Prisa announced its financial and operational results for the first nine months of 2011. In the period, the Group achieved revenues of 2,038.52 million euros and an ebiTda of 379.69 million euros (+1.9% growth ex non recurrent items). In Latin America, revenues grew by 14.1% and already account for 22% of the Group-wide total.
The chairman of the executive committee of the board and CEO Juan Luis Cebrián declared: «in an adverse macro environment, the results of the first nine months of 2011 continue to reflect the strong operating performance of our businesses. The growth in our education activities, both in Spain and in Latin America, together with the improved operating indicators of pay-TV, and a strong cost cutting effort, has partly mitigated the bad performance of the advertising market, which are undergoing a very difficult time».
According to the company, the restructuring plan announced continues its course in all business lines as planned. Prisa also announced that shareholders, TiMON S.a., Nicolas berggruen and Martin Franklin, have stated their intention to exercise 75 million warrants, for a total amount of 150 million euros.
Prisa´s Results Highlights:
- Market conditions remain stable in all business areas except advertising and general publishing (ediciones Generales), which are still being affected by negative macroeconomic conditions, especially in Spain and Portugal.
- In the Audiovisual division, revenue totaled 930.39 million euros, and adjusted ebiTda totaled 189.34 million euros. adjusted ebiTda margins increased by almost 3 percentage points to 20.6%. At the end of Q3, pay TV had 1.83 million subscribers, of which 56,318 correspond to wholesale distribution and dTT. Net adds of dTH subscribers performed well reaching 7,040 in Q3, compared with -20.788 in Q3 2010. churn rate continued to decrease to 13.5%. Subscribers to iPlus and Multi+ services rose almost by 50% YTd.
- Revenue in the Education division was 548.84 million euros, up 15.5% in Latam thanks to strong campaign performance (particularly in brazil where revenues grew 21.1%) and the strong education campaign in Spain, where revenues grew 11.6%. adjusted ebiTda reached 167.12 million euros, a 4.0% improvement over the first 9 months in 2010, with a slight reduction in margins (from 32.3% to 30.4%).
- Revenue in the Radio division stood at 269.48 million euros, down 6.3% year on year, with radio in Spain down 5.9% and international radio up 8.8%. adjusted ebiTda totaled 60.01 million euros (-11.7%) and the adjusted ebiTda margin was 22.3%.
- Revenue in Press was 293.06 million euros, down by 4.7% from last year. adjusted ebiTda totaled 36.80 million euros, a 17.3% improvement over the same period last year, with an improvement of 2.4 pps in margin to 12.6%.
- The Digital division achieved a monthly average of 63.3 million unique users in the first half, a 28.6% increase compared to the same period last year, thanks to strong growth recorded by as.com, elpais.com and cinco días.com.
- Advertising revenue totaled 443.69 million euros, down 7.2% from the same period the previous year (-7.8% in H1).
