Vivendi’s 1H revenues up a juicy 17%

Chris Forrester and Pascale Paoli Lebailly

Of course, this time last year just about everything was in the doldrums, but Vivendi’s 1H (and especially its second quarter) numbers for this year seem rather good.

Top of the revenue tree were Vivendi’s games division (Activision/Blizzard) generating an impressive $2.14bn, and helping drive first-half revenues to $18.85bn (€13.18bn), a 17% improvement on the same period last year.

However, CEO Jean-Bernard Levy must be thanking all those buyers of ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Guitar Hero’ because the revenue figures at Canal Plus were decidedly miserable. C+ saw revenues of $3.23bn, just 0.2% ahead of last year.

But there was some good news in the TV division where advertising surged 15% compared with last year, bucking the general market trend. And operating profit for both Canal+ and CanalSat went up 34.5 % to €472 million.

Vivendi’s CEO Jean-Bernard Levy, who plans to acquires TF1 and M6's stakes in the pay-TV channel by the end of this year, put a positive spin on the numbers. “Canal+ has grown in the last twelve months despite the crisis,” he said.

Growth has been helped by rising subscriptions with HD options leading the trend, as well as strong growth at the overseas division. Between June 2008 and June 2009, subscriptions to Canal+ services recruited 94,000 new subscribers to reach 10.2 million. M Levy said overseas services are where he expects further growth.

Vivendi is still burdened by $10bn (€7bn) of net debt.