Cyfrowy Polsat boosted by multiplay and post-paid growth

IPLA by Cyfrowy Polsat

Polish pay TV operator Cyfrowy Polsat’s second quarter performance has been boosted by strong growth in multiplay customers and post-paid services, despite lack of significant progress in the free TV segment.

The pay TV outfit said that up to 24% of its contract customers now use multi-play services, and the company had almost 1.4 million integrated services customers by June 30, up 18% year-on-year.

The number of contract services with the operator increased by 539,000 year-on-year to 13.4 million.

TV services played a significant role in contributing to the growth. The number of contract services for pay TV customers grew by 203,000 to 4.8 million, boosted by growth in multiroom and OTT services, including Cyfrowy Polsat’s Ipla packages.

The average monthly users of OTT service Iplan stood at 3.5 million for the first half.

Cyfrowy Polsat also added 252,000 mobile contract services by 252,000 year-on-year, taking its total to 6.8 million. The company’s mobile internet base grew by 84,000 top 1.8 million.

Pre-paid customers were more or less stable year-on-year at 2.9 million, but average revenue per unit increased by 8.5% to PLN20.5 (€4.80) .

TV advertising and sponsorship revenues on the other hand grew by only 0.5% in the second quarter, outperforming a market that saw a 1.2% decline. The group’s share of the TV advertising market increased to 27.6%.

Cyfrowy Polsat posted revenue of PLN2.47 billion for Q2, up 1.1%. EBITDA stood at PLN964 million, up 3.1%. the company posted a net profit of PLN282 million, up 22%, and free cash flow increased by 26% to PLN1.77 billion.

Cyfrowy Polsat recently acquired exclusive rights in Poland to the Champions League and Europa League football tournaments, beating TVN-backed nc+, which had previously held the rights.

“The second quarter of the year was the time of consistent execution of our strategy across all business segments, which brought the expected effect in the form of very good operational results as well as growth of the Group’s revenue and EBITDA,” said Tobias Solorz, CEO of Cyfrowy Polsat and mobile operator Polkomtel

“In line with the assumptions of our multiplay strategy, in Q2 we increased the saturation of our base with integrated services, we also noted growth of average revenue per contract customer and managed to maintain a low churn ratio. It was yet another quarter of significant growth of the number of contract services for mobile telephony, pay TV and mobile Internet access. Already nearly one quarter of our customer base uses integrated services while the low churn ratio and growth of average revenue per contract customer prove not only the efficiency of our efforts and the attractiveness of our offer but are also a sign of satisfaction of our customers with the services we provide to them.”