Oyo’s ESOP costs grow 344% to Rs 680 crore in FY22; CEO Ritesh Agarwal’s remuneration up 250%

Ritesh Agarwal

Online hotel aggregator Oyo’s employee stock option (ESOP) expenses rose 344 percent from Rs 153 crore in FY21 to Rs 680 crore in FY22 at a time when the company brought down salary and bonus expenses substantially, according to a filing with market regulator SEBI.

In the June quarter, Oyo recorded share-based payment expenses of Rs 260 crore.

The company’s latest filing with SEBI also showed that Oyo founder and chief executive officer Ritesh Agarwal received a remuneration of Rs 5.6 crore in FY22, up 250 percent from Rs 1.6 crore in FY21. His compensation for FY20 was Rs 21.5 lakh.

Despite the steep rise in ESOP costs, the hotel aggregator’s employee costs grew only by 7 percent to Rs 1,862 crore in FY22 as expenses on account of salaries, wages and bonuses were reduced 27 percent from Rs 1,520 crore in FY21 to Rs 1,117 crore in FY22.

Moneycontrol reported earlier that Oyo’s operating revenue rose 18 percent to Rs 4,905 crore in FY22 from the previous year, while net loss narrowed 45 percent to Rs 1,851 crore, the startup said in an additional IPO filing to the market regulator.

The Softbank-backed company was still far behind its pre-Covid annual operating revenue of Rs 13,413 crore in FY20. It had registered a net loss of Rs 10,419 crore before the coronavirus pandemic struck.

Oyo claimed EBITDA (earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation)-level profitability of Rs 10.6 crore for the June quarter. In an addendum to its draft red herring prospectus with SEBI, the hospitality firm said it recorded operating revenue of Rs 1,505 crore in the June quarter of FY23. It clocked a net loss of Rs 548 crore during the period.

Over the past one year, several newly listed tech companies have been criticised for large share-based payments that have dented their profitability.

For instance, three top executives of Policybazaar – Chairman and founder Yashish Dahiya, chief financial officer Alok Bansal and CEO Sarbvir Singh – were granted employee stock options (ESOPs) worth more than Rs 1,044 crore in FY22 when the company went public. For Zomato, the cumulative ESOP cost on account of such rewards to three key managerial personnel (KMPs) of the company was Rs 779 crore in FY22.

Also, fintech major Paytm saw its ESOP expenses of the KMPs surge 50 times to Rs 567 crore in FY22, up from Rs 11.2 crore in the previous financial year.