Dish TV India adds 47,000 subscribers in 1Q 2019

Friday, May 24th, 2019
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47 thousand net subscriber additions during the quarter

  • Closing net subscriber base of 23.7 million
  • Dish TV continues to be the market leader in the DTH space in India

NOIDA, India — Dish TV India Limited (BSE: 532839, NSE: DISHTV, LSE: DTVL) today reported fourth quarter fiscal 2019 consolidated subscription revenues of Rs. 13,083 million and operating revenues of Rs. 13,987 million.

On March 22, 2018, Videocon D2h Limited had merged with and into Dish TV India Limited with the appointed date of the merger being October 1, 2017. Financials of Dish TV India Limited for the year ended March 31, 2018 thus represent 12 months financial performance of Dish TV India Limited and 6 months financial performance of Videocon d2h Limited.

Financial numbers for fiscal 2019 are thus, not comparable with the corresponding period last year.

New Regulatory Regime

The fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 witnessed pay-tv distribution platforms continuing the drive to migrate subscribers to the New Tariff Regime. However, with the Tariff Order deadline shifting from December 28 to January 31 2019, pay-tv subscribers remained sceptical about channel selection. An early believer of the Tariff Order, Dish TV India was the first in the industry to partially and voluntarily roll-out the provisions of the Tariff Order by offering a-la-carte channels to its subscribers at affordable prices.

Later, post notification of the Order, leveraging deep insight about the recharge history of its subscriber base, the Company also offered ‘Best Fit Packs’ to facilitate channel selection by its subscribers in addition to a-la-carte offerings.

Though subscribers remained undecided, the Company, true to the deadline, worked in overdrive to satisfactorily migrate its 23.7 million subscribers to channels/packages of their choice or to ‘Best Fit Packs.’

Dish TV’s fourth quarter revenues were impacted due to transition to the New Regulatory Regime. Revenues were down Y-o-Y notwithstanding a sharp turnaround in the third month of the quarter.

One Year of Merger

Dish TV India Limited completed one year of Videocon d2h’s merger with Dish TV in the fourth quarter fiscal 2019.

The Company grew in size during the year increasing its subscriber base by 700 thousand subscribers.

New HD set-top-boxes that are more economical yet offer better features than the outgoing ones were launched during the year.

Integration of headend infrastructure was planned to enhance the customer TV viewing experience and serve satellite operations for both its brands. During the year, Dish TV India upgraded and expanded its entire DTH platform to the AVP 4000 video processing platform. The award-winning compression technology enabled the Company to adapt to both traditional broadcast and multiscreen service delivery from a single platform.

The Year Ahead

The Company is excited about the future of Watcho, the in-house OTT app that was launched during the quarter.

The Watcho app is available to download and view on the Web, App Store and Play Store and has already crossed a hundred thousand downloads since its launch a few days back. The platform has over 20 original shows in Hindi and regional languages.