MONTREAL — The fact that no Canadian hockey teams made it to the NHL playoffs this spring and overall soft sales in soundstage and production equipment rentals contributed to a second quarter net loss attributable to shareholders of $5.7 million at TVA Group Inc., the company announced on Monday.
TVA Group, a subsidiary of Quebecor Media Inc., reported a consolidated adjusted operating income of $2.427 million for the second quarter, representing a 67% decrease from its adjusted operating income in the same quarter of 2015.
The company’s Broadcasting & Production segment experienced a $2.431 million adjusted operating loss, a $3.3 million negative variance from the same quarter last year, due primarily to a 20% increase in the adjusted operating loss of TVA Sports because of lower advertising sales resulting from the failure of the Montreal Canadiens and other Canadian hockey teams to reach the Stanley Cup playoffs this year, the company said in a news release to announce its quarterly loss.
In addition, TVA’s Film Production & Audiovisual Services segment reported a $938,000 adjusted operating income for Q2 2016, which represented a negative variance of $4.35 million or 82% decrease from the second quarter of 2015. This shortfall was due to lower volume of activities in soundstage and equipment rental and in visual effects, TVA Group said in its release, explaining that in the same quarter of 2015, TVA’s soundstages and production equipment were heavily used for the major US production X-Men Apocalypse.
In comparison, TVA Group’s Magazines segment reported a $3.92 million adjusted operating income in the second quarter of 2016, up $2.7 million or a very healthy 222% increase over the same quarter in 2015, mainly due to the addition of the adjusted operating results generated by the magazines TVA acquired from Transcontinental, the operational synergies that resulted from the integration of the acquired magazines, and other cost-cutting initiatives, TVA Group said.
“Our quarterly results were impacted by the decline in the TVA Sports channel’s advertising sales, due in large part to the fact that the Montreal Canadiens didn’t make the NHL playoffs. Apart from that unusual circumstance, we are satisfied with the performance of the other units of our Broadcasting & Production segment, particularly TVA Network, which grew its adjusted operating income by 2.2% and increased its market share to 23.4%, up 1.4 percentage points from the same period of 2015. TVA Network carried 4 of the top 5 most-watched programs in Quebec, including La Voix, which was the Number one show again with more than 2.7 million viewers,” said Julie Tremblay, president and CEO of TVA Group.
“The increase in the Magazines segment’s operating results was the result of a concerted effort to successfully integrate the magazines acquired from Transcontinental on April 12, 2015. Our editorial and content management teams are constantly improving the content of our brands and magazines in order to address our readers’ ever-changing needs. The latest Vividata surveys show that we have grown our print readership by 2% and maintained our leading position in Canada’s magazine publishing industry with nearly 9 million readers across all platforms,” Tremblay said.
“Finally, the Film Production & Audiovisual Services segment suffered from the absence of any major Hollywood production in the second quarter of 2016, whereas the movie X-Men Apocalypse was filming on our soundstages in the same period of 2015. However, we are pleased with the bookings we have for (the) next months,” Tremblay concluded.
