Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Aaditya Mulani from the HT Media Group. I would like to welcome you all to our quarter four and full financial year FY 2023-FY 2024 earnings webinar. As a reminder, all the participants will be in listen-only mode. After we are through with the presentation, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. I now hand over to Ms. Anna Abraham, CFO, Hindustan Media Ventures Limited, and Head Investor Relations, HT Media Group. Thank you, and over to you, Anna.
Thank you, Aaditya. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our earnings webinar on the results for the fourth quarter and the full financial year 2023-2024. We will be discussing the results of Hindustan Media Ventures Limited announced yesterday and those of HT Media Limited, which were released earlier today. On the call today, we have Mr. Piyush Gupta, Group CFO, Mr. Pervez Bajan, Group Controller, and members of our Investor Relations team. Please be aware that our comments during this webinar will follow the presentation slides. These slides and the financial statements are accessible on the stock exchanges and on the Investor Relations page of our websites. This slide presents a disclaimer related to forward-looking statements. Kindly keep this in mind. In line with our usual practice, we do not issue specific guidance on revenue or earnings. Moving on.
This slide gives our Chairperson's comments on the performance of the company for the quarter, and I quote, "Reflecting on the past fiscal year, your company saw growth in revenue and marked improvement in operating profitability on the back of improved consumer spending and rising engagement. This was further supported in the last two quarters of the year by the festive season and heightened political activity ahead of the national elections. Cost rationalization and primary input commodities, that is newsprint, enhanced the profitability of our print business, which saw steady revenue from both advertising and circulation. Our radio business recorded an increase in revenue and an improvement in profitability. In the digital domain, our platform Shine and OTT continue to expand, showing healthy revenue growth.
Although investments in new business verticals moderated profitability for the year, we believe these to be critical for the future in an increasingly digital media landscape. We remain cautious about ongoing global conflicts, which could lead to potential disruptions to supply lines and impact commodity costs, and continue to be proactive in monitoring these issues to mitigate their impact on our operations. As we move forward, we remain steadfast in our commitment to our journalistic principles and recognize our role as a trusted source of credible and engaging news and entertainment.
We appreciate your continued support, which is vital as we navigate the evolving media environment and seek new opportunities for growth. Thank you for your trust and partnership as we continue to build on this momentum." End of quote. This slide gives the agenda for the day. We will start with an update on our consolidated performance, followed by the business unit performance for the year as well as for the quarter. With this, I now hand over the call to Piyush.
Thank you, Anna. Good afternoon, everyone. We will be tracking the presentation on the webinar. If you track the first slide, which gives us a consolidated financial summary. We can see our total revenue on a YoY basis for the fourth quarter went up 7% to INR 527 crores, and EBITDA increased substantially to INR 64 crores, which is a very good jump with the margins coming at 12%. PBT went to INR 14 crores, which is a substantial improvement from the significant last year.
If you look at it on a full year basis, revenue was virtually flat with EBITDA showing marked improvement, and that improvement flowing through to the PBT line as well. Our net cash remains healthy. As at exit 31st March, we are sitting with INR 884 crores of net cash balance. Moving on. We will now go into various segments and businesses. A quick look at the print business.
Our ad revenues on a quarterly basis grew 9%, and our circulation revenues were down 6%, with total operating revenues coming out flat at INR 376 crores, operating EBITDA showing an improvement of 219%, and margins coming at 12%. For a full year basis, on a flat revenue, we saw our operating revenue at INR 1,386 crores, which is down 3%, and EBITDA improving from a loss position last year to a INR 73 crore positive, with the margins coming at 5%. If you break down the print business in English and Hindi, our ad revenues are flat for the year with growth in key sectors like industrial, BFSI, and IT, while auto, real estate, and retail remain subdued. Circulation revenue improved for the full year on the back of higher realization per copy.
On Hindi, our double-digit growth in ad revenue for the quarter with growth in most commercial sectors except retail and auto. There was also a decline in circulation revenue on sequential and annual basis. If you look at our radio business, we saw a strong quarter for radio with revenue growth resulting in better operating EBITDA and margins, with a growth of 31% on a quarterly basis and 9% on a full year basis. The digital segment also recorded growth of 37%, where revenues tracked to INR 43 crores on a quarterly basis.
On a full year basis, they came to INR 154 crores, with a 16% growth. Just before we move into the Q&A, you can clearly see that our print business has performed very nicely on a consolidated basis. Except for the investment that is going into our digital business, notably OTTplay, our print business has come back very strongly, and we hope that we will consolidate our position from here on. With that, I hand it back to Anna.
Thank you, Piyush.
Thank you, Piyush. We will now begin the Q&A session. You can click on the Raise Hand option, which will enable the moderator to unmute you for posing your query. Please introduce yourself before posing your query, and kindly restrict to a maximum of two questions per participant so that we may be able to address questions from all the participants. We will wait for a few moments while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Rajesh Agrawal. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Hello, good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Myself, CA Rajesh Mangal Agrawal from Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. Hope I am audible?
Yes, Rajesh. Good evening. You are audible. Please go ahead.
My first question is, sir, last time this operating profit in + 16% shown in 2018. I am a stockholder of you since 2022, and I am holding that stock right now also. What do you think? When will we be in the positive side of operating profit?
Rajesh , you are talking about the consolidated net profit. Is that the question you are asking?
Yeah. Consolidated operating profit, yeah.
Operating profit?
Yeah. Last time this operating profit shown in positive in the year 2018. That is 16% operating profit. Thereafter, this operating profit is declining year by year by year.
Yes.
Being an individual stockholder, I want to know what is the management perception to bring back this, our negative profit into positive profit?
I have understood, Rajesh. Thank you for the question, Rajesh. Let me give you a perspective. Of course, you are comparing it with 2018, and your question is, why is the net profit declining, and what's the management's response thereof? There are two or three things, Rajesh. Of course, between 2019 and 2021, we had a bit of a COVID, and that obviously eroded a lot of profit. It has come back, but I'll go into the granular details. The second other thing is, which I was alluding towards earlier, is that, your company, at this point in time, is investing behind digital properties, notably OTTplay, which basically is a media adjacency and a business of future. Now there are two reasons on the standalone business, and then I'll come to the OTTplay.
Now, on the standalone business, Rajesh, if you see, there is an improvement in this year versus last year. It's a slow recovery, so revenue it's a marginal improvement, but on the bottom line, there's a substantial improvement. The reason for substantial improvement on the bottom line versus last year, and we'll come to 2018 also, is basically a very robust control on all expenses, discretionary and commodity expenses. The newsprint cost, which last year was troubling us a lot, has moderated a little bit at this point in time, and you see the benefit flowing into the P&L. Of course, it is reversing track, and we will see what happens in FY 2025.
But however, the bigger question, Rajesh, when you are comparing it to 2018, is the market which came back post-COVID. The pricing power is in a bit of a pressure at this point in time for the entire sector, and of course, for us as well. Though the volumes have come back for print, and because we are consolidated business for print, for radio, the pricing still hasn't come back. So, we are trying very hard to take pricing, but you can understand in an area where the volumes are soft, you will only like to push the pricing that much. So we have our efforts to take the pricing, and once the pricing start coming through, it will definitely come through to the bottom line. Now, switching on to the investments that's going behind OTTplay.
In the segment on a digital segment, we've already noted, and since last year we've been indicating that the company is investing behind aggregating all the OTT platform because that part of the segment, that segment of the market is growing very smartly. I am happy to say this year, the product market fitment on OTT has been done. Of course, it's taken a lot of investment. But going forward, the whole idea now that the product has been configured properly, what can we do to bring the revenues here? So once the OTT product unlocks, you will see the margins improving. And on the base business, which is our core business, which is print, you will definitely see the margin improving, because we will be pushing the pricing as we go into the FY 2025. I hope I've managed to answer your question, Rajesh.
Sir, second question is mine. In the notes, sir, it is in land and building classified as non-current assets in September. Hello?
Yes, please go ahead, Rajesh.
Yeah. In the notes to accounts, the land and building classified as non-current asset. It is sold. Sir, I want to know for how much this land and building has been sold?
Well, I do not know the exact number. We can get back to you. It is about INR 8 crore-INR 10 crore. These are those land parcels which are surplus kept in the company. We had some land parcel in Jaipur, et cetera, which was surplus, and that is the only piece which has been sold. So this has nothing to do, this is just a surplus land that we have liquidated, which we have captured in the notes.
Thank you, sir. Last question is, sir, in investment property classified as non-current asset, some of the investment property, okay? In the year-
Yes.
2023, 31st March 2023, we have shown it as INR 386 crore. In-
Yeah.
2024, we have shown it INR 357 crore.
Yes.
What is the nature of this investment property?
These are properties which are acquired as part of ad-for- equity business, and therefore, that also we continuously look for liquidation. As and when we have a deal, it is shown as a held for sale and therefore comes under current.
Thank you, madam, for the answer. My question is, whatever amount we have sold, whether we have gained anything or we booked loss on this property?
No, we are here, Rajesh. As my colleague was explaining to you, it's under Partnership for Growth business vertical that we have. We continuously are looking for deals in the market whereby we purchase these. We get these properties under AFE and we sell them. In this year also, like last year, we made profit on these sales. I hope that's what your question was.
Okay. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mohit Kumra. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Good afternoon. This is Mohit Kumra. Can you hear me?
Yeah, Mohit, please go ahead. Good afternoon.
I am a HMVL shareholder, so all my questions are specifically directed to HMVL and as a matter of fact, specifically directed to OTTplay now. Now that you are self-admittedly settled with your business and all, how much are you willing to disclose about this business to your investors? As in, what is the landscape of the business? How many competitors do you have, major competitors? Where do you stand in this aggregator business? How many subscribers do you have? Because, the only information we have received is through some odd websites. Mr. Avinash Mudaliar has disclosed that he was trying for 1.5 million subscribers by the end of this year. Are we even close to that? I just want to understand about this business because you have been very caged about it till now. What can you tell us now?
No, we are not cagey at all. If you go through the transcripts of the last year's notes, we have been guiding continuously that we have been investing behind a product to aggregate the OTT platforms. We have been definitely not giving out the numbers because that is competition-sensitive. As I was explaining to another investor prior to you, that this year we basically managed to do the product market fitment, but the whole commercial box unlock will happen in this year. This year, the investments have gone ahead. Next year, obviously, the investments will come down very sharply, but you will see the revenue clicking upward because the product is now ready in the market. As a matter of fact, as far as the product is concerned, you can yourself check out the product on Google.
In so far as guiding the shareholders is concerned, I think we will take another couple of quarters, because right now there is nothing to guide except for we have told you what the product is. We are trying to get a certain number of subscribers on our platform, get a certain level of renewal going of content which had to be aggregated with multiple content providers, have already been aggregated for the last one year, and we are getting good deals there. Now, basically, the repeat customers will come, and then we will basically showcase this to all o.ur investors. There is nothing being cagey about it. I think we have been-
No, no.
-transparent for the investor what it is about.
No, I apologize if you took offense to that specific word. What I meant by cagey was understandably cagey to start off with, because you were just making your business. But now, as an investor, if you go on to some weird site, MediaNews4U, and your CEO for HT Labs is giving out figures there. We wonder why you can't give us figures to us directly, as in how many users-
That's okay.
-how many users do you have?
I tell you what. Look, I am not aware of this whole stuff. Let me just pick up this juice or whatever, Coke or juice, that was Media Juice or whatever that is. Anyway-
Media News 4U it is.
Media News?
MediaNews4U.
Oh, okay. MediaNews4U. Okay, fair enough. What we will do, however, give us a couple of quarters. So like the middle of this year, we will have a certain performance to demonstrate to our investors. At that point in time, we will come back and we will showcase how it has achieved, and the performance will be for everyone. This particular information, as Anna articulated in the beginning of the presentation, we don't make forward-looking statements. What has come on MediaNews4U, I really can't comment on that.
We are not asking you for forward-looking statements. I was just asking how many subscribers do you have as of now. In your landscape, we understand, you obviously delve deeper into it. We understand that there's a Tata Play and the Xstream, and people like that. So we just basically wanted to understand where you stand in this landscape and how competitive are you. Because as per your statements for HMVL digital segment, you made INR 13.65 crores last year.
Yes.
Lost INR 116.93 crores. By your previously positive statements, I am assuming that you have expensed all your future payments to these platforms already because you were saying there are very little expenses left now and so on and so forth. So am I correct in thinking that part at least?
Yeah. You are correct in thinking that. To give you a color, I said in six months time, we will come back. There is nothing to share right now. But you are absolutely right in thinking that we have expensed all the expenses here, and we are not capitalizing stuff. So those numbers that you quoted are after charging of everything to the P&L.
Mohit, if I may add, the shape and color of this space, competition can be seen in many cuts and spaces. We can say another person might say some other people are competitors . It can be cut in many ways. What we have is a full disclosure of a separate segment in Hindustan Media Ventures Limited, which only has OTTplay. So you have the revenues to see, you have the cost to see. As Piyush said, all our investments are in the OpEx model and nothing is in the CapEx model. Therefore, that do have sufficient indication upfront as to what is the level of investment we are doing as well as where are we in terms of the scale that we have achieved till now.
Some information on subscribers, et cetera, we see as competitively sensitive at this point of time, and we, therefore, do not see ourselves disclosing that, nor our plan on the same or existing in the near future. That could change as and when the business kind of shapes up, because there are, of course, changes and pivots that will happen with any new business as we shapes up. But the revenue is there for them to see, the entire investment is there for everybody to see.
Fair enough. Do you expect to be profitable in the next year, next two years, next three years?
No.
OTTplay specifically.
No, we don't. We are looking to scale up the business and therefore, we will not expect to be profitable. Having said that, our investments, we are looking to see it considerably reduce.
Thank you. Thank you for your time.
Just to correlate with the year, next two, three years, I think Anna is counseling only for the next year. What happens the year after next? Obviously, we have to become profitable at some point in time, but next year we're definitely not looking for it.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Just as, once again, we ask this every time, this is a question for you to ignore again. Anything you plan to do with the cash back to the shareholders, buybacks, dividends, anything? You still have a considerable amount of cash with you.
Yeah, we have a considerable amount of cash, but as I said last time, I have no further thing to add on that. I think most of this cash is going in constructing these new businesses if they are locked. Obviously, we will have an entity scheme coming back to all shareholders, majority and minority. But at this point in time, there is no different payout.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, gentle reminder to all participants that you may use the raise hand option on your screen if you wish to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Ketan Athavale. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes.
Hello.
Yes, you are audible.
Thank you for the opportunity. I am Ketan Athavale from Robo Capital. My questions are related to HMVL, specifically this digital business. You said that our investment in the business will come down drastically. Will that happen from immediately this quarter? By how much can we expect that investment to go down?
Well, it applies from this quarter. Unfortunately, we won't be able to give you the number, but as I said earlier, it will come down drastically, because at this point in time, all the initial setup costs which was costed out in last year's P&L will not repeat itself. It will now be operating expense from here on. You can expect the investment, whatever we did last year, to be half this year, at least.
Half this year. Okay. Got it. What were the newsprint prices in this quarter?
They were at an average of about INR 50,000.
INR 50,000. Okay. Do you have any comments about NOTE F recommendation, which we had gotten I think last year?
It is still with the government. We don't have a conclusive decision on it, and I think it will now get delayed to post-election.
Okay. Got it. Thank you. Those were my questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder to all participants that you may use the raise hand option on your screen if you wish to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Gaurav Agarwal. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Piyush, hi, Anna. I am Gaurav Agarwal. I am a private investor in Digicontent. My question is related to Digicontent specifically. Nowadays there is a lot of talk about most of these advanced countries wherein these tech giants are giving a part of the revenue to these news publishing companies like Canada and all. There is a law which has been passed. What are your views on, like, can we see similar sort of a scenario playing out well in India as well?
Yeah. Well, Gaurav, thank you for the question, and good afternoon to you. I can tell you that, all these global companies are, on a bilateral basis, engaging with a lot of publishers, including ourselves, and together whatever they have to pay for our content is being bilaterally discussed with them. However, unlike Canada or Australia where there have been court cases and government strictures, they are done here. These are all bilateral discussions, and those monies are coming in. But of course, will we get subject to laws in our country, certain bigger amount of share of the revenue or the cost that we put to create all the content which these guys are using for free? Time will only tell, but right now they are bilaterally discussing with us and some amount of value is coming back into the business.
Okay. Thanks, Piyush. My second question is, in fact, many of these AI/ML generative companies have been giving royalties or sharing some amount of revenue as far as using the content from these news publishing companies. Is HT also part of planning or any of these agreements or anything is coming up here? Because in India as well, we are seeing a lot of these AI/ML software being built into.
Gaurav, overall, the importance of proprietary content and need for a payment for proprietary content is emerging, as Piyush said. That's all aspects and not just even companies on AI, et cetera, but that's an evolving space, so we will have to wait and see how it completely.
Okay. My last question is, can you share the revenue breakup of the subscription and the ad revenue?
For Digicontent?
Yeah.
No, we won't be able to share that.
Well, we won't be able to share that. But Gaurav, as you know, most of the revenue is ad revenue in nature. Of course, there's subscription revenue, which is building up year-on-year, but it'll still be a small segment, which eventually will grow into a bigger piece.
Okay. Lately I've seen Digicontent or the Mint website being ranked within the top five for the last month. One bullet then had come in. Does that ranking and all help you all in getting more higher ad rates, or what's the projection like? You all expect similar sort of website interaction-
From our side, what we can do is we can put out good content, and basis our content, the readers come to us, and basis that, the rankings are done by various people, including Comscore, Google Analytics, and so on and so forth. As long as we will keep on generating good quality content, which is useful for our readers, we see no reason why we will not go strength to strength from here on.
Okay. Thanks, Piyush. That's completed my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sakshee Chhabra. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, this is Sakshee from Svan Investment. My first question was on the English-
Sakshee, sorry, we cannot hear you too well. Can you speak up, please?
-circulation. What is the reason that we have not been able to see that sort of growth in the print ad revenue for English, whereas on the Hindi, we have been able to grow that revenue at 16% in this?
Sakshee? Sakshee, I am sorry, we could not hear you too well, so you will have to speak up and repeat your question.
Sakshee, can you hear us?
Sakshee, are we audible to you?
I think her line got dropped.
We'll move on to the next participant and wait for Sakshee to come back.
Hello?
Yeah, Sakshee, can you hear us?
Yes. Sakshee, you are on mute.
Hello? Yeah, I can hear you now.
Yes. You will have to speak a bit louder, please.
Sakshee, we could not hear your question.
I can-
You will have to speak up and repeat your question.
Moving on to the next participant. The next question is from the line of [Jay R]. Please introduce yourself and ask your question. Sir [Jay], please introduce yourself and ask your question. Sir [Jay]? We'll try with Sakshee one more time. She is still raising her hand. Hello, Sakshee. If we are audible, can you please unmute yourself and ask your question?
Yes, you are audible now.
You'll have to speak a bit louder, please.
Okay. My question was actually on the English ad revenue. I just wanted to understand that why we were not able to grow that in this quarter.
In this particular, if you see the full year numbers are similar for English and Hindi. In this particular quarter, there was a lot more government advertising in the Hindi markets, which has benefited Hindi [inaudible].
Okay. Thank you. I wanted to understand on the newsprint cost, so the cost that you mentioned of INR 50,000, was that for the full year or for the quarter?
That was for the quarter.
For the quarter. Okay. That was a decline of how much percent from last quarter?
That would be about a 4% decline on a sequential basis.
Okay. Have we seen that decline further in this month?
We will, in quarter one, also see a possible low single-digit decline further to that. All these are consolidated numbers that I am talking, not at an HMVL level. It is a consolidated.
Right. Okay, you are seeing a further decline in this quarter, in Q1.
For the quarter, because we have some earlier contracts which is remote.
Sakshee, just to build on what Anna is saying, she has given you a sequential decline quarter-on-quarter, which hopefully the trend should continue. But on a YoY basis, the decline is about 15% if you pick up the same quarter last year. However, going forward, there seems to be a bit of uplift on the newsprint, given the challenges in the Red Sea and therefore the transportation cost and therefore the stake. But we will see how that goes on. But what Anna told you is the correct information.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mr. [Jay R]. We shall try one more time. Mr. [Jay], please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. Good evening, Piyush and Anna. I have a couple of questions with regards to HMVL's performance. Now, though the revenue has increased by 16%, which I can see during the quarter, maybe note the reasons behind the drop in circulation revenue. Is it because of reduction in copy? How much has that impacted?
So, yeah, circulation. Sorry, there's a bit of echo.
Mr. [Jay], you'll have to mute yourself, please.
So the circulation drop is impacted by drop in copies. There was heightened newsprint costs as you know, for a large time for the print business, and therefore in the Hindi markets, everybody had raised the pricing a little bit, consequent of which for all players, the copies have gone down a little bit from where it used to be prior to that. So most of the drop is linked to copies.
Okay. What is the percentage drop in the copies that you may know?
We would not want to share the exact details there. But like I said, there is some RPC drop, but the large component is-
Okay.
It is marginal. It is not substantial, it is marginal. Some of the copies which were not productive enough due to the newsprint cost, we have rationalized for the time being. Now that the cost will be in more controllable range, we will see what we need to do next.
Okay. Are we planning on getting those copies back or what are we going to do?
That's always the plan. That's always the plan. But the copies have to be productive over a bit to long term. But the plan always is to get the productive copies back and keep on going strength to strength.
Okay. I just have one more question. Now it seems that consequent upon the ad revenue increasing, the circulation revenue marginally falling by 9%. There also seems to be a drop in the other operating revenue.
Yeah.
Which was INR 5 crores and it has backed to INR 5 crores or INR 7 crores. That's very less.
Yeah. Last time, other operating revenue also includes a component which is linked to our ad-for-equity business, where if over a contractual period, if the ad burn commitment is not there is a certain amount of forfeiture which we can take. Last year, that had a slightly higher component, which is why we are seeing the drop. But that's the reason for it.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you all. With this, we come to the end of the Q&A session. If you have any further queries, please reach out to the Investor Relations team. Our contact details are given in the investor presentation and are also mentioned on our websites. I now hand over to Piyush for closing remarks.
Thank you, Aaditya, and thank you to all the investors for taking the time to join the call. As we said, the print business has definitely turned around in this year. But substantial amount of investments have gone behind the digital product of OTTplay that we've been cultivating. All going per plan, we will be able to show you much better performance on OTTplay in the coming year. That's what we have built out in the plan. And with that, we hope to see you in the next quarter and look forward to that. Thank you very much and have a great day.