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InfoEdge Is Starting To See A Slowdown In Business, Says MD Hitesh Oberoi

“We had a reasonably good quarter but things slowed down towards the end of it,” InfoEdge’s Managing Director Hitesh Oberoi said.

Pedestrians walk past a damaged adverting billboard. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)
Pedestrians walk past a damaged adverting billboard. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

InfoEdge (India) Ltd. said it’s beginning to see signs of slowdown in business.

“We had a reasonably good quarter but things slowed down towards the end of it,” Hitesh Oberoi, managing director and chief executive officer of the owner of online classifieds such Naukri.com, 99acres.com and Jeevansaathi.com, told BloombergQuint in an interview.

Edelweiss Research said InfoEdge showed a strong performance amid an economic slowdown. “In spite of the general economic slowdown, Naukri managed to sustain momentum with an 18.7 percent year-on-year spurt in revenue and 14 percent in billings driven by the uptick in IT hiring,” it said in a report. Even 99acres is successfully navigating the slowdown in the real estate business, the report said.

Yet, the company’s losses widened to Rs 11 crore during the quarter ended September. “What you see is because of accounting and write-offs, etc. and our investments in startups. But standalone, Ebitda numbers grew 15 percent,” Oberoi said. The operating profit would have grown at an even higher rate had the company not invested heavily in its matrimony business, he said.

Here are the key earnings highlights...

  • Revenue up 16 percent year-on-year to Rs 357.7 crore.
  • Loss widened to Rs 10.92 crore from Rs 3.7 crore.
  • Ebitda up 15.3 percent to Rs 118.32 crore.
  • Margin stood at 33 percent against 33.3 percent.

Watch | InfoEdge’s Hitesh Oberoi on quarters ahead...