Astro Posts Resilient Results in FY20, Underpinned by Cost Optimisation
Date Released:25 Mar 2020
Share
Tweet
Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad | Result highlights for the financial year ended 31 January 2020 (FY20)
Revenue -10% y-o-y at RM4.9bn
EBITDA +7% y-o-y to RM1.7bn
Normalised PATAMI* +17% y-o-y to RM657mn; underpinned by cost optimisation
4QFY20 Normalised PATAMI -19% y-o-y to RM128mn
Declared fourth interim dividend of 1.5 sen per share.
Pay-TV ARPU steady at RM100
Tun Zaki Azmi, Chairman of Astro, said: Despite headwinds in the global economic environment and a challenging media landscape in FY20, Astro continues to be cash generative, cost disciplined and proactive in its capital management. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board has decided to take a prudent approach by moderating a fourth interim dividend to 1.5 sen per share.
Total dividend declared in FY20 amounts to 7.5 sen, equating to a 60% dividend payout ratio. This represents a departure from Astro's dividend policy of paying out at least 75% of consolidated profits. Given the current heightened uncertainty, the Board believes this to be the best course of action to conserve liquidity and strengthen the Group's balance sheet.
Henry Tan, Group Chief Executive Officer of Astro said: Our financial results remain resilient amid a challenging operating environment and the threat of piracy. We achieved PATAMI growth by optimizing cost and strengthening our position as the entertainment destination and gateway to Malaysian homes through our Pay-TV, NJOI, Commerce and Broadband propositions. The Ultra Box, Astro's latest 4K UHD decoder with cloud recording is well-received with over 45,000 orders since launch.
Our stable financials enable us to pivot our business to capture new digital opportunities in OTT video streaming, radio and commerce. With 3 exclusive streaming services - Astro GO, HBO GO and iQIYI, we have the largest customer base for video streaming services in Malaysia, with over 2.6mn registered users.
Key Operational Highlights:
Winning Over Malaysian Homes: With a variety of vernacular, international and live sports content, coupled with initiatives to elevate customer experience, Astro is strengthening its position as Malaysia's entertainment destination of choice, with a total customer base of 5.7mn, or 75% of Malaysian TV households. Astro is leveraging on NJOI to further increase its presence in households. NJOI introduced e-wallet top-ups to complement the existing 30,000 touchpoints including convenience stores, online banking and self-service channels.
Strong Engagement: Our customers are watching over 4 hours of Astro daily across TV, On Demand and Astro GO, reaffirming our relevance even in this digital era. Astro's HD offering has grown to 101 channels, contributing to a strong TV viewership share of 76%. With an On Demand library of over 51,000 shows, On Demand titles watched grew 37% y-o-y to 74mn while weekly time spent increased by 8% to 480 minutes. Meanwhile, Astro GO's registered users rose 20% to 2.6mn and weekly viewing time increased by 16% to 173 minutes.
Radex showing q-o-q growth: Astro's radio brands maintained their No.1 position in their respective languages, reaching 16.9 million weekly listeners, with an average of 2 hours daily while 3 million users stream radio online monthly. The SYOK app, which aggregates our radio brands, podcasts and original videos, has over 273k monthly active users. Astro Radio's Radex saw growth in the past 4 quarters while Radex share rose 4 percentage points to 80%. Astro's share of Digital Adex stood at 4%, supported by 11.6mn digital monthly unique visitors on over 25 digital brands. Meanwhile, Astro's TV Adex share stood at 43%, underpinned by higher viewing across all platforms.
Growing reach: Go Shop grew its reach nationwide registering a 25% growth in customers to 2.2mn with over 1.0mn app downloads.
Key Initiatives:
Astro Shaw Leads the Local Box Office: BoBoiBoy The Movie 2, a collaboration between Astro Shaw and Animonsta, is the top grossing animated movie in Malaysia last year with RM30mn ticket sales. Together with other releases - Pusaka, Sangkar, Wira and Misteri Dilaila, Astro Shaw garnered 50% of the local Malaysian box office in 2019. Award-winning The Garden of Evening Mists has been released in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Taiwan and Hong Kong and continues to receive critical acclaim globally.
Vernacular Content Drives Highest Viewership: Astro's vernacular content was key to strong TV viewership share of 76%. Its originals such as Gegar Vaganza 6, Maharaja Lawak Mega 2019, Curi-Curi Cinta and Classic Golden Melody 2019 were the most viewed programmes in 2019. Its reality talent show, Gegar Vaganza 6, was the highest rated programme with 3.8mn TV viewership.
Content Bundled Packages with Fibre Broadband Speeds of up to 800 Mbps: Astro now offers new content packages bundled with fibre broadband speeds of 300Mbps, 500Mbps and 800Mbps, in partnership with Maxis Home Fibre.
Outlook
Globally, businesses are facing unprecedented social and economic challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Henry said, As a broadcaster, Astro is categorised by the government as an essential service provider. While we continue to broadcast as usual during the Movement Control Order, we have also activated our business continuity plans and ensured the safety of our employees. Our teams are currently split across different sites with significant majority working from home. We at Astro are doing our part to keep Malaysians informed and entertained through these trying times.
Astro remains focused on strengthening its customer value proposition and loyalty, while pursuing deeper cost optimisation and stronger anti-piracy push. At the same time Astro will leverage on its customer
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Astro Posts Resilient Results in FY20, Underpinned by Cost Optimisation 
