1. At a Glance – Blink and You’ll Miss the Drama
₹2,668 crore market cap. Stock at ₹125. Down ~36% in one year. Meanwhile, the company is quietly running 34 hotels, 2,410 keys, 95 Flurys outlets, throwing 33–36% operating margins, and still finding time to buy hotels in Juhu like it’s Monopoly night.
Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels Ltd (ASPHL) is that underrated kid in class who scores decently, speaks less, but somehow owns a palace hotel. Q3 FY26 revenue came in at ₹188 crore, up 9.26% YoY, operating margin at a juicy 36%, but PAT dipped 21.7% YoY to ₹25 crore because hospitality accounting loves depreciation more than Indian parents love engineering degrees.
Debt? ₹216 crore. Debt-to-equity? A chill 0.17. Promoters holding strong at 68.14%, zero pledging. ROCE hovering around 12%, ROE still shy at ~7% — because asset-heavy hotels age like fine wine but give returns like fixed deposits initially.
Question for you already:
If this company is printing operating margins like a luxury chain, why is the stock behaving like a budget motel?
Stick around.
2. Introduction – A Hotel Chain With Personality Issues (In a Good Way)
Indian hospitality has had a wild decade. From COVID-induced ghost hotels to revenge travel, destination weddings, corporate offsites, and influencers discovering room service — everything hit at once.
ASPHL sits right in the middle of this chaos.
Founded in 1987, part of the Apeejay Surrendra Group, this company didn’t chase scale blindly. Instead, it built brands — and not the boring cookie-cutter kind. The Park hotels are known for design, nightlife, and attitude. Zone by The Park caters to the “I want luxury but my company won’t reimburse” crowd. And Flurys? That’s Kolkata nostalgia served with butter and colonial guilt.
Unlike Indian Hotels (Taj) or ITC Hotels, ASPHL doesn’t try to be everywhere. It mixes owned, leased, and managed assets like a seasoned poker player. Asset-light where possible, asset-heavy where returns justify ego.
The result?
- Strong margins
- Controlled debt
- Slower ROE, but improving
- And a valuation that still hasn’t made up its mind
Another question:
Is ASPHL a slow compounding hospitality story… or a misunderstood premium brand stuck in midcap purgatory?
3. Business
Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
Let’s break it down like you’re explaining this to a friend who thinks hotels just “rent rooms”.
Hotel Operations (The Core Money Spinner)
ASPHL operates across five brands:
- The Park – Luxury & upscale; design-led, nightlife-heavy
~8 hotels | ~1,201 keys - The Park Collection – Upper mid-market boutique
~4 hotels | ~79 keys - Zone by The Park – Asset-light, management contracts
~12 hotels | ~689 keys - Zone Connect – Upper midscale, efficiency-focused
~10 hotels | ~441 keys - Stop by Zone – Motels (blink and you miss them)
Hotels are operated via:
- Owned (7 hotels, 1,101 keys) – capital heavy, margin rich
- Managed (22 hotels, 1,050 keys) – asset-light, ROCE friendly
- Leased (5 hotels, 259 keys) – middle ground
Translation:
They own when returns justify it, manage when balance sheet says “bro relax”.
Food, Beverage & Entertainment (The Margin Masala)
F&B is not an add-on here. It’s a serious revenue stream:
- Restaurants
- Bars
- Nightclubs
- Event spaces
This is why Food & Beverage + Liquor together form ~42% of FY24 revenue. Hotel guests eat. Party crowds drink. ASPHL cashes both.
Flurys – The Emotional Asset
Flurys is not just a café brand. It’s a memory for half of Kolkata.
- ~95 outlets
- 9 tearooms
- 37 cafés
- 49 kiosks
Mumbai launch near Gateway of India in July 2024 was symbolic: Flurys is no longer just a Kolkata thing.
So yes, ASPHL is:
- A hotel operator
- A lifestyle brand
- An F&B aggregator
- And occasionally… a yacht rental company
