MakeMyTrip, the Nasdaq-listed travel service provider on Tuesday reported its “highest-ever” quarterly gross bookings and adjusted operating profit for the quarter ended December 2022, as there was a surge in demand for leisure travel and a major improvement in consumer sentiment.
The company also turned profitable and reported a profit of $0.2 million, compared to a net loss of $9 million in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal, while the gross bookings grew by 64.4 per cent in constant currency year-on-year to $1.74 billion, from $1.16 billion, the company said in a statement.
Its revenue stood at $170.5 million in the quarter under review, as against $115 million in 3Q last fiscal, while adjusted operating profit improved to $19.7 million, from $13.2 million.
Rajesh Magow, co-founder & Group CEO, MakeMyTrip, said, “Positive consumer sentiment and peak seasonality on the back of festivals and holidays led to improved travel demand during this quarter… Strong growth across air, hotels and bus bookings reaffirms our position as a trusted travel super-app in India.”
The company disclosed that its revenue from air ticketing went up from $27.4 million to $38.4 million in 3Q23, while revenue from hotels and packages improved to $103.3 million, from $67.2 million in the year-ago period.
Bus ticketing revenue also jumped to $19.5 million, from $14.7 million.
Speaking at the earnings call, Magow said that the reported quarter was the second high leisure travel season quarter of the year aided by winter and festival breaks and long weekends.
“We leveraged this demand and executed our business strategies well to get back to full recovery over pre-pandemic levels in gross booking terms while driving operating leverage from the cost optimisation initiatives over the last few years,” he said.
He added that the trends suggest that travellers are back on all travel segments like leisure, business, pilgrimage, and corporate events and will continue to drive growth in the coming years as well.
“During the quarter, we strengthened our free cancellation flow within 24 hours of booking, this is again an industry-first initiative. All these innovations help us remain the first choice of customers. We continue to maintain our leadership position and our market share in domestic air ticketing this quarter stood at 30.3%,” he said.
For the company, domestic air ticketing surpassed that of the pre-pandemic levels, while international air ticketing recovery was still lagging.
On the accommodation business, which includes Hotels, Packages and Homestays segment, the inventory on the platform is now comparable to pre covid levels, Magow said. “This has also helped us now offer stay options over more than 2000 cities. Aided with seasonality, this quarter we sold more than 53,000 unique properties which was at par with pre-covid levels.”
Homestays, he said, continue to lead the recovery in the overall accommodation category with over 10,000 properties across 640 destinations.
With business travel normalizing, the company’s corporate platforms - myBiz and Q2T — are growing exceptionally, he said.
In the international businesses, the company’s OTA business in GCC was growing slowly but, steadily, he said. “Gross booking value grew 29.6% QoQ. redBus international business is showing robust recovery, in Malaysia, redBus has more than doubled its business in Q3 as compared to the same period pre-pandemic and emerged as a clear market leader with a 25% share of the overall market and running profitably.”
He said the same playbook is being replicated in other big bus markets in emerging countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America. “With this, the contribution of International to overall bus business has crossed double digits in Q3,” Magow added.
Mohit Kabra, Group CFO, MakeMyTrip, said that rationalising fixed costs during the last few years and more efficient customer acquisition spends were helping the company drive bottom line gains with improving scale.
For the 9 months ended 31 December 2022, MakeMyTrip’s YTD Gross Bookings grew by 141% in constant currency terms and came in at $4.9 billion, while Adjusted Operating Profit came in at $51.3 million as compared to $11.2 million for same period last year, witnessing a jump of over 4.6 times.