ITV expects to outperform rivals in the fourth quarter-UPDATE

13th Nov 2012 07:04

Net advertising revenue (NAR) at ITV fell in the third quarter, but not as much as the rest of the market, the broadcaster said.The company took a hit from the Olympics and Paralympics, which were shown on the BBC.NAR for the 'ITV Family' was down 10% in July, down 9% in August and down 1% in September. This left the firm with an overall third quarter drop of 6%, which it said was in line with expectations and ahead of its competitors. This meant that in the first nine months of the year advertising was flat but, again, ahead of the market.ITV expects NAR to be broadly flat over the full year, with predictions of a 2% drop in the fourth quarter.This includes ad revenue down 2% in October, down around 2% in November and broadly flat in DecemberIn the nine months to date total external revenues were up 4% to £1.57bn, while non-NAR revenue (including production revenue, sponsorship, online ad revenue, pay TV income) was up 15% at £730m.ITV Studios continued its strong run, with total revenues up 20% to £498m and the company saying it expects the division to report over £100m of profit in 2012.Chief Executive Adam Crozier said it had been "an extraordinary year" for UK television with many unique events including the Queen's Jubilee, the London Olympics and the Paralympics. "In fact 9 out of the top 10 programmes aired will not return next year and as we expected this has affected our viewing performance," he said."However, we do not expect our viewing performance in 2012 to impact our advertising share in 2013 and we are focussed on growing our share of viewing next year."For their part, analysts at Nomura are highlighting how the company´s guidance has come in ahead of forecasts. In their own words: "ITV is forecasting fourth quarter Family NAR down 2% (vs NOMe of -1.4%) with fiscal year NAR flat (we are also flat). This breaks down into October -2%, November -2% and December 0% and we note that ITV has historically been conservative in its guidance so we may see some upside, particularly to the December forecast where bookings are still ongoing. The outlook is particularly reassuring given recent mixed media buyer messages from -8% in The Independent and 0% to -4% for the fourth quarter from our recent media buyer conversations [ITV has therefore assuaged some of the worst fears regarding the outlook for the advertising market this next Christmas]."