Yatra Begins FY20 With 17.8% Increase In Losses For Q1

Gurugram and New York-headquartered online travel aggregator Yatra has announced its financial performance for the first quarter of FY20. The company’s performance for the beginning of the year was negative, the revenues have continued to fall on a Y-o-Y basis and as the attempts to earn profit failed, the company incurred losses again.

The filings by the company showed that its revenue reached INR 225 Cr, a 20.7% fall against INR 283.9 Cr in Q1 FY19. However, the revenue was stagnant on a quarterly basis, as in Q4 FY19 the company reported a revenue of INR 225.84 Cr.

At the same time, the company’s losses reached INR 36.7 Cr, a 17.8% Y-o-Y increase. On a positive front, this was nearly half of the loss of INR 85.9 Cr in Q4 FY19. However, in a statement, Dhruv Shringi, cofounder and CEO of Yatra, talked about macro slowdown impact in airways due to Jet Airways shut down.

“There was also an adverse impact of INR 13.63 Cr on our operating performance in the current quarter due to legal and professional fees related to our previously disclosed merger transaction with Ebix, Inc. and the restructuring of our IATA arrangement,” Shringi said.

He added that the company rationalised its headcount by over 10% between April 2019 and September 2019 and expect it to also contribute towards its objective of positive operating performance in the near term.

Key financial performance metrics:

• Adjusted Revenue from Air Ticketing decreased to INR  114.69 Cr, a 8.6% Y-o-Y fall
• Adjusted Revenue from Hotels and Packages decreased to INR  23.54 Cr, a 55.4% fall Y-o-Y
• Total Gross Bookings (Air Ticketing and Hotels and Packages) reached INR 2650 Cr, a  decline of 6.9% Y-o-Y
• Marketing and sales promotion expenses decreased by 71.3% to INR 8. 23 Cr
• Personnel expenses decreased by 34.8% to INR 51.29 Cr
• The company booked 2.2 Mn air passengers, 347K standalone hotel room nights and 38K packages passengers travelled

Yatra: Looking Up For Ebix Merger

Founded in August 2006 by Sabina Chopra, Manish Amin and Dhruv Shringi, Yatra provides a full range of travel-related services such as domestic and international air ticketing, hotel booking, homestays, holiday packages, bus ticketing, rail ticketing, activities, attractions and ancillary services.

The company claims to have tie-ups with 70K hotels in India and nearly 800K hotels across the globe. It is backed by IDG Ventures, Vertex Venture Management, Norwest Venture Partners and other investors.

Despite rising losses, Yatra has made a string of acquisitions geared towards growth and expansion. These include Travelguru, Travel-Logs, WhatsApp-based concierge app Dudegenie and Bengaluru-based auto rickshaw aggregator MGaadi. In July 2016, Yatra signed a reverse merger agreement with NASDAQ-listed firm Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp(TRTL).

In July, the company signed a merger acquisition agreement with Ebix. For the merger, each ordinary share of Yatra will be entitled to receive 0.005 shares of a new class of preferred stock of Ebix. Following the completion of the transaction, Yatra will become part of Ebix’s EbixCash travel portfolio alongside Via and Mercury and will continue to serve customers under the Yatra brand.