Good evening, everyone. I'm Vanessa Fernandes from the Adfactors PR Investor Relations team. On behalf of TBO Tek Limited, I would like to welcome you all to the earnings conference call for Quarter Three and nine-month FY 2026. Today on the call, we have with us from the management, Mr. Ankush Nijhawan, Co-founder and Joint Managing Director, Mr. Gaurav Bhatnagar, Co-founder and Joint Managing Director, Mr. Vikas Jain, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Anil Parashar, Advisor, Ms. Udita Verma, Whole-time Director and CSO, and Mr. Ravindra Tomar, General Counsel, and Ms. Srishti Jain Mahajan, Associate Director, Investor Relations. We will begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management, followed by a Q&A session. Please note that certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking in nature.
Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or projections to differ materially from those statements. TBO Tek will hold no responsibility for any such actions taken based on such statements and undertakes no obligations to publicly update these forward-looking statements. I will now hand over the call to Mr. Vikas Jain for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Vikas.
Thanks, Vanessa. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for joining us. This quarter represents an important milestone in TBO's journey as we integrate Classic Vacations into our financial and operating metrics for the first time. While the consolidation meaningfully expands the scale of our platform, it also adds complexity to how certain headline metrics should be interpreted. As a result, we believe it is important to provide shareholders with additional clarity regarding some matters. Regarding the accounting policy, Classic Vacations recognizes revenue from hotels and ancillary services on a check-in basis, unlike TBO Tek, which recognizes such revenue at time of booking. This treatment is consistent with Classic Vacations' historical accounting practice and aligns with the nature of its business, given the longer booking to stay window and continued post-booking services until check-in.
Revenue from air transaction, however, is recognized at time of booking, consistent with TBO Tek's policy. Accordingly, all revenue and related metrics for Classic Vacations have been reported on the above basis, while TBO Tek's organic business continues to report revenue and metrics on a booking basis. Revenue from operations of INR 784 crore for the quarter translates into an enterprise take rate of 8.08%. The organic business delivered a take rate of 6.04%, while Classic Vacations reported a headline take rate of 24.94%. It is important to note that Classic Vacations take rate includes a 12.4% commission component that is passed through the travel advisors, which is structurally much lower in TBO's core platform.
As a result, these take rate are not strictly comparable on a like-to-like basis and introduces noise into the blended take rate metrics. For this reason, we believe gross profit as a percentage of GTV is more analytically robust measure of value capture. Gross profit strips out pass-through commissions and better reflects the net economic value retained by the platform. The second critical gauge of platform health is the conversion of gross profit into adjusted EBITDA, which reflects operating efficiencies and execution discipline. Gross profit to adjusted EBITDA conversion at enterprise level stood at 23.7% for the quarter, compared to 25.3% in Q3 of FY 2025. Within this, the organic business delivered a conversion of 25.3%, while Classic conversion of 19.6%.
On a holistic basis, enterprise GTV to Adjusted EBITDA conversion improved to 1.18% in Q3 FY 2026 from 1.05% in Q3 FY 2025, supported by contribution from Classic Vacations, which delivered a 2.46% GTV to Adjusted EBITDA conversion for the quarter. Thanks, and with this, I hand back the call to Vanessa for opening the floor for the questions.
Thank you, Mr. Vikas. We will now begin the Q&A session. Participants are requested to raise their virtual hands to ask questions. We request you to introduce yourself and the firm you represent before going ahead. We shall wait for a minute for the question queue to assemble. We have a first question from Mr. Karan Uppal . Mr. Karan, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah, couple of questions from my side. Firstly, the air business recovered very strongly, 16% YoY growth on an organic basis. So just wanted to check how are you seeing, you know, the air business from here on? Is the growth rate sustainable? That's the first question.
Karan, as we don't talk about forwards, but yes, we, I can tell you that we are, we will continue the momentum in Q4 as well.
Okay. Okay. Secondly, you know, this quarter we have Ramadan, so there is some distortion in the numbers because of this, in especially in the Middle East geography. So how are we thinking about, you know, the impact this quarter, it's Q4 FY 2026?
See, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, Ramadan fell, you know, pretty much in the same quarter last year as well... So while there will be a monthly deviation in numbers because, Ramadan is straddling February and March this time, early last year it was completely in March. But from a full quarter perspective, there won't be a very material change. The only difference is that, there is an uptick in business, towards the end of, Ramadan, and then going into the Eid, period. So that, that will straddle, you know, that will straddle the, last year it was straddling the, Q4 and Q1. This time it is largely going to be within Q3, Q4. So that's the only difference. It should not have a very material impact this time, because it is all within the same quarter.
Okay. Okay, thanks. Gaurav, just one question on Classic. How is the integration playing out? Any early signs of cross-sell, whether TBO business to Classic or Classic to TBO. Any early signs there?
So, TBO selling to Classic has already started, so we've done that integration. And, I would say that the early signs are quite promising. Because Classic has a very long booking window and a check-in window, so when it starts to convert into travel, because there's a long window between which the business can cancel as well. But the early signs are quite promising. The business of Classic buying from TBO has... Well, I can't share any numbers, but it's becoming meaningfully large. So if I were to look at Classic as a standalone customer of TBO, it will already be amongst like a top 20 customers, right? So from that perspective, it is promising.
TBO buying from Classic is going to start in a matter of time. There is a bigger integration that is required to enable that to happen. Apart from that, the overall platform migration is happening, but that's a several quarters long project because it is complex and the system, the legacy on the, on, very legacy on the classic side. So the platform migration will probably take two or three quarters. But the buy, the cross-sell from both the platforms will start sooner.
Okay. Just last question to Vikas. So, depreciation and finance costs have increased this quarter because of Classic integration. So from here on, should we assume these numbers to be steady state?
Yeah. So this quarter includes the debt and amortization cost for the PPA provisional that we have done. So you, we don't—While the PPA study is currently provisional, but we don't anticipate major changes in the same. So the debt cost is already taking into account the amortization cost. It's taking into account the costs which will get amortized for the CV PPA. And similarly, the finance cost includes the full quarter cost for the loan that we have taken for the Classic acquisition.
Okay, thanks. Thanks a lot. I'll fall back into queue.
Thanks, Karan. Thank you.
Thank you, Karan. We have our next question from Mr. Pratik Kumar from Jefferies. Pradeep, I request you to introduce yourself and unmute.
Yeah, good evening, and congrats for good results. It's Pratik from Jefferies. First of all, may I request that the call be hosted slightly later in the day or, like, next day, because you just posted results and shareholder letter, like, 10 minutes back. It's impossible to go through them and, yeah, and discuss during the call. My first question is, like, Q3 again was impacted by Forex element. How are we seeing the Forex element now? And, is there any changes in policy which we are introducing to reduce this impact on a sustainable basis?
So, year on year, Forex impact has reduced, per se, Pratik. If you see, the overall number has gone down materially. Having, however, said that, since till last year, Q4, we were not doing any material hedging, especially for our international business, and this as a practice we started after the Q4. So hedging would obviously involve some cost, varying wherever in currencies where we have difference in payables and receivables. And to cover that risk, we would have to incur such cost, and that cost is getting captured in the Forex line per se.
Okay, so, so it's the hedging cost which is there and not the MTM impact or something which is the part of that line item?
No, so that line would have all the hedging cost as well as, the MTM impact of the hedges, as well as if there are any unhedged, positions. If there are any gain or loss, that is also included. And plus, since we had given a foreign currency loan from, TBO Tek, the holding company, to Tek Travels DMCC, Dubai entity, for the CV acquisition, any, benefit or, cost pertaining to the revaluation of those loan also get captured in this line.
Sure. Okay. A second question is on CV's integration. So while of course last quarter was particularly impacted by integration costs, but is there any specific integration cost or some specific immediate synergy which we may realize like in 4Q versus 3Q? And is there something specific which had impacted this quarter as well?
Pratik, very early days. So the Q4, or you know, what, what, our Q3, but calendar year Q4 for CV was in line with what they had projected as part of diligence. So it has, it has played out as we expected it to. The synergies are, like I earlier mentioned, that we have already started selling the TBO inventory into CV. How that will materialize into incremental revenue or margin expansion is very early to say, because like I said, the booking windows are very long. It'll only be June, July, August, September, when bulk of the travel will happen. So by that time, we will know what, which, what part of the business that we booked today is actually materializing, and is it materializing at a higher rate. So that is, I think, a few months away.
The immediate synergies that we will see are likely going to be us, TBO also buying from CV, which should start happening in the next couple of months. And then, the broader benefits will happen when we migrate the core booking platform of CV onto the TBO ecosystem, which like I said, is a complex project, so that's a several quarters long project. But that is where we will actually start to see both cost synergies, as well as we are able to employ our TBO growth playbook onto the CV platform. So that, I think, is a few quarters away. For now, we try and maintain a steady state and try and make sure that we accelerate our integration projects.
From a cost, initial cost perspective, we don't envision any additional cost for these integrations. We are managing it within the current resources.
Thank you. Our question is on your commentary and expectation, which we have, like, sort of, given out earlier on revenue growth on organic business revenue growth accelerating versus SG&A growth from next quarter onwards. How are you looking at that comment now?
No, Pratik, we stick to our conviction. We are expecting to see Q4. So you would have already seen that every quarter, the growth of SG&A has been tapering down, and we continue, we expect that to continue in Q4 as well. At the same time, you know, from Q3 to Q4, we usually see a significant growth in the top line, because Q3 is, you know, traditionally our weakest quarter, and Q4 is our second best quarter. So we expect to see a meaningful growth in top line in Q4, while the SG&A will not grow at the same pace, and hence we should see a significant flow-through to the bottom line. So we remain convinced on that, and that's on the organic business, not counting CV. So we should be able to demonstrate that operating leverage in Q4.
Last question. Is there any thought process around bringing both CVs and your accounting to same standards on top line GTV and EBITDA margins?
Yeah, Pratik, it is, you know, we tried that, but it is simply not possible. The main reason being that CV's business books much in advance, and then, because of the nature of that business, so it is luxury and complex, right? So unlike the TBO business, where each booking is essentially one hotel or one flight, bulk of what CV books is multi-hotel, multi-product itineraries. Now, between the time when the booking happens and when the travel happens, the booking goes through several iterations in terms of people will add an additional room, or add a hotel, add an excursion. So there is no point in time where you can nail down the revenue and say, "This is the revenue on this booking," until the time the travel actually happens.
So, it would be hard to translate that into our booking model, where we, when a booking is reconfirmed, we count it as revenue, because of the nature of that business. So if we try to carry to do that, I think we create a fair bit of complexity. So we'll try and run the business on an as-is basis, rather than, you know, try and force fit it into our business model.
Sure. Thank you, and these are my questions.
Thanks, Pratik. Pratik, your comment, well taken on time. So we were anticipating our board meeting to finish a lot sooner today, and hence, the delay between when we published. But we'll keep that in mind going forward.
Thanks, Varun.
Thank you, Pratik. We have our next question from Mr. Manik Taneja. I request you to kindly unmute yourself and proceed with your question.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. While I do understand this quarter's performance is colored by the consolidation of the Classic Vacations business, but just stepping back on the airlines business, we have seen a strong GTV performance in the current quarter, unlike the weak seasonality that we typically tend to see in this business in this quarter. If you could spend some thoughts as to what drove the strong performance over here in this particular quarter, and how should we be thinking about these trends on a go-forward basis? That's question number one. The second question that I have is with regards to EBITDA as a percentage of GTV, which also has an impact of the Classic Vacations higher profitability.
How should we be thinking about this metrics if you were to think about over a 2-3-year period? Those would be my two questions.
So, Manik, on the air, I think there were some learnings, you know what, which we obviously learned from in the last previous quarters. So we kind of fixed that. One thing good is that we did not compromise on our GP. We still maintained the same GP, what we were maintaining the same quarters. But I think we did some things correct, which we were wanted to. So I think that kind of played up in our favor. Also, keeping in mind, Manik, this also had this disruption in December with one of the carriers, which all of us know about, yet we kind of pulled through with a good growth. And we anticipate the same momentum, you know, as we go into Q4. And hopefully it should be in the same lines, at least double digits.
You know, and I think that's the plan, what we have internally.
Just to clarify,
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Yeah. So just on that double-digit growth outlook from the air business, you're saying air GTV will essentially grow in double digits over the medium term? Is that correct? Because this quarter seems almost like a quarter.
I think let's focus on Q4, at least the short term, and then I think, you know, once we are confident in maintaining the momentum, then probably I can give a better color, you know, for the medium term as well.
Sure. And the other question was on-
So the question on, yeah, how to look at EBITDA as a percentage of GTV. See the, you know, it's a bit nuanced, but directionally it will go in the same direction as EBITDA as a percentage of GP. What we are trying to anchor away is from looking at revenue as the top line metric, because Classic has a significantly large revenue, but almost 50% of that revenue is a commission pass-through to the travel advisors. So that's not really, you know, income in the true sense of the word. So earlier, the flow-through from GP to...
Revenue to GP conversion was quite high for the TBO organic business, but it is materially lower for the Classic business, and hence, what we are anchoring around is that the GP is a kind of true net revenue for us in a way. And from there on, the operational efficiency of the business to convert that GP that into, you know, bottom-line cash, is a true representation of the business. So, one, we are anchoring around saying that, let's look at EBITDA as a percentage of GP to truly understand the conversion from revenue to bottom line. We are also starting to, you know, talk about EBITDA or adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of GTV, because that is a metric many of our peers are also using.
The nuance there is that not all GTV is equal. As you know that the airline GTV, while significantly large in volume, actually delivers much lower take rates. So it's a bit, this number can fluctuate a little bit more than the revenue EBITDA to GP number, because in a quarter where we have high growth in the airline business, this number may actually shrink a little bit. So directionally in the long run, this number will move in upwards in the same pace as EBITDA to GP. But as our conviction still remains that EBITDA to GP is a more consistent number to measure compared to EBITDA to GTV.
No, sure. That's quite helpful, Gaurav. Just to prod you further, because that will basically show up the true value of the platform. From an EBITDA to GP conversion, if you could give us some sense of your operating expenses below gross profit, what proportion of your broad other expenses or operating expenses below gross profits are essentially variable in nature, which will fluctuate in line with the volume of business, to what may essentially be fixed cost?
Vikas?
Yeah. So, Manik, as we have started disclosing the breakup of the SG&A cost below gross profit level from, I believe, last shareholder letter, we have shared those details in the, in our letter as well. If you see, there are broadly four, five components in that piece. So primarily, the variable nature of the expense is hosting, bandwidth cost, and the payment gateway charges. So those that expense would primarily grow in line with the growth in the revenue of the GP or the GTV numbers. But the other cost, which is the employee benefit cost and the business support service and the others, those would primarily be looked at a fixed nature of cost.
And therein, where we are saying that operating leverage would get generated as we scale our business more.
Great. Thank you. All the best for the future.
Thank you, Manik.
Thank you, Manik.
Thank you, Manik. We have our next question from Ms, from Mr. Kavish Parekh. We request you to kindly unmute yourself and proceed with your question.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. This is Kavish Parekh from BNK. My first question is on Classic Vacations. At the investor event, you outlined a roadmap highlighting certain low-hanging initiatives, some of which you have already started to tap into. While benefits remain some time away, do you have any timelines in mind, with respect to execution here? And how would you envisage the growth trajectory for Classic over the next, say, three to four years? That's the first question.
Okay. So, Kavish, like I said, that, the lowest hanging fruit is cross-sell on both sides. Cross-sell from TBO into Classic has already started, and we are seeing, quite promising results. Cross-sell from Classic into TBO is a few months, few weeks, away because, it requires a little bit more work on the tech. The other big integration that we are working on is the platform migration, where we will introduce our booking platform into the Classic ecosystem. That's a several-quarter long project. It will be a phased out project as well. So the benefits of it will start to accrue probably in, in H2 and not before that. Over a three to four-year period, Kavish, the way to think of, growth is not just on the Classic, but the overall North America business for TBO.
That was our investment thesis at the beginning as well. What has happened with Classic is that, one, we have gotten access to over 10,000 active, high luxury travel advisors in the North America market. The second access we have gotten is access to very, deep consortia relationships in that market, namely, Virtuoso, Signature, Travel Leaders, Travel Savers, et cetera. So, both these are relevant for unlocking growth in the core TBO business and the organic TBO business as well. So our view would remain that we will expect over the next three or four years, our North America business to continue to grow at, at a you know, at, in double digits, just like all other geographies have demonstrated growth in the early phases, with the caveat that we're already starting with a large base, right?
So for example, you would see today markets like APAC or Europe are growing a good lot of 30%, but coming from a smaller base. APAC is coming from a base of a couple of hundred million dollars. Now, in North America, we're already starting with a base of more than $600 million. But having said that, we would definitely endeavor to find high double-digit growth in North America as a whole over the next 3 or 4 years. Now, some of it may come in the TBO organic business, and some of it may come into the Classic business. But from our perspective, the value of this acquisition and the ROA on this acquisition will be measured by finding that growth for North America as a whole, not just standalone Classic or standalone TBO.
Fair enough, understood. Thanks for that detailed explanation. My second question is on the margins. So you have indicated that EBITDA growth is expected to outpace GP growth starting next quarter. Here, should we interpret this largely as a function of operating leverage at Classic, where EBITDA growth would inherently exceed GP growth as scale improves? Or would organic business be the larger contributor? So further on absolute margins, while TBO standalone margins could potentially reach around 17%-18%, Classic had margins of about 11% last year. So should we expect this to act as a drag on consolidated margins in the near term? Or what are the thoughts on Classic's margins converging closer to TBO's levels? Any timeline, any indication here would be great. Yeah, that's the second question.
So, Kavish, on your first question, the Q4 growth that we're talking about is pure operating leverage on the organic business, right? So with, obviously with Classic consolidation, the numbers will look, look larger. But, what we have been committing, for the last couple of quarters is that we will demonstrate significant operating leverage and flow-through of, incremental GP to bottom line in Q4, and that, that is on the organic business, and we are sticking to that commitment. So on the organic business, we will see a significant, margin expansion happening, hopefully in, in Q4.
Now, on your other comment, you're right that the Classic business, if you looked at as a percentage of revenue, feels dilutive, and which is why my previous comment that we—the true, you know, representation of the business will be looking at EBITDA conversion from GP, and which is more in line with the TBO business, right? Both are about mid-twenties.
Yes.
Right?
Classic is 20% and we are around 25%.
Yeah. So the Classic business is converting from GP to EBITDA at about 20%. TBO business is converting that at about 25%. And this convergence, we do expect that to happen. I can't give you a timeline right now, it's very early days. But we do expect to see efficiency, and Classic has the same operating leverage. I think the business from a cost basis is, you know, is fully paid for, in the sense that maybe there's some incremental sales team expansion that will happen on the Classic business, but we are not expecting the cost in that business to grow substantially. So any incremental top line growth will convert heavily into the bottom line, and hence this margin expansion should happen.
So while I don't have a timeline for it, we would expect for GP to EBITDA conversion to converge for the TBO core business as well as Classic.
Hmm. Got that, got that. Lastly, on our take rates, so organic TBO hotel take rates have remained strong for several quarters now. While the geography mix has been largely stable, what is really driving the sustained strength organic TBO hotels? Has there been a shift in the underlying hotel mix towards more premium categories, and if so, how sustainable are these figures? Because historically we have seen some volatility in this metric, so any color on that stability would be helpful. And if I can just squeeze in one more, could you share some color on what drove the sharp jump in the others revenue segment? So is this the new initiatives that you have been trying to grow, or does this also pertain to Classic?
Okay. So on your first question, Kavish, I think part of the take rate fluctuation that you see is also in a similar nature on at the revenue level as what we are explaining on Classic, because some of our suppliers are commissionable suppliers. So what happens is we receive a commission on every booking, and then we part a portion of that commission to the travel advisor, which gets netted off at a GP level. So a more fairer and, you know, kind of a more honest view would be to look at GP as a percentage of GTV, as against revenue as a percentage of GTV, to get a more consistent view of take rates. Having said that, we have worked hard to maintain take rates at a fairly consistent level.
Part of it is, that there are, you know, smaller businesses, like the ancillary businesses, which operate at a slightly higher take rate. So while they are small in size, they do add a few basis points to our overall take rate, you know, as they grow faster than the core hotels business. Second is that in certain quarters, where the mix between our enterprise business and our retail business moves towards the retail business, the take rates also improve at that point. And then we have incremental, bottom, you know, incremental margins that we are accruing because of the programs like the Platinum program, which we have talked about in the past. So the Platinum program is a meaningful program right now, and the override commission that we earn over there add to positively to our take rate.
So that has allowed us to maintain, or improve our take rates a little bit. What was your second question?
The other revenue segment, I think about INR 40 crores out of-
The others-
So other revenue segment, if you see on the consolidated basis, which is obviously, driven by, by some growth from the organic business, but primarily, those numbers have been stuck primarily because of the Classic, consolidation.
Understood. And you mentioned that there tends to be some variation in the mix between enterprise and retail. So is there some seasonality here that we have been seeing over these years in terms of the contribution from enterprise and retail customers?
No, Kavish, there is no seasonality over there. What happens on the enterprise side is, customers are large, so sometimes, their business can be a bit spiky, right? It can significantly go up or significantly go down... and which just changes the mix by a few percentage points, here and there, which will, you know, reflect in the overall, take rate by a few bits.
Got it, got it. Thank you so much. All the very best. That was it from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kavish. We have our next question from the line of Mr. Chirag Kachhadiya. Chirag, request you to kindly unmute yourself and proceed with your question.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah. So, one question on other expenses breakup, which you have given in the slides letter. If I look at the year-on-year trend, it's almost 18 and 20 about 18%, and quarter-on-quarter, there's a drop. Can you provide trajectory like in next quarter? What-
Chirag, we are not able to hear you properly.
Hello. Can you hear us? Hello.
Better, but could you be a little louder, Chirag, please?
Yeah. So, what I was asking, the Other Expenses line item, what trend one can expect in this? Because, on year-on-year, it's up almost 18%, whereas quarter-on-quarter there's a drop. So yeah.
So, as I was answering the other question, so other expense breakup primarily contains the employee benefit and the similar business support services and some other items. Also, in these expenses, the two line items which we are showing, hosting bandwidth and PG charges, that would be the line items which would grow in line more with the business or revenue, let's say. And the other expenses would, as we scale up, should show operating leverage.
Yeah. Thanks.
Thanks, Chirag. We have a follow-up question from the line of Mr. Karan Uppal. Karan, kindly unmute and proceed.
Yeah, thanks for the follow-up. Just one question on the monthly transacting buyers number, which you have mentioned, especially on the international side. It's around 1,480. So incrementally, 2,500 agents have been added versus what number you have given for the Classic, it is around 10,000. So does that imply that only 2,500 are the monthly transacting buyers from Classic? Any clarifications there?
No. So 10,000 is an annual-
10,000 is an annual number for Classic. So the quarterly number for Classic would be in range of around, yeah, $2,500-$3,000 only.
Yeah.
Keeping in mind, Karan, that the average booking value of a Classic travel advisor is much, much higher than the average booking value of a TBO core travel agent.
Okay. So Gaurav, from whatever you are saying, only 2,500 agents basically transact on the platform regularly. Is that what you're saying?
If on a monthly basis, yes.
Okay. Okay, great. And another question was on the take rates. So on a blended basis, the take rate is at 8.8 and our 8.1, sorry, and the hotel business is at 10.5. So from here on, on a sustainable basis, should we expect these numbers to remain stable?
We would expect the numbers to remain range bound, Karan, because we are not anticipating any pricing action on our end.
Mm-hmm.
We're also not expecting the saliency of the business to change dramatically over the next few quarters.
Yeah. But as highlighted by Gaurav, at times, because of the supplier mix impact, the take rate for the hotel business may go down.
True, but-
But yeah, may go down. But yeah, so GP is a right metrics to see.
I think just to add to that, the 2,400 number that you're talking about, that is the average over the two, three, over the three months. If you look at the unique agents who work with us here in the quarter at Classic, that number will be closer to 3,900.
Okay. Great. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Karan. Before we proceed to the next question, a gentle reminder to everyone, if you may have a question for the management, kindly request you to raise your virtual hands. We have our next question from the line of Mr. Devansh Gupta. Devansh, kindly unmute yourself before you proceed with your question.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, Devansh, you're audible.
Yeah. Hey, congratulations on a good set of results. Wanted to understand, while the, let's say, the revenue recognition policy of CV is different from us, how does the working capital work for CV? Is it also a negative? And on a consolidated basis, should the negative working capital situation improve further for us, or how should we think about it?
Yeah, Devansh, actually, Classic Vacations business, because the window between the booking and check-in travel happen is too large, so it's a highly negative working capital business, and it would obviously support in generating more negative working capital business at an enterprise level.
If you can give a numerical sense?
Numerical sense, like, because since we are not publishing the balance sheet numbers right now, we will give more color on it in the March quarter.
Got it. Got it. And, what would be our direct sourcing with and without CV? For hotels?
See, I think without CV, our direct sourcing in this quarter was about 40%. CV has a significantly higher contribution on direct sourcing. I don't remember the exact number, but, maybe it's in the range of about 80%-85% is the right-
Eighty-five.
Yeah. 85. So CV's sourcing is 85 direct. TBO core is about 40% direct.
Got it. Understood. So linking the metric that you were saying that what, let's say, you would track or what we should track is EBITDA to GP. First, one basic question: Does a higher direct sourcing, reduces the gap between revenue to GP for us, or, that is just purely which agent drives which kind of business?
No, no, I think that will not, Devansh. What happens is, basically, the big gap in the Classic's business on revenue to GP is the commission payout to the travel advisor. So that's irrespective. Whether you book direct supply or you book third-party supply, you will still pay a big commission to the travel agent. And that is what is right now while getting counted as revenue and then getting netted off in GP. So that will not change.
But I'm saying, from a business fundamental perspective, does a higher direct sourcing give us any added advantage in our unit economics for a transaction or business?
Yeah. In the case of Classic, especially, as it stands today, their commission or their take rates on their direct business are materially more than what they make on third-party supply. In the case of TBO, the number, the margin, the difference is rather small, because we are still trying to build out more volumes. And we have much larger number of hotels that we directly contract. But in the long run, Devansh, the strategy of direct contracting is twofold. One is to make sure that you have protection from overdependence on third-party supply, and second is, yes, margin expansion in the long run.
Some of the margin expansion that we talked about earlier and why take rates have been strong is because we are generating incremental income on our Platinum portfolio, and Platinum portfolio is all direct supply.
Understood. Understood. And, another data point question, what would be our enterprise to retail, GTV or revenue mix? And how does... Let's say, how much differential in the margin or realization for us?
GP revenue or the-
So enterprise to retail GTV for the TBO organic core hotel business is, it's around 50/50.
Got it.
Classic is all actually retail.
All retail. Got it. And what would be, let's say, our take rate differential, if you can give a sense on it?
That we generally don't publish, Devansh. At a GP level, there is not much difference.
Got it. Got it. Just two more questions. On the contracts that we have with hotels, I'm guessing there will also be some slab-based incentives, depending on certain, let's say, room nights that we enable for them. When does the payout of that happens, and how does the revenue recognition follow for it?
The revenue recognition would happen as per the terms of the contract. If it is as per booking or is it, if it is as per check-in, the revenue recognition would, the incentives due from hotels or suppliers would happen as per the contract. The payouts obviously would happen once the period of the contract is over and the numbers are finalized at both ends.
Got it. So revenue will mota mota happen at the time of booking, whereas payout will happen annually, I'm guessing.
Yeah. But at the time of booking or check-in, it would, it can vary depending on the,
Got it.
-contract with the supplier.
Got it. And just last question. Given all the volatility in the Forex exchanges, and this is not regarding the loan that we took for CV, what is our hedging policy and how much of currency that we hedge? And was there any, let's say, big benefit because of Forex exchange in this quarter or hit?
Regarding the hedging policy, basically wherever we have difference in payments and collections at a particular, any currency level, let's say for an INR or an Euro or a GBP, we try to hedge the difference amount in the range of around, let's say, 70%-70%, we try to hedge that amount in any particular entity or market. From the perspective of the gain or loss which are accounted for in this quarter, like, we did make some gains on account of the revaluation of the loan that we had given to TBO Dubai. Other than that, primarily on the revaluation, we had a negligible gain or loss.
Primarily, the balance of the expense pertains to hedging related and conversion costs.
Got it. Got it. Got it. Thank you. This is very helpful. I'll join back the queue.
Thank you, Devansh. We have a follow-up question from the line of Pratik Kumar. Could you please unmute yourself?
Yeah, thank you. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, your air segment's organic take rate, organic net take rate, seems to be at a multi-quarter low. So is this like also obviously benefited the top line, I mean, GTV growth getting faster?... Like, yeah.
Pratik, in case of airlines, at times the take rate is not in our control, because generally the airline business group works on a commissionable model wherein we receive commissions from airlines or the other partners. But if you see the GP line, there is only a marginal decline, not a significant decline between different quarters, 1.1-1.2. That's the kind of number which varies across different quarters.
So, meaning even the gross take rate is lower?
Yeah, yeah.
So-
So that's what I'm saying. It is 1.1% in this quarter versus a 1.15% in Q2, and a 1.2% in last year's same quarter. So not a significant decline, I would say, in terms of the GP.
Okay.
In terms of the take rate, you might see a higher decline, but not in terms of the GP.
I think what is important in the airline business is the GP. See, because that is something we still control. But the take rate is something which can move any direction, depending on the airline, right? But what is, what is important is that we... Our intent is to continue our 1.1, 1.2, as a GP on the airline business. And if the growth has to come, Pratik, that's a matter of discounting, right? So if we drop it to a point eight, we will start winning GTV. So that's not the intent. So I think this is a true growth, what we have demonstrated in Q3, maintaining our GP as well.
Okay. Also, can you discuss the region-wise growth expectation? You used to discuss earlier, like, region-wise, like different geography-wise. I know for quarter one-
I think we have shared all of that in the annual letter. We have shared that in our annual letter. So, and we've given region-wise, I think we have given some region-wise numbers as well.
You can go through and you can connect offline, Pratik, on this with me.
Okay, and last question on, can you comment on competition, both in India and outside, how, how is it shaping up, maybe in the intrinsic geography or otherwise?
I don't think there is any material change in the competitive landscape in the last few quarters, Pratik. You know, things remain competitive as they were before. I would not say that anything has become more competitive or anything has become less competitive at this point in time. Pretty much status quo.
In some geographies it might be intense, Pratik, but the fact remains it's still the same, so nothing has significantly changed on the compset.
Sure. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, Pratik. We have our next question from the line of Mr. Mithun Shah. Mithu n, request you to unmute yourself and introduce.
Yeah. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Thanks for giving the opportunity. So I would just like to know, like, who would be your comparable peers, you know, probably, either in the listed category, Indian, listed category or elsewhere?
Mithun, I think, the closest peers would be WebBeds, Web Travel Group, listed in Australia and HBX, listed in Spain. The Expedia has a B2B business as well, but bulk of their revenue still comes from the B2C business. But beyond that, I don't think I can think of any other listed peers.
One more thing, even in case of HBX and Web Travel, they are primarily more into enterprise business-
Correct.
than a retail kind of a business like us.
Yeah.
Is it possible to quantify any particular market share, percentage-wise?
No, very hard, Mithun. I think, one, the markets are very large and very fragmented, so very hard to take a hazard, it'll be hazardous to take a guess on market share.
Understand, understand. And is it possible, you know, to quantify the average revenue per employee?
I think we do share a headcount.
We do share headcount, but again, this revenue, this metrics may not give exact color basically on the basis of the nature of the business we are into. It's not purely a sales-driven business. So, we do share our overall headcount, including Classic, including what all our consultants and retailers that we have, is north of 2,600+ as of December end.
Okay. As I guess, one of the guys had already asked, you know, if it will be good, you know, if you can give percentage-wise contribution, geography-wise, you know? It will give us a better idea of how the business is shaping up in different geographies.
We do give GTV specifically for our hotels business the GTV numbers at a region-wise level, and what kind of growth we have year-over-year, and we do provide some color on the commentary on the regions as well.
Got it.
Beyond that, yeah.
No, no, understood. Understood. And last question, like, how are we connected to, you know, guys like Amadeus and RateGain per se?
Both are platforms that we connect to for supply. So these are intermediaries that help us connect to the suppliers. So we are connected to both Amadeus, RateGain, as well as many other GDS and channel managers.
Got it, got it. Thanks a lot for answering. Once again, congratulations on good set of numbers, and wish you all the best. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Mithun.
Thank you, Mithun.
Thanks, Mithun. We have a follow-up question from the line of Devansh Gupta. Devansh, kindly unmute yourself.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up. One more basic question. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that the hotel booking process is not, let's say, a very smoother and automated process, but at least flights given all the GDS and all other tech that surrounds, it's a highly automated flow. Is that understanding broadly correct?
Yeah, the hotel booking process is also fairly automated. The only thing with hotels is that the post-booking handling is slightly more complex on hotels compared to flights, but the booking process is largely automated.
Got it. So my question was actually on flights. So like we mentioned that, let's say we have a take rate of 1.1, if we go to 0.8, we can do larger volumes. So the question is that if the process is largely automated, even with a 0.8% take rate and a larger base, we would see a very high operating leverage flow through. So am I missing something there, as to why we would not want to pursue that strategy?
Well, Devansh, that 1.1 is a GP. So you are right. I mean, what you said, I understood the question. See, for us, it's the tech and the platform which helps us the efficiencies, right? So if you see our headcount in the last three years in terms of our air ops, et cetera, there's been no increase. So the plan is to keep building GTVs, which will obviously help us in our operating leverage, particularly for our airline business, right? Because that's more India-centric. You know, and to be fair, you know, we can't be mixing it with our hotel business at an enterprise level. But you're absolutely right. For us, it's to... But should we dilute 0.8 and get more GTV?
I don't think that's the plan, Devansh, because it doesn't work in the short and medium term, you know, because sooner or later somebody will match it, and then, so it's better that we be consistent. The market also kind of appreciates that, and we still rather grow in our early teens. You know, if we can grow more, but we are very happy to maintain our GP as well as some decent growth and obviously outpace the market, right? I think that's more important as well.
Got it. And as you had mentioned that, let's say, the previous airline had a lot of turbulence in this in the last quarter, and we grew. And anyways, IndiGo does a large own website sourcing. So it's a safe assumption that, let's say, we are much more stronger with Air India and Akasa. I'm guessing Akasa is still a minor player, but Air India is a bigger share of. We have a good relationship with Air India. Is that a fair statement to make?
I think our relationship with airline supplier Air India is probably the best, beat any airline. For us, IndiGo still remains our largest air carrier in domestic in specific. The disruption obviously kind of affected us. We could have gone, or we could have grown faster than what we did. But absolutely very well poised with every airline flying within India as well as overseas. So, so I think from that perspective, we are equal. Our focus remains on all the airlines, you know, which are meaningful, and we will continue to do that.
Got it. Just one housekeeping question: What would be the Working Capital cycle for a flight and for a hotel, ex of CV?
So, for hotels, basically, even in the organic business, it's a negative working capital cycling business. Because generally, we would be paying near to the time of check-in or after check-in to hotels or suppliers. But we generally would be collecting, starting from at the time of booking till at the time of check-in. So it's a negative working capital business. Air is, I would say, almost a working capital neutral business kind of thing. We do have credit, credit from airlines for a week. We do pass on such kind of credit to a selected agents and to, and so on and so forth.
But we don't fund the airline business, Devansh, but-
It's working capital neutral, yes.
Got it. I think a couple of quarters ago, you had mentioned that the time from booking to check-in is seeing a compression, because either because of geopolitical or might be various other reasons.
Yeah.
Are you seeing that number stabilizing, improving, reducing? Any color you can throw on it?
I don't think there is a major deviation in it. It has shrunk, but I don't think it is shrinking further. It seems to be stable at this point in time.
Got it. And is there any way... And, just one question that when a, let's say I'm a customer, I'm going through an agent and booking through TBO, do I get an option to, let's say, like, this is a B2C portal experience, that you pay something more, you pay something less upfront, or you pay with something extra, but you can pay at the hotel, and where effectively the difference is the working capital financing. So as a TBO agent, do I have that, offer to give to a customer?
No, we don't do pay at hotel. Devansh, we don't do pay at hotel at all.
It works in B2C, but not in a B2B kind of a business.
Any reason for it? Because we also give credit to our customer. But if we are collecting everything from the customer upfront, but then the credit limit should not exist, right, to the agents?
So generally, we will not be collecting upfront from the customers. At times we may allow travel agents to charge using the credit card of the customer on the pass-through. Generally, it would be that the travel agent would be making payment to us. He may be collecting or giving a credit to his end customer, and that's his own call.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was talking TBO to agent credit.
Yeah, so TBO to agent credit, we do, we do give, depending upon, the, the credit assessment that we do for the travel agent. But I'm not able to understand your question-
I think Devansh is asking that if the credit card was charged directly by the hotel, then the travel agent will not need credit, and travel agent folks will not see the business. But Devansh, what happened is often travel agents are packaging the hotel along with many other things. So if now, if each component has to be paid at destination, then packaging is not possible. Hence, mostly travel agents prefer a model where everything is paid for upfront. And second is, in many cases, travel agents also choose their own commission on every booking, depending on the propensity to pay and the competitiveness of pricing, which is also not possible if the customer directly pays at the hotel.
Got it. But my question was actually a bit different. So if TBO does not allow pay at hotel, which means the customer will pay to the agent. Now, he pays through credit card, he pays in cash, doesn't affect TBO, because TBO will say to the agent that you need to pay because you have collected money. Is this relationship understanding broadly correct?
Yeah, it is.
So then why is there a need for credit to be given to the agent? Because the agent already has the money from the customer. If he was not having money, then I can understand-
Because, there's also a mix of just not leisure business, right? Agents are also serving corporate, large itineraries, you know, groups incentives, right, which obviously require credit. So therefore, the credit has to extend it, especially to the players who are meaningful travel agents, you know, the largest travel agent part of the world. And even in case of leisure travel as well, travel agent has a set of customers, and he would be offering, credit to them as well. For the walking customers, he may demand, payment at the time of booking itself, but for his loyal set of customers, he would be extending credit to them as well.
Okay. Got it. Understood. Understood. And what has been a actual ever write-off, last year write-off on credit?
So we do provide the provision for bad debt numbers in our financials. I don't have that handy, but it-
No, no, I was asking the actual write-off, not the provision. Provision, so you will do, but actual write-offs.
Actual write-off is not that material amount. I don't recall, but yeah, I can provide you that number.
Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Devansh. We have our next question from the line of Mr. Amit Jain. I request you to unmute yourself before introduction.
Hello. Thanks for the opportunity. Just want to understand one thing. A few quarters back, we used to give a detailed cohort about the transacting buyers. So how many... Let's say, if someone got onto your platform five years back, so how much he's contributing, whether he's in our on our platform or not? So something, the kind of metric at the management level you are looking at between the old transacting buyers and the new transacting buyers.
Yeah, Amit, we do look at that number, and I think we've shared that number in the annual, even in the shareholder letter, have we given?
We've given not in the number terms, but in the GTV terms.
So we have shared how much business is coming from new customers versus customers who were previously onboarded in the shareholder letter. In the annual report, we shared the data on long-term cohorts as well. That data will not change very materially on a quarter-on-quarter basis, because you can't compare it for the half year compared to the previous full years, because then the numbers will obviously not be correct. So while we do that analysis on an annual basis, the number we have been sharing consistently is how much business has been contributed by travel agents added in the same year, which is basically a reflection of the effectiveness of the investment we have been doing in the sales team.
So Gaurav, just want to understand, at your level, what is the kind of optimal number you are looking at? Just like in insurance, we used to have a persistency ratio, let's say, how many policyholders remain with the insurance, in the policy. So similarly, in your case, what kind of, number you are looking at, ideally?
See, it is very hard to articulate a single number, Amit, because the business operates at a global scale, and the nature of travel agent changes from geography to geography. For example, in you know, densely populated but low income countries like Indonesia, India, you will see thousands of travel agents will come and go, but the throughput from each travel agent will be relatively small, so churn will be high. But if you look at markets like Western Europe and North America, then the stickiness is high, but and throughput is also high. So when you aggregate all of those numbers, to come up with a single number is very difficult. And hence, the metric we really look at is every yearly cohort, is that cohort on the whole growing or not?
So if I look at my cohort of travel agents added last year, have they meaningfully grown this year or not? Or the cohort that came in two years ago, has it started to, you know, grown at a slower pace than the last cohort, but is that cohort growing or not? So you can look at it a cohort as a whole, but you cannot look at, you know, a percentage of travel agents churning or not churning, because that changes a lot depending on, in that particular year, where did you add travel agents? If you add thousands of travel agents in Indonesia, for example, with a few hundred in Europe, it's a very different metric.
Mm-hmm. And I think you have rightly said, because our interaction with few travel agents reflects in India, churn is quite high. As they grow in size, I think they, you know, move out of the platform and they start dealing directly with the suppliers. So, is this confined to India or a few Southeast Asian countries, or you find some in other geographies, this kind of churn, higher churn?
No, Amit, the example you are giving is actually not very frequent. Our churn usually happens. This may just be a travel agent sometimes reducing their share of wallet if they choose to do something correct... The churn usually happens because of attrition, in the sense that travel agency closes down because it, there is no license required to start a travel agency, or you are a one person, started a travel agency, closed down, started again. So attrition causes more churn.
Mm. No, Gaurav, I just asked, actually, our interaction was a very big travel agent, and he was the—your wallet share was high, but over a period of time, it reduced. And I can see, the reason is that they started dealing directly with the suppliers. So I'm seeing this kind of risk. Do you see this as a risk which, which is, you know, to our business?
No, I mean-
As they grow in size.
If you see our numbers, if you see our numbers, our monthly transacting is 33,000, right? What you're describing is probably the top 1% or top 0.1% of our travel agencies who will actually be able to work directly with the suppliers. The whole business model is dependent on a long tail of small businesses depending on the platform for accessing supply. So in our experience, this is rarely a reason for churn. This may lead to some reduction of wallet share, but churn usually happens. Either they may occasionally happen because they just didn't like the service, but usually the churn is really a travel agent stopping business or, you know, moving out of the, that company and starting their own agency.
And also, I mean, sometimes we don't expose our credit limits, you know, with a full partner also. So that can also kind of, you know, ask them, can be leakage for them to deal with, supply directly. You know, that can be one of the reasons as well.
Understood. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Amit. We have a follow-up question from the line of, Chirag Kachhadiya. Chirag, can you unmute yourself?
Can you hear me?
Yes, loud and clear.
Yeah. So, I was just visiting the website of Classic Vacations. If I look at their UI and UX, and web interface, and if we compare it with the, what, TBO's current, you know, UI, UX is there, is there going to be any change, I mean, in terms of, let's say, upgradation in the Classic platform? That is question number one. And, second, the transaction advisors, which we, the numbers which we are providing, is there any concentration, let's say, some of the, you know, advisors contributing, materially more as a percentage of revenue to the top line? Yeah, just broad two question I have here.
See, the branding for Classic will remain distinct from the TBO branding because they serve as a different kind of customer. The underlying UI, UX may change somewhat, especially when the platform migration happens, then the booking engines will look more similar to TBO, but in Classic brand and colors, obviously. But I don't think we are trying to homogenize the two platforms at all, right? They service different customers, and we want to keep it that way. On your second question, there is... I don't think, on the whole, there is any major concentration of, you know, business with specific customers. Especially because Classic is a pure retail business, right? There's no large enterprise business over there.
Okay. And the changes which you mentioned for the Classic platform-
Mm.
Any ballpark CapEx figure, if you can provide, like, that we're going to incur, any such plan?
Chirag, there is no incremental CapEx for it.
There could be some enhanced CapEx for the IT work, but not a substantial amount.
It's not substantial. It's not substantial.
Okay. Thank you.
So let's see.
Great.
Thank you, Chirag. That was our last question for the evening. Thank you everyone for participating in the call. I now hand over the call to Mr. Ankush Nijhawan for his closing remarks.
Well, thank you everyone, for taking the time for our call today. One thing we definitely acknowledge that, you know, either we should have pushed the call today. Unfortunately, our board meeting got a little delayed, so we'll be mindful of that, for our next analyst and earnings call, so that we can send you the shareholder letter much in advance, you know, so our apologies for that, but thanks for joining in this evening. Thank you.
Thank you.