Dainik Bhaskar group reports growth in Q3

Following the results, DB Corp remains the highly respected regional news daily with 19.8 million readers. The recent Audit Bureau of Circulations result for six months period (January to June 2014) declared Dainik Bhaskar as the largest circulated national daily of India. While maintaining its leadership in legacy markets of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana (CPH), Gujarat and urban Rajasthan, the paper showed strong progress in emerging regions, such as Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Bihar. According to company sources, this has been achieved through high quality product, aggressive branding efforts and persistent reader connect initiatives.

According to the performance highlights of the company for consolidated 9M FY 2014-15, the total revenues have increased by 8.3% to Rs 15,400 million, from Rs 14,214 million. Advertising Revenues grew by 7.8% to Rs 11,623 million as against Rs 10,778 million during corresponding period last year. The company achieved EBIDTA Margins of 29.8% in 9M FY2015 at Rs 4,587 million from Rs 4,115 million (EBITDA Margin 28.9%) of last year with YOY growth of 11.5%, after factoring forex loss of Rs 19.9 million.

For consolidated Q3 FY 2014-15, revenues showed a growth of 6.1% YOY to Rs 5,574 million in Q3 against Rs 5,256 million of Q3 of last fiscal.Revenues from advertising reported a growth of 6.2% YOY to Rs 4,283 million in current period from Rs 4,035 million in Q3 last fiscal, which had a high base of Qtr 3 of last year, benefitting from state election impact in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan. EBIDTA margin for the quarter came in at 33.6% at Rs 1,876 million, against margin of 30.9% and EBITDA of Rs 1,625 million, in Q3 FY 2014 with YOY growth of 15.4%.

Meanwhile, DBCL’s non-print business continues to reflect strong growth. While its websites continue to develop a loyal readership base,dainikbhaskar.com continues to be the number one Hindi news site, as well as the #1 website in Hindi on the internet. For the quarter under review, Dainik Bhaskar’s digital business registered a total of 540 million page views and 18.2 million unique visitors.

Commenting on the performance for Q3 & 9M FY 2014-15, Sudhir Agarwal, managing director,

DB Corp, said, “This quarter, we diligently focused on 3 core areas: product, content and distribution which demanded all our hard work and efforts. Through an exciting mix of a high quality product led by innovative content, focus on better local news coverage in each region, various ground activation initiatives to intensify reader engagement, events to welcome greater corporate partnerships, have all contributed to improving our reach to readers across our legacy and emerging markets. We continue to progress well through Jharkhand, Bihar and Maharashtra making good headway in the readership profiles of SEC A & B categories, particularly Bihar and Maharashtra, even on the back of a higher cover price. In Jharkhand, we are working doubly hard to move towards our break-even target in this fiscal. Our focus on stronger internal operating efficiencies has ensured our financial health through better expense management while newsprint costs have also seen a correction which has contributed to the strong bottom line.”

DB Corp is India’s largest print media company that publishes seven newspapers with Dainik Bhaskar, 37 editions; Divya Bhaskar, 7 editions; and Divya Marathi, 7 editions, with 199 sub-editions in 4 languages (Hindi, Gujarati, English and Marathi) across 14 states in India. The flagship Dainik Bhaskar (in Hindi) established in 1958.