“The year has started on a cautious note. While April was promising, macroeconomic concerns and uncertainties around GST adversely affected advertising spends in the latter part of the quarter. The English print business was hit harder than the Hindi print one. But our new businesses continue to do well. Our new radio stations are generating revenue and the entire radio business witnessed an increase in operating profits.

The digital businesses have also shown good growth.
While advertising revenue has been soft, there has been healthy growth in our EBITDA and profitability on the back of strong cost management.

We remain optimistic that sentiment and business will both improve in the second half of the year, on the back of lower inflation and an expected cut in the policy rate by RBI. The stabilisation of GST will also help. We expect the core business to start showing growth and the new businesses to continue to profitably scale up — thereby delivering value to our shareholders.”

Mrs. Shobhana Bhartia
Chairperson and Editorial Director, HT Media
(Commenting on the results and performance)

Q1 FY2018 vs. Q1 FY2017

• Total Revenue at INR 652 crores.

• Advertising Revenue de-grew by (2.2%); Circulation Revenues de-grew by (7.7)% vs. last year.

• EBITDA was up by 18.7% at INR 133 crores; EBITDA margins at 20.4% vs. 16.9% last year.

• Net Profit After Tax (PAT) up by 85.4% at INR 42 crores; PAT margins at 6.4%.

• Strong balance sheet position with healthy cash flows.

• EPS for the quarter stood at INR 1.79 as compared to INR 0.96 last year.