The company posted a consolidated PAT of Rs 213.8 crore, compared to Rs 30.4 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal, which was marred by the nationwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
While the company has shown signs of recovery in the quarter under review, the financial performance has remained below market expectations as the second wave impacted the recovery.
Overall operating revenues were up 35.3 per cent to Rs 1,775 crore, on a depressed base of Rs 1,312 crore (down 34.7 per cent) in the first quarter of the last fiscal.
Ad revenues grew 127.9 per cent year-on-year to Rs 926.6 crore.
“Domestic ad revenues for both Q1FY22 and Q1FY21 were impacted by lockdowns. However, the impact this year was much lower, reflected in 127.9 per cent YoY growth. Compared to Q1FY20, domestic ad revenues were lower by 22.7 per cent,” the company said.
The subscription revenues grew by a mere 2 per cent to Rs 813 crore. The company said that the embargo on pricing change due to NTO 2.0 litigation continued to hurt domestic television pay revenue growth. Even the 2 per cent growth over the previous year was driven
primarily by subscription growth of ZEEL5.
ZEEL’s operating profit (EBITDA) went up by 56.4 per cent to Rs 344 crore, compared to Rs 219.9 crore over the year-ago period. The EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 19.4 per cent.
The company said its all India TV network share dropped by 190 basis points to 17 per cent from 18.9 per cent in the preceding quarter (Q4 FY21), as its flagship channels in Hindi, Marathi and Tamil markets lost market share.
ZEEL also disclosed its video streaming service ZEEL5’s operating loss of Rs 203.3 crore for the quarter at a revenue of Rs 111.7 crore. In the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal, the operating loss of ZEEL5 was at Rs 145.1 crore on a revenue of Rs 94.9 crore.
The video streaming service registered 80.3 million monthly active users (MAU) globally in June, while daily active users (DAUs) were at 7.1 million.
On the balance sheet front, inventory and advances for content increased to Rs 6,460 crore compared to Rs 6,270 crore in Q4.
ZEEL shares closed at Rs 196.65 apiece on BSE, down 2.5 per cent on Friday.
