D.B.Corp Limited

Girish Agarwal

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Girish Agarwal

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Amit Khetan

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Riya

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Riya

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Girish Agarwal

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Girish Agarwal

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Girish Agarwal

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Girish Agarwal

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Anuj Sharma

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Another point which is right now working little negative is the dollar price, because the dollar price going up my imported parity with the Indian newsprint as well as the foreign goes up so that is another concern right now.

— Girish Agarwal

The monthly active users, we have seen a decreased from 3.7 million from January 2022 to May 2022, it has come down to 3.4 million, so what is the reason for this decline?

— Gaurav Gandhi

Basically, are we seeing some curtail in the radio ad spend because we have been reading that as a percentage of the entire where advertisement spent by the major FMCG, they are more of knowing social media advertisement right now and curtailing on radio, TV businesses so are we seeing any impact of that?

— Riya

Q

Thank you very much and a very good evening to everyone and thank you for joining the Q1 FY2023 DB Corp earnings conference call. We will begin the call by highlighting the key financial performance for the quarter ended June 30, 2022, followed by key operational updates. We are pleased to report that despite inflationary pressures and challenging DB Corp Ltd sentiments in the domestic and global market we have delivered strong results in this quarter. We witnessed good growth in both circulation and advertising. We have commenced this new financial year on an optimistic note. In Q1 FY2023 adv

Girish Agarwal

Good evening and thank you everybody. Thank you, Pawan. We hope and wish you and your family members are healthy and safe. As Pawan stated we have commenced this financial year on a stronger note with strong Q-o-Q and Y-o-Y performance across all segments. I think it is more important to note the Q-o-Q rather than Y-o-Y for simple reason, because last year the first quarter was a COVID hit quarter so the numbers look very highly growth centric, but to be very honest we need to compare it Q-o-Q also we should compare ourselves with the 2019-2020 quarter rather than last year. DB Corp ,Lid We ar

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Thanks for the level of disclosures in your result bulletin. Just two questions which are actually in mind of many investors. One is our paywall strategy over two, three years how it will shape up and secondly the issue that comes from all the media houses, issues with Google and other Western technology companies also that we are not getting fresh share of revenues when you are invested so heavily in a countrywide cost base basically?

Girish Agarwal

The first is about the payout? Paywall how we are going to? I thought payout, my mistake. DB Corp ,Lid The paywall strategy in your franchises, you have taken up constantly. As you know in digital, we have already reached to a level of 17 million monthly active users on our app and these numbers are pretty steady from last three, four months as you must have noticed despite if you look at my other competitors, if I look at any other news channel or app and all that they all have gone down in numbers, so that clearly indicates that we have found the stickiness with our readers very clearly. Our

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Actually, my questions were in continuation to what Bhagyesh just asked so any numbers which you could share both on the paying for the app so to say and paying for the news and also on the Google assuming the order goes in favor of the INS and like it has been in some DB Corp Ltd of the other countries, what can be the likely or approximate revenue accretion which can really happen from that?

Girish Agarwal

In fact, in our petition that is one of the points we have mentioned to CCI that please ask Google to disclose the exact advertising income they make it from India and then based on that some ratio to be decided on, so I think we should wait for the honorable CCI to decide on that. Second that first you asked about the money which we can get from the app and all that correct the paywall? That is right. We are also evaluating it, understanding it from the market should take couple of more quarters. Understood or maybe some any global model which you are trying to kind of understand? We are stud

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Good evening and thank you for the opportunity. Sir, can you provide some color on the advertising yields, where are they relative to pre-COVID levels and where do you eventually see them going like would they recover to 100% to pre-COVID levels or would they be slightly lower and by when?

Girish Agarwal

Now this advertising yield again we are looking at category wise, so some categories yields are already higher than the pre-COVID level, but some categories are still struggling now it is true, it is a function of the category behavior in the market. So, for example, real estate category we are higher than the pre-COVID level because that category has already bounced back in a big way, but in our auto sector that is still struggling because the automobile category as such is down, so that is the way we are looking at it. But on average where would you be relative to pre-COVID? Still below the

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Good set of numbers, congratulations. Basically, I just wanted to have a word about where are we seeing the advertisement majorly coming from like you said you are doing well when you expect auto to do good so what part could you give a percentage wise breakup of which segment from how much of the total advertisement revenue?

Girish Agarwal

I have the whole chart in front of me, but because of the competitive environment I do not want to read out the whole chart for you, but let me still give you the flavor. Education as a category contributes the most because of the Q1, because in Q1 that is the education season time followed by government and then real estate and FMCG, real estate is doing very well if I compare real estate with as I am telling you that I do not want to compare any number with last year, because last year was a COVID hit month so all the numbers show the growth of 100%, 200% looks very fancy. We should compare

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There are two different things. One is that the absolute circulation copies going forward will increase, answer is yes, we are working on it as for example the average of the quarter which we mentioned to you around 42 as in the month of July itself we have got another 60000 copy growth over that number, so we are hopeful that the copies will grow further more. Number two, from the advertiser perspective I think one good thing has happened that in spite of whatever little copies we have lost because of the COVID and the format of the offices and all that. I would say my market share in various

Girish Agarwal

So, we have not seen anybody leaving the space, but yes because of the newsprint price hike we can clearly see a lot of people are compromising in their product, so if their pages were say 16 they brought it down to 14 or 12 they are using bad quality newsprint and all that that certainly is helping us to gain the market share. Himanshu Upadhyay: Okay and on the advertisement rates of the yield? I think that is what we are pushing that the yield should improve since our market, advertising rates in a way they are the resultant of your reach and market as well leadership position in market, sin

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Congratulations on the good set of numbers. Sir, I needed to ask you that what is the dispute between the government and us and when will this get resolved? What is the issue that is coming up?

Girish Agarwal

We do not have any disputes with the government. There were some state governments for the past one year or two years have stopped advertising with us. We are in conversations with them, to make them understand that the readership which are there for us, we need to send them the message and some of the state governments are heeding to us, but they have not given us any clarity on that. DB Corp ,Lid What is the reason? Why did they stop advertising with us? This, we also do not have any knowledge. Actually, it is the government's decision and it is according to their policies, this is not in ou

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Congratulations on very good set of numbers here. I just wanted to get more clarity on newsprint, are you importing from Canada or Russia first of all and then you did mention newsprint pricing I think I could neglect it if you could repeat that and first this and then probably, I will get back?

Girish Agarwal

Newsprint prices let me tell you, last year Q1 was at around Rs.41000 per ton blended for Indian and imported, this year it has become around Rs.62000 per ton, so around 51% price hike in terms of newsprint. Coming to your second point, are we importing yes, we are importing and our imported percentage is also in the range of around 30 - 35% we are importing in the current quarter, last year the import was higher, because the rate was better for imported than Indian, because of Ukraine war, our Russian import has almost come to a standstill like on halt, because of that we are not able to impo

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Can you please share the quantum of the ad spends in Q1 and for how long are we looking to continue the spends?

Girish Agarwal

Ad spends in terms of digital marketing you are talking about? Yes. Okay, digital marketing not only that spend, overall money which was spent in the Q1 and some in the last Q4 also, it was largely more in the Q4 not in this Q1. Okay, so are we still continuing that like increase plans for coming quarters? No, now since we have got a pretty good size and a good traction of the market, so we have reduced drastically the marketing spend on digital. I think the organic growth is very good, very encouraging. Okay, so like we have almost like completed the investment phase of ad spending phase of t

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How much was the cover price increase that we took in FY2022 in all?

Girish Agarwal

From Rs.4.33 that is why we went up to Rs.4.62, almost 8% increase overall. Some increase in Q1 as well right, because you said now it is 4.76? It is now 4.76 if I compare Q-on-Q which means 4.53 have become 4.76. Okay. That is the reason if you notice my overall circulation revenue has gone up to 4.5% almost. Okay and another question on this, suppose newsprint prices tomorrow if they come off significantly, will we be able to retain this price increase? Yes, very much, because we have not passed down much to our reader. So at least we get a benefit of that as you mentioned we are not breakin

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I want to appreciate your capital allocation policies and strategies. My question is on pagination if we compare a pre-COVID and currently, what is the difference in pagination and how do you see that going forward. I understand it is a function of volumes, but just did not pass on today?

Girish Agarwal

For example, this quarter we were at almost 19 pages average compared to last year this quarter at 16 pages that was a COVID hit time but if I compare this with 2019-2020, it was 23 pages average, so which means we still have to go up by four pages more to achieve the pre-COVID number and that is where the advertising has to come in picture. Okay and that will be a function of the ad to EBIT ratio? Yes. Any outlook as to when do you think you can reach that or internally? We have been really working hard, our teams are really working hard to see how we can further grow the advertising revenue.

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Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity again. This question is mainly from a radio business perspective, I just wanted to know are we maintaining our market share there and what is the incremental advertisement we are getting it from there like could you explain me or like the current scenario in the area space? DB Corp Ltd

Pawan Agarwal

I was saying that healthy mix of advertising categories and we have been able to maintain our market share basis Q1FY19-20 is at the same level and we have up our market value share of wallet has gone up in most of the markets as well because our rates have been better than the market. For the radio business, what would be the major advertisement sources like segmental wise? Again, all same lifestyle would be one large category followed by healthcare, FMCG, electronics, real estate, education, banking, finance all the dotcom companies. Are you seeing some resistance from the player for adverti

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Thanks for taking my question. Can you share the expected percentage increase in inventory cost in Q2 and Q3? DB Corp Ltd

Girish Agarwal

Tough question, we are at Rs.62000 per ton in Q1, I think Q2 will be at least maybe 3% to 3.5% more because of the new stock coming in picture. Right and Q3 should be further higher or should settle at 3? It can actually go down, because we have been getting some softening indications from mill in the Southern India as well as the import duty cut assumption by the government if that happens and I think Q3 should see cut down. We have accumulated fair bit of cash on the balance sheet apart from the two dividends, is there likely to be any accelerated payout maybe in the form of a special divide

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Great set of numbers congratulations for that first. My first question, current digital revenue Sir and going forward how much do we target?

Girish Agarwal

Our digital revenue currently as I mentioned to you we do not accept the advertising on the app, so it is zero from the app, but we still have some revenue from the web, because we accept the advertising on the web, so there is some revenue on the web, but that is not our focus area and going forward there will be a big revenue source coming from the advertising and subscription going forward. Till date how much investment has made in this digital strategy? If you remember Sir, two years back I took the liberty of requesting all the investors to allow us not to disclose the digital number sepa

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Just thank you for the followup. Just one question around I see that on a quarter-on-quarter basis your other opex has come down by almost Rs.30 Crores, is this mostly, is this entirely the reduced digital marketing spends and is this a sustainable number?

Girish Agarwal

Yes largely.

Q

Thank you gentlemen. My question is, I am just trying to understand last call we said we would look at a tax effective way of distributing money right. Now our ownership is around 70.5%, so would not a proportionate buyback, would not that have been a more tax effective, I am trying to understand how does it, how do you rationalize saying so much that unless we promote our entities, they are more tax efficient or they have other expenses and is it a big tax output? DB Corp Ltd

Girish Agarwal

I appreciate your point of view Mr. Nahar and I will certainly put up this note up to my board. You do not need to put it up. your board is very wise and two of you are here, you are very wise, you run your business so efficiently I am sure there is a reason if you are doing it that is your choice, but I was wondering last time we all said that anyway that was one point. The second point was so the interim plus the previous year's final, so interim dividend of this fiscal comes first and the final dividend of the previous fiscal will come later? Yes, after the AGM. And the AGM is being held I

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My questions have been answered. I just like to ask you one question, how will we compete ourselves with our competitors, I would like to just know about that like where we are in front of the competition, like the competitions from companies like Jagran or any other. I do not know they are doing very well, I think.

Girish Agarwal

Why do not we take this question offline with you, because the answer would entail almost an hour. Something in brief is possible, something in brief. DB Corp Ltd I am very proud to say from my team perspective that all 8000, 9000 people those who are directly working with Dainik Bhaskar and thousands of them those who are indirectly working with the Bhaskar Group I think we all are very passionate about our work and that is the reason why day in and day out we are able to produce newspaper which people really look forward to seeing it in the morning and give that 30 minutes to us and from eve

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Thank you everyone for your participation and time on this earning call today. I hope we were responded to your queries that were raised today and we will always be happy to be of persistence to our investor relations department headed by Mr. Prasun Kumar Pandey for all your further queries. Take care everyone and stay safe. Thank you. Have a good evening ahead. Thank you.

Management