Media and entertainment firm Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) has announced financial results for the third quarter ended December 2008 reporting 26% decline in its consolidated net profit, which stood at Rs 83.97 crore, as against Rs 113.47 crore for the same quarter, a year ago.

Rising input costs and a slowdown in its advertising revenue growth adversely hit the company’s business for the reporting quarter leading to significant decline in revenue and net profit.
 
ZEEL, the promoter of Hindi entertainment channel Zee TV and others, also blamed TV industry workers’ strike in November 2008 as among the reasons, which led to the decline in its net profit as well as operating margins.
 
It witnessed increase of 2% in advertising revenues, which stood at Rs 268.4 crore as compared to the corresponding period last financial year.

There was an increase by 17% to Rs 227.4 crore in the subscription revenues of the company for the quarter.

The company’s (ZEEL) main expenses include cost of goods and operations, employee cost and administrative and selling expenses.

Overall, programming and operating cost grew by 5% for the third quarter to Rs 268.4 crore as compared to Rs 254.9 crore in same period, a year ago.

At the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company’s scrip, on Wednesday (Jan 21) closed at Rs 101.05 as against its last closure at Rs 121.40 (Jan 20). The total volume of shares traded at the BSE was 711472. Current EPS & P/E ratio stood at 6.74 and 14.66 respectively. The share price has seen a 52-week high of Rs 290 and a low of Rs 93 on BSE.