New Delhi: Zee Entertainment Enterprises’ consolidated net profit rose 604 per cent to Rs 213.8 crore in the quarter ended June 2021 as against Rs 30.37 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2020. The company announced its Q1 FY22 results on Friday.
Sales rose 35.29 per cent to Rs 1774.98 crore in the quarter ended June 2021 as against Rs 1312.03 crore during the previous quarter ended June 2020. With lockdowns in most states, TV viewership again jumped during the quarter, though lower than Q1 of last year.
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.
In terms of subscription revenue, the network said embargo on pricing change due to NTO 2.0 litigation continued to hurt domestic television pay revenue growth. The 2 per cent growth over Q1FY21 was driven primarily by digital business.
The programming cost increased YoY as original content production largely continued across the states during the lockdown at alternate locations. Increase in marketing cost on a YoY basis was on account of the release of Radhe and continued investments in ZEE5. The marketing costs in Q1FY21 was lower on account of much lower original content production.
Lower ad revenues on one hand and increase in costs due to lockdown Rs. 271mn on the other affected EBITDA for the quarter.
Bengali, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi movies continued strong performance, however, Zee TV, Zee Marathi and Zee Tamil performance was soft during the quarter, indicating headroom for growth in key markets. The company also said it will revamp the programming line-up for Hindi, Marathi and Tamil programming in Q2.
Streaming platform ZEE5 witnessed 80.2mn global monthly active users and 7.1mn global daily active users in Jun '21. It recorded a total of 190 minutes’ average watch time per viewer per month in Q1. As many as 11 original movies and shows were released during the quarter.
