MakeMyTrip Raises $3.1 Billion to Shrink Trip.com Group’s Stake


MakeMyTrip on Tuesday said it raised around $3.1 billion as part of its plans to repurchase shares from China’s Trip.com Group, which at one point owned more than 45% of the company.

MakeMyTrip said in a stock exchange filing last month that it was raising money to buy back shares, and after several repurchases during the quarter, Trip.com’s stake is down to 16.9%.

MakeMyTrip said it is open to doing more buybacks later this year. “We’ll remain open to kind of dipping into further buyback even in the rest of year because we haven’t really deployed directly from the balance sheet through the quarter,” MakeMyTrip Chief Financial Officer Mohit Kabra said during an earnings call Tuesday.

Following the announcement, Skift accessed the company’s 6-K filing with the U.S. SEC, which also revealed a board overhaul.

Trip.com’s right to nominate directors on MakeMyTrip’s board dropped from five to two. Shortly after the share repurchases, three Trip.com‑nominated directors — James Liang, Moshe Rafiah, and Paul Halpin — resigned. Their departures were “not due to any disagreement,” the company said.

MakeMyTrip added three new independent directors, including Kabra.

The compensation committee now includes venture capitalist Aditya Tim Guleri, Shanghai Sunnyview Eldercare Company Co-Founder May Yihong Wu, and Trip.com Group CEO Jane Jie Sun.

“The interests of Trip.com and its affiliates may be different from or conflict with the interests of our other shareholders,” MakeMyTrip had said last month in a stock exchange filing announcing the buyback.

Even as April was a typical high season with bookings up in the mid‑20% range. The terrorist attack near Pahalgam on April 22 disrupted travel, closed several airports until May 10. The Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad in June dented confidence further.

As a result, flight and leisure package bookings in May and June slipped below last year’s levels. However MakeMyTrip’s  diversified mix of business and variety of travel and ancillary services helped the company to deliver a strong performance.

The quarter ending June 30 looked solid for MakeMyTrip:

  • Revenue rose 5.6% year‑on‑year to $268.8 million.

  • Gross bookings (the total travel spend on the platform) climbed 12.4% to $2.61 billion.

  • Adjusted operating profit improved by $8.2 million to $47.3 million.

  • Adjusted net profit grew by $4.9 million to $49.4 million.

“While domestic demand for leisure travel was particularly weak for domestic leisure destinations for air travel and holiday packages, being a one-stop shop on travel allowed us to drive growth from other travel services, other modes of transport as well as ancillary travel services catering to non-leisure travel use cases,” Group CEO Rajesh Magow said during the earnings call.

More From Author

Brian Kelly, get him on your team immediately

Brittney Griner returns to Phoenix with her Dream team to face Mercury

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *