ITV hails Transformational Plan as factor behind 10% profit growth for first half of 2012
ITV has claimed its Transformational Plan has lead to double digit revenue and profit growth, as it reported a revenue increase of over 10 per cent.
Announcing its half-year report, ITV has made £1,130m in the first six months of the year, with growth recorded across all areas of its business, with non-advertising revenue up by 26 per cent to £514m.
ITV Studios is the main factor behind the non-advertising revenue growth, generating £91m, an increase of 34 per cent on last year, through UK and International TV content delivery.
The company has also reports an increase in family advertising of 3 per cent, but has forecast a flat rate over the nine months, to the end of September.
Adam Crozier, ITV’s chief executive, said: "The Transformation Plan continues to gain momentum. External revenues are up 10% with all areas of the business delivering growth. The £106 million increase in non-advertising revenues - from content, pay and online - was particularly significant and is further evidence that our strategy of rebalancing the business and growing new revenue streams is working.
"Our relentless focus on cash and costs remains key. We're on track to deliver cost savings of £20 million this year and our cash conversion is over 100%. We've also further increased the efficiency of the balance sheet with a £275 million bond buyback in June, bringing total debt buybacks to £937 million since October 2009. We now have positive net cash of £92 million compared with £612 million of net debt at the end of 2009.
"ITV Studios is performing strongly both in the UK and internationally with double digit revenue growth across all divisions and an increasing share of ITVS programmes aired on ITV1. Our investment in the creative pipeline is now clearly coming through in the financial results.
"While ITV Family Share of Viewing was down 1%, our strong Autumn and Winter schedule gives us confidence for the full year. Online we performed well with long form video requests up 20% and further improvements in the reliability and distribution of ITV Player. Our pay and online strategy has made good progress with the launch of our archive pay deals and YouView, and is soon to take another step forward with the roll out of ITV Pay Player.
"As we anticipated, ITV Family NAR was up 3% in H1, outperforming the television advertising market. The underlying TV advertising market continues to be relatively flat and while we remain cautious about the outlook for the TV advertising market for the rest of 2012, we expect to outperform it for the year as a whole. Over the full year we expect ITV Studios revenues to grow at a similar rate to 2011 and to grow the ITV Studios share of ITV1 output," he concluded.
The Transformation Plan was announced by the commercial broadcaster in Autumn 2010, as a five-year-plan which would see it focus on its strategic prioritiesand generate 'world-class content'.