GROWW The Quarter the Scoreboard Quietly Changed

A Full Year of Public Filings, and Two Quiet Rulebook Changes

Groww closed its first full fiscal year as a listed company with Q4 FY26 (quarter ended March 31, 2026) Profit After Tax of Rs. 686.35 crore, up 122% year-over-year, on Total Income of Rs. 1,535.54 crore, up 81% - the cleanest quarter Groww has reported since its November 2025 IPO, with none of the base-effect distortion that drove the swings covered in the prior two posts. Full-year FY26 Profit After Tax came to Rs. 2,083.00 crore on Total Income of Rs. 4,815.88 crore. This is also the audited annual filing - the first time Groww has had to disclose a full, audited balance sheet and cash-flow statement since going public, closing the gap the last quarter's post had to leave open.

But buried in the same shareholders' letter that reported those clean numbers are two changes to how Groww measures itself. First, management announced it will "talk about EBITDA instead of Adjusted EBITDA since all merger-related one-offs have crossed one year" - retiring, without much ceremony, the exact metric CFO Ishan Bansal told investors twice across the last two quarters was the one to watch. Second, the market-share formula for Retail Cash ADTO^» and Retail Derivatives Premium ADTO changed mid-flight, from Groww Turnover divided by Exchange Turnover to Groww Turnover divided by twice Exchange Turnover (since every trade has two counterparties) - which restates the comparison-quarter's share figures lower than what was originally reported a year ago. Neither change is dishonest - both are disclosed, and the second one is arguably a more technically correct methodology - but a reader tracking these two numbers across Groww's public life now needs to know which ruler was used each quarter (see Beyond the Usual).

Underneath the definitional housekeeping, the actual business kept doing what it's done all year: Total Transacting Users reached 21.6 million (+25% YoY), Total Customer Assets hit Rs. 3,00,000 crore (+36% YoY), and product diversification continued - Equity Derivatives' share of Total Income mix edged up only slightly (53.5% to 54.6%) as Margin Trading Facility^» and Commodity Derivatives kept picking up share. Groww AMC and Fisdom - the newer bets flagged in the last two posts - both posted small operating losses this quarter (Rs. 21.4 crore and Rs. 10.2 crore respectively), a reminder that the diversification story is still mostly a cost center for now, not a profit contributor.

The Prescription

Groww should build a standing "what changed and why" reconciliation - one table, refreshed every quarter, showing the last four quarters of every headline KPI on both the old and new basis whenever a definition or denominator changes. This quarter alone retired Adjusted EBITDA in favor of plain EBITDA and rebased two market-share ratios, on top of a purchase-price allocation, an IPO-proceeds utilization update, and a new capital raise for Groww AMC all landing in the same filing. Each change is individually reasonable and disclosed; collectively, they make a reader's job of tracking Groww's own numbers against its own prior numbers meaningfully harder than it needs to be for a company barely six months into public life, when its credibility with analysts is still being built rather than already banked.

What it should stop doing: leaving foreseeable "how much revenue comes from Fisdom and Groww AMC" questions unanswered on the call. Asked directly, CFO Ishan Bansal turned to co-founder Lalit Keshre - "Lalit, you have top of your mind?" - and neither had the number ready; the analyst was told to follow up with investor relations instead. This is the third quarter in a row a data-keeping question about Groww's newer, acquired businesses has gotten an imprecise answer live on the call (see Beyond the Usual for the pattern across all three quarters).

Key Financial Metrics

Q4 FY26 (quarter ended March 31, 2026) vs. Q4 FY25 (quarter ended March 31, 2025) - consolidated, Ind AS, reported in INR crore and USD

Groww's fiscal year runs April-March, so "Q4 FY26" is the January-March 2026 quarter, and this filing is also FY26's audited annual results. USD figures use the INR/USD rate on each period's own period-end date (Rs. 93.48/$1 for March 2026, Rs. 85.47/$1 for March 2025), not a single blended rate.

Metric	Q4 FY26	Q4 FY25	YoY
Revenue from Operations	Rs. 1,505.37 crore ($161.0M)	Rs. 801.01 crore ($93.7M)	✅ +87.9%
Total Income	Rs. 1,535.54 crore ($164.3M)	Rs. 849.57 crore ($99.4M)	✅ +80.8%
EBITDA¹	Rs. 938.70 crore ($100.4M)	Rs. 388.23 crore ($45.4M)	✅ +141.8%
Operating Income²	Rs. 906.19 crore ($96.9M)	Rs. 365.65 crore ($42.8M)	✅ +147.8%
Profit After Tax (Net Income)	Rs. 686.35 crore ($73.4M)	Rs. 309.09 crore ($36.2M)	✅ +122.1%

¹ Called "Adjusted EBITDA" in the prior two posts' tables; Groww itself retired that label this quarter (see Beyond the Usual) since the definition no longer differs from plain EBITDA now that merger-related one-offs have rolled off the trailing base. Defined as profit for the period plus total tax expense, finance costs, depreciation and amortisation, and share of net loss of associate (net of tax), less other income. ² Not a reported statutory line item; calculated as Revenue from Operations minus Total Expenses, consistent with prior posts, since Groww's Ind AS statement doesn't separately caption "Operating Income."

Basic EPS rose to Rs. 1.11 from Rs. 0.57 a year ago (+94.7%); diluted EPS rose to Rs. 1.09 from Rs. 0.54 (+101.9%) - both trail the 122% PAT growth because the weighted-average share count kept expanding through the year on IPO shares, ESOP exercises, and a bonus-share allotment to the employee benefit trust this quarter (see Beyond the Usual).

For the first time since the IPO, this filing includes a full audited balance sheet and cash-flow statement, since SEBI's Regulation 33 mandates both alongside annual (and half-yearly) results, not the interim quarters. As of March 31, 2026: total assets Rs. 18,540.92 crore, total equity Rs. 9,651.36 crore, cash and cash equivalents Rs. 1,165.47 crore ($124.7M), and total debt (debt securities plus borrowings, current and non-current) of just Rs. 224.01 crore ($24.0M) - a lightly levered balance sheet, consistent with a business funded mostly by its own equity and IPO proceeds rather than debt.

Full-year FY26 (year ended March 31, 2026): Revenue from Operations Rs. 4,644.58 crore ($496.9M), Total Income Rs. 4,815.88 crore ($515.2M), EBITDA Rs. 2,746.40 crore ($293.7M), Profit After Tax Rs. 2,083.00 crore ($222.8M) - all at the March 31, 2026 FX rate.

Consolidated cash flow from operating activities for FY26 was actually negative Rs. 20.60 crore, despite Rs. 2,083 crore of profit - not a distress signal, but a direct consequence of Groww's own lending books (MTF and Loans Against Securities^») growing fast enough that the cash tied up in new loans (Rs. 2,595.47 crore added to the loans line alone) outran operating cash generation for the year. Operating cash flow before working capital changes - a cleaner read on the underlying, non-lending business's cash generation - was a healthy Rs. 2,964.95 crore. Free cash flow (operating cash flow minus the Rs. 12.08 crore spent on property, plant and equipment) was therefore negative on a reported basis but positive ex-lending-book growth; this distinction matters for the valuation section below.

Groww continues to report and manage its business as a single reportable segment under Ind AS 108, reviewed by the CODM (Chief Operating Decision Maker) as a whole, so there's still no segment-level P&L to compare - unchanged from prior quarters.

Key Operational Metrics

Q4 FY26 vs. Q4 FY25 unless noted

Metric	Q4 FY26	Q4 FY25 (implied)	YoY
Total Transacting Users (cumulative)	21.6M	~17.3M	✅ +25%
Active Users	16.7M	~13.9M	✅ +19.9%
Total Customer Assets	Rs. 3,00,000 crore ($321.0B)	~Rs. 2,20,588 crore	✅ +36%
MF SIP» Inflows	Rs. 13,023.0 crore	Rs. 9,657.3 crore	✅ +34.9%
Retail Cash ADTO (Stocks)	Rs. 13,791.3 crore	Rs. 8,961.5 crore	✅ +53.9%
Retail Derivatives Premium ADTO	Rs. 16,493.3 crore	Rs. 7,887.1 crore	✅ +109.1%
MTF Book	Rs. 2,814.3 crore	Rs. 601.9 crore	✅ +367.6%

Market share moved up across every disclosed product, though the Retail Cash ADTO and Retail Derivatives Premium ADTO share figures use the newly rebased denominator (see Beyond the Usual): MF SIP inflow share from 12.3% to 14.0%, Retail Cash ADTO share from 12.1% to 15.7% (on the rebased basis), Retail Derivatives Premium ADTO share from 6.8% to 10.6% (rebased), and MTF book share from 0.9% to 2.7%.

Product attach rates (active users on a specific product, as a share of platform Active Users) improved across the board: 72% for Stocks, 60% for Mutual Funds, 10% for Equity Derivatives. Commodity Derivatives reached 393,000 active users (+53.8% QoQ), a 2.4% attach rate against overall Active Users, with average daily orders up 60.7% quarter-over-quarter. Total Customer Assets actually declined 1.1% quarter-over-quarter (Rs. 33,000 crore) despite Rs. 25,000 crore of net inflows during the quarter, because mark-to-market losses of roughly Rs. 28,300 crore more than offset those inflows - management's own framing (a market-driven wobble, not a customer-behavior one) is consistent with what the quarter's price action shows (see Target Valuation Range).

Groww's own "Platform Economics" walk - Revenue and costs excluding Fisdom and Groww AMC - shows the operating-leverage story cleanly: on this ex-newer-businesses basis, Revenue grew from Rs. 799.4 crore to Rs. 1,468.4 crore YoY, while EBITDA margin expanded from 50.6% to 66.1%, as Cost to Serve fell from 18.5% to 10.7% of revenue, Cost to Grow from 12.1% to 8.5%, and Cost to Operate from 18.8% to 14.7% - all as percentages of revenue, even as each grew in absolute terms. The consolidated business (including Fisdom and Groww AMC) posted EBITDA of Rs. 938.7 crore, roughly Rs. 31.7 crore lower than this "platform-only" figure, since Fisdom (-Rs. 10.2 crore) and Groww AMC/"Growwmf" (-Rs. 21.4 crore) both still operate at an EBITDA loss - management's own stated target is for Fisdom to turn profitable in FY28, and for Groww AMC to need 5-6x its current AUM before profitability, which management frames as "a few years" away.

Groww's consumer-credit business (distributed and on-balance-sheet lending combined) contributed 4.1% of consolidated PAT this quarter, per management's own disclosure on the call - a small but real and growing profit contributor as the credit book scales, distinct from MTF (which sits inside the broking P&L via interest income, not counted in this 4.1%).

Beyond the Usual

This filing is the first audited annual results statement Groww has published since listing, so the findings below draw on its 11 explanatory notes, the investor presentation's Q&A, and the earnings call - a somewhat thinner footnote set than a full annual report with detailed schedules would carry, since this Regulation 33 filing doesn't include the extended notes (lease schedules, related-party transaction tables, contingent-liability detail) a company's separately-filed annual report typically would.

Adjusted EBITDA quietly became just "EBITDA," a definitional change to the exact metric management told investors twice to watch

Across the Q2 FY26 and Q3 FY26 posts, CFO Ishan Bansal repeatedly pointed investors to Adjusted EBITDA - which added back exceptional items, share-based payments, and one-time performance-based compensation - as the cleanest read on Groww's underlying profitability, precisely because reported PAT was being distorted by a one-time long-term-incentive provision reversal. This quarter's presentation states plainly: "Going forward, we will talk about EBITDA instead of Adjusted EBITDA since all merger related one-offs have crossed one year." That's a reasonable call now that the distorting one-off has rolled out of the trailing comparison base - but it means the headline profitability metric management asked investors to anchor on for two straight quarters has been retired, and a reader building a multi-quarter EBITDA trend needs to know that Q4 FY26's Rs. 938.70 crore is calculated on a different basis than the Adjusted EBITDA figures reported for Q2 and Q3 FY26, not a strictly comparable continuation of the same line.

The market-share formula for two flagship metrics changed mid-flight, quietly restating the comparison quarter lower

Retail Cash ADTO and Retail Derivatives Premium ADTO market share were, through Q3 FY26, calculated as Groww's turnover divided by total exchange turnover. This quarter, Groww switched the denominator to twice exchange turnover, "as each trade has two parties on the exchange" - a genuinely more defensible methodology, since a single trade generates turnover on both the buy and sell side of an exchange's tape. But the practical effect is that Q4 FY25's comparison-quarter share figures are now shown roughly half of what they'd have been on the old basis (12.1% and 6.8% here, versus what would have been double those numbers under the old convention) - a reader who saw last quarter's Retail Cash ADTO share of 28.8% reported for Q3 FY26 shouldn't expect this quarter's 15.7% for Q4 FY26 to represent a genuine, like-for-like decline; the two numbers are calculated on different bases. This is the second KPI-methodology change disclosed in as many filings (see the EBITDA finding above), which is a reasonable pace for a company still refining its own disclosure standards post-IPO, but worth tracking as a pattern rather than treating each change as a one-off.

A live "I don't remember" to a data-keeping question, the third straight quarter of imprecision around Fisdom's numbers

Asked on the call for the revenue split between Groww's affluent-customer products, an analyst's data-keeping question about affluent-client asset and revenue contribution went unanswered when CFO Ishan Bansal turned to co-founder Lalit Keshre mid-call - "Lalit, you have top of your mind? Sorry, I don't remember" - and the analyst was told to follow up separately with investor relations. This continues a pattern flagged in each of the last two posts: Q3 FY26's unaddressed Fisdom revenue-run-rate gap and the live headcount-correction footnote the same quarter. Individually minor, but three consecutive quarters of imprecise or unavailable answers to reasonably foreseeable data-keeping questions about Groww's newer, acquired businesses is worth watching as Groww's analyst base grows more used to cross-checking what's said on the call against what's actually disclosed.

A new regulatory-cost estimate, disclosed twice, got revised down by more than a quarter between filings

Last quarter's post covered Groww's disclosure of an incremental cost from India's four consolidated labour codes (notified November 21, 2025): Rs. 5.31 crore consolidated (Rs. 2.19 crore standalone), described as "already recorded this quarter" based on the company's own preliminary assessment, with an explicit caveat that the figure could change as government rules were finalized. This filing's equivalent footnote - covering the full year ended March 31, 2026 - discloses a lower cumulative figure: Rs. 3.825 crore consolidated (Rs. 1.352 crore standalone), a reduction of roughly 28% (32% at the standalone level) from what was disclosed as already booked just one quarter earlier. Both disclosures carried the same caveat about pending Central Rules clarifications, so a revision either way was flagged as possible - but the direction and size of this one (a real accounting estimate getting meaningfully smaller between two consecutive quarterly filings, not the usual upward drift on a new compliance cost) is itself a useful data point on how much uncertainty still surrounds the labour codes' actual financial impact.

The Finwizard (Fisdom) purchase price allocation shows almost all of the Rs. 961.05 crore purchase price landed in goodwill

This filing discloses, for the first time, the purchase price allocation behind October 2025's Finwizard Technology (Fisdom) acquisition: Customer Relationships (High Net Worth Individuals) Rs. 62.83 crore, Customer Relationships (Retail and Broking) Rs. 36.61 crore, Brand Rs. 23.38 crore, other intangibles Rs. 12.39 crore, less deferred tax on those intangibles of Rs. 34.03 crore, against net identifiable assets of negative Rs. 60.18 crore (Finwizard's own balance sheet was in a net-liability position at acquisition) - leaving Rs. 920.05 crore, or 95.7% of the total Rs. 961.05 crore purchase consideration, recorded as goodwill. A goodwill-heavy allocation is normal for an acquisition bought mainly for its customer base and distribution reach rather than identifiable IP, but it does mean most of the purchase price sits on the balance sheet as an asset that only gets tested for impairment if Fisdom's business case weakens - worth remembering given Fisdom's revenue has so far come in below its pre-acquisition run rate (see the prior quarter's finding) and management still targets FY28 for Fisdom profitability.

State Street's Groww AMC investment actually started moving money this quarter, ahead of full regulatory sign-off

Beyond January's announced Share Subscription and Share Purchase Agreement, this filing discloses that Groww received Competition Commission of India approval on March 25, 2026, and - following that approval - subscribed to compulsory convertible preference shares in Groww AMC (its own asset-management subsidiary) totaling Rs. 282.01 crore, out of the up-to-Rs. 580.03 crore State Street Global Advisors has agreed to invest. A separate SEBI application for the transaction was still pending as of this filing. This is the first concrete capital movement tied to the deal, roughly halfway through the total committed amount - worth watching as an operational leading indicator of whether the partnership actually closes on the terms originally announced.

The IPO's net proceeds are being deployed exactly as promised, with zero deviation flagged

Of the Rs. 1,015.98 crore in net IPO proceeds (after Rs. 44.02 crore of issue expenses), Rs. 371.09 crore had been utilized as of March 31, 2026 across the five objectives disclosed in the prospectus - cloud infrastructure, brand building, capital for the NBFC lending subsidiary (Groww Creditserv), capital for the MTF-funding subsidiary (Groww Invest Tech), and unidentified inorganic growth. The company's own regulatory filing states "No Deviation" against every line item - a small, easily overlooked disclosure, but one that's genuinely useful to a reader checking whether IPO promises are being kept, since a deviation here would require shareholder approval and disclosure of why.

A bonus-share allotment this quarter added 62.3 million shares without adding economic value

During Q4 FY26, Groww allotted 100 million new equity shares - including 62,320,847 bonus shares - to the Groww Employee Welfare Trust, for future issuance to employees under its stock option scheme; 17,980,291 of those shares were separately transferred from the trust to employees this quarter on option exercise. A bonus share issuance capitalizes existing reserves into additional shares rather than raising new capital, so it dilutes per-share metrics (EPS, book value per share) without changing any shareholder's proportional economic stake - a mechanic worth flagging since it's part of why diluted EPS growth (+101.9% YoY) outpaced basic EPS growth (+94.7% YoY) this quarter, on top of the ordinary ESOP-dilution effect already present in prior quarters.

What Management Actually Emphasized on the Call

Co-founder and CEO Lalit Keshre opened the call with a full-year recap rather than diving straight into the quarter - a deliberate choice given this is Groww's first fiscal year-end as a public company. He named three forward priorities: continuing to scale the newer wealth businesses (Fisdom, "W" for affluent/HNI customers, and "Prime" for mass-affluent customers) now that "it's been six months of the Fisdom's acquisition and now we have got a lot of learnings," compounding existing market share across Groww's core products, and treating this year as an "inflection point" for AI - both in customer experience and internal engineering productivity. Notably, Keshre framed AI's engineering impact in terms of shipping more with the same team rather than shrinking headcount: asked directly whether the number of engineers writing code would fall, he pointed to product-launch velocity (three or four products four years ago versus twelve now, built with "more or less similar" team strength) rather than answering the headcount question directly.

On the regulatory question that's recurred across multiple quarters' calls - concern that SEBI might further curb retail derivatives speculation - co-founder Harsh Jain gave a similar answer to what's been said before: Groww "participate[s] with our regulators on very regular basis," framing the company's interests as aligned with regulators' investor-protection goals rather than opposed to them. On cohort behavior through the recent market correction, CFO Ishan Bansal noted that the customer-acquisition funnel has shifted toward mutual funds and ETFs since markets turned choppy in September 2024, but that "at an aggregate level, most of these customers are still profitable" once looked at just after March 31's mark-to-market dip rather than at the exact quarter-end cutoff - a useful qualifier given the quarter's Total Customer Assets decline was itself mark-to-market-driven (see Key Operational Metrics above).

Target Valuation Range

DCF fair-value range: roughly Rs. 34,459-77,061 crore (base case ~Rs. 56,884 crore) - against an actual enterprise value of roughly Rs. 92,704.5 crore, meaning even the bull case undershoots today's price by about 18%. Overvalued on every method tried here: the reverse DCF implies the market is pricing in roughly 11% perpetual growth in Groww's underlying cash generation, forever, a bar above India's own long-run nominal GDP growth rate.

Market cap → enterprise value	FY2026 (Mar 2026)
Share price (period-end)	Rs. 150.12
Shares outstanding	6,239.05 million
Market capitalization	Rs. 93,646 crore (~$10.02B)
Less: cash and cash equivalents	Rs. 1,165.47 crore
Plus: total debt	Rs. 224.01 crore
Enterprise value	Rs. 92,704.5 crore (~$9.92B)

Net of cash against total debt, Groww sits in a net-cash position of roughly Rs. 941.46 crore, so enterprise value is only marginally below market cap.

Discounted cash flow. Groww's reported free cash flow for FY26 was negative, entirely because of loan-book growth (see Key Financial Metrics above) rather than any weakness in the core business, so this DCF uses operating cash flow before working capital changes (Rs. 2,964.95 crore, less Rs. 12.08 crore of capex, for a base of Rs. 2,952.88 crore) as the starting cash-flow proxy - an explicit adjustment, not a hidden one, since Groww's lending books are better thought of as growth investment than as a cash drain on the underlying platform business. WACC and terminal growth assumptions: base case 14.5% WACC / 5% terminal growth (revenue-linked cash-flow growth tapering from 25% to 13% over five years); bull case 13.5% WACC (growth tapering from 32% to 16%); bear case 15.5% WACC (growth tapering from 15% to 6%).

Scenario	Key assumption	Implied DCF value	vs. actual EV (Rs. 92,704.5 crore)
Current (period-end close)	— actual market price, for reference	Rs. 92,704.5 crore (EV)	—
Bear	Growth tapering from 15% to 6%; WACC 15.5%	~Rs. 34,459 crore	~37% of EV
Base	Revenue-linked cash-flow growth tapering from 25% to 13%; WACC 14.5%	~Rs. 56,884 crore	~61% of EV
Bull	Growth tapering from 32% to 16%; WACC 13.5%	~Rs. 77,061 crore	~83% of EV

Even the bull case undershoots today's enterprise value by about 18%.

Reverse DCF. Solving for the perpetual growth rate that would justify the current Rs. 93,646 crore market cap on the same Rs. 2,952.88 crore cash-flow base and 14.5% WACC implies the market is pricing in roughly 11% growth in this cash-flow measure, forever - a rate above India's own long-run nominal GDP growth (typically cited around 10-11%), meaning the market is effectively betting Groww's core cash generation keeps compounding as fast as the entire Indian economy, indefinitely. That's a genuinely high bar for any single company to clear forever, though it's a less extreme ask than the implied growth rates behind some pure hypergrowth-multiple stocks.

Peer-multiple sanity check (TTM)	Q3 FY2026 (Dec 2025)	FY2026 (Mar 2026)
Revenue	Rs. 3,940.22 crore (~$438.9M, TTM)	Rs. 4,644.58 crore (FY26)
P/S	~24.5x	~20.2x
EBITDA	—	Rs. 2,746.40 crore (FY26)
EV/EBITDA	—	~33.8x

Both are directionally lower than the prior quarter's read, simply because a full year of revenue is now the denominator rather than three quarters - not evidence the stock got cheaper on a like-for-like basis.

All three methods point the same direction: the market is paying for a multi-year growth story that a straightforward cash-flow build, even generously assumed, doesn't yet justify at the current price - consistent with the richly-priced read in both prior posts, now backed by a full year of audited financials rather than partial-year data.

---