Astro claims to serve 69% of Malaysian households, eyes 90% mark

Astro Malaysia Holdings Berhad's (Astro) advertising income grew by 10% year-on-year to RM150.3 million, from RM136.3 million in the first quarter of 2016. This has driven its share of TV Adex and Radex to 34% and 72% respectively, stated the company in a press statement.Currently Astro’s multi-tainment platforms of TV, radio, digital and mobile continues to draw in subscribers and advertisers. In addition, the Dynamic Television Audience Measurement (DTAM) provides greater TV measurement accuracy and more precise targeting and these bode well for advertisers, said the broadcast company. Meanwhile, Astro continues to drive growth of its e-commerce business. Go Shop sold over 350k products to 216k customers to achieve revenue of RM63.9mn in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017.Astro claims it now serves 69% of Malaysia's households with an increase of 80.3k to a customer base of 4.9 million.“While we grow our reach, with a target of 90% households in five years, key to our strategy is to continuously innovate in our quest to provide value add products and services. We are embracing end to end digitilisation to serve our customers better by enabling their increasingly digital lifestyles. Digitalisation of customer service will not only increase customer satisfaction but reduces our cost to serve, which will enable us to focus our resources to effectively compete with digital-only disruptors,” Dato’ Rohana Rozhan, Group CEO of Astro said.Examples of digitisation of Astro around the region, included Tribe, which is Astro’s first mobile-first video OTT platform targeted to the millennials was launched by XL in Indonesia in March 2016. Moreover in April, Astro entered into a MoU with Globe Telecoms Inc. to offer Tribe in the Philippines.“Across Malaysia and the region, we see incredible new opportunities and we are committed to deliver on our growth strategy and shareholder returns. To achieve this, we will maintain razor sharp focus to innovate with greater speed and agility in this rapidly changing world to better serve our customers in our quest to be a deserving market leader,” he said.Dato’ Rohana explained in an increasingly globally competitive marketplace, Astro remains focused on increasing customer reach by strengthening content pipeline and ensuring global best in class customer experiences and embracing digitalisation. He added that Astro First and Astro Best, registered total buys of 994k. More than 351k of Astro TV households have connected their set-top-boxes and On Demand (OD) viewing has grown by more than fourfold to 300k video downloads per month in our connected homes with Astro on the Go (AOTG) app downloads increasing by 58%, culminating in total downloads of 2.2 million while average weekly viewing time rose to 173 minutes.Going forward, 2016 will be a big sporting year for Malaysian sports fans, kicking off with the UEFA Euro 2016 and Rio Olympics 2016. Sports is also a genre that is constantly being expanded and redefined and following on from successes in 2015, we will launch the region’s first dedicated e-sports channel, eGG or Every Good Game on Astro TV, AOTG and Tribe on the 7th of June.Targeting the growing community of e-sports fans in ASEAN, eGG will carry the broadcast of live events and e-sports programmes."At the very heart of our business is our content, and we have every intention of strengthening and expanding our content pipeline, with a focus on our very own signature IPs, local and ASEAN movies, premium day/date global windows, live sports and events, and increasingly digital content and socialisation," said Dato Rohana.