1. At a Glance
Sandesh Ltd is that rare Indian media company which behaves less like a dying newspaper and more like a conservative uncle who accidentally became a full-time investor. Market cap sits around ₹797 Cr, the stock trades near ₹1,055, and the P/E is a sleepy ~7×—basically cheaper than most boring PSU stocks and definitely cheaper than media peers who cry about digital disruption on every earnings call.
Q3 FY26 delivered a PAT of ₹40.9 Cr, up a hilarious 293% YoY, even though quarterly revenue fell ~2.7% YoY. How? Because Sandesh earns money even when the newspaper business yawns. Other income, investments, and capital gains do the heavy lifting like a jugaadu jugaad machine.
The company is debt-free, sits on ₹1,200+ Cr of investments, trades at 0.57× book value, and throws a modest dividend while pretending it’s still just a Gujarati newspaper company. Three-month return is negative, one-year return is ugly, but cash flows and balance sheet scream “I’m not dead yet.”
Is this a media company? Is this a family office with a printing press? Or is this Gujarat’s most polite hedge fund? Let’s dig.
2. Introduction
Sandesh Ltd was incorporated in 1943, when “media disruption” meant your competitor got better ink. Fast-forward to FY26, and while the rest of India’s print media industry is busy writing LinkedIn posts about “digital-first strategy,” Sandesh quietly compounded wealth by… investing money.
Yes, circulation and advertising still matter. Yes, newsprint prices still swing like crypto. But Sandesh figured out something early: if you generate stable cash from print monopolies in a linguistic stronghold like Gujarat, you don’t need to beg Google or Meta for ad crumbs.
Instead, you invest.
Over the last decade, Sandesh morphed from a pure print media
business into a cash-rich, investment-heavy entity with exposure to equities, ICDs, land monetisation, and a real estate township investment that it very loudly claims is “self-sustainable.”
This is not a growth stock. This is not a turnaround story. This is a strange, old-school, family-run, cash-generating machine that survives industry decline by simply refusing to play the same game as everyone else.
So the real question isn’t “Will print die?”
The real question is: How long can Sandesh keep earning without needing growth?
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
Let’s explain Sandesh to a lazy but intelligent investor.
Step 1: Own Gujarat
Sandesh is one of the top three Gujarati print media players, with six major printing centers across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, and Bhuj. It circulates across Gujarat and Mumbai. Regional language dominance = pricing power + sticky advertisers.
Step 2: Milk Ads, Not Just Readers
About 61% of FY23 revenue came from advertisements. Publication sales are only ~20%. So Sandesh isn’t selling newspapers; it’s selling eyeballs to local advertisers who don’t care about Instagram CPMs.
Step 3: Add TV & Digital (Just Enough)
The company runs Sandesh News, a 24×7 Gujarati news channel,
