Online travel platform Ixigo turned back to profitability in the first quarter of FY23, announcing financial numbers ahead of its planned initial public offering (IPO) in the coming months, as per a disclosure made by the company.
According to Ixigo’s addendum filed with markets regulator SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), Le Travenues Technology Ltd-owned travel portal ixigo has posted a net profit of Rs 8.2 crore for the quarter-ended June as against a loss of Rs 3.4 crore in the same period a year ago.
For the full year ending March 2022, its loss stood at Rs 21.2 crore as against a profit of Rs 7.5 crore in FY21. The profitability returned after two waves of Covid-19 and Esops allotted to its employees in 2022 that impacted the company’s bottomline.
Ixigo’s operating revenue for Q1FY23 doubled to Rs 118.8 crore as against Rs 56.4 crore in its first quarter of last financial year ending June 2021.
Income from ticketing constitutes 94% of its total operating revenue. The company also booked other income of Rs 10 crore majorly from a write-back of a liability.
Its revenue from operations have seen a 3.4x growth between fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2022 growing from Rs 111.6 crore to Rs 135.5 crore and Rs 379.5 crore in financial years ending March 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively. In an over 30-player market, Ixigo claims to be emerging as the fastest growing OTA (online travel agent) in India and the second biggest OTA in India in terms of operating revenues in fiscal 2022, behind MakeMyTrip.
Ixigo’s employee expenses also doubled to Rs 30 crore in the June quarter for FY23 from Rs 15.2 crore in June quarter of FY22.
With travel bouncing back, marketing expenses for OTAs increased in fiscal 2022 as compared to fiscal 2021. In Fiscal 2022 ixigo’s advertising and sales expenses were at Rs 57.5 crore, the company said in the addendum.
Launched in 2007, Ixigo is a technology company focused on enabling Indian travellers to plan, book, and manage their trips across rail, air, buses, and hotels.
The Gurugram-based online travel portal had filed its draft prospectus in August last year and Sebi had approved the IPO in December. The company plans to raise Rs 1,600 crore through the public issue launching the IPO by mid-December 2022.
The total IPO consists of a fresh issue worth Rs 750 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) aggregating to Rs 850 crore.
As part of the OFS, existing investors Elevation Capital (erstwhile SAIF Partners) will offload shares worth Rs 550 crore, Micromax Informatics will sell shares for Rs 200 crore and cofounders Aloke Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar will divest stakes worth Rs 50 crore each.
At present, holds 23.97% stake in the company, Micromax 7.61%, Aloke Bajpai 9.18% and Rajnish Kumar 8.79%.
The company plans to utilise the net proceeds for organic and inorganic growth initiatives and general corporate purposes.
Booking running lead managers (BRLM) for the IPO are -- ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, and Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India).
The company aims to become the most customer-centric travel company, by offering the best customer experience to users.
Notably, the company is the largest Indian OTA (online ticketing agent) in the online train bookings segment and its train-centric mobile applications, Ixigo trains and ConfirmTkt, were collectively the leading B2C distribution platforms for IRCTC with 42% market share, in terms of rail bookings among the OTAs and B2C distributors of IRCTC in Fiscal 2021.
So far, Ixigo has raised $95 million including a $53 million round led by Singaporean sovereign wealth investor GIC in July 2021, including an exit from Fosun group.
In the public equity markets, Ixigo will compete with two other similar new-age firms - boAt and MamaEarth, set to make their debut on the stock exchanges. In the recent past, omnichannel beauty and lifestyle retailer Nykaa and automobile classifieds portal CarTrade were the other such tech-enabled firms that were also profitable at the time of their public listing.
