Cox & Kings Ltd - Stock Valuation and Financial Performance

Cox & Kings (India) was incorporated as ‘Eastern Carrying Company’ on June 7, 1939 under the Indian Companies Act, VII of 1913. The name was subsequently changed to ‘Cox and Kings (India) Limited’ and the consequent fresh Certificate of Incorporation was granted on February 23, 1950. Subsequently, after the amendment of Section 43A of the Companies Act 1956, the word “Private” was added to the name of the Company on October 12, 2001. Pursuant to a special resolution of its shareholders, the Company became a public limited company and a fresh Certificate of Incorporation with the current name was issued on March 28, 2007 by the Registrar of Companies, Maharashtra at Mumbai.

Cox & Kings is the longest established travel company in the world. Its distinguished history began in 1758 when it was appointed as general agents to the regiment of Foot Guards in India under the command of Lord Ligonier.

The company is one of the oldest and recognised holiday brands that cater to the overall travel needs of an Indian and International traveller. It is one of the India’s largest tour and travel operator that serve as a ‘One Stop Shop’ for all travel and travel related products.

Its business can be broadly categorised as Leisure Travel, Corporate Travel, Forex and Visa Processing. The company design travel packages for both individuals and groups for their domestic and international leisure travel. It makes travel arrangements for corporate clients to cater to their business meetings, conferences, events and as an incentive for their employees and business partners. It provide end to end travel solutions including land, air and cruise bookings, hotel bookings, in-transit arrangements, local sightseeing, visa, passport and medical insurance assistance and such other destination management services. It also provide value added services viz., customising travel plans for its NRI customers, travel arrangements for Trade Fairs, providing private air charter services, etc. Besides, it offer travel related foreign exchange & payment solutions. In fact, it is are one of the first travel companies in India to be granted a license as an Authorized Dealer -Category II under the new licensing regime.

Within Leisure Travel it has three sub-segments i.e. Outbound Travel, Inbound Travel and Domestic Travel. Its Inbound Travel business represents destination management services that cover all aspects of ground tour arrangements required by tour operators across the world. Its Domestic and Outbound Travel businesses include selling holiday packages for travel in India and overseas respectively. Under Corporate Travel it offer a full range of business travel services through a team of dedicated relationship managers. It offer customized business travel solutions for corporate clients with an endeavour to optimize their travel budget.

It continuously innovated its product offerings with the flexibility to meet the changing needs of its customers and to address their needs better. This also helps it to differentiate the products vis-a-vis the products offered by the competitors.Thus, over the years it have developed specific brands for its products viz. “Duniya Dekho” for Outbound Travel, “Bharat Deko” for Domestic Travel and “FlexiHol” for its Flexible Individual Travellers (FIT). The company believes that its success in branding its products has created more awareness amongst travellers and has also helped a traveller in distinguishing and identifying its branded products.

In India, it has 255 points of presence covering 164 locations through a mix of branch sales offices, franchised sales shops, General Sales Agents (GSAs) and Preferred Sales Agents (PSAs). It has 14 branch sales offices located in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Pune, Nagpur and Goa. Besides, it also operates through its 56 franchised sales shops spread across India to have larger access to its customers. Further, it has an extensive network of 185 GSAs and PSAs covering many of the major towns and cities of India. GSAs / PSAs are those agents who sell only its products through an exclusive tie-up with it.

It has global presence with its operations in 18 countries besides India through its subsidiaries, branch offices and representative offices. It have its subsidiaries in UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US, UAE and Singapore. It also operate from Moscow (Russia), Maldives and Tahiti through its branch offices and Spain, Sweden, Germany, Italy, France, Taiwan, South America and South Africa through its representative offices. Further, it has presence in overseas markets through a network of GSAs and PSAs covering other countries enhancing its global presence. Its global reach and passion for travel position us well to offer multiple travel choices and value for its products.

In March 2006, it acquired the entire shareholding of Clearmine Limited, a company incorporated in the UK. ETN Services Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Clearmine Limited and it carries out destination management services for its tours to Europe and also inbound tours in Europe for other tour operators. In September 2007, it acquired the entire shareholding of Cox & Kings Limited based in UK and took over 41.17% of the share capital of Cox & Kings (Japan) Limited. Cox & Kings Travel Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cox & Kings Limited, is an outbound specialist tour operator and caters to leisure travel market of Europe. Cox & Kings Travel Limited and Cox & Kings Tours LLC holds 33.33% and 25.50% respectively of Cox & Kings (Japan) Limited. Cox & Kings (Japan) Limited is a dedicated wholesaler of products and services to other tour operators. It also offers ground handling capabilities in select geographies.

In 2009 acquired Quoprro Global Services Pvt. Ltd. and forayed into the business of visa processing. Globally visa processing activities have been concentrated amongst few players and through this acquisition it would explore the potential in this business. In September 2008, it got an approval from The High Commission of India at Singapore for outsourcing their visa processing activities to us. Recently, it got further in-principle approvals from the diplomatic missions of India at Athens, Greece and at Hong Kong for outsourcing their visa processing activities to us.

In December 2008 it formed a Joint Venture with IRCTC under the name of “Royale Indian Rail Tours Limited” to operate a luxury train to be called “Maharajas’ Express”. Considering this JV to be a first ‘Private Public Partnership’, this can be viewed as a landmark in the growth of luxury tourism in India. The combined strength of IRCTC in rail based tourism and hospitality and its in high-end international tourism, would make this a state of the art luxury train. While IRCTC will be involved in the operations, it will leverage its overseas offices to market the product globally.

In December 2009 'Cox & Kings (Australia) Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Cox and Kings (India) acquires 100% stake in MyPlanet Australia Pty Ltd and Bentours International Pty Ltd, Australia'.

The company approved change of its name from 'Cox and Kings (India) Ltd' to 'Cox & Kings Ltd' on August 2010.

In 2011 Cox & Kings acquired Holidaybreak PLC

Service offering of the company:

The principal services offered by the company are:

Leisure Travel - The leisure travel market in India is highly fragmented. It is are amongst the largest players in the segment of leisure travel. It offers products that are either pre-packaged through brochures or tailor-made as per the requirements of a group and an individual traveller. Leisure Travel can be Outbound, Inbound or Domestic. It was amongst the first travel organizations to brand its Outbound and Domestic Tours. Leisure Travel contributes majority of its total business and earns us relatively better margins.

Group Tours - It operates Group Tours in all our divisions i.e. Outbound, Inbound and Domestic. Each tour is different in the number of days and destinations. All the tours are pre-planned i.e. the dates of departures and arrivals are fixed in advance for all the tours.

Flexible Individual Travellers (FIT)- Under FITs it provides customized holidays which have flexibility and are designed to suit the customer needs unlike group tours which are standard in nature. It believe this product though complex has good demand and requires better planning and execution to meet individual needs.

Trade Fairs - It also organizes group tours for Trade Fairs in countries outside India. Trade Fairs for different industries are organized all round the year at different places and it take participants in such trade fairs with a customised itinerary for their entire schedule. For the Trade Fairs organised by us, it arrange for every need including accommodation, city tours to technical add-ons such as factory visits, buyer-seller meets and an array of value-added services handling the most complex and exacting business trips anywhere in the world.

Foreign Exchange - It is amongst the leading retail forex dealers in the country. It was granted Full Fledged Money Changer (“FFMC”) license by the RBI in 1996. Subsequently, RBI introduced a new concept, of Authorised Dealer - Category II and commenced licensing certain select FFMC's as Authorised Dealer - Category II based on their net worth, Know Your Customer norms and implementation of Anti-Money Laundering policies. It was were one of the first travel companies to be granted the license as the Authorised Dealer - Category II under the new licensing regime.

Visa Processing Services - Quoprro Global Services Pvt. Ltd., its wholly owned subsidiary located in Mumbai, functions exclusively as an outsourced business solution to provide comprehensive processing services to diplomatic missions. Diplomatic missions world over are keen to outsource the time consuming administrative, non-judgemental parts of the passport and visa application process. As a core business, Quoprro Global is extremely well placed to address this need while focusing and addressing the concerns regarding security, integrity, speed and efficacy on the outsourced solution of the business.

Cox & Kings Travel Ltd. is an outbound specialist tour operator and caters to only the leisure travel market. It concentrates on the up-market end of the business. It is considered as a specialist tour operator which also operates tours around the world like to India, Africa, Far East, Middle East, Latin America, Australia and Europe.

Brand portfolio

The company sells its travel and travel related products under these brands:

Awards and Recognition: