New Delhi-based Television Eighteen India Ltd, popularly known as TV 18, has been in a high growth trajectory for some time. It has expanded rapidly not only in its domain strength of television news segment, but also in the segment of online portals. Raghav Behl who started as a news anchor and formed his own production house has taken his venture to new heights. His company runs four 24-hour news channels and a number of popular web portals. With English business channel CNBC-TV18, Hindi business channel Awaaz, English news channel CNN-IBN and Hindi news channel called Channel 7 (being re-branded as IBN 7), TV18 is present in the entire spectrum of TV news business.

TV18 has been among the few Indian media companies who have a serious web-strategy in place. It has now decided to hive off all the internet ventures into a separate company. The initiative is being taken to unlock their value, explore their full potential and attract fresh investments. Its three portals — moneycontrol.com, commoditiescontrol.com and poweryourtrade.com — generated about $1.34 million (Rs. 6.03 crore) during the fourth quarter of financial year 2005-06, which is six times of $230,000 (Rs. 1.04 crore) earned in the previous financial year. Recently it has invested in a travel portal yatraonline.com which received funding from Norwest Venture Partners and Reliance Capital also. During the last quarter only, TV18 has picked up 50% stake in an online recruitment portal jobstreet.com. It has also announced plans to start an integrated home shopping network. Now a new wholly owned subsidiary will take care of all these internet ventures.

TV18 has reported decent growth in the fourth quarter (Q4) of the financial year ending March 2006. Its Q4 revenue grew by 86% year-on-year to reach $13.1 million (Rs. 59 crore). The profit after tax for Q4 of 2005-06 stood at $4 million (Rs. 18 crore) against $770,000 (Rs. 3.5 crore) in Q4 of 2004-05. The figures of quarterly profit after tax are, however, not strictly comparable as the company had large expenses in Q4 of 2004-05 for the launch of Awaaz.
For the financial year 2005-06, TV18 posted revenues of $37 million (Rs. 166.5 crore), compared to $21.77 million (Rs. 98 crore) in 2004-05. Its net profit grew 70.4% to Rs. 40.2 crore ($8.9 million) compared to Rs. 23.6 crore ($5.2 million). For the financial year 2006-07, analysts are expecting TV18 to grow its revenue by about 25% to cross the mark of $45 million or Rs. 200 crore.
EBITDA margins of the company have improved significantly for the quarter ended March 2006 at 47.6% compared to 26.6% in the fourth quarter of 2004-05. As we mentioned above, the low margins in the fourth quarter of 2004-05 were on account of operating expenses for the launch of Awaaz, which was launched in the same quarter.

During the fourth quarter of 2005-06, the advertising revenues contributed 87.12% in the revenue of Rs. 59 crore ($13.11 million), while subscription revenue contributed 12.88% of this. The subscription revenue may rise significantly only when government brings clarity about the conditional access system (CAS). The contribution of Hindi business channel Awaaz and its three portals — moneycontrol.com, commoditiescontrol.com and poweryourtrade.com — improved from 5% of the total revenues in January-March 2005 to about 21% in January-March 2006. The Hindi business channel has now reached the break-even level in the last quarter.