Monopoly held. Maths didn't

Summary: IRCTC's monopoly remains intact, its profits are growing and it has no meaningful competitor. So why did the market cut its stock price by more than half? We look beyond the monopoly to find what changed inside the business.

Summary: IRCTC's monopoly remains intact, its profits are growing and it has no meaningful competitor. So why did the market cut its stock price by more than half? We look beyond the monopoly to find what changed inside the business. The last time you booked a train ticket, you paid a small convenience fee on top of the fare. Maybe you ordered a meal to your seat, or booked a tour package for a holiday. Without noticing, you used three separate businesses run by a single company: IRCTC. And here is the surprise. Those three businesses are nothing alike in how much money they keep. Four businesses you already know of This is the Peter Lynch idea in its simplest form. You do not need a broker’s note to understand IRCTC. You have been its customer for years. IRCTC does four things, all with no real competition: Sells online train tickets, and earns a convenience fee on each Runs catering, the food on trains and at railway stations Bottles ‘Rail Neer’, the packaged water you get on trains Packages rail tourism, holiday and pilgrimage trips For years, the market did not treat IRCTC like a sleepy railway PSU. It treated it like a digital platform, closer to a fintech than a government firm. At its 2021 peak, the stock traded at over 200 times earnings. T