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UTV MEDIA PLC - Trading Update

PR Newswire

London, June 23

UTV Media plc - Trading update

The Board of UTV Media plc is today providing an update on the progress of its new UTV Ireland television channel.

Having seen signs of audience growth in Q1, this has stalled in the last month, demonstrating the difficulty of predicting audiences for a start-up channel in a competitive market. 

After 26 weeks, audience performance for the channel therefore remains volatile. Whilst weekday peak time has performed well, with viewership almost 40% greater than both RTE2 and TV3, day-time and weekend viewing has been disappointing. Overall share of commercial impacts is therefore around 11% which is lower than the target set for the channel’s first year of operation.

The Board has today approved an action plan to address the audience shortfall but recognises that this will take time to deliver the required improvement in viewership. The Board is therefore assuming no significant improvement in overall audience levels for the second half of the year and is therefore revising its guidance for the full year and now expects UTV Ireland to incur losses of £11.5m in 2015.

The Board reaffirms its strategic objective for UTV Ireland to be the second most watched channel in the Republic of Ireland by 2017 and remains confident that it will create long-term strategic value for shareholders. It is clear, however, that the channel will take longer than originally anticipated to become profitable.

In the light of this, the Board has agreed with its bank lenders for the net debt/ebitda covenants on its facilities to be raised from 3.5:1 to 4.5:1 for a period of one year.

23 June 2015

Enquiries

Orla McKibbin, Director of CommunicationsTel: +44 (0) 28 9026 2188 / +44 (0) 7879 666 427For and on behalf of UTV Media plc

Norman McKeownGroup Finance Director & Company Secretary23 June 2015