MakeMyTrip (MMYT) Fiscal Q2 2027 Earnings Call: Non-Air Growth Offsets Aviation Pressure

Key Takeaways

• MakeMyTrip reported fiscal Q2 2027 gross bookings of $2.7 billion, up 20.9% year over year in constant currency, despite weaker air travel demand.
• Adjusted operating profit rose 13.8% in constant currency to $46.2 million. Adjusted operating margin was 1.7% of gross bookings, versus 1.8% a year earlier.
• Growth was led by hotels, buses and ancillary services. Non-air businesses represented 63.2% of the mix, up from 61.5% in the prior-year quarter.
• Hotels and Packages adjusted margin increased 20.2% in constant currency to $116.8 million, while Bus Ticketing adjusted margin rose 29.0% to $45.1 million.
• Myra handled more than 90,000 daily conversations and assisted over 3,000 bookings per day. Customers using Myra converted at approximately 1.7 times the rate of other customers.
• Management maintained its long-term view on India’s travel market but highlighted geopolitical uncertainty, elevated aviation turbine fuel prices, rupee depreciation and constrained airline capacity as near-term risks.

Key Financial Data

The rupee depreciated by approximately 10% against the U.S. dollar from a year earlier. Management said translation reduced reported year-over-year growth rates by about 10 percentage points, making constant-currency comparisons more representative of underlying performance.

Reported profit included a $29.6 million noncash notional interest charge related to zero-coupon convertible bonds and a $5.9 million foreign-currency translation expense. MakeMyTrip deployed $17.2 million under its share repurchase program during the quarter and has cumulatively repurchased 2.3 million shares.

Business and Operating Performance

Hotels and Packages

Hotels and Packages gross bookings increased 19.7% year over year, while segment volume grew 18.5%. Stand-alone hotel room nights rose 18.6%, supported by 20.4% growth in domestic hotels. International hotel room nights increased at a mid-single-digit rate despite weaker outbound demand.

Demand shifted toward domestic destinations, short-duration holidays, drive-down trips and pilgrimage travel. MakeMyTrip said its domestic accommodation portfolio covers more than 105,000 options across over 2,000 cities.

The directly contracted international hotel portfolio reached 40,000 accommodations, up 30% year over year, with coverage expanded to approximately 110 global destinations.

An AI-enabled recommendation system improved visitor conversion by more than 2.5%, with gains approaching 6% for super-premium stays, including villas. Locality highlights for selected homestays and villas produced a conversion uplift of more than 5% for relevant properties.

Air Ticketing

Air travel remained the most pressured business. Management said domestic departures declined 7% year over year and international departures fell 4%, while fares increased by 25% to 30%.

MakeMyTrip maintained a domestic air ticketing market share above 30% and said it performed better than the market in international air ticketing. Air Ticketing adjusted margin still grew 14.3% in constant currency, supported by stronger ancillary attachment and improved unit economics.

Higher fares pressured group margin because air ticket revenue is primarily linked to ticket volumes, while payment-processing charges are tied to booking value. Management expects this gap to narrow if fares and volumes normalize.

Ground Transport and Ancillaries

Bus ticketing volume increased 24.7%, gross bookings rose 29.4% and adjusted margin grew 29.0% in constant currency. Management attributed roughly half of the growth to inventory additions, with the remainder coming from market-share gains.

Intercity cabs grew by more than 40% year over year from a smaller base. The Other segment, which includes cabs, rail, insurance, foreign exchange, tours, activities and other ancillary services, generated $24.4 million in adjusted margin.

Corporate and Indirect Distribution

The myBiz platform served approximately 84,600 active corporate customers, compared with 75,500 a year earlier. Quest2Travel served 568 large customers, up from 527.

More than 26,000 unique travel agents transacted through myPartner during the quarter for the first time. Management said corporate travel and indirect channels added resilience while leisure air travel remained under pressure.

Artificial Intelligence

Myra now supports end-to-end trip planning, native voice interaction and in-chat payments. Around 55% of Myra conversations came from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, where engaged customers converted at more than 2.1 times the rate of customers not using the assistant.

Myra autonomously resolved more than 53% of post-booking flight and hotel queries. AI-powered semantic search represented approximately 10% of hotel searches and delivered conversion rates around 24% above filter-led search.

Management said AI investment is focused on three outcomes: higher revenue and conversion, greater operating productivity, and expansion of the addressable market through regional-language access and digitization of fragmented travel supply.

Management Outlook

Management did not provide quantitative revenue or profit guidance. It said future growth should continue to benefit from a broader mix of accommodation, ground transport, corporate travel and ancillary services, while air ticketing remains exposed to macroeconomic and capacity constraints.

The company expects bus momentum to continue into upcoming quarters, supported by festive demand, highway infrastructure and fleet upgrades. It also expects operating margin expansion to resume if airfares and passenger volumes normalize.

MakeMyTrip has confidentially filed for a potential IPO of its wholly owned subsidiary, MakeMyTrip India Limited. Timing remains subject to regulatory approvals and market conditions. Management said there had been no fundamental change in its approach and that the company intends to remain prepared for a suitable market window.

Risks and Watchpoints

• The West Asia conflict, elevated aviation turbine fuel prices and rupee depreciation are weighing on domestic and international air demand.
• Constrained airline capacity contributed to lower departures and substantially higher fares.
• Elevated airfares increase payment-processing expenses without a corresponding rise in revenue per ticket, creating near-term margin pressure.
• Outbound travel demand remains weaker in the Middle East and long-haul markets.
• Marketing and sales promotion expense increased to 5.4% of gross bookings as MakeMyTrip continued investing in customer acquisition and lower-penetration categories.
• The proposed India IPO remains dependent on regulatory approvals and capital-market conditions.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

December-quarter demand: Management acknowledged that airline traffic data remained weak but emphasized that platform growth has become less dependent on air ticketing. The company plans to offset pressure in individual categories through hotels, buses, cabs, corporate travel and ancillary services.

Customer-acquisition spending: Management said the shift toward higher-margin accommodation and ground-transport businesses provides greater capacity to invest in acquisition while protecting profitability. It also indicated that profitability could improve if air demand recovers and acquisition costs become more efficient.

Agentic AI risk: Management characterized current Myra adoption as assisted commerce embedded within the booking journey rather than fully autonomous, end-to-end agentic commerce. It argued that vertical travel platforms retain advantages from proprietary transaction data, live inventory, fragmented supplier relationships, payments and post-booking support.

Competition: Management reported no material change in competitive intensity across air or hotels. It said the company prioritizes service, relevant inventory and customer experience over deep discounting, while remaining price competitive.

India listing structure: Management said discussions about eventual share fungibility or a path toward a single listing remain exploratory. Further details are expected only after regulatory approval of the confidential filing and progress toward a public offering.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Vipul Garg

Everyone. I'm Vipul Garg, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations at MakeMyTrip Limited, and welcome to our fiscal 2027 second quarter earnings webinar. Today's event will be hosted by the company's leadership team, comprising Rajesh Magow, our Co-Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer; Mohit Kabra, our Group Chief Operating Officer; and Dipak Bohra, our Group Chief Financial Officer.

As a reminder, this live event is being recorded by the company and will be made available for replay on our IR website shortly after the conclusion of today's event. At the end of these prepared remarks, we will also be hosting a Q&A session. Furthermore, certain statements made during today's event may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of safe harbor provision of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, are subject to inherent uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially.

Any forward-looking information relayed during this event speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements is contained in the Risk Factors and forward-looking Statements section of the company's annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on July 27, 2026. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC or from the company's Investor Relations department.

I would like to now turn over the call to Rajesh. Over to you, Rajesh.

Rajesh Magow

Thank you, Vipul. Welcome, everyone, to our second quarter call for fiscal 2027. We are pleased to report strong market-leading growth despite a challenging environment for the travel industry, particularly in air travel segment. The West Asia conflict and resulting inflationary pressures due to high ATF prices and INR depreciation have weighed on air travel demand, both for international and domestic air travel. Our performance in such difficult macro conditions is a testament to our resilient comprehensive product portfolio strategy, both in retail and corporate segments as well as the focused execution by the team.

Our strong Q2 performance in a low leisure travel season quarter was led by domestic travel and short-haul international destinations for leisure purpose, while business travel within India continued as usual, resulting in robust growth in our corporate business. We were able to capitalize on this shift of choices with our ground transport offerings along with unmatched accommodation options resulting in robust growth in these segments while performing in line with the market on air travel. We continue to deliver growth and profitability while investing in the capabilities that will support our long-term growth.

In Q2, we delivered gross bookings of $2.7 billion, witnessing growth of 20.9% year-on-year in constant currency and adjusted operating profit of $46.2 million. All business segments delivered strong growth, both in volumes and gross bookings value except air ticketing, where we continue to hold on to our market share in domestic air ticketing and performed better than market in international air ticketing. Our non-air business mix has now reached 63.2% compared to 61.5% during the same quarter last year. We believe our resilience is best reflected in our ability to sustain customer engagement, serve evolving travel needs across categories and deliver profitable growth.

India's underlying economic momentum and propensity to travel remains robust. Therefore, our longer-term view of India remains unchanged. The near-term environment calls for careful execution alongside continued investment in the market with substantial long-term potential. An expanding base of aspiring travelers, participation from smaller cities, improving connectivity and digital payments will support growth in travel consumption over time. The opportunity includes both increased travel frequency and a greater share of that travel being booked online.

Progress will vary by category and market, but the underlying need for convenient reliable travel services remains strong. This is why we continue to invest beyond the immediate quarter. hotels, alternative accommodations, buses intercity cabs, to older experiences present opportunities where the supply is fragmented and is digitally underpenetrated. In these categories, growth requires us to make supply easier to discover and book improve confidence in the product and deliver dependable service. Building these capabilities helps expand the online market and strengthens our ability to own a larger share of it.

For hotels, we continue to drive online penetration by going deeper into the country and aggregating fragmented supply. Similarly, our intercity cabs business, which we started to build only a couple of years ago. is now growing upwards of 40% year-on-year, although on a small base. Our objective is to build sustained share gains through a better customer and partner proposition backed by a strong tech platform.

Let me now share how we think about AI. We see AI as a net positive for online travel platforms, particularly in large emerging markets such as India. I can gradually change how customers search and book for travel but it does not change what it takes to deliver a trip, accurate and bookable supply, reliable transactions and someone accountable when plans change. We believe value will accrue to platforms that are -- that own those capabilities, and these are the capabilities we have spent building over the last 2 decades.

Travel is an involved purchase with an element of inspiration, exploration, emotion and experience and often a significant share of household spend. Customers like to explore multiple options take time to discuss with families and friends before choosing the reliable auction. We expect conversational assistance and visual discovery to work together with customers choosing how much of the journey they want to delegate. The nature of supply in India is central to how we think about this. Much of India's travel supply is fragmented and a meaningful part of it still operates off-line, independent hotels, home stays and villas, thousands of private bus operators and local cab operators.

A large part of this supply does not have structured content or reliable digital print operates and availability. Horizontal AI assisted can only recommend what is discoverable, accurate and bookable that is available on Internet. And in India, much of that layer does not exist on the open web. It has to be built on the ground partner by partner. Our domestic accommodation portfolio now covers more than 105,000 auctions across over 2,000 cities, and our bus platform carries more than 50,000 schedules a day. Behind these numbers are years of partner onboarding content creation, inventory and pricing tools and quality checks. This is difficult to replicate and AI makes it more valuable, not less.

Our second advantage is proprietary data. Over 2 decades of searches, bookings, cancellations and reviews from customers who have actually traveled give us a grounded understanding of water property is really like, which room suites a family with elderly parents or which bus operator runs on time. Our knowledge graph connects property attributes, reviews, images and location intelligence with customer preferences. General purpose models built on public information, do not have this transaction level understanding and it is what makes recommendations relevant. As AI makes information more widely accessible, we expect differentiation to depend increasingly on the relevance of recommendation, the quality of bookable option and the reliability of service.

Third is the transaction and the relationship after it. A traveler needs confidence that the price is final that the payment has gone through, whether by UPI card or EMI or with the right GST advice for a business traveler, and that support will be available if plans change when a flight is canceled, a booking needs to be amended or a property does not meet expectations. The customer needs a clear point of contact who can rebook refund and coordinate with supply. Our ability to connect discovery with booking, payments, amendments, refund and assistance at scale and across languages is central to our proposition.

This brings me to trust which we believe will shape how customers adopt AI and travel. General purpose assistance are useful for inspiration and research and some travelers may begin their journeys there. But planning a trip and committing money to it are different decisions. When a customer is spending a meaningful part of their monthly income order on a family holiday. They want the answer to come from someone who can see live inventory and actual policies can complete and change the booking and stands behind the outcome. General assistant can recommend a travel platform is accountable for delivery.

We think this distinction matters most at the point of payment and when something goes wrong, it is where a vertical assistant backed by a trusted brand as a natural advantage. In India, this matters even more. Many of the customers coming online are first time or infrequent travelers from smaller cities often more comfortable speaking in Hindi or a regional language than typing in English and highly value conscious. They often need help understanding and unfamiliar destination of product.

A customer planning a pilgrimage with elderly parents may want to explain the budget accessibility needs and meal premises in their own language and be confident that what gets booked will match. The travel specialist assistant backed by brands customers already know such as MakeMyTrip [indiscernible] is well placed to own that confidence. We believe this can help being bring assisted and off-line travel demand online and help smaller suppliers reach demand, they would otherwise find difficult to access. These are meaningful opportunities to expand the market.

Our early experience supports this view. Building on last quarter's launch of Myra 2.0, we made our AI travel assistant smarter, faster and more closely integrated into customer journey, expanding its capabilities across end-to-end trip planning native voice interaction and in chart payments. Myra now engages in over 90,000 daily conversations and assist over 3,000 bookings a day. Customers engaging with Mara converted around 1.7x the rate of those who don't. In Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which account for around 55% of Myra conversations, this rises to over 2.1x. These are the customers who benefit from the assistance and these patents reinforce our view tha a travel specialist assistant can help more of them book with confidence. Myra also resolved over 53% of post-booking queries, autonomously in relation to flights and hotels.

We have also embedded Generative AI into our core hotel and flight booking journey, helping customers express their preferences in natural language and discover more relevant options. AI-powered semantic search now accounts for around 10% of hotel searches with conversion rates approximately 24% higher than filter-led search. Smart filters and Myra recommendations within the booking journey are showing even greater conversion advantages, particularly among new customers.

Our approach is to keep strengthening our interface Myra while experimenting with external assistance. Alongside customer-facing applications, our investment priorities include AI assisted engineering, partner onboarding and customer support. AI can make the work of alligating fragmented supply faster and more efficient. For example, in creating content for and onboarding smaller partners, and we see scope to reinvest part of those productivity gains in growth. We will measure success through better customer outcomes, dependable service and sustainable economics with appropriate oversight where human judgment remains important.

To summarize, we are driving 3 economic outcomes with AI. A, growing revenue and conversion through personalized discovery, semantic search, assisted planning, relevant cross-sell and better matching of customer intent with available inventory; b, improving operating productivity through automation of routine servicing, engineering productivity, supplier, content creation and faster partner onboarding; and c, expanding the addressable market by bringing fragmented supply online, enabling customers to transact in regional languages and making complex travel products easier to discover and book.

Looking ahead, we remain mindful of evolving geopolitical environment and macro situation. We will continue to serve customers across their travel needs, strengthen our presence in categories with significant potential for online adoption and invest with discipline and future growth. We believe this approach positions MakeMeTrip well to capture India's long-term travel opportunity and deliver sustainable profitable growth.

With this, let me now hand over the call to Mohit for business highlights of the quarter.

Mohit Kabra

Thanks, Rajesh, and hello, everyone. During the reported quarter, the external environment remained challenging, for the Indian travel industry and particularly for our outbound and air ticketing businesses, while making sure that we performed better than the industry in the impacted segments, we focused on driving growth momentum in the other segments of travel such as accommodations ground transport, including bus and cabs as well as a variety of ancillary travel services. As a result, we were able to post gross bookings year-on-year constant currency growth of 20.9%.

The ability to drive strong operational results, even in a seasonally weaker quarter of our leisure travel despite the degrowth in air ticketing industry shows the resilience we have built in our overall business and in being able to dial up different lines of businesses and/or demand segments, largely led by our ability to offer curated travel options that suit the pocket of every Indian traveler. In view of high airfields, we dialed up growth across domestic destinations, promoting drive down breaks, short duration holidays, pilgrimage literates and supported the breadth of our hotel and ground offerings.

Our operating focus remained on expanding relevant supply, improving the booking experience and encouraging repeat usage. As we build on this breadth, we are deepening our capabilities within each category to serve more travel locations and across price points. Let me now share some segmentize commentary, beginning with hotels and packages, which accounts for a leading 40% share of our business mix.

During this quarter, this segment delivered adjusted margin of $116.8 million, representing a strong year-on-year constant currency growth of 20.2%. Stand-alone hotel room night grew 18.6% and driven by a strong growth of 20.4% in domestic hotels. It was encouraging that despite the degrowth in outbound travel from India due to a variety of external factors, our international room nights continue to grow at mid-single digits year-on-year. Domestic growth was powered by curating wider supply to drive demand for a variety of travel occasions, including sort duration, special tourism or celebrations, such as anniversaries and family gatherings.

International rural demand has also held up across destinations outside the Middle East and long-haul markets where geopolitical headwinds and high fares continue to weigh on travel. Accommodation remains an important investment priority for us. India's supply landscape is fragmented with a wide range of independent hotels home stays and villas. For many partners, the opportunity involves getting discovered and bringing more of their business online.

At the end of the quarter, our domestic accommodation portfolio covered more than 15,000 options across 2,000 cities in the country. Alongside expanding coverage, our priorities include improving content availability and personalization of recommendations so that our customers get the most relevant options to choose from, and our supply partners see improving business from participating on our platforms.

While geopolitical headwinds weighed on near-term international demand, we continue to see outbound travel as a significant long-term growth opportunity and therefore, continue to invest in building international hotel supply. We're expanding our directly contracted hotel network. We have expanded our direct total supply by adding 45 new cities during the last 1 year, taking our total presence to about 110 destinations globally. Overall, the directly contracted international hotel portfolio grow to 40,000 accommodations, a 30% increase over same quarter last year. These investments broaden our offering and strengthen our ability to capture growth as demand recovers.

In hotels, we are combining a broader range of accommodation options with technology that helps customers find the right stay for their needs. For family holidays and pilgrimage trips to group travel, events or business-related travel, we continue to expand our supply and product capabilities to serve each of these occasions a lot more effectively. Our focus extends across customer cards and price points, offering relevant choices for different budgets and preferences. We continue to accelerate our efforts to solve for specific needs of the Indian customers as they travel within India and internationally.

Flexibility with all e-bookings, solving for guaranteed early check-ins, upgrading to better rooms, getting the right meals, group stays, odd child stay options are some of the examples of areas which we have worked on with deep consumer insights and specific needs while solving for customer needs on site, this value proposition also helped build incremental revenue for our supply partners. These value propositions were driven largely by rolling out an AI-enabled deep learning system across our apps combining our proprietary knowledge graph of property attributes, reviews, images and location intelligence with customer insights on preferences and behavior to deliver more relevant recommendations for our customers.

This improved visitor conversion by over 2.5% with gains of nearly 6% for super premium stays, including Villas. The system is now live for all app users and we continue to expand the coverage and refine the model. In Home stays, we continue to invest behind building the category. We announced our product proposition by introducing locality highlights to help customers better understand our property surroundings and be able to book with confidence, particularly in destinations like hilly areas where home stays and villas are often spread across off beat locations. This feature is now live across field destinations and has delivered over 5% conversion uplift for the relevant properties. During the last quarter, we sold over 29,400 unique properties across 1,185 cities. We plan to extend this feature to relevant pilgrimage and leisure destinations as well.

In Tools and Attractions, our aim is to serve more of the trip beyond the initial flight of hotel booking. Discovery and booking of these services remains fragmented across most destinations, making relevant activities available alongside the customer's itinerary can improve convenience and increase engagement during travel. With a view to drive convenience in booking and selection, we introduced the MMT experience bar a flexible bundled offering designed to encourage customers to book multiple activities within a destination with compelling value proposition. Early adoption across Southeast Asian destinations has been encouraging and reinforces the potential of offering these bundled experiences to drive higher customer engagement and gain larger wallet share.

Our Bus Ticketing business where Redbus is a strong market leader with phenomenal top of mind recall, continues to deliver strong growth. We delivered volume growth of 24.7% year-on-year with 29.4% growth in gross bookings and 29% growth in adjusted margin in constant currency terms. We continue to work very closely with our bus operating partners to add more inventory particularly in overnight or pilgrimage-led routes, which are seeing much better offtake in view of the prevailing high airfares. Hence, almost half of the growth is led by inventory additions with the rest being market share gains.

We continue to be optimistic about this segment in view of the improving highway infrastructure and investments by our supply partners in fleet upgrades. We expect this momentum to continue in the coming quarters. in line with the upcoming festive demand, alongside a gradual shift towards higher quality buses with enhanced amenities. We continue to enhance customer experience by expanding the coverage of the customer comfort score displaying onboard toilets, emergency exits in city layouts, improving in-app pipe tracking experience and enhancing our AI assistant trade. Our campaign on ease of travel, particularly for women travelers on buses with in-build toilets gained good traction among women travelers across India. These kind of product-led initiatives are helping us further strengthen our customer proposition.

Coming to the air ticketing business, this has been impacted by macro headwinds. Overall, market supply was constrained and domestic departures witnessed a decline of 7% year-on-year, while international departures witnessed a degrowth of 4% year-on-year. Both high sales and constraint capacity impacted demand, leading to an overall decline in flown passengers. In line with our called-out strategy, we continue to maintain a leading 30% plus share of domestic air ticketing market. Air remains an important part of our customer proposition and a source of engagement across the travel journey.

AI is becoming an important differentiator in our flight's business helping us improve both booking as well as service through smarter fair discovery, personalized recommendations, integrated trip planning and proactive disruption management. These capabilities are designed to strengthen customer experience and improve the economics of the business. We continue to enhance our product proposition and drive cross-sell. During the quarter, we launched an integrated flight plus cab booking experience connecting customers to 200-plus high-demand destinations across India without the airports through a single purchase journey. The feature simplifies end-to-end travel planning and supports cross-category adoption rollout is underway with flights and cap combinations being optimized for total travel cost and journey duration.

Let me now share some details specific to our B2B or corporate business as well as the indirect B2C channels. We continue to sharply target different brand cohorts via our corporate platforms, travel agent networks and affiliate partnerships to extend our reach to a broader customer base. Our corporate travel business continues to perform strongly, tapping into a demand pool that complements B2C travel. This mix adds resilience and helps navigate short-term headwinds more effectively.

myBiz and Quest2Travel, the 2 platforms that we operate on the corporate side allow us to serve businesses with different requirements from SMEs to large enterprises. These customers value policy controls, reporting and support alongside convenience booking. At the end of the quarter, myBiz served about 84,600 active corporate customers as compared to about 75,500 corporate customers during same quarter last year. And Quest2Travel solved 568 large customers compared to about 527 large customers served a year earlier.

Our travel agent platform, myPartner continues to see growing adoption with more than 26,000 unique agents transacting during the quarter for the first time. This was supported by an on-ground engagement at technology-led CRM initiatives. Agents are also booking a broader range of offerings with healthy repeat activity, reflecting stronger engagement and further cross-sell potential. Another distribution channel for us is my affiliates wherein we power travel for other online platforms like Amazon Pay, PhonePe, et cetera.

While my affiliates remain a small part of our overall business, it is helping us acquire new customers based on seasonality and shifting of demand patterns, we will continue to leverage our varied distribution capabilities to maximize overall growth for the business.

With this, let me now hand over the call to Dipak for the financial highlights of the quarter.

Dipak Bohra

Thanks, Mohit, and hello, everyone. Before turning to the financial highlights, I would like to highlight the notional cancellation impact of the rupee depreciation against the U.S. dollar compared with last year, to ensure our numbers are well understood. In Q2, currency depreciated by around 10%, resulting into lower year-on-year growth rates by approximately 10 percentage points in reported currency due to translation itself. Our commentary, therefore, focuses on constant currency growth to provide a more accurate view of underlying business performance.

To start with, gross booking value for the quarter grew 20.9% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms with all key segments growing in double digits. The quarter performance was supported by strong growth in hotels and packages, bus ticketing business and other segment, helping us deliver strong operating performance despite macro headwinds.

Moving on to our segment results. Our air ticketing adjusted margin stood at $108.6 million, registering a Y-o-Y growth of 14.3% Y-o-Y in constant currency. While the overall airline departures and passenger flown volume declined Y-o-Y and the fares increased in the range of 25% to 30% Y-o-Y due to macro headwinds. We performed better than the market maintain our market share and achieve robust growth in adjusted margin on the back of strong ancillary attach and better unit economics.

For the Hotels and Packages segment, we recorded strong volume growth of 18.5% Y-o-Y with stand-alone hotels growing faster at 18.6% Y-o-Y on the back of strong demand in domestic hotel segment. which grew at over 20% Y-o-Y. We benefited from the shift leisure demand towards domestic travel, including short duration and drive down holiday and pilgrimage led travel. Our expanding supply across established and emerging domestic markets allowed us to participate effectively in this shift. International Hotels segment growth was muted this quarter due to macro headwinds. Hotels and Packages gross booking growth was at 19.7% Y-o-Y and adjusted margin growth was at 20.2% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms coming at $116.8 million.

Ground Transport continued to grow at a strong pace during the quarter, supply additions, wider route coverage and the continued development of India's highway infrastructure supported the category structural growth. Bus ticketing adjusted margin was at $45.1 million for the quarter, registering a strong growth of 29% Y-o-Y in constant currency. Our ancillaries business, which includes intercity cabs, rate, insurance, ForEx, tools and activities and other ancillaries and is part of the Other segment is scaling up well, aided by higher attach rates of ancillary services. As a result, adjusted margin from other segment came at $24.4 million, witnessing a strong growth of 29.8% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms.

Moving on the expense side, most expenses came in line. Marketing and sales promotion expenses for the quarter was 5.4% of gross booking value compared to 5.2% during the same quarter last year. We continue to invest selectively to support future growth and gain market share, particularly in categories where online penetration remains low. Our investment approach is to balance current performance with the capabilities needed for future growth. priorities include accommodation, ground transport, emerging categories like tours and activity, customer experience and AI. We assess these investments against adoption, repeat behavior and contribution economics.

We are also investing in AI with a clear focus on returns. Early efficiency aims are creating room to fund future growth. Our financial priorities remain to support profitable growth, maintain the flexibility to invest and allocate capital with discipline. Adjusted operating profit for the quarter came in at $46.2 million witnessing a growth of 13.8% Y-o-Y in constant currency. Our adjusted operating profit margin was 1.7% of gross bookings this quarter compared with 1.8% a year ago. This is primarily due to divergence in air ticket revenue.

Our air ticket revenue is largely linked to number of tickets booked while payment gateway charges are linked to the total booking value with Air freights going up by 25% to 30% processing each booking became more expensive without a corresponding increase in revenue per ticket. We expect this gap between revenue and processing costs to narrow as fares and volume normalize supporting a resumption of margin expansion.

Adjusted net profit before tax grew by 27% year-on-year to $46.2 million, reflecting our underlying earnings performance. Reported profit includes noncash charge of $29.6 million in notional interest on our 0 coupon convertible bonds and $5.9 million in translation related to foreign currency expense, neither of which represent any cash outflow. We have a strong balance sheet, and our cash flow generation continues to be robust. We ended the quarter with a cash and cash equivalent balance of $815 million. Apart from a small investment plan increase of our stake in book by ForEx, we deployed $17.2 million in the buyback program during the quarter.

The company is preemptively managing dilution through buyback program, Cumulatively, we have now repurchased 2.3 million shares, covering for our 37% of the share capital expected to be issued related to 2028 convertible bonds. On the proposed IPO of our wholly-owned subsidy, MakeMyTrip India Limited, we have made a confidential filing earlier and continue to work with the capital market regulator and stock exchanges to get the due approvals. The timing of the IPO is subject to regulatory approvals and market conditions.

With that, I'd like to turn the call to Vipul for Q&A.

Vipul Garg

Thanks, Dipak. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Sachin Salgaonkar of Bank of America.

Question-and-Answer Session

Sachin Salgaonkar

I have 3 questions. First question, just wanted to get a sense on early indications how the December quarter is turning. Clearly, DGC air traffic shows traffic is down every month given the supply issues and higher oil price. So as we head into the seasonally stronger quarter, should we expect a softer quarter versus what we have seen historically? And a related question is your inducements are increasing. So does that mean marketing spend as a percentage of GOV should be closer to 5.5% or higher than that for the fiscal year. Let me pause here.

Mohit Kabra

Sachin, maybe I'll take the [indiscernible]. On the growth side, yes, the growth on the flight side basis, the reports coming from DGCA are a good leading indicator of how kind of travel is behaving. But you would see that over the last so many quarters now, the overall growth for the platform for us has been a lot more robust compared to how ticketing per se is behaving? Like even in this current reported quarter, you would have seen the degrowth in the air industry was larger than the degrowth we saw in the previous quarter.

But despite that, the overall growth that we were able to drive across the businesses was actually slightly higher than even in the previous quarter or Q1. So actually, overall growth has actually improved through this quarter. despite the setback on the flight ticketing side. And that would be our endeavor. And like we've been calling out over the last few quarters, we want to kind of build more and more resilience within the business that even if there is a line of line of business or the segment, which is not doing very well due to macro headwinds, we try and kind of make that up to the other lines of businesses. So that's something that we'll continue to endeavor even in the upcoming quarters.

On the other item, which is regarding the increasing customer acquisition costs, like I had called out earlier also, because of A, degrowing. And as a result of that, the mix is improving and going more and more towards higher-margin businesses like accommodation and say, for instance, ground transport or other segments, which are reported in the other is kind of a suggestion. With this improved margin businesses kind of increasing share in the mix our ability to spend a little more on customer acquisition is much better.

And therefore, while making sure that on the bottom line, we continue to kind of remain robust. This should be seen in line with the mix of the business and the improving mix of the business. So if that continues, I don't think we would be kind of worried about optically, the customer equation cost looking slightly higher.

Sachin Salgaonkar

Got it. Pretty clear, Mohit. Second question, your press release does indicate customers are engaging with Myra, now I think 1.7x more bookings are done versus non-Myra customers. So is this a sign that consumers are comfortable with Agentic AI? And if that's the case, then do we see a risk that the top 1% to 5% of users and given the fact that from a [indiscernible] rule point of view, they are the heavy spenders, if they eventually move towards Agentic AI platforms, we see a risk of losing revenues.

So would love to understand how should we look at consumer adoption of agent and how big that could be a risk, especially for your top users. I do understand the mass market users may never move to an Agentic AI.

Rajesh Magow

Maybe I can take that. Sachin, a good question as always. A couple of points here. Very important to understand. So the metrics that we have shared like 3,000 bookings and 1.7x better conversion is when our customers are using Myra for assistance while they are in the consumer journey. So the regular consumer journey, they are already on the flow. And in between, if you have to ask a question, they are in [indiscernible] Myra. And people who are in [indiscernible] Myra and asking clarificatory question end up sort of converting 1.7x more than the others who don't.

So this is actually embedded in a way along with the consumer journey. So it's not that -- at this point in time, that we see in India, that people are immediately starting from every show, going all the way and getting comfortable with the agent e-commerce yet. It is more of a use case that is getting early days positive signals that they are quite happy to use agent or assistance as and when they need it, right? So that is one important point.

The second is just the overall conversations are growing. Now -- right now, the adoption in India is more on sort of asking the questions around trip planning and doing the search, complex query and also some smaller cities through the voice as well as the vernacular usage, the new users who have not necessarily have ever used it, are coming through the conversational interface. Again asking a few questions and then trying to sort of go to the funnel and do the booking. So I would say I don't think we should jump to conclusion at this point in time in India, that they are completely getting comfortable with the start to end on Agentic e-commerce yet, Agentic commerce for travel yet, and therefore, time will only tell.

And the last point that I will make is, and I think I tried to cover that in the script very, very elaborativey as well the reasons for that, not necessarily only the mass market, the comment that you made. But also the serve users that rather than going through the general purpose or a horizontal third-party agent, I think the vertical agent with a trusted brand and the -- in the expert with proprietary data over the years would be better placed to service the end-to-end vertical assistance, if you will rather than coming through the third-party agent, right?

So that's really our view at this point in time, especially in the emerging markets because the level of the content that we have sort of built over a period of time given the fragmented nature of the supply underneath across the segments, is very, very rich and it's very hard to applicate. So unless a third party agent starts to -- they look to start building the capabilities where they can go end to end, which there is ample clarity that there is no real direction on that front. I think the vertical travel assistance or I don't know about the other category, but I would have thought sort of first principle even in the other categories might be in a better position to sort of leverage to that shift of trend that as and when that happens.

Sachin Salgaonkar

Thanks Rajesh, very elaborate. And last question is whatever you could share on a potential India IPO anything new? And I'm asking it because Dipak did mention that IPO timing is subject to market conditions and SEBI approval. But looking at where macro conditions are where oil at $114 plus an overhang on Agentic AI globally on the OTAs, softer demand and even the sentiment across for stock markets across the world is not as great. So is it fair to say that ideally, there's no IPO happening for the next 6 to 9 odd months or we don't know that. Any clarity, any incremental new it would be helpful.

Mohit Kabra

Yes, happy to take that, Sachin. In fact, we've always said that any capital market activity is always subject to kind of the market conditions. And I think the best thing that one can do is to kind of remain prepared to be able to utilize a good market opportunity. From that point of view, like we had called out, you've already made a confidential filing. And one of the reasons we're doing confidential filing was that in troubled markets, confidential filing allows you a much larger tenure through which it is kind of valid, so it's almost very for like 18 months.

Right now, we are at a stage where we are still working with the regulators in terms of responding to their queries and awaiting their approval on the on the confidential filing post which we kind of take the next steps as and when appropriate based on how the market kind of remains. So I think we remain prepared and we kind of dial in as market conditions suggest it to be fit.

Rajesh Magow

And in that sense, Sachin, actually, there is no change fundamentally of the approach. Since your question was if there is anything new or change. It's actually no change. The change might be market condition, which was always the case. So there is no real change. It's just basically we will stay -- as Mohit said, we stay prepared and then keep watching the market condition and then as and when there is an opportunity, we look at it.

Vipul Garg

The next question is from the line of Manish Adukia of Goldman Sachs.

Manish Adukia

My first question is on the air business. I mean, historically, the way at least I understood the business was that your air revenue growth is more indexed to volume growth and less to GBV growth. But in recent quarters, it does feel like it's tracking materially higher than the volume growth, at least the adjusted margin number. One, if you can explain why that is the case? And two, in that context, is the right method to look at for your air business, the IFRS revenue maybe more than the adjusted margin, if you can just maybe help me understand that, that will be great.

Mohit Kabra

So Manish, as you know, on the air ticketing business, it is more flattish margins than kind of completely variable like some of the other lines of businesses such as accommodation, bus ticketing, et cetera, the margins that we earn are completely variabilized, right? And therefore, any change in the ASPs and immediate impact on the absolute margins earned also. In case of flights, it is more kind of fixed kind of number than variable, but that doesn't mean there is absolutely no variability at all, particularly when it comes to rear entered incentives or, say, any upper incentives that we have with the airlines some of the segment fees, et cetera. There is a little bit of a variability as well. So some of the ASP increases do kind of help.

And the other thing to kind of keep in mind is, usually, you would find that in softer seasonality quarter, the margins tend to be slightly better compared to the seasonally kind of peak quarters. And therefore, again, the margin percentages in this quarter largely in line with, say, a similar quarter in the previous years as well. So largely in line and in tandem, nothing specific or kind of differentiated in particular.

Manish Adukia

My second question is on the inducement costs. So maybe 2 parts of the question, right? So one, I mean, I understand the mix shift that you called out earlier Mohit towards hotels, which is driving overall inducement costs high. But just the inducement costs in the hotel segment alone, there also directionally, the inducement costs have moved higher. One, if you can explain what is driving that? And second, just a hypothetical scenario, let's say, hypothetically, air demand were to improve next year and the inducement costs in the air business, which are today high come down to where it used to be in the past.

And today, like you're talking at 5.5% overall inducement cost at a company level, right? And let's say that falls to a lower number, 5.1%, 5.2% should directionally, all of that flow to the EBIT number. What I mean to ask is today you're at 1.7% EBIT margin. You've been in that range for a while. Is there opportunity that if demand recovers, that inducement costs can suddenly fall quite sharply. And so EBIT margins may see a sharp expansion? Or am I thinking that incorrectly?

Mohit Kabra

To a large extent, you're right, Manish. Like I've been saying, we got to kind of look at the customer equation cost or investment costs in line with mix of the business. And therefore, say, for instance, if the mix is kind of growing in favor of, say, the higher-margin businesses, the optically then you'll find the investment cost as a percentage, also kind of trending in that direction. So you're right.

The other thing that I wanted to clarify was, it's even the 1.7% that you look at it, which reported this quarter and might look we kind of largely remaining in that range where we were, say, last year. Actually, it is a bit of an improvement because the denominator is undergoing a change. Like Dipak was calling out in his part of the script, air fares have gone up by almost like 25%, 30%. That's clearly not in the normal course of business, right? Even if you were to assume that maybe up to 10%, fare increases are normal, in line with kind of inflationary conditions. The rest, which is almost at least 15% is kind of exceptional. And considering that air accounts for almost like 60% of the growth bookings, that's almost like the denominator has gone up by 10 percentage points.

So this 1.7%. But for this situation on a pricing would have looked much better as a percentage of gross bookings. So optically, like I always keep calling it out based on market situations, some numbers like adjusted margin or say adjusted operating margin as a percentage of gross booking our customer equation cost as a percentage of gross booking will kind of move in tandem with market conditions, but you are absolutely right that if kind of the overall situation on travel was to ease out and the demand was to come back a lot more comprehensively with the air kind of also contributing to growth, there clearly is an opportunity for kind of getting more efficient on the customer acquisition side and kind of seeing a more kind of improvement on the profitability side as well.

Manish Adukia

If you can just also address the first part of my question on the hotel segment, in particular, why the inducement charges have been moving higher.

Mohit Kabra

So again, these are all kind of more last-minute attribution. And therefore, I don't kind of like commenting on any specific quarter or any specific segment in a quarter because this -- like I said, this attribution is more post transaction or transaction led. And therefore, looking at these over a normalized period of say about 4 quarters is a better way to look at it rather than for a specific period.

Manish Adukia

Right. Where I was coming from was I just wanted to make sure there's no element of competition or competitive pressures in this number.

Mohit Kabra

Actually not really, not really in this segment at least, for sure, as you would have seen, because if you really look at it overall, see the travel industry overall growth has been pretty muted. And but even if you look at from most players in this segment, the overall growth numbers have come down. In fact, even at a very, very large base, we've actually been able to deliver almost to our desire of kind of keeping adjusted margin growth in the high teens to 20s. We have almost touched the 20% mark at about 19.9%.

So I think kind of -- not really necessarily seeing any competitive pressures as such. But yes, at a time when the -- there is a little bit of a disruption in the market, people want to kind of gain as much share of the market as possible in all the relevant segments.

Manish Adukia

Got it. And just last question very quickly from my end, and maybe I'll also try to push my luck on this one. Last time on the earnings call in the shareholder letter or filing you talked about potential fungibility of the shares, which obviously are post-India listing discussion. Again, like anything incremental you can share on that aspect in particular, that whenever, let's say, market conditions allow and you do indeed list, do you have any more clarity on what can form structure may take so that the shares over time can become fungible? Any color if you can share that?

Mohit Kabra

So Manish, like we said, when we get into the India IPO, we would want to kind of figure out a part between, say, MakeMyTrip, the Mauritius listed entity and the potential India listed entity to figure out a path for creating ability or getting into a single listing over a period of time. Of course, there have been various exploratory kind of discussions which have been happening with the regulators. And as and when we get there, we'll definitely have more to share, but it will be premature for now. I mean I think to begin with, we'll wait for the regulatory approvals to come in on the confidential filing. And then as we kind of get public, I'm sure we'll come back with more kind of color on these matters.

Vipul Garg

The next question is from the line of Parash Jain of HSBC.

Parash Jain

I just wanted to understand the competition dynamics within your different business, particularly in air and hotel, especially on the air side when the volumes are going sideways. And in terms of competition intensity, do you think that access to the capital as a differentiator? Or how do you see gaining market share if the market growth remains subdued.

Mohit Kabra

So Parash, maybe I can take that. I mean, like I think we've called out through the scrip and in some of the previous questions, no real change in terms of competitive dynamics or competitive intensity as such. And this I'm talking overall across the business and across lines of businesses as well. So no real kind of shift or change that kind of we've seen through the quarter or over the last few quarters as well. So pretty much kind of remains as is.

I think we clearly are kind of away from the door from the days of, say, maybe a decade back, when a significant amount of private equity play could have kind of created a bit of disruption. And that too was kind of largely happening because online penetration was in a very, very kind of intense stays back then. Today, if you look at it across most of the relevant kind of travel segments, online penetration has already reached a threshold where just kind of capital dumping is not going to create any sustainable advantage. And therefore, we do believe that market dynamics or kind of competitive dynamics will largely continue to remain as is and don't necessarily see any significant kind of changes on this side.

Parash Jain

I just wanted to understand, from your perspective, your focus is more on winning customers on quality service rather than on price. And what I wanted to allude to is that if capital is a constraint, and with your strong balance sheet and access to the capital, is it an opportunity to go for the kill.

Mohit Kabra

It's always been the former. It's always been the formal to kind of win customers more on why kind of providing more kind of relevant experiences and through better servicing rather than to pricing per se. And therefore, capital to that extent, is there never been a constraint. At times, like I have said historically, when we were kind of pushed by competitive dynamics, we haven't hesitated in terms of leveraging the balance sheet or kind of deploying capital if need be. But those are not really the times currently. And clearly, the approach has been more the former than the latter.

Rajesh Magow

And I may just add, Parash, since I think you probably are coming from the fact that historically, that has been maybe the market condition and all. Like Mohit said, I don't think that really is the market condition. But more fundamentally, what has also proven over the years is that you don't typically achieve stickiness with the customers by just going completely deep discounting way, right? So and again and from platform to platform from category to category, including ours, right?

So -- and therefore, while we obviously stay competitive, there's no question that we will not be competitive. And not only competitive, maybe we will also have the advantage given our scale and the depth of partnerships with the partners that we would be in an advantageous position for us to be able to just get the most favored nation sort of pricing, et cetera, from the -- pretty much every category as well. And because we have that advantage and the fact that we have a large size of customers who have transacted with us a very, very high repeat rate. and we continue to keep acquiring new users.

I think we are in an overall -- in a good position for us to be able to sort of grow even at the kind of scale that we have at a robust growth rate pretty much every category. Even in the mature category, we've been sort of growing. And wherever there is sort of lower growth that is like, for example, domestic air, we've been sort of holding on to our share and that is by design our strategy. When market improves organically, we will get a disproportionate share of that.

So I think because of overall advantages that we've built over a period of time, both on the demand side as well as on the supply side, we are -- we have been able to sort of so far continue to sort of grow with new users as well as the repeat rates, including getting more wallet share from the Indian travelers, and we will continue to keep doing that. And so I don't think there is any sort of question around whether it is going to be the excess capital or lack of it is going to be the real differentiator anymore. It is more a question of holistic strategy that we have applied and sort of working out nice.

Parash Jain

And maybe if I can squeeze one last question and that Vipul actually have been over the past few months has been very kind to explain me. Like what's the prospect that we hear from your current investors is that a potential listing of India will inherently bring a holding company discount. And I understand that the group has a plan eventually to find a solution of this dual listing? How are you tackling that when you are interacting with the investors?

Mohit Kabra

Parash, I think I just kind of answered that in a previous question posed by Manish, if I'm right. And maybe, therefore, in the interest of time, we'll move on to taking more questions.

Vipul Garg

Mohit, we are out of time. So this was the last question. And over to you, Rajesh, for your closing comments.

Rajesh Magow

Thank you, Vipul, and thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for patient listening. And like we said that -- we've covered pretty much every aspect of the business, very, very elaboratively in the script. So I would encourage everyone to sort of go through that and report to that as and when you will have follow-up questions and feel free to reach out to us as well, and we'll be accessible and available. And we will keep coming back with any material updates that we will have as well. So looking forward to see you next quarter. Thank you so much.

Mohit Kabra

Thanks, everyone.

Vipul Garg

Thank you, Rajesh. Thank you, everyone, for joining. You may now disconnect the call.

Rajesh Magow

Thank you.