Canal+ Spain subscribers down 28,500 in 1Q 2013

Thursday, May 9th, 2013
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Grupo Prisa has announced financial results for the first quarter of 2013.

Audiovisual

In Prisa TV (Canal+), revenues grew by 18.3% during the first quarter of 2013. This is explained mainly by a combination of growth in subscriber revenues from other platforms (which have grown by 6x thanks to football rights multi-distribution agreement) and growth in advertising (by +85.8%), lower satellite subscriber revenues (-1.3%) and lower services to third parties.

Canal+ maintains its leadership in the market according to the latest data published by the CMT (Spanish Telecommunications regulator), with a market share of 61.9% in 2012 (of 65.6% during the last quarter of the year) in pay TV revenues, and a market share of 41.4% on average in number of subscribers during 2012 (42.6% in the last quarter of the year). According to internal estimates, Canal+’s market share in number of subscribers for the first quarter of 2013 stood at 43% (implying an increase of 70 basis points since 4Q 2012).

Satellite subscribers fell during the first quarter of the year by 28,350, impacted by the weakness of the economic environment and domestic consumption. The evolution of satellite subscribers is as follows:

                  Mar 2013   Dec 2012  Chg. Abs
                 ---------  ---------  --------
Satellite (DTH)  1,691,281  1,719,811  (28,530)

The number of subscribers with iPlus continued growing: as at March 2013 the number of subscribers with iPlus stood at 601,831, which implies a growth of 14,500 compared to December 2012, and a penetration of 35.6%.

iPlus Subscribers (thousands):

1Q12  2Q12  3Q12  4Q12  1Q13
----  ----  ----  ----  ----
 530   574   578   587   602

The evolution of subscribers from other platforms / OTT to Canal+1 is as follows:

                  Mar 2013   Dec 2012  Chg. Abs
                 ---------  ---------  --------
Other Platforms*   143,359    120,619    22,740

* Includes subscribers from agreements with telecom operators (wholesale) and OTT subscribers.