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EaseMyTrip expects margins to improve as “discounts ease off in the second half of the year”. Discounting in H1, which included cashbacks from airlines and hotels and subsequently passed on to consumers, stood at 4.9 per cent, against 2 per cent in the year-ago-period.
With revenge tourism picking up and demand for domestic travel improving, the company expects a stronger H2.
Margins (EBITDA level) stood at 61.5 per cent in during the period under review. According to Prashant Pitti, Co-Founder and Director, EaseMyTrip, with the low base effect notwithstanding, discounting is expected to come down in the coming quarters.
“In line with the competition intensity, we have offered more discounts for customer stickiness and acquisition across our portal. We anticipate discounts to ease off for coming quarters on the back of strong recovery in demand, leading to further improvement in margins, tapping down of discounts,” he told BusinessLine .
Adjusted revenues
The company’s adjusted revenues (which include discounts given and claims and return back) for H1 stood at ₹150 crore, a 312 per cent jump year-on-year on a low base, while gross booking revenues during the period stood at ₹1,252 crore.
Nearly 93 per cent of EasyMyTrip’s GMV comes directly from consumers and nearly 88 per cent of transactions are by B2C customers (individual users).
According to Pitti, the company is gaining market share, which stood at nearly 9.7 per cent at the end of September quarter (Q2 FY22).
Acquisitions
Going forward, the plan is to look at acquisitions, as it eyes strengthening of business verticals, both on the B2B and B2C segments, said Pitti. Focus on bottomline expansion “will remain”.
The PAT for H1 stood a little over ₹42 crore.
The recent acquisition of Traviate is aimed at strengthening the hotel bookings vertical at the peer-to-peer or B2B level. Traviate enables peer-to-peer transactions among hotels, online travel agencies, travel agents and others. The company has over 1.2 million hotels listed on its platform.
“So far, 56,000 of the travel agents in India have used the platform. And we can leverage it to go beyond hotel bookings and into flight ticket booking, packages, cab bookings and so on. We are also hopeful of the platform turning profitable very soon,” said Pitti, adding that the focus continues to be on “bottomline expansion”.
EaseMyTrip has also expanded its international presence to Philippines, Thailand and the US; it is also anticipating a huge pent-up “global demand for the travel and tourism sector in the coming months”, said Pitti.
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