Thomas Cook (India) Ltd (NSE: THOMASCOOK) Q3 2026 Earnings Call dated Feb. 06, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Mahesh Iyer — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Debasis Nandy — President and Group Chief Financial Officer
Vikram Lalvani — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sterling Holidays Resorts Limited
K.S. Ramakrishnan — Founder Chief Executive Officer and President of DEI Global
Urvashi Butani — General Manager, Investor Relations
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Anil Shah — Analyst
Ravi Shah — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Thomas Cook India Limited Q3FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Systematics Group. 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 this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.
I now hand the conference over to Ms. Vijay Jahangir from Systematic Groups. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you Subhav. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us on Commerce Group India Limited Q3FY26 Ending Conference Call from the company we have with us Mr. Mahesh Iyer, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer and the Senior management team. We would like to begin the call with brief opening remarks from the management in following which we will have the forum open for an interactive Q and A session. I would now like to invite Mr. Mahesh Iyer to make initial remarks and thank you. And over to you, Mahesh sir.
Mahesh Iyer — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Vijay. Good evening everyone and thank you for joining us as we discuss the 2 and 9 month FY26 financial and operating performance. Before I begin I would like to introduce my management team who is joining the call with me today. With me in the room I have Dibashish Nandi who is the Group CFO for Thomas Cook India Ltd. I have Vikram Lalwani who is the managing director and CEO of Sterling Holiday Resorts. K.S. ramakrishnan, managing director and CEO of DEI Brijesh Modi, CFO at Thomas Cook India Limited and Urvashi Bhutani who heads Investor relationships.
Let me start with an overview of our consolidated performance and then walk you through the details of our segment. Our consolidated total income for the nine month FY26 increased by 8% from the same period last year to 67,523 million. And correspondingly during the quarter total income grew by 5% to 21,866 million. Our other income continues to improve impressively during the quarter and nine month period. I would like to spend a little minute talking about this other income because a lot of people have asked questions around this other income. About 60% of the other income is on account of fixed deposit arising out of our deployment of load on our foreign exchange business.
To that extent this is an operating item but because of the accounting knobs these are accounted as other income in our books. This remains largely steady and also shows the way we managed our income stream despite the lowering interest rate environment that we have lived over the last 12 months. So basically I think if you look at the interest income growing from 22 crores to 40 crores in the current quarter or for the nine months period from 88 crores to about 124 crores, this reflects our efficiency in managing our better treasury operations and improving our yields on our investments.
Consequently, our PBT for Q3 stood at 897 million which improved by 20% which excludes the one time impact of the new Labor Code. As you are aware this is a new labor Code implementation which had to happen and the impact that we have taken is on account of retireals which had to be taken to our P and L statement. If I exclude that one time impact, our profit before tax has grown by 20%. This reflects our improved efficiencies across our businesses, prudent cost and margin management. In the nine months for FY26 the corresponding value stood at 2.852 million as compared to 2.936 million in the same period last year.
I would like to mention here that this does not exclude the one time non recurring charge of 171 million on account of an ex gracia payment, details of which was mentioned in our notes to accounts in the previous period. Also, before I move on, I would like to spend a few minutes on the recent budget announcement which we believe further amplifies the opportunity in the tourism not only from a growth perspective but also from the term of employment generation. The rationalization of TCS on overseas tour packages to a flat 2% from the earlier rates of 5 and 20% respectively provides immediate relief and leaves more cash in the hands of travelers thereby spurring discretionary consumer spending.
Additionally, the reduction in TCs to 2% on education and medical categories under the LRS will ease the burden on students and patients resulting in lower cash outflows. Complementing this capacity building, initiatives have been announced to upscale 10,000 tourist guides across 20 iconic tourists tourist destinations. This initiative reinforces our commitment to enhancing on ground service quality, enriching visitor experience and showcasing India’s cultural and heritage assets through skilled knowledgeable frontline ambassadors. Together, these measures reflect a balanced approach, stimulating demand while simultaneously strengthening the supply side of tourism and set the stage for sustainable experience growth development in the sector.
Progressing on to our segmental performance, let me begin with the foreign Exchange segment. I am pleased to report a 10% increase in our EBIT in Q3 FY26 to 316 million. Correspondingly, our EBIT margins expanded to 41.5% from 38.7% last year, reflecting a disciplined execution and operating leverage. The growth is particularly noteworthy given the market environment in which we were operating, as evidenced by the LRS data published by Reserve bank of India for the period October to November 2025. The industry faced headwinds under key categories with travel declining by 6%, maintenance of close relative down by 5% and study abroad witnessing a sharp contraction of 22%.
Against this backdrop, our operating performance remains strong with retail sales growing at 25% YoY driven by a 39% increase in the education segment, whereas the holiday segment turnover improved by 11%. In terms of our digital adoption, we were at the 21% mark. Our app engagement continued to see an upward Trend and grew 2.7x to 835 transactions in the current quarter, up from 300 odd transactions in the corresponding quarter of last year. Our app bookings grew 3x during the same period too, reaffirming our efforts to enhance digital engagement and our ability to meet customer needs where they are.
Our collaboration with Blinkit to receive Forex Card continues to grow and today stands expanded to 8 cities in India which includes Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad being the latest addition. Besides that, we continue to focus our fiscal footprint via a retail store in a balanced manner and open new two Forex outlets in Kotayam, Kerala and Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Now moving on to the travel and travel related segments. As you are aware, our portfolio is split into B2B and B2C this quarter. Our B2B portfolio comprises of 80% of the travel segment. EBIT margins in the segment stood at 3.1% versus the 2.9% last year.
For the nine month period our EBIT margins improved to 4%, EBIT improved by 4% to 197179 million and and margin stood at 3.7% versus 3.9% last year. Let me cover the two broad categories in its segments, that’s B2B and B2C, the details of which are outlined in our investor presentation. Also, the B2B business which contributes approximately 80% of the segment, recorded a 5% growth during the quarter. Within this, the international DMS portfolio grew 9% worldwide driven by a healthy performance across our overseas entities including Asian Trails that operates in the Southeast asia market by 14%, private safaris in Southern Africa which increased by 41% and East Africa which grew by 20%.
This performance reflects steady demand and disciplined execution across our core international markets Our business in Middle east which is represented by Dissent adventures, faced stiff competitive intensity and muted demand owing to external factors which led to lower business volumes and consequently we had to make a tactical progress in terms of our margin which impacted the overall travel EBIT margins in the current quarter. In the US market where we operate under the entity Allied T Pro, while the quarter is traditionally weak, performance was further impacted by a muted inbound travel sentiment resulting in softer demand than anticipated overall while select markets faced near term headwinds and the underlying fundamentals of the business remain intact and we continue to focus on strengthening our portfolio and improving margin resilience going forward.
The India DMS business was another factor contributing to a moderated growth in the travel segment as it remained flat during the quarter. While Q3 is typically a peak quarter for the business, performance continued to remain impacted by the residual effect of the earlier travel advisories and the airspace sensitivities and routing concerns. Collectively these factors resulted in lower inflows from key source market. However, we continue to expand our margins given the long relationships that we had and some backend negotiations that we carried forward in the business. The corporate travel segment reported on a net basis saw its revenue improve by 21% in the quarter and 17% for the nine months period.
During Q3 FY26 we continued to strengthen our corporate travel portfolio with the acquisition of eight new accounts across key sectors including ites, Automobile, Telecommunications and E Com. This momentum translated into a strong operating performance with air revenue growing by over 12.4% YoY while non air transaction increased by 19.8% during the quarter. On the non air side, KOTAL and car transactions recorded healthy growth of 11.2% and 29.2% respectively and reflecting improved wallet share and deeper engagement across our corporate client base. We also expanded our international footprint during the quarter with the commencement of our air and hotel operations from our TCI Euro office in Cyprus, further enhancing our ability to service multinational clients and support cross border travel requirements.
Moving to the MICE segments, we recorded a marginal decline during the current quarter while on a year to year basis the segment registered a 5% growth. Corporate equity on the MICE front remained limited as year end is typically seasonally slower period for corporates and the business continued to be largely domestic driven. Coming forward to our B2C section which comprises about 20% of our trial segment, revenue on the B2C segment quarter marked a decline of 6% y o y and grew by 8% for the nine month period from 14477 million to 155-9-2 million in nine months of FY 2026 leisure travel performance during Q3 FY26 was influenced by a combination of calendar shifts and evolving customer preferences.
The advancement of Durga Puja during the period of September this year compared to October last year resulted in a portion of our festival demand shifting to the previous quarter. This represents roughly about 200 million of business that we transacted in the previous quarter in the current year where in the previous year it was in one quarter later. While leisure demand picked up strongly in December, this momentum partially got offset with the lag in October and November. Also noteworthy to mention here the sluggishness in the domestic travel that happened on account of the disturbances on air segment cost consequent to the impact of Indigo.
Additionally, customer presence during the quarter continue to remain focused on short haul destinations influenced by free and easy visa destination. This is clearly evidenced by our performance which indicates a 23% increase on our short haul on a nine month basis versus a 5% increase in long haul within our portfolio. Short haul destinations such as Vietnam has grown in sales by 30%, Japan by 15% and China has seen over 10x growth albeit at a smaller base. In terms of some of the initiatives of the leisure side, while we have mentioned these in our communication, I’d like to call out some of the important ones here.
We launched our Summer Europe packages driven by our AI powered digital avatar of Thomas Cook Tasty. We also launched Rahi, our own AI enabled travel automation system designed for domestic holidays that helps our our users to design holidays and give them quotations to customers at a much faster pace. We also engage with Multiple startups like GenLife, Genes Life, Marzi and Anata who are building an ecosystem platform for senior citizens and work with them to get to creating store participating events to reach out new markets and segments of senior citizen consumers gens as we call them.
Despite these external challenges, our focus on operating discipline, yield optimization and digital enablement helped us to deliver strong profitability growth with our profit before tax increasing by 20% excluding the one time impact of the labor port led by strong performance in Forex, select leisure and corporate travel business. Early indicators for the summer 2026 reflect continued customer interest with short haul travel continue to lead growth. Long haul specifically Europe remains slightly sluggish owing to the steep rupee depreciation against the Euro. We continue to evaluate our Europe products to make them far more affordable to our customers and continue our investments in marketing through digital and print medium.
With this I would like to hand over to Vikram for his comments and then to Ramakrishnan KS Ramakrishnan to speak about DEI and I’ll come back for the Q and A. Thank you. Over to you, Vikram.
Vikram Lalvani — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sterling Holidays Resorts Limited
Thanks Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us once again. My name is Vikram Lalwani and I’m the MD CEO of Sterling Holiday Resorts based in Chennai. I’m also joined by Mr. L. Krishna Kumar who is the CFO with me. Q3FY26 marks a record quarter in Sterling both in terms of absolute numbers and importantly the quality of growth delivered. This was the highest ever quarter performance for revenue, EBITDA and PBT and it reinforces that the business has entered a phase of scaled performance. We’ve had 24 quarters of profitable growth till now. As we walk through the numbers today, the key theme I would like you to keep in mind is that Sterling is demonstrating the ability to scale meaningfully while protecting margins and strengthening balance sheet numbers.
Let me briefly set the broader context First, India continues to be one of the fastest growing large economies globally, supported by domestic consumption, favorable demographics and sustained infrastructure investment. Travel and tourism remains structurally very strong with demand being overwhelmingly domestic in nature. Q3 also demonstrated strong tailwinds in domestic demand and an upswing in the wedding season. The macro conditions continue to be strong. In our previous discussion I had mentioned that H2 this financial year shall be stronger than H1 than what H1 was and Q3 performance did demonstrate the direction in this route. Turning to the quarter itself, Q3FY26 delivered the strongest quarterly performance in Sterling on a console basis.
Our revenues grew 10% year on year to 15. 68 million. EBITDA grew 7% year on year to 561 million. Profit before tax increased 11% year on year to 426 million. EBITDA margin was sustained at a healthy 36% which is a 4% over hedge fund average. And again, as mentioned earlier, we’ve had 24 consecutive profitable quarters and this being the 25th from a balance sheet standpoint, Cash and Investments currently stand at 3243 INR billion, up 54% over last year. The company continues to operate with zero debt in 2025 as it did in 2024 as well. The consistency of profitability alongside the balance sheet strength is an important marker of the quality and sustainability of the growth that we’ve had all these quarters including Q3FY26 from the operating performance key drivers growth during the quarter was predominantly inventory led, supported by strong ramp ups and improving operating metrics.
Our network expanded to 75 resorts with 3705 keys as on December 31st. Currently, as we speak, we are at 77 hotels and resorts across 63 destinations, including that of major trains. We added 607 rooms year on year representing a 20% growth in supply. Room nights available increased by about 17% on an enterprise network basis in Q3. The room nights sold increased by 22% again on an enterprise network basis for Q3 and the occupancy improved to 68% on a console basis, up by 4 percentage points. Q3 income from managed resorts has grown 60% y o y in Q3.
What is particularly noteworthy is that demand absorption has outpaced supply growth, indicating strong visibility and an effective distribution across our channels on the yield utilization at RevPAR. In addition to the higher volumes, we also saw improvements in Yield and utilization. ARR increased 5% year on year to 6976 on a console basis. Q3 that demonstrates our strength in holding and increasing our pricing propositions. RevPAR grew 17% year on year on a console basis. Q3 backed by a growth of 14% in food and beverage and 60% growth in rooms. Occupancy improved across the enterprise by 3% to 65%.
This confirms that growth has been driven by a combination of pricing discipline and improved utilization during the quarter. Sterling one, a proprietary distribution platform, is one of the bedrocks for this growth enablement and it has contributed over 1000 INR billion this financial year nine months to the top line. Margins Cost and Profitability Discipline despite rapid scaling, margin discipline has been maintained. EBITDA margin for the quarter 36% 4 percentage points higher than that of what we did in H1 EBIT margin at 29% higher than H1 average of 23%. We had a quarter impact of 27 million INR on account of our inability to take the GST input tax credit as we did in the previous year same quarter else if we had factored this in this was a cost line otherwise our EBITDA would have actually expanded to 37.5%.
That is a stretch by another one and a half percentage. During the quarter we provided for a one time gratuity and leave in cash with expense of INR 14.2 million. Excluding this exceptional item, the underlying profitability still remains robust. The key takeaway here is that the operating leverage is is now clearly visible and the business is demonstrating an ability to absorb growth without margin erosion. This shall continue as we look ahead in the next phase of leadership Debt Investments for growth and efficiency building through investments in the next wave. Digitized platforms over the next two to three quarters on the cash generation.
This continues to be one of sterling’s strongest assets attributes. Our operating free cash flow for Q3 stood at 346 million INR. That is a 52% growth year on year cash and investments. As mentioned earlier, 3.2 billion INR and the company continues to remain debt network has continued to strengthen supported by a consistent profitability over the last couple of years. This balance sheet strength provides us the flexibility to fund fund growth internally, absorb volatility and allocate capital prudently on a YTD FY26 performance for nine years. Our revenue is at 4,047 billion EBITDA margin is at 33% in line with industry average.
PBT remains broadly in line with the past year till now despite the disruptions in weather that we had in Q2 and the operating free cash flow increased 32% year on year. This demonstrates that Q3 is not an isolated spice, it’s a part of a steady growth trajectory, H2 outlook and the strategic direction looking ahead into the second half of the year and beyond, we are operating on a higher inventory basis compared to last year. New results are maturing and contributing more meaningfully. Utilization of P and L rooms continue to improve and the operating leverage benefits are expected to become far more pronounced in H2 as it was in H1.
These factors to FY26 outperform H1 strategically. We remain aligned to our long term roadmap, focusing on a disciplined expansion, improving capital on returns on capital and strengthening our leadership position in several destinations across India. On the asset management side, quickly during the quarter we completed renovations and upgradations at our Munnar resort which is our own asset of 51 rooms. With a new resort with a new restaurant and activity facilities we launched Sterling Arka suites puri of 46 suites again our own asset. Our first all suite model upper upscale resort adding to our already prevalent strength in Puri with Sterling Puri now taking our presence to over 166 rooms in Sweet that destination we also launched Sterling Mount Olu Gangtok strengthening our presence in Sikkim with our second hotel in Gangtok added new restaurant revenue stream with the launch of Udaipur Kata our award winning in our award winning hotel Sterling J.
Singer in udaipur some just two or three key recognitions that we got. We actually got six key recognitions in Q3. I’ll just mention two or three of them right now. We were awarded the fastest growing hospitality stand in Today’s Traveler Awards 2025 we were our Economic Times Restaurant Awards. We Got it for Amo Odisha and Sterling Puri Top 50 Boutique Luxury Awards for Sterling Jai Singh in Udaipur by hospitality Horizon and NDTV profit. Top 50 restaurants of the Year for State and Pearl in Sterling Kodai Lake again by Hospitality Horizon and Indian Daily Profit and the best family resort 2025 for sterling pernil Ooty by Travel and leisure.
To summarize Q3FY26 we present the record performance with strong execution. Growth is inventory led, yield driven and supported by healthy demand. Margins remain resilient despite rapid scaling. Cash flows and balance sheet strength provide long term flexibility. We believe churning is firmly in a scale plus leverage phase with a clear pathway to sustained growth and value creation. Thank you so much for your time.
K.S. Ramakrishnan — Founder Chief Executive Officer and President of DEI Global
Good Evening. This is K.S. Ramakrishnan. I’m the MD and CEO for DEI. As you see our performance in the last quarter this quarter three has been has been one of the best ever in the from the past quarter three is traditionally a high quarter, a high revenue quarter and we have bi performed in alignment of that. This is obviously there’s been some fairly good stars in the group of dei, Dubai being one. Dubai had its highest performance ever in the history in December it did revenue of over 565 million Indian rupees as compared to 510 in the previous year. We are also back with some decent amount of growth in Maldives.
The growth is partially offset by muted top line from markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore which did not live up to what we wanted. Overall we’ve seen a 5% growth in the quarter on quarter between 2025 and 2026. EBITDA wise. We’ve strongly worked on our cost structures and we’ve seen a 38% increase from the last quarter and at EBIT levels we are 42% better than quarter 325. Quarter 326 has been 42% better. This improvement is attributed to improved top line performance of course and combined with efficiencies in the cost which has been a norm for the past three quarters that we’re following moving forward.
We have two new partnerships signed in quarter three for Saudi Arabia, Six Flags and in UAE we’ve signed up Haribo Happy World. We’ve renewed all our key partnerships in UAE and India and Malaysia. We’ve launched seven partnerships in the last quarter and the benefits of it will be seen in the coming months and the quarters Ahead, which is namely at Saudi Arabia and at uae. We started the A in Dubai, which was the only one that we were not doing. We won that back. As I said, UAE has been fronting the quarter very well with a lot of action that’s happening.
We had a lot of festive events that we secured. We did more or less 80% of the festival events in the UAE covering that revenue. Last but not least, VCE was implemented in the last quarter to 80% of the sites. As we speak, VC is getting improvised and a lot of the smaller buzz are being fixed. We are seeing an efficiency growing day by day. By the quarter one of 2027, we should see VC in full implementation by April or May is when we see the full implementation. So we should be seeing some benefit in quarter two of that coming through.
That’s all from my side. Thank you.
Urvashi Butani — General Manager, Investor Relations
Please go ahead with the question and answer session.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the 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. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Anil Shah from Insightful Investment. Please go ahead.
Anil Shah
Hi, good afternoon. Am I audible?
Mahesh Iyer
Yes.
Anil Shah
Yeah. Just one quick question is in terms of the what’s the outstanding number of, you know, prepaid FX cards that we have and what would be the float in that as we, I mean, what would be the aggregate account balance there?
Mahesh Iyer
So from a card perspective. Sorry, this is Mahesh. I just want to put my name out there. From a card perspective, there are roughly about close to 200,000 plus cards that are outstanding there. The total float that we have on our books as of December exceeds 1500 crores.
Anil Shah
Okay. And our own cash on hand, other than the 1500 crores which is part of the float which would be in, you know, various banks and equivalents. Our own cash on hand would now be the, you know, our own profits which have been accrued and you know, we have net cash company.
Debasis Nandy
The total cash is about 2,500 crores out of which if I take out the thousand crores and that would be between obviously within various entities, including. And that the gross amount we have and there are about 220 crores of debt on our book. So if you net that off, it’s. Close to about 780 crores .
Anil Shah
And what, what was that number last year, December end? I mean, I’m just trying to see if this has grown or remained. Would that be easily available? But I can follow up later.
Debasis Nandy
I can tell you if you have a second question, you can ask that and I’ll just give the December.
Anil Shah
Right. So in terms of, the second question is in terms of, you know, travel as such, you know, where did from a perspective of where did we think we lost out? Is it more macro that we had as far as India was concerned, we had less inbound tourists, we had less of Indians traveling internationally, or did we lose out in terms of market share, you know, where, you know, was it a combination of all 3? Because clearly 3% growth in travel aggregate as a whole sector, not very encouraging.
Mahesh Iyer
So Anil, let me try and put this in perspective. I think as I said in my opening remarks, we had pockets of growth. If I look at, and let me try and address this in two parts, start with B2B and then come to B2C. If I look at my B2B business and within that, if I look at the industry, international dmss, three out of the five units that we operate, we had a strong growth ranging from 9% to roughly about 14, 15% growth. So that was a very strong growth that we had two of our units and namely that was in USA and Middle east, which is desert adventures that we offered in the Middle east market.
We had subdued growth and obviously in the case of Middle east, it was more the macro driven by the geopolitical tension that we were going through. So, so the demand in that market was much lower and Allied T pro that we operated in the US and you know, there was many advisories that were issued and hence travel to that market was affected by the sentiments that were weak. So these were the two impacts that came as well as the DMS entity is concerned. If I get closer home to the inbound business in India, which we operate under the brand name TCI and sita, our volume growth was flat as compared to the same quarter last year.
That’s largely because if you recollect we had the Operation Sindhur that happened between June, July and the cascading effect of the unrest in Nepal. In this business, a lot of our bookings or pipelines actually done six to nine months well in advance. And once you start getting travel advisories issued by various countries, you start seeing a tapering of demand. So, so effectively what happened is that in the last quarter we didn’t See the bump up of sale, that should typically happen because the cycle fills up six months in advance. That didn’t happen coming into the full quarter.
Having said so, the current quarter seems much better than what we had seen in the previous year. So there is no dramatic change that has happened as far as the overall environment is concerned. If I have to comment, on the B2C business the domestic market remained subdued and specifically in the month of December got impacted because of the air turbulence that we saw. Whereas on the international segment we actually saw a shift from the long haul to short haul. You will appreciate that when you talk about short haul the price point is slightly lower as compared to long haul because long haul typical price points are 250,000 rupees plus per person, whereas on the short haul you’re talking of destinations which are a lakh and 25,000.
So from a volume perspective we had higher number of passengers traveling but from a value perspective it was slightly subdued. So that’s what kind of happened. I wouldn’t think there is anything that we missed out on this scale. I think from a conversion perspective, from a lead perspective, I think they all came in well. But it’s just that the environment generally was not very conducive for the growth that we anticipated to come. But having said so, we managed our margins quite well. We did. Despite some cancellations that came in on our inbound business and some part on our domestic business, we managed to hold to our margins, we renegotiated and all of that is reflected in our margins which kind of help the EBT growth at 10%.
Anil Shah
Right. And the current quarter Q4 seem, you know, you made a comment, seems to be on a better footing than the normal fourth quarter. As we speak we are about five weeks into the quarter.
Mahesh Iyer
So what I’m saying is that if you look at our inbound business which is typically, as you know, this is the season running from October to March. While the first quarter, which is the October, December quarter didn’t pan out very well. The second part of the season seems much better than the first part. That’s point number one. Point number two. If I look at our India business, I think we are seeing decent growth coming in our portfolio both from the domestic and the international sector. International sector driven largely by shortall and that we’ve been talking about it that we see as a shift in pattern where people are more preferring to do easy visa, visa free destinations, last minute bookings and things like that.
So we are seeing a trend of shortened booking cycle, much faster decisioning there. So yeah, from a pipeline perspective, while we are seeing growth, but the momentum is still building as we speak. And as you rightly said, we are about four, five weeks into the quarter. There is still some pipeline to go given that the booking cycles have shortened up.
Anil Shah
Last question from my side sir is, you know, is there a way in which are we tracking in, in in terms of over the years if the, you know, the new apps which are coming in in terms of, you know, various names, you know, starting from make my trip ease my trip and even many, many, many more such wins in terms of a market share, you know there’s lots of data available, right, in terms of number of Indians traveling international, whether it’s short or long. But in terms of market share, is that something that we track and would it be possible for you to share that data?
Mahesh Iyer
Yes. One, I must say the data is not very structured. So the information that flows to us does not clearly reflect the segment that we are referring to which is leisure. Most of them talk about arrivals and arrivals includes vfr. Arrivals includes corporate arrivals includes mice and arrival includes leisure and leisure in two parts which is git and fit. So the addressable population for us that we like to measure in terms of our market share is more from the leisure holiday segment which is the git fit segment and separately for the mice market. So that’s how we look at it.
But a lot of this information, I will always put a question mark whether it’s most accurate or not. But yes, over a period of time there’s a trend line that comes through and we monitor our market share on that and probably we’ll start publishing some of that information going forward.
Anil Shah
Thank you sir. Thank you.
Debasis Nandy
One last thing. I have to answer part two of your question which was on the cash position, net cash position on December 24th. So against the 750 crores that I talked about in December 25th, the corresponding number for December 24th would have been 405 crores after taking out the float money and any debt that we had.
Anil Shah
Okay, okay, fine. So from 405 is more to about 760. 780.
Debasis Nandy
7 80.
Anil Shah
780. Perfect. Thank you so much. I’ll be in the queue for further questions if I have any. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. Reminder to all participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on a touchstone telephone. The next question comes from the line of Ravisha from VRs Capital. Please go ahead.
Ravi Shah
Hi sir. Am I audible?
Mahesh Iyer
Yes.
Ravi Shah
Yeah, hi. So sorry, I’ve Joined the call a little late, so sorry if my question sounds repetitive. So just wanted to understand on the segment revenue on our Forex business we’ve. Grown by 2% while our retail sales. Have grown by 25%, our education turnover. Has grown by around 40 and holiday. Turnover has grown by 11. So I’m not understanding this discrepancy, sir.
Mahesh Iyer
So I think we need to understand that these are two different components that we are referring to. The 25% growth in the education segment or the growth in the leisure segment refers to the sales growth. Whereas what’s reported in the segment is the revenue growth, the after take or rather the revenue that we make on those sales, the margin multiplied by the sales, that’s the value that you see here. Now this also includes the corporate side of it. We haven’t seen the growth corporate segment during the current quarter was subdued so obviously the volume was little lower and we also saw a slight bit of margin pressure on the corporate segment.
But the retail segment grew and their margins held steady. And that’s why the overall revenue growth that you see here is at about 2%. But I think what you need to measure is also the EBIT growth which grew by about 10% and that reflects the operating leverages that we have because improvement in sales is actually translating into a much better fall through in terms of our profitability. And that’s what the secret for this business is, how efficiently you manage this, how you can keep a constant watch on your margins, how your EBIT margins can improve and that’s the best.
While our ability to pass on a lot of our margins to the customer will be limited because as you know, today people compare price, anyone and everyone actually goes onto the website, looks at an interbank rate, any kind of a cross border rate to compare and there are many such sites that people look at. So to that extent there is a constant pressure on price and our ability to still skim the market and deliver a 10% growth I think is fairly good.
Ravi Shah
Understood sir. Thank you for a detailed answer and. All the best sir.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to all participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the Redstone telephone. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one on the Touchstone phone. The next question comes from the line of Mukul Verma. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, good evening Sir. I have two questions. At the consolidated level, do you see FY27 delivering double digit earnings growth assuming if we assume normal macro conditions. And the second question is on sterling with 22, 21 results in the pipeline by current calendar year 26, how do we think about incremental revenue and profitability contribution for the next two years?
Mahesh Iyer
Mr. Verma, I’ll take the first part of the question and then leave it to Vikram to come back on the sterling side of it. First of all, thank you for the question and you know we don’t normally comment on a forward looking statement as such but you know if you look at our macroeconomics GDP growth at about 7, 7.5%, currency by about 2, 3% I think a 10% is a given. So a double digit growth I think from a business perspective seems very realistic and I think we will definitely be gunning for that kind of a growth going forward in FY 2027.
So yes, I think what is going to also important is the quality of our earnings because we are more focused on ensuring that while we grow our business, grow our top line, we also keep our focus on margin and prudence, on our cost and invest in technologies which helps us get closer to the customer and improve his experience with us. Because ours is an experienced business, ours is an emotional business. We need to ensure that we catch the customer right and make the journey very seamless for the them. So we continue to be on that journey and you will see progress as we go down.
Unidentified Participant
So in the travel services business, can we expect margin improvement in quarter four?
Mahesh Iyer
Mr. Varma, again as I said, the travel segment has got multiple factors that play in, you know one is the seasonality that comes into play and it changes quarter to quarter and the second part of it is the geopolitical environment. And there are some practical measures that we take in our business. Like I alluded to, because of the sharp depreciation of rupee to the euro, our European holidays start becoming very expensive. So we kind of recalibrating our product portfolio starting to make it far more affordable. So there are some tactical calls that we take on our portfolio to ensure that we keep lucking around.
And to that extent there could be some quarter pressure coming here and there. But broadly the guidance that we have given is that we will continue our trajectory on the 4/plus percent as far as the travel segment is concerned ..
Unidentified Participant
On the budget impact, what you mentioned on the TCS reducing. So could you give some color into your Q1 bookings? I mean is it swing traction or. Yeah, very early days.
Mahesh Iyer
Mr. Verma, as you know the budget gets effective only the 1st of April 2026 and you know, so very early to kind of gauge the Kind of impact. But yes, I definitely can say that it’s a welcome measure because it leaves a lot more cash in the hands of people allows them to not wait for it to come after filing their returns and stuff like that. And also kind of cushions some shock that comes from the rupee depreciation. So I think it’s a welcome step and I would think that it should help for some consumer momentum on that one.
Unidentified Participant
Also sir, on this mat announcement in the budget since we are in a high tax bracket because of non utilization of our mat credit, if you can give some color of whether we will be moving to a lower tax regime the new regime starting FY27 as if you have kind of looked at it, looked at that announcement in the budget on the tax structure and the new regime which all companies will have to get into.
Debasis Nandy
Mr. Bama, this Devashisha, I’d like to answer that question. So the government has now mandated that all companies have to move to the new tax regime if the want to utilize the mat and therefore we will also do so. So we found effective 2627 or 2627 will move into that new regime. We will be able to, we have done the math. We’ll be able to utilize the entire MAT that we have as of now. That is not a problem. And yes, clear answer to your question. Yes, we’ll move to the lower tax rate as we get into the new regime.
Unidentified Participant
Great. So that will have a good impact on our earnings.
Debasis Nandy
Absolutely. That’s a positive for the company.
Unidentified Participant
Okay.
Vikram Lalvani
Okay. Mr. Verma, this is Vikram here. I think you’d ask the question for Sterling as well. So very bad. Yeah, thank you for asking this question. If we’ve seen in the last two years we’ve been ramping approximately 15 hotels and resorts a year. Even in 2025 we did about 15 in a year. Now typically they take about six months to complete the ramp and getting into a steady State after one or two quarters. So this is the same scenario that happened two years ago where we ramped up 1516 last year 15 to 16 and this year as well we are looking at a similar number minimum. So typically that’s how we the top line keeps growing.
You know with new additional as well as the organic growth that we have. Number one. Number two is most of these expansions that are happening this year are a real asset life model as well. Number two, that’s number three is the margins will continue to remain in that range would have margins between 32 to 35% EBITDA depending on the seasonality that we are in. Q3 was a great season because it had a lot of holidays out of the wedding season. And when compared to a Q2, typically a Q3 behaves very. But if you’ve seen that traditionally quarter one has been a very.
Has always been a strong quarter for Sterling where almost of the inventory for the revenues for the year used to come out of Q1 now because of the ramp in the inventory and I maintained it years ago that Q3 would actually be one of our strongest quarters. And it has been demonstrated like last two years. So as we keep ramping, the margins will continue to remain 32 to 35. But it will value wise it will keep growing as well as for M. So that’s. That’s my answer to your question.
Unidentified Participant
Great, sir, great. Thank you so much. One, one more question. Nothing to do with the financial performance. Which of the two or three starlit resorts you would want your investors to visit, which you feel.
Vikram Lalvani
It’S a very difficult. Actually more difficult to answer this than any financial question because if you have, you know, if you have.
Unidentified Participant
It’s good to have more. But any one or two.
Vikram Lalvani
Yeah. Who to choose? You know, it’s very difficult to say who to choose. Right. So. But having said that, I do not know where. Which is your base location? Mr. Varma?
Unidentified Participant
I’m from Bombay, sir.
Vikram Lalvani
Right. I. I think you should experience. Why not? You should experience Gerald Pretty Bombay to Peshwar, which is a unique destination. You should also see that. But for me it’s all. It’s a very difficult question to answer. I’m telling you this Puri I think phenomenal and is out of the world. You should actually visit Puri as well.
Unidentified Participant
Great, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much and all the best.
Vikram Lalvani
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. A reminder to all participants. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one unattached on telephone. The next question comes from the line of Vijay from Systematic Group. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, my question is on our collaboration with Cinema Light at Sri Lanka. So can you please explain a bit more on this? I mean, how this impacts our outbound business.
Mahesh Iyer
So, Vijay, hi, this is Mahesh. We just announced this collaboration that we’re doing with Cinnamon Live. As you know, it’s a part of the larger group. This synergy basically allows us to leverage their properties. And one of those which they built and kind of made operational in the last quarter is the City of Dreams, which has got a casino and whatever. The first of its kind in this part of the world. So I think that’s an opportunity for us to jointly market that product, take a lot of our customers, create a unique experience on a near exclusive basis in that sense for both the brands Thomas Cook and sotc.
So that’s what we’re looking to do both for our leisure as well as MICE customers. Also, it entails partnering other properties of the Cinnamon Group which we can use and create unique offerings for our customers.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay, thank you sir. And second on dei. So going ahead, what should be the. CD state margin for the business? I mean it seemed that the growth is back on its trajectory. So on that sense I’m asking.
K.S. Ramakrishnan
This is RAM and I’ll take this. Like we said, we’ve kind of stabilized the business and we are continuously growing. We look for opportunistic growth. We have calibrated ourselves with the group’s overall outlook, like Maest said, to have sustainable and profitable growth. So we look at that and the coming year looks to be fairly good. We have our VC being implemented fully and I think we will see some benefits of it in the next year for sure. The next calendar year for sure.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you sir. Thank you.
Mahesh Iyer
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Hard Joshi, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello. Am I audible?
Mahesh Iyer
Yes.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. So. So. Good afternoon. I would like to ask you what. Is the competitive landscape for Thomas Cook in the context of sort of an emerging market applications, the new players are entering the market and quite a young people are entering into the market that are catering to the solo travelers and etc and sort of getting the competitive in terms of pricing. And the second question was in the context what is sort of the policy of Soti and Thomas Cook in terms of off season that was conducted and R groups. So from what I understand, what I’ve seen rather is that during the off season for any locations or traveling, Thomas Cook does not cater any towards as such.
It depends on the seasonality and everything. But what is your opinion? Can you give some color on that? Thank you.
Mahesh Iyer
Mr. Joshi, let me try and take this question in two parts. The first question that you asked is about the competitive landscape. And look in that sense, if you are looking at Thompson as a group, we are unique in that sense. You know we’ve got multiple businesses, right from foreign exchange to travel and within travel we’ve got DMS International, India and then we’ve got corporate travel mile and then we’ve got holidays. So in that sense there’s no one common benchmark that you can use. But your specific point on from the mushrooming operators who come in and offer packages, look at the end of the day anyone and everyone can make a package.
I think it’s all about executing on the ground. It’s not about selling here, it’s about executing on the ground. And that’s what we bring as our brand to the market. One is the trust that you’re dealing with a trusted brand called Thomas Cooker so tc. Secondly, the experience on the ground that we provide which comes out of our 150 year source plus legacy. Third, the pricing, the economies of scale that we bring in because the kind of of volume buy that we do, I think we package all of that together to the customer and do fourthly, we are investing in technologies and trying to get that as much closer to the customer.
And one of the mantra that we are driving this year is customer obsession which means any and every angle that we take today is focused on how we make the journey for the customer frictionless and far more seamless. So I think these are barriers that we are going to put across for others to come and nibble in. But look, this industry doesn’t have any entry barriers. You could possibly put up a machine tomorrow, use a Google search and then come out and become a travel agent. So we cannot compete with those. But I think it’s all about the brand and the offerings that we bring along with our capability of executing a great product on the ground that helps us win in the marketplace.
To your second question, which is more on the off season? On the off season, look, one is if you look at travel as a category, it’s moved away from seasonality at least from India perspective. I can confidently say that now people undertake travel at very short intervals. You will find a long weekend, a short break, people want to get out and take a holiday. And that’s where either it’s domestic short haul destinations or for that matter a longer holiday that coincides with the summer or probably a Diwali vacation tends to be a long haul one.
But from a cycle perspective I think people are taking much more shorter breaks. So I’m not sure there is a price advantage or something that comes in. But yes, there are parts of seasonality driven by monsoon or something like that where occupancy tends to be slightly more lower. Load factors on airlines are slightly more lower where you will get some price advantage. And if you were to be tracking us on our website, you will find some of those opportunities out there where there are what I call steel deals, where There are Bogo offers which is buy one, get one.
I think those are the kind of initiatives that we bring to get the customer across during the so called lean season, which I don’t believe is a lean season but slightly low in terms of the market acceptance of a product or the travel.
Unidentified Participant
So yeah, my question was pertaining to the higher power expenses which the customer. Incurs on sort of a longer package. So like international like Singapore or USA sort of thing that way wherein like there is an off season for Singapore I don’t find quite slightly unavailable but. Does not operate in that environment during the off season.
Mahesh Iyer
Mr. Joshi, I think we have got products across domestic and international categories all through the season. Now you can check. It all depends on what price point you want to travel at. I don’t think. It’s not that we don’t offer products during off season in any markets. If there is a price advantage, it’s passed on to the customer. If there’s no price advantage and there is a surcharge during that period, it’s passed on to the customer. So that’s we operate. And if you want to look at our product portfolio you will find opportunities and options across time periods all through the year.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you.
Mahesh Iyer
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mukul Verma. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Since we have GROSS Cash of 1,000 crores, could you throw some light on the capital allocation priorities? We are going to use that.
Mahesh Iyer
So Mr. Varma, I think you kind of broached this topic before with us. I’d just like to state that, you know, our stand remains the same. You know, we build our balance sheet over a period in time. You know, we came out of pandemic and the last two, three years we continue to grow our profitability and build this cash position in our balance sheet. We keep looking, evaluating opportunities but currently our investments are directed on technology, technology and upscaling to the mandate of getting customer obsessed and making the journey seamless for them. But if there are more opportunities that will come our way, we will definitely look at it.
But currently there are no conversations around either any kind of disbursement of cash to shareholder or for that matter any acquisition. But we keep looking at options to or evaluate options to deploy this cash in a much better way which becomes accretive to our P and L and balance sheet over a period of time.
Unidentified Participant
Are we looking to kind of close the debt or it just goes off in the normal course of the business?
Mahesh Iyer
Mr. Varma, these are long term debts. More like the ECLGs which we can’t repay while we would love to repay them off but unfortunately because these were taken during the COVID period they have a lock in period and and you know we can’t dispose them off at this point in time so we continue with it. But these are not big debts as you know in solidity.
Unidentified Participant
And sir, are there any one time. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, go on.
Debasis Nandy
So Devashish, I just trying to give some more, add some more color to what Janice just said. So out of the 220 crores of debt about close to about 90 crores. 85 to 90 crores is the ECLGS debt which is long term but we will be paying off in the next two years or so over the course of the next two calendar years. So that’s one. The second is that while in India you do not have any debt the other than the cigs there are overseas suppliers who do use working capital funding and that’s the rest of the debt which will continue in some form because from time to time you will need to fund your working capital.
Unidentified Participant
Oh, okay, okay. And are there any one time or seasonal costs in Q3 that will kind of not come through in Q4 other than the this gratuity labor code provision we made which would kind of support. Profitability.
Mahesh Iyer
At this point we have no visibility of such one time cost. This one that we had to take as a charge, you know this came out as a statue from the government.
Unidentified Participant
That was the only thing, right? That was the only .
Mahesh Iyer
And that’s why I focused on on the operating performance and said about the 20% growth in our profitability. Had it not been for this one time chart the 20% would have been there and that’s a very strong growth given the kind of quarter that we operated with.
Unidentified Participant
And sir, on the financial services scalability, I mean we look Forward to continuing 40 plus margins in the next financial year.
Mahesh Iyer
Yes Mr. Verma, we will continue to be in that trajectory. I. I think that’s what we’ve been delivering year on year and I don’t think there’s anything that should be realist from that part. The 40 plus percent will shape .
Unidentified Participant
Sir, if you could also give some color on the part means the recently there was a corporate news regarding our partnership with Gujarat government, Tamil Nadu government. So how, how does that work? Or it’s how do you take it Forward?
Mahesh Iyer
Basically Mr. Verma, what we are trying to do is as you know we are a brand. We are a trusted brand in this market. We are partnering with domestic destinations, more like states, to kind of spur demand on the domestic travel side. So these MOUs and partnerships work with the government in building the infrastructure, in doing promotion, in doing marketing. Typically, if you see a lot of overseas destinations come and market themselves in India, so they kind of support marketing spends and other stuff. Here we are trying to build similar kind of models where we work very closely with the state government, put this as a priority sector, and start working with them in terms of creating demand, creating promotion, creating infrastructure, and supporting that growth. So we will be more like the distribution and marketing partner for the state governments.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Thank you. And over to you, sir.
Mahesh Iyer
Thank you, Vijay. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d just like to reiterate that for the current quarter, our profit before tax grew at about 20%, barring the one time exceptional item that we had, driven by a strong operating resilience across all our businesses and improved margins and operational efficiencies. Looking forward to the next quarter, we believe we should continue this trajectory. And I remain confident that we will deliver strong performances going forward. Thank you so much.
operator
Thank you. On behalf of Systematics Group, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.