Russia’s CTC Media’s finals
Written by Chris Forrester
Sunday, 28 February 2010 08:07


After a challenging year for the broadcaster, CTC Media unveiled its Q4 and FY numbers (to Dec 31) last Friday.

Total revenues were up 4% year-on-year in Rouble terms in Q4 and down 1% for the full year. Russian advertising revenues rose 2% year-on-year in Rouble terms in Q4 and fell 3% for the full year. The broadcaster’s Net cash position stood at $95.2m at year-end, and CTC enjoyed an increase in Russia’s national television advertising market share year-on-year to 19.5% from 17.5% for the full year.

Anton Kudryashov, Chief Executive Officer of CTC Media, sai: “We outperformed the Russian TV advertising market throughout 2009 and further increased our audience and advertising market shares. Our Russian advertising revenues were up 2% year-on-year in rouble terms in the fourth quarter and down only 3% for the full year, despite the impact of the economic recession on advertising budgets. This compares with an estimated 12% decline for the Russian TV advertising market in the fourth quarter and an 18% decline for the full year. We also managed to keep our underlying organic operating cost base flat year-on-year in rouble terms for the full year while, at the same time, raising the technical penetration and target audience shares of all three of our Russian networks. This efficient cost control enabled us to deliver underlying OIBDA margins of 48% in the quarter and 42% for the full year, when excluding non-recurring items.”

“Approximately 85% of our forecast full year 2010 Russian national inventory has now already been booked under forward contracts at approximately the same average prices as in 2009. The pricing environment is currently showing signs of improvement moving forward for later in the year and, while we do not expect to repeat the level of market outperformance that we achieved in 2009, our target audience shares have continued to grow so far in 2010. As indicated previously, we are also now substantially increasing our investments in the programming schedules and network coverage of our DTV and Domashny channels, in order to unlock their considerable future development potential.”

“We are a growth company and are therefore committed to investing in the development and expansion of our operations. The cash dividend declared by our Board demonstrates our philosophy to return an appropriate amount of cash to shareholders when we do not need all of the cash we are generating for investments in the future growth of the business.”