Network18’s Digital Commerce revenues showed healthy growth for the quarter ending September 30th, 2013 (Q2-FY14), crossing the Rs 100 crore mark for the quarter, at Rs 104.4 crore, up 59.88% from Rs 65.3 crore for the same quarter last fiscal year, and 22.54% from the last sequential quarter. The content business declined marginally (5.99%) quarter on quarter, which is remarkably low, given how tough things have been with online advertising, and the company managed to report the same revenues for content as the corresponding quarter last year, at Rs 20.4 crore.
The company hasn’t disclosed segment EBITDA performance for E-commerce and content separately, and at a combined level, Digital Content and Commerce showed a lower EBITDA loss at Rs 9.3 crore for the quarter, a reduction of 78.62% from the last quarter (Q1-FY14) . The lack of disclosure continues, with Network18 choosing not do disclose losses at an EBITDA level for the same quarter last year, instead, disclosing EBITDA losses for the segment with Newswire18 (which was sold off) included. So, a year-on-year comparison for the quarter, at this level, isn’t possible.
Note that costs would have reduced substantially, and will possibly continue to be lower this (current) quarter, in comparison with the same quarter last fiscal, as Web18 laid off a substantial number of people. In a statement, Raghav Bahl, Managing Director, Network18 has said, “Even though the macroeconomic environment continued to be uncertain, the media and entertainment industry is well poised to deliver robust growth. During the current quarter, our television operations turned in strong operating profits. We demonstrated the significant value built in our digital commerce operations which have also cut their losses substantially.”
More on the layoffs in our story here.
Network18 claims that Bookmyshow.com grew over 36% when compared to the previous year, and HomeShop18, which recently raised money, scaled business across unspecified “key operating parameters” while containing losses. It’s not clear if this is the combined revenue of HomeShop18 and BookMyShow, since there is no break up for digital commerce revenues provided for the quarter.
BookMyShow had reported revenues of Rs 52.62 crore and a profit of Rs 3.23 crore for the year ended March 31, 2013 (FY13). HomeShop18 had reported total revenues of Rs 225.4 crore in FY13, with losses of Rs 120 crore for FY13.
Rajan Srinivasan, CEO of IBN Live, recently left the company.
