Tanla Platforms hits upper circuit for third day, stock triples in a year

Tanla Platforms Ltd’s shares hit the upper circuit for the third consecutive session on Tuesday and surged to an all-time high after the cloud communications company announced a tie-up with telecom major Vodafone Idea Ltd. 

The stock jumped 5% on the BSE on Tuesday to Rs 1,675.90 apiece with pending buy orders for over 20,000 shares. The stock has almost tripled from its one-year low of Rs 570.65 that it touched in December 2020.

Hyderabad-based Tanla, a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider, now commands a market capitalisation of Rs 22,750 crore.

The Vodafone Idea partnership centred on Wisely – a cloud-based platform co-developed with Microsoft – that is set to lead the global enterprise market in digital interactions and is expected to go live in the first quarter of 2022.

As per the partnership terms, Tanla will be the exclusive provider of solutions to secure, encrypt and enhance performance for the entire international messaging traffic on the Vi network. India’s international messaging market — where messages originate outside India and terminate in India — is estimated to be worth an average Rs 3,500 crore a year.

The partnership will be based on its Wisely platform, which Tanla and Microsoft co-developed and launched earlier this year. The patented blockchain-enabled omni-channel communications platform is expected to go live in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022.

“Wisely platform is a win-win proposition for all stakeholders – consumers, global enterprises, suppliers, and regulators – as we are committed to innovate with the entire ecosystem...this partnership will help expand our global footprint by addressing the needs of global enterprises not just in India but across the world,” said Tanla founder, chairman and CEO Uday Reddy, adding that this platform ensures compliance to all applicable regulations.

Tanla claims the Wisely platform is designed to deliver a manifold increase of return on investment (RoI) and conversions for global enterprises, some of whom are large tech corporations as well as Over-The-Top (OTT) players. The platform is designed to help clients develop bespoke solutions to help achieve their strategic priorities.

Analysts have advised a ‘hold’ rating on the stock for existing investors, citing the sharp movement in the stock price and expensive valuation. New investors may buy and accumulate the stock in a staggered manner if it witnesses a price correction.

At the current price, the stock trades around 49.7 times its price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio.  

Sandeep Jain, director at Tradeswift Broking Pvt. Ltd, said, “The company has seen a big turnaround since March 2020 and has been a top performer. It is a big platform for services like SMS and has been earning good revenues. This is a unique model and the company has no competitor.”

Promoter and promoter group entities held a 42.51% stake in the company at the end of September 2021, while foreign institutional investors own over 13% stat and domestic institutions own about 1.5% stake in the company.