Canal+ Spain subscribers down another 59,500 in 2Q 2013

Grupo Prisa has announced financial results for the first half of 2013.

Pay TV revenues reached 598.35 million Euros and recurring EBITDA 32.85 million Euros. Key Performance Indicators were impacted by the difficult economic environment.

• Net adds in satellite subscribers fell by 88,119. Nevertheless its market share grows because of the highest fall in other operators.
• Net adds in subscribers from other operators of Canal+1 (including OTT) grew by 4,928.
• Satellite ARPU stood at 42.9 Euros on average in the 2Q of the year (41.7 in 2012)
• iPlus subscribers reached 37.2% or 606,876 (32,436 more than at June 2012)
• 278,024 of satellite subscribers are also subscribers of YOMVI, which implies a 16.8% penetration

Audiovisual

In Prisa TV (Canal+), revenues grew by 18.3% during the first half 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 higher advertising revenues (+77.2%) which is compensated by a lower growth in services (of 15.0%), and lower satellite subscriber revenues (-1.8%).

Canal + maintains its leadership in the market according to the latest data published by the CMT, with a market share of 43.1% of average number of subscribers in the first quarter of 2013 (42.6% in the last quarter of the year 2012). According to internal estimates, the market share in number of subscribers of Canal + in the second quarter of 2013 is the 43.3.

Satellite subscribers fell during the first half of the year by 88,199, impacted by the weakness of the economic environment and domestic consumption. The evolution of satellite subscribers is as follows:

                                                        Change    Change
                   June 2013  March 2013   Dec. 2012   1H 2013   2Q 2013
                  ----------  ----------  ----------  --------  --------
Satellite (DTH)    1,631,692   1,691,281   1,719,811  (88,119)  (59,589)

The number of subscribers with iPlus continued growing: as at June 2013 the number of subscribers with iPlus stood at 606,876, which implies a growth of 32,436 compared to June 2012, and a penetration of 37.2%.

The iPlus is currently the most advanced decoder on the Spanish market and the only one to offer HD and 3D broadcasts from the CANAL+ platform. The iPlus is equipped with a high capacity hard drive that allows users to record and play Digital+ programs whenever they like, tune in to DTT, freeze live broadcasts and resume the action, view the last few sequences, and download whole series. iPlus connects to the Internet, thus providing a access to on-demand services whenever the user wants.

iPlus Subscribers (thousands):

1Q12  2Q12  3Q12  4Q12  1Q13  2Q13
----  ----  ----  ----  ----  ----
 530   574   578   587   602   607

Churn stood at 17.9%, above the 16.6% of March of this year and compared to the 14.0% as at June 2012. During the first half of 2013, the average churn has been of 16.9%, slightly above the 13.5% on average of the first half of 2012. The economic crisis as well as the VAT increase (from 8% to 21%) are the main causes for those cancellations.

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

                  Jun 2013   Dec 2012  Chg. Abs
                 ---------  ---------  --------
Other Platforms*   125,547    120,619     4,928

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

YOMVI, which as of June 2013 reached 292,504 unique users, of which 278,024 are also satellite subscribers (17.0% penetration). This compares with the 153,332 as of June 2012 (8.9% penetration). On the other hand, the use that subscribers make of the platform has also considerably increased. Content downloads have increased from 830 thousand to 1.81 million at December 2012, to 1.88 million as of June 2013.

Yomvi allows CANAL+ subscribers to enjoy all the content to which they have subscribed, on all devices and at no additional cost. In addition, CANAL+ Yomvi is available for the PC as part of a special offer aimed at a wider public, and not just customers of CANAL+.