MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Grupo Televisa, Mexico’s largest broadcaster, reported on Tuesday a 44% jump in net profit in the second quarter, boosted by profit from its joint venture with U.S. network Univision and lower expenses.
The company posted a net profit of 3.14 billion pesos ($156 million) compared with 2.2 billion pesos in the year-ago period.
The company’s revenue increased by 0.3% to 18.53 billion pesos from the year-earlier period, slightly shy of the Refinitiv estimate of 18.8 billion pesos.
Its net profit from associations and joint ventures increased to 4.2 billion pesos in the second quarter from 888.4 million pesos a year earlier, the company said in a filing with the Mexican stock exchange.
“This … primarily reflected an increase in our stake in TelevisaUnivision Inc from approximately 36% in the second quarter of 2021 to approximately 45% on a full conversion basis in the second quarter of 2022,” the company said.
TelevisaUnivision, a firm that combines content with U.S. broadcaster Univision, launched its streaming platform ViX this year, which will compete with established rivals like Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video. A subscription-based version, ViX+, launched earlier this month.
The company also reported a 237.4 million-peso decrease in net expenses, attributed to factors including the absence in the second quarter of surcharges and other penalties which were paid in the same period in 2021 by its satellite television service SKY and cable segment.
Televisa posted a growth of 325,000 revenue generating units (RGUs) in its cable segment in the quarter, with sales and usage increasing 3.8% and 5.0% respectively.
Televisa’s satellite television service SKY had 255,000 disconnections, with dips in sales and usage of 7.7% and 24.1% respectively, the company said.
Mexican brokerage Monex said the results were in line with expectations, pointing to additions in cable but operational challenges in Sky.
($1 = 20.1335 Mexican pesos at end-June)
(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison and Carolina Pulice in Mexico CityEditing by Marguerita Choy and Matthew Lewis)
