Interim results released by French broadcaster TF1 today show a deteriorating outlook for the second half of the year. The company is now expecting a 3-5% decline in advertising revenues for the whole of 2001. Given that there was a 0.2% growth at the interim stage, this implies a fall in ad revenues of between 6.5% and 10.8% in H2, according to analysts at ABN Amro.
The broker now expects the slowdown to continue into H1 2002 and is forecasting a 9.0% decline before seeing a return to growth in the second half of next year (see
Forecasts). These assumptions result in full year advertising growth rates of -4.5% and -3.0% for 2001 and 2002 respectively, says ABN.
Meanwhile, M6, another French broadcaster, has released results which show an advertising outlook that ABN has described as ‘alarming’. The company has issued a profits warning today and ABN has cut its advertising growth forecasts for 2001 and 2002 to 0.9% and -1.0% respectively.
This suggests a deteriorating, rather than improving, medium-term outlook for the European broadcasting subsector. Visibility is limited and further downgrades can not be ruled out, warns ABN Amro.
