Welcome to the Saregama India Limited Q4 FY 2022 earnings conference call hosted by ICICI Securities. 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 an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Bhupendra Tiwary. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Seema. On behalf of ICICI Securities, we welcome you to the Q4 FY 2022 results conference call of Saregama India Limited. We thank the management. From the management we have Mr. Vikram Mehra, who's Managing Director, Mr. Pankaj Chaturvedi, who's CFO, Mr. B.L. Chandak, who's Executive Director, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, who's Vice President, Investor Relations. Without much ado, I'll hand over to Vikram. Over to you, Vikram.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Let me first start this call by welcoming Pankaj, who has joined our company as the CFO. Our old CFO had some kind of an illness, so he's on leave at this moment. Pankaj has come full-time as the new CFO of the company. Financial year 2022 saw our operating revenues increasing by 31% and PAT by 35%. It's very tempting to call it a bumper year, but I believe that will be very misleading. That gives you a feeling as if it's a one-off phenomenon. It's actually just a continuation of Sa Re Ga Ma's resurgent story, which started a few years ago. Remember financial year 2014-2015, our PBT was just INR 6 crore. In three to four years, this is between 2014-2015 to what?
2018-2019, we spent that time, right, on rebuilding the foundation of the company on technology side, contract side, data side, people side. What you saw after 2018-2019 was a very, very new company, and the results immediately started showing. Just to jog everybody's memory, our PBT for financial year 2019 was INR 84 crore. FY 2020 was a COVID-based aberration, so I'll not count it. 2021 was INR 152 crore, and this year we are ending our PBT at INR 204 crore. This by no means is an exception. This is just a continuation of a story, a story where a company like Saregama, which is the custodian and the owner of the largest IP, both in audio and video in the country, is finding its place under the sun by monetizing its IP to the fullest.
That's why the old filmy dialogue, "Picture to abhi shuru hui hai." We believe right now the story is far more bullish as we will go forward. At INR 615 crore, this is the highest revenue Saregama has ever written. At the profit PBT of INR 204 crore, this is the highest PBT Saregama has ever written. This year has been a year of lot of milestones for us. Our music licensing revenue showed the highest year-on-year growth ever of 26%. No mean achievement. Do keep in mind we have been able to grow these revenues, music licensing revenues, by over 20% now for fourth year in a row. Once again, reiterating, it is not a one-year exception.
The foundation that has been built here is going to ensure that as we will go forward, the success story will continue. In fact, the licensing revenue crossed INR 360 crore this year. Combination of both a big investment in new content as well as our catalog working harder. In this year, we took a content charge-off of INR 46 crore compared to INR 18 crore in the earlier, that is FY 2021. We have been able to write a much higher PBT in spite of us taking a much bigger content charge-off during the year. A lot of you have asked me questions in the past about our films division as to when will it start making money and when will it become significant.
I have been telling you that maybe FY 2021, the year gone by, 22 is the year, and that's what happened. For the first time, films, television, and series vertical in FY 2022 crossed INR 100 crore revenue number, and we delivered our committed margin of 15%. Carvaan sales number during the year touched four lakh, and this is in spite of zero marketing. In fact, the sales numbers grew by 17% compared to FY 2021. This is nothing but a reflection of the inherent strength of the brand. Yes, as committed, we have done a break-even on Carvaan this year too. Overall, we delivered an operating income before content, interest, and depreciation. Our commitment was in the range of 32%-33%. We have delivered a 38% of OIBCID.
As I go forward, I'll continue maintaining that as we start investing in content even more aggressively, we will be delivering an OIBCID to the range of 32%-33%. FY 2022 was a great exception to it. During the year, we successfully raised INR 750 crore of fresh capital from the market. This is going to be used for inorganic purchases in terms of music labels, as well as a more aggressive position on new content. The first acquisition we did from this money was of a Telugu music labels catalog. We've got around 1,500 odd music IP from 280 Telugu films. What that is helping us to is to give the initial boost that we needed for our Telugu business, because as stated earlier, we are investing now heavily on the Telugu film music.
Another story which I'd like to share with you, something we are very proud of. During the time of lockdown, we started this project, which we internally call Punarjanam. What was this about? It was about going and recovering some of the songs owned by Saregama belonging to maybe thirties and forties and fifties of the previous century. They were owned by us, but somewhere were lost to the pages of time. Those songs were sourced from by going through various LPs, which were in the custody of LP collectors, primarily in the city of Kolkata. Each of these songs was cleaned up, moved from analog to digital, and then was serviced to every partner of ours.
The good news is that from a 130,000-odd catalog we used to have in here earlier, a combination of Punarjanam project, us picking up Mango Music's catalog and our own new content investment, we now have 142,000 songs IP under Saregama. This is by and large the year gone by. If I get a little more detail about the quarter gone by which is Q4, our revenue from operations grew at 46%, while PBT grew by 28% compared to last year. An obvious question can be why was the PBT growth lower? Because remember, larger proportion of revenue growth in this quarter came from the films and television business, which is a 15% margin business.
Our operating income before content charge, interest and depreciation at INR 64 crore grew by 57% compared to the same quarter last year. This quarter was also a very big one from the music licensing perspective. We released songs of two big super hit albums. One was Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Alia Bhatt, Gangubai Kathiawadi, and second is Mahesh Babu's Sarkaru Vaari Paata. Both these. If I take both these films and start looking at their cumulative views of the IP that was from Sarkaru Vaari Paata and Gangubai, the number has already crossed 1 billion. Remember, Gangubai's got released in February, and Sarkaru Vaari Paata has yet to be released.
This is the power of new content, if you get it right, and we people as I've shared with you in the past have done large investments on data analytics, predictive models to ensure that we get it right more often than not. We continued with the investments in Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, and devotional music. Often, some people ask us, how will we sustain competition from some of the other existing people or players in the market? Players who have been there in the market, very active for the last 15, 20 years. Let me acknowledge, are they formidable competitor? Yes, they are. In a lot of places, we even look up to them to get the right market practices.
Also remember, they may be formidable competition, but the fact of life is this, in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, some of the biggest films music have already been sold to Saregama. Why are the big film producers selling the music to Saregama? I think it's our marketing power, which is now being acknowledged by the industry. Remember, in film industry, the biggest marketing of a film is done by the music of the film. Most film producers are very keen to partner with music labels that brings solid marketing strengths to the table, and that's what we've invested in.
A smaller thing, if I look at influencer marketing, which is the latest way to market any product these days, we have invested heavily in data analytics once again to ensure that we work with the influencer who's the best in the category and who gives the best return on investment. We're tracking performance of every influencer in every category to keep on deciding which influencer to work with. This is a small example. Our marketing ability, our investments on the data side, on the predictive modeling side and our balance sheet position. If we want to do a deal with a producer, our producer knows that he is going to get his money on time. That's also the impeccable record that Saregama enjoys in the market, that we always pay money on time and we pay royalties which are correct.
All this is giving us a huge edge in the new film music acquisition space. Needless to say, the quarter numbers itself are a proof of it, but our revenues on digital side grew on all fronts. They grew substantially on YouTube, on OTT music streaming platforms, on sync side, on short format app side, and we expected this trend to continue as we keep on investing in new music. I'll repeat something I said in the last quarter. Our growth rate of over 20% and last year 26% is a combination of the industry growth of anything between 11%-12% and increase in our market share. Market share is increasing because of the rising popularity of catalog music that we keep on pushing and but much more importantly, our investment on new content.
We will ensure that through the work that we people have on predictive modeling data and technology, that we keep on investing in content which has got a higher probability of success based on the track, their recent track record, and use technology to ensure that there is no leakage of revenue happening once we have bought any content. The only black mark, if I may say, on the music licensing side during the year and the quarter was public performance revenue. We were expecting a lot to come from public performance during the new year and Christmas time. Unfortunately, that's a time COVID once again had raised its head with the wave three and overall, the celebrations were not happening in the country.
Most of the parties were banned, hence our revenues were very muted during the quarter and overall during the year from public performance. Every other vertical has fired. Just like the last year or the year before that, or even the year before that, quarter three is the biggest quarter for us from the Carvaan sales perspective because of the Diwali season. After the 141,000 units that we sold in Q3, we still managed to sell a pretty good 112,000 units during quarter four. Overall, the Carvaan numbers for 4 lakh, which was a 17% growth.
We have been maintaining this over the last eight quarterly calls, that till the COVID issue is not fully resolved, both from demand side and supply side, our entire focus on Carvaan is to manage our cost structures, both on the marketing side as well as on the manpower side. With markets opening up, the demand side is improving, which you can very clearly see in the numbers, but the supply side is still an issue as I talk to you. Because of the overall global chip shortage, we believe as we get into maybe quarter two or quarter three of the year, the chip shortage issue may start getting resolved by that time to some extent, and that's the time you may see higher numbers coming on the Carvaan side.
Our focus and our commitment again in the year is that we will not spend any major amounts of money on manpower or marketing till the time the market is fully open, both from supply and demand side, and will deliver at least a break-even on the Carvaan front during this financial year. This was a super big quarter for Yoodlee, a product that has taken four years from first year writing loss to this year finally turning profitable. It was an expected journey. It took us that much amount of time to establish our credentials in the market where we were relatively new. We delivered our first digital web series to a leading platform during this quarter. We also ended up doing two Marathi films and delivered it to various platforms. The story looks even brighter as we go forward.
Somebody had asked me, I think 2 quarters back, "When will this division end up writing INR 100 crore?" Yes, that division has already written INR 100 crore number in this financial year. But this division, when INR 100 crore is a combination of Yoodlee and our TV business, hopefully Yoodlee on its own as we go ahead in a year or so should be able to write INR 100 crore of top line. Our TV serial business continued to do well in terms of TRPs. Our Q3 was special because not only did we make money from our series being broadcasted on the channel, but a substantial amount of money came from YouTube. Q3 is always the biggest quarter right now from YouTube perspective.
Quarter four in that sense was more muted, but overall, we still did pretty decent numbers during the quarter on TV front too. Here we are ending financial year 2022 on a high on all the four verticals, delivering both the top line and the bottom line numbers of ours and becoming a force to reckon with in the market on new content, both on the music side as well as on the video side. Thank you. Happy to take questions from you now.
Thank you. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have the first question from the line of Dharmesh. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon, Vikram, and all.
Good afternoon.
Vikram, thank you very much for giving this opportunity and great sets of numbers. I am invested since 2018, and it's a remarkable journey with Saregama. I have only one question, Vikram, that what kind of pricing power we may have in the future? Because as we know, each OTT stream we have around INR 0.10. Looking ahead, do we have any pricing power rather than increasing numbers only?
Yeah. If you ask me, in future I am much more bullish on the subscription part of the business taking off. In streaming business, which is music streaming business, India only is the only market which is so free driven. Globally, the paid subscribers for music streaming are growing at a very, very steep pace, and they have already clocked over 500 million paid subscribers as I talk to you today. I am bullish that give it another 12-18 months, in India also subscription business is gonna take off, and that's what's going to give us huge dividends. Our paid subscriber when he listens to Lag Ja Gale is far more valuable to us than a free customer when he listens to Lag Ja Gale. Regarding our pricing power, our ability.
See, the good part with music IP is that if you want to listen to Badshah's Paani Paani or you want to listen to Gangubai Kathiawadi's Meri Jaan, which is a super hit song of Gangubai Kathiawadi now, as a listener, I can't replace that song by any other song. Because if you like a song, you like that song, and you will continue to listen to that song for next 30, 40, 50 years. And that's the power of Sa Re Ga Ma catalog. We not only have the greatest songs sitting from the twentieth century, which is Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Asha Bhosle, Mohammed Rafi, Jagjit Singh, M. S. Subbulakshmi, Chamkila, you know, the list doesn't end across all languages. We are also now investing very heavily on newer content.
With the combination of the two, hopefully, will put us in a very formidable position when we keep on negotiating with these streaming platforms.
Thank you, Vikram. Thank you. I will come in queue if I have another question. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Ramesh. We have the next question from the line of Mr. Vivek Gautam from GF Investments. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, congratulations on once again good set of numbers, very consistent performance. My question is regarding this de-rating we are seeing in the Western world of Netflix and Spotify. What impact can it have in terms of us also suffering some sort of de-rating in terms of price-earnings valuation and the fancy so far which our company was enjoying?
I can only answer this right now on a hard data wise. Hard data wise, you are seeing the numbers going up. I see no reason. See, that's the advantage we people have as a content provider and not being a platform person. We are not directly, right? Indirectly we are. We are not directly get affected by the ups and downs that you see right now of a subscriber base of a platform. Most of our deals, almost all our deals are either protected by a minimum guarantee or have a fixed fee component in it. We don't see any reason why our profitability is gonna get affected just because some of the platforms may be losing some numbers either on the video side or the audio side.
At this juncture, I will put my neck out and say, I don't think we'll be affected really in the short run.
Okay. Second phenomenon which is occurring nowadays in India is the Pan-India presence, especially of the South Indian films like KGF Part One, Two and RRR, so the Telugu focus for us seems to be a very sensible step. Is there a risk of we overpaying for these music rights? Or that sort of a bonanza coming to us because of this? So far we were focusing only the Telugu movie was only in Andhra, but now it is all over India, thanks to the good rapport and response all over India.
What you're asking me is a very subjective question. I like to believe that we will end up paying the right price, but this is always a supply-demand negotiation that happens. The only part that I can give you comfort is that at Saregama, we use data a lot to decide that how much should we be paying at the peak. There have been deals where we people have just walked out because we thought it is overpriced. eight out of 10x we prove to be correct. two out of 10x we end up leaving projects which would have been great projects. I think we are okay with that. We want to minimize.
80% of the times if I'm getting right in terms of leaving a project with overpriced, I think we'll take it. But the first part of your question, you are right, there is a large market of these multilingual films and their music there. We people had a Telugu movie called Shyam Singha Roy, and then we had a Malayalam movie called Kurup, they are not these 1,000-crore movies, but they are very big movies for their markets. The music of those were multilingual. They were not limited only to Malayalam or Telugu, and both these tunes have done very, very well for us.
Okay, sir. How is the society for artists headed by Mr. Javed Akhtar performing? Sort of, we are also, you know, getting the benefit accruing from it and or not, basically.
That society at Saregama, we have a board member seat on IPRS. In fact, I only sit on the board of IPRS. I think that society being run very effectively, and you are already seeing signs of growth coming in. Globally, publishing revenue contributes anything around 15%-17% to the music labels' overall revenue. I see as we go forward, all of us enjoying that benefit. All you need to do is just Google for IPRS, you realize that this is the biggest year IPRS has ever seen in terms of a collection. They're just going from strength to strength.
Mutually beneficial for us and the artists also.
It is. It is overall beneficial for the industry. I love it when artists are also benefiting because at the end of the day, we have to all acknowledge that we music labels or entertainment companies are because there are artists. It's always great right now that artists also makes money and we also make money.
Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much, Mr. Gautam. We have the next question from the line of Ankush Agrawal from Surge Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vikram. Firstly, can you clarify a few things on this restructuring that you're going for? You know, what exactly is gonna be demerged from the current entity?
Let me start the genesis of this. We people very strongly believe that the expertise we have developed within the company of distributing Carvaan on digital platforms can now be used to sell non-Carvaan related products too. Hence, this particular expertise we have put in a company right now, and that's what is demerged. That new company will become a non-exclusive distributor of Saregama Carvaan for digital business for us. They are within the rights to take businesses, non-Saregama, non-RPSG businesses also. Along with that, we have also put all our non-core investments in the group companies, RPSG group companies and other things also have gone as part of this demerged company. Which to clarify means our investments, we have some shareholdings of company like CESC.
Right, right.
We have a public business of Open Media. Everything is hyped up into that company.
All right. Great. I believe the current physical distribution is already outsourced for the Carvaan, the offline distribution.
Sir, distribution for us is always an outsourced part. How does Carvaan work? Carvaan works with the help of distributors. Carvaan, Saregama sells its Carvaan to distributor, who in turn sells it to retailer, who sells it to the customer.
Right. Right.
Now this company will become one more distributor of Saregama.
Right. Vikram, any reason why, you know, the Carvaan itself is not being, you know, demerged separately and making Saregama the current entity just purely music licensing business? Any thoughts on that?
No, we have maintained that, and we continue maintaining that Carvaan is core to our business. We have taken last two years financial loss on Carvaan because of this COVID issue. As we go forward, we believe there's potential to make money out of Carvaan like it did in the first two and a half years of its existence.
Got it.
But I-
Secondly, you know.
... let me complete this answer.
Yeah, yeah.
Till the time we don't feel that the supply and demand issues of Carvaan are not fully sorted, we will not be doing any spends on marketing or manpower enhancement. The worst that we'll deliver is a break-even.
Yeah, that is well taken. You have highlighted that multiple times. Secondly, you know, this recent Mango label acquisition. In the current quarter, have you seen any benefits out of that library? Or do you expect it to accrue to us in the future negotiations that will come in FY 2023?
The way it functions on YouTube, you see the revenue enhancement immediately while on streaming.
Right.
Platforms or short format apps. Where we get into these one-year or two-year deals, it will take some time for benefits to start accruing. More importantly is, it gives us a solid ground now in Telugu. Suppose I have to go to a Telugu TV channel. If I went to them only with my four new movies, I may not have been in a position to cut a deal. Now, since we have a larger catalog also that goes, and there are music videos that have come with it, we are in a better position to negotiate in that market. You will start seeing benefits getting accrued to us as we go forward.
Right. Would it be a fair understanding that, you know, at the time of raising QIP, you had mentioned that, you know, with this inorganic acquisitions, you will accelerate our growth rate from about 20%-25% to over 30%. Do you see that coming in FY 2023, or it will take some time more?
You are playing around with words. I never said that. What I've been saying is that because of the investments we are making in the newer content and the investments we make inorganic, the growth rate will move from 20%-25%. The 30% number that you're referring to was our ambition, that of the newer content that comes out in the market, we want to garner 30% of that, which will result into music licensing revenue growing between 23%-25%. I'm holding on to that number.
Okay. Lastly, Vikram, one more thing, you know, we raised about INR 700 crore in QIP, you know. Out of that, INR 60 crore was paid out as dividend immediately. This quarter, I believe we have invested about INR 30 crore in group companies as well. You know, this thing, you know, don't add up that, you know, you dilute equity and then, a good chunk of that.
We have not invested in any group company. There are only two investments that have been made right now out of that money, and we have declared that out. The expenses of QIP plus the money that we have spent right now on the acquisition of Mango Music catalog. That's it. There is no money flowing to a group company.
Not sure about it because if we look quarterly shareholding pattern, there has been some increase in Saregama as a shareholder in the group company. The cash flow shows some INR 27 odd crores of, you know, investment in listed subsidiaries. Okay, I'll take that top line but.
Sir, let me explain this right, and let me take this opportunity.
Right.
I know what you're talking about. We people have a company called Kolkata Metro Networks.
Okay.
Which is our own company, which is a 100% subsidiary of Saregama, which was holding shares of CESC, RPSG Ventures and Spencer's Retail. This company is eventually going to be merged right now into Saregama. Before that, we needed to first get the shares which are held by our 100% subsidiary. We had to buy it within Saregama.
Okay. Okay.
Saregama, those shares are going to be moved out when the demerger is happening. Kolkata Metro Networks Limited is gonna be fully merged into Saregama, and the cash is gonna come back.
Basically, you have taken the shares from the subsidiaries.
Got it. Got it.
That was very helpful.
It can go to the unit.
Thank you.
The cash. That is.
Got it. Got it.
The cash flow of INR 27 crore that you are seeing right now is sitting as part of a 100% subsidiary, and as the subsidiary gets merged into Saregama, that cash has moved from 100% subsidiary back into Saregama.
Yeah, that clarifies.
There's no other happening in here.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We have the next question from the line of Ishmohit Arora from SOIC LLP. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Hope you're doing well. Congratulations for a hearty set of numbers.
Thank you.
What's the growth guidance for FY 2023? Are we like basically remaining with 23%-25% type guidance?
Yes, we are maintaining the 23%-25% guidance there and an operating income before content charge, interest, and depreciation number of 32%-33%.
Right, sir, second question was, when it comes to the QIP proceeds, what is the utilization status? Are we seeing any good opportunities for acquisition?
We are in advanced conversations with couple of smaller labels. Till now, the funds have been used only for two things. One are the issue expenses itself, and second is picking up the catalog of Mango Music.
Because I think we've been hearing that the private market valuation in this space has been actually reaching to a very high level. How do you think about that?
That's what's also taking time. We need to pick up somebody has to be willing to sell at a price that makes sense to us, and the catalog should be something that is relevant and robust enough. That's why we are taking our time. We are not going to jump into it. Till that time, the money is fully secure and sitting right now in debt or fixed deposits, and that's something you can see right now from our balance sheet easily. As and when the opportunities come in, that's the time we are gonna go in.
Okay, sir. That makes sense. Thank you so much. All the best for the future.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have the next question from the line of Devanshu Sampat from YES Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, sir. Just two questions from my side. One is, you know, can you talk a bit about the economics and the expected investment and plan that we have for the artist management or the A&R division? How big do you expect this to be, three or five years from now?
Listen, it's too early for me to start talking about the artist management. It is not something which requires large amount of investments from our side. It's strategically a very important part. Financially, it does not take too much investment. As and when we are in a position to talk about it, I will share. Too early at this stage.
Okay, sure. Even if I look at this from the chart that we have, which is the, you know, the size of the Indian media and entertainment sector, so live events is a sector that-
Yes.
... I can talk about it to one. Nearly three times the size of the Indian music industry and growing much faster also. We've also mentioned that live events is something that we're looking at. You can talk a little bit about that.
Yes. Events, I can talk about. Live events, we started actually in the financial year 2023 in the month of April. Our first two concerts were with a leading Indian artist called Diljit Dosanjh. He's a very big Punjabi music artist, and we are pretty happy with the way things went off. We are now doing Diljit's live events in U.S. and Canada later this quarter. Overall, in the initial years, our projections or guidance on the live business is between 5%-7% margin. It will take us some time to stabilize that, and that's after that we can look at a 10%+ margin on the live event side.
Okay.
Remember, live events do not take any capital investments ever. That's a good thing about it. It is more about rotating your capital.
Does this, I mean, I'm guessing this will also probably help us get in doors with these artists and, you know, probably get better, you know, connects with them.
You are bang on. One of the biggest benefits of doing live events is the benefit that the music part of the business ends up getting. Because when you are spending that much amount of time with an artist doing his live events, there are all the other things you can work with the artist, which includes convincing the artist to do some song for you, which with some of the artists is impossible to get otherwise, all you get is a subsidized rate because you're doing a bundle deal.
Can you give a sense of, you know, some of the players who are managing this, how big is their revenues or that side of the business for the live?
Early days.
Okay, sure. Sure.
Live events, we are very, very clear we are not getting into all kinds of live events. Our live events are connected to music only. If there is a fashion show happening, Saregama is not interested in getting into that space. Ours will be limited only and only to either an artist show or a musical, a play that we can go out there and put up. If there is music, then only Saregama will get involved in it.
Got it. This last question from my side. You know, you've been maintaining that we will not be upping our investment in Carvaan and Andher Naal until everything opens up, which seems to have been the case now. What are the expectations from this business in the coming year?
From which business? Carvaan?
Yes.
Carvaan is funding for itself right now. In the current year also, honestly, looking at the supply situation on the chip side, we people are gunning for a breakeven. No fresh investments are gonna be happening. We did four lakh units in the year gone by. We should be able to show some amount of growth this year, but that's all I can project. All investments in the true sense to start going deeper in the market on the distribution side or building further consumer demand which require marketing, all that is deferred till the time we are not 100% secure on the supply side. I don't see that happening over the next five, six months.
All right. Got it.
Okay then. That's it from my side. Wishing you and the team all the best. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Sampath. We have the next question from the line of Aditya Nahar from Altana Enterprises. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vikram. No question. I just wanted to say congratulations on the demerger of the online business and the group company investment, and specifically the Open Magazine. It's been a long ask from a lot of people, especially from a small vocal minority like us. Thank you so much, and wish you all the very best, Vikram. Thanks so much.
Very sweet of you. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We have the next question from the line of Mr. Jatin from InvestSari. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Congratulations on great results.
Hi, Jatin.
I had a few questions. One is, are there any tie-ups which you have planned with foreign, you know, music, digital platforms, which could help, you know, sell rights globally? Like, you know, streaming music across, because I think collections are much more transparent and, fair in the global market, on this. Global users are more willing to pay. The other question is, in the demerger that is planned, is the publication business being hived off to the new firm or is it gonna continue with the digital, part of the business? Finally, in the balance sheet, there is a fair amount of difference quarter-on-quarter on the unallocable expense net of income, which is actually making quite a significant difference in the net figures, to show good quarter-on-quarter growth.
Is it a sustainable reduction or is it something which is only for this quarter? Three questions effectively.
Yes. Let me answer your second question first. Yes, as part of the demerger, the new company that has been created, whose primary job is to be a digital distributor of goods, also, in that company, we have hived off all our non-core investments, including the publication business. Saregama, the parent company, will not have the publication business with them any longer. Your first question was not very clear to me. You were talking about aggregators.
No, I was talking about like something like Gaana. Other platforms which would actually allow international users to use your, you know, to listen to your music and pay you a fee for that.
Remember we are today, if I remember my numbers correctly, available on some 42 different global streaming platforms. The nine in India, the ones that were there in India, we are licensing directly. There are few which are the smaller ones at a global level, we are licensing them through an aggregator. You have a very wide presence going on right now of our content.
Is that coming up well? How is that shaping up?
You're asking, is the revenue going up?
Yes.
Remember a large share of our music licensing revenue comes out of OTT streaming. If we are showing 26% growth this year on our music licensing business, obviously the music streaming has also grown pretty significantly. That comes both from the domestic guys as well as the international market guys. It's more from the domestic guys, obviously, but as a percentage, even international is growing.
Okay, thanks. Lastly, the unallocable expense net of unallocable income
Deepa, can you explain that?
If you see, for Q4, generally we receive dividend from our group companies in the fourth quarter of the year. If you see, this year we'll be having a dividend of around INR 7 crore, which is the only reason why our unallocable expenditure is showing negative numbers.
Okay. That means, this quarter is more or less comparable to last quarter if we adjust for the dividends received.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Okay.
The same thing you saw in the last, same quarter last year. Similar phenomena.
Sure. Thank you.
Now those shares have been moved out there to the demerged entity. You may not have the same phenomena happening from next year onwards. Yes, please.
Mr. Jatin, I hope your question was answered, sir. Okay, we take the next question from the line of Mr. Ravi Srikant. He's a private investor. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I basically had two questions related to the premium services that these streaming companies offer. You mentioned that there is a move towards customers paying for the premium services. For the premium services, I know of YouTube Premium, but I'm not sure of the other streaming services. There is an option to download these songs. How does that affect the revenue for the, I mean, companies like yours? Secondly, if you look at the pricing for these premium services, say for example, YouTube. I mean, in the U.S. and Europe, they are roughly, I think or six times the cost in India. If a view comes from these geographies, would it be fair to assume that the revenue that you guys earn will be five or six times if a view comes from India?
Okay. Let me try to answer both the questions. Let me answer the second question. Yes. A view that comes from outside India, especially if it's coming from Europe or U.S., ends up having a higher yield. Our YouTube model is, so whatever advertising money YouTube makes because of any IP owned by Saregama, YouTube keeps 45%, we get 55%. Since the ad rates are far higher in European countries or U.S., Canada, we do end up getting a higher amount of money per view. The yield is better if the view is coming from outside markets. That's also the reason why some of the language selection that we have done. We are not focusing only on Hindi, we are focusing on multiple languages.
Some of the languages that we have selected keeping in mind the fact that the large amount of views end up coming from outside India. That was the second part. You were asking, your first part was.
If the customer downloads the song onto his device, whether you get paid for it.
Yes. First, let me clarify this. If you are a paid subscriber-
Yeah.
What you do not actually download is called offlining.
Yeah. Yeah.
The day you end up turning off your subscription, all that content that you're offline will go away. It's not download. You don't get a permanent copy with you. Now, the way our technology helps the model to work is, suppose you are a paid subscriber of any of these apps, and you downloaded or offlined a song Paani Paani.
Mm-hmm.
You heard it seven times in an offline state where you are not connected to the data. You are on a flight, you heard that song seven times.
Yeah.
The moment you get off the flight and the phone gets data back, the information will be passed from the music streaming application front end, which is your phone, to their back end, that this specific song was heard seven times. We end up getting money for every time you end up consuming something that you're offline.
Okay. Basically it makes no difference from an endpoint of view.
Not just audio, even YouTube video offlining works in the same fashion.
Sure, sure. I just had one question on the valuations. I mean, if you look at the global markets, I believe there are two listed funds which are into the songs royalty business, then they have mentioned that they typically acquire new content at around 15-16x, the publisher share of income, historical publisher share of income. What would be this sort of valuation metric in India?
You know, one in India, the publisher share and the sound recording share, which is a master recording share. They are two rights. You buy a song, you basically are buying into two rights, the master recording and the publishing rights.
Mm-hmm.
Typically in India, it's the same entity that ends up owning all those rights.
Mm-hmm.
There is not that much amount of a difference that's going in. Also, remember, when you are talking about these global funds, what they are buying is not the royalty that a label like Saregama will get, but the right that is sitting with the artist. Let's clarify it further for you. When I buy a song, there's master recording. 100% of that ownership of master recording and the money that we make from master recording, 100% comes to, say, Saregama. The second right is publishing right. Ownership is with Saregama, but 50% of that money goes to the person who wrote the song and the person who composed the song.
Mm-hmm.
If as a fund, maybe you don't want to buy my 50% because I'm refusing to sell.
Mm-hmm.
you can go to an artist and buy that artist's 50%.
Mm-hmm.
Are you with me?
I'm getting you. Yeah.
In India, no such move is happening at this juncture where artists rights are getting bought. Somebody had asked this question earlier, that how do we believe this publishing rights society is going to develop over time? I think they're doing a fabulous job under Javed Akhtar sir. You will see that right becoming more and more valuable as we go forward. It will benefit us also, Ross, because we own the right and 50% right to royalty, and it will benefit authors also a lot in the days ahead.
Because if I understand correctly, I think one of the funds which I was mentioning, which is listed, I think some, I think Copyright Royalty Board or something had sort of given a notice that the sort of share of, for the songwriter is going up. I think YouTube and Spotify, et cetera, I think they have filed a counter suit against it, saying that the share should not go up because I believe YouTube has to pay from their pocket.
Yeah, these are legal issues. I can't discuss that on this call. As I summarized to you, in India, the publishing rights valuation is going up. That right used to make practically nothing for us three years ago. Now that right is becoming more and more valuable. We own the right and we own 50% royalty right also when that right is exploited. As the valuation of that right goes up, both the owner, which is Saregama, as well as the person who wrote the song and composed the song, all the parties are gonna benefit.
Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thanks very much.
Thank you very much. We have the next question from the line of Raghav Kumar. He's an individual investor. Please go ahead, sir. Mr. Raghav, your line is in talk mode, sir. Please go ahead with your question. Hello, Mr. Raghav? As there is no response, we take the next question from the line of Ishmohit Arora from SOIC LLP. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, sir. Once again, just a very basic question on your revenue from YouTube. The entire revenue from YouTube, is it variable or do we also have a licensing deal over here?
No, I can't get into that specific detail. As I said, any IP which is owned by us, which may be a song that we have uploaded on the official Saregama YouTube channel, or it may be a song that you have recorded in your voice. Suppose you like Sanjay Leela Bhansali's latest Meri Jaan, and you sing that song and put it up on your own YouTube channel, our backend technology will be able to track it immediately that you're using lyrics owned by Saregama. After that, whatever advertising happens there, the revenue split is 55% goes to the IP owner and 45% retained by YouTube. Beyond that, our specific deal with YouTube and other financials, I'm not at liberty to share here.
No worries. No worries, sir. Thank you so much for answering.
Thank you very much. We have the next question from the line of Ravi Naredi from Naredi Investments. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, Vikramji, again, a very fantastic result.
I was waiting.
Sir, to decide for web series selection, how our internal system works?
As to which web series to make?
Yeah, yeah.
We have this core team that has been developed, that's the only team that remains on our payroll. Their job is to constantly read multiple scripts that keep on coming across to us.
If we decide in film a similar way in web series?
In web series, there's a slight difference. We read those scripts. After that, if we believe there is potential in that, then we go out there and have the initial dialogue with some of the digital platforms-
Right.
... to see their interest level in that. That's how we take it forward. We start shooting a series only and only if we have a firm interest coming right now from a digital platform to license it.
Right. Really, Vikram, you are doing a very hard work and very fantastic work. We are proud on you. Thank you very much, sir.
Ravi ji, thank you.
Yes, welcome sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Ravi. We have the next question from the line of Akshay Joga from Xponent Tribe. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity. I want to understand a little bit more on YouTube. Essentially, how are CPM fill rates evolving? Are there specific trends that you are seeing as a backdrop for the general-
Voice is not clear. I'm not able to hear you properly.
... can you hear me now?
Slightly better.
Hello.
Ji, sir.
Is it better?
It is better now.
Excellent. Thanks. Wanted to understand YouTube is a little better. How are CPMs evolving? Because I see, at least this quarter, we've seen a good jump in the number of YouTube views. Not sure if the CPMs are also holding up. And fill rates, how are they doing? Would be good to hear that.
I think I'll leave it to YouTube to comment on this, because that's very detailed and competitively sensitive stuff. Overall, remember Quarter Three is the best quarter for everybody, anybody who's dependent on advertising revenue. We people had a very good Quarter Four also, primarily because there were some very big movie releases happening in that quarter.
Mm.
Mahesh Babu's movie SVP as well as Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Gangubai. We had some two, three very big hits in Bhojpuri and Gujarati language too. All that helped in the views going up substantially on YouTube and hence also the money that we made from YouTube.
Sure. A follow-up on this, maybe not last quarter, but let's say if we take a three-year view. I mean, you know, how has YouTube as a you know, on a per unit cost stream basis evolved? Because we generally hear digital advertising growing at a much faster pace than video in which in the past history, right? Is pricing also improving or is it just more consumption leading to more ads that's driving this growth?
Sir, it's a combination. Pricing is actually quite seasonal also in nature, but by and large pricing of everything is going up.
Wow.
It's a reality that during the days of COVID lockdown and now after that, a lot more advertising monies are flowing from television business into digital business.
Yeah.
Because the eyeballs, consumers have moved in a very big fashion from a pre-programmed television viewing experience to on-demand digital experience, and YouTube is one of the big beneficiaries of that. We people get a benefit on both sides. We have a higher amount of views going on for each of our content. Since there's more money coming in, so either the fill rate goes up at times or the rate per ad, which is on the higher side.
Yes.
By and large,
No, no, of course. I mean, understanding the quality of that group or where it kinda comes from, it's valuable if you have to.
The comfort I can give you without sharing competitively sensitive information is this is sustainable. We don't see this something that which is happening right now that one-off case. Quarter-on-quarter, we are seeing sustained increase both on the view side, but more importantly on the revenue side from YouTube.
Correct. One last follow-up. When you say over a longer run the industry is growing at 11%-12%, and you want to grow at 20%-25%, what we see is digital advertising as a piece itself is growing at 20%-25%. Given the large chunk of our business comes from there, why is it that industry, the streaming part of it is growing at 10%-11%?
A large growth of the industry is actually coming from streaming.
Mm-hmm.
Streaming is a free business which does not get too much of audio. Audio does not attract too much of advertising in our country.
Yeah.
What we are talking about is only the world of YouTube and Facebook.
Yes.
Video advertising is also on.
Yeah.
Audio, which is a large chunk of the revenues, there is very little advertising sharing that. Hence-
Right.
... the revenue growth rates there.
Mm-hmm.
Are relatively more muted compared to advertising-driven video ad, video-driven advertising. There the numbers are far more bullish. On the audio side, the projection that we people keep on making here is based on the fact that the status quo is maintained on music streaming. The day subscription takes off, you will see both the industry in general and Saregama in particular growing at a rate far higher than the rates that we are projecting today. I am personally very bullish on subscription taking off the next 18 months to 24 months. But the projections we are making are assuming subscription will not take off.
Certainly.
We say that our music licensing will grow between 23%-25% year-on-year.
Yeah, sure. Thanks and good luck, continuing the excellent performance.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir. We have the next question from the line of Yash Mandewala. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, Yash.
Yes, sir.
Thanks for the opportunity. Just a couple of questions from my side. Vikram, if you see the revenue growth from the retro catalog, and by retro I mean music that was launched before 2000, the growth here for us seems to have slowed down significantly. Can you explain a bit what is happening in this portion of the catalog, and how would we expect revenues here to grow over the next three to five years?
Sorry, how have you arrived at that conclusion?
The numbers are disclosed in the investor presentation.
I mean, but which number has given you that? Where have you got that impression? Can you just tell me which table, slide, so that I can, I know where you're coming from, then I can answer.
You disclose the share of revenue by decades, 1960s-1980s.
One minute. Be very clear right now. Just because, if I make a line which is bigger than your line, that doesn't mean that the other line has become smaller. What you are
The numbers are there, Vikram, so it's not based on the distinction.
I understand. Hear out. The growth rate of 81%-200% or 61%-80% has not come down. It's the newer content which is disproportionately high. We never invested in new content in the early stages. Newer content always gives you the biggest kick. Catalog content cannot survive at that levels. Our catalog content, what I'll request you to do is to look at a corporate presentation where is it there in this here, sir. Just go to the last corporate presentation, which is there on our website. It will give you a very good idea where we have shared information about how music of various decades, what kind of a growth rate is it showing. Our rates are above 30% year-on-year. It's just that.
Vikram, if we just look at the absolute, you've been disclosing the licensing revenue and on slide, I don't know what slide this is, Saregama music IP, you also disclose the percentage of revenue from, you know, from each of the decades.
At the end of the day, even if the licensing revenue say is growing at x, if the new content starts growing at 2.5x, 3x, obviously the share is going to become that much bigger. Because newer content gives a massive push in the year one itself. I've just explained to you, if I take my song Paani Paani, which was released in June last year, we have already crossed over 2 billion views cumulatively of all the videos connected to Paani Paani. No old song can ever grow that way. If I look at Mahesh Babu's film or Gangubai, combined they have grown contributed 1 billion YouTube views in less than three months. Newer content grows at a different pace altogether.
It's the older content which is still showing above 30% growth year-on-year, and it's there in one of the other presentations of ours, you can have a look at it. If something is growing at 60% and other thing is growing at 30%, obviously the 60% will have a higher contribution.
Is the revenue from the old catalog still growing at 30%?
Yes. That's why the what data we people are sharing with you are OTT streaming. YouTube maybe possibly that a view has come and no ad has come. OTT, every stream is worth money. There's a substantial growth in catalog, and not just Saregama's. You check out global companies, any of the big three, and look at their disclosure. They all come back and tell you that the music of sixties and seventies and eighties is doing very, very well because discoverability has become that much easier.
Maybe there's an error in my calculations. Maybe I can take it offline.
Please, we'll be happy to help you right now and.
Thanks. That's it from me.
Thank you, sir. We have the next question from the line of Nitin Sharma from Macquarie Research. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Hello, Amol.
Yes, Nitin.
Hi. First of all, congratulations on great set of numbers. I have a question, fundamental question just to understand that, for a song, a new song, what is a typical number of streams that you guys see, for, let's just say, first set of months, and how it pans out in over a year? If you can throw some light on it.
I can't share that information because then my negotiation power with the film producer goes away immediately.
A general understanding would be fine.
As Saregama MD, what general understanding I'll give you? I'll give you Saregama benchmark. It's confidential information. You'll understand that part. I can't put this information in public domain. What I can tell you is something we have told in the past, that for all the music that we acquire in a financial year, the entire music across all the languages, film, non-film, our internal guidelines are very clear. Commitment to our board is that the payback period is going to be five years.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Sharma. We have the last question from the line of Devanshu Sampat from YES Securities. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thanks for the follow-up. Just two more questions. Can you please give us the revenue numbers for the public performance revenue for in FY 2022 versus 2021?
Yeah.
If you can also let me know what was it in the pre-COVID era?
No, no. I'll not be able to share our revenues right now from any specific one vertical. You will understand. These are all competitively sensitive information.
Okay.
I'm competing in the same market like everybody else. I can't go to that, you know. As I said, we have managed to grow our numbers by 26% in spite of PPL not contributing in last year. PPL even did not contribute the year before that. PPL contributed only during the pre-COVID era. Now as the PPL wants to get out of it slowly, we believe this year PPL should start contributing significantly.
Sure. This is just last question, if you can just, you know, elaborate a bit on this. I just wanna know a bit on how much of an issue piracy is right now and, you know, I mean, how are the industry bodies or companies involved basically tackling this and whether there are, you know, and if not, what are the challenges that you're facing, whether to do with particular apps or, you know, particular P2P sharing apps and all the other sort, if you can just give some sense on that.
Sure enough. I apart from being the managing director of Saregama, I also happen to be the chairman of the music industry's apex body, IMI, and in that capacity also, I work very closely with government on controlling music piracy. I am telling you my, this is my eighth year going on, and I've seen a massive difference in the country on the piracy front, both on music as well as films. It's a combination of carrot and stick policy. One, the very easy access of legitimate music through digital apps and short format apps and things like YouTube has ensured that more and more people now want to listen to music legitimately rather than going and taking a pirated route. It's so easily available.
Who is gonna go hunting for a pirated version of Meri Jaan, when you can get the legal version at the press of a button so easy? Second, we have seen on the supply side a massive change in the overall mindset, where people have started acknowledging now that the piracy of a song is as heinous a crime as maybe going and stealing somebody's car. Earlier times, people didn't understand how can digital piracy be actual piracy or how can IP piracy be stealing. Now we are getting more and more of courts coming out. They're very, very strongly against IP piracy, which is helping a lot in India.
Third, if you ask me, one of the biggest changes that have happened is from 2014, 2015 onwards, people like you and me, pre that, typically used to listen to music or watch videos by going to a laptop or a desktop and typing www.something.com and going there and consuming our content. In those days, it was very difficult to control the pirates because the servers used to be based in countries where we had no jurisdiction and no control. From 2014, 2015, 2016 onwards, many of us have started consuming content through our mobile phones. On a smartphone, you'd consume content through an app store, which will be either a Google app store or an Apple app store. I think both the companies are very, very helpful when it comes to controlling piracy.
Every time our investments that we people have made on the technology side, we're able to track any app using our content very, very fast. The moment we come to know of it right now, it's relatively easy now to reach out to Google and Apple and seek their help to throw the app from the app store. The combination of all this, of easy access of content and both judiciary and Google, Apple as the custodian of the app stores using the strict policy, is ensuring that the piracy is falling very steeply in our country. Is it zero? No, it's not zero. In the smaller towns, it still exists. In smaller towns, we are hitting the piracy a lot through Carvaan, because the easy access of that content makes it that much easier for parents not to go for illegal side loading. It's falling steeply.
I like to believe, give it another few years, even in smaller towns it'll start vanishing.
Okay, got it. Thank you, and all the best. Thanks.
Thank you, gentlemen. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand over the conference to Mr. Vikram Mehra for closing comments. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you everyone. A great year. We needed your support, and everybody has been backing us throughout. What's very heartening for me here is a year before that was a COVID year, last year was partial COVID. We are out of it, and in both the years we have been able to go out there and start taking the company to newer heights. The sustenance of these numbers both during COVID and after COVID is also a testament that the fundamentals of the company are now strong. Environmental changes, which are temporary in nature, are not going to impact either our top line or bottom line that significantly any longer. We maintain our bullish stand on music licensing. We are looking at 23%-25% revenue growth in this business over the next three to five years.
We will continue aggressively with our investments in newer content, both on the film side and the non-film side. We will also be on a lookout for any inorganic purchases that we can make in either Hindi or other regional languages. Our, again, continuance in our approach on Carvaan side, it's a cautious approach. The objective is to ensure that we control our costs, and we'll not be making any major investments here till the time the market is fully stabilized. We commit to at least a break-even during the year. The films and series TV vertical is expected to grow around 20%-22% as we go forward. That's a range we are looking at, and we are looking at a 15% margin in that vertical apart.
We will be entering, or we already entered in this financial year, into live events. In the initial years, we are holding to a margin of 5%-7%. As we stabilize the vertical, we may look at a double-digit margin as we go forward. Overall, we are looking at 22%-25% revenue growth for the company with an operating income before Content Charge, interest, and depreciation levels of 32%-33% as we move into financial year 2023. Thank you, and look forward to talking to you guys for the quarter one call of FY 2023. Bye-bye.
Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.