Travel portal Yatra’s revenue up 24% in Sept quarter, EBITDA loss narrows

Nasdaq-listed Yatra Online Inc, which operates travel portal Yatra.com through its Indian unit, reported higher revenues while narrowing its EBITDA loss for the quarter ended September, as per filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

EBITDA is short for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

The company’s adjusted revenue rose 23.7% to Rs 209.6 crore in the second quarter of the financial year 2018-19 from Rs 169.4 crore in the corresponding period last year.

Adjusted revenue refers to revenue and other income after deducting service costs and adding back expenses related to consumer promotions and loyalty programme costs that had been reduced from revenue.

Yatra’s EBITDA loss for the July-September quarter improved to Rs 23.3 crore from Rs 28.8 crore in the same period last year.

Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and chief executive at Yatra, said in a statement that the firm’s multi-channel approach enabled it to “deliver another quarter of strong growth.” 

“Our consumer business and our business travel platform both continue to deliver strong adjusted revenue growth while a combination of improved efficiency on our marketing spends and optimisation of our cost base helped us reduce our adjusted EBITDA loss,” he added.

Adjusted revenue from the hotels and packages segment increased to Rs 42.8 crore, an increase of 33.8% year-on-year (YoY) from Rs 32 crore.

Meanwhile, adjusted revenue from air ticketing increased to Rs 137.3 crore, representing an increase of 14.4% YoY from Rs 120 crore.

Shares of Yatra have lost around half their value since October 2017. The stock was trading at $4.44 apiece on Thursday with a market value of a little more than $200 million.

Yatra was founded in 2006 by former Ebookers Group (UK) executives Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra. Amin is chief information officer and Chopra is executive vice president of operations.

In July 2016, Yatra had signed a reverse-merger agreement with US-based special purpose acquisition company Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corp, which was listed on the Nasdaq, paving the way for a back-door listing of the second Indian online travel services provider in the US.

In July this year, Yatra had agreed to acquire corporate travel services provider ATB.

Last week, MakeMyTrip Ltd, the country's largest online travel services provider and Yatra’s bigger rival, reported higher revenue and a narrower loss for the second quarter of 2018-19.