The country's leading direct-to-home (DTH) telecast firm, Dish TV, hopes to start showing a positive net revenue within the current quarter. This will be a first for any DTH player, industry sources say.
“We will turn EBITDA-positive within the current, or at the most, within the next quarter, much ahead of our targets," Jawahar Goel, managing director, told Business Standard. EBITDA is net of operating revenue over expenses, before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation allocations Dish TV is in its sixth year of operation.
At present, say experts, every player in the DTH sector makes losses on almost every connection sold. According to Media Partners Asia's recent report, the combined losses for the DTH sector are set to cross Rs 2,000 crore in 2008-09. “Being EBITDA-positive for a DTH company means that it has managed to streamline its expenses. It is a positive sign,” said an observer.
Dish TV expects to close the 2008-09 fiscal, in which it crossed the five million subscriber mark, with a total revenue upwards of about Rs 700 crore, nearly 70 per cent more than the 2007-08 fiscal. It hopes to curtail its losses in 2008-09 to about Rs 430 crore or thereabout, almost the same as the previous fiscal, says Goel.
DTH players incur losses as a result of providing subsidised hardware to consumers. Dish TV has set aggressive targets for 2009-10 and aims to add another 2.5 million subscribers to take the gross subscriber base to over 7.5 million.
The company is also looking at additional revenue from carriage fees and advertising generated from the clean-feed of select foreign channels.
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