ITV Content Production Revenues up 9% in 2019

ITV, the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, has published its 2019 financial results which show strong growth across a range of the company’s activities. 

• Content production revenues (via ITV Studios) rose 9% to £1.8bn YOY
• Long form online viewing broke 500m hours served for the first time (506m compared to 447m in 2018) accompanied by a 6% increase in dwell time and 28% increase in monthly active users
• ITV Hub registered user accounts were up to 30.8m (vs. 27.6m the year before)
• Online advertising grew 21%
• And whilst linear ad income declined by 2% (to £2.1bn), overall ITV group external revenue increased 3% to £3.3bn

For ITV Studios, the broadcaster said that original hours commissioned by OTT platforms was up 95%, 58% of Studios revenue was generated outside the UK, up from 56% in 2018, and ITV Studios delivered 37% of ITV plc’s adjusted EBITA.

ITV’s OTT service, Hub+, has over 400,000 subscribers which is up over 50% year-on-year, BritBox US has over one million subscribers and BritBox Australia will launch later in 2020. BritBox UK venture losses were £21 million in 2019 and ITV expects the venture losses to be around £55 million to £60 million in 2020, broadly equivalent to its net investment.

You can see ITV’s full financial statement here.