Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q3 and 9M FY 2026 earnings conference call of SAMHI Hotels Limited. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashish Jakhanwala, MD and CEO of SAMHI Hotels Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SAMHI Hotels Q3 FY 2026 earnings call. Thank you for joining us today. I'm also joined by our CFO, Rajat Mehra, our VP and Head of Investments, Gyana Das, and Nakul Manaktala, SVP Investments, our Investor Relation Advisors, Strategic Growth Advisors also on the call. We have uploaded our Q3 FY 2026 financial results and investor presentation on these stock exchanges and on our website, and I trust you've had a chance to review them. Let me begin with a brief overview of the quarter before Rajat takes you through the financial results. quarter three FY 2026 was a strong operating quarter for SAMHI, delivered in a period that saw external disruptions, including the largest Indian airline facing operational challenges during December. Despite this, the portfolio demonstrated resilience and pricing power. Same-store RevPAR grew by 13% year-on-year to INR 5,643.
Total income growth was 16% YoY to INR 342 crores for the quarter. On an underlying basis, the EBITDA grew by 19% YoY, reflecting strong operating flow-throughs. However, changes in GST regulations impacted the margins, which moderated the reported EBITDA growth to 13.2% on a YoY basis. Even though there's a short-term impact of GST in part of our portfolio, we believe it will lead to greater sales volumes as hotels become more affordable, especially in the mid-scale segment, and will offset any impact in the long term. Further, it is important to note that all of our new inventory being added is an upscale segment, which will remain largely unaffected by this change, but also benefit from marginally lower CapEx due to reduction in GST rates across several construction items. This performance reinforces the strength of our city-centric business travel portfolio, spread across India's most resilient office markets.
For the past nine months, office absorption across key markets remains very strong and has supported same-store revenue growth significantly ahead of our long-term target, which we've always said is between 9% and 11% YoY. Now, let me briefly touch upon our key growth initiatives. The 170-room W Hyderabad continues to progress as planned. Design development is mostly completed, and building modifications are underway. Mock-up room will commence anytime now. This is a marquee asset for SAMHI and will materially lift our ARR profile, both in Hyderabad and in the upscale segment. In Bangalore, the demolition and reconstruction activities for the 220 rooms Westin Block in Whitefield, Bangalore, have commenced. This remains a fairly high-conviction project in one of Bangalore's deepest commercial micro-markets. Across the portfolio, we now have 4,900 rooms operational.
We have incremental 1,900 rooms under development or rebranding, of which about 1,450 rooms is a net room addition. These projects will gradually shift our revenue mix towards upscale and upper upscale, which is currently 42% contribution to about 60% upon completion, improving long-term earnings quality. Besides this, we continue to have a very high-quality and actionable pipeline of opportunities to fuel our future growth, and the majority of it, as of date, is in the form of capital-efficient variable leases that can be easily funded from our cash flows. With that, I'll now hand over to Rajat to walk you through the financial performance in more detail.
Thank you, Ashish. Good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the financial performance of Q3 FY 2026. Total income for the quarter was INR 342 crores, up 16.2% on a year-over-year basis. Same-store asset income grew by circa 14% on a year-over-year basis.
New opening, including Trinity Whitefield and the new Holiday Inn Express rooms in Kolkata and Greater Noida, contributed to incremental revenue. This was partly offset by income loss from sold and discontinued assets, including Four Points Chennai and Sheraton Hyderabad commercial floors, which we have converted to 42 rooms. Consolidated EBITDA stood at INR 126 crores. Reported EBITDA grew by 13.2% on a year-on-year basis. Excluding the GST impact of circa INR 6.7 crores, EBITDA growth was 19.2% on a year-on-year basis. GST impact was mostly in our mid-scale portfolio, where a fair bit of our revenue actually comes from rooms being sold at less than INR 7,500. EBITDA margins were 36.9% as compared to 37.9% last year. This drop in margin attributed to the GST change is circa 200 basis points. Underlying operating costs and flow-through remained stable during the quarter.
Our finance cost declined sharply to INR 40 crores versus INR 60 crores last year. The cash interest outflow is in the range of about INR 34 crores for the quarter. Balance cost in the finance cost represents non-cash and Ind AS adjustments. Our profit after tax for the quarter was INR 48 crores. The PAT attributable to SAMHI shareholders is INR 39.6 crores, while the minority interest accounted for INR 8.5 crores. As of 31st of December 2025, our net debt stood at INR 1,450 crores. The average tenure of our facility is circa 12 years, which actually allows us a strong margin of safety in terms of our liquidity.
The trailing 12 months EBITDA, excluding non-cash ESOP cost, increased to INR 482 crores. Our net debt to EBITDA remains stable at 3x. Importantly, we continue to fund our growth CapEx through internal accruals, with no material increase in the net leverage expected. With that, I hand over to Ashish.
Thanks, Rajat. So in conclusion, quarter three FY 2026 reinforces three key messages for SAMHI. The first is that while global headlines remain volatile, on-ground indicators in our core markets show a strong trend line driven by India's economic engine. Our portfolio continues to deliver strong, consistent operating performance and growth, and can manage repeated event risk as we have seen in the last nine months. And the last bit is that we have a strong growth pipeline and all the resources to deliver to achieve our targeted revenue of circa INR 3,000 crores by 2030. We will now open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Vikas Ahuja from Antique Stock Broking Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is, as we are already at the end of January, how is the current quarter shaping up? Does the momentum seem so far will continue? With the World Cup coming next month, do we anticipate any uptick from this event? Overall, just trying to understand this momentum improve from here on. That's my first question. Thank you.
Thank you, Vikas. So yes, the business on books for February looks pretty strong. January is always slightly slow because of the year-end break. This year, that 10th of January extended to pretty much 15th of January because of the pattern of school holidays in North, especially Delhi and all. February looks extremely strong, and not just because of the World Cup, actually, Vikas. Generally, a lot of demand is getting compressed between now and end of February and early March. We do think that the momentum that we've seen in quarter three will actually continue in quarter four.
Okay, thank you. In terms of the net debt increase by INR 80 crore this quarter to INR 1,450 crore, could you help us maybe break down how much of that increase was driven by CapEx and how much of that CapEx was offset by operating cash flow? Additionally, you had earlier guided for INR 300 crore of debt reduction from internal cash flows by 2030. Does this still hold on, considering that we have announced incremental expansion during the last quarter?
So Vikas, largely, the minor change in the net debt was on account of Navi Mumbai, where we had to make a certain extension of payments to the authorities. We are anticipating some inward investment from GIC in the Bangalore project. So there's always a bit of a mismatch in those two things. So that INR 70 crore-INR 80 crore was largely on account of the Navi Mumbai payment. In terms of our long-term guidance, both on net debt and also on gross debt reduction continues to remain as is. I know there is incremental investment that we have committed to Navi Mumbai, but if you look at our investor presentations, which we've uploaded earlier, the cushion between our total cash accumulation and CapEx continues to be very comfortable.
In addition to that, as we've demonstrated in the past, Vikas, we continue to seek opportunities for very, very limited asset recycling. So I think we remain fairly comfortable and confident about continuing to achieve that number of debt reduction alongside maintaining the CapEx plan that we have put together.
Thanks, Ashish. The removal of this input tax credit led to moderation in EBITDA, which we highlighted in the presentation by 200 basis points. Does this imply that over the next few quarters, EBITDA will grow at a slower pace than revenues, or do we have levers to offset that in the near term? Also, for FY 2027, should the revenue growth largely mirror the RevPAR growth with only incremental additions, given that most of our capacity expansion is expected to start from FY 2028, as the high-tech city properties are also likely to complete end of FY 2027? Also, lastly, one housekeeping question. Can we also possibly get an ADR growth number for this quarter?
So a couple of them. One is on GST. So you see the GST impact will be visible for the short term. We do expect that overall reported numbers will kind of not show that from quarter one. And that's just the adjustment to the basis that Vikas, don't forget, last year's first quarter was pretty terrible because of India, Pakistan, the Ahmedabad, Air India crash, and all of that. So we think that there will be 150-200 basis points impact on margins because of GST in the short term. But yeah, I think there are more than enough levers to start offsetting that, but it'll take a quarter or two, really. So that's on one. Two, second question was really around the next year, FY 2027.
So I think FY 2027, while there is no large opening, Vikas, but there's a lot of other levers that will come into play. The first really is that if you see we were adding very small bunches of inventory this year, but having said that, all of that is now fully operational and will get fully a benefit in next year. And some of the hotels like Sheraton Hyderabad, which are clearly outperforming the averages, are the hotels which are benefiting from almost 20% inventory growth because of the new addition. So the Trinity Hotel in Bangalore, which we had acquired last year, has really ramped up well. We expect that to start kind of outperforming through FY 2027, the new rooms in Holiday Inn Express. So FY 2027, we have reasonable levers to kind of add on top of same-store RevPAR revenue growth. That was your second question.
Third question was in terms of your ADR occupancy. So if you see same-store, the ADR growth was 15.9% YoY. The occupancy was stable, except not stable. It was 73%, had dropped about 1.6 percentage points. The total RevPAR growth, therefore, was ending up being about 13.3%. This is all same-store. We've continued to believe that all operating parameters should only be reported on same-store.
Sure. I get it. Many thanks, and wish you luck for the next quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jinesh Joshi from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. So my question again pertains to the GST impact. I mean, in response to the previous participant's question, you mentioned that there can be an impact of about 150-200 basis points in the next couple of quarters. I was just wondering whether a pass-through of this cost increase is possible or not, especially on the corporate side. I understand that typically the negotiations happen on an annual basis. But given the loss of ITC credit, can we not renegotiate for a slightly better rate, at least on the corporate side? So your thoughts on that. And also on the retail side, I was just wondering whether a pass-through is possible or not. And if not, I mean, what are the challenges on that side?
Jinesh, very important question, actually. Let's tell you what's happened in the quarter. First of all, the pass-through is already happening. If you see for the quarter when same-store grew at about 14%, and let me tell you, if we were to do an impact of the airline crisis in December, it was pretty, pretty substantial. Now, if you look at the revenue growth in the mid-scale segment that we have shown on page number 15 of our presentation, actually the mid-scale segment, which has the highest impact of GST, also showed a revenue growth of 16% and 14%, respectively. Now, what will happen is, of course, the input tax credit loss will show in higher cost. But if you look at the total growth, it is still pretty substantial in those two segments. The alignment needs to happen in the reporting.
The actual number continues to be, in our opinion, reasonably strong, especially given December was almost a three-week wipeout. We are typically prepared for December to be a 10-day wipeout, but December almost became a three-week wipeout because of the airline crisis, which started in the beginning and then continued because of the year-end, New Year vacation, and all of that. So Jinesh, I think in quarter four, February onwards, you'll start seeing a pretty back strong recovery to margins. But that's largely driven by revenue growth. So yeah, you're right. Pass-through has already started happening because the revenues have started going up. But I cannot change the way the numbers are reported, which is the cost we will reflect in the cost line items.
Got that. And sir, on the corporate side, when do annual renegotiations typically happen? And if it is nearby, are we going to take into account this ITC loss, which will be there with us, and then renegotiate for rates accordingly?
Answer is yes, because the customer clearly understands that if he was paying INR 100 of room rate and INR 12 of tax earlier, there was INR 112 being paid by the customer. Today, it's INR 105. So if we account for a slight increase, he'll still be paying INR 112 or less than that. So as any contract is renegotiated, you will start seeing and Jinesh, coming back, that actually helps increase demand because while we can increase the room rate, offset the cost impact, there is not really the real growth for customer will still be 7%, 8%, 9%. But more important, Jinesh, the nature of business is changing now. We all who underwrite hotel sector need to prepare ourselves underwriting the sold-out dates versus rest of the year. And we are seeing the demand compressed between few days every quarter.
So let's say last quarter, it was November, and November would have contributed majority to the quarterly profits and growth. This quarter, it's going to be period starting from January or 25th of January till pretty much middle of March. And therefore, in those days, contracted rates play very little role because our ability to reprice hotels on a daily basis, three times a day, is very, very strong. So hotels which have an average rate of INR 13,000 are already priced for INR 20,000 in the month of February, Jinesh. So I think the industry has changed. The dependence on the locked-in RFP prices for the year and its impact on the average reported room rate is kind of diminishing every year. So we're not worried. I think the demand is very strong.
You will start seeing fairly quickly this whole cost being absorbed because we do feel that GST reduction is across the sectors and industries, which should help boost overall economic activity and give us the paybacks.
Got that. Sir, one last question from my side. Our F&B revenue was up by about 9% in this quarter. And I guess in the previous quarters, we had mentioned that ballrooms are under renovation, especially at Hyderabad and Pune. And accordingly, we should expect some kind of a pickup happening on the F&B revenue side in the second half of the year. But this 9% growth, when I compare it with our same-store RevPAR growth of about 13%, it is still lower. So just wanted to check on this part, whether those ballrooms are operational or not. And if yes, then why is the F&B income still lagging?
A couple of clarifications. First of all, the ballrooms are operational in both the hotels, Hyderabad, Pune, and Sheraton Hyderabad. The same-store F&B growth was actually 10%, not 9%. The 9% is overall. There is obviously incremental rooms that we've added in Holiday Inn Express and other portfolios. 10% F&B growth is actually pretty decent, while rooms have really outperformed at 13.5%-14% RevPAR . 10% F&B growth YoY , this used to be 6%-7%, Jinesh, till last year. Now we have gotten to about 10% F&B growth YoY. I think ballrooms are starting to show impact. As they stabilize, I think you will continue to see that mirror close to double-digit YoY growth.
Got that, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you, Jinesh.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of Vaibhav Muley from Haitong Securities. Please go ahead. Vaibhav, your line is unmuted. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you. Please go ahead.
Okay. Great. First of all, congratulations for a good set of numbers, sir. My first question was regarding our Upper Upscale and Upscale segment. We have seen a bit of an occupancy decline for this segment, particularly in this quarter. Any particular reason for that?
Generally, what happened in December, Vaibhav, the airline issues that we saw in December.
Okay. Only pertaining to that, there was a bit of a.
Yeah, because upscale tends to have group movements and conferences and MICE. And obviously, such a significant airline disruption led to massive cancellations. So that's why the entire slight occupancy dip you saw was in the Upscale, Upper Upscale segment.
Understood. And next one, Trinity Bangalore. I understand Marriott had taken over operations for Trinity in August. And just wanted to understand how has been the performance post Marriott taking over. And since now Marriott is operating the property, do we plan to delay the overall renovations plan for Trinity?
So Vaibhav, while the team pulls out the exact number changes, I'll answer the second part first. So what we are doing in Trinity is doing so earlier, we were thinking of investing about the plan was to invest about INR 70crores-INR 80 crores in full renovation for it to be converted to a part of the collection and managed by Marriott. What we've actually done is we've done an interim renovation. So we've already spent about INR 7 crores in this hotel, largely towards fire life safety and technology. We are going to complete a very small refurb program between now and March end, which is about INR 23 crores-INR 24 crores. And with that, we think the hotel is extremely well positioned to kind of move up on its rate chart.
In terms of its performance, if you see, in July 2025, this hotel was doing a total revenue of about INR 1.8 crores a month with a rate of INR 5,900 occupancy of, let's say, 55%-60%. We have moved that revenue in November, December to about almost circa INR 3 crores average per month. So we've done that 50% growth in revenue, a little bit more than 50% growth in revenue. And the rate is now sitting between INR 8,000-INR 10,000 on a monthly basis in October, November, December, and occupancy being around 50%. So while the occupancies have remained the same because of renovation, we have pushed the rate almost 2x of what it used to be prior to the Marriott management. And therefore, the resultant asset income has gone from INR 1.8 crores a month to almost, I would say, INR 2.5 crores-INR 3.5 crores a month.
So yes, there is a sizable impact. As we complete the current ongoing refurbishment, which gets completed by end of March, the next fiscal year, this hotel should start seeing very strong, consistent performance with no interruption for renovations for full FY 2027.
Understood, sir. Just lastly on our recently added inventory, including Kolkata, Whitefield, Bangalore, and now the Sheraton Hyderabad and Pune as well. So how has been early demand trends in the new inventory as the full absorption happened?
Yeah. So I'll give you I mean, the impact in FY 2026 is going to be small, but FY 2027 is when they'll start really impacting. So I'll give you one example for Whitefield Hotel. We were just checking those numbers earlier. And sometimes you have reporting anomalies. For instance, Whitefield is an existing operating hotel, so it's classified as same-store. And we suddenly realized that the total revenue growth is 15% in rooms, but the RevPAR growth is 13.5%, and mathematically, it's incorrect. And when we dig deeper, we realize that Whitefield Hotel, because of those 56 rooms, has seen a total revenue growth, room revenue growth of almost 45%. So those 56 rooms being added to our existing 160-room hotel saw that hotel revenues jump by almost 45% because those rooms are slightly larger. Kolkata is stabilizing really well.
Interestingly, even though people don't talk a lot about Kolkata, it is a silent performer. That hotel is stabilizing quite adequately. Now the rate is we are actually now touching okay. So well, it was almost doing an occupancy of 62% in the first few. If you see from July till December, the average occupancy is about 62.4%. The rate is almost upward of INR 4,000. It's almost touching INR 4,500. It has contributed almost INR 6 crore since opening to our top line. So all the hotels are stabilizing really well. Sheraton Hyderabad has just gotten added, so you'll see the impact of that coming in February and March. And same for Hyderabad, the W one.
Understood. And sir, our expansion pipeline shows status of development is still into design stage for all of our planned greenfield projects. So are you confident that you'll be able to execute projects within 2-2.5 years to stick to the mentioned timeline?
So if you see slide number 18, we'll take you project by project. For instance, in W Hyderabad, the work is going on on-site. Actually, the mockup should be ready in the next few months. So it's an existing building which is being retrofitted to be converted to a W. In Courtyard Pune, Tribute Bangalore Whitefield, Tribute Jaipur, which is where you're seeing a lot of design, design, design, these are existing hotels. So these existing hotels have to be taken through a renovation, which will start, let's say, in April or so. So the timeline between design and start of renovation and complete is not like a greenfield project, which is 12-18 months. You start, first phase comes to first of all, if they start going into renovation in phases, they come back also in phases.
So that's why you're seeing a lot of sites being designed. Coming to Westin Bangalore, the Westin Bangalore, we will put it as construction when effectively the RCC starts getting cast ahead. But the demolition of the existing building has been completed. Site leveling has been done. We should start the shoring in the next month or so. So there's active work in all of those sites. The only site where it is truly in design is actually the one, Financial District, Hyderabad, and the Navi Mumbai project.
Understood, sir. Perfect. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Raman Purwar from Nuvama. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, this is Rajiv here. Good morning, sir. I am on slide 13 and 14. This is the same-store RevPAR. If I just delete that and for this quarter, it is looking like the incremental margin on this RevPAR is close to 4%. But considering that we have grown RevPAR at 13%, and in the previous few quarters, we have seen that this number shooting up to close to 60%. So while the revenue is driven more by room revenue, ideally, the flow-through should have been higher. Any thoughts on this?
Ladies and gentlemen, the management line has been disconnected. Please hold while we get them reconnected. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being on hold. The management has been reconnected. Thank you and over to the management.
Thank you. Sorry, Rajiv, you were on the call. Can you start your question again?
Yeah. Yeah. So I was talking about slide 13 and 14, which is on the incremental revenue and incremental EBITDA. So if I were to calculate incremental margin for this quarter, it is close to 44%. And considering that it is largely driven by room revenue, which has grown at a faster pace, the flow-through should have been higher, right? Because in the previous quarter, we have seen this number hovering close to 60% as well. So your thoughts on why the flow-through is lower?
So I think, Rajiv, a large part of that was the expected drop in revenues in December. And that's why the flow-through is only about 45%. You're right. This should be ideally about 55%-60%.
I think the GST is actually our margins would have been or gross would have been 19%.
Yeah. So I think it's largely because of the December impact, because of the December upscale kind of drop from. So what happens is that every hotel is prepped for a certain quarter in terms of the revenue build-up. And therefore, we saw a strong revenue build-up for the quarter according to some of the adjustments to the operating structures, payroll, and outsourced staff, and all of that is done. But the sudden drop in revenues in the two weeks in December kind of made us slip on that flow-through, which typically should be in 55%-60%. And this quarter was 45%. So you're absolutely right. There was a 10% slip in the flow-throughs.
Yeah. Secondly, about your comment on, let's say, demand getting compressed in some particular dates. So what is the, I mean, what is the metric we should follow to just get a sense on, let's say, for the upcoming fiscal or the next fiscal? How do we track this compression in certain dates? Any metric you track?
Yeah. So Rajiv, we track metrics. For instance, we have this demand compression graph where we say how many days in a year the occupancy was in which bands. Okay? So let's say how many days the occupancy was between, thankfully, now there's no 0%-30%. We had prepped it in the COVID time, so we had a graph of 0%-30%, 30%-50%, 50%-70%, 70%-90%, and 90%+, which is pretty much sold out, right? So we do track across the portfolio and by hotel, what is that sort of demand compression that we are seeing? And also, how is the rate responding to those buckets? So therefore, what was the average rate in the 70%-90% bucket? And when the number of days the occupancy was above 90%, how did that rate move up?
And did we really yield those days? So we are tracking that. What we'll do is, Rajiv, we will in we used to put the SAMHI internal page. We will include that back where we'll show you this demand compression chart so you can see what's happening under this entire year, right?
Oh, this is three quarters.
Just show me this number.
Yeah.
So I'll give you an example. What's happening is for the last 3 quarters, if you see, the days the occupancy was upward of 90% is almost 30%. So 30% of all days in the last 9 months across our entire portfolio, the occupancy was upwards of 90%. Incremental, 28% of the days, the occupancy was between 70% and 90%. So if you add those together, you're almost at 60-odd%, 57% when the occupancy is upwards of 70%. And the other data that we need to see is how does the rate move. So for instance, if the average rate between 70-90 bucket was INR 6,826, the same rate became INR 7,500 in the days the occupancy was above 90%. So you can see how much you yield between 70-90 and 90+, right?
If you talk about days when you're 50%-70%, actually, the rate was only INR 6,000, right? You're moving from INR 6,000 to INR 7,500. We do track this demand compression trends across hotels and for the portfolio, which is what is showing us the fact that increasingly, it's about yielding that one-third of the year really well. That creates the whole YoY growth, that creates the whole flow-throughs. All of that is a gift of that demand compression.
Yeah. Just to follow up on that, so this shifting of bucket towards, let's say, higher yielding or where the demand is stronger, how far forward, let's say, the visibility we have in terms of giving confidence that FY 2027 is looking stronger than FY 2026 or, let's say, before that?
Well, I can give you the secret sauce, but I can give you the recipe, but you can't get the sauce yourself, right? I think the answer lies in mapping holidays because they are very predictable, Rajiv. You know today you can map all the holidays on the graph. Increasingly, you have to account for certain event risk. Now, the event could be different. Event could be India, Pakistan, or Ahmedabad, or monsoons, or airline prices, or something, right? What we are learning is, besides that mapping those holidays, you have to also map unknown events in different parts of the year and then layer up the positive events, the large group movements, the conferences, so on and so forth. I'll give you an example. Goa is going through a conference for oil and gas.
I don't think one can find a room in Goa in the next two weeks or so. Similarly, when conferences happen in Bangalore, you can sell a room for INR 30,000-INR 35,000. So events are booked much in advance, actually. So you have the ability to kind of map, I would think, 65%-70% of how the demand compression will work. And the balance, 30%, I hate to say this, is short lead where your revenue management team and your ops team needs to be really up on their feet to respond fairly quickly.
So that's very helpful. I'll reconnect on the SAMHI intel bit offline.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Achal Kumar from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. I had only two questions. I'm sorry if kindly, excuse me, if you only answered because my line was bad. So just want to understand your quarterly performance. And if I look through the cost line items, I can see a huge jump in something called fixed cost and the variable cost. What is going on there? And on the employee side, because of the new labor costs, you have booked one-off INR 11 million. But then going ahead, how would this because this will become normalized next year, right? So how would this impact your employee costs? Thanks.
Achal, first things first, when you look at the operational efficiency chart, which shows individual costs, the growth that you see there is largely an impact of the input tax credit that you would get. You would get input tax credit across each line item. How would you adjust for that?
It goes as a cost in each line item?
In each line item. So Achal, you will see the GST input tax credit getting kind of spread across all the key cost items. So that's one reason why you see slightly elevated cost across, let's say, fixed or variable or all others. Actually, variable typically remains between 19%-21%. It's 20-odd%. So it's pretty stable. It's largely going into your fixed cost. So that's largely a GST impact, which the input tax credit is getting added to the expenses. Number two, you're asking us about the labor code. So one time has been taken. In any case, for the next 12 months, it's an implementation. Yeah. So we'll actually reset the overall salary structure. Good for us that we were actually calculating the entire cost at 40% of base or the way it is defined. So we'll only have to move from 40%-50%.
A small percentage impact on that of gratuity and leave encashment, which also depends as to how many people actually stay with us for those many years. So it would not be a major increase in the overall cost as we move forward. One-time impact has been taken off completely. Yeah. Thankfully, because of being a young company and high attrition, our impact was only INR 1.1 crore against some of the peers, which has, for instance, shown a very high number. And two, like Rajat clarified, that we were already at a pretty progressive 40% basic to total CTC, and the regulation is only recommending it to be 50%. So we really don't see any sizable noteworthy change to the payroll structure.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sumit Gala from RSP. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question was regarding the RevPAR. We have consistently seen double-digit growth in the RevPAR for at least the three quarters this year. So in the shorter term, with a higher base of Q4 last year, and if we want to look at a longer term of two to three years, do we see a sustained double-digit or a low teens growth in the RevPAR, and what will drive the thing?
So I think not just for the current quarter, but we've always mentioned that our demand-supply modeling tells us that the total revenue growth, which is largely being attributable to RevPARs, actually, will remain in high single digits to early double digits. So a double-digit RevPAR growth is clearly something that we are fairly confident will be maintained in quarter four in spite of there being a very high base last year. So we don't see any risk to that.
About the longer term, sir?
So we've mentioned that in the long term, we expect RevPARs to remain between 7%-11%, same-store. Sorry, 9%-11% CAGR for the next three to five years on same-store hotels. And I think that same-store is something, apologize, that we keep repeating. But for us, it's really important that all these KPIs are being discussed on same sets of hotels that have not gone significantly changed. So yeah.
Okay. Next, a bookkeeping question. How do you see the tax rate for the full year FY 2026 and years coming forward?
Can you repeat the question, please?
A bookkeeping question. Tax rate for the full year FY 2026 and FY 2027 and beyond?
So see, we are actually sitting on huge losses. So at least over the next three to five years, we don't actually see any significant tax outflows. What you would actually see is some bit of a reversal or deferred tax asset being created in our books. So after that, it would actually be a non-cash tax line item that you will see in the P&L, but there would not be any consequent cash outflow that we see, at least for the next two to three years.
Okay. So what will be the percentage-wise quantum of just the book entry?
Okay. He's talking about INR 7 crore you have?
Yeah. That's the deferred tax expense, which is there because in certain assets, which actually have turned profitable, that's about 25% of the profits of that particular hotel, which is there. But on a consolidated basis, it reduces because we will have to look at the tax expense only for those entities where deferred tax has been created.
Okay. Okay. That was helpful. Yeah. Fine. That's all from my side. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Samarth Agrawal from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Thanks for this opportunity. Just a couple of questions from my side. Firstly, how are the corporate negotiations for CY 2026 faring till now in terms of just the number of rooms and the ARR increase that is being agreed on? And secondly, what would be the breakup between the EBITDA margins between the ACIC Portfolio and the rest of the portfolio? And how much more integration margins can be still expected?
So the first question is, and I think we tried addressing it earlier, the whole concept of RFPs driving the average rate is sort of becoming a little not that relevant because, as I said, there's very few contracts with last room available provisions. Dynamic pricing is becoming more and more real. And that's why you're seeing the ability for a hotel to price when it's above 90% at almost 25% premium to, let's say, a day when its occupancy is 50%. So that shows you that the pricing power sits squarely with the hotel today. In terms of the RFPs, we are seeing a really healthy acceptance of RFP growth. And I'll tell you why, Samantha, because last year, what has happened is companies realized that on sold-out dates, they had to really book through, let's say, an online discount to BAR, which was really, really high.
So they are also realizing that the net rate they pay through the year was really high compared to the RFP rates. And therefore, the resistance on RFP rate increases is kind of becoming a bit of an old-fashioned conversation, to be honest with you. The second question was the EBITDA margin. So if you see the asset-level EBITDA for same-store, including ACIC, is 40.1%, and for ACIC, it's 40.3%. So now ACIC is fully integrated in terms of its EBITDA margins. It's reporting the same 40% EBITDA for both same-store, non-ACIC, and same-store ACIC.
Got it. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gazal Gupta from ASK Wealth Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hi sir. Congratulations on the results. I just have one basic question. So our hotels are divided into three categories, wherein the upper-mid-tier segment, the ARRs are in the range of INR 7,900 or so. Now, there would be hotels which would have ARRs below INR 7,500 and above that as well. So just wanted to understand that would we face any issues in terms of raising prices in this particular category, which is the customer would end up paying a lot more, 18% versus 5%, which they'll be paying earlier. So just wanted to understand your thoughts on this part.
So Gazal, the GST is a beautiful puzzle because it doesn't happen by hotel. It happens by every room that is sold. And I can tell you, even in upscale, there are hotels which have had 20% of its room revenues coming from rooms sold below 7.5. And to that extent, a pro-rata input tax credit is lost in that hotel. So pricing is a daily job for each room, and there will be acceptance and resistance depending on how busy the city and the hotel is. I really don't think that increasing the price is relating to GST. It's about demand and supply. We have seen rate growth being extremely strong for the last several quarters. GST, no GST, incident, no incident. So it's a factor of only demand and supply determines the pricing and nothing else. Demand remains really strong.
Supply is nonexistent or near nonexistent in core markets. And therefore, the confidence level that RevPARs should continue to grow in early double digits. So it's all going to be decided by demand and supply. And again, I'll repeat the cost of repeating. It all depends on those days when the demand is so compressed that effectively you can reprice your hotels with high efficiency. So it's demand and supply. It has nothing to do with GST or non-GST. I mean, the day after GST was implemented and the hotel rate went up by 15%, let's say, one could argue that 12% is 7% is just the GST impact because the customer is saving 7% GST. But it's just hypothetical. The real thing is, what is the real rate growth and its demand and supply?
Okay. Okay. That's helpful, sir. And secondly, on the asset recycling part, is there any update on that segment? Because last quarter, we had mentioned that there is INR 135 crore of asset recycling, which is still pending. So any update on that front?
No. So the only thing is that asset recycling, we have completed a large part in the last, let's say, 3 years or so. At this point, we still feel there are one or two hotels where there is a recycling opportunity, but we don't have any definitive agreements or decision on that as yet. It's a part of our plan, and I think we'll give ourselves another 12-18 months to execute that.
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, sir. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Gazal.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Hitaindra Pradhan from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead. Hitaindra, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
Yeah. So just two questions. So sorry for probing further on the GST point. So for the customer who was paying, you gave an example, INR 112. But that INR 12 was available as input tax credit, but now it is not available. So for your customer, the price has gone from INR 100 to INR 105 effectively because he doesn't have the ITC. So this 5% impact, when you have gone back to, let's say, your corporate customers, what's been the outcome of this? Because if you have, let's say, less than 7,500, what has been the mix of the outcome? So have you what is the weighted average impact on this after all your negotiations?
No, there is no negotiation, Hitaindra, on GST with the customer on a real-time basis, right? I will again repeat. Hotel prices are decided every single day. I do a revenue of INR 2.5 crore a day. On a weekend, I do the same hotels do INR 5.5 crore on a weekday. It's not that you're negotiating with a large company or Microsoft on a daily basis or a monthly basis or a quarterly basis, right? The hotels are being priced, and I'll repeat, on a demand and supply, right? Now, GST, you're right, for in the mid-scale segment, on that given day, if you were to assume the rates were INR 100, the customer is paying INR 7 less GST. The input tax credit is being lost by us, not by the customer, right? But again, the hotels are being repriced on a daily basis.
So the same segment has reported a 14%-16% revenue growth. I'd like to believe some part of that was because for the customer, the real rate growth may not have been 16%. But again, not easy to say that because the rate growth is being reported on a weighted average basis, whereas the GST 5%-7% depends on. So let's say if Rajat buys a room for INR 7,000, the same day I'm being sold a room for INR 8,000 in the same hotel, right? On that pro-rata income that Rajat has given me, I lose input tax credit on my add-on. And we are not able to really, it's just not possible to determine for those rooms which were sold for less than 7.5, was there a price increase?
So I think we all need to, I know we would like to calculate it to the last level, but it's just not possible mathematically. We'll have to agree to the fact that the total revenue growth in the same segment where GST is most applicable has been 14% and 16% YoY in spite of three weeks in December being wiped out, right? So let's feel good about the fact that the demand remained very strong, the pricing power remained with the hotels. And yes, in the short term, there is a YoY margin impact, but that will really disappear as we kind of start absorbing this revenue growth.
Also, not all the customers actually can take the benefit of the GST credit, whether in this era or earlier. The way credit can be taken by a corporate customer is if they have their office, which also has a GST number in the same state where the hotel is. So if somebody is traveling from Delhi to Bangalore and he's actually being charged GST in Bangalore, he doesn't have an office in Bangalore, he can't take the GST credit for the stay he's doing. So it's not that all the corporate customers are actually losing or gaining because of the GST. Some of them are. The only thing is for them, the price has reduced on an overall basis. Instead of, say, INR 118, they are paying INR 105 now, just as an example.
Yeah. Hitaindra, sorry, but there is no, unfortunately, a very easy answer to this. It's extremely complicated. Therefore, we should remain focused on what's been the real revenue growth in that same segment. I think we are very confident that the revenue growth is so strong that even this margin compression will disappear in the next quarter or two.
Yes, sir. So this is well understood. In fact, you're right. So I think the corporate customers who don't have the office will not be able to avail, and also the individual customers anyways were not availing. So for both these categories, it is cheaper. This is well understood, sir. And on the pipeline of expansion, so I'm referring to slide number 18. So you have around 1,900 odd rooms that you have laid out that are going to come up till FY 2030. What about the other inorganic opportunities on the pipeline, if you can throw some color on that? And is it even possible, given the balance sheet constraints that are on the body?
So Hitaindra, I think I did mention in my opening remarks that we continue to have a pretty interesting actionable pipeline of available leases. And that kind of also addresses your second question about financial capability. And I won't even go to balance sheet as it exists today because we are at 3x net debt to EBITDA. A significant amount of capital is invested in assets which are not producing EBITDA today. So if you were to only put debt on assets which are currently operating, our net debt to EBITDA will be 2.5x or so, right? So the balance sheet is pretty in a solid state. We are generating about—so TTM free cash was INR 300 crores, but if I take the current interest rate levels because GIC investment happened in July, May, and therefore the reduction in interest rates happened subsequent to that.
If I take current interest rate, but historical EBITDA, our free cash will move from INR 300 crore to INR 350 crore. Should be circa INR 400 crore plus in the next 12 months because of the growth in earnings. And trust me, INR 400 crore of free cash for a company like ours is more than adequate. Variable leases on the first day require INR 5 crore , INR 7 crore , INR 8 crore , INR 10 crore , INR 15 crore investment. Then your partner has to invest the majority of the capital before you move it into the fit-outs, right? So I think the variable leases are our answer to continue to grow without really putting any pressure on our balance sheet because that only barely uses the free cash that the business produces.
A large part of our committed CapEx is in large projects like Westin Bangalore and Navi Mumbai, which in all fairness, the CapEx cycle will only kind of bulk up starting FY 2028, FY 2029, at which point of time, the EBITDA from W Hyderabad, the renovations, the Trinity Bangalore, all of that will also start kind of getting an impact on free cash. So I think we have adequate buffer. Plus, there's incremental INR 150 crore of investment pending from GIC over the next, let's say, 2 years-2.5 years. So that also gets added to our free cash. So Hitaindra, we are sitting in a very comfortable situation. And I have confirmed earlier and I'll reaffirm that most of our current discussions on pipeline are all variable leases, which do not require us to put cash up for acquiring an asset. It only requires us to do investment on fit-outs.
Okay. Okay. And you also alluded to the INR 3,000-odd crore revenue ambition in the next four-odd years. So that is around almost 2.5x more than the current run rate. So this INR 300 crore free cash flow that you have produced in the TTM basis, so this is excluding everything other than after including everything other than growth CapEx, I'm assuming this INR 300 crore. So that you also expect to go up in the similar fashion, like 2.5x in the next five years. And I'm assuming that this is without any incremental acquisitions that you may do. So is that the right understanding, sir?
If you look at our investor day presentation, we have clearly articulated in that that the total EBITDA accumulation in the next 4 years-5 years is expected to be in the zip code of about INR 3,000 crore-INR 3,500 crore. And we've given the whole list of CapEx that we have that investors circle on top of that. So you're absolutely right. The number is clearly 2.4x our current revenue run rate. But that's not a difficult thing because the majority of our new inventory that is getting added is all in the upscale, upper upscale space. So today, if your EBITDA per key is, sorry, revenue per key is, let's say, INR 25 lakhs per key, in the same period, the revenue per key for an upscale asset will be INR 50-INR 55 lakhs in those cities where we've invested our capital.
So this addition of W Hyderabad and the Westin Bangalore, some of the other assets is also helping us maintain that growth rate. So yeah, the INR 3,000 crore target that we have is based on two or three assumptions. The same store will grow between 9%-11% CAGR in terms of revenue. Two, you will have incremental revenues coming from the growth initiatives that we've already invested in, by the way, and we are fully funded in terms of current cash and future cash flows. That takes us to the INR 3,000 crore. It does not envisage any new acquisition. So that's how we add up that INR 3,000 crore. Largely, only variable in that is that assumption of 9%-11% CAGR on same store revenue. Since we made that presentation last year, at least for three quarters subsequent to that, we maintained our revenue growth ahead of that.
And that includes the impact of these 473 rooms which are rebranded and 1,458 new additions.
Everything. Everything. Everything.
This INR 300 crore free cash flow that you have produced on a TTM basis before growth CapEx, so that you assume should also grow in line with revenue?
More than revenue because there's always operating leverage. So typically, if you see our revenue growth was 16%, our EBITDA growth before GST impact was 19%. Eventually, you will go back to that mathematics as you kind of adjust your baseline. So you have seen the EBITDA growth remain in excess of the revenue growth. Then beyond that, our interest cost remains flat. And therefore, the cash growth continues to be even higher than that. So if your revenue growth is, let's say, 14%-15%, your cash growth will be substantially higher than that because of A, operating leverage, and B, interest cost remaining stable.
Understood, sir. Thank you, sir, and all the best.
Thank you so much, Hitaindra.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you, and over to the management.
Thank you, everybody, for a very engaging call. I would reiterate the fact that I know sometimes these small changes to the regulation distract us, but that had a 2% impact on revenue. That revenue grew at 16% YoY. We should remain steadfast, focused on the fact that demand and supply continues to remain extremely favorable to the incumbent owners, operators in the sector in India. We are actually quite excited about the broader changes in the economy, including rationalization of GST, which is boosting local demand, local consumption. That's the only reason we are surviving through several event risks still coming out strong. Our core market, what's been the most humbling data to see is that in our core market for the last nine months, the net office consumption remains to be extremely strong. Bangalore is touching 12 million sq ft for a nine month period.
All other cities, Bombay, Hyderabad, Pune, NCR, even Chennai now is touching 6-7 million sq ft. I think with that backdrop, we remain fairly confident that our curve will remain at or ahead of our long-term target. That helps us get to at least the targeted number of INR 3,000 crore revenue by FY 2030. Look forward to speaking to you again next quarter. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much. On behalf of SAMHI Hotels Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us today, and you may now disconnect your line.