Entertainment Network (India) Ltd (NSE: ENIL) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 17, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Yatish Mehrishi — Chief Executive Officer
Yatesh Maharishi — Chief Executive Officer
Sanjay Ballabh — Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Runjhun Jain — Analyst
Kavish Parekh — Analyst
Harshad Gadekar — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Entertainment Network India Limited Q4 and FY25 earnings conference call. 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 this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star then zero on your touchstone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Runjun Jain from Eyir. Thank you. And over to you ma’ am.
Runjhun Jain — Analyst
Thank you. Ansat Good morning everyone and welcome to the Q4NFY25 earnings call of Entertainment Network India Limited. To take you through the results and answer your questions today we have the management team from the company represented by Mr. Yatesh Maharishi, Chief Executive Officer and Mr. Sanjay Vallabh, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that the financial results and the presentations have been uploaded on the company’s website and on the exchanges. Should you need any further information, you can get in touch with us at eyir. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today’s discussion might include forward looking statements based on the current expectations and assumptions.
These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements after today’s call whatsoever. With that said, I’ll hand over to Mr. Yazeesh.
Yatesh Maharishi — Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Rajat. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Entertainment Network India Ltd. I extend a warm welcome to our Q4 and FY25 earnings call. We appreciate you joining us on a rainy Saturday. Thank you very much. We announced our results yesterday and I hope you had a chance to review them. I’ll now take this opportunity to walk you through the key highlights and provide context around our performance on the financial overview. During the year our domestic revenue reached 526crores reflecting a 9.4% year on year growth. This was primarily driven by strong performance in our digital and non FCD segments.
Excluding digital, our core business recorded a 2.6 year on year growth with a revenue of rupees 465 crores. Let me take you through the segment performances. The radio industry faced significant headwinds during the quarter and we are not immune to these challenges. Additionally, quarter four of the previous year benefited from the extraordinary government and political ad spends due to the general elections resulting in a higher base. Despite this, we remain relatively better insulated than peers and continue to maintain a healthy 26% volume share in the radio segment on the non FCT segment we maintained a very strong momentum growing 20% year on year to Rs.
151 crore. This was driven by the sustained success of our solution based initiatives and key on ground events such as Green Marathon, Spelby and boombox. For FY25, the EBITDA margins for the non FCT business stood at a strong 33%. Let me take you through the digital business. Our digital segment delivered a stead seller growth with revenue reaching rupees 61 crores, up a strong 122% year on year growth largely driven by the strong performance of Ghana. We are encouraged by the positive customer response to the revamped Ghana 2.0 platform. Despite the revised upward pricing, revenues have been improving quarter on quarter and we anticipate the full impact to reflect in FY26.
In quarter four FY25 digital revenues comprise 32% of our total radio revenues up from 24% last year. For the full year, digital contribution reached 26% compared to 15% last year. This is in line with our strategic vision for evolving from a traditional radio company to a diversified multimedia entertainment enterprise. Very happy to share. Our digital cash burn is steadily declining registering a 15% drop sequentially over the last quarter with a total investment of rupees 47 crores in FY25. Just to reiterate some key financial metrics Q4 FY25 EBITDA excluding digital stands at rupees 37.4 crores with the EBITDA margin at 27.5% PAT for quarter four.
FY25 is rupees 21.4 crores, a 21% increase over quarter four last year. Full year EBITDA excluding digital stands at 118.8 crores with EBITDA margin at 25.5% and our PAD for the full year stands at Rs. 48.1 crores. Our international operations remain EBITDA positive, contributing rupees 19.2 crores in the revenue for FY25. The company continues to maintain a strong balance sheet with a cash balance of Rs. 368 crores as of March 31, 2025. Lastly, I am very pleased to to announce that the board has recommended a dividend of rupees two per share up from rupees 1.5 per share last year.
With that I will now hand over the call to the moderator. I look forward to your questions. Thank you.
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 star and one on their touchstone phone. 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. The first question is from the line of Khushi, an individual investor. Please go ahead. Ms. Khoshi, are you there?
Unidentified Participant
Hello.
operator
Yes ma’ am. Go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Good morning everyone. My. My first question to you is what is the Ghana revenue for the quarter and for the full year?
Yatesh Maharishi
Okay. Anything else? I’ll be just tell you the numbers.
Unidentified Participant
Also the revenue growth yoy and quarterly on Ghana only. Yeah. Yes.
Yatesh Maharishi
Okay. Sir Gawan. Ghana revenues increased from the total revenue for a full year was 46.2 crores against the last year revenue of 12.78 crores. Yeah.
Unidentified Participant
And what was the profitability of Ghana?
Yatesh Maharishi
So Ghana as we said it’s an investment phase. We are reducing cost and we believe Ghana will become profitable in the next five to six quarters.
Unidentified Participant
Could you please specify a number like.
Yatesh Maharishi
I’ll be happy to share. You can happy to share the numbers in detail on a site call with our CFO please.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, sure. My other question to you is what.
Yatesh Maharishi
Is the market share on Ghana or on radio overall? So overall as I said on the volume share we have almost a 26% volume share in the radio business. And from a value point we we are upward of 30%.
Unidentified Participant
Also please give us split on Ghana and radio the market share.
Yatesh Maharishi
You said Khushi. Yeah, Khushi market share on digital on Ghana is very difficult to put up because every platform has a different way of doing business. For example, YouTube is largely available free and they have a very less paid service. Spotify also does free and and a subscriber service Ghana. While Ghana we don’t offer free music. It’s a paid service platform so you have to pay for to listen to music. So if I was to look at a paid share we are a very healthy share compared to Spotify. But since nobody shares the numbers it’s very difficult to ascertain.
So we are own internal metrics on Ghana and we believe we have a very healthy share in the paid market music streaming service.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, My other question is what is the inventory utilization for the quarter and for the year?
Yatesh Maharishi
So our inventory utilization has been around for the quarter has been about 81% and at the year for the full year has been about 78%.
Unidentified Participant
All right. My other question is what is the Volume growth for both the quarter and for the year.
Yatesh Maharishi
Hello, One moment please. Just a minute. So as we said last year there were elections and there was lot of government spends. So there’s been a drop in the. In the volume growth by about 4%.
Unidentified Participant
Drop by 4%. Okay. My other question to you is what is our effective rate growth for the quarter and for the year Also how it is compared to pretty Covid levels.
Yatesh Maharishi
So pretty Covid levels as we have always spoken about the price have not come back to pre Covid levels. They stand at about 25% less than pre Covid levels. It used to be 40% down. There have been some errors in the degrowth. It’s now as a stable at 25% right now.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, could you please tell me again the revenue of Ghana like I am.
Yatesh Maharishi
About 18 crores on a digital.
Unidentified Participant
That’s for the quarter. Yes, and for the year.
Yatesh Maharishi
We spoke about it there in the investor presentation. Khushi, you will have all the details on that. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question we would like to remind the participants to press star and one to ask a question. Participants may press star N1 at this time to ask a question. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star N1. Now the next question is from the line of Prashant, an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello everybody, this is Prashant. My question is related to again with Ghana. Since this is a digital platform how can we prepare for the appearance like the Spotify and is there any strategy or what’s the plan for going forward to growth about the Ghana. So please can you elaborate more on the future plan or future growth about the Ghana and digital platform?
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you Prashant. See for Ghana. For us it’s very clear it’s made India only product in the market right now on a platform on the music streaming service. If you look at largely the competition remains YouTube and Spotify this year I’m very happy to say we have grown our subscriber base by almost 28% when we took over. We took over the business in the 1st of December last year and from the 1st of April to this year there has been a healthy 28% growth in our subscriber base. You would know that we increased our price from 299to rupees 599 in the month of August.
So we are seeing a very healthy growth. As I mentioned earlier, we are committed to profitability on the Ghana business and we believe in the next five to six quarters Ghana should become a Profitable business for us with a healthy revenue and a bottom line.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you.
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ronaksha from Aquiris securities Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yes sir. My first question is regarding except of the government which are the other sectors which have given the supported the overall volumes.
Yatesh Maharishi
So thanks Ronald. Actually government business has gone down over last quarter because last year was leading to the general elections. Government spends a lot of money and there was also political business coming in which will also reflect in the quarter one in the coming quarter also. So in fact government business has gone down and political business has gone down. If you look at the business which have done well traditionally in the quarter four, the BFI segments does spend a lot and that’s where the 16% growth has come on. BFI sector and real estate sector has done well.
Unidentified Participant
Okay sir, so my next question is regarding the new sizes which you have reflected from the July 1st. So as in the last call, you have highlighted that around 27% of our subscriber are having the new rates. So what is the status right now and are you witnessing any drop in the overall customer base because of the price hikes?
Yatesh Maharishi
So what we meant 27% was the profitable base. It was not the 599. The profitable base was 27% which now stand at as of March 31st at about 35%. We will see the first turn because we increased price on the 1st of August. We will see the impact only in the 1st of August, but we have not seen our growth rate go down. So we are very confident that we will be able to deliver that number considering the way our product is and very, very good Recommendation engine. The UIs are good, the catalogs are good.
Remember we are the first guys who have been curating music for the country for the last 20 years. Correct. So our music play editors have also done an excellent job on that. So we are very confident that our growth will sustain for the coming years also. And there is lot of headroom available in the market for paid market share. And as I also mentioned earlier, there are 200 million free music subscribers and only as per EY report, only 25 million pay or maybe 15, only 15 million pay for the music streaming service. So there’s massive headroom available, massive growth opportunity available there.
It is required to be patient and keep delivering value to the consumer. So as we keep delivering value to the consumer, we believe this growth will be sustainable and our ambition of and our objective of making Ghana profitable in the five to six quarters is on track. Our losses have also gone down quarter on quarter.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, sir, that’s it for my sir. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kavish Parikh from BNK Securities. Please go ahead.
Kavish Parekh
Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity. Could you help me with the absolute number of paid subscribers in Ghana and how has this number moved over the past few quarters?
Yatesh Maharishi
So as I said. Thank you Kavish. As I said, our numbers have grown almost 28% from the beginning of the year, which is a very healthy growth. If you look at ey growth, I think we have outperformed the subscriber growth in the market and we don’t reveal the numbers over a period. If you require anything on our individual calls, we can have a larger discussion on it. But having said that, it’s a very healthy paid market share which we have right now.
Kavish Parekh
Secondly, music labels have maintained the view that all audio DTS will move behind the paywall. Play Spotify and Jio 7 offer free services. You have of course been very clear about transitioning to the paid mode of consumption leading to profitable growth. What are your thoughts on these two platforms moving to paid and if it were to happen, what gives the industry the confidence that subscribers will pay rather than moving their consumption to a free platform like YouTube?
Yatesh Maharishi
It’s a very good question. I think if that happens, I think we will see a hockey stick growth in the subscriber markets. I’ll just take you back. I’m assuming you’ll be about 35 years if you just go back to your younger days. People used to buy CDs, people used to buy cassettes, even piloted music. People would go to a next door shop and pay 100 rupees to get their own playlist. So it’s not that people have not paid for music earlier days. People have always paid. If you look at you bought a CD of Kabikushi Kabi gum at about 300 bucks or 500 bucks also and today you’re getting almost 700 rupees or 600 rupees for our cost.
A full library, global library at a click of a button at a convenience different playlist. So I don’t it’s about value because it’s been available for free. People have not been valuing it as services stop. I think that will be a hocusc grow for the industry and that’s where music labels also believe in. I think the future lies in subscription and not doesn’t lie in the free medium. You’ve seen the ad headwind advertising Headwinds across media are been there. So there is no way a medium can sustain only on advertising. I think the subscriber growth will play it.
We saw in video OTT in the COVID times the way the growth happened and we believe that similar numbers will happen here. Also now coming to competition, Spotify started putting lot of restrictions on free product. Even if you look at YouTube also when you watch anything on YouTube there is so much of ads now coming on YouTube that they are also looking at putting paying more focus on subscription. In fact YouTube Music, if you are not a paid subscriber will not play music in the background. So that itself is a nudge to go subscribers. Even Sawan is looking at that.
So I think it’s a very healthy thing. There is as I said if everybody goes paid, the headroom is because 200 million people does subscribe music free. So there is no way people will not subscribe this. And as I said the last EY report says about only 15 million paid. So the amount of growth opportunity which is available for all the players is massive. So I’m very, very confident, very optimistic. It’s a great business, a great time to be in. We have developed a great product. It’s a Bharat. It’s the only Bharat product. Ghana meets songs.
It’s very, very close to the Indian consumers. The search optimization is massive. So we are very confident that this product and platform for us will deliver a lot of great revenues and profitability for us in the coming years.
Kavish Parekh
Thanks a lot for that. For your thoughts. Sir, just one last thing from my side. Could you share some engagement matrix or maybe the time spent on the platform on Ghana by a few free user versus a paid user.
Yatesh Maharishi
So we don’t have a free user Kavish. So there is no comparison and that’s the reason those numbers will not make sense because if you compare with us Spotify which is a freemium model the numbers will always look different so it will be difficult to share. I’m saying engagement, what we track is how the engagement is growing as the subscriber numbers are growing. Our engagement metrics is also growing and it’s been just four quarters. If you look at Kavish, we have not been handling Ghana for years. It’s been just four quarter or a full one year.
If you look at it the way we looking at the business and we are very very happy with the way engagement has gone up our and the way we count is the listening dao is listening dao. Now both numbers are very, very healthy.
Kavish Parekh
Thank you so much.
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you Gavish.
operator
Thank you. Before we take the next question we would like to remind the participants to press star and one to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of Harshad Gadigar from Elara Securities. Please go ahead.
Harshad Gadekar
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for my questions. So would it be possible to share any color on the growth outlook for FCT and non FCT segment And what would be the key priorities for us in FY26?
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you. Ashe. See the way we look at is quarter one we thought it started well but because of the border tensions it took a beating on both on ad media and everything. Because it was not a great time for any company to look at it. Now since it’s behind our back, the ceasefire has happened. It’s good. The way we look at is the ad business. Ad environment business will remain little muted. There will be growth because of a base effect in the second half. It might because it will still continue to muted hoping with the more macroeconomic conditions.
Even though if you look at the US terriforms settling down rains going to be great. We believe that will drive some growth on the pure advertising sales. Having said that we are very bullish on our non FCD solution business and the event business. Event business in quarter four has grown almost 80% for us. And we believe this year also it will lead the growth. Even our solution business has done reasonably well. And we believe the growth will come from the non asset segments. And we are double downing on that. And we are very confident that this year also the event concert business will do really well for us.
Harshad Gadekar
Thank you sir. All the best.
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you Arshad. Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Participants may press star and one to ask a question. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one. Now the next question is from the line of Meghna an individual investor. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Hello. Am I audible?
Yatesh Maharishi
Yes, Meghna. Thank you.
Unidentified Participant
Good morning. I just wanted to clarify one thing. You said Ghana revenue is 46.2. This is for the quarter four, right?
Yatesh Maharishi
No, full year.
Unidentified Participant
Full year. Okay. And for quarter four how much is it?
Yatesh Maharishi
17 crores only Ghana will be about. Just one second.
Unidentified Participant
I think digital is around 18 crores.
Yatesh Maharishi
So digital is 18 crores and Ghana will be about 14.6 crores.
Unidentified Participant
14.6 crores. And last year same quarter it was around nine and a half crores as I gather from.
Yatesh Maharishi
Yes, yes, yes.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And. And for the full year FY24 how.
Yatesh Maharishi
Much was it full year last year? As I said it may not be comparable because we took Ghana only in the first of December. So the full year number for four months was about 12.78 crores. Against that this year it is 46.22 crores.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay, got it. Thank you. And my next question was the volume declined by 4%. This is for the quarter, right?
Yatesh Maharishi
Yes, both quarter and all quarter. Because if you look at last year quarter four, there was massive government and political spends which has led to the government business. And whenever new government comes, the government spends are always lower and it impacts. If you look at past general election strength also the government business goes down. But last year was massive government and political spend that resulted into the volume degrowth.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And for the full year, how. How is the volume faring?
Yatesh Maharishi
Same thing. It’s almost the same. It’s actually quarter four led to the larger number drop also.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay, got it. That was my question. Thank you.
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you.
operator
Thank you. Participants who wish to ask a question may press star and one now. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. As there are no further questions from the participants, I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Yatesh Maharishi
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to have you all and thank you very much for joining on a Saturday. As we have been always saying, we are committed to delivering profitable growth for our stakeholders and we remain committed. We are very excited about our business on Ghana and overall event business. Thank you very much again. Thank you.
operator
Thank you on behalf of Entertainment Network India limited that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.