Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Yatra Fiscal Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Glenn and I will be the moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] I would now hand you over to the host Manish to begin. Manish, please go ahead.

Thank you, Glenn. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Yatra's fiscal second quarter 2023 financial results for the period ended September 30, 2022. I'm pleased to be joined on the call today by Yatra's CEO and Co-Founder, Dhruv Shringi; and our new CFO, Rohan Mittal. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflects management views as of today, November 29, 2022. We don't undertake any obligation to update or revise the information. Before we begin our formal remarks, allow me to remind you that certain statements made on today's call may constitute forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a description of these risks, please refer to our filings with the SEC and our press release filed earlier this morning. Copies of this and other filings are available from the SEC, and also on the IR section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Dhruv. Dhruv, please go ahead.

Thank you, Manish. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today for our second quarter earnings call of fiscal 2023. Before we discuss our results for the quarter, let me just quickly update you on the Draft Red Herring Prospectus, the DRHP, which was filed by our Indian subsidiary, Yatra Online Limited, on March 25, 2022. The Securities and Exchange Board of India, which is SEBI, issued the final observation letter dated November 17, 2022, which means Yatra India's proposed IPO can open for subscription now within a period of 12 months from the date the final observation letter was issued. I just want to clarify that this doesn't mean that it will open after 12 months, this means that it can open at any point within a 12-month window from the date of the issuance of the letter. You will recall that the Yatra India subsidiary had proposed an IPO of its equity shares, comprised of a price issue of primary sale of up to INR 7,500 million and an offer for sale of up to 9.3 million equity shares in a secondary offering. We expect to commence marketing activities shortly, and currently anticipate that we can complete this offering in the first quarter of calendar year 2023. Aside from strengthening our balance sheet, we expect this offering to allow us to pursue new corporate business more aggressively and to explore alliances with partners who might not have being comfortable with an overseas structure. Let me also welcome our new CFO, Rohan Mittal, to this earnings call. Rohan brings over 20 years of experience to Yatra most recently serving as CFO for RIVIGO, and prior to that having spent time with other listed companies in India, especially in the logistics space. We are very excited to have…

Thank you, Dhruv. First of all, I would like to say how excited I am to be part of the Yatra team. Since joining the company, I have been impressed by the quality of our employees and our strong positioning in the corporate and consumer travel markets. I’m looking forward to helping our business reach new heights. I will now review our September quarter results and focus primarily on year-on-your comparisons. Our adjusted revenue increased by about 92% on a YoY basis to INR 1.5 billion. The strong year-on-your growth was driven by a rebound in the air passenger traffic of about 41% and an improvement in needs, which resulted in 110% increase in the Air Ticketing – adjusted revenue to INR 1 billion. Adjusted revenue for Hotels and Packages was up 47% to INR 240 million. Sequentially, the total gross booking declined 11% to INR 15.9 billion reflecting normal seasonality. This was partially offset by the special affairs shared by airlines to counter the seasonal trends. Gross bookings however registered a strong year-on-year growth of 88%. Hotel and Packages gross bookings improved 97% on a YoY basis reflecting strength in the corporate uptake of hotels. Gross air passengers booked were 1.27 million, up 41% year-on-year basis. Standalone hotel room-nights booked were 412,000, up 43% YoY. Moving on to the expenses. Marketing and sales promotion expenses including an add-back for consumer promotions and loyalty program costs increased by 131% on a YoY basis to INR 796 million. Our personnel expenses decreased by 3% YoY to INR 288 million in the September quarter. The decrease from the prior year was predominantly due to a decrease in the employee share-based payment expenses to INR 36.5 million from INR 79 million in the prior year quarter. Excluding the impact of the share-based compensation,…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have our first question comes from Scott Buck from H.C. Wainwright. Scott, your line is now open.

Hi, good morning guys. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, Dhruv, when you guys talk about pursuing new corporate business more aggressively post-IPO, I think we’re talking about some M&A in there, right? And if that’s the case, what’s that pipeline look like and how quickly could we see some deals get done?

Good morning, Scott. Scott, in terms of addressing that question, there are two thoughts to it. One is obviously the organic growth itself and we are seeing a strong pipeline on the organic side also today given that companies are very keen to adopt the technology solution. So that’s something which is materializing quite rapidly as we’re seeing in the number of new customers and accounts that we are signing Q-on-Q. On the other part in terms of M&A, while as part of the IPO, we have some capital for M&A. M&A as you well know has its own timeframes associated with it, but our endeavor would be once the IPO is done to accelerate this growth through a combination of both organic and inorganic. It’s hard for me to pin down an exact timeline, but I think our endeavor would be to do this as quickly as we can without compromising on the quality of the assets that we look at as part of the M&A or without doing adequate diligence. So given those constraints we will try and move as quickly as we can, but we are seeing a great opportunity at this point, Scott, both as I said organically and inorganically. So it’s not just one way, I think there are multiple levers for growing this as of today.

Okay, that makes a ton of sense. Thank you for that. I’m curious, when I think about OpEx moving forward with the return in travel demand, can you give us a sense of maybe where you are from a headcount perspective versus pre-COVID levels? And how we should think about sales and marketing expense moving from here? And I understand there’s some seasonality in there as well.

Sure. So at the headcount level we are at about half the headcount that where we were pre-COVID. Headcount increase will now be at a much more gradual pace and linked to largely new customers that we are acquiring on the corporate side. Otherwise, on the headcount front, I think we are fairly well capacitized to manage the business as is that is today. So I don’t think there will be significant bump up in headcount. Whatever incremental headcount had to come in has come in either in the September quarter or has come in subsequently in the October-November timeframe to gear us for the incremental demand that we are seeing as of today. So from a headcount perspective, I don’t see major movements happening from the headcount level that we are at as of today.

Great. Thank you. And last…

The other OpEx we should, sorry, on the other OpEx, Scott, just to factor that in, I think we should start seeing good operating leverage on that. Legal and professional cost will continue to remain at a slightly elevated level as we go through the IPO process, but then going forward from there into fiscal 2024 should paper off significantly once this one-time IPO cost is all baked in and out of the way.

Great, thank you for that. And then last one for me, if you could just, touch on for those of us that aren’t local, what the Indian IPO market looks like today? I mean, what does demand look like in any recent offerings that might give some color on how your offering may perform?

Sure. So in terms of the overall markets in India, the markets continue to remain fairly buoyant [ph], in fact the markets recently touched a new 52-week high, which is quite unheard of, right? We’re seeing on the other hand, in more developed markets that markets seem to be touching a 52-week low, whereas in India we just recently touched a 52-week high. So markets are quite buoyant. Demand for good offerings continues to remain there. We think we are one of those where there is a strong appetite given the high degree of that.

Great. Well thank you for the time guys and congrats on the quarter.

Thank you. With our next questions comes from Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti. Anja your line is now open.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I’m just curious for the new enterprise clients. This is like you accelerated up to 30 new customers this quarter. Are you at all scaling up the sales team? Or are they just getting – are you just seeing a stronger demand or is there more growth to go after, so maybe – it should be scaling up your sales team or should we think about that?

Anja, I think Dhruv’s line just drop, I’ll take that. We haven’t really expanded the sales team as much. It’s more of the inbound demand we are seeing coming in and that’s what’s resulting in the number of customers we were able to sign.

Okay, thank you.

Anja, I am sorry.

And then I’m just curious – hello?

Hi. Sorry, sorry. My line just seems to have gone silent for a while. I’m back on. Yes, Anja, please carry on.

Okay. Thank you. Manish was able to address my first question. But my second question is about the freight business. How’s that trending compared to your expectations and what can we expect in terms of revenue contribution from that for this year?

So the freight business, before – as we’ve mentioned in the past in the last quarter, I think a bit working capital constrained. Hence, we were being a bit more cautious on the trade business. Our first priority was to provide incremental working capital to our corporate business, which was recovering very strongly. So freight was slightly muted in the previous quarter because of this working capital constraint. But given that subsequent to quarter end, we’ve got this debt facility from MAK Capital and we are now in advanced stages with some of our other banks out here for extending the working capital facilities and increasing the size of our current facilities. We expect the freight recovery to happen very rapidly as well. So again on freight, the organic demand for technology and a technology lead solution is extremely high in this market. Freight, as you would recall is a very opaque market, so we think technology can really disrupt that. There were some working capital constraints because of which we had to slow that down slightly, but in the November month onwards we've started seeing recovery happening again very quickly. So freight for next fiscal year, which is like FY 2024 we would expect the trade business to do almost between US$5 million and US$6 million of revenue.

For fiscal 2023?

For fiscal 2024.

2024, okay.

So which is the next fiscal year?

Okay. Thank you. That was all for me.

Sure. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Lisa Thompson from Zacks Investment Research. Lisa, your line is now open.

Hi, good morning. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you're seeing as far as demand from consumers. In the past you said there's a lot of pent-up demand. Is there still pent-up demand or has that pretty much been filled?

Good morning, Lisa. Lisa, I've been in the travel industry now in India for the last 15, 16 years and honestly I haven't seen this kind of demand ever in my 15 years in India in the travel industry. So demand still continues to be at extremely elevated levels, especially for leisure travel and that too during peak holiday periods. Now, we are seeing very strong forward booking numbers at this point looking into the December holiday season, the Christmas and New Year holiday season. And we’ve also seen similarly, the Diwali, Dussehra break being fairly strong. So demand continues to be at high levels and we expect that this to be the new norm rather than this being just pent-up demand, which is tapering off.

Okay, interesting. So you haven’t seen any pullback at all because everyone I talked to over here in North America is saying, all of a sudden demand is getting weaker and things like that, but not in India and not in travel.

No, not, not as of now. Because, what’s also happening is that in India wage inflation right is hovering in the early double digits, right? People are seeing between 10% and 15% kind of wage inflation, especially at the mid and lower levels. And that provides enough and more, capital in the hands of consumers to continue to spend. We’ve seen saving rates also come down, historically saving rates in India where in the mid to late 30s. We are seeing them taper off to as low as, 28% to 30%. So overall in the economy, we are continuing to see enough headroom from a consumption standpoint.

That’s great. That’s good to hear. I look forward to see, how the December quarter looks and best of luck with a successful IPO. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa. [Operator Instructions] We have no further questions on the line. I will now hand back to Manish.

Thank you, Glenn. Thanks everyone for joining the call today. As always we are available to follow up, so please feel free to reach out. That concludes our call for today. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this conclude today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.