Thomas Cook (India) Ltd (NSE: THOMASCOOK) Q3 2025 Earnings Call dated Feb. 05, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Madhavan Menon — Executive Chairman
Mahesh Iyer — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Debasis Bikash Nandy — President & Group Co-Chief Financial Officer
Vikram Lalvani — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
K. S. Ramakrishnan — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Unidentified Speaker
Analysts:
Chetan Mahadik — Analyst
Sanjay Shah — Analyst
Sani Vishe — Analyst
Nirav Savai — Analyst
Advait Lath — Analyst
Deepak Lalwani — Analyst
Meet Shah — Analyst
Parveen Sharma — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Thomas Cook Limited Q Q3FY25 earnings conference call hosted by Systematic Shares and Stock Limited. As a reminder, all participant line will be in 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. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chetan Mahadek from Systematic Shares and Stock Limited. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Chetan Mahadik — Analyst
Thank you Sejal. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us on Thomas Cook India Limited’s Q3 FY25 earnings conference call from the company. We have with us Mr. Madhavan Menon, the Executive Chairman and the senior management team. We would like to begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management following which we will have the forum open for an interactive Q and A session.
I would now like to invite Mr. Madhavan to make the initial remarks. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Madhavan Menon — Executive Chairman
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for the introduction. I think consequent to Monday’s board meeting. We came out with a spate of several announcements simultaneously and I’m going to take a couple of minutes just to address each of those so that there is absolute clarity. I think the first one I’m going to address is the fact of my own retirement. I’ve completed 25 years at Thomas Cook and having done all that I’ve done over this period, I thought it was time to pass the baton on to Mahesh who has worked with me through these entire 25 years.
Part of it in the foreign exchange business as well as various roles in Management starting 2013. As far as I’m concerned, this will be a very systematic transition. Given that both of us have worked together all these years on matters where the company’s governance, performance etc are concerned, the transition will be much easier and therefore I can assure you that that there should be no hiccups. Mahesh Comes is a Thomas Cook veteran of many years. We also have Vishal in this room, we have Mr. Ramakrishnan, all of them veterans in their respective fields.
Each of our managing directors come with extensive amount of knowledge in their respective businesses and therefore there’s no shortfall. And I’ll just to give you a sense of the level of succession planning that we have in place today. If anybody leaves, there are multiple choices for the number of people who can occupy that seat at any level with at any position within the senior management.
So I think the succession planning, which is a part of the group’s psyche, has been implemented down to the T and therefore nobody should be concerned with the departure of one individual or anybody replacing him, him or her in this particular case. The second important announcement that we made was obviously about the consolidation of the Nature Trails brand and its operations into TCIL’s domestic operations. You know, post Covid, we have witnessed dramatic surges in some of our businesses and the domestic business was a classic case of this sit.
While Nature Trails was an integral part of Sterling, Sterling themselves over a period of time came to the realization that they wanted to focus on their business, which is effectively in the hospitality sector, but addressing a particular segment, whereas Nature Trails did not align with that segment and addressed another segment. Given Thomas Cook getting a lot of interest at multiple levels in multiple segments of the population, Starting with the 25 to 35 year olds and all the way up to the 40, 50 year olds, we thought this was an opportunity to consolidate three resorts that are coming with this and expand our offering. Now you will ask the question, why couldn’t it have been done by Sterling? The very simple answer is that once it’s in the Thomas Hooks table, we actually can get our distribution to focus on this and sell those properties, three properties.
So I think that’s the second most important thing. You will appreciate that Sterling Holidays is Sterling Resorts is a 100% subsidiary and Nature Trails is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sterling. Therefore, doing this transaction did not require any regulatory requirements and therefore was the easiest option that we could have examined.
It also was triggered by the fact that over a period of time we have seen other companies asking us if we were interested in similar segments and therefore we thought that this would be an opportunity that we should pursue. Third element is the results and I just want to address a couple of points before I hand over to Mahesh and Devashish and of course Ram and Vikram Lalwani is the fact that if we look at the India businesses specifically in the quarter gone by, they actually led the growth. If you look at financial services, the turnover increased 16% year on year.
If you look at DMS, it increased by 19% year on year. If you look at the B2C segment was up by 29% along with a 12% increase in leisure hospitality under Sterling Holidays. Now, the Indian businesses clearly saw strong demand, something that we’ve been talking about for some time and therefore, you know, I think that is in line with our expectations.
Some of our businesses were impacted by one offs that we had in the year gone by and some changes that we witnessed during the year. But let me assure you that I believe all our businesses are on track to achieve their numbers in the coming quarter. And I think an important point I want to make here is that 2024 was a year where we witnessed a lot of challenges in the geopolitical space.
For example, if you look at Dubai, demand in Dubai was tepid all the way through November because of the problems that Israel and Iran had. And you know, combine that with Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, what you call the Houthis. The reality is with the failure of the government in Syria, the situation just dramatically changed.
If you look at the first two weeks or three weeks of this year of January in Dubai, the hotels were running as high as 85 to 90% occupancy. And you’ll appreciate that if I look at Dubai by itself, it most probably has more five star hotels than the whole of India put together. Now to be able to fill those hotels at that rate is quite difficult.
Secondly, if you look at both the results of, I mean, if you look at sales both at Dubai Desert Adventures as well as dei, we’ve seen a marked change that is reflective of that sentiment. So, you know, I think that’s one area of concern that we had. The US is another example that was strained last year because of the political problems in Europe with the Ukraine and Russia.
But you know, we didn’t see any major change in demand there because you know that I think Italy, which is one of our main source markets, really did not get affected by that. So I’m going to leave it there and we’ll be glad to answer any questions either on my departure on nature trails or the results once the Q and A starts.
I’ll hand over to Mahesh at this stage.
Mahesh Iyer — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Marvin and good evening to all of you and thank you for joining us on this call and the discussion on our performance for Q3 and 9 months of FY25. Let me start off by first covering our performance for the quarter ended December 2024. As Madhavan said, our financials in the quarter was led by some healthy performances of our India businesses.
Noteworthy amongst them is the financial services business, the India travel business which comprised of the B2C holidays, the India DMS business represented by the brand TCI and Ceta and the leisure hospitality business by Sterling Holidays Lots. And Vikram Lalwani, the managing director of Sterling will talk about it in the subsequent conversation. Just to begin with, I want to give you Some lens on our quarterly performance to begin with.
And if you look at our income from operations for the quarter we actually saw a 7% increase from 1,938 crores to 2083 crores. I’d like to mention here that these are not strictly a comparable number as you recollect. We’ve been mentioning this over the last three or four calls that in the year 2023 we did a bulk of government business under the subhead of mice which is the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions business.
Now obviously that business was not there in the year 2024 and specifically in the quarter of October December 20. Just to give you a color to that, in the October December 2023 we had about 935 million worth of income that we got from the government business. And if I exclude that from the last year numbers and compare to this, you will actually see that our growth stands at about 13% as compared to the seven that you see on the results.
Now what this reflects is that our growth in the business has been very stable. Our India businesses are actually fired and as we have guided the market to a 12 15% growth in our top line income from operations, actually our business have delivered. But since it’s not a comparable number, you’re seeing the impact of the one off that sits on the income from operations.
Before I get into the profitability, I just want to give you a color on the segment so that you understand as to how some of the segments in India has fired. If you look at our financial services segment, they actually reported a 16% growth in our revenues and then EBIT margin expanded by close to about 700 basis points. So if you look at for the quarter you will see that our income from operations grew from 64 crores to 74 crores reflecting a 16% growth.
And our EBIT improved from 21 crores to 28 crores which reflects a 36% growth over a comparable quarter. If I flip that over to the nine months you will see that our income from operations actually grew by 7% from 233 crores to 249 crores. And our EBIT actually improved by 25% from 92 crores to 116 crores.
And in both these you will see that our margins actually expanded on a quarter to quarter basis which is Q3 to Q4, Q3 to Q3. You will actually see that our EBIT margins in the financial services improved by 592 basis points and for the nine months actually improved by 700 basis points. Now some of the factors that led to this growth are strong growth on the retail segment for foreign exchange led by education segment which grew by about 11% and the holiday forex segment which grew by about 15%.
We continue to milk the operational efficiencies that you have built. Our digital adoption on the FX business continues to be very strong. We currently at about 22% digital adoption and the float on the broaderless prepaid card continued to grow. Our botless prepaid float at the end of Q3FY25 stands at about 1,364 crores representing a 13% growth over a comparable quarter last year. From a digital penetration point of view, as I mentioned the 22% we’ve done about 2,900 video KYC enabled transaction and that has happened with about 85% success rate. You’ll appreciate that sometimes mid or rather the last quarter second last quarter of last year when we met at an investors meeting I had shown you some demo on how the entire video KYC journey will work.
I’m happy to report that that journey has actually moved forward and as we speak we are actually onboarding more and more customers to this channel Forex via WhatsApp, which is another channel which typically most organizations or service or industry use as a service channel. We also use as a sales channel. We are actually tracking close to about 2,000 transactions on that channel, albeit it’s a very low base that we started off.
But we are actually seeing very good traction on that channel too. Coming back to the travel and travel related services and their performance to the quarter again as Madhavan said and highlighted that for the quarter in question our income from operations actually grew by about 11% and that’s a reflective of the fact that from a sales line point of view nothing has changed. While the profitability, I will comment on the one offs that we have on the profitability in a little bit.
I think from a sales point of view all our business continued to grow and in specific reference to our India business we actually clocked a very high double digit growth. Now if I have to exclude mentioned about the MICE business specific reference to the national Games in Goa that we did in Q3 of FY24 and I exclude that the growth will actually be close to about 19% and that’s a very sizable growth that we are talking about. If I transpose that number for the nine months that we ended, you’ll actually see that that growth actually translates into close to 20%.
Commenting on the profitability for the quarter and Madhavan alluded to that and I’ll give you a little more lens on how that has panned out. First, the impact of the national gains. On a comparable basis, the 935 million of top line sales that we had, which is the income, had a bottom line impact of 60 million.
Now this 60 million that we had in 2020, the Q3 of FY24 is definitely not available in Q3 of FY25. So that’s one element that I would like to call out here. Secondly, from our international operations point of view, Madhavan spoke about the geopolitical situation.
We also had some one off currency fluctuations and you will appreciate that we’ve seen some large movements in currency in a short duration of time and I think there has been ample coverage in large medias over the last two days talking about how ASEAN currencies have moved in relation to dollar and we saw a sharp swing in some of the currencies specifically in the ASEAN regions. Typically our business are insulated when we look at a swing between 1.5% to 2% but when you see a large swing ranging between 5 to 6% and some of these businesses are pre contracted, obviously we are not prepared to take that kind of a swing that came in.
So that impacted our business and the impact of that was roughly about 60 million on our profitability. Also there was this one time grant that we got on DEI last year in Q3, FY24 which was the grant that we got in US it was about $1.6 million Indian rupees about 134 million. Obviously that is not available in the current year. So clearly if you look at it, this is not an Apple to Apple comparison or it’s not like to like comparison. But if I look at the overall sales growth that reflects a 7% growth and if I adjust for this one time items, our profitability in the current quarter actually grew by about 5%.
I’d also like to mention that during the quarter we expanded our market and network by adding seven new locations. Five in the north state and about two in the western part of the country. Moving on to talk about some of those events that we are currently doing. As you all know there is a lot of conversation around the Kumbh Mela. I’m happy to report that SOTC and Thomas Cook, the two brands that represent the domestic market here, have actively participated. We’ve booked about 1000 tents, close to about 1400 passengers have traveled through us till date and we expect by the time this season ends or the Kumbh Mela ends, we would have roughly close to about 2,000 passengers who would have traveled through us.
Similarly, we spoke about Japan last year and Japan was a big bang event for us. We actually launched Japan last year. We are close to about 2,200 passengers for Japan this year. The cherry blossom is actually getting delayed. We are actually going to see the season running all the way till about 15th or 20th of April. And as we speak we are already close to about 85 to 90% of the volumes that we did last year. So I expect Japan to contribute very positively in the quarter to come. Commenting on the corporate travel business, we have actually seen a 13% year on year growth in terms of top line sales. Our focus on this business has been on margin expansion. I’m happy to report that our non air and car business has grown by 54 and 131% respectively. These are two levers for margin expansion from an overall portfolio point of view. In 2023 non air business was about 5% of our portfolio.
In 2024 we ended at about 8%. So clearly we are actually seeing the shift that’s happening on the non air side of our business and we expect this growth momentum to continue which will add positively to the gross margins on the business. Last but not the least is the MICE business. On the mice side of the business we continue to manage large groups. You will appreciate that we had close to about 245 crores of the government business that we did in the nine months ended December 2024 last year. And for the current year we have none of that reflecting into our P and L.
But despite that our MICE business actually grown. And I’m happy to also report that as we speak in the current quarter we actually bagged a large business from government. We are actually doing the National Games in Uttarakhand which the total size of that business is roughly about 120 crores which will now reflect in the current operating quarter.
From a forward booking perspective, specifically referring to the summers we’ve begun, the long haul business is actually starting to show up. We are seeing some smart recovery that’s happening. Elbit airfares continue to be remaining elevated. But despite that from a volume perspective we are actually seeing close to about 20 plus percent growth in terms of volumes and in terms of value we are seeing close to about 35% growth.
On that, I would like to hand over to Deep Ashish to take the DMS part of it and I’ll be happy to Come back to any questions that you have later on.
Debasis Bikash Nandy — President & Group Co-Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Mahesh. So on the India DMX part, this is the beginning of the six week period, the six month season and they have done pretty well during the quarter. They are up over 24% over last year in terms of top line benefiting from rising foreign tourist arrivals. As far as overseas DMS is concerned, at overall level, sales have improved by 18% year on year for the quarter. And if I try to give you a little more lens on that, we have seen very good growth in Asia. In Southeast Asia, in Asian Trails the growth has been upwards of 30%.
In South Africa, the growth has been about 35%. In desert adventure in the Middle east which the area has been impacted by persistent geopolitical tensions as you are aware of that. But in spite of that, Desert has seen a 7% increase in sales during the quarter. As far as the US market is concerned, Lit Pro, they have had a fairly healthy growth of about 9% during the quarter. This is obviously not a season for them as you can well appreciate. The only unit which has not done well and we have been talking about this unit even in the earlier quarters was East Africa.
East Africa suffered because one of our customers, one of their customers went bankrupt in the month of May. And that customer alone contributed to close to about 25% of the sales annually. And while they’ve been trying to get additional customers to make up for the deficit, that process takes time. Usually it takes 12 to 18 months to replace that and therefore their sales has dropped by about 30%. However, overall, in spite of this setback, the overall increase has been 18% for the overseas DMS segment. I would now like to hand over to Vikram to talk about Sterling.
Vikram Lalvani — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Debashish. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I’m Vikram lalwani. I’m the MD and CEO of Sterling Holiday Resorts. And I’m also joined by Mr. L. Krishna Kumar, the Chief Financial Officer of Sterling. I shall be happy to take you through the Sterling Holiday results. Results for Q3FY25 and also for the 9 month YTD FY25. I’m happy to report that Q3FY25 has been the strongest ever quarter performance for sterling following 18 consecutive quarters of profitable growth. This comes on the back of a quarter with strong Holiday demand coupled with our expansion of supply by Sterling. We are pleased to report double digit growth in income, EBITDA and EBIT.
Our income grew 12% in Q3FY25 was with a 14% growth in EBITDA and a 13% growth in EBITDA. Our EBITDA margins for Q3FY25 has exceeded our intended threshold of 30 to 35% to close at 38.8%. Our income stood at 1389 million, EBITDA at 539 million and EBIT at 427 million all in INR. We had a one time exceptional expense of 37 million towards an MNC scheme that we had undertaken. Traditionally ladies and gentlemen, Q1 has always been the most significant and the strongest quarter of any financial year for sterling. This time Q3 has exceeded Q1 on account of portfolio balancing that we had undertaken as part of our expansion plans, thus expanding our revenue base in quarters other than just Q1.
It may also be noted based on my previous commentary that the investments we made in Q1 have fructified in terms of results in Q3 with the completion of the ramp of the results that we launched in Q1, our occupancies for Q3 were at 61%, also indicating the headroom available actually for us for further revenue expansion. This is despite our available room nights having gone up by 16% over Q3 FY24. Our average room rate is healthy at 6,788, clearly depicting that Sterling now operates its portfolio of resorts in the upper mid upscale and the upper upscale segments.
Our other significant line of business food and beverage has shown an healthy growth of 20% and we shall continue to strive to increase our contribution in food and beverage as well. On a YTD basis, Sterling has had a 14% growth in income at 3,942 million and at an EBITDA of about 35%. During the quarter Sterling launched three new resorts Sterling Lortano in Vinha, Kerala.
This takes us to the third resort in Wayanaut, Sterling Coorg in Karnataka and Sterling Ranthambore in Rajasthan, thus also increasing our presence in Rajasthan already. This now takes our portfolio up to 48 locations in India and 57 resorts, hotels and retreats across the above mentioned various segments. Our expansion focus shall continue to be on a asset right model with limited or no capex in investments only to sweat our existing assets for scale.
On an average we have opened one resort a month in the last 18 months and we have a healthy pipeline of additional destinations being made live in 2025. This will keep adding additional revenues for our focus shall also continue to be on scaling lines of businesses of additional revenues also driven by operational cost efficiencies, use of digital practices for process stability and scalability and continuing to scale our distribution channels without significant addition of its costs. Investments towards leadership and some refurbishments in our own resorts to cater to scale and the new customer shall continue even in the future.
Sterling has also launched Sterling Frankal our ESG initiative having undertaken several initiatives under energy efficiency, waste management and water conservation. Some of the significant initiatives that we had undertaken in our resorts are as far as energy conservation is heat pumps from a waste management, organic waste converters and rainwater harvesting and water recycling. In some of our results a testament of our growing brand strength of Sterling is reflected with the industry wide recognition that some of our resorts have got over a period of time and in Q3 we are also happy to inform that we got such four significant recognition as under Sterling Aravalli Udaipur won the Travel Plus Leisure India’s best awards for Best Emerging City Hotel, Stirling Lake Palace Aleppy won the Hospitality Horizon Hotel Awards Top 5 Luxury Resorts in India for the first time our restaurants have started getting prominence.
Our restaurant Amu Odisha in Sterling Puri won the Food Food awards as the top 50 restaurants of India in 2024 and Sterling won the 27th today’s Traveler Award 2024 as one of the fastest growing hospitality drive in India. On the people front our focus continues to be on upskilling key potential talent within our resorts and to make them future ready at various positions in the new resorts that we launch towards this year successfully completed a capability and building exhibition size with the Indian School of Hospitality for our Executive Assistant managers making them ready to run our future resorts as resort managers or general managers independently. We have also groomed almost 245 departmental trainers in Q3 across all our resorts for being the flag bearers of upskilling frontline talent.
On a look ahead we expect to close FY25 with a healthy double digit growth and with focus to build continuing to build our base on business for FY26. Thank you. We will now hand it over to Ram Mr. Ramakrishnan who will talk about DEI.
K. S. Ramakrishnan — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is KS Ramakrishnan from DEI talking about our revenue between quarter three financial year 24 to 25 we’ve seen a 7% drop from a 241 crores to a 224 crores. I would take this despite all the geopolitical issues, harsh climate conditions and the China attendance and local reduction of spend and the US closures I think we’ve ebbed very well with our revenue still going down only by 7% to 224.
This basically reflects that our December was a good comeback from an EBIT and a PBIT perspective. From between quarter three financial year 24 to quarter three financial year 25 we’ve had from 22 crores drop down to 6 crores. As Mahesh and Madan already mentioned, this is or let’s keep in mind that there was a one time grant that was included in the Q3 24 of 13 crores.
Given that not being there this year and in spite of having double cost on software etc that we’ve done, we seem to be holding good on that front. As such, I’ve been maintaining this on all the quarter discussions with all of you all that it’s a one off year 24 where we have multiple things happening at the same time. The good part of the story is we weathered all the negatives that could happen, possibly happen for the business through the single year and 25 looks pretty strong going forward.
December January has seen attendance improve drastically and coming back to normalcy, the tech our tech platform seems to be in full form to get released by second quarter and by third quarter we should be able to see the results. I’m talking about third quarter calendar year 2025 and from a business perspective we have been fairly robust in our renewal rates. We’ve had more than 92% renewal rates, 17 new partnerships renewed in UAE and Maldives and Singapore.
We have two new partnerships just onboarded in India and Maldives and we’ve operationally launched four new part three new partnerships in India, Maldives and Indonesia. With that forward looking we see 2025 to be a fairly strong year for us to get back to where we were, where we have left it in the past. 24 has probably weathered all that could have done, some that were planned and some that were unplanned and I look forward for a good 2025.
Unidentified Speaker
Thank you Ram. We can now open the floor for Q and A please.
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 2. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Participants are requested to restrict the question to one per participant. If you have a follow up question I would request you to rejoin the queue. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sanjay Shah from Pranesha Technologies Private Limited. Please go Ahead.
Sanjay Shah
Hi. Thank you very much for this opportunity. I hope you can hear me.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yes, we can.
Sanjay Shah
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think you went to some of the reasons for the shortfall in margins, including the National Games and a couple of other areas. Would it be possible to just succinctly summarize the decline in EBITDA margin from 8.3% to 6.7%? What are the components that led to it and how much if that’s possible.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Okay. I think Manish summarized that very nicely and I just sort of reiterate that and you can ask questions if it is, if you have, if you have any any further clarification to see. But primarily we are talking about three events or one time impact. One is of course in case of DEI, we had a one time grant received in the US during quarter of 2324amounting to about 13 crores or $1.6 million. So obviously that’s a one time grant and not likely to repeat. So that’s one.
The second thing which Mahesh also explained is the impact of the National Games. The business that we had last year where we made a fixed crore sort of revenue or profit, there’s a contribution to debit which is missing this year. However, as you also pointed out, the national, we have back the National Games Uttarakhand business in the current financial year, it’s not happening as we speak.
So we will see a reflection of that in the January, March quarter. So it’s, I would say it’s more like a timing effect than anything else. The third one, the third one is the foreign exchange impact what you are talking about. Now let me dwell on this. This is primarily in the Southeast Asian business that we have and it relates to the exchange fluctuations that happened during the period October and November. Now just to put some numbers in perspective, during between 30 September and 15 November, the Thai Baht depreciated against the dollar by an astounding 8% which is very unusual.
You don’t see a currency depreciating by 8% in a matter of 45 days. Now as you would appreciate that our the business is the inbound business where our inflows are in dollars or similar currencies and outflow obviously is fed to the local market. Now when you and these rates are fixed well in advance because the contracts usually happen within three to six months ahead of the actual date of arrival.
So when we fix the contracts we take the current rate into consideration and therefore we quote a particular price. And let me just tell you that the business is fiercely competitive. We can’t expect to have keep high margins for exchange fluctuations because somebody else will take the business away. Therefore, while there could be 1 or 2% leverage or margin left in order to allow for exchange fluctuations, we certainly don’t keep a 8% margin in a matter of 45 days. Now that created a big impact Visari last year. Last year it actually went favorably. Between September of 23 and the December of 23 the Thai bar gained 6.5% and against the dollar. So that, that actually helped us. This year this was just the reverse. So this is more like a one time impact. It’s the fifth inner, you know, sort of change of rates by 8% over a 45 day period. Took us completely by surprise to be very honest. And that’s what has caused the difference by the way. Just, just so, just to answer father’s questions on that. The date has been fairly stable since then. On 15th of November the Thai Baht was 34.99 to a dollar. Right now it is hovering around 34, 1, 34.1, 34.2 in that range.
Sanjay Shah
And the last part contributed to how much in terms of an EBIT loss or a difference.
Madhavan Menon
Compare only for, if you look at only the current quarter it’s about five, five and a half crores. But you know, you have to just suppose that against the gain that we had last year, you know, the exchange gain because there the exchange rate worked in our favor. So there we gain something like over 6 crore. So the difference between the two quarters, which is what analysts are interested in is over 11 crores.
Sanjay Shah
Thank you for the clarity, really appreciate it.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Saniya from Access securities. Please go ahead.
Sani Vishe
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for taking my question. So I am just trying to understand what, what forms the other expenses. We could see some rise there. So there is one component on the console basis mark to market which is reported separately that is around 18.7 million. But otherwise also the other expenses have increased significantly. So could you just throw some light on that?
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yeah, this is Devashish Nandi. Let me try, let me try and answer your question on this one. Yeah, so the MTM thing that you see is actually a regular feature. It’s on the holding of the small amount of questions that we have for our employees is held in a trust and the shares will be there in the trust till such time they are given out to employees. But as per the accounting, you know, requirements we need to do a mark to market and that entirely depend on how the share prices of quest move. So in some quarters we get a gain out of that, some quarters we get a loss out of that. Honestly we cannot do anything. We cannot do anything about it really.
Sani Vishe
Okay. Okay.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
But quite apart from that, quite apart from that I think the gap. I’ll try and explain that in, you know in four or five into four and five elements. One is the increase in cuc, the increase in rent and utility expenses. This is. This is about 8 and a half crores. This is largely on account of the new airport counters that you have got in Delhi and in Goa. So obviously the rent and utility expenses are being accounted for here whereas the revenue will sit in the.
Obviously in the top line there is an element of three and a half crores on account of marketing spend which is over and above. I mean 3 and a half crores ahead of last year and that’s obviously the increased focus on leisure travel, domestic tourism, so on and so forth. It has resulted in that increase. There is an increase of about 2 crores on account of items like power and fuel and such other establishment expenses. This is largely on account of Sterling. Now Sterling as you know is setting up resources, expanding its spending, its footprint fairly quickly and this is a result of enhanced business within Sterling.
The fourth one is on account of repairs etc which has happened which I think which undertook some repairs of some of our branches and offices etc. Which is about. And this is not only in Thomas, this is across all the. Across all the. Across the group and this is about 2 and a half crores. Lastly there is about close to about 8 and a half crores and this can be split into two parts. One part is there has been a. We spoke briefly about the. Ram spoke briefly about the US business closure which happened earlier in the year. There is some inventory write off consequent to that which has been considered in this quarter and the balance is actually more like a regroup. So Sterling pays some contract wages obviously for contract workmen. This works out over 5 crores.
This has earlier been classified as employee benefit expenses. That is how it was shown till last year. This year the auditors have said that it should be moved away from employee benefit expense but these do not represent full time employees and should be clubbed as part of other expenses. So all of these together if you add up it explains about 25 out of the 30 crore. I hope that answers your question.
Sani Vishe
Yeah. So in terms of run rate, do we think this will be normalized? A bit at least in the next quarter.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
See as I said see some of these items bring in additional business, additional top line. For example, the increase in airport rentals etc. Is obviously getting compensated by the additional top line. The increase in the. If we talk about the expenses that increase in sterling on account of power, fuel, etc. Obviously finds a more than compensating effect in the top line. And marketing is something that is discretionary. Our marketing spends are very tightly controlled and it really depends on how much sales we make.
And if we see the do not see commensurate sales coming out of the marketing efforts, we tend to hold that back. So I think the only one time out of this is about the write off or the provision, I won’t say write off provision that you have taken for the US business closure on account of inventory. That’s the only one time other than that anything that is get spent will also find a deflection in the top line.
Sani Vishe
2.5 and the repairs related. 2.5.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yeah, I mean repairs are. Yeah, repairs is. I mean it’s. I. I can’t call that one time because repairs will continue as there are branches and there are offices. Repairs will continue every time. We’ll not see a two and a half crore growth over past quarters. I do admit that. But you know, honestly it’s very difficult to sort of predict a clear spend there. By and large we should at annual level it should be remain the same.
Sani Vishe
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Thanks a lot that experience.
Operator
Thank you.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
On a nine month basis I think Mahesh just added that on a nine month base just about 8 or 9%. So you know that’s fairly close to the inflation rate.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Neera from bank is Asset Manager Private limited. Please go ahead.
Nirav Savai
Hi, my question is regarding this margins in the travel business. So in the last quarter you all have guided that you’re looking for a 5% EBIT margin. Now in a business where there are so many one offs and exceptions based on currency swings, how do we see this a sustainable margin going forward? Because this has been an extremely weak quarter in the travel business when you look at the operating performance. So when do we see this 5% EBIT margins and is it something which you already indicated near the near term future at least My sense was it was FY25. But is there any timeline or any strategy to make sure the volatility in margins can be reduced going forward?
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Let me try to answer this and Mahesh can supplement if that’s not enough. I think first of all on the guidance that we gave on the 5%. I don’t think you gave a guidance for the quarter. Okay? Our guidance which we gave even some six months back was that our ambition or aim was to reach a 5% level over the next 18 to 24 months. Okay? And it is a journey. It will not happen overnight. It will happen over a period of time.
1 the second point is that from time to time and if you look at on a quarterly basis there even there will be aberrations like the one that you’ve seen now, there will be national games in a particular December quarter and the next quarter. Next time the national game may happen in January. Okay? Remember that you bought the contracts on both the occasions. It’s not that we lost the contract. We got the contract in one year and lost the quarter contract in the subsequent year. But timing is something that we can’t really do much about which is why we would encourage you to look at a full year result.
So the full period 9 month result rather than the quarter travel is a very seasonal business. There will be aberrations like that as we go along as far as exchange and number three, as far as exchange structures are concerned, honestly when you talk about a 5% margin or EBIT margin, we expect that exchange count fluctuation would be at a particular level. We obviously budget for some fluctuations here and there. But you will appreciate, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that very seldom we see a currency going down by 8% in less than one and a half months. So that is. That is something that took us another.
I admit that we are taking corrective steps for that and I hope it will not recur in the future.
Nirav Savai
My point was Q3 is our best quarter.
Mahesh Iyer
I just want to add something to what Debashes just said. This is my A. I want you to please focus on the nine month results that are there. And if you look at our EBIT margin on the travel vertical, we are holding at 3.9%. Now if you look at FY24 and compare that to FY25 for the nine month period, the 3.9% is despite the one offs that we have seen in the current quarter. If I was to adjust for those, you will actually see the margins actually going closer to the 4.1, 4.2 which is actually moving forward to the guidance that we have given that we aim to get closer to the 5%. And I think it’s also important to mention Here that when we spoke about the 5% we also guided the market to the fact that there are some of our overseas DMS entities who are not fully out of the woods, they are coming back, some of them have come to break even, some have started to generate profits and there are some units which are still not doing it.
And Debashish in his commentary spoke about a specific unit which is East Africa where there was a customer who went bankrupt and there is a customer loss that happened, it contributed 45% of the top line business. So that income has obviously not come in the current quarter. Now if those kind of events were not there, I think we would have been much closer to the guidance that we have given.
So obviously there are some events which are external in nature, which are beyond our control but our guidance to the 5% holds good. But if you were to ask me will this happen in one quarter, maybe that’s not how we looked at it. We actually looked at more like a period and it’s the same that applies for the foreign exchange business.
If you see it, we’ve guided the market more to a 40, 45% and there are quarters where we have done 47, there are quarters when we have done 42 and there is a seasonality to the business because foreign exchange flows up from the travel that happens. So obviously we’ll see some amount of the seasonality playing out.
Nirav Savai
And so why I was emphasizing more on the third quarter is because particularly third quarter is the best quarter which has seen for the holiday part of it which is a B2C business I don’t think.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
No, no, certainly not.
Nirav Savai
The holiday part of the business I am saying not the entire…
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Not even for the holiday part of the business. I suggest you go and look at a trend in the past and we can share more data on a one on one basis. I think especially if you are talking about in the past. But quarter three has never been the best quarter for us. But I suggest that you have a chat to Turvashi which will help you to understand the training a little better.
Nirav Savai
Yeah. So another thing I wanted to understand is, you know, the kind of diversified mix what we have within travel.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
I’m sorry but you know there is a norm which is set by the coordinator right in the beginning saying that one question at a time so that others also get. Thank you.
Operator
Sorry. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. You may press Star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Advait Lad from Nipun India Mutual fund. Please go ahead.
Advait Lath
Hello Sir, I’m audible.
Operator
Yes, sir.
Advait Lath
Yeah, Hi. Hi sir, just wanted to get some clarity on the measures you’re taking to mitigate these foreign exchange volatility moves, such tail end moves. So could you just give some light on that?
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yeah, I think I talked about that while I answered the previous question on this one. So more granular level actions that you might be taking. So we are, I can’t give up my business strategies in this forum. I’m sorry. But we are taking sufficient measures to make sure that this doesn’t come back again. Doesn’t surprise us the way we get. We been surprised this time. But you know, you’ll appreciate that in a public forum it’s very difficult to talk about business tactics and things that something that will execute in future.
I do not really want to talk about now. But I can promise you that you see the results.
Madhavan Menon
So I think you need to realize that an 8% depreciation currency over a very short period of time is literally one in a many, many years event. No country can allow its currency to depreciate by 8% or even 5% or even 4% in such a short period repeatedly that the economy will collapse. So I think you need to recognize that this is a very, very, very rare event. But having said that Deb, as will advise you as to what we are doing to mitigate potential risk.
Advait Lath
Yeah, sure. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepak Lalwani from Unifi Capital. Please go ahead.
Deepak Lalwani
Hi Sir, I had three questions. I’ll cut them into one. So firstly on the B2C vertical you mentioned that forward bookings are running at 35% growth. But if you assume that on our, you know, lower base this year that we’ll still be at 80% recovery when the endeavor was 400%. So is that assumption right? Will the revenues be better or lower? So secondly, on the DMS vertical, you know, the growth rates have been strong. So any qualitative feedback that we should take on what you’re doing on ground, whether it is regarding the B2B customer that you’re onboarding the productivity. So if you can give some sense on that. And again on the margin guidance of the Travel segment, the 5% Understand is for maybe a longer time. So what should, what should be a number that analysts will be working with for 25 and 26.
Mahesh Iyer
Deepak. Hi Mahesh. I’ll try and address your first and third question and I’ll get Debashish to come in for the DMS Part of it. On the first part of it. Look, we’ve been saying this repeatedly and Deepak, you’ve been on this call asking the same question over and over again. But for the sake of repetition I’ll say this again. Look, when we look at the business we don’t look at individual whether it’s long haul, short haul. At the end of the day we are holiday makers. We are here to make people travel and enjoy a good experience, come back with some good memories and that’s the aim for the brand Thomas Cook SOTC and brand in Hong Kong. Now clearly our recovery rate on the domestic and the short haul has been very very strong.
Our domestic business actually has grown more than 30%. Our short haul business growth has been more than 25% long haul. And then we’ve been repeatedly saying this was impacted because of visa related issues, heightened airfares, availability of inventory and some of the stuff that has impacted that business.
Having said so, October, December quarter we actually saw decent growth. When I say decent growth I’m talking about double digit growths in our long haul business. Also if I look at and I guided the forward bookings which represents not only summers but also the Jan. March quarter, we are actually seeing fairly stable kind of growth rates and in high double digits. When I said in terms of volume, when I say refer to volume I’m talking about PACS growth. I’m looking at more than 20% tax growth in the current quarter and I’m looking at volume growth which tops 25 to 28%. And going forward into the summers the Europe bookings have actually picked up and we expect that as we complete our booking cycle which will go on till the last week of March and early April, we will come and talk about it in the next quarter. But I expect this season to be much better from a recovery point of view to the pre pandemic levels. We’ve said that we will endeavor to get closer to the 85 90% mark and we stay true to that.
Whether we’ll end up there or some other segment will fire on the long haul side I really can’t say. But if you combine the B2B and B2C put together we are actually going to be closer to the 95% mark or 96% mark to the 2019 levels and I think that will be a very commendable performance as well as the comeback for the business is concerned. Commenting back on the margins and as I said to Nirav2 previously, I think from the nine month period the margins are stable. We are at 3.9%. If I factor in the one off items that we face in the current quarter, you will see the margins actually would have expanded. So this 1/4 impact should not be over read.
I think if we were to exclude those one off items, the margins would have expanded by about 2030 basis points already and we will be closer to the guidance that we have given which is close to 5% now the 5% margin is something that we hope to achieve by the end of FY 2026. There are parts of the businesses which are currently in different phases of recovery. And as Madhavan said in his opening remark about the Middle east markets desert divisions, one of the business was also impacted by the geopolitical While the top line has grown, profitability has not because we focus to garner as much business as possible and stay ahead of the game.
And some of them has come at the cost of some margin compromise and stuff like that. But that’s not necessarily the situation in 2025. So we expect a lot of recovery to happen there which will all positively add to our margins going forward.
You want to talk on the dms?
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yeah, I think on the dms the story on DMS we have been talking about for a while and the story hasn’t really changed. I think that because this is a long term story. So the things that there are three things that we have been trying to do in the DMS business. The first thing is automation. You know we have over the software that they’re using and these are different softwares for different people. It’s not the same. So that’s been completely overruled so that the level of productivity goes up and obviously we achieve better cost rational and better cost structures. The second is the expansion of the customer base. Each of the units have been encouraged to go out and get more external business.
The dependence on Thomas Cook is actually very minimal, in some cases almost nil. And of course the third one is the expansion offerings that they do so in terms of product etc. So these are the three things that we have been trying to do for a while. As you understand that as you know the progress was obviously hampered by Covid. So things went down for a couple of years. But now I think all the efforts are started paying off which is why you see them growing in spite of issues like what Mahesh talked about. Issues like the geopolitical disturbance, the Middle east or you know, one of the only suffering because couple of their key customers went down in one financial year, so on and so forth. But again, so overall you can see we can continue to. We expect that the business will continue to grow the way it is.
Deepak Lalwani
Okay, that is good to hear. Sir, your qualitative assessment of the current pricing trends in the market, any challenges that we see with regards to discounts or the schemes that you have to give to your customers and will that be a risk to growth and margins? Thank you.
Mahesh Iyer
No, Deepak, we don’t think so. I think we are very measured in terms of how we set our price to the market. We are also, and this is something we called out previously also that when we give margin guidance we are also cognizant of the fact that we don’t want to out price ourselves in the marketplace. And there will be some tactical moves that we make based on either a competition reacting or a price point operating at a certain point in time. Just to give a case, I mean look at the Kumbh. The kind of demand we have seen where we see an opportunity to put the price up. We’ve actually done that because demand was outpacing the supply in some form.
So obviously there’s an opportunity, we will do it. But there will be times and there will be pockets or markets or products where we anticipate a certain amount of demand, but that’s not coming in. Our competition is playing a different game. Obviously we don’t want to be losing that market too. So we will have to play that game. But we will be very cognizant of how we play this. And currently the pricing and discount strategy that we play is well benchmarked to how the markets across are operating.
Deepak Lalwani
Sure. Thanks. If there are no participants I can ask one more question.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Couple of guys. I can see couple of guys in queue. Wait for a while for the others to finish, please.
Deepak Lalwani
Sure, sure. Thanks.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yeah.
Operator
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Meat Shah from Finance. 360. Please go ahead.
Meet Shah
Thanks for the opportunities. I have couple of question on my segment of the business earlier we have earlier the management has told that we are being conscious on the government contract given the payment cycle. So now what has changed? I mean have we negotiated with government entities on this front and on the demand outlook for FY26 on both private and not on government and non government portfolio from my segment that’s question number one. And the other question is now in India we are seeing this mega trend going on on concept economy we have seen with Coldplay and other Diligent that, you know, the tickets get sold and they are fully occupied and even a Prime Minister is emphasizing on the infrastructure.
So are we as a Thomas Cope group, are we planning anything to solve trend which is happening in the economy in any sort of ways?
Mahesh Iyer
Meet again Mahesh here, I’ll try and explain answer both these questions. Commenting on the mice, I don’t think we ever said that we will be not looking at the government business. I think what the statement that we made for 2024 is that it was a year of an election and not that there were too many common contracts that were coming up for bidder. In the last quarter of 2024 we actually got the opportunity to bid for the National Games in Uttarakhand and as we speak we are actually executing the games which started on 25th January and will go on till 17th February, which is the ultimate day when the events end. There are close to 10,000 athletes, 5,000 plus support staff, 3,000 plus government officials, two 50,000 plus meals and about 10 to 12 venues. It’s a large scale operation.
We’ve got about 300 of our people who are on ground managing a very difficult terrain in Uttarakhand. So that’s the scale of operations that we are currently doing. From money safety point of view. I think in all the government business that we have done till date, we have recovered all the money that we have to get from the government. While there are some delays and I think we have also been wiser in terms of how we have priced our products also. So we are happening in some capital cost that goes into pricing some of these contracts.
Having said so, the contracts are drawn out in such a way that there is a payment schedule that the government has agreed with us. And I’m happy to let you know that payments as per that schedule have come in. In most cases it’s always the last part of it. But there is certain percentage of the contract value which is paid only after the events are completed and final submission. And that ultimately takes a delay of about three to four months. But I think that’s something that we have already factored into our workings.
Coming to your second point on the concerts and other cultural events that are happening, I think, look, we’ve seen two such mega events. One as you said, Diljit Dosa and the second one, Kori Play. Look, one of the bigger challenges is trying to procure the tickets for these events. It’s not about providing accommodation or transport, but I think most of the people who want to go There also look for tickets and there are unfortunately no bulk supplies of these tickets that I can prepackage and sell. But we have our eyes and ears to the ground. We will keep evaluating that opportunity. But currently I think we have a plate full of offerings that we have to the marketplace and if this opportunity grows up and we see more opportunity or more revenues to grow our business and revenues that we’ll definitely consider there.
Meet Shah
Okay sir, got it. And sir, any qualitative or quantitative view on the my segment for next year?
Mahesh Iyer
Look both on the private and public. Sorry, I didn’t respond to that question. I should have. On the private sector we haven’t seen any slowdown. I think forward looking pipeline both for SOTC and Thomas Cook, the two operators in this space from the Thomas Cook Group perspective are very strong on the private side. On the government we had absolutely no business in 2024. We had a bulk business in 2023 and in 2025 we’ve actually started off with a decent score.
I think we will continue to keep our focus and balance our portfolio. It’s not going to be over dependent on one segment. But I think we haven’t seen any slowdown. If the question is around to say whether the corporates are slowing down. No, we haven’t seen and actually we have expanded our offerings into the marketplace both in terms of destination and our reach and the customer segments who travel with us in the MICE business. So I think there is far more legroom available for us and there is more firepower left in the MICE business to expand and grow.
Meet Shah
Okay sir, answered last. Is it reasonable to expect 12 to 15% growth for this segment?
Mahesh Iyer
Meet, I think that’s what we’ve always guided for the overall travel segment we said 12 to 15% growth is our guidance on the travel segment and I think MICE is going to be no exception to that.
Meet Shah
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Parveen Sharma [Phonetic] who is an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Parveen Sharma
Yeah, thank you for giving the opportunity. I have a question on the DEI segment the margin here remains enigma because you know my understanding is once you have a tie up with a property and you know you put up the software and cameras and everything, the major part of the revenue which is accrued should go into the bottom line. So why is the margin so low? And when we say that in 2526 we will go back to a good margin scenario. So what is the margin we can expect there in the dei? Thank you.
K. S. Ramakrishnan
Okay. I think I am amused with the word Enigma. But nevertheless the business, your understanding probably is still completely not clear. And let me help you, let me tie up with the property. We get a contract to operate in that property, but we still depend on the attendance that comes to the property. And the attendance of tourists that come to the property, I’ve already explained, have been hampered due to few issues, geopolitical, weather, etc. Last year, again, that’s a one off case and doesn’t happen every year in the past 20 years. Dubai has never had that weather issue. It was the first time it happened and hopefully not happen again. The geopolitical issue again is no one’s prediction. But it was what it was.
So it is not like whatever. Once the contract is signed, the revenue is back. The contract is signed only to secure opportunity, opportunity to create that revenue. And we do that diligently. And I think our purpose of saying that we come back, will be back in 25, 26 is because December, January has started showing that trend back from all those aberrations that otherwise happened through the year of 24. So that helps you understand the confidence level.
We can say, plus we have a 20 years background behind us. We’ve been consistently delivering that in the past. So that gives us complete confidence that things are not going to change on that format.
Parveen Sharma
So once the revenues are accrued, you know, football is there and the revenue is accrued, why doesn’t it go to the bottom line, you know, what are the major expenses? Can you detail on that also?
K. S. Ramakrishnan
Well, I wouldn’t put a lot, I wouldn’t be able to give a lot. But let me just give you a brief background. The business, once the revenue is accrued, revenue gets accrued only when we capture the images. Our business is the only business where every morning you start with a zero inventory. This is the only business where your retail, we run retail operations with zero inventory when we start. And the inventory of capturing those pictures are facilitated by people we use for which is where your cost is. So we are priced in on the people that we invest to capture these pictures and technology up to a certain extent that captures the pictures, we still are not a fully automated model. And that’s why we are the largest and the best revenue operators in the so many imaging business across the world because of the human touch. So those are all up to a certain extent fixed cost variable in some nature.
So there is certain amount of fixed cost is always there. So unless we don’t bring into nearly about 100% of our revenue, we will not be able to make 100% of our profits committed. If the revenue drops by 10, 20%, the profits drop by 40, 50% and the revenue drops by 20 30% which is rare and was in abolition in 2024.
Our profits have been affected. That helps you understand why.
Parveen Sharma
And this VC software will automate.
K. S. Ramakrishnan
Yes. So going forward the VC software will. But please keep in mind the technology when it’s deployed, which is in the third quarter will take some amount of time to stabilize. We have a very, very healthy projection of our future in our minds right now. But as far as margins goes, we are very confident to bring back margins that we originally operated on pre 24. Once VC gets deployed come 26, you can. We are also anticipating even further betterment of those margins. And that’s the reason we invested in the investing in that technology. It is up to a great extent fully automated there.
Parveen Sharma
Okay. Thank you. All the best.
Operator
Thank you. The next follow up question is from the line of Deepak Lalwani from Unifi Capital. Please go ahead.
Deepak Lalwani
Thank you. I had a bookkeeping question, sir, on the tax rate. Since you have utilized the dtn, Sterling. So what is stopping us from moving to the lower tax regime at least in India?
Debasis Bikash Nandy
It is not yet fully utilized. It is. There’s still something left which will happen in this which will happen in this quarter, in the current quarter and thereafter. The company will take a call on that. Nothing is preventing us. We want the DTA at this be fully. There’s some amount which is still left out.
Deepak Lalwani
Okay. If. If you can help us to quantify that amount, sir, how much is left and…
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Very small amount. Let’s not get into so much of detailing. I think then it becomes a company specific discussion rather than a group specific discussion.
Deepak Lalwani
Okay. And…
Debasis Bikash Nandy
You do excel modeling. Deepak, please.
Deepak Lalwani
Okay, got it. And the takeaway for us should be that we are thinking about the lower tax regime next year, right?
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Yes. Across the group. Are you talking across the group or you’re talking about surly suddenly switched to.
Deepak Lalwani
No, you can. We are talk. I’m talking about across the group. Not specific to Sterling.
Debasis Bikash Nandy
Across the group. I can’t commit like that. We are spreading 29 countries, Deepak. How can I answer a random question like that?
Deepak Lalwani
Okay. And I’ll get back in the queue. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today.
I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Madhavan Menon
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. I just want to thank all of you. This is going to be my last call that I’m going to take I will. Mr. Iyer will take control of the analyst calls from here on. I’m sure you know he is already doing the heavy lifting, if I can use that word, along with Devashish and Vikram and Ram. Just very quickly want to mention that, you know, this is a one of a kind quarter and our expectation is that it will not repeat itself. When we’re looking at trends, be it the forward bookings, be it other markets which we operate in, we are seeing far better numbers primarily because of the impact of the geopolitical situation.
There is, I mean, in the foreign exchange space there has been some degree of volatility because of the new US Regime that’s in place and you know, talking up the dollar with tariffs, etc. But I don’t think that’s going to make a dramatic change here from here on. So my expectation is that, you know, we will be back to normal in the coming quarter and as you will appreciate, that’s the end of a financial year for us also.
Thank you very much again.
Operator
On behalf of Systematic Shares and Stock Limited. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.