In today’s Finshots, we tell you why Aurionpro Solutions’ stock hasn’t been doing well lately.

The Story

Aurionpro Solutions isn’t a brand you consciously notice in your day to day life. It doesn’t flash its logo at you or try to grab your attention. And yet, chances are you use its technology almost every day without realising it.

Take something as routine as the metro. If you live in Chennai or Delhi, you can plan a trip on Google Maps, buy a ticket, and store it in Google Wallet. That entire journey is powered by Aurionpro’s backend. Or think about those moments when you tap your phone, credit card, or debit card at a metro gate and walk straight in without a metro card. Those payment validators you’re tapping? Also Aurionpro.

The same quiet presence shows up in some banks, where you can walk into a branch, take a digital token, and watch your queue number and waiting time pop up on a screen. That system often runs on Aurionpro’s software.

So at its core, Aurionpro is a classic behind the scenes player. It’s a B2B (business to business) and B2G (business to government) company that sells software platforms and hardware to banks, metro rail networks, and government infrastructure projects. You don’t see the brand, but you feel the convenience it enables.

And that’s why its latest announcement caught attention. Just a couple of days ago, Aurionpro said it had bagged a multi-year deal from a leading public sector bank for its cash management system. Now this isn’t exactly new for the company. Its client list already includes large Indian banks like SBI, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, along with several global banks. And last year alone, SBI awarded Aurionpro a ₹100 crore contract for licensing and maintaining iCashpro+, its transaction banking and cash management platform, which corporate banking customers rely on to move money to multiple suppliers, track cash balances, manage invoices, and match incoming payments.

And yet, despite landing steady contracts, Aurionpro’s stock hasn’t been having a great run.

In the days following the announcement of this new PSU deal for instance, the share price slipped quite a bit, only to recover on Friday. Zoom out further, and the picture looks even tougher. Over the past year, the stock is down roughly 35%, even though the SBI deal was one of the company’s biggest wins. Today, it’s trading about 42% below its 52-week high.

Now, when a stock doesn’t perform well, your first instinct is to stop looking at the price chart and start digging into the business itself. Has growth slowed? Is something broken under the hood?

That’s exactly where we went looking. And what we found was… confusing.

Because on paper, Aurionpro has been doing almost everything right.

Over the last three years, its revenue from operations has grown at a steady clip of about 32% every year, reaching ₹1,173 crore in FY25. And the momentum hasn’t faded. In just the first half of FY26, the company has already clocked ₹694 crore in revenue, which is a 28.5% jump compared to the same period last year.

Roughly 57% of that money flows in from banking and fintech deals. The remaining 43% comes from its technology and innovation businesses — things like smart transit solutions for metro networks, including its recent Mumbai Metro contract.

Break it down another way, and about two-thirds of its revenue comes from software and services, with the rest coming from equipment sales and product licences. Geographically, India contributes around 66% of revenues, while the rest comes from markets across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the US.

And this revenue mix translates beautifully into profits.

In FY25, Aurionpro posted an operating profit margin of about 28%. To put that in context, IT heavyweights like Infosys and TCS typically operate in the 23–24% range. Net profit margins are healthy too, sitting around 16% and staying fairly consistent over the last few years.

All of this sounds great for a company that was doing under ₹400 crore in revenue just five years ago.

Which brings us to the obvious question. If everything looks this good, what exactly is the market worried about?

To understand that, you have to rewind a bit and look at how Aurionpro actually came into being.

Look, Aurionpro isn’t a flashy, new-age tech startup. Its story goes back to 1997, when it began as VAIDS (Value Added Information Distribution Services), a small Microsoft and Java coding firm founded by Bhavesh Talsania, a chartered accountant, and Amit Sheth, a finance professional.

The first real turning point came in 1999. A leading private sector bank asked the firm to build cash management solutions. That single project quietly set Aurionpro on its banking path. The same year, Paresh Zaveri joined as a promoter, bringing in deep banking expertise. But the real inflection arrived in 2003, when Aurionpro partnered with a firm founded by ex-Citigroup bankers specialising in transaction banking. That partnership shaped the company into the enterprise banking tech player we know today. And in 2005, it went public.

Now, if you scan through Aurionpro’s financials from those early years all the way up to 2021, you’ll notice something interesting. Revenues stayed fairly modest, mostly in the ₹400–600 crore range. Not because the company was struggling, but because it was spread thin. Aurionpro was running three very different businesses — Cyberinc (identity management), Trejhara (data centres), and generic IT services. That made Aurionpro look like just another IT services company, lost in a sea of thousands of similar firms.

The management eventually saw the problem and decided to hit reset. And reset pretty hard.

In 2018, Aurionpro sold Cyberinc to KPMG for ₹217 crore and spun off Trejhara. On paper, the company shrank. But in reality, it gained focus. The leadership had realised that services businesses don’t scale without constantly adding people, which hurts margins. And if Aurionpro wanted to compete with global banking tech vendors, it needed to go all in. The cash from the sale gave it the firepower to do that. And that’s exactly what followed.

From 2020 onwards, Aurionpro went on an acquisition spree. It bought SC Soft, a Singapore-based smart city solutions company that now powers tap-to-pay transit systems. It acquired Integro to strengthen its lending and credit assessment capabilities for banks. And Arya.ai to build out enterprise AI solutions for banking.

In fact, FY25 alone saw some big-ticket additions like Fenixys SAS which expanded its reach into European capital markets, while Fintra Software strengthened its cash management offerings for corporate banking customers.

The result was a sharper company, built around just two verticals: Banking & Fintech, and the Technology Innovation Group.

But it wasn’t just acquisitions at work. Aurionpro also benefited from near-perfect timing.

During and after COVID, banks realised their systems weren’t built for contactless payments, real-time settlements, and fully digital corporate banking. They needed upgrades, fast. Aurionpro had already built its transaction banking platform, iCashpro+, back in 2018 and even won an award for innovation in banking technology in 2020. So while competitors were still upgrading, Aurionpro was already market-ready. That made it a natural choice for large PSU banks.

Then came another push around 2022. The government rolled out the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC), which meant cities had to replace old ticketing systems with contactless readers across metros and transport networks. Aurionpro’s transit AFC (Automatic Fare Collection) business suddenly became essential, and metro contracts followed.

Together, these shifts opened doors overseas too, where the banking software market is far larger than India’s. And as a result, revenues, which had stayed flat for years, nearly tripled between FY21 and FY25.

But rapid growth also changes expectations. As revenues surged, the market started pricing Aurionpro aggressively. For context, at its 2024 peak, the stock traded at about 33 times earnings, well above the industry average of 26 and even higher than Infosys at around 29. So once valuations ran ahead of reality, a correction was almost inevitable.

Another factor at play is the broader mood in IT stocks. Over the past year, the NIFTY IT index has fallen by about 13%. When the entire sector is under pressure, even companies doing reasonably well tend to get dragged down. Aurionpro likely didn’t escape that sell off.

But beyond market sentiment, the recent dips seem to come down to expectations versus reality.

For FY26, management guided for consistent growth of 30% or more and laid out an ambitious target of ₹5,000 crore in revenue by FY30. Against that backdrop, the H1 FY26 numbers came in a tad softer — revenue grew 28.5% compared to H1 FY25. On its own, that doesn’t look alarming. But when you annualise it, it translates to roughly ₹150 crore less than what the market was expecting. And markets are rarely forgiving, even when the miss is small.

There’s also the ROCE story. Returns on capital have slipped from a peak of about 25% in FY23 to around 18% now. That naturally raises eyebrows. But a large part of this drop is explained by higher capital employed after acquisitions and a rise in working capital, not a deterioration in the business itself.

Which brings us to the bigger point.

Sometimes, stocks fall not because companies are doing badly, but because investors expect too much, too quickly. When growth becomes steady and predictable, it can start to feel flat — even if the company is still moving forward. In that situation, it’s often expectations that correct, not the business.

That might be the case with Aurionpro too. The fall in its stock price looks less like a verdict on poor performance and more like a reset in investor judgement. That reset has likely pushed the stock closer to fair value.

Where it goes from here will depend on whether the company keeps delivering, and whether investors are willing to recalibrate what “good enough” really looks like.

Until next time…

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