Jagran Prakashan posts 6% growth in Q3 ad revenue

Jagran Prakashan has posted Rs 366.77 crore as advertisement revenues from print, digital and radio for the quarter ended December 31, 2023. This is a rise of 5.8 percent from Rs 346.50 crore in the same quarter last year.

The circulation revenues stood at Rs 88.32 crore as against Rs 94.80 crore in the Q3 of the previous year, a decline of 6.8 percent. 

The profit after tax for the third quarter of this financial year was Rs 73.98 crore, up 47.9 percent from Rs 50.01 crore from the similar quarter of the previous financial year. The operating revenues for the publication stood at Rs 510.97 crore, which was up by 4.7 percent from Rs 488.16 crore in Q3 of FY 22-23. 

The company earned Rs 55.88 crore from other operating revenues, registering a growth of 19.2 per cent (Rs 46.86 crores) from last year’s similar quarter. 

Jagran Prakashan’s digital revenue stood at Rs 27.90 crore, up by a whopping 25 per cent from Rs 22.33 crores in Q3 of 2022-23. 

Commenting on the performance of the company, Mahendra Mohan Gupta, Chairman, JPL said, “Despite economy being resilient and maintaining a healthy growth momentum primarily aided by capex and spend on luxury and premium items by a small group of people, overall consumption by a large section of the society in urban as well as rural India remains muted. It does not augur well for the industries which depend upon advertisement revenue for profit. State elections in some of the large and politically important states have been extremely helpful to those operating in these areas and compensated the media houses substantially for the loss of commercial revenues.” 

“I am aware that India is transforming faster than ever before and the policy decisions taken including steep increase in capex by the government will translate into sustainable increase in consumption through employment generation and improvement in per capita income. This gives me confidence that the whole media industry is poised to be back on the path of long term sustainable growth sooner than later,” he added. 

The company’s revenues during the quarter grew moderately on a YoY basis. However, on a QoQ basis the growth in revenues was satisfactory owing to the festive season and elections in the states of MP, Chhattisgarh where the company’s newspapers Naidunia,Navdunia are circulating, Gupta said. 

Standalone profits of the company at operating as well as net level grew meaningfully on YoY as well as QoQ basis primarily due to moderation in newsprint prices, continued cost control and improved performance of all businesses. Gupta expects further decrease in newsprint prices and improvement in the performance of core and other businesses in coming quarters, which will augment the company’s profits even further provided they continue to remain cost vigilant and efficient.