Easy Trip Planners Ltd Shares in Spotlight as Promoter Offloads Stake in Block Deal

Shares of Easy Trip Planners recovered sharply on 26 September, climbing nearly 7% after a three-day downturn. Most of the decline happened in the last session, where the stock fell by over 16% to a new low of ₹32.78, which was seen following the sale of a 14% stake by a promoter.

As of 3:30 p.m. IST, Easy Trip Planners' shares were trading at ₹36.62, a 6.70% rise on the NSE. The price rebound was accompanied by significant trading volume, with 15 crore shares changing hands, far surpassing the monthly average of 6 crore shares. In the previous session, trading volume was even higher, with 90 crore shares being traded.

NSE bulk deal data shows the promoter Easy Trip Planners Ltd sold 67,357,201 shares at an average price of ₹37.42. It sold another 100 lakh shares at ₹38.28 and 16.9 crore shares at ₹37.22 totaling 24.65 crore sales by Pitti.

It may be recalled that, prior to the sale, Pitti held 49.84 crore shares, amounting to a 28.13% stake in the company. Post transaction, he has thus sold almost half of his holdings and reduced the stake to around 13.9%. Meanwhile, CORE4 Marcom has acquired 5 crore shares of Easy Trip Planners, while Craft Emerging Market Fund PCC - Elite Capital Fund purchased 10.5 crore shares.

The recent stake sale has probably eased the weight that was sitting on the stock's price. Easy Trip Planners has also gained media attention with its plan to scale up the YoloBus initiative, with the company looking at growing its fleet of electric buses to 2,000 in the next four years.

Medical tourism is also a field the firm explores, and recently it sanctioned two acquisitions worth ₹90 crore. In its latest announcement, the board of Easy Trip Planners cleared investment of ₹60 crore for a 30% equity stake in Rollins International Private Limited and another ₹30 crore for 49% equity stake in Pflege Home Healthcare Center LLC.

On a related note, Easy Trip Planners made an exclusive partnership with PhonePe to launch its Hotels segment on the platform, which would bring seamless access to a wide array of domestic and international hotels onto the Easy platform.

The platform further has activities and cab bookings planned for Easy Trip Planners in order to ensure that all of its users have a richer travel booking experience. EaseMyTrip Hotels platform is known for easy navigation, price competitiveness, and free cancellation policy, the company further added would be available for PhonePe users.

From a financial perspective, consolidated profit after tax of Easy Trip Planners increased by 31 per cent for the June 2024 quarter to ₹33.93 crore as compared with ₹25.9 crore for the same quarter last year. Total income went up to ₹156.22 crore compared with ₹126.64 crore a year ago, while total expenses rose to ₹109.03 crore versus ₹91.56 crore.

As of now, Easy Trip Planners has a market capitalization of ₹6,473.26 crore as listed on the BSE and is part of the BSE 500 index.

Easy Trip Planners Limited is an online travel company in India. It offers a gamut of services, such as booking air tickets, hotel reservations, and holiday packages, through the company's website, mobile application, as well as call centers. It provides value-added services like booking rail and bus tickets, car rentals, travel insurance, and visa assistance. The company also assists other travel companies with services such as Flight API, holiday packages, Hotel API, and Bus API.