Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd (NSE: SHEMAROO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Jul. 25, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Amit Haria — Chief Financial Officer
Hiren Gada — Chief Executive Officier
Arghya Chakrvarty — Chief Operating Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Nupur Jainkunia — Analyst
Yash Kukreja — Analyst
Urmish Shah — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Good day and welcome to Shimaru Entertainment Limited Q1FY26 earnings conference call hosted by Valorum Advisors. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and well. Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome TO Shimaru Entertainment Limited Q1FY26 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Valorum Advisors. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal up later by pressing Star then zero on Touchstone phone.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Nupur Jankunya. Thank you. And over to you, ma’. Am.
Nupur Jainkunia — Analyst
Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and a warm welcome to you all. My name is Nupur Jain Kunia. I am Valorum Advisor. We represent the investor relations of Shemaro Entertainment Limited on behalf of the company, I would like to thank you all for participating in the company’s earnings call for the fourth quarter of the financial year 2026. Before we begin a quick cautionary statement. Some of the statements made in today’s conference call may be forward looking in nature. Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated.
Such statements are based on management’s belief as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Audiences are cautioned not to place any undue reliance on these forward looking statements in making any investment decisions. The purpose of today’s earnings conference call is purely to educate and bring awareness about the company’s fundamental business and financial quarter under review. Now I would like to introduce you to the management participating with us in today’s earnings conference and hand it over to them for their opening remarks. We have with us Mr. Hiren Kara, CEO, Mr. Akya Chakraborty, COO and Mr.
Amitarya, CFO of the company. Without any further delay, I request Mr. Amitarya to start with his opening remarks on the financial highlights. Thank you. And over to you sir.
Amit Haria — Chief Financial Officer
Thank you Nupur. And good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our earnings call for the first quarter of the financial year. To let me first start by giving you some of the key highlights after which our CEO, Mr. Hiren Gadda will give you some of the Operational highlights. For Q1FY26. The revenue from operations stood at around 140 crores which declined by approximately 10% year on year. The company reported an EBITDA loss of. About. INR 56 crores for the quarter while the net loss to at around INR 46 crores. With regards to the new initiatives, expenses in Q1 FY26amounted to INR 32 crores. Adjusting for this investment, the EBITDA loss from existing operations for the quarter would have been around INR 24 crores. Digital media revenues for the first quarter stood at around 67 crores, growing by 18% year on year. Traditional media revenues for the quarter stood at around 72 crores which declined by 26%. Yoy now I would request our CEO Mr. Hiren Gadda to give you operational highlights for the period under review.
Hiren Gada — Chief Executive Officier
Thank you Amit and good afternoon everyone. As discussed in the last quarter, the re entry of major broadcast channels such as Star, upsav, Khalil, Grishte, Zmol and Sonipal on the free Dish platform led to a significant redistribution of viewership within the free to Air ecosystem or the Free to Air segment. This shift impacted the performance of existing GECs and indie movie channels category, including our bouquet of channels. Additionally, a packed sports calendar and ongoing softness in FMCG advertising further intensified headwinds across all traditional entertainment businesses. In sharp contrast, our digital media business had a very strong growth driven by robust performance matrices across our portfolio including YouTube, Shimarumi and syndication.
In response to these shifting dynamics, we are proactively implementing a range of strategic measures. These include rationalizing costs for select channels, repositioning others to better align with audience preferences and reinforcing our investment strategy across the content portfolio. Shimarumi Gujarati released six new titles during this quarter featuring a diverse mix of movies, web series and plays. Noteworthy digital premieres included blockbuster films such as Umbro, all the Best Pandya and Hindi dubbed version of Helaro on YouTube. Our flagship channel Shemaru Filmigane crossed a significant milestone of 72.5 million subscribers across our entire portfolio of channels. The company garnered more than 10 billion views during the quarter, underscoring the sustained strength of our digital engagement with the audiences.
We remain cautiously optimistic about a seasonal pickup in advertising spends in the upcoming quarters supported by the festive season and strong viewership momentum in our digital platforms. However, margins are expected to remain under pressure due to the ongoing accelerated inventory charge offs assumptions strategic initiative we began six quarters ago. It is important to highlight that these charge offs are purely accounting adjustments and do not reflect the monetization of our content or ability to generate free cash flows. Looking ahead, we remain focused on strengthening our balance sheet, driving operational efficiencies and positioning the company to unlock substantial long term value.
With that, I open the floor for the question and answer session.
Questions and Answers:
operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press char and one on the Trust jam telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press chart and two participants are requested use answers while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll wait for a moment while the question queue ascends. Participants who wish to ask the question, we press char and 1. Now the next question is from the line of Yashku Preja from Equity Capital. Please go ahead.
Yash Kukreja
I’m audible.
Amit Haria
Yes, yes.
Yash Kukreja
Yeah. So thank you for the opportunity. So sir, my first question is, as you said, the reentry of major broadcasters has had some impact. Could you elaborate more on it? Like the extent of impact this has had on our channel viewership and also the advertising revenue.
Hiren Gada
Yeah, so. Hi Yash. So basically with the entry of the four broadcasters, like we had already announced in the last call, I think we have seen it now for one quarter, the impact is largely around. What has happened is with the entry of the four new broadcasters, no new viewership has. The viewership numbers have not increased. It’s not that new viewers have come to the fridge platform. So what has happened is the overall GRPs in the fridge platforms have got redistributed. So some of the. So while the new broadcasters have garnered a lot of grp, it has come from some from existing GEC channels, some from Hindi movie channels, some from news and some from other sectors.
So basically there has been a redistribution of viewership. So as a result, what has happened is the overall ad spend in free dish platforms have not come down, but the advertising monies have also got redistributed according to the viewership changes. So that’s what has happened. I mean, it depends on which channel has got hit so much and so on, so forth. But largely at an overall level, I think about, you know, we would say about 15, 20, 25% changes in the advertising money depending on which channels viewership has moved. So that’s. That’s what has happened.
Yash Kukreja
Okay, got it. And sir, considering what you said now, and also our revenue mix which from Digital comes around 37%. So are we trying to focus more there or are we planning to grow there?
Amit Haria
So you know, as Hiren said in his opening comment, Yash, that we are also, you know, readjusting our investment in our overall content portfolio. So while we are continuing to our focus in broadcast, we are taking some rationalizing of cost measures and so on and so forth. But we have increased our investments on our digital media businesses largely around YouTube. So we are investing around bringing in more fresh content on YouTube as well as focusing on increasing our title mixes on Shamaru Me, which is our OTT platform. So yes, there is a change in the investment pattern.
This is what we are seeing with the movements happening around the overall advertising market and overall spend mix changes.
Yash Kukreja
Got it. Sir, answer another question is so what is the current debt level as of Q1 like we have seen the reduction in the finance cost.
Amit Haria
So current debt levels is 306 crores.
Yash Kukreja
Okay, got it. And sir, do we stick to our guidance of reducing it by 60 crore in this financial year? 26.
Hiren Gada
That’s. That is definitely our intent. Given the way the first quarter has happened at this point that looks unlikely. I would like to definitely call it out. We if you see even in spite of everything that has happened during this last quarter, including the big four entry, the debt, so the cash flow has been quite robust and the debt has just gone up by about 5 crores from the March balance sheet. So there is a very strong, you know, micromanagement of cash flow, working capital, etc. Happening. So we are very cognizant of that as of now.
Our intent to reduce that debt definitely remains. But we are given where the way the first quarter has gone that currently seems a little unlikely, to be honest.
Yash Kukreja
Okay. All right. And so my last question is what was the operating cash flow in this quarter?
Amit Haria
It was negative around 5 crores.
Yash Kukreja
Okay, thank you so much. I’ll join back in. Q. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask questions, please press char and 1. Now we would like to remind participants that you may press char n1 to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Urmesh Shah from Moneyvisors. Please go ahead.
Urmish Shah
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I joined the call a bit late so I’m sorry if I missed something and I’m asking it again. So I just want to know that in FY26 on a year, on year basis, your YoY growth is -9.63. Any reason for that? And how do you see it for the full year going forward?
Hiren Gada
Actually, sorry but we have explained the entire aspect about.
Urmish Shah
Okay, okay. I joined the call a bit late so. Okay. And one more thing, as I can see in your presentation, your traditional business is under significant pressure again. So I just wanted an outlook on what do you see going forward for full year FY26 and maybe FY27 as well. I just wanted our outlook on that.
Arghya Chakrvarty
So again, you know, I think you missed some part, but I’ll still, I’ll still try and answer. I’ll still try. This is Orgo here, so I’ll still try and answer. So there are traditional business has two parts to it. One is the broadcast business and one is our traditional syndication business, which is our.
Urmish Shah
Right.
Arghya Chakrvarty
Aggregation business that we do. Right, right. So the broadcast business has obviously come under pressure as we had. And it is not something which was a bit. Is any surprise which we are aware. Of. The presence of the four broadcasters coming in. There is an impact because of that. I mean, if you look at it from last year, first quarter we had, you know, those four broadcasters were not there and the advertising monies along with the viewership has shifted around. So some of our monies have gone, moved in. So there is a decline because of that. The second part is the syndication business, which if you have been following us and if you have been following our calls, you would know by now that it’s a lumpy business. It happens in some quarters and it doesn’t happen.
So in this quarter, last year we had some syndication business, but this year, in this quarter that has not happened. But there are a lot of deals in pipeline. So it will happen sometime over the future, the next three quarters. So that is something which will get arrested. So the decline will be there, but not to what you are seeing because the pressure on traditional in line with the broader.
Urmish Shah
It will be a slower decline going forward. Exactly what you are saying.
Amit Haria
Yes, yes. And I don’t know, I mean if we get better.
Urmish Shah
Yeah, obviously. Yes, yes. But from the current levels it will obviously be a bit of slower deployment.
Arghya Chakrvarty
That’s right. Significantly slower than that. Is this is what we anticipate. The pressure on broadcast revenues will continue because that’s how the entire year will go.
Urmish Shah
Right. Okay, sir, thank you. And I’m sorry, I joined the caller late. So thank you. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. To ask a question, please press char and 1. Now. Participants who wish to ask questions may please press char n1 at this time. The next question is from the line of Yashku Kreja from Equity Capital. Please go ahead.
Yash Kukreja
So thank you for taking up the follow up question. What is the total budgeted spend on new initiatives for MI 25th?
Hiren Gada
So we had, when we started the year we have budgeted around 75 crores, which is higher than what we had spent last year because we knew that the big four broadcasters will come in and there is definitely going to be a pressure on revenue and bottom line thanks to that. So we’ll see how the year goes. We are hopeful that from here since now the ratings have stabilized and every. You know, we all know where which channel stands and therefore the revenue is there. We’ve already recalibrated or are in the process of recalibrating cost as we.
As I shared in the opening comments. So 75 is what we had budgeted at the beginning of the year.
Yash Kukreja
Got it sir. My second question is. Sorry if I missed. So what is the breakdown the content? Basically accelerated inventory charge of taken in Q1 and also how much are we planning to do in FY26.
Hiren Gada
So Amit will answer it. To give you just the numbers, we closed March 25th at 560 crores of inventory. June we stand at 528 crores. So about 40 crores reduction in the inventory and which includes you know, net of further additions etc. But yeah, Amit will.
Amit Haria
So Yash, as I mentioned in the previous calls, the quarterly charge off is in the range of around 35 odd crores quarter quarter across the quarters every quarter. So if I have to just extrapolate that it would be around in the region of 140 crores of accelerated amount that will be taking in this financial year.
Yash Kukreja
Okay. And so this financial will be the last year, right?
Amit Haria
Yes.
Hiren Gada
Yes.
Yash Kukreja
Okay. Thank you so much sir.
Hiren Gada
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask question may please press Star and one now to ask a question. Please press Char and one now. Participants, we would like to remind that you may press Char and one to ask a question. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Hiren Gada
Yeah. Thank you everyone for participating in the Q1 earnings call. I hope you have been able to answer your questions satisfactorily. If you have any further questions or you would like to know more about the company, please reach out to our IR managers, Valorem Advisors. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. On behalf of Shimaru Entertainment. That concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.