Easy Trip Planners hits 20% upper circuit on heavy volumes

The company is anticipating the pent up demand to boost the travel and tourism segment post ease in travel restrictions, and vaccination drive carried out by the government

Shares of the recently listed Easy Trip Planners, the travel support services company, were locked in the upper circuit of 20 per cent at Rs 229.80 on the BSE in Tuesday's session amid heavy volumes. The trading volumes on the counter jumped over four-fold with a combined 6.41 million equity shares having changed hands on the NSE and BSE at the time of writing this report. There were pending buy orders for 880,000 shares on both the exchanges, the data shows.

With today’s gain, the stock price of Easy Trip Planners has bounced back 56 per cent from its 52-week low of Rs 147.50 touched on April 19, 2021, in intra-day trade. The company had hit a 52-week high of Rs 233.15 during intra-day trade on its stock market debut on March 19, 2021. It had raised Rs 510 crore through an initial public offer (IPO) with an issue price of Rs 187 per share.

The company operates the EaseMyTrip.com website. It offers a comprehensive range of travel-related products and services for end-to-end travel solutions, including airline tickets (94 per cent of revenues), hotels and holiday packages(5 per cent of revenues), rail tickets, bus tickets and taxis, as well as, ancillary value-added services such as travel insurance, visa processing and tickets for activities and attractions.

Easy Trip Planners is anticipating pent up demand to boost the travel and tourism segment post the ease of travel restrictions and vaccination drive carried out by the government. With minimal finance cost and low depreciation and capex going forward, we anticipate the majority of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) flowing down to profit after tax (PAT).

“Online travel is one of the worst-hit sectors due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, with recovery likely to be “U-shaped” at best. Domestic travel in India is set to recover faster relative to international travel (including hotels and holiday packages). For domestic travel, the industry should reach pre-Covid volumes by early 2021,” Easy Trip Planners said in an investor presentation.

The company expects the online travel market in India to double over the next five years to reach $31 billion FY25, growing at 14 per cent CAGR from FY20 levels.  
 

"There will be increased adoption of internet platforms in under-penetrated segments such as hotels, international travel and bus (online volume penetration is less than 20 per cent in each of these segments). The elevated growth in the underlying demand in sectors like air and hotels is due to rising income levels," the company said.