RTL’s German and French businesses drive record Q3
November 9, 2017
RTL Group has published its results for the nine months ending September 30th 2017. In the third quarter of 2017, reported Group revenue was up 1.5 per cent to €1,372 million (Q3/2016: €1,352 million), mostly due to higher revenue from Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland (Germany) and Groupe M6 (France).
EBITDA was up strongly by 17.4 per cent to €263 million (Q3/2016: €224 million), driven by the strong performances in Germany and France: Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland’s EBITDA was up 23.9 per cent, while Groupe M6 increased its EBITDA by 36.5 per cent.
January to September 2017: total video strategy fuels revenue growth
Reported Group revenue increased by 2.8 per cent to €4,350 million (January to September 2016: €4,230 million), reaching a new record level. This was driven by higher revenue from Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, Groupe M6 and RTL Group’s rapidly growing digital businesses.
RTL Group’s digital revenue continued to show very dynamic growth, up 30.2 per cent to €560 million (January to September 2016: €430 million). This was mainly driven by organic growth at BroadbandTV and StyleHaul, the sale of American Gods to streaming service Amazon Prime Video and the first-time full consolidation of Smartclip and Divimove.
RTL Group said ita revenue is well diversified with 47.7 per cent from TV advertising, 18.7 per cent from content, 12.9 per cent from digital activities, 5.4 per cent from platform revenue, 4.0 per cent from radio advertising and 11.3 per cent other revenue.
A joint statement from Guillaume de Posch and Bert Habets, Co-Chief Executive Officers of RTL Group, read:
“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 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 monetisation 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.”