01 — At a Glance
When Your Grandpa’s Record Collection Becomes a ₹6,600 Crore Fortune
- 52-Week High / Low₹603 / ₹307
- Q3 FY26 Revenue₹260 Cr
- Q3 FY26 PAT₹51.2 Cr
- Q3 FY26 EPS₹2.66
- Annualised EPS (Q3×4)₹10.64
- Book Value₹86.2
- Price to Book3.98x
- Dividend Yield1.31%
- Debt / Equity0.00x
- CFO Resignation31-Mar-26
The TL;DR: Saregama posted ₹260 crore quarterly revenue in Q3 with a robust 46% adjusted EBITDA margin (a one-time high they won’t repeat). Music licensing grew 29% YoY. They dropped ₹325 crore on SLB’s film music rights, bought a YouTube creator firm (Pocket Aces), and lined up ₹275–300 crore in new content spend for FY26. The stock is down 31% in a year. Investors are paying ₹343 per share to own a 123-year-old company that owns 50% of India’s recorded music history. The irony writes itself.
02 — Introduction
The Company That Survived Recordplayers, Cassettes, CDs, and Your Mother’s WhatsApp Status
Imagine this: you own a company founded in 1902. It survived the British Raj, Indian independence, partition, Doordarshan monopoly, the MTV invasion, the iPod apocalypse, and Spotify. And now it’s sitting on 1,50,000 songs, 112 million YouTube subscribers, and a strategic partnership with Sanjay Leela Bhansali. That’s not a company. That’s an IP fortress that accidentally became a media conglomerate.
Saregama — formerly Gramophone Company of India, then HMV — has been quietly collecting the music of India since before independence. Your grandfather’s Lata Mangeshkar records? Saregama owns that. Your grandmother’s RD Burman playlist? Theirs. That one Kishore Kumar song your dad replayed 10,000 times? Yup, theirs too. They own 50% of all music ever recorded in India. Not a metaphor. Fifty percent.
The real story: until 2017, Saregama was basically a dividend-paying zombie shuffling through life. Then management woke up. Launched Carvaan — a retro music player that looks like your 1970s transistor radio. Launched Yoodlee Films. Started buying YouTube creators (Pocket Aces, 52% stake acquired for ₹174 crore). Started producing content at scale. And very recently — December 2025 — they went nuclear and invested ₹325 crore in Bhansali Productions to lock down exclusive film music rights.
Q3 FY26 delivered ₹260 crore revenue with a 46% adjusted EBITDA margin (management calls it a “one-off aberration,” but the market doesn’t care). Music licensing grew 29% YoY. Eight consecutive quarters of double-digit volume growth. And yes, they’re burning cash on content acquisition, but they’re burning it on new content, not vanity projects. Welcome to the streaming wars. India’s oldest music label just entered the room swinging.
Concall Reality Check (Feb 2026): MD acknowledged a very high Q3 margin: “46% cannot be offered right now quarter-on-quarter.” Translation: don’t extrapolate this number. But also: when a company voluntarily walks back a quarter’s upside, that’s either brutal honesty or a sign they’re about to surprise you next quarter. The concall transcript is below.
03 — Business Model: The Streaming Wars via Timex Radio
They Don’t Make Music. They OWN Music. (Then License It to Everyone.)
Saregama’s model is deceptively simple but extraordinarily powerful. They own ~150,000 songs across 23+ languages. Retro. New. Indie. Tamil. Marathi. Haryanvi. Bhojpuri. Chhattisgarhi. Odia. The full Indian remix. They license these songs to:
Streaming Platforms30+Spotify, YouTube, etc.
Broadcasting20+TV, Radio Channels
Social Media8+Reels, Shorts, TikTok
In FY25, their music IP library got used 373 billion times across owned channels and YouTube/UGC. That’s not a typo. Three hundred and seventy-three billion. On an annual basis. YouTube subscribers jumped from 64 million (FY22) to 112 million (Q1 FY25). Their Carvaan device — a retro speaker loaded with 5,000 pre-loaded songs — sold 1.42 lakh units in Q1 FY25. Their artist management division now oversees 270+ artists (up from zero four years ago) with combined reach exceeding 300 million followers.
The revenue mix in Q3: Music licensing (52%), Carvaan sales (7%), Video content (16%), and Events (24%). The math: music licensing is the moat. The recurring cash machine. Licensing revenue grew 13% in FY25, and Q3 music segment growth hit 29% YoY. But wait — they’re also acquiring new content aggressively. In FY25, they invested ₹1,949 crore in new content creation and acquisition. For FY26, they’re budgeting ₹275–300 crore (reduced due to film delays, not slowing down). And yes, that ₹325 crore Bhansali investment is included in the overall content budget.
Mix Shift Alert: Management disclosed that 56% of FY25 music revenue came from 21st century releases, 44% from retro. They’re aggressively shifting toward new music (which needs investment) but commanding high margins on licensing. The payback discipline is tight: 5-year payback on all new acquisitions, then 55–75 years of monopoly income. Do the math: that’s a 15–20x unlevered multiple on day one of payback, thereafter pure cashflow.
💬 Did you know 50% of India’s entire recorded music history is owned by one company? Does that feel like a moat, or regulatory risk? Drop your thoughts!
04 — Financials Overview
Q3 FY26: The Numbers That Made Everyone Do a Double Take
