Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Tun Zaki Azmi, Chairman of Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad said, “The Company is committed to delivering total returns to shareholders, combining a progressive dividend policy with disciplined investments in the business to generate capital appreciation. For the financial year ending 31st January 2013 (FY13), a total dividend of 4.0 sen per share was declared, translating to an approximate 100% payout ratio on an annualised basis. For the first quarter of the current financial year, an interim dividend of 2.0 sen per share has been declared, a 33% increase from interim dividend of 1.5 sen per share paid in the last 2 quarters.”
Dato’ Rohana Rozhan, Chief Executive Officer of Astro commented, “Our focus remains to strongly execute on our strategic imperatives of achieving growth in customers, ARPU and Adex by providing more choices, compelling content, convenience and value for consumers. Astro now provides a comprehensive suite of value-added products and services across all platforms; ranging from pay-TV to prepaid and free multi-channel TV, as well as Over-The-Top and broadband. We are tailoring our offerings to cater for our customers’ preferences, budgets and increasingly digital lifestyle.”
Dato’ Rohana said, “This is our peak reinvestment and opex year as we focus on migrating our customer base onto the Astro B.yond platform. We are encouraged by the sustained demand for our value-added products and services and expect growth momentum to accelerate going forward, underpinned by recent platform and product launches gaining market traction. This positions us well for meaningful returns from our reinvestment initiatives and to further strengthen our market leadership.”
In FY13, Astro achieved revenue growth of 10% to RM4.3bn. It posted a higher revenue growth of 14% to RM1.1bn for the first quarter of the financial year ending January 2014. In the first quarter of current financial year, pay-TV customers increased by 40k to 3.32mn, while NJOI customers grew by 55k to 264k, bringing total customers to3.58mn, representing 53% of total TV households in Malaysia.
Out of the 2.18mn subscribers on Astro B.yond, 1.40mn are on HD service, 343k are on Personal Video Recording (PVR), 245k are on Multiroom and 784k are on Superpack bundle.Astro First and Astro Best have registered over 6.2mn buys since launch. All of the above have contributed to an increase in ARPU to RM94.20. Powered by higher TV viewership and radio listenership, Astro’s Adex also grew 21% to RM115mn, outperforming the industry’s growth rate. Astro’s share of TV Adex stood at 29% and share of Radex at 53%.
