Balaji Telefilms

Balaji Tele ties up with Ola…Ola customers can watch Alt Balaji shows during travel…Good move…And customers can beat the boredom too…A small but a significant move by Alt balaji…

http://corporates.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/10e70d05-5e8a-4a9c-a23d-75ce38b97197.pdf

Nice thread. My big issue -
Earnings growth (ex-other income) quite flat, 5 year FCF is negative. So buying BTL seems like taking a big punt on ALTBalaji - if it clicks, in the face of competition from Netflix and Amazon, we have a big winner. I also believe there is some stickiness in (TV or digital) channels, in that one big successful show keeps viewers on that channel for much longer; so BTL needs one big hit to get people to begin watching.

However, with zero debt and a stellar TV record, downside seems covered.

I’m took a tracking position after reading this thread, waiting a couple of days/ weeks before shoring up. Stock up 4% today, any specific reason?

What’s the easiest place to find if any whale investors are invested in this stock?

Have you guys taken a look at reviews for AltBalaji on Play Store and iOS app store? The reviews don’t look good at all. From reading a few these are the most common complaints.

  1. People are complaining that they can only watch 3 episodes and after that they need to Subscribe. They believe all episodes should be FREE!

  2. App seems very slow and buggy. Almost everyone mentions this. When competing with Netflix and YouTube, it is important that the app is snappy and light and has good usability.

  3. Most of them seem to like the content but HATE the platform. The ones that have subscribed and paid seem to want a refund because of bugs and also since only 10 episodes of the show they want to watch are available. I assume the lack of interesting content is causing the users to feel short-changed.

Do go through the whole list of reviews.

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Have made very good profit on Balaji …have sold just now after seeing above consumer review-thanks for sharing …review of 3.3 out of 5 would definetly going to impact -no brand can survive with such low rating in the long run until and unless they change the platform

If the APP is slow that means Alt Balaji is running out of server capacity. Isn’t it? Someone with tech background can confirm this. If this is true, one should be happy about the response. Tech shortcomings can be corrected but content can’t be. We need to watch the quality of content.

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App running slow could be due to poor memory management in the app and needn’t necessarily be due to servers unable to keep up with demand. Most of the reviews suggest this slowness is very apparent when they receive a call and switch back and forth and so on. This points to poorly written app than server load. These should be fixable if they have a competent tech team.

What should be more concerning is the intention of people towards paying for subscription and the expectation of what they would like to get for that money.

I think they might be better off creating a paid channel with subscription on YouTube. They can then leverage YouTube’s existing user base and also target ads through the YouTube platform. I believe this might be a better approach for them. Then the only thing they need to worry about is creating content and marketing them. They would lose out on having their branded app installed on the phone though. Just my 2 cents.

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Friends…IMHO…All these customer feedbacks are true, but not
reliable…Because, people who are upset will promptly report here. And
people who are happy never bother to write here…Go to Mouthshut or any
such site. Even the best brands have poor ratings…If we open up a feedback
for windows 10, it will get less than 3 out of 5…But it is the best
selling OS in the world for computers…So will people not buy Microsoft
shares ???..

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It is called Negativity Bias. While it is true that the ones having a positive experience may not be writing reviews, it is important to notice the pattern in the negative reviews to understand the impact on the business. Comparing ALTBalaji and MS Windows is like comparing water with the latest carbonated beverage because they are both liquids.

I did use the app before writing this post. 3.3 Stars is about right. I would like it to be quicker, and more responsive. Even while using the website on my PC, it takes a few seconds for a video to start streaming, and there’s no option to set the streaming rate (360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p). That’s a bit odd.

The apps usually prod the user to rate the app (out of 5 stars) on the Play Store. It takes only a second to do it. The wisdom of the crowd is more reliable on platforms with network effect like Play Store, App store, Amazon.

On a website/forum like Mouthshut the negativity bias is much more at play - One has to create an account, & search for the appliance/product before writing a review.

The developer of a free app can probably afford to make it incrementally better with time. When a user is expected to pay for the content, & the app is simply a means to deliver the content, the UI & UX has to be reasonably good. Having good content is moot when the UI & UX aren’t up to scratch.They will have to get it right sooner rather than later.

Regarding Content, I was pleasantly surprised to see a few K-dramas (Korean) which have somewhat of a cult following among college students (Not sure if that’s the case everywhere in India).

Finally, one has to keep in mind the piracy of the app. It’s not beyond the pirates to come up with a version of the app with the content already unlocked. (Someone has already requested for an unlocked version of the app on a popular forum which provides pirated versions of paid andriod and iOS apps.)

Disclosure: Not invested.

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It is good that they are exiting movie business after making such a pathetic one. From shareholder perspective, it will be great if they recover 50cr sunk capital in the movie and run away from this volatile biz. They have a decent future in TV serials and streaming content.

Disc: Not invested

Amazon prime cameup with “Baahubali The Lost Legends” animated series

Are the exiting the movies? Their 15-16 annual report said they’re working on making it profitable. No intention to exit it, sadly. Will make 5-6 movies a year and share risks by co producing and early sale of rights etc. Even if such a pathetic review, they may just have made some money in Half girlfriend, through sale of rights. Maybe quarterly results will show us if they did.
Disc:tracking position

they have decided not to deploy additional capital in the movie business. Final call after release of Half GF.

Where did ypu get this from? They seemed quite interested in turning around their movie business in investor ppt and AR

Check out their recent interviews. They are turning much more cautious on their movie biz

they are planning on demerging their movie business to balaji motion pictures

May 26 Balaji Telefilms Ltd

  • Gets members’ nod for demerger of unit Balaji Motion Pictures’ film produciton business Source text for Eikon

Since my last comment, I thought of trying the platform once.

Content: They have a few TV shows targeting young generation but the breadth is very limited. Movie collection is abysmal.

App: Product needs a lot of work. Apart from platform features highlighted earlier, they have insane bandwidth consumption. Ended up consuming 1 GB for about 75mins of content. For reference on YouTube in 760p you end up consuming about 600MB for about 100mins on content. Reason I am highlighting this is because AltBalaji is geared more towards mobile users compared to say desktop/laptop/Internet TV. In India, broadband penetration is less and thus people are using mobile data which is usually 1GB - 2GB for most of the people. Bandwidth is a easy fix.

Pricing: On a positive note for viewers, subscription costs are around 30 per month. Management as mentioned in a recent interview aims to take this to about 90 per month by 2020. Additionally they are targeting 4mn subscribers by 2020 which can potentially translate into a revenue of INR 800crs.

Now time for some 30K feet maths in 2020
India’s population: 140crs
Number of households: 28crs (Assuming 5 people per household)
TV penetration: 60% i.e. ~16.8cr households (I think 2015 penetration is about 50%)
India OTT penetration in 2020: 10% of TV population (US probably is around 20-30%)
India OTT households in 2020: 1.68cr

All the assumptions that I have taken are pretty generous. Now if AltBalaji were to have 4mn subscriptions i.e. 40 lakhs, they are targeting 24% share.

Balaji needs to really broaden the content available on the platform and fix the bandwidth consumption. If you look at reviews on the playstore, most people complain that they have not added new episodes in last 45 days. If early adopters are not happy, there is no way this can be a success.

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Few updates of last 3 -4 months:

Positives -

  1. Movie business should not make losses as Balaji has clarified in multiple interviews that they will not do movies. Rather any new idea will be channeled into ALT platform - unless the idea is extremely compelling to make a movie on it
  2. TV business in FY 2017 did PAT of 32 cr. Which is great. Clearly it is a cash cow. At 20 p/e multiple we can value TV serial business at c. 640 cr. Management said that this business will grow at 20 - 25% annually.
  3. Cash in books at c. 250 cr.

So even if no upside from ALT - the business is valued at 640 cr (TV) + 250 cr (cash) = 890 cr = current market cap roughly.

So downside protected in my view.

ALT -

Can have significant upside if they fix three things;

  1. APP TECH ISSUES
  2. STICK TO TIMELINE of new web-series release
  3. improve on the COMEDY QUALITY

Nevertheless positives of the ALT are:

  1. Cheap pricing
  2. 32 web series / year is awesome – so volume is good - this means high room for error. Even if some web-series are waste, other good ones will continue to attract subscribers
  3. Movie type production quality
  4. Variety of web series
  5. Dramas quality
  6. Roping famous movie stars such as Nimrat Kaur
  7. Almost a monopoly as no other production house producing so much Indian oriented content
  8. Already 2.5 mn plus downloads and aiming 1.5 - 2 mn paid subscribers by FY 2018
  9. Strong marketing and advertisement focus
  10. Management focus and capital spend on ALT is very encouraging
  11. And regularly meeting analysts/strategic investors. A tie up with investor / fund raise at higher per share price than CMP can be a good positive

So 250 cr cash + TV business cash cow throwing ~30 cr cash annually is enough to produce content for next three years and fix tech related issues!

So low downside with strong upside potential (which we are still not paying for).

To watch in the till FY 2018 - Do they release 20 more new web-series; do they fix tech issues; paid subscriber numbers. First till will drive the last one. Thanks

Invested!

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Porinju tweeted a positive note on Balaji today. He’s been in the stock for a while now, so wonder if that’s another positive for the stock

Promoter Ekta Kapoor has increased her stake in company , she has bought 2.5 Lakh shares from May 30 to June 1 2017

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