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The IRCTC – the ticketing and catering company under the Indian Railways – is expecting addition of new trains; a focus on e-catering and increase in license fee; opening of Rail Neer plants; and increased internet penetration to aid revenue growth.
For the company, revenue increased by 14 per cent q-o-q to ₹918 crore in Q3FY23, compared with ₹806 crore in Q2FY23. The sequential jump in top-line was due to 49 per cent & 18 per cent q-o-q rise in tourism and catering revenues. ‘Rail Neer’ revenues improved by 4 per cent and ticketing revenue remained flat q-o-q.
New trains
According to Rajni Hasija, Chairman and Managing Director, IRCTC , it has launched a Bharat Gaurav series and has taken up eight rakes, in addition to the earlier two.
“Each rake can run up to maximum 240 days in a year ; it can go up to 300 days also . So, when we were doing Bharat darshan, we were not running more than 150 trains in a year. With these rakes, we would be running more than 300 trains,” she said during the post earnings analyst call.
“So, that is going to give you additional revenue of nearly ₹200 crore,” Hasija added. The contribution from these new trains are expected to reflect next fiscal onwards.
The Tejas trains have done well too, in Q3 with overall revenue for the nine-month-period being ₹115 crore; expenses at ₹98.61 crore; and the overall contribution to income being ₹17.06 crore.
Rail Neer ramp up
According to Hasija, Rail Neer’s capacity utilisation was nearly 75 per cent. Due to the increase in the production cost — the rise in price of PET preforms — the margins in the segment have reduced.
“Now the (PET) preform prices have reduced in the January - March period. So, we will see the impact and margin improve,” she said adding that new plants are ready and two of them – Simhadri and Godhawal - will be commissioned within this fiscal.
e-catering
The e-catering sub-segment which has a margin profile of 15 per cent, is observing “good traction”. IRCTC awarded 752 tenders taking the total number of trains serviced to 1,200. The Whatsapp service (for ordering food) which was launched in Q3, is likely to provide higher volumes and better margins.
Revenue from this segment is expected to reach the pre-Covid level (45 per cent of revenue) in the near term.
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