Century Business Media SME IPO

Strengths · 8

• 01Profit has grown more than four times in two years, from Rs 1.08 crore in FY2023 to Rs 3.68 crore in FY2024 and Rs 4.70 crore in FY2025.
• 02Sales have grown steadily, from Rs 22.74 crore in FY2023 to Rs 32.27 crore in FY2024 and Rs 36.91 crore in FY2025.
• 03EBITDA more than tripled over the same period, from Rs 2.07 crore to Rs 7.18 crore.
• 04Return ratios are strong, with RoCE of 36.65% and RoNW of 37.74%, and a PAT margin of 12.84%.
• 05Exclusive advertising rights at five airports and across 714 railway stations in the East Central Railway zone are hard for a competitor to take away while the contracts run.
• 06The railway reach is very large at 714 stations, which gives advertisers a spread that few regional players can offer.
• 07It has a long record of more than 25 years in this business, having started in 1999.
• 08Borrowing came down from Rs 8.10 crore in FY2024 to Rs 5.50 crore in FY2025 while net worth rose to Rs 12.47 crore.

Risks · 9

• 01The whole business rests on advertising rights that are granted for a period and then come up for renewal. Losing an airport or railway contract removes that revenue outright, and these rights are won through tenders against larger national OOH companies.
• 02The P/E and EPS are not stated in the data available to us, so the issue cannot be compared with peers on earnings from here.
• 03The financial data is old for an issue opening in September 2026. The latest year given is FY2025, ending 31 March 2025.
• 04The business is concentrated in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and the North East, so it depends on advertising demand in one part of the country.
• 05This is a small company, with a net worth of only Rs 12.47 crore as on 31 March 2025.
• 06Advertising spending is discretionary. It is among the first budgets companies cut when business conditions weaken.
• 07Winning and holding rights needs security deposits paid upfront. Rs 3.10 crore of the issue money goes into deposits for the Patna, Deoghar and Darbhanga airport rights alone.
• 08Promoter holding will come down from 100% to 73.61% after the issue.
• 09This is an SME issue. One lot is 1,600 shares, which is about Rs 1.18 lakh at the upper band of Rs 74, and SME shares usually trade in low volume after listing.

Century Business Media Limited was started in 1999. It works in out-of-home advertising, usually called OOH, which means advertising displayed in public places rather than on television or online. It handles both digital screens and ordinary printed hoardings.

Its main areas are airport advertising and railway advertising. At airports it sells advertising space both inside and outside terminal buildings. On the railways it puts up digital and static hoardings at stations and on railway land.

The company works mainly in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and the North Eastern states, and also serves clients across India through a mix of exclusive and non-exclusive media rights. It holds exclusive advertising rights at Patna, Ranchi, Deoghar, Darbhanga and Jorhat airports, non-exclusive rights at Dimapur and Itanagar airports, and marketing rights at Gaya, Agartala and Silchar airports. On the railway side it holds exclusive advertising rights outside station campuses in the East Central Railway zone, covering the Danapur, Dhanbad, Mughalsarai, Samastipur and Sonepur divisions, which together take in 714 railway stations. It also holds advertising rights on platform screen doors at Howrah and Esplanade metro stations, and runs a store and workshop at Sinha Library Road in Patna for storing its material and equipment.

Interested in this IPO? Check the live subscription status or browse all upcoming SME IPOs.