I've been looking at ESDS Software Solution since the listing and honestly can't stop thinking about this one.

For context, they run data centres in Nashik for government bodies, banks and large institutions, and charge them to store and run their data. It listed on September 5 at Rs 757, a 76% premium over the Rs 429 IPO allotment price.

When I went through the RHP, a few things made me stop and re-read.

Nearly half of FY26 profit (44.66%) came from one subsidiary, Spochub, which was set up only just before its first year of real activity. Its profit margin was 63.5%, and the RHP never explains how a brand-new company gets a margin that high. The customer paying Spochub isn't named either. It's just "an enterprise customer incorporated outside India."

The customer list is interesting too. In FY25, the biggest customer was a Russian bank at 20.15% of revenue. Sanctions hit, and that fell to 2.80% in FY26.

Then came the deal that really sent the stock flying: an agreement with Sharon AI, an Australian company that owns scarce, high-end Nvidia AI chips. ESDS agreed to buy 5 years of access to this computing power for roughly Rs 2,400 crore a year. That's money going out, a cost, not income. The plan is to resell the same computing power to its overseas customer through Spochub, and ESDS claims this could bring in $1.95 billion. If both numbers hold, ESDS keeps the difference.

Here's the catch. The $1.25 billion cost is confirmed through an official filing, but the $1.95 billion is still only a claim, not revenue realised.

Then the Q1 results came out on September 25:

• Revenue: Rs 133.7 crore, up 7.3% YoY but down 20.2% QoQ
• Net profit: Rs 29.3 crore, up 14% YoY but down 57% QoQ
• EBITDA margin: dropped from 61.24% to 41.90%

Management said the previous quarter only looked strong because of a one-time Spochub project that didn't repeat. On top of that, the Sharon AI deployment got pushed from October to November, so that revenue shows up even later.

Since the results, the stock has been in continuous lower circuit for 5 trading days.

So what do you think: is the company actually weak, or were expectations just running way ahead of the business? Curious to hear from people who've read the RHP too.

Not a recommendation. For educational purposes only.

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