Print media’s dominance is demonstrated with consistent growth in ads: Girish Agarwal

DB Corp has reported yet another quarter of stellar growth, as the media conglomerate’s advertising revenue registered a growth of 18.4% YOY to Rs 4,819 million from Rs 4,069 million, rounding nearly 10 quarters of consistent growth.

Speaking at a conference call recently, Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director, DB Corp, said, “Over the past 10 quarters we have consistently delivered strong results, maintaining a trajectory of continuous growth. Our success can be attributed to several factors, including the sustained growth of advertisement revenue, softening trends in newsprint prices and well-executed cost control and optimisation measures.”

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EBITDA grew by 102% Y-o-Y to Rs 2,031 million against Rs 1,007 million. EBITDA margin expanded by impressive 1,400 basis points to 31% from 17% last year. The average cost per newsprint has reduced from the high of Rs 63,500 per metric ton in Q2 FY2023 to around Rs 51,500 per metric ton in Q2 FY 2024 and now to approximately Rs 50,000 per metric ton in Q3 FY 2024. “We do expect newsprint purchase prices to remain soften in the next 1 to 2 quarters,” Pawan Agarwal added.

Highlighting the business operations of the media conglomerate, Girish Agarwal, Non-Executive Director, DB Corp, said, “We are pleased to conclude yet another stellar quarter of performance, continuing our streak of consistent growth over the past 10 quarters.”

He stressed that print media’s dominance in the news landscape has been demonstrated with consistent growth in advertising. “Dainik Bhaskar’s powerful brand equity as India’s No.1 newspaper is reflected in the impressive portfolio of advertisers that continue to enforce their trust and increase advertising spend every quarter. The buoyancy in the Tier 2 and 3 cities continue to drive strong local economic growth in our key markets, the auto sector saw further traction with the festive season and the new launches driving further ad spends,” Girish Agarwal added.

He further pointed out that advertisers’ categories such as education, real estate, jewellery, government, health, BFSI, etc., continue to use print as their preferred medium and have given a very good growth in this quarter. On the cost front, DB Corp has been benefiting from the soft newsprint prices, which has helped the group improving its gross margins.

“Our balance sheet is in a very healthy position, with our cash and bank balance at Rs 825 crore with zero debt,” Girish Agarwal shared, adding, “Our ROCE and our RONW have a healthy 24% and 18% level. Also, happy to share that our company has generated free cash flow of Rs 337 crore in last nine months.”

While replying to a question on newsprint prices, Girish Agarwal informed that last year, in the same quarter, newsprint prices stood at around Rs 61,000 per ton, which came down to almost Rs 50,000 per ton in Q3 this year. “And going forward, it looks like that there is a strong possibility of this going down by another 2-3%. But, I’m recently told that there is an overseas freight issue happening because of the Red Sea and all that. If that doesn’t create any problem, then this price should further go down by 2-3%,” he conjectured.

Replying to a question on the segment-wise advertising revenue, Girish Agarwal said, “In this quarter, most of the advertising categories have grown in double digit – Automobile has grown by almost 47%, FMCG has grown by almost 20-25%, Real Estate by almost 20%, Jewellery by 26%. Government had 36% growth because of the elections in these states. Hospitals and the Healthcare sector has grown by 20%. Banking and Finance and IPOs have also gone up by almost 16%.”

Continuing further, he said, “There are a few categories, those who have maintained their numbers, like Response is one big category for us, including Classified and Obituary. That segment has taken a slight beating by almost 3-4%. Education has gone down by 10% because this quarter is not an education quarter. But largely, another category which has taken a nosedive, unfortunately, is the Hypermarket category, which has gone down by almost 25%. However it is a very small category for us; all the other categories have shown remarkable growth.”