The Indian Hotels Company Limited (500850) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. May I please request you to take your seats as we start with the afternoon. Thank you all for joining us today for IHCL's Annual Capital Market Day. I am Palak Chhabra, and I will be your host for this afternoon. We would like to extend a warm welcome to everybody present in this room here and everybody who's joining us online. Before we start the event, as a matter of good practice, I would like to invite Ms. Rhutika Ghatge, our Security Manager from Taj Lands End to do the security briefing.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Taj Lands End, Mumbai. Allow me to brief you about the safety procedures and guidelines of our banquet venue. We are at the ballroom, which is located at Banquet Level B. Please note that we have demarked fire exits to ensure smooth evacuation. Be kindly informed that entire hotel is well equipped with fire safety installations. There is no mock drill being planned for today. In case an emergency is raised, kindly consider it to be a genuine one. In an unlikely event of an emergency, please do not panic, kindly follow the instructions of the hotel staff assisting you as they are well trained to face all the emergency situations. In case of medical emergency, we have first-aid available in the hotel, along with certified first-aiders. We also have doctor available on call if required. Kindly refrain from leaving any personal belongings unattended in the hotel premise. We assure you of higher standards of safety and wish you a pleasant day ahead. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Rhutika. We will now commence with the presentation by our MD and CEO, Mr. Puneet Chhatwal. It's my pleasure to invite Mr. Chhatwal up on the stage.

So let me take you in the next half an hour or so together with my colleague, Ankur Dalwani, the CFO through our journey of aspiration to acceleration. Those who have followed us for long would know that we started with Aspiration 2022, which we unveiled and announced in February 2018, followed by Ahvaan; in between, we had to do a reset. And at the end of the day, we kept all the promises that we made. In the words of Mr. Ratan Tata, Promise is a Promise, which is really a commitment to the legacy commitment to the purpose, commitment to what we communicate and the say-do ratio or what we deliver. I think not only we delivered, we actually have transformed completely the business and the business model that you have been familiar with for almost 120-plus years with the company. So we've had more than 122 AGMs and the journey in the last 7 years is a lot more on the 360-degree business value proposition that IHCL has had to offer, all the road map and the guidance that it gave, the delivery on the promise that was made and the transformation of a business model, transformation of a capital structure, transformation of the growth, transformation of the brand scale, transformation of the various verticals, transformation of growing talent from within to a level that has not been experienced before. We have a very short film. I can go on, but I think that film in a very short way, encapsulates maybe a percentage, a small percentage of our journey. So I think let the film do the talk, and I come back after the movie. [Presentation]

So let's just take a minute to look at the journey, which you just saw on the screen, a P&L of INR 4,000 crores, going up to INR 7,000 crores. EBITDA margin, which was around 16%, the best ever in the preceding 10 years of 2017, which range from 12% to 13% to 14% to 16% was in 2017, going to 33% and the loss-making that was the lowest loss was in '16, '17 of INR 63 crores at PAT, which is almost 10 years in succession, except for a little accounting profit 1 year in between to INR 1,250-plus crores in profit after tax. A balance sheet, which was always under pressure with a lot of debt. Debt, almost INR 3,000-plus crores to net cash positive a bit over INR 2,000 crores. And return on capital employed of 5% that has grown to over 15%. This was the balance sheet and then came the brandscape from Taj Hotels, resorts, Safaris, a complete transition into unlocking the full potential of all the other brands. From a Taj Group to what the founder call. The founder always named the company, Indian Hotels, and that meant the company for all Indians and that meant having all brands for all Indians and not just Taj, which obviously is our closest to our heart, which is our crown jewel, it's our backbone but we started unleashing the potential of the brands that were created to support the Taj to become businesses in themselves, example being The Chambers, which was done as a private membership club once upon a time. So the time in that journey had come to go from just a mono brand to unleash the potential of all brands of Indian hotels. And finally, growth. very important element which has accompanied us in the last 5- to 7-year journey, going to 350 hotels, of which 230-plus in operation from a portfolio of almost 150-odd hotels to 350 despite 2 years of COVID, and we used to have 142 hotels in operation. So having a pipeline of almost 120 hotels with a capital-light model of 90% on capital-light positions us very well with the net cash that we have and the cash generation that we are expected to have in the next quarters to actually benefit from both organic growth opportunities as well as inorganic growth opportunities. Market cap, obviously, a much talked about subject from INR 13,000 crores to over INR 1 lakh crores and a shareholder base growing from 1.4 lakh to 5.5 lakh. And the institutional holding, which was around 40%, has also increased by over 10% to 45%. Taj, we cannot say it enough number of times for last few years by Brand Finance rated as the world's strongest hotel brand. And within India, the same organization has rated us as the strongest brand across all sectors. We'll be celebrating its 121st year on 16th of December next month. That was the opening in 1903 of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tavern in Colaba till the second hotel came almost 70 years later. Very important part of the journey, and I don't know if some of you were there. I know it personally. When we first did Aspiration 2022, we had a movie called What If. What if 115-year-old legacy reimagined itself. And today, when we came here, we thought it's not any more about what if that if has happened, the reimagination has happened. The change in the business model has happened, the growth journey has happened. Now the question is what's next? And that's what we will be talking about more and more in detail today. And what next is about the bright future ahead. The why of that what next, the where in the home. So I think the where is where exactly are we going to grow, how the brand growth and brand strategy will play and why we exist of the what next? The why is very important because profit anybody can make; revenue, anybody can make; growth anybody can do. But the purpose and the founder's philosophy that almost kind of is a core of every Tata Group organization is very important, and we'll share that also with you and how to win and get to our goals that we have set -- that we have set for ourselves for 2030. So what next? I don't know there is some kind of discussions that we have had during the day while talking to the press and also certain television interviews about some headwinds in the consumer sector, but we are not seeing any of that. And our long-term structural tailwinds for the hospitality sector are very much in place. The demand will continue to outpace supply. The double-digit growth in demand is realistic. The foreign tourist arrivals will recover to higher than the pre-COVID level. They are not there as yet. The disposable incomes, if India keeps growing from fifth to the fourth to the third largest economy, will happen that the disposable income will grow. The middle class will also grow, and the numbers are small, but the important thing is it stays at that 38%, 37%, 38% and the supply will remain constrained. The supply will remain constrained because of a lot of challenges in the way hotel investments get funded. The way hotel investments get approved and the way hotels get built. It's a very difficult class of real estate in comparison to just an office building or another building. The finishing of a hotel is an art and science in itself and a good true finishing of a luxury hotel could take up to 6 months versus a normal building in that category. Then the MICE segment, which India has never seen in the way it is seeing, the Bharat Mandapam that got made. If it is utilized even once every quarter with a conference of 2,000 people or the YASHOBHOOMI in Delhi -- both are in Delhi. Once every quarter, 1,000 to 2,000 people, I can tell you, Delhi will be sold out for 5 days. There are not enough hotel rooms to absorb that kind of demand. We have witnessed and I've also mentioned this many times, if there is an important big event happening in BKC or in [ GEO ] as you would want to call it within 5 square kilometers, all hotel rooms are sold out. This did not exist and more of this is coming. More of highways are coming. More of airports are coming. There will be 300 airports. At the time of independence, we had only 10 airports. And the number of branded rooms that we have, almost 200,000 is in no comparison to any other developed or mature economy of the G20 as we know. Emerging trends, obviously, when the country grows, when the GDP grows, when the disposable income grows, more and more people seek new experiences. We celebrate more and more life and moments. A lot of people have been talking about the 40 lakh weddings, which are expected to take place over the next few months. Yes, it is true. We have 5 extra wedding dates this year. And most of our hotels are very well booked with the weddings. The brand and the relationship capital that we can build is also another emerging trend, the building of your relationship capital using hospitality as a leverage and investing in yourself, whether you call it feel good factor, you call it spas, you call it well-being, you call it going into nature. This whole concept of feel good is gaining more and more in importance. Today, where Indian Hotels stands at 350-plus hotels is the company with the highest number of hotels, both in operation and in pipeline in India. There's nobody that comes close to this number. So I think that's another proud moment because 6, 7 years ago, this was not the case. So I think on a few metrics, we have really taken that leap in terms of enterprise level revenue, in terms of rooms growth, in terms of signings, in terms of openings, in terms of number of brands, in terms of EBITDA, in terms of total revenue or the consolidated revenue. So much so that the companies or the peers, which report results, if you look at the pie, our revenue or EBITDA is almost or very close to being equal to all other listed companies put together. So I think we have gained in scale, and that's an important element of what next. Scale for me is just one metric. We have gained immensely, as you saw in the movie and on the slide, doubling of our EBITDA margin. We have more than at the end of this year with all the maths that we have done, we would be reporting numbers, which when compared to the quarters of the previous years are a record in themselves. There are 10 consecutive quarters of record. Even the Q2 this year was better than the Q1, which never happens. Q2 is always the weakest quarter. Q1 is the third strongest and Q3, which we are in right now, happens to be the strongest quarter for the segment or for the sector. And I can tell you today, halfway through this quarter, there's nothing that suggests that anything is changing on that front, not just for us, but for the sector per se. IHCL is very well positioned to shape the future. And when I talk about that macroeconomic factors, I've already listed most of those. When we talk about demand outpacing supply, that you've also seen on the previous slide, which creates a phenomenal growth potential because then the investment comes into the sector. And people see that the occupancies are good, you can achieve good rates. Suddenly, there is another force of investors coming in, who want to invest, who want to earned with you, knowing very well if the investment pays off in 8 to 12 years' time, you have the property and you have had already your payback. And usually, hotels gain very strongly in value in 10 years from any given date that you might look into. But the most important part I will come to now is we are, today, industry-leading in terms of our performance on all metrics, as I just now said. We are industry-leading in terms of our brands, and they get consistently rated, especially the Taj brand not only in India, but across the globe. But the most important is now we have the opportunity to drive differentiated strategic growth because we are neither completely asset-light nor are we asset heavy. Seven years ago, when we started, we were 1/3 asset light or I would call it capital light because you have to change this narrative also. Asset-light is when you only count management or franchise contracts, capital light would be anything which is not capitalized on your balance sheet. Today, we have 60% capital light and only 40% capital heavy, despite the growth in the portfolio, despite the growth in also our capital-heavy businesses. And this could end up in the next 5, 7 years, maybe at a 30%-70%; maybe 25%-75%; maybe 35%-65%. We cannot exactly say that today. What is it doing? It is getting us close to a sweet spot, which creates a differentiated strategy for us because we put the money where our mouth is, number one. Number two, we can take advantage of strategic growth opportunities when the government floats their RFPs, others are not qualified to do so because they don't have the balance sheet to do so. Number three, because enterprise revenue is not what you report, right? So you have to have a certain number of enterprise revenue. You have to have a certain amount of hotels in ownership. You can look at any RFP floated for any project in the last 5 years, and you will have similar metrics which come from the government. But who has the best locations? The best locations are with the government. So whether it is rebidding of Taj Mahal Hotel Delhi, popularly known as Taj mansingh or it is bidding for islands in Lakshadweep or it is doing airport hotel in Kochi. The criteria that enable you to bid for it cannot be fulfilled through capital light. And to let go of them would not be financially or strategically prudent. That's why I say that this is one of the key differentiators between us and the rest. And we are very proud that if you can manage this when, then your chances of success in value creation is the highest. Examples, you must have seen in our quarterly results, the Ginger Mumbai Airport, a land that we had, people said, well, you should not count one-off asset management, but asset management is a key driver of growth for a 120-year-old company. We are sitting on a lot of assets. This is a part of our strategy. And we are very unlucky. We have a payback in 5 years of that investment. If everything stays fine, as we know today, in 4 years, we have the payback of Ginger Mumbai Airport. Besides the fact that it has become a showcase, a billboard that helps you to build the brand. So I think this is a very -- that's why I took a little more time on this slide, this aspect that it is not one way which will help you achieve the desired objective for the brands, for the solidity of brands, for creating value, it has to be a combination. And where that combination gives you the best result, where that sweet spot is, that time will tell as we progress from a GDP growth of 6.5% plus sustained growth, if India gets to #3 economy, that sweet spot is very different than when it stays at #5. So -- and as management, we'll keep evaluating that strategy so that we never lose sight of our what next. Why do we exist? And what is the purpose of our existence? And I think defining our purpose is very simple, pioneering responsible change, creating value and shaping future. Pioneering has been the core value and a very important component of any Tata Group Company. And those of you who didn't know, I would like to share with you today that Indian Hotels is the oldest operating company of Tata Group. It's not any other company that you know. It's us, which is the oldest operating company. So pioneering is an important -- value is an important attribute. Responsible business is another important value for us. And obviously, we are in here to create value for the communities we live in, we work for all our stakeholders and shaping the future is the what next that drives us every day. And that's how we would say that just being custodians of Indian hospitality, yes, that's fine. That is pioneering, creating sustained value, yes, that's also fine in doing what we do every day and setting global benchmarks by shaping the future is what drives us for the what next. We are not anymore going to copy the west and say that this is how they do know. This is how we do and we will show the way how it works. Up till now, we have done it only through our service ethos, through Atithi Devo Bhava through providing not -- let's face it, a lot of people say, especially post COVID, who travel, the rates have tripled, but the services in certain parts of the world have gone to 1/3 of the level. [foreign language] you feel at home when you are all here. Yes, we have had that. Now it is time to keep that, but build new attributes, build value creation, build brands, build relevance, create the pioneering and innovative ideas, and that's our what next. And I think we communicated and you must have seen on our famous pyramid to be the most iconic, most profitable company from South Asia. We've just made some small changes to it going forward in which we say, as of now, we would be the most iconic, valued, responsible hospitality ecosystem from South Asia because hospitality is not just hotels. Anything related to hospitality like flight kitchen business is also hospitality. It's hospitality in the air, 30,000 feet plus above the ground. So I think this is the little change on our purpose that we brought in and where to play, we play by segments. We play by themes. By segments, and the top end is obviously the Taj followed by upscale both Gateway and Vivanta at upscale. The new reimagined Vivanta is what it was always supposed to be meant to be coming from the French word, Vive, which means to live and the slogan was More We Want. And that's where we Vivanta is back. The reimagined Gateway is our full service upscale brand. The only difference would be -- Vivanta would not be taking on big weddings whereas Gateway. What Gateway would be a gateway to every city. Vivanta would be a more boutique proposition in that segment. In our mid-scale, we will have Ginger. On themes, we have put SeleQtions on the right side as a theme because SeleQtions is a collection of important named brands in their individual micro markets, like the President in Mumbai, the Ambassador in Delhi, the Blue Diamond in Pune or the Savoy in Ooty, et cetera. These are wonderful hotels, which should not be put or tried to fit into a brand and just sell it under some name. They should allow -- they should be allowed to remain individual and at the same time, have the benefit of our sales, market and distribution, HR, financials, procurement, all those benefits. So that is one theme. Tree of Life is experiential, small boutique hotels is another theme. Safaris is another theme, although it is Taj, but 12, 14 room properties or Safari Lodges, of course, at a very high rate, is a thematic proposition. Our homestays, amã, is another theme. And I think the way we have tried to map it is with the exception of district capitals where we think Ginger must be in every district capital. The others could be in leisure, could be in business location, could be Tier 2, Tier 3 cities, drivable locations so that there is a mapping for each one of them. On the international front, anything which is beyond 2 to 3 hours of flying distance, we don't think we want to go with any other brand other than Taj. So we will remain focused on allowing Taj to travel, stay relevant, build iconic properties with Taj. The next one, which is opening is going to be the 2 in Bhutan: Phobjikha and Paro over the next 12 months, also the Taj in Frankfurt. And in the following year, we are hoping that at least one more property in the Middle East opens, whether it will be Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or Bahrain or another one in Dubai, that time will tell. So -- and going forward, we also have other hotels and pipeline, whether it's in Bangladesh, in Dhaka or other opportunities that we work upon. But Taj is the brand with which we want to grow, and we will go to certain markets, which are very relevant for us, like Southeast Asia, Singapore or Thailand or Switzerland in Europe or another hotel in London or another one in markets like Birmingham, et cetera, where the Indian diaspora is very strong. We are definitely not going to these markets with single asset acquisition. NOT, no. But within India, if we had to invest with Taj, we will invest. Outside our model remains capital-light or driven by management contracts. Capital light outside will be like Frankfurt, where we have operating lease. The cost of institutional capital there that invest in hotel is 4% to 5%. Our own cost is 15%. We are happy to do a scientific lease with the art of not getting into a loss-making territory, but at least even if it's a small profit margin to make sure that we have a small profit margin, but keep growing our presence in key gateway locations. And when it comes to Southeast Asia, if there is a compelling opportunity, we might consider an exception. We don't have to, but we might consider an exception because that is like a really important market for Indians traveling whether for business or in leisure to these destinations. How would we win? How would we execute on our strategy on 2030? As I mentioned, is the expansion of our portfolio. We'll come to those metrics in a few minutes. Evolution of our brandscape. I know who would have thought sitting in this room and many of you, whether you're from UBS or HSBC. When we started this journey, we were Taj, Taj, Taj and then came all these reimagined brands. And then all the new businesses with amã and Qmin and the reimagined Ginger and Tree of Life and relaunch of Gateway. So you can expect some of this also coming in the next 5.5 years. The only thing is I don't know what. Today, we also don't know as time comes, as the right opportunity comes, right circumstances, and right level of portfolio, we will consider. It's not like cast in stone, till 2030, everything will be fixed today. So some of this will evolve like it has evolved in the past 5 to 7 years. But while doing all this, one thing which we will not lose focus on is our excellence in operations. What differentiates our company to the rest on a global platform and in India is our excellence in operations. And to become a high-growth company and still keep that excellence, it's not the easiest of the task. But we have put in a lot of programs, a lot of trainings and a lot of exposures for our current team into place for our 40,000 associates that you saw on the film to make sure that they help us on this journey that no matter what scale we scale up to, we are not losing the core values of trust, awareness and joy. Expansion of our portfolio, obviously, will be always focused on leadership on the Indian subcontinent. This is our core. This is our heart. This is our soul. We don't want to lose this momentum that we have gained and we will defend, enhance and further grow our leadership on the Indian subcontinent. We'll make sure that we don't lose out on opportunities in key international markets. Earlier this morning in the press conference, I did say, if we get a third hotel in London, we'll take that if it makes financial sense. If it does not make financial sense, we will not do it. But having another hotel in London for us is a no brainer. Our current hotel is also doing more than 85% occupancy. The current Long Stay one is also doing 90%. It's a market leader and London is a very big city. In many ways, it's a country in itself. You can obviously do one or the other more. I don't know how many would know here that today, the number of outlets, including amã, that we have just in Goa is more than 50, of which 17 are hotels. So that's the kind of strength we have in the micro markets and we can also have in markets like London, Efficient capital deployment. As you can all see, we have cash. We are not going shopping abroad like we once did. We are preserving the cash. We plan to preserve our cash, use it very selectively, very efficiently and with all the prudence that is needed. And if there is any value-accretive inorganic opportunity that comes up or any acquisition because of consolidation in the sector, we are well positioned to take advantage of that. That also helps us to bring you on the what next because we tend to forget the kind of projects we are working on and have not lost sight of it despite our capital-light focus. And one of the most important one is the Bandstand Sea Rock. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to share with you. After years of hard work, we got very recently the IOD, which is Intimation of Disapproval, which actually means approval, which means you can start, but that's how it is called. It's a government document. It's the most important step towards getting a CC, which comes together with the approval of the MoEF and the CRZ approval. And hopefully, sometime middle or latest by end of next week, we'll be submitting our final plans and uploading them for the CC so that when we announce our Q3 results, we are able to give you guidance where do we stand with CC. So all these years, all these quarters, after every quarterly results, the question used to come. So what about Sea Rock. So this is what we can share with you. This is where we stand with Sea Rock. We call it Bandstand because we don't want to have any rock coming in our way. So -- and the next one, obviously, is the 2 islands in Suheli and Kadmat. We are in the final drawing stage. We have submitted the plans. We have also done the Bhumi Pujan or whatever the religious ceremony at Shiroda, which is another one, which was stuck for over 30 years. We seem to have made a very good breakthrough in it. Same is the case with Aguada plateau, which will see a Gateway hotel. It's a huge site between Aguada and the Aguada jail that is there in Goa. We have been able to have that breakthrough with the city. Our Twin project, 275 rooms of Vivanta and Ginger in Ekta Nagar, we'll see completion in May of Ginger and 3 months later, for Vivanta, they face each other in the city of Kevadia or where The Statute of Unity or we call it Ekta Nagar now. And we have already announced a 300 key MOPA, which is your airport in Goa or another trophy Ginger, which together with Bangalore International Airport is going to help us to get to at least 4 airport locations in the short term, which really take the branding charge as for the brand is concerned. In evolution of our brandscape, why have we done what we have done? Why did we not announce all these brands at the same time? Because our management firmly believes that we must have critical mass in each of the brands before we start opening too many of the brands. Therefore, ideally, if you have 30 to 35 properties in a very big country like India in one brand, only then you can call yourself a brand unless you're in absolute luxury. If you're an absolute luxury with only even 3, 4, 5 hotels or even with one hotel, you could be a brand like the Claridges in Delhi, which we are soon going to operate as of April in Delhi, but most of the other brands can only be called a brand if they have a certain critical mass. If we can achieve premium positioning with each of those brands in their relative position. So in homestays, we want to be perceived as the premium homestay; in Gateway or Vivanta upscale positioning, we want to be perceived as the premium company that can deliver results. In the positioning of home delivery or in QSR with Qmin, we want to be perceived as the premium brand. Otherwise, we will end up hurting our main brand, which is the Taj. So in order to achieve all these segments, it's important to go by step-by-step approach. And each time we do so, we also launch new concepts, new concepts within existing Taj Hotels, new concepts in the newer properties, new concepts in the new brands. So I think that's the way we end up on the fourth pillar, which is building a brand equity. Today, if we talk about our very famous brands like Golden Dragon or in the Chinese food, I would say, or House of Ming. You have a House of Ming in several locations today. You have Shamiana in several locations today. We have Machan in several locations. So these are the brands which serve the Taj. Today, they are serving the Taj also, but in different locations, both within India and outside of India. But at the same time, we create new concepts. We created a beautiful Vinothéque in Delhi called the Captain's Cellar. It's like 40 years or 45 years ago, we did the Orient-Express. After that, this is the first time we went and did something which is so different and so unique and so much in a niche. This is not going to be a big money spinner or profit earner, cannot be. We pay 32.5% in Mansingh. So how can anything be a big profit earner, right? But we had to protect that. Only good news is for everyone to know those who thought that we are taking on Mansingh and we will make the loss, please be assured our profit is higher than what it was with the rent, which was 80% lower at that time. That's thanks to good asset management, but also good new concepts, good new chambers, double the size than what it was previously, good new floors of long stay, extended accommodation, and that is all serving the new concepts. In terms of transformation of our brandscape, on the scale, as I spoke on the relevance of having that kind of a size to be recognized as a brand, what we did and we spoke about so many brands. But what we quietly did is Taj, which used to have 50 hotels 7 years ago, today has 120, making it among the top 3 luxury brands in the world and hopefully, soon the #1. Ginger also doubled its size and so did Vivanta and Gateway put together and look at how they transition from their logos and Taj being timeless, we did not touch it. All we did was we improved the assets, we renovated them. We repositioned them. And today, ladies and gentlemen, that is what is driving the operating leverage in the company-owned hotels and portfolio. Now when it comes to other opportunities. So we have just put here one, this is we've got the rights to Claridges Collection and Claridges. What we'll do with this, we'll keep communicating to you, but we're very proud to have this. It is in Lutyens' Delhi with the new opening of Ginger in Chanakyapuri, with Claridges, with Taj Mahal, with Taj Palace with Ambassador round the corner in Connaught. We are very happy not to count a number of rooms rather to count the number of rooms in such an important micro market than to count the number of rooms somewhere outside 20 kilometers of the heart of Delhi. We control this market -- control is a wrong word. We address and serve this market with all kinds of offerings at all price points, from INR 7,000, INR 8,000 to on important days, INR 60,000, INR 70,000 for a room night. And that way, we are very pleased with our growth outcome and strategies. Excellence in operations, obviously, I spoke about service. I spoke about brands being differentiated for being best in class, and that cannot come if we don't have important adherence to brand standards, if we are not continuously looking after our assets and not practicing comprehensive asset management and obviously, in doing so, all this, we achieve the margin expansion that we've been achieving. I think this has been at the forefront of our execution strategy and delivering seamless guest experience by leveraging technology, by operational efficiencies. I think these are all different pillars that drive the forefront or are at the forefront of our execution. I just now mentioned about food and beverage, our innovative concepts. An example of a snapshot would be Loya, our newly launched Indian restaurant, it is going to open at the Taj Mahal Palace in the next 6 weeks. The first one. It will also open in this hotel in the later part of next financial year, whether it is Seven Rivers or House of Ming or recently launched Bombay Brasserie at the Campton Place in San Francisco, another 6, 8 months earlier than that, the Bombay Brasserie as a stand-alone in Singapore, and we are looking at opportunities to do more stand-alone Bombay Brasseries across the globe with partners throughout our system or from outside our system. NPS is something we didn't want to lose sight on. We have industry-leading NPS, and we plan to stay in the 70s. We don't want to let that fall, which is a very high score. And our enablers will remain in order to achieve all this is obviously our focus on customer centricity, our focus on commercials, driven through our focus on human capital on talent and what I already said in building our talent pipeline through training, through exposure. And in doing so, whatever we do not forgetting that we have to have strong governance. We have been awarded and recognized for corporate governance in the spirit of One Tata and always walking the talk with our ESG plus with Paathya. Our Paathya goals have been communicated in the past, easy to remember, everything is 100% except for one, which is renewable energy use. This is not in our control, but we will endeavor to use 50% of energy through renewable sources, 100% hotels to be EarthCheck certified, 100% single-use plastic-free, 100% meetings to be green meetings. You can see on your table, there's no plastic, it's glass bottles, Paathya bottles. This is what we call also energized meetings, 100% adoption of UNESCO standards and also training 100,000 youth. We're going to skill 100,000 by 2030. We have already achieved more than 20% of that score, and we have opened 37 skill centers in India, we signed up for 37, the last one being in Agartala in Tripura. Now comes the most interesting. Most of you have seen it. Most of you have read it. Everybody has a different opinion about it whether it is conservative or is it optimistic? Or is it very optimistic? Or is it -- what is it that we are missing? No matter what number we would have written everybody would have had some opinion on it. But I think it's important to tell what exactly are we aiming for? More than for you, for us, so we have a goal, we have a target. And if we can do more, we'll do more. If things are not looking good, because there is a COVID or something else is happening, we know what we set out to achieve and what we did, where we stand and how we can kind of mitigate any risk coming in. And this is what we said we'll do a total of 350 hotels that we have today to go to 700 hotels. This is the what next, that is doubling of our portfolio in a period of 5 years and 5 months and operational hotels from 230 to 500, so that the pipeline would be around 200 hotels, which means that our traditional brands will grow at a steady pace of 15 signings and 15 openings per annum and our accelerated growth brands, which is the Gateway Ginger Tree of life to have a very accelerated pace of signings and openings and just that it is clear, it's easier to do a Ginger and a Tree of Life. It's not that easy to do a Taj. So that is how this has been logically built up. And there is no sense. In doing amã, which is not a part of this, we also expect around 700 amãs by 2030 to do amã or Tree of Life if you cannot quickly scale it up. So important is that some of the brands require scale, they require higher growth. Some of the others require the soft element, the Taj-ness, the excellence, the emotion that is created with the brand and that is what sets the growth target. So what does that mean in terms of revenue, something which is close to 13,000 today would more than double. Why would this more than double because of the capital-light model and the consolidated would have a little more than double. So the delta between enterprise and consolidated is big. That is because of our consequent change in the business model. And that's why the enterprise level will grow. I know there is one or the other colleague in the audience who would prefer that we did it the other way and put a bit more on the capital heavy, but be rest assured, if we keep generating enough cash, the way we had in the last few years and in the next few years, we will also be deploying it and some of these ratios could change marginally, but not dramatically, right? Is minor, 5%, 10% tweaking that is possible. For those who understand this financial model, a 5% tweak on a capital-heavy could make a very big change. A 5% tweak that is equal to 10, 20 management contracts. So that's a call, we will take as time goes by at least the halfway through the journey and see where we stand. With that, this comes down into the same pyramid you have seen. The only thing that has been added is an extra base and that's the base of the purpose, pioneering responsible change, creating value shaping the future. On the top, as I said before, we have changed the purpose statement marginally. And the only guidance we're giving here is we will increase return on capital employed from 15% to 20%. With that, if there are any implications left for the financials, we'll have Mr. Dalwani walk you through it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Hello. Am I audible? It's always a tough task to follow Mr. Chhatwal after his great presentation. But let me just take you through some of the drivers, which we see it for the revenue growth, and there are 4 main drivers, and I'll walk you through each one of these. I think, firstly, let's put a perspective of where we are coming from, INR 4,000 crores in FY '17, we went to INR 7,000 crores, but it took us 12 years to come to INR 7,000 crores in terms of a doubling of revenues. What we are saying now is that in 6 years, we will actually more than double. So that's actually a big jump. Even if you were to adjust for the COVID period, it would have taken us 10 to 11 years to double in the last -- in this journey to FY '24. I think that's an important perspective to keep as we think about the future. And I think the reason we feel confident about delivering these numbers is really the cycle we are in. We think the cycle is actually far from getting over. There is lots of strong tailwinds that Mr. Chhatwal referred to on the demand side. On the supply side, we continue to see challenges, and I'll dwell a little bit deeper into that when I talk -- take you through my presentation. And then, of course, our not for like-for-like growth, which I think is going to be a fundamental driver for our growth for double digit going forward. If I can just start on the key drivers. I think the first one is our traditional business, which is really the core Taj, Vivanta SeleQtions business. This as some of you know, constitutes almost 85% of our revenues, consol revenues even today. It used to be more than 90%. So there's been some movement. But as people say, it takes a lot of time to move the titanic. So the titanic is turning, and I think it is turning decisively towards the newer businesses. And we will see that as we see the pie chart further, how the revenue mix looks like in FY '30. The traditional business will benefit from the sector tailwinds of RevPAR growth and our own asset management initiatives, which we have done in the past and what we will continue doing going forward, which is putting money back into our properties and the ongoing expansions we have already, which are identified and which will add keys to our consolidated revenues. More importantly, if you look at our new business, which is really Ginger, Qmin and amã, I think there are 3 main drivers of growth there. One is, of course, the not like-for-like growth. We have been adding and opening new Gingers, and that is something which will continue. We have about 100 Gingers. That footprint is going to double itself over the next few years. Secondly, there's a whole movement towards Lean Luxe. When we started Ginger, it was not positioned as an aspirational brand. It was more as a mid-scale economy brand. Over the last 5, 6 years, we have put money back into Ginger. And now almost, I would think, 90% of our portfolio has now been renovated as far as Lean Luxe positioning goes. This actually gives us the ability to drive RevPAR in our existing hotels. And then that also helps us in sort of making this positioning of this hotel or the segment as aspirational to our customers. And I think the third big change in Ginger, which has happened is putting Qmin into Ginger. I think Qmin was -- as you know, we launched that business or the app in COVID, and that itself has become a very popular sort of brand name with customers. There's a fairly strong recall of that brand name. And we said, why don't we put Qmin and Ginger together, both being spices and both go together. And actually, that is really benefiting the growth for both the room revenues as well as the F&B business in Ginger. I think the pipeline, which we've talked about in the past and the pipeline which we are projecting to grow is really going to contribute to a management fee growth. This is going to be driven by the net unit growth, which was actually sub-10% historically, and we'll show you some data on that. But going forward, we feel reasonably confident that this will be mid- to low single digit -- low double-digit growth in net unit growth. and plus the RevPAR growth, which should actually add to the -- or the RevPAR growth in these hotels, which should add to the growth of our management fee here. As newer hotels stabilize, the RevPAR of these hotels should actually start increasing. Every new hotel takes anywhere between 1 to 3 years to actually stabilize. Lastly, if you talk about the reimagined TajSATS, which has been growing quite nicely over the last few years and is the market leader with 59%, 60% of the share of the meals served. And that, along with that, the Chambers business, which is our private club business, which has grown -- even this year has grown at a 15% to 18% growth, and that momentum is actually continuing. We are again putting money back into the Chambers business, and we'll show you some stuff on that. Overall, these are the 4 main drivers or 4 more pillars for us to achieve more than doubling of our revenue in the next 6 years. I think let me spend some time on the first sort of the traditional business, as we call it. As you see, historically, there has been a growth of 8% in this business in terms of RevPAR. That momentum, I think, is continuing that is continuing in H1. And there is no reason why this momentum will slow down in the next few years because the demand-supply dynamics continue to be favorable. I think what we saw coming out of COVID was actually a sharp recovery. But if you were to just go back and look at FY '17, where we were at INR 6,300 and now at INR 11,000 on a per night basis, you would see the CAGR is pretty much 7%, 8%, and that's what we think should continue going forward. There could be years or quarters where this will actually be much better. There could be quarters or years when this could be a little bit lower. But I think directionally, this is a high single-digit like-for-like business growth. What will add on top of that is a not like-for-like growth, which I'll just take you through that. I think on ARRs, there are a lot of questions, and I think all my analyst friends out here asked that question to us. But I think a few data points. Firstly, if we were to compare with the previous peak on a dollar per room night basis, this is IHCL stand-alone data and industry data, we are lower than what we were in the previous peak, which was 2008. And this is not even adjusted for inflation. So this is just on a nominal basis. If you were to compare with some of the other countries out here, if you were to look at, let's say, Asia, if you were to look at Bali, if you were to look at some of the other countries for the 5-star luxury segment, those rates are also higher, right? And if you were to compare to Europe, there is no comparison because those rates are at a different level altogether. So that's one cut-off data, which is important to think about as we look at how ARR is going to pan out over the next few years. I think the other interesting data point, which I think we would like to sort of share with you is that if you were to look at -- this is industry data that is publicly available, where are the current industry ARRs for different segments, whether it's luxury, upscale or mid-scale. They range from INR 4,500 a night to INR 15,500 a night. And if you were to look at the greenfield CapEx per room today because we ourselves are looking at putting up our own hotels, and this is including land -- imputed cost of land, if you were to sort of impute market cost of land, this would anywhere range between INR 3.5 crores to INR 4 crores a room for a luxury hotel, INR 1.5 crores to INR 2 crores for a upscale hotel and mid-scale would be anywhere between INR 80 lakhs to INR 1 crore. Of course, this is representative data for Tier 1 cities. Actual projects will be different, and this is for a typical hotel size between 150 to 200. To achieve a viable IRR on these investments, the current ARRs need to continue to grow. I mean they are at a level where if they remain stagnant, these investments will actually make no sense. So they need to grow at high single digit or even double digit in some cases for investors or for people who want to put money into property to make a weighted average cost of capital of, let's say, anywhere between 12% to 15% depending on the number you pick. So this is an important data point because when we think about entry-inducing ARRs, I think we have still some time to go. And I think this is something which we monitor very closely as to how the market is and when we think about our own greenfields and look at the sector as a whole. On supply, I think Mr. Chhatwal referred to the fact that 6% to 7% is supply. But I think what is also important is look at the market-wise supply. And what we put out here are the key cities or the key states, which are the sort of the core markets in India. And you will see for most of them, we're in 3% or 4% kind of supply, Bombay, 3.5%; Delhi, 2.2%. Bangalore is about 4.5%. And these are the core markets, especially for IHCL, almost 70% to 75% of our revenues, domestic consol revenues come from these markets. So I think these markets have traditionally been slow -- lower supply. But even going forward, that is not going to change. A lot of supply, which we hear about is actually coming in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities. We ourselves will also be opening more management hotels, especially in those cities. And that has a different dynamic, which I'll talk to you in a minute. But I think on the core markets, there is, I think, enough data points out there which support the fact that supply will remain limited because of the fact that the land is not there, even if the land is there, it is too expensive to put up a greenfield or a brownfield in these markets. I think what is happening on the Tier 2, Tier 3 markets, which is really where the 60%, 65% of the new supply is going to come in, it is going to bring in a lot of the demand from the unbranded or the hotels which already are out there, but where people are basically going there because there is no other option today. I mean there are cities, even state capital, where there are only 1 5-star or 2 5-star or 2 nice branded hotels, where today, people are staying in unbranded hotels and that supply, that shift from unbranded to branded is also something which we think will play out. Some of that is already playing out, but that is something will get accelerated as more supply of branded chains reaches these cities. The one last aspect on the traditional business is the asset management, which we keep doing in our properties. There are several examples, but I want to talk about 2. The first one is the Taj Mahal New Delhi. The CAGR in revenues over the last 4 years after we've completed the renovation is about 14%, 15%. And more importantly, the EBITDAR CAGR is about 25%, 26%. This is -- we've actually done a lot in this hotel. We actually kind of almost rebuilt it. We reduced the inventory size, increased the rooms, renovated the chambers, new outlets. And we even let go of business, which was not profitable from a viability perspective. So after doing all of this, and this is a classic example of what can happen if you put money back into the property. These are typically very high ROC investments because the payback for these kind of investments is typically short because you can immediately see the benefit of putting money back into properties. The other one is Usha Kiran again, which is sort of now coming back to -- come back to our fold with fully renovated and is picking up momentum. It's growing at a nice 20% CAGR over the last few years and a 35%, 36% EBITDA CAGR. Even internationally, we continue to put money back into our properties. And if you were to look at St. James, we have put money back in that property. It's actually a continuous journey for some of these assets. An example of that is the new Chambers, which has opened there, the House of Ming and even renovating the other outlets out there and the rooms out there. And for that market, a growth -- a double-digit growth in EBITDA is actually very, very healthy and a very, very respectable growth. Similarly, Cape Town, which we actually consolidated and then put money back into that property, EBITDA has grown at 42%. The reason I'm showing you this is that ARR growth and RevPAR growth doesn't happen just by waiting for the cycle to play out. It's also important to put money back. And that's something which we do. We have a program, and we'll talk about that when we talk about the CapEx plan. I think the second aspect of revenue growth and actually a very important aspect to bring -- take us to the double-digit consistent growth is the focus on the new business. It's run as a separate vertical for us. And we are right now on Ginger, for example, we are now 100 hotels out of which 70 are operating. We will cross -- we will reach 200-odd hotels by end of 2030. Ginger, as you know, we shared the numbers with you when we did the quarterly call. H1 was fantastic. We grew by 50%, 55%. That was obviously on the back of the Ginger Mumbai Airport coming in. But even without that, I think it's growing at a nice 30%, 35% plus. I talked about the reason the Lean Luxe and even the humanization of Ginger, as we call it. I think that momentum is something which is going to sustain. And as Mr. Chhatwal referred to, this is something which should actually be within every district of India. I mean 200 is actually not the endpoint for this segment. It can actually expand a lot. And there could be -- we could even look at inorganic opportunities to see if we can scale this up. On Qmin, which is now part of Ginger and obviously will grow along with Ginger. But outside of Ginger, we also want to take it to outside Ginger and which actually creates a buzz for the brand itself and helps Ginger grow also is by doing QSR and Qmin stores, which are done in a capital-light model. This is actually our second sort of attempt at getting the business model right. We are not in the model -- in this business model, we don't want to actually burden the brand with fixed rental and fixed costs. So it will be a variable revenue share model. We signed with Westside for -- in partnering with them. These are high footfall area where we'll be opening Qmin outside Ginger. And we think this could actually create a lot of momentum for both Qmin and Ginger going forward. On Ginger, I think one of the latest addition is the Ginger Chanakyapuri, which is actually a small hotel, but it's a marquee hotel as far as the positioning goes. It's opened in the heart of Delhi. And actually, it probably will do wonder for the brand like what Ginger Mumbai Airport did for when it opened in Bombay. This is about Ginger Mumbai Airport H1 performance. And as Mr. Chhatwal referred to breakeven in 4 or 5 years, I think both are very good numbers and actually unheard of in the hotel industry. If you look at what we've achieved, INR 6,000 ARR just for the 7 months. And actually, this is a season time, so it should obviously trend up. And in the 7 months, we've achieved a 55% margin. So I think this is something which we feel really happy about. This is really putting nonproductive assets to use. And some of the greenfield projects we are talking about is actually taking the same philosophy saying that we have this land parcel, whether that's Aguada or Shiroda or our own sort of Bandstand here, which actually has been lying sort of not contributing to ROCE over all the years, well, you will see some of that flowing through as these projects come to maturity. Amã and Tee of Life, which are the latest -- I mean, amã has been there is again a business born in COVID. I think it is now scaling up nicely. I think what's important, amã, to make it to a reasonable scale is to build local economies of scale. We have now 40 amãs in Goa itself, out of which 25 are operating and 15 will open soon. So I think that's the way this business should really scale up where you have pockets of dominance because then you can actually spread the cost over those number of villas and benefit from the scale up. The other thing about amã is that it's a very exclusive positioning, but the average bungalow rate or the rate per average bungalow is actually -- which is typically a 4-room is actually INR 40,000. So it's actually lower than a luxury hotel. So there is actually much more headroom if one was to think about this and compare it to a luxury hotel. Occupancies have largely been weekend, but then we are seeing early signs or we are pushing -- we are thinking about ways on which we can actually make it a more sort of a full week kind of occupancy or at least 3 or 4 days in a week occupancy model. Tree of Life is the latest addition to the new business. And this is an addition, which is actually small today, but can be scaled up very quickly because this is typically a conversion model where you can convert existing hotels and convert them into operating hotels in 6 to 8 months. And right now, it's a portfolio of 19 properties, but we see it reaching 100 properties very quickly. And with that, will come scale and profitability. I think this is a strategy which we put in place, I think, about 6, 7 years back. Managed inventory was 25%, 26% -- sorry, capital-light was 25%, 26% of our portfolio. It's gone to about 60% right now with managed being 43% out of that. And if we don't do anything, this will become a higher share. If we don't put anything in terms of putting acquisitions or if we don't add more on capital heavy side, this is how the mix will look like. This obviously gives us the advantage of higher margins because management fee business is generally a higher-margin business. If you see historically, we've grown at 8%, 9% from 7,500 keys to 13,000. This actually will accelerate given the pipeline we have and what we are talking about. And even if you were to sort of take a sort of a view that some of that may not happen as per schedule, I think this 12% to 15% CAGR is a fairly comfortable CAGR we feel confident about. And that's why we feel confident saying that the management fee business itself should actually more than double and at least reach INR 1,000 crores in the next 6 years. On the other part of -- the last part of this is the reimagined business, which is the Chambers. Chambers, which has started with being only in 3 or 4 locations has now expanded to 9 locations in India and internationally. We're also going to add the Frankfurt one next year. As you know that this is actually a great value proposition for the customers, given what we offer them. It's also a highly profitable business for us, although small, but very high flow-throughs. And this benefits from the fact that this is a network effect. So the more chambers we open, our ability to charge our fees goes up. We increased fees last year, and we probably will do once we -- the renovations when the Frankfurt and the Mumbai one, which is under renovation gets completed. I'll just show you 3 pictures of the 2 chambers which have been recently done up and the one which is going to get completed, which is Bombay. So this is Taj Mahal New Delhi, and this is West End and lastly, the Mumbai one. So this is why we feel confident that Chambers business actually should actually more than double. The potential for that is to go to INR 250-plus crores plus in the next few years. And that is something we feel reasonably confident given the propensity and all the factors we talked about, the emerging as the -- per capita incomes go up and people want to be seen in these clubs. I think last point on growth -- on revenue growth is TajSATS. I think we have consolidated this from August 1. So this adds to our top line, our operating profitability and all the way to on PAT. We are adding newer kitchens here, which is in Noida, and we're going to expand in Delhi. So that itself will set some momentum to this business. Plus also, I think the airline business in India, as you know, is growing at healthy double-digit numbers, and that is something which will feed into this business. We are right now largely an airline catering business. It's almost 90%. The 10% is a non-airline catering or the institutional catering business, which itself is a very large opportunity. So we have actually created a subsidiary of TajSATS called Nekta Foods, which will actually focus on institutional catering, and that could itself become a large business going forward. These numbers right now don't factor too much contribution from there, but we'll see how the future evolves, but we feel confident that at least this will definitely double in the next 5, 6 years. I think to sum up the revenue mix and how we see this is going to evolve. As I mentioned earlier, the traditional business is about 85%, 86%. This does include the management fee, which is also largely coming from the traditional business. But if we were to see the pie chart in FY '30 and if I was to sort of forecast, given all what I've talked about, the not like-for-like growth, the growth in Ginger, the management fee, et cetera, some of the new brands, Tree of Life and amã scaling up, this traditional business will grow, but it will become a smaller portion of the pie, which is 60% to 65%. And the balance 35% to 40% is actually going to come from the new business, the reimagined business and the management fee. This obviously benefits from the fact that TajSATS wasn't part of FY '24 becomes part of FY '30. But even if you were to adjust for that, it is still a significant shift from traditional business to a newer business. This is one of the key reasons which I think will give us much more stability in a cyclical business because that helps us even when there are periods or quarters where things are not going like we had in Q1, which was a low growth business, but we could actually do well because of our not like-for-like growth. I think on -- having talked about revenue, let me spend some time on margins. This is a little bit of a historical perspective. You've seen these numbers. When we set out Aspiration 2022, we were at 16%, 17%. We said we'll do 25%. We actually got there. Had COVID not been there, we would have actually got there in FY '20 itself. And then we reset the margin expectation by Ahvaan 2025, we set the margin expectation to 33%. I think having achieved 33% plus margin, I think we feel confident that, a, this is something which we have now understand what are the key drivers and what will be the key drivers going forward. And instead of giving a specific margin guidance, we think it will have a positive bias going forward. And it's important to keep this perspective in mind. Even though we're going to put money back into our properties, we're going to put money back into building the organization in the future and new brands. I think there are drivers which will actually, on balance, be on the positive, this would be obviously operating leverage, the mix of revenues and some of the direct-to-channel investments which we have done, for example, on the website, Taj website, which has launched has already resulted in a couple of percentage points moving from non-direct to -- D2C to D2C channel. So all of this will actually play out as we speak. Even in H1, we have seen a couple of percentage points expansion. This is 29 to 30 is actually including TajSATS impact coming into H1. If we were to look at the hotel segment, it's up about 2%. October, November was all trending up from that point of view. So I think reasonably to say that FY '25 will have a reasonable growth over the previous year's margins. And directionally, this looks good from a long-term perspective. I think I would like to now talk about cash flow and our capital allocation principles. If we were to look at the next 5 years, EBITDA of, let's say, that's 100% and how will that get distributed from EBITDA to come to operating cash flow or free cash flow before CapEx is about 70% to 75%, the difference being really the tax payout, which happens at the bottom line. And we are going to put money back into a property, which I mentioned about. So almost 20%, 25% goes back into the properties. This will also include some of the ongoing new builds, which is the 5, 6 properties, which are getting completed in FY '25, FY '26. We have announced a dividend policy. So we will obviously meet that policy. We have said that we will distribute anywhere between 20% to 40% of our consol PAT or stand-alone PAT, whichever is higher. And that should take away a mid-teens kind of our numbers from our sort of EBITDA numbers. And then we have 15% to 20% for future greenfield, which is what Mr. Chhatwal showed, which is really the Sea Rock or Bandstand, the Lakshadweep, the Aguada Plateau and as well as the Shiroda project. And also Ranchi, which is also added to this list, which was incidentally a project we got earlier this year. This is a land lease project. So we will be building that also next few years. This leaves us still with a cash accrual of 10% to 20%, which can be used for inorganic opportunities or for newer projects. Like I just mentioned, we got Ranchi. There could be -- we normally get invited by government to say, if you can build, come and build a hotel in our state because that also adds to the sort of the momentum the state wants to have. And of course, then keeping something for the strategic reserve, which is if we run into some kind of a down cycle in the next few years, it will also give us the ability to then go out and consolidate the market. So I think that's really the principle of how we are looking at capital allocation, largely going into our own CapEx, which is ongoing and also the future greenfields. What we can speak confidently right now is what is identifiable and which is crystallized is about INR 5,000 crores over the next 5 years. And this is some of the ongoing ones which I talked about. This is about 1,000 keys, key renovation and digital spends. This does not include some of the future greenfields, on which we are still sort of crystallizing all the numbers, whether that's Bandstand or Aguada or Shiroda. And those numbers, we'll be able to talk to you about maybe once we are able to get the plans approved and there's more visibility on the time line of those projects. So I think where does this lead us? I think in terms of efficiency of the balance sheet, I think in spite of all the money being spent on CapEx, we don't think we'll end up requiring debt at this point in time. Our belief is that we will still remain net cash positive. And I think that's a bold statement to make because we are now getting into a little bit of a CapEx heavier part of the investment cycle. And we feel confident that with the cash flows, are not like-for-like growth, we should be able to sustain our net cash positive position. And overall, our ROCEs will expand because of the mix of the business changing. And when we unlock the noncash-generating assets which are on the balance sheet, like the Sea Rock land, which is stand-alone balance sheet has INR 1,500 crores. Consol balance sheet has about whatever, INR 900 crores, not generating anything today. So hopefully, we see some cash flow coming from those projects. Yes. I think just to sum up, this is a pyramid, which we have putting up as our own internal targets, and we feel reasonably confident that we will -- it's not by any way, an easy target. 700 hotel portfolio is going to be a stretch, but I think the management team is committed to make that stretch happen. Similarly on revenue growth and ROCE and at the same time, maintaining customer quality, which at 70 plus. I think that's it from my side. And I think Mr. Chhatwal and I can take more questions now. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Dalwani. Thank you, Mr. Chhatwal. We will now start with the Q&A round. May I please request you to kindly introduce yourself before asking the question and make sure that you raise your hand so that we can pass on the microphone to you.

This is Pradnya Ganar from UTI AMC. So sir, my question is on your owned hotels portfolio. So first of all, on Sea Rock or Bandstand. Once you get all the necessary approvals, what would be the estimated time line for completion and capital commitment from our end? So that is one on Bandstand. And the other owned hotel portfolio that you have in pipeline, I understand it would be difficult to exactly give a CapEx amount, but roughly, what kind of ROCE do we plan to get from those projects? Yes.

So I think I'll take the latter part, which is what kind of ROCEs or IRRs we target. Normally, we look at -- I think this was mentioned by Mr. Chhatwal as well. We look at mid-teens kind of IRRs for our projects. And therefore, these projects will also go through the similar scrutiny and viability analysis. In terms of time line, I think maybe you want to take that.

On Sea Rock, subject to us getting a CC and a commencement date of site preparation, let's say, April, May, June of next year, it would take anything between 3 to 3.5 years. It's a difficult project. It's not an easy one because of the site and the water and all the construction and the height that we plan to do. So 3.5 years would be realistic. So let's say, all in all, 4 years as the earliest, latest would be 5. if there were some hiccups or delay in still getting the CC. But as I said, IOD is the most important one, and we are there now.

And sir, what will be our capital commitment for Sea Rock?

It could be the -- without putting any interest capitalization for the interim financing into it, it could be anything between INR 775 crores to INR 875 crores. And as you heard, almost 50% of that is already on a consolidated basis on the balance sheet. But projects like this, the land element will always be 50% of the total project cost.

This is Adhidev Chattopadhyay here from ICICI Securities. Just again, a follow-up on the Sea Rock thing. I think in the past, you had alluded that we may look for a financial partner to maybe partly finance the project. So is there any change in that? Are we going ahead and spending all the money on our own? Or are we confident enough on that front?

There is no change on that thinking, as you just heard that if the consolidated basis is INR 900 crores and stand-alone is INR 1,500 crores and the cost to build is maximum another INR 900, right?

Yes.

So we could easily be 51% shareholder or 55% or 60% and get a partner preferably from within the group because assets like these, we would like to keep within the group. And if need be, we will look outside also. But this is a development which we'll do on a turnkey fixed price basis with a third party, whether it's a Tata Projects or another company is not something which -- the development risk will not be within IHCL.

I would like to just add what Mr. Chhatwal has said. I think when we looked at the partnership angle a few years back, there was -- the balance sheet was also constrained. From a balance sheet perspective, the constraint is less. But from a risk perspective, the turnkey model is what we will definitely want to look at. So whether it's a quality contractor within the Tata Group or outside is something we would like to definitely look at.

Sure, sure. Sir, my second question is on sourcing of real estate for management contracts. Obviously, we have a strong pipeline for the next 3, 4 years. But on an overall reading on upcoming management contracts in Tier 1 cities, do you think is there enough real estate which is around to enable us to get that sort of growth even going forward beyond what we have already signed?

See, this is an interesting question. So in theory, you are right with what you're trying to say, you're right. I can only say that, yes. But there are enough projects like Claridges, which is in the conversion. There are enough new suburbs coming. If you look at just the city of Mumbai and look what has happened around it, the new markets that are opening up. They're creating huge opportunities for our brands, which are not Taj like a Gateway, Vivanta, Ginger. Vivanta, Navi Mumbai is a very good success for us. We're opening in Thane. So there is a lot of opportunities that are opening up because these big metros keep just growing in the suburbs and that then suddenly becomes like Delhi, say, Delhi NCR region. It's not Delhi, Delhi and Delhi Lutyens', but you take that way, then there is enough real estate available, including for us within the group.

Sure, sure. So -- and the final question is on TajSATS. Obviously, you alluded to the sort of revenue growth or revenue potential we see in the business over the next 5 years. So on the EBITDA margin trajectory, could you share more on, let's say, we are now at 24%, 25%, but where potentially even the margins could -- what it could look like maybe in 4, 5 years' time from that?

I think TajSATS right now enjoys very nice and healthy margins. At least in the near term, which is maybe 1 or 2 years, we don't see big disruption. But look, this is a business which is different from hotels in the sense the margins typically in these businesses are probably mid- to high teens. We don't know if they were going to revert to that level. But we feel confident to say that in the near term, maybe in the next 12 to 18 months, there is no disruption on that front. But long term, we'll see how this business evolves. The good thing with TajSATS is that it enjoys -- it is locked in the sort of the lease or the concession at the key location, which is Bangalore and Bombay and is in the process of doing so at Delhi, so which, in a way, reduces the competitive intensity for them. But it is more dynamic business than the hotel business.

I'll add, I think, very important one, what Mr. Dalwani just mentioned. Just like we have, over time, grown new businesses within IHCL, in TajSATS, we have launched a new company and a new brand, which is called Nekta. And together with Qmin, we'll be sourcing non-airline business. And we expect that business over the next 5 years to become 20% to 25% of the total, just like we are doing with new businesses here. So what we did or started in the [TopCo] in IHCL 5, 7 years ago, the similar journey has started with TajSATS in the non-airline business. So that way you sweat your central kitchens or we don't call it cloud kitchens. We have them. So we will be able to sweat them better.

This is Shaleen from UBS. Puneet, I must say a pretty bold goal, 14% CAGR, INR 15,000 crores revenue by 2030. You have kind of stirred a debate here. So let me indulge you a bit more on EBITDA as well then, right? So while you talk about there will be a margin expansion, but how should we think about it, right? What kind of EBITDA -- absolute EBITDA are you looking at in 2030, if you're looking at INR 15,000 crore revenue?

That's a nice way of asking the same question, which you get asked all the time. But I think it's fair to say that as we see it, there is a positive bias. You've seen how the FY '25 is playing out on both on the hospitality segment as well as even if you were to combine TajSATS, will this remain forever? I can't answer for sure. But I think the drivers are not going away. Let me just put it this way. The drivers of operating leverage, the demand-supply mismatch and the not like-for-like growth, which is probably -- which is higher-margin business, then those are not going away. We have to be cognizant that we will put some money back into our business. And a lot of time, this -- while this should really be CapEx, but it's really capability building, building an organization of the future. Now new business is big enough for it to have its own sort of a structure, which is a little bit more independent and therefore, will that entail some upfront costs. We have now got challenges as a brand. So we will, of course, need to support that brand. And then we have to make sure that we are putting enough money back on the digital side, which is both customer-facing. So whether it's a CRM project or the website projects, or the back-end side, which is the ERP project. So some of these are upfront costs, the benefits of these will come over the years. And that's why rather than give you a specific number, I think I would just say that we feel confident that the direction is positive.

Okay. Let me ask it another way then. So on the 14% CAGR growth you're building in, you're talking about 7% to 8% RevPAR in which it's mostly the ARR than occupancy of your core because occupancy, you are up there. Then a large part, again, maybe 2% to 3% is coming from management contract because you're talking about much higher growth in that segment as well. And the new business, which is again doing a higher margin than your core business, right? So when I look at more than anything from 2/3 to 70% of your incremental revenue when you're looking at is coming at higher margin, maybe towards 60% plus ARR flow-through plus management flow-through and all. So when I do a rough math, 40% margin by 2030 looks conservative.

Don't set target for us here.

I would say in the break when we have the cocktails, I encourage you to have a word with the 3 stalwarts of operations sitting here in the front.

I have another question for them, don't worry.

Another one for them. So I think in -- see, any kind of maths that you do on piece of paper could work in what you are saying. The challenge is that this sector is a bit sensitive to certain changes that come outside its circle of influence. And that keeps happening. What is the reason? Let me turn it the other way around. What is the reason we don't want to take the risk and have debt? Because you get into that spiral to fight with the unknown. Otherwise, every finance school teaches you that optimal use of debt increases the net present value of the company, right? So why are we saying, no, no, we prefer to have cash and cash reserve in that is because as we are growing, we are still kind of confronted with a lot of unknown. Otherwise, instead of giving a ROCE target, we would have given, like in the past, EBITDA margin target. But if you have achieved 33.7% in the last financial year, one of the highest margins also within the group, if not the highest. I think it is the highest, but let's say, one of the highest. And industry-leading with assets in London and New York and San Francisco, et cetera, then you have to stop somewhere and say, okay, if we get more, we go for more. But at the end of the day, hotel sector is a capital-intensive and a labor-intensive business. And some of these costs, the way they will evolve as India evolves from fifth to fourth to third largest economy, it's very difficult to judge today because it's changing very rapidly. If 3 years ago, we had said that the average rate in this country will be x that what it is today for luxury or for upscale or for the sector. I don't think anyone would have believed it or the RevPAR would be so. We have lost out on a few opportunities where our strategic partners could not believe that this sector will ever come back. So that is the challenges we have that the headwinds when they come, they come very strong. So what is the management doing to mitigate the impact of those headwinds? Change in the business model with a different ratio for capital light versus capital heavy. Evolution, as we said, of the brandscape to have different brands where like you did the maths, many of those brands, good or bad circumstances will do 40% to 60% margin, 60% in good times and maybe 40% in bad times, but it cannot fall to 15% or 17% or 18%. So I think -- and that's why during the presentation, I said this is not all cast in stone in 2.5 years or 3 years, we could review seeing how our cash position, other things have evolved. So if we wanted to shift a bit more to capital heavy, we would do that if we keep collecting or accumulating the cash the way we've done it for the last 10 quarters.

Sure. Then my assumptions are not off the mark.

Sorry?

So my assumptions are not off the mark then.

Our answers are not off the mark.

Your answers.... I just concluded your answer.

He is saying his assumptions are not off the mark.

Yes. No, never.

Right. So Puneet, then why are you so conservative in Ginger? Like just 200 by 2030, like we expected more from you.

The challenges are the same. Whether you're doing a Bandstand or a hotel on a greenfield, we would love to do -- at least I personally, as you are aware, I have lived almost 3 decades outside of India. Hotels in this category can get built in 9 months' time. If you have the plans and planning permission, you just build it in a factory and assemble it on a site. So it's possible and not possible. These kind of technologies are also coming into India, but are not yet fully there. One or the other company that started doing this modular construction for some reasons, had to close shop. We are evaluating these model with Tata Projects. And if you looked at this chart, we said that the number of openings in the new businesses will be double of the traditional one. So that's why we are optimistic on that, but land, titles, permissions, some of these things are not within our control. But if we get it faster, I tell you, we are the happiest to build it fast and happiest to actually spend our own money because it's a no-brainer. It's absolute no-brainer. If Ginger is -- it's one brand where you can say the total square meter per room is 40. The cost to build that is x. If you get land from the city or state at a long-term 67, 99-year lease at a peppercorn rent, it's an absolute no-brainer to do hundreds of those. But it doesn't happen that way. Somewhere there is an election, somewhere there is a government change, somewhere there's something else, there is what would you call a tsunami or a flooding, somewhere there is landslide. So things keep happening. But also, it's a very positive happening place. So a lot of positive things are also happening. That's why we're able to show the growth we have been able to show.

Sure. Last one to Ankur. So Ankur, yes, you talked about 70%, 75% of EBITDA is operating cash, which effectively means that you should be having something like INR 12,000 crores to INR 14,000 crores of operating cash by 2030, INR 2,000 crores you have in bag, so INR 16,000 plus. You've only given us a plan of INR 5,000 crores right? So you need to be a little aggressive on that, do you think?

I don't know what math you're doing, but I think let me just put it this way.

Difficult math here.

Dividend.

Yes. So we talked about dividend. So that is part of the distribution plan, which we have. We know -- as you know, we have a stated policy. But more than that, also, there's a CapEx plan, which we said is INR 5,000 crores is identified CapEx, which we know for a fact that we are going to incur over the next few years. I think what's missing in that is the question which was asked earlier on how much we'll spend on the new builds, which are future -- which are still on drawing board or some of them are still -- we are still figuring out what approvals. And as was mentioned by Mr. Chhatwal that by the next earnings call, we'll have much more visibility at least on the one opposite this hotel. Now I think that is where we have to now see how much of that will go, how much we'll take on our balance sheet. Do we need a partner? Do we need all ourselves? And as things stand, we really don't need a partner, which I mentioned earlier as well from a financial flexibility point of view. Do we want to bring someone from a risk mitigation point of view? And that's something we'll debate as a management team. So I think the missing piece in this is that how much we end up spending on the new greenfields and how soon we can start construction of those. I think for the longest time, we've been trying to get these nonoperating assets into an operational mode. And with the effort of, I think, the entire management team here, which is sitting here, we've actually made great progress. And we've seen now finally 25-, 30-year-old disputes coming to an end, whether that's the Aguada Plateau or the Shiroda one. And now the one which is right out here has also made good progress. So I think we are optimistic that finally, these projects should take off, and therefore, a lot of that missing piece will go there. Having said that, does that give us flexibility to then look at inorganic? The answer is yes. We will -- we are actually continuously look at opportunities on the inorganic front. We've just done a very small transaction, so I'm not going to talk about that. But like those, there are many which keep coming, and we will probably look at adding on the inorganic front. The one thing about inorganic opportunity is that we obviously want to make sure it is viable. The second is that it should add more than just the rooms. It's not about just adding rooms. It's also about adding a capability. There are white spaces in our brandscape or in our location, then it obviously makes a lot more synergistic sense to go for those acquisitions.

Sure. So hopefully, we should hear something on Sea Rock by end of third quarter?

Yes, I think that's on Sea Rock.

Yes. As I mentioned, we will be submitting for the -- we were going for CC by let's say, mid or end next week. So a lot of work that goes in, a lot of plans. They'll be uploaded. And then it's a process, whether it takes a month, 2 months, 3 months, but it should not -- the most important is IOD, and we have that.

Last -- just last one, I know. How are you thinking about this brand Claridges? Like how do we intend to use it, its positioning, et cetera? Is there any thoughts on that?

Let us discuss that more in the Q3 call. We are -- we've just signed the contract, and there is an opportunity to do something. That's for sure. And Claridges will be Claridges. It will not be Taj Claridges or Claridges by Taj. So sure -- that part is very clear. It's complementary to the Taj brand and not something which will be under the Taj brand. And how we use that or scale up I think that is something which we will -- once we have drawn the plans, we'll share.

Fantastic presentation. First question is on the outlook on RevPAR growth, which you have given like high single digit. So is this more like the previous cycle, like in 2003 to 2008, we saw like a 20% kind of CAGR, 15%, 20% kind of CAGR. Past 3 years have been fantastic. We are looking at like high single-digit kind of CAGR over the next few years. Is it more like a perennial expectation? Or it is more like inflation plus 2%, 3% kind of a because we are like a steady state kind of industry cycle now. It's not a super bull cycle. We are somewhere in middle there, which will probably continue to remain like this for next 10 years.

See, there are 2 things here. One is that in foreseeable future like in the past, no more than 50% of our revenue, revenue will be rooms driven. Within that, we have a like-for-like growth, and then we have a not like-for-like growth. That's why -- when you become a high-growth company, just putting a CAGR on RevPAR is not a prudent way of doing it because if you're opening 30, 40, 50 hotels in a year, a lot of them are in the start-up phase. So they will dilute the total RevPAR that you see. So one is you have to separate the like-for-like and hotels, which are maybe up to 2 years of opening as a separate one. Second is any assumption around 8% is what we have communicated is fairly safe. It should not go below that on a like-for-like. On a not like-for-like, if you add and it drops to 7% or 6%, it does not mean anything because it's actually adding to the total room revenue. You cannot have the same percentage growth as you have in, let's say, Taj Lands End versus a new hotel in Thane or Navi Mumbai, et cetera. Maybe sometimes these hotels even open at a very high level. But when 3, 4 more hotels are in the same market, then they also drop, there is a degrowth. So the important thing is to separate. On a like-for-like 8, 10, 12 is not a problem, but now the occupancies have gone up so much that you can charge more, but at a certain point, it's not like unlimited scope to go up.

Just to add, there's also the F&B component where we will speak too much about it at least in my deck but I think that's something which actually is the ability for us to grow faster than the traditional room business is actually there because first [indiscernible] and then outlets. We're putting a lot of money back to outlets. We spoke about that a bit. So that is at the other angle. So when you look at our business, rooms is only 50%.

But in a way, if you reflect back on the presentation when I was saying something, we want to create a new benchmark and the benchmark is the -- this opportunity, this whole thought process of RevPAR being the most important is not wrong. But is it as relevant for an India-centric company versus another global major? The answer is no. One big event in Jamnagar that we catered this year, 80% of it was catered by us. One wedding in Umaid Bhawan Palace, one of the Bollywood's or Liz Hurley in the past, makes up for the entire F&B revenue for 1 year in that 5 days. Only thing is we cannot predict and project who is going to get married in the next 6 months. That is not our job. But somebody every year does and makes up for all the revenue. One event like the Dior event last year around this time at Gateway of India, one big visit of a royalty in a year, in Taj Mahal Palace or in Delhi, a delegation from UAE, et cetera, makes up for almost like at least 15, 20 days of revenue.

Right. My next question is on like you are looking at international markets much more aggressively now versus earlier. Likewise, I mean, you have given a great presentation, great outlook. I'm sure it will go to a lot of your competition also seeing it and suggesting strong outlook for the industry. So how do you see like competition like sort of reacting to not your this presentation, but in general, like looking to add capacity in India?

I don't think anyone waits for the other to add. People add what they can and they move on. And the more the sector grows and the higher our share of growth is, that is what makes us happy versus that we think only we are growing. That's not -- I think that is not realistic either. So if the pie keeps evolving and becoming larger and we keep or maintain the highest share in it, then we are happy. There was a time when we used to have more than 15% of the supply, then we fell down to almost single digit. We are back closer to 14% or so. We want to take it back to 15% plus, and that is good. That is good. We should also try to eat what we can digest. Too much is also not good. So it's okay. And also competition helps to improve the sector, improve the fundamentals. And it's very good, especially for Indian hospitality that most of the companies that we would call peer set. We all have a now similar narrative on growth, on EBITDA, on margin, on focus and without losing customer centricity. So that's very, very good. It's a very healthy sign for the sector.

I just want to add that this is not a winner takes all market. So as you know, it's -- we are only 190,000 branded rooms in the country, which itself is a very small number for the country, right? So I think there is enough room for everyone to grow. Also, when you think about large convention centers hosting events, then you actually need quality supply of hotels actually to open up. And obviously, one company cannot do all of that. So there's room for, I think, all of us to coexist.

Right. And the last question on the management contract revenues or income. You've given it like 15% to 18% CAGR. This seems like lower than the expected growth in the room count in that segment. That's because -- I mean is that the right understanding?

No. I think if you look at the projected growth in room count is about 12% to 15%. So this should grow at, like you said, higher than that. But I think what's important to understand is that as every year, we keep on opening hotels, they don't stabilize on day 1. They at least take 2 years and in some cases, 3 years for them to hit the ground running and get to a RevPAR level. I'm not talking about RevPAR, not RevPAR. At RevPAR level, which is comparable to a mature stable hotel. So that's why it's not like 12% plus 10 or 12% plus 8. It's more like let's say, 12% plus 5. And then over a period of time, that should actually obviously go up because then those hotels become mature and your new additions will probably kind of stabilize at a certain level.

This is Natraj from DSP Mutual Fund. Just more on the policy question. The National Tourism policy as well as the Maharashtra state government when they announced a policy for tourism in July 2024, they said they will do a number of incentives for tourism-related sector. The government has talked about ETFs and stuff like that. Any policy incentives that is coming through for the industry or for you to reduce the tax incentives or made it more attractive for tourists to come into India that you see as a catalyst for foreign tourist arrivals, which is still below the 2019 levels. We have been lobbying for infrastructure status for, I think, since I joined the industry in 25 years back. But I think this government is slightly different. So any developments on that side with respect to incentives, either state, central, that will be helpful.

See, I could not acoustically get your name, but here is you kind of answered the question yourself. But for the rest of the audience, I would say that Maharashtra was one of the first ones to grant industry status when we started lobbying for it. Prior to that, Rajasthan had done a very good job in execution on it. It was followed by Karnataka, West Bengal, more recently, Tamil Nadu, et cetera, that have given the industry status. What industry status does it, it makes your cost of utilities and taxes a bit more competitive versus any other real estate. So we were the highest tax sector or we still are in the places where you don't have industry status. What infra does is it can get you cheaper loans and longer-term moratorium as -- as the Head of CII National Committee for Tourism, I have been myself and as the Chairman of FAITH, which is the Apex body of all travel and hospitality associations, I've been personally very actively involved in getting this done. The good news, it's a bit like Bandstand or Sea Rock. The good news is everybody says you are right, but the not-so good news is that it has not yet happened. This is not asking for cash. We are not saying invest INR 20,000 crores, INR 30,000 crores, INR 50, 000 crores, is only going to help other companies, as Mr. Dalwani just mentioned, for other companies to grow because we don't need a moratorium or we don't need the cheaper debt because ideally, we don't want to use debt. We have our own internal accruals. But we are doing this for the sector. We are lobbying for the sector. And given the demographic dividend India has, given the government's focus, which is really benefiting us on the development of infrastructure, number of airports, 6 lane highways, renaissance of train stations, et cetera, et cetera, getting this sector to be a part of the support system of the government's focus on infrastructure would really help. I would maybe use this opportunity to say that Bandstand IOD is a consequence of the support we got from the government. It's not that it cannot have happened without their support. So in a way, -- all this is positive. But a country with the background like we are coming from, in 2012, for some reason, one of the commissions put certain caps on the infrastructure status where most of the time, it's not applicable for good quality investments, and we are trying to get those removed. So industry is fine. The one thing which is latest that we have come up with and is a new request besides this 2-point agenda is the equivalent of Incredible India campaign outside of India to attract more foreign tourists because your real tourist level, foreign tourists has actually declined. And how we can somehow support it, whether through visa on arrival or free visas or more marketing campaigns, a new website, all the government offices or tourist offices outside of India were shut down. So how is it we can do? What have we done as IHCL? We have committed to spend INR 25 crores over the next 3 years at various big tourism events and the one which happened recently in the World Travel Market in London. We did an India evening and one of our colleagues who is sitting here in the front was the head of that event, where we were the enabler for all tour operators who attended from India that event that not only they could attend, but they could also invite their guests for free. So that's how we are spending the money to support our fraternity. And we think it's for the good of the whole, not only like we will win, but the sector will win, and we need to do that in a significant way now.

We will now take our next question from the online participants.

We have one question from Sachin that's coming online. Given the consolidation in India's airline industry, particularly Air India, which is part of the Tata Group, how would you see the opportunities for TajSATS? Also, how does the company synergize among various Tata Group companies drive revenue?

Well, on the pyramid, you would have seen the One Tata as one of the enablers. We are very blessed to be part of an ecosystem and being part of a team of leaders and managers, which are enabling a lot of Tata Group companies have been a positive surprise and have done very well and have delivered a better-than-expected performance. And obviously, a lot of their events happen in our hotels, especially their annual meets or strategy meets. Their private events also happen in our events, if there is a wedding or any other occasion to be celebrated in their families. And being such a large group, that means our access to companies is very large. They do not work exclusively with us because we are not present in all locations, and there are others sometimes who are better in certain locations, but we do have access. We do have systems in place. We have a Tata Friend and Family rate for all Tata Group employees. We do a lot of promotions with other group companies together. We have worked very closely with Tata Consumer. As an example on your question on TajSATS, the food for Starbucks with Tata Consumer is prepared and acquired through TajSATS. It's not just Air India and Vistara that would come under the non-airline part. On the airline part and the consolidation, the opportunity is huge. But as you hear and read, there are a lot of other things which are important, as I say, put first things first. We are in the queue. And hopefully, together with our airlines, we can one day would be, at least my dream, have a claim that the airlines from India serve the best meals in the skies in the world. So that is something we can contribute to. We'll be happy to contribute to that.

We have no further questions from our online audience. Over to you, Palak.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That's all for the Q&A round. Thank you, Mr. Chhatwal and Mr. Dalwani for sharing such great insights with us. Thank you once again for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you all. Have a lovely evening. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.