Zee Q3 profit slumps 7.2% on sluggish ad revenues

Wednesday, 29 January 2003, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
Zee Telefilms Ltd., Tuesday said its October-December quarterly profit fell 7.2 percent from the same period previous year on decrease in advertising revenues.

NEW DELHI: The company's net profit for the quarter ended December 31, 2002 touched 221 million, down from 239 million logged in the October-December quarter of fiscal year 2001-02, said a Zee statement issued here. Total income of the media major, however, increased from 1.02 billion in the quarter ended December 31, 2001 to 1.41 billion in the October-December quarter of current fiscal, the statement added. Zee's advertisement revenues touched 1.71 billion in the same period, registering a decline of 2.4 percent as compared to a year-ago period. Subscription revenue, on the other hand, posted a growth of 42.7 percent to 1.24 billion. "At the end of September, we announced that that our priority objective was to streamline the organizational resources and to improve the programming content across businesses," said Zee Telefilms chairman Subhash Chandra. "Clearly, the strength of our assets combined with the talent and commitment of our team has resulted in good performance. "Despite a very tough advertising market due to the continued slowness of the consumer economy, we have been able to broadly maintain advertising revenues," he added. Zee's revenues are generated primarily from advertising sales and subscription revenues. Other sales and services include revenues from film production and distribution, music, publishing, syndication and education sales. The company said there is "low visibility" in the advertising revenue scenario in the current quarter ending March 31 because of the World Cup Cricket, to be held in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya from February 8 to March 23. "There could be an impact on the business of Zee because of shift advertising revenues to cricket, particularly during the duration of the cricket matches," said the company statement. "At Zee, we remain positive about our ability to convert the emerging opportunities into operating profits, especially with CAS (Conditional Access System) now becoming a reality," said Chandra. "This is poised to power subscription revenues, till now suffering from channel infirmities. The company is pursuing with determination its target of creating value for all its shareholders."
Source: IANS