German, French Operations Power RTL Results

RTL Group posted Q3 revenues of €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion), lifted by increases at its French and German operations.

Q3 revenues at the European media company rose by 1.5 percent, while EBITDA was up 17.4 percent to €263 million ($306 million) and net profit increased by 11.8 percent to €114 million ($132 million). On the heels of these results, RTL Group has lifted its EBITDA outlook for the full year. For fiscal 2017 the company projects a 2.5 percent to 5 percent boost in revenues, driven by digital and Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland. EBITDA is expected to grow by 1 percent to 2.5 percent.

Guillaume de Posch and Bert Habets, co-CEOs, said in a joint statement: “In the third quarter, RTL Group once again demonstrated the healthy state of its core business. As indicated at the end of August, our families of channels in Germany and France continued to outperform their respective TV advertising market significantly. This drove RTL Group’s best-ever third quarter revenue and operating profit. We act from a position of strength and will keep up this momentum in the fourth quarter, heading for another set of strong full-year results. We continue to invest in exclusive programming to ensure that our channels and on-demand services have the most attractive proposition for both viewers and advertisers. As we announced [at the] end of August, we are accelerating the execution of our Total Video strategy. This includes an ambitious growth plan for our ad-tech businesses with the main goal to create a global and independent monetization platform for broadcasters, video-on-demand services and publishers. We are very happy to report that over recent months SpotX and Smartclip have made significant progress in expanding their collaboration. We have now decided to combine both companies into one integrated ad-tech company by the end of 2018. We will roll out the platform across our operations and scale it up with further acquisitions and partnerships.”

Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland’s EBITDA was up 23.9 percent thanks to higher advertising and platform revenues. Revenues were up 7.8 percent to €498 million ($579 million).

Groupe M6’s EBITDA was up by 36.5 percent, with a solid performance at the TV division and the positive balance from the transfer of Girondins de Bordeaux players at the end of the season. Revenues increased by 4.2 percent to €273 million ($317 million).

FremantleMedia revenues fell by 2.6 percent to €335 million ($390 million), with EBITDA of €20 million ($23 million).

At RTL Nederland, revenues fell by 6.3 percent to €104 million ($121 million) and EBITDA decreased by 13.3 percent to €26 million ($30 million).