 "Subhash Chandra")
Zee Entertainment Enterprises’ revenue at Rs 1,385 crore for the September quarter of 2015-16 beat Street estimates. The Street had estimated revenue at Rs 1,357 crore. Revenue grew 24 per cent year-on-year to Rs 1,118 crore from the second quarter of FY15. This is twice the revenue growth expected in the media industry at 12%.
The company’s advertising revenue for the quarter were Rs 843.3 crore, recording a growth of 35% over Q2FY15 while subscription revenue showed 13% growth at Rs 479.1 crore. The subscription revenue has been positively impacted by dollar appreciation and success of content. The sports business reported revenue of 127.8 crore and overseas business revenue stood at 202.2 crore.
EBITDA for the quarter stood at Rs 354.6 crore (up 10.7%) and PAT was Rs 246.3 crore (up 8.5%). The EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 25.6% and the PAT margin was 17.8%. The sports business reported a marginal profit of Rs 2.2 crore.
The company explained that the quarter saw 29.2% increase in expenditure when compared to the same quarter in the previous fiscal, mainly due to the costs incurred for launching and running the group’s new Hindi general entertainment channel - &TV. In addition to this, depreciation was up 47.8% for the quarter and the ZEEL board approved to write-off of an investment of Rs 33.1 crore made by Asia Today Limited, a wholly owned overseas subsidiary of the company made in 2013 for acquiring minority stake in MirriAD Ltd UK. This write-off was on account of continuing losses and consequent capital reduction/ restructuring in MirriAD Ltd., UK.
Subhash Chandra, Chairman, ZEE, stated: “ZEE has seen an impressive performance during the second quarter. The improvement in advertisement industry and improved performance of our network has helped us grow ahead of the market. We continue to see the positive results of our investments. We will endeavour to continue on this track going forward and pursue new opportunities that will yield long term growth. Our effort is to entertain audience across the world.”
Punit Goenka, managing director & chief executive officer, ZEE, commented: “We are quite pleased with our quarterly performance and it continues to remain on track. We have grown as a network on the back of superior programming on our new and existing products. The improvement in the overall advertisement market has further aided our strong growth. The domestic subscription market has also seen steady growth.”
Speaking about the outlook of the business, Goenka continued: “ZEE is the leading content player in the Indian TV industry offering maximum hours of content for audiences both home and abroad. Going forward, our endeavor would be to further enhance our offerings and be ahead of the market in delivering innovative and high quality entertainment to our viewers across consumption platforms. We believe that in this fast evolving media and entertainment space delivering excellent content will remain key for monetising revenues, from both advertising and subscription standpoint.”
