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Direct to Home (DTH) service provider Dish TV recorded a standalone loss of Rs 38.2 crore in the quarter ended 31 December 2013. In the corresponding quarter last year, the company's losses stood at Rs 44.9 crore. The reported loss was much higher than the average Street estimate of Rs 14-15 crore. This reflected in the company's stock closing 1.5 per cent lower at Rs 49.75 on Thursday.
The total revenues for the period were Rs 612.8 crore, up 9.9 per cent from last year's Rs 557.8 crore. This is a shade less than the market estimates of Rs 614 crore for the quarter. The EBITDA at Rs 135.5 crore, however, was way short of market estimates of Rs 154.7 crore. Forex related issues were among factors that negatively impacted EBITDA.
Jawahar Goel, Managing Director, Dish TV said, “A relatively strong currency resulted in a translational loss, due to foreign exchange fluctuation, of Rs 70 million (Rs 7 crore) on foreign deposits. This along with an exchange rate adjustment demand worth Rs 54 million (Rs 5.4 crore), for transponder payments, negatively impacted the EBITDA for the quarter. In line with expectation, higher promotional and marketing expenses and a sports driven content payout also put pressure on the EBITDA”.
Subscription revenues for the quarter stood at Rs 553 crore, recording a growth of 11.9 per cent as compared to the corresponding quarter last fiscal. The churn for the period was constant at 0.6 per cent. The DTH service provider added 220,000 subscribers in the December quarter taking the net subscriber base to 11.2 million.
Goel added, “Notwithstanding the festival period, the overall additions for the industry remained muted largely due to the sluggishness in the economy as compared to the corresponding period last fiscal.”
Average revenue per unit (ARPU) for the quarter increased to Rs 166 per month from Rs 165 in the previous quarter and the subscriber acquisition cost (SAC) was recorded at Rs 1,889. Dish TV paid off debt to the tune of Rs 563.1 crore in the nine months ended December 31, 2013. As a result, finance costs have seen a decline of 12.8 per cent sequentially to Rs 30.1 crore.
Subhash Chandra, Chairman, Dish TV India Limited said, “The Indian television distribution sector is not completely out of the woods though. With more than 14 months passed post the rollout of Phase I of mandatory digitisation, billing and other critical requirements have not yet been fully put in place by majority of the MSOs. Though far too delayed, we remain optimistic about the completion of digitisation in its true sense.”
The company introduced the on-request-Ala-carte (ORA) scheme in December under which individual channels would be available, without any extra charge, to only those subscribers who specifically request for them. The scheme was implemented for 22 channels from one aggregator bouquet.
