HT Mobile, HT Media‘s mobile marketing joint venture with Velti reported revenues of Rs 4 crore for the quarter and Rs 12 crore for the year, company representatives said in response to MediaNama’s query on their earnings conference call. The number of mobile advertising campaigns for the venture have increased, they said. Note that the HT-Velti joint venture was formed in November 2008, and the company hasn’t shared any substantive information on this venture till now.
HT Media’s digital segment has reported a 25% increase in revenues from its digital segment, at Rs 13.4 crore for the quarter, up from Rs 10.7 crore for the same period last year. These revenues largely consist of their job portal businesses Shine.com, company execs told MediaNama on its earnings conference call, adding that “There is substantial progress on Shine and HTCampus, and you’ll see progress made every quarter on topline and expense line.” Shine currently receives over 10000 resumes each day, and their “fresh resume” database (6 month old) is 4.2 million. Note that market leader Naukri.com claims to add 11,000 resumes per day, has a database of 29 million resumes, but does not disclose how many of these are effectively “fresh”. Naurki claimed that 68,000 resumes were “modified daily” during Q4. See: Info Edge concall, Data)
A majority of the Rs 40 crore loss reported for FY12 for the digital segment is also on account of Shine. Note that Shine has still not been amalgamanted into HT Media Ltd: In last quarters earnings call, the company had explained that there was cash flow benefit on taxation, but there was a “very strong interest from a strategic investor in this site but due to various reasons that talk did not eventually fructify and we thought that it would be best for us to take advantage of the synergy that existed between these two businesses rather than lose those synergistic benefits.”
HTCampus, HT Media’s online education venture, claims a database of 28,000 institutes and over 600,000 registered users.
In response to MediaNama’s question, the company declined to comment on online advertising revenues for HindustanTimes.com and Livemint.com, saying that they don’t disclose this information; however, in previous conference calls, when we have asked for this information, it has been disclosed. The management did say that the investment in digital (overall) is around Rs 30-40 crore (without specifying a time period). During the quarter, Rs 20 crore given to Firefly e-ventures as Inter-corporate deposits”, and Rs 4.27 crore was invested in compulsorily convertible debentures of HT Digital Media Holdings Ltd, the holding company of Firefly E-ventures and HT Mobile.
Other notes from the concall:
– The business struggled for growth: “2012 was a challenging year, with the underpinning of exchange rate volatility. Seen 15% year growth on a consolidated basis, and profits in like with the last year. The liquidity position looks good, with Rs 554 crore of cash on the balance sheet. Our PAT level was lower due to depreciation and interest, we have not compromised on any of those adjusted.
– Circluation of 41 lakh of the whole co, with hindi at 23 lakh
– Mint readership is 270,000 readers on a daily basis.
– “We’re building a prototype in the education business.”
– Advertising industry has been seeing a downturn in real estate and financial services sectors.
– Ads for equity provisioning increased by Rs 5 crore
Downloads: Financials | Press Release
