MakeMyTrip - Q3 2024
January 23, 2024
Transcript
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Hello, everyone. I'm Vipul Garg, Vice President, Investor Relations at MakeMyTrip Limited, and welcome to our fiscal 2024 third quarter earnings webinar. Today's event will be hosted by our leadership team, comprising Deep Kalra, our company's Founder and Chairman. Joining him is Rajesh Magow, our co-founder and Group Chief Executive Officer, and Mohit Kabra, our Group Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, this live event is being recorded by the company and will be made available for replay on our IR website shortly after the conclusion of today's event. At the end of these prepared remarks, we will also be hosting a Q&A session. Furthermore, certain statements made during today's event may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of safe harbor provision of U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
These statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to inherent uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information relayed during this event speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements are contained in the risk factors and forward-looking statement section on the company's annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC on July 25th, 2023. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or from the company's investor relations department. I would like to now turn over the call over to Rajesh. Over to you, Rajesh.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Thank you, Vipul. Welcome, everyone, to our third quarter call for fiscal 2024. We are pleased to report another quarter of strong operating performance. During this high season quarter for leisure travel, we witnessed robust demand for leisure travel for domestic as well as outbound travel and are pleased to report our highest ever quarterly gross bookings, revenue and profit to date. Gross bookings for the quarter reached $2.1 billion, growing at 21.7% year-on-year in constant currency terms, while our adjusted operating profit or adjusted EBIT grew by 70% year-on-year to $33.4 million, as compared to $19.7 million in the same quarter last year. As per government estimates, domestic aviation traffic is expected to double from current levels by 2030.
To cater to this increasing traffic, there is continued and increasing investment across all categories of travel infrastructure, resulting in significant upgrades across all categories of transportation, including airports, highways, rails, and thus offering customers more convenience and choice. The current commitments of close to $11 billion in airport modernization should only help meet the near- to medium-term requirements, but for the first time, planned airport capacity we've put in place could exceed the projected demand for next 5-7 years, which bodes well for the travel and tourism industry. According to Bernstein report, India has gradually been gaining share of the global travel market, now representing 2% of tourism receipts globally, up from 0.7% in 2000. Domestic travel in India is already the fifth largest globally and is expected to become the third largest by 2027.
The size and diversity of India contribute to the strength of domestic market, and the government's efforts to develop new tourism destinations will help in maintaining this growth momentum. Outbound travel from India has also recovered to pre-pandemic levels, now, and the growth momentum is expected to pick up pace in the coming quarters and years. India is expected to be the fifth largest outbound market by 2027. This should lead to India outbound being the fastest growing component of overall India travel spends. We are excited about these opportunities and remain committed to excellence and innovation, meeting and hopefully exceeding the diverse travel aspirations of Indian travelers. As for our business segments, let me start with our air ticketing business.
During the last quarter, I talked about near-term supply challenges, particularly in the domestic market, due to the insolvency of Go First and the grounding of airplanes due to P&W engine issues. The Indian carriers are taking various steps, including addition of large number of planes in the coming years, to fill the supply gap. As per estimates, collectively, airlines are expected to add about 150 planes during next year, which will be the highest number of additions in a single year. We are hopeful that the supply situation will start improving from the next financial year. Despite the short-term headwinds, our growth on a flown basis was at 7.2% quarter-on-quarter, outpaced the market growth of 6%, allowing us to consolidate our market share at 30% plus levels in the domestic air market.
As to our international air ticketing business, we have not only fully recovered, but have started to grow above the pre-pandemic peak. We continue to innovate and enhance our product proposition. With demand for business and premium economy tickets showing an increasing trend, we have now completely revamped the business class funnel for international flights to provide an enhanced booking experience to our premium users and cater to their specific needs and preferences. We have introduced an industry-first enhanced booking process for business class flight tickets, where customers can preview visuals of cabin comfort, meals, in-flight entertainment, and other amenities. Customers also have a comprehensive view of the extensive business fare inclusions, including lounge access, travel services, and priority services, and can also preview airline miles points before finalizing the booking. It is early days, but we have started to see increasing engagement on our listing pages.
Additionally, we have further strengthened our UAE proposition, wherein customers now have the option to seamlessly buy e-Visa for UAE during their international flight booking process on our desktop site. The initial response to this has been positive, and this feature will soon be launched on our apps as well. Finally, we have further enhanced our Price Lock feature to now include multi-contract Price Lock, where customers can choose from different time durations for which the prices can be locked. Our accommodation business, which includes hotels, homestays, and packages, witnessed strong year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth in the seasonally strong quarter as well. During the quarter, we touched our highest ever single-night check-ins of close to about 200,000 people on the back of strong holiday demand. We sold over 63,000 unique domestic hotels across 1,760 cities, giving us unparalleled reach and penetration within India.
On the supply side, we continue to expand our supply, and we now offer over 78,000 domestic properties on our platform. Our international outbound business continues to scale well. During the quarter, new direct flights to various destinations like Tashkent, Baku, and Bali have been announced, and key international holidays destinations like Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia have announced waiver of visa for Indian travelers. This is likely to fuel greater demand for these international destinations in the times to come. On customer experience side, we enhanced the multi-room booking experience. Users are now shown more suitable room combination suggestions, and they can specify their preferences explicitly, thus simplifying their decision-making process. We have also started offering Super Value packages, bundling various value-added services with the hotel room, which will help bring more value for the customers.
Our homestays business continues to grow with increasing coverage of destinations and increasing customer awareness via our category building marketing efforts. During the quarter, we sold about 16,500+ unique properties across 800+ unique destinations. Our holiday packages business continues to scale on the back of our innovative offerings. We have started building on our spiritual tourism product. During the quarter, we launched an Ayodhya train charter product with 800 passengers. We plan to scale this and other similar offerings in the coming quarters. For outbound packages, Bali and Singapore were the top destinations and witnessed strong growth, while new destinations like South Africa, Japan, Kenya, have started to grow meaningfully. Our bus ticketing business witnessed robust growth in Q3.
redBus is now also available in Hindi, giving us a higher share of new customers from tier two and three towns, particularly for bookings on RTCs. We continue to work with various state road transport corporations to bring them online. The government-controlled bus inventory on our platform has increased meaningfully with the onboarding of UP State RTC and additional inventory being made live by Kerala and Telangana RTCs. A new RTC, Chandigarh Transport Undertaking, has also come onto the platform in this quarter. We have undertaken tech optimization to improve real-time inventory status for RTCs to lower booking errors. The overall sentiment among private bus operators is also very positive now, and we expect a steady increase in private bus supply over the next few quarters and should help drive growth.
On our redRail app, we are acquiring new customers in tier two and three towns, driven by our continued efforts to scale up acquisition, seasonal demand, and driving organic growth by leveraging the redBus user base. As a result, we continue to gain market share in train bookings on the back of all our three brands. Leveraging on the strength of our extensive inventory, we launched a Connected Travel feature for users to discover confirmed travel options through bus and rail combinations on routes that have lower availability or lesser frequency of trains. Let me now share some details on our brand campaigns during this high-season quarter. We leveraged the ICC World Cup, which was held in India, with multiple brand campaigns to build and maintain top-of-the-mind recall and showcase our value proposition to our existing and potential customers.
During the quarter, MakeMyTrip launched campaigns around hotels and homestays, while Goibibo launched its campaign with Kareena Kapoor, a well-known Bollywood celebrity, as brand ambassador. During the quarter, we also integrated BookMyForex product offerings on the MMT platform and launched a new brand campaign to drive forex demand on our platforms. Our corporate travel business, we have both our platforms, myBiz and Quest2Travel, are scaling up steadily with every passing quarter. Our active SME corporate customers count on myBiz is now over 56,000, and for Q2T, the active customer count has reached 334 large corporates. We continue to innovate our product offering based on customer feedback. We recently reimagined our myBiz homepage, offering the corporates the capability to customize the homepage according to their preferences in terms of theme and layout.
Additionally, we have now provided the option to users to enter their preferences in terms of seats and frequent flyer numbers, leading to greater personalization for corporate employees on the platform. We have also enhanced our workflow to include ground transport options in our corporate offerings. With this, let me now hand over the call to Mohit for the financial highlights of the quarter.
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
... Thank you. Thanks, Rajesh, and hello, everyone. During the first quarter of this fiscal year, 2024, I had called out that while the pandemic is now well and truly behind us, the business is well-positioned to leverage the investments made during the pandemic-impacted years in key strategic areas, such as building wider offering of travel and travel-related services, driving supply site expansion and choices for our customers, and the technology investments in building efficiencies, improved personalization, and curated platforms to scale new demand segments. It is heartening that these have helped us achieve multiple milestone numbers across financial and operating metrics, such as gross bookings, revenues, and operating profits during this seasonally strong quarter.
Gross bookings for the quarter grew by 21.7% year-on-year in constant currency terms, to an all-time quarterly high of $2.1 billion, compared to $1.7 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue, as per IFRS, grew by 26.9% year-on-year in constant currency terms to $214 million from $170.5 million in same quarter last year. EBITDA witnessed a strong growth and has more than doubled to $29.4 million, as compared to $14.3 million during the same quarter last year. Adjusted operating profit or adjusted EBIT registered a growth of about 70% year-on-year and reached $33.4 million, compared to $19.7 million in the same quarter last year.
Adjusted operating margin for the business has expanded by about 50 basis points to 1.6% of gross bookings, compared to about 1.1% during the same quarter last year. On a YTD basis as well, the adjusted operating margin stands at 1.55%, versus 1.05% in the first three quarters of the previous year. Our air ticketing gross bookings for the quarter came in at $1.3 billion, witnessing a year-on-year growth of 19.8% in constant currency. Adjusted margin stood at about $79.2 million, registering a year-on-year growth of 14.2% in constant currency. Take rates for the air ticketing business were in line at about 6.3%.
As mentioned by Rajesh, while the longer-term outlook for growth in the domestic aviation market is strong, with large aircraft orders having been placed by the leading carriers, there are short-term capacity headwinds, given issues around supply and servicing of aircraft engines. We expect that these headwinds will start easing out by the next financial year. Gross bookings for the quarter for the hotels and packages segment came in at $559 million, witnessing a strong growth of 27% year-on-year on constant currency basis. Linked to seasonality and improved pricing, the adjusted margin growth came in much stronger at 28.8% year-on-year on constant currency terms, and stood at $98.8 million during the quarter. Our take rates for the quarter were in line at about 17.7% in this segment.
We witnessed a strong growth across both domestic and international destinations, with our international hotel business surpassing the pre-pandemic peak. We continue to work on sharper targeting of various demand segments via a multi-platform approach, while also increasing the breadth of our offering through directly contracted hotels, both in the domestic as well as the international markets. This two-pronged approach is helping us drive strong growth in this business segment. In our bus ticketing business, gross bookings for the quarter stood at $269.8 million, growing at 20.3% year-on-year in constant currency terms. Adjusted margin is stood at $26.9 million, registering a strong year-on-year growth of over 33.8% in constant currency. Take rates for the bus business again came in line at about 10% for the quarter.
During this high season quarter, we invested behind our brand campaigns to drive top-of-mind recall for our brands, further, thus helping us increase the mix of organic traffic. As a result, the marketing and sales promotion cost for the quarter came in slightly higher at 4.9%, compared to the 4.6% in the previous low season quarter, but were lower than the 5.2% in the comparable quarter of last year. While the return on these brand campaigns tends to build over a longer duration, the initial response has been positive and should help us continue to target around 70% of our orders coming in from our existing customers or via repeat orders. All other costs were largely in line, and we continue to drive year-on-year efficiencies in our fixed cost base.
Another highlight of the quarter was our strong working capital management during peak seasonality. While the previous quarter had seen a deployment of about $12 million in working capital as we were getting into peak seasonality, we saw a much higher working capital release of about $35 million during this quarter. Accordingly, compared to the $37 million in cash operating profits for the quarter, the cash position has improved by almost $70 million over the previous quarter, taking our total cash position to about $608 million at the end of the quarter. During the last quarter, we announced the signing of the agreement to take a majority position in Savaari Car Rentals, and I'm happy to report that the transaction was concluded by early December.
The teams are working on consolidating all the supply with Savaari and thereby driving efficiencies in supply acquisition and management. With this, we expect to drive much better efficiencies in our supply acquisition, facilitating the scaling up of our intercity cab business. We recently filed an intimation for our 2028 note holders on their right to tender the notes for repurchase at par by the company at the end of the third year of the notes, as per the terms and conditions of the indenture on 15th February 2024. We shall update the progress of the tender process in due course. With that, I'd like to turn the call back to Vipul for Q&A.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Mohit. Anyone wishing to ask a question from the management may raise, may click on the Raise Hand option, and we will take the questions one by one. The first question is from the line of Vijit Jain of Citi. Vijit, you may please ask your question now.
Vijit Jain (Director)
Thanks, Vipul, and congratulations on a terrific set of numbers yet again. My first question is, you know, just looking at the hotels and packages business obviously has done really very well in the current quarter. I was wondering on two things. One, can you call out any specific benefits in terms of, you know, either the average realizations per room night or in terms of your profitability that you had during this quarter because of, you know, both Cricket World Cup as well as other, in general, travel appetite? Is there anything, any special or any extraordinary gains that you had in this quarter from that side? And how should one think about pricing and your margins in this segment going forward? That's my first question.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, maybe, maybe I can take that, Vijit, and thank you. You know, you're right. Hotel and packages, packages growth, you know, given that this is also a season quarter, and we had the demand momentum, especially, you know, after World Cup, it sort of picked up significantly. Because till the World Cup, you know, it was sort of, the focus was a lot more. While there were some gains for specific cities, where the, the India, was featuring in terms of, their World Cup games, but largely people were sort of focused on watching, you know, World Cup matches over the weekend. And therefore, you know, the first half of that quarter, of this quarter till the World Cup was, relatively speaking, the, the, you know, the seasonality momentum hadn't really picked up.
But, the moment World Cup was over, it sort of took off. And I guess, you know, sort of more than made up, you know, overall on a quarter basis. So overall seasonality momentum was, momentum was great. But specific to the, you know, to your question, was there anything extraordinary? I won't say there was anything extraordinary or temporary in nature. The mix, if you will see our overall mix of, you know, revenue on a revenue basis, contribution coming in from the hotel and packages has improved from 40%-45%, now, which is, which is great, and that is on the back of, you know, the overall sort of mix changing. But from a demand, in general standpoint, all segments actually that we saw demand going up.
I guess additionally, the emerging trend on homestays, specifically, has also started helping because that has added, on one side, a new set of supply and also new demand use cases, you know, that have also emerged of late, which has added momentum to the overall demand, on the hotel and accommodation side. And within packages, we saw outbound packages, you know, sort of coming back in this quarter with a bang as well. So I would say overall it's a bunch of factors, but a lot more on the demand side.
Sort of all segments sort of rising, which is helping the overall hotel and packages business grow on this quarter.
Vijit Jain (Director)
Got it, Rajesh. Rajesh, just taking on that hotels thing, do you have any comment to make on, in general, the demand and the supply situation, at least on the premium hotel, or the branded hotel space in India? How do you think that evolving, and do you think ADRs therefore remain resilient or even go up further from here? And a related question to that, do you think that is kind of, at least in that segment, impacting or bringing some shift over into the international outbound side from India? You did mention international outbound is doing very well, so I'm just wondering if you're seeing some kind of a shift there, and how does that affect, you in general?
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Yeah, no, so I think it's a good question. So if you look at, you know, past couple of quarters data or more, and the ADRs on the premium segment, I would say even on the mid segment have been fairly robust. But I think we should never forget, sort of factoring in, the two-year lull period where there was, you know, thanks to COVID, there was no real price increase on the hotel side on all segments that had happened. So if you factor that in and adjust it to sort of overall cumulative inflation and normal inflation for last, I would say, about three years, you would realize that the price increase is about 10%, which is fairly reasonable.
Vijit Jain (Director)
Mm-hmm
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
... in my view. I don't see it this sort of as an exceptional price increase, excepting for certain days where there will be, you know, demand, exceptional demand over the long weekends, et cetera. That would always be the case-
Vijit Jain (Director)
Mm-hmm
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
... because there will be more demand and less supply, and then because of that gap, you know, there could be, you know, increase in prices, which to my mind is very normal, and that happens in any market. But otherwise, I think it, you know, there is a certain degree of stability in pricing in terms of the new base that is setting up, setting in the market, and which I think is sustainable-
Vijit Jain (Director)
Mm-hmm
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
... in, you know, like an overall level. Now outside of that, I think it'll be a function of whether it'll further increase from here, or, you know, sort of sometimes in the market where, in certain weeks, certain weekends, certain, around the events, et cetera, the prices could go more or could go less, will be a function of how much demand and how much, you know, what's the sort of demand and supply gap equation that works out. But it's going to be a very normal sort of, up and down that we would see. I think there is a new base that is set up where from a demand standpoint, we've seen, you know, customers in general sort of upgrading, on the back of,
I think it's a behavior change that we have noticed in terms of maybe taking more holidays or maybe spending more percentage of their available disposable income in consumers' pocket to experience travel, which means more demand in the market. So there is definitely more you know, upside on the demand, which is helping. And therefore, and you know, within that, I think it's also a behavior of you know, upgrading from a particular segment to the next level and from a mid segment to, let's say, a premium segment.
And the last point I would make on this also is that, you know, it has also, you know, specifically to premium segment, a lot of the non-leisure travel events, like whether it is the corporate offsites or it's, you know, specifically the MICE activities or, for that matter, weddings, you know, that during the season. You know, more and more you see the trend of these events happening in the hotels, and because of which obviously there is more demand relative to the historical period. And that's also sort of helping, you know, sustaining the price levels that you would typically see or are seeing in the market.
But I think all the factors will have to be brought together to analyze and jump to conclusion in terms of what kind of, whether this is sort of sustainable or not. In my view, there is, you know, at certain level, these are sustainable with ±5, 10% up and down that will happen, which will be a function of regular demand and supply gap.
Vijit Jain (Director)
Got it, Rajesh. My last question, just, on the international outbound from India, if you can give any color on, where you're seeing... In terms of channels, at least, where you're seeing growth from? Is it, coming more in the packages side or- because you also have, direct, you know, holiday booking-
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Yeah
Vijit Jain (Director)
... feature available on your platform, and then there's the travel agent business also that you do. So I'm just wondering, where do you see the most momentum overall? My question is more on the international outbound side, but maybe if the answer is relevant in domestic as well, you can answer that. Thank you.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Sure. No, so specifically on international travel, we have seen actually momentum on our business on packages side for sure. Like I was mentioning earlier, I think it's part of the script as well. And because we were expecting, I mean, two quarters down, you know, ago the recovery on outbound was relatively slower, and we were expecting that to sort of, you know, pick up at some point, and it has picked up in this quarter. And that is on packages. It's also on international hotels. We have seen similarly for flights as well.
And in fact, you know, what also adds to this international travel momentum is the, you know, as I was mentioning even in the prepared script, the announcement that happened on either the direct connectivity, you know, solving for direct connectivity, like, you know, the three examples that I gave. And similarly for making the visa, you know-
Vijit Jain (Director)
Hmm
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
... more easier, and smoother, and convenient for people. That definitely sort of helps because then there is a comparison point with the domestic, you know, sort of comparable destination versus short-haul outbound destination, and then you end up taking the call. The fact that the outbound travel was slow was a little sort of slow to pick it up and get back to pre-pandemic level. It has now reached to pre-pandemic level because of demand coming back. In terms of channels, we see it, a large part of it is coming from our holiday packages business this quarter. Standalone bookings, not necessarily packages with respect to hotels or flights, our B2B channel also contributes.
In fact, pleasantly surprised with the contribution coming in from there, as well, besides the B2C, which is the regular sort of channel, which, when we see the demand coming back on an overall platform, in terms of traffic growth, you know, all sort of, you know, products and services we have on our platform get benefited out of it.
Vijit Jain (Director)
Got it. Thanks, Rajesh. I'll jump back into the queue.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Vijit. The next question is from the line of Sachin Salgaonkar of Bank of America. Sachin, you may please ask your question now.
Sachin Salgaonkar (Managing Director of APAC Telcos, Media and Tech Analyst)
Thanks, Vipul. Congrats again for a fantastic set of numbers. You know, I have three questions. First question, just wanted to understand, you know, on pent-up demand versus actually a demand where consumers are traveling a bit more. And clearly, when we look at this quarter numbers, on a base of 36% growth, you guys are showing more like a 27%, YoY growth. It does indicate that while the pent-up demand is behind, the growth is strong. So the question out here is, and I know it's difficult for you guys, and you guys don't give a guidance, but, should general growth for the sector continue to remain strong in next 12-18 months?
If you could help understand what are the some of the drivers in terms of are Indians traveling a lot more than before, or has something changed which is relating to that growth? A related question is, of course, any color you could give in terms of how, you know, this upcoming quarter is trending, that would be helpful.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
... Yeah, Sachin, so, thank you, firstly. And I would actually say two factors, and I would stay away from saying whether it is six months or 12 months or 18 months. But two fundamental factors, you know, from an outlook standpoint, we feel, clearly that seems to be happening, and one is on the demand side, and the second one is on just the overall improvement of the infrastructure. On the demand side, from a consumer behavior standpoint, we certainly have seen now there is a pattern that is emerging where, the frequency of breaks that the consumers were taking earlier, is definitely going up. Point number one.
Point number two, which to my mind is a fundamental change, point number two is that we've also seen some new, you know, use cases that are sort of emerging, which is also adding to, you know, the regular standard use cases for travel. So, you know, when I say use cases, it's effectively purpose for travel. So purpose for travel, for leisure, for pilgrimage, for, you know, visiting family, et cetera, was the standard purpose for travel or for work. But we've also seen now new use cases more and more emerging. And specifically, you know, in the eco space, we are seeing, you know, alternative accommodation getting benefited out of it.
The celebration use case of the milestone, you know, sort of, celebration use case in the family with the friends, extended family, group travel, you know, trying to celebrate whether it's a birthday or an anniversary or, you know, some other family, milestone. And getting together and sort of doing the celebration, et cetera, more than what used to happen in the past. So these are the two would consumer demand side, you know, on the behavior, on the buying behavior of travel or, or spending more on travel experiences, clearly are emerging that we can see. And on the other side, I would say from an overall outlook standpoint, that the infrastructure, improvement and the expansion is definitely going to add more.
Because more and more, you know, we make it smoother, easier, and convenient for, for the travelers. And also develop infrastructure in the new destinations. You know, we've started creating huge amount of awareness, for instance, of nearby destination to any key destination, and we've seen demand picking up on, on those destinations. Now, tomorrow, like I was just mentioning in the script, you know, the spiritual tourism. Now, if that picks up, let's say if the Ayodhya event, which is likely to happen, because there's also an infrastructure development that has happened in that city. I see no reason why people and more number of people would want to sort of travel and experience, for some of these new destinations which they had not really explored in the past.
Or the use case earlier was, you know, not going for offering for prayers and, you know, sort of hardcore pilgrimage use case. It might just be an experience, you know, merge into a new, you know, sort of use case where people would want to go and visit these destinations more for historical reasons, right? So I would say these are the two big factors that I think are more permanent in nature than temporary, as we have sort of seen the pattern emerging, and that should help the outlook or the growth outlook for travel and tourism industry going forward. You know, so that would be my take on it, Sachin.
Sachin Salgaonkar (Managing Director of APAC Telcos, Media and Tech Analyst)
Got it. Very clear, Rajesh. Second question, and it's just taking from where you left. Clearly, demand is good, and some new cases are coming. So does that mean MakeMyTrip doesn't have to spend so much on marketing going ahead? And as a percentage of GMV, it could be much lower than, let's say, the earlier guided 5%?
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
I think-
Sorry, go ahead, Mohit. Go ahead, go ahead.
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
Sure, maybe I can take that. And, you know, we've largely remained, you know, within the 5% kind of a guidance that we had rolled out, Sachin, through the year, and therefore, I believe that continues to hold good. I mean, overall, if you really see this quarter also, and generally we tend to do this, if you look at historically also, during peak seasonality quarters, you know, like Q1 and Q3, we generally tend to kind of, you know, spend a little more on the, on the, on the brand marketing side, and which is what we have seen even during this quarter. But even with that, you know, the overall spends came in at about, you know, 4.9%, and still kind of, you know, well below the 5.3% in the same quarter previous year.
So I guess the 5% kind of a ballpark number should be a good number to kind of, you know, keep in mind, at least for this year. We'll continue to see if we can kind of keep building efficiencies, some efficiencies with the scale in the coming years as well.
Sachin Salgaonkar (Managing Director of APAC Telcos, Media and Tech Analyst)
Got it, Mohit. Very clear. And my last question, and anecdotally, I'm sure you guys also saw and are seeing it. There is generally also a school of thought is coming that travel, traveling around is becoming expensive in India. For example, in New Year's, traveling to Goa was a bit more expensive than, let's say, going towards, Thailand or Bali. Is that something, a risk, what you guys are seeing, which could potentially impact, you know, some demand? And, you know, how do you guys, you know, think in that direction?
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
You know, I would say, Sachin, I think we should see this scenario more from a healthy competition between the destinations. Now whether it is going to be a domestic market destination or an international market, or comparable to domestic destination for that matter, in the peak period, I don't think this will have an impact on demand. It would actually, in turn, mean that, you know, there will be healthy competition between the markets. And, you know, from that point of view, because I don't think that's going to impact the travel demand. Because if, let's say, all three, you know, hypothetically comparable destinations are pretty expensive, then people will still travel, but they might go to a, you know, their plan B destination.
But it may not mean that they would not travel, you know? So I don't see that scenario happening, given at least based on whatever patterns that we've seen it emerging. And which therefore would mean is that, you know, in the ecosystem, people would start to sort of look at specific markets would start to look at all the data and accordingly price their products rather than, you know, sort of taking one destination as a threat to the other. I think that is what is likely to happen rather than, you know, overall, because it's expensive and therefore I would not really travel.
Sachin Salgaonkar (Managing Director of APAC Telcos, Media and Tech Analyst)
Very clear, Rajesh. Thank you, and all the best.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Thank you. Thank you, Sachin.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Sachin. The next question is from the line of Aditya Suresh of Macquarie. Aditya, you're... you may please ask your question now.
Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)
Hi, thank you so much. I had a few questions. The first one was on the B2B piece. You spoke a lot about on the B2C side, but on the B2B segment, you've seemed to have kind of scaled that. You now have a partnership with Zoho as well. Rajesh, would you mind kind of giving us an update here on that, on that segment and what that may mean for whether that be growth or kind of the impact on working capital and the likes? I'd be really curious to understand that. Thank you.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Yeah, sure, Aditya. No, I think it's a good question, and I think we gave a couple of data points to give an indication of how our, you know, corporate business is growing. And, you know, just from an outlook standpoint, I do see, you know, there is headroom for growth there. There's actually good headroom for growth there. And the way we, you know, our product has been sort of recognized in the market for whatever it's worth, from, you know, just from a voice of customer standpoint.
We feel very confident that this definitely is going to add more and more sort of growth avenues for us both in the small and medium enterprises, as well as in the large enterprises for both the platforms that we have, whether it is myBiz or Quest2Travel. And the other point I would also make is that what we are trying to do on the product side is just continue to keep enhancing the experience significantly, just based on feedback. You know, keep sort of adding more features for our B2B customers, which is a delightful experience for them. And based on that we have our retention rate, which is like, you know, benchmarked with the world-class B2B outfit already.
And we'll continue to keep that, keep doing that on two counts: one, adding more products and more use cases so that it becomes a one-stop platform for the corporate. And the second is, you know, like the way conceptually we do personalization on B2C, you know, use that concept to actually do a personalized customer experience for the corporate travelers, which would be very different than B2C. Because the behavior when you buy your own travel for your personal purpose is very different than what you end up doing it as part of your work trip, on any of the corporate booking platform.
So, and we have great insights on that, and we are focusing on that and just enhancing the customer experience significantly to make it very, very smooth and easier for the corporate travelers. So on those two areas, we've been working very hard, and we continue to keep sort of rolling out new features. And, you know, so therefore, looking at the growth that we already have, the acquisition engine that has already been established, and how the wallet share is sort of increasing, and the fact that we our product will continue to keep improving to become world-class, I definitely believe there is definite- there is a lot of headroom for growth for us in the B2B segment.
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
Sorry.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Working capital, yeah.
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
Capital, and, you know, the overall margins on the B2B side. I mean, in the way we've kind of, you know, put these platforms in place and kind of significantly leveraging technology, particularly the core B2B, which is, you know, the corporate-driven platforms. Because the other platforms, which are, you know, these ones which are powering the small travel agents or, say, the affiliates, those are more, you know, extension of, you know, the B2C platforms, right? B2B2C kind of a platforms. And on these corporate platforms, I think we're kind of seeing that we are kind of gaining very good traction, both with the small and medium enterprises, as well as with the large corporates. So growth is coming in good.
From an opportunity sizing point of view, like we have said, you know, at least one fourth, if not one third of the market, would be kind of, you know, largely business-driven or corporate travel demand. And therefore, there is a long, you know, big headroom to kind of, you know, keep making gains in this area. And, and with the unit economics kind of, you know, addressed to kind of meet B2C, like, kind of, you know, net margins, growth should come in in a kind of accretive, both at the top line and the bottom line.
And on the working capital side as well, you know, we don't really kind of deploy working capital on the B2B side, because like I said, these are largely, you know, kind of, you know, setups that we have created, without having to invest significantly in working capital for getting B2B businesses.
Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)
... Thanks. The second question I had was more on the outbound opportunity, right? Now, you've spoken a lot about the connections and the new routes and a few use cases. But Rajesh, it'd be great if you can maybe frame that opportunity for us, or even in broad terms, how should we think about this, the scale of this opportunity, even if it's over the next, say, two to three years compared to where our domestic business is at? Because I think a lot of our modeling, et cetera, is focused mainly on the India domestic piece, and so I'm really curious to see how you're thinking about scale of international outbound.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Yeah, Aditya, you know, as I was alluding to earlier, it is. If you look at it from a little midterm to long-term perspective, the outlook is actually quite positive for outbound. And the fundamental sort of underneath point for that is, you know, all what you have to, to look at it is the, you know, the airlines, all the airlines orders that have been placed on, you know, bringing a new fleet into, into, into their, into the market, you know, in the next, say, next three or five, five years, or more. And there is some record orders have been placed already, as you know.
Significant chunk of that is also going to get deployed, in the, you know, to open up some of the foreign destinations for them, or to grow the foreign destinations for them. So I think that is one data point, which is important. And if you, you know, from a demand standpoint, as I was making the point earlier, on an overall demand standpoint, I, I definitely see, you know, from a, let's say, a middle class to the upper middle class, to HNIs, you know, the, the way sort of, per capita income or the disposable income growing, in the country, that's definitely going to be the other driving force for, you know, sort of demand to go up for the outbound destinations.
You know, and there are, by the way, some third-party reports, and maybe, you know, we can take this offline and you can look at some of those specific reports on outbound, specifically from CAPA, for example. I don't know if you've seen it or not, and that independent research has also, you know, captured many data points to make this point. You know, and they have tried to sort of size the overall opportunity in the next three to five years as well. In fact, headlined it as a, you know, outbound could be the new domestic for the next three to five years as well.
And it's a quite neutral and credible sort of research report, and maybe you should look at that, and you know, maybe form your own view on top of that. But in terms of just the drivers for this, these would be the two drivers. And you know, we'll be happy to share the report if you want, offline.
Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)
Thank you so much, Rajesh, for that. And I guess that the final piece for me was, so finally the platform has kind of reached a scale. You've seen the kind of profitability kind of come through with the cost discipline. Industry structure is kind of a bit more favorable compared to previously, discretionary spends rising. So all those kind of demographic dynamics are playing out here, plus there's cost discipline. Rajesh, a specific question for you is about... And also, you know, the fact that you, you're kind of cashed up, the platform is generating free cash flow. So I guess the specific question to you is, what worries you? Means like what are some of the things which you're guarding against, as you kind of plan for the business in the next 6, 12 months?
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Hmm, interesting question, Aditya. Yeah, I guess the worry in this business, as we've seen in the past, is more the macro than the micro. You know, and so we would always sort of wish, like sometime back, the new variant of COVID, you know, the Omicron had started and, you know, and that definitely causes concern as we know what happened during COVID, et cetera. And so, you know, fundamental structure overall, as you rightly mentioned and articulated, seems to be you know, well in place now, poised for a new level of growth, et cetera. Both on the demand side, supply side, everyone is in investment mode, infrastructure improving, all of that is great. You don't really want any disruptive macro event happening, which neither you nor I can, or anyone for that matter, can control.
But if there is one disruption that we've seen over the last, let's say over two decades that we've been in the business, it is the macro events that sort of cause a concern or worry in the whole industry's mind, if you will. Then, you know, your own sort of micro issues or items. So operationally, within the organization, we feel much better and confident, well poised. And, you know, not to say that the eyes have to be taken off from an execution standpoint relentlessly, because this business is also about a lot of it is also about consistent and relentless execution as well.
But that we feel better and confident, you know, and given the track record, we'll be at it. But if there is one thing that would, you know, I have to call out as potential concern or, or worry area, would only be any of the micro events. So if we have a smooth run on that, I think industry is definitely poised for better, better times in the coming years.
Aditya Suresh (Head of India Equity Research)
Thanks, Rajesh. All the best.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Thank you.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Aditya. The next question is from the line of Manish Adukia of Goldman Sachs. Manish, you may please ask your question now.
Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)
Yes. Thanks, Vipul. Hi, good evening. Thank you so much for taking my question. So just picking up the conversation from where Aditya left, when we think about the last few years, right, the single biggest driver of your profitability has been the fact that marketing promotion spends have come down quite dramatically. And even from an outsider's perspective, while it seems like the market is fairly competitive with a number of players, your numbers suggest that competition is relatively low. It is lower versus what it used to be pre-pandemic. One, in your view, why is competition low? And a related question, what may need to change, or what could potentially change for competitive intensity to go up again, let's say in the next one or two years? Your thoughts, please.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Mm-hmm. Right, Manish. Again, a very interesting question. You know, the way I would address this, Manish, is not specific to, let's say, MakeMyTrip or within travel. I think this is a very welcome change in the ecosystem overall. You know, the competition is still there, as you rightly pointed out. It's not that competition will never stop, and, you know, and healthy competition is always welcome. What has changed is that within that competition, it is not necessarily super disruptive or, you know, just super aggressive for the sake of being aggressive. And now, within competition, everybody is sort of also focused on, you know, profitability at the end of the day in the entire internet ecosystem. To my mind, it's a very, very welcome change for the entire internet industry.
You know, forget about, you know, travel tech industry for that matter. And that is what has happened. And you know, the other aspect of this also, I believe, is, which is again, a fundamental ecosystem-level change, is also just the availability of capital. And from the investor side, I think everybody is sort of more cognizant of investing behind the right assets and the right areas. And that's the sort of guidance rather than just playing, you know, super aggressively, with the, you know, sort of, aggressive amount of capital push and trying to sort of win the market. And I think it's also to do with the learnings from the past.
It's also to do with how the market has evolved, and people have also become a lot more knowledgeable of what works in the market and what doesn't really work in the market, and what's sustainable, what is not sustainable in the market. So part of it, I will attribute it to the evolution of the market. So I think it has reached that stage where, because it's been going on now for, you know, I think internet industry in India is over, you know, two decades, definitely, or, you know, old, if not little bit more. And that is a good enough time for anyone to... And the amount of capital that has got invested, in this market is also huge.
I think, you know, in this response is the answer to your second question as well, that what would change, you know, or for it to go back to, again, sort of same high-intensity competition, et cetera? I actually think given the fact this is far more, you know, and part of it could be wishful thinking as well, but bear with me for that. But I do think given the fact that the market overall is relatively evolved and matured, and the entire ecosystem a tremendous amount of learning at every stakeholder level, for it to go back to the same, you know, super aggression in the market for the sake of being aggressive, I'm not sure.
I mean, the likelihood of that, you know, who knows for future? But likelihood of that might be, relatively speaking, much less than, you know, what I would have said maybe 10 years ago.
Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you, Rajesh. That makes a lot of sense. My second question: How should we think about the operating leverage in the business? I mean, you're growing top line at north of 20% right now, and let's assume that your marketing promotion intensity, let's say, stays in the same ballpark. Some of the other expenses, employee costs, outsourcing, et cetera, how should we think about what, let's say, the right growth number for that could be in the next, let's say, two or three years, Rajesh or Mohit, your thoughts there?
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
Yeah, sure. You know, the way we are looking at operating leverage being continuously driven is that, you know, we have seen good amount of, you know, improvement at the net level coming in over the last few years, and we want to kind of maintain that momentum. But we also want to kind of, you know, make sure that we are, you know, kind of more and more gearing towards growth and, and kind of, you know, not necessarily kind of trying to optimize only on driving profitability improvement.
So I think the medium term, kind of, the next 2-3 years, kind of a, you know, approach would be to try and see if we can take this close to 15% on adjusted margin or, say, 1.5% of, you know, gross bookings, in a net adjusted operating margins that we have, more closer to, say, about 1.8%-2% of gross bookings. I think that would be a very healthy kind of, you know, adjusted operating profit margin level to kind of maintain. And that would be the endeavor to kind of, you know, see, you know, coming in as an improvement over the next 2-3 years.
Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. Helpful. Last question, on use of cash. So, the buyback amount that you've carved out, $136 million, well understood, and thank you again for flagging that. But when you think about the business, I mean, this quarter alone, $37 million of cash EBITDA annualized close to $115 million, and that number is only growing. So, and then you have $600 million+ of cash in the books. So, like, when you think about a steady return to shareholders, I mean, could buybacks become like an annual affair in the business? Because from what I recall, last you mentioned that there are not too many meaningful M&A opportunities out there.... So how do you think about this growing cash balance and, you know, uses of cash as you go along next 2, 3 years? Thank you.
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
Sure, Manish. And, you know, clearly, you know, the first priority would be to kind of keep looking for inorganic as well as organic investment opportunities, you know, in the business. But beyond that, and clearly like you called out, you know, we have now close towards $600 million in terms of cash and cash equivalents, and that is a large balance to have. And therefore, we have been calling out that we do believe that we kind of will actively look at buybacks as an option to kind of, you know, exercise in the years to come.
Like we have also kind of intimated this, this quarter, we have kind of put in the intimation on the, on the 2028 note holders, because there's a put option that is kind of coming up in the, in the next month. And as we had called out in the, in the previous earnings call, that we would want to kind of, you know, see through this, put option date, and by then we would also be kind of, you know, close to the end of this fiscal year. And therefore, from next fiscal year onwards, we would want to kind of possibly dip in into the, into the buyback plan or the share repurchase plan in the right earnest. The quantum and size, again, would kind of, you know, depend upon the market, the, and the timing around it.
But yes, this is one potential, you know, you know, avenue of deployment of the cash.
Manish Adukia (Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks so much for taking my questions. All the best.
Mohit Kabra (Group CFO)
Thank you.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Thank you.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Hi. Thanks, Manish. We are almost out of time, and we will take one last question for now, from the line of Gaurav Rateria of Morgan Stanley. Gaurav, you may please ask your question now.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Hey. Hi, I'm audible?
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Yes, yes, please go ahead.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Thanks for taking my question. The first question actually is on the... If you can elaborate on the short-term impact on air business that you talked about in the near term, and also you talked about things easing out from next fiscal year. Is it likely to be more like a second half, or you think immediately, in the first half itself things will ease out based on the plans that you see for the airlines?
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
I think, Gaurav, it's going to be every quarter some improvement. I don't think it's going to be second half more than the first half. I think we'll see some improvement happening first half, based on the plan that we see. Because, you know, there is practically every month there are more planes coming, and there is wet lease, you know, sort of options being explored, et cetera. But we'll see, we'll see improvement pretty much now. The improvement could be small in the first quarter, and the second quarter could be higher, et cetera, but that would be a matter of detailing. But we'll see improvement pretty much every quarter.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Fair to say that it kind of bottoms out from the supply issues perspective in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year, and from there on, every subsequent quarter there is an actual improvement?
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
I think that'll be fair to assume, yes.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Okay. But-
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
I mean, all things being equal, right? I mean, you know, there should not be any new development. But, all things, you know, being equal as of today, I think that will be a fair statement to make.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Got it. My second question is on the volume growth in the hotel and package segment. It's pretty strong on the back of strong last years. But let's say on a steady state, given where we are in the online penetration journey, how should one think about this volume growth? Is it, like, going to be more like, you know, in teens? Is it something that can actually be in twenties? Just trying to understand where we are in the journey of online penetration, and what is the scope headroom for growth from next 2-3 year perspective.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
So let me try and address, Gaurav, this one, rather than just specifically calling out a number, because we'll see how it goes. But from a penetration standpoint, relative to the flights market, clearly it is, there's much more headroom there. Especially when you add homestays category also, which is an emerging category, and adding more supply by demand, it becomes even more fragmented, you know, and the online penetration, for that category is also low, you know, in relative terms. So I would say all things considered, even if we assume, like, a 20% online penetration or thereabout, as compared to 65 odd % penetration for domestic flights, there is obviously significant headroom.
I'm saying even if you don't want to, to consider it going all the way, and we look at global benchmarks, you know, the, the next milestone number for, you know, online penetration for hotels and, and accommodation overall would be 40% at least, because that has been the... You know, in many markets it, it got to about 40%. World markets in the Western side that, and that I'm talking about, the 40%—It's just that relative to the transport, it, it always has taken in every market, relatively speaking, little bit more time, than the, than the transport. Because there are transport actually, because of the fact that it's a very uni-dimensional product, it moves really quickly online.
You know, railways is a good, a good example of that, bus is a good example of that, and domestic flights for that matter. Wherever there is more involved purchase experiences and, you know, fragmented market on the supply side, it just takes more time for it to move online completely. So from that perspective, I think we should probably see it. Let's say if the overall travel and tourism market annually is going to grow at a double digit growth rate, you know, anywhere, if I look at some of the third party reports, it talks about 10%-12%, I think we should think about online and growth more in terms of, you know, like say 1.5x-2x kind of a range of the overall industry growth, just as a thumb rule.
Then see how the demand patterns emerge in the quarter, and basis which we can sort of form a view.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Great. That's, that's really helpful. And last question, I think you made a very significant product enhancement, and you have been highlighting every single quarter. How easy or difficult it is for competition to replicate that? And have you seen them actually even replicating, or this is something that, you know, kind of stands apart for us and, and, and kind of creates a competitive advantage for us? Thank you.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
You know, I would like to believe, you know, on an overall basis and on a continuous basis, it's not necessarily a one-quarter thing. It is actually, if there is one, you know, sort of at the core DNA of the company is continuously keep improving the customer journey, continuously keep improving the customer experience end to end, whether it is pre-booking experience or a post-sales experience, and so on. And keep coming up with the, you know, and some of the features we've called out are industry first.
And, you know, on the back of leveraging the, the huge, you know, sort of data that we have, which probably is, you know, incomparable with, to, to anyone else in terms of how much more do we have versus, versus any of the other players in the market. So that gives you an inherent sort of advantage, for us to be able to build on top of, you know, that, you know, very innovative features. And there are many, whether it's a Trip Guarantee or a Fare Lock or a Zero Cancellation or a, you know, Book @ Zero for hotels. And, you know, not to forget the AI-led some of the innovation that we've already done for our, hotels reviews.
And you know, there are more—there's more work on a continuous basis happening on that front as well, just to continuously keep improving the overall customer journey. And you know, given that we are in a B2C business and you know, the future will always be out there, so theoretically it can get copied. But I think some of these inherent advantages that we have and the fact that at the core of our sort of belief and you know, very core part of our strategy is to continuously keep enhancing the experience and keep it cutting edge, almost always all the time, would always be you know, some competitive advantage for us, I would have thought.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Perfect. Thank you, and all the best.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Thank you.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Gaurav. As we are out of time already, we'll not be able to take any more questions. So anyone whose question are unanswered, we can take them offline. That will bring us to the end of the call. Over to you, Rajesh, for your closing remarks.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Yeah. Thank you, Vipul, and thank you, everyone. Thank you everyone for your patience. Thank you everyone for your time, and look forward to seeing you next quarter. Thank you.
Gaurav Rateria (Executive Director)
Thank you.
Vipul Garg (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Rajesh. You may please disconnect. Thank you.
Rajesh Magow (Co-Founder and Group CEO)
Yeah.