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spk04: You have joined the meeting as an attendee and will be muted throughout the meeting. 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 the safe harbor provision of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantee 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 changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements is 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 July 2, 2024. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or from the company's Investor Relations Department. I would like to now turn the call over to Rajesh for his remarks. Over to you, Rajesh.
spk09: Thank you, Vipul. Welcome everyone to our first quarter call for fiscal 2025. We are pleased to share that we started the financial year on a strong note with the highest ever quarterly gross bookings, revenue and adjusted operating profit with robust growth across all our businesses. We delivered these strong numbers despite the late pickup of the season for leisure travel due to general elections in April. Gross booking value for Q1 was more than $2.4 billion with growth at 22% year-on-year in constant currency terms. And the adjusted operating profit was $39.1 million, registering a growth of about 30% year-on-year. Our strategy of catering to various travel use cases and targeting different demand segments on multiple customer touchpoints is helping us deliver sustained growth. A wide spectrum of travel products is also helping us increase our share of the wallet of Indian travelers' overall travel spend. We now have a lifetime transacted user base of 75 million across all our three brands. To build stronger loyalty, we relaunched our flagship loyalty program, MMT Black, with simplified two tiers and with new benefits such as guaranteed room upgrades and meal upgrades for participating hotels and homestays, immediate my cash credit post booking, and no cap on the number of times one can avail discounts on flight add-ons, such as zero cancellation, in-flight meals, free day change, etc. Although it is early days of the new MMT Black program rollout, we've already seen improvement in the operating metrics compared to the earlier version, indicating better value for our Black customers. On macroeconomic front, India's robust economic growth has boosted the disposable income of its growing upper middle class, leading to higher disposable income in their hands. As a result, there is a visible increase in spending on discretionary services, including travel and tourism. On the other hand, the lower middle class is also a growing number, acting as a booster for domestic travel. Besides, the increasing number of households headed by the younger generations is helping drive a cultural shift towards taking more breaks in a year. The rise of flexible working arrangements has also influenced travel behavior. Many people are combining work and leisure through vocations and extended stays in different locations. The shift in work culture allows individuals to travel more frequently without compromising their professional responsibilities. As per a McKinsey report, India is currently the world's sixth largest domestic travel market by spending, with growing middle class powering travel spending, growth of roughly 9% per year. India's domestic market could overtake Japan's and Mexico's to become the world's fourth largest by 2030. Domestic air passenger traffic in India is projected to double by 2030, boosted by government initiatives to build infrastructure and connect underserved domestic airports. Let me now turn to the business segment, starting with our air ticketing business. A positive development in this quarter was international outbound travel. As reported earlier, international outbound travel recovered fully in fiscal year 24, but in this quarter, we witnessed robust growth of 25% year-on-year in international air segments. It now contributes over 37% to our air ticketing revenue. Long-term outlook on outbound travel from India is also very positive with fast-growing pools of first-time tourists. Many short haul and long haul destinations are investing to increase their awareness for Indian tourists, considering India a very important source market. A couple of emerging destinations like Turkey and Kazakhstan, the number of Indian tourists has significantly grown and touched new highs. For Kazakhstan, India is now the third largest source market, witnessing a three-fold increase in Indian tourists compared to 2021. For Turkey, the number of tourists from India has surged 34% in the first five months of 2024 compared to the same period last year. We continue to invest in this opportunity and aim to increase our share of revenue from this segment over the years. In the domestic air market, the supply situation improved markedly. The total number of domestic departures saw a slight increase in Q1 compared to the previous quarter. We expect the domestic supply situation to improve further from the second half of the financial year. The growth in the domestic air market continues to be muted. On a flown basis, the market grew by 4.5% year-on-year, and we continue to grow faster than the market. To further improve our product experience, we have introduced GenAI-assisted chatbot named Myra on our international flight booking funnel. Myra assists users with various flight-related queries and actions, such as applying conditional filters, obtaining visa or transit visa information, understanding baggage policies, learning about cancellation, date change penalties, et cetera. Additionally, it can suggest the cheapest travel days for a destination and perform searches based on simple chat commands. AI-based feature enhancement is a journey. We plan to make Myra more and more intelligent using consumer insights in the future. Additionally, we have further expanded our integrated eVisa feature now for five additional destinations, like Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, and Sri Lanka. To increase affordability and address cash flow issues, we have introduced a new EMI feature that converts the international flight price into a six-month EMI plan, thus addressing affordability concerns. On domestic flights, we now have premium airport services such as meet and assist, porter and buggy transfer, along with regular flight booking. We plan to expand this feature on our international funnel as well soon, thereby enriching the flight booking experience with additional services. Our accommodation business that includes hotels, homestays and packages continues to witness strong growth. We recorded over 27% year-on-year growth in the adjusted margin on a constant currency basis, contributing 44% to the overall revenue. As we improve our penetration, we continue to add more properties across the country and now offer properties in 2100 plus cities in India. Our international outbound business for hotels continues to scale as well, contributing 15% of total accommodation business revenue. On the customer experience side, we have introduced the street view feature to enhance the user experience by providing an accurate view of the external surroundings of the properties, ensuring safety and visual appeal. We are the first platform in India to introduce this capability for both domestic and international properties. We're also now giving personalized recommendations for a customer across room types, meals, and amenities. For example, highlighting options for properties in remote locations where meal plans are essential. This intervention not only enhances user convenience, but also helps improve conversion. We've also launched 360-degree imagery for virtual tours, initially covering 200 mid and premium properties with plans to expand over 1,000 hotels. This feature gives us gives users an immersive experience visualizing hotel rooms and amenities, leading to a higher conversion rate among users who interact with it and helping us promote higher ASP properties. Our homestay business continues to grow with increasing coverage of destinations. During the quarter, we sold over 19,300 plus unique properties across 850 plus unique destinations with strong growth across business and leisure destinations. We endeavor to grow this category by offering unique experiences to our customers. As part of our MOU signed with the Goa government, we launched Goa Beyond Beaches campaign, promoting homestays near temples and heritage homestays in city. The collaborative effort aims to further propel tourism in Goa and position it as vibrant year-round destination moving beyond its iconic sun, sand, and beaches. Make My Trip in collaboration with Niti Aayog launched Project METRI, a woman entrepreneurship program aimed to empower female entrepreneurs from Northeast India by leveraging the untapped potential of homestays as a pathway to entrepreneurship, economic empowerment, and independence. 30 hosts attended the inaugural workshop wherein comprehensive training focusing on key areas such as finance, legal, taxation, hospitality, and OTA management was provided to help them set up and run a successful homestay business. Our holiday packages business delivered robust performance as well, achieving highest ever gross booking numbers driven by strong growth in international outbound packages with new destinations like CIS countries, America, and Japan leading the growth. Our packages team added new products like next-gen adventures specifically targeting millennials and Gen Z. These are experiential group tours catering to the 18 to 35 years old age group. Our bus business continues to grow well, driven by strong demand and expansion of supply. The Beyonce in supply was due to the addition of new buses by many existing operators across the country as the delivery of new buses gathered pace. However, an increase in supply and a reduction in diesel prices has led to a fall in average seat price in most regions, particularly in South India, which helped in robust volume growth in the segment for us. Keeping women's preferences and safety in mind, we launched a women's special feature that shows info such as buses that are highly rated by women, number of women traveling along, women-specific red deals, reviews by women, etc., 45% of women bookings are through this funnel with higher conversion rates and NPS than the regular funnel. We also launched Tamil Booking Funnel on Android platform in April 24, in addition to the existing Hindi funnel, helping us cater to new regional users and drive deeper penetration. For our rail customers, we continue to add product features and strengthen our value proposition. As a result, we continue to gain market share in train bookings, leveraging all our brand's including MMT, Goi, Vibo, and Redbus. For intercity cabs, we integrated supply from Savari and were able to cater to peak season demand with high availability, fulfillment, and quality of service. We have also scaled up assisted sales where high-value bookings and complex itineraries are routed to agents who help with the conversion. Our corporate travel business via both our platforms, that is MyBiz and Quest2Travel, is witnessing strong growth. Our active corporate customer count on MyBiz is now over 59,700 plus. And for Quest to Travel, the active customer count has reached 458 large corporates compared to 272 large customers in the same quarter last year. We have increased the personalization quotient on the platform by giving customized property rankings based on user preferences and featuring international hotels. popular with Indian travelers, and tailored ranking for business trips. As regard to our UAE business, we had a successful marketing campaign, Let's Make My Trip in the UAE. In time to capture the travel demand for the Eid season, the focus was to grow our brand awareness with the non-Indian population. Our loyalty program, MMT Select in UAE, is continuing to get strong traction as well. We now have close to 473,000 enrollments into the program and 40,000, approximately 40,000 members are already in silver and gold tiers. With this, let me now hand over the call to Mohit for the financial highlights of the quarter. Thanks, Rajesh, and hello, everyone. We've started the year on a strong note, posting our highest ever quarterly gross bookings of $2.4 billion compared to $2 billion in the same quarter last year with a 21.6% year-on-year constant currency growth. Apart from strong growth in bookings, the improvement in mix of higher margin businesses compared to the same quarter last year has helped us post 31.5% year-on-year comprehensive growth in revenue and achieving our highest ever quarterly revenue up to $54.5 million as compared to $196.7 million in the same quarter last year. Moving on to our segment results, our A-ticketing gross bookings for the quarter came in at $1.4 billion, witnessing a year-on-year growth of 17% in constant currency. Adjusted margin stood at $89.1 million, registering a year-on-year growth of 21.2% in constant currency. Take rates for the A-ticketing business were on expected lines at about 6.4%. Our international A-ticketing business posted Strong year-on-year revenue growth of over 37% in constant currency and now accounts for over 37% of interested margins in the e-ticketing business. Gross bookings for the quarter in the hotels and packages segment came in at $611.3 million, registering a strong growth of 24.7% year-on-year on constant currency terms. Adjusted margin growth came in higher at 29.6% year-on-year, resulting in an adjusted margin of $107.3 million during the quarter. The take rates during the quarter in this segment came in on expected lines at 17.5%. We continue to drive supply expansion by going deeper and wider in the Indian market and growing directly contracted hotels in key international markets which are of interest to Indian overseas travelers. Our international HMP business grew 88% year on year in constant currency and now accounts for about 15% of the adjusted margins from this segment. In the bus ticketing business, gross bookings for the quarter came in at $316 million, growing at 15.9% year on year in constant currency. Adjusted margin came in at $32.4 million, registering a year-on-year growth of over 20.7% in constant currency. The take-hits for the business came in line at about 10.2% for the quarter. Besides driving strong bookings and revenue growth, we continue to remain focused on building strong operating cost efficiencies. As a result, our expenses, which are largely in the nature of fixed costs such as personal expenses and selling or general administrative expenses, have shown operating leverage on a year-on-year basis. Considering that the reported quarter was a seasonally high leisure travel quarter coinciding with some softness in the early part of the quarter due to general elections, we have slightly increased the spend on marketing by rolling out brand campaigns leveraging the cricketing events during the quarter. Accordingly, our marketing and sales promotion expenses on customer action costs came in at 4.8% of gross bookings, which is slightly higher than the 4.6% in same quarter last year. As a result of the above, we are pleased to report our highest ever quarterly adjusted operating profit of $39.1 million and our highest ever adjusted operating profit margin at 1.64% as a percentage of gross bookings. The comparable adjusted operating profit during the same quarter last year was $30.1 million in absolute terms and 1.52 percent in percentage stocks. Our cash generation continues to be robust. During the quarter, we added net cash from operations to the tune of $42.9 million. We also saw temporary working capital releases as expected in a seasonally strong leisure travel quarter. As a result of this, our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter stand at about $676 million. Besides maintaining a healthy war chest, we will continue to leverage this strong cash position to invest in potential travel and travel-related organic as well as niche inorganic growth opportunities. Last quarter, we had called out our intent to pursue opportunistic share repurchases or buyback. While no shares were repurchased from the market during the reported quarter, we remain committed to the program if and when the opportunity arises. Before we open up the call for Q&A, I would like to mention that our investments over the years in key strategic areas, such as expansion of travel and travel related services offered on our platforms, the increasing breadth of services across large number of cities in the country, Sharper targeting of customer cohorts via non-B2C platforms such as MyBiz or Quest to Travel for corporate customers and MyPartner and MyAffiliate for wider penetration and the underneath investments in technology have been yielding good results and helping us grow faster than the industry. As we begin fiscal year 25, we look forward to continued investments in these areas and we'll keep sharing progress on any significant milestones achieved. For instance, our corporate business via our MyBiz and Q2D platforms crossed the $200 million gross booking milestone during the reported quarter. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to Vipul for Q&A.
spk04: Thanks, Mohit. Any participant who wishes to ask a question can press the raise hand button on their screen 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.
spk06: Thanks, Vipul. Hi, all. Congratulations on a good set of operation numbers. I have three questions. My first question is on the tax what we saw this quarter. I just wanted to understand, you know, it looks like a full tax that, you know, do you guys have tax credits? Are they fully utilized? And how should one think about the tax rate going ahead?
spk09: So Sachin, you might recall, as we reported the full fiscal year last quarter, we had taken a deferred tax asset kind of, you know, had been created and we had taken that benefit in the P&L. And therefore, what you see now is a reversal of the deferred tax asset created to the extent of, you know, profits generated during the quarter. So it's going to be more, you know, reversal of the deferred tax asset that has been created. And this is going to continue at least for the next couple years. And we will therefore be kind of utilizing our, you know, carried forward tax losses to minimize our actual tax payouts. So this is more, I would say, an accounting strategy. you know, kind of a treatment whereby you kind of create the double tax asset in advance as soon as you have line of clarity in terms of, you know, realizing, you know, these tax losses and saving on the tax outgoes. And then as you kind of actually build profitability in the periods to come, you start kind of, you know, reversing or expensing the double tax asset.
spk06: Okay. So, Moj, just to get you clearly, this is accounting change, not actual tax paid. And, you know, maybe a couple of years down the line, there will be an actual tax paid, right?
spk09: Absolutely, absolutely.
spk06: Got it. Second question, you know, I mean, clearly you guys gave a breakup in terms of how much does international contribute in terms of hotel as well as air. Wanted to understand a bit more on the margin side. Are the margins on international air and hotels similar to that what we see domestically? If not, you know, are they higher or lower?
spk09: They remain largely similar. more so in air ticketing. And when it comes to hotels, I think the only small difference that comes in is, like Rajesh has also called out, when it comes to international hotels, the entire inventory doesn't kind of come on contracted basis or directly contracted basis. And we also work with a set of affiliate partners, particularly for the long tail of hotels. So that is where, you know, there is some amount of margin dilution. Otherwise, the margins are largely similar across domestic and international segments.
spk06: Got it. And last question, you know, Rajesh did mention in his opening remarks that, you know, obviously demand was intact because of elections people didn't travel. But I just want to double check on that point and understand, are we seeing any signs of slowdown anywhere in the travel? or across air and travel, we see robust trends going ahead.
spk09: Yeah, let me take that, Sachin, and maybe just make one additional comment to the previous response that Mohit shared on the international hotels direct contracting. You know, while structurally we have obviously directly contracted hotels and partner hotels, but in terms of the business mix, about 65, 70 percent is actually with the directly contracted hotel. So to that extent, we continue to keep getting the benefit of the higher margin. Just thought it was relevant for a piece of information additionally for you. Now, coming to the demand side, like I mentioned, if you look at the domestic flight numbers on a flown basis, about mid single-digit growth, and we definitely have grown higher. And to my mind, whatever we saw in the month of April was temporary, thanks to general elections. Maybe in some parts of the country, it was also the climate, temperature really going beyond 50 and all. And some segments of the travel got impacted because of that. But we also did see May and June nicely recovering as well. So I would say on an overall basis, you know, what is sort of reflecting on our numbers as well, although the industry growth was relatively muted on an overall quarter basis. But if we look at standalone May and June, we didn't really see any, you know, sort of concerning signs on, you know, the demand slowing down. We'll see how it goes in this quarter, but I wouldn't say there is anything, at least from the reported quarter that we saw on an overall basis, with just, you know, short-term disruption in the month of April, everything else was normal.
spk06: Okay. And Mr. Gutskis, one more question to your point earlier, Rajesh. You know, you're expecting an air recovery. Is this more like a five- to six-month thing, or it might be well beyond the six months also where we see a full recovery in the air?
spk09: I would say more like six months and beyond. I think we should just take second half is what generally directionally we've said. And there will be some improvement as we see the sort of delivery schedule of all the airlines and more and more planes will start coming in. But I think the meaningful impact will, I think we should budget for at least six months. Thank you and all the best. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks, Sachin. The next question is from the line of Aditya Suresh of Macquarie. Aditya, you may please ask your question now.
spk05: Thanks, Apul. Congratulations, Rajesh and team. Two questions. So firstly, just the hotels business, I think, Rajesh, you touched on this as well, but your commission rates have gone up in this quarter. Can you just speak about what's happening here? I do appreciate that with the more premium supply which is kind of being onboarded, perhaps the take rates here are are lower, but just help us put in perspective what happened this quarter on take rates specific to hotels.
spk09: Yeah, thank you. Maybe I can take that very quickly as well. Aditya, thank you for firstly appreciating the results. You know, if you ask me, it's actually not necessarily significant improvement. Of course, year on year it is showing some improvement, but if you see quarter on quarter, it's in the ballpark. If you would perhaps recall our General sort of broad guidance, you know, on hotel take rate range has been between 17 to 18% in many cases. So I wouldn't read too much into it. You know, some part of it is within the quarter. It can be because of, you know, mix changing or, you know, some other small variables here and there. But directionally, there's no fundamental change here. And if I may add, if you look at it, you know, while it's a small increase, you know, compared to 17.2% in same quarter last year, you know, if you look at it on a quarter-to-quarter basis, it's like 17.5% versus 17.9%. So those small changes across quarters based on seasonality will continue to be there.
spk05: Yes, I was looking at this more from an IFRS revenue divided by cross-bookings. And so I think there, on that measure, it looks a bit talker, so I was trying to understand that. But I take your points. I guess, Rajesh, your second question is then on ancillary services. Now here, your revenue has almost doubled, albeit of low base. It seems like, based on your new disclosures on cross-bookings, the take rate is high as well in the kind of mid-30s, thereabouts. My specific question was actually on the drop-down. So beyond revenue, what's the cost of fulfilling this revenue? Is that What I'm trying to understand is, of this $21 million which you're reporting as revenue in Aadhar and Aansari, is the drop-down close to being full to your profit line? Thank you.
spk09: Maybe I'll take that, Aditya. And the Aadhar segment actually represents a host of travel and travel-related services that we offer and includes, say, for instance, in insurance services or foreign related services, advertising revenues, et cetera. And apart from that, it also includes certain other transport services such as you know, the cab services that we offer or the rail ticketing that we do. And therefore, if you would see this beginning this fiscal year, we've also started reporting the gross bookings coming in from our other transport services. That is, you know, the cab services that we offer and the rail ticketing services that we offer so that you can get some more color in terms of, you know, what is the gross booking from those businesses, which are where the revenue is kind of, you know, included in the in the other segment. It will be difficult to give a drop down to the bottom line on this one. But like I said, it's a mix of some of these services which have a low operating cost. And then there are some others, including transport services like cabs and rail tickets, where you would have effectively net margins similar to other lines of transport.
spk05: But can I just drill on that a bit more? Is there a significant amount of fixed costs which are being added to grow these businesses was, I guess, the question. I mean, when I look at your headcount in itself, that's not grown too much. So what I'm trying to understand is within your existing platform, these are new streams of revenue from an existing base of expenses, if I may, so That's what I'm trying to understand, yeah.
spk09: Yeah, no, some amount of, you know, fixed cost increases will be there. Like say, for instance, we had called out, you know, kind of investments in the cap kind of, you know, services that we are going to offer, including an investment in a third party called Savari that we had called out last year. So, yes, there is some small bit of increases, but like I said, you know, in terms of overall headcount increases or personal expenses, we'll continue to see good operating leverage coming through on a year-on-year basis, despite all of these investments.
spk05: And if I may, just one last question was, any impact you can quantify or speak about related to this CrowdStrike issue?
spk09: Nothing at our end, actually. No real kind of impact coming in on our business per se. It was more an operating disruption on the operations, you know, the flights getting canceled and all. So obviously the customer service, you know, function was super busy on that day. But, and, you know, and very quickly, you know, obviously the teams stretched and worked very closely with airline partners to, you know, control the situation as much as we, as much and as fast as we could possibly do. But outside of that, know the the the business that got disrupted let's say the the rate of bookings had dropped during that disruption because of the um you know uh some obviously the desktops and the bc's etc were not working so people had our time to to you know sort of access the platforms etc uh but very next day even if um uh you know that was saturday the volumes came back. And in fact, the deficit got made up. So it was net-net. There was no real impact on business. Thank you so much.
spk04: Thanks, Aditya. The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja of XS Capital. Manik, can you please ask your question now?
spk01: Thank you for the opportunity. My question was with regards to customer acquisition costs. You did allude to the fact that you stepped up some of this marketing activity in the second half of the quarter. But how should we be thinking about these costs given that after the revenge travel and the strong growth that the industry witnessed through 22 and 23, one is hearing of some slowdown in terms of travel across certain parts of the world as well as including India?
spk09: Hi, Manik, and maybe I can take that. You know, we generally have a bit of variation when it comes to customer acquisition costs across, you know, quarters based on seasonality, you know, which is what I had called out. And in this particular quarter, and with almost like every passing year, we are gradually increasing more and more the spends on the brand marketing side. As you can imagine, you know, when it was through the COVID period, obviously it didn't make much sense to kind of, you know, We spend on brand campaign, but we've been kind of, you know, bringing back brand campaigns increasingly over the last couple of years and still kind of, you know, been maintaining the overall customer action costs well within the 5% levels that we had called out. So I think we believe we'll continue to remain in this range of, you know, close to between 4.5% to 5% when it comes to customer acquisition costs.
spk01: Sure. The second question was with regards to our MyBiz or the assisted travel business. If you could throw, while you made some comments around that and the corporate business achieving almost $200 million of GTV in the current quarter, if you could help us understand both the corporate travel and the travel agent GTV separately and probably give us some sense of the air in the hotels mix or the air and non-air mix over there and possibly some sense of the profitability on that piece.
spk09: So when it comes to reporting the revenues as well as margins, we do it by the segment, not necessarily by the channel of distribution. However, we keep sharing additional color as might be kind of relevant. And therefore, on one of the channels of distribution, which is on the corporate side, if you would recall, we had called out that we have been making investments in terms of adding more and more platforms to kind of target the non-B2C segment. Some kind of channels like MyBiz and Quest2Travel, which were more kind of, you know, targeting the corporate customers, as well as kind of, you know, other channels like my partner or my affiliate for an indirect kind of, you know, targeting of the retail customers, particularly in the tier three and beyond kind of, you know, cities. When it comes to the corporate business, you know, the overall, you know, gross bookings from this business has now crossed a certain milestone. And therefore, we wanted to kind of call out so that people have a appreciation of the scaling of some of these channels over the years. So it's more in that regard. The reporting is still continues to be, you know, by the line of segment per se. Sure. Thank you and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Manik.
spk04: Thanks, Manik. The next question is from the line of Gaurav Duteri of Morgan Stanley. Gaurav, you may please ask your question now.
spk03: Many congratulations on a good set of numbers. My first question, you know, just wanted to get a sense of the competitive activity on the ground. Has there been any change, if at all, especially in segments like air and hotels?
spk09: No, thanks, you know, for asking this question. Actually, there's nothing unusual in this quarter. There's no real change. It continues to be the same. as we've sort of spoken about it in the past as well. So segment by segment, there will be a different set of competition that we will have in the market. But if the performance is our own performance for this quarter is of any indication, we'll give you a sense that we've been sort of gaining share pretty much across the board on all segments. Our growth rate is one higher than the industry growth rate. And we do have some of the surrogate data points to sort of believe that we've been gaining share on pretty much every business segment that we run. So I would say it'd be fair to say that, you know, we've been sort of effectively competing in the market and, you know, continue to sort of gain share.
spk03: Got it. Second question with respect to margins, you know, it's a good start to the year with nice margin expansion, both on a sequential and a YY basis. How should we think about FY25? Is this something that becomes a base and remains consistent or there would be incremental levers as and when the volume for the industry as a whole recovers as per your expectations in second half?
spk09: Gaurab, maybe I can take that. And, you know, as you know, the margins, particularly in the seasonally, you know, stronger leisure quarters like Q1 and Q3 tend to be, you know, better in our business. And therefore, I would say we do expect kind of, you know, margins, you know, in the for the full year also to largely remain closer to this number. So I would not say whether it would remain at about 1.6% or thereabouts, but largely around this, although, like I said, there could be small differences coming in based on seasonality. But this is largely also in line with our continued effort to kind of gradually take the margins to say about 1.8 to 2% in the longer term, say over the next three to five years. And so I think as part of that, we continue to kind of try and drive operating leverage and build a small margin improvement on a year-on-year basis.
spk03: Last question, just a bookkeeping one. If you could share the data point that you always share on your market share in the domestic side, and do we have a similar number for the international outbound segment also? Thank you.
spk09: So we do not have an international outbound exactly because that's not kind of, you know, reported in that manner on the outbound side. But yeah, on domestic, we continue to kind of, you know, retain 30% plus market share. In fact, Rajesh had called out while the industry had grown at about, you know, 4% plus, we've actually grown about 5% plus in domestic air. Thank you very much.
spk04: Thanks, Gaurav. The next question is from the line of Vijit Jain of Citi. Vijit, you may please ask your question now.
spk08: Thanks, Akul. And congratulations, guys, on a great set of numbers. Just, you know, focusing on the hotel business, you know, if I look at hotel businesses, five different pieces, right, say premium, budget, alternative, B2B, and international, right? Would you please give us a sense of what the growth was like, which of these subsegments grew ahead of the overall number? And in general, I would imagine that the alternatives and the budget segment would be much higher take rate versus the other way. So just wanted to get a sense of how those pieces are playing out. Thank you.
spk09: Maybe I can take that, while there is no significant change in terms of mix by price point, we did kind of share color in terms of the overall growth as well as the growth kind of being stronger coming in from the international hotel segment. So international hotels, like we had called out, grew much faster compared to, say, domestic, because the base is also smaller, and we're kind of adding a lot more supply over there. That's probably the best color. So the international business on H&P side, hotels and packages grew at about 88%, while the overall growth in the segment, including born domestic as international, came in at about 29.6%. And within that, maybe just one additional comment, Vijay. Within the segments, if your reference is to the past commentary, specifically to budget segment and all. Now there is no segment which is not necessarily in the growth mode. You know, that is of the past. All segments within, you know, the small, budget, medium, premium, super premium, all tech, of course, all of them are sort of growing now directionally. Of course, there will be base effects. Some will grow higher and some will grow at a relatively lower growth rate. But overall, all segments are growing now.
spk08: I don't know. Just one follow-up on that one. In general, the take rate across the various segments, right? My understanding would be, in general, premium hotels would be closer to the international benchmark, which is maybe mid-teens. Budget segment has been traditionally high. United is closer to 20. So, you know, for ultimate and for B2B, what is the broad range of take rate that you get? If you can just give a broad sense on that, that would be helpful. And my second question, I may just ask that right away. You know, looking at your employee costs overall, it's up maybe 12-13% YY now. Bookings in a pretty tough macro environment is up 20%. So it does look like operating leverage is playing out nicely here. So just trying to understand, are you basically being a bit cautious on the overall EBIT margin sign-up?
spk09: Vijay, I can probably take both. I think when it comes to personal expenses, I think like we've been calling out, we do believe in our personal expenses will continue to show operating leverage, like in, say, the last few years. And therefore, that is something that we've kind of continued with even in this particular year. The only area where we have seen slightly more investment being made is in terms of longer impact brand marketing expenses during the quarter. Sorry, on your previous one, could you just repeat the question?
spk08: The take rate on the B2B and the alternative formulation side.
spk09: Sure. I've already covered it in one of the earlier questions. that the take rates are kind of largely similar between, say, international and domestic, because that was also part of your question. For the fact that some part of the international inventory goes to about 25-30% comes in on an affiliate basis, and there we see some dilution. But as far as, you know, that might be more the B2B part from a supply side. But otherwise, yeah, largely similar take rates as as the domestic. And yes, you're right that the take rates tend to be generally lower in the higher ASP kind of hotels and slightly higher margin percentage in the lower ASP hotels. It stands to reason because most of the budget or mid-segment properties would be more standalone properties and would find it difficult to kind of market themselves. and therefore directly, and would therefore kind of, you know, use platforms like us a lot more effectively, and therefore we'll be able to kind of, you know, give slightly better margins.
spk08: Done. Thanks for those were my questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.
spk04: Thanks, Vijit. The next question is from the line of Aditya Chandrasekhar of UBS. Aditya, you may please ask your question now.
spk07: Yeah, hi.
spk02: Congrats on the good side of numbers. Just a couple of questions from my side. On the recovery that we kind of expect in the second half as the airline deliveries start coming in or the aircraft deliveries start coming in, do you see some risk there? Because I think Airbus has also kind of flagged some difficulties in meeting its production guidance and Boeing also, I mean, we all know it's facing its own set of difficulties. Do you think there's some downside risk there in terms of some of the deliveries getting delayed maybe to the next year, which in turn causes some demand constraints this year? Just wanted to get your sense on what you're hearing from the airlines and how we should think about that potential risk.
spk09: You know, Aditya, basically what we hear right now as things stand today, you know, the estimate is that things will start improving and that's the reason why You know, as I was talking about earlier in response to the earlier question as well, was taking on a margin more six months rather than three months kind of a timeframe. Now from six months hence from today, we might start to see some, you know, sort of material improvement happening. Now the downside risk, if we really have to hazard a guess, you know, can only be the timing. You know, so it could be a quarter. I don't think it'll be faster. It can only be a quarter later. So that is the only potential downside risk. But it needs to be viewed slightly differently, to be honest, because if the outlook, which is what is being projected today on the demand side, if it continues the same way, it follows the same trajectory, and let's say if there is supply constraint on the domestic flights market, You know, there are today other alternative options, other modes of transport, and they are growing very nicely. And there would be a share shift. In the past also we have seen, you know, if the prices were high and then the share shift moved to, you know, the high-quality trains or the intercity private buses, air-conditioned and so on, depending upon the route, you know, that you look at. So I don't think the momentum on, you know, sort of demand side will slow down just because of the supply side constraint, if at all that happens or does not improve in the domestic air market, you know, because there are other alternative mode of transport and equally good at times, you know, where people fall back on. So I think that it will sort of at least partially will get mitigated if that happens. But, you know, I guess we'll have to watch this space in terms of the deliveries coming on time, you know, and how fast they come and, you know, how fast they sort of start making the, start helping the supply side. But, you know, the current estimates are just based on our conversations is that it should be around the six months that it should start improving.
spk02: Got it. That makes sense. The second question I have is on the margins. So you've said that probably this year will remain at this 1.6 odd number and probably head towards the 1.8 to 2% range in the next three to four years. Just wanted to understand, so if your airline recovery happens as expected, say within six to eight months or even with a quarter's lag, your hotel business continues to grow at a healthy level, your costs are pretty much stable, marketing expenses are within that 5% range. And there is a lot of operating leverage flowing through, right? If all of these numbers kind of pan out as expected, we should be hitting that 1.8 to 2% range much earlier, right? Just wanted to understand if we need to kind of factor in some kind of leverage start slowing down, going ahead, or how we should look at it because it just seems that 1.8 to 2%, three to four years out seems a bit conservative from your end in terms of guidance.
spk09: Maybe I can take that. And, you know, I think there would be variables like, you know, the one that you just called out, the question before this, in terms of, you know, how quickly the domestic air industry kind of, you know, comes back or bounces back to good growth. And also I'm sure we'll have, you know, an opportunity to kind of keep sharing more color on the estimates going forward at almost every quarterly, on a quarterly basis. So if there's anything more to add, I'm sure we'll keep sharing more color with every passing quarter.
spk02: Sure. That makes sense. Thanks a lot.
spk04: Thanks, Aditya. The next question is from the line of Prashant Kothari of Pictet. Prashant, can you please ask your question now?
spk07: Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just one small question. You mentioned that the international air travel has definitely grown much better for us versus domestic. When I look at the average transaction size that has grown up by only like 4% year over year, can you just explain that? I would have thought that the next change of international should kind of help the transition size grow much bigger or was there any kind of a dip in overall ticket prices which led to this outcome?
spk09: I think the overall kind of pricing within the international segments or say for instance within the domestic segments hasn't really seen any any significant change. I think what's happened is the overall price increases that used to happen in the past used to be probably slightly more stronger. This quarter, we haven't really seen very significant increase in terms of ASPs per se. But otherwise, you know, there is no real, you know, change in the average ASP, I would say, you know, by domestic or by international segment assets. And I think, Prashant, this will, you know, the point that you're sort of looking at, while at an ASP level, there will be, there's no real significant change, but this will, the mix will change or, you know, the higher growth on international front will reflect more in gross bookings number for the the air, you know, as a whole. If you look at the total gross booking number versus the segment growth, you will see, you know, so the growth, which is driven by the mixed change, is, you know, sort of reflecting. You know, that increase is reflecting.
spk07: Okay, thanks. And one of the questions that I frequently ask people, any update on the India listing front?
spk09: I think there's nothing more to add over there. Like we said, we're not really kind of looking at raising any funds right now and therefore not looking at any capital market activity per se. But should there be a kind of a thought of doing so, I'm sure we'll share color in the quarters to come.
spk07: All right. Perfect. Thank you much.
spk04: Thank you, Prashant. At this time, we have no further questions. Any last questions any attendee wants to ask? Otherwise, we can end the call. So, Rajesh, we have no further questions. Over to you for your closing remarks.
spk09: Thank you, Vipul, and thank you, everyone. Thank you for all, you know, asking all the right set of questions. They were all relevant, and thank you for your patience. Look forward to see you next quarter. Thanks everyone.
spk04: Thank you everyone. You may please disconnect the call. Thank you.
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