Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Saregama India Limited's Earnings Conference Call, hosted by Emkay Global Financial Services Limited. 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 this 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. Aryan Tripathi, Emkay Global Financial Services Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good evening, everyone. I would like to welcome the management and thank them for this opportunity. We have with us today Mr. Vikram Mehra, Managing Director, Mr. Pankaj Chaturvedi, CFO, Mr. Anand Kumar, Group Head, Investor Relations, and Mr. Pankaj Kedia, Executive Director, Investor Relations. I shall now hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks. Over to you, gentlemen.
Hi, good evening, everyone. This quarter saw our operating revenue at INR 260 crore and an operating PBT of INR 76.5 crore. In this quarter, we have also taken the impact on account of the new labor code of around INR 7 crore, which is a one-time, non-cash, exceptional item. If I remove the impact of that, we are looking at an operating profit of INR 83.5 crore. As always, I will request you to evaluate us on a rolling 12-month basis and not on a quarterly performance basis. We have been maintaining that stand all throughout, and I request you to do it.
We have had a great EBITDA percentage in this quarter, but rather than taking that as our guidance, we should continue with our guidance of 32%-33% adjusted EBITDA for the mid to long-term basis for the company. Let me start with the first vertical, music, which grew by 29% year-on-year basis during this quarter. The primary reason for this growth was the release of newer content, both on Hindi and the regional side, and the partial negation of the Airtel Wynk revenue in the denominator effect. As many of you may remember, we were getting revenues from Airtel till mid-November of 2024, hence it was part of the Q3 of the previous financial year. That's the time Airtel Wynk shut their operations.
To some extent, we had that revenue sitting in our denominator, but now that that effect has gone away, it. That also helped us in going and registering a 29% growth. This quarter saw the release of the super successful Hindi film, Dhurandhar, which had the unparalleled distinction of all 11 songs being part of Spotify India charts. Its biggest song, Gehra Hua, even today, as I talk to you, is ranked at number one position on Spotify India charts. And its other song, Shararat, is in fact ranked at global number one song today on YouTube. The other prominent releases of this quarter was Tu Meri Main Tera, Main Tera Tu Meri film from Dharma in Hindi and Darshan film, Devil, in Kannada.
Non-film albums releases include our one of our own Pocket Aces artist, Danny Pandit, with whom we people had released a Marathi song, Za Pat Pata Pat, which did extremely well for us. And then we also worked with Amanraj Gill as part of our Nav Haryanvi deal and launched a song, Circle, which has become the top song in the Haryanvi language. Our new content strategic partnership with the ex-promoters on Nav Haryanvi is going very strong. Three of the songs released by Nav in the last four months are, even today, sitting in Spotify top India charts. Overall, company released 1,100-odd original and premium recreations across Hindi, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali languages. And this also includes Chhattisgarh and Odia.
Overall, our spend for the new content this year will be in the space at INR 275 crore-INR 300 crore. This has come down compared to what we had earlier planned, because many of the films that we had planned for the year, their releases got pushed to the next financial year. The two of the most prominent ones are Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Love and War and Telugu superstar Nani's The Paradise. During the quarter, the company made a strategic investment in Bhansali Productions through a significant minority ownership with valuation that is linked to the financial performance of Bhansali Productions over the next three years. We are proud of the structure of this deal, which gives more weightage to the future performance than only to the past laurels.
This arrangement with Bhansali Productions also provides us exclusive access to marquee Hindi film music at a pre-agreed cost structure with these people. This will ensure that not only are we going to get guaranteed access to the music of one of the biggest film production houses of this country, but also without getting into bidding, and hence, in the long term, is going to help our cost structures too. As partners, we will be playing to our respective strengths, with full creative control retained by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, while the financial oversight will be with Sar eg am a. For your understanding, this transaction finally got closed on 30 January 2026, wherein we have paid the money that we were committed to.
During our last call, we had informed you about creation of a new cell within our video team that's generating latest music videos for our older catalog songs by licensing new Gen AI video generation tools. During the last quarter, we experimented with multiple videos, got our own set of learnings, which we will be using to further refine this video launch strategy of ours. The good part is, that use of generative AI video generation tools for these older songs has helped us drastically reduce both time and cost to release these videos. What used to be earlier, something that used to take 10-12 days, through the earlier possible tools, or if we had to shoot, used to take up to 15 days, including editing, can now easily be done in less than 3 days.
And the way AI generation tools are moving, we like to believe this process should be completed in 1-1.5 days within a year or so. All this has serious impact both on time and cost to market. Overall, we continue with the guidance of a 5-year payback period for all new music content that we're acquiring, and after that, another 55-75 years of returns on the same music. As mentioned earlier, this quarter was the final quarter having partial impact of Airtel Wynk closing. It has got over from the mid of quarter three, and from Q4 onwards, we will not be having that impact sitting in our denominator. This will overall. This and the release of the newer content will hopefully get us back onto our old growth numbers. Our YouTube revenue during the quarter grew as per expectations.
The attempt by various audio free streaming platforms to push subscription continues to be there. The two big platforms who still have a free service are making moves right now to push the paid subscription part. This is great news. Though slow, but in a steady fashion, we are seeing a transition happening from the free to the paid side. And with India is the last large opportunity, which is sitting still for many of these global streaming platforms also, and an untapped market through which they can go and grow their subscription and hence their overall revenue. So we believe the growth is just there, courtesy subscription, knocking at the door.
Artist Management, the newer vertical within music, where artists are made popular through our IP releases, and then we monetize these artists by booking them for live events, weddings, and brand endorsements, from which Saregama gets a share. During the quarter, 60 new artists were added, taking the total under artists managed by co-managed by company to 270-odd, with more than 300 million followers and subscribers on Instagram and YouTube of these artists. As we continue our investments in all forms of content, we will use that power to make these artists big, and as they become bigger, the digital advertising following them will also grow, and we end up earning a share of it.
We are, we are very uniquely placed, as I've said multiple times, in this content ecosystem, that we are taking bets both on the content and the artist that is making the content. And our ability to make revenue is not just limited to content doing very well. At times, even better revenue comes in because the artists whom we people have taken to create that content, which helped an artist becoming big, also ends up generating large amount of revenue and profits for us. During the first 9 months, the music segment growth has come back to 18% on a year-on-year basis. This quarter was 29%, but overall, we are back to an 18% growth rate. We believe that we are on track on a medium to long-term basis, coming back to 21%-23% annual growth rate.
This year, the number may be closer to 18, 19, but next year onwards, we should be back to 21-23. As shared earlier, with the acquisition of a minority stake in SLB, we plan to wind down our in-house movie business. Over the next 12-15 months, we will release most of our existing movie projects that are currently in the pipeline. But at the same time, we will continue our work on short to a medium length video content, which goes either on short format channels on Instagram and YouTube Shorts, or goes as a licensing part to digital platforms or TV channels. We will continue our work in that space with a specific focus on Gen Z being the target segment.
On the live events side, Saregama did shows with Diljit Dosanjh, Himesh Reshammiya during the quarter. We also experimented with a lot of stand-up comedy shows across the country. There are many more shows planned in Q4, including our first music festival in Bangalore in March, shows around Lord Krishna with Manoj Muntashir in Mumbai. We are big time got into Bhajan clubbing shows, and we are doing with multiple people, the most popular one are being Backstreet Siblings. Our long-term belief in the potential of live events in India keeps getting reinforced quarter after quarter, and we will continue to put our focus and investments in this area. Again, as discussed last time, a new vertical around brand partnerships has been put in place, where the objective is to maximize revenue from brands in the areas of music, live events, and short-format video.
In the last quarter, we partnered with brands like Hero, OpenAI, Manyavar, Fogg, Greenlam, CaratLane, Gujarat Tourism, et cetera. This is our very strong endeavor to say that, we have been making money either from licensing our content to platforms: Netflix, Spotify, Star, or by going directly to the customer, which we do by selling a Carvaan or a live event. But we now want to build a vertical whereby we can also make a sizable chunk of revenue from brands that are coming on board. Over the next few years, we will continue investing in new music content. This will contribute not only to the immediate growth, but also future-proof the company, from content perspective.
We continue with our guidance of 21%-23% growth in the medium to long term in music segment, and an annual Adjusted EBITDA guidance of 32%-33%. Saregama's growth narrative will continue to be steady in the medium to long term, thanks to increase in digital consumption, both in terms of new customers joining the market and existing customers consuming more. With over 550 million internet footprint, cash reserves, professional managerial depth, and access to the soundtracks of the best movies, we are hopeful that we'll be able to generate earnings not just for next 2-3 years, but for next 30-40 years. Sorry, I need to... I made a typographical error out here.
The operating PBT of the company is INR 76.5 crore, which is without, if I remove the exceptional impact that we people have of the provision that we people have taken, which are INR 7 crore, on account of the Labor Act. If I include that, then the reported PBT is INR 69.45 crore. I stand corrected. Please, my apologies. Thank you, and we'll be open to questions.
Thank you very much. We'll now begin 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. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Our first question comes from the line of Sujit Jain from Bajaj Life. Please go ahead.
Yeah, Vikram, hi. So just one, you know, philosophical question: A, when you say judge us with trailing twelve-month basis, it is best to present that in your presentation itself, so that, you know, the numbers are for everybody to see, including your own team, as to how the numbers have panned out in terms of trailing twelve-month basis. Because if I look at that data, that data is materially down. B, how do we evaluate Pocket Aces and eventually Bhansali Productions? We need to have clear roadmap in terms of the parameters that we need to track so that we can track them. See, this is a company with a great team and great compounding. If I look at numbers, any numbers, three-year, five-year, ten-year, compounded sales growth of 27%, 18%, 20%. Profit growth has also been phenomenal.
And then, there is some kind of plateau. How do we address that? And one last question is, what about the shareholder who came in in 2021 at INR 400? If he'd invested that money, even in a National Savings Certificate, he, his money would have been INR 540 today. So I'm not that shareholder, but I'm saying I'm sure we want to basically service him as well. So how do we get back to the previous glory and trajectory? Thank you.
All fair points out here. Let me try to answer those. See, our strategy has been very, very clear, and we have been very open about it from the last four year onwards, that we want to up the investments on the music content in a significant enough fashion and not just rest on the laurels of the older content. Today, it's very easy for us to take that decision that we should reduce our new content investments significantly. We will still be able to go back and show some amount of a marginal growth coming in, and the profitability is going to look extremely decent. We have taken a conscious call that we will not do that. Music segment still continues. This is the first nine months where we are showing an 18% growth.
Till last year, we were continuing to grow at a 23% CAGR on the music segment of ours. Often what gets confused is, are the live music part, events part. Live events is, by nature, a business right now, which is slightly unpredictable. It all depends whether a large tour is going to be happening during the year or not happening during the year. Last year, same quarter, we had Diljit Dosanjh India Tour happening. Now, Diljit's next such tour may happen two years later. There is no other tour, so you will have these kind of a periodic ups and downs, both in our bottom line and the top line. The steady part of our business is the music part of our business, which has been growing in a steady fashion over these years.
The other part that you should track, and if it's not working, we are fully responsible for that, are our EBITDA numbers. Because if you look at the EBITDA numbers, that shields us for the time being right now from the content charge that we people are taking. And you will see there's a substantial growth which is happening on the EBITDA side. So we are at that phase of our company where we are trying to rebuild this company with newer content, so that we don't suffer the same problem that we had 25 years ago, when for a period of 2000 to 2020, there were no new music coming in the company and growth started stagnating. That's a process we are going through.
You will see this part getting over of this very high investment that we people made out there in our content. Because right now, the step function jump that is going on every year on the content side, we are happy with the kind of market share we people have started enjoying in the newer content. So as we go forward, the increase in content investment will be following more of a linear curve right now rather than step function, which means the revenue that's going to be coming on account of older investments on the newer investments will now soon be exceeding the charge that we are taking of that particular content, and hence the impact will start flowing back to the bottom line. Have I answered your question?
No. My suggestion is that can anybody in your team tell me that number, X of event sales trailing 12 months versus the 12-month period in the base, what was that number? We've been saying that that number should grow at that guided range. Has it done that?
And so-
You can tell me the exact numbers, or we can, you know, take this offline, but it is best to then-
Sure, please go ahead.
Every time when we say it is best to basically support that with actual numbers rather than just the narrative as that, you know, please look at it this way, that way. Let us put everything in numbers so that everything will be clear in black and white.
Absolutely, point is very well taken. From next quarter onwards, our presentation will now be showing the growth numbers on a rolling 12-month basis also.
X of events, which is a fair ask. We completely understand that. But my suggestion is that I can say that we are not there. Can your team tell me that, "No, no, we are there," with numbers?
No, no, we are there with numbers. By the time the call gets over, I'll give you the numbers.
Yeah, please.
That, what is the music, has shown on a 12-rolling 12-month basis versus the previous 12-month. We'll get you the numbers.
Correct. Live Events, which we understand, because that is a lumpy item.
I think the right part is music licensing numbers is what we should be looking at. Adding Carvaan to it makes no sense, because Carvaan, we have been very public about it.
Fair enough.
Focus has changed. We are reducing the revenue, but increasing the profitability on Carvaan. So the core part of the business, which is a steady income part of the business, is music. We'll give you the music numbers before the call ends.
Fair enough. I still don't get the answer as to how do I evaluate Pocket Aces and this new investment-
So, it is we have-
Which is absolutely right in terms of the direction the industry has to take, but we need to have clear parameters as to how good we are in terms of our capital allocation, the capital that we last raised.
I'm with you completely. Our guidance on Pocket Aces has been that this year we will not only show our growth right now, which is upwards of 25%, but will also be break-even. Last year, we people had still returned a loss. This year is a break-even year for us. All the synergies that we needed to drive with those people seems to be falling in place now. You will have a break-even year going there. Post that, I am expecting right now that the Pocket Aces part of the business, which is a combination of artist management and some amount of video content, should be growing at a 25% CAGR.
Would it lead to a meaningful ROE in that business after five years or after seven years?
Let me-
If yes, what is that number?
Sure. So I will come back to you on this, but please, every time you are looking at Pocket Aces, even when we acquired it, I said this, and I'll repeat myself: Pocket Aces on its own makes a lot of sense, but it makes even more sense from the music perspective. Today, if Saregama has got the biggest hit rate in the market today in terms of music albums, it's not just happening because we are smarter, or maybe a little bit contribution to that. But the fact of life is we are the most, most effective marketing machinery in the, in there on the digital side. And Pocket Aces numbers that they bring in of the followers and subscriber base, both on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, YouTube and Facebook, are a very big contributor, which is helping our music business.
We are able to drive bigger number of hits on the music side in spite of having marketing costs which are under control. There's a large help that that part of the business is providing to music part, too. But that does not mean Pocket Aces will ever become the loss leader. You will see numbers improving. There also, for us to get this company from a INR -10 crore loss into now a break-even has been a successful journey, and from onwards we'll build, and we will share with you the parameters on which you can go back and judge.
Yeah, and one last suggestion is, when we say in YouTube we met our internal expectation, I don't have anything to judge in terms of numbers what your expectation was, against which you said, "Yes, it's a goal.
Sir, you need to judge-
But I don't know the goal post.
No, you need to judge me at a 29% music revenue growth during the quarter and 18% on a nine-month basis, so. Beyond that, I can't share information. I can just tell you-
Yeah, that I get. That I get. But yeah, ultimately it should show up in numbers for us. That's the basic ask.
Evaluate us on a 29% quarter growth and 18% nine-month growth.
Sure. All the best, and thank you.
Sujit, Sujit, just to, just to add up on your query, this is Pankaj Kedia. The presentation which we have filed to the exchange, slide number 15 of the presentation talks about last 17 quarters music licensing income, quarter by quarter. So what Vikram was talking about, rolling last 4 quarters, that data is already filed with the exchange.
Yeah. Sure. Thanks.
Thank you.
...Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lokesh Manik from Vallum Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good evening, Vikram and team. A couple of questions from my end. One is, you know, you've seen good success with Dhurandhar, another film, regional releases this quarter. So do you expect this momentum, you mentioned one of them is completely limited Kannada, to aid the growth in Q4 as well, going forward, the momentum from all these releases?
Sir, let me not go back and talk on specific quarter. In general-
Mm.
We believe that revenue growth, apart from whatever little digital expansion that's happening.
Mm.
The subscription growth, the primary revenue growth that we people are getting is coming out of the newer content investment.
Mm.
Majority of our release calendar that was scheduled for Q1 and Q2 had got pushed, which was bunching up in Q3.
Mm.
and some amount is coming out there in Q4. So that's a content strategy which will help out there in the revenue part, too. Even last quarter, when we people had, were looking at 11%-12% growth in music license, music business of ours-
Mm.
I had mentioned very clearly that we will should end the year closer to 18%. We are already on a nine-month basis on 18%, and I hold at this juncture a reason to believe that-
Mm
Around 18% should be the number for the end of the year also, on the music part of the business.
Fair enough. And Vikram, just to add to this, do you see, you know, this success, you know, allowing you to negotiate better with the contracts with the platforms coming up? Because that's where new music also has an advantage. It, you mentioned in the past it helps you to negotiate better. So are you seeing that with the discussions with the platforms that you're having?
Yeah, let me put it this way, sir. The strength of catalog that we people own-
Mm.
Literally anything and everything of the twentieth century, apart from maybe the last 10 years of the twentieth century, anyway, puts us in a very decent position from negotiation perspective. And these big album hits that we have seen in Hindi or a Telugu or a Tamil, we have few very big hits coming out of Malayalam, definitely makes our position pretty strong when we are negotiating with people, especially the platform which are still on a fixed fee basis.
Mm.
So a lot of short format content platforms are still on a fixed fee basis. These things strengthen our position, yes, for sure.
Great. Vikram, my second question is on Pocket Aces. In a maturing phase, we are right now in a growing phase, nascent and growing phase. In a maturing phase, do you see this commanding the same EBITDA margins as the music business, or this would be more on the video side of the EBITDA margin?
Sir, this will be more on the video side of the business, because the music business, by its very nature, is an IP business, where you invest heavy and you take hits in the first couple, 2, 3, 4 years, and then, but later you have 55-75 years of pure margin.
Yes.
which is not the model which is followed either on the talent side or on the video side.
Yeah.
Because so the capital investment out there is always much smaller, but the-
Mm
... the profile of the margins is also lower.
But then, do you see the payback extending beyond the five years for the acquisition?
Sir, please, may I. I said in the first, on the response, question also.
Yes.
Whenever you look at Pocket Aces, please also look at the side benefit that the music part of the business is getting out of it.
Got it.
At the end of the day, we have—if I've got a music album, and a producer has to take a call that should they send the album to us or should they give the album to any of my competitors, the biggest thing, money typically becomes the same. We at times underquote compared to a competitor. We are still able to get it only because of a marketing muscle.
Mm.
For a film producer, it's not just the money that he makes out of the licensing or music. For him or her, very important part is: will the music be marketed large enough so that Friday morning when the movie opens up, there are enough footfall in the hall?
Mm.
What Pocket Aces is able to go back and bring to us is around 350 million digital footprint today across Meta and Google apps, which makes it easier for us to take any song and make it sampled by millions of people on an overnight basis.
Mm.
There is a large benefit of that also coming in, which-
Yes.
And those benefits are captured in different verticals. They're not just captured strictly sitting out there under Pocket Aces. Tomorrow, I can go back-
Mm
and start giving them large marketing monies to show them profitable, but that's the wrong thing to do.
Right. Right. Just last clarification, the big releases of Love and War and One More, they've been pushed into Q1, Q2 of next year or Q4 of,
As of now, understanding is, Paradise is Q1, and Love and War today is Q2.
Okay. Great.
We have another big movie, planned for next year in the Hindi space, which currently-
Mm
They are seeing Q2. My expectation is gonna get pushed to Q3. Now
Okay. You have a good lineup then for Q1, Q2, Q3, following on big releases.
So, typically, Q1 anyway goes a little lighter because most film producers-
Mm
are scared of the cricket phenomenon at that time.
Mm-hmm.
Less releases happen. They start bunching up towards May end in June. July, August becomes a very big release period, and then Diwali to Christmas is a very big release period. For South India, January and is a very big release period. Across the country, romantic films, February is a big period.
Understood. Great. Great. That's it from my side. Thank you so much.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kavish Parekh from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Vikram. Thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a great set of numbers.
Thank you.
Vikram, on the event segment, while I do understand that numbers here can be lumpy basis events, calendar, and all your initiatives seem to be on the right track, what kind of absolute revenues or, say, growth can we expect here on a sustainable basis, say, some sense on numbers two years out? And secondly, what kind of margin upliftment do we expect at the consolidated level as the revenue contribution from the movie business goes down over the next two years?
So let me try to answer the first one. See, on the events business, I'll be honest with you, we're still at a very early stage of this event economy in the country. Two years back, or 2.5 years back, when we started the events business, And I had said in our quarterly call that we will take a call after 1 year whether we want to continue in this business or not, and then Diljit happened, and after that Himesh happened, and we are realizing there's a large enough potential. But there are still serious infrastructural challenges in our country to make live event business genuinely a profitable business. We are bullish on that part, but I will be in a better position to give a guidance maybe 12 months from now.
I don't think today it will make sense for me to give a guidance on the revenue side. What I can tell you is, on the profitability side, we are very, very clear in our heads that in a steady state we want it to be a high single-digit margin percentage. On a margin basis, it will look very small, but, events business by very nature is a very high, higher business. Because the cash gets deployed, at best for 15-20 days. There are some of the times right now, events business, we get a positive working capital. So we are getting money right now to go back and fund our own events. So our, our attempt is going to be high single-digit margin percentage.
That's where we people are moving, but it will take 2-3 years to go out there and on a steady basis, achieve these percentages. Today, it's a hit and a miss. Some of the events end up delivering this. Some of the events which are at an early stages or wherever we are building a brand-new IP, ends up even contributing negative to the margin. Your second part was on the video side. So what you are going to be seeing, that our own internal video, where the biggest share was of the films part, we will wind it down over 12-15 months, so those numbers will start moving out of our books.
But we will get to the extent our strategic minority ownership is there in Bhansali Productions, we will start getting those numbers contributing to our own P&L.
On the movies part, my question pertain to consolidated EBITDA margins. What kind of upliftment do you expect, as a share of video, which is a low margin business, goes down? Do you expect to revise your adjusted EBITDA margin guidance, say, next year or maybe for F 28 going ahead?
So if you see our EBITDA numbers, and it's there in the presentation on a steady basis, we have typically, if I take out the events well apart, we have always beaten the 30%-33% guidance. I just want to get this mix a bit stabilized. Over the last one year, we have brought down Carvaan dramatically. We are now bringing down films business dramatically, but live events business is going up. We will need a little longer time for us to get the confidence to go and give a higher guidance. So we are continuing at this juncture with the adjusted EBITDA guidance of 30%-33%, but if you go in the past history, we have always beaten out.
Understood. Understood. Thanks for that. Vikram, EBITDA margins this quarter surprised us positively, but you have maintained the guidance at 30%-33% for adjusted EBITDA this year. What explains the beat this quarter and the INR 57 million-odd profits in the events business? What does that pertain to?
Sorry, sir. Your question is not clear. Can you please once again tell me?
So EBITDA margins this quarter at the consolidated level surprised us positively, but annual guidance for the adjusted EBITDA number stays at about 30%-33%. So what explains this-
It's a long-term guidance that I'm giving you. I'm not necessarily giving guidance right now for this year alone, because there's only one quarter left. I can't go more specific than that today. So 30%-33% is a medium to long-term guidance for our business at a consolidated level.
Sure.
It includes-
the INR 57 million.
Your second part, sorry.
The INR 57 million odd profit that you have shown in the events business this quarter, what does that pertain to?
So we had Diljit show during this quarter. We had Himesh show during this quarter, and we had some of the stand-up comedy that we people did during this quarter.
All right. Lastly, unallocated expenditure has witnessed a sharp increase over nine months, FY26, as compared to the last year. Could you highlight what explains the same?
I'll ask my CFO, Pankaj, to take this one. Pankaj, please.
Just a moment, sir. Mr. Pankaj is not on the line. He's just disconnected. I'll connect him to the call again.
Oh, so, sorry, Kuldeep is going to answer that one.
So if you see, this is basically basically due to the decrease in the other income, which is interest income, which we, we were having surplus fund, which we have invested in FDI and mutual funds. So now we are utilizing those funds for the business purposes. So that is where other income has reduced, and this is the main difference of unallocated expenditure over income.
...Understood, because of netting off. Understood. Thanks for that. Thank you, Vikram. All the best.
Thank you.
Hello. Mr. Pankaj is on the call with us?
No, I think that, Kuldeep has answered that. It's okay.
All right. All right,
Let's go to the next one.
Our next question comes from the line of Jyoti from Arihant Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Sir, might be this question you have got multiple time, but wanted to ask again, like India's paid music penetration, which is approx 1%. So what ARPU and subscriber assumption are embedded in our medium-term revenue outlook? And also wanted to understand what percentage of licensed revenue today is subscription linked, and how fast can this mix shifted, can shift? And also with 550 million plus follower across platform, what is your revenue per million followers, and how do you plan to scale this up going forward?
Ma'am, you have lots of questions. Let me see if I can answer. When we people are give our music, medium to long-term growth guidance of 21%-23%, we are not factoring in any major change in paid subscription in the country. So whatever comes on the paid subscription side, will be a booster on top of this guidance of ours. That's point number one. We, as company, believe that India is ready if, if all the, the remaining two platforms which are on the free side, that they, both of them, decide to go on the completely behind a paid wall, as Amazon, Apple, Gaana have gone, only Spotify and Saavn haven't gone yet. Once they do, we believe India has a very easily a potential of in, of, of, of INR 100 per month or INR 90 per month.
At least 100 million people going out there and opting for a paid subscription. That's our belief. The market potential is massive in our country. The success of earlier days DTH, then digital cable, and now video OTT services, even transactions being done on gaming services today, give us the confidence that, one, there's affordability, second, there is an inclination to go and pay for entertainment content. The fabulous job done by government on the digital infrastructure has ensured that the payment has become very, very easy and glitch-free. All these factors coming together create this perfect recipe right now, where a large number of people again can go out there and we move to the paid subscriber base.
When we also look to other countries, like a Brazil or any of the other Latin American countries, which on the economic side are not very different from ours, we have seen that the market continued on a free side for a very long time, and the day the one or two big guys decided to start pushing pay, there was a hockey stick effect and the sub-paid subscriber numbers went through the roof. Something very similar happened in China around seven years ago. We believe a similar story eventually is going to go and play out in India also on the music side.
As a company, we have that stronger belief in this hypothesis, that we are, when we are doing new content acquisition, we keep in mind that which are the languages where there will be a higher takeoff or the first takeoff will happen or the paid subscriber base, and we skew our spend on that particular language. It's a matter of one, two, three years, where even you will see paid subscription taking off in our country. Have I answered your question?
Yes, sir, largely. And the last question, follow up on the EBITDA side, like you have guided 32%-33%, but once CapEx over by 27, so what's our, outlook on that side, on the EBITDA side, not on the revenue, like you mentioned, you cannot guide, but on the EBITDA side, what kind of trajectory we can follow?
Ma'am, on revenue, I've given the guidance on the music side, and music, which is a steady part of our verticals, will continue growing at 21%-23% on a medium to long-term basis. So we have given a revenue guidance. On the adjusted EBITDA, guidance remains 32%-33% on medium to long term, because we have multiple businesses here. This is at the consolidated company level. You have music business, you have video business, you have live events business, and a small play sitting out here with us, the Carvaan business also, which is part of the company. Each of those other businesses take very little capital, but they're also lower margin, lower capital kind of businesses.
Music is a heavier margin because we have an old catalog helping us out, but also requires large amount of capital flow from investments from our side. The other part I want to clarify is, our music investment on newer content, we have given a guidance around INR 1,000 crore over financial year 2025, 2026 and 2027. After that, it's not that we will stop investing in newer music. We need to keep your company completely future-proof, so that in 2050 also, people are listening to the music, which is owned by Saregama. So we will continue investing, but the increase in the content spend is not going to be so steep as you have seen over these three years.
It will then start moving at the rate of inflation, maybe, which will be anything between 6%-8% to 10% every year, not this 30%-40%, at times 50% jump that you have seen over the last 3 years. Ma'am, have I answered your question?
Yes, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kunal Bhatia from the Dalal & Broacha Stock Broking Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So if we look at the overall numbers, like, what gives you the confidence that Q4 would be a better number, taking into account that there has been already some shift in the movie launches to the next year? Also, secondly, so talking about events, if we look at the number when we hit INR 400+ crore of revenue in last year, Q3, FY 2025. So, does that thing becomes more of a one-off for the next, say, one or two years, till we don't have a larger event in place?
Taking into account these large investments of INR 100-odd crore, we more or less stay at around that same 260, 250-odd crore of top line, which is not a significant sort of a growth number as far as the top line is concerned. So, could you give some thoughts on this?
So, let me answer the first question. Actually, I've not said anything about Q4. All I've maintained is that last at the end of Q2, we had given a guidance that of 17%-18% music revenue growth by the end of the year. At the end of nine months, we are sitting on 18% growth, on a nine-month basis. We are still hopeful to go back and maintain our guidance of 17%-18% on a full year basis when we end Q4. That's all I've stated till now. There are releases that are planned, and as I talk right now, there are various regional language releases that are also happening.
So we are, at this moment, still confident that we should be able to meet, continue with this momentum and end the year at somewhere close between 17%-18% revenue growth on the music part of the business. It's only on a medium to long term that we are going back to what old trajectory that we followed till financially at 25% or 21%-23% growth on the music side. That's your first part, sir. On the events part of the business, the these large events, where the big shows are happening and that, and it's completely 100% controlled by us, they don't happen that often, and we are very, very clear. What we are chasing on the event business is not the top line, but the bottom line.
We want, even if there are smaller businesses, events that are happening, and we are very happy doing 200 smaller events, but where we have a higher assurance of profitability than doing these very, very large events where the risk factors are pretty high. There are only few artists in this country. You can count them on a single palm, right? Where there is a high assurance that if you do an event with them, there will be profits coming in. We are working with, and we are grateful that we get a chance to work with two of those artists.
The numbers will grow in a steady fashion, but this kind of a lumpy revenue that you saw in Q3 of last year, which was not seen before, and even when it was shown, the revenue came, if you listen to my call last year, I had said, "This is one-off. Please don't hold it against us." This may or may not happen, but events vertical in a steady fashion will keep on growing up. And the great part about events vertical is there's very little capital which remains locked in it. Even now, if you see at the end of this quarter, we have got close to INR 15 crore, which is locked into the events vertical. Events vertical does not have to ever major cash that gets locked there because you blocked... Okay.
So the very nature is that you put the money in, you rotate, the capital gets rotated right now within 30-40 days, one gets out. So I think, events vertical, we will follow the same strategy: keep yourself very, very capital light. Don't get into any of the infrastructure related large projects part of the events business. Go back and produce great shows with artists where there's a high probability of success. Find business models where in case things go wrong, you can hedge that downside by doing something with the artist, maybe on the recorded music side, because we are uniquely placed being the only entertainment company, not just in India, but globally now, which is all present both on the recorded music side as well as the live event side.
We want to take the benefit of this so that we will always be able to control the amount of losses, if any, that come out in the event side. Have I answered your questions?
Yeah, so for going forward, say, on a medium- to long-term basis, how does one have certainty or predictability for the events business?
So, take out the one-off things. So just take out the one-off things, which when it happened. Again, I'm repeating, when the one-off thing happened, we had said it's a one-off thing. You take that out, there is a steady growth you're going to find year after year. So let me, every time there's a one-off thing, we will call out that one-off thing, and please don't consider that as part of our growth strategy. It will be imprudent on my part to say no when one-off activity like that happens, but that's the nature of the beast here. If you are going to be working with Indian artists, and we are very clear that's the space we want to be in. We work with Indian artists, artists with whom we also have a relationship on the music side.
Their all-India tours of that size are not that many and happening in the country. Most of those are very, very small. Diljit Dosanjh is the only, and the only tour of its shape, size, that has happened in the last five years in this country. And Diljit can't come every year to India. Please, Diljit, quarter Diljit impact, and then please evaluate us. So remove these one-off events, and you will see a steady growth happening on the event side.
Oh, sure. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management will be able to address questions from all the participants in the conference, kindly limit the question to one per participant. Our next question comes from the line of Swapnil Potdukhe from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. So, the question is regarding your content investment. You said INR 275 crore-INR 300 crore of investment this year, and our historical guidance, three-year guidance has been around INR 1,000 crore of investment. Now, does that INR 1,000 crore of guidance include the investment that you had done in the Bhansali Productions, or it is completely different and, yeah.
So whatever music that we will end up buying from Bhansali Productions will be part of this investment. So there are two relationships we have right now. We have gone out there and taken an equity stake in Bhansali Productions. As part of that deal, we also have a pre-agreed formula basis which all films that is produced by Bhansali Productions, the legal entity, the music will always come to Saregama. So there's a guaranteed flow of music without any bidding going on. That music that will come in will be part of this INR 1,000 crore.
Got it. Just as a second question is with respect to your video segment. Now, historically-
If you have a follow-up question.
It's a quick one, just, this is just a short one. It used to have TV serials, revenue from Tamil, right? And then there used to be some bit of Pocket Aces revenue also. So when you say that you will, take down the movies business to zero over a period of time, will this, the entire revenue go away, and then we'll still have some bits and pieces here?
We will have... I said this in my opening statement, that what we are, winding down is a films business, but we will continue with the focus on the video side, on short format content, which goes as under FilterCopy, and, medium-sized content, which goes on various web, as web series or TV series. That part of the business is a stable part of the business, profitable part of the business, that will continue.
Got it. Thanks for the opportunity.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aditya Nahar, from Alpna Enterprises. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, Vikram. Hi, Pankaj. Just a suggestion, with the new treatment on buybacks, I hope you all consider a combination of buybacks and dividend both. Just a suggestion, obviously, it's up to the board, but if you would consider it, that would be great. Vikram, there was some news report that said the music for Dhurandhar 2 has gone to a competitor. If you would want to talk about that, or, or was the bidding too high, your logic or rationale behind it, if that's possible.
So all I can say, Aditya, instead of commenting on a specific movie, we are very, very clear, we do content investment in a fashion that we end up getting a payback period. We don't do content investment keeping vanity in play at anybody. So whenever we, whoever good something may be, if we believe that there is a very low probability of us managing a five-year payback period, we don't go out there and opt in for that kind of content. It just stays there. It, it, I think to some extent, it reflects that as a management team, we don't allow our own personal emotions, ever to go back and come in place. There are hard-nosed financial calls that are being taken.
Great, Vikram, and just the point about the buybacks and the dividend. Thank you.
Point is well noted, and we will ensure we'll convey your feedback to the board.
Thanks, Vikram. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Aanchal Jalan from Lotus Wealth. Please go ahead.
Hello, thank you for taking my question. So my question is regarding the risk on the side of our investment in Bhansali Productions. Our company in future has options to even increase this investment to 51% by 2030, and the business of Bhansali Productions is very volatile. It can even be a blockbuster or otherwise. So does our investment risk in future stable equity or a more adventurous risk of debt funding tool to the company whenever it is required for any mega movie or anything? So can you please, tell me about it?
See, at this moment, the decision of what this equity stake will be will be taken three years from the time the deal was done. And during this, it will be based on different average financial performance during these three years. So the onus is fully sitting out there with the management of Bhansali Productions to be extremely prudent about what kind of movies are they making and at what cost structures are they making. We also have a complete financial oversight as part of the agreement on Bhansali Productions. So we are reasonably confident that things will be in control.
Also, I can give you comfort that if you look at the past numbers of Bhansali Productions, they run a very, very tight ship, and we believe that trend to continue. Our understanding of the next few years' plans is that the combination of the capital infusion done by Saregama and Bhansali Productions, and this ability, unique ability Bhansali Productions has, that they can go to a digital platform and pre-sell the rights even at, right at the script stage and pick up massive advances from them. The combination of these two will come very, very handy for them to go back and finance all their films without any need to raise debt. We don't see any need for any debt raise to happen. Regarding your last point on the majority stake, do we want to go out there and take or not?
That's a call option we'll be taking at the end of the three-year. We have the right, not the obligation, to go out there and do that.
Okay, sir. So if there is any requirement for debt by chance, then the company is open for that?
You're asking me a very theoretical question right now. We don't see the need, but if debt has to be raised, then the servicing of debt is going to be affecting the financial performance of that company, and that will have an impact on the valuation of that company. So I'm very confident of the Bhansali management that they will be extremely prudent while going out there and doing this. Regarding equity infusion, we, apart from the money that we have put in, we have no intent to put any obligation or intent to put any more money over the next three years.
Okay, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Govindarajan Chellappa from CSIM. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Vikram.
Hi.
Hi. I think like many others, I'm also confused on the guidance. Just, just indulge me for a few seconds. So you have guided to music business accelerating back to its historic trend of 22%-23%. At the same time, you've also said that the consolidated margins will fall from 39% we saw in the first nine months, to 32%-33%, which is what you've been guiding in the past. Now, is this because you expect the other lower margin businesses to grow much faster, and therefore the mix changes adversely, or do you expect margins in the music business to come down?
So I think you've at least the guidance you got right. I've been holding on to 32%-33% guidance, I think, for last 4 or 5 years now. It's the—And I'm saying this repeatedly because of the mix that we people have. Suddenly, you have a large Diljit Dosanjh kind of an event happening again. And the margin in that quarter, if I remember it correctly, EBITDA margin fallen down 29% or 30%. So I want some amount of stability to come in, as video business ramps down, live events become, the business becomes little more predictable, we will be in a better position to, if needed be, to go back and change our guidance. Music profitability is not going to come down. There's no reason.
It not come down over the years. There's no reason for us to go back and come down at all. If anything, subscription is going to be ensuring as subscription goes up, that the yield per view or a stream is gonna go up. So profitability, if anything, will improve rather than coming down. I don't want to change the corporate level guidance till the time these verticals that we people have get a proper stability. If we people, like, if you see this quarter's EBITDA percentage sitting at 46%. Now, these are aberrations that keep on happening. A 46% cannot be offered right now on quarter and quarter. It just depends on which content got released or which revenue peaked, while the cost may be sitting on quarter two or a quarter four basis.
Long term, it's not that we believe EBITDA percentages are going to come down. We will change our guidance once the mix of our vertical stabilizes.
I think the confusion comes because you give guidance on top line just for music, but margins is for the whole company.
Okay.
So there is an inherent assumption you've made for growth in other businesses, which mathematically would suggest that you are expecting other businesses to grow much faster than 20%-23%, which is, which is why all this confusion.
Okay, fair enough. Let me see if next time onwards, right now, when we do the annual call, what more refinement in our guidance for individual verticals can we, we will give?
Yeah. Just, just to be clear, you don't expect music margins to be very different from what it has been for the last 12 months?
No. Music margins are not going to fall down. If anything, over time, music margins may marginally improve.
Okay, that's comforting. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anand P from Seema Wealth Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, good evening, members. Just want to know, do you have the exact margins of the, as of this quarter, the exact margin for each segment?
You can go out there in the results. It's given for the various segments, the margins are there as part of the segment results.
Also see the top, what is the revenue breakup, but the margins on each segment, I don't see it has to be there.
So there, it's on the page 2 of the results. The first row is for segment revenue, second is called segment results, where the margins are there. If you can ask me the question, I can hopefully answer that.
Okay, okay, okay. In the case of live events, now the, what do you say, the craze for, like, okay, concerts and events, like, goes up more and more. Now, is there any thing for, like, now, Saregama is definitely, like, relying on its existing artists for live events, or would it move to other artists beyond its list of artists under the catalog?
... let's say, even foreign artist or someone to come as the basis of my events, would that be possible or would it come under, like, say, you know, music license problems or anything?
No, there's no problem. It's a, it's a strategic call. Our focus always has been to work with the Indian artists because of the unique position that along with being a live events producer, we are also a music, recorded music company. So when we work with these artists, like Diljit or Himesh or a Backstage Siblings and likes of many of these, we also very often do a combined deal whereby we buy their music as well as sign them up for the live events business. Does it stop us from working with any of the international artists on a pure live event business? No, it does not. Today, our focus is higher on the Indian artists.
We believe the financial performance on the bottom line is far better on the Indian artists, because the cost structures are something we can manage better than cost structures on many of the international artists.
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shivant Sarvaiya from Hume Vision Investment Advisors LLP. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes, please.
Yes, sir. So my question was on the artist management business. You spoke in your opening remarks that we manage around 270+ artists. So, if I want to view these the name of these artists and the details of these artists, where can I get the source? Where can I source them from, from the, because I can't see them on your website.
We typically don't give the names that easy, because the moment my competition knows everybody in detail, it becomes easy to go out there and poach.
Okay.
I'm happy to share that the entire full list. You have the big artist names that I mentioned, but the entire list of 270, strategically. I also thought we should go out there and put it, and the team was really up in arms, saying: "Why are you giving it on a platter to our competition?" Especially on the influencer side. So, bigger artist names are there all across. The long tail that we people have here, we keep it only to ourselves. I'll be happy to share with you if please come over to the office, and I'll show you.
Okay, sir. So just one couple of queries in the same breath. When I see your presentation, page 27, you've given us a list of few artists. So is it suffice to say that these are the top, maybe the largest artists that you manage?
It's a combination of the legacy artists and some of the newer names that have come out here in the recent times.
Okay.
So what we do is, if you see, there are three of those, star marked. We are intentionally going out there and highlighting the names of the artists who have been onboarded, who have a large fan following and been onboarded in this quarter itself. Please, I don't know if you have that feeling, but a lot of people, when I talk to them, that we also are a managed artist, they start thinking that we'll be managing Bollywood. We are very, very clear, as a company, we don't manage Bollywood talent. There is no value that we can go bring, and bring in to a large Bollywood talent. We bring value to talent, which are mid-term basis right now or in non-Bollywood, by giving them a large opportunity to appear in a video or music content.
That's how we build the artists and build a long-term relationship with them.
Okay.
If you see a face out there called Viraj Ghelani. Now, with Viraj Ghelani-
Yes.
He’s a very big talent today on the digital side, specializing in Gujarati stand-up comedy. We have now done a movie with him. We are also now doing stand-up acts with him, both India and abroad, and there is a play right now on one of the Gujarati songs he will be featuring. So that’s how we make that talent bigger. It gets into a much more stronger relationship than just a transactional relationship with the talent.
Got it. Got it. And, sir, in this 270, could you give me the split between music-
Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but if you have a follow-up question, please.
It's the same-
Please go ahead.
It's the same question, which I'm-
Sir, there are no clear-cut differentiator. Many of the artists, like, you are not going to be calling Viraj a traditionally, a music artist, but Viraj is doing music video for us.
Right.
We have just done this massive, massive Marathi song, "Zapat Patapat," with Danny Pandit. Now, Danny Pandit traditionally was not a music guy. He's doing a lot of music. So the way we manage in our system is, all talent is working primarily in music, because that's the biggest content investment that we people do, but also in some of the video content. I have Maahi, a young kid who happens to be Shaan's younger son, and we manage him. He does music with us, but we've also done web series with him on FilterCopy.
So that's the power that we people bring in, that we are there in music as well as video and live events, and we plug in our talent that we people manage across all, and then sell it to the corporate market or the wedding market or to the brands market and earn our commissions.
Correct, sir. By music, I meant singer, non-singer, if you can give me that split. And, just one-
Sir, I'm so happy to chat with you-
Okay.
And give you more details.
Okay, sir. Sir, yeah, in just one last one, quick one.
If you have a follow-up question, please.
It's just a quick one, if I may. Say, in your compensation structure, do you have a minimum guarantee that you give out to these artists?
Sir, are you getting... Now, getting into too much of details. I can't get into-
Okay.
Deal structures with my talent.
Okay. Okay, sir, no problem. Thank you very much for this.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Hitendra Pradhan from Maximal Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I hope I'm audible.
Yes, please.
So the core business, which is like music licensing, that is growing at, as you mentioned earlier, also like, you know, 20% plus, and our guidance is, you know, it can grow at 20%-25%. So my question is, you know, what is the contribution of our older catalog and the newer catalog, like, you know, the, say, you know, last, three, four quarters or one year, one year of catalog, for this kind of, you know, growth rate?
Sir, I'll not be able to give you last one year data. It's too much competitive intensive-
Sir, ballpark, ballpark, like, you know, like what is the next rate of contribution, basically?
Because what we have shared in the past, I can go back and tell you this, that this is the data I think we shared in the last annual presentation of ours. So around 56% of all the revenue that we have made in financial year 2025 actually came from music that was released in twenty-first century, and 44% of the stuff came right now from our older catalog, which is the twentieth century content catalog. Kishore, the Rafi Saab, Lata Didi, that kind of part. We are steadily seeing a larger, though catalog is growing for us, but the large increase that we people are seeing on the growth side is coming from the newer content investment.
Industry is growing anything between 5%-8% year-on-year basis. Remaining growth that is coming in is coming in because we are investing heavily on newer content and our market share is going up.
Sir, fair to assume, sir, like, more bulk of our growth in the music licensing is coming from our new catalog, right? Like the ones we are investing.
Sir, if I'm saying 21%-23%, not 22%-25%, 21%-23% is the guidance that we are giving for future growth in music business. This is assuming subscription will continue growing at the same pace, and then the hockey stick effect is not going to happen. The industry growth is 6%-8%, so the older content will continue growing at that particular pace, and remaining growth is gonna come because of the newer content investments that we people are making.
Got it, sir. Got it, sir. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, that was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you, everyone. This quarter, I'm just going to repeat some of the key numbers which are important for us. This quarter saw the music vertical revenue grow by 29% year-on-year basis. On a nine-month basis, we are back to 18% growth rate. We are confident that we will be able to meet our guidance for the full financial year of 17%-18% growth in music business. On a medium to long-term basis, we hold our guidance of 21%-23%, which we have been able to achieve over the last eight years, leaving this year, every year in the past, and we are very confident we will be able to achieve that. Our Adjusted EBITDA percentage during the quarter, this quarter, was exceptionally high at 46%.
Our guidance, though, remains at 32%-33% because of the mix of various verticals that we have. But with time, we, our endeavor is to go out there and better it. We will continue investing in newer content, keeping data and five-year payback period as the sole guidance factor, because that will ensure that every new piece of content that we people are bringing in is going to be adding something to the bottom line today and very substantially to the bottom line in the long run. Thank you, and look forward to your continued support. Thank you and good evening.
Thank you. On behalf of Emkay Global Financial Services Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.