Naukri parent Info Edge's Q1 revenue up 17%, profit slips a tad on write-offs

Info Edge (India) Ltd, which runs internet businesses Naukri.com and 99acres.com, reported a rise in revenue for the first quarter of the fiscal year that began in April but a drop in net profit due to write-offs related to its startup bets.

Standalone operating revenue climbed 17% to Rs 259.53 crore for the April-June period from Rs 222.46 crore a year earlier, Info Edge said in a stock-exchange filing. Net profit fell 1.9% to Rs 62.9 crore from Rs 64.22 crore.

Net profit slipped as the company reported Rs 15.9 crore in write-offs related to startup investments during the quarter. It didn’t have any write-offs in the year-earlier quarter.

However, that’s an improvement from the January-March quarter when the company had swung to a net loss of Rs 13.7 crore due to write-offs amounting to Rs 70.3 crore.

For the April-June period, revenue from recruitment portal Naukri grew to Rs 184 crore from Rs 159.7 crore a year earlier. Naukri’s pre-tax profit rose to Rs 102 crore for the first quarter from Rs 85.28 crore a year earlier after it wrote back some provisions.

Property portal 99acres’ revenue increased to Rs 41.9 crore from Rs 31.4 crore, but its pre-tax loss widened to Rs 12.8 crore from Rs 11.2 crore.

Revenue from other smaller internet services, which include matrimonial website Jeevansathi.com, grew to Rs 33.5 crore from Rs 31.3 crore while pre-tax loss widened to Rs 3.4 crore from Rs 2.9 crore.

Chintan Thakkar, finance chief at Info Edge, said billing grew 15% for the recruitment segment and 37% for 99acres during the quarter.

Flurry of investments

Info Edge, one of the India’s earliest internet companies, has been quite busy making investments in new as well as existing portfolio companies. Earlier this month, it invested Rs 3 crore in ZippServ, an online platform that provides risk-assessment services for real estate investments.

The company also invested more money in insurance selling platform PolicyBazaar, along with Singapore state firm Temasek and Japanese internet conglomerate SoftBank.

In May, it made a follow-on investment in Rare Media Company Pvt. Ltd, the owner of workforce tracker Blue Dolphin. The previous month, it invested Rs 3 crore in ShoeKonnect for a 20% stake in the online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace for footwear.

In February, it disclosed that it would divest a 6.66% stake in online restaurant finder Zomato to Chinese internet giant Alibaba for $50 million (Rs 320.5 crore). Alibaba, through its payment arm Alipay, separately invested $150 million in Zomato in a primary transaction. After the fundraising, Info Edge’s stake in Zomato came down to around 31% from 45%.