Modern Times Group is enjoying a healthy subscriber intake and rising ARU levels in both the Nordic region and Central & East Europe, according to president and chief executive officer Hans-Holger Albrecht.
The success built around a net sales increase of 6% year-on-year has helped the company more than double pre-tax profit to SEK 469 million (€48.7m).
In the Nordic region Viasat’s modest growth of 3,000 subscribers on the quarter has come mainly from the IPTV sector. An increase of 18,000 subscribers to the wired platform helped offset a fall of 15,000 subscribers to the DTH business. As of March 31, 2010, MTG had 670,000 premium DTH subscribers and 156,000 to IPTV.
The company attributed the subscriber falls to seasonality, but the doubling of HD subscribers to 211,000 and increases in multiroom to 216,000 at the end of Q1 helped put another 1% on annualised ARPU to SEK 4,356.
In the emerging markets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania sales from free-TV operations were down 13% to SEK 84 million in the first quarter. The Czech Republic was down 9%, but sales have stabilised in Bulgaria.
Sales within the combined pay-TV businesses were down 1% year on year, but increased at constant exchange rates on the back of subscriber growth in the Baltics and the Ukraine.
Successful subscriber acquisition campaigns helped another 8,000 DTH subscribers to be added, while the Russia Raduga DTH platform had reached an installed base of 83,000 by the end of the period.