ITV Q1 Revenue Up Slightly

LONDON: Following its annual general meeting, ITV plc announced that it is on track for another year of solid growth, with revenue from broadcast and online up 6 percent.

The company’s broadcast and online segment delivered revenues of £465 million, up from the £440 million reported in the same period in 2012. This is driven by 6-percent growth in national advertising revenue (NAR) and a 17-percent increase in online, pay and interactive revenues. 

ITV Studios had a rough first quarter, down 5 percent to £201 million, since there was a heavy load of programs delivered in the period. However, for the full year the company expects this segment to deliver double-digit revenue growth. 

Total external revenue was up just slightly, at 1 percent, to £571 million. Non-NAR revenue was down 2 percent, to £284 million. 

ITV says that it is still on track to deliver £20 million of cost-savings over the full year.

Adam Crozier, ITV’s chief executive, said: “We’ve had a good start to the year with ITV outperforming the TV ad market in Q1, a strong performance on screen with the family share of viewing increasing 2 percent and further strong growth in online, pay and interactive.

“As we anticipated, the quarterly pattern of demand from advertisers in 2013 is very different to 2012 although we expect it to even out over the course of the year. While we are cautious about the outlook for TV advertising for 2013, our objective remains to outperform the market over the full year.

“Given the longer term visibility we have in our Studios revenues we’re confident that we will deliver double digit growth this year. We continue to build on Studios’ organic strength with acquisitions in key creative markets—most recently The Garden in the U.K. and High Noon Entertainment in the U.S.

“Looking across the whole year, we again expect to deliver good growth in all parts of the business as we continue to strengthen and rebalance ITV in line with the Transformation Plan.”