(Reuters) – Grupo Televisa, Mexico’s largest broadcaster, on Tuesday posted a big jump in first quarter net profit versus a loss in the same period a year earlier, boosted by discontinued operations related to its content merger with Univision.
The company posted a first quarter net profit of 52.6 billion pesos ($2.65 billion) compared to a loss of 584 million pesos in the same period in 2021.
The company’s revenue increased 3.3% from the year-earlier period to 18.6 billion pesos, according to a statement filed with the Mexican stock exchange.
Televisa completed its fusion with Univision on July 31 to create TelevisaUnivision, a new firm that combines content from both broadcasters.
Sales for satellite television service SKY fell 6.2% while usage fell 13.6%, Televisa said. There were 175,000 disconnections in the quarter. Televisa’s cable segment posted sales growth of 1.1% and usage growth of 3.0%.
TelevisaUnivision launched a free ad-based version of its new streaming platform ViX in March, which will compete with established rivals like Netflix Inc and Amazon.com Inc’s Prime Video.
The subscription-based tier, ViX Plus, is due to launch in the second half of the year.
($1 = 19.8911 pesos by end-March)
(Reporting by Carolina Pulice, Noe Torres and Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Sandra Maler)
