Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (NSE: IRCTC) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 14, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Sanjay Kumar Jain — Chairman & Managing Director
Sudhir Kumar — Director, Finance & Chief Financial Officer
Rahul Himalian — Director (Tourism and Marketing)
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Rahul Jain — Analyst
Jinesh Joshi — Analyst
Kartik Gada — Analyst
Harsh Yadav — Analyst
Rahul Prakash — Analyst
Gurpreet Singh — Analyst
Rattan Joneja — Analyst
Mohit Motwani — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to IRCTC Q1FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Daulat Capital Markets Pvt Ltd. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the 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 and then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rahul Jain from Dalut Capital Markets Private Limited. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Rahul Jain — Analyst
Thank you, Nidhi. Good afternoon everyone. On behalf of Dalat Capital, we welcome you all to the Q1FY26 earning conference call of IRCTC Limited. I take this opportunity to welcome the management of IRCTC represented by Mr. Sanjay Kumar Jain who is CMD of the company. Mr. Sudhir Kumar who is Director, Finance and CFO. And also we have today with us Sri Rahul Himalayanji who is Director of Tourism and marketing segment and Mr. Manoj Sharma who is Director of Catering Services of the company. And now I would like to hand the conference over to IRCTC management to take the proceedings forward.
Over to you sir. Thank you.
Sanjay Kumar Jain — Chairman & Managing Director
Rahul. Am I audible?
Rahul Jain — Analyst
Yes sir.
Sanjay Kumar Jain — Chairman & Managing Director
Good evening everyone and a warm welcome to the IRCTC Limited earning call for the quarter ended June 30th, 2025. Yesterday our company has announced its financial results for the first quarter of financial year 2026 and these results have been disclosed on both stock exchanges. I will begin with a brief overview of Q1FY26 performance following which our Director of Finance and CFO Mr. Sudhir will provide a detailed analysis of our business segment performance. Afterwards we will open the floor for the question and answer session. I am pleased to report that Q1 FY26 has been a stable profitable quarter for the company with a PAT of 330 crore reflecting a year on year growth of 7.14%.
This performance is primarily driven by strong contributions from the Internet, ticketing, rail and tourism segment. Our EBITDA for this quarter stood at 397 crore rupees up 5.86% year on year. It is driven by improved operational efficiency. Further, our EBITDA margin also expanded to 34.27% compared to 33.55% in Q1 FY25 reflecting continued emphasis on cost optimization and better revenue mix management. Revenue from operations grew by around 4% year on year reaching 1160 crore. It is driven by continued growth in tourism and Internet ticketing segments. Overall, these results reflect our company’s strong fundamentals, strategic focus and continued adaptability in a dynamic market environment.
We are confident in sustaining this positive trajectory in the coming quarters backed by operational excellence and a strong digital backbone. Now over to. Thank you very much. Now over to my director Finan.
Sudhir Kumar — Director, Finance & Chief Financial Officer
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I wish good health and happiness to you and your family. I am eager to share with you brief overview of our quarterly performance. I will also compare it with quarterly performance on year on year basis. It will be followed by question and answer session. This year we have recorded profit after tax of rupees 330.45 crore in quarter one. It is 7.14% higher on year on year basis. Our revenue in first quarter has stood at rupees 1220 crore. It is 4.36% higher on year on year basis. Our EBITDA roll to 397 crore which is 5.86% up on year on year basis.
EBITDA margin is 34.27% in first quarter of this year underscoring our operating efficiency and prudent cost control measures. Now I come to segment by highlights. The first segment is Internet issues. This segment continued to be solid revenue driver for the company. Revenue from this op segment has stood at rupees 360 crore marking a 9.12% growth on year. On year basis, 87.78% of total reserve tickets on Indian Railways are now booked through our portal. This segment is the most profitable EBITDA of this segment in this quarter is 84% which is better than that reported last year in the same quarter.
Last year it was 83%. Now I come to my next segment. Static catering revenue from this segment has stood at rupees 547crore which is slightly lower by 2.15% in comparison to last year. In the same quarter. The EBITDA margin of this segment has also moderated to 13.1% in comparison to 13.9% last year on year on year basis. Even though margins are relatively moderate compared to other segments, this segment is a reliable revenue stream with constant growth potential. Now I come to next segment that is Rail near. Rail near segment has reported steady revenue growth of 106 crore.
It is rupees one crore less in comparison to same quarter previous year. EBITDA from this segment is also almost same. To be precise, Rupees one crore more than last year. Now I come to the last segment that is tourist. This segment has posted impressive revenue of rupees 148 crore. It is 21.3% up on year on year basis. This growth is commendable considering the fact that our business suffered setback due to geopolitical events. EBITDA margin of this segment has also improved in comparison to previous year. EBITDA margin of this segment by 7.6% last year in first quarter.
88.7% this year in the same period. Our performance of this quarter and growth initiatives undertaken by IRCTC reflect resilience, strategic discipline and operational efficiency. Setting strong foundation for remaining period of this financial year. This concludes my remark. Now floor is open for question and answer session. Thank you.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star and one on their touchstone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star and two Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Jinesh Joshi from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Jinesh Joshi
Thanks for the opportunity, sir. My first question is on the decline in revenue in the catering business. I. I believe we had multiple levers at play here. Like say for instance the rising count of 1 day Bharat trains tie up with the easy and tomato expansion of business outside of railways. And I guess the price hike was also helping us. But I think even in this quarter like last quarter, the growth is a bit subdued. So can you just call out what is the problem area over here? Because in an ideal scenario growth in catering should mimic the passenger traffic growth.
And if I look at your Internet ticketing revenue that is up by about 8, 9%. But somehow that growth in catering seems to be missing since the last two quarters. So your thoughts on that?
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Yes, thank you. Dinesh Joshiji. I have to tell you that overall our revenue increased by around 4%. And our tourism grew by 21%. And IT business also grew by 9%. Our growth in rainy remained flat and a slight dip in catering. The reason being there was a temporary phenomena like we last year same quarter we ran election special and a sizable amount around 32 crore worth of revenue generated from that business. Whereas this year it was only 4 to 5 crores. So that was the main reason why find about catering. Otherwise you see the E Catering part E Catering they grew by more than 30%.
And in addition we are in a transition phase whereby an opportunity through ABSS station Amrit Bharat Station where upgradation of stations are taking place. So the static unit on those stations could not generate license fee for this quarter. You can understand a little pain for a final relief. So ultimately this ABSS station once it is put in place it. It is opening a very big door for IR cities business catering business.
Jinesh Joshi
Understood. A follow up on this part is that how many stations or rather static units were impacted because of this transition that you spoke of and what was the lost revenue because of that? If you can specifically call out.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
That figure will give you later, we’ll send you across.
Jinesh Joshi
Sure. And sir, secondly, even on rail meer side I believe all our 20 plants are operational. And ideally we should have basically seen the benefit of improving utilization come through on that side. But even if I look at railmead the top line was more or less flat in this quarter as well. Wherein in the earlier quarters we have registered a good growth. So any specific reason that you may want to call out for this segment.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
As well as you correctly pointed out, our utilization in fact has improved. Earlier Last year year June 2024 our capacity license was 86.8%. Whereas this year this quarter it is 87.04%. But there were two issues. One is our Bilaspur plant. It is not working at the moment because of some issue with the state government regarding the extraction of water. So that in this quarter we are hopeful to start it again. So first thing is that secondly the election special which we ran last year has a component of rain lid also that is not there this time.
And thirdly, we have introduced a new 500ml bottle for Vande Bharat trains. So you see that compared to the last quarter, the Last year quarter June 2024 there were number of Vandevharat trains has been introduced in which we are giving only 500ml bottles. So despite our utilization has improved. But effectively because of 500ml bottle the revenue capturing is less.
Jinesh Joshi
Understood? Understood. Sir, just one last question from my side. If I look at our depreciation expense it is relatively flat on QQ basis. But if I remember right, I think in the last quarter we capitalized our new office building worth 400 crores. So sequentially the expense should have increased but it continues to remain flat. So if you can just explain the reason behind it.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Actually if you see the things we our our building has two parts. One part is land as per the accounting in standard land has to land. Land value has to be taken separately from the building part, from the construction part and out of 400 crores. The major chunk of our amount of investment in this building is of land which appreciate generally doesn’t depreciate. So we have capitalized only 40 crore of total investment and depreciation is counted on to that. Thank you.
Jinesh Joshi
You got it sir. Thank you. Thank you so much and all the best.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to the participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Karthik Gadda from multiple. Well, please go ahead.
Kartik Gada
Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Yeah. Please continue.
Kartik Gada
Yeah. Thank you. So a couple of bookkeeping questions. First can you provide the breakup of Internet ticketing revenue into convenience fee and the other component non convenience?
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Yeah, sure. Actually it is 2/3 of total IT revenue is convenience fee and one third is non convenience fee. You want a figure?
Kartik Gada
No, that’s fine. I’ll. That should be. That should be useful. That can be calculated. And similarly can you provide a breakup of the like one is total tickets and the breakup of tickets book AC. Non AC sitting.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
You see this quarter we have booked at 12.63 crore of tickets. And I think it is AC ticket of 6.4 crore. Non AC ticket is 4.74 crore.
Kartik Gada
Okay. Okay. The next question is. So there was a news recently about a rebate of 20% on holiday packages during the festive season. So just wanted to understand two. Two parts here. One is about this rebate of 20%. Who will be bearing that? Would it be railways which is my guess and second year. Would this be counted as one transaction only both the onward journey and return journey. Or there would be two transactions which would be like neutral for the convenience fee component for us.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
First of all I must compliment Ministry of railways for bringing this 20% discount in this festive season of Diwali and church. And simultaneously I must tell you that we have no impact on our convenience fee. Because both we will be having two PNRs. One for onward journey, another is for return journey and convenience fee. We’ll be charging the same rate. So this will certainly add to our business because of running of many trains. But no, no impact on our revenue. Okay.
Kartik Gada
Okay. Got it. Got it. That’s. That’s it. From my side. Thank you so much.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question I would like to remind the participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Harshadav from Daulat Capital Please go ahead.
Harsh Yadav
Hi. Am I audible?
operator
Yes, sir, you are.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Yeah.
Harsh Yadav
Okay. My question is regarding the catering business. I wanted to get an update on the total number of trains that are equipped with onboarded catering services and also how many of them are managed via the tendering process.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
All the units which we are working is through tendering process only. And this is around 1300.
Harsh Yadav
Okay.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
1295 is the number and it changes every time a new train is introduced or new service is added to that.
Harsh Yadav
All right. I had one more question regarding the rail meal business. So you had guided for adding three new bottling plants and increasing capacity to around 2 million bottles per day. I just wanted an update on this expansion timeline and also wanted to know if you have the number for the average volume of bottles sold per day in Q1.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Actually we are only. Our board of directors already approved the export of our two major plants. One at Danapur and another at Amber Nath. And there are few plants in the pipeline at Payagraj, at Ranchi, Bhagalpur and Mysore. So we are tendering process. We are already on to finalize the tender, start the tendering process and then it takes around a year and plus.
Harsh Yadav
Okay. And also do you have a number for the average volume of bottles sold Per day in Q1?
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Average number of bottles we sold per day. 14.12 lakhs bottle per day.
Harsh Yadav
Okay. Thank you so much for this. I just had one final question regarding the tourism business which is a more like general question. I just wanted to wanted you to give some light on the forward booking trends for Q2 and H1. Specifically if you could talk about, you know, the. The new services like Bharat Gaurav, Maharaja Express and the general services also.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Exact figure I will not be sharing but I can just do a glass give you a glance that we have. We are adding one more Reiko Bharat Gaurav train this financial year and we have already crossed a good figure mark in Maharaja Express booking and which is much higher than the last year figure. And we are very hopeful to get a very good business in tourism. Already we have like in the first quarter itself we have taken shown a growth of more than 20%.
Harsh Yadav
Okay. Okay. All right. That’s about it. Thank you so very much.
operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question, I would like to remind the participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Rahul Prakash, individual investor. Please go ahead.
Rahul Prakash
I thank you for the opportunity. First of all, thanks for the great setup. Number. I just had one question regarding the train tickets for Q1 2020 for this year given. May I know what is the total. Count of tickets for this Q?
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Yes please. We have booked a 13.88 lakh crore tickets this year
Rahul Himalian
daily average.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
No, you want total number of tickets? Yeah, it is 12.63 crores.
Rahul Prakash
12.63 crore is the total number of tickets for Q1. Got it. Got it. Any guidance for Q2? Q2 market growth in terms of ticket.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
You see this. All our IT business, all the business which we do is a seasonal business. So it will be comparable to Q2 last year.
Rahul Prakash
Thank you. All right. Thank you sir.
operator
Thank you. This call is no longer being recorded. A reminder to the participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question please may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dollar Capital Markets Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Rahul Jain
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, if you could share about the new initiative that we have taken in the previous segment. Of course we mentioned about the one weight that we have added in the Bharatwala frame. But any other newer initiative around, any newer plans, highlighted zone or categories that you want to operate in the tourism space.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
So you want to know about our initiative in tourism only or overall?
Rahul Jain
Yeah, first on the tourism. But it will be great if we could express another element.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
So in tourism we are already as I told that we have already started a process of adding one more Bharat Gaurav Reik. In addition the golden chariot of Karnataka government which we are running on an MoU that is also getting booked this season. And we are expected to run three to five departures this financial year. And as I explained that Maharaj Express has already seen a 20% growth. And in addition this during this financial year we are like including. Including many new circuits like Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Circuit. We have already run one and another are in the offing.
We are running Devhoomi Kedarnath Kartik Swami tour. This is in the month of June. And Ganga Ramayan Yatra from Sikandra Wat in the month of June. And Bharat Bhutan Mystic Mountain Yatra in the month of June. So many, many such new initiatives are already in the pipeline. Rahul.
Rahul Jain
Yeah, yeah, that’s very helpful. And we recently also saw the president from ISTC about the payment segregation approval. If you could help us in understanding the timeline by when we could go live and start seeing monetization of this business.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
See we are already into this business and with the license which we are trying to get from RBI in principal approval we have already got and six months time have been given by them to submit our paper. And then it will take around six to eight months in getting a license. So total from now if we say it may be around 12 to 18 months we will be able to get this license and that will help us in capturing business of other than our ticketing also.
Rahul Jain
Okay, so basically what you’re saying is that it may take another 12 to 18 months before we could get to the external customer list. Of course we are working on our own portal at this point.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Exactly .
Rahul Jain
Right. And in the. In the ticketing segment if I look at the non convenience part of the business, what we have seen is that it has not seen very meaningful jumps. We used to be pretty optimistic about this space especially around monetization on the advertisement and some other segments. Is there any key aspect of the business which you think can drive growth ahead of the convenience we growth or you think it would moreover more in line with the convenience fee or ticket book growth itself?
Sanjay Kumar Jain
You see I think Rahul you should shake your figure again because in non convenience fee we on a year on year basis this quarter we have grew by 17% and any double digit figure in this to my knowledge is a good one. But we are not satisfied. We are planning to do many things into this. We. First of all you talked about ad. So we are already planning to float a tender for like soul tendering rights for advertisement wherein we’ll be using artificial intelligence to get the ad and to get the cross selling also. So first thing is this.
Secondly in the non convenience fee type we are planning to have our OTA platform ready which is unified portal. This is also in the trending process that will give us a very good conversion of our like a business by cross selling. So these are a few things which will give us Then if you see the UPIC which has a share of 12% and is growing with 18% that will also help us in getting good business out of it. That also we are planning to implement.
Rahul Jain
Thank you. So just one clarification. So you are what you’re essentially saying that double digit growth on a full year is a possibility in the non ticketing, non convenience fee part of the ticketing business.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
No, no. I am simply saying that we grew by two double digit this this quarter and the momentum is already there. And our plan is also there to grow exponentially in this field.
Rahul Jain
That’s it. From my side and I’ll go Back. Thank you.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. The next question is from the line of Gurpreet Singh, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Gurpreet Singh
Yeah. Hi. My question has been answered. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to the participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchdown telephone. The next question is from the line of Ratanjuneja from Covalu. Please go ahead.
Rattan Joneja
Hi. Thanks. I want to know what is the trend of AC bookings over the past few quarters.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
We’ll send you across. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Motwani from Tara Capital. Please go ahead.
Mohit Motwani
Hello. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My question was on the margins that you did quite better versus last year in the Internet ticketing segment. Can you just walk us through what were some of the initiatives? Was it I. You already I think spoke about operation, operating, operational efficiencies. But was it also that the share of UPI was higher or it was better cost controls. If you can give some sense on the segment margin, better margins.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
Would you like to know about the margin in Internet ticketing, why it has increased?
Mohit Motwani
Yeah, yeah. Any particular factors that you want to attribute it to? And also the share of UPI which was there for the Internet ticketing segment in this quarter versus the previous quarter.
Sanjay Kumar Jain
UPI share is 48.72% this quarter and the margin margin increased because of non convenience.
Mohit Motwani
Okay, thank you.
operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchstone telephone. As there are no further questions I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Rahul Himalian
Thank you very much everyone. I am Rahul Himalayan, Director Tourism and Marketing. There was robust growth in Internet ticketing and tourism sector and almost from flat because of some obvious reasons in catering and this thing. But with your confidence, continuous confidence in irctc, we as a team will grow. Wishing you a very happy Independence day and a festival weekend. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you very much on behalf of Daulat Capital Markets Private Limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.