RTL record FY earnings
March 9, 2017
Media entertainment giant RTL Group has announced its results for the year ended December 31st 2016.
Group revenue increased 3.4 per cent to €6,237 million (2015: €6,029 million), mainly driven by growing revenue at Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland and dynamic growth in digital revenue; underlying/organic revenue growth rate was 3 per cent. Platform revenue was up 13.3 per cent to €281 million (2015: €248 million).
RTL Group reported that is revenue is well diversified with 52.1 per cent from broadcast advertising (TV and radio), 21.2 per cent from content, 10.7 per cent from digital activities, 4.5 per cent from platform revenue and 11.5 per cent from other revenue.
RTL Group’s three largest business units – Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, Groupe M6 and FremantleMedia – with significantly higher profit contributions
Once again, Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland closed the year with record results: EBITA grew by 3.1 per cent to €705 million (2015: €684 million), resulting in an outstanding EBITA margin of 31.8 per cent (2015: 32.0 per cent). Over the past ten years, Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland more than doubled its EBITA (2007: €329 million)>
Groupe M6 also reached a record EBITA of €252 million (2015: €205 million), mainly driven by the positive one-off effect from the settlement of the M6 Mobile contract, amounting to €42 million which more than compensated for the impact of the higher programming costs for the Uefa Euro 2016 live broadcasts.
In line with previous guidance, FremantleMedia’s EBITA increased by 6.8 per cent to €110 million (2015: €103 million), reflecting higher profit contributions from content coming through the pipeline as a result of recent acquisitions and investments.
RTL Nederland’s EBITA was down to €85 million (2015: €101 million), due to lower TV advertising revenue, higher programme costs and start-up losses of the SVoD platform, Videoland
A joint statement from Anke Schäferkordt and Guillaume de Posch, Co-Chief Executive Officers of RTL Group, read: “2016 was another record year for RTL Group. We continued our growth track, with both revenue and EBITA at an all-time high, and at the same time, our three most important business units – Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, Groupe M6 and FremantleMedia – reported higher operating profits. Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland generated a record profit for the fifth consecutive year, exceeding the level of €700 million for the first time. Groupe M6 profited from a positive one-off effect financially and from the Uefa Euro 2016 in terms of audience shares. We are a very cash-generative business, giving us all financial means for both – further investments and attractive dividend payments to our shareholders.”
“While we currently review our options for BroadbandTV, this does not change our overall strategy – broadcast, content, digital – which focuses on two main investment goals. One is to further expand and develop our digital businesses where global scale in content aggregation and advertising technology becomes ever more important. This is paying off: our digital businesses continued to grow dynamically and we already reached our target that 10 per cent of the Group’s total revenue originate from digital.”
“The other investment goal is to further grow content production. FremantleMedia is making sound progress with its push into high-end drama. Following the premiere of The Young Pope in October 2016, we are looking forward to seeing American Gods going on air in spring. In a ground-breaking deal with Amazon, we were also able to bring this extraordinary series to viewers worldwide – thanks to the close collaboration between the production and distribution business of FremantleMedia. Exclusive content like this is the power engine for everything we do in the total video universe.”