The company has not yet specified the planned job cuts.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The advertising business, which is weakening due to the recession, makes for a sobering start to the year at Pro Sieben Sat1. Sales fell by a good 13 percent to 816 million euros in the first quarter within a year, as the television group announced on Friday. The operating profit (adjusted Ebitda) even collapsed by 52.3 percent to 53 million euros.
The economic downturn will continue to weigh on the advertising business in the current second quarter, but not quite as much, said CEO Bert Habets. “We are already seeing significant improvements in advertising bookings in June compared to the previous months.” Between April and June, operating profit should amount to a mid to high double-digit million euro amount.
For the year as a whole, the Bavarians are sticking to their forecast if the economy should emerge from the current recession. Accordingly, sales should largely stagnate at 4.1 billion euros and could deviate by 150 million euros up or down. The profit should drop to around 600 million (plus/minus 50 million) euros. Habets emphasized: “At the same time, we expect a noticeable recovery in our very profitable advertising business in the second half of the year, parallel to the forecast economic upswing.”
Pro Sieben Sat1 wants to lay the foundations for long-term profitable growth in 2023, said Habets. “We are therefore clearly focusing on cost efficiency and are making targeted investments in areas that are strategically important to us in order to make our offerings even more attractive, especially digitally.” The focus here is on the Joyn streaming platform. The company has not yet specified the planned job cuts.
The Reuters news agency recently learned from insiders that Pro Sieben Sat1 is again in talks with the US cable giant Comcast about its pay-TV channel Sky Germany. Comcast wanted to get rid of Sky Germany so urgently that the US group was even willing to pay a financial dowry of several hundred million euros, several people familiar with the talks had said.
More: Berlusconi governor is to move into the Pro Sieben board of directors