ITV Revenues Down 12% In H1, Visibility Still Limited
ITV advertising revenues at Granada fell by 12% during the six months to March 2002, with March forecast to be down by 6% and April by 13%, according the company’s AGM statement released this morning.
Consequently, Granada warns of continued poor visibility and says that the predictions for May should not be extrapolated to the rest of the year.
Forecasts Buyers’ estimates of overall ITV Network revenue forecast a 9% decline during March and just 3% growth during May.
Analysts at ABN Amro are leaving their full-year advertising forecasts unchanged at -8.0% growth for ITV in the year to September and -4.0% for the calendar year.
The broker expects slightly stronger than expected performance in Q2 of the calendar year to be offset by revenues being sucked out of Q3. As a result, it now expects quarterly growth for the year to September 2002 as shown.
| ITV quarterly ad revenue growth, year to September 2002 | |
| Year on year growth (%) | |
| Q1 | -10.6 |
| Q2 | -14.0 |
| Q3 | -1.3 |
| Q4 | -5.1 |
| Year to September | -8.0 |
| Full calendar year | -4.0 |
| Source: ABN Amro, March 2002 | |
