BookMyShow FY2025: Revenue ₹1,831 Cr, OCF ₹250 Cr, ₹69 Cr in Employee Cost Nobody Was Paid

BookMyShow generated ₹250 crore in operating cash in FY2025.

That is the sentence that matters. Not the PAT headline, not the consolidated revenue number. The operating cash flow, which strips out every non-cash item and every accounting adjustment, was ₹250 Cr. The year before, it was ₹87 Cr.

Three times. In one year.

This is the story the filings tell about a 26-year-old company that most people stopped thinking about as a growth story.

The Revenue Picture

Bigtree Entertainment's standalone numbers cover the ticketing platform. Revenue from operations was ₹1,092 Cr in FY2025, up from ₹972 Cr in FY2024.

The breakdown tells you exactly what the business is.

Online ticket booking brought in ₹785 Cr, accounting for 72% of total standalone revenue. This is not the face value of tickets sold. This is the margin BookMyShow retains: the convenience fee, service charge, and booking commission on each transaction. The gross merchandise value flowing through the platform would be a multiple of this number.

The company paid ₹319 Cr in revenue share to cinema chains and venue partners. That is the cost of being an intermediary. What remains after that is BookMyShow's take.

Alongside ticketing: ₹96 Cr from booking solutions and B2B services, ₹92 Cr from a line that the PDF extraction rendered without a label (likely advertising and brand partnerships based on the structure of other filings), ₹91 Cr from live events on the standalone entity, ₹15.5 Cr from breakage on unclaimed transactions, ₹5.9 Cr from software maintenance, and ₹1.3 Cr from streaming.

The consolidated entity is a different order of magnitude. Consolidated revenue was ₹1,831 Cr in FY2025, up 31% from ₹1,397 Cr. The difference between the two numbers is almost entirely BookMyShow Live.

BookMyShow Live

BookMyShow Live Private Limited is a 100%-owned subsidiary that handles the big live events: IPL, Coldplay, comedy festivals, sporting events. In FY2025, it reported ₹506 Cr in total income and ₹5.5 Cr in PAT.

That is not a rounding error. BookMyShow Live is now almost half the size of the standalone ticketing business, and it turned profitable.

Bigtree invested ₹50 Cr in BookMyShow Live during FY2025 via a rights issue. The subsidiary is capital-intensive (production expenses, artist fees, venue contracts), which is why margins are thin despite the large top line. But thin margins on ₹506 Cr is still a different business than what existed three years ago.

The live events bet is working.

The OCF Story

Operating cash flow does not lie.

FY2024 OCF was ₹87 Cr. FY2025 OCF was ₹250 Cr. The mechanism is worth understanding.

Profit before tax was ₹223 Cr. Add back ₹69 Cr in non-cash SAR expense, ₹21.9 Cr in depreciation, ₹2 Cr in impairment provisions, and ₹20.4 Cr in bad loan provisions. Working capital was mixed: trade receivables improved (collections accelerated), advance from customers shifted, vendor payables adjusted. Cash generated from operations before tax was ₹283 Cr. After paying ₹33 Cr in taxes, net OCF was ₹250 Cr.

Then the company deployed much of that cash: ₹153 Cr into current investments (building the mutual fund portfolio), ₹86 Cr into subsidiaries (equity and loans), ₹46 Cr into fixed deposits, and ₹11 Cr into fixed assets. Net investing outflow was ₹175 Cr. Net financing outflow (loan repayment, lease payments) was ₹36 Cr.

The company ended with ₹85 Cr in cash, up from ₹47 Cr at the start of the year.

One number for the OCF tripling: advances given against ticketing collection jumped from ₹173 Cr to ₹333 Cr, and collections on behalf of vendors jumped from ₹164 Cr to ₹340 Cr. The GMV flowing through BookMyShow is growing much faster than the revenue line. The platform is getting bigger. The company earns float on the entire ecosystem.

The Employee Cost Number That Is Mostly Accounting

Employee benefits expense was ₹215 Cr in FY2025, up from ₹123 Cr in FY2024. That 74% jump has been cited in some coverage as a warning sign. It is not.

The full breakdown from Note 27:

• Salaries, wages, and bonus: ₹138 Cr (vs ₹110 Cr, +25%)
• Provident fund and other contributions: ₹1.8 Cr
• Gratuity: ₹3.3 Cr
• Compensated absences: ₹0.6 Cr
• Stock Appreciation Rights (SAR) expense: ₹69 Cr (vs ₹6.4 Cr, +10x)
• Staff welfare: remainder

The ₹69 Cr SAR expense is the source of the apparent spike. It is entirely non-cash.

The company operates a SAR scheme that allows employees to receive cash equal to the appreciation in share value, at the discretion of the Compensation Committee. As of March 2025, ₹63.7 Cr of this is held as a non-current provision on the balance sheet, which is new. The FY2024 provision was zero.

Why build a ₹64 Cr cash settlement provision now? Companies typically do this when a liquidity event is close enough that cash settlement becomes likely. BookMyShow has been private since 1999. It has not raised external equity in years. A company that generates ₹250 Cr in operating cash does not need funding. What it needs, if the founders and investors want liquidity, is a public exit.

The provision is a preparation, not a cost.

The DTA Recognition

Standalone PAT was ₹253 Cr, but the operating story is ₹193 Cr.

The difference is a ₹60 Cr deferred tax asset recognized in FY2025 for the first time. The company has accumulated unabsorbed depreciation and historical tax losses. When a company is confident enough in its future profitability to book a DTA, it means the management believes those losses will be offset by future taxable profits. This is a positive signal, not a distortion.

The actual cash tax paid was ₹33 Cr (₹30 Cr current tax provision plus net advance taxes paid). The reported PAT of ₹253 Cr includes ₹60 Cr that reduces future tax bills, not current period cash. Adjusted operating PAT is ₹193 Cr.

Both numbers are real. The ₹253 Cr is a more accurate reflection of total economic value created including the reversal of prior-year overpayments. The ₹193 Cr is the cleaner operating comparison to FY2024's ₹218 Cr.

Wait. FY2024 PAT was ₹218 Cr and FY2025 adjusted PAT is ₹193 Cr. Standalone operating profit went slightly down.

The OCF story is better than the PAT story, which is why it matters more.

The Carnival Cinemas Problem

On the balance sheet is a ₹52.3 Cr loan to Carnival Cinemas.

In a previous year, Carnival Cinemas owed BookMyShow money from advance credits and outstanding collections. When Carnival failed to pay, the amount was converted to a structured loan. Carnival subsequently went into CIRP, the Indian insolvency process. BookMyShow filed as a Financial Creditor.

As of March 2025, ₹45.4 Cr of the ₹52.3 Cr has been provisioned (87% written off). The remaining ₹7 Cr sits on the books at effectively zero recoverable value. BookMyShow added ₹20.4 Cr to the provision in FY2025 alone.

This is not a material risk to a company generating ₹250 Cr in operating cash. But it is a useful case study in the business model: ticketing intermediaries hold advance deposits from cinema chains. When a cinema chain fails, the intermediary takes the loss.

The Balance Sheet

Net worth was ₹1,287 Cr at March 2025, up from ₹1,032 Cr in FY2024.

The company holds ₹390 Cr in liquid assets: ₹85 Cr in cash, ₹229 Cr in debt mutual funds, ₹76 Cr in fixed deposits. Against this, there is only ₹15 Cr in borrowings (a working capital demand loan at 8.65%, repayable on demand). Net cash position is comfortably positive.

Retained earnings were negative ₹86 Cr at March 2025, reduced from negative ₹337 Cr in FY2024. The company is actively erasing its cumulative historical deficit. At this rate, retained earnings will turn positive in FY2026.

The company has invested ₹517 Cr in subsidiaries at cost: ₹277 Cr in BookMyShow Live, ₹74 Cr in preference shares of subsidiaries, and the rest across ten other entities including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, UAE, and Sri Lanka operations, along with various domestic ventures.

Securities premium sits at ₹1,337 Cr on the balance sheet, unchanged for years. This is the investor capital from historic funding rounds. BookMyShow has been generating enough cash internally that it has not needed to add to it.

What the Numbers Are

BookMyShow is not a startup story. It is not a loss-making growth story. It is a 26-year-old platform that found its second gear in live entertainment, generates substantial operating cash, holds a clean balance sheet, and is likely approaching a liquidity event that will matter for its several hundred employees holding SARs.

The filing does not tell you when the IPO comes. It does tell you that the company booked ₹64 Cr in cash settlement provisions for employee equity in a single year, which is not how you behave if the event is a decade away.