Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad achieves PATAMI (Profit after Tax and Minority Interests) for the first three months of the financial year ending 31 January 2018.
Tun Zaki Azmi, Chairman of Astro, said, “In a challenging market, Astro is focused on delivering sustainable revenue and profit growth over the long term. Our businesses continued to be cash generative and the Board is pleased to declare a first interim dividend of 3 sen per share.”
Building an Immersive Customer Relationship
Astro continues to build on our customer relationship with 71% of Malaysian households comprising 5.2mn households and some 21mn family members, and we are on track to achieve 75% household penetration by year-end. Our nine radio stations remain the most popular network in Malaysia, with 15.6mn weekly listeners while our digital properties attracted 7.5mn unique visitors and 66mn page views.
Record Viewership
Record viewership, particularly in our signature vernacular IPs, which continue to grow from strength to strength. Maharaja Lawak Mega 2017 garnered a record 4.9mn viewership and doubled its digital views and social media reach to 28mn and 58mn respectively. We are also expanding our original digital content offerings to capture the Malay digital community. Our digital-first content IPs, The House and 3 Gadis Manis registered 23mn and 4.5mn views respectively on Astro Gempak, Malaysia’s top Malay entertainment portal. Our diverse content offering also drove our share of TV viewership to 76%, with viewers tuning in close to four hours daily. With our increasing reach on TV, Radio and digital, we saw TV Adex and Radex shares increased to 39% and 76% respectively.
Dato’ Rohana Rozhan, Group CEO of Astro, added, “We continue to execute against strategies that underpin our growth plans. We are increasing investment into premium and signature vernacular Intellectual Property (IPs), accelerating digitalisation of our core business and growing reach of our connected customers both in Malaysia, and the region. Utilising digital platforms help expand our reach to a greater number of customers by serving individuals, as well as households, and thus lowers our unit cost to serve. During the quarter, we have achieved growth across key customer metrics including content viewership, and on demand consumption.
In April 2017, Astro entered into a strategic partnership with Turner Asia Pacific to co-develop and own verticals in Asian content for global distribution of quality Asian content. This new venture will also enable Astro to participate in the revenue distribution generated from Warner TV in the region.
This month, Astro signed a MOU with Kumpulan Media Karangkraf to pursue co-creation of a comprehensive line up of content IPs across Malay and Islamic verticals from theatrical, to TV, to digital and commerce as well as to create Nusantara IPs that can travel not only in Malaysia but regionally on Tribe, Boo and Warner TV platforms. Ownership of these IPs allows Astro to maximise monetisation potential from licensing, Adex, subscriptions and commerce, while at the same time anchor a long-term sustainable role for itself in the media value chain.
Tribe, a regional online video streaming service has expanded to Singapore via SingTel’s Cast platform and is now in three countries including Indonesia and the Philippines. Tribe now has a user base of 1.3mn who are watching an average of 125 minutes per week.
eGG Network has expanded its distribution to six countries with three new partnerships in its first year; in Singapore with Singtel, in the Philippines with Globe’s BEAM TV and in Indonesia with Orange TV and Genflix, and have plans to enter more new markets this year.
Astro’s ecommerce business, Go Shop has served a total of 1.04mn customers in Malaysia and Singapore. In Q1FY18, Go Shop sold 350k products and generated revenue of RM62mn.
Moving Forward
Dato’ Rohana summarised, “We are aggressively reconfiguring our entire business to serve consumers whose lifestyle choices are increasingly digital, mobile and personalised. The end state of our digital and business transformation programme is to see a mobile-first, analytics driven and customer-focused Astro delivering industry-leading innovations, achieving optimal monetisation model for our content verticals and start- ups, and thus lowering our cost to serve, gaining regional scale to drive efficiency and to address an ASEAN audience, and thus anchoring a solid platform for sustainable growth and to continue to position Astro as a stock that delivers positive total shareholder return.”
30 SENIOR MARKETERS.
50 MARKETING CASE STUDIES.
2 DAYS LIKE AN MBA IN MARKETING!
APPIES Malaysia is an annual 2-day Marketing Congress and Awards Festival showcasing, sharing and celebrating the country’s best marketing campaigns. Shortlisted entries will be judged by 30 leaders in the Marketing industry who will put the presenter’s knowledge to the test in a unique Live Presentation environment.
Date: 6 & 7 July, 2017
Venue: Grand Ballroom, Eastin Hotel, Petaling Jaya.
Time: 8.30am – 6.00pm
To register, connect with Ruby on 0377262588, [email protected], or http://www.appies.com.my/files/Appies17_Conference-RegFORM.pdf
Event PDF: http://www.appies.com.my/files/Appies17_Conference.pdf
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