The Board of Directors of CRISIL Limited, at its meeting today, approved the unaudited financial results for first quarter ended March 31, 2018.

Q1 FY18 Highlights: (Financial year ending December 31, 2018)

• Profit after tax grew by 14.0% year-on-year
  
• Declared an interim dividend of Rs. 6 per share

CRISIL’s consolidated income from operations for the quarter ended March 31, 2018, rose 4.6% to Rs 420.59 crore, compared with Rs 402.23 crore in the corresponding quarter of 2017. Consolidated net profit after tax rose 14.0% to Rs 82.21 crore, compared with Rs 72.14 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

The Board of Directors has declared an 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 pursuit of innovation by leveraging technology is beginning to generate greater business traction. Also, focused outreach has enabled client wins across geographies and businesses. Overall, margins have improved owing to greater efficiencies and cost control.”

Through 2017, sharp focus on tech-enabled products to serve emerging needs of clients in India and globally resulted in many new offerings and launches across businesses. The shift, backed by innovation, technology and cutting-edge analytics, has generated positive market response.

The launch of smefirst.com and CRISIL Credit Assessment Scores (CCAS) enabled the shift of the SME Ratings business to an end-to-end digital experience. The Global Research and Analytics (GR&A) business leveraged tech-enabled platforms SPARC (Shared Platform for Assessing Risk of Counterparties) and SMART (Simple, Modular, Analytics & Research Toolkit) to expand client base. Quantix, the cross-sector data analytics platform, delivered new clients for the India Research business.

For existing product offerings, CRISIL continued to focus on enhancing value proposition and strengthening client outreach to drive revenue growth. CRISIL Coalition strengthened its presence in the corporate and investment banking industry. India Research continued to add clients in the domestic market, while the Infrastructure Advisory business enhanced footprint in south-east Asia and Africa. GR&A tapped new client segments to serve emerging regulatory needs.

However, growth was partially offset by a restrained domestic capital market, where a significant decline in corporate bond issuances affected the ratings business. Focus, therefore, has been sharper on tapping opportunities in the bank loan ratings segment.

CRISIL has also completed the acquisition of Pragmatix Services Pvt Ltd (Pragmatix). During the quarter, Pragmatixadded clients in North America and enhanced its new-generation platform Fulkrum to serve emerging opportunitiesin India and globally.

Franchise events saw excellent participation and coverage during the quarter. CRISIL, in collaboration with the SmallIndustries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), launched CriSidEx, India's first sentiment index for micro and smallenterprises (MSE). This was followed by the fourth edition of CRISIL Inclusix, India’s unique financial inclusion indexthat was released by Hon’ble Finance Minister of India, Shri Arun Jaitley. CRISIL’s flagship event, the India OutlookSeminar, was well attended and a report titled ‘FouRs of Growth’ was released on the occasion.

CRISIL Foundation made good progress on its agenda of enhancing financial literacy and strengthening financialinclusion in targeted states during the quarter.