Note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashutosh Jyotiraditya. Thank you. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Huda. Hello and good afternoon, everyone present on the call. I, on behalf of ICICI Securities, welcome you on Travel Food Services Limited Q3 FY 2026 earnings call. I now hand the call over to Ms. Chhavi Aggarwal from Travel Food Services for further remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Ashutosh, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining us on the Travel Food Services Limited earnings conference call for the third quarter ended December 31, 2025. I have with me Mr. Varun Kapur, Managing Director and CEO, and Mr. Vikas Vinod Kapoor, Whole-time Director and CFO of TFS. We will start the call with management presenting their perspective on the company's operational and financial performance during the quarter. Post that, we will open the forum for the question-and-answer session. Before we proceed, here is a disclaimer to the call. A few statements by the company's management in the call can be forward-looking in nature, and we request you to refer to the disclaimer in the earnings presentation for further details. Now, I would like to hand over the call to Mr. Varun Kapur for opening remarks. Thank you.
Thanks, Chhavi. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for today's earnings call. We appreciate your continued interest in our company and its long-term growth journey. We hope you had the opportunity to go through our Q3 results, the presentation that was released yesterday as well. Starting off, I'm pleased to share that Q3 was an excellent quarter for the company, characterized by strong financial performance. We delivered robust sales growth with system-wide sales increasing by 28.1% year-on-year to INR 8.75 billion. This impressive growth was primarily driven by successful mobilization of more than 50 units over the last 12 months.
Driven by strong sales momentum as well as our efforts on cost efficiency, we have achieved a 35.3% year-on-year increase in our adjusted PAT in the quarter, showcasing the continued strength of our business model and our market leadership. Moving to passenger traffic trends. The third quarter is seasonally the strongest period of the year, driven by festive and holiday travel demand. In line with this trend, the quarter began with a visible rebound in passenger traffic during October and November, following the softness observed, as we've all seen in the preceding quarter, due to aircraft maintenance related issues. This positive trajectory was briefly disrupted at the start of December due to airline related operational challenges arising from the implementation of the FDTL regulations. These were the crew rest regulations which temporarily led to flight restrictions for the country's largest airline.
This resulted in short-term moderation in passenger volumes. However, the impact was short-lived. Underlying demand fundamentals remain robust, and traffic trends in recent weeks indicated an immediate passenger volume recovery. For TFS-operated airports, passenger traffic increased by 1.6% year-over-year in quarter three, reflecting an improvement compared to the nearly 1% year-over-year decline seen in quarter two. A point of note that during the temporary disruption in December, we ensured uninterrupted food service to affected passengers through proactive planning and operational action on the ground. Our centralized operations framework, supply chain efficiencies, master concession structure across airports, and the scale of our operations proved highly supportive to the airport clients and passengers during this challenging period. We had real-time monitoring of flight cancellations and delays, followed dynamic stock planning, along with closely monitoring the manpower redeployment across lounges and travel QSR outlets.
This helped us meet the unpredictable food and beverage requirements at the airport during those days, thereby allowing us to maintain service continuity despite heightened congestion and operational complexity. While the business continues to be highly agile to tackle such challenging situations, our growth has been continuing at a robust pace with our system-wide footprint now expanded to over 530 travel QSR outlets and lounges with the addition of about 30 units during the quarter. This continued expansion further strengthens our market leadership position in the travel F&B segment. Our brand portfolio now spans 140 brands with 15 new brands added over the past year, including famous celebrity-led brands such as Gordon Ramsay's Street Burger and Street Pizza, currently launched at Delhi and Mumbai airports, as well as internationally acclaimed brands like Nando's, enhancing both the depth and premium positioning of our offerings.
During the quarter, we operationalized 14 travel QSR outlets at Terminal 2 of Delhi Airport, offering a curated mix of regional and international cuisines. We commenced operations at Navi Mumbai International Airport through our joint venture, further increasing our presence to 19 airports. These milestones significantly strengthen our footprint across India's two largest aviation markets, Delhi and Mumbai, reinforcing our strategic position in high traffic, high growth hubs. I would like to highlight, as reiterated in the earlier calls as well, that we remain strongly focused on leveraging technology to drive business growth. Through our Eats platform, we have enabled direct bank-to-lounge access as an integrated service. This marks an important step in our evolution of becoming a tech-enabled, scalable travel hospitality company. As spoken about in the previous quarter, we continue to focus on revenue optimization initiatives and targeted promotions aimed at increasing throughput and premiumizing our offerings.
For example, we launched premium sleeping pods at the Bangalore International Airport lounge. With this wellness offering designed to elevate passenger comfort while creating an incremental experience-led revenue stream within our lounge portfolio. In addition, we introduced innovative and engaging customer-centric initiatives such as signature filter coffee and automated cocktail dispensers, enhancing the passenger experience through differentiated offerings. These initiatives not only drive higher passenger engagement as well as spend per pax, but also reinforce our position as a premium and innovative travel QSR player. Turning to our international growth strategy, we are actively pursuing lounge opportunities across the Asia Pacific and Middle East markets, where we see significant long-term potential. We have already established a presence in Malaysia and Hong Kong, demonstrating our ability to successfully enter and operate in competitive international markets.
Most recently, we opened our second Kyra Lounge at Hong Kong International Airport, marking an important step in our continued global expansion journey and reaffirming our ability to build strong relationships with airport operators and other clients as a preferred partner of choice. We commenced operations at a domestic terminal of Cochin International Airport on schedule, with additional outlets expected to be launched through the year. We also secured the contract to operate 33 travel QSR units at terminal 1 of the Delhi Airport for 11 years, which included extensions for existing outlets being operated there. With this win, we have further strengthened our presence across all 3 terminals at the Delhi Airport.
In addition to this, we are excited to be close to launching new outlets at the Greenfield terminals at Noida Airport and through our JV at Guwahati Airport as well, further contributing to a robust committed pipeline in the period ahead. Before concluding, I would like to mention that our focus remains firmly on sustaining our strong growth trajectory and continuing our financial outperformance. This momentum is expected to be driven by disciplined execution across our existing business, continued operational excellence and the successful mobilization of our recent wins. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'll request our CFO, Vikas, to walk you through the financial performance of the company in more detail.
Thank you, Varun. Good afternoon, everyone. As highlighted in our earlier calls, I would like to reiterate that our JV entity, Semolina Kitchens, was part of our consolidated financials for the first half and part of Q3 of FY 2025, and was subsequently deconsolidated as planned, effective October 14, 2024. Accordingly, to ensure a like-for-like comparison and consistency in performance evaluation, the third quarter and first nine-month numbers have been adjusted to exclude the contribution of Semolina Kitchens. The details of these adjustments have been shared in the presentation. The third quarter is seasonally strong for the business and the scale-up of recent business wins is also reflected in our financial performance. During the quarter, system-wide sales reached INR 8.75 billion, registering a 28% year-on-year increase.
Like-for-like sales growth stood at 12.5% at TFS managed airports on a system-wide basis, supported by strong execution across both domestic and international markets. Net contract gains increased by 13.5% year-on-year, driven by mobilization of the new sites. Moving to the consolidated numbers. Consolidated sales reached INR 4.56 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 18.3%. Like-for-like sales growth for the quarter was 7.1%, while net contract gains increased by 12.3%, supported by operationalization of new business. In terms of profitability, gross profit margins expanded to 83.9% compared to 82.1% in the same period last year. This margin expansion was supported by efficient procurement practices, lower cost inflation and value unlock of our lounge aggregation business, which together contributed to the improvement in gross profitability.
We have continued to manage our employee cost efficiently. During the quarter, we assessed the impact of the new labor code on employee costs and have taken a one-time charge, which is not material. In spite of this small one-off impact, employee costs as a percentage of sales were maintained at 15%, which is similar to Q3 of the previous year. This is because scale-up of operation across key airports, which enabled better manpower utilization. We continue to maintain strong operating profitability with an EBITDA margin of nearly 40% during the quarter.
Our consolidated PAT increased to INR 1.37 billion in Q3 FY 2026, compared to INR 1.1 billion in the same period last year, reflecting a 35.3% year-on-year growth on an adjusted basis. This improvement was driven by disciplined execution, effective cost management, and increasing share of profit from joint ventures. On a sequential basis, consolidated sales increased by 28.2%, supported by strong passenger growth of approximately 14% in Q3 compared to the previous quarter. This momentum translated into a 40% increase in profit after tax on a Q-on-Q basis. While this is seasonally a strong quarter, the improvement in earnings quality also reflects enhanced operating leverage, disciplined cost management, and the benefits of scale across our expanding network.
Turning to the nine-month performance, system-wide sales reached INR 23.2 billion, registering a 24.5% year-on-year growth. Like-for-like sales stood at 12.2%, while net contract gains were 10.2% YOY. This translated into a strong profitability growth, with consolidated PAT increasing by 24% year-on-year on an adjusted basis during the first nine months. Our balance sheet remains strong, with 0 debt and a cash balance of nearly INR 8 billion, enhancing our financial flexibility to pursue new growth opportunities. With that, I will close the opening remarks and will hand it back to the operator to open it for Q&A.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is on the line of Naeem Patel from Bastion Research. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for this opportunity, congratulations on a very good set of numbers. My questions were around our working capital side. If I look at our trade payables, they were around INR 330-INR 330 crores in FY 2025 as well as in H1 FY 2026. I'm puzzled in to understand that would we overstate payables and what is the right way to look at it considering that we are in a QSR business. If you could throw some color on that would be helpful. Yeah.
Hi, this is Vikas here. I take this question. Our trade payables are to our normal vendors, per se. In terms of this, yes, we are a QSR player and we pay our vendors on timely basis. A part of our trade payables is also for CapEx and some of the projects that we currently are underway in terms of building capacity across our network. From that perspective, these are regular trade payables that we have in our books of accounts. Another important point is a part of our trade payables is also reflective of our lounge aggregation business, which we do for some of the long-tail lounges, and that is getting reflected in terms of those payables as well.
Got it. Considering like that, like we have opened a new lounge in Cochin Airport as well, like you have mentioned in the past that it will take 12-18 months for a typical lounge to mature. Considering this is already an operational airport, how long would it take us to stabilize this lounge?
I can take this, Varun, yeah. In terms of, you know, in a running airport, while it's there, you know, part of the thing in a running airport as well, we will be doing, you know, mobilization of that lounge and upgradation of that lounge in a phased manner. I think in that question you have versus a greenfield, you know, while running airport has those numbers coming through, but in terms of capacity, you'll be seeing some upgradation happening there. No doubt over a period of time, the performance, and the ability to generate additional revenue once that phasing is complete, say, over the next 12 to 14 months, it would have a kicker tied into it.
Understood. Understood. That's all from my side. Thank you, that's it, sir.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. The next question is on the line of Aanchal Pal from Monarch Networth. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on the set of numbers. My first question is in the current LFL growth, how much growth is coming from volume and how much is from value?
Hi, I take this question. In terms of, as Varun had mentioned earlier, the PAT growth has been roughly in the range of 1.6% for the quarter as well as for the 9-month period across our system-wide sales from that perspective. What we do as a standard approach and an operating leverage that we across our network, we focus on revenue enhancement activities, improving the APV and the penetration levels so that the realizations at airports improve. Further to this, what we have also seen is that some of our international markets have performed strong LFL growth mainly because of an uptick in their profit, in their traffic and improvement in their realizations as well.
Okay,
Yeah. I'll just maybe adding to what Vikas said as well. I think to your particular point, LFL you would have seen our system-wide numbers about 12.5%. You know, passenger traffic at the same time has been in the quarter about 1.5%. The delta from our 11%, you know, our price normally is largely in line with really increases with inflation. You would assume a decent proportion of that would be driven portion by price but a decent amount driven by revenue enhancement objectives, which is what I was mentioning as well, you know, in my introduction.
Okay. Okay. My second question is like, could you share the current bidding pipeline and how many airports are under evaluation over the next two to three years?
In terms of the way we look at the opportunities in airports, you know, the way we work as well, you know, opportunities come up, not only for the, you know, while master concession, but you know, you also come up in sections for airport. For example, certain airports have terminals, sometimes there's an opportunity for a certain stack of units. For example, if you look at our wins, which I was talking about, we recently won at Delhi Terminal 2, which we had mobilized. Similarly, Cochin Airport was one where we started mobilizing, so that's still in the pipeline. In addition to that, we have Delhi T1, a recent tender, which includes some existing outlets, but as well as new outlets in Delhi Terminal 1.
We have also, you know, Noida, we have a new Guwahati Airport coming in, which under our JV, there we'll be mobilizing units. Aside from that, you know, opportunities not only in India, we'll be looking at opportunities even outside of India for which we had set up joint ventures as well. The pipeline, you know, both in India and internationally as these opportunities come. One, there's a lot of mobilization already in the pipeline as well as obviously new tenders as and when come up. We are quite active in looking at these.
Okay. sir, could you know, like could you number it like, till by FY 2028, how many airports we will be present? if I see currently we are at 19 airports. if you want to number it.
Sure. The way I can probably say, what we do look at the universe, you know, because our way is that we would not compromise our return metrics. You know, we do take part in opportunities. Aviation, as you know, is a fast-growing sector and obviously infrastructure that's happening on all fronts is quite impressive there in terms of the growth. The opportunities are quite a few. We obviously the market leader, so we will be present. One would see as in the past in considerable number of those.
I don't think like to call it probably a number may not be there, but the universe what we generally look at is, you know, airports that are over, you could say roughly that, 2 million-3 million mark is airports that make sense for us from a scale point of view to look at. As those opportunities keep coming up, we would look at that universe for expanding into. Aside from obviously the international airport opportunities that we did Malaysia, we did Hong Kong, including one this year as well. We opened additional lounge in Hong Kong Airport. Those opportunities are over and above that we are actively looking at.
Okay. Okay, got it. Sir, currently we are just focusing on airport or we are planning to expand our highway QSR as well?
Yeah, that's a good question. Like, you know, answering earlier these airports, I think I was answering that particular question. Yes, highways, very evidently for us is a key growth area. We see highways as being where airports were probably when we entered the business in 2008. We see highways being at that stage, you know, significant government investment, private participation happening. Even the way nature of highways right now is in the form of expressways which are access controlled highways, you know, with the wayside amenities. These are semi-captive locations, you know, set distances apart. Expressways have controlled access, so you know, they work very well for a player like us. Larger investment, scale, multi-brand opportunity, and we do see that as being.
It's not something that we'll say we just jump into and do everything today, but it will be a phase one calibrated approach to ensure we deliver the returns and get the business model right. We see that being a long-term opportunity because there's a very significant scalable opportunity there in India, no doubt.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Okay, thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dhiraj Mistry from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon, sir. First of all, congratulations on good set of numbers. I have two questions. One is on the new airport which is going to come in our portfolio of Kochi Airport and Noida Airport. What is the expected timeline and when we can start building in revenue from those airports going ahead?
Hi. Hi, Dhiraj. Thank you for the congrats. In terms of those particular airports, you know, it depends actually. First maybe just the overarching element. It obviously depends on the nature of the airport. A running airport like Cochin would obviously the numbers would come in because it has a particular capacity there. In the case of Cochin particularly, we have some units already mobilized there and part of the scheduled plan there, we will be mobilizing additional units through this year. You will be seeing that revenue uptick happen as we mobilize those units. In the case of airports like Noida or even Navi Mumbai, which are generally greenfield airports, those airports ramp up in a phased manner.
You know, as the airports open up, as their phases open up, as additional passengers come in, our revenues get tied in. I think those airports you would potentially see being more meaningful in the next financial year or the second half of the next year as those passenger volumes, uptick does happen, and our stores get mobilized. I think that's probably the way to look at it in terms of greenfield versus, you know, an airport that was, already running a brownfield airport.
Okay. In just for clarification, in Kochi Airport, we have lounge business as well, right?
We operate the lounges in terminal one domestic airport, and we have currently mobilized it with, like I mentioned, I think to an earlier question, that we will be doing the uplift and upgradation of that in a phased manner, but we are running that lounge currently.
Okay. It's currently operational, right?
That's right. That's right. Our value proposition obviously with the renovation upgrade obviously will improve as that kicks in. Yes, we are currently operating it.
Got it. Got it. Second question is about our share of profit in associate and JV and then minority interest also. We have seen good amount of, we have already seen somewhere around INR 44 crore of share of profit from associates. How we should think of this line item going ahead? Obviously it's going to increase, but then there is no clarity in terms of what kind of increase we can expect on those kind of a number. Can you give some math where we can work on this number?
Dhiraj, it's Vikas here. Thanks for that question. In terms of JV, basically, what is happening in our joint ventures is, as we said, that each JV is going through its own phase of expansion, and within that expansion, quite a few of the units are materializing faster. Say for example, Mumbai. Airport was an existing running airport in our joint venture, Semolina Kitchens, and recently we have kickstarted operations in Navi Mumbai. As Varun alluded earlier, Navi Mumbai will grow in phases, and from that perspective, as it mobilizes much more, those profits pick up from that will start contributing to the overall pie. Similarly, in Semolina Kitchens, we are expecting the new Guwahati terminal to contribute substantially to the Semolina Kitchens profitability.
In the case of GMR Hospitality, the other joint venture, we have mobilized quite a few units in Hyderabad, but still there is further more mobilization which will happen in the current year as well as in the next year. As that starts picking up, we will see a, uptick in the JVs and associates profit line. Another point you have to note is that we have our international business which has started performing well, specifically markets like Malaysia and Hong Kong, wherein traffic uptake was a bit slower compare from the COVID phase. That has now started normalizing and from there we are seeing improved contributions to our JVs and associate line.
Got it. Okay. Just for one clarification, this part, whether the P&L of all this JV, especially Semolina, would be more or less replicating to our TFS P&L?
Yes, because in terms of the business model, it is same travel QSR and lounge business, which is kind of a replica of the TFS model from that perspective.
Got it. Last question from my end on minority interest. When is Delhi T3 is going in GMR JV, what would be the amount of minority interest going forward after that?
Our Delhi T3 is an existing joint venture as part of the SPV when we had won that contract, wherein we held full 60% and DIAL holds 40%. The contract, as you are aware, has been extended till September thirtieth. When the contract will come up for renewal, people will bid for it, the various entities, and whoever wins the tender would be consolidating or running the operations for that. At this moment, I can't say where it will land because it's an open tender.
Got it. Got it. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Purva from BMK Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, team. Congratulations on good set of numbers. My question was related to Delhi Terminal 3. With domestic traffic at Delhi Terminal 3 reportedly declining to 50% due to flight movements to T1 and T2, how this will affect our Delhi Terminal 3 revenues?
Purva just conceptually, Varun here. Yeah, no, thank you for that. In terms of just conceptually what we see in the airport, that's why, you know, our business model is about being present across there and being market leaders. That's the advantage of, I think our position and it makes sense in travel because obviously airports have multiple terminals. In the case of Delhi is continuously growing. It's an airport that's growing well. However there obviously terminals capacity part of the overall line of expansion, you know, you mobilize. Today T1, T2, T3 are running. T1 is, you know, very impressive, the new T1 terminal, significant capacity. Obviously traffic is being balanced across terminals to unlock more potential in the existing airports.
With that movement, Delhi Terminal 3 particularly may have seen some drop in numbers. They're doing some upgradation work there and that reflects probably the numbers. While we've driven, I think with our, you know, good amount of sales and profitability there. I think the additional area is that, A, in T1 you're seeing incremental demand where we are present as well. You're seeing T2 where we won the tender as well. We actually touch all three terminals at Delhi Airport and actually leverage the consumer there. In addition, in Delhi, part of the T3 upgradation, what you'll see play out in the future is there'll be a third international player unlocked. That will actually unlock international demand where spend is actually higher. In reality, I mean, that's just generally the direction in Travel India.
You know, there is unlock of additional passenger capacity as these infrastructure movements happen. Our beauty of our business model is we tap across, and we see the benefit, if, you know, it goes a bit down somewhere, we get a bit much more than that elsewhere. That's the thing what works well for us.
Okay, got it. Second question was related to PAT margins for your SSP Malaysia and Hong Kong that the EBITDA has been lower than overall company average. Could you help explain the key factors for this? Can we expect it to go back to the company level PAT margins?
Sure. International, I think I spoke about this also in a previous conference call. If you see international, relatively, I mean, both our enterprises set up post-COVID. In the case of Malaysia, was a ramp-up that happened over a period of time. You know, set of units mobilizing from 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 as well. As expected, that business has been mobilizing. You know, as you always say in the greenfield, and especially more so in a new market we set up, it takes you that 18 months of getting there. Maybe the case of Malaysia, 18-24 months to get there. Currently, the business is performing very well.
Traffic also in that market compared because of the Chinese travel effect, as many of you will be aware, they came much later in the day in our recovery post-COVID. This year, actually, Malaysia and Hong Kong have been very, very strong passenger traffic recoveries in those markets. Those numbers are reflective, and I think Vikas alluded to the fact that they're actually contributing quite strongly now. We expect that we see that we'll be at a similar level. We don't see any difference really in how that financials do play out for us. I think especially with Hong Kong being more recent, we had set up a second lounge in Hong Kong just last month, so you'll see the benefit of that also probably kicking in over a period of 12 months.
I think both the businesses currently are performing quite well, and will further improve from here.
Okay. lastly was, can you quantify how much was revenue for SKTL and DHL for the 3 Q, FY 2023 and 9 months?
Yeah. Purva, both the sales have grown in terms of, in spite of the passenger traffic remaining at 1.6%. What we have seen is an improvement in the APV and the realization because of the expanded network. We would not be sharing the specific numbers of the JV, but on a broad basis, if you subtract between system-wide sales and consolidated sales, that would be roughly around INR 4.1 billion of sales, which we have from our JVs. Predominantly within that, Semolina and DHL contribute substantially.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Aman from InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity, sir. My first question was that in terms of our growth, what was the mix between lounges and QSRs?
Aman, thanks for the question. Vikas here. In terms of growth, basically our growth, the way we look at it, our travel QSR and lounge contribution to our revenue or top line has not seen any differential change in the mix from that perspective. The growth has come from both the businesses as such. It is reflected in the 12.5% LFL on a system-wide, and similarly 7.1% at a console level. Both the units are performing well in terms of contributing to LFL and EBITDA.
Okay. Any breakup you have in mind?
Predominantly, lounge contributes somewhere in the range of 40%-42% of our overall revenue mix. Travel QSR is in the 50%-55% range from that perspective. That's been our typical range of both the business mixes from that perspective.
Okay. Okay. The second question was, we are in 13 of the airports out of 15 in India. What has led to the growth? I mean, the top 5 airports are seeing the growth in terms of, you know, the passengers transacting more in terms of QSRs or lounges, or is it a broad-based trend that you are seeing?
Hi, Aman. Varun here. I think what we've been seeing, I think the big difference that's happening actually even before COVID as well, but surely after, India is seeing a very broad-based growth on passenger traffic. Leave aside Q2 of this year, you know, because that was when the aircraft maintenance issues happened, you know, unfortunately post the crash. You know, basically other than that, what we've seen is it's been quite a broad-based growth across both the big and the small airports. I think that's the impressive piece because obviously measures in the big airports, no doubt with the international traffic, those areas do grow well.
At the same time, you know, with some of the initiatives done by the government around UDAN Scheme, and, you know, the proliferation of more airlines, the fact is many of the, Smaller airports are getting a fair share of growth as well. Actually it has been quite a broad-based set of growth. Obviously within that you have some airports likely doing more. For example, you see a or airport like Goa Mopa growing very well. You know, places like Guwahati, you know, you have examples like that. Generally, it has been quite a broad-based growth across the country.
All right, sir. My last question was that, you know.
Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Baheti, but can you please rejoin the queue for more questions?
Sure.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Agarwal from IKIGAI Asset. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Very good afternoon. Rahul on the call. Just few questions. Firstly, on the renewable, sorry, on the renewal lined up, going into from now to next two years, could you just highlight which are the airports on the existing network which are lined up for renewals?
Hi, Rahul. Yes. In terms of opportunities coming up, we have next 2 years, 3 contracts. The Delhi contract, I think someone asked that before. Delhi Airport, the contract for Terminal 3, does come up in September. We obviously had a short-term extension on that. We have then in the next year coming up our contracts at Chennai and Kolkata come up as well for renewal. These are probably the next 2 years', the only ones in my mind that come up for renewals.
Chennai, Kolkata are due when?
It is in the next calendar year. I think next financial year it comes the early part. FY 2028, FY 20 28.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Thanks for that. In terms of, you know, new airport bidding right now, could you just highlight, like, which airports are going to, you know, go for bidding from a new contract angle going into next 12 months? This is only domestic I'm talking about.
In terms of opportunities coming up for bidding, we know Bangalore Airport T1, just as a perspective, you're a traveler, you see there's a lot of upgradation work happening there. I think the airport's got quite, you know, quite ambitious even in terms of what they're planning there. It's very interesting, I think that's an opportunity because I think when you fly there, you can see that work happening in that airport. Significantly an upgrade, which will obviously have upgrade in the non-aero side as well, which will therefore entail new opportunities coming up. We see that obviously as one that will come up in the short term. I mean, there will be multiple. For example, we are present at 14 of the 15 largest airports.
Our universe is over 25 airports. Even those 14 out of 15, there are a lot of areas we're not present at. There will be opportunities, for example, in Mumbai Airport T2. There will be opportunities coming up there for redeveloping units as well. I think there will be multiple opportunities coming up in this space. I think Bangalore is a big immediate one that I know what's coming up. I think I spoke previously in the last quarter about Cochin. Last quarter about Cochin and Delhi. Obviously those are up to 5. I think the next probably one to look at would be Bangalore immediately.
Perfect. Just lastly on the, you know, Chennai and Kolkata, Bangalore, overall likes for like, how is the traffic behaving there? Because those are like core part of the portfolio. Just some sense on outlook, how do you look at traffic growth? You know, are likes for like growth going into next year? That's all from my side.
Sure, sir. Chennai and Kolkata obviously from a size point of view would be in the top 10 airports in terms of traffic, you know, that are there. I think the growth has been in those airports. While Chennai has generally, I think Chennai has been a bit of a stronger performer in terms of traffic growth. Kolkata has had a slower growth. Kolkata has been one of those airports where I think in Q3 saw a slight decline. Chennai and I think it was the only one in the top 10, if I recollect in Q3, saw a bit of a decline. Otherwise, we saw most of the other airports actually have increased during that period.
Yeah. I was looking for more color for the next year, in terms of your own thoughts on like-for-like growth for these airports.
In terms of passenger traffic, when we refer to that growth, obviously that's a key determinant. Generally passenger traffic has been positive in airports. You know, we're not used to talking about de-growth. Obviously this year was the one period where we had it in Q2 and little bit remnants of that. Obviously now you can see very evidently the trend is changing. I think it would be prudent to say we're back to growth in next year. You know, the indication has been that over the next, you know, even at the time of the IPO when we had and during our first call, we spoke a bit about this.
I think the expectation of passenger traffic growth generally is the 7%-9% range is what we generally heard, you know, over the next decade or so travel. You know, you may have some years a little bit less, some years a bit more. I think that's generally been the call-out. If you refer to any source of credible information, that tends to be over the next 10 years what passenger traffic looks at. Obviously our perspective is on top of that price, on top of this, our initiatives we drive on top of this passenger traffic, which is our LFL plus, you know, net gains we can drive, which is new wins like some of the ones we spoke about. I think the pipeline of growth is quite significant for us on new wins.
I think that's the way we look at our business model. It's quite healthy between LFL and net gains. And even in challenging periods like this, we've been able to deliver 28% system-wide growth in sales through a balanced combination of LFL and net gains, almost equally split between both.
Perfect. Got it. Thank you so much, Varun, for answering the questions, and best wishes to you guys. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thanks for your questions. Appreciate that.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vatsal Dujari from TATA AIA Life Insurance . Please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, Jim. Thanks for the opportunity and congratulations on a set of numbers. I wanted to get some more clarity on the LFL situation this quarter. You mentioned how December was impacted by disruptions. Could you provide some more granularity as to how was the LFL growth looking like in October and November and what it went to in December? Any clarity on whether it's back on the normal path?
Hi, Vatsal. Thanks for your question and thanks for the congratulations. In terms of where we saw, I think the perspective actually would have been probably would have ended higher in terms of the numbers, while I think we did see robust growth, and that's not saying, LFL, yes, we probably would have even done better if there wasn't that slight disruption that caused December traffic to be a bit hit. We saw October bounce back reasonably well. We saw November actually be at many airports record traffic. You know, that we saw some very strong traffic in November. December, in a sense, there was a slight plateauing in some airports with degrowth as well because of the very short-term temporary effect that happened. Yes, but it was quite extreme, right?
You did see for that period, delay for the first two, three days, and then you saw a considerable amount of cancellation. Undoubtedly, I mean, the effect of that would be that the overall numbers for the month, and therefore our numbers and LFL would get disrupted, which did happen. I think the demand was so strong that it came back very quickly. Already January trends are completely back to normal, and, you know, actually growing quite well. I think the perspective is our LFL, yes, for the month of December would have been even better if it was business as usual, if that's answering your question.
Got it. Got it. Another question on the LFL, you know, from a medium-term perspective. The divergence between traffic growth at our airport and LFL is, in, you know, 10%, 11% kind of range, yeah. I mean, from a 3-5-year perspective of how much do you feel, you know, this kind of divergence is sustainable, you know, this double-digit kind of divergence between your LFL and passenger traffic? I mean, what kind of an LFL growth are you comfortable with? Do you expect this divergence to this extent of divergence to continue over the medium term?
Yeah, sure. I would maybe take a step back into the way we see our business model always is that, you know, there is undoubtedly in our sector underlying passenger growth, and that is obviously a key driver of packs coming in and therefore our sales. What we drive, and we've seen that, I think, over the entire period we've been operating, I think we've understood that quite well and we drive it quite well as a business, is that over and above passenger traffic, we do achieve a delta to drive our LFLs. That's done through a combination, and maybe I simplified, I mean, I could go in, but I'll probably simplify it for the sake of the call, is in probably two factors.
I spoke, I think I alluded to a bit briefly earlier, but it is one on price and one in terms of revenue-driving initiatives. In terms of you see LFL, like in this quarter was about 1.6%, we achieved an LFL of about 12.5%. You see 11% delta playing out there. Where did 11% come from? That's roughly I think we normally see that range. You know, you normally see that upside being in that 9%, 10%, 11%, 12% range in terms of outperformance. That comes through that combination of, A, yes, inflation, which drives up price, but B, and importantly, our revenue enhancement that we drive. This could be promotions, this could be initiatives we do around things like we did food at gates.
It's a thing we piloted where we actually delivered food to consumers at gates. You know, when they go straight, you know, passengers in Indian airports, a lot of people go straight to the gate, anxious first-time flyers. We actually made people go around with iPads and going to the gates and taking orders. That's, you know, contributed incremental LFL. Those type of initiatives on a continuing month-to-month basis, like a simple example we gave, you know, special filter coffee. I spoke about that when I was talking. Something like that, you know, that's very much, filter coffee is people around not only in the south, but people are enjoying it across the country. We did a wide initiative around that, very successful for us. That's a pure LFL driver in terms of revenue optimization.
Even those type of areas are drive that delta between passenger traffic and LFL growth, and it's been quite stable for us, and that's what we do. That's the USP of our business model.
Got it. Got it. thanks a lot, for the answers, and all the best, for the coming quarters.
Thanks a lot. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Praneet Kumar from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I just have, first one is on Eats. How should we think about, the revenue potential of this particular business? At this early days, how many launches did we expand this to? Does it also cater to other launches which are beyond the system of TFS? How about profitability of this particular business? Thanks.
Hi. Hi, Praneet. In terms of our Eats solution, yes, I think as you rightly said, it is early days for us. We are a business, no doubt technology has always been an important part for us, but even more so. It has been something obviously you can imagine that rolling out and going live entails a lot of work in period at the back end, which we have done. The key point is it has been successfully rolled out. I think it's a clear evidence in terms of some of the you know, the outperformance as well as the consumer experience at the ground. You know, we rolled out the direct bank to lounge access that is there. One can see directly on this Eats platform.
We are confident while it is early days, it's already showing us benefits. We're seeing that contribute positively to us, both in incremental revenue, we believe, and I think already incremental profit as well. We see that playing out probably more so over the next few quarters as we build this out more effectively. You know, it's a constant learning experience. We see a lot of potential for this, one of those areas where, you know, we believe, A, we have quite a focused strategy on this. As we unlock more and more, we'll be coming back and we will be constantly sharing some of those initiatives. There's a lot we're working on.
A lot of opportunity we see in taking this even further than the initial success that this has proven for our business model that's been there in this financial year. We, we are touching and maybe answering the last part. We are touching all of our lounges as you'd imagine, but also the solution has been quite effective and recently we've actually tied up with lounges even that are not ours, and we can provide that solution to them. That's also an additional upside that we get by developing such a successful solution. It can be actually used outside of our network to support other smaller players and smaller airports, you know, those type of areas. It has actually been quite a big success for us, and we will undoubtedly be growing on this part of our DNA with TFS.
Thank you. Very helpful. My second question is on the occupancy fee direction. Now we have a couple of new airports, right? One is Noida, and then we have onboarded a couple of units from Cochin and Delhi as well. Directionally, for the next two years, what do you think that the occupancy fee would be? I mean, are these new airports coming at higher occupancy fee compared to what we have currently or at similar levels? That's it. Thanks.
Praneet, Vikas here. In terms of occupancy fee, what has been the general trajectory in our business is that when an airport, kind of, gets in our network, we do see a jump in the occupancy fee for that purpose. It kind of stabilizes after a point of time, which we have built into our business case because we know how the sales will ramp up and how the airport traffic will move. From that perspective, it tends to then, which is the exact 12-18 months which we normally allude to, that by 12-18 months, we see it coming back to the normal level as the rest of the portfolio. That is how has been the general trajectory, and we work towards that from that perspective.
It would be in the same ballpark after a small blip for some of the new airports.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Akshay Krishnan from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Varun and Vikas. Great performance and things. Few questions from my end. If you look at the last few quarters, when we compare the revenue growth and the passenger growth, from the service, the revenue growth has been a lot higher than the passenger growth. I just wanted to understand the delta that's been coming in from the higher spend that per passenger versus the premiumization and the mix shift. How sustainable is this revenue performance versus the traffic growth?
Yep. So I think the point is that I think what we've seen is that this actually has been our business model from the very beginning. I think what we've done is over the last few years actually been able to unlock that quite well and sustainably. You'd always see a scenario where we've always seen a scenario where our this incremental of a combination of price and more importantly, revenue optimization initiatives have led to that delta, and that's purely in LFL. This is aside from net gains. You see in terms of PAC, we outperform on the LFL side, but the net gains, which has been the DNA of our business. I mean, a few years back, we were at present at, for example, seven airports, pre-COVID.
This was a few years before. Today, we are present, as you see the entire network, 19 airports. That's the question of net gains, right? That irrespective of the passenger growth, which has been quite robust. On top of that we've had LFL above that. We've also delivered quite high net gains. We generally believe we're just scratching the surface because new terminals, even the existing terminals will add their significant growth in that. That's why the entire opportunity is a combination of LFL and a combination of net gains. Obviously, you know, catering to such areas as delayed flights, the fact that our scale plays out and with our scale we can unlock more opportunities.
That is, I think all of those elements really play out in that LFL growth as well, you know, aside from the revenue optimization I was speaking on earlier.
Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. The second question is on the PAT margin. If you look at the Q3 numbers, our margins have expanded close to around 30-odd%. How much of this expansion is from the operating leverage from the new unit ramp ups versus the structural cost optimization? Should we view this current margin as a new base or is it closer to the peak?
Basically in terms of the PAT margin, what exactly happens is, yes, our PAT margin has improved may due to quite a bit of factors. One is of course the disciplined execution on the new projects that we have been following. The further important thing is that, yes, our PAT margin has been in the range of 27% in Q3, but it is a seasonally strong quarter from that perspective, very similar to what Varun alluded as part of the delayed flights and the scale that we operate. Our PAT margin has been in the range of 20% to 22%.
Before the share of the joint ventures and with the addition of the JV profitability, it kind of moves to the 25% to 26%. We believe it will be stable around that space. As we continue to expand and build on new projects, we expect the PAT margin to continue in that same threshold from that perspective.
What will be the contribution from the new unit ramp-up, which is actually built, helped us in this delta beta?
See, one important factor you have to take is, yes, some bit of the PAT margin has started to be contributed by Eats, which has just started to contribute to that. Also with Cochin, which is one of our existing airports, which is there and not a greenfield airport, we believe very similar to what Varun said at the start of the call, will start contributing a bit faster. From a range perspective, I believe that we should be in the comfortable range of that 25%-28%. We will continue to outperform that, but it's open from that perspective.
Okay, great. One final question, if may I. What proportion of the systemwide revenue is from the premium brand versus the mass format? How does this impact the margin volatility going forward?
You know, honestly, we don't see it as being one versus the other. We don't look at the business in that way. What it tends to be for us today is a portfolio approach across. You know, in terms of the brands as well, we look at it as having a multitude of offerings there. It could be the very same traveler, and today many people try us frequently. It could be that very much that you're going today in the morning and you want to go to the South Indian concept, which may be deemed as value. Maybe the next time when you're flying in the night and you're with your family, you want to go try the Nando's or a, you know, the Gordon Ramsay restaurant and want a nice. You know, great premium experience there.
In some sense, we see the same traveler actually unlock multiple areas. Our portfolio approach is what we see. Yes, it's a. It has to be, because, you know, you have some outlets which may be in-house, which may be slightly more profitable, you don't have royalty to play. We have third party brands, we pay a royalty. The portfolio approach of all that coming together is the way our business model works, because you can't have one concept across 50 locations in an airport. Getting the right mix to maximum to extract value and therefore the highest IRR, that is our business model.
That's how we generally look at our business, as a multitude of offerings, rather than saying that, "Oh, let's do more premium or more value," or for example, "Let's do more in-house," or it's always a portfolio approach. That's the way we look at evaluating the business.
Oh, perfect. That's it from my end. Good luck on all of this. Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
No, thank you. Thank you very much to the ICICI Securities team for hosting us, and I appreciate all of you taking the time today to join us for the earnings call post our Q3 results. If you have any further queries, do feel free to reach out to our investor relations team. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.