Astro's revenue touching RM2.6 billion

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 19, 2014: - Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad (Astro) announced its revenue grew 12 % to RM2.6b for the first six months of the financial year ending  January 31, 2015.

Announcing its final results today, its chairman Zaki Azmi said EBITDA rose 15% to RM903m and PAT increased by 25% to RM266m for the period.

He said: “The company delivered strong results with significant free cash flow. Based on the performance, the board of directors is pleased to declare a second interim dividend of 2.25 sen per share, bringing the total dividend for the first six months of the current financial year to 4.5 sen per share, 12.5% higher compared to 4.0 sen per share in the same period last year.”

Rohana Rozhan, chie executive officer of Astro said: “We continue to execute against our key

strategies of growing our customer base, increasing ARPU, and driving advertising share.

'We are offering more choices in content and consumer packages, including Astro Superpack, Astro Valuepack and Astro Family Pack, as well as NJOI, Malaysia's first subscription-free satellite TV service.

"Our customer base is growing, for both Astro and NJOI and at lower customer acquisition cost," she said, adding that total  customer base has grown by 491k y-o-y to 4.2m, an increase of 127k for Astro and 364k for NJOI.

She said that the growth in customer base is across all demographics and Astro is particularly pleased with the growth in its Chinese base, driven by Astro packages like Chuen Min Pack and Dynasty Pack, as well as higher take up of NJOI.

"ARPU has increased to RM98.0 (Q1FY15: RM97.1), supported by higher take up of Astro’s value-added products and services across the board.

"More than 60% of customers are enjoying Astro in HD (Q1FY15: 1.78mn), 636k catch up on their favourite shows with Personal Video Recording (Q1FY15: 585k), 359k are Multi-room customers (Q1FY15: 335k), while 961k and 283k customers are enjoying Astro Superpack (Q1FY15: 918k) and Astro Valuepack (Q1FY15: 244k) respectively.

"Astro’s penetration of the Malaysian TV households has increased from 54% to 60%. Astro Radio has retained its position as the number one radio station in all four languages.

"The growing share of TV viewership (+3ppt y-o-y to 47%) and radio listenership (+2% y-o-y to 12.6mn) has resulted in higher advertising revenues, up by 7% to RM290m," she said.

Rohana  added: “This has been a phenomenal quarter with unprecedented 2014 FIFA WORLD CUP BRAZIL™ coverage with a record TV viewership of 8.2m and 1.9m viewers on Astro On The Go and the Astro Go 2014 FIFA World Cup™ App.

"The high viewership is proof that Astro’s mult-screen strategy, be it on TV, notebook, tablet or smartphone, is resonating with Malaysian viewers," she said.