Info Edge's first-quarter earnings were better than estimates with strong margin improvement. However, billings were down 44 percent year-on-year (YoY) which indicates future revenue will be weak. Chintan Thakkar, CFO of Info Edge shared his views and outlook.

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“The lead indicator for us is the traffic on our site and we have definitely seen kind of a rebound in traffic and we are hoping back that the monetisation will follow from there. So we are hoping for a better Q2 given where the traffic on our websites are. Particularly we are surprised with the jump in traffic in real estate. Although in Q1, the traffic as well as billings were most impacted in real estate, little lesser in recruitment but more so in real estate but we have seen even there rebound happening,” he said.

While forecasting traffic growth both for Naukri as well as for 99acres and how it will impact the company’s revenues for the next few quarters, Thakkar mentioned, “It is hard to forecast what the traffic on the website would be. It is still not at a pre-COVID level but it is bouncing back very quickly. In general, if there is traffic coming back on the website, eventually it gets monetised because there are more and more people interested, more and more businesses are coming. I am talking about traffic on the website not just about the job-seekers but also about the recruiters.”

“Revenue—there will be more impact in Q2 and Q3 and lesser impact in Q1 because there is more revenue flowing from January-February in this particular quarter. We will see more impact in revenue but if you look at billing, which is a lead indicator, it is hard to say whether by Q3 we would be in green or not, it depends on how the economy is but we are hopeful that it will keep improving from quarter-on-quarter (QoQ),” he further added.

When asked what the cash on books will be used for, he replied, “We don’t think that in terms of our operating businesses we would need any cash. Definitely it is a safety margin. If we get in the environment like this when there is a disruption happening all over, we get good opportunity to invest and if we can invest into our core operating businesses, if we can do any inorganic activity, if we can get into an acquisition mode as well, we are very open to that and we will be looking forward to some good opportunities coming our way in the next 12-18 months’ time. So we are preparing ourselves for that.”

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