Astro Malaysia grows 4%
September 17, 2015
By Chris Forrester
Malaysia pay-TV operator Astro reported consolidated revenues of MYR2.7 billion ($64m) for the first six months of the financial year ending January 31st 2016, with a growth rate of 4 per cent year-on-year. The firm’s advertising income grew by 5 per cent to MYR305 million (€56.5m).
As to subscription gains, Astro added over 426,000 net TV customers in H1 FY2016; with the help of its free package, Njoi which generated a 58 per cent y-o-y improvement. With this subscriber growth, Astro claims that it penetrated 65 per cent of Malaysian TV households in H1 FY2016 from 60 per cent in H1 FY2015. At the end of January 2015, there were over 1.6 million ‘Astro on the Go’ downloads, an increase of 31 per cent y-o-y.
“Amidst a challenging operating environment coupled with soft consumer sentiment, the Group continues to deliver on its growth strategies to generate shareholder value creation.
“We are driving take up of connected boxes and of Astro on the Go from 181k now to 500k by year end. At the same time, we are ensuring our content proposition is second to none. As for our international content, we are ensuring that linear viewing is supplemented by strong on-demand proposition of same day as global premieres, live, social and box sets to cater for our customers viewing trends,” said Rohana Rozhan, CEO at Astro.