Thank you for that. Good afternoon, and a very warm welcome to the Brigade Hotel Ventures Limited Q4 FY '26 earnings conference call.

I'm joined today by members of our senior leadership team: Amar Mysore, our Director; Ananda Natarajan, our CFO; Manoj Agarwal, our Chief Operating Officer; Rayan Aranha, Vice President; and along with our Investor Relations advisor from SGA. FY '26 has been a steady and encouraging year for India's hospitality sector, supported by strong domestic demand across leisure travel, weddings, and corporate activity.

Structural drivers like rising disposable incomes, improved connectivity, and evolving travel preferences continue to support the industry momentum. While global uncertainties and geopolitical developments have led to some volatility, particularly impacting international travel, the domestic segment has remained resilient and continues to anchor growth.

Against this backdrop, Brigade Hotel Ventures delivered a very stable performance in Q4 FY '26 with continued focus on disciplined execution and margin expansion. Our strategy remains centered on driving ARR growth through calibrated pricing supported by healthy demand conditions.

Some of the highlights are: we grew by 15% in revenues and EBITDA for FY '26 over FY '25. We also saw 174% increase in our PAT from 24 crores to 65 crores for the whole year of FY '26 over '25.

For the quarter, total income grew by 8% year-on-year, led by 7% increase in ARR, and occupancy remained relatively stable, resulting in a 6% growth in RevPAR. EBITDA increased by 13% year-on-year to 58 crores, translating into an EBITDA margin of 39.7%.

This performance was driven by a continued focus on cost efficiency and productivity-led initiatives across the portfolio. Profit after tax for the quarter stood at 25 crores compared to 13 crores in the same period last year.

This growth was supported by improved operating performance as well as lower finance costs due to the debt reduction. 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 and 5.4% for the whole year of FY '26. Interest costs have reduced due to loan repayments, positively impacting the net profitability.

We are actively advancing adoption of renewable energy, which is currently at 61%, with some hotels exceeding 90% usage. In the coming quarter, we plan to upgrade our hotel at Kochi from a Four Points by Sheraton to a Courtyard by Marriott brand.

This should help us in improving the ADRs and the profitability further. In FY '27, we will further strengthen the base with the launch of the Courtyard by Marriott in Chennai, World Trade Center, a 45-key hotel that complements our existing presence in high-demand business district of OMR in Chennai.

From a capital allocation perspective, we remain disciplined in how we fund this growth. Our planned capex of approximately 3,600 crores, of which 400 crores has already been invested by FY '26, will be funded through a balanced mix of debt and internal accruals.

Around 60% will be financed through borrowings, with the remainder supported by internal cash generation. We expect internal accruals to contribute over 1,000 crores in the coming years driven by steady ARR growth and operating leverage as new assets ramp up.

Our portfolio ARR stands at ₹7,500 ADR, and as we commission more luxury properties through FY '29 and beyond, we project this to exceed ₹10,000 for an average ADR by FY '29 and surpass ₹14,000 by FY '31, nearly double of what it is today. Looking ahead, demand visibility remains robust, and we are positive about the year ahead.

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, and good afternoon, everyone. I will take you through the key financial highlights for the quarter.

Starting with the consolidated performance for Q4 FY '26: consolidated total income for the quarter stood at INR 146 crores as compared to INR 135 crores in Q4 FY '25, a year-on-year growth of 8%. Consolidated EBITDA for the quarter was INR 58 crores compared to INR 51 crores in the same period last year, reflecting a growth of 13%.

EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 39.7%. GST 2.0 has resulted in a 1.4% impact on EBITDA margin for Q4 FY '26.

Profit after tax for the quarter stood at INR 25 crores compared to INR 13 crores in Q4 FY '25. For the year ended FY '26, consolidated income stood at INR 543 crores compared to INR 471 crores in FY '25, an increase of 15%.

EBITDA for the period was INR 192 crores, up 15% year-on-year from INR 167 crores in the corresponding period last year. EBITDA was impacted by an additional property tax expenses of around 6 crores of additional property tax.

Excluding this, operational EBITDA would have grown 19% year-on-year for FY '26. EBITDA margin was additionally impacted by 0.8% due to GST 2.0 impact.

PAT for FY '26 stood at INR 65 crores compared to INR 24 crores in FY '25. From an operational standpoint, during Q4 FY '26, ARR stood at INR 8,066 compared to INR 7,548 in Q4 FY '25, with occupancy at 78%.

This translated into a RevPAR of INR 6,295, reflecting a year-on-year growth of 6%. For the year ended March 2026, ARR was INR 7,453 versus INR 6,696 in FY '25, with occupancy at 76.1%, resulting in a RevPAR of INR 5,670, a growth of 10% year-on-year.

As at 31st March 2026, our net cash position stood at 110 crores. With that, we conclude the financial highlights for the year, and we will now be happy to take your questions.

Thank you.

Hi. Am I audible?

Yes.

Yeah. Firstly, on the other income bit for the quarter, it looks relatively high.

What explained that?

Thank you. The other income has increased due to interest from the fixed deposit what we have kept.

Mainly that is the major increase in other income, and there is a ₹1.7 crores for the creditors reversal which no longer payable.

Yeah. Fine, thank you.

Secondly, can you quantify the impact of war during the quarter, especially on the F&B bit, which came in relatively softer compared to our previous quarters, especially the impact on F&B business?

Yes. For F&B, we saw a slight decline on the quarter-on-quarter for the F&B revenue, just about 3% or so.

Basically, we saw cancellations worth of about eight to 7 to 8 crores for the quarter, which was about 5% of the business for the quarter. Apart from that, we were able to make it up with some domestic business, but not to the extent that would see an increase in the F&B revenue.

The good part is that we were at least able to increase our ADR by 7%, we were able to increase our occupancy and keep it at around 78%, and overall RevPAR also we were able to increase by about 6%. Our ADR, if you look at it, is ₹8,000 for the portfolio, which is the highest ADR on average that we've received.

Okay. Largely, how do you see the situation maybe in April, since most of our business hotels are business-centric and that's where the travel is largely restricted.

At least in near term, how do you see the impact on our hotels?

While the greatest impact was seen in March, what we're seeing in April, May, and June, we also got some cancellations worth about 7 to 8 crores. We are trying to make that up with more domestic business.

If you look at our mix now, I would say domestic business contributes about 73% of our overall business, and international only the balance 27% or so, which was not the case before the war started. The good thing is at least the domestic demand is remaining robust, we are doing our best to make up for the loss in revenue through more domestic business.

Okay. Thank you.

Good afternoon to Nirupa and the management. This is Nitin Shakdher from the Green Capital Single Family Office.

My question is more strategic as an investor rather than an analyst is in a long-term situation for the company, I do understand that the hotel brand is building and constructing and then taking on brands and management contracts from brands, but is there a sense from the management that what is more accretive in terms of asset: buying the asset or constructing the hotel asset? What is more beneficial in terms of revenue exercise in the long run?

Would you look at acquisition opportunities, or would you look at only constructing and then looking at tying up? Thank you.

Hi, Nitin. Hope you're well.

Our strategy has always been to acquire the land, whether we buy it outright or we lease it, and then develop, because there are very few people in the construction space of hotels. I would say it's a very niche segment, and while it is much easier to buy an asset, it is much harder to build it up from scratch and get everything right.

In the country, I would say there are hardly half a dozen to a dozen players that can build on a large scale, and we're one of them. We've been able to do this very effectively over the last few years, and we believe that this is our USP: the ability to build very efficient hotels, build it on time, and build it well within costs, and actually I would say with a positive cost impact compared to what the rest of the market can build.

This will continue to be our main strategy. That said, considering now we are a listed entity, we understand that there will be a lot more opportunities that are coming our way, as we have seen.

At this point in time, we're definitely open to acquiring assets. When you're a builder, acquiring comes at a much more expensive cost per key.

Sometimes it's hard for us to digest, but then we have to weigh the pros and cons of getting the hotel to market. If the pros outweigh the cons, and if we're able to get a value-for-money product, and if we're able to find that, if we buy an asset, potentially repurpose it, rebrand it, and bring it to market much quicker than building it from scratch, and if that makes sense and a viable business proposition, then we go ahead and acquire.

That said, we've been in the market, we are looking at various options, but yet to navigate an asset.

That's

one of our key focuses for this year.

Great. I'll touch base with you offline, and then we'll discuss it further.

Thanks a lot for that clarity, and all the best. I always look at hotel companies at more long-term and annual results.

I don't think quarters does justification for all that. Great set of consistent numbers.

Thank you for the same.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi team, good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, Nirupa, you mentioned that we upgraded the Four Points Sheraton to Courtyard Marriott. What kind of ADR improvement should we expect there, and how much we have invested for upgradation of the property?

Yes. We're underway to change the branding.

It should happen in this quarter. We definitely expect an ADR increase, because you're upgrading the brand from a Four Points to a Courtyard, so that is a normal expectation that ADR would definitely increase.

We believe that you should be able to get something in the mid-teens, a double-digit growth. What was the second part of your question?

Have we already invested for upgradation of the property, or it is yet to be done?

It's in process. It should happen very soon.

Sure. Nirupa, if I exclude your other income while calculating the operating margins, it is still lower compared to the previous quarters.

Now, I do understand because of cancellation and everything, the margins could have been impacted. If you can guide us some sustainable kind of range for operating margins for us would be helpful.

Yeah. Definitely the thing is with our operating margins, if you look at all our operating metrics, be it the employee cost, which is one of the highest expenses in the P&L, if you look at our utilities cost, if you look on every aspect, we have very healthy figures.

Even our payroll cost, like I said, which is one of the highest, is sub-20%, it's at 19%. Utilities is only 5.5% for the year.

Admin and general, everything is under control. As I mentioned, as Ananda also mentioned earlier, yes, we got hit with a GST because of input tax credit that we were not able to utilize.

We had some additional one-time property tax hit. Apart from that, if that was not there, we would have probably hit about 37.5% for the EBITDA, which was very much in line with what we had planned.

Of course, because of these other interest income and other things, we were able to get a much higher EBITDA this time. That's also part of the business, right?

Repaying your debt and getting that interest income is very much part of running the business smoothly and effectively. As I would say that if we weren't hit by these one-off cases and GST, then we would have also hit about 37.5% to 38%.

We will see this increase in EBITDA once the ARR increases, because currently our ARR, while the Bangalore hotels I would say are averaging around ₹9,000 to ₹9,500 per room, the rest of the portfolio, a lot of our other hotels are in tier-2 markets like Mysore, Kochi, GIFT City, and these bring the overall ADR down to about 7,500. The goal for us is to bring all these 8,500 so that this GST hit is not there in the coming years.

That's what we are focusing on. Once our ARRs increase, which we are again, if you look at our current P&L as well, our occupancy stayed the same, but most of the growth came from ADR, we should get some higher EBITDA margins as well.

Sure, Nirupa. That was helpful.

Maybe lastly, what is the timeline for this Courtyard by Marriott in Chennai to be opened?

This is the Courtyard in Chennai? That we're looking in the second half of the year.

We are targeting Q3.

Sure. Q3 the opening.

It will probably take couple of quarters to stabilize. Sure, that was helpful.

Thank you so much, Nirupa, and all the best.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

I wanted to know, as you've mentioned in the presentation, there was an impact of gas supply issues also, right? Now in the ongoing quarter, how is the situation?

Is it resolved, or what is the situation? That is one question.

The second question is, as you mentioned that you saw cancellations worth 7 to 8 CR, right? Out of that, is it gone forever, or do you expect some business to come back in the coming quarters?

Hi. See, because of these disruptions during the last month of March and some bit of it still continuing, we faced a few cancellations on account of larger events which are dependent on the foreign travelers coming in and international travel.

Apart from that, on a regular basis, this gas supply, they didn't cause too much of disruption, because we managed with alternative fuel sources. We managed to restructure or redefine our menus and taken alternative items in the menu.

That's what we never closed any of our restaurant. All our restaurants have been performing as per the normal schedule.

We don't see because of this disruption and that has also been restored now. With alternative fuels and alternative arrangements in place, we switched to inductions now in many of our hotels.

With all that in place, on a regular F&B's servicing we don't have any issue, while the larger events and conferences, we are hopeful that it will start coming in and we are already seeing the bookings and queries and those queries coming in now.

Okay. No, that is helpful.

What I was trying to understand is that gas issue I understood, but what I was trying to understand another thing was that out of that total cancellations of any MICE event, how should we look at it? Can we expect in further quarters for the industry to see some of the events getting just postponed, and in further quarters kind of bump-up due to that?

Or these events are kind of gone forever, and no bump-up we should expect? How should we look at it?

Yeah.

Hopefully, it should come back at a later part in the year. That once things stabilize, hopefully it should come back.

Honestly, very hard to predict what will come back and what will get canceled. We hope we will definitely try to make sure that these come back to us.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi. Am I audible?

Okay. Thank you for the opportunity.

First question just on revenue growth and RevPAR growth. RevPAR growth seems to be about 6% blended, and revenue growth is about 2%.

How should we bridge this gap? Yes,

what is the question on that?

I just want to understand how we should bridge that gap. Why is revenue growth slower than RevPAR growth for this quarter?

Yeah. That's primarily See, our RevPAR growth is driven by ADR growth, which is 7%, and we maintained our occupancy.

The overall revenue growth is little lesser than that because of the main F&B impact. If you see our F&B revenues quarter-on-quarter the year-on-year quarter has shown a little bit of downside, around 3% because of these large cancellations.

Overall room revenue has increased 7%. That's why we have achieved this 2% operational growth in the revenues for the quarter.

For the full year, this growth has been 12%.

Sure, understood. The second Please go ahead.

Go ahead.

Sorry. I had another question on just the RevPARs.

Essentially, Bangalore seems to have underperformed. Is there a similar case for maybe Chennai as well?

Is it something to do with better domestic mix for maybe Mysore and Kochi, non-metro hotels? Is that why there is this divergence in performance on RevPAR?

No, our Bangalore hotels did pretty well, actually. If you look at it, our ADR grew pretty significantly for the Bangalore hotels as well.

It grew by 13%. In terms of the occupancy, it stayed kind of flat.

RevPAR also grew by 10%

for the No, specifically for the fourth quarter.

In the fourth quarter, we saw an increase of around 4% for the quarter, and we saw an increase of 6% in the RevPAR.

No, what happens, in Bangalore, but specially for the Bangalore market, like last year was the roadshow year the Aero Show year. That creates very high-demand days and a compressed market.

This year, that big event was not there, but there were other events, and we were doing fairly well within January and February, although March faced some occupancy pressure because of these cancellations. We had to get some some, lower-paying groups to fill up the fill up the demand, and we maintained our occupancy.

That's why the Bangalore hotels particularly saw a little bit for the quarter a lesser ADR increase compared to other markets.

Understood. That's more one-off.

Chennai

It's a one-off case because now April onwards we are seeing good kind of increase in the Bangalore market.

Okay. Thank you.

Understood. That's all from me.

Hi. My question was on the GST 2.0 pass-through.

I think last time around you mentioned that seven out of your nine hotels were under 7,500 ARR. Any progress on that?

How many keys do we have as a percentage of a total keys which are above that 7,500 threshold now?

Yeah. Two of our hotels are clearly on an annual basis averaging above 7,500, and the third hotel is just on the verge of crossing that 7,500 mark.

Three hotels will clearly cross the 7,500 mark. Having said that, the GST impact comes not on the basis of the average annual ADR; it comes on the basis of daily room nights.

Whatever room nights you sell below 7,500, you have to reverse your GST input credit on account of that. That can happen in a hotel averaging above 7,500 also.

Some of the room nights may be there below 7,500. In the hotels which are less than 7,500, but they might be selling some room nights above 7,500.

What is more important to see here is that currently, out of our total revenue, only 30% is coming from the room night selling less than 7,500. That 30% number is now slowly getting more and more reduced as we are increasing ADR in all our hotels.

Okay. Understood.

Also, one question on GIFT City. I think we are one of the only few hotels right now in GIFT City.

Is there any progress on other players that are coming in recently?

There is one announcement that is there, and we are seeing movement on the ground that there's one hotel coming up, but it's just starting. At least for the next three to four years, we don't see any other supply coming in in GIFT City.

Yeah. We plan to capitalize on the fact that we're one of the few hotels there, we are investing a lot more into the F&B options there.

Currently, there's only one option, but now we're looking at adding two or three more, since we're also one of the few hotels with a liquor license. I think there are only two of us or three of us at the moment.

We are going to invest a little bit of capex to add two more restaurants into this venue.

Understood. Thank you, and all the best.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on decent set of numbers.

My first question was on our overall ADR growth and occupancy expansion. In the quarter, we have seen bit of a divergent trend compared to rest of the peers, where our occupancy has actually held up at decent, healthy levels of 78%, but ADR growth has been relatively muted at 6 to 7%.

Any particular reason for this where we have seen better occupancies despite our majority of presence into business markets, and is this a targeted revenue management strategy where we have focused on higher occupancy rather than focusing on more ADRs? Related to this, regarding the GST impact, what is the practical scope do you see to increase the ADRs above 7,500 into your midscale portfolio, specifically the 30% part which you mentioned, which operates currently below 7,500?

What kind of scope do you see to increase the ADR above 7,500 in this portfolio? If that happens, what could be the potential impact on occupancy?

That's my first question.

Yes. As we mentioned earlier, I think it's always a balance between the occupancy and the ADR.

That's why, of course, we have to look at the RevPAR bit. Yes, I'm quite happy with the ADR that we managed to get of around 8,000.

That's been the highest ADR for the quarter that we've seen in our portfolio. Also, we maintained that 78%, so that's good.

Yes, is there room to do better? We believe so.

In fact, if you look at quarter four, almost five of our nine hotels had occupancies in the mid-80s, we do believe that there is gap to move this average portfolio occupancy from 78 to somewhere in the mid to low-80s. Apart from that, three out of the nine hotels are already above 7,500.

The others are sort of borderline, I would say they can be, and some days they aren't. Only maybe one or two hotels will take time to breach that 7,500.

We are working on various revenue management strategies sometimes to see if we can add more inclusions into the room rate, add more value-add in terms of, I don't know, could be laundry, could be a complimentary breakfast, could be a complimentary pickup, just to see how we can breach that 7,500 to negate the impact of the GST.

Without compromising on the occupancy, of course. We don't see any impact on the occupancy, as you have seen during March month also, in spite of some volatility, we kind of maintained very healthy occupancy.

Occupancy we don't want to compromise, and we are working on our revenue strategies by coming up with more categorizations of rooms and inclusions and other things so that we get to that 7,500-plus marks for these other hotels as well.

Understood, sir. If I may just drill down a bit more on this, my question was more from a perspective that rest of the peers are actually operating at relatively lower occupancy compared to Brigade, right?

We have been consistently maintaining this high occupancy, especially in business markets. What is driving this slightly higher occupancy compared to the rest of the pack?

See, that's the beauty of our portfolio in terms of our locations. We have such strategic locations in the key business districts and key areas and very very minimal or very low supply or anything coming up in these markets in the near future.

During the demand compression days, during the high-demand days, we have been able to maximize. Since we are overall doing a good occupancy on an annual basis, we get more chance than usual to maximize on our ADR yield as well.

We can really then play out on those dates where we play on our transient business and OTA business to increase our overall ADR. Occupancy-wise, I don't see any problem across our portfolio.

Yeah.

Understood, sir. What is the share of overall retail versus contracted business for Brigade?

If you can also give the share of OTAs separately?

Yeah. Currently, on the segment side, we have now reached 50% of our business coming from transient, which is retail business, and negotiated contracted business is only 25%.

While this differs from hotel to hotel depending on the location, but overall portfolio basis, this is the breakup: 50% transient, 25% negotiated, around 15% is our group business, and 10% is the balance miscellaneous crew and other businesses. Out of the retail 50%, almost 30%, so that is 60% of the total retail comes from the OTAs.

Understood, sir.

From the overall occupancy, 30% is the OTA business.

Got it. Secondly, on our FTA mix, you mentioned that the FTA mix has fallen to 27% in Q4.

What is the normal FTA trend for Brigade, and now in Q1, are you seeing the recovery in the foreign guest mix? Related to this, what is the practical scope to replace at least part of this foreign guest demand by domestic travelers?

Hi, this is Rayan here. The domestic business very quickly replaced international travel even in this situation of war conflict.

As you've seen, our occupancy has not dropped, and our ADR has climbed up. We consistently find that the demand domestically is still high.

Once there's this war conflict comes to an end, we will see a gradual increase in international business, but that does not mean that there is insufficient demand domestically. That travel still remains, and we're confident that will continue.

See, on a stabilized basis, you were asking what will be this ratio like. It used to be 70/30.

Now it has come down to around 25%. It'll again go back to 20 to 30% foreign FTA business.

Even if it does not, let's say for a shorter period of time, that's very small number for us to fill up on account of the domestic demand. That's where we are at.

It'll always be good to have that healthy level of this kind of 75/25 mix, because this FTA business kind of helps us in maximizing our ADR yield.

Understood, sir. Just lastly, if I may squeezing one more question on a gas supply constraint issue.

What is the mix of CNG versus PNG in our hotels, and how much of our kitchen operations are now shifted to electric methods mainly using the induction cookers, etc.?

Yeah. Four of our hotels run on PNG, and the rest are LPG-dependent.

However, considering the scope of kitchen operations across the hotel, there's a large amount of electric induction also available, which we moved to very quickly. We didn't really see a lapse as such.

There was no hotel which ran out of a gas supply. While there was reduced supply coming in from the PNG line, we still managed to supply the food that we had to.

Very quick alternatives were made. We didn't feel any lag in this whatsoever.

Perfect, sir. Thank you so much, and all the best.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your time and continued engagement with Brigade Hotel Ventures. To conclude, this has been a year of steady progress and disciplined execution for us.

We have strengthened our operating performance, maintained a healthy balance sheet, and continued to deliver robust returns, reflecting the underlying strength of our portfolio. At the same time, we have built a clear runway for our future growth.

Our development pipeline gives us strong visibility on expansion, while the evolving mix of our portfolio towards higher-value segments positions us to drive better pricing, improve margins, and stronger cash flows over the medium term. On that note, we remain confident in our direction and committed to creating long-term value for our shareholders.

Before we conclude, we are also pleased to share a few recent recognitions across our portfolio. By The Blue at our Grand Mercure Bangalore hotel was awarded Best Newcomer Hotel Restaurant at the Food Connoisseurs India Awards 2025 and in 20 February 2026 as well.

Sheraton Grand Bangalore at Brigade Gateway was honored with Business Hotel of the Year at the SATTE Awards 2026. Further, The Persian Terrace at Sheraton Grand Bangalore at Brigade Gateway won restaurant serving the best Middle Eastern cuisine at the Food Connoisseurs India Awards 2025 held in February 2026.

Our hotels continue to uphold their commitment to community engagement and social responsibility through a range of impactful initiatives, including our CSR contribution towards skill development from the corporate office. With this, I would like to thank all of you, and for any further queries or clarifications, please feel free to reach out to SGA, our Investor Relations advisors, and we wish you all a great day ahead.

Thank you.