Comments
A massive increase in revenues from convenience fee charged for online ticketing has helped Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) record growth in revenues and net profit, the company management said in an analyst call on Thursday.
“This is because IRCTC doesn’t have to share any revenue from the convenience fee with the Indian Railways as was the case earlier,” said its Chairman and Managing Director, Mahendra Pratap Mall.
On the segment’s growth potential, Mall said that IRCTC doesn’t see a need to increase the charges, but there is scope for increasing the volume as 27 per cent of reserved railway ticketing happens at physical counters.
IRCTC provides catering services in the trains of Indian Railways, and in shops and mobile (cart-based) vending facilities at the stations.
Tejas occupancy
IRCTC, which started running trains in the quarter-ending December itself, said its experience with running Tejas Express trains has been better than expected, so far. “The Lucknow (-Delhi) Tejas is seeing about 65 per cent occupancy while the Ahmedabad (-Mumbai) Tejas Express, which started in early 2020, has almost 80-85 per cent occupancy.”
Mall said that IRCTC would take part in the Indian Railways’ proposal to run 150 private trains.
IRCTC, which was listed in mid-October 2019, declared at interim dividend of ₹10 a share (100 per cent) on Wednesday, backed by a three-fold jump in net profit. The net profit of IRCTC was at ₹205.80 crore for the quarter-ended December-2019, around three times more than that in the corresponding previous period.
The public sector enterprise recorded a 62 per cent growth in total revenue for the quarter-ended December 2019 by mopping up revenue of ₹734.98 crore against ₹535.14 crore.
Following the announcement of results, IRCTC’s share price on Thursday touched ₹1,579.95 on BSE, up 11 per cent.
According to BSE filings, online ticketing was the most profitable segment for the public sector enterprise for the quarter-ended December 2019 with profit before tax, interest and investment at ₹193.36 crore (about five times more than ₹36.15 crore in the same period the previous fiscal).
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.