Dhruv Shringi
Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open
Thank you, Manish, and good morning, everyone. Also, thank you for joining us today for our fourth quarter earnings call of fiscal ‘23. We wrapped up the fourth quarter of fiscal ‘23 with our strongest quarter yet since the onset of COVID. We registered an exceptional year-over-year growth of 97.4% in revenue and 93.3% in adjusted revenue. This strong performance is attributed to the market recovering and also gaining share in recent quarters in both our consumer and corporate travel businesses, and this has enabled us to achieve the highest incentive levels with most of our airline and GDS contracts for the full fiscal year 2023. India's domestic passenger traffic saw sequential growth of 4.6% in the quarter ended March 2023, compared to this, our domestic passenger traffic grew 33% sequentially, reflecting strong market share gains for both our consumer and corporate businesses. Notably, we signed a record number of 97 medium to large corporate customers in the year ended March 31, 2023. This is a testament to our corporate segment leadership and capabilities and the continued recovery in the travel sector. On the consumer side, our strong brand and high brand recall helped grow the B2C business also significantly faster than the industry growth rate. A favorable macroeconomic backdrop with the domestic travel market in India surpassing free COVID levels also contributed to our impressive turnaround. Our revenue and adjusted revenue for the quarter ended 31 March 2023, were reportedly at INR1.19 billion, which is $14.5 million approximately and INR1.89 billion, which is $23.1 million, respectively. These were well ahead of our projected guidance range of $19.5 million to $20.5 million in adjusted revenue issued last quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter reached INR185.6 million, which is approximately $2.3 million marking a significant increase of 251% year-over-year. The domestic aviation in India between quarter four of fiscal year 2022 and 2023 grew 52% year-over-year, reflecting a swift recovery from the lows of COVID and the long-term growth trajectory for the Indian travel market remains very positive. This positive momentum has carried over into the new fiscal year as well with April 2023 domestic air traffic rising 17% year-over-year to 12.9 million passengers. International travel has also shown a steady improvement during the quarter ended March 31, 2023. It reached approximately 90% of pre-COVID levels as well. As we move forward, we remain optimistic and committed to leveraging these positive trends to drive further growth and success. I'll now give you a quick update on our ongoing IPO process in India. As you might recall, Yatra Online Limited, our Indian subsidiary also referred to as Yatra India, filed a Draft Red Herring Prospectus on March 25, 2022 with SEBI. This is in preparation for a potential initial public offering in India, the plan includes listing Yatra India's equity shares on the Indian stock exchange and referred to as the Indian IPO. On November 17, 2022, we received the final observation letter from SEBI indicating that the IPO can open for subscription within a year from the said date. In light of this, we embark on our India investor outreach in the early parts of the March quarter. This involved engaging with prominent investors in India, including leading domestic mutual funds, family offices, and hedge funds in the Indian market. The feedback has been very positive due to our strong performance. The evident recovery of both consumer and corporate travel businesses in India and the favorable macro trends that suggest the potential for substantial growth in the sector for years to come. However, due to the broader macro environment in the global market, the investor feedback process has been lengthier than what we anticipated. Despite this, we have noted that key investors continue to expect interest and engage. Our strong operating performance and macro tailwinds behind the industry give us the confidence in our prospects for a successful IPO in the near future. Aside from bolstering our financial position we believe that this offering will provide us with the opportunity to be more assertive pursuing new corporate businesses and also explore strategic alliances with partners, who might not have been comfortable with an overseas structure in the past. Moving on to further details on the quarter. Our consumer business gained further momentum on the back of the strong brand recall that the yatra.com brand continues to enjoy in the market, and during the quarter, we closed 25 new corporate customers to close the full year with a record number of large and medium corporate customer signings of 97, as corporate travel continues to recover strongly post-COVID. International travel also continues to improve, as I mentioned earlier, it exited at about 90% of pre-COVID levels and with the lifting of all restrictions now pretty much across Asia Pacific. We expect recovery in international travel to be pretty brisk, and we expect international travel to make up for some of the lost ground over the course of the last 12 months. On the hotels front, our adjusted revenue was up 49.3% year-over-year, with standalone room nights up 34% year-over-year, packages grew 35%, albeit from a small base. From a competitive standpoint, the intensity has remained stable from last quarter and remains manageable overall. In our drive for innovation in AI and data sciences and accelerating corporate sales growth and technology innovation, we made two key appointments this quarter. We welcomed Dr. Shakti Goel, a seasoned technologist from IIT, Delhi and MIT as Chief Scientific and Chief Data Architect. We also welcomed Tarun Kumar Bhakri as, Vice President, Corporate Sales, he’s a seasoned sales leader with three decades of travel domain experience. And in his last role led American Express sales efforts in India. From a macro standpoint, the Indian government remains strongly committed to the growth of airport infrastructure in India, and investment of roughly $3.3 billion has been earmarked for expenditure through FY ‘26, signifying a substantial commitment towards infrastructure development. More than 70 projects worth approximately $2.2 billion are projected for completion by mid-2024. These projects encompass a wide array of improvements and expansions across several Indian cities. Notable initiatives include the construction of a new Greenfield Airport in Rajkot, extension of terminal buildings in Surat and Goa, expansion of the civil enclave at Gwalior Airport and the construction of a new ATC tower in Kolkata amongst others. Additionally, the government predicts a massive investment influx into India's aviation sector in the coming years. Over the next three years, it is estimated that both private airport operators and the state owned airport authority of India will invest approximately $12 billion into this sector. This significant financial infusion is anticipated to increase the number of operation airports from the current tally of 140 to over 200. This strategic investment aligns with the government's vision of enhancing accessibility and connectivity across the nation. On the liquidity front, as of March 31, 2023, the balance of cash and cash equivalents and term deposits on our balance sheet was INR1.09 billion, which is approximately $13.3 million. We plan to also start repaying the MAK debt facility that we had taken on towards the end of calendar year 2022. We'll start paying this off in tranches starting with the first tranche by June 30 and expect to repay the entire facility before its due date. We believe we remain adequately capitalized and have sufficient working capital facilities in place to continue to fund the robust growth in our corporate business. Given the ongoing recovery in corporate and leisure travel, our continued success in signing new large and medium sized enterprise customers, we believe we are poised for a strong FY ‘24. Aside from seasonality, we expect our results to benefit from accelerating growth in both our corporate businesses and consumer business as we continue to add to our formidable blue chip customer base and leverage the strength of our brand. Just to reiterate, today Yatra serves one out of four of the top 100 listed companies in India by market cap, three out of the big four accounting firms, and three of the top five technology companies in India amongst others. Now on to guidance for FY ‘24. Based on macro factors and our quarterly trends to-date, we anticipate an adjusted revenue range of $88 million to $92 million in constant currency for FY ‘24, which translates to a growth range of approximately 18% to 23%. Taking advantage of the leverage in our business model, we anticipate that the adjusted EBITDA will grow at a much faster pace of 46% to 50% in FY ‘24. Before I hand over to Rohan to walk you through the financial performance in more detail, I would like to talk about the recent bankruptcy protection filing by Go Air. On May 2, 2023, Go Airlines India limited or Go First, one of the smaller domestic airlines file an application for voluntary insolvency resolution proceedings before the national company law tribunal in India, citing the supplier of faulty aircraft engines and failure of its engine supplier to replace them on time, which resulted in grounding of half of its fleet and consequent operational and financial issues. On May 10, 2023, the company law tribunal admitted the application and granted protection to Go First by imposing a moratorium against a recovery by lesser, lenders, and other creditors with Go First. In addition, the company law tribunal has appointed an interim resolution professional to operate, Go First and to maintain Go First as a going concern. Yatra India has made the appropriate filing with the interim resolutional, professional and connection with its claims. And as of date, thereof Go First has suspended all flights until May 30 2023. Go Air’s market share at the time of its filing for bankruptcy was approximately 6.4%, hence it's one of the relatively smaller airlines operating in India and given the amount of incremental capacity being added in the country by the other airlines, we expect only a marginal impact on our business of Go Air’s bankruptcy. While we remain optimistic that Go Air will commence operations in the near-term, we have as a matter of prudence created a one-time provision of INR39 million against a full amount that was due to us from Go Air at the time of this filing. Finally, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to our dedicated employees and shareholders for their unwavering support. With that, let me hand it over to Rohan to walk you through the details of the financial performance. Rohan?