Revenue Down 16 Percent. The Founders Just Bought over 3 Percent.

The company is NIIT Limited (NSE: NIITLTD, BSE: 500304).

Not NIIT Learning Systems, which is a separate listed company. That distinction turns out to be the entire story.

The Buying

Between 1 and 4 June 2026, four trading days, the two founders bought through their family trusts:

Shares bought Before After Thadani Family Trust 19,53,500 18.14% 19.57% Pawar Family Trust 19,53,500 17.74% 19.17% Combined 39,07,000 36.94% 39.80%

2.86 percent of the entire company in four sessions. Both founders bought the identical number of shares, to the last unit. The promoter group went from 5,04,31,688 shares to 5,43,38,688.

Disclosed under Regulation 29(2) of the SEBI Takeover Regulations. The filing confirms no encumbrance, no warrants, and no other persons acting in concert. Equity share capital stayed unchanged at ₹27,30,34,190, so nothing mechanical is inflating the percentage. This is a straight open-market purchase.

They have done this once before. The full quarterly series is worth reading:

Sep 2023 34.81% Sep 2025 37.00% Jun 2024 34.66% Dec 2025 36.97% Sep 2024 37.25% Mar 2026 36.97% Mar 2025 37.19% Jun 2026 40.87%

Two deliberate jumps, in September 2024 and June 2026. Everything in between is a drift of a few hundredths of a percent, which is ESOP allotment diluting the share count, not selling.

Some data aggregators currently display “promoters have been selling shares in the open market” for this stock, based on a move from 37.01% to 36.98%. That is a 0.03 percentage point difference caused by employee stock options. It is not selling.

A footnote on that September 2024 quarter. On 23 August 2024, Ramesh Damani bought 8,00,000 shares at ₹127.55, about ₹10.02 crore, roughly 0.59% of the company. The stock hit a 20 percent upper circuit and rose 29 percent in two trading sessions. Whether he still holds is not something I can confirm.

The Number Most People Miss

Open any screener and you will see this: sales down 16 percent compounded over five years. For most people that is where the analysis ends.

But look at what sits directly beneath it in the same table:

Period Sales growth 10 Years -9% 5 Years -16% 3 Years +5% Trailing twelve months +12%

Minus 16 and plus 12, in the same box. Both correct.

The reason is visible in the revenue line itself:

₹960 Cr (FY21) → ₹251 Cr (FY22) → ₹341 → ₹303 → ₹358 → ₹390 Cr (FY26)

That is not a decline. It is a cliff followed by a climb. A business genuinely losing customers produces a slope. This produces a single vertical step and then recovery.

What happened in that step: NIIT demerged its Corporate Learning Business into NIIT Learning Systems Limited under a Composite Scheme of Arrangement effective 24 May 2023, with the business transferring from 1 April 2022. NIIT Learning Systems listed separately on 8 August 2023, and existing NIIT shareholders received its shares in a 1:1 ratio.

The revenue did not disappear. It moved to a different listed company, and shareholders were handed that company. NIIT Learning Systems today does roughly ₹2,066 crore of revenue.

The same distortion sits in the price chart. On the demerger record date, NIIT’s share price was adjusted downward and reopened around ₹98. Any chart measuring a “fall from all-time high” across that date is measuring a corporate action, not a loss. Shareholders were compensated in the second stock. I have seen this misread as a 70 to 75 percent crash. It is not one.

So the five-year revenue figure spans a corporate restructuring. The three-year and trailing figures cover only the business that remains. Those are the ones that describe the company that exists today.

What Just Turned

The June 2026 quarter, reported in late July:

Jun 2025 Jun 2026 Revenue ₹84.12 Cr ₹95.65 Cr Net profit ₹4.19 Cr ₹7.52 Cr

Revenue up 13.7 percent. Profit up 79 percent on consolidated numbers.

(A note on that profit figure: several publications reported 85 percent, which comes from a different profit base, most likely profit attributable to shareholders rather than total profit. I have used the consolidated figure you can verify yourself on any screener. Check the company’s Q1 FY27 investor presentation for the basis management uses.)

Management has guided to double-digit year-on-year revenue growth for Q2 FY27, with improved margins and stronger order momentum for the full year. The company acquired 70 percent of iamneo, an AI deep-skilling platform, in April 2025, and reports that AI-linked work now contributes a meaningful share of revenue. It trained over 167,000 professionals in the last year and has been empanelled by two public sector banks.

The founders bought roughly seven weeks before those numbers were published.

The Balance Sheet

This is likely the real reason they are buying.

Market cap ₹1,266 Cr Price ₹92.30 Book value ₹78.50 Price to book 1.18x Borrowings ₹7 Cr Investments ₹656 Cr

More than half the market capitalisation is the investment portfolio. The company is almost debt free and trades marginally above book. Strip out the investments and the market is assigning roughly ₹610 crore to an operating business doing ₹402 crore of trailing revenue.

The Risks

Read this section twice. It is longer than the bull case for a reason.

1. The core business loses money. Operating margin was minus 3.4 percent in FY26 and minus 3.85 percent last quarter. The operating line has been negative or near zero for four straight years.

2. Essentially all reported profit is other income. FY26 net profit was ₹6 crore. Other income alone was ₹55 crore. Take the investment income away and the business is in the red.

3. The absolute numbers are tiny. That 79 percent profit growth is ₹7.5 crore against a ₹1,266 crore market cap. Percentage growth off a small base flatters everything.

4. Cash generation is weak. FY26 operating cash flow was ₹7 crore and free cash flow was negative ₹25 crore.

5. The P/E is above 90, precisely because earnings are so small.

6. Return on equity is 0.87 percent. ROCE is 2.24 percent. Three-year average ROE is under 3 percent.

7. The dividend payout exceeds 100 percent of profit, funded by investment income rather than operations.

8. FIIs are still leaving. From 18.77 percent in September 2023 to 8.06 percent in June 2026, and still falling quarter on quarter.

9. One quarter is not a trend. Wait for Q2 FY27 before treating the turn as established.

10. This is not a deep correction. The stock is around ₹92 against a 52-week range of ₹49 to ₹118. Anyone telling you it is down 75 percent is reading a demerger-distorted chart.

11. Founders buying does not make them right. They paid above today’s price, and they have been wrong before.

This content is for educational purposes only. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, and contains no price target or entry level. All figures are sourced from exchange filings and company disclosures as on 20 August 2026. Prices and market capitalisation move daily. Please consult your financial advisor before investing.