SAREGAMANSEQ4FY26May 14, 2026

Saregama India Limited

12,320words

117turns

14analyst exchanges

4executives

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Management on call

Vikram Mehra

MANAGING DIRECTOR

Pankaj Kedia

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR – INVESTOR RELATIONS

Kuldeep Kothari

DEPUTY GENERAL

Pranav Kshatriya

EMKAY GLOBAL FINANCIAL SERVICES LIMITED

Key numbers — 40 extracted

INR 287 crore

very good afternoon to all of you. Quarter 4 of the financial year saw revenue from operations at INR 287 crores with a YoY growth of 19%. Our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at INR 133 crores with YoY growth of

19%

uarter 4 of the financial year saw revenue from operations at INR 287 crores with a YoY growth of 19%. Our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at INR 133 crores with YoY growth of 31% and operational PBT at

INR 133 crore

from operations at INR 287 crores with a YoY growth of 19%. Our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at INR 133 crores with YoY growth of 31% and operational PBT at INR 105 crores, which is a YoY growth of 37%. Le

31%

s with a YoY growth of 19%. Our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at INR 133 crores with YoY growth of 31% and operational PBT at INR 105 crores, which is a YoY growth of 37%. Let me start with music. G

INR 105 crore

Our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at INR 133 crores with YoY growth of 31% and operational PBT at INR 105 crores, which is a YoY growth of 37%. Let me start with music. Global recorded music grew close to $3

37%

133 crores with YoY growth of 31% and operational PBT at INR 105 crores, which is a YoY growth of 37%. Let me start with music. Global recorded music grew close to $32 billion in 2025 according to

32 billion

es, which is a YoY growth of 37%. Let me start with music. Global recorded music grew close to $32 billion in 2025 according to IFPI, with India still under 2% of that despite housing 18% of the world's p

Global recorded music grew close to $32 billion in 2025 according to IFPI, with India still under 2% of that despite housing 18% of the world's population. We in India are operating in the most unde

18%

close to $32 billion in 2025 according to IFPI, with India still under 2% of that despite housing 18% of the world's population. We in India are operating in the most underpenetrated large music mark

INR 814 crore

lements of music are going to be there under the music vertical. Together, it recorded revenue of INR 814 crores, which was 17% YoY growth and annual EBITDA stood at INR 517 crores with a 22% YoY growth and an

17%

to be there under the music vertical. Together, it recorded revenue of INR 814 crores, which was 17% YoY growth and annual EBITDA stood at INR 517 crores with a 22% YoY growth and an annual net marg

INR 517 crore

ether, it recorded revenue of INR 814 crores, which was 17% YoY growth and annual EBITDA stood at INR 517 crores with a 22% YoY growth and an annual net margin of INR 377 crores, which was a 28% YoY growth. Th

Guidance — 20 items

Vikram Mehra

opening

“If I look at FY26, the overall music vertical and for the sake of simplicity, now onwards, when we talk about music vertical, we'll combine everything in it, music licensing, artiste management & retail business.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“In FY'25, Q4 did not have Wynk revenue, which helped us a lot.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“So, as we continue growing the music vertical, we are steadfast in maintaining that we will grow it, keeping in mind strong economic principles and never do things which are coming out of vanity.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“I think the biggest name will be Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Love & War and Telugu Superstar, Nani’s film Paradise.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“Our overall lineup for FY27 includes the delayed and now scheduled album of Love & War of Mr.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“And this year, we plan to go back and build that one weakness that we had, we want to fill in that gap, which is Punjabi Music.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“Overall, we continue with our guidance of a 5-year payback period, followed by anything between 55-75 years of returns.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“We plan to nurture this festival further and make it even bigger in FY27.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“We expect this IP to break even by FY28.”

Vikram Mehra

opening

“I accept that this revenue number is far lower than FY25.”

Risks & concerns — 11 flagged

There was some concern that was expressed at the end of quarter 2 from multiple partners and investors about the music vertical growth trajectory.

— Vikram Mehra

In fact, there was a lot of peer and partner pressure around it.

— Vikram Mehra

This decline is by design and has not happened by chance.

— Vikram Mehra

That's the only reason why you are seeing a serious decline in the video vertical, and we are happy with this.

— Vikram Mehra

Otherwise, it is very difficult to explain.

— Vikram Mehra

Could you confirm, Vikram, that we had this headwind of discontinued platforms in the base.

— Prateek Poddar

But for us, it's very difficult to assess how profitable it is.

— Resham Jain

When you're going to be looking at my numbers, do keep in mind, the moment you do an absolute catalogue to absolute catalogue, there's a decline because music had a decline because we had platforms like Resso shutting down.

— Vikram Mehra

Like you mentioned, the headwind on the platform shutting down or switching off is sort of behind you.

— Akshay Jogani

And those numbers are not very difficult to achieve.

— Vikram Mehra

Remember, in video OTT every year, there's some other new pressure that starts coming up.

— Vikram Mehra

Q&A — 14 exchanges

Congrats on very good numbers. My first question is on the two things which you highlighted. First was weakness in Punjabi. So, I wanted to understand why this segment has been a bit on the lower side. Is it because it's niche market or more competitive or more expensive? And how much allocation you plan over the next two years in this? And second is on AI IP monetization. How big can this be? Any examples from the developed market? And if you can talk more about this? That is my first question.

Vikram Mehra

Okay. On the Punjabi side, we have experimented getting to this market twice over the last six years. And I'll be honest and confess that our strategy never worked out. Any market that we get into, we need to keep a very tight balance between market share and the return on investment, which is a five-year payback principle. The market is a very expensive. But we also understand that if you get it right, the monetization happens not just from Punjabis living in India, but from U.S., Canada and U.K. also. Now we have been able to crack a model whereby we are working with more and more artists in

Congratulations on a great set of numbers for two quarters in a row. My first question pertains to one of the notes accounts you put. You seem to have written back provisions worth INR 99 million during the quarter. Could you share what do the provisions pertain to and where exactly is the impact reflected?

Vikram Mehra

This is something that happens every year. What we do is during the year, we build up a position on the provision side. And when the actual consumption data comes out, that's the time we are in a better position to decide how much royalty has to be paid or not pay. Remember, I've shared this in the past, today when all the new content is being bought, royalties are to be paid only on the Hindi film music. All the South Indian content and Hindi non-film content is onetime payment content and there's no royalty overflow that happens. But actual consumption reports from the platforms come at a mu

Congratulations on good set of numbers. So, sir, in the last con call also, you had discussed that there is a potential of around 100 million paid subscribers in India. And now also you said that 64% of free music users are ready to switch to paid subscription. So, say, hypothetically, if there are around 10 million paid subscribers in India, what would be our share in it in percentage terms?

Vikram Mehra

Ma'am, I can't go out there and share my market share in the market today. But remember, we are not getting the subscribers. Spotify is getting the subscriber. When a Spotify subscriber is listening to music during the month, we get paid based on the market share of what subscriber heard during the month. Are you with me? Yes, sir. I don't own the subscriber. I partially own the consumption of that subscriber on that platform. Yes. So, can you give me some context like what would be our share in it, as in our consumption share in it? At this juncture, the other data point I can go back and sha

So, congrats on the good set of numbers. I have a few questions. So, if you see a bit of history, the revenue for Q4 FY24, the growth was around 40% at the time. But after that, the growth has remained subdued in terms of revenue. But it has improved over the last two quarters. So, my question is, should we expect the current trends that we have in revenue to continue in the coming quarters? Like how should we look at the numbers going ahead?

Vikram Mehra

I'm assuming you're talking about the music vertical. Yes, music vertical, yes. For music vertical, I have stated this in the past also that our growth was getting subdued, in fact, I'll say, over the last two years now, primarily on account of the fact that a lot of free streaming platforms had shut down. And their revenue numbers were sitting as part of the denominator, while those things were not available in numerator at all. So, you had four different platforms changing shape and form, some shutting down, some going fully behind the paywall. That effect is completely over, which is the re

Could you confirm, Vikram, that we had this headwind of discontinued platforms in the base. That is now over. Is that a fair understanding?

Vikram Mehra

Yes. It's over. There's no platform sitting out there now in our denominator. Okay. The second question, just on event business. While I understand and appreciate that this is a lumpy business from a revenue perspective, this quarter, I saw a loss in the events business. That was something which I couldn't understand. I added as part of my opening commentary. We launched our first festival IP this year. Typically, festival IPs take anything between 3-4 years to do a breakeven. That loss is all primarily because of UN40. I expect this trend to continue. Only in FY '28, do we expect the festival

Congratulations on a great set of numbers. My first question is on our plans of the INR 1,000 crores spend on new content acquisition. So, should we consider FY27, I mean the fagged years for this kind of investment if we take FY25, FY26, FY27 cumulative numbers?

Vikram Mehra

Yes, you're absolutely right. FY25, '26, '27 was INR 1,000 crores odd, and we will be in that ballpark in that space only. Our intent is from FY28 onwards increase it only in a linear fashion and no more step jump in new content investment. We are happy with the current 25-30% market share that we have of the new music coming out in the market. Got it. Understood. Thank you for actually kind of giving a detailed explanation of how the music business and the EBITDA margins and profit margins look like. My only question here is that what is the difference between music EBITDA percentage and musi

I have three of them. First, just a clarification. In your presentation, you mentioned that you expect Music net margins to improve by 300 to 500 basis points in 3-5 years. So, in essence, you're expecting the EBIT margins to move from 46-odd to a sustainable 50%. Is that understanding, correct?

Vikram Mehra

Yes. So, in fact, if I'm looking at the EBIT margins currently also on music, they're hovering around 60%. Govindarajan Chellappa: Not the net margins, the EBIT margin for the business. If you are talking about the percentages, which are somewhere hovering between 46-50%. Yes, over the next 3-5 years, you should have 300-500 bps increase coming on our music business, everything else remaining as it is. Govindarajan Chellappa: Okay. And this would be a linear increase or you think this will be back ended? No, no. So, it may take us another year or two for the buildup to start happening. But wha

So, I had a couple of questions. So, I wanted to know about the revenue from social media platforms. So, suppose an influencer posts a reel using our music. So, what's the deal structure and how much do we make from that one deal? What's the revenue model there?

Vikram Mehra

I had answered this; I think last question only. All our social media platform deals are flat fee deals. That means we get paid a flat fee by this platform for utilization of our music across reels or posts during the year. So, you're not getting paid right now on a per reel basis. But this license is restricted only for individual consumption and usage. Our brand cannot take advantage of this and post any reel of theirs. Brands have to negotiate a license from us directly. Okay. Understood. My other question was related to the investment part. Suppose we do INR 350 crores in FY27 to reach our

There's a clear sort of increasing trend between Q1 and Q4 on the music revenue that we generate ex of carvaan and artist management, so increase in licensing revenue. I want to understand what is the driver of this increasing revenue in licensing between Q1 and Q4 through the years?

Vikram Mehra

So, between Q1 and Q4, actually, the biggest factor is when & which big albums is getting released. A lot of this revenue that you are seeing right now is also governed by the new music releases. Typically, in our country, Q1 being the IPL time, you will have less new big movies getting released during the year. Q3 being the Diwali time ends up seeing a massive release in terms of new music. And then the December, January time frame is very, very big. One being Christmas, second being Pongal around January 14 becomes a very big release date in South India and then 14th February becomes a very

Sir, is the IPRS movements a threat to the revenues especially after Kolkata high court ruling in that Vodafone case?

Vikram Mehra

It does not have any implication on us. I'll just leave it there. Okay. And secondly, sir, I understand that market price of the stock is neither your focus and it should not be and not under your control. However, markets are set to be waiting machines in the short term and running machines in the long term. Saregama has been on a downtrend for several quarters now, notwithstanding today, which we are grateful for. Is there anything fundamentally altered or disrupted in the music industry or Saregama's business, which is causing this downtrend in your opinion? I'll not comment as you rightly

Sir, just one question. If you can share the revenue from the content which has been bought over the last five years, if that number can be shared because there is hardly any way you have this payback period in mind by five years. But for us, it's very difficult to assess how profitable it is. So, if you can share at least the last five years' cumulative revenue in this year, FY26 of the content bought, that will at least be helpful for us to evaluate.

Vikram Mehra

So, I'll tell you how you can arrive at if you check my last corporate presentation, there, we have shared data with you that what percentage of the total revenue on the music side is coming actually from the music release after 2020. That data is as of FY25, does not include the FY26 data, and we will be releasing that part also shortly. But till FY25, you will get that information. If I remember my numbers correctly, right, 40% of the total revenue that we people had is music released between FY21 to FY24. Okay. So, if I then look at the overall revenue because now you have artist management

My question is this, our performance regarding the last three years, so just our competitor comes to you also has a market cap of 8,000 Cr. approximately to our and we have the same P/E 35. Our competitor's company ROCE is 122%, while our ROCE is 17%. They said 1990 music is their top line in the bottom line. While we have more good life daily after a music song, but we can't perform. Will you tell us where we are in a week? They have INR59 crores content cost last year, and we have approx. INR235 crores. Their write-off campaign cost is 100%, we also have good property to monetize in Dumdum a

Vikram Mehra

Sir, I can talk only about myself. So, if you have any questions directly connected to Saregama, I'm happy to discuss. I'd like to pass on any comments on my competitor's business. My question is, regarding the performance of our company, why we are not performing? Sir, I don't know how you're calling it not performing. The Indian music industry growth numbers have been published. This is a neutral study. None of us is involved in that part. E&Y has gone out there and done it as part of the FICCI report. IMI, which is the music industry's Apex body, has gone back and published this. Both of th

Vikram, a couple of questions. Like you mentioned, the headwind on the platform shutting down or switching off is sort of behind you. So, over the next one to two years as platforms sort of start pushing, and they have already started pushing premium, do you expect the growth rates to now sort of mirror their growth rates, or maybe there are no more changes within the industry structure that kind of is expected?

Vikram Mehra

So, one part is what I'm expecting. Second is the guidance I'm happy to give at this juncture, knowing the current situation. So, in the current scenario, looking at the subscription growth rate that is happening for the music vertical of ours, which added retail also to it. We are projecting a 20-23% CAGR over the next 3-5 years. But can this change dramatically into a hockey stick effect? It can. If anything, is to go look at the subscription data in other parts of the world, even Latin American countries are sitting out at 13-15%, which will be 5x of what we people are today. And those numb

Thank you, everyone. Many of you guys have complimented us on our Q4 results. Please remember, you're finally seeing the fruits of what was started by us as a company 3 years ago. And this trend hopefully is going to become even more pronounced as we people go forward. Always keep in mind, we in India are operating in the world's most under-penetrated large music market with the most dominant catalogue, which is growing by 5,500 songs every year, our net debt-free balance sheet, and a 650 million digital footprint. Every global trend, subscription growth, ARPU expansion, super fan monetization

Management

Speaking time

Vikram Mehra

Moderator

Kavish Parekh

Prateek Poddar

Yash Bajaj

Avnish Sharma

Aanchal Jalan

Sanmat Jain

Rohan Nagpal

Manish Gupta

Opening remarks

Pranav Kshatriya

Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to welcome the management and thank them for this opportunity. We have with us today, Mr. Vikram Mehra-Managing Director and Mr. Pankaj Kedia-Executive Director, Investor Relations. Now I shall hand over the call to the management for their opening remarks. Over to you.

Vikram Mehra

Thank you, and a very good afternoon to all of you. Quarter 4 of the financial year saw revenue from operations at INR 287 crores with a YoY growth of 19%. Our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at INR 133 crores with YoY growth of 31% and operational PBT at INR 105 crores, which is a YoY growth of 37%. Let me start with music. Global recorded music grew close to $32 billion in 2025 according to IFPI, with India still under 2% of that despite housing 18% of the world's population. We in India are operating in the most underpenetrated large music market on earth and Saregama's entire strategy is built around that 20-year opportunity that is sitting in front of us. If I look at FY26, the overall music vertical and for the sake of simplicity, now onwards, when we talk about music vertical, we'll combine everything in it, music licensing, artiste management & retail business. All the 3 core elements of music are going to be there under the music vertical. Together, it recorded revenue of INR 814

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