India’s Dish TV DTH halves losses
May 24, 2013
By Chris Forrester
Following on from the ZEEL improved profits picture on May 23rd comes Subash Chandra’s other major investment, Dish TV, which also announced its results. The numbers show that Dish has halved its losses, and added a net 200,000 subs this past quarter taking the total DTH subscribers to 10.7 million. Dish dominates India’s DTH market with a 27 per cent market share.
Overall revenues grew 7.5 per cent, with ARPU up 15.3 per cent. However, programming costs during the quarter rose by just over 20 per cent (although y-o-y programming costs were just 5.1 per cent up). Helping balance this rise was a fall in SAC, as well as lower advertising and marketing costs.
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India is currently going through a massive cable digitisation effort and Dish sees itself getting an advantage from this process. It offers more than 400 channels, plus 42 in HDTV.
Subash Chandra, chairman, said: “In the media sector, digitisation, though not fully up to speed, holds big potential for the industry. DTH platforms, in particular, look forward to a level playing field contributing to meaningfully higher ARPUs and stickier subscriber bases over time. Dish TV’s industry leading initiative, to hike acquisition and pack price is likely to be a catalyst to achieve that.”