The Board of Directors of CRISIL Ltd, at its meeting today, approved the unaudited financial results for second quarter ended June 30, 2018.

Q2 FY18 Highlights: (Financial year ending December 31, 2018)

• Profit after tax grew by 14.7% year-on-year
  
• Declared an interim dividend of Rs. 6 per share

CRISIL’s consolidated income from operations for the quarter ended June 30 2018, rose 7.3% to Rs 436.05 crore, compared with Rs 406.50 crore in the corresponding quarter of 2017. Consolidated total income for the quarter rose 9.0% to Rs 453.41 crore, compared with Rs 415.79 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. Profit after tax rose 14.7% to Rs 77.13 crore versus Rs 67.25 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

For the six months ended June 30, 2018, consolidated income from operations rose 6.0% to Rs 856.00 crore, compared with Rs 807.85 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Consolidated total income rose 6.8% to Rs 880.98 crore, compared with Rs 825.03 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. Profit after tax rose 14.3% to Rs 159.34 crore, versus Rs 139.39 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year.

The Board of Directors has declared a second interim dividend of Rs 6 per share (of Re 1 face value) for the financial year ending December 31, 2018.

Ashu Suyash, Managing Director & CEO, CRISIL, said, “Our core business and strategic initiatives on cutting-edge analytics, platforms and solutions are helping us win new clients. Our focus on operating efficiencies, through productivity and technology initiatives is helping us improve and sustain margins.”

Ratings did well despite a sharp decline in domestic corporate bond issuances. The quarter saw new mandates in the large corporate ratings segment and for independent credit evaluation of stressed assets. Credit growth has picked up in 2018, growing to double digits in recent months after trailing in low to mid single digits for most of 2017. Credit offtake during the year backed by wholesale credit growth has held demand for bank loan ratings.

The shift towards integrated platforms and solutions is helping serve increasing demand for technology-enabled, advanced analytics. Our offerings for SME segment has moved to a largely digital business model, especially through smefirst.com, the online platform that offers multiple solutions including CRISIL Credit Assessment Score (CCAS). Quantix, the cross-sector data platform with advanced analytics on Indian corporates is witnessing traction with new clients.

CRISIL Risk and Infrastructure Solutions (CRIS) Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of CRISIL Ltd. that houses the Risk Solutions and Infrastructure Advisory businesses continued to grow driven by new business wins and successful delivery of existing projects. Further to acquisition of Pragmatix Services Pvt. Ltd. (Pragmatix) early this year, the business won clients for advanced analytics in areas such as customer-centric relationship management and regulatory solutions. Pragmatix’s proprietary Big Data analytics platform Fulkrum powered by CRISIL’s data sets is being leveraged to provide deeper insights and advanced solutions.

Globally, our customer-centric approach of offering value and differentiation helped. For Global Research and Analytics business, our focus remains two-pronged. We continue to target client wins for platforms and solutions2such as SMART (Simple, Modular, Analytics & Research Toolkit) and SPARC (Shared Platform for Assessing Riskof Counterparties); simultaneously, we are increasing presence in core offerings across modelling, stress testing,change management, financial crime and compliance. We are witnessing signs of maturity in regulations in the UnitedStates while the regulations in European Union offer increasing opportunities.

CRISIL Coalition registered strong growth driven by high renewal rate and increase in wallet share across its clientsin the investment banking space. The business expanded in new client segment like regional banks and registeredwins for its new offering, ‘Transaction Banking, Lending & Securities Services’.

Our focus on cost controls and technology helped improve margins. Forex has also been favorable in the quarter.This apart, across businesses we have enhanced focus on employee experience and are investing in building afuture-ready workforce.

CRISIL’s report on four years of the central government as well as the second edition of CriSidex, the lead-and-lagindicator of business sentiment among micro and small enterprises, were very well received. Several white paperson areas like machine learning, blockchain and anti money laundering were released. Also, multiple roundtables onCurrent Expected Credit Loss (CECL) model across several cities in United States were organized.

CRISIL Foundation continues to progress well in bridging the financial literacy gap, especially in the rural areas ofRajasthan and Assam. To improve monitoring of our growing tree plantation programme, CRISIL Foundationinvested in tech enabled solution and has completed geo tagging of nearly 9,000 trees.