Info Edge (India) Ltd on Thursday reported a 44 per cent drop in quarterly net profit, as earnings from its core recruitment solutions business under Naukri.com were outweighed by losses in 99acres.com property portal.
Net profit for the third quarter ended December 31 fell to Rs 21.7 crore from Rs 38.6 crore a year earlier. Standalone revenue rose 19 per cent to Rs 173.3 crore.
The weak results show the continuing pain in the Indian internet space where companies both old and new are grappling with problems related to monetisation and unit economics in a dog-eat-dog world fed by venture capital-backed competition.
Earlier in the day, local search engine company Just Dial Ltd also reported a decline in profit and slowdown in revenue growth.
On a sequential basis, Info Edge’s net profit as well as revenue declined. The firm said the decline in profit from the second quarter was due largely to shrinking earnings from Naukri.com portal. The firm’s 99acres.com unit, in fact, reduced its losses sequentially but also saw a drop in revenue.
99acres.com competes with a slew of sites including MagicBricks, CommonFloor, Housing.com and PropTiger. News Corp, the owner of this news website, owns a 30 per cent stake in PropTiger. Earlier this month, classifieds site Quikr acquired CommonFloor.
Naukri.com and associated sites reported revenue of Rs 129.3 crore for the quarter. Profit fell to Rs 64.14 crore from Rs 68.21 crore in the quarter ended September 30, 2015.
The real estate portal generated revenue of Rs 25.91 crore last quarter while its loss narrowed to Rs 21.28 crore from Rs 27.21 crore in the second quarter.
The company said it invested Rs 24 crore, from the Rs 750 crore it had raised in 2014 through qualified institutional placement, in 99acres.com. In the previous quarter, it had drawn Rs 44.6 crore from the corpus for the property listing unit.