Good day, and welcome to The Indian Hotels Company Limited Q4 and FY 2021/2022 results call, being hosted by Mr. Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and CEO, IHCL, and Mr. Giridhar Sanjeevi, EVP and CFO, IHCL. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in a listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Puneet Chhatwal. Please go ahead, sir. Good evening, everyone. Apologies for the delay of 30 minutes as there was some technical glitch in the interface with the systems, not necessarily at our end. Here we are, and ready to walk you through our Q4 and full year results. Let me start by the picture of Taj Exotica Resort and Spa that we opened on The Palm last month in Dubai, with maybe the longest pool in that marketplace, a 75-meter pool. This is a 325-room property, taking our total number of hotels in operation in Dubai to three, totaling 800 rooms all on management contracts, with the fourth one scheduled to open in a couple of years, which is the Deira Waterfront development. Moving on, some awards. Travel + Leisure recognized our newly opened Taj Wellington Mews in Chennai. Some of you will recall this hotel is run by all the women professionals, from general manager to back of house to front of house to food and beverage to the security services to everything possible. Recently, the HICSA took place in April, the first week of April. That's the Hotel Investment Conference South Asia. In luxury and upper upscale hotels, the Taj Lakefront Bhopal was declared the winner for the best new hotel. In the upscale, the Vivanta in Pakyong in Sikkim, and the Ginger in Visakhapatnam in the budget and economy segment. Three recognitions in all three important segments that we operate in. Moving on to some macro views. There are certain challenges on the global GDP growth estimates, especially with the tension in Russia versus Ukraine. However, India still continues to be strong, and we are expecting GDP growth north of 8% in India. I think that is quite good definitely for our industry, not forgetting where we are coming from. As for STR growth, the performance has come back in towards end of March and early April above the 2019 level in terms of the RevPAR recovery. Leisure markets continue to outperform. There is strong recovery in business demand, especially led by both the national capital of Delhi and the commercial capital of Mumbai, followed by Bengaluru. As of each wave, we will see that the recovery is faster. The first wave, the recovery, as we remember, was followed by a lockdown for over several months, so the recovery took some time. With the second wave, the recovery was faster. It has gone into like a V-shaped mode. Was the case after the third wave, the Omicron, as we popularly call it. Within this, IHCL continued to outperform the industry on the RevPAR level. The industry is leading the rates and occupancy recovery at the moment. Also IHCL is still continuing to outperform. Our average rates have already reached, on the domestic level, on the same store basis for hotels that were open till, you know, 2019- 2020. We're at a 94% recovery in average rate. On the rooms per day or occupancy is 81% recovery. On the RevPAR it's 76% versus industry which stands at 65%. This is data which we have taken from sources like STR. We are leading recovery also in various key markets with the exception of Rajasthan. We are leading in all markets on all India basis. As you saw it was 65%, and we were at 76%. Goa we are at 100% of pre-COVID level. And even places like Chennai are doing well. However, it is important to note the three key cities which have a huge impact in the industry getting to the pre-COVID level as of April are performing at like Delhi at 121%, Mumbai at 118%, and Bengaluru at 102% in terms of the forecast or the expectation for the actual April numbers as we get close to that in the next few days. On the industry-leading benchmarks which we will be taking you through in this call, one of the besides the RevPAR recovery, where we are the industry leaders, I think we are also leading the industry in terms of building our pipeline for two consecutive years based on data published by HVS. Both on signing and number of keys and number of hotels, for two consecutive years, I think, Indian Hotels has been posting industry-leading figures, with the last year getting us 19 hotels and more than 2,000 rooms added to our pipeline. As I said just now, 19 hotels were signed, but also 13 were opened. Of these 13 openings, there were three with the Taj brand, two with SeleQtions, five with Vivanta, and three with Ginger. In Q4 itself, we had five signings and five openings. We are very proud to also share that today Indian Hotels, with its hotel business and not the homestay, along with its hotel business, covers more than 100 locations in India, more than 29 states and union territories, and has a total portfolio of 215+ hotels. If I was to add homestay with Amã brand, then we would be north of also 415 locations in India. We are ideally positioned and poised to support the Dekho Apna Desh campaign, which we had supported 6-8 months ago, and we are hoping to relaunch it or we are planning to relaunch it in the next four to six weeks. In terms of our pipeline, which I just mentioned, we have 60 hotels totaling 7,500 rooms. This is also industry-leading on the Indian subcontinent. As we can see that other brands are continuing to grow, more importantly via management contracts, as 74% of our pipeline is driven by fee-based business, 26% is non-fee-based business. That does not mean, I want to highlight this, that these are investments. No, this 26% includes a couple of investments, but it's mainly the Ginger operating leases, because that is our model. Preferred model for Ginger is to do operating leases, as they drive higher margin and give us higher share of the revenue versus the management contract hotels, which would be having, you know, reasonable or not that very big top lines. In terms of by brand, I think all brands are growing and growing very strong. Obviously, Ginger at the moment on the pipeline is strong, and that is absolutely in line with our strategy. We want to stay very exclusive. We want to stay luxury focused. We want to be very selective when it comes to the crown jewel of the nation, and that's the Taj brand. At the same time, we want to get to very quick scale with the Ginger brand. 40% of our pipeline with Ginger is very good. Definitely this year, the openings in Ginger in this financial year should cross a double-digit number. If that's a guidance we can give, yes, we're giving this guidance that we will definitely cross a double-digit number in Ginger for the number of hotels opened, obviously subject to no more COVID and the waves and the lockdowns or any other kind of event beyond the reasonable control of the management. Moving on, also we are industry leading innovation through new businesses. As you're all aware, of course, Ginger, you know, it's a name that we have had for a long time, but the whole entire brand has been reimagined, the logo, the look and feel, the what we call the lean luxe positioning. Ginger actually posted in Q4 a 96% recovery of the top line. Our aspiration is to quickly get to 100-250 hotels. Having said that, I think, also our two new brands, relatively new brands, both born almost during the pandemic, one three months into the pandemic, one three months before the pandemic, is Qmin on the home delivery QSR, and the food truck businesses. Today in 20 cities, it did a GMV of INR 66+ crores. Our aspiration is to increase our footprint to 25 cities this year and keep accelerating the GMV growth. On the Amã, it's the same. We are 80 properties today in 40 destinations, and our aspiration is to grow to 500 properties and grow our market footprint over the next 3- 5 years. Moving on to our industry-leading new loyalty program. Yes, that I'm talking here about Tata Neu. It's off to a good start. We expect significant upside, especially for our other brands like Vivanta, SeleQtions, Qmin, and even Ginger, as and when they get you know start benefiting from different promotions from Tata Neu. This is also very much in line with our strategy to, you know, to transfer our loyalty to a platform which benefits from various group companies and various businesses, increasing our reach to our customers, not by doubling that base or tripling, rather over the next three years to have a 20x or a 30x of what we were able to achieve on our own. I think very important for us was the launch of our ESG, plus CSR, plus, you know, whatever our responsible business towards nation building has been as the oldest operating company, and we have given this the name of Paathya, which stands for the paths or the path that we have embarked upon, which constitutes of six Ps or the six pillars, in doing, you know, justice to the wastewater, in skilling of more than 100,000 youth over the next five years, in saving energy, in having 100% of our hotels EarthCheck certified, having you know, going beyond the single-use plastic free. All our hotels would be single-use plastic free over time. You know, adoption or embracing the UNESCO guidelines on sustainability, on heritage, preserving heritage, contributing towards building of heritage, and also all our meetings would migrate into green meetings. Our conference business would be supported by our green meeting concept which we have very proudly called Innergise, which is, you know, kind of giving strength to your inner self by introducing special kinds of food, special kinds of paper, pens, you know, all the 360-degree value propositions that goes with it. A few other awards that we got recently is the India Risk Management Awards organized by CNBC-TV18, which is Master of Risk in Business Model Adaptability, Masters of Risk in Brand and Social Management, and a special jury citation for Risk Management in Hospitality Sector. It's in hospitality, they have put us in the bucket of the large cap category. In terms of our delivery, our promise to deliver. In order for me to summarize, yes, we are leading the recovery as far as the industry is concerned. We're leading the growth in our pipeline. We're leading the footprint in India. We're leading the pipeline in India. We are industry leading today in innovations in F&B concepts, in our ESG concepts as you have seen. We are leading today with the help of Tata Neu on loyalty, and we are leading in risk management as recognized by the recent awards. Moving on to financial performance. In Q4, we did a revenue a little short of INR 1,000 crore, which is a 52% increase over Q4 of last year. Our EBITDA grew by 192% from INR 83 crore to INR 242 crore this year. We declared a profit after tax of INR 74 crore against a loss of INR 91 crore for the same quarter last year. Year-to-date, however, the PAT is still at a loss, but it has come down significantly by almost INR 472 crore, the variation. The EBITDA has been positive for the full year at INR 560 crores versus the loss of INR 197 crores at that level, and our revenue reached 85% of the pre-COVID level at INR 3,211 crores. The quarter four was also interesting in terms of if you look at the top line, which I just now mentioned, which is INR 955 crores. We were able to post our highest EBITDA margin in the last 10 years at 25.3%. You know, pre-COVID and ten years almost or 8 years before that, we had been doing loss of INR 1,000 crores in revenue, but our margins were shorter. This means our business model that we have embarked upon in separating our businesses into traditional and into new businesses, with the new ones, being our efforts with our private membership club, our home delivery, our homestay, our Ginger brand, and the traditional, we have the right control on the total expenditure is still less by 24%. Of course, we are also at 85% of pre-COVID. Let's not forget the inflation factor. A lot of costs have increased in the last few months, given the price of fuel, et cetera. With that, I think the expenditure, the management and the hotels and the general managers have done a good job in keeping a strict control on the costs and our corporate overhead versus 2019, 2020 to be despite adding so many new businesses and new brands to our portfolio. We are also industry leading in terms of our balance sheet with the help of the rights issue and the QIP. Our consolidated net debt actually becomes a positive. As you might have noticed, all of you, that we are 100+ cash positive, now. That is good news. We'll keep repaying as and when the debts mature and get due, whether it is a debenture or payments getting due, very soon in Q1 and Q2. There is one payment which is due in April of next year. For that we'll have to wait. Finally, we are very pleased to announce twenty-third of May, the Capital Markets Day. On that day, we will be unveiling IHCL strategy for the future. We embarked on this journey on, you know, middle of February 2018, when we announced Aspiration 2022, and now is the time to chart the course for the next 4 to 5 years. We will be sharing all those details and all that plans with you on 23rd of May, which is almost in 4 weeks from now. We will be inviting all of you to join us, physically or digitally or whatever other medium that you might prefer. With that, I hand over to my colleague, Giridhar Sanjeevi, the Executive Vice President and the Chief Financial Officer of the company. Thank you, Puneet. I think moving on to some details in terms of the performance, I think this is just this chart is really the progression across the quarters. I think what we have seen is that there has been a steady progress across the quarters. Q4 was impacted because of Omicron in the month of January. It is good to see that even on a lower base of INR 905 crore, we were able to maintain an EBITDA margin of 25% and a profit after tax of INR 74 crore. Next slide, please. On the standalone, sorry. The slide moved. On the standalone, similarly, we have a top line of INR 607 crore, which represented a 99% recovery as compared to 2019-2020. The EBITDA margin came at 36% in standalone for Q4, which represents again a very important milestone in terms of driving through EBITDA margin despite the Omicron in the month of January. The profit after tax was INR 86 crore in the standalone fourth quarter. In terms of the revenue recovery across the key cities, as we look at the different cities, what is very good to see is that for January, February and March, consistently the business continued to improve across all the cities actually. Most importantly, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, the recovery in March 2022 versus March 2019 was at 84%, 79%, and 94%. Those three key cities matter to us. April, as we pointed out earlier, it has crossed 110%. This is something that is consistent with what the entire industry is experiencing, and we continue to lead it. On the international hotels or hotel chains, once again, we see very strong performance in markets like Dubai, where the recovery was 158%. U.K. came at 95%. USA in March 2022 was at 58% as compared to March 2019. The other cities of Maldives, Africa and Sri Lanka did well, though Sri Lanka has of course been impacted due to the recent economic challenges. I think one of the things is that we have seen that this doesn't disrupt the normal timing, which you're also seeing, that hotels possibly offer a hedge to inflation globally because the pricing is determined by demand supply. At this point in time, we are seeing strong demand. As we have highlighted in earlier presentation also, there is a supply impact, which is definitely being seen. Of course, inflation is impacting some of our costs, in terms of fuel and other costs. Overall, I think the hedge against inflation is something that we continue to see so far, and we will continue to keep track of this carefully. If you look at the domestic same stores, in Q4, the difference between leisure and non-leisure, what we are clearly seeing in occupancy is that the leisure occupancies continued to grow in the quarter up to 64%. The non-leisure group is 73%, a sharp jump, through the quarter. Ginger own went up to 61%. Similarly, in ARR, we continue to see a bump up in the leisure ARR at INR 14,982. We saw the non-leisure ARR also go up with the resumption of business travel and business conferences. We are seeing the non-leisure ARR also go up. Ginger also grew its ARR actually. On the international geographies as well, when you look at the occupancy, the occupancy in the U.S. climbed up. U.K. went up sharply to 62%. Dubai did very well at 80%, and Maldives at 95%. On the ARR, U.S. went up, U.K. has picked up, and similarly Dubai has been better, in the month of March. Maldives of course has also improved. Internationally also the messaging is consistent in terms of improved occupancy and ARR. In terms of the key revenue drivers, very clearly there are three key revenue drivers for us, which is revenue recovery, the asset light growth and the new and re-managed businesses. Occupancy this year was about 52% overall, which represented a 13 percentage point improvement. The ADR at INR 9,770 improved by 32%, and RevPAR at INR 5,103 improved by 76%. These are standalone twelve-month current year registered year. On the asset light growth, we have a total portfolio of 235 hotels, 28,000 rooms including the pipeline. New openings were thirteen openings with nineteen signings. Management fee was INR 231 crores. In fact, if you remember earlier discussion, we were earlier expecting management fee to close at around INR 185-190 crores. We are happy to report that we got INR 231 crore in management fees, which represents a return back to what we earned in the pre-pandemic period. In fact, this is better than that. On the new and reimagined businesses, Ginger, the portfolio of 85 hotels, humming in 20 cities, Amã they have 81 stays and The Chambers did about INR 85 crore of income in terms of memberships and annual fees. On top of it, of course, is the business that they generate in terms of events and conferences actually. Therefore, Chambers also did well. The next chart really shows graphically the growth in management fees with Chambers. As you see, the growth in management fees has bounced back to INR 231 crore and Chambers has also bounced back to sort of INR 85 crore actually. In terms of some key revenue metrics, if I look at the full year, as we discussed the full year, and you'll see that it has been a steady progression in terms of the occupancy, ADR, and the RevPAR actually. Q4 was slightly muted because of the Omicron impact in the month of January. Similarly, in terms of F&B room revenue, F&B revenue and other revenue, they continue to show a steady growth actually. Similarly, the revenue metrics on an enterprise basis on domestic also shows a steady growth in terms of occupancy, ARR and RevPAR actually. Similarly, room revenue, F&B revenue and other revenues. In terms of fixed costs and profit overheads per hotel, the chart on the left that you can see on slide 37 in the presentation is that the fixed costs control continued. I think while the fixed costs went up from INR 1,390 crores to INR 1,590 crores during the year, I think you'll see that, as compared to 1,920, the fixed cost per hotel has dropped from 24.4 to 18.9. Similarly, the profit overhead, which now has come down from INR 347 crores to INR 249 crores in the current year, where with the oversight on additional hotels, I think the productivity has significantly gone up and the profit overhead per hotel has come down from INR 303.21 crores to INR 2.11 crores actually. Performance of key subsidiaries. I think what is good to see is that on the US front, the cash loss funding in Pierre came down from INR 164 crore in the prior year to INR 56 crore in the current year. St. James' Court did very well in terms of recovery of performance. We came at EBITDA positive. Clermont Hotels was good. We were able to also derive, you know, get the benefit of the acquisition of Ginger shares which we held, and therefore we came in at a small EBITDA positive. Roots Corporation today is a 100% subsidiary. We have now acquired all the shares and Roots Corporation did very, very well with an EBITDA of INR 43 crore during the year. In terms of the equity issues and utilization, we raised INR 3,943 crores through the QIP and rights issues. Till date, we have paid about INR 2,873 crores. In the next few days we'll pay another 500 crores or so. What will really be left is the debt will come down to zero in all places except in IHCL India, INR 450 crores, which was the ECLGS debt which was taken in 2020. That is an unsecured debt. It is a 3-year bond. We can prepay that, but that comes with a premium at a high cost, so we are not prepaying it. These will be paid in April 2023. The balance is really just in the U.K., which will come down by INR 200 crores immediately, and we will continue to bring it down. Of course in markets like U.K., because of the joint venture, we don't put in money as an intercorporate debt. We actually increase shareholding in the process. Therefore, if you look at the end use, I think part of it has gone towards growth, which is Ginger acquisition, consolidation of shareholding in Preelock, and also increasing shareholding in subsidiaries like Ginger Export. Cash position. This is of course as of 31st of March, it does show a high liquidity of INR 1,900 crores. As the debt get repaid, this should start coming down. I think the balance slides are really on the details in terms of standalone and consolidated. These are in the presentation which has been uploaded both on the stock exchanges as well as on the website actually. Now I think we are open to questions and any we can also have detailed discussions tomorrow for any follow-on questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when your line is open. Please state your name and company before posing your question. Again, press star one to ask a question. Go to our first question. Please go ahead. Hi, good evening, Mr. Chhatwal and Giridhar Sanjeevi. This is Nihal Jham from Edelweiss. Three questions from my side. If I notice in the presentation as you have given the recovery and the rates also for all these markets, in fact the rates in April for literally every location that the major cities is actually much higher than April 2019. The increment is even more than what traditionally we've seen in normal times for the hotel sector. The first question was. How sustainable do you think this recovery is? Specifically if I have to point out, say a city like Goa, which is, say at 150% of pre-COVID levels. That'll be my first question. I'll come to the other two after that, if that's fine. Nihal, you know, the recovery is strong. Whether it's going to be 110, 115, 120, that time will tell. Because it's also dependent on a lot of other factors. Having said that, let's not forget that your international traffic has not yet started, so that's a hidden upside. You might have opened the airspace and allowed people to come in, but it's not that your international business travel has picked up like it used to be at a pre-COVID level. Demand is still being very strongly driven by domestic. With that, I think even if it was to weaken a bit, I think the international will start compensating, as time goes by. Understood. If I could just take a related question, say, for a city like Delhi, because for Mumbai we are aware of, you know, what the drivers are in terms of, say, IPL and rates being strong. Specifically for Delhi, with, say, corporate travel also at this point in time not completely recovered and still, you know, rates have touched pre-COVID for us. What are the drivers there that is leading to such kind of RevPAR rates? No, I think I don't agree with you that the corporate travel has not picked up. You know, you have a lot of delegations coming in, and also Indian delegations are going abroad. That is really a driver that was missing for the last year or so. Now, you know, whether it's a U.K. premier coming in or everybody else coming in, it brings with them a lot of other people, and they are able to pay higher rates also. The city gets then busy and the rates increase. It's a very simple formula. The other thing that is aiding for sure is I don't know if I've heard of a new hotel that opened recently in Delhi. If your demand comes back and supply stays, you know, contained, obviously the rates should go up. Understood. That's helpful. My final question was on our cost reduction target, sir. We have been guiding, I think, for a number around INR 300 crore. I just wanted to confirm that does that number stay or, given the inflation or our aggressive plan, we may just want to revisit that target again. I think what's happening on cost is that I think at this point of time I think we are seeing very strong revenue recovery. Clearly, in terms of wage inflation, there will be wage inflation for sure. I think in the last two, three years, we have not had some late settlements with employees actually. Those we will need to cover. As far as the food cost inflation is concerned, our ability to pricing is definitely there in terms of increasing the revenue, the pricing on both on F&B as well as on room rates, we are able to see that. Therefore, my sense is that we will have to look at it together. I think the business activity has come back. My sense is that the leverage we will get in terms of managing inflation, driving top line and managing expenses will continue, and hence which will be better for the margin actually. Sure. That's helpful. I'll come back in the Q&A to share those with everyone. Thank you. Yeah. We'll go to our next question. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Good evening. This is Vikas from Antique. I have two questions. First, looking at the April trend, especially for the corporate-led cities like Delhi, Mumbai, is it fair to assume we will be crossing pre-COVID revenues in FY 2023, provided that there is no 4th wave? There is a lot of pent-up demand you think which helped April? Also if it's possible to give the mix of corporate travel in those metro cities currently. This is my first question, sir. Vikas, I think I made that comment already four weeks ago that March, April, May is trending much higher than March, April, May 2019. We don't see any change in that trend. Corporate is as strong as any other social event. People are happy to go out. People are happy to be in a larger gathering. There are some people who still wear a mask and take the necessary precautions. It's not like it was six months ago. Partially the pent-up demand, I think, is slowly getting absorbed. I think it's now we are getting back to the normal demand. If you look at including your own side of business, I think a lot of your own sector companies are beginning to have events happening in the next few months because we do get an invite if we can come and be a speaker. Those events, awards events, you know, these are all happening in person. It's not anymore digital, what it was till maybe three months ago. All that brings in corporate demand. These two cities, both Delhi and Mumbai, are very important. Of course, as we all know, Mumbai is very strongly aided by the IPL. A few hotels are very busy because of that, and maybe that will also reflect in the rates. I think once the demand is back, those rates will also go up. You can expect very high occupancies in cities like Mumbai for the month of April and for the month of May. Sure. Thank you. Also, you know, just coming back to what Nehal asked on maybe the margins. In your opening remarks, you have talked about the cost escalation. It would be great if we can get some kind of guidance on margins for FY 2023. Finally, you know, the bookings through Tata Neu, what kind of trends we are expecting there? Is there any take rates we share with them for the bookings? Because I understand it's one group, but is there any take rates like you share with the OTAs? Thank you. That's all. Not really. Tata Neu is one of our biggest opportunities in the years ahead. It will take time, and it's been launched only on the seventh of April, and that is exactly 20 days ago. You have to have at least 100 days of operation to start seeing a lot of tangible results. We are on that platform because it was a closed user group since 6-7 months now. We definitely saw the strength of the platform because it is giving you an incremental reach to a lot of customers which you otherwise don't have, especially for our newly launched or new, you know, businesses like a Qmin or the Ginger, which will go online on Tata Neu as of June, should be very positive going forward. I think all in all, that help as a loyalty platform is good and we are very excited about that. I think data needs to mature, so we would be happy to share data with you, but I think 20 days is not a benchmark. When you launch, you know, you promote, a lot of people are putting promotions, discounts, et cetera. I think it will become more relevant when the sum of it has stabilized over a few months period, so that you can see what are the visible trends and how many enrollments have actually happened. At what million you are, how many people have you been able to transition to that platform who were already your members? A lot of that work is happening as we speak. Kindly bear with us for another at least 60, 70, 80 days. Let's give ourselves at least 100 days to give you any form of guidance or outlook. For us, it has to be more positive than it was. For us, it's a superior reach than what we could have done on our own. That's what we can say today. Sure, sir. Finally, you know, this one was for Giridhar, sir, on any FY 2023 margins, anything which you can incremental we talk about. See what we can say is that when it comes to margins and that kind of guidance, you'll have to be patient till the twenty-third of May. We will do it together on the Capital Markets Day, and we will announce the strategy. Having said that, you know our company well, and you've been seeing what we did in Q3. You can see what we've done in Q4. You have a certain, you know, thing about the margins and belonging to the group we belong to and given a 120-year history of the oldest operating company of the group, I don't think we have any kind of tricks there to improve margin. We are very proud and very happy that we have consistently grown margins and then came COVID, and then we all went, you know, into lockdown and was a problem. Since things have started opening up, we have re-embarked on that journey. It's mainly driven through a lot of efficiency. See, when we announced Aspiration 2022, we were at 17% margin on the EBITDA levels, right? We were a portfolio of 150 hotels. Today, we are at 235 hotels portfolio with obviously 16 pipeline. Our corporate overhead is reduced by 28%. Last year even it was higher than that. We have more brands and we have more businesses today. I think that itself should give you based on the actual figures some idea of what that means. Okay, sir. That's helpful. Thanks a lot. We'll take our next question. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Sumant here from Motilal Oswal. Can you hear me? Yes, Sumant, we can. My question is regarding management contract. Can you talk about, for FY 2023, 2024 or next 3 to 5 years, what is the run rate of opening management contract rooms, excluding Ginger, on a standalone basis you can say? I think we've always guided, Sumant, on management contracts that we have been opening around at least 2,000 rooms. That has been the kind of opening actually. I think what we have been happy with is the pace of recovery of business and that has been management fee in March 2022 has now come back to overall 12 and 30 on course. I think we have guided earlier on July 7 that the management fee could reach about INR 350 crore. But, I think on March 23 once again can now give you better clarity in terms of where the trajectory is, where we believe that our pipeline is growing, our ability to open hotels is growing, and with the recovery of business we believe that the potential to drive is really there. Just wait till 23rd to give you a full guidance on how this will grow actually. Okay. What is Sumant, what I will just add to what Mr. Sanjeevi said is that we'll definitely open more hotels this financial year than we opened last year. We opened 13. You can count on at least anything between 18-22 hotels to open this year. A minimum of 18, maximum of 22. Everything on either a management contract or on an operating lease. Okay. What is total number of management room in a standalone as on March 22? March 2022, the number was INR 231 crore. No, no, I'm talking of number of rooms, sir. Number of rooms? Okay, one second. I'll check. 7604. Okay. 7604. 7,600 approximately managed rooms. Yeah. What is the Ginger in that? 1,100. Okay. Got it. Next question regarding Sea Rock. Can you update on that? Yes. Also that we will provide a more detailed update on the Capital Markets Day. As you all know, we now are 100% shareholders, and we have started working on the development plan for Sea Rock together with the city authorities and the government. Hopefully we will get some decisions in the course of this financial year. Okay. Sir, can you talk about the pent-up demand in leisure segment? Are we seeing a pent-up demand in business segment in coming quarters and Yes, we are. Whether we call it pent-up or a strong demand or a strong recovery, there is recovery. As we said before, one of the reasons why we have chosen twenty-third of May is not for any other thing. It's the fact that we could not get a decent sized hall to hold the Capital Markets Day in the city of Mumbai. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. We'll take our next question. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good evening, everyone. This is Adhidev here from ICICI. Our first question is on, now that hotels are fully opened up, how is the employee rehiring and your staff-to-room ratio? You had highlighted some numbers last year of what you expected to sustain at. Is there any change to those numbers? To hire the new employees, are you having to pay them more, or how is the wage inflation trending for the new hires? That's the first question. Yeah. I think see what's happening is that in terms of manpower, very clearly with the resumption of business, I think there is definitely hiring happening. We have not yet rolled out any wage increments at this point in time, but that will happen now. What we're also working through is that in the last three years, some of the wage settlements with unions have not taken place in a number of hotels, so those are also being worked through. In terms of cost of hiring, I think not seen any noticeable increase in terms of cost of hiring for employees. I think that's what I would say at this point in time. Okay. There is huge activity and that's why. See, we did not, unlike other companies, we have not asked any of our full-time employees to go. Right. There is however, having said that, there is a challenge in the global hospitality in general and also in certain countries in particular because a lot of people seem to have left the industry. If a fear was inculcated in people that, by going to hotels or restaurants you get, you know, COVID, and that's why these places have to stay shut. I'm sure a lot of people were forced by their families to leave this job and take on alternative jobs. We are seeing those challenges, especially in cities like London because of Brexit, because of, COVID, because of other reasons. We think that a majority of our room-to-staff ratios will be maintained, not because people were taken out or not added in contractual or fixed-term contract because of business, rather by changing the business model itself at a hotel level. The way we operate hotels today, the way the organization structure is evolving, is addressing an organizational need and an optimization for the future. A lot of customers have also evolved after the pandemic, and they do not expect a lot of that kind of service with five people or four people standing around you or around your table, and people have got used to a bit more privacy. Also the consumer behavior is evolving. I think all that together should help the industry, not just us as a company, to redefine the business model. Sir, second question is on the management fee income of INR 231 crores for the year. Could you on a like-for-like basis tell us how much would that figure be? This excluding the new hotel openings or the Amã management fee income. I think that number you have to look at it as almost 80%-85% coming from the previous, you know, on a like-for-like basis. Because when you open new hotels and new business, that does not immediately give you fees. There are certain exceptions to it, like our hotel in Rishikesh, in Shimla, in Goa, in Darjeeling, which were in leisure destinations which started off very well. But you don't open a new hotel and suddenly that it takes time to ramp up. So I think the majority of the fees, almost more than INR 200 crore of the INR 231 crore is from the like-for-like portfolio. Sure, sir. Just last question, now that we are a net debt-free company or a net cash company rather, and assuming things stay well and good for the coming quarters, how do you plan to utilize the excess free cash flow which you will generate? Any clarity on the same? No, I think as far as free cash flow is concerned, we will certainly, I mean, very, very clearly we don't want to get back into a borrowing situation at this point of time. I think in terms of utilization, the key projects that we are executing are Jinriksha and The Koo. We continue the completion of the Taj Delhi. We are doing one block in London in terms of renovation. Some of these key projects will definitely continue. In terms of renovations, I think there are some other like The Chambers in Bangalore is the other project which we are sitting on. We will continue to focus on renovations which help in terms of revenue. I think we don't anticipate too many. It's not going to be a case that we have a significant amount of cash which we don't know what to do with. We are being judicious in terms of using it. Of course, the projects that we have spoken about, like Shiroda in Maharashtra, we will have to start spending money at some stage. Kevadia in Gujarat is the other project where we will start spending at some stage. I think all those are in planning. Really it's being deployed towards growth-related initiatives and renovations in different parts of the enterprise. Scaling of new businesses. Scaling up, yes. Okay. Sir, is there any CapEx figure you'd like to share for the coming year? Any budgeted CapEx figure which you would have closed on? See, usually the CapEx is what we said always around 4% of the top line. If you are coming out of the pandemic, you can increase it to five or six if things are going fine. As Mr. Sanjeevi said, it's all really dependent on those one-off projects that we will work upon as a renovation, but also on asset monetization. We would try to keep that number with the exception of a one-off investment here or there to within those levels of 5%-6%. Okay. Thanks, sir. That was very helpful. Thank you and all the best. Thank you. We'll go to our next question. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you very much, sir, for this opportunity. So this is Aishwarya Agarwal from Nippon India. My question is, I seek your view on the supply side, because I understand the new supply takes time, and if there is a gap between demand and supply, then there is a high occupancy and hence the tariff also goes up, which is highly beneficial for the hotels. I just want to understand your view for the next three years perspective, which I assume is the time for the new hotel to erect. That is it, sir. Yeah, I think that should help. The supply will remain constrained except for what is already under construction. Those kinds of projects will get completed with delay or without delay. You know, the sector with what it has gone through will have issues, and with those issues it will be very difficult to get funding for new supply in the short to medium term. I think in the next 2-3 years, demand should clearly outpace supply. Sure sir. Do you have any estimate in terms of what kind of occupancy and the tariff we should anticipate probably after a year or two years? It's a very difficult question, but if you have anything in mind that will be very helpful. I am not able to figure out the answer of this. Can you repeat the question? Yes, sir. What kind of occupancy and the tariff you expect in next one year? Because I'm not able to get the answer of this question. I don't think anybody can give. I think what you have to do is in such cases get third parties who do this industry benchmark like HVS, Horwath, you know, Hotelivate, a lot of such companies that do this, STR, those kind of trends. We use the same. You know, it's not that we don't use that. We also use those kind of information. Then against that we benchmark how we are doing. That's how we are able to show what is our market share, how much are we doing better than the market. They are experts in doing this. For us as listed companies, if we start giving guidance and we think the occupancy will be X% and the rate will be Y, it becomes a challenge. that's why I think we have to use advisory groups to get that or a JLL or a CBRE or whatever you want to use. All these kind of companies, they do that all the time. That's their business. Our business is to focus on running hotels and outperform the guidance which is given by advisors and try to gain more market share. Sure, sir. One last question is what could be the potential lead indicator which suggests that there is a gap between demand and supply and the things will be really moving northward? The lead indicator is when you have to call a few hotels to get a room or when you reach a hotel and then unfortunately there is no room although you have a confirmed booking. How often that happens? That is the kind of statistics that one has to get. I guess, here the Booking.com and these websites will be very helpful to see how the things are. It's a very readily available, Absolutely. Yeah, you can benchmark it, let's say today, twenty-seventh of April. Just make your own portfolio of 10 hotels on one of these websites. See if you book on a certain date, what rate are you getting? After 10 days try the same, and then you will see the delta. Sure, sir. This is really helpful, and wish you best of luck. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Again for questions, that is star one, and if you find that your question has been answered, please press star two to remove yourself from the queue. We'll go to our next question. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good evening, everyone. This is Achal from HSBC. I had a couple of questions actually. First of all, could you please discuss a bit about the pickup in the different business segments? Interestingly, you said that you did not get the hotel, the room or the ballroom for the meeting. Is that a kind of indication that there's a strong pickup in the MICE business? I mean, in terms of marriages, how do you see the marriage? Do you see the fat marriages coming back, or do you think the marriage is still staying the smaller sized marriages in terms of F&B business? If you could please discuss a bit about the pickup in the different businesses, that would be very useful. That's my first question, please. What is happening is leisure is still demonstrating resilience at a high level because leisure has been working very strong. What has happened is corporate business is coming back, the MICE is coming back, the weddings are coming back. Now the difference in the consumer behavior is, it's not a 1,000, 2,000 people wedding happening that often as it used to happen before, but you could have a wedding which is divided over several days of functions of 50 or 100 or 200 each. That part is definitely there. It is happening and will or should be reflected in the results. As you can see, we have announced our results. If you discount for the month of January somewhere and a slow pickup in the first two weeks of February, whatever numbers that you're seeing, the majority of that, you know, 60%-70% has come in the last six weeks of the last quarter. The four weeks of this month are stronger than April 2019. It cannot be just coming from leisure because the markets which have really gone up very strong in the last six, eight weeks for us and that are relevant for us very strongly are Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Is it fair to assume, Puneet, that the demand has picked up and demand is strong in all the cities? On the cost side, you're doing good. I mean, at least what's the pre-COVID level. You have restructured cost and the costs are now lower than pre-COVID level. Is it fair to assume that your profits this year should be higher than pre-COVID levels? I mean, unless there is some challenge. If you don't think so, do you see any challenge other than the potential of fourth wave? See, we can't predict the 4th, 5th waves and the impact of that. Yes. All we can say is that we will continue to strive for excellence in our operations, enhance our revenue to the extent possible, optimize our spend, which was the definition of reset, continue to work on effective asset management, and remain thrift and financially prudent. This is what we have been doing, this is what we'll continue to do. Based around all these factors, we will announce our new roadmap for the next 4-5 years, which is not far away, which is on the 23rd of May. Right. Could you say quickly, since all the restaurants are open now and people prefer to walk in, has that impacted your Qmin business? Yes, it has. What we have done is, in the sense that, you know, you have to move. What we did was when we started Qmin, it was mainly the food from different restaurants. What we have done, several months ago is we have introduced a comfort food element, which has nothing to do with the restaurant. We have introduced the same to our flight kitchen business with the brand Anuka. We are also in the Qmin with also the value segment, and not just dependent on the restaurants. When we launched Qmin on twenty-fifth of June 2020, it was limited to those restaurants because that's the best we could have done then. There has been an evolution in the Qmin brand. The number of orders are still being maintained. The average of our order, because it's not restaurant food, has gone down. Our continuous focus and expansion on the Qmin QSR, which we recently did in Bengaluru, and also on the Qmin food truck is actually helping drive superior sales than they were during the pandemic. Right. Okay. One question I have on slide 31, you are showing the difference in the occupancy levels in different brand. One thing which is very surprising and then I could not understand really, you know, that you are showing there is a significant difference in the occupancy levels between your own Ginger properties and on the Ginger properties on the management contract. So why such a big difference? I mean, for the customer, Ginger is Ginger, right? I mean, so what is the? Why such a big difference and what exactly are you trying to say here? What message are you trying to pass on on this in. Yeah. At different locations in India. It really depends on locations in terms of how the occupancy gets managed in terms of the closure. Yeah. Some of the managed Ginger properties were closed during the pandemic, but that's not really important. The important part is our owned or leased Ginger hotels are like in Goa, in Bengaluru, or like let's say even Agartala where there is hardly any other supply. They tend to benefit. One of the key learnings which we have had from the managed Ginger properties is that in difficult locations, you know, it's very difficult to drive business the way it is. You know, in Mumbai you can do 10, 15, 20 Gingers and it doesn't matter. As we'll be opening our 371-room Ginger this financial year in Santa Cruz, the revenue of that and the occupancy of that will cross all the charts here. That's how it is because there is a huge gap in the key metros and the kind of rates and occupancies you achieve there versus in sometimes in tier two, three, four markets. If you're the first hotel, first branded hotel in tier three, tier four, you benefit a lot. But when the second branded property, the third branded property comes in and the demand doesn't grow in the same proportion, does not matter in India or anywhere else in the world, then the occupancy and the rates get stressed. Typically you tend to own or lease in key markets which are brand enhancing, which give your brand more visibility. That's why we show higher occupancy. And on the rate side you will see the gap is not as big. It's really the occupancy part which is significantly higher. That too, it's really the three months is the January, February, March. I don't think it's a snapshot of the full year. This is the slide 31 is restricted to three months, of which one month was COVID. Then within that, which were the cities that recovered and which states in the end. That is a detail we can take on offline and deep dive into it. But mainly it's driven by Ginger, you know, in Panjim, Ginger in Dona Paula, Ginger in Madgaon, all three Gingers in Goa, the Ginger in Bengaluru, in all these key markets where it is doing very well. Right. Sorry, last two quick questions, very quick. Also, sorry, Archana, I forgot to. Yeah. I forgot to tell you, even in the new Gingers in Bhubaneswar or in Patna, et cetera, you know, it's very nice properties for all these cities, so it tends to do very well. The Visakhapatnam, the latest property that we have opened. There is also that kind of dynamics in this kind of capital cities, commercial or state capital. Right. Fair enough. Two very quick questions. On the Sea Rock, of course, you spoke very little about it, and you are intending to speak on your Capital Markets Day. You know, just quickly, I mean, have you got any partner yet? Or if you don't get any partner, how would you manage it? I mean, would you start investing in this property? What will be your strategy? Second question is that, in the last quarter, actually, this message was very clear, not from Indian Hotels, but from everyone, from either Chalet Hotels or from Lemon Tree Hotels or whatever it is, that message was very clear that people are ready to spend more, and hence the premium properties, the high-end properties are actually benefited out of that behavior change. Of course, Indian Hotels is a big brand, so Indian Hotels was definitely one of the beneficiaries. Now, have you seen that continued, or is there any change in that? Thank you. I can only agree with the colleagues from the other companies in what they said. People have not had much opportunities in the last few years to spend the discretionary spend, whether it is on hotel stays or it is in buying goods or other services. The willingness to spend is there as long as you feel safe and secure. Obviously anything premium is more in demand, and it doesn't matter. In whichever segment people go, they are looking for premium and not for price driven only. Okay. About Sea Rock, please? The first question on Sea Rock. Sea Rock, I think, we have been very clear that we don't intend to put own monies into this project at this point of time. I think that position continues, Shailesh. If you don't get any partner, what will be your strategy? I mean, would you continue to wait? Sorry, I. You know, we belong to a very large group. We have partners within the group also which are possible. It's step-by-step process. Our first step is to get approvals from the city, from all perspectives, and that will take some time. We are on the drawing board and are drawing the plans. Once we are ready, we will approach the city, which we have already approached. We have taken their wishes into account, whether it's with the urban development or it's with the BMC or it is with the tourism minister or tourism secretary. You know, it's a lot of people, a lot of stakeholders who are involved. It's also the, you know, the. You have to take care of the environment. You have all the other factors that come with it. Your CRZ. There are so many regulations. All that is being worked upon as we speak. We are very hopeful and are very focused to find that solution within this year. We did not want to go for that last year till we had 100% control of the property. Now we have 100% control, so it is us in the front. Okay. Thank you so much, and wish you all the good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Can we sort of have another five minutes, please? Maybe the last one or two questions, and then if any follow-on questions are there, we can speak tomorrow. Go to our next question. Please go ahead. This is Deepika from JP Morgan. Just two quick things from my side. Firstly, I just wanted to understand, in the U.S. business, it seems that the loss has increased in the fourth quarter. Just mainly wanted to understand, is there any shift in the cost structure for the U.S. properties? Fourth quarter traditionally, Deepika, has always been the low quarter in terms of business. The pattern that we have seen is really consistent with that. This year, as you know, actually the third quarter banquets were also not operational because the banquet renovations were taking place. I think what will happen in the current year is that we will see business come back both in terms of room nights and the banquets. The F&B services also will come back actually. That's the way we look at it. We expect our F&B to be- Basically there is no change. The cost restructurings that you'll have taken over the past couple of years, that remains, right? There is no change to any of the fixed costs coming back in the U.S. properties. In terms of the core expenses, it is not really. There is no change at all, actually. There's no change. On the contrary, actually, we have a reduction in the cost because again, change in the business model. We have reduced the size of the ballroom. We have given back the additional space which was from our neighbors, The Pierre, back to them. It has reduced our fixed lease rental with them. Given the challenges you have with the F&B service staff in New York, that reduces our cost, labor cost also on that front. The U.S., a lot of work has been done. Let's see when the business comes back, how the P&L will then start shaping up. From a cost point of view, we have done a lot of work and used the pandemic time to optimize it to the level that we could. Understood. That's very clear. Just lastly, on balance sheet, I mean, I think I missed it. What is the total aimed debt reduction in the next year? Total aimed debt. Aim to reduce debt. I think there will be only one big piece of debt left, which is only due in April 2023, which is around INR 450 crore. Yeah. U.K. would probably remain at around INR 250 crore-INR 300 crore. Which is GBP 25 million-GBP 30 million for a property that is worth GBP 200 million. That's what we have and we are not going to add debt as if at all, we'll keep reducing it, and use the surpluses or cash available, as we said earlier on another question from one of your other colleagues, to scale up our new businesses. Yeah. I think. Thank you for participating. I think we will close the conference now. Thank you everyone for joining. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.