DB Corp Limited (DBCL), home to flagship newspapers - Dainik Bhaskar, Divya Bhaskar, Divya Marathi and Saurashtra Samachar, posted total revenue of Rs. 573.6 crore for the quarter and year ended June 30, 2023, as against Rs. 499.4 crore for the same quarter previous year. The total revenue grew by around 15%.
The company’s advertising revenue grew by a strong 17.16% to Rs. 394.6 crore as against Rs. 336.8 crore in the same quarter previous year. While the circulation revenue grew by around 4% to Rs. 119.9 crore as against Rs. 115.6 crore.
The company’s radio business revenue grew by 16.2 % YoY at Rs. 37.2 crore versus Rs. 32.0 crore. While the EBITDA grew by 23% YoY to Rs. 11.5 crore versus Rs. 9.4 crore.
Commenting on the performance for Q1 FY2024, Sudhir Agarwal, Managing Director, DB Corp Ltd said, “As global economies are making a slow recovery from their inflationary pressures, the Indian Economy, especially the non-metro markets continue to see rapid growth. The print sector has been on the uptrend for the past few months and this is likely to continue. Reputed agencies such as CRISIL peg this growth at about 15-17% on the back of strong advertising revenues, driven by Elections, Government Spending, and Consumer Demand across traditional and digital sectors.”
He further added, “ While English language print has been struggling with sluggish demand, Regional newspapers seem to be faring better. Dainik Bhaskar, as the dominant leader, and India’s largest newspaper group, has a clear advantage. We attribute this to our continued editorial excellence, high reader engagement and omni-channel delivery mechanism. Along with ad revenue growth we have been focused on cost optimisation and over the last 4-6 months have also been helped with easing newsprint prices. This has helped us deliver our fifth quarter of consistent growth across all segments and are confident of continuing this trend in the forthcoming quarters.”
The company in its official release said that print circulation continues to be strong and as per the Audit Bureau of Circulation Survey for Jul-Dec 2022 (ABC Survey), Dainik Bhaskar Group continues to be the largest circulated Newspaper Group in India and Dainik Bhaskar continues to be the largest circulated Newspaper in India with a very wide gap with second number player. “Our reader-centric editorial policy and multi-modal news delivery engines have been key in helping the Company achieve leadership position as well as deliver strong growth for the fifth consecutive quarter.”
On the Advertising front, the media company said that traditional advertisers such as Education, Real Estate, Government, Jewellery, Health etc. continue to use print as their preferred medium. The Auto Sector is also witnessing a resurgence and is expected to show good growth in the forthcoming quarters. The company said, “As we have been highlighting, New age digital sectors continue to see value in the Print media, and in this quarter too, digital, app-based companies and start-ups have increased their advertising spends. Print Advt continues to register strong revenue growth of 24% YOY for last 5 Qtrs from Rs 13510 million to Rs 16755 million. We are hopeful that our leadership position and reader engagement continue to serve our advertising partners to reach their audience and this in turn, will help propel consistent advertising revenue growth.”
According to the company’s official release, newsprint prices continued their downward trend in Q1FY2024 and DB Corp said that its hopeful that the trend will continue based on their assessment. “Our average cost for newsprint has reduced from the high of Rs 63,500 PMT in Q2 FY2023 to Rs 56600 PMT in Q1FY2024 agst 62100 PMT in Qtr 1 FY 23. Our teams continue the well-thought-out cost-control optimisation measures and this, coupled with our circulation strategy and the growth of advertising revenues have helped us deliver strong operating results for yet another quarter and this momentum is expected to continue over the next quarters.”
