Other income of the company increased by a whopping 152.64 per cent to Rs 2.36 crore. Dividend income of Rs 7.83 crore from its subsidiary Ambience Space Sellers further propped up the non-operational income.
This subsidiary of handles all advertising sales of Zee, EL and Zee cinema channels and also has the marketing rights in India for the magazine Galaxzee.
Income from sales and services of the company increased marginally by 1.22 per cent to Rs 89.26 crore. However, last year, the company's sales figure included Rs 14.76 crore which was from the sale of programmes for EL and Zee Cinema channels. If this figure is excluded the actual growth in sales would have been 21.57 per cent.
The company could cut down the expenses marginally by 2.7 per cent helped the company to improve operating profit margin from 28 per cent to 31 per cent.
However, the increase in interest burden by 285 per cent to Rs 3.86 crore affected the profitability of the company.
Depreciation increased by 29.42 per cent to Rs 77 lakh. Increase in tax liability by 343 per cent to Rs 4.45 crore further affected the profits at the net level.
However the tax liability includes the dividend tax of Rs 83.67 lakh.
The stock of Zee was witnessing heavy buying interest in the last few days on higher expectations. However, the results may not be up to the market expectations which may result in some selling.
