Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Aaditya Mulani from the HT Media Group. I would like to welcome you all to our quarter two FY 2023-2024 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. Thank you, and over to you, Anna.
Thank you, Aaditya. A very good afternoon to everyone. On behalf of HT Media Group, I welcome you to our earnings webinar to discuss the financial results of the second quarter of FY 2023-2024. On the call with me today are Mr. Piyush Gupta, Group CFO, Mr. Pervez Bajan, Group Controller, and members of the investor relations team. The financial results of Hindustan Media Ventures Limited was declared last Wednesday, that is November 2nd, and of HT Media was released earlier today. We will cover the highlights of the same during this call. Our remarks will track the presentation on the Zoom webinar. This presentation and the financial statements are available on the stock exchanges and the investor relations sections of our websites. Slide two captures the disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements, which is on your screens right now. Kindly keep this in mind.
As per practice, we do not provide specific revenue or earnings guidance. The current slide gives our chairperson's comments on the performance of the company for the quarter, and I quote, the business environment improved significantly in the first half of the current financial year on the back of improved government spending. Your company's performance in the second quarter compared to the year-ago period, saw higher operating margins despite muted revenue growth, with gains coming from the easing of newsprint rates. Revenues of our print business remained flat on a sequential basis with a marginal decline compared to last year, but this was primarily due to a shift in festive season this year. Radio posted healthy growth, and our digital business also performed credibly in the quarter. The global environment continues to be volatile both on the economic and geopolitical fronts.
If the crisis in West Asia deepens, it could impact India and therefore our businesses. However, we continue to be optimistic and believe the festive season will bring all-round cheer. We thank our diverse and loyal audiences across multiple mediums and platforms and remain steadfast in our commitment to being a reliable source of credible news and engaging content. End of quote. Now we have the table of contents, which covers the agenda for today. We will begin the performance update with comments on our consolidated financials for the second quarter, followed by detailed remarks on our print, radio and digital businesses. We will open for a Q&A session after the presentation concludes. With this, I hand over to Mr. Piyush Gupta for the rest of the presentation.
Thank you, Anna. I will just be tracking the presentation. As you can see from the chart in front of you, the total revenue for the quarter declined 5% on a YoY basis. As we had articulated earlier, this is primarily because of the shift in the festive season. Most of the festive season is now in Q3 as opposed to last year when it was in the second quarter. Other income also saw a relative decline on a YoY basis. EBITDA profitability improved in the quarter owing to easing of newsprint rate as compared to the prior fiscal, and we will talk about it a little bit more. Now we go into the business unit performance. First, print. As we can see on ad revenue on a YoY basis, our ad revenue declined 9%, with circulation revenue up 3%. Operating revenue as a consequence was down 6%.
Operating EBITDA improved because of the newsprint prices. The key highlights, advertising revenue declined because the shift in the festive season impacted ad volumes. Despite revenue decline, operating EBITDA saw YoY margin expansion by the decline of newsprint prices. on a quarter-on-quarter, we can see revenue was flat, circulation revenue was marginally up by 1%, and operating revenue came out flat with operating revenue at INR 2 crore. A little deep dive into English. On a YoY basis, there was a decline in ad revenue of 9%. On a sequential basis, there was a growth of 2%. On the circulation on a YoY basis, there was an increase of 35%, and on a quarter-on-quarter basis, there was a 10% improvement. Going to Hindi. On the ad revenue, we saw a decline of 8%, and sequentially a decline of 2%.
On circulation, there was a decline of 5% on a YoY basis and 2% on a Q-on-Q basis. Radio, the operating revenue grew by about 8%, which was largely led by the non-FCT revenue. Operating EBITDA, as a consequence, remains flat. On a sequential basis, there was a marginal improvement in top line, with the operating EBITDA coming at INR 2 crore. On the digital, we saw our revenue grow by about 10%, coming at INR 36 crore, with operating EBITDA remaining flat with a -I NR 21 crore. On a sequential basis, the revenue was also flat, with EBITDA coming at a - INR 17 crores. With that, we come to the end of the presentation. Back to you, Aaditya.
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 participants. We will wait for a few moments while the question queue assembles. The first question is from Ketan Athavale. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, please.
Thank you for the opportunity. I am Ketan Athavale from Robo Capital. I wanted to know, if I have seen your segmental accounts, there is a PBT unallocated loss and a digital loss. So can you explain what exactly is included in these two things?
Yes. Unallocated is a whole host of amounts which are largely corporate in nature. It will include corporate fees, it will include any kind of fair valuation on instruments. It will have legal audit fees, all of that sitting there. There is a marginal amount pertaining to certain new businesses that we are exploring, but those are marginal amounts.
Basically, corporate overheads which cannot be allocated towards a particular segment.
Okay. On the digital side?
Digital, in the investor presentation, we have put all the brands which are forming part of digital for HT Media. It is Shine, it is Mosaic, it is a business of digital entertainment and OTTplay.
Okay. Regarding this OTTplay, I wanted to ask, up to when will this loss continue? What plan do you have, and by when can we see it turn profitable?
Well, I think that's a great question. Look, OTTplay, as you are aware now, we've been at it about six quarters now, and we had basically given a flavor on the last quarter's call. It will be few more quarters before we will see a profit coming in. As we had said that we are trying to aggregate the OTT platform, OTT increasing by about 10% - 12% as an individual platform. Really, we are one of the first movers advantage on the OTT platform. I don't think we are turning in a profit any time very quickly, but it will take another four to six quarters before we will have profits coming in there. Right now, we are basically getting a good subscriber base which will renew their subscription and hence we can have a glide path to profitability.
Okay. Can you give an amount, rough figure, how much cash burn is expected going ahead on this thing, and what is your plan regarding balance of the cash?
Well, look, I think there will be cash burn for sure. We don't give forward-looking numbers. It will be fair to assume. If you look at the segment numbers right now, I think what you are seeing as a cash burn at this point in time, we are really cycling on the top of the line. The cash burn will remain static to declining. It's not going to go up from here on.
Okay, got it. I had a few questions on printing side as well. So, in printing business also, we have some amount of loss, printing and publishing. Or maybe it's slightly profitable, but the peers are making much better profits. Can I understand the reason for that? What will be the reason?
I can give you a high-level reason. When you talk about peers, you're really talking about Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran. First of all, you need to remember they are a pure play Hindi and other languages publication as opposed to us, which has English and Hindi. So both the businesses have different set of dynamics. That's point number one. Point number two, when you look at Bhaskar's number, you have to really remember there are two or three state election revenue which are sitting in their number as opposed to Jagran, which does not. We really can be compared to a Jagran kind of a numbers and where we don't have too much of a delta.
Now, of course, Jagran being the number one player in U.P. or at least the Eastern part of the U.P., does have a marginal advantage to us, but not a huge amount of advantage. So really the point I'm trying to make is, with Bhaskar it's not really an apple-to-apple comparison in terms of market. Because in those markets, there is an election revenue which is sitting in those publications' P&L.
Dainik Jagran per se didn't have presence in some of their markets. Some of their other publications did have some markets, so that could also have some bearing on the delta.
Yeah. About the elections, I had a question. What benefit do you see coming from elections, including the general election?
Yeah. Look, there will be benefit. It will be benefit to the entire industry, including competition, if you are talking about the union elections or the central elections. The state election depends really on the state, but on the union election, really tough to quantify. It depends upon the spending that the various political parties do. Will there be benefit? Answer is yes.
Okay, got it.
Are you a participant?
Yeah. Okay, I will come back. Yeah. I have a few more questions. I will come back.
The next question is from the line of [Mehul Pathak]. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Yeah, sorry. Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can.
Yeah. Hello, Piyush and team. Thanks for this opportunity to reach out to you and ask a question. I have two queries. First is that when I was looking at the employee cost to revenue, Digicontent has, for every rupee of employee cost, there is only INR 2 of revenue, which is very unusual for a non-asset heavy sort of business. When I look at HT Media, it is almost 4x . What are the comparative benchmarks in the industry for these? In fact, now we are reaching a point in HT Media where the overall, I am just saying, there is no split in my mind on radio, how much is the employee cost and all that. But when I look at the overall employee cost, the print cost, the newspaper raw material cost is just 25% higher than that.
My assumption is that in the Hindustan Times business, the employee cost and the raw material cost should almost be same or the employee cost is higher. It is a very low level of employee productivity in terms of the ratio, if you see. My second question is, should I wait to hear from you or shall I go ahead with my second question?
No, you go ahead with your questions and then we can talk about it.
Okay. My second question is that from 2018, the shareholders' funds has eroded by about 30%. From INR 2,550, we are down to close to INR 1,799 on March 2023. We are down again another INR 100 crore in the last two quarters. At this burn rate, we are only maybe 25 - 30 quarters from burning up all the shareholders' funds. While employee costs, I do not see that whether it is on the employee cost front or whether it is on the other cost front, the management's behavior is not as if the house is on fire. Even when we talk to you every quarter, there is a whole degree of optimism that things are coming back and things are looking up.
Now, internally is there this urgency to address the erosion of the balance sheet, either in terms of if you are not able to control the revenue, then control the cost. One way or the other. Otherwise, in 30, 35 quarters, nothing is going to remain there. I want your perspective on overall, internally and within the board, how you are looking at this problem. At what point are you going to pull the plug and say that, okay, now revenue may not come. So now let us look at costs or let us look at sale of non-performing assets or let us monetize some of the, I would say, unrelated investments that we have in the business. So, your overall sense and perspective on the balance sheet, and in future, what it will look like and when we can see the improvement in the balance sheet.
We will be appreciated. Thank you.
Thanks, Mehul, for your question. I will try and take an attempt at it and then Piyush will probably add to it. Actually, Mehul, if you look at the employee cost levels of our entity, and you can look at consolidated and you could look at even HMVL separate versus the pre-COVID days, the maximum correction in cost have been actually across all competitors, if you look at it. It has been done by HT Media and HMVL actually, and that is till date being maintained. So if you would benchmark versus 2019-2020, the savings on this line is still there, while most of our competitors have actually kind of come back to those levels, et cetera. So we have done massive actions on all parts of costs.
The challenge, of course, that we have to some extent is on the operating leverage we have especially in the Hindi locations versus some of our competitors. So, the extent of monetization that they manage vis-à-vis the copies, that operating leverage does sit in, which also has some impact on the ratios that we are talking about. So on the cost, whether it is on all the direct costs or the indirect costs, is massive actions which actually we started way back in 2016 and we have been continuously at it. If you look at it vis-à-vis trends, we have improved. Our ratios as a factor of the revenues not having fully kicked in, but we are hopeful given that advertising volumes are back, that we will see better ratios sooner than later.
The only element of cost which has not been fully controlled is actually commodity rate, which is a larger industry-wide problem that happened last year, led by, of course, a global crisis which was unprecedented. Coming to the balance sheet position. Part of the erosion is a fact of the investments that we had done in the radio business, post which that medium saw a huge challenge, even pre-COVID, when the MSME crisis was on, and then post-COVID, of course, it was the medium which was most impacted and took some time to recover. That did have an impact on the situation. But thereafter, you would see that in the COVID year also, we maintained our cash balances despite this thing. In year two also of COVID, there was hardly any shift in cash position.
It is in year three, when the commodity rates widely swung, that we kind of had some levels of cash burn. We have been conservative. We are, of course, also needing to invest in business to the extent we have to build other verticals, which we will do. But we are hopeful that the balance sheet's position should only improve from here on. Piyush, if you want to add anything.
Mehul. So let me just take the two parts of your business. First, upon the employee cost, where you have a strong view. So let me just I mean, just adding on to what Anna said. Whichever cut of analysis you want to carry out, you want to benchmark or index that to 2019-2020 pre-COVID, or you want to index that to competition, we have done a much finer job. We can absolutely connect offline, and we can share all those analysis with you, and you can have a look at it. But on the employee cost, you have to understand there will always be a finality because a basic news gathering system has to be maintained, a basic circulation department has to be maintained, a basic ad sales monetization network has to be maintained, so on and so forth.
I would say we have been pretty robust on that. But as they say, can you improve that? Of course, you can improve that. And that's the intent at any given point in time. But I would absolutely, with conviction, tell you that we have done the best job if you do a peer comparison. Now, coming back onto the balance sheet size, because the number you quoted was INR 2,500 crore, which was a gross cash number because you had not netted off the debt number. Now you have to understand, in situation where there is a reasonable market arbitrage, both the numbers will tend to go up. So the right number to watch there would be a net cash number. Now, the net cash number has, of course, come down.
If you look at vis-à-vis 2016 level, the biggest investment or the single biggest investment has been our investment in the FM radio business, where we first participated in the phase III, where the total outlay, as we had put down then, was close to about INR 450 crore, and then the acquisition of Radio One, which was another INR 300 crore. That's basically all the erosion there is. Apart from that, our net cash level are still north of INR 800 crore. Given the commodity cycle is correcting the way it is correcting right now, cash is not dwindling. Because what you're doing is extrapolating a deduction of INR 150 crore- INR 200 crore on every year basis, and therefore, coming to a certain thesis. I don't think that is correct, because on cash, as you would remember from the earlier call also, we've been reasonably conservative.
We've been monetizing assets which are non-core, given the correct realities and looking at other ways to engage business. I don't think our cash numbers are dipping. In the same breath, we are currently investing in OTTplay, where, as I said, we will be investing for some time to come. That will, of course, have an impact, and that money will come from the core business. That's a new impact. That is not like in a bit we will have a INR 300 crore or a INR 500 crore play. That slowly and gradually tracking our KPIs, we are on that investment journey, and at some point in time, that business should start churning out cash. I hope I've answered everything, but if you have really more questions, we can share analysis, and we can then discuss on numbers anytime you want, Mehul.
No, thanks, Piyush. I appreciate your response. It is on expected lines that you would do that. As an investor, I see that our house is on fire.
Yes. Mehul, on that particular bit, let me share a couple of things with you. I totally understand, and let me build on that operating leverage. Understand the footprint of our business. English business is primarily in Delhi and Bombay, which are the big two metros, and as you know, COVID impacted these big businesses very sharply. If you look at the copy recovery or the ad price recovery, et cetera, et cetera, it's still not fully done. Hence, we have rationalized it through a copy rationalization to the maximum extent we have done. That has stolen some part of operating leverage out of the business, though through the cost actions, we have tried to manage as much as we can. In Hindi Hindustan, really, we were the third player when we did the IPO back in 2011.
In a market where Jagran and U jala had a dominant position, we've created a niche in ourself where the business is absolutely profitable. However, given this COVID, our prices, even in the Hindi markets, are challenging, and hence we've been working very aggressively on the cost because the pricing is a very tough ball. Tough thing to come. As I had guided in the last call, this is now, in this particular year, we are making a big program to take a stab on pricing, which is exactly what we are doing as we are entering into the season also at this point in time. I hope we'll be able to recover some part of the pricing, because the moment you'll see pricing coming back into English and Hindi businesses, you will see the margin expansion automatically happening. We are very hopeful.
On cost, we always keep one eye on cost and the second eye on cash. That we can assure you.
Thanks, Piyush. Appreciate your response. All the best.
Thanks, Mehul.
The next question is from the line of [Ranga Prasad]. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Good afternoon, everyone. Am I audible?
Yes, please. Please go ahead. Good afternoon.
At the outset, let me say that I am extremely disheartened by the results of both HT Media and HMVL. Both HT Media and HMVL have yet again shown extremely disappointing results. When the whole industry was not doing well, we were showing steep losses. Now, even when the industry has turned around and companies such as DB Corp and Jagran have shown extremely good results, and are even rewarding shareholders with an interim dividend, we continue to show huge losses. Even on our operating level, our top line, that is revenues, have not grown, and we continue to show steep operating losses even. Added to this, we are showing exceptional item losses of INR 31 crore on account of impairment of intangible assets and INR 30 odd crore towards impairment of intercorporate deposits given.
Mr. [Ranga Prasad].
In the light of these massive losses, my question to management is this. Do you honestly No, let me finish, please.
No, no.
Do you honestly see?
Mr. [Ranga Prasad], the only thing that I am saying is your voice is coming and not coming.
Okay.
Maybe the signal is not very clear. Just be a little closer to the microphone. That is all I am requesting.
My question to management is this: in the light of these massive losses quarter- after- quarter, do you honestly see the light at the end of the tunnel? After all, in the last investor con call, you had said that we can expect to see profitability at the PAT level sooner than later. Do you have any timeframe for this to happen?
Mr. [Ranga Prasad].
Yes.
Yes. Look, because your voice is not coming very clearly, I heard the question, and let me just reiterate, and you can tell me if that is the question.
Yes.
Is there a timeline for us to get profitable on the PAT level is basically what you are asking, right?
Right. Yes.
Okay. Mr. [Ranga Prasad], first of all, before I answer that, I am not disregarding your analysis that the operating results could definitely have been better. As I just diagnosed the results for one of the earlier speakers, because both our competitors have put their results out in the public domain, and you were saying Dainik Bhaskar's result, where there is a lot of election revenue sitting, which we do not have because our presence is not there in those markets. But now that we are and the other competitor is basically in a ballpark. As we are entering into the union election from the third quarter onwards, going up to quarter of FY 2025, you will see the election revenue coming. That is point number one. Having said that, could our results have been better? Yes. Now let us diagnose the reasons.
I think, as I was just speaking to the earlier speaker and I was saying, what we have not been very happy about is the yield performance that we have seen. When we spoke on the last call, I said, and I repeat again, that we have got a yield program, and we are working very hard to get our yields to a certain index of the pre-COVID yield. But going market by market, that is a bit of a challenge. Now that we are approaching the festive season, our hope and desire is that we will be able to unlock some yield. The moment that happens, you can see that coming straight to the margin. The third point that I made was on the newsprint. Newsprint prices have been coming down for the last four quarters, and accordingly, our procurement prices have been coming down.
They have started bringing down the weighted average cost of consumption, and you will see that trend continuing secularly for the next foreseeable future. I do not see the commodity cycle going up. So that, you will see flowing through onto the EBITDA basis. Now, coming to your last question, do I have a timeline? I do not have a timeline. But what I can tell you is, if you extrapolate backwards with these two or three trends that I am telling you, I basically clearly believe that on the quarterly basis, the second half of this year will be much better than the first half of this year. Because of essentially the same reasons, and the union election revenue also flowing in, with the marginal cost of newsprint much lower than what it is. On the discretionary cost, we have already taken actions which are supposed to be taken.
Now, this is about the print business, because your point was more about the print business. At the same time, if you look at the segment results on the digital side, we have been consciously investing in the businesses or the future profit pools, and OTTplay really is one big venture which is taking a certain amount of cash and, at this point in time, giving a certain amount of burn on the P&L. That will continue for some time, but as far as the other matured businesses of print and radio are concerned, I don't think they will, on a standalone basis, be giving you an operating loss. Now, coming on to that exceptional item or a one-off impairment that you are talking about.
Now, these are, as my colleague and I explained to the earlier speaker, all our investments in radio business that we had done in the time when radios, trading multiples of the companies which were tracking was more than 20 x- 25x earning, or some companies were 35 x earning. Those have been rerated very sharply. Unfortunately, we had made the investments in the phase III government auction and the M&A on Radio One thereafter, and most of those assets are now coming under impairment. So this time also, that INR 32 crore number that you see on our consolidated results is primarily the impairment of the investments that we had done in FY 2019-2020. I hope I managed to answer your questions, Mr. [Ranga Prasad].
Yeah. The other one is, see, we are showing some steep losses on the digital front. I'm a little worried, but it can-
Yeah.
Get long-term-
That is on the digital front, Mr. [Ranga Prasad], is the OTTplay that I just spoke about. It is in an investment phase right now, and it will remain in the investment phase for another three to four quarters, as I was just answering the earlier guy. Because at this point in time, we are increasing the subscription base on OTTplay, and we've already tied up with the content providers. There are 20, 22 content providers who are already sitting in our funnel.
Is it your view?
Sorry?
Do you see in the foreseeable future that this will turn profitable?
Oh, no, absolutely.
The kind of investment and losses that you are showing.
Well, Mr. [Ranga Prasad], there is a finite time we as a management have set out to do this whole stuff. Had we got this indication that this will not be profitable, we would already have pulled the plug. But at this point in time, there are a few very heartening signals that we are getting when we are distributing the products and getting a certain level of renewal done from certain set of customers. Now, of course, there is a timeline that the management already has set aside. If it does not turn profitable, we will have to take a call on this. Current hope and expectation is that OTTplay will be a very profitable business going forward.
Okay, thank you. I hope what you are saying comes true, that we will turn profitable in the coming future. Thank you.
Mr. Prasad, I appreciate the question and I respect your thoughts and comments, but that is really the way it is. Thank you for your wishes.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from the line of [Mehul Parekh]. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Good evening. I am an individual shareholder of HMVL.
Good evening, Mr. Parekh.
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Yes, please. Go ahead.
Yeah. Okay. One of my questions regarding the security deposits liability which we have been showing for the last three, four years. Prior to that, the figures were very small, and we are taking some of them as write-backs in our income. What exactly are those security deposits, and why are we-
Mr. Parekh, you can hear me, Mr. Parekh?
Yes, I can hear you clear.
Mr. Parekh, if you are aware, we have got a line of business called ad- for-e quity, in which we take an investment position in a counterparty in lieu of a certain advertising contract that we have.
Okay.
Most of that, for the advertising contract, the amount that is deposited by the counterparty, security deposit. Some of the write-backs that you are referring to is basically if the contractual liabilities are not fulfilled by the counterparty, there is a write-back which comes into the shareholders' income.
Okay. In case the counterparty fulfills its condition, we still do not have to pay the cash. It will go as revenue in our books, but it will not flow in as cash. Am I understanding correctly?
Your understanding is partly correct. If the counterparty does fulfill the obligation, there will be part cash and part revenue. Cash also comes because the way the transactions are configured, they are not totally backed by securities. They are partly backed by securities and partly by cash.
Okay, so we do not have to pay back this money. It only goes in the form of advertising revenue.
You are absolutely right.
Okay. Second thing is this OTTplay, the cost that we are paying to this OTT partners whose channels we are using, we are making a payment to them. Every quarter that we are paying them is an installment, or is it like we are paying them lump sum?
Yeah. So both the models. There are two costs. One is the content cost, which you are referring to.
Right.
There are multiple agreements with multiple content providers. There is no lump sum, lump sum. But there is a structuring on that whereby, either on a monthly basis or on a quarterly basis, or on a half yearly basis, or on the attainment of certain toll gates that we have to pay certain content fees to the content providers. Now, these are separate contracts, which our team negotiates with all the content providers, right? And we have got more than 20 of them on board.
The second cost, however, is the customer acquisition cost, which is basically the cost of acquiring the customer because we are building up the subscription base at this point in time, which depending upon which channel that you are acquiring that customer through an online channel, offline channel, cable channel, digital channel, OEM channel, and so on and so forth, or a feed on street channel, depends upon the payout that you have to give to that channel. So there are really two costs there. And of course, there is a product creation and a product marketing cost which is already sitting there, but that is more of a corporate nature. These are the two real-time costs, which at some point in time, the content cost will remain, and the acquisition cost has to come down much sharply.
Oh, great. So this, we are taking a full write-off or are we capitalizing some portion?
No, we are not capitalizing. In a given year, all the costs will hit the P&L.
Okay. When we are talking about the content, let's say we tied up with one content provider and let's say it's a four, five-year tie-up. When we are paying them, if our subscriber base shoots up, do we have to pay them more?
No, these are not revenue linked at all. These are content fees and negotiated as such.
Okay. Fine. I think that should be okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Rikin Shah. Please introduce yourself and ask your question. Mr. Rikin Shah, if this is audible, please introduce yourself and ask your question. Mr. Shah, you are not audible to us. Moving on to the next speaker. The next question is from the line of Aniket Kulkarni. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Audible?
Yes.
Yeah. Good afternoon and thanks for the opportunity. I am Aniket from BMSPL Capital. I had a couple of questions. Firstly, the print revenue in HT Media presentation, which is shown as INR 324 crore in Q2. But in HMVL earnings, the revenue is given as INR 164 crore. Can you just explain what is the difference between here? I mean, does the print business include something else? If you can say what all revenue goes to HMVL and what all comes to the HT Media standalone business.
Well, sir. Yeah, go ahead, Anna.
So, you are referring to print overall revenue at INR 324. Print overall for us includes Hindi, HT, and Mint business. So there are three business publications. The number that you are referring to is only of Hindi. So in the presentation we have given Hindi separately and then English separately.
Okay. And so-
Print separately.
Yeah. The HMVL business is only the Hindi business, if I'm correct?
Yes.
The English business is HT and Mint business.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. Secondly, can you give an idea from where the company is buying its pulp from? Because China pulp prices have rebounded from lows and the management is saying you are expecting raw material prices will not materially increase from here. Could you explain that please?
Yeah. Aniket, if you go into the newsprint commodity market, you'll realize that China really has not been an international supplier of newspaper-grade printing paper for the last many, many years. I would say more than six, seven years, because right now the China pulp is being used to produce newsprint and other grade of paper only for the Chinese market. They're not big exporters at this point in time. Most of the imports, which is happening in India, is happening from the Western Hemisphere. I would say countries like Canada, North America, and also a big supplier of newsprint is Russia. So those are the places, and sometimes, of course, South Korea also comes into the market to supply newsprint. But China really is not a player in exporting newsprint, at least to India.
Okay. That clarifies my doubt. All right. Thank you for answering my questions, and best of luck.
Thanks, Aniket.
The next question is from the line of [Hari S.] Please introduce yourself and ask your question. [Hari S.], please.
Am I audible?
Yes, Mr. Hari, please go ahead.
Good evening. I am Hari, an individual investor. These elections we are talking about, they are a one-off event, and we can't depend on it for the revival of the company. These commodity costs also go down and up. Even that is not dependable. The new verticals don't seem to be big enough to turn the company around, because the major revenue is from the print. My question is the company looking at buyback, since that seems to be the best solution, the way the company is going down the hill? I am not talking about just our company, but the industry overall also is like, print media itself is going down the hill. Is the company looking at any buyback since that seems to be the optimal solution for shareholder returns? Thank you, sir.
Good evening, Hari. Hari, there is no proposal of any buyback which the board is deliberating at this point in time. Regarding the hypothesis, I would tend to say, I totally agree with your point that elections are a one-off event, and we don't create a company on the basis of that. The commodity cycles can go up and down as well. But really the point that I was making to one of the earlier callers was, if you look at the results pre-2019, in spite of the multiple commodity cycle and the multiple election cycles that we have seen, the company was reasonably very profitable. The problem that has happened is after the company has come out of this whole COVID cycle, the pricing has been a bit on which we already have a program, FY 2024, that is a program that we are trying to execute to.
If we get even the 80th or the 90th percentile of that pricing, you will see the profitability come back in a very significant manner back to the print business. Of course, pricing is a challenge on our radio business also. But radio business, if you just look at the historical financials of radio segment versus now, we have done a very sharp cost optimization whereby we've cut the plot to the size, and now again, pricing is again what we are hoping for on the radio business. This festive is really the time from now to December that we will be working very sharply on that. If those comes back, I don't think this industry is in that bad a shape.
Our 10%-12% EBITDA margins, I think, looks like a sustainable level of margin, which I think from here to foreseeable future can easily be sustained. I hope I have answered your question.
Yeah. Thank you, sir. About this Orwell States, what is the percentage of holding we are holding in that company, sir, through HMVL?
In which company? In HMVL?
No, no. Yeah. Through HMVL, we are holding some stake in Orwell States, right?
Oh, okay. Look, we do not publicly disclose that because those things have competitive sensitivities. But suffice to say that we do not take very substantial stake because these are not strategic investments. These are part of our AFE program, which I was explaining to one of your colleagues earlier.
Okay, sir. Thanks for the answer, sir, and good best of luck.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Ketan Athavale. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Hello, I am Ketan from Robo Capital. Thank you for the opportunity again. Just a quick question on radio side. Regarding that recent TRAI recommendation, which will mandate a radio in mobile phones, do you see that being accepted?
Ketan, we have lost you. Can you hear us?
Yeah, hello. Hello. Am I audible?
Yeah, Ketan, we have heard the question. Look, I think that is a great question that you asked. The TRAI recommendation are already with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. I think those have a very real likelihood of seeing the light of the day. But as they say, it has not been notified by the ministry, so really there is no conclusive evidence of that. But I believe if the ministry does indeed notify that can be a substantial game changer because from the times when FM radio in a car for passengers during the commute used to be the first medium, and right now there is a lot of appointed medium in terms of playing through their smartphones, et cetera. Once you get that into a mobile phone, that gives another set of audience, which hitherto we have been missing.
I really hope that the Ministry does notify that, and I believe that will give a flip to the entire industry, and therefore our radio interests as well.
Okay. But in general, what has been the trend about these TRAI recommendations in the past, say last 5 - 10 years? What have you been observing?
Yeah. If we look at the process which is undertaken, even before the TRAI recommendation, there are multiple set of industry conversations that TRAI does. And before TRAI, the industry body basically makes their recommendation. There are three or four steps before it reaches TRAI. Those three or four, the mere fact that it has crossed those three or four steps, of course it's taken more than five years because some of these recommendations are actually not new recommendations, they are four or five year old recommendation. The mere fact that it has reached TRAI gives me a lot of hope, and TRAI has further made a recommendation to the Ministry. It gives me a lot of hope that it's a matter of time before the Ministry will accept the recommendation. But obviously, as I said again, it's not recommended till it's recommended.
Got it. And regarding-
Ketan, sorry to interrupt.
Just one data keeping question, sir.
Yeah, go ahead.
What was the newsprint consumption rate in HMVL entity, and how much on average do you see it correcting, as you mentioned that it will correct going ahead in few quarters?
Yeah, I think it will correct around 5%-10% going ahead. 5%-10% from here where it is. On the exact rate, I would request my colleague, Anna.
Yeah, it was around 54,000 for Hindustan.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of [Siddharth S.] Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Hi, I am Siddharth. I am an individual investor. I just had one question on the movement in other expenses between Q1 and Q2. I think historically, we have seen a jump. So for example, it was about INR 70 crore last quarter, and it is INR 86 crore this quarter. So what is driving this increase?
Are you referring to HT Media console results or some other result?
HMVL standalone.
Yeah. So it is on a YoY basis, a INR 2 crore increase.
Yeah. But what is driving it Q-on-Q, these other expenses?
What is the-
Quarter- on- quarter.
So hold on. What is the consequence? What is sitting in this result?
Yes, one second. I will just tackle that question. Mehul, sorry.
Siddharth.
Siddharth, sorry, Siddharth. Part of the reason is the fair valuation of equity investment that happens. It happens on a half yearly basis. Quarter one didn't have such a valuation impact. Quarter two did have, so that is partly the reason for the increase. Second is the fact that the OTT cost largely sits in this line from all the content and customer acquisition cost that we have been speaking about. This quarter, on a sequential basis, there is marginal increase in the level of events that have happened in the three. These are the main reasons for the cost increase on a sequential base.
Okay, thank you.
The next question is from the line of [Mehul Parekh]. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Good evening. Sorry, I missed one question. Can you hear me?
Yeah, Mehul, please go ahead.
Okay. Yeah. I wanted to know that livehindustan.com, which is the digital Hindi website, is run by Digicontent, or HT Digital Streams. Do we get any revenue from there? Because we had put up some notice regarding revenue share some time back. Do we really get some revenue? Because that notice was really a little complicated for me to understand.
Notice for revenue share? Sorry.
Yeah. Between companies, that if advertising revenue share and some notice was put up a few months back.
No.
One second. Mehul, we are not par and face able to read, figure which is the notice that we are referring to, so we can take this offline.
Okay.
On Live Hindustan revenue per se, it doesn't come to Hindustan. As you said, it is part of HT Digital Streams. Overall, if there are any sale, which is done as part of combo, like if you've gone to the client and you have sold print and digital, there as per RPT arrangements, there will be revenue sharing that happens basis on such sales which are sold together of multi-mediums. Beyond that, there shouldn't be anything. So everything will be as per RPT arrangements if at all. We can connect with you offline on the specific notice that you have raised.
Mehul, Piyush this side. I think that is what Anna said, I think is, look, Live Hindustan is a property of DCL through HT DSL, so no revenue of any properties which is monetized comes here. It will all be sitting here. But if a customer is taking a combo, whereby he is taking a print property and a digital property, then we would have requested a certain related party transaction, basis which the revenue will be distributed. But obviously, beyond that, there is no revenue which crosses the legal entity boundaries here. Okay, great. So that is like a separate newspaper itself. Yeah. Think of it, which is in a digital.
Yeah.
Yes. Okay. Think of it like that.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of [Ashima Khandelwal]. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Hi, I am Ashima.
Yeah, Ashima.
Looking to invest in the company. So my question is, like you mentioned in the PPT, that operating EBITDA for the print business has gone up. It has improved mainly due to newsprint prices. So my question is, by how much has newsprint prices declined?
Ashima, as we said to one of the earlier callers, on a YoY basis, we are already seeing prices come down by about 15%. As we go forward from here on into the next two quarters, we already see prices coming down between 5%-10% in the next two quarters.
Okay.
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, dear friends, for joining our Q2 FY 2024 investors call. Really appreciate that. We wish you and your families a very happy Diwali and happy festive season. Thank you so much.