Points to note from HT Media's earnings conference call for Q1-FY17. Our coverage of the results here. 1. GST impacts post demonetization recovery: GST concerns hit HT Media's advertising revenues in May and June 2017, even as there was some recovery in April, after a tough last quarter of FY17 which was impacted by demonetization. Year-on-year, advertising revenues for the groups English Print business were down, while the Hindi print business reported a flat top line. Overall, print revenues were down 5% for HT media in the quarter. "English has taken the real brunt of the soft market sentiments," Piyush Gupta, the company's CFO, said on HT Media's Q1FY18 earnings conference call. Broadly: April: "was a great month because we were seeing growth come back to the English revenues in the month of April." May: "slightly less but still better than June: June: "is where really the whole GST volatility hit our financials." When will things improve? "...we believe in a quarter it [GST] should get settled out, the growth we have seen in April should rebound back if not in a couple of months then probably in a quarters’ time" 2. GST's impact on print advertising: The problem, according to CEO Rajeev Verma: "there is going to be a major impact from the advertising in the near-to-short-term. Right now what we are experiencing is a major slowdown in the advertising consumption due to the fact that all our customers, people who advertise in the newspaper are all not consuming…
