...Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q1 FY '25 results conference call of Saregama India Limited, hosted by Emkay Global Financial Services. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal our operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pulkit Chawla from Emkay Global Financial Services. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Neha. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Q1 FY '25 earnings call for Saregama. From the management, we have with us today Mr. Vikram Mehra, Managing Director, Mr. Pankaj Chaturvedi, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Saket Shah, Group Head, Investor Relations at Saregama, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, Vice President, Investor Relations. Without any further delay, I shall now hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks. Over to you, Vikram.
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. This quarter saw operating revenue of INR 205 crore and PBT of INR 51 crore. Our revenue is a 26% increase over the last year and is in sync with the guidance of 30% revenue increase in financial year 2025. Our EBITDA increased by 9% and is currently at 33% of the revenue, which again is in sync with the guidance that we have been giving for our adjusted EBITDA. As always, I will request you to evaluate us on a rolling twelve-month basis and not on quarterly basis. I said this when we had a great quarter four last year, I'm saying the same thing when we have in this quarter. On a full year basis, we are confident that we will end up meeting all our guidances that we've given to the market.
Let me start, as always, with the first vertical, music. If you look at the numbers right now, there seems to be an apparent drop in the music segment revenue. I just need to clarify that actually there is no drop. What you see is because on account of Carvaan numbers also being there. I can give you comfort that the music revenue, which is combination of music plus artist management, is on track to achieve our guidance of 25%-26% growth in the financial year 2025. We don't see any problem there. This quarter saw release of our chartbuster song, Tauba Tauba, from the movie Bad Newz. This song has topped every possible chart in the country, from Spotify, Instagram, radio, YouTube, you name it, and we're there. It's Spotify's number one song in India since ninth of July.
In fact, it's on YouTube music video, is global number one music video on YouTube since last 28 days. Today is the 29th day. As I talk to you, number 2 and the number 3 songs also on the YouTube global list actually belong to us. The other songs of Bad Newz, Jaanam and Mere Mehboob, are also part of Spotify's top 50 charts for weeks now. We also saw the release of Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan and Deepika Padukone's movie, Kalki 2898 AD. Just like the movie, the music has done very well and has topped the Telugu music charts. Other big album this quarter was movie Mandakini, whose song, Vattolam, topped the charts in Malayalam language. In non-films category, company released songs like Morni by Raftaar, who's a very, very big rapper.
Kala Chashma Laga Lijiye by Neelkamal Singh in Bhojpuri, Piyu Maanu Na Maaru by Kajal Maheriya in Gujarati, and the devotional song Suno Krishna Pyare by Swati Mishra, and these are some of the names that I've taken. Overall, we released 330+ original and premium recreation songs across multiple languages, which includes Hindi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali. Our lineup for the next 12 months is all in place, where we have the music of some of the biggest films of the year. We have just released in the month of July, two songs from the next movie called Stree 2. Both of them songs are doing extremely well. One of them is Global Music Video number two, and the second song is Global Music Video number three on YouTube Music Video charts.
That means global number 1, number 2, and number 3 all belong to Saregama today. The comedy movies which are going to get released in the next few months are Dharma Productions' Jigra, which stars Alia Bhatt, Maddock's Sky Force, Tamil fantasy film Kanguva, where Tamil superstar Surya is acting. Mammooty's Bazooka in Malayalam, Kannada superstar Sudeep Kichcha's film . As shared with you in May, this will be the year where we start the journey of future-proofing our company by investing in newer content. It will also be the year to start the process of moving Saregama from being the number 2 label to the number 1 label of the country. This means this is a 3-year period right now where we, we will buy big in terms of content, but we will always buy smart so that we have one of the best ROIs in the market.
This quarter, the charge off on account of new content has gone up by 48% year-over-year. We are currently in a transitional state, where our new content expenses are going up in a step function manner, resulting in the incremental revenue just about matching the content charge off. Over a period of the next 18 months, this will stabilize, and the content investment going up, will start going up linearly after that and not in a step function. And the additional revenue that we'll be generating on account of the content we have will be taking over these 2 years and the, in new content that we'll pick up, will far exceed than the charge of that will start coming in, because the content investment will go up in a linear fashion and then, which means the profits will also start rising up in a steep fashion.
With all this content and new content, all this investment in new content, we maintain our guidance of a five-year payback period. That means whatever we spend today across all languages, at maximum five years, we will get our money back, and then we have anything between 55-75 years to make money from that content. This quarter was the last one with the base effect of free streaming moving to pay. We had two of our partner platforms who had contributed revenues on the free side in Q1 FY 2024, which from Q2 onwards, completely moved behind the paywall. But this impact gets over. From Q2 onwards, we will not have this impact any longer on our books. On YouTube revenue front, quarter 1 saw some pressure on account of most advertising actually moving to...
Coming from the political advertising or it was IPL advertising. June onwards, we started seeing very, very stable growth. As we go forward in the year right now, we see the numbers looking good. Overall, we aim for the music vertical, which includes licensing as well as artist management, to grow its revenue by a minimum 26% during the year. Artist management, the new vertical that we have under music, where artists are made popular through our IP releases, which may be music or short-form ad films or longer-form ad films, and then we monetize these artists by booking them for live events, weddings, and brand endorsements, and Saregama gets a share of their monies. During the quarter, 30+ new influencers and music artists were added, making our overall portfolio upwards of 150.
These artists, between them, have over 100 million followers and subscribers on Instagram and YouTube. As the investment in newer content goes up, these artists are going to become bigger and bigger. The more pessimistic estimates also on digital advertising growth are giving a number of around 15%. A large amount of this money is going to flow down to content, which is riding on the digital platforms. And with the might that we people have between our own content and the content which is created by the artists whom we are managing, we believe we will have a very strong position to grab a lion's share of this advertising budget. Both on the music side and more importantly, through Pocket Aces clout, we believe right now we will be having a clear number one position here.
Two of the artists on the music side released their songs. We've got Arjun Kanungo's song, Banjara, that was launched, and Maahi released his second song, Jaadugari. Net-net, with a stated goal of acquiring 25-30% of all new music released in India, the licensing vertical should double its revenue, something within 3.5 years, which is 25%-26% growth year-on-year. This entire investment is going to be funded through our internal accruals or the QIP money, which is lying with us. No additional investments are needed. No additional fundraise is needed. Let me now shift to the video vertical, where we make films under the brand name Yoodlee Films. We make digital series under brand name Dice, which belongs to Pocket Aces. Short-format content under FilterCopy, Nutshell, et cetera, and TV serials for Sun TV.
The explosion of smartphone ownership and cheap data are the biggest driver of this vertical. We are still in very early stages of building this business. We believe over the next five years, we should be able to grow this business at 25% CAGR. Please remember, every time we look at video, video has to make money on its own, and we are all very clear about it. But we should also keep in mind the amazing amount of impact it has on the music business. It allows us, firstly, content guarantee. Since most of our competitors also have a video arm, we never want to be caught in a position where it becomes difficult for us to acquire content from the market.
Secondly, the content that is, or the music, which is put in a Yoodlee film, ends up giving us a much better ROI than something that we are acquiring from the outside. Obviously, because we have complete control on what music and what singers are involved in that music. This quarter saw the release of two of our Punjabi films, Gippy Grewal: Shinda Shinda No Papa, and Ni Main Sass Kuttni 2. Quarter one also saw the release of Bade Sheher Choti Family, a branded web series with Maruti as the principal sponsor, which was released on FilterCopy.
Girls School, a Dice creation, was delivered to Amazon miniTV, and Gobble had a web series called Carpool Biryani, which was had the backing of the sponsor Thums Up. In the last few quarters, with various consolidations that are going on in the media sector, there is a little bit of uncertainty on the digital platforms and TV channels. We believe all these things should sort themselves out over the period of next twelve months, and the market is once again going to have a lot of hunger for more and more of video content, both on the film side as well as on the short and long format video content. On the live event side, we started, we did Dil-Luminati Tour of Diljit Dosanjh in Vancouver, with a record-breaking turnout of over 50,000 fans.
Overall, 11 concerts were held in Canada and USA. Multiple shows are planned in India and UAE in the coming quarters. We also launched That's So Viraj with Friend, a live comedy show with a cloud exclusive artist called Viraj Ghelani. These are great examples of synergy is being drawn between various verticals of Saregama, so that, the overall result is much greater than the sum of individual parts. Two of the shows were held in Mumbai, and now we are planning the shows internationally also. As shared in the past, events business is a very high revenue, low margin, but a high IRR business. So in quarters where there are a lot of concerts, it may make our EBITDA margin look a little low, but the fact is very little capital gets locked in events business, and that also for a very short duration.
Which results in a very high ROI-high IRR for the business, even though the margins are less. A typical scene is that if a concert is happening, the actual money is getting locked for anything, not more than 15 to 30 days, and more often than not, our ticketing partner ends up giving us an advance, which takes care of the investment that we have to make initially. As for Carvaan is concerned, we have rolled out a new retail strategy, whereby we'll be selling this product only from e-commerce and modern trade stores. This entire thing is getting rolled out in various parts of the country. Over the next few quarters, we will start getting out of the individual stores.
While our top line, while the number of units sold of Carvaan and hence the result in top line will shrink on account of we getting out of the retail store, we believe our profitability margins are going to improve through better control on the cost structures, which were directly attributed to the physical distribution. As promised earlier, from this quarter onwards, we have started sharing the Carvaan revenue numbers separately. This quarter, Carvaan revenue was INR 24.7 crore, which is a significant drop over what Q1 FY24 saw. If I look, talk a little bit long term, over the next three years, we will be investing over INR 1,000 crore in new music content. This will not only contribute to immediate growth, but also put the company on a long-term growth path. This is something I want to reiterate.
I've said it many times. We've always had the option to be happy being a music-only, catalog-only company and drive very high margins. Yes, the margins can be very, very high if we continue only being that. We believe that's not going to prepare the company for future. We are making these high margins because we made the investments 30 years ago on the catalog content. Similarly, we have to make investments today, so that 50 years down the line also, the company remains relevant and remains as one of the most successful entertainment company you've ever seen in India. Also, we don't want to be dependent ever only on one vertical, and in today's digital environment, all verticals are feeding off each other.
Even feature of music, music feature of films, films are used right now to promote artists, and the same artists are then going out there and performing in events. So, for us, there's a lot of synergy we believe we can drive off each other, and you will start seeing the impact of this over the next 2, 2-3 years. At the consolidated company level, we expect revenue, excluding Carvaan, to grow at a CAGR of 30% over the next 3 years and PBT to double over the next 3-4 years. On the EBITDA side, we maintain our adjusted EBITDA guidance of 32%-33%. With the strength of what we... The IP that we people own, a long-term strategic thinking, adequacy of capital on our balance sheet, and a fast-growing digital footprint.
Today, just for your information, we people have a direct or indirect controlling 262 million follower internet footprint between various channels of Saregama Pocket Aces and the artists that we people manage. Strength of all this will ensure that we will be successful in our aim to become one of the biggest and one of the most profitable IP companies from India. Thank you, and I'll be happy to take questions now.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Kavish Parekh from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So at the start of the call, you alluded that the music business needs to be looked at on a twelve-month basis. Even then, music revenues are up only 7%. Further, margins, too, have been volatile. So what explains this, sir? What led to the sharp fall in margins, music margins this quarter? And secondly, any color on the performance of Pocket Aces? Numbers suggest that Pocket Aces now close to breakeven. So is that the right understanding?
So let me answer Pocket Aces first. End of the year, you will find Pocket Aces at a breakeven level. We are not there yet, but we will be there before the end of the year. Regarding on the first one, when you are looking at a music revenue, please, you have to combine music and artist management. They're all music here. On a combined basis right now, we have been growing at over 23% year-on-year, and we will this year, in fact, our guidance is that we will grow at 26%. Your question on the profitability, please remember, at the moment, we start investing more and more on the newer content, as stated earlier.
The increase in revenue in the initial year will just about match the charge-off that we will end up taking on the content. Give it another 18 months, post which the impact of the revenue will be far higher than the charge-off that we'll be taking, and you will be seeing profitability also start moving in the... at the same level as which revenue will be going up.
Right. Right. Thanks for that, sir. Just as a follow-up on the artist management vertical, revenues from the same have started flowing in only CQFY 2024 on wards. Is that right?
No, we have started reporting them separately now. They were earlier part of the music vertical.
All right. All right, all right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. That was it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Yash from Stallion Asset. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Just got one basic data clearing question. How much revenue comes from YouTube and Instagram for Saregama across all your segments?
I can't give you specific platform-level information. It's confidential in nature.
Okay, okay, but do you just directionally, would it be, like, you know, a majority of your revenue, or are there other streaming platforms that also contribute, or is it more diversified? That's what I'm trying to understand.
We don't have dependence on any one platform or one partner to that extent. YouTube definitely is a large enough player right now, but so are the streaming platforms like Spotify. So are short format platforms like Instagram, and so are the big television channel networks who end up taking a license from our side. So are the societies from whom we end up getting money typically in quarter four of ours. We have very consciously worked in a fashion right now that there is not overdependence on any one player.
Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jyoti Singh from Arihant Capital Markets Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Sir, my question is on the event side performance, if you can shed some light, and also impact on revenue coming from the Diljit Dosanjh concert that was held in U.S. and Canada in Q1. And third, sir, just wanted your view on the influencer side, like, we are focusing to advertising through influencers. So, like, lot of focus, RPSG Group, to go with the influencers. So this will going to be our strategy for most of the group company that we are doing? Thank you.
Let me see. I am in a position only to comment on Saregama. The way we look at influencer, we very strongly believe that in the days to come, more and more younger people prefer following their local influencers that they look up to, rather than only the top cricketers or the top Bollywood actors. People go by the brand recommendation made by somebody they can relate to, rather than only a movie idol. And brands are recognizing this, so more and more brands now want to work with the influencer. We understand that reality, hence we want to build that vertical up. The key challenge is anybody can tomorrow start representing influencers. Why we are unique? Because we are the only influencer management company which also is in the business of creating content.
Hence, the influencer who signs with us, we can make the influencer that much bigger by giving them chances to appear in our music videos or give them chances to appear in the video content that we are creating for a FilterCopy or a Gobble or a Nutshell or a Yoodlee. So that's our overall strategy on the influencer. Once the influencer becomes big, whatever money influencer makes through brand endorsements, through live performances at weddings or any other mode right now, we end up getting a percentage share of that revenue. This is as per the influencer part you asked. On the event side, remember, the nature of the business is that, you invest some money for a very short span of time. Concerts typically don't require long gestation periods.
If a concert is happening right now in the month of October, typically, we end up putting our monies right now only in the month of August. In the month of September, we end up getting advances from our partners who may be doing the ticketing for that show. So the money is locked for a pretty limited time. In October, the deal gets over, money is back, brand money is also in. So the money can, the same money can be circulated 6, at times 8 times during the year. On the margin side, it will always be single-digit margin, mid-single-digit margin kind of numbers. But on the IRR side, it becomes triple-digit IRRs if the money is deployed properly. Hope I've answered all your questions.
Yes, sir. So just one more thing, as we are now focusing more of launching younger generation singers. So what's your comment on that side? Like, because it will be lesser in cost, so it will obviously going to help us to reduce our cost. So how it will going to benefit for us?
So, it will benefit us, but maybe the reason that you're given may not be right. See, what happens when you work with very big artists, you end up paying a large amount of money to the artist, but the marketing requirements are lower because the artist is already very well-known. When you are working with younger artists, the artist fee is practically zero, but the marketing fees are very, very big because the artist needs to get established in the market first. Our strategy of investing in the newer artists is that not only do we want to make money from the songs that the artists are creating, but if the artist becomes big, the artist will get invitations to perform in weddings or corporate functions, or brands will like him or her to do brand endorsement.
We will also get a share of that money. So unlike a big artist, where you make money only from the songs, with the younger artists, the risk is higher, but the money can be made both from the songs as well as from the fee that the artists will be making.
Okay, thank you so much, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon, Vikram and team. Just one question from my end. The music revenue this quarter is at INR 140 crore versus INR 149 crore June of last year, and-
Sorry, it's not INR 142 crore, it's INR 142 crore plus INR 62 crore, 16 crore, so it's INR 158 crore.
158. Okay.
Artist management always have to be seen as music, please. I've been stating this. When we were adding this artist management vertical in a separate reporting, I knew this was gonna happen.
Sure.
Please, because artist management is nothing but music.
Fair enough. So my question was because when you see 157 versus 150, and we had a content charge last year at INR 18 crore for this June quarter last year. So, if... Are we not seeing the throughput, or, you know, there's nothing much to read into this in your-
Nothing, my only part, which I said earlier also, when you're comparing INR 158 versus INR 149 number, also keep in mind this includes Carvaan revenues on both sides, and Carvaan actually seen a decline.
Okay
... in this quarter, a reasonable decline in this quarter.
Okay.
But music licensing revenue, which is combination of music and artist management on its own as a vertical, is very steady. Well, look, I'm continuing with my guidance of a 26% growth during the year.
Fair enough. So if I remove Carvaan, then this has actually grown because Carvaan was there last year, but it's not there.
Yes.
Is that right?
You will see end of the year a 26% growth. Please,
Okay.
Even if the quarter news is very good or very bad, ignore it.
Sure.
See us either on a 12-month rolling basis or 12-month future basis.
No, I'm just comparing 12 months, so I was just comparing it to the content cost that we incurred last year. So just to gauge if, you know, we're getting the throughput, but I did not include the Carvaan numbers, so, or exclude the Carvaan numbers.
Yes.
So probably that may be the reason why the discrepancy arise. Great. Great, great. That's it from my side, Vikram. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pulkit Chawla from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thank you so much, Pulkit. Vikram, so my first question related to YouTube. So just wanted to understand the impact of realizations on YouTube compared to, let's say, sequentially. You did highlight there has been some weakness because of diversion of advertising funds. And related, approximately what proportion of the YouTube views that you typically do report is that on the Shorts platform?
So on the reporting side, a large significant amount of monetized views are coming actually from the Shorts platform only. Since artists right now to start reporting all views, that's why we... Because earlier days, we never used to report views. Fixed fee deal and UGC on YouTube is a variable deal. Your question broadly, so maybe I've answered it, maybe I've not. Tell me, what exactly do you want to know?
Just wanted to understand, you mentioned about, let's say, because your YouTube views have actually gone up this quarter on a sequential basis, but there seems to be some weaknesses on a realization basis.
On realization-
For purpose of this.
On April, May combined, and that was more of a real qualitative statement. April, May combined, we saw more advertising money, which was flowing on new stuff because of elections and then on IPL, which happens every year. And every year, April, May, they are not so tight, but April, May are tight because most big advertisers want to advertise on IPL and nothing else. And this is what was expected, and I had said this in my last quarter's analyst call also. And June became completely stable, and so we are back to normal rosy days, and July has been going very, very steady for us.
Got it. Second, on the event side, this quarter, you had 11 concerts with Diljit in the U.S., Canada, but revenue obviously doesn't seem to be that high if you're comparing on a sequential basis. And you did highlight that you had a relook at the entire strategy last quarter. So is there, if, if you could throw some light on that?
On the events business, can you just be little bit more specific, Pulkit, what is the exact information?
So, you've exactly, you've done around 11 concerts with Diljit, right? But I think if you look at the revenue, on a sequential basis, there hasn't been too much of an improvement also. And you did highlight in terms of your, you've had a relook at or just at your strategy, right, last quarter. So just wanted to have some color around as to what is the deal, what the new strategy has been in the event segment.
It all depends on, you know, how we are structuring the entire event. While we take care of, you know, the Diljit's entire event, the revenues that we realize depend on what kind of structuring is being done on the entire event, because these are being done overseas, and we've got different partners managing different, you know, events in the shows. So yes, you will see event revenue. So the event revenue in U.S., the way we have treated it right now, is very different from the deals that we have in India. India, we are managing it 100%. In U.S., we take a strategic call to go out there with a local partner, and we people ended up taking right now only our share out of it, on the profit side.
We didn't want to take a risk of such a large revenue coming onboard.
Got it. Yeah, that's helpful. My last question is on the artist side. I mean, given that you've reported, let's say, low single-digit margins for the couple of quarters that you've reported your numbers, where do you typically see medium-term margins trending towards in this particular segment here?
These are, on artist side, typically the best margins that you can end up doing. Artist, firstly, remember, there's no capital that artist management takes. Artist management is literally in a way, right, because all the capital is on music. Artist management on its own, apart from having a team, there's nothing else that we people are spending there. Our typical margins on the music side of artists can vary anything between 20%-30%-40%, while on the influencer side is between 15%-20%. There's a gross margin. You deduct the expenses of your team members out there. So that's the range you are going to be in, unless you have a breakout artist coming out. Remember, this is... whatever we make out there is straight, is additional money that we are making because there is no cost.
Got it. That's it for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question is from Girish Dhanani from White Oak Capital Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Just for clarity, the in Pocket Aces revenue is being partly reflected in Artist Management as well as in video. Those are the two places where it is getting reflected, right?
You are right.
So when you say that, 16, so you said, music is 142 plus 16. So this 16, which you're carving out now in the base quarter, June 2023 quarter, how much would have been the artist management?
So, so artist management today is a combination of what we people are doing with Pocket, in Pocket Aces, and in Pocket Aces also there are music influencers and, and acting influencers, as well as the artist management that we are doing within Sa Re Ga Ma. So it's a combination that you're sitting and seeing out there.
Correct. So the INR 168.16 crores this quarter is a combination of your legacy artist management and the Pocket Aces artist management, right? In the base quarter, June 2023, you would not have the Pocket Aces artist management, but you would have your existing base legacy artist management. So that legacy artist management in the base quarter, if you can give a ballpark number to that extent.
I'm – let me not get into that much of detailing at this moment. See, again, if the objective is to understand that is the music business growing at the pace at which management had given the guidance, I'm holding my commitment that we are on track for a 26% year-on-year increase on the music business, which is a combination of music licensing and artist management.
But without artist management, the music licensing itself also should be in 20%+, right? Because-
Before we had acquired-
Pocket Aces.
It is the same business for us. It's just that there were so many questions coming on artist management, so we said we start reporting them separately. It's the same business. At the end of the day, those artists are appearing in my music videos. So there is... And we are taking risk by having the same artist appearing in three of my music videos or singing five of my songs. So the revenue I'm going to make from it right now is also a music revenue. So we are very clear, it is a music-driven business.
Okay. Just, I mean, I know there is some variability quarterly, but compared to the other industry peer, why is there so much deviation in the quarter-on-quarter performance?
It will be nice, right? I think in a quarter pre-quarterly presentation, again, we have given the quarter numbers for the last, I think, 12 or 13 quarters. And you see this, the nature of a beast is this. One, there's advertising revenue, which is highest in quarter threes, typically, and we are a lot dependent on advertising revenues. Two of my, both on the video side as well as on the music side, a large contribution is a percentage of the advertising revenues, which is a, which is seasonal in nature. Second, overflows nature. The way our deals are, and we have told you in the past also, the way our deals are, they are minimum guarantee deals, with potential for overflows.
Minimum in the those kind of deals, we book revenues based on only the minimum guarantee value, unless the overflows come when they actually start hitting us. Once we exceed the minimum guarantee, and these deals at times are allowed to live for the entire period of two years... sometimes get renegotiated because of various reasons earlier. So the moment we did renegotiating the deals out there, overflows are going to get booked. So whenever you're looking at us, please look at us on a trail month basis.
Okay, understood. Thank you for taking my question.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Swapnil from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vikram. Thank you for the opportunity. So my first question is with respect to your Carvaan revenue. Could you give a sense as to what, what was the Carvaan revenue last year, same quarter?
So, those three, we have started sharing those numbers. You, from this quarter onwards, you have the numbers for the last full financial year. It'll be easy for you to make an estimate out of that. We have seen a decline in this quarter, I will acknowledge that. We have cut down our retail network dramatically, and we will keep on cutting it down over the next two quarters. By the time we will end this financial year, it will become only an e-commerce and a modern trade product.
Okay. Okay, got it. The second question is with respect to a multi-year deal that one of our competitors have signed with a global music label, which I think is helping them get better rates from global OTTs. Have you thought on those lines, you know, getting those kind of deals, wherein we align with some global music label and get better rates?
On my competitor, I'll let me tell you our strategy. We, as a company, want to be taking this, as a company, looking for 20, 30 years ahead. The whole reason we're investing in newer content is the same, and similarly, the rationale that our fortune should be in our hand, whereby we build relationships with each of the individual platforms, rather than, for a guaranteed amount of money, hand it over to some other label. That means I will have no understanding in future how a Spotify is functioning or an Instagram is functioning. We don't want to be caught in that particular situation. Please remember, every step we are taking in this company is not looking for just the next 12 months.
We are looking at anything within at least 5-10 years ahead, and saying in the days where there will be limited number of platforms, there should be enough competence sitting within Saregama, that we know how to read data which is coming in. A good example today is on a daily basis, my team comes to know every one of every 150,000 songs, every song, every platform, if there is more than 5% variance in the daily views or streams compared to the last one month average, and we take immediate actions on this. All this intelligence that we are building on analytics side and on marketing each of the platforms, can come only if you have direct relationships.
I often joke to that even if somebody is ready to pay a little bit of a premium, we let go of that. We much rather prefer that we build this competency in-house and have direct relationship going on with the platforms.
Fair enough. That's very well explained. The next question is with respect to how much content acquisition are we planning to? I think, in the, cash flow statement, you have shown around INR 47 crore of, content being acquired for this particular quarter. For the full year, where will we stand?
We have given an estimate of INR 1,000 crore for the next three years. At a very broad level, you are looking at number of anything around little upwards of INR 300 crore.
Okay. And how much cash would we have on the balance sheet as of today?
We already disclosed something in excess of INR 600 crore, which is, see our cash flow statement in the presentation.
Okay, got it, got it. Thanks a lot. All the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mayur Patel from 360 ONE AMC. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. Just want to confirm one thing, music and artist management segment grew by 6% year-on-year in this quarter. So are we on track to deliver 25%+ for the year?
We will grow music and licensing business of ours, which is music plus artist management minus Carvaan, a minimum 26% growth.
Okay.
We are confident we will end up achieving those numbers before the year ends.
Vikram, just one more thing. Can you just, my line was not clear. Content acquisition was INR 27 crore in this quarter, and you are guiding for INR 300 crore for this year. Is this right?
That's a content charge, not acquisition value.
Okay, what was the acquisition value for this quarter?
Just, we don't share the acquisition value every quarter. Like, you know, the guidance has been given on the content investment. That's the value of the total content that gets released during the quarter. And INR 1,000 crore is a number for three years. Around INR 300 crore plus is a number for this year. We will check-
That we are on track to achieve this INR 300 crore, content acquisition for this year?
For this year, yes, 300+ is the target, and we are on course to meet it.
Very nice. I'll come back for more questions. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ashish from Inves Q Investment Advisors. Please go ahead.
Yeah, so just one bookkeeping question. Would it be possible for you to share the content cost between the monetization and other parts of the P&L that has gone in this quarter?
See, the content cost is in different line items. It's part of the advertising cost as well as the depreciation... But to give a full clarity on the charge, we are reporting the entire content cost separately in the investment, in the investors, presentation.
Uh-huh. Okay. So what was it this quarter, total?
It was INR 27 crore. Yeah. Total.
crore. INR 27 crore?
Yes.
Okay. So, sir, I think our policy is of writing off maybe 38% in the first year, so a reverse calculation of this would be a right figure to go for the content expenditure that we have made this quarter?
Not really, because the phasing of the content getting released is very important. You know, the marketing gets charged off immediately when you release the content, whereas the acquisition cost will get charged off pro rata, based on when the content gets released. If you simply divide by 38%, that will not give you the right number.
Okay, but this will incrementally keep going up over the quarters now, because we've started spending on content as per your plan.
4-5 quarters, you will see this number going up and then stabilizing.
Right. Right. Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prateek Bhandari from AART VENTURES . Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted to understand as to where are we in terms of, the revenue, for Padhanisa. Have you started generating, the revenue for that, the music app?
No. So Padhanisa is still right now in a soft launch phase. We are still refining and working on it. That's why there's neither marketing happening out there. There is revenue, but that revenue is more of a soft launch part. So the product, it will require another month or two before we start promoting the product.
Okay. And you also mentioned that, for Pocket Aces, you have an intent to grow with a CAGR of 25%, and by this year end, we should be at a break even. So are we still on the same track?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Akhil Gulecha from PKD Family Office. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mr. Mehra.
Hi.
So you keep saying that we should look at music and artist management as one vertical, and we will do that going ahead, but we can't look at it this quarter because there was no artist management in quarter one of FY 2024. So for a like-for-like comparison, we have to look at the music revenue, and it just feels like the music licensing revenue by itself, like excluding artist management, which is an inorganic acquisition, the music licensing revenue by itself has not really grown this quarter. So why is that happening?
So I'll. I've clarified it. I'll again repeat all the three things. See, you will have, in the, when you are doing. It's not an apple-to-apple comparison if you don't do artist management combination, because artist management not only includes the artists which are part of Pocket Aces, which is the inorganic acquisition, artist management also includes the artists which are Saregama artists, which was part of the, revenue in the same quarter last year. That's one. Second, this music revenue, what you are seeing, includes Carvaan also, which has shown a decent decline during this, quarter on a year-on-year basis. Issue number two, so both, these both are, more accounting issues right now than anything else. The third part, also, I have to. I said this in my opening statement, I'll repeat.
Last year, two of the platforms which have now moved from free to pay were still free, and we had accounted for the revenue in the quarter. Those, all those platforms in Q2 onwards, completely moved behind the paywall and the revenues have come down dramatically. We saw the impact of that in Q2, Q3, Q4, FY 24, and as stated, has also been seen in quarter one of financial year 25. It's only from Q2 onwards, that impact will completely go away.
Okay. So it's largely because of the shift from free to paid. So you think from the next quarter, that should go away. So music licensing by itself should be on track for 25%-30% growth?
From Q2 onwards, it's not even part of my denominator.
Okay. Okay. Understood. Fair enough. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Divyanshu Mahavar from Dalal & Broacha Stock Broking Private Limited . Please go ahead.
And thank you for the opportunity, sir. I just wanted to know a broad industry question, that if, say, let all these platforms move behind a paid wall. So what impact do you see in the piracy? And is there any change in the paid app that happens if all these platforms move to a paid subscription model?
Okay, so let me answer your first one. If tomorrow we move everything in a, let's talk on major markets like Bombay, Delhi, and Calcutta, and Chennai of the world, if you move everything to paid, where, if... and somebody wants to say, "Okay, I don't want to listen to paid content, neither do I want to go to YouTube," where will they go? If you ask a random person today, they don't even know where to get pirated music any longer. So piracy in the larger towns literally has come to... is dying on the music side. Smaller towns, it's still there, but it's a different kind of piracy, whereby the local telecom guy or somebody side loads some pirated music onto your phone. That is still existing, it's not dead yet.
But on the larger town, the piracy has come down. So we are reasonably confident that if we people move everybody from a free to a paid side, currently you have about 185-200 million monthly active users on the free side. Some of them may just move to YouTube, some of them even do side loading. Our confident belief is that at least 50 million of those people in the first 12-18 months itself are going to move towards the paid side. Now, on the paid side, let's understand how does the math work. Our deals with all the paid platforms is like this: whatever money they make from the customer, say they make INR 100 per month, for the sake of simplicity, we will get on average 50% of that money as content pool.
That means other platform made INR 100, INR 50 bucks he's gonna keep, INR 50 bucks he'll give to the content guys, which will get divided equally across all the songs heard during the month. If the person is a heavy listener, listens to 100 songs in a month, still every song is now going to be worth INR 0.50. Today, on an average, on the free side, we end up making close to INR 0.10. And now you may go back and say, "Okay, not an INR 100 rupee customer, the INR 50 rupee customer," still we make INR 0.25. So yes, the realization that all of us as an industry are gonna make is going to improve significantly as we move towards a paid side.
All you need to do is to look at some of the global music labels to understand the impact of paid subscription on the financial health of the music labels.
Second question is, sir, that if are you looking that government is taking a step towards a piracy issue, and how do you see this subscription moving going forward in coming years? Means, is it implementing on the ground level?
With the government, we, as the industry body, which is called IMI, work very closely both with the state and the central government, to bring down piracy. There is a very strong conviction at the government level to kill this concept of piracy and get everything on the legitimate side, not just on the music, but even on the film side. If you start, just check out the stories that are coming out in media very often. Even the judiciary is very proactively helping us out as content IP owners to help us control piracy and put the people who are indulging in it behind bars. Other parts, remember, our biggest savior on top of it is technology. If I ask you, you or your family, how do you guys watch and listen to anything, even with video?
Chances are it will be an app on your mobile phone or an app on your smart television. Very few people these days actually consume content through browser. In the app world, if, if we people find out, which technology allows us to find out, that an app is infringing on our content and giving our content without taking license, we find it out very fast. All we need is to reach out to Google or Apple and seek their help to throw that app out, and both of them are very, proactive and helpful in this space.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ravi, Ravi Kumar Nareddy, from Nareddy Investments Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir, Vikram Ji.
Hi.
Good morning.
Good afternoon, sir.
Sir, operational cost, you include content cost, contract manufacturing charges, cost of production of film. This cost a higher side, there, INR 68 crore in this quarter, so what is extraordinary expenditure?
We have release of films. We have events. We have music also, which is on the higher side. So everything in revenue, which is on the higher side, will have the operational costs involved.
Okay. This segment revenue added video by INR 46.53 crore revenue.
Yes.
What is not able to gain anything material from this video? What is this?
Sir, as I said, on the video side, we are still in the early stages.
Okay.
To give you comfort, once again, on the capital allocation policy, there's a very strict guideline we all abide by, which is not more than 18% of the total capital allocated will ever go towards the films business segment of our films or series, to video segment of us. Within that, we people are operating in. We hope that in next 12 to 18 months, we will reach a situation whereby we should be able to generate 8%-10% margins out here at a much higher IRR, because most of the time when we are working in this space, the capital is actually comes from somewhere else, and we don't end up putting all the capital as our own capital. That's what the endeavor is on the video side, sir.
Sir, now we reach 70+ films in our database. What is your experience which you want to share with us now?
Sorry, sorry. Total films that are in here.
70+ films we are having in our database.
Sir, as we people go forward right now, future strategy remains is that we will be investing only in regional cinema. We are not making direct to digital films. We make only regional films that can be taken to theater. The financial discipline is that 70% of the cost of production should get recovered before the release of the film by licensing the TV and the digital rights of the film. The music that we end up getting out here right now is a music on which we have far better control, and hence we get higher ROI there, which is sitting out there on the music side.
On the video serial side, we continue with our strategy at Pocket Aces, that we will make content only once we have a pre-licensing or a pre-commissioning from any of the bigger digital platforms.
Right. Right. Sir, lastly, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, that movie we are, we, anyone made and we have attached with that, movie. Any such, in future, we repeat the same performance?
Just for your information at this juncture, along with Rocky and Rani, there was one more movie called Zara Hatke Zara Bachke. Zara Hatke Zara Bachke done even better than Rocky and Rani, in a relative sense, because it was a cheaper movie. And, Bad Newz, which is the movie just got released, this is the first time that anybody apart from, there another movie, which was a competitor movie last year. Apart from that, this is the first movie whose song has remained at number one position, both on Spotify and YouTube for 29 days globally. So you are, you're not, yes, our performance may not be Rocky Rani because it's better than Rocky Rani. We are very proud of Rocky Rani, and Bad Newz is also Dharma only.
You will continue seeing good selection of very big movies, more importantly, movies whose music has a lot of potential to go out and survive. Kalki is another very good example. Kalki has done very, very big in theater, the biggest movie of the year, and the music was ours, and music has also done very well.
Right. Right, right. And you are doing, Vikram Ji, very hard work. We wish all the best, sir. Thank you.
The hard work are on... I keep on repeating this, and I want to say to everyone, listen, we have an option to look at only a short-term profit strategy versus preparing this company for 20, 30 years, down the line.
Right.
We are very clear, while we keep an eye on today's profit, but actually we are preparing this company for tomorrow.
Right. That, I agree. Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Advant from Prad Capital . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. So I've understood your guidance up to the adjusted EBITDA level. More that on the content charging cost, which was INR 86 crore in FY 2024, could you provide guidance on, based on the acquisition that you plan in this year, what is that content charging cost in FY 2025?
So the content charge will be pretty high in FY 25, because the total amount of content investment we are doing in FY 25 is going to be 50% higher than what we did in FY 24. So that's the straight up we have a large enough impact coming on content charge off.
So, at the PBT level, do you expect to grow in FY25?
Sir, the growth will be there, but the growth is going to be much lower than the growth which is coming in revenue, because the charge off is just about going to end up... I said this earlier also, as we are starting this process of doing large investments in content for the next 18 months or so, that is 6 quarters or so, you will have the situation whereby the revenue will grow at a steep enough pace. PBT is not going to grow at the same pace, but after that, PBT growth is going to become much faster.
Understood.
In 3 years, we are confident that in 3 years, between 3 and 3.5 years, we should be able to double the PBT that we wrote in financial year 2024.
Got it. And sir, secondly, on the paid versus, you know, free, do you think that Jio and Wynk, which are owned by telecom operators, when they bundle their offerings, do you think they are ever going to get turned paid?
Sir, you said in Jio and Wynk case, what? I'm not clear about this.
They are owned by, I mean, telecom operators, right?
Right.
Which, where they would be bundling their services with other offerings, right? So, I mean, does it make sense for them, say, unlike a Spotify, like, does it make even sense for them to turn paid, or they, they are likely to remain free forever?
So, uh-
From a customer perspective, because it's bundled with some other service.
But, but they are paying... So the question is, are they ready to go back and keep on incurring large losses on this particular app? There may be other things that they can bundle. Content is not cheap. So I am reasonably confident that all these concerned people are smart businessmen. Also, remember, when you are streaming a song, the amount of data consumption that happens is not very high. It's not video, it's audio at the end of the day. So the benefit they may end up getting to, on the data consumption side is there, but it's limited.
I like to believe that the telecom-led OTT platforms are also going to make move, and you are looking at around in 18 months to 24 months maximum, all the three big platforms also moving behind the paywall. There is already a lot more work happening in this space than it used to happen on the earlier, a year back. And we are seeing that impact coming out there on the subscription revenue. The base is very small, so the percentage of growth look very, very big. But for me, it's that stage. I'm very confident that we'll have a large subscription stream growing there.
Understood. Thanks for taking my question, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Govindarajan from CSIM. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Hi, Vikram. Thank you for taking my question.
Sorry to interrupt you, sir. I request you to use the handset, please. We are unable to hear you.
Yeah, hi, can you hear me now?
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks, thanks for taking my question. My question, I mean, this has been asked many times on this call, you know, the music segment. See, we have three subsegments in music: the licensing to OTTs, the artist management, and Carvaan. Now, the artist management is a relatively new one. Last year, you did INR 20 crore of it, INR 13 crore was in the fourth quarter. It's very hard for us to make any sense of how this year is going to be. If it suddenly comes into revenue base and we have no idea how, what the seasonality of the business is, how much of the growth from music, you know, you've guided 25% growth, but would it all come from artist management? Because they're very, very different margin profile.
I think that's the reason people are asking again and again, right? That licensing is a very high margin business. Artist management is mid. You know, you're seeing single digits. Carvaan is probably break even.
Margin profile of the music vertical at the, gross margin level is not gonna change.
Yeah, but I mean, we would still, it would still be useful if you tell us, A, how music licensing, pure music licensing grew in the first quarter, and how you expect that to grow in the full year?
So it will be unfair on my part to start getting into a quarter part. On an annual basis, it's not just the artist management vertical, right? Artist management vertical always will be a very small subset of the music licensing. I can do artist management vertical only in non-film music. Non-film music itself is a small vertical. In a film music, which is lion's share of my music business today right now, there's no concept of artist management because I can't plug in my own artist there. So majority will continue coming out there from the non, from the, pure licensing business alone. Carvaan will degrow. So on an overall basis, the margin profile is not going to change. Here, you are looking at between licensing and artist management, the combined number growing at 26% year-on-year.
Unfortunately, beyond that, it's just too much of detailing. I can't put that out in the market yet. You will start seeing right now these numbers panning out. I'm also maintaining our guidance of adjusted EBITDA at 32%-33%. I'm not changing that at all.
Okay. One small clarification. You did INR 16 crore of revenue from artist management in the first quarter. Will the quarterly run rate broadly be similar, or is there a lot of seasonality?
No, in artist management, there is not that much of seasonality. So Q3, Q4 will be higher, but the seasonality, because it's not directly only advertising dependent, is far less out here than compared to the hardcore music business, where platforms we get a share of advertising money are completely seasonal in nature.
Okay. Okay, thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jyoti Singh from Arihant Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the follow-up opportunity. My questions are on the edited song side, that now a lot of influencers and brands are using the song for the promotion on YouTube as well as on the Meta, edited version. So how we realize the revenue of that song?
So, ma'am, two things. One, if a brand is using our music to promote any commercial interests of theirs, they have to take a separate license. Over the last, three to five years, we have invested a lot in technology, which allows us to track that on any of the social media platforms, if anybody is using our music or a derivative of that music, which means even if you sing in your voice, Husn Tera Tauba Tauba of Bad Newz, and you put out, our system will be able to catch it, and we pull down that, post off the brand immediately and then pursue them legally to go out there and take a license from us.
Okay, thank you, sir. Sir, last one more question. A lot of blockbuster movie are there in FY 25 and also recovery in Hollywood. So, we are expecting better year for Saregama?
Ma'am, my year, we have never grown our top line by 30% year-over-year. This year, we have already projected a 30% growth year-over-year. So, we are building it as of right now. We will be... Our revenue is going to grow significantly. The profits we are going to make right now, we will ensure that we invest those profits in picking up newer and newer, successful and popular content. So that it's not just one-year growth story, but it's a multi-year growth story.
Thank you, sir. All the best.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll take this as the last question. I'll hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you. I'll just reiterate, please always look at numbers on a 12-month basis. We have started an ambitious journey to start investing in new content in a very aggressive fashion. Many of you will recollect, Saregama had not invested or picked up any new content in the first 18, 20 years of this century. This journey started only 4, 5 years ago, where we came back into new music. We, we want to ensure that today we are making a lot of profits is because we invested in content in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and we'll repeat that so that when we are in 2040 or 2050, we are still the number one company. Secondly, subscription in music side is coming.
Subscription on video side is going to become even more prominent, as it happened in every other part of the world. That's a time that the people who've got the highest quality IP content, whether on the audio side or the video side, they are the people who are going to benefit a lot. We will continue our journey right now of building and growing this company at a astronomical rate, whilst also keeping an eye that, the profits need to be maintained. There will be first 12 to 18 months, where profits may not grow at the pace at which top line is growing, but post that, profits will start growing at the same pace and eventually start exceeding the rate at which revenue is growing. Thank you, and we expect all help and support and your blessings on this. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Emkay Global Financial Services, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.