Deck

Groww · GROWW · NSE/BSE

India's largest retail-investing platform by active users — 129.4M customers on a single app for stocks, derivatives and mutual funds, with a small margin-lending and asset-management stack on top. Listed November 2025.

$1.92
Price (12-May-26)
$12.05B
Market cap
$495M
FY26 Revenue +14% YoY
129.4M
NSE active users #1, 28.22% share
Listed 12-Nov-2025 at $1.12 issue / $1.47 first close; ran to a $2.40 peak by 23-April-2026, then back to $1.92 today after the lock-up-expiry block sale — six-month round trip.
2 · Today is the event

The six-month lock-in expired this morning; $591M of VC stock cleared at a 6% discount on 11× volume.

  • The block. Peak XV, Sequoia, Ribbit and Y Combinator sold 309.1M shares (5.01% of equity) at a $1.91 floor; the stock printed -5.4% intraday on 542M shares — 11× the 50-day average.
  • Founders held. The four co-founders did not sell a share; the combined 25–27% stake (~$3.1B) is intact. Today's supply was entirely the VC stack — ICONIQ had already cut 53% pre-IPO.
  • The August echo. May-12 sellers are inside a 90-day mini-lock-up that ends Aug-10 — the same week Q1 FY27 results land. Roughly 37% of equity still sits with pre-IPO VCs.
4.18 billion shares unlocked this morning. The second-block test arrives the same Tuesday as the first clean post-base quarter.
3 · The acid test the moat passed

India's retail-broker base shrank 7.1% in FY26 — Groww was the only top-five player that grew.

  • Sole grower. Industry shed 3.49M active NSE clients in FY26. Zerodha lost 0.995M, Angel One lost 0.815M; Groww added 17,917 net and widened #1 NSE share to 28.22%.
  • Twice the next player. 129.4M active NSE clients vs Zerodha 68.9M — a 1.88× lead built and extended through the worst regulatory cycle in a decade.
  • But the moat ends at the broker. 84% of revenue is still broking, and F&O alone is 54.6% of Q4 revenue — the exact line SEBI took 38% out of with the Oct-2024 framework. MTF book $121M versus Angel One $581M (5.3× larger); wealth AuA an order of magnitude behind every listed pure-wealth peer.
The brand-pull moat survived the regulatory winter. It does not yet extend into wealth, AMC, or lending — consensus is paying as if it does.
4 · Money picture

Platform operating leverage produced Q4 FY26 +88% YoY revenue and a 62% margin — but the comp lands on the Oct-2024 F&O trough.

$495M
FY26 Revenue +14% YoY headline
59%
FY26 Operating margin Angel One 35%
$222M
FY26 PAT Q4 alone +122% YoY
55×
Trailing P/E Angel One 30×, Motilal 27×

Revenue compounded 81% per year FY22–FY26 ($56M → $495M) on a roughly $160–200M semi-fixed cost base — in-house tech, no branches, $48–53M fixed marketing — so each incremental order drops to a 59% operating margin. The Q4 print (revenue +88%, EBITDA +142%, PAT +122%) annualises to $293M PAT, already above the FY26 trailing line. But Q4 FY25 was the trough of the Oct-2024 SEBI F&O package; the next print — Q1 FY27 in early August — is the first quarter without that base distortion, and the test of whether the acceleration is operating leverage or a base recovery.

5 · What the 55× is paying for

Consensus is bolting three asset-gatherer franchises onto a discount-broker P&L that doesn't yet contain them.

  • Wealth. Groww W + Prime + Fisdom combined AuA is roughly $2.67B. Anand Rathi runs $9.92B at 47% ROE; 360 ONE runs $71.9B. Management has deferred wealth-ARPU disclosure three quarters running.
  • AMC. ~$1.07B exit-FY26 AUM versus HDFC AMC's $64B+. State Street's $64M / up-to-23% stake (CCI cleared March, SEBI pending) is a credibility milestone — not yet a revenue one.
  • MTF lending. $121M book funded 100% with equity; Angel One sits at $581M with a four-year head-start. RBI's April-2026 CME norms raised the collateral bar for everyone.
A broker-only multiple supports closer to 35×. The 20-point premium prices three call options at full vesting; the evidence supports at most one inside 18 months.
6 · The cash flow puzzle

$222M of FY26 PAT produced negative $0.2M of operating cash — and both bull and bear are reading the wrong line.

  • The float reading. Three-year cumulative CFO/NI is 0.03×. But FY25 pre-working-capital CFO was +$291M — 1.36× of PAT. The gap is $223M of US-merger tax catch-up, $122M of MTF book build, and $96M of exchange-earmarked client float. Mechanics, not accounting.
  • The real question. The 100%-equity-funded MTF book is what is absorbing the cash. The signal that matters is not whether reported CFO turns positive — it is whether new MTF capital earns above 25% ROE before the headline 28.8% compresses.
  • Pre-IPO clean-up overhang. FY24 absorbed both a $93M one-time founder bonus and a $161M US outbound-merger exceptional tax; FY25 released a $12M LTI accrual back into operating profit (worth 2.6pp of margin). The FY24→FY25 inflection is partly accounting timing, not pure economics.
Cash conversion is a balance-sheet build question, not an earnings-quality one.
7 · Bull & Bear

Watchlist — the operating story is accelerating, but 55× pays for a franchise that does not yet exist at peer scale.

  • For. Sole top-five broker to add NSE actives in FY26 (+17,917) while the industry shed 7.1% — the single fact in the file most resistant to rebuttal.
  • For. Structural 24–32pp operating-margin gap over Angel One on in-house tech, zero branches, and near-fixed marketing — incremental orders route through a fixed cost base.
  • Against. 55× trailing on a P&L where 54.6% of Q4 revenue is the exact F&O line SEBI is still targeting, three-year cumulative CFO/NI is 0.03×, and FY24/FY25 carry visible pre-IPO clean-up optics.
  • Against. Roughly 37% of equity still sits with pre-IPO VCs; the Aug-10 mini-lock-up rolloff lands the same week as Q1 FY27 — a paired test of both the cash-quality debate and the supply overhang in a single Tuesday.
One quarter and one calendar event — Q1 FY27 print and the Aug-10 lock-up expiry — resolve more of this debate than any other date in the next six months. Until then the 55× is paying full price for an unfinished proof.

Watchlist to re-rate: Q1 FY27 PAT YoY and AARPU (early August); presence or absence of a second VC block at Aug-10 mini-lock-up expiry; monthly NSE active-client share — loss of #1 to Zerodha breaks the entire brand-pull case.