(24 April 2007 6:25 pm)

MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT Ltd, which houses the cable and media businesses, has started trading again after spinning off its ITES-BPO functions into a separate company.

HTMT's shares closed at Rs 599.35, up 2.83 per cent from its previous trading of Rs 582.85 on 28 March. Wire & Wireless India Ltd (WWIL), the other cable company to be listed, ended today at Rs 80.45. The scrip (face value of Re 1) was marginally down by 0.62 per cent from its previous close.

HTMT has 63 per cent stake in IndusInd Media & Communications Ltd (IMCL), which is engaged in cable TV distribution, cable internet, cable movie and home shopping channels, film financing and content agregation.

HTMT also holds cash of Rs 5.11 billion and owns a 47-acre property in Bangalore. It has a paid-up capital of Rs 205.3 million and networth of about Rs 5.87 billion as on 31 December 2006.

The ITES-BPO business, which has been demerged into HTMT Global Solutions Ltd, is expected to list next month, subject to completion of regulatory approvals.

"Post this demerger, there would be two companies listed on the stock exchanges (Hinduja TMT Ltd and HTMT Global Solutions Ltd), HTMT said in a release.

Earlier, HTMT unified its media subsidiaries under one umbrella. As part of the restructuring, In2Cable (subsidiary which is into broadband business) and InNetwork Entertainment (content) were merged into IndusInd Media & Communications Ltd (cable TV distribution under Incablenet brand).

Cable operations were started in 1995 and the facilities were upgraded to provide digital cable TV by installing over 6000 km of fibre optic cables.

IMCL runs a Bollywood movie channel 'CVO' which has a Hindi movie library of over 1000 movies. CVO reaches 50 cities with an eight million household viewership. Shop24Seven, the shopping channel, is telecast on the IMCL network and is available on time slots through other satellite channels.

IMCL leases its spare capacity in the fibre optics network to major telecom companies such as Hutch, Tata and Railtel. IMCL is already providing twin play (Video content & Internet data) and is readying to provide triple play through its network, the company said in a release.

As of March 2007, IMCL had posted total revenues of approximately Rs 2.7 billion (provisional and unaudited) and a net profit of approximately Rs 990 million (provisional) which includes Rs 860 million profit from the Hutch stake sale. IMCL continues to be a debt free company, the release added.