Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd (NSE: HMVL) Q1 2026 Earnings Call dated Aug. 05, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Aaditya Mulani — Investor Relations.
Anna Abraham — Head, Investor Relations
Piyush Gupta — Group CFO
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Yash R — Analyst
Presentation:
Aaditya Mulani — Investor Relations.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is Aditya Malani from the HD Media Group. I would like to welcome you all to our quarter one financial year 2526 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 Ms. Anna Abraham, CFO Hindustan Media Ventures Limited and head investor Relations, HD Media Group. Thank you. And over to you a.
Anna Abraham — Head, Investor Relations
Thank you Aditya. Good evening everyone. On behalf of HT Media Group, I. Would like to extend a warm welcome to our earnings webinar for the first quarter of financial year 2526. Joining me on today’s call are Mr. Piyush Gupta Group, CFO Mr. Parvez Banan, Head of Financial Controllership and Taxation and. Members of the investments team. We hope you’ve had an opportunity to review the financial results of Hindustan Media. Ventures Limited which was announced yesterday, as. Well as those of HD Media Limited released earlier this afternoon. Please note that our discussion today will. Follow the presentation slides. This presentation along with the financial statements are available on the stock exchanges and in the investor relations section of our respective websites. Coming on to slide two, as per our usual practice, we would not be providing any specific guidance on revenue or earnings projections, so kindly keep in mind. The disclaimer that is on the slide regarding forward looking statements. This slide features comments from our chairperson on the company’s performance on the concluded fiscal quarter and I quote, building up from a successfully concluded last fiscal year, the first quarter in the current fiscal has also been on a strong growth. With both operating revenue and profitability showing growth as compared to the previous year. The print business has seen strong growth. In advertising revenue reflecting our leading market. Presence and the continued relevance of print. As an effect, our targeted efforts to. Grow circulation have delivered steady sequential wings. Further enhancing our niche. Growth in our radio business has been. Tepid with the larger industry still facing challenges. However, we are pivoting the business with a renewed focus on growing non free commercial time revenue. Meanwhile, our digital businesses continue to show. Steady momentum with our platforms Mosaic, Shine. And ODPK driving growth through differentiated future ready offer. We are working towards accelerating growth of our digital business while deepening the impact. Of our print offerings and reimagining the. Radio business with experiential and integrated format. As always, your trust powers our journey. With a relentless focus on quality journalism and immersive entertainment, we are creating richer. More relevant experiences for our diverse and evolving audience. End of quote. This is the agenda that we will. Be covering during the call today. We will first cover the consolidated financial. Results followed by a detailed overview of. Our print, radio and digital businesses. After the presentation we will open the. Floor for a Q and A session. With that I now hand over the call to Mr. Yusuf.
Piyush Gupta — Group CFO
Thank you Anna. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for. Joining Q1FY26 earnings call. We will just track the presentation on your screens. So the first chart is on Consolidated financial summary. As you can see in the first. Quarter FY 26% on a Wi Fi basis at 451 crores and PAT is a negative 11 crore which is the improvement of 59%. On a sequential basis the revenue is at minus 23% with path pad at minus 120%. Net cash again very very healthy at close to 101,000 crores. Coming on to the business unit performance and deep diving right away into print. You can see improvement in print operating revenues compared to the last year. This is led by a significant growth in advert revenues circulation showing sequential improvements as well. So our ad revenues have come to 255.
255 crores which is a 17% improvement and total operating revenue 324 crore which is 8. 8% improvement. Going to the English segmentation. And advertisement revenue have which have come at 140 crores is a 19% growth. So very healthy growth on a wide wide basis. On a quarterly basis however it’s a decline of 12%. Circulation revenue however has been a little debit because our impetus at recruiting more copies and more dealers is down by 22% on a quarterly basis it’s planned. Coming on to the Hindi business our. Growth is 14% with the bad refuse. Coming at 116 crores. On a quarterly basis it’s a decline of 9% at 116 crores. Circulation revenue on a y o y basis higher 39 crores which is flat versus last year. Radio as highlighted earlier, radio has been under a bit of pressure. Those segment that we saw this compared to the prior quarter due to high base effect from the big events which we conducted earlier this year. But on a Y basis the revenue scale at 31 crores as against 36 crores last year with the margins at negative 21. Digital you can see the segment revenues. Goes Y as most digital properties including OTP play continuing to gain traction and profitability improvement going to broad based revenue expansion along with business investment rationalization. As a consequence our operating revenues are at 56 crore which is a growth of 21% and operating margins are at a negative 38. With that we come to the end of the presentation by handing back to.
Questions and Answers:
Aaditya Mulani
Thank you Piyush. We will now begin the Q and 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 in before closing 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 the line of Gaurav Agarwal. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Hi Piyush. Hi Anna. I’m a private investor. So basically my question is regarding your one of the group companies DG content. I believe you there you have you all have diluted a large part of the equity as a RSUs. So just wanted to know what’s the impact on the P L Because if it’s almost like nine and a half percent equity dilution. So I believe in even in the financial you all should have separately adjusted or shown some details. What’s the impact on the PNL is.
Anna Abraham
Part of our employee cost in the pnl.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. So in the last quarterly numbers, what’s the impact? Can you tell?
Anna Abraham
Last quarterly number is hardly any RSU were issued only in the last month.
Piyush Gupta
So this is so what of all the cost has been charged in the Savary and wages account and it’s not a 9% dilution. I don’t know how you’ve calculated that but the accounting has been conducted as per NDAs and it’s not a 9% D but it’s all employees RSUs which. Have been given to the employers disclosed.
Anna Abraham
In the annual report as and when it comes up.
Unidentified Participant
But Piyush it’s 9 and a half percent. Now earlier you all had 29 lakh shares RSUs which you guys increased it to 56. So it’s like 10% of the DG content equity.
Anna Abraham
Issued is. Yes, there’s a right listing and there is. It is a benchmark to certain milestones also so currently there.
Unidentified Participant
Sorry I couldn’t get you. Can you come again please either this.
Anna Abraham
Point time the shares have not been. Issued as yet so so when the. Shares get issued then it will. It’ll have some level of D. But. At this point of time there is none.
Unidentified Participant
But if you find out the list of the entire BSE 500 list of companies there would be very few who would have done such large these all things happen in the private Equity unlisted stocks, you know founder allotments happen. So how come all of a sudden you know, right from 2% then 5 now it’s 9 and a half percent.
Piyush Gupta
That’s a very exactly the point that I’m trying to make. First of all, it’s not nine and a half percent. It’s much less. That has been given as a right for the trust to buy and hand over the ESOPs to the employees. It’s not nine and a half percent. That’s a, that’s the approval which has been taken for future handing out but it will not be a 9%. You know if you want we can separately engage and you can drop a. Mail to the investor relations section and. We’Ll give you the and just closing.
Anna Abraham
On that conversation we also the digital business is a new age business for from that respect we are investing more and more in that new business. So therefore it is listed but there is potential.
Unidentified Participant
So are there any specific employees like I believe you guys have enrolled.
Piyush Gupta
I tell you what this because we don’t consider you know this, this call is for the HD Media Group and DCR really doesn’t fall into that. Why don’t you send your specific queries on the investor relations and we will answer answer your query there.
Unidentified Participant
Nobody bothers to respond on emails, neither calls. Manu is not available. The number which is there. That number is. Seems to be out of working. It’s not working. So how do you guys contact?
Piyush Gupta
We receive a lot of emails on a very regular basis. Just drop in an email but somebody.
Unidentified Participant
Should pick up the call now. Nobody is picking up the call. Also.
Piyush Gupta
Would you be kind enough to kind of put in an email?
Unidentified Participant
I will do that Piyush. If you give me your email id I’ll put directly to you.
Piyush Gupta
My, my email id is very simple. It’s PI hindustan.com why don’t you write a mail.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks a lot. Piyush. Yes.
Aaditya Mulani
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 Yash R. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yash R
Hi Pushayana. Good evening. Could you please let us know the verticals that have helped to achieve the growth in the print segment, particularly the English part ht. I know I can read the in the comments that there has been a higher government revenue versus last year. So first of all, I mean we must have been having a good amount of revenue this year. Is it normalized or is that any exceptional revenue that you received? And what are the other.
Anna Abraham
Yeah, if I may take it up. See last year same quarter, if you remember we had the national elections so there was a code of conduct which. Was in play because of which government. Revenue was substantially lower. So without therefore this year there is no such restriction. So government spending has been as usual. And therefore that of course last year therefore in water one the results by for this this year is getting the upside. But apart from the government revenue, commercial revenue also has fired for us.
Yash R
So which sectors have contributed the most to.
Anna Abraham
It is a big segment from quarter one. So that would be one of the segments which is fired. So as I mean across, across English in Hindy it would be education. Among the top five segments two, three of them have been fire.
Yash R
Sorry, I didn’t get any of the verticals. Education,
Education is one that has performed well. Right?
Anna Abraham
Yes.
Yash R
And.
Anna Abraham
And real estate and BFSI and.
Yash R
Okay, and what percentage of contribution is by education to the.
Anna Abraham
Education is a pretty sizable advertiser in the quarter one.
Yash R
Okay. And growth percentage if you can just let us know. Government and education
Anna Abraham
we don’t get split by segments.
Piyush Gupta
Well yes, let me, let me try to give you a context. I mean education, the first quarter is a big segment. It’s in the top five to seven segments that we have published. The advertising comes in the English newspaper because the question is specifically to English. The growth has been reasonably good on the commercial side but we would like to give the exact numbers because you know, it’s a competitive number. We don’t want to share but that’s one sector which has fired.
Yash R
Okay, and what about on the circulation front? What are the copies? Are we stagnant or are we growing or has has those now have those numbers gone down? Because in the investor presentation I can see that the discounting is still continuing. Right.
Piyush Gupta
Hold on. Before. Well discounting, you know, as, as I. Highlighted earlier, we are currently recruiting a. Lot of new leaders on the Hindustan side. Right. So all the discounting which has happened. Is primarily happening there which is a short term trend. But I can give the exact specifics.
Anna Abraham
Yeah, so there is the. So in the English segment, whatever the decline that you see is largely on account of pricing only copies as you can see sequentially Also we are flat so there’s no change in copies in the Hindi business we are actually growing in copies Visavi last year sequential numbers. Remain pretty much time.
Yash R
Sorry. On the English front I can see a drop of 22% in the revenue that is on account of as may.
Anna Abraham
Also mentioned in the investor day.
Yash R
No, I mean so it’s lower realization for copy. So I’m not able to make a sense of it as to what it means.
Anna Abraham
That means the pricing to the customer is discounted as you were. And therefore it is the decline in revenue is linked by pricing and not by comps.
Yash R
Okay, so copies are the same. But then we are continuing with giving discounts right on the COVID price. Hello. Hello. Hello. Yeah.
Piyush Gupta
Can you hear us?
Yash R
I can now.
Piyush Gupta
So we said yes, you are absolutely right. We are giving those discounts and hence it is sitting on the circulation revenue. The copies are pretty constant. But we are. Our endeavor is to recruit more copies and increase the number of copies as. We go forward from here on.
Yash R
So I mean what is the plan like?
Aaditya Mulani
Dear participant, Sorry to interrupt here but may we request you to fall back in queue for any follow up questions please?
Yash R
Sure.
Aaditya Mulani
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Deepak Sharma. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. Hi, good evening. This is Deepak. My question is that we have signed a couple of AFE agreements in the. In the last six months and we see a uptick in the revenue. So would you be able to give a segregation between the AF revenue growth vis the normal revenue growth, Ad revenue growth?
Piyush Gupta
Not exactly. We don’t exactly give that number. But suffice to say that AFE revenue is. Has been a substantial part of the overall print revenue. And it remains to be so, remains to be seen. But it doesn’t have much varying on the new agreements that we would have signed. Because all the existing agreements that we have also have a life of three to five years. So those agreements are also into play. But AF revenue is a substantial part. Of the overall revenue.
Unidentified Participant
Sure, sure. Got it. Thank you.
Aaditya Mulani
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Meera Barel. Please introduce yourself and ask your question. Participant, you will have to unmute yourself. Mera Rubar, please unmute yourself and ask your question. Yes. Please unmute yourself now. Mira Rupar is not available.
Piyush Gupta
She hasn’t asked a question.
Anna Abraham
Sorry, we couldn’t hear you.
Unidentified Participant
I’m Sarad Ruparel. Her father. Mira Ruparel is not available. She hasn’t asked a question. Neither I have asked a question. We’ll move on.
Aaditya Mulani
No problem. The follow on question is from the line of Deepak Sharma. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, so follow up question again. So in my earlier discussion with Aditya, one of my discussions we did mention that you know the. The AFA Declaration happened when we do the conversion of the warrants into equity. So there are standing agreements which happen prior to that as well. So do we have a split of those saying that okay, these are in the pipeline and out of these, you know, X number of them we want to convert the, the warranty to equity. Do we have some ratios onto that?
Piyush Gupta
Can you just repeat the question? I, I think I missed a point there. You say when we convert a warranty to equity, what happens?
Unidentified Participant
So we, we under the LODR declarations we publish on the bosses that these are the AFP agreements which have converted into equity. The warrants are getting converted into equity. But you know, my discussion with Aditya earlier mentioned that there are, we keep on scouting for potential partnership opportunities and keep on shortlisting them and then out of those, if we find a long term strategic value then only we convert into that. So what is the split of those, you know, businesses where we say that we, we form a partnership with the 100 people and only 30% qualify to go to the next round?
Piyush Gupta
You know, so okay, so let’s be right to kind of attempt your question in a very high level. So I, we have no specific number here. First of all, you have to understand the reason that we invest through the warrant structure rather than paying equity is the risk mitigation, risk mitigation strategy. So of course there are a lot of instruments that we are using and not just the warrant. The warrant also is a risk mitigation mitigation strategy. We do pay equity, we do convertible debentures into optionally convertible debentures, we do warrants and so on, so forth.
Now the reason that we would convert a warrant into equity, if we basically see that that equity can give us a substantial upside. Now that will happen because this is all the information rights that we have in an invested companies. If we see that a certain company is on a certain track where we believe that there can be a lot of upside and that is the time that we convert our warranty to equity. As for the contractual document, there’s a time period in many cases that we have up in which we can exceed exercise this right.
And within that time period we keep on looking at the financial, financial performance of the company and basis that day. So there is no straight answer as to what percentage of warrants will be convert into equity. But the simple answer is depending on the conviction that we have on the company’s performance and therefore in the go, go forward, go forward perspective of the company, we would exercise that option. Otherwise they will not sure.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. Thank you. Historically, you know, what would have been the ratio in the past?
Piyush Gupta
Look, historically quite a few of our companies which have gone to the public markets and we were sitting in warrants. So before the public market we did exercise adoption. There are quite a few companies which have shown a lot of traction on both the top line and the bottom line. In that case we would have done this thing. But I don’t have a readymade number for you. But those are the decision gate spaces which you know, we look at the information. If the information is giving us a pre signal we’ll go ahead and explain the option.
Otherwise we’d not.
Unidentified Participant
Absolutely. I was talking to Aditya earlier and said that Mobiquik was a quick win for us last December itself. So you know it boosted our numbers as well. My, my question was more on the, on the, on the Mrs. You know, you know what happens, you know if most of the companies don’t qualify, you know what happens? Is there a, you know, the loss.
Piyush Gupta
Of win? As per, as per our operating thesis at this point in time whilst we are tracking our investment companies in the next two to three years we think that there will be many, many such opportunities in investing companies where we will get this opportunity. Now whether the markets will reward them very nicely or not, only time will tell. But at this point in time, you know we see a lot of opportunity over the next two or three years.
Unidentified Participant
Got it, Got it. Thank you.
Aaditya Mulani
Reminder to all participants that you may. Use the raise hand option on your. Screen if you wish to ask the question. Follow on question from Yash R. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yash R
Yeah. Hi. So the question that I wanted to ask earlier was that how long are we looking to see to continue the discounts on the circulation front?
Piyush Gupta
So at this point in time I’ll just do a long form answer. So as you are aware post Covid most of the copies for most of the publishers came down and now very selectively depending on which market is showing a promise and there is competitive activity we are addressing market by market. There’s a full impetus we are doing in the Hindi market and also in the English market, Delhi, Bombay, you know, and, and Chandigarh we are selectively increasing the copies. Now I don’t think that this is a carte range that we are doing across, across all our print locations and all our markets but this is a selective, selective markets where we see that we have to shore up the copies.
Now there are two rules that we take. One is as you said, price off. Second Is you know, the gifts that we give to our readers. So we keep on checking them on a monthly basis but at this point in time the strategy is paying fruits. Of course it’s a little costly for the RPCs tend to depress in the short term whereas the benefit comes over the long term. So at this point in time we are continuing but suffice to say that we keep on looking at the performance on a monthly basis and take a real time call on that.
So we don’t have any.
Anna Abraham
Yes. To add there is a competitive environment on this as well. So you know there is. Generally it also depends on the competitive environment as to what is the, what is the kind of offer that is run by.
Yash R
So we, we will continue with it for foreseeable future.
Piyush Gupta
But I am saying at least for the next month we are and we will take a call at the end of next month and if we think that we should continue. So we are taking one month at a time at this point in time. But looks like currently we are continuing because you know, this will give us books in the long run.
Yash R
Okay, and what about the new Sprint. Prices now.
Piyush Gupta
Prices, you know, are flat for at least the last two quarters and we don’t see any reason for them to spike up. I understand there’s a lot of anxiety around the geopolitical events but we believe that the new Sprint prices will remain in a very tight band which is currently give or take 500ametric done. And we are currently tracking those prices.
Yash R
Okay. Okay all thank you.
Aaditya Mulani
Thank you. Thank you all. With this we come to the end of the Q and A session.
Piyush Gupta
Thank you. As you can see we have clock pretty decent growth on the top line but from a long term business viability we keep on investing behind our copies in our print businesses and our other various businesses like we are setting up, setting up a target and we are, we have seen 100% growth on a Y basis and we hopefully beat up performance forward. Our radio business is, is undergoing a bit of a tough environment right now where the pricing is under pressure but we are doing all the efforts in our hand trying to correct the situation.
Our cash position remains very firm and if Cook is only growing and we hope to, you know, get some more equipments in the next two or three days with that we appreciate your time and, and we look forward to seeing. You in the next quarter. Thank you.
Aaditya Mulani
Thank you.