NMG upbeat on digital TV, plans Bt150m studio centre

“The overall economy is expected to recover next year and we will be growing quite rapidly, driven by the digital TV business,” NMG chairman Suthichai Yoon said yesterday.
“The delay in the digital TV auction will not have any impact, but help the group to have time to get ready. The group is now looking for a downtown location to build its new, large-scale studio, which will be a centre for its digital TV business called ‘Nation TV Town’,” he said.
Despite the economic slowdown, the group believes it could accomplish its revenue and profit targets, he said.
President Duangkamol Chotana said the group had budgeted about Bt150 million for the project to be constructed by the end of this year or early next year to support the company’s bid for news, variety and children’s digital TV channels.
NMG is showing greater financial muscle. Its debt-to-equity ratio was pared to only 0.24 times in the first half of this year from 1.12 times in the first half of last year, while its net profit surged by 92 per cent to Bt150 million from Bt78 million.
Its EBITDA-to-interest expense ratio improved sharply from 5.3 times at the middle of last year to 8.2 times at the end of the second quarter this year. Internal cashflow was measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation
Its debt-to-EBITDA ratio was reduced from 10.66 times to 4.41 times.
“Our financial status is getting stronger. We are ready to invest in new businesses both digital TV and content production to welcome the liberalisation of the TV industry, which will spur skyrocketing demand for media contents as the first phenomenon in the market,” she said.
Although the bidding schedule for digital TV has been postponed to the first or second quarter of next year, NMG has not stopped its preparations, especially in terms of personnel and facilities.
Spotting a great opportunity to provide contents beyond news, the group has appointed Torboon Puangmaha, president of the digital business group, as president of Nation International Edutainment, or NINE.
“The group will promote NINE as a key pillar of the digital media business. We are ready in terms of diversified contents, including pocketbooks, comic books, as the importer of licences from Japan and Europe,” Duangkamol said.
Torboon was also a local expert in digital media and would be a key driving force for moving NINE towards a major producer of digital contents to serve the high-growing market, she said.
Torboon said he had laid the groundwork for NINE’s “KidZone”, which was ranked seventh among youth and family-based satellite-TV channels, according to AC Nielsen’s recent survey. He would promote the new “content hub” business and further develop the existing broadcasting and publishing businesses into digital contents supplied to both domestic and Asean markets in the near future.
NMG will also launch “N Store” in October to provide digital content business services via an integrated e-commerce platform for e-books, films, video and games in a single application.
NINE posted a revenue increase of 7 per cent in the first half from Bt184 million in the same half of last year, but it earned Bt14.15 million, down from Bt16.57 million.
Adisak Limprungpatanakij, president of Nation Broadcasting Corporation, said NBC was confident of doing better in the second half than the first six months, when it achieved Bt340 million in revenue amid the concern of consumers over the slowing economy. Consumers were expected to have better confidence about the improving economy in the second half.
“Despite the anticipation of total revenue generated for the full year to be similar to last year, we are confident that our profit will be significantly improved. We earned more than Bt31 million in the first six months of this year, thanks to better cost management and the culling of some low-profit TV programmes, which will benefit NBC’s bottom line as a whole,” he said.