GMM Grammy on the lookout for partners

“We are now welcoming all possible options ranging from financial investors, joint ventures, media partners and content co-development to drive our company to reach that goal,” Paiboon Dumrongchaitham, chairman of the music and entertainment giant, said last week.

He said new partners could be either local or international companies. 

This new move comes after GMM Grammy completely restructured its internal management and learning activities throughout this year.

For example, the company decided to exit non-core business, selling its shares in SE-Education, Post Publishing, Matichon and Index Creative Village.

The company also sold its six-title magazine business to C True, which is majority-owned by Thai AirAsia chief executive officer, Tassapon Bijleveld.

Paiboon explained that through its 32-year journey in the music and entertainment industry, GMM Grammy had gained a high level of experience in the creation of rich content for television, radio, online, show business and concerts.

To manage that huge content library, the company is setting up a content-marketing unit to work with other departments to optimise and monetise the content through various media platforms, both at home and overseas.

The new department will also work closely with clients and sponsors to design and develop TV and radio programmes, film and marketing activities to engage with target audiences, he said. 

“Our focus now is on copyright management via online channels. I would say that 80 per cent of Thai content available on online sites like YouTube and LINE TV is owned by GMM Grammy,” he added.

Although its digital-TV business is still suffering from the huge investment cost of content production, the ratings and audience share of both the One and GMM 25 channels have continued to rise after the revamp of its programming with prime-time soap operas and situation comedies, said Paiboon. 

GMM Grammy’s boss acknowledged that it was quite |difficult to run the two digital-TV channels amid current intense competition in the flat-growth media industry, but said he hoped that next year would see an improvement in terms of advertising spending. 

“The breakeven point for the digital-TV business is expected to be right on track, in the next five years, with the business able to make a profit a year later,” he insisted. 

According to Bualuang Securities, GMM Grammy is expected to show a slightly shallower core loss in the current quarter, due to higher revenue from digital-TV business, although the company’s content costs will remain high.

An analyst at the securities firm estimates a new core loss for this year of Bt1.02 billion, against Bualuang’s previous estimate of Bt807 million, led by higher-than-expected content costs, and selling, general and administrative expenses.

GMM Grammy is expected to deliver a much better performance with a significantly shallower consolidated core loss of Bt220 million next year, against Bualuang’s previous core-profit estimate of Bt212 million, said the analyst.