LIMELIGHT
HT Media vehemently continues growing up
One of India’s foremost media companies, and home to three leading newspapers including Hindustan Times (English daily), Hindustan (Hindi daily, through a subsidiary) and Mint (English business daily), HT Media Limited has registered significant growth during the financial year 2009-10, with continuing impact of various cost optimisation measures, lower cost of newsprint and increasing return on new avenues, despite economic meltdown affecting the industry adversely. The company’s operational and financial performance during this period highlighted that they succeeded in maintaining their track record of strong readership growth while increasing revenues remarkably. Ajeet Singh, asst editor, AAN briefs.
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ith the outlook promising on the back of: improving ad spend scenario given improving macro environment; strong balance sheet capable of supporting the investments in growing businesses as well as exploring new opportunities; increasing returns in new businesses like Mint (JV with The Wall Street Journal), Burda JV and radio to contribute towards revenue growth and improved profitability; and continuing investments in the digital space to build new long term growth engines, HT Media Limited (HTML) is leaving no stone unturned for ensuring the robust presence in the news publishing industry. And undoubtedly, their constant endeavours are rendering noteworthy outcomes to boost the overall business and encourage the company for further strengthening their position in the market.
The findings of the latest Indian Readership Survey (IRS Q1 2010) apparently validate the progress made by HTML across their businesses. Hindustan Times has become the fastest growing English daily by adding 1.2 lacs readers to its fold, apart from being the No 1 English daily in Delhi with a readership of 22.06 lacs and continuing to be the fastest growing in Mumbai with a readership of 5.38 lacs. This growth has been driven largely by the highly successful re-launch of the paper in July 2009, which was especially focused on increasing readership amongst SEC A and the younger generation. While Hindustan has consolidated its position as the No 3 national daily and continues to be the fastest growing Hindi daily in the country with six percent increase in readership to 99.14 lacs, strengthening its position in Bihar and Jharkhand while continuing growth momentum in UP and Uttarakhand. Similarly, Mint consolidated its position as No 2 business daily with 1.58 lacs readers, while maintaining its premium audience profile and a loyal readership base of 76 percent solus readers. It also ranks No 1 in Bengaluru.
Also, taking overview of the company’s FY2010 performance (in comparison with FY2009) of the company, it becomes quite clear that HTML has been registering remarkable growth in print segment. During the period, net consolidated revenue of the company was higher by six percent at Rs 14,379 million from Rs 13,591 million, in which print segment contributed with net increase of Rs 586 million in revenue on account of: twenty percent growth in circulation revenue at Rs 1,833 million from Rs 1,531 million due to rise in circulation numbers and improved realizations; and advertisement revenue registering an increase of one percent at Rs 11,439 million from Rs 11,299 million owing to growth in volumes and improvement in price realizations.
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The just concluded quarter and financial year has been extremely good and gives us optimism for the future. All our businesses have shown good growth. Our Hindi business has performed exceedingly well and, we have filed the draft red herring prospectus for Hindustan Media Ventures Limited. We are very enthused with the results of the inaugural quarterly IRS with both Hindustan Times and Hindustan clearly showing robust readership growth…We look forward to building on our strong growth momentum in the year ahead.
–Shobhana Bhartia, chairperson and editorial director, HT Media Ltd.
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While the figures of Q4 FY2010 performance of the company show quite better results in comparison with Q4 FY2009. During this period, net consolidated revenue of HTML was higher by twelve percent at Rs 3,851 million from Rs 3,424 million, in which print segment contributed with net increase of Rs 372 million primarily because of: increase of eight percent in advertisement revenue at Rs 3,017 million from Rs 2,797 million due to growth in volumes and improvement in price realisation; and five percent growth in circulation revenue at Rs 429 million from Rs 410 million owing to rise in circulation numbers and improved realizations.
Commenting on the performance, Shobhana Bhartia, chairperson and editorial director, HT Media, said, “The just concluded quarter and financial year has been extremely good and gives us optimism for the future. All our businesses have shown good growth. Our Hindi business has performed exceedingly well and, we have filed the draft red herring prospectus for Hindustan Media Ventures Limited.”
“We are very enthused with the results of the inaugural quarterly IRS with both Hindustan Times and Hindustan clearly showing robust readership growth,” she stated further, adding “Radio continues to do well and has turned EBITDA positive this quarter. We are also very excited with the opportunities our joint venture with Burda offers and are looking to establish our position as a unique printing and pre-press house. We look forward to building on our strong growth momentum in the year ahead.”
Spreading horizon…
Extending mobile phone presence beyond its mobile website by developing a mobile application for Apple iPhone users, Hindustan Times has established yet another milestone in news dissemination. By launching this application in May 2010, the newspaper has included in the elite group of international newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Financial Times, which are already available with their iPhone applications. HT would provide this application for free allowing users to download it from the iPhone online store, namely iTunes.
Notably, in December last year, announcing its availability on Amazon’s popular e-reader Kindle on a monthly subscription, HT became the first Indian newspaper available on kindle. Meanwhile, Hindustan Times entered an exclusive content partnership with USA-based newspaper The Washington Post which enabled it to carry columns and articles from the Post and Newsweek.
The company has already entered into 65:35 joint venture with Velti Plc, one of the world’s leading providers of mobile advertising solutions, to provide these services in India.
Focusing Hindi business…
To effectively focus on a very successful and re-launched product, HT Media has hived-off the Hindi business into a separate entity, namely Hindustan Media Ventures Limited (HMVL). Now being a reader friendly product with emphasis on local news coverage, lots of colours and high quality content, Hindi daily Hindustan is emerging into a popular offering for people across the Hindi-belt with editions in Delhi, Lucknow, Dehradun, Kanpur, Meerut, Allahabad, Varanasi, Agra, Bareilly, Kolkata and Mohali and the entire Bihar and Jharkhand to print more than twenty lakh copies per day.
Post the demerger of Hindustan into Hindustan Media Ventures Ltd with effect from Dec 01, 2009, HMVL has initiated the IPO process and consequently filed a Draft Red Herring Prospectus in March 2010. Hindi business continued to show robust financial performance during the quarter both on the circulation and advertising front leading to higher profitability.
Ultimately, leveraging their expertise in printing and publishing, HT Media seems succeeding in exploring latent possibilities of gradual multifaceted growth, reaching to more audiences and generating much revenues, in the era of multi-channel news publishing.
