D B Corp Ltd

At Dainik Bhaskar Group, we have remained resilient and patient to tide over the challenges while retaining our strategic focus to become future-ready with continued emphasis on being reader-centric.

We are strong believers that through timely and widespread dissemination of relevant and hyper local information, we empower millions, and this helps in accelerating our readership growth.

In large part, this has been possible due to strong moral and ethical values on which our late Chairman Shri Ramesh Chandra Ji Agarwal built this company.

Due to the editorial strategies of Dainik Bhaskar and its market dominance, advertising revenues have increased significantly across the board, especially with print continuing to be the centre point of advertisers for both traditional and new age to run their hyperlocal marketing campaigns. We are seeing this trend continue and we are happy to report that we closed the financial year on a good revenue run-rate. We are encouraged by the performance of our radio division as well as the increasing digital presence, as we work to develop our content and enhance our omni channel platform to give information that is accurate, concise, and useful.

We continue to put the reader at the centre of all our efforts and this focus drives all our teams to ensure that we live up to the trust that our readers put in us. This year gone by has brought us several laurels for our editorial prowess as well as for our community outreach that helps us stay relevant and extend our leadership across the markets that we operate in.

Indian Language Print Returns in a Big Way

While CY2021 was severely impacted by Covid-19 and attendant restrictions, CY2022 began with geo-political tensions. However, the Print Sector continued the path of recovery despite these challenges. What is particularly heartening was that while advertising in Hindi and regional language publications recovered to around 90% whereas English newspapers advertising recovered to only 71% of pre COVID-19 levels, according to a report by FICCI-EY, underscoring the strength of the markets that we operate in. The print media industry is on a strong recovery path as the ad space per publication in CY2022 grew by 16% compared to CY2021, according to a report by Adex India.

Indian language print media have not only made a strong comeback but are demonstrating strong growth over new-age media segments.

The growth in Tier-II and III markets has further driven the growth in the Print segment and as the clear market leader, the Dainik Bhaskar Group has been a strong beneficiary of this shift as it offers clear advantages to the advertisers and as a result the Group recorded ~25% growth in advertising revenues in FY23 over the previous year.

The Newspaper Business

Editorial excellence continues to be a hallmark of Dainik Bhaskar Group that adapts the pulse of its readers and our experienced editorial team focusses on issues that have a strong impact on the lives of its readers and is driven by its commitment to courageous and responsible journalism. We continue to play our role as the fourth estate and our impactful stories and investigative journalism have been the cornerstone of editorial strategy.

Our teams across India have brought to light important stories that have often resulted in on-ground action by the concerned authorities.

We also understand that our readers often require us to go beyond news and we incorporate this in our special editions, recent innovative ideas such as our team that travelled for long distances and spent days with CRPF armed forces to gauge the influence of naxalism, sting operations to expose the truth in our Jails, celebrating Azadi Ka Amrut Mahotsav etc. These initiatives have strengthened our loyal reader base and helped us enthuse our teams to deliver more such content.

Circulation Strategy

Dainik Bhaskar's long-term efforts to extending our leadership by increasing our readership continues to yield benefits. We rolled out several initiatives for our readers and trade partners to drive more reader acquisitions. Our teams continue to deepen our market presence and increase our circulation by taking several initiatives with trade partners as well as readers. Ongoing campaigns such as Personal Contact Campaign (PCC), One Nation One Number (ONON) helpline for bookings, Rebooking Drives in some newer markets such as Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand and Punjab are all yielding results.

Our circulation strategy has enabled us to extend our lead as India's number one Newspaper and Globally 3rd largest Newspaper.

This dominant position has also allowed us to take nominal increases in our Cover Price in some markets during the year with headroom for more.

The Radio Business

Retail / local advertisers' share of ad volumes increased 10% over CY2021 to reach 49% of total ad volumes in CY2022. Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh had the highest ad volumes. At the Dainik Bhaskar Group, MY FM continues to connect with audience and augment listeners engagement activities through innovative content creation. This was demonstrated in the strong ~20% growth in revenues and an almost ~30% increase in operating profits. We continue to believe that this business has strong potential.

The Digital Business

For the past three years, we have put in renewed focus on strengthening our digital business as we look to create an omni-channel mechanism to reach our readers. Our ability to innovate clearly puts us ahead of the competition and with a highly personalised product experience – our app has registered a tremendous growth from 2 million in January 2020 to more than 14 million in March 2023. We are happy to report that in FY2023, Dainik Bhaskar has further extended its position as the dominant digital leader with the #1 Hindi and Gujarati News Apps, with the competition either staying flat or declining its user base. With our dominance already established in the print format and now in the digital format, we are undoubtedly the #1 Phygital Indian Language Newspaper in the country.

Our three-dimensional approach towards user retention and engagement – high quality content, unparalleled user experience and strong technology backbone has been the driving force of our digital performance.

Our teams continue to work on minor and major improvements to help deliver the crisp content curated by our editorial teams and ensure that our users get hyperlocal news from all towns, cities and states in our markets. We have also worked on increasing the visual aspect of the news for further engagement.

Our Financial Performance

Our businesses performed well on all parameters with Total Revenue growing by around 21% to 21,682 million while EBIDTA grew by 12% to 3,611 million in the backdrop of investments in our digital business as well as steep newsprint prices for a large part of the year. Net Profit for the year grew 19% to 1,691 million. We took proactive measures in response to the pandemic's impact, and the cost optimisation actions we adopted are now firmly embedded in our ongoing business practices. By maintaining a steadfast focus on cost management, we aim to fortify our earnings to ensure resilience even in challenging circumstances.

Strengthening our Balance Sheet

Our debt-free balance sheet ensured financial stability during these difficult times. Despite the global pandemic, we were able to maintain a debt-free balance sheet with a strong cash and bank balance position and generating impressive free cash flows, which enabled the Company to run operations smoothly.

Rewarding our Shareholders

As a cash-generating Company, it has always been our policy to return excess funds to shareholders. Despite the challenging times, we continue to adhere to our policy and have declared a dividend of 6 per share of face value of 10 each which is ~63% of our profits for the year.

Outlook

With abundant opportunities ahead, we are fully geared to leverage at the back of our customer-oriented business philosophy. We remain committed to enhancing our customer proposition to deliver content that is relevant and engaging. We shall also continue to focus on creating a world-class user experience, benchmarked to global standards of quality, for our consumers. We are confident that this strategic approach shall propel enhanced growth for the Company for many decades to come.

As we set our sights on the future, we remain steadfast in our pursuit of excellence, driving growth at every turn and empowering millions with the knowledge and information they need to thrive in this ever-evolving world. Join us on this remarkable journey of accelerating growth, where possibilities are endless and the horizon is brighter than ever before.

Let me also take this opportunity to place on record, our sincere gratitude to our Board of Directors, especially our Independent Directors, Employees and other Stakeholders for their strong belief in our abilities and we draw strength and inspiration from this to work harder.