Commenting on the company's outlook going forward, Sun Group CFO SL Narayanan said he expects the current fiscal (2015-16) to be better than the year gone by (2014-15).
While he expects ad revenues to be at the same level, he said the company is looking manage inventory better.
"We are not looking at price cuts. The situation on the ground is looking better," he told CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy in an interview.
Going forward, Narayanan said he expects phase digitization, expected to be rolled by the end of the calendar year, to be the next driver of growth.
Below is the transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.
Sonia: Just give us a sense of what FY16 is looking like in terms of both ad revenues, how much growth do you expect to see in the first half?
A: Ad revenues is going to be at these levels if not better. The situation on the ground is definitely looking better, so as a strategy we are now looking at more utilisation of available inventories, so even though we may not be taking price increases, there will be better utilisation of secondages and that should help revenue.
On subscription the key driver here will be the date on which phase three gets implemented. Phase three as you know is slated for end of the calendar year 2015, so if it indeed gets implemented on 1 January 2016 as planned, we will see some very good growth in our subscription revenues. So, we are quietly optimistic about that prospect. Net-net FY16 looks a lot better than FY15.
Latha: Before I come for more granular guidance on both ad revenues and subscription revenues, I just wanted to check out you thoughts on Vijay Plus, will take away a bit of market share? You dominate the mind space in my house but that apart, in the markets do you think Star India's Vijay Plus launch will be fraying your ad revenues at the edges?
A: We will have to wait and watch. As a strategy what we have been following so far is we have segmented the market. You must realise that if it is just Tamil, we are looking at something like about 80 million in all in the state of Tamil Nadu, maybe another few million in the metros.
Unlike the Hindi market where it is a real pan Indian market, so this is a very niche kind of a market, I don’t think there is a need for a second general entertainment channel (GEC). But we are an extremely fleet-footed company. If Vijay Plus does make an impact on our prospects, we would be shifting gears immediately but our view is we don’t think there is a need for a second GEC in a vernacular language.
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