Yatra Online Looks To Sell 9 Mn Shares Worth $50 Mn

Travel company Yatra Online is looking to raise $50 Mn via ordinary share sale, as revealed by its recent SEC filings.

The company is aiming to sell 9 Mn shares. It has also offered an additional 1.35 Mn ordinary shares to the underwriters, which if exercised in full, can take the total proceeds to $57 Mn.

Yatra Online plans to utilise the raised funds for business development purposes. In a statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Yatra Online said it plans to use the proceeds from the public market sale of shares towards “general corporate and business purposes.”

Citigroup and Jefferies are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The shares sale is expected to close around June 26, 2018, subject to customary closing conditions, the company said in a statement.

The announcement comes just a few weeks after Yatra Online revealed its intention to raise $100 Mn capital in the next three years.

“This is a universal shelf or an enabling filing which allows us to raise funds up to $100 mn, if required, over a period of next 3 years. The security could be equity, debt, preferred shares etc. However, currently, we are well funded and this filing will enable us to raise more funds at the right time to increase our capital base further, ” said Alok Vaish, Group CFO, Yatra.com in an earlier interaction with Inc42.

This comes after Yatra Online filed an offer for sale of its shares with the US SEC, in January 2017, to raise more than $60 Mn.

Yatra Online currently 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.

The company last raised $15.4 Mn as venture debt from InnoVen Capital in September 2017. Yatra also recently announced its unaudited financial results for the three months ending on December 31, 2017. As per its SEC filings, the company registered a 40.8% year-on-year (YoY) growth in revenue to $52.7 Mn (INR 336.04 Cr) for the last quarter of 2017.

Overall, in the last quarter of 2017, the online travel aggregator raked in profits upwards of $3.6 Mn (INR 23.2 Cr), with adjusted EBITDA loss expanding from $2.9 Mn (INR 18.7 Cr) in the year-ago period to $6 Mn (INR 38.8 Cr).

According to the earnings report, its revenue-less service cost from air ticketing jumped by 46% YoY to $21.4 Mn (INR 137 Cr), while that from the hotels and packages surged by 46.8% to $6.8 Mn (INR 43.7 Cr) during the three months ending in December 2017.

Yatra Online majorly competes with the likes of MakeMyTrip, ixigo, TravelTriangle, YuMiGo, HolidayIQ, ClearTrip, Expedia, Ebix-acquired Via.com, Hotels.com and Booking.com.

[The development was reported by ET.]