Good afternoon, everyone, and a very warm welcome to the Brigade Hotel Ventures Limited Q3 FY '26 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by members of our senior leadership team: Mr.

Vineet Verma, Executive Director; Amar Mysore, Executive Director; Arindam Mukherjee, President - Projects; our CFO, Ananda Natarajan; Mr. Manoj Agarwal, COO; and Mr.

Ryan Aranha, VP of Operations, along with our investor relations advisors from SGA. Brigade Hotel Ventures delivered a solid performance in Q3 FY '26, supported by strong operating fundamentals and disciplined execution across the portfolio.

Our total income grew by 14% year-on-year for the quarter, driven by a 17% year-on-year increase in both ARR and RevPAR, while the occupancy for the portfolio remained at a healthy 76%. EBITDA increased by 17% to 51 crores for the quarter, translating to an EBITDA margin of 35.9%.

This performance was driven by continued focus on cost efficiency and productivity-led initiatives across the portfolio. From a market perspective, Bangalore delivered a very strong performance, with both ARR and RevPAR growing by 19%, and an average occupancy of 76%.

Limited near-term new supply, which has helped occupancy stay high, we have been able to command higher pricing. In Grand Mercure GIFT City, ARR and RevPAR grew by 21% and 24% year-on-year respectively.

We remain positive on GIFT City's growth potential and are already seeing strong traction. Our Mysore hotels maintained strong occupancy levels, with the newly launched ibis Styles Mysore ramping up well and achieving 71.7% occupancy within its first year of operations.

We remain committed to elevating guest experiences and driving F&B revenue across our hotels. We plan to launch two new outlets in our hotels this quarter: one at Sheraton Grand and the other at Grand Mercure GIFT City.

Our consistent efforts to improve cost control and productivity continue to yield positive results. Utilities as a percentage of operating revenue stood at 5% for the quarter 3 and 5.5% for 9 months FY '26.

Interest costs have reduced due to loan payments, positively impacting the net profitability. We are actively advancing the adoption of renewable energy, which currently stands at 66%, with some hotels exceeding 90% usage of renewable energy.

Our existing portfolio is well positioned to sustain the strong performance over the medium and long term. In parallel, we are gearing up for the next phase of growth with a development pipeline of nine new hotels.

Over the next 5 years, we plan to nearly double our portfolio by adding 1,700 keys, taking the total inventory to 3,300 keys by FY '30, backed by investment of close to 3,600 crores. This pipeline is well diversified with a balanced mix of luxury, upper upscale, and upscale properties across business and leisure destinations.

The Courtyard by Marriott at Chennai World Trade Center with 45 keys is expected to become operational in FY '27. Looking ahead, our outlook for FY '26 remains strong.

The demand visibility continues to be healthy, supported by strong corporate activity and sustained MICE momentum. We are also expecting improved traction from our F&B offerings.

We expect this momentum to continue into the coming quarters. With that, I would now like to hand over the call to our CFO, Mr.

Ananda Natarajan, to take you through the financial highlights in detail.

Thank you, Nirupa. Good afternoon, everyone.

On behalf of the company, I would like to welcome you all the Brigade Hotel Ventures Limited Q3 FY '26 earnings call. I will take you through the key financial highlights for the quarter.

Starting with the consolidated performance for Q3 sorry, Q3 FY '26, consolidated total income for the quarter stood at INR 143 crore as compared to INR 125 crore in Q3 FY '25, year-on-year growth of 14%. Consolidated EBITDA for the quarter was INR 51 crore compared to INR 44 crore in the same period last year, reflecting a growth of 17%.

EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 35.9%. GST 2.0 has resulted in a 1.6% impact on EBITDA margin for Q3 FY '26.

Profit after tax for the quarter stood at INR 22 crore compared to INR 10 crore in Q3 FY '25, a growth of 126% YoY. For the 9 months ended FY '26, consolidated income stood at INR 398 crore compared to INR 336 crore in 9 months FY '25, an increase of 19%.

EBITDA for the period was INR 135 crore, up by 17% year-on-year from INR 115 crore in the corresponding period last year. EBITDA was impacted by an additional property tax expenses of 6 crore.

Excluding this, operational EBITDA would have grown 22% YoY. EBITDA margin was additionally impacted by 0.6% due to GST 2.0.

PAT for 9 months FY '26 stood at INR 40 crore compared to INR 11 crore in 9 months FY '25. For the For an operational standpoint, during Q3 FY '26, ARR stood at INR 7,852 compared to INR 6,708 in Q3 FY '25, with occupancy at 76.1%.

This translated into a RevPAR of INR 5,973, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 17%. For the 9-month period, ARR was INR 7,246 versus INR 6,396 in 9 months FY '25, with occupancy at 75.4%, resulting in a RevPAR of INR 5,465, 5,465, a growth of 12% year-on-year.

As on 31st December 2025, our net cash position stood at INR 132 crore. Our adjusted ROCE for 9 months FY '26 is 13.1%, and return on operating capital employed for 9 months FY '26 stands at 18.8%.

With that, we conclude the financial highlights for the quarter. We would now happy to take your questions.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity.

I have got three questions. First question is could you help us understand this GST how it is impacting us in terms of the pricing and what costs you're able to pass on or not being able to pass on, and how will this impact in the future?

That is the first question.

Thank you. Thank you for your question.

This is Ananda here. See, the GST, as per the new GST law, if our ADR, that is room rent, if we are charging anything 7,500 and below, the GST rate is 5%.

They have reduced it from 12% to 5%. What they have done is, on the input tax credit eligibility, that whichever we are charging on the pro rata basis, we have to reverse it.

We can't take as an input. That is hitting our expenses, which is hitting for the quarter around 1.6%.

Okay. Should this ease off in the coming quarters or will be around for some time now?

The same 1.6% will continue till the rate cross that 7,500 mark.

At a overall level, right? Means broadly as we head towards that thing as a company, right?

Overall the ARR, right?

Not overall, any individual bill for any hotel, if they charge 7,501, then this impact will be zero. If it is 7,500 and below, then we have consider this impact.

Got that. Yeah.

The second question now is on our CapEx plan, right? We had a CapEx plan of 3,400, 3,500 crores, right, for the next 4, 5 years.

Could you just give us the YTD CapEx number and going ahead for the rest of this year and next year any number on the budgeted CapEx we can model in?

I can just take that. As we mentioned, for the next set of nine hotels, we're expecting a CapEx of 3,600 crores.

We've already deployed about 158-odd crores in FY '24 and FY '25 to do the preparatory works. In FY '26, in the last 9 months, we've already invested about 230-odd crores, and possibly maybe in the next quarter also it could be about 25 to 30 crores.

That's how it looks. The balance 3,200 crores would come in over the next 4 years or so.

The next 4 years from let's say '27, how will this 30 be split 800 crores evenly or next year it is more 500, 600 crores-ish, this number?

No, it's going to be back-ended in FY '29 and FY

'30.

The exact amount really depends on the pace of construction, can't really spit it up at this point in time. I would say they're going to be back-ended in '29 and '30.

Got that. Final question, obviously, F&B, right, was a strong suit for us, right, in the first half, right?

The growth was pretty strong, but it seems to have tapered off in this quarter. Any one-offs because of that?

For the current quarter, how are you seeing the demand trends? Overall.

Yeah.

Overall, I would say, yes, the F&B trend was the increase was only 4% if we compare the quarter-on-quarter growth. However, it was a one-off with one particular hotel because maybe last year they had maybe they did an excellent job with their ODCs.

This year, some of those were not repeated. If I remove that one hotel, the portfolio actually grew by 20%.

If I look at the last 9 months, F&B has grown at 16%, which is pretty healthy. Going forward, I expect the growth to be in the similar high teens number for F&B.

To understand correctly, the room revenue and the F&B should again start tracking, right? At the similar growth levels, right?

It would have stabilized

from this quarter on.

I've been saying mid-teens to high teens is the growth rate that we are projecting for the portfolio in terms of be it rooms or F&B.

Fine. Sure.

Thank you. I'll come back in the queue if I have more questions.

Thank you.

Hi, am I audible?

Yes.

Thank you for the opportunity. I just have one question on the Bangalore portfolio.

We have been performing well on the rates front and the occupancy has been consistent at 76%, 78% for the last couple of quarters. Do you see still further room to improve it further?

If yes, what could be the drivers? Thanks.

See, Bangalore has been performing well mainly because it's a business market and the overall business segment has been doing well. While our portfolio is at mid-70s, I do believe that at an optimum level, it should touch about 80% or low 80s.

That's how we would like to see the portfolio trend. Obviously, during the weekdays, Monday to Thursday, the hotels are doing extremely well and extremely high occupancy, but it tapers off as a natural course of business on Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

We do have to market it a little more for staycations. That said, two of our Bangalore hotels, like the Holiday Inn Bangalore and the Holiday Inn Express on OMR, have been trending at 80% plus.

We do expect that the other hotels as well in Bangalore will be able to touch 80% plus. ADR growth will definitely be there because there's still limited supply coming into the market.

The demand and supply dynamics for the next 5 years are very healthy in all the markets we're operating, be it Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad. For Bangalore as well, the supply is growing only at 7.3% for the next 5 years, whereas demand is growing at 10.1%.

We still think that there is room to grow.

Sure. Thanks.

Just a follow-up on the GST front, can you please highlight what percentage of our inventory is below the INR 7,500 crore bucket?

Out of the nine hotels, seven have a ADR below 7,500. I think our objective now and what we need to work on is to see how we can take this ADR above 7,500.

Obviously, it's not a decision we can make in isolation. It's very much dependent on the market dynamics, but we do have to see how we can take our ADR above.

Currently two hotels are above the 7,500 rate.

Just to add here, hi, this is Manoj this side. If you see our portfolio ADR is already now reaching 7,300 levels.

We are now getting up to a level where most of our hotels will start hitting more than 7,500. Right now clearly two are above 7,500 and another three, four are kind of right there.

Hopefully now with these hotels also crossing that 7,500 mark, that impact will be getting minimal over the course of next few months.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Hi. Hello.

Yes, we can hear you.

Yeah. Hi, congratulations for a good set of numbers.

I had a question regarding our expansion pipeline. For the properties which are coming online in 2028 and 2029, would you be able to give the status of current development, and when during the year do you expect these properties to become operational?

See, currently, we have three hotels that are slated to come up in FY '28, the two Fairfields and one Grand Hyatt Chennai. We've already started our construction on the two Fairfields.

For the Grand Hyatt Chennai, it will be a low-rise, beachfront property, but we're waiting on one approval in order for us to start our construction. Basically, it's the CRZ approval that we're waiting on.

Apart from that, both the Fairfields, we've already started the construction. In fact, the Fairfield in Bial already the footings are in progress, and even Brigade Valencia, we've already started.

Understood. You are confident about the timeline for operationalization of these properties.

As of now, we believe that there's nothing to worry about, and we believe that business is on track.

All right. Secondly, related to CapEx, we have overall 3,600 of 3,600 crores of CapEx planned.

Do you expect any incremental debt raise regarding the future CapEx?

Yes, we definitely expect to raise debt in order to fund our construction. We haven't yet raised that debt because we don't require it immediately, but maybe in the coming fiscal year, we will start to take some debt.

We've already have the banks, everything sorted out for our debt line. Right now we're not taking anything in the next couple of quarters, but as and when we start to take, we'll keep you posted.

Yes, we definitely expect a good chunk of the construction cost to be financed by debt.

What would be the threshold net debt to EBITDA?

See, basically, if we look at it, the peak that we can look at, like I said, the construction cost and the CapEx invested would be back-ended in FY '29 and FY '30. There debt to EBITDA would be about 4.5 to 4x.

However, if you look at the DSCR, it's actually 4. it's actually four times covered till FY '29.

We have a very healthy DSCR. We're not worried about enhancing our debt levels because it is required with the kind of growth that we have outlined.

While debt to EBITDA is one angle to look at, if we look at the DSCR, our EBITDA covers our debt levels by 4x till FY '29. Post Yeah.

I

Understood.

Yes,

yeah.

Once these hotels start operation, then suddenly we'll see a drop in this debt to EBITDA ratio.

Understood, sir. Perfect.

Thank you so much and all the best.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

Couple of questions. One is that you talk about mid-teen growth for the company, I presume that would be for FY '27 as well, right?

That's right, that's right.

Yeah. Just wanted to understand, how big a role the occupancy and the ARR will play because the occupancy what we have seen has been around that 70 77-ish.

ARR has been very strong. How going into next fiscal, how do you see the ARR moving from here on now?

If you can just highlight what would drive the ARR growth?

See, basically, we have to look at the RevPAR. Our RevPAR grew by about 17% for the quarter.

We need to give the operating hotels the flexibility to work within occupancy and ADR. For instance, during the weekdays when occupancies are very high, they can have the ability to also increase the ADR.

Obviously during low demand periods, then they may decide to decrease the ADR. Overall as a portfolio what we need to see and as a overall hotel performance, we have to look at the RevPAR.

Those dynamics, in some cases, if we want to play on the occupancy, then it does impact ADR to some extent if you're just driving volumes to the hotel versus rate business. I think this is just something that's very dynamic.

We have revenue managers across each of the properties, and their job is to figure out how to play within these two levers. As long as we see RevPAR increasing, I think that should be the biggest sign of growth.

All right. My second question is basically with respect to your CapEx.

Now we have got one property coming up in FY '27. We got three properties coming in FY '28.

I think there would be a good amount of CapEx that would entail in FY '27 as well. It would just help us with the amount because you told that a lot of CapEx would be back-ended, just wanted to understand how much it would be in FY '27, '28 possibly, because four of the properties are coming in the next 2 years.

For the 45-room key, we've had to put in about 50-odd crores. In terms of the coming year, the CapEx that we need to put in could range between 400 to 500 crores for the additional nine hotels.

Apart from this, this also sort of includes your maintenance and upgradation CapEx for the existing property?

We've put in about 10 crores thus far in the last 9 months. We are looking to put in another possibly 10 crores in the coming quarter, and maybe in the coming fiscal year another 20-odd crores.

All right. Thank you.

That's it from my end.

Thank you for the follow-up. My specific question is around the two the Chennai five-star, right, and the Hyderabad, right, the InterContinental.

Could you please help us understand what is the status of the construction progress in there, when do we start, and what is happening over there?

Yeah. For the Hyderabad InterContinental, we've already started the construction.

Of course, the hotel comes only after the 32nd floor, it will be a while before we can start the construction for the hotel, because it sits on top of the mall and the World Trade Center Hyderabad. In terms of the did you ask about the JW?

Grand Hyatt. Grand Hyatt, like I already mentioned, all our preparatory works are done for the property.

We're ready to start construction. We're waiting on one approval, environmental clearance, and then we're good to start the construction.

Is that expected in this year? Means, what is the movement, anything there?

Sorry, could you please repeat the question?

That environmental clearance, are we expecting to receive it shortly within this year in the next couple of months, or is it still some time away? Okay.

Hopefully, this financial year. We're working on it.

Hopefully, this financial year.

Okay. Okay.

Fine. Fine, yeah.

That's it from my side, yeah. Thank you.

All the best.

Thanks.

Hello, am I audible?

Yes, please.

Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions.

One was in the last quarter, was there any impact of the airline disruption, major Indian airline disruption?

No, so that was

Can you hear me now?

Thankfully, we did not see much impact of the airline disruptions because these were short-lived, 3, 4 days. All the business occupancies were kind of continued steadily on account of the groups and other conference-based businesses.

We did not see much impact due to airline disruptions.

Okay. Another thing was, how much of your inventory is covered by corporate contracts?

Yeah. This has been quite dynamic, I would say.

Currently, if I look at it from a portfolio level, about 30% comes from corporate business, 20% comes from groups, and the retail business has moved quite significantly to 50%. Now not to say that within the retail business you don't have corporate, but it's just hard to clearly define how much of the retail business is actually from corporate and how much are free independent travelers.

In terms of dynamic pricing, the 50% is where you have the levers to increase the RevPAR. Would that

Yes, and that's one of the reasons why we've also maybe kept more of the inventory towards retail because this helps us be a lot more flexible with the high demand days on the rates.

Also to add to that, now the contracted business also is gradually shifting towards dynamic, it's no more that contracted business we are doing at static rates. Most of the operators now are slowly shifting their corporate business to link to the dynamic rate and not static rate for the full year.

That means the rate gets priced more frequently, or how does it if you can?

Linked to the going rate, corporates now the contract happens at a percentage discount to the going rate of that day.

Okay.

Okay. Okay.

The ADR changes on a daily basis. For the retail, it would be a daily rate change.

Okay. Since you are a predominantly South-based operations, could you help us in terms of what was the MICE and wedding business for the last 9 months and going forward how do you see that?

A general industry trend plus your observation, that would be helpful.

See, that depends on hotel to hotel and what category of the hotel and the market. In some of our hotels like Sheraton, which is a banquet-heavy and which has large conference and banquet spaces, we are seeing up to 25%, 30% of the business coming from the conferences and social functions.

In some of the business hotels where there is lesser amount of conferencing space, there we see 10% to 15% business coming from the conferences and events. It's a mixed bag depending on the hotel and the category, but overall on a portfolio basis, we see almost out of 30% of the F&B that we do, one-third of that F&B business comes from the MICE and conferences and events.

Okay. Going forward you feel that will continue or there is a possibility of increasing that?

Yes, right even now the occupancy of our conference spaces and banquet spaces is still not reached the full potential. They are still operating at around 40%, 40%, 50% occupancy.

There's a clear room to grow the conferencing and this social event businesses.

Okay. This last one, you have very well-articulated the CapEx and the expansion plans.

Just any plan or thoughts on asset recycling to reduce the debt and improve the PAT, PBT? Because as shareholders, we are more interested in PBT rather than EBITDA.

EBITDA makes bankers happy, PBT makes shareholders happy.

In fact our PAT has even increased by 126% for the last 3 months and almost by 273% for the last 9 months. We've definitely seen improvement in profitability.

In terms of debt, there's hardly any debt on the books right now because we just raised the IPO proceeds and repaid all our debt. The only amount we have is about 140-odd crores which is a loan from the parent company, which we plan to repay as well.

Our net debt is in fact negative because we have a cash surplus at the moment, about 132 crores of net debt, in the negative surplus.

For the upcoming expansion, can we see any asset recycling from the existing portfolio or you would still prefer to go for fresh debt?

No, we plan to go for fresh debt because we've repaid all the debt through the IPO proceeds, it'll all be fresh. No, and we're not planning to sell any of our existing portfolio asset.

Okay. Wish you all the best.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question.

My first question is, a lot of your peers have been highlighting that their expectations are typically high single-digit to low double-digit. While you've sort of been confident of mid to high teens, what sort of giving you this confidence that you can probably do much better than market?

That's one. Second, specifically on Q3 performance, if you could just spell out how the individual months have performed.

Also how has January been? Has there been some softness, and how are you looking at Feb and March as well?

Thank you.

Hi. See, what market is saying is high single digit or low double digit ADR growth, what we are experiencing in our portfolio is that, as Nirupa also mentioned in the beginning, that in our particular micro markets, overall, there is a demand and supply arbitrage in any case in our cities wherever we are operating, like Chennai and Bangalore.

Over and above that, in our particular micro markets, we don't see any major supply coming in or disrupting, kind of the dynamics in the market. These primary contributors currently in our portfolio, which is the Chennai hotel and the three Bangalore hotels, there we are already, kind of maintaining a very healthy occupancy levels.

No supply, steady occupancy levels, and now we are targeting better yield on the ADR, which we are doing continuously for the last several quarters. This trend we are seeing to continue.

If the market is increasing let's say 10%, 12% in these micro markets, we have the ability to exploit further because of our strategic positioning and the healthy occupancy level to yield better on the ADR. That's how we are saying that we will be able to maintain our mid-teens kind of RevPAR growth.

Thanks. The second question on how the months have behaved and how did you see in January?

Correct. Overall, this quarter has shown a very fantastic 19% kind of growth on the same-store basis.

Overall October started a little slow because there were two two period of holidays within the October month. November came back very strongly and November, kind of overcompensated for whatever lesser growth was there in October.

Then similarly December, in spite of the flight disruptions in the first week, we continued our RevPAR growth, and it got a little slow towards the end of the month. Overall, it remained in line.

November was the best month, and October and December, I would say, was performed on a expected level.

January has been a good one. Like I said, we expect a good quarter because Q4 in every fiscal year is generally a very strong quarter.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Hi. If I look at your Q2 investor presentation, it mentions the CapEx for FY '26 and '27 at around 1,500 crores.

Now somebody asked a question and you said you expect FY '27 CapEx to be around 500 crores. Have we spent 1,000 crores in FY '26 or some portion of this CapEx is being pushed out?

I have a second question, but once you answer it, I'll ask that.

Thanks for that. As I mentioned, in FY '26, we plan to spend about 265 crores and we've already spent about 230-odd crores in the first 9 months.

For FY '27, we're expecting it to be approximately 500-odd crores. Like I said, a lot of this will be back-ended to FY '29 and '30.

We didn't give year-wise break-up because it's very difficult to say. It's based on the pace of construction as well.

These are approximate numbers and can be subject to change.

Sure. The second question is that you have another nine hotels in the pipeline.

The land for these hotels has it been purchased by the company or it still sits elsewhere because I looked at your current portfolio and I found that five of those hotels the land is leased from either third party or the promoter. Can you give some clarity on that?

I think that's a conscious strategy that we have taken. Currently for the nine hotels that we have upcoming, all the land has been tied up in Brigade Hotel Ventures.

Either it has been acquired or we have taken it on long lease. Because of that, I would say we've been able to keep our cost of land also very cost-effective.

In fact, out of the total CapEx, only approximately 10% of it is going towards land. Acquiring the land at a very cost-effective price has been one of our key strengths and strategies.

The land does not sit in the company. Belongs to third party, when you're liquidating these assets, do you see any challenge if you were to recycle?

Like I said, these are long leases. For instance, the new hotels that we've tied up could be 55-year leases, 60-year leases.

I think it'll go on far beyond my time or your time.

Okay. Thank you.

Hello.

Hi. ):

I wanted to ask you about one of the hotels, the contract with Marriott is going to end by 31st of December 2026. What are the plans?

Are we going to renew it or do we have some other partner coming in?

We're discussing with Marriott already and we're just seeing what is the best outcome for the hotel and just trying to see which is the best outcome for the overall property in the long term. It's still under negotiation, and we're still discussing to see what to do: either we renew with the current one or we up-brand it.

We're just trying to see where we will get the best returns. ):

All right. That's it from my side.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi, thank you. Thank you all for your time and continued engagement with Brigade Hotel Ventures.

We trust this session has provided a comprehensive overview of our business performance and addressed all your queries. We remain confident in the strength of our operating portfolio, supported by healthy pipeline, disciplined execution, strong demand visibility, and our unique positioning across our micro markets.

As we move forward, our focus will remain on driving operational efficiencies, enhancing guest experience, and building a more balanced portfolio with newer additions across luxury, upper upscale, and upscale segments. With a strong balance sheet and a well-phased development pipeline, we believe we are well positioned to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value for all our stakeholders.

Before we conclude, we are proud to share that our restaurant, HIGH Ultra Lounge at Sheraton Grand Bangalore at Brigade Gateway, has won the Nightclub of the Year South Award at ET HospitalityWorld Restaurants and Nightlife Awards in October 2025. Our hotels continue to uphold their commitment to community engagement and social responsibility through a range of impactful initiatives.

For any further queries or clarifications, please feel free to reach out to SGA, our investor relations advisors, and thank you once again for your time, and we wish you all a great day ahead. Thank you.