Astro aims to increase household penetration to 75 pct next year

Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd (Astro) aims to increase its TV services household penetration in the country to 75 per cent by end of next year from 71 per cent or five million households at present.

Group Chief Executive Officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan said the growth would be driven by the increasing demand for NJOI, the subscription-free satellite TV.

She said Astro was seeing growth in its reach and engagement across all platforms, its TV services reaching five million households, which included pay TV (3.4 million) and NJOI 1.6 million, with average viewing of four hours.

"We will continue growing NJOI while retaining our subscription-based customers.

"We feel that there is no reason for customers not to subscribe to NJOI as we had every intention to make its proposition more attractive in the coming years," she told reporters when announcing Astro's nine months results for financial year ending Jan 31, 2017.

More Astro customers are also watching Astro contents on mobile devices and on demand, she said, adding that Astro on the go (AOTG) saw its registered users increased 31 per cent year-on year to 1.1 million with an average viewing time of 130 minutes per week.

"To date there had been about 2.7 million downloads on AOTG and we are eyeing to grow to five million downloads by end of next year," she said.

Rohana said Astro's share of the TV viewership also increased by one per cent to 77 per cent as it continued to offer comprehensive and compelling content proposition to viewers with focus on original signature intellectual property, local and ASEAN movies, sports, and Korean entertainment.

She said this spurred the group's relevance among advertisers with an advertising expenditure (Adex) grew by 13 per cent year-on-year to RM524 million with its share of TV advertising and radio advertising increased to 37 per cent and 73 per cent, respectively.

Astro's average revenue per user for the nine months period had also increased to RM99.9 from RM99.3 underpinned by higher take-up of value added products and services.

On its content cost this year, Rohana said it is expected to be about 36 per cent of Astro's TV revenue following a heavy sports year, while next year, the cost is expected to be maintained at the same level or slightly reduced.

Moving forward, for the full financial year 2017, the company is expected to continue growing its revenue by three per cent with Adex revenue contribution trajectory around 13 per cent.

-- BERNAMA