Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Aniket Malani from the HT Media Group.

I would like to welcome you all to our Q4 and full financial year 2025-2026 earnings webinar. As a reminder, all the participants will be in listen-only mode.

After we are through with the presentation, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions. Joining me on today's call are Mr.

Piyush Gupta, Group CFO, Mr. Pervez Bajaj, Head, Financial Controller and Controllership and Taxation, and members of our team.

We hope you have had an opportunity to review the financial results of Hindustan Media Ventures Limited announced yesterday, as well as those of HT Media Limited released earlier this afternoon. Please note that our discussion today will follow the presentation slides, which, along with the financial statements, are available on the stock exchanges and in the investor relations sections of our respective websites.

Moving on to slide two, this slide includes our standard disclaimer regarding forward-looking statements. As per usual practice, we do not provide specific guidance on revenue or earnings projections.

On to the next slide, this slide features comments from our chairperson on the company's performance, and I quote, "The fourth quarter of 2025-2026 and the full year marked a period of decisive transformation for your company, one characterized by meaningful improvement in profitability, even as consolidated revenue remained broadly stable on an annual basis. Our print business performed well both for the quarter and the full year.

Advertising-led revenue growth across our English and Hindi mastheads translated into higher profitability. In the near term though, rising newsprint costs amplified by a weakening rupee and the prevailing global environment of supply chain disruptions, trade policy uncertainty, and geopolitical volatility remain the concern that we are managing with cost discipline.

The radio business faced a tough year, with revenue declining on a full-year basis. Business was impacted by a high base from prior year's event-led revenue and was compounded by larger industry-wide issues.

As part of the ongoing streamlining of our radio business, your company has surrendered non-viable licenses, sharpening the network footprint and improving business profitability. In digital, our results reflect a deliberate and value-accretive reset.

The discontinuation of OTTplay business is in line with our focus on profitable growth. As always, your trust powers our journey.

We remain unwavering in our commitment to trusted journalism, quality content for our diverse audiences, and sustainable long-term value for our shareholders." End of quote.

Today's agenda will begin with a performance update focusing on the consolidated financial results for the fourth quarter and full financial year. This will be followed by an overview of our print, radio, and digital business segments, after which we will open the floor for a Q&A session.

With this, I now hand over to Mr. Piyush Gupta for the main presentation.

Thank you, Aniket. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our earnings call for FY 2026 fourth-quarter and the full-year results.

We'll be tracking the webinar on your screens. If you look at the consolidated financial summary, total revenue remains stable for the full year, however margin expanded on a YoY basis both for the quarter and for the year.

Cash position stays robust. Diving a little bit into the numbers, for the fourth quarter, if we see the total revenue came in at ₹558 crore, which is down 2%; EBITDA at ₹131 crore, which is up 5%; margins expanded by 100 basis points at 23%; PAT came at ₹96 crore and a PAT margin at 17%.

On a full-year basis, it was a flat revenue with EBITDA at ₹298 crore with an 8% growth. If you look at EBITDA margin, again a 100 basis point improvement you can see, and PAT came at ₹153 crore at a margin of 8%, and that cash position remains robust north of ₹1,000 crore.

Diving into business unit performance, first print: as you can see, ad revenues have remained strong for the quarter and full year, led by yield improvement. Circulation revenues have held steady with an uptick in the quarter, primarily from higher copies, and healthy margin expansion seen for the segment.

Again, a peek into the numbers: ad revenue 10% at ₹313 crore, circulation revenue growth of 4% at ₹51 crore, operating revenue hence at ₹427 crore, and operating EBITDA coming at ₹97 crore with a 23% margin. For the full year, revenues at ₹1,148 crore, which is an 8% growth; circulation revenue flat; operating revenue at ₹1,500 crore, which is an 8% increase; and operating EBITDA came at ₹208 crore with a EBITDA margin of 14%.

Diving into English ad revenue, for the quarter, ad revenues, which as told you came at ₹172 crore, which is a YoY growth of 9%, and on a full-year basis at ₹644 crore with a growth of 8%. Circulation revenue on a quarterly basis grew by 13% at ₹13 crore, and on a full-year basis at 53%, with a marginal decline of 5%.

Coming into Hindi, ad revenues for Hindi grew by 12% for the quarter at ₹142 crore, and for the full year at ₹504 crore with a growth of 8%. Circulation revenues virtually flat at ₹38 crore, same for the full-year revenue of circulation, which is at ₹155 crore.

A quick look at radio: the segment revenue declined on account of high event-less revenue which is there sitting in the base. Business continues to be under pressure with subdued margins.

Diving into the numbers, the quarterly numbers: operating revenue came at ₹43 crore with the operating EBITDA at a negative ₹17 crore, and on a full-year basis, the revenue came at ₹140 crore with the operating EBITDA of negative ₹22 crore. Finally, look at the digital, which is Shine and Mosaic: segment revenues restated for continued operations held steady for both the quarter and the full year, a slight dip in margins.

On the revenue for the quarter, it's a flat operating revenue at ₹39 crore with operating EBITDA at a negative ₹2 crore, ₹2 crore. On a full-year basis, it's operating revenue again flat at ₹155 crore and operating EBITDA at negative ₹8 crore with a 5% negative margin.

With that, we come to the end of the presentation.

Thanks, Piyush. We will now begin the Q&A session.

You can click on the raise hand option, which will enable the moderator to unmute you for posing your query. Please introduce yourself before posing your query, and kindly restrict to a maximum of two to three questions per participant so that we may be able to address questions from all participants.

Also, as is the ambit of this call, please be mindful to pose questions pertaining to the listed entity, HT Media Limited, and those within its consolidated structure. We will wait for a few moments while the question queue assembles.

The first question is from the line of Yash R. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.

Hi, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Yash.

The numbers seem decent, especially the ad revenues, congratulations on that on the first front. Now we've grown by around 18% or 12-odd percent in HMVL and 9-odd percent in HTML.

Yash, Yash, Yash, can you repeat the question? The voice just got garbled up.

Can you be a little slow and repeat the question, please?

Sure, sorry, I'll be a little louder. Is this better?

Much better, thank you.

Sure. Ad revenues have grown in English and Hindi as well, by almost I would say double digit in English, 9%.

Are these on the back of volumes or have you increased any pricing?

The simple answer is, Yash, as I explained, or actually I didn't explain, that was in the board meeting, the lever for the growth in revenues is primarily yields. Volume have been by and large flat, which have tracked the industry.

It's basically pricing. Now we'll have to see how much of that is structured, there's a big effort that we are doing on pricing which has flowed into the results in this quarter.

Okay. This is across both Hindi and English, or is it only for English?

Across.

Okay. There seems to be a tremendous growth in the other operating income in both.

What's that on the back of? Because I believe HMVL other operating income has grown by almost 100%.

By my calculation, it's around 32, and it was practically half last year in the same quarter.

There are two things sitting in other operating income. One, obviously, is the profit on sale of assets that we do, which is the AFE assets, so that's the number which has flowed in.

Secondly, as on our AFE thing, we've got these contracts with counterparties, and there is a certain contractual revenue which has to come in a specified period of time. If that doesn't happen, that amount stands forfeited.

Some part of that is on account of forfeiture, and some is on account of selling of AFE assets.

Okay. What about the circulation revenue?

It has been mentioned that there has been an improvement in the English part. Is that copies again or is that on the back of the prices?

Overall circulation revenue is plus 4% between English and Hindi. I would say realization for copies slightly flat at about 3% here and there.

There's not a huge amount of variance in circulation revenue. Overall, TO is slightly up.

We've been trying to go for a certain copy share market-by-market, not carte blanche. The number of copies definitely have a role to play, but I don't think it's a very substantial amount.

It's just that we want to retain a certain level of copy share in our key markets.

In the presentation, the English circulation revenue says 13%, I was just wondering. I know there's a comment that says that it is on the back of increase in circulation.

I just wanted to clarify whether that's on the back of pricing or the copies that have gone up, because it says copies.

Copies, primarily copies.

That's good news. All right, thank you.

Thank you, Yash.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder to all participants that you may use the raise hand option on your screen if you wish to ask a question.

The next question is from the line of Rohan Agarwal. Please introduce yourself and ask your question.

Rohan, please introduce yourself and ask your question.

Hi, am I audible?

Yes, Rohan, you are. Good afternoon.

Hi, Piyush. This is Rohan Agarwal from Wave Asset PMS.

I just had a couple of questions. One, could you give us a little more color on your decision to discontinue the OTTplay division, as in what led to that decision, and what would now be your future growth levers given that you've shut out the digital division?

I think that's a great question, Rohan. Rohan, if you just go back the last three or four investors earnings call, we've been maintaining that there are quite a few levers that we are trying to turn in OTTplay.

There's a finality to everything, and we've given ourselves a certain time. If in that we can make the unit economics and the entire P&L work, we will double down, else we will take appropriate decisions.

Obviously we've been trying multiple things, both on the content strategy, on the acquisition strategy, on the retaining strategy of various subscribers, and so on and so forth. However, in spite of our best efforts, the space became increasingly challenging, especially since all the big telcos also have a significant presence.

Though I must also caveat that we had already segmented our markets not as Tier 1, but Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns, thereby we were using a different distribution channel to propagate our product. Having done all that, we couldn't make the whole proposition work.

Therefore, we've decided to call it quits on OTTplay. We've been leading the investors towards this direction for the last three or four quarters.

Now the second part of your question is the future growth drivers. I think that's a great question.

Though it's not consolidated here, but from a group perspective, we've always been saying that if digital is the future, we obviously are prioritizing our investments behind our digital business. Digital business is something that we will obviously prioritize.

Please remember, the core of our business for the time being is our core print business. As your predecessor asked about circulation numbers, we have been investing in copies for getting a certain copy share, and we will keep on doing that, which have been financed by a very handsome yield improvement.

We will keep on investing behind the core, but a lot of investment will also go behind the businesses of tomorrow, primarily digital businesses. I hope I've answered your question, Rohan.

Sure, Piyush, thanks. I also had another question.

While I'm just trying to figure out another growth driver for the company, in the previous question, you were talking about the sale of AFE assets. I just want to know what's the company's policy when it comes to monetizing the AFE assets?

Does the company actively look for secondary transactions to monetize them or on exit events? If you could give us some more detail on that, that would be great.

The simple answer is yes. We are not holding these assets for the very long term.

Of course, it doesn't mean that we'll flip the assets within months. At the earliest opportunity when we think we can maximize the value for the organization, we will sell these assets.

If you look at our track record over the last 4-5 years, I think we've managed to do this activity pretty successfully. With the AFE portfolio that we have right now, which has all maturities of assets—fully matured assets, semi-matured assets, and, of course, assets which are underbaked at this point in time—we keep on looking at a portfolio strategy to maximize the cash in itself.

The company's policy is very clear: we have to maximize value, but we are not desperate sellers. We've got a reasonable portfolio, and we'd be active sellers in the market as much effort we make in striking new deals and getting our new asset acquisition, that's the same effort which goes behind divestiture of these assets as well.

Got it. Just to clarify, whenever you buy any AFE assets, it's always non-cash transactions, right?

You're never paying for acquiring any of the AFE assets other than with ad space, right?

You're right, Rohan.

All right, great. Thanks for your answers.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

The next question is again from the line of Yash R. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Hi. Now I was seeing the HMVL results, and there seems to be some number changes in the previous year segment revenue by around ₹6-odd crore.

I'll just elucidate. Last year, we had reported a number of around ₹673 crore for the segment revenue of print publishing and newspapers and periodicals.

When I'm looking at the results, now it says 667.23, and I believe the PBIT or the profitability has gone down by an equal amount.

Can I request my colleague Pervez to answer that question? Pervez, would you like to?

Yeah. Yash, hi.

Yash, this is because of inter-segment revenue where OTTplay had advertised in the print newspaper. Because OTTplay went into disc ops, this was the correct thing to do as per accounting standards, we've written that out.

Yes. All right.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Ranga Prasad. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Good afternoon, everyone. At the outset—

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon. At the outset, I would like to say that I'm quite relieved that the company has finally decided to scale down or shut down its unviable businesses in the form of surrendering radio licenses and getting out of the OTTplay business.

During the past few years, our company has incurred huge losses due to these unviable businesses. I find that just in this last 1 year, our company has shown an exceptional loss from continuing operations to the tune of ₹114 crore and a loss from discontinued operations of ₹101 crore, totaling ₹215 crore loss.

I'm glad that management has finally taken steps to stem these losses. Better late than never.

Now, going forward in the coming few quarters, what can we expect? Can we expect any further exceptional losses due to the surrendering of radio licenses or revamping our radio business?

Two, can we expect any further losses on account of shutting down the OTTplay business?

Great question. Ranga, you've got something further?

Just a clarification. I would like you to clarify or throw some light on two other issues.

One is, why has other income dropped by about ₹50 crore, from ₹218 crore in FY 2025 to ₹167 crore in FY 2026, the other income? Second thing is, what's the rationale for HMVL making an investment of ₹22 crore in a seemingly unrelated business, a business which has shown close to nil revenues, though it has been in business for over 8 years?

I'm referring to the investment in Asset Vault Limited. If you can throw some light.

Okay. Three questions that I have taken, Ranga.

Thank you very much for those kind words. Yes, of course, those exceptional losses and discontinued operations are big numbers, and we totally take your point on board.

I have basically taken down three questions, and correct me if I'm wrong: one, you're asking about the go-forward strategy; second, you've asked for a clarification on other income; and third is on this Asset Vault, which is an investment that you've asked. Am I right?

Yes, that's correct. I'm primarily concerned that are we going to take some additional losses on account of the closed businesses in future, and we should know about it.

Last question, let me answer first: are we going to take any further closure losses or discontinued operations or exceptional losses? The simple answer is no.

Even if you breakdown the exceptional items in this year, one of the big items which is sitting is consequent to the new labor codes which were announced by the Government of India. That, of course, if anything of statutory nature does come, that obviously will impact the financials.

From the business side, I can absolutely tell you that we have kind of looked at the entire portfolio of businesses, and we've cleaned up as much as possible. Just to give you a sense, OTTplay, I think I've already explained, you've heard me.

On the radio, we did a entire portfolio review where all the five loss-making frequencies now and one loss-making frequency earlier, totally into six loss-making frequencies, those are the frequencies that we've surrendered back to the Government of India. All existing frequencies are profitable frequencies, and obviously our intent is to increase the profitability as we go forward.

Now, however, as I explained in the webinar, radio as a sector is under a lot of pressure, but we will keep on reviewing this on a very close basis. Right now, all the frequencies or all the stations which were not turning in a profit, we've already surrendered those frequencies.

Going forward, if I just have to marry the thought, our investments will go a lot into the core business, which you've seen have gone into the circulation and copies in this quarter, and some part of the investments will go in our digital business, not the digital segment of HT Media Consolidated, but the DigiContent Limited also, where we are prioritizing some investments. That's the part on going forward and would we kind of have any more exceptional losses.

Now coming to other income, we basically had the interest income, we've got a substantial treasury which is sitting there. The interest income has obviously, if you track the yield curves, yield curves are at a record high.

The 10-year is close to about 7% and so on and so forth. There are quite a few mark-to-market losses that have impacted us as on 31st of March.

We are very hopeful. This is patient capital, right?

We don't have to withdraw this capital tomorrow. We will ride out the curve.

We are very hopeful that the yield curves will stabilize and these will come back. That is what is impacting other income to the extent of ₹50 crore in a full year.

Of course, there are various other small reasons, but that's the chunk of the reason which is happening there. On the Asset Vault, you are right, Asset Vault, the revenue is a pretty small revenue at this point in time, but as I explained earlier, it's again an AFE investment.

It's not a cash investment. It is a AFE investment, and there are certain marketing plans that the company has for the market of India where we would like to give our marketing properties and partner with them in the hope that the asset will become profitable.

There's no cash invested. That's Asset Vault, where the brand name is AsanWill.

I hope I've answered your question.

Yes. Thank you very much.

I'm quite relieved with the decisions being taken, and I'm hoping to see our company return to good profitability in the coming few quarters. Thank you very much.

I'm really relieved.

Thank you, Ranga. Thank you very much.

Thanks for the kind words.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Raman KV.

Please introduce yourself and ask your question.

Hello, can you hear me?

Hi, Raman. Please go ahead.

We can hear you.

Hi, I'm Raman from Sequent Investments. I have a few questions.

Sorry, I joined the call a little late. Can you just provide me the current yields with respect to the circulation, like how quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year improvement in the yields figure?

This is a competitive information, but I can tell you you are talking about circulation yields, right? You're not talking about ad?

Circulation yields, I would basically just broadly say have been flat year-on-year. The copies have increased because we're going after copy share.

I can't give you that specific number. I have a blended number, but that number has to be seen market-by-market.

I can broadly tell you that competitive forces are different in different markets, and we try to benchmark our realization for copies on a market-to-market perspective.

If my understanding is right, your realization of copies has increased during the quarter. You mean that, right?

It has. It has, but marginally, because the constraint there would be copy competition.

You're right, our realization for copy has increased.

Sir, if you can give a ballpark figure with respect to gaining market share in the copy segment, have you gained the market share during the quarter?

In a few markets, yes, we call it copy share, because this is on copies. Yes, on a few markets, we have increased our copy share, which is a part of our conscious strategy, and we plan to keep it like that.

You have to understand, when you go after copy share, there are certain short-term tradeoffs that you have to do for long-term gain. Which we are doing on a market-to-market basis, but broadly, our copy share has gone up marginally, yes.

Sir, the growth in EBITDA with respect to the printing division, is it because the advertisement realization has increased or is it because on the back of circulation yield improvement?

No, the first one. Ad yields, because you joined the call slightly later, as I was explaining to one of our earlier participants, our ad rates or ad yields, what we call them, have increased substantially.

Of course it's a full algorithm, you put in a certain copy, you recruit new readers, you give a certain value proposition to advertisers, and you try to have certain level of AFE deals where the new guys can come on board who hitherto would not be advertisers, and so on and so forth. Then you demand a certain pricing on your advertisement, and that has played out very beautifully in this quarter.

It's ad rates.

Is this current ad yields maintainable, sustainable for the coming year as well?

To an extent, yes, but I won't do a carte blanche on that, because maintaining a 100% gains, etc., because there is an immediate reaction which always comes from the competition. Our hope and prayer, and even for the plan that we've set out for ourselves, though we don't give a forward guidance, we plan to keep our yields at a certain level and above, not below.

Sir. Sir, my last question is with respect to your discontinued business.

Once you completely discontinue your OTTplay business, are you expecting any inflow of cash into the company?

What do you mean by that? The

Are you planning to sell off the existing OTTplay brand or the distribution which you have built to someone else, or I just want to understand how are you planning to discontinue and will there be any

Raman, we've had those strategic conversations with a lot of potential partners and suitors. Unfortunately, nothing has worked out.

At this point in time, we've decided to shut down the business. This was not a capital-heavy business, there's no residual value.

We tried all those things, but right now it's not making sense.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you. The next question is again from the line of Rohan Agarwal.

Please unmute yourself and ask your question.

Discontinuation of the OTTplay business, can you confirm if there will be no further one-time losses attributing to that business that will show up in the coming quarters?

Rohan, so, okay, let me give you two or three data points. Effective 31st of March, which was the last date till which we were selling OTTplay subscription, from 1st of April, we are not selling any OTT subscription.

However, subscriptions which have been sold on or prior to 31st March will have to be serviced for the life, which can typically be ranging from 1 month to 6 months any point in time. If the unit economics of that is not working out, there might be marginal losses, etc., which will basically come into the P&L for FY 2027, but that will be a very small number.

Also, parallely, you should expect that because we are winding down the business, all the negotiated contracts that we had on the content side, on the ISP side, on the channel partner side are being exited by a certain negotiation and a certain contractual nature. Those will basically tantamount to cash flows, there'll be some cash impact to shut down these contracts.

From a P&L perspective, there'll be a very marginal impact of some residual subscribers who purchased their subscriptions in March and might go up till September, but that'll be a very small number, rounding off.

Basically it's expenses related to servicing those residual subscription timelines, that's it?

Yes, you're absolutely right, Rohan.

Got it. Just my last question, does the board or the company have any policy regarding the substantial cash pile that we have now?

You can give us any information on that?

Rohan, the board always discusses the cash pile and what to do. As I can tell you, and we had a board meeting, the company would like to create long-term sustainable value for shareholders by investing in businesses of tomorrow.

Right now we're investing behind core and our digital businesses. Of course, we tried OTTplay, after a certain time when we realized that's not going to work out, we've also decided to exit that space.

That cash at this point in time, the board has thought it fit to kind of invest behind businesses of tomorrow and create a long-term value.

No plans to return anything to the shareholders currently?

There's none so far.

Sure. Cool.

Thanks, appreciate your answers.

Thank you.

Thank you all. With this, we come to the end of the Q&A session.

If you have any further queries, please reach out to the investor relations team. Our contact details are given in the investor presentation and are also mentioned on our websites.

I now hand over to Piyush for closing remarks.

Thank you, Aniket. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for participating in our earnings call.

I am very pleased with the kind words some of you shared with us. Our hope and expectation is that we'll be able to churn out such good set of numbers quarter after quarter for you, and some of the new investments that we'll plan will create long-term sustainable value for all shareholders.

I wish you all the very best, and I look forward to seeing you in the next quarterly earnings call. Thank you very much and have a great day.