Strong Q3 for ITV

This morning’s Q3 statement from ITV impressed the stock market. At the time of writing shares in the company had increased by 6% in an overall market that has declined over the last few days.

The update reported that total external revenues increased by 4% to £1.57 billion, compared to £1.52 billion in the corresponding quarter last year.

Non-net advertising revenues (NAR) were up 15%, from £633 million to £730m for Q3, which the company stated was driven by ITV Studios.

ITV advertising revenues were flat over the first nine months but the company state that the performance was ahead of the TV ad market. Advertising revenues are forecast to be broadly flat over the full year but again outperforming the TV advertising market.

Total cost savings will be around £30 million in 2012 – £10 million ahead of the original target.

Chief executive Adam Crozier commented: “We have made further progress in reshaping and rebalancing ITV to ensure the business is more robust both commercially and creatively.”

Crozier went on to state: “The momentum we are building in our non-NAR revenues has helped grow group revenues up 4% to £1,573m in difficult economic conditions and with a broadly flat television advertising market.

This has been an extraordinary year for UK television with many unique events including the
Queen’s Jubilee, The London Olympics and the Paralympics. In fact 9 out of the top 10
programmes aired will not return next year and as we expected this has affected our viewing
performance.

However, we do not expect our viewing performance in 2012 to impact our advertising share in 2013 and we are focussed on growing our share of viewing next year.”