Gazprombank's Media-Business segment finishes first quarter of 2019 with 1.97 billion rubles net profit

30 May

On May 30, Gazprombank published its financial results for January-March 2019. Among the numbers were key indicators relating to its Media-Business segment.

Consolidated revenues for the Media-Business segment grew by 3.6% and reached 23.749 billion rubles, according to the results of the first quarter.

The Media-Business segment wrapped up the first quarter of 2019 with an operating profit of 1.346 billion rubles. According to the financial indicators for this period, the net profit of the Media-Business segment added up to 1.970 billion rubles. Gazprom-Media Holding’s television business, as well as its film distribution and film production activity, accounted for the biggest contributions to the net profit.

According to Russia’s Association of Communication Agencies (AKAR), the TV advertising market decreased by 6% in the first quarter of 2019. However, the advertising revenues of Gazprombank’s Media-Business segment decreased only by 4.4% to 16.442 billion rubles. The company was able to achieve these results thanks to an increase in ad sales on its Friday! and TV-3 channels despite a broader decline on the TV advertising market.

The growth in consolidated revenue is attributed to an increase in non-advertising revenue from the sale of rights and the successful distribution of Russian films in the first quarter of the year. The non-advertising revenues in the Media-Business segment grew by 27.5% to 7.307 billion rubles. The main portion of non-advertising revenues comes from the sale of rights and distribution of media content. Income from the sale of rights increased by 42% to 4.411 billion rubles between January and March 2019 due to the successful releases of Central Partnership films and the TNT film Politseysky s Rublyovki. Novogodniy Bespredel (Policeman from Rublevka. New Year's Mayhem).

The monetization of NTV’s content library on the territory of Russia and the CIS countries also had a positive effect on revenue growth. The revenues from the sale of rights also include revenues from the distribution of Red Media’s special-interest TV channels and the sports channels of Gazprom-Media Match.