Good evening, everyone. I would like to welcome the management and thank them for this opportunity. I shall now hand over the call to the management for the opening remarks. Over to you, Anirudhsinh Jadeja, for your opening remarks.
Thank you, Naval. Good evening, everyone. A warm welcome to all of you on the conference call of GTPL Hathway Limited to discuss the financial and operational performance of quarter four and annual FY 2022. I hope you and your family are all keeping safe, and I pray for their well-being. I'm glad to inform you that the bo ard has recommended a dividend of 40% per share for FY 2022. Wi th that, I hand over to Mr. Piyush Pankaj, who can take you through the business and financial aspects of the company.
Thank you, Mr. Jadeja. Good evening, everyone. I hope all of you are safe and healthy. As you are aware, GTPL Hathway is one of the few consistently profit-making cable TV and broadband companies in India. I am happy to share with you that GTPL Hathway has become the number one MSO as per TRAI's performance indicators report.
In the last six years, our CATV subscriber base has grown sharply by 2.3x to 8.40 million, and for FY 2022, it has grown by 5%. Our broadband subscriber base has grown by 4.8x in the last six years to 816,000, with an addition of 181,000 active subscribers in FY 2022. Some of our key achievements for FY 2022 includes we are number one MSO in India, we are the number one broadband player in Gujarat, we expanded our presence in four new states, and we continue to enjoy a net debt-free status in FY 2022. Let me now share the performance highlights for quarter four, FY 2022, and the annual FY 2022. In the CATV segment, our active subscribers stood at 8.40 million as of March 31, 2022.
GTPL's digital CATV services reach around 1,200 towns spread across 19 states in India. The company is expanding aggressively in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and the Northwestern states. GTPL's CATV platform services own and operates 40+ channels across multiple genres. For FY 2022, we increased our active and paying subscriber base by 400K and 300K respectively. The CATV industry offers an underlying growth opportunity for an organized and seasoned player like GTPL Hathway. Our CATV business expansion will gain momentum with organic and inorganic growth in the coming quarters. The launch of GTPL Genie, our hybrid Android TV set-top box offering which bundles the convenience of live TV channels and OTT apps at attractive rates, will further help us capture larger share of our customer base.
Increasing applications of internet and communication services and increasing connectivity in urban and rural areas of India are expected to further consolidate our presence across India. In the broadband segment, we added 8.3 lakh new home pass in FY 2022, and taking the total home pass as on March 31, 2022, to 4.70 million. During the period, GTPL added 1.81 lakh active subscribers, taking the total active subscribers count to 8.16 lakh as on March 31, 2022. The broadband ARPU for FY 2022 increased by INR 5 YOY to INR 450 per month as on March 31, 2022. The average data consumption per customers stands at 256 GB per month as on March 31, up by 21% YOY. Let us now move to our financial performance.
The consolidated results excluding EPC for annual during FY 2022, total revenue grew by 12% YOY to INR 24,154 million. The CATV subscription revenue stood at INR 10,753 million. The broadband revenue surged by 46% YOY to INR 4,075 million, led by healthy subscriber additions. EBITDA increased by 4% YOY to INR 5,677 million. For quarterly results, during quarter four, FY 2022, total revenue grew by 4% YOY to INR 6,209 million. The CATV subscription revenue stood at INR 2,695 million. The broadband revenue increased by 34% YOY to INR 1,098 million. The consolidated results including EPC are for annual during FY 2022, total revenue stood at INR 24,567 million.
EBITDA for FY 2022 stood at INR 5,701 million with a margin of 23%. PAT stood at INR 2,006 million, up by 6% YOY. For quarterly results during quarter four FY 2022, total revenue stood at INR 6,278 million. EBITDA stood at INR 1,400 million with a margin of 22%, and PAT stood at INR 552 million. The standalone results excluding EPC are for annual during FY 2022, the revenue increased by 7% YOY to INR 15,254 million. EBITDA of INR 3,268 million with an EBITDA margin of 21%. The standalone results, including EPC are for annual during FY 2022, revenue stood at INR 15,677 million. EBITDA stood at INR 3,292 million with an EBITDA margin of 21%.
PAT for FY 2022 stood at INR 1,380 million, an increase of 4% YOY. This is all from my side. Thank you everyone for your attention. We can now begin with the questions and answers session.
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 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 will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from the line of Ria M. from Aequitas Investments. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. Pratiksha here. My first question was on the new product that we have launched, GTPL Genie. What kind of cannibalization do we expect in this product? If you could also explain about the strategy with geographies. Have we targeted this, and how do we plan to scale this product up?
Hi, Pratiksha. Cannibalization, it is not going to cannibalize our product because if my current subscriber is going into this product, they are going to become more sticky, and we are going to get more revenues. The cannibalization is not there in this product. We did it for attracting the new customers and upgrading our existing customers to this new product. Right now we have launched it in the six states, which is Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In the next phase, we are going to increase it to all over India, which is very soon by end of April. It is going to be all over India launch. The target is that we are going to target phase one and phase two cities first and then go into the phase III and phase IV cities subsequently.
Okay. Can you elaborate a little bit about the response of this product so far? How many of our existing users have upgraded to this? How many new users have we got, especially in our, you know, home markets like Gujarat and the like?
Pratiksha, it's too early to give a trend on this. Yes, we are getting a lot of queries. The product is going off the shelf very fast, which we are seeing. Right now, giving any trend on this is a bit early for us. Let's wait for the next quarter. We will give you the right trend at that point of time, which will be more logical and more decipherable for the analyst.
All right. This quarter we've seen some subscriber addition in the cable TV business. Does this include any inorganic growth here or this was purely organic?
Yeah. It's, it includes inorganic and organic. As we said after NTO that the growth will come from inorganic and organic. The first year of NTO has gone into stabilizing the industry and everything. as we were getting ready for doing the acquisitions and going for inorganic, the COVID hits in March 2020, and we are not able to do any, inorganic growth. from this quarter we have started. this is inorganic and organic both.
Do we have any, you know, pipeline for inorganic growth, any budget that we have allocated, or any other opportunities on dashboard?
Opportunities are there. We are evaluating those. As the more and more opportunity will come as we are seeing, we will do the acquisitions at the appropriate time after all the evaluations and all. If you want we can take it offline if you require any specific opportunities you want to talk about.
Perfect. Just one last question. If you could give, you know, the CapEx budget for the next year is set, and if you could elaborate on that.
This year, we did the CapEx of INR 363 crore, which includes INR 180 crore of CATV CapEx and INR 183 crore of broadband CapEx. Next year, we are keeping the target of INR 450 crore for the CapEx, on which around INR 180 crore is going to be the cable CapEx, rest is going to be the broadband CapEx.
All right. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dixit Doshi from White stone Financial Advisors. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my first question is regarding this new product, GTPL Genie. You know, in our website, I saw only this package pricing of INR 460, where OTT Plus only free-to-air channels available. For other, let's say, OTT Plus paid channel, what is the package prices?
That is also the other package prices with HD package also we have declared on the website. It's available, it's close to around INR 650 plus tax.
Okay.
Three packages we have declared. One is with FTA, one is with the all full, all Hindi pack, and one is with the full HD pack. The difference of pricing is around INR 100 in it.
Okay. Now coming to, in this package, in the initial phase, are we going to make any loss or, you know, reduction in the margin or, the deals with the OTT players is such that, we will not take any margin hit in this business?
No, we are taking margin also resembling loss.
Okay.
We are going to maintain our EBITDA in this business also.
Okay, we are going to maintain our EBITDA. Okay, this does not include the internet, right? They have to take separately.
We have offers include broadband also, broadband, cable TV and OTT also. Right now we have offered CATV plus cable TV plus OTT. The new products, which is broadband plus OTT, plus combining all together CATV plus broadband plus OTT, which we are launching very soon.
Okay. That will be obviously higher package prices because broadband will also be included.
Right. Yeah. You're right.
Okay. Now, coming to this quarter results, if I see our, you know, segment-wise revenue and PBT breakup, in both the cases like cable TV and internet, there was margin reduction. Any particular reason?
F ew things we have to consider that one is your activation revenue, because the deferred revenue is going away on Ind AS. That's why you will see that the activation revenue has come down by around INR 34 crores YoY. The second is your EPC revenue, because EPC project was one-time project, which has been completed. You will see that the EPC project revenue has come down. Because of that, you will see that there is some margin shrinkage overall. We are very hopeful that that will come back as we go forward.
Okay. No, basically, you know, even excluding the EPC, you know, from Q3 to Q4, our activation revenue was also same. Still our, you know, profit has come down by almost 7%-8% in cable TV.
Yeah, that is, there is some year-end adjustments which happened. As you know, as the annual comes, then you have to go for, some impairments of your investment and everything comes into the play. That's why you have seen a bit of shrinkage in the margin, which, will come back in quarter one, quarter two, quarter three.
Okay.
One-time cost which has come into the play.
Okay. In terms of in broadband also, you know, revenue has gone up, but our profitability has come down quarter-on-quarter.
There are some one-time items which has come into play because of being the annual results on the quarter four. If you compare YOY year to year, you will see that there is a growth in the broadband, good growth in the broadband. Because of annual quarter four, always you will see that trend, that quarter four, it comes down a bit because of annual provisions.
Okay.
One time-
Is it fair to assume that annual, whatever the margins are there, that margin are maintainable?
Yeah, that margin will, it's going to grow now the margins. As the situation is now normal, the COVID is almost ended and the whole economy and everything has become normal. We are hopeful that the margin will grow from here onwards.
Okay. Now my next question is, you know, in broadband business, this year, we have done fantastic numbers. How do you see customer addition in FY 2023 as well? Is there any scope of further increase, or we will be able to maintain this 180,000 per year?
Rajan, sir.
Yeah, Piyush, I'll take forward this. Gentlemen, essentially, if you see, last two years, okay, GTPL aggressive growth in broadband, you know, active base that has been led by doing more and more fiber to home pass, as well as increasing penetration. Okay. Having said that, there are two more clear opportunities which are there. Further increase in home pass penetration, okay, because as Piyush just gave figures, we are still sub 20% in terms of penetration, okay, which means we can further increase with increasing relevance of, you know, high speed fiber broadband. There is still scope for increasing further, penetration in the home pass by 7%-8%. Okay. There is a clear opportunity.
Parallelly, as you all know, GTPL has done a large fiber project, and now fiber has been taken to all district level towns and all, tehsil level towns, okay? Now we have to launch broadband there. Okay. Potentially, frankly, humongous, we have just started. It will all depend upon management ability to keep on doing more home pass and keep on increasing further penetration and also going to this next level towns. Okay. I think which current confidence level is very, very high. We of course, have to ensure we keep on executing it, you know, the way we have done in last two years.
Okay. If I'm not wrong, this is, you know, what we have done in last two years is mainly through our own network. Now we are also, you know, planning to do it through our channel partners also, LCOs in the other states. How do you see that also ramping up going forward?
Yeah. The broadband through partners we have already launched and we are progressing well. Already we have made good roadmap in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Bihar and Jharkhand states. We are progressing well. We are hopeful that this segment, B2B segment of broadband, is going to add business and value and numbers all through the nation in our broadband business. We are looking forward that we are going to get good numbers and expand all over India through this business model.
Okay. One last bookkeeping question, and then I'll join back in the queue. In this, once we do it through partners, broadband, we'll be recording INR 450 ARPU, and then, we'll pay the share to the partner, or we will record the revenue net of partner's share?
No. This is, as you say, accounting, yes. Because GTPL is going to do the billing to the customer, so we are going to get 100% revenue. Out of 100%, whatever share we have to provide to the partners, we will share as a cost.
This is the operator. Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Doshi. May we request that you return to the question queue for follow-up questions.
Yeah, sure.
Thank you. Reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. The next question is from the line of Amit Doshi from Care PMS. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. Sir, you mentioned that this new product, Genie, also has the option of, you know, that internet service as well as the cable TV and OTT bundled. So just to understand, whenever this revenue through Genie would come, what you would bifurcate in this segment of cable TV and internet separately, or how would it account for in this segmented result that we see on a quarterly basis?
See, right now we have launched. First we have to understand that, GTPL Genie is the product which is the hybrid box, which is a CATV product, which is CATV plus all embedded OTTs, which we are providing, which we have launched right now. The revenue of this all will come into the CATV business straightway. Here, we are going to launch, as we mentioned, that there is going to be a broadband plus OTT product, which the, all the revenue will come into the broadband business. There is going to be the third product, which is combination of CATV plus OTT Plus broadband. Here, CATV plus OTT will come into the CATV business and broadband will go into the broadband business.
Okay. Second and third is yet to be launched, the second part and the third part which you mentioned.
That's right. That's what I mentioned that we are going to launch very shortly.
Okay. Currently, just, if you were to tell us how many number of users, you know, there will be Genie users, from whatever, you know, you have launched till date.
Right now it is very early, Amit. As I said earlier also that we will give you all the trends in next quarter, or we can touch base offline also on this. We want to disclose all the trends next quarter. I'll just give that we have seen a lot of queries and a lot of interest which is coming on. The product is going off the shelf very fast, but exact trends and all the analysis and all we would like to provide in the next quarter.
Okay, fine. Second question is related to this, earlier participant, you know, who was talking about margins. I think I also buy the point that the margin independent of, you know, excluding EPC project, as well as, not only quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year, the margins have reduced. Now, you mentioned, during the discussion there is some sort of a one-time adjustment that was done in the internet segment. Can you just slightly clarify what could that be and what kind of amounts that are involved so we kind of take an judgment as to what are the sustainable profitability figures? The reason is because, your 30% subscribers have increased, and not only that, the ARPU has also increased. Logically, the EBITDA of internet segment should have been far more higher. Just trying to reconcile the difference.
There is a one-time hit which we have taken on the insurance side, as you know. That's more on the conservative accounting. We are hopeful or we are very confident that the recovery will happen. Already we are in touch with the insurance company for doing that. But as already around 1.5 years has gone for recovery of that, which we applied for the recovery. For doing the conservative accounting, we have taken the hit of insurance on that.
Okay. Can you quantify the amount?
INR 12 crore is the amount in the broadband business.
Oh, that's all taken in Q4, is it?
Yeah. Some in Q3, some in Q4.
Okay, okay.
Mostly in Q4.
Okay. Thank you, and all the best.
Thank you. Reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. The next question is from the line of Dixit Doshi from Whitestone Financial Advisors. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity again. Sir, in our last phone call, you had mentioned that, you know, starting first April, we look at increasing our share against the MSO share in the cable TV business. Have we done that?
No, Dikshit. We are waiting for NTO 2.0 to come. NTO 2.0 will come, at that point of time. We might have to change the packages and all. We are waiting for that. Right now it is there that it can come in July or August as per the TRAI, the last date given. We are waiting for that.
Earlier it was first April.
Earlier it was first April, which has been extended to July. It's June right now, and expected to start in July or August from there.
Okay. Sir, you know, just to understand it better. You know, we have been talking this for last two, three years, and then obviously the COVID has come and the NTO one has come. After two and a half years, do you feel that we will be able to do that increase in the share because? Or do you feel that MSO LCOs might not, you know, like it?
We are confident that we will.
Because they are used to now, almost from three years they are used to with the higher share. How do you feel?
No, we are confident that we can increase, yes. The increase has to happen with the changes in all the packages. If it is happening industry-wise, it will help us.
Okay. Last thing from my side. Any update on the AGR issue?
AGR issues. Rajan sir?
No, Piyush, I don't have any additional update as of now.
Yeah. Right now, AGR issues, no update is there. We are waiting for the date from the court and
One order is.
One order has come for the NXTigital, which is very positive for the whole industry, that we are similar to what treatment has been given to the PSUs. The same treatment has to be given to other players also. Still we are waiting for the final order to come and which is going to help us. It's a very positive development for the whole industry that the court has said that we are at par with the PSUs. We have to be treated at par with the PSUs.
Okay. Thank you. That's it from my side. Bye.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gautami Desai from Chanakya Capital Services. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Hi. In the past three or four quarters, I think we've been saying that because of COVID, we are losing some cable TV customers, especially the commercial ones. Would you like to share some trend, like are the same customers coming back or anything else, you know, you want to share in terms of trends? That is one trend I want to know. Another is also some trend on the broadband churn. Is it reducing, increasing, how it has been? That is my one question. Another question is that how is inflation treating you? I mean, how is inflation treating GTPL in terms of, are you facing the. It could be anything. It could be wage inflation or bandwidth cost or anything else, you know, that you feel is happening on the inflation front to GTPL.
Hi, Gautami. Commercial customer, as I said that around INR 7.5 lakhs we lost when the COVID started, and around INR 4 lakhs has come back on that. Still, we are seeing that trend that every quarter around 20,000, 30,000 subscribers are coming back from that. The same subscriber which you are talking about that has gone, that are coming. The rate of joining of customer is declining, you can say. As earlier it was higher, now it is a bit lower. It's like 20,000 average for this quarter. Last quarter it was 20-25, between that only. That's the case in the commercial side. Second, you talk about the churn of broadband. We have seen over the years that the churn has come down.
Yeah.
The trend is showing that it is coming down as we are increasing more and more FTTH subscriber base. We are seeing that, churn is getting arrested. It's not like earlier trends of 28%, 30%. Now it has come down to around 20% somewhere. Rajan sir, can you take that, the churn part?
Yeah, Piyush. Gautami, essentially, I think there are two things happening, as Piyush just mentioned. A is improvement of our service, okay, through launch of FTTH in most of the home pass, as well as I think in general a lot of software upgradation. The way call center operates, the kind of support consumer is given on various other digital platform, et cetera. Okay. Parallelly, industry competition level does remain high. That's the reason whatever churn Piyush just told, I mean, that's also relatively high. Well, it has come down from earlier. Okay. I think churn because of customer proposition, you know, that has improved a lot. Competition intensity in the market, that's already quite high. That's there for quite some time. That's where, you know, it's better from earlier. This is where we are.
Okay, fine. Yeah. My next question on inflation.
Yeah. Inflation, I will say, the general inflation is there in the admin cost, or you can talk about salary, employee cost and all. They are there. On operating costs, we talk about bandwidth and all. As more and more volume of bandwidth is required, we are negotiating well and bringing down the bandwidth cost a bit. As more volume is required, you will see there is an increase in the bandwidth cost on the overall in our P&L. If you talk about per GB cost, it is coming down.
Okay, fine. Thank you.
Thank you. Reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. Participants, to ask a question, you may press star and one. The next question is from the line of Miten Lathia from Fractal Capital Investments. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. I was wondering if you have broken out the geographical split of the 4.7 million home passes that we have on broadband?
Yeah. Miten, mostly it is in Gujarat, which you can say around 95% is in Gujarat. 5% is in the six cities which we mention every time. That's Pune, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Patna, and Varanasi.
Is it possible because now our broadband strategy is sort of also through partners, is it possible for us to do some sort of a geographical split going forward on the broadband side? That would be very useful.
Yeah. Point taken, Miten. As we progress, we will start introducing geographical wise, subscriber base.
Great. If you could just give some specifics about, you know, is the Q4 adjustment entries about data? Is it about something else and which makes the Q4 number not comparable with the Q3 number?
It's insurance, Miten.
That is just this time. Normally, going forward on a Q4 also we should not have one-offs, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Great. Wish you all the best. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Hiten Boricha from Joindre Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Good evening. Most of my questions have already been answered. I have only one question. Are we giving any guidance on revenue and margins for the existing FY 2023 year?
The guidance is just that we are going to maintain our CAGR 100 basis point here and there, but we are going to maintain our CAGR in both revenue and EBITDA, that's the way. As after two years, we are getting a clean year now, and we look forward to our aggressive growth in both the businesses in this financial year.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Participants, to ask a question, you may press star and one. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nachiket Kale from Orient Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah. Hi, good evening. Thanks everybody for joining in on the call. We at Orient Capital are investor relations advisors to GTPL Hathway. I'd like to thank everybody once again, the management, the participants, analysts, and the investors, and we look forward to having continuous engagement with all the market participants. For any queries, please feel free to contact myself or my colleague, Pawan Soni. Our contact details are available on the presentation. Again, I'd like to thank the management for their time, and thank you everybody for being on the call.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.
Thank you.