TVN financials hit by consolidation of pay-TV arm

Polish commercial broadcaster TVN Group has posted net revenues of PLN428m (€100m) for the quarter, up 20.9% year-on-year. However, consolidated EBITDA fell by 48.4% to PLN49m.

This was partly due to the consolidation of pay-TV arm ITI Neovision (which includes pay-TV platform ‘n’), without which TVN’s revenues would have grown by 5.2% to PLN335m and consolidated EBITDA would have dropped by 13.6% to PLN82m. The consolidation of ITI Neovision contributed to a significant increase in the cost of sales for the group (partly due to a fall in the value of the zloty against the dollar, in which a large part of programming costs are denominated), with the latter increasing by 58.2% or PLN324m for the quarter.

TVN’s operating profit fell 104.9% to a loss of PLN4m, again partly as a result of the consolidation of the pay-TV arm, without which the company would have turned in an operating profit of PLN57m, down 24.9%. 

TVN’s pay-TV service, ‘n’, had 730,000 active subscribers at the end of the third quarter. The figure includes subscribers to TVN’s lower-cost TNK pre-paid option. Post-paid ‘n’ subscribers numbered 573,000 at the end of September, up 17,000 on the previous quarter.

‘n’’s ARPU for September was PLN56.10, up from PLN52.90 a year earlier. The platform turned in revenues of PLN102m for the quarter, up from PLN60m in 2008. EBITDA for ‘n’ was a loss of PLN34m, compared with PLN37m last year.

TNK turned in revenues of PLN4m for the quarter, and increased its pre-paid subscriber base by 55,732 to about 159,000 during the quarter. ARPU for TNK was PLN9.68 for the quarter.