Thomas Cook India shares rose over 8% to Rs 61.2 on the BSE in Wednesday’s intra-day trade after the company’s Executive Director and CEO,  Mahesh Iyer, said that the firm expects foreign exchange demand to hit 90% of pre-covid levels this year. While FX demand in the education sector has now reached pre-covid levels, travel-related forex volumes are only 35-40% of pre-covid levels.

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The company is inching closer to its pre-covid level volumes in the overall forex segment. He explained that given that international travel was limited to air bubbles, and multiple geographies were shut, forex volumes through leisure travel were limited, Mahesh Iyer told BusinessLine.

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However, “Between October and December, part of the markets opened up, Mauritius, Maldives, Dubai we saw that travel-related forex came back. Travel-related forex is close to 35-40 per cent of the pre-pandemic level and it is in line with the industry level,” he said.

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Nonetheless, he stated that thousands of students had continued to study in other countries. According to Iyer, during the pandemic, the company’s retail forex earnings were dominated by educational forex and forex for families (remittances to and from family members in other countries).

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“Our educational segment is already ahead of what we used to do in 2019,” he said adding that he expects this segment to contribute in the same trajectory as it has in the past two years. 

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Thomas Cook reported a consolidated net loss at Rs 24.59 crore for the third quarter ended December 2021. It had posted a consolidated net loss of Rs 66.24 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, Thomas Cook (India) said in a regulatory filing.

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Consolidated total income from operations stood at Rs 750.25 crore, as compared to Rs 271.42 crore in the year-ago quarter. Total expenses jumped to Rs 786.69 crore from Rs 360.75 crore earlier.