Zoomcar Holdings (OTC:ZCAR) reported first-quarter financial results on Friday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Zoomcar Holdings reported a record contribution profit of $1.65 million, a 72% increase in per booking contribution profit compared to the same quarter last year.

Despite a 16% decline in booking volumes, the company achieved growth by focusing on longer, higher-value trips and experienced a 10% revenue increase in Indian rupee terms.

Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed by 65% to $0.61 million, marking significant progress towards breakeven, with operational losses halved to $0.88 million.

The company launched a two-wheeler business in Bangalore, leveraging existing infrastructure to expand its product offerings and capture a share of the growing vehicle-sharing market.

Management emphasized the strategic shift towards profitability, rather than growth at any cost, and announced initiatives for fundraising and potential uplisting to a premier U.S. securities exchange.

Full Transcript

Anirudh Lamba, Investor Relations

Hi everyone, good morning and good evening, and thank you for joining Zoomcar Holdings' earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal 2627, the quarter ended June 30, 2026. I'm Anirudh Lamba and I lead Investor Relations at Zoomcar Holdings. Joining me today are Deepankar Tiwari, our Chief Executive Officer, and Sachin Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, a brief note on our disclosures. Today's discussion contains forward-looking statements.

These reflect our current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Those risks are described in our filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, all available at sec.gov. We'll also refer to non-GAAP measures including contribution profit, contribution margin, and adjusted EBITDA. These supplement and do not replace our GAAP results. Reconciliations are in the appendix of today's press release.

With that, over to Deepankar.

Deepankar Tiwari, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Anirudh, and good morning to everyone joining us this morning. Thank you for taking the time out. Let me set the context for anyone who's new to the Zoomcar Holdings story. Zoomcar Holdings is India's largest peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace. We do not own assets. We do not own cars. Individual vehicle owners, we call them hosts, list their vehicles on our platform and guests book them for self-drive use. That structural choice and asset-light choice is why the numbers which you will see in some of the slides going forward by our CFO will show you the way the numbers look the way they do.

Our platform operates across more than 100 cities. We have onboarded over 42,000 cars and we run approximately 700,000 rental sessions a month. Three numbers on this slide matter the most. Our average guest rating is 4.8 out of 5, which is a telling story on the customer experience that we command. When the asset is not ours, it is owned by somebody else, this number becomes a product. 58% of our trips come from repeat users, up 7% from previous years.

That is a 7 percentage point improvement in one single year. We were 51% last year. It has been achieved without any meaningful discounting incentives or any other such efforts. And brand: we hold roughly 90% brand awareness in the Indian car rental space, the number one position in search and brand recall and organic traffic. Our organic traffic converts at about twice the rate of paid traffic. Those three facts are connected. Brand strength is why we can hold demand without needing to buy it.

This has been the best quarter the company has ever reported on the measure we care about the most. Our contribution profit was $1.65 million, the highest in Zoomcar Holdings' history. It is the 11th consecutive quarter of positive contribution profit. Before that run started, every quarter was negative. Per booking contribution profit was $18.75 as against $10.89 in the same quarter last year. That's a 72% increase. Three years ago in September 2023, that number was a negative two and a half dollars.

We were paying for the privilege of serving a trip. Today that trip pays us $18.75. Our adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed by 65% to $0.61 million, the smallest quarterly adjusted EBITDA loss we have ever reported. Loss from operations have halved down to $0.88 million. Excluding a quarter of a million dollars of non-cash RSUs, it was $0.63 million, a 64% improvement. Now I want to directly address how we got here because the headline improvement sits alongside a decline in booking volumes and I would rather explain it rather than have you infer it.

We did serve 16% fewer bookings this quarter. But that was deliberate, and I’ll add one thing which you cannot see on this slide. We earn all our revenues in Indian rupees but report in US dollars. The Indian rupee weakened against the dollar over this period. In Indian rupee terms, our revenue actually grew roughly by 10%. The 2% growth you will see in our financial section is what is left after the translation. The underlying business grew faster than our reported dollars suggest.

We've been steering the marketplace towards longer, higher-value trips rather than chasing booking count. A single extended trip earns us more than several short ones against broadly the same cost to serve — the same verification, the same support, the same infrastructure. Value per booking grows by about 7% to roughly $66. Our experience post-rated us at 4.5 or above grew by 3% year over year. That's slower than the 7% we posted across fiscal 2025–26, and I expect that we have become more selective about who we onboard, and our repeat users are now 58% of bookings, up from 51%, sustained for more than six quarters without significant incentives or discount. By this it does not mean that we will not pursue growth. We will pursue growth, but we are setting the fundamental structure of the business correct and that has been evident over the last six quarters or so. As we now take in more growth capital, we would be building the growth top-of-the-funnel pipeline as well. Why does all of what I've said matter now? We will go more in depth when our CFO takes his slides on the financials. Why does all this matter now?

India's self-drive car sharing market is expanding from roughly 18.5 million users in 2025 to over 65 million users in 2031. That's a $28.5 billion market opportunity on third-party estimates. India has about 0.1 cars per household as against almost 2 cars per household in the United States. That is not a gap that closes through ownership of cars. That's a gap that closes through access to cars. Meanwhile, the infrastructure has also caught up in India: over a billion Internet users, digital payments are universal.

Two thirds of the population is very young — demographics under the age of 35 and in the workforce by the year 2031. So what's changed at Zoomcar Holdings is that now we can meet that demand profitably. And that's the important one: profitably. 5.1 million cumulative trips across 109 cities, with more than 2 million unique consumers and, critically, booking-level contribution margin going from a negative $2.50 in September 2023 to a positive $18.75 this quarter.

The direction of that number is the entire investment case. Incremental trips now add margin rather than cost. Which is why we've also increased our product category. We have launched the two-wheeler business — a different vehicle form factor. The pilot today is live in-app in Bangalore for motorcycles and scooters. The reasoning is very simple. Our infrastructure is already paid for — a matching engine, a whole screening support, the entire tech stack — all of it has been built and paid for by the 5.1 million car trips that we've already done.

Extending that to a different vehicle form factor, every different vehicle category costs a fraction of what it is building anew. So it is but natural and logical that we extend our product portfolio. It's a fragmented category heading towards roughly a billion dollars by 2030. So the way I would sum it is the macro is ready, our infrastructure is mature, and our model has been validated at scale and for scale. Anirudh, over to you.

Anirudh Lamba, Investor Relations

Thank you, Deepankar. And with that, I'll hand over to Sachin Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer, to take you through the quarter's financials in detail. Sachin, over to you.

Sachin Gupta, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Deepankar and Anirudh. Let me walk this table top to bottom. Our booking numbers during the quarter ended June 30, 2026 were 88,160, down 16%. Gross booking value was $5.83 million, down 10% as reported compared to the previous year. I want to pause on that gross booking value number here because it needs some context. We transact almost entirely in Indian rupees and we report in US dollars, as pointed out by our CEO. Against the June 2025 quarter, the rupee depreciated meaningfully against the dollar.

In constant currency terms, that 10% gross booking value decline is almost flat in real money terms. Now the reported decline is currency translation and not business. The same applies to revenue: reported revenue growth of 2% corresponds to approximately 10% growth in rupee terms. Our average guest trip rating improved to 4.8 from 4.73 a year ago. Our net revenue was $2.35 million against $2.31 million, up about 2% as reported and, as I have noted, materially more in rupee terms.

Contribution profits, which is very important and significant, was about $1.65 million as against $1.14 million about a year ago, which is a 45% growth. On a per booking basis, it comes to about $18.75 as against $10.89, which is up 72% during the quarter ended June 30, 2026. As a share of net revenue, this translates into 70% of net revenue as against 49% a year ago, representing an expansion of 2,100 basis points. Here is what drove that: our cost of revenue fell 38% to $0.81 million, driven principally by a reduction in losses from accidental damages and theft following changes to trip coverage and loss prevention measures taken by the company.

Gross profit rose 54% on essentially flat reported revenue. Host incentives came down from $42,000 to $6,000 because host retention is now driven by earnings quality rather than subsidy. Loss from operations halved to $0.88 million. If referencing the footnote, if we exclude $0.25 million of non-cash RSU expenses, it was about $0.63 million, which represents a significant 64% improvement. Our adjusted EBITDA loss was $0.61 million as against $1.73 million a year ago, which is a 65% improvement.

What this means is that the remaining gap to adjusted EBITDA break even is now $0.61 million per quarter, which is roughly one-third of the contribution profit the business already generated this quarter and less than the $1.13 million by which the loss narrowed. Over the past one year, Zoomcar Holdings has closed two-thirds of the distance to break even in four quarters, with margins still expanding and costs still falling. On a GAAP basis, our net loss for the quarter was $5.37 million as against $4.21 million a year ago.

That is wider, and I'll tell you exactly why. Everything above the operating line improved, and everything that widened sits below it. Our finance cost rose from $0.43 million to about $1.4 million and other expenses, net, rose from $2 million to about $3 million. Now these incremental costs are mostly one-time and non-cash in nature due to the securities issued to settle some of the liabilities and close out the pending litigations which were ongoing earlier, and has nothing to do with the actual operating business but were aimed to strengthen the balance sheet on a go-forward basis.

Moving on to the contribution margin or contribution profit chart — the chart is the reason why we say that the model works. Starting on the left-hand side, March 2024, we generated a contribution profit of $0.10 million per quarter. This quarter it is $1.65 million — 16 and a half times in nine quarters. Two things I would like to draw out. First, the trend is not smooth. June 2025 dipped. March 2026 dipped. This is a seasonal business and we don't ask you to read any single quarter as a trend.

Second, the direction over the full period is unambiguous and this quarter is the highest point on the chart. The quarter further marks our 11th consecutive quarter of positive contribution profits. Now that is long enough to stop being a streak and start being a characteristic of the business itself. Same story on the adjusted EBITDA line as well. March 2024: $4.03 million of quarterly adjusted EBITDA loss. This quarter: $0.61 million. What it means is we have taken roughly 85% out of the quarterly loss over that period.

Again, not a straight line. March 2026 was $1.4 million — losses wider than the December quarter before it — but the trajectory holds. $0.61 million is the lowest quarterly adjusted EBITDA loss in the company's history, which means we are burning about $200,000 per month only to operate the current business. That too when you consider that we have not made any growth spends for more than 26 months now. I would frame what this chart represents: it's the distance between where we were and the adjusted EBITDA break even.

The distance is now under a million dollars a quarter consistently, and that is a very different conversation from the one we were having a couple of years ago. I would like to spend a few minutes on the fundraising update as well — on the growth capital. We are actively raising funds to fund the next phase of expansion, firstly to reach breakeven in terms of profitability and then climb the ladder towards long-term value creation for our stockholders.

We did launch a private placement bridge round to raise a minimum of $1 million and up to $10 million including over-allotment. So far we have raised about $1.8 million to date. We additionally launched a tender offer to exchange our outstanding warrants for common stock, and the same was approved by our stockholders at the Annual General Meeting held on August 11, 2026. The purpose to do this was to simplify the capital structure that had become complicated over the years and to consolidate our equity base towards uplisting.

We have further engaged an investment banker to support a potential uplisting to a premier U.S. national securities exchange by the end of this year. I would stress on the word potential as no timeline can be committed and the process is subject to meeting the listing requirements, on which the company has already taken steps to meet the same. Debt restructuring has been ongoing; we are working on it consistently, and it is directly connected to the finance cost line I had flagged earlier.

The objective here is simple: reduce the balance sheet burden and move towards positive net worth with minimal cash burn. I'll briefly spend some time on the appendix so that it is on record. The appendix carries full reconciliation: contribution profit builds from GAAP gross profit, adding back depreciation, overheads and stock-based compensation booked under the cost of revenue and then deducting host incentives and performance marketing which are directly akin to the generation of the revenue.

Our adjusted EBITDA on the next slide reconciles from GAAP net loss, adding back stock-based compensation, depreciation, amortization, finance costs, and any other one-time and extraordinary items of expenses and gains. You would find both these reconciliations in the press release filed earlier in the day and Form 10-Q to be filed later in the day today as well. I would encourage anyone modeling us to work from these tables rather than the summary figures.

Back to our CEO to summarize the wins for this quarter.

Deepankar Tiwari, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Sachin. Let me start where our CFO just ended. Our net revenue is up by 2% as reported and, as our CFO explained, meaningfully more in rupee terms before the dollar translation on account of the rupee weakening against the dollar. Our repeat user base is at 58% as against 51% last year. That's the clearest signal that the customer experience on the platform works and people want to come back to it again and again. Our contribution margins per booking is at $18.75, up from $10.89, generating $1.65 million — about 70% of GAAP revenue.

Our adjusted EBITDA loss is down by 65%. Loss from operations are down almost half by 50%. And the new product category — our two-wheelers — is live in Bangalore on an infrastructure we've already built and has been paid for. So these six lines all are moving in the same direction in a quarter where we deliberately took less volume. That's the point I would leave you with — that this is what the business looks like when it optimizes for margins instead of growth at any cost.

Again I would repeat, we would continue to grow as we take in more capital, but we want to ensure that the growth is sustainable and profitable. So the volume decision is obviously reversible, but the cost structure — the cost structure around the fact that we will be a profitable company — is not a reversible decision. And that's the thought I would leave you with. Anirudh, over to you.

Anirudh Lamba, Investor Relations

Thank you, Deepankar and Sachin, and thank you all for joining. Our Q1 results and today's presentation are available on our investor relations site, and you can reach the team at investorszoomcar.com for any questions. We look forward to updating you next quarter. Thank you so much.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.