Zee Media reports net loss of Rs 16.98 cr in Q2 FY16

The network saw its operating income for Q2 FY16 3.1 per cent at Rs 127 crore, while the EBIDTA up 9.7 per cent at Rs 6.71 crore

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | October 21, 2015

Zee Media Corporation has reported net loss after tax and minority interest of Rs 16.98 crore in the second quarter ended September 30, 2015, as against the net loss of Rs 13.43 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

Zee Media Corporation has a cluster of news, current affairs and regional news channels, which includes Zee News, Zee Business, Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal, Zee Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Zee 24 Taas, 24 Ghanta, Zee Kalinga, Zee Sangam, Maurya TV and Zee Marudhara. It also includes the daily dna.

The half yearly loss after tax and minority interest for the period ending September 30, 2015 stood at Rs 24.07 crore, as against the loss of Rs 29.05 crore during the same period last year.

Operating income for Q2 FY16 was Rs 127 crore, down by 3.1 per cent from the corresponding quarter last fiscal, where it stood at Rs 131.1 crore.

The EBIDTA for Q2 FY16 was reported at Rs 6.71 crore, up by 9.7 per cent from the corresponding quarter last year, where it was Rs 6.1crore.

The half yearly operating income for 2015 stood at Rs 262.30 crore, adip of 0.3 per cent from the corresponding period last year, where it was pegged at Rs 264.58 crore.

The EBIDTA for H1 FY16 was Rs 214.8 million, a jump of 161.7 per cent over Rs 82.1 million reported in H1 FY15.

The advertising revenues for Q2 FY16 was reported at Rs 90.6 crore, down by 3.6 per cent from Q2 FY15, where it stood at Rs 93.1 crore.

The advertising revenues for H1 FY16 was Rs 187.4 crore, down by 3.9 per cent from the same period last year, where the figure was pegged at Rs 195 crore.

The subscription revenues for Q2 FY16 stood at Rs 27.24 crore, down by 3 per cent from the corresponding quarter last fiscal, where it reported subscription revenues of Rs 28 crore.

Meanwhile, the subscription revenues for the half yearly period ending September 30, 2015 was Rs 55.9 crore, up by 5.5 per cent from the same period last year, where the subscription revenues stood at Rs 53 crore.

Segment wise break-up

TV broadcast business

The operating income through the TV broadcast business in Q2 FY16 was Rs 100.29 crore, up by from the corresponding quarter last fiscal, where it garnered Rs 98.56 crore.

Profit before tax and interest for this segment was Rs 1.33 crore, as against profit of Rs 1.69 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

The half yearly profit before tax grew from Rs 6.55 crore in Q2 FY15 to Rs 11.03 crore in Q2 FY16.

The advertisement revenues for Q2 FY16 was Rs 72.59 crore, up by 2.1 per cent from Q2 FY15 (Rs 71.1 crore). Of this total ad revenue, the share of the existing channels was Rs 65.9 crore, while Rs 6.6 crore was the share of the new channels (Zee MPCG, Zee Marudhara, Zee Kalinga, and Maurya TV).

Meanwhile, the operating loss (EBIDTA) for the new businesses in Q2 FY16 was Rs 14.9 crore, down from the loss of Rs 22.7 crore in Q2 FY15.

Subscription

Print business

Operating income from the print business (dna newspaper) for Q2 FY16 was Rs 30.02 crore, while in the corresponding quarter last fiscal, this was marginally higher at Rs 32.59 crore.

Zee Media was able to cut down on its losses for Q2 FY as it posed loss before tax and interest from each segment of Rs 7.08 crore, as against loss of Rs 8.59 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

With regards to H1 FY16, Zee Media's print business was able to cut down the losses substantially. At the end of September 30, 2015, loss before tax and interest from each segment was Rs 141.1 crore, down from loss of Rs 238 crore in the same period last year.

Commenting on the company's quarterly results, Bhaskar Das, Group CEO, Zee News Cluster, said, “With hardly any content differentiators, news has become commoditised over the years. Fragmentation has also not helped the cause of the genre. However, we at Zee Media have been constantly investing on breaking the clutter and creating path breaking content so that we can distinctly set ourselves apart from the current normal. Our breakthrough experiments in content have borne results. Zee News, the pioneer in news broadcasting in India, has turned into viewers' first choice of late as we continue to make the content meaningful and relevant in the context of the current discourse. The bouquet of Zee Media channels and our newspaper, dna, continue to be one of India's largest news networks and we leverage our multiple access points to reach both our viewers and advertisers, providing value to every stakeholder at every step.”

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