Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to DB Corp Limited Q4 and FY 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. 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 and zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. We have with us today the senior management team of DB Corp Limited: Mr. Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director; Mr. Girish Agarwal, Promoter, Director; Mr. Lalit Jain, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Mushtaq Ali , Senior Vice President, Finance and Accounts; and Mr. Prasoon Kumar Pandey , Head, Investor Relations and Media Relations, who will represent DB Corp Limited on the call.
The management will be sharing the key operating and financial highlights for the quarter and full year ended March 31st, 2026, followed by the question-and-answer session. Please note that some of the statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Documents relating to the company's financial performance have already been emailed to you and are available on the website of stock exchanges and the company's investor section. Trust, you have been able to go through the same. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pawan Agarwal. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, and good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Q4 and FY 2026 earnings call. We will begin with a brief overview of our financial performance for the quarter and the full year ended March 31st, 2026, followed by key operational updates across our businesses. Despite a global geopolitical uncertainty during the quarter gone by, our print business continued to grow steadily, supported by improving advertiser sentiment across key sectors such as education, real estate, healthcare, automobile, and government. Our consolidated advertising revenue in Q4 FY 2026 grew by around 6% year-on-year to INR 4,067 million compared to INR 3,841 million in Q4 FY 2025, along with stable circulation revenue at INR 1,162 million.
The consolidated total revenue grew by 4% year-on-year to INR 5,896 million, and EBITDA for the quarter grew by 15.6% year-on-year to INR 1,176 million, while profit after tax grew by 18.8% year-on-year to INR 622 million, underscoring the resilience and operational strength of our business model. For FY 2026, our performance was largely flat compared to the last fiscal, with consolidated total revenue at INR 24,408 million compared to INR 24,212 million in FY 2025, EBITDA at INR 5,736 million, and PAT at INR 3,320 million. However, on a like-to-like basis, that is after excluding last year's election impact, our print advertising revenue delivered a healthy growth of 6.3% year-on-year and EBITDA growth of 7.1% year-on-year, with EBITDA margin expansion of 66 basis points to a robust 28% in FY 2026.
On the cost side, newsprint prices witnessed some upward trend during the quarter due to factors such as raw material cost pressures, global supply dynamics, and logistics cost and demand- supply imbalances. We believe the current trend is temporary and may continue for the next couple of quarters. Moving on to our digital business. Digital continues to be a focused business area for the company. As of March 2026, our news apps recorded around 20 million monthly active users, maintaining Dainik Bhaskar's leadership position as the number one Hindi and Gujarati news app. Our focus continues to remain on high-quality content, better user experience, and strengthening our technology platform to improve engagement as well as retention. We continue to see strong traction in hyperlocal content, visual storytelling, and personalized content formats across our markets.
In the radio segment, advertising revenues for the quarter stood at INR 358 million, while EBITDA stood at INR 95 million. During the year, MY FM expanded its network with seven new stations, strengthening our presence now to 37 cities across India. I am happy to share that all new seven stations have become EBITDA positive within three months' time only. We continue to focus on strengthening listener engagement through innovative content and on-ground activations. With this, I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Girish Agarwal for his comments. Thank you. Over to you, Girish.
Thank you, Pawan. Good evening, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. Print as a medium continues to perform consistently for us and continues to demonstrate resilience despite the perception in some sections that print is declining medium. Over the last few years, our company has consistently delivered robust performance across businesses. Between FY 2022 and FY 2025, our advertising revenue has grown at a healthy CAGR of around 13%, while our continued focus on operational efficiencies and cost discipline helped deliver a consolidated PAT CAGR of around 38%. During 2026 also, we witnessed the momentum continuing as reflected in the performance highlighted by Pawan. Our focus on maintaining strong reader connect and market leadership and circulation also continues. We are happy to share that our circulation revenue remains stable, and our on-ground activities and initiatives are able to engage the readers.
On the editorial front, our focus continues to remain on impactful and responsible journalism. During the quarter, several of our editorial initiatives received strong responses from readers. Our investigative journalism efforts also continued to create impact across state by highlighting issues related to people, corruption, and public interest. Two of our journalists were awarded the prestigious Ramnath Goenka award , and I am happy to share with you that this is the first time that any Hindi language newspaper journalists have been awarded this prestigious journalism award. Not only this, there are a few other awards our journalists have received in last one year. It is very, very encouraging for us. With that, now, we can open the floor for the question-and-answer session. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to please limit your questions to two per participant and to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Devang Shah from Ant Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. There are two questions. There are two parts. Am I audible, sir?
Yes, sir. Very much.
Yeah. The question is regarding the future prospects, like what are we expecting for the next, like the state elections were there, so a re we going to see in the next quarter a bumping on the other incomes or something like that? Or is there any plan to achieve 18% or 16%+ EBIT margin or something like that?
Sir, if you notice, last year, our performance, if I take the election revenues out, was around 6.5% on the advertising, and s ame was the quarter number. This year, in the month of April, we have seen a very good double-digit strong growth. Looking at the fundamentals of Indian market, the ground numbers, I am very confident that this growth should continue of a strong single-digit number even for this year also. Now, my EBITDA margin last year, the year what we closed was 24%. Before this year, we were at 26%. So, we believe that the maintaining of this number, this margin, should be achievable.
Okay. Sir, the other thing is, like, in last 6-12 months, one of the promoters was constantly buying from the open market shares. Is there any plan to reach beyond 75% if you retain you to go for the open offer for the delisting or something like that? Is there any plan for that or it's, like, just to cap up till 75% only?
Yes, you are right. Just to cap up till 75%, sir.
Okay. That's fine, sir. That's all from my side.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Riya Mehta from Aequitas. Please go ahead.
Thank you for good set of numbers. My first question is in regard to the segmental numbers. Hello, am I audible?
Yes, yes. Thank you for your compliment.
Yeah. Yeah. So, for the print, I think we have done phenomenal 7.2% YoY returns. Could you help me break up between the segments where sectors and segments where this growth is coming from?
Barring out the government, including the election advertising, every other segment has shown a growth from single digit to some of them into a double digit also.
Okay. How has auto performed predominantly? Auto, [crosstalk] .
Auto had a single-digit growth, r eal estate had a double digit, j ewelry had a double digit, h ealthcare had a double digit.
Okay. Thank you. Sorry?
FMCG was flat.
FMCG was flat. Right. Now, coming to our cash flow. Basically, there is some CapEx which we are doing of INR 120 crore. Could you help me where is this money going to?
Largely, this money is going into buying out the existing properties what we have rental. For example, in most of the places, we have rented out the properties for our printing presses and offices. So we are.
Right.
Slowly and gradually trying to buy out these properties so that we don't have to pay the rent.
Got it. Because it is a good sum of INR 140- odd crore for the full year.
Correct. This includes our Bhopal office. We are making Bhopal office, Jaipur office, Kota, Aurangabad printing unit, Nasik, Jalgaon. All these places where we have rented properties, we are buying them out.
What will be the key thesis why we are going through this approach? While I think the rental yields will be very less there, will it not make sense?
For two purposes, the land appreciation and the property appreciation in these places are fairly decent. So, if I add the rental and the appreciation, I am better off than keeping the money.
Got it, got it. And there was an intangible asset addition of around INR 13- odd crore. Could you tell me what is that?
No, they are not intangible assets. That money is going into the repair and maintenance of IT, upgradation of IT, upgradation of few existing furniture of the existing offices and all.
Right. Also, in terms of digital, so I think across the industry last around May 2025 around, we had almost 22 million MAUs. It has slightly reduced. What can be the particular, is it a monthly phenomenon or should I read into it? Have we increased our rates? What could be the key reason for this?
If you look at the overall number, there has been a constant growth. Now, in one particular month, the number goes up because of any local event, but otherwise we are on a steady pace of growth.
Okay. Nothing to see or reason to it, right?
No.
What are our plans with the cash? Are we planning any buyback or something along those lines? Because [crosstalk].
Yeah. Certainly, we will be looking at thinking that what is the best tax- efficient manner to do with the cash.
Okay. Thank you, Girish, so much. I will get back in queue for further questions.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhavi Chauhan from Care PMS. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Yes, ma'am.
Thanks for the opportunity. My first question is that last year, the company had dividend payout of 60%, whereas this year, there is not much of a dividend declared right now. Is there any change in our dividend policy?
There is no change in the policy. I think board is evaluating more tax- efficient manner to use the cash.
Okay. My second question is, there have been news on the platform such as Google and other media. We are not getting any revenues from them right now. Is there any update of getting that revenues?
All the platforms put together have gone to the Competition Commission of India, filing a case against Google and others. So, we are still awaiting, n othing has happened so far from there.
Okay. I am done with my question. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Tanushi], an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. My name is [Tanushi] and I am an individual investor interested in investing DB, and I have a few questions I would like to ask.
Please go ahead.
Could you share the sectoral growth rates and their contribution for the Q4?
Okay. One second. Q4. So, see, in Q4, most of the categories, like education, has grown big time, but most of the categories have shown a decent growth in the Q1. Barring out, government is not that high. Also, real estate, there has been a slight dip on the Q4. Yeah, that is Q4. Not dip, flat actually, but most of the other categories have seen a decent number, single digit, some of them double digit. Yeah.
If possible, could you please provide the numbers?
We don't give the exact number, sector-wise and all that, because of the competitive reason. I hope you will appreciate that.
Okay. And the contribution for quarter four?
In terms of contribution, education remains in the mid double digits, real estate in a double digit, automobile in a strong single digit, government in a decent double digit, jewelry in a single digit. Yep.
Okay. The next question is, what was the ad yield growth percentage in quarter four?
There is no major yield growth in quarter four. The yield has largely remained the same, largely. Th e growth has come from the volumes.
Okay.
But some minor percentage growth in yield, but nothing worthwhile.
Okay. Can you also provide the circulation copies reported in the quarter four?
Quarter four copies are almost 39 lakh.
Okay. Thank you. What was the newsprint mix between the domestic and the imported in quarter four?
In quarter four, the mix has been 80:20. 80% Indian, 20% imported.
Okay. Also, the last question, how do you see the newsprint rate outlook evolving in the near term?
Our last year, overall rate was at almost INR 48,000 per ton, the average mix of Indian and imported. In quarter four, this number has become INR 49,000, and going forward, we believe this number will further go up, maybe by 6%- 8%, going forward in the quarter one itself.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of [Yash] from [JB Associated]. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good evening.
Good evening.
Congratulations on the good set of numbers for Q4.
Thank you, sir.
My first question is with regards to your ads revenue. You have mentioned that excluding the election impact, we have grown by around 6%- odd, 6.3% to be precise, as far as spend is concerned, the advertising revenue is concerned, right?
Correct.
But, overall, on a yearly basis, I think we are more or less flat.
Yes.
I was just trying to gauge the impact. What, is it around INR 80- odd crore? Because, I mean, we have around INR 1,500 crore of revenue that we are reporting, and out of that, if we take out around 5%, that comes to around INR 80- odd crore.
Correct. You are right. You have got the right number.
Okay. And what is the government share? Because last time, we had reported it was around at 24%, if I am not mistaken.
Yeah.
Can you just give what you have said?
Yes. See, what happened, the entire money during the, i t's not the election money, t here is a regular advertising of the government.
Right.
There is the central government advertising money, which election money came that way.
So, totally, I mean, it remains same at around 17%, 18%, or has it changed ?
Yeah, all the same numbers, plus 1 percentage here and there.
Okay. And you mentioned that for few sectors during the beginning of the call, that they have grown by, like, double digits. Let's say, for example, real estate, healthcare, and maybe, those are for the full year, right?
Yes, for the full year. If I tell you the number, like, jewelry has grown by strong double digits. Real estate has grown by double digits. Education has grown by single digits. Automobile has grown by single digits.
Okay. And I can see that the copies, I mean, we were just informed that the copies have gone down. It was 40- odd lakh in the previous quarters, and now.
Yeah.
We are at 39 lakh.
You are correct. We are at 39 lakh, so almost 1 lakh copy.
What is happening? Because we have been spending on getting these copies of, I mean, I think it has been for the past five or six quarters, if I am not mistaken. So, what has gone wrong? What is happening in the market?
I think what is happening in most of the places, we believe that with all our efforts, we are able to maintain this number. We are able to maintain the engagement of the readers b ecause if you notice, a couple of quarters back, a concern was raised by a couple of people that if you look at other markets, people are seeing the newspaper declining. So, I think with all our efforts, at least we are able to maintain, and I think I would call it a decent achievement, actually, to maintain the circulation numbers.
But it has gone down by around 1 lakh, right? That is around 2%-2.5%.
Yeah, 2%. Yes.
Okay. And what about the, I mean, competitors? Any update on that? I mean, [crosstalk].
Yeah. We can only share that in most of our markets, we are gaining the market share.
Okay. But the overall market is declining, is what seems to be the case.
Yeah. Looks like that couple of the markets, the competitor are not able to really hold the copies, so we are able to gain the market share there, though we are still losing, like, a couple of , I mean, a s you can see the numbers, 2%, 1.5%, 2%, but the competitors are losing more.
Okay. And you have been trying to, like you just mentioned, you see an uptick of around 6%-8% in the coming quarter, right? Because of the geopolitical tensions that are going around.
Correct.
Okay. All right. Nothing further from my end at this point. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Upadhyay from Steadfort. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good evening. Congrats on good set of numbers. My question was, again, was on circulation only. I think four or five quarters back, we had announced that we are working and are having new schemes to increase the circulation copies. So, what is the progress and how are you thinking about that? That even after investing and having schemes and putting more efforts, circulation is not increasing, i t is just reducing. So, what is your thought process, and how are you planning ahead from here?
Two things very clearly in this. All the markets are not behaving the same. Some of the market, we are able to maintain; some of the market, we are showing a small growth also; while in some of the markets, the numbers are shrinking. But overall, as you see, the impact is 1.5%, 2%. Now, it clearly indicates that with all the efforts on the editorial as well as circulation, we are largely able to maintain the numbers. So, I think we'll have to do much more, many more efforts to see that how can we further excite people, open up new markets, by going more deeper in the distribution furthermore. We have been noticing certain problems in the market.
For example, the vendor, the delivery boys, those who used to deliver the paper in the morning, there has been shortage of those boys also because our newspapers start distributing at 4:00 A.M. in the morning until 6:00 A.M., 6:30 A.M. Now, what he's earning by doing this two-hour job, he's slightly getting better compensated by doing any of the other delivery during the day. So, there's been a tough challenge what our agents are finding to get the delivery boys. We are working with them to resolve that also. So, there are various challenges on the ground, and I guess, we'll have to keep making efforts so that we maintain or grow whatever we can or lose the least.
Are we going to run the similar schemes this year also, or is there any?
Well, we.
Change or?
We are doing multiple things. It's not about the scheme alone. It's about creating every possible avenue and efforts for a reader to make sure that he continues reading paper or even more readers come and read the paper, whether it's brand awareness, whether it's the solution network enhancement, editorial quality, everything.
And finally, on radio. As a radio, as a medium, what is your thought process? Because we took some new radio stations also in this financial year, how are you thinking about investing and future of that business over a longer period of time, let's say five years, 10 years?
Happy to share with you, r adio is all about maintaining it with a very, very low cost because the revenue upside is not double-digit every year because of the inventory. But we've been able to control cost to a very, very large extent. Even in the stations that we have picked up, I shared in the opening earlier today, that the seven stations that we launched were EBITDA positive in the first three months itself with a very, very high margin because of the cost and the fact that we picked up these stations in places where, in these seven cities, we are the only radio station actually. In the balance seven cities, we'll be sharing it with one more person. So, it's a very, it's a good market to play and these are small stations. It will add some value to our top line.
Going forward, we believe, as a medium, it is still heard by people. Whenever we check on cars, on traffic signals, we find people listening to radio, and that's the effort that we have to keep making on making sure that the medium still has relevance across our audiences.
Okay. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Participant, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Riya Mehta from Aequitas. Please go ahead.
Thank you for giving me the follow-up opportunity. I also just wanted to understand what could be the difference in pricing in domestic and international paper, and what could be the month-on-month growth there?
So, just to give you the number of last year, Indian newsprint was at around INR 45,000 a ton, and the imported was at around INR 54,000 a ton. Now, both these prices have changed. Now, what happened in the prices, imported newsprint, whenever they increase the price, because imported also got impacted because of dollar value also.
Understood.
In the beginning of the year, dollar was at [inaudible] rate, and today, we already lost around 8% of that. So, that also played a role. Now, Indian newsprint manufacturers follow the parity pricing [inaudible] imported. So, whatever is your imported landing parity price, they try to adjust their price accordingly. And since imported has gone up because of the freight and all that, they have also taken freight onto them.
What are the current rates for domestic and imported?
The Q4 rate, as I mentioned to you, as the average has gone up to INR 49,000 already.
Okay. Average is INR 49,000. Okay.
Q4.
Specifically domestic, how much that will be?
I do not have exact breakup here right now, but you can adjust. If the INR 47,000 was the average with that, which has gone up by INR 49,000, so, both of them have increased.
Okay. Perfect. And we expect this to further increase going forward, right?
In the Q1, we believe this may go up, a ctually not may, t his has already gone up by 7%, 8%, because we have the forward orders with us.
Got it. And we would have two to three months of inventory with us for April?
Utilize whatever best we could do in the month of March and February, and some of it in the month of April also.
Got it. Got it. In terms of the digital business, I think you are doing a lot of efforts there. Could you elaborate more on what is going there currently, and when do we see that business maturing enough to start giving numbers?
So, as you have seen the number, we have got almost 20 million MAUs now, and we opened up a new market, which is Uttar Pradesh, which is giving us good results. We are very optimistic about Uttar Pradesh because the population market in the state, 23 crore population. So, we expect this 20 million should grow year-on-year substantially [audio distortion]. There are multiple efforts being made in terms of product quality, editorial content , and the videos, so that the user experience is really enhanced and gives the delight to the reader, so that in future, whenever we want to monetize it, we are able to do that.
Got it. Got it. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [Yash] from [JB Associated]. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. There seems to be a small uptick in the other operating income, but I cannot cross going by my calculations. Can you help us understand what is this difference?
The other operative income is largely on job work as well as the wastage sale, the newsprint wastage sale. Because since the newsprint prices have gone up, there is some uptick there also.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question is from the line of [Mohit Saini], an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations for the good set of numbers.
Thank you.
My first question is regarding one of your talent acquisitions, Mr. Piyush Thakur. Sir, can you share some of his insights on what Mr. Thakur thinks from his decadal experience, w hat we can do differently to scale this digital business profitably?
Okay, so, Mr. Piyush Thakur has joined us from a good organization, the CPM and all were very healthy. He has just joined, so he has made first presentation to the board this Saturday itself. We are able to roll out the whole thing from this month. So, he will take at least, I would say, a couple of months to start showing the results. But we are very optimistic on that.
Okay. Do we have the technical team ready if, say, we start advertising, or we will be first recruiting more in the future? Just understanding from a bottom-line perspective.
No, our technical team is all ready. Nothing. We just need to go and sell more creatively to our advertisers and run their ads.
Okay. Has the war situation given us more traction on the app side? How do you see the scenario given our advertisers are concerned, as our PM also recently said, they restrain buying jewelry and discretionary spending. Any light on the same?
Okay. Two things. First of all, has the war given us some major traction on the app users? Slightly, because people are, in India, unfortunately, more concerned with the things next door rather than the global things. That is one. Second thing, the concerns raised by the Prime Minister yesterday, I think the whole nation is grappling with those concerns. Let's see how it pans out. Really, nobody's clear how it'll unfold.
Do we have any plans of acquisition of other media houses as they are struggling to keep up the business?
No, sir. We have not any such plan to acquire any other media business.
All right. That is it from my side. All the best.
Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to management for closing comments.
Thank you everyone for your participation today and time on this earnings call. I hope we have responded to your query, and we always will be happy to be of assistance to our investor relations department, headed by Mr. Prasoon Kumar Pandey, for all your further queries. Thank you and have a great evening. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf DB Corp Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.