Online travel company Yatra reported a 34.4% year-over-year fall in consolidated revenues to Rs 220.4 crore, and a 40.8% fall in profit to Rs 13.7 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2018. However, the company's losses from operations reduced by 48.4% in the quarter to Rs 32.5 crore, and adjusted EBITDA loss reduced by 60.3% to Rs 15.4 crore. CEO Dhruv Shringi said that Yatra made substantial progress to reach breaking-even. He added that the improvement in numbers was because the company optimized marketing costs, drove up cross-sell revenues, closed some loss-making corporate customers, outsourced their call-center, and also closed their physical retail stores. Service cost decreased by 33% year-on-year to Rs 93.6 crore in this quarter since the sales of holiday packages fell after physical retail stores were shut down to drive profitability. Adjusted Revenue grew 16.6% to Rs 233 crore in the quarter, owing to an 5.7% increased in air ticketing revenue, and a 10.5% increase in hotels and packages revenue, along with a 108.6% increase in income (listed as 'Other Income' in the financials) from cross-sales, advertisement income, and government grants. The company has also reduced its marketing and personnel costs: Personnel expenses: decreased by 17.5% to Rs 59.4 crore due to a decrease in employee-share based payment expenses to Rs 3.38 crore this quarter from Rs 13.2 crore in Q3FY18. Personnel expenses also reduced because Yatra outsourced its customer call center. Marketing & promotion expenses reduced by 83.9% to Rs 16.5 crore this quarter. Here…
