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. Gaurav Bhatnagar for his opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Aashvi, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to our Q1 earnings call. We had uploaded our shareholder letter on our website yesterday, and I hope all of you had a chance to go through it. Before we jump into Q&A, we wanted to highlight a few salient features from this quarter. The first one, I think this was by far the toughest quarter for the company in the last two years. The increasing disturbances in the Middle East caused severe disruption in travel across the globe, and I think the disruption expanded far beyond Middle East. Markets like India and Europe were also impacted because travel from East to West and West to East was disrupted because it is heavily reliant on the Middle East carriers. The airfares were also very high.
In spite of that, the company has delivered growth both on top line and bottom line, and we're very proud of it. It has started to show the fact that the diversity of source markets that we operate in is a big factor in building resilience in our business model. Given that no one country or no one region heavily dominates our top line helps us cushion effects like the ones that happened in the last quarter. A couple of other things that have helped us is that we were, as you all know, investing heavily into market development in Europe, and that helped tremendously even in a very tough quarter. Travel in Europe was generally impacted as well, but we still delivered a 24% year-on-year growth in Europe.
The other thing that is helping the business, especially looking forward, depending on how long this crisis lasts, is our increasing saliency of North America. With the acquisition of Classic Vacations, North America is starting to be almost a quarter of our hotel GTV which is substantial, and we believe we will be able to create growth plans over there. That saliency will help us because that corridor, the North America-Europe corridor, is far more resilient compared to other travel corridors at this point in time. The final highlight purely on the numbers was that Middle East, in spite of massive crisis within the region, delivered flat numbers. It actually delivered 1% growth in constant currency which is very commendable and full marks to our team for delivering that.
Net net, our view is that the expanded investments that we made in retrospect were very timely because that helped us cushion a potential degrowth that could have happened in this quarter given our heavy reliance on the Middle East market. Europe came through, the acquisition of Classic was also very timely because it has given us an entry into a much more resilient corridor. The second thing to highlight for this quarter is that operating leverage was quite visible. Our bottom line EBITDA margins grew significantly faster than our GP or revenue margins. You all know we have been promising operating leverage, it started to feel a bit mythical because we've been promising for some time. We were expecting to start to see it in Q4, unfortunately, the war broke out in that quarter.
We're happy with the fact that Q1, there is a clear demonstration of operating leverage, we expect given that margins have expanded even on moderate top-line growth given the war situation, our expectation is that as top-line growth normalizes when things come back to normal, the bottom-line growth should accelerate further. The final point we want to highlight is that you would have observed that we have shared numbers in constant currency as well. This was feedback from some of you in the last call as well. Secondly, this specific quarter was very unusual because you would see numbers both in INR and in constant currency. There was almost an 11% gap in our hotel GTV when we looked at in constant currency versus INR, which is leading to significantly higher growth numbers if you looked at INR standalone.
In the interest of transparency, we have started reporting numbers in constant currency as well. We should also highlight this was the first quarter when such a significant gap happened. For example, even last quarter when the rupee had started to depreciate, there was only a 3% gap in GTV, in hotel GTV, in constant currency versus INR. We did not find it significant enough to report separately. Given the steep depreciation that has happened on a year-on-year basis, we have started reporting numbers in constant currency as well. With that, we'll take a pause and open for questions.
Thank you, sir. We will now begin the Q&A session. I would request all the participants to raise their virtual hand and introduce themselves and the firm they represent before going ahead with their question. We'll wait for a moment till the question queue assembles. The first question is from Mr. Karan Uppal. Karan, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. I hope I'm audible?
Yes, Karan.
Yeah. Congrats team on very strong execution yet again in a very tough quarter. All-round performance on top line as well as bottom line, so congrats on that. The first question is on the operating leverage. The EBITDA to GTV number in this quarter was at 1.3%, which was quite strong. The quarter got benefit from the Classic seasonality and operating leverage in the organic business also. Going ahead, do you believe that this on a consolidated basis, EBITDA to GTV number at 1.3% is sustainable and hopefully grows from here as the revenue growth accelerates?
See, Karan, I think, EBITDA to enterprise GTV is going to be a tricky number to track, especially at this point in time, for a few reasons. First one is that, as you know, there is a fair bit of difference between the take rate of our airline business vis-a-vis our hotels business. As airline business starts to show its own growth, that saliency can move a little bit, which can have an impact because of the fact that the GTV volumes on airline are very high. The second aspect is that given the crisis, you would have seen that the take rate in this quarter was slightly lower because of the fact that the regions were fighting for business in a tough environment, and from a dollar value perspective, any growth would be accretive.
There will be selectively places in such crisis situations where we do drop margin a little bit to win disproportionately more business. I think the right metric to continue to look at, especially from an operating leverage perspective, is GP to EBITDA conversion, and that number should continue to improve.
Gaurav, you are indicating 26%, I mean, EBITDA to GP. That number should continue to improve from here on, is what you are saying?
That is correct.
Got it. Thanks for that. Secondly, in terms of Middle East, given the situation remains volatile, do you expect that to come back to growth anytime soon? Last time you had mentioned that the cancellations were lower and then search volumes were also increasing. How are things on the ground currently?
Karan, the situation is extremely fluid. Also the fact that the Middle East was flat is quite an achievement in all honesty, given that that is the eye of the crisis right now. It is also very hard at this point, we have given up on predicting what's going to happen because the situation literally changes every hour. The last 72 hours, again, some kind of a escalation has happened. That's true just on the ground as well. There is a frequent change in behavior and mood on travel on the ground. I would really not hazard a guess on what's going to happen in the Middle East, and when it comes back to growth.
We are thinking of that as optionality at this point in time, that should that growth come in, that helps us accelerate bottom-line growth even faster. Given where the situation is, it's very hard to bank on it.
Got it. No, we understand that. X of Middle East, Q2 is generally seasonally strong for TBO. Classic, the positive seasonality will reverse in Q2. How should we think about the growth in rest of the markets like Europe, North America, APAC from here on?
Look, I think year-on-year growth should be somewhat irrespective of seasonality because we are comparing year-on-year. Then especially outside of Middle East, Middle East has dependency on when Ramadan falls and when Eid falls. Other than that, rest of the regions have similarity, seasonality same period every year, more or less. The year-on-year growth would look probably similar. You're right that from a QOQ perspective, this is a heavy quarter for Classic, no doubt about it. Obviously from a QOQ perspective, that can have an impact. Beyond that, outside of Middle East, we would expect nothing significant to change from a trajectory perspective, assuming nothing adverse is happening in the world.
Got it. No, I was just thinking about, let's say, in this quarter, FIFA World Cup was there, next quarter European summer holidays would be there. Are they impacting the overall growth trajectory for you?
On a QOQ basis, Karan, historically Q2 is bigger than Q1, and we would expect it to be same way. That is what we are really anchoring around that just like last quarter, we said that let's aim for QOQ growth and YOY growth. We continue to aim for that. Yes, from that perspective, Q2 should be somewhat better than Q1 given that July, which is the heaviest travel month in the Northern Hemisphere, falls in Q2.
Got it. Thanks a lot for answering my questions, and I'll fall back into the queue.
Thank you.
Thank you, Karan. We'll now move to Mr. Swapnil. Sir, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. Also thanks for taking the feedback and sharing the CC numbers this time around. My first question is around your growth numbers for the organic business. 15% YOY growth on a CC terms is great at a time when the Middle East is affected definitely. From your growth standpoint, how do you model this from a go-forward perspective? Assuming everything comes back to normal, how should we model this growth from a slightly medium-term perspective?
Swapnil, I think if we were to just look at where we were from a growth profile perspective in Q3 of last year, last full quarter which was in some sense of normalcy. We would absolutely expect to get back to that when things get normal. The when is a big when, and we really don't have an answer for it. I guess nobody does. Our expectation is that when things get back to normal, business comes back to similar growth profile on the way we were growing at that point in time. Now, whether this happens in this Q3 or Q4, very hard to say given what the situation is. Broadly, we don't expect a change in trajectory pre and post-war at this point in time.
If anything, and this is not a commitment at all, but if anything, what we have seen is that post-crisis, usually the bigger players become bigger because of the fact that attrition usually happens in smaller and mid-size players.
Will it be fair to say, Gaurav, that most of this growth will be driven by Europe and APAC, which this quarter did fantastically well for you, given that a lot of your investments last year would have gone in these two markets?
Yeah, I think, Swapnil, that's fair to say. Europe and APAC are leading the growth charter right now. We are also expecting to see reasonable growth, like for like basis, in North America as well, starting whenever October, November, December, when it's a like for like comparison. Admittedly, on a very large base in a very tough market, but we are looking for growth levers over there as well.
Got it, Gaurav. The second question is with respect to your organic margins. This quarter around you delivered 1.5% EBITDA margin on GTV. Let's just assume things normalize and you start reporting 20%+ growth at the GTV level and possibly higher at a GP level. These margins can expand to around 1.5% eventually. Is that the right way to look at it, assuming your investment phase is behind and you don't need to meaningfully increase your SG&A cost here on?
See, Swapnil.
Go ahead.
Broadly, at least, internally, like I was mentioning, we have come down to starting looking at our numbers from a GP to EBITDA conversion, because now we have three different types of GTVs which have very varying GP profiles. We have the air GTV, which you know is like a 1% kind of a GP profile. On the other hand, there is Classic, which is an 11% GP profile, and then there is our organic business, which is in the middle. For us, it just becomes very hard to model by looking at GTV as blended GTV. What we do know is, at this point, SG&A is, unless we choose to, and we will tell you if we choose to. If we choose to relook at accelerating market development, et cetera, our SG&A growth will be significantly slower than GP growth, hence, those margins should expand meaningfully.
Understood. How to look at the Classic Vacations margins? When I do the same math on Classic Vacations, the 3.4% margin is meaningfully higher versus the previous numbers that we have reported. Directionally, how should we look at that business?
Swapnil, I think directionally, we see, look, we have acquired this business only six months ago. Directionally, not a whole lot has changed in it. You would be seeing higher numbers because of the fact that this is a heavy check-in period, right? Hence, the EBITDA is historically highest, in this quarter for Classic, and hence, those numbers will look higher. Nothing has materially changed either way in that business.
On a full year basis, one should build in around 2.5% margin. Will that be a fair assessment?
Yeah, that's. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
Okay. Just a last thing on your working capital side as well. There was some release this time around. I remember that there was some working capital investments last time. From a seasonality perspective, is this the way to look at your? There will be some quarters where you will need some investments on working capital, some quarters you will have some of these releases. It should ideally be meaningfully negative working capital each quarter. I'm just trying to triangulate those things. Yeah, thanks.
Look, Swapnil, working capital does have a seasonality impact. To give you an example, in the last quarter, we have explained some of those items were more seasonality or I would say driven through how the business works. For example, the performance-linked incentives, et cetera, they get accrued from the hotels or the airline suppliers, et cetera, over the year. Either they would be on the Jan to December calendar or April to March. Generally, those accruals would be more or less highest at the time of margin. Those accruals get released, the payment gets released during the first half of the next year. Similarly, at times, because of the supplier mix, et cetera, as well, some changes have happened in the supplier mix. Because there are different payable days for different suppliers, that may also impact the working capital movement.
Okay, Vikas. Just a related question to that, what would be your net cash position right now? I understand that there is some borrowing that we had for the Classic Vacations business. Net of that.
We have reported INR 1,980+ crore as the cash in bank, we have $70 million of loan as well as a EUR 6 million of a working capital loan for Jambo.
Got it, Vikas. Thanks very much. All the best, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Swapnil. We'll now move on to Mr. Kavish. Kavish, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Hi, team. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a great set of numbers. My first question pertains to India airline. Just trying to understand a bit more on this 15% GTV growth this quarter on the back of volumes shifting to East Asian carriers. Does this mean our market share is far higher with East Asian airlines versus other geographies? Overall, airlines grew 20% in 3Q and 4Q FY 2026. That was 17% this quarter. What was driving the momentum in 2H FY 2026 if this quarter's strength was attributed to this volume shift that we've spoken about in the shareholders' letter?
Kavish, see, very difficult to say that because of the Far East airline picking up the share. I think a lot of people were also flying on the European airlines. I think we kind of definitely in grabbing the business, and I think we did some right things in terms of our customer service, and I think the CAMs were very aggressive picking up this business. Nothing to do with the shift of Far East, et cetera, but I think overall we've fared up well and that 15% growth, what we are showing you, is something which I think was commendable keeping in mind the situation we were in. Kudos to the team for the same.
Got it. On Classic, we've mentioned that bulk of integration of Classic will be completed by 3Q FY 2027. Earlier, of course, we've spoken about the steps that we have taken to integrate and start cross-selling with Classic. What levers are yet to start contributing to the business, and what kind of an impact would you envisage led by these pending levers?
Kavish, basically, it's a three-pronged strategy, and it's quite straightforward. One is we are expanding our feet on street sales team in North America, both in the Classic as well as the TBO North America business because it's a very large geo and very distributed, and a very large travel advisor base over there. That's the first step, and this has mostly happened. We have already upped our hiring and most of the hiring is actually completed. The second is integration and automation of many of these Classic back office and customer service experiences. For example, implementing our enterprise CRM into Classic and things like that which is currently underway and which will allow us to improve the quality of service and also make it more measurable and more efficient as well.
The third is the platform integration, which is the big one, and which we are likely to finish by end of this current calendar year. This is what will allow one seamless integration of the TBO platform into the Classic ecosystem. Secondly, a more seamless selling and buying between the two platforms. While we have already integrated one way where TBO supply is now powering a fair bit of Classic supply, the vice versa cannot happen unless the platforms migrate. That's the other upside that we will see once this platform migration is completed.
Fair to assume that most of the cost synergies are in the numbers already, or cost impacts are in the numbers already and revenue bit will see some pickup going ahead. Would that be a fair conclusion?
Yeah, I think that's a fair conclusion.
Got it. Thank you so much all the way w est.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kavish. We'll take the next question from Mr. Manish. Sir, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. This is Manish Adukia from Goldman Sachs. Firstly, congratulations again on a fantastic set of numbers across the board. I had a couple of questions. The first one was just maybe a little bit more or delving deeper into just the modeling bit as we think about full integration of Classic and starting December quarter they will fully be in your base. When I look at, let’s say, your GP growth there, maybe two opposing forces as we approach the December quarter. One is, let’s assume that Middle East and Europe maybe normalizes a bit more, so that should be a tailwind to growth. On the other hand, you have Classic, which will start forming a part of your organic growth.
Because at least for the quarters we don't have some visibility on how the seasonality there plays out, how should we think about your overall GP growth once Classic fully comes into the base? At this point in time, you're growing at about mid-teens or mid to high teens on organic basis. Because Classic is one quarter of your overall GP, is it safe to assume that from December quarter overall company level GP could actually see a bit of deceleration despite Middle East coming back? Or is that maybe a bit of a premature assumption?
Manish, I think you are right. There are two opposing forces playing right now. I think the first thing to acknowledge is that for Classic, which is a business that we have just recently acquired, it will be a period of time before we get Classic standalone. I am not saying North America as a whole, but Classic standalone to start delivering enterprise level growth. I think we will have to find those levers. We are confident we will find them, but that is definitely a few quarters away. On the other hand, if you remember when we presented our Q4 numbers, we had shown the organic growth in Jan and Feb before this war broke out. That growth was far higher than the 15% that is historical and that probably we are trending at. Those are the two opposing forces that we need to blend for.
I do not have an answer for you that what will that blend look like. Wishfully thinking, if things were to normalize back, I think we did not enjoy the full benefit of the investment we made last year. Well, we enjoyed in the sense that the market disrupted and we still managed to grow. Had the market not disrupted, we were expecting just absolute bumper growth in Q4 and Q1. How soon normalization happens? Does it happen in O&D quarter? Are we able to see similar growth numbers at Jan, Feb? We are not concerned at all. We also know that the ground realities of Middle East are very unpredictable right now, but we are also three, four months away from that quarter.
Very hard to predict, Manish, we still remain optimistic that between the blend of what we are expecting to do in North America versus where our organic growth was starting to normalize at a new normal. If that comes back, we should still remain fairly healthy.
Very helpful, Gaurav. Thank you so much. Then maybe just a follow-on question. Firstly, on the two regions which were discussed earlier in the question as well, which is APAC and Europe, which continues to do really well. Organic basis, 30%+ growth, [50] in APAC. Part of it you alluded to were a function of your timely investments, which have helped you get this level of growth. Would you be able to provide any color as to the investment that you already made? For what duration you would be able to reap the benefits of those investments before you may need to undertake another new investment cycle? What I am trying to get at is, for how long do you think these APAC and Europe growth could sustain before you maybe need to undertake a new round of investments?
It's a tricky question to answer, Manish. Let me just share that on the whole, a key account manager will show at least four to six quarters of increasing growth before they start to kind of exhaust whatever they could have gathered within their region. With the caveat that this varies a lot, especially on terms of how much revenue you get per CAM, varies depending on the source market. Germany would look very different from Italy, would look very different from Philippines, Indonesia, and so on. This is sticky, right? One of the premise that we work with, Manish, is that once you bring a customer in, they organically grow, plus your sales guy does bring in more business as well. Which is where the operating leverage happens.
It should not be so time sensitive that you need investment every three or six months to drive another three or six months of growth. It is definitely more than that. We don't have any early signs right now, especially because of the fact that signals are disrupted because of the crisis. We don't have any early signs that we would start to see slowing growth because the investments have started to kind of already mature.
Very clear. My next question was on Classic again. I know, again, it's been early or it's not been even a year since you've completed the acquisition. From a marker's perspective, what will give you comfort that your Classic Vacations acquisition is moving in the right direction and is allowing you to get a foothold in the largest travel geography, which is North America? What might it take for you to really realize the full potential of that market? I know it's very subjective, 20,000 ft view question, but any color maybe you can provide that'll be helpful.
Okay. I think, Manish, the first realization for us, and which is really a revelation for us, is how large the North America market is, especially when it comes to luxury outbound travel. It's probably, I'm not on exact numbers, but probably North America alone contributes more to luxury travel than the rest of the world combined. That is just the scale of that market. The other bit that we've started to realize is how large the travel advisor base is in North America and how large that opportunity is, and how large some of the players are who are operating this space. If you look at consortias like Virtuoso and Travel Leaders, they top up north of Because they aggregate travel, they're not merchant of record, but they aggregate travel demand to travel agencies.
Both those report more than, say, $25 billion each of GTV that flows through their consortia, their networks, right? Those are just two. Just the size of the market is immense. For us, the core marker is North America on the whole growing for us or not, right? That's really where we want to get to. If this is the market that we are operating in, which is that large, we should over a course of— This is, look, I think we will be realistic. These are very developed markets, mature markets. They take time to break through. You would say Europe, we've been trying for almost five or six years before we reached where we did. Hopefully not that long in North America.
Several quarters through, if we are able to find enterprise-level growth in North America, then that's a big win for us. What we know is that that kind of top-line growth in North America will drive a far larger bottom line in that market.
Thank you so much, Gaurav and team. Really appreciate your responses. All the best.
Thank you, Manish.
Thank you, Manish. We'll take the next question from Mr. Prateek Kumar. Sir, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Can you hear me? Hi. Good evening. Congrats for great results. My question, again, is on investments. Of course, the company went through heavy investment cycle for two years, and which is now concluded. How should we understand in terms of investments? While you said that there's no rule there, probably how soon your investments benefit gets exhausted. For our modeling purpose, that should reflect in our peak EBITDA to gross profit at some stage. What is that EBITDA to gross profit you kind of see for your company on a total basis?
I think, Prateek, two things I'll focus on. First is that the quantum of investments, because the nature of investment in our business is an investment in a sales force, right? Which is really hiring people. The quantum of investment as a percentage of your GP will continue to shrink even if you investment at the same levels as before. Right now we are not. Even if you were to invest at the same levels as before, because we are on a higher GP and where there is a higher cash generation happening in the business, the quantum of investment doesn't correlate with the size of the business, right? It kind of remains same while the GP grows. That will fundamentally mean that even when the investment cycle comes back, we should still be able to continue to grow our margins.
Now, on where those margins can land, Prateek, is very hard to comment on because we don't want to give any guidance on that because several things are in play right now. One of those is that there is a whole thesis we still need to form on what does AI do, does to efficiencies, and the jury's still out on it. The second bit, Prateek, is that what happens in the Middle East in the medium to long run, right?
If this is a crisis which becomes something like Russia-Ukraine, then you will have to go back, look at it, and say, "Look, we need to find other levers of growth, and maybe there is an investment cycle because of it." The flip side is that if Middle East starts to normalize in the next couple of quarters, then we will be generating significantly more cash, and hence an investment can still be absorbed while continuing to grow the EBITDA margins. If you wanted to look at where steady state businesses which are scaled up, say, Hotelbeds or Web travel kind of businesses, those businesses are kind of starting to normalize anywhere between to 45%-60% EBITDA margins, which we are not at all. I just want to be very clear, we are not at all anchoring towards in any short to medium term.
Platform level dynamics should play out. If we choose to optimize, there is a significant runway for improving those margins from where they are today.
Sure. You think you're not an environment and, of course, improvement in margin is great. You are now not too much focusing on margin versus growth. The question is actually flipped versus what we used to ask earlier.
Sorry, Prateek, your voice broke.
Yeah.
Can you understand what I said to you? Yeah, Prateek, your voice broke, so I couldn't really figure out the question.
Yeah, sorry. My question was, while we are kind of encouraged with your margin improvement, what we have seen in past two, three quarters, but two quarters. Are we not focusing too much on margin versus growth, right? We will be kind of optimizing growth versus margin and incrementally focusing on growth, which is upwards of 20%, and plus margin expansion, whichever, which is kind of implication there.
Absolutely, Prateek. There is no change in that strategy.
Okay. Coming on to the AI question which you mentioned earlier. What is the CapEx and OpEx intensity in AI investments like Voya rollout, and where do they sit? Are there any measurable improvement in agent productivity from that?
Prateek, there are three broad initiatives happening right now. One is on CX productivity, second is on sales productivity, third is Voya, which is our AI itinerary tool. Voya remains very much experimental at this point in time. Look, we have seen a few bookings happen through it, but nothing that is going to impact your top line. Having said that, the CapEx on it is also very minimal right now. Which is probably sitting in CapEx.
It is.
Yeah, it is in intangibles.
It's all in-house, it's all done through the tech team our all in-house team.
Yeah. It's a lean team, as is the modern AI native projects. It is not impacting our cost structures in any way at this point, but it is creating optionality on the other side. CX is where we have actually seen a significant improvement in productivity. The metric that we are trying to drive, and I don't have numbers for you today, but the metric we are obviously trying to drive is what percentage of GP do we spend on CX today, and can that number start to come down? Because that, again, is a lever for margin expansion. There we have made significant inroads. Some of it is actually translating, although we have not reported any of it as yet. Some of it is actually translating into efficiency gains on the P&L. It's a journey.
The other place where we are actually investing is creating on our in-house CRM, creating a very interesting AI layer, which allows us to start doing things which allow our sales teams to know which travel agencies to go to, bases, signals which we are collecting from across the enterprise. Bases which are promising leads, which are at-risk travel agencies, which are travel agencies which are healthy. That's a project that is happening. The key there is that can that increase number of active agents per key account manager? Very early days on it. This is like a launch that happened a couple of weeks ago. I don't have any early results on it, and I can't even say that this is a successful project as yet. We are very hopeful on this project, and there's significant amount of engineering effort has gone into building this out.
Sure. Third question is on your competition. How do you think competition would have done in markets like Asia-Pac and Europe, where you have done strongest post your investments?
Prateek, hard to say, but we have clearly taken share because it's hard to imagine that these markets could have grown at this level at all. In fact, they wouldn't have grown at all, but we have high double-digit growth. We must have taken share. I believe some of our peers would be releasing or have released their results in the last couple of days. That may give some indication, but we haven't studied as yet. Yeah, we are clearly taking share because at this point in time, there isn't any organic growth in the market.
Next on your constant currency numbers, great disclosures on every line item. Will you be thought of giving this data every quarter from here on, including region-wise GP impact and all the data which you have given? Which I think is over-disclosure, frankly. Would you be kind of disclosing this in later quarters also?
Prateek, directionally, yes, and as Gaurav pointed out in the initial comments as well, that we had seen a wild fluctuation in this quarter, and that's the reason we wanted to transparently show the numbers in the constant currency so that we have the real picture of the numbers. Directionally, yes, we would tend to show the numbers in the coming quarters as well. Wherever it feels that it is over-disclosure, we can look at it and see whether that makes sense or not. Yeah, directionally, yes.
Prateek, I think there was a lot of compelling requests for us to give a region breakup. The last two quarters, I think we've been giving, and I think that's something we will continue as well.
Thanks. Last question. This hosting and bandwidth expense fell like 14% this quarter. Any specific reason there?
Anyone want to take that?
See, this is something we also discussed some time back. We had made significant investments in terms of technical investments to make sure that we optimize our traffic. On the infrastructure, we essentially try to move away from expensive infrastructure solutions to solutions that we manage ourselves to essentially bring that cost down. That's the new baseline that we can assume from now on.
Thank you. These are all my questions, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, Prateek. We'll take the next question from Mr. Chirag. Please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
Yeah. I have two questions. If I look at your gross margin, it has down sequentially and as well as on year-on-year. Is it due to the contribution has increased from Classic and the pass-through to the retails is relatively on the higher side, that's why we are seeing this number as a percentage of revenue or sequentially down? Second, the operating leverage which we witnessed during the quarter in terms of margin expansion, should we expect it to continue? Yeah.
I think the first one is a mix change, right? Because from revenue to GP.
Yeah, Chirag, if your question is on revenue to GP margin. On sequential basis, you're saying down basically, that as you mentioned, that is primarily because for Classic it is a big season, and that is kind of driving down.
That's a resiliency change. Chirag, on your other question on operating leverage. In the short to medium term, especially, as a top line growth, for example, Q2, we expect historically Q2 to be bigger than Q1 on top line. We should definitely see a little bit of further margin expansion in Q2.
Okay. This run rate of margin will continue throughout the year, right?
No. I think, look, because our business has seasonality, it will go both ways, right? For example, Q3 historically is less than Q2, you will again see a dip in margin just because of the fact that revenue would be lesser, given that seasonality is not there.
Once the integration of Classic will complete, should we expect after that subsequent quarter a meaningful improvement or it will take some time? Yeah.
Sorry, I didn't understand the question.
What I'm asking, once the integration of Classic will complete during this year, should we expect this operating leverage will continue to play out after the quarter?
Yeah, Chirag, I think, because Classic is a similar platform kind of business with a fairly fixed cost, you would expect any top-line growth in Classic will also lead to operating leverage and margin expansion.
In fact, if you look at the current quarter itself, you will see some margin expansion in Classic. Because of the seasonality, the GP was higher and the costs were what they were. The flow-through was better in Classic as well.
Okay. From seasonality point of view, Q1 and Q2 is a little better for Classic. Is that understanding correct?
Q1 is the highest. Q2 actually would be the lowest because in Classic, as we mentioned, that it is on the check-in basis.
Okay. Thank you. All the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chirag. We'll take the next question from Mr. Samarth. Samarth, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Thanks for providing the opportunity. I had two, three questions. First one is, if I just look at the organic SG&A growth, right? That was around 4% on a year-over-year basis in a constant currency term. Is that the kind of run rate that we should carry into the rest of FY 2027? That's the first question.
Samarth, I think, it will expand a little bit from here in the short term. One, because it's also increments season in Q2. Secondly, as business revise back. There will be opportunities for us to opportunistically do a little bit of more market development exercise. I would say that it will be range-bound, but the SG&A growth may slightly increase, but not at the pace of top line, definitely.
Some elements of SG&A, like payment gateway cost, et cetera, that's also linked to the top line.
Yeah.
Understood. Very helpful. The second question is, if I look at the organic hotels and ancillary gross profit as a percentage of GTV, that came down by around 30 basis points. Can you just help me with 30 basis points between, let's say, lower saliency coming from Middle East and our calibrated decision to protect the volumes? Any rough idea that you can provide?
It's very hard, Samarth, to do a breakup of this. Absolutely, we have fought for business in this quarter with the view that we don't want to lose money on it, but because we are an operating leverage fixed cost business, it sometimes does make sense in a tough situation to lower your margins and take top line share. We have done that. It's impossible to say what happened because of saliency and what happened because of just dropping margins, because both have happened, right? Middle East being at 1% growth in this market is also because we drop margins there, but it is also historically a higher margin market.
Understood. Now my last question is, if I just look at the intercompany elimination on TBO sales to Classic, that was around INR 65 crore thereabout. Is that the right proxy for the cross-sell today? Where do you expect that number to stabilize when the entire integration completes, which is, let's say, end of the year as you are indicating?
Yes, the numbers that you saw is the sales which is currently being made by TBO to Classic per se. As we are expanding our reach and try to optimize on the inventory, which would be selling from the TBO platform to Classic, we obviously look forward to increasing that share. We have seen the early shoots in the last quarter, and we hope that that number would keep on increasing from here.
Just follow up on that question is, there would also be some selling that would be happening from Classic to TBO, right?
No, that has not started as yet. Like I mentioned that requires us to first migrate and integrate the platforms. Yes, that will start showing up once the platform migration has happened probably early next year.
Understood. That was very helpful. Thanks again for providing me the opportunity and congrats on good set of numbers.
Thank you.
Thank you, Samarth. We'll take the next question from Mr. Divyansh. Please unmute yourself, introduce the firm you represent, and go ahead with your question.
Hi, team. This is Divyansh from Latent PMS. The first question, I think you mentioned during discussion, are you seeing players vacating or shutting shop in the Middle East market because of all the events that are happening? If yes, the second question is how easy or difficult is it for them to, let's say, go active again?
Divyansh, at this point, I think inbound into Middle East is most impacted. As you know, our business is more anchored around outbound. I would say there isn't a massive attrition in our, say what you'll call our direct competitors or peers. What is under serious stress is inbound businesses which depend on travelers coming into Middle East. I think there we have serious stress and hopefully, situation revise soon. Otherwise, we will definitely see attrition over there.
Does that imply that you are saying inbound guys are struggling?
Yes.
These inbound guys will also be, let's say, enabling people to move from, let's say, Middle East to Europe for travel.
No, you see, I think that's a different ecosystem, right? The inbound is more like DMCs and hotels and providers of other services coming into Middle East, which is somewhat distinct. There's some overlap, but somewhat distinct from the outbound ecosystem, which is players like us who sell the world to people traveling from Middle East.
Got it. The second question is when, let's say, I'm a traveler and I go to a TBO agent and he helps me book a place which is actually sourced by Classic, which is what's, let's say that INR 64 crore of business that we have highlighted, right? Where does.
No, Divyansh, the INR 64 crore you have highlighted is the reverse where TBO inventory is selling on Classic.
TBO inventory is selling on Classic. Got it. Understood. Maybe change in question. Given that TBO has a lower take rate and everything, how does the P&L recognition happen between Classic and TBO? Because while there is a console basis where you will net it off, but we report different take rates, GP and everything.
Divyansh, we follow arm's-length pricing between whatever the intercompany sales is happening, while the GTV gets eliminated. From the transfer pricing perspective, we keep the required margins which is required to be kept by the selling entity. There will be some margins which will be booked in the TBO Dubai entity, and then the revenue which is generated by the Classic entity is getting booked in the legal entity level at the Classic level.
Got it. Understood. Just the last question. In the opening comments, we had mentioned that typically the currency depreciation impact is, let's say, less than or I think the number mentioned was 3%, and this time it is 11%. It's just purely driven by the volatility of the currency or was there a, let's say, opportunistic benefit, or change in policy which led to such a big difference?
No. This is primarily what Gaurav mentioned in the opening comment is that in the Q1 of this current quarter, FY 2027 versus FY 2026 last year same quarter, when we translate the GTV of hotels business in the currency form in the last year numbers, there was 11% impact coming, growth coming just because of the currency translation. The 3% was the Q1 FY 2026 versus Q1 FY 2025. What we are highlighting is that this quarter is impacted too much by the currency fluctuations, and that's why we wanted to transparently present the constant currency numbers.
No, no, my question is a bit different. I'm saying was there a change in policy or it's just?
No, there's no change in policy.
Nothing. It is just that rupee has depreciated.
Yes.
Understood. Got it. Thank you. That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll take the next question from Mr. Shaurya. Shaurya, please unmute yourself, introduce the firm you represent, and go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Hi. Shaurya here from Growthsphere Ventures. Thanks for the opportunity. Just one question from my side. Beyond the agent-facing AI tool, could you walk us through how AI is specifically being applied on the supply side, particularly the contract rate negotiation with hotel and airlines and inventory loading, et cetera? Because if you see the hotel supply chain below tier 1 markets globally are highly fragmented and traditionally require large manual management team, on-ground team for the hotel name and listing, et cetera. As we see AI adoption in the travel and tourism sector across the whole ecosystem, not just the TBO, but also the supplier and competitors, how much structural leverage do you think that TBO can capture from the usage of AI?
See, Shaurya, I think on the specific thing that you mentioned, contracting long tail through AI-led negotiations is not a big focus area for us, to be honest, because a lot of our contracting is either with chains or with large luxury hotels, because that is really where we operate. Also for long tail, the whole hotel distribution ecosystem has significantly created an ecosystem of channel managers and aggregators who do this for you in a way. To be very fair, this isn't a area of focus for us at this point in time.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Shaurya. We'll take a follow-up question from Mr. Karan. Karan, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity again. Just wanted to check the split of the GTV in retail versus the B2B side of things, the API business. How's the split in this quarter?
We don't disclose specifically the GP percentages between.
No, the GTV numbers.
The GTV. The GTV number would broadly be between 50/50 only as the last quarter.
Just a feedback. If we can share further details on the B2B side of the business or the API business, given that 50% of the GTV is derived from API. Last time also, we had mentioned that API growth was mainly led by this API partnerships. If we can share some further details around that, how the trends are moving in that part of the business, that would be very helpful for me.
We will take.
We will see what best we can do from the disclosure perspective.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you, Karan. We'll take the last question from Mr. Kavish. Kavish, please unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Hi, Kavish here from 360 ONE Capital. Thanks for the follow-up. Sir, in the context of AI, we would appreciate your perspective on how the broader travel ecosystem is evolving. While there had been concerns that AI could potentially disrupt business models across the value chain, an alternate view is that the impact may be more pronounced for OTAs, while travel aggregators and B2B players like TBO could remain relatively insulated or even benefit from that shift. How do you assess the likely impact of AI across different participants in the ecosystem? Are there any recent, say, industry developments or trends that you believe are relevant here?
Kavish, I think you're right. There has been a fair bit of speculation on how the AI business models will evolve and then who do they impact. What has happened in the last couple of quarters, I guess, is that both Anthropic and OpenAI haven't really tried to create a transactions or a payments framework within their apps. Which basically means that there isn't a significantly easier way to make a booking via an agentic interface vis-a-vis just going on the website of an OTA. On the other hand, OTAs have started to participate through MCPs within these channels, but I don't think anybody has indicated or disclosed any numbers to say that there is a meaningful conversion happening through those channels. As of now, it just feels like a status quo. There was a fair bit of trepidation and concern maybe two quarters ago.
At this point, it does feel like priorities have shifted for the frontier labs to not so much focus on, say, cannibalizing OTA businesses or anybody else rather than focusing on other more enterprise use cases, I guess. From our perspective, we continue to experiment with all of it. We're keeping track of what's happening in the ecosystem. We're experimenting with the similar MCP infrastructures and travel and itinerary planning tools. It'll be fair to say that I think most of the predictable gains in the business are really going to get driven by what we have already talked about, like the implementing CX in AI and in sales effectiveness.
Understood. Pretty interesting. Got it. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Kavish. I'll now hand over the call to Mr. Ankush. Sir, please go ahead with the closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for joining the call today and truly appreciate your time. Any further follow-up questions, please feel free to reach any one of us and look forward to see you in our next earnings for Q2. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone. You can now disconnect your lines.