RTL Group saidn its revenue was stable at €5,808 million (2013: €5,824 million).
Higher revenue from Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland and from acquisitions (consolidation of BroadbandTV, SpotXchange and 495 Productions) was offset by lower advertising sales in France, the effect of the disposal of the French e-commerce service Mistergooddeal along with lower revenue from FremantleMedia and UFA Sports.
The group said it has recorded major progress in implementing its digital growth strategy. Digital revenue continued to show very dynamic growth, up 26.6% to €295 million (2013: €233 million) benefitting from organic growth and new acquisitions’
RTL Group’s platform revenue grew by 18.9% to €220 million (2013: €185 million). Its catch-up TV services, websites and MCNs attracted a total 36.4 billion online video views, up 117% year-on-year; thereof: FremantleMedia’s 216 Youtube channels attracted 9.0 billion views, up 35% year-on-year
In September, RTL Group completed the acquisition of a 65% majority stake in the programmatic video advertising platform SpotXchange for a cash out of €104 million. Over three billion video ad decisions are now processed through the SpotXchange platform daily.
In October, RTL Interactive in Germany acquired Econa Shopping (now renamed to Sparwelt) for a cash out of €29 million. Sparwelt operates curated advice and recommendation platforms for online shopping such as Sparwelt.de. It is the most significant acquisition in the history of RTL Interactive
In December, RTL Group increased its Shareholding in StyleHaul to 94% for a cash out of €84 million, further accelerating the Group’s rapidly growing presence in the online video space. With one billion video views per month, StyleHaul is the leading multi-channel network (MCN) on Youtube for fashion, beauty and lifestyle.
In December, FremantleMedia increased its non-controlling shareholding in Divimove to 51%. Divimove has become Europe’s leading MCN with 900 million online video views per month.
Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland achieved its best financial result ever: EBITA increased by 5.0% to €650 million (2013: €619 million). This improvement was mainly driven by significantly higher TV advertising revenue in the second half of the year and a growing digital distribution business.
The French net TV advertising market was estimated to be stable in 2014. The EBITA of Groupe M6 was slightly up to €209 million (2013: €207 million), driven by higher profit contributions from the company’s diversification activities.
RTL Nederland’s EBITA stable at €103 million mainly driven by higher platform revenue and diversification activities. EBITA of RTL Belgium stable at €46 million.
RTL Hungary reports an EBITA loss of €1 million (2013: profit of €15 million), mainly due to impairments resulting from the punitive advertising tax which came into effect in August 2014.