D. B. Corp Limited (DBCORP.BO) Q2 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the D.B. Corp Limited Q2 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. We have with us today the senior management team of D.B Corp Limited, Mr. Pawan Agarwal, Deputy Managing Director; Mr. Girish Agarwal, Non-Executive Director; Mr. Lalit Jain, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Mushtaq Ali, Senior Vice President, Finance and Accounts; and Mr. Prasoon Kumar Pandey, Head Investor and Media Relations, who will represent D.B Corp Limited on the call. The management will be sharing the key operating and financial highlights for the quarter and H1 ended September 30, 2025, followed by a question-and-answer session. Please note that some of the statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve risks and uncertainties. Documents relating to the company's financial performance have already been e-mailed to you and are available on the website of the stock exchange and the company's Investor Relations. First, you have been able to go through the same. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pawan Agarwal. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining the Q2 FY '26 D.B Corp Earnings Conference Call. We will begin the call by highlighting the key financial performance for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, followed by key operational updates. Advertising revenues for the second quarter stood at INR 4,478 million, marking a 12% Y-o-Y growth as against INR 4,014 million. Excluding the early festive benefit on a like-to-like basis, advertising revenue recorded is a high single-digit growth. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, advertising revenues grew by around 13%. The total revenues for the quarter grew 9% Y-o-Y to INR 6,347 million compared to INR 5,825 million in quarter 2 FY '25. Along with positive market dynamics, this performance reflects the resilience of our brand and sustained advertiser confidence in print media sector and in Dainik Bhaskar newspaper group. Coming to circulation now. Revenues for the quarter grew by 3% Y-o-Y to INR 1,208 million as against INR 1,175 million in Q2 FY '25, and we continue to maintain steady circulation traction across all our key markets. Overall, EBITDA stand -- stood at INR 1,584 million compared to INR 1,442 million last year, a growth of 10% Y-o-Y after adjusting for a ForEx loss of INR 9 billion. PAT came in at INR 935 million as against INR 826 million in Q2 FY '25, reflecting a 13% Y-o-Y growth after adjusting for ForEx loss of INR 15 million. Let me tell you about the newsprint now, the newsprint prices remained soft with average cost at around INR 47,000 per metric ton in Q2 FY '26, same as in Q1 FY '26 and we expect the newsprint price environment to remain range bound in the coming quarters, subject to currency fluctuations. Moving on to our radio business. The momentum remained steady. Advertising revenue for the quarter grew 4% Y-o-Y to INR 430 million as against INR 440 million in Q2 FY '25. EBITDA for the radio segment stood at INR 130 million compared INR 132 million in the same period last year. We are happy to share additions of 14 new radio stations, expanding our reach and network. Out of these 14 stations, we will be the only operative private FM station at 7 locations. This strategic expansion will further strengthen our position in the radio segment and allow us to reach more listeners, especially in the untapped markets. The digital business continues to show strong traction. As of August 2025, the number of monthly active users on our app stood at 20 million maintaining our leadership in the Hindi and Gujarati digital new space. This reflects the success of our content innovation, hyper local relevance and continued investments that we are making in technology. Happy to share that post good success in Utter Pradesh, we have also launched the Uttarakhand state digital app 2 days ago. Looking ahead, we remain positive about the demand -- I am sorry, now I want to talk to you about the H1 FY '26 performance on a consolidated basis. The total revenues grew by 2% Y-o-Y to INR 12,219 million as against INR 11,988 million. Advertising revenues grew by 2% Y-o-Y to INR 8,455 million compared to INR 8,291 million in H1 FY '25. And our circulation revenue grew by 2% Y-o-Y to INR 2,411 million as against INR 2,367 billion. EBITDA stood at INR 2,968 million compared to INR 3,351 million and a net profit stood at INR 1,743 million compared to INR 2,004 million. After adjusting for the ForEx loss of INR 17.5 million. To sum up, we have delivered decent set of numbers in Q2 FY '26 and H1 FY '26 with signs of sustained advertiser interest, steady leadership traction and healthy cost management supporting our overall profitability. With this, I now hand over the call to Mr. Girish Agarwal for his comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Pawan, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us. As Pawan mentioned to you, our Q2 FY '26 performance reflects a good and broad-based recovery across key segments. Advertising revenue grew by 12% year-on-year, supported by positive macro trends such as normal monsoon, interest rate reduction, encouraging GDP growth and, of course, GST rate cuts. An important aspect this time is the early onset of the festival season. The Navratri this year started on the 22nd of September compared to last year, which was in the October, which was Q3. Even after excluding this early festival benefit on a like-to-like basis, we registered single-digit growth in advertising revenue, which reiterates the trust the advertisers continue to play in our platform. Barring the weakness in government and FMCG sector, all our major categories like real estate, automobile, jewelry, education, health, banking they all have registered a double-digit growth. Circulation revenue also posted a decent year-on-year growth, driven by our continued focus on readers engagement, market-specific strategies and on-ground execution. As per the latest ABC report January-July 2025, Indian print media industry newspapers have grown by around 8 lakh copies, which is around 2.7% growth as per ABC. This report also validated Dainik Bhaskar's position as India's largest circulated newspaper group. In terms of profitability, we are encouraged by the operating -- operational performance with double-digit PAT growth and sustained margin profile aided by soft newsprint prices. Looking ahead, we remain positive about the demand environment, supported by the strong festival season, stable input cost and encouraging consumer sentiment based on the reduced GST slabs by the government of India. We shall continue to build on our competitive advantages in print, digital and video, with a sustained focus on efficiency, innovation and value creation for all our stakeholders. With that, we would now open the floor for the question-and-answer session. Thank you, and over to you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Rakesh from Nine Rivers Capital.

Am I audible?

Yes, please, go ahead.

Congratulations for a great set of numbers in this quarter. Sir, a couple of questions. First, you spoke -- in your opening remarks, you spoke about that station -- radio station. We have got 14 more radio stations. So when we are going to operationalize all 14?

Sir, these stations will be -- we are looking at early beginning of next year, hopefully, between January and March to operationalize all these stations. There are 14 a number and there are other 8 operators with us but we have working pretty hard to bring all of them up by March.

So in Q3, no new radio stations will be coming. In Q4, all the radio stations will be coming, is that understanding correct?

Yes, sir.

Okay. Sir, with respect to the other expenses in the last con call, we have -- there was a discussion that other expenses were higher because of the promotion expenditures that are done for the other businesses. This quarter also the expenses have been higher than the range. Any reason for, sir?

Yes, there are 3 beyond normal numbers this time. One is the INR 2 crores of [indiscernible], INR 8 crores of [ advertising ] expenses against right, the income is already booked on the top line and also INR 4 crores [ election ] promotion expenses. So if you take out these, then the rest of the expense, which is around INR 20 crores, balance INR 8 crores are in the normal range.

Sir, sorry to ask you again, INR 8 crores, what was the reason -- INR 8 crores, I just missed the point.

Event, what happened during this entire festival season, we do a lot of seasons on the ground for the revenue generation. So the expenses are booked there and the revenues is captured in the advertising revenue column.

Okay. Okay. That's helpful. And sir, with respect to the 1 observation, if I look at it last quarter, the number of visitors -- like unique visitors on the app are 18 million, now it has come to 16 million. So 18.2 million for your Dainik Bhaskar mobile app, it has come to 16.8 million. Any reason for that?

Sir, what happened in the fluctuation of 1 million or 2 million keeps happening depending on the ground activities. For example, we expect that in October, this will take a jump because of the Bihar election. So 1 million here and there keeps happening. Our endeavor is to cross the number much faster but all these corrections keep happening, sir.

Okay. That's very helpful. Sir, one last question from my side. On the digital part, can you please give us some -- like the app is running from the last couple of quarters. Any learning that you're doing taking from the app that is helping you to gain more attraction or downloads on the -- from the subscriber or nonsubscriber. Any learning that you have observed in your app?

Yes. Lots of learning actually, lots of learning on the technology as well as on the [indiscernible] side. So all the technology part, which comes out that, for example, a reader is sitting in Bihar and if you want to mark the preferred stations outside Bihar, how efficiently he can do that, how the news flow will happen to him so that the Bihar news doesn't get compromised in his window as such. And more is the quality of the content. So we realize that people are really looking for more content local. So we have increasing -- we have increased our news network a lot, say 12,000 people on the ground, those were into the newsprinting business. I think that's very encouraging, we are [indiscernible] going forward.

The next question is from the line of Amit Doshi from Care Portfolio Managers Private Limited.

Sir, there's increase in circulation revenue of around 2.83%, which is in line with industry. So this side we are doing lot of events, you mentioned about other expenses, promotional expenses last quarter. So any particular reason not able to kind of outperform the industry growth?

I think we'll have to wait for the quarter 2 results of the other industry players to see how it goes because we believe our teams are really putting lot of efforts. And with that, we are able to maintain the circulation. In the quarter 2, we have not been able to grow number of copies but we've been able to maintain. So I think with all that efforts, we are still trying to how we can still continue to grow. And we are more concerned about the number of copies rather than the revenue because revenue call, I can take by increasing 50 paisa cover price, which I don't want to do that.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. So actually I thought 3% is the growth of copies only because we have not taken any price hike or we have increased our cover price.

It's a minor area, there's a small price correction and all that. A number of days also.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. So you mentioned, I mean, the newsprint prices have been fairly stable and likely to remain so. Just to understand the perspective in case for whatever reason, currency coming down, the price -- newsprint prices are increasing. Do we kind of kind of pass on the price hikes for the benefit that we have been getting.

As of now we don't see any price [Technical Difficulty]

Ladies and gentlemen, the management line has been disconnected. Please hold, I'll get them reconnected.

As of now, sir, we're not looking at any price hike, cover price increase in any of our markets. We believe -- as we believe that we want to continue to grow our circulation and our copies. And our price -- current price helps us to do that.

I have some technical glitch on my phones. I'm getting disconnected precisely by every 5 minutes.

I answer that. Girishji, I answered that question on the cover price.

Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So you mentioned that all areas did well in ad revenue segment except government and FMCG. Now after this GST rationalization announcements, anything specific that we are foreseeing in the -- after the 22nd of September or in the first, I mean...

After 22nd September, the bigger growth came from the automobile segment. What happened when the GST announcement made that government will reduce some time on 15th of August. From that time till 22nd September, the automobile advertising took a nosedive because everybody was holding on to the inventory because nobody was buying. And from the third week of September, we currently saw the uptake. So I think in the month of October, November, automobile will continue to push. One area we believe we want to see more growth coming is from real estate because the GST benefit has not been felt in the real estate category much because over there, a consumer is not getting a benefit of the stamp duty or something when he's buying a flat. So in fact, what has happened from the ground stores, we believe that people, those who had some extra money, right now, they have diverted that money to buy electronic or automobile. And the property thing has gone like on the second rank for them. So hopefully, that couple of months going forward, the real estate should start firing again.

Understood. Understood. Got it. But this FMCG has started picking up...

5% market growth. So nothing worth.

Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Yes, that's in the radio station space, so you mentioned that 14 stations more. So we already had 30 stations already. This is 14 in addition to what we had. Yes. So there was an announcement in between probably about a year back when government was -- I mean, the mobile handset manufacturer smartphones that to have a compulsory radio stations in all the smartphones. I don't think that's happening on the ground. Anything that you see seriousness about that being implemented?

Sir, TRAI has been pushing it. And in the second recommendation that TRAI has sent to the ministry, they have made a very strong recommendation and they have repeated their stance that all mobile handsets must also be able to receive radio. And that battle is still going on, recommendation from the TRAI. We are very hopeful that the radio handset -- mobile handset manufacturers should understand that in a country like this, having mobile is also a source of getting an emergency messaging. So we are still very hopeful and we are pushing it very, very closely. But having said that, has it been implemented? No, not yet. But we're now going...

And a bookkeeping question. There was a capital WIP of INR 25 crores. Can you just clarify what amount would that be for?

Sorry, come again, sir, on that?

There is a capital WIP work in process, capital WIP in the balance sheet of INR 25 crores.

This is all upgradations.

This is about upgradation of our Jaipur-Kota and some of our plant in buildings, which is in the process.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So I just was like this radio station, any amount that we have to pay licensing fees or something of that sort, nothing of that sort.

We already paid it.

That's the kind of P&L item.

Correct.

The next question is from the line of Jai Chauhan from Trinetra Asset Managers.

So I have 2 broad questions. One that management has previously indicated an aim for strong single-digit growth on a like-for-like basis. And as we look ahead, could you please help us understand the key building blocks to achieving this? And like what are your internal assumptions for the mix between advertising volume growth versus yield improvement? And also on the margin side, beyond the stable newsprint outlook, what are the primary levers or potential risk you see in managing operational costs?

Okay. Let me particularly take your question first. I don't see any newsprint prices increase in the next at least 2 quarters. So from the cost perspective, we are not much worried. Coming to the point of the advertising, I believe important aspect for us to see how the real estate category starts firing because as of now, I'm sitting at a real estate growth, which is good but I have expected almost double of it. So I think we are looking at it because market is also saying when we speak to the real estate clients that there is no benefit has come to end consumer for a real estate, which may take some time because the cement GST has gone down, but using a cement and passing it on to the consumer will take a year or 2. So I think that is one area. Let's see how government encourages people by reducing stamp duty or something for the real estate to give some kind of impetus to that industry.

Got it, sir. Got it. And sir, when we see ad revenue, is it coming from print ads or digital ads or it is a mix of both?

Largely print, largely print, as you know, our main numbers are from print and then radio. Digital is hardly anything.

Got it. And sir, I just curious, I just wanted to know how does this price -- how does it get priced? Like is it -- does it get priced on a daily or monthly basis or a size basis, cover page basis, like how does it get priced? What are the aspects that you see? And is it on the demand?

Yes, we'll be more than happy to explain you the whole process. I'll request Prasoon Pandey to get in touch with you offline and explain you because it will be difficult for me to tell you in a minute. So Prasoon will explain the whole process, how do we price the advertising.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of [ Mohit Saini ] from Way2Wealth Securities.

Congratulations for the good set of numbers. Sir, I just wanted to ask how is the current market condition since GST rate cuts, we already got advertising upfront, especially from auto, I believe. And even during short season, I was seeing a lot of advertisement. So how do you price in that in the current quarter?

As I mentioned to you, the current quarter from 15th of September, the whole traction of the GST advantage came in. Because of that, the number is at 12%, 13%. If I take that out, we would be in the mid-single-digit number, mid- to high in various markets. And now I think the entire focus is in October and November because after this GST initial pent-up demand done, how the market responds to various categories in October and November, I think that's very critical for the entire nation to see.

Okay. And regarding the dividend payout, are we still sticking to that 58-odd percentage?

That is a Board decision. Our Board has been very prudent on taking the decision on the dividend part, and that is evident from the past track record of the company.

The next question is from the line of Krushi Parekh from BugleRock PMS.

So this 2 crore users that we have for our app, so that is great. I'm just trying to assess that if you want to understand a bit granular at a granular level on the quality of these users. So how are you guys assessing the same internally? I'm not looking for any specific numbers but, depending on the usage, daily, weekly, paying, nonpaying, et cetera. So what are some of the internal parameters that you are tracking? And what are the trends on this?

So we are tracking multiple things, age group, we are tracking gender. We are tracking the time spent. We are tracking the frequency. We are tracking what are they reading on our app because if they come and read entertainment and masala, then I'm worried because then they may not be a sticky customer for me. But if they are investing their time in reading the local news, analysis, videos, then I'm happy that they are going to spend because that kind of quality of the content they will not get anywhere else. So we are doing multiple cuts. And wherever we feel and we come to know that we need further improvement of the profile in particular market, we work on that also.

Okay. So in terms of our understanding, what will be our maturity level in this? I mean, have we covered a fair bit of ground or we are still looking to understand the market and the demographics further over the next 1, 2 years? So how are we placed right now? Or it's like now product is probably well placed and we understand and now we know what kind of content we need to offer to them before we start properly monetizing?

I won't make any claim that we know the market well enough. We know the consumer well enough because this is a very dynamic market. But do we understand the business? Yes, very much. Now coming to the numbers, we have got 2 crore readers on our app. And the market population, the potential population, those who have the smartphone in the age group of particular, say, 20-plus and those who also watch YouTube, I think the universe would be at least INR 12 crores, INR 13 crores. So from INR 2 crores, we have a long way to go.

Right. Fair. Okay. And just in terms of circulation also, I believe you touched upon it but last time we had discussed that there are certain activities on the ground that we are doing to increase our circulation as well.

Correct.

So where are we on that? And what kind of results are we witnessing now that -- I mean, so it's still early but October Diwali time is here. So how are we looking at it now?

So we are doing a lot of efforts on the ground in various markets, offering schemes, doing research, surveys and all that. With all that effort, we've been able to maintain the numbers. So our circulation has been maintained. Now on one side, we feel slightly disheartened saying that, oh man, you've repeated so much and yet we are not able to grow. But when we look at the other side, we say, no, I think even the retention of the numbers is a decent achievement. Now from here, we need to further grow. So yes, it's a daily job.

The next question is from the line of Yash Rangaswami from [ J.P. Associates. ]

So I have a couple of questions. One is on the advertising revenue. What is the share of government revenue this quarter?

17%, sir.

And how much was it last year?

25%.

Okay. So it has actually come down.

Because of the election, new government came in picture and all that.

Okay. But then that was affected in okay, Q1. And what is the growth, if you can put it, quarter on -- I mean, versus last quarter -- last year quarter, Q2 FY '25?

If I look at Q2, then it has gone down by around 12%, 13%.

And have we managed [ to down ] the yield or how is it? Or are we just paying on volume, looking at just volume?

Government, there's no yield. Government rates are fixed. So the entire growth of government and decline is based on the volume only.

I'm sorry, let me just rephrase my question. So it was directed towards overall yield.

Overall yield, to be very honest, maybe 1% or 2% yield fluctuation here and there. Largely, it's all volume gain.

Okay. Now I'll present a somewhat critical view in terms of circulation revenue because we can see that it has hardly grown. And I mean circulation you're saying has been maintained, but then we are spending quite a lot on P&P. But then the ABC data has mentioned that circulation has grown by around 2.7-odd percent.

Correct.

So I mean, in spite of spending, and we've been doing this for the past 2 or 3 quarters, if I'm not mistaken.

Almost 4 quarters, I would say.

Yes. But then still, we have hardly grown is what you're saying. I believe the last quarter number was around 40 lakh copies, and you're saying it has been maintained at that level, right?

Yes.

So I mean in spite of spending, we are still sitting at the same number wherein the industry has grown. So I mean, what view would you put on that?

Yes. We are introspecting each and every market of us to understand where we left the scope, where we left the opportunity. We are going through that. Certain course corrections have been done already. Some more are to be done. So we are working on that. Do we have a 100% answer to grow? No. But we are trying our best on the ground to make sure that we do get into the growth zone.

MP is one of the major markets, right? How are we doing over there?

MP is fine. I think maybe some 2% growth over there.

In copies.

MP, Rajasthan is fine. MP, Rajasthan numbers are decent enough. The other markets, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana and the smaller markets, that's the area where it's not firing.

Overall, we are at 40 lakh copies still.

Yes, yes, around.

And I could see that there is some gain in our other operating income. What would that be attributable to?

Certain event income has come there because we have booked the event cost below in the other operating cost, and those event income must have gone up there. And some of the other operational income are the sale of the waste paper and all that.

Okay. Right.

Nothing major, frankly speaking. If you look at the number also, other operational income growth is, say, 4%.

And one last question. I could see that the staff costs at a consolidated level have gone up by around 6%, 7% versus last quarter.

Sorry, sir, what is that? I missed out that.

The staff cost that we have.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Slightly versus previous quarter. What is the reason can you say?

Yes. 3.8% growth okay, you are talking about the quarter to quarter, then there is a 6% growth, yes.

Correct. Employee benefit expenses are around 177.6...

Some of the increments have come in there. And also the newer markets, for example, Uttarakhand, we have launched for digital, some cost has come in from there also.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Khushi, an Individual Investor.

So sir, in terms of domestic and imported mix, I wanted to know the Q2 newsprint mix.

So Q2 newsprint mix is 70-30, 70% Indian, 30% imported.

Okay. Fine. Okay. The next question I would like to ask is what is the circulation copies for the quarter?

Around 40 lakh copies.

40 lakhs.

Yes.

Okay. Okay. The last question for you is that what is the sectoral growth for the quarter?

So as I mentioned to you, the sectors like automobile, real estate, hospitals, jewelry, FMCG, banking, lifestyle, electronics, hypermarket, they all have grown, except for FMCG, they all have grown in the strong double digit. And the only segment, which has taken a beating is the government.

And for the YTD FY '26?

If I take it H1, in the H1 also, government has gone down much more. Education, response, real estate, automobile, hospital, jewelry, they all have grown. FMCG has declined and banking has grown.

So overall, only banking has grown other than other sectors are.

No, they all have grown. They all have grown double digit, except the government. Government has shown a decline. FMCG has shown a decline. Rest other categories have shown a double-digit growth.

Okay. Perfect. And what is the contribution for the quarter and YTD both?

So the contribution in the quarter, if I mention to you, the government contribution came down to 17%. Education contribution is around 22%. Real estate is around 12%, automobile is around 10%. Jewelry is 5%, FMCG is 3%.

The next question is from the line of Himanshu from Seaport.

I had a question on our receivables, okay? I was going through the annual report and nearly 30% of receivables are more than 6 months old, okay? And it has been a persistent trend. But any opportunity to bring down the receivable days and especially which is more than 6 months old.

Largely, this money, which is more than 6 months old is the government of India, state government, Panchayat, local district money, where they normally take a minimum of 6 months going up to 1 year also, sometimes 2 years also. Over there, we have made a representation to multiple governments and multiple platforms but somehow they have not been able to take a call on that. We have even proposed to the Indian Ministry of Society that we all should go to the court and get a ruling done from the court that the advertising money should also be paid on time like other industries, but no decision has been taken on that so far.

And one more thing. This is slightly anecdotal, okay? But again, when we look at Bombay City, means the Times of India, which is the larger paper, what we see is they have restarted Mumbai Mirror as a regular feature or a regular print part of the edition, okay? -- correct? And again, what we see is a new readership has started somehow growing up, okay, even in the metro cities, okay? What is the experience in Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4? And are we restarting some of the things which we might have stopped historically?

Yes. You're right. So to attract more readers, younger readers, different segment, we have started the City Bhaskar separately, which was earlier as a separate pullout, which got merged and it's the main paper in between. So in certain markets on certain days, we take the City Bhaskar as a pull out. We are doing D. B. post also in certain market, D.B. Star also in certain markets so that we are able to -- so we are doing all these activities also. And it's an encouraging sign by Times of India that Mumbai Mirror is gathering more readership.

And are you seeing the readership itself also starting to improve in Tier 2, 3, 4? Or it is still only a metro phenomenon what we are seeing currently?

I think the readership largely remains stable, whether it's metro or the Tier 2, 3 cities.

Okay. And can you give some more color on the efforts what you have made to increase the readership, where are we on those whole efforts? And we had thought about price money and all those things. Any other new schemes have we launched in micro markets?

As I mentioned earlier, it's kind of a daily job for us. We've been thinking a lot. Recently, there's a scheme on the -- some other benefit for the readers. So I think like any FMCG industry, we're also thinking how to keep the traction going on, some kind of motivation and all. If something comes to your mind, we'll be happy to hear from you also. Please help us on that.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, this was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation and time on this earnings call today. I hope we have responded to your queries, and we will always be happy to be of assistance through our Investor Relations department held by Mr. Prasoon Kumar Pandey for all your further queries. Thank you, and have a great evening and wish you all a very, very happy Diwali.

Thank you. Happy Diwali.

On behalf of D.B. Corp Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.