Astro pre-tax profit rises to RM720.9 million in FY15

Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd's pre-tax profit for financial year ended Jan 31, 2015 (FY15) rose to RM720.88 million from RM569.23 million in the previous year.

Revenue grew to RM5.23 billion from RM4.79 bllion a year ago, following the expansion in its customer base and increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) in sales of value-added products and services as well as cost control.

Chief Executive Officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan said despite the soft consumer market last year, the company had accomplished growth for the third year running driven by its ability to provide depth and breadth of choices to all customers.

The company also promised to continue delivering growth, which is derived from advertising expenditure, sales of rights content and leveraging its invested infrastructure, among others, she added.

"We see momentum in take-up of our products and services across our pay-TV, NJOI, Astro On The Go and Over The Top (OTT) platform infrastructure.

"Our customer base grew by 547,000 to 4.4 million representing 63 per cent penetration of the total Malaysian households. ARPU rose to RM99 from RM96 as more customers subscribed to HD (high definition), PVR (personal video recorder), Multiroom, and Superpack and Valuepack packages," she told a press conference to announce the company's financial results here, today.

The company declared a fourth interim dividend of 2.25 sen per share as well as a final dividend of two sen per share, which brings the total dividend in FY15 to 11 sen a share, up 22 per cent from FY14 payout of nine sen a share.

Asked whether Astro would pass on some savings from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation on April 1 to consumers, Rohana said the company was still in the midst of clarifying the input tax issues with the Royal Malaysian Customs Department, thus it needed more time before it was able to make a decision on the matter.

"Our business will run as usual as we need to consider the dynamics of various components to our cost, for example the technology, information technology, content, production and services inputs.

"At the same time, there are challenges that we have to face including giving the best value to our consumers and understand their needs so that they will continue to take-up our services," she said.

She also commented that the weakening ringgit against the US dollar had also impacted the company as 60 per cent of its contents were in US dollar-denominated, but due to its prudent cost management, the company was able to continuously deliver growth.

She said Astro aimed to continuously develop its e-commerce value proposition to meet the growing online shopping demand and capture more household consumers through its free satellite TV proposition, NJOI, which is set to introduce a new Malay HD channel this June.

Apart from that, Astro also plans to introduce a new download service in May, whereby consumers would be able to download their favourite television shows onto their computers or smart devices, enabling them to watch them offline.