IRCTC scales fresh record high; zooms 445% against issue price

Shares of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the online ticketing, tourism and the catering arm of railways, hit a new high of Rs 1,743, up 6 per cent on the BSE on Wednesday.

In the past two trading days, it has rallied 15 per cent ahead of the commercial run of Kashi Mahakal Express, the third train operated by it, from Thursday, February 20. The stock was trading at its highest level since listing on October 14, 2019.

With today’s rally, IRCTC has zoomed 445 per cent as against its issue price of Rs 320 per share on the BSE. The retail investors had received shares at a discount of Rs 10 per share at Rs 310 per share.

Supported by the sharp rally in the stock price, IRCTC now stands at 106th position in the overall market capitalisation ranking with Rs 27,823 crore as m-cap. On the day of its market debut, the company was at 194th position, the data shows.

IRCTC is all set to introduce the third private train in the railways network and its first night service Kashi Mahakal Express on the Varanasi-Indore route from Thursday. The other two private trains run by the IRCTC are the Lucknow-New Delhi Tejas, and the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas.

IRCTC is the only entity authorized by the Indian Railways to provide catering services to railways, online railway tickets and packaged drinking water at railway stations and trains in India. It has a dominant position in the online rail bookings/packaged drinking water with around 73 per cent/45 per cent market share, respectively.

For October-December quarter (Q3FY20), the company posted a strong profit growth on back of healthy performance from e-ticketing services. The profit before tax (PBT) from e-ticketing services jumped an over five times to Rs 193 crore in Q3FY20 as compared to Rs 36 crore in the same quarter of the previous year.

Overall, IRCTC posted a net profit of Rs 206 crore in the December quarter, as against Rs 74 crore in the year-earlier quarter. The total revenue of the subsidiary of Indian Railways rose to Rs 716 crore from Rs 435 crore in a year ago quarter. The revenue from IRCTC e-ticket services jumped four times to Rs 227 crore in Q3FY20 as against Rs 55 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year.