Info Edge Ltd*, which owns Naukri.com, 99Acres.com, Jeevansathi.com and Shiksha.com, among others, had reported a net profit after tax (on a standalone basis) of Rs 33.2 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2014 (Q2-FY15), nearly flat from Rs 33.2 crore profit in the same quarter last year. The sales however grew by 20% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 147.5 crore from Rs 123 crore in the same quarter last year.
Importantly, deferred sales revenue has decreased to Rs 147 crores vs Rs 150 crores as
of September 30th versus June 30th, but the company says this is 21% up year-on-year. However, Q2-Q3 are typically weak quarters for hiring, because of the festive season. Cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet increased to about Rs 1,273 crores as a result of the fund raising.
Here are some notes from Info Edge’s investor conference call:
Recruitment business:
– Recruitment top line grew by 19% YoY to Rs 107 crore in this quarter.
– EBITDA margins remained flat at 51% similar to Q2-FY14.
Naukri:
– EBITDA margin in Naukri also remained flat at 55%, similar to the corresponding quarter last year.
– Naukri added an average of 13,100 fresh CVs every day and the average CV modifications were at 135,000 per day.
– Naukri currently has a database of more than 39 million CVs.
– Naukri serviced 31,000 unique customers during the quarter, against 27,000 customers in the same quarter last year.
– In H1-FY15, Naukri serviced 40,000 customers, up from 35,000 customers in H1-FY14.
– The portal also launched new products, like Career Site Manager and the Referral Hiring, during this quarter. – About 34% of the total traffic coming to Naukri was from mobile during this quarter.
Ecommerce and mobile sectors are hiring more: The big hirers in India continues to be the IT companies and the large companies in Banking and Insurance and some of the other Infrastructure sectors, “But we are
doing business with a lot of companies in the ecommerce space, we are doing business with a
lot of companies in the mobile space as well.”
99Acres:
– 99Acres’ top line grew by 32% YoY to about Rs 24.5 crore during Q2-FY15
– 99Acres reported a loss before tax of about Rs 10 crore during this period.
– “more than 70% of the headcount increase in our business over last year, is on
account of 99Acres.”
– There were 21,000 paid listings on the site during this quarter, which generated Rs 6 lakh, similar to Q2-FY14.
– Proportion of paid listings versus total listings has dipped to about 73%, from 82% in the same quarter last year.
– Traffic from mobile accounts for 29% of total traffic on 99Acres.
– 99Acres operates around 20 cities. About one-third of 99Acres’ revenue comes from Delhi-NCR, and the top six cities account for about 60% of their revenue.
– Delhi has slowed down considerably this year because of a lack of new launches and the real-estate market slowing down in general
– 99Acres vs Magicbricks: “So we saw dip in our traffic share as measured
by ComScore in last quarter because of massive sort of competitive activities especially from
MagicBricks. But what we have seen in the past is that this is not normally not a permanent shift
so as and when we sort of start spending more we get back our share but we did not really
respond last quarter aggressively to their advertising burst on television”
InfoEdge MD & CEO Hitesh Oberoi mentioned that the loss was on account of investments in man power, product, technology and advertising. He also mentioned that the losses might increase depending on the kind of investments the 99Acres business incurs going forward. Importantly, the investments in 99Acres are “unlikely to reap any sort of benefits in the short-term in terms of revenue, we are investing in areas which are sort of going to help us improve our user experience over the medium term. Many of these investments are actually to create a market or to sort of do things ”
Jeevansathi:
– The net sales of Jeevansathi.com grew by 2.5% YoY to Rs 9.45 crore
– it also reported an EBITDA loss of around Rs 2.3 crore in Q2-FY15.
– About 50% of Jeevansathi’s total traffic comes from mobile.
Shiksha:
– The net sales of Shiksha.com grew by about 14% YoY.
Headcount: InfoEdge’s headcount increased about 35% YoY, but its staff cost increase by only 27%. 70% of the headcount increase over the last year has been on account of 99Acres.
Download: Conference Call Transcript
