By Cassandra Garrison
(Reuters) -Grupo Televisa, Mexico’s largest broadcaster, on Tuesday posted a big jump in first quarter net profit versus a loss in the same period a year earlier, boosted by discontinued operations related to its content merger with Univision.
The company’s net profit from January to March reached 52.6 billion pesos ($2.65 billion) compared to a loss of 584 million pesos in the same period in 2021.
The company, for years the world’s largest producer of Spanish-language video content, saw its revenue increase 3.3% from the year-earlier period to total 18.6 billion pesos, according to a statement filed with the Mexican stock exchange.
Televisa completed its fusion with Univision on July 31 to create TelevisaUnivision, a new firm that combines content from both broadcasters.
The company’s cable segment posted sales growth of 1.1% with the addition of 336,000 revenue generating units (RGUs) and usage growth of 3.0%.
Sales for satellite television service SKY, however, fell 6.2% while usage fell 13.6%, Televisa said. There were 175,000 disconnections in the quarter.
Local consultancy Monex said Televisa’s results were “positive” and that it saw an increase in growth expectations for this year.
The transaction to create TelevisaUnivision “could imply a greater capacity for the generation of future flows, as well as a lower level of leverage,” Monex said in a note.
TelevisaUnivision launched a free ad-based version of its new streaming platform ViX in March, which will compete with established rivals like Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video.
The subscription-based tier, ViX Plus, is due to launch in the second half of the year.
($1 = 19.8911 pesos by end-March)
(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison, Carolina Pulice and Noe Torres; Editing by Sandra Maler)
