What will a listed IRCTC look like?

Mumbai: Finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in the budget last week that the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corp. Ltd (IRCTC) will list along with other government-owned railways enterprises soon. So how will a listed, profitable IRCTC with a Rs1,500 crore turnover stack up against its listed peers?

Jaitley also announced that the government will waive off service charge on tickets booked through IRCTC (which is Rs20 or Rs40 at present, depending on the ticket category).

A company spokesperson declined to comment, saying it was too soon for the management to take a call on the development, but added, “We are currently anticipating losing nearly Rs600 crore per annum in service charge revenue along with the possibility of listing.” That makes roughly 36% of the IRCTC’s annual revenue in FY16.

India’s largest online travel portal cannot be really compared with other online portals because it also runs a catering business and has a government-granted monopoly on the sale of railway tickets, the largest travel network in the country. This could make it an attractive proposition for investors. According to data filed with the Registrar of Companies, IRCTC was selling 58.5% of all reserved online tickets in India at the end of last fiscal year.

Ashish Basil, partner and head of technology M&A practice at consulting firm EY, said the budget announcement that removes service charge on all tickets booked through IRCTC is likely to significantly affect their revenue.

Besides, IRCTC’s monopoly on the sale of tickets in the Railways could make investors nervous about a listed IRCTC. Details of IRCTC’s revenue sharing agreement with the Indian Railways are not in the public domain, and government-mandated changes to IRCTC’s revenue stream can wreak havoc on its market valuation.

IRCTC still has a clear advantage over other travel portals because it has no competition in the business of selling railway tickets. “Online travel portals have to advertise to bring customers to them. In that sense, they operate in a more competitive market,” Basil said.

Analysts tracking MakeMyTrip say that comparing the online travel portal with IRCTC isn’t fair. “IRCTC primarily sells railway tickets, and that forms less than 1% of MakeMyTrip’s sales,” an analyst at an international investment bank said, on the condition of anonymity. “I would imagine that the drivers for IRCTC’s growth will be very different from those of MakeMyTrip’s.”

MakeMyTrip has made nearly double of IRCTC’s revenues for the last two fiscal years. In FY15-16, the online travel portal made Rs2,264 crore in revenues, while IRCTC made Rs1,506 crore. However, MakeMyTrip also reported losses worth Rs596 crore in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, while IRCTC posted a Rs189 crore profit, up 44% from the previous fiscal year. MakeMyTrip nearly quadrupled its losses in the same year, mostly driven by discounts and promotions online. MakeMyTrip also made more money from hotel bookings, a higher margin business, than from selling airline tickets for the first time last quarter.

MakeMyTrip’s numbers are based on a coversion rate of Rs67.20 per dollar.

On the other hand, according to Yatra’s annual report for FY16, its total revenue was Rs833.8 crore, and its loss after tax Rs124.33 crore.

Besides, like other online travel agencies, IRCTC has been branching out to related lines of business. It made Rs375 crore from its travel and tourism business, which includes tour and travel packages, special tourist train tickets and nearly Rs11 crore in revenue from selling online air tickets. IRCTC has tie-ups with Amazon India and OYO rooms for other value-added services in train, travel and tourism.

Then there is the other half of the business—catering. IRCTC sells catering services on all Indian Railways trains, in outlets on Indian Railways stations, and makes and sells packaged drinking water under the brand name Rail Neer. This is a distinct line of business that makes it hard to classify IRCTC as an e-commerce business or compare it to other online travel agencies. IRCTC made Rs118.5 crore last fiscal from the sale of Rail Neer, not counting sales from departmental catering. It was a 46% increase from the previous fiscal year. IRCTC made a total of Rs359 crore from all segments of the catering and hospitality business last fiscal year.

IRCTC’s three main divisions—ticketing, catering and tourism—contributed 43%, 26% and 31%, respectively, of IRCTC’s total revenue last fiscal year. The catering division included Rail Neer.

Consulting firm KMPG’s chief operating officer Jaideep Ghosh said if IRCTC is considered to be a travel portal, it would be valued at more than just its core rail reservations business.

“Other aspects specific to IRCTC would include service offerings, geographic spreads, and tie-ups (with other service providers),” he said in an emailed statement.

Ghosh also pointed out that IRCTC’s listed valuations could be affected by how much Indians use the internet. “Macro factors like internet penetration, digitization levels and smartphone penetration will come into play,” he said.