Pay-TV bright spot for Telefónica's troubled Brazilian operation


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Juan Fernandez Gonzalez

| 26 February 2016




Despite net income in Brazil being down by over 36% in 2015, Telefónica has found positive figures in its satellite and IP-based TV services, as well as fibre.



telefonica vivoNet income totalled over $280 million in Q4 2015, 10.7% less than in Q4 2014. For the whole year, the company's net income totalled more than $840 million, 36.4% less than in 2014, or nearly $865 million taking into account GVT from May 2015.

GVT's integration into the Vivo brand has been a great driver of Telefónica's pay-TV business. Fuelled by direct-to-home (DTH) and IPTV subscriber bases, pay-TV revenue grew by 22.6%.

Pay-TV accesses increased by 9.7% year-on-year, to nearly 1.8 million in Q4 2015, with 158,000 net additions in 2015 – although Vivo actually dropped nearly 50,000 subs since September 2015, due to a Brazilian market that is falling.

Telefonica's pay-TV market share came to 9.4% in December, one percentage point more than in the previous year.

In addition, the company says Vivo and GVT are now fully integrated and it expects an improvement in financial results for 2016.