1. At a Glance – Blink and You’ll Miss the Irony
Digicontent Ltd is one of those stocks that looks like a multibagger on Excel but behaves like a villain in your portfolio. Market cap of ₹151 Cr, annual sales touching ₹485 Cr, trailing P/E of 6.86x, EV/EBITDA at 5.26x, ROCE a muscular 36.5%, and ROE doing a suspicious gym-bro act at 171%. And yet, the stock is down 40% over one year, flirting with its lifetime lows like it enjoys emotional damage.
Latest quarterly numbers? Q3 FY26 revenue at ₹128 Cr, up 17% YoY, PAT growth of ~30% YoY, but still reported a Q3 consolidated loss of ₹7.28 Cr due to an exceptional labour-code charge of ₹15.89 Cr. So yes, profits are real… but so are surprises.
This is a smallcap digital-content arm of the HT Group, operating some of India’s most visited news and content platforms, trading at a price-to-sales ratio of 0.31x. Cheap? Absolutely. Simple? Not even close. Curious yet? You should be.
2. Introduction – A Content Company Trapped in a Conglomerate Soap Opera
Digicontent Ltd was incorporated in 2017, back when “digital transformation” was the buzzword everyone abused in investor presentations. The idea was simple: hive off the digital content and monetisation engine of the Hindustan Times ecosystem into a separate listed entity.
On paper, that made Digicontent the owner and operator of high-traffic platforms like Hindustantimes.com, Livehindustan.com, Livemint.com, Desimartini, Healthshots, and a buffet of niche verticals like HT Auto, HT Tech, HT Bangla.
In reality? Digicontent became a high-revenue, low-control, related-party-heavy cousin at the family wedding—always working, rarely enjoying the cake.
The company earns hundreds of crores in revenue, mostly from digital services and content management, but a large chunk of this flows through related-party arrangements with HT Media and group entities. That’s where investor eyebrows begin their yoga stretches.
So the question is simple:
Is Digicontent an undervalued digital media cash machine… or just
a backend utility with listed-company headaches?
3. Business Model – WTF Do They Even Do?
Let’s break this down without corporate poetry.
Digicontent creates, sources, aggregates, and monetises digital content. It does not print newspapers. It does not run TV channels. It runs the digital pipes through which news, reviews, photos, audio, and branded content flow.
Core verticals include:
- Digital News & Content Platforms
Websites like Hindustantimes.com and Livemint.com generate traffic, which is monetised via advertising and branded content. - Content Sourcing & Multimedia Services
Digicontent supplies written, visual, and multimedia content to publishers, newspapers, magazines, and supplements. - Desimartini
A movie-review and entertainment platform with 4,000+ movies and 7,000+ reviewers. Bollywood opinions at scale. - Fever Audio Tools (FAT)
Audio and video content creation for mobile-first digital users. - Photo Library
Monetisation of iconic photo archives licensed to media houses and publishers.
In FY22, revenue mix was roughly:
- Digital services – ~59%
- Multimedia content management – ~38%
- Other income – ~3%
Now here’s the twist: Digicontent doesn’t just sell to the outside world. It sells a lot to its own group. Which brings us to the elephant sipping chai in the room.
4. Financials Overview – Numbers That Behave… Until They Don’t
Quarterly Comparison Table (₹ Cr)
| Metric | Latest Qtr (Dec FY26) | YoY Qtr | Prev Qtr | YoY % | QoQ % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 128.14 | 109.48 | 131.79 | +17.0% | -2.8% |
| EBITDA | 10.51 | 13.71 | 16.33 | -23.3% | -35.6% |
| PAT | -7.28 | 6.59 | 9.52 | NA | NA |
| EPS (₹) | -1.25 | 1.13 | 1.64 | NA | NA |
Yes, EBITDA
