StarHub sees entertainment subscribers fall

Singapore service provider StarHub’s entertainment subscriber total fell by 10% year-on-year to 337,000 at year-end, dropping by 10,000 during the last quarter.

The operator reported that entertainment service revenue fell by 4.8% year-on-year in the second half to S$114.1 million, which the operator said was mostly due to the absence of World Cup held in 4Q2022, with subscription revenue, commercial TV revenue and advertising revenue all down.

Nikhil Eapen

For the full year, entertainment service revenue was up 5.4% due to higher subscription, commercial TV and ad revenue,, boosted by the presence of English Premier League football fron the third quarter of 2022, partially offset by the absence of the World Cup this year.

StarHub said the decline in subscriber numbers in the last quarter, was mostly due to it stopping certain promotion offers.

ARPU for the last quarter was up S$1 to S$46, lifted by the Premier League.

StarHub’s total revenue was flat year-on-year for the second half at S$1.267 billion, while EBITDA was up 26.9% at S$237.7 million.

CEO Nikhil Eapen said that the operator had experienced a “milestone year”  with “real growth across all metrics and business segments”.

He said that the company had made preset milestones while “continuing to make significant investments amidst the intensively competitive market conditions” it faced.

Eapen said that 2024 had marked “the tail-end of our investment phase’ setting the company up to shift focus to “harvesting” the results.