“ITV made further strong progress in the first half of the year as we continued to grow and rebalance the company creatively and commercially”, said ITV plc chief executive Adam Crozier.
Advertisement
This helped overall sales leap 11% higher to £1.36 billion.
ITV reported a 25% increase in pre-tax profits, despite a 4% drop in viewing in the first half of this year, saying it remained on track for a strong performance in 2015. Net advertising revenue (NAR) was up 5 percent to GBP 838 million, from GBP 795 million, with online, pay and interactive revenue up 27 percent to GBP 85 million, from GBP 67 million in 2st-half 2014.
“All parts of the business performed well with external revenue up 11 per cent to £1.36bn and we delivered another period of double digit profit growth up 24 per cent to £400m”.
Revenues at its production arm ITV Studios – which has been bolstered by a string of acquisitions such as Talpa Media, maker of BBC1’s The Voice – rose 23 per cent to £496million. He said that “we expect to see improvements in H2 when we have exclusive rights to the Rugby World Cup as well as a strong slate of high quality drama”.
However, ITV’s share of viewing across its portfolio of channels fell 4%. Crozier said that addressing the issue was a “key focus for the year” and promised that the company would increase investment in programming.
He also said ITV would continue to participate in the sector’s drive toward consolidation.
Looking ahead to 2016, Crozier noted that ITV has looked to build on its rugby momentum by securing the joint rights to Six Nations Rugby and will show the European Football Championships later in the year, with newly secured deals for Britain’s Got Talent and US animated comedies Family Guy and American Dad. It lifted its pretax profit expectations for 2015 by 2% to GBP830 million from GBP815 million, and its earnings per share forecast to 15.9 pence from 15.6p.
In a statement, ITV said: ‘While there were many successful programmes in the first half, our viewing performance was impacted by strong competition from the BBC, no major sporting event and some of our shows not performing as well as we had expected.’.
Advertisement
The interim dividend was raised by 36% to 1.9p a share.
