HT Media Ltd (NSE: HTMEDIA) Q4 2025 Earnings Call dated May. 20, 2025
Corporate Participants:
Unidentified Speaker
Anna Abraham — Chief Financial Officer, Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd. and Head, Investor Relations
Piyush Gupta — Group Chief Financial Officer
Analysts:
Unidentified Participant
Mohit Kumar — Analyst
Presentation:
operator
I would like to welcome you all to our quarter four and full financial year 2024-25 earnings webinar. As a reminder, all the participants will be in listen only mode. After we are through with the presentation, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. I now hand over to Ms. Anna Abraham, CFO Hindustan Media Ventures Limited and Head, Investor Relations, HT Media Group. Thank you. And over to you Anna.
Anna Abraham — Chief Financial Officer, Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd. and Head, Investor Relations
Thank you, Aditya Good afternoon everyone. A warm welcome to all of you to the earnings webinar of HT Media Group for the fourth quarter and full financial year 2425. Joining me on today’s call are Mr. Piyush Gupta Group, CFO Mr. Parvez Bajan, Head Financial Controllership and Taxation and members of our Investor Relations team. We will be taking you through the highlights of the financial results of Hindustan Media Ventures Limited which were announced yesterday, and the results of HD Media Limited released earlier today. Please note that our comments during this webinar will be in line with the presentation slides which along with the financial statements are available on the stock exchanges and in the Investor Relations section of of our respective websites.
Please refer slide 2 which is a cautionary statement. This in line with our usual practice, we would not be sharing specific guidance on revenue or on earnings projections. The following slide present our chairperson’s comments on the company’s performance for the quarter and the full year. And I quote, in the last financial year, your company saw consistent growth in terms of both revenue and profitability in most quarters, indicating a broad based upswing, especially in the latter half of the year. The improvement can be attributed to conscious efforts and aimed at growing the business incrementally. Higher pricing, a dip in prices of key commodities and cost rationalization.
The annual festive season saw increased spending by consumers and this, along with elections in some states, provided a conducive environment to growth in the second half of the year. In terms of annual consolidated performance, your company’s total revenue as well as profitability saw a marked improvement. Our print business revenue remained stable even as it saw a considerable rise in profitability. Our radio business grew revenues on the back of focus on ground events. Although its emergence remain under continued pressure, the digital business led by OTT Play once again posted strong revenue traction and also saw incremental improvement in margins on account of better cost control.
Treating the just ended financial year as a springboard, your company is looking to keep the momentum going in the digital business, build on the gains made last year in the print business and streamline the radio business Your support and trust drive what we do. We are committed to delivering reliable news and meaningful entertainment that keeps multiple audiences informed and engaged. End of quote. Today’s agenda will cover the consolidated financial results for the fourth quarter and the full financial year 2425. This will be followed by details of our print, radio and digital business segments. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for a Q and A session.
With this, I hand over the call to Piyush.
Piyush Gupta — Group Chief Financial Officer
Thanks Aditya. Thanks Anna. We’ll be tracking the tracking the webinar on the screen so let’s dive into it. So the first slide is Consolidated Financial Summary. As you can see growth seen in overall revenue and profitability for the concluded quarter as well as the fiscal year. On the left side is the quarterly financials. On the right side you can see the annual numbers. Robust improvement in net cash position as compared to the prior year. So total revenue on the quarterly basis grew 12%. PAT grew 88% from a 30 to 57. On a full year basis the revenue growth was 7%.
And PAT came to a positive number at 20 crores which is a substantial increase and ebitda go by 58%. If you see the net cash position we ended we we have as of 31st March cash cash in excess of 1000 crores on the books. Diving into the print performance despite despite muted growth in advertising and circulation segment profitability remains very strong led by softer new spread prices. So as you can see the ad revenues are flat to marginally declining across quarter and year. But if you look at the operating EBITDA margin there’s a strong growth and quarter ended with the EBITDA of 61 crores and on a full year basis it has 121 crores which is a growth of 67%.
With the margin expansion also 300 to 400 basis points. If you break down the print into Hindi and English. Let’s look at the English numbers. So yoy the revenue ad revenues are flat which is a minus 1% and on a full year basis it’s a growth of 3%. Circulation revenue there’s a decline of 27% and on a full year basis It’s a decline of 14%. In the again we see the softness in revenue continuing with a decline of 5% on a quarterly basis and a 4% on an annual basis. On a circulation revenue you see 7% decline on a quarterly basis and a 9% decline on an annual basis.
Radio now segment revenue improved driven by increase of on ground events during the year and margin however, continues to remain soft on the top line. You can see the quarterly numbers on top line grew 72% to 82 crores and on a full year basis 204 crores which is an increase of 30%. Digital as you can see, strong growth in segment revenue both for the quarter and the fiscal year led by OTT Play and Shine Business and segment losses reduced during the four set period. On a quarterly basis, revenue grew 35 to 58 crores and on a full year basis to 212 crores which is an increase of 38%.
Yeah. With that we come to QL.
Questions and Answers:
operator
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 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 the line of Mohit Kumra. Mr. Mohit, please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Mohit Kumar
One second. Good afternoon. Can you hear me?
Piyush Gupta
Yes.
Mohit Kumar
Yeah, so this is Mohit Kumra. My questions are specifically directed to HMBL and to OTT Play to get even more specific. So now we, in this quarter we have done about 20 crores of revenue and we are losing about 1 rupee 30 paisa for every 1 rupee of sale approximately. So do you what is the rate at which you expect growth in the coming year in revenue and at what point do we at least get to a one to one break even? Like what is your estimate in this matter?
Anna Abraham
So we don’t give specific guidance on it. But broadly, as you can see, we have been growing on a quarter on quarter basis business and losses have also reduced from what we had reported last year. We expect to keep up the momentum in the on the growth side given that it’s still a very nascent business from that perspective and you know, hopefully by end of this year we should be in a breakeven situation. But it depends on if we scale fast enough, we may invest more on the business as well. So difficult to predict, but we would be looking for to continue the growth momentum.
Mohit Kumar
Okay, in the last call when I spoke to you, we broadly agreed that 1% of the paying subscribers in India is your baseline assumption, which is around 200, 250 crores of revenue. When do we expect to reach this? You sound very confident by the way, in your traction of the Business, I must say. So am I reading this correctly that you are very confident in.
Piyush Gupta
So Mohit, hi, this is Piyush Desai. So look, Mohit, you know, I think broadly, because you don’t give any guidance and we are investing behind a business in which we are seeing some traction on the top line, which of course is coming for a reasonable amount of cost. But if you are looking at one unit of revenue to a unit of cost, this year is definitely much more efficient than the year prior. And I can absolutely bet that, you know, next year will be efficient. Now looking, you know, doing a crystal ball gazing and saying, when will we reach a one is to one unit? I can’t say.
But I can tell you the plans that we have put forward drives efficiency much more aggressively. And that’s because of the last two two and a half years experience that we have built into this thing and various efficiencies and productivity measures that we are driving. But can we tell you with some amount of, you know, confidence that it’s going to happen in three months, six. Months or a, or a year? We can’t,
Mohit Kumar
but traction is definitely there. You are not disappointed
Piyush Gupta
if, if you. See the fourth quarters, if you see the fourth quarter’s growth versus the same quarter last year versus the first quarter, both in absolute number and the, at the gradient of growth, you can see a difference. I just look at the first quarter’s call versus this quarter’s call on OTT play.
Mohit Kumar
Yeah. And do we expect similar growth going forward?
Piyush Gupta
Well, that’s the plan.
Mohit Kumar
Okay, can I ask one more question? Please.
Piyush Gupta
Go for it.
Mohit Kumar
On your latest balance sheet, how much? And I’m only speaking of HMBL right now standalone.
Piyush Gupta
Substantial part of it, substantial part of. It is sitting on hmbl.
Mohit Kumar
My question is absolutely different. What is the amount of add that ad for equity property which is sitting on your balance sheet right now?
Piyush Gupta
Well, we don’t give that number separately, but I can tell you for quite some time now, substantial part of our. Ad for equity deals are happening on. The HMVL balance sheet. So, you know, a substantial part of the properties and the risk and reward and the economics of that is sitting in HMBL’s financial.
Mohit Kumar
But you give me that number every year. I ask you every year and every year you give me a number of.
Anna Abraham
How much overall number, you know, but.
Piyush Gupta
Look broadly, I, I will give you that number this year also. So look, what I give you every year is on a fully diluted basis, our investment position will be, you know, north of a thousand crores. Now you know those numbers are very, very, very high level numbers. We will not be able to give you a diluted state what secretty, what’s you know, convertible instruments, what’s real estate, what’s profit, what’s you know, what’s the revenue and so on so forth. But it will the substantial part of. That is sitting in HLPL for sure.
Mohit Kumar
So last year you confirmed that it was approximately 250 crores. Are we still around there only I’m.
Piyush Gupta
Talking only confirmed or denial.
Mohit Kumar
Okay, thank you.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Yash R. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hi, good afternoon.
operator
Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, I am Yash. Good afternoon. I have a couple of questions. First to begin with I was trying to analyze the numbers from a print perspective. I could see that the operating revenue is almost flat for hmbl. But I think HT English has done well. So where have we done well? Because in the presentation I couldn’t see that in the revenue itself.
Anna Abraham
Yeah. So if you see in the, in the presentation we’ve actually called out in the respective areas also. So the Hindi has not done well because of a large revenue from government in the base. Last year as prior to the national election there was a fair bit of spend happening from the government end. So most vernacular players, especially Hindi players you would see have had a substantial revenue coming from the government because which has, which is of course not maintainable this year because the first quarter had the CoC also coming in and therefore most Hindi players have declined on the back of decline in government revenue.
To compared commercial revenue has grown even in Hindi and in English we have seen growth because growth government was not such a substantial component and we’ve called out the growth the critical segments in our deck as to which are the segments which also contributed to the hierarchy.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thanks for the information. But the question was slightly different. What I’m trying to say is that the revenues have declined, right? It is at 158 versus 159. The ad revenue for English and even the circulation revenue has taken a beating of around 27% but there seems to be an uptick in the operating profit. So what has worked well which is there on the cost side which seems to be so.
Piyush Gupta
Well.
Anna Abraham
Yes, yes. Cost has been substantially. Cost has substantially improved because if you remember last year was a year of heightened newsprint pricing and therefore most of the margin expansion is attributed to the savings and newsprint that’s come through. True. Having said that, you know the advertising revenue Also saw basis a mix of categories and absolute price increases. There has been an overall yield improvement in the advertising revenue despite growth not being that strong and therefore that is also contributed to the margins.
Unidentified Participant
So what has been the improvement in yield in terms of percentage?
Anna Abraham
Be able to quantify that for you. But there is a real improvement going to it.
Unidentified Participant
And what about on the volume front?
Anna Abraham
One will give you the other. Right. So we won’t be able to give you the split.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And also what about the employee cost? Those have gone down in this quarter. Again.
Anna Abraham
You’Re now referring to the quarter on quarter, are you?
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, it’s at around 43 odd crores versus 46 in the previous quarter.
Anna Abraham
This is console, right? That you.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, I’m talking about console. That’s correct.
Anna Abraham
Yes. This is quarter 114 and 108. Those are the numbers you’re looking at.
Unidentified Participant
No, I’m talking about 43 crore which is sitting in your HT console. I’m sorry, I’m talking about
Anna Abraham
standalone number. That’s the confusion. Console number is different.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay.
Anna Abraham
That’s kind of, I mean flat to my marginal.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And what about the increase in your other income which seems to be from HMVL primarily?
Anna Abraham
That’s largely Treasury. We’ve had a substantial gain in treasury given that there’s been favorable yield movement in line of rate actions as well as anticipation pay interactions in the market.
Unidentified Participant
So it’s mainly yield is what you’re talking about, right? The return income.
Anna Abraham
We were positioned to take advantage of the yield movements in the market.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, all right.
operator
So be a participant. Sorry to interrupt but may we request you to fall back in queue for. Thank you. Thank you.
operator
Okay, thank you. The next question is from the line of Mehul Parikh, please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Good afternoon, this is Mehul Parak here, individual shareholder.
Piyush Gupta
Yes, we can. We can.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. So I had a question on the accounting side primarily that is say we are, we get around a annual subscription of say 2400 rupees from OTT subscriber and we are say offering a coupon of 40 or 50%. What do we take as a top line meaning in segment revenue? Do we take 2400 and put 1200 as expenses in the result or do we take net of 1200 rupees as a segment revenue?
Anna Abraham
Net.
Unidentified Participant
We take net as a segment revenue.
Anna Abraham
Right? Yeah.
Unidentified Participant
And for MSOs also it works the same way
Anna Abraham
for what
Unidentified Participant
the wholesale buyers like MSOs and the tie ups that we do. Y
Anna Abraham
Yeah, yeah,
Unidentified Participant
it works the same.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. And one more Question. Hindustan Adventures is initiative of HMBL or is it under some other company?
Anna Abraham
It is an. It is under hmbl.
Unidentified Participant
Okay, thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jay Datani. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Hello.
operator
Hello. Yes, please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, so this is Jayda Thani. I’m an individual investor. So my question is specific to the radio segment. As you can see there’s a significant improvement in the top line in the radio segment but at the same time the, the losses have also gone up quite significantly. So if you can give us an explanation on that.
Anna Abraham
We have actually called it out on the investor deck also to say that the increases been on largely on the account of on ground events that we have done in in this year. Unlike the core FCT revenue which every increase in revenue falls to the bottom line because of the fixed nature of the business where the cost is mostly on the statutory fee side, when we go into the non fct streams of revenue there is bound to be a related cost also associated with it. This year we went, you know, we, we kind of experimented with some certain scaled events and therefore the cost structures were a little higher than our usual, you know, events that we do.
Doing events is nothing new, just that here this year we went for a couple of big initiatives which is why you’re not seeing the commensurate improvement in the profitability.
Unidentified Participant
All right. And going forward, if you can give us kind of a guidance on that segment.
Anna Abraham
Revenues still remain a challenge largely for the industry. So while we are at it and we will see some level of growth, we believe the larger growth will come in line of non FCT initiatives. That necess doesn’t mean that it’s only events. There are many initiatives that we do including on air properties which we are focusing more on from a sector perspective.
Unidentified Participant
All right, thank you. That’s it from my side. Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mel Patak. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.
Unidentified Participant
Can you hear me?
Piyush Gupta
Yes, we can. Good afternoon.
Unidentified Participant
Good afternoon to you, Shanak. Congratulations on a positive set of numbers. I think after a long time we are seeing such good numbers. Two questions. My first question is related to the segment results. Now if you could just throw a little more granularity on the quarterly 47 crore number for printing and publishing compared to 26.33 last March. So the Delta 21 that is coming from, where is it coming? Second question, not second question. The other question related to Segment results is that on radio and digital the assets deployed are 278 crores and 37 crores and the losses are 37 crores and 102 crores.
In fact the digital on 37 crores we are showing loss of 102 crores. How do we interpret these numbers and know what do we make of them? Second question is Hindustan Media. I was you know little taken aback yesterday that we have decided to invest in a company that is electric mobility related. You know we are not paying dividend there but you know, investing in an electric mobility company. Know if you could explain the logic of doing that being a media company. Thanks.
Anna Abraham
Okay, I’m going to take your questions in the reverse order. So the first on the investment it is not a cash investment, it is an AFE investment itself. So there is no cash being deployed for that investment. It’s just that it triggered disclosure, that’s that. So there is no cash being deployed in that investment. On the digital business on a full year basis we’ve actually reported 212crores of revenue with the laws and you can see that it’s a substantial improvement versus last year because as we’ve been articulating and you’ve also seen in HMBL there’s a huge investment which is going in OTT to kind of build the business as the second full year of operations and we we have therefore they’re seeing it as an event investment and that is contributing to it.
So this HMBL also adds up to the OTT also adds up to HTML. So it’s both in HML and HTML. That’s a big component which is coming both but OTT has significantly scaled in terms of revenue which was the initial query from one of the participants as well. We are also seeing good healthy growth in chime business and we have seen it improve on the profitability as well. There is a smaller business also that we are investing on which is our mosaic business where all the core product proposition etc also we have in this year done some level of investment for scaling up that’s for the revenue going forward that’s also forming part of this segment.
But that is that investment is nowhere compared to the kind of investment we are doing an OTT. So from a 154 crores of revenue last year digital revenues have grown to 212 while the losses we have reduced from 114 to 102. So we are scaling revenue but it’s also at a lower loss position. Coming to the radio radio we spoke about that it is a mix of revenue which is impacted and that’s a very different different scenario from the digital business which we are being about and radio will see. Unless the regulatory changes come in there’ll be some level of pressure on margins from the perspective because the FCD that platform has not seen revenues come back post Covid to the extent say print has or digital has etc and print.
Unidentified Participant
EBITDA margin.
Piyush Gupta
On the printing and publishing segment. This entire uptick that you are seeing coming is you know as Anna was explaining earlier to another participant earlier, there’s been a lot of work which has been done on yield which has given a lot of operating leverage and which is falling to the bottom line. So it’s all print which is driving. That uptick in profitability.
Unidentified Participant
When you see yield I do not exactly understand what it means.
Anna Abraham
So there’s newsprint savings on one hand and there is advertising price. When we mean yield we are actually talking about pricing of advertising. It’s not dumped as yield in the industry and basis the categories that we have seen contributing this year as well as conscious price correction that we have been on which Piyush talked about last year has been talking about since last year we managed to make inroads there and therefore we are other revenue growth revenue that you’re seeing in print is despite volumes being negative in the market. So that means that we have been able to improve the pricing on our.
Unidentified Participant
Just a follow up question is that on digital and radio address rate we are keeping we’ll wipe out you know 6% of net worth know almost every year. So is there any thought on the run rate of the losses the next few years how much it will come down?
Anna Abraham
Yeah, we will need to if we need to build businesses. Businesses are difficult to set up within two years so therefore there will be some level of investments that we have to do if we have to get in road make inroads into a new business segment which is what OTT play is and to establish it. What we’ve been able to demonstrate is that we are scaling up by reducing losses and we hope to be on that journey but with the intent is to build businesses and therefore we will see some more investment before the returns come through in that radio.
While you know while it is losses it’s not a significant number at this point of time and we did see break even basis mix did see when we scaled up we saw some negative and hope is that we will bring it back to breakeven to positive sooner. You know in the near term itself. That’s a different story. Digital of course we are building businesses so we will have to invest a bit before we can achieve that.
Unidentified Participant
Thanks Anna, but I’m. Please take a look at ENIL numbers. ENI has reported a fantastic set of numbers already.
Anna Abraham
Yeah, we have seen those numbers. Profit growth is not there for them. Profit growth has declined actually while they. Both of them have the advantage of being in non metro which is actually growing faster than metro while we are a metroplex. But anyway we can. We should move on.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you very much.
operator
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Yashr. Please unmute yourself and ask your question. Yeah.
Unidentified Participant
Hi Anna. So I was just asking about this question about your employee costs which have actually gone down versus previous quarter. So it was 114 crore in Q3 which ended on December 24 versus 108 crore. So why is there a reversal in this quarter? Because normally that happens in the first.
Anna Abraham
Quarter in some businesses we’ve had some rationalization. So therefore that accounts for part of the difference. And the part is yes, there could be some reversals in the quarter.
Unidentified Participant
Okay.
Anna Abraham
And then there’s also sometimes if a quarter three is a festive quarter so there is some level of incentive etc which gets paid off which is not a run rate number.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay, got it. And again in terms of hmvl now I know I spoke about. I asked this question earlier as well but does other income of HMWARE include some profit on sale of AFE investments as well?
Anna Abraham
Yes, it does.
Unidentified Participant
But the larger gain is on account of yield is what you said, right?
Anna Abraham
This year. Yeah. This year there is a substantial profit on sale of AFU also. But the. Yes, the larger component is Treasury.
Unidentified Participant
Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.
operator
Thank you foreign. Thank you all. With this we come to the end of the Q and 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.
Piyush Gupta
Thank you Aditya. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for joining our Q4, FY25 and full year FY25 call. You know we are pleased, we are pleased that you know, some of you like the set of numbers that we published. We hope that this trajectory will continue. We’ve already drawn our annual plan basis which. Which is a growth plan basis which we will strive and do our best to get greater performances and investment in future looking businesses which will create long term sustainable value for all shareholders is something that we are at it and we will strive to do our best with that.
Thank you so much, and we look.