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First quarter Highlights
Hans-Holger Albrecht, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented: “Q1 was an investment quarter for the Group as we invested in our Spring free-TV schedules in Scandinavia to improve our ratings, and in our pay-TV content offering and new technologies across the Nordic region to drive continued subscriber intake. The work to drive up audience shares is ongoing in Scandinavian TV advertising markets that are expected to grow in 2012. Our Nordic pay-TV operations generated healthy sales and underlying subscriber growth, with a margin that remains high by industry standards. Both our free-TV and pay-TV businesses in the emerging markets reported sales growth and improved profitability levels, despite the fact that there has been no trend shift in the development of the emerging advertising markets and that we have continued to invest in the development of our emerging market satellite platforms. We have grown our target audience and advertising market shares year on year in almost all of our free-TV emerging market territories, and also grown our emerging market pay-TV subscriber bases. We have also benefitted from the discontinuation of loss-making operations and the previous write-downs of certain assets.
“The year on year increase in investments in our Scandinavian free-TV and Nordic pay-TV operations was higher in the first quarter than will be the case for the rest of the year, and we expect improved year on year profitability levels for our emerging market free-TV and pay-TV operations in 2012.
“We remain in a strong financial position with good annual cash flow conversion levels and low gearing, which is why we have proposed an increased annual dividend pay-out to the upcoming 2012 AGM, and adopted a dividend policy of paying out a minimum of 30% of recurring net income moving forward. MTG has always been about building sustainable long term value and we will continue to invest in the development of our existing operations, and to review opportunities to establish or acquire complementary businesses.”
Conference Call
The company will host a conference call today at 15.00 Stockholm local time, 14.00 London local time and 09.00 New York local time. To participate in the conference call, please dial:
Sweden:
+46(0)8 5352 6408
UK:
+44(0)20 7136 2056
US:
+1646 254 3388
The access pin code for the call is 3382044.
To listen to the conference call online and for further information please go to www.mtg.se.
For further information, please visit www.mtg.se, or contact:
Hans-Holger Albrecht, President & Chief Executive Officer
Mathias Hermansson, Chief Financial Officer
Tel: +46 (0) 8 562 000 50
Matthew Hooper, Head of Corporate Communications & Planning
Tel: +44 (0) 7768 440 414
Email: investor.relations@mtg.se / press@mtg.se
Stockholm, 19 April 2012
Hans-Holger Albrecht, President & CEO
Modern Times Group MTG AB
Skeppsbron 18
P.O. Box 2094
SE-103 13 Stockholm, Sweden
Registration number: 556309-9158
Modern Times Group (MTG) is an international entertainment broadcasting group with operations that span four continents and include free-TV, pay-TV, radio and content production businesses. MTG’s Viasat Broadcasting operates free-TV and pay-TV channels, which are available on Viasat’s own satellite platforms and third party networks, and also distributes TV content over the internet. MTG is also the largest shareholder in CTC Media, which is Russia’s leading independent television broadcaster.
Modern Times Group is a growth company and generated record net sales of SEK 13.5 billion in 2011. MTG’s Class A and B shares are listed on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm’s Large Cap index under the symbols ‘MTGA’ and ‘MTGB’.
The information in this quarterly report is that which Modern Times Group MTG AB is required to disclose under the Securities Market Act and/or the Financial Instruments Trading Act. It was released for publication at 13.00 CET on 19 April 2012.
