Ad revenue improved on the back of volume and yield: Group CFO Piyush Gupta

HT Media’s total revenue has increased 53% in Q1FY23 to reach Rs 432 crore as against Rs 281 crore last year. The margin came in at a negative 4% and PAT as a consequence came to a negative of Rs 42 crore with a margin of negative 10%. Net cash balance, however, remains strong at Rs 936 crore despite a dip when compared to a year ago.

Group CFO Piyush Gupta has attributed the dip to investments caught behind working capital, which will be unwound as the newsprint price stabilizes.

Talking about the business unit performance, Gupta shared that for print business ad revenue came to Rs 240 crore. Circulation revenue stood at Rs 60 crore, a 20% increase from the same period last year of Rs 50 crore. Consequently, the operating revenue has touched Rs 348 crore, and operating EBITDA came at Rs 2 crore with a 1% margin.

Some of the key highlights, Gupta said, were improvement in ad revenues which is basically led by an uptick in volumes and improvement in yields. “Circulation revenue growth was led by an increase in print order and realization per copy for both English and Hindi and significant year-on-year improvement despite higher newsprint prices.”

According to Gupta, the group's English business on ad revenue on a y-o-y basis, Rs 127 crore as against Rs 69 crore ad revenue. “On a y-o-y basis, categories such as real estate, retail, auto, education and FMCG saw an improvement while categories like e-commerce remained a bit subdued.”

As for Hindi ad revenues, Gupta said there was a substantial jump of 80% coming to Rs 113 crore with a 3% decline compared to last quarter. On circulation revenues, also a very healthy 11% jump coming to Rs 48 crore, which is a 7% jump even on a sequential basis. “Some of the key highlights were; the ad revenue improvement is led by both volume and yield, as I said earlier. And on a y-o-y basis, categories such as education, retail, FMCG, health and fitness, auto and retail estate grew. Circulation revenue grew due to better realization per copy and higher copies in circulation.”  

Talking about the radio business he said with revenue at Rs 33 crore, operating EBITDA at Rs 2 crore, “ We got a positive EBITDA margin as against the negative Rs 16 crore in the same quarter last year. Just to remind, I think, the first quarter last year was the COVID impacted second wave quarter. So obviously, it was a pretty depressed scenario. So, the base is definitely soft here. However, it's a substantial growth on the top line that we recorded and significant improvement in revenues for the quarter, driven both by volumes and rates, and operating EBITDA for the quarter is showing a substantial improvement versus previous year. And this is the third consecutive quarter for operating profit.”