Wealth First Q1FY27: consol. PAT down 35% YoY to ₹10.4 Cr, revenue nearly halves

Wealth First Portfolio Managers' consolidated PAT fell 34.7% year-on-year to ₹10.42 Cr on revenue of ₹14.32 Cr, down 42.3% YoY from ₹24.81 Cr in Q1 FY26 — a sharp reversal from the 40-65% YoY growth the company had been posting through FY25-FY26. Standalone tracks the same trend (PAT ₹10.34 Cr, -36.3% YoY; revenue ₹14.08 Cr, -43.2% YoY), so this is not a consolidation-level distortion. Sequentially the picture looks stable — revenue down 13.2% QoQ and PAT down just 0.6% QoQ versus Q4 FY26 (₹16.51 Cr revenue, ₹10.49 Cr PAT) — but per the YoY-primary read, that flatness only underlines how much lower the base has reset versus a year ago, not a genuine recovery. The margin bridge shows the compression is structural, not one-off: consolidated net profit margin fell to 54.9% from 64.1% a year ago (and from 56.2% last quarter), while operating margin (on revenue-from-operations, excluding other income) dropped to about 63.4% from 86.3% YoY. Employee benefit expense — the company's dominant cost line as a broking/wealth-distribution business — rose 54.4% YoY to ₹2.94 Cr even as revenue nearly halved, the clearest driver of the squeeze; other expenses and finance costs are broadly flat and not material to the story. There is no formal management guidance on record and a web search turned up no analyst previews or consensus estimates for this quarter — Wealth First carries no visible sell-side coverage, so vs-street and vs-guidance are both unknown rather than a miss. No management press release accompanies this filing beyond the standard exchange intimation. Two corporate actions sit alongside the print: the board's ₹1/share dividend recommendation from its May 29, 2026 meeting (a FY26 year-end action, not tied to this quarter's earnings), and the two-phase acquisition of 100% of Wealth First Advisors Pvt Ltd for ₹102.15 Cr, which closed July 1, 2026 — after this quarter's June 30 cut-off, so it is not yet in these numbers. With the WFAPL acquisition now closed, Q2 FY27 consolidated figures should start reflecting the enlarged group, which will complicate a clean YoY comparison; investors will need to separate that inorganic effect from the underlying volume/margin trend flagged this quarter.