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spk06: I'm the head of investor relations at MakeMyTrip. We'll just wait for the attendees to join for a few seconds. Hello everyone, I'm Vipul Garg, Vice President of Investor Relations at MakeMyTrip Limited and welcome to our fiscal 2024 first quarter earnings webinar. Today's event will be hosted by a company's leadership team, comprising of Deep Kalra, our company's founder and chairman. Joining him is Rajesh Mago, our co-founder and group chief executive officer, and Mohit Kabra, our group chief financial officer. As a reminder, this live event is being recorded by the company and will be made available for replay on our IR website shortly after the conclusion of today's event. At the end of these prepared remarks, we will also be hosting a Q&A session. Furthermore, certain statements made during today's event may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of safe harbor provision of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to inherent uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information relayed during this event speaks only as of this date and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect change circumstances. Additionally, Information concerning these statements are contained in the risk factors and forward-looking statements section of the company's annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on 25th July, 2023. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or from the company's investor relations department. I would like to now turn over the call to Rajesh. Over to you, Rajesh.
spk07: Thank you, Vipul. Welcome, everyone, to our first quarter call of fiscal 2024. We've started this financial year on a strong footing as evident from our Q1 results. Travel demand was robust in the leisure-heavy seasonal quarter, despite high fares due to short-term supply-side challenges in the aviation market. We witnessed strong traction in leisure travel during the quarter, aided by seasonality coinciding with summer holidays, while business travel continued its recovery trajectory. All segments have now grown beyond pre-pandemic levels, as a result of which we have posted our strongest ever quarter, both in terms of gross bookings and profitability. Gross bookings for the quarter reached an all-time high mark of approximately $2 billion, growing at a faster pace than market growth rate. Our adjusted operating profit or adjusted EBIT of $30.1 million and gap profit after tax of $18.6 million were also record milestones for us. India is still an underpenetrated travel market and is well poised for long-term growth. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the sector has demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability. Other macro factors in India, like strong GDP growth, growing earnings in the hands of middle-class population, increasing propensity to travel and improving transport infrastructure and last mile connectivity will help fuel travel sector growth in India. Consumer preferences are evolving and experiencing travel is now increasingly emerging as one of the preferred areas to spend from the growing disposable income in the hands of consumers. As a result, both domestic tourism and international outbound travel are expected to grow at a faster pace in the next 10 years compared to the last 10 years prior to the pandemic. Infrastructure investments are aiding domestic tourism growth, while the aspirational Indians are looking to travel to various international destinations. As per the IPK World Travel Monitor, India generated Asia's highest outbound travel volume for the first time in 2022, exceeding those of China, South Korea and Japan, partially aided by lagged recovery of outbound travel in China. All major Indian airlines have placed record number of orders for new planes to cater to this demand. Similarly, all hotel chains have announced expansion plans thus increasing the supply over time. We continue to stay excited about the future opportunity and geared up fully with focus on leveraging new technologies to provide more convenient and personalized experiences for travel planning and booking. Our depth of travel-related offerings, quality customer experience, powered by robust tech and product innovations, along with strong brand strength, are helping us cater to the evolving consumer preferences and stay ahead of the market. As for business segments now, starting with air business, we witness strong growth in air ticketing driven by leisure travel during this high season quarter and continue to record 30% plus share in the domestic flown passenger market. Domestic supply was affected during the quarter due to go first issue leading to higher airfares. The supply gap was partially offset on account of higher load factors and additional supply deployed by other airlines. With the DGC approval granted to go first for the resumption plan, and additional aircrafts expected to arrive for other airlines, we hope to see supply situation improving in the coming quarters. Seasonal demand also helped our outbound travel segment finally recover to pre-pandemic levels after almost three years. While long-haul destinations still haven't recovered fully due to supply constraints and visa-related issues, short-haul international travel has surpassed the pre-pandemic levels. We expect the overall international air ticketing segment to keep growing as the supply situation eases further. We continue to innovate our product to cater to a larger variety of use cases. During the quarter, we launched an inspirational travel discovery product called Incredible India at Incredible Prices. which offers results to leisure travelers about the most economical airfare to multiple destinations in India from their chosen origin destination. The early results are encouraging as we have observed a significant increase in searches for leisure destinations on the Incredible India funnel. During the quarter, we also launched an industry first student festival for international flights in June, offering special relevant benefits to students traveling to international destinations for their college studies. coinciding with commencement of academic session during the period. This was highly appreciated and helped us increase our student-led contribution to overall business. Our accommodation business, which includes hotels, homestays and packages, witnessed strong growth this quarter, aided by robust demand in both leisure and corporate travel. We continue to focus on supply expansion and improved discovery as a result, During this quarter, we sold 56,000 plus unique properties in more than 1,700 cities, which is the widest spread achieved in the business. This supply expansion with improved personalization in search results has helped us in improving online buying behavior in an underpenetrated category. While our gross booking value crossed pre-pandemic levels a few quarters back, during this quarter, room nights have also recovered to pre-pandemic levels. We've also seen good momentum in our international hotel business in line with the recovery in outbound travel. Many countries like UAE, Indonesia, Vietnam, Maldives have already surpassed pre-pandemic volumes. We introduced a few industry-leading features in hotels to continue our journey of ensuring delightful and high-quality experience for the end consumer. Book With Zero Payment was launched last quarter, which received a fantastic response from our users. With no upfront payments required, customers can now confidently plan their trips in advance, benefiting from exclusive deals and avoiding price fluctuations. This innovative feature has particularly helped to improve adoption rates in tier two and tier three cities. We continue to scale our homestays business with increasing coverage of leisure destinations. Learning from consumers' insights, we have enhanced our offerings for consumers to get finer details around meal options, such as availability of chef at the property, meal options, kids meals, extended cooking kitchen amenities at one place before booking. This is helping us to specifically target meat to meal premium segment of stays. Our packages business witnessed strong growth this quarter. We successfully conducted three campaigns during the quarter, thus helping us scale the business significantly. We have partnered with Europa Mundo, a leading global player in tourism and travel industry, for bringing the latest international holiday packages to India online. With this partnership, over 600 new itineraries will be added to MakeMyTrips' existing catalogue of nearly 5,000 holiday package options. The partnership further strengthens our portfolio and bolsters our capability to unlock global destinations, and new combinations to cater to every traveler's preference. Our bus ticketing business continues to deliver strong results. Q1 saw a significant addition of supply across the country. Our daily life schedules or supply for private bus operators has increased significantly. Owing to high occupancy across most regions during April and May, we expect fleet additions to be strong in the second half of the year. Our other ground transport services, such as intercity cabs, rail tickets, et cetera, continue to scale well. This segment is helping us acquire new users for the platform. We are gaining market share in the rail ticketing business. Organic downloads for standalone red rail app with an app rating at 4.5 continues to be high on both iOS and Android. Now, a quick update on my partner and corporate travel business. Our my partner, B2B2C platform, where we offer both flight and accommodation booking, is gaining positive traction from our partners. Our travel partner count is now 38,000 plus and expanding every quarter. We recently launched MyPartner in GCC, and we already have more than 1,000 partners live on the platform. Our corporate travel business is scaling up. Our active customer count on MyBiz is now 49,000 plus, and for Q2T, active customer count has reached 271 with strong addition every quarter. We continue to add more capabilities on our both MyBiz and Q2T platforms. We completed automated integration to multiple HRMS and expense management platforms, thus reducing onboarding time for corporates and simplifying overall travel and expense management for employees. Our OTA business in GCC is growing steadily. Gross booking value doubled over the same quarter last year. Strong momentum in the last quarter was driven by significant progress in building key product features, supply richness, and building new growth avenues. Along with revenue growth, we have been working on improving efficiency in acquisition and pricing management, driving significant improvement in unit economics, while overall contribution of GCC remains small, but showing good traction organically. With this, let me now hand over the call to Mohit for financial highlights of the quarter.
spk00: Thanks Rajesh and hello everyone. The strong business performance in the first quarter of the new fiscal year 2024 indicates that the pandemic is now well and truly behind us. Elbit, we continue to leverage the cost rationalization initiatives we had rolled out during the pandemic impacted period. During this period, taking a longer term view, we have also invested behind three or four key strategies or areas which are as follows. Firstly, technology upgrades on the supply side to drive synergies across brands while enhancing the stability and scalability of the underlying platforms. On the customer phasing side, made significant enhancements to deliver highly personalized customer experience driven by data science and machine learning abilities and on the tech backend, and providing online resolution for a wider variety of post sales service requirements. Secondly, increase the travel and travel related service offerings on our platforms to be the one stop shop or travel super app for Indians to explore, book and manage all their travel needs. Thirdly, Supply-side expansion, particularly in the accommodation space, which involved getting more and more hotels and alternative accommodations across price points and across the length and breadth of the country so that our customers can have more options to choose from. Lastly, a sharper targeting of various customer segments by leveraging new generative artificial intelligence tools and scaling up new demand segments by curated platforms to target corporate bookings, as well as increase our outreach, particularly beyond the tier one cities through offline agents and other online affiliates. As a result of the above, the business is well positioned to leverage demand recovery and outpace market growth while improving profitability. We are therefore pleased to report a strong quarter as we begin the new fiscal year 24, both in terms of business growth and profitability. While there were certain supply-side hiccups during the quarter, demand for travel continues to be robust, backed by seasonality and positive consumer sentiment. We have witnessed strong year-on-year growth across all segments, which has helped us achieve milestone numbers in terms of gross bookings, as well as profitability, and this has turned out to be one of our best quarters till date. During the reported first quarter, gross bookings came in at approximately $2 billion, or $1987 million to be precise, witnessing a growth of over 31.4% year-on-year in constant currency terms. We delivered gap EBITDA of $25.9 million for the quarter, witnessing a growth of around 31.7% year on year. EBITDA margin was at 13.2% for the quarter, which is an expansion of about 530 basis points as compared to the same quarter last year. Adjusted operating profit or adjusted EBIT stands at about $30.1 million as compared to $16.5 million during the same quarter last year, an improvement of almost 83% year on year. As already called out by Rajesh, these are our highest ever quarterly numbers during the business. While a sharper focus on profitable growth, we are glad to achieve our medium-term margins targets ahead of our expectations on the back of strong business growth and our continued focus on cost efficiencies. Air ticketing gross bookings for the quarter stood at $1.2 billion, witnessing a growth of 30.9% year-on-year on a constant currency basis. Adjusted margin stood at about $74.5 million, registering a strong growth of 30.4% year-on-year on constant currency basis. Take rates or margins for the quarter stood at about 6.1%. This was lower optically due to the higher ASPs on account of Q1 being a seasonally strong quarter and contraction in margins in line with the supply constraints as a result of the shutdown of operations by one of the low-cost airlines in the country. Gross bookings for the quarter in the hotels and packages segment stood at about $498 million, witnessing a strong growth of 36.5% year-on-year on constant currency basis in line with the demand trends. Adjusted margin for HNP business stood at $85.6 million during the quarter, witnessing a growth of over 36% year-on-year in constant currency terms. Margins for the quarter was 17.2%, an expansion of almost 90 bps over the previous quarter. In our bus ticketing business, gross bookings for the quarter were at $276.8 million, growing at 24.7% year on year on constant currency basis. Existed margin stood at about $27.3 million, registering a strong growth of over 39.7% in constant currency terms. Margins in our bus ticketing business stood at about 9.9% for the quarter. We continue to be prudent and efficient with our expenses, specifically our customer acquisition costs as reflected under the marketing and sales promotions. During the reported quarter, we went live with our brand campaign to drive top of mind recall and accelerate call to action in a seasonally strong quarter. Overall marketing and sales promotion costs for the quarter, including the brand campaign, came in at about 4.6% of gross bookings as compared to 5.1% in the same quarter last year and 5% during the previous quarter. Most of the other operating expenses continue to be in line with the previous quarters. As at the end of this quarter, our cash and cash equivalents stand at about $522 million. Potential deployment of the free cash in future could be in pursuit of growth opportunities or towards capital restructuring via share repurchases. During the last quarter, we had also notified that we have widened our share repurchase plan to include repurchase of convertible bonds. With that, I'd like to turn the call to Whipple for Q&A.
spk06: Thank you, Mohit. Any participant willing to ask a question from the management can click on the raise hand options and we will take the questions one by one. The first question is from the line of Sachin Salgankar of Bank of America. Sachin, you may please ask your question now.
spk03: Thanks, Vipul. Congratulations for a great set of numbers. I have three questions. First question, clearly one sees in this quarter a strong growth in hotel and slightly subdued growth in air. And because of the mix shift in favor of hotels, perhaps the margins also have improved. So the question out here is, you know, how should one look at the sustainability of these EBITDA and EBIT margins going ahead? To, you know, Mohit, your point that, you know, you achieved your medium term margin targets in this quarter. Let me pause here.
spk00: If you look at it from a mixed point of view, the HNP business is now kind of into the early 40s. If you look at historically, even in the pre-pandemic kind of period, we have seen HNP contributing to kind of almost close to 50% of the mix. So I think there is still further potential for holidays and packages to kind of improve in the mix. While we could see better growth coming in from air ticketing in the coming quarters, as some of the short-term supply constraints get lifted, we believe blended margins should continue to kind of be in the range that we've kind of posted. We have seen slight marginal improvements coming through over the last few quarters that should potentially sustain.
spk03: Got it pretty clear actually out there. Second question, just wanted to understand, how should one look at the industry growth for the next six to nine months? And it comes from a context that last year was clearly more like low base kind of a year. But this year in the first quarter, you guys are more like a 27% growth. So is it 25% plus growth for industry sustainable?
spk00: I think growth is a factor of one industry growth. plus the kind of incremental growth that we get in by increasing online penetration, right? And we are kind of pretty much representative of the growth on the online side, particularly on the travel services. So I think we continue to leverage on the trend of Increasingly, consumers getting comfortable with online buying behavior and particularly in the under-penetrated segments like accommodation, etc. So that should continue to fuel better than industry growth for us in the coming years.
spk07: And maybe Mohit, if I can just add to what Sachin was saying. Sachin, historically, we've seen the thumb rule typically is that the overall industry growth, online, offline, put together, let's say if it is like 10% Kega, Then the online typically will be 2x. And we have always sort of, you know, at least historically, even in this quarter, we called out our growth rate typically has been faster than the industry overall growth rate as well. So, you know, some sort of additional points for that. But that's the way to sort of directionally think about the growth.
spk03: Okay, thanks Rajesh and Mohit. And last question, you know, just wanted to understand a bit more on, you know, the book with zero payment, what you guys launched last quarter. You know, how should one look at the impact of this on your numbers? Are you, you know, what kind of a balance sheet risk are you taking or, you know, anything to explain the economics out there would be helpful.
spk07: Okay, let me just take this. There is no balance sheet risk on this for sure. Because this is just a feature back to back sort of work with the partners where it offers, you know, more flexibility to the consumer, the travelers, just basically working on the insight that, you know, if you are not necessarily 100% certain, and at some level, it'll also over time drive the behavior of booking in advance was really the thought behind. So give the flexibility to the consumer. You just started to, let's say, plan for your trip. You can just go ahead and book it because there is a feature available that you don't have to upfront commit any money. And then as you make up your mind, you can just make the final payment. But your booking will be guaranteed. So that's really the focus here. There's no balance sheet risk. There's back to back arrangement here. Overall, from an impact standpoint, the way we are looking at it, that and as it has become popular in consumers' minds already, you know, good feedback coming back from the customers that they're finding it really, really useful is that it effectively mouth of the funnel will increase significantly. There will be more users, more people who would be wanting to come in and let's say block or reserve their booking. And if they end up just canceling it, the net impact of you know, increase in the more new users coming or even the existing users coming and booking. And, you know, let's say when the cancellation rate is a little higher because there's flexibility offer, the net-net impact is only going to be growth in the number of room nights. So that's the way we are looking at it, but there's no balance sheet risk involved in this.
spk03: And then Rajesh, who faces the risk? Let's say, you know, to your point, if a consumer cancels perhaps at the last minute and doesn't make any payment, It's a loss to someone, right? So who bears this loss?
spk07: No, Sachin, it's actually, it's an auto cancellation and that's the way we have plugged it. So it's an auto cancellation that happens. Let's say if the payment does not happen, where back-to-back arrangement with the partner is that the free cancellation is available for, let's say, 48 hours in advance or 72 hours in advance, that the timelines are set accordingly. So if the payment is not received from the customer, the cancellation happens automatically.
spk03: Got it. Thank you and all the best for future. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you, Sachin. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain from Citi. Vijit, you may please ask your question now.
spk02: Thanks, Rupal. Hi, guys. Congratulations on a great set of numbers. Just two questions from my side. One, is I know you mentioned targets with free cash of buyback. And I know you have that convertible debt that you would want to buy back. But aside from that $136 million authorization, have you settled on the use of cash between buybacks and dividends in favor of buyback? Is that how I should understand it?
spk00: So I think what we've called out currently is the share repurchase plan. And we've kind of widened the share repurchase plan, as I've mentioned, to include the convertible bonds. We haven't kind of made any comment around any dividends as such. And even on the share repurchase plan, see, this is an existing plan which has been carried forward for quite a few years, wherein the balance is about $136 million. we should kind of be open to increasing the overall plan outlay once we are kind of closer to exhausting the available available within the plan. So I think the one should not feel that, you know, the plan is kind of restricted to only $136 million. It could be a much larger outlay depending upon how much are we able to kind of, you know, repurchase.
spk02: Correct. So if I can ask, is there any specific driver for the choice between a dividend and a buyback? I'm just curious about that because obviously there's a reason for something like that in India. But just for you, I'm wondering if there's any rationale.
spk00: So a couple of, a couple of things, you know, driving the rational for us, you know, if you look at it, like I've said, our preference would be while we have a convertible bond, which has, you know, certain put triggers end of year three and year five, our preference would be to kind of, you know, repurchase the convertible bonds. provided they're available at a meaningful discount. However, like I've said, it's been difficult to kind of get them at a discount. They're trading pretty strong, about almost 99 to 100%. So the first difference would lie in terms of repurchasing the convertible bonds. And thereafter, we could kind of look at the repurchases on the share side. So this is the preferred prioritization at our end.
spk02: but my second question is you know just on the quarter I see that the other expenses this quarter is you know somewhere around 2.4% of GBV quite a bit of a jump there I know you mentioned areas where you are investing behind but if you can give more color on you know beyond the payment gateway related fees and those kinds of things where this increase is coming from that will be great And in addition to that, just to follow up on your adjusted EBIT margin number, you've obviously hit the top end of the target of 1 to 1.5. And I just wanted to clarify if you're revising that target to 1.5% plus, is that how I should interpret your earlier comment?
spk00: OK. On the first one, this is also a result of a little bit of a reclassification. of certain expenses which were earlier coming in as other cost of services and have now been reclassified as distribution expenses under the other operating expenses category. So we made a disclosure in the 6K around the same. It's largely coming in from the bus ticketing business and also from our overall affiliates business. So this is a little bit of a optical thing coming in from the reclassification as explained in the 6K. The second one, You know, if you really look at it, we have been guiding that, you know, we're gradually scaling up on profitability. And you would recollect that over the last few quarters, we have been mentioning that we would like to get to about, you know, teens of adjusted operating margin, you know, as a percentage of adjusted margin and get to about, you know, 1.5%. of gross bookings in terms of percentage of gross bookings. I think we kind of hit that level during this seasonally strong quarter, which was also backed with the fact that we were able to significantly optimize on our customer acquisition costs during this particular quarter. So the quarter had certain amount of supply constraints as a result of which we have kind of tweaked our strategy or kind of, you know, tactically made sure that we're, you know, spending more on, on say brand building kind of, you know, expenses rather than short term ish, you know, transaction driving spends like promotional expense. And therefore the overall, you know, marketing and sales promotion came in about 4.6%. For the full term, I believe we could look at, you know, these expenses coming in at around the five, five and a half percentage mark. However, For the full year also, we've seen, like last year, we were pretty much able to maintain the momentum that we had kind of generated on profitability in the first quarter. Even during this year, we would like to kind of maintain the momentum and try and keep the profitability around the first quarter levels.
spk02: Got it. Moit, one last question, if I can sandwich in. You know, the Cricket World Cup in November is that... a significant business driver in general. I don't know if you had any experience around that at the last time India hosted World Cup. We have seen news around bookings in certain places going to high levels already. So I just thought I'd get your two bits on that one.
spk07: Well, maybe Vijit, I can take that. Yeah, I know. And there's a lot of hype and noise around it already. So I'm not surprised that you're asking this question. Listen, there is, given that there's so much of interest in watching cricket in India, there is definitely bound to be some, you know, sort of excitement around traveling to the destination where the matches is going to happen, and therefore by virtue of that, there is definitely, it could act as a booster for the travel industry, overall domestic travel, right? And, you know, as you can perhaps already see, fares have started to go up specifically to those dates and even the hotel rooms, et cetera, you know, the rates have gone up because everyone is obviously, I mean, there is hype, there is potential, you know, potentially there's going to be hike in demand and therefore, you know, accordingly the prices, you know, are also going up. So clearly there will be some upside. Now, how much will that be? We'll see from a preparation standpoint from, you know, at our end. We are doing everything possible for us to be able to be ready to tap into this opportunity as well, now be it on the accommodation side, not necessarily on the hotels, you know, making sure that we have, you know, a lot of the inventory in place, but also Um, you know, additionally, uh, actually it's a great opportunity for homestays as well for some of these locations. So, um, and, and not to say obviously the travel that might happen along with it. So overall, whether it is air travel or ground transport or, uh, overall accommodation during that period, um, there definitely will be some, uh, uh, you know, growth, the additional growth or the incremental growth that we would witness.
spk02: Correct. Thanks Rajesh. Those are my questions. Thank you so much.
spk07: Thank you, Vijit.
spk06: Thanks, Vijit. The next question is from the line of Manish Udukia of Goldman Sachs. Manish, you may please ask your question now.
spk01: Yes, hi. Thanks, Vipul, for taking my question. So my question is actually a follow-up to Vijit's previous question. Now, when we look at your marketing spend, Mohit, I mean, you know, let's say a couple of years back, you were guiding to about 6% to 7% of gross bookings. And then the guidance was lower to 5% to 6%. And now you're saying 5% to 5.5%. And of course, the numbers come at 4.6%. So is there actually like a downside risk to marketing spend, meaning in terms of what you see in the market, in competition, do you think structurally marketing spend has room to come down even further? Because when you look at, let's say, global markets, I think the marketing spend for some of the travel OTAs there is still lower than what you have reported. So your thoughts on that would be great.
spk00: Yeah, I think it's kind of evolving as you have seen over the last few years and quarters. Clearly, there are two or three trends that we had called out. One, there is definitely scope for improvement in the customer action costs linked to a few things. One, the overall base of customers that we keep acquiring and how much of our transactions keep coming in from repeats. rather than, you know, new customer acquisition, which is generally more expensive, right? And we've been calling that out, that our repeat rates have actually kind of, you know, been increasing almost 70% plus of our transactions now, our orders now are coming in from our existing customer base. And clearly there's an opportunity to keep expanding the customer base as well. What we also need to keep in mind is usually, you know, as we kind of, you know, keep increasing the mix on the accommodation side, accommodation being a larger margin business also increases requires a little bit of a larger push on the marketing and sales promotion side. And therefore, the blended marketing and sales promotion could go up a little bit as we see the mix improving towards orders and packages. That said, this particular quarter, there was also a little bit of an anomaly where, like I had called out, there have been certain supply-related constraints which were impacting particularly the air ticketing side of demand and therefore overall travel. Therefore, we've kind of, you know, gone tactically a lot more prudent in this particular quarter on some of these customer acquisition costs. And therefore, they have come in slightly lower than where we would have anticipated them to come in. This is the previous few quarters trending. Should we be able to sustain it around these levels or be kind of, you know, cutting back closer to the 5% levels? We'll again depend upon how quickly, you know, particularly the ticketing side of business or the industry recovers. That should pretty much kind of, you know, impact this in the coming quarters. But like I said, you know, overall, If we can be around that range of five to five and a half percent, that should be a good range to be in. On the competitive side, yes, competitive dynamics have been easy. And like I said, two factors that are kind of contributing to it is one is the increasing size and scale of our customer base, increasing online penetration in each of the segments that we operate in. And thirdly, increasing kind of easing of competitive pressures.
spk01: Thank you so much for that. My second question is on the reclassification that you talked about. So the take rate increase that we've seen in the bus segment of about 80 basis point quarter on quarter and hotels about 100 basis point on quarter on quarter is a large part of that due to that service cost reclassification?
spk00: Not in hotels. Actually, hotels and air, there's hardly any kind of impact coming in from the reclassification. The reclassification is largely coming and making an impact on the bus ticketing margins And therefore, I was clarifying that that is something that we have specifically mentioned as an explanation in the MD&A section of the 6K. So yes, large part of the bus ticketing upside that you see going in from about 8.8% to 9.9% is coming in from the reclassification.
spk01: Gordon, my last question is on the budget segment in the budget hotels and the recovery there. So in the past, you've called out a recovery there has lagged the mid to premium and has the recovery dynamic there improved meaningfully in the last quarter and is that driving the take rate expansion on a quarter on quarter basis yes it is it is it is and therefore you do see some impact of that coming through the uh to the improved margins as well and we are now close to about 80 85 percent recovery on the budget segment as well or the super budget segment thank you so much for taking my questions and all the best
spk06: Thank you, Manish. Next question is from the line of Aditya Suresh from Macquarie. Aditya, you may please ask your question now. Aditya, you'll have to unmute your line. Yes, please go ahead.
spk05: Yes, great. Thank you. Thank you very much, Vipul. I had one big picture question and then two specific questions. So it's obviously great to see the operating leverage come through. So beyond market dynamics, I'm really curious to understand what's really changed in terms of how you're managing the business, whether that be for Rajesh or Deep or Mohit. Can you just speak about that a bit in terms of what's really changed in the past one month, one year in terms of how you're managing the business?
spk07: Yeah, maybe I can take that at a time. I think actually two or three big changes. And I would actually just not say for the last one year, I would say including the pandemic period. And sometimes, you know, the down cycle actually pushes you to think harder and it also throws opportunities. You know, how could you possibly look at the opportunities and look at the businesses slightly differently? So just to specifically call that out, right? So the one thing, A big opportunity that we got was the availability of our technology and product folks. And we decided to sort of focus on what could be the potential opportunities. on the tech front or on the product front that we can possibly tap into for our existing business. And then in parallel, can we think of new business segments and for that, whatever development that we need to do. What is that? Can we just sort of attack those areas and double down on those? So we leverage technologies, all the latest technologies to focus on, you know, the expanding the product offerings to make, you know, like literally a one-stop shop on the B2C side and then built multiple platforms as we've been calling out. in those two years. I mean, you know, some of that was enhancement on the platform that was already there, like my business, the corporate segment platform was already built and we had started that journey pre-pandemic, but we just significantly sort of deployed resources and doubled down on improving not only the product experience, but also you know, just significantly sort of expanding the offerings there and fixing all the supply side, front end issues, et cetera. Similarly, the My Partner platform, similarly TripMoney FinTech platform, launching into the GCC market, launching Red Rail, and, you know, also building an affiliate platform that we can potentially power you know, many of the horizontals out there for new user acquisition. So I would say that was one area, just the product and the tech part of it. The second Um, interesting opportunity that we saw, uh, was in the echo space where we, we saw homestays category emerging very nicely. Um, and, uh, and we doubled down on building the supply strength on that. Today we have about 28,000 properties and we also saw an opportunity in the budget hotel segment. Um, you know, as there was churn happening, but then. There was an opportunity on picking up the quality supply in the market and bringing on our platform as well. So a lot of the work on the expansion of domestic hotel supply specifically on homestays and then building home front end capabilities and also building supply side or host application dedicated for the host and so on. And third, I would say, you know, just looking at the opportunities again, which could enhance productivity, you know, of course gives us agility at scale and also helps in cost sort of rationalization. And that was just building the self-service platforms for post sales customer service side. And we invested behind, again, deployed a lot of sources, a lot of bandwidth went into it. And we significantly improved the customer experience on the postal side. And thereby, reducing the amount of outsourcing that we had to do pre-pandemic. you know, at a scale. So all these areas that obviously have helped us, you know, both on the, you know, the profitability at the scale standpoint overall, you know, sort of unit economics improving, but also more importantly, adding new areas of growth. So I'm saying all in all, it was basically an idea of just looking at the opportunities where it could potentially help you post-pandemic while we were sort of weathering the storm as a separate track in terms of just, you know, how best to come out of the crisis. So, Aditya, these are the few things that, you know, probably worth calling out.
spk05: Great, Rajesh. Thank you so much for that response. I think the other call out also is how you've improved your revenue line whilst you're employee costs have been steady. And that's, I guess, speaks to your productivity comment as well. But I'm really curious to understand how this line shapes up in the next couple of years. You're kind of boosted productivity per employee. Maybe some guidance here on how you're thinking about staff, salaries, ESOPs, as we continue to grow the business.
spk00: Charlie, maybe I can take that, Aditya, and, you know, when it comes to personal costs overall, I think this will largely be kind of, you know, seeing inflationary increases, you know, more around the, say, around the 15% mark. That is what we should be seeing as we don't really kind of, you know, expect to have any significant increases on the headcount side. When it comes to specific areas of cost like share-based compensation, etc., or SBC costs, what you can consider is that the absolute number should largely remain in the same ballpark range and therefore provide a lot of operating leverage going forward as well.
spk05: Great. Thanks, Muth. I had one additional question, if that's okay. So I'm just on working capital. Clearly, we've seen that international and hotels is coming back in the mix. And I typically would have thought that you'd see a positive working capital impact as these two lines come back. Would you tend to agree with that comment? And how should I be thinking about the working capital release going forward?
spk00: Usually if you follow our kind of, you know, trending, you know, over the years, seasonally high quarters would generally see a deployment in working capital. However, this quarter, you know, essentially because we've been extremely focused on cash flow management as well, we have actually seen a release coming on the working capital side. So that's actually a kind of a big positive for the quarter that we've reported because usually otherwise in a peak seasonality, there's generally deployment that we see over the years.
spk05: But I guess the specific question was, as you have more share of hotels in your mix, my understanding is that as I'm kind of booking in advance, the kind of advances which I'm giving as a platform stays with you. And so there's a positive working capital impact until the time I actually check in. So I was wondering if as you see more hotels and more international travel come back, you should see a stronger working capital impact which favors you.
spk00: not a lot, you know, because you've also kind of, you see the whole campaign, you know, this quarter was around book at zero, right? So we're not, necessarily trying to kind of, you know, build on, you know, positive working capital through the accommodation business. That's not really the intent. We're kind of using a variety of, you know, options and features such as pay later or kind of book at zero, et cetera, whereby we don't really see there will be any significant kind of, you know, working capital positivity coming in with the increasing mix coming from hotels and packages.
spk05: Great. Thank you so much for these clarifications. Thank you.
spk06: Sure. Thanks, Aditya. The next question is from the line of Gaurav Rathiri of Morgan Stanley. Gaurav, you may please ask your question now. Hi, am I audible? Yes, please. Go ahead.
spk04: Hey, congratulations on almost a magical quarter on margins and cash flow. My first question is on your comment around the air ticketing business should see improving trends going forward with supply constraints easing. Is this more like a second half phenomena or it should start happening from near term itself.
spk07: Yes, Gaurav. And thank you. Firstly, thank you for the generous comment. Yes, Gaurav. That's what I was just trying to say in my commentary as well. Most likely second half onwards, because that is when I think the deliveries are scheduled to come in. More planes are likely to come in for the Tata group of airlines or Indigo for that matter. and, you know, even for Acosta and the others. So, and that would help. I don't think it's happening like in the immediate future, like not in the running quarter, but from second half onwards, it starts, it will start to ease out.
spk04: Got it. Very clear. Second question is again, some comment that you made around you growing faster than market in HNP segment, how to understand the overall volume growth, From an industry standpoint, and where have you got your market share gain from?
spk07: Yeah, no, I think the data that we have sort of looked at, I mean, you know, at an overall level, it's hard. There is not really any structured third party data that is available, like you will get it in the air market, like DGCA number is a very good number that comes out every day. So, you know, to the last sort of digit that what is your market share gain, etc., And that's not necessarily the case with hotels market, admittedly. But what we see and, you know, our comment is based on looking at that data that, you know, specifically on our platform, we've looked at every segment as compared to, let's say, pre-pandemic level or even year on year. From a pre-pandemic level, every segment, our growth rate is, you know, more than 100% across the segments, except the budget. Budget, as Mohit pointed out some time back, that is also recovering nicely now. And then, you know, basis that your conversation with the industry and the partners that you collect some data, there are some reports on the supply side, which are neutral on the occupancy. So you bring in all of that, you know, into the calculation and based on your estimates that you think that you will be able to actually gain share in majority of the segments of the hotels. So that's really the basis of that comment. And, you know, we can get into details offline, but, you know, if you would want more color, but that's the way we have sort of looked at it.
spk04: Got it. My last question is around the generative AI. You alluded to certain efficiencies around there and personalization, improving product features, but How do you think about the overall risk of disruption from using this new technology where the whole travel booking process of search selection becomes more conversational and completely disruptive to the way it's being done currently? Just trying to understand on terms of product innovations that could be the possibility in this month.
spk07: No, there is huge possibility. I mean, this technology per se is, you know, to our assessment, it's looking really promising. And if I may say so, you know, if there is any disruption that this technology is likely to cause, we would want to lead that disruption. And with that thought only, we actually did soft launch off our conversation flow. And right now, you know, there are two or three use cases which are in the works, which we are working on. with the focus that we want to improve the customer experience and more particularly relying on the better and robust language models to also have a flow which is hybrid and that could help us reach to beyond 25 cities, if you will, literally penetrate deep into India or Bharat. That's really the focus. The next level focus also is to leverage the technology to also bring in some efficiencies and productivity gains in the system. Because I think there are areas on software development or in some of the other areas that we are still doing some work on where prima facie you see a lot of potential. That if you do the deployment right, then you should be able to get some gains. But If I may just add an important sort of, not caveat, but maybe an additional comment, that it is going to be a journey. And as you sort of deploy this technology in every particular use case, you will learn. You will learn, you will get more insights and you will keep fine tuning it. Until the time that you get to 100% accuracy, it is going to take some time. It's not, and pretty much happens with every technology. It's not necessarily overnight. Some gains you would be very visible to you really quick, but for us to be able to see sustainable gains, whether it is overall customer experience improvement or serious amount of innovation disrupting the status quo or productivity gains. In all areas, there is promise, but it's going to be a journey.
spk04: All the best for future. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you, Varun.
spk06: Thank you, Gaurav. This was the last question that we had in the queue. If we have no more questions, I'll hand over to Rajesh for his closing comments.
spk07: Well, thank you, Vipul. And thank you, everyone. Thank you for your time. And thank you for your patience. And thank you for all the nice comments that you had made today. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. You may please disconnect.
spk07: Thank you.
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