Monday 21 January 2013

Media - Soft Close To CY12


Malaysia’s advertising expenditure  (adex)  inched  up  by  a  smaller  than  expected 2.0%  y-o-y  in  CY12,  mainly  due  to  weaker  adex  in  the  newspaper  segment,  which slipped 1.2% y-o-y. In contrast, adex for free-to-air (FTA) TV and radio grew by 5.2% y-o-y  and  5.3%  y-o-y  respectively.  We  expect  advertisers  to  continue  to  rein  in advertising  and  promotion  (A&P)  spending,  possibly  due  to  sluggish  consumer sentiment.  Hence, we remain NEUTRAL on the media sector.
 
CY12  numbers  below  expectations. According to The Nielsen Co, 4QCY12 adex came in at RM2.3bn, up 7.2% y-o-y and 5.2% q-o-q. The quarter turned out to have been 2012’s strongest  amid  the  typical  year-end  rush  on  the  part  of  advertisers  to  exhaust  their advertising budgets. However, the cumulative CY12 adex grew by a disappointing 2.0% to RM8.4bn,  which  was  below  our  estimate.  By  segment,  free-to-air  (FTA)  TV  adex  climbed 5.2% y-o-y while that of newspapers dipped 1.2% y-o-y.

BM,  Chinese  papers  in  the  lead.  Newspapers  adex  income  contracted  1.2%  y-o-y  in CY12  on  the  back  of  a  5.1%  decline  in  the  adex  for  the  English  newspapers.  BM  and Chinese  publications,  on  the  other  hand,  saw  their  adex  ticking  up  1.7%  and  1.1% respectively.  On  a  y-o-y  basis,  Media  Prima  and  MCIL  expanded  their  market  shares  by 143.6 bps and 26.6 bps respectively, while their counterparts saw a 170.2 bps dip in total market share.
 
FTA TV adex improves. Total FTA TV adex improved 5.2% y-o-y in CY12, with three out of  four  of  Media Prima’s channels  registering  positive  adex  growth  except  NTV7,  which saw  adex  shrink  3.7%  y-o-y.  Nevertheless,  Media  Prima  continued  to  dominate  the  local airwaves with an 86.4% market share. 

Maintain  NEUTRAL.  We  are  maintaining  our  NEUTRAL  stance  on  the  media  sector  on expectation  of  tepid  growth  over  the  next  two  quarters.  We  make  no  changes  to  our NEUTRAL calls on: (i) MCIL (NEUTRAL; FV: RM1.17) as we stay cautious on  the impact  of its RM500m in debts on its bottomline, (ii) Media Prima (NEUTRAL; FV: RM2.39) due to its  exposure  to  the  more-volatile  TV  segment,  and  (iii)  Catcha  Media  (NEUTRAL;  FV: RM0.43) as the company may need more time to nurture its burgeoning online media and e-commerce  businesses.  Lastly,  we  keep  our  MARKET  PERFORM  recommendation  on Astro (MP; FV: RM3.35) for the company’s pay-TV business model, which may somewhat cushion the impact of the slowdown in adex.
Source: OSK

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