Astro to launch home shopping channel for Malay segment in September

BUKIT JALIL: Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd, which posted a 34.2% increase in net profit for the fourth quarter of the financial year ended Jan 31, 2014 (FY14), will be launching a Malay home shopping channel in September this year.
"We hope we'll have the (home shopping) services up and running in August or September this year. The first channel will be a Malay home shopping channel, targeted to Malay customers," CEO Datuk Rohana Rozhan told a press conference after announcing the group's FY14 results here yesterday.
The cable network operator signed a shareholders agreement with GS Home to set up Astro GS Shop Sdn Bhd, 60%-owned by Astro Retail Ventures Sdn Bhd and 40%-owned by GS Home for the former to venture into the home shopping business. GS Home has a presence in South Korea, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, India and Turkey.
Rohana said Astro will take delivery of eight satellite transponders this year with the new broadcast capacity coming onstream in the second half of the year.
"We'll use that capacity to introduce premium and value added services. We will be launching eight HD (high definition) channels and 12 SD (standard definition) channels this year," she said.
Meanwhile, Astro COO Henry Tan said the case of the missing flight MH370 has not affected advertising expenditure (adex) and it is not something that the market would capitalise on.
"Astro Awani has become a destination for the latest news, and its channel share has grown ten times compared with what it was before," said Tan, after news of the missing plane broke.
The group delivered four consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue in FY14, underpinned by expansion of its customer base, higher take-up of value added products and services, as well as industry leading adex growth.
During the year, Astro grew its customer base to 3.9 million or 56% of TV household penetration in the country. It has now completed the swap-out of its pay-TV customers onto the Astro B.yond platform, where it has seen customers increasingly take up its product, value and service propositions, such as HD, Personal Video Recording (PVR), Video On Demand (VOD) and Astro On-the-Go (AOTG).
"We're planning to push forward and achieve double-digit topline on a mixture of average revenue per user and adex. We're comfortable that although it's aggressive, we'll be making those targets," Rohana said
Astro saw its net profit for the fourth quarter ended Jan 31, 2014 rise 34.2% to RM111.38 million from RM83.16 million a year ago, mainly due to the increase in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) and decrease in tax expenses. The better showing managed to offset an increase in depreciation of set-top boxes and increase in net finance costs.
Its revenue jumped 11.4% to RM1.26 billion from RM1.13 billion, mainly due to the increase in subscription, advertising and other revenue.
For the full year, Astro's net profit went up by 6.7% to RM447.95 million from RM418 million, also mainly due to an increase in ebitda and lower tax expenses.
Its revenue rose 12.3% to RM4.79 billion from RM4.26 billion, mainly due to an increase in subscription, advertising and other revenue.