Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Entertainment Network (India) Limited Q4 FY 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, all participants' 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 Sneha Salian from EY IR. Thank you and over to you.
Thank you, Deepesh. A warm welcome to all the participants to the Entertainment Network (India) Limited Q4 FY 2026 earnings call. The investor presentation and the financial results are available on the company's website and on the stock exchanges. Please note anything said on this call, which reflects our outlook for the future or which can be considered as a forward-looking statement must be viewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. This conference call is being recorded, and the transcript along with the audio of the same, will be made available on the website of the company as well as on the exchanges. Please also note that the audio of the conference call is a copyright material of Entertainment Network (India) Limited, and it cannot be copied, rebroadcasted, or attributed in press or media without specific and written consent of the company.
To give you a brief business update and to take you through the results from the management team, we have Mr. Yatish Mehrishi, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Sanjay Ballabh, Chief Financial Officer. I would now request Mr. Yatish to provide you with a brief update on the quarter. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Sneha. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of ENIL, I extend a very warm welcome to all participants joining us for our Q4 and FY 2026 earnings call. We announced our results on Friday, and I hope all of you had the chance to review them. I would now like to take you through the key highlights of our performance and provide some context around the operating environment during the year. For FY 2026, we delivered consolidated revenues of INR 565 crore, representing a year-on-year growth of 3.9%. Domestic revenues grew by 4% to INR 548 crore, primarily driven by the strong momentum in our digital business. EBITDA excluding the digital business, stood at INR 76 crore for FY 2026, translating into an EBITDA margin of 18%. PAT, excluding digital, stood at INR 22 crore.
This includes a one-time impact arising from the reversal of deferred tax liability amounting to INR 17.2 crore pursuant to tax reassessment under the Finance Act 2026. Our balance sheet continues to remain strong and healthy. As on March 31, 2026, the company maintained a consolidated cash balance of INR 424 crore, while the standalone cash balance stood at INR 404 crore. Let me now take you through the segment-wise performance. Starting with the radio segment. FY 2026 continued to be a challenging year for the overall radio industry, with demand conditions remaining subdued amid persistent macroeconomic uncertainties that continued to weigh on advertisers' sentiments. The slowdown was further aggravated by the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the West, Arabic war , which adversely impacted business confidence.
Despite these challenging conditions and industry headwinds, the company continues to maintain its leadership position with a volume market share of 25.2%. Our international operations are particularly impacted, especially in the Middle East, which were directly affected by the ongoing conflict. This market witnessed disruption and slowdown in economic activity, leading advertisers to adopt a more cautious and conservative spending approach. Moving to our non-FCT segment. For FY 2026, revenues for the non-FCT segment stood at INR 148 crore. The segment performed well for the majority of the year, delivered healthy growth during the first nine months, reflecting strong underlying demand across our offerings. However, during Q4 2026, the business was impacted as a result of the macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges intensified by the war situation, resulting in event disruptions and execution delays. The evolving global environment continues to pose operational challenges.
This impact was visible across multiple areas. For instance, a couple of our international artist concerts faced travel constraints which led to cancellation of certain events. These factors disrupted planned activities and adversely affected the overall segment performance during the quarter. Let me now take you through the digital business. Our digital business emerged as a key growth driver during FY 2026 and delivered an outstanding performance. Revenues for the year stood at INR 112.4 crore, representing an impressive year-on-year growth of 84%. The strong performance reflects the increasing scale, relevance, and acceptance of our digital offerings within the overall business portfolio. Digital revenues now contribute to our radio revenues to about 48% for FY 2026, making a significant structural shift in our business mix.
This transformation is aligned with our long-term strategy to build a future-ready and a platform-agnostic business model that caters to evolving consumer behavior as well as changing advertising preferences. Gaana continues to witness a strong traction during the year, supported by continued expansion in the user base and deeper consumer engagement. Simultaneously, we remain focused on improving operational efficiency and driving cost discipline across the business. Digital spending during the year was reduced by 23%, reflecting improved digital economics and tighter cost management, even as the business continued to scale meaningfully. Overall, the strong growth in our digital and other solution business has helped offset the challenges being faced in the traditional segments. More importantly, it reinforces our confidence in digital as a key driver for our future growth, profitability, and long-term value.
Lastly, I am pleased to share that the board has recommended a dividend of INR 2 per share for FY 2026. With that, I would now like to hand over the call to the moderator, who will be happy to take your questions. Thank you.
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 their touchtone phone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants, I request you to use handset while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Amit Mehendale from RoboCapital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I just wanted to get some visibility on the business plan for Gaana for next two to three years. Some broad numbers. I understand that you may not want to disclose a lot of numbers because confidentiality, but any trajectory, any broad sense of business plan will be great.
Thank you, Amit. Yes, you are right. The way we look at, we are firm believers of the subscription economy. Overall, globally, also, if you look at the subscription trends have been really, really good, and that is the way we believe in music also. People over a period of time will go to a subscription business, to a subscription rather than free model. We have always believed a music advertising model is a broken model, and people should be paying. We have always in the past paid for cassettes, paid for CDs. It is just that in the last 10 years, when people have got anything free, the behavior has changed towards getting it for free. But over a period of time, I believe it will drive subscription.
We believe, the way the last two years we have seen almost a 15% CAGR on subscriber growth should stay put for the next two, three years also. Overall also in the industry, which is good, that everybody is now trying to focus on pure subscription business and not free music. We believe a pure subscription business is there to stay, and our confidence to drive this business to a profitable growth stays put. To give you some numbers, we have grown from about INR 61 crore of Gaana revenue to about INR 112 crore. The number of subscribers have been increasing at 15% CAGR, and we believe that should continue. What we believe is we don't just look at subscriber numbers. Always the objective has been the unit economics to gain subscriber at a profitable number rather than just look at one metrics.
The overall way to look at the business is to look at your revenue growth, look at your profitability and simultaneously the subscriber growth. We are not here to just run after subscribers if they are not profitable. You would have seen one of our competitors drop the price to a very large extent in the Q3 of last year. We believe that model doesn't work when you give everything free or at a lower cost than your price, doesn't make sense. For us, it's critical to look at the overall economics of the business, and we will go hand in hand with the subscriber growth and the revenue growth with congestion to the profitable growth. The way we look at, as I said, FY 2027 is the year where we look at breakeven, and then going forward to keep looking at more and more profitability.
Great, sir. Just any color on market share data for Gaana, either a number or are we maintaining the market share or is it declining or is it growing? Some color will be great. Also, what type of pricing power do you think we have currently or we will have, say, in two, three years? Because the amount that the users are paying is absolutely negligible. Do you think there'll be some pricing power? Do you see it currently, or do you think that there'll be over a period of time?
Couple of things. Yes, you're right. The price, what we've been charging earlier when we started the business, INR 300 or we will last say at INR 499, we have now gone it to INR 799 annual pack. I believe, generally, and even most of the labels, if you would have Saregama's commentary also, where Vikram talks about INR 100 a month could be a right price of INR 1,200 a year price is the price we would want to look at. Even Spotify right now or Apple are in the similar range at annual pack, at a steady state. That was the price we would want to believe. As of today, we are at INR 799, where we believe the unit economics work to a certain extent. But as we grow along, we will look at there is some headroom available for the price.
India is a value-driven market, so the way we look at is not just blindly look at price, it's about what value you bring because there's a behavior change issue here. Unless until we keep showing value to a consumer, it's not about the price. The price, you're absolutely right, it's very low. It's not about ability to pay a INR 300 or INR 700 or INR 800. It's a willingness to pay towards a value we can drive and the consumer can gain from it. We believe there is headroom on the price, so that's for sure. On the market share, it's a bit difficult because there's a lot of players who are offering free product and there's a bundled product available. But when I look at Spotify, us, Apple, we have a healthy market share and we continue to maintain that.
Right, sir. Once you break even, how do you see the margins going forward? Do you think there is some operating leverage in this business? Or let me ask differently. What will be the variable cost after the breakeven? Is it like 60%- 70% or larger or?
So, see, the way we look at it anywhere globally also, subscription business after you break even does drive good profitability. In this case, there is a little bit of patience to be driven because here you're coming from a free product to a pure subscription business. It will depend on how the overall ecosystem of Spotify and other players also play the pure subscription game. But having said that, I have always believed subscription business, after a certain point, the profitability does multiply.
Well, I was just requesting from a unit economics perspective. Suppose there is a music stream that gets played X number of times currently and then gets played, say, 1.5x after three years. Then for the incremental point X, that revenue that we generate, typically a lot of it will go to profit before tax, or we have to pay the royalty as well, right? So what is the percentage of royalty if we look at it that way?
The economies of scale will always drive when you have more and more subscribers coming in. There will always be economies of your operations and stuff. Yes, there is a variable content of the music label cost to be given, which always remains in the range of 60%-70%, depending on how you put it up. For us also, it is largely a variable cost, the way we look at it. There will be economies playing around as the number of subscribers increase because your tech cost also gets leveraged with the number of subscribers. So we are covered on that, and we believe for the next two, three years, we are covered on our tech cost, the people cost. You can surely look at incremental margins coming from that. Also, there will be a play from a non-music content also.
When you look at podcasts and stuff, if that content goes up, your content cost can get a little bit of leverage on those lines. There is a margin play. But yes, you are right, there is a variable content cost, which will always be there.
Right. If I may, last, quickly, how do you see competitive intensity in this play? Because I think there will be YouTube, which is offering for free and has large market share or dominance. How do you see It is not YouTube, generally, how do you see the competitive intensity?
I believe-
Sure.
I don't think India has still seen the inflection point of music subscription. The video subscriptions had seen a COVID year where there was inflection point. I believe the way we look at Indian market, there is 100 million population which should be paying for any subscription, that's what we target. In the last two years, we have seen music subscription double up, and I think that's the way we look at the growth coming in. I think there's still a lot of headroom available in terms of subscriber numbers going up.
Great, sir. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Tanushree, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. My name is Tanushree, and I am an individual investor. I have a few questions I would like to ask.
Yeah, go ahead.
Could you please share only Gaana revenue and profitability for the quarter four, financial year 2026 and the YoY growth?
Just give me one second. Overall digital business for Q4, the Q4 number was about INR 21 crore and a year-on-year growth of about 42%.
Okay. And what is for financial year 2026?
INR 81 crore over INR 46 crore, with a growth of 71%.
Okay. What was the FCT and non-FCT split for quarter four?
FCT revenue was about INR 74 crore and non-FCT was about INR 38 crore.
What was the volume growth achieved in this quarter?
Volume growth has largely been flat. It's been a tough quarter. It's largely been flat.
Also, can you please share the details on the inventory utilization for this quarter as well?
It's in the same similar range as I said. It's been a flat scene.
Okay. Lastly, what was the effective rate in quarter four?
It's not much change. It's almost a similar level. As I said, post-COVID, the ERs have not gone up, and it remains in the same levels.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Amit Mehendale from RoboCapital. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the follow-up. I just wanted to check on Gaana. If I state correctly, I think last two quarters revenue is almost flat at around INR 20 crore or so, right? Any color on that?
Just give me one second. There has been some growth for sure. It is not that it has not grown.
I think quarter-on-quarter, the growth seems to have come down significantly. There may be some growth, but very small, maybe INR 20 crore, INR 20.2 may have become INR 21 or something.
Yeah. So there has always been a Q3, Q4 churn for us when we started the business. There could have been a play, and as I said, if we had reduced the price in looking at the Spotify numbers, but after that, we have increased the price. So it is almost been about 10%-15% growth, from INR 18 crore to INR 20 crore. INR 18 crore to INR 21 crore, actually. If you look at-
Quarter to quarter you mean? From Q3 to Q4, you mean?
Yeah.
Okay. Perfect. What type of-- are we spending a lot of money to acquire customers? Any column growth, how do you see the subscription? Like the funnel, either the subscribers are not paying and then converting to the funnel which are paying subscribers.
Amit, in any subscription, as I said, for us, the funnel is quite basic. Just as you are right, the customer acquisition has to be at the right price. There is no point if it has to be given free, I would rather not even spend any money and maybe stand at a metro station. But the whole idea for us is very clear, that we will look at profitable subscriber number growth. We are not chasing any subscriber number. We are looking at, from day one, a business which is sustainable, which is profitable. So you will always see that. In fact, in the last quarter also, we said that there is a pressure on with everybody chasing, every subscription business in India chasing the same customer. There has been a hike on the CAC numbers, which we believe, we always be prudent on that side.
We do not chase every quarter any number. For us, the unit economics is far more important than just looking at a pure subscriber number.
Right, sir. On that CAC to LTV, are you publishing those numbers? Are you comfortable giving those numbers? What is the CAC on LTV or the CAC -to -LTV ratio?
I do not think this open for, that is like sharing all your secrets. Sorry, I do not think we should be doing that in con call.
Okay, perfect. One quick last thing. The growth that we talked about, the 15% growth on subscribers, is it the top of the funnel, like the non-paying subscribers, or is it at the paying subscribers?
No, we don't differentiate. For us, it's all paid customer only. There is nothing like we don't have any free customer.
No, but I think the original set of customers, there were a lot of customers who are not paying, right? When the acquisition was done.
When we acquired the business, we went completely behind the paywall, so there was never a free customer.
Right. So basically then the 15% is on the paid subscribers, effectively.
Yeah, everything is paid.
Okay, perfect. Okay, great. That is it from my end. Thank you very much for the detailed answers.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Rahul from [Noesis] . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, my name is Rahul. Just looking at the financial figures, you all have got an income tax notice of INR 111 crore from the income tax department. Can you throw some light on that? What is this regarding, and whether you will be able to solve it?
I will ask Sanjay to answer that.
Yeah. Hi, Rahul. Yes, we have received the income tax notice on 31st March , specifically. This is related to financial year 2023-2024, and there was an assessment going on. The department, as usual, asked about a lot of questions, a lot of details, which we have furnished duly. However, ignoring all those submissions, order was passed, and that resulted in a demand of INR 113 crore. The company is completely confident that it can go to the next level, to CIT appeal and other courses of getting the justice. There is no reason we will not be able to fight that in the court of law and the further appellate authorities.
We are very confident, Rahul. I do not think there is any worry on that part because our case is quite clear, and I do not think it should be a worry point at all.
Okay. The next question is that you all saw a significant decrease of approximately INR 15 crore on the top line. How is the radio industry doing and how are your radio competitors doing?
As I said, we maintain our. So two parts to our business, radio and non-radio. Radio, as I said, we continue to be the leaders with a volume share of almost 25.6% to be maintained that. In fact, we would have gained certain basis points on that. Our non-radio business got impacted in Q4. As you would have seen, generally, Q4 is a very heavy. H2 is very heavy on events and experiential business. This got impacted due to the ongoing geopolitical conflict. A couple of our international artist concerts had to get canceled, which resulted into drop in revenues. So our drop majorly came from our non-FCT business, which was growing very healthy for the first nine months. But having said that, since Q4 is a very heavy contributor, which led to the fall. Which I believe is a momentary thing.
We remain very confident that experiential business has a lot of tailwinds, and we remain geared to showcase growth. In fact, our first nine months growth was very healthy double digits.
Okay. The other question is that you mentioned that there is a market of around 100 million subscribers in India, which you foresee for the whole industry. So right now, when you say that in two years' time, you all have doubled up in terms of the subscriber numbers. So currently, how many million subscribers are there who are in the paid category as of now?
EY recently reported during the FICCI report, the EY FICCI report which came in in March, talks about the Indian music subscription numbers at about 15 million, which was about 8 million two years back. When I say 100 million, India is a very large country with 1.4 billion people, but it is a mix of income strata. The people who really matter in the first go, before when you look at the sachet pricing or economical price, 100 million people would be earning as high as any developed world. That is the reason I said the 100 million people. Most of the subscription business in India would be chasing these 100 million people. When I look at video OTT is also in the similar range, about 80 million- 100 million, which is consistent or a more stable number.
It could go up little on the IPL with the IPL thing, but otherwise, at a steady state, it is about 80 million- 100 million. And that is the number I quoted, about 100 million. Right now, if you look at music streaming, it is about 15 million. So there is a lot of headroom available for the music subscription numbers to grow.
Okay, when do you think that this 100 million figure, in how many years would the industry reach that figure?
If I had a magic wand, I would have done it yesterday. But jokes apart, Rahul. As I said, I have been saying it is a behavior change thing. People have been getting things for free, and India is a very value-driven market, so it takes time for behavior change. As I said, it is not about the ability to pay, willingness to pay. Any behavior change will take some bit of time. We need to be patient. But the good part is most of the streaming players have started focusing on subscription. If you look at Spotify or YouTube or Apple is a paid product, but I think between Spotify and YouTube, there are a lot of restrictions when you do a free product. Spotify would allow to do playlists which used to allow backgrounding music on YouTube has stopped if you are not a premium customer.
All these are good signs to drive the subscription market, and most of the players are realizing, along with the labels, that for music industry to grow and rightfully, the way to grow is only by doing subscription and not offering free music.
Correct. Your overseas foray into new markets, do you all see that happening in the near future?
The way we look at now is with Gaana as a critical product and as a critical mass, I think, and now being present in many countries. In any international market, we would want to go with Gaana rather than radio.
Also you had mentioned in the last quarter earnings that you all were spending a lot of time and energy in completing and making all the features in the Gaana app. Now all that has been completed?
If I look at it, as a UI or as a product, we would be at par with any competition. But if you look at any technology product, it's a dynamic thing, it's a continuous process. To answer, yes, whatever large changes which we had to change in the last two years, we have taken care of that. But as I said, technology keeps changing, keeps evolving. So you have to be on toes rather than just sitting on your laurels that you have come to a certain level of your product. It's a continuous process to keep improving the feature sets.
Okay. Thanks a ton, and all the best for the future, and good that you all have increased the market share in the radio business, and all the best for your Gaana's future.
Thank you, Rahul. Thank you very much.
Yeah, bye.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Meghna, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, Meghna.
I just wanted to know the overall digital revenue for the quarter and the growth rate.
For the quarter, you said?
Yes, for the quarter and the growth rate.
Pure digital is about INR 29 crore with a growth of 61% approximately.
Okay. How much is branded IP and what is the growth like?
We don't segregate revenues like that, Meghna, so I'll not be able to answer you on that.
Okay. Okay, thank you. That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Tanushree, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Yeah, Tanushree.
I just wanted to ask you the branded IP, but I guess that question was addressed earlier.
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Amit Mehendale from RoboCapital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for the follow-up . My question is on the cash. We are carrying a lot of cash, and if you see, the markets are not giving any valuation to the radio business. Not just our business, but across the industry, our peer set as well.
Yeah.
Why is that so? Can we at a faster clip, even if we burn slightly more money, just to scale it up quickly? Or what is your thinking internally around that?
No. See, as I said, for us, it's not about just burning cash and generating. It's hard-earned money. So we are very clear, we will chase profitable growth only. We will not just chase numbers. That's one part, that it's not about we can't burn. Whatever we believe is the right amount to be invested, we'll always do that. As I said, for the last two years, we've been building this business. It's now come to a certain level where we believe it will break even over this year. And that's the reason we are holding that. We keep evaluating inorganic opportunities also. So that's always been the case. You have seen that overall geopolitical thing and the economic conditions, the overall media landscape is also a bit challenging right now. So we have to be very careful about it from that perspective.
Having said that, you would appreciate that even any year, we've always been consistent with our dividend policies also. It's been increasing over years. The whole idea is we will keep evaluating inorganic growth also, and also keep investing in our digital business.
Right. Great. And for Gaana, the breakeven, do you expect, broadly, is it in Q3, Q4 or Q1 of next year? Broadly, any sense of direction there?
We would be happy to do that in this financial year itself. We've been reducing quarter -on -quarter. You would have seen even this quarter we have reduced. We'll continue to do that, and I think FY 2027 could be the defining year for that.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you everyone for joining this call. We remain committed to driving sustainable growth and in a profitable manner. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
On behalf of Entertainment Network (India) Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.