Easy Trip Planners To Sell Shares At Rs 186-187 Apiece In IPO

Easy Trip Planners Pvt., the holding company for online travel portal easemytrip.com, will sell shares at Rs 186-187 apiece through an initial public offering next week.

The company will launch its Rs 510-crore maiden float on March 8, according to its red herring prospectus. It comprises an offer-for-sale of 2.72 crore shares, amounting to 25.10% of the paid-up equity. At the upper end of the price band, Easy Trip will be valued at Rs 2,031 crore.

Easy Trip’s IPO, the tenth so far in calendar year 2021, will close on March 10.

“We have over Rs 200 crore cash in our books for future growth. The purpose of the IPO is listing and get valuation,” Prashant Pitti, whole time director at Easy Trip Planners, said in an interview with BloombergQuint.

Easy Trip earns more than 90% of its revenue through air tickets booked on its website and mobile application. At the end of December 2020, it allowed customers to buy air tickets of two full-service and six low-cost airlines operating in India, and more than 400 full-service and nine low-cost airlines operating in other countries, the prospectus said. Yet, 75.25% of its air-ticketing revenue is dependent on five domestic airlines.

The company plans to expand in the business-to-business and business-to-consumer space, aiming to tap enterprises and travel agents directly. The operational expenses for expanding these segment will be marginal, said Pitti.

Covid-19 Impact

Easy Trip’s gross booking revenue and gross booking volume dropped in the ongoing fiscal as the pandemic barred domestic and international travel for most part of the year.

• Gross booking revenue declined to Rs 1,220.75 crore in the nine months ended December 2020 from Rs 3,179.80 crore a year earlier.
• Gross booking volume dropped to 1.77 million in the April-December 2020 period from 4.05 million a year ago.

The decline in revenue, according to the company’s red herring prospectus, however, has been offset by a corresponding fall in all direct transaction related expenses such as service cost, marketing and sales promotion expenses and payment gateway charges.

Gross booking volumes in October-December 2020 quarter have reached 70% of that achieved in the third quarter of the last financial year, said Pitti.

Financials

Easy Trip reported Rs 81.46-crore revenue for the nine months ended December 2020, including other income worth Rs 32.19 crore. Its restated net profit stood at Rs 30.52 crore during the period.

• The company didn’t disclose comparable financials for this period in its prospectus.
• For the financial year ended March 2020, the company’s revenue stood at Rs 181 crore, including other income worth Rs 39.6 crore. Restated net profit was at Rs 32.98 crore.