Astro sees growth in adex despite challenging media landscape

Astro Malaysia witnessed a growth in ad spend (adex) during the third quarter of its financial year ending 31 January 2020 (Q3 2020), with its radex increasing by 6% to 80%, while TV adex increased by 1% to 44%. Meanwhile, its digital adex stood at RM33 million, translating to digital adex share of 4%, supported by 11.1 million digital monthly unique visitors across its digital brandssuch as Astro Awani, Gempak, Xuan, Ulagam and Stadium Astro.

Overall, its revenue for Q3 2020 was RM1.2 billion, and its profit after tax and minority interests (PATAMI) increased by 11% yoy to RM171 million for the quarter.

Astro continues to invest in local and vernacular content, which has an average viewing time of over four hours daily. Also, the company said two-thirds of the time is spent on local and vernacular content. New IPs in the line up are are Sembilan, The A Game, and Hello Pinkfong.

Nonetheless, the market remains challenging with structural changes in the global content, media and advertising industries, including threats of piracy and streaming wars. Astro said its focus is to strengthen its core Pay TV and NJOI businesses by redefining customer value propositions, elevating customer service, refreshing and aggregating the best content and streaming services. The company will leverage on its customer base to build new revenue adjacenciesin commerce, broadband, digital and OTT, whilst maintaining disciplined cost optimisation.

CEO Henry Tan (pictured) said despite a challenging media landscape, Astro continues to deliver solid PATAMI growth as it continues its journey to improve customer service, refresh its content, as well as enhance home entertainment and personalisation on Astro Go.

"The newly launched Ultra Box saw good response with over 10,000 orders to-date. iQIYI launched its first app partnership outside China, with Astro taking lead in marketing, customer acquisition and media sales. With greater emphasis on video streaming services, we now have three exclusive streaming services - Astro GO, HBO GO and iQIYI," he said.