a follower customer needs more education and marketing of that. And you'll see the company -- you'll see us do some meaningful steps in that direction very soon.

[Unknown Analyst]

Got that. Secondly, last quarter, we had guided for OpEx stabilizing to around INR 350 crores by Q1 FY '27, while now our target is more aggressive at around INR 250 crores to INR 300 crores in the same time horizon. So presuming that the structural drivers that are highlighted in the letter have been placed for a while, but our OpEx has been range bound over the last 3 quarters between INR 470 crores to INR 500 crores. What particular measures provide us the confidence that we can in this revised and more aggressive reduced OpEx within the next 2 quarters?

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

See Ishan, the actions that we have taken is written there, so I'll not go over that again. But a lot of those actions have been taken in towards the end of Q2 and Q3. So in that direction, these 2 quarters have some of these one-off costs. So you don't see the clean cost structure yet.

You'll start seeing it in Q4, and you'll see more of it in Q1. What we've also done is in this last quarter and including in the last month of January and February, we've really gone deep into some structural changes across the board so that our operating leverage potential improves.

So you'll see that all thing play out. I don't want to jump the gun here and give you too many micro details or give you any very sharp numbers for the coming quarter. But I also want to highlight, Ishan, I think the last one you were referencing was only auto segment, right? Whereas now what we're seeing is actually consolidated.

So that's -- we've been able to now scale our Gigafactory with a much lower cost. We've been able to optimize the productivity in the field of our service technicians. We've been able to optimize some of the corporate costs. We've used a lot of AI in our back-office processes to really optimize the cost structure there.

So all of these things have actually converged at this time because like I said in the beginning, we've used our -- this operational challenges as an opportunity to really optimize the business model and position it right for the next phase of growth so that we hit profitability faster and the cash generation happens after that.

Deepak, do you want to add anything to that?

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

No, I just wanted to just say that we are very confident of achieving these numbers. That's all I can tell you. We are.

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

If I can add, we've already done all the actions [Foreign Language] .

[Deepak Rastogi, executive]

Ishan, we are on course to deliver this.

[Operator]

We'll take the next question from Mr. Arun Kejriwal of TPG.

[Arun Kejriwal, analyst]

During our last interaction, you had informed how the company would lower its breakeven point through a calibrated mix of cost rationalization, improved operational efficiencies and resource optimization. With Ola now positioned as a lean and agile manufacturing hub for E2Ws and cells, how do you plan to leverage these structural efficiencies to further strengthen financial performance, enhance margins and drive long-term shareholder value creation?

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

Sir, Arun, sir, good question. I think the fundamental answer is what's covered in the letter that because we are a vertically integrated operations, both on the back end and the front end and our back end, which is the manufacturing and R&D and supply chain is so efficient because for the last 4, 5 years, we've been hammering away at it, and we have 3 generations of our platform. We have 2 factories built out.

So the benefit of that vertical integration is already seen in our gross margins and even in our OpEx, which is not as transparent to the Street, but our operating costs, so basically the cost to manufacture per unit of our vehicle or, let's say, a Shakti product is actually fairly low.

And maybe in the future, we will talk more about that. Same we are doing on the front end now because it's all company-owned. The efficiencies we can drive on repair per technician, sales per executive, sales per square feet, sales per store is fairly high. Now in the last 1 year, we had expanded our stores to 2,000 plus, but we've now come back to the same level of stores as we were in the first couple of quarters post IPO about a year or so back.

And those -- that is where largely the EV industry is and where we were also fairly deep in penetration.

So we do expect a higher operating leverage even on the front end of the business model. The way this plays out is if you look at our gross margin today, per product, our gross margin is almost INR 50,000 per product. And hence, breakeven is close to about 15,000 units on a consolidated EBITDA.

And this consolidated EBITDA includes all lease costs. There is nothing below this now. So we've started reporting adjusted EBITDA, which is actually adjusted for adding lease costs into the operational expenses. So that the Street can get a very clear fully loaded operating profitability lens.

And at that level, we feel very confident of breaking even in this 15,000-odd volume levels. Now obviously, the focus is of the company to quickly get there by rebuilding service and brand trust and letting the product benefit shine in the customer, which already is there. It's there in the customer sentiment as well as in the product reality.

[Arun Kejriwal, analyst]

So Bhavish, thanks for that really detailed answer. Just one small thing. Anything that keeps you worried?

[Bhavish Aggarwal, executive]

We have done a lot of good things in this company. We have built a lot of strengths, which is not going to be easy for industry to catch up on. So our competitive positioning is not really of a concern or a risk to us. Today, the numbers are low, but that is because of the fundamental loop of delivering good service and hence, letting the product shine.

So the whole company, the leadership, me, we are super sharp focused on the consumer, on making sure we raise our service and quality and service quality levels for the customer so that the honest truth of the product can shine.

[Operator]

We take the next question from Mr. Chandramouli Muthiah of Goldman Sachs.

[Chandramouli Muthiah, analyst]

I don't think I raised my hand, sorry. I'll just get back in the queue.

[Operator]

We'll take the next question from Ms. Gayathri. If there any final questions, we'll wait for that. If not, then we'll conclude the meeting close.

[Unknown Analyst]

Hello. Hello. Bhavish sir anyone.

[Operator]

We can hear you properly. And due to shortage of time, we have to conclude the meeting now. We appreciate your time and all of your questions during the call today.

Thank you so much for joining us, and we look forward to meeting you all during our next earnings conference. Thank you for joining us. You may log out from the conference call now. Thank you.