Saregama India Ltd: India’s premier music publishing label

This Quarter:-

1. Music Licensing business has again grown at a rate of more than 20%. ASP of Carvaan has fallen thus previous ASP not valid for computation.

2. Very big Quarter for Bhojpuri Division of Saregama, 2 massive hits this Quarter.

3. Regional music like Bengali, Gujrati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri- all 3 have done well.

4. Announced a long term tie up with Arjit Singh this Q.

5. On QIP Money: only acquired Mango music catalogue. Money kept aside for inorganic purchases, This capital will only be used for the music business.

6. Many of the films for which they have acquired music will start going live in Q4 this year, and spill over to Q1 & Q2 next year. (Rocky rani Karan Johar etc etc). This is the lag between content acquisition and release.

7. Carvaan had an upswing this Quarter, latest variant is carvaan mobile. Which replaced Carvaan go. Price point is at 2000-2500rs. 50% increase in units sold. ASP has fallen here, due to smaller variant products. All sale is through customer pull and no advertisement. Revenue increase isn’t as much as 50% as you need to sell 2-2.5 mobiles to get to 1 carvaan realisations. Not spending at all on Carvaan.

8. YouTube numbers are globally different vs Indian. YouTube views for Saregama has increased QoQ. Over last 4 Quarters, own channel numbers are growing much faster than user generated content. Views are growing faster than any other label.

9. YouTube shorts deal was a part of this quarter. (Instagram deal wasn’t- what I understand)

10. Deals are becoming better, due to better quality of content and newer content. Gives them better position to negotiate.

11. Got approval for demerger from SEBI and filed in NCLT, will take 4-5 months. Will complete by March 23.

12. Guidance for 22-25% growth remains in music licensing business. Music business hasn’t experienced any type of slowdown.

13. Bonuses to employees are given in Q2. Improved employee expenses to 11% in Q2 vs 13% last year in the same Quarter.

14. Events business is currently combined with Films & TV. Is a low margin business. This is an essential business to manage to build relationship for my music business.

Disclaimer: invested. Will complete the thread as I listen to the complete concall. Fears of a slowdown have been misguided it seems… Remains one of the cheapest consumer stories… given the margin profile and being a play on the internet growth story.